I. In Context: What Came Before In the ABC debate in Philadelphia, Sen. Obama said something that was untrue. After Hillary was questioned about Bosnia and Sniper fire, this exchange took place.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/us/politics/16text-debate.html?pagewanted=9&_r=1 MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Obama, your campaign has sent out a cascade of e-mails, just about every day, questioning Senator Clinton's credibility. And you yourself have said she hasn't been fully truthful about what she would do as president.
Do you believe that Senator Clinton has been fully truthful about her past?
SENATOR OBAMA: Well, look, I think that Senator Clinton has a strong record to run on. She wouldn't be here if she didn't. And you know, I haven't commented on the issue of Bosnia. You know, I --
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Your campaign has.
SENATOR OBAMA: Of course, but --
SENATOR CLINTON: (Laughs.)
SENATOR OBAMA: Because we're asked about it.
The truth is that the Obama campaign did not learn its lesson with the "Race Memo"---a document it issued to the press in early January, 2008. Or rather, it learned a lesson other than the one that it pretended to learn.
It learned that dirty tricksters get ahead. And if you issue memos full of lies, overworked journalists will go with whatever cock and bull story you feed them.
The “Race Memo” contained three significant lies about things which Clinton, her husband and Mark Penn had said. It was released to the press in mid January, and it triggered a MSM eruption of misinformation that directly contributed to the rift within the Democratic Party along racial lines.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/203Above is the journal in which I show the way that MSM stories parroting the lies put forward by the Obama camp cluster around the date of the "Race Memo" release. Here are polling numbers which show that Clinton had higher support within the nation’s African-American community than Obama in mid-January (a few days after the Race Memo was released)
http://www.pollster.com/blogs/obama_clinton_among_africaname.phpWithin a month, this had turned around and Obama had the lead among African-American voters.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/27/AR2007022701030.htmlWhile association does not prove causality, the human mind is conditioned to believe that if something appears to work once, it is worth trying again. So, with the “Race Memo” an apparent success, the Obama camp decided to address another Clinton strength, her superior foreign experience. They did this with a series of memos which again contained lies, this time with one big hook---Clinton herself made one error about one insubstantial detail which the Obama camp could exploit to portray her as a liar.
Since Obama began the attack on Clinton’s foreign policy experience by claiming that his own residence in Indonesia between the ages of 6 and 10 were more important than her years as First Lady---in which all she supposedly did was drink “tea” with foreign officials---I have decided to call these the “Obama Tea Party Memos”.
II. You Will Know Him By His Acts So what? Every politician tries to define or redefine his opponent’s character. “Forget about it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.” At DU, people suggest that Obama give up throwing the kitchen sink at Clinton and try hurling the whole bathtub. No one here cares if he resorted to dirty oppo. The reasoning goes that no matter what
he may have done,
she must have done something worse.
That is how rationalization works.
The only problem is that DU is a tiny little community. Most Democrats who are voting for Barack Obama think that they are selecting a candidate who disavows the politics of personal destruction and distractions. He is supposed to represent a new kind of government. No more dirty tricks. No more politics as usual. That is why it was so unforgivable when Rev. Wright called him a
politician . The people at DU suggesting that he throw the bathtub know that he is a politician. But they will be damned if anyone is allowed to call him one. No one may speak the truth in American politics. Except Hillary. If she gets one little word wrong, then everything she says is a god damned lie.
I don’t have any patience for people who say one thing and do another.
As when Obama said that his campaign has not been propelling the narrative that Clinton is a liar, and yet I can find memos on the internet that are clearly from the Obama campaign in which they attempt to spread that story---
and they tell lies in order to do it. That is what the press did to Al Gore. For Obama to stand up before a national audience and claim that his campaign has not attempted to do this is hypocritical. It is just like claiming that he takes no lobby money when he takes lobby money---as long as it is routed through a state capital first. AT&T needs to buy some influence with Obama? No problem. Send the cash through Sacramento. Hypocrisy is the lowest, because it makes it impossible for the truly
honest politician—like Dennis Kucinich—to survive. There is too much competition from the phony honest guy with all the corporate cash. At least Clinton does not pretend to be Dennis.
III. The “Obama Tea Party Memos” http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2008/03/sweet_obama_advisor_greg_craig.html Sweet: Obama advisor Greg Craig rips Clinton foreign police experience. Complete memo.
from the Obama campaign...
To: Interested Parties
From: Greg Craig, former director, Policy Planning Office, U.S. State Department
RE: Senator Clinton’s claim to be experienced in foreign policy: Just words?
