At the Washington Post they wrote: "The Republican presidential candidates are right. The media does suck. But not for the reasons the candidates complained about Wednesday night. We in the media suck because we have rewarded their rampant dishonesty and buffoonery with nonstop news coverage. Which, of course, has encouraged more dishonesty and buffoonery."
The author is mostly correct in the statement above, but ...there's another reason. The author also noted they accused the media of not asking substantive questions. That is also true (at Republican debates and Democratic debates). One commenter at the WaPo wrote: "I am still waiting for the unbiased news reporters who would pick apart Democrats the same way they pick apart Republicans."
But they do. I remember CNN's Anderson Cooper red-baiting Bernie Sanders at the first Democratic debate because, just after Bernie married his wife, they went to Russia with a contingent of 10 other people on official diplomatic business to visit a "sister city" to Burlington Vermont. But Anderson Cooper was clearly implying Bernie and his wife honeymooned in the Soviet Union because he was a communist sympathizer. But on the other hand, Anderson Copper let Hillary off the hook on issues like Social Security. (It appears he and/or CNN favored Hillary over Bernie).
And Megyn Kelly of Fox News wasn't very kind to Donald Trump at their GOP debate either. So the commenter at the WaPo was wrong. The media will pull strings like any other puppet master. And we saw how the media lied about who won the last Democratic debate.
As I noted in a previous post, I suspect the establishment Republicans (and Fox News) wants a "moderate" like Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush — while the establishment Democrats (and CNN and MSNBC) wants a "moderate" like Hillary Clinton — because neither will raise taxes on any of the media elites (on the left or right). But someone like Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump might if the could — but they can't, because it would take Paul Ryan on the Ways and Means Committee (and as the Speaker of the House) and a majority vote in a Republican-dominated Congress to raise anybody's taxes.
Then the very next day (today) I read this via a link from the Washington Post newsletter:
"Over the last two presidential debates, both Democratic and Republican candidates have asserted that the television news media is biased and has done a poor job informing voters of the most pressing issues in the election. But fundraising disclosures reveal that lobbyists for media companies are raising big money for establishment presidential candidates, particularly Hillary Clinton. The giant media companies that shape much of the coverage of the presidential campaign have a vested stake in the outcome. The top fundraisers for Clinton include lobbyists who serve the parent companies of CNN and MSNBC. And the National Association of Broadcasters, a trade group that represents the television station industry, has lobbyists who are fundraising for both Clinton and Republican candidate Marco Rubio.
So it made me wonder...
Ever since Bernie Sanders had made that comment about "people shouting" when he was discussing gun control at the first Democratic debate on 10/13/15 (full transcript), Hillary Clinton had said not one word in retaliation or in a rebuttal during the debate. That's because, at that time, she knew exactly what Bernie Sanders had meant, and in what context he was speaking.
But two days later when Hillary Clinton was shouting about guns at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in San Antonio on 10/15/15, the media reported that Hillary had been implying Bernie Sanders had made a sexist remark about women shouting — and that's after Bernie had given her a pass on the emails during the debate! (He was really complaining about the media spending too much time on the emails, and not enough time on other issues).
Which just goes to prove, no matter how rich someone is, money can't buy class.
It appears that, because of all the negative press the media had been generating for Bernie Sanders, Hillary decided to use this line of attack again: 8 days later on 10/23/15 she repeated that message (more calmly this time) at the Democratic Women's Leadership Forum --- and then again (the very next day) at the Jefferson Jackson Dinner in Iowa on 10/24/15.
Will Rachel Maddow call out Hillary Clinton about this at the next Democratic debate? Let's see if Hillary will attack Bernie to his face about this at the next debate.
All three instances are in the video below. It appears to be a standard line in all her campaign speeches now.
Personally, I don't know what all the fuss is about, and why the media has now turned on Bernie's campaign manager for making a joke about it. The media really doesn't want Bernie for President. Ok, we get it. But they have been actively trying to sabotage his campaign, and not just "reporting" news.
