Furthermore, during a Senate vote Wednesday, Obama dragged Lieberman by the hand to a far corner of the Senate chamber and engaged in what appeared to reporters in the gallery as an intense, three-minute conversation.
While it was unclear what the two were discussing, the body language suggested that Obama was trying to convince Lieberman of something and his stance appeared slightly intimidating.Using forceful, but not angry, hand gestures, Obama literally backed up Lieberman against the wall, leaned in very close at times, and appeared to be trying to dominate the conversation, as the two talked over each other in a few instances.
Still, Obama and Lieberman seemed to be trying to keep the back-and-forth congenial as they both patted each other on the back during and after the exchange.
I'm quite sure that most democrats have wanted to lay it down to Senator Lieberman for a while. The thing I respect most about Obama -- from the start -- is his willingness to approach problems head on.
Here, he took the 2000 Dem. VP candidate and (probably) told him to stop misrepresenting his Israel position. He probably told him that they can disagree on Iraq, but that they had no differences on Israel and to say otherwise makes Joe look foolish and sows unnecessary discord on an important international matter.
He has the authority, demeanor, and guts to be an amazing president.
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"We all made this journey for a reason. It's humbling, but in my heart I know you didn't come here just for me, you came here because you believe in what this country can be."vs. Candidate 2:
" We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. We are the hope of those boys who have so little, who've been told that they cannot have what they dream, that they cannot be what they imagine."
"yes we can"
"I am in this race for them -- all the men and women I meet who wake up every day and work hard to make a difference to their families."
"I believe," she said, "that both my theory and my strategy, and my track record and how I'm doing right now, really adds up to a very compelling argument that I will actually win."
"I believe I can provide the economic leadership we need to make the changes that are so desperately required, and I ask for your support and your counsel and your help as we make this journey together."
]]>"It's clear, this election they're having is not going to count for anything," Clinton said Thursday during an interview on New Hampshire Public Radio's call-in program, "The Exchange." "But I just personally did not want to set up a situation where the Republicans are going to be campaigning between now and whenever, and then after the nomination, we have to go in and repair the damage to be ready to win Michigan in 2008."
Speaking in the first primary state, Clinton said she understands concerns about her refusal. Rivals Barack Obama, John Edwards, Bill Richardson and Joe Biden took their names off Michigan's Jan. 15 primary ballot this week, and Michigan's hope for nominating clout all but evaporated.
Clinton's comment reflects an optimism she will win her party's nomination to face the Republican nominee in November 2008. She said any snub to Michigan could hurt her _ and all Democrats' _ chances to defeat the Republicans there.
Clinton was prompted by a caller who said, "It strikes me that this is politics as usual, where politicians say one thing and do something else."
Clinton brushed aside the comment.
]]>Old Abe is approaching the podium, looking even more like a badly-dressed and ill-proportioned scarecrow suffering from a depressive disorder than he usually does. I mean, if you're going to be an empty suit, couldn't you at least find a suit that fits?
And as usual, he's not wearing an American flag lapel pin. Too good for it, I suppose. Probably thinks it's tacky, and that "real patriotism" doesn't have to be displayed. Typical intellectual arrogance.
Unfortunately, duty has required me to get a seat up close, so I'm likely to be able to hear his annoyingly high, faint voice.
Of course, it's going to be hard to take anything he says seriously, since he's obviously just angling for votes in Pennsylvania. Notice that he didn't bother to give a speech at Antietam.
Okay, here we go. More "eloquence," no doubt.
Four score and seven years ago"Fourscore and seven"? Puh-leeze! Couldn't you make it just a little more pompous? Only a moonbat could regard this guy as an orator.
our fathers brought forth on this continent,Ummm ... didn't we have mothers, too? Well, maybe Lincoln didn't; he looks like he came out of a test tube marked "Failure." But somehow I doubt that the suffragette harpies who swoon over Father Abraham are going to be pleased by the omission.
