Friday, April 08, 2016

Bullshit history from the Bernie-bots

Added note: I've refused to publish a number of comments from Bernie trolls. They control so much of the conversation elsewhere; this humble blog will remain free of their propaganda.

But I can tell you this: ALL of the deleted comments changed the subject. Not one of my critics was able to address the specific argument made below. 

If you can do so, I will publish you, even though I will not agree with you. If you change the subject to standard-issue Hill-Hate -- well, don't bother. You won't be published.

The fix is in.

The way to tell that the fix is in for Sanders is to count the number of stories claiming that the fix is in for Clinton. All of her wins are ascribed to "The Democratic machine" -- not to, you know, the greater number of people who voted for her. All blame goes to an amorphous, conspiratorial Them.

The same people who foisted Barack Obama on us are giving us Sanders. The difference: Obama was always meant to win in the general, while Sanders will lose.

What is most galling about this situation is the rewritten history of the Clinton presidency. The best years of my life are now being recast as the worst.

Take, for example, this propaganda piece from Michelle Goldberg (which reflects propaganda pieces published earlier, not least by Matt Taibbi):
It started when the demonstrators interrupted Bill Clinton’s speech to protest his draconian 1994 crime bill, which, among other things, expanded the scope of the death penalty, enshrined “three-strikes” provisions into federal law, and allocated almost $10 billion in funding for prison construction. That bill is now widely seen as contributing to the human catastrophe of mass incarceration. Hillary Clinton is proposing a diametrically different approach to criminal justice, and even Bill Clinton renounced the law last year, though today, bafflingly, he went back to defending it.
The hirelings who push this propaganda line never tell you one little fact:

BERNIE SANDERS VOTED FOR THAT BILL.

Hillary did not.

Hillary made amelioration of the incarceration problem the cornerstone of her very first speech after announcing her candidacy. Sanders did not.

The fact that demonstrators are heckling Clinton, not Sanders, is very telling. Those demonstrators are either paid off or they have been severely misinformed -- probably the former.

There's plenty of misinformation out there. It comes from the same "progressives" who promised us, in 2008, that Obama would be The Great Lefty Messiah. Many of these same "progressives" had previously assured us that Gore was so insufferable that we should let good old George Bush win.

An incessant propaganda campaign has convinced ignorant young voters that the 1994 crime bill should be used against Hillary, never against Bernie -- even though Bernie voted for the thing.

Propagandists like Taibbi and Goldberg also don't tell you the following:

1. The bill was extremely popular at the time.

2. It was popular among black leaders, because black communities were being hit hard by a very real crime wave.

3. The Congressional Black Caucus insured the passage of the bill.

4. Legislation is passed by Congress, not by the President.

MOST IMPORTANTLY:

5. The subsequent increase in African American incarceration had almost nothing to do with that bill -- and everything to do with a wave of tough-on-crime laws passed at the state level. The vast, vast majority of people who have gone to prison have never committed a federal crime.

Bill Clinton is now being castigated as a racist because he signed off on a bill pushed through by the Congressional Black Caucus.

None of these points are getting through to the public. The propaganda is incessant. The fix is in.

Here's more from Goldberg, who was one of the worst offenders when it came to the anti-Hillary smears of 2008 (because she knew that Obama would be sooooooooooo much better):
It was a mess, but it’s not the first mess he’s caused for his wife’s campaign. Just a couple of weeks ago, he decried “the awful legacy of the last eight years,” which sounded a lot like a condemnation of the Obama presidency—a presidency that Hillary Clinton is doing her best to tie herself to.
Bill Clinton was referring to congressional obstructionism, as was clear from context. Goldberg knows this, but won't tell you this. She is a propagandist and a liar.
And in February, Clinton said that if the system is rigged, it’s because Americans “don’t have a president that’s a changemaker.”
Obama is a "changemaker"? News to me. Tell me, Ms. Goldberg: Just how many Wall Street criminals did your Messiah, Barack Obama, put in jail?
But let’s remember that Clinton caused similar problems for Hillary in 2008. There was the time he tried to diminish Obama’s victory in South Carolina by noting that Jesse Jackson won there as well. The time he described the idea that Obama had gotten the Iraq war right as “the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen.” The time—it hurts to remember it—when he complained that the Obama campaign “played the race card on me.”
Indeed he did. It was incredibly obvious, and this blog talked about it every single day. Hillary was winning the black vote at first. Obama became president by playing the race card and by lying through his goddamned teeth on such issues as free trade.

One of his biggest lies was Iraq, as I documented at length here.
In 2002, when Barack Obama gave one (1) speech (for which no professional recording exists) denouncing the drive toward war, he was not campaigning for the United States Senate. He was running for re-election to the Illinois State Senate in a very liberal district. Expressing pro-war feelings would have been politically suicidal.

