Of Corsi Lies

An editorial from the local paper on the new book smearing Obama with lies:

Return of the swift boater, Editorial, Register Guard: You’ve got to hand it to Jerome Corsi. Not only did he manage to debut in the No. 1 spot on The New York Times best-seller list with his book-length smear of Barack Obama, but he also has played the media like a Stradivarius.

Capitalizing on his success four years ago as a key figure in the swift boating of John Kerry, Corsi once again is capturing priceless political coverage that further propels book sales and keeps his grab bag of lies, innuendo and character assassination front and center in the presidential campaign. He has appeared on CNN’s “Larry King Live” and had major stories and editorials on his book published in dozens of leading U.S. and international newspapers.

Rarely does such obvious media manipulation succeed so effortlessly without promising exclusive photos of Brangelina’s new babies. We take the bait because we must. The media are obliged to vet the charges and countercharges that ping-pong through a presidential campaign.

As Obama has discovered painfully, deliberately repeated misinformation is difficult enough to combat with irrefutable evidence. Left unchallenged, it can undergo the Joseph Goebbels’ transformation — repeat a lie often enough and it becomes truth.

That’s why the Obama campaign wasted no time pushing back hard against Corsi’s book, “The Obama Nation,” a title that is a deliberate play on the word “abomination.”

Because of the virulent misinformation that has circulated on the Internet about Obama since his rapid rise to the top of the Democratic ticket, his campaign has developed a rumor-debunking Web page called “Fight the Smears.” On that page is a link to a 40-page rebuttal to Corsi’s 384-page book.

In addition, John Kerry’s political action committee has launched a new Web site called Truth Fights Back to “fight against the right-wing smear machine.” It devotes significant space to “making sure Jerome Corsi doesn’t get away with his lies unchallenged.”

Corsi shouldn’t get away with much of anything unchallenged. He’s a staff reporter for the hard-right World Net Daily, where the Web site features an item headlined “Astonishing photo claims: Dead Bigfoot stored on ice” and another that announces “Big Macs fund training for homosexual activists.”

Corsi is well-known for his intemperate remarks. He has referred to Arabs as “ragheads,” called Pope John Paul II senile and characterized Islam as “a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion.”

Just one example of Corsi’s technique in “The Obama Nation” is enough to give readers a sense of the kind of pejorative manipulation of information he uses throughout the book. In a discussion of the drug use Obama disclosed in his autobiography and acknowledged discontinuing at age 20, Corsi adds, “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 U.S. Senate?”

How about last night? Why is Barack Obama afraid to confirm for the American people that he did not snort $1,000 worth of high-grade Colombian cocaine last night?

The news media may be forced to pay attention to such horse pucky in its efforts to set the record straight, but the public could drive a stake through the heart of the whole monstrous process by simply refusing to buy the book.

One thing, and I'd hope the editors know this, the public could refuse to buy the book, but I'm not sure that would be enough to stop them from becoming "bestsellers". As I understand it, these books are propelled to the top of the best seller list in large part by bulk purchases from interested groups. A conservative group will purchase a large quantity of the books (for far less than the cost of, say, a TV ad - they get the books at a discount), then hand them out to people who might be susceptible to the lies in the book. So there is a double benefit - the media is manipulated into thinking it is a "bestseller" and it gets lots of attention ("We take the bait because we must"), and lots of copies of the book find their way to people who are vulnerable to being manipulated by the book, but wouldn't have purchased it themselves.

The New York Times best-seller list does count corporate sales, etc., in its rankings, but it notes when a book's sales have been influenced by these factors. Unsurprisingly, Corsi's book has a footnote attached to it saying "A dagger (†) indicates that some bookstores report receiving bulk orders." So they're at it again.

Maybe a liberal group should consider, as part of an aggressive pushback against this, a large buy of one of the books on McCain and fight fire with fire. You may not have heard of the books about McCain (ask yourself why), but there are plenty to choose from.

Finally, the McCain campaign, in a show of just how honorable they are, has refused to denounce the book which has been summarized as arguing:

The Democratic candidate is a deceitful jihadist drug addict who, if elected, plans to impose a black supremacist, socialist regime.

I guess we'll have to depend upon the media's "efforts to set the record straight":

The media are obliged to vet the charges and countercharges that ping-pong through a presidential campaign.

