The Washington Post is very upset!

MONDAY, JANUARY 28, 2019

They weren't real upset in real time:
Once more, we're forced to delay for a week the start of the new year at this awatd-winning site.

"Aristotle's error" begins next week. For today, we turn to the deep concern expressed by the Washington Post in yesterday's top editorial.

The editor are very upset with the past conduct of one Roger Stone. His behavior took place in 2016, an election year.

According to the editors, Stone's gross moral corruption concerned the well-known nature of WikiLeaks. Hard-copy headlines included, the editorial started like this:
WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL (1/27/19): Mr. Stone's indictment/The charges against the president's ally reveal gross moral corruption

Roger Stone was indicted Friday for lying to Congress and witness tampering, not for conspiring with Russian intelligence or WikiLeaks, Moscow’s partner in disseminating materials stolen from the Democratic National Committee. Yet if special counsel Robert S. Mueller III did not disclose evidence of criminal collusion, the indictment makes clear that senior officials of the Trump campaign—including, possibly, Donald Trump himself—reacted to the criminal intelligence operation of a prime U.S. adversary by secretly trying to take advantage of it.

By mid-June 2016, it was publicly known that the DNC’s computer systems had been hacked by Russian government agents. The following month, when WikiLeaks released a trove of DNC emails, it was clear the material had come from the Russians. Yet, according to Mr. Stone’s indictment, the response of the Trump campaign was to contact Mr. Stone and ask him to find out what other damaging material WikiLeaks might have and when it would be released.
By June 2016, "it was publicly known" that WikiLeaks was "Moscow's partner," the irate editors wrote. Despite this fact, Stone, and the Trump campaign, wanted to know what kind of material WikiLeaks might have.

Everyone knew that WikiLeaks was Moscow's partner! The editors stressed this point again as their editorial ended:
WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL: Perhaps there was nothing illegal in the campaign’s actions, though we won’t know that until Mr. Mueller completes his work. But, as in the case of Mr. Trump’s secret pursuit of a real estate deal in Russia while running for president, his campaign’s dealings with Mr. Stone evince gross moral corruption. If it had nothing to do with the hack of the DNC, the Trump campaign should have done its best to steer clear of an attack on the U.S. political system by a hostile foreign power. Instead, at the least, it secretly sought to learn more about it so as to make the best use of it.

[...]

Earlier this week we pointed out that, if Mr. Trump did not secretly cut a business deal with the regime of Vladi­mir Putin while praising him on the campaign trail, it was not for lack of trying. Mr. Mueller’s latest indictment shows that if the president’s campaign did not conspire with WikiLeaks, an organization designated as a hostile intelligence service by the Senate Intelligence Committee, it was not out of scruple.
WikiLeaks had been "designated as a hostile intelligence service by the Senate Intelligence Committee!" As they ended their editorial, the editors stressed this general point again!

How righteous, how pure the editors were as they railed again this gross moral corruption! For ourselves, we thought of all the gross moral corruption which has emanated from the Washington Post from the Whitewater pseudo-scandal on, including the reign of terror of Ceci Connolly as the Post punished Candidate Gore for the alleged sins of President Clinton.

In that way, the Washington Post put George W. Bush in the White House. Children are dead all over Iraq because of what the paper's designated Gore-destroyer relentlessly did in twenty months of remarkably gruesome campaign coverage—gruesome coverage all "career liberals" knew they mustn't condemn or discuss.

The Post started in on Candidate Hillary Clinton in mid-2014. They thus continued their long campaign against both Clintons and Candidate Gore. As a result of decades of such behavior, we are all able to see who's American president now.

Yesterday, though, the Post was upset about the way the Trump campaign cavorted with "Moscow's partner"—with "an organization designated as a hostile intelligence service by the Senate Intelligence Committee." The editors were very, very upset about what the bad people had done.

We thought you might want to see the way the Post cavorted with WikiLeaks during the time in question. We thought you might want to see the way the Post described this org until the 2016 race was done.

On October 7, 2016, WikiLeaks began releasing John Podesta's stolen emails. The Post mugged, clowned, cavorted and played with the pointless contents of those stolen documents, as only such children will do.

For our money, Dan Zak's clowning essay on the front page of Style took the entertaining nonsense to its ultimate low point. Along the way, though, consider the way WikiLeaks was described on the front page of the famous paper which is so irate now.

On October 12, WikiLeaks released yet another batch of pointless catnip of the type our "mainstream press corps" loves. Under a triple headline, the Post reported the dump on the front page.

