The Hillary Clinton thread

[Rip]

Have republicans started blaming Hillary for World War II yet?

Nope, but after 2 years and $7 million investigating Benghazi! (again) they found...nothing.

Most impressive re-investigation ever. Also it's 800 pages long. That seems sort of short to say nothing at all.

Rip will be along shortly to tell you you're wrong and that they found a lot. He won't be able to prove it, but he just knows it.

All depends on who is reading it.

[hepcat]

Thanks for proving me right.

[El Guapo]

Have republicans started blaming Hillary for World War II yet?

Nope, but after 2 years and $7 million investigating Benghazi! (again) they found...nothing.

Most impressive re-investigation ever. Also it's 800 pages long. That seems sort of short to say nothing at all.

Rip will be along shortly to tell you you're wrong and that they found a lot. He won't be able to prove it, but he just knows it.

You can see the future!

[Fitzy]

Have republicans started blaming Hillary for World War II yet?

Nope, but after 2 years and $7 million investigating Benghazi! (again) they found...nothing.

Most impressive re-investigation ever. Also it's 800 pages long. That seems sort of short to say nothing at all.

Rip will be along shortly to tell you you're wrong and that they found a lot. He won't be able to prove it, but he just knows it.

Naw, there's that new Clinton Secret Service book out today. I'm sure he's busy.

Edit: Guess I was too slow.

[Fitzy]

Have republicans started blaming Hillary for World War II yet?

Nope, but after 2 years and $7 million investigating Benghazi! (again) they found...nothing.

Most impressive re-investigation ever. Also it's 800 pages long. That seems sort of short to say nothing at all.

Rip will be along shortly to tell you you're wrong and that they found a lot. He won't be able to prove it, but he just knows it.

All depends on who is reading it.

Is that The Onion?

[hepcat]

Close. It's a screen capture from Fox News.

[Scraper]

Close. It's a screen capture from Fox News.

Sometimes the Onion is more accurate than Fox.

[Isgrimnur]

WaPo

There is no smoking gun, but the report does conclude that Clinton and the Obama administration more broadly should have realized how in-danger our diplomatic posts in Libya were at the time of the 2012 attack and done more to protect them and the four Americans -- including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens -- who were killed.

Or, more accurately, the Republicans on the special Benghazi committee concluded that. Democrats on the committee called this whole thing a partisan witch hunt to bring down Clinton's presidential run and released their own, much softer report on Monday. But those two reports aren't even the sum total of the committee's work; two of the committee's most conservative lawmakers released a more critical report, which was not signed off on by the rest of the GOP members.

For our purposes, we're going to focus exclusively on Republicans' main report -- I know, it gets confusing -- since Republicans are the ones in control of the committee and Congress, and this is the report a majority of the committee members signed off on. It's also the one that will be at-issue in the 2016 presidential race.
...
1. The State Department failed to protect our diplomats in Libya

Spoiler:

This is the report's bottom line. It doesn't necessarily lay the blame at Clinton's feet -- Gowdy had said he wanted to keep the report focused on the facts, not personalities -- but the conclusion is clear: Clinton and the Obama administration should have realized the risks.

To back this conclusion up, CNN's Collinson reports that requests for more security in Benghazi leading up to the attack went unheard or were refused. (In a statement to reporters, State Department spokesperson Mark Toner indicated there was no new evidence in the report.)

But even House Democrats' version of their report acknowledge that "security measures in Benghazi were woefully inadequate," pointing the finger at the security and law enforcement arm of the State Department rather than Clinton. Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed in the attack, was at the compound with only two official bodyguards even after other Western diplomats had left the country.

...
2. The CIA missed warning signs

Spoiler:

The report says the agency misread how dangerous Libya, in the midst of a revolution after overthrowing its longtime dictator a year earlier, was at the time. Recall the attack took place on Sept. 11, 2012.

"One section of the report seems to allege that U.S. officials fundamentally misunderstood who their allies were at the time," writes NBC's Mitchell.

To illustrate that point, the report details how there was confusion in U.S. intelligence circles about who ultimately came to Americans' rescue. Previous reports concluded it was a "quasi-government militia," this report says it was a military regime loyal to the country's former military dictator.

3. The Defense Department failed to rescue Americans in time

Spoiler:

Or at least, they were late in deploying help, waiting until well after the attack had begun even though President Obama had approved the military to do whatever it needed to hours earlier. U.S. military forces didn't reach Benghazi until 2 p.m. the day after the attack. The report blames a breakdown in the chain of command for this, including a debate among U.S. Marines about whether they should wear their military uniforms or civilian attire.

