“Under what circumstances? Why was reference to Al Qaeda left out? There are so many things that have happened. The interesting things finally, we knew in hours of all the details when we got bin Laden, they making a movie out of it and we are ten weeks later and finally our ambassador to the United Nations, who appeared on every national Sunday show, is now saying that she gave false information concerning how this tragedy happened as far as the spontaneous demonstration triggered by a hateful video.”
As Josh points out: “…you tend to know more about a raid you spent a year planning and executed yourself than a raid on your compound which, as kinda tends to happen in these [situations], you didn’t know about in advance and happened in dark.”
Yes, it’s a great mystery that we had “all the details” about a long-planned raid — and it’s simply dereliction of duty that we can’t foretell the future.
After his comment, perhaps it’s worth noting that John McCain graduated sixth from last place (894th out of 899th) in his class at the U.S. Naval Academy. Ironically, he called Susan Rice “not very bright“ (Rice graduated from Stanford University with honors, was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and earned a master’s degree and Ph.D. at Oxford University). Of course, he’s a rich conservative white man, so… that makes him qualified to judge those who aren’t.
It’s somehow fitting that John McCain’s legacy will be Sarah Palin, who has proven herself to be one of the dullest knives rattling around in our nation’s junk drawer.
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“The conspiracy therefore was not to mislead the American public but to mislead America’s enemies. If Rice had gone beyond her unclassified talking points and said that Ansar al-Sharia was suspected to be behind the Benghazi attacks, no doubt she would now be being hounded for the unauthorized disclosure of classified information,” — Peter Bergen, CNN (AS)
Charlie Pierce explains McCain’s whole Benghazi / Susan Rice dilemma:
“This whole long con has passed now into the realm of pure McCarthyism: “We are significantly troubled by many of the answers that we got and some that we didn’t get,” said McCain, an Arizona Republican. “It is clear the information that [Rice] gave the American people was incorrect when she said it was a spontaneous demonstration triggered by a hateful video. It was not, and there was compelling evidence at the time that that was certainly not the case.”
No details. Nothing specific. Just John McCain, being troubled, as he has been since the country declined to make him its president. What happened with Rice and the talking-points, and why it happened, has been explained at length by everyone closely involved in the episode, including David Petraeus… McCain and Graham — and the hapless Ayotte, who is clearly, and pathetically, looking past Rice all the way to the 2016 Iowa caucuses — have nothing. They want to beat up on Rice simply because they can’t beat up on the president, although McCain made a run at that over the weekend. And they came out of the meeting and ran their mouths about what went on because they knew Rice wasn’t going to go into details of that meeting in public. They are a pair of cowards, with a feckless rookie in train, and they are playing dangerous games with the country’s security. They hereafter should be ignored and, if Graham goes through with his threat of putting a hold on Rice’s nomination, Harry Reid should move his desk out onto Constitution Avenue, and no Democrat should cooperate with this clown ever again.”
“One of you, Senator McCain, has gone so far as to make the outrageous claim that this event was “worse than Watergate”—despite the fact that there is no evidence that any crime was committed, no evidence of any cover-up, and no evidence that the administration has characterized the incident in any way that has not been consistent with the Intelligence Community’s contemporaneous assessments.”
— Harry Reid, rejecting McCain’s request to form a Senate committee to investigate the attack on Benghazi last September. McCain had made the request in part because, per internal Senate rules, he’s term-limited out of his seat as ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the formation of a new committee would allow him another perch from which to delve into the Benghazi matter. Reid derided McCain’s request as an attempt to use the Senate as “a venue for baseless partisan attacks,” and excoriated the senator for skipping a classified briefing on the incident in order to hold a press conference. source (via shortformblog)
When CNN approached McCain in a Capitol hallway Thursday morning, the senator refused to comment about why he missed the briefing, which was conducted by top diplomatic, military and counter-terrorism officials. Instead, McCain got testy when pressed to say why he wasn’t there.
“I have no comment about my schedule and I’m not going to comment on how I spend my time to the media,” McCain said.
Asked why he wouldn’t comment, McCain grew agitated: “Because I have the right as a senator to have no comment and who the hell are you to tell me I can or not?”
When CNN noted that McCain had missed a key meeting on a subject the senator has been intensely upset about, McCain said, “I’m upset that you keep badgering me.”
The “Maverick” doesn’t like being called on his reindeer games.
Apparently conservatives have decided Lyin’ Paul Ryan should be front-and-center after Romney’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week. It doesn’t matter if Paul Ryan is the standard bearer and the budget writer — The Granny Starver — of what Mitt Romney said about half the country to fellow gadzillionaires on hidden camera. At least Ryan is young and fresh about it!
NY Times: “Representative Paul D. Ryan’s selection as the Republican vice-presidential nominee is now yielding something Mitt Romney’s campaign can do without: second-guessing about how Mr. Ryan is being put to use.
“Through the halls of Congress and well beyond, a whisper campaign is bursting into the open: Rather than burden him with the usual constraints on a ticket’s No. 2 not to upstage or get ahead of the presidential nominee, let Ryan be Ryan and take a detailed, policy-heavy fight to President Obama and the Democrats.”
