Friday, October 11, 2013

The turning of the worm, the eating of the crow (redux)

I popped on over to Daily Kos for the first time in a while and found the damnedest article. Writer Barbara Morrill offers what she claims to be the definitive timeline on Benghazi. What she really does is list news headlines throughout early 2013 which demonstrate Hillary's likelihood of winning both the nomination and the general election in 2016.

Here's the ending bit...
February 28, 2013: Clinton would beat Walker, Ryan in Wisconsin in 2016
March 21, 2013: Clinton's popularity soars in Florida while Rubio stumbles
April 11, 2013: Clinton and Paul are neck and neck in Kentucky
April 25, 2013: Clinton would be dominant in New Hampshire in 2016
May 8, 2013: Republicans decide it's time to find out just how responsible Hillary Clinton is for the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi

Any questions?
Well, yes. I have one. This is the Daily freakin' Kos, right? I'm not the only one who recalls what a cesspool that site -- and the other major prog-blog sites -- turned into in 2008, right?

Maybe I am the only liberal who possesses a working memory. Here's one of the first comments appended to Morrill's story...
Yes, we are going to get 3 plus more years of smears rfegarrding Hillary Clinton. But I think most people outside the bigot's bubble just are not listening. They have heard this tune before and are tired of it.
God, this institutional forgetfulness is infuriating. Daily Kos was the bigot's bubble. Every hour of every day for a year.

Want to talk about smears? All right. Let's.

Am I the only one who remembers Daily Kos's indefensible "darkened video" smear? That one was every bit as bad as anything we've ever seen from the Republicans.

And do you recall the great NAFTA smear? Obama was caught lying about NAFTA in his campaign literature, and then he sent Austan Goolsbee to Canada to assure our NAFTA partners that there would be no renegotiation of the treaty. The Kossacks engineered a smear designed to convince Democrats that it was Hillary, not Obama, who sent that back-channel message.

I refuse to make use of the memory hole, and I ain't never gonna forget this shit:
Just slit her throat, lock her in a car boot, and drive the car into river in West Virginia. Ain’t gonna let no whore screw with the man
The heinous Hillary hag with a bullseye on her forehead is reason enough to vote for Obama
And a Drive-By Won't Be Out of the Question. What goes around, comes around. The stupid fucking bitch !!
Talk About WHITE TRASH that bitch better keep looking over her shoulder.
The Vince Foster Issue Should Be Investigated Again. Clintons just showed that their ambitions know no limit.
The Clinton death list The following is a partial list of deaths of persons connected to President Clinton during his tenure as Governor of Arkansas and/or while President of the United States and thereafter. Read the list and judge for yourself...
Hillary is in this for her own personal power trip, and a sense of entitlement.
Hillary's gonna lose you feminazi cunts. Do the math, it's over.
Hillary is a liar and a cunt
They're all crazy cunts,taze them all!!!!!!
Cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt CUNT cunt cunt cunt CUNT cunt cunt cunt CUNT CUNT CUNT CUNT . . .
Yo! Cunt!
the Clinton's squirm and look like the reactionary idiots they are
it is really the Bush/Clinton crime family.
Serves you right for putting your faith in the Bush Clinton Crime Family.
And so on. I could go on for many pages. (And have done just that in the past.) These quotes really do typify what was going on at that time. Anyone who read Kos and the other progressive blogs during this period will attest that I am not misrepresenting the madness that overtook the Democratic party in those days.

In truth, I was never a big Hillary fan. I didn't want her to run in 2008, and I don't want her to run in 2016. (Unlike most of my readers, I don't think that she was a particularly good Secretary of State.) Nevertheless, I came to despise the Obama crowd for turning the major Democratic sites into a septic tank filled with smears, lies, and lowbrow insults.

Throughout 2008, I warned Democrats repeatedly that Obama was a covert right-winger pretending to be Mr. Perfect Progressive. Well, here we are. It's 2013, and Obama has compiled a depressing record: Afghanistan, Syria, the NSA, free trade agreements, the refusal to indict Wall Street bankers, the repeated sell-outs to the Republicans on numerous issues.

Who did a better job of predicting what would happen -- the Kos Krowd, or Cannonfire?

