Congratulations if you had Vince Foster on your Donald Trump fantasy league team. It was a bold pick, but, when it comes to the Donald, you know that going bold is the only way that points toward victory.
I mean, did you really think Trump was going to suddenly become more, uh, presidential? Have you already forgotten that on the day Trump virtually clinched the GOP nomination, he was flogging the idea that Ted Cruz’s father was somehow linked to the Kennedy assassination?
There’s no limit on crazy in this campaign, no limit on conspiracy theories, no Mexicans who aren’t potential rapists, no refugees who aren’t potential terrorists, no Muslims who aren’t celebrating 9/11, no vaccinations that couldn’t lead to autism, no pillow that couldn’t have killed Antonin Scalia.
People keep asking what it is about America that Trump has plugged into, but it should be clear by now: His upcoming nomination is the ultimate (or we can hope) victory for talk radio and all the contaminated media it has spawned. Where’s Chris Christie to order a quarantine when you need him?
Anyone could have guessed that it wouldn’t take Trump long to turn the campaign away from stopping Muslims at the border — is anyone still keeping count of the refugee terrorists? — and make it into a Bill-Cinton-cigar-chomping-’90s-nostagia tour, even though, technically, the Big Dog isn’t the one running for president. So, you’d have been a fool not to have picked Clinton accusers Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Willey on your team. Trump said he had no choice — and, gosh, you can see his point, since the Clinton campaign keeps bringing up the long list of ugly things he has said about or done to women.
The only surprise is that this glance backward to the ’90s has happened so quickly. It is still May, and the election, I fear, is not until November.
Ah, the 90s, those days when hypocrites roamed the land and when Republicans leaders — you remember, the child molester and his gang of serial adulterers — were tossing around impeachment papers and, Ken Starr, who has been silent about sex scandals at the college over which he now presides, was giving us, uh, blow by blow and when the Big Dog was being defended by — yes — the short-fingered vulgarian who said at the time, and I quote, that Clinton was being slammed “over something that was totally unimportant.”
Of course, Trump being Trump, even back then, didn’t stop there. He said that the whole Monica Lewinsky scandal wouldn’t have been so bad if Clinton had been messing around with really classy women like JFK did with Marilyn or like the Donald did with whoever was on the list that day.
The Washington Post’s Fact Checker offers up this memory-lane interview with Trump by Chris Matthews, who long ago asked him if he ever thought about running for president.
Trump: “Can you imagine how controversial that’d be? You think about him with the women. How about me with the women? Can you imagine …”
Well, no, we couldn’t. Now, yes, we have to.
And so Vince Foster.
This was always crazy-time stuff. It emerged around the time of the video being hawked by Jerry Falwell that accused Clinton of possibly murdering various people. Vince Foster kills himself on a park bench, and it’s a terrible tragedy for his family and close friends, who include both of the Clintons. And so naturally, the Clintons were accused in the far spaces of loony land — spaces that still exist on the Internet and in Donald Trump’s campaign offices at Trump Towers — of killing Foster.
(In some versions, Foster and Hillary were lovers, and, of course, he worked at the Rose Law Firm, and if it wasn’t the Clintons who killed him, who would it be – Ted Cruz’s father?)
For you kids out there, this was before Twitter, before Facebook, back when cable TV news was in its infancy, but still it was possible for rumors to spread, if slightly more slowly, into every corner of this great country, especially if you were Trump and did a “John Miller” by pretending to be your own PR man.
If you were alive back then, you’d know, I guess, that there were four GOP investigations into the matter — that’s no Benghazi number, but still — and all of which found that poor Vince Foster had committed suicide.
What’s different, of course, is that the person now spreading the rumors is the presumptive Republican nominee for president.
Of course it’s the same presumptive nominee who was a leader in the birther movement and who went investigating agents to Hawaii, who, he said, “cannot believe what they’re finding.” Many of us cannot believe it either, since Trump has never actually said what they found.
