JohnKWilson's blog

In Florida, Obama won 61-37 over McCain among the 18-29 group, which was 15% of the voters. A 24-point gap times 15% = a 3.6% advantage. Obama won Florida 50.88-48.37, only a margin of 2.51%. Young voters won Florida for Obama.

In Ohio, Obama won 61-36 among the 18-29 group, which was 17% of voters. That's a gap of 4.25%. Obama won Ohio 51.15-47.25, a margin of 3.9%. So Obama would have lost Ohio, too, without young voters. And that one electoral vote in Nebraska, too.

Now it is true that Obama's landslide was so overwhelming that he would have still won the election without these four states (or even Virginia, which he would barely win without young voters). But Obama's margin of victory would be cut in half in Nevada, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Iowa, putting him perilously close to losing if McCain had been able to stage a comeback.

It's also notable that young voters 18-29 voted nationwide in record numbers (18% of voters) and in record proportions (an amazing 66-34 margin) for the Democrats to give Obama an advantage of 7.57 million votes. Without them, Obama's popular vote victory would have been cut to 400,000 votes, or 0.3%, essentially destroying Obama's mandate for change.

Young voters inspired by Obama were absolutely essential in U.S. Senate races in Georgia, Minnesota, Oregon, Alaska, and perhaps also Louisiana, not to mention numerous close races in the House as well as local and state elections.

It's also important to note that young people were a critical force turning the election to Obama. Whether they were schlepping to Florida or coming out in droves to the Iowa caucus, young voters won this election for Obama. They were the core of the volunteers who drove the enthusiasm for the Obama campaign. They were the people convincing their neighbors and relatives to vote for Obama. They were the bulk of the volunteers and low-paid campaign workers who did the essential grunt work of this campaign. They were the ones who utilized the web and social networking and cell phones and on-the-ground canvassing to turn what might have been another election stolen by Republicans into a landslide for Obama.

The cynical journalists can twist the poll numbers and dismiss the Obama Generation all they want, but we know the truth about how Obama transformed the youth numbers in this election to astonishing levels, and in doing so may have helped establish the foundation for a permanent progressive majority.

Crossposted at DailyKos.

Summers would be a lousy selection for this position. Summers is an overrated economist with a conventional free market ideology. But worst of all, Summers has a terrible reputation as a leader after being one of the worst presidents of Harvard in its history. And Summers has shifted even more toward the right-wing in recent years. If Obama chooses Summers, it would send the worst possible message to his supporters: that he may be nothing more than a repeat of Bill Clinton, and that is rejecting the idea of change in one of the most important posts during this economic crisis.

So what's wrong with Summers? At Harvard, there was his sexist speech about women, his dismissive attacks on Cornel West, his right-wing shift toward intolerance, and his rudeness and arrogance that alienated nearly everyone around him. During the Clinton Administration, Summers was infamous for signing a memo urging more pollution in the Third World, as well as his legendary poor treatment of others. Summers' approach to leadership and his ideology run contrary to what Obama espoused during his campaign, and Obama would be making a serious mistake if he appoints Summers to a prominent position.

The sexism of Summers may be the most well-known aspect of him now. On January 14, 2005, Summers spoke at a Harvard Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce. Summers declared,

It does appear that on many, many different human attributes--height, weight, propensity for criminality, overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability--there is relatively clear evidence that whatever the difference in means--which can be debated--there is a difference in the standard deviation, and variability of a male and a female population.

In other words, Summers was claiming that the inferior genetics of women regarding math was one major reason why so few women were found in science and engineering. By contrast, Summers displayed an extraordinary ignorance of how discrimination works in America:

...Gary Becker very powerfully pointed out in addressing racial discrimination many years ago. If it was really the case that everybody was discriminating, there would be very substantial opportunities for a limited number of people who were not prepared to discriminate to assemble remarkable departments of high quality people at relatively limited cost simply by the act of their not discriminating, because of what it would mean for the pool that was available.

