67 Anti-Obama Books

BLASTING OBAMA FROM THE RIGHT
2. Babbin, Jed. How Obama Is Transforming America’s Military from Superpower to Paper Tiger. Publisher: Encounter Books, July 2010.

Between the Covers: According to former air force officer Jed Babbin, President Obama wants America to be a second- rate military power and, in league with Defense Secretary Robert Gates— in the real world, a Bush appointee— is moving fast in that direction by cutting military spending, abandoning our allies, and not investing in new technology. Apparently, Babbin was AWOL when Obama drove his liberal base crazy by continuing the war in Iraq, expanding the war in Afghanistan, providing military assistance to the rebels in Libya, and increasing the Pentagon’s bud get while cutting heating- oil funding for the poor. Another right- wing charge without any supporting evidence.

1. Blackwell, Ken and, Ken Klukowski. The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency.
Publisher: Lyons Press, April 2010.

Between the Covers: Blackwell, Ohio’s former republican secretary of state, teams with conservative constitutional attorney Ken Klukowski to argue that Obama intends to pack the Supreme Court with liberal
justices who will support his “power grab” and his plans to subvert the Constitution and turn America into “a militant, secular welfare state dominated by an overbearing central government.” This is fearmongering
at its worst, with not a shred of evidence. When Ed Meese praises it as “an important and timely book,” you know it’s pure right- wing propaganda.

3. Bolton, John R. How Barack Obama Is Endangering Our National Sovereignty.
Publisher: Encounter Books, May 2010.

Between the Covers: It’s like a dog whistle. One of the tried- and- true ways to drive right- wingers crazy is to raise the specter of Democrats who are destroying America’s leadership in the world by surrendering
our national sovereignty to foreign powers and international institutions.— you know, the black helicopters of the United Nations and all that. It’s a serious charge, which deserves at least one example, one bit of evidence, of where President Obama is doing just that. John Bolton, George Bush’s former appointment to the UN, who thinks most every problem can be solved by bombing Iran, provides none.

4. Brown, Floyd. Obama Unmasked: Did Slick Hollywood Handlers Create the Perfect Candidate? Publisher: Merril Press, August 2008.

Between the Covers: The very name Floyd Brown is enough to put fear in the hearts of many Democrats. For years, he was the Republican party’s number- one behind- the- scenes attack dog, best known for creating the Willie Horton ad that sank Michael Dukakis in 1988. But in this campaign book, he seems to have lost his teeth, accusing Obama of being nothing but a creature of spin doctors and focus groups and
just coasting his way through the general election until George Soros would pull off an “October Surprise” and propel him into the White House. Nobody, not even Fox News, pretended this book was fair, evenhanded, or even factual during the election. And in the end, of course, McCain was such an inept candidate, and his pick of Sarah Palin so disastrous, that Obama didn’t need Soros’s “October Surprise.”

5. Cashill, Jack. Deconstructing Obama: The Life, Loves, and Letters of America’s First Postmodern President.
Publisher: Threshold Editions, February 2011.

Between the Covers: By most accounts, before being elected president Barack Obama had written two books: Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope. Not true, says business writer Jack Cashill.
Obama was intellectually incapable of writing either book, he asserts. Not only that; after exploring similarities in their two memoirs, he concludes that Dreams was, in fact, written by— Guess who?
Wait for it, wait for it!— Obama’s friend (not really) the former Weatherman Bill Ayers. Consequently, Cashill concludes, Obama is nothing but a “calculating phony.” He may have been born in Hawaii,
according to Cashill, but his father was actually author and alleged Communist Frank Marshall Davis, not Barack Obama. As an added bonus, Cashill also says he “discovered” that Obama is bisexual. Amazing what trash you can get published, as long as it’s anti- Obama.

6. Cook, Terry L. America’s Communist Revolution!:Terrifying Change Without Hope!
Publisher: CreateSpace, February 2010.

Between the Covers: You know you’re in for a wild ride when his publicity package says Terry Cook, like the Blues Brothers, is “a man called by God for this particular mission” (and when there are so many exclamation points in the title— It reads like a line from Allen Ginsburg’s “Howl”). Cook’s mission in this book is to expose Barack Obama as the true Manchurian candidate— carefully programmed by his father, as well as Frank Marshall Davis and Chicago pals Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers, and Jeremiah Wright, to sneak into the White House under cover as a Democrat and then rip off his mask as a Communist. “God
help us!” Cook concludes. Yes, God help us from paranoid Christian nut jobs like Terry L. Cook.

7. Cook, Terry L. The Making of an American Dictator!: Barack Hussein Obama.
Publisher: CreateSpace, June 2010

Between the Covers: The “man called by God” is back again, with more titular exclamation points. This time, he’s warning Americans about the catastrophic changes that can be expected in 2011. Under Obama’s direction, Cook warns, America will be transformed from a Constitutional republic to a full- fledged socialist police state and, later, to a Communist dictatorship. All in one year’s time! Also, it will all be triggered by another broad economic collapse deliberately induced by Rothschild- controlled international bankers— paging George Soros!— just like they conspired with George W. Bush to bring about the crash of September 2008.

8. Corsi, Jerome. The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality.
Publisher: Threshold Editions, Simon & Schuster, August 2008.

Between the Covers: In 2004, Corsi almost single- handedly torpedoed the candidacy of John Kerry with publication of Unfit for Command,challenging the accuracy of Kerry’s record of heroism in Vietnam. In 2008, he was back with The Obama Nation, which he admitted was written solely to defeat Obama in the 2008 presidential primary. Very sloppily written and with very little evidence, this book accuses Obama
of being an extreme leftist with close ties to Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers, Ayers’s wife, Weather Underground member Bernadine Dohrn, and Jeremiah Wright. He also asserts that Obama was secretly a Muslim, who wanted “to will all the white blood out of himself so he can become pure black.” Fortunately for Obama, unfortunately for Corsi, the book was so fi lled with factual mistakes that it was dismissed as pure right- wing nonsense— by everybody except Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and all the other usual suspects on Fox News.

9. Corsi, Jerome. Where’s the Birth Certifi cate? The Case That Barack Obama Is Not Eligible to Be President.
Publisher: WND Books, May 2011.

Between the Covers: If at fi rst you don’t succeed, try, try again. The Web site WorldNetDaily continues to fan the flames of the absurd theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and is therefore an illegitimate president, long after most rational people, including the Roberts Supreme Court, have rejected it. Not surprising, then, that they should publish Corsi’s latest attempt at making a buck. According to Corsi, the very fact that Obama has spent millions of dollars in attorney’s fees to oppose having to produce a “long- form birth certificate”— whatever that is— proves he’s lying about where he
was born. Three years into Obama’s administration, Corsi is still arguing that Obama is “constitutionally ineligible for the office of the presidency.” And there are still too many idiots— I’m talking about you, Donald Trump— who believe him. Even before it was published, Corsi’s book zoomed to the number- one position on Amazon.

