Live television always holds out the possibility of unanticipated “contributions” to the program. The “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox & Friends found that out this morning during a remote outside the studio.
While introducing a fluffy segment on shelter pets, a crazed figure pops up behind the hosts. He then removes his shirt and tie to reveal a t-shirt with a picture of Bill Clinton above the word “Rape.” Repeatedly shouting “Bill Clinton is a rapist,” the intruder attempts to jump over the barriers protecting the set. The hosts giggle and try to remain composed as security drags the protester away. It’s actually pretty funny, however, there is a serious subtext to the event.
First of all, the reckless and unfounded allegations against Bill Clinton are the work of nut job conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones of Infowars. In fact. Jones actually made a public offer to pay $1,000.00 to anyone who successfully got on the air wearing that shirt (which he sells on his website) and shouting that message. Presumably that guy can use the money right about mow – for bail.
More to the point, while this incident was obviously carried out by a certified fruitcake, the exact same message has played out on Fox News by their own anchors and guests. In June of last year Megyn Kelly raised the issue saying that “Bill Clinton was accused of rape. He has been accused by several women of sexually assaulting them.” F&F Anchor Steve Doocy interviewed disreputable rumor monger Ed Klein whose book charges that Bill raped Hillary. Doocy affirmed Klein’s nonsense asserting, without foundation, that his “sources are impeccable.” Frequent Fox guest Ann Coulter gave a speech at CPAC in March of 2013 wherein she ranted that “The keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention this year was forcible rapist Bill Clinton.” Fox contributor Katie Pavlich wrote that “Bill Clinton is probably a Rapist.”
If that isn’t enough, just last May Sean Hannity hosted Donald Trump as they attempted to dismiss his tawdry past. For the record, that includes three marriages and infidelities too numerous to cite. He literally bragged about them. What’s more, Trump himself is currently being sued for the rape of a thirteen year old girl. He was also accused of rape by his ex-wife, Ivana. So of course this conversation ignored all of that and quickly diverted to a comparison to Bill Clinton:
Hannity: In one case it’s about exposure. In another case it’s about groping and fondling and touching against a woman’s will. Trump: And rape. Hannity: And rape.
So whatever the state of mind of the wacko who tried to crash Fox’s broadcast there is one thing that is abundantly clear. He has the same political positions as the Fox News regulars. They might as well have let him join the others on the air. Who knows, maybe security took him to see someone in Human Resources and they gave him a job. Stay tuned for the Photobomber News Hour on Fox News.
Politics has always been a rough and tumble game with mudslinging and character attacks that test a candidates endurance. And while it often diverts from the issues that voters care about, those types of tactics are usually short-lived distractions and the public debate generally returns to the primacy of a candidate’s policies and proposals.
But this year it’s different. One of the candidates is a former reality TV game show host with a long history of making tabloid melodrama the centerpiece of his celebrity. Donald Trump is a rich, spoiled, thrice married playboy who flaunts his infidelities, and isn’t shy about slandering anyone he perceives as an enemy. And he has brought his crass demeanor and inflated ego to his candidacy for president.
It is precisely because Trump is so ignorant when it comes to the pressing matters of state that he needs to rely so heavily on smear campaigns and juvenile name-calling. It has been nearly a year since he announced his entry into the race and he is no more knowledgeable today than when he began. Consequently, we can expect to see a continuation of the empty-headed insults and bullying that are the hallmarks of Trump’s campaign. And today there were two frightening examples of what the next five months are going to look like on the campaign trail.
The first came in the form of a Trump video dredging up an old and discredited allegation about Bill Clinton. The accuser, Kathleen Willey, had told her story to the Independent Counsel investigating Clinton back in the early 1990’s, as well as the FBI, who dismissed it as inconsistent, unverified, and riddled with lies. As Media Matters reported, she also told it to conspiracy fruitcake Alex Jones and Donald Trump.
