August 14, 2008

Obama campaign creatively edits Jerome Corsi quote; his supposed "widely discredited beliefs"; calls him "Truther"

The Barack Obama campaign is promulgating to their followers and others a PDF about Jerome Corsi's latest book "Obama Nation"; you can download it here: my.barackobama.com/page/invite/corsi

Some of their debunking in parts of it may be accurate or not, etc. However, in one section they've "creatively edited" Corsi. From the section called "CONSIDER THE SOURCE: CORSI HOLDS WIDELY DISCREDITED BELIEFS":

CORSI IS A 9/11 TRUTH BELIEVER—THAT AIRPLANES WERE NOT TRULY TO BLAME FOR DESTRUCTION OF WORLD TRADE TOWERS Corsi is a 9/11 Truther. In a radio interview, Corsi said, “I’m gonna come out with a story, I think is gonna be earth-shaking, and that is from Steven Jones, the physicist from BYU who’s been dismissed. Well, he’s now gotten samples of the World Trade Center dust, and he’s demonstrated the dust has formed these spheres, these iron spheres, that can only be formed under extremely high temperatures. And I know enough about the science to know he’s right. The fire, from jet fuel, does not burn hot enough to produce the physical evidence that he’s produced. so when you’ve got science that the hypothesis doesn’t explain--evidence--then the hypothesis doesn’t stand anymore. It just means the government’s explanation of the jet fuel fire is not a sufficient explanation to explain the evidence of these spheres--these microcopic spheres--that Steven Jones has proved existed within the WTC dust...In attacking these things, first scientifically...for me, what tips the scales is when you’ve got science that the conventional hypothesis doesn’t explain.” [Alex Jones show, 1/29/08]

Oddly enough, the BHO campaign left out part of that quote without providing ellipses. In fact, they left out a whole sentence. Here's the relevant part, with the omitted sentence in bold (source: NYT):

So when you’ve got science that the hypothesis doesn’t explain–evidence–then the hypothesis doesn’t stand anymore. It doesn’t mean there’s a new hypothesis you’ve validated. It just means the government’s explanation of the jet fuel fire is not a sufficient explanation...

With that sentence, his statements take on a more balanced tone; he appears to be calling for real press coverage instead of simply accepting everything the government has said at face value. While some MSM sources have been in the former camp, most have been in the latter. In the NYT's words, "he was planning [on] exposing what he calls the government’s inadequate explanations about the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center". There's a huge difference between the wild-eyed truthers who claim for a fact that Bush/Cheney/etc. knew about or planned the attacks and those who rightly question some government explanations that don't add up.

Another entry in that section concerns the North American Union; see the post about Kenneth Vogel for an answer to that. Their entry also quotes Hawkins. They also discuss the NAFTA Superhighway. Apparently their followers are expected to think both are myths and they correctly assume that most of their followers won't know that Obama has come out for Bush's SPP.gov and appears to have confirmed the NAFTA Superhighway.

Posted to Politics at August 14, 2008 09:13 PM