Thursday, August 11, 2016

A Letter to the New York Times

Charles Blow is an op-ed columnist for the New York Times. In the August 4, 2016 edition of the Times he had a piece entitled "Trump Reflects White Male Fragility." Essentially, he declares Trump to be a racist; therefore if anyone votes for Trump they must be a racist also. This "thinking" is not unlike that of the woman attorney who expressed her attitude toward anyone who would vote for Trump in her email to me, as set out in the 8/1/16 blog post. In fact, this attitude has been expressed by many on the left.

On 8/5/16 I submitted a letter to the Times commenting on Mr. Blow's article. To date, it has not been published by the Times, nor I have heard that it will be. As such, I am "publishing" it here.

This is my letter:

"According to Mr. Blow, "if you support Trump, you are on some level supporting his bigotry and racism...and acceptance of racism is an act of racism. You are convicted by your complicity."

So, Mr. Blow believes the perceived sins of the candidate can also be attributed to the voters. Using his logic, all those who voted for Bill Clinton can be deemed to be sexual predators, and possibly even rapists. If you vote for Mrs. Clinton you agree with lying to the American people (FBI Director Comey testified before Congress that she was not truthful with the American people with regards to her emails) and, hence, must be a liar yourself. If you vote for Mrs. Clinton you are in support of criminality, or at the least extreme carelessness, as Director Comey described Mrs. Clinton's negligent handling of emails. Therefore, your vote for Mrs. Clinton means you have no concern for our national security.

I could go on. However, the broader point is that the Left would rather demonize than engage in debate. Sadly, the editorial writers of this paper are of the same mindset. For example, if you disagree with gay marriage you are a bigot. Classical liberalism, for the most part, has died. Classical liberals respected those with opposing views; they engaged in debate - not demagoguery. But today's Leftists do not engage in debate. Rather, given their elitism, given their self-righteousness, their retort to opposing views is this: "you are a bigot, a racist, a sexist, a homophobe," and on and on.

My biggest disappointment is that the "paper of record" has abandoned liberalism for leftism, and reasoned argument for demonization."

Monday, August 8, 2016

Lying Liars

In his 8/7/16 column in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof compares what he says are Hillary Clinton's "fibs" versus Donald Trump's "huge lies." After noting almost equal poll numbers for veracity for the two candidates, Kristof tells us that it is "preposterous" that the two would be considered equally deceptive.

Based on data from Politifact, he states that 27% of Clinton's statements were found to be "false or worse," compared to 70% for Trump. He cites similar numbers from the Washington Post's Fact-Checker. Then, Kristof tells us that "critics ...claim that Clinton lied to the families of the four Americans killed in Benghazi, but fact-checkers have said the evidence is unclear." Really? We know from Clinton's emails that have been released that she was telling others privately afterwards that the attack was a terrorist attack. But publicly, she and others in the Obama Administration were telling the families of the victims and the American people that the attack was because of an anti-Muslim movie trailer. Of course, it was only two months prior to Obama's reelection, and the truth of ongoing terror would not play well with Obama's message that terrorism had been defeated.

Kristof does not excuse her fibbing about her emails, stating "her accounts of her use of private email servers have been consistently false or misleading." He is then "astonished" that "she continues to mislead by claiming that the F.B.I. director, James Comey, judged her answers truthful (he didn't)." So, Clinton does not lie, she simply says false things and is misleading. Kristof: "All this is junior varsity mendacity." Would that be the same way that ISIS is the J.V. team? And in what universe is lying about national security matters just "junior varsity mendacity?"

When Clinton recently appeared on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, she continued her - let's be polite - obfuscation. Clinton: "Director Comey said that my answers were truthful." What the FBI Director said, was that it appeared Clinton was truthful to the FBI. Then again, lying to the FBI is a separate criminal offense by itself. But when Comey testified before Congress he said Clinton did send classified emails on her private server (she denied it), and that the FBI found thousands of work-related emails that Clinton had not voluntarily turned over to them (she claimed that she turned over all of her emails). Recall that Clinton claimed to have set up the personal server, at least in part, because she only wanted to use one electronic device. Comey testified that she used multiple devices.

This past Friday, Clinton responded to a reporter's question about whether she "mischaracterized" Comey's testimony. Clinton: "...what I told the FBI, which he (Comey) said was truthful, is consistent with what I have said publicly." No, it's not. She is still lying! Clinton continued: "So, I may have short-circuited and for that, I, you know, will try to clarify." What in the world does that even mean? Whatever it is, it is world class obfuscation - not "junior varsity mendacity," as Mr. Kristof claims.

In the event you get your news from the New York Times, you should know that the Times had no interest in putting anything about Clinton's continued lying on Fox News Sunday in their paper edition. However, their Public Editor, Liz Spayd did discuss it in her online blog. Entitled "The Clinton Story You Didn't Read Here," Spayd explained how the Times ignored the story. Spayd: "Clinton's remarks were covered by several major news organizations, several of which pointedly challenged the Democratic nominee's candor. But nothing on the interview ever appeared in the Times, either online or in print." Not until Spayd's blog. Good for her.

Spayd gives us yet another instance in which the mainstream media simply cannot be trusted to fairly report the news. Is it newsworthy when one of the two major presidential candidates continues to lie about national security matters? Apparently not nearly as important as Melania Trump copying a few lines from Michelle Obama. That turned out to be a front-page lead story in the New York Times.