Keeping Count of Obama News (Update: Obama Wins Wyoming)
[Guest post by DRJ]
Jim Geraghty notes that, for Barack Obama, bad news comes in threes fours:
“I guess with Goolsbee on NAFTA, Susan Rice on who’s ready for 3 a.m., and Samantha Power on Iraq (and Hillary being a monster), then we were due to hear from another Obama adviser sooner or later.
Turned out to be very soon.”
Geraghty notes an interview by Obama adviser and former CIA official John Brennan in which he strongly supported immunity for telecom companies that had been sued for cooperating with a “dubious U.S. government domestic surveillance program.” Obama voted to strip immunity from Senate legislation.
In good news for Obama, he’s taken an early lead in the Wyoming Democratic caucuses, leading Hillary Clinton 58-41 with 57% of the precincts reporting. The AP reports that Democratic participants “deluged caucuses in Wyoming Saturday, straining the ability of party officials to accommodate crowds.”
UPDATE: In Wyoming, Obama beat Hillary “by double digits [59-40] after a day of historic turnout in the state.”
— DRJ
*BARACK OBAMA IS A CARPET BAGGER HE WOULD RUIN THE USA
krazy kagu (a97175) — 3/8/2008 @ 12:14 pmoh no drj, that isn’t bad news. john brennan isn’t running for president, so i don’t give a f*** what he thinks. obama “voted to strip immunity from senate legislation” and because i’m steadfastly opposed to immunity for the telcos, i’m hoisting my beer to him right now.
it appears that they broke the law. we don’t know for sure, because their activities are cloaked in “state secrets” and other b.s. while they ask (in the case of jay rockefeller, bribe) congress to grant them blank check forgiveness for undisclosed crimes.
bush says he won’t sign an expanded surveillance powers bill unless it includes telco immunity, and he blames “trial lawyers” for putting their interests ahead of the american people. in so doing, he’s putting the profits of criminal corporations ahead of the american people. he’s challenged my party (at least the large part of it that doesn’t like to see companies get away with violating the law) to a game of chicken, potentially no less deadly than traditional chicken, involving two cars heading at each other at top speed on a narrow roadway. let me tell you something, drj:
if, due to an intelligence failure for want of expanded powers, al-qaeda nukes an american city, it won’t be any of my fault. the fault will rest with those who exalted shareholder equity over homeland security. you folks will own that mushroom cloud.
assistant devil's advocate (efe988) — 3/8/2008 @ 12:25 pmada, I disagree for many reasons, but the Dems were the ones not even allowing a vote. Any mushroom cloud (God forbid) will be on their conscience.
DRJ, did you see the post over at LGF? They reference an article from Investor’s Business Daily asking some tough questions from Obama about FARC. Looks like at least part of the media honeymoon is over.
Stashiu3 (5285bb) — 3/8/2008 @ 12:34 pmThanks, Stashiu, I’ll take a look.
ADA – Why is it the primary responsibility of American telecoms to protect America? I thought that was the government’s job.
DRJ (a431ca) — 3/8/2008 @ 12:36 pmDRJ – With all due respect, Brennan resigning is a pretty big deal. He has very national security credentials. His beef is that apparently Obama had a typical knee jerk liberal response, like ada above, to the idea of telecom immunity, without taking the time to understand the issues.
I love guys like that. It’s like Greenwald’s argument, “I don’t care how many classified national security briefings you’ve had, if you disagree with me, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Heh!
daleyrocks (906622) — 3/8/2008 @ 12:59 pmDaleyrocks,
I’m confused. Are you talking about Brennan’s resignation from the CIA or did he also resign as an Obama adviser? If so, I missed that.
Plus, how do we disagree on this? I thought the divergence between Brennan and Obama was significant, too, and that’s why I posted on it. But I’m not aware of anything that says Brennan directly criticized Obama. In fact, this appears to be another example of Obama saying one thing while his adviser says the opposite.
DRJ (a431ca) — 3/8/2008 @ 1:07 pmif, due to an intelligence failure for want of expanded powers, al-qaeda nukes an american city, it won’t be any of my fault. the fault will rest with those who exalted shareholder equity over homeland security. you folks will own that mushroom cloud.
Undeniably true. If the bees starve in the winter it won’t be the drones’ fault. It was not their job to make honey after all. It was the workers’ fault. They did not make enough. ada, your irrelevance is not something you should brag about.
nk (7b0075) — 3/8/2008 @ 1:12 pmYour wrong for several reasons, ada, but the most obvious is that suing the telco’s would do nothing for “the american people”, not one thing.
Your last sentence is just incoherent.
