We Don't Live in Bipartisan Times

Sen. @ewarren is 25 minutes into a fiery speech on the Senate floor about voting rights and the filibuster. Go watch.

“Today’s filibuster doesn’t encourage debate, it promotes cowardice.” pic.twitter.com/Nn3RbA68Yr

— Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) January 19, 2022

Professor Warren explains the truth--cowards can hide behind the rationale that "We can't get to 60, so what does taking a stand matter." That's what infuriates me about Manchin and Sinema right now. They are pretending that they are standing up for a principle of bipartisanship and not making the divide between Republicans and Democrats worse, but what they are really doing is failing to make a stand. Absent the filibuster, the votes fall where they may. 

We all know we'd be hard-pressed to find a Republican right now putting their vote on limiting state legislatures' ability to suppress voting because they are going to talk about federal power grabs and states' rights, and if that doesn't sound familiar! I'd love to make the Republican party expound at length on that subject so we could tell exactly where they stood. 

Please, have them defend everything from restrictions to mail-in voting to DeSantis' possible vote cops (I imagine crackers with bullet heads and necks exceeding their jawlines carrying blackjacks and being prone to saying shit like "You don't look like you're from around here" and "Who all is your people?"). In lieu of that, though, just based on our current composition in the Senate, I'd like Sinema and Manchin to put their vote where their ideals are supposed to be, let VP Harris settle the matter, and go forward with voter rights better protected.

Where we are now is at a stupid state where Senator Romney pretends it is a darn shame President Biden didn't reach out to him. If Senator Romney was so moved to think voting rights needed to be protected, he could have reached out his damn self. Senator Murkowski might be persuaded--but is she not a grown woman who understands politics? Ditto all GOP senators. If they have an opinion, fuck it, put it on the damn table, like grown people. But also, explain voter purges, and defend poll places miles from where some voters live, and long lines, and how unequal access impacts outcomes. And if that wasn't even the intent of such voter suppression laws in the first place. They need to be put on notice that they can't bitch about being called racist for supporting those "states' rights" bills if they can't defend the obvious demographic choices that made them what they are.  Put the GOP on the spot for what they have come to stand for, after the Voter Rights bill had been so universally approved-of not so long before. 

Literally the Founder (and MVP) of ISIS

There isn't a lot of surprise for me in Donald Trump's oft-repeated claim of late that President Obama is the founder of ISIS. Donald Trump says inflammatory things, things that are based on conspiracy theories, and his dislike of Obama is pretty well understood. What is a little less fathomable is his intent to go with the claim as being literally true. For example, when Fox News' Hugh Hewitt tried to help articulate his comments as being a strong opinion, Trump corrected him, reiterating that he believed it to be a fact.

There is quite a lot wrong with what Mr. Trump alleges to be facts in this case. While some trace the foundation of ISIS to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and others would push the genesis of ISIS further back to AQI led by Abu Musab Zarqawi, the existence of a group, sort of fashioned from a rib of al-Qaeda, existed in Iraq before President Obama ever took office or appointed Sen. Clinton his Secretary of State. The claim that AQI was completely quiescent in 2008 is not really true, although it is true that they had a heck of a comeback with the Syrian civil conflict and the basically anti-Sunni government of Nouri al Maliki.

There might have been changes to the course that Obama's foreign policy took with respects to the region that might have made a difference--but there are no guarantees. Despite the conditions of the 2011 SOFA agreed to by his predecessor, Obama wanted retention of 5000 "advisors." This was a no-go with the Iraqis, but there's no sure way to know what 5K in support personnel could do, anyway. Covering the deteriorating conditions in Syria, it's very hard to say what, if any course, would have been preferable in stopping ISIS, when ISIS was among the many rebel groups against Assad--and the Assad regime is pretty much a pack of bounders who ought to be stopped as well. And as events evolved, it became clear that ISIS acted in a way that predated not merely on Assad's military but civilian and other rebel groups as well.

