Someone please explain how Corsi's agit-prop got to be No.1 on the NYT's bestseller list. Could Republican donors have bought up a few million copies and put them in warehouses?

"as is evidenced by all the disengenuous whining from the McCain camp about Obama's willingness to play "the race card."

I don't think it was a "whining" . The McCain camp  hit Obama very hard for using a racists card.  It was Obama who was whining and reinterpreted his words.

Robert -- there is a willing and eager fanbase that did the same favor to numerous Ann Coulter books, to Jonah Goldberg's book, and who make Rush Limbaugh one of the most popular media personalities. It's hard for me to grasp because I live in Boston, but these people are out there.

"these people are out there."

Ah Rozenson, there you go again - the elitist Easterner (from the home of Harvard and Boston College, no less) looking down at "these people".  And what do you mean by "these people" in any event?  The "bitter" gun-toting Christians who embody the values of Middle America?  No wonder Democrats are going to lose this election big time - the Presidency, the House AND the Senate.

... just being a "contrarian", you know, in this Obama echochamber ...

RP: Rush has twenty million listeners, according to his own estimation.  Setting aside exaggeration, old folk homes, the mentally challenged, children, and skinheads, that still leaves, oh, two million people who'd be willing to fork out $24.95 go have their prejudices confirmed in Hardcover.  Heck, if anyone wrote a book denouncing the World Wide Conspiracy of Licorice Lovers and the evil properties of anise and fennel, I'd happily be out there, first in line, to pay for the tripe.  I man's gotta have principles.

"No wonder Democrats are going to lose this election big time - the Presidency, the House AND the Senate."

Would you like to put a little bit of money on that claim? I'll give you good odds. Look, Obama may find a way to lose this election, but if you think the Republicans are gonna win seats in the house and the senate, I want a connection for some of the shit you're taking!

And you don't have to live in a blue state to know that there are plenty of "these people out there". I know some of them. I like plenty of them when we're talking about anything OTHER than politics. The fact that a few hundred thousand people will buy extremest literature doesn't mean squat about where the election is. Any more than Obama drawing 75,000 people to his convention speech or in Portland or where-ever else means anything about where the election is. Each side will concede the other side's hard core base and both sides will work on the voters in the middle.

According to what's his name guest from Countdown last night, the majority of the sales have come via bulk purchases; accordingly, when the book is placed at the top of the NYTBS list it will have a dart next to the name to qualify the ranking.

Additionally, the Obama campaign has already published a 40 page rebuttal.

Additionally, according to what's his name guest, 9 of the first 11 citations in the back of the book are from Corsi's other writings.

Jacob, your sad Hillary dead ender stuff is leaking through again.  To quote Obama: "No, McCain's campaign is not racist. It's cynical, but not racist."  

It's you that's using a popped off line of Obama's (which was completely true, BTW) to try and worm our way back to proving, once again, how unfair it all is about poor misunderstood Hillary.  

There's a Republican ad I saw where Obama's head was superimposed on a dollar bill.  Gee, I wonder why.

McCain is running as the head of a party that ran this ad and that has gained power from the Southern strategy for generations.  If McCain doesn't openly repudiate it, he owns it. He;s not allowed to both benefit from it and fake a bunch of outrage over it, at least without being called on it.  

I'm calling him on it: he's the biggest phony in DC, all the more ridiculous with his Honorable Man solipsism.

I was thinking about the name of this thread: Sure to Sink.  I'd say, Hopefully It Will Sink.  

I think it will define us as a nation of dangerous morons if it does not sink, and rightly so.

"World Wide Conspiracy of Licorice Lovers and the evil properties of anise and fennel"

You laugh, icarus.  Licorice is evil.