The video Trump is now distributing shows Willey recycling her assault charges with no more evidence today than she had twenty-three years ago. The difference is that now she has Donald Trump paying her to repeat this rotting pile of salacious gossip. Although it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Trump, a still festering birther, would hype such obvious garbage. Willey has also accused the Clintons of killing her husband and her cat.
The second steaming heap was reported by the Washington Post and also attempts to reanimate a scandal that has been dead for a quarter of a century. Trump spoke to the Post today and unprompted resurrected the ghost of former White House aide Vince Foster. Foster committed suicide in 1993, which led to a flurry of ludicrous conspiracy theories mainly accusing Bill and/or Hillary of murdering him.
So today Trump told the Post that he considered Foster’s death to be “very fishy.” Continuing, Trump said of Foster that “He had intimate knowledge of what was going on. He knew everything that was going on and then all of a sudden he committed suicide.” Trump never reveals what might have been going on that would make him a target for assassination. He also neglects to mention that Foster’s death “was ruled a suicide in investigations conducted by the United States Park Police, the Department of Justice, the FBI, Kenneth Starr and Congress.”
The fact that Trump is bringing up these bizarre and stale smears of yesteryear shows that he intends to drag the campaign down to levels never seen before. He will continue to avoid substantive issues like national security, economics, healthcare, and equality because he simply doesn’t comprehend any of them. So prepare to be inundated with assertions that Hillary Clinton is a lizard-person from outer space who is plotting to devour your children. Because that’s as close to reality as Donald Trump is capable of getting.
And what’s really sad is that Trump’s glassy-eyed followers won’t see anything wrong with this style of campaigning. They don’t care if he talks about ISIS or Martians as long he says he’s gonna obliterate them in the first week of his presidency. And they certainly don’t care if he lies through his capped teeth as he has been doing for the past year (see the Trump Bullshitopedia). His fans love nothing better than the tales of murder and lust that are more at home in the cheesiest of soap operas. So that’s what they will get and most of it will be happily delivered by Fox News. They will never ask him to demonstrate any of the intelligence or ability to govern the most powerful nation on Earth – Lucky for him.
One of the most consistent fallacies presented by Fox News on a daily basis is the assignment of blame for for anything that goes wrong exclusively to President Obama. If it can be cast as negative, Obama did it. Some of the laughable liabilities attributed to the President include the riots in Ferguson, MO, California’s drought, Ebola, and even Hurricane Katrina (which happened three years before he was elected. They have blamed him for high gas prices that hurt consumers, as well as for low gas prices that hurt oil companies. There is simply no way Obama can win with these partisan hacks.
Fox News’ Stolen Honor
Now, in addition to making Obama shoulder the responsibility for the failures of incompetent Republicans, Fox News is also stealing the credit for anything good that happens during any Democratic administration. This week alone has provided two glaring examples of this stolen honor by Fox pundits who can’t seem find anything that Republicans have done that actually helped the nation.
First we have Eric Bolling, a co-host of Fox’s The Five. During a segment devoted to bashing Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Bolling sought to diminish her husband’s success in orchestrating what was at the time the longest period of non-wartime economic growth in the nation’s history. Since he couldn’t plausibly deny that it was an era of unprecedented prosperity, Bolling served up this pretzel logic: “The reason why Bill [Clinton] did so well is because of Ronald Reagan.”
Of course it was. Never mind that Reagan was followed by four years of his vice-president George H.W. Bush who ran the economy into the ground and was summarily booted out of office. And perish the thought that Bolling would provide any substantive argument to support his made up theory. According to Bolling Reagan deserves the praise simply for being Reagan.
Following that, Fox’s senior political analyst, Brit Hume, made an appearance on Special Report to deliver his explanation for the political successes of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Eventually the discussion diverted to the state of the economy under President Obama. Hume began by asserting that the economy isn’t really in very good shape, but then shifted to proclaim that whatever was good about it wasn’t Obama’s doing, saying that “The credit for rescuing the economy, if it belongs with government, has got to be shared, at least [with George W. Bush].”
