The Shaming of the GOP

Tags

Bergdahl, GOP, hypocrisy, tea party

I mean ya gotta hand it to the GOP and their corp of clowns. I swear the term chutzpah must have been invented just for them.

Given all the back-walking going on within the GOP ranks on this issue of Sgt. Bergdahl, it still remains stunning the degree to which folks like Fox Noise continue to look down their noses at the drooling sycophants that pass as the usual Fox viewer.

Case in point, is one Ollie North, criminal/traitor extraordinaire who was recently on Newsmax to give us the benefit of his wisdom on the negotiated release of Sgt. Bergdahl from the hands of the Taliban.

You remember Ollie. He participated along with candidate Ronald Reagan, in a secret deal with Iran (terrorists) to sell them missiles and then turn that money over to the Contras in Nicaragua (more terrorists). In return Iran was supposed to turn over  hostages, but not until the election was over, so Carter couldn’t get the benefit of it. This was not only negotiating with terrorists, it was downright treason.

Yet, Fox figured Ollie was a good choice to weigh in on the matter of the Bergdahl release. I mean seriously!

From there we move to Johnny McCain who just cannot to this day live with the fact that he is not the President.

Back in February of this year, Johnny suggested that he could probably get behind a trade of Taliban Gitmo detainees in exchange for Sgt. Bergdahl, though he would “have to see the details”. This seems in line with the information that this negotiation has been in the works since 2011, and that the appropriate members of Congress were informed of both the negotiations, AND the subjects of any exchange.

John was enraged when this was pointed out to him. He sputtered, accused journalists of “lying” and then abruptly changed his tune, and suggested that it was a done deal, and we should move on. Then the next day, he was back on the bandwagon, screaming for “his head”.

Joined at the hip, Kelly Ayotte just on Memorial Day was calling on citizens to “remember Sgt. Bergdahl in their thoughts and prayers” and declaring that she was pushing the military to do everything possible to return him to his family. Of course now she’s singing a different tune.

Ayotte, is of course, no different from Lindsey Butchmeup Graham, who get their marching orders from Johnny, came to lately McCain, and both can be forgiven their turnabouts, since it’s all just too confusing to them in the first place. Lindsey of course is facing a primary next week, and so he’s desperately trying to remind everyone in his state that he has a mighty big job in just zipping up his trousers over that massive load of junk he’s carrying.

Their story is not singular as it were. A host of those who were congratulating America on having brought back a prisoner, quickly scrubbed their congratulations from their Twitter feeds when advised that the GOP was tacking once again. At least six Republicans have done so, advised by party leaders apparently that things “had changed”.

This all falls into place when one realizes that the rabble of the Tea People are making their anger heard throughout the faux news blogs that cater to the trailer brigade. Facebook pages, and the usual stories rebound around the likes of WorldNetDaily, Breitbart and Fox Noise, all attesting to the fact that Bergdahl was “probably a traitor”, “probably a deserter”, whose father “looks like a Muslim” and on and on. Impeachment echoes through the halls of crazy land.

None of this has anything to do with the decision of course, but in the usual fear of upsetting the grossly ignorant, GOP politicians run scared. The mill around the Capital, asking each other what to do, after all, elections are at stake, and NOTHING is as important.

The degree to which the GOP jumps when the fringe furrows it’s collective Neanderthal brow, is stunning. Just last week, the NRA after having declared that the crazies in Texas wandering around cheap food establishments with assault-type rifles and camouflage, should just go home, was met with an uproar from these thugs, and beat a hasty retreat, claiming “we made a terrible mistake”.

Such is the state of the GOP that they are drug around by the nose by a band of motley ill-educated morons who have basements full of canned goods, and lockers full of assault weapons, all ready for the coming revolution. However shaming this is to them personally doesn’t excuse the selling out of their soul in exchange for a greasy fingered vote.

The bottom line is quite simple. There are few facts that are known, other than the following.

1. Prisoner exchanges have always been part of a President’s duties, going back to George Washington.
2. Prisoner exchanges are done by most countries, including Israel with Palestine. In fact one of their more famous exchanges involved 1 Israel for over a THOUSAND Palestinians. Both sides call the other side terrorists.
3. This negotiation has been going on since 2011. There seems to be evidence that some Congressional leaders of the appropriate committees were aware of the negotiations, and the general parameters of those discussions.
4. Sgt. Bergdahl has been charged with no crime. And even if he were, that is no reason whatsoever by any military standard not to secure his release.
5. The exchanged Gitmo detainees were Taliban, not Al Qaeda. There is a serious difference.

