Liz Sidoti /AP: Obama's opponents still racist (lies, takes quotes out of context, elides statistics...)

Before the election there were a string of articles attempting to portray opponents of Barack Obama as racist. Liz Sidoti of the Associated Press decided to carry on that fine tradition after the election (link):

Disproved and disputed claims about his religion and citizenship, namely untruths that Obama is a Muslim and isn't U.S.-born, zip across chatrooms and dominate the blogosphere. Fringe critics largely are responsible for perpetuating the lies, but even elected officials have raised them.

1. Only Obama himself knows what, if any, religion he belongs to. The most that can be said is what religion he's known to practice.
2. No definitive proof of where Obama was born has ever been provided. As described here, that's different from someone saying that they know where he was born. Sidoti is claiming he was born in Hawaii without having definitive proof; Sidoti is a liar.

All that underscores how the accomplishment of one man who broke the highest racial barrier hasn't entirely changed the dynamic of a country founded by slave owners.

Eviscerating the last part is left as an exercise for any first graders who are visiting this site; there's some historical background here.

She then may have taken from his recent press conference out of context; see the transcript here:

Still, he added, "Obviously, at the inauguration I think that there was justifiable pride on the part of the country that we had taken a step to move us beyond some of the searing legacies of racial discrimination in this country. But that lasted about a day."

She ends the quote there; here's the transcript (link):

But that lasted about a day -- (laughter) -- and, you know, right now the American people are judging me exactly the way I should be judged, and that is are we taking the steps to improve liquidity in the financial markets, create jobs, get businesses to reopen, keep America safe. And that's what I've been spending my time thinking about.

Sidoti is making it look like he was playing the race card. My impression is that Obama wasn't (yet again) playing that card but was instead supporting the idea that he should be judged on his actions.

Exit polls from the election between Obama and Republican John McCain, who is white, found that 19 percent of all voters and 17 percent of white voters said the race of the candidates was a factor in how they voted. Of those whites, nearly two in three voted for McCain.

Of course, what Sidoti doesn't mention is discussed in part here:

Meanwhile one in three blacks called race a factor in their vote, and, like all blacks, favored Obama almost unanimously.