The Commentariat -- Feb. 20, 2016
Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times: "The Justice Department, impatient over its inability to unlock the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino killers, demanded Friday that a judge immediately order Apple to give it the technical tools to get inside the phone. It said that Apple's refusal to help unlock the phone for the F.B.I. 'appears to be based on its concern for its business model and public brand marketing strategy,' rather than a legal rationale. In court documents, prosecutors asked a federal judge to enforce an earlier order requiring Apple to provide the government with a tool to extract the data from a locked iPhone 5c. They are trying to get into the phone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the attackers in the San Bernardino rampage, which left 14 dead." ...
... Michael Shear of the New York Times: "For years, President Obama has struggled to reconcile a civil libertarian's belief in personal privacy with a commander in chief's imperatives for the nation's security. This week, security won. The decision by Mr. Obama's Justice Department to force Apple to help it breach an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists has ended, at least for now, the president's attempts to straddle the feud over encryption between Silicon Valley and law enforcement. Asked about the president's backing of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's inquiry into San Bernardino, one of the worst terror attacks in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Obama's press secretary declared on Wednesday that 'the F.B.I. can count on the full support of the White House.'"
What a Mess. Richard Fausset of the New York Times: "The United States Supreme Court declined late Friday to stay a lower court ruling that has forced North Carolina's Republican-dominated legislature to redraw its congressional electoral maps on the grounds that the original maps amounted to racial gerrymandering. As a result, the state must now follow a contingency plan, also devised by Republican lawmakers, that tries to comply with the lower court's ruling by making significant changes to the boundaries of the some of the state's 13 congressional districts.... The contingency plan was approved by the state legislature on Friday, hours before the Supreme Court announced that it had rejected North Carolina Republicans' application for a stay. But the approval of the contingency plan came over the strenuous objection of Democrats, who claimed that the new congressional maps were hyperpartisan -- giving Republicans 10 safe districts to the Democrats' three -- and still failed to protect black voters' interests." ...
... Richard Hasen: What I said. Plus: "Justice Scalia's absence might have been decisive here.... It is quite possible that there could be a Voting Rights Act violation now. The problem with the last plan was that North Carolina took racetoo much into account. But now perhaps NC did not take race enough into account to assure that the districts comply with Section 2 of the Act, which requires the creation of minority opportunity districts under certain circumstances.... None of this would have happened if the Supreme Court had not ruled in Shelby County to strike down the trigger for the preclearance provisions of the VRA.... There's a lot of confusion on the ground, and I expect that the three-judge court will quickly hold a hearing and figure out what the heck comes next. Wow!"
Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "For President Obama, the process of scrutinizing candidates for the Supreme Court in earnest begins the weekend, when he will start reviewing dossiers on potential nominees. The materials include information about the candidates' records, professional experience and other matters, according to White House press secretary Josh Earnest." ...
... Somebody Got to Murkowski. Tierney Sneed of TPM: "Moderate GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski (AK), one of the few Republicans initially willing to break ranks on whether President Obama's nominee to succeed Antonin Scalia should be considered, reversed course Thursday evening. In a series of Tweets she said 'the American people will be weighing in on the direction of SCOTUS' in the upcoming election and that Obama should 'allow his successor to select the next Supreme Court justice.'" ...
... Martin Longman. What I said. With context: "... if there is anyone in the Republican Senate Caucus who might be inclined to buck the lunatics and insist that the president has the right to nominate someone and the nominee is owed the courtesy of a vote, it's Lisa Murkowski. She's already demonstrated that she can survive in Alaska even if beaten by a primary challenger. The Republican Party wasn't loyal to her. The GOP actively tried to defeat her." ...
... Joan McCarter of Daily Kos: "RIP, GOP. You're all the party of Ted Cruz and Donald Trump now."
Lawrence Hurley of Reuters: "President Barack Obama, the U.S. Supreme Court's eight remaining members, former law clerks and thousands of ordinary Americans paid respects to the late Justice Antonin Scalia on Friday as his body lay in repose in the stately, white-marble courthouse. The president and first lady Michelle Obama were greeted by Chief Justice John Roberts, spoke with some Scalia family members and briefly stood in silence, heads bowed, in front of Scalia's casket during an afternoon visit." ...
