Hillary Clinton’s memory failed her again. The Secretary of State claimed she mis-spoke after her claim to have stayed at the ruined hotel in Belfast was debunked by British newspapers. “Mrs Clinton told assembled politicians at Stormont: ‘When Bill and I first came to Belfast we stayed at the Europa Hotel … even though then there were sections boarded up because of damage from bombs.’” The trouble with that is it could not have happened. The Times Online reports:
The Europa, where most journalists covering the decades-long conflict stayed, was famed as Europe’s most bombed hotel, earning the moniker “the Hardboard Hotel”.
However, the last Provisional IRA bomb to damage the Europa was detonated in 1993, two years before President Clinton and his wife checked in for the night.
The last time the Europa underwent renovations because of bomb blast damage was in January 1994, 22 months before the presidential entourage booked 110 rooms at the hotel.
Memory, even in honest people, can be a tricky thing. “Eyewitness identification evidence is the leading cause of wrongful conviction in the United States” according to Wikipedia. Cornelius Ryan had the opportunity to interview veterans shortly after the Second World War and came away with the belief that human memory was an unreliable source.
At the 1967 National Colloquium on Oral History, Forrest Pogue, the biographer of General George C. Marshall, described the combat interview program that was started by the army in 1943. In this project a team of army historians was assembled to interview soldiers just coming off the line, tapping into a level of memory not dissimilar to that studied by Elizabeth Loftus, who asks people about their memories fairly recently after presenting them with the material to be remembered. What was exciting to me about the army interview project was that it clearly made possible the opportunity to examine in the archives of the history of World War II documents with an unusual immediacy, documents that would include the perceptions of ordinary combat soldiers. At this same colloquium, however, Cornelius Ryan, author of The Longest Day, the story of the D-Day invasion, offered some criticism of the interview process. He had read these army combat interviews, and he also claims to have conducted six thousand interviews of his own, and this is what he said about them:
I discovered that interviewing is not reliable. I never found one man who landed on Omaha Beach who could tell me whether the water was hot or cold. I never found one man who landed on Omaha Beach who could tell me the exact time when some incident occurred. . . . Gathering the material after was very, very difficult indeed, and it did not lend itself to total accuracy.
This raises the possibility that Hillary may actually believe she visited the hotel in the immediate aftermath of the bombing. Perhaps she enlarged on the story of her visit until she came to believe it herself. Possibly her knowledge of the narrative of events led her to place herself in it. She knew the story and from there it was a small step to become of the characters. For whatever reason, whether out of dishonesty or a memory malfunction, Hillary Clinton “mis-spoke”. After John Kennedy was assassinated, his lionization as a martyr caused a retrospective change in memory.
John F. Kennedy’s assassination not only reshaped Americans’ subsequent views of him but even changed how they remembered their earlier perceptions. Although Kennedy was elected with just 49.7% of the vote in the fall of 1960, almost two-thirds of all Americans remembered voting for him when they were asked about it in the aftermath of his assassination.
Memory has been described as our own personal Time Machine. It lets us go back into the past, not necessarily as it was, but as we remember it. And the distinction is sometimes essential. Occasionally a science fiction writer stands this proposition on its head and posits situations where it is the memories make us. We do not make them. A tide of memory spits out our present consciousness and seize us like prisoners. Keith Laumer’s A Trace of Memory uses this theme. It describes a man haunted by an ancient recollection which contains his destiny. I think that Hillary’s problem is probably different from that depicted by Keith Laumer. Her destiny is falsely remembered in her memory. If she changed her present regard for herself, it’s possible that her recollections would likewise change.
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78 Comments
1. Sertorius:“Memory, even in honest people, can be a tricky thing.”
Tacitus lives!
Oct 19, 2009 - 6:35 am 2. HEPT:That and John Kerry’s trip to cambodia that was SEARED, SEARED mind you in his brain.
Oct 19, 2009 - 6:44 am 3. Robert Speirs:self promoting, lying, glad handing sacks of political shit.
Another problem is determining what really happened so as to judge the verity of memories. For instance, Wilder Penfield’s reports of experiments with placing fine wires at certain places in the brain claim that certain evoked memories, such as that a certain song was being sung at a birthday party held decades ago, are exact re-enactments of what occurred at the party. But how can the truth of that ever be known, except by comparing it to someone else’s memory of the same event? How reliable is that memory? Unless, of course, the song was “Happy Birthday”!
Oct 19, 2009 - 6:48 am 4. DougRek:Observation, experience, memory. I was involved in a 3-car collision on an Interstate Highway, caused by a lady going the wrong way. All three vehicles were totally destroyed: the lady was killed. The Interstate highway was closed for over five hours to clean up the mess. Three ambulances, five fire trucks, and countless Sheriffs’ deputies, state police, and local patrolmen were on the scene. The various authorities took statements from a dozen witnesses, all of which ended up a month later in the police report. Reading that report, it would be well nigh impossible to determine the “true facts” of the event. From one report to the next, the direction of travel of the various vehicles was different, the actions of the vehicles and sequence of impact changed, the color of the vehicles varied. I am sure those who contributed reports of the accident have the same “facts” in memory today: mostly wrong.
Oct 19, 2009 - 7:16 am 5. Urban B:There is not only the selective memory, and the embellished memory to consider. The question in this case is, I think, is why? The D-Day soldiers couldn’t remember the temperature of the water because, let’s face it, it really, really, really, didn’t matter. John Kerry remembered going into Cambodia because his interpretation of the Vietnam War meant he MUST have been there. He MUST have committed war crimes, or seen them, or something.
