Question...

Anyone ever contemplated the irony of the flap over 'sustainable' pet ownership?

I guess somewhere in here is an argument but in a society that is so abundant that our pets now arguably live better than pre industrial man did... are we quibbling here or is this just the environmental bullies pulling our leg?

Can Ryan Unite The Republicans?

“Let’s be frank; the House is broken,” Ryan said in a speech after taking the gavel from Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi to loud applause from lawmakers. “We’re not solving problems, we’re adding to them, and I am not interested in laying blame. We are not settling scores. We are wiping the slate clean.”

Reaching across the aisle, he urged Democrats and Republicans to work together, saying, “we will not always agree,” but “if you have ideas, let’s hear them.” He also cited the pressures felt by many working Americans.

“What a relief to them it would be if we finally got our act together,” Ryan said. “How reassuring it would be if we actually fixed the tax code, put patients in charge of their health care, grew our economy, strengthened our military, lifted people out of poverty, and paid down the debt.”

It's still the Democrats fault

Well, in other news yesterday, Denny Hastert pleaded guilty to a single money shuffling charge in order to avoid having to say where the money went, which has been pretty well speculated on elsewhere. In a probably unrelated story, Boehner passed a budget bill with a majority of the majority....of Democrats. Republicans control the house and the senate, and yet, to actually pass a bill, the final breakdown was as follows Democrats 187 for, Republicans 79 for, Republicans 167 against. I think that's pathetic. As the party in power, Republicans control the committees and hence, could offer up tons of cuts. Instead, they dump it on the Democrats to pass a bill that allows them to keep their pork. And from what I read, this deal was worked out between Boehner, Pelosi, McConnell and Reid.

When Obama vetoed the last bill a couple of weeks ago, I received a histrionic email from my congressman, Joe Heck, that was wailing about using the military as hostages. The reason he was making the claim was this, in essence, the Republicans wanted to increase military spending and couldn't do it because of the sequester. So, they wanted to add some multiple billions to the military through off budget accounting, which is kind of a scam. In this case, I actually have some sympathy for the tea bags who are complaining about this bill that just passed, it increases spending and circumvents the sequester. Yet, as I read the post article, in order to get more Republicans to vote for, there has already been promises made to fix what will initially be a cut of like 3 billion dollars in crop insurance programs in future spending bills.

So, here is my gripe to start the daily flame war. It continues to astonish me that Republicans are seen as the party of fiscal responsibility. The charge perpetually leveled at Democrats is that they are the party of tax and spend. And while I think that is not an honest representation, I have to say that raising taxes in order to spend more money is far more honest than what the Republicans have offered. They want spending for their agenda just as surely as the Democrats do, however, they don't want to pay for it by either raising taxes, or by equally cutting programs they support along with cutting programs they don't support. Undoubtedly, this raise in the debt will be blamed on Obama despite the fact that Republicans truly do hold the purse strings and can't get their heads out of their ass to pass a real budget.

The sequester was meant to do what legislators don't want to do, which is arbitrarily make cuts in everything. However, just like Reagan's famous closing of tax loop holes, the legislators have gone back and basically exempted everything important in order to avoid the cuts. In essence, they want to wail about the debt and run on it as a campaign issue, but they don't ever want to put in a consequence in place, like raising taxes. Collectively, it is clear we want the spending we have, seniors want their benefits, farmers want their benefits, poor people want to drive cadillacs and eat fillet every night without working for it while additionally wanting pocket money to help them get to the polls to vote for more free shit that only Democrats hand out. We want the spending, but don't want to pay for it. Again, while I find the social outlook of tea baggers to be batshit crazy, I can't deny they have an honesty here in their position. That said, what they don't acknowledge is that the rest of America, who doesn't support the teas enough to give them full control, collective wants the spending where it is. To me, the only honest thing to do is to look back at America and say that if you want all of these programs that benefit both left and right, then it's time to raise taxes to pay for them.

Comey

What could bring Hillary down? According to some who have followed the case closely, Mrs. Clinton could be charged with breaking several laws, including willfully transmitting or retaining Top Secret material using a private server, unauthorized removal of classified information from government control or storing such information in an unauthorized location, lying to Congress, destruction of government property (wiping the server), lying under oath to a judge about having given the government all her emails or obstruction of justice.

This last misdeed seems particularly dangerous for Clinton. On September 20, 2012, nine days after the attack in Benghazi that left four Americans dead, Jason Chaffetz, chair of the House Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations (part of the committee on Oversight and Government Reform), requested from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton all documents related to the Libya event. The broad request included all records, including emails. For a year, the State Department responded in dribs and drabs to the request; notably, no emails were handed over. A frustrated Oversight Committee finally (in August 2013) issued two subpoenas – one covering the initial documents request and another for the results of the internal investigation that exonerated Clinton.

