“Now, in terms of knowing my commitments, you don’t have to just look at my words, you can look at my deeds,” Obama said. “Just this past week, we passed out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, which is my committee, a bill to call for divestment from Iran, as a way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don’t obtain a nuclear weapon.”
Problem, he doesn’t even sit on the U.S. Senate Banking Committee.
Members of the US Senate Banking Committee
To be fair, the Iran Divestment Bill S.1430 is Obama’s bill, introduced in May 2007 that calls for state and local governments to direct divestiture from, and prevent investment in, companies with investments of $20,000,000 or more in Iran’s energy sector, and for other purposes. The House version of the bill passed the House 408-6 last summer and has been sitting in the Senate Banking Committee. Last week, Obama’s bill passed in the committee by 19-2 vote. It now goes to the Senate floor. Nor Obama claim that he voted for the bill since he does not sit on the US Banking Committee. In fact, Obama can’t claim many votes at all. Barack Obama has missed 277 votes (44.3%) during the current Congress. Again to be fair, John McCain has missed more votes.
Obviously, Senator Obama misspoke. He meant my bill not my committee. But I hope you recognize the larger pattern. He constantly misspeaks. The question is it intentional with the aim to deceive or is he just an idiot? Not that McCain is much better though in McCain’s case it is clearer that he just gets his facts wrong. With Obama, I am not so sure. I get the impression he is actually trying to pull one over on us.