Just what is a “Lincoln-Douglas” debate?
Republican frontrunner Newt Gingrich and long-shot Jon Huntsman say they’ll hold a “Lincoln-Douglas” debate in New Hampshire on Monday. So how will it be different from the usual debates?
During the 1858 race for U.S. Senate in Illinois, incumbent Democrat Stephen Douglas and upstart Republican lawyer Abraham Lincoln held a series of seven three-hour debates in towns throughout the state on the day’s hottest topic: slavery.
The debates had no moderator, and the candidates spoke in paragraphs rather than today’s rehearsed 45-second sound bites. In each of the debates, the first candidate was given 60 minutes to make opening remarks. His opponent was given 90 minutes to respond, and the first candidate was allowed a final 30-minute rebuttal.
Today’s Republican voters will be spared a bladder-busting three-hour talkfest. Tim Miller, a spokesman for the Huntsman campaign, says Monday’s debate is likely to last just an hour and will focus on national security and foreign policy. The question of whether to have a moderator, and whom it might be, has yet to be decided, he said.
Both candidates have expressed annoyance with how the Republican debates have been moderated thus far. Until recently Gingrich’s debate performances had been most noteworthy for his attacks on the media. In a September debate in California, for instance, he told moderator John Harris of Politico: “I’m frankly not interested in your effort to get Republicans fighting each other.”
Huntsman, a former U.S. ambassador to China and Singapore who has the most foreign policy experience of any Republican candidate, had to wait 40 minutes to get asked his second question during the foreign policy debate last month and spoke for just over 6 minutes in the entire 90 minute debate, according to Politico.
In fairness to the moderators, debates exist to highlight policy differences between the candidates, and it could be argued that Huntsman, who has hardly registered in some national polls, has been given more media attention than his position in the race merits.
United States 0-2 in world sports arena
The United States has now lost out on two huge world sporting events in the past two years. And in each instance to first-time winners.
It may be an unintended consequence of the fight against terrorism. The very security policies aimed at protecting the United States from attack, might be working to bench it in contests to host world sporting events due to some concerns that foreign fans, players, even officials may have trouble entering the United States for the games.
FIFA awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, the smallest country ever to host the soccer finals, over competitors Australia, Japan, South Korea and the United States.
President Barack Obama was clearly not pleased, telling reporters: ”I think it was the wrong decision.”
He had sent the top U.S. law enforcement official, Attorney General Eric Holder, to Zurich on Tuesday to help make a last-minute pitch in the bid to secure the soccer games for the United States and presumably to soothe any concerns over security.
At that time, a Justice Department spokesman said it was Holder’s goal “to make clear that the United States has the capacity to host a World Cup that is both secure and welcoming to the people of the world.”
It was the second smackdown in as many years for the United States in the sports sphere, and came after former President Bill Clinton and actor Morgan Freeman also helped try to make the case.
Seriously folks – comedian testifies before U.S. Congress
It was all quite funny, but the subject is very serious especially in a sluggish U.S. economy with an unemployment rate stuck at 9.6 percent.
The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing Friday on whether illegal migrant workers take jobs away from Americans. Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert testified in character as a conservative talk show host.
He was there at the invitation of Representative Zoe Lofgren and his testimony was based on the one day he spent for his show “The Colbert Report” laboring in the fields along with migrant farm workers.
“I reject this idea that farm work is among the semi-mythical jobs that Americans won’t do,” Colbert said.
“I’ll admit, I started my workday with preconceived notions of migrant labor. But after working with these men and women, picking beans, packing corn for hours on end, side by side, in the unforgiving sun, I have to say, and I do mean this sincerely, please don’t make me do this again,” he testified.
“It is really, really hard.”
Colbert said his experience shows why so few Americans are clamoring to do the job.
Colbert shoots from the hips and manages to hit you right between the eyeballs. There is always the element of truth to get your juices flowing. Love him … and congress could use a good jab in the funny bone, at least to get them to listen, talk, agree, discuss, THINK…
In other words, the United States legislative assemblage could use a good mockery!
The first commenter here has decided that Fox News didn’t think it was very respectful. Perhaps he should read how the Republicans are delaying and making a mockery daily of the system?
Barack and David practice beer diplomacy
The White House was once again the setting for beer diplomacy.
This time to demonstrate the chumminess of the new British Prime Minister David Cameron and the not-so-new American President Barack Obama and reaffirm that “special relationship” enjoyed by the two allies. (The two leaders are also both left-handed, so plenty in common).