... Charles Pierce comments (below his tribute to Harper Lee). The citation of Frederick Douglass -- part of the Lee tribute -- is helpful.
Lisa Miller of New York on a topic we discussed in yesterday's Comments: "... the pope was splitting hairs [on contraception], walking a fine line between the established doctrine of his Church and the wishful thinking of his fans -- a line he has walked masterfully since he ascended to the throne of Peter, sending rhetorical signals about a modernizing, liberalizing church while not moving much on actual policy. (Just how much you think this counts as progress, and how much political savvy you think it entails to allow a basically backwards church to have it both ways, probably depends a lot on how moved you've been by Francis's progressive PR campaign.)"
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Great Expectations. Paul Waldman: "On Saturday, Republicans vote in South Carolina and Democrats vote in Nevada. While we don't know how those contests will turn out, we know that the results will be judged not so much on their own terms but on whether they conformed to 'expectations.'... When a candidate either exceeds or fails to meet expectations, all it means is that the ones doing the expecting -- i.e. the press -- were wrong.' In explaining the expectations game, Waldman illuminates the daily challenges of the political reporter: "Imagine that it was your job to follow Ted Cruz from one campaign event to another, where he said pretty much the same thing again and again, and yet you had to come up with a new story about it every day. It's not easy, and you have to find as many different angles as you can to discuss what is essentially a repetitive series of fake events."
Presidential Race
The New York Times Editors think the Democratic superdelegates will come around & support whichever candidate wins the most delegates in popular primaries & caucuses. CW: I'm less sanguine. The whole purpose of having superdelegates was to allow the party's leaders to choose a candidate to their liking should someone like Bernie Sanders win the popular delegate vote. However, this most likely is a moot point; Clinton will probably win the popular vote, too.
Dana Milbank: "Hillary Clinton has raised $26 million for the Democratic National Committee and state Democratic parties so far this campaign. And Sanders? $1,000.... This is the source of the panic that Sanders causes the much-maligned Democratic elites. It's not about ideology; it comes from a fear that having Sanders as a nominee will decimate progressive candidates down the ballot.... The Obama presidency has been a disaster for the Democratic Party nationwide. Clinton has pledged to rebuild the party and has begun to make good on that promise. Sanders, by contrast, has shown little concern for the very real crisis the party faces.... The consequences of the Democrats' atrophy at the state level are potentially catastrophic for progressives.... If Sanders leaves the Democratic Party for dead, as he is now doing, the odds against his success are even greater." ...
... Well, not exactly, Dana. Here's how it works. ...
... Matea Gold & Tom Hamburger of the Washington Post: "A record 32 state parties signed on to [a joint fundraising committee with Hillary Clinton], allowing the committee to solicit donations 130 times greater than what a supporter can give to Clinton's campaign for the primary.... The states have yet to see a financial windfall. Meanwhile, Clinton's own campaign has been a major beneficiary, getting an infusion of low-dollar contributions.... The joint committee that was formed, called the Hillary Victory Fund, ended up raising nearly $27 million by the end of 2015, thanks to six-figure donations from longtime Clinton allies and a New York fundraiser headlined by the singer Sting.... The victory fund now functions as an operation embedded within the Clinton campaign, run by campaign staffers. Last year, the fund reimbursed the campaign nearly $1.5 million for salary and overheard." CW: This whole thing sounds suspiciously like a clever Clinton scam, aided & abetted by our winger friends (including the dearly departed) on the Supreme Court. ...
... CW: If you wonder why DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has bent over backwards to give Clinton the debate schedule she wanted, wonder no more: "Campaign finance records show that nearly $2 million in donations to the fund initially routed last year to individual state party accounts was immediately transferred to the DNC, which is laboring to pay off millions in debt." ...
... Josh Gerstein & Rachel Bade of Politico: "The State Department released more than 1,100 additional pages of Hillary Clinton's emails Friday night, shedding light on her handling of diplomatic crises and detailing her team's efforts to make sure President Barack Obama didn't get all the credit for U.S. foreign policy.... The latest batch comes at a particularly crucial and inconvenient time for the former secretary of state, as she searches for her first decisive win in the Democratic presidential primary contest.... Each release serves as a reminder of Clinton's decision to use the private server and of the FBI's investigation into the potential intelligence breach -- a probe the law enforcement agency said was ongoing as of earlier this month." ...