For Hillary, I think it’s pure jealousy. Some people just happen to have a dynamite personal history. (Our illustrious host, for one. I really hope Wretchard writes a book!) Hillary believes that her history lacks particular bonafides. There seems to be a theme for her. I don’t think it makes her a bad person, but I think it illustrates her tendency toward selfishness. Is there nothing to talk about but herself? Same goes for Michelle Obama’s flubs before the Olympic committee. She was supposed to be building up Chicago. Remember Al Gore in 2000? Holy cow!
Oct 19, 2009 - 7:24 am 6. Josh:How does it go – “Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past.”
“Fake but accurate”, synthetic memories that might have been true, and teach the right lessons, seem to be the modus operandi of the modern left.
Do the people making stuff up, know they are making stuff up? Doubt it. I’ve heard about the unreliability of eyewitness accounts many times. Seen it in myself. Perhaps more often with age. And, y’know, Hillary, like all of us, is older now than she used to be.
Oct 19, 2009 - 7:28 am 7. SEA7:I highly recommend the excellent episode of WNYC’s Radio Lab “Memory and Forgetting” http://bit.ly/vxwo. The second segment features Dr. Loftus and her work on memory.
“Adding Memory:
Oct 19, 2009 - 7:35 am 8. Marty:. . . Can you add memories? Dr. Elizabeth Loftus says yes. She’s a psychologist in the department of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California at Irvine, and her research shows that you can implant memories—wholly false memories—pretty easily into the brains of humans. Her work challenges the reliability of eye-witness testimony, and is so controversial that she once had to call the bomb squad. . . . “
Occam’s Razor—she’s just a liar when she thinks she can get away with it.
Oct 19, 2009 - 7:40 am 9. HEPT:Yup, I’ve spoken with some of the guys I served with and memory plays tricks, the basic gist of the stories is the same but lots of minor and some major details are different I think due to perspectives.
Oct 19, 2009 - 7:42 am 10. Marty:Hillary may have heard about the bombings and the damage and it became something she thought she saw.
John kerry now, I believe that was something more sinister.
Then again Kerry ain’t been my favorite turd since winter soldier.
of course, memory is tricky–
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3322642/Did-you-see-the-gorilla.html
Oct 19, 2009 - 7:46 am 11. michaelhoskins:Sigh.
Oct 19, 2009 - 8:01 am 12. Subotai Bahadur:Memories are faulty things, and eyewitnesses are often far from reliable. There are methods of teasing a reasonable approximation of the truth from multiple accounts that differ in details; but I won’t go into that.
The key point ties into a previous thread. “Truth” is what the state-controlled media says it is. There are many in it and in the government who long to have Winston Smith’s job. In their hearts, a proper government would be composed of “Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty”.
It is only the fact that we do still have alternate sources of information that statements like this [and this is far from Hillary's first, and she is only one of many politicians whose past is something they have concocted out of whole cloth] made in a pathetic attempt to burnish her own reputation can be disproved.
Note that it was not any of our state-controlled media that ferreted out that detail. Granting, it is the turf of the Brit papers; but can you conceive of any of our media outlets, including FOX, aggressively and regularly fact checking statements by Democratic Party members? Not going to happen. The Brits, while subject to their own version of that syndrome; drink statist tea instead of Democratic Party Kool-Aid, and so they will take a shot at American politicians sometimes. Our finding out such things depends on their contempt for us rather than any American concept of journalism.
Thus, Hillary gets a pass on anything that pops out of her mouth. Charles Rangel, who chairs the committee that writes our tax laws is guaranteed blind acceptance of his excuse that he “merely overlooked” $1.3 million in annual income for tax purposes and similarly a number of real estate deals that are violations of the law. Timothy Geithner, who used to run the NY Federal Reserve Bank and now runs the Treasury can claim that the reason that he did not pay his income taxes is because he could not understand the complexities of a cheap, common computer tax program; and the media will lap it up. Indeed, the rate of tax evasion, immigration law violations, and shady ties amongst Democrat appointees has pushed past the improbable to the statistically impossible short of conspiracy; and the media will not gainsay any of their excuses. And, incidentally, neither will any of them pay the penalties for their acts that we mere “proles” would be doomed to in a similar case. Such selective tolerance being perfectly acceptable to the American media.
And any outrageous claim coming from the White House automatically becomes received wisdom.
It would not fit the Narrative if they did anything else.
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Sorry for the rant. My tolerance for fools and syncophantic poltroons is limited before I have finished my morning coffee. And not much larger after.
Subotai Bahadur
Oct 19, 2009 - 8:13 am 13. anton:As a twenty-five year veteran of law-enforcement I can say with considerable certainty that most of the problems stemming from “eyewitness” statements are caused by the witness reacting to something and then interpolating what they obeserved with what they think preceeded the observed event.
A traffic accident is the best example, very rarely do you had an independent witness that was observing the accident before it ocurred, they turn and look when they hear the crash. They then make a series of plausible assumptions based on past experience and observed events.
Victims of crimes are far more reliable, few things in life will focus your mind more completely that to have a gun pointed at you at short range.
Hillary’s problem is that she was witness to nothing and had to construct her story from whole cloth. There may have been a boarded up window somewhere on the hotel or in the neighborhood and confabulated the story from there, much like the Sarajevo incident. I think she spends a lot of her time wishing that she was the centerpiece to some dramatic event.
A lot of politicans feel the need to have backstory that poses them in some heroic/historic way. A few decades ago many of the actually did (JFK, Eisenhower, Teddy Roosevelt, etc), oddly they didn’t constantly tell stories of their heroics.