Just yesterday I happened upon a product called double salt Dutch licorice.  Being a onetime fan of old-fashioned tough-as licorice buttons, I gave these a try.  Man alive!  It had to be one of the most revolting things I've ever put in my mouth.  Disconcertingly, the first impression was not dissimilar to sucking on a teaspoon full of table salt.  I looked at the ingredients: gelatin, sugar, anise...the only unusual one was down at the bottom of the list--beeswax.  And no salt.  Maybe salt counted as a "preservative," I thought.  Being the tolerant, inquisitive guy that I am, I decided to stick with it and see where this taste adventure led me.  Maybe salt and licorice are two great tastes that taste great together.  I bit down and--with difficulty--chewed.  What fallowed can be likened to nothing so much as sitting down with a snifterful of liquid ammonia.  Yikes!  It's been a long time since I spat food out, but yesterday I did.  I can only think that this food was never intended as a treat but as some sort of Dutch folk medicine--a strong purgative more than likely.  All I can say is, NEVER AGAIN.

Wandrey, don't feed the bears.

Wandreycer1 said:

"He;s not allowed to both benefit from it and fake a bunch of outrage over it, at least without being called on it."

McCain did it and Obama run for cover.

The bears are already well fed. They are just roaming and  this particular bear is harmless,  just having fun, I think.

Welcome back, jake. Sorta missed ya.

The conservative movement has no regard for the truth. This is not an attack, but a statement of fact. The disregard for truth is not due to oversight or ignorance, but is baked in the DNA of the conservative movement. The conservative movement willingly exiled itself from objective reality (another name for truth), and believes that when truth and the interests of conservatives collide, the truth must yield.

The movement is described by its adherents even today as an "insurgency", despite the fact that conservatives have held the presidency for 28 of the last 40 years, have appointed 7 out of 9 Supreme Court justices, and held unfettered power between 2001 and 2007.  The insurgency is (quoting movement stalwart Geo. F. Will) against the 'flaccid liberal consensus" that existed in Eisenhower's America. Considering that this consensus was adhered to by people as disparate as Eisenhower, Nixon, Truman, Kennan, Acheson, Marshall, Stevenson and most other mainstream Republicans and Democrats of the time, it's not a stretch to say that that the insurgency was and is against reality itself.

This is particularly true in view of the movement's strategies and tactics. Because conservatives believed that they were not getting a fair shake under the prevailing view of reality, nearly all their writing from the fifties to today seeks to redress the balance though apologias for conservatives, attacks on liberals or a combination of the two. (In Eisenhower's America, the main apologist and attack voices were those of fringe groups like the Birchers and Communists - Buckley's goal was to put a face more respectable than the Birchers' to one-sided conservative views.)

Apologias and attacks need not be inconsistent with the truth (though neither is compatible with the "whole truth"), but when they supply almost the entire arsenal of thought, there can be no consistency and no intellectual honesty because they're based on diametrically opposite premises - the apologist views reality in the light most favorable to his case, bending some facts and completely overlooking others to paint a portrait of pure virtue, while the attacker views reality in the light most unfavorable to the target, again bending or overlooking facts that don't support the argument, creating a picture of unmitigated evil. This turns the Golden Rule on its head  - the apologist says (sometimes with some justification) "you're not being fair to me because you're overlooking these (selected) points in my favor" then turns around and mounts an attack in which he patently does not even seek to be fair, usually because the target is unworthy of fairness.  (Have you ever read the Wall Street Journal editorial page?)

This makes for effective insurgency - if two wrongs make a right, all I have to do is point out some hypocrisy, error or failing of yours and my own are irrelevant, and my side can rest comfortably knowing that however bad we are, we're not as bad as your side. It also encourages moral slippage, as can be seen when a civilized country adopts tactics used by an uncivilized, wholly indecent enemy and then claims the tactics are justified, indeed unassailable, because they're not as bad as those of the enemy - "Al Qaeda beheads its enemies, how can you claim that it's wrong for us to dunk them in a little water?"

In addition, for insurgents, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. This means that I cannot criticize anyone on my own side, and can support any outrageous argument made against the other side, because truth is less important than scoring points (or racking up casualties) for our team. Thus, despite the fact that there must be many decent conservatives who are as repulsed by Corsi's swill (which is probably not being fair to swill) as liberals are, they will remain mostly silent (except for attacking liberals on the basis that they're being hypersensitive in complaining about the book). If they joined in condemning Corsi, they'd be giving comfort to the enemy and distress to whoever is benighted enough to believe Corsi's libels. Insurgents don't shoot their own on purpose (except, of course, for apostasy, which accounts for the vitriol directed at any former conservatives who depart from the insurgency's line to tell the truth).