Got that? Summers not only advanced the notion of female genetic inferiority, but he largely dismissed the possibility that discrimination is an explanation for the absence of women in these fields. In doing so, Summers cited and embraced the right-wing economics of Gary Becker, whose long-discredited dissertation in 1950s espoused the ridiculous theory that discrimination can't exist in the free market because rational employers would hire superior candidates overlooked by prejudiced employers. In reality, of course, the world doesn't work this way.

But that didn't stop Summers from concluding,

in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination.

In the question period, Summers brushed off a question about how female scientists are much more common in France and other countries: "My guess is that you'll find that in most of those places, the pressure to be high powered, to work eighty hours a week, is not the same as it is in the United States." So aside from calling women innately dumb, Summers was arguing that women are too lazy to be good scientists. Perhaps not surprisingly, "the number of women receiving tenure each year at Harvard had dropped precipitously since Summers became president -- down to 4 of the past 32 offers."

But it is a mistake to think that Summers was forced out of his job as president of Harvard because of his sexist remarks (and I believe he should be free to express these stupid, offensive ideas). In fact, Summers held on to his job long after he made his obnoxious remarks. The conservative board running Harvard was fully behind him. Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted 218–185 to pass a motion of "no confidence" in Summers, but this didn't seriously threaten his job.

Summers' end at Harvard came a year later, when he purged William Kirby, the dean of Arts and Sciences, from his post, because Summers wanted to have only his loyalists in positions of power. This prompted the Faculty of Arts and Sciences planned to make another vote of no confidence in Summers on February 28, 2006. But this time, the conservatives at Harvard did not rise up to support Summers. Summers had alienated them completely. Summers announced his resignation on February 21, 2006, and received a substantial golden parachute.

As I note in my book, professor Stephen Thernstrom, who is one of the most prominent conservatives at Harvard, supported Summers but admitted that Summers is in the "top tenth of one percent of any scale measuring abrasiveness, arrogance, and overbearingness." When some of your best friends and ideological allies admit that you're not suited for an important job, it signifies something very important. Does Barack Obama really embrace "abrasiveness, arrogance, and overbearingness" as the model for his cabinet?

Harry R. Lewis had resigned as a dean in 2003 because of his disagreements with Summers, and was sharply critical of him: "For all his extraordinary talents, he just hasn't provided the kind of leadership to the university that people were prepared to follow." These words are important because Harry R. Lewis is a darling of the conservative movement in higher education. Yet Lewis concluded, "His misfortune arose from the impatience, harshness, thoughtlessness, and lack of candor."

The lack of candor was a reference to Summers' dealings with Andrei Shleifer, a close friend of Summers who cost Harvard a $26 million settlement with the U.S. government. Shleifer violated conflict-of-interest rules by making secret investments in Russia at the same time he was working for a Harvard group contracted by the U.S. Government to advise the Russian government. In 2004 a federal court found Shleifer liable for conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Government. While Shleifer was being investigated, Summers was pushing to have Shleifer promoted to a prominent chair at Harvard.

The problem isn't just that Summers' buddies are corrupt; the problem is that Summers deceived people about this issue, causing many of his conservative allies at Harvard to abandon him. Summers knew his buddy was investing in Russia, and knew that it might be illegal, and even warned him in 1996. But Summers, even though he was working for the Treasury Department, didn't nothing to stop Shleifer's criminal activities and insider dealing.

At Harvard, Summers was "a blunt and overbearing figure with an overt agenda of drastic change." When he was asked about the value of affirmative action by a faculty member, Summers responded, "The jury's out." When a female law professor at a meeting asked Summers a question he didn't like, he responded, "That's a stupid question." One professor "denounced Summers as 'a control freak' and mocked Summers's hierarchical 'Washington' style. 'He doesn't give a damn what anybody thinks.'"

Summers' life had taken a decidedly rightward turn, even to the level of dating Laura Ingraham in 2001. Summers took a further turn to the right after 9-11, when "Summers says that he felt called to speak up for patriotic values."

Summers also adopted far-right stands on Israel, and harshly denounced anyone who urged that universities disinvest from Israel were "anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent." Accusing critics of Israel of anti-Semitism is the lowest form of intellectual sleaze from the far right.