At that time, he spoke at a left-wing event at which Jesse Jackson was the featured figure. Even so, Obama denounced the upcoming war only after asking advisers "Am I gonna have damage politically?"

Tellingly, the speech was not videotaped. (At least not professionally.) The video on YouTube is a fake created by the Obama campaign. I doubt that any other Democratic candidate would be allowed to get away with so bold a step as to re-create a speech.

Before the invasion, Barack Obama never wrote a single essay, article, blog comment or letter to the editor against Bush's drive to war. He made sure not to leave an internet trail.

In fact, he took pains to destroy all record of his 2002 speech by removing it from his website -- the only easily-accessible source for his words on that occasion. On his official website, he now calls his war position "consistent." If so, why the scrub?

Obama's ploy was clever: If the war had been successful and popular, no-one could easily prove that he had ever denounced it. If public opinion turned against the war, he could claim that he had always opposed it.

"Political damage"? Nope!

Obama did not announce his quest for a U.S. Senate seat until late in 2003. Even though Illinois was and is a reliably blue state, I have yet to find a single speech made during that campaign in which he questioned the decision to invade Iraq.
Emphasis added. I should note that none of the Obots who wrote in to bewail my sentiments could prove me wrong. Obama never spoke out against the war while running for Senate. You can't point to a single speech. In fact, he says in his book that he was coming around to support the war during that period.
In truth, while "in the middle of a high stakes campaign," he suddenly became eager to address any non-Iraq topic. On one occasion when he was forced to confront the war, he became the mirror image of George W. Bush. In July of 2004, he told the Chicago Tribune:
There's not that much difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage.
Obama admitted that, if he had been in the Senate at the time of the "authorization of military force" vote, he "doesn't know" which way he would have voted. Translation: He would have gone with the polls -- and at the time, the polls strongly favored the authorization of military force.

Even after the public began to turn against the war, Obama refused to speak out against it. Don't believe me? Let's go to the video record.

Look up Obama's famous speech to the Democratic convention in 2004 -- the speech that made his career. NOT ONCE does he denounce the Iraq war, which was the key issue of the time. He criticized the way the war was being fought, but not the war itself.

Now look up the speeches given by nominee John Kerry and by Bill Clinton: They both denounced the decision to go to war.

Even a prevaricating pig like Michelle Goldberg can't argue with the video. Was Barack Obama spinning a fairy tale when he portrayed himself as an anti-war crusader? You bet he was. Obama was Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm and Andrew Lang, all rolled into one.

If not for the "progressives" who helped Obama spread that fairy tale, liberals would not have had to suffer through the wretchedly disappointing Obama presidency.

Barack Obama never opposed the war as it happened. He spoke against the idea for the duration of one (1) little-noticed speech in 2002, at a time when war was purely theoretical. And he did so in front of a left-wing audience that would have tossed rocks at him if he had uttered a single pro-war syllable.

On that occasion, and on all subsequent occasions, Barack Obama displayed pure political cowardice.

In the senate, his voting record was to Hillary's right.

That's what is so infuriating about this election. We are allowing the well-paid pigs of propaganda to rewrite our history. We're letting them tell young people lie after lie after lie. We are being told that...

Bernie never supported the 1994 crime bill.
Black leaders never supported the 1994 crime bill.
Bill Clinton was a racist.
Barack Obama never played the race card in 2008.
Barack Obama opposed the Iraq war.


BULLSHIT!

18 comments:

Unknown said...

You lost me when you referred to Matt Taibbi as a propagandist. More like one of the only honest investigative journalists currently operating. I have no idea why you'd refer to him as that after the tremendous reporting he did on Wall Street.

Joseph Cannon said...

I used to think that way, Mike. I loved Taibbi's books.

And then I saw the piece in Rolling Stone where he repeated the Bernie-Bot Big Lie about the crime bill.

Joseph Cannon said...

Let me add something about Taibbi. Here are his exact words:

"As The New Jim Crow author Michelle Alexander noted, America when Bill Clinton left office had the world's highest incarceration rate, with a prison admission rate for black drug inmates that was 23 times 1983 levels."

Taibbi is a bright guy. He knows damned well that the increase in black drug inmates resulted from changes to STATE law, not to the 1994 federal bill which the Congressional Black Caucus pushed through (and which Bill Clinton signed).

Taibbi knows all this but won't tell you this. Very revealing. We learn much about the disingenuous Mr. Taibbi, do we not?

Bob Harrison said...

