Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Eating Your Own Dogfood

I'm not sure when I'll be blogging next as I have a family member in the hospital (immediate danger appears past, home by the weekend if all continues to go well), so I am simply going to point you at the Incomparable Bob Somerby's latest post, Who Sent the Dogs Out!

First, he calls out Harold Meyerson's deeply mendacious words about the Michigan ballot and why Obama's name wasn't on it:

Can Meyerson possibly be this dumb? Trashing Clinton’s vile ways up in Michigan, he misstates elementary fact not once, but twice, in this groaning passage:

MEYERSON (5/28/08): Had Florida and Michigan conducted their primaries the way the other 48 states conducted their own primaries and caucuses that is, in accord with the very clear calendar laid down by the DNC well before the primaries began—then Clinton's marchers would be utterly justified in their claims. But when the two states flouted those rules by moving their primaries outside the prescribed time frame, the DNC, which gave neither state a waiver to do so, decreed that their primaries would not count and enjoined all presidential candidates from campaigning in those states. Obama and John Edwards complied with the DNC's dictates by removing their names from the Michigan ballot. Clinton did not.

Seating Michigan in full would mean the party validates the kind of one-candidate election (well, 1.03, to give Dennis Kucinich, Chris Dodd and Mike Gravel, who also remained on the ballot, their due) that is more common in autocracies than democracies. It would mean rewarding the one serious candidate who didn't remove her name from the ballot when all her rivals, in deference to the national party rules, did just that.

You live in a deeply disordered society, as Meyerson has shown in the past.

Sorry, but even Meyerson surely knows that there was no “DNC dictate”—no “national party rule”—requiring Obama, Edwards, Biden andRichardson to remove their names from the Michigan ballot. Duh! They did so voluntarily, at the last minute (as was their right); that’s why Clinton, Dodd, Kucinich and Gravel were free to leave their names there. The candidates’ decisions were voluntary; indeed, all the requests were made on October 9, the day of the ballot deadline, to considerable uproar in Michigan. (The DNC had condemned the state’s primary at least four weeks earlier.) Indeed, in the October 10 Detroit News, party honcho Debbie Dingell said that Obama’s campaign “had assured her last week that he would remain on the ballot.” We have no idea if that’s accurate, but no challenge to her statement was ever published—and it only made sense because there was no requirement that names be removed from the ballot. All the uproar, surprise and confusion occurred because there were no “rules” or “dictates” requiring names to be removed.

Request to Meyerson: What was the “dictate” to which you refer? Any chance you could quote it for us?

How should candidates have handled Michigan? That is a matter of judgment. But Meyerson seems to be working double-hard to convince Post readers of something that’s baldly untrue. Clinton, Dodd, Kucinich and Gravel all stayed on the ballot. And they broke no “dictates” or “party rules” when they decided to do so.


Meyerson is the person who falsely accused Clinton of making racist phone calls in Los Angeles dutring the California primaries, if you will recall. He appears to be getting his talking points directly from Obama headquarters, first promoting the bullshit claim that Hillary is stirring up racial tensions (no, only Obama is doing that) and now spewing sheer lies about the conditions for the Michigan primary.

Then, Somerby does something I didn't think I'd see - he goes after Obama. In the earlier months, Somerby has been scrupulously careful to keep his criticisms of the campaign focused on the behavior of the press and bloggers (we owe him for the coinage of the Guy Who Kidnapped Josh Marshall) and to not so much as hint at bad behavior by either campaign. As recently as Friday, he was exonerating Obama from involvement in the biased bahavior of the press corps: "Members of the media recoiled and threw their support to Obama? Again, this wasn’t Obama’s doing. But let’s ask ourselves how “reporting” looks when journalists engage in such recoil."

With today's post, Somerby has stopped protecting Obama. The RFK assassination smear was simply too much, going too far. It was the Bradley trashing of Gore cubed. His eloquent fury deserves to be quoted in full.