Yeah, right. The last election shows just how effective the press is at getting the truth out there rather abetting the creation of a false narrative.

So how should Democrats react? What should they do differently this time?

Comments

[hari]

In US, isn't there a legal provision to STOP such incendiary publications at the time of election?

This is nothing but a *racist* attack on personality of BO.
If McCain doesn't reject it and its contents, he shld be put on notice by the media and rest....

[robertdfeinman]

Hari:
The first amendment insists on no prior restraint of publication (unless the government will be embarrassed by it).

The other option, libel laws, are impossible to use in the case of public figures because the libel must have been committed deliberately. This is, of course, impossible to prove, it requires knowing the author's state of mind.

The NY Times didn't have to play along with this game, they could have refused to believe the numbers and not put the book on their best seller list. There are many large selling books that they choose not to track, including the bodice rippers and the perennial favorites like the "Left Behind" series of apocalyptic Christian science fiction.

Either the press is fatally involved with the right wing, or it is still all about selling newspapers. Anything which boosts audience trumps any journalistic ethics. Sensationalism and false reporting were the stock in trade of journalism since the days of Grub Street. The press got a better reputation (in the US) when CBS TV and NBC TV were owned by two men of great decency: William Paley and Robert Sarnoff. This rubbed off on the NY Times and the Washington Post during the Nixon era.

This has all ended now. The two networks are now owned by big corporations, one of them the biggest military contractor. The founding families of the Post and Times are now in their third generations and don't seem to have same moral standards as their predecessors. Grub Street returns (or Yellow Journalism for those in the US).

[Nicolas]

robertdfeinman,

Your comment is true, but how do you explain that the US has gone so far down this road. We usually think of Italy as a Western country with crappy media, but I think you guys might just be the all time winners.

I live in Canada and while we have our Bill O'Reilly's, they are kept on the margin in some radio shows, and most journalists, while pressured, manage keep some sort of work ethic.

[a reader]

Unethical as it may be, I say pump the McCain books too!...

Having two crappy best-sellers, one on Obama and one on McCain, is likely to dilute the effects of either book left to take the 'throne' on its own...

So those liberal groups should just pick their 'favorite' anti-McCain book and start buying in bulk and spreading it everywhere..

(Of course, in addition to everything else they're doing to debunk the myths of the anti-Obama book).

[ken melvin]

Methinks Corsi should receive an invite from msrs. Conyers and Waxman.

[kthomas]

Corsi is a swine. If I ever got within arms length of him, he'd be swallowing teeth.

[Lee A. Arnold]

I think it would be entirely appropriate if McCain were asked what he really thinks about this book and his official reactions to it, at the Saddleback Civil Forum tonight.

The response could help turn the election. If he isn't asked, Obama should bring it up himself.

This is very important. In fact it's the perfect counterattack. Somebody get a message to the Obama camp.

[robertdfeinman]

Nicolas:
Let me turn the question around, why do you think Canada has avoided the control of the big media that has taken place in the US?

My Canadian brother-in-law watches Fox news all day on cable and has as lopsided a view of things as anyone else addicted to the channel.

Personally I think the CBC is a factor. I listen often and it seems to be less biased than NPR in the US has become. I'm not up to date on newspaper consolidation, perhaps it hasn't gone as far as in the US.

I think having more than two parties might also be a factor, it allows for more diversity of opinion to be heard.

Your thoughts?

[bakho]

Those types of screeds are par for the course of American presidential politics going back to the founding fathers.

People who did not see this one coming are pretty naive. The Dem nominee was always going to be swift boated. Obama was always just as likely to get swift boated as Hillary. Obama is more of a blank slate than Hillary so it makes it easier to target him to the uninformed.

The effect of negative advertising is to suppress the vote. This works best if your base is energized and the opposition is not. This time, the Dems are energized, the Dems have the ground organization and the Republican base is not energized.

What goes unnoticed is the attack ads that Obama has been running in tossup states. We have seen them for a couple of months in Indiana with zero counter by McCain. Obama is going after McCain on the DHL deal in Ohio media. If you live in an uncontested state like California, this may be under the radar. McCain does not have the funds to run a 50 state campaign or counter Obama. If the campaign turns really negative and the undecided don't vote, that favors Obama because he has registered many more Dems, his supporters are more energized and Obama has the better GOTV.

