DOWNLOADS: (245)

PLAYS: (3925)

Embed

Here's something you don't see every day -- someone in our corporate media actually calling out Republicans for feeding them lies. Good for CBS and Major Garrett.

Via TPM: Wow, This is Pretty Epic:

Generally, once partisan, tendentious sources leak information that turns out to be wrong, nothing’s ever done about it. That’s for many reasons, some good or somewhat understandable, mostly bad. But on CBS Evening News tonight, Major Garrett did something I don’t feel like I’ve seen in a really long time or maybe ever on a network news cast. He basically said straight out: Republicans told us these were the quotes, that wasn’t true. Quick transcript after the jump …

SCOTT PELLEY: Also at his news conference today the president called for tighter security for U.S. diplomatic facilities to prevent an attack like the one in Benghazi, Libya, last year that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (57)

PLAYS: (122)

Embed

One of these things is not like the other, but this is what's passing for political debate on CNN this weekend. Republican strategist and dirty trickster Alex Castellanos did his best to help the network continue on their path to becoming Fox-lite with this false equivalency on the drummed up Benghazi "scandal" they're all having the feeding frenzy over this week.

CROWLEY: Now, while I'm asking you this question I want to put up an NRCC, a Republican campaign committee, an ad they put up asking for funds saying, you know, we're after Benghazi. Is it smart to go after substantive things with Rand Paul in Iowa attacking Hillary, who might run in 2016 and the NRCC raising funds off of it. Isn't that kind of a mixed message?

CASTELLANOS: Well sometimes if you make something too political you undermine your motive that you really want -- a fair investigation.

CROWLEY: Do you think that has happened here?

CASTELLANOS: Not yet. Politics is also how we govern our governors. It's the only control we have. So, when government fails, the political arena is the place that we want to expose something and bring it to people's attention. And this is bad news for Hillary Clinton. This could be what mission accomplished was for George Bush. What difference does it make could be for Hillary Clinton? She -- three bad mistakes here. She didn't look after the people under her care in Benghazi. She either allowed or encouraged or didn't know about a cover up and then she marked it with a YouTube moment and those things last and travel in politics. This is going to make it very tough for her in 2016.

Ah yes, taking part of Hillary Clinton's testimony during the Republicans witch hunt on Benghazi out of context is exactly like Bush declaring that we'd "won" in Iraq right as things were about to go to hell after our illegal invasion of a country that was not a threat to us. Just the same! Jesus this crap makes my head hurt. And not an ounce of push back from host Candy Crowley, of course.

Full transcript from the segment above below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (95)

PLAYS: (707)

Embed

This has to be one of the most pitiful things I've seen in a long time, even by Fox's "standards" -- if they had any. Brit Hume jumped the shark on Bret Baier's show this Monday and tried to conflate their drummed-up Benghazi non-scandal to George W. Bush lying about Saddam Hussein and fearmongering to get us to invade a country that was not a threat to the United States.

HUME: Long experience teaches that highly anticipated Congressional hearings often fail to meet expectations. Witnesses don't quite say in public what they told investigators ahead of time. Congressional interrogators prove inept and unfocused. But if Wednesday's Benghazi hearing lives up to its billing and the truth about what happened that night and the administration's efforts to disguise it, might at last begin to come out.

Yet for this case to become the scandal it surely deserves to be, will require another ingredient – relentless news coverage of the kind the media typically avoid when the subject is someone or some cause they favor. That's why the Gosnell abortion horrors were played down for so long. And that's why the now-discredited Benghazi talking points are treated as just an honest mistake.

Each new advance tidbit from Wednesday's witnesses makes it clear that the State Department, CIA and White House deliberately concocted the Benghazi cover story that was false in nearly every particular. Now, think back to the disputed claim by President George W. Bush that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa. It amounted to sixteen words in his 2003 State of the Union Address and it was arguably true.

But it triggered a media firestorm that did much to advance the notion that Mr. Bush had lied to the U.S. into Iraq. Now, suppose that administration had done what this one has on Benghazi.

