Today's Cartoon Threefer - Benghazi Fishing Expedition Sinks

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(Rob Rogers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)


(Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press)


(Drew Sheneman, The Star-Ledger, Newark, N.J.)

The Benghazi! Benghazi!! BENGHAZI!! Boondoggle Bust

Here's all you need to know about the Benghazi! report issued by House Republicans today:

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.

Two years and $7 million, to be exact, following eight previous reports and investigations by, for example, the State Department, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the House Oversight Committee, all coming to essentially the same conclusion long ago.

House Democrats on the Benghazi! committee issued their report yesterday.  As they point out, this partisan witch hunt (you know who their "witch" is) took longer than the investigations of the Kennedy assassination, Hurricane Katrina, Iran Contra, or Pearl Harbor.

When faced with the reality that his efforts had come a-cropper, we like to imagine this was the reaction of head (heh) Republican inquisitor Rep. Trey "Deuce" Gowdy (R- Hair Cuttery) and his puppetmaster behind the chair:
via GIPHY

Today's Cartoon - Benghazi!!! Blows Up

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(Rob Rogers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

It was a genius, stealth Republican plan that no one ever could possibly have taken to be a naked partisan attack on Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, including our noble "mainstream media."

Benghazi: Yes, It Was All A Fake Scandal

After all the hysteria, tinfoil hat conspiracy theories, faux outrage, and vicious Obama/ Clinton/ Rice bashing, there's this (via the AP):

A two-year investigation by the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee has found that the CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and asserted no wrongdoing by Obama administration appointees. 

Debunking a series of persistent allegations hinting at dark conspiracies, the investigation of the politically charged incident determined that there was no intelligence failure, no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, no missed opportunity for a military rescue, and no evidence the CIA was covertly shipping arms from Libya to Syria.

That's no, no, no, and no.  And your "mainstream media" that was all over Benghazi!!! when the right-wingers were flogging it will report this...how? Have you seen anything beyond maybe a passing reference to this in the media?  =crickets=

Will Benghazi!!! recede as an issue going forward?  Anyone who believes it will is not familiar with the crackpot right and their anger-generators, Fox "News," hate radio and basement bloggers.  It will continue to be a dead horse these lunatics will beat on as long as there's a Clinton or an Obama in office or running for one.

BONUS:  Here's Martin Longman's (a.k.a., the Booman) take on the media's culpability and need for redemption. Also, Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog is equally skeptical of Republicans letting this go.

BONUS II: As any normally functioning human would have guessed,  Fox "News" gives the report 30 seconds, and not 30 accurate seconds, either.

BONUS III:  Republican Sen. Lindsey "My Stars and Garters" Graham (R-SeCessionland), pictured in the gif above, keeps whacking away.

BONUS IV:  Nope, they're not giving up -  Weeper of the House John "Mr. Tangerine Man" Boehner (R-Eunuch) is still on a mission.

"Benghazi! BENGHAZI! Huh? What? Er, Look Over There"

Another major Republican faux story line may be biting the dust after two years of relentless slander:

 The House Intelligence Committee, led by Republicans, has concluded that there was no deliberate wrongdoing by the Obama administration in the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, said Rep. Mike Thompson of St. Helena, the second-ranking Democrat on the committee. 

The panel voted Thursday to declassify the report, the result of two years of investigation by the committee. U.S. intelligence agencies will have to approve making the report public. 

Thompson said the report "confirms that no one was deliberately misled, no military assets were withheld and no stand-down order (to U.S. forces) was given."  (our emphasis)

Rep. Darrell "Grand Theft Auto" Issa (Asshat-CA), teatarders, conspiracy nuts, hate radio, Fox "News," and all the associated flora of the right-wing swampland will, of course, continue to ignore the facts, because it was really all about roughing up Hillary Clinton (and, collaterally, the President) anyway.  Let's see how the "mainstream media" plays this (our bet is 15 seconds max on the broadcast news, and back in the undergarment ads in the press).

Today's Tomorrow Cartoon

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(Tom Tomorrow, via Daily Kos)

Today's Dispatches From The Stupid Party

Oh, the irony!  Check out the title of this Republican/ Stupid Party bill's name:

Titled the “Frontiers in Innovation, Research, Science, and Technology (FIRST) Act of 2014," the bill would put a variety of new restrictions on how funds are doled out by the National Science Foundation. The goal, per its Republican supporters on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, would be to weed out projects whose cost can't be justified or whose sociological purpose is not apparent.

In other words, House science committee brainz like these will be deciding what can or can't be justified for funding:  Rep. Lamar "What Global Warming?" Smith (Trog-TX), Rep. Paul "Lies From The Pit of Hell" Broun (Sanitarium-GA), and Rep. Randy "Noogie" Neugebauer (Trog-TX) who, when he's not berating Park Rangers, likes to shout sweet nothings to his fellow Congresscritters.   Those are only 3 of the dimbulbs on which the bill would vest authority for deciding whether or not to do studies on global warming , basic science and population research  Benghazi!!!