10. Cullen, Mike. Whiny Little Bitch: The Excuse- Filled Presidency of Barack Obama.
Publisher: Quite Right Books, June 2010.

Between the Covers: The title says it all. Don’t expect much from this book, and you won’t be disappointed. Even one sympathetic reviewer had to acknowledge that it’s no “in- depth” account of the Obama administration. It’s a thin book, full of thin and stale criticisms of Obama’s messianic complex, his slighting of allies, his being too hard on Wall Street, his surrounding himself with cronies, his race baiting, etc., etc. Cullen proves there’s an audience for any anti- Obama drivel, no matter
how shallow.

11. DeBrecht, Katharine. Help, Mom, Radicals Are Ruining My Country!
Publisher: Kids Ahead.

Between the Covers: Are you ready for this? The first anti- Obama children’s book. God spare us. Or, better yet, God spare our kids. Described by the publisher as “a hilarious and entertaining way for parents to sit down with their children and teach them the origins of the new Tea Party movement and the importance of standing up for liberty and the American Dream.” In this gripping drama, sure to keep any three- year old sitting on the edge of his seat, Tommy and Lou are trying to set up their swing- set business, but first they have to fight off the “onerous regulations and sky- high taxes” thrown in their path by Nancy Pelosi,Harry Reid, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and Charles Schumer. In the end— are you paying attention, children?— the big test is whether they will “join the other kids on the corner in standing up for freedom or will they continue to fear being vilified by the press and demeaned” by the big, bad, and black “Marxus Obundus.” Any parent who reads this book to their child should be charged with child abuse.

12. D’Souza, Dinesh. The Roots of Obama’s Rage.
Publisher: Regnery Publishing, September 2010.

Between the Covers: Obama’s critics have called him many things: a socialist, a Marxist, a Chicago- machine politician, and worse. But actually, Barack Obama is none of the above, says conservative writer Dinesh D’Souza. He is best understood as an angry anticolonialist, still upset at the injustices his father and grandfather suffered at the hands of the British in Kenya— and determined to get revenge. Never mind that Obama never met his grandfather, and only met his father twice. At least D’Souza accomplished one thing with this book: He convinced both Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee to make total fools of themselves by swallowing his ridiculous theory whole— and repeating it verbatim. After which, neither of them was ever again taken seriously as a presidential candidate.

13. Ferrara, Peter—President Obama’s Tax Piracy.
Publisher: Encounter Books, October 2010.

Between the Covers: There’s nothing new in this little book, so don’t look for it. Ferrara wastes forty- eight pages making the argument that Ronald Reagan’s tax policies saved the nation, while Barack Obama’s
tax policies will destroy it. He conveniently omits the fact that 95 percent of Americans actually received a tax cut in Obama’s 2009 stimulus package. And his book was published before Obama made a deal with Republicans in Congress to extend the Bush tax cuts to all taxpayers, middle- class and wealthy. Ferrara, who served in the Reagan White House, also seems to have forgotten that Reagan raised taxes in
seven out of his eight years in office.

14. Freddoso, David. The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media’s Favorite Candidate.
Publisher: Regnery Publishing, August 2008.

Between the Covers: Another campaign book aimed at stopping Obama’s surge toward the White House. But Freddoso, a writer for the National Review, takes a different approach. He thinks Corsi and others are making a mistake by focusing on Obama’s life history or instant celebrity. (Remember McCain’s Paris Hilton ad?) He suggests a stronger case against Obama could be made by examining his record in the Illinois state senate and, briefly, in the U.S. Senate— where, Freddoso argues, Obama accomplished nothing. He con veniently omits Obama’s work in the Illinois state senate to fashion bipartisan reforms of campaign financing and the death penalty, and, to take one example, his work on arms control in the U.S. Senate with Richard Lugar. Obama’s not “a bad person,” Freddoso admits. “It’s just that he’s like all the rest of them. Not a reformer. Not a Messiah. Just like all the rest of them in Washington.” And, of course, Freddoso adds, he doesn’t walk on water, either.

15. Fredrick, Don. The Obama Timeline: From His Birth in 1961 Through
His First 100 Days in Office.
Publisher: iUniverse, July 2009.

Between the Covers: The media didn’t tell us everything about Barack Obama— and had they done so, he would never have been elected president. That, in a nutshell, is the thesis of this sore- loser book. In rushing to Obama, Fredrick insists, voters had no idea of his “overwhelmingly radical history.” He traces Obama’s life from cradle to the White House and lists, by his definition, all the unsavory characters Obama met and hung out with along the way: the Marxists, Communists, and socialists who shaped his character and politics— you know their names by now. Fredrick puts special emphasis on Rahm Emanuel, the new “communist” mayor of Chicago.

16. Furchtgott- Roth, Diana. How Obama’s Gender Policies Undermine
America.
Publisher: Encounter Books, September 2010.

Between the Covers: The fi rst bill President Obama signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, making it easier for women to sue for discrimination in pay— for which he was applauded by all women,
except Furchtgott- Roth, researcher at the conservative Hudson Institute. Here, she makes the bizarre argument that Obama is actually hurting women by helping them. Women are doing fi ne on their own
without government help, she insists. Giving them any special protection only reinforces the notion that they are a weaker sex, and also hurts men in the process. By her logic, of course, women would still
be denied the right to vote.

17. Gasparino, Charles. Bought and Paid For: The Unholy Alliance Between
Barack Obama and Wall Street.
Publisher: Sentinel HC, October 2010.

Between the Covers: To Barack Obama, it must often feel like he can’t win for losing. On the one hand, conservatives accuse him of being antibusiness, an avowed enemy of big business. On the other hand,
others, like Charles Gasparino of the Fox Business Network, accuse him of being in bed with big business. For Gasparino, defying conventional conservative commentary, the Obama administration is
nothing but “business as usual” when it comes to Wall Street. Obama talks a tough game, he says, but in the end his economic policies benefit the big banks and financial institutions, while small business and
individual taxpayers suffer. Fox Business . . . always looking out for the little guy.

18. Geller, Pamela and Robert Spencer. The Post- American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America.
Publisher: Threshold Editions, July 2010.

Between the Covers: If you truly believe that Barack Obama is “the most radical individual ever to occupy the White House,” this is the book for you. Geller and Spencer sound yet another call to arms to Americans concerned about Obama’s plot to destroy our free- market system and nationalize major segments of our economy. As proof, they accuse Obama of seizing control of three key economic engines: health care, energy, and education. (The ridiculousness of this argument was covered in the previous chapter.) Billed as “the true patriot’s handbook,” Geller’s book urges conservatives to rise up and stop Obama in his tracks, while there is still any America left to defend.

19. Gingrich, Newt. To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular- Socialist Machine.
Publisher: Regnery Publishing, January 2011.