SPQR (26be8b) — 3/8/2008 @ 1:31 pmwhy is it the primary responsibility of american telecoms to protect america? i thought that was the government’s job.
you’re right. the primary responsibility of telecoms is to put my calls through and keep my internet up; protecting america is indeed the government’s job.
the government can pass laws to force telecoms to share information, and if there is sufficient probable cause presented to a neutral magistrate to suspect that i am a terrorist, it would be constitutional for verizon to tap my line and share every word and keystroke with the fbi. i also have no problem with surveillance on folks outside of the u.s., they have to look out for themselves, it’s way beyond my modest abilities to look out for them and me too.
the problem i have is the fallacious notion that failure to grant immunity will somehow chill voluntary cooperation. there’s nothing voluntary about responding to a lawfully issued subpoena; if the verizon manager doesn’t comply with a lawfully issued wiretap on my phone line, he goes to prison.
yes, it’s the government’s job to protect me, but i do not repose absolute confidence in it. it is not my master. it is the collective property of you, me and all the others, and it is also a potentially dangerous adversary to our liberties, as our founders recognized in their federalist letters, constitution and bill of rights. a number of people have either lost their sense of potential adversarial hazard, or else they are fully conscious tools of absolute state authority. i am neither, thank you very much.
assistant devil's advocate (efe988) — 3/8/2008 @ 1:32 pmDRJ – Hot Air has a post on it:
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/03/08/obama-adviser-obama-naive-knee-jerk-on-telecom-immunity/
daleyrocks (906622) — 3/8/2008 @ 1:36 pmyou’re right. the primary responsibility of telecoms is to put my calls through and keep my internet up; protecting america is indeed the government’s job.
ada – So if they give the telco’s the immunity they deserve for aiding the government in protecting you, why not sue the government?
daleyrocks (906622) — 3/8/2008 @ 1:40 pmThanks, Daleyrocks. After reading the Hot Air link, and in light of similar recent events, I predict the Obama campaign will encourage Mr. Brennan to express his regret for any misunderstandings and tender his resignation as an adviser.
DRJ (a431ca) — 3/8/2008 @ 1:43 pmADA,
I agree that it’s good to be wary of government.
DRJ (a431ca) — 3/8/2008 @ 1:45 pmCrowds??? Please. The total voters is likely to be less than the population of McLean County in Illinois…
Scott Jacobs (d3a6ec) — 3/8/2008 @ 1:49 pmStashiu3 #3,
The post at LGF is amazing. Here’s Gateway Pundit’s stunning and apparently accurate summary:
DRJ (a431ca) — 3/8/2008 @ 1:51 pmHave you seen this? If there ever was a smoking gun. Tony Rezko is Obama’s Norman Shu, but Arab money not Chinese money.
nk (7b0075) — 3/8/2008 @ 2:08 pmCorroborated it with this.
nk (7b0075) — 3/8/2008 @ 2:12 pmThanks, NK. I posted on it here.
DRJ (a431ca) — 3/8/2008 @ 2:48 pmDRJ – Sorry for the confusion. It’s me. I think one of the stories I first read was written to imply that Brennan had directly criticized Obama instead of implicitly criticizing his position, or I took it that way. I thought I also saw a headline indicating he had in fact resigned from the campaign over the issue. I searched and can’t figure out what I saw. Sorry.
daleyrocks (906622) — 3/8/2008 @ 7:42 pmBHO destroyed HRC 59-40. He got at least 10 of 12 delegates, right?
Ummm, no. 7-5.
The Dem voters are getting the leadership (DNC) they deserve. What a joke. The DNC set-up a system that gave maximum voice to the insiders.
All true Dems well understand the value of 5-4, don’t they?
Ed (8166cd) — 3/8/2008 @ 7:50 pmSo Barrack gets seven delegates to Hillary’s five, with six still uncommitted until the convention in Denver, from a state that the GOP has carried in every presidential election since 1968 (even Bob Dole won Wyoming!), and in which Dick Cheney, its native son and six-time congressman, remains the single most popular politician.
For a net gain of two delegates, in other words, Obama has to give Hillary another argument to make to the superdelegates that (a) caucuses are unrepresentative, and (b) Obama is mostly winning states that are highly likely to remain Republican cherry red in 2008, while she’s winning the swing states that have determined the last two elections and are likely to determine this one.
Beldar (433d17) — 3/9/2008 @ 6:49 amWow. A Barack advisor has a different opinion than the candidate’s! We already know what happens when a candidate, later an elected oficial, surrounds himself with yes-men. Maybe a new approach is a good idea.
Andrew J. Lazarus (fcad65) — 3/9/2008 @ 8:46 amThis strikes me as an overstatement. Give Hillary Ohio and, looking ahead, Pennsylvania. Maybe even Florida, although I’d give McCain a big edge there over both. Yes, those are key swing states. But Obama won Colorado, Virginia, Missouri (barely), Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin. I guess it depends what your list of swing states looks like, doesn’t it?
Andrew J. Lazarus (fcad65) — 3/9/2008 @ 8:53 am