The other day I wrote that as investigators got closer and closer to the truth about Benghazi democrats would max out the volume on the shriek meter. It’s begun.
The are five stages to a scandal. They are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
We have already passed Stage 1: Denial
House Democrats Dismiss Existence Of Obama Scandals
Rep. Gerry Connolly refuses to use the word “scandal.”
After two weeks of brutal news cycles — with frenzied Republicans and a hyped up press corps aggressively covering every inch of three controversies surrounding the Obama administration — Connolly insists this too, shall pass.
“I think when the media repeats the word ‘scandals’ you are repeating partisan lines. They are issues that have occurred that have to be addressed. I don’t think they rise to the level of a scandal,” he said. “We had a bunch of idiots at IRS in Cincinnati who didn’t know how to aggregate a flood of tax-exempt applications … but this is not some major scandal in the order of magnitude like Watergate. That’s absurd.”
Connolly was also critical of the way Republicans have investigated the terrorist attack in Benghazi that killed four Americans.
“Don’t get me wrong, Benghazi was a tragedy, but it has no traction. They can continue to talk about it to feed their base, they forget we have a base too. Everytime they do that they are firing up our base too and alienating moderate and swing voters.”
Democrats: No scandal in Benghazi deaths
WASHINGTON (AP) — Politicians love few things better than a scandal to trip up their opponents, and Republicans hope last year’s fatal attack on U.S. diplomats in Libya will do exactly that to Hillary Rodham Clinton and other Democrats.
History suggests it might be a tough lift. The issue is complex, the next presidential election is more than three years away, and a number of reports and officials have disputed criticisms of Clinton’s role when she was secretary of state.
Still, Republicans and conservative talk hosts are hammering away at Clinton’s and the Obama administration’s handling of the 8-month-old tragedy. A daylong House Oversight Committee hearing Wednesday starred three State Department officials invited by Republicans.
Security was poorly handled in Benghazi, Libya, they said, and administration officials later tried to obscure what happened.
Stage 2: Anger
Fox’s Brit Hume shouts down Democrat after she compares Benghazi to Area 51
Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume on Sunday lashed out in anger after former Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) mocked conservatives’ obsession with Benghazi by comparing to conspiracy theories like aliens at Area 51 and the murder of Vince Foster.
During a panel segment on Fox News Sunday, Harman pointed out that recently-released emails about how the Obama administration prepared talking points after the Benghazi attack did not prove that there was a conspiracy to deceive the public.
“We didn’t have actionable intelligence about 9/11,” host Chris Wallace argued. “But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”
“No, it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, and I would call that an intelligence failure,” Harman agreed. “This was an intelligence failure, but it wasn’t a conspiracy.”
“And there aren’t aliens in Area 51, and Vice Foster wasn’t murdered,” she added in frustration. “And it’s time to move on, and focus on the real problems in Libya.”
“You’re right, there wasn’t a conspiracy in the United States to mount the Benghazi attack,” Hume shot back, raising his voice. “The question was, in the aftermath of the attack, when the administration sent its U.N. ambassador out to explain it to everybody — and she did so falsely — that there wasn’t a conspiracy to create the false talking points she used!”
Democrats walk out of Benghazi Hearing Before Families Testify
During the second portion of a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing about Benghazi Thursday on Capitol Hill, the majority of Democrats on the Committee left the room and refused to listen to the testimony of Patricia Smith and Charles Woods. Ms. Smith is the mother of Sean Smith, an information management officer killed in the 9/11 Benghazi attack. Charles Woods is the father of Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods, who was also killed.
Oversight Democrats demand end to Benghazi probe
All 17 Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are demanding that Chairman Darrell Issa end his year-and-a-half-long probe into the Benghazi attacks, which left four Americans dead and have become a catchphrase signifying conservative suspicion of the Obama administration.
Led by ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the move to end what Democrats dismiss as a “partisan investigation” is part of a broader effort by party leaders on Capitol Hill to finally move past the political furor surrounding the incident.
Democrats and Obama administration officials complain that the probe has cost millions of dollars while forcing the Pentagon and other federal agencies to respond to seemingly endless congressional demands for more information, all without yielding any coverup or conspiracy. They argue that the investigation has not produced any information related to allegations that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to “stand down” military units that could have been sent to Benghazi in a bid to save U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and the other besieged Americans.
This will cost nothing in contrast to Michelle Obama’s vacations.
And the anger is deepening
Jay Carney rails against Benghazi ‘conspiracy theories’
White House press secretary Jay Carney dismissed a GOP special committee tasked with investigating the Benghazi terrorist attack as illegitimate and accused conservatives of stoking “conspiracy theories” about the Obama administration’s reaction to the Sept. 11, 2012, strike.
