Corsi again falsely claimed "there is no substance to the allegations" that his book "contains lies"

In a September 16 "WorldNetDaily Exclusive," author Jerome Corsi wrote: "The Obama campaign, in its 40-page 'Unfit for Publication' commentary, alleged my book, 'The Obama Nation,' contains lies, but as I documented in a rebuttal published on WorldNetDaily on Sept. 7, there is no substance to the allegations." In fact, while Corsi asserted in his September 7 "rebuttal" that "Unfit for Publication" "failed to prove a single falsehood contained in pages of the book," as Media Matters for America documented, Corsi went on to provide a list of 11 "corrections to the next printing of The Obama Nation" -- many of which correct falsehoods documented by the Obama campaign, Media Matters, or both.

In his September 16 article, Corsi also wrote:

Moreover, I assume the Obama campaign took its best shot with "Unfit for Publication," refuting every point in "The Obama Nation" that the Obama campaign considered false.

The result here is the chapter-by-chapter arguments from "The Obama Nation" that were not disputed in "Unfit for Publication." Because the Obama campaign did not even attempt to refute these substantive arguments, I now assume the Obama campaign is conceding their truth.

In fact, under the heading, "Factual Inaccuracies in Corsi's Book," the Obama campaign specifically asserted, "While these are certainly not all the inaccuracies in the book, they include some important points we thought should be pointed out." Indeed, Media Matters identified several other Obama Nation falsehoods not cited in the Obama campaign document, including:

• Corsi writes of Obama campaign blogger Sam Graham-Felsen, "After leaving Harvard, Graham-Felsen published an article in an avowedly socialist magazine" [Page 148]. In fact, the article Corsi presents was actually published in April 2006 in The Nation, and reprinted by the Socialist Viewpoint; that edition of the Socialist Viewpoint also reprinted articles from the Detroit Free Press and London's The Guardian. Graham-Felsen's article also was reprinted at CBSNews.com.
• Corsi writes of Obama's March 14 meeting with reporters from the Chicago Tribune to discuss his relationship with convicted Chicago businessman Antoin Rezko: "The transcript of the question-and-answer session clearly shows the Tribune staff had a hard time believing Obama. Yet Obama persisted, denying he coordinated the purchase with Rezko [Page 168]." But Corsi did not reconcile his assessment that "the Tribune staff had a hard time believing Obama" with the subsequent publication of an editorial in which the paper asserted that Obama had "offered a lengthy and, to us, plausible explanation for the presence of now-indicted businessman Tony Rezko in his personal and political lives."
• Corsi writes that "higher capital gains tax rates tend to produce less capital gains tax revenue, not more. The economics of this principle have been proved repeatedly in the two decades since [Ronald] Reagan was president [Page 245]." In fact, as Media Matters has documented, numerous economists have challenged the assertion that cuts in the capital gains tax raise revenue in the long term. Additionally, Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation estimated in June 2006 that the 2006 extension of the 2003 cuts on capital gains taxes would result in decreased revenues of $20 billion over 10 years.
• Discussing Obama's "antiwar ... foreign policy," Corsi conflates Iraq and Afghanistan to falsely suggest that Obama supports "de-escalat[ing]" troops from Afghanistan. But Obama's January 2007 bill -- the Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007 -- establishes a timetable for the withdrawal of most troops from Iraq, and calls for "appropriate units of the Armed Forces" to be redeployed to Afghanistan and elsewhere in the region, "to meet urgent United States security needs." As Media Matters has noted, Obama has been calling for an increase of U.S. troops in Afghanistan since at least 2006 and began specifically calling for the addition of at least two combat brigades there in 2007.