Moe Lane

Cynical, but more or less correct:

The hundred pages of Benghazi e-mails released this week tell us almost nothing about how four Americans came to die so tragically in that Libyan city. But they are a case study in why nothing works in Washington.

Rather than reading these messages for their substance on Benghazi (on which officials were still basically clueless three days after the attack), try perusing them as an illustration of how the bureaucracy responds to crisis — especially when officials know they will be under the media spotlight.

What you find is a 100-page novella of turf-battling and backside-covering.

Also: damning.  We were told that this administration was different, somehow.  Which was, of course… a false thing, told to people who are now learning better, and we have to remember that people do not deserve to be lied to, even if they had been warned ahead of time.  The point is that Barack Obama – and his entire staff, explicitly including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – is a creature of the system, not its nemesis.

Just checking.

Pat Smith wishes Hillary Clinton a Happy Mothers day, noting that Hillary’s got her kid but “I dont have mine – because of her.”

Video at the link – and no, that’s not particularly out of context, either.  I’ll be honest; I don’t buy into the absolute moral authority argument.  But a large section of the antiwar movement did, and so I’d like to hear them either a). admit that it was all hypocritical BS on their part; or b). start savaging Hillary Clinton just as viciously as they tried to savage George W. Bush.  Either will suit, really.  Because, again: under the Left’s own rules this woman absolutely must be answered.  Not my rules: the Left’s.  I expect the antiwar Left to live by its own moral code, even if it can’t live by a mainstream one…

Moe Lane

PS: Winding up Cindy Sheehan all those years ago and releasing her in the direction of George W Bush – all to try to win a Presidential election – was pretty contemptible.  Just wanted to remind people.

(H/T Instapundit) This editorial had me …well, shrugging and conceding that there was a possibility… until this point:

And just in case Benghazi does end up costing [Hillary] Clinton the White House, there’s someone else ready and willing to take her place in the 2016 race.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Yeeeeeeah. Do you know what we do to liberal Democrats from Massachusetts who run for President in this country? Do you, do you? That’s right! We rip their hearts out and then throw the hearts on the ground and then we make them dance on their own hearts!  We do that until they have no dignity left!  And then we smack them in the face, laugh, and elect the other guy. (more…)

So, apparently this ad was ready to go last year, but didn’t run it because of the Mitt Romney campaign.

Free advice to the RNC. Don’t ever make a weapon like that again, only to hide it because the nominee got cold feet. LEAK IT, YOU FOOLS.

Moe Lane

P.S. Aaron Gardner argues on Twitter that  ABC put this up in order to hit the RNC/Romney one last time, and not because of, you know, dead Americans.  I am not quite that cynical on that particular subject, but I can see it from here.

…will be judged by future researchers to have started to slide off of the beam:

[Hillary] Clinton — how much she knew, when she knew it, and whether she willingly participated in a cover up — was a central theme of the [Benghazi] hearing. And Wednesday, the story did move a large step closer to Clinton. Star witness Gregory Hicks, who was the Deputy Chief of Mission in Libya the night of the attack, charged that Clinton’s key State Department lieutenant and longtime family retainer, Cheryl Mills, made a concerted effort to block him from meeting with a Congressional delegation and that he had never been interviewed by the FBI in connection to the attack. Hicks said that he had been demoted after asking too many questions of his superiors about their response to Benghazi.

Republicans repeatedly raised the fact that Mills, a former deputy White House counsel and Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department, personally called Hicks to express that she was upset that he had met with Rep. Jason Chaffetz without a lawyer present. So was the fact that administration lawyers had told Hicks and the Regional Security Officer not to speak with congressional investigators, as well as Hicks’ claim that he briefed Clinton the night of the attack and characterized it as an act of terror.

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As my dear, departed father used to say – and, hopefully, still does – it’s good to want.