They discussed the benefits of cold beer versus warm ale and Cameron showed sporting enthusiasm for the “312″ ale that Obama introduced him to.
“We have just concluded some excellent discussions, including whether the beers from our hometowns that we exchanged are best served warm or cold,” Obama said. “My understanding is that the prime minister enjoyed our 312 beer and we may send him some more.”
Our understanding is that Cameron gave Obama bitter ale called Hobgoblin from a brewery near his Oxfordshire parliamentary constitutency.
Being from the Northeast, some of us had never heard of “312″ ale, whose name is the area code for Chicago from where Obama hails. So we Googled it, and found this description of the “urban wheat ale” : “Densely populated with flavor, 312’s spicy aroma of Cascade hops is followed by a crisp, fruity ale flavor delivered in a smooth, creamy body. This gives 312 a balance of flavor and refreshment that never fills you up and won’t let you down.”
Closer to home, I asked a couple of people who claimed to have actually tasted the lager and one of them described it as “nice, fairly hoppy,” while the other found it to be “fairly unremarkable with a slight metallic taste.”
Hillary’s mango diplomacy in Pakistan
Hillary Clinton has lots to worry about in Pakistan, but she has found one thing she can wholeheartedly embrace: Pakistani mangos.
The U.S. Secretary of State was treated to a mango dessert during dinner with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and they clearly won a fan — Clinton repeatedly raved about the fruit.
“We’ll get a lot of people hooked on Pakistani mangos,” Clinton told a “townhall”-style meeting in Islamabad, where she was on an official visit.
Mangos came up again at a press conference with Pakistan’s foreign minister, and yet again at a roundtable with Pakistani journalists.
Mangos Mangos Mangos.
Clinton suggested mangos might be one place to start when discussing benefits of better trade cooperation, including Pakistani requests for improved market access.
The fruit provided a sweet note to talks which otherwise focused on the hard details of the US-Pak relationship, which is increasingly under pressure amid the unfolding war in neighboring Afghanistan.
NewsBusters: CNN Correspondent Touts Mangos as Tool to Fight Militants
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/rusty-weiss /2010/07/19/cnn-correspondent-touts-man gos-tool-fight-militants
Iranian scientist saga has message for defectors: big bucks in U.S.
Five million dollars is a lot of money for most people on this planet.
So the revelation by unnamed U.S. officials that Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri was paid that amount for providing information about Iran may actually end up encouraging others thinking of defecting – that’s one train of thought among some experts.
“It is a great advertisement to folks that if they have good information — $5 million or more may be theirs. They just need to make up their minds that when they come here — there is no going back,” a former senior U.S. official tells me. “The message to me seems to be: don’t screw with Uncle Sam. We can be a very good friend, but a worse enemy.”
What has been surprising is that U.S. officials seem to have decided to play hardball (instead of going the silent route) by speaking out (anonymously of course) and saying that Amiri started giving information to the United States while living in Iran, that he was paid $5 million to show he was an important defector, and he disliked his wife and didn’t want to bring his family to the U.S.
Matthew Cole of ABC News, who first reported in March that Amiri had defected to the United States, has an interesting piece about what U.S. officials are now saying about the Iranian scientist.
“Amiri agreed to take the money and offer of resettlement, but told the CIA he would leave his family behind. When asked why he would go alone, Amiri told the CIA he disliked his wife and felt that his son would be better off in Iran believing his father had disappeared, according to the officials briefed on the matter,” Cole writes.
The view from Tehran is quite different. Amiri on his return to Iran said he was abducted by the CIA and pressured to lie about Iran’s nuclear program.
The mystery of the homesick Iranian nuclear scientist
The facts are few: Shahram Amiri, an Iranian nuclear scientist, disappeared in June 2009 during a pilgrimage to Mecca. He turned up this week at the Iranian interests section in the Pakistani Embassy in Washington wanting to go home.
What happened during the year inbetween is quite murky and even a timeline of what is publicly known requires much reading between the lines and connecting circumstantial dots.
ABC News reported in March that Amiri had defected to the United States. That would be quite a catch.
Tehran had accused the CIA of abducting Amiri and Iran’s state television showed a video in June of what it said was Amiri declaring he had been kidnapped and taken to the United States where he was “tortured.”
All of this bubbled up on Tuesday prompting U.S. officials from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on down to declare that Amiri had been in the United States of his own free will and was free to leave anytime.
But why would an Iranian scientist who apparently defected to the United States turn around and very publicly announce loudly that he was going back to Iran where he is likely to be viewed with suspicion by some among the ruling powers?