It was not until August 2014 – nearly two years after the attacks and the first request for documents -- that the first Clinton emails appear, and that Congress becomes aware of the existence of her private server. Only in February 2015 is Congress alerted that Clinton has only made available some of her records. Shortly thereafter, The New York Times breaks the story that Hillary has turned over 55,000 pages of emails and more subpoenas follow. The obfuscation only worsens, as she claims to have destroyed some 30,000 “personal” emails, despite a Congressional “preservation letter” telling her to protect any records.

 http://finance.yahoo.com/news/fbi-could-derail-hillary-clinton-132000775.html

The incident in South Carolina

As I watched the now viral video of that school cop dragging that girl out of the chair to arrest her, my first thought was honestly not, "OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS IS HAPPENING IN AMERICA". As I listened to the rest of the report, the story I heard was that 1) the girl was using her phone during the class 2) she had been told to put the phone away and she refused 3) she was asked by the teacher to leave the room and she refused 4) a school administrator was brought to the room to ask the student to leave and she refused 5) Robocop with the tactical gear on finally showed up and brought the scene to a predictable end.

It will be no surprise to anyone here that I was a smart ass in school. I received plenty of physical slaps from the principle of my grade school. It's not just matter that you can't do that today, but the shit he did would have gotten him in some serious trouble in today's world. Since his response was always a way over the top smack down, it's not like I was gonna get a mild slap for  mild grab ass behavior and a roundhouse kick to the head for worse behavior. I say this to make the point that I was pretty much the same smart ass everyday and I knew what the limit was. It wasn't his threat of reprisal that set my limits, rather it had a lot to do with not only how I was raised, but also how my friends were raised. Even in my most smart assed moments, I would not have dreamed of openly disrupting the class the level this girl, allegedly, did.

So TS and I have been having this round and round about who's to blame. If what is being said about the girl's behavior is true, I think she's kind of an entitled spoiled bitch, and I feel the same about a lot kids I meet today. Obviously, the video shows the final stage in a conflict and Robo Renta cop was called in to do the dirty work and be the bad guy. And he delivered. I guess as I read liberal outrage and listen to the cherry picked interviews with carefully selected black "authorities" I ask myself what, exactly is that these people would rather have seen done. Should they have allowed the girl to completely take over the class, disrespect the teacher, disrespect her classmates who might want to learn and be allowed to sit there with smugness while the school people politely "bargain" with her? It appeared she was digging in her heels and wasn't going to budge. That's a no win situation for everyone involved.

I feel like kids today have no respect for authority, and while this has surely been said of every generation looking backward, I feel like the present moment presents something new. Not only do kids not respect authority, but neither do their parents. The video only shows what happens at the end, and I can only judge from anecdotal reports of what lead up to it. Still, I feel like teachers have to put up with a lot of bullshit today and if they aren't getting it from girls like the one shown in the video, they are getting it from parents who are equally abusive. I'm sure there is some liberal scapegoat to blame for this girl's behavior, probably related to gay marriage and lack of respect for the constitution, but if the rest of the story happened they way I'm reading it now, my only thought at the moment is that this girl should grow the fuck up. I saw nothing there that made me think about racism.

Ted Cruz is Running the Best Campaign

And here is the logic behind that assertion:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/10/27/7-reasons-ted-cruz-is-running-the-best-2016-campaign/

Trump and the Apocolypse

Michael Gerson argues that politicians like Trump benefit from their "end of time" rhetoric.

http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/article41479053.html

Who buys the government

Ever wonder which U.S. companies are the biggest political donors?

1. Las Vegas Sands               69.4  M             republicans        democrats  0

2. AT&T                               35.5 M               republicans        democrats  25.3M

3.Goldman Sachs                  24.2 M              republicans        democrats  27.9 M

4. Citigroup                           18 M                 republicans        democrats 17    M

5. JP Morgan Chase Bank     18 M                 republicans        democrats  16.5 M

6. United Parcel Service        22.3 M              republicans        democrats  12.2 M.

7. Microsoft                           14.2 M              republicans        democrats  17.9 M

8. General Electric                 16.2 M              republicans        democrats  14.5 M

9. Lockheed Martin               17.2 M               republicans        democrats 12.7 M

10. Bank of America             17.4 M               republicans        democrats  12.1 M

11. Morgan Stanley               16.2 M               republicans        democrats  12.3 M

12. Verizon                            16.8 M               republicans        democrats  11.4M

13. Time Warner                     6.2  M              republicans        democrats  18.8 M

14. Comcast                           10.8 M              republicans         democrats  14   M

15.Boeing                               13   M               republicans         democrats  11.2 M

16.Honeywell International   13.4 M               republicans         democrats  10.4 M

17. Northup Grumman           12.8 M               republicans         democrats    9.5 M

18. Union Pacific                    15.9 M              republicans          democrats    6.1 M

19. AFLAC                             12.3 M             republicans           democrats    9.4 M

20. Pfizer                                 13.8 M             republicans          democrats     7.5 M

21. Altria                                 13.8 M             republicans          democrats     6    M

22. Raytheon                           11.2 M             republicans           democrats    8.5 M

23. American Financial           16.2 M             republicans          democrats     2.2 M

24. General Dynamics               9.7 M             republicans         democrats      8.2 M

25. Chevron                             14.4 M              republicans         democrats     3.2 M

26 Walmart                              11.3 M             republicans         democrats      6   M

27. Exxon                                 14.6 M             republicans         democrats     2.2 M

28. FedEx                                 10.3 M             republicans         democrats     6.2 M

Noticably George Soros, The Kochs and Warren Buffett are not listed. This is because figures here are only for public companies. One could say that Berkshire Hathaway is public but truth is Buffett stays relatively uninvolved in politics.

