[T]he press felt there had to be some drug story about the first boomer candidate, and in the last weeks of the campaign a convicted felon bent on exploiting the system cooked up just the story some of them wanted. Brett Kimberlin was a perjurer doing a fifty-one year federal prison sentence for terrorizing the town of Speedway, Indiana, by planting eight bombs in seven days. The explosions maimed several people, including a Vietnam veteran, the father of two young children, who lost his leg. Suddenly, just before the election, he was claiming to have regularly sold me marijuana. He said he wanted to show how "hypocritical" my anti-drug positions were.
There was not a shred of truth to his bizarre accusation, nor a single witness to back it up, and if anyone could have less credibility I have a hard time imagining who it would be. (CBS's "60 Minutes" would eventually spend two years looking into this story before deciding that there was nothing there.) But the media in the frantic final days of the campaign didn't care about facts and ran with the story anyway. On the Friday before the election Kimberlin scheduled a press conference. Before he could manage to hold it, the Federal Bureau of Prisons put him into administrative detention. He was in and out of solitary for the next ten days, partly for violating prison rules and partly, according to the bureau director, out of concern for his personal safety. There was a controversy, inevitably, over whether the Reagan administration or the Bush campaign pulled some strings to keep him quiet until the election was over. Whether they did overact and exert pressure, I don't know, but Kimberlin's story was so ridiculous that it should never have made its way into the mainstream media. Even assuming the worst, I'll let Larry Sabato have the last even-handed word about this incident. In "Feeding Frenzy" he says that "the responsible federal officials, if not the Bush/Quayle campaign itself, have only themselves to blame for elevating Kimberlin to martyr status. But there is also a pitiful quality to the way in which the press let itself be manipulated by an apparently publicity-hungry federal prisoner guilty of heinous crimes."
Like Kimberlin, Sinclair may simply be publicity hungry as media critic Larry Sabato described Kimberlin in his book, "Feeding Freny." Unlike Kimberlin, however, Sinclair has never been found guilty of heinous crimes and makes no apologies for his drug-using/trafficking, check forging and credit card fraud past. It is worth noting the striking difference in the willingness of the mainstream media to report on Kimberlin's sensational charges, while they, for the most part, have completely ignored Sinclair's allegations against Obama. There is clearly a double-standard at play here within the MSM as there is in every election in this country.
As to the arrest of Sinclair being celebrated by supporters of Obama, I have to ask if the Obama supporters are unwittingly elevating Sinclair to martyr status like Kimberlin was after he was isolated from reporters by federal prison officials? Two pro-Obama bloggers from Paris, France of all places, took credit for securing the arrest of Sinclair by making sure the appropriate authorities knew of his specific whereabouts on the day of his press conference. Citizen Wells blogger has already put up a post at Sinclair's blog depicting him as a "political prisoner." Sinclair is disabled due to chronic health problems and relies on a social security disability check for his livelihood. His family and friends worry for his safety and whether he is being allowed to take the medications prescribed to him by his doctors. Their concerns may be valid. After Jim McDougal was sentenced to three years in an Arkansas federal prison for his Whitewater-related crimes, federal prison officials placed McDougal in isolation because the old and ailing inmate was incontinent and unable to produce urine samples for drug testing on demand. McDougal, who was reportedly cooperating with Special Prosecutor Ken Starr in the investigation of President Clinton, fell very ill in isolation after prescription drugs for heart-related problems were withheld from him. He was pronounced dead after being rushed to a local hospital.
If you wish to view Sinclair's National Press Club conference in full, you can view it by clicking here.
10 comments:
The only people whose comments will be posted on this thread are those who use their own names. The Obama drive by shooters can go elsewhere with their anonymous comments.
Interesting article from Columbia Journalism Review, about New Yorker reporter Mark Singer, who "bought" the Kimberlin story hook, line and sinker:
http://backissues.cjrarchives.org/year/97/2/books-con.asp
I especially appreciated the lessons learned, as outlined by Anthony Marro, who is reviewing Singer's book on Kimberlin for CJR:
¥ Political bias is poison to journalism.
¥ Economic partnerships with sources can be both dangerous and corrupting, and are likely to end up as painful as any other bad marriage.