And Foster? How did this come up? Trump brought it up, although he says he hates to because, you know. He said the whole thing was “very serious” and that the circumstances “very fishy.”
“He had intimate knowledge of what was going on,” Trump said of Foster. “He knew everything that was going on, and then all of a sudden he committed suicide. … I will say there are people who continue to bring it up because they think it was absolutely a murder. I don’t do that because I don’t think it’s fair.”
Trump may not think it’s fair, but, on the other hand, he’s running even in the polls with Hillary Clinton, Democrats are freaking, and if it comes to that, it’ll be a while longer before Vince Foster, or any of us, are at peace.
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons, Flickr.
Why doesn’t the press just shut him off? He’s an egomaniac who lives for attention. But, most importantly, he sells papers and TV time. So your ilk will continue to cover his sorry ass.
BJ, you can blame my ilk, but you can’t blame me. We don’t charge you to read our stuff at the Indy. But we do feel obliged to cover the guy who might be the next president.
MR. TRUMP doesn’t have to “evoke” anything. The murder of Vince Foster was just ANOTHER in a long line of murders committed on behalf of the Clinton’s in Mena.
Bill Clinton helped the CIA / Rockefeller’s run over 100$ million a month in cocaine through the nose cones of the airplanes according to leading State investigators.
For you to mock Foster’s murder demonstrates your udder stupidity. They even put the gun in the WRONG HAND ! Foster was not left handed.
Burying the lede: “To begin a story with details of secondary importance to the reader while postponing more essential points or facts.” – Wordnik.com
If you want to read Mr. Littwin’s column more efficiently start at the end because that, more often than not, is where you’ll find the column’s raison d’etre.
Here’s how Mr. Littwin ended today’s column:
“Trump may not think it’s fair, but, on the other hand, he’s running even in the polls with Hillary Clinton, Democrats are freaking, and if it comes to that, it’ll be a while longer before Vince Foster, or any of us, are at peace.”
Talk about burying the lede! The only way Mr. Littwin could have buried it any deeper is if he published the last paragraph on another website.
But at least he gave those readers who ventured that far—a very small percentage—an idea of what the column was really all about: Mr. Littwin, like other Democrats, is “freaking”.
He has made his dislike of Mr. Trump very, very clear: “You can call Trump a demagogue, a xenophobe, a misogynist, a bigot, a sexist, an authoritarian, a boor, a crypto-fascist and the least-prepared person ever to be nominated by a major party”.
That vitriol comes courtesy of a compassionate and inclusive liberal. Of course, it’s less harmful than throwing rocks and starting fires at a Donald Trump rally as some demonstrators turned thugs did last night in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
This from NPR:
“The scene outside a Donald Trump campaign rally in Albuquerque, N.M., turned violent on Tuesday, leading to at least one arrest and several injuries, police say.
Protesters carried anti-Trump banners, toppled barricades and threw plastic bottles and burning T-shirts at police, The Associated Press reports. Officers responded with smoke grenades and pepper spray, according to multiple news reports.
It’s not the first time a Trump campaign event has erupted in violence. Less than a month ago, as NPR reported, about 20 people were arrested outside the Pacific Amphitheater in Costa Mesa, Calif. There were no injuries at that event, but a police car was attacked by demonstrators, who shattered the car’s windows.”
I’m sure Mr. Littwin will explain the actions of those “demonstrators” in his next column. Or not.
But Mr. Littwin isn’t the only one burying a lede these days:
“It’s not the headline, and it takes 219 words to get there, but a new Washington Post poll on the presidential race reveals that Republican Donald Trump leads Democrat Hillary Clinton among registered voters 46 percent to 44 percent.
At this point, the two candidates are in a statistical dead heat among registered voters, with Trump favored by 46 percent and Clinton favored by 44 percent. That represents an 11-point shift toward the presumptive Republican nominee since March. Among all adults, Clinton holds a six-point lead (48 percent to 42 percent), down from 18 points in March.
