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Posts Tagged ‘Tea Party’

Hillary knows what she has to do tomorrow and long has known what she wants to say in her testimony to the House Select Committee on Benghazi.  She has not been campaigning this week and probably is reviewing briefs and papers that the State Department has provided to the committee.

Most of us will be as glued to various-sized screens watching the proceedings as time and work permit.  In case you feel you need to brush up on any of the information related to the Select committee’s investigation, Correct the Record has put together a handy guide for your convenience.

correcors-benghazi-guide

You can access the pdf of the guide here >>>>

 

Just saying, it would have been nice if Appropriations had granted the State Department an unlimited budget for embassy security in 2011 and 2012 rather than cutting those budget figures, but that’s just me.

House Tea Party Members In Pursuit Of Hillary Clinton: Examine Your Own Role In Cutting Diplo Post Security

Clearly, a great deal of what the State Department could and could not do to increase security, if indeed headquarters was notified of such a need, rested not in the hands of the department itself, but rather in the hands of the same body that is now calling the secretary and her department to task,  the House of Representatives and specifically,  the Appropriations Committee.

Try as they might to somehow blame the Secretary of State for not adequately protecting her colleagues,  the Republican Tea Party House has blood on its hands and should be called to task  as well.  We should not forget their role in this going forward.

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Remember that the right sidebar here contains links to the complete unclassified Accountability Review Board report and the cover letter that accompanied to to Congress in late 2012 when a good number of the recommendations in that report had already been implemented.  This remains the seminal document covering the events of September 11, 2012.

In case you did not already know.

October 22, 2015

Hillary Clinton Testimony at House Select Committee on Benghazi

Hillary Clinton testifies before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which is investigating the events surrounding the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate there, in which Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others died.

This program has not yet aired

The campaign has provided this brief, which is nice and succinct. if you have time to read nothing else, read this.

The Benghazi Committee, explained.

Hillary is on Capitol Hill today, testifying in front of the House Select Benghazi Committee. Here’s what it’s all about.

What happened in Benghazi

On September 11, 2012, a group of Islamic militia members attacked a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya. Four Americans were killed in the terrorist attack: U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glenn Doherty, and Tyrone Woods.

For Hillary, who was serving as secretary of state at the time, the tragedy is personal. She was the one who had asked the late Chris Stevens to serve as ambassador to Libya. She was with President Obama at Andrews Air Force Base when Marines brought home the caskets of the four Americans. Anyone who knows Hillary knows she isn’t the kind of person to stand around wringing her hands after a tragedy—she leapt into action immediately to prevent anything like this from ever happening again.

The Benghazi Committee is the eighth—yes, eighth—congressional review of the tragedy.

The events in Benghazi have been scrutinized by countless panels, news organizations, and government agencies. After the attack, Hillary set up a nonpartisan panel known as the Accountability Review board (ARB) to investigate. The panel made dozens of recommendations for improvement. By the time Hillary left office, every single reform was on its way to being implemented.

After the ARB, seven congressional panels have also completed investigations. Five were led by Republicans. None found any wrongdoing. But even with these conclusive findings, House Republicans approved an unlimited budget—yup, we’re talking about your taxpayer dollars—for an eighth congressional review. Enter the House Select Benghazi Committee.

The House Select Benghazi Committee has one goal.

Now, if you’re wondering why Republicans are still at it even after the thorough reviews—or if you’re thinking that sounds a little fishy—you’re onto something. Over the past few weeks, a number of key Republicans—from House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy to New York’s Rep. Richard Hanna—have copped to the truth about why this committee was established in the first place: to “go after” Hillary Clinton and to hurt her presidential candidacy. A whistleblower has even come forward to say that he was fired because he  objected to how partisan the inquiry was.

Trey Gowdy, the chair of the committee, has predicted the probe will continue well into 2016. Their aim is clear: hurt Hillary’s chances of winning the presidential election. And for those of you who are curious, no, the committee has not been able to produce any new facts about the attack.

What you’ll hear today

“No one wants to find out what happened more than I do.”

Hillary, October 24, 2012

Hillary’s first priority is to get to the bottom of what happened in Benghazi. That’s the right thing to do—and the way to make sure it doesn’t happen again. That’s why she has already testified on Capitol Hill about the tragedy (twice, in fact), and she has been asking to testify before the this committee for more than a  year so that the public can hear her answers.

Republicans, on the other hand, are going to exploit whatever they can to mislead voters about Hillary’s record. They’ll grill her about emails and anything else they can think of to discredit her.

