Polls Show Bleak Outlook For McCain-Palin

I might be ecstatic if I didn't know about the voter roll scrubbing that's going on in battleground states. A huge turn-out will be necessary along with exit polls in order to make a stolen election obvious to a blind man.

People like Joe "the puke" Scarborough are already laying the groundwork. Double digit leads don't matter because of the "Bradley effect." No one knows what the numbers really are. So says Joe, this morning. He's not alone. Other far-right wingnuts are claiming the same.

Vote early, says Bobby Kennedy, Jr. Make sure you have a government issued I.D. Raise mortal hell if they turn you down because of your name being different on voter rolls than on your I.D.. for example Robert F. Kennedy on one and Robert Francis Kennedy on the other. This is total b.s. and we all know it. Let these Democracy thieves know that it isn't over until we. the people, say it is.

No taxation without representation!

By Steven Thomma and Marc Caputo | McClatchy Newspapers

INDIANAPOLIS — A series of new polls released Thursday found a bleak outlook for John McCain, even in traditionally Republican states, and a potential landslide victory for Democrat Barack Obama on Nov. 4.

The polls found McCain trailing Obama in the battleground states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania and suggest that he's behind even in solidly red states such as Indiana, and they also suggest that his talk about "Joe the Plumber" has done little to help his cause.

"Senator Obama is no longer the candidate of the young, the well-educated and minorities. He is now virtually the candidate of the 'all,'" said Peter Brown, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, which conducted one of the polls. "He is winning among all age groups in all three states. He wins women by more than 20 points in Ohio and Pennsylvania and is competitive among men in all three states. Whether voters went to college or not, they are voting for him.

"If these numbers hold up, he could win the biggest Democratic landslide since Lyndon Johnson in 1964," Brown said.

A new CBS News/New York Times poll found that a number of groups that supported President Bush in 2004, including married women, suburban voters and white Roman Catholics, now prefer Obama to McCain. Even white men, long solidly Republican, favor Obama, according to the poll, which overall found Obama leading McCain by 51 percent to 38 percent.

In Florida, where a Mason-Dixon poll earlier this week suggested that talk of the economy had helped McCain, a new Miami Herald poll Thursday found the Arizona senator trailing Obama by 49 percent to 42 percent.

The Herald poll, done in conjunction with the St. Petersburg Times by Republican and Democratic polling companies, was one of four surveys out Thursday that found the election map becoming more unfavorable to McCain.

Perhaps the most alarming of all, from a Republican perspective, was one sponsored by universities in the eight states that make up the Big 10 Conference of college sports teams. That survey found Obama ahead in all eight Big 10 states, including Ohio, Indiana and Iowa, three states that Bush carried four years ago. That was a dramatic shift from September, when the Big Ten Battleground Poll found the race a dead heat in all the states except Illinois, Obama's home state.

Now Obama is leading by double digits in all eight states, including Indiana, long a GOP stronghold, where the new poll found Obama ahead by 10 points. The last Democrat to carry the Hoosier state was Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

"If the Republican is only winning Indiana by 1 or 2 points, he's in serious trouble," said Charles Franklin, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and the director of the Big Ten Battleground Poll. "McCain still has a chance to get to 270 electoral-college votes, but it's a narrow one."

The Big 10 poll found Obama up by 11 points in Pennsylvania, 12 points in Ohio, 13 points in Wisconsin and Iowa, 19 points in Minnesota and 22 points in Michigan. In his home state of Illinois, according to the poll, Obama is up by 29 points.

The Quinnipiac survey of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania found similar results. That survey found that:

• In Ohio, Obama leads by 14, up from 12 at the beginning of the month.
• In Pennsylvania, Obama leads by 13, down slightly from 14 points.
• In Florida, where Obama led by 8 points at the beginning of October, he now leads by 5 points.

Obama's lead in the Quinnipiac and Miami Herald polls is too small to say with certainty that he leads McCain in Florida, but the Herald poll found some key indicators that McCain may be falling behind in that key battleground:

• McCain trails Obama in Southwest Florida, long a reliable Republican base, and he leads in only one region, conservative North Florida — by 7 percentage points.
• Obama has tied McCain among Florida voters over 65 years old. McCain had a 7-percentage point lead in the over-65 group a Herald poll taken last month, just as the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy precipitated the economic crisis.
• Only 35 percent of Floridians said that McCain has demonstrated more leadership during the crisis and has a better plan to fix it, while 45 percent said Obama has demonstrated better leadership and 49 percent said the Illinois Democrat has a better plan to fix the economy.

