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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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I'm not sure what else Rep. Adam Smith expected to hear from host Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday this weekend, since his network has been in full fake Benghazi outrage mode ever since the attacks in Libya, and taking the insanity to new heights ever since ABC helped legitimize the witch hunt last week -- but I was glad to see Wallace get some push back for continually parroting the GOP's talking points.

Wallace's response to some of Smith's criticisms was to say "I'm not a potted plant." That's always the case when he has a Democrat on the air. Every once in a while he decides to stop acting like one when a Republican is on.

Congressman Tears Into Fox News Host For Obsessing Over Benghazi Talking Points:

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) tore into Fox News’ Chris Wallace and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) for obsessing over the talking points U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice used when talking to the media in the days following the attack in Benghazi, Libya rather than focusing on identifying the perpetrators of the killings. “I think the desire of the Republicans to create a scandal here has really undermined any ability to have a credible look at what actually happened,” Smith said during an appearance on Fox News Sunday alongside Rogers.

While acknowledging that the administration’s initial assessment of Bengazi did not reflect what officials later learned about the incident, Smith criticized Fox for suggesting that that Rice’s remarks on five Sunday news shows presented a definitive picture of the events of Sep. 11, 2012.

“[The administration] didn’t reach conclusions the way you just presented that was that by the Sunday afterwards that the administration said here is what happened, here is our conclusion,” Smith explained. “But the president never said, no terrorism, no Al Qaeda. There was a dispute about how soon to lead to specific conclusions that now is being made into Watergate and Iran-Contra.” Read on...

As they went onto explain, President Obama and Hillary Clinton did describe the attacks as terrorism. For anyone having trouble keeping track of the latest round of lies, Media Matters has updates here: The Truth About The Right's Latest Benghazi Attacks .

As Smith rightfully noted during his interview, it would be a lot more productive if they focused on what actually happened and finding those that perpetrated the attacks, rather than debating how a memo was put together. Instead, now it's not just Fox, but all of our corporate media has decided to turn this into the next big "scandal." It's disgusting to watch to put it mildly.

Transcript via Fox below the fold.

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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....

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Unlike another former presidential candidate who's showing up on those shows literally every other week because he apparently can't get enough of hearing himself talk in front of the cameras, we found out Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is not quite so fond of them during the hearings on Benghazi this Wednesday.

Apparently Clinton not appearing on the Sunday shows right after the attack in Benghazi was of great concern to wingnut Rep. "You Lie" Joe Wilson and here's how Clinton responded to him when asked about it: Clinton: Going On Sunday Shows ‘Is Not My Favorite Thing To Do’:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday conceded that going on the Sunday morning talk shows "is not my favorite thing to do." After the Benghazi attack in September 2012, UN Ambassador Susan Rice went on the Sunday programs to deliver the U.S. message.

"There are other things I prefer to do on Sunday mornings," Clinton told the House Foreign Affairs Committee, adding that she hasn't appeared on a Sunday show in more than a year.

Wilson continued his line of questioning, reading from an op-ed written by a retired foreign service officer, William Boudreau last year. Clinton addressed the majority of the concerns addressed in the column and here's more on one of the many right wing memes being pushed in the article, which is that the White House and their national security team were supposedly watching the attacks in real time. They weren't and this article explains where that lie originated before the right wing blogs and Fox picked it up and ran with it: How a Real News Story Became the 'Obama Watched Them Die' Meme.

Clinton also discussed something I hadn't heard before on the issue of why they did not have Marines guarding the compound.

CLINTON: Because historically, Marine guards are at posts where there is classified information. Marine guards have not historically had the responsibility for protecting personnel. Their job is to protect, and if necessary, destroy classified material. At our compound, there was no classified material.

I have no doubt that no matter what Clinton said during these hearings, it won't satisfy the right who was just itching to take her down and who wanted to turn the tragedy in Benghazi into some grand conspiracy theory in the run up to the presidential election. I don't think the right did themselves any favors putting the likes of Wilson and his counterparts in the House, or flame throwers in the Senate like Ron Johnson and Rand Paul on display for all to see.