This is not to say that liberals are always in possession of the truth. Far from it - a respect for reality means a respect for complexity and a recognition that we rarely know the entire truth (except on the most basic level - i.e., "truth is beauty and beauty truth"), and thus must constantly reassess our view of what's likely to be true when new facts or arguments come to light. (A liberal is someone so openminded that he's not sure he agrees with himself.) When liberals (and other truthseekers) recognize this (as most do, most of the time) the echo-chamber effect and groupthink are avoided. Conservatives do not seek to avoid an echo-chamber, but relish it, partly because it's effective for an insurgency and partly because they think that liberal groupthink (both when it exists and more often when it doesn't) requires conservative groupthink as a counter-force.

The utter refusal to give liberals the benefit of any doubt, and to acknowledge any error in their own ways lest liberals gain an advantage, perpetuates conservatives' exile from reality. It's impossible to take Corsi's book seriously as "scholarship" or a useful insight into Obama from a conservative perspective, because it is neither. Thus, it must seem to conservatives that liberals don't want to take them seriously. The only way we could do so would be for conservatives to write an honest book (and maybe there are some out there, though being serious they won't attract the attention or garner the sales that Corsi's book will.) And the only way to write an honest book would be to acknowledge that Obama is a man of virtues and flaws (as is also of course the case with McCain, and any liberal book that failed to note this would not garner favorable reviews from most liberal publications). But a book that said that Obama is a pretty good guy, but on balance McCain would be better for the country for x,y and z reasons, not only would not sell, it would not even be conservative, because a fairminded person could read it and come away with the impression that Obama's virtues outweighed his faults (particularly if the fairminded person liked universal healthcare and a sane fiscal policy). This would not be an insurgency but a surrender, and the modern day Eisenhowers, Trumans, Kennans and Kennedys would once again set the parameters for truth. That would be the death of the conservative movement, though it just might lead to a renaissance for conservatives and conservatism.

Hmmmm, salt licorice! Home, sweet home.

OK, on topic: Kilgore's argument in the first para appears to be that Obama "may be less vulnerable than Kerry" because ... "Obama's credibility as a candidate is based on the popularity of his policy positions," not on "character".

How's that make Obama different from Kerry? God knows Kerry's selling point wasn't character... People who voted for him voted so because they preferred Democratic policies over another damn Bush term, not because they thought John was such a swell guy or something. (He must have been the least sympathetic candidate the Dems put up since.. eh...)

"Geoff G said:

The conservative movement has no regard for the truth. This is not an attack, but a statement of fact"

You are correct, however the liberal  movement also has no regard for the truth.

Obama's got bigger problems than Serome Corsi's book. Namely, the escalating crisis in Eastern Europe, a region about which he knows next to nothing.

Jacob - you are pathetic.

He comes here for the positive reinforcement, Wandrey...

-- The "bitter" gun-toting Christians who embody the values of Middle America? --

Oh, like lying the country into an illegal, unnecessary, unConstitutional war? Trying to blackmail our brave Americans in the armed services to staying in the military longer to get the GI Bill? Oh yeah, really, really American, this. Seems to me they confuse silence with integrity.

ramboorider: tee hee ... I am one of those whom the good Tep would call a "kool-aid drinking, Obamabotophile echo-chamber-instrumentalist".  I guess I should have noted that my tongue was firmly in the cheek predicting the demise of the Democra-tic Partee ... I though the licorice reference was enough ...