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PART 2—WHO SENT THE DOGS OUT: The screaming mimis keened and wailed when it was deemed that Clinton had vilely offended. Robinson, Olbermann, Herbert, and Dowd (sounds like a firm of ambulance chasers!) realized how vile the vile woman had been—and they began to tear their hair wildly. And it wasn’t just these hounds of hell—hounds who howl for the mainstream press corps. Many hacks on the “liberal web” have taken to reciting this latest grim nonsense. Once Drudge had said that Clinton was vile, these pseudo-libs rushed to affirm it.
Can our society function this way? More on that question this Friday.

At any rate, Robinson, Olbermann, Herbert and Dowd took turns barking and howling their outrage. Which takes us back to the early days of March—to the hounds which failed to bark.

By last Friday night, everyone knew it: Clinton’s statement to the editorial board in Sioux Falls was one of the vilest things ever said. But uh-oh! As it turned out, Clinton had said the exact same thing to Time’s Rick Stengel in March! When Joe Klein played the fool (again) this weekend, he cited her earlier statement:

STENGEL (3/6/08): Can you envision a point at which—if the race stays this close—Democratic Party elders would step in and say, “This is now hurting the party and whoever will be the nominee in the fall?”


CLINTON: No, I really can't. I think people have short memories. Primary contests used to last a lot longer. We all remember the great tragedy of Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A. My husband didn't wrap up the nomination in 1992 until June. Having a primary contest go through June is nothing particularly unusual.

Yep! Last Friday, all the mimis screamed and yelled at Clinton’s deeply vile statement. But Clinton had said the same thing in March! And to show you how fake this week’s outrage was: Not one damn thing happened back then!

There was no madness back in March. Before considering Robinson, Olbermann, Herbert and Dowd, let’s make sure we understand the chronology of Clinton’s March statement:

  • Clinton’s interview with Stengel was held on March 5. The full transcript was posted on-line, on March 6.
  • As you can clearly see from the transcript, Stengel said nothing—nothing at all—when Clinton made her statement about Robert Kennedy. This was no sign—no sign at all—that he was troubled, in any way, by what the vile person had said.
  • On March 10 or thereabouts, Time’s hard-copy edition hit the street (dated March 17). The cover stories—about Obama and Clinton—included two Q-and-A’s from the Stengel interview. And yes: This did include the Q-and-A in which Clinton cited Kennedy’s death. But even then, after several days had passed, there was no reference to Clinton’s statement in Time’s cover-story reporting. There was still no sign that anyone at Time was troubled by what Clinton had said.
  • *In its next edition (dated March 24), Time published several letters about the Obama/Clinton cover stories. None of the letters mentioned Clinton’s reference to Kennedy’s assassination—and no such letters appeared in subsequent editions. In short, there was still no sign that anyone had found a problem with Clinton’s remark.
  • That brings us around to our hounds from hell—to Olbermann, Robinson, Herbert and Dowd. Olbermann, Robinson, Herbert and Dowd wrote many columns—appeared on many cable programs—during the first few weeks in March. And guess what? Not one of them said the first f*cking thing about the outrage Clinton committed. Olbermann and Robinson kept their traps shut. Joe Klein didn’t say one word either.
In fact, no mainstream pundit (no one; nobody) said a word about Clinton’s statement in March—a statement which was published in Time, and on-line at the magazine’s web site. No one at Time said a word; no one in the wider press corps. And yet, this past weekend, everyone keened and wailed and tore their hair when Clinton so vilely said the same thing! Olbermann, “The Worst Con Man in the World,” offered a heartsick restrospective in which he blamed himself:

OLBERMANN (5/23/08): She said, in an off-camera interview with Time on March 6, "Primary contests used to last a lot longer. We all remember the great tragedy of Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A. My husband didn`t wrap up the nomination in 1992 until June, also in California. Having a primary contest go through June is nothing particularly unusual. We will see how it unfolds as we go forward over the next three to four months."

In retrospect, we failed her when we did not call her out, for that remark, dry and only disturbing, inside the pages of a magazine.

