Amen!

Pick your poison. Gary Kamiya, a Salon political columnist, has created a checklist for independent and undecided voters. (Decided voters can take a peek because no one's looking.) Click on the following links to go directly to your hot-button issue or, to Hell with Vannevar Bush and Tim Berners-Lee, read the whole damn thing from beginning to end. The choice is yours, dear visitor to this blog. If this is a(fair & balanced) hypertext choice — not an echo — so be it.

THE ECONOMY

FOREIGN POLICY AND NATIONAL SECURITY

SOCIAL ISSUES

CHARACTER


[x Salon]
An Open Letter To Independent And Undecided Voters
By Gary Kamiya

This is an open letter to those American voters who are not affiliated with either major political party, or who have not yet decided whether to vote for Barack Obama or John McCain. There are millions of you, in every state of the country, men and women, from all races, classes and ethnic groups. Each of you has his or her own reasons for not registering as either a Democrat or a Republican, and for not yet having decided whom to vote for. It's impossible to sum up such a diverse group, especially because by definition you are, well, independent. Some of you are relatively apolitical, whether out of disillusionment or simply because you have other more pressing concerns in your daily lives. Others of you follow politics, siding sometimes with Democrats, sometimes with Republicans, sometimes with libertarian figures like Ron Paul, and sometimes with none of the above.

But there are a few qualities that many of you share. You are fed up with the choices offered you and sick of partisan rancor. You are disillusioned both with the Bush administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress. Many of you are conservative on fiscal policy and liberal on social issues, which is a big reason neither party exactly fits you. Mainly, you want someone who will actually deliver — on the economy, on foreign policy, on domestic programs. And you don't care what his or her political label is.

Because you hold the key to the election, both John McCain and Barack Obama have been assiduously courting you. But you're not sold on either candidate. You like the fact that McCain has a reputation as a maverick and an independent thinker, but you're not sure if he doesn't just represent more of the Washington status quo. As for Obama, you don't know much about him and all the mania about him only makes you suspicious.

As the endless campaign moves into the home stretch, the noise from both sides and their supporters grows deafening. You're sick of the hyperbolic, us-against-them commentary that dominates our political discourse. What follows is a list of the main issues facing the country, and an attempt to compare, in as neutral a way as possible, how the two candidates stack up on those issues.

THE ECONOMY

McCain
First, there's the overriding matter of simple competence. By his own admission, McCain knows little about economics and has little interest in it. His ignorance has been reflected in the numerous confused and inaccurate statements he has made since the financial crisis exploded, including saying that "the fundamentals of our economy remain strong," then clumsily saying he meant America's workers; falsely blaming the meltdown on "abuses within Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac"; incoherently blaming the crisis on nameless "greedy" individuals (we all know that Wall Street functions on greed — greed is not the problem) and saying if he were president he would fire SEC chairman Chris Cox (which the president lacks the power to do). McCain simply does not inspire confidence as a capable manager of the incredibly complex U.S. economy, especially at a time of unprecedented collapse.

Second, there's the fact that the Republican Party has betrayed true conservatism. McCain, Bush and their fellow ideologues claim to be conservatives, but in fact their ideology is profoundly unconservative. Because McCain and Bush are so fixated on cutting taxes for the richest Americans, while simultaneously insisting on vastly increasing spending, they have saddled the country with a ruinous, record debt, much of it owed to China. True fiscal conservatives strive to keep taxes low, but understand that nations, like individuals, must live within their means. That's the root meaning of "conservative" — you conserve what's valuable. By spending like drunken sailors while starving the government of money by cutting taxes on plutocrats, Bush and McCain have passed a crippling debt on to our children and grandchildren. This is the very opposite of conservatism — it's more like "spend it now and pass the buckism."

Third, and most important, there's common sense: You don't reward failure. At this moment, with the U.S. suffering through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and saddled by the largest debt in our nation's history, with wages stagnant, credit tight and food and energy costs soaring, why would anyone support a candidate whose beliefs and policies are identical to those of George W. Bush? Let's assume you are fiscally conservative — meaning you tend to support lower taxes and deregulated markets and are wary of big government. At first glance, this would seem to make a Republican candidate a more attractive choice. But, in fact, the labels "Republican" and "Democrat" don't mean much anymore when it comes to the economy. As the current crisis shows, Republicans are as prone to engage in big-government regulation as Democrats.

