Trey "Benghazi" Gowdy calls it quits. Update!

Courtesy of NBC News:  

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., who has been at the forefront of investigations into both Hillary Clinton and alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election, said Wednesday he would not run for re-election, adding his name to a growing list of Republican lawmakers stepping aside. 

In a lengthy statement, Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor, said he would be leaving politics for good to return to a career in the justice system. 

"There is a time to come and a time to go. This is the right time, for me, to leave politics and return to the justice system," wrote Gowdy, who was first elected in 2010. 

"I will not be filing for re-election to Congress nor seeking any other political or elected office; instead I will be returning to the justice system," he added. "Whatever skills I may have are better utilized in a courtroom than in Congress, and I enjoy our justice system more than our political system."

Yeah, well if that skill set is supposed to include the ability to differentiate between fact and fiction, then I think Gowdy is poorly qualified to practice law in any capacity.

This decision seems to have been quite recent as Gowdy's team just sent out a fundraising email for his 2018 campaign. Kind of makes you wonder what happened, doesn't it?

Trey Gowdy, along with Darrell Issa, were among the idiots that promoted exaggerated misinformation about the Benghazi attack, and then used that to attack both President Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Trey Gowdy has not an ethical bone in his body and should be treated as a pariah from this day forward.

Of course I guess he could go back to playing he banjo.

As for Democratic hopes moving forward, well as the great Freddie Mercury used to sing:

"Another one bites the dust
Another one bites the dust
And another one gone, and another one gone
Another one bites the dust, yeah
Hey, I'm gonna get you too
Another one bites the dust"

Update: The Daily show weighs in.

In honor of his retirement, it's The Trey Gowdy Hairstyle Guide! Our personal fave is #8, "The Benghazi Blowout." What's yours? pic.twitter.com/4LaY2EuVJF

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) January 31, 2018

One of the strangest heads of hair in Congress.

So now it 's official. Donald Trump would rather have an accused child molester in the Senate rather than a Democrat.

Trump, commenting on Roy Moore sexual assault allegations: “You don't need someone who's soft on crime like [Doug] Jones.” pic.twitter.com/CdnZZhRTSh

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) November 21, 2017

"He denies it, he totally denies it, he says it didn't happen."

Now where have we heard that before?

Oh yeah, I remember:

"He (Putin) says he didn't meddle. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on the trip to Hanoi, Vietnam. "Every time he sees me, he said: 'I didn't do that.' And I believe, I really believe that when he tells me that he means it." 

Apparently if you are a Republican, or a Russian dictator, all you have to do is deny that you did anything wrong and you are believed.

However if you are a liberal or a Democrat, well then even after eight separate investigations have cleared you of wrongdoing, you are still guilty, guilty, guilty.

So this is the Republican party now.

Refute evidence which clears your opponents, and take on faith the word of anybody who benefits your party politically.

Wow!

Did you hear? The Benghazi investigation is finally over.

Benghazi committee chairman Trey "Banjo Boy" Gowdy.

Courtesy of USA Today: 

The special congressional investigation into the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi is officially over now that the panel filed its final report the day before the House adjourned for the year. 

The Select Committee on Benghazi initially released its findings in June but remained in place for months afterward trying to declassify supporting documents like emails and interview transcripts for public release. 

The final report, not including dissenting views from committee Democrats, clocks in at more than 322,000 words. It was added to the official House record without fanfare on Dec. 7 by Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the panel’s chairman. 

The panel, which spent more than $7.8 million over two and a half years, disbanded at the end of the 114th Congress, before a new Congress begins in January.

This was of course the eighth investigation into the Benghazi attack and not one of them found anything significant.

So why did it take so long for this last committee to file its report?

Oh I think you know why.

Democrats contended all along that the committee was a political effort to taint Clinton, an allegation that got some traction when House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told Fox News that because of the committee, "her numbers are dropping." 

The panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, said Monday that the final report was a “desperate rehash.” 

“Republicans voted on this partisan report five months ago, but delayed filing it and completing the committee until after the election,” Cummings said. “Republicans promised a process that was fair and bipartisan, but the American people got exactly the opposite.”

Yes it, just like the Russian hacks and the Comey letter, existed only to destroy Hillary Clinton's chances of winning the presidency.

Filing the report before the election would have only helped Hillary, and of course Trey Gowdy and his fellow witch hunters could not allow that, now could they?