The Herald poll also found that Obama's biggest boost in Florida came from independent voters, who now back him over McCain by a 57 percent to 22 percent margin. That's a 38-point shift toward the Democrat since the last poll in September, which was also conducted for the Herald, the St. Petersburg Times and Bay News 9 television by SEA Polling and Strategic Design and The Polling Co.

The fate of McCain's campaign in Florida and elsewhere was damaged by troubles that are out of his hands, said Kellyanne Conway, a Republican who owns The Polling Co.

She said the ''superseding events" of the financial crisis hurt McCain, who led by 2 percentage points last month. But, she said, McCain's campaign is also to blame for his troubles because it's focused too on attacking Obama for his alleged ties to a Vietnam-era radical terrorist.

''Trying to connect Barack Obama to Bill Ayers rather than trying to connect McCain to the average voter on the economy has also been dubious," Conway said.

The growing importance of the economy and Obama's success in talking about the issue appear to be deciding factors in winning independent votes, which comprise about a fifth of Florida's electorate. Independents have grown increasingly worried about the economy, making them more like Democrats than Republicans.

Compared with about half of all Republicans, just under two-thirds of independents and Democrats reported experiencing big financial troubles — from losing a job to missing a mortgage payment. Of those who've experienced economic duress, 55 percent back Obama and 34 percent support McCain.

Tom Eldon, a Democrat and pollster with SEA, said that Obama has used the economy to improve his standing with nearly all types of Florida voters. In the case of senior citizens, it was his ''pounding" of McCain in television ads about Social Security, Medicare and health care. Obama has outspent McCain on advertising in Florida by 3-1.

McCain's initial response — rapping Obama for his ties to Ayers and the vote-registration group ACORN — missed the mark, Eldon said, because the attacks were geared toward firming up the Republican base, but they alienated independent voters, to whom the self-described maverick once appealed.

"He served up red meat for his base but he starved independents," Eldon said. "McCain has run a base campaign and it's a race right now that is all about the independent voters."

The McCain campaign also took heavily Republican Southwest Florida for granted, Eldon said, by not doing enough to appeal to the region's elderly voters who've lost a lot in the stock market. Obama opened up field offices in the Republican area to keep the pressure on McCain, a tactic that the Republican Conway said was an example of Obama's nearly "flawless" campaign.

However, Conway cautions, "Florida's still in play" in a politically and financially volatile atmosphere. Indeed, though the Quinnipiac poll's findings resembled those of The Miami Herald survey, three statewide polls this week found Obama losing momentum in the face of McCain's renewed attacks over the Democrat's recent statement that he wants to "spread the wealth around" by raising taxes on families that earn more than $250,000 a year.

(Caputo reports for The Miami Herald.)

ON THE WEB

Poll: Independents boost Obama in Florida

Quinnipiac University poll

Big Ten Battleground Poll

CBS News/New York Times poll

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Obama and McCain vie for working-class voters

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Health care: Both candidates' plans promise radical change

Veterans: Candidates agree that VA is broken

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

UHOH!!! If This Is True......

....or even false, all hell is about to break loose!

Editor's Note

Is this legal filing on Obama's birth certificate part of a carefully prepared ploy to trigger a crisis at the Democratic Convention? The suit was filed in Philadelphia five days prior to the Democratic Convention.

Philip Berg is close to Hillary Clinton. Is this action being launched because Hillary Clinton was not chosen as Obama's running mate for the office of the Vice President?

Will the law suit be allowed to proceed?

Are the Republicans supportive of this initiative? Will the lawsuit be used by the McCain campaign?

The mainstream media has not covered the issue. There is barely mention of the lawsuit in America's main news sources. The text of the Press Release is contained in Annex. Links to the main legal dcouments are also provided.

The article below is posted with a view to informing our readers. Global Research does not necessarily support the views expressed in the article.

Global Research will provide further analysis as events unfold.


Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, August 23, 2008

---

A prominent Philadelphia attorney and Hillary Clinton supporter filed suit this afternoon in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic National Committee and the Federal Election Commission. The action seeks an injunction preventing the senator from continuing his candidacy and a court order enjoining the DNC from nominating him next week, all on grounds that Sen. Obama is constitutionally ineligible to run for and hold the office of President of the United States.

Philip Berg, the filing attorney, is a former gubernatorial and senatorial candidate, former chair of the Democratic Party in Montgomery (PA) County, former member of the Democratic State Committee, and former Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania. According to Berg, he filed the suit--just days before the DNC is to hold its nominating convention in Denver--for the health of the Democratic Party.

