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Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Chris Stevens Sister: Don't Blame Hillary Clinton for Benghazi

Yesterday the GOP released their final Benghazi report that told us nothing new and showed no wrongdoing on Hilary's part.

Don't believe me, believe Marco Rubio:

"The House Select Cmte report on Benghazi tells us what we already know - Hillary Clinton is disqualified from being Commander in Chief."

https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/747830674036563968

Yes, but Hitler 2.0 is qualified, right Little Marco?

Not for the first time, Little Marco makes zero sense. He admits that the report tells us nothing we didn't already know.

No wonder Rubio's losing in bid to take back his own seat that he wasn't running for.

http://www.dailynewsbin.com/news/democrat-patrick-murphy-neck-and-neck-with-marco-rubio-in-senate-race-in-florida/25037/

Rubio should pledge to the Florida voters not to run for President in 2020 or they should forget him.

As Hillary says, it's time to move on.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/29/benghazi-report-finds-no-smoking-gun-and-hillary-clinton-happy-to-move-on

You know who else is happy to move on? Ambassador Steven's sister. Obviously the pain of her personal loss is great.

But she has had it with the GOP's politically motivated attempt to make this about Hillary Clinton and wrongfully blame her for this terrible loss.

"When it comes to who was responsible for the security lapses that resulted in the death of her brother, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012, the ambassador's sister and family spokesperson, Anne Stevens, is not pointing the finger at Hillary Clinton. And it is "inappropriate," she said, to make Benghazi an election issue."

"I do not blame Hillary Clinton or Leon Panetta," Stevens said in an interview published Tuesday with The New Yorker's Robin Wright, referring to the former secretaries of State and defense, respectively. "They were balancing security efforts at embassies and missions around the world. And their staffs were doing their best to provide what they could with the resources they had. The Benghazi Mission was understaffed. We know that now. But, again, Chris knew that. It wasn’t a secret to him. He decided to take the risk to go there. It is not something they did to him. It is something he took on himself."

"Instead, Stevens remarked that if any entity had any culpability, it was Congress for the State Department's budget."

"Perhaps if Congress had provided a budget to increase security for all missions around the world, then some of the requests for more security in Libya would have been granted," Stevens told Wright.

"As far as the reports issued this week by Democratic and Republican members of the House Benghazi Committee, Stevens indicated that she had learned very little. "It doesn’t look like anything new. They concluded that the U.S. compound in Benghazi was not secure. We knew that," she told Wright. While she remarked that her brother knew of and spoke of the risks of being in Libya, she never heard him discuss it as a personal concern, rather in terms of the rampant militias and loose weapons."

Asked whether she felt her brother's death had been politicized, Stevens was adamant.

"Yes! Definitely politicized. Every report I read that mentions him specifically has a political bent, an accusatory bent," Stevens said. "One point that seems to be brought up again and again is the accusation that the attack was a response to the video. I could understand why that conclusion would be made, because it was right after the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Egypt. But, frankly, it doesn’t matter that that was the thinking, that night, about why the attack occurred. It’s irrelevant to bring that up again and again. It is done purely for political reasons."

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/chris-stevens-hillary-clinton-benghazi-224928#ixzz4Cyc4EtNX

In other news Trump tweeted this:

Benghazi is just another Hillary Clinton failure. It just never seems to work the way it's supposed to with Clinton."

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/747888354126069761

I'm sure when he hears the wishes of Ann Stevens, he'll take it back.

26 comments:

  1. O/T: Really really good news:
    http://theresurgent.com/really-really-bad-news-for-gop-senate-races/

    and some bad:
    http://www.redstate.com/california_yankee/2016/06/29/new-poll-hillary-donald-close-call/

    and more good:
    http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/29/politics/battleground-polls-donald-trump-hillary-clinton/index.html

    and some bad (Ballotpedia doesn't even get a grade, but Quinnipiac is graded A-, but with a Republican bias of 0.7 points or so):
    http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/

    ReplyDelete
  2. I saw both CNN and Quinnipiac. The Q numbers are dubious.

    Trump is only winning white voters by 9 and only gets 1 percent of black vote and yet it''s just a two point race?

    But what you notice even here is that what makes it close is Hillary is just at 44 percent.

    Trump's numbers in virtually no poll I've seen has gotten higher than the low 40s-in some he's into the 30s.

    The difference is other polls have her with higher support.

    So it's conceivable that they have undercounted her support.

    In any case, at least for now, Q is an outlier until others confirm this

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I tend to think Q is an outlier as well, but overall, I have no reason to doubt 538's assessment. But honestly, I'm thinking the ballotpedia looks a little suspicious as well... the differences there are very large compared to most polls I've seen, especially in battleground states.

      Also I tend to think those numbers on those senators are a little optimistic for the Dems, but it'd be nice if they were true.

      We'll see I guess.

      Did you see that the GOP shot itself in the foot in the Senate race in CO yesterday (the GOP picked a loser in the primary: and extremist candidate)

      Trump is even making his new found evangelical friends (experts at self deception, every one) a little nervous by not saying a peep about the pro-abortion rights supreme court decision.

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    2. Interestingly this Glenn guy who's loved by all the hard core conservatives (including Erickson, Levin and Cruz (and Palin too)) is a solid Trump supporter. Bennett should hammer him on that. But it looks like he's on his own fund wise with Bennett having a 10x funding lead now, so he might not require too much hammering.

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  3. Well 538 gives her an overall almost 80% shot.

