All Together Now, Benghazi BENGHAZI!

Having failed to generate any movement over the so-called IRS "scandal," extreme wingnut Congresscritters are turning to their Rethuglican leadership in the House to establish a special committee to "investigate"....you guessed it....Benghazi! BENGHAZI!!  Led by uber-wingnut Rep. Steve "Out of Stock" Stockman (Tinfoil Hat - TX), bitter enders in the House are gathering signatures to force a discharge petition and an up or down vote on establishing the committee.  They need a simple majority of 218, but have only collected roughly 160.

Instead of focusing on the needs of the American people, the Rethug wingers continue to politicize everything they see (or imagine).   Remember last November when they ran on the economy and jobs? Now it's attempted scandal-generation and their war on women.

No Need To Kiss His Ring

U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice is scheduled to meet with a number of Senators today to discuss the Benghazi attack. We wonder why, when her only involvement was reading off of talking points prepared by the Director of National Intelligence on several Sunday gab fests.

Most aggravating is her scheduled meeting with bitter old clown Sen. John "McNasty" McCain, which he says she requested. This would have been a good time for the Administration to shun McNasty and let him twist in the wind of his reckless and borderline racist remarks about Rice, which he's trying to walk back. Here's the way McNasty put it:

"She asked to see me and I agreed to see her."

How nice of him to agree, and how obsequious of the Administration to offer her up again to a jerk like McNasty.

The Administration doesn't need McNasty's vote if Rice were to be the nominee for Secretary of State, so why not send him a message by denying him a "visit" from Rice? If this is a harbinger of more "negotiating with yourself" by the Obama Administration, maybe they, more than the Rethuglicans, need to remember who won the last election convincingly.

UPDATE: And now that she's met with McNasty and his amigos, they've renewed their criticism. Well played.

UPDATE DEUX: As usual, Charles P. Pierce um... pierces the ego bubbles involved in the charade:

"Rice, and acting CIA director Michael Morell, took time out of their busy schedules to go up to Capitol Hill and soothe the wounded fee-fees of John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and the inexplicable Kelly Ayotte, who has decided that the foreign-policy credentials she burnished keeping New Hampshire safe from General Burgoyne have made her a serious player, and who apparently has been adopted by Grumpypants and Huckleberry Closetcase because they can convince her that Susan Rice went to prom with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."

Hee-hee. Love the "Grumpypants" and "Huckleberry Closetcase," henceforth our new monikers for McCain and Graham.

McNasty's Bitter Road

It seems that Arizona Sen. and anger management candidate John "McNasty" McCain has never gotten over his thrashing in 2008 by then-Sen. Barack Obama. Almost from the start of President Obama's term, he positioned himself as one of the most bitter and partisan voices on the Rethuglican right. He even abandoned previously held positions on immigration and other issues in order to oppose the man that beat him out of the Presidency.

Lately, McNasty has been angrily denouncing the Administration over the handling of the Benghazi attack. But, when he had an opportunity to attend a top secret briefing yesterday on the attack, he was AWOL. When asked by a CNN reporter why he missed the briefing that could have answered the questions he'd been raising, McNasty blew his top.

For someone so reckless as to select nincompoop grifter Sarah Palin as his running mate, and so deeply bitter four years after his rejection by the voters, we are fortunate that we're not dealing with a President McNasty these days.