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PoliGAF 2013 |OT2| Worth 77% of OT1
- Thread starter The Librarian
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Well, justice has been served.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...bda4-11e2-9b09-1638acc3942e_story.html?hpid=z
The guy didn't actually start serving as acting commissioner until after the IRS stopped misbehaving, but who's counting?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...bda4-11e2-9b09-1638acc3942e_story.html?hpid=z
The guy didn't actually start serving as acting commissioner until after the IRS stopped misbehaving, but who's counting?
Oh come on. One time I asked Obama if these jeans made me look fat, and he said "no." Guess what? Everyone disagreed. But you don't hear me calling for his impeachment, now do you?
This is more worth getting angry about. The Obama administration will fire the hell out of someone who isn't even at fault if the right wing is throwing an exceptionally high pitched hissy fit. Getting pretty crowded under that bus. :|
Eh, bloodless firing. They would be replacing him soon anyways with an actual commissioner in response to this.
speculawyer
Member
But they changed the story within a few days and the GOP had a whole month and a half of Benghazi "truth" running 24/7 on Fox News. I think the story did hurt Obama. But most people, with good reason, didn't see it as that big of a deal.
Well, it isn't really. I mean, he did have a job there that he now no longer has.
el retorno
Member
He'll never put anyone in charge. He has to at least have an acting director.
curlyfriski
Banned
Except it's unknown if the new law would have changed the outcome of the AP subpoena, and the Obama administration didn't agree he shouldn't have these powers when they helped kill the 2009 version of the shield law. And it's far more than just Republicans who are criticizing the DOJ's actions.
empty vessel
Member
The bending over backwards by Democrats to appease radical conservatives is not pleasant to watch.
Link
The Autumn Wind
I hate it.
empty vessel
Member
It's Shirley Sherrod all over again. Just unbelievably knee jerk.
No man, if we just fire this one IRS guy the GOP will totally play ball with us.
It's frustrating and pointless.
I assume those guys are being canned also, but since it's not a position made by appointment, there's more "paperwork" to work through.
TacticalFox88
Banned
I'm now convinced we got to be a superpower completely by luck, with the amount of outright stupid people we have both in government and in the populace.
empty vessel
Member
About what exactly? I generally find Stewart to be pretty much as quick to cave to the radical right as the Obama Administration.
The notion she was advancing that it was because the American people didn't call their Senators enough that they didn't vote for background checks. And not that her caucus unanimously was dedicated to avoiding a victory for Obama.
empty vessel
Member
Ah. So not related to any ginned up scandals.
el retorno
Member
The media is complicit and part of the problem. They think that by "asking the hard questions" (nothing they asked are actually the hard questions) they're doing the country a service when in reality their stuck in their bubble and no one really gives a shit
We got to be a superpower by our policies, ones that promoted social mobility and a social safety net (and with quite a bit a luck that we have the best land on earth). We gave that up in the 80s and have been furiously giving shit away to appease corporate america ever since.
speculawyer
Member
So the same bullshit Kay Bailey Hutchison recently spouted when she was interviewed on the show.
ClassyPenguin
Banned
Politics and rational actions are not something that goes hand in hand.
Reading GK Chesterton's What I saw in America. Christ, he was an overbearing narcissist.
I haven't watched the interview yet. But I agree with first half of that statement. Politicians only respond to pressure. Self preservation is the prime directive.
Gun control advocates need to get organised.
RustyNails
Member
He has to. Otherwise he won't get people like Jim DeMint on his show. So he holds GOP's ideas to scrutiny just like you would any respectable idea. But GOP ideas (TRICKLEDOWNS or 0 tax infinite revenue) need to be laughed out of the room instead and he can't or won't do it, lest he become a PG-13 Bill Maher.
I wouldn't expect something like that from Olympia Snowe. She's about as liberal as you get with an (R) next to your name.
polyh3dron
Banned
So is the GOP going to be in BENGHAZIBENGHAZIBENGHAZI mode until 2016 now? I am in utter disbelief that they somehow brute-forced these trumped up claims into getting some actual traction. That IS what happened, right?
speculawyer
Member
I hope they keep it up. It has nowhere to go. All they can do is BENGHAZI! BENGHAZI! BENGHAZI!
