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This Is What Happens When You Lose Credibility |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=40776"><span class="small">Dan Rather, Dan Rather's Facebook Page</span></a>
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Sunday, 22 October 2017 12:51 |
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Rather writes: "This is what happens when you lie repeatedly about issues big and small. This is what happens when you foment divisions and show no remorse. This is what happens when your words have no meaning. You lose the benefit of the doubt."
Dan Rather. (photo: USA Today)
This Is What Happens When You Lose Credibility
By Dan Rather, Dan Rather's Facebook Page
22 October 17
 his is what happens when you lose credibility. This is what happens when you lie repeatedly about issues big and small. This is what happens when you foment divisions and show no remorse. This is what happens when your words have no meaning. You lose the benefit of the doubt.
Today John Kelly, the White House Chief of Staff issued an emotional defense of President Donald Trump's phone call to the widow of a fallen soldier. He opened up about the death of his own son in combat. He claimed that Mr. Trump was being sensitive. He said he hadn't meant to criticize previous presidents when he said he wasn't sure if they made calls to the fallen. He criticised the conclusion of a Democratic congresswoman who shared her vantage point of the call. Everything that Mr. Kelly said may be true. Or maybe not. This could fall legitimately in the grey area of different interpretations, at least in cases where the president isn't Donald Trump.
Why did millions of Americans jump to the conclusion that Mr. Trump was criticizing President Obama with his words? Because that is what Mr. Trump always does, including questioning whether President Obama was a real American. Why did millions of Americans not trust Mr. Trump's denials about what he said and that he had proof? Because Mr. Trump repeatedly lies about what he says and what he means. Why did millions of Americans assume that Mr. Trump could not feel empathy for the death of Sgt. La David T. Johnson? Because he has shown no empathy for the people of Puerto Rico still suffering from a hurricane without power or safe drinking water. Why did millions of Americans think that Mr. Trump could disrespect American servicemen and women? Because he attacked a war hero and a Gold Star Family during the presidential campaign.
The impression of Mr. Trump that fueled the narrative around this phone call is one for which Mr. Trump has only himself to blame. General Kelly has served with distinction and honor. He has born grave personal sacrifices. He has every right to speak in the manner he did today. But he also has to understand that while millions of Americans may be inclined to believe his sincerity and character, they have long since given up on those attributes when it comes to his boss.
Yes elections have consequences. But so do words and deeds.
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FOCUS: Yes, Bush Was That Bad |
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Sunday, 22 October 2017 11:40 |
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Robin writes: "Thursday’s speech, in which Bush obliquely took on Trump, was merely the latest in a years-long campaign to restore his reputation and welcome him back into the fold of respectability."
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney inside the presidential limousine in February 2008. (photo: The U.S. National Archives/Flickr)
Yes, Bush Was That Bad
By Corey Robin, Jacobin
22 October 17
Can we please stop rehabilitating Republican ghouls?
 ack in March 2016, I made a prediction:
If, God forbid, Trump is elected, some day, assuming we’re all still alive, we’ll be having a conversation in which we look back fondly, as we survey the even more desultory state of political play, on the impish character of Donald Trump. As Andrew March said to me on Facebook, we’ll say something like: What a jokester he was. Didn’t mean it at all. But, boy, could he cut a deal.
When I wrote that, I was thinking of all the ways in which George W. Bush, a man vilified by liberals for years, was being rehabilitated, particularly in the wake of Trump’s rise.
Thursday’s speech, in which Bush obliquely took on Trump, was merely the latest in a years-long campaign to restore his reputation and welcome him back into the fold of respectability.
Remember when Michelle Obama gave him a hug?
That was step two or three. This week’s speech was step four.
