I would rather be inside a besieged embassy right now donning a certain Danish cartoon T-shirt than discussing Benghazi again, but if six months of endless headlines haven’t really netted you anything meaningful, please stop. People with a reading comprehension above a squirrel don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Make love not scandals. Besides, new scandals are emerging with teeth. Clue Alert: they’re being covered by something called “the media”.
Republicans have successfully painted a four year narrative that brings Obama down to the level of Satan. Bravo.
And perception is reality (ask Joseph Goebbels). There are scores of people in Real America who think this week’s events mark Obama’s 27th, 28th and 29th scandal, respectively. He’s losing the War of Ideers’. No wonder he’s desperately trying to fund education.
Here’s what we’ve learned after covering Benghazi since the late Pleistocene:
The State Department and the CIA had a difference of opinion on how best to present the embassy attack to the media. Wow, deep linguistic stuff involving verbiage.
“You have to bend yourself into several pretzels to even understand what the Benghazi thing is about. All the emails Obama And Turkish PM Erdogan Meet At The White House released show what amounts to a classic inter-agency conflict, resolved dispassionately by Ben Rhodes, in a period of considerable confusion.”
—Andrew Sullivan, The Dish
Or, as the GOP put it, “Impeach Obama!”
This has been a witch hunt from the get-go. Here’s the recap of the Hillary witch trial:
- It’s the lead up to Benghazi! No wait, we blocked the security funding for that.
- It’s what Obama didn’t say the next day in the Rose Garden! Oh, wait he called it terrorism. Shit.
- It was…oh wait, the independent investigation found no wrongdoing.
- Wait, I know! In hindsight, we could have saved those people! Really? …we couldn’t have?
- Umm, I got it, they’re hiding the truth!
…which I addressed recently here:
“Yes, we’ve been trying to paint a very different picture of what happened over there: a group of Libyans, who love America as much as anyone, accidentally overran our embassy and killed everybody with glitter and bunnies…glitter and MFing bunnies, people!”
—Mick Zano as Barack Obama
I can’t wait to hear the rest of the alphabet. This isn’t about keeping future embassies safe. The truth is the Obama Administration is being PC. They are quite averse to creating terrorism through ignorance (QTTI). Abu Ghraib likely created more terrorists than Bush ever captured or killed. Obama, not one to repeat a mistake, wants to avoid spiking American hatred in the Middle East needlessly. In fact, that’s a primary reason I voted for him, or…glitter and MFing bunnies, people!
Meanwhile, the GOP is calling this Watergate. They were calling it that before the…umm, nice-Libyans-who accidentally-killed-us even left the embassy. I guess they just smelled a scandal.
Fun Fact: frequent meth use can result in olfactory hallucinations and can permanently damage one’s sense of scandals. Have that checked out.
“[T]he one advice I give to Republicans is stop calling [Benghazi] a huge scandal. Stop saying it’s a Watergate. Stop saying it’s Iran Contra. Let the facts speak for themselves. Have a special committee, a select committee. The facts will speak for themselves. Pile them on but don’t exaggerate.”
—Charles Krauthammer
Later Roger Ailes pulled Charles aside and said, “Psst. We don’t do that here but, don’t worry, our viewers don’t seem to notice.”
“This whole thing with Fox (on Benghazi) would be funny if it weren’t so damaging. A lot of people only watch Fox News, and while it’s easy to mock Fox for being so reality-deficient, so clearly wrong so often, the fact is for millions of people Fox is their sole news source.”
—David Weigel, Slate Magazine
Yes, there is something under this stone, and it’s you! The biggest part of this “scandal” is an email from the State Department that turned out to be doctored bullshit, here. And, even if the initial reports of this insidious wording proved true, it would still rate a whopping:
Scandal Level raised to who gives a flying F—?!
I am not making light of this situation, but after reading dozens of related articles, if we do run out of helium I think this scandal could be a backup source. The real story, as usual, is how fewer and fewer republicans exist outside of the bubble. Did you ever see The Blob with Steve McQueen? I envision the last few sane republicans currently holed up in that old fashioned diner.
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Think of me as a GOP-stopper. George Will and Peggy Noonan, two individuals I once respected, have officially joined this bubble of non-reality. I agree with Sullivan on this one, their conclusions from Benghazi are “unhinged”. So the GOP just lost another 10% of their clout. Hint: that’s about all they had left. Good thing they don’t believe in math.