And why not? After all, Bush merely presided over the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. And his response was a basket of bailouts for the banks that were instrumental in the market’s downfall. It wasn’t until Obama came into office that efforts were made to stimulate the economy, and even that was opposed and obstructed by the Republicans in Congress.
It’s Hillary’s Fault Too
In both of the cases above the inspiration for these self-serving assumptions of economic glory stemmed from a comment Hillary Clinton made on the campaign trail. She said that if elected president she would put her husband Bill in charge of revitalizing the economy, something he is demonstrably good at. That comment sent the conservative pundits into a frenzy. They couldn’t abide her reminding people about the boom-time economy over which Clinton presided. So they endeavored to clumsily steal the credit for themselves.
This is just more proof that if Republicans had anything to be proud of they wouldn’t be trying to take credit for things they didn’t do – for things they affirmatively tried to prevent. They are, in effect, admitting that there are no accomplishments attributable to GOP administrations, so by necessity they have to swipe them from Democrats. It’s dishonest and unethical, but that’s never stopped them before.
When Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president his unfavorable rating among women was an already dismal 58%. In the intervening months as he campaigned it has gotten considerably worse, rising to an unprecedented 70% unfavorable. And through it all, Trump has demonstrated that he has absolutely no idea why he is hated so much by America’s women.
In another of his rambling, rancid stump speeches (which he promised would be more presidential), Trump attempted to address his female problems by attacking Hillary Clinton’s past tribulations with her husband Bill. Apparently Trump still thinks that the former President’s infidelities reflect badly on her. However, the public doesn’t blame Hillary for Bill’s bad behavior, and raising the issue is more likely to bring her sympathy from other women.
So Trump is diverting to a new path aimed at accusing Clinton of ruining the lives of Bill’s booty calls. Trump complained that “they’re going after ME with women?” Then he told his glassy-eyed disciples that…
“She’s been the total enabler. She would go after these women and destroy their lives. She was an unbelievably nasty, mean enabler and what she did to a lot of those women is disgraceful.”
First of all, anything Hillary said about the situation was said at a time when she believed the allegations against her husband were false. She was defending him from what appeared to be political hit jobs. But more to the point, she never said anything that could be remotely described as nasty or destructive. There’s a reason that Trump doesn’t provide any examples to support his attack – they don’t exist.
For Trump, on the other hand, the evidence of his misogyny is voluminous. His attacks on Megyn Kelly, Carly Fiorina, Elizabeth Warren, Rosie O’Donnell, Arianna Huffington, etc., are unarguably nasty and intended to cause harm. And unlike Clinton, Trump himself was the unfaithful person in his multiple marriages. He boasted in public of his infidelities.
But these personal incidents are not even what defines someone’s support for women in a political context. Trump’s new attack strategy is more proof that he continues to misunderstand what constitutes women’s issues. He is reducing it to the bad behavior of an individual. But when you take in the more expansive view of social equality, it has to be noted that it’s Hillary and Bill Clinton who support a woman’s right to choose, equal pay, prohibiting discrimination based on gender, support for victims of abuse, and family leave and child care. Those are actual women’s issues, not some guy being a horndog, and Donald Trump opposes them all – and is also a horndog.
For the record, when a poll was conducted earlier this year asking who is “more respectful of women” – Bill Clinton or Donald Trump – respondents overwhelming chose Bill Clinton (55% to 31%). And that was a Fox News poll.
In the battle for family values, Donald Trump cannot possibly prevail. He is a brutish hate monger who has repeatedly demonstrated a raging chauvinism that has been corroborated by his personal behavior. His defense often rests on the support he gets from his current wife and daughter, as if that validated anything. And don’t forget, we’re talking about the daughter that he wants to bang.
A couple of weeks ago Hillary Clinton correctly observed that Donald Trump has a “penchant for sexism.” He has demonstrated that repeatedly with his personal attacks on Megyn Kelly, Carly Fiorina, Rosie O’Donnell, and others. What’s more, he is a fierce opponent of a woman’s right to choose, and prohibiting pay and job discrimination based on gender. He is also on his third wife and wants to bang his daughter. In light of that record of misogyny, Clinton was actually pretty mild in her criticism.