The bottom line is all that matters, and the Republicans are largely responsible for that bottom line. The crisis happened on the GOP's watch, and it was a direct result of their beliefs and policies. One of McCain's top economic advisors, Phil Gramm — who said the country was only in a "mental recession" and called Americans "a nation of whiners" — was one of the authors of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that deregulated the banking industry and was largely responsible for the current meltdown. By encouraging speculators to take excessive risks without fear of penalty, the Republicans are largely responsible for financial disasters such as the one we are now experiencing — and for the earlier savings and loan debacle that tarred McCain. Whatever your personal economic views, it simply doesn't make sense to reward the Republicans for their failure.

Obama
First, it should be said that the Democrats, too, bear some responsibility for the current mess. It was President Clinton who signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Second, no president is going to be able to wave a magic wand and clean up this mess overnight. But the Democrats have always been more concerned with the welfare of American workers, and less ideologically driven than the Republicans. That mixed, practical approach led to the creation of one of America's great institutions, Social Security. Not surprisingly, McCain joined Bush in trying to privatize part of Social Security, which McCain called "a disgrace." Americans overwhelmingly rejected that misguided attempt, but McCain still embraces the same failed ideas. Obama, by contrast, stands in the moderate, mainstream American tradition, one that recognizes the virtues of free markets but also recognizes that total deregulation ends up benefiting not average Americans but the super-rich — who are now being bailed out at taxpayer expense.

If elected president, Obama would not be able to restore the glory days of the soaring stock market and the housing bubble — those factors are out of his or any president's control. But he would be far more likely to steer a safe and centrist course. He would encourage entrepreneurship and initiative, but regulate excessively risky practices like the unchecked mania for subprime loan-based securities that led to the current collapse. He also understands that the U.S. is inextricably tied into the world economy, and that simply mouthing bromides about the glories of the "free market" is no longer meaningful in the age of globalized capital and impossible-to-understand financial transactions like derivatives.

In the end, you should ask yourself a straightforward question. If you believe that you've done better financially under Bush than Clinton, you should vote for McCain. If you don't, you should vote for Obama.

FOREIGN POLICY AND NATIONAL SECURITY

McCain
Let's assume that you tend to trust Republicans more on national security. McCain has far more experience than Obama, and he is a war hero. So it might seem logical to tilt toward McCain. But as with the economy, labels don't mean anything, only results. On Iraq, the most important foreign policy decision since Vietnam, McCain was dead wrong. Not only did he ardently support (and still supports) that disastrous war, which most analysts consider one of the greatest foreign-policy mistakes in U.S. history, he's actually to the right of Bush: He's still talking about "victory" in Iraq, an idea that even Bush has abandoned. A vote for McCain increases the chances of an endless and self-destructive U.S. military presence in Iraq.

McCain's foreign policy approach would make America less safe, not more. McCain would be far more likely to restart a dangerous cold war with Russia. His hard-line policies, formulated by advisors who include some of the same neoconservatives who dreamed up the Iraq war, would imperil America. His bellicose rhetoric toward Iran raises the specter of a war that could raise gas prices to as high as $10 a gallon, lead to a global depression, threaten U.S. troops, and greatly increase the chances that radical Islamists would attack the U.S. mainland again.

Obama
Obama has far less experience than McCain. But experience means little without good judgment, and on foreign policy Obama's judgment has clearly been better than McCain's. Obama opposed Bush's invasion of Iraq from the start, insisting that capturing Osama bin Laden and defeating al-Qaida was our top priority and that Iraq was a disastrous distraction. This isn't a partisan or Democratic opinion — it is one held by America's intelligence agencies, which agree that the Iraq war has made America far less safe. Obama has a coherent plan for an orderly withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Moreover, the fact that the rest of the world overwhelmingly wants to see Obama elected simply cannot be ignored. It's tempting at times to thumb our noses at or try to run roughshod over other nations, but the Bush years have shown that it is not a luxury worth indulging. America's "soft power," our good name, is a vital asset that we cannot afford to squander. In an interconnected world, it is simply not in the U.S. interests to be despised by our allies. It makes it much harder for us to pursue our national interests both in terms of national security and economically. Under Bush, the U.S. is more unpopular than it has ever been. Electing Obama would immediately help reverse that lamentable trend. Electing McCain would continue it.

SOCIAL ISSUES

McCain
Once a courageous critic of the Christian right, McCain has thrown in his lot with it for political reasons. This pleases the Republican base, which makes up about 15 percent of the country, but it ensures that America will continue to be painfully polarized, as it has been for the last eight years. The increasingly nasty "culture war" has led to a loss of civility and mutual respect and has damaged our social fabric.

Obama
Americans disagree and will continue to disagree on contentious issues like abortion, the role of religion in public life, affirmative action, and gay rights. But Obama is far more likely to be a national uniter on these issues, because his positions are more moderate and are shared by more Americans. Conservatives, liberals and independents alike all have an interest in finding common ground on these divisive issues, and when that isn't possible, finding a civil way to discuss them. Obama, who has sought to transcend worn-out clichés about race, has a proven track record of reconciliation on such matters.

