In his latest column, Ron Fournier performs the pundit’s equivalent of creating an online sock puppet to amplify his own dumb criticisms of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Here’s the preface Fournier wrote for his column, which is entitled “Memo to Hillary: ‘You’re Still the Problem'” and subtitled “Old friends wonder what happened to the Clinton ‘we once knew,'” for maximum tsk-tsk and boo-hoo:
The following is a faux memo, although its contents are based upon my interviews with people close to Hillary Clinton, including some I’ve known since my years covering the Clintons in Arkansas. These sources spoke on condition of anonymity because attempts to make their case directly to the Democratic front-runner and her campaign team were icily received. Like my December 2013 memo titled “You’re the Problem,” this represents their point of view.
What do Hillary’s imaginary friends, channeled by Fournier, want Hillary to do this time? It’s such an amazing coincidence, y’all — they recommend that Hillary do exactly what the Beltway horse-race hacks like Fournier want her to do, plus add a dollop of wish-fulfillment for Trey Gowdy, the Republican congressman running the Benghazi show trial / circle jerk.
Fournier, whose overweening self-regard may actually be Trump-scaled, even makes an appearance in his own fake memo from Friends of Hill:
Of course, that won’t stop attacks from Republicans or the carping of cynics in the media like Fournier (What is it with that guy? We made his career!). But it’s the right thing to do and the smart thing to do.
Jesus Christ, what a ridiculous hack.
Memo to Fournier (from your “true friends” — honest!): You wish you were a “carping cynic.” That’s something to aspire to, for the likes of you. What you actually are, sir, is a weeping ass-pustule on the desiccated press corpse that is tied around the neck of our national polity like a decaying albatross.
Last week, Doug asked if any other Hillary skeptics were being pulled in her direction by the non-stop absurdity and sheer mendacity of her media detractors. The answer is yes.
Botsplainer
I used to like to fuck with him on Twitter, until he blocked me.
Same with Chuck Todd.
Germy Shoemangler
Yesterday morning I wandered into my local supermarket for cat food and beer (the cat food was for me; the beer was for the cat).
I stopped at the little bagel and self-serve coffee area; that’s where a mounted TV was showing CNN at low volume with subtitles. I stood there for a few moments and watched. “Hillary Clinton E-Mails!”
They were going on and on about Hillary and her emails. It looked like they’d uncovered a major scandal, something only a few degrees less incendiary than “dead girl live boy”
A few other shoppers stopped and watched. The majority of voters who don’t spend their time devouring Charles Pierce, Media Matters, Balloon-Juice… what are they to think?
“She’s a crook! Otherwise why would they be spending so much time talking about this stuff?”
They’re STILL talking about her emails. This will continue until election day.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
That was a miserable read.
burnspbesq
Dear Mr. Fournier,
Gfy.
Very truly yours,
A Concerned Citizen
dedc79
I blame Balloon Juice. Before I started reading this blog, I didn’t even know who Ron Fournier was. Sure I may have been a bit ignorant regarding just how frighteningly painful and wrong “centrist” punditry could be, but it was a blissful ignorance.
burnspbesq
My favorite 2016 campaign related story of the day:
The organizers of a meet-up for Sanders supporters in Alabama planned for 30 people. They got 300.
al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/07/alabama_feeling_the_bern_for_s.html
Corner Stone
Jim Webb, GFY.
Paul W.
24 hour news networks and sinecured journalists have led us to this great moment in our nation. Excuse me while I vomit and then continue to ignore the MSM.
the Conster
I’m going to guess that the total number of people in America who have ever heard of Ron Fournier is statistically zero, and the number of people who form their opinion based on what Ron Fournier writes is actually zero. I don’t even understand why Ron Fournier is even a thing.
schrodinger's cat
@dedc79: You and me both. Also too, Charles Murray and Chuck Lane. I blame DougJ.
Gin & Tonic
@burnspbesq: Gotta say that’s a pretty impressive draw for a Brooklyn-accented Jewish Socialist from the Yankee-est of Yankee states.
schrodinger's cat
@Corner Stone: What did he do?
lgerard
The National Journal
Isn’t that the publication that announces every 4 years that the Democratic candidate for President is the most liberal Senator/Governor/Whatever?
