If Bernie Sanders was sick of Clinton’s damn emails, I am sick of Melania Trump’s damned plagiarized convention speech. Still, the news keeps coming.
This explanation is wholly inconsistent with what the Trump campaign has been saying over the last day and a half. Meredith McIver has collaborated with Donald Trump on several books. Contrary to the suggestions of Trump’s campaign guru Paul Manafort, Ms. McIver did plagiarize Michelle Obama’s words, so the accusation wasn’t “absurd” or “crazy” and it was ludicrous for him to say that there was “a political tint” to the accusations of plagiarism and to accuse the Clinton campaign of spreading disinformation.
About 50% of the Republican convention so far has been based on fear of immigrants, terrorists and bogeymen, but the other half has been dedicated to questioning Hillary Clinton’s forthrightness and honesty. It seems like a critical mistake to get caught being deceptive and dishonest about something as mundane as Melania’s speechwriter’s mistake. It stomps on the message.
What’s almost funny is the excuse provided. Melania copied Michelle’s words because she admired them.
That’s good to know, but I’m not sure it will do a lot to comfort a fractious Republican base.
I’m not sure what was worse: Ben Carson invoking Lucifer or NPR using Jonah Goldberg as a commentator for politics. No, Goldberg was worse.
As much as I am dismayed by the rightward tilt of NPR (Did you see who was on the podium last evening with Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff? Mara Liaison, David Brooks and E.J. Dionne) I’m thinking that it’s a sign of the apex of conservative media, that, and the eminent departure of Roger Ailes from Fox News. I’ve hope that the pendulum has turned and NPR is way behind the 8 ball just when they wholly embrace conservative pundits and their viewpoints.
“It seems like a critical mistake to get caught being deceptive and dishonest about something as mundane …” and will probably mean exactly nothing.
Republicans could not care less about lies, damn lies, statistics or plagiarism. As these things go, this is pretty small potatoes.
It will not in any way affect the votes of anyone in the progressive world. Progressives like Voice and Marie3 pay zero attention to the mendacity of the R’s in their contempt of HRC and will vote for/against/not as they deem appropriate. People like me and janicket will continue to vote, support, and send $$$ to HRC because that’s what we think is best.
Worst immediate case for the R’s: For a few lonely souls who are still fence sitting, the hoohaw might make them think of the of the irony of a Trumpista plagiarizing the Kenyan Muslim’s only wife.
Worse case long term for the R’s: This set of lies and excuses becomes the “straw that broke the camel’s back” …
My guess is the Bernie supporters come around. Not every last one of them of course but the vast majority. It’s hard to watch the Republican convention without getting angry. Apparently we’ve descended to the point of political show trials. Scary stuff. Imagine what Trump would do if he were actually in the White House. I’d like to think he’d get impeached but my guess is the Rs would continue to enable him because he’s “their bastard.” What’s left of our democracy then crumbles to dust.
Please refrain from lying about me. I’m sufficiently on record about my contempt for the GOP wrt to their attacks on HRC over Benghazi and the lies and fictions they promulgated about it. Including the mother of Sean Smith who repeated much of that from the RNC convention podium.
If you don’t see me posting daily comments about my disgust for every sleazebag Republican and their ignorant fans and destructive policies, it’s only because endless repetition is tiresome and freaking boring. It’s all been said ad nauseaum.
What I won’t do is act and speak like a Democratic Bushie or Trumpster. When HRC lies, I won’t dismiss, deny, excuse, rationalize, etc. it. Similarly, public policies that hurt ordinary people in the interests of elite special interests, be they financial/economic, “security”/war, or cultural, don’t get passes from me.
If that hurts your fee-fees and interferes with your uncritical adulation of Hillary, that doesn’t give you license to lie about those speaking the truth and/or consistently applying principles.
I learned long ago when I became involved in politics that you have a choice:
I don’t make excuses for politicians.
Because when you start doing that you will waive goodbye to your personal integrity very quickly under the guise of fidelity to people who do not deserve it.