Readers, if you’re dumb enough to buy that sh*t, you’re as dumb as this big fraud thinks you are. For the record, that was in Olbermann’s “Special Comment.” In it, the man who suggested, just last month, that someone should “take [Clinton] in a room and only he comes out”—that delicate poodle barked deep outrage about what Vile Clinton had said.

Except, she had said the same thing back in March—and this hound from hell hadn’t barked at all! In fact, nobody barked back in March. And everyone barked this past weekend.

But readers, you may understand why this happened—because we’ve all seen this movie before. Let’s explain what happened this weekend. Let’s explain why Robinson, Olbermann, Herbert/Dowd/Matthews all sat up and started to bark.

How did the chronology go down this time? As usual, it all came down to a famous old question: At present, who is scripting your “press corps?”

In fact, a familiar old pattern reappeared in the wake of Clinton’s remark in Sioux Falls. As John Harris explained at Politico, the Associated Press filed an initial report about Clinton’s session with the editorial board—and the AP didn’t mention her remark about Robert Kennedy’s death! At the AP, it was March in May; no one seemed to be troubled by Clinton’s outrageous comment (link to story below). But then, the people who script your “press corps” got busy! As Katherine Seelye reported on Monday, the brilliant minds at the New York Post got the nasty episode started. Then, your press corps’ current masters told the dogs to bark:

SEELYE (5/26/08): Shortly after Mrs. Clinton spoke on Friday, the Obama campaign jumped on the story, sending an e-mail message to reporters saying her comment had no place in a presidential campaign. It linked to a online report in The New York Post that said Mrs. Clinton was ''making an odd comparison between the dead candidate and Robert Kennedy—a phrase the newspaper later dropped.

So there you see the sad chronology of Friday’s nasty, vile nonsense. The AP treated Clinton’s remark as inconsequential—just as Robinson, Olbermann, Herbert and Dowd had done back in March. But off in the dumbest regions of Gotham, the creepy crawlers of Rupert Murdoch’s dumbest newspaper made a claim so stupid that they later retracted—and just like that, the Obama campaign threw the Post’s dog food to all the dogs! And presto! Just like that! Every shill in America’s “press corps” knew what their current trick had to be. They repeated the New York Post’s stupid and ugly claim—a claim so stupid that the Post even dropped it!—and soon, they were trying to top one another. They competed to see who could bark loudest about the vile thing Clinton said.

Back in March, she had said the same thing—and Olbermann didn’t say one word about it. Neither did Robinson; neither did Herbert; neither did Klein, or Matthews, or Dowd. Neither did anyone at Time—and oh yes, neither did anyone in the “liberal” web! Go ahead! Ask the screaming mimis of the liberal web, the children who are so outraged today. Ask them to show you a single word anyone wrote back in March!

In fact, we’ve all seen this stupid story before, back when the RNC was still scripting the “press corps” (details tomorrow). But is it really so different today? Last Friday, it was Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post which first put out this rancid dog food—offering an interpretation so deeply stupid that even they later retracted it! But so what? If you want to know how your “press corps” works, you have to know who they take their scripts from. And last Friday, they took their script from Obama’s campaign—from the campaign John Judis tells us is “history.” But then, that campaign recently pimped out bullsh*t from “Mister Drudge” too! Should we really be surprised when it feeds on the New York Post!

Last Friday, Obama’s campaign told the “press corps” to jump. The “press corps” barked and then wondered: How high? But then, we’ve written this story for more than ten years: When the dogs were told to bark, Robinson, Olbermann, Herbert and Dowd all commenced barking and howling.

TOMORROW—PART 3: Same pattern, from back when the RNC ruled. And: Back in March, Olbermann mused about “assassinating Hillary Clinton”—on two separate programs! And:

What happened in June—of 1992—in the words of the Washington Post.

THE AP DIDN’T BARK: Here’s Friday’s original AP story, as it appeared on-line at the Boston Herald. The story didn’t mention Clinton’s comment about Kennedy—just as no one in the press corps had mentioned her comment in March. The AP didn’t file a report about Clinton’s vile remark until more than another hour had passed. By then, of course, current masters of the hounds of hell were scripting the bullsh*t you’re handed.