Between the Covers: In one of the most dramatic personality changes since George Jorgensen underwent a sex- change operation to become Christine Jorgensen, Newt Gingrich has transformed himself from notorious wife cheater and sinner to Christian preacher and reformer. In his new role, he accuses Barack Obama of leading the fight to banish religion from the public square and attempting to remake America from “a land of free enterprise, faith, and personal freedom” into a morass of “endless bureaucracy, secularism, and state control.” That’s not what Americans voted for, says Gingrich, but we are being steamrolled by the secular- socialist Obama machine— a machine he plans to stop himself in the 2012 election. Um, good luck with that, Newt.

20. Goldberg, Bernard. A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (and Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media.
Publisher: Regnery Publishing, January 2009.

Between the Covers: Having made a good living in print and on Fox News bashing the “liberal news media,” Goldberg expands his attack by accusing the mainstream media of falling so head over heels for
Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign that they failed to report the true story and therefore handed Obama a victory over John McCain. Without the “slobbering” help of the media, as Goldberg sees it, Obama would have won neither the Democratic primary nor the general election. The truth is quite different, as we will see in chapter 6. Goldberg complains that reporters presented Obama as young and
energetic, while portraying McCain as old and tired. Hey, but wasn’t that the truth?

21. Graham, John. Obama’s Change: Communism in America.
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing, September 2010.

Between the Covers: Bad news! If you wanted to prevent a Communist takeover of America, you’re too late. We already have one. In fact, we’ve had one for over sixty- five years, insists John Graham, under three Communist dictators. (I guess that explains why we all speak Russian); first, FDR, who gave Stalin all of Eastern Europe in return for helping us during World War II; then, Bill and Hillary Clinton, who gave China the secrets to our long- range- missile system in return for a campaign loan; and now, Barack Obama, who is setting up “a communist dictatorship right before our very eyes.” In some parts of the world, news does travel slowly. But you’d think Graham would have heard by now that the Cold War is over.

22. Graham, Michael. That’s No Angry Mob, That’s My Mom: Team Obama’s Assault on Tea- Party, Talk- Radio Americans.
Publisher: Regnery Publishing, March 2010.

Between the Covers: Nobody ever tried to shut talk- show host Michael Graham up. They couldn’t if they tried. Yet he insists the Obama administration is trying to muzzle Tea Partiers and listeners to rightwing
talk radio. As if. Tea Partiers aren’t racists or crazies, he argues. They’re like his mom, nothing but honest Americans, frustrated with the growth of government and eager “to restore the home- spun values of hard work, fair play, and individual responsibility.” That statement alone proves that Graham doesn’t attend many Tea Party rallies. Nor does he realize, as we will see in the next chapter, that the whole Tea Party was invented and funded by Charles and David Koch as the “grassroots” front lines of the Obama Hate Machine. Does his mom know she was part of the “Kochtopus?”

23. Gratzer, David. Why Obama’s Government Takeover of Health Care Will Be a Disaster.
Publisher: Encounter Books, November 2009.

Between the Covers: Notice when this book was published: five months before President Obama signed America’s Affordable Care Act. Had he only waited, Dr. Gratzer could have saved himself a lot of time. But then again, he would not have been able to attack the president’s bill as “socialized medicine, which would create a massive new government bureaucracy, introduce rationing, and stifle innovation that has made America a world leader in developing new miracle drugs. I’m surprised he didn’t predict “death panels” also. Maybe because Sarah Palin beat him to the punch. None of Gratzer’s dire predictions came to pass, of course. Obama did little more than sign legislation forcing everybody to buy health insurance
from private insurance companies. But why wait for the facts?

24. Hannity, Sean. Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama’s Agenda.
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks, March 2010.

Between the Covers: If you watched any Fox News coverage of the last presidential campaign, you don’t have to read Hannity’s book, because you’ve heard it all before. For his most loyal, unthinking, and extremist followers, Hannity merely repeats all the arguments he made against candidate Obama in 2008. You know the litany: Bill Ayers, ACORN, the Revered Jeremiah Wright, Community organizer, Communist sympathizer, and all the rest. And because not enough believed him, Hannity warns, Obama has now surrounded himself with a bunch of “self- professed socialists, fringe activists, and others” who have kicked off “an alarming assault on our capitalist system.” It’s the end of the world as we know it, says Hannity.

25. Hanson, Victor Davis. How The Obama Administration Threatens Our National Security.
Publisher: Encounter Books, December 2009.

Between the Covers: In yet one more of Encounter’s forty- eight- page publishing wonders, Hoover Institution fellow Victor Davis Hanson sets out to show how President Obama has “imprinted his domestic ideology of victimhood onto a therapeutic, Carter- inspired foreign policy.” You try to explain what that means. I can’t. And neither can Hanson, a classicist who once called Donald Rumsfeld “a rare sort of secretary of the caliber of George Marshall.” He projects that Obama may be successful in forging better relationships with Iran, Russia, and China— but that all three will eventually turn on the United States because they perceive us as weak. Only a confirmed Obama hater to begin with would take this book seriously.

26. Hedrick, David. The Liberal Claus: Socialism on a Sleigh.
Publisher: FreedomsAnswer, October 2010.

Between the Covers: In the sick world of Tea Partiers, it’s never too early to start brainwashing your kids. So here we go with another anti- Obama children’s book. And a Christmas book, no less. This one is written by a failed congressional candidate from Washington State (who once suggested Nancy Pelosi wore Nazi insignia on her sleeve)— and is dedicated to his kids. And it tells the story of how underhanded liberals stole an election in the Great Elf Council, kicked out Santa Claus and replaced him with a skinny imposter who wasn’t even born at the North Pole and can’t even give a speech without a teleprompter. Oh, and did I mention he’s black? Liberal Claus forces all elves to join a union and decrees that from now on they make only little “red” traincars. You can figure out the rest. Pity the poor kids who have to fall
asleep listening to this propaganda while waiting to hear the sounds of reindeer prancing on the roof.

27. Horner, Christopher C. Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America.
Publisher: Regnery Publishing, April 2010.

Between the Covers: If you didn’t figure it out from the title, you know what to expect here when Christopher Horner is hailed as a “watchdog” by Glenn Beck and praised by Rush Limbaugh as the “longtime go- to guy on global warming extremism.” You expect a grossly exaggerated account of Obama’s role in seeking climate- change legislation and the economic disaster that would result. And, in that sense, Horner does not disappoint. No matter that Obama failed completely to enact any legislation on global warming in his first two years in office and, with Republicans in control of the House, is even less likely to do so in his second two years. Horner still prophesies economic, not environmental, doomsday. Even without legislation, the very fact that Obama favors renewable sources of energy, according to Horner, means that he has declared war on oil, coal, and natural gas. Unless Obama is stopped in his tracks, Horner fears, it’s only a matter of time before we flip a switch and the lights don’t come on. Don’t say he didn’t warn you.