An adult sense of proportionality is also a healthy ingredient. Along with not applying contemporary standards and laws to past bad and/or ignorant acts. A small example: A long time ago, my Mom’s best friend M received an ocelot jacket from her beloved husband when he earned a huge bonus one year. Decades later she whispered to me, “We didn’t know better back then, but I’m not giving it up.”
correction: it’s petty small potatoes in today’s IOKYIAR world.
there isn’t a straw large enough the break the GOP
camel’selephant’s back. these people are utterly shameless and without morals or conscience.the rat public party, in it’s current incarnation will succumb eventually, suffocated by the weight of it’s own hubris and entropy.
whatever hastens that demise is welcome indeed.
Progressives like Voice and Marie3 pay zero attention to the mendacity of the R’s in their contempt of HRC and will vote for/against/not as they deem appropriate. People like me and janicket will continue to vote, support, and send $$$ to HRC because that’s what we think is best.
Do Voice or Marie live in CA or NY, as an example? Half a million people could vote for Jill Stein in both places and HRC should still beat Ferret-head by 20 points, if not more. If you want to go the browbeating road, you might want to make a distinction re: where people live. There are states, like the aforementioned CA, where Trump has no chance of winning whatsoever.
I live in California, and my policy preferences are more liberal than Hillary’s. Nevertheless, I am uninterested in voting for Jill Stein. Her policy plans are incomplete and uncompelling to me, and her recent rhetorical attempt to poach Bernie voters in the wake of Bernie’s successful work to influence the policies in of the Clinton campaign and policy platform was filled with the Both Sides bullshit that I have found despicable about the Green Party for a while now.
Plus, the Green Party is an ineffective organization. In recent elections they have organized voters much less effectively than the Libertarian Party, and that trend seems certain to continue in 2016.
Finally, if I felt there were a real chance that Hillary would be held further to the left by votes for Stein, I would be more sympathetic to the case. There’s no evidence I can see that this has happened in the past with any Dem nominee or President, though, so I remain unsympathetic.
I’m glad that Green Party members care about the world and have strong leftist views about our governance. But I wish they had a more fully fleshed out platform, a realistic way to achieve any significant portion of that platform, and a willingness to dispense with near-absolute Both Siderism. These things, along with better large-scale organizing strategies, would help them gain more Party members and voters.
Ferret head? Feel better?
Quite honestly, progressives know how bad Republicans are. It’s just that we also noticed how bad corporate Democrats are. You are right that the Green Party isn’t very well organized. It takes lots of money, so the parties that are well-organized are also the parties with the most financial resources, and today the best-financed party is the Democratic Party.
The problem I see is that many Democrats, and that would include the vast majority of H. Clinton supporters either do not recognize or tend to ignore the monetary tentacles that holds the modern Democratic Party. The same oil money that backs wars overseas, ignores climate change and ecological degradation, has insinuated its way to the top of the Dems. Every decision each politician makes has to be weighed against the money he or she needs. And our congressional leadership knows how to fail. Oh, if only this or that senator hadn’t bolted party unity. And war? The Democrats are the war party now.
The Democratic Party has a candidate that is in debt to the richest of the rich for upwards of three billion. That money has been given for speeches to stockholders, as donations to the Clinton Foundation, as campaign donations, both laundered and unlaundered, moved through PACs et al.
If I find no particular candidate that is not repugnant and offends my sense of morality it’s of no consequence to you. I won’t interfere with your worship of your chosen one.
Nice touch, that was.
Finally! A scapegoat!
What’s absurd is US politics. 24 hour shit-storms over a minor plagiarism kerfuffle while Trumps crazy policies or Christies fascist call to have Clinton “locked up” cause nary a ripple of interest. Who gives a crap what Melania has to say? The minutiae that people find important, while the country is being ass-raped, just amaze me.
It’s like Al Capone getting busted for tax evasion. Sometimes it’s easier to take people down over the small or smaller stuff than the big stuff. In part because making a solid case on the big stuff requires more time and/or time has to elapse for enough of a cultural shift for the public to appreciate the egregiousness of the big stuff. Thirteen years on a majority in this country have still to wrap their minds around the lies that led to an unwarranted $4 trillion war. And half of Democrats pooh-pooh the failures or collaboration of Democratic politicians in that despicable USG action.
the Al Capones get taken down.