Betty Cracker
@the Conster: Fournier has always been a worthless GOP hack, but he also served as Washington bureau chief for the Associated Press and is deemed a Very Serious Person by the rest of the lame-ass national political media herd. I agree most people who don’t follow politics closely wouldn’t have a clue who he is, but he does influence the coverage they hear whether they know it or not.
SiubhanDuinne
At some point today, may we please have a Yahrzeit thread? We mentioned on an unrelated and specialized thread last night that today is the second anniversary both of our getting confirmation of General Stuck’s recent passing, and (later that same day) the devastating demise of Tunch. (John’s initial thread about Tunch generated well over 1,000 comments, most of them gasps of horror and profound shock and sorrow.) And because July 13, 2013 wasn’t quite shitty enough already, even later that day came news that George Zimmerman had been acquitted by a Florida jury of the murder of Trayvon Martin.
At this point, I don’t want to re-visit the awfulness of that day, but I’d love to trade Tunch memories and jokes and comments (“He is not fat! He is floofy!”) and remember Stuck as well.
bemused
@Betty Cracker:
The national political media herd need to get over themselves…if only. I expect hell to freeze over first.
SiubhanDuinne
@Germy Shoemangler:
:-)
=^..^=
rikyrah
uh huh
uh huh
what did people who
a) voted for Rahm
b) did not vote
think was gonna happen?
…………………………
Spending at neighborhood schools to drop by about $60 million
Chicago’s neighborhood public schools will see cuts of about $60 million while charters and contract schools can expect to gain $30 million overall under school budgets released Monday.
And even more cuts may come, since those budgets are based on a big assumption that Springfield lawmakers will enact pension reform that will save Chicago Public Schools $500 million.
CPS will hold schools to their enrollment in doling out per-pupil money this year, Chief Financial Officer Ginger Ostro said Monday in releasing individual school budgets. If more kids turn up than planned, the school stands to gain, but if fewer show up, the school will lose money, she said. This departs from CPS’ practice the last two years, in which schools were not penalized financially if fewer students showed up than expected. CPS, in short, will no longer provide the financial safety for schools short on enrollment.
CPS expects overall enrollment at neighborhood schools to drop by about 4,000. but enrollment charter and contract school enrollment to incease by about 3,000, so per-pupil spending at neighborhood schools is expected to drop by about $60 million overall and charter and contract school spending to rise by about $30 million.
The reductions are part of the $200 million in cuts recently announced by CPS…
chicago.suntimes.com/news/7/71/767017/chicago-public-schools-feel-pain-fewer-students-show
the Conster
@Betty Cracker:
Ahhh, I forgot about his whole AP gig. Then fuck that guy and bombs away.
BGinCHI
The guy leading the GOP national polls thinks we should have invaded Mexico, while Hilary thinks we should grow the middle class.
Maybe Fuckhead Fournier can dicksplain that equivalency to me.
Cervantes
Great idea.
Shakezula
LOL.
Germy Shoemangler
@SiubhanDuinne: Cats rule.
mashable.com/2015/07/13/native-americans-pet-bobcat/
Tree With Water
It’s an interesting dynamic all right, and one that has played out since the campaign of ’92. Hell, I believe Hillary to be unfit for the presidency, and I’m (as always) constantly offended for her sake by the attacks of these political barbarians. How can a decent person not be?.. or even people possessing mere shreds of decency; even those retaining the only last vestiges of their once full hearted sense of human decency; all are offended by the attacks. Or should be, anyway.
SiubhanDuinne
@Germy Shoemangler:
Cool story!
Splitting Image
How much do you want to bet that three of those sources are named Dick Morris, Lanny Davis, and Mark Penn?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Old friends like Joe Lieberman and John McCain, Bill Daley, Evan Bayh…
@Betty Cracker: but he does influence the coverage they hear whether they know it or not.