DA: March 11, 2008
When your entire campaign is based upon a claim of experience, it is important that you have evidence to support that claim. Hillary Clinton’s argument that she has passed “the Commander- in-Chief test” is simply not supported by her record.
There is no doubt that Hillary Clinton played an important domestic policy role when she was First Lady. It is well known, for example, that she led the failed effort to pass universal health insurance. There is no reason to believe, however, that she was a key player in foreign policy at any time during the Clinton Administration. She did not sit in on National Security Council meetings. She did not have a security clearance. She did not attend meetings in the Situation Room. She did not manage any part of the national security bureaucracy, nor did she have her own national security staff. She did not do any heavy-lifting with foreign governments, whether they were friendly or not. She never managed a foreign policy crisis, and there is no evidence to suggest that she participated in the decision-making that occurred in connection with any such crisis. As far as the record shows, Senator Clinton never answered the phone either to make a decision on any pressing national security issue – not at 3 AM or at any other time of day.
When asked to describe her experience, Senator Clinton has cited a handful of international incidents where she says she played a central role. But any fair-minded and objective judge of these claims – i.e., by someone not affiliated with the Clinton campaign – would conclude that Senator Clinton’s claims of foreign policy experience are exaggerated.
Northern Ireland:
Senator Clinton has said, “I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland.” It is a gross overstatement of the facts for her to claim even partial credit for bringing peace to Northern Ireland. She did travel to Northern Ireland, it is true. First Ladies often travel to places that are a focus of U.S. foreign policy. But at no time did she play any role in the critical negotiations that ultimately produced the peace. As the Associated Press recently reported, “She was not directly involved in negotiating the Good Friday peace accord.” With regard to her main claim that she helped bring women together, she did participate in a meeting with women, but, according to those who know best, she did not play a pivotal role. The person in charge of the negotiations, former Senator George Mitchell, said that “ was one of many people who participated in encouraging women to get involved, not the only one.”
News of Senator Clinton’s claims has raised eyebrows across the ocean. Her reference to an important meeting at the Belfast town hall was debunked. Her only appearance at the Belfast City Hall was to see Christmas lights turned on. She also attended a 50-minute meeting which, according to the Belfast Daily Telegraph’s report at the time, “ a little bit stilted, a little prepared at times." Brian Feeney, an Irish author and former politician, sums it up: “The road to peace was carefully documented, and she wasn’t on it.”
Bosnia:
Senator Clinton has pointed to a March 1996 trip to Bosnia as proof that her foreign travel involved a life-risking mission into a war zone. She has described dodging sniper fire. While she did travel to Bosnia in March 1996, the visit was not a high-stakes mission to a war zone. On March 26, 1996, the New York Times reported that “Hillary Rodham Clinton charmed American troops at a U.S.O. show here, but it didn’t hurt that the singer Sheryl Crow and the comedian Sinbad were also on the stage.”
Kosovo:
Senator Clinton has said, “I negotiated open borders to let fleeing refugees into safety from Kosovo.” It is true that, as First Lady, she traveled to Macedonia and visited a Kosovar refugee camp. It is also true that she met with government officials while she was there. First Ladies frequently meet with government officials. Her claim to have “negotiated open borders to let fleeing refugees into safety from Kosovo,” however, is not true. Her trip to Macedonia took place on May 14, 1999. The borders were opened the day before, on May 13, 1999.
The negotiations that led to the opening of the borders were accomplished by the people who ordinarily conduct negotiations with foreign governments – U.S. diplomats. President Clinton’s top envoy to the Balkans, former Ambassador Robert Gelbard, said, “I cannot recall any involvement by Senator Clinton in this issue.” Ivo Daalder worked on the Clinton Administration’s National Security Council and wrote a definitive history of the Kosovo conflict. He recalls that “she had absolutely no role in the dirty work of negotiations.”
Rwanda:
Last year, former President Clinton asserted that his wife pressed him to intervene with U.S. troops to stop the Rwandan genocide. When asked about this assertion, Hillary Clinton said it was true. There is no evidence, however, to suggest that this ever happened. Even those individuals who were advocating a much more robust U.S. effort to stop the genocide did not argue for the use of U.S. troops. No one recalls hearing that Hillary Clinton had any interest in this course of action. Based on a fair and thorough review of National Security Council deliberations during those tragic months, there is no evidence to suggest that U.S. military intervention was ever discussed. Prudence Bushnell, the Assistant Secretary of State with responsibility for Africa, has recalled that there was no consideration of U.S. military intervention.
