(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)
Hawes says:
May 1, 2014 at 7:23 pmWho could’ve predicted that when the GOP establishment handed Nixon the pearl handled revolver in the parlor, we would have to impeach every Democratic President for the next forty years to balance things out?
I still think the biggest roadblock to the Repubs’ frantic search for a BenghazAIEEEE! blowback against President Obama / Hillary Clinton / Susan Rice / all the Democrats is that they’ve spent so many years mainlining xenophobia to their target Fox News audience. Going back to the Reagan administration, and especially since 9/11, the low-info voter has been continually reminded that the world beyond our borders is a scary and terrible wilderness. Nothing but terrorists and Muslims and Communists and Communist Muslim terrorists, every one intent upon murdering innocent Americans in the name of their godless booga-booga “ideology”, which you know has to be a nasty word because ideas are for snobs. All those foreign hellholes like Libya and Kenya and Hawaii — you risk going out there, instead of staying safe at Disney World or one of the major heavily-advertised-on-tv cruise lines, you’ve gotta expect the occasional murdering rampage, like in Black Hawk Down or Zero Dark Thirty. It’s very sad that four Americans died, but after all, those four volunteered to venture into places where anybody who’d watched the news knew were murderously chaotic, and it’s not as though any politicians were convening special investigations into why four thousand Americans died in Iraq or Afghanistan, are they?
9.11.01 – 3000 terror deaths expolited to attack Iraq. 9.11.12 – 4 terror deaths exploited to attack Barack. #benghazi #p2
— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) May 1, 2014
Although, if you actually need a reason for Boehner’s new clown parade (beyond getting all the clowns in the same car), Mr. Pierce probably has the truth of it:
… The political bad faith on this — Hillary In ’16! — should be so obvious as to not require any explanation. But this is what’s coming. This committee will leak like a sieve. It will leak truncated testimony and barbered evidence. Most of these leaks will go to select members of the conservative media, particularly at a certain vulpine-named news network, but some folks among the Bigfeet will play Chris Vlasto, Lisa Myers, et. al. (My winter book favorite is Jonathan Karl.) These very selective revelations will dominate the political discussion and when, ultimately, they come to nothing, nobody will notice because everyone will be out there chasing the next handout. And, of course, everyone will discuss the “political implications” because “perception is reality” and, anyway, all this stuff is Out There.
And it’s still all about what got said on television programs that nobody watches any more. The “American people,” my ass. This scandal exists because the Village demands it, and because too many news directors are afraid of being yelled at on the radio. The rest of us have to live through it.
I’m just not convinced even the hardcore Twenty-Seven-Percenters, excepting those getting paid for their efforts, can be goaded into chasing this corpse-candle any further down the lych way…
Theory that #Benghazi revival is designed to distract base from GOP's tacit acceptance of ACA is quite plausible. http://t.co/KiRpFpTH7C
— billmon (@billmon1) May 2, 2014
Steve in the ATL
Matt Bevin shook my hand today. I had to leave the reunion to sterilize my hand.
Consensus amount the generally very conservative alumni was that he has no chance.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
Less than a thousand days for Republicans to impeach. This is going to be a nail-biter, particularly since those lazy fuckers in the house only work 113 days a year.
Litlebritdiftrnt
Hate to go OT so soon but I LOVE this woman, Elizabeth Warren’s speech after the defeat of the minimum wage bill.
http://linkis.com/aattp.org/elizabeth-/J2vMu
She goes after the corporate welfare and the wingnut bootstrap memes with a vengeance.
kc
There’s a special place in Hell for these people.
MattF
THere are just so many scandals— Benghaaaazi, the IRS, Fast and Furious, Obaaaamacare, the city of Chicago, Mooooslim Kenyan socialism… and they’re all CONNECTED, doncha know…
trollhattan
They figure it’s a two-fer–get Obummer to resign and kill off Hill’s chances in ’16. Winning!
Some winger columnist (forget which, does it matter?) confidently predicted that if Obama somehow were to win in ’12, he’d never make it another year, because: Benghazi! So we’re about two years into Obama’s living on borrowed time.
Also, too, WTF, Arizona?
