The Lies Vance and Trump are Selling

 

The most striking thing that JD Vance has admitted out loud and in public is that even if Haitians are supposed to be here legally, he's still going to call them "illegal aliens". He knows and knew that the "people eating pets" thing was a lie when he spread it. He could easily bother to check whether crime really was up or whether communicable diseases were up, But the point isn't whether he's being honest--he's not. 

It's whether he can induce people to follow up on his story and keep it alive as if it were a big deal. Just like big public lies could induce people to follow up on a land deal in Arkansas, or a lie about a man's honorable service in Viet Nam, or a lie about a fully American man's birth certificate, or an attack on an embassy in Libya by Islamic terrorists, or an email server, or a man's son's laptop, and try to make that into a big deal, whether it really is or not. 

But there is something else in Vance's particular set of lies that is revealing--the idea that if a person can wave a wand over someone and declare them citizens, having a particular office means you can "uncitizen" them.  Or unperson them.

Trust Issues

 

When the explosion (let's call it that, for a minute, over obvious objections) occurred at the Ahli Arab Hospital, it was assumed by many (the media, some elected officials, etc.) that it was caused by Israel targeting the hospital, an horrific war crime, not in the least justified an opinion because there had been a warning to evacuate, and previous targeting. The counter-narrative is that the event was caused by a Hamas or Islamic Jihad rocket misfiring (or maybe an "accidentally on purpose" strike). 

Neither version has been nailed down, but I note that journalists and their various outlets are perfectly capable of not assigning blame in headlines when they want to be: "A Local Teen Was Killed in a Police-Involved Shooting." (How were the police involved? Who knows?) 

I know a lot of people take what version they want to believe in a kind of "I know what I know" kind of way. I can't. I know that I don't know what I actually don't know. Was I there? Did eyewitnesses track what was going on before the rocket hit? Do I have any previous foreknowledge of either sides' capability of creating damage and what it would look like at what range and so on? 

Flailing in the Scandal Mines

 

I just wanted to highlight this slightly missed major story from the halls of Congress that commenter Dan Kleiner pointed out--Jamie Raskin entered into the record a document that everyone should have already known about from the first impeachment with respects to Joe Biden and Burisma, which was: the supposed bribery is very heavily denied. The response of Jim Comer about this is "yeah, but our very respected tipster Rudy Giuliani never mentioned anything about that." That doesn't feel really probative to me, you guys. I mean, I might be tempted to do foolish things but having my whole investigation rest on the word of Four Seasons Total landscaping guy is a stretch. 

For what it's worth, Rudy Giuliani is about as fallen a human as humans ever get. He defamed election workers, He's liable to get disbarred in DC. He's under a civil lawsuit for some eye-wateringly disgusting sexist shit. I would not, myself, trust the word of perpetually drunken and disheveled former America's Mayor Rudy Giuliani if it came to the goddamn rain without checking out a window. He's a joke, but here's the kind of joke he is:

This man wants to tell everyone they are dumb as hell if they don't think the little baggie of cocaine is Hunter's. Again, like no one else in the world uses cocaine, when My God! They sure do. And also so what if it was his? An addict relapses, news at eleven. It's just a story about a tragedy of how using has a grip on a human's life, it isn't a failure of the Biden Administration. 

Would I Call it Weaponization?

 

Somewhere, deep down, I feel like nothing is ever over with Republicans. Forget Benghazi or tan suits. They are going to get weird and bring up Chappaquiddick or Alger Hiss or Robert Byrd's Klan connections out of the blue.  So what do I think when Jim Jordan thinks maybe he'll target Hillary Clinton with a new investigation?

If Hunter Biden wasn't already done to death, why would the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy turning their lonely eyes to Hillary Clinton again hit any different?  I mean, Kevin McCarthy, the current and obviously temporary Speaker of the House explained out loud where people could hear that the email investigation hurt Clinton intentionally. And current crank James Comer admitted in the same vein that the investigation into President Biden's family members is supposed to help Trump. 

He still hasn't found what he's looking for, of course. The GOP can't keep track of their whistleblowers. To the extent they exist they are being paid by Trump insider Kash Patel who is a witness in the Mar-A-Lago document scandal and the first impeachment over the Ukraine president's being extorted. So that's not obviously sleazy as hell, right? 

But in the funny old round world kind of way, it comes out just now that the Trump DOJ was already investigating the Clintons via the Clinton Foundation, and they had nothing. See, unlike Trump's slush fund that he called a charitable enterprise which had to be shut down, and his kids had to go to mandatory don't run a charity as a slush fund school? The Clinton Foundation has been on the up and up. 