If only.
Well, except that the cops couldn’t catch Capone for the big stuff, but Trump is doing it all right on TV. It’s more as if Trump walked into the middle of 5th Ave. and started randomly shooting people, and instead of getting upset about that, people are going nuts that he jaywalked.
Trump hasn’t killed anyone either directly or by proxy based on his active support in some way and therefore, acting as if he has makes opponents look unhinged.
Yes, I’m mindful of what a Trump could do if he had the power to order others to kill, maim, etc. That goes a long way to explaining why I wouldn’t want such a belligerent nincumpoop in power. However, I’m not going to pretend to know that he could be more destructive than others that have already exhibited their destructive willingness. The odds are bad with both nominees.
… And yet another thread twisted into an indictment of HRC. Excellent work!
Which candidate has threatened a shooting war against another nuclear power?
Thanking you in advance for your honest response.
Sorry, not gonna help you hijack the thread.
I disagree only to the extent that this is a very simple, easily understood story that can still convey a broader underlying theme about the candidate – in this case, that Trump (by proxy) is a dishonest fraud. It’s very easy to digest, true (from our perspective), and can get through to people whose eyes would glaze over if you tried to explain to them all of the other lies the Republicans are making.
In modern blogsphere, no reference is allowed to either Biden or Obama’s plagiarism among Democrats.
Sorry, I forgot to mention that Biden did the same thing 28 years ago.
And dropped out of the race because of it in 1988.
And now he is the sitting Vice President.
And of course we can’t talk about Obama taking from Partick – I noticed you didn’t include that at all.
The hypocrisy is pretty fricken obvious.
I’m going to give Martin a pass on this for a few reasons. One being that blog posts need not be exhaustive. Another that he may not have been aware that Obama had lifted from Patrick. (It’s not always easy to be aware of the shortcomings of those one puts on a pedestal.) WRT Biden, it’s so long ago, hasn’t been repeated (as far as we know), and did take him out of the running to achieve directly his long held desire.
Then again, I’m more amused than outraged by Melania and/or her speechwriter plagiarizing from Michelle Obama’s ’08 speech because it’s more evidence of how far out of their league the Trump campaign is. (Wearing an ugly and way too tight dress is culturally more outrageous to me.)
For me, it’s the raccoon eyes — just hate, hate, hate the raccoon-eye look. Especially with the bum-flaunting dress.
It’s not her fault that she was born with small eyes for her face and a limited eyelid crease. Her heavy eye makeup does compensate for those limitations. Celebrities today seem to use more eye makeup (including false eyelashes) than they did in the past. Michelle Bachmann used tons of it in 2012. From what I could tell in the debates, Hillary was wearing as much or almost as much eye makeup as Melania does. Not as obvious because the size and shape of her eyes are good for her face.
Melania’s The dress was at least a size too small. Creased everywhere but on the fanny that it hugged provocatively. Plus it was ugly.
Obama?
:Hillary Clinton 2008 campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson said President Barack Obama had “lifted rhetoric” from Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.
“If your whole candidacy is about words, then they should be your own words,” then-Sen. Clinton said about Obama at the time. “That’s what I think.”
Obama admitted that he used some of Deval’s words at a Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Wisconsin.
“Deval and I do trade ideas all the time, and you know he’s occasionally used lines of mine,” Obama said.:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/19/politics/politicians-plagiarism/
Interesting, thanks. Not sure it’s plagiarism if you’ve got permission, though.
It’s also not an indictment of someone’s character if he personally acknowledges having borrowed rhetoric from another Party leader.
The actions of the Trump campaign and RNC are significantly different, on multiple levels.
Yes because in trumpmanialand this is the REAL CRIME;
If she wasn’t tRump’s trophy wife, they would hound her out of the party.
