This is probably a misquote of Goolsbee. The people running the Canadian government are ideologically aligned with Bush. Stephen Harper himself is a supporter of right-wing economics. It's easy for some Conservative minion somewhere to 'accidentally' misquote a Democratic official.

"I don’t think people should come to Ohio and tell the people of Ohio one thing and then have your campaign tell a foreign government something else behind closed doors."

That's rich. This from the "I didn't support NAFTA back when I supported it" candidate.

This isn't the kitchen sink. It's the toilet.

So a semantically ambiguous note scribbled by some aide during an informal conversation with someone who is not Obama... is a smoking gun? Alright.

To be fair though, neither Clinton nor Obama's PLATFORMS are especially "protectionist." Renegotiating NAFTA really is not at odds with a pro-trade mentality.

It's about the lies coming out of Obama's own mouth.

Here's what Obama said, as of 2/29 -- last Friday:

Sen. Obama: “Our office has said the story is not true. It’s important for viewers to understand that it was not true.” Anchor: “So, completely inaccurate, did not happen, end of discussion.” Sen. Obama: “It did not happen.” [WKYC TV, 2/29/08]

Just words = Just lies

Pants on fire, Senator. You should do something about that.

It's hard to say whether this will have enough time to get traction before tommorrow's election, but it's certainly going to be fodder for McCain.

The beauty part about this whole scandal is that there are no fingerprints on it from the Clinton campaign, so the usual attempts to blame it on "politics" ain't going nowhere.

Obama has been flooding radio and TV here in Ohio with ads about NAFTA for weeks now.

Glad to hear that.
He really needs to choke her on this.

Her attempt here to get traction from this Goolsbee nothingness... is a sure sign that she is sinking on this issue.

As well she should.
She is the NAFTA queen.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/26/us/politics/26clinton.html?sq=hillary%20clinton%20did%20not%20have%20security%20clearance&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=print

The New York Times

December 26, 2007
The Long Run
The Résumé Factor: Those 2 Terms as First Lady
By PATRICK HEALY

As first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton jaw-boned the authoritarian president of Uzbekistan to leave his car and shake hands with people. She argued with the Czech prime minister about democracy. She cajoled Roman Catholic and Protestant women to talk to one another in Northern Ireland. She traveled to 79 countries in total, little of it leisure; one meeting with mutilated Rwandan refugees so unsettled her that she threw up afterward.

But during those two terms in the White House, Mrs. Clinton did not hold a security clearance. She did not attend National Security Council meetings. She was not given a copy of the president’s daily intelligence briefing. She did not assert herself on the crises in Somalia, Haiti and Rwanda.

And during one of President Bill Clinton’s major tests on terrorism, whether to bomb Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, Mrs. Clinton was barely speaking to her husband, let alone advising him, as the Lewinsky scandal sizzled.

In seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, Mrs. Clinton lays claim to two traits nearly every day: strength and experience. But as the junior senator from New York, she has few significant legislative accomplishments to her name. She has cast herself, instead, as a first lady like no other: a full partner to her husband in his administration, and, she says, all the stronger and more experienced for her “eight years with a front-row seat on history.”

Funny to see how all the obamaloons trying to jusify this disaster!

This is excellent news for Hillary.

This is great news for yellow pantsuit wearing Republicans.

Yo dude, what's up with the fairy tale obsession? You sound unhinged.

OK, I'm going to try to be a moderating voice here...this is not meant as a criticism of anyone because I can be as vociferously partisan as anyone; however, I would like to comment on this story.

I am a strong Obama supporter based on his platform, his charisma, and his message of optimism and hope. I'm not a "Kool-Aid" drinker; I happen to be tired of the Clintons and their triangulating and calculating every single political move. I'm from New York, so I feel that I have justification to be tired of the Clintons and don't want to see another dynasty in the White House. However, I will admit to all Hillary supporters that this is a troubling story, with possible repercussions in Ohio. I will also say that I believe Goolsbee when he says that his statements were taken out of context - that happens all the time. I will also say that I believe the Clinton campaign probably also "reached out" to the Canadian government in one way or another to assuage their fears about overturning NAFTA. I think it's troubling that the Obama campaign issued a denial that a meeting ever took place and then a memo was produced corroborating CTV's claims. There's no way to get around it - it's not a good thing for a campaign to get caught in a lie, even if there's really not a lot to the story. I'll call it a misstep by the Obama campaign, and I hope it doesn't have any negative effect tomorrow. If it does, well, then the campaign will hopefully learn from this and not let it happen again.