CHARACTER

McCain
McCain was once highly respected even by his political opponents for his integrity and willingness to challenge GOP orthodoxy. Unfortunately, that was the old McCain. The new McCain has sold out his principles to win. He has abandoned his independent positions on issues like taxes, torture and immigration and fallen in line with his party's policies. He has also run a much dirtier campaign than Obama, endlessly attacking his opponent's integrity and running transparently false ads that even members of his own party have repudiated. His cynical, win-at-all-costs approach is epitomized by his highly irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate, one that even GOP guru Karl Rove says was purely political. Palin may have her personal virtues, and you may find her a breath of fresh air, but no one except die-hard partisans can seriously argue that she is actually prepared to be president. This alone is a reason not to vote for McCain, even if you agree with some of his positions. That McCain would be willing, for purely political reasons, to put an unqualified individual a heartbeat away from the most difficult and important job in the world raises serious questions about his judgment, and ultimately about his character.

Obama
Obama is not the saint some of his supporters claim him to be, but there are no serious stains on his character. He belonged to a church whose pastor gave some incendiary anti-American sermons, but he repudiated those views and quit the church. His is a classic American story of overcoming long odds: A mixed-race child raised by a single mother, he went on to become the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review. He passed up a sure shot at corporate wealth to work with impoverished residents of Chicago. His track record in the Illinois Senate and then the U.S. Senate is solid. And his campaign, while it has at times played hardball politics, has been largely respectful and avoided ad hominem attacks on his opponents. He is exceptionally intelligent and has written one of the most widely praised books ever penned by a politician. None of this proves that his character is flawless, but it should dispel needless fears about it.

All this adds up to a clear conclusion: Barack Obama is far more likely to be an effective president than McCain. And he's far more likely to bring real change to Washington than McCain, who may have good intentions but who shares the failed policies of George W. Bush and his party. This isn't because Democrats are good and the Republicans are evil, or because Obama is some sort of political messiah, but because the Republicans have had their turn and screwed things up, and America desperately needs something different. Obama will not be a miracle worker. But he'll change the disastrous course steered by the Bush administration. McCain may move the furniture around on the deck, but it'll be the same Titanic.

As independents, you aren't beholden to any party or ideology. You have the privilege, and the responsibility, of thinking for yourselves. And when you do that, you'll find there's only one reasonable choice: Barack Obama.

[Before joining Salon.com, Writer at Large Gary Kamiya was at the San Francisco Examiner for five years, where he worked with David Talbot as senior editor at the paper's Sunday magazine, Image. He also served as the paper's book editor and critic at large, writing critical essays and reviews of books, movies, music, theater, and art. Before that he helped found Frisko magazine, where he was senior writer. Kamiya's writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, ArtForum, and Sports Illustrated, among many other publications. He holds an M.A. from U.C. Berkeley, which awarded him its top undergraduate award in English literature, the Mark Schorer Citation, in 1983.]

Copyright © 2008 Salon Media Group, Inc.

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Another Right Shoe Drops: First, Wick Allison, Now The Willster!

The Righties aren't giving The Geezer much love right now. Yesterday, Wick Allison (former publisher of The National Review and lifelong Dumbo) endorsed The Hopester. Today, The Willster calls The Geezer on the carpet for putting his mouth in motion before his brain is in gear. This is serious stuff. The Willster does not suffer fools gladly and obviously he is obviously weary of The Geezer's fighter-jock, smartass responses to serious questions. (Ironically — and tragically — the current Idiot-in-Chief was a fighter-jock wannabe.) Enough is enough! If this is (fair & balanced) forensic criticism, so be it.

[x Washington Fishwrap]
McCain Loses His Head
By George F. Will

"The queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. 'Off with his head!' she said without even looking around."
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.

Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated. This childish reflex provoked the Wall Street Journal to editorialize that "McCain untethered" — disconnected from knowledge and principle — had made a "false and deeply unfair" attack on Cox that was "unpresidential" and demonstrated that McCain "doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does."

To read the Journal's details about the depths of McCain's shallowness on the subject of Cox's chairmanship, see "McCain's Scapegoat" (Sept. 19). Then consider McCain's characteristic accusation that Cox "has betrayed the public's trust."

Perhaps an old antagonism is involved in McCain's fact-free slander. His most conspicuous economic adviser is Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who previously headed the Congressional Budget Office. There he was an impediment to conservatives, including then-Rep. Cox, who, as chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, persistently tried and generally failed to enlist CBO support for "dynamic scoring" that would estimate the economic growth effects of proposed tax cuts.