Let me repeat something I wrote in an earlier "look back in anger" post:

I will not permit anyone to rewrite history on this score. False equivalences are odious; it is not the case that there were "problems on both sides." The Obama wing was 100 percent guilty; the Clinton wing was 100 percent innocent. Yes, it really is that simple: The Obots cannot escape the evidence of their own ink.

Never forget. Never forget. If you're about to tell me that "What's past is past," fuck you. NEVER FORGET.

Some wounds go too deep. Some wounds last a lifetime.

There can be no forgiveness without apology. We have never received one from anyone associated with Daily Kos, Democratic Undergreound, or Huffington Post.

16 comments:

prowlerzee said...

Well put! I hope Barbara Morill sees this. I hope every link to her story is preceded by a link here.

Penelope Pennebaker said...

I left Buzzflash, TPM, Kos and several other sites back then. I wasn't a Hillary fan then, I originally supported Edwards then pledged to support whomever the Dems nominated. But after watching the sliming of another Clinton (by "liberals" no less) I was too disgusted and cut up my DNC, DCCC, DSCC cards and mailed them back, swearing never to blindly support another Dem as long as I lived.

I'm open to voting for a Dem, but they'll have to earn it and convince me that they're not just another blindly loyal Kossack.

Joseph Cannon said...

PP, I still consider myself a Dem. Often, I'm an angry, rebellious, grudging, fingers-tightly-clasped-over-my-nostrils Dem. Nevertheless, that party is still the closest thing I have to a political home, because it's the only place where you can still find people who revere the New Deal.

I refuse to accept the premise that the Democratic party and Daily Kos are the same thing.

Anonymous said...

Joseph, I suspect that if you put the shoe on the other foot you would be be open to considering the possibility that many of the post were of ironic intent--intended by Clinton operatives to make the Obot crowd look bad.

Suppose the HuffPost crowd had been overtly pro-Clinton. Suppose commenters there wrote blatantly racist comments about Obama. Wouldn't you suspect that might be some Obot activity trying to create quotable lines that made the Clintonists look bad?

Joseph Cannon said...

It wasn't Clinton operatives. Don't triple-think it, Anon. Moulitsas and Arianna were clear about what they would and would not allow on their sites. They own the results.

Also, we later found out that Axelrod owns an astroturf operation. Nobody on Clinton's side of the aisle had access to that particular set of tinkertoys. If the situation were otherwise, we'd have heard about it.

prowlerzee said...

If I was aware Axelrod had an astroturf operation, I've forgotten about it...do you have any links to your own posts about it, Joseph? I'm not surprised, at any rate.

Anon. must be one of those 3 dimensional chess Obots.

It's exactly as Joseph said, Anon. The head of kos, the head of Buzzflash (Mark Ofluffer Karlin) the head of Americabog, John Aravosis, and the sickening head of Dem Underground (Will Snake Pitt, who is now writing for Truthout as if he knew all along Obama's a corporate tool) were all Clinton-bashing Obama fanboys who banned people for merely posting the truth and yet allowed all sorts of slander against the Clintons, as Hillary was the biggest threat to their Boyfriend's path to the White House.

But nice try at rewriting history, Someone who can't even make up a distinct nym! :) Back to the stinktank with you for some better spin!





Anonymous said...

2008 still hurts soo bad. Some times I think I hold grudges for so long. But what really made it worse was the disappointment in some people I used to respect for a long time. Then I heard them calling Hillary degrading names. The manipulation of the cacuses and ignoring of the votes.....
it was very hard to replay that time and still hold any respect to that party. The values and principals are one thing but the people no way. The funny thing I started not wanting her to run and ended up a fan

Joseph Cannon said...

Zee: http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2011/03/barr-gone-great-but-what-about-axelrod.html

prowlerzee said...

Thanks! I remembered it as soon as I saw your toon!
Great post.

And I was just reading about HB Gary today and wondering where I already knew that name from. Sheesh. Sad moment for a regular reader here.

I was reading up on Barrett Brown, who is now under a gag order, and Jeremy Hammond, another whistleblower who has spent the last year in jail and faces sentencing soon...up to 10 years. I sent in a leniency plea to the judge to sentence him to time already served.

Letters are needed by Oct 15 : http://freejeremy.net/



Anonymous said...

