Showing posts with label confusion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label confusion. Show all posts

Sunday, April 17, 2016

Pope Suggests a Psychiatrist for Bernie Camp

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Previous Related Posts:
Bernie Surrogate Calls Hillary and Supporters "Democratic Whores"
Bernie Brats Need to Stop Dissing the South
Desperation in Bernie Land
Susan Sarandon Likes Trump Over Hillary
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Bernie Sanders and his family took a whirlwind trip to the Vatican in Rome yesterday. Ostensibly he went there to speak at a small conference to spread his message of "moral economics" to a wider audience, giving Bernie more credibility as a world leader. Bernie's spokesperson said he discussed such matters with Pope Francis, head of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, and someone Bernie seems to admire.

But the political price of going all that way to make a 15 minute speech struck many as hypocritical - more like a mini-break vacation for Bernie's Catholic wife than a sensible plan.

From the Daily Mail UK


  • Bernie Sanders traveled to Rome for the Vatican conference on Friday



  • He was joined by his wife, ten family members, a group of campaign staff, secret service detail and members of the press



  • The total group of what is believed to be below 50, flew in a chartered Delta 767 for their trip which can seat between 211 and 261 people



  • Sanders's wife, who's Catholic, and four grandchildren came on the trip 



  • A 767 like Sanders' that is flying 4,435 miles from New York to Rome uses approximately 16,596 gallons of fuel







    • But what really happened there in Rome? By the time Bernie and company were headed back home yesterday, confusion reigned. It wasn't as bad as "Romney Shambles" when Mitt went to Israel, but there were questions a-plenty about how the Bernie team were spinning the trip compared to what actually happened.







    From ABC News
    Fresh from Thursday night’s Democratic debate, Bernie Sanders landed in Rome today to speak at a Vatican-hosted conference.
    In his speech to the conference, hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Social Science, the Vermont senator focused on the “urgency of a moral economy.”
    “The issue of wealth and income inequality is the great economic issue of our time, the great political issue of our time, and the great moral issue of our time,” Sanders said. “It is an issue that we must confront in my nation and across the world.”
    . . . During a coffee break, Sanders exited the Vatican walls to address what became a mob scene of supporters and reporters.













    From CBS News
    "When I received the invitation -- I know it's taking me away from the campaign trail for a day. It was so moving to me that it was something I simply could not refuse to attend," he said.
    In reality, Sanders just brought the campaign trail to Rome. In a speech there, he hit many of the same themes, calling for a more just economy, and often using the pope's own words.
    Bishop Marcello Sanchez Sorondo, the man who invited Sanders to a usually obscure conference at an academy advising the Pope on issues like social inequality, says getting involved in political movements "is important."

    But there was confusion over Bernie's invitation from the beginning, with various spokespeople for Bernie at odds with the Vatican, which sought to distance the Pope from American politics. Just like the Kim Davis debacle with the Pope a few months ago, the Vatican's story differed from the way it was being pitched by supporters. And lower-level Vatican officials seemed interested in stirring the political pot much more than the Pope himself.

    For instance, as early as April 8th, the Vatican hinted that Bernie himself had angled for the invitation, which they considered "discourteous."

    From The Hill
    "It was an invitation from the Vatican," Sanders said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "I was very moved by the invitation."
    But the senior Vatican official, Margaret Archer, president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, said it was Sanders who made "the first move" to attend the event.
    . . . “I think in a sense he may be going for the Catholic vote but this is not the Catholic vote and he should remember that and act accordingly — not that he will," Archer added.
    However, Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, chancellor of academy, formally invited Sanders to attend the meeting in a letter dated March 30 and provided to The Hill by Sanders' campaign.
    “We are interested in having him because we have two presidents coming from Latin America, I thought it would be good to have an authoritative voice from North America,” Sanchez Sorondo told Bloomberg, speaking from New York.

    Look at the difference between the way the "meeting with the Pope" was pitched yesterday compared to what the Pope says actually happened. The Pope was getting ready to leave for Greece and sent his regrets to all the members of the conference. But Bernie was determined to have the face time with Pontifex and lurked outside his rooms as he was leaving before receiving a "handshake." That was somehow enlarged into a "meeting" by a spokesperson named Michael Shank, and the Sanders camp in general.

    From USA Today
    "We had an opportunity to meet with him this morning," Sanders told the Associated Press. "It was a real honor for me, for my wife and I to spend some time with him. I think he is one of the extraordinary figures not only in the world today but in modern world history." Sanders, who is Jewish, said he has long been a "big fan" of the pope's teachings on economic justice.