Benghazi should be about learning from any mistakes and making future Americans safer abroad, nothing more. Every point the republicans are trying to make on this subject is, and remains, semantics. When similar shit happened under Bush…well, take it away Juan:
“By the way, does (Paul) Ryan always consider attacks on US embassies a sign that an administration’s foreign policy is blowing up in our faces? For instance, if the US embassy in Athens, Greece, was attacked in 2007, would that have been an indictment of George W. Bush’s foreign policy? What about if the US embassy in Serbia was burned down early in 2008? If the US embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, were attacked in September 2008? If the US consulate in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, was attacked in 2004? What if thousands of anti-American Iraqis were regularly demonstrating and even shelling the Green Zone in Baghdad where the US embassy is in 2008? Did all that mean that Bush’s foreign policy, the most recent foreign policy outing of the Republican Party, blew up in our faces, according to Ryan?”
—Juan Cole
And I’m sure after each of these attacks, which Bill Maher claims totaled 13, Bush told the people all the details accurately and concisely—within seven or eight seconds after each incident. Well, after he put down My Pet Goat. Hey, it was just put onto Kindle then and he was at a good part.
I never covered a word about those attacks, why? Well, for one I was still working on my GED, but I understood how other parts of the world are dangerous. Deep stuff. Besides, we had plenty of real scandals to contend with at the time.
On cue, here’s the shit hitting the net:
Meanwhile three of these do not reach the level of scandal. They certainly don’t reach the level of significant scandal, and the other two broke five minutes ago. The GOP doesn’t jump to conclusions, they immediately warp to the planet Methane. Sorry, Star Trek is in theaters.
Here’s the Cliff Notes on past Obama “scandals”:
Solyndra – Please invest more in solar power, sir, but try not lose money this time
Fast & Furious – Why did Bush start such a program? Only six months into office—and dealing with two wars and the worst financial collapse since the great depression—I guarantee you this wasn’t on Obama’s radar. But, sure, let’s not do that anymore. In fact, since we’ve been running arms through multiple countries for the last fifteen or so administrations, maybe we should stop that.
Benghazi – Huh? Whaa? Can I be reimbursed for all the bullshit articles I had to read? I found more meat at that vegan donut shop Bald Tony took me to in Vegas.
And, if I made a similarly cute little Bush scandal cartoon:
- I could not fit them all on such a small picture.
- I would not need to invent any.
- I would be forced to narrow it down to huge scandals, some warranting impeachment, others the death penalty.
- Oh, and Bush was directly responsible for these scandals—none of this ‘other agencies misbehaving’ crap.
The good news is the GOP is convinced Obama is directly responsible for these new scandals so David Corn, channeling yours truly, came up with this great tweet:
“Dick Morris says IRS scandal could lead to Obama’s impeachment, which means it won’t.”
Yeah, I should sue for plagiarism, but instead solidarity, brother! Since you can set your watch to their wrongness that means Obama will likely skate.
Irony Alert: Only if the GOP started to defend Obama will he resign in disgrace.
To imply this stuff is impeachable—especially when one considers what this bunch let slide under W—is astounding. Meanwhile, the IRS thing has yet to be linked the White House. If a connection is found, Obama is in big trouble. That is not the case today, nor am I predicting a connection will be made. But that won’t stop the GOP. I can’t wait until they get desperate:
Fox News Alert: A guilty mid-level IRS accountant, not only voted for Obama in 2004 and 2008, but he visited a city in Kenya believed to be Obama’s birthplace.
Impeach!
Fun Fact: most people with an education, aka, college professors, IRS accountants, journalists and the like are generally not huge Tea Party fans. So I’m afraid that’s going to spill over into shit now and again like British Petroleum engineer on mescaline.
Am I excusing the IRS’s behavior? Certainly not—heads should roll and will. The only valid scandal at the moment is the Associated Press thing, which is directly linked to the one big, real, scary problem facing our liberties. Hint: it’s the one I’ve been warning about for a decade or more.
This includes Obama’s secrecy, the treatment of whistleblowers, no oversight for drone strikes, no habeas corpus, and the expansions of executive power which are straining our system to the brink.
So you want to impeach Obama for the AP scandal? Sorry, what he did is legal. Is it extreme? Yes. Is it pretty scary? Yes. But this shit is now a tip toe through the tulips for big bro. In fact, it’s known as the Gonzales Special in the beltway. What the Justice Department did is permissible under law. Check my 2010 article, Funny Thing but Breaking Something Called the Justice Department Might Have Consequences for Something…er, Called Justice.