¥ The fact that the government treats someone badly doesn't mean that the person was a true innocent to begin with; Murray Kempton has noted often that in the case of one prominent New York heroin dealer, the government "framed him for something that he did."
¥ Information that can't be verified shouldn't be used.
My name is Josh Woolley, I am a resident of Indianapolis, I did not post "anonymously." Indeed, you have your blog set up so you cannot post "anonymously," and you still refused to post my comment about crimes of dishonesty and credibility of a person not hinging on a "heinous crime." Gary, my posts are usually not that bad (even if they are pro Obama).
What is going to end up happening if you fail to publish comments from all sides is you become FOX News. If that is what you want, I am sure some people are motivated enough to respond by creating their own website questioning you and your reporting directly, perhaps you have seen foxattacks.com. As an attorney and public figure, I just was not sure you had looked at the whole picture and what could happen if you try to censor fellow bloggers. If you believe you have a future career in politics, this might not be your best decision.
An obviously imbalanced man posts a video on YouTube about having sex with a celebrity, and the right-wing rushes to put a mike in front of him.
He deserves quality medical and mental health care from a single-payer health care system, not to be humored in his hallucinations.
Josh, I have no problem publishing comments when people are reasonable about what they write. Within a couple of hours of putting up this post, I had about 10 comments from anonymous Obama bloggers, primarily leveling personal attacks against me and not addressing the post. This is part of a pattern that has been described in detail by Clinton bloggers, who have even had their lives threatened by Obama bloggers. Paulie Abeles has discussed the death threats and late night phone calls she has received since she announced an effort to get former Clinton supporters to back John McCain. The Obama people have orchestrated an attack against Larry Sinclair's family members as well. He has received death threats. There is something very frightening at how the Obama supporters choose to express their support for their candidate. If you think I'm going to allow people to personally attack me anonymously and then post their comments on here, then you better think again. Civilized comments are always posted here, even if they are anonymous. The point I was trying to make is that the MSM widely reported on Kimberlin's flimsy allegations back in the 1988 campaign, and he had absolutely no corroborating evidence. Sinclair has made very detailed allegations, provided records of his hotel stay in the Chicago area, named the limo driver and the the company he worked for, signed sworn affidavits, provided a video-taped statement, etc. That doesn't mean his allegations are true. A Chicago Tribune reporter spent several days interviewing Sinclair and spoke to the limo driver's wife. I can't say Sinclair is telling the truth. He has a sordid past, but I'm very troubled by Obama's past as well. He has repeatedly been caught in lies about his life. He chose a thoroughly corrupt man, Tony Rezko, as one of his closest friends and political supporters, who is now in jail facing many years in prison for his crimes. The government's key witness against Rezko was a closeted gay man who threw all night drug parties for his male friends. I can understand why people don't believe Sinclair, but I can't understand why people are so quick to believe everything Obama says when he has been caught in one lie after another. Some of Obama's closest associates are no better than Larry Sinclair whether you want to believe it or not. You just choose to ignore the facts.
A Democratic blogger, who calls Obama the Manchurian candidate, had this to say about Sinclair being held as a political prisoner:
By Webster G. Tarpley
Washington DC, June 21 — Tonight political prisoner Larry Sinclair is spending his fourth night in the DC Jail, the victim of a Gestapo-style enemies’ list operation carried out just three blocks from the White House last Wednesday afternoon.
Sinclair had come to the National Press Club to detail his charges that the self-proclaimed Democratic presidential nominee Barack Hussein Obama had indulged in two homosexual encounters complete with crack cocaine in early November 1999, that Obama was complicit in the December 2007 assassination of Donald Young, the gay choirmaster of Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ, and that’s Obama’s resident perception monger, David Axelrod, had paid the pornographic website Whitehouse.com $750,000 to organize a campaign of character assassination against Sinclair, culminating in a faked polygraph test. At the close of the press conference, Sinclair was arrested inside the press club by US Marshals and DC police, apparently based on an old Delaware warrant.
