he has the video, or that he will be releasing it on Monday. I've been monitoring No Quarter.

Here's what he said:

"New and dramatic developments. This is a heads up. I’ll post the news Monday morning by 0900 hours. Now I know why people who have seen the videotape say it is stunning. Barack’s headaches are only starting."

That's it, that's all he said.

So it's not at all clear what's coming on Monday morning. It may be only that he's now got a fuller description of what's on the tape from someone who's seen it, or possibly a transcript. Obviously, he himself has not seen it.

My guess is he's waiting for confirmation of whatever he has from a second source.

they have? (Michelle on "whitey" from the same church, a la Wright and Phleger)

Way back when, in the olden days with printer's ink and paper, misinformation took overnight to spread and sometimes days to take hold - shocking to the young, I know, but really; it was that slow.

Now, a few keystrokes and a send button and lies, or even earnest errors, can fly around the globe in a fraction of a second.

Lambert is spot on (again). We should all take a minute. Get up and walk around. Think before we write. From here on, the stakes will get very high, very quickly; we should take care to be sure - as much as can be - that what we write is accurate. If we can, be slightly circumspect. Consider that the world will read our words. We should try to make them words to be proud of.

This is serious ratf*** territory.

It gives me the willies.

lambert,

thanks for reprieving this bit of weblog investigative history.

i came to the weblog world through a reference in a dan fromkin "white house watch" column in wapo in 2004. i had no ideal it existed before then.

the two stories i really enjoyed following that fall were paul lukasiak's investigation of the bush national guard records

and

joseph cannon's investigation into bush's use of an electronic device worn on his back while participating in the presidential debates with kerry.

both stories were on the mark.

both stories were ignored or mishandled by the corporate media.

the new york times had the bush-cheating-during-the-debates story worked up and killed it for fear of "influencing the election".

cbs executives let themselves be bluffed into retreat from an election changing news story by right-wing operatives (dan rather has a law suit going which may tell us more about what news the public is allowed to know).

not long after, i ran across "the next hurrah" and emptywheel, writing on the valerie plame business and found myself constantly reading the work of another superb investigative reporter from the weblog world.

these days NO QUARTER and Rezko Watch are two activists weblogs i read daily to learn as much as i can about senator obama's background and the background of those around him.

i also check in daily at cannonfire where you can learn a lot that you will never hear discussed elsewhere. and which has that stubborn i.f. stone feel about it.

and, thanks to lambert's efforts, i get to read paul lukasiak lucid analyses right here at corrente.

emptywheel and glenn greewald have never left my must read list, though they have, wisely for their purposes, stayed away from my current interest - the democratic nominating campaign.

so, from my viewpoint,

the activist weblogs such as no quarter, and the activist investigators are tremendously important for getting information about powerful people that would otherwise be suppressed.

one type of activist weblog that seems to be missing from the weblog world is one that directly summons individuals to political action and provides guides for doing so. i suppose they exist - outside of political campaigns, that is - but i have not run across any.

The two standard typewriter fonts, from the 1950s on, are serifed -- both Courier and Prestige Elite.

Ratsturbation: n., ratfucking oneself.

"and maybe not then even."

Always treat news of this sort with a healthy dose of skepticism.

OTOH - Also consider that even if the video is real and undoctored, the Obamanation will cry foul and claim it is fake.

------------------------------------------------
“Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are.”
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

OTOH - Also consider that even if the video is real and undoctored, the Obamanation will cry foul and claim it is fake.

That the doctored "War Room" video was made and released to poison the well.

An addendum to #3 is that Keith in his intellectual brilliance will also assert with full foam something to the effect: career ending, driven from the country, lashed to the mast of a ghost ship and sent ceaselessly into the dark seas.. yadda yadda.. oh and good night and good luck..

Ah, Keith Olberman, an overwrought pearl-clutching school marm with a genetic predisposition to rend garments, tear hair, and feign outrage at least once or week.

dupager

Anglachel went over this yesterday and I pretty much agree with everything she said and you say, lambert.

I've said it before about this video rumor, but I'm not going to believe anything until I see it with my own eyes and judge it with my own mind. I don't think Larry Johnson lies, but Republicans (who are his sources) sure do.

but who?

who has the strongest motive to release this video now?

1) the mccain campaign?

why now?

obama is by far the easier opponent. he has legal and ideological baggage in spades.

2)the clinton campaign?

they don't play this way.

but if they did, doing so and being found out would be deadly.

3) the obama campaign?

say what?

the obama campaign?

oh yeah.

get the video out now.

give the networks a carefully edited version so the very worst is chopped.

let it run on teevee, now.

maybe even claim that it was the clinton folk who really released it.

release it now and plead "old news" to reporters in october.

seems kind of obvious to me.

some in advance damage control

I say stay very far away from this. r work very hard to debunk it if it even shows up.

"Buckhead" famously claimed to have "evidence" that the memos about Bush could not have been typed on equipment available to the 111th at the time.

Bull.

Fucking.

Shit.
WARNING: MULTIPLE PDFs at link.

In 1978 and 1979 the United States Air Force active duty offices routinely handled personnel memoranda using IBM Selectric typewriters* -- and the IBM Selectric had been AF issue for more than 20 years. It's beyond belief that a Texas "champagne unit" of the Guard wouldn't've had -- and used -- equivalent equipment.

Some Selectrics do in fact have a "superscript character" mode -- look at the type ball, which strikes the ribbon to create the printed result. Not all Selectrics do, but some have the capability.

