This long and sordid, kinda boring and yet, totally important (!) story comes from our Friends to the North. It all started last week…

At the debate in Cleveland on February 26, both candidates espoused identical views on how to deal with NAFTA, which is to renegotiate it or pull out of it. The next night, those Filthy Canadian Devils decided to throw a snowball:

The report is blind, with an “unnamed source” claiming a “senior member in the Obama Campaign” called the Canadian Ambassador, told him that NAFTA would become an issue but anything that Obama said would be just noise to appeal to Americans, and he didn’t really mean it.Obama’s people responded swiftly:

“The news reports on Obama’s position on NAFTA are inaccurate and in no way represent Senator Obama’s consistent position on trade,” says Obama spokesman Bill Burton. “When Senator Obama says that he will forcefully act to make NAFTA a better deal for American workers, he means it. Both Canada and Mexico should know that, as president, Barack Obama will do what it takes to create and protect American jobs and strengthen the American economy — that includes amending NAFTA to include labor and environmental standards. We are currently reaching out to the Canadian embassy to correct this inaccuracy.”

And Canada backs him up:

“I can categorically say that no one has contacted our embassy or our ambassador,” said Canadian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andre Lemay. “None of our officials at the embassy discussed anything with the runners up in the presidential campaign. We realize that one of the Canadian networks mentioned yesterday that such a call had been made. The report is untrue.”

Whew. Crisis averted! Oh, wait…

However, the Obama camp did not respond to repeated questions from CTV on reports that a conversation on this matter was held between Obama’s senior economic adviser — Austan Goolsbee — and the Canadian Consulate General in Chicago.

It was Austan Goolsbee, in the study, with the rope! The story goes on to ensnare Clinton, too:

The CTV exclusive also reported that sources said the Clinton campaign has made indirect contact with the Canadian government, trying to reassure Ottawa of their support despite Clinton’s words. The Clinton camp denied the claim.
…..
But on Wednesday, one of the primary sources of the story, a high-ranking member of the Canadian embassy, gave CTV more details of the call. He even provided a timeline. He has since suggested it was perhaps a miscommunication.
…
Sources at the highest levels of the Canadian government — who first told CTV that a call was made from the Obama camp — have reconfirmed their position.

We appear to be at an impasse. Until, that is, a memo is leaked to the Associated Press. A memo that details this meeting. Remember when we said Embassy and Ambassador? We meant “office in Chicago” and “counsel general.” Ah ha! A smoking gun! Oh, and also, Goolsbee was there as a professor from the University of Chicago, not as an emissary for Barack.

Goolsbee makes the rounds, explaining he was invited by the Canadians to sit down, he did, they spent 40 minutes talking, only two or three were devoted to NAFTA, and he said nothing more than that he agreed with Barack’s stance on it. Goolsbee says they must “misinterpreted” him:

Goolsbee disputed the characterization from the conservative government official.

“This thing about ‘it’s more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans,’ that’s this guy’s language,” Goolsbee said of DeMora. “He’s not quoting me.

“I certainly did not use that phrase in any way,” he said.

The CBC then runs a report that says:

the memo at the heart of the controversy “may not accurately reflect what they were told”.

So, basically, the story about the Obama staffer telling the Canadian Embassy to pay us no nevermind when we talk about NAFTA? Yeah, complete fiction. Total, unadulterated lies. But don’t worry! Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he’s real real sorry, and he’ll get to the bottom of it:

The leak of information about Barack Obama’s position on the North American Free Trade Agreement was “blatantly unfair” to his campaign, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Wednesday.

Harper said the government was mounting an “internal security investigation” to find out who leaked the information, which suggested Obama’s campaign had said not to pay too much attention to his protectionist rhetoric on NAFTA.

“This kind of leaking of information is completely unacceptable and in fact … it may well be illegal,” the prime minister told Parliament.

He doesn’t need to look very far.

If the prime minister is seeking the first link in the chain of events that has rocked the U.S. presidential race, he need look no further than his chief of staff, Ian Brodie, The Canadian Press has learned.

The article goes on to say that Brodie said the Clinton campaign, not the Obama campaign, had contacted them. Both accusations, of course, are being denied.