But here’s what Hillary is going to do: stay focused, clarify the facts, and offer some lessons that we can learn to protect Americans going forward. The men and women who serve our country deserve nothing less.

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So this happened.

Pope Francis, in Congress, Pleads for Unity on World’s Woes

By PETER BAKER and JIM YARDLEY SEPT. 24, 2015

WASHINGTON — Pope Francis, the spiritual leader of 1.2 billion Catholics, challenged Congress and by extension the mightiest nation in the world on Thursday to break out of its cycle of paralysis and use its power to heal the “open wounds” of a planet torn by hatred, greed, poverty and pollution.

Taking a rostrum never before occupied by the bishop of Rome, Francis issued a vigorous call to action to lawmakers who have spent years stalemated over major issues and even now are days away from a potential government shutdown in a dispute over the moral boundaries of federal spending.

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Then this happened.

John Boehner, House Speaker, Will Resign From Congress

WASHINGTON — Speaker John A. Boehner, an Ohio barkeeper’s son who rode a conservative wave to one of the highest positions in government, said Friday he would relinquish his gavel and resign from Congress, undone by the very Republicans who swept him into power.

Mr. Boehner, 65, made the announcement in an emotional meeting with his fellow Republicans on Friday morning as lawmakers struggled to avert a government shutdown next week, a possibility made less likely by his decision.

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And now this.

House Conservatives Push Trey Gowdy for Leadership Job

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER SEPT. 29, 2015

WASHINGTON — House conservatives, fearful that the post-John A. Boehner era of leadership may look more like a modestly renovated old house than a newly built one, have begun to cast about for one of their own to join the upper ranks: the head of the committee that has been ripping into Hillary Rodham Clinton for well over a year.

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Yes, that Trey Gowdy!   It is hard to know whether this script could be more absurd if Samuel Beckett had written it.  An element of drama is suspension of disbelief.  But this is not dramatic fiction.  This is taking place in our Capitol, and it is very real.

There is no question as to whom Gowdy has been targeting.  He has twisted and contorted himself every which way like Brody on that crane hook to aim at Hillary Clinton. Like a mouse in a maze he has tried every avenue.  Now his Tea Party partisans want to place him in the leadership position.

You cannot make this stuff up.  We can never put the absurd past the Republicans.  I know this hits you like an “And now this” segment from John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight.  It should.  Like everything in those segments, this is actually happening.

There is only one explanation for an option so extreme.  They fear Hillary Clinton.  It is as pathetic as it is possible.

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If it were not obvious from the outset, guess what?  The political nature of the Benghazi Select Committee is gaining notice!  Wow!  It has taken only three years and a wasted $4.5 million not to find out what went wrong so that we can prevent similar attacks in the future.  Correct the Record shared this today, for those who need a picture.

benghazi-cmmittee-chart
But we have known it all along. We knew it less than a month after the attacks when the House Oversight Committee accused State Department officials of a political agenda.

Representatives Darrell Issa and Jason Chaffetz of the House Oversight Committee, on October 2, sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a letter listing attacks in Libya  over the six months prior to the deadly September 11 attack on our Benghazi consulate.

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Issa Flips The Coin And The Game Is On

Today was the first public session of the House Committee Oversight and Government Reform hearings on diplomatic security in Libya.  In closing today’s more than four-hour long session,  chairman Darrell Issa noted that although this is an election year, his committee wants to find out what went wrong in Benghazi in order to prevent it from happening anywhere again.  If you buy that,  I have a bridge for sale.

His admonishing tone, suggesting members of the panel might have an election year agenda,  was startlingly inappropriate.

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Resoundingly missing from the cover of the Interim Progress Report  on the Benghazi, Libya consulate attack published yesterday by the House Republican Conference is the name Harold Rogers (R-KY), chairman of the House Appropriations committee that twice slashed the State Department’s diplomatic security budget.   That committee was apparently excused from reporting to the conference in the zealous crusade being waged by Tea Party Republicans,  led by Darryl Issa and Jason Chaffetz, to pin blame on then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  Issa’s name is listed as a co-author of the report while Media Matters reports that Chaffetz appeared with Megyn Kelly to discuss the report released to great hullabaloo in right-wing circles.

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In astoundingly transparent fashion, the Republicans on the Select Committee on Benghazi have abandoned all pretense plans for investigating departments and agencies outside the State Department and individuals other than Hillary Clinton.

