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Appendix To: Smears and Slurs without Legal Consequences: How the Law Protects Jerome Corsi's Malicious Attacks on Barack Obama, In His Book Obama Nation |
By JOHN W. DEAN |
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| Friday, Aug. 22, 2008 |
Obama Campaign's Collection of Corsi's False Statements (all of which were easily refuted)
John W. Dean reproduces the list of fifty key false statements by "Obama Nation" author Jerome Corsi that had been previously compiled by the Obama campaign, for reference in connection with his column arguing that these statements, while false, could not support a successful defamation suit, for they are in the nature of smears, rather than libels.
- LIE: "Nowhere in the autobiography does Obama disclose that his wife-to-be accompanied him to Africa on the 1992 trip." [p. 25]
- LIE: "Obama failed to discuss his father's alcoholism and polygamy in his autobiography." [p. 24]
- LIE: "We find there is even uncertainty whether Stanley Ann and Obama Senior were ever married in a church. No marriage license for this first marriage surfaces in any of the now-growing volume of research being done...Yet even this remains murky." [p. 44]
- LIE: "Obama devotes the entire second chapter of his autobiography to his time in Indonesia, but remarkably, he makes no reference to Maya's birth." [p. 48]
- LIE: "Obama did not dedicate Dreams from My Father to his mother, or to his father, Barack Senior, or to his Indonesian stepfather. Missing from the dedication are the grandparents who raised him in Hawaii, especially during the years his mother abandoned him to return to Indonesia to be with Lolo." [p. 49]
- LIE: "According to the blog, his religion was listed as Islam." [p. 53]
- LIE: "[Zulfan] Adi said neighborhood Muslims worshipped in a nearby house. When the muezzin sounded the call to prayer, Adi remembered seeing Lolo and Barry walk together to the makeshift mosque." [p. 56]
- LIE: "Obama always acknowledged his stepfather was Muslim, though he did his best to downplay Islam as an important force in his stepfather's life." [p. 58]
- LIE: "As a vice president, Madelyn Dunham would have earned enough to be well off, even if not rich." [p. 71]
- LIE: "Still, Obama has yet to answer questions whether he ever dealt drugs, or if he stopped using marijuana and cocaine completely in college, or where 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?" [p. 77]
- LIE: "But the key role Frank Marshall Davis plays in the autobiography is not to provide Obama with words from his poems as a voice for Obama's black rage. Instead Davis is the mentor Obama seeks for wisdom and advice, for instance when he has a crisis with his grandmother that was so traumatic Obama still mentions it today." [p. 87]
- LIE: "Despite all they had done for him, his grandparents were still 'white folks' and 'white folks' are racists." [p. 88]
- LIE: "The Obama campaign denied the photo [of him in Somali clothing] proves any connection between Obama and Islam." [p. 93]
- LIE: "Senator Barack Obama came full circle with his father's past by openly supporting Raila Odinga during his visit to Africa in 2006. He took up his father's battle with Kenyatta and joined forces with the most extreme Luo in Kenyan politics, Raila Odinga, the son of the communist Odinga Odinga, who was ousted by Kenyatta." [p. 103]
- LIE: "Senator Obama could claim to be a citizen of Kenya, as well as of the United States. Obama can trace his heritage back to his mother, who was born in the United States and was an American citizen when he was born, and to his father, who was born in Kenya and was a Kenyan citizen when Obama was born." [p. 103]
- LIE: "Even as Kenya entered this postelection violence, Senator Obama has continued to insert himself into Kenyan politics." [p. 104]
- LIE: "This reference establishes that Obama Senior was considered at the time to be 'a radical economist' and leaves no doubt that Obama Senior had gravitated from his longtime family supporter Tom Mboya to the more extreme communist position openly advocated by and identified with Odinga Odinga." [pp. 110-111]
- LIE: "The funding memo listed seventy-two top individuals and organizations allegedly contributing to Odinga's presidential campaign, including over $1 million from 'Friends of Senator BO,' widely interpreted as friends of Senator Barack Obama…" [pp. 115-116]
- LIE: "No one in Obama's paternal or maternal family had ever resided in Chicago." [p. 123]
- LIE: "…Obama mentions in passing that in 1984 he had just graduated from college and was working as a community organizer out of the Harlem campus of the City College of New York. This is a job Obama does not mention in his autobiography, Dreams from My Father." [p. 129]
- LIE: "In the 1980s, Kellman was a known figure in community organization and it is doubtful he would have driven from Chicago to New York just to meet a newly graduated college kid who wrote a letter looking for a job. More likely, Kellman went to New York to see if the reports coming out of New York City about Obama were right, that Obama's profile might just fit in with Kellman's organization." [p. 130]
- LIE: "Rush, for instance, has charged that activist Hazel Johnson discovered asbestos in Altgeld Gardens housing project long before Obama latched on to the issue and made it a major part of the community organizing story he tells about himself in Dreams from My Father." [p. 135]
- LIE: "Sol Stern, a contributing editor of Chicago's City Journal, has observed that while Ayers today 'is widely regarded as a member in good standing of the city's civic establishment, not an unrepentant domestic terrorist,' the impression of Ayers's good citizenship is incorrect." [p. 140]