However, the bottom line is that we are all a bit naive if we think that NAFTA is going to be overturned anytime soon; we're also naive if we think that most of this NAFTA talk isn't political posturing in Ohio and customized for the particular audience (in Texas, there's far less NAFTA talk because it's been good for many Texans). Outside of all the posturing and (perhaps) empty promises, we have to decide, each of us, who we feel is best able and ready to lead our country and get us out of the hellhole we're in, and my personal choice is Obama.

This is just my humble opinion and I'm open to comments and whatever. :)

Are embassy and consulate officials in the habit of sitting on important communications and not forwarding what they have been told, to their governments. Of course not. Since the Canadian Government has already officially stated that they received no such communications from anyone, then it is obviously a false story.

If a any Consular Official of the Canadian Government had received any such information from either candidate, they would have informed their government at once. That is what their job is all about. They did not, so this story is pure bull shit.

Ohhhhh... the Obama campaign appears to have made a mistake. That's one blunder for the Obama campaign compared to too many to count on both hands for the Clinton campaign.

Clear who the better campaigner/manager is to me; and it sure isn't Hillary.

It seems to me that the Canadian Government would really like to see Hillary Clinton or John McCain as our next President - that couldn't be because they are afraid Obama would actually keep his word to strengthen labor and environmental standards on NAFTA.

What is really scary to me is that I read through these quotes from the memo and nothing seems to be at all strange or saying what the Clinton campaign has been implying all along - that Obama is a liar who is just campaign slick talking.

The only one slick talking here is the candidate who was stumping for NAFTA and supported it when it first passed during her husband's administration and who now says she would change it - despite the fact that her husband's buddy Giustra and Lord knows how many others are profitting so heavily from it. But of course, her tax records are unimportant and should only be examined some day in the distant future.

Until then, be afraid of the scary unknown Obama man who has never said or done anything to give anybody cause to mistrust his possition on NAFTA, because the Canadian Government - who benefits from NAFTA - says we should.

The meeting that the Obama campaign denied was the one INITIALLY reported by CTV: A conversation that:
-- took place in Washington
-- in a call from Obama to the Canadians
-- from a "high level staffer" with the Obama campaign
-- to Ambassador Michael Wilson
-- purpose of the call was to convey the message that whatever Obama said about NAFTA was "campaign rhetoric"

That was the CTV story that was denied and that denial was accurate because NO SUCH CONVERSATION EVER HAPPENED.

It was not until the following day that there was any mention of Goolsbee or Chicago, and neither Goolsbee nor the campaign ever denied that he had spoken to the Canadians, only that he had said what was reported. And that is something that he continues to deny.

During the debate, Sen. Obama stated:
"I think we should use the hammer of a potential opt out as leverage to ensure that we actually get labour and environmental standards that are enforced."

The Candian's own memo reports that Goolsbee said:
"On NAFTA, Goolsbee suggested that Obama is less about fundamentally changing the agreement and more in favour of strengthening/clarifying language on labour mobility and environment and trying to establish these as more 'core' principles of the agreement."

Where is the double-talk? Goolsbee was conveying the same message to the Candians that Obama conveyed in his public statement: labor and environment.

What I want to know is who came up with the totally false Washington/staffer/Ambassador story?? THAT's what made this whole thing newsworthy (to the extent it is) and that was a total crock. Think about it. If ABC or CTV had broken the "story" about the Goolsbee meeting, would anyone have cared?

I think the Obama campaign made a mistake by taking on Goolsbee as an advisor. By pushing an uncritical stance on NAFTA, Goolsbee is being true to his other job, as DLC Senior Economist.

The Clinton camp is of course, grossly hypocritical on this issue. Obama may have erred in taking on a DLC advisor -- and is paying the price -- but Hillary Clinton leads the DLC. By taking on Goolsbee, Obama flirted with an uncritical free trade policy, and now he's getting called on it. But Clinton is married to such a policy.

Here is the original CTV story:

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080227/dems_nafta_080227/20080227/

It contains this description of the meeting and what was said:

>>>a top staff member for Obama's campaign telephoned Michael Wilson, Canada's ambassador to the United States, and warned him that Obama would speak out against NAFTA, according to Canadian sources.