An article in The Hill today reveals a letter from Select Committee Democrats to their GOP counterparts accusing them of refitting the objectives of the committee from inquiry and prevention into a political weapon aimed at the former secretary of state.  Thank you, Karen Finney, for sharing this because regardless of what “we all knew all along,” here is the evidence. In the end evidence is all that really counts.  It is our only weapon.

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When something like this appears I just wonder what rock people have been sleeping under and how many opioids they took.

The Benghazi panel is a scandal of a committee

Seriously?  So not news!

*******************Edited 09/30/15 to add this**********************

mccarthy

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By May of this year, Hillary was beginning to appear in public more regularly, and her speaking engagements were as likely as not to involve award presentations.  She had, in her fours years at the State Department,  received many awards and honors.  Now that she was no longer in public service many organizations rushed to recognize her considerable contributions to a variety of causes.

05/01/13

Washington, DC

Atlantic Council Distinguished Leadership Award

05/03/13

Little Rock AK

Bill & Hillary Clinton Airport

Dedication of Airport

05/06/13

New York NY

Metro East, Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel

CGI Mid-Year Meeting

05/08/13

Los Angeles CA

Pacific Council on International Policy

Warren Christopher Public Service Award

05/15/13

New York NY

Plaza Hotel

Conservation International

Honor

05/22/13

New York NY

Christie’s

Helen Keller International Humanitarian Award

Meanwhile, in the face of numerous polls favoring our girl, the Tea Party wing tip of the Republican Party continued leading the chorus of “Benghazi – Benghazi – Benghazi.”     We continued myth busting.

The archive for May 2013 can be accessed here.

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As we know, Hillary will receive the Liberty Medal from Jeb Bush at Constitution Hall in Philadelphia this evening.  Although none of the C-SPAN schedules currently show an airing of the event, it is possible to view the proceedings here.

Hillary Clinton Receives 2013 Liberty Medal

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton receives the the National Constitution Center’s 2013 Liberty Medal. The medal, which honors leaders who promote liberty around the globe, is delivered by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), NCC chair.

Hillary Clinton Receives 2013 Liberty Medal

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Tea Partiers are predictably berserk over this decision on Bush’s part given today’s date.  We would remind them that Tea Party Republicans had a major role in reducing funds available for embassy security  and that  2012 was not the only year that saw an attack on Americans on September 11.  As New York Senator,  Hillary Clinton fought hard for the families of those lost in the attacks on the twin towers as well as for health care for first responders who suffered devastating illnesses from working for many months on “the pile” which burned into mid-February 2002.

Senator Clinton Visits

Senator Clinton with the 9/11 Families’ Association

By Marian Fontana

I still find it difficult to look at Ground Zero without getting emotional; however, the window in our office overlooking the site seemed like a fitting place to start our meeting with the Senator on March 6th. Our loved ones were in the forefront of Vice President Lee Ielpi’s mind as he pointed out to the Senator where his son Jonathan was found, emphasizing the painful reality that over, forty percent of the families have received nothing of their loved ones remains.

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Clinton demands federal funding for 9/11 health woes

Monday, December 18, 2006

Senator Hillary Clinton is putting new pressure on the White House to address health concerns of ground zero workers.

Senator Clinton says the program that monitors and treats 9/11 first responders and workers could run out of money by this summer.

She wants President Bush to put more money into the program when he presents his next budget.

“We are worried that the medical treatment that has begun, finally, after years of effort and many obstacles along the way will run out of money starting this summer,” Clinton said, “so that the people who are finally being treated for the many symptoms of their chronic conditions due to 9/11 exposures will once again be left out in the cold.”

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Jeb Bush, a voice of reason in a party trembling on the brink of implosion, offered his rationale for choosing our girl for this high honor.

Jeb BushFormer Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will award former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday with the 2013 Liberty Medal and defends it as part of a shared interest in the “importance of civic engagement.”

The potential opponents in the 2016 presidential election come together as Bush presents Clinton with the award at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia to honor her lifelong career in public service and her ongoing advocacy efforts on behalf of women and girls around the globe. Bush is chairman of the National Constitutional Center.

“While Secretary Clinton and I disagree on many issues, we certainly agree on the importance of civic engagement,” Bush said in a statement to the Tampa Bay Times.

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When you do read more of the above article, you see that a Tea Party affiliate will be holding a competing event naming an alternate choice for the honor.

As if all of this were not sufficient to make Philadelphia simply explode tonight, the Ready for Hillary Super PAC will be holding a rally simultaneously at Finnegan’s Wake.

