Jes chillin' pic.twitter.com/OqLL8trvlN
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) October 11, 2015
The problem with running a successful quasi-legal racket is that there’s always some low-level sorehead who thinks he’s not getting “his due”, and when That Guy runs to the media, the local Powers can no longer pretend they don’t know about the legbreakers staffing your “security services”…
Ex-staffer tells @jaketapper the House Benghazi Committee was just out to get Hillary: http://t.co/iAXiq4IYaf
— Steve Inskeep (@NPRinskeep) October 10, 2015
The Times actually broke this story about the Benghazi committee whistleblower http://t.co/C99HC5eync
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) October 11, 2015
From the NYTimes article:
… A former investigator for the Republicans on the House Select Committee on Benghazi plans to file a complaint in federal court next month alleging that he was fired unlawfully in part because his superiors opposed his efforts to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the 2012 attack on the American diplomatic mission in the Libyan city. Instead, they focused primarily on the role of the State Department and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, he said.
The former investigator, Bradley F. Podliska, a major in the Air Force Reserve who is on active duty in Germany, also claims that the committee’s majority staff retaliated against him for taking leave for several weeks to go on active duty. If true, the retaliation would violate the federal Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994, which Major Podliska plans to invoke in his complaint, according to a draft that was made available to The New York Times…
Per the Washington Post, Rep. Gowdy is wounded, deeply, that his selfless public service should be slandered by a low-level minion who is also nuttier than squirrel turds and probably a traitor to his uniform…
… Chairman Trey Gowdy, in his first public statement on the controversy, said committee investigator Bradley Podliska never mentioned any concern about Clinton or politics while fighting his dismissal from the committee staff this fall. In his formal complaints, Gowdy said, the investigator had repeatedly asserted only that the committee discriminated against him because he was an Air Force reservist who periodically had to leave his job for reserve duty.
“Until his Friday conversations with media, this staffer has never mentioned Secretary Clinton as a cause of his termination, and he did not cite Clinton’s name in a legally mandated mediation,” Gowdy said. “The record makes it clear he himself was focused on Clinton improperly and was instructed to stop, and that issues with his conduct were noted on the record as far back as April.”
Podliska, a major and intelligence officer in the Air Force Reserve who describes himself as a conservative Republican, told The Post in a statement on Saturday that the committee trained its sights almost exclusively on Clinton after the revelation last March that she used a private e-mail server during her tenure as secretary of state…
In an on-camera interview on CNN on Sunday morning, he said Gowdy’s committee, which has spent $4.6 million over the course of its investigation, pulled resources away from other probes and has pursued a “partisan investigation” focused almost solely on Clinton and the State Department under her four-year tenure…
The ranking Democrat on the Benghazi panel, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (Md.), said Saturday evening that Podliska’s allegations provide more proof of serious bias by the committee’s majority. Gowdy rejected that characterization…
Even low-information citizens of the BothSides persuasion might look askance at the distinction between “let’s get that mad Democrat bitch Hillary” and “let’s get that mad Democrat bitch Hillary because she will not play ball with our team… “
dmsilev
Another fascinating tidbit:
Edit: Irony
A guy
Hillary is incompetent in all she does save letting her husband wander
dmsilev
@A guy: If she’s so incompetent, why is the GOP spending millions of (taxpayer) dollars to try to smear her? Wouldn’t it be easier to just let her self-destruct?
jl
Maybe so, but looks like HRC has met her match for incompetence in our current GOP. So if we have to choose, I’ll go with the less incompetent. But, maybe that is just me.
22over7
@A guy: Go peddle your ignorance at Redstate.
jl
The Biden OG politician vibe does not work for Gowdy.
David Koch
I don’t think that’s the reason.
It’s true the Beltway and political media hate both Clintons. But it’s not about policy. The Clintons’ hawkish views on the middle east, hand wringing over the deficit, bowing to wall street, and most of all – hippie punching are closely in tune with the politics of the Beltway.
They’re willing to play ball with AIPAC, Bob Rubin, and Pete Peterson.
They are hated but it’s for other reasons.
Yatsuno
Obvious troll is obvious.
The Republicans already have a plan here. Don’t raise the debt ceiling. Whole government gets shut down including federal courts. His case gets delayed and no dirty laundry can air. So what if they wreck the national finances in the interim? Just win baby!
Iowa Old Lady
@Yatsuno: Truly, I don’t think they even understand what the debt ceiling is, much less the consequences of not raising it.
A guy
It’s true. Hillary ought to be ashamed of herself. She failed in the most basic of human responsibilities. Keeping her man from banging the next chick to walk by. And then she defended him. No wonder the feminists love her.
jl
GOPer BenghamailBSgaters clamming up on allegations. Didn’t respond to NYT, Gowdy refused an interview. I can see why they would not want to get into details of this guy’s termination, but seems to me that they could make comments and interviews to try to defend their BS committee while refusing to discuss the ex-employee’s situation in detail. But they won’t.
