Obama: Oval Office Rug

This is par for the course.

Obama's newly-decorated Oval Office doesn't pass the historically accurate test.

Team Obama blows it AGAIN.

The new rug was touted as a significant centerpiece of the Oval Office Obama-style.

Here lies the rug:


It's very attractive on the surface, but what's important is the substance.

While President Obama enjoyed his Martha’s Vineyard vacation, the Oval Office wasn’t completely empty – a design team was at work, replacing the wallpaper, the rug, the chairs and the coffee table.

The new rug – in wheat, cream and blue – has the presidential seal in the middle and five historical quotes “of meaning to President Obama” on the edge, the White House said in a statement. The quotes are:

- “The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear Itself” – President Franklin D. Roosevelt

- “The Arc of the Moral Universe is Long, But it Bends Towards Justice” – Martin Luther King Jr.

- “Government of the People, By the People, For the People” – President Abraham Lincoln

- “No Problem of Human Destiny is Beyond Human Beings” – President John F. Kennedy

- “The Welfare of Each of Us is Dependent Fundamentally Upon the Welfare of All of Us” – President Theodore Roosevelt

There's a problem with the rug.

The quote emblazoned on the rug from Martin Luther King, Jr., the one that holds meaning to Obama, isn't a King quote.

From the Washington Post:

A mistake has been made in the Oval Office makeover that goes beyond the beige.

President Obama's new presidential rug seemed beyond reproach, with quotations from Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. woven along its curved edge.

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." According media reports, this quote keeping Obama company on his wheat-colored carpet is from King.

Except it's not a King quote. The words belong to a long-gone Bostonian champion of social progress. His roots in the republic ran so deep that his grandfather commanded the Minutemen at the Battle of Lexington.

For the record, Theodore Parker is your man, President Obama. Unless you're fascinated by antebellum American reformers, you may not know of the lyrically gifted Parker, an abolitionist, Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist thinker who foresaw the end of slavery, though he did not live to see emancipation. He died at age 49 in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War.

A century later, during the civil rights movement, King, an admirer of Parker, quoted the Bostonian's lofty prophecy during marches and speeches. Often he'd ask in a refrain, "How long? Not long." He would finish in a flourish: "Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

King made no secret of the author of this idea.

Oops!

No quote from King on Obama's rug.

Who did the research on the quotes? You'd think the brilliant Obama, scholar and renowned author, would have his history correct.

Of course, Obama does have issues with detail. On the campaign trail, he said he visited all 57 states.

"Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii, I was not allowed to go to even though I really wanted to visit, but my staff would not justify it."

Scary, isn't it?

I suppose it should come as no surprise that Obama's Oval Office rug would be stained with an inaccuracy. It's par for the course.

Paraphrasing his words and using the logic of Phil Walzak of the Democrat Tom Barrett campaign, I guess it's fair to assume this:

I think what it goes to say is that these guys have put together a phony, false rug. If they're willing to lie on the rug then maybe they'll lie about other things. And I think that if this rug is a phony, if the production of this rug is phony, then certainly the claims by Obama are phony.

Get to work Mike Lowe and FOX 6 News. You have a big story here.
_________________

Is the Theodore Roosevelt quote a problem, too? Is it taken out of context and assigned a meaning by Obama that dramatically alters Roosevelt's intent?

Read TR's full speech here.

It's not an endorsement of the Welfare State, "spreading the wealth around," and socialism. Another Obama gaffe.