I will be surprised if we don't see another bump in her popularity ratings once some new polls come out following this fiasco. I'm not a big fan of Hillary Clinton, but I gained some new respect for her after watching the way she handled herself during these hearings. She's got a lot more patience than I would have had for these Republicans throwing every ounce of mud against the wall to see what would stick over this drummed up fake scandal they've been screaming about for months.

Transcript of the exchange below the fold.

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Fox News host Geraldo Rivera on Friday said that "angry, old, white men" like Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) demanded Susan Rice give up any ambition to be secretary of state as a "minimum price" for the September attacks in Benghazi.

Speaking to the hosts of Fox & Friends, Rivera explained that female Republican Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Susan Collins (R-ME) gave cover to "the angry, old, white men" by joining in their attack on Rice "and then it couldn't be a male-female issue against this poor, beleaguered black woman."

"Angry, old, white men?" asked co-host Gretchen Carlson.

"I am speaking expansively and metaphorically and for effect here," Rivera insisted. "But it became clear she couldn't be the beleaguered damsel in distress -- the poor, black, embattled ambassador. It became clear that she was the minimum price... she was the minimum price to pay for the administrations dissembling on the facts and circumstances of the Benghazi attacks. She was going to be the minimum price that the Democrats, that the Obama administration had to pay for that clear offense."

"In Washington, you make minimum prices. She's the sacrificial lamb."

NBC News White House correspondent Chuck Todd, however, on Thursday said that Rice had also been a victim of conservative media outlets like Fox News.

"She became victim of the attacks. ... and it was all driven, in many cases, by conservative outlets who were making her the center of the Benghazi story," Todd told MSNBC's Martin Bashir. "It's too easy now in the way our media landscape is set up: You can become collateral damage in a hurry, in the way you can just get piled on — whether it's Twitter, whether its advocacy journalism, talk radio. ... That's what she was. Make no mistake, she was political collateral damage."

(h/t: Mediaite)

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Rep. Tom Cole, a Republican from Oklahoma, says that if lawmakers are going to go after U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice over her initial public assessment of the September attack in Benghazi then maybe Congress should also look at how President George W. Bush pushed bad intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Dan Senor, who worked to spin the Iraq war for the Bush administration as the chief spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), told a Sunday panel on ABC that Rice deserved to be scrutinized because she was "front and center" as the voice of the Obama administration after the Benghazi attack.

"I spoke with one senator who met with her this week," Senor explained. "The consensus is -- this individual conveyed -- is the meetings did not go well. Benghazi was a serious issue. We can debate whether or not Susan Rice should be blamed for it."

"There is a legitimate concern that she was used five days after the fact to propagate a story that we should have known at the time was not the case," Cole agreed, adding that there were also "serious questions about our own intelligence people."

"We saw President Bush out front defending something wasn't true too," the Oklahoma Republican recalled. "Maybe we should ask those guys some questions too."

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) pointed out that 241 Marines were killed in Lebanon in 1982 under President Ronald Reagan and "we came together and said that this is a national tragedy and blame was not parceled out the way that it is now."

Senor, however, insisted that there was "accountability" after the Marines were killed because Reagan appointed a fact-finding committee to investigate.

"Part of the problem here is in the lead up to the election when Benghazi got a lot of attention, the president said, 'Don't talk about Benghazi. If you do, you're politicizing the issue,'" Senor opined. "So you weren't allowed to -- [former GOP nominee Mitt] Romney and others weren't allowed to talk about it in the political context. Here we are after the election and there's no full airing. We still don't know exactly what happened."

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I've got to wonder if anyone over at Fox ever asked if something Bill Maher or any other left-leaning comedian said on the air was an indication of the rest of the media "coming around" on anything? I would guess the answer to that question is "No."