Aero: Yeah, called "Drop" in the Netherlands (as in, "have some Drop and drop dead") ... I had heard about the thing while I was studying there and avoided the stuff.  Then moved to Denmark and one day, when the train broke down and I was walking down the tracks to the replacement, a very nice Danish couple offered something - a black pearly thing covered in what looked like sugar - my stomach is as sturdy as a battleship and having grown up in a third world country where you eat a lot of weird things all the time, my gag reflex is pretty well under control.  Well, the Drop took it to the limit.  I did dispose of it as soon as the nice couple turned away to smooch - otherwise, I would have thrown up in the next train, I'm sure.  

Everytime I read one of jacob's posts, reminds me of the Drop: snifterful of liquid ammonia about describes the sensation.

Geoff: "The insurgency is (quoting movement stalwart Geo. F. Will) against the 'flaccid liberal consensus" that existed in Eisenhower's America." I understand referring to Eisenhower as "flaccid" - God knows Churchill had no respect for the "man" - but that Will refers to the 50s as "liberal" (this is when the Dullest Brothers ran American's Foreign and Security Policy and Tricky Dick learned his Executive leadership) just shows how warped our values have become.  

Tep: "Obama's got bigger problems than Serome Corsi's book. Namely, the escalating crisis in Eastern Europe, a region about which he knows next to nothing."

But, but, but - I thought Poutine had made the stupidest mistake of his like, that his taking the pawn had led to the exposure of his rook in the fourth house, and that the Wizard's mantle was lost to Minas Morgul or ... I lost your chess analogy but didn't you say that Poutine had made a big boo boo and now that we the 100 Patriots in Poland (would make for an amazing musical by the way), he is surrounded and about to give up his Premiership and retire to a Dacha in Crimea?

kevincollins: I guess the internet is not the best medium for dead pan ... see my note above.  Was kinda joking ;-).

Jeff: Funnay!

Wandrey: I have a suggestion for dealing with Jacob.  Why don't we do the same thing he does?  Like, copy the stuff that he has copied, and change the words he has changed BACK to what they were, and then add a few grammatical mistakes to make sure we sound like him - that is, a twelve-year old stuck in grade two - then add links to irrelevant and poorly supported articles taken from rightwing blogs, and voila: you have a "Jacomment".

What this site needs is a campaign betting pool.  

Enough with the daily back-and-forth on whether Obama is or is not in trouble.  (I know, I'm as guilty as anyone, but still...)  

I'm increasingly bored.  Let's spice it up with some wagering.  Money talks and bullshit walks and all that.

"however the liberal  movement also has no regard for the truth."

You are correct as well.

Now, if we can just re-define liberal from "anything not conservative" back to "people whose minds are so open they fell out", and reestablish "moderate" to its rightful dominion at the middle of the scale, I'll be a happy man.

Thank you, Geoff G! That was perhaps the most interesting read of the year.

tep writes,

"Obama's got bigger problems than Serome Corsi's book. Namely, the escalating crisis in Eastern Europe, a region about which he knows next to nothing."

Any basis for this statement?  I know you like that McCain has been to the region and recognizes that Putin is a thug.  Good for him.  But what has Obama said that convinces you he's clueless about the region?  His comments thus far say next to nothing about his understanding of the region because his comments (like McCain's) say next to nothing in general.

We (or at least I) judge people to have a poor understanding of an issue because they demonstrate their ignorance through misguided statements and proposals.  Seem e.g. McCain on tax policy and health care or Hillary on the gas tax (actually, there's usually the alternative interpretation that the person in question knows he/she is wrong but pushes said bad policy for political reasons).  Often such lack of understanding comes with helpful signposts in the form of statements like "I don't put much stock in [experts in this area]" or sometimes even a direct admission (e.g. McCain on the economy).

I'm not saying Obama has a good understanding of the region or that McCain doesn't.  I'm saying that we should wait for some actual substance from the candidates before evaluating them on the issue.  The histrionics about McCain's sage wisdom or Obama's naïveté are premature.

