JohnKWilson's blog

In his blog, Kurtz quotes the entire email Ken Rolling wrote to CAC founders Warren Chapman and Anne Hallett and notes that Sam Dillon, Education Reporter for the New York Times, was working on an article. Rolling wrote about Dillon, "He is trying to understand how Barack got ‘picked’ for the CAC board, by whom, why, etc. – I have avoided that question head-on though I believe Barack was Debbie Leff’s/Joyce nomination."

This is "cover up" Kurtz referred to. Kurtz writes, "Why should Rolling avoid the question of who chose Obama for the CAC board, especially with a reporter he deems friendly?" Obviously, Rolling was avoiding it because he wasn’t directly involved and didn’t know for sure, although his memory of secondhand information was that Ayers hadn’t proposed Obama. There is not anything remotely resembling a cover-up here.

In addition to the usual nutty conspiracy theories, Kurtz offered us what he considered the big "smoking gun." According to Kurtz, "the most important smoking gun is that Barack Obama was funding Bill Ayers’ radical educational projects."

This is false. Obama was the president of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, not its dictator. There’s no evidence that Obama made any funding decisions. Moreover, it would have been completely unprofessional for anyone, including Obama, to ban Bill Ayers from receiving funding for educational projects because of alleged radical activities decades earlier which Ayers was never convicted of. Kurtz has no evidence that projects were judged based on anything other than their merits. This is a pure smear by association.

I’ve written previously about Kurtz and his attempts to push this non-story and cry for victim status because the Obama campaign criticized his false smears.

After temporarily being denied access to the Annenberg Challenge records (which are now fully available to everyone), Kurtz expected to discover "a treasure trove of documentary evidence." Instead, Kurtz found absolutely nothing of significance. Not surprisingly, Ayers and Obama were both working on school reform with the Annenberg Challenge, so they went to some meetings together. Yet Kurtz hasn’t let his total failure to find a smoking gun stop him from blowing smoke.

Kurtz asserted without any proof in the Wall Street Journal, "Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval." Kurtz also claimed, "Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda." Kurtz has no evidence that Obama and Ayers "worked as a team." Ayers attended six meetings of the group along with Obama.

And what was today’s big revelation by Kurtz? Obama and Ayers were "both on the committee that crafted the by-laws." By-laws! Undoubtably these were radical, terrorist by-laws.

In his blog, Kurtz quotes the Obama campaign response. So far, Kurtz hasn’t been able to prove anything he says, and nothing he alleges amounts to anything of significance. How long will some of the biggest media outlets in the country (Wall Street Journal, Fox News Channel) continue to promote his lies and conspiracy theories even when he doesn’t have any evidence to support his smears?

Crossposted at DailyKos.

Ironically, like their own misguided vision of Obama, this documentary is slick and well-financed, but lacking in actual substance. Instead, it relies on a stream of false attacks on Obama.

The movie focuses heavily on Chicago. Bob Barr falsely declares, "Barack Obama has his roots in the Cook County machine." Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson claims, "You can't tell me he spent 18 years there [in Chicago], or however long he spent there, and no stories have resulted from that time." Proving that Carlson doesn't bother to read, there is in reality a massive literature about Obama's time in Chicago, all of it disproving the smears asserted in "Hype."

The documentary blames Obama for failing as a community organizer because "there's still asbestos in that housing project," "the neighborhood is still a very rough area, jobs are hard to come by," and "there's not a lot of long-term improvement." It's absurd to blame Obama, who had no political power, because he didn't magically transform an impoverished area

Patrick O'Malley, a Republican state senator in Illinois, attacks Obama because "he tended to be late for committee meetings." (Later, the documentary also denounces Obama for being late to a US Senate committee hearing, showing how trivial most of the objections to Obama are.) O'Malley also attacks Obama's claims of bipartisanship: "I can't recall him ever coming over to my desk." But it's hardly surprising that Obama would ignore some of the far-right-wing legislators who would never compromise with him, preferring instead to work with moderate Republicans.

David Freddoso claims that Obama passed "ethics reform that faced little opposition and was handed to him to as a favor" by state Senate President Emil Jones. According to Freddoso, he "gave them to Obama, who today enjoys all the credit having done little of the work." That's false. Numerous Democrats and Republicans have noted that nobody wanted this hard work, and Obama prevailed against strong initial opposition.

Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell calls Obama "to the left of the only proclaimed socialist in the senate" based on one year of a National Journal ranking, about which Michael Barone incorrectly claims "National Journal rankings are done on the basis of just about every vote in the Senate"

Barone also proclaims, "it's very likely that President Obama will mean higher taxes for many Americans." Actually, exactly the opposite is true. Obama has proposed lowering taxes on 95% of Americans. Mike Huckabee claims: "If you want to have more taxes taken out of your check, Obama's your choice." For most Americans, the opposite is true. But the documentary declares that "critics expect that every family that earns more than $100,000 per year will face a potentially irrevocable change in their tax burden." That's not true; in fact, most Americans earning more than $100,000 will face reduced taxes under Obama. Moreover, how can any change in the tax burden ever be "potentially irrevocable"?

Yet the movie continues a stream of misinformation and outright lies. Dick Morris declares: "he wants to impose social security taxes on income above $100,000." In fact, Obama proposes social security taxes only on income about $250,000. According to the documentary, "79% of all 2005 tax returns reported capital gains. So, under President Obama, three-quarters of all American households would have their capital gains taxes double." That's not true. First of all, Obama hasn't proposed to double anyone's capital gains taxes. He has proposed that households earning over $250,000 would have an increase in capital gains tax rates from 15% to 20%. Those earning less would not face increased capital gains taxes. The documentary even claims that "2/3rds of America's small business income may be taxed at 50%," citing far-right-wing activist Grover Norquist for this ridiculous claim. This is pure nonsense.

The documentary even attacks Obama when he called for Americans to learn foreign languages, noting that it is embarrassing when Americans visit Europe and are unable to speak the native language. William Bennett proclaims "this is not a problem" and attacks Obama's patriotism: "his use of the term 'embarassment'...suggests to me that there's a little embarassment and not total pride in being an American." Bennett may be the first former Secretary of Education to ever denounce someone for urging Americans to learn more foreign languages.

Bennett wasn't the only conservative willing to humiliate himself on camera by saying something idiotic in service of these attacks on Obama. Dick Morris claims that under Obama's health care plan, there will be "rationing" and doctors will be banned from providing health care: "it's okay for him to perform an abortion, but if he gives you that bypass, he's going to lose his license." Where did Morris fantasize about this absurd lie? Did one of his prostitutes tell him this during a toe-sucking session?

The movie claims that Obama has "a plan that gives illegal immigrants the same health care that US senators have." In fact, as Obama explained during a Jan. 21 debate, illegal immigrants are excluded "because I think we've got limited resources. And it is important for us that, when we've got millions of U.S. citizens that aren't yet covered, it's important for us to make sure that they are provided coverage."

According to the movie, "the senator has taken money from many special interest groups and employees of lobbying firms." In reality, Obama doesn't take any PAC funding, so there's no money he's received from special interest groups.

The movie notes Obama's "record fundraising" but adds, "however, not all the donations are coming in $20 at a time" (of course, no one imagined they were). It claims, "Not according to the Washington Post. Bundlers and big money donors abound in the Obama campaign network." But the Washington Post article never said that, although it did focus attention on Obama's big donors. However, it also noted, "Donations of less than $200 account for nearly half of Obama's contributions, compared with a third of Clinton's and a quarter of Sen. John McCain's." And that article also noted how Obama had publicly opposed a tax loophole sought by one of his major bundlers.

According to the movie, "contrary to the statements Senator Obama made....according to documents filed by his campaign, 40 federally registered lobbyists have contributed to his presidential run." In reality, the lobbyists gave money despite the campaign's ban on it, and the Obama campaign reported that "any contributions from lobbyists that weren’t already returned will be soon."

The usual lies about Obama's stand on abortion are offered by Jill Stanek, who claims that "Obama is so extremely radically supportive of abortion that he thinks infanticide is acceptable..." Of course, that's nonsense. Obama objected to an Illinois bill banning infanticide after botched abortions (which was already illegal) because it might endanger abortion rights. When provisions to protect existing abortion rights were finally added in 2005 (after Obama left the state senate), the bill was passed. Obama has never regarded infanticide as acceptable.