Summers showed a disturbing disregard for academic freedom. In 2002, Summers was responsible for helping cancel a poetry reading on campus by Tom Paulin because Paulin had denounced Jewish settlers as "Nazis, racists" and suggested they should be "shot dead." Although Paulin apologized for the remarks, Summers consulted with the English Department and then praised its decision to cancel the reading. (The cancellation was denounced by Charles Fried, Summers' friend Alan Dershowitz, and Laurence Tribe, showing how both conservatives and liberals were appalled by the idea.)

Summers also pushed out famed professor Cornel West, meeting with him to criticize him for recording a rap album and being involved in supporting Bill Bradley's political campaign. A president of a university has no business ordering a professor (or anyone else) to stop participating in political campaigns. It is a clear violation of academic freedom to do so. West called Summers both "uninformed" and "an unprincipled power player" in describing what happened in his book Democracy Matters (2004). If nothing else, Obama should ask West if Summers has the leadership skills for any major post in the next administration.

Summers' reign as president of Harvard was a terrible failure. How bad was Summers? The Harvard Corporation accepted his resignation offer even though it cost them hundreds of millions of dollars in donations from angry conservative alumni who loved Summers.

But Summers' career as an economist hasn't been much better. Summers is an ardent advocate of uncontrolled free trade and globalization. Summers' first job was in 1981, when he worked as assistant to Martin Feldstein, the head of Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers. After a stint at Harvard, Summers went to the World Bank. Back in 1991, Summers was the chief economist of the World Bank, when it was continuing to pursue disastrous policies that did little to help the poor. Summers doesn't deserve all the blame for the failings of the World Bank, but he was never part of any solutions or serious reforms.

While at the World Bank, Summers signed a memo that declared: "Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Least Developed Countries]?" The memo noted, "I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that."

The memo was written by an underling, and Summers claims that he "co-signed it to stimulate internal debate" (it's funny how many disgusting theories Summers likes to promote in the name of "debate"). It's not even clear how closely Summers read his memo and its claim that "underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted."

One of the problems with the defenders of Summers who suggest that this was meant as satire is the fact that Summers' economic ideology doesn't seem to be much different from this memo. Summers' free market economic logic does seem to support that point of view, even if he normally has the political skill not to say so openly.

Back in 1993, Al Gore reportedly prevented Summers from becoming chair of the the Council of Economic Advisers. Instead, Summers was named undersecretary of the treasury for international affairs. At the Treasury Department, Summers was a protege of the free market advocate Robert Rubin, and followed him in the role of Secretary of the Treasury from 1999-2001. At the Treasury, "Summers had earned a reputation as a politically careless upstart."

When Summers was being hired by Harvard, "Summers's temperament was troubling to some members of the corporation. The word from Washington was that he could be peremptory, condescending, impatient with lesser mortals. He had, as Robert Rubin, Summers's mentor and predecessor as treasury secretary, delicately put it, 'a rough-edges issue.'" As Secretary of the Treasury during a time with few crises, Summers had few dramatic events to challenge him.

As Richard Bradley noted, "Though deferential to his superiors, Summers could be a boss from hell. 'If you're in a meeting, whatever you say, he will make you feel like you're an idiot,' says one Treasury aide who worked for both Summers and Rubin." Paul Gigot once wrote, "Larry Summers is to humility what Madonna is to chastity."

Recently, Summers called for Paulsen to be given unchecked authority over the $700 billion bailout plan: "There's more risk in having too little flexibility than there is risk that they will have too much authority."

That indicates that Summers would resist any efforts to monitor, scrutinize, and criticize his control over the bailout if he is the Treasury Secretary. That promises to be a disaster. There's already far too little transparency and monitoring in the bailout plan, and Summers wants no one to be looking over the shoulder of Paulsen or anyone else.

There's also a danger of a conflict of interest, since Summers is a part-time managing director of the hedge fund D. E. Shaw & Co. Will he try to help his friends by continuing to bail out businesses? He also refuses to answer questions about the financial advice he has been giving Shaw.

