Trying to think of something cantankerous and obnoxious to say to troll you all for a couple hours, but believe it or not, I am coming up blank. Hard day to blog today because I have decided I would rather shower in prison than talk about Benghazi anymore.
The best thing about this Benghazi bullshit (other than it being a complete and total nothingburger) is that even the press is starting to lose interest. That became clear to me yesterday when I saw this bullshit:
That was 2 pm yesterday. The surest sign that a manufactured media feeding frenzy is about to fizzle out is when they run out of chum and linkbait for the right wing media and then start to turn inward and eat each other. A WaPo piece on the wingnut CBS journo pushing this nonsense followed by a Politico “inside the media” analysis about how she has a sad with the CBS execs and may be quitting her job to go a different network FOX is much like when you cover a lit candle and the flame briefly gets bigger and laps the top of the cover before flickering and then going out with a tiny puff of smoke.
Fox will still cover it, and I’m sure Tapper at CNN will still write some nonsense every now and then to blunt criticism from wingnuts that he is a biased liberal, but it really looks like we are near the end of this nonsense. Unless Hillary is the nominee in a couple years.
*** Update ***
Damnit. This is totally unrelated to the rest of this post, but I have to vent. I was going through STARZ to find a movie to sort of fade off to while peting the dogs, found Total Recall, said “HELL FUCKING YEAH,” started it, and it was the god damned remake. For those of you who understand, thank you.
Violet
Yep. And her potential presidential nomination is a large part of why they’re doing this.
trollhattan
Jon Stewart killed the Benghazi thang last night. Killed.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-may-8-2013/the-big-benghazi-theory
Mnemosyne
The last two weeks have sucked ass. I’m being pulled six different directions at work, and each person is getting pissed off at me because I’m not concentrating solely on their project. Jackasses.
Catsy
@Mnemosyne: Boy do I know what that’s like.
Tripod
The news frenzy on that nut in Cleveland sucked all the air out of the room.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: God DAMN, that is the truth. I called out today because Spawn the Elder is sick, and I am dreading going in tomorrow.
max
I was going through STARZ to find a movie to sort of fade off to while peting the dogs, found Total Recall, said “HELL FUCKING YEAH,” started it, and it was the god damned remake. For those of you who understand, thank you.
I saw enough of the remake to realize that they had gone and somehow turned Arhnuld into a classic actor in a classic movie. Jesus God Christ Almighty.
(Hollyweird, as near as I can tell, reads PKDick and understands all the words and completely misses approximately everything. They’ve lucked out twice in getting directors who may not have really gotten it, but got something weird enough to make it work as something other than a disgraceful sham of an adaption. They should just stop now.)
max
[‘You’re welcome.’]
Steeplejack
@trollhattan:
He really did.
Gordon, the Big Express Engine
“Cohagen, give da pee-puhl air!!!!”
SatanicPanic
The last pair of jeans I bought are the worst of both worlds- too baggy to look good, but too skinny to be comfortable. Going to goodwill!
Steeplejack
@Cole:
Galaxy Quest started at midnight on AMC. Bridesmaids is on HBO at 12:30. Cream Covered Asians is on pay-per-view.
Okay, forget that last one.
GregB
Dee aliens beelt it!
James E. Powell
Regarding Benghazi. We know how this goes. They don’t need any facts. The truth, the higher truth, is that Obama, Clinton, Democrats, and everybody else they don’t like are bad people. Really bad. When they are not merely incompetent, they are corrupt, disloyal, etc.
The Americans at which all this is directed know these higher truths and they do not need anything more than the single word – Benghazi – for it to be useful to their political campaigns.
Recall the 90s. Recall the Swift Boat thing. Recall that Obamacare was the equivalent of the Nazi takeover of the German government only this time, instead of the Jews, the plan was to exterminate senior citizens with death panels.
No Democrat, not even a white, male, Protestant with an Ivy League & Wall Street lineage will ever be anything but a godless traitor determined to take our guns so he can destroy America.
It would be nice to have that kind of raging media machine going for the good guys, but it still wouldn’t matter because all the really good looking girls would still go out with the Republicans because they’ve got all the money.
Violet
There’s a Total Recall remake? When did that happen?