    Sanders, in the thick of the presidential race, had to break off his primary campaigning and fly all night to get to the Vatican, where he addressed a Vatican conference on social justice and spent the night at the Vatican guest house where Francis lives.

    The pope, who made a brief trip to Greece on Saturday to visit a refugee camp, spoke to reporters on the plane home about his encounter with the American politician. "When I came down, I greeted him, I shook his hand and nothing more. This is called good manners and it is not getting involved in politics," the pope said, according to Reuters. "If anyone thinks that greeting someone is getting involved in politics, I recommend that he look for a psychiatrist," he said, laughing.

    From "Bernie's Roman Holiday" by Daniel Schultz
    The whole Bernie-goes-to-Rome thing has been a shambles, to be honest. The campaign got Sanders a back-door invite which surprised and irritated the academy president, not to mention stepping on the roll-out of Amoris Laetitia, the Pope’s new teaching on the family. Then they did it again, taking a private jet to Rome to speak on the idolatry of money in the middle of a make-it-or-break-it primary in New York, and arriving in Rome on a day when the Vatican would much rather be talking about Francis’ meeting with Patriarch Bartholomew in Lesbos about the European refugee crisis.
    As if that weren’t bad enough, Sanders showed up with his family in tow, undercutting the high-minded moral message he was supposed to be delivering, and Oh, sweet Jesus, did they really put his logo on a picture of the Pope?! All this in service of a message that won’t impress or inspire anybody who wasn’t going to vote for Sanders to begin with.
    I suppose that was the goal all along, though: to maintain Sanders’ inspirational image. Either that, or they’re making some kind of bizarre, desperate play for the New York Catholic vote. Or again, maybe they were hoping a bird would land on his podium again, which would do about as much good. At this point, I just don’t know what to think.

    From Reuters Video: It is Crazy
    To See the Sanders Meeting as Political













    The Non-Meeting was turned into a political ad!



























    At least the food on the plane was great!











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    Thursday, April 18, 2013

    Twitterstorm Over Media Chaos in Boston, Then FBI Smackdown

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    Twitter Heads Exploded this afternoon when various media outlets such as AP, CNN and Fox reported an "imminent arrest" in the Boston Marathon Bombing. Actually no suspect was in custody. To make matters worse, John King on CNN kept insisting that police were searching for a "dark-skinned male" as if that was part of the crime, while CBS was reporting the search for a caucasion light-skinned subject. Derp.

    From Business Insider
    According to a source at CNN, the network was the first to report that a suspect had been identified. Anchor John King sent in a report around 1 p.m. that a source "briefed" on the investigation had told King a positive identification had been made. CNN Washington bureau chief Sam Feist approved that report, according to the source.

    According to the source, who was reviewing internal email logs, Fran Townsend was the first at the network to say that an arrest had been made.
    "As I think everyone knows, we really f—ed up. No way around it," the source said.
    The source said that the network's email network went quiet for a 15-minute period shortly after the retraction — "so people [were] either being more cautious or getting yelled at."

    Townsend's report came around the same time as other outlets, including the Associated Press and the Boston Globe, also reported an arrest, so it is not clear whether CNN was the first to make the mistake.

    Special FBI Smackdown
    Contrary to widespread reporting, no arrest has been made in connection with the Boston Marathon attack. Over the past day and a half, there have been a number of press reports based on information from unofficial sources that has been inaccurate. Since these stories often have unintended consequences, we ask the media, particularly at this early stage of the investigation, to exercise caution and attempt to verify information through appropriate official channels before reporting.

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    Sunday, March 31, 2013

    Holy Chavez! #GOP Hopped Up Over Google's Easter Doodle

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    Google honored Cesar Chávez with a doodle Sunday on the 86th anniversary of his birthday, drawing nationwide attention to the Latino civil rights leader and sparking a backlash among those upset with the company for taking a pass on Easter.
    . . . President Barack Obama proclaimed March 31 as Cesar Chávez Day in 2011.
    But the decision to honor Chávez infuriated many religious people and conservative publications who wondered by Google didn’t honor Easter instead. Conservative blog Twitchy blasted Google for featuring the image of Chávez and praised Bing for posting an image of Easter eggs.
    ~ Huffington Post

    Google has commented on the online backlash its doodle has stoked in conservative quarters.
    In a statement emailed to the Guardian, the internet giant acknowledged that there had been a "lot of angry user emails" but only a couple of press inquiries.
    A spokeswoman said: "We enjoy celebrating holidays at Google but, as you may imagine, it's difficult for us to choose which events to highlight on our site. Sometimes for a given date we feature an historical event or influential figure that we haven't in the past."
    ~ Guardian UK


    Hugo Chavez? No, Cesar - Why Didn't You Google It?






