Sounds an awful lot like what “they” were saying back in 2008 with McCain-Palin, doesn’t it? McCain wasn’t thrilling ‘em like he should, apple sauce was attacking him in grocery stores, he was saying ‘the fundamentals of our economy are strong’ and suspending his campaign in the next breath, things were getting messy. So they wanted the campaign to “Let Sarah be Sarah” – turn her loose, give #2 the spotlight. How’d that work out?
At the end of the article, Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Republican Party of Iowa, discusses what it would mean for Ryan’s future if Romney loses in November:
“I hate to say this, but if Ryan wants to run for national office again, he’ll probably have to wash the stench of Romney off of him.”
Heh. Republican politicians are trying to wash that stench off right now. It’s not going to be easy.
2) Catholics intensify campaign against same sex marriage - LONDON — The Roman Catholic Church stepped up its campaign against civil gay marriage, with a letter from two senior archbishops being read out at services in 2,500 churches on Sunday. The letter from Archbishop Vincent Nichols, the leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, and Archbishop Peter Smith, the Archbishop of Southwark, said it was their “duty” to defend the institution of marriage. “Changing the legal definition of marriage would be a profoundly radical step. Its consequences should be taken seriously now,” Nichols and Smith said in the letter, which was being read out at parish churches in England and Wales. “We have a duty to married people today, and to those who come after us, to do all we can to ensure that the true meaning of marriage is not lost for future generations.”
3) Santorum Easily Wins Caucuses in Kansas - Mr. Santorum captured 51 percent of the vote, easily eclipsing his rivals Mitt Romney, who had 21 percent; Newt Gingrich with 14 percent; and Ron Paul with 13 percent. Mr. Santorum was projected by The Associated Press to win at least 32 of the 40 delegates in play, raising the stakes for the Alabama and Mississippi primaries on Tuesday, which polls showed to be wide open. “We’ve had a very, very good day,” Mr. Santorum said in Missouri, retracing the ups and downs of a campaign in which he said many had questioned why he persisted. [image: thatslayerchick]
Watching Willard Romney have to reinvent himself as a barbarian is going to be the best show in town - And, also, this is the casual slander that passes for political thought among the people with whom Romney cannot be nominated for president. In his appearance in Topeka, Santorum lashed out at Romney, saying that the former Massachusetts governor “can’t wait” for the primary season to be over so that he can “get back in his comfort zone.” He added, “We already have one president who doesn’t tell the truth to the American people. We don’t need another nominated by our party to do the same. Gov. Romney reinvents himself for whatever the political occasion calls for.” It is now permissable in the Republican party to say anything you want about the incumbent president of the United States. I’m going to open comments for someone to prove to me that a Democratic candidate in, say, 2004 came that close to calling George W. Bush a liar. The general election campaign is going to be the most savage and truthless exercise that money can buy, and the money involved is going to be able to buy a lot. The GOP is one small step from having one of its politicians drop an N-bomb on TV.
4) Romney struggles with improved economy - The first is that Romney’s refusal to even acknowledge the new job numbers suggests he has a problem. Romney has already said, more than once, that he believes the economy has improved since President Obama took office, and whether the Republican candidate ignores reporters’ questions or not, the facts are hard to dispute. Second, Romney likes to throw around that claim about “he would keep unemployment below 8 percent,” but it’s just not true. Repeating a lie does not make it more accurate. And third, if we’re really going to have a conversation about who “has failed” at job creation, we should probably talk less about the guy who prevented an economic collapse, and more about the governor whose record on job creation was something of a fiasco — during Romney’s tenure, Massachusetts’ job creation was “one of the worst in the country,” ranking 47th out of 50 states in job growth. [image: liberalsarecool]
5) James Wolcott | Julianne Moore’s Sarah-dipity - The chief reason to see Game Change (HBO, Saturday March 10th) is that it’s fun. It has nothing new or profound to say about the runaway train of a presidential campaign, it doesn’t paint any rainy moments of a candidate’s somber reflection on the toll of his soul as the an aide prattles on the latest polls, it doesn’t peel any of the crab shell off of John McCain for a look under the psychological hood, or show us a side of Sarah Palin that will send us to the rewrite pages of history. It doesn’t drip oil from the ceiling like Ides of March, implicating everyone including the audience in collusion and corruption. It’s a slow-burn comedy of exasperation, finally blossoming into cursing frustration when Palin, the rock-star treatment from her rabid fans pumping her up into believing that she’s bigger than the campaign, wants to make her own concession speech the night of the losing election…
The relevant comments come from these two:Other aides who worked on the campaign – campaign manager Steven Schmidt and top aide Nicolle Wallace – have said the film is a generally accurate portrayal of Sen. John McCain’s selection of Palin, whom they allege was emotionally and intellectually not up for the job. Let’s be clear: Palin is absolutely right. The film doesn’t matter.