--------------

Your press corps' current master - the Obama campaign. There was nothing in the statement, nothing that was wrong or objectionable in the slightest. It had nothing to do with assassination and there is not a single thought in there that a rational human being can interpret that way. Only the irrational and increasingly panicked Obama campaign. They pushed this story to the MSM and the Blogger Boyz and continued to do so through the weekend, as George Stephanopolous exposed when interviewing Axelrod.

All Obama has now is a tenuous hold on a portion of the delegates, and a growing, furious opposition within the party itself. He has nothing of himself to offer - no substance, no honesty, no vision, no voters, and I'm beginning to think he's not got much money left, either. It's coming in, but he is spending like a drunken sailor. All he can do is scream for the MSM to come save The Precious from the evil Hillary Mommy Monster who wants to destroy him. That Olbermann himself was advocating Hillary's murder last month in straightforward language doesn't seem to register with the Obamacans. They are projecting onto her the murderous impulses they harbor towards her.

Help yourself to your own rancid dogfood, Obamacans. The rest of us aren't biting.

Anglachel

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

Most Hillary sympathizing blogs refer to the comments by the Obama mob on the RFK incidence as "insanity," "misogamy" and dumb. I want to strongly object to this terminology.

In reality Kos, Josh and Meyerson are sane and decently smart individuals. None of them will be referred by a therapist for further and urgent treatment.

The German intellectuals who hated the Jews and supported Hitler weren't insane, they were racists. The Europeans, to this day, hate the Gypsies. (Interestingly enough hate of Gypsies reminds me of Obama's attitude towards blue collar workers.) You don't want to be gay in every country in the Middle East except one.

Hate and racism is the correct diagnosis for what afflicts Hillary detractors. (Detractor is an understatement.) The Hillary racists hate Bill as well. They also hate blue collar workers and women as apolitical group.

Insanity is an illness and today we don't ridicule the mentally sick. Racism isn't an illness; it's a choice and racists should be prevented from participation in a county's political dialog!

gendergappers said...

Anyone who has ever had to clean up "a dog's dinner" has long associated the BO campaign with stench and disgusting crap.

Gawd amighty, how they hate a woman who is both courageous and smart.

All best for you and family.

TLE said...

My thoughts are with you and yours. I will miss your regular commentary, as your site is an oasis of sanity in the raging sh*tstorm.

speck said...

Best of luck with the hospital - we just brought my father out safely. Don't forget to question everything they do!

I'm starting to ask myself what I should be putting my energies into as a consequence of living through this orgy of hate. Maybe joining the fight for single-payer health insurance. This is something I would do if Hillary won, in the spirit of Roosevelt's famous remark about "now, make me do it." Either way, it seems like a good fight. I've sure had it with Presidential electoral politics and the *!&# Democratic party.

I'll be looking for your return; again, best of luck.

Sarah said...

BEst of luck with the hospital!

And FYI everybody - it is double-contribution day at HRC's site.

https://contribute.hillaryclinton.com/match1.html?sc=1883&utm_source=1883&utm_medium=e&ta=0

Shainzona said...

Hank: (shaking head). I just don't even know how to respond to your continued use of the Hate Hillary line..."nodding acquaintance with the truth".

The strange part is that often, when she has addressed a question about what she has said, you (Obamaphiles)look even closer to find a "lie" in her explanation.

Don't you have better things to do with your life?

I know what truth is. And I know what lies are. And if the words you label lies are the worst you can get from Hillary, I'm just fine with her, still.

What I don't understand is how every word - out of millions - that HRC has used is reviewed to find the "lie" while Obama gets a pass on everything - AND HE'S THE ONE WHO HAS SAID "WORDS MATTER".

I guess you Kool-aide drinkers mean words matter...as long as they aren't Obama words.

Sigh. Very pathetic.

Chinaberry Turtle said...

Anglachel, I hope your family issues work out OK. Good luck.

CognitiveDissonance said...

