10 replies to this topic

[Mr. Roboto]

Responding to the idiotic conventional wisdom that Obama just doesn’t have the schmoozing skills to be an effective president, Norm Ornstein loses it:

“Didn’t any of you ever read Richard Neustadt’s classic Presidential Leadership? Haven’t any of you taken Politics 101 and read about the limits of presidential power in a separation-of-powers system?”

No, it seems, they haven’t. It’s a terrific piece, because it grapples with actual history:

No one schmoozed more or better with legislators in both parties than Clinton. How many Republican votes did it get him on his signature initial priority, an economic plan? Zero in both houses. And it took eight months to get enough Democrats to limp over the finish line. How did things work out on his health care plan? How about his impeachment in the House?

No one knew Congress, or the buttons to push with every key lawmaker, better than LBJ. It worked like a charm in his famous 89th, Great Society Congress, largely because he had overwhelming majorities of his own party in both houses. But after the awful midterms in 1966, when those swollen majorities receded, LBJ’s mastery of Congress didn’t mean squat.

And the GOP Obama faces is arguably the most partisan, factional and deranged that it has been since I started observing it in the mid-1980s. Zero votes for a modest stimulus in the worst recession since the 1930s right after a new president’s astounding electoral victory? Total, hysterical and futile opposition to healthcare reform – rather than working to make it better? Mitch McConnell’s entire strategy of simply denying Obama a second term, regardless of what he did or did not do (and failing)?

If you want to be obstructionist douches in the American system, oppose everything and anything Obama wants in the House, and demand a 60 vote super-majority to pass anything in the Senate, then that is your prerogative. But the GOP is offering nothing constructive on healthcare, nothing that can seriously be accomplished in a two-party system on the debt and entitlements, nothing but Captain Hindsight on Syria, and nothing on climate change, or gay rights. Nothing. The few of them who have championed immigration reform are going to face a storm of hostility from their base – and will endure a media hazing from the “conservative” media industrial complex.

Nonetheless, Obama is schmoozing on.

And nonetheless, he has guided the economy to a sustainable recovery – unlike any other developed nation. He got his stimulus through; and he got universal healthcare. He ended two draining, bankrupting, failed wars. He presided over a civil rights revolution – and played a key role in nudging it to fruition. He has created a coalition that, without gerrymandering, would command majorities in both Houses, and may well become a durable realignment to his party’s favor. If immigration reform passes, the substantive legislative achievements will be huge.
This is how to make sense of the over-coverage of Benghazi on the right. Some, like Butters, just want to save themselves from primary challenges; others see this as an early opportunity to bloody the woman who might crush them in 2016. But all of it is a sign of desperation. I keep asking myself: this is all they’ve got? This is what they want to place in front of the public in a time of great challenges at home and abroad? This?

You don’t need to turn a lamentable piece of government incompetence and some weak, shifting talking points into Watergate and Iran-Contra combined if you actually have a popular and constructive set of proposals for Americans to weigh. They have already derailed four careers (Susan Rice’s and three State Dept officials) and ended one entirely at the State Dept. And yet they are still breathless for more accountability, even as they are running on fumes.

Some Republicans seem to think this kind of negative nihilism is a way back to power. They need to remind themselves that Roger Ailes’ need for ratings is not the same thing as the GOP’s need for votes.

http://dish.andrewsu...benghazi-party/

[Mr. Roboto]

Republicans Altered Benghazi Emails, CBS News Report Claims

[Zimbochick]

Loons!

 

[Mr. Roboto]

This is what I've been saying for a long time. 

 

Of course Stewart said it so much better. 

 

[Mr. Roboto]

House votes to start new Benghazi investigation

[Zimbochick]

[Mr. Roboto]

The creation of a House committee to study the attack on Benghazi raises the troubling question of why Congress has never bothewred to scrutinize to the invasion of Iraq.

 

When I heard that the House of Representatives has established a select committee to investigate the attack on Benghazi that left several Americans dead in 2012, I couldn't help but wonder what these same legislators might have done had Barack Obama been president in 2003, and had the audacity of George W. Bush to attack a sovereign country that had no relevant connection to the 9/11 attacks with the result that nearly 5,000 Americans and well over 100,000 Iraqi civilians (many of them women and children) perished. Had Obama’s war in Iraq also cost American taxpayers $1.7 trillion, with another $490 in veteran expenses (thus far)—with a total cost of $6 trillion projected—I have no doubt that a select committee would long ago have sent him to the Hague for trial as a war criminal. 