Anyway, shouldn't someone as smart as Lincoln is supposed to be know that it's mothers who "bring forth"? That thing that fathers do is called "begetting." (I'd always wondered whether Mrs. Lincoln's brats were any kin to Old Ape.)
a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.Ahhh...now he slips it to us! "Fourscore and seven," indeed! He's bringing us back to the Marxist rant of 1776, completely ignoring the Constitution of 1787 in rhetoric as he has in practice. I'll believe we're all equal when I'm as tall as Lincoln, or as ugly. And the slaves he's so fond of may be his equals, but I'm damned if they're mine.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.Right. As if Mr. Lincoln's victory over his sectional enemies on behalf of his black friends were the same as the survival of the nation. It all comes back to the cult of personality.
We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.Well, no. It would be more "fitting and proper" to leave the dead in peace rather than to use them as a club with which to beat conservatives. But Lincoln, like all liberals, is completely shameless. Joshua is right: they're basically fascists.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground."A larger sense"? I defy anyone to find any sense whatever in this sentence, large or small. And does he think that "consecrate" and "hallow" really add anything to "dedicate"? More moonbat "eloquence," I guess.
Just venting my disbelief. I'd love to see quotes from Clinton/Bush 41/Reagan/Carter/Ford/Nixon that are this bad. I guess the closest would be the Johnson mushroom cloud...still unbelievably perverse.
]]>The most recent debacle is this Dubai Port situation. I have not done my research into whether or not this is a fair contract or if its a good idea to put border/port security in the hands of a foreign firm (possible links to terrorism aside). So, what's the administration's response? The first thing the WH says: White House Says Bush Played No Role in Port Deal
Good or bad - have some pride or cojones. If something went wrong - it's on the President. He's the only one accountable to the American people.
In, what can only be considered uncharted territory for the White House, the spinmeisters have decided that this is actually extremely humorous. The problem? The WH isn't funny.
This reminds me of two unrelated things:
1. The strategy of the parents of the South Park children who decided to act like they were thought "chinpokomon" was cool, which in turn made the kids think it was lame.
2. George Bush searching for WMDs under the table at the WH Correspondents dinner.
Which way do you think this "humor" offensive will go? If I had to guess, Scott McLellan will be rather uncomfortable with that press conference if the guy dies from complications.
]]>Germany’s Franz-Hermann Brüner was expected to be replaced when his six-year stint at the head of the anti-fraud office came to an end next month after widespread criticism of his time in charge.
OLAF was created in 1999 after the corruption scandal that ended Jacques Santer’s tenure as commission president, and has had some success, not least the discovery of widespread fraud at the EU’s statistical office, Eurostat, in 2003.
But the case of German journalist Hans-Martin Tillack, accused of bribing officials for access to information that was highly critical of the EU executive, brought accusations that Brüner was trying to gag the press following highly critical articles about him in Tillack’s magazine, Stern.
The EU ombudsman was highly critical of OLAF’s handling of the Tillack case, with Brüner personally taking much of the flak.
I did a quick search and couldn't find a single mention of the Hans-Martin Tillack scandal in all of TPM or TPM Cafe. The point of this post is to just catch folks up on what exactly went down in this awful story back in 2004-2005 - and to see how much disdain corrupt governments have for their people.
Hans-Martin Tillack, a journalist, tried to prevent the Belgian Authorities, at the behest of the European Commission, from seizing his computers, address books, telephone records, and 1,000 pages of notes. Below is an account I wrote last year about the whole episode. The general sources (which are not linked) are to WSJ Europe and varios English-language papers.
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One Friday morning in March 2004, a ring of the doorbell woke Hans-Martin Tillack. Drowsy and dressed only in a t-shirt and boxers, Mr. Tillack opened his door to find six Belgian police officers, who subsequently served him a warrant to search his home and office. The basis for the search was an accusation that Mr. Tillack had bribed a European Union (“EU”) official to obtain a sensitive dossier pertaining to an internal EU anti-fraud investigation.
Pursuant to the warrant, the Belgian police seized over 1,000 pages of documents, his personal computer, his address book, his bank statements, his 2002 scheduling diary, all of his mobile phones, and a copy of "Spaceship Brussels", one of his published books on the European government. After the search, the Belgian police arrested Mr. Tillack and held him incommunicado for ten hours, refusing him access to a lawyer or a phone call to his wife. When Mr. Tillack objected to the search and arrest, one police officer commented that Tillack should consider himself “lucky” that he did not live in Burma, because “[t]here, journalists get treated much worse.”