Details on tonight’s rally for Hillary

Thomas Fitzgerald, Inquirer Politics Writer Posted: Tuesday, September 10, 2013

As Hillary Clinton receives the Liberty Medal Tuesday night, supporters will gather at a rally by the super PAC Ready for Hillary to celebrate the group’s efforts to encourage her to run for president in 2016.
The event is at Finnigan’s Wake, the popular bar/event hall at 3rd and Spring Garden streets in Philadelphia’s Northern Liberties neighborhood. The event begins at 6:30 p.m.
Read moreravel Deals $249 — NY: Lake Placid ‘World’s Best’ Suite, Reg. $407 See all travel deals » Thomas Fitzgerald, Inquirer Politics Writer Posted: Tuesday, September 10, 2013, 10:09 AM As Hillary Clinton receives the Liberty Medal Tuesday night, supporters will gather at a rally by the super PAC Ready for Hillary to celebrate the group’s efforts to encourage her to run for president in 2016. The event is at Finnigan’s Wake, the popular bar/event hall at 3rd and Spring Garden streets in Philadelphia’s Northern Liberties neighborhood. The event begins at 6:30 p.m.
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/big_tent/Details-on-tonights-rally-for-Hillary.html#kMeR18H5Rl71rE5E.99
Travel Deals $249 — NY: Lake Placid ‘World’s Best’ Suite, Reg. $407 See all travel deals » Thomas Fitzgerald, Inquirer Politics Writer Posted: Tuesday, September 10, 2013, 10:09 AM As Hillary Clinton receives the Liberty Medal Tuesday night, supporters will gather at a rally by the super PAC Ready for Hillary to celebrate the group’s efforts to encourage her to run for president in 2016. The event is at Finnigan’s Wake, the popular bar/event hall at 3rd and Spring Garden streets in Philadelphia’s Northern Liberties neighborhood. The event begins at 6:30 p.m.
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/big_tent/Details-on-tonights-rally-for-Hillary.html#kMeR18H5Rl71rE5E.99
Thomas Fitzgerald, Inquirer Politics Writer Posted: Tuesday, September 10, 2013, 10:09 AM As Hillary Clinton receives the Liberty Medal Tuesday night, supporters will gather at a rally by the super PAC Ready for Hillary to celebrate the group’s efforts to encourage her to run for president in 2016. The event is at Finnigan’s Wake, the popular bar/event hall at 3rd and Spring Garden streets in Philadelphia’s Northern Liberties neighborhood. The event begins at 6:30 p.m.
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/big_tent/Details-on-tonights-rally-for-Hillary.html#kMeR18H5Rl71rE5E.99
Thomas Fitzgerald, Inquirer Politics Writer Posted: Tuesday, September 10, 2013, 10:09 AM As Hillary Clinton receives the Liberty Medal Tuesday night, supporters will gather at a rally by the super PAC Ready for Hillary to celebrate the group’s efforts to encourage her to run for president in 2016. The event is at Finnigan’s Wake, the popular bar/event hall at 3rd and Spring Garden streets in Philadelphia’s Northern Liberties neighborhood. The event begins at 6:30 p.m.
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/big_tent/Details-on-tonights-rally-for-Hillary.html#kMeR18H5Rl71rE5E.99
Thomas Fitzgerald, Inquirer Politics Writer Posted: Tuesday, September 10, 2013, 10:09 AM As Hillary Clinton receives the Liberty Medal Tuesday night, supporters will gather at a rally by the super PAC Ready for Hillary to celebrate the group’s efforts to encourage her to run for president in 2016. The event is at Finnigan’s Wake, the popular bar/event hall at 3rd and Spring Garden streets in Philadelphia’s Northern Liberties neighborhood. The event begins at 6:30 p.m.
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/big_tent/Details-on-tonights-rally-for-Hillary.html#kMeR18H5Rl71rE5E.99

The local broadcast of the medal ceremony will be shown at the rally.

Congratulations, Mme. Secretary!  We are so happy for this high recognition of your dedicated service!

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When Hillary Clinton accepted the prestigious American Bar Association Medal last month, she spoke out on the Supreme Court decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act and announced a series of policy speeches the next of which she will deliver in Philadelphia this coming Tuesday upon acceptance of the Liberty Medal from Jeb Bush.

Tea Partiers, of course, are in meltdown mode over the coincidence of this presentation with the upcoming anniversary of the attack on the outpost in Benghazi which, in the interim, has come to be known to have been a CIA operation (thanks to Jason Chaffetz’s public announcement on live TV).

