Steve posted Fri about ABC News’ Jake Tapper’s article that completely misrepresented what Bill Clinton said in a speech delivered in Denver on Wed regarding climate change and the economy. Brad at Sadly No! justifiably raked Jake over the coals for his apparent illiteracy in interpreting what Clinton meant from the transcript, but I must add that after seeing the video which Tapper has posted several links to in his article, I’m inclined to believe there’s just no way anyone could have misinterpreted what he meant. See for yourself.
Download | Play 
Download | Play
Even though Tapper apparently watched that same video, he has since added in an update that he “wasn’t sure just what Clinton meant.” Now whether it is even possible for a journalist at ABC to be that stupid or whether he just continues to be deliberately misleading, I suppose that could be open to debate, but the problem is that now, days after Jake’s misleading piece had been thoroughly debunked and taken to task by blogs on the left and the right, the story unsurprisingly made it into the echo chamber where it was picked up by the likes of Drudge, Rush Limbaugh and now is showing up in publications with titles such as “Bill Clinton Wants An Economic Slowdown” and “Slow The Economy? Chill, Bill.”
I can only shake my head. Churchill was so right.
Filed Under: ABC, Bill Clinton, Global Warming, Hackery, Journalism, Matt Drudge, Media Criticism
No Trackbacks To “The Lie That Just Won’t Go Away“
This lie is so lame.
So Tapper “wasn’t sure what Clinton meant.”
But now he is, or rather, should be.
I believe the words that come to civilized peoples’ minds are “correction” and “apology.”
I believe the words coming to Tapper’s mind are “laughing all the way to the bank” and “me like-ee pudding.”
Seriously this lie sucks.
No drugs, sexs, death, religion, conspiracies or even violence.
The sheeple aren’t going to be very interested in this.
Hey, did I just read on the internet somewhere that Tapper intends to blow up the White House? My God! Pass it on!
http://www.thecarpetbaggerrepo.....l#comments
God damn liberal media.
link doesn’t work for me……but at anyrate….If BC says it…they will attack it.regardless of what he means to say.so it doesn’t matter..they will make of it as the want.
These are the same arseholes that whine and moan that they’re being taken out of context-when they aren’t. They just pooed and fell back in it. I’m sure if it comes to light what a huge whopper this is, they’ll all wah wah boo hoo over how they themselves were taken out of context, while taking someone else out of context, for the purposes of vilification.
BTW. The economy should slow down. It can’t keep growing. There is not an endless supply of anything, and the earth is not and endless garbage dump.
It’s going to be a very long summer and autumn. Between the negative ads and mailings, I’m going to need a lot of alcohol for this election.
miss kitty, I think you’re wrog about the economy slowing down because there’s not an endless supply of anything.
Economies adapt and their growth is fed by change as much as by production and consumption. Movement — innovation, new markets, changing markets — is sufficient to keep economies growing. An economy that stays in one place, depends on the same industries and consumption patterns, is one that will stop growing. that’s why liberal administrations andd policies are almost always better for the economy than conservative ones.
This is my own theory, not yet peer reviewed. Feel free to pass it on.
Jake must have erased the video. Can’t play nor download.
miss_kitty @ 7:
The economy moves in cycles, so slowdowns are just part of it. The myth of endless growth was the problem with the subprime crisis. People got seduced by easy money and big returns, ignoring history and never believing that home prices would decline, effectively eliminating the equity paper wealth that the propelled lax credit standards and a ponzi scheme that caused many companies to lose billions, and their jobs.
Republicans are quick to blame others like BC for their voodoo economics and shockingly enough, don’t want to be accountable.
I’ll bank that Tapper knows he’s wrong. Tapper himself isn’t the issue, he’s just doing the dirty work that his corporate masters pay him to do.
This is the problem with our corporate media:
Who owns CNN? or MSNBC? ABC?
by systemfailure Wednesday, Apr. 09, 2003 at 1:43 AM
So ya think we have a “free press” eh? Check out who owns who, and who owns what you think…….
http://la.indymedia.org/news/2003/04/47530.php
The media is only as Liberal as the corporate interests that own it.
spit take @ 9:
Look if it doesn’t slow down, it comes to a sudden stop. It’s called a crash. We are using up resources at an unprecedented rate of speed in a never ending desire to own everything we can possibly get our greedy little mitts on, and tossing crap all over the place as we go. The economy has to slow down, if it’s a consumer based economy. Or it WILL crash.
