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Home » Context of 'October 22, 2008: McCain Supporter Alleges Attack by Obama Supporter, Says Attacker Carved 'B' for 'Barack' in Her Face'
Context of 'October 22, 2008: McCain Supporter Alleges Attack by Obama Supporter, Says Attacker Carved 'B' for 'Barack' in Her Face'
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January 10, 2008: Conservative Radio Host Accuses Obama of Being Educated in Radical Islamic Madrassas
Syndicated conservative radio host Michael Savage, asserting the oft-debunked claim that Democratic candidate Barack Obama is a Muslim (see January 22-24, 2008), gives Obama's name as "Barack Madrassas Obama," referring to schools that teach radical Islam. As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, Savage also repeats the falsehood that Obama was schooled in an Indonesian madrassah. [Media Matters, 1/11/2008]
Entity Tags: Michael Savage, Barack Obama, Media Matters
Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, 2008 Elections
January 11, 2008: Fact-Checking Organization Debunks Claims that Obama a 'Covert Muslim' Whose Middle Name Is 'Mohammed'
PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, debunks Internet claims that Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), a presidential candidate, is a covert Muslim whose middle name is Mohammed. The claims appear to be sourced from anonymous emails circulating throughout right-wing blogs and organizations. PolitiFact writes: "First off, Barack Obama's middle name is not Mohammed; it's Hussein. He was named after his father, a Kenyan who came to the United States from Africa as a student." PolitiFact also verifies that Obama is not a Muslim, "covert" or otherwise. Obama is a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago (see January 6-11, 2008). PolitiFact notes that the emails contradict themselves, on the one hand making the claim that Obama is a Muslim and on the other attacking his membership in Trinity United. Obama campaign spokesman Robert Gibbs has said, "To be clear, Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago." [St. Petersburg Times, 1/11/2008; St. Petersburg Times, 1/11/2008] PolitiFact does further investigation and again debunks the claims months later (see April 18, 2008). PolitiFact has already debunked earlier claims that in 2005, Obama took his Senate oath of office on a Koran, when in reality he used his family Bible (see December 19, 2007).
Entity Tags: Robert Gibbs, PolitiFact (.org ), Barack Obama, Trinity United Church of Christ
January 12-15, 2008: Ron Paul Supporters Say Exposure of Racist Newsletter Content Is Result of Conspiracy between Magazine, Rival Libertarian Institute
At least one supporter of far-right libertarian Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) argues that a recently published article in the New Republic that exposed the overtly racist and conspiratorial content in Paul's newsletters (see 1978-1996) was the result of a conspiracy by "beltway libertarians" from the Cato Institute to discredit Paul. According to Thomas DiLorenzo, the Koch family (see 1979-1980), who provide much of the funding for the Cato Institute (see 1977-Present and 1981-2010), is behind the conspiracy. "Proof" of this conspiracy, according to DiLorenzo, is that James Kirchick, the author of the article, has said he found many of the newsletters in the University of Kansas library; Charles Koch "is a major patron" of that university. DiLorenzo asks, "How on earth would a kid just out of college know to go to a library in Kansas, of all places, to dig up such stuff?" DiLorenzo goes on to say that he "recognized a paragraph [in Kirchick's article] that was identical to one written on several occassions by one of the especially hate-filled Beltway losers who works at a DC 'think tank' on his spleen-venting personal blog. Either he wrote it or coached the author." Author David Bernstein, who notes that the Cato Institute is preparing to publish a book of his, speculates that Kirchick may have used an Internet database called Wordcat to find the Paul newsletters, and writes, "Even 'kids just out of college' often know how to use the Internet, I believe." And Kirchick calls DiLorenzo's conspiracy theorizing "comically credulous." [New Republic, 1/8/2008; Thomas DiLorenzo, 1/12/2008; David Bernstein, 1/12/2008; New Republic, 1/15/2008] DiLorenzo publishes his theory on the blog of former Paul chief of staff Lew Rockwell, who runs the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank in Alabama closely allied with Paul. [Thomas DiLorenzo, 1/12/2008] A week after the publication of the first New Republic article, Paul will deny having virtually any involvement with his newsletters (see January 16, 2008).
Entity Tags: Ron Paul, James Kirchick, David Bernstein, Charles Koch, Cato Institute, Lew Rockwell, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Thomas DiLorenzo, The New Republic
January 16, 2008: Libertarian-Republican Presidential Candidate Denies Authorship of Racially Inflammatory Newsletter Material
A September 2007 photo of Ron Paul and Don Black, the former Klansman who runs the racist Stormfront.org Web site. [Source: BTX3 (.com)]An article in the libertarian newsletter Reason discusses the controversy surrounding the racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic material printed in newsletters issued by US Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) from 1978 through at least 1996 (see 1978-1996). The controversy has erupted in recent weeks after an article by the New Republic publicized the newsletters and prompted Paul's disassociation from those publications (see January 8-15, 2008). Paul, a self-described libertarian, has waffled on claiming authorship of the newsletters; he has gone from saying in 1996 that he wrote all the material in them (see May 22 - October 11, 1996) to more recently claiming that he wrote virtually none of their content and knew little of what was being published under his name for nearly 20 years. (In 2001 he told a reporter that in 1996 he did not admit that a ghostwriter wrote most of the material because to do so would have been "confusing" for voters (see October 1, 2001); this year, Paul is claiming to have virtually no knowledge of anything printed in the newsletters.) In mid-January, he told a CNN reporter that he had "no idea" who wrote some of the racially inflammatory rhetoric in his newsletters, and said he repudiated the flagrantly bigoted material printed therein.
Conservative Libertarian Said to Be Paul's 'Ghostwriter' - According to Reason reporters Julian Sanchez and David Weigel, some libertarian activists, including some close to Paul, name Paul's "ghostwriter" to be Llewellyn "Lew" Rockwell Jr. Rockwell is the founder of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank in Alabama with which Paul has maintained close ties. Rockwell was Paul's Congressional chief of staff from 1978 through 1982, and was vice president of Ron Paul & Associates, which published two of Paul's newsletters before its dissolution in 2001. Sanchez and Weigel note, "During the period when the most incendiary items appeared—roughly 1989 to 1994—Rockwell and the prominent libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard championed an open strategy of exploiting racial and class resentment to build a coalition with populist 'paleoconservatives,' producing a flurry of articles and manifestos whose racially charged talking points and vocabulary mirrored the controversial Paul newsletters unearthed by the New Republic." Rockwell is to this day a close friend and adviser to Paul, accompanying him to major media appearances, promoting his presidential candidacy, publishing his books, and selling Paul's writings and audio recordings. Rockwell has denied writing any of the newsletters' content, and refused to be interviewed by Sanchez and Weigel. He has called discussion of the newsletters "hysterical smears aimed at political enemies" of the New Republic. Paul himself calls the controversy "old news" and "ancient history." A source close to the Paul presidential campaign says Rockwell indeed wrote much of the newsletters' content, and says: "If Rockwell had any honor he'd come out and I say, 'I wrote this stuff.' He should have done it 10 years ago." Former American Libertarian (AL) editor Mike Holmes says that Rockwell was Paul's chief ghostwriter as far back as 1988, when Rockwell wrote material for AL under Paul's name. "This was based on my understanding at the time that Lew would write things that appeared in Ron's various newsletters," Holmes says. "Neither Ron nor Lew ever told me that, but other people close to them such as Murray Rothbard suggested that Lew was involved, and it was a common belief in libertarian circles." A Rockwell associate, Wendy McElroy, says Rockwell's identity as Paul's ghostwriter is "an open secret within the circles in which I run." Timothy Wirkman Virkkala says he and members of the libertarian magazine Liberty, which he used to edit, knew that Rockwell wrote material under Paul's name, as did Rothbard on occation.
Change in Strategy: 'Outreach to the Rednecks' - Sanchez and Weigel note: "The tenor of Paul's newsletters changed over the years. The ones published between Paul's return to private life after three full terms in Congress (1985) and his Libertarian presidential bid (1988) notably lack inflammatory racial or anti-gay comments. The letters published between Paul's first run for president and his return to Congress in 1996 are another story—replete with claims that Martin Luther King 'seduced underage girls and boys,' that black protesters should gather 'at a food stamp bureau or a crack house' rather than the Statue of Liberty, and that AIDS sufferers 'enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick.'" They also note that the newsletters were a significant source of funding for Paul's campaigns. Former Paul campaign aide Eric Dondero, who after leaving the organization in 2004 has become one of Paul's most notable critics, says that Paul's staff learned between his stints in Congress that "the wilder they got, the more bombastic they got with it, the more the checks came in. You think the newsletters were bad? The fundraising letters were just insane from that period." Ed Craig, the president of the libertarian Cato Institute, says he remembers a time in the late 1980s when Paul boasted that his best source of Congressional campaign donations was the mailing list for The Spotlight, the conspiracy-mongering, anti-Semitic tabloid run by Holocaust denier and white supremacist Willis Carto until it folded in 2001. Rockwell and Rothbard broke with the Libertarian Party after the 1988 presidential election, and formed what the authors call "a schismatic 'paleolibertarian' movement, which rejected what they saw as the social libertinism and leftist tendencies of mainstream libertarians. In 1990, they launched the Rothbard-Rockwell Report, where they crafted a plan they hoped would midwife a broad new 'paleo' coalition." Rockwell wrote in 1990 that his new libertarian movement must embrace overtly conservative values, including values he called "right-wing populism." The strategy was codified in what he called "Outreach to the Rednecks," and embraced overtly racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic views. Rockwell looked to Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI), the leader of the 1950s "Red Scare," and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke as models for the new strategy. The newly, flagrantly racist material in Paul's newsletters were apparently part of Rockwell's "paleolibertarian" strategy. The strategy encompassed values espoused by Paul, including what the authors cite as "tax reduction, abolition of welfare, elimination of 'the entire 'civil rights' structure, which tramples on the property rights of every American,' and a police crackdown on 'street criminals.'" Rockwell envisioned Paul as the leader of the new movement until 1992, when Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan convinced Paul to withdraw from the 1992 campaign and back his candidacy instead. At that point, Rockwell called himself and his fellow "paleolibertarians" "Buchananites" who could choose "either Pat Buchanan or David Duke" to represent them.
Change in Tone - In recent years, Paul has suspended his newsletters, disavowed the racism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism of their content, and presented himself as a conservative libertarian who idolizes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and embraces people of all races and religions. Sanchez and Weigel conclude that Paul is trying to bring a new generation of minorities into the libertarian fold, and write: "Ron Paul may not be a racist, but he became complicit in a strategy of pandering to racists—and taking 'moral responsibility' for that now means more than just uttering the phrase. It means openly grappling with his own past—acknowledging who said what, and why. Otherwise he risks damaging not only his own reputation, but that of the philosophy to which he has committed his life." [Reason, 1/16/2008]
Entity Tags: Mike Holmes, Julian Sanchez, Joseph McCarthy, Eric Dondero, Ed Craig, David Weigel, David Duke, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Willis Carto, Patrick Buchanan, The New Republic, Wendy McElroy, The Spotlight, Ron Paul and Associates, Reason, Murray Rothbard, Timothy Wirkman Virkkala, Lew Rockwell, Ron Paul
January 22-24, 2008: Reporters Prove Obama Never Attended Muslim School
Reporters show that Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), a leading Democratic presidential candidate, was never educated in a "madrassa," or Islamic school, as some of his political enemies claim. Insight Magazine, a subsidiary of the conservative Washington Times, recently reported that the presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) had unearthed information showing that Obama was educated in an Indonesian madrassa during his childhood. The Clinton campaign disputes that it is the source of the story, and calls it "an obvious right-wing hit job." Obama indeed lived in Indonesia from 1967 through 1971, with his mother and stepfather, but was not educated in a madrassa. Instead, Obama, who was six when his family moved to Indonesia, attended the Basuki School from 1969 through 1971. According to a school official: "This is a public school. We don't focus on religion." CNN correspondent John Vause, who visited the school, reports: "I came here to Barack Obama's elementary school in Jakarta looking for what some are calling an Islamic madrassa… like the ones that teach hate and violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan.… I've been to those madrassas in Pakistan… this school is nothing like that." A former classmate of Obama's says the school was not radical in 1969: "It's not [an] Islamic school. It's general.… There is a lot of Christians, Buddhists, also Confucian.… So that's a mixed school." Associated Press reporters also visit two other schools attended by Obama, the SDN Menteng 1 and Fransiskus Assisi. SDN Menteng 1 is a secular public school, according to its vice principal, while Fransiskus Assisi is, according to the Indonesian Ministry of Religious Affairs, "clearly a Catholic school." After the Insight story is repeated on Fox News, the Obama campaign calls those broadcasts "appallingly irresponsible." [CNN, 1/22/2008; Associated Press, 1/24/2008] Despite the debunking, some conservative radio hosts continue to assert that Obama is a Muslim (see January 10, 2008, February 21, 2008, April 3, 2008, July 10, 2008, August 1, 2008 and After, August 21, 2008, and September 10, 2008).
Entity Tags: Indonesian Ministry of Religious Affairs, Barack Obama, Basuki School, Hillary Clinton, John Vause, Fransiskus Assisi, Insight Magazine, SDN Menteng 1
January 25, 2008: Beck: Clinton Should Give Obama 5 Percentage Points for Affirmative Action
CNN Headline News talk show host Glenn Beck tells his viewers that if presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (D-NY) wants to be consistent with her belief in affirmative action, she should give her opponent, African-American candidate Barack Obama (D-IL), "an additional five percentage points just for the years of oppression." Beck makes his statement after asserting that anyone mentioning Obama's race in a denigrating or derogatory fashion is "insulting," and something only "professional separators" would attempt: "All they do is pull us apart so they can angle and try to grab as many people and ignite their base—and it's outrageous. And it's happening on all sides, on all issues, and it has got to stop or we're going to disintegrate." [CNN, 1/25/2008; Media Matters, 1/28/2008]
Entity Tags: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Glenn Beck
January 31, 2008: Bush Describes Visit to Prison Ministry: 'Everyone Was Black, of Course.'
President Bush makes racially charged statements while addressing an audience at a Republican fundraiser in Hillsborough, California, outside San Francisco. The fundraiser, hosted by the chairman of an investment firm, raises $1.5 million for the Republican National Committee. [San Francisco Chronicle, 1/31/2008] The media will not learn about Bush's remarks until late 2009, when former Bush administration speechwriter Matt Latimer publishes his book, Speechless: Tales of a White House Survivor. Latimer will write: "He talked about his own failings with alcoholism as the reason he supported his faith-based initiative. 'My philosophy is, find somebody who hurts and do something about it,' he said. 'Don't wait for government to tell you what to do.' He bluntly talked about his own situation. 'I was beginning to love alcohol over my wife and kids. It got to a point when Billy Graham came into my life. But I was hardheaded and didn't want to listen for a while. And then I stopped drinking overnight. I am a one-man faith-based initiative. Alcohol was competing for my affections. And it would have ruined me.' He said things that could ruffle feathers, such as how he'd recently gone to a faith-based program run by 'former drunks.' He said he went to see a prison ministry program, noting that 'everyone was black, of course.' All eyes turned in search of the sole African American in the audience of donors. They wanted to see if he was offended." Latimer will write that the sole African-American donor did not "appear to be" offended, and will defend Bush, writing that he "didn't mean it in a derogatory way. He just liked making blunt observations to shock his audience." [Think Progress, 9/23/2009]
Entity Tags: Republican National Committee, Bush administration (43), George W. Bush, Matt Latimer
February 1, 2008: Conservative Radio Host: Democratic Presidential Primary 'First Affirmative-Action Election in American History'
Michael Savage. [Source: Portland Indymedia]As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Michael Savage calls the Democratic presidential primary race, now between African-American Barack Obama and female Hillary Clinton, "the first affirmative-action election in American history." Savage says: "We have a woman and a multi-ethnic man running for office on the Democrat side. Is this not akin to an affirmative action election? Isn't that why the libs are hysterical, tripping over themselves to say amen and yes to this affirmative election vote?" Because Americans do not support affirmative action, Savage asserts, voters will reject either Democratic candidate in the November presidential elections. "When they are heard from, the affirmative action ticket goes down in flames… I don't really care who's gonna be on the other side, they win. America's not ready for an affirmative action presidency. I stand by those words." Savage goes on to characterize Democratic supporters as "radical red-diaper doper babies from Brooklyn who made a fortune in the film business by urinating on the American flag and decimating the American value, the values that you grew up loving. They [are t]he ones who made a fortune hating America." [Media Matters, 2/4/2008]
Entity Tags: Michael Savage, Barack Obama, Media Matters, Hillary Clinton
February 21, 2008: Conservative Radio Host: Americans Should Know Whether Obama a 'Friendly Muslim' or a 'Radical' Muslim
As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, syndicated conservative radio host Michael Savage, continuing the well-debunked assertion that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is a Muslim (see January 22-24, 2008), says that American voters "have a right to know if he's a so-called friendly Muslim or one who aspires to more radical teachings." The media should not worry about Republican candidate John McCain's connections to lobbyists, Savage says, and instead should be more concerned with "the Muslim connection to Obama." Savage says: "Barack Hussein Obama. Father Muslim, grandfather Muslim. Nothing wrong with that. But we, the American people, being at war with radical Islam have a—have a need to know just exactly what kind of Muslim he was exposed to, what kind of Muslim he is, what kind of Muslim teachings he's—he's friendly to. We have a right to know if he's a so-called friendly Muslim or one who aspires to more radical teachings." [Media Matters, 2/22/2008]
Entity Tags: Barack Obama, Michael Savage, Media Matters, John McCain
February 25, 2008: Radio Hosts Use Pic of Obama in Kenyan Dress to Level Accusations of Terrorist Sympathies
Senator Barack Obama, during a 2006 visit to Somalia. [Source: Associated Press]Conservative radio hosts such as Dan Caplis and "Gunny" Bob Newman use a photo of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama wearing traditional Kenyan robes to imply that Obama has terrorist sympathies. As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, Caplis says the photo shows Obama wearing "the same type of turban and clothing that Osama bin Laden wears," while Newman asks, "[W]hy do you think Obama really had the photo taken, dressed up as a Somali warlord?" The photo was taken during an August 2006 visit by Obama to Kenya, where his father was born. [Media Matters, 2/25/2008] It was published a few days ago by the conservative Drudge Report. According to Yusuf Garaad Omar, head of the BBC's Somali Service, the robes are "the normal clothes that nomadic people wear. The head turban is especially used by elderly people as a suggestion of respect. It is something that has no meaning whatsoever in Somalia culture. If you see someone dressed like that in Somalia, you think it is a nomadic person—that is all. There is no religious significance to it whatsoever. It is mainly the nomadic people who use it. Some of them are religious, some are not. It is simply a tradition of the place where they are from. In this particular place, Wajir in north-east Kenya, the community is majority ethnic Somali.… This debate reminds me of people back home in Somalia, who say that women should not wear trousers, or other cultures who say men should not wear a tie. I just don't think it makes sense." [BBC, 2/26/2008] Caplis asks his listeners why Obama would "put on similar clothing to the outfit worn by the man who personally ordered thousands of Americans, including women and kids, to be burned to death," and says that "it would be as if [former President] John Kennedy had gone out and thrown on the fatigues and the funny baseball hat that Castro wore." Newman, like Caplis a nationally syndicated Clear Channel talk show host, tells his audience, according to Media Matters: "We were five years into the war on terror when Obama knowingly and willingly dressed up in Somali warlord garb to have his photo taken." He asks if Obama wore the robes "to garner support from Muslim-Americans who ideologically support Muslim terrorists?" and then asks, "Would it have been right for [former President] Harry Truman to dress up like a Nazi in 1948?" Caplis also tells his audience, "[Obama's] middle name is Hussein, which should not be held against him for a second; his last name rhymes with Osama, which should not be held against him for a second." [Media Matters, 2/25/2008] Months later, Newman will tell his listeners that an Obama presidency will welcome "an invasion of Muslim terrorists" (see July 10, 2008).
Entity Tags: Bob Newman, Clear Channel Communications, John F. Kennedy, Media Matters, Barack Obama, Harry S. Truman, Dan Caplis, Osama bin Laden, Yusuf Garaad Omar, Fidel Castro
February 28, 2008: DHS Advisor: Ease Burdens on Hospitals by Telling Hispanics that Emergency Rooms Want to Harvest Their Organs
Larry Niven. [Source: Larry Niven]A group of science fiction writers calling themselves SIGMA is engaged in advising the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on how to protect the nation. Undersecretary of Science and Technology Jay Cohen says he likes their unconventional thinking. Two of the approximately 24 members are right-wing libertarian authors Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven, who have collaborated on a number of books as well as writing numerous novels and short stories on their own. One of Niven's more controversial ideas is to help hospitals stem financial losses by spreading rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants. Niven believes the rumors would discourage Latinos from using the nation's emergency rooms and thus ease the burden on hospitals. "The problem [of hospitals going broke] is hugely exaggerated by illegal aliens who aren't going to pay for anything anyway," Niven says. Pournelle asks, somewhat jokingly, "Do you know how politically incorrect you are?" Niven replies, "I know it may not be possible to use this solution, but it does work." [National Defense Magazine, 2/28/2008] One blogger, apparently angered by Niven's proposal, later writes that Niven's idea comes from his "magical, mystical fictional universe where hospitals don't have to treat rednecks who OD on meth, insurance companies aren't inflating the cost of hospital care, under-regulated drug companies aren't making massive profits, and uninsured children of hardworking parents don't fall off skateboards." [Mark Frauenfelder, 3/28/2008]
Entity Tags: US Department of Homeland Security, Jay Cohen, Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, SIGMA
Timeline Tags: US Health Care, Domestic Propaganda
March 2008: Republican Volunteer Ousted from Paul Campaign Group for Dishonest Tactics
College Republican member Ashley Todd is asked to leave a group of Ron Paul (R-TX) supporters in Brazos County, Texas, according to group leader Dustan Costine. According to Costine, Todd posed as a supporter of presidential candidate Mike Huckabee (R-AR) and called the local Republican committee seeking information about its campaign strategies. Costine will later say: "She would call the opposing campaign and pretend she was on their campaign to get information. We had to remove her because of the tactics she displayed. After that we had nothing to do with her." Todd had earlier told the Paul group that her tires had been slashed, and campaign paraphernalia had been stolen from her car because she supported Paul. "She's the type of person who wants to be recognized," Costine will say. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/24/2008] Seven months later, Todd will falsely claim to have been attacked by an Obama supporter who, she will say, carved a "B" (for "Barack") into her cheek (see October 24, 2008).
Entity Tags: Dustan Costine, Ashley Todd
March 13, 2008: Conservative Radio Host: Obama Sympathetic to Nazis, Imperial Japan
As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Michael Savage says of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, "I think he was hand-picked by some very powerful forces both within and outside the United State of America to drag this country into a hell that it has not seen since the Civil War of the middle of the 19th century." Savage is referring to controversial statements made by Obama's former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whom Savage calls "the soul of Barack Obama's movement." Savage goes on to claim that Wright, and by extension Obama, align themselves with historical enemies of the United States: "And if you want a man who says not 'God bless America,' but 'God d_mn America,' if you want a man who takes the side of the imperial Japanese army, an army that killed not only hundreds of thousands in the Bataan Death March, but hundreds of thousand of Koreans, an army that operated on people while they were alive in Manchuria, a man who takes the side, in essence, of the Japanese Nazis of World War II, if you want a man who takes the side, in essence, of the Hitlers of the world, then you've got it in Barack Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright, of the Trinity United Church of Christ." Obama is merely "an ordinary apparatchik of the Democrat machine in Chicago" whose handlers intend to use Obama to bring upheaval and chaos to the nation. [Media Matters, 3/19/2008]
Entity Tags: Barack Obama, Michael Savage, Media Matters, Jeremiah A. Wright Jr
Around March 19, 2008: Email Claiming Obama the 'Antichrist' Misrepresents Biblical Teachings
A recent spate of chain email attacks on presidential contender Barack Obama (D-IL) include claims that Obama may be the Antichrist of Biblical prediction. PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, notes that the email entirely distorts the words of the Book of Revelation to make its claim. The email reads: "According to The Book of Revelations the anti-christ is: The anti-christ will be a man, in his 40s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal.… the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, will destroy everything is it OBAMA??… I STRONGLY URGE each one of you to repost this as many times as you can! Each opportunity that you have to send it to a friend or media outlet… do it! If you think I am crazy… Im sorry but I refuse to take a chance on the 'unknown' candidate." PolitiFact notes that there are at least 635,000 hits on Google for the search term "Obama + Antichrist," indicating that the subject has a certain interest to many. There are also literally thousands of blog posts about "Barack Obama the Antichrist" and such. PolitiFact states flatly, "Nothing about this detailed allegation is true." According to PolitiFact's research, which includes interviews with two religious scholars, the email makes a number of egregious errors.
The email misstates the name of the "Book of Revelation" as "Revelations."
The email falsely says that the Book of Revelation uses the term "anti-christ" or any such term. Religious studies professor Dr. James D. Tabor tells PolitiFact: "The word Antichrist is not used in the Book of Revelation so this is important to point out. Everybody thinks the word is used." Dr. L. Michael White, a professor of classics and religious studies, adds, "First and foremost, the word Antichrist and a figure called the Antichrist never occurs in the Book of Revelation in the New Testament." There are characters in Revelation that some interpret as being the Antichrist, particularly one beastly figure in Chapter 13 "having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy" that some consider to be an allusion to the Antichrist. "It's only in Chapter 13 and you could almost miss it," Tabor says. White notes that most Biblical scholars do not consider that figure to represent the Antichrist. "It wasn't there in the Bible," he says. "It emerges in the Middle Ages. It's something historians deal with." The term does appear a few times in other books of the Bible, specifically First John and Second John.
The Bible does not identify the Antichrist as a man of any particular age. Nowhere does it describe "a man, in his 40s," as the e-mail alleges. "As you notice, there's nothing about being age 40," Tabor says. "This is completely wrong. The Book of Revelation doesn't say that. It says it's a male, so I guess they got that right. It says 'he,' 'he,' 'he.'"
The Bible does not identify the Antichrist as being Muslim; Islam was not founded as a religion until 400 years after the completion of the various books of the Bible. "A Muslim would be a monotheist and the last thing a Muslim would do is have anyone worship anyone other than God," says Tabor. And Obama is a Christian, not a Muslim (see October 1, 2007, December 19, 2007, and January 11, 2008).
According to White, the email lifts much of its information from the Left Behind series, a group of post-apocalyptic novels written by Christian-right preacher Tim LaHaye and his co-author, Jerry Jenkins. The email is, White says, "a jigsaw puzzle of bits and pieces all filtered through the kind of end-of-world scenarios we get in the theology that is the underpinning of the Left Behind novels." He says this kind of "patchwork interpretation of the Bible" is used by groups who wish to justify certain beliefs. "Of course, they never bothered to read the Scriptures carefully," he says, "so it's kind of a system of interpretation. That if you start with that presupposition… it's all there you can just find it.… That description [in the chain email] never occurs anywhere in one place nor are the component parts really about the same situation. It's a cherry-picking through Scripture to get it all to fit together." PolitiFact calls the email's claim "egregiously inaccurate." [St. Petersburg Times, 3/19/2008]
Entity Tags: James D. Tabor, Barack Obama, L. Michael White, Tim LaHaye, Jerry Jenkins, PolitiFact (.org )
April 3, 2008: Conservative Radio Host: Obama is a Muslim Educated in Radical Islamist Madrassah
As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Michael Savage repeats the false assertion that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is a Muslim, a trope repeated by many conservative radio hosts (see January 22-24, 2008). In reality, Obama is a practicing Christian and a member of the United Church of Christ. The allegations that Obama is, or ever was, a Muslim have been debunked by, among others, CNN, the Chicago Tribune, and the Associated Press. Savage again lies to his listeners by telling them another oft-repeated falsehood, that Obama was educated in a radical Islamist "madrassah" during a childhood stint in Indonesia. Savage tells his listeners: "Look who we inherited in this country, from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Barack Hussein Obama, in one generation. A war hero to—a war hero who commanded the Allied operations against Nazi Germany was running for the presidency then. Now we have an unknown stealth candidate who went to a madrassas in Indonesia and, in fact, was a Muslim.… Yes, check it out." [Media Matters, 4/7/2008] Weeks before, Savage told his listeners that Obama and his former pastor supported the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese, and Obama would bring chaos and devastation to the United States on a scale not seen since the Civil War (see March 13, 2008).
Entity Tags: CNN, Associated Press, Barack Obama, Media Matters, Michael Savage, Dwight Eisenhower, Chicago Tribune
April 18, 2008: Fact-Checking Organization Again Debunks Email Claims that Obama a 'Muslim' with Ties to Islamist Radicals
A portion of Barack Obama's marriage certificate. The full-size original can be viewed online. [Source: St. Petersburg Times]PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, debunks a recent spate of claims that Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), a presidential candidate, has ties to Islamist radicals in Kenya. The claims appear to be sourced from a letter sent by American missionaries in Kenya, saying that Obama has ties to a Kenyan opposition party and warning its readers "not to be taken in by those that are promoting him." The email also claims: "By the way. His true name is Barak Hussein Muhammed Obama. Won't that sound sweet to our enemies as they swear him in on the Koran! God bless you." PolitiFact writes: "The e-mail reads like a bad game of 'telephone,' its claims drawn from assorted people and sources that have been stitched together. And yet, because it is signed by real people, who have a life in Africa, it somehow carries more credence than your average blog posting—and it's spreading rapidly." PolitiFact has debunked this claim before (see January 11, 2008), but notes that the claim continues to spread. PolitiFact posts a copy of Obama's 1992 marriage certificate, which states "Barack H. Obama" married "Michelle L. Robinson" on October 3, 1992, in a ceremony officiated by Trinity United Church of Christ pastor Jeremiah A. Wright (see January 6-11, 2008). Obama's driver's license record in Illinois identifies him as "Barack H. Obama." His property listings name him as either "Barack Hussein Obama" or "Barack H. Obama." His registration and disciplinary record with the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois notes that Obama was admitted to the Illinois bar on December 17, 1991, and has no public record of discipline. PolitiFact was unable to secure a copy of Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate (see June 13, 2008). PolitiFact has located the originator of the email, Celeste Davis. Her husband Loren Davis confirms that he cannot substantiate the claims in the email. "That was what we heard there [in Kenya]," Davis tells a PolitiFact interviewer. Davis says he and his wife have lived and worked in Kenya for the past 12 years, and says his wife's message was from a personal letter "never intended to be forwarded or sent out to the Web." [St. Petersburg Times, 4/18/2008]
Entity Tags: Jeremiah A. Wright Jr, Barack Obama, Celeste Davis, Michelle Obama, PolitiFact (.org ), Loren Davis
May 2008: Former Press Secretary Lauds 'Skeptical,' Liberally Oriented Media, Chides 'Deferential' White House Press Corps
Former Bush administration press secretary Scott McClellan, in his book What Happened, provides his observations on the so-called "liberal media." McClellan writes: "I'm often asked about the 'liberal media' critique. Is it true? Is the problem with Washington in part a result of the fact that left-wing journalists are, in effect, at war with conservative politicians and trying to bring them down? My answer is always the same."
