ABC’s 20/20 With Some Sobering Insights
Barack Obama Lands in More Hot Water
The Golden Child himself, Barry Obama, was visiting some autoworkers when crackerjack ABC reporter Peggy Agar of WXYZ tried to ask the presumptive Democrat Presidential nominee a question.
Evidently she caught ol’ Barry with his mind on more important things than her and her question, so he waves her off with “Hold on one second, Sweetie,” and promised to answer the question later, a promise he didn’t keep.
Of course, she didn’t appreciate being called ‘Sweetie,’ and her sisters in arms joined her outrage at the comment, quickly characterizing his word choice as sexist and dismissive.
Senator Obama did call her afterward and apologized to her. Now Peggy Agar has enjoyed her brief national moment, and goes back to an existence where nobody in his right mind would ever refer to her as ‘Sweetie.’
No doubt, she must be happy.
Keep in mind that almost everything Hillary says here is untrue
Hillary Clinton has had problems with the truth all along the campaign trail. Recently on the stump, she related a hospital/insurance horror story with quite a bit of passion and detail. Here it is…
Well, the big problem with her horror story (where characteristically both a woman and a child are victimized) is that it didn’t happen.
Clinton Drops Another Tale From Stump Speech
Another Clinton Campaign Story Shot Down
By ELOISE HARPER
For the second time in recent days, Sen. Hillary Clinton has had to drop a story from her stump speech after being challenged on its accuracy.
For the past month, the New York senator liked to tell the tale of a pregnant woman who was denied health care from an Ohio hospital because she did not have $100 the hospital demanded to treat her. After being turned away, the woman was brought back to the hospital days later with severe complications. She had to be rushed to another facility for advanced treatment, but it was too late. Both the woman and the baby died, Clinton told her audiences.
For Clinton, the story was an example of how everyone should have universal healthcare. It is a powerful tale and always drew gasps from the audience.
The hospital, which was never named in Clinton’s speeches, objected this weekend, saying it wasn’t true and demanded that Clinton stop telling it.
The O’Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio, told the New York Times that the woman was insured and was never denied treatment.
The Clinton campaign told ABC News today that the candidate heard the story from a deputy sheriff and had no reason to doubt the story.
“If the hospital claims it didn’t happen that way, we certainly respect that and she won’t repeat the story,” said Clinton spokeswoman Mo Elleithee.
“Candidates are told stories by people all the time, and it’s common for candidates to retell those stories,” Elleithee said. “It’s not always possible to fully vet them, but we try. For example, medical records are confidential. In this case, we tried but weren’t able to fully vet the story.”
Elleithee said the point of the story is that the country has a health care problem. “That’s a point very few people will dispute,” she said. The senator’s credibility came under fire last week when she tried to burnish her credentials as a veteran of international hot spots and described dodging sniper fire upon arrival in Bosnia in 1996 when she was traveling as a First Lady.
She admitted she “misspoke” when a video emerged showing her getting off the helicopter and being greeted by a girl with flowers. Clinton later tried to make fun of the misstep by telling Jay Leno during an appearance earlier this week that she almost was late because she was pinned down by sniper fire at the Burbank airport.
Well, that makes me feel a lot better – they pretty much admit they shoot their mouths off half cocked, and there’s no claim that they ever even tried to verify the story.
Very shoddy. It’s really something that 1/2 of the democrat constituency is rooting for her. To be fair, it’s really something that the other 1/2 of the democrat constituency is rooting for that other guy.
“Is God proud of you?”
On September 11, 2001 the world stood still as Islamic terrorists used four planes as lethal weapons against innocent Americans. The 9/11 Commission was formed to determine how such an attack could happen, and its report documented the trail from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing to the tragedy of that September morning.
ABC is commemorating the 5th Anniversary of the attacks with a two part tv movie, ‘The Path To 911.’ It draws from the 911 Commission Report, published accounts, and interviews to create a dramatization of the events surrounding the incident, tracing the roots back over 8 years to the first WTC bombing in 1973. The primary character is FBI agent John O’Neill, who had a ringside seat at how ineptly the Federal government handled the growing Islamic terrorist threat in the 1990s.
The first part was long but good. It covers a lot of ground but it’s never particularly dull. Hindsight being 20/20, the errors in judgment on the part of the Feds is remarkable. It’s clear from the dramatization that the Clinton administration was just incapable of taking a strong posture as terrorist attacks grew more bold.
President Clinton, Madeline Albright, and Sandy Berger in particular have objected to the representations in the film. Putting aside the unintentional comedy of Bill Clinton stressing the value of telling the truth (remember he manipulated his wife and members of his cabinet to go around on tv shows and interviews and repeat his lies regarding his perjury & obstruction of justice charges), let’s just say that ‘Clinton’ and ‘Credibility’ aren’t exactly synonymous. Sandy Berger, the guy who stuffed documents from the national archives in his socks and panties, similarly isn’t Mr Credibility when it comes to matters like this. The Democrat leadership have gone so far as to lean on ABC to not air the film, which really demonstrates how far they have fallen in the modern era.
Dramatizations do put words in peoples mouths that they may never have said. Dramatizations also puts people in situations that may not exactly reflect the real-life incidents. Too bad for the Clinton crew that it doesn’t matter – that’s the nature of dramatizations and everybody knows it. While the words and situations do not literally portray what happen, they do dramatize a basic truth – the administration didn’t have the wits to recognize the growing threat, nor the will to handle the growing threat.
I’m reluctant, and always have been reluctant, to be a ‘blamer.’ The people to blame for the 911 attacks are the attackers themselves and the organization that made their mission possible. That being said, the 911 Commission’s mandate was not to lay blame but rather to find out what went wrong and to make suggestions to make things right for the future. Whether it succeeded or not is not yet clear, but there is plenty to learn from the failures of the Clinton & Bush administrations.
We can’t fix a problem if we can’t first isolate the problem. Political figures taking a posture of ‘don’t look at me’ is embarrassing. Indeed, it smacks of ego – people who really think the lessons of the ‘Path to 911′ tv movie as primarily about them have a lot of ‘problems.’
I’m sorry to say that it appears that we have quite a few people along the political landscape with a lot of ‘problems.’
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