Supplemental: The children are beautifully trained!

WEDNESDAY, JULY 1, 2015

The Clinton “scandals” through the eyes of Duke 2009:
The children are beautifully programmed, what with their spotless minds.

The latest such player is David Graham, Duke 2009. At the Atlantic, he apparently was assigned to compile “The Clinton Scandal Primer,” which he chillingly says he’ll “update as new information arrives.”

To call this “more prejudicial than probative” is like saying it’s dark and cold inside young Graham’s head. At the Atlantic, this one candidate will be honored with a tabulation of her scandals or pseudo-scandals, including those of her husband.

No one else will have such a tab! She’ll be the only one!

Almost anyone could see the problem with this idea. Still, the children have been beautifully trained, so David plowed right ahead.

The children are eager to please, if not real sharp. This is the way the current child presents his overview:
GRAHAM (7/1/15): The Clinton family has been in politics for a long time. Bill Clinton’s first run for office came in 1974. And for almost as long as they’ve been a force, there have been controversies about what they were or weren’t doing, whether they were following laws, and whether they were disclosing what they ought to. Even today, the repercussions of a failed real-estate investment Bill and Hillary Clinton made in 1978 can still be felt. No other American politicians—even ones as corrupt as Richard Nixon, or as hated by partisans as George W. Bush—has fostered the creation of a permanent multimillion-dollar cottage industry devoted to attacking them.

Clinton defenders insist that it’s all just—to borrow a phrase—a vast right-wing conspiracy. The members of the alleged conspiracy insist that Hillary and her husband are shockingly corrupt. The truth is likely somewhere in between: Many of the hyped controversies have turned out to have little substance, but in several cases it has become clear that Bill or Hillary Clinton fell short of rules or laws. The Whitewater investigation, despite years of effort and millions of dollars spent, found almost nothing out of line, but that doesn’t mean Bill Clinton’s extramarital escapades weren’t real.

Now, with Hillary Clinton favored to win the Democratic nomination for president, every Clinton scandal—from Whitewater to Clinton’s State Department emails—will be under the microscope.
Keeping track of each controversy, where it came from, and how serious it is, is no small task, so here’s a primer. We’ll update it as new information emerges.
“The truth is likely somewhere in between!” This is a good, well-trained boy.

Note the way this hopeless child treats the Whitewater matter, which gave its name to a decade of pseudo-scandals whose promulgation still goes largely unexamined.

In his second paragraph, he says the investigation of same “found almost nothing out of line, despite years of effort and millions of dollars spent.” Just for the record, let it further be noted that this all happened twenty years ago.

To a youngster with a critical mind, those facts might raise a few questions about the reasons why that investigation went on for so many years. They might even suggest that, twenty years later, the matter shouldn’t be found in a tabulation of some candidate’s “scandals.”

That said, this is the MSM, and Graham is nicely trained. In his third paragraph, he tells us that all the scandals, Whitewater included, “will be under the microscope” moving forward. He doesn’t say why that would happen with Whitewater, since it was exhaustively probed and next to nothing was found.

Nor does he explain his first paragraph, in which he tells us, right out of the gate, that “the repercussions of [Whitewater] can still be felt.”

Why are the repercussions still felt if almost nothing was out of line? Readers, please! Which part of “went to Duke” don’t you understand?

At the nation's top finishing schools, the children who plan to be “journalists” receive their laborious training in promulgation of script. On their diplomas, this motto is found:

“Narrative never dies”

Graham turned out to be a good boy. In recent decades, we’ve all paid the price for these, the folkways of his guild.

When youngsters begin to tire: At the end of his tabulation, Graham discussed all the “scandals” from the period which he called “THE BAD OLD DAYS.”

It may be that he was starting to tire. This is what he typed:
What is it? Since the Clintons have a long history of controversies, there are any number of past scandals that continue to float around, especially in conservative media: Whitewater. Troopergate. Paula Jones. Monica Lewinsky. Vince Foster.

