FORBIDDEN STORY: Bill Clinton speaks!

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2015

Part 1—So does Matt Yglesias:
For decades, the liberal world has almost uniformly agreed. When it comes to the mainstream press corps’ behavior, telling the truth is forbidden.

That said, there seems to be a great deal of truth to what Bill Clinton said.

Clinton spoke this weekend on CNN, a cable news channel. He told a forbidden story again, as he does every few years.

On this occasion, he didn’t tell every part of the forbidden story. On this occasion, he omitted one part of the apparently accurate tale.

That said, there seemed to be a great deal of truth to everything the ex-president said. He was interviewed by Fareed Zakaria, who let the ex-president speak at length, then played a tiny dumb.

What was Bill Clinton talking about? The former president's forbidden story began with this exchange:
ZAKARIA (9/27/15): There will be a new president in 2017, January. You're, some would say, the most skilled student of American politics. Why do you think Hillary Clinton is having a tougher time than many imagined? The lead in the national polls has narrowed. Iowa and New Hampshire seem tough.

CLINTON: Well, I think you know why. I think you know why.
Oof! That was a slightly rude way to start, with the suggestion that Zakaria was playing it just a bit dumb.

From there, Clinton proceeded to tell the story—the story we liberals have agreed not to tell. Our view? Because we’ve agreed to bury this story, we now have a very good chance of electing a President Rubio next year.

Clinton started by telling a story—a story he’s told before. It takes us back to 1991—to the start of the journalistic era we liberals have agreed to disappear:
CLINTON (continuing directly): In 1992, I received a call, before—in ’91, before I started running for president—from the Bush White House, from the man on duty. He said, “We’ve looked at the field. You're the only one that can win. The press has to have someone every election, we’re going to give them you. You better not run.”

So all of a sudden, something nobody thought was an issue, Whitewater, that turned out never to be an issue, went up to being at $70 million investigation.
And all the hammering happened and you ask voters, “Do you really believe this, this amounts to anything?”

“No.”

“But do you trust him as much?”

“No. There must be something.”

So this is just something that has been a regular feature of our presidential campaigns—except 2008, for unique reasons. Ever since Watergate, something like this happens. So, I’d rather it happen now than later, and it was always going to happen.
Did that phone call actually happen as described? We can’t tell you that.

Has this sort of thing been a regular feature of our presidential campaigns? In some ways, it pretty much has. And uh-oh!

As Clinton continued, he told an unholy story involving the press—an unholy story that rings especially true this year. As he spoke, he chose to omit one basic part of the story:
CLINTON (continuing directly): The other party doesn’t want to run against her and if they do, they'd like her as mangled up as possible. And they know that if they leak things, say things, that that is catnip to the people who get bored talking about what’s your position on student loan relief or dealing with the shortage of mental health care or what to do with the epidemic of prescription drugs and heroin out in America, even in small towns of rural America. Or how are you going to get jobs into coal country, given how much they’ve lost in the last twenty years?

So that just happens. It always happens. We’re seeing history repeat itself. And I actually am amazed that she’s borne up under it as well as she has. But I have never seen so much expended on so little.
According to ex-president Clinton, the GOP wants to see Candidate Clinton get “as mangled up as possible.” For that reason, they’ve ginned up a scandal tale in which he has “never seen so much expended on so little.”

In certain basic ways, that part of the story seems obvious. Democrats would like to see Republican candidates get all mangled up too!

In the second part of that story, the former president told a tale which doesn’t derive from common sense and can’t be squared with what it says in civics texts. He said the press corps has pushed this overblown scandal tale because they’re empty, fatuous people—because they “get bored talking about what’s your position on student loan relief or dealing with the shortage of mental health care,” or about any serious issues at all.

According to eighth-grade civics textbooks, that can’t be the way the American press corps functions. But alas! If you’ve ever watched the corps in action, you know that Clinton had just expressed the most obvious fact in the world.