 

These figures are for contributions from 2002 until 2015 to the major political parties.

I find it interesting that during Jack Welch's tenure at GE more money was given to republicans than democrats although everyone thought Welch was totally in bed with the dems.

Oil companies tend to go right. that is understandable as left wingers favor green energy.

Defense contractors go right to the war mongers and military industrial complex protectors.

Banks tend to go right.

Media and technology tend to go left.

    

Congress and White House Reach a Deal

A tentative deal was reached Monday which would fund the government through 2017.

http://theweek.com/5things/585347/congressional-leaders-white-house-reach-tentative-budget-deal#1item

The beginning of the end

Tea Party Support Falls to Lowest Point Ever, Gallup Says

U.S. News & World Report

Gabrielle Levy

© Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images Just 17 percent of respondents in a recent survey considered themselves supporters of the tea party, down from a high of 32 percent in 2010.

Support for the tea party has fallen to its lowest point since the emergence of the movement reshaped modern American politics, according to new polling from Gallup.
Just 17 percent of those surveyed this month said they considered themselves supporters of the tea party, according to data released Monday, while 24 percent said they opposed the group.
The tea party first played a major role in the November 2010 midterms, ushering in a wave of conservative lawmakers to federal and local office. The group peaked in popularity that month, with 32 percent support among those surveyed by Gallup.
At the time, Americans said they opposed the group or felt neutral about it in approximately equal measure, at 30 percent and 31 percent, respectively.

But even while at its most popular, the movement only managed favorability among slightly more than half of those who identified themselves as Republican or leaned Republican, at 52 percent.
The ultimate effect of that ideological split within the party has been to yank more moderate GOP lawmakers to the right as they're faced with more ideological electorates – particularly in midterm and local elections, which attract smaller numbers of voters who are more likely to be politically engaged and hold beliefs that are more extreme.
Moderate Republicans, particularly in 2010 and 2014, attracted primary challengers from the right, and the GOP overall earned a large majority in the 114th Congress. What's more, both the House and Senate in 2015 have featured the fewest centrist Republicans since around the end of Reconstruction, according to a measure of ideology based on voting behavior and developed by political scientists Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal.
Republican voters, however, appear to have become increasingly frustrated that their party's hold on congressional power has resulted in neither major legislative change nor a recent presidential victory. As evidence, look no further than the GOP presidential nominating contest, where political outsiders Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina have all surged in recent months.The recent intraparty chaos in Congress itself also can easily be traced to the rise of the tea party, with the House Freedom Caucus able to claim a major victory by forcing House Speaker John Boehner to resign. The group additionally handcuffed his likely successor, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, from making changes that would prevent them from mounting an insurgency against him, too.
In the long term, though, the tea party's rise and the GOP's subsequent ideological split may box the furthest right members of the party out. Moderate Republicans have teamed with Democrats to handle critical legislation on topics like avoiding a government shutdown and reforming Medicare payments – the latter of which stemmed from a deal struck between Boehner and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California this spring.
The most telling figure of the Gallup survey may be that more than half of those interviewed – 54 percent – said they neither support nor oppose the tea party, meaning that the movement has lost its potency as either a positive or negative motivator.
"While the effects of the tea party movement on previous elections still resonate, the big drop in support from Republicans and Republican leaners over the past four or five years may indicate that the tea party movement's impact on American politics is fading," Gallup's Jim Norman writes in the survey release.
Copyright 2015 U.S. News & World Report

The fix was in

The FBI & Hillary’s e-mails: A Lois Lerner precedent?

By Post Editorial Board

October 26, 2015 | 2:11pm

Former IRS official Lois LernerPhoto: AP

The fix was in: Lois Lerner will walk away scot-free.

On Friday, the Justice Department closed its two-year investigation into the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status and decided to charge . . . no one.

This, when Lerner admitted the IRS had singled out righty groups, but blamed the “absolutely inappropriate” actions on “front-line people” — that is, lower-level folks. And then refused to answer more questions by pleading the Fifth.

Questions about, say, her orders to hold up applications from any outfit with “Tea Party” or “patriot” in its name.

In a letter Friday, Justice told Congress: “We found no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution.”

In other words, exactly what President Obama ordered up — er, predicted. Back when the “investigation” had barely started, Obama told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly there wasn’t “even a smidgen of corruption” in the case. On “The Daily Show,” he explained that the “real scandal” is that the IRS lacks the budget to do more audits.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a member of the House Oversight Committee, notes: “Here’s a lady who systematically and for a sustained period of time targeted people for exercising their most fundamental rights, their First Amendment free-speech rights. … The chief investigator, the chief lawyer assigned to the Justice Department to evaluate this, was Barbara Bosserman — a maxed-out contributor to the president’s campaign.”