No Hillary Clinton was NOT a flawed candidate, and NO she did not lose this election.

Before this election season started, right when I first heard murmurings that Hillary Clinton was going to throw her hat into the ring, I thought oh well that's it nobody else will really have a chance at the nomination with her in the race.

I also knew that I would vote for her but that I would never feel inspired by her or think she was the best candidate for the job.

On those last two points I was dead wrong.

At the end of the 2008 nomination process I was very unhappy with Hillary Clinton, for the same reasons that I was unhappy with Bernie Sanders during this nomination cycle.

In my opinion there is a point when a candidate running for the nomination should recognize that continuing to fight for the position, does nothing to help them reach that goal, but it does a lot to hurt their opponent in the general election.

I thought that in 2008 Hillary passed that point of no return and that her stubbornness was going to help the Republicans and damage Obama's chances, and I was pissed!

But then she finally realized that it was over, and in the end came out hard to help her former rival rally the Democrats to his side and even pleaded with her former supporters to put their hard feelings aside and vote for him.

And they did.

So like I said I supported her run for the nomination this time around, as well as her candidacy in the general election, but sometimes my support felt a little pedestrian, like I was just going through the motions.

But then I saw her spend those 11 hours testifying in front of that Republican led Benghazi witch hunt, and that may have been the first time that I realized what a badass she was!

And my support went from tepid, to full speed ahead. 

Donald Trump caught using Russian propaganda to attack Hillary Clinton.

Courtesy of Newsweek: 

The documents that WikiLeaks has unloaded recently have been emails out of the account of John Podesta, the chairman of Clinton’s election campaign. Almost as soon as the pilfered documents emerged, Sputnik was all over them and rapidly found (or probably already knew about before the WikiLeaks dump) a purportedly incriminating email from Blumenthal. 

The email was amazing—it linked Boogie Man Blumenthal, Podesta and the topic of conservative political fevered dreams, Benghazi. This, it seemed, was the smoking gun finally proving Clinton bore total responsibility for the terrorist attack on the American outpost in Libya in 2012. Sputnik even declared that the email might be the “October surprise” that could undermine Clinton’s campaign.

Here was the "smoking gun" according to Sputnik:  

In a major revelation from the second batch of WikiLeaks emails from Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta it was learned that Hillary's top confidante Sidney Blumenthal believed that the investigation into Benghazi was legitimate because it was "preventable" and the result of State Department negligence. 

In an email titled "The Truth" from Hillary's top confidante Sidney Blumenthal, the adviser writing to undisclosed recipients said that "one important point that has been universally acknowledged by nine previous reports about Benghazi: The attack was almost certainly preventable" in what may turn out to be the big October surprise from the WikiLeaks released of emails hacked from the account of Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta. 

Then came the money quote: "Clinton was in charge of the State Department, and it failed to protect U.S. personnel at an American consulate in Libya. If the GOP wants to raise that as a talking point against her, it is legitimate," said Blumenthal, putting to rest the Democratic Party talking point that the investigation into Clinton's management of the State Department at the time of the attack was nothing more than a partisan witch hunt.

The problem with this "smoking gun" is that the words attributed to Sid Blumenthal were actually from a Newsweek article written by the same reporter that wrote the piece I am quoting from here.(And of course they were taken out of context.)

Which he sort of noticed.

As it turns out Sputnik finally recognized their mistake and took the article down.

So that's that, right?

Wrong. Because as it turns out somehow the article ended up in the hands of Donald J. Trump. You know, that guy who is turning American democracy into a joke and destroying the Republican party?

At a rally in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, Trump spoke while holding a document in his hand. He told the assembled crowd that it was an email from Blumenthal, whom he called “sleazy Sidney.” 

“This just came out a little while ago,’’ Trump said. “I have to tell you this.” And then he read the words from my article. 

“He’s now admitting they could have done something about Benghazi,’’ Trump said, dropping the document to the floor. “This just came out a little while ago.” 

The crowd booed and chanted, “Lock her up!”

The author of the article quoted by Sputnik was more than slightly disturbed by all of this, to put it mildly:

This is not funny. It is terrifying. The Russians engage in a sloppy disinformation effort and, before the day is out, the Republican nominee for president is standing on a stage reciting the manufactured story as truth. How did this happen? Who in the Trump campaign was feeding him falsehoods straight from the Kremlin? (The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment).