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/03/arizona-high-school-student-accused-of-up-to-18-sex-attacks/
MattF
OT, but OMG:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/gop-candidate-opposes-marriage-equality-worked-as-female-impersonator
Bob In Portland
From Robert Parry.
trollhattan
Hooray for The Youngs. They’re not forgetting what this crew did.
–NY Mag
Tripod
If it was just support for repealing Obamacare that was softening, I don’t think they’d give a fuck. But they’re dropping it like a hot potatoe.
My thesis is that Medicaid expansion is becoming a millstone.
GOP run state leges need to move on it before the next time Democrats control congress – when the fix will be moving Medicaid to a single payer system. But these bodies are so dominated by mouth breathing morons that they’re going to hang federal and statewide candidates out to dry.
Proceed Governor…..
Higgs Boson's Mate
@trollhattan:
Thirty-five large for a commencement speech? I should have been an incompetent public servant.
trollhattan
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
I’ve got the incompetent part down, baby! Could definitely deliver a Homer Simpsonesque
stem-winderambition-killer of a speech to those young’ns. (Airfare and limo too, yes?)Amir Khalid
The pronunciation guidance given in that cartoon, which reflects how Americans pronounce Benghazi, is actually incorrect. The correct pronunciation of بنغازي is more like “ban ra zi” with the “a” pronounced as “ah”, and the “r” pronounced from the back of the throat as in French. But then Obama got ridiculed for mispronouncing “Pakistan” in the presidential debate against McCain when he’d actually got it right; it’s the pronunciation common in America that is wrong.
The Republican opposition to Obama has throughout his presidency been partisan to the nihilistic extreme. But since his reelection it has seemed to me ever more desperate. It was always unreasonable, but now you see an ever greater divide between reality and the issues being ginned up. I suppose there’s hope to be found in this: that the crazier the Republican Congressional party acts, the more they put off sane people like commenter Tommy’s mother from voting for them.
Patrick
@trollhattan:
It is outrageous that the school was ready to pay $35,000 for Rice’s speech. Somebody at Rutgers should get fired.
trollhattan
Also, also, too from NY Mag, maybe the best pet rescue story I’ve ever read, made better by the picture of the world’s most-contented pooch.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/05/dog-lost-in-hurricane-sandy-reunited-with-owners.html
Villago Delenda Est
@Bob In Portland: TIMMEH!
NotMax
Obama may ostensibly be the public target, but the real reason for extending and extending and extending the topic is to smear Clinton. “If this happened in the one department she was running, imagine what will happen to the entire country if she’s in charge” and like that there.
It’s no longer about Benghazi, it’s Whitewater 2.0, an preemptive strike to create a set of voters, however small that set may be, who intractably gravitate to the “I would have voted for her but for this” camp.
Amir Khalid
@Patrick:
How much does Rutgers University usually offer a commencement speaker, anyway? Do they normally pay that much, or were they offering Condi Rice a premium for her prestigious resumé?
SatanicPanic
@MattF: well, I didn’t always agree with everything I’ve done for money
Anoniminous
@Amir Khalid:
English speakers can’t get Copenhagen (Koob-en-HOUN) right and they’ve been sailing there for a thousand years.
nellcote
Forget Hillary, it’s death panel summer redux. The Bengazi BS will take up all the media oxigen thanks to the compliant Villagers so that no Dem messaging gets thru this summer and into the fall elections.
Patrick
@Amir Khalid:
I don’t know. But considering what a failure she was as Sec of State and what a disgrace of a war that she helped led, it is sickening that a university was willing to pay her $35k for a speech. It is sad that as a nation we are paying her ilk rather than ridiculing her. Hell, CNN keeps asking Cheney for his opinion as if it is worth anything after his disastrous leadership of the Iraq war.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@trollhattan:
Heh. I’d even be incompetent for half the price.
Amir Khalid
@efgoldman:
If you’re asking about his visit here, yes, those hats were indeed fezzes, which are often worn by men as part of the Malaysian national dress and other ceremonial attire. The Malay name for the fez is “songkok”.
gene108
Benghazi is an important red-line in our generation. A moment of weakness that signals to our enemies to attack us and our allies.
If Truman had been stronger and not lost mainland China to the communists, we would never have needed to fight the Korean and Vietnam wars and about 90,000 Americans would not have been killed at the hands of Chinese backed communist forces across Asia.
