DOWNLOADS: (532)

PLAYS: (7257)

Embed

Jon Stewart ripped into Fox "News" and their continued hyping of the trumped up Benghazi "scandal" which they've been promising over and over is about to "have the lid blown off a giant coverup" at any moment now since the attacks first happened.

Stewart took his viewers back through some of Fox's coverage for the last few months now, whether it was the Greta hyping the Petraeus testimony, or Hannity ranting about the Clinton testimony, to Lindsey Graham promising that the hearing this week was "going to make you mad" and if not, well, they'll just keep having more of them until you are.

Stewart reminded his viewers that this Congress has had nine full hearings on Benghazi, but during the Bush administration there were fifty four attacks on diplomatic targets that killed thirteen Americans, but Congress only held three hearings total on embassy security back then with zero of the outrage we're seeing from Republicans now.

After asking what made things different this time around, Stewart went through the recent list of items that the wingnuts on the right believe are "worse than Watergate" and crazy GOP Rep. Steve King's remarks that Benghazi is "Watergate and Iran Contra together" and "multiplied by ten." Stewart put into perspective just what King was comparing the so-called Benghazi "coverup" to and asked, just what did President Obama do that Republicans believe is worse than some of Nixon and Reagan's worst scandals combined.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (121)

PLAYS: (1106)

Embed

Rep. Jason Chaffetz was more than happy to help continue the Republican witch hunt on Benghazi this Sunday, but as Josh Israel over at Think Progress took note of, when pressed by Chris Wallace about his claims that there are witnesses from the State Department who are being threatened by their bosses, he couldn't name any examples.

Asked about a claim by a witness’s lawyer that whistle-blowers had been blocked from testifying (a claim rejected by the Department of State), Chaffetz said that “more than one” witness has indeed been “suppressed” by the Obama administration. [...]

Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) quickly debunked his colleague: “There’ve been two attorneys involved here, the only reason they haven’t received information is that they haven’t asked for it yet… there has not been a request for documents from these attorneys to the State Department.”

The only “retaliation,” Lynch noted, was that one of the witnesses wants a reassignment and a promotion and feels he’s being retaliated against because has not yet gotten the promotion.

As they reminded their readers and we have here as well, there are plenty of reasons why anything Victoria Toensing, who is representing some of these potential witnesses, attaches her name to, and who has been peddling conspiracy theories for months now, ought to be looked at with more than just a healthy dose of skepticism.

Full transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (144)

PLAYS: (1325)

Embed

Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday told Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) that he was "getting off track" when he suggested that Republicans were hypocrites for continuing to attack President Barack Obama's administration over last year's attacks in Benghazi after pressuring the State Department to cut funding for security personnel by voting to cut embassy funding.

During a discussion to promote upcoming testimony by whistleblowers who Republicans say will tell the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that the Obama administration intimidated them into not speaking out about the attacks in Benghazi, Lynch pointed out that Fox News had not made Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) answer for his vote to cut security funding.

"We're talking about -- including my colleague, Mr. Chaffetz -- when Secretary [Hillary] Clinton and the State Department asked for additional funding for embassy security, they all voted no," Lynch said.

"No, no, no," Chaffetz grumbled.

"We're getting a little bit off the track," Wallace interrupted.

"They've already admitted this on CNN," Lynch added.

"I understand there's an issue about security, it's a little bit off the track," Wallace insisted. "I want to try to stay on course here."

"No, this is the point!" Lynch pressed. "They're complaining about a lack of security at the embassies after they voted against funding for security at the embassies. That's what they're complaining about... Is that not related?"

"The chief financial officer for the State Department sent in an email that finances had nothing to do with the decisions about funding at the facility," Chaffetz replied. "This is a facade, it's a distraction. There are four people dead here, Chris."

"And I want to talk about... Let's talk about beforehand," Wallace said, changing the subject. "Two weeks ago, the Republican chairs of five House committees -- and I will agree with Congressman Lynch here, it was just the Republicans, not the Democrats -- issued an interim report on Benghazi in which they charged that then-Secretary of State Clinton misled Congress when she said she had never seen any request for more security."