28. Ingraham, Laura. The Obama Diaries.
Publisher: Threshold Editions, July 2010.

Between the Covers: There are people who are born to be stand- up comics. And there are those who should not even try. I belong in the latter category. So does Laura Ingraham. She just doesn’t know it. Instead, she’s published a supposedly yuck- yuck fake Obama: diary a joke setup that might have been worth five minutes on her radio show but not a whole book. Instead, Ingraham stretches it out to four hundred painful pages, forcing readers to suffer such rib- splitting lines as Obama on Sarah Palin: “Hell, doesn’t Palin have anything better to do than criticize me? Shouldn’t she be back home shooting some endangered wolf species from a helicopter?” Or Obama, weighing the next step in his career while visiting the Vatican: “If I can ingratiate myself with a few more of these red- hats, the pope thing might not be a bad follow- up to the presidency.” There are good joke writers out there. Ingraham should think of hiring one for her next book.

29. Johnson, Donald. Black but Not My Brother: Why I Cannot Vote for Barack Hussein Obama.
Publisher: Author House, November 2008.

Between the Covers: This is a sick book, written by a sick man, in a feeble last- minute attempt to help block Barack Obama from the White House. Pastor Donald William Johnson believes that the very survival of the African- American community is threatened by abortion and homosexuality, both of which, he says, Obama supports. Therefore, unlike many leading black conservatives, he says he could not
even consider voting for his black brother. “If we choose Mr. Obama because of his color,” Johnson warns, “we choose a champion for abortion and the homosexual agenda; we choose our own destruction.” Obama, says Johnson, is in league with Planned Parenthood’s campaign of genocide to wipe out America’s black population. The question facing black voters in November 2008 was, “Can we afford a leader who champions racial suicide— even if he is black?” Fortunately, few blacks believed or had heard of Johnson. Obama got 96 percent of the black vote.

30. Joscelyn, Thomas. What President Obama Doesn’t Know About Guantanamo.
Publisher: Encounter Books, May 2010.

Between the Covers: President Obama’s first executive order, signed on January 22, 2009, was to close the naval prison at Guantánamo Bay in one year. He did so, Obama said, in order for America to reclaim the “moral high ground” in the war on terror and to deny al- Qaeda one of its chief recruiting tools. But Joscelyn condemned the order as “pure folly,” undertaken by people who knew nothing about the detainees in Gitmo, what intelligence we were getting out of them, how complex their cases were, and where we might house them once Gitmo was closed. True or not, his case was undercut anyway by the fact that, despite his best intentions, Obama was unable to persuade Congress to approve shutting down Gitmo. In March 2011, he signed another executive order, keeping the prison open and resuming military trials.

31. Kirby, Stephen M. Islam and Barack Hussein Obama: A Handbook on Islam.
Publisher: CreateSpace, July 2010.

Between the Covers: How violent a religion is Islam and how much a supporter of Islam is Barack Obama? Former LAPD officer Stephen Kirby takes a roundabout way of answering those questions by contrasting the positive things Obama said about Islam in his June 4, 2009, speech at Cairo University with the ugly reality of what Kirby believes Islam is really all about. The author also accuses Obama of failing to express sufficient public regret for the shooting of two army officers by a Muslim convert at a Little Rock recruiting station three days earlier. Indirectly, Kirby’s message is, Don’t believe anything he says. Obama’s really a Muslim; make no mistake about it.

32. Klein, Aaron and Brenda J. Elliott. The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists, and Other Anti- American Extremists.
Publisher: WND Books, May 2010.

Between the Covers: Gather all the paranoia about Barack Obama between the covers of one book— and this is what you get. The man portrayed by Aaron Klein and Brenda Elliott is not just a Democrat, not just a liberal, not just a Socialist. Oh, no. He is— as so many other books on this list concur—“the most radical— and therefore the most dangerous— president this country has ever seen.” And, of course, Obama didn’t just get there on his own. Like any self- respecting Manchurian candidate, he was programmed on his way to power by a long- standing, “far- leftist, anti- American nexus” that, now that Obama is in the White House, is busy writing and directing his policies in order to turn America into a
Communist dictatorship. Wait till you hear about “Obama’s mysterious college years unearthed!” And bet you didn’t know that Obama’s “hope” and “change” slogans actually stem from Communist activism. So little time, so much to fear. Here’s the place to start.

33. Krikorian, Mark. How Obama Is Transforming America Through Immigration.
Publisher: Encounter Books, May 2010.

Between the Covers: You would think that the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies would know something about immigration. Apparently not. Krikorian slams President Obama for his policy
of “open borders,” leading to easy amnesty, loose enforcement, and ever- higher levels of legal immigration. The truth is just the opposite. President Reagan granted wholesale amnesty to immigrants living here illegally; President Obama never has. Instead, Obama put forth the same plan for comprehensive immigration reform proposed by President George W. Bush. Meanwhile, under Obama, there are more guards at the border than ever, fewer immigrants are crossing the border illegally, and the illegal- immigrant population in the United States dropped by one million in 2010, a year that saw a record number of deportations. Mark Krikorian, call home!

34. Kurtz, Stanley. Radical- in- Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism.
Publisher: Threshold Editions, October 2010.

Between the Covers: President Obama has a secret: a secret he’s managed to hide through the first two years of his presidency from everyone but right- wing authors and talk- show hosts. His secret? According
to National Review writer Stanley Kurtz, it’s his “socialist convictions and tactical ruthlessness.” But Kurtz lets the cat out of the bag: “Our Commander- in- Chief is really a Radical- in- Chief.” OMG. Here we go again. This book has been written by several others under different titles. It’s but another rehash of the “Manchurian candidate” theory: that Obama is a closet socialist, shaped by his experience as a community organizer and his connections with Bill Ayers, ACORN, and Jeremiah Wright. Like others, Kurtz speculates that Obama fully embraced socialism during the mysterious “lost chapter” of his life, when he was a student at Columbia— even though Obama writes extensively about his days at Columbia in Dreams from My Father. If Obama has his way, Kurtz warns, capitalist America will soon resemble a “socialist- inspired Scandinavian welfare state.” But, of course, there’s no sign of that yet.

35. Ledeen, Michael A. Obama’s Betrayal of Israel.
Publisher: Encounter Books, November 2009.

Between the Covers: One of the biggest canards among right- wingers today is that President Obama is an enemy of Israel— which is nothing but an indirect way of keeping alive the theory that he’s a closet Muslim. There is certainly no evidence of Obama’s enmity toward Israel, as Ledeen, unwittingly perhaps, proves in this essay. He accuses Obama of pursuing a two- state solution for Israel and the Palestinian territories for the same reason the North Vietnamese once agreed to a two- state division of Vietnam: only as a temporary diversion until they could take over the entire country. In fact, the two- state solution was first officially proposed by President George W. Bush and accepted as their mutual goal by leaders of both Israel and the Palestinian territories. In the Middle East, as in so many other areas, and to the dismay of his liberal base, Obama has continued the policies of his predecessor.

36. Limbaugh, David. Crimes Against Liberty: An Indictment of President Obama.
Publisher: Regnery Publishing, August 2010.