"I filed this action at this time," Berg stated, "to avoid the obvious problems that will occur when the Republican Party raises these issues after Obama is nominated.".

Berg cited a number of unanswered questions regarding the Illinois senator's background, and in today's lawsuit maintained that Sen. Obama is not a natural born U.S. citizen or that, if he ever was, he lost his citizenship when he was adopted in Indonesia. Berg also cites what he calls "dual loyalties" due to his citizenship and ties with Kenya and Indonesia.

Even if Sen. Obama can prove his U.S. citizenship, Berg stated, citing the senator's use of a birth certificate from the state of Hawaii verified as a forgery by three independent document forensic experts, the issue of "multi-citizenship with responsibilities owed to and allegiance to other countries" remains on the table.

In the lawsuit, Berg states that Sen. Obama was born in Kenya, and not in Hawaii as the senator maintains. Before giving birth, according to the lawsuit, Obama's mother traveled to Kenya with his father but was prevented from flying back to Hawaii because of the late stage of her pregnancy, "apparently a normal restriction to avoid births during a flight." As Sen. Obama's own paternal grandmother, half-brother and half-sister have also claimed, Berg maintains that Stanley Ann Dunham--Obama's mother--gave birth to little Barack in Kenya and subsequently flew to Hawaii to register the birth.

Berg cites inconsistent accounts of Sen. Obama's birth, including reports that he was born at two separate hospitals--Kapiolani Hospital and Queens Hospital--in Honolulu, as well a profound lack of birthing records for Stanley Ann Dunham, though simple "registry of birth" records for Barack Obama are available in a Hawaiian public records office.

Should Sen. Obama truly have been born in Kenya, Berg writes, the laws on the books at the time of his birth hold that U.S. citizenship may only pass to a child born overseas to a U.S. citizen parent and non-citizen parent if the former was at least 19 years of age. Sen. Obama's mother was only 18 at the time. Therefore, because U.S. citizenship could not legally be passed on to him, Obama could not be registered as a "natural born" citizen and would therefore be ineligible to seek the presidency pursuant to Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution.

Moreover, even if Sen. Obama could have somehow been deemed "natural born," that citizenship was lost in or around 1967 when he and his mother took up residency in Indonesia, where Stanley Ann Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian citizen. Berg also states that he possesses copies of Sen. Obama's registration to Fransiskus Assisi School In Jakarta, Indonesia which clearly show that he was registered under the name "Barry Soetoro" and his citizenship listed as Indonesian.

The Hawaiian birth certificate, Berg says, is a forgery. In the suit, the attorney states that the birth certificate on record is a forgery, has been identified as such by three independent document forensic experts, and actually belonged to Maya Kasandra Soetoro, Sen. Obama's half-sister.

"Voters donated money, goods and services to elect a nominee and were defrauded by Sen. Obama's lies and obfuscations," Berg stated. "If the DNC officers ... had performed one ounce of due diligence we would not find ourselves in this emergency predicament, one week away from making a person the nominee who has lost their citizenship as a child and failed to even perform the basic steps of regaining citizenship as prescribed by constitutional laws."

"It is unfair to the country," he continued, "for candidates of either party to become the nominee when there is any question of the ability to serve if elected."

---

PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release: - 08/21/08

For Further Information Contact:

Philip J. Berg, Esquire Suit Filed

555 Andorra Glen Court, Suite 12 08/21/08

Lafayette Hill, PA 19444-2531

Cell (610) 662-3005 No. 08-cv-4083

(610) 825-3134

(800) 993-PHIL [7445]

Fax (610) 834-7659

philjberg@gmail.com

Philip J. Berg, Esq. Files Federal Lawsuit

Requesting Obama

Be Removed as a Candidate as he does not meet the

Qualifications for President

(Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania – 08/21/08) - Philip J. Berg, Esquire, [Berg is a former Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania; former candidate for Governor and U.S. Senate in Democratic Primaries; former Chair of the Democratic Party in Montgomery County; former member of Democratic State Committee; an attorney with offices in Montgomery County, PA and an active practice in Philadelphia, PA, filed a lawsuit in Federal Court today, Berg vs. Obama, Civil Action No. 08-cv-4083, seeking a Declaratory Judgment and an Injunction that Obama does not meet the qualifications to \FORMS\PressReleaseObama08212008 to be President of the United States. Berg filed this suit for the best interests of the Democratic Party and the citizens of the United States.

Philip J. Berg, Esquire stated in his lawsuit that Senator Obama:

1. Is not a naturalized citizen; and/or

2. Lost his citizenship when he was adopted in Indonesia; and/or

3. Has dual loyalties because of his citizenship with Kenya and Indonesia.

Berg stated: “I filed this action at this time to avoid the obvious problems that will occur when the Republican Party raises these issues after Obama is nominated.