Can they arrest anyone? No. Can they impeach anyone? No. Can they hold hearings and say BENGHAZI! BENGHAZI! BENGHAZI!? Yes. People are going to grow tired of the 'scandal' that never goes anywhere.
Link
The Autumn Wind
And that pressure (and money) was
coming from the NRA. Those senators didn't give a shit what their constituents wanted. The diving approval numbers back that up.
speculawyer
Member
I'm still utterly stunned by that Eugenics report on immigration. What the hell were they thinking?
Can anyone who can speak spanish let me know if that got big play in the Spanish language press? I can't imagine that it didn't. They like completely burned their bridge to latinos.
RustyNails
Member
I read that thing and what bothered me was not the hoaxy conclusions the guy cooked up, but the very matter-of-factness way he went about it. It reminded me of the Compendium of that crazy Norway Killer that murdered 70 kids.
The GOP (and Fox News) narrative suggests people only didn't care and it didn't have an impact because only Fox News was giving it the coverage it "deserved". By extension, in their fantasy world, Obama should have lost over this.
Jack Remington
Banned
Do you realize how difficult it is for elected officials to effectively oversee federal agencies?
There are close to three million federal employees in the U.S. spread across a huge number of agencies. Constant oversight is impossible. There are two main types of oversight established in the political science: police patrol, in which Congress or the President actively search for wrongdoing at the agency level, or fire alarm oversight, in which they wait for citizens or the media to expose problems, and then they work to fix them. McCubbins and Schwartz did a good study of this in the 1980's; they found that fire alarm oversight is far and away the most common, simply because monitoring every single agency for violation of statute/standards or other wrongdoing is far beyond their capabilities.
This doesn't stop people from decrying "failures of leadership" every time someone in an agency fucks up though.
Oh, Jesus fucking Christ.
Anyone who thinks like that has literally no idea about how the government operates, or why it needs to operate the way it does.
What else can they do? The scandal is under its own momentum now and the same is about to happen with the IRS news. They lack the hard evidence to prove any connections and the 41% of their voters who think Benghazi is the biggest scandal in American history are going to want either Obama or Hillary to take the fall. They're trapped because they are so desperate to manipulate their voters.
Black Mamba
Member
When the Dems control everything in 2016 via Hillary, the right is going to finally implode.
Some believed they'd implode after 2012 but I knew it would take til 2016 massacre to realize how disjointed they became. The party will fracture and it will be a good thing for our country.
Jack Remington
Banned
I'm hoping they run these non-stories hard enough that we get a 1998-esque midterm election next year.
el retorno
Member
I haven't really watched much of univision or telemundo recently but there are articles basically saying the same thing as the english press. Its not anything special or shocking, conservatives being hostile to latino immigration isn't a shock
but it did make the Spanish press.
http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2013/05/11/actualidad/1368293943_697544.html
And this was funny
Basically the lower the IQ in childhood the higher the chances of racism as an adult
racists are stupid, its just science
Jack Remington
Banned
Dr. Doom said it best: racism is based on assumptions.
Assumptions can sometimes serve as necessary shortcuts, but they can also dramatically weaken your critical thinking ability and leave you looking like a fool when they turn out to be wrong.
Assumptions can sometimes serve as necessary shortcuts, but they can also dramatically weaken your critical thinking ability and leave you looking like a fool when they turn out to be wrong.
Black Mamba
Member
WASHINGTON (CNN) - The White House released more than 100 pages of e-mails on Wednesday in a bid to quell critics who say President Barack Obama and his aides played politics with national security following the deadly terror attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.
The e-mails detail the complex back and forth between the CIA, State Department, and the White House in developing unclassified talking points that were used to underpin a controversial and slow-to-evolve explanation of events last September 11.
You can read all the e-mails here.
The talking points have become a political flashpoint in a long-running battle between the Obama administration and Republicans, who accuse it of not bolstering security prior to the attack, of botching the response to it, and of misleading the public for political gain less than two months before the November election.