What transpired next was a tirade of extraneous attacks from Trump directed at Bill Clinton’s decades-old infidelities that, while improper, do not in any way absolve Trump of his past and current repulsive behavior. It is merely an attempt by Trump to deflect attention from himself. And for that he has been getting plenty of help from Fox News. The network has endeavored to keep the focus narrowly on Clinton’s affairs with frequent stories dredging up the former president’s past, while ignoring Trump’s nauseating present.
Now a new poll conducted by Fox News shows that the result of this propaganda blitz may not be exactly what they intended. When women were asked who they thought was “more respectful of women” – Bill Clinton or Donald Trump – they responded overwhelming that it was Bill Clinton (55% to 31%).
Despite all the hard work by Fox and Trump, American women still prefer Clinton over Trump by a wide margin. So what is Fox to do now? Well, of course, they will assemble a panel of conservative women to refute their own poll.
All four of the women called upon for this Fox Business Channel segment are hard-core wingnuts. They include a Tea Partier, a conservative columnist, a former Bush aide, and even Donald Trump’s national spokeswoman. With four opinions represented, Fox somehow could not manage to include a single Democrat or Clinton supporter who might actually have agreed with their poll. The “fair and balanced” network made sure that only one point of view was supplied. And the results would be comical if they weren’t so sad. Here are some of the highlights as these right-wing spinners attempt to roll back what America’s women actually think:
Katherine Timpf (National Review): It can’t just be about ‘Oh Bill Clinton’s a bad guy.’ It’s what does it have to do with Hillary? It has to do with, if you look back at the way that Hillary treated these women who were accusing her husband of sexual assault, so far beyond the opposite of this new liberal feminist idea of they have a right to be believed, rather she called them names that I could not say on TV without getting suspended. So we need to look at that, and do put the focus on Hillary, but how she’s related to what happened then because she played a direct active role there. It wasn’t just Bill. She did some things that make me sick. It all makes me sick.
That comes very close to infringing on Sarah Palin’s “Word Salad” copyright. Timpf has virtually implicated Hillary in her husband’s affairs. She also doesn’t bother to include a single bit of truthful commentary, particularly the assertion that Hillary used language that could not be used on TV. Although I will agree that Timpf does appear to be sick.
Katrina Pierson (Trump spokeswoman): You’ll recall that this didn’t come up until she called him a sexist. She was thumping that woman’s card very hard. […] When you’re looking at who is being respectful or disrespectful to women if you’re in the media today, then you’re probably not gonna think so much of Trump because people don’t really remember everything that happened with Bill Clinton. We’ve got an entire generation of people who are still trying to figure out what this discussion is.
If she thinks that people in the media today are not exceedingly well-versed about the controversies of the Clinton years, she’s acutely delusional. Obviously the women responding to the poll didn’t have any trouble figuring out what the discussion is, and they recognize a cad when they see one.
Gina Loudon (Tea Party): People have short memories, first of all, so there’s the psychological component of that. But also, like Katrina said, there are generations of people that don’t even know what happened, but if you ask them who’s more trustworthy, the numbers on Hillary not being trustworthy are terrifying. And this is the other thing – Donald Trump hasn’t even begun to campaign against Hillary Clinton. […] My guess, Charles, is that the minute he starts to unleash on Hillary, she won’t even know what hit her.
So Loudon’s position is that it’s the people who are too ignorant to realize how horrible Clinton is and how awesome Trump is. The young ones never learned and the old ones have forgotten. What a bunch of idiots these women voters are, according to Loudon. Furthermore, Trump has been campaigning against Clinton for months. He has called her the “worst Secretary of State in history” (although he used to think she was a “terrific woman” and said that “I really like her and her husband both a lot”).