So--see how that seems like weaponization? And the thing where Trump get tried in courts and actually has done stuff is not weaponization? And how Durham had nothing, and most Republicans seem to be kind of distracting from 1/6 or the documents scandal by deflecting and whatabouting to other stuff? 

It's like they want to pretend "both sides" are equally as bad and they really aren't. And I would through very gritted teeth like to suggest the media report it that way, because sometimes, there are not two sides to everything (sorry current CNN management!) but one side is actually very bad, even seditious. And even undermines the very concept of rule of law via extreme partisanship. 

And what I mean by that isn't hard at all to see or hear if you're paying attention. 

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. 

The Worst Instincts

 

"I'd start killing bad guys" -- Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) on how he'd respond to the attack in Kabul pic.twitter.com/38AFNd6Nim

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 26, 2021

"Pew! Pew! Pew! Muddafakas!" he did not add. I don't know what he thought we had the military doing there for the last 20 years, and I'm not sure he even gets that "putting in more US troops" isn't the way to get all Americans out. This isn't a thought process--it's the equivalent of when a house cat jumps because you set a cucumber down next to it. 

In order to keep from writing an increasingly expletive-laden 2500 word excessively linked screed about what the whole hell is wrong with Republicans, I'm just going to boil it down to this: people who have more smoke for President Biden than ISIS and make saying he has to resign or be 25th Amendment-ed the first thing to fall out of their mouths, are just partisan ghouls. Any tragedy to seize on and make political hay of would do. 

I didn't respect that nonsense when they tried it with Benghazi and I'm a whole lot less charitable to it after January 6.

UPDATE:  Yeah, this tracks: 

Amid the chaos in Kabul, Business Insider is highlighting a November 2020 article written by James Golby for The Atlantic. 

"Perhaps by design, perhaps by incompetence, perhaps out of sheer spite or arrogance, Trump has created the circumstances for another Bay of Pigs, Black Hawk Down, or Benghazi," Golby wrote in his piece published by back in November. 

Golby, also a U.S. Army veteran, emphasized how those were all incidents "where the United States inserted itself into overseas conflicts enough to draw lethal opposition but without sufficient strength to protect its people."

 

The October Surprise is We Made it to October

 

I'm not sure what we're supposed to do with information that some computer shop got hold of a hard drive that is from Hunter Biden and is now in the hands of maybe the FBI and also too Rudy Giuliani who is very strong on the cyber. (Like, this is a thing he took money from people to consult on, which is actually embarrassing.) 

So now that the Durham investigation and the "unmasking" thing are apparently duds, we're going to go back to the Ukraine well that got Trump impeached, huh? If that's where the guy holding superspreader events all over battleground states want to go, to advertise his alleged post-Covid-19 fitness while the pandemic still rages and while his actual unfitness for the job was determined well before he botched the pandemic response, well, ok. As for me, I spent the last nearly four years documenting TrumpWorld Grab Bags of the depth and depravity of this Administration, and this counts as the most desperate and fail-flail stuff I have ever seen from a pack of racist cretins and inveterate liars. 

Naturally, Biden has no record that such a meeting as is the focal point of the email allegation from the hard-drive "evidence" ever took place*--"but his emails" is just recycled 2016 hash, and I would adore to know what emails between Jared Kushner and MbS looked like. I don't want to hear about familial corruption from the Trump Administration/family, who are literally soaking in it. 

Trump is desperate for an October Surprise. He will try different things, some entirely stupid. But it's too late--remember how this whole year has gone? Yeah. That's him. That was his watch. He fucked everything up and is now looking for a lifeline. 

I am not even arsed to play this game anymore and chase down all the ways this shit is fake, because even if it was all 100% true, Trump fucked up everything. The economy is bad. The unemployment is bad. The COVID-19 deaths and infection rates are bad. The polarization and mistrust are bad. His relentless lying is bad, and getting worse, because his brain is bad. 

Even if Biden is flawed or his son is a wee bit of a money hungry fuckup--everything in TrumpWorld is worse than we deserve. And Biden is not that flawed. He has the unfakeable funk of a person who actually gives a damn about this country. Trump World's shitheaded rumor mongering shows he never has. 

*UPDATE: And as Steve M. notes, even if such a meeting did take place, it isn't a big deal--or wouldn't be unless you are already primed to knee-jerk assume there must be something wrong there. Long story short--this is for keeping Trump's rubens on the ranch, but it won't derail folks who already know well and good why they are Team Biden.

The Benghazi Committee has Been Shut Down

The House Select Committee on Benghazi has finally called it quits because "Mission Accomplished."

Surely it earns some kind of prize for being one of the longest taxpayer-funded attack ads ever made.

Emails Story-Not a Bang but a Whimper?