Debbie(aussie)
@trollhattan:
Good stuff
Amanda in the South Bay
Not so keen on the prison rape joke…
Hal
@Steeplejack:
Bridesmaids is my go to late night movie now. If I’m up after midnight and it’s on I tend to watch.
trollhattan
This asshole triple-murderer is on the loose in northern California, or…? Can somebody tell me again why background checks are a bad thing, when a federal ex-con can acquire a weapon “cache”, kill his family and launch a massive manhunt? (It’s only been a month since our last triple-murderer manhunt.)
Eight years old. Four years old. How does anybody do this?
Ron
Every time I go through the guide on cable and see “Total Recall” I am completely disappointed to see it’s the new one (which I have not seen and don’t really want to see)
jl
@Mnemosyne:
” I’m being pulled six different directions at work, and each person is getting pissed off at me because I’m not concentrating solely on their project.
Jackasses.My distinguished ‘colleagues'”What! Are you ME? I did not know that. Damn, the things I learn on this damn blog.
I edited the last part, since we are always ‘appropriate’ here where I work. Yeah, the ‘appropriate’ workplace racket. Should be a separate post on that sometime.
Walker
That remake was so bad that even watching it at my favorite drive-in could not save it.
Hal
One other thing about Benghazi. All the words that have been written, all the coverage, the umpteen million Fox “News” segments, and I’m guessing the average American couldn’t even say what the scandal actually is supposed to be. Unless you watch Fox in which case your screaming about a cover up of, um, yeah…
jl
@Hal:
“the average American couldn’t even say what the scandal actually is supposed to be.”
Well, the cover up is always worse than the crime (much worse), and even if there weren’t something to covered up, they covered it up by saying there was nothing to cover up, and that is bad.
Benghazi seems perfectly clear to me.
ulee
Jeff Bliss is great. I am sure if we explored his history it might not be so laudatory. But hey, if you can’t be the side of this long haired hippie intellectual than there really is no hope for you. Jeff Bliss for president. Or prison, because that’s what angerheads with brains belong.
? Martin
@trollhattan:
Freedom! America, Fuck Yeah!
jebediah
In bed listening to Little Feat and Juno is doing fearsome battle with my finger.
is pretty good.
Steve Crickmore
The best thing about this Benghazi bullshit (other than it being a complete and total nothingburger)
It may be boring, and nothing to you but not to the State Department, and those anxious not to make the same arrogant mistakes as the Bush adminstration, such as not listening to those American state officials on the ground, it is familiar territory.
This, from one of the most well known former progressive, State Department officers, Peter Van Buren, who writes for Tomdispatch, Mother Jones and others, and is the author of ‘We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People’, an angry book about his work for the Department of State as the leader of two Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT) in rural Iraq, 2009-2010.
Van Buren: “Hicks, Nordstrom and the third witness, Mark Thompson, came off as credible, dispassionate and very serious. Meanwhile, while Republicans were accused going in of playing politics, it was the Democratic members of the committee who were shrill, crude and desperate in trying to degrade (as opposed to rebut) the witnesses.
Most fingers pointed toward Under Secretary of Management Pat Kennedy and Hillary aid Cheryl Mills as acting as Hillary’s proxies to make the bad, tragic, decisions. Long-term fallout unclear, but a lot of angry people in Foggy Bottom right now. The State Department was portrayed as disorganized, and often far more concerned about political impressions than the safety of its people and informing the American public.”
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Mnemosyne: Take it from me, don’t ever use the words “I’m sorry, but you’re not my number one priority right now.”
Fuckers don’t want to hear the truth.
protothad
Hey John Cole,
Since you often are asking for late night movie suggestions, here is one. Search for Black Lightning on Netflix. Yes, it is a foreign film… Russian with English subtitles… but don’t let that scare you off. It is your basic action, sci-fi, superhero, special effects flick and not badly done at that.
Also… just started watching a series called The Riches staring Eddie Izzard (though you wouldn’t recognize him). Looks like it has potential.
Sloegin
I have the same issue when ‘Casino Royale’ comes up in the TV listings.
Origuy
Just had a little shaker here in East San Jose. 3.4, about 5 miles east of my house. I felt it while I was upstairs sitting on the toilet; my housemates downstairs didn’t feel a thing.
jl
@Steve Crickmore:
I don’t think State Department and HRC failures that lead to the deaths at Benghazi are nothing, they are serious and deserve serious investigation.
I think the GOP “Benghazi!” scandal charges are nothing.