This smacks, as so much of GOP opposition usually ends up being, as nothing more than, whatever the Black guy does, we hate it. Note that as usual, the GOP prior to this event, demanded the release of Sgt. Bergdahl, but as usual offered NO concrete terms of how that should be done. (See Syria, and the Ukraine for similar demands without specifics). So they demand action, refuse to specify what that action should be, and then when ANY action is taken, it’s the wrong action, and still there is no statement of what right action would look like.

This is a pattern of opposition. This is not governance, it is pure mean-spirited obstinate opposition. It is in truth a pandering to the fringe crazies which now seem to run the GOP. These people are satisfied with nothing other than venomous denial to everything this President presents. Of course they have no alternatives. Do you expect to get alternatives from seven-year olds?

Perhaps someday, normal men and women will pick themselves up from the mud, wash themselves off, and decide to reclaim the GOP as a party worthy of listening to. Not today however, not today.

 

Amid All the Eulogies, a Sobering History

Tags

GOP, History, Mandela, racism, South Africa

Nelson Mandela, died a couple of days ago, and the airways have been filled with tributes and analysis of his impact on the political landscape. Indeed Mandela stands forth with a handful of others of the 20th century whom we can look up to as real fighters for freedom and justice. His name is equal to that of Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, Jr., Caesar Chavez, Lech Waleza in the pantheon of people we adjudge as heroes.

Mandela started as a peaceful revolutionary and democratic socialist in South Africa. The massacre at Sharpeville was said to have radicalized him and led to a more militant Mandela and a upturn violent activities. He co-founded the MK in 1961, becoming ultimately the ANC’s armed wing. He sought help from Casto and other Communist states in his struggle to help his people. After his conviction in 1964 for treason and his incarceration, he developed the present philosophy for which he is noted, and upon his release from prison in 1990.

He went on to become the president of the country in 1994, and today South Africa stands as a model of reconciliation between black and white citizens. Of course that doesn’t mean that all is well there by any means, but Mandela set the tone of forgiveness which allowed the country to move forward instead of devolving into a bloody war.

But most all of this is common knowledge. Today, the US, like countries around the world, are paying tribute to this freedom fighter. Yet it was not so very long ago that things were quite different here as regards this individual.

It is clear that there was no real desire in this country to come to Mandela and Black Africans in general initially. As was true in the 60’s as regards the Vietnam war, the impetus for change came from university campuses across the nation, as students challenged their schools financial investment in the rich industries of South Africa. Local governments in some cases followed suit.

Finally a coalition of Democrats and liberal and moderate Republicans passed a comprehensive bill called the Anti-Apartheid Act in 1986. The near-god of the Right, Ronald Reagan, promptly vetoed it. Back it went to the Congress, where people like Jessie Helms claimed that Mandela was nothing more than an ungodly communist aligned with the Soviet Union. In fact old Jessie led a filibuster against the law.

Other well-known Republicans who voted no to over-riding the presidential veto. Among them were: Phil Gramm, Joe Barton, Dick Cheney, Ralph Hall and Howard Coble and Hal Rodgers. Rodgers, Barton, and Coble  had the gall to commemorate Mandela after his death, making no mention of the fact that they had tried to stop the imposition of sanctions against South Africa to end apartheid and his very imprisonment. Present members of the senate who voted against the bill are: Thad Cochran, Orrin Hatch, and Chuck Grassley.

For the first and only time in the 20th century, a coalition of Democrats and Republicans over-rode the President’s veto and the bill became law. The rest is history.

No doubt before long, the tea party will “adopt” Mandela as one of their own, much as they have laughingly tried to do with Martin Luther King, Jr.

But we remember that the Republicans again, in very large numbers were on the wrong side of history back in 1986. Cheney of course says his vote was proper and that Mandela has “mellowed” since then.

Indeed, some Democrats were as well. Mandela was not taken off the “terrorist watch list” until 2008.

Some “modern” wannabe leaders are finding the going a bit tough in praising Nelson Mandela. Ted Cruz gave the obligatory tribute and was vilified for it by his cadre of insanely crazy followers.   It’s best we don’t forget that either.

