Mr. Speaker! We Need To Get Back To Benghazi

[KingOrfeo]

Oh, and one other thing, there are no "facts" in his post, certainly none that are in context or analogous to my post. You stupid clown.

What, this one?

Putin is a leftist? Lefties are the ones who support a strong military and invading other countries? Who knew? I thought lefties were considered pussies because they didn't like that kind of thing.

Putin is a leftist? Lefties are the ones who want to see gays treated a second hand citizens? Like they are in the Middle East? I must have gotten that one all wrong.

Putin is a leftist? The one who's trying to preserve the proud heritage of his country and return it to it's former greatness? I must be confused, I thought liberals were the ones destroying the country with their stupid new ideas that have not withstood the test of time in the crucible of a civil society held together by laws not men.

The only thing Putin has that's not right wing conservative is to some extent his fiscal priorities. The rest of that shit is clearly part of the right wing camp.

Refute his facts or shut up, bitch.

 

[unregistered]

 

[RjThoughts]

Vette again shows his ignorance

 

[Que]

Mr. Poster! We need to get back to Benghazi.

So, now we are debating whether Russian Communists are Leftists?

I will grant that they are far more pragmatic and far less ideologically driven to stupidity than the American Left.

A.B.B.

Anything But Benghazi.

The report on Christie's Brigdegate was an expensive whitewash, but The Senate's Whitewash answered all questions for all times, even if key documents were with-held.

 

[BoyNextDoor]

Mr. Poster! We need to get back to Benghazi.

So, now we are debating whether Russian Communists are Leftists?

I will grant that they are far more pragmatic and far less ideologically driven to stupidity than the American Left.

A.B.B.

Anything But Benghazi.

The report on Christie's Brigdegate was an expensive whitewash, but The Senate's Whitewash answered all questions for all times, even if key documents were with-held.

You forgot about ghouls making money off the dead.

 

[Sean Renaud]

Mr. Poster! We need to get back to Benghazi.

So, now we are debating whether Russian Communists are Leftists?

I will grant that they are far more pragmatic and far less ideologically driven to stupidity than the American Left.

A.B.B.

Anything But Benghazi.

The report on Christie's Brigdegate was an expensive whitewash, but The Senate's Whitewash answered all questions for all times, even if key documents were with-held.

They are not leftists unless the only measure of a leftist is that they don't worship at the alter of the rich. If that is the only standard that matters then yes, Putin and Russia are lefties but if we look at the entire gamut of what is considered conservative by American standards most of their behavior falls squarely on the right.

There is nothing Benghazi worthy of discussion. We know the exactly what happened, why it happened, how it happened. All the pertinent questions have been answered for Benghazi.

If your really interested in nailing him to the wall you could attempt to talk about the truth about why there were people in Benghazi in the first place but nothing else is worthy of discussion and I think the Right is avoiding that because they know that trying to pretend they weren't in full support of selling arms would come across as bullshit.

 

[IrezumiKiss]

Oh, and one other thing, there are no "facts" in his post, certainly none that are in context or analogous to my post. You stupid clown.

Point out the particular "fact" you want to refuted.

The entire post is a factual bitch slap on your ruddy cheeks for attempting to match up Putin and "lefties."

Refute the facts or shut up, bitch.

 

[Que]

So, why click on the thread, much less participate in 35 pages of the right pointing out what it is that the Obama administration hasn't come clean on and the left saying "nothing to see here?" and "Bush lied more."

Of course it was arms dealing. One of many motives the oh-so-passive Obama administration had fortheir false narrative and the subsequent coverup.

 

[Que]

You forgot about ghouls making money off the dead.

As usual your me-too post is late to the party...I covered that extensively with Comrade Uleven this morning.

 

[Sean Renaud]

So, why click on the thread, much less participate in 35 pages of the right pointing out what it is that the Obama administration hasn't come clean on and the left saying "nothing to see here?" and "Bush lied more."