The movie is full of silly smears, such as this attack: "Bin Laden is very well aware that Democrats over and over again try to undercut the war on terror by diminishing the tools that we need to stop the next attack." One interview in the movie proclaims, "He voted to essentially give Osama bin Laden the same rights that Americans have when it comes to intercepting his calls and email...and if his vote had prevailed, the whole war on terror would come to a halt." The whole war on terror would come to a halt? What, the entire war on terror consists of trying to find Osama bin Laden's emails and phone calls? Of course, Obama never voted for any bill that would give bin Laden the "same rights" as Americans. It's all  fantasy, it's all lies.

The movie attacks Obama for saying that the threat posed to the United States by Iran is "tiny compared to the Soviet Union." They claim that "Obama reversed himself" a few days later by saying, "Iran is a great threat." Bill Bennett demands to know: "Which is it?" The answer is obvious: Iran is a tiny threat to the United States, especially compared with the Soviet Union. Iran is a great threat to Israel and stability in the Middle East. There's no contradiction, and no reversal.

Obama's declaration that he would be willing to meet with our enemies "without preconditions" drew similar attacks when he explained what it meant. The documentary claims that Obama tried to "redefine 'without preconditions' to now mean 'with preparation.'" Obama always meant that; "preconditions" refers to the Bush Administration approach of requiring major policy changes before having any meetings.

The movie attacks Obama for citing the fact that Reagan met with Gorbachev as proof that meeting with our enemies is common; the movie proclaims that this meeting was the result of "more than 40 years of preconditions and prior groundwork" (apparently Reagan was creating the groundwork when he was still making "Bonzo" movies) and "direct talks came after only five years of preconditions." Not true: Reagan met with Gorbachev eight months after Gorbachev took over the Soviet Union.

The movie repeats a common lie that Obama had "only 143 days of national experience before beginning the campaign." Of course, Obama actually had two years of experience as a U.S. Senator before he announced his campaign.

On Iraq, the movie claims, "his position is, perhaps, as fluid as the polls that it follows." In reality, Obama has had a completely consistent position from the start: it was a mistake to invade Iraq, and we need to withdraw, but we must do so with great care.

Of course, the familiar clips of Rev. Jeremiah Wright have a starring role in the documentary. Ken Blackwell declares: "either he was asleep...or he embraced the theology in its totality." The notion that you could listen to a preacher without agreeing completely is so totally anathema to the far right that they can't even imagine it was possible for Obama to disagree with his pastor without walking out of church.

Sometimes guilt by association isn't enough. A parade of clips of Louis Farrakhan spouting anti-white and anti-Semitic comments is justified by guilt by association with association, because Obama has no connection with Farrakhan but Obama's former church had a newsletter that praised Farrakhan. The documentary even makes the extraordinary (and ridiculous) step of proposing geographical guilt by association, with the narrator ominously intoning: "Obama and Minister Farrakhan live within walking distance of one another."

And of course, Bill Ayers is prominently featured. Jim Geraghty of the National Review claims, "Barack Obama really couldn't bring himself to say 'you know, I really don't like that guy.' That was too much for him to say. He had to talk about what a decent guy he is and what a good professor." Unfortunately, Geraghty is simply making things up. There is no record of Obama during the campaign calling Ayers "decent" and "a good professor." In fact, Obama really did bring himself to criticize Ayers, denouncing him during a Democratic debate as "somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago." According to the movie, "Obama was feted at a fundraising event" at Ayers' home, but Obama never had a fundraising event there.

Freddoso claims, "he wrote a letter specifically to help Rezko...get a $14.6 million housing deal...really, Barack Obama did quite a bit for Tony Rezko." In reality, Obama wrote a standard form letter supporting a low-income housing project, along with several other elected officials. There was nothing corrupt about it.

Unable to make any charges stick against Obama, the movie is left with vague attacks like this from Jerome Corsi: "it's hard to know what he was doing in Chicago. It's all a lie." According to David Freddoso, "he goes on a talk show like Ellen DeGeneris and he starts to dance. He's not treated like other politicians." (Actually, John McCain also went on Ellen's show. Overall, it's McCain, not Obama, who has gotten a free ride from the media.)