It's hard to say what's more disgusting and reprehensible: The revisionist history on Bush lying us into invading Iraq, or the fact that he thinks his audience is stupid enough to believe four people being killed in a country that they knew full well was dangerous and in turmoil is in any way akin to the hundreds of thousands of lives that were destroyed and God knows how much money flushed down the toilet due to the actions of the Bush administration.

Every time I think Fox can't sink to a new low, they outdo themselves once again.

DOWNLOADS: (127)

PLAYS: (692)

Embed

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who calls himself a "proud wacko bird," told CBS News that President Barack Obama was plotting to make immigration reform fail so that Democrats could campaign on it in 2014 and 2016.

In an interview that aired on Wednesday, Cruz explained to CBS reporter Jan Crawford that Obama was playing a political game on Republicans by pushing a path to citizenship as a part of comprehensive immigration reform.

"President Obama does not want an immigration bill to pass," he stated confidently. "I think the president wants to campaign on immigration reform in 2014 and 2016. And I think the reason the White House is insisting on a path to citizenship for those who are here illegally is because the White House knows that insisting on that is very likely to scuttle the bill."

Crawford pressed Cruz one what he would do with the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants who were already living in the United States.

"I think there could probably could be a compromise on that if a path to citizenship was taken off the table," he insisted.

Earlier this year, fellow Republican Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), one of eight senators helping to craft the immigration reform proposal, called Cruz a "wacko bird" for filibustering the nomination of CIA Director John Brennan over the administration's use of drones.

"If standing for liberty and standing for the Constitution makes you a wacko bird then I am a very, very proud wacko bird," Cruz quipped to Crawford.

DOWNLOADS: (132)

PLAYS: (977)

Embed

Former CIA Deputy Director Phillip Mudd on Sunday told Fox News that Boston bombing suspect Dzokhar Tsarnaev should be charged as a murderer because the crime looked more like the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado than an attack planned by al Qaeda.

During an interview on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace asked Mudd if there were signs that al Qaeda was behind the Boston Marathon bombing.

"The only fingerprint I've seen might have possible have been ideology, but not operations," Mudd explained. "But every step of the way here was pretty rudimentary. For example, if you look at some of those initial photos, you've got a kid with a hoodie and a cap. If he wants to obscure himself, the hoodie goes on, the cap forward."

"If he had operational training, I want to know who did it because they were amateurs."

Mudd added that he feared that people were being too quick to categorize the crime as terrorism.

"This looks more to me like Columbine than it does al Qaeda," the counter terrorism expert observed. "Two kids who radicalized between themselves in a closed circle go out and commit murder. I would charge these guys as murders, not terrorists."

Wallace pressed Mudd on how he could dismiss the fact that Dzokhar Tsarnaev's brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, spent six months in Russia "where there are a lot of radicals."

"I'm not writing that off," Mudd insisted. "What I'm saying is we want to categorize this... with a simple term, and at looking at the psychology of clusters like this -- which I did for 20 years -- the psychology is not that simple. It's two kids who decided, for whatever ideology, that they wanted to commit murder. And the murder piece is significant as the terrorism piece."

DOWNLOADS: (127)

PLAYS: (744)

Embed

Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham -- who once accused opponents of the Iraq invasion of trying to "subvert America" -- is now blasting the The Wall Street Journal for beating the "war drums" because the editorial board expressed support for President Barack Obama's use of drones.

Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday asked Ingraham what she thought of the split within the Republican Party after Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) criticized Sen. Rand Paul's (R-KY) filibuster of CIA Director John Brennan over speculation that President Barack Obama might target citizens inside U.S. borders with drone strikes.

"John McCain, Lindsey Graham and The Wall Street Journal editorial board, extremely dismissive of Rand Paul," Ingraham pointed out. "Wall Street Journal said, 'Calm down;' said, 'You don't have to do more than fire up impressionable libertarians in their college dorms.'"