There were 10,000 or so American deaths, in the last decade, caused by Clinton cutting and running from Somalia and not standing up to terrorists.
What tragedy Obama’s weakness will wreck upon the American people will be hard to predict, but we could easily see a million Americans having to die to correct Obama’s unwillingness to be tough on our enemies,
Richard Grant
And Jonathan Chait uses such a descriptive phrase — in passing, mind you — at the end of his second paragraph:
“In the months since the mainstream media has mostly moved on from Benghazi, it has continued to blossom in the right-wing imagination as a kind of placeholder scandal.”
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/05/john-boehner-goes-full-benghazi.html
barry
You are wrong about the GOP saying Muslims were scary.
Until 9/11/2001, the GOP view of the world was that Islamic fundamentalists were our greatest allies. Reagan dedicated space shuttles to them. Reagan compared them to our founding fathers. Reagan had no time to attend the retirement ceremony of Admiral Hyman Rickover, but had the time for tea with Islamic fundamentalists at the White House.
Bush the Pere thought it was cool that the Chinese were providing Pakistan with the nuclear weapons.
The Wall Street Journal cheered the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.
GOOPERs (once they took over the House in 1995) routinely condemned India for being beastly to Islamic fundamentalists. Dan Burton was so pro Pakistan, I used to refer to him on the 1998 Internet as Dan Burton (R-Islamabad).
Few have done more the rise of Islamic fundamentalism than the GOP.
ruemara
@gene108: Stop huffing and eating paste.
Ash Can
@gene108: Hey, that was pretty good. You should get an undercover job at National Review and, once there, spike the office coffee pot with GoLytely.
Ash Can
@ruemara: I suspect snark was involved.
hilts
Glenn Greenwald Debates Michael Hayden over Surveillance
h/t http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140502/17545627105/find-two-hours-to-watch-glenn-greenwald-debate-michael-hayden.shtml
Villago Delenda Est
@ruemara: Admittedly, his experiment with GOP mind-altering substances produced a Poe’s Law challenging post.
lurker dean
@Litlebritdiftrnt: love her, wish her clips like this would get more play.
Frankensteinbeck
@NotMax:
I really don’t believe this is about Hillary, or at least not about her possible candidacy. It’s carried the loudest by the people who have shown they’re morons who froth at the mouth. Obama hate has produced so much insanity that you don’t need to look for any extra reason for anything. It drives conservatives up the fucking wall that a black man beat them, that they haven’t been able to score a single win (from their perception) against him.
I think looking ahead to the next presidential race is silly, but what the Hell. As a thought experiment, I’ve been considering the debates about whether the GOP would get more or less crazy if Hillary became president. Do they hate blacks or women more? My theory is that it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. There will be much more in the way of open insults and they won’t even try to fig leaf the misogyny the way the upper levels have tried to pretty up their racism. There could easily be the kind of dedicated obstructionism we saw in the first 2 years of Obama’s administration. There won’t be the kind of rabid, self-destructive irrationality.
They hate women, but they fear blacks. Conservatives will view Hillary as vulnerable because she’s a woman, and will attack her accordingly. A black president terrifies them. It’s unthinkable, and looking at him fills them with emotions they can’t make sense of. It’s driven them batshit insane. Different responses.
WaterGirl
@MattF: I haven’t read the article yet, but I have to admit that I snorted out loud (always so attractive) when I read the title at the link.
Edit:
OMG, I snorted again when I got to this paragraph: (right after he denied he had ever been a drag queen named Mona Sinclair)
Tokyokie
@Anoniminous: I still can’t understand how we got “Vienna” out of “Wien,” or, for that matter, “Austria” from “Österreich.”
sharl
@Litlebritdiftrnt: I love how Sen. Warren stays on that paramount topic, and doesn’t let herself get distracted by the Village media collective. Since the latter don’t like spending much of their precious assets on her message – it would upset the owners and sponsors to do otherwise – I hope social media and internet will get her the attention she deserves.
Here’s a direct link to the You-Tube video (4m41s) of that Senate speech she gave on April 30.
