Jake Tapper has a very good, and aptly titled, piece on some Republicans’ criticism of Obama over the attacks in Libya. It points out that, as mistermix said, the embassy’s statement came out before the violence began, and it ends by calling a lie a lie.
Romney wasn’t the only one — Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus tweeted ”Obama sympathizes with attackers in Egypt. Sad and pathetic.”
The evidence that the president “sympathizes with attackers in Egypt” was not immediately apparent, likely because it does not in any way exist.
Kudos to Tapper for spelling it out carefully…why isn’t this done more often? Why can’t an article just say that someone’s claims are not true in any way?
Litlebritdifrnt
Romney is doubling down on the lie at his presser. What a disgusting human being he is.
dmsilev
They’ve apparently also lost Chuck Todd:
Face
Yet the texts reads:
Looks like calling a lie a lie does not in any way exist.
BGinCHI
I hope Priebus is jangling even these stenographers’ last nerve, because I think this guy is the worst of what the GOP has to offer.
He’s Karl Rove without the brains or class.
Windy City
My first mistake of the day was wading into the comments section on the Tapper piece. Talk about a cesspool of ignorance and poor grammar. My opinion of humanity plummets every time I do that on sites that aren’t this one, yet I can’t stop looking. Ugh.
MattF
A reminder that politics matters and that journalists will shift with the political winds. This is happening because Obama is getting stronger. Not to denigrate what Tapper’s done, but he’s only saying out loud what they’ve all been saying to each other for the past year.
NCSteve
An Obama hater on the comment thread of that post is using “” as his handle. In case the historical allusion is lost on our younger readers, that would be the alias Lee Harvey Oswald used when he bought his mail-order guns.
They’re not even pretending they’re not going to turn violent when they lose this election anymore.
shortstop
@NCSteve: Well, lots of younger readers here are historical geeks who’re up on events that took place well before they got here. But I–not a particularly younger reader as I was born the same year Kennedy died–did not know that about Oswald, so thanks. I wonder how much of that stuff is going around just under the surface.
Raven
Pat Lang thinks that the fact that the statement by the Embassy before the breach is worse that it would have been after?
“IMO it is worse that the craven statement was issued by Embassy Cairo BEFORE they were attacked. The ambassador issued this statement on her own authority and should be withdrawn for “consultations.” pl “
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Because IOKIYAR that’s why.
Quite frankly, I’m gobsmacked that the odious spewer of safe CW, Chuckles Todd, actually wrote that. If you’re a Republican and you’ve lost him and his ilk, you’re toast.
amk
Really ? You’re happy with these weaselly words from tapper, the tool ?
Amir Khalid
@Face:
He’s implicitly calling out Mitt and Reinhold as liars. Close enough for me.
Elizabelle
PBO speaking now.
Secretary Clinton hit the right notes earlier.
POTUS: “We reject all attempts to denigrate the religious faiths of others.”
Trinity
When you’ve lost Mark Halperin…
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@amk:
Well, no, not really but as mentioned above, Tapper’s doing what every Villager does, namely contort his prose into a pretzel to say that Rmoney is a lying sack of shit without using those words.
The Villagers have been cowed for so long, and will go back to being cowed after the election, any break from their normal “reticence” is amazing, even if weasily worded.
Raven
Totally above it. Well done.
NCSteve
And looks like the Balloon-Juice Robot knows coded assassination threats when it sees them, even if ABC doesn’t, cause it edited the Oswald alias right out of my last comment. (Don’t ban me, bro!)
Face
@Amir Khalid: A lie needs to be called a lie. Allowed to fester, this verbal rename game makes Republican racists exist as “Underinformed pro-colorless GOP enthusiasts” and rapists as “Legitimate pro-birth control sexual practicers” and dumb shit like that.
Anonymous
Doubling down on an obvious lie. Blaming people in the embassy. Fuck Romney. I cannot remember the last time I have felt this mad.
feebog
@ amk:
There ways to call a lie a lie without using the word. This was an admittedly feeble attempt. But I sense the MSM is pretty much fed up with the never-ending-stream of bullshit that is coming from the Rmoney/Lyan campaign. So while happy might not be the right word, somewhat pleased will do.
aimai
Can I just say that Romney and Priebus’s statements just make me physically sick. I really thought the Republican party and its various standard bearers couldn’t make me any angrier than I already was but I am actually physically nauseated with rage at this point. I can’t find contact information for Romney’s Boston HQ but as soon as I do I plan to call them up and give them a piece of my mind. It won’t matter but it might make me feel better. Please tell me that this whole thing is going to blow up in Romney’s face?
aimai
chopper
@Anonymous:
keep talking, mittens. please.
biff diggerence
If anyone had the balls, I’d turn this right back on the Amoral Piece of Shit that is Mittens.