Less Pronounced Leftward Tilt to Reporting - "It's probably true that most reporters, writers, and TV journalists are personally liberal or leftward leaning, and tend to vote Democratic," he writes. "Polls and surveys of media professionals bear this out (see February 24, 2009). But this tilt to the left has probably become less pronounced in recent years, with the ascendancy of a wider variety of news sources, including Fox News.… And more important, everything I've seen, both as White House press secretary and as a longtime observer of the political scene and the media, suggests that any liberal bias actually has minimal impact on the way the American public is informed." McClellan notes that, in his opinion, "the vast majority of reporters—including those in the White House press corps—are honest, fair-minded, and professional. They try hard to tell all sides of the stories they report (see March 6, 2003), and they certainly don't treat information or statements coming from a conservative administration with excessive harshness or exaggerated skepticism. And even when a bit of bias does seep through, I believe the public sees it exactly for what it is."
Press Corps 'Too Deferential to the White House' regarding Iraq - McClellan writes: "We in the Bush administration had no difficulty in getting our messages out to the American people. If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war with Iraq. The collapse of the administration's rationale for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should have never come as such a surprise. The public should have been made much more aware, before the fact, of the uncertainties, doubts, and caveats that underlay the intelligence about the regime of Saddam Hussein. The administration did little to convey those nuances to the people; the press should have picked up the slack but largely failed to do so because their focus was elsewhere—on covering the march to war instead of the necessity of war. In this case, the 'liberal case' didn't live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served."
'Liberal-Oriented Media ... a Good Thing' for Countering Right-Leaning Administrations - He continues: "I'll even go a step further. I'm inclined to believe that a liberal-oriented media in the United States should be viewed as a good thing. When I look back at the last several presidential administrations—the two Bushes, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford—I see conservative/centrist leaders, either right of center or just left of center, who pursued mainstream policies designed to satisfy the vast bulk of middle-class American voters. All of these presidents were at least moderate on economic policy, generally pro-business in their orientation, and within the mainstream in most other issues, from foreign policy to education to the environment. And the Congressional leaders they worked with were, generally speaking, from the same mold—conservative or centrist. Over the past 50 years, there have been no flaming liberals in positions of greatest power in American politics."
'Comforting the Afflicted and Afflicting the Comfortable' - "Under these circumstances, a generally liberal or left-leaning media can serve an important, useful role," McClellan writes. "It can stand up for the interests of people and causes that get short shrift from conservative or mainstream politicians: racial and ethnic minorities, women, working people, the poor, the disenfranchised. As the old saying goes, a liberal reporter ought to take up the cause of 'comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable,' speaking out on issues that otherwise would be neglected or ignored, exposing wrongdoing, and helping to keep the powerful in government and business honest."
Welcomes 'Skeptical, Untrusting' Media - McClellan continues: "Furthermore, I welcome media that are skeptical and untrusting. The more so the better—as long as they are honest and fair. Those who are in positions of power should have to continually earn the trust of the governed. They should be constantly challenged to prove their policies are right, to prove they can be trusted, and to prove they are accountable. That is the way we are more likely to get to the important, sometimes hard truth."
Fixation on 'Controversy' Obscures 'Larger Truths' - He concludes: "So I don't agree with those who excoriate the 'liberal media.'… The real problem with the national media is their overemphasis on controversy, the excessive focus on who is winning and who is losing in Washington, and the constant search for something or someone to pick on and attack. These bad habits too often cause the larger truths that matter most to get lost in the mix." [McClellan, 2008, pp. 156-158]
Entity Tags: Scott McClellan, Bush administration (43), Fox News
May 19, 2008: Conservative Radio Host Accuses Obama of Behaving Like a 'Thug'
'Gunny' Bob Newman. [Source: Newsradio 850 KOA]As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host "Gunny" Bob Newman, the host of a popular Denver talk show, responds to a Tennessee Republican Party ad attacking presidential contender Barack Obama (D-IL)'s wife Michelle to accuse Obama of behaving like a stereotypical black street hood. Calling Obama a "clown" and asking if he is "some sort of a bad _ss," Newman then addresses Obama directly, demanding: "What are you gonna do, Obama, come to Denver and try, key word try, to whip my white _ss? Son, you are not some sort of macho tough guy, trust me. You are just another blowhard, make-believe thug who wants to be the most powerful man on Earth. You're a far-left, terrorist-hugging politician, not the bad-boy gangsta you want people to believe you are." Obama called Republican attacks on his wife "unacceptable" and "detestable," apparently provoking Newman's response. [Media Matters, 5/20/2008] In previous broadcasts, Newman accused Obama of dressing like a terrorist sympathizer (see February 25, 2008).
Entity Tags: Bob Newman, Media Matters, Michelle Obama, Barack Obama
June 2, 2008: Limbaugh: Democrats Chose Obama for Presidential Candidate Only Because 'He's Black'
Discussing the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama (D-IL), conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh tells listeners that the Democratic Party is "go[ing] with a veritable rookie whose only chance of winning is that he's black." Limbaugh's comments are reported by progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters. [Media Matters, 6/2/2008]
Entity Tags: Rush Limbaugh, Barack Obama, Democratic Party
June 6, 2008: Conservative Radio Host Savage: Obama an 'Afro-Leninist'
Conservative radio host Michael Savage repeatedly refers to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as an "Afro-Leninist." As reported by the progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, Savage asserts: "If the other side [the Republican Party] had one decent candidate, one real conservative, he would win 70-30. But because we have a retread, a Bush III [referring to Republican candidate John McCain], it's going to be very doubtful as to whether or not we can avoid outright Marxism and Afro-Leninism running this country." Later in the broadcast, he calls Obama "[a]n Afro-Leninist who's achieved nothing" and "the most narcissistic candidate in the history of the presidency." [Media Matters, 6/10/2008]
Entity Tags: John McCain, Barack Obama, Republican Party, Media Matters, Michael Savage
June 13, 2008: Obama Campaign Releases Birth Certificate
Obama's birth certificate, obtained from the Hawaii Department of Health. [Source: FightTheSmears (.com)]Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), running for the Democratic nomination for president, releases a digitally scanned copy of his Hawaiian birth certificate. His campaign is responding to persistent rumors that he is not a legitimate American citizen. In the process of releasing the certificate, Obama's campaign also launches a Web site called Fight The Smears, devoted to debunking the allegations that, among other things, Obama is not a citizen, he is a closet Muslim, he took his oaths for political office on a copy of the Koran, he refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance, and other falsehoods. As Obama was born in Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu at 7:24 p.m. on August 4, 1961, his birth certificate comes under Hawaiian state law, and those laws state birth certificates are not public records. Only the individuals, or immediate family members, may request copies. The copy of the birth certificate released by the Obama campaign confirms that his name is legitimately "Barack Hussein Obama," not "Barack Muhammed Obama," "Barry Soetoro," or other claimed variants, and states that Obama's mother is Stanley Ann Dunham, an American, and his father is Barack Hussein Obama, an "African." The birth certificate release only inflames the "birther" claims that Obama is hiding his true citizenship, religion, political alliances, and other such personal facts (see June 27, 2008). [St. Petersburg Times, 6/27/2008; St. Petersburg Times, 7/1/2009; Honolulu Advertiser, 7/28/2009]
Entity Tags: Barack Obama, Ann Dunham, Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital, Barack Obama, Sr
(June 14, 2008): Fake Email Details 'Obama Death List'
Right-wing blogs begin reprinting and recirculating an email that claims presidential candidate Barack Obama (D-IL) is somehow responsible for at least 19 mysterious deaths. Right-wing terrorism expert David Neiwert will compare the "Obama death list" to the equally spurious "Clinton death lists" that circulated throughout the two terms of the Clinton administration and still survive in some places today. The email falsely claims that the fact-checking Web site Snopes.com has validated the list. The email reads in part: "Please send this to as many people as you can, especially those who might be thinking of voting for B. Hussen Obama. We cannot have a man like this in office.… The following is a partial list of deaths of persons connected to Barack HUSSEIN Obama during his time inside the United States. Read the list and judge for yourself." The list includes a number of known and supposed Obama associates, all of whom "died mysteriously" from a variety of causes, from "suspiciously timed" heart attacks and car crashes to drug overdoses. According to the list: an author died in 2003 after supposedly "exposing" Obama as a secret "radical Muslim" (see October 1, 2007, December 19, 2007, Before October 27, 2008, January 11, 2008, Around March 19, 2008, and April 18, 2008), as did a supposed FBI informant. Another died before he could share "sensitive information about meetings Barack Obama had with arms smugglers," and that person's father died "four hours after" his son made an appearance on right-wing talk show host Michael Savage's broadcast. One woman died after filing and then dropping rape charges against Obama. A former Obama office secretary was murdered after meeting with a reporter to discuss Obama's secret connections to black militants. A "childhood classmate" of Obama's was beheaded before he could present evidence that Obama had attended a radical Islamist madrassa in Indonesia. One person, a former reverend of Trinity Baptist Church (see January 6-11, 2008), was allegedly murdered so the Reverend Jeremiah Wright could take over as head of the church; the pastor's son was also murdered before he could expose Wright as a murderer. Another person died before he could expose his homosexual love affair with Obama. Another was shot to death before she could expose Obama as a frequent client of prostitutes. Another went missing after telling friends that she was carrying Obama's "love child." Bloggers for the progressive Sadly No site say they have tried and failed to authenticate most of the "deaths" of the people on the list, including author Sarah Berkley, whose alleged book The Jihad at the Ballot Box does not seem to exist. [My Right Wing Dad, 7/15/2008; Sadly No, 7/26/2008; David Neiwert, 7/28/2008] One blogger later finds that one person on the list, who supposedly died because of sinister Obama machinations in 2003, also supposedly died in 1994 from equally sinister Clinton machinations. [Civilization Fanatics, 7/26/2008]
Entity Tags: Michael Savage, William Jefferson ("Bill") Clinton, Barack Obama, David Neiwert, Jeremiah A. Wright Jr
June 26, 2008: Conservative Commentator Crowley Repeats Falsehood that Obama Is 'Arab-African'
A 2003 publicity photo of Monica Crowley. [Source: 96.9 FM WTKK]Fox News commentator Monica Crowley, guest-hosting conservative radio host Laura Ingraham's show, tells her audience that Democratic candidate Barack Obama is not African-American, but "Arab African." Crowley admits that she has done no research to verify her claim, but is quoting conservative blogger Kenneth Lamb, who himself provided no verification to his February 2008 claim. Crowley says: "[A]ccording to this genealogy—and again, because I haven't done the research, I can't verify this—but according to this guy Kenneth Lamb, Barack Obama is not black African, he is Arab African.… And yet, this guy is campaigning as black and painting anybody who dares to criticize him as a racist. I mean, that is—it is the biggest con I think I've ever seen." (Lamb has consistently refused to provide the research to back his claim, but has instead challenged critics to do the research themselves—including surreptitiously obtaining samples of Obama's DNA for testing—and accused the administration of Harvard University of complicity in perpetuating the "sleight of hand.") [Media Matters, 6/26/2008] In September 2008, radio host Rush Limbaugh will repeat the falsehood (see September 22, 2008).
Entity Tags: Laura Ingraham, Barack Obama, Fox News, Harvard University, Kenneth Lamb, Monica Crowley, Rush Limbaugh, Media Matters
June 27, 2008: Fact-Checking Organization Debunks 'Birther' Claims about Obama Citizenship
Logo for the Hawaii Department of Health. [Source: Baby Guard Fence (.com)]PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, publishes a scathing denunciation of so-called "birther" claims that presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) is not a legitimate American citizen. The story has gained traction mostly through Internet blogs and emails circulating among far-right and "tea party" organizations and figures, making wildly varying claims—Obama is a Kenyan, he is a Muslim, his middle name is Mohammed, his birth name is "Barry Soetoro," and so forth. PolitiFact's Amy Hollyfield writes: "At full throttle, the accusations are explosive and unrelenting, the writers emboldened by the anonymity and reach of the Internet. And you can't help but ask: How do you prove something to people who come to the facts believing, out of fear or hatred or maybe just partisanship, that they're being tricked?" Hollyfield notes that PolitiFact has sought a valid copy of Obama's birth certificate since the claims began circulating months ago. PolitiFact has already secured a copy of Obama's 1992 marriage certificate from the Cook County, Illinois, Bureau of Vital Statistics, his driver's license record from the Illinois secretary of state's office, his registration and disciplinary record with the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois, and all of his property records. The records are consistent, all naming him as either "Barack H. Obama" or "Barack Hussein Obama," his legitimate, given name. PolitiFact ran into trouble with the birth certificate. Obama was born in a hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii, and according to Hawaiian law, that state's birth certificates are not public record. Only family members can request copies. The Obama presidential campaign originally declined to provide PolitiFact with a copy, until the campaign released a true copy of the certificate (see June 13, 2008). When PolitiFact received the document, researchers emailed it to the Hawaii Department of Health, which maintains such records, to ask if it was real. Spokesman Janice Okubo responded, "It's a valid Hawaii state birth certificate." Instead of settling the controversy, the certificate inflamed the so-called "birthers," who asked a number of questions concerning the certificate, including queries about and challenges to:
the certificate's seal and registrar's signature;
the color of the document as compared to other Hawaiian birth certificates;
the date stamp of June 2007, which some say is "bleeding through the back of the document," supposedly calling into question the validity of the stamp and, thusly, the entire certificate;
the lack of creases from being folded and mailed;
the authenticity of the document, which some claim is "clearly Photoshopped and a wholesale fraud."
Further investigation by PolitiFact researchers supports the validity of the certificate and disproves the allegations as cited. Hollyfield writes: "And soon enough, after going to every length possible to confirm the birth certificate's authenticity, you start asking, what is reasonable here? Because if this document is forged, then they all are. If this document is forged, a US senator and his presidential campaign have perpetrated a vast, long-term fraud. They have done it with conspiring officials at the Hawaii Department of Health, the Cook County (Ill.) Bureau of Vital Statistics, the Illinois secretary of state's office, the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois, and many other government agencies." Hollyfield notes that the Hawaii Department of Health receives about a dozen email inquiries a day about Obama's birth certificate, according to Okubo. She tells Hollyfield: "I guess the big issue that's being raised is the lack of an embossed seal and a signature." On a Hawaiian birth certificate, she says, the seal and signatures are on the back of the document. "Because they scanned the front… you wouldn't see those things." Hollyfield concludes that it is conceivable "that Obama conspired his way to the precipice of the world's biggest job, involving a vast network of people and government agencies over decades of lies. Anything's possible." But she goes on to ask doubters "to look at the overwhelming evidence to the contrary and your sense of what's reasonable has to take over. There is not one shred of evidence to disprove PolitiFact's conclusion that the candidate's name is Barack Hussein Obama, or to support allegations that the birth certificate he released isn't authentic. And that's true no matter how many people cling to some hint of doubt and use the Internet to fuel their innate sense of distrust." [St. Petersburg Times, 6/27/2008]
Entity Tags: Janice Okubo, Amy Hollyfield, Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois, Barack Obama, Cook County, Illinois Bureau of Vital Statistics, Hawaii Department of Health, PolitiFact (.org )
July 9, 2008: Conservative Radio Host Publishes Doctored Photos of Obama with Bin Laden
Doctored photo supposedly showing Barack Obama in the company of Osama bin Laden. [Source: Media Matters / Newsradio 850 KOA]As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host "Gunny" Bob Newman posts doctored "satirical" photographs of Democratic candidate Barack Obama supposedly posing with Osama bin Laden and as "Che Obama" (appearing as South American socialist revolutionary Che Guevara) on his radio station's Web site. Newman also posts real photos of Obama with fake captions featuring profanity-laden threats directed at Newman. The Web site, like Newman's radio station, KOA Radio of Denver, is owned by Clear Channel Communications. One caption has Obama saying about Newman, "If that sumb_tch even tries to get into my convention [the Democratic National Convention], I'll have him disappeared like Jimmy Hoffa." Another reads, "Upon seeing Gunny Bob approaching with a microphone, Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama angrily warns the Gunny, 'If you come any closer, I'll have the Secret Service shoot and then waterboard you, you fascist Marine capitalist b_stard!'" The fake Obama-bin Laden photo is captioned, "Endorsed By Terrorists, Tyrants and Racists Everywhere." [Media Matters, 7/9/2008] In May, Newman accused Obama of being a "thug," and rhetorically asked the candidate if he intended to come to Denver and "whip [his] white _ss" (see May 19, 2008).
Entity Tags: Ché Guevara, Barack Obama, Bob Newman, Newsradio 850 KOA, Osama bin Laden, Media Matters, Clear Channel Communications
August 1, 2008 and After: Right-Wing Author Smears Obama in Book Riddled with Falsehoods
Cover of 'The Obama Nation' [Source: Threshold / FactCheck (.org)]Dr. Jerome Corsi, a conservative author and blogger who was deeply involved in the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign to besmirch presidential candidate John Kerry (D-MA), publishes a book, The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality. The title is a play on the word 'abomination.' In his book, Corsi, who writes for the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily and blogs at the extremist Free Republic, attacks Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in a fashion similar to that used against Kerry—combining fact, hyperbole, speculation, and outright falsehoods in an attempt to demean and disparage Obama's character and professional career. The publisher, Threshold (a division of Simon and Schuster devoted to publishing conservative political works), calls the book "[s]crupolously sourced" and "[m]eticulously researched and documented…" Among other allegations, Corsi accuses Obama of growing up under the influence of Communist, socialist, and radical Islamic mentors; of deep and secretive affiliations with '60s radicals William Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn; of espousing what he calls "black liberation theology" through his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright; connections to socialists and radical Islamists in Kenya, his father's home country; deep and criminal ties to Chicago real-estate mogul Tony Rezko; and an intent to, if elected president, implement what Corsi calls "far-left" domestic and foreign policies. [Simon and Schuster, 8/1/2008; New York Times, 8/12/2008; St. Petersburg Times, 8/20/2008] The book debuts as number one on the New York Times bestseller list, propelled by large bulk sales (large buys by particular organizations designed to artificially elevate sales figures) and an intensive marketing campaign carried out on conservative talk radio shows. "The goal is to defeat Obama," Corsi says. "I don't want Obama to be in office." [New York Times, 8/12/2008]
Allegations Roundly Debunked - Unfortunately for Corsi, his allegations do not stand up to scrutiny. FactCheck.org, a non-partisan "'consumer advocate' for voters" site run by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center, finds that Corsi's book "is a mishmash of unsupported conjecture, half-truths, logical fallacies and outright falsehoods." It "is not a reliable source of facts about Obama." FactCheck notes: "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." The organization notes that Threshold's chief editor, Republican operative Mary Matalin, said the book was not political, but rather "a piece of scholarship, and a good one at that." FactCheck responds: "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." [FactCheck (.org), 2008; FactCheck (.org), 9/15/2008] The St. Petersburg Times's PolitiFact finds, "Taken as a whole, the book's primary argument is that Obama is a likely communist sympathizer with ties to Islam who has skillfully hidden his true agenda as he ruthlessly pursues elected office," an argument that the organization concludes is wholly unsupported by Corsi's arguments and sources. [St. Petersburg Times, 8/1/2008] And an Associated Press article finds the book a "collect[ion of] false rumors and distortions [designed] to portray Obama as a sort of secret radical who can't be trusted." [Associated Press, 8/16/2008]
Unreliable Sources - As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, Corsi's sources are often unreliable: for example, his allegation that Obama's father divorced his mother according to "Islamic sharia law" is based on a single and unverifiable post made by an anonymous blogger. [Media Matters, 8/4/2008] FactCheck notes that although Corsi points to his over 600 endnotes as proof of his "rigorous" sourcing, many of those endnotes refer to obscure, unverifiable Internet postings, blog posts, and opinion columns. Four of Corsi's sources refer to his own work. "Where Corsi does cite news sources," the site says, "he sometimes presents only those that are consistent with his case while ignoring evidence that doesn't fit the picture he paints." [FactCheck (.org), 9/15/2008]
Demonstrably False Claims - Some of Corsi's claims are completely false: his statement that Obama did not dedicate his 2004 memoir, Dreams from My Father, to his parents or grandparents is easily debunked merely by reading the book's introduction, in which Obama wrote, "It is to my family, though—my mother, my grandparents, my siblings, stretched across oceans and continents—that I owe the deepest gratitude and to whom I dedicated this book." [Media Matters, 8/4/2008; St. Petersburg Times, 8/20/2008] Corsi also claims, falsely, that Obama holds dual citizenship in the US and Kenya, though the Kenyan Constitution specifically prohibits dual citizenship. [FactCheck (.org), 9/15/2008] Corsi goes on to claim that Obama has long rejected his white family members from his mother's side, including his grandparents in Hawaii who raised him for much of his childhood. This is part of Corsi's argument about Obama's secret embrace of the so-called "radical black rage" teachings of American activist Malcolm X. According to Corsi's reading of Obama's memoir: "His race, he self-determines, is African-American. In making that determination, he rejects everyone white, including his mother and his grandparents. We do not have to speculate about this. Obama tells this to us outright; his words are direct, defying us to miss his meaning." But PolitiFact calls this "a significant misreading of Obama's memoir," and notes that Corsi ignores a large amount of evidence that points to Obama's continued close relationship with his white family members throughout his life. PolitiFact concludes, "To conclude that Obama rejects everyone white, including his mother and his grandparents, Corsi has to significantly read against the memoir's stated meaning. We find factual evidence also contradicts this statement, indicating that Obama maintained lifelong relations with his white relatives." [St. Petersburg Times, 8/1/2008]
Insinuations and Leading Questions - Many of Corsi's allegations are based on little more than questions and insinuations: for example, Corsi insinuates that Obama may not have stopped using marijuana and cocaine, as he admitted to doing during his high school years. Corsi writes: "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. Did Obama ever use drugs in his days as a community organizer in Chicago, or when he was a state senator from Illinois? How about in the US Senate? If Obama quit using drugs, the public inquiry certain to occur in a general election campaign for the presidency will most certainly aim at the when, how and why…?" According to Media Matters, Obama wrote in his book Dreams from My Father that he stopped using drugs shortly after beginning college. [Media Matters, 8/4/2008] FactCheck notes: "Corsi… 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.… In fact, Obama has answered that question twice, including once in the autobiography that Corsi reviews in his book."
Guilt by Association - Corsi alleges that Obama has links to Kenyan presidential candidate Raila Odinga, and claims that Obama is somehow linked to the violence surrounding the 2007 Kenyan presidential election. He bases his claim on a single visit by Obama and his wife, Michelle, to Kenya, where they publicly took AIDS tests to demonstrate the tests' safety. In the testing process, Obama spoke briefly to the crowd. Odinga was on stage while Obama spoke. Corsi construes the speech as an Obama endorsement of Odinga, and, as FactCheck writes, "[h]e goes on to attribute all the violence in Kenya to an elaborate Odinga plot." Corsi ignores the fact that during that trip, Obama also met with the other Kenyan presidential candidate, Mwai Kibaki, and with opposition leader Uhuru Kenyatta. Human Rights Watch blamed the violence following the election on both Odinga and Kibaki and their followers. FactCheck notes that Corsi uses the logical fallacy of "guilt by association" to fill Chapters 3 through 7. [FactCheck (.org), 9/15/2008]
Misquoting Other Sources - Media Matters finds that Corsi sometimes misquotes and rewrites source material, as when he attributed a claim concerning Obama's supposedly untoward business relationship with Rezko to articles in the Chicago Sun-Times, the Boston Globe, and Salon (.com) that made none of the claims Corsi attributes to them. Corsi also misquoted the conservative Web site NewsMax when he used one of its articles to falsely claim that Obama had been present at Chicago's Trinity United Church during Reverend Wright's denunciation of America's "white arrogance." (Obama was actually in Miami during Wright's sermon.) [Media Matters, 8/4/2008] Corsi uses a man he calls one of Obama's "closest" childhood friends, Indonesian Zulfan Adi, to back his assertion that Obama was once a practicing Muslim. However, Corsi does not report that Adi later retracted his claims about Obama's religious practices, and admitted to knowing Obama for only a few months. Corsi also ignores a Chicago Tribune story that contains interviews with "dozens of former classmates, teachers, neighbors and friends [who] show that Obama was not a regular practicing Muslim when he was in Indonesia," and other media reports that have conclusively proven Obama was never a Muslim (see January 22-24, 2008).
Ignoring the Obvious - Corsi repeatedly claims that Obama is a master speaker who bedazzles crowds with soaring flights of rhetoric, but never actually gives any specifics of what he intends to do as president. He writes: "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 [campaign manager David] Axelrod and Obama have proclaimed, they can't forever avoid telling us what precisely that message is." But FactCheck notes that "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."
Conspiracy Theorist, 'Bigot,' and Veteran Liar - FactCheck notes: "Corsi is a renowned conspiracy theorist who says that [President] George Bush is attempting to create a North American Union… and that there is evidence that the World Trade Center may have collapsed [after the 9/11 attacks] because it was seeded with explosives. More recently, Corsi claimed that Obama released a fake birth certificate. We've debunked that twice now. [M]any of the themes in The Obama Nation are reworked versions of bogus chain e-mail smears." [FactCheck (.org), 9/15/2008] In August 2004, Media Matters found that Corsi routinely embraced both extremist opinions and personal invective. Corsi called Islam "a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion." Of Catholicism, he wrote, "Boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope as long as it isn't reported by the liberal press." Of Muslims themselves, he wrote, "RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters—it all goes together." And of Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), he wrote: "Anybody ask why HELLary couldn't keep BJ Bill [former President Clinton] satisfied? Not lesbo or anything, is she?" [Media Matters, 8/6/2004] (Corsi posted these comments on the Free Republic under the moniker "jrlc," and identified himself as "jrlc" on March 19, 2004.) [Free Republic, 3/18/2004; Jerome Corsi, 8/7/2004] An Obama campaign spokesman calls Corsi "a discredited, fringe bigot." [Associated Press, 8/16/2008] FactCheck concludes, "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." [FactCheck (.org), 9/15/2008] PolitiFact concludes: "A reader might think that because the book is printed by a mainstream publishing house it is well-researched and credible. On the contrary—we find The Obama Nation to be an unreliable document for factual information about Barack Obama." [St. Petersburg Times, 8/20/2008]
Entity Tags: Mwai Kibaki, NewsMax, Salon (.com), Raila Odinga, Simon and Schuster, Trinity United Church of Christ, Tony Rezko, Michelle Obama, St. Petersburg Times, Zulfan Adi, Uhuru Kenyatta, William Ayers, Media Matters, Hillary Clinton, Malcolm X, Boston Globe, Bernadette Dohrn, Barack Obama, Associated Press, Annenberg Public Policy Center, Chicago Sun-Times, Mary Matalin, Chicago Tribune, FactCheck (.org), John Kerry, Jerome Corsi, David Axelrod, Jeremiah A. Wright Jr, Free Republic, WorldNetDaily, George W. Bush
August 4, 2008: Conservative Radio Host Hannity: No One Can Claim He or Other Conservatives Have 'Made an Issue of Obama's Race;' Facts Prove Otherwise
Sean Hannity. [Source: Halogen Guides (.com)]Conservative radio show host Sean Hannity tells his listeners that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama "can't point to a single instance in which President Bush or [Republican candidate John] McCain or [Bush political adviser] Karl Rove or Sean Hannity or talk radio or any other major Republican has made an issue of Obama's race." Hannity's claim is proven false by data collected by progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters. Hannity himself asked his audience on March 2, 2008, "Do the Obamas have a race problem of their own?" He has also repeatedly distorted the content of Michelle Obama's 1985 Princeton University senior thesis to suggest that Mrs. Obama believes, in Hannity's words, "blacks must join in solidarity to combat a white oppressor." (Mrs. Obama was documenting the attitudes of some black Princeton alumni from the 1970s and not expressing her own views.) [Media Matters, 8/7/2008] Media Matters has also documented numerous examples of other radio and TV personalities making "an issue of Obama's race" (see January 24, 2007, February 1, 2008, May 19, 2008, June 2, 2008, June 26, 2008, and August 1, 2008 and After). The issue of race will continue with conservative pundits and radio hosts (see August 25, 2008, September 22, 2008, October 7, 2008, October 20, 2008, October 22, 2008, October 28, 2008, and November 18, 2008).
Entity Tags: Media Matters, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, John McCain, Karl C. Rove, Princeton University, Sean Hannity, Michelle Obama
August 15, 2008: Author Claims Obama Birth Certificate a 'Photoshop' Fake
Author Jerome Corsi, who has published a scathing, and well-debunked, challenge to presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (D-IL)'s American citizenship (see August 1, 2008 and After), calls Obama's birth certificate a "fake" in an interview on Fox News. Corsi tells interviewer Steve Doocy: "Well, what would be really helpful is if Senator Obama would release primary documents like his birth certificate. The campaign has a false, fake birth certificate posted on their Web site. How is anybody supposed to really piece together his life?" Corsi is referring to a scanned digital copy of Obama's birth certificate (see June 13, 2008), which has been confirmed as true and valid by Hawaiian state officials (see June 27, 2008). Corsi claims, "The original birth certificate of Obama has never been released and the campaign refuses to release it." Doocy asks if the copy isn't "just… a State of Hawaii-produced duplicate?" and Corsi responds: "No, it's a—there's been good analysis of it on the Internet, and it's been shown to have watermarks from Photoshop. It's a fake document that's on the Web site right now, and the original birth certificate the campaign refuses to produce." [FactCheck (.org), 8/21/2008]
Entity Tags: Barack Obama, Jerome Corsi, Steve Doocy, Fox News
August 16, 2008: Conservative Author: Obama Will 'Create a Department of Hate Crimes' and Jail Critics
As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, Jerome Corsi, author of a widely discredited book that smears presidential candidate Barack Obama (see August 1, 2008 and After), tells a C-SPAN interviewer that if Obama becomes president and people like Corsi dare to criticize him in print, "Obama might just have to create a department of hate crimes and put them in jail." [Media Matters, 8/16/2008]
Entity Tags: Media Matters, Barack Obama, Jerome Corsi
August 19, 2008: Conservative Radio Host Limbaugh on Obama Nomination: 'Nobody Had the Guts to Stand and Say No to a Black Guy'
Rush Limbaugh, the nation's most popular conservative radio talk show host, tells his listeners that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was nominated because "nobody had the guts to stand up and say no to a black guy." As documented by progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters, Limbaugh, while complaining about "how unqualified Obama is," says, "I think it really goes back to the fact that nobody had the guts to stand up and say no to a black guy." Limbaugh continues: "I think this is a classic illustration here where affirmative action has reared its ugly head against them. It's the reverse of it. They've, they've ended up nominating and placing at the top of their ticket somebody who's not qualified, who has not earned it.… It's perfect affirmative action. And because of all this guilt and the historic nature of things, nobody had the guts to say, well, wait a minute, do we really want to do this?" Limbaugh, in a conversation with a caller, prefaces his comment by saying that "liberals" oppose racism except "when it benefits them… [s]o when, when a precious resource like racism becomes scarce… they will go out and drill for new sources.… You're exactly right. They understand the principle. They want it for themselves, just not anybody else. Liberals can have two sets of rules: One for the elites, the arrogants and the condescending elites, and the other set of rules for everybody else.… They will exempt themselves from the limiting rules they place on everybody else." He concludes that Obama's nomination is "perfect affirmative action. And because of all this guilt and the historic nature of things, nobody had the guts to say, well, wait a minute, do we really want to do this? So they do it and then they start behaving in manners and ways that let us know that they know that they've goofed up with the choice. Actually, it's been somewhat fascinating to watch." [Media Matters, 8/20/2008; Guardian, 8/24/2008; Der Spiegel (Hamburg), 8/27/2008] Limbaugh and other radio hosts have repeatedly used Obama's race as a springboard for numerous false and unsupported allegations (see January 24, 2007, February 1, 2008, May 19, 2008, June 2, 2008, June 26, 2008, and August 1, 2008 and After).