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    Google Should Stick to Christianity, or at least, Pagan Easter Eggs





















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    Saturday, December 15, 2012

    GOP State of Confusion

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    We lose because we choose liberals like Romney.
    ~ comment by SameOlBS on Daily Caller

    I don't think the Republican Party schooled their candidates very well or supported their candidates very well.
    . . . We had a lot of candidates quite frankly that did dumb things out there.
    ~ Dick Armey on CBS News

    Republicans have lost a majority of the popular vote in five out of the last six elections. There’s a message there. The Republicans need a new business model, and a new product for the new century. It’s not just a problem of one candidate or one campaign.
    ~ GOP Pollster Whit Ayres

    I simply want to highlight a temptation all of us in politics face, which is to assume that because we hold a certain view, a majority of the public does, too. Those who hold this mindset usually fall back on an explanation that goes something like this: Republican politicians simply didn’t make sufficiently forceful and articulate arguments. If they had, the public would flock to our side since, after all, the arguments are all on our side.
    The people who take comfort in this explanation usually reside in the “we have a communications problem” school. They lament the fact that we don’t have another Ronald Reagan to articulate conservatism and if we did, all would be right with the world once more.
    . . . it’s unwise to pin one’s hopes on producing, election after election, a candidate who possesses a once-in-a-lifetime set of skills.
    ~ Peter Wehner on Commentary

    My own view is that conservatives should recommit themselves to federalism and states’ rights. The party of Lincoln should protect core civil rights, but beyond that, states and localities should be given as much freedom as they can handle. If California wants to become Sweden with better weather, let it. If Texas wants to become Singapore on the Rio Grande, great, go for it. And the same principle goes for cities and towns within those states.
    ~ Jonah Goldberg on National Review

    My suggestion: Buy some women’s magazines. No, really. Or at least some women’s Web sites.
    One of the groups with whom Romney did worst was female “low-information voters.” Those are women who don’t really follow politics, and vote based on a vague sense of who’s mean and who’s nice, who’s cool and who’s uncool.
    Since, by definition, they don’t pay much attention to political news, they get this sense from what they do read. And for many, that’s traditional women’s magazines — Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, the Ladies Home Journal, etc. — and the newer women’s sites like YourTango, The Frisky, Yahoo! Shine, and the like.
    . . . For $150 million, you could buy or start a lot of women’s Web sites. And I’d hardly change a thing in the formula. The nine articles on sex, shopping and exercise could stay the same. The 10th would just be the reverse of what’s there now.
    ~ Glenn Harlan Reynolds on NY Post

    There are just so many off-putting comments from the Republican party. It's crazy to me that they're still acting as if women are a niche market.
    ~ Sara Stevenson, single voter, quoted on Huffington Post

    Viewed a certain way, the 2012 election can be seen as a gift to Republicans wrapped in ugly paper. The wrapping looked like a hostage note with a message scrawled in crayon: "We hate you." But inside was a gift, and the gift was time. The party was given the opportunity, when it is still strong, to hold the kind of fresh, open-the-windows debate it would have been forced to have in 2016 anyway, and in less favorable conditions.
    . . . Organisms that survive a shock are often able to see their surroundings more acutely. The establishment, hardy self-seeking survivors that they are, already knew the party was in trouble. Now, importantly, the base does. Now local precinct leaders know. The tea party knows, Christian conservatives know. They're all reading the same data, the same polls.
    . . . For the past 10 years the party has operated under an ethic of Questioning the Team Is Disloyal, Dissent Is Disloyal, as Is Criticism.
    This has been a recipe not for peace but for disaster. Which is what we saw on Nov. 6.
    ~ Peggy Noonan on WSJ

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    Tuesday, September 11, 2012

    Romney Camp in a Ball of Confusion

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    To Romney: You had an entire week off to listen to the Democrats' arguments against you, to think about how you're going to sell yourself to the public for this homestretch of the campaign. You had a whole week. And what you came up with is "I kinda like Obamacare" and "Paul Ryan has a horrible voting record"? But when you're pressed on those about-faces you're going to deny . . .
    . . . Either this is such high-level campaign genius that we just don't understand the complexity of what they are doing here, or they don't have any idea of what they are doing here.
    ~ Rachel Maddow on MSNBC