It is the first time Trump has vaulted over Clinton in the poll and shows the advancement of the New York businessman over the past six months.” – Washington Examiner
Mr. Littwin has been very slow to recognize stories that don’t fit his narrative (e.g. Donald Trump, Cory Gardner, Bernie Sanders, Laquan McDonald) so acknowledging that Mr. Trump is running even with Mrs. Clinton in a national poll is a big step forward.
We can only hope Mr. Littwin will continue this progress and there will be less kicking and screaming when he is confronted with non-narrative enforcing news.
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“Who kept the faith and fought the fight; The glory theirs, the duty ours.” – Wallace Bruce
“Freddie Gray arresting officer Edward Nero was found not guilty on all counts by Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Barry Williams Monday morning.
Nero faced charges of second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and two counts of misconduct in office.” -Baltimore.CBS local.com
“But there are some areas that the federal government should not leave and should address and address strongly. One of these areas is the problem of illegal immigration. After years of neglect, this administration has taken a strong stand to stiffen the protection of our borders. We are increasing border controls by 50 percent. We are increasing inspections to prevent the hiring of illegal immigrants. And tonight, I announce I will sign an executive order to deny federal contracts to businesses that hire illegal immigrants.
Let me be very clear about this: We are still a nation of immigrants; we should be proud of it. We should honor every legal immigrant here, working hard to become a new citizen. But we are also a nation of laws.” – former-President Clinton
Hillary Clinton’s claim of a narrow victory in Kentucky and Bernie Sanders’ win in Oregon illustrated a deepening rift among Democrats with the potential to hobble the party heading into the general election.
The split outcome in Tuesday’s primaries gives Clinton little leverage to push Sanders to unify his supporters behind her in preparation for an expected campaign against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, who is using the extended primary contest to attack Clinton’s standing with her own party.
Sanders showed no intention of dialing back his fight against Clinton or urging his supporters to fall in line. His spokesman said Sanders is considering seeking a recount in Kentucky, where Clinton was clinging to a lead of a half percentage point. – Bloomberg.com
“A lot of Democrats don’t want to admit it, but Donald Trump isn’t the only presidential candidate playing with fire and recklessly courting an angry mob.
For the latest round of curse-word hurling, chair throwing, social-media stalking and conspiracy-theory swapping, look no further than the supporters of Bernie Sanders.
Over the weekend, dozens of Sanders devotees lost their minds after the Nevada Democratic Party, meeting for its convention in Las Vegas, awarded a majority of delegates to front-runner Hillary Clinton.
Convinced that the establishment had rigged the rules and that Sanders delegates had been excluded for unfair reasons, they booed and traded barbs with people on stage, including Clinton surrogate and keynote speaker U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer.
The convention ended abruptly, descending into chaos that was captured for the world to relive on Facebook and YouTube.
Death threats and vandalism followed, prompting Nevada Democratic Party offices to close on Monday and its chairwoman, Roberta Lange, to release some downright disgusting voicemails and text messages she had received from Sanders supporters. She also reported threats against her grandchildren.” – Sacramento Bee
“Since its launch, a specter has haunted Bernie Sanders’ run for the Democratic nomination. It’s not his age, though at 74 he would be the oldest president in American history. And it’s not that he’s an avowed socialist, the label that a mere eight years ago was used to smear Barack Obama as a sinister, alien threat to the American way of life. Rather, it has been the so-called superdelegates—the 712 Democratic Party insiders who are free to vote at the nominating convention for the candidate of their choosing.
The corporate media’s early inclusion of the superdelegates in the delegate count created the impression of an inevitable Clinton nomination. Seventy-three percent of superdelegates—520 of the 712—have pledged their support to the former secretary of state, but superdelegates are free to change their minds any time before the Democratic National Convention in July. – In These Times.com
“’Cause I don’t have no use
For what you loosely call the truth” – Tina Turner
Greenlight a Vet
Folds of Honor
Special Operations Warriors Foundation
Memorial Day – May 30, 2016