The policy speeches Mme. Secretary has announced are to address transparency and national security.  In an op-ed, published in yesterday’s New York Times, Representative Alan Grayson also addressed these issues as they relate to the classified information available to members of Congress regarding the proposed attacks on Syria that President Obama has referred to Congress for approval.

Grayson has some issues with the available data and documentation to back up an attack on Syria that he addresses in this article.  Most interestingly,   he compares that availability with the documents Hillary Clinton’s State Department provided on Benghazi.

Grayson in the NY Times on Syria Intel: “Trust, But Verify”


On Syria, “Trust, but Verify”

This op-ed written by Congressman Alan Grayson appeared in The New York Times today. Read it, share it with your friends and family, and join more than 75,000 others who oppose U.S. military intervention in Syria by signing on at DontAttackSyria.com.

WASHINGTON — THE documentary record regarding an attack on Syria consists of just two papers: a four-page unclassified summary and a 12-page classified summary. The first enumerates only the evidence in favor of an attack. I’m not allowed to tell you what’s in the classified summary, but you can draw your own conclusion.

On Thursday I asked the House Intelligence Committee staff whether there was any other documentation available, classified or unclassified. Their answer was “no.”

The Syria chemical weapons summaries are based on several hundred underlying elements of intelligence information. The unclassified summary cites intercepted telephone calls, “social media” postings and the like, but not one of these is actually quoted or attached — not even clips from YouTube. (As to whether the classified summary is the same, I couldn’t possibly comment, but again, draw your own conclusion.)

SNIP


Compare this lack of transparency with the administration’s treatment of the Benghazi attack. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, to her credit, made every single relevant classified e-mail, cable and intelligence report available to every member of Congress. (I know this, because I read them all.) Secretary Clinton had nothing to hide.

Her successor, John Kerry, has said repeatedly that this administration isn’t trying to manipulate the intelligence reports the way that the Bush administration did to rationalize its invasion of Iraq.

But by refusing to disclose the underlying data even to members of Congress, the administration is making it impossible for anyone to judge, independently, whether that statement is correct. Perhaps the edict of an earlier administration applies: “Trust, but verify.”
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Most ironic is the statement of sources of the intel – sources that are being withheld.   Social media is cited.  Last October, in the wake of the Benghazi attack,  there was a great deal of hand-wringing over the issue of some leaked emails that Hillary Clinton addressed directly.

Hillary Clinton, those emails, and the truth

In the dust up around the leaked emails and among the events of her busy day, Hillary Clinton made the following remarks regarding the emails and the attack on the Benghazi consulate in a press availability today.

Now finally, on Benghazi, look, I’ve said it and I’ll say it one more time. No one wants to find out what happened more than I do. We are holding ourselves accountable to the American people, because not only they, but our brave diplomats and development experts serving in dangerous places around the world, deserve no less. The independent Accountability Review Board is already hard at work looking at everything – not cherry-picking one story here or one document there – but looking at everything, which I highly recommend as the appropriate approach to something as complex as an attack like this.

Posting something on Facebook is not in and of itself evidence, and I think it just underscores how fluid the reporting was at the time and continued for some time to be. What I keep in mind is that four brave Americans were killed, and we will find out what happened, we will take whatever measures are necessary to fix anything that needs to be fixed, and we will bring those to justice who committed these murders. And I think that that is what we have said, that is what we are doing, and I’m very confident that we will achieve those goals.

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There are two major takeaways here: 1) Attestation from a member of Congress, who is in a position to make the comparison,  that Hillary Clinton provided Congress with every scrap of relevant documentation on Benghazi all of which he read. 2) Hillary Clinton does not consider postings on social media to be evidence – in her own words.

Thank you, Representative Grayson, for defending our girl prior to a week that is guaranteed, on every front, to be hell on wheels, and thank you and our Hillary for your dedicated service.  It is satisfying to know that some members of Congress read everything she sent since, during her testimony in January,  she was obliged regularly to refer some members to the ARB Report that they seemed to have neglected to read.   The unclassified ARB report is available in the sidebar on the right for anyone who would like to see it.

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We older dudes and dudesses remember a time before Congress reset all national holidays except Independence Day to the nearest Monday to the traditional date.  Originally, Memorial Day was May 31.  Somehow it is fitting that the bookends for this week include this particular dudess finally being face to face and hand in hand with Hillary Clinton ( while being featured in Inside Chappaqua Magazine) and the fifth anniversary of the infamous meeting of the Democratic Party Rules and Bylaws Committee that reassigned and partitioned delegates Hillary had won in the 2008 primaries effectively disenfranchising primary voters in two states and handing the nomination to Barack Obama.