So, despite the "bombshell" that was heralded as "the FBI is re-opening the Clinton emails case!" that was cacked out last Friday, before any of the emails in question found on Anthony Weiner's laptop had even been looked at, it turns out there was an awful lot of nothing turned up.

Well, of course there wasn't. The email thing is quite possibly the most boring thing that has ever been prodded about as a potential scandal. "She violated workplace guidelines because she was the boss and found carrying two phones inconvenient, hur dur..." Yeah. Well. That's actually it. It doesn't actually rise to the standard of treason, does it? The sort of wild things like hammers being taken to devices no longer useful or the info retained being extracted by a program like BleachBit, which Trump likes to go on about (although I don't think he understands it in the least since he calls it "acid wash") are actually not at all dodgy but recommended.

I think the funny thing though, is that Trump and his surrogates are bummed that FBI Director Comey is now saying they investigated those emails and there is no dropping of any further shoes. Thus, the Tweet above from General Michael Flynn, former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who does not seem to know that this investigation could have been achieved quite rapidly with computers.  Yeah, with time to spare. Like, before making the announcement eight days ago that there was new information, he could have totally obtained the warrant, had the new information gone through, and cleared it out without ever casting suspicion on a presidential candidate.

Just like that!

Now, there is some anecdata evidence that Comey's original letter (yeah that timing is not satisfactory to say the needle truly didn't move based on the date--you needed to see where we were a few days later) did not actually move the needle that much, or maybe actually motivated people to vote for Her (it sure did make me hot!) But this additional move?

Please. Like Senator Sanders said--enough with her damn emails! This isn't impeachable--and if it is, when does anyone address all the other officials who have had separate servers, private accounts, and deleted emails? Because this frankly isn't rare and in practice, what Clinton did is really just a mistake--not disqualifying. As with the Benghazi hearings, that were admitted to being about "getting" Clinton, I don't feel these investigations are about truth--but politics. This is why politics has the shabby reputation is has. This kind of stuff needs to end for people to get back the kind of approval of and belief in our civic institutions we need for democracy to work. There is a good reason for the low approval the American people have for Congress, and this kind of fuckery is it.

Don't just vote the top of the ticket, and if you don't love Hillary Clinton--don't let this stop you from coming out for the lower ticket offices. We need to vote out witch hunters and get people who want to work for their constituency.

The Trump Two-Step

For a variety of reasons, I went with the screen-cap and not the embed on this one. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, once a potential challenger for Speaker of the House (although OMG--what if something were to befall Golden Boy Paul Ryan? Who knows?) and applicant for the Secret Service, who is so capable of handling classified information, just a matter of weeks after rescinding his endorsement of Trump,  and having also in the past been critical of Trump's failure to "open (his) kimono" with respects to tax returns, has decided that it's probably really dodgy to go on as a GOP Congressman and not 1) Support the party's nominee, 2) allow the possibility of seeming to support the Democratic nominee, who the fix has long been in to start trying to impeach from Day One of her Presidency, and 3) he wants to justify his role in being "that guy". The guy who is trying to take down the bad lady.

Now, this isn't just to single out poor Rep. Chaffetz. This is to talk about what our current political situation is: One side, in this case, the GOP, is demonizing and delegitimizing the apparent Democratic winners in advance. The other side--my side, has got to figure out a way to stop this vicious cycle (since they don't seem to show any inclination to stop) of making Democrats pay for our successes.

Now, my first choice is a wave election where we get on-board with voting out all the R.'s wherever we feasibly can--I think this year the Senate could be in reach if Clinton is performing where the polls say she is. The House is probably not reachable this election--so we need to already be thinking about the 2018 mid-term. That said, there needs to be a vocal strategy about priorities--lay it out on the table: Do we have time for fake-scandal bullshittery that spends taxpayer money on free attention for congressional grandstanders, or do we think addressing the real problems facing this country's citizens are worth taking seriously?

This two-step is being done by several red-state politicians who can't disturb where the primaries told them their natural voter base leans. Or so they think. But that base they are looking at is not set in concrete. I'm a little confident about the Clinton win, and if I'm right, the DNC needs to treat Trump like an albatross. A stinking albatross. And no one gets to have it drop from their neck until they appreciate the little things that might actually result in something called "good governance". Like--not demonizing. Not holding show-trials for b.s. reasons. And listening to one another and crossing the stupid aisle. Year after year we are told this is what a lot of Americans would like to see, and year after year, they get more bullshit.

So let's get Chaffetz the hell out of there for his current flexible principles, or at least stay on attention with him for future planned partisan stupidity. But pay attention to your own possible local Chaffetz-that guy (like my Senator Pat Toomey) who can't even put who he endorses or will vote for on the record. Lots of people this year are seeing the presidential vote as very much a moral choice--I am not opposed to this way of thinking.