At no time prior to her campaign for the presidency did Senator Clinton ever make the claim that she supported intervening militarily to stop the Rwandan genocide. It is noteworthy that she failed to mention this anecdote – urging President Clinton to intervene militarily in Rwanda – in her memoirs. President Clinton makes no mention of such a conversation with his wife in his memoirs. And Madeline Albright, who was Ambassador to the United Nations at the time, makes no mention of any such event in her memoirs.
Hillary Clinton did visit Rwanda in March 1998 and, during that visit, her husband apologized for America’s failure to do more to prevent the genocide.
China
Senator Clinton also points to a speech that she delivered in Beijing in 1995 as proof of her ability to answer a 3 AM crisis phone call. It is strange that Senator Clinton would base her own foreign policy experience on a speech that she gave over a decade ago, since she so frequently belittles Barack Obama’s speeches opposing the Iraq War six years ago. Let there be no doubt: she gave a good speech in Beijing, and she stood up for women’s rights. But Senator Obama’s opposition to the War in Iraq in 2002 is relevant to the question of whether he, as Commander-in-Chief, will make wise judgments about the use of military force. Senator Clinton’s speech in Beijing is not.
Senator Obama’s speech opposing the war in Iraq shows independence and courage as well as good judgment. In the speech that Senator Clinton says does not qualify him to be Commander in Chief, Obama criticized what he called “a rash war . . . a war based not on reason, but on passion, not on principle, but on politics.” In that speech, he said prophetically: “ven a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.” He predicted that a U.S. invasion of Iraq would “fan the flames of the Middle East,” and “strengthen the recruitment arm of al Qaeda.” He urged the United States first to “finish the fight with Bin Laden and al Qaeda.”
If the U.S. government had followed Barack Obama’s advice in 2002, we would have avoided one of the greatest foreign policy catastrophes in our nation’s history. Some of the most “experienced” men in national security affairs – Vice President Cheney and Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others – led this nation into that catastrophe. That lesson should teach us something about the value of judgment over experience. Longevity in Washington, D.C. does not guarantee either wisdom of judgment.
Conclusion:
The Clinton campaign’s argument is nothing more than mere assertion, dramatized in a scary television commercial with a telephone ringing in the middle of the night. There is no support for or substance in the claim that Senator Clinton has passed “the Commander-in-Chief test.” That claim – as the TV ad – consists of nothing more than making the assertion, repeating it frequently to the voters and hoping that they will believe it.
On the most critical foreign policy judgment of our generation – the War in Iraq – Senator Clinton voted in support of a resolution entitled “The Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of U.S. Military Force Against Iraq.” As she cast that vote, she said: “This is probably the hardest decision I have ever had to make -- any vote that may lead to war should be hard -- but I cast it with conviction.” In this campaign, Senator Clinton has argued – remarkably – that she wasn’t actually voting for war, she was voting for diplomacy. That claim is no more credible than her other claims of foreign policy experience. The real tragedy is that we are still living with the terrible consequences of her misjudgment. The Bush Administration continues to cite that resolution as its authorization – like a blank check – to fight on with no end in sight.
Barack Obama has a very simple case. On the most important commander in chief test of our generation, he got it right, and Senator Clinton got it wrong. In truth, Senator Obama has much more foreign policy experience than either Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan had when they were elected. Senator Obama has worked to confront 21st century challenges like proliferation and genocide on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He possesses the personal attributes of a great leader – an even temperament, an open-minded approach to even the most challenging problems, a willingness to listen to all views, clarity of vision, the ability to inspire, conviction and courage.
And Barack Obama does not use false charges and exaggerated claims to play politics with national security.
No, Obama uses false claims to kneecap another Democrat. Do you have any comment, Gary Hart?
Here is another release from March 24
http://2008central.net/2008/03/25/obama-press-release-misspoke-clintons-prepared-remarks-on-bosnia-join-similar-stretches-on-fmla-schip-and-nafta/ “Misspoke”? Clinton’s Prepared Remarks on Bosnia Join Similar Stretches on FMLA, SCHIP, and NAFTA
CHICAGO, IL—The Clinton campaign claimed today that Senator Clinton “misspoke” when she described a supposedly harrowing landing in Tuzla, Bosnia as First Lady in 1996—despite the fact that the claim appeared in her prepared remarks. The Tuzla story, now thoroughly debunked, joins a growing list of instances in which Senator Clinton has exaggerated her role in foreign and domestic policymaking.