That said, the former president wasn’t yet done with his critique of the press corps. According to Clinton, the press corps has vastly overblown its treatment of the email matter. As he continued, he offered a second reason for their conduct:
CLINTON: You know, at the beginning of the year she was the most admired person in public life and she earned it. Why? Because she was being covered by people who reported on what she was doing. The New START treaty, the Iran sanctions, tripling the number of people on AIDS getting medicine for no more tax money. America was—when she left office, our approval rating was more than twenty points higher than it had previously been.

What happened? The presidential campaign happened. And the nature of the coverage shifted from issue-based to political.

And it happened. You can't complain. This is not—this is a contact sport. They're not giving the job away. And people who wanted a race wanted her to drop some. And people in the other party desperately wanted it because she’s already put out more positions on more issues and said how she would pay for them I think based on the others combined, based on the two—the Republicans based on the two debates I saw.
According to Clinton, “people who wanted a race wanted her to drop some.” Presumably, he referred to the press corps itself. Moments later, he said it again, clearing up any uncertainty as to who he meant:
CLINTON: I think that there are lots of people who wanted there to be a race for different reasons. And they thought the only way they could make it a race was a full-scale frontal assault on her. And so this email story became the biggest thing in the world.
Would our journalists really tilt their campaign coverage because they “want a race?” According to eighth-grade civics books, that sort of thing could never happen in the American press corps.

But alas! Not infrequently, major journalist have actually said that they tend to cover campaigns that way. In the current circumstance, the trashing of Clinton and the relentless selling of Biden neatly fit the pattern to which these scribes have copped.

The ex-president said some unflattering things about the American press corps. That said, there’s one part of the forbidden story he plainly chose to leave out.

He chose to omit a long-standing claim—the claim that the mainstream press corps has an animus against the Clintons. This brings us to a second person who recently told a version of this forbidden tale.

We refer to Matt Yglesias, a 34-year-old upper-end journalist who currently writes for Vox. Two week ago, he told a slightly different version of the forbidden story.

Has the press corps been conducting journalistic scams in our presidential elections? Has the press corps been doing so on a regular basis, as Bill Clinton said?

Two weeks ago, Yglesias said that one such journalistic scam was “the formative experience of my political life.” He described the war the press corps conducted in 1999 and 2000, the war against Candidate Gore.

Yglesias was telling a forbidden story—an extremely important story the liberal world has widely agreed not to tell. It was a version of President Clinton’s story—a story the American people have rarely been permitted to hear.

Yglesias said the press corps’ misconduct in Campaign 2000 was “the formative experience of my political life.” For us, this raised an obvious question:

Has he ever told this story before? We searched twenty-two pages of Google results. We haven’t found it yet.

Tomorrow: Telling the truth very slowly

53 comments:

  1. Former VA Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli analyzed the law and concluded that Hillary broke the law by retaining classified material. He's a Republican, so maybe he's biased. But, the WaPo Fact Checker, no Republican, just rated her 3 Pinocchios for the specific issue of lying about the timeline on her personal e-mail account. Chuck Todd of Meet the Press put together a montage pointing out various inconsistent positions on various issues. Others have pointed out inconsistent statements about the e-mails made by her and her representatives.
    http://nypost.com/author/ken-cuccinelli/#
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2015/09/28/hillary-clintons-incomplete-timeline-on-her-personal-email-account/
    http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/09/hillary-vs-hillary.php

    Bottomn line -- She may have broken the law, she may have harmed national security, and she has surely told many falsehoods. Bob seems to have concluded that she did nothing wrong. His basis seems not to be a full analysis of her actions and words. Rather, he seems to see her as a repeat of his buddy Al Gore.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Who should I believe, the Former VA Attorney General (who is a Republican) or Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State, who has said explicitly that Clinton did not endanger national security? Who should I believe about her breaking the law? Republicans or the FBI and State Department?

      Delete
    2. Who should I believe, the Former VA Attorney General (who is a Republican) or Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State (who is a Democrat once employed by Hillary's husband)....

      Fixed that for you, i'm certain that info was left off by mistake.

      Delete
    3. Who would know more about what the job of secretary of state entails -- the former VA Attorney General or the former Secretary of State (no matter what her party or who appointed her)?

      Where are Rice's emails or Colin Powell's emails? Are laws only for Democrats to follow?

