Friday, September 16, 2016

The Vilification Proclamation

"And here's the portrait Donald Trump gave me to commemorate the day he declared I was no longer 3/5ths of a human being. "
From NBC:
Trump May Be Abandoning 'Birthers,' but They're Not Abandoning Him
by ALEX SEITZ-WALD

So-called "'birthers" are OK with Donald Trump abandoning their cause, as long it helps him win the presidency — even if they still believe Obama was born in Kenya and don't necessarily agree with his claim that Hillary Clinton started their movement.

"President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period," Trump said Friday in Washington, D.C., reversing course on a five-year campaign to undercover proof that Obama was not really born in Hawaii. No evidence was revealed during the course of that time to back up his initial claim.

But in his 40-second statement, Trump replaced one conspiracy theory with another by claiming Clinton "started the birther controversy." That is simply not true, according to multiple independent fact checkers, who call the claim "ridiculous."...

You will never understand the election we are going through in this country or why Donald Trump won the Republican nomination for president until you understand how deeply and passionately Conservatives hate this country.

21 comments:

bowtiejack said...

Of course, there's the other possibility - that Trump lied today.
That you know, he still believes the whole Barry Soto fantasy and is only lying to get to the presidency!

bowtiejack said...

Oh yeah, ". . . how deeply and passionately Conservatives hate this country" ?
Nailed it.

dinthebeast said...

He believes this will prevent him from getting roasted at the debates for his birtherism. As usual, he's wrong.

-Doug in Oakland

bluicebank said...

upfist bowtie if that were allowed.

Also, as much as the media deserves ridicule and criticism for dropping every single ball thrown its way, that doesn't excuse today's so-called Conservatives who have abandoned every effort at critical thinking, after they abandoned facts, after they even denied Jesus three times and then lied about it.

It would not surprise me in the least if one day there is a widespread outbreak of Conservatives not showing up for work because they couldn't put on a pair of pants (and then denied the science of one-leg-at-a-time).

RUKidding said...

Trump had Jabba the Ailes Yuuuuge meaty sweaty hand up his sphincter forcing Trump to say that about the N%*@3r in the White House. 40 seconds ending w a snarl that Hitlery started it.

I neither know nor care if Trump was lying or telling the truth from his perspective. He was forced to say it.

My coldest of cold comforts is that he HATED retracting his birther bullshit. Hatred it!!1!

Of course his white supremacist fans believe Trump only said it to get votes. Gah. Fuckwits on all levels.

Fiddlin Bill said...

The birther believers will see Trump's last second admission as being unfairly forced out of his lips by the politically correct police. Trump is now a victim of political correctness, a kind of water-boarding.

Neo Tuxedo said...

When they say they want their country back, they mean the country they lost at Appomattox.

Unknown said...

... until you understand how deeply and passionately Conservatives hate this country.

Once again, to quote Philip E. Agre:

Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.

Unknown said...

Trump believes nothing except his ability to manipulate the media. Probably the most cynical jagoff in the US.

Robt said...

Besides now answering the next question.
"How did you come to this realization, that most reasonable Americans came to in 2008?
Is avid Duke right when he says, "Donald Trump is just saying things that he has to to get elected"? Are you just saying it to get elected?

Do you think or believe that the President you harassed and accused of not being legitimate for 6 years. Do you think an public apology from yourself is in order?
What about the American people that voted for President Obama. Should they receive an apology from you publicly"

Ending a sentence with the word, "PERIOD", does not display sincerity. How do we know what you mean by saying this?

Will you now make a statement to the effect that Capt. kahn's service was honorable and you shouldn't have demeaned it? Will you end that with period?

Lastly,
Why do you think everyone should just move on like it never happened? That you lied to Americans for all these years? How do you treat someone that attacks you unfairly? Shouldn't those you attacked unfairly for 6 years treat you any different?

Ed said...

