Convention watch: Candidate Clinton would look good in stripes!

TUESDAY, JULY 19, 2016

Smith's nineteenth nervous breakdown:
We're going to start with a somewhat unpleasant comment.

In the past four years, we've seen Patricia Smith discuss the death of her son, Sean Smith, on many TV shows. We often get the impression that she may not be fully competent.

Last night, Smith spoke at the Republican Convention. As she discussed her son's death at Benghazi, she declared that Candidate Clinton would look quite good in stripes:
SMITH (7/18/16): For all of this loss, for all of this grief, for all of the cynicism the tragedy in Benghazi has brought upon America, I blame Hillary Clinton.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

I blame Hillary Clinton personally for the death of my son. That's personally.

And in an e-mail to her daughter shortly after the attack, Hillary Clinton blamed it on terrorism. But when I saw Hillary Clinton—

AUDIENCE MEMBER: A liar!

SMITH: She sure is. She lied to me and then called me a liar.

(CROWD BOOING)

When I saw Hillary Clinton at Sean's coffin ceremony, just days later, she looked me squarely in the eye and told me a video was responsible.

[...]

This entire campaign comes down to a single question. If Hillary Clinton can't give us the truth, why should we give her the presidency?

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

That's right. Hillary for prison. She deserves to be in stripes.
Just for the record, Hillary Clinton has never called Smith a liar.

Last night, as in the past, we wondered if Smith is fully competent. That said, it's perfectly clear that our press corps isn't competent to even the slightest degree.

Why do we say that? Here's why:

Smith's endless claim that Clinton has lied turns on an elementary point—a basic point our "press corps" avoids like the plague. We refer to the reason for the killing attack on the Benghazi facility.

For the past four years, Republicans have pimped a false dichotomy about that killing attack. Benghazi was a terrorist attack, they angrily say. But Hillary Clinton once said it was caused by a YouTube video!

Duh. There's no apparent reason why a "terrorist attack" couldn't be inspired by a YouTube video. All over the Muslim world, people were in turmoil that week over that insulting video. There's no reason why a terrorist group in Benghazi couldn't have launched that attack because of that insulting video.

There's no obvious contradiction there. But from the first day after the attack, Republican attack dogs have pushed this false dichotomy, using it first to attack Susan Rice, then to go after Clinton.

(On MSNBC, our liberal stars ran and hid in the woods while Rice was being savaged. They've refused to address this point ever since.)

What's the truth about the motive for the Benghazi attack? Was it a reaction to the insulting video? Or was it perhaps a "preplanned" attack, designed to coincide with the anniversary of September 11?

Over the past four years, your "press corps" has avoided this basic question like the plague. In doing so, they've helped keep a deeply divisive, punishing conflict alive.

Last night was no different. On CNN and MSNBC, mumble-mouthed pseudo-journalists tiptoed around the basic facts behind that false dichotomy. They mumbled about how "emotional" Smith had been—and they refused to play the journalistic role, in which they would offer basic facts about intelligence assessments.

What has the intelligence community come to believe about the motive for the Benghazi attack? The last time we saw it discussed, it was our impression that the intelligence community didn't think the Benghazi attack was a long-standing, "preplanned" event.

That said, it's been a long time since we saw this divisive matter discussed at all. The people hired to pose as our journalists avoid this topic like the plague.

Last night, they did it again—Maddow and Williams and Cooper and Tapper and the whole gaggle of posers. Smith staged her latest public breakdown. They engaged in their latest avoidance of facts.

What is the current best assessment of the motive for that attack? Our TV stars refuse to say. In fairness, we know of no reason to think that any of these world-class slackers have even the slightest idea.

Smith has been staging this breakdown for years; Republicans are eager to exploit her highly emotional state. In the face of all this misery, Maddow, Williams, Cooper and Tapper refuse to perform the most basic tasks.

Facts are no longer part of our discourse. It's narrative, and emotional cries, pretty much all the way down!