"I thought to myself, when is the last time a Republican managed to capture the imagination of young people, some people on the left, Mitch McConnell, John Thune, John Cornyn, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio?" she added. "There was a wide range of Republicans and people on the left who said, 'You know something? I think the attorney general should be able to answer a simple question [about the use of drones] with an unequivocal yes or no.' He couldn't do that, and Rand Paul served an enormously important function during that filibuster. He wasn't waving his hands and ranting and raving, contrary to what the Journal condescendingly said."

Liberal contributor Juan Williams argued that the targeted killing policy needed to have transparency and judicial review, but Paul was "grand standing" with his filibuster.

"But the fact is that no U.S. citizen has ever been targeted or killed by a drone on U.S. soil," Williams explained. "And secondly, the Constitution gives the president authority to go after a U.S. citizen if that U.S. citizen is somehow involved in colluding with an enemy of the United States."

"I just want to say that I love the fact that we have the hawk, Juan Williams, and the dove, Laura Ingraham," Wallace snarked.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (128)

PLAYS: (291)

Embed

The charisma-hungry Republicans are fanboys at heart, desperate for new heroes. So it's not surprising that the chairman of the Republican Party on Thursday said that Sen. Rand Paul's (R-KY) filibuster of CIA Director John Brennan was "completely awesome."

Like, totally.

During a stop on his listening tour in Iowa, Priebus was asked if Paul's filibuster over President Barack Obama's use of drones had energized the party.

"Listen, I think it was completely awesome," the RNC chairman said. "I was excited about it myself. I couldn't go to bed. I'm still excited about it."

(Hey Reince, we'd really rather not hear you use the words "bed" and "excited" in the same sentence, mmkay? Some things are private.)

"You know what I'm excited about?" Priebus continued. "I think our party needs some unity sometimes and it's not easy not having the White House and sometimes you've got scrap and claw for issues that can unify a party. Now, that's not totally unity, but this was great issue in standing up against the president, asking some simple and important questions. And I was happy to see so many other Republican senators support Sen. Paul."

(No, it's not easy having all that money, ALEC, the Heritage Foundation, Fox News, Politico, The Daily Caller, the American Enterprise Institute, the National Rifle Association... why, the Republican party is just like a little lamb, lost in the woods.)

According to the Des Moines Register, conservative activists in Iowa told Priebus that they wanted to see more integration between former Rep. Ron Paul's "liberty movement" and the Republican Party.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (129)

PLAYS: (525)

Embed

Who would ever think we'd see this scenario happen again -- Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham appearing on a Sunday show talking about their fake Benghazi scandal. What are the odds? I was waiting for Bob Schieffer to give both of them a big wet kiss, he was so thrilled at the very beginning of this interview to have both of them on there together with him.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to have concerns over the appointment of John Brennan to CIA, the torture issue which was mentioned in passing here being one of them, but their fake Benghazi outrage and Susan Rice's press releases are not among them.

Demanding Benghazi documents, McCain, Graham will delay Brennan nomination:

Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. will not move forward President Obama's nominee to head the CIA until they receive additional documents detailing the White House's handling of the Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, the pair said today on "Face the Nation."

"John and I are hell-bent on making sure the American people understand this debacle called Benghazi," Graham said, vowing to "stop" John Brennan's confirmation until further information is released about the attack that left four Americans dead. A Tuesday vote is currently scheduled in the Senate Intelligence Committee. [...]

"Her story has completely collapsed under scrutiny," Graham said. "I said this to the president: I want FBI interviews of the survivors. They were turned over to the intelligence committee and everything was blacked out. ...The e-mail about who changed the talking points - there's a big gap. I want to know who the survivors are so we can interview them.

"The transmissions from Benghazi to Washington, in real time, on the night of the attack," he continued. "What were people asking for? What were they saying?"

Using a Cabinet nomination as leverage is a classic "give-and-take," a "time-honored tradition" among lawmakers, Graham said. "And I'm going to insist on that," he continued. "I'm not going to vote on a new CIA director until I find out what the CIA did in Benghazi."

McCain said he hates to say he's threatening to hold Brennan's nomination because "the story tomorrow will be, 'McCain and Graham threaten to...'

Sorry Johnny, but if the shoe fits....