      Delete
    4. Powerline, ... again?

      Delete
    5. Of course, US laws for administration are only for Democrats to follow. Republicans are exempt from following those laws because they are God fearing gun toting patriots.

      Delete
  2. Journalist Ron Fournier says it better than I did:

    The GOP did not cre­ate a secret email sys­tem in­de­pend­ent of the Free­dom of In­form­a­tion Act, con­gres­sion­al over­sight, and his­tor­ic­al archives. The me­dia did not dis­cuss and dis­trib­ute clas­si­fied in­form­a­tion on the un­se­cured serv­er. Hil­lary Clin­ton’s cam­paign—not the vast right-wing con­spir­acy—has re­peatedly and in­ten­tion­ally misled the pub­lic.

    I feel sorry for the Clin­tons. I really do. Start­ing with the White­wa­ter land deal, which I first in­vest­ig­ated in the mid-1980s—find­ing no wrong­do­ing on the part of the Clin­tons—this ex­traordin­ar­ily tal­en­ted couple has been the sub­ject of spuri­ous ru­mors and al­leg­a­tions....I un­der­stand their siege men­tal­ity.

    And yet, Bill and Hil­lary Clin­ton re­peatedly dis­play a will­ing­ness to ag­gress­ively deny wrong­do­ing when the facts say oth­er­wise. Des­pite her deni­als, a fed­er­al pro­sec­utor found “sub­stan­tial evid­ence” that Hil­lary Clin­ton had a role in the 1993 White House travel-of­fice fir­ings. Five years later, Bill Clin­ton lied to the pub­lic about his af­fair with Mon­ica Lew­in­sky.

    Which is why the email scan­dal is so sticky. Hil­lary Clin­ton’s de­fense can be boiled down to two words—trust me—and we can’t.


    http://www.nationaljournal.com/s/73900/why-clinton-email-scandal-is-so-sticky?mref=scroll

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    Replies
    1. http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/09/if-you-accuse-hillary-clinton-lying-you-should-be-careful-truth-yourself

      Delete
    2. Just to pull one thread from this tapestry of insinuation you call "journalism:"

      "The me­dia did not dis­cuss and dis­trib­ute clas­si­fied in­form­a­tion on the un­se­cured serv­er."

      Nope, we are to conclude the media didn't do that to her, she did that to herself. Clinton discussed and distributed classified information on the unsecured server.

      And the evidence of that is?

      Someone sent her something that wasn't marked classified, but contained information that some assert could only have come from classified sources, while some disagree.

      Huh.

      And as to whether Clinton herself should have guessed that this information, though not in any way marked as classified at the time, and that even now arguably was available from non-classified sources, should have been presumed by her nevertheless to be classified at the time?

      As to that, nothing, of course.

      Far from "journalism" I'd think to suggest otherwise.

      Nevertheless, too much thinking is required to understand the issue -- the inherent nothingburger that it is as a supposed problem -- and reveal it as the character assassination that it transparently is, so I think it's most likely it will take Clinton down.

      Delete
    3. "Journalist and Hillary Clinton underwear sniffer Ron Fournier ...."

      FTFY - next troll topic

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    4. Condi Rice and Colon Powell's USA owned servers were compromised. Hillary Clinton's privately owned server never was.

      Delete
  3. Oh no, here we go. Bob is whining about the meanies picking on the poor Clintons once again. I guess he's scared of the old guy with the Brooklyn accent who has no chance.

    As if Clintons don't smeer their opponents. Let's forget all about Hillary jumping on the Rev. Wright non-controversy bandwagon in 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/26/us/politics/26wright.html?_r=0

    Or Hillary Clinton lying about the danger she was in when she landed in Bosnia and was greeted by sniper fire. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2008/mar/25/hillary-clinton/video-shows-tarmac-welcome-no-snipers/
    Did Bob get upset with that lie? Nope, but when Brian Williams told the same type of lie, Bob had a tizzy.

    Now we have Mr Honesty himself telling us why his wife is down in the polls.

    When will we liberals stop trusting liars?

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    1. Those "meanies" have been picking on all Democratic candidates but especially the Clintons.

