Darrel Issa isn’t going to share the Benghazi spotlight with anyone:
In a letter to Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, the committee’s combative chairman, the State Department’s assistant secretary for legislative affairs, Julia Frifield, appeared to go out of her way to pit Mr. Issa’s investigation into the attacks against a new one being conducted by a select committee appointed by Speaker John A. Boehner.
Ms. Frifield said that Mr. Kerry would testify in June, but that in complying with Mr. Issa’s demands, “we believe this would remove any need for the secretary to appear before the select committee” on the Benghazi attacks, which killed four Americans, including J. Christopher Stevens, the ambassador to Libya.
[…] Tempers flared anew this week when Mr. Issa revealed a classified email that the State Department sent to YouTube during the attacks, warning of the ramifications of an anti-Islamic video it was hosting. To critics, Mr. Issa was refusing to step away from the inquiry and let Mr. Gowdy take over. Worse still, the revelation bolstered the White House’s contention that national security officials believed that the attacks were prompted by the video, and that they were not using it as a pretext to play down the assaults’ ties to Al Qaeda.
Never have so many battled over the rights to get in front of a TV camera with so little. Do you think Fox will launch a new channel so they can have simultaneous coverage of both Issa and the Select Committee? It’s clear that Darrell is pretty far up his own asshole, but I wonder how much colon he has left on that little spelunking mission, because he seems to have completely lost the plot that he made up in the first place.
(via Benen)
dmsilev
So we’ve officially hit the ‘farce’ phase of ‘history repeats itself’.
NonyNony
Can anyone explain just what the hell Issa thought was so damning in that leaked letter to YouTube? Because it seems to undermine every talking point that the GOP has had on this issue since they first figured out how to pronounce Benghazi.
dmsilev
@NonyNony:
There’s your problem right there.
Jay C
“Lost the plot?” Inasmuch as the only story in this “plot” is Darryl Issa keeping his name, and the tattered remnants of the Benghazi!! “scandal” in front of whatever pathetic fraction of the populace still gives an crap about it, I’d say he’s still right on cue…
SteveinSC
Republican cannibalism. It’s what’s for dinner and the menu looks great. Now what was that again about Lois Lerner at the IRS being a Republican?
Frankensteinbeck
I think that no one who isn’t a FOX addict will give a damn. They may even be repulsed by the desperate partisanship. It seems like even wingnuts are going through the motions. Sure they still hate Obama, but I just don’t sense the passion in 2014 that I did in 2010, that impression that they would crawl over broken glass to vote to stop him.
Higgs Boson's Mate
January 3rd, 2011
May 23rd, 2014
Flailing? Clutching at straws? Hoisting himself on his own petard? We report, you decide.
rikyrah
I think it’s hilarious too. Issa has been lying and grandstanding and been checked by Cummings for his lies…he will not be shoved aside.
NotMax
The Benghazi inquisition is to investigation as New Coke was to soft drinks.
Belafon
It’s obvious that Obama, on his way back from inserting notifications of his birth in Hawaiian newspapers on the day he was born, retroactively sent an email to YouTube warning them about the effects of the video in Benghazi in order to cover his 2016 trip to Mecca.
MattF
May I ask where the Republican ‘leadership’ is hiding whilst Mr. Issa is swinging, a la Tarzan, from the chandeliers? Under the table? Behind the drapes?
JGabriel
mistermix @ top:
Once you’ve gotten completely up your ass far enough, you become a human klein bottle, the 3 dimensional equivalent of a mobius strip in that your inside and outside become one surface instead of two.
Issa has not only reached that state, he has gone beyond it, has become an ouroboros devouring himself like pop.
Higgs Boson's Mate
If Issa is launching another Benghazi hearing and Boehner’s select committee is doing the same, how many Benghazi hearings does that make in total?
MattF
@JGabriel: I used to say that “so-and-so has his head so far up his ass that he has to open his mouth to blow his nose.” And now it’s come true.
NonyNony
@Frankensteinbeck:
Eh – this story is barely on the radar for the non political junkies. I guess it’s “working” in the sense that it’s background noise that suggests the administration is up to something scandalous, which is all they are going to be able to wring out of it. It’s a bit like “Travelgate” from the Clinton era in that respect – a bit of noise constantly going on in the background to give the impression that something hugely scandalous must be going on because every week people were talking about some minor scandal.