Oct 19, 2009 - 8:22 am 14. DW:HRC’s “mistaken memory” concerning having to dodge sniper fire may have been the most costly mistake of her failed campaign. It isn’t so much that people aren’t willing to give others the benefit of a doubt. Except when the person committing the gaffe is the same one who proclaimed that any hint of her husband’s Oval Office improprieties were nothing more than the sordid product of a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”
Memory in general may be unreliable, but the minds of voters across the country were competent enough to make the connection.
Then again, maybe we should give her the benefit of a doubt. At least it’s a little less worrisome to believe that as secretary of state she’s merely forgotten who our enemies are.
Oct 19, 2009 - 8:25 am 15. Brock:Not remembering the color of the wallpaper at the hotel would be an understandable a failure of memory. Only someone with an eidetic memory would remember that. But that’s not what Hillary did here – she invented things whole cloth, just like with the Sarajevo story. In both cases her memory “failed” in such a way to make her life (and herself) far more dangerous and exciting than reality would suggest. That’s a pattern of deceptive self-aggrandizement.
Oct 19, 2009 - 8:46 am 16. steveaz:Richard:
“Memory, even in honest people, can be a tricky thing.”
All of which only underlines the indispensability of duly recorded committee proceedings. Everything else, from hearsay accounts of hashed-out agreements, to ex-parte media histories, is corruptible.
If we can reengage our citizens with committee processes, say, by exposing children to Robert’s Rules’ role-plays in civics classes as early as the fifth grade, they’ll learn to ignore media myth-making as adults and to despise politicians who engage in deliberate, self-aggrandizing revisions like Hillary’s latest.
Oct 19, 2009 - 9:06 am 17. Lifeofthemind:Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable and juries have no idea about what they saw in the court room. Ed Levi was part of the Chicago Jury Project, that secretly taped the jurors, and some held it against him. The problem with witnesses and juries is the same as the problem with Democracy. Bad as they are it is hard to come up with anything better.
Hillary Clinton is running hard for the title of most feckless and gaffetastic Secretary of State ever. Maybe she can switch jobs with Joe Biden.
While everyone misremembers not everyone demands that the audience submit to their perception of reality. One mark of a traditional gentleman was a certain modesty in expression. A natural inclination to hedge and qualify statements is not designed to evade responsibility but rather to acknowledge limits and validate that others may have valid information also. A person displaying a sense of ethics learned from the ghetto like a child when challenged will attempt to tear down any threat “You didn’t say that” or establish a story that allows no other interpretation “He came screaming out of that street like a bat out of Hell and aimed right for her” while a well raised person will have the inner security to accept their own limits “I did not hear you” or “I saw the vehicle enter the intersection after a truck cleared and the other car was already crossing.”
In training for TSA and at FLETC we would do the surprise encounter, now write down a description, role play scenario. It is a humbling and important lesson. Children should all be taught the Telephone Game where a story is told at one end and works its way around the room until something very different arrives at the other end.
Oct 19, 2009 - 9:19 am 18. Dave D.:..Ms. Clinton presents fabrications as memory that seeks to enhance her experience, make her relevant and is selfserving. If she does believe them, she is delusional. If she knows they are false, she’s a liar. Either way she beclowns herself. What next, was she in Memphis with Jesse Jackson on that balcony with MLK ?
Oct 19, 2009 - 9:29 am 19. Mad Fiddler:Did I just say this?
Oct 19, 2009 - 9:30 am 20. Andrew_M_Garland:In politics, appearing sincere is important for gaining support. A few politicians are sincere from an understanding of the facts. The others get used to saying anything that is plausable, with a constant enthusiasm. It is even more convenient to believe what you say, as with Al Gore. A Liberal is only fact-checked occasionally, so it works great for them.
“Sincerity is the most important thing. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
The Political Dictionary: Sincerity
—
Oct 19, 2009 - 9:42 am 21. lc:It is easy to implant memories into one-third of people, as explained by Elizabeth Loftus: Remembering what didn’t happen.
My apologies for being off topic (well, maybe not; truth or its misrepresentation is the topic)
Lord Monckton on the new climate treaty, which O I’m sure will show up for and sign.
Oct 19, 2009 - 9:56 am 22. headhunt23:http://tiny.cc/7Ki1t
I would say that a lot of memory tricks is due to people listening to other people’s rememberance of an event and then losing confidence (or gaining confidence) in what they saw.
Looking at Anton’s post, I remember watching a car accident happen right in front of me, and being 100% sure that one of the drivers had run a red light. I even said to the other driver “you ran a red light” as we got out of our respective cars. But then after listening to another witness, and then hearing the laws on red light running, I was no longer 100% certain.
I suspect that is the way with most incidents – people listen to other takes and then conform their observations with the narrative that is forming.
Of course, in HRC’s case, she is just a seriel liar.
Oct 19, 2009 - 10:06 am 23. Gordon:If you have grown children and want to have some fun, compare memories of some past event, such as a holiday or vacation. You’ll find complete gaps where they have memories and vice versa.
Oct 19, 2009 - 10:08 am 24. Mad Fiddler:Here’s a quote from Department of Energy’s information titled “Sale of the Elk Hills Naval Petroleum Reserve.”
“In May 1995 the Clinton Administration proposed placing the federally-owned Elk Hills Naval Petroleum Reserve on the market as part of its efforts to reduce the size of government and return inherently non-federal functions to the private sector.[my bolding] In February 1996, the Congress passed and the President signed the Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1996 containing authorization to proceed with the sale.”
Here is a wonderful example of government officials inventing, torturing, and mis-representing facts.
The Elk Hills oil reserves had long ago been part of the known oil reserves of the Continental United States set aside from commercial development so as to be available to the U.S. Navy in event of war. Even now, only a handful of U.S. Navy ships are nuclear; the rest run on refined petroleum. So many folks had questioned the Clinton’s decision to abandon those strategic reserves at the time.