The Russians have been obtaining American emails and now are presenting complete misrepresentations of them—falsifying them—in hopes of setting off a cascade of events that might change the outcome of the presidential election. The big question, of course, is why are the Russians working so hard to damage Clinton and, in the process, aid Donald Trump? 

Good question.

And one that any politician endorsing Donald Trump, or any American voting for him, should stop and ask themselves. 

John Oliver comparing the scandals of Hillary to Donald Trump's is something you must see before the debate tonight.

My favorite part:

Think of it like this: Ethical failings in a politician are like raisins in a cookie ... They shouldn't be there. They disgust people. But most politicians have at least a few raisins. Hillary arguably has more raisins than average. There's probably 10 of these little fuckers in there … But [Trump] is a fucking raisin monsoon! He is ethically compromised to an almost unprecedented degree. So if you don't like raisins, I get it – they're disgusting. But unfortunately, this November, you're gonna have to swallow 10 or we're all going to be eating this shit for years.

I hate raisins so this was the perfect metaphor.

And that is really it.

Sure Hillary Clinton has done some things which can be interpreted as shady. But when you really examine them, there is really very little or nothing scandalous to be found.

However Donald Trump is so unbelievably corrupt, manipulative,  and full of shit that you become exhausted when reading about his numerous and never ending scandals.

There really is no choice here.

Only one of these people should ever even be considered for a job in politics, especially for the most important political job on the planet.

Hunting, Benghazi, Ted Nugent, Sean Hannity, the new Donald Trump infomercial has it all.

You know I was warned back in the seventies about LSD flashbacks but I had no idea they could be this batshit crazy.

So uh was there anybody in this commercials that was NOT some kind of reality star or gun humping ammosexual?

My takeaway from this commercial is that almost everybody Donald Trump knows is a person who pretends to be a version of themselves on a scripted "reality show."

Which kind of makes me think that his idea of America is some combination of The Biggest Loser, the Jersey Shore, and Duck Dynasty all spliced together to create a country of overweight loudmouths with no talent and little intelligence, with a penchant for gun violence.

Actually that sounds like a lot of places we already have in America.

By the way if you were wondering how Sean Hannity can appear in a commercial for Donald Trump while under contract with Fox News, well he can't:

Fox News star Sean Hannity—a vocal supporter of Donald Trump on his radio show and his 10 p.m. program on the top-rated, right-leaning cable network—is in hot water Tuesday after his bosses were alerted to his participation in a Trump campaign video.

Apparently, Hannity didn’t see fit to obtain permission for starring in the political ad—an act that would be considered a serious breach of ethics at the overwhelming majority of news outlets—and the sort of behavior that is definitely not condoned at a post-Roger Ailes Fox News. 

“We were not aware of Sean Hannity participating in a promotional video,” said a Fox News spokesperson, after The Daily Beast informed the network of Hannity’s appearance, “and he will not be doing anything along these lines for the remainder of the election season.”

Gee it appears that Hannity just gave the new sheriff in town over at Fox a reason to cut him loose and kick him to the curb like they did with Greta Van Susteren.

Good thing he has that Trump TV gig to fall back on.

Assuming of course that the American people are significantly more intelligent than your typical reality star and know enough to keep this idiot out of the White House.

Colin Powell hacked emails show him calling the Benghazi investigations a "stupid witch hunt" and referring to Donald Trump as a "national disgrace."

Courtesy of TPM:  

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell dismissed the years-long Republican outcry over the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya as “a stupid witch hunt” in leaked emails published by BuzzFeed News on Tuesday. 

“Benghazi is a stupid witch hunt. Basic fault falls on a courageous ambassador who thoughts Libyans now love me and I am ok in this very vulnerable place,” Powell wrote in a December 2015 email to former Secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, according to BuzzFeed. 

His email refers to Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, one of four Americans killed in the 2012 raid.

I think this is my favorite tidbit of information because it confirms what those of us on the Left have been saying for years.

However that was by no means the ONLY explosive bit of information exposed by this hack.

Courtesy of the Buzzfeed: 

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a retired four-star general who served under three Republican presidents, slammed GOP nominee Donald Trump as “a national disgrace” and an “international pariah,” according to his personal emails seen by BuzzFeed News. 

