For decades, the customary and accepted way to dodge responsibility for mistakes on your watch was to say, “Mistakes were made.” Now the Times has upped the ante to “Mistakes weren’t made.” If our mailbag is any measure, it’s having an effect.
From TPM Reader MT …
Quick comment about your Biden piece, but really my comment is about Hillary and the Times. You capture the increasingly bizarre Times coverage of Clinton’s campaign nicely. From a personal perspective, when I saw the headline about Biden considering a run in the Times I immediately dismissed it as being newsworthy because it appeared first in the Times. I don’t recall doing that since the run up to the Iraq war and Judith Miller’s brilliant reporting. One difference, however. With Iraq, they get fooled. With Clinton, they are part of the disinformation process.
I’m a big fan of Joe Biden’s. I think he’d be a great president. I’m less certain he’d be a great candidate for president – and his first two runs provide some basis for that judgement. I’m also a bit suspicious of a groundswell or campaign of anonymous leaks in favor of a Biden campaign, all or most of which seem to emanate from The New York Times, which is grappling – or rather, not grappling – with its own institutional problems covering Hillary Clinton. But here’s one thing I’ve been watching closely: Over the past two weeks, among some of the most active and opinion leading center-left voters, those who believe Clinton will be the Democratic nominee has dropped dramatically.
Here are some of the numbers.
A good look at the increasingly flimsy arguments against the Iran deal.
Koch brother sees his investment of billions to roll back regulation on business as akin to civil rights movement.
Several days ago, perennial presidential candidate Mike Huckabee charged that President Obama was ready to lead Israeli Jews “to the ovens.” A few days later, he said he might use not only the FBI but even the US military to prevent abortions. And around the same time, Ted Cruz called Obama the world’s biggest funder of Islamic terrorism. There was a day when cracks like these would have stopped the political world in its tracks, spurring transgressive glee from supporters and outrage from liberals and normal people. But this summer, they’ve struggled to break through. And the reason is obvious: Donald Trump has flooded the market with a new, purer brand of Crazy that has left the other candidates scrambling and basically unable to compete.
In case you missed it, a desperate Christie rebrands himself as the champion of delayed commuters as campaign swirls around the bowl of oblivion.
Texas’s Tea Party Attorney General, Ken Paxton, hit with securities fraud indictment.
Despite calls for participants to refrain from using racial slurs at a rally on behalf of the Confederate flag at the Confederate memorial at Stone Mountain, Georgia (aka the Confederate Mount Rushmore), things apparently did not all go according to plan. While most of the roughly 800 participants professed to be focused on heritage not race, some got into heated arguments with a mixed-race crowd of protestors there to voice their opposition to the flag and the monument.
Texas man injured after bullet ricochets off armadillo he was trying to shoot.
Critic who launched right-wing/RNC freakout over AP History standards says he’s satisfied with revisions/cave in.