Got that? It’s like a soap opera that thus far refuses to end. But, there are six weeks until Pennsylvania, and I guess we should thank Canada for giving us something to fixate on during the lull.

Let’s try a new tactic: Fear. Here is Hillary Clinton’s new ad:

Boo! There are a few things I don’t like about this. First off, the blue tones aren’t doing anything for me. Secondly, it takes six rings for the President to get to the phone? And it’s not like she was sleeping because, Point Three, she’s all dressed and already in make up!

Per Politico.com, here’s what the Obama campaign had to say:

The ad has echoes of a famous “red telephone” spot that Roy Spence, now a Clinton adviser, made in 1984 for former Vice President Walter Mondale when he was seeking the Democratic nomination against Gary Hart.

He’s right. Check it out:

Back to the official response:

Plouffe said dismissively: ‘Senator Clinton has already had her red phone moment, and it was the [2002] decision whether to allow George Bush to invade Iraq. She answered affirmatively. She did not read the National Intelligence Estimate, so she didn’t do her homework either.’

Oh snap. The Obama camp then made their own rebuttal video, playing up this strength:

So of course the obvious questions comes up, this time via Slate’s John Dickerson:

What foreign policy moment would you point to in Hillary’s career where she’s been tested by crisis?

And the answer? Silence. Cold, cold silence. Click here for a listen.

Let’s say you are in charge of one of the major newspapers in the country. A standard barer, if you will. The campaigns are heating up, and so is your coverage. The world keeps turning, with peace talks in the Middle East and capture of some guys that killed some chick some years ago that we all used to obsess over but don’t care about now. And The Patriots are having a mind-blowing undefeated season, to boot! So what do you decide to run on page A1?

Oh, oh, I know! Let’s retread some old crap about Obama a month before the first caucus! Yeah!

First of all, we’ve already debunked this. Twice. But that’s not what makes this article by Perry Bacon (if that is your real name) so shockingly bad. It may stand alone as one of the worst piece of journalism ever written, and would easily have been forgotten in the school newspaper of Backwater High if it weren’t on the front page of the Washington Post.

Let us start, class, by looking at the title:

Foes Use Obama’s Muslim Ties to Fuel Rumors About Him.

Since when are “rumors” front page material for a major news paper? I’ve got a rumor for you:

Ron Paul Son Of Bat Boy And Lobster Girl!

Can I have a job writing for WaPo now? First paragraph:

In his speeches and often on the Internet, the part of Sen. Barack Obama’s biography that gets the most attention is not his race but his connections to the Muslim world.

Gets the most attention from whom? It turns out Perry Baconlinks means, and quotes, a select few loonies on the extreme right wing fringe of the Internet — and then bolsters his claim that these people are a majority of some sort by name dropping Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh without attributing anything more than innuendo to these better known names.

Furthermore, and quite randomly, the article quotes a recent poll showing that “people,” by which we infer “Americans” and not “pod people,” don’t want Muslims in politics. Which is a striking bit of information in the middle of an article about how Obama’s not a Muslim. At least it would be, in Upside Down World.

But this might be considered nitpicking. It’s true that the lies about Obama’s religion and background persist on the Internet and occasionally bleed over in to the mainstream media — but that’s what makes this article, in particular, so fucking infuriating. Rather than state outright the undeniable truth that Obama is NOT a Muslim, Perrywinkle Bacon presents his story as though this is still in dispute, and is something worthy of debating on page 1 of The Washington Post. He brings up Insight Magazine and the Madrassa story from January and provides Obama’s denial as the lone and sole refutation, completely leaving out the CNN report where they actually went to the school and actually talked to people and actually proved this rumor as a lie. This does a disservice to the readers of The Washington Post by not giving them a full and accurate story.

Baconbits doesn’t debunk the “rumors” in a straight forward manner at all. He never says “Obama is a Christian who came to his faith on his own in his 20’s.” Instead, it is stated that he attends a Christian church and that he denies the “rumors,” but they don’t expound on that.

If you need any further proof of the bias inherent in the article, check out this little bit of word count fun:

27 instances of the word Muslim

5 instances of the word Christian

8 instances of the word rumor

0 instances of “false,” “lies” or “allegations”

At the very least, I think it’s crystal clear that Perrymason Bacon needs a damn thesaurus. Oh, and that title? “Obama’s Muslim Ties?” Turns out he doesn’t have any.