Trump's Losing Ugly--and Dangerously

Trump on Clinton picking SCOTUS judges: "Nothing you can do... Although, the 2nd Amendment, people, maybe there is." https://t.co/U3lH0IiWF7

— CNN (@CNN) August 9, 2016

This morning, I was planning on writing about how Donald Trump, down in the polls, was becoming increasingly ugly in his invective and tactics. The "rigged" insinuations--the idea that if he loses, it won't be because he is a lousy candidate who behaves erratically and has prompted the defections of numerous current and former (albeit, mostly former) GOP officials--it will be because somehow, the system is "rigged". It could be argued that this argument strains credulity and won't even be bought by most Republicans--but is not making that appeal to "most Republicans". He is making that appeal to the folks who still think ACORN is a thing, that Barry Soetero is a Muslim Kenyan, and that the Democratic nomination was won by a person with significant brain damage. Sure, we want to believe those people are rare and weird, sort of FOX News website commenters meets The Hills Have Eyes. But many of them have voter's registrations all right.

And they have guns, and these are the ones who really worry that the Mommy State is going to take their guns and leave them in the kill box of the Chipotle as defenseless as that Pajama Kid from the Obamacare ads.

Now, Trump's proven himself to be worthy of the Republican nomination by being well-acquainted with the oldest tactic against the Clintons--just keep shoveling shit, and sooner or later, some of it will stick. You couldn't help but notice the manipulation factor of the grieving mother of one of the Benghazi attacks' victims holding Hillary Clinton "personally responsible" for her son being killed at the RNC. Now, I know that anger and trying to assign blame and a deeper meaning is a part of grief--but does anyone think Hillary Clinton put on a camouflage pantsuit and her sensible jackboots to kill CIA contractors that day?

That Pat Smith and Charles Woods are now working with the probably disturbed, "endangered white guy", Birther lawyer Larry Klayman to sue Clinton for wrongful death and defamation is just sad. Maybe they believe this guy will manage to accomplish something nine official investigations didn't. But there is a lot of reason for doubt. (Hint--he's not in it for your best interests, parents--he's got axes to grind and he'll use you for a whetstone.) It's deeply visceral. It doesn't have to make sense. So when Trump calls Clinton "Lucifer" and accuses her of corruption and everything else--he's softening her up: some of it will stick. That's why it doesn't really mean anything to him if one of his surrogates suggests the "firing squad" for her and is investigated by the Secret Service--Trump thinks that is a job well done. That's the language "his people" like to hear.

So maybe he'll suggest her emails got an Iranian scientist killed--and Mike Pence even repeats it, even though this is idiotic. Every conspiracy theory you can think of--just shovel that shit. SOP.

Trump's Amusing Big Dumb Lie

When Donald Trump started describing a video that he watched of a plane where money was being off-loaded to Iran, discussing it as if it were very secret and not something everyone knows about, he created ripples of speculation: Was he now passing on classified information from briefings? What is he even talking about? Does this video exist?

But nope, that isn't what happened:

A Trump campaign spokeswoman told The Washington Post early Thursday that the businessman was, in fact, talking about the video from Geneva. She did not explain why he claimed it was a top secret video from Iran.

The video was “merely the b-roll footage included in every broadcast” of the prisoner release, spokeswoman Hope Hicks confirmed. Hicks did not respond to a request for comment from The Huffington Post.

This means that Trump told his audience a half-dozen things about the tape that aren’t accurate. The video he saw was not shot in Iran, it did not show the exchange of cash, it was not “top secret,” it was not “a military tape,” and it was not “provided by Iran.” Nor was it released to embarrass the United States.

None of what he said was actually true. Not Iran, not top secret. Weird, right? And he even did this stupid thing again today in Portland, ME--mentioning the b-roll of a thing that was not clandestine or a drop in Iran or filmed by Iranians or even really even remotely embarrassing to the US any way as if it were all those things. The intelligence community, you think, wouldn't be amused, but they kind of are. Because it is literally laughable--this was a transfer of funds so not secret that Secretary of State John Kerry had it on his website. A person would have to be incapable of research (oh hey, Wall Street Journal!)or probably just not interested in details--right about January when it happened, to have missed this thing that some folks want to blow up. Which includes Donald (so prepared to be President--believe me!)Trump.

Did Trump Just Praise Saddam Hussein?