 

It’s Official–I Don’t Have to Like Any Republicans

Tags

conservative, GOP, ideology, liberal, teabaggers

I’m a big fan of UP, formerly with Chris Hayes and now Steve Kornacki. Given that it starts at 6:00 a.m. here in New Mexico, that tells ya just how much.

They usually have an interesting and varied panel of folks who dissect whatever interesting topics of the day seem appropriate.

Well, live and learn as they say. I came, I saw, I learned. And now I am no longer ashamed of disliking Republicans pretty much to a person.

You see, the Contrarian likes to think of himself as somewhat more centrist than me.

me<————->Contrarian<—————->Crazy Right

Mostly he’s just as liberal as I am, but it makes him feel better to think he’s not.

Me? I’m almost off the page. I’m an anarchist with the foresight to know that politics belongs to those who realize that you gotta give up something to get something. So I am willing to swallow a  bit of bitter for the sweet. I recognize that the only people who get exactly all of what they want are dictators and they usually don’t last too long. Facts is facts.

Any the how. One of the things said Contrarian likes to dig me with, is shit like “if George W. Bush discovered a cure for cancer, you would find something wrong with it” and other bitter ilk of that sort, all designed to make me look unreasonable in general and downright wrong in any given specific instance in which he decides for the fun of it to argue with me. Basically he claims that “you don’t like any of ’em”, ’em being Republicans.

So I always argued that such was not the case, and cited an instance or two, of people who were not downright by birth pathological liars, cheats, and shills for big business, and had just maybe one bone in their wretched bodies that hummed like a tuning fork when hit as to the poor and you know, the brothers and sisters out there barely gettin’ by. Am I my brother’s keeper keeps echoing in my head, though it seems to have not had the same effect upon most Christianist Republicans I have known.

I defended that position to every challenge.

Until.

I saw this graph on UP. I can’t find the graph on UP today, but I recall it generally. Congress is made up of 535 seats all told. Back in the 60’s or so, on a liberal/conservative continuum, 355 members were overlapping between the two parties. That means that while there were some Democrats all alone on the far left and some Republicans alone on the far right, there was a vast middle where they scored about evenly.

Given that for some 40 years, the Democrats had owned both Houses of Congress, it became incumbent on the part of Republicans to cooperate and find common ground on some things if they wished to participate in governing. There were a lot of Northern liberal Republicans and lots of Southern conservative Democrats, but there were enough in the middle that compromises were worked out and legislation passed. No faction was large enough to overcome the vast middle.

Then 1994 happened, and Newt Gingrich orchestrated a majority win for the GOP. This happened for a variety of reasons not the least of which was the loss of the South to Democrats following the Civil Rights acts of the 1960’s. Democrats in the South left the party in droves, or certainly were prepared to vote Republican if only given a good reason. Newt gave them that reason in his Contract with America, touching on sensitive issues of “welfare” and budget deficits.

He also started something new and unique in Congress, the 4-day work week. Members were encouraged (especially in the House) to return to their districts each weekend and spend time with constituents. This gave the average voter the illusion at least that his congress person cared about his or her opinion. The downside to all this was that the sense of collegiality that had been the grease in the machine of Congress was now gone. Weekend parties, and various other gatherings for dinner and drinks were no more. Members didn’t get to know one another as they formerly did. Many Republican wives or husbands stayed in the home district, missing the other opportunity for camaraderie.

With Gingrich and Tom Delay, more emphasis was placed on sticking with the team no matter what. Voting as a cohesive unit was prized to control a larger agenda that was dreamed up in the offices of the Speaker and his upper echelon elites.

It all went down hill from there.

Denny Hastert gave us the Hastert rule: thou shall not bring to the floor any bill that does not have the majority blessing of your own party–it is irrelevant if enough members of one’s own party plus enough members of the other party would ensure victory.

Today we reap the results of a Congress that is entirely partisan. Today that same graph indicates that of 535 members only 11 overlap. Yes you read that right. Only ELEVEN senate or house members from the two parties are rated at the same point on the liberal/conservative spectrum. All the rest, 524 lie to the left (Democrat) or to the right (Republican). There are essentially no moderate Republicans to embrace. There are no fiscally conservative, socially liberal GOP members. They have been purged or threatened so fiercely that they deny the emperor has no clothes.