When? 1975-2001

Who? Bill Clinton; Hillary Clinton; a brigade of supporting characters

How serious is it? Almost none. Some are wholly spurious (Foster). Others (Lewinsky, Whitewater) have been so exhaustively investigated that it’s hard to imagine them doing much further damage to Hillary Clinton’s standing. In fact, the Lewinsky scandal famously boosted her public approval ratings. But that doesn’t mean you won’t hear plenty about them.
“Almost none.” That’s how the youngster answered the question, “How serious is it?”

In this passage, David continues describing Whitewater as a “past scandal,” even though an exhaustive investigation “found almost nothing out of line.” He also seems to tell us that we’ll “hear plenty about it.”

Schoolboy, please! Thanks to you, we just did!

39 comments:

  1. "The Whitewater investigation, despite years of effort and millions of dollars spent, found almost nothing out of line, but that doesn’t mean Bill Clinton’s extramarital escapades weren’t real."

    Compiled list of Clinton "scandals": FINAL

    1.) Consensual blow job.

    END OF LIST

    regards,


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    Replies
    1. Your list looks like the HRC emails she selected to send to Foggy Bottom.

      2) Paula Jones sexual harassment
      3) Juanita Broaddrick, rape
      4) Kathleen Willey, sexual harassment

      But HRC is too busy figuring out how to use fax machines to worry about Whitewater.


      'Just pick up phone and hang it up. And leave it hung up.'

      Huma Abedin to Hillary Clinton, about a fax

      "I thought it was supposed to be off hook to work?" HRC

      http://foia.state.gov/Search/Results.aspx?collection=Clinton_Email

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    2. There was no sexual harassment of Paula Jones or Kathleen Wiley. Juanita Broaddrick's story is not credible.
      You seem to be among the gullible cicero.

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    3. "You seem to be among the paid help in the trollosphere, cicero."

      FTFY

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    4. @ Horace,

      "President Clinton reached an out-of-court settlement with Paula Jones yesterday, agreeing to pay her $850,000 to drop the sexual harassment lawsuit that led to the worst political crisis of his career and only the third presidential impeachment inquiry in American history"

      http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/jones111498.htm.

      "Five people say Broaddrick told them about the rape immediately after it occurred. A friend and co-worker named Norma Kelsey says that, 21 years ago, she found a dazed Broaddrick with bloodied lip and torn pantyhose in their shared hotel room and Broaddrick explained that Clinton had just raped her. (Clinton is supposed to have bitten her on the lip just before raping her.) Her current husband--then her lover--says Broaddrick told him about the rape within a few days of the event. Broaddrick was, at the time, married to another man, whom she didn't tell about the assault. And three of Broaddrick's friends--one of whom is Kelsey's sister--say she told them about the rape shortly after it supposedly occurred."

      http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/1999/03/is_juanita_broaddrick_telling_the_truth.html

      In the current climate, Juanita Broaddrick rape allegations would be enough to get the accused expelled from any university if the accused were a student.

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    5. From the incomparable Howler archives:


      GRAHAM: When she was interviewed by the FBI, she broke down and stopped the interview and said, “I don’t want to live this again.” She never gave a sworn statement. NBC was the first organization to get her to come publicly and say, “I was the victim of an assault.”

      ...

      But there was one other painfully obvious question that Russert flat-out failed to ask. If Mrs. Broaddrick had never gone on the record; if her charges weren’t part of the counts of impeachment; then why in the world were GOP members paraded off to the Ford Building “sex vault?” Here is Graham, clearly saying that Broaddrick was irrelevant to the impeachment:

      GRAHAM: The Judiciary Committee had evidence of the corroborating witnesses, that she told people, but she herself never gave a sworn statement until NBC came along...There was no legitimate way to get her before the Senate, there was no legitimate way to make her relevant to the articles of impeachment, and I was the guy looking at that. I can tell you I did not feel comfortable interjecting her into the trial, given the level of testimony, that she never made a sworn statement.

