Saturday, March 10, 2007

More Tough Questions

Since my post on March 7, I've done some more digging on Obama's stock portfolio. Was I too hard on my "boy" the other day? Some of my readers thought so.

Obama disclosed documentation on one of the two stocks, but it is the other stock that still raises some questions. The news has covered the fact that he actually lost $13,000 by selling SkyTerra stock when he realized the conflict, but it's the AVI stock for a company developing a vaccine for the avian flu that still is a bit suspicious. What most news organizations have left out of their reports is that he gained 28 percent from that stock.

And the "quasi-blind trust" for buying and selling stocks was signed three months after the purchase of the stocks, not before.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not jumping ship on Obama, but I do think this is a temporary set back in his campaign as the media has spent days reporting on this, and it's not going away just yet. Other politicans have done way worse, much of which probably goes unnoticed, but Obama is the poster boy for ethical reform.

I do have to question the fact that the New York Times was the first to unearth this story. Maybe Rudy's supporters fed this to the media. Who knows. Either way, it has once again deflected attention from Obama's platform to personal quandries.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think that's the plan--attack him on personal qualities since they can't attack him on his platform, because he's solid. I think that's the Karl Rove strategy for how to win a presidential election. I admit this stock situation amounts to a mild controversy, but for the most part, it's a non-starter. He sold the stock, it's done. He only made $2,000 from that avian flu stock. It's not like $2 million. Again, the media is trying to make a story where one doesn't exist. At least not one that should be reported for days.

Peter K Fallon, Ph.D. said...

What IS Obama's platform?

1] Timetable on troop withdrawal.
2] No red America; no blue America; just the United States of America.

Is there more? I've read both his books and I'll be damned if I can get more than that...