Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Obama rumors from internet and print

Everyone knows that there rumors about Barack Obama out there, and they know that many of them are false. Unfortunately, many false things about the candidate are still being used to hurt him. Those lies need to be debunked. Thankfully, there are some resources out there that do just that.


SITES THAT FIGHT THE RUMOURS
* Know the Facts is an extremely detailed site from the Obama campaign that gives you everything you could possible need to know about misleading issues in the campaign. The Campaign Politics part of the site is especially useful. Fight the Smears is the version for popular use.


* Put Away Falsehood is a website by the Matthew25 foundation (a religious political group that back Obama) that seeks to educate Christians about the truth concerning Barack Obama, and appeal to their integrity.

* Snopes.com is a leading website for investigating urban legends. They have worked on 30 urban legends relating to Barack Obama so far, almost none of which have turned out to be true.

* John Kerry has started his own site to fight Barack Obama rumors, called Truth Fights Back.


MOST LIBERAL?
On a topic related to such rumors, you may have heard something to the effect of "Barack Obama is the most liberal member of the Senate" or "Joe Biden is the third most liberal member of the Senate". These statements (silly to anyone who follows the Senate) are based on a single flawed National Journal report about 2007 voting patterns (they said the same thing about John Kerry in 2004). The only reason these senators ranked so high was because they missed many votes while campaigning. In previous years, Barack Obama had ranked 10th and 16th, and Biden was even more moderate. The National Journal themselves has said that their vote rankings should not be used in such a way, and just stated:
Joe Biden's voting record has generally placed him among the center of Senate Democrats ideologically in National Journal's annual congressional vote ratings
A separate, more comprehensive study of the 109th Congress found Obama to be the 21st most liberal Senator. The study of the 110th Congress put Joe Biden and Barack Obama tied as the 10th and 11th most liberal senators, which was exaggerated due to missed votes. Obama has also coauthored several successful bills with Republicans Richard Lugar, Tom Coburn, Kit Bond, and Chuck Hagel, who are nowhere near the liberal end of the spectrum.
The McCain campaign has tried to push these false impressions about both Obama and Biden themselves, even as they claim that "Obama has voted in lockstep with President George W. Bush nearly half the time." That's pretty hard to do if he's the most liberal member of the Senate, isn't it? John McCain has been in the Senate with both men and should know better.


JEROME CORSI
On another (and hopefully dying) topic, Jerome Corsi recently released a vile book full of falsehoods in an attempt to keep Obama from winning the presidency. The Obama campaigning released a 40 page rebuttal to Corsi's book, and Media Matters have kept a running update of what Corsi is trying to do.

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