“So it shouldn’t be any surprise the Justice Department said there’s nothing wrong here. But the American people know that there is.”

Wondering what the FBI probe will conclude about Hillary Clinton’s use of a private account and server for all her State Department e-mails? Well, Obama already told CBS’s Steve Kroft that it didn’t make for a “national security problem. . . I can tell you that this is not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered.”

If the Lois Lerner case is any precedent, the FBI might as well wrap up its Clinton probe right now.

Rubio Gives Up on the Senate

He says he will not seek reelection, here is the link:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2015/10/25/28cfaff0-6d59-11e5-9bfe-e59f5e244f92_story.html

Can Trump Unify The Parties?

He says he can, here is the link where he explains how:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/25/politics/donald-trump-democrats-republicans-bipartisanship-great-unifier/

How PBS managed this story

PBS Anchor: 'Why Does It Matter' Hillary Lied About a YouTube Video on Benghazi?

By Tim Graham | October 23, 2015 | 9:49 AM EDT


PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff came to bury the Benghazi committee on Thursday night’s program. “What difference does it make” seemed to be her Hillary-echoing mantra. Or in her case, it was “Why does it matter?” Lies? Coverups? Who cares about that?

She brought on Anne Gearan of The Washington Post, a routine defender of Hillary’s, and Yochi Dreazen, formerly with The Wall Street Journal news pages and now with Foreign Policy magazine, owned by....The Washington Post Company. Get a load of this exchange:

JUDY WOODRUFF: But, Yochi Dreazen, did we learn anything more about how she made — how those decisions were made and her role in what finally happened?

YOCHI DREAZEN: I think the most interesting moment by far was when Congressman Jim Jordan was saying to her, in some detail, that you, Secretary Clinton, told your family in one e-mail that this was an attack linked by al-Qaida, that you said in a phone call with an Egyptian leader that this was not something tied to an anti-Muslim video, and then saying, but the talking points coming out of the White House at the time were, this wasn’t al-Qaida and this was linked to this video.

I thought that was the most effective and sort of new moment in the entire line of questioning. And her answer back wasn’t terribly strong. Her answer back was, they were still sifting intelligence. We were trying to sort our way through it. But she couldn’t quite give the direct answer why she was saying in an e-mail something very different than what was being said publicly.

WOODRUFF: But, for the audience, why does it matter? Why did that — why does it matter whether she was saying one thing? Because she tried to say, well, I was trying to warn other countries. We didn’t want to see this thing happening anyplace else.

There you have it. A journalist asking “Why does it matter if she told the truth to her family and lies to the families of the victims at Andrews Air Force Base, or lied to the media about a YouTube video? Why does it matter Hillary skipped the Sunday shows so Susan Rice could be the poster child for lying about the YouTube video?" This is Woodruff rejecting Journalism 101, choosing politics over expecting the honesty of public officials. Dreazen’s answer:

DREAZEN: So, the Republican charges basically are two parts. One is, she ignored security, so, substantively, she could have done more to make the compound safer, and then much more damaging from their point of view is that the White House basically lied. They’re saying the White House knew one thing, for political reasons, they said something else, and there’s a cover-up, and she was a major part of that cover-up.

That’s basically what they have been trying to say now for three years, that she deliberately misstated what she knew to be the cause of the attack, and these e-mails were their best attempt today to try to make that point again.

Woodruff then changed the subject, asking Anne Gearan, "the Hillary Clinton campaign right now, they obviously had some worry going into this hearing. What was their strategy?”

Then she went back to how this committee would wrap it up:

WOODRUFF: So, Yochi Dreazen, what comes out of this? Where does this lead? I mean, after she has testified, the committee goes on. What do they do with this information?

DREAZEN: So, some of the numbers just on the hearings, it’s astounding. This is the 21st hearing on Benghazi. By comparison, there were 22 public hearings on 9/11. So, just to compare the two, 22 on 9/11, 21 on Benghazi. The investigations are thought to have cost about $5 million. This has been going on now 17 months. It’s not clear to me or I think to really any observer what is new that could still be found.

Dreazen said a similar thing at the segment’s very beginning: “And if you were watching the hearing today, you’re not hearing anything new. These questions have been asked again and again. The answers were given again and again. Basically, what you saw almost from the beginning were Democrats and Republicans literally yelling at each other. This wasn’t like an august hearing designed to try to get down to something we didn’t know. This was politics, pure and simple.”

“Politics, pure simple” is a good definition of how PBS managed this story.

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Tim Graham is Executive Editor of NewsBusters and is the Media Research Center’s Director of Media Analysis

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She Knew All Along

She Knew All Along

The House hearing on Benghazi reveals that Hillary Clinton’s spin about the attack was a politically expedient fiction.


By 

KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

Updated Oct. 23, 2015 1:00 p.m. ET

2344 COMMENTS

Thanks to Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi testimony on Thursday, we now understand why the former secretary of state never wanted anyone to see her emails and why the State Department sat on documents. Turns out those emails and papers show that the Obama administration deliberately misled the nation about the deadly events in Libya on Sept. 11, 2012.