I agree, Shainzona. I hear more lies coming out of Obama's mouth than Hillary could tell in a month of campaigning. Even recently, he has been out there lying about his family and liberating concentration camps, and all anyone talks about is something very innocuous that Hillary said.

What is even sadder is that Obama doesn't even seem to try to cover his lies these days, knowing that the press won't report them anyway. While those of us on the internet can find out that his great uncle (not uncle) was in the Navy, not the infantry, and was definitely not liberating camps from a ship. And could not have liberated Auschwitz unless he was in the Red Army. But the press has basically told Obama he can say any idiotic thing he wants, including huge gaffes in geography about our own country, and they won't say anything.

Quite frankly, I'm just about at the conclusion that our leaders and their politics will never change as long as this press is in power and is not held to the fire. The press has never been perfect, but I do seem to remember them exposing the crimes of Richard Nixon non-stop until he was out of office. The press of today would have simply looked the other way. Or tried to convince us that the democrats were so unpatriotic that he was forced to break into their offices and he was simply doing his duty.

Make no mistake. If Obama is elected, it's because we have a propaganda machine, not a press. They have completely accepted Obama's frame of who is ahead, how SD's should vote, and that Clinton doesn't have a chance. Anyone familiar with how the party has worked over the past 50 years is not convinced at all. If we don't get a real press one of these days, we are well and truly lost. I'm really afraid that this is where we already are.

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

I suspect if Obama is elected, it will be because he's Wall Street's mole to raid Social Security [no GOP prez could get away with it], and so the crooked voting machines will be set to favor the [nominal] Democrat this time.

*********

I hope Anglachel's relative recovers fully.

Shainzona said...

Hank: I have a wonderful perspective. Hillary Clinton is, IMHO, the most qualified person who has ever run for POTUS in my (long) lifetime. Plain and simple.

Wiht regard to the game of "gotcha" that you want to play...I don't want/need to play it. If you think telling me you consider Hillary Clinton a liar is going to make me decide to vote for an ego driven empty suit, you're mistaken.

If you want to talk qualifications, then please, be my guest. But your Hate Hillary message is so out of place on this blog that it's jarring.

Why not go talk to people who "think" like you do? You must have your gut in such a twist that we aren't all falling over in a dead faint for BO's line of - well - crap. Take your Tums!!

Anglachel said...

Thanks for the good wishes.

Hank Gillette's posts in this thread have been deleted permanently and all subsequent posts by him will be deleted. If you see him posting, please ignore.

Anglachel

CMike said...

Wow.

UPDATE: [Jake Tapper, ABC News, blog post with 700+ comments - takes forever to load] Pfleger appears to have been scrubbed from the Obama campaign's page that features the testimony of faith leaders, but you can see the cached version HERE."

Pat Johnson said...

I have never been more demoralized about a presidential primary as I have with this one.

To see the Clinton's portrayed as racist; to have Hillary persecuted by the MSM; to watch a viable candidate with years of experience being replaced by an empty suit is remarkable.

The Democratic Party will surely be broken come November if they insist on backing this unqualified man. My vote will go to McCain, something for which I never in a million years would have imagined. But Obama needs to be stopped as his campaign and his backers are becoming almost sinister.

Pat Johnson said...

The Democratic Party does not deserve Hillary Clinton. They must live with their disastrous choice who will more than likely go down in flames come November.

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

In case Hank still lurks here:

NA-NA-NA-NA, NA-NA-NA-NA, HEY-EY-EY. GOOD-BYE! :)

Anglachel has too much dignity to say such things. Fortunately, I don't. :D

Anonymous said...

While Anglachel supports her family in recovery (it takes a village as you know), we will keep the place neat, clean and with some appearance of thoughtful comments. I'll do may part.

First, I will not vote McCain, although they say you start in the left and end in the right, I am as left as I have ever been and I almost a senior citizen. I never voted for the right and never will; I'll stay at home at the first time since 18.

Ms. Pelosi has said that she will "step in" if there is no nominee by June. The Democrats have abandoned the poor but gained arrogance. Where did Ms. Pelosi find the right to intervene and shorten the democratic process? What power does she have? Is the despicable constent to everything Bush wants an hindrance to her chutzpa?

