Clinton Supporters Leap on Anonymously Sourced Obama Hit Piece

CTV.ca published yesterday an article alleging that an Obama campaign staffer had contacted the Canadian embassy and told an official there that Obama’s opposition to NAFTA is “just campaign rhetoric.”

Barack Obama has ratcheted up his attacks on NAFTA, but a senior member of his campaign team told a Canadian official not to take his criticisms seriously, CTV News has learned.

Both Obama and Hillary Clinton have been critical of the long-standing North American Free Trade Agreement over the course of the Democratic primaries, saying that the deal has cost U.S. workers’ jobs.

Within the last month, a top staff member for Obama’s campaign telephoned Michael Wilson, Canada’s ambassador to the United States, and warned him that Obama would speak out against NAFTA, according to Canadian sources.

The staff member reassured Wilson that the criticisms would only be campaign rhetoric, and should not be taken at face value.

But Tuesday night in Ohio, where NAFTA is blamed for massive job losses, Obama said he would tell Canada and Mexico “that we will opt out unless we renegotiate the core labour and environmental standards.”

Late Wednesday, a spokesperson for the Obama campaign said the staff member’s warning to Wilson sounded implausible, but did not deny that contact had been made.

“Senator Obama does not make promises he doesn’t intend to keep,” the spokesperson said.

Low-level sources also suggested the Clinton campaign may have given a similar warning to Ottawa, but a Clinton spokesperson flatly denied the claim.

During Tuesday’s debate, she said that as president she would opt out of NAFTA “unless we renegotiate it.”

Despite the fact that (a) the Obama “campaign staffer” was not named, and that (b) the allegations in the story were blindly sourced — meaning that the article does not state how they got this information, who told them about the campaign staffer, who they interviewed for the story — Clinton supporters jumped on the charges without hesitation:

… The above should be even more alarming to the Obama campaign than the other video being circulated. A report out of Canada says Obama’s promise on NAFTA is just words. …

When contacted, an Obama aide basically delivers a non-denial denial, as you can see in the video. Obama keeps his promises? What kind of blathering is that? When you think about Obama’s moves on Exelon, rewriting legislation for them, juxtaposed against him telling Iowa voters tougher legislation had passed, instead of the truth, I’ve done enough research on the guy to know when smoke is being blown for votes. Obama’s team is not denying the conversation CTV is reporting and it’s quite plausible the criticisms would only be campaign rhetoric, and should not be taken at face value, and to add, because Obama has no intention of doing what he’s campaigning on with regards to NAFTA. Obama welshing on his pledge to take public financing for the general election also comes to mind. It’s not like Obama hasn’t said one thing then done another before.

Over the screaming headline Shocker: Obama Reveals Fake Stand on NAFTA, Larry Johnson writes:

A Canadian medical professional (no more to protect anonymity) reports to me: “This story made headlines tonight in Canada in all major Canadian news networks. Barack Obama has been caught lying. Spread this as much as you can because it is true and factually supported. I think the people of Ohio as well as the rest of America, deserve to know this.”

(Original) Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Canadian media reveal Obama’s posture on NAFTA is solely “campaign rhetoric.” …
[snip]
Oh, that bamboozler. Imagine, for a moment, that you’re the head of state or diplomatic corps, or one of the chief politicians or government officials, for the hundreds of nations across the world. Wouldn’t you read this article and wonder WHICH OBAMA you’ll be dealing with, and IF he means anything he says?

Well, today, the Canadian embassy said the CTV report was not true:

A spokesman for the Canadian Embassy to the United States, Tristan Landry, flatly denied the CTV report that a senior Obama aide had told the Canadian ambassador not to take seriously Obama’s denunciations of NAFTA.

“None of the presidential campaigns have called either the ambassador or any of the officials here to raise NAFTA,” Landry said.

He said there had been no conversations at all on the subject.

“We didn’t make any calls, they didn’t call us,” Landry said.

“There is no story as far as we’re concerned,” he said.

Larry Johnson’s SusanUnPC’s response:

Obamadroids Frantic: Attack Canadian Media NAFTA Story

UPDATE: “The facts of our story are accurate.” – Greg McIsaac, Communications Manager, News Information and Current Affairs, CTV (Taylor Marsh has the report in “CTV Stands by NAFTA Story.” Besides, this is a first-rate national news organization that wouldn’t go with an off-record story that wasn’t solidly vetted.)

Original: Now competing with my diary in the recommended list at MyDD:
BREAKING: Canadian Embassy: Obama NAFTA call story is a lie
by Bob Johnson, Thu Feb 28, 2008 at 12:24:57 PM EST

So one person for the right Canadian government — a single official — issues a public denial to Politico’s Ben Smith, and that’s it? Even though the entire Canadian media are all over this story? Nationwide? And it’s the top story in Canada?

