ENABLERS OF THE SCANDALOUS TIMES: Bellantoni defends the guild!

WEDNESDAY, MAY 13, 2015

Part 3—A familiar old insider con:
Could it be true that the national media are “primed to take Hillary Clinton down?”

That’s what Dylan Byers has said. Can Dylan Byers say such things? Is he crazy out of his head?

Byers covers media issues for Politico. He made the comment in question in a column last week.

For us, Byers’ remarks raise a set of questions:

Is it possible that Byers is actually right in some way? Is it possible that the New York Times is part of some such syndrome?

Is it possible that the syndrome in question dates all the way to the New York Times’ invention of the Whitewater pseudo-scandal in 1992? Is it possible that this syndrome explains the mainstream press corps’ two-year war against Candidate Gore, President Clinton’s defender and chosen successor?

We’d be inclined to answer all those questions with some version of yes. We’d also note an obvious fact—mainstream and liberal journalists have been avoiding these questions for decades.

Very rarely, someone like Byers will get a snootful and emit some version of a fairly obvious truth. When this happens, the rest of the insider press corps quickly scrambles its jets.

Consider Christina Bellantoni’s performance on last Sunday’s MediaBuzz. Also, consider Michael Tomasky’s performance on that same program. But for today, let’s start with Bellantoni.

MediaBuzz is Howard Kurtz’s new weekly vehicle on the Fox News Channel. Each weekend, Kurtz spends an hour critiquing the press corps, as he did at CNN for many years.

Each week, Kurtz asks journalists to come on his show and evaluate their colleagues and friends. On its face, this seems like a peculiar practice. But this was Kurtz’s introduction of last Sunday’s panel:

“Joining us now to analyze the coverage, Matt Lewis, senior contributor at the Daily Caller; Christina Bellantoni, editor-in-chief of Roll Call; and Michael Tomasky, columnist for the Daily Beast.”

Lewis was the conservative in this group; Tomasky was the liberal. Bellantoni was the non-aligned professional journalist—the reporter, not the opinion writer.

With that in mind, we offered the following gendered remarks about our highly gendered “press”/entertainment system:

Bellantoni’s manners are perfect. She’s in the running to fill a role the pundit world has long been seeking to cast—the role of the next Cokie Roberts, the well-mannered, well-bred lady who comes on the air to cement the official view of the guild on whatever issue is current.

Roberts has been cast in that role forever. With her impeccable manners and perfect script-reading, Bellantoni has moved to the front of the pack as her likely successor.

Who is Christina Bellantoni? You’re asking an excellent question.

Bellantoni grew up in San Jose. She graduated from Cal in 2001.

After working for Bay Area newspapers, she moved to the Washington Times in 2003. Starting in 2009, she spent a year at TPM, creating a hint of liberal cred.

From there, she moved to Roll Call, an insider publication which covers the doings of Congress. Starting in 2012, she spent two years as political director at the PBS NewsHour.

Last year, she returned to Roll Call in her current position as editor in chief.

In our view, it’s all good! What isn’t good is the way the well-bred people who hold such positions are willing to mislead the public in service to their standing within this guild.

Good lord! On Sunday, Kurtz devoted his opening ten-minute segment to the press corps’ coverage of the new book, Clinton Cash. If you want to understand the way the insider press corps works, we’ll suggest that you review Bellantoni’s ridiculous comments.

Now that Kurtz gets his cash from Fox, his work has taken on a new, Fox-friendlier line. As the segment began, Bellantoni proved up to the task of matching his snide, unsupported remarks about two recent TV interviews involving Bill Clinton.

To watch the whole segment, click this.

Already, the analysts were rolling their eyes at Bellantoni’s well-mannered work. They began to wail when they saw the way Kurtz and his guests reviewed the work of Peter Schweizer, the author of Clinton Cash.

By the time Kurtz sat with his guests, Schweizer had been tramping the nation for weeks, spreading disinformation. How bad had his disinformation become?

So bad that it even got left for dead on the May 6 O’Reilly Factor! See yesterday's report.

Schweizer had been making bogus statements all across the land. But how strange! When Kurtz discussed him with his guests, no such problems were mentioned!

Kurtz had a different approach in mind. As he started the segment, he seemed annoyed by the fact that Bill Clinton had challenged Schweizer’s journalistic greatness.

Can a former president do that? Not on MediaBuzz!

Kurtz played tape of Clinton challenging Schweizer's work. His first Q-and-A was with the conservative pundit, Lewis.

Lewis’ presentation begged for a challenge. That challenge would never come:
KURTZ (5/10/15): What do you make of Bill Clinton saying that the author of Clinton Cash, Peter Schweizer, “admitted he had no evidence?” What do you make of that shot?