... BUT. When Morgan Freeman, backed by violins, tells me to do something, it's hard to say no. ...
... CW: I missed this Feb. 9 report by J. K. Trotter of Gawker, but it's stunning in a Dick Cheney-Judith Miller way: Clinton's State Department spokesman Philippe Reines cut a deal, via e-mail, with Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic in which "you can see Reines 'blackmailing' Ambinder into describing a Clinton speech as 'muscular' in exchange for early access to the transcript" of an upcoming Clinton speech. I don't know that Scooter Libby dictated the actual language of the misleading NYT reports Miller wrote. ...
(... In e-mails to the WashPo's Erik Wemple, Reines & Ambinder defend themselves. Ambinder claims the word "muscular" was his idea, one he shared with Reines in a phone call. Reines defends transactional "journalism.") If, like Will Rogers, all you know is what you read in the papers, you don't know much. ...)
Caitlin Cruz of TPM: "Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Thursday accused rival Hillary Clinton of embracing President Obama to curry favor with black voters. 'You know Hillary Clinton now is trying to embrace the President as closely -- as she possibly can. Everything the President does is wonderful. She loves the President, he loves her and all that stuff,' Sanders said in an excerpt of a half-hour BET special featuring himself and Clinton published by Indie Wire. 'And we know what that's about,' he continued. 'That's trying to win support from the African American community where the President is enormously popular.'"
John Wagner of the Washington Post: "The Clark County Black Caucus, an organization based in Nevada's most populous jurisdiction, announced its support Thursday for Sanders in his contest against Hillary Clinton. Yvette Williams, chairwoman of the caucus, said that Sanders's agenda most closely aligned with that of her nonpartisan group, saying the endorsement of Sanders 'wasn't a very difficult decision.'" ...
... A Presidential Candidate Should Be an Only Child. Nico Hines of the Daily Beast: "The problem with the Clintons, according to Bernie Sanders's big brother, is that people don't realize what an awful president Bill was. For the most part, Larry Sanders says, that's because people are too busy debating 'Is Bill really such a terrible rapist -- or is he a nice rapist?' These are shockingly blunt words from a soft-spoken man, who has been calmly explaining his little brother's sudden political success from his sun-drenched kitchen table in Oxford.... Larry is at pains to point out that they have real respect for Hillary. (The Clinton campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)"
Sean Sullivan & Katie Zezima of the Washington Post: "The [South Carolina GOP presidential] race has resembled a three-man contest more than ever during the final push before [Republican] voters head to the polls here Saturday. [Donald] Trump is heavily favored to win, and Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida are furiously vying for second place.... Trump, Cruz and Rubio have directed most of their fire at each other this week, trading the kind of petty insults and underhanded tactics that have come to define South Carolina's primary. With each day, the sniping has escalated." ...
... Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "From Lee Atwater's whispers that a congressional candidate was psychotic to rumors that John McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock to fake Mormon holiday cards supposedly sent by Mitt Romney, South Carolina is infamous for its dirty politics. While this year has not lived up to past levels of salaciousness -- so far -- presidential candidates are not shying away from employing underhanded tricks ahead of the Republican South Carolina primary on Saturday. And they have been more than happy to cry foul. Here are some of the more creative efforts." In all but one of these "creative efforts," other candidates have charged that Ted Cruz was the culprit. CW: I'm surprised. He seems nice. ...
... McKay Coppins of BuzzFeed: "A new robocall going out to South Carolina voters on the eve of the state's Republican primary blasts Donald Trump as a culture war appeaser in the battle between gay rights and religious freedom -- and urges listeners to support Ted Cruz.... The recording was paid for by the Courageous Conservative Political Action Committee, the same pro-Cruz group that launched another eleventh-hour robocall this week attacking Trump for praising the removal of the Confederate Flag from the South Carolina statehouse.... A spokeswoman for Cruz told the Post and Courier newspaper Friday that the campaign did not condone the Confederate flag call. But she did not respond to requests for comment from BuzzFeed News Friday night about the new robocall, except to say that the campaign wasn't associated with it." ...
... Katie Glueck of Politico: "South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford endorsed Ted Cruz at a Charleston rally Friday afternoon, boosting the Texas senator in the final hours before the first-in-the-South primary.... Sanford's decision appears to have come late in the game: He was spotted at a Rubio rally earlier this week." CW: Yeah, an endorsement from former Gov. Appalachian T. Rail should help Sen. Family V. Alues." ...