But that's the way Fox News Watch host Jon Scott opened up his show this Saturday, prior to yet another round of beating the dead Benghazi-gate horse. Fox does always have their double standards when it comes to "celebrities" though. If you're a Republican, you must be taken seriously at all times and might even end up being one of their idols, like the revisionist version of St. Ronnie they love to prop up. But if you're a liberal, you're going to find yourself either being completely ignored or scorned and mocked.

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They just can't stop themselves. Even after Fox, John McCain and the right wing have been completely discredited with their fake outrage over what happened during the attacks in Benghazi back in September, they're just going to keep beating this horse long after it's dead. Case in point, here was Fox's Greta Van Susteren and the Quitta From Wasilla, Sarah Palin, with more over the top attacks against Rice.

As I noted in my other post, there are legitimate questions that she ought to be asked if she is nominated for Secretary of State, one being investments in the companies involved in the Keystone pipeline, and I've read some other articles questioning investments in firms with ties to Iran. If they want to ask her questions about what companies she and her husband are investing in and whether there are conflicts of interest there, by all means, have at it during the hearings. But this nonsense over these Benghazi attacks is so over the top, it's frankly just giving me a giant headache seeing them still going after her in this manner.

What was even more disgusting than the interview with Palin was the intro above, where they took footage of various members of Congress, and intentionally made them look like something out of a horror movie. Be afraid... be very afraid!!! Those evil, scary black women were standing up for Susan Rice and heaven forbid calling out Grandpa McGrumpy for the fact that racism and sexism might just possibly have something to do with his attacks on Susan Rice. The horror!

As to Van Susteren's interview with Palin, you can read more about that over at Mediaite, where, par for the course as we've come to expect from most of their posts where Fox "news" is involved, it was pretty well substance-free over whether Van Susteren or Palin had an ounce of legitimacy to their complaints (they don't), was just more of the same that we've already heard from McCain's carping to the media. He's got questions. They haven't been answered. When is the administration going to let everyone know who changed the talking points? But, as Rachel Maddow already pointed out this week, those questions for the most part, have already been answered.

The ones that haven't will be during the upcoming Congressional hearings and one hell of a lot faster than we ever got any answers, if any, about the attacks on 9/11 that happened on George W. Bush's watch, but don't dare bring that up to any Republicans, because they'll just dismiss any comparisons to how they reacted to terrorist attacks back when Bush was in office.

That's different, because Republican presidents and their administrations can do no wrong, as opposed to Democratic presidents, who they'll never even cede the least bit of respect or common courtesy to for holding the office, as long as they think it will score them cheap political points. You say something bad about one of their own though and of course that's akin to treason. Our first bi-racial Democratic president... not so much.

Video below the fold of the Palin interview and transcript of Rachel Maddow's points on McCain's similar madness from her show this Wednesday, debunking their continued, ridiculous over the top attacks over what happened in Benghazi.

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Republicans have been having a hissy fit over the potential nomination of Ambassador Susan Rice for Secretary of State, and I agree with Rachel Maddow, Karoli and others' assessment that the likely reason we're seeing the "three amigos" and company on television screaming about her being unqualified, is they want Sen. John Kerry nominated instead so Scott Brown can potentially make his way back into the Senate.

What has been ignored by all of them and by the better part, but not all of our corporate media, is a real reason to have issues with her nomination, and that's her conflict of interest over the Keystone XL pipeline.

From Democracy Now's headlines this Thursday: Report: Susan Rice Holds Stock in Keystone XL Oil Firm:

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice is receiving criticism of a different kind after it was revealed she holds up to $600,000 worth of stock in the firm behind the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline. TransCanada is seeking federal permission to transport Canadian tar sands oil to the U.S. Gulf Coast. If confirmed as secretary of state, Rice could play a key role in determining the fate of the pipeline.

I think if Ambassador Rice would like the job as Secretary of State, she needs to be divesting herself of those stocks, and if she doesn't and is nominated, she may find herself having problems with more Senators than just McCain, Graham and Ayotte, who look like they've all lost their freaking minds over this Benghazi nonsense.