Note the way "Moscow's partner" was described by the Post:
PHILLIPS AND WAGNER (10/13/16): Hacked emails show anxiety over Clinton candidacy/
Wikileaks releases likely to continue/
Trump seizes chance to attack opponent's integrity


WikiLeaks released yet another batch of hacked emails from inside Hillary Clinton's campaign Wednesday, and with them came another round of embarrassing headlines and new glimpses of internal anxiety over the candidate's weaknesses.

Republican Donald Trump and his allies seized on the emails, which reveal comments by an aide about Catholics, a line from a paid speech in which Clinton might be seen as playing down the threat of terrorism and an internal dispute over potential conflicts of interest posed by the Clinton Foundation.

The drip-drip-drip of damaging attention is likely to continue. WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization, began releasing new messages last Friday from the personal email account of Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, and has promised to issue tens of thousands more.

The correspondence reveals a campaign that has struggled all year to improve a flawed candidate. As far back as March, aides were keenly aware that she was resistant to the media, perhaps out of touch with regular Americans and unable to convey a clear message to voters.
Back when the morally glorious Post was playing its campaign reindeer games, WikiLeaks wasn't "Moscow's partner" or a Russian front. WikiLeaks was an "anti-secrecy organization!" Or so it said on the front page of the Washington Post!

So the great newspaper described this org on the road to Hillary's Defeat. That said, WikiLeaks kept releasing its piles of bullshit, and the Post kept pimping their contents along.

On October 26, Rosalind Helderman's report appeared on the Post's front page. Sure enough—it happened again!
HELDERMAN (10/26/16): Leak shows turmoil on Clinton team over emails

On the day the news broke that Hillary Clinton had used a private email account as secretary of state, the man who would soon be named to chair her presidential campaign fired off a note of distress, venting frustration about some of Clinton's closest aides.

"Speaking of transparency, our friends Kendall, Cheryl and Phillipe sure weren't forthcoming on the facts here," John Podesta complained in the March 2015 note, referring to Clinton's personal lawyer, David Kendall, as well as former State Department staffers Cheryl Mills and Philippe Reines.

"Why didn't they get this stuff out like 18 months ago? So crazy," replied Neera Tanden, a longtime Podesta friend who also has worked for Clinton. Then, answering her own question, Tanden wrote again: "I guess I know the answer. They wanted to get away with it."

The exchange, found in hacked emails from Podesta's account and released Tuesday by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, provides a striking window into how the revelation of Clinton's email setup roiled her nascent campaign team in the weeks before its official April 2015 kickoff.
This time, WikiLeaks was identified as "an anti-secrecy group." One day later, again on page A1, the Post fluffed Moscow's partner again:
HELDERMAN AND HAMBURGER (10/27/16): Top aide's leaked memo details 'Bill Clinton Inc.'

When top Bill Clinton aide Douglas Band wrote the memo, he was a central player at the Clinton Foundation and president of his own corporate consulting firm. Over the course of 13 pages, he made a case that his multiple roles had served the interests of the Clinton family and its charity.

In doing so, Band also detailed a circle of enrichment in which he raised money for the Clinton Foundation from top-tier corporations such as Dow Chemical and Coca-Cola that were clients of his firm, Teneo, while pressing many of those same donors to provide personal income to the former president.

The system has drawn scrutiny from Republicans, who say it allowed corporations and other wealthy supporters to pay for entree to a popular former president and a onetime secretary of state who is now the Democratic presidential nominee.

Band wrote the memo in 2011 to foundation lawyers conducting a review of the organization amid a brewing feud with the Clintons' daughter, Chelsea Clinton, who was taking a stronger role in leading the foundation and had expressed concerns about Teneo's operations.

The memo, made public Wednesday by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, lays out the aggressive strategy behind lining up the consulting contracts and paid speaking engagements for Bill Clinton that added tens of millions of dollars to the family's fortune, including during the years that Hillary Clinton led the State Department.
The bullshit just kept rolling out. The Post kept putting it on page A1, complete with its suggestion that WikiLeaks should perhaps win a Nobel Prize for its "anti-secrecy" work.

When it actually counted, the Post was happily pushing Moscow's line along with Trump and Stone. If someone steals a person's mail and shows it to the world at large, they're doing "anti-secrecy" work, or so the Post kept saying.

"Man [sic] is the rational animal," Aristotle is routinely said to have said. As part of this overall gestalt, we liberals tend to think that major orgs like the Washington Post behave with basic intellectual skill and in morally defensible ways.

