You would need a continuous video of that part of those events.. preferably one with SMPTE timecode or its equivalent. NO edits or splices.

One photo from a moment possibly near the time one of the other ones was taken, only tells us things about the moment that particular photo was taken, but doesn't prove anything about any other moments at all - like the moments the other photos were taken.

It doesn't take long to give the finger..

Do you have any complete videos of those events from that angle? Security cams? etc?

If I were Obama's campaign, I would get to it and publish them because the photo I saw was pretty dammning.

I respectfully ask you and Jonathan to go to this CBS video and freeze it at about 0:39 or 0:40, and then you see it as clear as day. It is CLEAR that the middle finger is extended. and it's a salute!  

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/ main500251.shtml?id=4025010n

Note right at that moment (about 0:41) the reaction of the two women at the back (left of the frame, behind Obama's right shoulder). Look closely at the reaction of the woman in red shirt and watch her explain it to her neighbor.

I am sick and tired of apologists for this sick, juvenile, misogynist behavior by Obama.    

I don't understand all this talk about "flipping the bird."

Is that like "tilting a cow?"

Would it be worse if Obama had tilted Hillary a cow?

Media Matters writes "In this screenshot of Obama at the rally, two fingers appear to be touching his face" ... but the photo makes undeniably clear that the index finger is NOT touching his face.

Note the very substantial gap between the end of his index finger, and the end of his index finger's shadow on his face.

If the finger is in contact, the shadow meets the fingertip.

And you still have the accompanying remark, the preceding pinkie gesture "bait", the smirk, the comic-timing pause, the audience reaction ... not to mention the whole brush-off insult routine.

You really are desperate to rationalize your hatred, aren't you?

What are you talking about?

He DID NOT flip her off.

And I don't think he did anything with his "boots" at all...

Comedy. As if it was CLINTON and not the gotcha games he was referring to.

Juvenile "questions" and "debates" deserve juvenile responses. My response to the "question" about Ayers would be that I want to be elected president so that I can blow up my own bedroom. You people have lost all seriousness.

He was doing a Jay-Z "dirt off my shoulders" dogwhistle to the kids. Also a bit of "shake the dust from my sandles." Harmless, especially given the Rodney King-job he'd been treated to the night before.

He's not wiping Clinton off, he's wiping mud off.  The idea of wiping Clinton off doesn't even make any sense.

So are we disallowing any words Bush may have used while he was President?
Are we disallowing any gestures?
Are we disallowing any character similarities at all?

I dislike our current President as much as the next guy; but even if he was "flicking her off," which I am not sure he was, I am not sure the fact that "it is something Bush would do," is the reason it should be unacceptable.

Twice the insult for the same effort!!!

How efficient.

Actually, that IS an insult in some countries!  Sort of a backward peace sign.

I hope the Obama haters don't pick up on it!

That quote is from James Thurber.

This is all a vast left-wing conspiracy that originates from the grassy knoll!!!

With his wee, beady eyes, and that smart look on his face- "Ooh you're going to buy my chicken! Oohhh!".

and two planes didn't really hit the towers!!

Tip of the hat for the Mike "So I Married an Axe Murderer" Myers!

The Messiah?

Are you saying Jesus Christ rose from the grave and gave Hillary Clinton "the bird"!!

Blasphemy!  You'll burn at the stake for that one!

(if you weren't referring to Jesus Christ, well, then you are a bigger blasphemer than I thought)

It is funny that you make a pretty far-fetched argument but then ... you state that this is a non-issue to you. It is getting really entertaining around here. Keep it up.  

You undoubtedly disdain Obama supporters for their use of offensive language, and then you come right down from the perch and pointlessly refer to him in mocking terms as "The Messiah."

I know how to handicap your level of bitching in the future.  Clinton supporters are right there needs to be a lot of growing up to be done by obama supporters, but you might want to check your own behavior before you go righteously pointing out the sins of others.  

This, erm, issue really says a lot more about those who would focus on it than Obama. Sad, really.

I think it also might mean:

"I call bullshit on the puerile, lame-ass game of 'let's have Clinton's monkey boy spend a free hour on national TV 'Rove-framing' Obama in the guise of an unfixed debate on national TV so we can call him a sissy for taking it, call or a sissy for refusing to put up with it!' Go Cheney yourselves, you pathetic hacks."

I think Obama shot them both, possibly with bullets implanted in his middle finger (a la "Grindhouse").

"You haven't seen impatient until you've seen a monkey waiting for a donut."  

LOL giggle giggle heeheeheeheehee

God I love that!

"Can this election just be over with please?"

I think the fact that we're discussing this shows that it is.

You have a poll of what they supposedly recognized or not?