I don't want anyone to think that I hate Larry Summers and regard him as a horrible person. He's a well-respected economist, seems to be regarded as a good teacher, and he did undertake some valuable actions at Harvard (such as increasing financial aid for the poor and trying to emphasize undergraduate teaching). I don't have a problem with Summers being an advisor to Obama, and he's not a free market ideologue on the scale of the Republicans.

A 2007 New York Times profile of Summers noted that "Clinton ended up embracing the centrist, business-friendly ideas of Summers and his mentor, Robert Rubin." But it added that now Summers "sounds, strangely enough, a little like Bob Reich." It's good if Summers is rethinking some of his free market faith. But why do we need him if we can get Reich himself, or someone else who was right all along?

However, there are also good reasons to doubt that Summers' conversion is real. Summers played a central role in "negotiations over China's entry into the World Trade Organization," which has been a disaster in terms of protecting human rights, the environment, and labor rights. And Summers doesn't seem to have changed his views much at all.

Back in April 2008, Summers was predicting: "There is a reasonable chance that from a financial market, Wall Street perspective, the worst has passed." That doesn't sound like a smart economic prognosticator.

Just a few months ago, Summers declared: "Alan Greenspan had a tremendous record as Fed chairman."

And in April 2008, Summers proclaimed, "Any honest Democrat will admit that we are now all Friedmanites."

Larry Summers may be a Friedmanite, but I'm not. No one appointed by Obama to this essential position should be announcing how much he agrees with Milton Friedman, the intellectual godfather of the current economic disaster. And an endorsement from Henry Kissinger ("Henry Kissinger has said that Summers should be given a permanent White House job, a sort of fixer of flabby policy ideas") scares the hell out of me.

Still, I find myself agreeing with Kissinger (shudder!) on this point. I think Summers should be an adviser to Obama, somebody who challenges old ideas (hopefully his own) and tries to come up with new ones. But that doesn't mean he should be running the show. Everyone agrees that he lacks the temperament. What he also lacks are genuinely new ideas. And that may be the most disturbing thing of all. We don't need the recycled, pro-business, free-market-is-god ideas of the Clinton Administration in a time of economic crisis. We need change, not more of the same. And Larry Summers is a lot more of the same.

At his best, Summers is a gaffe machine who actually exceeds Joe Biden's capacity to shove his foot down his larynx. At his worst, he's a conservative, domineering leader who alienates almost all of the people he works with. In neither case is he a good choice for the Treasury Department or any other major position.

Crossposted at DailyKos.

I must give Honorable Mention to a few people who didn’t quite make the top ten list. Stanley Kurtz, the National Review purveyor of smears about Obama and ACORN, and his own self-aggrandizing persecution complex where he imagines that Barack Obama is trying to destroy him. David Freddoso, the author of a best-selling book full of lies. Brad O’Leary, the author of another shoddy book smearing Obama (and whose lies in his book I detail at TruthObama.com). Jack Cashill, who claims that Bill Ayers wrote Obama’s memoir. Floyd Brown of ExposeObama.com (and Willie Horton fame).

All of them are worthy of being on any list of liars and professional smear artists. But here are my top ten for the scariest liars of them all this election season.

#10. Jed Babbin

As editor of Human Events (and deputy undersecretary of defense under W.’s daddy), Babbin deserves recognition for helping me pad my list of lies with plenty of extra smears. But he makes this list thanks to his column yesterday proclaiming that "Barack Obama will be our first French president." Obama as French? After using this sleazy Francophobia against John Kerry, you have to admire the conservative commitment to recycling.

Babbin’s previous columns include a fantasy of violence breaking out after Obama loses, and even during election season, he made time to interview the author of a pro-Confederacy interpretation of the Civil War.

But what really gets Babbin his place on this list is the final paragraph of his Oct. 30 column:

Anyone who still doubts Obama is culturally (and probably genetically) French should consider this statement by the Illinois naïf: "My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you’ll join me as we try to change it." Who but a Frenchman could have uttered those words?

There’s only one problem with this powerful indictment of Obama: it’s all fake. As FactCheck.org noted, "People who keep circulating this ‘idiot quote’ could easily discover that it is false. It was debunked by Snopes.com, the urban legends site, back on March 15, and a simple word search using Google or any search engine quickly brings up the truth of the matter."