Well, of course Donald Trump had some good words for Saddam Hussein! It's not like this is anything new, for one thing, since he's said before that the Middle East would be better off if Hussein and Moammar Gaddafi were just left alone to do their dictator things. After all, he doesn't play favorites about dictators--he has nice things to say about Kim Jong-Un also!

Now it is true that he didn't always love Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gaddafi.  He's actually a little bit of a liar in pretending that he originally didn't support both actions against actual dictators. But really? The GOP candidate for president in 2016 is saying nice stuff about how Saddam Hussein was anti-terrorist?

He was a state sponsor of terror!  And I think no serious candidate would hurry to say nice things about someone who had rape rooms and torture as a part of his reign.

That should not be viewed as an acceptable level of being both not even remotely right on the facts and not even right about his own historic positions, right?

He really is dreadful at every aspect of this running for president thing.

The Benghazi Select Committee Report is 800 Pages Long

This page is very apropos to my comment, so let me just explain that this 8th investigation onto the Benghazi event has been one of the longest Congressional investigations in US history, and one of the least necessary. I'm saying that even though the Select Committee on Benghazi's very own report claims that it "Fundamentally Changes the Public’s Understanding of the 2012 Terrorist Attacks that Killed Four Americans". It does not. What they have produced is an 800 page report that is largely duplicative of earlier efforts that on balance has, as some of its weightiest criticisms, that politics played a part in statement the White House and other federal agencies made after the event, and that nothing was done to stop the tragic attacks--even though it is acknowledged that nothing could really be done in the time that elapsed and there is no real evidence that any prior concrete warning existed that such an attack would occur.

If there's any question about the part politics played in the statements made post-Benghazi attack, I'd like to point out that there's a timeline showing when this became politicized, and the answer is it happened right away, and it wasn't the Obama Administration doing it. Look at the date. Mitt Romney, the GOP candidate for president, was condemning the Obama Administration for a statement that came out of the Cairo Embassy prior to the Benghazi attack, when Secretary of State Clinton's immediate response was to condemn the perpetrators:

I condemn in the strongest terms the attack on our mission in Benghazi today. As we work to secure our personnel and facilities, we have confirmed that one of our State Department officers was killed. We are heartbroken by this terrible loss. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and those who have suffered in this attack.

This evening, I called Libyan President Magariaf to coordinate additional support to protect Americans in Libya. President Magariaf expressed his condemnation and condolences and pledged his government’s full cooperation.

Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind.

The Libyan Embassy had deficient security, which was in part a question of funding, but that had to do with Congressional oversight over that funding, and Secretary Clinton herself took responsibility for the handling of security and changes were made.  This is how things are supposed to work--but this self-admitted political anti-Obama, then anti-Clinton advert was a waste of time and money. And what do we get? An 800 page nothingburger. Oh! And a 48-page nothingburger with cheese, with all the comments partisan Republicans would have liked to stick into the 800 pages, but couldn't substantiate, so, really?

But 800 pages all on its lonesome is a major read, and gosh dang it, who reads anymore? So partisans are liable to just depend on the opinions they had before. And if your opinion was RW conspiracy-theory trash, like Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's opinion, well, you'll stay ignorant.

I almost can't be disgusted by crap like this Trump Tweet:

If you want to know about Hillary Clinton's honesty & judgment, ask the family of Ambassador Stevens.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 21, 2016

Even though he's just making up what he imagines the real people impacted by the horrific death of their loved one actually feels.

I hope this puts the travesty of trying to make political hay out of these dead patriots behind us, but as Steve M. documents here, some folks have even made this their bread and butter. I don't really expect it to end.

A Challenger Arises

You can read the text of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's speech here. Clinton broke down point by point a handful of the very wrong things that Donald Trump has said with a brief explanation of why he's very wrong. There might be some areas where Clinton's perspective about policy and political reality differs from mine, but to see her define Trump as badly informed and of poor, not to say dangerously rash (OK--exactly to say that!) temperament was necessary.

