6:26 pm Central … And now, for my premature exasperation. It's been 9 hours, 26 minutes, we're still counting, still getting the same questions answered in the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh investigations, and still there's no end in sight.
Today I learned only one thing. Tomorrow, the tea party types will be angrier than ever. When listening to Republicans call in to C-Span3's line during recesses, I noticed they all sounded like the frantic, election-night Karl Rove in 2012: We're not losing, we're not losing, and the enemy is not winning. Well, of course the enemy had won, and today Hillary won. The ideological Benghazites positively exhausted themselves trying to hit her, and they failed in every attempted strike. I could hear the panic in the Republican callers' voices. They knew the day and this battle were lost — and reality, as you know, doesn't sit well with these people. They were pissed. There was no rejoining whatsoever in their dial-ups. They'll want fresh meat tomorrow to satisfy their bloodlust. And from what I saw of the committee's Republican members today (and let's recall, these are the more "responsible" Republicans that the chairman wanted, to avoid a Gohmertlike freakshow), the GOP will be desperate to provide … whatever. Today settled nothing for Gowdy & Friends. It only made things worse for them.
I'm outta here. See you in the morning, when these things will get really interesting.
***
5:08 … Ohio's immensely offensive Jim Jordan is again proceeding on the wild presumption that the State Department, the CIA, the national security council and the WH press secretary should all have known, within 48 hours, precisely what caused the Benghazi attack, and been in agreement. No bureaucracy — let alone an admixture of dazed bureaucracies — could ever withstand that level of fastidious scrutiny. And Rep. Jordan knows it.
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4:43 … California's Adam Schiff has been refreshing. "I do not understand this case, I do not understand this prosecution, I do not understand this obsession with Sidney Blumenthal." What we're witnessing is a mystery hearing, an hours-long mess of nothing intelligible, except the politics, which has been persistently denied by "the prosecution." Schiff's bewilderment is authentic, since this hearing is authentically dumbfounding.
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4:25 … So far, seven hours, 25 minutes — and nothing. Not a damn thing.
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3:06 … No, Dana Bash, one's reaction to this committee's hearing is not a Rorschach test of whether one likes Hillary Clinton or not. The hearing is simply an objective farce. It makes no damn difference — it should make no damn difference — whether one "likes" Hillary, or not, to see that.
(By the way, the committee has recessed for floor votes. I don't know which is more dangerous.)
***
2:49 … Rep. Roskam again. See: 9:53 am.
After Gowdy's repeated insistence that these hearings are not political, Roskam, it seems, received the committee assignment of launching a purely political attack on Clinton. Roskam's afternoon line of questioning was, like this morning's, utterly unrelated to Benghazi security. It was, rather, entirely devoted to hammering Clinton on the Libya intervention policy — which of course has nothing to do with the committee's purported purpose. Republicans can protest all they want that this committee is non-political; not a soul alive could genuinely believe that now. Not after today. Not after Roskam's assignment.
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2:26 … GOP congressman Mike Pompeo, from Kansas, misspells his last name. Good God what an overbloated, pompous baffoon.
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2:13 … Clinton just delivered a powerful, voice-cracked tick tock of Benghazi's fog of war that night of attack, which Gowdy & Co. instantly politicized in a reassault on the committee's Democratic members. You would have had to witness it yourself to truly understand just how sickening it was.
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1:57 … Indiana's Susan Brooks reminds me of a junior-high teacher I once had (as a student, not biblically) who chronically confused minor infractions with major felonies. I didn't understand the infractions then, and just now I didn't understand Brooks' court martial. This is getting even weirder.
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1:26 … They are now reconvened, and Gowdy has clearly been swallowed whole by the GOP bubble. Only in Limbaughland could this Blumenthal obsession be "revealing." This is pathetic, absolutely pathetic. Gowdy is going through Blumenthal's emails virtually minute by minute, as well as other emails unrelated to consulate security. Clinton is left to remind Gowdy that consulate security was an issue in others' hands. Gowdy & Co. cannot seem to appreciate this one underlying fact of top State Department priorities — because appreciating it would put an end to this inquiry.
***
12:19 … Finally, something fresh. Chairman Gowdy overreached (shocking, huh?) on the Blumenthal email issue and would up as a defendant before his own committee under punishing cross-examination by Democratic members Cummings and Schiff. Gowdy lost his cool, bellowing If you think we've spent too much time on Blumenthal now, just wait till we reconvene. Meanwhile, Madam Secretary sat smiling, with chin resting on folded hands. This farce finally became even more farcical.
(If you're just now visiting, a new post from earlier morning — unrelated to these hearings — is here.)
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12:04 … Well. Trey Gowdy is onto some real Watergate-level stuff now: the meaning of "unsolicited" emails from Sidney Blumenthal. Such a triviality is hard to believe, even from a petty little man like Gowdy.
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11:45 … Does Jim Jordan believe that carefully weighed political responses to a terrorist attack are indictable? That's what he seemed to imply. What, then, became of Republicans' post-9/11 indictments?
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11:20 … If hindsight is vision, then these GOP inquisitors have loads of it. They make the same point about inadequate consulate security, years later, over and over. It is mind-numblingly tedious and — at this point — profoundly pointless, yet one must stay tuned to their tedium just in case something fresh crops up, in either question or answer.
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10:53 … Democrat Adam Smith's (Wa.) statement was the best yet. The Benghazi Committee is a joke in that it's focusing on nothing serious — all of which has already been asked and answered.
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10:36 … Now comes "the gentlelady from Alabama," Martha Roby. The gentlelady from Alabama. The Republican gentlelady from Alabama. Grrrr, gnash, rip.
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10:28 … I tend to doze whenever Dems are asking questions, for there are no fireworks. The Republicans' pyrotechnic imbecility reawakens me, though. You gotta admire their flame-throwing persistence (draftback, blowback and all).
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10:18 … Given their recent public chastenings, GOP committee members are being a bit more aggressive than might be advisable on the national level. But one can't stop them from playing to the homefucks, the Limbaugh crowd, and other incurable paranoids.
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10:06 … Darrell Issa fibbed about Hillary's (non-existent) order to deny additional security? Now if you wish to talk about outrageous charges!
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9:53 … To his credit, Rep. Roskam (R) is correct that senior WH voices were opposed to the Libya intervention. To his discredit, that has nothing to do with the committee's investigative purpose.
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9:39 … Oh how I hope Hillary's recommendation of "boots on the ground" as an absolute "last resort" was a heartfelt conviction.
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9:10 am Central … If Trey Gowdy regards Hillary's emails as essential to his committee's "investigation," then why did he say that he asked John Boehner to appoint another committee to look into them? The bullshit hits his partisan fans straightaway.
***
I wouldn't miss them for anything. Hence blogging may be sketchy for the day's remainder. I'll probably have some thoughts on this fiasco throughout, so, if you give a damn as to what those are, check back periodically.