If the Dem Reps treated the witnesses today with disrespect that is also bad, but I did not see anything in the summaries I read today that they did (though, they may have, i admit that).
What seemed important to me is that one of the key witnesses (Hicks, I think) admitted that he was mistaken n earlier charges that resources that would have helped could have been sent in time to help but they were not. Instead, the truth is that either they could not have arrived in time to help, or were being reserved for help with evacuation (Edit: in other words, by the time the would have gotten there, they would have been no help in protection, but they were being sent instead to help evacuate, but that turned out to be unnecessary)
I thought there might be something to the charges at first, but the more I read the less I think there is anything amounting to a scandal.
And speaking of political motives, the Congressional GOP cut the budget for State Dept for security, so part of this show is likely a distraction from that decision. I have never heard that aspect mentioned in the incompetent and lazy media coverage I have heard on TV and radio.
piratedan
@James E. Powell: you’d think these fuckers would buy a clue and maybe just take over Trinidad and Tobago and make it their own Galt’s Gulch. As a bonus, the weather is great there and they can keep all that money that they spend on trying to buy, rig and influence elections and use it to build golf courses and luxury hotels.
jl
What other charges turned out to be BS?
I read that one of the reasons that the US thought the attack was something that was cooked up on short notice as part of a demonstration re that dumb movie was that it was a cover story spread by the terrorists. And maybe it was gullible to accept it, but there were violent demonstrations about it in other places.
The main charge that seemed absurd to me from the beginning was that the US did not immediately accept and agree with the Libyan governments immediate assessment. Since when does the US blindly outsource investigations to foreign governments? It turned out that the Libyan governments assessment was accurate, but at the time it was uncertain.
I guess what is left is Obama did not say ‘terror attack’ exactly on the correct schedule as determined by the likes of Issa and McCain, or he didnt’ say it three times, or just right, so it don’t count.
What else is there?
MattR
@jl:
From what I have read and seen of the hearing, the Democratic Congressmen were disrespectful in the sense that they spent time pinning down the witnesses on answers that refuted the GOP Benghazi bullshit rather than focusing on finding the legitimate lessons that can be learned from the tragedy.
Nemo_N
I’M TOTALLY THERE RIGHT NOW! It ruins my nights.
Also,
Die Hard
“HELL FUCKING YEAH”
4
“…”
MattR
@jl:
Similarly, the Right seems to be using the fact that Hicks has correctly said from the start it was terrorists as proof that HRC and Susan Rice were knowingly lying to the nation when the blamed it on the movie, as if it is impossible that other government agencies were casting doubt on Hicks’s assessment in the immediate aftermath.
PeakVT
I didn’t even know a remake of Total Recall existed. And isn’t 22 years a bit early for a remake?
ETA: There oughta be a law against such abominable behavior…
jl
@MattR:
Well, Issa and the GOP were running the show, and if it is a shit show, maybe the Dems had to chose between shoveling the shit out of the way and building a foundation for something useful.
And from what I read, one of the witnesses said mistaken things and made mistaken testimony in a previous hearing and part of the investigation.
So, how can you start a serious investigation until you clear the mistakes and inaccuracies out of the way?
Were the Democrats rude to the witnesses?
Steeplejack
@Hal:
There are certain lines—and the delivery—that just get to me every time. “I’ll have a glass of alcohol.”
dance around in your bones
@Steeplejack: I mentioned in the last thread that I was watching Galaxy Quest yet again – love that movie. “I see you’ve managed to lose your shirt again!” and “I’m not stupid, I know it’s just a TV show” …….”No, this is real!”…” I KNEW it!”
Cream Covered Asians makes me think of “I’ll have the cream of sum yung guy” (Wayne’s World).
MattR
@jl: I agree with you completely. That was just my sense of the only way they could be considered “disrespectful” in their questioning. I don’t blame them at all and probably would’ve done the same thing in their place.
piratedan
@MattR: hey now Matt, it’s ONLY the 9th hearing about this incident that has been going on for the last six months. It takes a looong time to manufacture bullshit that’s believable, to glean that one kernel of information or get the half of one quote out of context to allow you to blow it completely out of context properly.
Yet in the Fox media echo chamber it’s much more fascinating to churn the chum barrel of partisanship than actually looking at the votes of our elected representatives to know which set of elected officials decided that the safety of the people who represent our country overseas isn’t nearly as important as the current federal deficits that they themselves were responsible for.