Bravo, WaPo.  Luckily, you publish every single day, so maybe you can get a better writer for tomorrow.  One with a thesaurus.  One who isn’t a xenophobe.

This isn’t mudslinging, and it isn’t dirty politics, but it is really, really childish.

Now voters will judge whether living in a foreign country at the age of 10 prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next president will face… I think we need a president with more experience than that. Someone the rest of the world knows, looks up to and has confidence in.

It’s physically impossible to roll my eyes enough at this one. Here’s a hint: A lot of people think hosting dinner parties at tax-payer funded houses is also not enough qualification to be President. Luckily, Obama spokesperson Bill Burton is a lot nicer than I am.

Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld have spent time in the White House and traveled to many countries as well, but along with Hillary Clinton they led us into the worst foreign policy disaster in a generation and are now giving George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran… The real choice in this election is between conventional Washington thinking that prizes posture and positioning, or real change that puts judgment and honesty first.

Oh hey remember this dust up? Where Hillary said that Obama was “naive and irresponsible” for saying he would meet with Iran without preconditions?

Now she’s saying the same thing.

CANTERBURY, N.H. (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton called Barack Obama naive when he said he’d meet with the leaders of Iran without precondition. Now she says she’d do the same thing, too.

During a Democratic presidential debate in July, Obama said he would be willing to meet without precondition in the first year of his presidency with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.

Standing with him on stage, Clinton said she would first send envoys to test the waters and called Obama’s position irresponsible and naive.

But asked about it Thursday by a voter, the New York senator said twice that she, too, would negotiate with Iran ”with no conditions.”

”I would engage in negotiations with Iran, with no conditions, because we don’t really understand how Iran works. We think we do, from the outside, but I think that is misleading,” she said at an apple orchard.

She characterized her recent vote to label Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization as a way to gain leverage for those negotiations.

So she adopts his position, and then claims that labelling Iran’s army as a terrorist organization will help her to meet them with no conditions.

Obama once again proves himself to be out in front, and Hillary once again proves herself to be an inconsistent shrew.

Barack responds forcefully:

A couple of months ago, Senator Clinton called me “naïve and irresponsible” for taking this position, and said that we could lose propaganda battles if we met with leaders we didn’t like. Just yesterday, though, she called for diplomacy with Iran without preconditions. So I’m not sure if any of us knows exactly where she stands on this. But I can tell you this: when I am President of the United States, the American people and the world will always know where I stand.

Zbigniew Brzezinski today endorsed Barack Obama:

Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the most influential foreign-policy experts in the Democratic Party, threw his support behind Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy, saying the Illinois senator has a better global grasp than his chief rival, Hillary Clinton.

Obama “recognizes that the challenge is a new face, a new sense of direction, a new definition of America’s role in the world,” Brzezinski said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt.”

“Obama is clearly more effective and has the upper hand,” Brzezinski, who was President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, said. “He has a sense of what is historically relevant, and what is needed from the United States in relationship to the world.”

Brzezinski, 79, dismissed the notion that Clinton, 59, a New York senator and the wife of former President Bill Clinton, is more seasoned than Obama, 46. “Being a former first lady doesn’t prepare you to be president. President Truman didn’t have much experience before he came to office. Neither did John Kennedy,” Brzezinski said.

Clinton’s foreign-policy approach is “very conventional,” Brzezinski said. “I don’t think the country needs to go back to what we had eight years ago.”

“There is a need for a fundamental rethinking of how we conduct world affairs,” he added. “And Obama seems to me to have both the guts and the intelligence to address that issue and to change the nature of America’s relationship with the world.”

Brzezinski also sided with Obama, who was criticized by Clinton as being “irresponsible” and “naive” for saying he would meet in his first year as president with leaders of adversaries such as Iran and Syria. “What’s the hang-up about negotiating with the Syrians or with the Iranians?” Brzezinksi said. “What it in effect means” is “that you only talk to people who agree with you.”

Holy crap, the Associated Press is doing the fact checking for me!

