Pete Souza:
Pretty sure he wasn’t slandering someone on Twitter.
Wondering why a few conservative friends fail to be impressed.
Seldom Balanced – Usually Fair
Pete Souza:
Pretty sure he wasn’t slandering someone on Twitter.
Wondering why a few conservative friends fail to be impressed.
Senator John F. Kennedy had two huge political vulnerabilities.
One was that he was Catholic and many protestants had a deep and abiding distrust of what was sometimes called “popery.” If government somehow fell under the sway of Catholics, the entire country would be run from Rome. The Pope would oppress non-Catholic churches. Democracy itself would disappear. Kennedy dealt with that in a series of public appearances, clearly stating his opposition to any religious interference with basic freedom.
The other vulnerability was that he came from a wealthy family. He would be unable to relate to everyday citizens, insulated as he must be from the cares and pressures of ordinary financial life. He disarmed some of that concern by reaching out sympathetically to the working poor in West Virginia and in other states.
And he used humor. In 1958, he spoke to the Gridiron Club in New York. No recording is available of the future President at that moment. But Chris Matthews quotes from the transcript as Kennedy reads from what he told his audience was a telegram from his very rich father:
Jack, don’t buy one more vote than necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.
The Chris Matthews Show, March 13, 2011
A year and 8 months later, he won the Presidency by a hair. He later told audiences that he felt a little like a fictional mayor elected by a single vote. As Kennedy told it, every time that mayor ventured out, he encountered at least one constituent who would inform him: I’m the vote that put you over the top. You owe your job to me.
Hillary Clinton owes her Presidential loss to many things. If any one of them had not come together, she would be in office today. If the creaky old electoral college, that legacy from the slave-holding south, had been replaced, if she had not swooned from dehydration in the heat that New York summer, if she had devoted one more day to Pennsylvania, if she hadn’t chosen door number one instead of door number two.
But the final blow that did her in, that reduced a decisive 11 point lead into a “mere” 2 points, 3 million votes, was that series of needless public reminders of a gratuitous public scolding by the head of the Federal Bureau of investigation.
Continue reading “Why James Comey Is, and Isn’t, Donald Trump”
From Green Eagle:
Just to get things clear before the orgy of praise directed toward James Comey which is coming this week, here is the truth about Comey.
James Comey is a right wing hatchet man, who, in by far the most important act of his pathetic life, stabbed Hillary Clinton in the back in an absolutely gratuitous raising of an issue that he knew was a total lie, right before the election, and in the process did more than any single person, Putin included, to put Trump in office.
From Michael John Scott at MadMikesAmerica:
CNN’s “New Day” host Chris Cuomo took some subtle shots at MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough on Thursday morning, saying he never received the same amount of criticism as Fox News personality Sean Hannity back when he was known as the “Trump whisperer” and unofficial adviser to President Donald Trump.
In a conversation with CNN media analyst Brian Stelter, the New Day host took up a Washington Post report that called Hannity Trump’s “unofficial chief of staff.”
From Max’s Dad:
Vitter is truly an awful choice to be in any position of power. I wouldnt want this 19th century mind running a souvenir shop down on Canal Street. This backwater barrister has continually pushed the junk science of the pro-life movement, You know, the oldies like women who have abortions all get cancer cuz of Jesus. That Planned Parenthood “killed” 150,000 women every year with their birth control and their pap smears and their selling those baby parts and their abortion referrals and their looking up womens naughty parts. Hey come on, that’s her husbands field of expertise.
But the thing that Wendy Vitter did, or didnt do, says it all. Vitter, remember a LIFETIME federal judge nominee, would not say whether Brown vs Board of Education was correctly decided. You know Brown, the case that said yeah you know that Plessy v Ferguson deal, not so good. Separate but equal really doesnt work. So you white people cannot keep the blacks and browns and the Asians and the Indians out of your schools.
Nah, Wendy Vitter has no idea if that decision was right.
From Dave Dubya:
We know the routine. When White American Conservatives feel their privileged social order is threatened they become angry. They started a Civil War when slavery was no longer accepted in a free country. They opposed the civil rights movement and school integration. The very same racism and resentment from the past lingers today and fuels the KKK, white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
You wouldn’t know it from their howling accusations about “Leftist suppression of free speech” in higher education, but far Right white hate groups have been increasing their recruitment activities on college campuses across the country. For some reason Conservatives had no problem when Liberty University de-recognized its campus Democratic club, saying the national party’s platform went against the school’s “moral principles”. But Trump is fine, amirite?
“Back when a ball was not called slimy”
– Official Photographer Pete Souza
Wondering why a few conservative friends fail to be impressed.
From Tommy Christopher:
The White House smear campaign against former FBI Director James Comey blew up in Trump’s face Monday morning, as counselor Kellyanne Conway admitted that Comey swung the election in Trump’s favor.
During an interview with George Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning America,” Conway tried to revive the original cover story that Comey was fired for his harsh treatment of Hillary Clinton.
“Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, in a scathing memo on May 9th and others, other former attorneys general, had called for Mr. Comey to step aside because they felt like he can no longer hold up the values of the FBI,” Conway said.
“He admitted to you that he purposely leaked information to a friend so that it would get into the media and trigger a special counsel,” Conway said. “This guy swung an election. He thought the wrong person would win.”
From driftglass:
For some time now, I have been hearing professional media persons waxing wistful and poetic with some variation of this kind of bosh (not an actual quote):
“There are a ton of super-ooper-duper-awesome journalists at Fox News! A ton of them! And sure they’re angry at how Satan is running the fascist propaganda dungheap where they work, but c’mon man, they gotta work.”
It has happened often enough that I think someone should point out that when you hear such talk, you are not hearing journalists reporting the facts of a story. You are hearing pundit break-room chatter from employees in a very small and fiercely competitive corporate media hiring/firing pool treading very lightly when discussing colleagues across the street but in the same business.