LEWIS: This is right out of the Clinton Playbook 101. What did James Carville say? You drag a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you're going to come up with. That’s how they handled the bimbo eruptions and that's how they handle scandals. It's to attack the attacker, the messenger, in this case the author. I think that Peter Schweizer has been very clear that there are a lot of things in this book that lead you to believe that something unseemly, untoward is happening. There is no smoking gun and the Clintons are great at not leaving smoking guns behind.
There are a lot of things in Schweizer’s book that lead you to believe that something unseemly is happening? The same can be said of every misleading presentation down through the annals of time!

The Clintons are great at not leaving smoking guns behind? Every innocent party in history has committed the same offense!

In that exchange, Lewis complained that the Clintons have been “attacking the author.” But what if the author in question deserves to be criticized?

By now, one of Schweizer’s bogus claims had been torn apart on the O’Reilly program! But no one watching Kurtz’s show would learn such facts this day.

As he continued, Kurtz threw to Bellantoni, his politically unaligned guest. She didn’t note the many problems with Schweizer’s journalistic work. Instead, she also seemed to be annoyed by the things Bill Clinton had said:
KURTZ (continuing directly): I had Peter Schweizer on this program last weekend and he acknowledged as he has in other interviews that he doesn't have a smoking gun, but he lays out a circumstantial case about big money and donors and speaking fees and then you have to connect the dots. It's not the same thing as saying he has no facts.

BELLANTONI: No, it's certainly not. But this is going to be a systematic bit of evidence that you're going to see used against Hillary Clinton from the beginning of this campaign to whenever it ends. You know, if she ends up in the White House, you're going to continue to see people lay out these facts, talk about different relationships that the Clinton Foundation has. It's not just about giving money, it's about the types of interactions that there are. And the Clintons are going to combat that, “Look at all the great things that we did and look at what she did as secretary of state and these things are very separate.” But the point is, we all know it's about perceptions. And if you tell a government in Oman or Saudi Arabia or wherever, “we're not going to take your donations until eight years after she’s in the White House,” that doesn't mean that you might not have influence there.
Bellantoni sniffed like a famous predecessor as she said, “No, it’s certainly not.” She signaled distaste with the fact that Clinton had challenged the glorious author.

She never noted the obvious problems which exist with Schweizer’s work. As she ended, she even seemed to suggest that the Clintons may still be working crooked deals with marginal countries, even if they stop accepting donations.

Or something! Her point was quite unclear.

Bellantoni cited no problems with Schweizer’s work. Sadly, neither did Tomasky, a point we’ll consider tomorrow.

That said, Bellantoni defined her ultimate role in this charade toward the end of the segment. At this point, she offered musty, formulaic defenses of the guild’s wonderful work.

By now, Tomasky had cited Byers’ claim that the press corps was “primed to take Clinton down?” Kurtz asked him if he agreed with that statement.

“I sort of do,” he said.

Later, Lewis voiced even stronger agreement with Byers’ remark, comparing the negative coverage of Clinton to the glowing treatment of Candidate Obama. At this point, Bellantoni stepped in, offering praise for the corps’ unassailable work.

For people cast in the Roberts role, a claim like Byers’ can’t stand. Bellantoni started her defense of the guild with some classic formula:
BELLANTONI: And you know, by the way, the Clinton people made that big argument about Obama just getting all this glowing coverage. But don't forget, this is also the same—

You know, if anybody views the media as trying to take a candidate down, they also say the exact same thing about the media trying to take Republican candidates down. So once we have a general election you know, what? The media’s going to be trying to take them both down? It doesn’t make any sense.
To this defender of the guild, it doesn’t even make sense to say that the media are trying to take Clinton down. The claim is so crazy it doesn’t even rise to the level of being wrong!

Republicans make the same complaint, Bellantoni said, offering standard formula. Her script came out of this rusty old can:

If the Republicans criticize us, and the Democrats criticize us, then we must be doing it right!

It’s the oldest, most hackish script in the book. In this way, Bellantoni avoided discussing the possible merits of what Byers had said.

Her next remark was worse. The violins began to play as she read from the guild’s civics text, cuing agreement from Kurtz:
LEWIS (continuing directly): No, they’ll turn—they’ll turn on the Republican once Hillary gets the nomination.

BELLANTONI: Individual journalists are looking to teach the American people and American voters about all of the candidates. And with the Clintons, so much has been known about them, they have been in the public eye for now decades, and they are trying to get new information. And you know what? This question about donors and the question about what e-mails, you know, did and did not make it through, you know, what she was supposed to say, those are legitimate questions that should be raised, regardless of what party she's with.