GESTAPO TACTICS IN THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB, THE TEMPLE OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT
Where are the civil libertarians? Where are the paladins of the ACLU? Where is the outcry and the indignation? Is no one concerned about threats to lynch a gay man for political reasons in the heart of the nation’s capital? Where are the left liberals who have been ostensibly so concerned about civil rights and civil liberties from Nixon to Bush-Cheney? Perhaps they are sleeping, or perhaps they have drunk the Obama Kool-Aid and have become morally insane.
Or perhaps they are so obsessed with the reform of the FISA law and the danger that Bush might be listening in to their telephone calls that they do not notice when a prominent critic of a presidential candidate who is infamously a darling of the establishment media is actually arrested, taken into custody and led away, the target of Gestapo tactics in the National Press Club, the sanctum sanctorum of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the First Amendment generally.
Surely the weak sisters who have joined Obama’s fifth column are morally insane when they joke about how Barky’s Myrmidons were able to arrest Sinclair. If the First Amendment does not apply to speech which is not popular with the establishment and the mob, then the First Amendment does not exist at all, for anybody. Any journalist or writer should be able to see that they themselves may be next, now that the US Marshals are serving as the “Fight the Smears” enforcement arm of the Obama campaign. Selective and vindictive prosecution, anyone?
The mere fact that Larry Sinclair had been able to hold such a successful press conference was already a serious defeat for the corrupt and brutal Obama machine.
Sinclair had appeared in the Holeman Lounge before more than a hundred journalists, with 10 cameras set up on tripods in the back of the room. The number of handheld cameras, camcorders, and tape recorders was beyond counting. The press conference was dignified, businesslike, factual. There was no screaming, no disruption, no threats or insults.
Every journalist who wanted to ask a question was given ample opportunity to do so, and about three dozen questions were asked. Reasonable follow-ups were allowed.
There were journalists from Britain, from Germany, from India, from China. Most of the questions represented honest attempts to pin down the facts of what was being alleged.
Sinclair’s honesty compared favorably to most politicians today. He started his presentation with a detailed admission of his criminal record, jail time served, his pending court motion to dismiss an old Colorado warrant, and a statement that his troubles with the law date back more than 20 years to 1980-1986.
In the question-and-answer segment, Sinclair gave a straight answer to every question he was asked. He did not dodge questions, he did not prevaricate, he did not refuse to answer questions, and he did not bungle his answers. Sinclair has made serious mistakes in life, as he readily concedes. But Sinclair is not a candidate, not a person who has to be evaluated by the public and then accepted or rejected.
Sinclair comes forward as a witness with a series of allegations to make and a story to tell. It is up to public opinion and most emphatically the news media to evaluate those allegations and those facts, including through the efforts of enterprising investigative journalists anxious to make a name for themselves by finding out the truth about what is potentially the biggest political scandal of the century. Obama, after all, is the candidate of whom we know little and who needs urgently to be evaluated.
The issue posed is not what you think about Larry Sinclair. The overriding issue is the presidency in a time of military defeat, institutional crisis, and economic breakdown.
HOMOPHOBIC DEATH THREATS AGAINST SINCLAIR
Obama’s lemming legions, and especially his notorious mercenary squadristi of the Internet, had done everything possible to sabotage and disrupt Sinclair’s press conference. One Obama backer had issued a categorical death threat against Sinclair in terms that made it abundantly clear that a homophobic hate murder might be in the offing. The FBI and the District of Columbia police had shown zero interest in offering Sinclair protection against a possible hit by one of Obama’s fanatics.
Once it is accepted that police agencies can intervene in political campaigns, it is possible to a rest or detain almost anyone if the interest is great enough. The old warrant used to incarcerate Sinclair most probably refers to events already covered by the statute of limitations.
If nothing can be found at this level, there are always old parking tickets and library fines that can be ginned up. Any political candidate who has had dealings with the Federal Elections Commission can be hauled in on some minor technical violation. The precedent established by last Wednesday’s events at the National Press Club is exceedingly ominous for the public life of this country.
The irony is that repression is now being carried out not to help the Republicans but under ultra-left cover, to help the radical subversive Obama.
Since the warrant used as the pretext to arrest Sinclair apparently came from Delaware, our attention naturally turns to Senator Joe Biden, the incorrigible blowhard and defeated presidential candidate who is now known to be angling for the post of vice president or Secretary of State in a future Obama regime.
