Pneumonia struck in 2014!

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2016

Josh Marshall sees no evil:
Until last summer, a long-time friend of ours would come to Baltimore each summer to house-sit for one of her friends.

Our friend is a former teacher and principal. The person for whom she would house-sit had been one of her colleagues in the Baltimore City Schools. Her annual visit would let her catch up on her Baltimore friends, and on her former colleague's cat.

Two summers ago, our friend wasn't feeling well by the end of her stay. When her friend returned from her annual travels, she took our friend to a clinic. The diagnosis surprised us:

Pneumonia.

At the time, we didn't know that people even get pneumonia, let alone in the summer. In this amusing post by Kevin Drum, he says it's fairly common. He also mocks the press.

Liberals might see a silver lining in Hillary Clinton's illness. Her illness might distract attention away from her "basket of deplorables" comment.

Hillary Clinton has always been a bit of gaffe machine. The pattern began with her first major national appearance, on the famous 60 Minutes from New Hampshire in 1992, when she committed the unforced political error of snarking at Tammy Wynette.

The "basket of deplorables" comment was a major groaner, both on the politics and on the merits. The fact that many liberal pundits can't see this—well, our tribe's determined moral/intellectual blindness strikes us as very depressing. We'll plan to discuss the deplorables comment tomorrow.

Concerning the pneumonia matter:

In recent posts, Kevin Drum and Charlie Pierce have both discussed the way the press corps' long-standing behavior plays into this development. We'll only note that the liberal world has begun complaining about this behavior extremely late in the game.

Conservatives have assaulted the press corps for alleged bias for the past fifty years. Through all the pseudo-scandals of the 1990s; through the subsequent twenty-month war against Gore; through the repulsive coverage of Candidate Clinton in 2007 and 2008, often by major "liberals;" through all those episodes, we the liberals averted our gaze from the mainstream press corps' strange behavior concerning the Clintons.

Our careerists were looking out for themselves, and we in the rank and file just aren't real good at this game. Conservatives continued attacking the press; we continued averting our gaze from what the press was doing. This continued through the Washington Post's ridiculous treatment of Hillary Clinton's speaking fees in the summer of 2014. It continued through the New York Times' astonishing "bombshell report" about the scary uranium deal.

It continued through the New York Times' disgraceful pimping of the late Beau Biden's death. We liberals have been disqualifyingly slow to complain about the upper-end mainstream press. We've finally started complaining now, extremely late in the game.

By the way:

Drum has been doing excellent work about the press corps in recent weeks. Many, many people keep saying we drove him to it.

We hate it when so many people say such stupid stuff. If we might borrow from John McCain, such statements "make our skin crawl." That said, we can't stop all those people from saying such things, or from wondering where we liberals and pseudo-liberals would be if our tribe had been willing to push back decades ago, when the ongoing nonsense began.

Conservatives have pushed back forever. We've been asleep in the woods.

Tomorrow, we'll discuss the "basket of deplorables" remark. If you want to know why our tribe is so unsuccessful, all you really have to do is review our leaders' sad reactions to that unwise, undisciplined remark.

Meanwhile, Clinton has pneumonia everywhere except at TPM! At TPM, this incident barely seems to have occurred. Let's all see no evil, friends!

Drum and Pierce are trying to create some badly-needed perspective. TPM? Not so much!

24 comments:

  1. I guess she could have just stayed home and baked cookies like my beloved mother and grandmothers wasted their insignificant lives doing.

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    Replies
    1. Anonymous 4:42, you're a lying piece of filth. Stop lying.

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    2. Your mother and grandmothers did waste their lives if the only thing they did was bake cookies. I suspect they all did more and I am wondering why you don't seem to realize that.

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    3. @4:42 & Randall -- you can find verses in the Quran and interpretations of those verses to support whatever viewpoint you wish. You can find support that women are not supposed to speak and support for their speaking out in public. It is one of the problems of all religions that any position can be supported, pretty much.