There is simply no Republican left for me to “like”.

And so I don’t.

So sue me.

That’s the way I see it. If you don’t well, there is a comment box.

Items to Make You Queen of the Watercooler Next Week

Tags

brain, dinosaurs, education, evolution, GOP, humans, life, meaning, philosophers, physics, quantum mechanics, teabaggers, War, what you should read, words

See that’s me. I mean, imagine a woman instead of a man, and that’s me. I’m spend hours reading just so that you don’t have to. I mean you can if you want to of course. God forbid that fine education goes to waste, but I have burned up the Intertubes in an effort to find all the news that you missed.

And I read it all. And some of it was crap upon further inspection, and so I ditched it. And the rest, well you gotta know this stuff. Especially if you want all your friends and aunt Tilde to think you are just a real smart ass. (meant in the kindest way of course)

So, let’s get to it, in no particular order.

Paul Krugman has a fine op-ed in the NYTimes detailing the crazy party, AKA, the GOP. What he says is very true. The GOP argument for deliberately toying with the very health of our economy goes something like this: I have put a gun to your head and demanded your money or your life. If you refuse to give me your money, it’s your fault that you’re dead. I gave you the option to live after all!

On the other hand, this may all go to prove that one can actually get admitted to Harvard and get through it with flying colors and still be utterly and profoundly stupid. Ted Cruz may be set to be one of the most spectacular blazing super nova that sputtered out in record time in the history of horses asses, err, super novae.

¶

If it is true that humans have an individualized predisposition to violence, is it equally true that humans in community have a predisposition to violence in the form of war? It seems many assume this to be true. But evolutionary biologist, David P. Barash argues that this may in fact not be true. The latter may be only a capacity rather than an adaptation. Want to learn more? If you don’t think it matters, think again. We base our defense systems on assumptions of what other groups are likely to do. If we assume all people are driven to war to achieve ends, we build a different defense system than if we do not. And we’ve sure got the tax bills to reflect that.

¶

I know that most of you are just thrilled every time you get a chance to read about quantum mechanics, I mean what self-respecting grease monkey or grocery check out lady  isn’t obsessed with the working of the universe at the extra-tiny scale? Ever heard of an aplituhedron? I bet not. It all means that all the complicated mathematical twists and turns are eliminated as well as the super computer to do the computations. Now little Bobby can explain the most complicated sub-particle interaction with nothing more than a pencil and paper again!

If you are going, uhh, okay so what? Well, you all know that physicists have been since the beginning of time, trying to join the big universe with the small universe (macro and micro forces?) and it has just never fit well, and well, the don’t call it the elegant universe for nothing. Everybody who knows this stuff figured the answer would eventually be simple. This might be it. I’m not a physicist as you might have guessed by now.

I mean this is simply delicious early fall reading. Get to it.  🙂

¶

Now I know you will love this one. There is a new book out there that you probably will want to get. I can imagine about half a dozen of you will be on Amazon in moments. It’s called Holy Shit: A Brief History of Swearing, by Melissa Mohr. Colin Burrows review of the book is worth the reading. Now read it your grouthead gnat snapper!

Steven Pinker from Harvard has written a book that details how we are becoming less violent as societies over time. He also argues that the world would be better led by science than by the humanities. Some beg to differ. A great essay from The Berlin Review of Books, and Gloria Origgi, A Reply to Steven Picker’s Scientific Manifesto.

¶

Love words? Lots of words? Okay.

The American Scholar has a fun essay called Is There a Word for That? Words are being made up all the time, but you knew that. Want to know who created some words we now take for granted? Who is responsible for katydid? Or neologize ? Or Anglophobia? Blurb? Gerrymander? Bromide? Oh I bet I got your attention now.

Similarly, if you have ever remembered the quote but not the quoter, and the more you looked the harder it got? Who Really Sad That? You would be surprised at how often we get the attribution wrong. Amaze your friends by correcting their quotes!

“Whoever is not a socialist when he is 20 has no heart; whoever is not a conservative when he is 30 has no brain.” Usually attributed to Churchill. Actually? Nobody knows.

Enter the fine world of WAS–Wrongly Attributed Statements.