We love it when they hand us pleasing fluff like that found in yesterday's editorial. Their conduct has been gruesome for decades, but boys and girls who seek press corps careers agree not to tell you that.

Ceci kept it up for twenty months. Our very favorite liberal stars knew they mustn't say so.

Later this week: Things "career liberals" may possibly do to get hired by the New York Times

40 comments:

  1. What benefit would the corporate-owned media have gotten by not pretending to care that Republicans were pretending to care about Hillary Clinton's email/ server?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No matter how old you are, family history is important. While you might not think so at the time, as you get older there will be things you and your grandchildren will want to know. Most of us don't realize it until the older generations are gone and you can't replace first hand comments. Don't just put in about the good times, add in the harder times and how you overcame those trials. Another thing to remember is what caused the deaths of those you loved. There are many things that have been found to continue into future generations that knowing it runs in the family can be helped with now or possible in the future. prevention starts with knowing where to start. I wish someone had taken the time to write these things down for mew to be able to go back to. My Grandmother and my mother told us many stories of what things happened in their lives and about the people in their lives. I now wish someone had written those things down since both have passed now. But I never thought at that busy point in my life that I would one day want to remember all those things. So much family history is lost when the older generations are gone. Please pass it on to your family while you can. You can even just do it digitally so it can be accessed by family later on.Family pictures are something to cherish also. Just be sure to write down who is pictured in them, where they are taken and when. I have found family pictures that no one now even knows who is in them.

      AKHERETEMPLE@gmail.com
      or
      call/whatsapp:+2349057261346

      Delete
  2. I would like to express my gratitude to the goebbelsian rag called WaPo for confirming, once again, that WikiLeaks is the best investigative-journalism organization in the world.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ...and yet infinitely superior to the alternative, dembot.

      Delete
    2. It's the same. Endless wars, Acquiescence to the military industrial complex, healthcare and big banks. Healthcare hasn't changed under Trump. Endless war hasn't changed under Trump. Predatory lending has not changed under Trump. Everything's the same. He hasn't drained the swamp. He hasn't negotiated any terrific new deals. American people don't feel better about their situation. Infinitely superior? Only to a dumbfuck Trumpbot.

      Delete
    3. Mao,
      It's amusing that you never, ever dispute the facts that:
      Trump is a liar and a thief.
      And Putin's bitch.
      Punk.

      Delete
    4. No, not the same, dembot.

      Instead of two new wars that the lib-zombie cult would've started - two major lib-zombie wars are winding down. That's not the same.

      Instead of factories forced, by the lib-zombie cult, to close in the US and move to China - tariffs are imposed on Chinese imports. That's not the same.

      This shit affects people, human beings, dembot. Of course you wouldn't know it, you being dembot and all, but that's true.

      Delete
    5. I will note that Mao criticizes liberals, not business owners, for moving their factories to China for higher profits.
      Yup. Mao has got his marching orders to be upset with the results, but never, ever criticize his betters.
      Say what you will about Mao, but he's 100% dependable when it comes to covering for the establishment elites.

      Delete
    6. Why would anyone criticize ("criticize", really?) business owners for moving their factories to China when it makes business sense to do so, dembot? Do you understand what the word "business" means?

      Could you convey this message to your dembot management, please: this one is failing the turing test catastrophically; worse than any other one I've seen around here...

      Delete
    7. Ho-hum.
      Mao sides with establishment elites yet again.

      That some people still don't realize every Right-wing accusation is really a confession, is the surprise here.

      Delete
  3. At the time, I thought that it would have been correct for the media to refuse to talk about stolen material that obviously served the interests of one candidate over the other, but that is not the world we live in.

    Somerby's tone here is ridiculous. He suggests that the Washington Post has no right to be outraged over Roger Stone's actions because they themselves were not pure in the past. Papers can be sued for libel and may not wish to go through that process by suggesting that an organization such as Wikileaks is a Russian agent. Unlike Mueller, the Post wouldn't have the investigatory evidence to back up that decision. I can understand their caution. I do not understand why they went ahead and undermined Clinton's campaign, but Clinton appeared to be "fair game" to all during her campaign, when even Democrats were attacking her. Somerby certainly lacks the purity to defend Clinton on any level, given his own behavior in 2016.