Entity Tags: Media Matters, Barack Obama, Rush Limbaugh
August 21, 2008: Fact Check Organization Certifies Obama Birth Certificate Valid
A photograph of the actual Hawaiian birth certificate of Barack Obama, being held by FactCheck (.org) writer Joe Miller. [Source: FactCheck (.org)]FactCheck (.org), a non-partisan arm of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, certifies that its experts have verified that the birth certificate released by Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) is valid (see June 13, 2008). Since the release of the digitally scanned image, a firestorm of controversy (see July 20, 2008) has erupted over the authenticity of the certificate, even after Hawaiian officials verified its validity (see June 27, 2008) and the discovery of a printed birth announcement from a Honolulu newspaper (see July 2008). FactCheck notes that much of the controversy has been sparked by author Jerome Corsi, whose recent book Obamanation makes a host of negative claims against Obama (see August 1, 2008 and After), and who has told a Fox News interviewer that the birth certificate the campaign has is "fake" (see August 15, 2008). FactCheck releases the following statement: "We beg to differ. FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined, and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving US citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as 'supporting documents' to this article. Our conclusion: Obama was born in the USA just as he has always said." The actual certificate is in the hands of Obama campaign officials in Chicago, FactCheck reports, and has the proper seals and signature from Hawaiian registrar Alvin Onaka.
Certificate Meets Requirements for State Department Passport Issuance - FactCheck reports: "The certificate has all the elements the State Department requires for proving citizenship to obtain a US passport: 'your full name, the full name of your parent(s), date and place of birth, sex, date the birth record was filed, and the seal or other certification of the official custodian of such records.' The names, date and place of birth, and filing date are all evident on the scanned version, and you can see the seal above" in a photograph reproduced on FactCheck's Web site.
'Short Form' Certificate - The copy possessed by the Obama campaign is called a "short form birth certificate." The so-called "long form" is created by the hospital in which a child is born, and includes additional information such as birth weight and parents' hometowns. The short form is what is provided by Hawaiian officials upon receiving a valid request for a birth certificate: It "is printed by the state and draws from a database with fewer details. The Hawaii Department of Health's birth record request form does not give the option to request a photocopy of your long-form birth certificate, but their short form has enough information to be acceptable to the State Department."
Scan Artifacts - The digitally scanned version released by the Obama campaign does indeed show "halos" around the black-text lettering, prompting some to claim that the text may have been copied onto an image of security paper. However, FactCheck writes, "the document itself has no such halos, nor do the close-up photos we took of it. We conclude that the halo seen in the image produced by the campaign is a digital artifact from the scanning process."
Date Stamp, Blacked-Out Certificate Number - The digital scan also contains an unusual date stamp and a blacked-out certificate number. Campaign spokesperson Shauna Daly explains that the certificate is stamped July 2007 because that is when Hawaiian officials produced it for the presidential campaign. The campaign did not release a copy until mid-2008, leading some to speculate that the date stamp proved the digital scan was a forgery. Of the certificate number, Daly says that the campaign "couldn't get someone on the phone in Hawaii to tell us whether the number represented some secret information, and we erred on the side of blacking it out. Since then we've found out it's pretty irrelevant for the outside world." FactCheck writes, "The document we looked at did have a certificate number; it is 151 1961 - 010641."
'African' Father - Obama's father, Barack Obama Sr., is listed on the certificate as "African," sparking claims that Obama is actually of Kenyan citizenship. Kurt Tsue of the Hawaii Department of Health tells FactCheck that the father and mother's race are told to officials by the parents, and thusly "we accept what the parents self identify themselves to be." FactCheck writes: "We consider it reasonable to believe that Barack Obama Sr. would have thought of and reported himself as 'African.' It's certainly not the slam dunk some readers have made it out to be."
Differences in Borders - The "security borders" on the digital scan do indeed look slightly different from other examples of Hawaii birth certificates. Tsue explains: "The borders are generated each time a certified copy is printed. A citation located on the bottom left hand corner of the certificate indicates which date the form was revised." He also confirms that the information in the short form birth certificate is sufficient to prove citizenship for "all reasonable purposes." [FactCheck (.org), 8/21/2008]
Entity Tags: Kurt Tsue, Barack Obama, Barack Obama, Sr, Annenberg Public Policy Center, Alvin Onaka, Hawaii Department of Health, Shauna Daly, Jerome Corsi, FactCheck (.org)
August 25, 2008: Conservative Radio Host Savage: Obama, Democrats 'against the White Person'; White Women Particularly Easy to 'Dupe'
Conservative radio host Michael Savage calls the Democratic Party "the minority party," Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is "a minority, a half minority at least," and both Obama and the Democratic Party are "against the white person." According to progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters, Savage goes on to say of the Democratic Party, "The membership is made up largely of minority blocs, the Hispanic caucus and the gay caucus—caucuses that are all against the white person." Savage says that Democrats are "trying to pose as a centrist party, trying to win over the white male voter" and continues: "Now, the white women generally are not as hard-nosed about things as the white male, and so many white women don't even understand that they're being duped, and they vote for a Democrat, not knowing that they're digging their own grave.… But now they're going after the working-class white male, who is traditionally leery of the Sister Helen Prejeans [an opponent of capital punishment], the gay lobby, the caucuses and the other lobbies that are trying to take away his child's birthright." [Media Matters, 8/26/2008]
Entity Tags: Michael Savage, Barack Obama, Helen Prejean, Democratic Party
September 7, 2008: Conservative Author: Obama Will Ban Books Critical of Him
Jerome Corsi, author of a widely debunked smear against Democratic candidate Barack Obama (see August 1, 2008 and After), says in a WorldNetDaily article that since the Obama campaign has responded to his book with a Web page called "Unfit for Publication," it is conceivable that an Obama presidency will create "a censorship department in which a book critical of a President Obama might be banned from publication." [WorldNetDaily, 9/7/2008] Corsi has previously suggested that Obama is likely to create a "department of hate crimes" and put critics such as himself in jail (see August 16, 2008).
Entity Tags: Barack Obama, Jerome Corsi
September 11, 2008: Wall Street Journal Speculates that Obama a 'Mediocre' Student at Columbia, Poses Questions about Ties to Black Radical Organization, Carter-Era Advisor
The Wall Street Journal prints an editorial questioning Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (D-IL)'s record at Columbia University in New York City. Obama began his attendance at that university in 1981 and graduated with an undergraduate degree in 1983. The Journal does not directly assault Obama's record of attendance, nor does it challenge the diploma he earned there, but instead accuses Obama of "barely mention[ing] his experience" at Columbia in his two published memoirs, accuses the Obama campaign of "refus[ing] to answer questions about Columbia and New York—which, in this media age, serves only to raise more of them," and asks: "Why not release his Columbia transcript? Why has his senior essay gone missing?" (There is no senior thesis—see October 21, 2009). After noting that the presidential campaign of John McCain (R-AZ) has refused to release McCain's records from the US Naval Academy, the Journal calls Obama "a case apart" because of his lack of "a long track record in government." It accuses Obama, in his memoirs, of "play[ing] up certain chapters in his life—perhaps even exaggerating his drug use in adolescence to drive home his theme of youthful alienation—and ignor[ing] others." Citizens and journalists attempting to "exercise… due diligence" in the days before the presidential election are, the Journal claims, "meeting resistance from Mr. Obama in checking his past." The Journal claims that one of Obama's Columbia-era roommates, Sohale Siddiqi, has confirmed Obama's transformation in New York from a dissolute youth to a serious young man, telling an Associated Press reporter: "We were both very lost. We were both alienated, although he might not put it that way. He arrived disheveled and without a place to stay." The Journal writes, "For some reason the Obama camp wanted this to stay out of public view," and claims, "Such caginess is grist for speculation." It speculates that Obama's Columbia transcript might "reveal Mr. Obama as a mediocre student who benefited from racial preference," though, noting that Obama later graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, says he obviously "knows how to get good grades." The Journal echoes "others" who "speculate about ties to the Black Students Organization, though students active then don't seem to remember him," along with tales from "the far reaches of the Web [about] conspiracies about former Carter national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who became the candidate's 'guru and controller' while at Columbia in the early 1980s." The Journal notes that Brzezinski "laughs, and tells us he doesn't 'remember meeting him.'" The Journal concludes that few remember Obama during his two years in New York. "Fox News contacted some 400 of his classmates and found no one who remembered him," it reports. Obama himself has told biographer David Mendell that during his time at Columbia, "I was just painfully alone and really not focused on anything, except maybe thinking a lot." The Journal concludes: "Put that way, his time at Columbia sounds unremarkable. Maybe that's what most pains a young memoirist and an ambitious politician who strains to make his life anything but unremarkable." [Wall Street Journal, 9/11/2008]
Entity Tags: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Barack Obama, Columbia University, David Mendell, Harvard University Law School, Sohale Siddiqi, Wall Street Journal
September 22, 2008: Conservative Radio Host Limbaugh: Obama an Arab, Not African-American
Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh tells his audience that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is "not black." As reported by the progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, Limbaugh asks the rhetorical question: "Do you know he has not one shred of African-American blood?… He's Arab. You know, he's from Africa. He's from Arab parts of Africa.… [H]e's not African-American. The last thing that he is is African-American." Media Matters documents this claim being advanced as far back as February 14, when blogger Kenneth Lamb wrote that Obama "is actually Arab-American [and] not legally African-American." Lamb produced no evidence of his claim, but since then, conservative bloggers and some radio hosts have repeated the claim. In reality, Obama's father was a African from Kenya, in the black part of Africa, and his mother was a Caucasian American. [Media Matters, 9/22/2008]
Entity Tags: Rush Limbaugh, Barack Obama, Media Matters, Kenneth Lamb
October 7, 2008: Pastor Calls Obama's Mother 'Trash,' Says Only 'Trashy White Woman' Would Have Married Black Man in the 1950s and 1960s; Conservative Talk Show Host Promotes Video
As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Chris Baker promotes an Internet video that features a Harlem preacher calling Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's mother "trash." Baker discusses the video, by the Reverend James David Manning of ATLAH World Missionary Church, on his radio show, and posts the video on his Web site. Baker says of the video: "Oh God, you have to—you have to see this. This guy—I mean, this guy just goes off. And he's not really wrong, either. That's the best part, at least, you know—at least, in my hate-filled opinion." Manning contrasts Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, with Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, whose daughter Bristol is carrying a child out of wedlock. Manning says: "The difference between Obama's mama and Bristol Palin is that Obama's mama was trash. I mean, she was dirt. She was a bag of trash sitting on the sidewalk waiting there in Honolulu on one of those streets for the garbage truck to come by and pick her up and take her to the dump.… [M]y mama told me back in the '50s and the '60s, the only kind of white women that would take up with a black man back in the '50s and the '60s was a trashy white woman. The only kind of white woman that would take up with a black man in the '50s and the '60s was a sloozy, was a floozy, was a lowlife, snail-eating, white woman. That's the kind of woman that Obama's mama was.… Want to talk about Bristol Palin? Let's talk about that piece of trash called Obama's mama. Want to talk about Bristol Palin? Let's talk about that trash that hatched Obama. Yeah." Obama's mother, who died in 1995, was a white American, and his father was a black African. [Media Matters, 10/8/2008]
Entity Tags: Bristol Palin, Ann Dunham, Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, Chris Baker, James David Manning, Media Matters
October 8-10, 2008: Conservative Radio Hosts Spread Falsehood about Obama's Lack of Valid Birth Certificate
As reported by progressive media watchdog Web site Media Matters, conservative radio hosts echo the claim that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has never produced a legitimate birth certificate proving his American citizenship, a claim long since debunked (Obama long ago posted a copy on his Web site—see June 13, 2008—and document experts and the Hawaii Department of Health will confirm its validity—see June 27, 2008, August 21, 2008, October 30, 2008, and July 28, 2009). Rick Roberts tells his audience that Obama's birth certificate "hasn't… been produced" and that no one in the Obama campaign has ever provided one for public scrutiny. Chris Baker says there "has never been a real birth certificate presented" by Obama. Michael Savage, taking the story one step further, says that the birth certificate "that was produced is a forgery." Savage also claims that no one in Hawaii, Obama's birth state, can find the original certificate: It "does not exist, they can't find it in the Hawaii government. It's never been produced. The one that was produced is a forgery.… I will never work for a man who has a birth certificate nobody can find. In other words, if you vote for Obama, you're insane." Savage goes on to claim that Obama is actually a Kenyan citizen, like his father, another claim long since disproven (see August 1, 2008 and After), and makes an equally illegitimate claim that Obama was educated in an Indonesian madrassa, or radical Islamist school (see January 22-24, 2008), under the name "Barry Soetoro"; Savage even claims that Obama legally changed his name to "Barry Mohammed Soetoro" in Indonesia. No such name change has ever been documented. [Media Matters, 10/14/2008] Weeks later, Savage will assert, without proof, that Obama will visit Hawaii to address the issue of the birth certificate and cloak the trip by ostensibly visiting his gravely ill grandmother (see November 10, 2008).
Entity Tags: Michael Savage, Media Matters, Barack Obama, Rick Roberts, Chris Baker
October 9, 2008: Conservative Author Claims Obama Critics Risk 'Being Thrown in Jail or Killed'
Progressive media watchdog site Media Matters reports that Jerome Corsi, author of a book widely debunked as an attempt to defame presidential candidate Barack Obama (see August 1, 2008 and After) and after leaving Kenya where he had been briefly detained by authorities for peddling his book without a work permit (see October 8, 2008), tells conservative radio host Lee Rodgers that he is a victim of journalistic suppression. "I think the story here is really the suppression of the press," he says. "I hate to think of what the First Amendment is going to mean. If you write a negative book or criticize Obama, I think you're now going to have to risk being thrown in jail or killed." Rodgers agrees, "Yeah, well, that's the mentality of these people." Corsi also claims that he has been targeted by the Obama campaign: "I'm telling you, this is scary. I have heard from Obama supporters telling me: one way or another, boy, when we're in office, we're going to shut you down." Corsi has repeatedly claimed that he is the victim of censorship by the Obama campaign (see August 16, 2008 and September 7, 2008). Corsi also tells Rodgers that he has "[d]isproved every point" that the Obama campaign made in a "40-page rebuttal" to his book. In reality, Corsi responded to the Obama campaign's rebuttal by issuing a list of 11 corrections for the next printing, most of which corrected lies identified by the Obama campaign or outside sources. [Media Matters, 10/10/2008]
Entity Tags: Media Matters, Barack Obama, Lee Rodgers, Jerome Corsi
October 10-11, 2008: McCain Booed by Supporters for Denying Obama an 'Arab' 'Terrorist'
Presidential candidate John McCain takes the microphone from a woman who says opponent Barack Obama is 'an Arab.' [Source: Associated Press / Truthdig (.com)]Senator John McCain (R-AZ), the Republican candidate for president, draws boos and catcalls from his own supporters when he defends opponent Barack Obama (D-IL) from charges that he is an Arab. Obama has been accused of being Arabic, Muslim, and not a US citizen by opponents (see October 1, 2007, April 18, 2008, July 20, 2008, August 15, 2008, and October 8-10, 2008). At a town hall in Minnesota, McCain takes questions from selected members of the audience; in recent days, spurred by accusations from McCain and his running mate, Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK), that Obama is a close ally of "terrorist" William Ayers (see October 4-5, 2008), McCain rallies have been marked by screams and cries of "Terrorist!" and "Traitor!" hurled against Obama. According to McClatchy reporters, at a rally in New Mexico earlier in the week, McCain "visibly winced" when he heard one supporter call Obama a "terrorist," but said nothing in response. In today's town hall, supporters pressure McCain to attack Obama even more fiercely. Instead, when one supporter tells McCain he fears the prospect of raising his young son in a nation led by Obama, McCain replies, "I have to tell you, he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States." The comment draws boos and groans from the crowd. McCain continues: "If you want a fight, we will fight. But we will be respectful. I admire Senator Obama and his accomplishments.… I don't mean that has to reduce your ferocity, I just mean to say you have to be respectful." Later in the town hall, an elderly woman tells McCain: "I don't trust Obama.… He's an Arab." McCain shakes his head during her comment, then takes the microphone from her and says: "No, ma'am. He's a decent, family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with." Obama and his supporters have acknowledged that the rhetoric in the final weeks of the campaign is likely to get even more heated. He tells crowds in Ohio, "We know what's coming, we know what they're going to do." In recent rallies, McCain has stepped back from the more heated rhetoric, refusing to talk about Ayers and instead calling Obama a "Chicago politician." Palin, however, has continued the attacks on Obama via the Ayers association. Recent McCain-Palin television ads asking, "Who is the real Barack Obama?" have been taken by some as insinuating that Obama may be a Muslim. Obama has been a practicing Christian for decades (see January 6-11, 2008). Former Governor William Milliken (R-MI) has said, "I'm disappointed in the tenor and the personal attacks on the part of the McCain campaign." [McClatchy, 10/10/2008; Los Angeles Times, 10/11/2008] The next day, Obama thanks McCain. "I want to acknowledge that Senator McCain tried to tone down the rhetoric yesterday, and I appreciated his reminder that we can disagree while still being respectful of each other," he tells a crowd in Philadelphia. Referencing McCain's military service, he says McCain "has served this country with honor and he deserves our thanks for that." He then returns to his standard campaign broadsides against McCain's economic proposals. [Wall Street Journal, 10/11/2008]
Entity Tags: William Ayers, Sarah Palin, William Milliken, Barack Obama, John McCain
October 14, 2008: Community Organization Submits Voter Registration Form Filed by 'Mickey Mouse' As Required by Florida Law
The press reports that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) recently submitted a voter registration form filed under the name "Mickey Mouse" to the Orange County, Florida, board of elections. Fox News co-anchors Megyn Kelly and Bill Hemmer, hosting the "straight news" program America's Newsroom, mock ACORN for filing the form. Under Florida law, ACORN is required to submit all voter registration forms even if it suspects they are bogus: failure to submit a voter registration form is punishable by a $1,000 fine. Kelly reports the form submission, and Hemmer reports that the form was rejected, saying, "ACORN says they are required to turn in every application that is filled out, even if it says Mickey Mouse." Kelly then says: "I love that, they've got the obligation to submit it no matter what it says. Mickey Mouse, Jive Turkey, which we saw yesterday. How are we to know?" ACORN official Brian Kettenring tells a Tampa Bay Times reporter, "We must turn in every voter registration card by Florida law, even Mickey Mouse." The liberal media watchdog organization Media Matters cites the pertinent Florida statute: "A third-party voter registration organization that collects voter registration applications serves as a fiduciary to the applicant, ensuring that any voter registration application entrusted to the third-party voter registration organization, irrespective of party affiliation, race, ethnicity, or gender shall be promptly delivered to the division or the supervisor of elections." If a third-party voter registration organization such as ACORN fails to submit any voter registration form, it is liable for a "fine in the amount of $1,000 for any application not submitted if the third-party registration organization or person, entity, or agency acting on its behalf acted willfully." Kettenring says he is not sure the "Mickey Mouse" voter registration form came through ACORN, though it bore a stamp indicating that it was collected by someone affiliated with the organization. ACORN has come under fire for problems with some of the forms submitted by its employees, including 35 voter registration forms submitted in Pinellas County, Florida, that the Pinellas Board of Elections considered questionable. Recent forms submitted by the organization in Las Vegas listed the names of the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys. Republicans are claiming that the "Mickey Mouse" submission and others are part of a nationwide conspiracy by ACORN to subvert the electoral process; Republican National Committee (RNC) counsel Sean Cairncross says that ACORN is a "quasicriminal organization" engaged in "a widespread and systemic effort… to undermine the election process." Kettenring says that a few of ACORN's paid voter registrars are attempting to get paid by submitting forms that are clearly not legitimate. ACORN says it fires canvassers who forge applications, citing a recent firing in Broward County of one worker who turned in applications with similar handwriting. The organization alerted the county's election supervisor to the problem. ACORN pays $8/hour for canvassers to register votes, and does not pay bonuses for volume or a specific number of signatures. The organization says officials call each name on the forms to confirm their legitimacy, but under Florida law must submit even problematic forms. [Tampa Bay Times, 10/14/2008; Media Matters, 10/14/2008] In March 2008, Fox reporters misquoted a Washington state official regarding allegations of ACORN-driven voter fraud (see May 2, 2008). Seven days before the Fox News report, officials raided the Nevada offices of ACORN in a fruitless attempt to find evidence of voters being fraudulently registered (see October 7, 2008). Four days after the report, independent factcheckers will find allegations of voter registration fraud leveled against ACORN to be entirely baseless (see October 18, 2008). Five days after the report, a Fox News guest will accuse ACORN of causing the subprime mortgage crisis (see October 19, 2008). And in 2009, Fox News host Glenn Beck will accuse ACORN and President Obama of working together to create a "slave state" within the US (see July 23, 2009).
Entity Tags: Megyn Kelly, Bill Hemmer, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, Brian Kettenring, Republican National Committee, Fox News, Sean Cairncross, Media Matters
Timeline Tags: Civil Liberties, Domestic Propaganda, 2008 Elections
October 17-22, 2008: Hawaiian Court Throws Out Request to Force Government to Release 'Official' Obama Birth Certificate
Andy Martin. [Source: Andy Martin]Hawaiian resident Andy Martin files a writ of mandamus in Hawaii's Supreme Court to compel Governor Linda Lingle (R-HI) to release a certified copy of presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (D-IL)'s "vital statistics record," apparently asking that Hawaii ignore federal privacy laws and release the "long form" birth certificate on file for Obama (see June 13, 2008, June 27, 2008, and August 21, 2008). His request is denied. [WorldNetDaily, 11/13/2008] When his lawsuit is dismissed, Martin responds on a blog for defeated Democratic primary opponent Hillary Clinton (D-NY), in a posting reprinted on the Free Republic and a number of other conservative blogs. Martin expresses his doubt that Obama has just flown to Hawaii to visit his dying grandmother, apparently referencing conspiracy theories on right-wing radio that Obama went to Hawaii to "scrub" his birth records (see November 10, 2008). He suggests that it is his lawsuit that caused the Obama campaign "to panic and suspend his presidential campaign to head off Andy's stories." (Martin has been posting a number of blog entries about Obama being a "covert Islamist"—see October 1, 2007 and April 18, 2008). He is, he boasts, "on the verge of taking down the Obama campaign," calling himself "the good sheriff stand[ing] alone against the Obama Gang. Eliot Ness and the Untouchables? The Long Ranger? Pick your own hero. Martin vs. Obama explodes into a Hollywood classic." Martin writes: "I will do my best to defeat Obama even though I essentially stand alone. I stand tall. All of the protagonists are from Chicago. Despite ridicule and envy from Chicago's corrupt mainstream media, I have spent over forty years successfully fighting crooked politicians like Barack Obama and his Daley Machine cronies." He cites "support" from Fox News talk show host Sean Hannity, and his own participation as a blog commenter on FoxNews.com and YouTube. He says he "became the target of a massive liberal assault at the [New York] Times" after one Hannity broadcast: "On direct orders from the Emperor Obama, the New York Times then unleashed its smear machine on me." He says his "investigative team" defeated the Times's attempt to "destroy me," writing: "I am still standing and the Times' credibility is going into the toilet.… High Noon.… Barack Obama vs. Andy Martin. The drama builds as we move closer and closer to disclosing the dramatic truth about Barack Obama.… Barack Obama is an enemy of the Constitution. He is using tens of millions of dollars in clandestine campaign cash from unknown sources to stage an electoral coup d'etat in our nation. That is why I keep fighting for the truth. Barack Obama has been lying to the American people. And his Big Lie is about to be exposed." [Andy Martin, 10/21/2008] Shortly after the lawsuit's dismissal, Martin will abruptly abandon his accusations that Obama is a Muslim, and will begin asserting that Obama is a secret Communist taught by his "father," a black activist named Frank Marshall Davis (see Before October 27, 2008). In a wide-ranging article about the "birther" controversy, Salon columnist Alex Koppelman will later note that Martin was denied an Illinois law license on the grounds that he was mentally unfit to practice law. [Salon, 12/5/2008]
Entity Tags: New York Times, Barack Obama, Anthony Robert Martin-Trigona, Alex Koppelman, Frank Marshall Davis, Linda Lingle, Sean Hannity, Free Republic
October 20, 2008: Conservative Radio Hosts: Powell Endorsed Obama because 'He Wants to Be Black Again'
Rose Tennent and Jim Quinn. [Source: OrbitCast]As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Rose Tennent, on her nationally syndicated talk show Quinn & Rose, says that former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama "because he doesn't want to be known as an Uncle Tom anymore. He wants to be black again." Co-host Jim Quinn says of Powell: "He's tired of being called an Oreo.… [R]emember, when he was in the Bush administration, he was a white guy." Tennent responds: "Blacks hated him. They—'Oh, he doesn't count. It doesn't count that you have someone black in the administration. He's not really black, he's an Uncle Tom.'" Tennent says that Powell's endorsement of Obama "is racism." [Media Matters, 10/20/2008]
Entity Tags: Rose Tennent, Barack Obama, Jim Quinn, Bush administration (43), Media Matters, Colin Powell
October 22, 2008: McCain Supporter Alleges Attack by Obama Supporter, Says Attacker Carved 'B' for 'Barack' in Her Face
A photograph of Ashley Todd, with a backwards 'B' scratched into her face. Todd claims an Obama supporter beat her and scratched the letter into her face. [Source: Dan Garcia / Hollywood Grind]Twenty-year-old Ashley Todd, a volunteer for the presidential campaign of John McCain (R-AZ), tells Pittsburgh police she was attacked, beaten, and robbed by an African-American male who claimed to be a Barack Obama (D-IL) supporter. According to Todd, the man accosted her at a Citizens Bank ATM in Bloomfield, Pennsylvania. He was brandishing a knife, Todd claims. Todd gave him $60. When the man saw a bumper sticker on her car supporting McCain, she says, he punched her in the back of the head, knocked her down, and beat her, saying, "You are going to be a Barack supporter." He then pinned her down and used the knife to scratch a "B" (for Barack) into her right cheek; she attempted to fight back, but he said he was going "to teach her a lesson for being a McCain supporter" before actually cutting her. He then fled, Todd says. Todd's left eye is also bruised. The attack happened around 8:50 p.m.; Todd calls the police around 9:30 p.m., after the attack. She initially refuses medical attention. The next day, however, she will receive a full checkup at a local hospital, including an MRI. Todd says she is not a member of the McCain campaign, but went to Washington, DC, in June for training with the College Republicans. She posted pro-McCain and anti-Obama comments on Twitter in the hours preceding the attack, the last one coming just minutes before she alleges she was accosted. She describes her alleged assailant as a dark-skinned black man, 6 feet 4 inches tall, 200 pounds with a medium build, short black hair and brown eyes, wearing dark-colored jeans, a black undershirt, and black shoes. She emphasizes that her assailant is an Obama supporter. Within hours of the alleged attack, Todd posts comments on Twitter about it, along with allegations that she was targeted deliberately by members of the local Obama campaign and exhortations to support McCain in the upcoming elections (see October 23-24, 2008). The Hollywood Grind, reporting on the incident, observes: "Despite the information we've gathered above, there are three things that make us skeptical. First, Ashley is a hardcore McCain supporter, as evidenced by her Twitter updates… that show her posting Twitter updates right up until the alleged attack, then the last post three hours after the attack. Second, she initially refused medical attention, but finally got it the next morning. Third, the 'B' scratched on her face is backwards, making it look like it was done in a mirror." [Associated Press, 10/23/2008; Hollywood Grind, 10/23/2008; Fox News, 10/24/2008; London Times, 10/25/2008] Todd acts suspiciously almost from the moment the police respond to her complaint. She goes to the house of a friend and fellow College Republican, Dan Garcia, a University of Pittsburgh law student. After being told of the alleged attack, Garcia treats her wounds and contacts the police. When an officer arrives at Garcia's house, Todd becomes belligerent when asked where the attack took place. "I don't know!" she shouts, using an expletive. "I'm not from here." Todd, Garcia, and the officer then drive through Bloomfield, the town where Todd alleges the attack occurred, until they arrive at the Citizens Bank on Liberty Avenue. Todd then tells the officer that the Citizens Bank ATM is where she was attacked. She refuses medical attention offered by the officer, and instead leaves with Garcia to go eat at a diner, apparently making some of her Twitter posts during her time at the diner. It is during this time that Garcia takes the photograph of Todd with the scratched "B" on her face. Garcia then persuades her to go to a nearby hospital. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/24/2008] The next day, Todd will admit to lying about the incident, and will admit to inflicting the "B" on herself (see October 24, 2008). It is unclear how much of her story as reported in the press comes from Todd, and how much of it is embellished by a McCain campaign operative (see October 23-24, 2008).