Hillary ran for President and lost to Obama, who then offered her a job a the Secretary of State (which she accepted). Recently Hillary had made a veiled comment (when shouting in a speech) about Bernie being a sexist, and accused him of accusing her for "shouting" (knowing full well that it wasn't true). So in response, Bernie's campaign manager made a snide joke that Bernie would offer Hillary a job as his VP — and that it was more than what Obama had offered her.
Big frigging deal! Is Hillary and the Hillary camp so thin-skinned? Now Clinton's people are complaining and playing "the victim card". They want to dish it out, but they can't take it in return. Anybody who is familiar with the Clinton family's politics knows that they fight very dirty. So it looks like nothing has changed since Hillary last ran for something. And now the media is reporting that it was Bernie who went negative in his campaign as a sexist! Such frickin' bull$hit!
And no, we male Bernie fans are not misogynists — we love Senator Elizabeth Warren! But in contrast, it might appear that there are many women in Hillary's camp who might hate men, and may only support Hillary JUST BECAUSE she is a woman (FIRST WOMAN PRESIDENT!) — and not because she's more trust worthy or more qualified (Here are few of them here) And that might also be why pop star Katy Perry is campaigning for her — JUST BECAUSE she is a woman, and not because Bernie has been any weaker on woman's issues or LGBT rights than Hillary has been.
And hear this: It is Hillary who wants to do all the damn shouting; but then she plays "the gender card" when a man dares to shout back at her. STFU! Me thinks the lady doth protest too much!
The Center for Public Integrity had asked the political consultant Joe Trippi, "What do you think would happen if Bernie Sanders beats Hillary Clinton in Iowa?", he relied: "The entire Democratic establishment would come out of the woodwork to stop Bernie Sanders from being the nominee. The establishment fervently believes that a socialist cannot be president of the United States.
So it looks like the Democratic Party Machine will also get help from the mainstream media, who Marco Rubio had said was their ultimate super Pac (excluding Fox News of course).
The other night on Stephen Colbert’s show, Hillary Clinton had said: "I’m not running for my husband’s third presidency, or President Obama’s third term. I’m running for my first term.”
But she never admitted that she was also running on Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders very popular ideas (not her own) to get herself elected.
Today #BlackLivesMatter protesters interrupted Hillary Clinton’s rally in Atlanta because of her support for the death penalty, which disproportionately affect Blacks lives. Bernie Sanders opposes the death penalty, and also wants to de-criminalize marijuana, which also disproportionately affect Blacks lives.
After the disruption by the #BlackLivesMatter protesters, Hillary Clinton had them thrown out and repeated her standard line: “I’m not running for my husband’s third term or Obama’s third term. I’m running for my first term!” (What do you have to prove Hillary? And to who? And why? Hmmmmmmm?
In the video below, one protester explains to one of Hillary's security people as he was being escorted out: "We're not going to allow Hillary to come here and to have a cookie-cutter black conversation to exploit black production for her vote — because Hillary has not, and does not, truly represent the black population ."
* It would be TOTALLY AWESOME if Vice President Joe Biden endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders for President in 2016. He just might, or why their recent meeting?
To refute a Washington Free Beacon study that concluded that women working in Clinton’s Senate office were paid 72 cents for each dollar paid to men, FactCheck.org noted that Clinton hired nearly twice as many women as men. (Was this gender discrimination?)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.factcheck.org/2015/04/gender-pay-gap-in-clintons-senate-office/
Bill Clinton's former pollster thinks it's a mistake for Democratic presidential candidates to essentially run for President Barack Obama's "third term." He believes renewal will require a period of sustained political reform, comparable to the Progressive Era at the turn of the 20th century.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/stan-greenberg-america-ascendant_56326a6ae4b0631799118c83
News Flash: Hillary is not a true "progressive". She is a self-described "moderate" (a centrist/Third Way Democrat). And no matter what Hillary says, she really is running in place of an Obama third term (Just as Joe Biden would have, had he also ran).