Cathy Taylor (GOP strategist and former George W. Bush advisor): I think we’re gonna see the tide shift quite a bit as we see Donald Trump continues on his path and starts to campaign as more of a general presidential campaign versus a primary campaign. Let’s remember that he has not really focused on women yet. He’s been very good to women as a businessman. And when you look at policies and policy recommendations, because policies are going to be more favorable, as with any of the GOP candidates, than Hillary Clinton. And let’s remember, there’s good guys and there’s nice guys. Bill Clinton may be a nice guy, Donald Trump is much more of a good guy.
Ms Taylor may need to wipe a bit of the drool off her chin. Trump actually has focused a great deal on women in this campaign, and it’s all been derogatory. Especially his policies, which are pretty much the same as the rest of the GOP and firmly rejected by majorities of women. As for the distinction between a “nice guy” and a “good guy,” I can only respond – WTF? Is this a political campaign or high school?
The video of this discussion (below) opened with a clip of Republican pollster and self-proclaimed “Word Doctor,” Frank Luntz, saying that “Trying to tie Bill Clinton into Hillary doesn’t make sense,” and that “You cannot win this election without getting at least 45% of the female vote.” But Republican candidates are doing everything they can to alienate women (and Latinos and African-Americans). And Fox News is making a desperate effort to clean up after them. The problem is that their efforts are so ham-handed that no one is going to be convinced by the ultra-partisans who are clearly acting as Trump’s surrogates. What’s most revealing about this is that Fox will hold nothing back when their conservative principles are being challenged. The challenger must be destroyed, even if it’s themselves and their own poll.
For the past several weeks the media has been anticipating the entrance of Bill Clinton on the campaign trail for his wife Hillary. It has been a hotly debated subject, not just because he is a former president, but because he is regarded as a masterful communicator with the potential to shape the political landscape.
Among those eagerly engaging in the discussion is Fox News. They have broadcast numerous segments analyzing the former President’s ability to boost Hillary’s prospects, his continued popularity as a public figure, and the possible downside due to some old personal “indiscretions.” Fox has spent untold hours speculating about how Bill’s presence might affect the course of the campaign.
Well, today was the day that Bill made his debut appearance as a surrogate for his wife’s 2016 candidacy. He delivered a half hour speech to an appreciative audience in New Hampshire, the first primary state. The speech was carried live by both CNN and MSNBC. Fox News, however, showed just fifty-five seconds, then quickly cut away. That’s less than one minute of a half hour speech by a former president, and husband of a current presidential candidate, on his first campaign appearance, which was taking place in an important primary state. And for the record, there was no breaking news to justify snubbing this event.
Compare that the coverage that Fox News gives Donald Trump. They broadcast the entirety of his events live, despite the fact that they rarely contain anything more newsworthy than his standard stump speech that everyone has heard ad nauseum. Fox interrupts scheduled programming for these marathon speeches and repeats significant clips of them throughout the rest of the day. So far, Fox has not replayed anything from Clinton’s speech, although they have brought it up as an excuse to level attacks against the Clintons.
News Corpse has documented the wholly unprofessional and biased manner in which Fox News has virtually turned their network over to Donald Trump. No other candidate, even other Republicans, have received the sort of preferential treatment that Trump has enjoyed. And that’s even after he has repeatedly feuded with and insulted the network’s anchors, pundits, and owners. He even called for a boycott of Fox News after another delusional fit of whining about being treated unfairly.
So while Fox News kisses up to a crybaby who bullies them at every turn and has achieved nothing in the realm of public service, they completely ignore a former president who is widely admired with an unsurpassed record of achievement. And this is the network that wants people to believe they are “fair and balanced?” Some people may retort that this is Bill and not Hillary, so why should Fox broadcast it. Well, they have never aired a speech by Hillary live and in full either, so that argument doesn’t really fly.
Look for more of this bias as the campaign proceeds. Fox will continue to feature Trump and disregard Democrats as a whole, unless it is to disparage them. And they will especially avoid Bill Clinton because they know that he might be effective in making the case for Hillary. That’s something that Fox is simply too afraid to confront.
