Obama the Alien

"He's not one of us" has long been one of the most common electoral arguments at all levels?every election features ads all over the country where one candidate is accused of not sharing "[insert state here] values." It's become almost a cliché that Democrats talk about issues while Republicans talk about values, building an affinity with voters as they construct a wall of identity between the electorate and their Democratic opponents.

Yet it took some time for Mitt Romney to determine exactly how to show that Barack Obama was not ?one of us.? The campaign tried out and then abandoned various attacks; for instance, faced with polling and focus groups telling them that voters basically like the president, the Romney campaign argued that Obama is "in over his head"?hardly the kind of attack that'll make people see your opponent as alien and threatening. But then deliverance came in the form of an infelicitous sentence Obama uttered, "You didn't build that," which they quickly ripped from its context and gave a shamelessly dishonest reading. Undeterred by the condemnations of fact checkers, Romney has reoriented his entire campaign around this one sentence, plainly believing it to be the fuel that will propel him to victory in November.

The sentence serves multiple purposes for Romney. In his tendentious reading, it allegedly reveals Barack Obama to be the anti-American every good Republican knows him to be (that's always the way it is with "gaffes"?they "reveal" that what you've been saying about your opponent has all long is true). If Obama isn't the kind of radical individualist who believes the market is the expression of all virtue and the sole creator of all that is good, then is he really one of us? So a Romney surrogate can say "I wish this president would learn how to be an American," and Romney himself can then offer the slightly more polite formulation that Obama has a "very strange, and in some respects foreign to the American experience type of philosophy." Not that he's saying Obama isn't American, of course?whatever could make you think such a thing?

"You didn't build that" also gives Romney a larger theme that both encompasses his arguments about the economy and excuses him from talking specifically about the things he wants to do about it. Why is the economy still struggling? Because Barack Obama hates capitalism and small businesses. Is your plan to cut taxes for the wealthy really going to make things better? Unlike Barack Obama, I'll have an administration that is pro-entrepreneur and pro-American. Any other questions?

Because this case is a direct and personal assault on Obama, hitting him not on his performance but on what he allegedly thinks deep down in his soul, it also enables Romney to reassure his base that he shares their utter contempt for the president. And finally, "You didn't build that" allows Romney to shove small business owners into the spotlight, the better to move the conversation away from his own not-so-small private-equity business, where by buying and selling companies, often with an unsentimental ruthlessness, he so famously learned "how the economy works." And shove them he has, with ads like this one, in which a business owner takes umbrage at Obama's words and says, "We need someone who believes in America"; with a special web site where business owners are encouraged to tell their stories of how Barack Obama offended them (and download a "Built By Us" sign); and campaign events featuring "self-made" businesspeople testifying not only that they never got a lick of help from the government to create their businesses, but, more important, how deeply hurt they were at Obama's suggestion that they might have.

Liberals have snickered as one after another, the "self-made" businesspeople trotted out by the Romney campaign turn out to have benefited spectacularly from government. And not just in the way every business does, by using public roads, hiring workers educated in public schools, or having the government enforce the contracts they enter into. Instead, these businesspeople all seem to have taken advantage of municipal bonds issued for their benefit, Small Business Administration loans, or millions in government contracts. Yet they insist, with absolute sincerity, that the government never helped them at all.

Why? My guess is that these folks define "government help," particularly the kind they associate with Barack Obama, as something very different. Government help isn't something hard-working people like us get. It's something people like them get. The lazy, the shiftless, the people just trying to get over on somebody. By definition, they can't see themselves as recipients of government largesse, just like the millions of Americans who benefit from student loans, Social Security, Medicare, and any number of other programs, but claim that they've never gotten anything from the government.

And it's here that the most powerful tribal definer of all?race?comes into play. There will be no Willie Horton ads in this election, nothing so brutal and forthright. But race will be there rumbling like a bass drum beneath the melody of the campaign. Since the 1960s, when the party of government became the party of civil rights and the war on poverty, significant numbers of white Americans have seen Democrats taking something away from them so they could give it to undeserving minorities. And the Republicans have been there every step of the way to nurture and feed those resentments. I doubt there was a meeting in the Romney headquarters, or in the offices of Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS, where strategists sat around a table and said, "Let's bust out the racial appeals." Making these arguments doesn't make them racists. But I'm also certain that they're not naïve enough not to realize the subtext in what they're saying and just which buttons they're pushing. When Mitt Romney tells Republicans that people who "want more stuff from the government" should "go vote for the other guy?free stuff," he knows exactly what he's doing.