Entity Tags: John McCain, Ashley Todd, Dan Garcia, Hollywood Grind
October 23-24, 2008: McCain Supporters, Conservative Commenters Lambast Obama, 'Liberal Media' for Alleged Attack by Obama Supporter; McCain Operative Adds 'Racially Charged,' 'Inflammatory' Details to Original Story
Within hours of Pittsburgh resident Ashley Todd's claim that she was attacked by a black Barack Obama supporter whom, she says, carved a "B" (for "Barack") into her face during the attack (see October 22, 2008), conservative blogs and political Web sites begin an outpouring of enraged and supportive posts and articles supporting Todd and lambasting the Obama campaign and the "liberal media" which, they say, will do its best to cover up the alleged attack. Todd uses her Twitter account, and her connections as a member of the College Republicans and a McCain campaign volunteer, to spread the word about her alleged attack. The photograph of her and her wounds, taken by her friend Dan Garcia and given to police and the College Republicans, is quickly posted on the popular conservative news and gossip site Drudge Report, which calls the attack a "mutilation." The Drudge article takes the controversy to a national level. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/24/2008; TPM Election Central, 10/24/2008; Media Bistro, 10/24/2008]
Bloggers Respond - Conservative blogger Glenn Reynolds, writing for the popular blog Instapundit, uses the Drudge article for the basis of his own post (repeating the claim that Todd was "mutilated"), and writes, "This is so serious that I predict it will get almost one-tenth as much national coverage as something some guy may have yelled at a Palin rally once." He repeats a comment from another blog that says, "But, were it a black woman with an 'M' carved in her cheek [presumably for 'McCain'], we'd be getting 24/7 coverage." [Glenn Reynolds, 10/23/2008] Conservative blogger Ed Morrissey, writing for another popular blog, Hot Air, calls the attack a "maiming," though he does not blame the Obama campaign for it, instead writing that "this particular criminal sounds like he's a couple of bricks short of a load even for that crowd." Morrissey initially resists the idea that Todd may be perpetuating a hoax, writing, "Not too many young women would scar their faces just to create a political hoax," but later admits that Todd lied and calls her a "very, very disturbed young woman." [Ed Morrissey, 10/23/2008] A blogger for College Politico calls the attack "horrifying" and derides bloggers at the liberal Daily Kos for being "unsympathetic," citing comments that expressed doubts about Todd's veracity, calling them "deprived" (apparently intending to call them "depraved") and saying that the Kos bloggers "have absolutely no reason to doubt her." He goes on to criticize conservative bloggers who also express their doubts about Todd's story, calls some of the skepticism "idiotic," and says the fact that the "B" is carved backwards "MEANS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING" (caps in the original). The blogger later posts updates acknowledging that the story is a hoax, and calls Todd "the lowest level of scum." [College Politico, 10/24/2008; College Politico, 10/24/2008] A blogger calling himself "Patrick" for the conservative Political Byline posts the picture of Todd and writes, "So, this is what they do to people who support McCain." In his title, he says Todd's attacker is "One of Barry's fans, I'm sure," referring to Senator Obama, and calls Obama the "Marxist Magic Negro." Like the others, he eventually acknowledges that the story is a hoax. [Political Byline, 10/24/2008]
Malkin Expresses Doubts - One conservative blogger who does not immediately leap on the Todd story is Michelle Malkin. When the story breaks, she writes of her suspicions about the "B" being carved so neatly into Todd's face, and carved backwards, and how she finds Todd's initial refusal to accept medical treatment questionable. Before Todd admits to the fraud, Malkin writes: "We have enough low-lifes and thugs in the world running loose and causing campaign chaos and fomenting hatred without having to make them up. I've been blowing the whistle on the real, left-wing rage not on the front page and in-your-face tactics throughout the election season. Hate crimes hoaxes—by anyone, of any political persuasion, and of any color—diminish us all." [Michelle Malkin, 10/23/2008]
Presidential Campaigns Respond - The McCain campaign issues a statement denouncing the attack as "sick and disgusting"; the Obama campaign issues a statement deploring the attack and demanding that Todd's assailant be quickly brought to justice. Both McCain and his running mate, Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK), telephone Todd with expressions of concern and support. The Pennsylvania communications director for the McCain campaign, Peter Feldman, quickly spreads the story, along with the photo of Todd, to reporters around the state, along with what reporter Greg Sargent will call "an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established." Apparently Feldman is the person who first tells reporters that the "B" stands for "Barack." [TPM Election Central, 10/24/2008; Media Bistro, 10/24/2008; London Times, 10/25/2008]
Obama Campaign Demands Explanation, Corrections - Todd soon admits that she lied about the attack, and though she claims her memory does not well serve her, says she probably scratched the "B" into her cheek herself (see October 24, 2008). When the national press learns that Todd lied about her attack, the Obama campaign becomes incensed, demanding that the McCain campaign explain why it was pushing a version of the story that was, in Sargent's words, "far more explosive than the available or confirmed facts permitted at the time." The Obama campaign also pressures some news outlets, including KDKA-TV and WPXI-TV, to rewrite their reports to remove the inflammatory and "racially charged" information concocted by Feldman, including claims that the alleged attacker told Todd he would "teach [her] a lesson" about supporting McCain, and that the "B" stood for "Barack." There is no evidence of the national McCain campaign becoming involved in promulgating the falsified Todd story. [TPM Election Central, 10/24/2008]
'Okay Obama Frame-Job. ... I'd Give You a 'B' - After the story is exposed as a fraud, many post irate or sarcastic rejoinders on Twitter, using the hash tag "#litf08" to ensure their viewing on the College Republican Twitter account, "Life in the Field," where Todd made many of her Twitter posts. A former blogger for the Senate campaign of Christopher Dodd (D-PA), Matt Browner-Hamlin, asks: "Anyone know which Rove protege is responsible for #litf08? Because they lack the execution skills of the man himself." Browner-Hamlin is referring to former Bush administration campaign manager Karl Rove. Another commenter writes: "Hmm, it was an okay Obama frame-job, just a few inconsistencies snagged you. Overall I'd give you a 'B.'" And another commenter asks, "Do 50 College Republicans [the description of the 'Life in the Field' volunteers] try this kind of stunt often?" College Republicans executive director Ethan Eilon claims his organization "had no idea" Todd "was making this story up." [Wired News, 10/24/2008]
Pittsburgh Councilman Demands Apology from McCain Campaign - The Reverend Ricky Burgess, a Pittsburgh City Council member, will demand an apology from the McCain campaign for deliberately spreading a story it had not confirmed, and for embellishing it to make it even more racially inflammatory. "That one of your campaign spokespersons would spread such an incendiary story before any confirmation of the facts is both irresponsible and runs counter to our nation's constitutional guarantee that no one be denied life, liberty, or property without due process," Burgess writes. He demands an apology for "inflaming the divisions of this country," and later says: "I don't know why they chose to push this story. But it just seems suspicious to me that they would target this story, which has a fictional African-American person harming a non-African-American person in this city." A McCain campaign spokesman initially derides Burgess and his source, the progressive news blog TPM Election Central, writing: "The liberal blog post that the councilman cites has no basis in fact. The McCain campaign had no role in this incident. We hope the young woman involved in the incident gets the help that she needs. It's disappointing that Pittsburgh law enforcement time and resources were wasted by her false allegations." [WTAE-TV, 10/27/2008; Burgess, 10/27/2008 ; Burgess, 10/27/2008 ]
Entity Tags: Barack Obama, College Politico, Ed Morrissey, College Republican National Committee, Daily Kos, Dan Garcia, Drudge Report, Ethan Eilon, Ashley Todd, Ricky Burgess, Glenn Reynolds, Sarah Palin, John McCain, Greg Sargent, Michelle Malkin, Political Byline, Peter Feldman, Matt Browner-Hamlin
October 24, 2008: McCain Supporter Admits Lying about Alleged Attack by Obama Supporter
A handcuffed Ashley Todd is escorted from a Pittsburgh police station by detectives. [Source: Keith Srakocic / Associated Press]Ashley Todd, the Pittsburgh woman who told police she was beaten by an African-American Obama supporter who carved a "B" (for "Barack") into her face (see October 22, 2008), admits she lied about the incident. She was never attacked, she admits, and cut the "B" into her right cheek herself, though she says her memory is faulty on the subject.
Serious Inconsistencies Lead to Polygraph, Questioning - Though Pittsburgh police began by treating Todd as the victim of a crime, they noted serious inconsistencies in her story from the outset. Originally she told a story of being mugged by a black man who, after threatening her with a knife, then struck her in the back of the head with an unknown object and knocked her to the ground, where he punched, kicked, and threatened to "teach [her] a lesson" for being a McCain supporter before kneeling and scratching the "B" into her face. Police administered a polygraph test to Todd, though they have refused to release the results of that test; police spokeswoman Diane Richard says Todd's story began to change after the polygraph was administered. Photographs from the Citizens Bank ATM that she claimed was the site of the attack do not verify her claim. Lieutenant Kevin Kraus, who heads the major crime squad for the Pittsburgh Police Department, says, "She told lie after lie, and the situation compounded to where we are right now." He says Todd is being kept in custody for her own protection, and says the police are considering whether she may need a psychiatric evaluation. "We don't feel she should be able to walk out onto the street," says Pittsburgh Assistant Police Chief Maurita Bryant. "We wouldn't want any further harm to come to her." Kraus says: "She hasn't really shown any obvious remorse. She's certainly surprised that it snowballed to where it is today." Kraus says she is angry with the media for blowing the story out of proportion (see October 23-24, 2008). Bryant says: "The backwards 'B' was the obvious thing to us when we first saw her. Something just didn't seem right. And, first of all, with our local robbers, they take the money [and flee]. They're in and out. They're not stopping to do artwork.… We suspect she may have inflicted the injuries herself. We don't think anyone else is involved." Bryant says that Todd's story changed more than once while she was with police. During points in the questioning, she said, among other things: she was attacked before, not during, her visit to the ATM; she was hit from behind and rendered unconscious; she didn't know she had been cut or robbed until she went to the apartment of a friend, Dan Garcia; the attacker sexually fondled her. "After a while, she just simply stated that she wanted to tell the truth," Bryant says. Under questioning, Todd abandoned her story of being brutalized by a black Obama supporter, and then told police she was driving alone, looked in the rearview mirror, saw her black eye and the "B" on her face, and didn't know how they got there. She assumed she could have done it herself, she said, and then she made up the story about the attacker as she was driving to Garcia's house. "She saw the 'B' on her face, and she immediately thought about Barack," Bryant says. Kraus says the letter's appearance made him instantly suspicious, both because of it's being backwards—as if it were done by Todd while looking in a mirror—and because of its unusual neatness. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/24/2008; Fox News, 10/24/2008; Hollywood Grind, 10/24/2008; WTAE-TV, 10/27/2008] Richard says: "Miss Todd stated she made up the story, which snowballed and got out of control. Miss Todd stated she was not robbed and there was no 6-foot-4 black male attacker." [WTAE-TV, 10/27/2008] Garcia says while he initially supported Todd, he is now furious with her and wants no more contact with her. "I don't know why she would do this," he says. "I would think that she needs help. I had red flags going up, but I didn't think it was prudent of me to ask the truth. I wanted to make sure she was OK." [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/24/2008]
Area of Alleged Attack Heavily Traveled - The area at Liberty Avenue and Pearl Street where Todd had said the attack took place is heavily traveled in the daytime, full of traffic, pedestrians, restaurants, and stores. Doug Graham, a local resident, says it is unlikely any such assault at the Citizens Bank would go unnoticed, as Todd originally claimed. "There ain't no way nobody saw that," he says. "It's always hopping up there. Something fishy, I knew the first second I saw [her story]. Something fishy." [Fox News, 10/24/2008]
Huge Waste of Money, Man-Hours - Bryant says Todd's false report created "a huge waste of time, with many man-hours and people coming in on overtime just to get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible." Kraus adds: "It created intensive national and international attention. We've had detectives working around the clock since she made the bogus allegation. The cost to the city of Pittsburgh has been many, many dollars and resources." [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/24/2008]
Todd a McCain Campaign Employee - Ethan Eilon, executive director of the College Republican National Committee, acknowledges that Todd is working as a field representative on behalf of the McCain-Palin presidential campaign, and has taken a year off from her studies at Blinn College to work on the campaign. [Fox News, 10/24/2008] Ashley Barbera, the communications director for the College Republicans, says: "We are as upset as anyone to learn of her deceit. Ashley must take full responsibility for her actions." McCain-Palin campaign spokesman Peter Feldman says in a statement: "This is a sad situation. We hope she gets the help she needs." [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/24/2008; Fox News, 10/24/2008] However, it later emerges that Todd is not just a volunteer, but a paid campaign worker earning a stipend of $3,600 from the College Republican National Committee (CRNC). The CRNC will announce Todd's employment in a statement announcing her termination from the organization, but will later remove the statement from its Web site. The liberal news and opinion Web site Buzzflash will preserve a portion of the CRNC's statement. [Buzzflash, 10/24/2008]
Previous Incidents - In March 2008, Todd was asked to leave a group of Ron Paul (R-TX) supporters in Texas after using dishonest campaign tactics (see March 2008).
'MySpace' Description - Todd has a MySpace profile under the screen moniker "Italian Pajamas." She lists her occupation as "Being a bad_ss." Next to her picture, she references the title of a song by the group Panic at the Disco, "Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her cloths [sic] off," but adds to it "but its [sic] better if you do." She lists as one of her favorite books The Scarlet Letter. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/24/2008]
Faces Charges of Filing False Police Report - Police say that Todd faces criminal charges for making a false police report, and is being held in the Allegheny County Jail in lieu of a $50,000 bond. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/24/2008; Fox News, 10/24/2008] The next day, Todd is charged (see October 25-30, 2008).
Entity Tags: Doug Graham, Diane Richard, Maurita Bryant, Kevin Kraus, Ethan Eilon, Dan Garcia, John McCain, College Republican National Committee, Ashley Todd, Ashley Barbera, Peter Feldman
October 25-30, 2008: McCain Volunteer Charged with Filing False Report after Lying about Mugging by Black Obama Supporter
Ashley Todd, a volunteer for the John McCain (R-AZ) presidential campaign, is charged with filing a false report to police after falsely claiming that a black Obama supporter mugged her and carved the letter "B" (for "Barack") into her face (see October 22, 2008 and October 24, 2008). The Times of London observes: "The incident illustrates the depth of hatred of some McCain supporters towards the Democratic nominee, who would become America's first black president if he wins the November 4 election. Race has been a sensitive issue in the contest and a number of prominent Republicans, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell, have criticised the increasingly divisive tone of the McCain-Palin campaign. Some supporters have been freely expressing their distaste for a black president to reporters attending McCain rallies, while cries of 'terrorist!' and 'kill him' have been heard from the crowd at televised events." Fox News executive vice president John Moody says that, if the incident is proven false, it could do irreparable damage to the McCain campaign. "This incident could become a watershed event in the 11 days before the election," he writes. "If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain's quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting." [London Times, 10/25/2008] Tood soon agrees to enter a program for first-time offenders in return for being allowed to leave jail. She also is required to accept mental health treatment. If she accepts treatment, completes the program, and stays out of further trouble with the police, her record will be expunged. Todd still says she cannot explain why she invented the story. [Associated Press, 10/30/2008; Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 10/30/2008]
Entity Tags: John Moody, Ashley Todd
Before October 27, 2008: Obama Critic Changes Story, Now Accuses Obama of Being Fathered by Suspected Communist
Chicago resident Andy Martin, who has been accusing Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) of being a secret Muslim since 2004, abruptly shifts his story. Now, Martin claims, Obama is not the child of a Muslim father, Barack Obama Sr., as documents have clearly and repeatedly shown (see June 13, 2008, June 27, 2008, July 2008, and August 21, 2008), but the child of Frank Marshall Davis, an African-American activist who was suspected in the 1950s of having ties to Communist organizations. Martin's accusations, though never supported by fact, have garnered a great deal of coverage in some corners of the Internet. Martin now tells a CNN reporter that Obama's "father was Frank Marshall Davis." He gives no proof, and implies he has nothing more than a gut feeling. Davis was a black poet and political activist who moved to Hawaii in 1948. He wrote for a newspaper which the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) accused of being a Communist front. Right-wing Web sites have been claiming since 2007 that Davis was not only a Communist Party member but also the mentor to Obama in his teen years who he refers to in his autobiography as "Frank." Martin's most recent burst of prominence was an appearance on Sean Hannity's Fox News broadcast, where he said that "Obama's role as a community organizer [in Chicago] was a political staging ground perpetuated by the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers." Martin also told Hannity that Obama "probably had met William Ayers in New York, and was coming here to lay the foundations for what he thought would be some sort of political movement." An Obama presidency, Martin predicted, would lead to "a socialist revolution, which attempts to essentially freeze out anybody who's not part of this radical ideology." Martin readily admits that his current assertion about Obama's parentage refutes his four-year-old claims that Obama is a Muslim. He calls himself "an honest writer and an honest researcher.… I'm known as a person who strives for the truth." The fault is Obama's, he says, because he "hasn't told the truth to the American people." [Raw Story, 10/27/2008] In a wide-ranging article about the "birther" controversy, Salon columnist Alex Koppelman will later note that Martin was denied an Illinois law license on the grounds that he was mentally unfit to practice law. [Salon, 12/5/2008]
Entity Tags: William Ayers, Anthony Robert Martin-Trigona, Alex Koppelman, Barack Obama, House Un-American Activities Committee, Barack Obama, Sr, Sean Hannity, Frank Marshall Davis
October 28, 2008: Conservative Radio Host Says Obama's Father Typical Black Father: 'They Simply Leave'
As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Bill Cunningham, discussing Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's parentage, says of Obama's father: "[I]magine at the age of one or two seeing your father for the last time. See, his father was a typical black father who, right after the birth, left the baby. That's what black fathers do. They simply leave." Cunningham then calls Obama's mother "a Communist" who married "a radical Muslim," who he refers to as "Barry Soetoro," and then "rejected" her son at age 10, resulting in Obama's being sent to Hawaii to live with his grandparents. [Media Matters, 10/30/2008] However, the name of Obama's stepfather is Lolo Soetoro, not Barry Soetoro. In addition, he is said not to have been a devout Muslim. For example, according to the New York Times, he was "a nominal Muslim who hung prayer beads over his bed but enjoyed bacon, which Islam forbids." [New York Times, 4/30/2007]
Entity Tags: Bill Cunningham, Barack Obama, Lolo Soetoro, Media Matters
October 30, 2008: Hawaiian Health Director Verifies Validity of Obama's Birth Certificate
Hawaii's Director of Health Dr. Chiyome Fukino says she and the registrar of vital statistics, Alvin Onaka, have personally verified that the Hawaii Department of Health holds Senator Barack Obama (D-IL)'s original birth certificate (see June 13, 2008, June 27, 2008, July 2008, and August 21, 2008). Fukino says that she has "personally seen and verified that the Department of Health has Senator Obama's original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures." Fukino and Onaka thereby verify that Obama is, indeed, an American citizen. Fukino releases the statement in an attempt to stem the tide of conspiracy theories that assert Obama is not a US citizen—"birtherism"—and therefore cannot be eligible to be president. Fukino adds that no state official, including Governor Linda Lingle (R-HI), ever issued instructions that Obama's certificate be handled differently. Hawaii state law prohibits the release of the so-called "long form" birth certificate to anyone who does not have a tangible interest; state law says that the "short form" the state releases to its citizens, and that Obama has long ago made public (see June 13, 2008), is legal and valid in and of itself. State courts in Ohio, Pennsylvania (see August 21-24, 2008), and Washington State have recently dismissed court challenges to Obama's citizenship. [FactCheck (.org), 8/21/2008; Associated Press, 10/31/2008] Fukino tells a Honolulu reporter: "This has gotten ridiculous (see July 20, 2008). There are plenty of other, important things to focus on, like the economy, taxes, energy." Asked if this "[w]ill be enough to quiet the doubters," Fukino responds: "I hope so. We need to get some work done." [FactCheck (.org), 8/21/2008]
Entity Tags: Chiyome Fukino, Linda Lingle, Alvin Onaka, Hawaii Department of Health, Barack Obama
November 5, 2008: Libertarian House Member Accuses Obama of Working towards 'New World Order'
Libertarian Representative Ron Paul (R-TX—see 1978-1996, July 9-10, 2006, July 22, 2007, and August 4, 2008) gives an interview to radio host Alex Jones in which he accuses President-elect Barack Obama of working to undermine the US government in favor of a "new world order" (see September 11, 1990), a UN-led "one-world government." Paul says that he believes the incoming Obama administration is orchestrating some sort of "international crisis" that will give Obama the chance to begin implementing his sinister plan: "I think it's going to be an announcement of a new monetary order, and they'll probably make it sound very limited, they're not going to say this is world government, even though it is if you control the world's money and you control the military, which they do indirectly.… A world central bank, worldwide regulation and world control of the whole system, of all the commodities and all the natural resources, what else can you call it other than world government?… Obama wouldn't be there if he didn't toe the line.… [T]his could be the beginning of the end of what's left of our national sovereignty." Paul says that many non-US media outlets are already hailing Obama as "the world's leader." [Crooks and Liars, 11/17/2008]
Entity Tags: Alex Jones, Ron Paul, Obama administration
November 10, 2008: Conservative Radio Host: Obama's Pre-Election Visit to Dying Grandmother Part of 'Conspiracy' to Conceal Problems with Citizenship
As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Michael Savage tells his audience that President-elect Barack Obama's grandmother "suspiciously died virtually the night before the election," in an apparent attempt to question Obama's pre-election trip to Hawaii. Obama visited his grandmother in late October, shortly before her death on November 3. Savage ties in his questions about Obama's grandmother and her "suspicious death" to discredited claims that Obama has been unable to verify his US citizenship. Savage tells his listeners: "Well, we don't even know where Obama was born. His grandmother died the night before the election. There's a lot of questions around this character that the media won't answer. Let's start with what country he's from. Why was the birth certificate never produced? Why in the world did he take time off from the campaign to visit the grandmother who then suddenly and suspiciously died virtually the night before the election? Tell me about that." Savage and other conservative commentators have suggested that Obama went to Hawaii, not to visit his gravely ill grandmother, but to address charges that his birth certificate is not valid. [Media Matters, 11/14/2008] Savage is one of a number of conservative radio hosts to spread false rumors about Obama's birth certificate (see October 8-10, 2008). Obama produced a copy of his birth certificate months before (see June 13, 2008). A number of organizations have verified that Obama's birth certificate is valid and authentic (see June 27, 2008 and August 21, 2008), as have Hawaii Health Department officials (see October 30, 2008). [St. Petersburg Times, 6/27/2008; WorldNetDaily, 8/23/2008; FactCheck (.org), 11/1/2008] According to Talkers Magazine, Savage is third in talk-radio listenership across the US, behind fellow conservatives Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. [Media Matters, 11/14/2008]
Entity Tags: WorldNetDaily, Talkers Magazine, Media Matters, Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Barack Obama, FactCheck (.org), Sean Hannity
November 18, 2008: Conservative Radio Host Savage: 'Socially Promoted' Obama Will Fire 'Competent White Men' throughout Federal, State, Local Governments
Conservative radio host Michael Savage, who has previously accused President-elect Barack Obama of being part of "the first affirmative-action [campaign] in American history" (see February 1, 2008), of being a radical Islamist (see January 10, 2008, February 21, 2008, and April 3, 2008), and of being sympathetic to the Nazis (see March 13, 2008), says Obama will oversee the "wholesale replacement of competent white men" from government jobs through the federal, state, and even local levels. As reported by the progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, Savage tells his listeners: "You haven't seen any of what's coming in this country. You are going to see the wholesale replacement of competent white men, and I'm targeting exactly the group that's gonna be thrown out of jobs in the government. And I'll say it, and I'll be the first to say it, and I may be not the only—the last to say it. I am telling you that there's gonna be a wholesale firing of competent white men in the United States government up and down the line, in police departments, in fire departments. Everywhere in America, you're going to see an exchange that you've never seen in history, and it's not gonna be necessarily for the betterment of this country."
Accusation of 'Social Promotion' - Savage says that Obama was "socially promoted" to the presidency, a disparaging reference to the practice of promoting children to higher grades even if they have not done the work necessary to be promoted, and says: "If you're socially promoted your whole life and nobody challenges you because you're of the proper constitution and composition and you look exactly right and no one's—everyone's afraid to say a word to you, why, you then go to Harvard, you then go to the law review, you then get elected, you then get elected to the next level. This is what happens in a country that's intimidated by its own policies and its own fears." [Media Matters, 11/19/2008]
Obama Avoided Mention of Race on College Application? - Some of Obama's classmates recall that when he applied for Harvard Law School, he refused to indicate his race so as to avoid benefiting from affirmative action, an action the Obama campaign has declined to affirm or deny. In 1990, as a law student defending the program, Obama wrote that he had "undoubtedly benefited from affirmative action" during his educational career. [New York Times, 8/3/2008]
Entity Tags: Media Matters, Barack Obama, Michael Savage
November 23, 2008: Conservative Editorial Predicts Forced Euthanasia of Disabled Children under Obama
The conservative Washington Times, a staunch opponent of President-elect Barack Obama, publishes an editorial predicting that the incoming Obama administration will, in some form or fashion, move to "exterminate" babies with disabilities and other "useless" Americans through its promised reform of the US health care system, similar to actions taken by the Nazis before World War II. The Times provides a brief synopsis of Adolf Hitler's "T4 Aktion" program designed, in the words of the Times, "to exterminate 'useless eaters,' babies born with disabilities. When any baby was born in Germany, the attending nurse had to note any indication of disability and immediately notify T4 officials—a team of physicians, politicians, and military leaders. In October 1939 Hitler issued a directive allowing physicians to grant a 'mercy death' to 'patients considered incurable according to the best available human judgment of their state of health.' Thereafter, the program expanded to include older children and adults with disabilities, and anyone anywhere in the Third Reich was subject to execution who was blind, deaf, senile, retarded, or had any significant neurological condition, encephalitis, epilepsy, muscular spasticity, or paralysis. Six killing centers were eventually established, and an estimated quarter-million people with disabilities were executed." The Times draws a parallel between the Nazis and the Obama administration's support for legal abortion and for physician-assisted suicide, which it equates with "euthanasia." The incoming administration will, the Times fears, begin "selecting" babies with disabilities for what apparently will be "selective abortions." It quotes the Reverend Briane K. Turley as saying: "Were God's design for us left unhindered, we could naturally expect to welcome 40,000 or more newborn infants with Down syndrome each year in the US. And yet we have reduced that number to just under 5,500. These data strongly indicate that, in North America, we have already discovered a new, 'final solution' for these unusual children and need only to adapt our public policies to, as it were, 'cure' all Down syndrome cases." Turley, the Times notes, claims that "there is growing evidence suggesting that, among health care practitioners and systems, the central motivation behind legally enforced or high pressure screenings is economics." The Times then adds: "[A]nd the results seem to bear him out. America's T4 program—trivialization of abortion, acceptance of euthanasia, and the normalization of physician assisted suicide—is highly unlikely to be stopped at the judicial, administrative, or legislative levels anytime soon, given the Supreme Court's current and probable future makeup during the Obama administration, the administrative predilections that are likely from that incoming administration, and the makeup of the new Congress." The Times predicts a new "final solution" of "extermination" that will start with disabled infants and will progress "from prenatal to postnatal to child to adult." [Washington Times, 11/23/2008] The editorial anticipates the "deather" claims that many conservatives will make in the summer of 2009 (see January 27, 2009, February 9, 2009, February 11, 2009, February 18, 2009, May 13, 2009, June 24, 2009, June 25, 2009, July 10, 2009, July 16, 2009, July 17, 2009, July 21, 2009, July 23, 2009, July 23, 2009, July 23, 2009, July 23-24, 2009, July 24, 2009, July 28, 2009, July 28, 2009, July 28, 2009, July 31, 2009 - August 12, 2009, August 6, 2009, August 7, 2009, August 10, 2009, August 10, 2009, Shortly Before August 10, 2009, August 11, 2009, August 11, 2009, August 12, 2009, August 12, 2009, and August 13, 2009).
Entity Tags: Washington Times, Barack Obama, Obama administration, Briane K. Turley, T4 Aktion
December 3, 2008: Anti-Tax Activist Runs Ads in Chicago Newspaper Challenging Obama's Citizenship
A portion of the advertisement that runs in the Chicago Tribune. [Source: We the People (.org)]Robert L. Schulz, a wealthy anti-tax activist from upstate New York and the chairman of the We the People Foundation, takes out the second of two ads in the Chicago Tribune questioning whether President Barack Obama is a "natural born citizen" and thusly eligible to be president. Schulz confirms that his non-profit foundation spent "tens of thousands of dollars" on the ads. The ads echo long-debunked claims that Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate (see June 13, 2008) is fraudulent (see July 20, 2008, August 15, 2008, October 8-10, 2008, October 16, 2008 and After, and November 10, 2008). Cases challenging Obama's citizenship have been thrown out of numerous state courts (see March 14 - July 24, 2008, August 21-24, 2008, October 9-28, 2008, October 17-22, 2008, October 21, 2008, October 31 - November 3, 2008, October 24, 2008, October 31, 2008 and After, November 12, 2008 and After, November 13, 2008, and Around November 26, 2008), and the State of Hawaii has vouched for the authenticity of the Obama birth certificate, which by state law is locked in a state government vault with all other such "long form birth certificates" issued by Hawaiian officials (see July 1, 2009). Schulz's ad raises the following claims:
The birth form released by Obama was "an unsigned, forged, and thoroughly discredited" live birth form, Schulz says. Digital and real copies of Obama's birth certificate have been examined by experts, including members of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, and pronounced real (see August 21, 2008).
According to Schulz, "Hawaiian officials will not confirm" that Obama was born in their state. Hawaiian officials initially did resist releasing a copy of the certificate, citing state privacy laws. However, Hawaii's health director and head of vital statistics reviewed Obama's birth certificate in the department's vault and vouched for its authenticity (see October 30, 2008).
Schulz says that legal affidavits state Obama was born in Kenya. Those affidavits were filed by challengers to Obama's citizenship, and those challenges have been dismissed by a variety of courts (see August 21-24, 2008, October 9-28, 2008, October 17-22, 2008, October 21, 2008, October 31 - November 3, 2008, October 24, 2008, October 31, 2008 and After, November 12, 2008 and After, November 13, 2008, and Around November 26, 2008).
Obama's paternal grandmother is recorded on tape saying she attended Obama's birth in Kenya, Schulz says. Schulz is referring to claims by street preacher Ron McRae who interviewed the second wife of Obama's grandfather, Sarah Obama, via long-distance telephone (see October 16, 2008 and After). The audiotape clearly shows that the assembled Obama relatives, and the translator who spoke to McRae, repeatedly stated that Obama was born in Hawaii.
