Letters to the Editor
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So, let me get this straight...
Clinton's critics will take every opportunity to believe virtually anybody over her, including people who have strong financial and legal vested interests in telling their own version of events. And therefore... she should drop out of the race? Because this unreasonable, knee-jerk reaction is "emblematic of the ways the prolonged primary campaign is affecting the intraparty dynamic"? (Oh, and by the way, I haven't read a phrase that awkward since I was a teaching assistant in grad school.)
Yikes. That is some of the most tortured "logic" I've seen in a long while.
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But what a song it makes!
Have to echo the other posters asking for the retention of Steve Benen (if you can't get Tim Grieve back -- he doesn't seem to be doing much with The Politico) on The War Room, the principal reason I read Salon, and the reassignment of Koppelman. There must be something somewhere that needs cleaning.
In the last few weeks TWR has deteriorated from a quick political news update to an outlet for the sort of political bloviators Grieve and Joe Conason took such delight in punctuating.
Koppelman's latest is fatally disappointing. As several others have pointed out, Clinton's story wasn't "essentially accurate" but completely wrong. Why should we believe someone caught in multiple lies (my own favorite is "We had no idea who Mark Rich was when we pardoned him," narrowly beating out "I was never in favor of NAFTA") over a hospital administrator? Because hospitals keep records that can be checked and, as has been said here, are forbidden by law from refusing emergency medical care.
Having lived in both Athens and Meigs counties for several years, it's pretty obvious that Clinton and her people got snookered into a large dose of Appalachian romantic fatalism, the kind that makes for fascinating folklore and great country songs but can't always stand up to literal truth. That she didn't realize this and didn't bother to check it as the real media did casts doubt on her competency, as Koppelman's factually challenged defense of her casts doubt on his.
And please, ditch the talking heads videos. TV has bored us with these for years, with better lighting and prettier people. If it don't move, don't shoot it, print it.
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There's a limit even to proofreading
"In the last few weeks TWR has deteriorated from a quick political news update to an outlet for the sort of political bloviators Grieve and Joe Conason took such delight in punctuating."
I kind of like it like that, but it should have read "puncturing."
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Clinton's story
Yes I agree with this peice thoroughly. I did not vote for Clinton in the primaries. (I'm for Obama.) But though I did find Clinton's story about sniper fire genuinely offensive,attacking her about this one is unfair. That story essentially reflects a sad truth about our health care system.
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Koppelman is ridiculous
Before he just seemed like a biased hack. Now Koppelman reminds me of a press secretary.
This post attempts to deconstruct another famous Hillary Clinton "lie." In his rush to defend Clinton, Koppelman reveals that in this one instance, Clinton did not actually "lie" - as in consciously tell an known untruth - but she was instead "mistaken," she "misspoke," or she was poorly informed. At worst, she was careless about and unconcerned with the facts. Someone else, not Hillary, is to blame for this "mistake."
Koppelman deserves the Tony Snow Award for Spin on this piece. It reminds me of the various Bush press secretaries, how they spin a lie into a half-truth, then into misspeaking, and finally into being misinformed. Maybe that's where Koppelman belongs, shilling for some liar in a suit, rather than posing as a journalist.
Hillary Clinton is little more than George W. Bush in a pantsuit.
And Alex Koppelman is Tony Snow without the paycheck.
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Clinton's statement is clearly true
Many Clinton haters out there have just become plain irrational. This is how the AP reported what Clinton said:
I'll tell you a quick story that I heard in Ohio when I was campaigning there," she said. "A deputy sheriff told me about a young woman who worked at the pizza parlor there and she worked for minimum wage, she didn't have any insurance. She got pregnant, went to the hospital — and I don't blame the hospital. The hospital said, 'We can't take any more charity care. You have to give us $100 before we can examine you.' She didn't have $100. Went back another time, they told her the same thing."
Sen. Clinton said the woman returned a third time "in an ambulance. And they worked hard to stabilize her, and she lost her baby. Then they airlifted her to Columbus to the medical center, and for 15 days they tried to save her life, and she died."
The facts confirm that the police officer DID tell Clinton the story pretty much exactly how she repeated it. She didn't say that she had investigated or that the story she heard was true; she just said "here's a story in I heard in Ohio from a police officer." How can anyone say that she lied, when she clearly did not.
Obama tells such stories all of the time. Bush tells these types of stories all of the time. I repeat stories that I hear all of the time. Are you really going to hold Obama accountable for the facts underlying every story that he hears and repeats. And, do you really think that if you did so, you would find that the stories he repeats are 100% accurate in all respects. Please, get some perspective folks.
As an aside to some of you posters -- if you don't know this already -- the whole point of prenatal care is to prevent emergencies. Medical professional take your blood pressure, examine you and the baby, do tests, monitor you and the baby, etc., to make sure that you don't end up needing to go to the hospital in an ambulance. To assume that prenatal care for the women would not have avoided the tragic ending seems a huge leap to me and justified only by your anti-Clinton bias. I would think that most Obama supporters would be in favor of making sure that all pregnant women get prenatal care -- the point Clinton was clearly trying to make.