Republicans hit paydirt eventually with that strategy with Clinton, because he was a moron when it came to sex. Of course in a way it kind of backfired on them, in that when the huge scandal finally arrived most people said “that’s it? That’s what you’ve been going on about for years? He had sex with an intern? Seriously?” But it convinced Gore to run a campaign where he ran away from every success that Clinton had had and kept Clinton from campaigning for him on his behalf. Which I still think is the primary reason that W ended up getting the vote close enough to steal – embracing the success of the Clinton years and getting Clinton out to rally voters would have gotten Gore enough votes that the margin in Florida wouldn’t have been so close.
I doubt that, absent a truly major scandal on Obama’s part, that particular strategy is likely to pay off for them again.
I think it’s because the more aware of them realize that he’s not getting out of office before 2016 no matter what they do at this point unless they flip the Senate enough to get a 2/3 majority for impeachment. Which is such a long shot that it might as well be impossible. Or if they come up with a real scandal that they’d want to impeach him over. Which given that the most “scandalous” things that this administration has done are pretty much status quo in DC and have been since the end of WWII, most of them don’t want to rock that boat at all. (This is also why the VA stuff has been so tepid on the GOP’s part – they know that a true solution to the problem isn’t just embarrassing the President but that it would reveal just how few fucks the Congress as a whole gives for veterans who don’t have health care and who don’t have jobs, especially the GOP side. And they don’t want to go rocking that boat – especially in an election year when it could SERIOUSLY blow up in their faces.)
Cassidy
You don’t expect him to share that sweet fundraising cash do you? Man needs to eat at 5 star restaurants.
big ole hound
Issa is the asshole who developed those sequential car alarms that are the bane of us all. His gerrymandered district must be 51% rich Hollywood lawyers and their families. Somebody run against him PLEASE.
Keith G
Re: The investigations. Things never go as planned. That is even more the case when: 1) Activity time lines are extended, 2) There is no clear end state, and 3) The reason for the activity itself rests on dubious premises.
While I guess that I can sort of grok what the GOP leadership is hoping for, there has to some of the leadership who understand how dangerous this event is for the Republicans. There are infinite numbers of ways that they can shoot themselves in the foot on this.
The only thing that I see in the favor of the GOP is that our current Democratic leadership has been reluctant to develop better counter punching skills.
RaflW
Kudos to Julia Frifield and anyone else who came up with this excellent idea. Nothing quite like two GOP douchecanoes warring with each other!
Gene108
@NotMax:
New Coke, in and of itself, was not a bad idea. Taste tests showed people responded better to the New Coke formulation than Classic Coke.
The mistake was not understanding brand loyalty. Launching New Coke while keeping Classic Coke around woul have been a smart move in hindsight. Killing classic Coke for New Coke was a blunder (which Coca Cola learned from thus Coke Zero and Diet Coke co-exist).
How this lesson in corporate failure relates to Benghazi, I can only hazard to guess. I think sticking to “classic” politicization of a “scandal” will be tolerated for Benghazi, but from what I have seen laletly trying to politicize the problems at the VA is leading to blow back for Republicans from. Veterans groups, who want solutions and not grand standing.
So Republicans need to keep Benghazi going for brand loyalists, even though most of the public wants to see something done about the VA, without polticizing it too much which has no appeal for Republican brand loyalists.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Gene108:
Good observations. That brand loyalty business is tricky. It’s what keeps the Republicans from changing their name to the Daleks.
Face
Doesn’t really matter what the committee officially finds; this is going to be the issue for which the House GOP issues an impeachment directive against Obama. Likely right after the elections, probably the night of the midterms if they’ve captured the Senate.
It’s all a canine and miniature horse show until late October, when the ink starts flowing on those impeachment docs.
Tommy
When Republicans are telling another Republican to cool it. Take a step back. Well that might be a hint you’ve gone a little too far. You know, just saying Issa.
Ruckus
@JGabriel:
Used to say that if your head was far enough up your own ass it would sit upon your shoulders.
