Republican Rogues' Gallery

What is that animal on her head?

Representative Susan Brooks really thought she had Hillary Clinton:  She had this tall pile of paper which she said was the stack of emails Hillary Clinton had sent about Benghazi or something before a certain date and then a tiny stack which was what she had sent after that date, which, she said showed very clearly how Secretary Clinton had simply stopped thinking about her exposed Ambassador in Benghazi, because she stopped emailing about Benghazi.  

Ms. Clinton responded emails were a poor measure of her concern about Benghazi because the State Department actually deals mostly in secure diplomatic cables, secure phone lines, personal conversations and a whole set of lines of communications which had not been piled on the Congresswoman's desk, thus demonstrating Ms. Clinton actually knows what she is talking about when it comes to how the State Department functions, unlike Ms. Brooks, who is not really interested in details like that. 

Undeterred, Ms. Brooks asked whether Secretary Clinton had given Ambassador Stevens her personal email, her home phone number, her personal cell phone, Bill's cell phone, or had him over for tea at her house.  Well, no, Ms. Clinton had to admit, that's not the way she communicated with the 270 ambassadors she had to deal with, although every ambassador has a fail safe direct cable to State and this gets bumped up to her as dangers arise. 

Ms. Brooks announced Secretary Clinton ignored Ambassador Stevens as he was fighting for his life because the Secretary didn't care about her Ambassador or any of her people, as you could clearly see from those two stacks of paper and from the fact she had never given him her personal email, her cell phone number, or ever had him over to dinner. How inaccessible can you get. Just build a wall between you and every ambassador in the line of fire! In fact, building a wall is a Republican specialty. Republicans like walls, when they are built across the Mexican border, but they abhor them when built around Ms. Clinton.

Ms. Brooks was just outraged at the callous indifference so plainly manifest in the imperious Secretary Clinton, who even now, before the committee had not shed a single tear for the Ambassador while Ms. Brooks burned with righteous indignation at the abandonment of a brave American sent into the fray and left for dead by his faithless Secretary of State. Indignation quavered in the Congress woman's voice, just thinking about those two stacks of paper on her desk.

They wouldn't let me wear my wrestling singlet to the hearing

Next up was representative Jimmy Jordan, who does not wear a jacket but always appears in his shirtsleeves, just to remind everybody he was once a  NCAA wrestling champion, which was the biggest accomplishment in his life, and surely is a big deal. Personally, I would have liked to see him in his wrestling singlet, the one he wore when he won the championship, but there is a dress code in the House of Representatives and you can only push that so far and a tie with the singlet would have looked a bit off putting. 
Mr. Jordan  leaned forward with a pasted on "Gottcha" leer pointing out all the discrepancies between things she had said in March and things she said in August, something about saying she had not sent any classified information in her emails then saying she hadn't sent any information "marked classified." This seemed to be an important distinction in Mr. Jordan's mind. 
I didn't quite follow all this because I was thinking if anybody ever pointed out all the discrepancies between what I said this morning and what I said this afternoon,  it would probably fill a stack of papers which would be higher than both stacks Ms. Brooks had on her desk combined.
Mr. Jordan is a pugnacious questioner. Who can forget his interrogation of the head of Planned Parenthood about why she did or did not apologize for something after those videos surfaced. Mr. Jordan is strongly antiabortion and if he could just shoot a single leg take down on some of those abortion doctors, he could settle this whole issue mano-a-mano. He is particularly manly when questioning women, because he wears only shirt sleeves, so they can get the musky aroma of his testosterone drifting across the hearing room toward them. That really unsettles them. You can just see them shifting in their chairs.

It was curious however, that nobody ever seemed to have an issue with what was said in those stacks of emails, which, apparently, none of these Republicans has ever read.
Ms. Clinton pointed out the system of designating what is "classified" in the government security systems is quite complicated and arcane and she had not to her knowledge or, to this date, to anyone else's knowledge violated security with her emails or in any other way.  Again, she knew more about State secrets than her interrogator.

Look Ma! I can rip paper!

The least appetizing of this trio, however, has to be Peter Roskam, who used some of his personal injury lawyer skills to dramatically illustrate just how little Secretary Clinton cared about all the frantic emails and faxes coming from the abandoned Ambassador at Benghazi, by holding up a piece of paper and saying, "This is the fax from the Ambassador and this is how you handled it!" And with that, he ripped the paper in half, from top to bottom. 
 What moment of high drama! What a brilliant move in the halls of Congress. Oh, a letter from the Ambassador, a cry for help, ripped in half!  This is sure to make Fox News and maybe even CBS or NBC.  It's one of those moments sure to be seared into the memory of the electorate.