      You clearly don't understand the difference between mistaken memory and a lie. Many people forget episodes in their lives over time, confusing dates and times and places, things experienced with things witnessed on video. It is more common as you get older and have more to remember. Calling those common memory failures "lies" when Democrats do them and mistakes when Republicans do them is unfair.

      What Brian Williams did wasn't just honest memory failure. It was elaborate self-aggrandizing lying in someone whose job it is to investigate and report the truth. It is not just a matter of scale but of intent and self-awareness.

      If you think Clinton jumped on the Wright bandwagon, please describe what she said. My recollection is that she stayed way out of that controversy. Attacking Obama over Wright would not win her any black votes and those votes were part of her normal constituency (had not Obama been running). Or do you blame Clinton herself for everything some Clinton supporter somewhere might have said inappropriately to the media?

      Delete
    2. HRC claiming to be taking fire (literally "landing under sniper fire") in Bosnia is merely a mistaken memory, but Brian Williams describing taking fire during a helicopter landing in Iraq is a "self-aggrandizing" lie. Got it. The difference is so clear, it makes perfect sense now.

      sigh, i just hope you're trolling

      Above I gave a link to a NYTimes article on Clinton and Wright. Enjoy

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    3. We know how accurate the NYTimes has been about Clinton.

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    4. Here's what the NYTimes based its headline on:

      "“Given all that we have heard and seen, he would not have been my pastor,” Mrs. Clinton, of New York, said on Tuesday of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., at a news conference in Greensburg, Pa. She made similar comments earlier in the day in an interview with The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “While we don’t have a choice when it comes to our relatives, we do have a choice when it comes to our pastors or our church,” she said."

      Note that Wright had personally attacked Clinton. Even so, this is a pretty mild statement and it doesn't criticize Obama as much as say what she would have done -- an appropriate remark given that she too was running for President. You have to work hard to blow that up into some kind of attack on either Wright or Obama.

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  4. "CLINTON (continuing directly): In 1992, I received a call, before—in ’91, before I started running for president—from the Bush White House, from the man on duty. He said, “We’ve looked at the field. You're the only one that can win. The press has to have someone every election, we’re going to give them you. You better not run.”

    I wonder if anyone has heard that story before. Gene Lyons or Joe Conason?

    Speaking of the GHWBush WH, let's look at some real documented corruption. They're not known as the Bush Crime Family for nothing.

    *********************************
    As it pertains to email, not much new happened in the first Bush administration – at least until the very end. For the full four years, the case between the government and National Security Archive was processed through the U. S. District Court and the U. S. Court of Appeals.

    At the end of 1992, when Bush I lost his re-election bid to Bill Clinton, U. S. District Court Judge Charles R. Richey granted a motion to include the Bush I White House email backups in the case. In January 1993, Richey ruled that email had to be treated like other government records. This treatment includes coverage by law, management by archivists, and preservation.

    Apparently, things started to get interesting when the outgoing Bush I people were facing the prospect of an incoming Clinton team. On the eve of President Clinton’s inauguration, once again on a January 19th evening, this time in 1993, staffers in the outgoing Bush I administration go their busy on.

    According to the National Security Archive, a group of National Archives & Records Administration employees rented vans, drove them to the Old Executive Office Building, assembled hand-written inventories, and loaded 4,852 computer tapes into boxes and then into the vans, with the backup tapes destined for the Bush Presidential Library in Texas.

    While this was going on, Bush I was doing a deal with the Archivist of the United States, Don (not “The Dragon”) Wilson. Just hours before Bill Clinton was to be sworn in, the agreement gave Bush I control over all the backup tapes, completely bypassing The Presidential Records Act.

    Wilson was already in trouble with Judge Richey for “abdicating his duties as Archivist” because he allowed the destruction of the Reagan-era email records. From Judge Richey’s perspective, this last minute Bush/Wilson deal to bypass the Presidential Records Act was the icing on the cake. Threatened with an in-depth investigation, Wilson resigned.