We also note that Biden’s son, the nepotist Beau Biden, is the current Attorney General of Delaware. As the cops would say, the Biden machine, anxious to ingratiate themselves with Obama, had the means, motive, and opportunity to arrange this outrageous arrest. For those gullible enough to believe that civil liberties might improve under an Obama regime, this ought to provide a reality shock.
Do not assume that civil liberties will get better under Obama; the evidence is now that they will get worse. Obama’s National Press Club caper is as blatant as anything seen under Bush – and Barky is not even in the White House.
At the end of his detailed indictment of Obama, Sinclair demanded information on four points. The first involves Obama as phone records for November 3, 1999 through November 8, 1999 — the time frame of the two allegedly encounters between Obama and Sinclair, mediated by Paramjit Multani of Five Star Limo at O’Hare Airport. The second involves Obama’s phone records for September 2007 — December 23, 2007, when Sinclair was receiving probing phone calls from Donald Young about how much Sinclair had revealed concerning Obama — calls that ended when Young was found dead from multiple gunshot wounds just before Christmas 2007.
Sinclair’s third demand for clarification touches communications from Obama, Axelrod, and campaign manager David Plouffe to Whitehouse.com in January and February 2008. Sinclair’s fourth point regards possible payments by Obama, Obama’s campaign, Axelrod, Plouffe, and Axelrod’s AKP Message and Media to Whitehouse.com in that same time frame of January-February 2008.
OBAMA MUST ANSWER, NOT EVADE
It is now up to Obama to answer these charges. It is imperative that this be done now, without further delay. No responsible citizen wants a president who can be blackmailed and thus turned into a puppet because he is hiding secrets about bisexual activities, crack cocaine, political murder, and character assassination campaigns.
It is also up to the great news organizations, including ABC, CBS, NBC, The New York Times, and the Washington Post, to carry out their responsibility to the public. These news organizations should not play the role of kept courtesans of those in political power. As Sinclair pointed out, he has told his story and has thus done everything he can.
It is now up to the great media concerns to locate and interview the limo driver Paramjit Multani, to investigate the relevant telephone records, and above all to question Obama himself about this very serious matter. It is not up to the corporate media to sit back and sniff about whether a Sinclair has conclusively proven his own case to their satisfaction or not; the proving or disproving is the responsibility of the media, and let them make damn sure that they get it right.
By today’s journalistic standards, Sinclair’s allegations are extraordinarily substantive already, especially when compared with some other major scandal allegations heard during the primaries. Sinclair has filed a federal civil suit against Obama and Axelrod, complete with sworn affidavits and court papers.
This means that he is willingly risking Rule 11 penalties for filing a frivolous lawsuit.
He has also made statements to the Chicago police about his contacts with murder victim Donald Young. These steps represent a very high degree of public commitment by Sinclair to the truth of what he is saying.
Compare this to the shoddy standards of the New York Times which, on February 21, 2008 published and prominently displayed on its front page an innuendo about a supposed sex affair between Senator McCain and a certain Vicki Iseman, a Washington lobbyist. Not one single solitary named source was cited to support this innuendo. Or, take the case of Vanity Fair magazine, the house organ of decadent left liberalism, which included a slander piece entitled “The Comeback Id” by Todd Purdom in its July 2008 issue. Here again, there was not one single named source who was willing to have his or her name publicly associated with Purdom’s sleazy allegations.
It is painfully obvious that there is one set of journalistic standards for the Perfect Master Obama, and another and much laxer set for the competition. This is intolerable.
NO PRIVACY FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO ACCESS THE NUCLEAR BUTTON
It is fair to say that the idea of a private sphere for US presidential candidates about which the general public is not entitled to know anything became obsolete at the same time that intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads became available around 1960 to 1965. Since then, every presidential candidate has in effect appeared before the public asking to get his or her hands on the thermonuclear button that can start World War III.
At this point, the notion of a private sphere for presidential candidates becomes wholly untenable. In this day and age, we have the right to know everything but everything about presidential nominees who are asking for our votes.
We have a right to know their full personal histories, with no exceptions, no omissions, and no withheld documents.
We have a right to know if they are HIV-positive and whether they ever registered for the draft.
We want to know if they have received electroshock, psychopharmaca, and whether they have been treated by a psychiatrist.
