Tangled Friggin' Web
03.05.08 -- 10:28PM
By Josh Marshall

Seems the NAFTAgate leak started with -- surprise, surprise -- the Chief of Staff to Canada's conservative PM Stephen Harper. Only the first hint wasn't about stuff the Canadians had heard from the Obama camp. It was about reassurances the Canadians got from the Clinton campaign. According to a reporter who heard the original conversation, Brodie said "someone from (Hillary) Clinton's campaign is telling the embassy to take it with a grain of salt. . . That someone called us and told us not to worry."

Only somehow this evolved into a story about the Obama campaign giving such reassurances.

The Globe and Mail has the latest details.

So was Hillary bashing Obama for what her own campaign had done? Did they both do it? Was it all a set up? I think the overarching story here is that friendly governments should not interfere in our elections.

Well, it turns out that the Clinton campaign was giving reassurances --

"Seems the NAFTAgate leak started with -- surprise, surprise -- the Chief of Staff to Canada's conservative PM Stephen Harper. Only the first hint wasn't about stuff the Canadians had heard from the Obama camp. It was about reassurances the Canadians got from the Clinton campaign. According to a reporter who heard the original conversation, Brodie said "someone from (Hillary) Clinton's campaign is telling the embassy to take it with a grain of salt. . . That someone called us and told us not to worry."
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/18 1749.php
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/s tory/RTGAM.20080305.wharpleak0305/BNStor y/National/home

Can hardly wait to hear from some Hillary fans about this. I wonder how long it will take.

You say:
 There is no serious dispute about the facts.

Sorry but you really need to check out:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/s tory/RTGAM.20080305.wharpleak0305/BNStor y/National/home

Here's the important part:

At the end of an extended conversation, Mr. Brodie was asked about remarks aimed by the Democratic candidates at Ohio's anti-NAFTA voters that carried serious economic implications for Canada.

"He said someone from (Hillary) Clinton's campaign is telling the embassy to take it with a grain of salt. . . That someone called us and told us not to worry."

This just serves to remind us all that there are liars and then there are the Clintons -

Thanks for the update. The Obama campaign is trying to wiggle out of NAFTA-gate. Isn't going to happen. Obama is in the media's net now and the more he wiggles the more he is tied up in his own lies.

Oh, you people really shouldn't be poking this beehive. Lots of blue collar workers in PA aren't gonna like the way HRC is playing this.

With Obama, there's a memo, hard proof of his crap. Where's the memo proving these allegations against Clinton?

From yesterday's Canada.com:

[Barack Obama's] remarks were reminiscent of the lyrics from an Oscar-nominated song sung by animated characters in the 1999 South Park film.

"It seems like everything's gone wrong, since Canada came along," the cartoon characters sang. "We must blame them and cause a fuss, before somebody thinks of blaming us."

The "Nafta-gate" episode laid bare some key weaknesses in Obama's campaign.

The Illinois senator and his staff badly misjudged the potential impact of early media reports which said - inaccurately, as it turned out - that an Obama aide spoke directly with Canadian Ambassador Michael Wilson.

When details emerged that Goolsbee actually met with the Chicago consulate, Obama's campaign continued to outright deny the story until the Canadian memo was leaked to the media.

"They got caught, at least, in a misstatement," said Herb Asher, a political scientist at Ohio State University. "The initial response was 'there is nothing to this," Then, of course, there was something to it. That does undermine credibility."

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/ne ws/story.html?id=6a0ad227-2175-4142-8c40 -a21c6e301223&k=46757

While you all get into these misinformation and spin attempts to make this go away, millions of people have lost their jobs, have their wages repressed, their pensions lost and it looks even worse for young people and their future.

So, how about looking at actual policy positions and what actually needs to be done here?

The truth of it is Obama does not have any real plans to completely revamp trade agreements.

Neither of them have mentioned that their health plans and others violate WTO GATS agreements and they will have to challenge those agreements to enact their plans.

Right now on the who is better on trade score, Hillary is by far ahead, on the mortgage crisis too.

But she has to go further on this and very intelligently also.  While people talk about the forces out there who will kill any attempt to bring down costs on health or create a plan, that's peanuts on going up against the WTO, GATS agenda.  

Since we are going off topic..I am a good loyal democrat but I don't think we should intervene 100% in the mortgage crisis.  If people bought homes they could not afford the logical consequence is that they lose them.  Now, if people who had been in their home for several years bought into some crazy refinance with ARM that is now screwing them.. I can see intervening there.  But people who went out and went crazy during the mortgage boom by buying too much house...well it's hard to feel too sorry for them.

I think Obama and his supporters should simply forget about this issue and move. Some things just aren't favorable for your guy, and the best thing to do is let it fade away, not keep it in the news by arguing it.

An example on the Clinton side is something like what BET founder Bob Johnson said. Rather than try to explain what he meant, or how he did it on his own, just shut up and let the news cycle move on. Keeping it in the news isn't helpful.

http://facts.hillaryhub.com/archive/?id= 6382

Fact Check: Unlike Sen. Obama, Hillary Campaign Never Contacted Canadian Government About NAFTA

"Unlike the Obama campaign, we can and do flatly deny this report and urge the Canadian government to reveal the name of anyone they think they heard from. The Obama campaign has given a variety of misleading answers to the press and the public about its top economic adviser's contacts with the Canadian government and should come clean about why they did so." - Campaign spokesperson, Phil Singer

Last week, CTV reported that a senior member of Obama's campaign called the Canadian embassy, reassuring officials that Sen. Obama's talk on NAFTA was just campaign rhetoric. The initial report carried a strong denial of similar low-level meetings with the Clinton campaign:

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

The Clinton campaign also offered blanket immunity to any Canadian official who could provide names of any initiators or recipients of such contacts.