[Lee A. Arnold]

The Saddleback Church forum with both candidates can be seen live starting 5 pm Pacific time here:

http://saddlebackcivilforum.com/index.html

[dissent]

"So how should Democrats react? What should they do differently this time?"

They should have seen this coming, and had a book in the can, ready to go, on McCain. Associated with surrogates, of course. You can't fight fire with "Hope". You need fire.

McCain: many who know him think his temper much too volatile for the presidency. This was demonstrated and is in the records as early as the Naval Academy. Document & push.

McCain: there's a lot of smoke in his association with the Keating 5. Needs a thorough review.

McCain: an economic ideologue, protege of Phil Gramm. Connect the dots, document the lobbyist connections, etc.

McCain: dumped his first wife for an heiress, who went on to develop a raging drug addiction, motivating her to steal (and destroy) her own charity, and pressure (and destroy) a doctor to get her pill habit satisfied.

Can you imagine what the response would be if Michelle Obama had a history like Cindy McCain??

Can you imagine what the response would be if Obama had the treacherous husband history of McCain??

For heaven's sakes, Dems, if you don't know how to go on the offensive (after what we've all see the last 2 elections) you don't deserve to win. Which is sad - for the country.

[Bruce Wilder]

"Rarely does such obvious media manipulation succeed so effortlessly . . ."

"Rarely" on bizarro earth, maybe, but here in the real world, it is standard operating procedure.

I think it strange that, while most Democratic politicians readily acknowledge that Fox News is a propaganda channel, it is so rare to challenge CBS, CNN or NBC or the Washington Post on this score. That the corporate media has become a right-wing propaganda machine Goebbels would envy is a serious, serious problem in American politics, but there are almost never proposals to do any about it. A little hectoring from the blogosphere and hand-wringing over journalistic standards, and that's about it.

Real problems require real solutions. The U.S. News Media will have to forcibly restructured in some important ways.

Instituting a three or four competitors, which have some financial basis other than unshielded corporate advertising, would be a reasonable start. This is what PBS and NPR were supposed to be, but the Republicans completely trashed that vision, and PBS and NPR are pretty much worse than useless. (I slap my friends, who think NPR is "liberal", until they wake up.) Air America was a nice try, but corporatism seems to be a disease that infects all that we do.

We need the equivalent of the BBC and the Guardian.

[Thinker]

So using Corsi's logic, we can assume that Corsi is a child molester since he hasn't addressed that.

[Anon]

I for one intend to boycott all of Simon and Schuster's books. If I find that I really have to have one of their books, I'll be sure to buy used.

[Noni Mausa]

I agree with you, Mr. Feinman, about the CBC being one of the major difference is between the US and Canadian media environment. In fact, I would say it is the single biggest difference. The reason for this is so simple that most people miss it. My apologies at this point to people who have not missed it -- for the others, I continue:

You see, the CBC and commercial media are actually opposites, at least in so far as their intended objectives are concerned.

The purpose of commercial media is to attract money. The usual method of doing this is to contrive a show or series of shows which will attract viewership. At that point, the media outlet turns around and sells these eyes to commercial sponsors. The commercial sponsors are willing to pay large amounts because in their experience out of every million viewers, a certain proportion can reliably be predicted to become customers.

So the programming in this structure doesn't really have to do much -- any more than the bait in a mousetrap has to be good Cheshire cheese. (Mmmmmmm...)

Conversely, the CBC and other publicly funded media have a very different goal. Certainly, viewership is an important part of it. However, this is where the resemblance ends. Noncommercial media takes the satisfaction and involvement of its audience as an end in itself.

I have been a fan of CBC radio since the mid-70s. It was established in 1936 as a Crown Corporation (a publicly owned corporation) by the then Prime Minister R.B. Bennett, who was a Conservative, as a response to the rapid encroachment of US broadcasting. It's goals are, in part, to ensure distinctive programming of the highest quality, and recognize the importance of regional reflection and of the changing face of Canada. This it has done well for over 70 years.

Now, many people [cough**commercial media and right-wingers**cough] complain that only 10% of Canadians listen to or watch the CBC. They need a bigger audience, they claim. They need to serve ALL Canadians, they claim. Of course this is a false argument, based on a junk food vision of media.

