This was the same disconnect that Hillary Clinton tried to pull off when Ron Johnson questioned her the other day and she had her "What difference does it make?" outburst. She wanted us to focus on the point in time when the attackers decided to attack.
"Was it because of a protest or because of guys out for a walk one night who decide to kill some Americans, what difference at this point does it make?"
It. She has the wrong it. Johnson's question to her and then to Kerry related to the point in time when the people in the Obama administration decided to mislead the public by actively pushing a phony story about the "Innocence of Muslims" video. That was a strange thing to do, and both Clinton and Kerry have doggedly distracted us by pretending the question is why the attack occurred.
That's the way they put it over at Think Progress. I've watched the video. Rand Paul asks a question. It seems histrionic to equate asking a question with pushing a conspiracy theory, and the truth is Hillary Clinton's answer has the ring of... lying.
The effort on the left to stereotype Rand Paul as a nutcase is so strenuous that it stimulates my root-for-the-underdog instinct. And makes me suspicious. I feel a Rand-Paul-must-be-destroyed conspiracy theory blossoming within.
Rand begins with a feint: "I'm glad to see your health is improving." Note: he's a doctor. In fact, he's an ophthalmologist, but he didn't add, "And by the way, I love your new glasses." No, he proceeded to flay her.
This she was prepared for. All she had to do was endure. His time would run out, and it would be a Democrat's turn, which is to say it would be rest and relaxation time again. Mission accomplished.
My interpretation of this is that Clinton had prepared for this question and practiced getting indignant, but she was not quite ready for the tension cranked up by the wily Wisconsinite Johnson. So the workshopped outrage flipped out over the top. Great theater.
Here. Testifying on Benghazi to the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee.
ADDED, 8:31 A.M.: Hillary has a fairly authentic crying quality in her voice as she speaks of embracing the families of those who died in the attack. That comes just after she says in a steely voice that those who serve in countries like Libya know they are going into a dangerous place and cannot work "in a bunker." Risk comes with the territory, and Chris Stevens fully understood where he was going and what he would face.
Militia leaders told U.S. officials just two days before the attack that they were angered by U.S. support of a particular candidate for Libyan prime minister and warned “they would not continue to guarantee security in Benghazi, a critical function they asserted they were currently providing,” Stevens wrote in the cable the morning of Sept. 11, 2012.
I have no idea what it is about the secretary of state that drives them to this kind of inhumane idiotic behaving state.
Inhumane idiotic behaving state... is an odd way to struggle to make a point. People — like me — who notice the coincidence of this string of medical crises and the interest in avoiding questions about Benghazi are not "behaving." We're speaking. We're not in a "behaving state," whatever that's supposed to mean. We're looking at the information we have, analyzing it, and asking pertinent questions. This is political speech about powerful office holders in the United States of America. I am sick and tired of people who say that if you talk about Hillary's health you are inhumane and idiotic. I feel like yelling that. I want to stand up and say we are Americans and we have a right to question and criticize any politician. I'm saying that out loud and sounding like this:
Clinton supporters are trying to shut down criticism by going hardcore on those of us who are just asking questions. We're being called inhumane on the theory that Hillary's problems are health problems. This accusation of inhumanity is — ironically, outrageously — being used to supervene any humane concerns directed at those who died in the Benghazi attack. I could just as well accuse Carville for going into a kind of inhumane idiotic behaving state whenever anyone suggests that anything other than Hillary's health deserves attention.
It's been said that those of us who ask — merely ask —whether there's some evasion going on here are asserting a conspiracy theory. First, asking is not asserting. Second, the idea that politicians are avoiding questions isn't a conspiracy theory. It's pretty much expecting the most ordinary and predictable sort of human behavior. Third, I can't think of anyone in American politics who is more famous for slapping the label "conspiracy" on something than Hillary Clinton:
And fourth, she was lying! When we're talking about Hillary Clinton, we're not talking about someone with a clean reputation for honesty. Talk about idiotic! It would be idiotic not to probe self-serving statements coming from the Clintons. The more histrionic these shut-up-she's-ill statements become the more suspicious I am. This is an immensely powerful politician who seeks even more power and has a motive to cover up what could be a terribly damaging story about an incident the American people deserve to know about. I'm sick and tired of people who say we can't talk about that, and I'm going to stand up and say we are Americans and we have a right to question and criticize and debate about Hillary Clinton.
ADDED: Wow. Look at this NYT puff piece, crediting Hillary with "indomitable stamina and work ethic" because she went back to work after breaking her elbow. It's not like she continued working without getting it treated. She just went back to work with her arm in a sling while the healing took place. Doesn't everyone do that? (Unless their work requires you to do things with that arm.) I can't imagine if a co-worker came to work during the period of recovery for a broken bone that we'd be saying this is "vivid evidence of... indomitable stamina and work ethic." That's ludicrous!
Toward the end of the article, it says that Clinton still "plans to testify, while still in office" about Benghazi.
“She would have vastly preferred to testify that original date than go through the last 27 days,” said her senior adviser, Philippe Reines. “Only an imbecile would say otherwise,” he added, referring to charges by conservatives that Mrs. Clinton faked her illness to avoid the Congressional questioning.
Only an imbecile! Okay, if that's they way we are going to talk, I'll just say Reines is a.... oh, being a civil woman, I can't say it.