This is something that no Republican primary challenger could have done, because in being knee-jerk opponents to anything President Obama has done, they at least had to support Trump's constant, if wrong, criticisms. Clinton, as part of Obama's circle, has an intimate knowledge of why some things were done, and not others. She understands, for example, the importance of the diplomacy of the Iran nuclear deal. She appreciates that trade is also a part of foreign policy. While her speech has been discussed as being short on the specifics about what we can expect from a Clinton foreign policy, I think the point is, that with or without specifics, there is no good that comes from the foreign policy of a badly-prepared media-mediocrity who is spurred by personal whims and a thirst for stirring public opinion.

And look how weak pitiful Trump's response to Clinton is:

In Crooked Hillary's telepromter speech yesterday, she made up things that I said or believe but have no basis in fact. Not honest!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 3, 2016

Sad! Because Clinton fired back:

You literally said all those things. https://t.co/6VX5AfR7gL https://t.co/U8LfWdPU7x

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 3, 2016

Sometimes the Less Said, Bill...

This was the sort of thing I worried about with a Hillary Clinton presidential run--the return of Bill Clinton, former President, world's greatest Hillary fan, and, sorry to say, not always the most disciplined campaign surrogate. An episode with BLM protesters here in Philadelphia had Clinton looking a little like he got stopped at a tollbooth on that bridge to the 21st century and was short of the change.

The Black Lives Matter protesters have targeted political rallies to keep their message a part of this political cycle, but with this event, their particular message placed a good chunk of the blame for the deadly combination of poverty, crime, and police brutality that they want addressed on Bill Clinton's administration, in the form of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996. They didn't just lay the blame on Bill Clinton, but by extension, his wife, for supporting those policies during his presidency. And he defended them to defend her...and that's problematic.

I have to agree with Ed Kilgore when he explains that President Clinton had no business defending those pieces of legislation. He is marrying himself to them in a way he wasn't "married to them" when those bills got signed, and he's re-litigating the past in a way that isn't necessary or helpful. It only serves to reinforce the idea that Hillary Clinton's campaign endorses them. And it's no way to convince protesters who are already deeply suspicious of the motivations behind that kind of political charcuterie--folks talk about law-making as being a little like watching sausage being made. My husband is a butcher, so I'm not especially alarmed by that comparison--but I will say, that like bologna, social and domestic policies sometimes keep very badly. And in this case, a lot of the assumptions behind those two acts are spoiled.

Lynn Westmoreland: The Woman Tempted us and We Did Bite

So, since I've been doing a lot of posts about the 2016 GOP contenders, I think it makes sense to do a post that is not about them--and this little piece of, I guess, revisionism, made me giggle.

Last month, Clinton testified before the GOP-led committee investigating the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The hearing stretched 11 hours and was widely seen as a bust for Republicans.

“As you know, some of you may have watched the marathon Hillary Clinton fiasco, and I say that because Trey Gowdy, the chairman of the committee, wanted to interview her in private, and she said, ‘No, I want to do this in public,’” Westmoreland said in a recent speech uploaded to YouTube.

“Now to me, that was us stepping in a trap because we should have known that she was going to go on and just stall, debate, filibuster, on these answers to make it go as long as possible, so we would look cruel,” he continued.

So, she tricked the entire House GOP by requesting the transparency to put the hearing on camera, which somehow drew this out to eleven hours, to make them look bad?

Okay, player. Now, I've seen some funny revisions of what went on--after all, I picked on poor Childe Luke the MTP Dauphin regarding his silly-ass "both-sides" take.  Chuck Todd did a mildly better job at the same kind of both-sides sheep-dip operation.  But the last I checked, Trey Gowdy was running this travelling show, and that basically makes him quality control for the snake oil that results. He can't blame Clinton for how long the thing went because--his team were the ones asking the questions. They could have asked any question with whatever relevance they wanted. But they asked the ones they did, and acted like right gits in the process, as if they had never been on the television machine before.

Guys--television is actually "old media" by this point. We've got Youtube now. That's really dumb.

Rep. Westmoreland is hoping his hearers are at least as, if not more, dumb than congressional Republicans. I'm not sure how that's even possible. But actually being pissed that the foxy Madame Secretary outsmarted all of their asses? (He's the one saying that.) That's priceless.

