Turns out the press got played again by Republicans. Jake Tapper has the smoking gun of the original email from the Obama administration which differs significantly from the “leaked emails” ABC ran with. In an exclusive for CNN, Tapper reveals that CNN has the original email sent by a top Obama aide, regarding the administration’s reaction to the Benghazi attacks. Tapper reported, “The actual email differs from how sources characterized it to two different media organizations.”
“The actual email from then-Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes appears to show that whomever (sic) leaked it did so in a way that made it appear that the White House primarily concerned with the State Department’s desire to remove references and warnings about specific terrorist groups so as to not bring criticism to the department,” Tapper concludes.
The email was sent on Friday, September 14, 2012, at 9:34 p.m. and was obtained by CNN from a U.S. government source. Ironically, the email points out that there is a “ton of wrong information” coming from Congress and people who are not particularly informed (waving hello to Congressional Republicans and Mitt Romney.
The year 2010 gave us Citizens United. Suddenly corporations were people who had the right of free speech. But corporations didn't want their free speech to be disclosed. Enter the Koch Bros., Dick Armey and Freedom Works. In their basement lab, they concocted the very first para-political party, the Tea Party, disguised as a social welfare agency, a 501(c)4. Tea Party Groups were mysteriously born all over the US. Not surprisingly, people and the media began howling loudly that the Tea Party was a wholly political entity that should be a 527 entity for IRS purposes. The media mysteriously seems to have forgotten all this.
Again not surprisingly the IRS began to question this rash of new applicants. That's how you make a determination. But ah, the Koch Bros were ready. In March 2012 a conservative legal foundation, the Landmark Legal Foundation filed a complaint with the Inspector General of the Treasury that the Tea Party groups were being unfairly targeted.
So the Tea Party which is a 100% political organization can pretend it is a social welfare agency until the rules are changed by Congress. To fault IRS workers who were responding to complaints is an ex post facto re-investigation of something that has already been examined and addressed.
“I wish there was more GOP interest when the same issue was raised during the Bush administration, where they audited a progressive church in California, said CA representative Adam Schiff. “I found only one Republican, [Rep. Walter Jones], that would join me in calling for an investigation during the Bush administration. I’m glad now that the GOP has found interest in this issue and it ought to be a bipartisan concern.”
The well-known church, All Saints Episcopal in Pasadena was threatened by the IRS to revoke the church’s tax-exempt status over an anti-Iraq War sermon the Sunday before the 2004 election.
And while All Saints came under the gun, conservative churches across the country were helping to mobilize voters for Bush with little oversight. In 2006, citing the precedent of All Saints, “a group of religious leaders accused the Internal Revenue Service yesterday of playing politics by ignoring its complaint that two large churches in Ohio are engaging in what it says are political activities, in violation of the tax code,” the New York Times reported at the time. The churches essentially campaigned for a Republican gubernatorial candidate, they alleged, and even flew him on one of their planes.
And it wasn’t just churches. In 2004, the IRS went after the NAACP, auditing the nation’s oldest civil rights group after its chairman criticized President Bush for being the first sitting president since Herbert Hoover to address their group.
Then, in 2006, the Wall Street Journal broke the story of a how a little-known pressure group called Public Interest Watch — which received 97 percent of its funds from Exxon Mobile one year — managed to get the IRS to open an investigation into Greenpeace. Greenpeace had labeled Exxon Mobil the “No. 1 climate criminal.” The IRS acknowledged its audit was initiated by Public Interest Watch and threatened to revoke Greenpeace’s tax-exempt status, but closed the investigation three months later.
These outfits that call themselves 'non-profit' are stealing from the treasury. The average Joe Smoe has to pay taxes on everything, including food, and these groups don't? And as far as that goes, these humongous megachurches (hate holes) where the 'preachers' live in mansions and drive the finest cars, they don't have to pay taxes on their wealth? What has this country become? A haven for wealthy and greedy scumbags, I'd say.
Carren Bersch, that's the plan of the right wing in this country -- ANYTHING, and I mean ANYTHING to see President Obama fail even if it means our most vulnerable citizens must suffer -- doesn't bother them one iota. They use fear, smear, inuendoes, outright lies, and hate groups so they can own this country lock, stock and barrell. Not one 'leader' (and I use that word jocularly) in the GOP dares ire the extreme wing of their party, and these days that's anybody that drags an 'R' around.