I hope SOS Clinton doesn't make the Kerry Mistake of letting nasty shit slide. She, or a surrogate, needs to land on every lie with both feet. Kerry could've won if he had challenged the Swift Boaters to a duel and mocked them when the cowards wouldn't show.

prowlerzee said...

Thank you so much, Joseph. I needed this very much today. It is galling and sickening.
And impossible to contest with these young TWITS.

Ken Hoop said...

I really don't mean to be glib, Cannon. Honestly. Nor do I mean to go anywhere near
reductio ad absurdum.
But the sum total of all you've had to say about both Clintons, Sanders and Obama, when collated with recent political history is that no one should have voted for any presidential candidate to the right of Kucinich-not even when Kucinich relented and told his people to vote Obama, nor when Nader told his folks to go Edwards. Too kind they were. They would tell you the same now.
Everything else is, as the man said, commentary. Among the ruins of the Mideast and the Great Collapse.

Hoarseface said...

Joe, the way you've just turned on Taibbi reminds me of conspiracy theorists who assume someone who disagrees is "in on it". You cant be sure what he does or doesnt know unless you can point to him demonstrating that knowledge elsewhere. This isn't really his "beat" where I expect him to be particularly well-read the way I would on, say, financial fraud.

And funding for 100k cops and almost $10bn for prison construction in the same bill... seems to me an increase in the prison population was an expected outcome of the bill, even if it was at a state level, even if that was popular at the time.

I get your problems with the berniebros and even the sanders campaign but I think you're overreacting.

bob568 said...

Although I'm a Sanders supporter, I keep coming to this blog for posts like this. I was a somewhat reluctant Hillary supporter back in '08 precisely because of the feeling that Obama was an empty suit with no core whatsoever, a fact documented beautifully here.

jacktheokie said...

Do you really think Sanders, if elected, will respond like Obama? Keep us in the Middle East? Bail out banksters again if they fail? Continue and expand the Patriot Act? If not, then why are 'They' orchestrating his nomination? What's in it for 'Them', especially when you know Sanders will lose? Wouldn't 'They' know that?

And I find it hard to believe that Black Lives Matter members would be paid by someone to heckle either Clinton, especially Hillary. She has a very low favorable rating. A lot of voters don't like her and would do it just for free.

I'm a progressive and know others who say they are. None I know promised Obama to be the Messiah. I/we hoped he would represent America better than he has in the world. He didn't come through. I suspect most who voted for him felt and feel the same way. And what progressive told anyone to vote for GW because Gore was insufferable? Parallel universe here?

I'm not against Hillary because of the Crime Bill. That was Bill's thing. I don't blame her for it. I'm not voting for her because she is a damned Hawk, because of Victoria Neuman's handywork in Ukraine, and her hubby Kagan, because of Libya and because she has backtracked on too many issues to be believable.

Lastly, why do you think Bernie Sanders would not be elected if he is the Democratic nominee? And do you think he would be a shill for 'Them', if elected?

Joseph Cannon said...

jackie, I've answered your last question many, many times in the past.

Of COURSE the alleged Black Lives Matter representatives who heckled Clinton were paid shills. If they had heckled Bernie as well -- who voted for the bill -- then I would say that they were acting out of principle. But anyone who pretends that Bernie did not vote yes on that bill should be presumed to be completely purchased. Any refusal to mention that key fact is as good as a receipt.

You refused to mention it.

Therefore, you too are a paid shill.

Banned forever from this blog. This is a NO TROLL zone, bot.

jacktheokie said...

Joey, I'm sorry you feel as you do. I have enjoyed reading, and sometimes commenting, on your blog for about ten years now. And also donating quite a bit to you and your dog over the years. I know that doesn't give me a free pass, but I feel better mentioning that.
"Banned forever" is not terribly upsetting, considering the dismissive attitude I have felt toward me. I just figured I wasn't a member of your exclusive club. Read the blog, but don't try to comment with the insiders. Enjoy your back-and-forth with them. Banning me is a formality. Your blog comments have been a closed membership for quite some time.
The odd thing is, you picked out one particular item and used it to justify my ban. Of the questions I posed for you and my reasons for not liking Hillary, you answered none of them and, instead, did the inductive reasoning bit of, since I didn't mention one particular thing that was not specified as a rule, voila!, you judge me a paid shill. My dog's tail is short, therefore all dogs have short tails. In my years of commenting from time to time, I have never denigrated you. I must have hit a nerve, I guess, for you to name-call. Like I wrote to joe6pac, you don't know me, so why do that?

jo6pac said...

Hello jacktheokie, please can you remind me what I said?

Thanks


Congressional Black Caucus is nothing but rubber stamp and has nothing to do in helping people of color.