On the campaign trail, Clinton has frequently touted her role in “helping to pass” the Family and Medical Leave Act, claimed to be “a critic of NAFTA from the very beginning,” and says she played a leadership role in the passage of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. All of these claims have been disproved, raising questions about Senator Clinton’s willingness to misrepresent her experience for political gain.
“Senator Clinton said that a planned welcoming ceremony was cancelled because they needed to avoid sniper fire, but news footage shows that she was met by a small child who read her a poem. Contrary to the latest spin from the Clinton campaign, when you make a false claim that’s in your prepared remarks, it’s not misspeaking, it’s misleading, and it’s part of a troubling pattern of Senator Clinton inflating her foreign policy experience,” said Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor.
Clinton’s account of the Bosnia landing, repeated most recently in a speech on March 17, earned four Pinocchios from the Washington Post’s Fact Checker, and has been discounted by several other accounts, both in the press and by the comedian Sinbad, who accompanied her on the supposedly death-defying trip.
Her claim to have opposed NAFTA has been disproved by the recent release of her White House schedules, which showed at least four meetings to advocate for its passage. And with respect to her claim to have by “ to create the State Children’s Health Insurance Program,” the Boston Globe recently wrote:
“Hillary Clinton, who has frequently described herself on the campaign trail as playing a pivotal role in forging a children’s health insurance plan, had little to do with crafting the landmark legislation or ushering it through Congress, according to several lawmakers, staffers, and healthcare advocates involved in the issue.”
You can read the full article HERE
And here is another press release here from March 26
http://thepage.time.com/obama-camp-memo-on-clintons-exaggerations-in-her-domestic-record/ Obama Camp Memo on Clinton’s “Exaggerations” in Her Domestic Record
TO: Interested Parties
FR: Obama Campaign
RE: Clinton’s Exaggerations: The Domestic Record
DA: March 26, 2008
Senator Clinton’s claims about her visit to Tuzla, Bosnia—and the footage disproving her account—have created quite a stir. And with good reason. As the Associated Press wrote <
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_campaignplus/20080325/ap_ca/on_deadline_bosnia> yesterday: “What makes Clinton’s situation unique—and the Bosnia embellishments so damaging—is the fact that the New York senator has built her candidacy on the illusion of experience. Any attack on her credentials is a potential Achilles heel.”
Unfortunately, Clinton’s fantastic invention of a sniper-raked landing is only one in a growing list of instances in which she has exaggerated her role as First Lady, particularly with respect to domestic policy.
Clinton has credited herself with “creating” the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and “helping to pass” the Family and Medical Leave Act.
Like the Tuzla story, both of these claims turn out to false—raising serious questions not just about the rationale for Senator Clinton’s campaign, but about her willingness to adhere to the truth.
“Creating” the State Children’s Health Insurance Program?
Ø Question: Did Hillary Clinton “create” SCHIP as First Lady? That’s what her web site says. But it’s not what the program’s congressional sponsors say.
On her website, Senator Clinton goes so far as to laud <
http://hillaryclinton.com/issues/healthcare/> what she calls “her successful effort to create the SCHIP Children’s Health Insurance program.”
“Create” SCHIP? Once again, Senator Clinton’s claim simply doesn’t hold up.
The Boston Globe recently conducted an investigation <
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/03/14/clinton_role_in_health_program_disputed?mode=PF> into Clinton’s purported role in the legislation, concluding that: “Hillary Clinton, who has frequently described herself on the campaign trail as playing a pivotal role in forging a children’s health insurance plan, had little to do with crafting the landmark legislation or ushering it through Congress, according to several lawmakers, staffers, and healthcare advocates involved in the issue.”
Not only is Senator Clinton’s claim of authorship false, but the White House actually opposed SCHIP during it’s creation: “But the Clinton White House, while supportive of the idea of expanding children’s health, fought the first SCHIP effort, spearheaded by Senators Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah…”
Representative Henry Waxman, a leader on the bill who remains unaffiliated in the race, said he has no memory of any involvement by Clinton: “It was a bipartisan bill. I don’t remember the role of the White House,” said Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who has not endorsed a candidate in the presidential race and who was the chief Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, which deals with health matters. “It did not originate at the White House.”
And Senator Kennedy, the Senate’s undisputed leader on universal health care and one of the actual creators of SCHIP, does not agree with Clinton’s assessment: “Asked whether Clinton was exaggerating her role in creating SCHIP, Kennedy, stopped in the hallway as he was entering the chamber to vote, half-shrugged. ‘Facts are stubborn things,’ he said, declining to criticize Clinton directly. ‘I think we ought to stay with the facts.’”
