
Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln “are peas in the same pod,” at least in the eyes of Salon.com technology reporter Andrew Leonard . And just how exactly? Because “both [were] irredeemably stained by the hard fiscal decisions they had to make to save their nation,” Leonard argued in a June 2 “How the World Works” blog post. To do so, the Salon writer conflated loopy conspiracy theories about Lincoln having been a pawn of European Jewish bankers with complaints Obama faces from conservative and libertarian quarters regarding his spendthrift economic policies. Leonard seems to suggest there's little if any legitimate critique from the right on Obama's stewardship of federal finances (emphases mine): [I]f you dig a little deeper on the specific accusation that the Rothschild motivation for starting the Civil War was to take over the U.S. banking system, you suddenly find yourself facing a set of concerns that are surprisingly close to the surface of contemporary political discourse involving the national debt and monetary policy.