UPDATE: Friday 11:45am ET. Power has resigned. Good. The only tenable response. Obama initially only "decried" the comment - he didn't act to fire her or ask for her resignation. And Power's resignation didn't happen till AFTER the outrage grew and became apparent. Notwithstanding that - Power should be commended for having (eventually) done the right thing. Now we can get back to the issues. And to hoping that whoever we pick as our prospective president has the judgment to select senior foreign policy advisors who are experienced enough to not make such fundamental mistakes in the first place.
"SHE IS A MONSTER..." - Samantha Power - Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to Barack Obama Direct quote in interview published in The Scotsman (UK) March 7, 2008
Taking time out from her duties as one of Barack Obama's advisors to promote her latest commercially-published book, ["Chasing The Flame" Penguin Press $32.95]- Samantha Power decided to express her true feelings about Hillary Clinton to one of Britain's leading political correspondents - Gerri Peev of The Scotsman.(a respected national daily newspaper since 1817)
Having expleted her way through the Obama campaign's recent stumbles: "We fucked up in Ohio" she turned her attentions to Senator Hillary Clinton.
This senior representative of the "New Type Of Politics" expressed herself in no uncertain terms about Hillary Clinton.
"SHE IS A MONSTER..."
Then - in a moment worthy of the Watergate culprits interviewed by Woodward and Bernstein - she tried the oldest scam in the "we fucked up" book - she tried to claim her comment was off-the-record AFTER THE FACT.
She said: "She is a monster, too - that is off the record - she is stooping to anything,"
Alas - that is not kosher. Just not done. You can't retroactively claim "off-the-record" status in the middle of an on-the-record interview with a national daily newspaper - just because (to use her dainty language) you "fucked up". THAT is "stooping to anything".
Ms Power is not a child or a neophyte. She is a grown woman age 37, who graduated from Yale University and Harvard Law School and is herself a journalist for Time Magazine. With a journalism career writing for U.S. News & World Report, The Boston Globe, The Economist and The New Republic. In other words - she knows the rules.
The rules of this interview were established at the outset. As the journalist for The Scotsman noted:
"In this instance, Samantha Power was promoting her book and it was established in advance that the interview was on the record."
Not allowed. Not done. TILT.
So what will Barack Obama do about this?
Will he follow the example set by Hillary Clinton who has dismissed advisors and campaign staff who have made intemperate and inappropriate statements?
Will he denounce and reject Samantha Power for her loathsome comment? And dismiss her from his campaign?
Will he embody "The New Type Of Politics" of which he speaks so often?
Or will he give her a free pass and in so doing condone the description of a fellow Senator and former First Lady as "A MONSTER"?
We shall see.
We certainly know what the uproar would be if a senior Clinton advisor was caught calling Barack Obama "A MONSTER"...
"I have been very clear to my campaign. I do not want to see research that is involved in trying to tear people down personally. If I find out that somebody is doing that, they will be fired. And I have been absolutely crystal clear about this, and I have been clear about this for a very long time." - Barack Obama - December 2007
Incidentally, I apologize in advance to Ms. Power for the use of the word "kosher" in a paragraph adjacent to her name. I am mindful of her long-standing, oft-expressed virulent objections to the State of Israel (in a 2002 speech she proposed that the US spend billions of dollars to impose a Palestinian state by military means) - and I do not mean to offend her by placing a word that she may find offensive so near to her name.
Follow Martin Lewis on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TheMartinLewis
This was not a remark made at the spur of the moment and then regretted it was a calculated move to once again go negative by the Clinton campaign. Mr. Lewis, if you have any intellectual honesty I would expect an article from you soon about why Wolfson should resign.
Let's move on to the next Obama bash.
This, BTW, is also true for Clinton, which means I am pretty much f***ed when it comes to voting.
Such nice people.
Hillary should just quit now so these nice people can get what they want.
They really deserve it.
He doesnt have the popular support and cant get enough electoral votes. With no experience in the Senate to speak of he's looking like the weakest of the two candidates.
All his nasty supporters and groupies cant change this fact and the louder they yell TAXES or Bitcch or Whatever they look like Repugs even more.
That said- both camps need to chill. The end game is to win the White House next year.
Martin Lewis, however, is trying to trick everybody reading this post by editing out all of the other interesting things that Powers said because they were true:
She also said:
"In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio's the only place they can win," Power is quoted as saying. "She is a monster, too — that is off the record — she is stooping to anything."
"You just look at her and think, 'Ergh'," Power is quoted as telling the newspaper. "But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive."
No Dem will win the White House this Nov. I do hope that the peon Dem voterrs look to vote in their Dem Senatorial and Congressional seats... just try to salvage something out of this mess. Too bad I really would have liked to see a change in 08.