In any case, McCain's smear — that Cox "betrayed the public's trust" — is a harbinger of a McCain presidency. For McCain, politics is always operatic, pitting people who agree with him against those who are "corrupt" or "betray the public's trust," two categories that seem to be exhaustive — there are no other people. McCain's Manichaean worldview drove him to his signature legislative achievement, the McCain-Feingold law's restrictions on campaigning. Today, his campaign is creatively finding interstices in laws intended to restrict campaign giving and spending. (For details, see The Post of Sept. 17; and the New York Times of Sept. 19.)

By a Gresham's Law of Political Discourse, McCain's Queen of Hearts intervention in the opaque financial crisis overshadowed a solid conservative complaint from the Republican Study Committee, chaired by Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas. In a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, the RSC decried the improvised torrent of bailouts as a "dangerous and unmistakable precedent for the federal government both to be looked to and indeed relied upon to save private sector companies from the consequences of their poor economic decisions." This letter, listing just $650 billion of the perhaps more than $1 trillion in new federal exposures to risk, was sent while McCain's campaign, characteristically substituting vehemence for coherence, was airing an ad warning that Obama favors "massive government, billions in spending increases."

The political left always aims to expand the permeation of economic life by politics. Today, the efficient means to that end is government control of capital. So, is not McCain's party now conducting the most leftist administration in American history? The New Deal never acted so precipitously on such a scale. Treasury Secretary Paulson, asked about conservative complaints that his rescue program amounts to socialism, said, essentially: This is not socialism, this is necessary. That non sequitur might be politically necessary, but remember that government control of capital is government control of capitalism. Does McCain have qualms about this, or only quarrels?

On "60 Minutes" Sunday evening, McCain, saying "this may sound a little unusual," said that he would like to replace Cox with Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic attorney general of New York who is the son of former governor Mario Cuomo. McCain explained that Cuomo has "respect" and "prestige" and could "lend some bipartisanship." Conservatives have been warned.

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

[George F. Will is a twice-weekly columnist for The Post, writing about foreign and domestic politics and policy. His column appears on Thursdays and Sundays. Will attended Trinity College in Connecticut, Oxford University in England, and received a Ph.D. from Princeton University in political science in 1967.

Will began his syndicated column with The Post in 1974. Two years later he started his back-page Newsweek column. Will serves as a contributing analyst with ABC News and has been a regular member of ABC's "This Week" on Sunday mornings since the show began in 1981. His books include Restoration: Congress, Term Limits and the Recovery of Deliberative Democracy (1992), Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball (1989), and Statecraft as Soulcraft (1983).

Will was the recipient of a 1978 National Headliners Award for his "consistently outstanding special features columns" appearing in Newsweek. A column on New York City's finances earned him a 1980 Silurian Award for Editorial Writing. In 1985, The Washington Journalism Review named Will "Best Writer, Any Subject." He won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary in 1977.]

Copyright © 2008 The Washington Post Company

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Weed Wacky? Murphy's Other 15 Laws

Ah, viral e-mail. An old (in every sense of the word) friend — who lives in the place where they think you spell "Knowledge" with an "N" (Nowledge) and put their spelling on exhibit on football helmets — sent along something that has been filling e-mail In Boxes this summer: "Murphy's 15 Other Laws." A Google search produced the e-mail listing in a Web site that supports High Times for its visitors. If this is a (fair & balanced) hallucinogenic experience, so be it.

[x Cannabis.com]
Murphy's Other 15 Laws
By Unknown

1. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

2. A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.

3. He, who laughs last, thinks slowest.

4. A day without sunshine is like, well, night.

5. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

6. Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don’t.

7. Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.

8. The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there’s a 90% probability you’ll get it wrong.

9. It is said that if you line up all the cars in the world end-to-end, someone would be stupid enough to try to pass them.

10. If the shoe fits, get another one just like it.

11. The things that come to those that wait, may be the things left by those, who got there first.

12. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

13. Flashlight: A case for holding dead batteries.

14. The shin bone is a device for finding furniture in the dark.

15. When you go into court, you are putting yourself in the hands of twelve people, who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.

Copyright © 2008 Cannabis.com

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Jerome Corsi: A Swift-Boater Hoist By His Own Petard

Mad Mary Matalin should be ashamed. Matalin is engaged in the lurid and detached exploitation of something that is essentially good, even necessary, in order to make money, while simultaneously shaming and disgracing all of those who are involved. Mad Mary is a political pornographer (see above) who peddles lies and sleaze and insinuation. Beware of what you reap, Mad Mary. FactCheck, non-partisan political truth-squad, turns its eye on the political pornography by Dr. Jerome Corsi that sits near the top of the NY Fishwrap's Best Seller List. If this is (fair & balanced) disgust, so be it.