Don’t forget how we came to this point. Mrs. Clinton complained in her testimony on Capitol Hill that past Congresses had never made the overseas deaths of U.S. officials a “partisan” issue. That’s because those past deaths had never inspired an administration to concoct a wild excuse for their occurrence, in an apparent attempt to avoid blame for a terror attack in a presidential re-election year.

The early hints that this is exactly what happened after the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans cast doubt on every White House-issued “fact” about the fiasco and led to the establishment of Rep. Trey Gowdy’s select committee.

Main Street Columnist Bill McGurn on Hillary Clinton's testimony before the House Select Committee on Benghazi. Photo credit: Getty Images.

What that House committee did Thursday was finally expose the initial deception. To understand the willful depth of that trickery, let’s briefly recall the history.


In early September 2012, at the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Joe Biden summarized to thunderous applause the administration’s re-election pitch: “Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive.” Translation: The president had revived the economy, even as he had put “al Qaeda on the run,” as Mr. Obama put it. Five days later, four Americans in Benghazi were dead. It appeared the White House had slept through a terror attack on the anniversary of 9/11.

The administration instead immediately presented the attack as a spontaneous mob backlash to an anti-Muslim YouTube video. At 10:30 on the night of the attack, Mrs. Clinton issued a statement about the violence, blaming the video. She repeated the charge in a speech the next day. President Obama gave his own speech that day, referring to the video and refusing to use the word “terrorism.”

The next day, Mrs. Clinton mentioned the video twice more. The day after that, Press Secretary Jay Carney said: “We have no information to suggest that it was a preplanned attack.” Mrs. Clinton promised the father of one of the victims that the administration would “make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.” In his weekly address, Mr. Obama talked about the video. When the Libyan president said there was evidence the attack was planned months in advance, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice contradicted him. She instead told five Sunday talk shows—five days after the attack—that “based on the best information we have to date,” the attack “began spontaneously” in response to “this hateful video.” Mr. Obama for two full weeks continued to talk about YouTube.

Here’s what the Benghazi committee found in Thursday’s hearing. Two hours into Mrs. Clinton’s testimony, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan referred to an email Mrs. Clinton sent to her daughter, Chelsea, at 11:12 the night of the attack, or 45 minutes after the secretary of state had issued a statement blaming YouTube-inflamed mobs. Her email reads: “Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al Queda-like group.” Mrs. Clinton doesn’t hedge in the email; no “it seems” or “it appears.” She tells her daughter that on the anniversary of 9/11 an al Qaeda group assassinated four Americans.

That same evening, Mrs. Clinton spoke on the phone with Libyan President Mohamed Magariaf, around 8 p.m. The notes from that conversation, in a State Department email, describe her as saying: “We have asked for the Libyan government to provide additional security to the compound immediately as there is a gun battle ongoing, which I understand Ansar as Sharia [sic] is claiming responsibility for.” Ansar al Sharia is al Qaeda’s affiliate on the Arabian Peninsula. So several hours into the attack, Mrs. Clinton already believed that al Qaeda was attacking U.S. facilities.

The next afternoon, Mrs. Clinton had a call with the Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil. The notes from it are absolutely damning. The secretary of state tells him: “We know that the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack—not a protest.” And yet Mrs. Clinton, and Ms. Rice and Mr. Obama for days and days continued to spin the video lie.

In other news Thursday, Judicial Watch unveiled a new cable, sent the day after the attack, from the Defense Intelligence Agency to the State Department Command Center. It explains that the attack was carried out by a “Salafi terrorism group” in “retaliation for the killing of an Al Qaeda operative.”

The cable says “the attack was an organized operation with specific information that the U.S. Ambassador was present.” The cable included details about the group’s movements and the weapons it used in the assault.

Count on the Obama administration to again resort to blaming “confusing” and “conflicting” information at the time for its two-week spin. That was Mrs. Clinton’s flimsy excuse at the hearing. But her own conversations prove she was in no doubt about what happened—while it was still happening.

Democrats on the committee spent most of the hearing complaining that it was a waste of time and money. Quite the opposite. It was invaluable, for the clarity provided by those three emails alone.

Write to kim@wsj.com.

poor Trey

The Benghazi chairman was stumped on a simple question about Hillary Clinton's marathon testimo

Maxwell Tani

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst                 William's boy

After questioning Hillary Clinton for 11 hours in Congress, the head of the House Select Committee investigating the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya didn't have a concrete answer about whether he'd learned anything new.

On Thursday, Clinton sat with lawmakers on Capitol Hill for a daylong hearing about the attacks on the American consulate in Benghazi on September 11, 2012.
Over the course of the day, lawmakers grilled Clinton about everything from her use of a private server while serving as secretary of state, to the rationale behind her support of an international military incursion into Libya in the first place.
But when asked by a reporter after the hearing about what new information the committee had gleaned from the hearing, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-South Carolina) didn't have an answer.

