Is Senator Barack Obama using Andy Martin as a scapegoat for Obama's sinking campaign?

NEWS FROM:
ANDY MARTIN
“He works for
the People of Illinois”
Republican for U. S. Senator
Suite 4406
30 E. Huron Street
Chicago, IL 60611-4723
(312) 440-4124

ATTENTION: ASSIGNMENT/DAYBOOK EDITORS

ANNOUNCEMENT OF NEWS CONFERENCE: October 30th, 2007

U. S. SENATE CANDIDATE ANDY MARTIN CHARGES OBAMA CAMPAIGN WITH TRYING TO SCAPEGOAT MARTIN FOR OBAMA’S CAMPAIGN COLLAPSE

MARTIN RETORTS “I ACCEPT FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE COLLAPSE OF THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN”

(CHICAGO)(November 1, 2007) Republican U. S. Senate candidate Andy Martin will hold a Chicago news conference Tuesday, October 30th at 1:00 P.M. to accuse the Senator Barack Obama’s campaign of trying to scapegoat Martin for Obama’s campaign collapse. Martin will plead guilty to torpedoing Obama’s prospects for the White House.

Martin filed nominating petitions for the U. S. Senate in Springfield, Illinois on October 29th.

Beginning in August, 2004 Martin, one of the Internet’s most influential independent opinion journalists, began exposing Obama’s secret life and hidden childhood as well as his invented family history, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1189687/posts; see also http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/1/21/14036/4115.

During 2007 Martin has chronicled Obama’s unfitness to serve as president, see ContrarianCommentary.com. Now Martin’s criticism of Obama is being confirmed, as Obama raises more and more money and seems handcuffed by his fear of political combat with Team Clinton. “The tougher he talks the wussier he gets,” Martin says.

“Not surprisingly, Obama’s staff is looking for a scapegoat for his poor performance. And, not surprisingly, the Obama staff is now trying to scapegoat my writing as the reason for Obama’s downfall. Obama’s staff, sobbing about the unfairness of my criticisms, was an admitted source for The Nation article.

“The Nation, America’s oldest left-wing journal, suggested I am the mastermind of a ‘New Right-Wing Smear Machine’ that may have inflicted a fatal blow on Obama’s chances for the presidency. I have never written anything but factually correct articles, as well as prescient opinions on Obama’s unfitness as a national candidate.

“In the warped lexicon of the left, ‘truth telling’ is now a ‘smear.’ Nonsense. Finger pointing at me will not salvage Obama’s desiccated campaign.

“On the other hand, if Obama wants to blame me for the collapse of his campaign, I know what Rush Limbaugh would be telling me to do: take full responsibility, Andy. OK, Rush, I am proud to do so. After all, I was the first and most persistent observer to document Obama’s evasions and evasiveness.

“I plead guilty to puncturing Obama’s balloon. And because I am pleading guilty to The Nation’s conclusions, though not to their factual insinuations, I can’t sue them for defamation. Truth is their defense. Andy took down Obama. Yup.

“My own senate campaign has been subjected to bombardment from The Nation and other liberal media, for telling the truth about Obama. This week, when I was scheduled to file in Springfield, they unloaded with their latest ‘smear machine’ attack on me. The timing was not a coincidence.

“But in reality there is no ‘right-wing smear machine.’
There is only me, a plain-talking, truth-telling writer commenting on a senator who is not even remotely fit to be president and who has been refracted into a dazzling aurora by liberal news media and left-wing campaign contributors.

“The Nation engages in its own left-wing smear when it admits it has no evidence linking me to anonymous e-mails attacking the senator, and then slyly suggests I really am the source. As a journalist, I do not believe in anonymous attacks, and I have never made any against Obama. Period.

“What is surprising is the powerful impact my research and writing has had on the national psyche. The Nation admits my commentary has been devastating for Obama. Indeed, I just might be responsible for his downfall. People keep reading what I have to say, and they keep falling away from Barry O. He started the year closing the gap with Team Clinton, and he has been widening the gap since he announced. He is running a ‘campaign in reverse.’ His balloon is deflating. Hisssss.