Frankensteinbeck
@efgoldman:
I think there’s a difference in the emotions they feel towards the two groups. One emotion is desperate, and the other is contemptuous. Obama is an existential threat that must be destroyed, where there can be no compromise. Hillary they want to cause pain.
NotMax
@Frankensteinbeck
Agree that it originally was not a political tool directed at Clinton, but maintain that it has mutated into such and that is why it continues to fester long after witness after witness has debunked the claims of rabid inquisitors.
(And I am no fan of Clinton by any means but recognize that for all intents and purposes she is currently the head of the pack.)
trollhattan
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Then Rutgers would probably cut you a check for $70k. I say, Make that speech!
WaterGirl
@trollhattan: Amazing pet rescue story. Thanks for linking.
I also found a link to this gem on the same page as your story: Amy Schumer
D58826
@Frankensteinbeck: Well they worked up a pretty good head of hate about the Clintons. Whitewater, killing Vince Foster, selling drugs out of the White House, etc. They managed to spend 100m dollars on one investigation after anther and all the came up with was a blue dress and a blow job. So I’m sure they can transfer the hate from Obama to Hillary without missing a beat. The GOP in Congress will do the exact same thing that it has done for the past 6 years, block everything.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@gene108:
You can do your part to correct this by suiting up and showing up then personally eliminating as many of America’s enemies as you can.
SiubhanDuinne
@Anne Laurie:
No H/T? (#99)
Dolly Llama
@Tokyokie: Or “Japan” from “Nippon.”
SiubhanDuinne
@Tripod:
Nicely played. (Some of us remember….)
gene108
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Oh come now, someone has to be “in charge” to point out who America’s enemies are. This is the valuable role us journalists / pundits / TV Talking Heads, etc. fulfill.
D58826
@gene108: and of course that most valuable of all birds – the chickenhawk!!!!
debbie
I have no idea who Fugelsang is, but this was great:
http://egbertowillies.com/2014/05/03/john-fugelsang-benghazi-republican/
Higgs Boson's Mate
@gene108:
\My apologies. My snark detector is often deficient.
gene108
@gene108:
Also meant to add bloggers and commenters on blogs.
Mike in NC
@gene108: Asshole GOP senator from Wyoming is a new MSNBC favorite to show up and repeat FOX News talking points about how “Our enemies don’t fear us and our allies don’t trust us”, without identifying said enemies, why they are our enemies, what to do about said enemies, etc. Worthless fucking hack.
PhilbertDesanex
@efgoldman: For the RWNJ, the fear of being raped by blacks is even worse than their fear of not getting any..
gene108
@Mike in NC:
Hate to say it, but when America does not intervene the world suffers. If Wilson had stepped up to the plate and backed the Whites, in the Russian Civil War, we would never have had to contend with global communism.
On a serious note, Republicans have been the “tough on America’s enemies” party, ever since 1968 and they cannot deal with a world, where Democrats do a better job being “tough”.
Bush, Jr. ran on a platform of restoring the U.S. military, in 2000, because Clinton had so “thoroughly hurt it” by not maintaining it at Cold War levels.
Obama is getting the same sort of “scolding”, because in the minds of the media it can be no other way besides Democrats are effeminate and weak, with regards to crime and national security, while Republicans are tough and strong and manly.
The reality of results really does not matter.
There were anti-Vietnam war riots outside the Democratic convention, in 1968, that has basically defined the logic of what each Party represents for the next half century.
Bob In Portland
@Mike in NC: Prepare for “Obama lost Ukraine”.
Davis X. Machina
@Bob In Portland: @Mike in NC: Prepare for “Obama lost Ukraine”.
But isn’t ‘losing’ Ukraine a good thing? That way they’ll be spared from the international bankers ,the National Endowment for Democracy, and the CIA, and the neo-Nazis, and NATO, and the EU, and Victoria Nuland….
Shana
@debbie:OMG, he’s great! You should listen to Stephanie Miller, she has him on regularly, he’s the Eccliastical Mook who’s on every, or almost every, Friday on her show. Also, great hair.
qwerty42
From a posting on Wonkette by NDeeeZ:
Hawes
Who is this Hawes fellow you quoted? He seems both wise and sexy.
Ken
@efgoldman:
gene108 certainly didn’t. I vaguely recall a quote from Osama bin Laden[*] to the effect that he took the withdrawal from Lebanon after that bombing as showing Americans would cut and run when attacked.