"In terms of her testimony, I don't know if she testified that differently today than she's previously testified," Gowdy said.
The congressman then said that he'd follow up by looking at the day's transcripts.

Perhaps the brown wave will stem the red tide....

Yesterday’s WSJ’s “Notable & Quotable” reports that more than half of America’s college students oppose free speech on campus – which means that more than half of America’s college students are one small step away from opposing free speech everywhere.

Reading this and some other articles I have read about immigration got me to thinking.  A good many of the people who come to the US do so because of opportunity.  Now while the left is working tirelessly to skew the number of people who come to the US as being from more liberal or socialist countries.  Now it may be true that they will significantly change the culture of the US in the future, given the sad and scary fact from the WSJ above, people who oppose immigration because they fear that immigrants infect America with cultural attitudes hostile to freedom ought to reconsider their position.  With most of America’s best and brightest already flirting with tyranny, new waves of opportunity-seeking immigrants are unlikely to make matters worse and might well supply a needed spur to protect freedom in the U.S. from its home-grown antagonists.

Win or Lose Trumps campaign threatens to unleash...............

the Great American Stupid

Donald Trump Just Stopped Being Funny

By Matt Taibbi

So two yahoos from Southie in my hometown of Boston severely beat up a Hispanic homeless guy earlier this week. While being arrested, one of the brothers reportedly told police that "Donald Trump was right, all of these illegals need to be deported."

   

When reporters confronted Trump, he hadn't yet heard about the incident. At first, he said, "That would be a shame." But right after, he went on:

"I will say, the people that are following me are very passionate. They love this country. They want this country to be great again. But they are very passionate. I will say that."

This is the moment when Donald Trump officially stopped being funny.
The thing is, even as Donald Trump said and did horrible things during this year's incredible run at the White House, most sane people took solace in the fact that he could never win.
In fact, most veteran political observers figured that the concrete impact of Trump's candidacy would be limited in the worst case to destroying the Republican Party as a mainstream political force.
That made Trump's run funny, campy even, like a naughty piece of pornographic performance art. After all, what's more obscene than pissing on the presidency? It seemed even more like camp because the whole shtick was fronted by a veteran reality TV star who might even be in on the joke, although of course the concept was funnier if he wasn't.
Trump had the whole country rubbernecking as this preposterous Spaulding Smails caricature of a spoiled rich kid drove the family Rolls (our illustrious electoral process in this metaphor) off the road into a ditch. It was brilliant theater for a while, but the ugliness factor has gotten out of control.

Trump is probably too dumb to realize it, or maybe he isn't, but he doesn't need to win anything to become the most dangerous person in America. He can do plenty of damage just by encouraging people to be as uninhibited in their stupidity as he is.
Trump is striking a chord with people who are feeling the squeeze in a less secure world and want to blame someone – the government, immigrants, political correctness, "incompetents," "dummies," Megyn Kelly, whoever – for their problems.
Karl Rove and his acolytes mined a lot of the same resentments to get Republicans elected over the years, but the difference is that Trump's political style encourages people to do more to express their anger than just vote. The key to his success is a titillating message that those musty old rules about being polite and "saying the right thing" are for losers who lack the heart, courage and Trumpitude to just be who they are.

His signature moment in a campaign full of them was his exchange in the first debate with Fox's Kelly. She asked him how anyone with a history of calling women "fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals" could win a general election against a female candidate like Hillary Clinton.

I've been challenged by so many people," Trump answered. "I frankly don't have time for political correctness. And to be honest with you, the country doesn't have time either….We don't win anymore. We lose to China. We lose to Mexico….We lose to everybody."
On the surface, Kelly was just doing her job as a journalist, throwing Trump's most outrageous comments back at him and demanding an explanation.
But on another level, she was trying to bring Trump to heel. The extraction of the humiliating public apology is one of the media's most powerful weapons. Someone becomes famous, we dig up dirt on the person, we rub it in his or her nose, and then we demand that the person get down on bended knee and beg forgiveness.
The Clintons' 1992 joint interview on 60 Minutes was a classic example, as was Anthony Weiner's prostration before Andrew Breitbart and Chris Christie's 107-minute marathon apologia after Bridgegate. The subtext is always the same: If you want power in this country, you must accept the primacy of the press. It's like paying the cover at the door of the world's most exclusive club.

Trump wouldn't pay the tab. Not only was he not wrong for saying those things, he explained, but holding in thoughts like that is bad for America. That's why we don't win anymore, why we lose to China and to Mexico (how are we losing to Mexico again?). He was saying that hiding forbidden thoughts about women or immigrants or whoever isn't just annoying, but bad for America.
It's not exactly telling people to get out there and beat people with metal rods. But when your response to news that a couple of jackasses just invoked your name when they beat the crap out of a homeless guy is to salute your "passionate" followers who "love this country," you've gone next-level.
The political right in America has been flirting with dangerous ideas for a while now, particularly on issues involving immigrants and minorities. But in the last few years the rhetoric has gotten particularly crazy.

Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert proposed using troops and ships of war to stop an invasion of immigrant children, whom he described as a 28 Days Later-style menace. "We don't even know all of the diseases, and how extensive the diseases are," he said.
"A lot of head lice, a lot of scabies," concurred another Texas congressman, Blake Farenthold.
"I'll do anything short of shooting them," promised Mo Brooks, a congressman from the enlightened state of Alabama.

Then there's Iowa's Steve King, who is unusually stupid even for a congressman. He not only believes a recent Supreme Court decision on gay marriage allows people to marry inanimate objects, but also believes the EPA may have intentionally spilled three million gallons of toxic waste into Colorado's Animas river in order to get Superfund money.

Late last year, King asked people to "surround the president's residence" in response to Barack Obama's immigration policies. He talked about putting "boots on the ground" and said "everything is on the table" in the fight against immigrants.
So all of this was in the ether even before Donald Trump exploded into the headlines with his "They're rapists" line, and before his lunatic, Game of Thrones idea to build a giant wall along the southern border. But when Trump surged in the polls on the back of this stuff, it caused virtually all of the candidates to escalate their anti-immigrant rhetoric.
For example, we just had Ben Carson – who seems on TV like a gentle, convivial doctor who's just woken up from a nice nap – come out and suggest that he's open to using drone strikes on U.S. soil against undocumented immigrants. Bobby Jindal recently came out and said mayors in the so-called "sanctuary cities" should be arrested when undocumented immigrants commit crimes. Scott Walker and Marco Rubio have both had to change their positions favoring paths to citizenship as a result of the new dynamic.
Meanwhile, Rick Santorum, polling at a brisk zero percent, joined Jindal and Lindsey Graham in jumping aboard with Trump's insane plan to toss the 14th Amendment out the window and revoke the concept of birthright citizenship, thereby extending the war on immigrants not just to children, but babies.
All of this bleeds out into the population. When a politician says dumb thing X, it normally takes ‘Murica about two days to start flirting publicly with X + way worse.
We saw that earlier this week, when Iowa radio host Jan Mickelson blew up Twitter by calling for undocumented immigrants to become "property of the state" and put into "compelled labor." When a caller challenged the idea, Mickelson answered, "What's wrong with slavery?"
Why there's suddenly this surge of hatred for immigrants is sort of a mystery. Why Donald Trump, who's probably never even interacted with an undocumented immigrant in a non-commercial capacity, in particular should care so much about this issue is even more obscure. (Did he trip over an immigrant on his way to the Cincinnati housing development his father gave him as a young man?)

Most likely, immigrants are just collateral damage in Trump's performance art routine, which is an absurd ritualistic celebration of the coiffed hotshot endlessly triumphing over dirty losers and weaklings.
Trump isn't really a politician, of course. He's a strongman act, a ridiculous parody of a Nietzschean superman. His followers get off on watching this guy with (allegedly) $10 billion and a busty mute broad on his arm defy every political and social convention and get away with it.
People are tired of rules and tired of having to pay lip service to decorum. They want to stop having to watch what they say and think and just get "crazy," as Thomas Friedman would put it.
Trump's campaign is giving people permission to do just that. It's hard to say this word in conjunction with such a sexually unappealing person, but his message is a powerful aphrodisiac. Fuck everything, fuck everyone. Fuck immigrants and fuck their filthy lice-ridden kids. And fuck you if you don't like me saying so.


Those of us who think polls and primaries and debates are any match for that are pretty naive. America has been trending stupid for a long time. Now the stupid wants out of its cage, and Trump is urging it on. There are a lot of ways this can go wrong, no matter who wins in 2016.

Ah Matt Taibbi telling it like it is.... That's what you want isn't it William? Louman? someone to tell it like it is.................................

It's time for the republicans to end this taxpayer funded fishing expedition.

Benghazi Committee Fights Among Itself As Hillary Clinton Enjoys The Show

"It is time now for the Republicans to end this taxpayer-funded fishing expedition."

Amanda Terkel

WASHINGTON -- Hillary Clinton maintained a calm, unruffled demeanor for 11 hours Thursday, as Republican after Republican grilled her about her role in the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi and her use of a private email server as secretary of state. 

"So far today, I've said, 'good morning,' 'good afternoon,' 'good evening.' So let me go ahead and say, 'good night,'" Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) said around 8 p.m., acknowledging that the hearing had began at 10 a.m. (with some short breaks throughout the day). 

Despite the long hours, Republicans failed to catch Clinton off her guard or come up with significant new revelations to argue that she was negligent in her duties that led to the death of four Americans in Libya. 

Her appearance is likely to give her a boost with the base, especially coming off from a strong performance after the first Democratic debate last week. Republicans weren't able to score any major hits and knock her off her feet, and Clinton showed she had the stamina to withstand the GOP attacks -- a fact that Republican lawmakers grudgingly seemed to acknowledge.

Indeed, many of the members seemed more exasperated than Clinton as the day wore on. 

"I don't know what we want from you," ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said, his voice rising during hour 10 of the hearing. "Do we want to badger you over and over again until you get tired, until we do get the 'gotcha' moment that he's talking about? We're better than that. ... We're better than using taxpayer dollars to try to destroy a campaign. That's not what America is all about. So you can comment if you like. I just had to get that off my chest."