      Which was the obvious place for Russert to ask a question. Why were House member taken to the “sex vault” to see the statements of the “corroborating witnesses?” If there was no legitimate way to bring Broaddrick into the trial, why had her case helped to drive the impeachment? Russert never asked.

      ...

      WEXLER: What I find most troubling about the case against the president was, I believe it was capsulated in a way by Mr. Schippers, the counsel for the Republicans, when he in essence started one of his presentations by saying, “There are horrible things about this president, horrible things, but we’re just not going to bring them to you.” Well, that’s just not the way it works in America. If you have a charge against somebody, you bring it, you prove it, and you deal with it.

      Strangely, Russert said this:

      RUSSERT: But 40 Congressmen were briefed on the Juanita Broaddrick situation.

      And that’s the point he should have brought to Rep. Graham. If Mrs. Broaddrick had never given direct evidence; if Graham felt she couldn’t be part of the trial; then why had forty members of Congress been encouraged to vote impeachment on this basis? It’s an obvious question, one the press corps is failing to ask. Russert, in an obvious setting, simply didn’t bring the point up.

      As we stated in our March 1 report, several questions remain unanswered, even now, about the Broaddrick allegations. Why didn’t her allegations form the basis of a specific impeachment count? Why didn’t Starr require her to speak? And still completely unexplored: why were members urged to vote for impeachment on this basis, if her situation didn’t produce formal charges? The press corps has an obligation to ask. Russert failed on his program this weekend.


      Inquiring minds don’t want to know: No one likes probing Mrs. Broaddrick’s allegations, but a press corps is obliged to do so. It is not the job of the political press to lead cheers for the people they like. When individuals make serious criminal charges, those serious charges must be examined. No one is forced to be a journalist. If pundits don’t want to be actual journalists, then by all means they’re free just to quit.

      Mrs. Broaddrick’s failure to speak to the FBI raises a point we have mentioned before. One can’t help noting: Mrs. Broaddrick refused to make her allegation in any forum where she could be cross-examined. This does not mean that her story is false; again, we take it as obvious that it may well be true. But as we have said before: we shouldn’t create a press culture in which complainants feel free to take criminal charges to Lisa Myers. As part of their ongoing discussion, journalists should identify the obvious problem with Mrs. Broaddrick’s choice of forum. Good luck with this front-running bunch.
      http://www.dailyhowler.com/h030999_1.shtml
      ******************

      you're welcome

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    6. @mm,

      What does the Howler archive say about William Jefferson's sexual harassment $850,000 court settlement with Paula Jones?

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    7. What do you care? You're a republican, just make some shit up. Create your own reality.

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    8. Cicero - there are some unusual aspects to the Paula Jones case. Her case was funded by deep pocketed right wing commandos - Ann Coulter was on her legal team for example. There is a 300 day statute of limitations for bringing sexual harassment claims under federal law. Her suit was brought way beyond that period. The federal judge, (you have to read the decision) didn't dismiss the case. Statute of limitations admittedly is a technical defense. Why did he settle? I don't know, (you don't know either) but it likely had something to do with not wanting to be subjected to the circus of a trial - people settle all the time. Most cases get settled. It doesn't prove anything. I take it cicero that you never read either Fools for Scandal or the Hunting of the President.

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    9. Forget Fools for Scandal or the Hunting of the President. Read, "No Island of Sanity" by Vincent Bugliosi.

      "The highest court in the land made an incomprehensible and terribly flawed decision against the nation's most powerful and important citizen.....

      "What conceivable argument could possibly be made for the proposition that Jones's right to proceed to trial now with her private lawsuit is more important than the public's right to have its president be undiverted and undistracted in the performance of his duties running the country......"

      The very fact that this right wing funded private lawsuit was allowed to proceed against a sitting president, just shows once again how traitorous the right wing is in this country. They didn't give a damn how much damage they would inflict on this country, they just had a single minded purpose to destroy President Clinton in any way possible and it had to be done while he was president.

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    10. mm, you're right, that decision undisputedly turned out wrong; as I recall, without rereading it, is that the court based its decision on the premise that the lawsuit would not unduly interfere with the president performing his duties. Completely wrong.