There have been numerous questions raised about Obama’s background with no satisfactory answers. The questions that I have addressed include, but are not limited to:

1. Where was Obama born? Hawaii; an island off of Hawaii; Kenya; Canada; or ?

2. Was he a citizen of Kenya, Indonesia and/or Canada?

3. What was the early childhood of Obama in Hawaii; in Kenya; in Indonesia when he was adopted; and later, back to Hawaii?

4. An explanation as to the various names utilized by Obama that include: Barack Hussein Obama; Barry Soetoro; Barry Obama; Barack Dunham; and Barry Dunham.

5. Illinois Bar Application – Obama fails to acknowledge use of names other than Barack Hussein Obama, a blatant lie.

If Obama can prove U.S. citizenship, we still have the issue of muti-citizenship with responsibilities owed to and allegance to other countries.

Z\\FORMS\PressReleaseObama08212008 3

Berg continued:

“Eighteen million Democratic Primary voters donated money, volunteered their time and energy, worked very hard and then not only supported Senator Clinton, but voted for her and often recruited other supporters as well. All the efforts of supporters of legitimate citizens were for nothing because this man lied and cheated his way into a fraudulent candidacy and cheated legitimately eligible natural born citizens from competing in a fair process and the supporters of their citizen choice for the nomination.

Voters donated money, goods and services to elect a nominee and were defrauded by Senator Obama's lies and obfuscations. He clearly shows a conscience of guilt by his actions in using the forged birth certificate and the lies he's told to cover his loss of citizenship. We believe he does know, supported this belief by his actions in hiding his secret, in that he failed to regain his citizenship and used documents to further his position as a natural born citizen. We would also show he proclaims himself a Constitutional scholar and lecturer, but did not learn he had no eligibility to become President except by means of lying, obfuscations and deceptions. His very acts proves he knew he was no longer a natural born citizen. We believe he knew he was defrauding the country or else why use the forged birth certificate of his half sister?

Americans lost money, goods and services donated in their support of a candidate who supposedly was a natural born citizen simply because the DNC officers and party leaders looked the other way and did not demand credentials to answer the questions and prove whether or not Senator Obama was a legitimately natural born citizen, even in light of recent information that has surfaced on websites on the Internet suggesting Senator Obama may not be eligible to become President and questioning his status of multiple citizenships and questionable loyalties! If the DNC officers and.or leaders had performed one ounce of due diligence we would not find ourselves in this emergency predicament, one week away from making a person the nominee who has lost their citizenship as a child and failed to even perform the basic steps of regaining citizenship through an oath of allegiance at age eighteen [18] as prescribed by Constitutional laws!

The injunctrive relief must be granted because failing to do so, this inaction defrauds everyone who voted in the Democratic Primary for a nominee that is a fair representation of the voters. Failure to grant injunctive relief would allow a corrupted, fraudulent nomination process to continue. It not only allows, but promotes an overwhelming degree of disrespect and creates such a lack of confidence in voters of the primary process itself, so that it would cement a prevailing belief that no potential candidate has to obey the laws of this country, respect our election process, follow the Constitution, or even suffer any consequence for lying and defrauding voters to get onto the ballot when they have no chance of serving if they fraudulently manage to get elected! It is unfair to the country for candidates of either party to become the nominee when there is any question of their ability to serve if elected.

All judges are lawyers and held to a higher standard of practice than a regular lawyer. It is this Judicial standard that demands injunctive relief prayed for here. This relief is predicated upon one of the most basic premises of practicing law which states no lawyer can allow themselves to be used in furthering a criminal enterprise. And by that gauge alone, failing to give injunctive relief to the 18 million supporters of the other candidate, a true natural born citizen eligible to serve if elected, this court must not allow itself to be used to further the criminal and fraudulent acts to continue and be rewarded by becoming the Democratic Nominee. Failure to give the injunctive relief prayed for will insure that a corrupted Presidential election process will only guarantee a show of unfair preference of one group of people over another group by not demanding the same rules be applied to all groups equally and fairly, especially in light of the fact that both candidates are each considered a minority.

---

LINKS TO KEY DOCUMENTS

File	Description	File size
Complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief		142 Kb
Memorandum in support of temporary restraining order	This document contains a complete narrative of the facts.	164 Kb
Plaintiff's motion for temporary restraining order	Plaintiff's motion for temporary restraining order	108 Kb
Temporary Restraining Order		79 Kb
Press Release

Global Research Articles by Jeff Schreiber


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Will This Election Be Decided By The Reliably Ignorant?