There were plenty of pointed exchanges throughout the day. Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) called Clinton the "chief architect" of U.S. Libya policy and laid the whole mess at her feet. Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) said he was baffled that Clinton didn't give out her home phone number and home address to Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who died in the attacks, while her longtime friend and adviser Sidney Blumenthal did have that information. 

When Clinton found a moment to laugh after about nine hours of testifying, Rep. Martha Roby (R-Ala.) chastised her for thinking it was a joking matter. Roby asked Clinton about the night of the attack, when Clinton left her office and went to her home in Northwest Washington: 

ROBY: Who else was at your home? Were you alone? 

 

CLINTON: I was alone, yes. 

 

ROBY: The whole night? 

 

CLINTON: Well, yes, the whole night. [Laughter]

 

ROBY: I don't know why that's funny. Did you have any in-person briefings? I don't find it funny at all.

 

CLINTON: I'm sorry, a little note of levity at 7:15 [p.m.]. Noted for the record. 

But some of the most heated debates were between the Republican and Democratic lawmakers, who disagree about whether the committee should exist at all. 

Indeed, the opening statements of Cummings and Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the committee's chairman, both focused on intra-committee politics. Gowdy tried to argue why, although there have been seven other investigations into Benghazi, his is still necessary. Cummings called for Congress to disband the committee.

"It is time now for the Republicans to end this taxpayer-funded fishing expedition," Cummings said. "We need to come together and shift from politics to policy. That's what the American people want, shifting from politics to policy."

Clinton was the only one who actually spent her entire time discussing the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi.

Their disagreement reached its height right before the committee broke for lunch.

Gowdy focused his aggressive questioning of Clinton on why she took foreign policy advice from Blumenthal, who frequently emailed his thoughts to her even though he didn't work for the State Department.

The committee has already interviewed Blumenthal -- for nine hours -- although it was behind closed doors. Cummings has repeatedly called on Gowdy to make the transcript public, arguing it would show that Republicans are more interested in going after Clinton for partisan purposes than in getting to the bottom of the Benghazi attack. He renewed his demand on Thursday.

"I move that we put into the record the entire transcript of Sidney Blumenthal," Cummings said, his voice rising. "We're going to release the emails, let's do the transcript. That way the world can see it!"

Clinton, meanwhile -- no doubt happy to have a break from answering questions -- seemed to enjoy the entire exchange, often smiling and nodding.
Gowdy has been straining to save his committee's reputation since late last month, when House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) implied that the investigation was political and applauded it for damaging Clinton's presidential prospects. 

Since then, the hits have kept on coming, with another Republican lawmaker and a former GOP committee staffer saying the intent was to go after Clinton. Gowdy also had to return campaign donations from the Stop Hillary PAC, a group that aired a controversial ad about the Benghazi attack.

"I would say in some ways these have been among the worst weeks of my life," Gowdy told Politico. 

The Benghazi investigation has lasted 17 months and cost more than $4.5 million.

In total, Congress has held 21 hearings on the Benghazi attacks in which four Americans died, across the various investigations. In contrast, it held 22 hearings looking into what happened on 9/11, where 3,000 people died.

Then-President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney testified for just three hours during a private session to the 9/11 commission in 2004.

Most of the Benghazi committee's questions to Clinton in the first half of the day did focus on the attacks, aside from the mentions of Blumenthal by Gowdy and a couple of other members. That, however, changed when the committee came back in the afternoon, as Gowdy warned before adjourning.

“If you think you’ve heard about Sidney Blumenthal so far," Gowdy warned before gaveling for lunch, "wait until the next round."

When the committee returned, it voted against releasing Blumenthal's transcript on a party-line vote. The second half of the day focused extensively on Clinton's emails and Blumenthal's access to the secretary of state. 

Clinton's calm, measured demeanor throughout the hearing was modeled on the recent appearance of Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards before the House Oversight Committee, who also walked away relatively unscathed after hours of testifying. 

Clinton occasionally appeared bemused as Republicans picked up the pace and aggressively questioned her. 

Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) tried to make Clinton look unprepared, repeatedly pointing out that she was looking at notes during her testimony. 

"I can pause while you're reading your notes from your staff. ... I'm not done with my question. I'm just giving you the courtesy of reading your notes," said Roskam, who consulted notes during his questioning. 

"That's all right," Clinton replied, making clear she was able to do more than one thing at a time.

As expected, Democrats used much of their time to either attack the committee for being partisan or to ask Clinton softball questions, allowing her more time to give answers and explain her point of view.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), for example, gave Clinton the opportunity to respond to accusations that she deliberately interfered with security that could have saved Stevens' life.

"Well, congressman, it's a very personally painful accusation," Clinton replied. "It has been rejected and disproven by nonpartisan, dispassionate investigators. ... I would imagine I've thought more about what happened than all of you put together. I've lost more sleep than all of you put together. I have been wracking my brain about what more could have been done or should have been done."