This was a lie on multiple levels.
It is an absurdity to assert that the “de-acquisition” was somehow intended to reduce the size of government. It is a grotesque side-stepping sleight of hand to suggest this was intended to help the private sector generally.
Simply, it was a gift to his pal Al Gore.
Although the Gore Family ownership interest in Occidental Oil has been well known and documented since Albert Gore SENIOR was appointed to the company’s board of directors by Armand Hammer, his son Albert Gore JUNIOR could coyly say that he personally did not own a major interest in the company that was awarded the contract to purchase the Elk Hills strategic oil reserves.
At the time of the sale in 1997 – this information from “Bought and Paid For,” an article under the byline of Mark Hertsgaard appearing in today’s Salon.com – Albert Gore, Senior, former Senator from the glorious state of Tennessee and father to Al Gore, Junior, “owned more than $500,000 worth of Occidental stock…”
I’m supposing that in the absence of information contrariwise, that’s in 1997 dollars.
Several different times in the decade since that sale, I’ve researched this and posted rants about this. It is INSANE to deplete the strategic oil reserves that were set aside for military use during world emergencies while the U.S.Navy has approximately 600 capital vessels and probably thousands of smaller boats that run on petroleum-base fuels, and we depend on foreign and in many cases hostile sources.
Salon.com has always previously seemed to ME to be pretty far left.
Is it encouraging to find that Salon is ready to point out the glaring contradiction between Gore’s posturing about environment and his quiet major interest in one of the world’s great petroleum development and distribution companies?
Oct 19, 2009 - 10:38 am 25. anton:@22. headhunt23: Comparison and cross-referencing are the greatest contaminants of memory, preceived significance is huge as well; an emergency ward doctor doesn’t notice blood the way an average civilian would.
We always try to seperate and interview crime witnesses as soon as possible, not that any one of them has the “whole truth”, more like each one possesses one piece of a jigsaw puzzle. From the different pieces you can try to work out what the picture really is. The eye always sees true, the brain generally makes a hash of things trying to understand what the eye is giving it.
What concerns me the most is the fact that the serial liars that comprise our political class are either so contemptous of us that they do not do not believe that they will be caught out, or are so certain that there will be no penalty for being caught that they simply don’t care. Either way, it does nothing to build confidence in the government.
Oct 19, 2009 - 10:58 am 26. Mad Fiddler:From: http://www.fe.doe.gov/news/techlines/1998/tl_elsold.html
“Techlines provide updates of specific interest to the fossil fuel community. Some Techlines may be issued by the Department of Energy Office of Public Affairs as agency news announcements.
Issued on: February 5, 1998
Largest Federal Divestiture Completed, Elk Hills Transferred To Private Owner
$3.65 Billion Sale to Help Further Shrink Nation’s Deficit
[photo]Elk Hills Signing Ceremony
[caption]Patricia Godley, DOE’s Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy, who orchestrated the government’s 2-year process to divest of Elk Hills, watches the culmination of her efforts with the historic signing of the final transfer documents by Secretary Peña (left) and Occidental’s Hentschel.
[body of story]
Washington, DC – The Department of Energy and Occidental Petroleum Corporation today concluded the largest divestiture of federal property in the history of the U.S. government. In a Washington, D.C., ceremony, Secretary of Energy Federico Peña and Occidental Oil & Gas Chief Executive David Hentschel signed final papers for the sale of the United States’ interest in the Elk Hills Naval Petroleum Reserve to Occidental.
Early today, Occidental executed a wire transfer of $3.65 billion to the U.S. Treasury. In return, the U.S. Government recorded a deed in the Kern County (CA) Courthouse, transferring title to the property which had been in government hands since President Taft created the reserve in 1912.
Today’s signing completed a privatization process that began in 1995 when the Clinton Administration proposed selling Elk Hills. The divestment will get the federal government out of the business of producing oil and gas at Elk Hills and reflects President Clinton’s vision for the proper roles of the federal government and private industry.”
(Full text available at the link location.)
I wonder how long the Federal Suck-o-meters run on 3.65 Billion dollars…
Oct 19, 2009 - 10:58 am 27. joe buzz:I truly believe that the contents of Sandy’s socks, pants, whatever and the hard drive missing from the archive were retrieved so that the Clintons could improve their memories.
Oct 19, 2009 - 11:56 am 28. bob:Good Grief, this is the woman who claimed she was named after the climber Sir Hillary.
Back in the day.
Oct 19, 2009 - 12:13 pm 29. Lifeofthemind:Mad Fiddler,
Oct 19, 2009 - 12:16 pm 30. Mad Fiddler:Teapot Dome. ‘Nuff said. Look it up.
LOTM, Yes, I remember reading about Teapot Dome.
Ed Doheny and Harry Sinclair, both oil men, paid bribes to Senator Albert Fall serving as Secretary of the Interior, in return for leases of oil-rich lands in the Elk Hills and Buena Vista reserve in California and Teapot Dome in Wyoming, without competitive bids.
Those folks spent some time in prison in the 1920’s after investigations & trials.
The lands had been set aside for strategic reserve for the US Navy by President Taft in 1912. Senator Fall had opposed the sequestering of the oil deposits. When he was appointed Secretary of the Interior under the compliant President Harding, he managed to persuade the Secretary of the NAVY to transfer jurisdiction of those reserves to the Department of the Interior, which gave Fall authority over them.
Secretary Fall accepted $400,000 in illegal loans in return for giving his friends the leases. The Wall Street Journal got the story out, prompting a Congressional investigation (which started AFTER President Harding dropped dead…) and the conspirators were sent to the pokey.
Sound Familiar?