Well, that was long and painful

Long and painful. For the GOP, I mean. Grilling Hillary Clinton in front of cameras where people could see how they worked was incredibly stupid and right up their precious little epistemic-closure alleys--right? In the steamy fever swamp of Benghazi conspiracy theory, publicized on blogs and shit-show media like FOX Mushroom Farm, the idea operated that there was some nefarious underbelly that the Benghazi Committee was going to uncover was always supposed to suddenly make the principals involved look like utter shit.

It never could though, because those media and that conspiracy theory culture was always wrong. They harangued Secretary Clinton. They yelled at her. The grandstanded at her. They kept it up for hours, and she just gave the facts.

Trey Gowdy Would Like Folks to Please Shut Up

As should surprise none of us, House Select Committee Chair Trey Gowdy would like his colleagues who are not on the committee to please be shutting up about what the committee is for. (And some of the people who have worked with the committee he'd probably like to also shut up.)

I bet he would. When people start talking, sometimes they also start paying attention. For example, it has been alleged that some of the people surrounding former Secretary Clinton are being called for specifically partisan reasons. This issue came up regarding the recent hearing focusing on Clinton's long-time assistant, Huma Abedin. (Gowdy did not attend that day.)

But what's more interesting is that there might be some discrepancies regarding what the Committee is putting out: for example, an allegation that one of Clinton's emails "outed" a CIA resource, turns out to have been true. 

But really, shit happens, right?

I probably won't have much more to say until Clinton is interviewed later this week, but I'm pretty sure he should know by now that a lot of us are going to be watching really closely. And probably won't shut up if we catch anything short of fair play.

Wayne Simmons: He is That Guy

Or maybe he is not that guy.

The funny thing is that just as the House Select Committee on Benghazi's credibility is cratering, one of the terrorism analysts that FOX Mushroom Farm used to call for further investigation, Wayne Simmons, has been determined to be a fraud, who is not only making up his level of expertise, but using it to further a political agenda.

Take note, Wayne Simmons and the Citizens Commission on Benghazi is basically the equivalent of a Facebook conspiracy theory fanpage hosted by Aim.org, which based on the linked posts, is really all about Hillary Clinton. Wow.

You know, it doesn't matter to me so much whether this guy was a paid analyst for FOX News or was put on the camera just for free because they felt like it--they wanted his product. His credentials were besides the point. They promoted any bullshit thing that came out of his lying mouth because they liked it.

Who vets experts or checks facts? That would be so very close to journalism. Since when was that FOX News' job?




But more here. (Apparently, they haven't decided if this video is private or what--the embed may go down.)

Pull the Other One, It's Got Bells On

 

If one has followed at all the Twitter output of @SpeakerBoehner, one might note that he's been working the pole hard for the Benghazi Committee. He's spinning on it, doing splits, taking it down low and trying to make folks believe and trust the Benghazi Committee. Bullshit, Orange John. There is no sex in that particular Champagne Room and there is a limit to the rain. Once again, a GOP Rep. has spilled just a little bit of the beans--this is about Hillary Clinton:

 

“Sometimes the biggest sin you can commit in D.C. is to tell the truth,” Hanna said in an interview on Keeler in the Morning, a radio show in upstate New York. The third-term congressman paused for a moment, perhaps recognizing the importance of what he was about to say, before going on to agree with McCarthy’s original statement.

“This may not be politically correct, but I think that there was a big part of this investigation that was designed to go after people and an individual, Hillary Clinton,” Hanna said.

He explained further why he believes the Benghazi Committee’s purpose has been in part to attack Clinton. “After what Kevin McCarthy said, it’s difficult to accept at least a part of it was not,” Hanna said. “I think that’s the way Washington works. But you’d like to expect more from a committee that’s spent millions of dollars and tons of time.”

After millions of dollars and tons of time? Yes. Yes, you would expect more--but this is what we're apparently getting:

With the slow progress, members have engaged in social activities like a wine club nicknamed “Wine Wednesdays,” drinking from glasses imprinted with the words “Glacial Pace,” a dig at Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland and the committee’s ranking member, Major Podliska said. Mr. Cummings used the term to question the speed of the committee’s work.