Earlier this year Fox News fortified their rabidly right-wing roster of Republican PR flacks by hiring Roger Stone, a veteran GOP dirty trickster and notorious Clinton hater. Stone cut his teeth in the nastiest campaigns of Richard Nixon and in 2008 he founded a group to oppose Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign that he called “Citizens United Not Timid,” or C.U.N.T. He said that the group’s mission was “to educate the American public about what Hillary Clinton really is.”
Well, Fox is getting their money’s worth as Stone makes appearances on the “news” network spewing outrageous allegations and vile insinuations that set the bar for decency at new lows. Last week Stone visited the Kurvy Kouch Potatoes at Fox & Friends to hurl his trademark insults and innuendo. He was asked by Elizabeth Hasselbeck for some “insight with Hillary Clinton’s relationship with Wall Street.” Stone’s answer began predictably by asserting that it “causes her real problems.” Of course, if she had no relationship with Wall Street that would also be a problem. Fox is hard-wired so that anything that happens, or doesn’t happen, is a problem for Democrats. But then he swerved to inject an unrelated criticism from far-right field.
“Frankly, the much greater issue is the new public Bill Cosby scandal, which is gonna cause a reexamination of the problems of Bill Clinton and what Hillary knew about those actions and what she did to suppress them. So I think the Bill Cosby issue, as it were, could be a real problem for Bill Clinton and, therefore, for Hillary Clinton.”
Yes. That’s “the much greater issue.” A twenty year old incident of marital infidelity that is in no way analogous to Bill Cosby. Clinton’s affairs were consensual and, by all accounts, they stopped twenty years ago. You can be sure that if he were fooling around now some tabloid would have uncovered it. The notion that the Cosby controversy would spark a reexamination of Bill Clinton exists only in Stone’s perverted mind. Nobody cares about any of that, as evidenced by Clinton’s high approval ratings. If anything, it would be a reminder that the Clintons worked through their difficulties and preserved their marriage, affirming their family values.
The fact that Fox News employs a despicable character like Stone is proof that they have no interest in ethical journalism. But he is only the tip of the viceberg. Fox’s cast of characterless mudslingers include Karl Rove, who said that Clinton is too “old and stale” for America; Dinesh D’Souza, who said that the young Clinton looks like a hippy (and young Obama looks like a thug); Edward Klein who thinks that Chelsea Clinton was the spawn of Bill after raping his lesbian wife, Hillary. If there is anyone who still thinks that Fox News is either fair or balanced they had better seek professional help and massive quantities of medication as quickly as possible.
If it seems to you that that President Obama has been under an investigative microscope since the moment he took office, it’s only because that’s pretty much true. Republicans were determined to foil anything positive that this president placed on his agenda, and their primary method of achieving that end has been perpetual investigations of trumped up scandals.
But even with their single-minded devotion to destroying this presidency, the House GOP has not produce any evidence of wrongdoing that implicated the White House. Of course, if their purpose was merely to keep the nation from enjoying the benefits of a productive government, Republicans can claim some success. They have certainly obstructed the creation of millions of jobs; progress on environmental protection; reforms of health care and immigration and tax policies; and numerous other initiatives that might have advanced the country’s well being. But any actual manifestations of scandal have been nonexistent.
To illustrate the level of incompetence attributable to these Tea Party hacks, it is useful to put their job performance into historical perspective. One way to do this is to compare their progress with that of prior congressional sessions working on similarly lofty projects. And since there has been so much talk of impeachment of late, it seemed like that would make a good model for comparison.
So get this: From the date that the U.S. Senate voted to establish a select committee to investigate Watergate, until the resignation of President Nixon, it took about 15 months. To reiterate, that’s from the date that the committee was approved, through the maze of contested hearings, the presentation of evidence, the White House defense, and all the way through the conclusion with a disgraced (and obviously guilty) president stepping down, only a little more than a year transpired.