Anderson Cooper to Hillary Clinton at the first CNN debate:
Delete“Plenty of politicians evolve on issues, but even some Democrats believe you change your positions based on political expediency. You were against same-sex marriage. Now you’re for it. You defended President Obama’s immigration policies. Now you say they’re too harsh. You supported his trade deal dozens of times. You even called it the ‘gold standard.’ Now, suddenly, last week, you’re against it. Will you say anything to get elected? Just in July, New Hampshire, you told the crowd you’d, quote, ‘take a back seat to no one when it comes to progressive values.’ Last month in Ohio, you said you plead guilty to, quote, ‘being kind of moderate and center.’ Do you change your political identity based on who you’re talking to?”
Yes and yes.
Over the past few years, some Democrats -- including the Clintons -- have offered a new explanation for why they supported the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. The threat of a federal constitutional amendment, these Democrats have argued, motivated them to support DOMA -- a law that defined marriage for federal government purposes as between one man and one woman and said states could refuse to recognize same-sex couples’ marriages from others states…. There is no contemporaneous evidence, however, to support the claim that the Clinton White House considered a possible federal constitutional amendment to be a concern, based on a BuzzFeed News review of the thousands of documents released earlier this year by the Clinton Presidential Library about same-sex couples’ marriage rights and the Defense of Marriage Act. In the documents, which include correspondence from a wide array of White House and Justice Department officials, no one even hints that Bill Clinton’s thinking or actions regarding DOMA were animated by the threat of a federal constitutional amendment.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/how-the-clinton-white-house-handled-doma-in-1996-in-their-ow#.iw40M8Dr1z
“Bernie Sanders has committed to running a positive campaign and yet one of his staffers slips up and HillaryLand goes after him like a demon. Basically they are pummeling him like he said ‘binders full of women’. It’s really unfair but it shows that the Clinton people are much more aggress and brass-knuckle.”
ReplyDeletehttp://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/258741-bernie-sanders-sharpens-his-elbows
Bernie Sanders said that he thinks the Democratic race for the White House has become too personal as supporters of Hillary Clinton have accused him and his campaign of taking on a sexist tone.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/10/31/bernie-sanders-says-the-tone-of-the-democratic-presidential-race-has-become-too-personal/
Bud i share your frustration... this primary appears rigged ... the right wing has 4 decades of experience + of convincing working people to vote against their own economic interests ... plus Bernie has to fight off charlatans within his own party.
ReplyDeleteapparently the word "socialism" still scares the americans that are left alive to remember the evil USSR...
i think i'll make a small donation.
thank you for all your writing.
Thanks Allen, I went to Bernie's store and bought a cap...
Deletehttps://store.berniesanders.com/products/bernie-hat-navy
In a CNN interview back in August, Sanders said much the same thing he said in the last debate:
ReplyDelete"Coming from a rural state, which has almost no gun control, I think I can get beyond the noise and all of these arguments and people shouting at each other and come up with real constructive gun control legislation, which most significantly gets guns out of the hands of people who should not have them."
Recently at an overflow event in New Hampshire Bernie Sanders took a question about gun control from a middle school student: "Sometimes my words have been mischaracterized, I have said that as a nation, we have got to stop shouting at each other on this issue.”
(Hillary Clinton was nowhere around --- and her name was never mentioned.)
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/10/31/bernie-sanders-new-hampshire/74969452/
Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics: "Bernie Sanders actually talks about people shouting about gun control, that's a line of his. So I don't necessarily think that what he was saying was particularly about her gender."
This [fake controversy] comes at the same time when the Clinton campaign has made an increased push to appeal to female voters with a new ad campaign running in early states targeted squarely at women.
http://www.npr.org/2015/11/01/453663625/is-it-fair-to-accuse-bernie-sanders-of-sexism
[* Bernie doesn't look to appeal just to male voters or black voters ---- he campaign's on issues that affect ALL of us. Hillary will be another divider-and-chief.]
Because of his overwhelming popularity, the Establishment Democratic Party Machine should nominate Bernie Sanders and support him for President - - - or Bernie might run as an Independent and split the vote, giving himself (or the GOP) a win in 2016.
ReplyDeleteOctober 31, 2015: Bernie Sanders is at Lebanon High School Gymnasium (Lebanon, NH) shouting (and talking) about guns for 4 minutes, explaining his past votes and his current stand on the issue (video below). What is there to disagree with? (Even Hillary supporters could agree!)
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/YB7R6G2a4WU?t=2475