Schulz says that "US law in effect in 1961 [the year of Obama's birth] denied citizenship to any child born in Kenya if the father was Kenyan and the mother was not yet 19 years of age." Schulz is incorrect. US law states that any child born in the US is a legitimate citizen regardless of his parents' nationalities and/or citizenships. Obama's father had dual Kenyan/British citizenship, and his mother was a US citizen. Had Obama been born outside of US territory and his mother Ann Dunham been under 19 years of age, which she was, Obama would indeed not have been a citizen at the time of his birth, though the provisions of this law were subsequently loosened and made retroactive for government employees serving abroad and their families. The point is moot, because Obama was born in a hospital in Honolulu.
Schulz says that in 1965, Obama's mother relinquished whatever Kenyan or US citizenship she and Obama had by marrying an Indonesian and becoming a naturalized Indonesian citizen. Schulz has produced no evidence to back this claim; Dunham did not file any of the documentation required to renounce one's US citizenship, and even so, would not have jeopardized Obama's citizenship in doing so. Obama and his mother moved to Indonesia in 1968, and returned to Hawaii while Obama was still in grade school. Schulz provides a reproduced Indonesian school document that states Obama's citizenship at the time as "Indonesian," but the same document lists Obama's birthplace as "Honolulu, Hawaii." [Chicago Tribune, 12/3/2008]
Schulz claims his challenges to Obama are not motivated by political partisanship. "We never get involved in politics," he says of We The People. "We avoid it like the plague." However, Schulz has done battle with local and state authorities for years; in 2007, a federal judge ordered him to shutter his Web site because he and his organization were, in the words of the Justice Department's tax division, using the site to promote "a nationwide tax-fraud scheme." Schulz now says he is being targeted by government operatives who are attempting to silence him. He says his group attempted to buy a similar ad in USA Today, but could not afford the cost. [Chicago Tribune, 12/3/2008; Salon, 12/5/2008]
Entity Tags: Barack Obama, Robert L. Schulz, FactCheck (.org), Chicago Tribune, We the People Foundation, Ann Dunham, Sarah Obama, Ron McRae
December 5, 2008: Columnist Explores Widening 'Birther' Conspiracy Theories
Salon columnist Alex Koppelman explores the widening sets of claims that purport to prove President Barack Obama is not a US citizen—the heart of the so-called "birther" conspiracy theory. The Obama campaign long ago produced a valid birth certificate that allowed Obama to run legitimately as a presidential candidate (see June 13, 2008), Obama's mother Ann Dunham has also affirmed her son's citizenship, and Hawaiian officials have confirmed that Obama was indeed born in a hospital in Honolulu (see October 30, 2008). However, some on the right continue to promulgate the tale of Obama's supposed Kenyan citizenship, or Indonesian citizenship, or British citizenship. The Chigago Tribune recently ran a paid advertisement questioning Obama's citizenship (see December 3, 2008). Conservative news and opinion blogs such as WorldNetDaily run stories on a near-daily basis challenging Obama's citizenship, or producing hoax "birth certificates" that "prove" Obama was born in Mombasa, Kenya, or other locales (see July 20, 2008). Plaintiffs have filed lawsuits challenging Obama's citizenship in a number of state courts, all of which have been rejected (see March 14 - July 24, 2008, August 21-24, 2008, October 9-28, 2008, October 17-22, 2008, October 21, 2008, October 31 - November 3, 2008, October 24, 2008, October 31, 2008 and After, November 12, 2008 and After, November 13, 2008, and Around November 26, 2008), and a similar case goes up for review in the Supreme Court (that case also challenges Republican presidential contender John McCain's citizenship, as McCain was born in the former Panama Canal Zone to parents serving in the US military, another legitimate way of securing citizenship—see March 14 - July 24, 2008 and August 21-24, 2008). Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine and a columnist for Scientific American, notes that some people will never let go of the idea that Obama is not a citizen, no matter what level of proof is provided. "There's no amount of evidence or data that will change somebody's mind," he says. "The more data you present a person, the more they doubt it.… Once you're committed, especially behaviorally committed or financially committed, the more impossible it becomes to change your mind." Any inconvenient facts are irrelevant, he says. Chip Berlet, a senior analyst with Political Research Associates, agrees. People who believe in a conspiracy theory "develop a selective perception, their mind refuses to accept contrary evidence," Berlet says. "As soon as you criticize a conspiracy theory, you become part of the conspiracy." Social psychologist Evan Harrington adds: "One of the tendencies of the conspiracy notion, the whole appeal, is that a lot of the information the believer has is secret or special. The real evidence is out there, [and] you can give them all this evidence, but they'll have convenient ways to discredit [it]." Koppelman notes that during the presidential election, so-called "birthers" said that they would drop their claims if only Obama would release the "long form" of his birth certificate, even though to do so would be to violate Hawaii's privacy laws, which keep all such documents under lock and key. During the campaign, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, the director of Hawaii's Department of Health, released a statement saying she had verified that the state has the original birth certificate on record (see October 30, 2008), and that Obama's Hawaiian birth is a matter of state record. Experts with the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, part of the FactCheck (.org) organization, have examined the certificate and verified its authenticity (see August 21, 2008), as has PolitiFact (see June 27, 2008). Koppelmann notes that the conspiracy theory has grown to the point where talk-show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage have suggested that Obama used the occasion of his grandmother's death to go to Hawaii to alter the record (see November 10, 2008). Koppelman notes that many who align themselves with the "birther" movement are well-known conspiratorists. Author Jerome Corsi, who attacked Obama's citizenship in a pre-election book (see August 1, 2008 and After), has spoken of "secret government plans" to form a "North American Union" with Canada and Mexico. Philip Berg, who filed the lawsuit that had until now drawn the most public attention, asserts that the 9/11 attacks were staged by the US government (so-called "trutherism"). Another critic, Andy Martin, who seems to be the source of the rumor that Obama is a Muslim and is a strong "birther" proponent, was denied an Illinois law license on the grounds that he was mentally unfit to practice law (see October 17-22, 2008). Robert Schulz, who ran the Tribune ads, is a well-known tax protester and anti-government rhetorician. [Salon, 12/5/2008]
Entity Tags: Rush Limbaugh, Robert L. Schulz, WorldNetDaily, Philip J. Berg, PolitiFact (.org ), Michael Savage, Barack Obama, Chicago Tribune, Anthony Robert Martin-Trigona, Alex Koppelman, Ann Dunham, Chip Berlet, Chiyome Fukino, Evan Harrington, John McCain, Jerome Corsi, FactCheck (.org), Michael Shermer
January 18, 2009: Arizona Pastor Calls for God to 'Melt' Obama 'Like a Snail,' Denies Calling for Assassination
Pastor Steven Anderson. [Source: Jill Stanek]Pastor Steven Anderson of the Tempe Independent Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona, delivers an impassioned sermon in which he calls for God to strike down President Obama—to "melt" Obama "like a snail." When Anderson gives a similar sermon at another church in August 2009 and posts it on YouTube, it will cause an outcry among Obama supporters and media observers. Anderson's sermon is based on the Bible's Psalm 58, which details the divine curse laid upon the foes of King David. During it, he quotes Psalm 58, which reads in part: "Break their teeth, Oh God, in their mouths. Break out the great teeth of the young lions, Oh Lord, let them melt away as waters which run continually. When he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces." [Arizona Republic, 8/29/2009; Talk2Action, 9/1/2009]
Calling for Obama's 'Abortion' - Anderson then says: "'As a snail which melteth,' Barack Obama, since you want to use your salt solution to kill babies in this country [referring to abortion], Barack Obama, you're going to reap what you sow because one day, Barack Obama, you're going to be burning in hell and you're going to feel a burning sensation all over your skin—which was the same sensation felt by every baby that was aborted in his mother's womb.… He's saying, let Barack Obama perish like an abortion. Let Barack Obama perish like a miscarriage.—'As the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.' Let me tell you something—somebody needs to abort Barack Obama. It's true."
Denies Calling for Assassination - Anderson continues: "Now, I'm not to do it. I'm not saying vigilanteism. I'm not saying that somebody should go kill. I'm saying there should be a government in this country that, you know, under God's authority, that takes Barack Obama and aborts him. On television. For everybody to see in the whole world. Did you hear me? Now, I'm not saying I'm going to do it. I'm not a vigilante. But I'm going to tell you something—if there was any justice in this country, if the judicial branch of this country meant anything they would take Barack Obama and all of his colleagues and take them and they would abort him. They would melt him like a snail. That's what they—they'd break the teeth out of his head, my friends.… And you say, 'oh, I can't believe you're threatening the president,' I'm not saying I'm going to do it, I just wish God would do it. And he will do it, my friends. And I wish we had a government that would act on God's behalf. Like the government is supposed to do. You know, the government is supposed to carry out God's law—enforce God's laws against murder, against stealing, against lying, against deceit, against adultery. That's the purpose of human government. And so I'd like to see Barack Obama melt like a snail. I'd like to see the teeth knocked right out of his head. I'd like to see him perish just like an abortion. That's what David preached. That's what he prayed to God."
Obama Turning America Communist - Anderson continues: "Now look—we could sit there and say you know… and we're only talking about one thing that we don't like about Barack Obama. I could name for you a hundred things that he's wrong on. I could name for you a hundred.… We're just talking about one aspect of it—the abortion that he's fighting for, the murder that he's fighting for. What about the fact that he's turning it into a communist nation? That he wants to redistribute the wealth, like Levi Mordachai—also known as Karl Marx? And his Communist Manifesto—[Marx] wanted to redistribute the wealth."
Attacking America's Poor - Anderson continues: "You know, you think I want taken the wealth that I go out and work by the sweat of my face and the sweat of my brow and give it to some lazy jerk in the ghetto, somewhere, who's never gone to work in their life? I don't care whether you like that or not, it's wicked. God said to the man that works, 'if a man will not work neither shall he eat.' That's what the Bible preaches. Why should I go out and work so that some fat slob in the ghetto can get fat off of my food stamps that I'm paying for and EBT—you know, [to audience], what, is it—EBT? You know, 'I want Domino's Pizza'—we've got a big sign, 'We Accept EBT.' You know what I mean? And they probably deliver it on EBT. They don't even have to leave the house, my friend, they'll get the pizza delivered to them. And, you pay for it. It's wicked, it's stealing. [EBT is a method of delivering federal food stamp monies.] You say, 'It's not a moral issue.'—Uh… last time I checked, stealing's a moral issue. Take money out of my pocket and give it to somebody else—isn't that in the Ten Commandments? Oh, you know, you just care about these financial issues, gotta care about the moral issues… financial issues are moral issues, my friend. Somebody takes money out of my bank account—it's immoral. Okay? It's wrong."
Obama Is 'Pro-Queer' - Anderson asks the audience for their input. "So many other things that we don't like about Barack Obama. Does anybody… let's have a little open forum here. Is there a man—and, only men speak in this church—is there a man here that can tell me something else that's wicked about Barack Obama tonight? Do you have some other policy that you think is wicked?" A member of the congregation says, "Pro queer." Anderson says: "Gay rights. Thank you, sir. All right, this is great. Gay rights—interactive preaching with pastor Anderson—gay rights, right? Promoting the Sodomites. Pushing not only that but a sodomite agenda in schools. Schools teaching sodomite curriculum. Teaching alternative lifestyles. See, your five-year-olds, your six-year-olds, you seven-year-olds… [you] say they don't start that young. Well you know what? You only have to drive two hours, my friend. Get in your car and drive two hours and you'll be in California. And it's by law being taught in elementary school in the earliest grades. Only drive two hours to get there!"
Claims No Racism in Attacks, Says Obama Is 'White' - After more attacks on welfare recipients, Anderson turns to the issue of race. "You know… and, this has nothing to do with race," he says. "I'm so sick and tired of people calling me a racist for being against Barack Obama. You know, I thought we were past that in this country. You know what I mean? Let it go! I love all people equally—red, yellow, black, and white—they're Christians inside—I've won more black people to the Lord, probably, than I've won white people to the Lord my friend. … I have very close friends, right now, that are black. One of my best friends is black. But… [l]et's get over it. They're perpetuating the hatred between races by bringing it up all the time. Oh wow—you know, the first black president! No he's not—he's white. He's just as white as he is black. He's half black, half white. But, yet, he's just black black black. Why not say he's white? I mean, if he's half black and half white, I'm going to say he's white. That's the half I want to chase! You know? I'm calling him a white man. We have a white president coming in, my friend. He's white! Don't tell me he's black, he's white. His mom is white. Her mom is white! Her dad is white. His parents are white. He's a white man! Barack Obama is white… deal with it!" [Talk2Action, 9/1/2009]
Secret Service Inquiry - In August, the Secret Service will interview Anderson to ascertain if he constitutes a threat to the president (see August 29, 2009).
Entity Tags: Barack Obama, Steven Anderson, US Secret Service
February 19-21, 2009: Media Divided in Response to CNBC 'Tea Party' Rant
The media responds strongly to CNBC commentator Rick Santelli's call for a "tea party" to oppose the Obama economic stimulus. [CNBC, 2/20/2009]
Santelli 'Equally Complicit' in Economic Crisis - Writing for College News, Jon Graef notes that Santelli has opposed virtually all of the Obama economic policies, including all the bailouts of the mortgage and automobile industries. He lauds Santelli for "embracing the democratic possibilities that the Internet allows," but says that "Santelli and his ilk are equally complicit in the housing/finance crises as those who refused to live responsibly within their means. If Santelli doesn't like the details of the mortgage bailout, then why is continuing to work in conjunction with an industry that received its own government bailout—and promptly spent it on press releases and product placement?" [College News, 2/20/2009]
'Mad as Hell' - Writer Jerome Corsi, who penned a lurid and highly inaccurate "biography" of President Obama before the 2008 election (see August 1, 2008 and After), notes that some are comparing Santelli's rant to that of fictional news anchor Howard Beale in the movie Network, where Beale screams, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this any more!" [WorldNetDaily, 2/19/2009]
'Investors Have It All Figured Out' - Market analyst Donald Luskin writes that Santelli "went a little bit berserk in his broadcast… warning that all the bailouts, programs, rescues, stabilizations, and stimuli are turning our capitalist nation into Cuba. He got the floor traders so stirred up it seemed for a minute there that an armed revolution was going to start at any moment." Luskin continues, with at least some sarcasm: "Santelli is right. This country is being rescued to death. The voters may be fooled, for a while at least. But obviously investors have it all figured out." [Smart Money, 2/20/2009]
'Santelli Hates Poor People' - The avant-garde Washington political gossip blog Wonkette calls Santelli "unlikable" for calling Americans forced to default on their mortgage "losers," and calls his on-air rant "apesh_t." Commentator Jim Newell continues, "Maybe Obama's plan isn't so great, who knows, but one thing is clear, and that's that Rick Santelli hates poor people—and by poor people we mean the bottom 50-90 percent of per capita income earners." [Jim Newell, 2/20/2009]
'Speaking Truth to Ego and the Far Left' - Financial blogger Thomas Smicklas writes that Santelli "sp[oke] truth to ego and the far left.… It is becoming more apparent each day of the new administration those who work hard, save, and are responsible citizens are getting hosed by the practice of class warfare.… Ladies and gentlemen, the politics of vote buying, legal extortion, and the re-distribution of wealth to the lazy and ill-educated has begun in earnest. And we haven't even touched upon a deteriorating foreign policy. Thanks to CNBC's Rick Santelli and the workers in the pit that deal in commodities who finally expressed it. We can all be grateful for the lesson." [Thomas Smicklas, 2/20/2009]
Rewarding Those Who Caused the Bad Lending - The Huffington Post's Jason Linkins writes that right-wing media figures such as Matt Drudge are "freaking out" over Santelli's rant, "fomentin' a revolution on the trading floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He's assembled a small army of half-hearted, floor-trading broheims to cheer and hoot as he rails against President Obama's plan to not immediately foreclose on everybody and kick them out into the streets, because that rewards 'bad behavior,' and clearly what we should be doing is rewarding people who incentivized all the risky lending, because until the house of cards collapsed, things were looking pretty for everybody!" [Huffington Post, 3/22/2009]
'Hysteria a la Fox News' - Columnist Mary McNamara calls Santelli's rant "colorful," but says Santelli's "rhetoric/hysteria a la Fox News is damaging to national discourse." The financial crisis has hit hardest, not in the businesses and mansions of the people Santelli works with, but in the working-poor and lower-middle class families. "They work hard," she writes. "They weren't buying luxury homes. Sure, there were a few speculators. But mostly, they just wanted a little piece of the American dream, especially good schools for their kids and closer proximity to their work." [MultiChannel (.com), 2/19/2009]
'Money for Idiots' - Conservative columnist David Brooks refers to Santelli's "lustily" delivered rant in defending the necessity for the government to stabilize an economy sliding into chaos. [New York Times, 2/19/2009]
'Pretty Awesome' - New York Magazine's Jessica Pressler writes that she finds Santelli's "call for revolution… pretty awesome." She writes, "Santelli is pissed off about the Obama administration's bailout measures so far, in particular the housing plan the administration announced yesterday, and he wants America to stand up and revolt before we turn into some kind of not-even-tropical version of Cuba." [New York Magazine, 2/19/2009]
Favorable Coverage from Limbaugh, Hannity, Drudge - Associated Content's Mark Whittington notes that Santelli's rant is garnering tremendous coverage from conservative commentators Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Drudge. "More importantly," he writes, "Santelli's attack on the Obama mortgage bailout scheme seems to reflect a growing disquiet over President Obama's spending schemes, which started with the stimulus package, and will now not only include a bailout for mortgages but also a new bailout for the car companies and perhaps even a second stimulus." [Associated Content, 2/19/2009]
'Almost Inciting a Riot' - Business Insider's Joe Weisenthal observes: "CNBC's RIck Santelli is always pugnacious, but he outdid himself today, almost inciting a riot among the traders in Chicago when talking about Obama's housing plan. Suffice to say, the capitalists on the floor do not want to pay for anyone else's mortgage. Neither do we. That being said, his insistence that these guys represent the 'real America' won't ultimately play that well among most people." [Business Insider, 2/19/2009] Progressive columnist and blogger John Amato calls himself "disgusted" at Santelli's "embarrassing diatribe at the expense of the American people," and writes that watching Santelli "made me realize that these Wall Street frat boys still don't get it. America is sick and tired of the riches they have manipulated out of the system and then be lectured by people who make more money than 100 middle class workers put together." Referring to Santelli's experience as a trader in the high-risk derivative market, an area that many have blamed for causing much of the economic downturn, Amato writes sarcastically, "The next time I want advice on how to live I'll be sure to ask a man who was deeply involved in 'derivatives.'" He concludes: "Don't blame the crooked mortgage lenders who were having bidding wars to acquire their next mansion, but blame first time buyers or average Americans, the lifeblood of our society and call them 'losers.' Santelli needs to own that he is the loser and if it wasn't for the gasbag insider crowd that gives his words a modicum of respect, crowds would gather outside his home with torches and pitchforks." [John Amato, 2/21/2009]
'Voice of the Silent Majority' - Progressive author and blogger Jane Hamsher writes: "Rick Santelli is just the explosive id of CNBC, saying what everyone else thinks. Somehow it's not the pervasive institutional rot, the criminal malfeasance at the highest levels, or the chairman of the Federal Reserve telling Americans over and over again that housing prices would never go down. They have convinced themselves that the real problem is once again people at the absolute bottom of the economic scale. If they'd only used appropriate 'judgment' and lived within their means, we'd all be fine. Santelli is now being promoted by CNBC as a truth teller, a voice of the… 'silent majority.' 'Would you join Santelli's "Chicago Tea Party?"' they want to know. With 170,000 respondents, 93 percent say yes! I guess it was only a matter of time before a hero emerged." [Jane Hamsher, 2/20/2009; CNBC, 2/20/2009]
Entity Tags: Jessica Pressler, Thomas Smicklas, Sean Hannity, David Brooks, Jane Hamsher, Jerome Corsi, Donald Luskin, Rush Limbaugh, Jason Linkins, Obama administration, Jim Newell, Joe Weisenthal, Jon Graef, Rick Santelli, Mark Whittington, Matt Drudge, Mary McNamara, John Amato
Timeline Tags: Global Economic Crises, Domestic Propaganda
February 24-26, 2009: Mayor Sends Racist E-mail, Resigns due to Furor
The photo Mayor Grose sent out to, among others, an African-American community member. [Source: Keyanus Price]The mayor of Los Alamitos, a small city in Orange County, California, causes an uproar when he sends a "joke" e-mail that shows the White House with a watermelon patch taking the place of the usual White House garden. The e-mail is entitled "No Easter Egg hunt this year." Among the recipients are the members of the City Council, and black businesswoman and community volunteer Keyanus Price. Price explains, "I think he's saying that since there's a black president, there will be no need to hunt for eggs since they're growing watermelons in the front yard this year." Price replies to the e-mail, sent by Mayor Dean Grose, with the response: "Hey, that's not nice at all. Not all black people like watermelon… you should know better than that." Grose's initial reply fails to respond to the racial content, and reads: "The way things are today, you gotta laugh every now and then. I wanna see the coloring contests." Price says Grose's response upset her even more than the original e-mail. "As soon as I saw his response; that put me over the top because it was no big deal to him," she says. "I was horrified when I read that e-mail. What I'm concerned about is how can this person send an e-mail out like this and think it is OK?" When Orange County residents and city leaders begin protesting the racially insensitive e-mail, Grose issues an apology to Price, her boss, and the City Council; it reads in part: "I am deeply embarrassed in receiving your e-mail, and for any harm or hurt that it may have caused. It was poor judgment on my part and was never intended to be offensive to Ms. Price, your company or anyone in the African-American community.… I in no way was representing the City of Los Alamitos, or my role as a council member in sending this out and it went via my private business e-mail. That doesn't justify the fact that it was sent, however, we gratefully appreciate the contributions that your company makes to our community and I wish to publically apologize to anyone within the firm or organization that may have been offended. I am truly sorry." Some residents are not mollified. "It appalls me how much racial insensitivity continues in this day and age," says Aliso Viejo resident Brian Alpers. "Even forwarding e-mails like that continue to perpetuate stereotypes and yes, even racial hatred." 74-year old Marjorie McDowall says: "It reminds me of my childhood and all the filthy jokes there were about blacks. It's really offensive. I thought we were beyond that. I really did." Robert Graham adds: "To me, it's not so much the e-mail that was sent but the comment that was sent afterward that supports it. For me, as a resident and he being my mayor, it reflects on the rest of our community. He's our representative not only to the county, but the state as well." An unidentified person smashes a watermelon in front of Grose's office, apparently either in protest or retaliation for the e-mail. Two days after sending the e-mail, Grose announces that he will resign as mayor of Los Alamitos. "The attention brought to this matter has sadly created an image of me which is most unfortunate," he writes. "I recognize that I've made a mistake and have taken steps to make sure this is never repeated." [Orange County Register, 2/24/2009; Orange County Register, 2/24/2009; Orange County Register, 2/26/2009; Orange County Register, 2/26/2009]
Entity Tags: Brian Alpers, Keyanus Price, Marjorie McDowall, Robert Graham, Dean Grose
March 3, 2009: Dartmouth Campus E-mail Uses Racial Slurs to Greet Incoming President
The students who run Dartmouth College's "Generic Good Morning Message" (GGMM), a popular email update, post an essay about incoming college president Jim Yong Kim that many find racist and derogatory. Kim is a noted researcher and human rights advocate, with recent missions to Uganda. The essay includes such statements as: "Unless 'Jim Yong Kim' means 'I love Freedom' in Chinese, I don't want anything to do with him. Dartmouth is America, not Panda Garden Rice Village Restaurant"; "It was a complete supplies" (employing stereotypical Asian-accented English); "Y'all get ready for an Asianification under the guise of diversity under the actual Malaysian-invasion leadership instituted under the guise of diversity. It's a slippery slope we are on. I for one want democracy and apple pie, not Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen"; and others. The essay accuses Kim of being an Asian forcing "another hard-working American" out of a job, to be replaced "by an immigrant willing to work in substandard conditions at near-subsistent wage, saving half his money and sending the rest home to his village in the form of traveler's checks." GGMM later claims the message was intended as humor and satire, but "was executed in poor taste and offended many people in our community, as well as in the entire campus.… [N]o one on any level thinks what happened this morning was in any way acceptable, GGMM writers included. All seven writers of the GGMM realize the gravity of the statements made in the blitz, regardless of intent, and are taking internal measures towards a resolution." GGMM will apologize for being racially offensive and acknowledges the lack of oversight on its part. [IvyGate, 3/4/2009]
Entity Tags: Jim Yong Kim, Dartmouth College
March 4-6, 2009: Conservative Radio Host: Obama a 'Rabble-Rouser' and a 'Dictator'
Michael Savage, a conservative radio host, calls President Obama a "dictator" as part of a larger diatribe against the president. He calls Obama "a young, articulate rabble-rouser" who "is espousing a message that I call 'trickle-up poverty'.… Where it ends? I know where it ends, because I've studied history. I know where it ends. The signal as to when this begins, when the end begins, will be when he organizes a militia directly under his own control. He will not call it a militia. It will be called, perhaps, the 'Ecology Corps' or the 'Environment Corps,' or the 'Global Warming Corps,' or the 'Energy Corps.'" Savage may be referring to Obama's efforts to revive the moribund Americorps, a volunteer organization (see November 11, 2008 and March 31, 2009). "Whatever it will be called, they will all wear uniforms. They will either be blue denim or green denim. They will have the executive power under the 'urban czar' to come into your home without any court order to investigate your energy use, but they will be looking for other things as well. Would you have any chance to stand up to this army of Obamaites?" Savage asks, rhetorically, if he has "gone over the edge," and then says: "I've gone over the edge before, and every time I have, I've been right eventually. I see the handwriting on the wall. Obama is a dictator." Savage accuses liberals of failing to understand that any dictatorship, leftist or rightist, "is not going to be good for your children." He then shouts, "Someone has to oppose this man." He also claims that the White House "is going after" anyone who criticizes it, and repeatedly mixes his accusations of "government" persecution with "media" persecution of White House or Obama critics. "Fundamentally," Savage concludes, "we have a dictatorship emerging.… Now I'll make another prediction. I predict that very soon, Obama will create a crisis along the lines of the Reichstag Fire [the 1933 attack on the Reichstag by Nazi militiamen, who later blamed the fire on Communists, and used the attack to gain control of the German government]. I don't know what form it will take. But I believe that once the minions are seen for what they are, Rahm Emanuel [the White House chief of staff] and his gang will set off a Reichstag Fire in this country of some kind, and they will" begin arresting US citizens without warrants much as President Lincoln did during the Civil War. "I will tell you as I sit here I fear that every night as I go to sleep." Savage offers no evidence for any of his claims. [Media Matters, 3/4/2009] Two days later, Savage calls Obama a "neo-fascist dictator in the making." [Media Matters, 3/6/2009] Savage has called the landmark civil rights decision Brown v. Board "sickening" (see May 18, 2004), accused Obama of being educated in a radical Islamic madrassa (see January 10, 2008 and April 3, 2008) and being a potential "radical Muslim" (see February 21, 2008), called Obama's presidential victory "the first affirmative-action election in American history" (see February 1, 2008), accused Obama of being sympathetic towards the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese of World War II (see March 13, 2008), said that homeless Americans should be put in "work camps" (see June 6, 2008), called Obama an "Afro-Leninist" (see June 6, 2008), said that welfare recipients should lose the right to vote (see October 22, 2008), accused Obama of using his grandmother's death to conceal his "efforts" to falsify his Hawaiian birth certificate (see November 10, 2008), and accused Obama of planning to fire all the "competent white men" in government once he became president (see November 18, 2008). Other conservatives, including Fox News's Glenn Beck, will accuse Obama of being a Nazi, or of intending to create a "Reichstag Fire" crisis to gain power (see September 29, 2009 and October 3, 2010).
Entity Tags: Glenn Beck, AmeriCorps, Barack Obama, Michael Savage, Rahm Emanuel
March 30-31, 2009: New York Post, Fox News Blog Attack Obama Nominee as Advocating Subordination of Constitution to 'Sharia' and International Law
The New York Post publishes an article headlined "Scary! Obama nominee wants one world order." The article, by Post reporter Meghan Clyne, attacks President Obama's nomination of Yale Law School dean Harold Koh as legal adviser to the State Department. Clyne says Koh is a "fan of 'transnational legal process,' arguing that the distinctions between US and international law should vanish." She says that according to Koh's views, judges should put aside the Constitution in favor of "legal 'norms'" from other nations' laws. "Sharia law could apply to disputes in US courts," she writes. "The United States constitutes an 'axis of disobedience' along with North Korea and Saddam-era Iraq." The newly launched Fox Nation, the blog for Fox News, links to the article, which disappears from the Post's Web archive shortly thereafter. [Fox Nation, 3/31/2009; Media Matters, 4/10/2009] An extraordinarily racist conservative blog, Chimpout, hosts a forum discussion of the article under the heading "Osambo picks another douche bag for his cabinet." The forum's thread is part of a larger discussion section entitled "N_gger College" and a subsection entitled "F_cked Up Facts about First Monkey," an apparent reference to Obama. Commenters immediately begin launching "birther"-styled accusations of Obama being an illegal president because of his "Kenyan birth" (see October 8, 2008, October 16, 2008 and After, November 10, 2008, August 1-4, 2009, and August 4, 2009), and say Obama should be relegated to "picking cotton." [Chimpout, 3/31/2009] Days later, Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck, conservative editor Cliff Kincaid, and former Republican Senator Rick Santorum will join in attacking Koh (see April 1, 2009, April 6, 2009, and April 9, 2009).