Leadership on the Family and Medical Leave Act?
Ø Question: Did Senator Clinton “help to pass” FMLA? Her White House schedules and the timeline of the bill’s passage call that claim into question.
Clinton claims on the trail and on her website <Helping%20to%20pass%20the%20Family%20and%20Medical%20Leave%20Act> that she played a significant role in “helping to pass the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to enable new parents to take time off without losing their jobs…” But there is no evidence that this is the case.
For starters, the bill was signed into law only 16 days after Bill Clinton took office—not much time for the new First Lady to play much of a role. On top of that, the Associated Press reported that an existing version of the bill that had already been passed “by majorities in the last Congress” was altered only slightly and “recycled for enactment”
.
In addition, Senator Clinton’s recently released White House schedules show that she didn’t have a single meeting on the bill she now touts. And in her own autobiography she discusses FMLA without making any mention of having a role in its passage.
Now that she’s running for President, however, the facts seem to have changed. Or at least her allegiance to them has.
Experience: Foundation of the Clinton Candidacy
The refrain that Senator Clinton “has the experience to lead on Day One” has been repeated endlessly since she entered the race. On closer inspection, the claims Senator Clinton makes turn out to be little more than stories.
With the next primary less than a month away, it’s time for Senator Clinton to finally face the “vetting” she’s so fond of discussing. Badly trailing in delegates, votes, and states won, she’s going to need more than a new script to win the nomination. But if she wants to regain the trust of the American people, it would be a good place to start.First, it is a good idea to note something that KO let slip on March 12, 2008
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23611984/ OLBERMANN: Richard, you spend a lot of time with Senator Obama on the campaign trail…
KO is speaking to Richard Wolffe. Anyone who watches the show, knows that Wolffe is the point man for the Obama campaign on
Countdown. He was shilling for Barack way back in January, while Olbermann was still neutral. Read the transcripts. They are very enlightening.
Now, here is the March 10, 2008 show. I expect that Richard Wolffe, being so close to the Obama camp, got a first peek at the first “Obama Tea Party Memo.” Maybe he wrote it. He is pretty bright. Almost up to Pat Buchanan level.
Note how he and Keith cover two of the talking points from the memo that will be released the next day. I will describe how the talking points are
lies later on in this journal.
OLBERMANN: The Clinton campaign has by its own admission focused on this fundamental question: Is Obama sufficiently experienced to be commander in chief? Does he have foreign policy credentials?
snip
And they have now taken a huge hit, specifically her claimed that, quote, “I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland.” That sentence coming back to haunt her tonight, now that a Nobel Peace Prize winner has called her bluff.
Over the weekend, negotiators who helped broker the Belfast Agreement in 1998, telling the British newspaper, “The Daily Telegraph” that her role there had been peripheral at best. Lord Trimble who shared the Nobel Peace Prize for his work negotiating the Belfast Agreement, saying, she had no direct role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland and it is, quote, “a wee bit silly” for exaggerating the part she played now.
Further quoting the former David Trimble, ex-head of Ulster Unionist Party, “I don‘t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill Clinton going around. I don‘t want to rain on the thing for her, but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player.”
As for Senator Clinton‘s claim of gone to Bosnia in 1996, when it was too dangerous to send President Clinton, Susan Rice, the former assistant Secretary of State from the Clinton years, now an Obama campaign adviser, pointing out that singer Sheryl Crow and the comedian Sinbad accompanied Mrs. Clinton on that trip, the purpose of which was to put on a USO show for the troops.
snip
WOLFFE: Yes. It is a wee bit of an exaggeration and if it stretches exaggeration to the breaking point. And if you look how the Northern Ireland peace process really developed, the hands-on grind that it was, there is no way a photo-op, a parachute event that Hillary Clinton was involved, with constitutes helping Northern Ireland to peace.
snip
When you put experience in the White House, at the centerpiece of your campaign, you really end up arguing about things that weren‘t obvious or, in fact, evidential in that time period. So, they have to exaggerate because, frankly, she wasn‘t hands-on in terms of the foreign policy record of her husband‘s administration.
March 24, another Obama memo, another
Countdown episode devoted to pushing the contents of that memo. This time KO is joined by Jonathon Alter of
Newsweek who may be the biggest, fattest news media liar of them all (I will get to his atrocity if a few minutes after I finish with
Countdown )
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23794427/Olbermann shows the obligatory sniperless video and spends some time hashing out Bosnia,
then he and Alter agree that it isn’t an important story (so why show the video?), except…
OLBERMANN: But has anybody look at this in a context and said, what would the Republicans do with this in a general election? I mean, she has said she negotiated to open the borders in Macedonia, the borders turned out to have been opened the day before she got there.