Thanks, Kreskin.

It only looks like "the bird" from one very specific angle. The majority of the audience were not looking at him from that angle.

The audience were responding to the speech itself.

Even the people behind him were responding, and they couldn't even see his hand, never mind what it may or may not be doing.

There's video from which that picture comes from.

He never raised one finger, he raised two.  If you have two fingers raised, you haven't flipped someone off no matter what those who have already made up their mind want to believe.

But it didn't happen.

I would just love it if he said "hey hillary" and then actually gave her the finger.  that would be great.

But he didn't.

Anyway, my reaction to this is pure enjoyment, watching the Clinton supporters around here flip out (no pun intended) over this, trying to make it into the next big thing, and now saying that "the GOP will use it" before hyperventilating and falling over.

It's quite amusing.

I'm aware that Hillary shines most brightly when discussing policy.  

The middle finger is an issue to the extent that:

1. It shows character (lack thereof).

2. It illustrates how Obama reacts under pressure (tantrums/complaining).
   
3. It shows dishonesty (denying the gesture).

Settle down, please. You're doing us Obama supporters no good. Even if logic and reason don't convince anyone, this sort of thing doesn't help either. Don't sink to their level, and definitely don't sink beneath them.

I'm sure the CBS vid looked like the bird.

But now you've seen it from another view that pretty clearly demonstrates that it wasn't.

Millions of children see monsters in their closets, but in the morning it turns out it was just clothes and shadows.

But they still think that there are monsters.

Can't we be better than children?

Although I believe that Obama was giving the finger to Clinton, I know the evidence isn't 100% conclusive.  But I'm actually more disturbed by the extended Jay-Z "brush off" gestures so admired by Matthew Yglesias.  That level of narcissim is creepy.

I hate to say it but there does seem to be a base sort of confirmation bias at work here.

You're in the wrong party?

Amen to that!

So the criticism now is because there are a bunch of anti-Obama conspiracy theorists out there, he should have read their minds and anticipated that they would manufacture this stupid controversy?

there is another reason for Hillary hanging on until now even though (according to Gallup) she is only slightly ahead at this stage in popular support.

Suppose that Obama's platform leaves large segments of the population in the lurch, as far as healthcare, and suppose Obama is a technocrat who talks like silver silk, but who deep down inside doesn't really care about the plights of large segments of the country as we shift to a post industrial, and eventually, as machines do more and more, for many a post-work economy?

In that mirror-world, Hillary is the real Democrat, and she is fighting for a progressive politics that if she fails, a new progressive party is going to have to get started, because the Democratic party 'brand' is being taken over by center-rightist people who pretend to be Dems but are really Republicans deserting the old, now damaged goods, GOP-brand like rats from a sinking ship.

Let's call up the "Obama Expert" and get his analysis.  Me, I think the pinky was a shout-out to Farrakhan.

Because you see what you want to see. Incredible that solid photographic evidence still can't dissuade you from your attack. Very insightful.

This is about the only decent point made against the whole finger-thing.  Yes, I think the one lady behind me thought he was flipping off Clinton.  And yes, that means she is also, like so many people on here, incorrect.

This comment of mine got four 1s and two 0s.  Not one of them explains the reason for TR or HR but it cost me my TU status.

Evidently the operating theory now is that if you can't rebut an argument you TR the user into oblivion.  

Way to go, Obamabots.  You've turned MyDD into dKos.

Skaje and Babbitt. You need to change the 0 to a 1. This is not a hidden comment. Hell, I personally wouldn't even give this a 1, even if it has the denseness of a troll comment.

uprated. i really think you're dead wrong, but it's not HR worthy.

With respect, horseshit.  The photograph proves nothing at all, and there's nothing else like "proof" in the Media Matters article.

Once again, I do not think he was flipping the bird.  But, since you are putting out the line that it is an absolute truth that he did not, and that heretics must be silenced, let me make the devil's advocate argument that he did:

(1) The gesture came at the exact moment in his speech where, for the first time, he was criticizing Clinton.

(2) He paused for several seconds while he was making it, as if to emphasize it.

(3) Some members of the audience, not all but some, clearly interpreted it as a bird.  My reading of the ambiguous moment that followed is that Obama, who had not intentionally shot a bird, realized (as anyone with body awareness would) what part of the crowd was laughing at, and played to it.

(4) He began to smile slyly immediately thereafter.

(5) Continuing to smile and laugh, he shortly thereafter made some ambiguous knife-twisting gestures that are quite similar to a known FU gesture.

The whole sequence of events put together is pretty suggestive.

I think he wasn't shooting a bird primarily because it would've been just too risky.  Secondarily, I'm a strong believer in giving candidates the benefit of the doubt on crap that can't be proved.