The CBC does indeed serve all Canadians, even the ones who don't watch, in several ways:

--They track and break demanding news stories, which then also effect commercial news stories.
--They pick up local news stories of importance and cover them, nationwide if justified.
--They cover science, arts, history and literature. When Canadian publishers put on their jammies and say their prayers at night, they 'specially ask for their authors to be interviewed on air.
--They make sure important but obscure topics are covered.
--They provide a training ground and model of media excellence for other media people, even the ones who never work there.
--They effectively promote Canadian culture and thought in all its forms.
--They maintain a vast store of recorded programming and documentation going back to their earliest days. And not only CBC staff, but other organizations and researchers can arrange access to a lot of this.
--Much of their current programming, news stories, backgrounders etc. are available online to anyone who cares to see it. This is a valuable resource for other journalists, by the way.
--They have an institutional memory and an emphasis on facts and putting those facts in context within their programming. Their staff are well informed on a thousand topics. (Example: listen to their flagship show "As It Happens" weeknights, which consists of them picking up the phone and calling anyone and everyone in the world, from throne to gutter.)

And this isn't pay-per-view either -- the CBC creates all this programming and pours it out for anyone and everyone to enjoy. The last I heard, all this broadcasting wealth cost each Canadian citizen, in taxes, only 17 cents a day.

I estimate that the CBC alone raises the effective intelligence of Canadians by about 10 IQ points. And when you're snuggled up beside the biggest elephant in the world, being a smart mouse is a priceless advantage.

Noni

[Patrick]

Canadian culture is generally resistant to really nasty politics. Of course, we aren't immune or above it, but in general Canadians are turned off by personal attacks. Another difference is that the Government faces the opposition in parliament every day.

Americans, in my opinion, place WAY too much importance on the President, and it has resulted in arrogation of power by and to the executive branch. I find it weird to hear the president talk about his taxation policy when the president has absolutely no power to tax. Most of the significant powers (e.g. taxation, declaration of war) rest with the congress. It was the congresses failure that allowed Bush to go into Iraq. It was a weak congress that passed the Bush tax cuts which lead to the current fiscal disaster, etc ... For what it's worth, I would urge Americans to pay more attention to who they are electing to Congress.

[brian holt]

Bruce Wilder:

"So using Corsi's logic, we can assume that Corsi is a child molester since he hasn't addressed that."

You all should take a few minutes and see this video.

It's 20 minutes long, but about 1/2 way through is the best and simple example of communication jujitsu that I've seen in a while, and the MediaMatter's representative did just as Bruce suggests.

http://mediamatters.org/embed/larryking-20080813-corsi?f=h_top

[brian holt]

A good place to start if you can't see the whole video in my post above begins at about 9 minutes.

[Peter Schaeffer]

robertdfeinman,

According to http://www.leftbehind.com/channelbooks.asp?channelID=95

"Glorious Appearing, the #1 best-selling twelfth book in the Left Behind series, topped the charts of The New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly and the Christian Booksellers Association. It is the sixth consecutive book in the series to hit this peak."

If the elite media attempted to suppress (or ignore) Corsi's book it was have approximately the same effect as Soviet suppression of "The Gulag Archipelago".

In other words, everyone would read it and treat it as gospel.

For a current example, note the effort to suppress the Edwards scandal. How well did that work out?

[robertdfeinman]

Peter:
I'm not suggesting that the Times suppress anything, but they chose to acknowledge the fact that Corsi's book sales are being manipulated through a footnote.

They have expanded their book lists over the years into more categories, so it is up to them how to treat underwritten books.

If a firm buys in bulk and then gives away copies, the book may still be "popular" and highly read, but it different from one where people plunk down their own money. Book sellers know how to manipulate best seller lists, they do it all the time. It is only the lax moral standards of the newspapers that allow them to go along with this game - they need the ads.

Notice that the same game was played with movie reviews and the situation has now gotten so bad that people don't rely on them anymore and many papers are dropping them. People would rather read online reviews from those who don't have a stake in the results.

Why do you think CNN carries ads for companies making oil drilling platforms? Do they expect a viewer to suddenly call up and order one? No, the idea is that CNN is compromised by the income and will think twice about angering the sponsor by running critical stories.

I dare you to find a story on NBC which condemns GE and goes into some of its shady military contracting.

See the comments above about the CBC (the same could be said for the BBC), to see what an independent media outlet looks like.