KURTZ: Absolutely legitimate questions.
According to Bellantoni, individual journalists are simply trying to teach the public about the various candidates. Because the Clintons have been around a long time, journalists are simply trying to get new information about them.

Full stop! Also, the questions are legitimate.

The questions are legitimate, of course. In various instances, it’s the way those questions have been pursued which has been a good deal less than legitimate.

This would include the way that poor abused author had toured the country in previous weeks spreading disinformation. It would include the ridiculous journalism performed by Jo Becker in her “bombshell report” for the New York Times, the well-known newspaper Byers specifically cited.

But how strange! None of Schweizer’s misstatements were ever mentioned this day! No one said a word about his business partner, the glorious New York Times.

Instead, Bellantoni orated about her guild’s good intentions, to which there seemed to be no exceptions. “Individual journalists are looking to teach the American people,” she gloriously said.

As we watched Bellantoni this day, we were struck by several points. We were struck by her perfect manners, and by her repulsive performance.

Bellantoni does have perfect manners. She also seems to know what it takes, to quote the old Richard Ben Cramer hook.

Your “press corps” is full of climbers of this type. Like their hair, their manners are perfect. On the down side, their ambitions may be vast.

Over the course of the past twenty years, the liberal world has shown amazingly little skill at recognizing these facts. People are dead all over the world because we seem to love getting conned by people who know how to act.

Tomorrow: Tomasky’s silence

Coming next: It’s good being Bellantoni

56 comments:

  1. OMB (It's Finals Season. Where are the Test Scores from the OTB?)

    Part 1

    The silence of the BOB. Does he no longer care how the little brains of the munchkins in the Land of BOB are calibrated, mismeasured, misreported and/or ignored?

    Troll spotters from the Land of BOB know we have mostly reserved our comment participation to education issues lately, and frankly BOB not caring about kids or Kristof has made us lonely. "So why now?", they seem to ask of Zarkon, suggesting our interplanetary presence is best reserved for education. Well, we missed commenting about footballs.

    In our view, yesterday's post was about football, and football is the most visible and discussed activity of your public education system from high school through college. Those are the years where kiddos seem not to be making remarkable progress on standardized tests. And those who teach football are paid better than the ratty, mostly female underlings whose extracurricular activities are mostly joining unions to protect their rights to rubber rooms instead of termination, But that is another topic and we sure don't want to point out the gender wage gap even exists in public schools. Besides BOB will correctly point out the male salaries are inflated because of all the extra hours those coaches spend building mental toughness on the practice field and male unit cohesion in the Locker Room Leadership training program. Then they move up to counselor, principal and superintendent. Plus coaches don't take time out for birthin' babies.
    Motherhood has nothing to do with education, despite the vocabulary gap, and experience based salary penalties to child bearing women are
    not intentional gender discrimination.

    But, say the psychologists who dabble in BOBism in the comment box, that post was really about journalism and the crucifixion of the Clintons (and of course their little prophet Al whom is the only one who really got nailed). True enough, but half was about football and was a rather rambling introduction to an unrelated topic so we thought we would follow suit.

    OK, we can shift gears totally in mid comment too. Let's summarize BOB's posts on this whole subject in one paragraph.

    BOB it seems is preoccupied about Jo Becker's "fairy tale" story about a "fairy tale plane" she reported W.J. Clinton, an ex American President, did or did not take to Almaty, Kazakhstan in 2005, said plane belonging to plutocrat mining money man Frank Giustra, a resident of the 51st state of Canada. He is concerned that the Times made a mistake, never corrected it when it was refuted, repeated it seven years later, and nobody and their LIBERALworld brother and lesbian sister has corrected it in the last three damn weeks. BOB wonders why "No one has breathed a word about that... morally repellent fact..."

    BOB points out that Ms. Becker reported this fairy tale plane ferried both Clinton and Giustra together to this former crucial Republic in the cold war Evil Empire of Iron curtain fame back on January 31, 2008.

    BOB points out that one whole football season later January 12, 2009 a Forbes financial reporter (and brother of former a former Clinton Private Eye) wrote he had been given a document by Giustra which showed W.J. Clinton did not have seat on that Fairy Tale plane! Mr. Giustra's.

    BOB does not mince or muddle his words! This is a "mistake." He would later categorize it as a "sin" and a "crime" by "journalistic standards."

    In Part 2 we will show what BOB does in place of mincing and muddling.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Your Howler ReadersMay 13, 2015 at 4:34 PM

      Can't wait, since in part 1 you showed... well, nothing at all.