Entity Tags: Glenn Beck, Chimpout (.com), Barack Obama, Fox Nation, US Department of State, Obama administration, Harold Koh, Rick Santorum, New York Post, Meghan Clyne, Cliff Kincaid
April 7-8, 2009: Texas Lawmaker Says Asians Should Change Their Names for Americans' Convenience
Betty Brown. [Source: Houston Chronicle]Texas State Representative Betty Brown (R-Terrell) says during House testimony on voter identification legislation that since Asian-Americans often have names that are difficult for other Americans to pronounce, they should just change their names to something "easier for Americans to deal with." The Texas House Elections Committee hears testimony from Ramey Ko, a representative of the Organization of Chinese Americans, who says that Americans of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean descent often have problems with voting and with other forms of identification because they have both a legal transliterated name and then a common English name used on their driver's license and school registrations. Brown suggests that Asian-Americans find a way to make their names more accessible, asking, "Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese—I understand it's a rather difficult language—do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?" Later in the session, she tells Ko, "Can't you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that's easier for Americans to deal with?" Democratic Chairman Boyd Richie says Republicans are attempting to suppress votes with a partisan identification bill, and that Brown "is adding insult to injury with her disrespectful comments." Brown refuses to apologize for her statements. A spokesman for Brown, Jordan Berry, says that her comments have nothing to do with race, and are merely focused on overcoming problems with identifying Asian names for voting purposes. Democrats are the ones guilty of using racial rhetoric, says Berry, not Brown: "They want this to just be about race." [Houston Chronicle, 4/9/2009]
Entity Tags: Ramey Ko, Betty Brown, Organization of Chinese Americans, Boyd Richie, Jordan Berry, Texas House Elections Committee
April 9-22, 2009: 'Seventeen Socialists' in US House, Republican Claims
Spencer Bachus. [Source: Chicago Tribune]US Representative Spencer Bachus (R-AL) tells a group of local leaders in Trussville, Alabama, "Some of the men and women I work with in Congress are socialists." Asked to clarify his comment, Bachus tells a reporter that 17 members of the House of Representatives are socialists. [Birmingham News, 4/9/2009; Hill, 4/9/2009]
Only Names One of 17 - When pressed, Bachus only names one of his "socialists"—Representative Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who has repeatedly recommended that the US adopt a program of "democratic socialism" similar to some practiced in Scandinavian countries. He refuses to name the other 16. Sanders asks rhetorically: "Has Spencer released his list yet? Everybody's waiting with bated breath." He adds, "I think at the very least he has to tell people what his definition of socialism is—and I think, yeah, he should tell us who he was referring to, who's on the list."
Possible Reference to Congressional Progressive Caucus - Many Congressional staffers and advisers believe that Bachus is referring to some members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a left-leaning coalition of 77 House members founded by Sanders in the early 1990s. Although the caucus has not espoused socialism in any form, it does advocate reduced military spending, universal health care, and higher taxes on the rich. Right-wing groups have long labeled the caucus's agenda as "fringe-left socialism"; one hard-right pundit, WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah, has called the caucus "Congress's very own Red Army… marching the nation inevitably toward its self-proclaimed socialist ideal."
Differing Definitions - Politico's Glenn Thrush writes that the term "socialism" has different meanings for different people. "To many on the left, it's a relatively benign—if outdated—term, representing an activist, interventionist government that prioritizes economic security over the unfettered freedom of the marketplace. To many on the right, it's practically an epithet—suggesting a return to Soviet-style Communism or a leap toward a hyper-regulated European brand of capitalism that stifles innovation and hikes taxes. It's safe to say that more people in Bachus's suburban Birmingham district—the most GOP-tilting seat in the country, according to the Cook Political Report—view socialism as a bad, bad thing."
Mixed Reactions - Doug Thornell, speaking for Representative Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), says of Bachus's accusation: "House Republicans' solution to the current economic crisis is to launch head-scratching, '50s-style accusations against unidentified members of Congress. Next thing you know they'll be going after beatniks and calling for the auto industry to bring back the Edsel.… With all the challenges we face, it's stunning this is what Republicans are talking about. They sound like a broken record of GOP low points from the 2008 campaign." Erin Kanoy of the Heritage Foundation is glad Bachus "called out" his colleagues, saying: "I think that people expressing where they see someone on the political spectrum has tended to be an off-limits thing and very politically incorrect—but sometimes I think you've got to call a spade a spade. If Bachus believes members of Congress are part of this movement, he should be able to say it.… He's really reflecting a much larger frustration with the landslide of legislation that we've had coming at us that seems to be marching towards socialist government." Conservative activist Grover Norquist agrees with Bachus's position, but says he should not have gotten into the subject of lists. "We shouldn't get into a labeling thing with the other side," Norquist says. "We shouldn't call them socialists—we should call them stupid because they are spending all this money we don't have." Sanders notes that conservatives tried to tar Barack Obama with similar accusations: "They said a lot of this stuff about Obama during the [presidential] campaign, calling him a socialist, and trying to instill fear in people" (see August 1, 2008 and After, October 10, 2008, October 27, 2008, and March 5, 2009). Many progressive and liberal bloggers have accused Bachus of launching an attack on Democrats worthy of the McCarthyite "Red scare" of the 1950s. [Washington Post, 4/10/2009; Politico, 4/14/2009]
Defending Socialism, Decrying 'Scare Tactics' - In an op-ed for the Huffington Post, Sanders writes: "I doubt that there are any other socialists, let alone 17 more, in all of the Congress. I also respectfully doubt that Spencer Bachus understands much about democratic socialism.… At its worst, Washington is a place where name-calling partisan politics too often trumps policy.… [B]randing someone as a socialist has become the slur du jour by leading lights of the American right from Newt Gingrich to Rush Limbaugh. Some, like Mike Huckabee, intentionally blur the differences between socialism and communism, between democracy and totalitarianism. 'Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff,' Huckabee told last winter's gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference. If we could get beyond such nonsense, I think this country could use a good debate about what goes on here compared to places with a long social-democratic tradition like Sweden, Norway, and Finland, where, by and large, the middle class has a far higher standard of living than we do.… [W]e should be prepared to study and learn from the successes of social democratic countries. Name-calling and scare tactics just won't do." [Huffington Post, 4/22/2009]
Entity Tags: Congressional Progressive Caucus, Spencer Bachus, Chris Van Hollen, Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Joseph Farah, Doug Thornell, Conservative Political Action Conference, Erin Kanoy, Mike Huckabee, Grover Norquist, Glenn Thrush
April 14, 2009: FreedomWorks, Lobbying Firm Fighting Health Care Reform, Profiled by Progressive Site
FreedomWorks logo. [Source: FreedomWorks]The progressive news and advocacy site Think Progress profiles FreedomWorks, a conservative lobbying firm that uses the practice of "astroturfing" to press its agenda home. FreedomWorks is one of the organizations behind the anti-tax "tea party" movement (see April 8, 2009). The organization denies that it is "astroturfing"—creating fake "citizens groups" that purport to be spontaneously organized grassroots organizations—and compares its work to that of liberal activism group MoveOn.org. However, Think Progress notes that MoveOn is a citizen-organized group, while FreedomWorks is headed by former Republican activists and corporate officials, and is funded by oil, energy, and tobacco companies. Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey and current Washington lobbyist (R-TX) leads FreedomWorks. [Think Progress, 4/14/2009]
'Amateur-Looking' Astroturfing Sites - Last year, the Wall Street Journal exposed FreedomWorks' use of "amateur-looking" Web sites for its "astroturf" groups to bolster their credibility as purported "citizen groups" pushing for corporate interests (see May 16, 2008). [Think Progress, 4/14/2009]
Represented by PR Firm with GOP Links - FreedomWorks is represented by the Washington public relations firm Shirley & Banister Public Affairs. Shirley & Banister also represents conservative organizations such as the National Rifle Association, Citizens United, news outlet Human Events, and organizer Richard Viguerie's direct-mail firm. (It also represents the Bradley Foundation, a conservative funding organization that in 2008 gave $25,000 to both FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity [AFP], gave FreedomWorks $75,000 in 2009, and is considering a grant request from AFP.) One of Shirley & Banister's partners is Craig Shirley, a veteran Republican PR operative who helped develop the overtly racist 1988 "Willie Horton" political ad (see September 21 - October 4, 1988). Progressive MSNBC host Rachel Maddow tells her audience: "This is a perfect system for the Republican Party. It's a constant feedback loop. The Republican Party activists stir up fear and anger on the Internet… Fearful, angry people go to town hall events and then Republican Party officials say they are just responding to that anger and they have no idea where it came from. It's [a] perfect cycle. Rile them up with made-up stuff and then sympathize with them that are so riled." [MSNBC, 8/14/2009; MSNBC, 8/17/2009]
Led by Millionaires - Three of FreedomWorks' most prominent senior officials are millionaires. Armey makes over $500,000 a year working for the organization, and lives in a Texas home valued at $1.7 million. FreedomWorks president Matthew Kibbe lives on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, in a home valued at $1.17 million. Board member Steve Forbes, the billionaire publisher of Forbes magazine, lives in a New Jersey home valued at $2.78 million, owns a chateau in France, and recently sold a private island in Fiji and a palace in Morocco. [Wall Street Journal, 5/16/2008]
FreedomWorks Supports Armey's Lobbying Efforts - Armey's lobbying firm, DLA Piper, represents pharmaceutical firms such as Bristol-Myers Squibb, medical device supplier SleepMed, health care provider Metropolitan Health Networks, and another pharmaceutical firm, Medicines Company. One member of FreedomWorks's board of directors is Richard Stephenson, the founder and chairman of Cancer Treatment Centers of America. He is also the president of International Capital and Management Company, which runs a hospital consulting company. The president of FreedomWorks is Matt Kibbe, the former senior economist for the Republican National Committee and the former chief of staff for Representative Dan Miller (R-FL). FreedomWorks is organizing protests against health care reform that would cut into pharmaceutical firms' profits. DLA Piper represents a number of life insurance firms; FreedomWorks has organized support for the deregulation of the insurance industry. DLA Piper represents not only several American oil firms, but also Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, prime minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), on energy related issues such as maintaining the close ties between the US and the UAE. US oil firms are deeply involved in the UAE's oil industry. [Center for Responsive Politics, 2009; Think Progress, 4/14/2009; MSNBC, 8/12/2009] In August 2009, after reporting on FreedomWorks, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow will tell her audience: "Washington lobbyists and health care executives and former Republican Party officials have just as much a right to shout down the policy debate about health care reform as anyone else does. These folks have just as much a right to try to derail this entire process as anyone else does. But we have a right to know who they are and who is paying them for their efforts. These guys are pros. This is an industry. This is beltway politics being organized and played out in town halls across the country." [MSNBC, 8/12/2009] DLA Piper has also received $830,000 this year, so far, from the pharmaceutical firm Medicines Company; the same firm paid DLA Piper $1.5 million in 2008. [MSNBC, 8/7/2009]
FreedomWorks Lobbying on Behalf of DLA Piper? - In August 2009, Maddow will ask, "[W]hy are DLA Piper's clients relevant?" She answers herself, "There appears to be some pretty good evidence that when you pay Dick Armey's lobbying firm, DLA Piper, you get what Dick Armey's grassroots organization FreedomWorks does." In the first half of 2007, the American Council of Life Insurers paid DLA Piper $100,000 to lobby on its behalf. During that time span, FreedomWorks began lobbying Congress on a "grassroots" basis to deregulate the life insurance industry. Maddow will sarcastically ask: "And, of course, perhaps it is just mere coincidence that FreedomWorks happened to have a newfound, ideological, purist grassroots commitment to life insurance deregulation at the same time the American Council of Life Insurers hired Dick Armey's lobbying firm. It could just be a coincidence. Could be, right?" In 2006, DLA Piper began lobbying for the Senado de Republica, the Mexican Senate, for the purpose of "enhancing US-Mexico relations." At the same time, FreedomWorks began promoting itself as "one of the few organizations willing to aggressively promote meaningful immigration reform." In 2004, during the Bush administration's push to privatize Social Security, a single mom from Iowa was introduced at a White House economic conference as a supporter of privatization. That mom was a FreedomWorks employee. Maddow will say: "This is how FreedomWorks does their work. They try to create the impression that their just regular grassroots Americans without any financial or political interests in the outcome of these policy fights." [MSNBC, 8/12/2009]
Entity Tags: MoveOn (.org), Steve Forbes, Think Progress (.org), Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Wall Street Journal, Matt Kibbe, Bristol-Myers Squibb, DLA Piper, Medicines Company, FreedomWorks, Dick Armey
Timeline Tags: US Health Care, Domestic Propaganda, 2010 Elections
April 29, 2009: Conservative Activist Asserts Obama a 'Closet Muslim'
Conservative columnist and political activist Jonathan Moseley writes an article for his blog US News and Views that asserts President Obama is, and always has been, a "closet Muslim." This assertion has been made numerous times by conservative opponents of Obama, and has been thoroughly debunked (see October 1, 2007, December 19, 2007, Before October 27, 2008, January 11, 2008, Around March 19, 2008, and April 18, 2008). Moseley accuses the national news media of "acting as the palace guard for 'Dear Leader' Barack Obama" and refusing to report what he calls "the truth" of Obama's "secret Muslim" beliefs. Apparently, Moseley's primary evidence is a February 2007 interview with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, where Obama recited the Muslim call to prayer and called it "one of the prettiest sounds on earth at sunset." Moseley calls the Muslim call to prayer "screeching," and says no one who listened to it would believe it to be beautiful "without enormous indoctrination into Islam." Obama says he learned the call to prayer as a child, when he attended school in Indonesia. According to Moseley, the recitation of the call to prayer "makes one a Muslim. The words express a Muslim's complete acceptance of, and total commitment to, the message of Islam.… Having attended Islamic religion classes, Obama knows this." Moseley also cites as "evidence" a false claim that in April 2009, Obama demanded that "Georgetown University cover up the name of Jesus in a campus hall before" he would give a speech there. And, he says, at a recent economic summit, Obama "bowed reverently to Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah," but did not bow to Queen Elizabeth of England; Mosely writes that "a Muslim would instinctively give reverence to" the king of Saudi Arabia, but would not bow to the Queen of England, who, he writes, "is technically the head of the Church of England. Obama did not bow to the royal queen who is guardian of the world's first and oldest Protestant Christian Church." Moseley incorrectly calls Queen Elizabeth a "head of state" equal to the king of Saudi Arabia; in reality, Elizabeth is queen in title only, with the real head of the British government being the prime minister. Moseley states falsely that Obama "was raised as a Muslim," citing the fact that his biological father was Muslim as well as his stepfather Lolo Soetoro (see October 28, 2008), and falsely states that Obama's stepfather enrolled him in school under the name "Barry Soetoro" (see June 27, 2008, August 21-24, 2008, and Shortly Before June 28, 2010). Moseley even claims: "Since Obama changed his name back from Barry Sotero [an alternate spelling of 'Soetoro'], he could have legally removed [his middle name] 'Hussein' in the process had he wished to. He did not." This, Moseley claims, is further proof of Obama's Muslim status. Moseley says that Obama has been masquerading as a Christian for over 20 years, ever since his "profess[ed]" conversion to Christianity at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago (see January 6-11, 2008), but dismisses Trinity United as "little more than a left-wing political club" and not a real church. And, Moseley says, Obama incorrectly claimed he had been to "57 states" on the presidential campaign trail, and cites this as evidence of Obama's "closet Muslim" status, noting that there are 57 "states" in the Organization of Islamic Conference. "So the number of Islamic OIC states appears to have sprung more readily to Obama's mind than the 50 states of the USA," he writes. [Jonathan Moseley, 4/29/2009; The British Monarchy, 2011] Obama said after that statement that he had misstated both the number of states and the number of victims of a cyclone in Myanmar in that speech, and blamed fatigue for his misstatement; there are also less than 57 members in the OIC. [Snopes (.com), 7/1/2009] Moseley will later become a senior campaign aide to Christine O'Donnell (R-DE) in her unsuccessful bid for the Senate (see September 13, 2010); O'Donnell's campaign will assert that Obama is a Muslim, and both O'Donnell and Moseley will assert that Obama, like other Democrats, is a secret Communist. [Mother Jones, 9/20/2010]
Entity Tags: Trinity United Church of Christ, Barack Obama, Christine O'Donnell, Jonathan Moseley
May 2009: White Supremacist Pleads Guilty to Assaulting African-American Woman
Marcus Epstein. [Source: Pensito Review]Marcus Epstein, a "nativist" leader with close ties to numerous racist and white supremacist organizations (see October 8, 2007 and January 31, 2009), pleads guilty to assaulting an African-American woman both physically and verbally. According to court documents, on the evening of July 7, 2007, an intoxicated Epstein was walking down a Washington, DC, street and making apparently random racial imprecations. When he saw the woman in question, he called her a "n_gger" and "delivered a karate chop" to her head. He was briefly detained by the woman's husband but managed to break away and flee. Within minutes Epstein was taken into custody by a Secret Service officer who witnessed the incident. Epstein pleads guilty to simple assault. He faces a maximum punishment of 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine. He is bound by a restraining order to stay away from the couple, has agreed to seek mental health treatment, complete an alcohol treatment program, write an apology to the victim, and donate $1,000 to the United Negro College Fund. Epstein consistently denies being a racist, though he writes for the overtly racist VDare.com Web site, attends racist conferences, and heads a discussion group, the Robert A. Taft Club, that regularly hosts racists as guest speakers. Epstein, who is of Korean and Jewish ancestry, has become something of a "star" in some conservative circles, particularly among groups interested in hindering or stopping immigration into America. Epstein is executive director of The American Cause, a white nationalist group headed by MSNBC commentator Pat Buchanan. He also serves as executive director of Team America PAC, a political action committee run by Buchanan's sister Bay Buchanan and founded by former Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO), an outspoken opponent of immigration. He is a leader of Youth for Western Civilization (YWC), a group dedicated to launching a right-wing youth movement at university campuses around the nation, and which was prominently featured at February's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Some of Epstein's colleagues do not denounce him for his crime. Bay Buchanan merely calls the incident "out of character" for Epstein and explains that he was struggling with personal issues at the time of the assault. She adds, however, that he will soon be leaving Team America PAC. Tancredo dismisses the incident entirely, blaming the news coverage on the fact that a Hispanic, Sonia Sotomayor, has been nominated to the Supreme Court (see May 28, 2009). [Southern Poverty Law Center, 10/8/2007; One People's Project, 5/19/2009; Denver Post, 6/2/2009; Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/3/2009] On his Web site, Epstein will claim that he has been admitted to the University of Virginia School of Law for the fall 2009 term, and thusly "will more or less suspend my political activities." However, the law school will deny admitting Epstein, and will write that it does "not expect him to be an enrolled student in the future." [DC Indymedia, 5/27/2009]
Entity Tags: United Negro College Fund, Robert A. Taft Club, Patrick Buchanan, Marcus Epstein, Bay Buchanan, Team America PAC, Tom Tancredo, Youth for Western Civilization, University of Virginia School of Law, VDare (.com ), The American Cause
May 18, 2009: Conservative News Blog Begins Erecting Billboards Asking 'Where's the Birth Certificate?'
One of the billboards erected by WorldNetDaily. [Source: WorldNetDaily]The conservative news blog WorldNetDaily (WND), which has been at the forefront of the "birther" movement challenging President Obama's citizenship (see August 1, 2008 and After, October 21, 2008, October 24, 2008, November 12, 2008 and After, and December 5, 2008), begins erecting billboards asking "Where's the Birth Certificate?" Joseph Farah, editor and chief executive officer of WND, calls the billboard initiative "the truth and transparency campaign." The first, a digital electronic billboard, is displayed along Highway 165 in Ball, Louisiana, and two more standard billboards are being prepared for display in Los Angeles and Pennsylvania. Farah says the "national [billboard] campaign is going to be big and long-lasting," and uses WND to solicit donations for more billboards. Farah says he and the WND staff deliberately chose not to name Obama in the billboards: "There are several reasons we chose the message, 'Where's the birth certificate?' There is only one birth certificate controversy in this country today—despite the near-total absence of this issue from coverage in the non-WND media. This is a grass-roots issue that resonates around the country, as our own online petition with nearly 400,000 signers suggests. In addition, I like the simplicity of the message. I like the fact that the message will cause some people to ask themselves or others about the meaning of the message. It will stir curiosity. It will create a buzz. I'm assuming when these billboards are springing up all over the country, it might even make some in the news media curious. And there's one more factor that persuaded me this was the way to go. Come 2012, campaign laws will pose restrictions on political advertising mentioning the names of presidential candidates. This one clearly doesn't. I would like to see the federal government make the case that this is somehow a political ad." Farah blames "timid elected officials in Washington, corrupt judges around the country, and a news media that show a stunning lack of curiosity about the most basic facts of Obama's background—especially how it relates to constitutional eligibility for the highest office in the land" for failing to investigate the "birther" controversy. Obama released his birth certificate in 2008 (see June 13, 2008), and since then it has been validated by multiple governmental and independent sources (see June 27, 2008, July 2008, August 21, 2008, and October 30, 2008). Farah, however, is not convinced, and believes the birth certificate "controversy" is part of a larger, sinister scheme by the Obama administration: "As Obama transforms this country from self-governing constitutional republic to one governed by a central ruling elite, the simple fact remains that no controlling legal authority has established that he is indeed a 'natural born citizen' as the Constitution requires," he says. "Obama's promises of transparency have become a bad joke as he continues to hide simple, innocuous documents like his birth certificate and his student records." Farah says WND is operating as an "independent watchdog on government" by launching the billboard campaign, and not acting as a partisan organization. "I wish such a campaign were not absolutely necessary," he says. "I wish there were checks and balances in our political and electoral systems to ensure that constitutional eligibility of presidential candidates was established before politicians could assume the highest office in the land. I wish my colleagues in the news media believed the Constitution really means what it says and pressed this issue as hard as we have pressed it at WND. I wish radio talk show hosts were bold enough to ask this question. But wishing is not enough. It's time to raise the visibility of this issue vital to the rule of law in America. I ask everyone to pitch in and help WND make a simple yet profound statement: The Constitution still matters." [WorldNetDaily, 5/20/2009] In November 2010, WND will erect a "birth certificate" billboard along Highway 93 near Kingman, Arizona, the small town in which Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh planned the destruction of the Murrah Federal Building (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Other billboards will be erected in Pennsylvania, Texas, Alabama, and Delaware. [WorldNetDaily, 11/8/2010]
Entity Tags: Joseph Farah, Barack Obama, Timothy James McVeigh, WorldNetDaily
May 26, 2009: Former Republican Lawmaker Accuses Supreme Court Nominee of Racism
Tom Tancredo (R-CA), a former House member and 2008 presidential candidate known for his radical isolationism and anti-immigrant views (see September 9, 2006), tells MSNBC host Ed Schultz that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009) is a racist. Tancredo uses a statement from 2001 that seems to suggest Sotomayor believes Latinas (Hispanic women) make better rulings than white males (see October 26, 2001) to launch his attack. "I'm telling you she appears to be a racist," Tancredo says. "She said things that are racist in any other context. That's exactly how we would portray it and there's no one who would get on the Supreme Court saying a thing like that except for a Hispanic woman and you're going to say it doesn't matter. Well, man. Where are you coming from? How can you possibly say that? There's plenty of stuff." Another guest, liberal columnist Bill Press, says that Sotomayor will get no "special protection" because of her race and gender, to which Tancredo scoffs, "Oh, jeez." Responding to Press's reiteration of Sotomayor's extensive judicial background, Tancredo says: "You can still be a racist and have all of those things in your background. You can be a racist and have all of that stuff in your background. One does not preclude the other." Schultz asks his third guest, reporter Mike Allen, if he would "check out to see if she had some racist comments?" Allen responds, "No," to which Tancredo says: "You won't do it? You won't check it out? There you go.… They won't even check it out." Tancredo also calls Sotomayor a "radical" and in the same sentence admits he knows nothing of her judicial record. Allen says of Tancredo's remarks, "Ed, we're getting a preview here of a lot of phony outrage, theatrics, posturing." [MSNBC, 5/26/2009]
Entity Tags: Sonia Sotomayor, US Supreme Court, Bill Press, Edward Andrew ("Ed") Schultz, Mike Allen, Tom Tancredo
May 27, 2009: Gingrich: Supreme Court Nominee a 'Latina Woman Racist' Who Should Withdraw
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) says that because Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009) is what he calls a "Latina woman racist," she should immediately withdraw her nomination. Gingrich bases his remark on a 2001 comment by Sotomayor in which she said she "hopes that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life" (see October 26, 2001). Sending a text message on Twitter, Gingrich writes: "Imagine a judicial nominee said, 'My experience as a white man makes me better than a Latina woman.' New racism is no better than old racism." He follows with another message: "White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw." Republican National Committee (RNC) media chairman Todd Herman quickly "retweets" Gingrich's message, which usually signifies agreement with the message, but the RNC will refuse to say whether or not it officially endorses Gingrich's comment. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs replies that Gingrich is probably not the best source of information or guidance on the issue, and warns against excessive rhetoric: "I think it is probably important for any involved in this debate to be exceedingly careful with the way in which they've decided to describe different aspects of the impending confirmation. I think we're satisfied that when the people of America and the people of the Senate get a chance to look at more than just the blog of a former lawmaker that they'll come to the same conclusion that the president did." [Think Progress, 5/27/2009; Plum Line, 5/27/2009; Washington Times, 5/28/2009] Orrin Hatch (R-UT), who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, refuses to align himself with Gingrich's characterization. Asked about Gingrich's remark, Hatch says, "No, I don't agree with that." [Think Progress, 5/27/2009] Days later, Gingrich will appear to withdraw the "racist" characterization, although he will go on to accuse Sotomayor of "betray[ing]" the "American system" of law (see June 3, 2009).