Republican members of Congress raised no objections when they first saw internal emails detailing the evolution of the administration’s talking points on Benghazi, and House Speaker John Boehner declined to attend or send a representative to that briefing.
Lawyers with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence briefed House and Senate Intelligence Committee members in March about the emails, which ABC News released after officials said they would make them available to members of Congress.
Boehner would have seen the emails had he attended the briefing, to which he and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi were both invited.
On the Senate side, lawyers briefed Sen. Saxby Chambliss, the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Richard Burr, who said the briefing satisfied many of his concerns. “It answers a lot, if not all, of the questions that the committee from an oversight standpoint,” he told the Hill at the time. On the House side, those briefed included Intelligence Committee Chairman Michael McCaul. Republican members in neither chamber raised substantive concerns about the emails, the official said, and were free to discuss them publicly as they were not classified.
The emails about the September 2012 attack on the diplomatic post in Libya were shared with members of Congress during negotiations over the confirmation of CIA Director John Brennan. If Republicans had had major problems with what the emails revealed, they probably would have said something at the time and not confirmed Brennan 63-34, White House spokesperson Jay Carney said during his daily press briefing. “This is an effort to accuse the administration of hiding something that we did not hide,” Carney said.
Duh!
John "Conspiracy" Bergen - Seriously? That is what the traditional media has decided is going to be the major scandal of the Obama WH? That is what has the right-wing self-immolating? Whether the administration misled reporters about the changes in the talking points? Not about the actual attacks, mind you, but about who the White House told the media was responsible for changes in the media releases? That's it?
What an esoteric, inside-the-Beltway circle-jerk this has become. Mind you, nobody except the right-wing and the traditional media give a hoot about this--of course the deaths of the Ambassador and the other three Americans was a tragedy, but this is the most blatantly partisan, and sickeningly hypocritical political brouhaha I believe I have personally ever seen. A "brouhaha" which keenly demonstrates the absolute power the rabid right-wing has over the traditional media--once again, the right has understood that by bleating loudly and repeatedly over any subject, they can get major media exposure and create a "scandal" out of thin air.
In terms of the right, one wonders where this determination to "get to the bottom of things" was after the Bush Administration's failures leading up to 9/11, a series of attacks which killed approximately 75,000% more Americans than the attacks in Benghazi. One wonders where the right's hunger for the truth was following the decade-long disaster in Iraq, which so far has killed approximately 100,000% more Americans than were killed in Benghazi. Again, the hypocrisy here is so rank, so vile, it could only emanate from the right-wing. One wonders where the right's concern for the safety of diplomats was when the Republicans cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the State Department's security budget, a fact swallowed up by this ludicrous, concocted "scandal."
The whole thing is a farce. A front page, above the fold "breaking news" story about media releases which talked about who had actually changed other media releases. Absolutely ridiculous.
I don't suppose you heard these 'facts' on Faux News(sic).
For fiscal 2013, the GOP-controlled House proposed spending $1.934 billion for the State Department's Worldwide Security Protection program -- well below the $2.15 billion requested by the Obama administration. House Republicans cut the administration's request for embassy security funding by $128 million in fiscal 2011 and $331 million in fiscal 2012. (Negotiations with the Democrat-controlled Senate restored about $88 million of the administration's request.) Last year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that Republicans' proposed cuts to her department would be "detrimental to America's national security" -- a charge Republicans rejected.
Ryan, Issa and other House Republicans voted for an amendment in 2009 to cut $1.2 billion from State operations, including funds for 300 more diplomatic security positions. Under Ryan's budget, non-defense discretionary spending, which includes State Department funding, would be slashed nearly 20 percent in 2014, which would translate to more than $400 million in additional cuts to embassy security.
Maybe that had something to do with not enough security, ya' think?
The armed forces in this country has dropped its enlistment requirements to an all-time low and it shows in the conduct of our troops and officers. Intelligent and honorable young men and women are declining to join this killing machine we call our 'defense'. We should have never changed the name from the WAR Department.
Mr. Ezell, I hate to break this to you, but the right-side of this paper and the right-wing hate machine in this country, is not bound by facts or reason on any subject.