Issa is the perfect example of this. And it explains why the only thing coming out of his mouth is shit.
Punchy
The internoobs tell me that Coke did this to allow for a switch from cane sugar (sucrose) to HFCS without anyone able to actually remember exactly what the original one tasted like. Again, just something I readed online somewheres; cant vouch for its veracity.
Long Tooth
“Never have so many battled over the rights to get in front of a TV camera with so little”.
Bravo.
Tommy
@Gene108: I used to be a “branding” guy at an ad agency. At the time New Coke was launched the thinking of “brand extension” is not what it is today. It was felt you hurt the brand to launch new products off of it. Clearly that is not the case today, cause well every brand is extended endlessly. It is pretty well known that is why they didn’t keep Coke around and just launch an extension with New Coke.
Now I don’t drink soda much, but I bet there are like 5-7 different kinds of Coke products at your local 7-11 right now.
Botsplainer
Said it a million times already – this is more about defending that shitheel Terry Jones and the asshole video.
All-Merkin dumbasses and their ignorance are always to be defended from scorn for their ignorance. That they might get to chase after Obama is just the cherry on the sundae.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Botsplainer:
You call them All-Merkin dumbasses, the Republicans call them their base.
Alex S.
Will Darrell Issa be forced to testify before the Gowdy committee? What did he know and when did he know it?
MikeJ
@Face:
It takes 2/3s to win in the senate. Even if they get a majority, they won’t get close to enough to convict.
Tommy
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Brand loyalty is tricky. But powerful. Look at Apple. Anytime a new product comes out somebody at one of the tech pubs takes it apart and adds up the price of the individual components. Often it is about the same price as say a Samsung phone or tablet. But Apple can charge 50% more. Brand loyalty.
MikeJ
@Punchy:
You are attributing far too much foresight and planning to people who haven’t shown that they were capable of it. It’s far more likely they were just stupid.
Botsplainer
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
I’m loving the Bundyfest guy’s parodies of the OAS militiamen – they’re so close to right, it’s Onionworthy.
Tommy
@Botsplainer: I think it is safe to say when your party is such, that I read a story about you, and I have to wonder if it is “real” or from the Onion, well you might have jumped the shark.
NonyNony
@Keith G:
Of all the things to criticize Dem leadership right now for, I can’t fault them on this.
When your opposition is working to punch themselves in the face repeatedly, it’s hard to get your own counter-punch in.
MomSense
The problem with all this is that Issa and the other Republicans are rabid dog whistling at this point. They stay just on the sane side of scandal mongering but the congressional investigation gives just enough credibility to the paranoid conspiracies of the rabid guys out there–the gun nuts, Bundy followers, birther/truthers, etc.
We don’t have to look too far back in our history to see how this played out in the 90s when Republicans were rabid dog whistling. We ended up with the tragedy at Oklahoma City. This feels like a perfect storm to me.
catclub
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: This may not be the best day to bring up classified information, given that the White House Press office (accidentally?) identified the CIA station chief in Afghanistan
this weekend.
catclub
@Botsplainer: OAS militiamen ??
Link? What is OAS? Ah, not Organization of American States, but Operation American Sproing!
maya
Dueling Benghazos
Tommy
@NonyNony: I tend to agree with you. There is a part of me that wants us to come out like Mike Tyson (in his prime) in the first round and end the fight in like 30 seconds. But there is another part of me that thinks we should just sit down, shut up, and let the Republicans keep talking. For years I’ve kept thinking, OK, they can’t get any more crazy. And then they do. Again and again.
kindness
Fox doesn’t care that there might be incongruity between Republicans. Fox will just as soon use that and say it is the President or Democrats that are messing with Congress. Lying doesn’t matter to Fox. It’s not a bug of Fox but instead it is a coveted feature.
NonyNony
@Face:
You need 2/3rd of the Senate to convict, so it’s just pointless grandstanding for the House to vote on Articles of Impeachment. Even with a majority in the Senate they aren’t going to get close to 2/3rds.