Although "Hype" presents itself as a documentary, it's more of a mockumentary—the movie makes a mockery of intelligent political debate and intellectual honesty.

As a hatchet job, "Hype: The Obama Effect" is an embarrassment to its creators and nearly everyone interviewed in it. The movie is full of basic factual errors, idiotic lies, and baseless smears. Ultimately unable to make a coherent or accurate critique of Obama, the movie is left with vague insinuations, like: "Is there a smoking gun hidden in Senator Obama's history? That's a question we can leave to the blogosphere."

There is no smoking gun, so the far right is blowing smoke, hoping that American voters will ignore the truth and the real issues facing this country, and instead be fooled by the conservative smokescreen of lies and smears.

Crossposted at DailyKos.

Limbaugh went on a long diatribe exposing the shocking, shocking possibility that Obama as a small child may not have witnessed the Apollo mission pilots in person as he remembered. But finally, Limbaugh got back to his original lunacy, claiming that Obama "hasn't lived a life long enough to write two chapters," let alone two books. Since the books are all about his life, which numerous press accounts confirm that Obama lived, the notion that "he hasn't lived a life long enough" to write two books is insane. Yet Limbaugh claims that the books were "written to hide and disguise who Obama is." As anyone who has read Dreams From My Father knows, it's not the sort of book someone would write to "hide" their past. In fact, Obama has gotten more media scrutiny about his past than any other politician in American history, precisely because he wrote about it in so much detail. But Limbaugh thinks that randomly throwing out smears against Obama, even when they can't possibly be true and don't make any sense, is acceptable to try to win an election for his side.

That's not the only lie Limbaugh is telling. On September 13, Limbaugh declared about Obama, "He organized to keep the ROTC out of school." There's not the slightest evidence to support this.  There's not even one of those fake email rumors about Obama. I've never even heard that ROTC at Columbia University was even an issue when Obama was there, let alone that Obama had any role in it.

And earlier today, on September 16, Limbaugh referred to "Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, the mentors of Barack Obama."  This is just silly. Even the worst of the "guilt by association" critics of Obama don't imagine that Ayers and Dohrn were his "mentors."

It's tempting to dismiss the lies of the far right because they're so crazy. But we need to document and refute all of these lies, which is what I'm working on right now. (I tried to respond to some of the common lies when I appeared on C-SPAN2.) Please email me via ObamaPoliticsor post a comment about lies and smears against Obama which you've received or read or heard on talk radio.

Crossposted at DailyKos.

Rick Stengel, the editor of Time magazine, confirmed this "fact" in speaking to Obama:

STENGEL: To that end, to get the best and brightest into the military, this university, your alma mater, invited President Ahmadinejad of Iran to be here last year, but they haven’t invited ROTC to be on campus since 1969. Should Columbia and elite universities that have excluded ROTC invite them back on campus?
OBAMA: Yes. I think we’ve made a mistake on that.

Stengel is wrong. No one is banning ROTC or the military from speaking or appearing on campus, except for the military.

It’s politically understandable why Obama feels obligated to support ROTC. And in fact he is right: there should be ROTC programs at every college. However, the problem lies with the military (and Congress), not with the colleges that are falsely accused of banning ROTC. Columbia and other elite colleges never banned ROTC: they simply decreed that ROTC must follow the same rules for faculty control and open access as any other academic program. It was the military (following the rules imposed by Congress), that withdrew ROTC from Columbia and other colleges under these circumstances, not the reverse.

As I’ve written about before, according to military rules, ROTC programs must receive college credit and must be entirely controlled by the military in terms of faculty hiring, curriculum, and what students are permitted to attend classes. According to ordinary college rules, program curriculum and faculty must be determined by the university, not by outside groups. Some colleges simply allow ROTC unique status to violate campus rules, but they shouldn’t.

Even in colleges that currently refuse to grant college credit, the military could create ROTC programs. ROTC units can be run by the military using facilities rented from a college. Or they can created as registered student organizations open to all and run by students, or departments run and controlled by universities. But the Pentagon refuses all of these options.

It is true that the military’s biased "don’t ask, don’t tell" policies violate virtually all anti-discrimination laws. But we can hope this bigotry will end soon. However, it’s not homophobia that causes ROTC programs to be banned by the military from campuses.