At one point, several Republican staff members formed a gun-buying club and discussed in the committee’s conference room the 9-millimeter Glock handguns they intended to buy and what type of monograms they would inscribe on them, Major Podliska said.

It's the House GOP social event of the ages. You compare and contrast that to the lip-quivering over four courageous dead in the embassy attack, and it certainly seems a little like...using those bodies for a campaign. Politicizing the dead. While not actually having all that many shits to give.

Oh--which just recently got done, in an incompetent ad by some asshats calling themselves the StopHillaryPAC. These numbnuts were so out to get at Hillary Clinton that they featured the actual grave of Ambassador Christopher Stephens in their ad, but they couldn't be arsed to get the spelling of Libya right the first time, going with "Lybia".

Tina Wong at Vanity Fair suggests that the misspelling may be a Freudian slip regarding their impression of "lying" or a (probably more Freudian, am I right?) subliminal suggestion of labia. That sort of thing has disgustingly been done before, of course. (Roger Stone has gone on to be Donald Trump's main man, by the way,.)

Anymore, after something like 25 years of being acutely politically aware, when people try to talk scandal about the Clintons, either of them, I smell the sharp tang of rodent buggery. If Speaker Boehner fears that the Benghazi Committee isn't bringing in the tips anymore, maybe he isn't really making it in this club and should bring that hustle to a close.

So, Did John Boehner Push to Keep the Benghazi Cmte Alive?

Recent gavel-renunciator John Boehner is quite possibly the guy who turned the Benghazi Select Committee on to Clinton-emails-all-the-time. I personally always thought there was a partisan quality to the Select Committee, but I didn't see out to how it would get to be about trapping Hillary Clinton out loud until pretty recently. But in light of the sort of information that had been out there, I think it was becoming increasingly clear that there wasn't new information about what happened then that even was being looked for.

But why would Boehner push to have a committee about the deaths of four US persons in Libya be about Hillary Clinton's emails? Because of the Infinite Football-Pull. Politically, Hillary Clinton was the most likely candidate for the Democratic nomination, so by wrecking her, he could break out of the "always-losing" scenario by having someone in the Oval Office--a Republican--who would give the House GOP militants at least some of what they wanted some of the time--and really do him a favor by not being a Dem at all.

The idea that Boehner threatened to walk off the Speaker position knowing full well no one in their right mind would want it while still pumping for the Committee's validity, kind of suggests he wanted to stay on but with a stronger hand? It makes some sense.  But since the game is more or less given away--does this mean he really leaves--or is he further caught in a hell of his own making? (Enquiring minds might like to know with the CR up and the debt ceiling also.)

If so, Trey Gowdy isn't alone in being under fire for the Benghazi Committee becoming (even more) overtly partisan. Boehner assisted.  Does this mean he also should be looking at an ethics issue? Probably not--we are far removed from the day when Newt Gingrich stepped down from his speakership partly for ethics reasons by a GOP committee. But he still might just like to, you know. Go away.

(All this backstory is, in part, why I found the idea of Newt Gingrich in the running for a shot at Speaker so amusing when it got floated. The partisan witch hunt that Gingrich lived and politically died by--the current GOP learned it by watching him!)

Watch me unravel, I'll soon be naked

It turns out, a House aide working on the Benghazi Committee was possibly terminated for reasons having to with them, um, actually having a clueless partisan witch-hunt instead of actually being all about what happened there. The staffer, Major Bradley Poliska, an Air Force reservist intelligence officer, became concerned that once the Clinton email server issue was revealed, the Committee's attention abruptly committed its focus to State Department minutia. As if specifically on a "Get Clinton" track. The Committee gave grounds for his dismissal, but he alleges they were about his unwillingness to engage in a partisan witch hunt and his extended reservist orders.

Frankly, I would be astounded if congress was unaware that employees can not be dismissed on the basis of their reservist obligations. In my private sector time in retail, we had a few reservist employees, and their duties were never a question regarding their rotation--we just temporarily relied on other staff. It's hard for me to figure that the House was weird about this, but they are so weird about other stuff so maybe they don't get how military reserves work. I'd be really surprised, but wow. This Congress is so generally screwed up in other ways...