Between the Covers: Okay, what do you expect from Rush’s little brother? Exactly what you get: Obama accused of criminal behavior in “encroaching upon and stripping us of our individual and sovereign rights”
as Americans. Obama sees individual liberty as a threat to government power, according to Limbaugh, something to be squashed by any means possible. So, he’s out to do so through health- care reform, the
stimulus package, environmental policies, “bail out upon bail out,” and Wall Street reforms. Sometimes you really have to wonder if junior Limbaugh is just making this stuff up. Or maybe he’s just repeating
stuff he heard his big brother talk about while popping pills. Where, for example, is Obama’s “blatant pursuit of race- based justice” that Limbaugh complains about? Or “the administration’s gagging of the
honest discussion of the threat of radical Islam?” And, frankly, I haven’t seen any sign of Obama’s “Chicago- style bully boy tactics,” but I wish he’d use a little more of it in dealing with John Boehner.

37. Malkin, Michelle. Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies.
Publisher: Regnery Publishing, August 2009.

Between the Covers: As part of the Fox News army of conservative commentators, blogger Michelle Malkin did her best to prevent Barack Obama from becoming president. Six months later, she pronounced him a complete failure. Her complaints are familiar fodder to any Fox viewer: Obama surrounded himself with power- hungry “czars”; he named ethically challenged people like Hillary Clinton and Timothy Geithner to his cabinet; he funneled millions of dollars to ACORN and labor unions. A year later, August 2010, she published a paperback edition of her book, in which she also accuses Michelle Obama of taking on the cause of child obesity only in order to create 400,000 new food- service jobs for her friends at the SEIU. This is brass- knuckle Chicago politics at its worst, she charges. Again, this is a pack of lies that would never be considered for publication by any mainstream media outlet. But Malkin doesn’t care. She knows it’s enough to guarantee her a continued job at Fox.

38. Martin, Andy. Obama: The Man Behind the Mask.
Publisher: Orange State Press, July 2008.

Between the Covers: As you can see from this list so far, there have been many attempts in print to “rip the mask off Barack Obama” and expose the real monster hiding beneath. Andy Martin goes about this tilting at windmills through the prism of Chicago. With forty years of experience in Chicago politics under his belt, Martin paints Obama as just another lackluster, in effective, corrupt Chicago politician, remarkably unqualified to be president. Don’t expect anything new. All we get is the same old litany of community organizes: Saul Alinsky, Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko, Richie Daley, and Jeremiah Wright. Martin honestly thought his exposé would stop Obama dead in his tracks. Imagine his chagrin today, knowing not only that Obama is in the White House— with a Daley as his chief of staff— but that his former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is Chicago’s new mayor.

39. Mattera, Jason. Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation.
Publisher: Threshold Editions, February 2011.

Between the Covers: You may not know Jason Mattera’s name, but you’ve seen him at work online, a precursor to Andrew Breitbart and James O’Keefe, and a pioneer in ambush “journalism,” capturing
young political activists at their worst. Here, he paints a scary picture of “the Obama generation” as a brainwashed cadre of clueless college students hoodwinked by the charismatic community organizer from Chicago. It’s no secret how Obama won in 2008, claims Mattera. He simply “lobotomized” an entire generation who went on to elect the “most radical and untested president in U.S. history.” (Are you sensing a theme to this list yet?) The only way conservatives can win back the White House, Mattera concludes, is to infiltrate the web and lure the youth vote away from Obama. But, of course, in order to do that, they’re going to need somebody a little more compelling than Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Michelle Bachmann, or Rick Perry.

40. McCarthy, Andrew C. How Obama Embraces Islam’s Sharia Agenda.
Publisher: Encounter Books, December 2010.
See comments below.

41. McCarthy, Andrew C. How the Obama Administration Has Politicized Justice.
Publisher: Encounter Books, January 2010.

Between the Covers: Andrew McCarthy, former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, worked in the Bush Justice Department under Attorney General John Ashcroft, where he was actually a supporter of waterboarding. In these two Encounter broadsides, he basically argues that everything Bush and Ashcroft did in the so- called “war on terror” was right— and that everything President Obama’s doing is wrong. He objects especially to Obama’s initial plans to bring September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to trial in Manhattan’s federal court house. Which is ironic given that, as assistant U.S. attorney, McCarthy helped prosecute World Trade Center bomber Sheih Omar Abdel- Rahman—in the same federal court house! Earlier, McCarthy had accused Obama of being a proponent of introducing Sharia law to the United States by supporting the activities of the international Muslim Brotherhood and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. This is so preposterous and so totally without foundation, it almost defi es a response. But seasoned Obama haters will believe every word of it.

42. McCaughey, Betsy. Obama Health Law: What It Says and How to Overturn It.
Publisher: Encounter Books, June 2010.

Between the Covers: In 1994, before becoming New York’s lieutenant governor, Betsy McCaughey gained fame as one of the chief critics of President Clinton’s 1,362- page health- care- reform legislation. Some reporters, in fact, gave her credit for killing the whole plan with the cover story “No Exit,” which she wrote for The New Republic. Sixteen years later, she tried to do the same for President Obama’s health- care reform package, and failed. In this long essay, published three months after the Obama plan was signed into law, she merely repeats the lies heard from Republicans in Congress. This new law will “destroy your constitutional rights.” As if that’s not bad enough: “For the first time in history, the federal government will dictate how doctors treat their privately- insured patients.” The problem for her, and other critics, is that none of the horrors she warns about have come true.

43. McMahon, Edmund J. Obama and America’s Public Sector Plague.
Publisher: Encounter Books, September 2010.

Between the Covers: This is an interesting book— not for any truth it contains, but because it shows that right- wingers had been planning for and encouraging an attack on public- sector workers long before Republican governors like New Jersey’s Chris Christie, Ohio’s John Kasich, and Wisconsin’s Scott Walker tried to destroy public- employee unions in their states. McMahon, in effect, wrote the patently false talking points that Kasich and company would stick to about public employees enjoying higher salaries and better benefits than all other workers. But he blames President Obama, especially, because it was only with the assistance of his stimulus funds that local governments were able to
keep so many teachers, nurses, firefighters, and cops on the job. McMahon would have been happier if they’d all been fi red. And, of course, he’d like to see them all lose their right of collective bargaining.

44. Moore, Stephen. How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting the U.S. Economy.
Publisher: Encounter Books, December 2009.

Between the Covers: Stephen Moore, former head of the Club for Growth, now sits on the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, where his job is to appear on cable television or write occasional broadsides like this one, always with the same theme: Liberals can’t do anything right. And besides, they are destroying the economy. Here, Moore reports this shocking news: “In his first nine months in office, Barack Obama has pursued the most aggressive government expansionist agenda since Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was launched in 1933.” Duh!
What Moore doesn’t point out is that Obama also inherited the worst economic crisis since FDR inherited the Great Depression. Moore also fails to point out that it was George W. Bush, not Obama, who began
the necessary bailouts of Wall Street and the American auto industry— and that both programs, continued by Obama, have proven phenomenally successful and have actually earned taxpayers money. But that may be asking too much from a Rupert Murdoch acolyte.