The idea of going after Obama’s otherness dates back to the last presidential election—and to Democrats. Long before Trump started in, Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist, Mark Penn, recognized this potential vulnerability in Obama and sought to exploit it. In a March 2007 memo to Clinton (that later found its way to me), Penn wrote: “All of these articles about his boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii are geared toward showing his background is diverse, multicultural and putting it in a new light,” he wrote. “Save it for 2050. It also exposes a very strong weakness for him—his roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited. I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and his values.”

Penn also suggested how the campaign might take advantage of this. “Every speech should contain the line that you were born in the middle of America to the middle class in the middle of the last century,” he advised Clinton. “And talk about the basic bargain as about [sic] the deeply American values you grew up with, learned as a child, and that drive you today.” He went on: “Let’s explicitly own ‘American’ in our programs, the speeches and the values. He doesn’t … Let’s add flag symbols to the backgrounds [of campaign events].”
Full story here: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-05-30/the-democratic-roots-of-the-birther-movement

Ms. L.B. said...

Ed, you left out the coda: There is no evidence Clinton or her stand-ins ever used any of this. In fact, as I understand it, they said no.

Charlesdillon said...

Did she use this? Did she not fire Mark Penn?

Unknown said...

Vince McMahon school of marketing. As soon as one "dynamic" is resolved, start a new one. If it is an outrageous lie so much the better.

driftglass said...

A pollster put together a whole list of every possible line of attack, which is what EVERY pollster does. The Clinton campaign refused to even consider it, This "Clinton started it" is the new, new alibi from the Right so they won't have to answer for the fact that they're degenerate racists who deserve to be driven into the sea.

Funny how the default setting of the "Party of Personal Responsibility" is lie, lie, lie, lie, lie and then when it all turns to shit (as it always does), take absolutely no personal responsibility for anything.

Unknown said...

The GOP could have disavowed this garbage as soon as Trump brought it up. They chose to go along and snicker behind their hands. Shame on all of them.

Robt said...

As so in any race,
A lie can travel around the world in today's media before the truth can even get it's running shoe laces tied.

The GOP's candidate can forever admit a truth accompanied with 2 lies to deflect responsibility until the Twain meets again.

Ridicule this, Batman!
Procrastinating the convergence of sunlight absorbing night is most effective during sunsets. Says the "dark side of conservatism".
Yeah, mixed metaphors.......

RUKidding said...

Political junkies know about this line of attack suggested to be Clinton's fault. She didn't use it & neither did any of her surrogates. But let's lie & pretend that she did. It always works for the GOP & especially Trump to lie lie & lie again. It is their de facto strategy across all the Oligarch owned media. The media won't question it or point out the falsehood. Why would they? Cui Bono? If Trump wins the super rich win big time. They don't give a shit about anything else.

When Jabba the Ailes forced Trump to recant on his beloved birtherism bs, the "Blame Crooked Hitlery" was the metaphorical cookie he got for the "pain" of having to walk back his lie. This was followed the next day by encouraging his goon fans to assassinate Clinton.

So yeah, let's all pretend that Trump is rational & presidential and that 8 years of insanity & money wasted on bullshit birtherism is solely & only Clinton's fault.

Fuck you & the lying horse you rode in on.

Chan Kobun said...

"Ed",

Suck.
My.
Fucking.
Dick.

Jimbo said...

My wife and I both knew Ann Soetoro, Barack's mother, in the 1980s when she worked for the Ford Foundation in Jakarta. She was a widely admired scholar and frequently hosted "salons" at her house for the expatriate and Indonesian development community. She had a charismatic personality. She only referred to her son as "Barry" who was at Columbia at the time so we never made the connection to him until friends informed us. The birthers have always been about discrediting the idea of an African-American President and the foreign-born argument was just the easiest one. A Trump Presidency would certainly finish the ongoing destruction of the American Democracy experiment.

Unknown said...

I see no claim that he was not born in America in your comment.