If they’re gonna do it at all, they should do it in October in the run up to the November election. The only point behind this is to pander to the base for votes, so they should do it when it’s going to count. After November they really can’t run on the “vote for me and I’ll impeach Obama” ticket again[*] so they should go ahead and make it “vote for me – I’ve already impeached Obama” to drive out the vote. If they think it’s a winning move, that is.
[*] I mean, they could, and many of the stupider elements in the GOP base might even vote for someone in 2016 who is still promising to impeach Obama. Maybe retroactively so that they can pretend that the country never had a black president. But you can’t count on those guys winning an election for you – you’ll need a new schtick in 2016 and the “impeach Obama” well is going to be basically dry.
boatboy_srq
@catclub: Operation American Sproing
Gene108
@NonyNony:
The Clinton scandals, plus some GOP ratfucking operations, had the net effect of costing Democrats to have any chance in the South.
In 1992, I believe LA and GA, went for Clinton-Gore, with Arkansas and TN overwhelmingly voting for their favorite sons.
Even when Bush, Jr took office AL, GA and other deep red states with dead Democratic parties now had Democrats in state wide office.
The linking of Clinton to “draft dodging”, abuse of poltical power (Travelgate), unethical actions (Whitewater), and some connotation to effiminate Hollywood types (delaying flights at LAX for “4 hours” to get a haircut) turned the tribalism sensors of Southerners away from Clinton and the Democrats.
Look at Obama’s approval rating now. It is below 50%. The low info voter, ie most of the electorate, does not need care or really know about the scandal de jour they just need to hear “Obama failing at ‘x'” on CNN during lunch breaks at a Ubway that has CNN on to form their opinions.
Botsplainer
@boatboy_srq:
“Where are y’all at?!?” was the cry of a real attendee who was genuinely puzzled.
catclub
@boatboy_srq: exclamation point required. Also, too.
Jay C
@MattF:
More likely at the bar…..
shelley
And he made a butt-load of money from same. His Wiki article states he’s the wealthiest member of Congress, worth about 450 million.
boatboy_srq
Issa really needs to go back to Carlsbad. His district is that patch of SoCal seacoast that’s all scary “hotels” and Camp Pendleton: less gerrymandered than some, but clearly made for the “Support Our Troops” bumpersticker-makers. He’s one of the main reasons CA got the Governator (not that Schwarzenegger made a bad choice, but ousting Davis over the Enron-induced power fiasco was obscene in and of itself). He’s a Teahadist prototype: convinced Dems are unpatriotic a##holes out to ruin the country, while making a mint for himself on a product with excellent marketing potential (all those “thieves are lying in wait to make off with your unprotected car!” ads) but questionable real value (who really notices when a car alarm goes off nowadays?).
boatboy_srq
@catclub: !!!!11!!1!. Just for you.
NonyNony
@Gene108:
Eh. I think you (and, admittedly, the GOP and Dems) read too much into the GOP influence there.
The South has been trending Republican for decades. The GOP ratfuckers take credit for something that was happening as older Yellow Dog Democrats were dying off and the people who were kids during the Civil Rights Act and post-CRA eras moved up the political ladders. Political shifts are generational – they don’t take place because of a short-term clever strategy. They take place because of long-term shifts in public opinion.
The constant drone of scandals didn’t help, but the loss of the South to the GOP was inevitable when LBJ signed the CRA (he even said so himself). It took time for all of the politics to shake out, but the 90s – 30 years after the Democratic Party realigned itself – is when the oldest of the Dems in the Southern political machines finally died or retired in large enough quantities for the shift to take place.
Much like Karl Rove takes all of the credit for things he doesn’t deserve, I think other GOP ratfuckers take a lot of credit (and get granted a lot of credit) for things they don’t deserve either. And this is one of them, The constant drumbeat of scandal sure didn’t help, but I don’t think any Democrat was going to win a presidential election in TN by 1999 no matter who it was – the demographics just shifted too much.
Tommy
@Gene108: I hate the term low information voter. It takes effort to be informed. More time then most people have. My parents are retired. Educated. They read two newspapers a day or at least scan them. Get Time and Newsweek. Watch CNN for at least an hour a day. I talk to them a few times a week, they know I geek out on stuff like this, and they have questions.