Let's hope not, but if it is and McCain wins, Americans will get exactly what they deserve, with the exception of those of us who have seen the writing on the wall for some time and have made arrangements to get the hell out of here.

That Newsweek possesses a penchant for wry understatement was strikingly apparent when the magazine observed Friday: "Obama's overall decline from the last Newsweek Poll ... is hard to explain."

As it turned out, Barack Obama's decline -- a bellyflopping swan dive from a 15 point to merely three point lead over John McCain in only three weeks -- was actually quite impossible to explain, although speculation abounds.

It could be, of course, that Newsweek's latest poll is pure bunk. Or, it could be that Newsweek's previous poll was pure bunk. Such methodological matters are not unlike an ad exec trying to determine which half of his advertising isn't working. It's nigh impossible to say.

Notwithstanding what cable network analysts have been saying over the weekend, however, Newsweek's June poll -- the one showing a 15 point Obama advantage -- did not stand alone. For indeed there was another poll at the time, the LA Times/Bloomberg poll, that showed a similar Obama lead; in fact, an identical lead when Ralph Nader and Bob Barr were factored.

So who knows? Only one thing is certain: Princeton Survey Research Associates isn't. Because as Newsweek noted of its own poll's designer, PSRA "says some of the discrepancy between the two most recent polls may be explained by sampling error." Well, that's why they put erasers on pencils.

For the fainthearted I would add another finding as solace, however.

As everyone knows (admittedly a risky introduction to any sentence in such a "low-information" democracy), national polling numbers in head-to-head matchups don't mean much; rather, predicting a presidential election is all about the state-by-state electoral count.

And there, according to Real Clear Politics' latest averages of state-by-state polling, if one eliminates all those fussy "leaning" margins and just goes with the hard numbers as of today, then Obama wins the electoral college vote, 304 to 234.

Hey, work with me here. It's something, and that something is abundantly better than an actual 15-to-three point dive in merely three weeks. Naturally, it could be that both Newsweek polls were incorrect in their extremes, and a simple averaging of the two brings them into line with most other national polling.

Still, one marvels at the seeming flat-lining of Obama's numbers, whatever their vicissitudinous peaks and valleys. As Newsweek put it rather austerely: "Perhaps most puzzling is how McCain could have gained traction in the past month."

In every issue-by-issue polling analysis done by virtually every polling organization, Obama crushes McCain across the board, except on the "protect us from terrorism" bugaboo. But in this election terrorism is rarely even among the top three national concerns, so "puzzling" indeed is Obama's issue dominance vis-à-vis his relative parity with McCain in a head-to-head matchup.

Unless, that is, one ponders the old bugaboos of race and religion in America, and their steadfast companion of staggering ignorance. I'll let Newsweek present the grisly details:

The new poll suggests white voters continue to be a challenge for Obama, with McCain leading the Democrat in that category 48 to 36 percent. Some of Obama's lag in white support may be explained by continual confusion over his religious identity.

Twelve percent of voters surveyed said that Obama was sworn in as a United States senator on a Qur'an, while 26 percent believe the Democratic candidate was raised as a Muslim and 39 percent believe he attended an Islamic school as a child growing up in Indonesia. None of these things is true. Finally cracking the code with less-educated whites could have a big payoff for Obama: 85 percent of undecided voters are non-Hispanic whites and only 22 percent of those undecideds have a four-year college degree.

OK, so the problem isn't disagreement with Obama on domestic issues, and it isn't national security concerns, and it isn't any severe fracture within the Democratic Party ("only 17 percent of former Clinton supporters say they will vote for McCain in the general election," and even that statistic, given empirical data, is slated for continuing decline), and it is scarcely any burgeoning enthusiasm for another Republican president of Gothic disposition.

So let us think hard. What could the problem be; whatever could it be?

Senator Obama, of late you've done a nice job -- I'd go so far as to say an admirable job -- of cynically shifting to the political center, which is where, of course, the immutably cynical game of politics is won. But from now till the convention, it should be a game of little more than personal introduction and reintroduction -- of your biracial, Christian biography. For this election, like nearly all others, it appears, will be decided by the reliably ignorant.

Please respond to P.M.'s commentary by leaving comments below and sharing them with the BuzzFlash community. For personal questions or comments you can contact him at fifthcolumnistmail@gmail.com

THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

An Attack That Came Out Of The Ether

Some of my friends have gotten some of these idiot-mails.

The following article examines ways of stopping this kind of anonymous attack.