Parasites are nothing new, but the ticks on a Water Buffalo probably never have press secretaries announcing to the world that the tick is the SAVIOR OF THE WORLD.
I’ll shut up for a while…
Oct 19, 2009 - 1:12 pm 31. Beverly:Rashomon.
Oct 19, 2009 - 1:26 pm 32. mac:HRC is a Democratic politician. That, by definition, means she would never tell the truth where a lie would be more useful. If she told me the sun was going to rise in the East tomorrow, I’d have to get up and look.
In public utterances, Democrats and truth encounter each other only tangentially and on rare occasions. I could not possibly hold them in deeper contempt. I can’t think of a single living Democrat pol whose hand I’d even consider shaking.
If we were really looking for a job scheme to put large numbers of Americans back to work, we could start with one involving the horsewhipping of all dishonest Democratic politicians. Of course, since that means all of them, at all levels, such a program would keep a considerable number of people employed for a long period of time. I’d even vote for a tax increase to fund it!
Oct 19, 2009 - 1:49 pm 33. Dave D.:..Well no, #30: Mad Fiddler, ” and the conspirators were sent to the pokey ” isn’t quite true. Mr. Ed Doheny was aquitted and later foreclosed on Mr. Fall’s home for failing to repay the $100,000 loan ( bribe ) that Mr. Fall was convicted of, but Mr. Doheny was aquitted of. Thence the term ” Fall guy “.
…Maybe that’s where the term ” Special Ed ” comes from ?
Oct 19, 2009 - 1:53 pm 34. Walt:Through shot and shell
Oct 19, 2009 - 2:05 pm 35. Quig:She lived to tell
Of her great escape
From sniper blows
And goodness knows
‘Bout every other scrape
From Agincourt
To prairie fort
She’s been there and done that
From Pelelieu
I’m telling you
You’ve got to tip your hat
On landing strips
On foreign trips
She’s taken some AA
But she’s a pro
And don’t you know
She grins ‘cause she’s okay
Our Sec of State
By God she’s great
She goes where danger gleams
With every breath
She laughs at death
If only in her dreams
I think it was Mark Twain:
Oct 19, 2009 - 2:42 pm 36. feeblemind:“I can remember everything. Whether it happened or not!”
Now, was he a democrat or a republican?
Hillary’s fabrication’s look very similar to those males who boast of their war medals when they have earned none.
Oct 19, 2009 - 2:58 pm 37. PA Cat:Apropos of the D-Day veterans, it is possible that their memories were affected by the traumatic circumstances under which they were formed. There is considerable evidence that memories of traumatic events are encoded by the brain differently from more ordinary memories, and that they have a fragmented or splintered quality rather than a continuous movie-like flow. That is, the person may recall a certain smell or a patch of color or a few other bits and pieces of the event but have a hard time putting it all together into a coherent “picture.” About ten years ago I participated in a clinical study of PTSD in civilians– it was an interesting experience because the investigators spent a good deal of time explaining the neuroscience behind the study to the subjects. It certainly helped me understand why my particular traumatic memory has a radically different quality from my memories of other past events. Not that this explains Hillary’s wondrous romps in the fields of memory, of course.
Oct 19, 2009 - 3:28 pm 38. A Conservative Teacher:That’s a modern day liberal for you- ignorant of history and making it up as they go. For all the mocking she is going to receive, in reality, it doesn’t matter- if you tell a thousand lies and half-truths and get caught on one or two of them, you still can slip by an awful lot of misinformation. Truth and reality are meaningless to modern liberals- Clinton and Obama are the results of a civilization that has become very sick.
Oct 19, 2009 - 4:53 pm 39. JFSanders031:You know, I think she was really torqued about not being excepted into the military. So much so that she invents these stories to sooth her tortured soul. I am not entirely sure she is even capable of stopping herself from telling them.
Oct 19, 2009 - 5:46 pm 40. Mad Fiddler:Thanks DaveD (No.33)
That’s good to know. All these exchanges remind me of how much I DON’T KNOW about all the stuff about which I know a little…
The great thing about Belmont is that a person can spout off about stuff, make errors, and be corrected without necessarily being banished.
The research, even as casual and slapdash as it sometimes is, expands my understanding. Even moreso, the corrections, replies, and conversations.
Thanks all.
Oct 19, 2009 - 6:30 pm 41. maz2:“Thus Keats, in his Ode to a Nightingale:
‘O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim.’”
…-
“MNEMOSYNE: GREEK GODDESS OF MEMORY
MNEMOSUNE, or MNEMOSYNE, as she becomes in English, was the Greek Goddess of Memory. This is the Orphic Hymn to her, written between 300 BC to 300 AD:”
http://www.mnemosynefoundation.com/main_troubadourpress_cashford_3.htm
Oct 19, 2009 - 6:48 pm 42. trangbang68:Bob #28’s invoking of the Sir Edmund Hillary lie by Mrs. Clinton is really her in her essence. Along with Bill, lies are their stock in trade. They are pathological at it, they lie when it doesn’t matter just because that’s what they do.
Oct 19, 2009 - 7:38 pm 43. F:Speaking of the inaccuracy of eyewitnesses, a friend who works for the NTSB says (only partly tongue-in-cheek) that their practice is to interview all the eyewitnesses to an aircraft crash as soon as possible after the event, then burn the accounts they have received. Well it was funny when he said it. But it doesn’t change my disgust at Hillary’s lying ways. F
Oct 19, 2009 - 7:48 pm 44. Lifeofthemind:Dave D.,
Oct 19, 2009 - 9:12 pm 45. JMH:Robert Heinlein had Jubal Harshaw refer to a legal decision as unmatched in jug headedness since Secretary Fall was convicted of receiving the bribe that Doheny was acquitted of offering. Foreclosing on him for failing to return the money was a nice touch.