      Delete
  2. OMB (It's Finals Season. Where are the Test Scores from the OTB?)

    Part 2

    As we said BOB is not a word mincer or muddler. He is, however, a magician. He makes things disappear. Multiple times. (We from Doom have fourth grade math skills, too, and our thumbs are very smooth)

    First Disappeared Fact: BOB never mentions this passage in Becker's 2008 New York Times article:

    "Mr. Giustra was invited to accompany the former president to Almaty just as the financier was trying to seal a deal he had been negotiating for months.

    In separate written responses, both men said Mr. Giustra traveled with Mr. Clinton to Kazakhstan, India and China to see first-hand the philanthropic work done by his foundation."

    Our guess? Perhaps Ms. Becker learned nothing about asking Clinton about plane trips from others efforts to ask him about sex.

    Second Disappeared Fact: BOB is concerned about the current three week lapse in others correcting this mistake but never mentions it took over a year, from 2008 to 2009, for the two men so maligned by journalistic sins and crimes to correct this injustice and blasphemy by Becker.

    Third Disappeared Fact: BOB never mentions that five days before Becker committed this sin and crime about the fairy tale plane Peter Isikoff of Newsweek put Mr. Clinton and Mr. Giustra aboard the same jet going to almighty Almaty. (HT/@ 1:21 yesterday). We do not know if an effort by Mr. Clinton to correct this terrible error when it first appeared in Newsweek might have spared he, poor Mr. Giustra, and even the Times from the emabarrasmnet of repeating it five days later and again seven years down the road. (Mr. Clinton appears not to have learned from Al Gore, who let a similar Time magazine story about "Love Story" go uncorrected until after Maureen Dowd got her venomous mitts on it.)

    Fourth Disappeared Fact: BOB uses Forbes in 2009 to prove Becker made an error in 2009 that she would repeat in 2015 but does not mention that, even in its correct version of the facts, Forbes has Mr. Clinton's advance man on Giustra's plane to Almaty, Mr. Clinton on another billionaires jet arriving a few days later, and Mr. Giustra and Mr. Clinton leaving Almaty together on Giustra's "fairy tale" plane for India and points beyond. Those omitted facts and a written declaration of "travelling together" make one wonder: Could a reporter covering this "bombshell' story during a Presidential campaign by the wife of one of the travelling partners, having seen these two placed on the same plane in print by another reporter several days earlier, think maybe this "fairy tale" was true. We don't know.

    Fifth and Final (for the moment) Disappeared Fact: This article full of sins and crimes from the unwritten Code of Journalism appeared in January of a Presidential election. Hillary Clinton is mentioned. She is also mentioned in a previous story by Newsweek which appeared a few days earlier containing the same sin and crime about the Fairy Tale Plane. And BOB, who is the guardian against sins and crimes against humanity, life forms, and the BASIS OF JOURNALISM, never mentioned either at the time. Not once.

    The New York Times wrote a fairy tale in campaign season 2008 and the Daily Howler got no results. It didn't even notice.

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    1. So what was the sharp-eyed and ever on-the-ball Somerby writing about in January 2008 when this latest Journalistic Crime of the Century was fresh and new?

      I turned to the Incomparable Archives and found these names in the headlines:

      Todd and Millibank
      Gail Collins
      Chris Matthews
      Rachel Maddow
      Russert and Williams
      The Times
      Matthews (again)
      Rachel Maddow (again)
      Broder
      GE
      Margaret Carlson
      Tucker Carlson
      Josh Marshall
      Herbert
      Gene Robinson

      You'd be tempted to say, "The more things change, the more they remain the same," but in Somerby's case, it's "The more things remain the same, the more they remain the same."

      Delete
    2. Your Howler ReadersMay 13, 2015 at 4:40 PM

      So, Part 2. And... nothing, all wrapped in the usual Zarkonian slaw. Totally worth the wait!

      Indeed, the NYT has fucked up on this.

      But!

      The bigger -- BIGGEST! -- problem for the unbalanced is that Somerby didn't write about it in 2008!

      You can't invent these trolls. You just have to pick up your jaw from the floor and marvel at their incontrovertible existence. They're real!

      Delete
    3. Actually, Your Howler Reader, we never said the New York Times fucked up on this. And we wouldn't guess our fifth disappeared fact is BOB's biggest problem. We leave guessing what someone's biggest problem is to experts like BOB, who guessed Hillary Clinton's biggest problem was some of her supporters. We might guess who he was talking about, but not put a rating on the size or quality of his guess.

      But we would have been remiss by leaving out our final disappeared fact because, by being silent about this error all these years, BOB unknowingly confesses he too is just a New York Times enabler.