The remarks came in a June 17, 2016, email to Emily Miller, a journalist who was once Powell’s aide. In that same email Powell also said Trump “is in the process of destroying himself, no need for Dems to attack him. [Speaker of the House] Paul Ryan is calibrating his position again.

”In an Aug. 21 email from Powell to Miller, he blasted Trump for embarking on a “racist” movement that believes President Obama was not born in the US. 

“Yup, the whole birther movement was racist,” Powell wrote. “That’s what the 99% believe. When Trump couldn’t keep that up he said he also wanted to see if the certificate noted that he was a Muslim.”

So apparently Colin Powell has the same opinion of Donald Trump as every other rational halfway intelligent person in this country.  Most of who are apparently NOT members of the Republican party.

In other e-mails shared by CNN Powell also expressed irritation with Hillary Clinton and her team for drawing him into the whole e-mail investigation kerfuffle:

"The only thing I would add is to simply say she had a private account on a public server before becoming SecState and continued to use it when she became SecState. On the other hand this might to lead to questions about the basement," Powell said.

His main point seems to be that he advised her to use a private e-mail address, but not a private server which in his eyes is completely different. However he also fails to mention that the entire Bush administration used the RNC's private email server and then deleted 22 million emails which was against the law.

Which does not do much to support his faux outrage over Hillary's choices.

The guy who wrote that RNC speech for the mom whose son died in Benghazi which blamed Hillary Clinton, is now thinking of voting for her.

Courtesy of Politico:  

The lifelong Republican who wrote the powerful speech delivered by the mother of one of the Benghazi victims says he won’t vote for Donald Trump this fall and could end up voting for Hillary Clinton. 

Richard Cross, a former staff member for Maryland Republicans such as former Gov. Bob Ehrlich and former Rep. Helen Bentley, wrote in a Baltimore Sun op-ed that he penned the scathing remarks delivered by Patricia Smith, whose son Sean was killed in the 2012 Benghazi attack. Smith, delivering Cross’ speech, asked the Cleveland crowd "If Hillary Clinton can't give us the truth, why should we give her the presidency?" 

Despite what he wrote in Smith’s speech about Clinton, Cross said he “may yet have to vote for her because of the epic deficiencies of my own party's nominee.” The GOP speechwriter said the deal-breaker on Trump was his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the U.S., a plan the Manhattan billionaire has modified in recent weeks in favor of a ban on immigrants from certain countries. 

“President Eisenhower would have never proposed banning Muslims from America. Nor would President Nixon. Nor would President Reagan,” Cross wrote. “Donald Trump has betrayed and perverted their legacies. Consequently, I no longer recognize my party.”

Man you know that Donald Trump is losing big when the guy who wrote a speech essentially accusing his opponent of murder is thinking of voting for her instead of him.

Think I'm exaggerating?

Then go ahead and watch the video of that speech again.

Parents of two men killed in Benghazi attack file federal lawsuit against Hillary Clinton.

Courtesy of the Chicago Tribune:

The parents of two men killed in Benghazi, Libya nearly four years ago are suing former Secretary of State and current presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, saying the attack resulted from her “reckless” handling of classified information. 

The federal lawsuit, filed Monday, comes from Patricia Smith of San Diego, whose son Sean Smith was a U.S. State Department technology officer, and Charles Woods of Portland, Ore., whose son Tyrone Woods was CIA security contractor. 

Four people, including Smith and Woods, died after an anti-American militia group attacked the U.S. diplomatic compound on Sept. 11, 2012. 

Since then, Clinton and the question of what responsibility she may have had for those deaths prompted a two-year inquiry that revealed she had used a private email server for government business. 

A yearlong FBI investigation followed, which found no grounds on which to prosecute her.

You know every time I think I have witnessed the lowest depths to which the Republican party will go to defeat Hillary Clinton I rediscover that there really is no bottom.

Manipulating grieving parents into filing a baseless lawsuit for political gain is right up there with holding a gun to a puppy's head and demanding money.

Of course more than likely this will get tossed out of court due to a lack of evidence, because there is nothing in Hillary Clinton's handling of her e-mails that has anything to do with the attack in Benghazi.

This is just another GOP fishing expedition trying to dig up more dirt on Hillary, and using these grieving parents as bait.

Simply disgusting.

The mother of Ambassador Chris Stephens would like the Republicans to stop using the name of her dead son for political gain. Seems fair.