[RoySV]

We take the bait because we must. The media are obliged to vet the charges and countercharges that ping-pong through a presidential campaign.

Another responsibility-free CYA piece from the press. Guess they had to take the bait about he WMD's in iraq too. The press needs to grow a damn back-bone. Pathetic

[Peter Schaeffer]

RD,

"The NY Times didn't have to play along with this game, they could have refused to believe the numbers and not put the book on their best seller list. There are many large selling books that they choose not to track, including the bodice rippers and the perennial favorites like the "Left Behind" series of apocalyptic Christian science fiction."

Apparently, the NYT did track the "Left Behind" series.

[anne]

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/obama-meets-with-pickens/

August 17, 2008

Obama Meets With Pickens
By John M. Broder

RENO – Senator Barack Obama and T. Boone Pickens, the Oklahoma oilman turned wind farmer, met for a few minutes this morning to talk about energy and the economy.

Aides did not share the details of their meeting, but Mr. Obama took one question from a reporter, who wanted to know why he was meeting with a man who spent $3 million supporting the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign to tear down Senator John Kerry, the Democrats’ 2004 presidential nominee.

Mr. Obama looked a bit uncomfortable and then said that’s not what he planned to talk to Mr. Pickens about, according to a pool report from the meeting, “Ah, you know, he’s got a lot longer track record than that. He’s been doing, ah, he’s a legendary entrepreneur and you know one of the things that I think we have to unify the country around is having an intelligent energy policy.

“Everybody knows that if we keep on going on the same track that were going, that we are giving our wealth away, were funding both sides in the war on terror,” Mr. Obama continued. “We’re going to be, over the long term, putting enormous pressure on ordinary families here in America who just aren’t going to be able to afford skyrocketing gasoline prices and home heating prices, so this is one of those issues that I think should unify the country. That’s what we’re going to be talking about.”

Mr. Pickens has offered to pay $1 million to anyone who can disprove the accusations against Mr. Kerry made by the Swift Boat group. Mr. Kerry and others have provided substantial documentation that they say definitively proves the charges are false, but Mr. Pickens has refused to pay the bounty.

[Huh?]

[anne]

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/obama-meets-with-pickens/

August 17, 2008

Obama Meets With Pickens
By John M. Broder

"Ah, you know, he’s got a lot longer track record than that. He’s been doing, ah, he’s a legendary entrepreneur and you know one of the things that I think we have to unify the country around is having an intelligent energy policy."

[This is disgraceful, I am not running for President but this is disgraceful and Obama and aides ought to be ashamed but will not be.]

[anne]

"Obama Meets With Pickens," this from a candidate whom aides will not let be seen near women with head-scarves. Gotta unify the country....

[anne]

What is essential for the Obama campaign is to show, especially to show would-be friends that they simply do not matter. This has happened repeatedly, as Obama has shown that he is completely beholden to precisely the advice that has brought us here. Foreign affairs, domestic affairs, no matter. Yes; we can be even more Republican than Republicans. Gotta unify the country.... Unifying Afghanistan, not so much.

[btg]

BO ??? what an unfortunate set of initials to have.

"Canadian culture is generally resistant to really nasty politics. "

it gets nasty enough - but it is more likely to backfire here.

In the 1993 Federal election, the conservatives ran an attack ad agianst Chretien, which tries to use his appearance and difficulty talking (a facial disability caused due to childhood polio that affected one side of his mouth) to mock him - it backfiried and the concervates were reduced to a mere 2 seats in parliament.

The Ontario provincial conservatives attacked Liberal Leader Mcguinty relentlessly as "not being up to the job" - and when the same people in the conservatives later moved to federal politics, they ran ads attacking PM Paul Martin linking him to corruption and a scandal that he had nothing to do with and triied to clean up - they have similarly been running attack ads against current liberal leader Dion, using audio clips or film clips to make him look indecisive, and essentially lying about his proposal for a carbon tax (current ads say gas prices will go up, when Dion has exempted gasoline in his proposal.

Tame stuff compared to Bush's people saying McCain had had a black love child and swiftboating - but i am pretty disgusted by the tactics here nonetheless.

[Francois]

"We take the bait because we must. The media are obliged to vet the charges and countercharges that ping-pong through a presidential campaign."

Yeah riiiight!

