because of snub-gate, likeable enough, and his other less than gracious behaviors towards Clinton, not to mention the motions he makes of a knife twisting earlier in this rally in reference to Clinton hitting him at the debate yesterday (http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=4025010n), I would believe it.

I'm glad I live in a red state.

Confession: I use my middle finger often, especially for the d, k, i, e, m and c keys on my keyboard.

[He mixed a Jay-Z dirt-off-the-shoulder reference with a Rolling Stones scrape-the-sh!t-right-off-your-shoes Sweet Virginia reference immediately afterward. Talk about a two-toned dog whistle!]

How can we back and try to elect someone who is engaging in juvenile behavior, regardless of who its aimed at. How have we come so far backing someone like this as a viable nominee without anyone noticing? What happens if he is the President and things aren't going well.

What does it say about his judgement if he does in the PUBLIC?

Look at about 0:32 second mark.  It's unmistakable.  

Watch the two women at the back row on the left of the screen, look at the woman in red mouthing "oh" and gasping and laughing, and then explain it to her neighbor.  

On the 3:10 mark on the video on Corrente where he says:

That is also precisely why I am running for president to change that kinds of politics.

why do i care? because it shows his character. someone who has so little respect for his opponent probably has just as little respect for me.

It shows how far we have tumbled as we continue to eat our own.

In Europe folks use the middle finger for pointing etc.
In America, almost all of us are very careful about that.

He makes slick Willy (like Bill BTW) look positively sticky!

I understand that Senator Clinton, periodically when she's feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal

They're both at the same level of maturity, and based on the same hide-in-plain-sight mentality that one would expect from a 13-year-old girl putting down one of the less cool kids.

Yeah, just a total coincidence.

The only thing that irritates me about this video is that this is the 21st debate and his 1st round of tough questions and he's actually whining about it.  Whining.  About it.  Crazy.

My first reaction was incredulous. My second was anger. Now I just want to cry. I pity him. I really do. I have long thought him duplicitous. I can now add pitiful.

I've been thinking this for quite a while now, but I just can't understand why he would want this.  He mocks her every chance he gets whenever he stumbles and she exploits his weakness.  Does he really expect her not to do that?  Why does he have to be such a juvenile sore loser?  

It is obviously intentional.
Do you believe these pols don't get coached on body language and speech etc?

give me a break!

1-look at the sign in the background, in one vid you can see the lettering from one end of the banner, in the other you see the other end of the banner, in neither do you see the center section. The audience members look totally different because they are different people at opposite ends of the seating area.

2- the audio of the audience sounds different because the cbs video uses the podium mic as its source. the other video is getting sound from the camera's built in mic.

3-his small gestures match up to his voice in both videos exactly the same.

he says
"and i have to say senator clinton.."
 (he does a little shoulder shrug)

"looked in her element..."
(circle motion with hands)

"she's uh.."
(finger scratch)

I know some need to manufacture umbrage and outrage to keep their spirits up but this is down right silly.

Feel free to run with it, though.  Im sure you wont look silly or anything.

Oh, and if you look just closely enough at 3:18 in the clip for just a nano second I think he flashes the secret Harvard Elitist Illuminati male member sign and then right at the end just behind his back he gives the black panther fist sign (of course after slipping on his black gloove and free mumia t-shirt) to his homies.

The man has no class.  None.  I think the middle-finger and the timing of his pauses were absolutely deliberate.  The man who grinned and smirked while demonstrating Hillary's twisting of the knife, the shoulder-brushing - it was all of a package.  Immature, mean-spirited, classless.  This isn't change, or hope or unity - at least not the kind I want.

Clearly his crowd reacted to the gesture and I'm pretty sure they thought he was flipping her off.

If Obama is going to use demeaning and dismissive gestures like the "brush off" then he should be really careful about which finger he uses to scratch his itches.

Come on, do you think we were born yesterday?  You think we've never seen or used the subtle middle finger gesture while adjusting eyeglasses, rubbing chins or scratching other facial itches?