She claimed the critical role in the peace process in Ireland, there‘s two equally weighted testimonies about whether or not that was true. So, that‘s like a 50/50 on that. But there are people involved of the process, David Tremble (ph) who says she‘d never had anything to do with it other that arranging lunches (ph) for people, and now, the Bosnia thing.
Can you treat this as—is there a perception that this will be treated as misstatements, misspeaking now, but will the Republicans not come out and say you, are resume padding, you are lying?
ALTER: Well, you know, who knows what the Republicans might do. But I think that it‘s important to distinguish between the substantive exaggerations on things like her involvement in the Northern Ireland peace process, where I saw her terribly exaggerate her role there. She was involved in helping women on both sides come together, but she was not involved in the actual negotiations. That‘s very clear.
She substantively exaggerated her role in S-CHIP, the children‘s health program. She was not involved in the passage of that. She was involved later on in helping it be implemented by the states. But she was not involved in the passage and she claimed that she was.
She was not involved in the Family and Medical Leave Act passage. She was involved in some follow on, more minor legislation. So, I think it‘s important to look at the substance rather than the exaggerations of whether she made a corkscrew landing or dodged fire in Tuzla. And I do think that there is an issue here where she wants to run as the experienced candidate.
Note that someone has finally told KO that the Obama version of the Northern Ireland story is not the only version When did he get told about it? Why did he never issue a correction on the air? His 50/50 explanation is total bullcrap. I will explain why in a bit. The source that called it a “wee-bit silly” is not reliable, and he knows it. Or he should know it. But even if he did his job as a journalist instead of letting Alter and Wolffe feed him Obama oppo, he would never say anything that would help Clinton. That is why he still has his stupid Special Comment about Ferraro up on his site even, though at the very moment he was giving it, Clinton was apologizing to a group of Black newspaper publishers for Ferrraro and for Bill Clinton’s “Jesse Jackson” remarks and rejecting and denouncing Ferraro’s words. And though she did not reject either person, Obama did not reject Wright two days later when KO asked him to on Countdown, and Olbermann did not do a Special Comment on him. My 16 year old son says that KO is turning into O’Reilly. If by that he means they both operate with a double standard, well yeah, he is right.
Also note that Alter delivers the significant talking points from the March 24 “Obama Tea Party Memo” on
Countdown .
Wow. Obama sure is lucky. He has the number one prime time liberal news anchor in his pocket reading his talking points as if they are news without any fact checking at all. WTG! March 26, another “Obama Tea Party Memo” and KO leads with the Sniper story again. Surprise, surprise.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23827282/I will let you read it yourself. The main things to note are that there is lots of video,today, and then there is a snarky interview with, Margaret Carlson who will go down in journalism history for telling the Rolling Stone that participating in the “Gore is a liar” media atrocity was much more fun than fact checking Bush’s lies.
While researching for this journal, I have stumbled across so many KO media atrocities directed at Sen. Clinton that one has to wonder what on earth got into him in the month of March. Did whatever foul creature crawled up Chris Matthews’ thigh hop onto Olbermann? I am going to save most of it for later, but this takes the cake for projection. Here, from Mr. Tonya Harding himself, is the “I know you are but what I am” of all time:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23848687/March 27
OLBERMANN: The reported “Tonya Harding” strategy, the idea to kneecap, Senator Obama‘s candidacy, to make him unelectable and thus, force the superdelegates to turn to her at the convention.
Just substitute Clinton for Obama and we have what Olbermann, Alter and Wolffe (along with a whole bunch of other people in the MSM---I do not want to suggest that nuclear energy obsessed GE was the only one that propelled the “Obama Tea Party Memos”) attempting to prove to the Superdelegates that they had better pick Obama, the man who thinks that nukes are green, because Clinton won’t be able to get elected to the post of dog catcher by the time they are through with her.
V. Media Lies I said that I was going to show that Jonathan Alter was the biggest fattest media liar around. That is probably an exaggeration. There are worse liars than Alter. Dick Morris for example. And Bob Novak. However, of the three stooges for the Obama camp whom I have named in this journal, he is sure the dumbest.