The brilliant way the Mainstream Media in the US uses to do that is to succumb to the "both side-ism" ad nauseam. Even when one side of the argument is pure grade AAA bullshit, very few journalists seems to have the kahunas to challenge the mouthpiece.

With "journalism" like that, who needs a propaganda machine?

As for this "book" (after all, it has a cover and paper between those) I was astonished to go to a Philadelphia Borders store just to be "greeted" by a prominent display, full of copies, right at the front door. I mean, one couldn't miss it, unless legally blind.

Why was this book given such a location? Something to ponder, no? Why did I have to look and ask to find ANY book on John McCain is rather troubling, to say the least.

As for the Dems, they must accept one obvious truth: Right-wingers are hell bent in playing very dirty, their agenda for the nation is quite obvious, ("everything for us, nothing for you") and the only way to defeat them is to play even dirtier and with more money.

Sad to accept, but it seems that the credulity of the American voter knows no limits. How to explain B.O. slippage in the polls , otherwise? (Unless one wants to invoke the race factor, of course) He's made far fewer blunders than McSame, (on foreign policy, my 17 y/o daughter knows more than him, and she does not take this as a compliment!) yet anything that is PERCEIVED as a faux-pas from B.O. is reverberated everywhere by a legion of talking heads who can't bring themselves to use it for the purpose Nature intended. As for the editors and owners of media outlets, they have tax cuts to protect (as Charlie Glibson made very clear during the Philadelphia "debate" between BO and HRC) and the country can go to hell in the meantime.

So, Dems just can't afford to show any mercy whatsoever. Play the press as puppet, since they seem to be so willing to be given the "get the K-Y jelly and bend over" treatment. Attack, attack always attack the other (and their enablers) until the character assassination is total, or that chaos, despair, fear, uncertainty and utter confusion is achieved.

The gloves MUST come off.

Taking the high road has cost the Dems 2 elections, and look at this country now. Want more of the same for yet another 4 years?

[jeff hoffman]

You get the impression that if they went one on one, the old white guy would be driving the basket and Obama would be trying to finesse a series of three pointers. When Wes Clark stated, a few Sundays back, that McCain's military experience didn't automatically make him Commander in Chief material, both Obama and John Kerry were prominently featured repudiating him the following day.

[X Man]

The people in control of our major media outlets are a bunch of credulous nitwits who couldn't practice journalism properly if their lives depended on it. In the U.K. this clown would have been publicly exposed and humiliated as the partisan political hack that he is. It's no wonder the NY Times is now asking whether Jon Stewart is "the most trusted man in America"--not that the gray lady has been right about very much else these past several years.

[Cyrille]

Robertdfeinman : "Notice that the same game was played with movie reviews "

Well, I receive a French cultural magazine (Télérama), which is no longer invited to the press displays of new movies by one major (yes, American) production company, because said company was unhappy that they received a non-thrilling review about a movie that they hoped would top the charts.

Years later, they still have to publish their critics a week late.

Yes, it's all a con game.

[swells]

My wife and I had a couple of friends over for dinner Saturday night. One of my friends works at a more or less rural store in North Carolina. She commented that she couldn't have an Obama sticker on her truck due to the virulent anti-Obama attitudes of other people at the store as she couldn't afford the vandalism. She said that most, when pressed, will come up with an excuse like lack of experience but that the virulence of their opposition belies their rationalizations. Nobody really gets that exercised by a thin resume, they just vote for someone else. It's really about race.

Here's the deal folks. Corsi, to paraphrase Al Franken is a lying liar. He knows it and so does everyone who reads his book. People who buy his arguments are shopping for camoflage, not truth.

Here's the other thing. If McCain wins, the US will get exactly what it deserves, democratically speaking.

[Francois]

Swells wrote:
"It's really about race."
I went to see my parents in Canada during the summer. At dinner time, my dad told me that Obama (sadly as per my dad) "couldn't win", because whether I liked it or not, race is too powerful a factor in the USA. "He's got, at least, a 30 points handicap, just for that"

I first thought he was being his old self, as pessimistic as they come. But now, I'm not so sure. There are too many revealing anecdotes, that lend credence to the pollsters theory that voters lie to them to present a socially more acceptable image, but when alone in the voting booth, their true colors (pun not intended) will surface.

Given the numerous problems this nation face right now, it would be beyond appalling if race was a decisive factor in this election.

But we get the governments we deserve, don't we?