That’s the simplistic version.
And Bill Clinton WASN’T saying that.
And I don’t know why he’s opening his big yap. His wife is gonna trip all over that big dick of his and have a little crash herself. JMHO.
Bill, Hillary, Barrack, John and Mitt all work for the same company. They are competing for the top dog position but please don’t expect change for the better . . . more of the same is more likely.
Bill has a way of making bullshit smell like roses - you have to hand it to him for that. But what he fails to mention in his righteous speech is that when he was president we did have those things - they where all destroyed on his watch. We’ve had the technology since the mid 90’s, but I guess it wasn’t a good time then. But now that his wife is running for president and gas is three bucks a gallon - it’s a good time. And if you blame it on big oil, what makes you think big oil will allot it now?
“Who killed the electric car”
Global warming is not concrete yet, but according to Bill and Al is it. They are all ready to trumpet in a global carbon tax. We are most like contributing to the warming, but not as much as the UN says we are. And like I stated above, if it’s such a big deal, why didn’t we make the switch in the mid 90’s? Good luck finding a credible scientist that will put his career on the line can publicly state that global warming is as serious as the UN makes it out to be. You’ll only find pseudo scientists like Al Gore. The numbers aren’t in yet and they know it - yet there still shouting “doomsday!”.
“Global Warming - Doomsday Called Off”
It’s more “War on Terrorism” type psychological warfare - “War on Humans”. And if they do make a global carbon tax, what the hell is the UN going to do to fix the problem? But a trillion dollar vacuum and suck up all the CO2 - give me a break…
I don’t trust the Clintons as far as I can kick them. Shits so corrupt nowadays - really quite sad.
I have seen engines run on electricity, fresh water, salt water, hydrogen, hemp oil, bio fuel - this stuff is old news. We could already have it - but our currency is based on oil instead of gold - so they just won’t let it happen. If Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, and possible Korea nationalize their oil supply - it will send our dollar into the pooper faster than and you can say “Euro”. You watch, we will invade any country that tries to drop the US dollar as it’s base currency for oil trade. When China and Russia decide to do it, where in for a world of shit.
And the only candidate talking about our weak dollar and its cause is getting mocked of the stage if they allow him to show up at all. I don’t understand why every candidate isn’t bring up this in debates - it seems like Ron Paul is the lolly voice.
Oh well, we’ll be a borderless North American Union soon because people are too busy being bias to notice.
And while time is spent debunking this asshat and fighting with misinformation brigade, guess what? They have just succeeded in steering the conversation from how shitty their entire platform is. Bankrupt of ideas, they resort to bold face lies. Get used to this “slow the economy” lie because we will be hearing it pop up for the next year no matter how many times it is proven false.
If they get away with saying Clinton “said” this, then we should be able to get away with saying Bush “said” all sorts of things. For example, this week, Bush said “Some say, trade hurts our economy.” So our headline should be: Bush says, “Trade hurts our economy.”
Every silly straw man argument that Bush uses (usually beginning “Some say…”) could be turned into Bush’s own viewpoint.
Lies circle the globe, while Truth gets dressed.
Maybe Truth should just come out naked. I always liked naked Truth. Oh, right, censors…
So on purpose.
As generous a Bill Clinton was to the telecommunications industry by signing the 1996 Telecommunications act, it just wasn’t enough for them. Even after that gift, they were, and still are, relentless in their pursuit of the Clintons. The Corporate Media wanted total control of the FCC and the Bush regime has achieved that goal for them.
The problem I have with the Clintons is that they still haven’t wakened to the fact that no matter how much they bend over backwards for this industry, it still goes after them.
Now, Mike McCurry, Clinton’s former press secretary, is a telecom lobbyist who is besily working to end net neutrality so that common folk like us won’t be able to hold discussions like this in the future. He is also on Hillary’s campaign committee, but apparently it isn’t really winning much, if any favorable coverage from the Corporate Media. They know they can get the whole package from Republicans, why should they work with Democrats?
Check this out about Mike McCurry:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind.....ke_McCurry
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/06/.....index.html
A good journalist tries to inform people.
