Select Committee Dumbs It Down

Uh, What's So Funny? I Don't Get It.

Apparently, I was not the only one to notice Martha Roby's line of questioning when she attempted to demonstrate how uncaring Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had been by asking about when Ms. Clinton walked out of her office at the State Department, the night of Benghazi, who she had left behind. 

"Was so and so still there, when you walked out?" 
And when Ms. Clinton said it was likely so and so was still there, but she could not remember specifically who stayed, but pretty much the entire staff was still there when she left.

 Ms. Roby was not appeased, asking about each one by name, as if each name was another nail in the coffin of Ms. Clinton's reputation. "Was Ms. Mills still there, when you left?"
"Well, yes, since she was one of the staff, I imagine she was still there."
"Was Ms. Jones still there?"
And so on, like that.

Very much the prosecutor, setting the trap for the defendant.

You fled the scene of the crime! 
Leaving your loyal abandoned workers behind you! 
The workers, the underlings you abandoned, just as you abandoned Ambassador Stevens (to whom you never even gave your cell phone number). 
Oh, the callousness!

And then, the coup de grace! 
"When you went home, did you spend the night alone?" 
"Did I spend the night alone?" Hillary repeated. "Yes."
"The whole night? Alone?"

Wait, did she just ask me who I slept with?

This took a moment to sink in, but when it did, Ms. Clinton saw the absurdity and laughed. Did this bimbo Congresswoman just ask me if I went home to a lover? In a Congressional hearing?  

They talked the whole night through!

If I had, would she expect me to say, "Well, yes, now that you ask, and I have wondered why nobody else has asked, after all this time, through all these hearings:  I spent the night in bed with General Petraeus, and he was very good indeed. We talked about Paula, and how the young women can be fun, but they just don't seem to be able to keep their mouths shut. No discretion, those youngsters. Tend to brag a lot to their friends and get jealous and possessive. No, wait, was it Petraeus that night or Brad Pitt? I'll have to check my diary. Did you know I kept a diary?"

Let's just send in a plane full o f  heroes. That's sounds good.

But if Ms. Roby was simply a simpleton, then the prize for sleaze went to Congressman Lynn Westmoreland, who at least gets points for craftiness, as he amiably allowed he didn't give a hang about the emails, but then he did want to ask about the guys who wanted to organize a rescue flight which the Secretary had thwarted; he set up the fact that a team of non State Department Americans had set up an airplane trip to Benghazi, but Secretary Clinton did not give her okay.

 Ms. Clinton had  previously testified they were sending a State Department team but there "was not a State Department person on that plane."  

Well, true enough, Ms. Clinton pointed out, but that was an unarmed expedition Mr. Westmoreland was talking about and Ms. Clinton had scrambled some actual armed people who would be more likely be be effective and less likely to get killed. 

Really, from under what rock did these members of Congress crawl?  
Does the state of Alabama not have a better woman to send to Congress than the dim witted Ms. Roby?  I'm not sure where Mr. Westmoreland is from, but just looking at that guy, he makes Richard Nixon look as wholesome as  Howdy Doody. 

NOTE TO MR. WESTMORELAND: If your party had not sequestered funds for embassy security, or if Congress had taken that $20 million this Congressional committee spent on  investigating Ms. Clinton, and spent it instead on building stronger walls and more security for State Department facilities in dangerous places, maybe Mr. Stevens would be alive today.

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.