"No U.S. military asset was every deployed to Benghazi despite the order of the Secretary of Defense at 7 o'clock that night," Gowdy told reporters in a press conference Tuesday. "So Washington had access to real-time access information yet somehow they thought he fighting had subsided."

(The Democrats' version of the report concludes that even if the military got to Benghazi earlier, it could not have saved the lives of the four Americans who were killed. Gowdy says that's beside the point.)

4. The Obama administration "stonewalled" the investigation

Spoiler:

The administration engaged in what Gowdy described as "intentional," "coordinated" and "shameful" stonewalling of his investigation. The report said the State Department, Pentagon and CIA refused to to turn over all of the agencies' records and delayed getting others to Congress, a process that Republicans said delayed their investigation by months.

At the heart of this accusation is Clinton's use of a private email server exclusively while she was secretary of state.

5. A Clinton aide influenced the State Department's review

Spoiler:

As noted above, Congress isn't the only branch of government that reviewed what happened in Benghazi. The State Department did its own, too, which was intended to be internal but independent (think the watchdog report on Clinton's emails).

But according to a section of the Benghazi investigation that Bade obtained, the report "was consistently influenced by" Cheryl Mills, Clinton's former chief of staff. Mills has said she offered suggestions on drafts, but they were merely that, suggestions.

[Fitzy]

Close. It's a screen capture from Fox News.

In my defense I couldn't know that a major news organization would use retro 80s web design.

[Isgrimnur]

Close. It's a screen capture from Fox News.

In my defense I couldn't know that a major news organization would use retro 80s web design.

Make GeoCities Great Again!

[hepcat]

Close. It's a screen capture from Fox News.

In my defense I couldn't know that a major news organization would use retro 80s web design.

Sorry, wasn't making fun of you.

Cross post: In other news, stocks are up thanks to this report clearing her name!

[Isgrimnur]

Haaretz

There is no sane planet in which the 2012 terrorist assault, tragic as it was, justifies more probing than 9/11, the Beirut bombings or Pearl Harbor.

[Fitzy]

Cross post: In other news, stocks are up thanks to this report clearing her name!

Have you considered applying to DPRK News Service?

[Max Peck]

Haaretz

The harsh Republican report provides new impetus, if any was needed, for right wing attackers to portray the killing of Ambassador Christ Stevens and three other U.S. diplomats at the American Consulate in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 as the very worst scandal in the history of the nation.

Well, no wonder the GOP is so persistent. The last time someone killed Christ, it took a couple thousand years for people to simmer down about it.

[YellowKing]

The real scandal is that Republicans spent two years on this witch hunt over the administration failing to protect the lives of four people, but have refused to even entertain a discussion about preventing the 475 mass shooting deaths (1,870 wounded) that have occurred since 2015.

[Edit] - Sorry, those numbers were from 2015 only. Go ahead and add....a bunch more.

[Unagi]

[Scraper]

The real scandal is that Republicans spent two years on this witch hunt over the administration failing to protect the lives of four people, but have refused to even entertain a discussion about preventing the 475 mass shooting deaths (1,870 wounded) that have occurred since 2015.

[Edit] - Sorry, those numbers were from 2015 only. Go ahead and add....a bunch more.

I think YK has finally shed any hope he had for the GOP. It has been a slow process, but the combination of 8 years of Bush, then constant witch hunts against Obama and Clinton, and to top it all off Drumpf, all of these things combined seem to have done it.

[GreenGoo]

The GOP doesn't have to suck. They are just lost right now.

[Pyperkub]

The GOP doesn't have to suck. They are just lost right now.

However, it is a product decades in the making, and deconstructing that foundation will not be easy.

[YellowKing]

I doubt I'll ever be attracted back to the party as long as they are under the sway of the religious right. Too many social viewpoints that are at complete odds with me.

I used to be able to look past all that as long as the fiscal and foreign policy was strong, but Bush torpedoed that.

It also got particularly harder as I got older and fatherhood started to trump (no pun intended) self-interest. Now I'm having to look at what kind of world I want my kids to live in after I'm gone. On the Republican side, it is looking increasingly like a world in which there is an intolerance to people who are different, where guns and bombs are the first solution to every problem, where fear drives policy decisions, and where science takes a back seat to religious views. I'm incompatible with all of those.

[Enough]

Have republicans started blaming Hillary for World War II yet?