For years prior to that, our image of Bush was emblazoned by the memory of not only the Iraq War, which killed hundreds of thousands of people, of not only the casual violence, the fratboyish, near-sociopathic, irresponsibility, of Bush’s rhetoric of war (remember when, after the Iraq War was over, in June 2003, Bush turned to his administrator general there, Jay Garner, and said, “Hey, Jay, you want to do Iran?”). It was also imprinted with the memory of the laziness and incuriosity, the buoyant indifference, that got us into war, not just the Iraq War but also the war on terror (the original sin of it all, if you ask me) in the first place.
All those now pining for the pre-9/11 George W. Bush, a man who took his responsibilities to the nation — and his duty to its people — seriously, an anti-Trump who, whatever his many flaws, at least had a sense of the gravitas of his office and its burdens, might want to have a read-through to what was going down in the Bush administration circa August 2001.
Roemer then asked Tenet if he mentioned Moussaoui to President Bush at one of their frequent morning briefings. Tenet replied, “I was not in briefings at this time.” Bush, he noted, “was on vacation.” He added that he didn’t see the president at all in August 2001. During the entire month, Bush was at his ranch in Texas. “You never talked with him?” Roemer asked. “No,” Tenet replied. . . .
And there you have it. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has made a big point of the fact that Tenet briefed the president nearly every day. Yet at the peak moment of threat, the two didn’t talk at all. At a time when action was needed, and orders for action had to come from the top, the man at the top was resting undisturbed.
Throughout that summer, we now well know, Tenet, Richard Clarke, and several other officials were running around with their “hair on fire,” warning that al-Qaida was about to unleash a monumental attack. On Aug. 6, Bush was given the now-famous President’s Daily Brief (by one of Tenet’s underlings), warning that this attack might take place “inside the United States.” For the previous few years — as Philip Zelikow, the commission’s staff director, revealed this morning — the CIA had issued several warnings that terrorists might fly commercial airplanes into buildings or cities.
And now, we learn today, at this peak moment, Tenet hears about Moussaoui. Someone might have added 2 + 2 + 2 and possibly busted up the conspiracy. But the president was down on the ranch, taking it easy. Tenet wasn’t with him. Tenet never talked with him. Rice — as she has testified — wasn’t with Bush, either. He was on his own and, willfully, out of touch.
But now that’s all forgotten. Or being forgotten.
It may be, however, when it comes to Trump’s rehabilitation, that things will move faster than I predicted, that Trump won’t have to wait as long as Bush to get out of the doghouse.
After all, Sean Spicer is now up at Harvard, tutoring the hopefuls of tomorrow’s ruling class.
And just after Roy Moore got the Senate nomination in Alabama, Paul Begala was quoted in Politico: “What do they say in recoveries? You have to hit bottom? I thought that, with Trump, they [the GOP] hit bottom. But, apparently not, because Moore is worse.”
And there you have it, the stage is already being set. Given the relentless march rightward of the Republican Party, there will always be something worse waiting in the wings, something worse that will inevitably furnish Trump with a retrospective glow — even though it was Trump who set the stage for that something worse, in the same way that it was Bush who set the stage for Trump.
So, here’s a message to everyone on Twitter or Facebook saying, gee, I never thought I’d be saying this, but next to Trump, George W. Bush really isn’t so bad: one day, I promise you, I guarantee you, you will be saying, gee, I never thought I’d be saying this, but next to TK [that’s editor-speak for “to come”], Trump really isn’t so bad.
Unless, that is, you get out of this terrible habit of burnishing the past — something you can only do because it’s no longer in front of you — and dehistoricizing the present.
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FOCUS: There's More to the Narrative About Hillary Clinton and Wisconsin |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=11104"><span class="small">Charles Pierce, Esquire</span></a>
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Sunday, 22 October 2017 10:34 |
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Pierce writes: "You would think that the one thing that could unite the squabbling Democratic factions is a strong effort to rescue the franchise from its avowed enemies."
