A syndicated news service attacked the New York Times best-selling book “Fool Me Twice” as espousing “conspiracy theories,” yet did not cite a single example of a conspiracy in the book, which unveils President Obama’s specific, second-term agenda.
The conspiracy claim originates with Joe McNamara, a Toledo lawyer and city councilman who is active in the Obama re-election campaign. However, the same article quoting McNamara later notes that the Obama campaign member “didn’t try to take issue with any of the facts in the book.”
The full title of the book, by bestselling authors Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott, is “Fool Me Twice: Obama’s shocking plans for four more years exposed.”
The Block News Alliance, which consists of the Toledo Blade and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, yesterday published an article about “Fool Me Twice” in both the Blade and Post-Gazette.
The title and subhead of the Post-Gazette article was “Book posits Obama hopes to fulfill progressive goals in a second term. But arguments attacked as conspiracy theories.”
The Blade carried the same article using a different title, “Authors claim to reveal Obama’s 2nd-term agenda. Book says President hiding Socialist goals.”
The Block News article was written by Blade reporter Tom Troy, who interviewed “Fool Me Twice” author Klein.
“I don’t have an agenda beyond documenting for the American public what Barack Obama’s specific plans are or at least the recommendations that have been given to Obama that will most likely form the blueprint for a second term,” Klein said in the interview with Troy. “I was simply trying to do what the president will not, and that is spell out his actual plans if he gets elected.”
Troy’s article describes the book thusly:
“Mr. Klein tries to make the case that the president hopes to implement a lot of the goals of the progressive movement.
“Those goals are said to include using the military to carry out a ‘green agenda,’ such as by converting military equipment, installations and processes to experimenting with clean energy.
“They would include implementing policies that would dramatically boost the cost and role of the national government in subsidizing low-income and working-class people through mandated paid family leave, a national ‘living wage,’ an end to deporting illegal immigrants, a single-payer health system, and a new Great Depression-era kind of Works Progress Administration with millions of new federal jobs, and even putting the United States in the position of funding global initiatives to redress the wrongs done by industrialization and colonialization.”
Troy quotes McNamara as claiming the book is the work of a conspiracy theorist and of a genre that makes money by playing on the fears of many people.
“Considering this author’s previous works, I have a hard time taking him seriously. He’s a conspiracy theorist who equates progressives with Socialists,” McNamara said. “There’s a large contingent in this country who are enthralled by conspiracy theorists. The president has had to defend his faith and his citizenship. This is part of that genre again. This is an attempt to try to reignite the idea that the president is not an American who shares our values.”
Neither Troy nor McNamara cited a single inaccuracy or alleged conspiracy advocated in “Fool Me Twice.”
Toward the end of the article Troy notes, “On the other hand, Mr. McNamara didn’t try to take issue with any of the facts in the book.”
Troy further contended progressives may be proud of the book.
“The tone of the book views this quiet agenda as a dangerous, anti-freedom one, but persons of liberal and progressive views might come away from it encouraged to see their ideas being put into practice.”