Exactly. I agree it’s a fine thing that rating of the “Sunday shows” are in the tank, that most people don’t know who David Broder and Ron Fournier and Andrew Sullivan are, but the people who still watch those shows, who think Andrew Sullivan is the fascinating and independent thinker, and David Brooks is a thoughtful moderate, are the people who decide what goes on the top-of-the-hour reports and the stuff people sit (flip) through while waiting (looking, dead tree or on-line) for the sports and the weather– both sides do it, Republicans maintain that such spending is unacceptable, etc.
Another Holocene Human
@Germy Shoemangler: I’m of the opinion that Millennials are growing up knowing that the media they consume is highly biased and partisan. Boomers remember a time when things were different, and when they become very old, they will be even more vulnerable to the fake news pitch.
These things always work for a while, until they don’t. The Boomers’ grandparents grew up in a world where media was partisan, biased, and infamous for making stories up….
Geeno
@schrodinger’s cat: Does he need to do anything?
boatboy_srq
Translation: doing what Fournier thinks HRC should do will only turn Fournier down to 10 (from 11). But she should do it because otherwise Fournier will blow the speakers (faster/sooner). Not exactly a selling point if the only thing this buys HRC is very slightly less loud “carping of cynics.” I’d suggest Fournier rethink this, but that implies Fournier thinks in the first place.
boatboy_srq
@burnspbesq: More proof that there are more (and more highly) motivated Dems in Red States than the DNC thinks.
Another Holocene Human
@schrodinger’s cat: Charles Murray, if you mean the white supremacist, is one of those dangerously wrong personages who needs to be watched. I’d heard of him through academic channels long before I ran across him again in political blogs (gag gag). Ditto Dinesh D’Souza, big apologist for “scientific” anti-Black discrimination and bias. This was before he decided to go full metal joke on us.
MattF
Fournier doesn’t even rise to the level of ‘concern troll’. His message is “Please, please, please confirm that all the bad things I think about you are true.” Well, how original.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@schrodinger’s cat: I saw a clip of him on Fox lamenting that “his party” has drifted so far left. Id bet this month’s mortgage payment that if you could read his mind, he’s talking about the Confederate flag
? Martin
Being for whatever the media is against is also a formula for a GOP nominee named Trump.
Not a good plan.
MattF
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Appearing on FOX News to lament the sorry state of the Democratic party. I see a problem there.
Betty Cracker
@Another Holocene Human: I’m not convinced that knowing the media is partisan and biased will improve anything. From what I’ve observed, people who reach that conclusion tend to just avoid coverage altogether rather than taking it in and analyzing it critically. Is uninformed really a huge improvement over misinformed?
Mr. Longform
It’s been so long since Secretary/Senator Clinton has had any coverage other than mindless spittle directed at her that it’s hard to imagine what an unbiased, straight-forward assessment might look like. Even in 2008 it was all about what a failure she was, not what it was like to be up against a once-in-a-lifetime charismatic wunderkind. She really has never gotten a journalistic break. And guys like the bush-league know-nothing who wrote this piece are just lazy. This is Maureen Dowd-level crap.
Belafon
@BGinCHI: “At least Trump has a specific jobs plan.” //
Tree With Water
‘Everybody Has a Killer in Their Family’: Growing Up Black in West St. Louis”.
That’s the title of a really interesting article posted today at Salon.com. Imagine my surprise when I got to the end and saw it had been written by Juan Thompson, son of Hunter.
BGinCHI
@Belafon: I love it when he says he’s going to be the “greatest jobs president ever.”
WTF does he mean by that?
Kay
This isn’t going to make her any friends among the punditry:
Good for her. We know what happened. We know what factors contributed to income inequality. Anyone who won’t admit we know is never going to help fix it.
gus
I was gonna guess “lead. With leadership.”
Kay
@gus:
He wants her to restore trust by releasing everything, but I think we all know that won’t matter- they’ll keep on it.
I think she should release as much as she can but I don’t kid myself it will resolve “questions”. It won’t. How long they cover it has nothing to do with anything real.
gelfling545
Even though I just put my “Bernie” sign in the front yard, the more I see how terrified – and they clearly are terrified – conservatives are of HRC, the more I feel satisfied that she would be a good candidate (and I actually expect she will be the candidate).