[x FactCheck]
Corsi's Dull Hatchet
By Joe Miller



Despite its place near the top of The New York Times' nonfiction bestseller list, where it has been riding high for the past six weeks, Jerome Corsi's The Obama Nation is not a reliable source of facts about Obama.

Corsi cites opinion columns and unsourced, anonymous blogs as if they were evidence of factual claims. Where he does cite legitimate news sources, he frequently distorts the facts. In some cases, Corsi simply ignores readily accessible information when it conflicts with his arguments. Among the errors we found:

♦ Corsi claims that Obama "could claim to be a citizen of Kenya as well as of the United States." But the Kenyan Constitution specifically prohibits dual citizenship.

♦ Corsi falsely states that Obama, who has admitted to drug use as a teenager, "has yet to answer" questions about whether he stopped using drugs. In fact, Obama has answered that question twice, including once in the autobiography that Corsi reviews in his book.

♦ Corsi relies on claims from one of Obama's "closest" childhood friends to "prove" that Obama once was a practicing Muslim, without revealing that the witness later said he couldn't be certain about his claims and confessed to knowing Obama for only a few months.

♦ Corsi claims that despite Obama's "rhetorically uplifting" speeches, the candidate has never detailed any specific plans. In fact, Obama's Web site is full of detailed policy proposals.

Analysis

Mary Matalin, the chief editor of the book's publisher, told The New York Times that the book is not political, but rather, "a piece of scholarship, and a good one at that." The prominent display of Corsi's academic title (he holds a Ph.D. in political science) seems clearly calculated to convey academic rigor. But as a scholarly work, The Obama Nation does not measure up. We judge it to be what a hack journalist might call a "paste-up job," gluing together snippets from here and there without much regard for their truthfulness or accuracy.

Corsi promises in his preface "to fully document all arguments and contentions I make, extensively footnoting all references, so readers can determine for themselves the truth and validity of the factual claims." Some of Corsi's claims do come complete with citations. But even a casual glance at Corsi's lengthy endnotes reveals that his "sources" include obscure Internet postings (which are themselves completely unsourced) and opinion columns from various conservative publications. In fact, on four occasions, Corsi cites himself as a source. Where Corsi does cite news sources, he sometimes presents only those that are consistent with his case while ignoring evidence that doesn't fit the picture he paints.

A comprehensive review of all the false claims in Corsi's book would itself be a book. Our review touches only on a few of the more blatant examples.

Careless Errors?

Even the best books sometimes contain errors that slip past both author and editor. But some of Corsi's inaccuracies can be debunked with a simple Internet search. In one instance, he makes an assertion that is disproved by the Obama biography that Corsi claims to be reviewing. These are the kinds of errors that people with a Ph.D. from Harvard don't usually make accidentally. For example, Corsi writes:

Corsi (page 103): Still Senator Barack Obama could claim to be a citizen of Kenya as well as of the United States. Obama can trace his heritage back to his mother, who was born in the United States and was an American citizen when he was born, and to his father, who was born in Kenya and was a Kenyan citizen when Obama was born.

Corsi manages two false claims in these two short sentences. First, as we've already written, Kenya prohibits dual citizenship for anyone over the age of 21. So while one could make the case that Obama held both U.S. and Kenyan citizenship as a child and a youth, it's false to assert that he can claim dual citizenship now. Obama's claim to Kenyan citizenship expired more than two decades ago, on Aug. 4, 1982, when he turned 21 years old. This is a bit of elementary research that Corsi either overlooked or chose to ignore.

Corsi also overlooks basic history when he says Obama's father was a "Kenyan citizen" at the time of Obama's birth. Kenya was not yet a nation; it was officially "Kenya Colony" of Britain from 1920 through 1963, at which time it became "The Republic of Kenya." Obama's father was a British subject when his son was born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961. Kenya won its independence from the United Kingdom on December 12, 1963 – when Obama was 2 years old.

Corsi offers two more nice examples of easy-to-disprove claims when writing of Obama's early drug use. On page 76, Corsi states, "Why Obama chose to disclose he smoked marijuana and used cocaine at all remains a mystery." Actually, it's no mystery at all, at least to anyone who does a basic Internet search. Ours turned up a Washington Post article that reported:

Washington Post (Jan. 3, 2007): In an interview during his Senate race two years ago, Obama said he admitted using drugs because he thought it was important for "young people who are already in circumstances that are far more difficult than mine to know that you can make mistakes and still recover."

Corsi then slyly insinuates – without offering any evidence – that Obama might have "dealt drugs" in addition to using them. And he falsely claims that Obama has "yet to answer" whether he continued using drugs during his law school days or afterward.