Such acknowledgment is certainly the only defensible way forward. (Helpful if also couched as “sorry, I fucked up”.) But it can’t fully expunge the original infraction, as though it had never occurred. It is still an indictment of character, even if one that, with acknowledgment, has now earned “forgiveness”. To forgive, there has to have been something meriting forgiveness.
But “borrow[ing rhetoric from another Party leader” (or anyone else!) without attribution (that’s key) is always problematic.
Acknowledging same is essential to “moving on”, though (= why the “but Biden did it, too” crap is silly).
Apropos what you call an “indictment of character”, an anecdote: My neighbor was a Democrat once but drifted rightward in the 1990s. At some point months after the 2000 election, he told me that he had voted for Dubya because “we needed an adult in the White House.” Now he’s all over Hillary Clinton’s transgressions and character flaws, but has nothing to say about Trump.
Character? I think appeals to character are mostly after the fact rationales.
heh — guess her dodge for using ghost book and speech writers is that her candidacy isn’t about words.
Deval Patrick didn’t mind; so, no reason for me to mind either. (But only fools believe that Obama writes mot of his own stuff.)
Pfft. Didn’t Democrats hold Biden accountable for his plagiarism in real time when it was exposed? Didn’t Biden pay a price for his bad act? Isn’t it now over twenty years since he paid that price?
Under those conditions, how about we refrain from again mentioning such misdemeanors? A dozen or fewer years for plagiarism should be more than sufficient. Of these Democrats, most paid a price or adequately compensated for the bad act. Only one remains troubling and won’t earn a pass for some time. (And one exhibits the value of having really smart and articulate friends and associates.)
A problem in current US politics is the infrequency of a party holding their members accountable for their bad acts and therefore, the actors pay no personal price for his/her bad behavior. That leaves the party and the misbehaving actors open to attacks from the opposition and rightly so. Regardless of how tiresome it is to hear it repeated again and again.
I dunno. Biden and Clarence Thomas are forever associated in my mind. Forever.
Didn’t suggest a blanket pardon. WRT to Biden and Thomas, the Senate Judiciary committee split 7-7. NYTimes
While I agree that Thomas was the one justice that moved SCOTUS far to the right of where it had been and Biden didn’t do a good enough job in his efforts to defeat the nomination, it was Deconcini’s vote that pushed the nomination to the full Senate where eleven Democrats voted Yea for Thomas. Biden wasn’t one of those eleven.
Kissinger is one political public figure who will never get a pass from me. His bad acts are too egregious and he not only has never paid a price for them but has profited hugely from them. As such, those who choose to associate with him then and now deserve to be judged accordingly.
Oh, the days of Bob Packwood and Mark Hatfield, “mossback Republicans” as they were called here and in Washington, who were Oregon’s senators when I moved here 25 years ago. Rational Republicans both, concerned with–wait for it–actual governance. Packwood was staunchly pro-choice, an unknown concept for a Republican ca. 2016. Hatfield had been an early opponent of the US war in Vietnam. I didn’t vote for either, but I wasn’t appalled by them (until Packwood’s lechery was uncovered). Hatfield’s seat, upon his retirement, was initially filled by Gordon Smith, another Republican, who later was defeated by Jeff Merkley. The Oregon GOP now regularly nominates wingnuts for Congressional and statewide offices and as a result can only win one of those races (Greg Walden’s House seat in rural Oregon).
are reminders that it wasn’t always the case that the entire GOP is either batshit insane, or all-in on using and encouraging those that are for their own electoral benefit.
Packwood was no Wayne Morse or Hatfield, but he was still within the traditional boundaries of west coast Republicans that could think through issues and weren’t totally in the pocket of the owners/takers.
However, Packwood had a real clinker thinker by sexually abuse of women for many years after it was both culturally and legally inexcusable.
I can’t get very worked up about it. I’ve been avoiding it.
Been catching up on Season Five of “24”. That’s the one where the President looks and acts like Nixon (as opposed to the All-State guy with the deep voice). I study the advances in background and incidental music (more interesting tension-building clinks and whacks, but when Jack Bauer takes his love interest into his arms it’s all syrupy strings).