Bill Arnold
@BGinCHI:
Greatest change in employment level, perhaps. Maybe he aspires to beat Herbert Hoover, at least in absolute numbers if not percentages.
Kay
Is that “reporting”? Unless someone told her, how could the reporter possibly know what Clinton “intended”?
Don’t you have to add at least a “could be”?
nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/07/13/hillary-clinton-blames-republicans-for-promoting-inequal…
dogwood
@Mr. Longform:
How could they tell it like it is? In their world there can be no such thing as a BLACK “once-in-a-lifetime charismatic wunderkind.” Same goes for all the anti-Hillary Democrats who believe she lost because she was incompetent rather than he won because he was better. To quote George W Bush, there is such a thing as the “soft bigotry of low expectations.”
chopper
@SiubhanDuinne:
seconded.
Iowa Old Lady
@BGinCHI: I thought it was the greatest job president God ever made. So you know. It’s divine intervention.
BGinCHI
@Bill Arnold: The sad fact is that if he did what Hoover did the right would just applaud him.
Betty Cracker
@gelfling545: I’m liking HRC 2016 a lot more than the 2008 edition — the emphasis on income inequality in this speech today echoes a lot of what Sanders has been saying. I think she’ll ultimately be the candidate too, and I fully expect the Beltway media to amp up the stupidity accordingly and screech non-stop about Monica and Benghazi and Bill’s dick, etc. It’ll be interesting to see what effect their feeding frenzy has on voters.
BGinCHI
@Iowa Old Lady: So classy. So huge. So smart.
? Martin
@Another Holocene Human:
I have two teenagers. They are both of the opinion that any delivered media (TV, newspaper, magazines, etc.) are just advertisements for someones agenda. They consume exactly zero of it unless it comes via a recommendation from someone they trust. I don’t particularly like that because the people they trust are just as biased and partisan, but they and all of their friends I interact with are extremely cynical about anything mass-media – more than most people probably realize.
BGinCHI
@Betty Cracker: Wait until she makes Michelle Obama the VP nominee.
No way Fournier survives that.
? Martin
@BGinCHI:
More trickle-down. Because it’s been trickling so well.
BGinCHI
@? Martin: Busboy and croupier unemployment craters! Yooge.
J R in WV
Wow, just got Internet connection back, still in amazing thunderstorm, tiny creek by house went from 1 inch deep 6 inches wide to gushing 6 feet wide torrent!! Limbs from trees hitting house in high gusty winds, etc, etc.
For the 4th or 5th time in the last 60 days, with lots of plain old heavy rain most every day. Strange, strange weather this summer. I read somewhere a well respected climatologist moved his family to Denmark in prep for crazy weather. Wonder if there’s a best place in America?
Another Holocene Human
@Betty Cracker: It means when they get trolled, it’s by their own side, whether it’s a blog like Rawstory or on one or other social media platform.
the Conster
OT – Can’t link to it from my phone on the train but all of you northwestern US dwellers need to move, yesterday. Read the New Yorker article on the overdue Big One along the Cascadia fault. Ho lee shit!
gene108
@Another Holocene Human:
Millennials are ridiculously mistrusting of authority. It is not “man, that’s partisan, I’m going to find the truth”, it’s really internalizing “both sides do it” and therefore I better not vaccinate my infants (and yes, the people by and large young enough to have infants and toddlers that need vaccinations are Millennials).
9/11/01, for them, was a childhood memory.
The same way distrust of government, for older Gen X’ers, caused by Watergate drove them to embrace Reagan’s Republicanism, there’s a lot of good will pro-government spending liberals need to work on to bridge the “fuck it, everyone’s lying” attitude a lot of Millennials have.
Another Holocene Human
@J R in WV: Somewhere above sea level. Welp, I’m screwed.
gene108
@Kay:
I think Hillary needs to come clean on her role in the murder of Vince Foster, running cocaine from Central America into Arkansas and murdering teenage boys, who found out, by tying them to railroad tracks.
