rickyp wrote:So the repeated Benghazi investigations had a purpose? So says Rep. Kevin McCarthy....

“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” he said. “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.”

The consequences of McCarthy’s sleight of tongue can’t be overstated. It wasn’t just a Washington gaffe — when someone accidentally tells the truth. It was a self-inflicted, potentially fatal wound, not just to McCarthy but to Republicans more broadly, including those running for president.

“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” he said. “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.”

The consequences of McCarthy’s sleight of tongue can’t be overstated. It wasn’t just a Washington gaffe — when someone accidentally tells the truth. It was a self-inflicted, potentially fatal wound, not just to McCarthy but to Republicans more broadly, including those running for president.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html

McCarthy is a fool

Sure, it will make for a ready-made advertisement for Hills

rickyp wrote:http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/2016_democratic_presidential_nomination-3824.html

Hillary is still 20 points ahead of Sanders. and that's with Biden in the picture... As much as I personally like Sanders Hillary is still fairly secure.

Fate

McCarthy is a fool

And yet republican leadership material... Or was.

Fate

Sure, it will make for a ready-made advertisement for Hills

yes it will. And since the |implications" behind the 9 Banghazi hearings and the email "trumped up" scandal is that she is not trustworthy.

The Implication that it was all just a witch hunt at tax payers expense... will be effective.
And will sell pretty well. Which is KAthleen Parkers point. And Bill Clintons who will certainly be using McCarthy's admission to remedy the effect on Hillary's image caused by either set of hearings...

Clinton: It was for “convenience.” “I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two.”

Truth: Mrs. Clinton’s team acknowledged in July that she traveled with both a BlackBerry and an iPad while secretary of state, and that she had her private email set up on both.

Why she finally gave her emails to the State Department.

Clinton: “What happened . . . is that the State Department sent a letter to former secretaries of state, not just to me, asking for some assistance in providing any work-related emails that might be on the personal email.” In other words, this was a routine records request.

Truth: In late September, State Department spokesman John Kirby said that “in the process of responding to [Congress’s Benghazi investigation], State Department officials recognized that it had access to relatively few email records from former Secretary Clinton.” So they contacted her “during the summer of 2014 to learn more about her email use and the status of emails in that account.” Only then did the department realize that it was also missing emails from other secretaries. It didn’t contact them until October 2014.

What she turned over.

Clinton: “I . . . provided all my emails that could possibly be work-related.”

Truth: In June Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal turned over to Congress his own store of Clinton correspondence, which included emails she hadn’t provided to the State Department. Last week the government found by its own means emails she had sent to Gen. David Petraeus, which Mrs. Clinton also hadn’t surrendered. Her campaign now admits that there is a two-month gap from the beginning of her tenure as secretary of state, when she was using her private email address but not her personal server. All the emails from that time period are missing, and the Clinton team says it has no idea where they are.

What is in State Department records.

Clinton: “It was my practice to communicate with State Department and other government officials on their .gov accounts so those emails would be automatically saved in the State Department system to meet record-keeping requirements.”

Truth: Mrs. Clinton’s top aides, including her chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, and Huma Abedin, had private email addresses, which she used to correspond with them. Ms. Abedin’s email was also housed on the Clinton server. The State Department release on Wednesday of 6,300 pages of Clinton correspondence features one email in which she specifically asks an aide, not Ms. Abedin, for her Gmail address. In another 2011 email, an aide wrote to Mrs. Clinton expressing concern about the State Department’s outdated technology and just how many employees use private email: “NO ONE uses a State-issued laptop and even high officials routinely end up using their home email accounts to be able to get their work done quickly.” Mrs. Clinton—from her private email—agrees that it is a problem.

Classified information.

Clinton: “There is no classified material” on the private server.

Truth: The latest State Department document dump now brings to more than 400 the number of Clinton emails that contain classified information. They touch on everything from spy satellites, to drone strikes to Iranian nuclear discussions. The Clinton team contends that these emails were not stamped classified until after the fact. But intelligence experts note many were “born” classified—that is, the nature of the information required that they be handled as classified from the start.

Security.

Clinton: The server “had numerous safeguards. It was on property guarded by the Secret Service. And there were no security breaches.”

Truth: The Clinton emails released this week show that her server was attacked at least five times by hackers linked to Russia. It is unclear whether she clicked on any email attachments and put her account at risk. Mrs. Clinton’s server meanwhile sat for many months in a private data center in New Jersey, accessible to people who lacked security clearances. Thumb-drive copies of her email were also unsecured for months, while in the possession of her lawyer, David Kendall. And classified email she sent to aides on their private accounts is now sitting on Google and AOL servers.

Transparency.

Clinton (on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sept. 27): “I think I have done all that I can . . . to be as transparent as possible.”

Truth: Give her marks for this one. Mrs. Clinton is undoubtedly being as transparent as Mrs. Clinton can possibly be.

rickyp wrote:So the repeated Benghazi investigations had a purpose? So says Rep. Kevin McCarthy....

“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” he said. “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.”

The consequences of McCarthy’s sleight of tongue can’t be overstated. It wasn’t just a Washington gaffe — when someone accidentally tells the truth. It was a self-inflicted, potentially fatal wound, not just to McCarthy but to Republicans more broadly, including those running for president.

“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” he said. “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.”

The consequences of McCarthy’s sleight of tongue can’t be overstated. It wasn’t just a Washington gaffe — when someone accidentally tells the truth. It was a self-inflicted, potentially fatal wound, not just to McCarthy but to Republicans more broadly, including those running for president.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html

Ray Jay wrote:

rickyp wrote:So the repeated Benghazi investigations had a purpose? So says Rep. Kevin McCarthy....