Usually they have the basics correct. I bet if you gave them a test on current affairs they’d score in the top 90%. They know the leadership of both parties. Heck I bet they could almost name every Supreme Court justice. But the devil is in the details and often they are clueless on those.
I bet my brother and his wife would fail the current affairs test. But they both work 50+ hours a week and have a five year old. They’re not watching CNN. They are watching Frozen. They are not reading the paper, they are reading a kids book about some fairy princess.
I am willing to bet the vast majority of the population, you know low information voters, are like my brother and wife.
gf120581
@shelley: And with that money, he’s made himself a pest for a long time, even before he became known as the colossally incompetent chairman he is now. He was, after all, a driving force financially behind the recall of Gray Davis, with the intention of taking the job himself, only to have that mean old Arnold swipe it from him (Issa’s blubbering, sobbing, Boner-esque withdrawl from contention is a classic).
Tommy
@gf120581: I will just say this, and I am only partly joking. I HATE THE MAN! A roommate in college had one of his Viper alarms. This was the mid-80s. I swear the thing went off, for no reason, like 20 times a day. He was the only person with an alarm at the time and folks that lived around us would hit the window or rock the car just to make it go off. I assume they thought it was funny, and I guess in hindsight it was, but OMG I hated that darn alarm.
Not only did it say, “protected by Viper,” but it also said something like “step away from the vehicle” over and over again as the alarm went off.
To say it was annoying would be an understatement!
Mnemosyne
@boatboy_srq:
@gf120581:
The one and only good thing to come out of the recall was Issa’s crybaby meltdown as he watched his dreams of becoming governor get swamped by Ah-nold. Now he knows he will never be anything more than a congressman from San Diego county.
@big ole hound:
As others have said, Issa represents a chunk of San Diego county (though not the city itself, IIRC), so it’s all retired and current military that makes up his base, along with white voters who are angry that some people in San Diego speak Spanish.
I swear to god, my dream as a legislator would be to pass a law saying that if you live in a city, county, or state with a Spanish name, you don’t get to fucking complain that people there speak Spanish.
Villago Delenda Est
Issa has nothing to worry about. Boner doesn’t have the balls to strip the criminal shit of his committee chairmanship.
Mnemosyne
@Tommy:
When I was going to USC as an undergrad, I was in my apartment one day when I kept hearing that announcement over and over again. I peered out the window and saw that there were a bunch of neighborhood kids (ranging from about 8 to 10 years old) all gathered around a car. They would take one big step forward, the car would announce, “You are standing too close to this vehicle,” the kids would take one step back to let it reset, and then they would all step forward again. Over and over again.
It took me a long time to stop laughing, and I sure as hell didn’t stop them from doing it. Hopefully the jackass never knew why his battery was run down.
Tommy
@Mnemosyne:
My gosh I’ve never thought of that. But about the smartest and best idea I’ve heard in a long time. I really mean that! I live in a place where it is more likely you speak German then Spanish (area founded by German’s 200+ years ago).
I know I am preaching to the choir, but now I ponder it how do you live in a place that has a Spanish name, used to be a part of Mexico and find it remotely strange people also speak Spanish? But what do I know, guess I am just a liberal.
Tommy
@Mnemosyne: You know I forgot that. You didn’t even have to touch the car for that announcement to play ….
I recall telling Ron, that was the guy that owned the car, his alarm was worthless. That after like a day or so living with him, we could be in the house. You were at class. The alarm would go off. We didn’t even take the time to turn our heads, look out the window, and see if somebody was stealing or breaking into your car.
He never seemed to get this cause he never turned off that darn alarm.
Roger Moore
@Tommy:
There’s an old fable about car alarms, except it’s about a boy who cries “wolf”.
boatboy_srq
@Tommy: “Low information voter” is, in my opinion, a libertarian construct on the lines of “job creator” and “small business owner”. It’s a convenient term to describe the laziness of the average citizen too indolent to take time away from the to-to-three-jobs and two-to-four-kids to do responsible citizen things like research their investments, read the fine print on contracts and learn what lunacy the volk they elect to public office are doing. It’s a perfect descriptor for a voter with one 35-hour-a-week job with a ten-minute commute, a stay-at-home spouse and domestic staff: unfortunately that particular creature hasn’t existed in the US since the 50s, and was last seen in significant numbers circa 1860. The requisite conditions for the stereotype don’t exist anymore to enable the stereotype – only the presumption remains.