Monster Clinton? Well if I was a card carrying Dem I'd call her a TRAITOR to the Dem party... alas I consider myself an indie. The card carrying follow my party right or wrong members will have to make that decision..
Sen. Hillary Clinton has declined to return $170,000 in campaign contributions from individuals at a company accused of widespread sexual harassment, and whose CEO is a disbarred lawyer with a criminal record, federal campaign records show.
The federal government has accused the Illinois management consulting firm, International Profit Associates, or IPA, of a brazen pattern of sexual harassment including “sexual assaults,” “degrading anti-female language” and “obscene suggestions.”
In a 2001 lawsuit full of lurid details, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claims that 103 women employees at IPA were victimized for years. The civil case is ongoing, and IPA vigorously denies the allegations.
“This is by far, hands down, the worst case I’ve ever experienced,” said Diane Smason, one of the EEOC lawyers handling the lawsuit. “Every woman there experienced sex harassment, they were part of a hostile work environment of sex harassment. And this occurred from the top down.”
Sen. Clinton’s spokesman, Howard Wolfson, told NBC News in a statement that the senator decided to keep the funds because the lawsuit is “ongoing” and because none of the sexual harassment allegations has been proven in court.
“With regard to the pending harassment suit, as a general matter, the campaign assesses findings of fact in deciding whether to return contributions,” Wolfson said.
From NBC’s Lisa Myers and Jim Popkin, Feb. 29, 2008.
America must begin to stand up for her democracy. We cannot allow anyone to further take our Democracy from us, be it the Clintons’, the Bush’s or anyone else. In the current delegate controversy, Camp Clinton must follow the Rules like everyone else and not be allowed to change the game in the middle. They know this. They cannot be allowed to Cheat the System for their own aggrandizement and selfish grasping of power. There must be a fair and equitable resolution to this matter.
As for Hillary’s superior foreign experience, Hillary did not think it important enough to read the National Intelligence Report and so she voted Yes on a War/Mistake that should have never been waged instead of having the intelligence and Judgment to say No, as other Senators did, and stated at the time, that we must not invade Iraq who did not bomb us on 911, but instead finish the job in Afghanistan. This makes her qualifyingly ineligible for the top job as commander-in-chief. Just because she surrounds herself with a bunch of generals does not make her qualified. A Photo-op does not eras her Iraq vote or exonerate it. Camp Clinton loves to stage phony events for the perception to make us think something that is not, is -- Masters of Spin & Hype and Delusion, often busing people in to their events to make the crowd look bigger than it is!
Those of us who care for our Democracy must begin to call CNN, MSNBC, NBC, etc. and ask them to begin to Vet Hillary Clinton and ask the questions they should be asking like why she has not returned the money back to IPA, and about their Camp contacting Canda first in the Naftagate controversy, and to stop the unfair and uneven reporting of just Obama’s negatives. It is an illusion that the press has been soft on her, as we know Camp Clinton are the Masters of Spin.
MEDIA OWES OBAMA AN APOLOGY AND UPDATE ON NAFATAGATE, CALL INITIATED BY CLINTON:
Naftagate was the work of an initial call from the Clinton camp and Bush’s Canadian allie, Stephen Harper in an attemp to sabotage Obama and the democrats, which they did!
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080305.wharpleak0305/BNStory/National/home
Brotherhood (1937) - 552:
552. Do you wish to be courageous? Then prove your courage in battling for Brotherhood. Assurances alone will not create courage, nor will praises affirm achievement. No preparations can be a guarantee of success. Courage is tested by unexpected obstacles. I have already spoken about courage; if I repeat it, it means that this quality is especially needed on the path to Brotherhood
Let the Vetting Begin!
Powers said something stupid, perhaps out of exhaustion. The people that are trying to defend Obama by claiming that what Powers said was actually true are doing more to help Clinton than Obama.
===========MARTIN RESPONDS===========
We are so rarely in agreement! Hillary Clinton is a politician. With all that that entails. Good AND bad. So was FDR, JFK, LBJ, RFK, Bill Clinton, Al Gore. And so is Barack Obama. That's one of the reasons I admire him and why I believe that he will - at some point - make a good president. He didn't get where he is today - any more than Hillary got where SHE is - by not having a politician's smarts, ego and sharp elbows. I don't resent him those attributes. I WANT that in a politician. We NEED that in a politician who can take on the GOP. The issue I have is not Obama's undoubted and considerable talents. A key issue is the pretense for political purposes - by him, by his campaign and most of all by his fanbase - that he is somehow different than other politicians in this regard. He isn't. And it's no ill-reflection on him that he isn't. If he was truly different and lacked the skills, ego and sharp elbows of a politician - right now he'd be the most popular community organizer in a small ward in Chicago.
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Fair is fair. Please don't start whining if some Hillary aide calls Obama a name.
And, in the Middle East, to be called a Muslim is a compliment. So, Hillary aides totally meant it in that way.