Courtesy of CNN:

The mother of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, who died during the 2012 Benghazi attacks, penned a short letter to the editor of The New York Times asking that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and the GOP stop invoking her son's death. 

"I know for certain that Chris would not have wanted his name or memory used in that connection," Mary Commanday wrote in the letter, which was published Saturday. "I hope that there will be an immediate and permanent stop to this opportunistic and cynical use by the campaign." 

The Benghazi attacks were frequently mentioned in speeches at this week's Republican National Convention in Cleveland, where speakers used it as a reason presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is unfit for the presidency.

I seriously doubt that the Republicans will stop.

After all they are really scraping the bottom of the barrel to find things with which to attack Hillary Clinton, and they only have respect for the dead when bringing up those deaths make THEM looke bad.

Besides they only respect the wishes of mothers whose children died in Benghazi when it furthers their political agenda.

Mother of soldier slain in Benghazi attack literally blames Hillary Clinton for the death of her son.

For me this is what set the tone for the first day of the GOP convention.

Right before Pat Smith took the stage former Navy Seal Marcus Luttrell spoke and he was similarly hyperbolic.

However Smith's anguished condemnation of Hillary Clinton used "weaponized emotion" to attack the Democratic nominee in a way that I don't think any of us have seen before at a national convention.

It was ugly, misinformed, and incredibly unfair.

Hillary Clinton has been thoroughly investigated by no less than nine investigative committees, most of which were led by partisan Republicans desperately trying to find something to use against her in the 2016 election, and not one of them blamed her for any of the deaths in Benghazi.

As for her claims that Clinton blamed the video in private talks with her, Politifact looked into that and found that her version did not necessarily jibe with other family members, but even if true did not mean that Hillary would have been purposefully lying.

However this Pat Smith has been a frequent guest on Fox News and other Right Wing media outlets where her charges against Clinton have grown ever more aggressive and emotional.

Having her speak on the first night of the convention is a clear sign that Donald Trump is prepared to go after Hillary in the ugliest and nastiest way imaginable.

There is a lot to mock with this GOP convention, but we should not ignore the level of rage and and outright hatred toward the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton that is felt by many of its attendees.

I think this about says it all.

Working hard to earn that Palin credit, Dakota Meyer posts this hyperbolic conspiracy driven article on Facebook.

Courtesy of the latest Palin sperm donor's Facebook page:  

The protected class... such is what it appears to be the case for the top tier politician. (Well at least it's clear he writes his own posts.)

The long and intensive investigation into the mishandling of what the CIA called top secret email correspondence by Hillary Clinton has been going on by the FBI / Justice Department. Even with over 30,000 email leaked to the public and substantial evidence out for the world to see the FBI has issued the statement today that Hillary Clinton has been cleared of any suspicion of unlawful conduct. 

This announcement comes on the heels of the release of the report from the now 8th committee formed to investigate the series of events leading up to the attack on U.S. compounds in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 that needlessly claimed the lives of 4 Americans Hillary Clinton and the entire Obama Administration were formally cleared again of any wrong doing. That being said the commission held a 1 hour press conference stating fact after fact after fact proving gross negligence on the part of the Administration putting their own political agenda, including hiding specifics of Hillary’s private war to oust Gaddafi from power in Libya and setting things is (sic) to play for the upcoming presidential election 56 days later, before the lives of Americans. (So according to Meyer the eight investigations failed to find the criminality that he knows exists concerning Benghazi, even though they were conducted by some of the most partisan Republicans in the Congress. Well gee I guess that means they need to launch a ninth one, right Dakota?)

How has this administration gained so much power and influence that even the most obvious of crimes can be so easily excused and overlooked by their supporters? Have we come so far as a nation that politics and corruption are now truly one and the same? Is it still "We the people..."?

So apparently Bristol's baby daddy has never heard of the Bush administration who lied this country into the wars for which he received his medal of honor, or better yet the Reagan administration: "By the end of his term, 138 Reagan administration officials had been convicted, had been indicted, or had been the subject of official investigations for official misconduct and/or criminal violations. In terms of number of officials involved, the record of his administration was the worst ever."

The idea that the Obama's virtually scandal free eight years is even remotely worse, or even comparable, to the last two Republican administrations is laughable on its face.