God, I hope you are 12 Roger. And if you are kidding … not funny. He feels pressure because he has a family. Knowing they may be torturing them is got to him.
Swapping spies to advance a post-Cold War relationship
It’s hardly ever been a rock-solid relationship but has had its moments. So what does one do when deceit is discovered but no one wants a divorce?
When Russia was caught engaging in the second oldest profession in the United States the two partners decided that the overall relationship was too important to disintegrate over such an indiscretion. Their answer: swap spies.
But the public story so far has raised questions about why the hurry?
“Looks to me that the Administration was in one mighty big rush to put aside this annoyance in the U.S.-Russian relationship. What a deal. We swap 10 Russians for 4 Russians,” a former U.S. intelligence official says.
“I am not buying the spin that we were anxious because of the ill health of some of those being held in Russia. No indication we were working to spring those folks until we found ourselves in the possession of the U.S. based ring,” he said.
The message appears to be that a Russian who gets caught spying in the United States will get sprung by Moscow in 10 days, while a Russian caught working on behalf of the west may get sprung years later if it suits Moscow’s needs, the former official says.
“Did we learn everything possible from the gang of ten before setting them free?” Unlikely that a full debriefing took place about other potential sleepers in the United States in that short of a time, he says.
GASP! Russia spying on the United States
There’s gambling in Vegas (sharp intake of breath)… Tea grows in China (eyes widen)… Russia spies on the United States (hand over heart stagger backward).
SHOCKING, SHOCKING, SHOCKING! (Get out the hanky and smelling salts).
Well, hold on a minute… it’s not exactly Robert Hanssen is it? The former FBI agent was charged with selling U.S. secrets to the former Soviet Union and then Russia and is now serving a life prison sentence in what was seen as a huge intelligence disaster – Russia penetrated the FBI.
In this spy story, a multi-year U.S. investigation into the “illegals” program nabbed 10 “alleged secret agents” in the United States and charged them with conspiring to act as unlawful agents of Russia. A charge that carries a 5-year prison sentence.
Covert Russian agents assumed false identities living in the United States on long-term, deep-cover assignments, to gather information on the United States and recruit sources to infiltrate U.S. policy-making circles. There was a drop site under a bridge, a newspaper hiding $5000, and code words like “Excuse me, but haven’t we met in California last summer?”
The information the FBI says the Russians were seeking – U.S. policy on Internet use by terrorists, U.S. policies on Central Asia, U.S. position on Iran’s nuclear program. Doesn’t sound like heavy lifting. The suspects were also accused of gathering information on high-penetration nuclear warhead research programs and background on CIA job applicants.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, said U.S. police were “out of control.”
Well it should certainly come as no surprise to anyone.
It should never be forgotten that Russia has always regarded us as an enemy and does everything they can to make our objectives more costly, including directly providing material aid, advice, and intel to our enemies in the current Middle East conflicts. This particular (rather amateurish) attempt at espionage may be laughable, but it’s only part of a much larger, ongoing effort that has some very unfunny consequences for us.
The Liberals always used to mock us conservatives for our “paranoia” in seeing Russian spies everywhere. Whenever a case like this comes to light, all they can manage to do is mumble some inane, vacuous sophistry like “everybody spies on everybody”.
Whatever current mask their government has on, with their lip sevice to democratic ideals and their phoney ‘elections’, Russia remains the same imperialist aggressor they have always been- and their anti-US policy remains unchanged.
Same old Russia.
White House to Kremlin: how r u? OMG…
President Barack Obama suggested to visiting Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that it might be time to toss out the red phone from Cold War days and open new lines of communication between the United States and Russia — Twitter.
(Although Obama may want to get the terminology down first, it’s Twitter not Twitters).
Obama cracked the joke at a news conference at the White House with Medvedev, who earlier this week visited technology firms in California and stopped at Twitter offices where he sent his first tweet.
“I appreciated very much the opportunity to hear President Medvedev’s vision for modernization in Russia, especially high-tech innovation as a personal passion of the president,” Obama said.
“And during his visit to Silicon Valley this week, he visited the headquarter of Twitters, where he opened his own account. I have one, as well, so we may be able to finally throw away those red phones that have been sitting around for so long,” Obama said.
We imagine the greeting over the Cold War hotline connecting the White House to the Kremlin goes something like: “Hello Russia, United States calling, please hold the line…”
But now that both U.S. and Russian leaders have tried their hand at tweeting, perhaps future communications may be something like: “how r u? OMG what was tt all about ydy?”
