Friday Open Thread [5.10.13]
The Hill recounts the story about how Delaware’s own Joe Biden forced the President’s hand on gay marriage:
Last May, in the heat of President Obama’s reelection efforts, Biden went on “Meet the Press” and said he was “comfortable” with same-sex marriage. Obama had not at that point announced his support for gay marriage, and the vice president’s endorsement left the campaign lurching to clarify the administration’s position.
The following week, Obama acknowledged he had decided to make an announcement endorsing gay marriage before the election, but Biden’s comments forced his hand early. Biden at the time said he apologized to the president for putting him in that position, but in the Rolling Stone interview, Biden said Obama couldn’t have been happier.
“I got blowback from everybody but the president,” Biden said. ”I walked in that Monday, he had a big grin on his face, he put his arms around me and said, ‘Well, Joe, God love you, you say what you think.’ I knew he agreed with me. It wasn’t like he was in a different place.”
Booman wonders if the “Biden Push” was and is the seminal moment for progress on marriage equality in America. Recall that ever since, the polls have shown nothing but majority approval for it, and momentum in the states passing gay marriage legislation has been brisk.
The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson writes about the Republican obsession with Benghazi and its “witch hunt” attempt to smear Hillary Clinton:
The only coherent purpose I can discern in all of this is to sully Clinton’s record as secretary of state in case she runs for president in 2016. […] Did Clinton’s State Department fail to provide adequate security for the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi? In retrospect, obviously so. But the three diplomats who testified at the hearing gave no evidence that this failure sprang from anything other than the need to use limited resources as efficiently as possible.
House Republicans who voted to cut funding for State Department security should understand that their philosophy — small government is always better — has consequences. Bureaucrats have to make judgment calls. Sometimes they will be wrong.
Peter Fenn adds:
Benghazi was a tragedy, a terrible tragedy and because of it a light should be shone on what more can be done to protect those who serve America overseas. What our country does not deserve is a political show trial designed to vilify Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama. What we don’t need is a crass partisan effort to influence the 2016 presidential campaign.
Unlike the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal, there are no questions of illegal acts, no secret funds, no shredding of documents and no efforts to directly circumvent a law passed by Congress. People may forget that 14 administration officials were indicted and 11 convicted as a result of the arms-for-hostages scandal.
Instead, what we have after eight months of investigation, 11 congressional hearings before five committees, 20 staff briefings and 25,000 pages of documents is exactly what we started with: a tragic situation with lessons to be learned, but not a grand conspiracy. It is sad that Rep. Darrell Issa has decided not to conduct a series of hearings to help solve the problems that out diplomats face every day but rather to engage in a partisan, political witch hunt for a conspiracy and cover-up that doesn’t exist.
Twelve year old is shot in the face by an eleven year old in Camden today.
What difference does it make Hillary? I’ll tell you what difference it makes. The lie about the spontaneous protest over the obscure Muhammad youtube video, actually caused more protests that ended in deaths. That’s why.
So diplomats should speak the full truth, everything they know, as soon as they know it?
So will you people quit living in Denial about Benghazi? Now it’s not just Fox/right wing media covering its existence. Whatever the end result is, clearly this is not an invention of Fox News to destroy Obama as so many of you claim. There is a real scandal here; whether Obama is involved or not will depend on the information to be uncovered. But clearly officials in the State Department were involved in not admitting that the attack was terrorism and higher-ups were covering up information.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/05/exclusive-benghazi-talking-points-underwent-12-revisions-scrubbed-of-terror-references/
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/05/white-house-holds-offrecord-benghazi-briefing-163704.html#.UY1GksebAgw.twitter
I wouldn’t be surprised if Hillary had a nervous breakdown over the guilt. That’s probably why she went missing for so long.
Yes. When I think “Clinton” – guilt induced mental breakdown leaps to mind.
Re Issa: If Republicans worked to achieve solutions, then they wouldn’t have problems to complain about.
Re Hillary going missing: When I think of pols gone missing, first name that comes to mind is Mark Sanford.
Real scandals are lying about conditions to lure the country into two useless rules.
Real scandals are about elected officials, an entire political party actually, effectively refusing to participate in the government they are drawing their pay checks from.
Real scandals are ignoring the important stuff while trying to gin something, anything, into scoring political points instead of doing your job.
How about the congressman, who while condemning Obama , let it be known that it was a CIA site. Where is the scandal there?
Did they open the gates at DPC the right wing nuts are all posting.
Anyone who has ever had to go before a battery of cameras and answer reporters questions, knows full well that before hand, you gather 12 people in a room and hash out what you are going to say… Everyone gets a comment, everyone gets a vote, and so, of course you are going to have changes on your original document with which you walked in on, duh…. “Excuse me, can we drop the Muslim and just say extremist?” In the large scale of world opinion that was a great idea. Why inflame another riot and kill more Americans.