    Roger Stone is a bad actor, an evil guy. He deserves everything he will get. Somerby insists on treating media as if they were players in our election process. They prefer to see themselves as recorders of events. It might be better to argue whether that is true or not, than to argue anything about Stone and Wikileaks. Somerby's hypocrisy is too great to argue any political point any more.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @Anonymous @1:14 - I think you are missing the point. The Post Editorial is condemning Stone for engaging with a known [implicitly known to Stone] front for Russian Intelligence. If it were indeed that widely known at that time that Wikileaks was indeed such a front, surely the Post should have reported that fact at the time. They did not...presumably because it was not widely known at that time.

      None of that challenges your assertion that Roger Stone is a bad actor, an evil guy...but it does shed some light on the Post.

      Delete
    2. @mark
      You are misstating the op-Ed. It did not say it was widely known at the time. What was known was: the hack occurred; the emails were released; Russia was the source. It does not say it was widely known at the time that Wikileaks was a “front for Russian intelligence”

      Delete
    3. "Russia was the source"

      What the fuck does it even mean, dembot? DNC was the source.

      The best investigative journalism org in the world revealed deep-seated corruption, infecting the American liberal elite.

      In response, the liberal-fascist regime immediately imposes suffocating censorship (new-mccarthyism), and Julian Assange, the hero journalist, is persecuted, silenced, and tortured by western fascist elites.

      And this's the truth, the real narrative, debot.

      Delete
    4. Obama was our first black president.

      Trump is our first Russian president.

      Delete
  4. The quotes from the 2016 Washington Post are from *news reports*. The currently (2019) quoted excerpts are from an *op-ed*. It would be inappropriate to use judgmental language like “Moscow’s partner” in a news report. Philips and Wagner let the Clinton campaign make that charge in their story “Hacked emails show anxiety over Clinton candidacy:”

    “By dribbling these out every day, WikiLeaks is proving they are nothing but a propaganda arm of the Kremlin with a political agenda doing Putin’s dirty work to help elect Donald Trump,” said Clinton spokesman Glen Caplin. “The FBI is now investigating this crime. The unanswered questions are why Donald Trump strangely won’t condemn it and whether any of his associates are involved.”

    The reporters use a non-controversial term.

    Also, it’s worth noting that the Senate didn’t designate Wikileaks as a “hostile intelligence service” until 2017.

    A better comparison would be current op-Ed’s with op-Ed’s from 2016, although one has to take the author(s) into account.

    What was the WaPo’s Editorial Board stance in 2016?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It would not be "News" that Wikileaks was a front for Russian Intelligence?

      Delete
    2. Of course it’s news. But We have a lot more evidence of that now than we did in 2016 during the campaign. It still remains an allegation, doesn’t it? So why should reporters simply have referred to Wikileaks as “Wikileaks, Moscow’s partner” back in 2016 when that was unproven or uncertain? It still isn’t legitimate to refer to it that way even today in a *news report* because we do not yet have incontrovertible evidence. That is journalism 101. It’s like a reporter referring to Trump as “putin’s Stooge”. An op-Ed is the more appropriate place for making those kinds of inferences.

      Delete
  5. The Wikileaks made true things known. The public benefits when actual facts about candidates are made public. When someone improperly leaked some of Trump's tax return, neither Bob nor any other liberal complained.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If Trump lost the electoral vote (too), due to the release of John Podesta's risotto recipe, you'd still be crying about how unfair it all is.

      You're still selling the "liberal media" bullshit after they gave Trump 16 months of free campaign advertising.

      Delete
    2. @6:56 - you're blaming me for some hypothetical action based on something that didn't happen. Yes, the media gave Trump months of free campaign advertising. That's a credit to Trump. Trump was smart enough and effective enough to behave in a way that made the media choose to give him that coverage.

      A lot of people think Trump is dumb. They're wrong.

      Delete
    3. Don't make the Scott Adams mistake. Trump is smart at persuasion but has a history of persuading people to believe he can do things that he can't. So you have a master persuader who is vainglorious and incompetent and hence his lifelong string of bankruptcy, backstabbing and bridge burning that left him a joke among his peers and hawking wine, ties and bottom of the barrel mlm scams until TV, and his vast talents and intelligence of which you speak, transformed himself into a TV star that acted like a successful, competent tycoon but his smarts have always been undercut by his vanity and the results speak for themselves. Beaucoup de bruit, peu de fruit.

      You'll see when it's all said and done with.

      Delete
    4. @8:50 - I agree that the results speak for themselves. A series of great successes is impressive, even if there were many failures along the way. E.g., consider Abe Lincoln.