Alan, since you have requested actual substance from the candidates on Eastern Europe, Obama's first reaction to Russia's invasion of Georgia was to call on both sides for restraint, thereby blaming the victim at least in part. Then, he proposed that the issue be taken up in the UN Security Council, where Russia has a veto. If that isn't substantial enough evidence that Obama is in over his head on this matter, what is?

nbarry, it's not as if Georgia was simply sitting there in peaceful bliss when Russia attacked.  Georgia took military action in South Ossetia, which at the very least contributed to the start of the conflict (the active war at any rate.   The conflict had been seething for a while).  Russia's response was grossly disproportionate, but asking both sides to show restraint is inherent in a cease-fire.  And he did emphasize that this was more about Russia, even before they invaded (see www.barackobama.com/.../statement_of_senator_obama_on_1.php and www.barackobama.com/.../statement_of_senator_obama_on.php )

As to the security council, here's McCain: www.johnmccain.com/.../Read.aspx

"The United States and our allies should continue efforts to bring a resolution before the UN Security Council condemning Russian aggression, noting the withdrawal of Georgian troops from South Ossetia, and calling for an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgian territory. We should move ahead with the resolution despite Russian veto threats, and submit Russia to the court of world public opinion."

Again, where is the substantive difference between McCain and Obama here?

I should add that "substance" means the things you are actually proposing, not how you talk about it.  To disagree with the "substance" of Obama's call for restraint would be to support propose that one side stop fighting while the other continues.  That's not what McCain had in mind.  The only difference there was rhetorical.

Right, Alan. And I second GSpinks on jake's "liberals too" point. As a Radical Moderate, I say a pox on both of their ideology-driven weaseling and histrionic moral superiority posing .

A question for the Obama-skeptics--given that Biden has demonstrated a vote-catching appeal only slightly better than Mad Mike Gravel; Hillary's recently published campaign memos and e-mails reveal a level of chaos and mismanagement of truly epic proportion; and Edwards, well you know...

Who do you think would have been a better choice than Obama? In my view, you might just as well come right out with it and say, "John McCain", because none of the other Dems would have a snowball's chance in hell of beating him. Obama doesn't have a silver bullet for a resurgent Russia, but then neither does McCain.

aero and icarus:

I can't believe you would write such calumnies against Dutch licorice! Drop is to candy as mother's milk is to nourishment.  ...Well, okay, *double salt* is probably not up to this analogy. But there are so many other kinds of drop. Have you tried soft sweet, without sugar coating? Or soft salt? Ahhh, heaven. Brand is also important.  (Venco's a good one.)

I'm not sure I'm going to be taking advice on what to ingest from someone named "Hemlock".  Just saying ...

Regarding the "Jacomment". idea I would like to add that you must add English as a second language cues, such as Obama has THE charisma.

I always get a kick out of Jake's posts, it is like listening to a foreign exchange student working on conversational Enlgish and Poli Sci at the same time, a true gift :)

Here comes the panic. Days before the midterm, this blog was nearly hysterical that the Dems were going to nutball the election. Didn't happen. Nor will it happen this time. Relax, go have a beer and stop reading the inner-nets, it's obviously too difficult for some of you.

Despite losing a handfull of news cycles and the ever important, if not critical "what's happening in Eastern Europe and Georgia?" vote, *sigh - there's no cause for panic.

As for Robert's question, VPs don't really bring votes to the table, well, not since LBJ. They are picked to hit back hard and say nasty things. Biden is pretty good at both when he needs to be. So is Webb.

I mean, how many votes did Dick Cheney bring to the table? Lieberman?

RP and MPatrick: well said, as usual.

hemlock: personally, I think if Drop had existed when Socrates was alive, that would have been his punishment, but as I said above, I have a natural and perfectly understandable aversion to all dervatives of anise, in any shape or form. (You want to know how deep?  I've had a bottle of Absinthe - the real stuff - for years now that I have not dared even try because of the licorice flavour.  Anyone who writes a book why this vile stuff has any appeal at all would have my undying loyalty.)

