The "Truth" about John McCain from the same "scholar" who gives us Obama Nation

Here are a few articles slamming John McCain by the same scholarly researcher who gave us the Swift Boaters and the current Obama Nation.

Articles here and here and here. All of these and more comments by Jerome Corsi with regard to McCain can be found here.

Interesting. So has anyone done any fact checking on these articles? And what do you suppose he is trying to accomplish - he doesn't like Obama, he doesn't like McCain, so who does he expect to benefit from all of this?

Obama's own anti-anti-Obama website (Stop the smear or something like that) has a bunch of quick and simple fact checking on Obama Nation and those articles. I forget the website, because I don't go there myself. It's called 'stopthesmear' or 'fightthesmear' or something along those lines.

I have to say, I'm not a huge Obama fan, but I have to give him credit for not just letting Corsi run the way John Kerry did. (I wasn't a big John Kerry fan either, but I thought all the stuff questioning his service while never mentioning Bush's 'fortunate son' status was just despicable.)

He was doing the obligatory Republican hatchet job on McCain back when the Party wanted someone, anyone, other than John McCain. The guy is pure propaganda from start to finish. If there is an abomination in Obama Nation it's the absolute lack of moral substance in this guy Corsi in particular and the Republican Party in general.

> 2 who does he expect to benefit from all of this?

WND has a None of the Above campaign going.

It will be interesting to see what the anti-McCain right does if McCain picks Lieberman as VP. Personally, I think it's unlikely, whatever the current noise.

#5: I was thinking of writing in Paris Hilton as my NotA vote, but I don't want a vote for her to seem like an endorsement of her energy policy. And staying home is just not an option. There was this one place recently that had a local election where no one showed up (not even the candidates) and the government kept on going as always. That Joseph Farah guy is almost reading my mind in thinking that Obama would be better than McCain, but still not worth voting for. It's like how I'd rather be stabbed in the thigh over being stabbed in the eye. I may prefer one over the other, but neither is worth the explicit legitimizing endorsement of a vote.

Why is staying home not an option?

Well, you have to vote for dog catcher too.

#8: There are a couple different "relevant" arguments which are popular in society. One says that if I don't participate, that constitutes tacit approval. The other says that if I do participate, then that constitutes consent to the results no matter what they are. Both of these arguments are BS, but the latter argument is more BS than the former so I prefer that there is no perception of tacit approval.

Another way to put it might be if the police come to my door and say they need to take my son to fill the ranks of the army and that they need to take my car to give it to someone less fortunate than I. Even if I can't do anything about it, I think the more logical response is to helplessly say "Hell, no!" instead of just ignoring them with a beer in hand as they put a hood over my kid and tow my car away. Actually, even better would be for me to pull an Arthur Dent and lie down in front of their vehicle, but the government's methods are rarely overt enough to obstruct so simply.

10: Yeah, it's a lose/lose. I don't know though about which argument is more BS. I would say if you're participating in the democracy you're legitimating it on some level; if you exercise your right to vote you might be signing a bit of a social contract (at least for one round). Whereas nonparticipation could more easily be regarded as bowing out of the system—not that statists wouldn't turn it around anyway.

Of course, I agree with your second paragraph, but I might argue that voting is less like saying, "Hell, no!" and more like letting them take your son and then heading down to the station to fill out some forms complaining about it.

#11: I think it would depend on each individual state if registration to vote constituted a social contract to abide by the results. I currently can't find any such agreement on the materials for California, but I've heard something like a social contract is written on the voter registration form for New Hampshire. If it ain't in writing, I'm not going to put much stock in it. Besides, if you don't vote, or don't even register, the state still considers you just as much in their legal jurisdiction as if you had voted.

There's always standing in front of the polling place and discouraging others from voting, although I've heard that criticized as still taking part in “the spectacle.”

#13: You just gave me an idea. No, not the obstruction of voters. But it reminded me of what FIJA does when they hand out pamphlets on jury nullification to prospective jurors at courthouses. Maybe so long as I'm outside a certain range of the polling place, I could hand out pamphlets of Lysander Spooner's essay "Against Woman Suffrage," which argues that even though women should have equal rights as men, neither men nor women should have the right to vote. Like the Joker once said, "Introduce a little anarchy." :P

Well, maybe Corsi can figure out how many homes John McCain owns.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/21/obama-counts-mccains-houses/

Lunar, why don't you like Bob Barr? A vote for him would be in support of many if not all your beliefs. I think people who don't vote, don't have a legitimate say in the outcome.