Joseph Cannon said...

jacktheokie, I'm sorry. Sincerely. I should not have said that.

You don't know what's going on behind the scenes. Although you would not think that so small a blog would be worth the effort, there have been several occasions in the past when this site was swarmed by trolls who were intent on taking over.

The first time was when it was hit by the "controlled demolition" freaks. For some reason, they targeted THIS blog -- and a few of those guys still seem to consider me an importatnt "get." Imagine how you'd feel if every Jehovah's Witness in your state gathered on your front lawn, constantly watching for an opportunity to stick a foot in the door.

There were several subsequent occasions when that kind of swarm hit. Again: This is a small site -- I never sought out a larger readership, never pushed things on social media or Reddit. So one would think that the game was not worth the candle.

Yet it's been happening again -- and to be honest, I don't think that the Sanders operation per se is behind it.

prowlerzee said...

I do believe one of those CD fools is still here laughably arguing no one should ever vote to the "right" of.....KOOKcinich, he of the Breatharian wife. SO glad he is out of the arena. Maybe he and his trophy bride have expired from overdose of sun and air as their only sustenance. Is there a rite, maybe with salt or garlic, I should perform when speaking of this devil to ensure he does not then appear?

Also, it's baffling to me all the outpouring of tenderness and all the concerned freak outs for Matt Taibbi. It's not the first time you've called him on BS when richly deserved. What's the biggie?

There's a new 27 "point" Hillary hitlist circulating from the insufferable berniebots. I think it's a Huff piece. A considerable number of these points cite TWEETS as sources. You would be interested to know that they do mention Bernie's vote for the prison bill but said he did it under protest to pass some other things attached to the bill. They seriously dedicated one entire point discussing how Hillary "finally" brought up the Flint water crisis but only AFTER (according to them) Bernie did. So they scored against her for speaking up at ALL and she did so at a debate, when Bernie didn't. Was 27 such a magic number that they were desperate to score her for doing something right??? WTH?

Again, thank you for this post. Your work is needed and far from done!


-> said...

"The software let him quickly change names, profile pictures, and biographies to fit any need. Eventually, he discovered, he could manipulate the public debate as easily as moving pieces on a chessboard—or, as he puts it, “When I realized that people believe what the Internet says more than reality, I discovered that I had the power to make people believe almost anything.”
->
http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-how-to-hack-an-election/

Pennelope said...

I'm terribly afraid that the "progressives" will give the presidency to Trump/Cruz just like the jack asses gave it to Shrub. But they maintained the purity of their souls, forget about the 100s of thousands of dead all over the Middle East.

The purity ... the purity ... the purity

Anonymous said...

I think you are reading different "propaganda" than I am, because I know full well Bernie voted for the bill. I also know there were many versions and the record is a bit confusing in that, alone. BUT the end result was-- he voted for it, and he doesn't deny it. He talks about it on his own website and there are videos of his protestations of the results of passing a bill like this, without other alternatives in place to deal with the crime rate, while saying he would support it. The cause and effect of crime in this nation is often ignored by most politicians. I think he wanted to see other measures put into place that dealt with the big picture -rather than simply focus on punishment. You can read more here
http://feelthebern.org/bernie-sanders-on-criminal-justice/

As for the CBC--these articles paint it differently, and they are dated the year the bill was passed 1994
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/18/us/blacks-relent-on-crime-bill-but-not-without-bitterness.html

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1994-08-18/news/1994230118_1_black-caucus-crime-bill-clinton

I respect you Joseph, but these articles are very easy to find on the internet, so to explain that the crime bill was viewed favorably by the CBC is just disingenuous. We all have recollections of things that can taint the truth, but the fact is that this bill was not welcomed by all. That's why it was so difficult to pass.

Another fact is that only Bill Clinton knew that after this bill was passed, they would cut the budget for prisons, and expand on the move to privatization, making prisoners a whole new industry.Not everyone who voted on this bill -anticipated that.

One thing I learned today, was that Bill Clinton was re-elected with the lowest voter turnout of record since 1960--- 49.1 % . He was not hugely popular like you want to believe. I remember not voting that year, knowing full well he would be elected in my state. I just didn't care- it was an assured victory (liberal state), with a centrist that assumed my vote. It was the only Presidential election I didn't vote in, so I am not surprised that it was the lowest turn out of record.

I don't see things your way, but I try to keep the dialog on the issues, with respect to those I am communicating with. I wish we could all do that, but I can't control the world, certainly not you. It's your blog, so if you wish to ban me, that's fine. Take care.

Anonymous said...

Nice work. Pretty soon you'll be reading just your own comments. Hillary is perfect for the likes of y;all.

Ben franklin