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    11. "....the premise that the lawsuit would not unduly interfere with the president performing his duties."

      Correct. The absurdity of that ruling ended up dragging this country to its knees 4 years later as republicans insanely impeached the president over misleading answers in a deposition given for this private lawsuit on a non-material matter.

      That's the difference between Democrats and republicans. Democrats don't ratf*k like this - and would never in a million years have contemplated manufacturing this kind of phony lawsuit on a sitting Republican president and taking it to the freaking Supreme Court to get their way. Traitorous treasonous bastards. They didn't care what they were doing to this country.

      "The reason is that the Court failed to balance, as it must always do, the public interest against the private interest; here, the public interest in the effective functioning of the office of the presidency against the private interest of Paula Jones to have her case heard, without further delay, during the president's term in office. One could perhaps say that because I am not a constitutional scholar or even an appellate lawyer, just a plain trial lawyer, I am out of my depth in taking on the highest court in the land in this case. But in this instance, the Jones v. Clinton case, the depth is so shallow that anyone using even an ounce of common sense could navigate its weak currents. This is not the type of situation where the Supreme Court has issued a ruling with which those who disagree question."

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  2. If your links are S--t, you must aquit! Those could be quotes from Broaddrick's lawyer for all we know. All the lying right wingers have been calling Clinton a liar for years.

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    1. "All the lying right-winger paid trolls, like cicero, ...."

      FTFY

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  3. Why HRC believes in the need for a "Vast right-wing conspiracy" when it is her own bizarre compulsion to lie about events that only her sycophants would accept at face value.

    Sample seven:

    1) "Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters last month that the memos about Libya she received while secretary of state from Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime adviser whom the Obama administration had barred her from hiring, had been “unsolicited.”

    But email records that Mrs. Clinton, according to officials briefed on the matter, apparently failed to turn over to the State Department last fall show that she repeatedly encouraged Mr. Blumenthal to “keep ’em coming,” as she said in an August 2012 reply to a memo from him, which she called “another keeper.”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/30/us/politics/benghazi-emails-put-focus-on-hillary-clintons-encouragement-of-adviser.html?_r=0

    2) Chelsea Clinton was jogging around the World Trade Center on 9/11. HRC later admitted that Chelsea was actually safely in her Union Square apartment at the time of the attack.

    3) HRC landed under sniper fire in Bosnia.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHVEDq6RVXc

    3. HRC was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, one of the first two men to climb Mt. Everest. Sir Hillary didn’t actually climb Mt. Everest until Hillary Clinton was 6 years old.

    4) . HRC was emphatic that she had only one device while Secretary of State

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqITWnIKbl8

    5) HRC claims to have been instrumental in the Northern Ireland peace process.

    "Hillary Clinton had no direct role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland and is a "wee bit silly" for exaggerating the part she played, according to Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former First Minister of the province."

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1581150/Nobel-winner-Hillary-Clintons-silly-Irish-peace-claims.html

    6) “All my grandparents, you know, came over here, and you know my grandfather went to work in a lace mill in Scranton, Pennsylvania.”

    Clinton has only one immigrant grandparent — her father’s father, Hugh Rodham Sr., who was born in the United Kingdom. The rest of Clinton’s grandparents were born in the United States.

    7) "After dabbling in both sugar and cattle futures for just over a year, she parlayed a mere $1000 investment into nearly $100,000. In explaining her success, she first claimed to have "educated herself" and "watched the market closely." As any cattle futures trader knows, it would take years to understand cattle farming and how and when cattle are brought to market in order to be that successful.

    Under media pressure, Hillary gave a highly unusual and live news conference where she admitted that the $1000-to-$100,000 success was a result of her being counseled by Tyson Foods contract-lawyer and friend, James Blair, who simply made the trades in his own accounts on her behalf."

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    Replies
    1. Troll harder! Your livelihood depends on it.