26 comments:

  1. No one wants to embarrass or seem to attack a woman who has lost her son. However, they could discuss this in a more abstract way and vindicate Hillary. The larger problem is that no one wants to be seen supporting Hillary -- that would be uncool.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Perhaps the media won't be seen helping Hillary is because they sense and resent her disdain for their intelligence, just like conservative voters do with the rest of Tribe Liberal.

      Pay attention to Somerby's lessons.

      Delete
    2. You say that the media representatives "sense and resent her disdain for their intelligence...." I believe if there is any, the resentment and disdain originates from reasons other than their intelligence, such as the years of unfounded accusations and scandal mongering that they have promulgated.

      Delete
  2. People who are happy and confident about where the country is headed don't watch the news as much. The upper-end news media want Trump in the worst way. It will help their individual pocketbooks, too.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Funny thing isn't it that dozens of incidents all across the Middle East (with deaths) happened on that same day, but only Benghazi was not a reaction to the video.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This election is over. Democrats need start organizing for 2020. I doubt they will fix the problems Somerby describes - their deep ignorance. But, like after W, they have a chance to pick up the pieces after the coming trump disaster. This one is over though.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think Clinton wins the election by 3%-4% points.

      Delete
    2. My view is that it is pointless and dumb to make claims about who is going to win, especially at this point. What's the point - we'll find out for sure eventually.

      Delete
    3. @ 2:32 PM - is the sky blue in your world?

      Delete
  5. One liberal journalist responded to Smith's presentation, tweeting: "I don't care how many children Pat Smith lost, I would like to beat her to death."
    https://twitter.com/realkingrobbo/status/755285350155706368/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Liberal journalist? He's a sports writer/blogger.

      Not defending the comment, obviously, but c'mon.

      Delete
  6. And once again, Somerby looks at a tiny tree and misses the forest.

    FYI, Bob, since you apparently turned in early last night, the story out of Day One was Melania's plagiarism.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The so-called plagiarism was a nothing burger. Here is the comparison, a brief portion of Michelle Obama’s speech with the words that Melania Trump duplicated in bold:

      And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that you work hard for what you wantin life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you’re going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them, and even if you don’t agree with them.

      And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values, and pass them on to the next generation. Because we want our children — and all children in this nation — to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.


      The repetition of a few common phrases is hardly a reason to vote for or against Trump.

      Delete
    2. Naturally D in C you don't quote the other paragraph where it's virtually word for word the same. What has gone wrong with you to want Trump to be president so badly that you distort even this stupid thing?

      Delete
    3. An astrophysicist showed that the likelihood of coincidence with Melania Trump's borrowing is extremely low.

      "For Melania Trump to have gotten all 14 of those phrases, in the same order as Michelle Obama did at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, is a chance of 1 in 87 billion ― about 7000 times less likely than winning lotto 6/49."

      Why not just own up to the borrowing/theft? Oh wait, she said she wrote the speech, except then her husband's handlers said aides assembled the speech. What a way to start off the convention!

      Delete
    4. AC/MA -- I was quoting a source that mentioned only this part of the speech. If there was another part that had true plagiarism, then I stand corrected.

      However, I am perplexed as to why this matters. There are some big issues in this race. I don't see citizens switching the vote based on whether Ms. Trump's speech-writers stole from some earlier speech.

      Delete
    5. "What has gone wrong with you to want Trump to be president so badly that you distort even this stupid thing?"

      Where have you been these last few years, AC/MA?

      Delete
    6. I don't really have too much interest in Melania's plagiarism, other than it gives us another window into the stinking sewer that is the Trump campaign in how they responded.

      Right out the gate, Manafort blamed it on, who else, Hillary Clinton.
      You can't make this shit up.

      I am much more disturbed by what TDH wrote about. Like the grotesque manner in which they are exploiting the tragic deaths of 4 brave Americans. These people are not patriots. They will always put party above country.

      For two nights now we've seen Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called a criminal, and a murderer. Featured speaker on day 1 was Scott Baio, last seen posting a Tweet calling Clinton a C*NT.

      And all the media cable heads can obsess about is this plagiarism controversy. They don't blink an eye when speaker after speaker lies about Clinton from the podium.