Provenance of article aside, what do you think of this?

http://mobile.wnd.com/1998/11/1253/

Monster from the Id said...

Those members of the USAmerican misruling classes who prefer to use the Dinocratic Party as their vehicle put their thumbs on the scales for Obummer in 2008.

This proves that among the still mostly white and male USAmerican misruling classes, sexism is stronger than racism.

I still don't understand why so many of our former allies drank the Blue Kool-Aid.

To compound that disappointment, many of our former allies who WERE smart enough to shun the Blue Kool-Aid turned right around (or Right around) and drank the Red Kool-Aid instead, becoming de facto Reptilians, even Tea Birchers. (cough*Crawdad Hole*cough)

LieparDestin said...

Im as big a DKOS user as anyone (and as you know a fan of this site as well). I stayed out of the Obama/Hillary events because I saw it as fanufactured hits coming from both sides. DailyKos has now long been infiltrated by 'the man' and more sockpuppets than I have ever seen on another site. The recent Greenwald/Snowden events have brought the puppets back out in full force to 1(discredit Greenwald, much as they were doing when they got busted with the HBGary events) and 2) cause rifts in the party etc. Markos totally lost me when he called the Snowden leaks a 'white privilege issue'. The site was co-opted by the DNC long ago. Sadly there are some great writers who still post there (me! because it does get a lot of views)but also people like Bobswern and Ray Pensador do great work on the NSA issues. Writer BRIT covers Murdoch like nobody eles in the media. However this is no longer a site with the mission of 'electing more and BETTER dems', it is to protect the establishment dems and use its influence to raise money for more centrist dems. Wendy Davis for example. Im from texas and I dont know a damn thing about Davis other than her abortion stance. Her websites have NO information about any other issue, yet DAILYKOS is pushing her like they did one Senator Webb or Al Franklin, both who hae totally disregarded the 'progressive line' and turned into hawks and cannot find oils deals they do not like. DKOS is full of fantastic diaries, they are just the ones that will get 4 recs and never make it anywhere on the site. And the puppets are ready to flood it with propanda.

LieparDestin

LieparDestin said...

prowlerzee - I have written about Barrett Brown in several of my NSA/presecutorial abuse diaries at DKOS. I am unable to link you at the moment but head ver to dkos and view my diaries under dailykos.com/user/liepardestin. Not all of us have forgotten about him there.Of course everyone is quick to jump on his breakdown to discreit him, but there is sill some good information to be learned about him at DKOS. i would also recomment doing a search on Salon / Barett Brown. They are doing some good reporting. Another case that is geting some good reporting these days (that dkos disregards) is the story of the boston bombers friend in Florida who was shot mysteriously during a 2am questioning at his home, and the subsequent abuse of his girlfriend.

Anonymous said...

I knew DKos had slipped into the twilight zone when troutfishing posted a diary accusing Hillary of using subliminal messaging by mentioning the RFK assassination, in order to get Obama killed by some lone nutcase. The whole website consumed itself and went off the deep end. And yes, the Obama campaign played the race card like pros... so well that hardly anybody noticed. I felt ashamed to have voted for the guy in the primary.

CBarr

Anonymous said...

And speaking of astroturfing; with the passage of the Smith Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 as part of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act which went into effect last July, the Pentagon is now free to legally propagandize the American populace. Can't imagine a more cost effective way to disable a progressive leaning news/social media site than to misdirect the comment section with trolls.

If you want an example, just read the flood of "string him up" posts from indignant commenters who appear out of nowhere every time TPM runs a Snowden article. It's transparently blatant.

CBarr

Anonymous said...

The Benghazi complex wasn't an embassy, it was a CIA facility under cover of being a State Dept outpost. As Petraeus testified, the news clusterphuk surrounding the attack resulted from the CIA's attempt to not reveal their role in the affair. The Repubs know this and are taking full advantage of it since Hillary can't just come out and say that it's all because the CIA screwed up. They have her over a barrel on this.

BIG question is, Who sponsored the 9/11 attack on the Benghazi compound, which smeared the reputations of both Clinton and Petraeus and almost led the US into putting boots on the ground in Libya? Maybe somebody that specializes in false flag operations and wants us to fight their wars for them?

CBarr