#9. Investor’s Business Daily

Investor’s Business Daily makes the Wall Street Journal editorial pages seem thoughtful and moderate. IBD has produced numerous editorials featuring falsehoods about Obama’s law school career. The newspaper is fond of denouncing Obama’s plans to promote voluntary community service in vile, insane terms: "the Obamas . . . plan to herd American youth into government-funded reeducation camps where they'll be brainwashed into thinking America is a racist, oppressive place in need of 'social change.'"

IBD also has made bizarre, racist attacks on Obama: "At the core of the Democratic front-runner's faith ... is African nativism." IBD asks, "Would Obama put African tribal or family interests ahead of U.S. Interests?" and also had attacked "his Muslim past."

IBD loves to smear by association, even when there’s no association: "he's using the playbook of Yasser Arafat."

Oddly, IBD is treated as a credible source for information. (RealClearPolitics lists the pro-McCain tracking poll of right-wing wackos like IBD, while refusing to include the DailyKos/Research 2000 tracking poll.)

#8. Dick Morris

This toe-sucking scumbag was the punchline to many jokes, but astonishingly, conservatives (especially at Fox News) still take this discredited political consultant seriously. I detail his numerous lies on TruthObama.com. Even before Obama started running for president, Morris was lying about his record. On January 17, 2007, Morris claimed that Obama, voted against "a Senate reform banning the increasingly widespread practice of legislators hiring their family members on their campaign or PAC payrolls." Obama actually voted for the reform, and Morris was forced to retract his error. Unfortunately, Morris has continued to lie about Obama. He co-authored the best-selling book, Fleeced, which only includes one chapter on Obama but manages to be riddled with factual errors and bad writing, and occasionally the combination of both, such as this claim (page 14): "He one [sic] would weaken the standards Bush imposed for improved public education."

Morris is prominently featured in the anti-Obama documentary "Hype," where he is the most prolific liar among a large number of competitors. Morris makes various lies about Obama’s tax plan and even claims that doctors will be banned from providing health care under Obama: "it's okay for him to perform an abortion, but if he gives you that bypass, he's going to lose his license."

#7. David Bossie

Bossie is the head of Citizens United, a far-right group which was started in 1988 to run the infamous racist "Willie Horton" ads against Michael Dukakis. Bossie is back trying to smear Barack Obama with a series of false ads and a feature-length documentary called "Hype" which repeats numerous lies about Obama and his record that I’ve documented in detail.

#6. Sarah Palin

She’s the new kid in smear school, but boy does she learn fast, dontcha know. Her enthusiasm for telling lies is what really sets her apart from the typical Republican. Of course, she began by lying about herself, pretending that she opposed the Bridge to Nowhere and posing as Miss Maverick (somehow ignoring how she was a director of the "Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service Inc." 527). But Palin has quickly made Obama the primary target of her propensity to lie.

Palin declares at every stop, "Barack Obama voted 94 times for higher taxes." It’s a lie that’s been discredited long ago by multiple sources. (Palin doesn’t mention that by this same standard, McCain has voted for higher taxes at least 477 times.)

Palin claims, "Unlike Barack Obama, John McCain will not support cutting off funding for troops in the war zone"–-indifferent to the fact that McCain had also voted against a funding bill, or that none of these votes would ever endanger the troops.

According to Palin, "To withhold medical intervention for a baby who is born alive as a result of a botched abortion and to allow that child to die without the medical intervention that that child deserves, it's appalling to me and I think it should concern voters."(Sarah Palin, interview with Christian Broadcasting Network, Oct. 21, 2008) The Washington Post fact checker noted, "it is unfair to accuse Obama of supporting the withdrawal of medical treatment from babies born as the result of a botched abortion. He has never adopted such an 'extreme' position."

Palin proclaims, "We need a leader with truthfulness"(Oct. 31) while she spreads a seemingly endless list of lies about Obama.