Surely they would want go public with a response to the evidence Democratic committee members released that the committee was a partisan smear campaign against HRC, wouldn’t they?
Just call me puzzled! Come out and defend your honor, Trey!
Benghazi Committee Chair Declines CNN Interview To Discuss Ex-Staffer’s Allegations
TPM blog
“But first we would like to say we did invite the chairman of the Benghazi Committee, Trey Gowdy, to come and appear on this program this morning to respond but he declined,” Bash said.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trey-gowdy-cnn-interview
A guy
Dimslev- there’s no correlation between being a politician and competent in affairs of family and morality
Gimlet
@Iowa Old Lady:
I think they are confident of some “deal” so that it won’t happen.
JPL
@Yatsuno: I didn’t watch the morning shows but I wonder how much time was spent on the freedom caucus wanting the nation to default on their payments. Should I write my local and city government and say it’s not a good time for me to pay my taxes. I’ll get back to you some time in the future.
Amir Khalid
@A guy:
We have a ranking Republican Representative — Kevin McCarthy — admitting, quite unprompted, that the House Benghazi Committee existed only to undermine Hillary’s candidacy. We have a member of the Committee’s staff, who is suing it for unlawful dismissal, corroborating McCarthy’s claim. What we are seeing here is the collapse of a years-long, utterly failed attempt to scapegoat Hillary over the incident. The incompetence is not hers, but the Republican party’s.
jl
@Amir Khalid: We also have evidence released by the Democratic committee members that the smear campaign decided to blow off any aspect of the Benghazi attack not directly related to cause of smearing HRC in the daily news cycle.
Nutella
Since this is an open thread, what do you all think of this:
It’s from this link. Getting past the cracked writing style, what do you think of his points about Trump’s politics?
Amir Khalid
@A guy:
That is the stupidest and most backward comment I’ve seen here in a while.
Iowa Old Lady
I fervently hope a lot of R trolls run around blaming HRC for her husband’s infidelity. Do it publicly. Make sure to put in all the sneering and scorn for the wife whose husband cheated. Women already trend D. Let’s accelerate that trend if we can.
A guy
I don’t care about Benghazi. Hillary should be disqualified simply due to her incompetence as a woman
RK
Whatever happened with Thurston? I liked the look of that dog.
redshirt
@A guy:
Quality trolling… not..
burnspbesq
Can’t wait to read the deposition transcripts.
rk
@A guy:
Dude! Stop obsessing over Bill’s sex life and what Hillary did or did not do. It’s been almost 20 years since the Lewinsky scandal. If Hillary can get over it so can you. You need to see a shrink about this.
Frankensteinbeck
@Nutella:
I thought all that was obvious. He doesn’t have many of the social conditions Hitler required, however. For example, Hitler had a private army. The Medicare Machine Gun Brigade wish they were a private army, try to strut like a private army, but they are incapable of a nation-wide intimidation campaign. They can manage a few shootings here and there, and while those are horrible tragedies, they are nothing like what the brownshirts could do.
I don’t see why Trump can’t win the primary. I wouldn’t bet on it, because the situation is so weird I would bet on nothing. At this point, it’s so weird I wouldn’t even bet that Jeb:( will lose. Trump has reshaped the field so that the establishment candidates are competing against him, not each other. But there’s no reason he couldn’t. He’s absolutely screwed in the general, though. It’s not just that demographics generally favor Democrats in a presidential election. Latinos hate him with the kind of uniformity that blacks are against the Republican party. Even given voting rates and suppression, a few percentage points of the total vote are enough to kick any chance Trump would have of ever winning out the window.
gocart mozart
@A guy:
A guy spends another lonely Sunday afternoon trolling on the internet. As he tries to get his mind off the fact that no girl will ever like him, he consoles himself with the knowledge that he still has his balloon juice and his internet porn to keep him warm.
jl
@efgoldman: Ha ha. Good to hear. Glad you have some very high quality trolls in your family that provide you a great entertainment value.
RK
@gocart mozart: Balloon Juice is internet porn. lol
mai naem mobile
I hope this guy printed off some of the internal emails without classified info but lots of juicy stuff. Also too, I would like a deep delve into Gowdys and Issas emails. What is good for HRC is certainly good for second rate congressional reps.
divF
@efgoldman:
Good for you. Talking to young’uns can wipe clean the residue of a bad day.
And her grandpa’s granddaughter ?