Nope, but after 2 years and $7 million investigating Benghazi! (again) they found...nothing.

Most impressive re-investigation ever. Also it's 800 pages long. That seems sort of short to say nothing at all.

Rip will be along shortly to tell you you're wrong and that they found a lot. He won't be able to prove it, but he just knows it.

All depends on who is reading it.

Would knowingly misleading the public be another way of saying she lied? If so, the head of the committee, firebrand Republican Trey Gowdy, very clearly said he wouldn't use the word lie in a court of law and wouldn't be putting your bumper stickers on his car. And this is after more hearings than were held for 911, Watergate or Pearl Harbor. Nooo, not a witch hunt at all, lol.

[RunningMn9]

I doubt I'll ever be attracted back to the party as long as they are under the sway of the religious right.

Oddly enough, the Religious Right suddenly looks like the reasonable people in the room, which is terrifying.

This party has morphed itself into the party of the deep south. It cannot unwind that without destroying the party itself. Therefore I cannot go back.

[LordMortis]

I doubt I'll ever be attracted back to the party as long as they are under the sway of the religious right. Too many social viewpoints that are at complete odds with me.

As long as they are vocally represented by snake oil salesmen they are off the table for me. The way protecting individualism is a code for corporatism, religious oppression, and bigotry was half of the problem. The other half is that fiscal responsibility has been smoke and mirrors for my entire voting life. I desperately want to be on the conservative side. I truly subscribe to more theoretical conservative principles than I do liberal ones but GOP can suck it. The truth of the matter is that at least since Clinton leaving office, the democrats have been the more sane party. That's 16 years of increasing insanity beyond how bad democrats already have been. I won't subscribe to republicanism until they show me something good. More likely, I wait for the implosion to complete and I hope to find something sane and reasonable come out of it to support.

[hepcat]

To be fair, there's quite a few things the lock step democrats fervently support that I don't agree with. It's just that those things are erring on the side of justice and equality most of the time. So I view them as less dangerous...which is all one can do when it comes to government.

[Kraken]

To be fair, there's quite a few things the lock step democrats fervently support that I don't agree with. It's just that those things are erring on the side of justice and equality most of the time. So I view them as less dangerous...which is all one can do when it comes to government.

This week I took the almost-unprecedented step of blocking a Facebook "friend" who was spamming my feed with Democratic talking points and pro-Clinton propaganda. Yes, I lean (D) more often than not, but this lady made Fireball look even-handed.

[Defiant]

Someone did:

Dr. Anne Stevens, who serves as her family’s spokesperson, made it very clear that no matter what Republicans say, Hillary Clinton is not to blame for Benghazi. In fact, she says the blame lies with Republicans in Congress.

“It is clear, in hindsight, that the facility was not sufficiently protected by the State Department and the Defense Department. But what was the underlying cause?” she said. “Perhaps if Congress had provided a budget to increase security for all missions around the world, then some of the requests for more security in Libya would have been granted. Certainly the State Department is underbudgeted.”

[Unagi]

Al Franken, possible VP pick... ? - I like it.

[Kraken]

Al Franken, possible VP pick... ? - I like it.

Her ticket might benefit more from an infusion of charisma than from any other single addition, since her unlikeability is her biggest negative. Franken's good enough, he's smart enough, and gosh darnit, people like him.

[YellowKing]

Ugh, I can't stand Al Franken. That would definitely lessen my already dismal inclination to vote for Hillary.

[El Guapo]

Ugh, I can't stand Al Franken. That would definitely lessen my already dismal inclination to vote for Hillary.

I'm curious - why's that?

[hepcat]

Because he and Tom Davis lied about being the comedy team that weighed the same?

[YellowKing]

It's a deep rooted dislike from back in my ultra-conservative days. But even though my political alignment has shifted considerably, the old feelings are still there. Similar to my disdain for Hillary. Falling out of love with the Republican party doesn't mean falling in love with the Democratic party. I still loathe a ton of left-wing pundits and politicians.

[El Guapo]

It's a deep rooted dislike from back in my ultra-conservative days. But even though my political alignment has shifted considerably, the old feelings are still there. Similar to my disdain for Hillary. Falling out of love with the Republican party doesn't mean falling in love with the Democratic party. I still loathe a ton of left-wing pundits and politicians.

That's fair enough. But my surprise was just because Franken's politics as a whole aren't all that different from Hillary's. He's probably a little more to the left of her all told, but I still regard him as a center-left figure similar in political profile to Hillary.