Two movements came to life that summer although only one remains in the spotlight.  Angry Democrats from all over the country carried signs imploring the RBC to “Count Every Vote” and countered  the intended appearance of party unity with cries of “party unity my a**.”

The PUMA movement arrived yelling and screaming as most newborns do.  On the other side of the political spectrum, a reaction brought an embryonic coalition into existence.  In the days of Barry Goldwater, many young people read his Conscience of a Conservative and argued politics  in essay assignments for school and over cafeteria lunches.  A word seldom heard anymore was one we commonly used then, reactionary.

By late summer 2008, in the wake of the Democratic National Convention where a shameful, scripted,  televised imitation of a roll call vote ended when the winner of the party’s popular vote was escorted onto the convention floor and called for the unanimous nomination of the candidate who had garnered and been gifted with a few more delegates, the other baby of the summer was coming to term.  Activist women, some angry that Barack Obama had bypassed his very well-qualified female former rival for the Veep spot – in fact would not even speak with them on the topic –  headed to the Republican Convention to have a word with their nominee, John McCain.

If you read the book, or better yet saw the movie Game Change, you know what happened next.  Sarah Palin, of shooting wolves from helicopters fame,  was drafted to the ticket in the Veep spot. By September 2008. PUMA talks shows on Blog Talk Radio and PUMA blogs began being invaded by people speaking of FEMA camps, coffins stacked stories high, blue helmets, black helicopters, and a private army while the Republican VP nominee made speeches about the Democratic nominee paling around with radicals.

There is no doubt that elements of the Tea Party were drawn from the ranks of the PUMAs.  Five years later, some who were diehard Hillary Clinton supporters have indeed turned hard against her as those early Tea Party infiltrators tried to convince us to do.  But the PUMAs have remained cohesive via Facebook groups and blogs.  We may not receive the publicity the Tea Party does.   We do not seek it,  but we are still together.  If /when our Hillary wants us, this solid core of her loyalists are already organized around her.  We have stuck by her over these six years since she so appealingly began the conversation with us.  We stayed beside her when she was robbed of her delegates, and we celebrate our anniversary together while our girl, as yet having made no commitment to a second run for the roses, continues to top the polls.

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A new Quinnipiac poll out today pits her against two dynastic possible rivals,  Jeb Bush, of the more traditional Republican brand, and Rand Paul, darling of the reactionary firebrand variety that has  overtaken the party and left Congress in paralysis.  While she remains in the shade, setting up her office within the family foundation, her appeal and charisma continue to keep her in the news.
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May 31, 2013 – American Voters Like Clinton Over Paul, Jeb Bush, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds;
PDF formatIn an early look at the 2016 presidential campaign, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leads Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky 49 – 41 percent and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush 48 – 40 percent, but Vice President Joseph Biden trails Bush 44 – 38 percent and falls behind Paul 43 – 39 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.
Ms. Clinton gets a 52 – 40 percent favorability rating, down from an all-time high 61 – 34 percent in a February 8 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University. Favorability ratings for other possible 2016 presidential contenders are:
  • Biden: Negative 37 – 44 percent;
  • Paul: Positive 32 – 24 percent, with 42 percent who don’t know enough about him to form an opinion;
  • Bush: 29 – 29 percent, with 42 percent who haven’t formed an opinion.

SNIP

“Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remains the queen of the 2016 hill at this point, but the wide gap between her and some of the leading Republican contenders on favorability may be closing, as her overall favorability has taken a hit,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
“Her score is down substantially from her all-time high score in February. The drop in her favorability is substantial among men, Republicans and independent voters. One reason for her drop may be that 48 percent of voters blame her either a little or a lot for the death of the American ambassador in Benghazi,” Brown added.
In the hypothetical race between Clinton and Jeb Bush, she carries Democrats 92 – 3 percent, but loses Republicans 82 – 8 percent and splits independent voters 42 – 43 percent. She wins women 55 – 35 percent, but loses men 45 – 40 percent.
Clinton gets a 91 – 4 percent favorability among Democrats and a 46 – 42 percent favorability from independent voters, with a negative 18 – 77 percent favorability from Republicans. Women are favorable 59 – 32 percent, while men are negative 44 – 50 percent.
In February, she was 91 – 5 percent favorable among Democrats, negative 27 – 68 percent among Republicans and 59 – 35 percent positive among independents. She was 53 – 42 favorable among men and 68 – 27 percent favorable among women.
“If Ms. Clinton chooses not to run in 2016, the potential Democratic field could include a somewhat unpopular vice president and a number of new faces who are unknown to the vast majority of Americans,” said Brown. “The potential Republican candidates include many unknowns also. Some of them, however, lead the incumbent vice president and outscore him when it comes to overall voter favorability.”Read more >>>>