Responding to those arguments doesn't make you a racist, either. Sometimes we talk as though there are only two kinds of people in the world, racists and people who aren't racist, and if you're not the former then you can only be the latter. That's obviously not true. But let's not forget that from the moment Barack Obama was judged to have a real chance of becoming president, base conservatives have been fed a steady diet of racial resentment, from Glenn Beck telling them that Obama "has a deep-seated hatred of white people," to Rush Limbaugh telling them over and over that "Obama's entire economic program is reparations," to Andrew Breitbart's endlessly playing jukebox of racially inflammatory faux-scandals (ACORN, Shirley Sherrod, Derrick Bell). From the beginning, the conservative case against the Obama presidency has been absolutely saturated in racial resentment.

You can be sure that Mitt Romney knows this quite well. Romney is a careful student of the Republican base, in the way Alexis de Tocqueville was a student of Americans. As a visitor to their land, he has worked hard to understand them and determine what makes them tick. And he knows well that nothing will keep them enthusiastic about his candidacy more than massaging their anger and resentment.

So Romney will continue to contrast his love for the hardworking, self-reliant business owner with Obama's hatred of same, and express his outrage at the way the president allegedly attacks them in the service of those who want "free stuff." He'll stop short of saying that Obama is literally a foreigner, though he'll make sure you know that the president doesn't "believe in America" and has a philosophy that is "foreign to the American experience." He's not just wrong, Romney says, he's alien from people like you and me. It may have taken Romney a while to arrive at this line of attack, but I suspect that he'll be sticking with it from now on.

Read The Full Article:
http://prospect.org/article/obama-alien

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Obama: Not Like You or Me

"He's not one of us" has long been one of the most common electoral arguments at all levels?every election features ads all over the country where one candidate is accused of not sharing "[insert state here] values." It's become almost a cliché that Democrats talk about issues while Republicans talk about values, building an affinity with voters as they construct a wall of identity between the electorate and their Democratic opponents.

Yet it took some time for Mitt Romney to determine exactly how to show that Barack Obama was not ?one of us.? The campaign tried out and then abandoned various attacks; for instance, faced with polling and focus groups telling them that voters basically like the president, the Romney campaign argued that Obama is "in over his head"?hardly the kind of attack that'll make people see your opponent as alien and threatening. But then deliverance came in the form of an infelicitous sentence Obama uttered, "You didn't build that," which they quickly ripped from its context and gave a shamelessly dishonest reading. Undeterred by the condemnations of fact checkers, Romney has reoriented his entire campaign around this one sentence, plainly believing it to be the fuel that will propel him to victory in November.

The sentence serves multiple purposes for Romney. In his tendentious reading, it allegedly reveals Barack Obama to be the anti-American every good Republican knows him to be (that's always the way it is with "gaffes"?they "reveal" that what you've been saying about your opponent all long is true). If Obama isn't the kind of radical individualist who believes the market is the expression of all virtue and the sole creator of all that is good, then is he really one of us? So a Romney surrogate can say "I wish this president would learn how to be an American," and Romney himself can then offer the slightly more polite formulation that Obama has a "very strange, and in some respects foreign to the American experience type of philosophy." Not that he's saying Obama isn't American, of course?whatever could make you think such a thing?

"You didn't build that" also gives Romney a larger theme that both encompasses his arguments about the economy and excuses him from talking specifically about the things he wants to do about it. Why is the economy still struggling? Because Barack Obama hates capitalism and small businesses. Is your plan to cut taxes for the wealthy really going to make things better? Unlike Barack Obama, I'll have an administration that is pro-entrepreneur and pro-American. Any other questions?

Because this case is a direct and personal assault on Obama, hitting him not on his performance but on what he allegedly thinks deep down in his soul, it also enables Romney to reassure his base that he shares their utter contempt for the president. And finally, "You didn't build that" allows Romney to shove small business owners into the spotlight, the better to move the conversation away from his own not-so-small private-equity business, where by buying and selling companies, often with an unsentimental ruthlessness, he so famously learned "how the economy works." And shove them he has, with ads like this one, in which a business owner takes umbrage at Obama's words and says, "We need someone who believes in America"; with a special web site where business owners are encouraged to tell their stories of how Barack Obama offended them (and download a "Built By Us" sign); and campaign events featuring "self-made" businesspeople testifying not only that they never got a lick of help from the government to create their businesses, but, more important, how deeply hurt they were at Obama's suggestion that they might have.