Hillary Clinton. (photo: Getty Images)
There's More to the Narrative About Hillary Clinton and Wisconsin
By Charles Pierce, Esquire
22 October 17
Specifically, voter suppression.
he invaluable Ari Berman at Mother Jones has an extraordinary examination about how an ongoing campaign of voter suppression in the state of Wisconsin, which my own reporting has told me is the worst kept secret in the history of that state’s politics, probably did throw that state’s electoral votes to the president* in 2016.
On election night, Anthony was shocked to see Trump carry Wisconsin by nearly 23,000 votes. The state, which ranked second in the nation in voter participation in 2008 and 2012, saw its lowest turnout since 2000. More than half the state’s decline in turnout occurred in Milwaukee, which Clinton carried by a 77-18 margin, but where almost 41,000 fewer people voted in 2016 than in 2012. Turnout fell only slightly in white middle-class areas of the city but plunged in black ones. In Anthony’s old district, where aging houses on quiet tree-lined streets are interspersed with boarded-up buildings and vacant lots, turnout dropped by 23 percent from 2012. This is where Clinton lost the state and, with it, the larger narrative about the election.
Berman is particularly good in two areas here: 1) He brings the long game of voter suppression played by the state’s Republican party down to the streets of places like the north side of Milwaukee, which happens to be my old neighborhood, not that that matters significantly and, 2) he is scornful of the attempts by some on the putative left to minimize voter suppression as a factor in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s defeat.
The impact of Wisconsin’s voter ID law received almost no attention. When it did, it was often dismissive. Two days after the election, Talking Points Memo ran a piece by University of California-Irvine law professor Rick Hasen under the headline “Democrats Blame ‘Voter Suppression’ for Clinton Loss at Their Peril.” Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said it was “a load of crap” to claim that the voter ID law had led to lower turnout. When Clinton, in an interview with New York magazine, said her loss was “aided and abetted by the suppression of the vote, particularly in Wisconsin,” the Washington Examiner responded, “Hillary Clinton Blames Voter Suppression for Losing a State She Didn’t Visit Once During the Election.” As the months went on, pundits on the right and left turned Clinton’s loss into a case study for her campaign’s incompetence and the Democratic Party’s broader abandonment of the white working class. Voter suppression efforts were practically ignored, when they weren’t mocked.
And he also dredges up a quote that gives the entire game away, a quote I’d forgotten, which meant I could get angry about it all over again.
On the night of Wisconsin’s 2016 primary, GOP Rep. Glenn Grothman, a backer of the law when he was in the state Senate, predicted that a Republican would carry the state in November, even though Wisconsin had gone for Barack Obama by 7 points in 2012. “I think Hillary Clinton is about the weakest candidate the Democrats have ever put up,” he told a local TV news reporter, “and now we have photo ID, and I think photo ID is going to make a little bit of a difference as well.”
You would think that the one thing that could unite the squabbling Democratic factions is a strong effort to rescue the franchise from its avowed enemies. That, of course, would require some people to give up on the idea that HRC was absolutely the evilest evil that ever evil-ed. I make that a 50-50 shot at best.
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Trump Isn't Hitler. But the Lying... |
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Sunday, 22 October 2017 08:25 |
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Blow writes: "It is a commonly accepted rule among those who are in the business of argument, especially online, that he or she who invokes Adolf Hitler, either in oratory or essays, automatically forfeits the argument."
President Trump at an event in Middletown, Penn. (photo: Tom Brenner/NYT)
Trump Isn't Hitler. But the Lying...
By Charles M. Blow, The New York Times
22 October 17
 t is a commonly accepted rule among those who are in the business of argument, especially online, that he or she who invokes Adolf Hitler, either in oratory or essays, automatically forfeits the argument.
The reference is deemed far too extreme, too explosive, too far beyond rational correlation. No matter how bad a present-day politician, not one of them has charted or is charting a course to exterminate millions of innocent people as an act of ethnic cleansing.
Hitler stands alone in this regard, without rival, a warning to the world about how evil and lethal human beings can be, a warning that what he did can never be allowed again.
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