The “Reverend” Terry Jones is one of your peeps, Mitt.
Barnacle has the right idea. Get DOJ on this preacher’s ass as an accessory to murder.
red dog
Pinocchio would be so proud of the GOP. With long noses and pants on fire their emblem should change from am elephant to a stork walking on coals or some other strange thing.
chopper
@aimai:
they’re desperate. mittens can’t even win on the economy, but if the issue turns to foreign policy he’s done. his only shot here is bluster even though he knows it won’t really work.
Elizabelle
I think we are seeing the beginning of the end of the Romney campaign.
shortstop
@aimai: I had the same reaction. I’m pretty used to them pissing me off, but this just enraged me. Do we get a “At long last, sir, have you no decency” moment ever again?
amk
@Face: Bingo. There you go. Said it better than me. Fucking overton. Fucking window. And all that.
The fucking msm is as cowardly as the fucking mittbot. Assholes all.
Ding dong
@BGinCHI: Wait you are saying Rove has class? The man who said Mcains adopted Bangladeshi daughter was the result of an affair with a black woman? The manw ho was responsible for denigrating Kerrys military service. Rove has no class.
scav
@Elizabelle: Would be nice. I still somehow see them fighting even louder and more stridently onward so they don’t lose by too badly as measured on some metric or other. Rich men need face-saving and ego-lifting cosmetic interventions too.
1badbaba3
@BGinCHI: Rinsed Poobutt has gone from working on jalopies in WI to trying to figure out Doc Brown’s time machine stuck back in ’55. Way over his head would be an understatement and quite cliche.
kay
@aimai:
Romney is smiling at the end of that press conference.
WTF is wrong with him? What is he smirking about?
shortstop
Finally read the Tapper piece. I was not aware that Rich Williamson, whose race baiting of Carol Moseley Braun in the 1992 Illinois Senate race was so overt that he lost what should have been a certain endorsement from the wingnut Chicago Tribune editorial board, is an advisor to Mitt Romney. And yet, I feel no surprise.
Waldo
So dumb. There’s no need for Mittens to lie. In fact, it’s a an opportunity to help himself look presidential by displaying some class for a change. Simply issue a statement condemning the attack and regretting the loss of life. But no — instead of letting the story be about an unfortunate incident on Obama’s watch, the GOPer’s have made it about their ghoulish and dishonest exploitation of a tragedy.
JasonF
Romney is a piece of shit who is either so stupid he doesn’t understand the timeline or thinks we’re so stupid that we don’t understand the timeline. Either way, it’s contemptible.
He’s also opening himself up to attacks — and they would need to be made with subtlety, but there are plenty of surrogates who could do so — that he doesn’t understand diplomacy. Basically, he is demanding that the U.S. ambassadors make loud proclamations of fidelity to free speech at the expense of inflaming tempers in the Middle East. That is a righteous warrior’s response and it accomplishes nothing. The Egyptian statement made clear that we support free speech, but it did so in a way that also makes it clear that we respect Islam and understand why Muslims find the movie upsetting. That is the proper tone for the U.S.
Finally, if I were the Obama campaign, I would be giving serious thought to an attack that draws a direct parallel between how we should treat Muslims with respect today and how Mitt’s own forbears were treated in the late 19th century. That we have to learn to live with Islam even though parts of it are counter to our own values, just as it was wrong to persecute and murder Mormons (subtext: even though they believe in some weird things).
Tractarian
Romney is reprehensible. I must say, even I – a hardened Obot – was taken aback when I heard yesterday that the embassy apologized for Terry Jones in response to attacks on its staff. Part of me thought – crap, they’re gonna try to turn this into 1979 redux. The other part of me thought – this isn’t 1979 redux, but it’s still pretty bad.
Then I realized it was all based on a lie. In fact, the embassy statement came before the attack. If I was fooled, the swing-voting rubes must have been fooled.
We know Romney/Ryan view truth as a mere obstacle to be overcome on their path to power. But this is different. This is a lie on a majestic, biblical scale.