That’s a modern day liberal for you- ignorant of history and making it up as they go. For all the mocking she is going to receive, in reality, it doesn’t matter- if you tell a thousand lies and half-truths and get caught on one or two of them, you still can slip by an awful lot of misinformation. Truth and reality are meaningless to modern liberals- Clinton and Obama are the results of a civilization that has become very sick.
This is one reason that I don’t pay attention to anything a leftist says, other than to try and figure out what goals the leftist is trying to accomplish. Don’t try to figure out what is truth or lies, by the time you figure out the first few lies, dozens of others have slipped through. Better to just assume everything they say is a lie (the Market for Lemons and all that).
Oct 19, 2009 - 9:41 pm 46. Barbara:Richard, my husband and I spent a few nights in the Europa in December 1996. As I recall, the lobby was being renovated. I assumed it was related to a bombing. Outside there were what looked like barricades. Security was very high, and our passports were confiscated by the hotel. This did not happen in any hotels in the ROI. I found Belfast very oppressive and we were treated very poorly both in the hotel and at a restaurant near the hotel that was frequented by the media. I didn’t read Hillary’s quote, but think she may have been partly right in her recall.
Oct 19, 2009 - 10:38 pm 47. wretchard:Security was very high, and our passports were confiscated by the hotel. This did not happen in any hotels in the ROI. I found Belfast very oppressive and we were treated very poorly both in the hotel and at a restaurant near the hotel that was frequented by the media. I didn’t read Hillary’s quote, but think she may have been partly right in her recall.
Do you have any pictures which might show barricade-like structures in the background? I’m not a personal fan of Hillary, but if she’s getting a bum rap, then it’s only fair to point it out.
Oct 20, 2009 - 1:33 am 48. tomw:Maybe Mrs Clinton is suffering from a “willing suspension of disbelief”… permanently.
For the “smartest woman in the world” to be so befuddled by facts is an instance of that old trick of believing two contradictory facts at the same time, no?
tom
Oct 20, 2009 - 5:47 am 49. tomw:42. trangbang68:
Bob #28’s invoking of the Sir Edmund Hillary lie by Mrs. Clinton is really her in her essence. Along with Bill, lies are their stock in trade. They are pathological at it, they lie when it doesn’t matter just because that’s what they do.
Your commentary has evoked a memory: {ha}
I have always thought that the members of the Democrat Party EXPECTED their politicians to lie, and had the same expectation of Republican politicians. IOW, ALL politicians lie.
Thing is, *I* don’t expect politicians, as a rule, to lie. Except Democrats.
What does this mean?
tom
Oct 20, 2009 - 6:01 am 50. anton:@49. tomw:
It means that you are a conservative.
Principles, and all that other baggage of a moral life, get in the way of habitual lying. Conservatives are less likely to lie as they are less likely to have something to lie about. I say “less likely” because I know that we are all human, and, as such, have failings. Also conservative do not subsrcibe to the “Cult of Personality” and are more apt to support a politician because of their position as opposed to how “cool” they are.
Oct 20, 2009 - 6:16 am 51. Instapundit » Blog Archive » RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Somewhere In Time….:[...] RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Somewhere In Time. [...]
Oct 20, 2009 - 7:05 am 52. Teresita:Bob: Good Grief, this is the woman who claimed she was named after the climber Sir Hillary.
Lefties are great at forecasting. Hil’s parents forecasted that Edmund Hilary would become famous six years after their daughter was born, so they named her after him. Al Gore forecasts warm with continued hot. The Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize Committee forecasts that Obama will roll over for the advance of Islam for the next three to seven years.
Oct 20, 2009 - 7:24 am 53. Jim,MtnViewCA,USA:As several have pointed out there are numerous examples: Bosnian snipers, “seared” ops in Cambodia, Hillary being named after the mountain climber, didn’t Al Gore have a story related to a pro-labor folk song that wasn’t even written yet?
Oct 20, 2009 - 7:46 am 54. jWarrior:Total speculation but probably these guys took some drugs in the 70s or 80s which have addled their minds. Explains a lot…
Both the Clintons are liars, but Hillary lies when she doesn’t have to, and she isn’t as good at lying as Bill is. Bill reminds me of the line (attributed to one G. Marx), “If You Can Fake Sincerity, You’ve Got It Made”.
Oct 20, 2009 - 8:22 am 55. Doug:“Man does not control his own fate. The women in his life do that for him. ”
Oct 20, 2009 - 8:47 am 56. joe buzz:– Groucho
Ouch this will leave a mark:
Obama’s moral leadership balloon crashes…No one inside!
Oct 20, 2009 - 9:49 am 57. sol vason:by Mona Charen
Like all liberals, Hilary Clinton has an active fantasy life. Like all liberals, there are times when she cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality. This is why liberals get us into wars, and why they turn wars into bloody messes. This is why they run huge deficits. This is why their promises never come true.
Oct 20, 2009 - 10:45 am 58. 10-20-2009 | Drive Time Happy Hour:[...] Richard Fernandez: Hillary Clinton’s memory failed her again. The Secretary of State claimed she mis-spoke after her claim to have stayed at the ruined hotel in Belfast was debunked by British newspapers. [...]