DOWNLOADS: (203)

PLAYS: (1457)

Embed

Rep. John Tierney (D-MA), the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's National Security Subcommittee, slammed Republicans on Thursday for conducting a hearing that he said was driven by Internet conspiracy theories suggesting that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was buying a billion rounds of ammunition to use against the American people.

In his opening statement on Thursday, subcommittee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) cited "recent news reports" about the "federal government's massive procurement of ammunition."

"The question is, what is an appropriate use of this ammunition, where is it stored, how much are they paying for it and what are they doing with it?" the Utah Republican asked.

Although Chaffetz mentioned media outlets like The Associated Press and USA Today, much of the hype about DHS ammunition purchases have been driven by conservative websites like Alex Jones' Infowars and Glenn Beck's The Blaze. And the theories have been kept alive by the Fox News Channel, the Fox Business Network and even televangelist Pat Robertson.

"To the extent that we're responding to conspiracy theories or whatever, I think we're really wasting everybody's time on that," Tierney said in his opening statement. "It might have been predictable that Sarah Palin would have taken opportunity to feed these conspiracy theories with statements that the government was preparing for civil unrest, but it was a little more disturbing that Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) would seize the opportunity to accuse the government cornering the market on ammunition to drive up prices."

"Unsubstantiated false conspiracy theories have no place in this committee room -- hopefully," he continued. "Federal ammunition purchases are a fraction of the total ammunition market and they've been decreasing in recent years. Even the National Rifle Association distances itself from these conspiracy theories."

DOWNLOADS: (84)

PLAYS: (233)

Embed

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and conservative columnist George Will told a Sunday panel on ABC News that gun violence in the United States was caused by mental illness, video games, violence in the media and even "unparented" boys from single-parent homes -- but they refused to accept that gun control was part of the problem.

"Look, I'm a concealed-carry permit holder," Chaffetz explained. "I own a Glock 23. I've got a shotgun. I'm not the person you need to worry about. And there are millions of Americans who deal with this properly. It's our Second Amendment right to do so. But we have to look at the mental health access that these people have."

"The gun rules are very stringent. There's a lot conjecture out there that I don't think would necessarily solve this particular problem. And I want to look at anything we think will solve all the problems, but we have to, I think, look at the mental health aspect."

"As a parent, we all shed a tear," Chaffetz added as he choked up. "You put violence and death and gore in a movie, you're not going to get an R rating. You do something else, okay. I got to tell you, I think the movie ratings are terribly misleading when it comes to violence, death, gore and glamorizing."

Will, however, pointed to boys in single-parent homes as a source of the problem.

"We ought to bring in Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago," he insisted. "Chicago is an epidemic of violence with young, largely unparented -- that is, no father in the home -- adolescent males. That's a problem quite separate from this."

The conservative columnist also worried that the massacre of 20 children at an elementary school in Chicago would be used to "ratchet up the security of schools and elsewhere in public spaces."

"Our public spaces are already blighted by this," Will ranted. "For generations, people have been using the water on the [National] Mall to run little sailing boats. Now, the government in its wisdom has banned remote-control little boats on the mall water in Washington because it somehow represents a security threat to the country. We have to be a little bit reasonable."

DOWNLOADS: (250)

PLAYS: (3314)

Embed

From this Friday's Andrea Mitchell Reports, apparently Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a member of the House Budget Committee, doesn't understand what the debt ceiling is or how it works. Andrea Mitchell explains that to him when he complains that President Obama somehow wants an "unlimited credit card" for the spending he and his cohorts already voted for.

CHAFFETZ: The President said he was going to help curb back the debt and tackle this deficit. Instead the President has the gall to actually go out and suggest that we should get rid of the debt ceiling votes and take away Congress' ability to help put a lid on that. Essentially he wants a limitless credit card. [...]

MITCHELL: Let's talk about the debt ceiling for a second, because the debt ceiling is not more money. It's raising the level to accommodate what Congress has already appropriated. So it's not an unlimited credit card, and most serious economists think that it is an unnecessary act. Why not review the bidding on just how that debt ceiling should be used? Because it's used as a shotgun to the head of either party, either president.

CHAFFETZ: Look, there's got to be some limit to the debt we're putting forward in this country and I believe that we should have that discussion. In the past,it's driven the debate and the discussion about our out of control debt.