Profiling
Turns out the press got played again by Republicans. Jake Tapper has the smoking gun of the original email from the Obama administration which differs significantly from the “leaked emails” ABC ran with. In an exclusive for CNN, Tapper reveals that CNN has the original email sent by a top Obama aide, regarding the administration’s reaction to the Benghazi attacks. Tapper reported, “The actual email differs from how sources characterized it to two different media organizations.” “The actual email from then-Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes appears to show that whomever (sic) leaked it did so in a way that made it appear that the White House primarily concerned with the State Department’s desire to remove references and warnings about specific terrorist groups so as to not bring criticism to the department,” Tapper concludes. The email was sent on Friday, September 14, 2012, at 9:34 p.m. and was obtained by CNN from a U.S. government source. Ironically, the email points out that there is a “ton of wrong information” coming from Congress and people who are not particularly informed (waving hello to Congressional Republicans and Mitt Romney.
Profiling
The year 2010 gave us Citizens United. Suddenly corporations were people who had the right of free speech. But corporations didn't want their free speech to be disclosed. Enter the Koch Bros., Dick Armey and Freedom Works. In their basement lab, they concocted the very first para-political party, the Tea Party, disguised as a social welfare agency, a 501(c)4. Tea Party Groups were mysteriously born all over the US. Not surprisingly, people and the media began howling loudly that the Tea Party was a wholly political entity that should be a 527 entity for IRS purposes. The media mysteriously seems to have forgotten all this. Again not surprisingly the IRS began to question this rash of new applicants. That's how you make a determination. But ah, the Koch Bros were ready. In March 2012 a conservative legal foundation, the Landmark Legal Foundation filed a complaint with the Inspector General of the Treasury that the Tea Party groups were being unfairly targeted. So the Tea Party which is a 100% political organization can pretend it is a social welfare agency until the rules are changed by Congress. To fault IRS workers who were responding to complaints is an ex post facto re-investigation of something that has already been examined and addressed.
Treading
“I wish there was more GOP interest when the same issue was raised during the Bush administration, where they audited a progressive church in California, said CA representative Adam Schiff. “I found only one Republican, [Rep. Walter Jones], that would join me in calling for an investigation during the Bush administration. I’m glad now that the GOP has found interest in this issue and it ought to be a bipartisan concern.” The well-known church, All Saints Episcopal in Pasadena was threatened by the IRS to revoke the church’s tax-exempt status over an anti-Iraq War sermon the Sunday before the 2004 election. And while All Saints came under the gun, conservative churches across the country were helping to mobilize voters for Bush with little oversight. In 2006, citing the precedent of All Saints, “a group of religious leaders accused the Internal Revenue Service yesterday of playing politics by ignoring its complaint that two large churches in Ohio are engaging in what it says are political activities, in violation of the tax code,” the New York Times reported at the time. The churches essentially campaigned for a Republican gubernatorial candidate, they alleged, and even flew him on one of their planes. And it wasn’t just churches. In 2004, the IRS went after the NAACP, auditing the nation’s oldest civil rights group after its chairman criticized President Bush for being the first sitting president since Herbert Hoover to address their group. Then, in 2006, the Wall Street Journal broke the story of a how a little-known pressure group called Public Interest Watch — which received 97 percent of its funds from Exxon Mobile one year — managed to get the IRS to open an investigation into Greenpeace. Greenpeace had labeled Exxon Mobil the “No. 1 climate criminal.” The IRS acknowledged its audit was initiated by Public Interest Watch and threatened to revoke Greenpeace’s tax-exempt status, but closed the investigation three months later.
Treading
These outfits that call themselves 'non-profit' are stealing from the treasury. The average Joe Smoe has to pay taxes on everything, including food, and these groups don't? And as far as that goes, these humongous megachurches (hate holes) where the 'preachers' live in mansions and drive the finest cars, they don't have to pay taxes on their wealth? What has this country become? A haven for wealthy and greedy scumbags, I'd say.
Story’s negativity mirror’s national mood and other letters to the editors
Carren Bersch, that's the plan of the right wing in this country -- ANYTHING, and I mean ANYTHING to see President Obama fail even if it means our most vulnerable citizens must suffer -- doesn't bother them one iota. They use fear, smear, inuendoes, outright lies, and hate groups so they can own this country lock, stock and barrell. Not one 'leader' (and I use that word jocularly) in the GOP dares ire the extreme wing of their party, and these days that's anybody that drags an 'R' around.