    So, where did the discredited former Archivist of the United States wind up after attempting to destroy both the Reagan presidential email records and the Bush presidential email records? Three weeks after the midnight ride of the email vans, Don W. Wilson accepted a gig as Executive Director of the Bush Presidential Library Center.

    Source: Where Have All the Emails Gone? By David Gewirtz
    ****************************************

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Hillary is innocent, because:
      1. Gore was innocent, when he was wongly accused of lying.
      2. Hillary has been acused of many acts of lying or other wrongdoing. She innocent of some things she was accused of.
      3. The Bush family also did bad things.

      Delete
    2. Come back when you find an actual crime, asshole troll.

      Delete
    3. That's an awfully low standard, mm. Just that someone hasn't been convicted of a crime. Especially when the investigation is being conducted by a friendly administration.

      When I was growing up, integrity was regarded as essential for a President, or, indeed, for any public servant. Today, we don't expect the Presidential candidate to be honest. Nor do we require accomplishments, executive experience, military leadership, economic expertise, foreign policy expertise, selflessness, etc. We're lucky if a candiate has even one of these qualities. Basically, we'll elect anyone who looks good and sounds good.

      BTW there's now another excuse for the e-mails:

      4. Time to move on.

      http://www.mediaite.com/online/hillary-supporters-all-have-suspiciously-identical-feelings-about-meet-the-press-interview/

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    4. I agree with mm. Anyone can make an accusation. When did those accused become guilty solely because of that accusation?

      Those accusations used to be called mudslinging and people routinely discounted it as politically motivated. You throw everything you can at a candidate and hope that some of it "sticks." If people automatically believe everything unless proven innocent, not only are we un-American, but we will have no one to admire or place our faith in. Hence your cynicism about the integrity of today's candidates.

      When I look at Clinton's character, one of the things I count on the positive side is her ability to go on fighting for what she believes in despite the constant barrage of accusations from the right. I couldn't do it myself and I admire her strength. She says the basis for it is her religious faith. I believe it is also the knowledge that she has done good in the world and truly helped others -- that can enable a person to endure a lot of personal sacrifice. I think many of her strong supporters feel the way I do about her trial by fire. It is why this relentless campaign against her may backfire.

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    5. "That's an awfully low standard, mm. Just that someone hasn't been convicted of a crime."

      No, troll, the former Secretary of State hasn't ever been accused of a crime. Get your shit straight.

      When you say "hasn't been convicted" you are implying that she was ever charged with a crime to begin with.

      In this entire email phony scandal, the one thing you fuckers and the NY Times keep forgetting is the actual underlying crime. There ain't none.

      I love it every month when a new batch of her boring mundane day to day emails are released, the cable hosts and news reporters breathlessly report, "Well, we haven't found a "smoking gun"......"

      And why in fucks sake would they expect there to be a "smoking gun"? In other words, don't you need a body first before you can talk about a smoking gun?

      With Secretary Clinton, the rule seems to be, she has to prove she's "innocent", without ever telling her what specifically was the crime. I'm not playing that game with you trolls.

      Delete
    6. "I'm not playing that game with you trolls."

      ;-)

      Delete
    7. Well, mm, I was guessing that you wouldn't consider something an "actual crime" if she hadn't been convicted.

      Delete
    8. IMHO to focus solely on crime is a red herring. The e-mail handling reflects badly on Hillary's judgment, integrity, competence, concern for US security, and public spiritedness. Consider her buddy Madeleine Albright, who graduated from Wellesley 10 years before Hillary, and who Hillary recommended as Secretary of State. Madeleine Albright naturally defended Hillary, but admitted that she would have never allowed an underling to operate a private email server under her tenure.

      Delete
    9. Meet David in Cal.
      He has never been convicted of child molestation.

      Delete
    10. "Madeleine Albright ... admitted that she would have NEVER allowed an underling to operate a private email server under her tenure."

      From Politico:

      Pressed, however, on whether she would approve her deputy secretary of state to run a private email server, Albright was firm.

      "I would not, no," she said.

      Albright later clarified her position on Twitter.

      @MarkHalperin Your question was whether I would approve it now. After all of this controversy - of course not. 1/2

      — Madeleine Albright (@madeleine) September 28, 2015


      David in Cal only lies when his fingers touch the keypad.