¶

I betcha thought that the human mind created the gear, that round thingie that has “teeth” and meshes with other objects similarly constructed? That together makes things turn and other things go up and down and maybe side to side? You would be wrong. Scientists have found a gear in nature for the very first time. And YOU are some of the first non-specialists to know that, so don’t you feel so very proud?

A cute little guy called a planthopper (he has a very important scientific name you need not memorize) has a couple of gears in his back legs that mesh together and then when he calls on them to, spin backward sending him off on a leap across the earth that looks pretty fun. I’m sure it made sense to him too in terms of escaping predators or getting up as high as he wanted to feed. It’s called evolution folks. There is a little embedded video so you can watch him go!

¶

Must a life be meaningful in order to be happy? Do we prefer meaningfulness over happiness if we can’t have both? They are not the same by the way. Happiness in part is getting what you want or need in life. Meaningfulness can have zero to do with this. Similarly happy people report that health is essential, yet health has nothing to do with meaningful lives. Happiness is apparent in the now, while meaningfulness tends to be a future assessment. This is a long article but one that raises lots of questions to think about. Well worth your time.

¶

Nautilus brings us the ever-beloved essay on dinosaurs. The discovery and explanation of our bird predecessors have had a varied history as scientists working from small numbers of bones, continually revised their thinking of these creatures over time. As is usual, it is the unsung tiny dinosaurs that have done the most to correct our understanding over time of what these cuties looked like and how they lived. For the kid in all of us, this article will satisfy. I still wish there had been Brontosaurus, they were so neat!

¶

With the advent of all the cute devices we have now from phones to tablets to readers to computers, all with calendars and reminders of one sort or another, there is less and less reason to have to memorize things. Nobody has to write down a phone number or address. The call is registered, switch it to contacts and it’s saved forever. Enter an address in your Google maps app, and you don’t need to record that address again. And maybe, just maybe that’s a good thing. Memorization may be a much over-rated thing. Curious? Read on.

¶

How many late night gab fests have lingered long into the night over the ever-present question– Why was Spinoza excommunicated anyway? I mean this guy was ostracized with a big O, like in members of the congregation being order to be no closer that four cubits to the man. That’s some serious excommunication! Worse, payment of a fine served to dissolve most bans. Spinoza’s was life long. Spinoza himself never spoke of the harem, most of his works and fame came long after it. What is as interesting as why is by whom: Jews who had escaped forced Catholicism in Spain and Portugal and once free in Amsterdam, practiced a form of Judaism that was anything but normative. All in all, quite fascinating.

Happy reading everyone, and to all a good day!

What We Have Here, is a Failure to Think

Tags

Congress, GOP, social issues, teabaggers

I have to laugh. Truly I do. Not out of some sense of arrogant snotty, look down your nose kinda attitude. Out of real sympathy. Sincerely.

Oh, you know me too well.

I am lovin’ it. I am lovin’ the super-duper mess that the GOP has gotten itself into. I am chortling that after having a massive study of “HOW THE HELL DID WE LOSE?” they are pretty much going to ignore the results.

They are really debating whether its NECESSARY to appeal to women, gays, immigrants, or all those host of other folks they have managed to offend in the last ten plus years, oh hell, make that ever since every stinkin’ Dixiecrat joined the Republican party as the last vestige of what’s white and right in America.

Now, let us remember that less than a year ago the GOP was wringing its collective hands and weeping that civilization as we know it would end should we not elect one Willard Romney, wizard businessman to cure our collective ills. He would get our economy zipping along, return unemployment to historical lows, and all the while, manage not to offend anyone as he guffawed that the White House was a tad small by his standards but he was ready to rough it for the good of the country.

It was all jobs and deficits and the sky is falling in GOP land.

Today?

Not so much.

So far the GOP has gone-a-lynching in Benghazi, the IRS, the NSA, and come up dry. Nary a suitable lynchee to be found. This after failing to turn “fast and furious” into the downfall of the Administration it was always touted to be. And before that, it was birth certificates and pallin’ around with terrorists and downright squishy softness when it came to A-rabs. If there was a teflon-Don well, then there most assuredly is a teflon-President.

Or could it simply be that there was nothing to find.

