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Bowling Green Massacre

This whole event does show where Trump and his team are vulnerable and that is to being laughed at. This was nothing new for his team, and usually they've managed to move onto the next thing taking no damage but this time because people simply laughed and made up jokes it has actually stuck.

Rational argument, facts and so on are useless against their tactics, being laughed at is their kryptonite.
 
Meadmaker said:
After reading the uproar, I still don't feel misled. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was this instead of that and this detail isn't exactly like that and.....whatever. As she said it, I assumed some details would be wrong, and they were.
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Then she's done something remarkably clever, either by accident or on purpose. If you feel that you weren't misled, does that mean that you believe Obama instigated a travel ban that was never reported? Or do you mean that you're absolutely clear on the history of recent US immigration measures, so you know for a fact that he didn't?

Because the whole point of the statement was to give the false impression that Trump's travel ban was no different to anything done by the Obama administration. By apologising for the one small lie about the imaginary Bowling Green Massacre, Conway has managed to slip through the big lie about Obama's imaginary travel ban, and even got the green light from a fact-checking column in doing so. Which means that the less informed will chuckle a little at the imaginary massacre, but then go away thinking that Trump's ban was just business as usual. And that, if so, means that it was a very effective piece of lying.

Dave
 
If you get caught making stuff up often enough, folks will simply tune you out.

Boy who cried wolf.

I think Ms Conway should have paid more attention to the lessons to be learned from bed time stories. The point of that story was not to "make up stories," the point was don't lie to people who are counting on you to look after the community's interest.

If she keeps doing this she'll either get fired, get ignored (and render her position moot) and possibly both. Even a modest amount of research would have allowed her to present that case of miscreants operating on American soil (though not as she described it) in order to make a point. As presented, it makes her look (at best) like a fool.
 
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dudalb said:
I am a military history buff,and most books on the War of 1812 describe the River Raisin Massacre.
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I live not far from there and wrote an unpublished novel about it. Ironically, it was written while we lived in Alaska. It sat in storage for many years, then disappeared during our last move.

Fun fact: Frenchtown later became Monroe, Michigan, and was George Armstrong Custer ' hometown.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk
 
Meadmaker said:
Let's try it like this.

I heard her quote before I heard about the uproar regarding a non-existent massacre. I knew exactly what she was referring to. (Although I....errr....got the state wrong. I thought it was in Bowling Green Ohio. That's why I thought it was near Detroit. I remember hearing about it on local news, though.) I knew that I hadn't forgotten about any massacre that had occurred in Kentucky, or even in Ohio. I assumed that she was not giving a precise description of executive actions that had been taken.

In other words, I didn't feel misled. I knew it was a pair of would-be terrorists who were planning to do something bad. After reading the articles today, it turns out they had already done some bad things, and were planning on doing more, and they hadn't quite settled on just exactly which bad things to do.

After reading the uproar, I still don't feel misled. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was this instead of that and this detail isn't exactly like that and.....whatever. As she said it, I assumed some details would be wrong, and they were.

But, her political opponents by all means ought to seize on it and play it for all it's worth. Congressional investigation maybe? Maybe seven of them? That was the score on Benghazi, I think. Keep repeating it until people believe that KellyAnne Conway went onto news shows and fabricated a story about a massacre in Kentucky, hoping to fool people with a fake news story about an unreported massacre. People in America these days might just be stupid enough to believe it. It wouldn't be the first time.

Because, the alternative would be to believe that she's a fairly ordinary person, who drew parallels between two situations, exaggerated their similarities, downplayed their differences, and did a bit of cherry picking to support her case beyond what a fair reading of all the facts would be. That interpretation would be impossible, right? She must be a lying propagandist trying to mislead stupid people.
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That's a whole lot of apologetics right there. Maybe you could get a place on the Trump team.

Answer this one question; What was the "it" that the press didn't report on?

Keep in mind that your answer needs to parse plausibly with the rest of her statement.
 
C_Felix said:
All this simple slip up stuff.

I don't understand how one can accidently say, "there was a massacre in this city and it wasn't reported"

when what was meant to be said was, "two men were arrested for trying to sell arms to Iraq and that was reported"

Anyone?
Anyone?
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Meadmaker has already explained it.

Only problem, that explanation was as transparently bogus as the original statement, and the subsequent half-assed attempt at what some people amusingly call a retraction.
 
You would think it was a slipup because the "facts" Conway cited -- there was a massacre in Bowling Green, the media never reported it and it led to Obama banning Iraqis entering the U.S. for six months -- are very easy to check. Too easy for anyone to get away with.