The more Republicans talk, the dumber they become. Can you not see this is normal protocol, and that nothing wrong took place at all? It is no different than the team McDonalds put together after finding they were a secondary media star in the Cleveland kidnappings. I bet a dumb Republican could find enough scratches and changes on that original talking point to impeach Ronald McDonald….
My goodness. You Republicans are dumb as rocks.. Of course I mean that in a nice way, Don’t feel insulted. You are….dumb…. nice… rocks.
And let us not forget who this person is who is trying to pin something that he is personally guilty of creating (no funds for security for you)… four dead in Benghazi on someone else…
It isn’t the first time he has exhibited this behavior pattern….
According to prosecutors said, William Issasold his brother’s car to Smythe European Motors in San Jose for $13,000 cash and three $1,000 traveler’s checks. Hours later, Darrell Issa reported the car stolen from the Monterey airport, near his Army post at Fort Ord. Issa was quick to blame his brother for both his run-ins with the police…..
“Everyone gets a comment, everyone gets a vote, and so, of course you are going to have changes on your original document with which you walked in on, duh…”
So they came up with a video? Duh…. Hillary lied, and people died, but who cares , right?
They were only third world heathens anyway.
Benghazi = witch hunt / Gay marriage = inevitable. What about the results of Dover’s investigation of Rehoboth Beach Police and Cpl. Robert Whitman’s misuse of a taser gun? I saw online that the investigators were going to release a result this week ( http://www.delaware1059.com/story.php?id=2738 ) but haven’t found any comment on that yet. Has anyone heard anything about the results of this investigation?
Vance Phillips is in the news……again. This time he is being sued for sexual assault including bondage, sex toys, and threats.
@fightingbluehen
Well, Bush lied, and how many have died?
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghanistanins civilians
And thousand of American and how many maimed and injured?
If you want to do a side by side comparison that’s one place you can start.
Nine different hearings, five committees looking into Benghazi , if there was something there I think they would have found it by now.
For all the talk of diplomats what we are really looking at is an attack on a CIA base. Why would any sane administration expose our covert operations. We left that behind with the end of the Bush administration. Thank you Dick Chaney for outing CIA operatives.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-JUIZsRT-b68/UYz-jPbTZsI/AAAAAAABA6g/LjA_QNU4pz4/s378-no/13+-+1
Ok, people, enough is enough. We need more prayer in the Sussex County Council.
…..and a fresh batch of snakes to handle.
“There is a real scandal here; whether Obama is involved or not will depend on the information to be uncovered.”
No, there is no scandal here, other than Republicans using the machinery of self-government to pursue political ends.
“But clearly officials in the State Department were involved in not admitting that the attack was terrorism and higher-ups were covering up information.”
How does one “admit” that the attack was “terrorism”? Terrorism involves attacks against soft targets, not hard ones; by an actual definition, this wasn’t terrorism at all.
Your complaint boils down to the administration’s refusal to go along with the preferred Republican narrative of the event. As best I can tell, there is no directive anywhere that claims the president or his administration must tell what someone else thinks is “the truth” in the way that those someones — in this case, clear political enemies — would prefer in order to destroy his administration.
You dumb motherfuckers lied nearly 10,000 American GIs into graves so far, and I haven’t seen even a hint of apology, let alone an investigation into how Dick Cheney manipulated the entire country into war. So with all due respect, fuck off, “occam.” You couldn’t carry his razor.
Four “diplomats” (this is what we call all our CIA operatives overseas) died? Sorry, I reserve my anger for people who didn’t know what they were getting into — National Guardsmen, for example. And I reserve my contempt for fucksticks like you.
Anyone see the Beaver Valley story in TNJ? Now I understand the rush to get this “national monument” bullshit done. The question now becomes, what’s in it for Carper? Or do they just roll over and fetch automatically whenever the Richie Riches tell them what they want done?
You can move this to the Saturday open thread once that’s posted.
Intrigued, I clicked on “Open space in Beaver Valley” but it was just about some land deal.
Amazingly, Gawker has a pretty decent explainer of the Benghazi business.
Yesterday, All Things Considered did an interview with Thomas Pickering, who was a co-chair of the Accountability Review. He reviews/rebuts some of the testimony of the Issa circus, but he also notes that he specifically volunteered to come testify in front of that committee and was rejected. Combine that with no appearance by anyone wearing a uniform who could have approved additional action, you get that Issa really is just conducting a circus here.
ThinkProgress catches Jason Chaffetz admitting that the GOP voted to cut Embassy security funds.