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!