? Martin
@PeakVT:
The new standard is about 4 years. At least for comic franchises and popular novels.
NotMax
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our STARZ,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Cacti
The Benghazi fail parade is interesting as an anthropological study of the alternate reality where Republicans dwell.
It’s unpossible that the black guy beat them twice, fair and square. Something about it has to be illegitimate.
And if they just try hard enough, everyone will know the truth about
the birth certificate, Reverend Wright, Bill Ayers, ACORN, Solyndra, Fast and Furious,Benghazi!am
Baby, you make me wish I had three hands!
ellie
Really? I was scrolling through the channels and saw the remake and didn’t realize a remake needed to be made. I kept on scrolling.
NotMax
Can 99.9999999% guarantee one title which won’t be remade.
(Fair warning: bad taste alert at link)
MattR
@NotMax:
Boy, you weren’t lying.
The prophet Nostradumbass
I don’t know if anyone else has mentioned this, but the death toll in that garment factory in Bangladesh that “collapsed” has topped 1,000.
Mnemosyne
@Steve Crickmore:
I’m not really sure how, based on the evidence, this claim can be made with a straight face:
So is Hicks denying that there was a major protest outside the US embassy in Cairo that same night?
Also, frankly, Hicks’ testimony and everyone else’s is really just amplifying for me that there’s a huge behind-the-scenes struggle going on between the State Department and the CIA over whose fault this screw-up was. But, of course, we won’t ever know because the only concern the House Republicans have is how they can make this Obama’s fault, not how internecine struggles between State and the CIA contributed to the screw-ups.
ETA: I would also be interested to hear whether or not the group that assassinated the ambassador had ties to Egypt, but that again is something I guess we’ll never know since Republicans only care about Obama’s personal responsibility for Benghazi and not, y’know, what actually happened and who the perpetrators were.
MikeJ
@The prophet Nostradumbass: But careercast says newspaper reporter is teh worstest job evar.
(HT Fred @ slacktivist)
The prophet Nostradumbass
@MikeJ: Huh?
NotMax
@The prophet Nostradumbass
After the GOPocalypse, the U.S.A. will reclaim the record.
MikeJ
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Obviously being a newspaper reporter is a worse job than working in a garment factory.
It’s like they don’t understand that there are unpleasant jobs that people do for very little money. The worst thing they could imagine was being a newspaper reporter.
YellowJournalism
The Total Recall remake owes me a fucking date night wih my hubby. I was so pissed to waste a child-free theatre experience on it.
In comparison, Galaxy Quest is such a joy of a film. My favorite scene is where Gwen loses her shit while trying to do her “one job on the ship” and goes back to calmly repeating what the computer is saying. Hubby has to see the part where the ship scratches as they pull out of port.
And, of course, ALAN RICKMAN.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@MikeJ: Without any sort of context, it came across as a weird non-sequitur. Makes more sense now.
sm*t cl*de
A WaPo piece on the wingnut CBS journo pushing this nonsense followed by a Politico “inside the media” analysis about how she has a sad with the CBS execs and may be quitting her job to go FOX
Attkisson also has a reputation for John-Birch-Society-level health crankery, investing no end of effort and credibility over the last decade into denouncing vaccines as the cause of autism — even as the evidence behind that purported link crumbles into a unattractive tangle of fraudulence.
Charles Pierce wonders whether “Attkisson’s main job has been the purchase of magic beans”.
Kris Collins
There is actually a remake of a stupid movie like Totall Recall??? Why would anybody bother?
Steve Crickmore
@Mnemosyne: @Mnemosyne:
Hicks in his statement, talked about getting an call from a American State Department Cairo colleague, about the demonstration in Cairio in the afternoon and then went about his business in the embassy in Trípoli.
Speaking about calls wasn’t it Hillary Clinton who set the terms of reference in her famous ad about the experienced presidential timber 3:00 o’clock call, (Obama didn’t have it, she did) to protect the safety of Americans. We have come a a long way to “What difference does it make? When she got the call in real life, and declines to inform us what really happened or what she did? I guess we will have to wait for her commercial in 2016 for a more complete answer.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Kris Collins: Money. I think the “remake” is equivalent to the sequel, in the sense that Roger Ebert meant this definition:
“Sequel: a filmed deal”.