45. Morris, Dick and Eileen McGann. Fleeced: How Barack Obama, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want to Kill Talk Radio, the Do- Nothing Congress, Companies That Help Iran, and Washington Lobbyists for Foreign Governments Are Scamming Us . . . and What to Do About It.
Publisher: HarperCollins, June 2008.

See Comments below.

46. Morris, Dick and Eileen McGann. Catastrophe: How Obama, Congress, and the Special Interests Are Transforming . . . A Slump into A Crash, Freedom into Socialism, and a Disaster into a Catastrophe . . . and How to Fight Back
Publisher: HarperCollins, June 2009.

See Comments below.

47. Morris, Dick and Eileen McGann. Revolt! How to Defeat Obama and Repeal His Socialist Programs.
Publisher: Broadside Books, March 2011.

Between the Covers: One thing for sure. Barack Obama has certainly been good to the Dick Morris house hold. He and his wife have turned their animosity toward Obama into three best- selling and long- titled
books, each less original than the last. In Fleeced, Morris, who is the most amoral man in American politics today, joins with Mrs. Morris to show how Americans are being ripped off today by just about everybody— bankers, bureaucrats, and politicians. There is very little about Barack Obama. It seems Morris added his name to the title only in order to sell more books. The second, Catastrophe, published halfway through Obama’s first year in office, merely repeats the standard right- wing scare stories about Obama’s plans to destroy the economy, nationalize banks and auto companies, let terrorists go free, enfranchise illegal immigrants, force everyone into a government- run health plan, and shut down talk radio. The happy couple strikes again with Revolt!— a fervent plea to conservatives to use their newfound power after the 2010 midterm elections to stop the Obama agenda in its tracks. You can pretty much judge the Morris family’s powers of prognostication by looking at the title of their 2005 book: Condi vs. Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race. My question is, Why would anybody, including his wife, believe anything from a guy who let his highly paid prostitute listen in on his conversations with the president of the United States? And why does Fox still keep him on the payroll?

48. Mukasey, Michael B. How Obama Has Mishandled the War on Terror.
Publisher: Encounter Books, March 2010.

Between the Covers: I must say, this book surprised me. Because, being somewhat old- fashioned, I expected more from a highly respected New York judge and former attorney general of the United States than a purely partisan screed based on a pack of lies. Mukasey accuses Obama of being “soft on terror” for wanting to try terrorist suspects in federal criminal courts, for example, when it was Mukasey himself who presided over the successful trial of World Trade Center bomber Sheikh Omar Abdel- Rahman in lower Manhattan. He also attacks Obama for wanting to “provide better conditions for terrorists than common criminals,” prison George Bush established at Guantánamo Bay. Mukasey obviously drank too much of the Bush Kool- Aid while in Washington, where he spent his days making excuses for Bush- era waterboarding.

49. Muravchik, Joshua. Obama’s Radical Transformation of America: Year One.
Publisher: Encounter Books, February 2010.

Between the Covers: If, from the title, you get the impression that Joshua Muravchik, senior fellow at the conservative Foreign Policy Institute, wasn’t a big fan of President Obama’s first year in office, you’re right. This from the book’s promotion materials: “In only one year, Obama has saddled Americans with a skyrocketing deficit that will leave future generations deeply in debt; a health- care plan that prescribes a
cure worse than the illness; catastrophically expensive environmental schemes; and a foreign policy that appeases enemies and punishes friends.” One can only guess what he thought of years two and three.

50. Newberry, Tommy. The War on Success: How the Obama Agenda Is Shattering the American Dream.
Publisher: Regnery Publishing, January 2010.

Between the Covers: Tommy Newberry has made a good living and sold a lot of books as an expert on small business. Unfortunately, he also decided to jump into politics, where he quickly finds himself over his head and forced to repeat the same old canard about how Republicans are good for business— and Democrats are bad— when just the opposite is true. Newberry brings nothing to the table we haven’t already heard from even less informed conservatives and offers no new insights. Ignoring the reality of a slow but consistent economic recovery from the Bush recession under Obama, Newberry accuses the president of staging a “fundamental assault on the very concept of success” by delivering “higher taxes, nationalized industries, and suffocating regulations.”
Only those totally ignorant of today’s economy might believe him.

51. O’Leary, Brad. The Audacity of Deceit: Barack Obama’s War on American Values.
Publisher: WND Books, September 2008.

Between the Covers: Lucky for Barack Obama I didn’t read this book before the 2008 election, or I would never have voted for him. How could anyone other than an outright Communist vote for him after Brad O’Leary told you what his real agenda was. No kidding. Few people realized that Barack Obama had these seven top goals: to raise the top tax rate to 60 percent; to grant citizenship to twelve million illegal
immigrants; to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn the Second Amendment; to take 25 percent of farmland out of production; to transfer care of children under five from parents to government; to set up new government agency to decide which medical procedures seniors qualify for; and to make it easier for more Democrats to get elected by allowing felons to vote. Of course, that may have been a
good way to scare people. But it didn’t work. And, needless to say, not one of O’Leary’s predictions has come true.

52. O’Reilly, Bill. Pinheads and Patriots: Where You Stand in the Age of Obama.
Publisher: William Morrow, September 2010.

Between the Covers: The insufferable Bill O’Reilly has written— well, atleast published— another insufferable book. He divides all Americans into two camps. “Patriots” are those who agree with him politically. All the rest of us are “Pinheads.” Personally, I’ve never been so proud to be a pinhead. One- third of this book is a transcript of O’Reilly’s interview with Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign, at the end of which O’Reilly does a fairly sloppy job of comparing what Obama said then with what he’s actually done as president. Surprisingly, for Fox’s number- one anchor, O’Reilly is relatively easy on Obama. After all, he once praised him as the perfect role model for America’s schoolchildren today. He still attends Obama’s annual White House Christmas party with his daughter. And he scored an interview with Obama during the 2010 Super Bowl. O’Reilly’s careful not to cut off that kind of access.

53. Ott, Scott. Laughing at Obama: Volume I.
Publisher: MacMenamin Press, July 2010.

Between the Covers: Among the dozens of books critical of President Obama, this one is a refreshing change. Because it’s funny. And it’s meant to be funny. In fact, it’s political satire at its best, which even
Obama supporters can laugh at. And it’s exactly what you’d expect from the editor of Scrappleface .com, whose slogan is “News fairly unbalanced. We report. You decipher.” Ott pokes fun at the highlights of
the Obama campaign and the Obama presidency, which is also a recurring theme of his Web site. Did you realize, for example, that President Obama, following the example of John F. Kennedy, has announced his goal of putting a “Muslim on the Moon”— and “returning him safely to earth using only Muslim technology?” Meanwhile, the White House refuses to comment on reports that Obama plans to order a fatwa against the 24 percent of Americans who still believe, incorrectly, that he’s a Muslim. Obama told reporters, “Whether I’ve asked for a fatwa or not is between me and my mufti.” Through his satirical Web site and book, Ott provides what is too often lacking in politics: a good belly laugh.