Of course it was arms dealing. One of many motives the oh-so-passive Obama administration had fortheir false narrative and the subsequent coverup.

Because it's important that people who are spreading misinformation be slapped down repeatedly if necessary. The Obama Administration has come clean and Bush did lie a lot more.

Well why not focus on the arms dealing? You would actually get a lot of leftist upset about that because that was genuine bullshit. If you wanted to impeach him for that I'd back you the whole way. But there was no false narrative nor was there any coverup.

 

[Que]

Because it's important that people who are spreading misinformation be slapped down repeatedly if necessary. The Obama Administration has come clean and Bush did lie a lot more.

Well why not focus on the arms dealing? You would actually get a lot of leftist upset about that because that was genuine bullshit. If you wanted to impeach him for that I'd back you the whole way. But there was no false narrative nor was there any coverup.

You realize that is laughable for all but 26% of the public polled in mid-April BEFORE just this recent batch of hidden documents.

Interesting that you are SURE they have "come clean" and with all that is known about the Bush Administration, it still bears illumination daily six years later.

Arms dealing is not an impeachable offense. It just would be embarrassing to an administration that maintains that "dialogue" and hashtag diplomacy means something to neolithic savages.

 

[RjThoughts]

And again I ask: Why is a supposed lie AFTER the fact of death causing more outrage then a lie or two or three BEFORE deaths occurred?

Damn Boehner, why is this MORE important?
Why GOP apologists is this MORE important?

 

[RjThoughts]

You realize that is laughable for all but 26% of the public polled in mid-April BEFORE just this recent batch of hidden documents.

Interesting that you are SURE they have "come clean" and with all that is known about the Bush Administration, it still bears illumination daily six years later.

Arms dealing is not an impeachable offense. It just would be embarrassing to an administration that maintains that "dialogue" and hashtag diplomacy means something to neolithic savages.

So you're upset over "lies" said after deaths occurred, "lies" which had NO!!!!!! bearing on the deaths?

 

[Sean Renaud]

You realize that is laughable for all but 26% of the public polled in mid-April BEFORE just this recent batch of hidden documents.

Interesting that you are SURE they have "come clean" and with all that is known about the Bush Administration, it still bears illumination daily six years later.

Arms dealing is not an impeachable offense. It just would be embarrassing to an administration that maintains that "dialogue" and hashtag diplomacy means something to neolithic savages.

No, it's not laughable. The fact that the media has continually presented this as a scandal does not make it so.

Yes, I'm sure they've come clean. And no the Bush Admins sins don't bear rehashing, except in the context of pointing out that we didn't ride bullshit for years with him. We let it go, why can't you?

Of course Arms Dealing is an impeachable offense. Anything the Senate thinks is an impeachable offense is an impeachable offense.

The administration does maintain that dialogue and diplomacy means something and indeed it does. The fact that Obama's not a wide eyed idealist is a different point but one I'd gladly impeach over.

 

[IrezumiKiss]

And again I ask: Why is a supposed lie AFTER the fact of death causing more outrage then a lie or two or three BEFORE deaths occurred?

Damn Boehner, why is this MORE important?
Why GOP apologists is this MORE important?

Ain't never gonna get an answer to this one, brah.

They failed to take down ObamaCare on all fronts, the Putin vs. Obama forced boxing match is a washout and this is the last remaining cow for them to dry milk, so…looks like it's a Benghazi Bullshit Summer.

 

[BoyNextDoor]

As usual your me-too post is late to the party...I covered that extensively with Comrade Uleven this morning.

Good coverage. Tom Cotton manufacturing some outrage and doing anything to divert attention from his actions because even his own party thinks it is ghoulish and beneath contempt to make money off of the dead. You are a real Loquacious Sesquipedalian. What is your next act? Quoting Cardnal Law defennding pedo priests?

You realize that is laughable for all but 26% of the public polled in mid-April BEFORE just this recent batch of hidden documents.