What I wonder is, did Conway actually believe this? Okay she found out it didn't happen, but even so. Just the fact she thought it was possible makes her scary. That there could be "a massacre" and the media "wouldn't cover it?" Why would she think that? Because it involved Muslims? Because the "liberal media" loves Islam so much, Muslims can even go around killing Americans and the media will cover it up? That isn't just "inaccurate" it's weird.
 
newyorkguy said:
You would think it was a slipup because the "facts" Conway cited -- there was a massacre in Bowling Green, the media never reported it and it led to Obama banning Iraqis entering the U.S. for six months -- are very easy to check. Too easy for anyone to get away with.

What I wonder is, did Conway actually believe this? Okay she found out it didn't happen, but even so. Just the fact she thought it was possible makes her scary. That there could be "a massacre" and the media "wouldn't cover it?" Why would she think that? Because it involved Muslims? Because the "liberal media" loves Islam so much, Muslims can even go around killing Americans and the media will cover it up? That isn't just "inaccurate" it's weird.
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If she was just mistaken (no chance at all), that would be yet another sign of White House incompetence. If she was lying (she was), it's yet another sign of White House malevolence. Either way, it's inexcusable unless one believes that incompetents should continue to be employed by the White House after said incompetence has been proven, perhaps as some sort of program to employ people who cannot find gainful employment elsewhere.
 
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newyorkguy said:
You would think it was a slipup because the "facts" Conway cited -- there was a massacre in Bowling Green, the media never reported it and it led to Obama banning Iraqis entering the U.S. for six months -- are very easy to check. Too easy for anyone to get away with.

What I wonder is, did Conway actually believe this? Okay she found out it didn't happen, but even so. Just the fact she thought it was possible makes her scary. That there could be "a massacre" and the media "wouldn't cover it?" Why would she think that? Because it involved Muslims? Because the "liberal media" loves Islam so much, Muslims can even go around killing Americans and the media will cover it up? That isn't just "inaccurate" it's weird.
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I don't think she even cares whether something she says on the record is true or not. She knows that plenty of useful idiots will leap to her defense regardless of what she says. And go through the most torturous verbal gymnastics imaginable trying to excuse or obfuscate what she clearly said.

And there's no reason she shouldn't feel that way. She got Trump into the White House using the same strategy.

Why stop now?
 
Dave Rogers said:
Then she's done something remarkably clever, either by accident or on purpose. If you feel that you weren't misled, does that mean that you believe Obama instigated a travel ban that was never reported? Or do you mean that you're absolutely clear on the history of recent US immigration measures, so you know for a fact that he didn't?

Because the whole point of the statement was to give the false impression that Trump's travel ban was no different to anything done by the Obama administration. By apologising for the one small lie about the imaginary Bowling Green Massacre, Conway has managed to slip through the big lie about Obama's imaginary travel ban, and even got the green light from a fact-checking column in doing so. Which means that the less informed will chuckle a little at the imaginary massacre, but then go away thinking that Trump's ban was just business as usual. And that, if so, means that it was a very effective piece of lying.

Dave
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You have hit the nail on the head here. In fact, I would have one small quibble with the above. I would not say that they were extremely clever, I would simply say that their opponents were extremely stupid. Well, not stupid exactly. I don't know the exact word to use. Clueless? Unaware? I doubt the Trump team did it on purpose, but I think the opponents managed to turn it into a Trump win, as they did all through the campaign season.

What happened is that she made a statement trying to justify a policy, and instead of focusing on the policy, the opponents seized on the "gotcha" moment of the non-existent massacre.

Ok, that's all very well. No actual massacre,, just a couple of bad guys maybe doing some stuff that might have involved thinking about large scale killing, but what about the policy? No. No. She was lying. She made up junk about a massacre that never happened. Well, ok, sort of, I mean, there were a couple of bad guys, but that's not really important. The important thing is that they pushed this blanket ban and they're trying to avoid talking about it by bringing up other stuff that isn't important. Not important?!? She just plain LIED! There was no massacre!!!

I don't like ducking questions, so I'm going to try to answer yours. When I said I didn't feel misled, I was focusing on the statement about the massacre, because that was the focus of the thread, and of the uproar in general. I don't think she invented a story about a massacre, or about terrorists, in order to mislead people.