Liberals have snickered as one after another, the "self-made" businesspeople trotted out by the Romney campaign turn out to have benefited spectacularly from government. And not just in the way every business does, by using public roads, hiring workers educated in public schools, or having the government enforce the contracts they enter into. Instead, these businesspeople all seem to have taken advantage of municipal bonds issued for their benefit, Small Business Administration loans, or millions in government contracts. Yet they insist, with absolute sincerity, that the government never helped them at all.

Why? My guess is that these folks define "government help," particularly the kind they associate with Barack Obama, as something very different. Government help isn't something hard-working people like us get. It's something people like them get. The lazy, the shiftless, the people just trying to get over on somebody. By definition, they can't see themselves as recipients of government largesse, just like the millions of Americans who benefit from student loans, Social Security, Medicare, and any number of other programs, but claim that they've never gotten anything from the government.

And it's here that the most powerful tribal definer of all?race?comes into play. There will be no Willie Horton ads in this election, nothing so brutal and forthright. But race will be there rumbling like a bass drum beneath the melody of the campaign. Since the 1960s, when the party of government became the party of civil rights and the war on poverty, significant numbers of white Americans have seen Democrats taking something away from them so they could give it to undeserving minorities. And the Republicans have been there every step of the way to nurture and feed those resentments. I doubt there was a meeting in the Romney headquarters, or in the offices of Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS, where strategists sat around a table and said, "Let's bust out the racial appeals." Making these arguments doesn't make them racists. But I'm also certain that they're not naïve enough not to realize the subtext in what they're saying and just which buttons they're pushing. When Mitt Romney tells Republicans that people who "want more stuff from the government" should "go vote for the other guy?free stuff," he knows exactly what he's doing.

Responding to those arguments doesn't make you a racist, either. Sometimes we talk as though there are only two kinds of people in the world, racists and people who aren't racist, and if you're not the former then you can only be the latter. That's obviously not true. But let's not forget that from the moment Barack Obama was judged to have a real chance of becoming president, base conservatives have been fed a steady diet of racial resentment, from Glenn Beck telling them that Obama "has a deep-seated hatred of white people," to Rush Limbaugh telling them over and over that "Obama's entire economic program is reparations," to Andrew Breitbart's endlessly playing jukebox of racially inflammatory faux-scandals (ACORN, Shirley Sherrod, Derrick Bell). From the beginning, the conservative case against the Obama presidency has been absolutely saturated in racial resentment.

You can be sure that Mitt Romney knows this quite well. Romney is a careful student of the Republican base, in the way Alexis de Tocqueville was a student of Americans. As a visitor to their land, he has worked hard to understand them and determine what makes them tick. And he knows well that nothing will keep them enthusiastic about his candidacy more than massaging their anger and resentment.

So Romney will continue to contrast his love for the hardworking, self-reliant business owner with Obama's hatred of same, and express his outrage at the way the president allegedly attacks them in the service of those who want "free stuff." He'll stop short of saying that Obama is literally a foreigner, though he'll make sure you know that the president doesn't "believe in America" and has a philosophy that is "foreign to the American experience." He's not just wrong, Romney says, he's alien from people like you and me. It may have taken Romney a while to arrive at this line of attack, but I suspect that he'll be sticking with it from now on.

Read The Full Article:
http://prospect.org/article/obama-alien

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Mitt the Likudlican

(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney meets with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

Four summers ago, when Barack Obama landed in Israel, one of the country's most popular papers headlined the event, "Obamania" and reported that he was greeted "like a rock star." This past weekend, Mitt Romney was not received in Israel as a rock star. The Hebrew headlines on his arrival noted his close friendship with Benjamin Netanyahu?and that he bombed in London. By the time he left, Romney managed to shift attention to his hawkish positions on Iran, but also to his breaches of American and Israeli political manners. His partnership with the Israeli prime minister was even more conspicuous than when he came. 

What Israelis learned about Mitt may seem tangential to the U.S. election. But a close read of Romney's visit matters?not just to that small number of Jewish voters whom Romney hoped to sway, but to anyone who cares about the U.S.-Israel relationship and, more widely, to anyone concerned about a potential president's ability to handle foreign policy. The Romney stopover in Jerusalem wasn't as hide-your-face embarrassing as the one in Britain, but it should be more troubling.

