Tag: Clinton

A long-overdue letter to the editors of the New York Times

I wrote this today in response to an editorial decrying “Two Presidential Candidates Stuck in the Past.”

Thank you so much for continuing the Times’s pattern of false equivalence between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton which did so much to elect the former and besmirch the latter. Trump’s pathological need to tell whoppers at campaign rallies instead of governing is not at all the same as Clinton’s factual answers to a reporter’s questions. There is no doubt that James Comey’s October surprise re-opening of the e-mail investigation damaged her election prospects, nor is there any doubt that Russia interfered on her opponent’s behalf, though direct complicity by the Trump campaign has yet to be proven.

The editors’ instruction to Clinton to stop talking about the election sounds a lot like, “Women should be seen and not heard.” I look forward to your issuing a similarly stern warning to Bernie Sanders, who continues to peddle his fraudulent claim that Clinton “stole” the primaries by defeating him. Until you do, I’d be grateful if you’d stop pretending that Clinton’s telling the truth is somehow the same as Trump’s lying.

Defending the indefensible: Althouse on Trump’s blood libel

There’s always something to be learned from watching seemingly intelligent people defending the indefensible.

Ann Althouse teaches law at the University of Wisconsin, which implies that her IQ must be above room temperature. (Her moral standing, given her at-best-ambivalence about torture (oh, I’m sorry, that’s merely “harsh interrogation techniques”)  is another matter.)  But her hatred of liberals and liberalism is so vehement that she supports Gov. Scott Walker, despite (because of?) his attacks on the University where she teaches. Still, you’d think that Donald Trump would be a bridge too far for anyone not actually a mouth-breather.

But pundits gotta pund, and apparently Althouse regards the common-sense approach adopted by many others on the Right - denouncing Trump as No True Conservative - too obvious, or insufficiently likely to raise the blood pressure of the people she despises.  Continue reading “Defending the indefensible: Althouse on Trump’s blood libel”

Donald Trump, Michael Hayden, unlawful orders, and the Establishment

Michael Hayden is a retired four-star general who ran the NSA and then the CIA under George W. Bush. Bill Maher asked him about Donald Trump’s plans to, for example, kill the families of terrorists, and Hayden replied that the armed forces would refuse to obey unlawful orders.

This is (1) unsurprising (2) surprising and (3) significant.

Continue reading “Donald Trump, Michael Hayden, unlawful orders, and the Establishment”

First rule of GOP politics: Never, never, EVER tell the truth

Incoming House Speaker Kevin McCarthy just committed a “gaffe” in Michael Kinsley’s sense of the term: in an unguarded moment, he allowed himself to tell the truth. The truth is, as most of has have always known, that Benghazi!, like its predecessor Whitewater!, was an entirely bad-faith exercise in partisan character assassination from the get-go. But don’t listen to me, listen to what the Speaker-to-Be told Sean Hannity:

Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would’ve known any of that had happened had we not fought and made that happen.

Naturally, the rest of the House Republicans are outraged: not, of course, at Trey Gowdy for ghoulishly making a political meal out of the bodies of four dead Americans, but at McCarthy for blabbing.

The political press corps is caught in the middle. Lots of those reporters and editors, especially at the New York Times, have been more than willing to peddle Gowdy’s “partial-transcript” leaks as if they had news value, and to let Gowdy and his staff hide behind anonymity to defame a political rival. In other words, they’ve been playing according to the Clinton Rules, which hold that anything a Clinton does is guilty even after it’s been proven innocent.

So far, most of that crowd has reacted to McCarthy’s stunning admission, which makes them look like fools or scoundrels or both, by ignoring it. But I’m hoping that the second round of stories, with other Republicans commenting on McCarthy’s blunder, will start to crack that Wall of Silence. And I’m starting to look forward to Clinton’s appearance before Trey Gowdy’s inquisition. He might well come out of that experience as no more than a Deuce.

 

 

 

(Im)plausible deniability

HRC apologizes to Obama for a smear against him by her New Hampshire co-chair. Mark Penn then goes on TV and says “cocaine,” just in case anyone had forgotten the substance of the smear.

I’m glad to see that Hillary Clinton has dumped Bill Shaheen as co-chair of her New Hampshire campaign, and apologized to Barack Obama for Shaheen’s references to Obama’s drug use from college days.

Now all she needs to do is fire Mark Penn, who in discussing the issue on TV after HRC’s apology made sure to use the word “cocaine.”

Apologies From the Heart (of Darkness?)

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton apologized personally to Senator Barack Obama on Thursday for a top adviser’s public suggestion that Republicans would go after Mr. Obama for his youthful drug use.

This came a day after Mike Huckabee apologized to Mitt Romney, a Mormon, for remarks that suggested Mormons believe that Jesus and Satan are brothers.

But in the aftermath of the apologies, both the Clinton and Huckabee campaigns kept the original slurs alive through a series of interviews, raising questions about the sincerity of their apologies, especially in the heat of a wide-open campaign with the first voting less than three weeks away.

[snip]

On Thursday afternoon, Mrs. Clinton’s top adviser, Mark Penn, appeared on MSNBC with Mr. Obama’s top adviser, David Axelrod, and John Edwards’s top adviser, Joe Trippi. They argued with one another, and it was there that Mr. Penn dropped the word “cocaine,” saying that the Clinton campaign had not raised the issue of “cocaine use.”

That seemed to infuriate the others. “This guy just said ‘cocaine’ again,” Mr. Trippi said.

Anyone who is fooled by HRC’s assertion that there was no central decision to spread slime about Obama must want to be fooled. A fish rots from the head.

Update Wait! It gets worse.

Obama’s ‘surprises’?

Clinton didn’t mention specifics in the taping of an interview on “Iowa Press” this morning, but drew a contrast with unnamed rivals that echoes Bill Shaheen’s now-notorious claim that unexplored elements of Obama’s candidacy will make him an easy Republican target.

“I’ve been tested, I’ve been vetted,” she said. “There are no surprises. There’s not going to be anybody saying, ‘I didn’t think of that, my goodness, what’s that going to mean?'”

This appears to be the emerging core of the electability case against Obama: that elements of his public record and — unspoken — his private past, could scuttle what should be a Democratic sure thing, and that he is untested by real partisan combat.

“Whoever we nominate will be subjected to the full force of the Republican attack machine, and I know that they know I know that and I have no illusions about what this race will entail,” she said.

UPDATE: Asked to elaborate on what she’s suggesting about Obama, Clinton has an answer ready: “I’m only talking about myself.”

I repeat: from the head.

Second update Speaking of going negative … err, “comparative” … Paul Loeb has some comparisons between the conduct of Obama’s “Leadership PaC,” for which HRC has criticized him, and her own conduct. Bottom line: if Hillary hadn’t been such a money hog, spending $40 million to run virtually unopposed and transferring $12 million to her Presidential campaign &#8212 if, that is, she’d acted like Edwards and Obama, who raised money for and gave money to other campaigns nationwide &#8212 Democrats could have picked up a bunch of extra seats in the House and at least one in the Senate.