But I'm even more of a believer in giving every person, not to mention American fucking citizens in a democracy speaking about an election the benefit of the doubt.  That includes the grace to allow individuals to hold views different than our own and to speak their mind about those views.  In the marketplace of ideas, all ideas add value to the whole of discourse, and in the long run, good ideas drive out bad ones.

Just say no to content censorship.

Virtually everyone sees how idiotic this is.  It's still disheartening that anyone wouldn't.

Handguns are not rifles, shotguns, etc.  

I think if anyone thinks he and every other Democrat is not in favor of handgun control, they are profoundly idiotic (THIS IS EXCELLENT NE--) No, the other kind of idiotic.  

supports other groups that support talking about ways to control handguns!!!!!!!

Next thing I'll hear is that there's a Republican who supports groups that support discussing limiting Abortion!

Oh the Horror of it!

Mission Statement

The Joyce Foundation supports efforts to protect the natural environment of the Great Lakes, to reduce poverty and violence in the region, and to ensure that its people have access to good schools, decent jobs, and a diverse and thriving culture. We are especially interested in improving public policies, because public systems such as education and welfare directly affect the lives of so many people, and because public policies help shape private sector decisions about jobs, the environment, and the health of our communities. To ensure that public policies truly reflect public rather than private interests, we support efforts to reform the system of financing election campaigns.  

Yep, crazy foundation for a Dem to be on the board of!

Improving Firearms Policy

The Foundation believes that better public policies can help reduce gun violence. It supports the efforts of law enforcement officials, legislators, municipal leaders, the medical and public health communities, advocacy groups, and others in pushing for measures to stop gun trafficking, keep guns out of the hands of criminals, prevent children from getting access to firearms, and other measures that offer promise of combating gun violence.

Sounds radical!

Alberding said Sugarmann's group is "the only organization that we fund that explicitly has that goal" of a national handgun ban. The foundation's cash can't be used to lobby, she pointed out. And she stressed that when Obama was on the board, the focus of the foundation's gun violence program was almost exclusively on studying the issue from a public health perspective.

Not only that, but 1.23% of the grants allocated went to folks advocating the discussion of banning HANDGUNS!  The sheer unmitigated madness!  

Of that overwhelming number, 0.038% of the funds went to "a symposium on the theory that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual's right to bear arms, but rather only a state's right to arm its militia."  A symposium!  They were TALKING at that thing!  What was he thinking?!?

Seems like the most of the 1.23% of the funding went to a group

...primarily for efforts to study the public health effects of gun violence.

That appears to be the purpose of a majority of the 83 gun-violence grants...

0.009% of the funding supported a book putting forth the argument for banning handguns (whose author "disagree(s) with Obama's interpretation of the Second Amendment". but you know that's a smokescreen), and 0.0045% of the funding went "to support a student grass-roots gun violence prevention campaign." - but, get this, the student group advocates a handgun ban!

You missed a part, he supported a limit of buying only "one handgun a month" - which barely satisfies my personal needs, I can tell you that.

And you just know that the 81% of funding that went to groups studying the environment, education, employment, money and politics and culture are just another false front erected by the Obama campaign!

But, what's this?  A crack in Obama's un-Democratic anti-handgun stance?

"Obama supported a 2002 amendment to bar the use of federal homeland security funds to seize firearms during states of emergency", while Senator Clinton opposed barring the use of DHS funds to seize guns.

Whew!  At least one candidate is sticking to the Democratic Party's support of guns!

May as well quite the race, this guy is a goner!  No Democrat will ever vote for him (I, myself am now voting for my cat, who just told me he's Ben Franklin's ghost)!

-thanks!

-chris

PS, did I mention that he is a black crypto-muslim antiamerican secret society communist manchurian candidate funded by the Illuminati, and actually a thousand year old tibetan monk presevered in formaldehyde and operated with strings?

It's the "if he had" part that I can't get around.  It's just so stupid - that's not how people act.  Presidential candidates or not; I can't remember the last time I did anything like that, or anyone I know did anything like that, especially... like someone else here said, THIS is the test of whether or not you're on the same planet as the rest of us are.

You're losing your mind.

Seek help.

this is just f*cking nuts.  You guys are NUTS.  I am stepping away from the computer.  I'll be checking in on y'all after Hillary's concession speech just to read the "she didn't really concede" diaries.

They are the exact same rally shot from two different angles.  You can confirm this by either comparing yourself, running them side-by-side to see the timing of everything that occurs is exactly identical or, more simply, read the caption text included with both (they plainly say they're both from Sen Obama's April 17th, Raleigh, NC rally).