Northwest Indiana Discussion

The shocker among all the films was Rocky Mountain Pictures’ political documentary 2016 Obama’s America which opened July 13th in very limited release and expanded into theaters across America this weekend. It wound up in 4th place Friday and 8th place for the weekend. That’s stunning because it was playing in 2/3 fewer theaters across North American than the other wider release films. (See below for more details).

Perhaps the president was hoping 2016: Obama’s America would come and go unnoticed like so many other political documentaries. But seven weeks after its opening, the film is still going strong, promptingBarack Obama to finally respond, which he has done through a lengthy entry at his campaign’s website that calls the movie “a deliberate distortion” of his “record and world view.”

The entry at BarackObama.com quotes from several negative reviews of the film and claims Dinesh D’Souza, who stars in the film based on his book, The Roots of Obama’s Rage, has a “long history of attempting to add a veneer of intellectual respectability to fringe theories, conspiratorial fear-mongering and flat-out falsehoods.”

The entry is dated Sept. 5, just ahead of the weekend in which 2016: Obama’s America became the second most popular political documentary in history, behind only Fahrenheit 9/11, and the sixth most popular documentary of any kind. The movie has earned $26 million domestically since opening July 13.

Among the movie’s inaccuracies, according to BarackObama.com, are the following:

“D’Souza falsely claimed that President Obama said he didn’t believe in American Exceptionalism …”

“D’Souza falsely asserted that President Obama funded $2 billion in Brazilian oil exploration even though numerous fact checkers and reporters have noted that President Obama had nothing to do with the loan.”

Last week, President Obama's 2012 campaign came out with its own review posted on BarackObama.com.

"[D'Souza] attempts to hide his lies behind a pseudo-scholarly presentation and glossy production values cannot withstand basic scrutiny," writes the Obama campaign. "The facts show that '2016: Obama’s America' is nothing more than an insidious attempt to dishonestly smear the President by giving intellectual cover to the worst in subterranean conspiracy theories and false, partisan attacks."

The campaign also outlined exactly where the movie muddled the facts, including:

•D’Souza falsely claimed that President Obama said he didn’t believe in American exceptionalism—when in fact the President has repeatedly praised America’s exceptional identity and core values.
•D’Souza falsely asserted that President Obama funded2 billion in Brazilian oil exploration even though numerous fact checkers and reporters have noted that President Obama had “nothing to do with the loan.”
•D’Souza falsely charged that President Obama backed Scotland’s release of the Lockerbie bomber only weeks after the Obama administration had put out a statement opposing Scotland’s decision to return Abdelbaset al-Megrahi to Libya and sent a letter to the Scottish government raising the administration’s strong objection.
•D’Souza even claimed that President Obama passed the bank bailouts when the facts clearly show that it was President Bush who signed the Troubled Asset Relief Program into law in October 2008.
D'Souza has defended "2016: Obama's America" which, like his book, draws quotes directly from Obama's own writings, including "The Audacity of Hope" and "Dreams From My Father."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/1 ... ertainment

Bill Maher's show.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com

•D’Souza even claimed that President Obama passed the bank bailouts when the facts clearly show that it was President Bush who signed the Troubled Asset Relief Program into law in October 2008.

I say wuss.[/color]

I saw this D’Souza clown on Bill Maher's show. Maher pointed out the garbage and flat out lies in the movie and made him look like a jackass.

For argument’s sake, D‘Souza addressed the Obama campaign’s attacks one by one:
1. D’Souza falsely claimed that President Obama said he didn’t believe in American exceptionalism—when in fact the President has repeatedly praised America’s exceptional identity and core values.
“First of all, the documentary doesn’t claim that,” D’Souza said. “But I do claim that in an earlier book called ‘The Roots of Obama’s Rage,‘ that he doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism. I say that based upon the fact that Obama was asked about that specifically in 2009 and he said we are no more exceptional than the Brits and the Greeks, everybody thinks they are exceptional. And so the meaning of Obama’s response is, if everyone believes they are exceptional, no one really is.”
2. D’Souza falsely asserted that President Obama funded $2 billion in Brazilian oil exploration even though numerous fact checkers and reporters have noted that President Obama had “nothing to do with the loan.”
D’Souza said not only is that true, but he actually “understated the case.”
“Well, the Obama administration has not only approved the $2 billion in subsidies to Brazil, but after that the Obama administration has given billions of dollars to Mexico and Columbia to drill for oil, so I actually understated the case,” he told TheBlaze.
The money was approved by the U.S. Export-Import Bank, which handles these types of transactions, D’Souza explained, but the bank falls under the Obama administration, leaving the president ultimately responsible.
“So this is a case where the Obama administration is refusing to take responsibility for its own actions,” he added.
3. D’Souza falsely charged that President Obama backed Scotland’s release of the Lockerbie bomber only weeks after the Obama administration had put out a statement opposing Scotland’s decision to return Abdelbaset al-Megrahi to Libya and sent a letter to the Scottish government raising the administration’s strong objection.
Firstly, there is no reference to the Lockerbie bomber in “2016,” according to D’Souza.
“This is a recycled White House attack on my book, ‘The Roots of Obama’s Rage,’ in which I refer to a memo that was sent by the Obama administration telling the Scottish government that if they were going to release the Lockerbie bomber, Obama would prefer that he be kept in Scotland and not sent back to Libya,” the best-selling author said.
He continued: “So basically, Scottish officials understood that to mean that the Obama administration was giving them the green light to release the guy as long as they kept an eye on him… that‘s how the Scottish government read Obama’s memo. So my original report was correct, and in any case, that has nothing to do with the film.”
4. D’Souza even claimed that President Obama passed the bank bailouts when the facts clearly show that it was President Bush who signed the Troubled Asset Relief Program into law in October 2008.
D’Souza says he never claimed that President Obama was alone in passing the bank bailouts, however, for President Obama to argue he did not approve of the action is “disingenuous.”
“That is true but a technicality,” he said. “The fact of the matter is, Obama was included in those discussions, he approved of them. He said publicly that he supported the bailout and subsequently the stimulus. For Obama now to disclaim responsibility for things that he has signed off on seems a bit disingenuous.”
The fact that the Obama White House is annoyed with the success of “2016” only shows that they are “worried,” D’Souza told TheBlaze.
“They have succeeded in keeping these facts off the public menu all this time and now they feel like they have to work really hard to prevent people from seeing the film,” he said, taking a deep breath before continuing.
“We are asking one fundamental question: who is Barack Obama? We are investigating the president’s background, his ideology and the implications of his ideology for the future. We are a truth telling team ourselves and I guess his truth telling team is trying to prevent us from getting our message out.”
D‘Souza attributes the documentary’s overwhelming success to the nation’s desire to know more factual information about Obama. Even pro-Obama people have seen the movie and marveled at how much they learned about Obama that they didn’t know before, he explained.
“I think that the film goes into territory that has been previously unexplored. In fact, it even goes into territory that the Romney campaign won’t touch,” he added.
D’Souza told Deadline that the producers of “2016: Obama’s America” are trying to find a network to air the documentary before the November elections. He expressed his frustration over the mainstream media ignoring the film.