I say the best way is to track down the people who are responsible for it and beat the living daylights out of them! These people aren't just defaming Obama, they are messing with democracy itself.

We've been tracking some rumor-mongers ourselves, thanks to some really good I.U. geeks.

They had better be ready to move when we find them because we have had about all we can take of fear-tactics and lies no matter where they come from.


Scholar Looks for First Link in E-Mail Chain About Obama

By Matthew Mosk
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 28, 2008; C01

PRINCETON, N.J.

The e-mail landed in Danielle Allen's queue one winter morning as she was studying in her office at the Institute for Advanced Study, the renowned haven for some of the nation's most brilliant minds. The missive began: "THIS DEFINITELY WARRANTS LOOKING INTO."

Laid out before Allen, a razor-sharp, 36-year-old political theorist, was what purported to be a biographical sketch of Barack Obama that has become one of the most effective -- and baseless -- Internet attacks of the 2008 presidential season. The anonymous chain e-mail makes the false claim that Obama is concealing a radical Islamic background. By the time it reached Allen on Jan. 11, 2008, it had spread with viral efficiency for more than a year.

During that time, polls show the number of voters who mistakenly believe Obama is a Muslim rose -- from 8 percent to 13 percent between November 2007 and March 2008. And some cited this religious mis-affiliation when explaining their primary votes against him.

As the general-election campaign against Sen. John McCain has gotten underway, Obama's aides have made the smears a top target. They recently launched FightTheSmears.com to "aggressively push back with the truth," said Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor, and go viral with it. The Web site urges supporters to upload their address books and send e-mails to all of their friends. "

But long before this, Allen had been obsessing about the origins of her e-mail at the institute, which is most famous for having been the research home of Albert Einstein. Allen studies the way voters in a democracy gather their information and act on what they learn. She was familiar, of course, with the false rumors of a secret love child that helped sink McCain's White House bid in 2000, and the Swift boat attacks that did the same to Democrat John Kerry in 2004. But the Obama e-mail was on another plane: The use of the Internet made it possible to launch anonymous attacks that could reach millions of voters in weeks or even days.

As an Obama supporter -- she had met the senator while she worked as a dean at the University of Chicago -- it made her angry. And curious.

"I started thinking, 'How does one stop it?' "

Allen set her sights on dissecting the modern version of a whisper campaign, even though experts told her it would be impossible to trace the chain e-mail to its origin. Along the way, even as her hunt grew cold, she gained valuable insight into the way political information circulates, mutates and sometimes devastates in the digital age.

How Rumors Are Born

Allen was ideally suited to embark on such a difficult hunt. She boasts two doctorates, one in classics from Cambridge University and the other in government from Harvard University, and won a $500,000 MacArthur "genius" award at the age of 29. Last year she joined the faculty of the institute, the only African American and one of a handful of women at the elite research center, where she works alongside groundbreaking physicists, mathematicians and social scientists. They don't have to teach, and they face no quotas on what they publish. Their only mandate is to work in the tradition of Einstein, wrestling with the most vexing problems in the universe.

While Allen was already an expert on the mechanics of politics, she fast began to learn the mechanics of the Internet. She discovered, for instance, that the recipe for launching a chain e-mail attack is not as simple as typing it up and hitting the send button to a long list of recipients. It takes effort to seed a chain mail that spreads as widely as the Obama missive, explained Jeff Bedser, president of the Internet Crimes Group, a company that helps corporations battle such broadsides. "Lighting that fire, getting something to have momentum, takes work," he said.

For this kind of chain-mail message to gain traction, it must be plausible, and it has to resonate, said Eric Dezenhall, a public relations specialist who once worked in the Reagan White House. Obama was vulnerable, Dezenhall said, because of his unusual name, his childhood in Indonesia, a foreign-born father, and his sudden arrival on the national stage without a fully fleshed-out biography. "All of these things gave it merchandising legs," Dezenhall said.

As Allen scrolled through the e-mail about Obama, she saw that the list of people who had received the missive consumed several full screens. Her first thought was to try to learn about the people behind the addresses. She traced a number to North Carolina Web sites about golf, but quickly hit a dead end. Then she had another thought: What if she took some of the unusual phrases from the text of the e-mail and Googled them?

Her eyes fell on this untrue sentence: "ALSO, keep in mind that when he was sworn into office he DID NOT use the Holy Bible, but instead the Kuran (Their equivalency to our Bible, but very different beliefs)."

The use of "their equivalency" and the spelling of "Kuran" instead of "Koran" made the sentence her point of departure.