All the while that the Congress was busy picking lint from its navel, the Republican held legislative bodies across the land have been busy too. Busy about the people’s business. If you set out with the intention of electing majorities across the land with an R emblazoned on their forehead, well you might have saved a lot of time and money by just going down to the local cattle lot and choosing any cow that could stand without help and installing them as State Senators and Representatives. They would surely know as much.

These folks are priceless, and in some cases led by ELECTED governors of the R persuasion to boot. And as I said, they have been busy doing the people’s business.

If  you believe that the people’s business is enacting more and more restrictive laws regarding abortion access, deliberately tailoring laws to put a legitimate business out of business (Planned Parenthood), and systematically making voting about as easy as working your way through a corn maze at midnight on a moonless night.

This is your democracy at work folks.

In Missouri, the livestock elected to its legislature passed a bill that made it illegal to enforce federal gun laws. It made it a crime for a journalist to publish the names of  gun owners. It nullified other federal laws, lowered the age to get a concealed weapons permit, authorized guns in schools, and on and on.

The Missouri governor vetoed the bill as unconstitutional on its face. Money well spent doncha think? The uber righties are calling for Governor Nixon’s impeachment so more money can be wasted. (where are the jobs Republicans?)

In South Carolina, the screams election night were loud. VOTER FRAUD! The State Attorney General was up in arms. Investigate! Prepare to arrest those cheaters. After all the time and money spent on this investigation what do we have? Not a single case found. NOT ONE. (where are the jobs Republicans?)

In Wisconsin, in the dead of night, on his way out the door governor Scott Walker, signed into law legislation requiring women to undergo and VIEW ultrasounds before getting an abortion, and then required that all clinics doctors have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles. This from the people who demand “small government” and government that isn’t regulatory in business matters. Walker mansplains that it’s all to help women make informed decisions. Lawdy doc, that’s a BABY in there?  (where are the jobs Republicans?)

This crap goes on everywhere the GOP has a majority.

In Congress, the House is poised to hold the debt ceiling hostage once again in order to force the President to enact Paul Ryan’s budget. Now they tell me that Paulie was ultra sure that he and Willard were going to win last November, so perhaps he didn’t get the memo. . . .YOU FREAKIN’ LOST YOU DIMWIT. Nobody cares about your budget and more cuts to SNAP and MEDICARE and MEDICAID.

And immigration? Oh, no, that ain’t going to happen either. They now call it the “Steve King” problem. Ya see, King and the belly crawlers of his ilk don’t want ANY pathway to citizenship. They want a permanent underclass of non-citizens (think South Africa before Mandela) to pick the lettuce and live in camps. Or better yet, haul your ass back to Mexico (all South Americans call Mexico their “home” didn’t you know?) until the next picking season.

Boehner ain’t apparently going to fight the TeaNutz by bringing the Senate bill to the floor for a vote up or down, since he found out that the Speaker ship granted him five extra days in the tanning machine and two extra weeks of golf. I mean what’s important here? A man doesn’t work that hard to get to the free ride good life for nothin’ you know.

I could make a list of this crap that would cover the entire Washington monument, and still have enough to drape the Lincoln Memorial.

This is your tax money at work.

Why are you sitting there?

Have you seen what’s going on in Cairo? It’s called feet. You walk on them, stand on them. Arms, they hold things. Like signs. Ones with the words spelled correctly.

Petition your damn government to either start addressing the people’s real business or start packin’.

 

 

There’s a Scandal Alright–Just Not Where You Think

Tags

Benghazi, Dan Burton, Darrell Issa, House committees, Jonathan Kar

I’ve long wondered at the seeming inability of the GOP to remember that we actually keep records of  “that stuff”. They continue to forget that. I give a pass to the typical TeaPotter who is so ill-informed that they are left with nothing but misspelled phrases that they either paint on cardboard signs or attempt to regurgitate from memory. They can’t be expected to actually, you know, KNOW history.

As you know doubt know, the GOP has been looking for a way for five long years now to bury this president. All of their schemes have come to naught for quite obvious reasons, but even when we thought things might, just might, return to some semblance of normalcy after their debacle of 2012, well, sadly they learned nothing.

Some of their own kind (Pat Toomey)  even admit, that their membership so hates this man that they will vote NO on legislation as publicly supported as universal background checks. So of course we expected that rottweiler of a thug, Darrell Issa to continue his determination to find SOMETHING that can bring down this administration.