So much for feeling sorry for Dakota Meyer these days, clearly he has been assimilated by the Palin pod people. 

Sarah Palin congratulates the House Republicans for their failed Benghazi witch hunt and accuses the Obama administration of "wrapping America's children in a suicide vest."

Courtesy of Queen of the Wingnuts' Facebook page:  

HILLARY LIES, SOLDIERS DIE. 

YES, HILLARY, AT EVERY POINT "IT MATTERS" 

(Putting it in all caps just in case you didn't notice it was the rantings of a crazy person.)

Listening to the Benghazi Committee reveal what we knew - the Obama Administration's devastating lies cost lives, and at any point it just doesn't matter to them. Thank you to Congressional investigators for their report. (Yes what better way to waste over seven million tax payer dollars could there be? You know besides repairing our infrastructure, improving our schools, expanding healthcare, etc..)

The Administration's deception is beyond shameful. They sat back and allowed our peacekeepers to die during what they witnessed becoming a suicide mission. In command of the greatest military in the world, yet officials sat back in Washington's comfort, not allowing our troops to do their job to protect fellow Americans. (Uh, what fucking report did you read lady?) Hillary left our men behind. Hillary is disqualified from serving as Commander in Chief. (Actually that is not even remotely what it said in the report.)

The Administration lies and denies in places like Benghazi, which cost innocent American lives. Much like today's refusal to believe real threats -denying Islam put the "I" in ISIS - they are wrapping America's children in a suicide vest. (WTF?)

 - Sarah Palin

And that my friends is why you do not wash your methamphetamine's down with a Red Bull chaser.

The crazy has now got such a strangle hold on Palin that I literally think she might start lining her wigs with tinfoil any day now.

While we are on the topic of Sarah Palin let me address the comments that pop up several times a week asking me when I am going to "take this woman down?"

My question back to that commenter would be "Down from where?"

Exactly where do you see that she is up?

Let's remember that when I first started blogging about Sarah Palin she was the Governor of Alaska.

Then she was running to be the Vice President of this country. Which of course failed.

Then she was an ex-VP candidate as well as an ex-governor, but suddenly a famous book author. Not to mention a paid talking head for Fox News.

That gave her the juice to help promote the Tea Party which is now blamed for much of the division within the Republican party.

Then she was on a reality show, which received terrible ratings and was not renewed.

After that there was quite a bit of talk about her running for the Republican nomination in 2012, but of course she didn't.

Then there were some hit and miss political endorsements, her Fox News contract was not renewed,  a number of her ghostwritten books failed spectacularly, her ill conceived internet channel choked to death on its own stupidity, another reality show died due to viewer disinterest, the police responded to a drunken brawl that involved virtually every member of her family, her husband damned near died in a snowmachine accident, and she has now tied herself to a conspiracy theory believing nutjob with no hope of winning this upcoming election, so I ask you once again, "Down from where?"

To be clear no, nothing I am going to share on this blog is going to "bring Sarah Palin down." Essentially because there is no up from which she can fall.

For all intents and purposes Sarah Palin was "brought down" by Sarah Palin, with a little help from those of us who chronicled that fall.

Now I am not saying that I don't have very interesting or provocative things to share, because I do.

But even if I were to expose her biggest secrets, there simply is no longer an audience who will care enough for it to matter to any significant degree. Those are just the facts.

For most of America she is remembered as that crazy ex who keyed the side of their car and left those insane voice mail messages on their answering machine.

As long as she does not show back up on their doorstep they could not care less what happens to her.

BENGHAZI! BENGHAZI! BENGHAZI!

So today the House Benghazi committee released its report on all of the things that President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did to murder those four brave Americans.

At least that is what it sounds like over on the Right Wing crazy pages.

What did we actually learn after this ninth investigation?

Well let's see.

Courtesy of the New York Times: 

Ending one of the longest, costliest and most bitterly partisan congressional investigations in history, the House Select Committee on Benghazi issued its final report on Tuesday, finding no new evidence of culpability or wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton in the 2012 attacks in Libya that left four Americans dead. 

The 800-page report, however, included some new details about the night of the attacks, and the context in which it occurred, and it delivered a broad rebuke of government agencies like the Defense Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department — and the officials who led them — for failing to grasp the acute security risks in the Libyan city, and especially for maintaining outposts in Benghazi that they could not protect.