I could really use a Starbucks latte about now. 

Secretary Clinton had not listened, was inaccessible, went home from the Department of State, leaving her dismayed, hard working staff leaderless, after hearing of the death of her Ambassador,  the night of Benghazi. The ambassador was dead and she did not organize a wake, or sit shiva or do any of the things people do for the dead. Gone home... 

Gone home,  to...whom?  Was she leaving because she had a late night assignation planned?

Tune in for the next episode when  Congresswoman Martha Roby asks Secretary Clinton if Ms. Clinton spent the night....ALONE!

"As the World of the State Department Turns," will go on and on, longer than "General Hospital" or any soap opera ever.

Or just read about it on the front page of the National Enquirer, available at your supermarket counter later today!!!

Really, can we not do better with the hair?

But really, we have to work on that hair ladies and gentlemen. From Ms. Brooks to Ms. Roby to Mr. Roskam to, especially, Mr. Gowdy, we really have an array of frightful coifs. 
 The Tea Party wears wigs. Think about it.

He played in a high school band

But he's all grown up now!

So, Hillary: Did you spend the night alone, or with your lover?

Hillary Clinton had many good moments during the 2 hours I watched tonight.
So did Elijah Cummings and most of the 5 Democrats on the Committee, but for my money, Hillary's best moment came with one of the Republican women, Martha Roby,  leading her through a series of questions in the staccato  tones you'd use for interrogating some really vile perpetrator, but the whole thing was supposed to show how arrogant and uncaring Hillary was because she left the State Department the night of the Benghazi blow up, and she left her staff behind. So this Republican Congress woman is asking her name by name which of her staff was still in the office when Hillary left, to show that while all her staffers were so concerned and still on the job, Hillary just waltzed out of the office and went home. Home to her secure phone, where she talked to the President and a number of other relevant people and did not get to bed until 3 AM and got up again around 5 AM. 

Ms. Roby: "So, were you alone?"
Ms. Clinton: "Was I alone?"
Ms. Roby: "Did you spend the night at home alone?"
Ms. Clinton: "Yes."
Ms. Roby: "The whole night?"

Hillary spontaneously starts to laugh.

"Well, I don't see what's so funny," her interrogator fumes.

Well, I did. I bet a lot of people in the room saw what was funny. She was asking Hillary if she spent the night, or what two hours of it she had left,  alone. Did she have a lover at home? Was Bill there? Did she have sex while Benghazi burned?

Hillary, now 9 hours into the show, is a little punchy. 
You want to know if I went home to a lover?  You are actually asking me that? 
The whole idea just tickled her.

Oh, yeah. It was pay back time for Bill, you know. All those women he had. Well, I just chose Benghazi night for a little fun and frolic.

Eventually, she got control and answered, "Yes, I was alone," shaking her head.

The Congresswoman, thick as a brick and dumb as a stick,  was still flustered, still not seeing how ridiculous she looked. 

Really, there is no chance for bipartisanship, for cooperation with the other side, for statesmanship, for any sort of actual governance as long as the stupid parts of America send such stupid people to Congress. 

They are simply too stupid to govern, too stupid to talk to, to stupid to take seriously.

Trey Gowdy: Twit Personified

MERRIAM WEBSTER DICTIONARY:

Twit: n. A stupid or foolish person. 

(See Accompanying Photo)


When the new edition of the dictionary is published, Congressman Gowdy's picture will be right there, next to "twit," I am reasonably certain. No better clarification of the word comes to mind, except perhaps for Mo Brooks or any of the Tea Party "Freedom Caucus," of Congressional Republicans.

One must admit, there was entertainment value to watching Eljah Cummings (D-MD) take Mr. Gowdy apart with help from his friends. When Mr. Gowdy got to raging on about the impropriety of Ms. Clinton receiving emails with advice from a Mr. Blumenthal, who is not a State Department employee--Heaven forbid Ms. Clinton should seek advice from thinkers who are not on the government payroll--Mr. Cummings suggested Mr. Gowdy release the entire transcript of Mr. Blumenthal's testimony, "for the world to see," which caused Mr. Gowdy to erupt in a fury. 

Apparently, Mr. Bluenthal's testimony is embarrassing to the Republican members of the committee and the very mention of  releasing his testimony provoked a frothing, sputtering response from Mr. Gowdy, who pointed out all he was interested in was Ms. Clinton's email correspondence with Mr. Blumenthal, not Mr. Blumenthal's testimony about what those emails meant. 

Gowdy, being the man with the gavel, abruptly and from left field, adjourned the committee, presumably for lunch. 