At the time of the search, Mr. Tillack was an investigative reporter for the German magazine, Stern. In early 2002, Mr. Tillack wrote two articles about the ongoing corruption in the European Commission despite the “zero tolerance” pledge of the new administration that had taken over from the previous scandal-plagued Commission. One of the stories indicated that Eurostat, the EU’s powerful statistical agency, had improper financial dealings with private-sector firms and had failed to account for millions of euros that disappeared into secret bank accounts. The material for these articles came from a forty-six page confidential memo that leaked to Mr. Tillack from the European Anti-Fraud Office (“OLAF”). After refusing to disclose the agency source who leaked the document, OLAF began investigating an allegation that Mr. Tillack had bribed an official for the document. However, later in spring 2004, journalists discovered that the source of the bribery allegation was the press spokesman for the European budget commissioner who oversees OLAF. As the chairman of OLAF’s supervisory committee admitted, the bribery case “was purely on the basis of hearsay evidence from an informant, one informant, who happened to be in one of the public relations offices of the commission . . . Any normal person would have to say that somewhere along the line OLAF is trying to get back at (Mr. Tillack).”
Despite the weak evidence against Mr. Tillack, OLAF reported these allegations to the governments of Belgium and Germany and encouraged them to quickly investigate. While the German authorities found the evidence against Mr. Tillack too weak to investigate, the Belgian police promptly acted on the OLAF report. Following the raid and Mr. Tillack’s detention, the Belgian police sealed the documents and refused Mr. Tillack access to them.
After the Belgian police seized his materials and released him from custody, Hans-Martin Tillack went to court in Belgium to challenge the search and seizure. In addition, he filed two applications for interim measures with the European Court of First Instance requesting compensation for his injuries and to prevent OLAF from “obtaining, inspecting, examining or hearing the contents of any documents and information” that resulted from the Belgian search. He lost (pay per view req'd) on all counts.
And today, Franz-Hermann Brüner was reappointed to another 6-year term. God Bless the Hegemon.
]]>Cravatts seems outraged that anyone, nonethess a librarian or her American Library Association counterparts, should "stymie the investigative efforts of government officials." He excoriates her for "protecting terrorists" and acting as a "human shield" by simply demanding that the police obtain a warrant before disappearing with library records. And in a cheap potshot, he tells her to leave those poor officials alone and get back to "mastering the use of the Dewey Decimal System."
Aside from his contempt for those in the library sciences, Cravatts misses the entire point. He baldly claims that the librarian and her supports have a profound "misunderstanding of both Section 215 of the Patriot Act as well as the protections provided in the Constitution's Fourth Amendment." He cites to those ivory towers of conservative "thought" at the Manhattan Institute and the Heritage Foundation who claim that the founders didn't really know how bad terrorism could be and therefore couldn't have expected the need for executive searches of libraries. They're concern is misplaced.
The Heritage Foundation "scholar" claims that ''Americans should keep in mind that the Constitution weighs heavily on both sides of the debate over national security and civil liberties."
He's not quite right. The Bill of Rights was/is a protection for the people against the government. Certainly, based on Supreme Court precedent, one would have a lower expectation of privacy when you make transactions in a public space (bank account transaction information, trap/trace devices monitoring the numbers [not content] of outgoing phone calls).
But when an executive official, without even the minimal oversight of a magistrate judge, shows up at your door, or the door of your library, or the door of your school, or the door of your nonprofit group's meeting, or the door of your public company and demands to seize the computers, I hope - and I'm sure if it came to his doorstep, Cravatts would hope - that there was someone as brave as the head librarian to stand up for his rights. Because it isn't the terrorist's rights she was protecting, it was the rights of the good people of Newton that she was saving.
The new site looks terrific. Very user friendly, very pleasing on the eyes and very community-oriented. I look forward to posting here and leaving comments - even though I've been a quiet emailer before today.
Keep up the good work!
- Gnopple
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