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.

RNC 2016: Was This a Bridge Too Far?

Even though this was supposed to be "Jobs night", NJ Governor Chris Christie took the time in his speech to try Hillary Clinton for the horrible things he thinks she ever did, like being a Democrat and running for president.

She also negotiated with Russia (which we call diplomacy) and which any anti-proliferation foreign policy person would think was right to do. Reagan even did. He says Clinton never fights for "us". Does Christie feel, for some reason, particularly unfought for? And does he happen to have a mouse in his pocket?

Seriously, this is they guy so enamored of the Trump deal he tried to math away Melania's plagiarism, saying it was only 7% of her speech. Well, if a sandwich was 93% cheesesteak and 7% mothballs, would you even eat it? (Or spend an unbelievable amount of time picking out mothballs.)

Former McCain Advisor Steve Schmidt called this Banana Republican. I call this a "bridge too far".

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.

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.

The MTP Dauphin and the High Broderist Cult

John Amato has a nice clip of Luke Russert with a hot take that's a hot mess--he suggested in front of a camera that certain interruptions or complaints by House Democrats in the middle of Thursday's Benghazi hearing "blocked" more damaging questions that could have been leveled at former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Like that would have stopped them from bringing out more serious questions if they had them. Of course that's stupid. But when I stepped back and saw who came up with that weird-ass notion, it became clear.

Luke Russert, unlike other journalists who had to marinate in Washington DC culture or mainstream journalism for a while before converting to the both-siderist faith, has been born and baptized to it. Having heard "both sides do it" from the cradle, he is able to see the political theater started by House Republicans against a particular Democratic figure as also being played for strictly political reasons by House Democrats with equal culpability--even if that is by no means the case. But his articles of faith possibly may insist on this view.

I've joked that Luke Russert is the Dauphin of Meet the Press, and that David Gregory and Chuck Todd had only been charged with serving out a kind of Regency until the boy journalist proves he's man enough to handle the reins. The thing is, he can't ever be any good without dues-paying, and he's never going to be positioned to do that. But it never really struck me before that the cult of High Broderism also has an aristocracy, now. Fancy children of today's journalists and pols chummily winding up both-sidering their way across our screens like Village criers telling us all is well, and both sides do it, so shut up and deal.

I find it boring and distasteful. The Ancien Regime media needs a revolution. (For maximum futility, consider this sort of thing why I blog.)

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.

The Plan to Impeach Hillary Clinton

I said I probably wouldn't have anything to say about the Benghazi Committee and Hillary Clinton again until after she spoke before them, but it turns out, Rep. Mo Brooks of AL made a liar of me by stating that he believed that Hillary Clinton would be impeached on day one of her presidency.

Which tells me he's pretty sure that the GOP nominee is going to fail, and that the only hope the GOP has of containing a Hillary Clinton presidency is dragging her name through the mud.  In other words, what else is new? The email story isn't really anything like so dire as the reading the GOP wants people to make of the issue.

It doesn't help Mo Brooks' (or Trey Gowdy's) case that House Democrats decided to release their report of what has been uncovered, which is not at all unfavorable to Hillary Clinton. Now, before anyone says, well that's just partisan ass-covering: Democrats always realize the potential of an ass getting hung out. We cut bait far more often than we keep sinking the line. If Congressional Dems genuinely believed Clinton to be a flawed candidate, they'd have burned her. Their coming out with this means they don't believe any such thing.

Keeping the Benghazi Committee alive in the face of what it has become is starting to be disrespectful to the people most directly affected by those events. The whole thing has gone punchy and stupid.  They may as well quit it, and should she, inshallah, get into office in 2017, maybe they could wait until they had something to get her with before they started up a "get her" plan?

But in case any liberal or progressive is wondering, this is why we really need a Democratic congress, even if it has a few Blue Dogs. These hard-heads keep trying. The Clintons tried to investigate themselves on Whitewater before 1994, but once the GOP owned the House, it was all about "Get Clintons". Once the GOP took the House after the 2010 election, like Jon Chait suggested, it was all about "Get Obama". They never had anything to get him with, but they kept trying.

This is why we can't let them get away with it. They would do it with Sanders too, don't pretend they won't. It's their pretend ace-card--get congress, shit on the Dem president. If you are liberal or progressive or not an asshole, vote Democratic because otherwise, we will have nothing but show-trials and fuckery and half-assed government. Get them out of Congress, and they can't do these things. No more debt ceiling and budget reconciliation stupidness. No one can afford to sleep in on Election Day.  Got it? Good.

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.