Tommy
@Roger Moore: Yes. Thankfully alarms have changed. My car is “old.” A 2001 VW Passat. You break into it, it doesn’t make any noise. The steering column just locks. I assume more “modern” cars have something similar if not more advance.
Lurking Canadian
@Tommy: which is yet one more reason that the media is the problem. It should not require heroic efforts to figure out that the Republicans are a pack of self-dealing freebooters. It’s not like they try to hide it. They just get help covering it up.
Gene108
@NonyNony:
I disagree about the inevitable shift of the South to Republicans. There were enough folks, in the 1990’s, who remembered and revered FDR that they were not opposed, as a matter of principle, to government helping them.
The Republicans were terrified Clinton could reconnect Southerners with the Democratic Party via something like universal healthcare, which would have effectively crippled the gains they made under Reagan, which is one reason they went after him with a vengeance.
Tommy
@Lurking Canadian: But it does require too much effort. And you are right the media is one of the problems. That I can read a story in the Washington Post or New York Times, then have to head here or to another site. Drill down 2-3 more levels to understand what is going on, well IMHO that isn’t acceptable.
Roger Moore
@Tommy:
This. If you depend primarily on the regular media, you may not be a low information voter, but you’re likely to wind up as a high misinformation voter.
Suffern ACE
@NonyNony: They’ll run on stripping him of his pension.
AxelFoley
@dmsilev: LOLOLOLOL
jonas
@NonyNony: The whole thing is just a score to be played on the Wingnut Wurlitzer to keep Fox News viewers outraged enough to keep writing checks. They could give a crap if anyone else even notices.
Bex
@MattF: Or, he has his head so far up his ass he needs a glass bellybutton. We’re lookin’ at you, Darrell.
StringOnAStick
@catclub: It wasn’t the WH that gave up the station chief’s name originally, it was the military. They produced the list with all the names and titles on it, and when the WH asked “are you sure about releasing this?” they said “yep”.
catclub
@StringOnAStick: Yep, thanks for the correction.
All the press headlines are “White House releases…”
Mnemosyne
@StringOnAStick:
Huh. Almost makes you wonder if the military is still pissed off at the CIA, doesn’t it? I know they’ve had a lot of turf battles over drones and interrogations.
DavidTC
I always thought the appropriate response to a car alarm would be to slash two tires.
Not out of malice, of course. Perish the thought.
No, I would slash the tires to protect the car from being stolen,which is clearly what is happening. The thief must have have disappeared when I showed up. But I can’t guard the car all day, so I just slashed two tires so they couldn’t steal the car, or even change out the spare.
It’s generally legal to commit a crime to prevent another crime, and the car was claiming it was being stolen.
Sadly, I’ve never actually done this, but it would be funny as hell to see that court case. I’d like to see a car alarm owner stand there in court and assert his car alarm was not going off because the car was being stolen, it was going off for no reason at all. a) How am I to know that? and b) Should he then be charged with disturbing the peace? (Falsely screaming about how you’re having a crime committed against you is pretty much the definition of ‘disturbing the peace’, much less purchasing and operating a machine to do that at high decibels.)
boatboy_srq
@DavidTC: Ah, but that defeats the marketing ploy: “You hear all those car alarms going off in your neighborhood? That’s because of [gasp] car thefts!!11!1! You need your car protected, too!”
And of course not one mention that the alarms are so sensitive that they go off if a butterfly flaps its wings a hundred yards away.
As a side effect, all the car alarms add to the general sense of fear imposed on the populace by the makers of these devices – which is good for them and the pols they fund/create, since it means more funds for prisons and more Three Strikes laws (though, interestingly enough, not necessarily more law enforcement professionals; I suppose 2nd-Amendment-loving SYG Righteous Free Citizens™ can defend their own property).
grillo
@Tommy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY7OWOUKH0k
Bob Munck
@DavidTC:
There’s a real old Doonesbury, from when he was living in the Village with his first wife (JJ) that shows another possible response. Click here: Blam! Blam! Blam!.