If the libertarians don't support the candidate, then nothing will come of Libertarianism as a viable political philosophy.

Why not vote for Barr or Ron Paul?

geneg, I'd say it's a short-term vs. long-term distinction. If I vote for Barr, what are the effects this year, and what are the effects down the road? I haven't seen any "new thing" that I want to add to the ballot in 2040 badly enough to discard my opportunity to participate in choosing between the two major candidates.

Voting for the Democrat or the Republican is NOT going to advance your libertarian agenda. Not voting at all is aquiescing to the wishes of others. You may wind up with a Democrat or a Republican, but you will definitely NOT get a libertarian.

Building a political party in this country takes time and effort. Just pissing and moaning without participation doesn't work. I would rather you vote for Bob Barr than not at all. If you don't vote it won't affect the outcome, if you do it probably won't, but when it comes time to count the libertarians they will have one more vote than they would have had. In many (all?) states a political party will be recognized as legitimate, not needing petitions, etc. to get candidates on ballots, if it gets some percentage of the vote. If you vote for the libertarian, your vote may be the one that legitimizes the party in your state. Once you've got a legitimate party you can participate in party politics helping to shape the platform more to your liking. I know the Libertarian party is a real, legitimate party, but you still have to petition to get on most ballots. To effect your agenda you need 50% + 1 of the Electoral College. You won't get that by not voting.

I know you know this.

18: If you don't vote it won't affect the outcome, if you do it probably won't, but when it comes time to count the libertarians they will have one more vote than they would have had. In many (all?) states a political party will be recognized as legitimate, not needing petitions, etc. to get candidates on ballots, if it gets some percentage of the vote. If you vote for the libertarian, your vote may be the one that legitimizes the party in your state.

First, "if you do it probably won't"—this is strictly true, but "probably won't" should really be "it's all but mathematically impossible." In any case, your chance of being the voter to make a difference as far as established party status for Libertarians is equally small in many states. Illinois's requirement of 5%, for example, is fairly standard and would give me about a 1/264k chance of being that one vote—minuscule. (That calculation is based on voter turnout in 2004; chances would actually be much lower this year because I'm sure lots more people in IL will turn out to vote for Obama.) If the spread between the two major-party candidates is less than 5%, you actually have a better chance of being the deciding vote in the contest between them. If their spread is more than 5%, vice versa.

In any event the value of your vote in deciding outcomes like that is negligible and can be safely ignored in favor of consumption voting.

Gene, you either don't know what my positions are or what Bob Barr's positions are. Just recently he praised the Texas school district that allowed teachers to carry guns. I think if you read my posts on that topic here in Pro and Con, you'll see that Barr is taking the side of government control, not liberty. There is just no point voting for a person to "represent" libertarianism. The very idea is self-contradictory. The only motivation I have to show up to vote is to vote down ballot measures.

I understand what you mean by saying that putting together a political party takes time and patience, but I don't want to be in control of the government. Politics is the art of theft and coercion, and I don't care to impose a libertarian official upon people who don't want it.

And even if I did want the libertarians to take over the government, you should look at my post in the other thread about Barack Obama and the McCain ads. My point in that thread was to wonder what it would mean if even the "perfect candidate" couldn't win in a democracy. And Obama is a mainstream politician. If he can't win, how are the libertarians supposed to win?

Wouldn't allowing teachers to carry guns be anti-government control? Or only if the kids were allowed to pack heat too?

Waitaminute... Obama's an effete black nationalist "secret Muslim" argula-eating socialist?

I'm going to have to rethink everything.

#21: It's the government making a decision on behalf of everyone in that school district. The individual parents and principals in that district would have no choice in the matter and stealing choice from people like that is about as unlibertarian as you can get. You can go to the relevant thread here.

>20 Lunar:

Lunar, point taken. I was so dismayed that you wouldn't vote at all, that I was blinded to the fact that any governmental interaction is beyond the pale. I will try to keep this in mind in future.

BTW, I know you and Bob Barr come from seperate wings of Libertarianism, I just ass-u-me(d) that a libertarian is a libertarian is a libertarian. I will try to keep the fact they are not before me in future.

Of course it only makes sense, Democrats certainly are not a lockstep party, either.