For those of us who remember this day in history, Hillary is the glue.  She is the magnet that drew us together and keeps us tight.  We have stayed with the girl we took to the dance in 2008 even though the party tore up our prom tickets.

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Resoundingly missing from the cover of the Interim Progress Report  on the Benghazi, Libya consulate attack published yesterday by the House Republican Conference is the name Harold Rogers (R-KY), chairman of the House Appropriations committee that twice slashed the State Department’s diplomatic security budget.   That committee was apparently excused from reporting to the conference in the zealous crusade being waged by Tea Party Republicans,  led by Darryl Issa and Jason Chaffetz, to pin blame on then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  Issa’s name is listed as a co-author of the report while Media Matters reports that Chaffetz appeared with Megyn Kelly to discuss the report released to great hullabaloo in right-wing circles.

Fox’s Kelly Interviews Rep. Chaffetz And Ignores His Hypocrisy Over Embassy Security

 ANDREW LAWRENCE

During the interview there was no mention of Rep. Chaffetz’s own vote to cut funding to embassy security or reports that have undermined right-wing attacks on Clinton.

SNIP

Kelly provided Chaffetz with numerous opportunities to bash Clinton – asking if Clinton “blatantly lied” over requests being made for more security at the embassy, allowing Chaffetz to make claims that Clinton personally denied more security for the embassy, and speculating that there are documents being hidden from lawmakers that prove Clinton had direct knowledge regarding the lack of security at the embassy.

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Oh!  So he is speculating!  Never mind that she accepted full responsibility for failures, provided State Department personnel to testify and documents for examination as requested, submitted the Accountability Review Board report in a timely fashion from home while recovering from a concussion and blood clot,  and went on to testify in person before committees in both the Senate  and the House as requested before she had fully recovered from her serious (and scary) health issues – never mind all of that.  Chaffetz and his Tea Partiers think documents are being hidden.   According to an article yesterday inThe Hill,  the former secretary was not interviewed by the audit committee.

01-23-13-Z-33

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Having resisted for all of about ten minutes,  I have decided that it would be selfishness on my part not to share this.   After two  weeks of Tea Party Republicans and Fox News (with the notable exception of the always fair Greta Van Susteren)  emptying their quivers at our Hillary  for not testifying on The Hill last week due to her illness and subsequent injury, the genetically sarcastic Wonkette has responded to the wingnuttery with a sublimely satirical post.

Here is a tiny snip, but you will want to read this brilliant piece in full and savor it.  I suggest a trip to the bathroom before you begin in case you are accident-prone while laughing hysterically.  I sincerely hope someone has shown this to Hillary.  I can just see her reading this with tears running down those amazing cheekbones.  Here’s a tissue, Hillz.

LOL2

Concussion-Gate: Hillary Clinton Perpetrates America’s Most Nefarious Coverup

by snipy

So let’s get this straight. Hillz faked a stomach virus, had her staff fake a stomach virus (or gave it to them because she has no soul and killed Vince Foster), then faked her fainting so that she could cry “concussion!” and avoid debunking conservative nonsense about Benghazi? What the hell kind of Rube Goldberg scheme is this supposed to be?

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Representatives Darrell Issa and Jason Chaffetz of the House Oversight Committee, on October 2, sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a letter listing attacks in Libya  over the six months prior to the deadly September 11 attack on our Benghazi consulate.   In the letter, Issa and Chaffetz make the following request:

To help the Committee in its assessment of the security situation in Benghazi belbre (sic) Ambassador Stevens’ murder please prepare a written response to the following no later than October 8, 2012, and make the appropriate officials from the Department available for a briefing for of the Committee by the same date:

l. Was State Department headquarters in Washington aware of all of the above incidents? If not, why not?

2. If so, what measures did the State Department take to match the level of security provided to the U.S. Mission in Libya to the level of threat?

