“Arafat would condemn [terror] operations by day while at night he would do honorable things,” said Dahlan, who today serves as top advisor to Arafat’s successor, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
I’m sure there will be a few people on the left totally taken aback, there might even be a few that consider it old news. It’s certainly a candidate for the Capt Renault award at Hot Air.
There is real news in the next paragraph however:
Dahlan said the Abbas regime should learn from Arafat and begin to again employ calculated and carefully-tiimed terrorism as an official tactic. He said the only part of today’s terrorism he doesn’t like is that so many groups are running around attacking Israel on their own. In Dahaln’s view, all terrorism against Israel should be directed by the Palestinian Authority.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced on July 24 that the United States has given $200 million to help the operations of the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority (PA).
“I wanted personally to announce the delivery of budget support to the Palestinian Authority, under the leadership of President [Mahmoud ] Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad,” Clinton said at a video teleconference in Washington, in which she was joined from Ramallah with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
I presume that these people aren’t stupid enough to think these people actually support peace so I’m really wondering what the cause for all this nonsense is.
I pretty much liked the book but thought the epilogue really didn’t belong in it. I don’t think you can credibly link Chris Dodd’s corruption to President Obama’s except in the sense that both received quite a lot of financial support from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
I have to congratulate Michelle on the timing in particular, the book came out exactly as questions are coming up concerning this administration which I think drove the coverage of the book on the today show. The Today show interview will drive others.
Being a top 1000 reviewer at Amazon is pretty much like being a famous candlepin bowler, but if you give that weight then I say go buy it!
So of course the White house wants to talk about the birthers:
MR. GIBBS: No. (Laughter.) I mean, the God’s honest truth is no. I mean, Bill, let’s understand this — and I almost hate to indulge in such an august setting as the White House — and I mean this in seriousness — the White House briefing room discussing the made-up, fictional nonsense of whether or not the President was born in this country. A year-and-a-half ago I asked that the birth certificate be put on the Internet because lord knows, you got a birth certificate and you put it on the Internet, what else could be the story?
If one applies for a United States passport, the passport office will demand a birth certificate. It defines this as an official document bearing “your full name, the full name of your parent(s), date and place of birth, sex, date the birth record was filed, and the seal or other certification of the official custodian of such records.” The Hawaiian birth certificate President Obama has produced—the document is formally known as a “certificate of live birth”—bears that information. It has been inspected by reporters, and several state officials have confirmed that the information in permanent state records is identical to that on the president’s birth certificate—which is precisely what one expects, of course, since the state records are used to generate those documents when they are requested. In other words, what President Obama has produced is the “real” birth certificate of myth and lore. The director of Hawaii’s health department and the registrar of records each has personally verified that the information on Obama’s birth certificate is identical to that in the state’s records, the so-called vault copy. Given that fact, we are loath even to engage the fanciful notion that President Obama was born elsewhere, contrary to the information on his birth certificate, but we note for the record that his mother was a native of Kansas, whose residents have been citizens of the United States for a very long time, and whose children are citizens of the United States as well.
My fellow conservatives who are pushing this are really giving the president an out on an awful lot of things. It gives them the chance to not only change the subject but to paint the right as a bunch of idiots.
And don’t think the democrats won’t take advantage of this, Salon has it exactly right:
Greg Sargent reported Monday that one House Democrat, Hawaii’s Neil Abercrombie, was doing just that. Abercrombie, Sargent wrote, “is going to introduce a resolution on the House floor today that seems designed to put House GOPers who are flirting with birtherism in a jam …. [The resolution] commemorates the 50th anniversary of Hawaii’s statehood. But here’s the rub, his spokesman tells me: It describes Hawaii as Barack Obama’s birthplace.”
“Fifty-five people didn’t vote for whatever reason,” Abercrombie spokesman Randy Obata said. “Apparently there was no objection in the final analysis.”
55 congressmen voting present, it’s so Obamaish isn’t it?
If I’m the democrats I’d have these guys voting on this at least once a week. I’d paint the republicans with this brush and I’d be asking Romney, Palin and and any republican running for office this question over and over again. It’s their best chance to change the subject and perhaps, with the media’s help sneak their stuff through.
If we do this to ourselves then we deserve 8 years of Obama.
No, the primary beneficiary of the Obama birth certificate conspiracy theory is Obama. He is running the country into the ground at break-neck speed, but the conspiracy theory has handed Democratic operatives like Media Matters, Think Progress, and all the left-wing blogs which jump when the whistle blows, a great way of distracting the public from the damage being done.
Don’t believe me, just look at the Memeorandum screen shot above right. The left-wing blogosphere moves in a group, and the group is pushing the same point: Beware the Birthers. The Birthers are not a threat to the economy, our national security, personal freedom, or our health care system — except to the extent they hand the Democrats a side issue with which to deflect attention from the real issues facing the country.
He does in fairness leave out one group the profits from this: The people who will write the books, hold the conventions and milk the true believers out of plenty of dough to keep their own gravy train going.
One of the things that I enjoy about Doctor Who historical stories are the reactions of the Tardis crew to the mindsets of various ancient times and the clashes in culture that take place. One of the weaknesses that can take place is when a person taken from their own time ends up acts with 21st century reactions.
The Very good Blog Just one Minute forgets this fact when making his case for the president mother et/al having a motivation to provide false documents concerning her child’s birth. He says as follows:
My point, then and recently – Barack’s mom and maternal grandparents had a strong incentive to create a paper trail documenting Obama as a US citizen back in 1961 and it had nothing to do with assuring his future viability as a Presidential candidate. Alll they needed to do was imagine a day when the white Ms. Dunham would be engaged in a custody fight in a Kenyan court contesting the fate of a black Kenyan baby sought by the black Kenyan father and his African family, and their course would have been clear.
However in 1961 Culturally all of those things would be impossible, rejected and scandalous. The concept of divorce itself was not very well excepted outside of Hollywood or the elites. Hell a pre-nup would have been considered off the wall. The thought particularly at the time of marriage that it was going to end in a custody fight just didn’t wash.
The US was at it’s height of self confidence as well. The idea that a US court was going to rule against a US citizen in a fight over a child, particular in favor of a non Christian Black African was far fetched. Cripes; Miranda rights didn’t even exist at the time.
It would be like going to 1896 and saying to someone “Michael Jackson is cool.” They would tell him to come closer to the fire. The idea that she was planning for a custody fight in 1961 would be a foreign to her as the idea of e-mail.
This is exactly the opposite of the mistake the AP is making with bloggers. AP is trying to win an argument using the norms of the past. This argument is applying the norms of today to a different culture. It just doesn’t wash.
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