Many Democrats would no doubt dearly love an uncontested primary amounting to the stately coronation of [Hillary] Clinton. It would spare them a spectacle akin to, say, the 2012 GOP primaries, in which another prohibitive front-runner came out on top, but only after a grueling process of fending off a seemingly endless procession of challengers. It may never get that bad for Clinton…

Yeah, it would get that bad for Hillary Clinton, and for a reason that Tod Lindberg doesn’t bring up until the last paragraph: Vice President Joe Biden.  You see: I may think that it’d be dumb for Joe Biden to run for President.  You may think that it’d be dumb for Joe Biden to run for President.  The Democratic party’s base may think that it’d be dumb for Joe Biden to run for President.  But Joe Biden doesn’t think that it’d be dumb for Joe Biden to run for President, and he’s the guy with access to the state party organizations and leadership cadres and Rules Committees. (more…)

You’ve no doubt seen this bit about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton losing control and snapping back at Senator Ron Johnson’s reasonable, if pointed, observation that the White House kept pushing out a fake narrative on the terrorist strike on, and murder of, our embassy staff in Libya:

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The argument that Barack Obama should fire Hillary Clinton comes to us today from Jeremy Lott (via Instapundit) who is essentially noting that American foreign policy went into the manure pile this week and today may be the worst day of all (so far, things could be worse, but ‘tense’ is the best adjective to use).  Jeremy is taking the ‘command takes responsibility’ position; and while he recognizes (just like everybody else*) that this failure to anticipate events on the ground is ultimately the responsibility of the Commander in Chief  there’s plenty of blame to spare for the Secretary of State.  To put it bluntly, and to use Jeremy’s example: George W Bush had Donald Rumsfeld symbolically resign over a mere flipping of Congress.  Surely Hillary Clinton should resign for letting an Ambassador get murdered in cold blood.

But there’s a difference between ‘should’ and ‘will.’  Let us not mince words: Hillary Clinton is about the only person left in the Democratic party leadership who could believably run for President in 2016.  Joe Biden is a fool.  The C0ngressional leadership are snakes, showing signs of mental decay, or both.  The various Democratic governors are generally presiding over failing or failed states, and the most effective one (Cuomo) is going to be utterly unacceptable to Big Labor.  It’s Clinton or nobody – and while Barack Obama would happily throw Hillary Clinton under the bus in a heartbeat, there are some constraints placed on him by his own party.  Following the President’s lead blindly so far caused the Democrats to get eviscerated in 2009 and 2010: forget Congress, their loss of state legislatures across the country – just in time for redistricting! – quietly blighted many a promising career.  Surely the Democrats recognize that there must be a limit to how much damage an endangered, embattled, and execrable President may be allowed to do to his own party organization.

Mind you, I could be wrong about that.  Possibly the Democrats will allow Barack Obama to eat yet more of their seed corn.  Maybe they’ll let him lose 2016 while he’s losing 2012, too.  You can imagine how broken up I’ll be about that…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Even the apologists for the President recognize that Obama is responsible for this mess.  They won’t admit it, but they recognize it.  Oh, dear, did I just type that out?  How vulgar of me.

I mean, between the Obama health tax and Operation Fast & Furious yesterday the oxygen was sucked out of the room, then compressed into a cylinder and thrown into a fire.  What did we miss?

I mean, besides this pretty thumb-your-nose Mitt Romney ad featuring… Hillary Clinton.

Still enjoying the memory of that nasty 2008 primary campaign, Obama for America?

These days, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just looks… healthier.  More energetic.  Less worn.  Examples below:

• Here.
• Here.
• Here.

I mean, seriously.  Compared to this picture from last year, our current Secretary of State is looking remarkably improved.  Must be a new diet/exercise regimen: maybe she plans to do a 10K or two?  I understand that many politicians feel that running is its own reward…

Moe lane

…and set up the bank shot in 2016 for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, apparently:

The Obama administration has decided to drop the number of U.S. troops in Iraq at the end of the year down to 3,000, marking a major downgrade in force strength, multiple sources familiar with the inner workings and decisions on U.S. troop movements in Iraq told Fox News.

[snip]

This shift is seen by various people as a cost-saving measure and a political measure. The only administration official fighting for at least 10,000 forces to stay in Iraq at the end of the year was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, sources said. But she has lost the battle.

No, I don’t actually think that this scenario is actually what’s unfolding: nobody in the administration’s brave enough to try it.  But, speaking cynically, this would work as a long term strategy.  Accept that the election’s lost, set up a disaster for the Republican President to inherit and take the blame for, and put the one brave truth-teller in position to come over in 2016 and save the day.  It’s not optimal, but then it’s going to take a couple of years for the Democrats to fix everything that Obama’s done to their party.  They might as well sabotage things for the GOP in the meantime.
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Hillary Clinton, on Jimmy Carter:

“‘Do you want to meet with Carter?’ Clinton is looking at papers, and just says ‘No.’ Then she pauses, looks up and adds, ‘HELL no!!!’”

Madame Speaker: I find your ideas intriguing, and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Via Hot Air.

Moe Lane