I always thought that the leverage real leaders have is either moral or the LBJ type of hinting at twisting arms. What can Pelosi do to Hillary? It's like a second grader trying to pressure a high school student. What power does she have over Obama? He is way more arrogant then she is.

This is another sign that at a time when the Republican Party is falling apart, the Democrats succeed in doing the same.

gendergappers said...

Who put Pelosi in charge of the world?

Methinks they are using her as front so all the majority of boyz in the DNC seats of power will be protected from charges of "beating up on a girl."

And wasn't the latest Reverend erruption typical for illuminating BO's past?

orionATL said...

anglachel -

best wishes for a strong recovery to your family member.

Anglachel said...

IBW & everyone else, please, no troll baiting and no childish shit. I will shut down comments otherwise.

Anglachel

Horselover Fat said...

Pelosi has power over SD who are members of congress. She can take retribution on those who do not favor her preferred candidate

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

Apologies, Anglachel; I'll save it for other blogs in the future.

In my case, 45 years old is an average: I'm 80 half the time and 10 the other half.

Anonymous said...

Catching up during my weekly internet check-up on the craziness going down in this election. Obama has lost and I am so glad he and his supporters are arrogant and ignorant enough not to consider Clinton for the VP slot. She's too good for VP and she's too good for Obama and the Democratic Party.

As I've said before, I've contemplated voting for McCain just as a protest vote against Obama. I will probably write in Clinton along with Anglachel but the mere fact that a progressive Democrat like myself is even thinking about voting for McCain has signaled that the unity jig is up for Obama and the creeps in the MSM and blogosphere. This is really tearing me up because if MI does become a battleground state in the general which it must certainly will be for Obama, I might decide to send in my absentee ballot for McCain because at this point I will do anything to see Obama and the leaders of the Democratic Party go down in flames in November.

Obama will most definitely lose and their false attacks calling the Clintons racists and monsters along with Wright and Pfleger have already lost Obama the crucial women, Reagan Democrats, and Independents Obama needed to win the general election. Add the disenfranchisement of MI and FL to this already growing disaster for Obama & Co. and you're looking at something as bad as McGovern '72.

At this point I hope Obama, Olbermann, Dowd, Herbert and the rest of the Obamabots continue their gaffes and attacks on Clinton because it is just more ammunition for McCain to take the Clinton supporters Obama didn't earn or will deserve to win in November.

Hope your relative recovers, Anglachel.

Anonymous said...

I also wanted to add another thing. Since I do not have regular internet access, I've had to count mainly on television to get election news (it sucks). I heard a "journalist" report that the Democratic Party expects Clinton to campaign as enthusiastically for Obama as she has done for herself.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Just hearing that made me angry as hell. What gives the Democratic Party the right to screw her over then basically threaten her that she has to work her ass off for Obama because he and his supporters have already ruined his chances of winning the general election. Yes, Clinton is expected to support whoever the Democratic candidate is but the way the journalist said it sounded like the Democratic Party was threatening Clinton to keep her supporters in line.

Um...FUCK NO. Sorry, Hillary. I know she'll have to take the brunt of the attacks when Obama loses the general because of us Clinton supporters who will vote for McCain/stay home/write in Hillary but I will not support Obama no matter what Hillary says or does in the coming months. The damage is done. And now that we know the Democratic Party will force her to work 24/7 for Obama even though she deserved to win the nomination or at least be asked to fill the VP slot with Obama, Clinton supporters will not vote for Obama.

Clinton deserves a long vacation after this election. She doesn't deserve to be bullied into working for Obama without any appreciation from Obama and his supporters.

Chinaberry Turtle said...

right there w/ ya cutepeach. I want Hillary to take a nice long vacation, maybe wear an Obama t-shirt, and say "yeah, vote for Obama, he's better than McCain." But other than that, she should be sitting on her ass drinking Mai-Thais all day long. Lord knows she's earned it. Let the precious little Mr. Unity do his own damn work.