      Delete
    7. D in C, mm makes a very good response. I don't know how you could have missed the other parallels between the 2 speeches, since the internet and news were inundated with it. The media, as part of their design to anesthetize the public so as to enhance consumer spending by making people to feel inadequate if they don't buy, buy, buy, focuses on these potential first lady statements, which by definition are always vapid and meaningless. But the way the Trump 'team' reacted to the incident fits in with their fraudulent approach to just about everything. As mm said, the media focuses on this relatively trivial issue, and more or less ignores the venomous libel spewed out over and over.

      Delete
    8. Just happened to get that wrong, did you David? Whatever. The elder statesmen of your party are showing a certain amount of class in writing off this travesty. You might want to consider it too.

      Delete
  7. The NY Times ran more than one article exploring the motives of the perpetrators, although not recently. There was all kinds of evidence, including statements from some of the participants, that the video was a motivating factor for a significant number of the attackers. That evidence has never been refuted. It also appears that the attack was committed by local terrorists rather than Daesch or al-Qaeda. To this day I don't think we have definitively established exactly who carried out the attack or why. That's not a very satisfying answer, but ad far as I can tell it's the truth. How does any of that make Hillary a liar or a criminal. She may have been guilty of faulty judgment in urging our support for deposing Gaddaffi, but that's a different issue.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This was released as part of the recently released (June 2016) Benghazi Report, Democratic version. Noticeably missing from the Gowdy/Republican version.

      General David Petraeus: I’m still not absolutely certain what absolutely took place, whether it was a mix of people that are demonstrating with attackers in there, whether this is an organized demonstration to launch an attack, whether—because you’ll recall, there’s a lot of SIGINT [signals intelligence] that we uncovered that very clearly seemed to indicate that there was a protest and it grew out of the
      protest. … And there is a video of what took place. And they are just basically milling around out there. So if this is an attack, you know, maybe they rehearsed it to look like a protest, but maybe it was actually a mix. And so, again, I’m still not completely set in my own mind of what—and to be candid with you, I am not sure that the amount of scrutiny spent on this has been in the least bit worth it.


      That was just this past March, 2016.

      Delete
  8. Yes, only MSNBC is guilty of compartmentizing the truth so they can sell products to viewers of different partisanships. And that's what it comes down to.
    The first person I saw legitimizing Trump was Bill O"Reilly. You know, the guy who gets a pass for some reason. That spot is not going to come out of your hands, Bob.

    ReplyDelete
  9. There is no reason a terrorist attack couldn't be inspired by a video but Clinton said it was, suggesting that the video producers were at fault. It was a disgusting suggestion, and no one argued that such causation could not exist, only that our government should not justify the terrorists' actions.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Am here to appreciate Dr Oliha for using his herbal medicine to cure my Herpes virus. since 4years now I have been living with this virus and it has been giving me challenges, I was so perplexed cause i have been taking several drugs to be cured but all of my effort was in vain,one morning i was browsing through the internet then i saw several testimonies about Dr. Oliha curing people from Herpes virus and immediately i contacted Dr. Oliha on his email: oliha.miraclemedicine@gmail.com   , i told him about my troubles and he told me that i must be cured, gave me some instructions and which i rightly followed. so he prepared a herbal medicine for me and sent it to me which i used for 2 weeks and everything was like a dream to me and my Herpes virus was totally gone, why don't you contact him today and be free from your diseases because he is very good and honest Doctor. contact him via email; oliha.miraclemedicine@gmail.com   or whatsApp him on +2349038382931

    ReplyDelete
  11. Hello! I'm very excited to inform everyone that I'm completely cured from my HSV 1&2 recently. I have used Oregano oil, Coconut oil, Acyclovir, Valacyclovir, Famciclovir, and some other products and it's really help during my outbreaks but I totally got cured! from my HSV with a strong and active herbal medicine ordered from a powerful herbalist and it completely fought the virus from my nervous system and I was tested negative after 12 days of using the herbal medicine. I'm here to let y'all know that herpes virus has a complete cure, I got rid of mine with the help of Dr Oyagu and his herbal exploit. Contact him via email: oyaguherbalhome@gmail.com call or whatsApp him on +2348101755322.

    ReplyDelete