Compare that to the current House Committee on Oversight’s investigation of whether the IRS discriminated against conservative organizations. Those hearings began 16 months ago. So they have already exceeded the time allotted to impeaching Nixon. However, there has not been a single shred of incriminating evidence uncovered. Plus, if you count from the time the Ways and Means Committee began their inquiries, it has been over 38 months. And these hearings are still continuing.
Let’s also compare the House hearings on Fast and Furious, the botched gun trafficking sting that actually began in the Bush Administration. But limiting this to just the Obama era, Congress has been investigating this since June 2011 – 38 months and counting. And nothing of substance has come from it.
The granddaddy of the Obama era pseudo-scandals has to be Benghazi. Over at Fox News they are suffering from a rare form of Benghazi Tourettes, spitting out the word every few seconds for no apparent reason other than to stir up their dimwitted viewers. So far, the congressional investigations into this have been ongoing for 23 months, with nothing to show for it. And on this issue they have been the most insistent that there is a correlation to Watergate. In fact, the Watergate angle has been an obsession that they tie to their wet dreams of impeachment.
Even the impeach-happy congress of the Clinton era took far less time to conduct hearings and actually try the President for high crimes and misdemeanors, than it has taken for any of the current Congress to even find a crumb of presidential misbehavior. From the inception of the House proceedings to impeach Clinton, until his acquittal in the Senate, it took all of four and a half months. If you count from the date that the Drudge Report posted its tabloid article identifying the Monica Lewinsky affair, it was still only 13 months.
To sum up, every one of the current phony scandals, that are wastefully consuming time and taxpayer dollars, are exceeding that spent on the Nixon and Clinton impeachments. And none of these scandals have produced any hint of wrongdoing. That’s fairly conclusive proof that the Republicans serving in Congress now are profoundly incompetent. There are really only three possible explanations for this. Either 1) There is no evidence and they are wasting everyone’s time, or 2) There is evidence, but these blockheads are too stupid to stumble over it, or 3) They don’t give a damn about evidence, they are only trying to smear the President.
Either way, they need to be relieved of their duties at the earliest opportunity, which would be this November. That makes it the responsibility of American voters to step up and do their duty. All you have to do is vote. And rest assured, if you do not, this GOP idiocy will continue for the next two years and will likely be escalated into a full-blown impeachment of Obama. For God’s sake, don’t let that happen.
If there is one man in America who’s reputation is irretrievably stained with bias and deceit it is Edward Klein, the author of the new book “Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas.” Klein’s history of unfounded allegations and obviously invented accounts of life in the Clinton sphere has been denounced by scores of critics from across the political spectrum. But that won’t stop Fox News from hailing Klein and providing a platform for his transparent lies.
Klein’s new book is filled with ludicrous “quotes” that invariably cast Hillary Clinton, and other Democrats, in a negative light. While they are ridiculous on their face, and Klein fails to validate their authenticity, they are precisely the sort of raw meat tabloidisms that appeal to Fox’s executive propagandists (i.e. Roger Ailes) and woefully gullible viewers. Among the published nonsense are these morsels of mendacity:
Bill Clinton advised Hillary to “put on widow’s weeds, dress in black” if he died because “it would be worth a couple of million votes.”
Hillary “managed to keep her medical history secret out of fear that, should it become public, it would disqualify her from becoming president.”
Oprah Winfrey claims to have “a much warmer relationship with Hillary than I do with either Michelle or Barack,” and that the Obamas “make me jumpy.”
Bill Clinton said “I hate that man Obama more than any man I’ve ever met, more than any man who ever lived.”
Hillary Clinton considered resigning over Benghazi because Obama allegedly forced her “to say that the attack had been a spontaneous demonstration triggered by an obscure video on the Internet.”
Some of these assertions were presented as private conversations between two individuals. For instance, the last item was said to be from a phone conversation between Bill and Hillary. Which begs the question, how could Klein quote them verbatim when no one else was even listening? His source would have to have been Bill or Hillary. Sure, that could happen.