Yeah, that big revelation in the recent batch of documents. What a crock of shit. I'll post it again for you.

With the subject line “PREP CALL with Susan,” Rhodes’s email outlined four goals of the administration’s communications strategy.

One was: “To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.” Another was: “To reinforce the president and administration’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.”

How sinister. The guy who is responsible for communications, talking about how to communicate a message.

 

[Que]

No, it's not laughable. The fact that the media has continually presented this as a scandal does not make it so.

Yes, I'm sure they've come clean. And no the Bush Admins sins don't bear rehashing, except in the context of pointing out that we didn't ride bullshit for years with him. We let it go, why can't you?

Of course Arms Dealing is an impeachable offense. Anything the Senate thinks is an impeachable offense is an impeachable offense.

The administration does maintain that dialogue and diplomacy means something and indeed it does. The fact that Obama's not a wide eyed idealist is a different point but one I'd gladly impeach over.

Ok now you are just making a parody thread.

Yeah the media has been SO tough on Obama.

Since for a few months post 911, lefties gave Bush a pass, we will say that you guys have only carped a total of 13 years now.

The house impeaches, could now, shouldn't make a martyr out of him.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Now this is interesting, though it's more about media than Benghazi:

Friday, May 9, 2014 01:15 PM EDT

The right’s Jay Carney conspiracy: How White House puppets get “clicks!”

Remember how excited left-wing media was about Obama's chained CPI deal? No? Don't ruin the truthers' fantasy

Jim Newell

Like many others, I have for some time believed that executive branch staffers workshopping talking points in the midst of a diplomatic crisis two years ago does not constitute the need for an open-ended special investigative House committee that could stretch on another two years.

My admittedly imperfect political sense led me to judge that John Boehner’s decision to set it up stems from the need on the right-wing to: (a) reach some sort of perfunctory face-saving conclusion stemming from this 2012 election year issue, because otherwise would involve admitting that two years have been wasted; (b) gin up the base ahead of the 2014 midterm elections; and (c) tarnish the State Department tenure of probable 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Regarding that third point, incoming committee chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy suggested recently that it might take his committee well into the 2016 election season to finish parsing some emails from September 2012.

Even-minded people can agree that this represents something of a tell.

But in a piece this morning, National Journal’s James Oliphant suggests something more nefarious in various left-of-center pundits’ determination that the Benghazi scandal doesn’t live up to its reputation.

When Jay Carney was grilled at length by Jonathan Karl of ABC News over an email outlining administration talking points in the wake of the 2012 Benghazi attack, it was not, by the reckoning of many observers, the White House press secretary’s finest hour. Carney was alternately defensive and dismissive, arguably fueling a bonfire he was trying to tamp down.

But Carney needn’t have worried. He had plenty of backup.

He had The New Republic‘s Brian Beutler dismissing Benghazi as “nonsense.” He had Slate‘s David Weigel, along with The Washington Post’s Plum Line blog, debunking any claim that the new email was a “smoking gun.” Media Matters for America labeled Benghazi a “hoax.” Salon wrote that the GOP had a “demented Benghazi disease.” Daily Kos featured the headline: “Here’s Why the GOP Is Fired Up About Benghazi—and Here’s Why They’re Wrong.” The Huffington Post offered “Three Reasons Why Reviving Benghazi Is Stupid—for the GOP.”

Much like these writers (including the decidedly not-liberal Dave Weigel) determined that the latest cache of disclosed Benghazi emails did not constitute the “smoking gun” that the Benghazi hypers had been alleging, Oliphant’s hazily argued piece does not provide anything close to a “smoking gun” of what he appears to be suggesting: that progressive “bloggers” write what they write in order to protect the White House that festoons them with access and feeds them talking points — a practice that is now supposedly easier and more widespread because something something the age of social media something whatever.