So what we learned is that there were flaws in the intelligence and that the security situation in Benghazi was deteriorating.

Wait, didn't the other investigations already tell us that?

Yes, they did.

So was there anything else?

Courtesy of NPR: 

The 800-page report found that despite President Obama and then Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's "clear orders," the military failed to immediately send a force to Benghazi and that nothing was en route to Libya at the time the last two Americans were killed — almost eight hours after the attacks began. 

The report says none of the relevant military forces met their deployment timelines to respond to the attack and that a "Fleet Anti-terrorism Security Team (FAST) sat on a plane in Rota, Spain for three hours, and changed in and out of their uniforms four times."

Oh, so the military screwed up?

Is this the same military that has been all but deified by the conservatives in this country?

(Update: By the way just to clarify, by all reports even if this military response HAD happened immediately they still would not have arrived in time to save Ambassador Stevens and his men.) 

Well come on, let's cut to the REAL reason that this investigation was launched in the first place.

What did report find about what Hillary Clinton did after the attacks which proves she is unfit to seek the Oval Office?

The report had harsh findings about the military but little new about the role of Hillary Clinton, whose response as secretary of state had been thrust into the spotlight by the committee's investigation.

So ultimately Hillary remains unscathed by the findings of this partisan investigation whose sole purpose was to discredit her. I see.

Remember the words of Republican House Majority leader Kevin McCarthy?

“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought.” 

Yeah well today her numbers are back on the rise, and this feeble attempt to damage them further is clearly an abject failure. 

Sure the conservative media will make huge mountains out of the Benghazi report molehills and scream at the top of their lungs that this proves Hillary is unfit to take up residence in the White House.

But it is the same old song we have all heard before.

It was an empty melody back then, and it is an empty melody today.

The House Benghazi committee is preparing to release its report, a report which is going to be very disappointing to the Right Wing conspiracy crowd.

Trey Gowdy

Courtesy of the New York Times:

After running a congressional oversight committee like a Republican opposition research shop for more than two years, Representative Trey Gowdy appears to be gearing up for the finale. Democrats on the Select Committee on Benghazi expect that a final report will drop soon, just as Hillary Clinton appears poised to clinch the Democratic nomination. 

If things had gone his way, Mr. Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor, would have found a way to torpedo Mrs. Clinton’s presidential ambitions. After all, Republican lawmakers have admitted that this is precisely what they set out to do. 

But things have not gone well for Mr. Gowdy, who has run the investigation with the dexterity and grace of a blindfolded toddler swinging at a piñata. Having pored over reams of documents, grilled Mrs. Clinton in an 11-hour session in October and hauled in more than 100 people for interviews, the Republicans seem to have come up with nothing. 

So after spending 20 million dollars of taxpayer money, and running longer than the investigation into 9/11, this witch hunt ends with a whimper and not the bang the conservatives were praying for.

Gee, who saw that coming?

Oh yeah, everybody.

But don't worry, there is STILL the e-mail "scandal" and surely that will come up with something.

Right?

I have said it before, but it bears repeating, I am dying to see what Hillary Clinton does as President which has terrified the Right Wing for so many decades. 

Remember just three years ago when Donald Trump gushed over the Clintons and praised Hillary's tenure as Secretary of State?

"Well first of all I know her very well and I know her husband very well, and I like them both. And they are just genuinely terrific people. I like them both very much. But I think you'll be, you know, you'll be looking at the record of Hillary Clinton, and how did she do as Secretary of State. Probably above and beyond everybody else, and everything else. You'll be looking at her record, and everybody else will be looking at her record. I don't know that Benghazi, it doesn't seem to have resonated like perhaps it should have, but many other things have come up, and the world is in turmoil. And I think that a lot of people will be looking at Hillary's record as Secretary of State and she will be defending that record, and I'm sure she will do a good job of defending it, but that will be the thing that they will be going for. "

I swear it is almost as hard to decipher the Trump babble as it was to make sense out of the Palin word salad.

However what seems fairly clear here, and don't forget this interview was in 2013 only a year after Trump embarrassed himself over the Obama birth certificate lunacy, is that Trump had great admiration for Hillary and even points out that during a campaign she will be attacked on her record as Secretary of State, but that he thinks she can easily defend it.

So here we are, flash forward three years, and it is Donald Trump who is attempting to attack Hillary Clinton on her record as SOS.