 

It’s sad to think how in our fury over Benghazi we’ve almost forgotten a recent war that destroyed so many families, nearly bankrupted this country (and may yet), and led to a hugely destabilized Iraq that no longer serves as a buffer to Iran. Needless to say, this terrible war was pursued under false pretenses, with huge amounts of government corruption—Houston-based company KBR alone (a spinoff from Halliburton, where Dick Cheney was chairman and CEO before becoming vice president) racked up charges of nearly $40 billion during the war, making it (by far) the winner in the Iraq sweepstakes. In most banana republics, this would be cause for serious investigation; but not so much here, where our politicians (or their friends) are allowed to profit from armed invasions. Can it possibly be so that the U.S. Congress has ignored such obvious corruption while investigating over and over whether Susan Rice was given some edited “talking points” on Benghazi? Really?

 

I’ve spent a good deal of time in the Middle East over the years, lecturing at universities in places like Egypt, Jordan, Israel, and Morocco. Soon after the invasion of Iraq, I was staying at a hotel in Amman, when into the hot tub by the pool stepped a tall American with a closely shaved head.  He seemed about my age, and we struck up a cheerful conversation. I explained I was in the country at the behest of the Department of State, as a kind of cultural ambassador. He liked this, and told me he was en route to Baghdad. He was a general in the army, a career officer with a specialty in intelligence. I asked him what he thought would come of the Iraq war.

 

He said, without pausing, that in ten years the U.S. would be out of Iraq, as the American people would never support an expensive war in an obscure country longer than a decade. He was right about that. He guessed that thousands would die. And he was more or less right about that, though his figures were a bit low. He predicted the region would be dangerously destabilized, and that sooner or later Iran would assert control over the Shia majority who would almost certainly take control, repressing the Sunni minority, which Saddam Hussein had led to power. Let’s say he was absolutely on the mark here, as Nouri al-Malaki was hiding from Hussein in Iran before assuming high office in Iraq, where he now has become a kind of dictator, supported strongly by Grand Ayatolla Kazim al Haeri, one of the most influential Shia voices in Iran.

 

I remember this general shaking his head bitterly, noting that we had turned Iraq into a magnet for all sorts of dangerous elements, drawing al Qaeda into a region where they had only a minimal presence before the war. He also pointed out that large numbers of Iraqi citizens had been displaced, and that the number would increase. Indeed, some four million Iraqis have been run out of their homes, and these wandering families--he said with a wry smirk--would never become our allies in the region (to put it mildly).

 

A few days after this conversation in Amman, I was giving a lecture on American poetry at a university on the Iraqi-Jordan border, talking to perhaps 800 students about Robert Frost. Afterwards, a young man came up to me with Frost’s poems in hand. He could recite reams of Frost, Dickinson, Whitman, and Lowell, and he did so while I stood there, amazed. He had just completed a degree, he explained, in American poetry, and I asked him if he were going to become a teacher one day. He said, indeed, it was his fondest hope. “But first,” he said, “I am crossing the border into Iraq, to fight against the American invader.” My jaw dropped. “And why is this?” I wondered. He said, “You must understand that, for my generation, this is like the Spanish Civil War. I must join in the fight for freedom. I must join the equivalent of our Lincoln Brigade.”

 

These encounters in Jordan stick with me, a decade later. Now Iraq lies in ruins, and the U.S. has tens of thousands of enemies with a right to their anger. Meanwhile, Americans mourn the loss of so many brothers, fathers, uncles, sisters, mothers. Many veterans lie in hospitals across the nation, dazed and confused. This war that somehow never found its way onto the books continues to drag on our economy. So why haven't we brought Bush and Cheney to Washington to answer some very hard questions under oath? Well, I suppose we've got Benghazi to worry about.

 

Jay Parini, a novelist, poet, and professor at Middlebury College, most recently published Jesus: The Human Face of God.

 

http://www.thedailyb...nt-on-iraq.html

[Mr. Roboto]

ALAN GRAYSON: Here's How I Plan To Make The Benghazi Investigation A 'Nightmare' For Republicans

From the article

 

 

Grayson also offered Business Insider a preview of what that "nightmare" would look like. During the proceedings, Grayson said he would attempt to draw attention to other issues for which he thought voters would also like select committees to be formed.

 

"I'll be asking why there's no select committee on income inequality. I'll be asking why there's no select committee on immigration reform. I'll be asking why there's no select committee on the minimum wage. I'll be asking why there's no select committee on anything that has anything to do with the lives of ordinary Americans," Grayson said. 