Hence Buckhead's "factual debunking" of the memos ... fails.

Killian's memos, derided for "proportional spacing" which Buckhead and others claimed was not possible before the invention of Microsoft Word (How did newspapers do their headlines since the days of Ben Franklin, then? Or the frackin' 6-point classified ads and legal notices, which WILL make you go as blind as religious fixation on the stock-quotes agate, only in a different direction), were typed more than a year after the letter that officially notified then-Lt. Bush of his promotion from 2nd Lt. to 1st Lt.-- a letter with proportional spacing and the same font as the Killian memos. That letter was part of an official White House document dump, by the way -- on 9/24/04, among stacks of pages a court had ordered the White House to release.

*I know -- I watched my travel orders and my transfer orders and my discharge all being typed on IBM electric machines; and during a short stint as a "casual airman" awaiting orders off Lackland, *I* typed on them to fill out official documents for other airmen in 1978. The plural of anecdote isn't data; but if you were enlisted, or a junior officer who got to do your own typing, and you did it with an electric typewriter in the late '70s on a USAF base, it was probably a Selectric with a typing ball.
Depending on the model you probably had some "case fractions" available such as 1/2 and 1/4 and some automatic superscript characters available such as th or rd (particularly handy for the military in writing about unit designations).

...is moving kinda slow today, thanks no doubt to the 9AM promise.

After several tries, I was able to get the front page to load, but I couldn't read what was below the fold on this piece, which doesn't do anything to assuage Lambert's sage warning to maintain strong skepticism about this topic until it's vetted:

I learned over the weekend why the Republicans who have seen the tape of Michelle Obama ranting about “whitey” describe it as “STUNNING.” I have not seen it but I have heard from five separate sources who have spoken directly with people who have seen the tape. It features Michelle Obama and Louis Farrakhan. They are sitting on a panel at Jeremiah Wright’s Church when Michelle makes her intemperate remarks. Whoops!! When that image comes out it will enter the politcal ads hall of fame. It will be right up there with the little girl plucking daisy petals in the famous 1964 ad LBJ used against Barry Goldwater.

Barack may have quit his church but his religious problems are not over. Barack Obama has a Nation of Islam problem that will receive more attention in the coming days.

http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/06/02/...

"I have not seen it but I have heard from five separate sources who have spoken directly with people who have seen the tape."

So Larry Johnson hasn't seen the video. His five separate sources haven't seen the video. But supposedly they've spoken to people who have. And I'm supposed to what? Think this is true? I don't even believe things that are on video I see myself half the time. It continues to sound like GOP bullshit to me.

You never go wrong in politics with "put up or shut up." Unless or until someone has the video and is willing to show it and have it analyzed, I believe shutting up about it is the best policy. There's nothing to be said about a video that there's no evidence even exists.

recently--he took Pfleger off his religious one just a few weeks ago too--preemptive covering his ass?

Hinessight (& FOX) is all over this too-- their front page-- http://www.hinessight.com/

this is what i love about the weblog world.

i can learn things in a flash that i'd have to spend days trying to dig out.

Couldn't find it in your link?

...but I worry that there might be something significant here. Although from Larry Johnson's tidbits, it may be just another shocking expose of a frustrated AA railing on the white establishment. Will that be sufficient to scupper Barry's election chances? Very probably. But to pander to this sort of white victim nonsense is out of the question as far as I'm concerned. A democrat win on that score would be a hollow victory, IMHO.

The fast majority of Obama's supporters understand that every black politician has had to move through circles that have been highly critical of the white establishment. It will be interesting to see if Condoleezza Rice isn't brought into this debate. Heaven knows I can't imagine it will be difficult to dig up some scathing anti-white sermons from her pastor in Civil Rights-era Alabama.

The stimulus behind the Civil Rights movement, and the elements of it that might have made law but took a lot longer to see reality (I'm from St. Louis), are fresh in the minds of AAs. Often to their own detriment, when it has come to backing corrupt pols on skin colour alone. Or rallying to release criminals, or lynch innocent men. I've tasted this racism personally, and I don't like it. But I understand where it comes from, and I haven't yet reached the level of sanctimoniousness required to think that it is wholly illegitimate. In my city, the vast majority of the poor are black, and it is as a direct result of pre-civil rights era policies. The wounds aren't healed by a damn sight, and I'm prepared to wear a thick skin and suffer the backlash (which rarely raises beyond a snide remark) until they are. As far as victims of racism go, we've had it easy.

As it is, I believe Obama when he says that he does not subscribe to the inflammatory views of those who, certainly, he has pandered to for political expedience (as if he's in a league of his own on that score).

It this video is just Michelle shouting a "Hell yeah!" to some fire-and-brimstone sermon, I will be less than impressed. If it's something more fundamentally indicative of her character, and more importantly, her husband's, then I guess it was just too early for this sort of gig after all.

works most effectively as a disruptor during this less than smooth primary season. It, once again, gives the democratic party another bombshell to dodge and clean up after. It doesn't help Hillary because it may be too late in the season to expect an upset (although I'm hoping for just such an event) and it certainly doesn't help Obama. Even if this is false, which may be the case, it's done enough damage to keep everyone off balance until November.

This is a new strain of political IED, just the mention, the rumor of something changes the campaign. We don't even need to see the tape, notice how no one really has seen this video and already damage is being assessed. In the words of our president "mission accomplished".

I love this job!

But one suggestion is that this might be a hatchet job not unlike the Mickey Kantor video.

Well, we'll see.

One thing's for sure, the Democrats have met their enemy, and it is us.