In contrast, the Obama campaign refused to confirm or deny the initial report. But over the next two days, Sen. Obama and his campaign made a series of false denials about its communication with the Canadian government about NAFTA. A memo from the Canadian government established that the Obama campaign did have a meeting, making assurances contrary to what Sen. Obama has told voters.

Despite your extremely long rant, when the Canadian Embassy says a memo, "May have misrepresented" Goolsbee, the memo ceases to be relevant. As you say, George Bush may be smarter than Einstein, and Austan Goolsbee may have said it was "just campaign rhetoric". When may becomes fact, we can revisit Obama. Until then, this is nothing than a partisan smear.

Obama's friends are trying to convert this disaster into a story about the Clinton campaign, e.g. by referencing an article in the Globe and Mail about who leaked the memo, and whether the Clinton campaign made similar assurances to Ian Brodie.

The Globe and Mail story affirms my account of the memo:

Days later, the leak of the internal Canadian diplomatic note revealed that Mr. Obama's adviser, Austan Goolsbee, spoke to Mr. Rioux on Feb. 8.

In a summary of the meeting written by Canadian diplomat Joseph de Mora, Mr. Goolsbee was described as indicating that Mr. Obama's NAFTA stand "should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans."

The Globe and Mail also says that the possibility similar assurances were made by the Clinton campaign is based on "a terse, almost throwaway remark that Mr. Brodie made to journalists from CTV, according to people familiar with the events."

Since the story about the consular meeting with Mr. Goolsbee in the New York Times included actual quotes from the memo, a formal diplomatic document, instead of impressions about "a terse, almost throwaway remark," I went with the story that had a solid source, instead of a "story" that didn't.

From NBC's Domenico Montanaro
Per the Toronto Globe and Mail, in a story that was the lead on the paper's front page today, that call to the Canadian embassy was actually from the Clinton campaign, not Obama's:

"Mr. [Ian] Brodie, [PM Harper's chief of staff], during the media lockup for the Feb. 26 budget, stopped to chat with several journalists, and was surrounded by a group from CTV. The conversation turned to the pledges to renegotiate the North American free-trade agreement made by the two Democratic contenders, Mr. Obama and New York Senator Hillary Clinton.

"Mr. Brodie, apparently seeking to play down the potential impact on Canada, told the reporters the threat was not serious, and that someone from Ms. Clinton's campaign had even contacted Canadian diplomats to tell them not to worry because the NAFTA threats were mostly political posturing. The Canadian Press cited an unnamed source last night as saying that several people overheard the remark.

"The news agency quoted that source as saying that Mr. Brodie said that someone from Ms. Clinton's campaign called and was `telling the embassy to take it with a grain of salt.'

"The story was followed by CTV's Washington bureau chief, Tom Clark, who reported that the Obama campaign, not the Clinton's, had reassured Canadian diplomats.

"Mr. Clark cited unnamed Canadian sources in his initial report. There was no explanation last night for why Mr. Brodie was said to have referred to the Clinton campaign but the news report was about the Obama campaign."

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2 008/03/06/738264.aspx

During the Austin debate, Obama tried to play up the emotions on NAFTA by relying a story about a factory  in Ohio shutting down and moving to China.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/us/pol itics/21text-demdebate.html?pagewanted=a ll

Obama: In Youngstown, Ohio, I've talked to workers who have seen their plant shipped overseas as a consequence of bad trade deals like NAFTA, literally seeing equipment unbolted from the floors of factories and shipped to China, resulting in devastating job losses and communities completely falling apart.

First, NAFTA is the North American Free Trade Associate and has nothing to do with China. Second, he made a factual error because the factory he was referring to did move to Mexico. Why did Obama mention China and not Mexico? Did he not understand what NAFTA was or was he trying to avoid mentioning Mexico as to not offend the Hispanics in Texas? Sounds like standard politician speak to me.

Don't even dream of commenting on this if you haven't read the utterly credible memorandum of the meeting between Goolsbee and CHCGO.   Here's the link: http://www.nytimes.com/images/promos/pol itics/blog/20070303canmemo.pdf

We know the time, location and names of all participants. It strains credulity to suggest that the memo is a fraud, or doctored.  Who was responsible for such a fraud? The staff notetaker, risking his job and prosecution?  Someone who came after, changed it, then silenced the consul and notetaker and leaked it?

Read the three -- count 'em -- excerpts.  Do they have the ring of a "misinterpretation"?

Subject: REPORT ON US ELECTfONS - CHCGO Meeting with Obama Advisor Austan
Goolsbee

Introductory Summary:
"[Goolsbee] was frank in saying that the primary campaign has been necessarily domestically focused, particularly in the Midwest, and that much of the rhetoric that may be perceived to be protectionist is more reflective of political maneuvering than policy...."

Paragraph 4:
"Noting anxiety among many US domestic audiences about the US economic outlook, Goolsbee candidly acknowledged the protectionist sentiment that has emerged, particularly in the Midwest, during the primary campaign. Consistent with CHCGO/WSHDC's analysis, he cautioned that this messaging should not be taken out of context and should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans."

Closing Comments:
"As Obama continues to court the economic populist vote, particularly in upcoming contests like Ohio, we  are likely to see a continuation of some of the messaging that hasn't played in Canada's favour, but this should continue to be viewed in the context in which it is delivered."