Er, the last I looked at the map, South Ossetia and Abkhazia were part of the sovereign nation of Georgia. So, should we actively support the secession of Chechnya and Dagestan from Russia? How about North Ossetia?

nbarry: er, last time I looked at the map, Kosovo was part of the sovereign nation of Serbia.  There was that minor incident of 99 days of bombardment by NATO for humanitarian reasons, then occupation and now secession, all supported by the West and bitterly opposed by Russia.  As someone who supported all of the above from day one, i am not criticising what we did; but given that South Ossetia and Abkhazia are both heavily populated by ethnic Russians, and given that Russia had warned the West that there would be payment due in response to the dismemberment of Serbia, what has happened, however vile, is not unexpected.

As for Chechnya and Daghestan - sure.  And let the Russians start supporting Basque and Catalan and Corsican and South Tyrolean and Bavarian and Flemish and Aalandian and Faroese and Scottish and Northern Irish separatism. .. This kind of macho talk is Laurel and Hardy Diplomacy guaranteed to land the West in a Fine Mess and nothing more.

icarus--while there are some superficial similarities with Kosovo (being played to the hilt by the Russians), there is a world of difference between Serbia's behavior toward ethnic minorities and that of Georgia. Ossetes number only about 10-15,000, and there's nearly that many ethnic Georgians who have been driven out of the area recently. Over 80%(!) of the pre-'91 population of Abkazia has been driven out, and these refugees went to Georgia, not Russia. These territories have never been countries, and became "separatist" mostly because it was convenient for the mafia elite composed of KGB/Red Army officers who saw an opportunity to set up their own fiefdoms when the USSR collapsed.

mpatrick--I think you misunderstand me. I'm not talking about VP choice--Bayh is clearly the best choice there in my view. I'm talking about tep and jake and the rest of the Obama-phobes who seem to think someone else should have gotten the nomination at the top of the ticket. I think it should be pretty obvious at this point even to those for whom it wasn't clear months ago that of the candidates available, Obama was by far the best choice.

nbarry writes,

"Er, the last I looked at the map, South Ossetia and Abkhazia were part of the sovereign nation of Georgia.  So, should we actively support the secession of Chechnya and Dagestan from Russia? How about North Ossetia?"

Who said anything about active support?  Certainly not Obama or McCain.  If you're talking about me, then I'm not sure you got my point.  Saying that Georgia should avoid taking military action that it knows will provoke a Russian attack doesn't require taking a stance for or against South Ossetian secession.

As an analogy, consider a situation where someone has hostages they are threatening to kill. The police break down the front door and try to arrest the guy, who promptly shoots several of the hostages.  Saying that the police made a bad move does not amount to supporting the hostage-taker.  It means that there were foreseeable adverse consequences that needed to be dealt with first.

Icarus, I share your aversion to anise.  For the life of me, I can't figure out why it's such a popular drink flavoring (ouzo, anisette, sambuca, pernod, ricard, herbsaint, jager, and of course absinthe).  I've always sort of wanted to try real absinthe simply because of the mystique and tradition surrounding it (plus the allure that comes with being outlawed), but I have no expectations of actually enjoying the taste.

RP: "These territories have never been countries, and became "separatist" mostly because it was convenient for the mafia elite composed of KGB/Red Army officers who saw an opportunity to set up their own fiefdoms when the USSR collapsed."

The similarity to Kosovo deepens ...

Analogies are never exact - more grist for the mill of international lawyers - but at the time of the Kosovo action, it was clear what we could have expected from Russia.  While I agreed with the NATO intervention, I have been opposed to independence for Kosovo, so as - among others - not to establish a precedent.  Well, the deed is done; Georgia reaps, at least in political terms, what we have sown.

Alan: apparently wordwood is not as bad as it has been claimed to be, and it would appear that in Canada we are moving to decriminalise it.  BAD MOVE.  As I think I have mentioned, anything with anise should be prohibited as a menace to public health and taste.

Ouzo, sambuca, pernod ... see any common thread?  They originate in countries that are really good at losing wars.  Anise saps the lifeblood out of you.  That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

icarus: In that case, I'll put it on my list of "books to write." :-)

You know, absinthe has recently been re-legalized.  You can order it online.  But if you're worried about the flavor, the anise isn't the problem, it's the wormwood.  The alkaloid in wormwood is the most potent activator of "bitter" taste receptors known to man.