Amazing how that concern for the deficit they've got now wasn't "driving the debate" when they were passing the Bush tax cuts, voting for a couple of wars they didn't want to pay for, or a prescription drug plan what wasn't paid for. Deficits didn't matter back then. They only matter when they want to use them as an excuse to destroy our social safety nets.

h/t Dave

DOWNLOADS: (134)

PLAYS: (1207)

Embed

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) on Monday said that GOP hopeful Mitt Romney's ad suggesting that Chrysler was moving Jeep production to China was "100 percent correct and accurate" -- even though fact checkers have determined the claim is false.

"I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China," the Republican presidential candidate told supporters in Defiance, Ohio last week.

In an ad released on Sunday, the campaign repeated the claim, saying that Obama "sold Chrysler to Italians, who are going to build Jeeps in China."

The candidate apparently picked up idea that Chrysler was going to move all production to China from conservative bloggers who twisted an otherwise-accurate story from Bloomberg News.

And even Gualberto Ranieri, Chrysler’s vice president of communications, has said that the claims are just not true.

"Despite clear and accurate reporting, the take has given birth to a number of stories making readers believe that Chrysler plans to shift all Jeep production to China from North America, and therefore idle assembly lines and U.S. workforce," Ranieri wrote on Oct. 25. "It is a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats."

"A careful and unbiased reading of the Bloomberg take would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments," he added.

After reviewing the ad on Sunday, BuzzFeed's McKay Coppins tweeted: "There's really no good explanation or excuse for it. Mitt Romney's Jeep ad is misleading. Full stop."

"Ads that mislead or stretch the truth are nothing new for presidential campaigns," Business Insider's Grace Wyler explained. "But this ad — and Romney's comments last week — has prompted harsh criticism from the media, likely because it strikes reporters as not only disingenuous, but irresponsible. For Romney to suggest that the livelihoods of specific voters — namely workers at the Jeep plant in Toledo — are in danger in order to win an election comes across to many as the type of fear-mongering that no one wants in a president. "

During an interview on Monday, MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell asked Chaffetz if the Romney campaign should stop running the ad.

"No!" Chaffetz replied. "It's 100 percent correct and accurate. The Romney campaign stands behind it."

For its part, President Barack Obama's campaign released an ad on Monday calling Romney's assertion an outright "lie."

"When the auto industry faced collapse, Mitt Romney turned his back," the Obama ad says. "Even the conservative Detroit News criticized Romney for his ‘wrong-headedness’ on the bailout."

"And now, after Romney’s false claim of Jeep outsourcing to China, Chrysler itself has refuted Romney’s lie."

Speaking to supporters in Youngstown, Ohio on Monday, Vice President Joe Biden said Romney's ad was "absolutely, patently false" and he had "never seen anything like that."

"Have they no shame?" the vice president wondered. "Romney will say anything, absolutely anything to win it seems."

(h/t: Political Carnival)

DOWNLOADS: (340)

PLAYS: (6364)

Embed

CNN host Candy Crowley on Wednesday stood her ground and refused to backtrack as a surrogate for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney insisted that she had been "wrong" to fact check the GOP hopeful's claim that President Barack Obama had not referred to the attacks in Libya as "acts of terror."

While moderating Tuesday night's second 2012 presidential debate, Crowley had briefly stunned Romney when she undermined his claim that Obama had not taken the Benghazi attacks seriously.

“He did call it an act of terror,” she had told the former Massachusetts governor. “It did as well take two weeks or so for the whole idea of there being a riot out there about this tape to come out.”

By the next morning, conservatives were insisting that Crowley had backtracked because she later explained that Romney was "right in the main" but "picked the wrong word" by saying that Obama had not called the attacks terrorism.

"This morning, Paul Ryan, who has been making the rounds on the morning shows, says, 'Well, she's already backtracked,'" CNN host Soledad O'Brien pointed out to Crowley on Wednesday morning. "Are you backtracking on what you said in that fact check last night?"

"Goodness, I hope they get back to one another," Crowley replied, adding that her comments following the debate were "exactly the same" as the original fact check. "He did say 'acts of terror,' call it an act of terror, but, Gov. Romney, you are perfectly right that it took weeks for them to get past the tape."

"Not a backtrack?" O'Brien wondered.