      A common list of the failures of Abraham Lincoln (along with a few successes) is:

      1831 - Lost his job
      1832 - Defeated in run for Illinois State Legislature
      1833 - Failed in business
      1834 - Elected to Illinois State Legislature (success)
      1835 - Sweetheart died
      1836 - Had nervous breakdown
      1838 - Defeated in run for Illinois House Speaker
      1843 - Defeated in run for nomination for U.S. Congress
      1846 - Elected to Congress (success)
      1848 - Lost re-nomination
      1849 - Rejected for land officer position
      1854 - Defeated in run for U.S. Senate
      1856 - Defeated in run for nomination for Vice President
      1858 - Again defeated in run for U.S. Senate
      1860 - Elected President (success)

      That looks like a pretty glum résumé, making you wonder how he ever made it to the top. But when you really think of it, to run for office or high positions so many times, you have to have something on the ball and have more successes than meet the eye.


      https://www.school-for-champions.com/history/lincoln_failures.htm#.XE-6wVxKiUk

      Delete
    5. Indeed, nor shall we forget Pliny the Elder's documentation of the collected misfortunes of Augustus Caesar himself, whom, one would judge the most fortunate of all men.

      Delete
    6. I do not care for notions such as success and failure, winners and losers, competition, dominance - they are generally fleeting and empty. I feel good when I am engaged in healthy relationships, or helping those in need.

      Delete
    7. 5:17 That is because you have an inferiority complex. That is why you are a failure in life and relationships. You never, ever "help those in need".

      Delete
    8. David,
      I look forward to your complaints about how life isn't fair. Please feel free to post about out how some people (preferably blacks, a women, or an illegal aliens) have gamed the system.

      Just remember, if the weren't smart people, they never would have gotten away with it.

      Delete
    9. I owe Conservatives an apology. I had thought Conservatives criticized illegal immigration due to bigotry. It turns out it's something more mundane, jealousy over the smarts it takes to get away with it.

      Delete
    10. AnonymousJanuary 29, 2019 at 10:41 AM - illegal immigration hurts poor black and Hispanic Americans. You are opposing a policy that hurts the people you say you care about. However, I don't think you're a bigot. You just have naive economic understanding.

      Delete
    11. "Trump was smart enough and effective enough to behave in a way that made the media choose to give him that coverage."

      That's probably it. And not at all because the media is in the bag for the GOP because they love the corporate tax breaks.
      LOL.

      Delete
    12. "You just have naive economic understanding."

      Writes the self-professed former actuary, who disregards population growth when discussing federal budget growth rates.
      For a long time, I thought you weren't really aren't a stupid person, but just love to play one on the internet. Lately, I am not so sure.

      Delete
    13. "You just have naive economic understanding."

      Meh. Just a dembot; primitive Soros dembot. Scanning comment sections for keywords, and replying with a hastily concocted word-salad.

      Delete
    14. "...replying with a hastily concocted word-salad."

      What could people possibly mean when they say, "Every Right-wing accusation is a confession"? Tis a mystery.

      Delete
    15. One Soros dembot says it, dembot. No people.

      Delete
    16. 9:27 Your troubled soul has been corrupted by empty desires to feel superior. I help people like you daily, and please, no compensation is required.

      Delete
    17. Okay, help me then. Shall I give up studying history? Too fleeting and empty? Shall I forgo any "notions" of some things as successful or superior and other things as failed or inferior? Fill me in on you views!

      Delete
    18. Studying history seems like a fine endeavor. Too few of us understand things with historical context, witness the debacle at Davos where elites scoffed at the notion of a 70 percent marginal tax rate. I would encourage your developing introspection, keep at it!

      Delete
    19. You're fucking lame.

      Delete
  6. The editor are very upset with the past conduct of one Roger Stone. His behavior took place in 2016, an election year.

    ReplyDelete
  7. LOTTO, lottery,jackpot.
    Hello all my viewers, I am very happy for sharing this great testimonies,The best thing that has ever happened in my life is how I win the lottery euro million mega jackpot. I am a Woman who believe that one day I will win the lottery. finally my dreams came through when I email believelovespelltemple@gmail.com and tell him I need the lottery numbers. I have spend so much money on ticket just to make sure I win. But I never know that winning was so easy until the day I meant the spell caster online which so many people has talked about that he is very great in casting lottery spell, . so I decide to give it a try.I contacted this great Dr Believe and he did a spell and he gave me the winning lottery numbers. But believe me when the draws were out I was among winners. I win 30,000 million Dollar. Dr Believe truly you are the best, all thanks to you forever

    ReplyDelete