#5. Jerome Corsi

Corsi’s book attacking Obama hit the top of the best-seller list, despite the enormous number of lies and errors that I (and others) found in it.

Corsi is a genuine nutcase, and even wrote a book about his belief that George W. Bush is trying to destroy America by merging it with Mexico and Canada. Since his Obama book, Corsi has been pushing the insane belief that Obama’s birth certificate is a fake.

#4. Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity is the leading promoter of sleaze on cable news talk shows, and his name appears throughout my list of 1,117 lies and smears about Obama. His Hannity’s America program pushed some bizarre conspiracy theories about Obama, including the anti-Semite Andy Martin’s view that Ayers has been secretly controlling Obama for decades as part of a covert plot for revolution. Hannity also uses the "Hannity & Colmes" show to spout the usual lies about Obama, and Hannity also has a radio show where he spouts nonsense like claiming that Obama's proposal "for rescinding the Bush tax cuts" would result in "families of four that make $50,000 a year ... paying another $2,000 in taxes a year."(July 9, 2008)

#3. Rush Limbaugh

My TruthObama.com list included 100 lies and smears by Limbaugh (#170-#269), and I’ve detailed his lies before. Limbaugh has pushed some astonishingly stupid theories on his show, including the idea that Obama is using hypnosis on people, and that Bill Ayers wrote Obama’s memoir.

Limbaugh has made openly racist attacks on Obama, calling him a "halfrican American" and a "half minority" and a "little black man-child." Limbaugh bizarrely claimed without any evidence that Obama, who graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard Law School as president of the Harvard Law Review, received preferential grading because of his race and "probably didn’t get out of Harvard without affirmative action."

#2. John McCain

I used to respect John McCain, and I never imagined that he would end up near the top of a list of liars. But he’s here for his remarkable transformation during this campaign. For a man who likes to talk about honor, it’s astonishing how little of it he’s had in this campaign. McCain was victimized by right-wing smear artists and robocalls in 2000—and then turned around and hired the very same sleazebags to help run his campaign.

In his ads and his own speeches, McCain has repeatedly lied about Obama and his record. He promised to run an "honorable" campaign and instead gave us one of the most dishonest, smear-filled campaigns in the history of American politics. Deliberately distorting Obama’s views and resorting to the worst guilt-by-association smears imaginable, McCain has forever destroyed his reputation in this campaign.

#1. Andy Martin

Martin deserves hall of fame honors for his long career of lunacy. And nobody has been smearing Obama longer than Martin, or with less attachment to reality. The self-appointed Executive Director of The Stop Obama Coalition, Martin is also founder of The Committee of One Million to Defeat Barack Obama and author of "Obama: The Man Behind The Mask."

Few can match his devotion to not telling the truth. As I revealed in my book, Martin was the original source for the "madrassa" myth about Obama attending an Islamic school in Indonesia.

Martin is an unending source of smears. This week, he proclaimed, "Andy Martin explores the relationship between Barack Obama and anti-Semites." (Martin was repeating a fantastic, discredited smear that a guy named al-Mansour had financed Obama’s law school education and arranged to get him admitted.) Certainly, no one can doubt Martin’s expertise on the subject of anti-Semitism, since he has a remarkable record of hateful remarks (such as "crooked, slimy Jew") toward Jews that he explains away by declaring, "I was the innocent victim of both a political kidnapping and a burglary by corrupt federal judges in Chicago."

Today, Martin writes on his website, "Is there a secret Obama, and an ‘Obama Code,’ author Andy Martin asks." That’s the kind of inexplicable paranoia about Obama that we’ve all learned to love from Martin.

These supreme smear spreaders may seem scary, but what’s really frightening is the fact that they’re not alone. There are swarms of conservative talk shows and websites where the lies about Obama get repeated with the same indifference to the truth, and even in the mainstream media there is little effort to debunk these lies and many times the smears are actually repeated without the truth being told. My list of 1,117 lies and smears is just the tip of the iceberg, and we all need to get the truth out.

Crossposted at DailyKos.

The lies against Obama began with a series of chain emails accusing him of being a secret Muslim (he's not), claiming that he was educated in a madrassa in Indonesia (it was a public school), even asserting that he took his oath of office on the Koran (it was a Bible).