“There is a problem when you have so many conspiracy theories that get knocked down by the facts and yet, the adherents to those theories only become more convinced that the facts aren’t what they so clearly are,” Carney said, calling the special committee “so partisan in nature.”
Carney went on to criticize the “information loop” on Benghazi, saying that Republicans and “certain media outlets” were fueling a false narrative on the attack that killed four Americans.
The White House has been on the defensive in the wake of the release of an email showing a senior administration official promoting the false theory that an anti-Islam video was the root cause of the attack.
Bargaining will be the next phase of the scandal. Watch for it. In the meanwhile there are more developments. It turns out that there are differences between the emails the White House sent to Congress and those it was forced to release by Judicial Watch.
Documents reviewed by Fox News show there are differences between Benghazi emails released through the federal courts to the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch and emails released to the House oversight committee as part of its investigation into the attacks.
The discrepancies are fueling allegations the administration is holding back documents to Congress.
“The key question is whether Congress now has all the documents,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, a member of the oversight committee, said. As for differences between the two sets of documents, Chaffetz alleged: “They are playing games. The classification and redactions are different. Why should Judicial Watch get more than Congress after issuing a subpoena?”
The emails published by Judicial Watch last week, which showed additional White House involvement in shaping the public explanation of what happened, helped trigger the announcement Friday by House Speaker John Boehner of a select committee to investigate.
and check this out:
While the text and subject line are redacted in full for both Judicial Watch and Capitol Hill, there are unexplained differences in the classification. The emails, originally marked “unclassified,” were retroactively classified in February by the Department of State.
The email released to Judicial Watch is now marked “SECRET,” and the same email released to the Oversight Committee is marked “Confidential.” Both are marked to “DECLASSIFY” on Sept. 13, 2037 — 25 years after the terrorist attack which killed four Americans.
Fox News also reviewed an email from Sept. 12, 2012 from Rice to members of the U.S. team at the United Nations where Rice was U.S. ambassador at the time. This unclassified email, whose subject line and text are also redacted in full, was retroactively classified on April 16, 2014, one day before it was released. While the contents and subject line were redacted in both versions, the email released as a result of the federal lawsuit to Judicial Watch does include the names, while the other does not.
democrats are now threatening to boycott the Select Committee.
A former US Attorney thinks that’s great:
Former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova says he’ll be happy if Democrats decide not to appoint members to the special select committee on Benghazi that Republicans plan to establish.
“I’m delighted the Democrats don’t want to participate. All they would do is obstruct,” diGenova told WMAL talk radio in Washington, D.C. Monday morning.
“The president is going to pay a price ultimately,” he added. “It may not be today, it may not be tomorrow, but his performance and Leon Panetta’s was shameful that night.”
A democrat boycott would prove two things- first, that there is something to hide and second, that democrats have no interest in the truth.
And the clown formerly known as Jay Carney hinted that the White House might refuse to cooperate, inferring that the Select Committee was “illegitimate.”
“We have always cooperated with legitimate oversight,” Carney said this afternoon during the daily White House briefing. Asked whether the panel qualified as “legitimate,” he said: “I think if you look at what even some Republicans have said, it certainly casts doubt on the legitimacy of an effort that is so partisan in nature.”
“You know, at some point, you just have to assume that Republicans will continue this because it feeds a political objective of some sort,” he added. “At the same time you have to ask, ‘What about the American people who want to see Congress work for them?’”
Constitutional crisis, anyone?
What is it that democrats really are afraid of? If there’s nothing there, this won’t take long at all. democrats can’t be bothered about the cost. These hearings won’t cost a penny compared to a Michelle Obama vacation.
I want to know where Obama was during the attack. We know he wasn’t in the situation room. I want to know who concocted the video canard. I want to know why Obama lied to the United Nations. I want them to tell us why Chris Stevens really was in Benghazi. Trey Gowdy says he has more evidence and I cannot wait to see it. There is one simple statement made by Mike Morrell that underscores the absolute need for this Committee’s investigation:
“The analysts said from the get-go that al Qaeda was involved in this attack.”
Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance.
They’re coming.
UPDATE
Trey Gowdy’s life has been threatened by liberals:
The U.S. Capitol Police are investigating threatening emails against Rep. Trey Gowdy, the South Carolina Republican recently tapped to lead a special panel probing the Benghazi terrorist attacks.
The investigation follows emails sent to news outlets warning that Gowdy would be “assassinated.”
The Capitol Police would not comment on the scope of the investigation but Officer Shennell Antrobus confirmed that there is “an active, open investigation.”
Gowdy was tapped on Monday to lead a new select committee on Benghazi. His office referred all questions to the Capitol Police.
UPDATE
The bargaining phase has begun.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.