MikeJ
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Sorry. Benghazi is rubbing off on me, obviously.
JWR
I don’t have cable, I’ve never had cable, so all I know about CBS is what’s broadcast, and I’m telling you, they’ve really got a #BENGHAZI hard on. Saw an interview earlier tonight between the always “serious” Charlie Rose, and Margaret Brennan, and after paying as close attention as I could, I knew nothing except a rehash of Republican “concerns”, which left me feeling as if I was supposed to be worried about.. something. It was really quite remarkable.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@MikeJ: I really don’t think an apology is necessary for that.
Steve Crickmore
@Mnemosyne: During the fiery and emotional congressional hearing on the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Rep. Trey Gowdy read aloud from an email dated Sept. 12, 2012 to senior State Department officers, from Elizabeth Jones, the acting Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs.
Describing a conversation she had with then-Libyan ambassador Ali Aujali, Jones wrote in the previously undisclosed email that “I told him that the group that conducted the attacks, Ansar al-Sharia, is affiliated with Islamic terrorists”
From Wikipedia, Ansar al-Sharia (Libya) advocates w the impleentation of Sharia law in Libya. If not theie fingerprints their footprints seem on the Benghazi atttack. There is also an Ansar al-Sharia (Egypt) and one in Yemen etc, so there are probably ties with Egyptian militants/terrorists.
Steve Crickmore
@Mnemosyne: During the fiery and emotional congressional hearing on the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Rep. Trey Gowdy read aloud from an email dated Sept. 12, 2012 to senior State Department officers, from Elizabeth Jones, the acting Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs.
Describing a conversation she had with then-Libyan ambassador Ali Aujali, Jones wrote in the previously undisclosed email that “I told him that the group that conducted the attacks, Ansar al-Sharia, is affiliated with Islamic terrorists”
From Wikipedia, Ansar al-Sharia (Libya) advocates the implementation of Sharia law in Libya. If not their fingerprints, their footprints seem to be on the Benghazi atttack. There is also an Ansar al-Sharia (Egypt) and one in Yemen etc, so there are probably ties with Egyptian militants/terrorists.
Another Halocene Human
@James E. Powell: Since when are Republican girls good-looking?
Also, too: the crunchy girls put out.
Darkrose
@YellowJournalism:
“It’s a ROCK! IT HAS NO MOTIVATION!”
“That’s always been your problem. You were never serious about the craft.”
Patricia Kayden
That’s how I feel whenever I see that HBO is showing “The Thing” and it turns out to be the remake and not the one from the early 1980s. Totally know how you feel, John.
Patricia Kayden
@Steve Crickmore: Were you also as concerned with the 60 diplomats who died under Bush’s watch? Did you worry about the lack of hearings on those deaths? Or are you only concerned with the 4 that died in Benghazi under the current Democratic administration?
chopper
“In thirty seconds you’ll be dead, and I’ll blow this place up and be home in time for Corn Flakes.”
GREATEST GODDAMN LINE IN CINEMA HISTORY
El Cid
I say we need to let Ken Starr do his work.
lojasmo
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
MikeJ is sort of an abstract dude.
Redshirt
Start. The. Reactor!
Mnemosyne
@Steve Crickmore:
Not to pat myself on the back too hard, but I’m pretty sure that when the news first broke, I said that I thought the attack was an (unfortunately successful) assassination attempt on the ambassador and that any reported protest activity was a cover for that assassination.
But, of course, we can’t discuss that possibility because we first have to determine what time the president and SoS went to bed that night and if they were listening to the live audio feed.
MattR
@Steve Crickmore: And how does this prove that Susan Rice or HRC were completely unjustified in mentioning the movie as a possible source of the attacks? It shows that people in the State Department were pretty sure of their assessment from day 1 (and were correct in that assessment). But it doesn’t show what other departments were telling the president and his cabinet or the evidence they were presenting to back up their opinions (which we now know were incorrect)
Steve Crickmore
@MattR:
This is evidently where the so called top people in government focus their energy on, marketing and selling. “The final talking points that weekend reflected the work of several government agencies – CIA, FBI, State Department, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence – apparently determined to cast themselves in the best light as the investigation was just getting underway. No wonder we ended up with the description of events, even with all the lawyer-like qualifiers completely at variance with what happened.