3. Please detail any requests made by Embassy Tripoli to State Department headquarters for additional security. whether in general or in light of specific attacks mentioned above. How did the Department respond to each of those requests?

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is the principal oversight committee of the House of Representatives and may at “any time” investigate “any matter” as set forth in House Rule X. When producing documents to the Committee, please deliver production sets to the Majority Staff in Room 2157 of the Rayburn House Office Building and the Minority Staff in Room 2471 of the Rayburn House Office Building. The Committee prefers, if possible, to receive all documents in electronic format. If you have any questions about these requests, please contact Tom Alexander or Brien Beattie of the Committee staff at (202) 225-5074. Thank you for your attention to this important matter.

The following day, in a press availability with the Foreign Minister of  Kazakhstan, Secretary made the following statements.

There are continuing questions about what exactly happened in Benghazi on that night three weeks ago. And we will not rest until we answer those questions and until we track down the terrorists who killed our people. Active efforts are also underway to determine who was responsible and bring them to justice.

We have already formed an Accountability Review Board to examine this attack and to explore how we can prevent anything like this from happening in the future. The board is beginning its work this week under the leadership of Ambassador Thomas Pickering. The board’s mandate is to determine whether our security systems and procedures in Benghazi were appropriate in light of the threat environment, whether those systems and procedures were properly implemented, and any lessons that may be relevant to our work around the world.

The men and women who serve this country as diplomats deserve no less than a full and accurate accounting, wherever that leads. And I am committed to seeking that for them and for those who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to our nation.

No one wants to determine what happened that night in Benghazi more than the President and I do. No one is more committed to ensuring it doesn’t happen again. And nobody will hold this Department more accountable than we hold ourselves, because we served with and we knew the four men we lost. They are not just names or profiles to us. They are our colleagues and our friends.

In our initial reviews over the past two weeks, we have worked closely with other agencies, and we have learned a number of things. We will continue to learn more in the days to come. We are committed to a process that is as transparent as possible while balancing the needs of the investigations underway. It will take time before we have a complete understanding of what actually did happen. But still, I am asking the board to move as quickly as possible without sacrificing diligence and accuracy. In the interim, we will continue to provide as much accurate information as we can to the public and to the Congress.

As I’ve been saying for four years, our diplomats and development experts are on the front lines, just like our troops. And the entire United States Government needs to work together to protect them. We will not retreat. We will keep leading, and we will stay engaged everywhere in the world, including in those hard places where America’s interests and security are at stake. That is the best way to honor those whom we have lost.

There are a few things that are clear and a few that are not moving ahead.

1. The written documentation and appropriate officials requested in the letter are to be available tomorrow.

2. The committee has left the determination of who those officials are to be up to the judgment of the department.  Nothing in the letter specifies that the secretary herself be among them.

3. The secretary has pledged full cooperation and stated compelling reasons why.

4. Any information provided to the committee tomorrow will be incomplete and preliminary.

The air is rife with speculation and accusation  only temporarily quelled by the media shift to the presidential debate over the past few days.   This week there will be a debate between  Joe Biden and Paul Ryan that may also absorb whatever light might have shone on the hearing Issa’s committee has scheduled for Wednesday, October 10.  Whether the subject of the attack comes up in the debate is yet to be seen, and as of right now, we do not know for certain whether the Secretary of State herself will appear before the committee since her presence was not specifically requested in the letter.  Those of us who follow her work and know her level of dedication are prone to expect that she will and that she will do so eminently well-prepared.

We should bear in mind, however, that no matter what information the State Department headquarters in D.C. had,  ability to provide adequate security to embassies in high-risk locations is not completely in the hands of the department.

Benghazi attack followed deep cuts in State Department security budget

By Shaun Waterman

The Washington Times

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Investigators looking for lessons from the fatal terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi might want to start on Capitol Hill, where Congress slashed spending on diplomatic security and U.S. embassy construction over the past two years.

Since 2010, Congress cut $296 million from the State Department’s spending request for embassy security and construction, with additional cuts in other State Department security accounts, according to an analysis by a former appropriations committee staffer.

Read more >>>>

Clearly, a great deal of what the State Department could and could not do to increase security, if indeed headquarters was notified of such a need, rested not in the hands of the department itself, but rather in the hands of the same body that is now calling the secretary and her department to task,  the House of Representatives and specifically,  the Appropriations Committee.

Try as they might to somehow blame the Secretary of State for not adequately protecting her colleagues,  the Republican Tea Party House has blood on its hands and should be called to task  as well.  We should not forget their role in this going forward.

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