A bad journalist tries to mislead people.
Jake Tapper started his article by taking Bill Clinton’s words out-of-context because he wanted to mislead people. He didn’t show what Clinton really said until the 11th paragraph.
Jake Tapper is a bad journalist, and ABC News should ask him to resign.
There’s the librul media at work for you.
Do you dare take the red pill?
I can’t wait for these older politicians to either retire or lose. Term limits are a must. Washington has a sickness. It’s called greed. Between Senator Stevens to ex-politician Tom Delay, greed griped our political process. We must get the younger generation energized and vote! I’ve told all my nieces and nephews to vote this year, in fact I’ve been nagging the shit out of them, but I don’t care. Children are our future.
At what point will today’s version of a “journalist” be called before a senate investigation committee, or some other supposedly ethically conscious tribunal, to answer and be held accountable for what they’ve elected to report to the public?
It used to be that journalists earned, possessed and assumed a fundamental right in representing the public’s interests, asking the hard questions and mandating the answers so often evaded by those guilty of forsaking the public’s interests in effort to serve their own. Today, however, true journalism has been usurped by corporate profit margins and the “reporting” individual’s narcissistic drive to obtain celebrity status through the opinion-centric vitriol personally espoused in their pieces, but that might possibly land them on network payroll as a bobble-head pundit who gets to pop in and be compensated whenever beckoned at anytime over the 24-hour spin-cycle. Hey, they might even get their own show out of it. Possibly even a book deal.
Shame.
All we need to do is to have a copy of the full context of what Clinton said, keep it and cutnpaste it whenever we come across somebody doing a hit job on Clinton with the “bogus version”. You’d be surprised how quickly the marvelous internet (especially email lists) can counter-attack. But, like the Obama email, it’ll continue to have a “technological” life of its own to some degree, but that’s life.
Of course,you can always invent a similar distorsion for whoever you want to slime on the other side and send it out as a chain email…..nah, that would be too much like the wingnuts. Isn’t it interesting that these bogus smear jobs seem to always emanate from right-wingers?….
In today’s journalmalism you don’t get fired for this. You get fired for “speaking truth” to corporate power.
I think a person in the audience brought up a lie that just won’t go away either
P.D. @ 23:
term limits are never the answer
worst thing that ever happened to this country was when they term limited the presidency
if the people are too lazy to vote out the incumbent, they get what they deserve
or would you prefer what we have in california? we have a legislature filled with crackpots and nutjobs who look at their short tenure and grab what they can in that short period of time
my idiot state instituted term limits due to one corrupt pol….and now we have 2 dozen who are worse
want to really fix what ails the election situation? stop gerrymandering….
I wonder if Obama could handle the corporate media.
After the President bashed the CNN reporter, they attacked him.
I hate to feel bad for politicians, i know that they never feel bad for me. But its gotta be hellish to know that anything you say (and sometimes might have said, didn’t say, or someone thought you might have meant) can, and will, be used against you in the court of public opinion.
Billary @ 15 is right about a fair amount in that post. We all could see this coming. Hell, Jimmy Carter saw this coming in the late 70’s. The 90’s were the time to do it. Oil was cheap, the people had money to invest, no more Cold War, etc. The time was right to build a bridge to the 21st century. But instead we spent a decade gazing at the new diamond stud in our collective naval and gossiping about sex acts in the White House.
We even had Mr. Environment himself as the vice president (or third wheel). I don’t think that any legislative progress would have been possible, given the circumstances. But investing in developing new power generation technologies and the like was certainly possible. Bill Clinton could sell you your own car. If he had chosen to, he could have sold enough of the American people on the idea. It would have been one helluva legacy…far better than a stained dress and a tortured definition of “is”.
In any case, we don’t need to slow the economy down, we need to change its direction. We don’t need to abandon capitalism, we need to retool it for circumstance that are far different than when it industrialized. But more than anything, us little folks need to change some of our ways. Buying and investing locally would be the best starting point for creating new jobs and helping the environment. Shop till ya drop if you’re buying from your neighbors.
Clinton DIDN’T say we should slow down the US economy, but he SHOULD have.
Business cycles demand recessions to blow off excesses and misallocations of capital. Think about it.. it’s not ok to keep building huge Mcmansions in place of farmland, or older, smaller structures… it’s unsustainable in every way I can think of.