... At a South Carolina campaign event feature "Duck Dynasty" patriarch Phil Robertson, Cruz jokingly suggests Robertson for the U.S.'s ambassador to the U.N. Politico's headline writer bills this as "Southern charm." One might want to call it pandering. I'd say it's just more evidence that Cruz thinks us regular folks belong to a despicable inferior life form. ...
... "It Takes Two Wings to Fly." Ed Kilgore looks at the Sanford & Robertson endorsements as evidence of Cruz's "dual strategy."
Artwork by the Daily Beast.Yeah, they’re in that closet. -- One of Ben Carson's Secret Service detail, when asked the whereabouts of Dr. Carson & Ted Cruz
Gideon Resnick of the Daily Beast: Ted Cruz called a meeting with Ben Carson in a storage close Thursday night, "in an attempt to mend fences ... ahead of the South Carolina primary.... The two huddled in the unusual venue for nearly 20 to 25 minutes, as Carson's Secret Service detail stood outside.... It is unclear if there were lights inside of it." A Carson campaign operative said the meeting "did not go well": "Carson's campaign confirmed the meeting -- which was was supposed to be short and off-the-record -- and blamed the Cruz campaign for leaking the fact that it occurred in an attempt to rectify his public image." CW: I can't stop laughing. Yes, yes, I know the fate of the nation is at stake.
Pamela Engel of Business Insider: "... Donald Trump just called for a boycott of Apple in light of the company's reluctance to help authorities hack into the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters." ...
... Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News: "Donald Trump, embroiled in a long-running legal battle with former students of his defunct Trump University, has been accused in recently filed court papers of threatening to financially ruin the woman who is a lead plaintiff in the suit. Trump's comments, according to the filings, came in a secret deposition he gave just two months ago, on Dec. 10 -- the same day he was making international headlines over his pledge to ban Muslim immigrants from the country.... Exactly what Trump said in his December deposition is unclear." ...
... CW: Upon reading Isikoff's piece, it occurs to me that Trump may be running for president in part as a means to delay & disrupt the lawsuits against him. That didn't work for Bill Clinton, but that was a one-off; it could work for a president facing multiple suits. ...
Which one of these critters has the longer attention span? Or the better memory? Or the more courage? ...... The Art of the Flipflop. Gail Collins: "Perhaps you didn't see Trump's town hall on CNN.... The great theme of the night was things that Donald Trump said that he now doesn't remember, or didn't necessarily mean. This happens all the time. Either our great business genius is incapable of mental fact-checking, or he has about as much political courage as a rabbit." ...
... As if determined to make Collins' point, There's This. Alan Rappeport: "In a town-hall meeting hosted by CNN on Thursday night..., Mr. Trump said, 'I like the [ObamaCare] mandate.' So here's where I'm a little bit different.... I don't want people dying on the streets.' Less than 24 hours later, Mr. Trump backed away from his remarks, proclaiming himself to be the fiercest opponent of the health law.... In the face of ... backlash [from winger opponents & supporters alike], Mr. Trump fired back on Twitter that he had been misunderstood. He said he only liked the provision in the law that requires insurers to provide coverage for people who are already ill. He then promised that he intended to repeal the entire piece of legislation, including the mandate.... It was the latest example of a candidate who has been impervious to inconsistencies again emerging unscathed from a misstep that would probably be damaging to anyone else." ...
... Oh, There's More. Cooper Allen of USA Today: "A day after the uproar over Pope Francis' comments that Donald Trump 'is not Christian' because of his proposal to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border, a Vatican spokesman offered a clarification of sorts. Father Federico Lombardi of the Vatican Press Office told reporters (translated from Italian) that 'the Pope emphasized that those who only think of building walls, not bridges, is not Christian.' He added that the pontiff has emphasized the need for bridges over walls in the past, including with the European migration crisis. 'This is one of his general attitudes, very consistent with what is a courageous following of the Gospel,' Lombardi said." ...