54. Patterson, Robert. Conduct Unbecoming: How Barack Obama Is Destroying the Military and Endangering Our Security.
Publisher: Regnery Publishing, September 2010.

Between the Covers: As a military aide assigned to the Clinton White House, Buzz Patterson’s job was to carry the briefcase holding the “nuclear football”— a job any well- trained ape could do. Yet, somehow,
Regnery believes that experience qualifies him to pontificate on American foreign policy and declare President Obama a danger to the military and the nation. The book is full of contradictions. Obama’s slashed funding for the military, complains Patterson. In fact, he’s increased it substantially. Obama’s ignored the war in Afghanistan, according to Patterson. In fact, he’s more than doubled the number of American troops. Obama’s only the second president since World War II with no military experience. In fact, he’s the third— because nobody counts George W. Bush’s work on a U.S. Senate campaign while serving in the Texas National Guard as true “military” experience. And, just for good mea sure, Patterson also attacks Obama for “bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia.” It’s so much more manly to do what George Bush did and just hold the king’s hand. There’s nothing in this book, in other words, except just what you’d expect from a bonafide Obama hater.

55. Pipes, Sally C. The Truth About Obamacare.
Publisher: Regnery Publishing, August 2010.

Between the Covers: As we’ve seen in so many other books, criticism of President Obama’s health- care- reform plan, both while it was being debated in Congress and since it’s become the law of the land, has been way, way over the top. Sally Pipes, with the long- established conservative Pacific Research Institute, does a typical hatchet job: tells a bunch of lies about the plan and then refutes them. In conservative circles today, this is known as “research.” For starters, she condemns Obama’s plan as “the largest expansion of government in the history of the United States.” In truth, there is a vast expansion of private insurance, and no government expansion. The greatest expansion of government since Medicare was actually George W. Bush’s creation of Medicare Part D, which conservatives widely applauded, even though there was never any pay- for passed along with it. As part of the right- wing echo chamber, Pipes declares that “Obamacare” will destroy the American economy and “fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and see our doctors.” And, she might have added, brush our teeth. Unfortunately, for Pipes and others, “Obamacare” is already in place, and none of her dire predictions have come true. So much for all that “research.”

56. Prescott, R. Lee. Barack Obama’s Plan to Socialize America and Destroy Capitalism.
Publisher: Madrona Books, March 2009.

Between the Covers: Obama sure works fast. He’d been in office only two months before Lee Prescott accused him of successfully destroying capitalism and turning the United States into the world’s new socialist empire. Good work, comrade! Sounds like Prescott’s been listening to too much Glenn Beck. Like Beck, he believes that behind Obama’s attractive, articulate, charismatic personality lurks his “dangerous agenda” for America: socialized medicine, education, finance, manufacturing, and energy production. Of course, there never was any truth to that charge. Obama a socialist? Nonsense. By this time in his presidency, many of us progressives are wondering whether we can still call him a liberal.

57. Savage, Michael. Trickle Up Poverty: Stopping Obama’s Attack on Our Borders, Economy, and Security.
Publisher: William Morrow, October 2010.

Between the Covers: If you’ve ever been unlucky enough to catch his radio program, you know that Michael Savage is the worst of the worst: the nuttiest and ugliest conservative talk- show host on the air—
and that’s saying something. And he has a particular loathing of Barack Obama. You know what you’re getting when Savage begins by warning, “No longer can we be Barack Obama’s sheep and let the American Dream be trampled, beaten, and burned to the ground.” Followed by: “The Naked Marxist must be stopped. Obama’s trickle up poverty is infecting everything we hold to be true and self- evident.” Like every other Obama hater, Savage never bothers with reality. He accuses Obama of favoring illegal immigration, for example, when, in fact, Obama has doubled the number of agents on the border and presided over a record number of deportations. But why let the facts get in the way of a good, frothing tirade?

58. Sinclair, Lawrence W. Barack Obama and Larry Sinclair: Cocaine, Sex, Lies, and Murder?
Publisher: Sinclair Publishing, Inc., June 2009.

Between the Covers: How low can you go in politics? Meet Larry Sinclair, who stooped so low that he could not get anyone to publish his explosive charges— not even Regnery Publishing!— so he set up his
own company and published them himself. His story is hardly worth repeating, but just to show you how far some people will go to bring down Barack Obama, Sinclair claims that on November 6 and 7, 1999,
he engaged in consensual homosexual acts with then Illinois state senator Barack Obama in a Chicago hotel room. During those trysts, Sinclair says, Obama procured cocaine for him and smoked crack cocaine while being fellated. It wasn’t until Obama gave his famous speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention that Sinclair realized whom he’d had sex with. As if that’s not bad enough, Sinclair
also claims that on December 23, 2007, after rumors of Obama’s homosexual activities had begun to surface, Obama ordered the murder of his former lover and Trinity United Church’s choir director Donald
Young, just days before the 2008 Iowa Democratic caucuses. Now here’s what’s really disgusting: Sinclair was not only able to publish his grotesque charges; he was granted permission to repeat them publicly in a news conference at the National Press Club during the 2008 campaign. Shame on the Press Club!

59. Spencer, Roy W. The Bad Science and Bad Policy of Obama’s Global Warming Agenda.
Publisher: Encounter Books, January 2010.

Between the Covers: Welcome to the Flat Earth Society. Roy Spencer is a former NASA scientist, now at the University of Alabama. He admits that global warming may be real, but he denies that it’s man- made. The melting of the ice caps and glaciers has nothing to do with all the greenhouse gases we’re pumping into the air, he claims. It’s just Mother Nature trying out a few new temperature levels, like a new set of
clothes. Government should stay out of global warming, Spencer argues. Let Mother Nature do her thing. And let the free market work. Because we know that corporate interests will always do what’s in the
public’s best interest and never act purely for bigger profits, the environment be damned. It’s no surprise that Spencer’s at the University of Alabama (sorry, Crimson Tide fans!), but how’d he ever get a job with
NASA?

60. Tarpley, Webster Griffi n, Bruce Marshall, and Jonathan Mowat. Obama: The Postmodern Coup: Making of a Manchurian Candidate.
Publisher: Progressive Press, June 2008.

Between the Covers: Here’s the first hint of what lies between the covers of this book: the dust jacket features side- by- side photos of Barack Obama and Benito Mussolini waving to campaign crowds. Building to their conclusion that Obama is the architect of “postmodern fascism,”what ever that is, the three authors produce what must be the most outrageous and incredible of all the hate Obama literature. They seriously want us to believe that while he was still a student at Columbia, Obama was recruited by Zbigniew Brzezinski, on behalf of the Trilateral Commission, to become president of the United States and lead a global confrontation against China and Russia. Obama himself, of course, did not win the 2008 election. A “deeply troubled personality,” he merely allowed himself to be used as “the megalomaniac frontman for a postmodern coup by the intelligence agencies, using fake polls, mobs of swarming adolescents, super- rich contributors, and orchestrated media hysteria.” It’s hard to imagine anybody believes this stuff. But there are still many Americans who believe September 11 was an inside job, planned by George Bush and Dick Cheney.