Speaking of Benghazi!!!, let's not leave out former Bush flack, GOP-TV Fox "News" host and "Mission Accomplished" banner editor Dana Perino's ironic contribution to lowering the national IQ even further.  Take it away (no please, take it away):

"Tomorrow, President Obama is going to do interviews with meteorologists all across the country about a new climate change report," [Fox News host Dana Perino] said. "I hope they ask him about Benghazi."

Thousands killed on 9/11, many more thousands killed and wounded in Iraq, and Ms. Perino has the thick-skulled gall to show her face, much less display her faux outrage?

 "Irony my shirt!"

The Senate Intelligence Report on Benghazi

In today's once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle, David Ignatius writes about the recent Senate intelligence committee report on "Benghazi !":

The Senate intelligence committee made headlines this week by reporting that the 2012 attack in Benghazi was preventable. But frankly, we knew that. The deeper message of the bipartisan report was that Republicans in Congress wasted a year arguing about what turned out to be mostly phony issues.  [snip] 

The Republican tirades about Benghazi were unfortunate not just because they were based on erroneous speculation but also because they distracted policymakers from the real challenge of framing coherent policy in the Middle East. Sometimes, it seemed as if Benghazi finger-pointing was the only issue that leading Republicans cared about. 

In between the selected paragraphs above, Ignatius indicates how the (bi-partisan) Senate report refuted more than a year's worth of Republican witch-hunting and character assassination, led by the execrable Rep. Darrell "Grand Theft Auto" Issa (R-Arson).   What Ignatius omits is the "why," i.e., the real issue "leading Republicans cared about."   Let's fill in that blank for him in two words:  Hillary Clinton.

The minute Barack Obama became a lame duck President, Republicans shifted their strategic focus to roughing up the strongest Democratic contender for 2016:  Hillary Clinton.  It must have scared the bejezus out of Fox "News" (GOP-TV) that Clinton was leading every potential Republican contender by double digits, hence their drumbeat of "coverup!" that began the year-long obsession:

Driving the Republican jihad was a claim, first reported in October 2012 by Fox News, that CIA personnel had wanted to respond more quickly to the Benghazi attack but were ordered to “stand down,” perhaps by political higher-ups. Although this claim was promptly rebutted by CIA officials, it was repeated by Fox News at least 85 times, according to a review by the liberal advocacy group Media Matters. This barrage fueled Republican charges that the Democrats were engaging in a coverup.

They might need to manufacture a new diversion, though, because Hillary's lead over her closest Republican rival, once-Great White Whale Hope Gov. Chris "Krispykreme" Christie, is back to double digits.

More Media Malpractice

Here are two good reads on how the media amplifies story lines and faux scandals ginned up by the  right-wing:

Steve Benen at Maddowblog on how the New York Times (!), once great Washington Post Kaplan Daily, and (not surprisingly) Politico uncritically trumpeted the right-wing line on the IRS nothingburger, but were far less interested in trumpeting contrary facts as the "scandal" started to implode.

Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog notes CNN's Jake "Tippy" Tapper dutifully pushing the latest Rethuglican narrative course correction on BENGHAZI!! 

And you wonder why we can't have nice things in this country?

We Interrupt This Blog For -- BENGHAZI !!

It's been said enough, but worth saying again, this time by CNN's David Rothkopf:

"Rep. Darrell Issa must be ruing his bad luck. The hearing he carefully orchestrated to pick at the scab of Benghazi was stepped on by the verdict in the Jodi Arias murder trial and by the story of three women held captive and brutalized for a decade in Cleveland. He was out-sensationalized and out-tawdried this week despite his own best efforts and those of his committee colleagues and staff members. [...] Nothing spoken of in the hearing suggested a cover-up by a Cabinet secretary, who instantly took personal responsibility for the attacks and swiftly appointed an independent commission led by two of the most distinguished, nonpartisan career civil servants in recent American history to investigate them. To say otherwise is more than a reach. It's an effort by the Republican Party to damage the person most likely to be the next Democratic presidential candidate."   (our emphasis)

An effort that is going to fail because, to borrow Gertrude Stein's formulation, "There is no there there."

Teabaggers Boycott Fox "News" Over... Benghazi?

Here's your comedy read of the week from Wonkette, about the "boycott" a teabagger group is engaged in because Fox "News" isn't running Benghazi conspiracy porn 24/7.  Read the whole piece!

"Hell hath no fury like a pretend movement (which is really just a bunch of Republicans who like to play dress-up) scorned.

"It’s as if Fox News has completely abandoned its mission of pimping every gathering of three dudes waving misspelled signs inspired by the conspiracy theories hatched from Donald Trump’s hair. You done gone soft, Fox, and the teabaggers are as mad as hell and they’re not going to take it no more and they even made a website called BENGHAZIIIIII!!!!!! Truth, which has lots of quotes from Alice in Wonderland so you KNOW they mean business. Take THAT, Fox News — if that even is your real name, which it might not be, we don’t know, we need to see the long-form incorporation forms!"

Where, oh where, are these demented souls going to get their anger rush "news" now?  

(Image:  Uncle Sham)