[*] That’s the Osama bin Laden who Obama had captured and shot. He’s easily confused with the one that Bush Jr. was “not concerned about” in 2002, since they’re the same person.
jl
@gene108:
” Bush, Jr. ran on a platform of restoring the U.S. military, in 2000, because Clinton had so “thoroughly hurt it” by not maintaining it at Cold War levels. ”
That even the airheads in the corporate media and large minority (maybe plurality, even) of US voters still believe that the GOP is somehow the party of foreign policy and national defense strength is surreal to me.
Where is there any evidence of U.S. military weakness, or decay, or degradation, in the invasion of Afghanistan, or Iraq for that matter? If Clinton had left the military seriously weakened and starved for funds, and in disarray, the almost exactly two calendar years, and one budgetary year since Clinton left office was not enough time to change much.
Seems to me that there was, though I hate to use the phrase, plenty of shock and awe to spread around, and a lot of bravery, and finesse, and expertise, including civilian affairs expertise on the ground (which was sadly, and IMHO criminally unappreciated by the Bush II crowd).
The later failures sprang from miserable lack of leadership and competence in the GOP run executive branch.
Yet, the tired old ‘strong daddy GOP’ meme still lives in many hearts.
Of course, many ghastly blunders and crimes occurred as they do in all wars. But I think the worst were the result of bad policy from the executive, which did not need to occur, and need not occur in all wars.
barbequebob
@gene108:
you’re probably a troll, but China was lost because we bet on a corrupt autocratic loser, Chiang Kai Shek (as we did in many places in the mid-20th century).
Barbara Tuckman’s “Stillwell and the American Experience in China” is a great read into what a useless POS Chiang was.
Anne Laurie
@Hawes: Tried to email you for permission, but my email system rejected the address!
Death Panel Truck
And you’re obviously an idiot.
Mike G
@gene108:
With a Vice Presidential candidate who as Secretary of Defense cut the Pentagon budget by 25% at the end of the Cold War. You’d have to be a Republican to believe something so transparently stupid.
Matt McIrvin
A person of liberal sympathies just asked me if I could explain what Republicans thought Benghazi was about, and I had a difficult time of it.
I think it’s because R politicians are playing a sort of dog whistle game. The surface complaint is some arcane business about whether Susan Rice was being dishonest by not saying the attack was terrorists, in some public statement in 2012 that no sane person cares about any more. But by going on about “smoking guns” and the old “what did the president know and when did he know it,” they’re playing to the folks who think Obama is in cahoots with the Muslim Brotherhood and called the Navy SEALS back because of his hate of the white man, etc. Because they can’t say this out loud but can’t distance themselves from it either, it all just comes of as mysterious insinuation of something just out of view.
Chris
@Mike G:
Before there was Obama Derangement Syndrome, there was Clinton and Carter Derangement Syndrome. Carter was weak on foreign policy because he inherited a military still shell-shocked by Vietnam and didn’t start building it up again (the “Reagan buildup”) until after the Sovs invaded Afghanistan, but somehow he’s single-handedly responsible for “Vietnam Syndrome.” Clinton inherited a military that had had been cut deeply in the previous administration for the obvious reason that the Cold War was over, but somehow all these cuts were his fault.
What boggles my mind is the number of people who really should know better – officers and so forth – that I’ve heard embrace these memes enthusiastically despite the obvious bullshit. Yes, some of them know it’s bullshit and are in it for the money, but not all. There’s plenty for whom it really is utter derangement, although I suppose it’s no different from “get your government off my Medicare.” This country has been in a hippie-punching drunken rage for longer than I can remember.
Jebediah, RBG
@Chris:
I vaguely remember it being called a “peace dividend” when it was a Republican administration (Reagan) but just “cutting the military” under Clinton. Because of that left-wing media bias, I suppose.
If I remember your comments about your approximate age correctly, that is literally true, since it has been going on since before you were a fetal citizen.
Pseudonym
@gene108: If America had stood up to the French back in 1776, we never would have had Napoleon to deal with.
Hawes
@Anne Laurie: Hunh? Well, this was the best thing to happen to me this week, so no harm.
(Says a lot about my week…)