Entity Tags: Newt Gingrich, Sonia Sotomayor, US Supreme Court, Orrin Hatch, Todd Herman, Robert Gibbs
May 28, 2009: Republican Smears Supreme Court Nominee's Association with Hispanic Civil Rights Organization, Compares Group to KKK
National Council of La Raza logo. [Source: National Council of La Raza]Former House member Tom Tancredo (R-CO—see September 9, 2006) continues his attacks on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009). As in his earlier commentary, Tancredo vilifies Sotomayor over her supposed racism. On CNN, Tancredo says that her affiliation with the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), a Hispanic civil rights group, is the equivalent of a white person belonging to the Ku Klux Klan. "If you belong to an organization called La Raza, in this case, which is, from my point of view anyway, nothing more than a Latino—it's a counterpart—a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses," he says. "If you belong to something like that in a way that's going to convince me and a lot of other people that it's got nothing to do with race. Even though the logo of La Raza is 'All for the race. Nothing for the rest.' What does that tell you?" When host Rick Sanchez attempts to redirect Tancredo from his statements about the civil rights group, Tancredo shouts: "She's a member! She's a member of La Raza!" [Think Progress, 5/28/2009; NewsMax, 5/28/2009] Liberal news website Think Progress notes that La Raza has been targeted by conservative critics since the 2006 immigration rallies, with some making the false claim that La Raza advocates the secession of the Western United States "as a Hispanic-only homeland," and right-wing blogs calling the organization "an anti-white extremist group." In reality, La Raza is the nation's largest Latino civil rights and advocacy group, focusing primarily on "civil rights/immigration, education, employment and economic status, and health." The name "La Raza" translates to "the people," not "the race," as Tancredo insists. And the group's motto is not "All for the race, nothing for the rest," as Tancredo says, it is actually "Strengthening America by promoting the advancement of Latino families." La Raza, or NCLR as it is officially known, points to its recognition by the Office of the Surgeon General and the Leadership Council for Civil Rights for its efforts on behalf of underprivileged Hispanic-Americans, and its work alongside Habitat for Humanity and the Heritage Foundation as a nonprofit organization working for positive social change. [National Council of La Raza, 2009; Think Progress, 5/28/2009]
Entity Tags: Think Progress (.org), Sonia Sotomayor, US Supreme Court, National Council of La Raza, Rick Sanchez, Tom Tancredo
May 29, 2009: Former Klan Wizard Calls Supreme Court Nominee Racist, Charges Nomination Part of Larger Jewish Conspiracy
David Duke. [Source: Hip Hop Republican (.com)]Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, continuing the attacks on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009), says that Sotomayor "brings a form of bigotry and racism to the court" similar to views espoused by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Within hours, Duke counters on his own Web site, disparaging Limbaugh's comparison and claiming that while he believes Sotomayor is a racist, he himself has never embraced racist views. "Limbaugh, a recent addict to illegal drugs, has no business making personal attacks against me for my past," Duke writes. "I have consistently supported true equal rights, stating again and again that I support the best-qualified person regardless of race in hiring and promotions." Duke goes on to write that Sotomayor's racism is "proven" by remarks she made during a 2001 speech in which she said a "wise Latina" judge would often make better decisions than a white male (see October 26, 2001), and calls her "an activist for radical-Left Mexican organizations and an enthusiastic proponent of racial discrimination against White people called affirmative action" (see May 28, 2009). He then claims that her nomination is part of an overarching Jewish conspiracy to control "any person who is influential or who may at some point in the future become influential." [Think Progress, 6/1/2009]
Entity Tags: David Duke, US Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, Rush Limbaugh
May 31, 2009: Conservative Pundit Mocks Supreme Court Nominee for Difficulties with English during College Years
Right-wing pundit Pat Buchanan continues to attack Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009), this time during an appearance on C-SPAN's Washington Journal. Buchanan continues his allegations that Sotomayor is an "affirmative action nominee" (see May 28, 2009), and mocks her recent discussion of her difficulties with the English language: Sotomayor told a New York Times reporter that during her first years in college, she honed her English skills by reading children's books, practiced with lower-level grammar books, and worked with a professor who provided her tutoring in the language. Buchanan says in reference to the article: "Well I, again in that Saturday piece, she went to Princeton. She graduated first in her class it said. But she herself said she read, basically classic children's books to read and learn the language and she read basic English grammars and she got help from tutors. I think that, I mean if you're, frankly if you're in college and you're working on Pinocchio or on the troll under the bridge, I don't think that's college work." The article did not characterize her outside, self-directed remedial work with English as "college work." Amanda Terkel, a reporter for left-leaning Think Progress, will note: "Buchanan has long claimed that Hispanic immigrants are resistant to learning English and has said that it would be easier for them to 'assimilate' if they did so.… So basically, Buchanan yells when Hispanics are allegedly unwilling to learn English. However, when they make an attempt to do so, he mocks them as being dumb." [New York Times, 5/30/2009; Think Progress, 6/1/2009]
Entity Tags: US Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, Amanda Terkel, Patrick Buchanan
June 1, 2009: Former Bush Speechwriter Advises Republicans to 'Play Grown-Up' in Challenging Supreme Court Nominee
Former George H. W. Bush speechwriter Peggy Noonan joins the ranks of Republicans (see May 28-31, 2009, May 29, 2009, and May 29, 2009) asking for a more moderate and less inflammatory tone in recent criticisms of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009 and May 26, 2009). Republicans should "play grown-up," she advises, in opposing the Sotomayor nomination, and notes that her background—disadvantaged, Hispanic, female—makes her dangerous to oppose too vehemently: "Politically she's like a beautiful doll containing a canister of poison gas: Break her and you die." Noonan continues: "New York is proud of her; I'm proud of our country and grateful at its insistence, in a time when some say the American dream is dead, that it most certainly is not. The dream is: You can come from any place or condition, any walk of life, and rise to the top, taking your people with you, in your heart and theirs. Maybe that's what they mean by empathy: Where you come from enters you, and you bring it with you as you rise. But if that's what they mean, then we're all empathetic. We're the most fluid society in human history, but no one ever leaves their zip code in America, we all take it with us. It's part of our pride. And it's not bad, it's good." Noonan calls Republicans who launch virulent attacks on her racial heritage or gender "idiots," and writes that instead of "exciting the base," as one Republican strategist has said the attacks will do, "How about excit[ing] a moderate, or interest[ing] an independent? How about gain[ing] the attention of people who aren't already on your side? The base is plenty excited already, as you know if you've ever read a comment thread on a conservative blog.… They don't need to be revved, they're already revved. Newt Gingrich twitters that Judge Sotomayor is a racist (see May 27, 2009). Does anyone believe that? He should rest his dancing thumbs, stop trying to position himself as the choice and voice of the base in 2012, and think.… The choice for Republicans isn't between 'attack' and 'roll over.' It's broader than that, and more interesting. There's a new and fresh opportunity here for Republicans in the Senate to be serious, and, in their seriousness, to be seen and understood in a new light." [Wall Street Journal, 6/1/2009]
Entity Tags: US Supreme Court, Newt Gingrich, Sonia Sotomayor, Peggy Noonan
June 2, 2009: Doctored Photo Shows Supreme Court Nominee in KKK-Like Hood and Robe
A doctored photo of Sotomayor issued by the Council of Conservative Citizens. The robe and hood have been added to the photo, as has the 'raised-fist' logo. [Source: Council of Conservative Citizens / Think Progress]The Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC), a pro-segregation group that the Southern Poverty Law Center has called "brazenly racist," posts a doctored photograph of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009) on its Web site. The altered photograph depicts Sotomayor wearing what appears to be a robe and hood similar to those worn by members of the Ku Klux Klan. The robe has a raised fist and the words "La Raza." Sotomayor is a member of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), a Hispanic civil rights organization which some conservatives have falsely claimed is a racist organization (see May 28, 2009 and May 29, 2009). An NCLR spokesman confirms that the logo in the photograph is not used on any basis by the organization. [Think Progress, 6/2/2009]
Entity Tags: National Council of La Raza, Council of Conservative Citizens, US Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, Southern Poverty Law Center
June 3, 2009: Gingrich: Supreme Court Nominee 'Betray[ed] a Fundamental Principle of the American System,' Equal Justice before the Law
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) writes what appears to be a retraction or withdrawal of his previous accusations that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009) is a racist (see May 27, 2009). He writes that he was reacting to the news of remarks she made during a 2001 speech in which she said a "wise Latina" judge would often make better decisions than a white male (see October 26, 2001), and calls his "initial reaction… perhaps too strong and too direct." Others have criticized his "word choice" in his vilification of Sotomayor, and Gingrich writes, "The word 'racist' should not have been applied to Judge Sotomayor as a person, even if her words themselves are unacceptable (a fact which both President Obama and his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, have since admitted)" (see May 29, 2009). Gingrich then launches an attack on Sotomayor's "judicial impartiality" and accuses her of "a betrayal of a fundamental principle of the American system—that everyone is equal before the law." Gingrich is either unaware of, or ignoring, a recent analysis which disproves the thesis that Sotomayor has systematically exhibited racial bias in her rulings (see May 29, 2009). He calls her a "radical liberal activist" masquerading as a "convention[al] liberal," and lambasts Obama for believing that "judicial impartiality" is "no longer a quality we can and should demand from our Supreme Court justices." [Think Progress, 4/3/2007; Human Events, 6/3/2009] Liberal news and analysis Web site Think Progress notes that Gingrich may not be the most impartial person to weigh in on this issue, having called Spanish "the language of living in the ghetto" and warned of "gay and secular fascism" as an imminent threat to American society. [Think Progress, 4/3/2007; Think Progress, 11/17/2008]
Entity Tags: US Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, Newt Gingrich, Barack Obama, Robert Gibbs, Think Progress (.org)
June 5, 2009: Republican Chairman: 'God Help' White Males in Supreme Court Nominee's Courtroom
Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele implies that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009) has racist tendencies, a week after urging fellow Republicans to stop "slammin' and rammin'" Sotomayor over the issue of race and deal with her nomination on the issues (see May 29, 2009). While guest-hosting William Bennett's radio show, Steele discusses criticisms that have been made of Sotomayor. "[T]he comments that she made that have been played up about, you know, the Latina woman being a better judge than the white male is something that she has said on numerous occasions," Steele tells a caller (see October 26, 2001). "So this was not just the one and only time it was said. They've now found other evidences and other speeches… that she has made mention of this, this fact that her ethnicity, that her cultural background puts her in a different position as a judge to judge your case.… And God help you if you're a white male coming before her bench." A recent analysis of Sotomayor's decisions as a judge in race-based cases proves that she does not discriminate against white plaintiffs (see May 29, 2009). [Think Progress, 6/5/2009] Four days later, Steele will defend his remarks. "Well, that's not inflammatory," he tells a CNN audience. "It's based off of what—the inference that she left and what she said. You know, if you have a judge, where you have a situation where you have—you're going before a trier of fact, and the trier of fact is on record as saying that this individual's background experience is better positioned to make a decision than someone else, that gives one pause. And so my view of it was, in looking at it, you're now segregating out white men by your comments. So, God help you if you're a white male. If you're seeking justice, this may not be the bench you want to go before." [Think Progress, 6/10/2009]
Entity Tags: Republican National Committee, US Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, Michael Steele
June 7, 2009: Gingrich: Supreme Court Nominee a 'Racialist'
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who recently seemed to retract his characterization of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as a "racist" (see May 27, 2009 and June 3, 2009), now calls Sotomayor a "racialist." On CBS News's Face the Nation, Gingrich says: "When I did a Twitter about her, having read what she said, I said that was racist—but I applied it to her as a person. And the truth is I don't know her as a person. It's clear that what she said was racist, and it's clear—or as somebody wrote recently, 'racialist' if you prefer." [Think Progress, 6/7/2009]
Entity Tags: US Supreme Court, Newt Gingrich, Sonia Sotomayor
June 8, 2009: Former First Lady Speaks Well of Supreme Court Nominee
Former First Lady Laura Bush says some positive things about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009). On ABC's Good Morning America, Bush says: "I think she sounds like a very interesting and good nominee.… As a woman, I'm proud there might be another woman on the Court. So we'll see what happens, but I wish her well." [Think Progress, 6/8/2009] Bush's comments stand in contrast to some conservatives' gender-based attacks on Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009, May 28, 2009, and June 5, 2009).
Entity Tags: US Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, Laura Bush
June 10, 2009 and After: White Supremacist Kills Security Guard inside Holocaust Museum; Targeted Jewish White House Official
James von Brunn. [Source: UPI / TPM Muckraker]James von Brunn, an 88-year-old man with a long history of violence and anti-Semitism, opens fire inside Washington's Holocaust Museum. Von Brunn kills a security guard, Stephen T. Johns, before being brought down by fire from other security guards. Von Brunn is hospitalized in critical condition. Von Brunn brought a .22 rifle into the museum and began shooting almost immediately upon entering the building. [WJLA-TV, 6/10/2009; New York Daily News, 6/11/2009] The New York Daily News identifies von Brunn as a "neo-Nazi." [New York Daily News, 6/11/2009]
Targeting Jewish White House Official - Von Brunn has a list of nine locations in his car, including the White House, the US Capitol, and media outlets such as Fox News and the Washington Post. [WJLA-TV, 6/10/2009] A note in a notebook found in the car reads: "You want my weapons, this is how you'll get them. The Holocaust is a lie. Obama was created by Jews. Obama does what his Jew owners tell him to do." In September 2010, the press will learn that von Brunn intended to kill President Obama's senior adviser David Axelrod, a Jew. Von Brunn did not believe he could get to Obama, authorities will later confirm, but he had the "motive, means, and intent" to kill Axelrod, one of Obama's closest aides. Axelrod will be given special Secret Service protection. [Guardian, 6/11/2009; Time, 9/30/2010; TPM Muckraker, 9/30/2010]
Shock, Sadness Mark Reactions - Within hours, President Obama and a number of political and cultural organizations will express their shock and sorrow over the shooting (see June 10-11, 2009).
Long History of Violence, White Supremacist Ties, and Anti-Semitism - Von Brunn maintains a Web site, "holywesternempire.org," described by reporters as "racist [and] anti-Semitic," and is the author of a book, Kill the Best Gentiles, which alleges a Jewish "conspiracy to destroy the white gene pool." Von Brunn served six years in prison for a 1981 attempt to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve Board. (On his Web site, he complained of being convicted by a "Jew/Negro" conspiracy of lawyers and judicial officials.) His Web site alleges that the Holocaust is a hoax, and calls Nazi Germany the "cultural gem of the West." The FBI is investigating the shooting as a possible hate crime or a case of domestic terrorism. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) lists von Brunn's Web site as a hate site. [WJLA-TV, 6/10/2009; NBC New York, 6/11/2009; USA Today, 6/11/2009] "We've been tracking this guy for decades," says SPLC official Heidi Beirich. "He thinks the Jews control the Federal Reserve, the banking system, that basically all Jews are evil." [Associated Press, 6/10/2009] Von Brunn's son, Erik von Brunn, says his father's virulent racism and anti-Semitism has blighted their family for years. In a statement, he writes: "For the extremists who believe my father is a hero: it is imperative you understand what he did was an act of cowardice. His actions have undermined your 'movement,' and strengthened the resistance against your cause. He should not be remembered as a brave man or a hero, but a coward unable to come to grips with the fact he threw his and his families lives away for an ideology that fostered sadness and anguish." [Washington Post, 6/14/2009] Further investigation turns up evidence that Von Brunn has connections to white supremacist organizations and anti-government groups. In 2004, von Brunn stayed for four days in Hayden, Idaho, with Stan Hess, then the representative for white supremacist David Duke's European rights group. Hess recalls von Brunn as being "very angry about society and the Jewish influence at the Federal Reserve." Von Brunn, Hess says, alluded to violence but never spoke specifically about a target. [NBC New York, 6/11/2009; USA Today, 6/11/2009] FBI investigators find a painting of Adolf Hitler and Jesus Christ standing together in von Brunn's home. They also find more firearms, and child pornography on his computer. [MyFoxDC, 6/17/2009; Washington Post, 6/19/2009] Von Brunn also has ties to the far-right, white supremacist British National Party, and had attended meetings of the American Friends of the British National Party. [Guardian, 6/11/2009]
Eradicating Evidence of Support - Within hours of the murder, Web sites featuring von Brunn's work begin removing his material from their pages; some of those sites are operated by organizations whose members had praised and supported von Brunn's white supremacist and anti-Obama statements (see June 10-11, 2009).
Connections to Anti-Obama 'Birther' Movement - Von Brunn has also written about his belief that Obama is at the heart of a conspiracy to cover up his Kenyan citizenship (see October 8-10, 2008). Reporter Ben Smith writes, "The penetration of the birther mythology into the violent fringe has to be a worry for the Secret Service, because at it's heart, it's about denying Obama's legitimacy to hold the office of president." [Politico, 6/10/2009; USA Today, 6/11/2009]
Indicted for Murder, Dies before Trial - Von Brunn will be indicted for first-degree murder in the death of Johns. [Washington Post, 7/29/2009] However, he will die in prison before his trial can commence. [BBC, 1/6/2010]
Entity Tags: British National Party, David Axelrod, James von Brunn, Heidi Beirich, Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Barack Obama, Erik von Brunn, US Holocaust Museum, American Friends of the British National Party, Southern Poverty Law Center, Stephen T. Johns, Stan Hess, US Secret Service
June 12, 2009: Conservative Pundit Prefers 'Old Bigotry' to Affirmative Action in Arguing against Supreme Court Nominee
Conservative author and pundit Pat Buchanan continues the argument that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009) is a product of "affirmative action" (see May 28, 2009, May 29, 2009, and May 31, 2009). "By her own admission, Sotomayor is an 'affirmative action baby,'" Buchanan writes, referring to a panel discussion from the early 1990s where she called herself a "product of affirmative action." Buchanan writes that her stellar academic record, including graduating at the top of her class at both Princeton and Yale, is "a fraud from beginning to end, a testament to Ivy League corruption.… Sotomayor got into Princeton, got her No. 1 ranking, was whisked into Yale Law School and made editor of the Yale Law Review—all because she was a Hispanic woman. And those two Ivy League institutions cheated more deserving students of what they had worked a lifetime to achieve, for reasons of race, gender, or ethnicity. This is bigotry pure and simple. To salve their consciences for past societal sins, the Ivy League is deep into discrimination again, this time with white males as victims rather than as beneficiaries. One prefers the old bigotry. At least it was honest, and not, as Abraham Lincoln observed, adulterated 'with the base alloy of hypocrisy.'" [Human Events, 6/12/2009; Media Matters, 6/14/2009]
Entity Tags: US Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, Patrick Buchanan
June 20, 2009: English-Only Advocates Bash Supreme Court Nominee, Misspell Word on Banner
English-only advocates Pat Buchanan and white nationalist Peter Brimelow standing under misspelled banner. [Source: Think Progress (.org)]Right-wing pundit Pat Buchanan and his organization The American Cause host a conference to discuss how Republicans can regain a political majority. The conference is co-sponsored by a number of white nationalist and white advocacy groups. The conference features a panel discussion supporting English-only initiatives as a way to attract "working-class white Democrats" to the Republican Party, and in the process ridicules Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009) for her use of children's books to study English while she was in college (see May 31, 2009). The panelists also suggest that, without English as the official language of the US, President Obama would force Americans to speak Spanish. The conference's English-only advocates apparently do not notice that the banner hanging over the festivities prominently misspells the word "conference" as "conferenece." [Media Matters, 6/11/2009; Think Progress, 6/22/2009]
Entity Tags: Republican Party, Patrick Buchanan, The American Cause, US Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor
June 24, 2009: Obama Says Medical Costs Can Be Trimmed by Cessation of Unwanted 'Extraordinary Measures' for Terminally Ill Patients
President Obama, in a televised "town hall" event held in the White House to discuss health care reform, suggests that one way to trim medical costs might be to cease performing expensive and futile treatments—"extraordinary measures"—on terminally ill patients who do not want such interventions and would not benefit from them. Currently, doctors who have no particular instructions will perform "extraordinary measures" to stave off a terminally ill patient's death, even for a matter of hours, no matter how intrusive or expensive the procedure. Obama tells his listeners that families need better information so they don't unthinkingly approve "additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care." In some instances, he says, "Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller." He notes the experience of his recently deceased grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given less than nine months to live. When she broke her hip, she and her family had to decide whether to put her through a long, expensive, and painful hip-replacement procedure. "[A]nd the question was, does she get hip replacement surgery, even though she was fragile enough they were not sure how long she would last?" he says. [Los Angeles Times, 6/25/2009] Obama is not advocating that life-extending treatments be forcibly denied to terminally ill or elderly patients (see July 23, 2009 and July 23, 2009), but his remarks will be misconstrued as advocating just such a position (see June 25, 2009, July 10, 2009, July 16, 2009, July 17, 2009, July 21, 2009, July 23, 2009, July 23-24, 2009, and July 24, 2009, July 28, 2009, July 28, 2009, July 28, 2009, July 31, 2009 - August 12, 2009, August 7, 2009, August 10, 2009, Shortly Before August 10, 2009, August 11, 2009, and August 12, 2009).
Entity Tags: Madelyn Dunham, Barack Obama
June 25, 2009: Nigerian-American Conservative: Obama Is an 'African Colonial' Plotting to Become a 'Despot'
L.E. Ikenga, a Nigerian-American woman who has published numerous essays and articles in conservative publications, writes in the conservative blog American Thinker that President Obama holds the African-centric views of his Kenyan father, and has "adopt[ed]… a cultural and political mindset rooted in postcolonial Africa." Ikenga writes: "[D]espite what CNN and the rest are telling you, Barack Obama is nothing more than an old school African colonial who is on his way to turning this country into one of the developing nations that you learn about on the National Geographic Channel. Many conservative (East, West, South, North) African-Americans like myself—those of us who know our history—have seen this movie before." She accuses Obama of conducting a "masquerade" as an American who believes in democracy, when he really identifies with his Kenyan heritage and is "intrinsically undemocratic." His true intentions are those of any "African colonial politician," she writes: "a complete power grab whereby the 'will of the people' becomes completely irrelevant." Ikenga writes that Obama is using the United States to play out his African colonial dreams of power. She bases her assertion on material drawn from his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father, which she calls "an eloquent piece of political propaganda." In Ikenga's reading of the book, Obama "clearly sees himself as an African, not as a black American," which she says he proved by actually going to Kenya to visit the homeland of his father. This visit, she says, "provides the main clue for understanding Barack Obama." She concludes by warning that "the African colonial who is given too much political power can only become one thing: a despot." [Fresh Conservative, 2009; L.E. Ikenga, 6/25/2009] The next day, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh will read extensively from Ikenga's article, which he calls "a special piece." He concludes that Obama is "more African in his roots than he is American," and declares: "[Obama] wants to turn this into a third world country.… The only way to try to do this is to just attack the private sector and deplete it of its resources, of its money, of its capital, which is exactly what he is doing.… We've elected somebody who is more African in his roots than he is American, loves his father who is a Marxist, and is behaving like an African colonial despot." [Media Matters, 6/26/2009]
Entity Tags: L.E. Ikenga, Barack Obama, Rush Limbaugh
June 29, 2009: Beck: Obama Hates British Due to Kenyan Grandfather's Mistreatment by British in 1950s
The bust of Winston Churchill, loaned to the White House by the British government. [Source: WorldMeets (.us)]Conservative radio host Glenn Beck tells his listeners that President Obama recently returned a bust of Winston Churchill to Great Britain because of his secret hatred of the British. Britain gave President Bush a bust of Churchill to display in the Oval Office during his term of office. In February 2009, Obama returned the bust and replaced it with a bust of President Abraham Lincoln; he added a bust of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to the display. At the time, London's Daily Telegraph reported that the bust had only been lent to the White House: according to the British Embassy, it had been "uniquely lent to a foreign head of state, President George W. Bush," not given in perpetuity to the US government. A British Embassy spokesman told the Telegraph: "The bust of Sir Winston Churchill by Sir Jacob Epstein was uniquely lent to a foreign head of state, President George W. Bush, from the Government Art Collection in the wake of 9/11 as a signal of the strong transatlantic relationship. It was lent for the first term of office of President Bush. When the president was elected for his second and final term, the loan was extended until January 2009. The new president has decided not to continue this loan and the bust has now been returned. It is on display at the ambassador's residence." The White House curator, William Allman, said at the time, "It was already scheduled to go back." However, Beck explains that Obama returned the bust because he harbors a secret hatred for the British. Beck tells his listeners that Obama's paternal grandfather, a Kenyan, was tortured by the British during the Mau Mau Uprising in the 1950s, and that is the source of Obama's supposed hatred. Beck presents no other evidence that Obama holds any sort of grudge or negative feelings towards the British, and ignores the fact that the Churchill bust had been slated to be returned to Britain at the end of Bush's second term. Beck also fails to inform his listeners that Obama keeps a British treasure on his desk: a wooden penholder made from wood taken from a British sailing ship and given to him by former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Instead, Beck tells his listeners: "Why does Obama harbor animosity towards the British?… A listener called me this morning. Said he had found information about Barack Obama's grandfather in an old Irish newspaper but couldn't verify it. I said okay, what is it? We looked into it. The information, took us about 20 minutes to find. It was out there, but until today I never heard about this information, and I'm kind of in the Barack Obama business, you know what I mean? I don't think you have. Maybe you have. What puts you in a position to act unexplainably in weird ways toward the ally? Something must have happened in your life and maybe this is a part of it." The news report apparently carried an account from Obama's Kenyan step-grandmother, who told of her husband being tortured by British soldiers during the 1950s. In light of this information, Beck says it "sure makes sense" that Obama would hate the British, and adds that if it had been his grandfather who was mistreated, "I certainly wouldn't want someone like me dealing with longtime allies." [Daily Telegraph, 2/14/2009; Associated Press, 1/5/2010; Media Matters, 6/29/2010] Beck is echoing themes advanced by a Nigerian-American conservative in a recent Internet publication, who claimed that Obama is secretly an "African colonial" (see June 25, 2009).
Entity Tags: Glenn Beck, George W. Bush, William Allman, Barack Obama
June 30, 2009: House Member Faces Charges that 'Dead Baby Juice' Used to Create Diseases, 'Socialized Medicine' Will Destroy America
Moderate Republican House member Mike Castle (R-DE) faces a raucous band of angry conservative protesters at one of his "health care listening tour" meetings. Castle, who is one of eight Republicans to join the Democratic majority in voting for the American Clean Energy and Security Act, is challenged by a full range of accusations and conspiracy theories, some ranging far afield from health care reform and energy policy.
'Socialized Medicine' Worse than 9/11 - Some audience members accuse Castle of supporting "socialized medicine." One member shouts, "I don't have the answers for how to fix the broken pieces of our health care system, but I know darn well if we let the government bring in socialized medicine, it will destroy this thing faster than the twin towers came down."
'Cap and Trade' Tax Will Destroy Economy - One audience member shouts that the proposed "cap and trade" tax on pollutants will destroy the US economy. "Do you have any idea what that cap and trade tax thing, bill that you passed is going to do to the Suffolk County poultry industry?" the member says. "That's how chicken houses are heated, with propane. It outputs CO2. I mean, I'm outputting CO2 right now as I speak. Trees need CO2 to make oxygen! You can't tax that!"
Global Warming a 'Hoax' - Many audience members respond with cheers and chants to expressions that global warming is a hoax. "I'm actually hopeful that this vote that you made was a vote to put you out of office," one says to a barrage of applause and cheers. "You know, on this energy thing, I showed you, I had in my email to you numerous times there are petitions signed by 31,000 scientists that that know and have facts that CO2 emissions have nothing to do and the greenhouse effect has nothing to do with global warming. It's all a hoax! [Applause.] First of all, I cannot for the life of me understand how you could have been one of the eight Republican traitors!" Another audience member says that global warming is "still a theory, so is Darwin's theory of evolution! And yet we have the audacity to say global warming is accurate, it's more than a theory? How about how cold it's been this spring. Personal data, data shows that since 1998 average temperatures have been cooling!"
'Dead Baby Juice' Used to Create AIDS, Swine Flu - Some audience members believe that AIDS and the H1N1 "swine flu" epidemic are part of a conspiracy to kill Americans, using "dead baby juice." "The virus was built and created in Fort Dix, a small bioweapons plant outside of Fort Dix," one audience member asserts. "This was engineered. This thing didn't just crop up in a cave or a swine farm. This thing was engineered, the virus. Pasteur International, one of the big vaccine companies in Chicago, has been caught sending AIDS-infected vaccines to Africa. Do you think I trust—I don't trust you with anything. You think I'm going to trust you to put a needle full of dead baby juice and monkey kidneys? Cause that's what this stuff is grown on, dead babies!"
Obama a Kenyan - One audience members wins a round of applause by asserting that President Obama is not an American citizen. "Congressman Castle, I want to know," she shouts. "I have a birth certificate here from the United States of America saying I'm an American citizen, with a seal on it. Signed by a doctor, with a hospital administrator's name, my parents, the date of birth, the time, the date. I want to go back to January 20th and I want to know why are you people ignoring his birth certificate? He is not an American citizen! He is a citizen of Kenya!"
Protests Organized by Conservative Lobbying Organizations - According to liberal news and advocacy site Think Progress, Castle and other moderate Republicans are facing orchestrated attacks on their energy and health care policies by conservative lobbying firms and right-wing talk show hosts. Lobbying organizations such as Americans for Prosperity (AFP—see May 29, 2009) have tarred Castle and other moderate Republicans as "cap and traitors," joined by members of Fox News host Glenn Beck's "9-12" organization (see March 13, 2009 and After) and exhorted by pronouncements from Beck, fellow talk show host Rush Limbaugh, the Web site Prison Planet, and others. [Think Progress, 7/21/2009]
Entity Tags: 9/12 Project, American Clean Energy and Security Act, Fox News, Glenn Beck, Barack Obama, Rush Limbaugh, Mike Castle, Pasteur International, Prison Planet (.com), Americans for Prosperity
July 8, 2009: Fox News Host Decries Americans' Lack of 'Pure Genes,' Cites Intermarriage with 'Other Species and Other Ethnics'
Brian Kilmeade, co-host of Fox News's morning show Fox & Friends, during a discussion of marriage practices in Sweden and Finland, says that Americans don't have "pure genes" like Swedes because "we keep marrying other species and other ethnics." [Media Matters, 7/8/2009; Media Matters, 7/20/2009] Two weeks later, Kilmeade will apologize for his remark, calling it "offensive to many people" and "inappropriate." America is a "huge melting pot," he says, "and that's what makes us such a great country." [Media Matters, 7/20/2009]
Entity Tags: Fox News, Brian Kilmeade
July 16, 2009: Conservative Pundit: 'Affirmative Action' Latina Judge Should Not Be Confirmed to US Supreme Court Because America Is 'a Country Built Basically by White Folks'
Rachel Maddow and Pat Buchanan, during their discussion of Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court. [Source: MSNBC / Crooks and Liars]As the Senate readies to vote for or against Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court (see August 6, 2009), conservative commentator and author Pat Buchanan attempts to explain why he feels Sotomayor should not be confirmed.
Affirmative Action Accusation - Buchanan, interviewed by MSNBC's progressive host Rachel Maddow, has accused Sotomayor of being an "affirmative action" selection for the bench (see May 28, 2009, May 31, 2009, June 12, 2009, and June 20, 2009) who uses her position to "discriminate against white males." As evidence of his claim, he says: "I do believe she's an affirmative action appointment by the president of the United States. He eliminated everyone but four women and then he picked the Hispanic." Maddow asks him to define affirmative action, and Buchanan replies, "Affirmative action is to increase diversity by discriminating against white males." After citing four court cases, he adds: "[A]ffirmative action is basically reverse discrimination against white males and it's as wrong as discrimination against black females and Hispanics and others. And that's why I oppose it."
White People Built America, Buchanan Says - In her turn, Maddow asks, "Why do you think is that of the 110 Supreme Court justices we've had in this country, 108 of them have been white?" to which Buchanan responds: "Well, I think white men were 100 percent of the people that wrote the Constitution, 100 percent of the people that signed the Declaration of Independence, 100 percent of people who died at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Probably close to 100 percent of the people who died at Normandy. This has been a country built basically by white folks in this country who are 90 percent of the entire nation—in 1960, when I was growing up, Rachel—and the other 10 percent were African-American who had been discriminated against. That's why." Maddow asks if he believes "there are 108 of 110 white Supreme Court justices because white people essentially deserve to have 99.5 percent of those positions? That there's nothing—that doesn't reflect any sort of barrier to those positions by people who aren't white. You think that's what they've—you think that's just purely on the basis of what white people have deserved to get?"
Back to Affirmative Action - Buchanan shifts his argument and asserts that the Supreme Court should have the nine finest legal minds and scholars, regardless of race or gender. "But this one doesn't have that. She was appointed because she's a Latina, a Hispanic, and a woman." Maddow counters with Sotomayor's extensive experience, saying: "She is also the judicial nominee who has more judging experience than any judge has gone up in, say, in the past, I don't know, what is it, 70 years? She has been an appellate court judge of some distinction for a lot longer than [Chief Justice John] Roberts was, [Justice Samuel] Alito was. I mean, it's not like she was—she was picked out… she was like picked out of the minor leagues and brought up here, Pat." Buchanan returns to his affirmative action argument, noting that Sotomayor agreed that she was granted admission to Princeton University because of the program. Buchanan goes farther, accusing her of receiving preferential treatment for all of her accomplishments, including her stint on the Yale Law Review and her appointment to the federal bench. Maddow, battling through Buchanan's attempts to interrupt her, defends the affirmative action program, saying: "[W]hat our country needs is to be able to choose from the largest possible pool of talent in order to be able to pick the people who are going to have to function at the highest levels so that our country can compete and our country to do all the hard things we need do, I would hope that you would see that picking 108 out of 110 white justices… to the Supreme Court means that other people aren't actually being appropriately considered. And the reason that you have affirmative action is that you recognize that the fact that people were discriminated against for hundreds of years in this country means that you sort of gained the system, unless you give other people a leg up." She continues, "But, Pat, for you to argue that there's no basis on which the United States benefits… from having Hispanics be among the people who we choose the best and brightest from defies belief.… The idea that you think we'll best serve by only choosing among 99.9 percent white people.… [W]hen I look at the United States Supreme Court and I see 108 out of 110 white people, I see 108 out of 110 men. I'm—I don't look at that and think, 'God, white guys are naturally better at this type of work than other people who aren't getting these jobs.' I don't think that way.… I want to hear you—I would love to hear your answer as to whether or not you think that is what explains it, too. Because, I think, what the more obvious explanation is, is that you have to be a white guy in order to get considered for these jobs and has been true since the dawn of time in this country.… That's starting to break up now so that we can tap a bigger pool of talent. You should be happy about that for your country, Pat." Buchanan counters that whites "are victims of this evil affirmative action policy which says in effect that everybody's covered by the 14th Amendment and the civil rights laws unless you're a white male and your parents and ancestors came from Europe. Then we can discriminate against you. That's what I am against."