We can’t POSSIBLY keep borrowing from the world to continue our consumption. People buying our debt will reasonably want to use it themselves, in a recession.
And Clinton is wrong again on the world economy… as the US goes into recession, so will the entire world. It’s happening now, boys and girls, no need to argue about it.
Lots of homebuilders and homebuyers will go bankrupt, along with financial institutions. This is DESIRED.
We need that capital to repair infrastructure, restore local manufacturing, repair downtowns. We can’t POSSIBLY keep using resources at the rate we have been, especially in the US.
PS - Citicorp just gave hundreds of thousands of Brits until March to close their credit card accounts… there’s a great example of the US housing problem hitting the world.
PPS - Clinton was wrong about NAFTA, too. That, for another day.
Jake Tapper looks to much like Jon Cryer. I feel sorry for Cryer that his likeness is associated with a dickweed.
This is what he gets for contradicting “the Path to 9/11.”
In some esoteric larger sense, change is necessary. When change happens too quickly, it leads to chaos. When change happens too slowly, it leads to stagnation and death.
Many times those that struggle against change are either comfortable in their current situation or afraid of a future where they will struggle. Those that defend a faster rate of change are either eager to move into a future they see as more beneficial, or are struggling in their current. Nevertheless, the pendulum swings between various stages of chaos and stagnation – and this is progress.
Whether discussing political persuasions, economic theories, or social programs there will always be those who want to roll back the clock; and those who wish to propel us faster into the future. Too many times this mandate (for either) stems from an emotional response based in fear. Fear is the enemy – and people can be made afraid (with or without any basis). In our current hyper-analyzed political cycle and 24-hour news entertainment inundation, fear sells. Logic doesn’t.
Personally, I’ve never understood the anger that is directed toward the Clintons, though I do see this anger constantly. What I do understand though, is that anger is just another facet of fear, for you can’t have one without the other. The Clintons, for some, have become a personification of this anger/fear. They are a de-facto target for those who are afraid – those who are angry.
It seems this attitude originally started as a simplistic political ploy years ago, but now has been extended to a level of mythos. When the mythos becomes a better story than the analysis – print the mythos. It sells better. And when you run out of fiction, make it up - it is, after all…fiction.
Give them enough rope and they will hang themselves….the lies will get so big they just cannot be ignored.
Kefa @ 35:
Eventually…
Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty!!
Snowball @ 19:
Snowball, I agree with you all the way. I just hope that the millions of Americans that are hooked on National Media are finding these words of truth.
You can tell from Tapper’s defensive rationalizations that he wants to preserve his ‘in’ with the Matt Drudge crowd. I still can not for the life of me understand why homosexual gossip Matthew Drudge holds so much sway with the Republcans. I guess he is just considered an expert character assassin with no moral boundaries. Is that why so many closeted gay men can be found at the very top levels of the GOP propaganda machine? The MSM has never dared expose that sick, twisted, corrupt relationship.
I personally am not surprised by this story with Jake Tapper.
We see this kind of spin and manipulation from the corporate media everyday. It just never get’s reported. People just focus on Fix News because they do it all the time.
When it comes to every election cycle however, ALL THESE NETWORKS show their true colours. In the case of the current coverage for the Democratic nomination, it is so strikingly obvious. They had already set the stage for a coronation after just the first primary in Iowa when only less than one percent of the American population had voted. It was really the people of New Hampshire who saved Democracy in this country at the time.
I personally now ONLY switch my television set just see the candidates “themselves speak in their own words” and form my own judgement. I don’t listen to the comments or spin the analysts and commentators have for each candidate because they will be twisted by them to reflect the particular candidate they either like or do not dislike in a certain way.
It is very sad to see what they news media has now become in our times. Do you think we are fools?
Many on the far right will do anything to try to disrupt the Clinton bid for the presidency. This is just another example of the repukes hatred of the good that Bill Clinton brought to the country (though ot all he did was good - my fair and balanced opinion).
On the other hand, I defy the repukes to come up with a singe good thing that bush has done for the people of this country (and I don’t mean those who have profited from the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq).
Taark, I think you have a good point about the fear factor. The oil economy has been a comfortable one and many have benefeted from it&