Michelle Obama has spoken frequently on the campaign trail about the amount of student loans she and Barack had to take out to get through Harvard and Princeton. Worse yet, she had to pay them back!
As she has many times in the past, Mrs. Obama complains about the lasting burden of student loans dating from her days at Princeton and Harvard Law School. She talks about people who end up taking years and years, until middle age, to pay off their debts. “The salaries don’t keep up with the cost of paying off the debt, so you’re in your 40s, still paying off your debt at a time when you have to save for your kids,†she says.
“Barack and I were in that position,†she continues. “The only reason we’re not in that position is that Barack wrote two best-selling books… It was like Jack and his magic beans. But up until a few years ago, we were struggling to figure out how we would save for our kids.â€
Good thing for that Rev. Wright sermon that inspired The Audacity of Hope! Perhaps Michelle should be asking for a refund? It appears her husband, no doubt an exceedingly smart and capable man, is having some trouble with the basics, like American history and math.
Jack Kelly, a Marine, a Green Beret, a high ranking pentagon official (deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration) and now a journalist focusing on national security issues, offered up a remedial history lesson for Barack earlier this week,
In his victory speech after the North Carolina primary, Sen. Barack Obama said something that is all the more remarkable for how little it has been remarked upon.
In defending his stated intent to meet with America’s enemies without preconditions, Sen. Obama said: “I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies, like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did.”
That he made this statement, and that it passed without comment by the journalists covering his speech indicates either breathtaking ignorance of history on the part of both, or deceit.
I assume the Roosevelt to whom Sen. Obama referred is Franklin D. Roosevelt. Our enemies in World War II were Nazi Germany, headed by Adolf Hitler; fascist Italy, headed by Benito Mussolini, and militarist Japan, headed by Hideki Tojo. FDR talked directly with none of them before the outbreak of hostilities, and his policy once war began was unconditional surrender.
FDR died before victory was achieved, and was succeeded by Harry Truman. Truman did not modify the policy of unconditional surrender. He ended that war not with negotiation, but with the atomic bomb.
Harry Truman also was president when North Korea invaded South Korea in June, 1950. President Truman’s response was not to call up North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung for a chat. It was to send troops.
We learned yesterday that during this long campaign, Barack has “visited 57 states with one to go”
The far more important issue here is the one noted above by Jack Kelley. The Atlantic’s Mark Ambinder summed up the video nicely by writing,
Obama is tired, nothing more. But if John McCain did this — if he mistakenly said he’d visited 57 states — the media would be all up in his grill, accusing him of a senior moment.