The new landscape has allowed the White House communications shop to do what it does best: Figure out new ways to bypass the mainstream media. It holds off-the-record briefings, sometimes with Obama in the room, for select progressive bloggers from outlets such as TPM and ThinkProgress. (More than once, a National Journalreporter who previously worked at a liberal outlet has been invited as well.)

The outreach to progressive bloggers is part of a multipronged White House media strategy that also involves briefings with the likes of bureau chiefs, prominent columnists, even conservative writers such as Byron York and David Brooks, although certainly with each group, the mileage varies.

The new landscape has allowed the White House communications shop to do what it does best: Figure out new ways to bypass the mainstream media. It holds off-the-record briefings, sometimes with Obama in the room, for select progressive bloggers from outlets such as TPM and ThinkProgress. (More than once, a National Journal reporter who previously worked at a liberal outlet has been invited as well.)

The outreach to progressive bloggers is part of a multipronged White House media strategy that also involves briefings with the likes of bureau chiefs, prominent columnists, even conservative writers such as Byron York and David Brooks, although certainly with each group, the mileage varies.

As Weigel writes in his response to Oliphant, “There’s definitely an interesting, reported piece to be written about how the White House reaches out to opinion writers, or bloggers, or liberal-leaning reporters. This isn’t that piece.” If Oliphant really wanted to do a “fresh take,” he could have, I don’t know, cross-checked “blogger” visits from White House logs with White House talking points and what that “blogger” wrote that day, and seen if it was a change in tune from what a “blogger” would normally write (from his parents’ basement, in his pajamas, sippin’ Mountain Dew, etc.) He could probably have found something! And then we’d all call that person a hack and blacklist them and it would be fun.

The most absolutely positively delightful quote in Oliphant’s piece comes from a “former liberal blogger” who, in keeping with the traditional journalistic standards that National Journal seeks to protect, is granted anonymity:

“The incentives are to play ball,” says one former liberal blogger, “not to speak truth to power. More clicks. More action. Partisanship drives clicks.”

(The most funny way to read this, which is the only way I can read it, is in the voice of a corporate whistleblower being interviewed on Frontline, voice altered, cloaked in shadows, chain-smoking, looking side-to-side nervously: This whole reality is a fiction, right?… the name of the game is clicks… *snap* *snap* *snap*… one, two, three, boom, just like that — clicks… the clicks, man, follow the clicks… the clicks lead to the very top levels of American government… the clicks are probably watching us right now… were you trailed by any clicks on the way here? CAN YOU BE SURE??)

This “former liberal blogger” has indeed revealed a very dark, secret truth about online news organizations: clicks are important! But to assume that clicks can only be secured solely through White House water-carrying is inaccurate.

Consider the Salon piece that Oliphant name checks in his paragraph of left-leaning Benghazi dismissers, authored by Heather Digby Parton. Digby does not think much of the Grand Benghazi Scandal/Watergate 2.0, it’s true. As those who are familiar with her lengthy political writing history know, however, she also doesn’t think much of the White House’s various attempts to secure “grand bargains” with Republicans on the deficit by offering cuts to major social insurance programs. These posts trashing the White House got Digby “the clicks,” too. (Along with some fancy awards!)

Digby, and others, have been earning their dirty clicks by writing about various other awful Obama White House issues, too — the ugly deals it cut with insurance and pharmaceutical companies during the drafting of the Affordable Care Act, the surveillance state, the overseas drone-killing program, the way it managed the 2011 debt ceiling crisis, intervention in Libya, and everything involving Tim Geithner’s tenure as Treasury secretary, to name a handful. It’s unlikely that the White House disseminated talking points shitting on the White House in these cases.

Let’s operate here on good faith and suggest that James Oliphant thought he had an interesting piece to write and we’re contributing a response, in good faith, to the conversation. There are more cynical motives to ascribe here — that the House of Fournier is trolling for clicks. In the first case, let’s say we hope that Oliphant considers some of what we’ve said here. In the latter, well, here you go, Ron Fournier! Click, everyone. Click click click, give him all the clicks he wants. Click. Click. You are not clicking fast enough. Natty Journal needs a new pair of shoes!