We have a right to see their birth certificate, their college transcript, their senior thesis if they wrote one, their law school transcript, their passport, papers from earlier times in public office, and all other relevant documents.
We have a right to know about their mother, their father, their sister, their brother, their Aunt Tilly, their best friends at all stages of life, their boyfriends, their girlfriends, their pets, their backers, their sponsors, their gurus, their controllers, and their associates of every kind.
More than a right to know these things, we have an imperative duty to find them out.
For they are asking to get their hands on the thermonuclear button, the misuse of which can unleash a thermonuclear fireball that will not respect any aspect of the privacy of ourselves and our family.
Naturally, candidates are free to make their own choices in life just like everybody else: they can choose their religion, their personal associations, their forms of recreation, and all the rest in any way that they like.
But none of this — absolutely nothing — can be claimed as a secret off limits to the attention of the public. All of it must be thoroughly investigated, aired, and published when the presidency is at stake.
An Air Force crewman at a missile silo in the Dakotas goes through a background check which leaves scant room for privacy. We must demand nothing less from presidential candidates.
OBAMA’S COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT AND ALLEGED COCAINE USE
Larry Sinclair alleges that Obama has indulged in crack cocaine. Those familiar with the public literature about the current tenant of the White House know very well that there are many indications that his extraordinarily low level of performance may derive from cognitive impairment brought on by habitual cocaine use. How many more coke fiends in the White House are compatible with the further national survival of the United States?
Ronald Reagan notoriously suffered from cognitive impairment and constantly made his remarks off index cards which he kept hidden in his hands. Those index cards were a low-tech version of the glass plates of the Teleprompter upon which Obama relies.
As soon as he cannot read his words off those glass plates, Obama begins to stutter, to stammer and babble, to hem and to haw, repeatedly losing his syntax and constantly interjecting “um” and “you know.” What if Obama’s cocaine use really did extend beyond 1981, as he suggests in his memoir, and continued all the way to late 1999 at the very least, as Sinclair is alleging?
That might suggest that Obama suffers from greater cognitive impairment than Bush, as Obama’s incredible series of gaffes at the end of the primaries also indicates. Larry Sinclair stressed during his press conference that he has been a gay man all his life, and that he regarded the crack cocaine issue as the central one, at least until the time of the Donald Young murder.
During the press conference, Sinclair announced that he was willing to make his own personal medical records, including mental health records, available to responsible representatives of accredited news organizations, at their own expense.
That means that Sinclair is much more forthcoming about his medical history than Obama, who has withheld his medical records and offered a single meaningless page of advertising copy signed by his personal physician. And remember that Sinclair is not running for any office, while Obama wants to be president.
TWO MONTHS TO THE ROLL CALL OF THE STATES, AUGUST 27
The Democratic Party still has more than two months in which these very serious, substantive, and detailed allegations against its presumptive candidate can be thoroughly investigated.
It is unthinkable that any responsible political leader would be willing to see Obama receive the nomination while this sword of Damocles hangs over his head. Larry Sinclair’s videotape has been on the Internet since mid-January, and it has at various times been the object of discussion on something approaching a million websites.
The issues are Obama’s crack cocaine use, his bisexuality, his possible involvement in the Donald Young assassination, and the allegations of character assassination and harassment against Sinclair funded by the Obama campaign.
Karl Rove knows all about each one of these points, and there is no way to deter Karl Rove and his cohorts.
So, although it may seem incomprehensible to Obama’s drooling acolytes, the interest of the Democratic Party is best served by thorough airing of these allegations to before the roll call of the states is held on August 27, 2008 — and this is exactly what Sinclair has been trying to do since mid-January.
If Sinclair had been a GOP deployment, he would simply have waited for September or October to come forward.
There are of course those who lament and regret that it is necessary to dredge up the sordid details of a figure like Obama. They say that it is better to use political campaigns to talk about issues.
This document may sound plausible, but it is totally wrong, and the fault rests with Obama.
First, Obama does not campaign on issues in any systematic way. He presents himself as the Perfect Master, the Anointed One, the Savior, the Messiah, the Mahdi. His hysterical followers are obsessed, not with a political program or a set of issues, but with the personality cult of Obama. This means that any attempt to engage Obama on the issues is by definition an impotent and self-defeating tactic.