DOWNLOADS: (124)

PLAYS: (347)

Embed

As Dave already noted, Sen. Lindsey Graham was back on the air this Sunday, still flogging their latest Benghazi "scandal" that somehow President Obama was disengaged during the embassy attacks on the anniversary of 9/11. I'm not sure just how much more hateful and nasty this man can manage to be before he starts getting called out for his behavior by members of the media, but Face the Nation's Bob Schieffer seemed pretty shocked and exhausted by the time Graham finished his rant here.

Sadly, however, he did not ask Graham what the hell was wrong with him or why the public should care about this drummed up non-scandal that he refuses to let die.

Lindsey Graham To Place Hold On National Security Nominees Over Benghazi Attacks:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is threatening to place a hold on key administration national security nominations unless President Obama explains how the White House reacted to the Benghazi attacks and who “changed” the talking points used by U.N. ambassador Susan Rice during back-to-back appearances on the Sunday political talk shows in September. Appearing on CBS’ Face the Nation, Graham insisted that Republicans shouldn’t “allow Brennan to go forward for the CIA directorship, Hagel to be confirmed to Secretary of Defense, until the White House gives us an accounting.” “Did the president ever pick up the pohne and call anyone in the Libyan government to help these folks,” Graham asked. “What did the president do?”

Since Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and General Martin Dempsey testified before Congress last week, conservatives have seized on a portion of the testimony to argue that President Obama went “AWOL” the night of the Benghazi attack.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (114)

PLAYS: (233)

Embed

The more things change, the more they remain the same. It's now almost ten years later, and Colin Powell is still defending going in front of the United Nations and pushing the faulty intelligence to justify our invasion of Iraq. Of course don't expect any introspection from host David Gregory who decided to treat this as merely some policy disagreement between Powell and former Sen. Chuck Hagel, who he was defending as President Obama's pick for Defense Secretary during this segment on Meet the Press.

It's no wonder all of the neocons don't seem to mind re-litigating the invasion of Iraq if this is the type of coverage that we're going to get from our corporate media once those hearings start.

GREGORY: The renewed debate about Iraq is also occurring, the New York Times write about-- writes about that today. And his-- in his memoir, he writes something very pointed about the Iraq war. He writes, "it all comes down to the fact we were asked to vote on a resolution based on half-truths, untruths and wishful thinking. I voted for this resolution that gave the president the authority to go to war in Iraq if all diplomatic efforts were exhausted and failed. Unfortunately, it was not his intention to exhaust all diplomatic efforts.” He is talking about the diplomatic efforts you were engaged in as Secretary of State in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

GEN. POWELL: I would disagree with this characterization. We were basing all of our actions on a national intelligence estimate that the Congress asked for and was provided to the Congress by the CIA. And all of us in the Bush administration at that time accepted the judgment of our 16 intelligence communities. I presented it to the U.N. Three months before I presented it to the U.N., Congress passed a resolution, also supported by Senator Hagel and many other senators that would give the president the authority to go to war. They weren’t half-truths is what we were being told by the intelligence community. We subsequently found out that a lot of that information was not accurate and that is very unfortunate but that’s the way it unfolded.

GREGORY: Was he wrong on Iraq?

GEN. POWELL: With respect to what?

GREGORY: With respect to what he ultimately called a huge foreign policy blunder?

GEN. POWELL: He-- that’s his characterization and if people want to challenge his characterization, they will have that opportunity during the confirmation.

GREGORY: In your judgment, was he wrong on Iraq?

GEN. POWELL: I would not have called it that. I would have said that what I think was wrong was the president had more than sufficient basis to believe that there were weapons of mass destruction that were a danger to the world and the possibility of those weapons going to terrorists. And so, he undertook military action. I think that was the correct thing to do and it was well supported by the intelligence. I think we did not execute the operation well. Once Baghdad fell, there was a feeling that well that was the end of it. It was not the end of it. That was just the beginning of it.

Here's a little reminder about just what Powell knew and didn't know when he made that presentation to the United Nations: The U.N. Deception: What Exactly Colin Powell Knew Five Years Ago, and What He Told the World