      We are glad you have dropped Douchebag from your nym, though. And on Zarkon we prefer squat salad with squadoosh sauce to slaw. Goes better with lamb. Too much mayo in slaw.

      Delete
    4. According to Somerby impeccable and geometric logic, there can be but one explanation for the "code of silence" that fell upon this blog seven years ago in re: Bill's flying partners.

      Somerby was selling his soul and angling for one of them high-paying gigs with the house on Nantucket, or at least next door to Meredith Vieira.

      Works for everybody else, right?

      Delete
    5. Either that or he was asleep in the woods. Liberals do that a lot. They are lazy.

      Delete
    6. "Actually, Your Howler Reader, we never said the New York Times fucked up on this."

      Although they indeed did, no, you didn't say so. You can't bear it.

      And a douchebag you remain.

      Delete
  3. Our resident schizophrenic is off his meds again.

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    1. I can only express my profound disappointment that KZ waited until the fourth paragraph to predict your appearance.

      Delete
    2. I am surprised KZ did not take a cheap shot at Bob's use of the wailing analysts in this post. I think it is crazy the way some commenters pretend Bob uses these cute characters for anything but literary flavor in his work.

      Delete
    3. KZ is a schizophrenic person so it is useless to argue with him because he slides away from any evidence disconfirming his preferred beliefs. In this case, he has developed delusions about Somerby, who doesn't deserve to be the obsession of someone with disordered thought like this. I'm glad you find KZ amusing, but he is mostly sad.

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    4. @ 9:35, which of the two previous commenters do you imagine was amused by KZ?

      Delete
    5. @2:43 & @5:57 & @4:12

      Delete
    6. So, three out of two, eh?

      Delete
  4. Over at Huffington Post there was an article yesterday about how Hillary Clinton is refusing to provide access to the press whereas all the other candidates are. Belatedly, they modified their article to include a statement by a member of Clinton's staff, who pointed out that she is answering a wide variety of questions from people at the various events where she has been speaking. The article said that the press does have a gripe against Clinton, is in a war with her, but it is because she is refusing to provide access.

    If you were being targeted the way Clinton has been, would you provide more grist for the mill? I think she has unveiled a strategy in which she refuses to dignify their focus on scandal-mongering and is instead focusing on issues and statements about her plans for office. It strikes me as healthy for our democratic process. It is entirely consistent with her refusal to defend against the specious claims in the Clinton Cash book. She clearly does not want to take a defensive stance and that is the role the press wishes to force her into.

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    1. Considering the whole Whitewater scandal was invented out of silly minor errors the Clinton's made in Income Tax Deductions that were only discovered because they made those returns public when Bill ran for President, I would go a step further and deny access to any of my records of any kind if I were her.

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    2. Are you asserting that Bill and Hillary's partners, Jim and Susan McDougal, both went to prison only because the Clinton's made some minor errors in their income tax deductions?

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    3. No, Jim McDougal went to prison for crimes entirely unrelated to the Clintons. Susan McDougal went on "contempt" charges because she refused to roll over for Ken Starr and lie for him.

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    4. David in Cal I did not assert any legal problems others may have faced who had some connection to Whitewater was caused by the Clintons tax deductions.

      I am saying if the Clinton's did not make the silly deduction of Whitewater expenses as their own personal expenses, and if these deductions were not scrutinized because Bill ran for President and made his returns public, there would have been no invented scandal. The NY Times could not have invented the issue of one Clinton regulating a Savings and Loan as Governor while another Clinton represented the Savings and Loan before the regulator Bill appointed. And if the S&L had not been used to cover expenses of the development company the Clintons were partners in with the S&L owner. You know, these silly appearances things that turn into invented scandals.

      So I say to avoid that the Clintons should disclose nothing any more. Because the press is primed. They got Al. And all he ever did was defend Bill and be Bill's chosen one.

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    5. Anon. @ 3:52: I tried to tell that to Dave a couple of weeks ago. As I said at the time confirmation bias is strong in him. He seems to be myopic.

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    6. Horace, thank you for posting under a nom de blogue, so I know who responded previously.

      Anon 3:52 -- As you know, the formal reason that Susan was imprisoned is that she refused to testify against Bill Clinton. Now, any guess at her motivation is speculation. The most obvious guess is that she knew something bad about Bill Clinton that she wanted to hide. Or, more generally, that her testimony would have implicated one or more of the four partners or others that she cared about.