      Delete
    11. Why is Clinton being treated like an underling when she was the secretary of state. She decided what was classified or not. She decided what server to use for her email. Being the boss is different than being an underling. Even Clinton has stated she would do things differently, if she had it to do over -- presumably because of the uproar. But I agree that if it weren't this issue it would be something else, manufactured from whole cloth if she managed to give them no opportunity (an impossible task).

      Delete
    12. @7:12,

      Secretary Clinton was the highest ranking cabinet member, and as such she had the power and authority to classify or declassify something sent to her. She was the final arbiter of whether any information send through the State Department should be classified. Only the President and VP were above her in rank.

      Delete
    13. Soapy...after all the controversy over the RNC e-mail accounts during the Bush administration, would Hillary Clinton set up her own private account too? Of course not!

      Delete
    14. Dear 1:16 AM - can you notice the difference between David in Cal's citation to Madeleine Albright and what she actually said? Your are pursuing a man built of straw with your comment. I would add that you are also moving the goalposts, but it is obvious that you are incapable of any heavy lifting.

      Delete
  5. The press can't make a likable politician unlikeable. Thus, their relentless assault on Bill Clinton didn't hurt him. Hillary, on the other hand, is not naturally charismatic like her husband. Frankly, she is just not that likeable - even less so today than in the 2008 primary - which is why I have long been mystified by the claim that she is the favorite to win it all after Obama's two terms. She should not be struggling against a socialist who looks like a mad scientist.

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    1. People who have met and interacted with Clinton disagree with you, Maj. They find her not only likeable but warm, humorous and inspiring. The problem is that today's campaigning provides few opportunities for people to actually meet any candidates. So her personal qualities are less apparent.

      As I posted yesterday, Clinton is still 15 points ahead of Sanders (except in his backyard, where he should have strength because of both his organization and his record on local issues). No one would call that "struggling" if they weren't talking about Hillary Clinton. My opinion is that she will probably take NH too, but that remains to be seen. Everyone likes Sanders but I doubt people consider him a serious candidate as opposed to a protest vote on the economy. He has no foreign relations experience whatsoever and that is a serious hole in his resume.

      Delete
  6. Here's another part of the story he didn't tell you about: how the far left Sanders supporters are trashing Hillary just as relentlessly as the "other party". Just check out DailyKos for their war on Clinton.

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    1. I'm sure you were equally up in arms in 2008 when Hillary supporters made up the "Obama isn't a natural born citizen of the US" nonsense. Yes, the original Birthers were Hillary supporters.


      From check FactCheck.org

      "Of all the nutty rumors, baseless conspiracy theories and sheer disinformation that we’ve dealt with at FactCheck.org during campaign 2008, perhaps the goofiest is the claim that Barack Obama is not a 'natural-born citizen' and therefore not eligible to be president under the constitution.

      This claim was first advanced by diehard Hillary Clinton supporters as her campaign for the party’s nomination faded,..."

      http://www.factcheck.org/2008/11/its-official-obama-born-in-the-usa/

      Delete
    2. From Factcheck.org:

      "Claims about Obama’s birthplace appeared in chain emails bouncing around the Web, and one of the first lawsuits over Obama’s birth certificate was filed by Philip Berg, a former deputy Pennsylvania attorney general and a self-described “moderate to liberal” who supported Clinton.

      But none of those stories suggests any link between the Clinton campaign, let alone Clinton herself, and the advocacy of theories questioning Obama’s birth in Hawaii.

      One of the authors of the Politico story, Byron Tau, now a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, told FactCheck.org via email that “we never found any links between the Clinton campaign and the rumors in 2008.”

      Delete
    3. Anom 3:09, read DipsoFacto's post (to which i was responding). He's denigrating Saunder's supporters for "trashing" Hillary, not the Sanders campaign.

      In that light, my point stands - Hillary supporters were pimping the Birther nonesense and i'm guessing Dipso Facto never had an issue with it.

      Delete
    4. "Yes, the original Birthers were Hillary supporters."


      That is false.