Romney's planning showed serial inattention to local customs: The visit was scheduled so that he arrived late Saturday at the beginning of Tisha Be'av, a sundown-to-sundown fast and day of mourning in the Jewish calendar. A fundraiser with refreshments was set for Sunday evening as the fast ended. Caught off-guard by criticism, the campaign moved the event to Monday morning, and filled the open slot with a post-fast dinner with Bibi and Sara Netanyahu. (Netanyahu actually doesn't observe the fast, a detail to which the prime minister would usually avoid calling attention out of deference to religious coalition partners). Romney nonetheless paid a quick visit to the Western Wall on the afternoon of Tisha Be'Av with a horde of photographers?providing pictures at the holy place for voters at home while again disturbing the solemn mood of the day. 

In the widely circulated newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, Romney's arrival was consigned on Sunday to pages 8 and 9, with a sidebar listing his multiple gaffes in London and a large picture of Obama signing a law expanding defense aid to Israel. The competing Ma'ariv put Romney just as deep inside the paper, and detailed the Obama defense package in large type?better coverage than it would have gotten without Romney's trip. 

In the high-brow Ha'aretz, Romney was interviewed by columnist Ari Shavit, an Iran hawk who tossed him questions slow and down the middle. In his introduction, though, Shavit wrote that Romney would like to be Ronald Reagan, but lacked the Republican icon's passion and Reagan's "naïveté suffused with a sense of mission." In the interview, Romney demonstrated another difference with Reagan: Asked if it wasn't better for Israel and America to retain a certain distance, he answered that any disagreements between the countries should be discussed only "in private," not made public. Reagan had no such compunctions?as shown, for instance, by his very public suspension of a security pact after Israel annexed the Golan Heights. In fact, no previous president, Republican or Democratic, has followed Romney's proposed rule. 

Israeli President Shimon Peres, the ceremonial head of state, made clear that he was a stickler for another kind of etiquette: Before he met Romney, his advisers reportedly told Romney's arranger, Dan Senor, that Peres would follow precisely the format of his meeting with Obama four years ago. Peres wanted to keep Israel above the American partisan divide. The leak was a very slightly veiled criticism of Netanyahu, who made his partisan preference obvious: He had a morning meeting with Romney as well as dinner, and publicly stressed their personal friendship and Romney's support for Israel. 

Romney's speech on foreign policy made the alliance ever more blatant: It followed a Bibi-esque outline so closely it seemed written in the prime minister's office and delivered to his surrogate. Romney began with the "ancient promise made in this land" to the Jews, then segued to the Holocaust. He said nothing about a two-state agreement with the Palestinians. Instead, he focused on Iran, saying that it must not be allowed to achieve "nuclear weapons capability"?in contrast to Obama's commitment to prevent Iran from actually building a bomb. Helping Israel with "military and intelligence cooperation alone" wasn't good enough, Romney said, devaluing the latest aid package; the U.S. has to avoid any "diplomatic distance" in public. Israeli news sites quickly reported the "barbs aimed at ? Obama" in violation of "rules of protocol" for American candidates abroad. 

(To be fair to Netanyahu, it's doubtful that he had a role in Romney's most blatant gaffe: his comment to donors on Monday morning that the "dramatically stark difference in economic vitality" between Israelis and the Palestinians were due to cultural differences. The comment was notable both for its racist overtones and its blithe ignorance of the economic impact of the Israeli occupation on the West Bank.)

Before the trip, Romney's campaign arranged meetings with two opposition leaders?the head of the centrist Kadima party, Shaul Mofaz, and Labor leader Shelly Yacimovich. The Labor leader is likely to be the stronger candidate in elections that must take place by next year. On Sunday morning, as Romney met with Netanyahu, Romney's man Senor canceled the meeting with Yacimovich. The media heavily reported Labor charges that Netanyahu had stepped in to avoid adding to Yacimovich's stature. 

If the charge isn't true, Romney outdid himself at clumsiness. But Labor's claim resonates because Romney's team and Netanyahu's flow together almost seamlessly. Netanyahu's top adviser, Ron Dermer is American-born; he got his start in politics working for the Republican congressional campaign in 1994 before moving to Israel. Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson is also a long-time Netanyahu backer. 