Crooked Hillary Clinton is a fraud who has put the public and country at risk by her illegal and very stupid use of e-mails. Many missing!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 1, 2016

If I were the Clinton campaign I would simply make an ad featuring that NBC clip, followed by some snippets of the truly harsh things he says about her today, and then add the tag line, "Donald Trump, he was for Hillary Clinton, before he was against Hillary Clinton."

Damn, I really need to start charging for this. 

Senator Dianne Feinstein on Clinton e-mail controversy: "Enough is enough!"

Courtesy of Mediaite:

In an interview with ABC’s This Week that aired Sunday, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein dismissed the controversy over Hillary Clinton‘s use of a private email server, saying, “enough is enough,” and encouraging voters to deal with more pressing issues facing the country. 

HC broke no law. I read all 42 pages of the report. The conclusion of the report does not say that. What it does say is that the [State] Department does not handle these electronic platform operations well.” 

She continued: “I mean, what do people want? This goes on and on and on. We’re reaching the final stages of a primary. Hillary Clinton is going to win this primary. I say enough is enough. Let’s get to the major problems facing this nation.”

Finally somebody said this out loud.

This thing has gone on for far too long and when all is said and done it is all going to be a huge disappointment for the Bernie Bros and the Right Wing conspiracy fanatics who have been masturbating themselves to sleep over the possibility of a Clinton going to prison for over three decades now.

First it was Whitewater, which nobody even understands.

Then the Clintons supposedly killed Vince Foster.

Then we heard Hillary allowed four Americans to be killed in Benghazi while she refused to save them.

Then there are the allegations that Hillary is owned by Wall Street because they paid to hear her speak.

And now we have the e-mail "scandal."

In every case there is just enough unanswered questions, or troubling details, to keep it going sometimes for year. But in the end.....nothing.

None of this garbage shouted from the rooftops by the Right Wing has ever panned out, and yet every single time there is a new "scandal" we are told "Sure the rest of those were all bullshit, but THIS one, this one is going to finally destroy Bill Obama Hillary completely." 

And don't even bother bringing up the FBI investigation.

Do you REALLY think that if the White House had any fear that Hillary would be indicted that they would not have intervened to derail her campaign by convincing Joe Biden to run, or pressured more Democratic politicians behind the scenes to endorse Bernie Sanders, or simply taken Bill and Hillary aside and said that for the good of the country she needed to drop out of the race?

Of course they would.

Look I get it Hillary Clinton has made some stupid mistakes in the past, and sometimes she plays a little fast and loose with the facts. Which politician doesn't?

But none of that really matter because this contest is now between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and of the two she is by FAR the more qualified, honest, and competent person running for this office.

Hillary Clinton IS going to be the next President of the United States.

So y'all better get used to it.

Benghazi Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy admits that there was no way the military could have arrived in time to save Ambassador Stevens. Oops.

Courtesy of Salon: 

“Whether or not they [the military] could have gotten there in time – I don’t think there’s any issue with respect to that. They couldn’t,” Gowdy said. But, in an effort to justify his committee’s continued efforts, he argued that important context had been omitted from Chipman’s remarks. “The next question,” Gowdy explained, “is why could you [the military] not? Why were you not positioned to do it?” That’s the critical question, Gowdy insisted: why the military wasn’t prepared to respond to a Benghazi-like attack. 

Well, guess what? That question has been asked and answered already.

Salon then goes on to explain that previous investigations had already determined that there was inadequate security, and the President himself admitted this in 2014 and said that changes needed to be made to better protect our diplomats in the future.

It has also already been determined that there was no wrongdoing on the part of the Obama administration, military, or CIA concerning their response to the attacks in Benghazi.

By the way Secretary Clinton was part of the Obama administration at the time.

So if everybody has already been exonerated, and Gowdy himself admits that the military could not have arrived in time to save the day, what exactly is the point?

Well of course the point is the same one behind this ridiculous "Clinton Cash" movie, Donald Trump referring to her as "Crooked Hillary Clinton," and every other Right Wing attack on the internet.

It is to do damage to Hillary and hopefully prevent her from winning this next election.

And toward that end Donald Trump, the House Republicans, internet trolls, The Drudge Report, Fox News, and now the Bernie Sanders campaign are working as one.

Is it really any wonder that Hillary Clinton's favorability numbers are falling?