(PS: FWIW Jay Carney has never invited me to the White House or given me talking points or pushback, mostly because I’m unimportant, and I’d probably print whatever screaming email he sent because I like to burn bridges.)

 

[KingOrfeo]

The house impeaches, could now, shouldn't make a martyr out of him.

It would. Remember that it was not Bill Clinton's misbehavior but his impeachment that made America a global laughingstock.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Of course it was arms dealing.

What was arms dealing?

 

[Sean Renaud]

Ok now you are just making a parody thread.

Yeah the media has been SO tough on Obama.

Since for a few months post 911, lefties gave Bush a pass, we will say that you guys have only carped a total of 13 years now.

The house impeaches, could now, shouldn't make a martyr out of him.

I know you are but what am I?

The media hasn't done Obama any favors. They could easily ignore a lot of this obvious bullshit if they so chose. Let Fox be the only ones carrying said bullshit.

You mean a few years after 911 the lefties gave Bush a pass.

Sorry, the house, regardless there isn't actually a set in stone legal definition of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors" it's like any other conduct clause. If they had the votes they could impeach him for playing basketball when everybody knows the sport of leaders is Chess.

See only good men get made into martyrs. It's good you've realized what you're dealing with however.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Point out the particular "fact" you want to refuted.

Don't pull that, even you should be able to see the factual assertions under the rhetorical questions.

 

[KingOrfeo]

So, now we are debating whether Russian Communists are Leftists?

No, we are debating whether Putin is a sincere Communist/leftist. (There is still a Russian Communist Party, BTW, and Putin is not in it, and it is his main opposition.)

 

[Que]

I know you are but what am I?

The media hasn't done Obama any favors. They could easily ignore a lot of this obvious bullshit if they so chose. Let Fox be the only ones carrying said bullshit.

You mean a few years after 911 the lefties gave Bush a pass.

Sorry, the house, regardless there isn't actually a set in stone legal definition of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors" it's like any other conduct clause. If they had the votes they could impeach him for playing basketball when everybody knows the sport of leaders is Chess.

See only good men get made into martyrs. It's good you've realized what you're dealing with however.

No, they really couldn't continue to pretend this isn't a story and cling to the fiction that they are journalists.

It isn't their job carry water for the administration...although for many it is a labor of love.

Just because you have enjoyed their portrayal of a false narrative for many months doesn't mean you have a right to expect them to continue to portray this the way you would prefer, rather than the way it is.

Take heart in the many other scandals that THEY have been helpful in squelching. The Obama Administration has gotten away with some doozies.

If you wanted impeachment over Libyan arms to Syria, I would think rifles for zetas would be of interest to you. Just for an example.

 

[Sean Renaud]

No, they really couldn't continue to pretend this isn't a story and cling to the fiction that they are journalists.

It isn't their job carry water for the administration...although for many it is a labor of love.

Just because you have enjoyed their portrayal of a false narrative for many months doesn't mean you have a right to expect them to continue to portray this the way you would prefer, rather than the way it is.

Take heart in the many other scandals that THEY have been helpful in squelching. The Obama Administration has gotten away with some doozies.

If you wanted impeachment over Libyan arms to Syria, I would think rifles for zetas would be of interest to you. Just for an example.

This isn't a story, it is however making money. The same reason I can click on CNN right now and they are looking for a damn plane after two months, the reason they continued to present the 2012 election as a close race up until the votes were counted all stems from the same thing. They are in a capitalist system attempting to make money.

They should have an obligation to the truth, which would carry water for Obama, but they don't. They like money and honestly nobody can blame them.

Obama hasnt' gotten away with shit. You are however right, I don't get to demand that the media stop this bullshit, other than what I already do by watching less and less of their programming and reading other websites.