The Whistle
Republican members of Congress raised no objections when they first saw internal emails detailing the evolution of the administration’s talking points on Benghazi, and House Speaker John Boehner declined to attend or send a representative to that briefing. Lawyers with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence briefed House and Senate Intelligence Committee members in March about the emails, which ABC News released after officials said they would make them available to members of Congress. Boehner would have seen the emails had he attended the briefing, to which he and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi were both invited. On the Senate side, lawyers briefed Sen. Saxby Chambliss, the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Richard Burr, who said the briefing satisfied many of his concerns. “It answers a lot, if not all, of the questions that the committee from an oversight standpoint,” he told the Hill at the time. On the House side, those briefed included Intelligence Committee Chairman Michael McCaul. Republican members in neither chamber raised substantive concerns about the emails, the official said, and were free to discuss them publicly as they were not classified. The emails about the September 2012 attack on the diplomatic post in Libya were shared with members of Congress during negotiations over the confirmation of CIA Director John Brennan. If Republicans had had major problems with what the emails revealed, they probably would have said something at the time and not confirmed Brennan 63-34, White House spokesperson Jay Carney said during his daily press briefing. “This is an effort to accuse the administration of hiding something that we did not hide,” Carney said. Duh!
Golf outings raise questions and other letters to the editors
John "Conspiracy" Bergen - Seriously? That is what the traditional media has decided is going to be the major scandal of the Obama WH? That is what has the right-wing self-immolating? Whether the administration misled reporters about the changes in the talking points? Not about the actual attacks, mind you, but about who the White House told the media was responsible for changes in the media releases? That's it?
What an esoteric, inside-the-Beltway circle-jerk this has become. Mind you, nobody except the right-wing and the traditional media give a hoot about this--of course the deaths of the Ambassador and the other three Americans was a tragedy, but this is the most blatantly partisan, and sickeningly hypocritical political brouhaha I believe I have personally ever seen. A "brouhaha" which keenly demonstrates the absolute power the rabid right-wing has over the traditional media--once again, the right has understood that by bleating loudly and repeatedly over any subject, they can get major media exposure and create a "scandal" out of thin air.
In terms of the right, one wonders where this determination to "get to the bottom of things" was after the Bush Administration's failures leading up to 9/11, a series of attacks which killed approximately 75,000% more Americans than the attacks in Benghazi. One wonders where the right's hunger for the truth was following the decade-long disaster in Iraq, which so far has killed approximately 100,000% more Americans than were killed in Benghazi. Again, the hypocrisy here is so rank, so vile, it could only emanate from the right-wing. One wonders where the right's concern for the safety of diplomats was when the Republicans cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the State Department's security budget, a fact swallowed up by this ludicrous, concocted "scandal."
The whole thing is a farce. A front page, above the fold "breaking news" story about media releases which talked about who had actually changed other media releases. Absolutely ridiculous.
The Whistle
I don't suppose you heard these 'facts' on Faux News(sic). For fiscal 2013, the GOP-controlled House proposed spending $1.934 billion for the State Department's Worldwide Security Protection program -- well below the $2.15 billion requested by the Obama administration. House Republicans cut the administration's request for embassy security funding by $128 million in fiscal 2011 and $331 million in fiscal 2012. (Negotiations with the Democrat-controlled Senate restored about $88 million of the administration's request.) Last year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that Republicans' proposed cuts to her department would be "detrimental to America's national security" -- a charge Republicans rejected.
Ryan, Issa and other House Republicans voted for an amendment in 2009 to cut $1.2 billion from State operations, including funds for 300 more diplomatic security positions. Under Ryan's budget, non-defense discretionary spending, which includes State Department funding, would be slashed nearly 20 percent in 2014, which would translate to more than $400 million in additional cuts to embassy security. Maybe that had something to do with not enough security, ya' think?
The Signal
The armed forces in this country has dropped its enlistment requirements to an all-time low and it shows in the conduct of our troops and officers. Intelligent and honorable young men and women are declining to join this killing machine we call our 'defense'. We should have never changed the name from the WAR Department.
Volkswagen investment a huge benefit to Chattanooga and other letters to the editors
Mr. Ezell, I hate to break this to you, but the right-side of this paper and the right-wing hate machine in this country, is not bound by facts or reason on any subject.