      Your interpretation, that she was imprisoned because she refused to lie, is hard to swallow. First of all, it paints the entire investigating team as utterly dishonest hacks. There's no evidence of that. Furthermore, it must be awfully difficult to convict someone of perjury, when they haven't committed perjury. How would the prosecutors even do that? Thirdly, how do you claim to know that the prosecuting team planned to convict Susan of perjury if she testified honestly. What's your evidence for this unlikely assertion?

      Anon 5:23 it's a bit of a euphemism to call the McDougals "others...who had some connection to Whitewater." In fact, they and Bill and Hillary were the only 4 partners in Whitewater. We all know that Bill and Hillary are smart. That's why I think they knew that hanky-panky was going on. But, turn that around. Their partner in a small corporation was committing felonies under their noses. If they didn't know it, then they're incompetent administrators. In short, under any interpretation, the imprisonment of the McDougals reflects badly on Bill and Hillary.

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    7. Yes, this is the conservative storyline. Bill and Hillary were such bad administrators they gave us 8 years of peace and prosperity. You can accept that evidence or the indirect, oblique, mistaken mess of crap David is peddling to decide whether the Clintons are competent in office. It isn't as if they have no track record directly relevant to government office. David fails to mention that they lost money on the venture. So, what exactly was the crime they supposedly committed -- a crime that no one found any evidence to support despite years of trying?

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    8. Did Bill give us peace and Hillary prosperity for those eight years, or was it the other way around? Or did they do equal work for unequal pay and both contribute to both bounties afforded their adoring public?

      And what the Sam Hill was Al Gore doing all this time? Beside visiting Buddhist temples and using his skills to re-invent government, which our founders, during their service in the Constitutional Convention, took the initiative to create.

      I think Somerby said he was also defending Bill. I hope he does so for Hillary now.

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    9. David has been coming here for many years to read TDH document with impeccable logic and facts the hoax that was Whitewater, yet here he comes, ever so politely, insisting that the Clintons were guilty of something. David is a bitter warped twisted troll.

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    10. @8:26 Do you really have the nerve to suggest that the first lady doesn't do a job?

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    11. "what exactly was the crime they supposedly committed -- a crime that no one found any evidence to support despite years of trying?"

      Whitewater committed crimes. That's why Jim McDougal went to prison. Bill and Hillary were 2 of the 4 partners running Whitewater. These facts reflect badly on Bill and Hillary.

      OTOH it is said that Hillary recommended Madeleine Albright for Secretary of State. Props to Hillary! What a great, high quality Secretary of State she was. Sad that our current incumbent isn't qualified to polish Madeleine's shoes.

      Anon 8:03 -- I don't think the Clintons are bad administrators. That's why I do think they were aware of Jim McDougal's criminal activities. Going back, the Rose Law Firm was a sleazy outfit. The Clintons' treatment of the "bimbo eruptions" was also sleazy.

      Now, maybe Hillary's policies, administration, and leaderhship would be good and effective. That's more important than her sleazy background. Jimmy Carter was the opposite. Nobody doubts his integrity and morality, but under his leadership things went to Hell, both domestically and internationally.

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    12. We all know you aren't going to vote for Clinton. If you think the sleaziness of the Rose firm outweighs every virtue, it suggests you have poor judgement, so you'll excuse me if I don't follow your lead.

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    13. Anon 9:29, I agree with you. That's what my last paragraph tried to say.

      Now, I think Obama's policies are mostly working badly, and I think Hillary would do more of the same. That's why I wouldn't like to see her as President, not because of her sleazy background. After all, Harry Truman's background was part of the sleazy Pendergast machine, yet he was an excellent President.

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    14. If you think Clinton would do the same as Obama you didn't pay attention to her campaign statements in 2008. There were several major differences on issues such as Social Security, funding for science research and the space program, NSA spying and net neutrality, schools and testing. Moreover, her style and ability to achieve political compromise is different. And unlike Obama, Clinton supports women's issues, especially health. Only a conservative could consider them the same because conservatives only look at their own favorite issues about war and economics, where Obama and Clinton were more similar.

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  5. "Each week, Kurtz asks journalists to come on his show and evaluate their colleagues and friends. On its face, this seems like a peculiar practice."

    It's the perfect little circle jerk. And then they all go out with Howard for a champagne brunch.

    "I think that Peter Schweizer has been very clear that there are a lot of things in this book that lead you to believe that something unseemly, untoward is happening. There is no smoking gun and the Clintons are great at not leaving smoking guns behind."

    You can't find a better illustration of Clinton Rules. If you can't prove they did anything wrong it is only because they are so diabolically clever in their criminality that they never get caught with a "smoking gun".