Corsi (page 77): Still, Obama has yet to answer questions whether he ever dealt drugs, or if he stopped using marijuana and cocaine completely in college, or whether his drug usage extended into his law school days or beyond.

But the State Journal-Register of Springfield, Ill., reports Obama as saying in 2003 that he hadn't done drugs in more than 20 years, which means he wouldn't have done drugs in law school. Obama finished his undergraduate degree in 1983 and attended law school from 1988 to 1991. And that's the same answer that Obama gives in his autobiography, Dreams from My Father, where he writes that shortly after his arrival as an undergraduate at Columbia University:

Obama (Dreams, page 120): When Sadik lost his own lease, we moved in together. And after a few months of closer scrutiny, he began to realize that the city had indeed had an effect on me, although not the one he'd expected. I stopped getting high. I ran three miles a day and fasted on Sundays. For the first time in years, I applied myself to my studies and started keeping a journal of daily reflections and very bad poetry. Whenever Sadik tried to talk me into hitting a bar, I'd beg off with some tepid excuse, too much work or not enough cash.

So Obama has said at least twice that "he stopped using marijuana and cocaine completely in college," and one of those times is in the very book that Corsi is ostensibly reviewing.

Inconvenient Facts

Corsi ignores evidence that doesn't fit his chosen thesis. In discussing the baseless notion that Obama was secretly a Muslim at some point in his life, for example, Corsi relies heavily on published interviews with Zulfan Adi, an Indonesian who claimed to be one of Obama's closest childhood friends. Corsi writes:

Corsi (page 56): Adi said neighborhood Muslims worshipped in a nearby house. When the muezzin sounded the call to prayer, Adi remembered seeing Lolo [Obama's stepfather] and Barry [Obama] walk together to the makeshift mosque. "His mother often went to the church," Adi told the Times, "but Barry was a Muslim. I remember him wearing a sarong."

The "Times" is the Los Angeles Times, which did indeed report Adi's claims in a March 16, 2007, article. What Corsi leaves out is that the Chicago Tribune followed up on Adi's claims. When reporters for the Tribune interviewed Adi the following week, they received a much different response:

Chicago Tribune (March 25, 2007): Zulfan Adi, a former neighborhood playmate of Obama's who has been cited in news reports as saying Obama regularly attended Friday prayers with Soetoro, told the Tribune he was not certain about that when pressed about his recollections. He only knew Obama for a few months, during 1970, when his family moved to the neighborhood.

The Tribune also reported that "interviews with dozens of former classmates, teachers, neighbors and friends show that Obama was not a regular practicing Muslim when he was in Indonesia." Corsi omits any reference to the Tribune article.

In fact, the entire third section of Corsi's book – titled "The Candidate Is the Message" – is a study in how to ignore evidence that doesn't fit. In one passage, Corsi complains:

Corsi (page 221): At the end of every rhetorically uplifting speech Obama gives about the future of hope, millions of listeners are still left pondering, "Now what exactly did he say?" If the politician is the message, as Axelrod and Obama have proclaimed, they can't forever avoid telling us what precisely that message is.

Contrary to Corsi's claim, Obama's Web site is packed with details of what he proposes to do if elected. He lays out descriptions of his policy proposals, including tax cuts for most families and increases for those making more than $250,000 per year; a $150 billion, 10-year program to develop alternative energy sources and more efficient vehicles; a proposal to increase the size of the Army by 65,000 troops and another to create a public health insurance plan for those whose employers don't offer health coverage. Whether or not one agrees with them, Obama has indeed presented detailed plans for dozens of policies. It's hard to see how anyone writing a book on Obama could fail to acknowledge their existence.

Guilt By Association

A frequent Corsi tactic is to point to some link between Obama and various unsavory persons and to imply that Obama somehow shares in their unsavoriness. He devotes an entire chapter to violent uprisings in Kenya following a disputed presidential election in 2007. The link to Obama? During a visit to Kenya in 2006, Obama and his wife, Michelle, arranged to take an AIDS test to publicly demonstrate the test's safety. While there, Obama spoke to the assembled crowd. Raila Odinga, one of the two candidates running for president, was on the stage when Obama spoke. Corsi concludes that the event constituted an endorsement of Odinga. He goes on to attribute all the violence in Kenya to an elaborate Odinga plot.

Corsi, however, offers no evidence that Obama actually did endorse Odinga. In fact, MSNBC reported that during that same trip, Obama also met with Mwai Kibaki, who was Odinga's opponent in that election, as well as with opposition leader Uhuru Kenyatta. And Human Rights Watch reported that both Odinga and Kibaki (or their supporters, anyway) had a hand in the violence that followed the election.

