Barack Obama recruits team to tackle web smears

Barack Obama is recruiting senior staff to a new unit which will combat virulent rumour campaigns on the internet that threaten to cost him votes in the presidential election against John McCain.

The unit is part of a huge expansion of Obama’s campaign team as he shifts from the Democratic nomination race to the campaign for November’s election.

As well as the rumour-mongering problem, units are being set up to deal with other perceived vulnerable points, including off-the-cuff remarks by his wife Michelle. McCain’s wife, Cindy, questioned Michelle’s patriotism in February after she said: “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country.”

Brooks Jackson, director of the Washington-based FactCheck.org, an independent academic organisation set up in 2003 to monitor the factual accuracy of statements made in elections, said yesterday there had been false rumours on the internet about George Bush and John Kerry in the 2004 election.

“With Obama, it is particularly vicious,” Jackson said. He added that one of the most persistent is that Obama, a Christian, is “some kind of Muslim Manchurian candidate, planted by Islamic fundamentalists to betray the country and it is very widespread”.

McCain too suffers from rumours on the internet, mainly from former Vietnam veterans disputing his account of his five-and-a-half years in a Hanoi prisoner-of-war camp.

Obama yesterday began a three-week campaign through potential swing states in which he will focus on concerns about job losses, collapsing house prices and soaring petrol costs. McCain, short of funds compared with Obama, held fund-raising events.

The latest Gallup poll nationwide puts Obama on 46% against McCain’s 44%. CBS has Obama on 48% and McCain on 42%. Obama is ahead in the key swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, while McCain leads in Florida. In Virginia, normally a state Republicans can rely on and Obama is targeting, McCain is only 1% ahead.

Obama delivered his speech in Raleigh, North Carolina, which he has only an outside chance of taking, but his campaign team said he wants to send a message he is going to compete in all 50 states, not just the swing ones.

Obama paid homage to McCain as an American war hero and acknowledged that the two shared many of the same goals such as tackling climate change.

But Obama said the two had fundamentally different views of how to deal with the economy. Reflecting Obama’s strategy of tying McCain to the unpopular Bush, Obama said: “For all his talk of independence, the centrepiece of his economic plan amounts to a full-throated endorsement of George Bush’s policies.”

– By Ewen MacAskill

Popularity: 1% [?]

That, I am sorry, carries NO different meaning……………..If one is not REALLY proud of their country then they should get the hell out. PERIOD………..And the minute she entered the limelight is the minute she became fair game. No, Obama, we will NOT lay off you wife.

Who has the best ideology for change in our nation? Senator McCain is a ‘dark horse’ who signed onto the lefts bill to enact comprehensive Immigration reform, that if passed would have been a paramount blow on any taxpayers. Potential president Obama, has always been direct about his obvious intentions to sign into law a new AMNESTY. McCain? One cannot be sure what his intentions? McCain is a true globalist, which to me means outsourcing of jobs to other countries, and the same badly negotiated free trade agreements like NAFTA. The North American Free-trade agreement, has become a dark hole where billions of dollars have vanished in treaties, that have handed America over to the International corporate CARTELS. These mega corporations hold no loyalty to any country and have exported jobs to the lowest bidder. Globalist have already eroded the sovereign rights of many nations in the European Union.

Culminating in free movement of poor peoples labor undermining the European indigenous population to large amounts of immigration. The same agenda is anticipated in 2009, unless the citizens and legal resident doesn’t stop this assault on our own job market. Obama will have a titanic fight on his hands, if he tries to force the plan of ethnic caucuses and special interest entities on 80 percent of the population. Taxpayers cannot afford to support the millions of illegal aliens, attracted to this nation by predatory employers. With a massive importation deficit from China, Mexico, India and other countries. This explosive rise in our nation’s trade deficit is another fundamental menace to this country and our economy. The trade deficit through the first 11 months of last year came in at $662 billion dollars, on pace to jump 17 percent from 2004’s record deficit. In fact, the trade deficit has nearly doubled since the president Bush took office and still gaining momentum. Perhaps McCain would sign an executive order to halt ear-marks, but that doesn’t stop the avalanche of cheap imported products. Americans should first halt the unfettered influx of millions of illegal immigrants and give the majority of these jobs, back to the legal individuals. After the borders are closed, shut then perhaps a guest worker program can be installed, but without citizenship. Democrats must endorse the SAVE ACT (H.R.4088) to bring orderly immigration back to our country.