Oct 20, 2009 - 11:06 am 59. Tarnsman:I still remember vividly going out at age 3 (51 years later) to Pappy’s (my grandfather) chicken coop to gather eggs for Grandma Bess to cook for breakfast, the basket I put the eggs in, the smell of the coop, the yellow floral wallpaper on the kitchen wall, the iron skillet the eggs were cooked in, the gas range the skillet was on and the fact that one of the eggs was fertile; so I have to call BS for Mrs Clinton’s excuse for being caught yet once again making up stories out of whole cloth on having faulty memory. Maybe I am blessed with a good memory, but I don’t think I have any more memory for the details of life than anyone else, which is why I am suspicious of folks that claim they don’t remember the details of important events. Especially politicians. Having a knack for remembering faces and names is a very large part of what they do. And then being trained as a lawyer….. Hillary is a bald-face liar, not to sugar coat it.
Oct 20, 2009 - 12:10 pm 60. Dyspeptic Curmudgeon:Mark Twain also wrote something like:
“Take your average village idiot. Take your average congressman. But I repeat myself.”
And:
“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who
are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”
My vote is for the latter.
And I like this, from Will Rogers: ” ” There ought to be one day — just one — where there is open season on senators”.
Oct 20, 2009 - 12:45 pm 61. barbara:Sorry for the late reply Wretchard, but I have no exterior pix from Belfast, only some shots of a boy’s choir singing Christmas Carols in an indoor shopping area. This was long enough ago and so many important things have occurred in my life since that could have coloured my memory, that I cannot put together a linear, accurate narrative for you. In acting training, there is an exercise called “sense memory” and another called “emotion recall” where one puts oneself back in a real moment in his or her own history and “looks around the room,” rebuilding the environment, and recalls (or creates out of whole cloth) the sensations — smell — temperature — textures of clothing, etc. This is very powerful stuff. This information is then transferred onto the text of the play and the details of the character are incorporated into one’s own thoughts about one’s own life. The life within the play eventually contaminates the actor’s memory. This is why I warn my son, an aspiring actor, to be very careful when choosing roles to play, because just like you cannot unscramble an egg, you cannot unremember the stuff you put in your brain to play a part. I would say Hillary is incapable of having a clean memory of any moment in her life. Politics being Acting for the less than beautiful.
Oct 20, 2009 - 1:06 pm 62. DWPittelli:I think the JFK assassination shows the opposite of what it is here purported to show. That is, people remember how they voted. They don’t fudge that in their own head, as they might fudge a past emotion or a less clear-cut action. They were lying to the pollster. You don’t want to be seen as opposed to the slain Kennedy, so you don’t tell people you voted for Nixon. (Nixon’s low-point of “won’t have me to kick around anymore” after the 1962 election didn’t help either.) I have always been opposed to very tall buildings, and I thought the World Trade Center was a hideous architectural abomination, but I didn’t tell people that after 9/11; that would be insensitive, and irrelevant to the main point (i.e., we were almost all united on the need to oppose the slaughter of innocents).
Oct 20, 2009 - 1:14 pm 63. Marty:DWPittelli–
I wouldn’t be so sure that people don’t talk themselves into believing what they want to be true. For a JFK-centric view, read James Piereson’s book about Camelot being redefined (don’t remember the title offhand)–after teh assassination, Jackie and Teddy White and Sorenson and a few others used the next couple of weeks to totally redefine the man—the whole “Camelot” idea was only half-formed before than, but in a couple of weeks people remembered the whole administration as Camelot. More specifically, they changed a Cold Warrior (who had run to the right of Nixon on national security) who had only been interested in civil rights for political expediency and because he thought segregation made it harder to compete with the Soviets in the Third World, into a soft-edged liberal peacenik who was a great civil rights leader, cut down in reactionary Dallas for his liberalism (rather than by a Castro-sympathetic communist).
And everybody bought it.
Oct 20, 2009 - 2:18 pm 64. Marty:For that matter, by 1968 hardly anyone remembered that RFK had cut his political teeth on Joe McCarthy’s Senate Investigations Committee staff, working with Roy Cohn, and later went after union corruption on Kefauver’s staff, or even that during JFK’s Presidential race and Presidency ony 5 years before, RFK was considered “ruthless.”
People find it very easy to flush things down the memory hole.
Oct 20, 2009 - 2:22 pm 65. toad:Maybe Hillary needs to borrow Kerry’s special hat.
I somewhat remember something Gen. Sheridan said about battle field recollections.
“Four generals get into an argument about being at a location on a creek at 3:00 AM and each says he didn’t see the other. One had a slow watch, the other was at a tributary of the creek, and the third had the date wrong and I wasn’t all that sure about the accuracy of my map.”
Oct 20, 2009 - 3:09 pm 66. jWarrior:Re: 60. Dyspeptic Curmudgeon:
Oct 20, 2009 - 3:13 pm 67. Charles:Twain also said “America has no native criminal class, except Congress”.
We studied this passage tonight in bible study.
……..
Genesis 11
The Tower of Babel
1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As men moved eastward, [a] they found a plain in Shinar [b] and settled there.
3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel [c] —because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
Oct 20, 2009 - 7:23 pm 68. Ned:Some years ago I served on a jury where Dr Loftus was called on as an expert witness for the defense. The prosecuting attorney went through her testimony like a buzzsaw through balsa. I thought at the time that they had crossed swords before, but now I’m not so sure; the prosecutor has gone on to be one of the top defense lawyers in the country. By the way, we convicted and my tooth abcess had no influence on the case.
Ned
Oct 20, 2009 - 8:39 pm 69. gadfly:Throughout her presidential candidate campaign, Hillary got caught up in several deviations from truth, but the most memorable was her sniper fire incident in Bosnia, circa 1996.
The problem, of course, was video evidence to the contrary. Anyone surprised?
Oct 20, 2009 - 8:44 pm 70. trangbang68:Gadfly, That is amazing stuff. I don’t know how you live with yourself lying like that. It shows you’re not a serious person , but a cynical power crazed liar who will do anything to claw your way to the top. Leadership it ain’t.