As to the general contents of her statement, it's hogwash. Of course their policy is a lot different than previous policies. I wouldn't have been able to tell you that Obama put travel restrictions of any sort in place during his tenure, but I didn't have to look it up to know that whatever Obama's policy was, it wasn't very much like Trump's. She's a politician spinning and dissembling. That's not really news.

This travel ban was very questionable policy, implemented in a truly oafish manner. (I started to type, "It's Trump at his worst" but that's wrong. I'm pretty sure we'll see much worse in the remaining 206 weeks of his term.) It's just the sort of think I expected when I watched the returns on November 8, hoping that Detroit and Philadelphia were just late in counting votes.

However, that particular statement didn't really have anything in it that I found noteworthy, including the reference to a massacre.
 
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newyorkguy said:
You would think it was a slipup because the "facts" Conway cited -- there was a massacre in Bowling Green, the media never reported it and it led to Obama banning Iraqis entering the U.S. for six months -- are very easy to check. Too easy for anyone to get away with.
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Like Trump's inauguration turnout. Doesn't slow them down though, does it?


What I wonder is, did Conway actually believe this? Okay she found out it didn't happen, but even so. Just the fact she thought it was possible makes her scary. That there could be "a massacre" and the media "wouldn't cover it?" Why would she think that? Because it involved Muslims? Because the "liberal media" loves Islam so much, Muslims can even go around killing Americans and the media will cover it up? That isn't just "inaccurate" it's weird.
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It seems she just says what sounds good. Pretty sure that being...what's the word... factual...is the last thing on her mind.
 
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“I clarified immediately. I should have said terrorists and not massacre,” Conway told Kurtz. “I’m sure it will live on for a week.”

The gaffe might seem ironic for Conway, who — like other White House aides and Trump himself — have attacked reporters at length over mistakes.

A Time reporter's erroneous claim that Trump removed a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office — a tweet that he quickly deleted and apologized for — became a focus of Trump's first speech after Inauguration Day and his press secretary's first briefing.

The White House was still hammering the mistake days later, when Conway interjected Time's “falsehood” into an interview with Chuck Todd on NBC.

“It was corrected immediately,” Todd noted.

“But why, Chuck? Why was it said?” Conway replied — then brought the mistake up four more times before she let Todd complete a sentence.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...er-critics-haters-after-bowling-green-fiasco/

This sort of self-victimization is so utterly pathetic. Does she even realize why people make fun out of her? Is she so oblivious to the fact that people expect more from those who are supposed to speak for and argue on behalf of the president of the USA? You know, the "leader of the free world"? Then again it seems that torch is being passed to the chancellor of Germany cause Americans are so utterly unreasonable and thick headed that they can't be trusted with such responsibilities.

She is really god damn awful that's what she is and instead of taking a hint and resigning this clown insists on continuing making a mockery of America and it's president. What that thick headed president needs is damage control and a lot of it but here the "damage control" needs damage control of it's own.

What a *********** joke of a country.
 
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Arcade22 said:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...er-critics-haters-after-bowling-green-fiasco/

This sort of self-victimization is so utterly pathetic. Does she even realize why people make fun out of her? Is she so oblivious to the fact that people expect more from those who are supposed to speak for and argue on behalf of the president of the USA? You know, the "leader of the free world"? Then again it seems that torch is being passed to the chancellor of Germany cause Americans are so utterly unreasonable and thick headed that they can't be trusted with such responsibilities.

She is really god damn awful that's what she is and instead of taking a hint and resigning this clown insists on continuing making a mockery of America and it's president. What that thick headed president needs is damage control and a lot of it but here the "damage control" needs damage control of it's own.
What a *********** joke of a country.
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Indeed, but the joke is providing the world with many hours of cheap entertainment.
 
Traditionally, US administrations had the decency to fabricate a crisis and then use it to justify their policies.
Trump&co. are just too unorganized and probably too lazy for that, so they make their policies and fabricate reasons for them afterwards.
 
The gaffe might seem ironic for Conway, who — like other White House aides and Trump himself — have attacked reporters at length over mistakes.

A Time reporter's erroneous claim that Trump removed a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office — a tweet that he quickly deleted and apologized for — became a focus of Trump's first speech after Inauguration Day and his press secretary's first briefing.

The White House was still hammering the mistake days later, when Conway interjected Time's “falsehood” into an interview with Chuck Todd on NBC.

“It was corrected immediately,” Todd noted.

“But why, Chuck? Why was it said?” Conway replied — then brought the mistake up four more times before she let Todd complete a sentence.
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This might be an example of that hypocrisy stuff I've been hearing so much about lately.
 
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