If ever there was an illustration of the aphorism: The worst thing for a bad product is good advertising, Mr. Gowdy and his committee provide  it.

The most alarming thing about Mr. Gowdy:  173,000 people in South Carolina voted for him in his last election. Can you imagine what those people must be like? 

          

Give 'Em Hell, Hillary

I'm from Alabama. 

Next to these guys, I'm looking better.

"In the end it is not the words of your enemies, you will remember but the silence of your friends."
"The vicious racists, the governor of Alabama, the words nullification and interposition dripping from his lips."

--Martin Luther King

Thus spake Martin Luther King, the man who turned the tactic of turning the other cheek into a political weapon, a tool for change.
Still, he did not shrink from the word "enemies" when it was an accurate description of his adversaries. 
When anyone departs from attacking your ideas and shifts to attacks on your character, your competence, your motivations then he has shifted from being your opponent to your enemy.

If you can go out for a beer after the hearing and laugh together, then you have a loyal opposition.

Can you imagine Mo Brooks inviting Hillary for a beer, in a spirit of collegiality?
Hard as it is to believe, Antonin Scalia goes to the opera with Ruth Bader Ginsberg. These two are not enemies but opponents opposed across a passionately felt philosophical divide. 

For any Republican, now a member of a radicalized, far Right Tea Party Republican Party to feign umbrage at Ms. Clinton for naming Republicans as "enemies" is the height of hypocrisy.   You slap her in the face and then are outraged when she spits in your eye.

What's more difficult to take is Joe Biden scolding her for having more balls than he has.

Are Republicans "Enemies?"

She Calls A Spade a Spade

The concept of a "loyal opposition" is a slippery thing. From the founding of the American republic, the level of vituperation in American political discourse has been staggering, but only during one era, that leading up to the Civil War did it become evident the opposition was "disloyal."  

Can an American political opponent be considered an "enemy" if he remains loyal to the republic?  That depends how you define "enemy" of course, but one definition must surely include stepping over the line where you questions your opponent's character, loyalty to the country, morality or character rather than policies and positions. Simply put, when you make it personal, you are an enemy by most common understandings of the word.

So if a Republican Congressman or operative or employee says:
1. Hillary Clinton is a lesbian, when in fact this is not true that might be the act of an enemy. As C.J. Craig in a "West Wing" episode says, when she is asked to deny that she is a lesbian:"So now I'm asked to deny something I do not think is a bad thing, to say that I'm not that not bad thing." Family Research Council President, and Republican, Troy Perkins said "rumors swirl" about Clinton's own sexual orientation. So he has crossed the line into the personal, attack or not, he got personal. He's a Republican and he's an enemy.

2. "Hillary Rodham Clinton will bring permanent darkness of deceit and despair, forced upon the American people to endure." That's the NRA's Wayne LaPierre.   He also accused her of causing the death of White House aide Vince Foster, found dead along the Potomac and said Hillary Clinton was the center of many "scandals." An enemy, qualified in full. And a Republican whose organization supports Republicans and intimidates Democrats.

3. Bill O'Reilly, Republican said a Hillary Clinton presidency would mean "if you're a Christian or a white male in America, it's open season on you."

4. Hillary is "the Wicked Witch on the Left," (Larry Klayman, Republican), embodies the "hideousness factor" (Don Feder, Republican with the World Congress of Families).

5. A TV commercial shows the grave of Ambassador Stevens, killed at Benghazi and does not say, but portrays her as something between a facilitator and an accomplice to the crime. 

6."I think the awful way Hillary Clinton treated the mother of a Benghazi victim went too far" said Dan Backer, a Republican from "Stop Hillary,"  referring to Republican allegations the mother of a dead American said, "they have treated me like dirt and have not told me anything."  

So, can we forgive Hillary Clinton if she thinks Republicans have treated her as the enemy? 

You be the judge.

Say It Ain't So, Joe: Not Ready for Prime Time

So, you had to expect it: You knew Hillary was going to take flack for naming "Republicans" as her enemies, rather than say, "Some Republicans" or "Tea Party Republicans," but you might not have expected the first volley to come from her own party--But there was Joe Biden getting all folksy saying "You don't call the other team enemies."

Yes you do, when they have behaved as enemies. 

These guys are not "the other team."

Just read on...next post.

The Donald: Lost in the Details

The Donald, Short on Specifics

One of the most embarrassing moments I had as a third year medical student was  on the Neurology rotation when they sent in to see a delightful 69 year old man whose wife had brought him in and deposited him on the Neurology ward saying he was demented, would lose his shoes and blame her for hiding them, could no longer drive to the store, etc.

