So, this happened:
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Friday he would appoint a select House committee to expand the Republican investigation into the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.
Also, somewhere today, a cow farted.
You know, I don’t mind that the right wingers want to beat this to death. It conveniently discredits the government’s interventionist impulses and highlights the foolish risks they take. Obama was wrong to intervene in Libya. He’s wrong to care about Syria and he’s wrong to spend one minute trying to manage the silliness in Ukraine. He’s wrong to prosecute the drone wars on islam even though islam deserves it. His entire foreign policy is awful. So I welcome the GOP radicals discrediting it. It sucks in so many ways that its worth having Obama and Clinton harassed by this stupidity. Maybe Clinton will learn something. I hope Obama never dares spend another moment on anyone outside the USA. He should focus on Americans in America and let the rest of the world take care of itself.
It’s way “beyond managing silliness in Ukraine. He’s already participated in fomenting the ousting the elected government, and it’s spinning out of control in ways that Nuland, Kerry, etc. didn’t anticipated. They don’t know what to do to salvage the western advantage and withdrawing — absorbing sunk costs — isn’t a US strength.
They’re roasting unionists in Odessa tonight and bragging about it on Twitter. When I say “They” I mean the side that the US is backing. Again, stone fascists.
You wonder how many times our Mighty Wurlitzer can go through the same okeydoke and Americans will follow. But they thought that there were weapons of mass destruction! But we stayed there twelve years to find Osama. But Khadafy is a bad man, like Saddam, like Noriega. Death squads, disappeareds. When fascists come to power you know what their game will be.
Ukraine’s problem isn’t the pro-russians or the pro-ukrainians, it’s a winner-take-all political system that makes it impossible for them to live together. The solution is not to hand the entire country over to Russia without trying a few non-violent options. The chances of a US invasion are nil, so let’s all stop hyperventilating, shall we?
Putin is not your friend. Just ask Pussy Riot.
Putin/Russia haven’t been angling to take over Ukraine. Tend to agree that we’re not going to engage in overt military actions. Or should say it’s not on the drawing board as the invasion of Iraq was in 2000 (that’s not a typo). However, powder kegs that explode always have unintended consequences.
Putin is a smart guy but culturally he’s incredibly provincial. Stuck somewhere in the mid-20th century or earlier.
‘Incredibly provincial’. That’s a real howler. I wouldn’t suppose so.
Notices you skipped over “culturally.” I said, culturally incredibly provincial. How well do you think “Pussy Riot” would have gone down in the US in 1954?
Well now, how well do you think the pussy rioters would go down in St Patrick’s cathedral today? Anyway, they wouldn’t be sent to the gulag. In exactly what respect might someone judge him provincial then, if not culturally?
The US had mental health institutions where blatant non-conformists could be sent and shot up with drugs and subjected to ECT. And don’t fucking tell me that wasn’t done.
It was done to Lou Reed.
Sad to see both left and right using this tragedy to score political points, while ignoring the courage of that ambassador, who risked everything to forge a stronger relationship with Libyans.
How else do we prevent other unnecessary American deaths? It was not courageous. It was foolish risk taking that resulted in tragedy.
Those running our government have got to stop thinking that they can save the world from itself. If it takes a few of them dying to make that point, it is tragic. But if they weren’t quite so foolish, they wouldn’t be there to begin with.
I don’t think this is about Obama, it’s about Hillary.
ISLAM deserves it? How so? Does Christianity deserve to be droned for every outrage committed by “Christian” extremists?
I won’t defend any religion. They are all nuts. So yeah, they deserve it for being nuts, but I’m better than that so while they deserve it, I don’t support it.
It’s the only card they hold to discredit team Obama on the WOT. May be but a lowly deuce of clubs but they can bluff. They know damn well that team Obama withheld information and they also know that it concerned the CIA annex and therefore, it can’t be disclosed. They’re pulling the same thing for public consumption that Bush/Cheney did to get their war on with Iraq when they kept repeating strings of Iraq, WMD, al Qaeda, 9/11In without generally stating that Iraq was linked to al Qaeda and 9/11 — letting the public connect the dots. That’s how a significant majority can to believe that Iraq was responsible for 9/11.
