Showing posts with label dan rather. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dan rather. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Trump Fires FBI Director Comey

via GIPHY


Donald Trump fired controversial FBI Director Comey just as he was setting up indictments from grand juries for General Flynn and his associates over possible treason with Russia. But Trump would have us believe he fired Comey for his statements about Hillary Clinton's emails last year, which Trump famously called for Russia to hack, by the way. Yeah right.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions wrote a letter suggesting the termination, even though he had recused himself from the Hillary Clinton email scandal as well as Trump-Russia. This comes right after also-fired Ex- Acting Attorney General Sally Yates appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee to discuss Trump's Muslim Ban as well as his Russian connections.

Perhaps Comey and Yates were getting too close to the truth, so Trump got rid of them. Not since Nixon has a President fired someone who was investigating his own administration. Who knows what tomorrow brings?









From Journalist Dan Rather on Facebook



























Kudos to the Trump-Russia Twitter Crowd
Who Have Been Sounding Alarms for Weeks
And Were Still Predicting Last Night


For more see Previous Post:
Russiagate Speculation Round-Up





























It Might Be A Coup

















Like Nixon and Watergate














AG Sessions Did What?








What Will the GOP Do Now?




















Special Investigations Overdrive















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Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Lara Logan and the Bogus Benghazi Report

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Media Matters for America, 11-03-13
On October 27, CBS' 60 Minutes featured "Morgan Jones," -- The Washington Post later revealed his real name, Dylan Davies -- a supposed "eyewitness" of the September 2012 attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities, who claimed that during the attack he scaled a wall of the compound, personally struck a terrorist in the face with his rifle butt, and later went to the Benghazi hospital to see Ambassador Chris Stevens' body.
The story he told CBS wildly diverged from the account he gave his superiors in an incident report that was obtained by The Washington Post.

New York Times
Ms. Logan said that Dylan Davies, one of the main sources for a two-week-old piece about the attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, had misled the program’s staff when he gave an account of rushing to the compound the night the attack took place. “It was a mistake to include him in our report. For that, we are very sorry,” Ms. Logan said.
The apology lasted only 90 seconds and revealed nothing new about why CBS had trusted Mr. Davies, who appeared on the program under the pseudonym Morgan Jones. Off-camera, CBS executives were left to wonder how viewers would react to the exceptionally rare correction.

From Lara Logan, 60 Minutes Reporter in charge of Fake Benghazi Story
LOGAN: We end our broadcast tonight with a correction on a story we reported October 27 about the attack on the American special mission compound in Benghazi, in which Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed. In the story, a security officer working for the State Department, Dylan Davies, told us he went to the compound during the attack and detailed his role that night.
After our report aired, questions arose about whether his account was true, when an incident report surfaced. It told a different story about what he did the night of the attack. Davies denied having anything to do with that incident report and insisted the story he told us was not only accurate, it was the same story told the FBI when they interviewed him.
On Thursday night, when we discovered the account he gave the FBI was different than what he told us, we realized we had been misled, and it was a mistake to include him in our report. For that, we are very sorry. The most important thing to every person at 60 Minutes is the truth, and the truth is, we made a mistake.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It took two weeks to have that apology on 60 Minute. The piece aired at the end of October and there were questions raised almost immediately about it. So I think the question is now and the thing that media writers will be writing about this week are, what took so long and what is 60 Minutes doing to make sure this doesn’t happen again?
. . . This wasn’t a story that was breaking news, this was a story that they worked on for a year. And that’s why I think people wonder, did they come in with an agenda?
~ NY Times writer Brian Stelter on CNN via Raw Story

This evening's 60 Minutes response was wholly inadequate and entirely self-serving. The network must come clean by appointing an independent commission to determine exactly how and why it fell prey so easily to an obvious hoax.
~ David Brock, founder of Media Matters for America

(Media Matters) has been right about Benghazi for 13 months now. We have been fact-checking this story to death. And when CBS decided 'we want a piece of that pie, we want a piece of that right-wing narrative,' saying there are lingering questions when there are none . . . when they decided they wanted to key into that buzz machine . . . the next day on Fox News a Senator spent two hours talking about it. How do you know you hit a home run? When a senator's talking about your story. They couldn't resist it. But the story didn't add up.
There were no lingering questions. The conflict of interest should have stopped them. The discrepencies in the narrative should have stopped them. They should have apologized a week ago! This whole thing is a train wreck!
~ Eric Boehlert on MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes

Journalism 101: You have a single source, and you have a self-interested source because he is trying to sell books. And then you have a story that is a political hot potato that can be red meat to certainly one side of the argument. And it seems to me that raises the bar and makes it even more crucial to do your due diligence. And I didn't hear anything in the explanation of 'what we did to vet' that lends credibility to the argument that 'we were fooled.' You shouldn't have been fooled.
Steven Reiner, former 60 Minutes Producer and now Professor of Journalism at Stony Brook