He was a charming man, full of the blarney, funny, a great story teller and when the Chief Resident asked for my evaluation I told her he was as sharp as you or me; his wife must be just trying to get rid of him.

The Chief Res, a wispy young woman, took me to his bedside and asked him about his vacation, which he had returned from a week ago.

"Oh, it was just beautiful.  Really, just so nice. Even at my age, you can enjoy a holiday.

"Oh?" she asked. "Where did you go?" 

"The most beautiful place. Sun off the water. Sunsets like you see in postcards."

"Oh? A lake? The ocean?"

"The water was just so gorgeous, turned all pink in the glow."

As she persisted, it was clear he had no idea whether it was the lake or the beach, or what the names of his children were or how many days they had spent or who had come along. When she drilled down to the details, you could see his answers were devoid of specific content, and were all carefully designed to include no details others could deny or correct.

I had the same feeling this morning  as I listened to some CNN journalist/bimbo interview Donald Trump. This lady was clearly selected for her looks, not her journalistic talent and I found myself  screaming at the television: Ask him for specifics!!!

She asked about Trump's assertion, made at a rally in South Carolina, that President Obama is "Thinking about signing an executive order to come and take away your guns." 

How did Mr. Trump know what Mr. Obama was thinking? Had he talked to Mr. Obama? Had he heard this from a reliable source, like Mr. Obaman's press secretary?

"Well, people are saying it," Mr. Trump said. "It's in the newspapers. People have told me." Which newspaers? What articles in what newspapers? What specific person is saying Mr. Obama is contemplating taking away your guns?  Names, dates, places please. The bimbo asked for none of this. She was cute, though. Just not very smart.

This is such an eerie echo of Michele Bachmann's source of information, about the woman in the parking lot who told her a friend's daughter got autism from a tetanus vaccine.

Is it not curious Mr. Trump would know what Mr. Obama is thinking about when that thought is the very thing so many of Mr. Trumps supporters have always suspected: They are coming to get my guns!  Those black helicopters. They want to disarm me!

Of course, if you believe Ben Carson, they want to disarm you because they know if the Jews in Nazi Germany had shot guns, deer rifles, Glocks or even attack rifles, they could never have been rounded up and carted off to concentration camps.  As Dr. Carson must know, when Jews actually got their hands on some guns in the Warsaw Ghetto, they were able to resist--for a week or two--until the SS rolled up a few howitzers and blasted the Jews right into oblivion. These Jews with guns, it must be admitted, did not die in concentration camps. They were splattered over the rubble in the ghetto. So they died happy and proud.

But back to Mr. Trump.

"I'm for the Second Amendment," Mr. Trump informed us. "I don't know how the President thinks he can get away with this." Well, Maybe Mr. Trump does know, as he suggested--Mr. Obama thought he could get away with signing an executive order allowing for a flood of immigrant rapists to cross the Rio Grande, so it's just one in a long line of Mr. Obama's plans for ruin for this country. What specific executive order is Mr. Trump talking about?

In fact, the longer I listened to Mr. Trump the more he reminded me of that guy on the Neurology ward, all generalities, all determinedly non specific, no hard details, nothing that could be checked. Someone told me, don't ask who.  I've heard it.  It's in the newspapers. You could look it up. It's just so amazing. We will win so much, you'll get bored with winning. 

He resonates with the 49% of the Republican party which does not ask for details because, well, truly, they are pretty vague on details themselves.

Mr. Trump did talk  about one specific case,  a case of  a 69 year old woman (un-named), a veteran who was raped and murdered by an illegal alien, in San Francisco. Well, there's a set of details. You could look it up. But is this a specific case from which we are safe to extrapolate?  If you can find a case of say, a white policeman murdering an innocent black man, should we conclude we should fire all the white policemen?   When he does use a specific story, he leaps from the specific to the general conclusion in a way which defines prejudice. All those immigrants flooding across the border, raping and murdering. We ought to build a wall. Round 'em all up. "I was attacked for saying this; now everyone is agreeing with me."

Really? Who is agreeing?

As Chris Cumo pointed out, after the Donald had signed off,  the vast majority of illegal immigrants in this country have come in legally, and overstayed Visas.  I would have liked to hear at least some numbers, any numbers, even bogus numbers about that. but more, I would have liked to hear him ask Mr. Trump about that. But three CNN anchors sat there with flustered smiles, never pressing him for specifics. The "Morning Express" is too express to stop and ask the important question. No local stops. Might slow us down. 

Thus does our free but commercial press fail us.  Maybe the news organizations should try hiring people for their brains rather than their looks.