... Andrew Kaczynski, with Christopher Massie, has returned to the Trump Time Machine: "Donald Trump, faced with his own words from 2002 that directly contradict his claim he opposed an Iraq invasion early on, told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Thursday night he opposed the war by the time it started. But in an interview with Fox News' Neil Cavuto one day into the Iraq invasion, Trump did not express his opposition to war, and said it appeared to be 'a tremendous success from a military standpoint.' Trump predicted the war would continue to be great for Wall Street. (See related link in yesterday's Commentariat.)
Way Beyond the Beltway
Nicholas Watt, et al., of the Guardian: Prime Minister "David Cameron has succeeded in renegotiating the terms of Britain's European Union membership, paving the way for a cabinet meeting on Saturday that will allow him to announce a referendum on 23 June. A marathon round of talks over two days, during which the prime minister managed just three hours sleep in the early hours of Friday morning, led to an agreement for the UK shortly after 9pm UK time."
News Ledes
The Washington Post report on Justice Antonin Scalia's funeral mass is here.
Los Angeles Times: "Umberto Eco, an Italian novelist and intellectual of worldwide renown who imbued his work with humor and scholarship and whose novel 'The Name of the Rose' became a global phenomenon, has died, his American publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt confirmed late Friday afternoon. He was 84." ...
... Update: Eco's New York Times obituary is here.
Share Article
Reader Comments (10)
I'm surprised that Bernie's son who is from an affair Sanders had with a woman in between his first wife and his second hasn't been bandied about. Of course it's still early in the game. It won't come from the Clinton campaign, but might show up from whomever wins on the Republican side. Might just be that "nice guy" above.
@PD Pepe: If the nominee is Donald Trump, he'll have a hard time making the case against Sanders. His daughter by Wife No. 2 Marla Maples was born before the couple was married. Marla was "the other woman" in Donald's breakup with Wife No. 1 Ivana. (Yeah, I hadda look it up. Even tho I lived in Manhattan during the Big Breakup, where the latest developments were on the nightly news nightly, I pretty much tuned it out.)
As I recall, Jane Fonda was once asked about her father Henry's many wives. She said, "At least he married 'em." I suppose Donald could call that the high ground, but I don't think it makes for a very effective campaign issue.
But, yeah, Ted is going to play Mr. Wholesome. He might not wanna mention too often that Mrs. Ted is/was/will-be-again an investment banker with Goldman Sachs, tho.
Marie
Marie, I think you're just having fun with the "Libby is to Miller as Reines is to Ambinder" comment. It seems to me there is a world of difference. I'm not a fan of Reines for a variety of reasons, but in the case here, as comes out in his missive to WaPo's Wemple (linked in your cite), he was just doing his flak job. HRC was making a policy speech, Ambinder sought an advance copy, and Reines wanted to ensure that Ambinder got the message that Reines wanted the speech to convey. Ambinder seems to have agreed with Reines' characterization of the speech and used that in his article -- he just did not say in his article that "HRC's flak and I discussed and agree about this characterization."
Miller:Libby (and Miller and many others) was vastly different. She took the bullshit she was given as facts (not characterization or judgment) and presented them to her readers as such, as an active (witting? she says not, but ...) collaborator in selling the Iraq war.
Reines did no wrong (in this case). Miller sold out her profession for access, and helped create public support for a highly consequential bullshit case. Big difference in my book.
@Patrick: You're absolutely right in terms of effect; Miller's stenography, even if she used her own words, may have been a minor contributing factor in all of the horrors that were (and still are) the Iraq War. However, I have little doubt that the war would have gone down just as it did without the NYT's assistance.
But Ambinder's stenography (as Gawker reported it) is more direct (Ambinder denies it), & it of a type that potentially has the same sort of effect as Miller's. If "journalists" let the leaders they're supposedly covering put words on their pages, then send those words out to the unwitting you & me, our impressions of our leaders are apt to jibe with the leaders' propaganda. Thus, when we read Hillary Clinton gave a "muscular" speech on foreign policy, we're likely to think, "Oh, she's strong on foreign policy -- and in a good way. Even a 'dispassionate journalist' at the Atlantic was impressed."
I read every "exclusive" story with a jaundiced eye. Often reporters get those exclusives because they've cultivated reliable sources for years, sources who aren't necessarily in the news themselves. But many or most times those exclusives are the products of the kind of deals Reines cynically points out are SOP. Sometimes one can tell just by asking "Where'd she get that?" & "Who profits?" Other times, I've been fooled, & I may be a somewhat more sophisticated reader than average.