Other chapters offer more of the same regarding Obama's well-known connections to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, to former Weather Underground fugitive (and now longtime professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago) William Ayers, and Obama's friend Tony Rezko, recently convicted in a celebrated corruption trial. Nowhere does Corsi demonstrate that Obama agrees with what Wright or Ayers have said or done, or that he broke any laws as Rezko did. Corsi completely ignores what Obama actually says about both Wright and Ayers. Nowhere in the book will be found Obama's March 14 statement rejecting Wright, when Obama said, "I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country," or Obama's April 16 comment on Ayers, whom he said "engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old." Nor does Corsi offer anything new connecting Obama to Rezko, a relationship we've addressed twice in earlier articles.

Attempting to discredit Obama because of an association with unsavory people rather than with actual proof that Obama shares their views is an instance of a logical fallacy that philosophers call guilt-by-association. Corsi uses the technique to fill chapters three through seven.

Corsi's Track Record

Corsi is a renowned conspiracy theorist who says that George Bush is attempting to create a North American Union (we looked at that here) and that there is evidence that the World Trade Center may have collapsed because it was seeded with explosives. More recently, Corsi claimed that Obama released a fake birth certificate. We've debunked that twice now. And, as our colleagues at PolitiFact.com found, many of the themes in "The Obama Nation" are reworked versions of bogus chain e-mail smears.

Logically, any argument should rise or fall on its own merits, not the reputation of the person making it. A logical fallacy – known as the "genetic fallacy" – occurs when someone rejects an argument based on its origins. The correctness of a claim should be judged by the relationship the claim has with the rest of the world.

Nevertheless, a practical rule of thumb for everyday living is to rely on sources that have proven themselves to be trustworthy, and to check even on those when an issue is in dispute.

In Corsi's case, we judge that both his reputation and his latest book fall short when measured by the standards of good scholarship, or even of mediocre journalism.

Sources

"Frank Talk about Drug Use in Obama's 'Open Book'," The State Journal-Register (Springfield, IL), 16 November 2003.

The British Nationality Act, 1948. 1948. 24 August 2008.

"The Constitution of Kenya." 1963 (revised, 2001). The Parliament of Kenya. 24 August 2008.

Romano, Lois, "Effect of Obama's Candor Remains to Be Seen." Washington Post, 3 January 2007.

Corsi, Jerome R. The Obama Nation. Threshold Editions, 2008.

Obama, Barack. Dreams from My Father. Three Rivers Press, 2004.

[Joe Miller earned his BA in philosophy from Hampden-Sydney College, his MA in philosophy from Virginia Tech, and his PhD in political philosophy from the University of Virginia. He joined the Annenberg Public Policy Center in April, 2007 after working as a writer with the Mack/Crounse Group. Previously he was an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the United States Military Academy and at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke and a Visiting Fellow at the Callaghan Centre for Conflict Studies at the University of Wales at Swansea.]

Copyright © 2008 Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania

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Angry Bob Eyes The $700B Piñata: "You're Doin' A Heckuva Job, Hank!"

The reaction to The Dubster's latest, bungled disaster-response is beginning to build. How long before the Congress comes to its senses and starts the wheels turning for impeachment on grounds of criminal incompetence? Where have you gone, Dennis The Menace (Kucinich)? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you. If this is a (fair & balanced) indictment of greed and incompetence, so be it.

[x NY Fishwrap]
A Second Opinion?
By Bob Herbert

Does anyone think it’s just a little weird to be stampeded into a $700 billion solution to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression by the very people who brought us the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression?

How about a second opinion?

Everything needs much closer scrutiny in these troubled times because no one even knows who is in charge, much less what is going on. Have you ever seen a president who was more irrelevant than George W. Bush is right now?

The treasury secretary, Henry Paulson — heralded as King Henry on the cover of Newsweek — has been handed the reins of government, and he’s galloping through the taxpayers’ money like a hard-charging driver in a runaway chariot race.

“We need this legislation in a week,” he said on Sunday, referring to the authorization from Congress to implement his hastily assembled plan to bail out the wildly profligate U.S. financial industry. The plan stands at $700 billion as proposed, but could go to a trillion dollars or more.

Mr. Paulson spoke on the Sunday morning talk shows about “bad lending practices” and “irresponsible borrowing” and “irresponsible lending” and “illiquid assets.”

The sky was falling, he seemed to be saying, and if the taxpayers didn’t pony up $700 billion in the next few days, all would be lost. No time to look at the fine print. Hurry, hurry, said the treasury secretary.

His eyes, as he hopped from one network camera to another, said, as salesmen have been saying since the dawn of time: “Trust me.”