      The question is how women are allowed to behave in real life. Do they speak up and how are they treated when they do. This varies across different Muslim states and communities, even across different families. Generalizing makes no sense -- you have to be specific about who exactly you are talking about because Muslim people are diverse within that religion, which is much larger than Christianity (which also varies a great deal).

      So, calling someone a liar seems inappropriate and referring to what "Muslims" support or do not support is also wrong unless you say which women, in what place and time and under what circumstances you are talking about.

      Women have been killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan and even in the USA for speaking out about their lives. Denying that ignores the need to protect women's rights in Muslim cultures. When you deny it, people who know about the disconfirming cases will not believe you, as Randall does not.

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    4. The Islamophobia is out of control here. Trump was wrong to suggest Muslim women do not have freedom to speak openly. The mistreatment and oppression of Muslim women is a myth. They choose to dress modestly and the burka is liberating.

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    5. Malala's crusade is all because of a myth? Get real!

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    6. If White Man's solution wasn't to throw the baby out with the bathwater (don't you love all of the wisdom we gained from assimilating the good parts of the Native American culture into ours?), then we would be better than that.

      Delete
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  2. It's O.K. to see two sides to a question, but does Bob even notice
    he is arguing opposite sides of a proposition?
    We are wimps who won't fight back when the media berates our candidates (you mean like calling Hillary Clinton a "gaffe
    machine?")
    At the same time, Bob is bent out of shape that it should be suggested that Trump supporters are racists and, surprisingly, many pundits find this true and not a "gaffe" at all.
    Does Bob not understand that this is not a typical election?
    Has he not noticed that many prominent Republicans have
    refused to support Trump, perhaps for those very reasons?

    Tomorrow should be interesting.

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    Replies
    1. Bob's shtick is that insulting conservatives will not persuade them to check facts. This is most likely true, but the people that love Trump will never be persuaded to vote for Hillary. Still, her "basket" comment will only give mugwumps a reason to turn away from her. It won't motivate the undecided to support her.

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    2. I disagree. Some mugwumps may look at those supporting Trump and decide they don't want to be in the basket with them.

      Clinton is no more of a gaffe machine than any of us would be if we spoke as often as she does about such a range of topics, sometimes to the point of being tired, often to a hectoring press.

      I suspect she is much less of a gaffe machine than the average person. I think Trump is much more like most of us would be when it comes to gaffes.

      There is a story circulating that when Trump heard about Clinton's illness, those nearby grabbed his hands to keep him from immediately tweeting.

      Clinton is examined much more closely and any excuse is used to magnify anything she says into a so-called gaffe. She has kept the focus on Trump's character flaws. It may be deliberate.

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    3. "Basket" will motivate the undecided to support Hillary in the way it motivated millions of moderates to stampede to Trump. They got sick of 8 years of SJW children screeching one or more of her isms and phobics at them for thinking the wrong thoughts, including criticizing Obama.

      Delete
  3. It goes both ways.

    James Woolsey, Bill Clinton's CIA director joined Donald Trump's presidential campaign Monday as a senior adviser.

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    Replies
    1. No, it doesn't, but that doesn't stop you from lying.

      Wikipedia:

      Woolsey has held important positions in both Democratic and Republican administrations. His influence has been felt during the administrations of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton.

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  4. Only half of Trump supporters are bigots?
    We don't need another cock-eyed optimist in the White House.

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  5. "Hillary Clinton has always been a bit of gaffe machine."

    But Al Gore has always been an innocent victim of corporate controlled careerists trying to get the Clintons.

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    Replies
    1. I caught that too. Then I remembered that Somerby has been railing against some sort of liberal intolerance of much of the Trump demographic (eg. southern whites) that belongs in the basket.

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  6. Wait, why is Bob picking a fight with Josh Marshall? Josh tweets plenty about the shitty media. Is Bob tryin to ignite some Taylor Swift/Katy Perry-style beef?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Wait, why is Bob picking a fight with Josh Marshall? Josh tweets plenty about the shitty media. Is Bob tryin to ignite some Taylor Swift/Katy Perry-style beef?

    ReplyDelete
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