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Fake Benghazi Outrage

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Unlike his cohort Jon Stewart, who hasn't bothered to mention Jonathan Karl's Benghazi email scandal all week, Stephen Colbert had no problem taking the ABC reporter to the woodshed and giving him the treatment he deserved after his non-apology over the weekend.

Bruinkid over at KOS actually took the time to transcribe the whole show which I'll share part of here: Stephen Colbert lays waste to ABC's Jonathan Karl for his Benghazi lies:

And tonight's scandal is... Benghazi!!

Yes, Benghazi. Following the tragic attacks of eight months ago, Benghazi, and the rumored cover-up, has become problem #1 for the Obama administration. [...]

Yes, Benghazi is the biggest scandal since sliced bread was caught funneling money to Nicaraguan death squads. And folks, if Republicans are angry now, imagine how they'll feel when they learn where Benghazi is. [...]

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I'm not sure what happened, but it appears Candy Crowley has either gotten tired of being beaten up on by right-wingers for being unfair to poor old Mittens during the presidential debates, or she's developed a really bad case of amnesia since she first stunned Romney by fact checking him when he claimed that President Obama did not call the attack in Libya an act of terror.

Whatever the reason, she did a complete 180 and began the right's game of parsing the President's words when interviewing White House advisor Dan Pfeiffer this Sunday: CNN's Crowley Adopts False Right-Wing Claim That Obama Didn't Call Benghazi A Terrorist Attack.

Transcript via CNN below the fold.

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Deputy White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that Republicans owed Susan Rice an apology after they misled the country about the Benghazi emails -- a story that was hyped by his network's correspondent Jonathan Karl. After Stephanopoulos feigned ignorance on the matter, Pfeiffer should have told him ABC owes her an apology as well.

Karl gave a sorry excuse for apology this weekend, saying that he regrets that "the email was quoted incorrectly." More like he regrets getting caught. So to sum things up after reading his statement and listening to this interview -- not only is ABC refusing to come clean about the names of the Republicans who lied to them and conned them into hyping and giving new life to this so-called scandal that was being ignored by most of the networks other than Fox until Karl and ABC decided to lend it some credibility -- Stephanopoulos decides to sit there and pretend he doesn't have any idea why someone might want Republicans to apologize to Susan Rice after what they did to her.

Instead he decided to ask Pfeiffer about the emails without a word on Karl's "apology" or any acknowledgement of his network helping to spread lies for Republicans by hyping doctored versions of them. Stephanopoulos should have been opening This Week with a statement from the network on their shoddy "journalism" and with Karl's statement instead of trying to pretend it didn't happen.

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Rand Paul Continues Attacks on Clinton Over Benghazi

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Sen. Rand Paul continued with his charges from earlier this week that former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton had "her fingerprints all over these talking points" on the Benghazi attack and claims that she never "really accepted culpability" because she failed to resign shortly after the tragedy. When CNN's Candy Crowley asked Paul if he was worried about appearing to politicize the controversy by making his remarks in Iowa and other presidential battleground states, Paul dismissed the notion that his remarks were based on politics.

It's laughable that anyone expects us to believe that Republicans care one iota about this trumped up Benghazi story for any other reason than to muddy up Hillary Clinton, because they all assume she's going to be the front-runner for the next presidential election.

And I'd say it's safe to assume Rand Paul is going to take up his father's mantle and make a career out of perpetually running for president as a fundraising scheme. It worked out pretty well for his dad and the press is already propping him up because of it -- with this being the latest example -- so why not?

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Yes, who better to ask about "government accountability" than war criminal Donald Rumsfeld? It seems the producers of Meet the Press and host David Gregory are doing their best to become a parody of Fox "News" - because that's certainly what they gave us this Sunday by allowing Rumsfeld on there for this softball interview.

We didn't get any questions about the invasion of Iraq, or torture, or whether Rumsfeld has any remorse about his actions during the Bush administration, but we were treated to him being asked about sexual assaults in the military, the IRS, Benghazi and of course he got plenty of time to hawk his new book.