Stirring 'Up Racial Animus' - Countering Buchanan's accusations of reverse racism, Maddow says: "Pat, I couldn't disagree with you more. I tribute—I credit you sticking to your gun. I think you're absolutely wrong about this and I think that by advocating that the Republican Party try to stir up racial animus among white voters.… You're dating yourself." Buchanan says that the government should "defend the legitimate rights of white working-class folks who are the victims of discrimination, because that's the right thing to do and because it's the politically right thing to do." Maddow concludes: "A lot of things divide us, Pat. Race is one of those. But there's a lot of other ways in which we just gratify as a country, and for you to privilege race and say that what we really need to make sure we tap, politically, is white people's racial grievances, you're playing with fire and you're dating yourself. You're living in the 1950s, Pat." [MSNBC, 7/17/2009]
Entity Tags: Samuel Alito, Patrick Buchanan, John G. Roberts, Jr, Rachel Maddow, Sonia Sotomayor, US Supreme Court
July 17, 2009: Conservative Radio Hosts: Health Care Reform Will Encourage 'Inconvenient People' to Die Sooner
Laura Ingraham. [Source: Pat Dollard]Fox News and radio talk show host Sean Hannity tells his radio audience of the op-ed published in the morning's New York Post by health industry lobbyist Betsy McCaughey, claiming that the Democrats' health care reform proposal would result in senior citizens being advised to end their lives prematurely (see July 16, 2009). Hannity says: "[I]t sounds to me like they're actually encouraging seniors in the end, 'Well, you may just want to consider packing it all in here, this is—' what other way is there to describe this?… So that they don't become a financial burden on the Obamacare system? I mean that's how they intend to cut cost, by cutting down on the health care we can give and get at the end of our lives and dramatically cutting it down for senior citizens? You know, welcome to the brave new world of Obamacare. We're going to encourage, you know, inconvenient people to consider 'alternatives to living.'" The same day, conservative radio host Laura Ingraham tells her listeners: "Can you imagine—if I were doing Saturday Night Live, like, if I were producing it this weekend, and I was going to be fair about political humor, I would have a hospice chute—like a door, a trap door that goes into a chute where the elderly would just walk up—'Oh, my hip hurts.' And all of a sudden you see this leg kicking granny down the chute, and that's Obamacare." She continues by making a veiled reference to Nazi concentration camps: "[S]ome will call them death camps, but this is the way Obamacare is gonna go for America." And on the same day, conservative radio hosts Jim Quinn and Rose Tennent echo Hannity and Ingraham's claims. Quinn says, "[T]here's a drop dead date, you should pardon the expression but a lot of us are going to—" Tennent interjects, "Are going to drop dead, yeah." Quinn then adds, "For heaven's sakes, this is the death-to-old-people plan." [Media Matters, 7/17/2009]
Entity Tags: Laura Ingraham, Elizabeth ("Betsy") McCaughey, Fox News, Jim Quinn, Sean Hannity, New York Post, Rose Tennent
July 21, 2009: Conservative Author Claims 'Islamist Radical' Engineered Obama's Harvard Acceptance
Author Jerome Corsi, who has made a number of disproven and debunked claims concerning President Obama's citizenship (see August 1, 2008 and After, August 15, 2008, October 8, 2008, and October 9, 2008), now claims that he has "proof" Obama's attendance and exemplary performance at Harvard Law School were engineered by a Saudi prince through the auspices of an African-American Muslim radical. He points to Obama's decision not to release his college transcripts as circumstantial evidence (see September 11, 2008), saying that decision "prevents resolution of a continuing controversy over whether radical Islamic influences promoted his admission and financed his legal education there." The "continuing controversy" centers on a lawyer named Percy Sutton, who claims that Islamic radical Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour, "one of the world's wealthiest men," asked him to write a letter of recommendation to Harvard Law School for then relatively unknown Barack Obama. Sutton says al-Mansour, a Saudi citizen, introduced him to Obama, and says al-Mansour was raising money for Obama to attend Harvard. Sutton says al-Mansour was a "principal adviser" to Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who, Sutton says, actually engineered Obama's acceptance to Harvard. According to Sutton, he was told in a letter from al-Mansour: "There's a young man that has applied to Harvard. I know that you have a few friends left there because you used to go up there to speak. Would you please write a letter in support of him?" Sutton says he did write the letter, and told friends at Harvard, "I thought there was going to be a genius that was going to be available and I certainly hoped they would treat him kindly." The Obama campaign denied the story during the 2008 presidential campaign. Sutton, who is in his 80s and apparently suffers from some sort of senile dementia or memory loss that precludes him being contacted by Corsi or other members of the press, has made his allegations in a YouTube video that Corsi cites as his "proof." In 2008, Politico reporter Ben Smith contacted al-Mansour, who confirmed Sutton was "a dear friend, his health is not good" and said he's sure Sutton wrote a letter for someone else, "and he got it confused." Corsi has requested that the White House release all of Obama's law school records to "resolve the issue." Al-Mansour, Corsi claims, was originally Don Warden, a member of the 1960s Black Panthers. [WorldNetDaily, 7/21/2009]
Entity Tags: Percy Sutton, Alwaleed bin Talal, Barack Obama, Jerome Corsi, Ben Smith, Harvard University Law School, Don Warden, Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour
July 23, 2009: Beck: Obama Colluding with Labor Union, Community Organization to Create 'Modern-Day Slave State'
Conservative radio host Glenn Beck accuses the Obama administration of colluding with ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) and SEIU (the Service Employees International Union) to construct a "modern-day slave state" in the US. Beck tells his listeners: "So, now, inside the health care bill is an organization where your tax dollars are going to go to go find information out about minority health. It creates a group of slaves to the government—a group of people working for the government—most likely minorities, working for the government, under the auspices of community organizers, going door to door to find out information about people's health. This is a modern-day slave state that is being created." [Media Matters, 7/23/2009]
Entity Tags: Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, Obama administration, Service Employees International Union, Glenn Beck
July 24, 2009: Republican Lawmaker Joins Radical in Accusing Obama of Implementing 'Eugenics,' Nazi-Like 'Youth Brigades'
Rep. Louis Gohmert. [Source: Associated Press / Washington Blade]Representative Louis Gohmert (R-TX) lays out a skein of theories on radical radio host Alex Jones's broadcast. During his interview with Jones, Gohmert accuses the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats of trying to implement socialism and kill senior citizens; Jones and Gohmert compare Obama to a number of foreign despots. Gohmert tells Jones and his listeners: "We've been battling this socialist health care, the nationalization of health care, that is going to absolutely kill senior citizens. They'll put them on lists and force them to die early because they won't get the treatment as early as they need.… I would rather stop this socialization of health care because once the government pays for your health care, they have every right to tell you what you eat, what you drink, how you exercise, where you live.… But if we're going to pay 700 million dollars like we voted last Friday to put condoms on wild horses, and I know it just says an un-permanent enhanced contraception whatever the heck that is. I guess it follows that they're eventually get around to doing it to us." Gohmert is echoing claims by Republican lawmakers and industry lobbyists that the Democrats' health care reform proposal will kill senior citizens (see November 23, 2008, January 27, 2009, February 9, 2009, February 11, 2009, February 18, 2009, May 13, 2009, June 24, 2009, June 25, 2009, July 10, 2009, July 16, 2009, July 17, 2009, July 21, 2009, July 23, 2009, July 23, 2009, July 23, 2009, and July 23-24, 2009). Jones ups the ante by accusing the White House "science czar" of planning to "put… stuff in the water to sterilize us," and then goes on to accuse the White House of, among other things, implementing a "eugenics control grid over us" and implementing "youth brigades, national service compulsory in a group outside the military under the Democratic Party control in the city year in the red and black uniforms." Gohmert agrees with Jones, and says these kinds of policies were "done in the 1930s," a plain reference to Nazi Germany, "and it's not the only place its been done. It has been done throughout history." Jones says, "Mao did it," referring to Communist China's Mao Zedong. Gohmert agrees: "Well, that's exactly what I was thinking of. This is the kind of the thing we got to stop. We got to get back to the roots, the basics." Gohmert praises Jones for his rhetoric and accusations: "That shows how on top of things you are, Alex." For his part, Jones effusively thanks Gohmert and reminds him that "you're there fighting and we're supporting you." [Think Progress, 7/27/2009] Progressive MSNBC host Rachel Maddow says of Gohmert and Jones: "You know, the Democrats may be fighting it out about whether they're going to be beholden to the insurance companies and whether there's going to be a public option in health care reform. But when it comes to the Republicans, this is the kind of thing they are bringing to the table: Hitler, Mao, and secret plots to kill old people." [MSNBC, 7/29/2009]
Entity Tags: William Jefferson ("Bill") Clinton, Richard Poplawski, Obama administration, Alex Jones, Louis Gohmert, Mao Zedong, Think Progress (.org), Rachel Maddow
July 27, 2009: Beck: Obama Has 'Real Issues with Race'; Guest Says Obama's 'Feelings about White America Are Coming Forward Again'
Fox News host Glenn Beck accuses President Obama of "hav[ing] real issues with race." Beck, discussing the matter with psychiatrist and regular Fox contributor Keith Ablow, says of Obama, "I just see this ACORN [Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a citizen advocacy group accused of mismanaging funds and promoting prostitution by conservatives] thing and also the thing at the White House as a sign—this guy has real issues with race, real issues." Ablow responds, in part, "I think we get a transparent president in this case whose feelings about white America are coming forward again." Beck adds, "I think he's one of the more arrogant people I have ever witnessed in the office." [Media Matters, 7/27/2009] During the same broadcast, Beck says: "We have demonstrated President Obama's desire for racial justice, but how is he setting out to achieve it? Exactly the way a community organizer would: through intimidation, vilification, bullying, a system, an underground shell game." [Media Matters, 7/27/2009] The next day, Beck will accuse Obama of being a "racist" with a "deep-seated hatred of white people" (see July 28-29, 2009).
Entity Tags: Keith Ablow, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, Barack Obama, Glenn Beck
July 28, 2009: Doctor Resigns after E-mailing Racist Picture of Obama
MacKilip's altered photograph of Obama as a witch doctor. [Source: TPM Muckraker]Dr. David McKalip, a neurosurgeon, resigns as president-elect of the Pinellas County (Florida) Medical Association after circulating a graphic of President Obama dressed as a witch doctor with a bone through his nose. On July 23, he sent the graphic as an e-mail with the heading "Funny stuff," and said that he thought the artist who created the graphic "was expressing concerns that the health care proposals [made by President Obama] would make the quality of medical care worse in our country." McKalip is an outspoken opponent of the White House's proposed health care reform package. He later apologized and denied he is a racist, and called the graphic merely a "satire." In an e-mail to the members of the association, he writes, "For now, in the interest of protecting this movement from any collateral damage, I am withdrawing from making media appearances on health system reform." But in an e-mail to fellow anti-reform protesters, he writes: "Here they come. The first of what likely will be many e-mails accusing me of being a rascist [sic] for forwarding this e-mail of Obama as a witch doctor. Almost like Hillary [Clinton] and the Obama photo form [sic] the presidential campaign.… This may be worth doing a story on about how these ultra-liberal groups like to race bait and avoid the issue.… Lesson learned: Any attempt to discuss politics will lead to a race-baiting war.… Don't let them bait you. I will choose to ignore them and always talk about the issues." In a previous e-mail defending his choice to send the Obama picture, McKalip cited his participation in a "career counseling day several years ago for African-American Boy Scouts." [TPM Muckraker, 7/23/2009; Connexion, 7/28/2009] After learning of McKalip's action, the association called the e-mail "inflammatory," said it "denounced" McKalip's act, demanded a public apology, and called itself "appalled by the statements and act" of McKalip. [Pinellas County Medical Association, 7/24/2009]
Entity Tags: Pinellas County Medical Association, David McKalip
July 29, 2009: Fox News Host Criticizes CNN Host for Promoting 'Birther' Theory
Fox News host Bill O'Reilly provides harsh criticism towards CNN talk show host Lou Dobbs for promoting the "birther" conspiracy theory, which claims that President Obama is not a US citizen (see July 20, 2008, August 15, 2008, October 8-10, 2008, October 16, 2008 and After, November 10, 2008, and December 3, 2008). O'Reilly says he and his staff have investigated the claims and found them groundless. He questions Dobbs's choice to continue promoting the idea on his show, but in an interview with the Southern Poverty Law Center's Richard Cohen, defends Dobbs's right to make the statements. O'Reilly says: "That theory has been around for a while. The Factor [O'Reilly's talk show The O'Reilly Factor] investigated, found out it's bogus. But Mr. Dobbs is still engaged.… Again, we found out that President Obama was born in Hawaii… we were sent the documents. And what are you gonna do? I don't know why it's still around." When Cohen says that CNN should remove Dobbs from the airwaves, O'Reilly disagrees, saying: "Why are you guys overreacting?… It's not true. Mr. Dobbs is, is trying to get ratings, trying to be provocative." Cohen calls O'Reilly's explanation a "poor excuse" and accuses Dobbs of "trading in right-wing baseless conspiracies for years." [Huffington Post, 7/27/2009]
Entity Tags: Barack Obama, Richard Cohen, Lou Dobbs, Bill O'Reilly
(July 30, 2009) and After: Anti-Reformers Claim Government Would Have 'Direct Access' to Americans' Bank Accounts
Anti-health care reform proponents claim that the Democrats' reform package will allow the government direct access to US citizens' bank accounts. In some variants of the claim, the government will steal money from those accounts to fund the reform package. The claim is quickly disproven.
From an E-mailed 'Clearinghouse of Bad Information' - Apparently the claim originates in a "chain e-mail" sent out by an anonymous anti-reformer. The e-mail, which references its claims by page numbers from HR 3200, the pending House version of the reform legislation, is characterized by the St. Petersburg Times's "PolitiFact" team as a hugely long e-mail that they call "a clearinghouse of bad information circulating around the Web about proposed health care changes." The e-mail is apparently based in part on the work of Peter Fleckenstein, who sends frequent and regular commentaries on Twitter under the name "Fleckman," and posts his analyses on his blog. Fleckenstein identifies his Twitter comments with the tag #tcot, which stands for "top conservatives on Twitter." A health care analyst with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, Jennifer Tolbert, calls the e-mail "awful.… It's flat-out, blatant lies. It's unbelievable to me how they can claim to reference the legislation and then make claims that are blatantly false." Tolbert is particularly offended by the e-mail's claim that ordinary citizens will suffer a lack of health care in order to provide free care for illegal immigrants. Many of the e-mail's other claims are equally wrong.
Based on Provision for Electronic Health Records - The claim that "[t]he federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer" is based on a portion of the legislation that provides for electronic health records, including the enabling of "electronic funds transfers in order to allow automated reconciliation" between payment and billing. However, the government will not have access to citizens' bank accounts and will not be able to make unauthorized withdrawals. [St. Petersburg Times, 7/30/2009; TPM Muckraker, 8/11/2009]
Quick Promulgation - However, the lie quickly makes the rounds of conservative anti-reformers. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh cites the false claim numerous times on his radio broadcast; on August 6, he calls the program "[d]irect deposit access to every individual's bank account," and says: "That is in the House bill. You think that's the worst thing in it. I'm not arguing with you, but there are things that are a greater abomination than that. I mean, this bill determines, the government's going to determine who lives and dies. They are going to fund abortions and they are going to be for euthanasia on the back end" (see November 23, 2008, January 27, 2009, February 9, 2009, February 11, 2009, February 18, 2009, May 13, 2009, June 24, 2009, June 25, 2009, July 10, 2009, July 16, 2009, July 17, 2009, July 21, 2009, July 23, 2009, July 23, 2009, July 23, 2009, July 23-24, 2009, July 24, 2009, July 28, 2009, July 28, 2009, July 28, 2009, July 31, 2009 - August 12, 2009, August 6, 2009, August 7, 2009, August 10, 2009, and August 10, 2009). On a local conservative radio show in early August, Representatative John Shadegg (R-AZ) calls the supposed provision "pretty Orwellian." On August 11, a participant in a "town hall" forum hosted by Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) asks about the claim. [KFYI, 8/2009; Rush Limbaugh, 8/6/2009; TPM Muckraker, 8/11/2009]
Similar to Automatic Bill Payment - Progressive media watchdog Web site Media Matters notes: "[I]f you're paying back a student loan from the government (like we are) and you've set up automatic bill pay online, this is the same thing. Completely uncontroversial, and totally not scary—unless if you're trying to fearmonger." [Media Matters, 8/6/2009]
Entity Tags: John Shadegg, Media Matters, Arlen Specter, Rush Limbaugh, St. Petersburg Times, Jennifer Tolbert, Peter Fleckenstein
July 31, 2009: Progressive Author Blames Media Pundit, Health Industry Lobbyist for Much of Misinformation Clouding Health Care Reform Debate
Progressive author and columnist Joe Conason writes that if the Democrats' attempt to reform health care fails, "much of the blame rests on our political culture's empowerment of deception and ignorance. Fake erudition is revered, every hoax is deemed brilliant, and prejudice is presented as knowledge—while actual expertise is disregarded or devalued." Conason points to two conservative commentators as primary founts of destructive misinformation: neoconservative publisher and cable news pundit William Kristol, and health industry lobbyist Betsy McCaughey (see January 27, 2009, February 9, 2009, February 11, 2009, February 18, 2009, July 16, 2009, and July 23-24, 2009), whom Conason names as "the right-wing celebrities who worked so hard to kill the Clinton reform plan" in 1994 (see Mid-January - February 4, 1994). Conason labels McCaughey as "the source of the 'elderly euthanasia' hoax now circulating on the Internet, talk radio, and in right-wing media, which claims that Democratic health bills will force old, ill Medicare recipients into making plans for their own deaths" (see July 28, 2009). A thorough debunking of her claims by a variety of Congressional and media sources (see July 23, 2009, July 23, 2009, and Late July, 2009) has done little to derail the impact on the media, and on the citizenry, that McCaughey's claims are having. McCaughey's falsehoods are being heavily, and effectively, promoted by Kristol and other conservative pundits (see July 17, 2009) on Fox News and other media outlets. Conason notes that Kristol, interviewed by Jon Stewart of The Daily Show, admitted that the government provides "first-class" healthcare to American soldiers and senior citizens (in the form of the Veterans Administration and Medicare) before trying, and failing, to back away from the admission. [Salon, 7/31/2009]
Entity Tags: Joe Conason, Clinton administration, Jon Stewart, Elizabeth ("Betsy") McCaughey, William Kristol, Fox News
August 1-4, 2009: Conservative Lawyer Produces Forged Birth Certificate 'Proving' Obama Born in Mombasa, Kenya
The fraudulent birth certificate presented by California lawyer Orly Taitz 'proving' that Barack Obama was born in a Kenyan hospital. [Source: Snopes (.com)]California attorney Orly Taitz posts an image of what she says is President Obama's "true" birth certificate, this one issued in Kenya (see June 13, 2008). Taitz then files a motion in federal court to prove its authenticity. The conservative news blog WorldNetDaily (WND) quickly publishes an article repeating Taitz's claim. WND notes that the Kenyan document lists Obama's parents as "Barack Hussein Obama and Stanley Ann Obama, formerly Stanley Ann Dunham." The birth date is August 4, 1961, and the hospital of birth is Coast General Hospital in Mombasa, Kenya. The document lists no attending doctor. It does list the signature of the deputy registrar of Coast Province, Joshua Simon Oduya. According to the document, it was issued as a certified copy of the original in February 1964. WND claims that it has compared the Taitz document to other Kenyan birth certificates, and, it concludes, "the form of the documents appear to be identical." WND admits that other fraudulent Kenyan birth certificates have recently been posted on the Internet, but, it says, "[t]he new document released by Taitz bears none of the obvious traits of a hoax." Critics note that the Taitz document was certified as being issued by the Republic of Kenya on February 17, 1964, though the Republic of Kenya did not come into existence until December 1964. However, WND says, "Kenya's official independence was in 1963, and any number of labels could have been applied to government documents during that time period." According to WND, Taitz says she received the document "from an anonymous source who doesn't want his name known because 'he's afraid for his life.'" Taitz's court filing, in the US District Court for the Central District of California, requests the purported evidence of Obama's birth—both the alleged birth certificate and foreign records not yet obtained—be preserved from destruction, asks for permission to legally request documents from Kenya, and seeks a subpoena for deposition from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Taitz tells WND: "I filed the motion with the court asking for expedited discovery, which would allow me to start subpoenas and depositions even before Obama and the government responds. I am asking the judge to give me the power to subpoena the documents from the Kenyan embassy and to require a deposition from Hillary Clinton so they will be forced to authenticate [the birth certificate]. I'm forcing the issue, where Obama will have to respond.… Before, they said, 'You don't have anything backing your claims.' Now I have something. In fact, I have posted on the Internet more than Obama has (see June 13, 2008). My birth certificate actually has signatures." Taitz says she plans to file more documents with the court in the following days. [St. Petersburg Times, 8/2/2009; WorldNetDaily, 8/2/2009]
Forgery - PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, asks for clarification from Salim Lone, the spokesman for Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga. Lone says via email: "It's a forgery. Kenya only became a republic in December, 1964. Other arguments could also be marshaled, but they are not needed." Blogger Steve Eddy then finds a nearly-identical document on the Internet using Google Search, posted on a genealogy Web site by an Australian, David Jeffrey Bomford. Eddy compares the two and, according to PolitiFact: "Same format. Same book and page number in the birth registry. Some of the officials' last names were even the same." Eddy tells PolitiFact, "At that point, it was pretty obvious the Kenyan one was a fake, that someone had used this real one from Australia to make their version." An ABC affiliate in Australia asks Bomford, a public service clerk in Adelaide, about the controversy, and Bomford replies: "That is ridiculous. Little old person in Adelaide, the president of the United States. I don't know whether to laugh about it or not, be worried about it." Bomford says he had nothing to do with the hoax. "It's little old me and my mum and everything else up there," he says. The birth certificate he posted online is his own, he says. "Oh, I definitely confirm that the birth certificate was mine. That was quite easy to see—my address, even the style of the birth certificate was an old South Australian one. So it's quite easy to identify that it's mine.… It's definitely a copy of my certificate. It's so laughable it's ridiculous." [St. Petersburg Times, 8/2/2009] The Washington Independent's David Weigel notes , "The image is part of the extremely ill-informed conspiracy theory that Obama was born in Mombasa—conveniently, one of the more Muslim parts of the country." The Obama family lives in an entirely different part of Kenya, over a thousand miles from Mombasa. Moreover, at the time of Obama's birth, Mombasa was not a part of Kenya, but part of Zanzibar. [Washington Independent, 8/3/2009]
Rebuttal - Taitz posts on her Web site that Bomford's certificate, not her own, is the fake, and says Bomford or someone else altered that certificate from the "original" Obama certificate to discredit her. Eddy says of Taitz's claim, "There's no reasoning with some of these people." A blogger from "Obama Not Qualified" writes a long screed detailing his or her belief that the Taitz document is real, though noting his or her belief that the photo Taitz originally posted may not be real, and giving a step-by-step walkthrough of how to create a falsified document. PolitiFact receives a response from Val Edyvean, registrar of births, deaths and marriages for South Australia, saying: "It appears that a South Australian loaded an image of his own birth certificate onto a family history Web site and that the format was used by others to 'create' a document which purported to be a Kenyan birth certificate for Barack Obama. As the South Australian man has now removed this image, and the date of his birth is in the period of certificates which are restricted from public access, I do not intend to add to speculation by commenting on details of either that certificate or any aspects of it." [Obama Not Qualified, 2008; St. Petersburg Times, 8/2/2009]
Conclusion - WND publisher Joseph Farah publishes a column expressing his feeling that the Taitz certificate is "probably" a forgery, and claims that WND never made any assertion of its validity. (Farah also says that the State of Hawaii has "steadfastly refused" to state that the birth certificate posted by the Obama campaign in 2008 is valid, a false statement—see October 30, 2008 and July 28, 2009). "The Kenyan document could be real. I haven't seen a single disqualifying error pointed out in the last 24 hours. But I still strongly suspect it is not," he writes. Instead, he says, WND posted the certificate and the accompanying article so that it could be fact-checked. He then claims that Obama has "hidden" his real birth certificate and "virtually every other meaningful document in his life" from public scrutiny. [WorldNetDaily, 8/4/2009] PolitiFact concludes that the Taitz certificate "is a fake." However, "we have no delusions this changes anyone's mind in the birther movement." [St. Petersburg Times, 8/2/2009]
Entity Tags: Steve Eddy, US District Court for the Central District of California, WorldNetDaily, Salim Lone, Val Edyvean, Orly Taitz, David Jeffrey Bomford, David Weigel, Barack Obama, PolitiFact (.org ), Joseph Farah, Joshua Simon Oduya, Hillary Clinton
August 4, 2009: Conservative Radio Host Blasts 'Birther' Conspiratorists
Glenn Beck, who hosts a daily radio show along with his Fox News talk show, attacks "birthers" who believe President Obama is not a citizen (see see July 20, 2008, August 15, 2008, October 8-10, 2008, October 16, 2008 and After, November 10, 2008, December 3, 2008, and August 1-4, 2009). He says: "Everybody says, everybody says, 'why is Barack Obama not just producing the birth certificate?' Okay, first of all, he did (see June 13, 2008). And you're never going to get, you're never going to get a conspiracy theory to stop. You're never.… One of the reasons why he doesn't just come out is because it is so great for him because it immediately marginalizes anybody who says that kind of stuff. It makes them immediately look like they're flat earthers." [Media Matters, 3/24/2011]
Entity Tags: Glenn Beck, Barack Obama
August 5, 2009: 'Recess Rally' Anti-Reform Protests Sponsored by Industry Lobbyists, Right-Wing Billionaires
Screenshot of the bottom of Recess Rally's home page, taken August 22, 2009. [Source: Recess Rally (.com)]MSNBC host Rachel Maddow examines an organization called "Recess Rally," which is promoting anti-health care protests over the Internet, providing information about upcoming "town hall" forums hosted by Democratic lawmakers, and proclaiming, "We the people say no to socialized health care." Maddow gives some information on who is organizing Recess Rally. At the bottom of Recess Rally's home page, a number of sponsors are listed, including conservative blogger and Fox News commentator Michelle Malkin, and conservative blogs such as RedState and Smart Girl Politics.
Funded by Corporate Lobbying Firms, Corporate Interests - Other sponsoring organizations are less easily identifiable as citizen organizations. American Majority is a lobbying organization headed by Ned Ryun, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush; many of the organization's senior officials are veterans of the Bush-Cheney 2004 presidential campaign, former Republican lawmakers, and conservative lobbyists. American Majority is itself an offshoot of another organization, the Sam Adams Alliance. That organization is headed by a former executive director of the Illinois State Republican Party, and by a former Dow Chemicals engineer who also heads a large conservative think tank. Another sponsor of Recess Rally is a group called Let Freedom Ring, whose founder provided the funding for the 2008 Republican campaign ads that used footage of the 9/11 attacks to promote the Iraq war. Another sponsor was responsible for the 2004 "Swift Boat" campaign advertisements that besmirched then-presidential candidate Senator John Kerry (D-MA). Two other groups sponsor Recess Rally: Americans for Prosperity (AFP—see May 29, 2009, July 27, 2009, and August 1, 2009) and its subsidiary, Patients First (see July 23, 2009, July 27, 2009, and August 6, 2009). AFP runs Patients First, which is busing people around the country to demonstrate against health care reform, and another "grassroots" organization, Patients United Now (PUN). Maddow says that groups like these are "experts at fake grassroots campaigns that promote corporate interests." (AFP president Tim Phillips will call the buses "really good props"—see August 6, 2009.)
Sincere Americans Protesting at Direction of Corporate Interests, PR Firms - Noting that AFP is headed by, among others, oil billionaire David Koch and longtime Republican fund-raiser Art Pope, Maddow says: "This oil industry and Republican operative millionaires' club is, according to the Republican Party… just average, middle-class Americans—just regular American folks sitting around the kitchen table, thinking about whether they can get away with saying that the government continuing its long standing policy of encouraging living wills is really a secret plot to kill old people (see November 23, 2008, January 27, 2009, February 9, 2009, February 11, 2009, February 18, 2009, May 13, 2009, June 24, 2009, June 25, 2009, July 10, 2009, July 16, 2009, July 17, 2009, July 21, 2009, July 23, 2009, July 23, 2009, July 23, 2009, July 23-24, 2009, July 24, 2009, July 28, 2009, July 28, 2009, July 28, 2009, and July 31, 2009 - August 12, 2009). Americans are showing up at these events to shout down the discussion and to chase their congressmen and they are enraged. And they're enraged at least in part because they're being riled up by over-the-top, fabricated conspiracy theories about health care. And they're being directed and orchestrated by the corporate interests that do this for a living and do it very well. RecessRally.com is not some organic outgrowth of American anger. This is how corporate America creates the illusion of a grassroots movement to support their own interests. This is what they do. They are professionals. This is an industry. To talk about these town hall events as some organic outpouring of average American folks who have concerns about health care is to be willfully blind as to what is really going on—which is professional PR operatives generating exploitive, manufactured, strategically deployed outrage in order to line their own pockets. These PR spinmeisters get paid a lot of money for doing it. The corporations they work for get to kill legislation that would hurt their profits. And the real people who they launch into these town hall settings after they're told that health care reform is a secret commie plot to kill old people and to mandate sex changes—those real people get more and more and more angry, and more and more and more alienated. And ultimately, they get left, like the rest of us, with a health care system that is broken and doesn't work in the interests of the American people, but does work in the interests of the corporations that profit from the way the system is now. This is professional, corporate-funded, Republican staffed PR, and it should be reported as such." [Recess Rally, 8/2009; MSNBC, 8/6/2009]
Entity Tags: Sam Adams Alliance, RedState (.com), Tim Phillips, Smart Girl Politics, Recess Rally, Patients First, Patients United Now, David Koch, Art Pope, Americans for Prosperity, Let Freedom Ring, Michelle Malkin, Rachel Maddow, American Majority, Ned Ryun, George W. Bush
August 6-7, 2009: FreedomWorks Official Boasts of 'Blowing Up' Town Hall Meetings on Health Care, Refuses to Calm Down Outbursts
Max Pappas, a senior official with the conservative lobbying firm FreedomWorks (see April 14, 2009), openly takes credit for his firm ratcheting up disruptive behavior at "town halls" across the nation devoted to discussion of health care reform (see June 30, 2009, July 6, 2009, July 25, 2009, July 27, 2009, July 27, 2009, July 31, 2009, August 1, 2009, August 1, 2009, August 2, 2009, August 3, 2009, August 3, 2009, August 3, 2009, August 3, 2009, August 4, 2009, August 4, 2009, August 5, 2009, August 5, 2009, August 6, 2009, August 6, 2009, and August 6-8, 2009). Pappas is interviewed by MSNBC's Chris Matthews, who says that FreedomWorks is "blowing them [town hall meetings] apart." Pappas agrees, saying, "Yes, just like we blew up—" before Matthews talks over his response. Pappas says that FreedomWorks only has about 18 paid employees, and does most of its work over the Internet, working with 400,000 online members (referring to the number of people on its e-mail lists). "We… send them information about when the town halls are, give them briefings on the health care reform plans." The Washington Post's Greg Sargent writes: "[T]here's nothing wrong with FreedomWorks or any other group doing this. But if industry-funded groups are pumping up turnout at town hall meetings, it makes it perfectly fair game for reform proponents to argue that the industry is trying to manipulate perceptions of public opinion for the sake of its bottom line." [Plum Line, 8/7/2009] The next day, Pappas appears on C-SPAN, and a caller claiming to be a Republican veteran asks him "to tell these people to wrap it down." The caller says: "We Republicans already have the image of being owned by corporate America. Now we're getting the image of being owned by wild red neck America." Pappas responds: "We don't have the power to control how many people turn out or how they behave there. All we really do is facilitate their participation by letting people know when these town halls are and giving them information about the issues that are going to be discussed. The passions are so deep about this issue that we can't send out an email that says 'calm down.'" Another caller claims to be from the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a white power and outspokenly racist organization (see June 2, 2009), and praises Pappas and FreedomWorks, calling him "a true patriot." Pappas asks the caller to join the organization. [Think Progress, 8/7/2009]
Entity Tags: Max Pappas, Chris Matthews, Council of Conservative Citizens, FreedomWorks, Greg Sargent