The staff member reassured Wilson that the criticisms would only be campaign rhetoric, and should not be taken at face value.

Now that is a story worth reporting and very troubling to those of us who support Obama because of his honesty. But .... details of meeting wrong - people involved in the meeting wrong -- content of the message wrong -- and there was no conflict between what was said (by Goolsbee to the Canadian CG in Chicago) and what Obama said in the debate.

So ..... who the heck came up with that original, false version? Because without that, there would be no story.

really good analysis here by Elizabeth2 that the original CTV fraud has not been investigated sufficiently. And that fraud was the only reason there was any suspicion about contacts with Canadians. So, now that AP has a story about a 1,300-word memo written by Canadians that paraphrases an Obama advisor, we need to see the entire memo.

I am less sure now that this is all a waste of our time, so I take back what I said over the weekend about Greg wasting our time. But the reporting is still incomplete, it seems. And despite AP breaking this new angle, I don't see the story on the front page of the WaPo or NYT websites. Let's hope it never gets there.

Rebuttal not too bad:

In response, the Obama campaign accused Mrs. Clinton of using false ammunition in a desperate attempt to try to remain in the race.

"Senator Clinton knows full well that she’s not telling the truth on this story, and that her blatant distortion is just part of her campaign’s stated strategy to throw the kitchen sink at Senator Obama in the closing days of this campaign," Bill Burton, the Obama campaign spokesman, said in a statement e-mailed to reporters. "The truth is, Senator Clinton called Nafta a victory and has switched positions for raw political reasons. Her false attack won’t protect American workers, but as President, Senator Obama will."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/us/politics/03cnd-campaign.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

This is a big story and an important one, not that it will get much play right now. It could not be any clearer that Obama was reassuring the Canadian government that all of his talk about renegotiating and boycotting NAFTA was just “messaging” and not to be concerned about it. He and Goolsbee and the campaign (along with the Canadian government) lied about the meeting for days until the memo popped up.

The story is solid, and it shows a candidate who is running on integrity and how “words matter” deceiving voters, flatly lying to the press and telling a foreign government not to worry about renegotiation of an international treaty (not exactly in American interests).Let's say this story never got out and Obama is elected president. He can hardly renegotiate NAFTA now since he has no leverage.

Unsurprisingly, this story was getting little if any coverage until Clinton spoke up about it. But when TPM has front-paged every little snarky insinuation about supposed Clinton dirty tricks for months, how can they pass on a story like this- hiding the story and framing it as another Clinton attack?

You know who is deceiving voter's, GWB, and John McCain. I am not asking for the people who support Mrs Clinton to avoid to talking about substantial policy difference, I am not even asking them to tone down their Saint Obama, Obamabot, etc crap that many posters have posted (because some Obama supporters have been a little over zealous as well) but are the posters on here even remotely interested in whether both candidates psoition of re-looking at NAFTA is a good idea or a bad idea? I can keep on coming back here to refute the claims made by CTV regarding this incident but it would seem that many Clinton supporters do not believe these claims because they have evidence to support their view. OK for Fuck's sake can we call this a minor issue, with re-looking at NAFTA being the real issue or campaign rhetoric vs real action being the other. I mean seriously if what you are saying is that Obama was saying one thing but had no plans on delivering it in the future, well can you give me an instance in the past where he has done this in prior campaigns. And in light of having proper discourse, has Mrs Clinton promised some things in her campaign and then failed to deliver? And then do you think that NAFTA is a win for America, why, for whom, how? Should we renogotiate this issue? At least the democrats are concerned with the economy and the healthcare of all American including the troops, which is not at all what the Republicans are concerning themselves with during this campaign. In fact the Republicans are trying to win this election based on how many times they can use the name Ronald Reagan! I mean John McCain was not only an officer in the Navy but he was also a foot-soldier in Reagan's Army, who knew that in the US their were two national armies in the 80's the US Armed ofrces and Ronal Reagans foot soldiers. With Reagan's memory regarding Iran-Contra it would appear that accountability was never an issue in Reagan's army!

My God! Look to the right. She is within 4 pts of McCain in Texas right now. I know this is hard to hear for many of you, but we are getting a clear answer on who Texans want to see picking up that phone. I'm loving it that it may not be McCain! But for one minute look at her next to McCain. Forget Obama for one minute. Wouldn't you rather see her answer the phone than McCain?
We may have struck gold!