The only useful objections that can be made to Obama are ad hominem biographical revelations designed to show that he is not so anointed after all, and that his ability to walk on water has been overestimated.
Then there is also the matter of Obama’s notorious duplicity and flip-flops even where he does have specific positions on certain issues. First Obama wanted a fixed schedule for getting out of Iraq, but Samantha Power revealed that this was not the case at all. Barky said he wanted a different kind of foreign policy, and then he pandered to AIPAC, probably lying through his teeth in the process. First, Obama wanted to help the lower income brackets, but now he is talking about cutting the corporate income tax. Obama attacked free trade in Ohio and Pennsylvania, even as his top economic controller, Austan Goolsbee of the Friedmanite Chicago school reassured the Canadians that this was just election posturing; now Obama has told Fortune magazine that he likes free trade and is devoted to “free markets.”
First, Obama was going to be tough on FISA; now he is going along with the Democratic congressional leaders as they attempt to appease Bush.
Obama had built his career on ethics in government and reducing the role of political contributions; now he has turned his back on the only meager legislative achievements by becoming the first presidential candidate in modern times to repudiate matching funds in the general election.
On all these points, to attempt a substantive debate with Obama is a fool’s errand. The only way to pin Barky down is through pointed reference to crucial facts in his own background, biography, and associations which cannot be changed or swept under the rug. Any other approach is deliberate impotence and capitulation.
FREE LARRY SINCLAIR!
In the meantime, Larry Sinclair is still sitting in the DC jail. He could be extradited to Delaware at any time.
What kind of a presidential campaign are we going to have when critics of the most radical subversive to ever get this close to the presidency have to worry about a knock on the door in the middle of the night? It is time to put massive public pressure on the Obama campaign to drop their enemies’ list operation against Larry Sinclair, and to release him from jail at once.
Thank you AI for showing the hypocrisy of the MSM.
Although I have many issues with Larry, and his story, I find it hard to believe that NOT ONE MSM'er has discredited his story. Greta posted one blog as to why she wouldn't cover this story. She got ripped by people saying that the public deserved the right to make up their own minds. I had forgotten about Kimberlin's accusations, but when you brought them up, the old memories returned.
Someone at Lame Cherry also posted a story about how Larry's arrest, may just open the doors for Obama to have to release the records that have been asked for.
Thanks again for rekindling and giving we who just want SOMEONE to investigate the allegations, and prove or disprove them, some ammo.
As someone once said, "The silence speaks volumes". Ok someone may not have once said that, but I'll take credit for it.
ONE HAS TO WONDER WHY ALL THE TROUBLE TO QUIET ONE MAN? LARRY SINCLAIR SEEMED CREDIBLE AT HIS NATIONAL PRESS CLUB SESSION AND HE SHOULD AT LEAST BE HEARD BEFORE WRITTEN OFF. OBAMA HAS TOO MANY SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET OR SHOULD I SAY, IN THE BACK OF A LIMO.
My name is Chris Hext, I hope that counts. Your (very long) comment is quoting the screed of a man who says 9/11 was engineered by the military industrial complex and the media. Come on, even if he hadn't been discredited (which he has...with a lie detector...operated by conservatives who would have loved to see it proven), at least quote someone who isn't a complete nutjob.
Clearly, the mainstream media feels there are better things to cover in this election. I tend to agree.
There must be nothing to the story that anyone can find...otherwise, the MAINSTREAM MEDIA would be all over this like flies on dog poop in August. One thing that is a mantra...sex sells. If true, this saga would make Larry Craig's bathroom behavior look tame.
Finally, this isn't 1988 anymore, either. Just speculating here, but maybe the Mainstream Media LEARNED something from that whole deal. If this story had legs, it would be running. Of course, there's still lots of time left before the election. I would tend to believe that this is a dude on You Tube that wants to make a buck.
As far as censorship on this blog. It's the owner's blog and his right! I fully support him on that accord.
And, finally, I am an Obama supporter that could give a rat's pitootie less as to what he did in 1999. Whether the allegations are true or not, it makes no difference in how I will vote in 2008.
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