WASHINGTON - Democrat Barack Obama said it, the Republican Party pointed out in a screaming headline Tuesday that highlighted the presidential candidate’s comments on Afghanistan and the killing of civilians.
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Behind the scenes, Obama’s rival campaigns buzzed about his statement uttered Monday during a campaign stop in New Hampshire when he was asked about his plan to move troops into Afghanistan.

“We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there,” Obama said.

THE SPIN:

The suggestion whispered by Obama’s opponents was that he was maligning the efforts of troops fighting in Afghanistan by stating they are “just” out there killing civilians.

The Republican National Committee simply repeated the comment as one of their “They Said It!” series used to highlight statements by opponents that supposedly put them in a bad light. RNC Chairman Mike Duncan followed up later in a statement demanding that Obama apologize for his “offensive” statement.

“It is hard to imagine that anyone who aspires to be commander in chief would say such a thing about our brave men and women in uniform,” Duncan said. “Obama owes our armed forces an apology — today.”

THE FACT CHECK:

A check of the facts shows that Western forces have been killing civilians at a faster rate than the insurgents have been killing civilians.

The U.S. and NATO say they don’t have civilian casualty figures, but The Associated Press has been keeping count based on figures from Afghan and international officials. Tracking civilian deaths is a difficult task because they often occur in remote and dangerous areas that are difficult to reach and verify.

As of Aug. 1, the AP count shows that while militants killed 231 civilians in attacks in 2007, Western forces killed 286. Another 20 were killed in crossfire that can’t be attributed to one party.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai expressed his concern about the civilian deaths during a meeting last week with President Bush.

Bush said he understands the agony that Afghans feel over the loss of innocent lives and that he is doing everything he can to protect them. He said the Taliban are using civilians as human shields and have no regard for their lives.

“The president rightly expressed his concerns about civilian casualty,” Bush said of Karzai. “And I assured him that we share those concerns.”

As regards this previous post, wherein Hillary Clinton chastizes Barack Obama for “taking nukes off the table,” The Associated Press points out that she said the same thing last year as regards Iran.

“I would certainly take nuclear weapons off the table,” she said in April 2006.

Her views expressed while she was gearing up for a presidential run stand in conflict with her comments this month regarding Obama, who faced heavy criticism from leaders of both parties, including Clinton, after saying it would be “a profound mistake” to deploy nuclear weapons in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

As regards this previous entry about Obama and Pakistan, I present you with a little snippet from tonights AFL-CIO debate. Full transcript here.

Senator Biden: But folks, I got to say something here. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. The truth of the matter is, none of what you heard earlier is correct. It’s already the policy of the United States, has been for four years, that if there was actionable intelligence, we would go into — into Pakistan. That’s the law.

Secondly, it’s already the law, that I wrote into the law, saying that in fact we don’t cooperation from Musharraf, we cut off his money.

It’s time everybody start to know the facts — the facts.

So it’s already US policy and law to go in to Waziristan if we have to, and it’s already US policy and law to cut off Pakistan’s funding if they don’t work with us to stop bin Laden. The whole kerfuffle, then, does indeed break down to not telling the American people how one might inact foreign policy, were one to be elected.

Oh, except President Bush did just that last year:

President Bush said Wednesday he would order U.S. forces to go after Osama bin Laden inside Pakistan if he received good intelligence on the fugitive al Qaeda leader’s location.

“Absolutely,” Bush said.

The president made the comments Wednesday in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

Although Pakistan has said it won’t allow U.S. troops to operate within its territory, “we would take the action necessary to bring him to justice.”

Apparently, the only person who can’t talk about this strategy is Hillary Clinton. And Chris Dodd, when he’s playing lap dog.

TPM reports on the escalating war of words between the Senators Clinton and Obama. Obama was asked by the Associated Press whether he’d consider using nukes against terrorists in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

“I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance,” Obama said, with a pause, “involving civilians.” Then he quickly added, “Let me scratch that. There’s been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That’s not on the table.”

Clinton responded:

“I think that presidents should be very careful at all times in discussing the use or non-use of nuclear weapons. Presidents, since the Cold War, have used nuclear deterrence to keep the peace. And I don’t believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or non-use of nuclear weapons.”

So we should be “concerned” about talking about putting pressure on Pakistan to help root out bin Laden, but it’s totally copacetic to talk about nuking Pakistan or Afganistan?