Klein’s past books have included some of the most repulsive fabrications ever levied against the Clintons. He alleged that Chelsea was conceived after a domestic assault wherein Klein said that Bill raped Hillary. Again, how on earth could Klein have known that? Were there witnesses who have spoken only to him? Klein is also a confirmed Birther who believes that Obama may have been created to be a Manchurian candidate from Kenya.
This is the sort of person that Fox News is now promoting on air and online. The lie-riddled Fox Nation website has already posted three articles promoting the delusional revelations in Klein’s new book. Media observers have become accustomed to the reality bending and partisan slanting of virtually everything that Fox broadcasts, but they have sunk to new lows by endorsing the maniacal ravings of Edward Klein, a conspiracy kook who comes close to making Glenn Beck look sane.
I sat down this morning intending to write an article about the absurd new crush that Mitt Romney and the GOP have on Bill Clinton. It’s a flagrant rewriting of history concerning the man that Republicans tried to impeach, but seek to cuddle up with now that he’s one of the most popular former presidents. But as I was doing research for the article I discovered that Michael Tomasky had already written it for the Daily Beast. So here are a few brazenly appropriated paragraphs:
It’s hardly a secret what Mitt Romney is up to in trying to invoke Bill Clinton’s name in ads and speeches. Clinton was the good Democrat. The sensible centrist. And—let’s lower our voices here—the white one. It’s been transparent since it started in May, made all the more so this week by using Clinton to slam Obama on welfare.
I hope he uses the occasion of his convention speech, and for that matter the whole fall campaign, to destroy Romney, saying to every swing voter: “If you voted for me, you’d be nuts to vote for this guy. He’s making up a version of me to serve his own purposes, and he’s against almost everything I stood for and stand for.”
It’s obvious that using Clinton to try to appeal to the Clinton swing voter is pretty central to the Romney plan. As soon as Romney polished off Rick Santorum back in May, he started singing Clinton’s praises. It was his way to appeal to the center. He doesn’t have the courage to do that by taking any actual centrist positions, of course. The positions remain hard right. So he chose to do it instead by using Clinton as the vehicle through which to make ominous insinuations about Obama, implying to audiences that Clinton was the sober pragmatist whose legacy the ultra-liberal Obama had defenestrated.
Clinton can do more than validate Obama. He has the authority to shred Romney. Some conservatives appear to have this fantasy, expressed by Jennifer Rubin in The Washington Post yesterday, that Clinton has more in common with Romney. That’s too ridiculous even to bother rebutting, except to note that it can provide fodder for some great laugh lines built around the idea that yes, back when he was president, Clinton did agree with Romney on several things, like abortion rights and the assault weapons ban. Then Romney changed all his positions. And, of course, there is the one issue that looms above all others, which Clinton could frame as a simple and devastating question: “Governor, if you think I’m so great, if you agree with me so much, why don’t you support my tax rate for the top 1 percent?”
Mitt Romney and his Republican Disinformation Society want Americans to forget that they were not merely opposed to Clinton’s agenda, they were veritably obsessed with demolishing him personally and politically. In addition to the impeachment over private personal matters, Republicans launched fruitless investigations into Arkansas land deals; they alleged that he ran drugs from state airstrips; they accused Hillary of murdering Vince Foster. The budget bill that led to years of prosperity did not receive a single Republican vote in congress. What it did receive was assertions of socialism and predictions of the end of America. Sound familiar?
Voters need to remember this when they hear Romney et al praise Clinton. They need to remember that their own agenda is diametrically opposed to the Clinton Doctrine. Republicans have a desperate need to latch onto Clinton because their own past presidents were such horrific failures. Clinton will be making the official nominating speech for Obama at the Democratic convention. George Bush won’t even be attending the Republican convention.
We can expect Bill Clinton’s name to be heard often in this election season. And it will be mentioned by both sides because they know that the American people respect him and his achievements. But every time Mitt Romney and the GOP mention Clinton’s name should be a reminder to vote for Obama, just as Clinton is going to do.