Here is a piece he wrote for
Newsweek for April 7, 2008
http://www.newsweek.com/id/129587/page/2“The Tales Hillary Tells”Please read the article. Alter claims that Bosnia was not a war zone. That Hillary was not like Eleanor Roosevelt visiting a war zone. That there was no corkscrew landing (was he awake when he wrote this?) That she contributed nothing to the peace process in Northern Ireland. He brings up Watergate. Monica. Travel-gate. Richard-Melon-Scaife. He accuses Clinton of being disappointed that Wright has not sunk Obama’s campaign---clearly projection. Look at the date. He is disappointed that the “Obama Tea Party Memos” which he helped push have not sunk Clinton’s campaign. It probably never entered his pea brain that she might move back to the Democratic base, particularly the poor, unemployed, alienated part of it that distrusts people like Alter and will not believe a damn thing that the corporate media says about Democratic candidates. You can just feel the frustration oozing out from between each line.
VI. Just the Facts I wish I had known about that Alter piece when I wrote this journal
People Mag 1996, Hillary's Trip Into Bosnia "War Zone" & How Obama Broke the "Final Rule" Firsthttp://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/189Here is an actual first person journalist’s account written by someone who accompanied First Lady Hillary Clinton on the journey and who wrote about it at the time (so that we know that no one has persuaded the author to color her story). I found this in about 5 minutes in the public library. I wonder if Alter has a library card.
From People volume 45, April 15, 1996 by Linda Kramer, one of 14 journalists who went along on that trip.
March 25, Bosnia : As our C-17 air transport prepares to land in Bosnia, the flight crew warns passengers to slip on flak vests: “We have entered the combat zone.” Armed GIs in Humvees line the landing strip. The first presidential wife to visit a war zone since Eleanor Roosevelt, Mrs. Clinton comes bearing gifts. For the troops: a 50-inch TV, a VCR, 300 videos and 2,200 phone cards with credit to call home. For Bosnian children: art supplies, toys and cases of candy. The reaction to her visit: “I don’t know about the stuff she’s into, that trouble—not Watergate, what is it?” says Capt. Jonathan Boswell of Nashville later in the day. “It doesn’t matter. It’s really exciting to have her here.”
Unexpectedly, Chelsea proves to be a star attraction several times today. GIs at each stop request photos with the First Daughter. While the First Lady tours an outpost near the badly shelled village of Markovici, Maj. Gen. William Nash, commander of U.S. forces in Bosnia, insists Chelsea chech out an M-1 tank, which he describes as a “mean killing machine.” “That was just great!” says Chelsea afterward, emerging from the belly of the M-1.
Snip
March 26, Ankara, Turkey : After surviving a war zone, the Clintons must now brave the Turkish press…
The author stands by her story, saying that she specifically remembers being told "We have entered the combat zone".
http://www.glamour.com/news/blogs/glamocracy/2008/03/another-view-fr.htmlAnd then there is this.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/26/EDVJVQ9BP.DTL Bosnia a war zone when Hillary visited in 1996
Richard Rapaport
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Ten days before the Clinton party arrived in Tuzla, I had flown there on an Air National Guard C-130 with photographer Ed Kashi….
I will leave it up to readers to go to the link for the rest. Basically it confirms that Clinton landed in a war zone---and two easy to locate internet links proved it, one from someone who was actually there with Hillary Clinton. So, I guess Alter does not have Internet or a library card. Poor guy. No wonder he has to rely on campaign oppo to get a story.
That must be why he did not know that Hillary really did play a significant role in Northern Ireland’s Peace Process.
On March 31, a week before Alter wrote his sad little Clinton hit piece, I wrote
Reconstructing Hillary: Ireland, Experience, Bosnia and Nice Peoplehttp://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/178in response to someone’s journal in which they posted a bunch of pictures of Clinton next to unlikable people. BTW, did you know that the Obama camp circulated a photo of Rev. Wright shaking hands with Bill Clinton at a National Prayer Breakfast?
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/012180.phpBack to my journal. I have an entire section devoted to the lie that Clinton was not important in the peace process. The one source, Trimble, is an “Orange”---a North Irish Protestant recently turned Conservative Party member. That makes him the equivalent of a Republican. John Hume, the Irish Catholic liberal and the women who were involved in the peace process all agree that Hillary played a vital role. Be sure to read the NYT articles about how she is treated as a hero in Ireland. And then there is this link.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/hume-and-trimble-clash-over-clintons-peace-role-1311181.html In a statement -- unusually issued by Mrs Clinton's headquarters -- former SDLP leader John Hume insisted Mrs Clinton had played an important role.
