Paul Waldman Shreds Jerome Corsi

When you aren't on an obnoxious cable news show like one of CNN's or Fox News, C-Span viewers can hear an argument (and answers to callers' questions) on Jerome Corsi's new book that defames Barack Obama:

Barack Obama Fights Back Against A Fringe Bigot

Barack Obama's campaign may call Jerome Corsi a fringe bigot who is peddling lies, but he is much more than that. Corsi is what the GOP is banking on. They have no issues to win Americans over. The only thing McCain and the Republicans are offering is more of the same, another four years tacked on to the last miserable eight. So they must smear Obama in order to have a chance at winning. Unfortunately for Corsi and his ilk, Barack is going to fight back and he isn't taking names.

From RawStory:

The Obama campaign picked apart the book's claims in a rebuttal titled "Unfit For Publication," to be posted on the Obama campaign's rumor-fighting Web site, FightTheSmears.com. The title is a play on the book Corsi co-authored against 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's military service called "Unfit For Command."

"Jerome Corsi is a discredited liar who is peddling another piece of garbage to continue the Bush-Cheney politics he helped perpetuate four years ago," said Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor. "His is just one of what will likely be many more lie-filled books rushed to print this election cycle, which are cobbled together from debunked Internet sources to make money and advance a partisan agenda. We will respond to these smears forcefully with all means at our disposal."

Corsi's book is off to a swift start and is No. 1 on The New York Times' hardcover nonfiction best-seller list, even though Obama's campaign would argue the book should be listed as fiction.

The fiction Corsi is peddling is nothing of the sort to lull children off to sleep. The book is a white supremacists dream (in fact he has promoted the book on two white supremacist radio shows so far). He drags up old rumors that have been discredited, he writes about his mom's "second man of color to be her mate." Corsi accuses him of using drugs and slams Islam simply because his middle name is Hussein. Corsi is nothing more than a piece of shit liar who is financed by people that can not debate Obama on the issues. This man has zero credibility and should be treated as such.

I'll leave you with this:

In an interview with The Associated Press, Corsi defended raising the issue of drugs without any evidence.

"I don't need more," he said. "I'm putting this question forward. I'm putting the evidence forward. Voters can make up their own minds."

Corsi writes for World Net Daily, a conservative Web site whose lead headline Thursday was "Astonishing photo claims: Dead Bigfoot stored on ice."

Now for those conservative Republicans out there that are still frothing at the mouth over this, just try and imagine someone with Corsi's background wrote the same type of drivel about McCain.....that is right, you can't, because it doesn't exist.

The Depths Wingers Go To..."Obama Kills Live Babies"

Fox News, always the network trying to be fair and balanced, invited wingnut swiftboater Jerome Corsi onto Fox and Friends today. Corsi believes (or pretends) that Obama has done every ghastly act that any decent human being can think of. To Corsi (and unfortunately those that read his book) Obama is black militant who is hiding a far left agenda who likes to kill live babies.....yes, live babies.

From RawStory:

Jerome Corsi, co-author of the book Unfit for Command which swiftboated John Kerry in 2004, has now leaped into the 2008 campaign with Obama Nation, a book which Media Matters finds "contains numerous falsehoods about Sen. Barack Obama."[...]

Corsi insisted that after an incident in Illinois where an infant had survived for 45 minutes following a late-term abortion, Obama had "said that woman had an absolute right to abortion, to kill the baby even if it survived that abortion."

"That is patently untrue," Beckel countered, to which Corsi replied, "You haven't looked at the case."

According to Seth Colter Walls, the "infanticide" charge against Obama stems from his "present" vote on a bill debated in Illinois in 2001 that "would have required that any 'viable' fetus surviving a late-term abortion receive sustaining medical care (something which opponents of that bill said was already required by a 1975 bill in the state)."

Media Matters further explains that Obama's "present" vote was the result of a deliberate strategy worked out in concern with Planned Parenthood:

"We at Planned Parenthood view those as leadership votes," Pam Sutherland, the president and CEO of the Illinois Planned Parenthood Council, told ABC News. "We worked with him specifically on his strategy. The Republicans were in control of the Illinois Senate at the time. They loved to hold votes on 'partial birth' and 'born alive'. They put these bills out all the time ... because they wanted to pigeonhole Democrats. ... He came to me and said: 'My members are being attacked. We need to figure out a way to protect members and to protect women.'"

For Corsi, protecting women is akin to desecrating the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. How dare anyone want to watch out for the health of American women. Perhaps Corsi would rather us go back to a time when women were treated as second class citizens without right to hold property, who were seen and not heard and basically were at the mercy of their men.

As Sutherland alluded to, this is merely a wedge issue to deflect voters from focusing on issues that truly affect them, such as legislation that protects workers more so than the corporations that stretch employees to their limits and then some.