61. Thiessen, Marc A. Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack.
Publisher: Regnery Publishing, January 2010.

Between the Covers: Caveat emptor! This book has been endorsed by both Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. But, if you’re looking for a defense of torture— why it’s morally justifiable, why it’s necessary, how much information was gained, how many lives were saved, and how many new terrorist attacks were prevented because of it— this is your baby. And, as the title shouts, by banning torture— which is, after all, illegal, both under international and U.S. law— President Obama is naïvely inviting another terrorist attack. It is no surprise that Marc Thiessen would argue this point of view. He is, after all, the former White House aide who wrote George W. Bush’s speech defending the use of torture. Now that torture’s illegal again, he’s lucky he, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld are not all in jail.
Whew!
So the Right have been busy at their typewriters— but they are not the only ones to go after Obama in print. With that in mind, a look now at those books about Obama by disgruntled liberals. Their complaint is just the opposite, of course: not that Obama has gone too far in many areas, but that he has not gone far enough— or been willing to use the powers of the presidency to fight for the things liberals believe in.
This proved to be a big problem for Democrats nationwide in 2010, when many Democratic voters, disenchanted with Obama’s perceived failure to deliver, simply stayed home— and when many dissatisfied in de pen dents, having given Democrats a chance in 2008, moved back to the Republican column.
Indeed, given the frustration with Obama expressed by so many liberals, I’m surprised there haven’t been more books critical of Obama published on the Left. Those that have been written, however, make their case very strongly— but also more gently and kindly than books coming from the other side. Naturally! They’re written by liberals!

BLASTING OBAMA FROM THE LEFT

1. Ali, Tariq. The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad.
Publisher: Verso, October 2010.

Between the Covers: Here is one of the first criticisms of President Obama from the Left. British Pakistani military historian Tariq Ali, regular contributor to the New Left Review and The Guardian, accuses Obama of reneging on his campaign promises— at home by bailing out Wall Street and falling short on health care; abroad by continuing the occupation of Iraq, sending more troops to Afghanistan, and launching more drone attacks on Pakistan. Ali argues that very little changed between Obama and Bush, which will inevitably lead Republicans to victory in 2012.

2. Carney, Timothy P. Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses.
Publisher: Regnery Publishing, November 2009.

Between the Covers: This is a searing indictment from the Left of Obama’s economic policies, reflecting the disappointment felt by many liberals. Investigative reporter Tim Carney credits candidate Barack
Obama for wanting to help protect average Americans from corporate interests. But, Carney argues, the economic policies of President Barack Obama have done just the opposite. Under Obama, the only people getting bigger and richer are the Wall Street banks, pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, auto companies, and big polluters. For Carney, “Obamanomics” is just another term for corporatism, which Obama has done little to change.

3. Hodge, Roger D. The Mendacity of Hope: Barack Obama and the Betrayal of American Liberalism.
Publisher: HarperCollins October 2010.

Between the Covers: Roger Hodge is a respected veteran journalist a former editor of Harper’s, and a deeply disappointed Obama supporter. Indeed, he had great expectations for “Archangel” Obama
and the “Audacity of Hope,” only to see his hopes crushed by the reality of what he cleverly calls the “Mendacity of Hope.” Like many liberals, Hodge feels betrayed by the president, who promised to
fi ght for the middle class and— on health care, tax cuts, the economy, and other issues— ended up, instead, favoring the very corporate interests he had campaigned against. What we got with Obama, he
argues, is not change, but continuity. On Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war on terror, there’s not much difference between Barack Obama and George W. Bush. This is the strongest indictment of Obama I’ve
seen from the Left, and one the administration should take seriously.

4. Jocelyn, John Michael, and Dirk Brewer. President Obama’s Broken Promises: Race, Religion, and Gay Rights.
Publisher: Iuniverse, January 2010.

Between the Covers: Where does President Obama stand on gay rights, and what influenced his thinking on this important civil rights issue? Jocelyn and Brewer relate their conclusions, based on interviews with
many Obama associates over the years. His support of gay rights in general, but opposition to same- sex marriage in particular, they believe, is based on the overwhelming influence of the Reverend Jeremiah
Wright, Obama’s pastor for twenty years in Chicago. Even on the Left, Wright is a bogeyman of sorts. His experience at Trinity United Church, the authors contend, left Obama both “unashamedly black” and “unapologetically Christian.” And, as such, he has ended up disappointing his gay and lesbian constituents by not being more supportive of their issues in the White House.

5. Street, Paul. Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics.
Publisher: Paradigm Publishers, September 2008.

Between the Covers: Paul Street’s critique is unique in two ways: It is thoughtful and analytical, and it comes from the Left, not the Right. As one who has followed Obama as an Illinois state Senator and in
his early days as a U.S. senator, Street warns liberals to be careful. What you see is not necessarily what you get. Obama’s not as liberal as he pretends to be on the campaign trail. Street notes, for example,
that Obama opposed legislation creating universal health care for Illinois until it was watered down to authorize only the creation of a commission to study the issue. As U.S. senator, he also parted with
liberals in supporting George W. Bush’s plan for tort reform. Street is especially critical of Obama for, he says, ignoring the deep- seated problem of racism in this country, other than giving an occasional mild “Bill Cosby- like lecture.” Everybody’s expecting something radically new and different about an Obama administration. Lower your expectations, Street advises. Instead of breaking the mold, Obama he predicts, will easily fi t into the mold of narrow- thinking, cautiously acting, corporate- controlled Republican and Democratic presidents of
the past.

6. Street, Paul. The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power.
Publisher: Paradigm Publishers, September 2010.

Between the Covers: Two years later, Paul Street can’t wait to shout out, “I told you so!” Again, coming from the Left, Street compares Obama’s original progressive agenda for change to what he actually delivered in his first two years on the job. Needless to say, like many liberals, he is frustrated with what we got, compared to what we expected. He accuses Obama of letting his base down by settling on a weak healthcare- reform plan, expanding the war in Afghanistan, not fighting harder for the poor and unemployed, increasing the Pentagon’s budget, and not cracking down harder on Wall Street bankers. If you’re a progressive Democrat frustrated with the Obama administration, take heart. Paul Street is your voice. This is the book for you.

Buried under a pile of books a mile high? By this time, you almost have to feel sorry for Barack Obama. As we’ve seen, he’s faced an unprecedented wave of personal attacks: in speeches, on radio and television, online, and in print. But, the discontent of the Left not withstanding, you’d be naïve to think this just happened spontaneously. Just the opposite. From the beginning, the right- wing Obama attack machine was created, fueled, and funded by a pair of extremely wealthy conservative brothers from the heartland.

As we have seen throughout this book, others have voiced the same criticism. But only the Koch brothers had the financial resources to build an entire anti- Obama movement— and were more than willing to spend it.

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