That search showed that the first mention of the e-mail on the Internet had come more than a year earlier. A participant on the conservative Web site FreeRepublic.com posted a copy of the e-mail on Jan. 8, 2007, and added this line at the end: "Don't know who the original author is, but this email should be sent out to family and friends."

Allen discovered that theories about Obama's religious background had circulated for many years on the Internet. And that the man who takes credit for posting the first article to assert that the Illinois senator was a Muslim is Andy Martin.

Martin, a former political opponent of Obama's, is the publisher of an Internet newspaper who sends e-mails to his mailing list almost daily. He said in an interview that he first began questioning Obama's religious background after hearing his famous keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. In an Aug. 10, 2004, article, which he posted on Web sites and e-mailed to bloggers, he said that Obama had concealed his Muslim heritage. "I feel sad having to expose Barack Obama," Martin wrote in an accompanying press release, "but the man is a complete fraud. The truth is going to surprise, and disappoint, and outrage many people who were drawn to him. He has lied to the American people, and he has sought to misrepresent his own heritage." Martin's article did not suggest an association between Obama and radical Islam.

Martin was trying to launch a Senate bid against Obama when he says he first ran the Democrat's name by a contact in London. "They said he must be a Muslim. That was interesting to me because it was an angle that nobody had covered. We started looking. As a candidate you learn how to harness the Internet. You end up really learning how to work the street. I sort of picked this story up as a sideline." Martin said the primary basis for his belief was simple -- Obama's father was a Muslim. In a defamation lawsuit he filed against the New York Times and others several months ago, Martin says that Obama "eventually became a Christian" but that "as a matter of Islamic law began life as a Muslim" due to his father's religion.

The belief that Obama unavoidably inherited his religion was not uniquely Martin's -- as recently as May, it was proffered by Edward N. Luttwak, a fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, in a New York Times op-ed piece.

(After the Times was deluged with complaints, the paper's public editor, or ombudsman, later wrote that he had interviewed five Islamic scholars, at five American universities, recommended by a variety of sources as experts in the field. All of them disagreed with Luttwak's interpretation of Islamic law.)

Martin said he posted his 2004 article on Web sites, and distributed it by e-mail to authors of other popular blogs. But he said he had nothing to do with the chain e-mail that got Allen's attention. "I'm not trying to smear anybody," Martin said. "I just felt that was an underreported story."

But Martin said he understands how his initial article has taken on a life of its own. "There's nothing sinister here. I was thinking of running for Senate and was looking for a story to put some sizzle on the plate."

Other articles followed Martin's. Andrew Walden, the founder of an alternative Hawaiian newspaper with the motto "The untold story, the unspoken opinion, the other side," published an article with many of the same false biographical details from the e-mail in the weeks before Obama announced for president -- that he was "Raised in Muslim lands and educated in Muslim schools." He said in an interview that Obama's "alliance with Islam" was "all over the Internet," a source he often considers more trustworthy than the mainstream media.

Around the same time Ted Sampley, a North Carolina man who runs his own Web site, published a similar piece. In an interview, he denied authorship of the e-mail, but said he did not doubt that his article had provided source material. "That's the miracle of it," Sampley said. "Once it takes off, and people start posting it on Web sites, you really have no idea how far it goes or who reads it. You get a ripple effect. It's like a little pebble and then it gets bigger and bigger."

Poring over these early articles on the topic, Allen noticed what she thought was an important pattern. In each instance, someone had posted the articles on the Free Republic Web site, prompting a discussion involving the same handful of people, with several expressing a desire to spread the word about Obama's supposed faith.

Keeper of the Obama File

Of the file folders that are spread in neat rows across Allen's desk, only one is bulging. It holds printouts of the reams of conversations about Obama's religion appearing on Free Republic. Since its start in 1996 by Jim Robinson of Fresno, Calif., the site has grown into a home for discussion of all types -- though it is particularly noted for spirited political discussions dominated by conservatives and libertarians. Freepers, as they're called, converse with a varying degree of transparency. Most remain anonymous.

Allen counted 23 freepers among those engaging in regular discussions about Obama's religion, and isolated a handful whom she began to suspect as having a role in the e-mail. Sifting through hundreds of postings, she began to piece together their identities. There was "Beckwith," whom she pegged as a veteran from Boston, old enough to vote for John F. Kennedy, in uniform by 1964, and host of a Web site that devotes considerable space to an "Obama file" that says the senator is "by birth, blood and training, a Muslim."