Benghazi was their choice, aided and abetted by one John S. McCain, who had a personal vendetta and was more than willing to rattle the sabre of “coverup” at least as it pertained to Susan Rice, a woman we can now categorically say was unfairly maligned and mistreated by Johnny and his misogynist guy pal, Ms. Lindsey.

Let me just say this simply. The Benghazi “scandal” is nothing more than a witch hunt. And history explains it all to us.

Darrell “my brother did it” Issa is chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. That is, innocent as it sounds, a very powerful committee, and one Issa has used since 2010 when he assumed chairmanship, to conduct endless hearings into the Obama administration, hoping to find ANYTHING that can be used to harass and drive from office the Negro in the White House.

It is also the only committee that is allowed to issue subpoenas under the chairman’s signature only. However, this has seldom been the practice. Normally, given that grave power, the Chairman has sought the agreement of a full committee vote before so proceeding. This has been  the case except for only two occasions in modern times. Hint: this is where the history gets important.

The most notable occasion when the Chairman took sole control over subpoenas was under the chairmanship of Dan Burton, (R-IN). Mr. Burton had a serious case of the ass against one William J. Clinton. Like Darrell, Dan fairly lit up the committee with his constant and outlandish claims of wrongdoing.

This resulted in a scandal of course–Mr. Burton spend years, over 1,000 subpoenas, and 7 million bucks of taxpayer money, trying to prove that there was scandal to be found in the fund-raising practices of the Democratic Campaign organization. Copies of audio tapes from a “witness” were released. Later it was determined that the tapes had been severely “edited” to appear quite different from their original content. Burton fired committee staff man David Bossie, the supposed “editor”.

However, the scandal went further, and finally, there were calls for Burton to step down himself. He never did of course.

Well, here we go again.

Mr. Issa decided that Burton’s sole possessor of the subpoena was a good thing,  and re-instituted the practice again. This brought a rather lengthy and well-reasoned letter from Elijah Cummings, ranking minority leader on the committee, and a man with a memory. He pointed out that unilateral usage of the power of subpoena had gotten the GOP into serious trouble once before, and it was better to return to the normal and regular practice of bipartisan issuance of these orders.

Of course, Mr. Issa declined rational behavior and has as we all know run a one-man-show of Obama attack. And the expected result has occurred.

For weeks the GOP has harped that the Obama White House was engaged in a cover-up regarding Benghazi. That cover-up has never been spelled out well, but it seems to have revolved around the White House changing the talking points (which implicated Rice somehow), to protect the State Department (and Hillary Clinton) from being accused of malfeasance.

This claim was bolstered by information from e-mails circulated between the  parties involved. We were told this by the GOP. Jonathan Karl broke the story for ABC, claiming as the GOP had alleged, that State Department officials had participated in changing the talking points, along with the White House. Karl implied that he had seen the emails himself and “quoted” from them.

When the true emails were brought forth, they told a different story–one that indicated that neither the White House nor the State Department had played a part in the versions discussed and finally issued by the CIA for distribution (i.e. to Susan Rice).  Now of course Karl claims he never actually saw any e-mails but his “source” shared “notes” with him of what he/she read.

The fair meaning  of what Karl claimed and the actual truth leave little doubt that there was a deliberate attempt to portray the White House and State Department in a bad light and to provide proof that they had acted politically with the intent to deceive. Since the e-mails were the subject of subpoenas, the likely “source” is undoubtedly someone on Issa’s committee.

It is ironic in the end that all this Benghazi “scandal” has been in part to dirty the White House, but also to begin the long process of discrediting Mrs. Clinton. While nobody is all that surprised by the GOP’s doing that, it must be remembered that when all efforts were directed toward destroying the President, the GOP actually held Mrs. Clinton up as the “ray of sunshine” in the otherwise dismal Obama landscape.

Now that the President seems invincible to their machinations, Clinton, the new threat, became the new target.

It’s all so predictable.

And that is what needs be investigated it seems–why are my tax monies being used to manufacture scandals for Republican political gain?

Riddle me that Batman.