I wonder how much it was intended to soften up the American people to the idea of torture, because it seems like Jack is strapping someone down and yelling at him every episode.
Of course, watching the series back-to-back, as I have, kind of diminishes the drama of the various threats. This week it’s a nuclear bomb, next it’s poisonous gas. Terrorists running amok. What a ghastly world television created for us. Much like the real world today.
Definitely worth a read
http://www.redstate.com/leon_h_wolf/2016/07/20/watch-paul-manafort-vehemently-deny-morning-melanias-
speech-cribbed-michelle-obama/
Daily News – Protesters arrested outside Republican convention after flag burning.
Who knew there were seventeen communists in the US and they are into flag burning?
Did TrumpInc have to scour the country to come up with a couple dozen communists? Or did they just hire wannabe extras? Were they paid extra to singe a flag? If there are two things rightwingers get apoplectic about it’s commies and flag burners. They really do make it easy for TrumpInc to manipulate them.
Condolences to the family of Mark Takai Age 49 is just when many politicians are beginning the major parts of their careers. (Pancreatic cancer is a cruel disease.) Daniel Akaka didn’t move up from the House to the Senate until he was 66.
Emily’s list is throwing big money into Hanabusa’s primary race (August 13) to reclaim her House seat (she opted to run for the US Senate in 2014). (Tulsi Gabbard’s primary opponent appears to be a non-starter for the 2nd CD). A sticky wicket — Special Vote To Fill Takai’s Seat May Coincide With General Election.
Whoa! Cruz appears to have self-immolated onstage tonight:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/20/politics/ted-cruz-republican-convention-moment/index.html
Dropped a big stink bomb. That may be unprecedented in modern times. (Who knew the Trumpsters were informed about who Heidi Cruz works for and that they no like?)
iirc, there are no GOP nomination comebacks for those that finish second on the strength of the fundie faction. They are a fickle lot. As the Huckster and Santo discovered. Or perhaps in Cruz’s world, they lost their mojo by endorsing McCain and Romney.
David Shuster:
There are reasons why Cruz is loathed by his GOP Senate colleagues.
Laura Ingraham graphically displayed the proper tone and feel for a speaker at the RNC convention. These guys can’t stop thinking about 1992 but without the gloves.
Cruz might well make that 2020 comeback if HRC wins this year. That 12-year-and-out rule seems pretty solid.
If we all make it to 2020 of course. What a lousy year this is.
Difficult to formulate a rule out of a data set of only two examples in over a hundred years of a contender succeeding in getting a third term for the party in office.
Oh absolutely. But we make assertive statements with the dearth of data that we have, not the infodump that we wish we had.
Plus the visceral response to Cruz is skin crawling.
True, Theodore’s nasally voice is hard to listen to. But so is Bob Dylan’s, and look at his success.
And we elected cringe-worthy crook Nixon twice, once by a slide of land.
Just saying, in four years it could happen for Theodore, given the right circumstances, if Hillary’s term is riddled with controversy, contention, near chaos in the land as most of the GOP reacts angrily and violently to her presidency.
Yeah but Dylan’s actively tried to shred his fanbase multiple times. Though there was a certain Newport ’65 vibe to Cruz’s appearance, wasn’t there?
Latest: “Ted Cruz Won’t Endorse Trump `Like A Servile Puppy'”.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ted-cruz-rnc-2016_us_5790c893e4b0bdddc4d340e2
Reminds me of that line from Penny Lane — “And though she feels as if she’s in a play, she is anyway.”
So will somebody please pass the popcorn? Because insofar as this is a play, I’m totally rooting for Cruz. Imagine expecting Cruz to kiss Trump’s ass after Trump insults his Goldman Sacks wife and insinuates that his father helped Oswald assassinate Kennedy — especially since it was not in reality, but only in a play written by the Warren Commission, that Oswald assassinated Kennedy.
But insofar as this is not a play, let Cruz and Trump can both beat the shit out of each other, and while they’re at it may they destroy what’s let of that putrid excuse for a party known as the GOP.