"No!" Crowley said. "Now, did the president say, 'This was an act of terror'? The president did not say [that], he said, these 'acts of terror.' But he was in the Rose Garden to talk about Benghazi so I don't think that's a leap."

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), who was appearing on Wednesday morning's CNN panel as a Romney surrogate, told Crowley that "it wasn't necessarily your place to try to be fact checker right there. I happen to think that your assessment of that was wrong. ... It's not the role of the moderator to say, 'Mr's President, you're right.'"

"Nonsense," CNN liberal contributor Roland Martin quipped. "The congressman is dead wrong. If you stand there and say something that is wrong, you should be corrected on the spot. Look, I have no problem even having a table of fact checkers there. We shouldn't wait until the debate is over and then have different people saying, this was right, this was wrong. More people are watching that singular debate than they're watching anyone's particular coverage."

"And so if you say something and it's wrong, you check them right then," he added.

DOWNLOADS: (372)

PLAYS: (2232)

Embed

I've been watching Fox "News" and every other talking head on that network do their best to blow this issue up and politicize it since the attacks on our embassies on the anniversary of Sept. 11th, and am in agreement with Rachel Maddow about politics always having an "ick factor" and this one being worse than usual, but quite a few harsher words than just "ick" came to mind for me in regard to just how craven these recent political attacks have been.

The Republican party continues to prove that there is absolutely no topic that they will not politicize and no amount of hypocrisy too blatant for them to have an ounce of concern about if they think it will score them some cheap political points. Listening to the party that led us into an invasion of a country that was not a threat to us based on lies and the literal clusterf**k that was the invasion of Iraq, and the amount of national treasure, lives, and other atrocities associated with our actions there, now carping about whether we had enough security at one of our embassies in a country in the middle of the type of turmoil after just ousting their dictator that Libya is in right now, frankly is enough to turn my stomach.

These people are shameless and they apparently think the entire country has a severe case of amnesia and can't remember what happened to them over the last decade or so. It's disgusting and shameful to put it their actions in the kindest terms possible.

And here's good little Romney water-carrier Jason Chaffetz stepping all over himself attempting to explain his hypocrisy on CNN this Wednesday morning with Soledad O'Brien -- Right-Wing Media's Libya Consulate Security Mythology Falls Apart :

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (390)

PLAYS: (6558)

Embed

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) has become the latest Republican to go up against CNN host Soledad O'Brien on the issue of Medicare and lose.

During an interview on Friday, O'Brien called out Chaffetz after he tried to claim that that Medicare plans offered by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), would not turn the program into a voucher system.

"Let's keep to the facts that President [Barack] Obama did take $700 billion out of Medicare," Chaffetz told O'Brien.

"We've now had this conversation 15 times at least," O'Brien noted, shaking her head. "As you know, it's not taking money out of Medicare, right? It's a decrease in spending over time and it's a decrease that you yourself, I assume, voted for, right? In Paul Ryan's budget in 2011 and 2012, he had that same number in his budget. Didn't you vote for that?"

"It's not exactly the same number," Chaffetz replied. "I did vote in favor of the two budgets."

"But now you're criticizing something that you voted for twice, right?," O'Brien observed.

"It's a totally different approach," the Utah Republican maintained. "For instance, the Independent Payment Advisory Board -- IPAB -- is not something that I support, but is something that takes that $700 billion that Obama took and puts it into the control of these bureaucrats in Washington, D.C."

"At the end of the day, that same number crunching was voted on by virtually every single Republican in 2011 and then again in 2012. That is fair to say," O'Brien pointed out, adding that both Romney and Ryan had promised to "save" Medicare by turning it into a "voucher program."

"No, it's not!" Chaffetz objected.

"It's not a voucher program?" O'Brien wondered.

"It is not a voucher program," Chaffetz insisted. "It is a premium support, and that is totally different than a voucher program. And every time somebody says, 'Oh, it's a voucher program,' it's false, it's misleading, it's derogatory and it's inaccurate. That is not what it does."

"You will give people money to go and buy their own insurance, right?" O'Brien pressed. "But we're arguing over symantics. At the end of the day, isn't it -- you would give someone money to buy their own insurance."

"No, a premium support program is different than a voucher program," Chaffetz repeated.

"Walk me through how it's different," O'Brien dared the congressman.

Continue reading »