Related articles

• Benghazi Backfires on Republicans as Democrats Eviscerate Issa and the GOP (politicususa.com)
• Will a GOP aide be fired over Benghazi email changes? (salon.com)
• CBS News: Republicans Changed Benghazi Emails (themoderatevoice.com)
• CBS: Republicans were source of inaccurate Benghazi emails (dailykos.com)
• Why the GOP may regret its Obama scandal obsession (tv.msnbc.com)
• Benghazi Backfires on Republicans as Democrats Eviscerate Issa and the GOP (easyjjgrand3.newsvine.com)

The Benghazi Hustle

Tags

Benghazi, GOP, Libya, State Department, teabaggers

Here we go again. Everybody hold tight because this merry-go-round is speeding around the curve and headed for–well just about anything that the GOP imagination can dream up.

In a valiant attempt to turn a mole hill into a mountain, Republican Tea Snorters are busy twisting and feigning shock and awe at the shameful and deliberate attempt by the Obama Administration to get “brave Americans” murdered by, well, you know, their true friends.

If one reads the headlines of the extreme-stream media, here is what you will find:

“Benghazi Witness: First Time in my Career that a Diplomat Has more balls than somebody in the Military.”

“Benghazi revelations today could obliterate Obama’s Credibility and Sink Hillary’s 2016 ambitions.”

“Issa seeks more whistle blowers after dramatic Benghazi hearing.”

“Two key witnesses refuse to testify at Benghazi hearing.”

“Benghazi Makes Watergate look like kindergarten: The End of Obama”

“Hillary perjured herself on Benghazi?”

“Benghazi Whistleblower: You Should have Seen what Clinton Tried to do to us that night.”

And on and on it goes.

Here’s what I think we know at this point.

1. A YouTube video riled up Muslims around the world and demonstrations were being held in a variety of places, Egypt among them.
2. A demonstration occurred at Benghazi, that was violent.
3. Ambassador Stevens was fairly well known to favor less security rather than more in an attempt to be open to the residents of the country.
4. Republicans had steadfastly refused State Department requests for more money to beef up security around the world.
5. The Ambassador and three others were killed in the first attack.
6. Air support could not have reached the outpost for hours, a minimum of 5-7 according to the military.
7. There was no basis for suspecting a second attack.
8. There were no deaths or serious injuries sustained in the second attack.
9. A team of FOUR, a military security forces was located at Tripoli but they were concerned about security there, and even John Bolton admitted that they were unable to determine whether the four men should leave that facility for Benghazi when the deaths had already occurred and there was no reason to suspect a second attack.
10. Senator Tom Corker from Tennessee, sat on the Senate hearings on Benghazi and said that he read all the material and thought he knew what happened and was satisfied.
11. The President termed the attack a “terrorist attack” the day following the attack.
12. That Susan Rice delivered the cautionary remarks that we were unsure what happened based on material supplied her by others in the State Department or other agencies.
13. That Al Qaeda is not an organization so much as an idea, and many Islamic groups claim “affiliation” without benefit of any actual connection. To this day, we don’t know I don’t think who this group consisted of.
14. There was no reason to believe that naming it other than a terrorist attack was some how beneficial to the White House in the midst of an election. Most presidents, following some catastrophe or other see their polling improve as people tend to “rally round” the Administration. If the President had war mongered the event, the GOP would have been arguing just the opposite–that he was making it much worse than it was in order to gain sympathy.

The bottom line to me here is simply. The Benghazi outpost was under-secured. Certainly the GOP bears SOME responsibility for that fact as do congressional Democrats who agreed that they didn’t need additional funds. There was apparently not good plans in place for an emergency like this. There should have been.

Beyond that, it was a sad tragedy. But let us remember. Americans are dying around the world every day. They are dying in service to the country, and as employees of corporations doing business in dangerous places. These four were doing their jobs. They perhaps did not receive the full support they should have, but such is life in dangerous occupations. I don’t mean to minimize it, but it should not be overstated either.

The GOP tried to make this into some scandal during the fall of 2012 to hurt the chances of the President to be re-elected, and enhance their candidates chances. That didn’t happen. Now they see polling that suggests that Hillary Clinton, if the nominee will beat any Republican so far put forth, easily and soundly.

Is it hard to see why this is happening now? Of course not. This is just an attempt to dirty up Clinton and force her to not run.

That’s my take on it.

And what is yours?

Republicans are united in their insanity that this will lead to impeachment.

Do you?

Related articles

• Republicans continue to press for answers on Benghazi (nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com)
• Yet Another Benghazi Nothingburger Today (motherjones.com)