In a narrow sense, Lara Logan did say she was "sorry." But the entire 90 seconds was aimed at obfuscating what happened.
Logan said 60 Minutes had found out Thursday that they had been "misled and it was a mistake to include him in our report."
Include him in their report? He was the report. And even in conceding that her team had been "misled", Logan tiptoed around the real news, which is that it seems clear that Davies' entire story was a fabrication.
He wasn't there. So none of the stuff he did could have happened and he cannot have witnessed any of what he claimed to describe.
. . . There was yet another red flag that Davies book (the publication of which has now been canceled) was published by the publisher best known for publishing Glenn Beck, Mark Levin and Jerome Corsi.
I don't know the players involved enough to know whether this happened because of bias, indifference, arrogance or wild sloppiness. But you can't screw up much bigger than this. At a minimum there needs to be some detailed explanation of how this big a screw could have happened.
~ Josh Marshall of Media Matters












































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Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Best Quotes of Inauguration Day

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Obama's Quiet Moment

Here is the moment. It was not on the program. It was not on anybody's schedule. We did not know it was coming. And it was not spoken into any microphone. . . .
"I want to take a look one more time. I'm not going to see this again."
The President looking in one direction, while everyone else looking toward him was moving past him.
That is the moment when you see the man inside the trappings of the office. When you see the way that any of us might feel a little overwhelmed in human terms by the importance of your office. The singular scale of the importance of that particular office. That was a cool moment.
Days like this are special because of what is scripted and preordained about them. The least suspenseful things on days like this are the most important things on days like this. Things that display the ritual of how we peacefully and agreeably move between Presidencies in America. Days of ritual are days of foregone conclusion. They are scripted. Which makes it all the more amazing when there is not a script. Like that moment after his Inaugural Address when we saw the President turn to be as amazed to see that crowd as that crowd was to see their President.
~ Rachel Maddow on MSNBC






As if a cold Monday in January wasn’t dreary enough, today has been dubbed ‘Blue Monday’, the most depressing day of the year.`
~ Steve Doocey on Fox and Friends

Fox on Obama's Speech:
Chris Wallace: This was an unyielding, uncompromising espousal of a liberal agenda.
Brit Hume: This is utterly bereft of an outreach to the opposition.
Mark Levin: I think there’s a lot of perverse thinking that goes on in Obama’s mind, radical left-wing thinking. He was indoctrinated with Marx and Alinksy propaganda.

I thought it was an amazing speech, and historically very important. This was really Obama unbound. And I think what's most interesting is that Obama basically is declaring the end of Reaganism
~ Charles Krauthammer on Fox News






Ladies and gentlemen, the late Alex Haley, the author of Roots, lived his life by these six words: "find the good and praise it.” Today we praise the American tradition of transforming, or reaffirming, immense power in the inauguration of the President of the United States. We do this in a peaceful, orderly way. There is no mob. No coup. No insurrection. This is a moment when millions stop and watch. A moment most of us always will remember. It is a moment that is our most conspicuous and enduring symbol of the American democracy. How remarkable that this has survived for so long in such a complex country when so much power is at stake. This freedom to vote for our leaders and the restraint to respect the results.
~ Senator Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, Co-Chair of the Inaugural Committee

"I don't care if you're a Democrat, Republican, a Mugwump or whatever. This is a day when you have to say 'What A Country!'
~ Dan Rather

He went big. He went lofty. He went ambitious. And he went unmistakably liberal.
~ Jonathan Karl on ABC News

I feel like I should pinch myself right now, Wolf. I can't believe I have this vantage point of history in the making.
~ Jim Acosta of CNN while covering the President and First Lady walking down Pennsylvania Avenue parade route


That was really historic. To hear the President of the United States mention the word Stonewall in the same sentence as Selma, in the same sentence as Seneca Falls, certainly for gay and lesbian Americans, that is a stunning statement and a real leap forward for gay and lesbian Americans.
~ Anderson Cooper on CNN

I just want to say, there were moments in this speech, but there was a theme, we the people go back to the Founders, think of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. There was an uplifting, beyond rhetoric, there was a theme of our job is not finished until our gay brothers and sisters have equal rights under the law. This was a bigger moment, I think, than a lot of people initially gave it credit for. I just think, with re-election, he is thinking much more broadly and much more inclusively, and I was very moved, just being up there in that frozen crowd, looking out over the masses.
~ Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC

Gigantic. And he connected it all to the patriots of 1776 that we keep widening in our democracy. And he made those places almost like battlefield spots in American history, like Oxford, Mississippi, or Normandy or Iwo Jima. And it's an iconic speech.
. . . I thought it was a marvelous speech and it's brave and it's bold and I think it's going to play well in history.
~ Presidential Historian Douglas Brinkley on CNN