During Romney's visit, he and Netanyahu behaved as two candidates of the same Likudlican Party. The relationship may please the Republican Jewish Coalition. But it is deeply unhealthy for both countries. Israeli and American interests necessarily diverge at times. A commitment by a U.S. president never to voice public criticism of Israel would create an utterly unnatural limit on the leverage of one side in the relationship. 

Besides that, a leader in one country should not be a participant in the other's politics. Both Romney and Netanyahu will soon face the voters. If both win, they will be overly bound to each other. If one wins and the other loses, the victor in his own country will face a leadership in the other that he has already slighted. Because of their own behavior, the only win-win outcome is for both to lose.

Read The Full Article:
http://prospect.org/article/mitt-likudlican

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Fox's Beckel On Distortion Of Obama Comments:
"Once Again, We Put Something On The Air That's A Flat-Out Lie"

From the July 31 edition of Fox News' The Five:

Previously:

Karl Rove Brings Ad Based On Fox's Deceptive Editing Of Obama's Remarks To Fox News

Fox & Friends Deceptively Edits Obama's Comments On Small Business

Fox "Doubling Down" On Deceptively Edited Comments

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.mediamatters.org/~r/mediamatters/latest/~3/zw9DcBfQD2Q/189045

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Lakeside Diner

A variety of links to articles/interviews/speeches on current issues that may be of interest.[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/firedoglake/fdl/~3/4fbr__nFitU/

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Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: Romney's not fit to
be President

^{Visual source: Newseum}

NY Times:

Mitt Romney offended Palestinian leaders on Monday by suggesting that cultural differences explain why the Israelis are so much more economically successful than Palestinians, thrusting himself again into a volatile issue while on his high-profile overseas trip.

Chris Cillizza:

?I find this entire trip borderline lunacy,? said one senior Republican strategist granted anonymity to speak candidly. ?Why on earth is he seeking to improve his foreign policy cred when there will not be a single vote cast on that subject??

Ed Rogers, a longtime Republican operative, was more measured, but acknowledged that the trip was something short of a unqualified success.

?Romney abroad is the same as Romney at home,? said Rogers. ?His performance is uneven at times, but overall, pretty good.? Added Rogers: ?Let?s face it, Romney can?t win, but Obama can lose.?

LA Times:  

Mitt Romney is rapidly discovering the downside of a high-profile overseas trip ? a visiting American presidential candidate makes an irresistible punching bag for foreign political leaders, and the resulting blows can overshadow whatever message the campaign had hoped to convey to voters back home.

Romney's supporters can't count on "no one cares what Europe thinks". It's here in the US that people think he's in way over his head.

The Fix:

If Romney?s trip to London was supposed to highlight his own stewardship of the (Winter) Olympic Games, it appears to have failed. And apart from that, we haven?t seen much messaging on the issue from his supporters.

CBC News:

Romney called racist for his view of Israel's success
Republican candidate steps into hot water again on overseas tour

U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney's overseas woes intensified on Monday as he managed to insult yet another entire nation of people ? this time Palestinians ? as he praised Israel's "culture" for fuelling its economic success in the Middle East.

Gallup:

Two-thirds of Americans -- 66% -- have a favorable opinion of former U.S. President Bill Clinton, tying his record-high favorability rating recorded at the time of his inauguration in January 1993. Clinton nearly returned to this level of popularity at two points in his second term, but has generally seen lower ratings, averaging 56% since 1993.

Hey, look what the Big Dog is reading (my Daily Kos review of that book is here):
Drew Westen:

So, beyond the anemic economy, why do the latest polls show the former Massachusetts governor in a dead heat with the president? Because Obama?s administration made three crucial errors that enabled the Republican obstructionism that has tied his hands for the past two years, with GOP leaders shooting down any idea ? even if it?s one of their own ? that might have helped the president strengthen the economy. And those mistakes have made possible what was unimaginable in January 2009: that a private-equity baron lacking a sense of noblesse oblige, and preaching the gospel of deregulation and lower taxes for the rich, might actually win the presidency four years after those policies led to the collapse of the U.S. economy.

Kevin Drum, writing about Drew Westen's critique of Obama's first term:

I really don't understand why people like Westen can't make their critiques of Obama's leadership in a way that takes into account obvious political realities. Not that it would be an easy critique. If you look at past presidents who made big changes, they were mostly surfing on waves that were already cresting: FDR and the New Deal, LBJ and civil rights, Reagan and taxes. Obama just didn't have that kind of wave to ride. It's an open question why he didn't have that ? one that I tried to tackle here ? but one way or another, he didn't. And while I think Obama has done a poor job as leader of his party, I say that tentatively. The fact is that modern presidents simply don't have the party leverage that some past presidents have had, and Obama in particular simply didn't have a big enough majority to get his way.