I think these subject-reporter deals are poison. And the Gawker report is a reminder of why the crowd at the 2006 White House Correspondents' dinner was so upset with Stephen Colbert:
"The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction!"
Marie
The Walk back, walk back (sung by Knopfler and Sting)
. Father Federico Lombardi of the Vatican Press Office told reporters (translated from Italian) that 'the Pope emphasized that those who only think of building walls, not bridges, is not Christian.'"
"IS"? is singular, "those" plural, so either a blip in the translation OR a hidden message that, yes, by gum, the Pope really was directing his statement towards Trump.
Love the closet conference with Carson and Cruz––among the brooms, disinfectants, and slop buckets these two tried to mend fences to no avail––oh, for the fly on the wall to come clean and tell all.
And finally the ultimate walk backs by the guy with the golden touch defies belief. When will it become clear that the fun time is over and he will finally have to leave the political arena, climb back up to his tower and become what he was before––a real estate mogul and an asshole.
The Clinton ad above is exactly how Hillary should be presented. A young whipper snapper who has been working for the less fortunate since she was in pigtails––and NOW––now she is the compassionate, smart, hard working, highly skilled person we need to guide us and lead us. The perception of "mother" here is palpable––Mother Country, the woman as the caretaker, warm, protective.
The incident of the little girl, from the audience where Hillary was speaking somewhere,who asked a question re: deportation of her family, somewhat tearfully; Hillary asked her to come up, then embraced the girl, it was very moving. This, I would think, should be a strong pull for her. If the country is in need of repair and disarray, Mother will save the day and scare all those boogie men away.
Works for me! she said with a wink and a nod.
Since the Pope--Trump contretemps is still taking up space (even on the NYTimes front page), let me offer this Huppke piece from the Chicago Tribune. It might make you smile.
http://my.chicagotribune.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-85943518/
@Ken Winkes: Thanks for the link. It is always hard to pick the most absurd story of the cycle: here we have two stellar entries: (1) Pope &
Henry VIIITrump get into theological/political battle; (2) Cruz & Carson fight it out in (possibly darkened) closet.The image of a stone-faced Secret Service agent matter-of-factly saying, "Yeah, they're in that closet," is still making me LOL. In fact, the juxtaposition of the grand concepts at issue in (1) makes (2) even more hilarious.
This has been my favorite day of the campaign -- so far.
Marie
I realize this originates from Breit-barf.
And I would not define this as an "attack" (too passive-aggressive to qualify).
However, unless the audio is bogus (and do let me know if it is) . . .
Hillary's thinly veiled remark about her own "extraordinary" grandchild, whom she *really* has (SUBTEXT => Sanders' non-blood & non-Caucasian-adopted youngest family members), is truly despicable . . . and illustrates just how low she will go.
(Sanders has referred to his grandchildren as "extraordinary".)
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/01/16/hillary-clinton-attacks-bernie-sanders-adopted-grandchildren-i-actually-have-a-grandchild/
@Ophelia M.: It's Breitbart; ergo, it's edited.
Here's a Daily Kos entry that provides the whole quote; it sounds as if, in context, Hillary was saying, "You shouldn't have to be the granddaughter of well-to-do or "extraordinary" grandparents to become "extraordinary" yourself. Real controversial.
Breitbart should have tried harder. With a little more effort, they could have spliced together a number of Clinton's past remarks to have her say something like, "My extraordinary granddaughter is a victim of rape and incest. And I place the blame where it belongs -- on my husband Bill Clinton."
Marie
Great response, Marie (I'm laughing), and thanks for your reply.
I also read the Daily Kos piece - and others, with comments - and have no idea if there was editing/splicing/whatevuh: It certainly would not be the first - or the last - time.
The following is what inspired my reaction to the audio & print:
There was a juxtaposing of others who enjoy talking about their grandkids (as Sanders does) with Hillary *actually* having one. More so, it was the *but* ('. . . but I actually have one . . .') that conveyed a tone to - and concerned - me.
Personally, I've pros & cons regarding both candidates. But I will find Hillary - alongside her abundant and laudable experience and accomplishments - resorting to half-truths & the (not always accurate) undermining of others when she feels it will serve the moment. And those color my sense of trust . . . in anyone.
In truth, I'd feel better if my impressions were over-reactively inaccurate.
Cheers -