    "And the Clintons are going to combat that, “Look at all the great things that we did and look at what she did as secretary of state and these things are very separate.”"Matt Lewis, senior contributor at the Daily Caller

    God damn those Clintons always trying remind people that their global charitable foundation does all this good work around the world. yeeecchh, they are so transparent. Who do they think they're fooling, certainly not the Daily Caller.

    "....that's how they handle scandals. It's to attack the attacker, the messenger, in this case the author..."

    Corollary to all Clinton Rules: don't ever question the motives of the scum ratfKrs' who are smearing them. We are not moved by the fact that Peter Schweizer is a proven liar and con man with strong right wing connections and a completely transparent motive to Swift Boat the leading democratic contender.




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    1. But MSNBC is worse. Much worse. Their parent company didn't publish the book. But Jack Welch once owned GE and look at all the horrible things The Puppy did to Clinton by vouching for the New York Times.

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    2. You think it's funny that our liberal pundits are not defending the person most likely to be the candidate in 2016? That makes you a conservative or a troll or an idiot or all three.

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    3. I don't think it is funny that we have been told two stories about what kind of a shot Rachel Maddow is. I think it is a scandal that Meredith Viera tries to act like she has a comfy old couch and that Diane Sawyer pretends to make oligeanous sandwiches out of old meat loaf for her famous playwright hubby.

      I think some of our liberal pundits agree that the non disclosure of foundation funding as agreed to is a problem. I think liberal pundits and liberals generally believe money received, whether in fees, foundation donations, or campaign contributions creates conflicts period, not just the appearance of conflict. I know it was liberal pundits who attacked Hillary for speaking to corporations like the Vampire Squid group and suggested it was not good for Bill to pal around with plutocrats.

      In any rationale world these people would be taken away where they could quit raising these issues because conservatives are attacking a potential Democratic nominee using liberal sounding issues and these people will not defend her.

      Delete
    4. How do such liberals think a charity can operate without donations? How do they think a candidate gets elected without campaign contributions? Ideological purity will lose us the presidency.

      Delete
  6. Liberal pundit Alan Colmes:
    FBI should 'absolutely' investigate Clinton

    "She's got to answer questions. She's got to stand up and answer to the press," said liberal radio show host Alan Colmes about presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

    Hillary Clinton promised that the Clinton Foundation would stop accepting foreign donations, but she has not followed through on that promise, pointed out Fox host Bill Hemmer.

    "The FBI might want to look into this statement that there was not a conflict of interest between her work as secretary of state and any money that went to the Clinton Foundation," said Colmes.

    "I would like to see her cleared, obviously," added Colmes. "But I'd like to see full disclosure and transparency. None of this 'I didn't inhale stuff.'"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This is another perfect example of what TDH is describing every day. Alan Colmes, supposed liberal, doesn't even know his facts. Hillary Clinton never "promised that the Clinton Foundation would stop accepting foreign donations,.."

      That just never happened. It is false no matter how many times Joe Scarborough repeats it live on his idiotic morning show.

      Delete
    2. This is actually another perfect example of mm being an the one who doesn't know his facts, as well as a Somerby enabler.

      Colmes did not say Clinton promised not to accept foreign donations, Bill Hemmer of Fox did.

      And Colmes call for an FBI investigation was first made last night on Bill O'Reilly's show. You know, the show which Somery says left Schweizer's work for dead. You know, the show on the network owned by the guy whose publishing company made Schweizer's book very much alive.

      Delete
    3. I didn't post that quote from Alan Colmes. In any case, my point stands.

      Delete
    4. Nobody said you did. You just turned a paraphrase of Bill Hemmer in the posted comment into a quote and made it appear incorrectly to be an example of Alan Colmes ignorance of the facts.

      Can your silence on what Colmes did say, that the FBI should investigate Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, be interpreted as agreement on that other point? Or would you be better characterized as an O'Reilly/Colmes enabler on that point? I am not going to let people all over the world end up dead because I, as a liberal, did not wake up and ask.

      Delete
    5. I stand corrected. I misread the post and attributed the quote about the fictitious promise to Colmes when in reality is was Bill Hemmer, another jackass. Joe Scarborough has been spreading the same manure on his show.

      No, of course I don't think the FBI should investigate.

      Delete
    6. I would say Colmes is a jackass too. But I don't need anyone in the "liberal" media to help me figure that out.

      Delete
    7. I don't need anyone to tell me either.

      Colmes is not only a jackass, he is an ignorant and naïve jackass. The point is, no investigation by any authority will ever be enough to satisfy the Clinton haters. That is one of the prime Clinton Rules. Just look at Whitewater. How many simultaneous investigations were going on during those horrid years?