REMEDIAL POLITICS/GOVERNMENT 101: How many times has the Bush administration denied everything? (Along with every governnent on the face of the earth, thousands of times?)

And you’ve believed Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld — and every “official” government statement around the world — every time? Really? From a single official? Really?

Do I have a bridge to sell you!

Yet SusanUnPC has no problem believing a story that Obama is deliberately staking a position on NAFTA that he has no intention of honoring, based on a single official. And with the Obama staffer who allegedly contacted this single official unnamed and unidentified; presumably not even known to CTV; and with no independent confirmation from any other source.

Sure, that makes sense.

Reject? Denounce ?

This from Talking Points Memo. Here’s the gist of it

During a series of satellite television interviews, [Hillary] Clinton was questioned by Dallas station KTVT about comments by Adelfa Callejo, a local activist who supports Clinton candidacy. The interviewer quoted Callejo as saying “Obama’s problem is he happens to be black” and asked Clinton to respond.

[snip]

The interviewer asked Clinton whether she rejected or denounced Callejo’s comment.

“People have every reason to express their opinions, I just don’t agree with that,” she said, adding “You know, this is a free country. People get to express their opinions.”

Free country? Express opinions?   Chief to Hillary: Get Real. You need to denounce, disassociate and fire the cretin. Period

Thought of the Day

An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.

— Mahatma Gandhi

The Full, and Ugly, Truth About an Icon

Let’s start with the positive. William F. Buckley was smart, literate, well-read, and from everything I’ve read and heard, had a rapier wit. I’m sure he was a great conversationalist and a fascinating person to talk to even if you did not agree with his political philosophy (maybe especially then). He also was a seminal figure in the U.S. conservative movement.

It is perhaps not so remarkable that Buckley had such an impressive intellect and achieved so much professionally: He was born to enormous wealth, and grew up in lush, tony surroundings with only the best, and nothing but the best, of everything:

The elder Mr. Buckley made a small fortune in the oil fields of Mexico and Venezuela and educated his children with personal tutors at Great Elm, the family estate in Sharon, Conn. They also attended exclusive Roman Catholic schools in England and France. Young William absorbed his family’s conservatism along with its deep Catholicism. At 14, he followed his brothers to the Millbrook School, a preparatory school 15 miles across the New York state line from Sharon.

He went to Yale. He had been groomed and prepared to go to Yale, or someplace else just like it, since the day he was born. It’s highly unlikely that he ever saw a brown-skinned person except as a servant, or any person who was not wealthy and privileged, from the day of his birth to his adulthood. Heck, he probably never met a Jew until he was out of university (this was the late 1940s, remember).

Could someone with a background like that be expected to understand the conditions in which black Americans lived in the 1950s and 1960s, not just in the South, but anywhere in this country? And if he didn’t understand the conditions in which black Americans lived, or the true reasons for those conditions, or what those conditions did to the bodies, minds, hearts, and souls of the people who had to endure them, how could he possibly disapprove of them, or comprehend that the social arrangements white Americans had devised for black Americans were evil, and based on ignorance, fear, and hatred?

Perhaps some in his social class could have. But William F. Buckley was not one of them. In a very real way, Buckley was profoundly disadvantaged. His life experiences, his family history and background, totally unfitted him to even imagine the reality of African-Americans’ lives, especially in the South at that time, much less understand them in any kind of compassionate or empathetic way, or to grasp the injustice of that reality.

The fact is: William F. Buckley, for much of his adult life, was a racist.

A few people have alluded to this aspect of Buckley’s existence, but no one — at least that I have come across so far — has tackled it head on.

Until 7:34 pm, that is. And I did not read it until 11:58 pm. But better late than not at all:

Conservative icon William F. Buckley was found dead today in his Connecticut study at the age of 82. The magazine he founded is in mourning, with tributes on the National Review’s Web site from political heavyweights like Sen. John McCain, who deems Buckley a “Great American.”

Also weighing in is Charles Murray, the author whose controversial theories link race and IQ. In a piece is titled “WFB the Sweetheart,” Murray writes that Buckley “had the kind of manners that are so good that they cease being manners and become a warming aura. Yes, I know he changed the world, and I’m glad about that. But what so often occurred to me in his presence was that I was talking with an extraordinarily good man.”

Really? Are the following truly the words of a “Great American” — of an “extraordinarily good man” with a “warming aura”? They appeared in an unsigned National Review editorial, probably penned and undoubtedly published by Buckley, that ran on Aug. 24, 1957, titled “Why the South Must Prevail”:

“The central question that emerges . . . is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically? The sobering answer is Yes–the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists.

“National Review believes that the South’s premises are correct. . . . It is more important for the community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.”

Buckley undoubtedly had a way with words, and is remembered fondly by friends and family. But a warming aura?

Feels pretty chilling from here.

Indeed. Thank you, Sue Sturgis. Facing South is going on my blogroll.