With all due respect to Mr. Paulson, who is widely regarded as a smart and fine man, we need to slow this process down. We got into this mess by handing out mortgages like lollipops to people who paid too little attention to the fine print, who in many cases didn’t understand it or didn’t care about it.

And the people who always pretended to know better, who should have known better, the mortgage hucksters and the gilt-edged, high-rolling, helicopter-flying Wall Street financiers, kept pushing this bad paper higher and higher up the pyramid without looking at the fine print themselves, not bothering to understand it, until all the crap came raining down on the rest of us.

Yes, the system came perilously close to collapse last week and needs to be stabilized as quickly as possible. But we don’t know yet that King Henry’s fiat, his $700 billion solution, is the best solution. Like the complex mortgage-based instruments at the heart of this debacle, nobody has a real grasp yet of the vast implications of Mr. Paulson’s remedy.

Experts need some reasonable amount of time — I’m talking about days, not weeks — to home in on the weak points, the loopholes, the potential unintended consequences of a bailout of this magnitude.

The patchwork modifications being offered by Democrats in Congress are insufficient. Reasonable estimates need to be made of the toll to be taken on taxpayers. Reasonable alternatives need to be heard.

I agree with the economist Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, that while the government needs to move with dispatch, there is also a need to make sure that taxpayers’ money is used only where “absolutely necessary.”

Lobbyists, bankers and Wall Street types are already hopping up and down like over-excited children, ready to burst into the government’s $700 billion piñata. This widespread eagerness is itself an indication that there is something too sweet about the Paulson plan.

This is not supposed to be a good deal for business. “The idea is that you’re coming here because you would be going bankrupt otherwise,” said Mr. Baker. “You’re coming here because you have no alternative. You’re getting a bad deal, but it’s better than going out of business. That’s how it should be structured.”

The markets tanked again on Monday as oil prices skyrocketed. Time is indeed short, but alternative voices desperately need to be heard because the people who have been running the economy for so long — who have ruined it — cannot be expected to make things right again in 48 or 96 hours.

Mr. Paulson himself was telling us during the summer that the economy was sound, that its long-term fundamentals were “strong,” that growth would rebound by the end of the year, when most of the slump in housing prices would be over.

He has been wrong every step of the way, right up until early last week, about the severity of the economic crisis. As for President Bush, the less said the better.

The free-market madmen who treated the American economy like a giant casino have had their day. It’s time to drag them away from the tables and into the sunlight of reality.

[Bob Herbert joined The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist in 1993. His twice a week column comments on politics, urban affairs and social trends. Prior to joining The Times, Herbert was a national correspondent for NBC from 1991 to 1993, reporting regularly on "The Today Show" and "NBC Nightly News." He had worked as a reporter and editor at The Daily News from 1976 until 1985, when he became a columnist and member of its editorial board. Herbert received a B.S. degree in journalism from the State University of New York (Empire State College) in 1988. He has taught journalism at Brooklyn College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.]

Copyright © 2008 The New York Times Company

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Enough Is Enough!

In Green Bay, WI, yesterday, The Hopester said:

The era of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street and in Washington has led us to a perilous moment. They said they wanted to let the market run free but instead they let it run wild, and in doing so, they trampled our core values of fairness, balance, and responsibility to one another. As a result, we are facing a financial crisis as profound as any we have faced since the Great Depression. As a result, your jobs, your savings, and your economic security are now at risk
...
We did not arrive at this moment by some accident of history. We are in this mess because of a bankrupt philosophy that says we should give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to the rest of us. We’re here because for too long, the doors of Washington have been thrown open to an army of lobbyists and special interests who’ve turned our government into a game only they can afford to play — who have shredded consumer protections, fought against common-sense regulations and rules of the road, and distorted our economy so that it works for them instead of you.

Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins), in today's "This Modern World," looks at the "Wall Street Bailout" and sees G-R-E-E-D rewarded. Enough is enough. If this is (fair & balanced) temperance, so be it.

[x Salon]
This Modern World
By Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins)

Click on image to enlarge.
Tom Tomorrow/Dan Perkins

[Dan Perkins is an editorial cartoonist better known by the pen name "Tom Tomorrow". His weekly comic strip, "This Modern World," which comments on current events from a strong liberal perspective, appears regularly in approximately 150 papers across the U.S., as well as on Salon and Working for Change. The strip debuted in 1990 in SF Weekly.

Perkins, a long time resident of Brooklyn, New York, currently lives in Connecticut. He received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism in both 1998 and 2002.

When he is not working on projects related to his comic strip, Perkins writes a daily political weblog, also entitled "This Modern World," which he began in December 2001.]

Copyright © 2008 Salon Media Group, Inc

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