- LIE: "Is presidential candidate Barack Obama's decision to support Israel merely a matter of political convenience?" [p. 144]
- LIE: "The year 1995 was a banner one for Obama. He had just married Michelle and the couple bought a Hyde Park condo, the first home Obama ever owned." [p. 145]
- LIE: "Besides, Obama had to know who Ayers is and what he stands for, especially with Ayers making this splash on 9/11." [p. 147]
- LIE: "But when Chicago Sun-Times reporters finally confronted Obama on Friday, March 14, 2008, for an extended interview in the newspaper offices, the senator changed his tune." [p. 154]
- LIE: "Undoubtedly, Obama's advance for the book had worn thin and Project Vote! was work he was qualified to do, given his community organizing experience and his law degree." [p. 157]
- LIE: "As we shall see, Rezko was persistent, ultimately convincing Obama to drop working for political organizing causes so he could supplement the dwindling advance he had received at Harvard to write a book with real income as a lawyer, working in the small Chicago law firm where the lead partner did much of Rezko's slumlord legal work for him." [p. 157] … "if Obama did not want to work directly for Rezko, then having Obama in David Miner Barnhill & Galland was possibly the next best thing for Rezko." [p. 158] … "The likelihood is that Rezko played a role in getting Obama to join Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland." [p. 158]
- LIE: "Rezko found the house for Obama." [p. 165]
- LIE: "The letters appeared to contradict statements from Obama that he never did any favors for Rezko." [p. 162]
- LIE: "Yet Obama's campaign characteristically denied Obama had been involved in working at the law firm for Rezko or his rehab projects." [p. 163]
- LIE: "Rezko came up with a solution. His wife, Rita, bought the vacant lot at full price, permitting Obama and Michelle to negotiate buying the house for $1.65 million, a discount of $300,000 from the asking price." [p. 165]
- LIE: "Rezko agreed to pay the $14,000 cost of building the fence and Obama agreed to pay his landscaper to mow Rita's lot for her." [p. 166]
- LIE: "Obama could offer no explanation of why Rita Rezko bought the vacant lot instead…" [p. 169]
- LIE: "As fully expected, the Obama campaign continued to maintain Obama had never met Auchi, saying in effect that Levine had committed perjury." [p. 173]
- LIE: "When he was incarcerated in Iraq, Alsammarae contacted multiple elected officials in the United States to help him. Obama's Senate office has admitted Obama sought information from the US State Department about Alsammarae on October 16, 2006, and got a reply from the US consul in Iraq about a week later." [p. 174]
- LIE: "After Kellman hired him, Obama followed Alinsky's rules by moving into the Hyde Park-Kenwood area he had been assigned to organize." [p. 184]
- LIE: "When the 1995 Chicago Reader article surfaced in 2008, Obama supporters predictably tried to distance him from the Million Man March, arguing Obama had attended the event as an observer, not as a participant. Still, Obama's reaction at the time was enthusiastic." [p. 191]
- LIE: "Kessler claimed he and Obama both heard Wright preach a sermon that day in which the preacher blamed the 'white arrogance' of America's Caucasian majority for the world's suffering, especially the oppression of blacks." [p. 196]
- LIE: "Axelrod most likely liked how the speech worked with his client in Massachusetts and so decided to try it once again with Obama, perhaps thinking no one would notice." [p. 227]
- LIE: In a section on borrowed lines from movies, Corsi wrote, "Obama has repeatedly used the words bamboozled and hoodwinked in framing his argument that the truth has been hidden from voters." [p. 228]
- LIE: "On February 18, 2008, at a rally in Madison, Wisconsin, Michelle Obama made a political gaffe, implying to the audience she had not been proud of America until her African-American husband had ascended to be a front-running candidate for president." [p. 230]
- LIE: "Christopher Hitchens noted on Salon.com that Michelle announces in her Princeton thesis that she has been influenced by the definition of 'black separatism' given by Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton in their 1967 book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America." [p. 232]
- LIE: Writing about "Born Alive" legislation: "Not wanting to be the only Illinois state senator to vote against the bill, a move that Obama realized would be politically unpopular with his constituency, he took the easy way out and voted 'Present.'" [p. 238]
- LIE: "Critics on the right, who were anything but enthusiastic, sarcastically renamed the bill the 'Global Poverty Tax." [p. 250]
- LIE: "He has pledged to reduce the size of the military and stop spending money on expensive new military systems, so we can redirect the savings to social welfare spending." [p. 257]
- LIE: "He has been endorsed by Hamas and had to fire a Middle Eastern advisor who had been privately meeting with Hamas." [p. 257]
- LIE: "Another Obama advisor with decidedly anti-Israel views is General Merrill 'Tony' McPeak, retired US Air Force chief of staff under President Clinton, who is currently a senior foreign policy advisor to Obama and co-chairman of Obama's presidential campaign committee." [p. 267]
- LIE: "Critics charge that Obama's 'No Nukes' policy also bears another resemblance to the bestselling rock album: both sounded good, but neither had any realistic chance of accomplishing the policy goal they proclaimed." [p. 261]