Reminds you of another second inaugural: Lincoln’s. So much of Lincoln in that speech, from the Gettysburg address to the second inaugural itself. I thought what was interesting was an attempt to draw a balance – of course, he’s a man of the progressive side – but he tried to draw a balance there between a government ruled by an elite and then a government ruled by a mob both being a problem.
~ Chris Matthews on Obama's Second Inaugural Address

~~~~~~~~~~~~

GOP dinner tonight should begin with crow.
~ Ed Schultz on MSNBC

So folks, I raise my glass to a man who never, never, never operates out of fear. [He] only operates out of confidence. I’m toasting you Chuck. A guy who I plan on working on working with. You can’t get rid of me, man. Remember, I’m still part of the Senate! God bless you, Chuck.
~ Vice President Joe Biden offering Senator Chuck Schumer a surprise toast at the Inaugural Luncheon

Chuck Schumer Photo Bomb During Ceremony
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First Lady's Epic Eye Roll
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Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Romney Fall-Out Continues from Video-Gate


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 "Mitt Doesn't Disdain the Poor"
~ Name of a video with Ann Romney taking up for Mitt, posted then pulled by the Romney campaign for unknown reasons, via BuzzFeed



"Mitt Romney, Man of Constant Sorrow"
~ Headline on Politico

It turns out that Mitt Romney was right. There is class warfare being waged in the 2012 campaign. It is Mr. Romney who is waging it, not President Obama, and he’s stood the whole idea on its head.
~ The New York Times Editorial

My first reaction was 'can't be true.' The tape must be edited. Somebody must have played games with it. He can't possibly have disparaged almost half of the population of the country with seven weeks to go in the election campaign. Alas, it turns out to be exactly what he said.
~ Legendary anchorman Dan Rather on MSNBC, to Rachel Maddow

There is a reason they did not take back that statement on that tape. They are restating it now in a way that is less blunt, but it is actually their world view and their policy. And that's why this tape has been like a nuclear bomb, not a dirty bomb, in the Republican's campaign for the presidency this year.
~ Rachel Maddow on MSNBC

Mitt Romney’s comments felt as if he were stabbing me in the heart. I stopped breathing for a few seconds with a profound feeling that I was trapped in another world where people have no clue, not one little clue of what it’s like to have to struggle to get through every single day.
~ Roz Levine in NYT

Mitt Romney should be reminded that rights to food, housing and health care are recognized in international covenants that the United States has signed. The federal government is not required to “provide” these goods, but it is legally obligated “to respect, protect and fulfill” these rights.
Mr. Romney’s comments suggest not only contempt for working people and the poor but also for fundamental human rights.
~ ~ Marc Edelman in NYT

Mr. Romney in his current configuration is better suited to serve as king of 18th-century France rather than as president of the United States.
~ Stephen Korn in NYT

What we should strive for, what we have to improve upon, in the inner cities, in the poor rural areas, is to make sure that people get that chance so that they can make the most of their lives. So we should not be looking at people as if they are stuck in some station or stuck in some class or some victim or something like that.
~ Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan, rolling back Romney's remarks on video

We are a big, complicated nation. And we are human beings. We are people. We have souls. We are complex. We are not data points. Many things go into our decisions and our political affiliations.
You have to be sophisticated to know that. And if you’re operating at the top of national politics, you’re supposed to be sophisticated.
I think there is a broad and growing feeling now, among Republicans, that this thing is slipping out of Romney’s hands.
It’s time to admit the Romney campaign is an incompetent one. It’s not big, it’s not brave, it’s not thoughtfully tackling great issues. It’s always been too small for the moment.
. . . An intervention is in order. “Mitt, this isn’t working.”
~ Peggy Noonan on Wall Street Journal

Grim-faced aides acknowledged that it was an unusually dark moment, made worse by the self-inflicted, seemingly avoidable nature of the wound. In low-volume, out-of-the-way conversations, a few of them are now wondering whether victory is still possible and whether they are entering McCain-Palin ticket territory.
It may prove a fleeting anxiety: national polls show the race remains close, even though Mr. Romney trails in some key swing states.
Still, a flustered adviser, describing the mood, said that the campaign was turning into a vulgar, unprintable phrase.
~ The New York Times

Caught! Let's Play Hardball
(Hardball Theme plays)
Hello this is Chris Matthews in New York.
Let me start tonight with:
(singing)
If I were a rich man,
Yubba, Dibby, Dibby
Dibby, Dibby, Dibby, Dibby Dum.
Dumb!!!
~ Chris Matthews on Hardball

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I disagree with Governor Romney's insinuation that 47 percent of Americans believe they are victims who must depend on the government for their care. I know that the vast majority of those who rely on government are not in that situation because they want to be.
~ Linda McMahon, running for a Republican Senate seat in Connecticutt

That's not the way I view the world. As someone who grew up in tough circumstances, I know that being on public assistance is not a spot that anyone wants to be in. Too many people today who want to work are being forced into public assistance for lack of jobs.
~ Senator Scott Brown, who is running against Democrat Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts

Who else loves the American people as much as Miffed Romney?
  • Leona Helmsley
  • Nikita Krushchev.
  • Dick Cheney.
  • Paris Hilton.
  • Gina Rinehart.
  • Eduardo Saverin.
  • Somali pirates.
~ Wonkette

Oh my God. People think they are entitled to food! Are there no workhouses?
~ comment by PuckStopsHere on Wonkette

He forgot to call them "vermin" and mention his plans for dealing with them once and for all.
~ comment by Chet Kinkaide on Wonkette

This has been another episode of Uncle Rockefeller's Summer Cottage.
~ comment by SayItWithWookies on Wonkette

















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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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