Obama's distant connections with 1960s radical William Ayers have become an overwhelming focus of both the McCain campaign and the media. On October 5, 2008, Sean Hannity on the Fox News Channel even presented Andy Martin (infamous for his anti-Semitic legal filings and the originator of the madrassa myth) as a credible source for the latest absurd rumor, that Bill Ayers had recruited Obama at Columbia University to go work as a community organizer as a test of his allegiance to Ayers and their secret plot for revolution.

Jerome Corsi--a conspiracy theorist who believes that the Twin Towers fell on 9/11 due to "controlled demolition," that George W. Bush is part of a global plot to destroy the United States and merge it with Canada and Mexico, and who claims that Obama's birth certificate is a fabrication--even rose to the top of the best-seller list with his book attacking Obama, despite making numerous errors and ridiculous smears.

Barack Obama has said, "If they lie about us, we'll correct the record."  But sometimes correcting the record isn't enough. The lie accusing Obama of being a Muslim has been disproven over and over again, by Obama's campaign, by reporters, even by most of his critics. Yet according to a Newsweek poll, the proportion of Americans who incorrectly imagine Obama to be a Muslim has grown as the campaign progressed.

Although right-wing writers and talk show hosts have spread many of the smears against Obama, perhaps the most surprising development of the 2008 campaign has been the willingness of McCain himself to spread lies about Obama.

Back in May, Cindy McCain declared: "My husband is absolutely opposed to any negative campaigning at all." John McCain himself promised to run an "honorable" campaign. But political expediency proved to be a more powerful lure than honor.

Joe Klein wrote in Time (Sept. 29, 2008), "McCain’s lies have ranged from the annoying to the sleazy, and the problem is in both degree and kind. His campaign has been a ceaseless assault on his opponent’s character and policies, featuring a consistent–and witting–disdain for the truth."

In September, Don Sipple, a Republican advertising strategist, told the New York Times, "The last month, for sure, I think the predominance of liberty taken with truth and the facts has been more McCain than Obama."

McCain's propensity for deceit in this campaign has statistical documentation. PolitiFact.com, a nonpartisan project of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly, has examined more than 150 statements from each candidate for their truth value (as of Oct. 30). Obama had 49 statements deemed "true," compared to only 30 for McCain. McCain had seven statements so completely false that they were put in the "pants on fire" category, compared to only two for Obama. Altogether, 69 of McCain's 153 statements were deemed "barely true" or worse, compared to only 45 of Obama's 156 statements. Obama's statements were 60% more likely to be true than McCain's; McCain had 54% more statements than Obama that were less than half-truths.

The number of smears and lies is so vast and so often repeated that it overwhelms the ability of the Obama campaign and the press to refute them. Even if they did, it would be almost impossible for any voter to keep track of all the false accusations and separate delusion from reality.

I've utilized many of the excellent fact checkers out there to help assemble this list:

Media Matters
Snopes.com
FactCheck.org
Politifact
Washington Post Fact Checker
Urban Legend
Obama's Under the Radar
Obama's Fact Check
Stop the Smears

Lies are the primary hope for the McCain campaign during a time of declining poll numbers, economic crisis, and widespread dissatisfaction with Republican politicians. Perhaps it's possible these smear campaigns will work once again, as they did in 1988 and 2000 and 2004. Yet I have hope that the American people will refuse to vote based on a series of lies. That might be an audacious hope for reason to prevail, but it's the only hope we have.

However, we need to educate people about the misinformation that's out there. So here are the thousand points of lies: www.truthobama.com.

Crossposted at DailyKos.

I'm shocked that more media attention hasn't been paid to the Liddy example and John McCain's evasive answers on David Letterman's show last week. Joy Behar actually brought up Liddy on "The View" this morning, but the mainstream press (and many progressives) are still avoiding this critical issue. McCain has a lot of questions to answer about Liddy, and nobody is asking them in the press even while Ayers continues to be the subject of endless media obsessions.

Crossposted at DailyKos and TruthObama.