Note to David Gregory: Here's how an interview with Donald Rumsfeld should be conducted if you want to call yourself a "journalist." -- Kai Ryssdal asks Rumsfeld some of the questions we've all wanted to ask.

UPDATE: Here's the transcript if you don't have the stomach for watching the clip.

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While others in the media are finally acknowledging that the Benghazi "scandal" which Fox has been pushing for months on end is nothing but a witch hunt and that ABC's big "scoop" on White House emails just left egg on their face and was nothing but lies being fed to them by Republicans, what are they doing over at Fox?

You guessed it... still scandal-mongering over Benghazi. And of course there was no acknowledgement by anyone on the panel of Fox News Watch this Saturday that the Republicans were caught feeding lies to ABC News. In Fox-land, the talking points by Susan Rice are still supposedly a scandal. They're carping that the White House doesn't treat the press nicely enough to suit them and that they don't know how to handle their messaging properly -- because we all know if they were better at messaging and nicer to the press, Fox would then give them a fair shake, right? They haven't managed to make this fake scandal of theirs stick, but they're still grasping at straws to be outraged about.

I thought that maybe they would just move on, since they've got themselves a couple of new drummed up "scandals" to chase after as well, but apparently they're not ready to let this witch hunt go any time soon.



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After taking her viewers through the whole, long, ugly mess with ABC's big "scoop" on the Benghazi emails and the how the story pretty much fizzled out by the end of the week with the discovery that Republicans were responsible for doctoring the supposed quotes from the emails that they published, Rachel Maddow gave her two cents on ABC still protecting the sources who lied to them.

MADDOW: And now, part of the scandal here is a press scandal. You know what? When you get used like this and you end up publishing false information, false quotes, you have to correct it. But the bigger scandal here is not a process matter, not a press matter. There's a very stark fact that somebody in Congress right now, or somebody working for somebody in Congress right now, a staffer, concocted a big lie to try to make the White House look very desperately bad on this Benghazi scandal that they otherwise have not been able to get traction on.

Who told the lie? And a note to my journalist pals who got involved in this scandal. If your source lied to you, they are not actually a source. They are a con artist and you are their victim. It means you don't have to protect them any more. They're not a source.

When you get lied to, when you are a tool of somebody else's deception, when you get lied to, the person lying to you is no longer a source, they are news. Their lie to you is itself news and you can report that news. Republican Congressional offices shopped a false dossier as if it was a White House email. That is a story. The office and the staffers and the members of Congress maybe who did that... that is news. And if you know who it is, you can say so.

Boy do I wish they'd take her advice, but again, I'm not holding my breath.



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Bill Maher had some advice for Obama haters who have been going crazy over what Susan Rice said on the Sunday shows and who are claiming that the drummed up Benghazi B.S. by Republicans is somehow the "worst scandal in American history" during his New Rules segment this Friday night.

As he noted after running through the list of scandals that are actually worse which we went through during Republican administrations, if anyone actually believes that nonsense about Benghazi "then your hard-on for Obama has lasted for more than four hours, and you need to call a doctor."

That about sums up what's been wrong with Republicans ever since the black guy got elected president, but I don't think they're going to find a cure for their hatred any time soon.



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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.

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Someone needs to tell Fox regular Charles Krauthammer that the picture he's demanding to see of President Obama on the night of the attack in Benghazi, Libya has been available on the White House Flickr page since at least January:

Via Media Matters: Krauthammer Still Hasn't Seen This Photo Of Obama From Night Of Benghazi Attack:

Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer continued to hype the right-wing myth that President Obama was missing on the night of the September 11, 2012 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

During a May 14 panel discussion on the Benghazi investigation during Fox News' Special Report, Krauthammer requested photographic evidence of President Obama's whereabouts on the night of the Benghazi attack:

KRAUTHAMMER: And where was the president on that night? We've all seen the video and the pictures--well the picture of the situation room--of Obama on the night of the Osama raid. And everybody looks at that, oh yeah he was really involved in that. Show me a picture of where he was on the night of the attack in Libya.

The claim that Obama was absent the night of the Benghazi attack has been repeatedly debunked, both by former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin E. Dempsey.

Some of Krauthammer's other tales he was telling in the segment have been debunked here and here as well.