This approach is classic conservative misinformation, as they are relying heavily on the suggestive nature of the title to blur the line between fact and fiction.
Allahpundit over at Hot Air claims to have "proof" to back up Kyl's assertions that Obama told him, in a private meeting, that he was not securing the border because amnesty wasn't on the table.
...courtesy of Naked Emperor News.... Obama circa 2004 talking explicitly about border security and amnesty as a political “trade off,” which is precisely what they are. In no sense are the two joined at the hip as a matter of policy; in fact, as I’ve argued before, the feds would be more likely to bring conservatives around on some sort of amnesty if they showed good faith by taking care of the border first. But since Latinos won’t stand for that, neither will a Democratic or Republican president. Hence the obvious “trade off,” and hence The One’s candor in chattering about this with Republicans. We all know the score. Why pretend otherwise?
Take a listen for yourself.
It's common for most people, when hearing statements from others, to remember the first and last pieces of those statements. This has been proven in psychological testing for decades. However, one would think that with the advent of new information technologies that people would be able to utilize those tools and go back to take a second look at something they think may be questionable. This most certainly applies here.
Go back and listen to this clip from Obama.
Did you catch it? Not once was the word amnesty uttered, and the conclusion of the clip ( which was devoid of the question that was obviously asked of him ) was anchored to Obama's call for a path to citizenship for those illegals that have shown to be "good citizens". This completely destroys the talking point that he is in favor of granting blanket amnesty to all illegal immigrants - which was the point that Allahpundit and Naked Emperor News were attempting to make.
With all this talk about how the border is less secure now than it was 2 years ago, I have to wonder why no one is reporting that deportations have increased as well as border crossings had decreased. Could it be that this wouldn't help the conservative cause? Most certainly, yes.
Of course, this is in no way meant to diminish the fact that there are illegals here that are engaging in criminal acts, but where we are losing site of what can and should be a reasonable and justifiable solution to the problem is that our perceptions of who these illegals are, why they are coming here, and what they are doing have been distorted by the ever escalating reporting and how that reporting is done by not just conservatives, but virtually the entire media establishment.
It's a lot like Obama playing golf. He's taken less vacation time and played far less golf than Bush, but you wouldn't know it because that's all that conservatives talk about for days on end. It's a matter of proportions.
As I've stated before, amnesty was granted by Ronald Reagan in 1986 and this didn't hurt Republican's chances for holding office in America. At no point during the 59 second clip ( ripped from a much longer interview that I would really like to hear ) did Obama mention or even allude to amnesty. However, the use of the word has saturated conservative conversations to the point where they think that providing a path to citizenship ( through all legal channels which Obama has proposed ) is the same as amnesty.
They hysteria continues.
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