What they’re pushing with Benghazi is that team Obama hasn’t been (and can’t be) transparent; ergo, they have something to hide. They pair that by repeating terrorism and al Qaeda expecting the public to connect the imaginary dots. So far it’s only their crazies that have taken the bait.
The blame for this nonsense belongs with McConnell and Boehner who would have received a very limited reading of what was going on there and are supposed to call off their attack dogs. Neither is mature and responsible.
It seems to me that the Bengazi shtick started as an attack on President Obama — when Mitt Romney launched it during election season. But now when top-level Republicans talk about Benghazi, they have a different objective: It’s about poisoning Hillary ahead of 2016.
I’m somewhat surprised that they are recycling this line of attack. But then again, I think they must be feeling rather desperate watching Christie — whom I believe to have been their best hope — take on water.
In real time, Romney jumped on the events at the Cairo Embassy like white on rice. As if he and his team expected the demonstrations to blow-up and discredit Obama enough that Romney would win. Perhaps they were merely being opportunistic, but my intuitive sense is that they played a role in creating the opportunity. But it fizzled.
While the events in Benghazi played out only two or three hours later than those in Cairo, it was more like days before team Romney attempted to seize upon it as an opportunity. Even then team Romney didn’t know how to play — an indication that they didn’t know anything other than the news reports. Then the curious insistence that the attack couldn’t have been related to the anti-Muslim movie trailer when it was generally accepted that it was a factor in the Cairo demonstrations. As if they didn’t want anyone to look more closely at that video, and it seems to have worked.
And some in the GOP are still pissed that the election game-changer that was to begin in Cairo bombed along with the cheesy movie.
So the media narrative starts moving to the idea of republicans using the ACA as a weapon for 2014 might not be working, and this is their response?
.
Anything to keep the base- and I use that word in more than one sense- riled up.
This weekend’s Correspondents’ Dinner, if Issa attends, could provide Obama with this year’s stick it to him moment. Obama’s humor is a damn fine weapon when he chooses to wield it.
I read this as a concession that they were losing ground with all the Obamacare repeal nonsense, so they had to go to another message for the fall.
“Please proceed, wingnuts.”
Curious to me, though, is why the popular media are lending so much air time to this nonsense. They know as well as anyone that this is nothing more than a rehash of a bunch of discredited speculation, ungrounded in reality.
Because the popular media are owned and controlled by the Koch brothers and others of their ilk. There is no neutral media.
That’s not it. Village media’s definition of “news” is an issue where there is disagreement between the two major parties. That one of the positions being staked out is either ludicrous or factually absurd (or both) does not matter in the least. It’s all about the horserace. And if one of the two major parties says it, it’s assumed to be legitimate.
Within that paradigm, of course, some positions are more legitimate than others. But it’s all within that paradigm. If neither major party is advocating it (eg single payer), it does not exist.
A question for any scientist types: which contributes more to climate change, the methane from cow farts or the hot air from Congressional Republicans. I know which smells better.
Considering Congressional Republicans are breathing sulfur ash and pulverized brimstone along with that hot air, I’d say the cows have got a little bit of catching up to do.
Twenty third time’s the charm!
Obviously they are certain Hillary is running:
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
If they actually find out the declassified truth, it could be very embarrassing for Republicans. Too bad that the Congress won’t subpoena relevant CIA documents.
Yep, just another campaign year stunt.
Somehow cow farts don’t seem like they will distract the voters this year once they find out that Republicans have been lying through their teeth about Obamacare.
There’s already been one report about a Tea Party afficionado saved by Obamacare. Too bad there’s not a good way to get a national count of this phenomenon by, say, October 15.
Well when one is the Party of NO there really can be no platform to run on so all that’s left is Benghazi. If Jeb decides to brush questions of Benghazi off, he’ll find himself toast.
The saying goes, if you’re explaining, you’re losing. Republicans rapidly tired of trying to explain away the ACA numbers, plus there’s only so long you can go around saying that improving access to affordable care is worse than slavery. This is mostly just fan service for a restive base, and will soon disappear without a trace, much like the 27 trips we all took on the good ship Jeremiah Wright.