The GOP suggests that the administration removed specific terror references and stuck to an explanation - later proved untrue - that the attack was result of a spontaneous demonstration over an anti-Muslim film that was produced in the United States. There had been such a demonstration in Cairo.
The Benghazi attack killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
The White House and its allies in Congress have made the case that any confusion and conflicting information in the early hours and days after the attacks stemmed from the "fog of war" - not any deliberate effort to mislead the American people about the source of the attacks.
Obama has called Republican concentration on the talking points a political "side show."
Senior Obama administration officials contend the e-mails demonstrate the process of developing talking points for members of Congress to use in media interviews was not focused on politics but rather on events.
For instance, some of the e-mails expressed caution about what should be said publicly during an FBI investigation while others centered on the strength of intelligence at the time.
The White House said the e-mails it provided to inquiring lawmakers months ago and released on Wednesday aim to paint a fuller picture following what it described as a series of selective and inaccurate e-mails recently appearing in media reports.
"Collectively, these e-mails make clear that the interagency process, including the White House's interactions, were focused on providing the facts as we knew them based on the best information available at the time and protecting an ongoing investigation," said White House spokesman Eric Schultz.
The e-mails indicate the CIA was likely the lead organization in developing the talking points with the State Department recommending significant changes.
Changes made to talking points
Following the original drafting of them, CIA analysts made a handful of significant changes, according to administration sources.
In the CIA's original set, the first bullet point included a reference that the Benghazi attack was "spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. consulate and subsequently its annex."
It noted assessments could change "as additional information is collected and analyzed."
The second bullet point noted the attackers in Benghazi were comprised of "a mix of individuals from across many sections of Libyan society."
It specified that intelligence officials did not know whether Islamic extremists, including those aligned with al Qaeda, had participated in the attack.
This bullet was later changed after a CIA analyst questioned whether the current intelligence supported the assertion that extremists had participated in the attack.
Another CIA officer agreed, stating intelligence placed extremists at a protest but could not support the notion that extremists were responsible for the American deaths.
The editing team revised it so that talking point read, "The crowd almost certainly was a mix of individuals from across many sectors of Libyan society. The investigation is on-going as to who is responsible. That being said, we do know that Islamic extremists participated in the violent demonstrations."
The second CIA change was to the swap out the word "attacks" with "demonstrations" in the first bullet point, which an administration source said was to eliminate an awkward and illogical account of events.
A third change the CIA made was to remove the name al Qaeda from the second talking point, which was done because it didn't want to get ahead of the FBI's investigation of the attack.
A key point of contention revolves around statements by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who took the most direct criticism because of her assertions in television interviews days after the attack that linked it to the demonstration.
State Department concern
A final CIA addition to the talking points was a warning about the security situation at the time of the armed assault. But that warning was eventually removed.
Senior administration officials say that long before the CIA heard concerns from the State Department about warnings being put in the talking points,
CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell advocated for removing the warnings out, since he felt the talking points should focus on what happened in Benghazi on September 11, rather than the previous six months.
He also felt it was unprofessional and unfair for the CIA to cite its own warnings to the State Department, officials said.
Victoria Nuland, then the State Department spokeswoman, had raised concerns over the CIA's first version, saying that they went further than what she was allowed to say about the attack during her briefings.
She also questioned information about CIA warnings of extremist threats linked to al Qaeda in Benghazi and eastern Libya, saying "the penultimate point could be abused by members (of Congress) to beat the State Department for not paying attention to agency warnings so why do we want to feed that either? Concerned..."
Rep. Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee which is investigating the matter, told CNN's "Situtation Room" that his staff wants to digest the e-mails. He stressed that they were a selected set of documents as released and the committee is still seeking a range of other information.
What the e-mails say
September 14, 2012
Page 6 (11:15 a.m.): The original talking points were sent by the CIA.
Page 12 (3:04 p.m.): Talking points were sent to the White House's Tommy Vietor (National Security Council spokesman) and Ben Rhodes (a top National Security aide).