      *************************
      It was all over the place long before Clinton and Obama faced off in 2008, which is where another young journalist who actually knows his job picks up the story. Dave Weigel wrote in the Washington Post:

      "The whole birther thing was started by the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2008 against Barack Obama," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) confidently told Yahoo News this summer.

      The problem: This is simply not true. Clinton's campaign, one of the most thoroughly dissected in modern history, never raised questions about the future president's citizenship. The idea that it did is based largely on a series of disconnected actions by supporters of Clinton, mostly in the months between Obama's reaction to the Jeremiah Wright story and the Democratic National Convention. I know, because I spent/wasted quite a lot of time covering this stuff.

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    5. These recent "stories" are the first I ever heard of it. Another right wing fever dream.

      Delete
  7. I tried to post this once already and it just disappeared.

    Digby wrote about this just a couple days ago. This smear was started by right wingers in 2004.

    **************************************
    As it happens, in 2007 a young journalist by the name of Chris Hayes actually did the shoe leather reporting on this. The smear started back in 2004.

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  8. Ok, the smear was started by right wingers in 2004 then picked up and pimped by Hillary supporters in 2008.

    Wonderful. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. As Weigel points out in his piece, Clinton's campaign tried to quash this nonsense and fired people who tried to push it, and it takes some real chutzpah of the King of the Birthers Donald Trump to now claim she was responsible. He can run but he can't hide:

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    2. That doesn't mean Hillary did anything. It just means there were birthers in both parties.

      Delete
  9. Been gone all day. Glad this isn't about black kids test scores. Nobody cared.

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  10. Wow. In 1991 Bill Clinton got a call from the "man on duty." I wonder if he was getting head when he took the call. Might explain why he got the year wrong at first and can't remember the name. Of the caller. He probably doesn't remember the girl's name, either. If there was a girl.

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    Replies
    1. He also gave us Hillary.

      Delete
    2. Dear 1:17 AM - apparently you are incapable of being embarrassed.

      Delete

  11. All thanks to the great doctor that help me to get back my boyfriend I thank you so much because you man of your words than anything he said will be done is a very good man I want to use opportunity thank Dr Ben and God shall bless him for getting my boyfriend back he is back to me now I didn't believe this at first until I put effort now my boyfriend is back I thank Dr Ben for the great work He has done for me I want him to keep doing this for other people are so that you can do it for me to thank you Dr Ben. And you can contact him at email DrBenspellcaster@gmail.com or whatsapp number +2348151642717. Now I believe you are the great spell caster Dr Ben.

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  12. Investing online has been a main source of income,that's why knowledge plays a very important role in humanity,you don't need to over work yourself for money.All you need is the right information,and you could build your own wealth from the comfort of your home!Binary trading is dependent on timely signals,assets or controlled strategies which when mastered increases chance of winning up to 90%-100% with trading. It’s possible to earn $10,000 to $20,000 trading weekly-monthly,just file a complaint with  Robert,I had almost given up on everything about binary trading and ever getting my lost funds back,till i met with him,with his help now i have my lost funds back to my bank account and I can now trade successfully with his profitable strategies and software!! Email: Robertseaman939@gmail.com or Fb.me/investandmakemoney1 or  whatsApp: +44 7466 770724

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  13. Happiness is all i see now I never thought that I will be cured from HERPES virus again. I have been suffering from a deadly disease (HERPES) for the past 3 years now, I had spent a lot of money going from one places to another, from churches to churches, hospitals have been my home every day residence. Constant checks up have been my hobby not until this faithful day, I was searching through the internet, I saw a testimony on how DR agaba helped someone in curing his HERPES disease, quickly I copied his email which is Dragabasolutionhome@gmail.com just to give him a test I spoke to him, he asked me to do some certain things which I did, he told me that he is going to provide the herbal cure to me, which he did, then he asked me to go for medical checkup after some days after using the herbal cure, behold I was free from the deadly disease, he only asked me to post the testimony through the whole world, faithfully am doing it now, please brothers and sisters, he is great, I owe him in return. if you are having a similar problem just email him on : Dragabasolutionhome@gmail.com or WhatApp: +2349074536486

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