 

Grayson predicted he would draw attention to the 60 people who died from embassy attacks under the Bush administration, as well as questioning why there wasn't a select committee established to investigate the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack.

 

He also said he thought the appointment of Phil Kiko, a former National Republican Congressional Committee aide, to be the staff director for the select committee on Benghazi proved it is an attempt by Republicans to boost their fundraising in an election year. 

 

"Well, listen. If you're going to have a kangaroo court, you've got to have your kangaroos. And what better kangaroos than the NRCC?"

 

 

[wedjat]

^^^ Excellent plan.

[freedom78]

Even Republicans have now decided that this wasn't an issue..

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House intel panel debunks many Benghazi theories By Associated Press November 21

 

WASHINGTON — A two-year investigation by the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee has found that the CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and asserted no wrongdoing by Obama administration appointees.

 

Debunking a series of persistent allegations hinting at dark conspiracies, the investigation of the politically charged incident determined that there was no intelligence failure, no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, no missed opportunity for a military rescue, and no evidence the CIA was covertly shipping arms from Libya to Syria.

 

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, intelligence about who carried it out and why was contradictory, the report found. That led Susan Rice, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to inaccurately assert that the attack had evolved from a protest, when in fact there had been no protest. But it was intelligence analysts, not political appointees, who made the wrong call, the committee found. The report did not conclude that Rice or any other government official acted in bad faith or intentionally misled the American people.

 

The House Intelligence Committee report was released with little fanfare on the Friday before Thanksgiving week. Many of its findings echo those of six previous investigations by various congressional committees and a State Department panel. The eighth Benghazi investigation is being carried out by a House Select Committee appointed in May.

 

The attacks in Benghazi killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, foreign service officer Sean Smith, and two CIA contractors, Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty. A Libyan extremist, Ahmed Abu Khatalla, is facing trial on murder charges after he was captured in Libya and taken to the U.S.

 

In the aftermath of the attacks, Republicans criticized the Obama administration and its then-secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is expected to run for president in 2016. People in and out of government have alleged that a CIA response team was ordered to “stand down” after the State Department compound came under attack, that a military rescue was nixed, that officials intentionally downplayed the role of al-Qaida figures in the attack, and that Stevens and the CIA were involved in a secret operation to spirit weapons out of Libya and into the hands of Syrian rebels. None of that is true, according to the House Intelligence Committee report.

 

The report did find, however, that the State Department facility where Stevens and Smith were killed was not well-protected, and that State Department security agents knew they could not defend it from a well-armed attack. Previous reports have found that requests for security improvements were not acted upon in Washington.

 

“We spent thousands of hours asking questions, poring over documents, reviewing intelligence assessments, reading cables and emails, and held a total of 20 committee events and hearings,” said Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., the committee’s chairman, and Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the ranking Democrat, in a joint statement.

 

“We conducted detailed interviews with senior intelligence officials from Benghazi and Tripoli as well as eight security personnel on the ground in Benghazi that night. Based on the testimony and the documents we reviewed, we concluded that all the CIA officers in Benghazi were heroes. Their actions saved lives,” they said.

 

Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who serves on the intelligence panel and the Benghazi select committee, said, “It’s my hope that this report will put to rest many of the questions that have been asked and answered yet again, and that the Benghazi Select Committee will accept these findings and instead focus its attention on the State Department’s progress in securing our facilities around the world and standing up our fast response capabilities.”

 

Some of the harshest charges have been leveled at Rice, now Obama’s national security adviser, who represented the Obama administration on Sunday talk shows the weekend after the attack. Rice repeated talking points that wrongly described a protest over a video deemed offensive to Muslims.

 

But Rice’s comments were based on faulty intelligence from multiple agencies, according to the report. Analysts received 21 reports that a protest occurred in Benghazi, the report said —14 from the Open Source Center, which reviews news reports; one from the CIA; two from the Defense Department; and four from the National Security Agency.

 

In the years since, some participants in the attack have said they were motivated by the video. The attackers were a mix of extremists and hangers on, the investigation found.

“To this day,” the report said, “significant intelligence gaps regarding the identities, affiliations and motivations of the attackers remain.”

 

 

http://www.washingto...0489_story.html

[Mr. Roboto]

Well Lindsey Graham isn't having any of that! ^^^ Ms. Thing doesn't believe it for one minute.