Oct 20, 2009 - 9:06 pm 71. trangbang68:Like many I was hoping Obama would beat her in the Dem primary and then hopefully be defeated in the general election. Since ,I have sometimes wondered if she would have been a better choice. When I see what a characterless shrew she is, I guess it didn’t matter. six of one, half dozen of the other.
Oct 20, 2009 - 9:19 pm 72. Parad E. Makewater:Hell, she still forgets she has a husband, and her staff has to keep reminding her to look adoring when she’s around him.
Oct 21, 2009 - 3:31 am 73. Lifeofthemind:I’ve met Hillary Clinton 4 times. I believe the technical term for her condition is Nuts. The room temperature drops when she enters. Many of her supporters, called the PUMAs for Party Unity My Ass, were a lesbian cabal. They brought some numbers and energy to the McCain campaign the final months but also brought emotional instability, a propensity for infighting and domineering and confusion on policy and principles. They may have repelled some social conservative voters who stayed home on election day. While Libertarian conservatives may support them on some issues they would not support them on others where they Hillary supporters stood for big government Democratic Party ideas.
Every political movement is an alliance of interest groups and eventually I hope to see studies of the 2008 campaign that will indicate why core center right voters did not come out to vote for McCain in sufficient numbers while enough of the equivalent voters on the Democratic side did go to the polls, despite the obvious extremist elements that were associated with the Obama movement. Nothing that this administration has attempted should be a surprise but I suspect that a sizable number of Democratic Party voters are saying that they just didn’t know.
Fortunately the tax payers will not have to support lifetime Secret Service protection for Hillary Clinton. Just 15 more months until she and her husband are 10 years out of the White House. Jimmy Carter we are stuck with.
Oct 21, 2009 - 4:22 am 74. Charles:73. Lifeofthemind:
Every political movement is an alliance of interest groups and eventually I hope to see studies of the 2008 campaign that will indicate why core center right voters did not come out to vote for McCain in sufficient numbers while enough of the equivalent voters on the Democratic side did go to the polls
………..
This mis states the question by the use of the word phrase “core center right”. It wasn’t the republicans who didn’t show up for McCain. It was the conservatives.
It is the conservatives who are the activists…the foot soldiers in the party. Just as liberal activists are the foot soldiers in the democratic party.
For example, Sean Hannity who the Obama administration has singled out as their main opposition along with glen beck — will not characterize himself as a republican but rather a conservative.
Obama’s foot soldiers knew who he was and thought he was inspirational. McCain’s footsoldiers knew who he was and thought he was a deadbeat.
Oct 21, 2009 - 7:01 am 75. Lorenz Gude:I recently had the experience of reminiscing with my son about an incident that happened on a trip we took together 25 years ago. He remembers me turning down a liaison with a gorgeous Italian girl, and while I remember her well and even her boyfriend visiting us later back home I have no memory of what my son remembers. Perhaps we repress unpleasant memories? I certainly was a liberal at the time, but now I call myself a recovering liberal. Maybe that has something to do with it too.
Oct 21, 2009 - 7:21 am 76. tomw:73. Lifeofthemind: not 15 months, per this clip from secretservice.gov
http://ustreas.gov/usss/protection_works.shtml
“However, as a result of legislation enacted in 1997, President George W. Bush will be the first president to have his protection limited to 10 years after he leaves office.”
Sorry to say… Hil & Bill will be covered for life … riding around in a government provided bullet proof limousine…
Well, maybe not a limo, but in an entourage of some sort forever…
Oct 21, 2009 - 7:58 am 77. Subotai Bahadur:tom
# 74 Charles
Not only John McCain being a “deadbeat” [as a conservative, I have more descriptive phrases in mind]; but also the essential nature of the party that imposed him on us. The Institutional Republican Party desperately wants to chase all conservatives out of the party, except for a couple of months every two years. The level of contempt they have for anyone who would actively oppose Democrats must be felt to be believed. Conservatives have been feeling it, and we believe it.
It is no accident that it is ad hoc groups that are leading the fight against Buraq Hussein and TWANLOC. With very few exceptions the Republican Party is holding back, trying not to be noticed.
Item, RNC Chairman Steele just gave another speech praising ACORN of all things. Item, In NY-23 [the only special election for Congress this year] in a district that normally votes 60% Republican, the party imposed a “Republican” candidate that is to the Left of the Democrat and who has mentioned switching to the Democrats after the election. And are doubling down on supporting her. Item, the only, literally, personality in the Republican party who can fill venues, draw donations, and rouse the enthusiasm that they claim that they want, is anathema to the Republican party, and its leaders attack her as harshly and often as the Democrats. Her draw is largely to Conservatives [both inside and outside the Republican party], and they hate us and the grass roots movement to try to save the country.
I just got another letter Republican Senate Committee screaming that if I don’t send them money that the Democrats will govern. Guess what, if I do send them money, the Democrats will govern with Republican protection. It is going back with a note on paper the size and shape of a check [so someone will open and read it] listing the Republicans they support for re-election who are functionally Democrats, and the conservatives who run who they fight.
In the normal course of events, assuming that we have elections in 2010 and the votes are honestly counted, one would expect there to be major gains by Republicans in Congress. It will be less than it could be, because the Republicans cannot resist either their urges to kick their base in the teeth, or their addiction to supporting any Democrat impositions so that they will be “bipartisan” [a word that should be banned from any third party that forms].
Subotai Bahadur
Oct 21, 2009 - 9:35 am 78. Lifeofthemind:tomw,
My bad, thank you.
Hope the poor sods assigned to her detail get their choice of a next assignment.
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