    Dan Rather on Rachel Maddow:
    I think the Romney campaign is in a bad stretch. It may or may not last. It may or may not be decisive in the campaign. But they are having a terrible week post the Democratic Convention. . . . Here's the basic problem. Does this man know what it is he believes? Is he willing to stick to it and is he willing to fight for it? Whatever the truth of it is, the perception has been there from the beginning - 'this guy may not know what he wants to do when he gets into the presidency - where he stands.'
    These last few days have fueled that anew. If he wins, he wins on jobs and the economy. He can't seem to keep the focus there. And you know you can't win a campaign with more twists than a pretzel factory and expect people not to catch up, not in the present day.
    And Rachel I think future historians and politicians and people who cover politics will be looking at this campaign and studying it for a long time to come because the center of gravity has changed with Facebook, Twitter, and the immense amount of coverage through the campaign. There was a time not long ago when you could say one thing to one group of people and another to another group of people and it wouldn't really catch up with you. Those days are gone. Now either the Romney camp doesn't understand that, which could be serious if the campaign goes along, or they're just having a bad few days and they'll refocus....





    Romney Surrogate Tara Wall on MSNBC:
    JANSING: What are the (tax) loopholes you would close? Will you tell the American people how you’re going to to this better place that you say they have?

    WALL: Well, again, the campaign has laid out a number of specifics relative to the principles that will guide the policies of a Romney-Ryan ticket. [...] Again, the specification include policies that are pro-growth in nature, that reduce the deficit, that reduce the burden on taxpayers and small businesses, small businesses number one have been hit hard by a number of regulations that have stifled growth and job creation. And so number one, those are some of the things you have to start with.

    JANSING: Well, with all due respect, a pro-growth policy is not specific.

    WALL: The other part of that is energy independence. That’s an approach to energy independence that will create millions of jobs. There is a target of 12 million jobs by the Romney-Ryan target. Relative to those loopholes that you mention, I agree that Congressman Ryan pointed out (that) have to be put out in a public debate. But I think, again, we have to look at the overall principles that are going to drive the policies and not ram through policy as we saw with Obamacare.




    This is embarrassing.
    Holy word salad, Batman! If this is an example of the people who are advising Mitt Romney in his upcoming debates with President Obama than Mitt Romney is walking into a fistfight like Popeye armed with a can of spinach.
    ~ Ministry of Truth on Daily Kos

    The reason they don't answer the question is because they don't HAVE an answer. This is beyond putting lipstick on a pig, there is no PIG there to put lipstick on. Mitt just wants to be president, that's all.
    ~ comment by citisven on Daily Kos

    Can you debate Jello? Romney has so many different positions, which one do you respond to?
    ~ comment by tln41 on Daily Kos

    Maybe the Romney camp doesn't understand what the word "specific" means.
    ~ comment by Dennis G. on Think Progress

    the guy's got to be a god-d*mned wind sock in a whirlwind.
    ~ comment by unrepentant_expat on Americablog

    The moral from the Aesop fable about the man and the satyr seems remarkably apropos here:
    "I will have nought to do with a man who can blow hot and cold with the same breath."
    ~ comment by bluestocking on Americablog

    If the first weekend of Mitt Romney’s general election campaign is any indication, the country is in for eight weeks of wild, often random answers to some of the most important policy questions.
    . . . Aware that President Obama’s policies in these areas are quite popular once people learn about them, the Republicans are simply sowing confusion.
    ~ The New York Times

    Perhaps Romney and Ryan are evasive because they don't actually know what they are talking about. Maybe we'll be governed by a flip of the coin or by one of those magic 8-balls.
    ~ comment by Linda on The New York Times

    The devil is in the details. Without details, we will not vote for you. Another euphemism is also appropriate for the political silly season. If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with B*S^
    ~ comment by Tom on The New York Times


    He seems to be intentionally feeding misinformation to an under-informed population. And it scares the crap out of me. These aren't little quibbles over minutiae that he flubs; these appear to be intentional misstatements of the fundamental beliefs of his campaign.
    ~ comment by sun_isnt_yellow on Mother Jones

    Romney is seems to be unraveling at this point. He is being forced to stuff every position into the no tax, small government pigeon hole. It doesn't fit. The contortions are painful and illogical. The Republican arguments are starting to resemble a Swiss cheese. I don't know why he wanted to have everybody concentrate on the "issues". He looks like a fool trying to sell these fallacious plans.
    ~ comment by eannie on Mother Jones

    I think this is what they call flip-flop sweat.
    ~ comment by jheartney on Mother Jones

    Is there something burning? It smells like toast in here.
    ~ comment by Evil_Twin on Mother Jones

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