    Yes, things are looking good in the Senate. Little Marco is down by a point now too.

    http://www.dailynewsbin.com/news/democrat-patrick-murphy-neck-and-neck-with-marco-rubio-in-senate-race-in-florida/25037/

    Patrick Murphy should push him to pledge that if he wins he serves his full term-no running for POTUS in 2020

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    Replies
    1. And he should hammer him on his Trump support. Rubio said he wouldn't trust Trump with the nuclear codes, but he's backing him?

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    2. Absolutely. 'Trump can't be trusted with the nuclear codes but at least he's not Hillary Clinton' is not a winning campaign slogan

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    3. She hammers him on his "garbage wall" trade speech too:
      https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/06/29/garbage-in-garbage-out/

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  4. Jennifer take Rubio to task today for his incomprehensible Trump backing:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/06/29/whatever-happened-to-rubios-integrity/

    And I notice she has a fresh new Trump turd pie piping hot out of the oven as well:
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/06/29/trumps-dangerous-ignorance/

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  5. The "Great" James Dobson has sullied himself by flirting with Trump:
    http://www.redstate.com/leon_h_wolf/2016/06/29/james-dobson-doesnt-want-sucker-donald-trump-anymore/

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  6. Mike, one step closer to seeing my GOP convention fantasies realized:
    http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2016/06/29/youll-never-able-guess-wants-provide-security-gop-convention/

    ReplyDelete
  7. Dreams can come true. As a Trump Democrat, I can attest.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I see that you saw E. Harding at Sumner's wishing for economic turmoil so that his favorite fascist can get elected. He made some comment about the 1932 election and I write to him "What, you mean the one in Germany?"

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    2. RE: GOP convention. The downside as I see it, is that the pitched street battles between opposing groups of neo-Nazi skin heads might not be over yet by the time the Democratic convention starts. Hell, they might not even have all the holed up extremist snipers liquidated in the GOP convention hall by them! ... and that's going to suck up all the media attention.

      Delete
  8. I'm trying to figure out if this is E. Harding or Art Deco:
    http://www.redstate.com/uploads/2016/06/traditionalist-workers-party.jpg

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Deco is the one with absolutely no sense of irony. He's almost like Major in that regard except he's not absurdly verbose

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    2. That pick above is probably more likely to be Harding. I don't think Deco is an anti-semite. Plus, my imagine of Deco is more like this.

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    3. Yes, Harding takes pride in showing off how racist he is

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  9. Mike, I think this comment from Bill S. (RedState Moderator) indicates who he might be voting for (plus I mostly agree with his comment):

    If Trump is nominated, it is critical that he be defeated by an astronomical margin. It needs to be a 50-state sweep and he must lose the popular vote by at least 15%. The Trumpkins need to be silenced and sent back under the rock from which they crawled. It appears we're headed that direction. Good.

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    Avatar
    libertylioness Bill S • an hour ago

    Agree a 50 state loss would show the Trumpeets ..they are done for in this party.


    I hope all that happens, but these are conservatives we're talking about here: the chance they'll actually learn something from reality's feedback to them in minuscule.

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  10. A lot of folks are saying this. George Will hopes Trump loses every state. I'm sure Rubin would be fine with that.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Bill S. calls Trump the Seinfeld valet guy:
      http://www.redstate.com/bs/2016/06/29/donald-trump-valet-parking-guy-seinfeld/

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  11. Mike, you probably won't agree with this, but one of the things that cracks me up about Hillary sometimes is her choice of clothing. Sometimes it's pretty good (like during her foreign policy speech), but sometimes she wears a certain kind of top, with a row of buttons up the front that reminds me of Dr. Evil. I'm surprised I haven't seen any right wingers pick up on that.

    Here's an example:
    http://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2016/02/02/08/Hillary-Clinton.jpg

    http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/160607232057-hillary-clinton-june-7-2016-large-169.jpg

    http://i2.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2016/06/HillaryWarren1.jpg?resize=580%2C387

    Let me see if anybody out there has picked up on this...

    Yep, I'm not the only one. Though nobody had her stroking a cat, which was a surprise.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Maybe right-wingers subconsciously pick up on that and it's one of the things that terrifies them about her! Lol... in which case, it's totally worth doing as much as possible!

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    2. This (IMO, which I'm sure nobody cares about) is a much better look for her (the aforementioned foreign policy speech):
      https://localtvwtkr.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/160602152017-hillary-clinton-foreign-policy-speech-06022016-exlarge-tease.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&w=370&h=204&crop=1

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    3. It's a lot more complicated for female politicians than male ones... Men pretty much wear a uniform. There's a choice of tie (red or blue) and that's about it. I guess there's the casual vs suite, but that's not a biggie.

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  12. I don't know about all that. LOL.

    I will say this. Since she started her own career, I like her hairstyle better. She usually keeps it flowing down now.

    Before she still had something of the 70s feminist about her-which was always something of a defiantly tomboyish look to it. Her hair was usually pulled up and always changing.

    Something about that. I l guess it's a Zizekan thing: In woman I like to imagine there's a stable personality in there and the changing hairstyles make it seem like there are lots of different split personalities.

    As long as I'm following you down this rabbit hole, let me admit that I find her quite attractive, now more than ever. Even more now than in 2008.

    Maybe it's that I find power sexy.

    But I always have had something of an Oedipal thing for her.

    You know before her and Bill there was Barbara Bush and Nancy Reagan. Those were old fashioned women brought up before the feminist movement.

    They were way too old and Republican for me to feel much towards but kind of like being around your very severe and scary grandmother.

    I've heard it joked that women beyond a certain age used to get respect by scaring you, literally. To look as 'formidable' for the male gaze as possible.

    But Hillary was younger in 1992. While Barbara and Nancy were old enough to be my grandmother, Hillary was old enough to be my mother...

    Ok, you led me to this place, LOL

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