Surprised
"I am quite surprised that anyone would suggest that Hillary Clinton did not perform important foreign policy work as first lady," Mr Hume said.
"I can state from first-hand experience that she played a positive role for over a decade in helping to bring peace to Northern Ireland. She visited Northern Ireland, met with very many people and gave very decisive support to the peace process.
"In private she made countless calls and contacts, speaking to leaders and opinion makers on all sides, urging them to keep moving forward."
snip
Central to Mrs Clinton's claim of an important role is a meeting she attended in Belfast with a group of women from cross-community groups.
"I remember a meeting that I pulled together in Belfast, in the town hall there, bringing together for the first time Catholics and Protestants from both traditions, having them sitting a room where they had never been before with each other because they don't go to school together, they don't live together; and it was only in large measure because I really asked them to come that they were there."
Mary Fox, the wife of a former IRA prisoner and one of the seven women at the meeting, said she had been there on behalf of the Footprints community centre...
Even if journalists are too lazy to read international newspapers, there was this Clinton camp memo dated the
same day that cited Sen. George Mitchell with an opposing view. It also included rebuttals of the charges that she had done nothing more than “drink tea” in Bosnia, Rwanda and China.
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=6467http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/10/eveningnews/main3923206.shtml George Mitchell: She was helpful and supportive, very much involved in the issues, knew all of the delegates. She accompanied President Clinton on each visit he made to Northern Ireland, made several visits of her own. Her greatest focus was on encouraging women in Northern Ireland to get in and stay in the political process, the peace process. And I have said publicly many times and wrote in my book, the role of women in the peace process in Northern Ireland was significant. It did make a difference in the process, so as I said I think it was a helpful and supportive role.
I presume that this is the evidence which made KO say there was a 50/50 split. So, why did he initially say that Clinton was a liar if both memos came out the same day? Because he only reads Obama memos? Oh, wait. That first day was
before the memos came out. Richard Wolffe must have gotten an advance sneak peak at at the Obama memo, because he follows them around so much. And I guess KO just takes Wolffe's word for it.
If Olbermann did his job, he would have had someone do what I do---get on the internet and find the John Hume interview and the NYT stories about Hillary in Ireland, and he would have smelled an Obama camp rat in that Northern Ireland story and avoided airing a lie that made him look like a fool--or an Obama tool. What ever happened to Bloggerman? And why on earth did Alter ignore Mitchell and go with the original lie?
Shame on both of them.
As for the charge that Clinton accomplished nothing in Bosnia, the Clinton Memo issued on March 11 has testimonials and links to news articles which tell exactly what she was doing. You can read them here. Maybe she did not run through sniper fire. But she was engaged in meetings whose goal was to secure the safety of refugees to ensure that another Rwanda did not happen. Those who have complained that she and her daughter should not have flown into a war zone have conveniently forgotten that the lives of thousands of people were at risk, and that this was a humanitarian mission. In a situation like that, the good will gesture of sending the First Lady and Daughter counted for a lot.
http://facts.hillaryhub.com/archive/?id=6431The Obama camp lucked out when they caught Clinton embellishing one trivial aspect of her visit to Bosnia, but that did not change the fact that she had had much more real foreign policy experience that her opponent. The only thing at which Obama apparently excels is getting the news media to repeat his oppo word for word. That is because his campaign knows how to frame stories into the kind of meaningless narratives that are short on substance---and substantiation---but long on outrage or laughs or some other emotion that will get the suckers at home to watch but not think, because no one wants voters to
think about what they are doing when they enter the voting booth. Certainly not General Electric. If we thought about "nuclear energy is green" and what John McCain means when he promises that he will end Middle East Wars by ending our dependence on oil, we would all run to the nearest library for books on Chernobyl. All of us except Jonathon Alter.
But the important question for Obama supporters will be did the "Obama Tea Party Memos" work? Yes, like a charm.
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Voters-say-Hillary-Clinton-untrustworthy-Poll/298977/ The former first lady, who was in statistical dead heat with Obama in a March poll by the magazine, has thus lost much ground within a month.
Even more devastating for Clinton was that a majority of all registered voters now see her as dishonest and untrustworthy and analysts say that could be reason for her plummeting numbers.
This is probably why the Democratic Party elders are lining up behind the Senator from Illinois. Despite his youth, he is proving to be adroit at selling himself as not a politician while acting like a seasoned politician. If he can kneecap Hillary so effectively, just imagine what he can do to McCain.
Makes you proud to be a Democrat, doesn't it?
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