Basically you don't have to like Hillary or anything, but adding Franken to the ticket shouldn't sway you much.

[LordMortis]

It's a deep rooted dislike from back in my ultra-conservative days. But even though my political alignment has shifted considerably, the old feelings are still there. Similar to my disdain for Hillary. Falling out of love with the Republican party doesn't mean falling in love with the Democratic party. I still loathe a ton of left-wing pundits and politicians.

That's fair enough. But my surprise was just because Franken's politics as a whole aren't all that different from Hillary's. He's probably a little more to the left of her all told, but I still regard him as a center-left figure similar in political profile to Hillary.

Basically you don't have to like Hillary or anything, but adding Franken to the ticket shouldn't sway you much.

Franken is behaves like the stereotypical Plato's Gold Blooded Philosopher King. He seems to hate that people have a say in their own governing and wants them to know that only he knows what is good for them.

I honestly don't know his track record but he's a self promoter and a dick who talks but doesn't listen.

I think his "problem" is mainly that he is both a professional political satirist and professional power broker. It's not a good combination.

[Unagi]

Ugh, I can't stand Al Franken. That would definitely lessen my already dismal inclination to vote for Hillary.

You should read his book on Dick Cheney. really. I think you might like it.

[Max Peck]

Where did the idea that Al Franken might be the pick come from, anyway? All I've seen is that he's said that he'd take the job if it was offered, but as far as he knew he wasn't being vetted. From what I've read, the vetting process has progressed to the stage where those being considered are aware of their status, so I don't think he'd have made a comment about not knowing if he was in the running.

[Unagi]

I think I saw it on some Yahoo headline, but I admit it was likely one of those 'speculative' articles.

[El Guapo]

It's a deep rooted dislike from back in my ultra-conservative days. But even though my political alignment has shifted considerably, the old feelings are still there. Similar to my disdain for Hillary. Falling out of love with the Republican party doesn't mean falling in love with the Democratic party. I still loathe a ton of left-wing pundits and politicians.

That's fair enough. But my surprise was just because Franken's politics as a whole aren't all that different from Hillary's. He's probably a little more to the left of her all told, but I still regard him as a center-left figure similar in political profile to Hillary.

Basically you don't have to like Hillary or anything, but adding Franken to the ticket shouldn't sway you much.

Franken is behaves like the stereotypical Plato's Gold Blooded Philosopher King. He seems to hate that people have a say in their own governing and wants them to know that only he knows what is good for them.

I honestly don't know his track record but he's a self promoter and a dick who talks but doesn't listen.

I think his "problem" is mainly that he is both a professional political satirist and professional power broker. It's not a good combination.

For what it's worth, I generally try to find out a candidate's track record on things before taking a position on them.

I do have to say, though, that I forgot the time when Al Franken came out against people having a say in their own governance. I could see that position coming back to bite him come election time, for sure.

[Unagi]

Here perhaps...

Source of speculation: A report last week in Politico. The story itself was mostly about how Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, long considered Clinton’s safest VP pick, had officially ascended to the top of her shortlist — intel, we can assume, that “Democratic allies and operatives close to the campaign” leaked to Politico as a way of gauging reaction among progressives and preparing them for the letdown of an all-centrist ticket.

But deep in the Politico dispatch — 17 paragraphs down, to be exact — there was a single non sequitur of a sentence that again gave liberals reason to hope, however faintly, that one of their own might someday join the ticket:

One dark horse that Clinton allies said is also on the list is Minnesota Sen. Al Franken, a close ally who is also popular with the progressive wing of the party and enjoys a closer bond with Clinton.

Backstory: Before we assess the odds here, it’s worth looking back at Clinton and Franken’s long history together — and explaining why Beltway types who might have once dismissed the idea of Vice President Franken are beginning to mention him in the same breath as Kaine and Julian Castro.

Clinton and Franken have been friends for years. They met in 1994 when, for that year’s Gridiron Dinner, Franken wrote a parody of the famous anti-Hillarycare “Harry and Louise” ads for the first couple to star in. He spoke at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner a month later, then reprised his role in 1996.

[hepcat]

I honestly don't know his track record but he's a self promoter and a dick who talks but doesn't listen.

I think his "problem" is mainly that he is both a professional political satirist and professional power broker. It's not a good combination.

Wow, I honestly am surprised at the Franken hatred. But maybe that's perhaps I remember him mostly from his early days as a comic.