ContrarianCommentary.com is very proud to be credited as the ‘giant killer’ of Obama’s flatulent campaign for the presidency. We take full responsibility. Obama just doesn’t have the ‘right stuff’ to be president. Period.

“The left may scapegoat me, but ultimately they are fooling themselves if they blame ContrarianCommentary.com for Obama’s collapse. To paraphrase Shakespeare, ‘The fault, dear Obama, likes not in my columns, but in yourself,’” Martin will state.

NEWS CONFERENCE DETAILS:

WHO: U. S. Senate candidate/Internet
journalist/editor/critic Andy Martin

WHERE: Southeast corner of Huron and Wabash Streets, Chicago
(St. James cathedral)

WHEN: Tuesday, October 30th, 1:00 P. M.

MEDIA
CONTACT: (312) 440-4124

WEBSITE: AndyforUSSenator.com

E-MAIL: AndyforUSSenator@aol.com

-----
[An edited version of The Nation story follows]
The New Right-Wing Smear Machine
by CHRISTOPHER HAYES
[edited from the November 12, 2007 issue]
The most notorious smear forward of this cycle is the Obama/madrassa canard, which represents the cutting edge of electronic rumor. At least two weeks before the Obama/madrassa smear appeared in the online magazine Insight, on January 17, it had been circulating widely in an e-mail forward that laid out the basics of Obama's bio in a flat, reportorial tone before concluding thus: Let us all remain alert concerning Obama's expected presidential candidacy.
But even if the identity of the e-mail's author was unrecoverable, it was still possible to trace back the roots of its content.
On August 10, 2004, just two weeks after Obama had given his much-heralded keynote speech at the DNC in Boston, Andy Martin issued a press release. In it, he announced a press conference in which he would expose Obama for having "lied to the American people" and "misrepresent[ed] his own heritage."
Martin raised all kinds of strange allegations about Obama but focused on him attempting to hide his Muslim past. "It may well be that his concealment is meant to endanger Israel," read Martin's statement. "His Muslim religion would obviously raise serious questions in many Jewish circles where Obama now enjoys support."
When I asked Martin for the source of his allegations about Obama's past, he told me they came from "people in London, among other places." Why London, I asked? "I started talking to them about Kenyan law. Every little morsel led me a little farther along."
Within a few days of Martin's press conference, the conservative site Free Republic had picked it up, attracting a long comment thread, but after that small blip the specious "questions" about Obama's background disappeared. Then, in the fall of 2006, as word got out that Obama was considering a presidential run, murmurs on the Internet resumed. In October a conservative blog called Infidel Bloggers Alliance reposted the Andy Martin press release under the title "Is Barack Obama Lying About His Life Story?" A few days later the online RumorMillNews also reposted the Andy Martin press release in response to a reader's inquiry about whether Obama was a Muslim.
One Obama organizer told me recently that every day, while calling prospective voters, he gets at least one or two people who tell him they won't be voting for Obama because he's a Muslim. According to Google, "Barack Obama Muslim" is the third most-searched term for the Illinois senator. And an August CBS poll found that when voters were asked to give Obama's religion, as many said Muslim as correctly answered Protestant.
Oh yeah. And the e-mail continues to circulate.
"Everybody started calling me" when the e-mail first made the rounds, Andy Martin told me. "They said, 'Hey, did you write this?' My answer was 'they are all my children.' "
------------------------------------------------------------
Chicago-based Internet journalist, broadcaster and media critic Andy Martin is the Executive Editor and publisher of ContrarianCommentary.com. © Copyright by Andy Martin 2007. Martin covers regional, national and world events with forty years of personal experience. He holds a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Illinois College of Law. Columns also posted at ContrarianCommentary.blogspot.com; contrariancommentary.wordpress.com. Comments? E-mail: AndyMart20@aol.com. Media contact: (866) 706-2639. Web sites: ContrarianCommentary.com.