Answering Earl

I’m disappointed in Earl Ofari Hutchinson’s 10 questions for Obama. Some of them are misleading in their formulations and others in their implication. Here are my responses and they are not those of either Sen Obama or his campaign. Just me.

1. I suppose you could spin Obama’s statement that he was against the war without seeing the secret intelligence as a negative. However, I read it as “You guys saw the intel and you still got it wrong.”

2.This is a disingenuous criticism. His subcommittee is on European Affairs. Despite continental drift, Afghanistan remains outside of Europe.

3. The parts of this compound question mix his Illinois Senate service and his national service where there is no vote of Present.

4. I don’t know anything about this.

5. Do you really want to get into how dirty the money sources on all sides of both parties? Bill’s contributors to his library and his multi-million dollar retainer as a consultant are pretty putrid. There are no winners here. For the most part mega fortunes are not made with pristine cleanliness. They may however be cleaned up by being inherited. (See #6)

6. Penny Pritzker, one of Abraham Pritzker’s 12 grandchildren inherited her fortune and is a billionaire in her own right. She doesn’t need to skim from failed banks. The whole subprime thing ended in a fiasco but originally was supposed to help poor people, people who didn’t qualify to regular loans. It was a way of avoiding the redlining of poor people in poor neighborhoods. Yes it was predicated on a continually rising market and that market, as all markets eventually “correct.”

7. See #5

8. Does this question imply that Obama lied or just didn’t know what all his staff and surrogates were saying? Both are certainly sins, but one is worse than the other.

9. Has anyone asked?

10. Oh come on. Hillary stayed in along with Kucinich, Dodd and Gravel. Obama, Edwards and Biden did the honorable thing and tried to follow the request of the national party.