Then and only then can we have confidence in her. She must admit to her crimes: real and imagined.
Baud
The media coverage doesn’t affect me for the primary — any Democratic front-runner would experience the same contempt. It does make me all the more enthused for a repeat of the 2012 general election, when we learned that the polls were not so skewed after all.
trollhattan
@Germy Shoemangler:
What the heck? Okay, if pet bobcats were a thing, I demand cave art showing dudes riding mammoths with pet bobcats on their shoulders. Make this happen!
Another Holocene Human
@gene108: Okay, you’ve confused me. My friends who’ve had babies are Gen X or Gen Y; the only Millennials I’ve met with kids put them on Medicaid, which runs you through the vaccine conveyor belt with ruthless efficiency. If you know what I mean and I think you do. I guess some wealthier hyper educated Indigo parents exist at 25, but remember these folks have had 15 years to come across the anti-anti-vax blogging and during their formative years, as well. If internet comments are anything to go by (so scientific, I know) the tide has turned in liberal circles firmly in the pro vax and scorn woo direction. That was completely the hell not true in the 1990s and that pained me a lot. (I subscribed to Skeptical Inquirer for ages but dumped it a couple of years ago when it turned into Libertarian BiMonthly, now with 25% more dudebro juice in every issue.)
ps, let’s not forget that mathy thing where kids in school, so 5 and up, are the disease vectors. they kill babies too young to be vaccinated. So the offending ‘rents were 5-8 years back, Mills as young as 17, I’m sure some 17 yo moms are vaccine refusers but we know that a lot of the antivax plague are wealthy white women who’ve completed higher education, you know, in their 30!!
BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan: What about the cave art with Jesus riding a dinosaur? Heathen.
BGinCHI
@efgoldman: All the Sociology and Justice Studies professors.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
They’ll never believe that she’s released everything, no matter what. They could break in and steal the damn server, and they’d be sure there were more emails that had been deleted before they got there. Once you’ve decided not to believe somebody, there’s nothing they can say that will make you change your mind.
trollhattan
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Aw, man, you would bring that up. Well, I done broke my official Joseph Smith & Wesson Urim and Thummim and am hoping I can replace them with a Google Glass, so I can read cave drawings too.
Kay
@Roger Moore:
Serious conservative lawyer weighs in:
Two “clearlys”! Chertoff wasn’t satisfied with just one bullshit lawyer-word “clearly”, that case required two.
nytimes.com/1996/06/05/us/hillary-clinton-s-fingerprints-among-those-found-on-papers.html
Gimlet
@gene108:
Part of the reason for this is probably to get the base out to vote in the election against the evil usurper Obama and now the beastly Hillary.
NotMax
@BillinGlendaleCA
In Russian cave art, dinosaur rides Jesus.
Applejinx
Villagers being assholes neither disqualifies, nor qualifies, Hillary for President.
They’re useless and bullshit. She’s a tough lady and doesn’t have to kowtow to them in any way.
I don’t think she’s better than Bernie but… how about I put it a more appealing way? I think she can learn. Bernie can’t be swayed the way she can, so it’s lucky he’s on the right page since he won’t be changing. Hillary may well be changing.
If so, she may be changing to co-opt the populist wave Bernie’s riding, and if so I hope to hell she decides that’s the way of the future. It is, but I can’t decide that for her: all I can do (and have BEEN doing) is giving money to Bernie and not a penny to her because I don’t yet trust her to not be a neoliberal. The economy is my hotbutton issue, it’s behind so much. She needs to be a lot more intense about it, and prepared to back it up.
That I don’t trust her does not mean I believe wacky conspiracy theories of wingnuts. I just think she may be too ‘centrist’: she’s no Elizabeth Warren, unless she learns to be.
That could still happen.
gelfling545
@Betty Cracker: I have especially liked how the media keep trying to get Sanders & Clinton to attack each other & they just won’t do it. They just keep going out there & saying “This is what I would do.” I believe that whichever gets the nomination will have benefited from the opposition which is a thing you almost never see. I hope they continue that way. I also believe that Sanders campaign has been tremendously liberating for Clinton.