Ryan Lizza:

To envisage what Republicans would do if they win in November, the person to understand is not necessarily Romney, who has been a policy cipher all his public life. The person to understand is Paul Ryan.

Jonathan Bernstein:

Ryan?s budget leaves all the pain until after the election ? pain that?s only necessary in order to achieve the low tax rates, especially on the rich, that Ryan and other Republicans deem essential. Either Ryan?s fiscal vision really would dramatically cut government, or his numbers don?t add up. In short, Ryan is either a radical or a fraud.

Sol Erdman and Lawrence Susskind, writing in the Harvard Business Review,  try again to bridge the partisan gap with a good-faith facilitated approach to the issues.

Suppose, for instance, that some non-partisan organizations waged a media campaign that promised every American voter, "Your voice will be heard on the issues vital to your family's future if, on our website, you tell us: Among all the people who've spoken out on how to reform taxes, Medicare, Social Security and federal spending, who would you trust to speak for you?" The most trusted individuals might perhaps come from advocacy groups, think tanks, industry, labor unions and universities.

It's doomed to fail because the authors don't recognize the radical nature of the Republicans who would rather bankrupt the country than see Obama succeed, and who get bankrolled by the same groups currently supporting Romney. You can't negotiate with people who lie about their goals as well as their methods. They should read centrists Mann and Ornstein (Let?s just say it: The Republicans are the problem) again. And again. And again, until they get the picture.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/ZP5bYEnH5Gs/-Abbreviated-Pundit-Ro
und-up-Romney-s-not-fit-to-be-President

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Fox's Tantaros: Economic Downturn Might Have Been
"Best Thing" For Young People, Teaching Them "The Value Of A Dollar"

From the July 31 edition of Fox News' The Five:

Previously:

Fox's Perino: College Grads "Don't Have A Right To Worry" About Work-Life Balance Until Their "Mid-30s Or Something"

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.mediamatters.org/~r/mediamatters/latest/~3/YahrbitlwyM/189044

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Gingrich Explicitly Defends Bachmann’s
Attacks On Clinton Aide Huma Abedin: ‘It’s Totally Legitimate’

Former presidential candidate and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich

At a Romney campaign event in Virginia on Monday, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich took questions over his weekend op-ed defending the practice of questioning prominent Muslims in government jobs over alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and four other Republican lawmakers have been wrapped on the knuckles by prominent members of their own party for requesting an investigation into the supposed infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood into the U.S. government, and the role of Huma Abedin, a top Hillary Clinton aide, in the organization. And while Gingrich deliberately did not mention Abedin in his Sunday evening op-ed, when asked by ThinkProgress on Monday, he defended Bachmann?s call for an investigation into Abedin?s loyalty:

ADAM PECK: Do you think it was fair for the “National Security 5″ to explicitly name Huma Abedin in this letter?

GINGRICH: I think all they asked for was an investigation. I can?t imagine, given our track record over the last 70 years, that we want to start with the principle that anybody is automatically exempt. And therefore I think it?s not illegitimate to raise the question, it’s not a question I raised in my piece…Who’s offering advice to Secretary Clinton? I think it’s totally legitimate to ask that question.

What Gingrich failed to mention is that the appropriate questions have already been asked of Abedin and every other member of the Obama administration. As the top aide to the Secretary of State, Abedin underwent a thorough background and security check before assuming her position within the State Department. It seems Gingrich has stricter standards than the nation?s top intelligence agencies, which cleared Abedin.

Gingrich also makes the incorrect assumption that simply raising questions is a harmless exercise. In the weeks since Bachmann?s letter became public, Abedin has been subjected to direct threats on her life, and the NYPD has given her a security detail.

Listen to the remarks here:

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/security/2012/07/30/609151/gingrich-explicitly-defends-b
achamanns-attacks-on-clinton-aide-huma-abedin-its-totally-legitimate/

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Tuesday Open Thread

Indifference and neglect often do much more damage
than outright dislike.

J.K. Rowling

Born July 31, 1965


Read The Full Article:
http://www.myleftwing.com/diary/28043/tuesday-open-thread

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Muse in the Morning

Muse in the Morning[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.docudharma.com/diary/30491/muse-in-the-morning

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