      "...in 1995 by the national law firm of Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro, with financial and economic analysis support from Tucker Allen Inc. (the "Pillsbury report"). The Pillsbury report was delivered to the Resolution Trust Company (later the FDIC) and furnished to both the Senate and the House in connection with their Whitewater investigations. The Pillsbury report required about two years to prepare, had full and complete access to all relevant records in the possession of the RTC/FDIC, and cost more than $4 million,..."

      The Pillsbury Report came out in 1995:

      "The [Pillsbury] report concludes that the Clintons invested $42,192 in Whitewater, which is relatively close to the $46,137 loss as determined by the revised Lyons report."

      The Pillsbury report also concluded: "Therefore, on this record, there is no basis to assert that the Clintons knew anything of substance about the McDougals' advances to Whitewater, the source of funds used to make those advances, or the source of the funds used to make payments on bank debt. In particular, there is no evidence that the Clintons knew anything of substance about the transactions as to which the RTC might be able to establish liability as to people other than the Clintons." (Pillsbury report, Dec. 13, 1995, page 77.)

      Further, and perhaps most importantly, Pillsbury reported: "On this record, there is no basis to charge the Clintons with any kind of primary liability for fraud or intentional misconduct. This investigation has revealed no evidence to support any such claims, nor would the record support any claim of secondary or derivative liability for the possible misdeeds of others." (Ibid, page 77.)


      In other words, the investigation concluded the Clintons were victims of Jim McDougal yet the investigations just kept rolling on and on and on throughout his entire 2 terms as President.

      Delete
  7. "So bad that it even got left for dead on the May 6 O’Reilly Factor! See yesterday's report." B. Somerby

    "So bad it got left for dead" is the correct depiction...but not for Schweizer's work based on the one minute of coverage O'Reilly devoted
    to the issue of how much of the Clinton Foundation budget goes to charitable work.

    "So bad it got left for dead" should be the description of Somerby's praise for O'Reilly, whose program has featured a veritable non stop call for an FBI probe of the Clinton Foundation before and after the tiny segment Somerby chose to feature.

    Bob Somerby has become so obsessed with liberal flaws he has now become a cheeleader for a guy who really is leading what might be realistically compared to a favorite historical event invoked by Somerby...a witch hunt.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Noting that even the likes of Fox and O'Reilly have taken the bunk out of these claims is not the same as cheerleading/praise for them. On the contrary, it's a simple matter of what ought to be an embarrassing contrast for media outlets that want to be taken more seriously.

      Pretending the opposite, as Anon 4:28 does here is a standard M.O. for trolls and media sycophants.

      Delete
    2. Bob is the one who led a cheer for O'Reilly and turned it into a jeer that "liberals are asleep in the woods, worrying about their careers.... Why on earth are fiery liberals tolerating this scam?"

      Sorry Geoff's mother. That one minute segment refuted one claim made on that same show about the amount of money spent by the Foundation. Neither the claim itself nor the refutation of it to which Bob devoted a whole post was attributed to Schweizer on O'Reilly's show on the network owned by Schweizer's publisher. His work was hardly left for dead.

      Meanwhile the drumbeat for and FBI investigation of Clinton and the Foundation based on the accusations of the author "left for dead" continues on O'Reilly. And Somerby never mentions that.

      Sorry pal, but my comment about the error made here by Bob Somerby says nothing about any media other than Somerby, Fox, and O'Reilly. And the sycophancy you display by ignoring that is all yours.

      Watch yourself some Megyn Kelly tonight. I learned from Bob some time ago she knows how to conduct really good interviews every once and a while.

      And don't tell the analysts Santa isn't white. They might cry again.

      http://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/2013/12/when-megyn-kelly-was-good.html

      Delete
    3. Yes, Bob is clearly the problem. If we stipulate to that will you all go away?

      Delete
    4. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. O'Reilly stumbled across some truth and was willing to broadcast it. That certainly doesn't make him a friend to progressives. But at least, as Bob is pointing out, he saw the problem and talked about it. We are still waiting for the NYT. That is the point here, not what Fox News is doing.

      Delete
  8. Are the liberals still hiding in the woods? Or have they emerged from the woods but are now too tribal? And how about the Professors? Also, is it tribal to be against Hillary but not tribal to be for her? That said, for ourselves, we don't know.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, this is all just a big joke. It doesn't matter if Walker becomes president.

      Delete
    2. Bob's hard work didn't save Gore.

      Delete
    3. Somerby would have to have been on the Supreme Court to save Gore.

      Delete
  9. 9:24 is dropping tribal W-bombs. Would Walker be a bad president? For ourselves, we don't know. We know that Rachel doesn't like Walker.

    ReplyDelete
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    ReplyDelete