“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” he said. “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.”

The consequences of McCarthy’s sleight of tongue can’t be overstated. It wasn’t just a Washington gaffe — when someone accidentally tells the truth. It was a self-inflicted, potentially fatal wound, not just to McCarthy but to Republicans more broadly, including those running for president.

“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” he said. “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.”

The consequences of McCarthy’s sleight of tongue can’t be overstated. It wasn’t just a Washington gaffe — when someone accidentally tells the truth. It was a self-inflicted, potentially fatal wound, not just to McCarthy but to Republicans more broadly, including those running for president.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html

It's hard to argue that part of the purpose of these investigations has been to embarrass Obama and Clinton. That being said, McCarthy doesn't speak for those who ran these investigations.

The historical significance of this moment can hardly be overstated, and it seems many Republicans, Democrats and members of the media don’t fully understand the magnitude of what is taking place. The awesome power of government—one that allows officials to pore through almost anything they demand and compel anyone to talk or suffer the shame of taking the Fifth Amendment—has been unleashed for purely political purposes. It is impossible to review what the Benghazi committee has done as anything other than taxpayer-funded political research of the opposing party’s leading candidate for president. Comparisons from America’s past are rare. Richard Nixon’s attempts to use the IRS to investigate his perceived enemies come to mind. So does Senator Joseph McCarthy’s red-baiting during the 1950s, with reckless accusations of treason leveled at members of the State Department, military generals and even the secretary of the Army. But the modern McCarthys of the Benghazi committee cannot perform this political theater on their own—they depend on reporters to aid in the attempts to use government for the purpose of destroying others with bogus “scoops” ladled out by members of Congress and their staffs. These journalists will almost certainly join the legions of shamed reporters of the McCarthy era as it becomes increasingly clear they are enablers of an obscene attempt to undermine the electoral process.

rickyp wrote:Newsweek published this piece today:

Benghazi Biopsy: A Comprehensive Guide to One of America’s Worst Political Outrages

If American journalists read it, and it should be required reading, it - and the testimony of Clinton today, will end the abuse.
What's amazing is how really poor American journalism is ...

http://www.newsweek.com/benghazi-biopsy ... ges-385853

I hope you'll read it in full Fate. Here's the important takeaway.

The historical significance of this moment can hardly be overstated, and it seems many Republicans, Democrats and members of the media don’t fully understand the magnitude of what is taking place. The awesome power of government—one that allows officials to pore through almost anything they demand and compel anyone to talk or suffer the shame of taking the Fifth Amendment—has been unleashed for purely political purposes. It is impossible to review what the Benghazi committee has done as anything other than taxpayer-funded political research of the opposing party’s leading candidate for president. Comparisons from America’s past are rare. Richard Nixon’s attempts to use the IRS to investigate his perceived enemies come to mind. So does Senator Joseph McCarthy’s red-baiting during the 1950s, with reckless accusations of treason leveled at members of the State Department, military generals and even the secretary of the Army. But the modern McCarthys of the Benghazi committee cannot perform this political theater on their own—they depend on reporters to aid in the attempts to use government for the purpose of destroying others with bogus “scoops” ladled out by members of Congress and their staffs. These journalists will almost certainly join the legions of shamed reporters of the McCarthy era as it becomes increasingly clear they are enablers of an obscene attempt to undermine the electoral process.

You can call that politics. I'll call it abuse of power, perjury, and obstruction of justice

rickyp wrote:Trouble is, for Republicans, it gave Hillary a stage to demonstrate grace under pressure, competence, eloquence and command of the issue. Probably cemented her victory in the upcoming Presidential race. Especially if her opponent if Trump or Carson. (As hard it is to believe, they do seem to be plausible candidates, albeit for an implausible political organization).

Thanks to Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi testimony on Thursday, we now understand why the former secretary of state never wanted anyone to see her emails and why the State Department sat on documents. Turns out those emails and papers show that the Obama administration deliberately misled the nation about the deadly events in Libya on Sept. 11, 2012.

. . .

Here’s what the Benghazi committee found in Thursday’s hearing. Two hours into Mrs. Clinton’s testimony, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan referred to an email Mrs. Clinton sent to her daughter, Chelsea, at 11:12 the night of the attack, or 45 minutes after the secretary of state had issued a statement blaming YouTube-inflamed mobs. Her email reads: “Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al Queda-like group.” Mrs. Clinton doesn’t hedge in the email; no “it seems” or “it appears.” She tells her daughter that on the anniversary of 9/11 an al Qaeda group assassinated four Americans.

That same evening, Mrs. Clinton spoke on the phone with Libyan President Mohamed Magariaf, around 8 p.m. The notes from that conversation, in a State Department email, describe her as saying: “We have asked for the Libyan government to provide additional security to the compound immediately as there is a gun battle ongoing, which I understand Ansar as Sharia [sic] is claiming responsibility for.” Ansar al Sharia is al Qaeda’s affiliate on the Arabian Peninsula. So several hours into the attack, Mrs. Clinton already believed that al Qaeda was attacking U.S. facilities.

The next afternoon, Mrs. Clinton had a call with the Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil. The notes from it are absolutely damning. The secretary of state tells him: “We know that the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack—not a protest.” And yet Mrs. Clinton, and Ms. Rice and Mr. Obama for days and days continued to spin the video lie.

freeman3 wrote:Nothing significant came out and Hillary Clinton got to look presidential and show off her credentials and knowledge regarding foreign policy...thanks Republicans!