Anyway, what he describes as a shift in the focus of the Benghazi hearings pretty much conforms to what the news from them in various media shows--it stopped being about what happened in Benghazi, and suddenly became all about the Clinton server. No one died because Hillary Clinton's emails were delivered to a specific server. We can question things like whether embassies are properly staffed with respects to security, and one House mahoff absolutely was fine with cutting embassy security.  But we can't fool ourselves that this committee was totally honest in what it did.

Louise Slaughter and Alan Grayson, both Dems, have tried to disrupt this partisan nonsense. I hope this partisan bullshit is made so infamous nobody tries it again.

John Boehner is Still Workin' It

.@HouseBenghazi’s very existence is only the result of the Obama Admin’s obstruction http://t.co/HOn0fJrUZk pic.twitter.com/GOTgwrUT2H

— Speaker John Boehner (@SpeakerBoehner) October 1, 2015

Still?  Dude, if you're really going to quit, start with this. In the meantime, Josh Marshall's take is really good.

Kevin McCarthy Basically Says It All

He might not have meant to say it out loud where the people could hear, but the Benghazi Committee was always all about Hillary Clinton. And the taxpayers have been paying for like, a 72 week and counting anti-Hillary attack ad.



It's ok, Rep. McCarthy. Deep in our hearts, we always knew.

The Benghazi Benchmark

A very special congratulations to the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which is, I believe, the eighth investigation working on the ninth report (or something like that) into the event that happened three years ago leaving four dead--the Committee has now exceeded the length of the investigation into Watergate at a whopping 72 weeks. They've spent over $3.5 million investigating this, too.

I got nothing. I still think Libyan terrorists did it. But I feel like this investigation will go on so long as Hillary Clinton is running for president. If she becomes president, they will have to come up with a new thing about her to investigate, unless we get a Democratic congress back in.

I think we need a Democratic-majority congress.

The House Select Committee is Still on the Benghazi Case

 



This past Friday, the House Intelligence Committee released a report that dismisses many of the speculative claims about the performance of the Obama Administration regarding the events of 9/11/2012, while still allowing that security for our diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, was not as good as it should have been.

 

This is why I think Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) has it right when he suggests that the House Select Committee, which is on-going, shift its focus to what we can do in future to secure our diplomatic personnel abroad. I don't think it's any insult to the past to look forward about how we can correct the errors of the past. I'm not sure there's much more to be gained by combing over already picked-apart ground. What matters should be doing things better.

Benghazi, Again



It turns out that one of the latest investigations into the Benghazi tragedy (of which there have now been eight, is it?) has found no wrongdoing by the Obama Administration.  The report says:

-- Intelligence agencies were "warned about an increased threat environment, but did not have specific tactical warning of an attack before it happened."

-- "A mixed group of individuals, including those associated with al Qaeda, (Moammar) Khadafy loyalists and other Libyan militias, participated in the attack."

-- "There was no 'stand-down order' given to American personnel attempting to offer assistance that evening, no illegal activity or illegal arms transfers occurring by U.S. personnel in Benghazi, and no American was left behind."

-- The administration's process for developing "talking points" was "flawed, but the talking points reflected the conflicting intelligence assessments in the days immediately following the crisis."

And the trigger really did seem to have to do with the dumbass video by that weird guy who was eventually picked up for violating probation. (Which means Mitt Romney is still very wrong nearly two years later, and can go ahead and ride a horse with his bared bayonet to protect Iran's route to the sea, for all I care.) (Is Mitt Romney going to be the 2016 front-runner, seriously? Can someone pinch me?)

Now, I know, and my readers know, this doesn't necessarily dampen the flames of conspiracy theorists. But perhaps it ought to mean that the current, Rep-Gowdy-led House Select Committee might want to find something more useful to do than re-hash old news?   If they want to uncover things like how to better offer security and support to all our diplomatic stations, that would be useful and grand. But all things considered, I think they might want to give the witch-hunting a rest, huh? Because that part is starting to look very deliberate. And desperate.