By the way, Terry Jones and Sam Becile – like Bibi – know exactly they’re doing.
I’m not saying what Jones and Becile did is anything close to what the Benghazi attackers did – they are just pathetic bigots, not murderers.
But they know Obama is closing in on victory and they’re doing whatever they can to prevent it from happening, even if it (indirectly) means a few American diplomats getting killed.
(Reposted from earlier thread.)
Villago Delenda Est
@Anonymous:
For me, it was when the deserting coward said the sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln put up the “Mission Accomplished” banner, he had nothing to do with it.
Villago Delenda Est
@Waldo:
This.
He could have come out looking more Presidential than he has any right to.
I guess the problem Rmoney has, ultimately, is that the Sheriff is Near.
This is the only conclusion left to me.
Todd
@Tractarian:
Nehemiah Scudder.
muddy
@kay:
That’s his patented “Public Face”. He opens his eyes up really wide to look sincere, and the effort pulls his mouth up at the corners. Possibly this is a servo-motor issue.
I’m remembering an action figure my son had, where you could rotate the face and there were 3 different ones. (it might have been from He-Man, which would really be perfect, imo)
NCSteve
@Villago Delenda Est: Ultimately, Romney’s problem is precisely the one identified by Deval Patrick when he was talking about the mess Romney left behind as governor: “as governor he was more interested in having the job than doing it.”
Romney wants the presidency the way rich people who commission art thefts from museums want things. It’s just a thing he wants because he thinks it might fill up the big empty hole inside him that he’s spent his life futilely trying to fill with all money and accomplishments and property and kids and Stepford wife. He doesn’t want to be president, he just wants the presidency.
And that’s the thing that explains all the weird stuff he does and says. People who want to be president have an understanding, sometimes flawed or misguided, of what a president does, and what a president can do, and they want to be president because they want to do those things.
Romney just doesn’t give a crap about that stuff. He just wants the office. And the result is that because he’s not interested in being president, he doesn’t really have any conception of what it means to be presidential. The national interest is irrelevant to him. National interest is a thing he’ll bone up on and deal with after he closes the deal.
The whole campaign, to him, is just a really tough negotiation to buy a thing he wants and when you’re negotiating a deal, you say whatever seems most advantageous at that point in the deal because if the other side doesn’t accept your offer, either by rejection or by making a counteroffer, your offer is off the table and, if you’re really hard nosed, you can just say “well you didn’t take that offer, so it’s gone now. Here’s what I’m offering you now.”
Indeed, Bain under Romney was notorious in PE circles for that kind of “well that deal’s off the table, here’s what I’m offering you now” tactic to the point that a lot of other people on Wall Street just wouldn’t deal with them.
sherparick
Jack Tapper is pretty Conservative, like a lot of media types in their early forties and late thirties. They grew up under Reagan, Liberalism itself seemed increasingly passe during the nineties and all the “Kulz Kids” were conservatives, and finally 9/11 scared the crap out of them and they enjoyed the “shock and awe,” especially since neither they nor their friends had to go do the dirty work of war fighting. However, apparently this Romney brain fart has been to much for Tapper and Chuck Todd. I wonder how it has gone over with Joe Scarborough.
shortstop
@NCSteve: Dead on in all respects.
Amir Khalid
@Waldo:
I think Mitt is afraid that missing any opportunity to get in a dig at Obama, however crass or unbelievable, might be interpreted as him pulling his punches out of weakness. And Mitt is absolutely terrified of seeming weak, while just as absolutely oblivious about seeming classless or dishonest.
Catsy
@Todd: Who was, I would like to remind everyone, supposed to be elected this year.
Lots to love in Heinlein’s vision of Future History, but I’d just as soon skip the theocracy phase.
Catsy
@Amir Khalid:
Slight corrections in bold.
Trinity
Interestingly Laura Rozen thinks this Bacile guy may possibly be some wingnut named Steven Klein.
SFAW
@kay:
From Smirking Chimp to Smirking Simp in only about 10 years. Is this a great country, or what?
Geeno
@muddy: Man-E Faces from He-man. My ex-brother-in-law had that toy as a pre-teen in the 80’s.
tones
MAN E FACES!!!1
ohhhh, thanks!
BTW, didn’t the ambassador and staff die of smoke inhalation – because of a fire?
That might not exactly be premeditated murder, if you are in a building filling with smoke and afraid to go outside as well it won’t take but a few minutes to lose consciousness…
just saying.