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    2. Do you have an explanation for HRC's proclivity for lying to the American people or are you inured or just indifferent to the lack of character of the person who intend to vote for POTUS?

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    3. Don't you have some votes to suppress somewhere, or some work to do on plan XYZ to get people thrown off their health insurance? Get out of here cicero, this is a progressive blog.

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    4. @mm

      But most of the progressives here complain about B.S. criticizing libs. Isn't your own post attempting to suppress discourse on the Daily Howler?

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    5. Discourse? Ha! Is that how you flatter yourself? That's your problem cicero, you and your right wing buddies have been coddled with what I would call "affirmative action" all your lives to the point that you think that any turd that falls out of your twisted mouths is worthy of equal consideration. It is what allows total scientific illiterates to insist on their right to decide what goes into biology textbooks. How else to explain the presence of Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade?

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    6. They are eye candy to distract from the serious female commentators with whom they are mated?

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    7. I am convinced, having read the long list above provided by cicero, that DNC should assign Clinton to MSDNC to rebuild her credibility before she is allowed to anchor the nomination.

      Rachel can salute her assignment with some major ascot kissing about redemption before turning to cover those large crowds in Madison, Wisconsin turning out to hear Bernie!

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    8. @mm

      Inbreeding explains Debbie Wasserman Schultz and James Carville.

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    9. You need to troll much, much harder to earn your keep.

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    10. "...HRC's proclivity for lying..."
      She's running for President of the United States, for chrissakes! The last President to speak the truth to the American people got trounced by a corporate spokesman in the 1980 election. Why would anyone make that mistake again?

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  4. Bush v Clinton. Yippee!!!

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    Replies
    1. I would like to see Michelle Obama get in the race for the Democratic nomination.

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    2. Considering the POTUS has already thrown his support behind HRC that would prove to be another embarrassing situation between POTUS & FLOTUS.

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  5. I wonder how many classes of fifth graders had been subjected to a whole year of schoolboy Somerby when he was David Graham's age?

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    1. Do the math yourself.

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    2. I have. And using a rough rule of thumb based on his previous work, Bob Somerby should not have been allowed near children in their formative years until about the time he himself has acknowledged he was burning out as a teacher.

      And nobody under thirty should read this blog because they are too young to understand or benefit from it. And clearly, since he generally seems to "otherize" people based on thier age, his argument wouldn't advance his cause with those whippersnappers anyway. He is like dumb, lazy liberals, condescending to out youth from the perch of his exalted age.

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    3. Quite making fun of Somerby because he is old enough to remember the 20th Century.

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  6. This is a progressive blog. Most of us like Somerby fine. You trolls are wasting your time here.

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    1. Fewer and fewer do, @ 12:35. Notice no one contradicted you when you said that.

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  7. Writes Bob Somerby today in disapproval of David Graham, Duke 2009:

    “The truth is likely somewhere in between!” This is a good, well-trained boy.

    Wrote Bob Somerby, Harvard 69, in 1999 (H/T mm)

    "Mrs. Broaddrick refused to make her allegation in any forum where she could be cross-examined. This does not mean that her story is false; again, we take it as obvious that it may well be true."

    Conclusion: If Dukie David Graham in 2015 were half the man as our Howler from Harvard Yard, he would have written:

    "The truth? Maybe. Or maybe not. We just don't know."

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    Replies
    1. Way to miss the point asshole. Reading comprehension - work on it.

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    2. You did not say that my comment is false. It is obvious it may well be true.

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    3. Bob sometimes tells us about the spouses of media figures who's leg he is pissing on.

      Like Diane Sawyer, who only got her job because she looks good and married a famous director.

      Sometimes he tells us about their mommy or daddy, like "Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. O'Hehir had all the advantages. His mother was a well-known poet and a Mills College professor."

      He doesn't bother to tell us anything about David Graham's wife. Who was working for a Clinton appointed appellate judge when they got married. He doesn't tell us anything about his folks. His mom is a hospital chaplain but his Dad? Wouldn't you know it. You could have guessed. A professor!

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