Page 13 (3:27 p.m.): A top official with the CIA Office of Public Affairs says they're working on the talking points, and "will have further edits."
Page 15 (4:42 p.m.): CIA sends out a new draft for review before sending to the White House.
Page 21 (5:09 p.m.): A version of talking points is sent to the White House and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence at 5:09 p.m. This is the second draft of the talking points, when the reference to "attack" was changed to "demonstrations."
Page 26 (6:21 p.m.): The White House suggests adding the word "Cairo" to the first bullet point.
Page 28 (6:33 p.m.): Talking points are sent to the State Department. An administration official says the highlighted portions included the last sentence of the first bullet - "On 10 September we learned of social reports calling for a demonstration in front of Embassy CAIRO and that jihadists were threatening to break into the embassy."
A sentence in the second-to-last bullet was also highlighted. That sentence said "The Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al Qaeda in Benghazi and eastern Libya."
Page 29-30 (6:41 p.m.; 6:43 p.m.): Office of the Director of National Intelligence proposes an edit: "I've been very careful not to say we issued a warning," wrote Shawn S. Turner (a spokesman).
Page 32 (6:52 p.m.): White House national security staff send around their own edits, namely to the second bullet.
Page 37 (7:39 p.m.): Then-State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland sends her e-mail flagging concerns about information contained in the bullet points revealing too much information.
She also questions the point about the CIA's previous warnings to the State Department about potential attacks in Benghazi.
Page 38 (7:51 p.m.): The FBI weighs in with questions on particular pieces of intelligence.
Page 48 (8:58 p.m.): CIA sends the latest draft in talking points, which they say take into account State Department and FBI concerns.
Page 48-49 (9:24 p.m.): Nuland responds, saying the new draft's talking points "don't resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership. They are consulting w NSS."
Page 51 (9:25 p.m.): State Department Official Jacob Sullivan says "we'll work through this in the morning and get comments back."
Page 58 (9:44 p.m.): Department of Justice officials are added to the e-mail chain.
On the next day, a Saturday, officials from the State Department, CIA, FBI, the White House and the Justice Department convene at a "deputies meeting."
According to an administration official, the meeting was not focused specifically on Benghazi or Libya, but rather on the broad violence, prompted by the anti-Muslim video throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The meeting centered on keeping Americans safe.
Only at the very end were the talking points discussed, the administration official said.
The administration official said Morell relayed that he was aware of some interagency concerns about talking points, and noted he had his own concerns. He said he would take a crack at editing them and would send them to those attending the deputies meeting.
The administration official said then-Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough thanked Morell. That was the total extent of the discussion of the Benghazi talking points at the meeting.
Page 63, From Saturday: after the meeting, Morell edited the document by hand. He reordered the talking points and struck out sections about CIA warnings to the State Department on possible demonstrations, and the outbreaks of violence in the region. He also removed the reference to Islamic extremists.
Page 64 (9:49 a.m.): Original CIA drafter says the edits Morell made are "fine with me. But, pretty sure HPSCI won't like them." HPSCI refers to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Page 69-70 (11:08 a.m.) New draft of talking points is circulated to agencies for clearance.
Page 69-89 (11:12-12:43 a.m.): Officials from various agencies sign off on the talking points.
Page 74-76 (11:25-11:26 a.m.): Officials from the State Department and the White House National Security Staff ask to change the reference in the first bullet point from "US Consulate" to "diplomatic post."
http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/15/white-house-releases-100-pages-of-benghazi-e-mails/
I wish this would put this all to bed but it won't
JESSICA WILLIAMS, I LOVE YOU. (Starts at 9:45)
<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
http://www.hulu.com/watch/490166
<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
http://www.hulu.com/watch/490166
el retorno
Member
impeachment is the only response
I am not proud to be a Pennsylvanian today...
ClassyPenguin
Banned
not too far from the truth. the oceans were a wonderful barrier against the tumult of the world wars.
Its a joke firing. The Guys term as Acting Commissioner was up next month. He took an early retirement and gave the administration a patsy. Its all apart of doing something to try and get the media to go back to normal mode and let fox just be fox.
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