Allen found Beckwith discussing the matter in a Jan. 13 clip from a Web-based conservative radio show based in San Diego. In his thick Boston brogue, Beckwith told hosts Jeff Lynch and Mike Howard that Obama's "relationship to Islam is the big question. When one investigates the background of Obama's conversion, I can find no record of his baptism."

"Wow! Interesting!" Lynch gasped.

"This guy could easily be the Muslim Manchurian candidate," Howard said.

As Allen scanned his postings on Free Republic, she noticed that Beckwith repeated several phrases that also surface in the e-mail. Beckwith called Obama "an apostate Muslim, educated in madrassas." And when Beckwith later repudiated the "madrassa" claim -- after it was debunked by the mainstream media -- the term disappeared from subsequent versions of the chain e-mail. The Post located Beckwith in a Boston suburb, and he agreed to be interviewed under the condition that he not be identified because "I get a lot of really nutty stuff and some of it's threatening." The 69-year-old said he is retired as a software engineer and lives alone, but for brief stints babysitting for his grandchildren. He said he started a Web site in 2005 "because I don't play golf." His initial goal was to take swats at the liberal left. "Then this new guy comes along called Obama," he said.

Beckwith said he built a Web site that features hundreds of pages of material intended to undermine Obama. "If 20 percent of what's on my Web site is true, this guy is a clear and present danger," Beckwith said. (He later added, "I try very hard to be accurate.") But while Beckwith speaks with pride about his research -- much of which he credits to an unnamed "colleague" in Europe -- and to his extensive Obama files, he rejects outright the suggestion that he authored the chain e-mail. "I've never been involved with any e-mailings. Period," he said.

Another Free Republic participant who attracted Allen's interest went by the handle "Eva." She was one of the first to write on the site about Obama's religion -- in November 2006 she began repeating the phrase "Once a Muslim, always a Muslim," when discussing Obama.

With the help of Allen's biographical sketch, The Post located Eva in rural Washington state. She is Donna Shaw, 60, a teacher who said Obama's ability to captivate audiences made her deeply uneasy because his "tone and cadence" reminded her of the child revivalist con-man preacher Marjoe Gortner.

Shaw says she has done extensive online research about Obama but believes many of the initial sites that provided "proof" of his Muslim background have been removed from the Internet: "Everything about his Muslim background was readily available on the Web in 2004. But they were all cleared from the Internet before he ran for Senate." Shaw says she's always had a hankering for politics. Probably, she muses, that's because her father served for a spell as a New Jersey state assemblyman. He was driven out, she notes without a hint of irony, when he became the victim of a 1950s smear campaign that wrongly accused him of being a communist.

When asked about the Obama e-mail, she says evenly: "I've never seen the e-mail. I don't get any political e-mails. I have a good filter on that."

Old Tactic, New Twist

The idea of unsubstantiated charges whispered through gossip trails has been a tried-and-true political technique since well before Machiavelli's time, Allen said. Traditionally, the best approach to combating them has been to "flush the charges out into the open."

That was easier when the rumors flew off a printing press, or when they appeared -- as with Swift boat attacks against Kerry -- in television ads paid for by a well-funded group of partisans. The attacks on Obama are different, Allen says. The level of anonymity, the technical efficiency, and above all the electoral impact of Internet-based smears all represent a new challenge.

"What I've come to realize is, the labor of generating an e-mail smear is divided and distributed amongst parties whose identities are secret even to each other," she says. A first group of people published articles that created the basis for the attack. A second group recirculated the claims from those articles without ever having been asked to do so. "No one coordinates the roles," Allen said. Instead the participants swim toward their goal like a school of fish -- moving on their own, but also in unison.

Obama's campaign, for better or worse, is writing the manual on combating this new asymmetrical guerrilla warfare. Obama has not shied away from the rumors -- he mentions them frequently. "Before I begin," he told a pro-Israel group this month, "I want to say that I know some provocative e-mails have been circulating throughout Jewish communities across the country. . . . They're filled with tall tales and dire warnings about a certain candidate for president. And all I want to say is -- let me know if you see this guy named Barack Obama, because he sounds pretty frightening."

Allen says the casual pushback and aggressive response plan could provide the model politicians will follow in the future. But she remains uncertain it will work.

"Citizens and political scientists must face the fact that the Internet has enabled a new form of political organization that is just as influential on local and national elections as unions and political action committees," she says. "This kind of misinformation campaign short-circuits judgment. It also aggressively disregards the fundamental principle of free societies that one be able to debate one's accusers."

For proof of this, Allen says, she need look no further than her e-mail inbox. After months of research, a new chain-mail smear against Obama arrived with an innocuous subject line: "Food for thought."

Research editor Lucy Shackelford and polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.