‘Game Change’ and the realities of political decisions - What matters is that John McCain picked someone so totally and completely unfit for the position of vice president. That disastrous decision disqualifies McCain for the position of “senior wise man” that he so loves to play. But what this choice tells us, reinforced by his behavior during the September 2008 financial meltdown, is that McCain’s instincts are abysmal and his judgment is worse. Why anyone would continue to take McCain seriously from a political standpoint is unanswerable. He’s never going to live down this choice. And the reason he’s so dismissive of the movie and the book is for all the right reasons: the chatter may be all about Palin, but the implications are all about McCain. In fact, that’s actually what happened in 2008, in case anyone has forgotten.
Your average rightwing talk-radio fan.
6) 98 Major Advertisers Dump Rush Limbaugh, Other Right-Wing Hosts - This helps explain why, on Rush Limbaugh’s flagship station WABC, almost of the commercial breaks were filled with unpaid pubic service announcements. You can check out the list of the 50 advertisers who were known to have dropped Limbaugh before this report here. But it’s not just Limbaugh that these advertisers want to disassociate with, but other big names in right-wing radio too. As the Daily Beast’s John Avalon notes, this is unprecedented in the 20-plus years that Limbaugh and his imitators have been on the air and could spell real trouble for an industry that’s already suffering demographically. Women ages 24–55 are the prize advertising demographic, but Limbaugh and other conservative hosts have steadily alienated these listeners over the years, so the sexist attacks on Sandra Fluke were “a perfect storm.”
(VIDEO) SNL’s Rush Limbaugh and his “new, better” sponsors:
The Young Turks: A Challenge to Rush: Prove Your Ratings- So, Rush is in big trouble now as more and more advertisers peel off. He’s in a tail spin. Why else would you triple down on the “slut” comments from Wednesday to Friday and then issue an apology on Saturday? He has over-reached (in his offensive comments) and undelivered (in his ratings). That’s a lethal combo. But Rush can easily prove me wrong. So, I’m issuing a challenge to him – show us your ratings. He won’t do it because he’s embarrassed by them. He has never produced evidence of his ratings and he certainly won’t do it now. In fact, I’ll make a Mitt Romney like wager. I’ll give him $10,000 if he can show us his 20 million listeners. Rush’s audience is a myth. He is a paper tiger. Do some people listen to him? Of course. Is it anywhere near the hype? Not remotely. Talk radio is a dying business. I wouldn’t be surprised if his daily listeners didn’t even reach a million.
“Do not slow down the recovery that we’re on. Don’t muck it up.” – President Obama, speaking directly to Congress during a speech centered on jobs and the economy on Friday in Arlington, Virginia. The economy added 243,000 jobs in January and the unemployment rate fell to 8.3%, much better than analysts expected. (tpmmedia)
8.3% Unemployment In Context — or how can the GOP turn this around to make it worse before November? (Source: politicalwire.com)
Steve Benen: “After years of jobs reports that were only considered encouraging when compared to where we’ve been, January’s totals is objectively good news. Indeed, this is one of the best — if not the very best — jobs reports since the recession began four years ago.”
Ezra Klein: “The bottom line is that this isn’t just a good jobs report. It’s a recovery jobs report. It’s showing the sort of numbers that win elections.”
More Steve Benen: And with that, here’s the homemade chart I run on the first Friday of every month, showing monthly job losses since the start of the Great Recession. The image makes a distinction — red columns point to monthly job totals under the Bush administration, while blue columns point to job totals under the Obama administration.
In 2008, Romney spent millions of dollars to get 25 percent of the vote in Iowa. Romney has now spent four years and millions and millions of dollars to get 25 percent of the vote in Iowa. Via Anne Laurie: those precious votes cost Romney $113.07 each, which is pretty spendy for a race in which Willard’s handlers claimed he wasn’t really competing.
He’s got a lot of money though — so don’t worry. He can afford it.
Right-wing media figures are accusing the Obama administration of seeking to impose a tax on Christmas trees; but the Christmas tree industry has been working since 2008 — before President Obama was elected — to partner with the Department of Agriculture and establish a marketing campaign funded by tree growers in order to promote the sale of fresh Christmas trees.
Gateway Pundit blogger Jim Hoft said the “Christmas Tree Tax” illustrated that “Barack Obama hates Christians.”
Far from a tax initiated by the Obama administration, the proposal to create an assessment on tree growers to fund a research and promotion program through the USDA was begun by the industry during the Bush administration.
Ha ha ha! Sarah’s astounding hubris never fails to amaze. You deserve to be associated with everything she says or does, Senator Country First “Politics First” McCain.
“He thinks McCain ran a lousy campaign with an unqualified running mate and destroyed any chance of winning by picking Palin,” the official allegedly averred.
Internal CCTV video of the Pacific Sun cruise ship in heavy seas:
According to London’s Daily Telegraph, 42 people were injured after the P&O ship ran into a storm about 650 kilometres of the coast of New Zealand in July 2008.
The ship was turning into the storm when its side was hit with huge waves, causing it to violently roll. Continued…
Colin Powell, 2008: “I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to [say] such things as, ‘Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.’ Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, ‘He’s a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists.’ This is not the way we should be doing it in America.”
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