Applejinx
@burnspbesq: Fuck me.
They got 300 people and he was not THERE. Seriously? What if he hit the road and went down to Dixie like he says he is going to do? Is he going to outdraw Republicans in Alabama? I’ve been saying he would draw Tea Partiers and folks like that, but I didn’t expect a crowd like that in Alabama for an event he wasn’t even at!
Hope Hillary’s paying close attention, whether or not she ends up being the nominee.
Kay
@Applejinx:
At La Raza’s conference:
What has gotten into her? :)
cjonline.com/news/2015-07-13/e-pluribus-unum-top-democratic-nominees-hillary-clinton-martin-omalley-…
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx:
Ed Kilgore at Washington Monthly is fond of reminding readers that in the first term of the Bill Clinton White House, Hillary and her circle were regarded as the epicenter of liberal influence. Are you thinking of something in particular that would mark her as anti-populist or corporate-friendly? Is it the Walmart board thing?
If you’d indulge me in some psychodramatic speculation, I’d guess that Hillary is–deep down–a liberal wonk on domestic policy who’s always been aware that people expect women to be squishy emotional peaceniks, and for that reason skews towards hawkishness on foreign policy.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx:
No, he won’t. All the Tea Party believes in is that black people and Mexicans have it too easy. Everything else they say is just posing, with accidental similarities to actual populism. (edited slightly after original posting)
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: IMHO being impressed that there are 300 Bernie-curious people in Alabama is kind of condescending to Alabamans.
Tree With Water
Turns out that Juan (son of Hunter) Thompson’s good words are posted at TPM, not Salon:
talkingpointsmemo.com/theslice/black-men-murder-west-st-louis
Keith G
@FlipYrWhig: Your’re are quite correct.
Bernie, god love him, has a hard ceiling to his support that varies by region. It the old South, it ain’t gonna be all that high. Plus I remember when John Anderson (look him up, kids) rocked the OSU campus in 1980.
During the fun of a turbulent campaign, Anderson support was as high as the low 20s (%). When it came time for actual votes, he did not carry a single precinct anywhere rolling up 7% of the popular vote.
The moral: It has been the trend that folks will be very generous with their political “support” of off-beat or protest candidates until it comes time to cast a vote.
J R in WV
@FlipYrWhig:
I’ve lived in Alabama, thanks to the US Navy. 300 people showing up at a Sanders meeting in Alabama is a fucking miracle!!
Every liberal in the state, maybe. Well no, that is condescending. but still.
Cervantes
@FlipYrWhig:
But from the linked article:
Anyway, what I did expect to hear from the critics is how few African-Americans there were among the hundreds of people who showed up unexpectedly.
FlipYrWhig
@Keith G: My parents, who were not quite hippies but definitely campus liberal types, voted Anderson in ’80 because they disliked Carter’s “born again”-ness. I was just a kid but remember their talking about Anderson. I voted Anderson in my 5th grade class’s mock election. I’m pretty sure Carter came in a distant 3rd.
Origuy
@Germy Shoemangler: From the bobcat story:
Austerity, bitches!
FlipYrWhig
@Cervantes: @J R in WV: Eh. Gary Johnson and Jill Stein got 15K votes in Alabama in 2012. Phish plays Alabama. Nice but not a miracle, IMHO. YMMV.
Roger Moore
@gelfling545:
It used to be the Republicans who believed in an 11th Commandment about not badmouthing other people in the party.
Turgidson
@Botsplainer:
For a while, I persistently beseeched him on Twitter to go to a doctor to get treated for head trauma, since he kept writing the same thing over and over and appeared to have no knowledge of recent events.
He rewarded my concern by blocking me. Whatta jerk.
FlyingToaster
@Tree With Water: Not Hunter’s son.
The author is Juan M. Thompson; Hunter’s son is Juan F. Thompson.
Barry
@Germy Shoemangler: “They’re STILL talking about her emails. This will continue until election day.”
Hopefully and onto Inauguration Day.
Archon
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