What we need is a president who will turn ROTC into an independent, truly academic program rather than the current system. Having independent Military Studies programs would expand academic offerings about the military, allow all students to take these classes, and provide more faculty doing research on the military. It would be a winner for everyone: ROTC programs would be restored to all campuses, academic freedom would be preserved, and the quality of intellectual work and research about the military would greatly improve.

Crossposted at DailyKos.

According to Bob Woodward's new book, the surge didn't cause the decline in violence in Iraq by itself:

Overall, Woodward writes, four factors combined to reduce the violence: the covert operations; the influx of troops; the agreement by militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to rein in his powerful Mahdi Army; and the so-called Anbar Awakening, in which tens of thousands of Sunnis turned against al-Qaida in Iraq and allied with U.S. forces.

According to Woodward, "85 to 90 percent of the successful operations and ‘actionable intelligence’ had come from" the change in techniques, not the expansion of troops.

Even Gen. David Petraeus (hardly an objective source as Bush's handpicked man in Iraq) admits that the surge did not bring victory: "Petraeus is careful not to credit all the progress to the surge of U.S. troops in 2007." According to Newsweek, "Would the Sunni Awakening have succeeded without the surge? Possibly, he concedes."

In fact, it's more than possible, since the Sunni Awakening began before the surge ever started, a fact that McCain was wrong about in the interview last month that CBS distorted to protect McCain.

So Obama was completely right when he declaredback in 2007:

My assessment is that if we put additional 30,000 of our outstanding troops into Baghdad that that's going to quell some of the violence in the short term. I don't think that there's any doubt that as long as U.S. troops are present that they are going to be doing outstanding work. It doesn't change the underlying assessment that there's not a military solution to the situation in Iraq. The underlying political dynamic has not changed.

As Obama correctly predicted, the surge had a small effect in stabilizing Baghdad. But an increase in troops by itself wouldn't change anything in Iraq. And that's exactly what happened.

But Obama has allowed the pro-war spin machine to overwhelm him. Obama's big mistake was admitting that he was wrong when he wasn't, declaring on Bill O'Reilly's show last week that "the surge succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams." Even though reports about this line distorted Obama's meaning, it was still an incredibly stupid thing to say. Sarah Palin promptly slammed Obama: "I guess when you turn out to be profoundly wrong on a vital national security issue, maybe it's comforting to pretend that everyone else was wrong, too."

The interview reflected Obama's worst tendency (which is also tied to one of his best attributes): his willingness to listen to conservatives and empathize with them. Obama was anxious to be liked by O'Reilly and his viewers, and so he decided to give up completely on opposing the surge and told O'Reilly what he wanted to hear.

It's the worst mistake Obama has made yet in this campaign. Obama could have defused McCain's attacks by making a simple argument: that even without the surge, this improvement in military tactics, the Sunni Awakening, and the Al-Sadr brigade truce would have also dramatically decreased violence in Iraq. In fact, Obama could have argued that if his plan for withdrawal had been implemented earlier, it would have caused this reduction in violence to take place well before 2007. Why? The reduction in troops would have forced the US military to change its tactics and improve them; and it would have forced the Iraqis to undertake the political deals that led to the reduction in violence in Iraq. Can anyone be certain of this? No, but that's precisely why it's such a powerful argument: McCain can't dismiss Obama's hypothetical policy because we'll never know what might have happened.

It's baffling as to why Obama's campaign has failed to make this simple point. Perhaps there are simply too many of the pro-war Democrats advising his campaign right now, the traditional Democratic consultants who are terrified of Democrats appearing "weak" by opposing war.

Unfortunately, Obama gave up the argument completely. It was a weakness that the McCain will exploit in the next two months.

It's time for Obama to reverse himself, to declare that he made a verbal mistake in the O'Reilly interview by using the word "surge" to mean the entirety of US military and strategic policies in Iraq, and to point out that the achievements could have been made (and probably would have been made sooner) by decreasing US troops in Iraq. Obama can also point out the fact that the information in Woodward's book wasn't available to him for that interview, and that book indicates that Obama was right all along.

Obama needs to reject the theory that the surge worked, right now, or he may lose this campaign.

Crossposted at DailyKos.