SiubhanDuinne
@A guy:
Okay, hold up just a half a second here. In the next thread up, you claim that your wife (the “girl”) is a “feminist.” But right here in this thread, you claim that “the feminists” love Hillary because she stood by her husband.
Which is it, a guy? Do you and your putative wife have major differences over “feminist” support of Hillary Clinton? May we expect to see news of dissent and discord in the guy family, or will a guy and mrs. feminist a guy manage to emerge from this fifth circle of marital hell unscathed?
gene108
Gowdy’s fucking problem is he wasted so much time on Hillary, the ship has basically sailed on impeaching Obama; they should have been digging up dirt on him.
I mean for fucks sake, Gingrich and Co. impeached Bill, and he’s white.
/A Real American, in the Heartland of Real America
SFAW
@efgoldman:
With Kung-Fu Grip holding her Gen-U-Wine Ioway Pig Denutter – so “a guy” doesn’t hold her TOO close to his groin when he’s fapping away to her. Because, as small as he is, it can still be cut off.
OK, so It has now started on the “real woman” BS; waiting for the “real Jews,” “real blacks,” and so forth. Because that’s all those morons have is17th Century “thinking.”
ThresherK (GPad)
@David Koch: They hate the Clintons because Bill defeated an incumbent R to win the White House. Not just any R, but GHWB, a ellow who was basically born (if not actually conceived) to be President.
The veneer of Reagan-imitating happy jolly workingtogetherness with old-school Ds such as Tip, or before him Rayburn, fell away on Election night 92. And when Bill won again in 96 after a SOTU that the mere voters loved, consternating the better-informed pundits who went from chuckling “It’s so long and issue-based!”, to screaming “You stupid electorate! What’s wrong with you?”, it just went all haywire.
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne:
You’re assuming that “A girl” is not a mannequin/inflate-o-babe/plastic replica, if you know what I mean. So I doubt that “she” is a feminist, or ever says anything. That’s one way he can “keep a woman in her place,” I guess.
SFAW
That’s because he’s not a complete moron, you fucking dickhead. Had he even hinted at doing so, you would have ignored him, or done the “la-la-la-la-I-can’t-HEAR-you” thing, or whatever it is you assholes do when any sane person tries to tell you that hating on the various groups in this country is not a good thing.
If I ever run across an honest – intellectually or otherwise – Republican politician, I may have a stroke or an MI. So I guess I’m relatively safe in that regard.
gelfling545
@rk:
And so, so many other things.
Josie
@ThresherK (GPad): I remember reading that the Washington hoi poloi thought that the Clintons were trashy and did not belong in the White House. Maybe the New York elite felt the same way.
SFAW
@Josie:
I think you may mean something different from “hoi polloi.” Assuming that’s the case: yeah, they all looked down their noses at those hicks from Arkansas.
Gin & Tonic
I’m so old I can remember when the trolls here were worth reading.
SFAW
@Gin & Tonic:
No, you’re so old that you now “remember” that they were worth reading. (Kinda like I remember being in the stands, watching Roger Maris hit his 61st home run.)
Josie
@SFAW: You’re right. I just looked it up and had the wrong idea. All this time I thought it meant the elites in society. I learn things here all the time.
SFAW
@Josie:
I think I used to use it the same way, until I heard someone use it properly, and had an “Oh shit” moment.
I learn stuff here, too. Of course, some of it, I wish I could UN-learn.
bk
“A guy” pretty much has to be a BJ insider just doing this for lulz.
SiubhanDuinne
@Josie:
Admittedly I am not a linguist, but I think the brain may tend to conflate hoi polloi and hoity-toity , and invent a definition that just isn’t there but that makes a certain kind of sense. (Look at all the people who think “pluperfect” means “best thing EVAH!”)
I’ve possibly told this story on myself, but when I was younger I saw the word Beefeater and in my head pronounced it “bee-FEAT-er.” I thought it was short for “Bee-defeater” and to explain it I literally made up a story about the Yeomen of the Guard at the Tower of London, centuries ago, fending off huge horrible swarms of bees that were invading England. I would be embarrassed to tell you how old I was before I (a) learned the correct pronunciation and (b) learned where the term actually originated. Let’s just say I was no longer in my teens :-(
Balloon Juice is a great place to learn new stuff. I agree.
SFAW
@efgoldman:
Stallard for 61 and Jack Fisher for 60. Both later on the Mets, I think. (Fisher for sure, Stallard possibly – TL2LIU)
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne:
Your linguistic supposition seems pretty reasonable to me.
As far as Beefeater: I know what you mean – not about the bees, that’s just weird, my dear – I saw the label on the bottle for years before I finally separated the syllables correctly.
shomi
In other breaking news, water is wet. Seriously are you that daft to not realize what bullghazi was really about from day 1???