The only thing that may bring down this whole house of cards is Eric Holder. Cheney would have handled this situation thusly:
“It’s legal, I’m keeping you safe, so shut the F-up”
—Dick Cheney
I have had only one staffing suggestion for Mr. Obama over the years, lose Holder. He’s an idiot. It’s one of the only four valid GOP points in the 21st century, though the other three escape me. I have no idea why Obama is sticking with him and it may yet be his undoing.
“Someday you (Obama) will thank us for this expansion of power.”
—Dick Cheney
Apparently that day is today:
“Thanks, Dick.”
—Obama
Here are the dots—and if only the GOP had the wherewithal to connect them. Our problems stem from the FISA Amendment (2008), The Patriot Act (2003), and the utter Politization of the Justice Department (2005-2007). The very things that signified the end of any semblance of our liberties.
The Bushies and Foxeteers got this shit to pass post 9/11 with a two-pronged approach:
- Vote for these or you are not patriotic.
- We need these tools to keep your sorry asses safe.
And they all fell for it. These items were all nearly unanimously supported by the GOP. Who was in charge then? I’ll refrain from saying the B word, but with all the histrionics and blather from the right, did any one of them really see this coming? Did they understand what they were voting for? Maybe the Pauls did and certainly the Zanos, but I’ll try not to strain anything patting myself on the back.
I said in 2008 “Obama will have a coronation, not an inauguration.” And I predicted he would not restore the rule of law (many times on this site)—nor will anyone for that matter.
GOP translation: You’re wrong, Zano!
Granted, I am not as angry with Obama as I should be, but once these expansions occurred while fighting a nebulous, endless war…it was over. It still doesn’t make it right, but you don’t run for president if you don’t like power. I’m not giving Obama a free pass, I’m just being realistic.
You didn’t think the shit Bush broke would have consequences? Could you imagine this power in the hands of a Tea Partier? Or back in the hands of another Neocon like Cheney? Cheney, if you recall, downloaded all of Google and was later discovered—not hunting down Al-Qaeda with this info—but checking up on his political adversaries. All legal like. And someday the republicans will return to power and I rue that day, as should we all. A republican president with this power is the kind of shit that keeps me up at night…well, that and meth.
Here’s what I wrote a couple of weeks ago, right before these latest scandals broke, here:
“The GOP believed something which turned out to be bullshit. Then the GOP believed something else which turned out to be bullshit, and while everyone was fixated on this aforementioned bullshit, we completely missed ___________ which, as it turned out, had profound implications for our liberties and our future.”
I could have focused more on the real problems if I hadn’t been chasing Rep. herrings for the last four years. Critiquing the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity is a fool’s errand. I was actually working on the first part of this post, the Benghazi part, when these other scandals surfaced. Meanwhile the Right feels somehow vindicated. Finally, they have scandals to discuss with people outside the bubble.
News Flash: climb the F-back in the bubble!
We need Republicans weighing in on current events like the Dow Jones needs the Ryan Plan. Ninety percent of the GOP is still suffering from Gross Insight Deficit Disorder (GIDD). Far too many republican views are shaped by a fear of out-members, as covered here, and an unswerving ability to support all of society’s sociopathic and suicidal tendencies, here. Until they address their own shortcomings how can they help?
Actually, pains me though it may, it’s time we worked together on addressing this expansion of power. It’s a huge issue regardless of who is in the White House. It’s been exceedingly tough to focus on the meaningful when nearly half the country is obsessing over the trivial. Instead, let’s all focus on restoring the rule of law. If we can pull that off I would be very happy to write that retraction. I just don’t know how the Foxeteers can ever climb out of the ideological hole they’ve dug for themselves.
Okay, here it goes…I am reaching across the aisle right now and hoping to God I don’t hear another clown horn.
Look, just remember, the other two Obama scandals are hot off the press. Let’s take a page from the Hammer of Kraut and see where the investigations go. Watching the GOP pursue a scandal is like watching North Korea develop a missile program. You want the truth? You can’t make up 758 things and then expect to find the truth. It’s like finding a Beetle in a Sleestack.
Wow…that is the single worst groaner in Discord history. Mr. Winslow could shut me down for—