When I saw just that 15 seconds or so again - as posted here at TL, with sound, like Jeralyn - I also saw nothing. Whats the Big Deal I thought?
Have Clinton-supporters finally flipped too? Or just a storm in a tea-cup... shrug

But -

When I saw the whole 3-4 minutes on CBS, (before and long after the scratch) from a wider angle and clearer view of the audience immediately behind him and their reactions, coupled in time with what he was actually saying.

Then.. then, I saw what's being referred to - its all in the audience reaction, the face scratch is just the first time we see it, and its more obvious actually just after that scratch, when he goes on for a little while about her digging in the knife and twisting it, with special pauses timed for e3ffect. Then comes Captain Smirk, and Captain Sneer, and the crowd going ap*sh*t with jeers at his somewhat crude gestures used to demonstrate Hillary digging the knife in.

It may not have been intentional of course, but the audience perceived it that way, in context of the whole segment...

On second or third viewing, you know what it reminded me of?

Junior high, 8th-grade etc,
gym class politics.

Although I'm a girl, I'm fairly sure the boys in my co-ed education, must have their own version of junior-high gym class politics.

hh how I hated gym class in those years, with the put-downs, one-up(wo)man-ship on personal insults, the ganging-up, the back-stabbing, the sneers, the jeers, the sarcasm.

I like to think most of us grow out of it sometime before high-school graduation anyway - although recently I read an article in a British women's liberal feminist magazine, talking about corporate office career politics between women - calling it "stiletto politics". (Interestingly, as an aside, far more common amongst women who had been educated co-ed, than amongst those who had been educated single-sex)

But anyway,

Trying to turn a scratch into a scandal? Have you no sense of shame? Don't you know how silly this looks? How can I take anything you write seriously if you get righteously indignant over a scratch? Can't you see that trying to turn a scratch into an attack is irrational?

My totally uninformed guess has been that his itching is related to quiting smoking.  But, I've heard that he wears a lot of makeup (for tv) so maybe that is the reason.  Or, maybe it's stress, Or, maybe he's always had an itchy face.  This situation may be a chance for me to find out why he's so itchy, does anybody have an idea?

So the crowd went wild with applause because a guy, who is quitting smoking, itched his face with his middle finger just after he talked about Clinton and just before he referenced her twisting a knife.

I've seen it a hundred times at school.

To me it's absolutely clear cut.

Go ahead, spend a few years at the high school level in the public schools....and then come back and talk to me about it.

I calles two teacher friends just to be sure-and they saw the same thing.

I do not feel that way about Obama.  The man is not Dick Cheney.  He is not as ugly as some of his unfortunate supporters.

I think he was simply nervous in the face of the kind of questions he can expect in the general election, up against media-Mahdi John McCain.

Link:
http://tinyurl.com/69vd23

"i don't think"

it is a sad day in talk left when "i think" becomes the standard.  by thinking, you leave the door open to possibly, maybe he did, maybe he didn't.

if you want to call something out, call it out on the basis of fact.  say he did it and stand by it.  this "i think" business smells like propaganda and innuendo.  squint your eyes, tilt your head and look at it this way.

this is desperate and a cheap shot.

How Obama Fell to Earth

Back in Iowa, Barack Obama promised to be something new -- an unconventional leader who would confront unpleasant truths, embrace novel policies and unify the country. If he had knocked Hillary Clinton out in New Hampshire and entered general-election mode early, this enormously thoughtful man would have become that

But he did not knock her out, and the aura around Obama has changed. Furiously courting Democratic primary voters and apparently exhausted, Obama has emerged as a more conventional politician and a more orthodox liberal.

He sprinkled his debate performance Wednesday night with the sorts of fibs, evasions and hypocrisies that are the stuff of conventional politics. He claimed falsely that his handwriting wasn't on a questionnaire about gun control. He claimed that he had never attacked Clinton for her exaggerations about the Tuzla airport, though his campaign was all over it. Obama piously condemned the practice of lifting other candidates' words out of context, but he has been doing exactly the same thing to John McCain, especially over his 100 years in Iraq comment.

Obama also made a pair of grand and cynical promises that are the sign of someone who is thinking more about campaigning than governing.

(pause for audience hoots, hollers, and cheers)

(then continue with a CYA statement to "CHANGE" the meaning)

People have been claiming he does this all the time. Well, videos should show it.