Here are Senators Lindsey Graham and Dianne Feinstein, interviewed by Chris Wallace (yesterday, on "Fox News Sunday"):
WALLACE: Senator Graham, how important is it for Secretary of State Clinton to testify under oath before she leaves office about the Benghazi terror attack?...
GRAHAM: Absolutely essential that she'd testify....
WALLACE: Some of your Republican colleagues say they are prepared to hold off the confirmation of John Kerry as secretary of state, until Secretary Clinton testifies as secretary, before she leaves office.
GRAHAM: That's going to happen. I've been told by Senator Kerry he wants that approach also. He needs to hear what she says so he can make comments about, I agree with her/I don't agree with her. It makes sense to have her go first.
WALLACE: Do you agree with that, Senator Feinstein, that she needs to testify first, as an -- and have you been assured she will testify, though it has been 3 1/2 months since Benghazi and she still has never really answered questions, about Benghazi, her role before, during, after the attack? Do you have reason to believe she'll testify as secretary?
FEINSTEIN: She has said she will and I believe she will. You know, she's had a very real accident and she's recovering from it, and, she will be back. I gather, her first day, of work may well be next week. So, I think that's good news.
With all that assurance that Hillary Clinton would testify, later that day, we heard the news that Hillary Clinton had entered the hospital with a blood clot. We weren't told the site of said blood clot. Was it her brain (recently concussed)? Was it her leg (where she had a blood clot back in 1998)? The former is a big deal, the latter, not so much. Why not specify the site, since it make such a big difference, medically? Oh, but we're told we must not display any skepticism, any hint of suspicion that the SOS is trying to avoid having to testify about Benghazi. The woman is ill. Only a clod would say a clot was a plot.
Unlike the relatively bland “concussion after fainting” pronouncement from earlier this month, this terse press release from her spokesman smells a little fishy. First it is odd that we are not told where the clot is—usually the clot, referred to as thrombophlebitis, occurs in the leg, a condition suffered by former president Richard Nixon after leaving the White House.
Maybe you can remember — if not, guess! — how sensitive we were to Nixon's phlebitis, which conveniently flared up in the midst of Watergate. Ha! That bastard thinks he can get our sympathy. Pathetic! (That's what I said at the time.)
The clot [in the leg] can be uncomfortable but is only dangerous and even life threatening if it breaks free and travels downstream into the lung—a pulmonary embolus, in medical parlance.... Given that Clinton already has had this condition and those who have had one episode have a predilection to recurrence, the lack of a reminder of the 1998 clot from her press people seems a strange oversight.
Another problem with the “concussion then clot” story is this—the concussion, if indeed it came after a faint, should not directly predispose Clinton to a clot....
Alternatively, is it possible that the clot in question is one in the lining of the brain that can form after head trauma.... But anticoagulation is never given to persons with clots around the brain. They are either watched without intervention or surgically evacuated. So this possible explanation is out.
We are left with a story that is not easy to connect up with sparse information from the inside crowd, who could easily deflate speculation with two or three more measly facts. The National Enquirer has already declared Clinton to be suffering from a brain tumor, linking her observed weight gain, possibly from treatment for the putative cancer, and not-exactly-explained need to leave Obama’s Cabinet to the grim diagnosis. Such a story no longer seems to me as implausible as it did after the faint and concussion reports.
The suppression of information — the site of the clot — suggests 2 radically different theories: 1. fakery/exaggeration to evade testimony, or 2. something horribly serious. I read Sepkowitz to exclude the middle ground.
UPDATE: Email from CNN says: "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has a blood clot between her brain and skull behind her right ear, her doctors said." This seems to be the option that Sepkowitz excluded because "anticoagulation is never given to persons with clots around the brain." If that's correct, then something is still, to use Sepkowitz's word, fishy.
UPDATE 2: Here's the Washington Post, on January 1st, noting the site of the clot and saying "The conventional treatment is an anticoagulant drug for at least six months." So that directly contradictions Sepkowitz's statement that "anticoagulation is never given to persons with clots around the brain."
Clinton also played a key role in the international action in Libya. So far, she has avoided much of the criticism over the attack in Benghazi that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in September.
That's the second-to-the-last paragraph. The last is:
"She will be leaving this job, in my view, with almost no asterisks* and that, it seems to me, in this day in age, is a real accomplishment," [said Aaron David Miller, vice president of the of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars].
In the higher-up paragraphs, we get Miller saying:
"She has pursued an agenda, which has been highly constrained by both the kind of cruel and unforgiving foreign policy world out there and by the president's own determination to withhold, in my view, the most consequential issues related to national security, war, peace, big-think strategy"...
What was left, he says, is an agenda that Clinton shaped, one Miller describes as "planetary humanism." That includes women's issues, the environment, press and Internet freedom, and social media.
Women's work. And now the lady has a headache. Don't trouble her about Benghazi.
An independent inquiry into the attack on the United States diplomatic mission in Libya that killed four Americans on Sept. 11 sharply criticizes the State Department for a lack of seasoned security personnel and relying on untested local militias to safeguard the compound.... The investigation... also faulted State Department officials in Washington for ignoring requests from officials at the American Embassy in Tripoli for more guards and safety upgrades to the diplomatic mission.
The panel also blamed the State Department for waiting for specific warnings of imminent attacks to act rather than adapting security procedures and protocols to a deteriorating security environment...
Finally, the report also blamed two major State Department bureaus — diplomatic security and Near Eastern affairs — for failing to coordinate and plan adequate security at the mission. The panel also determined that a number of officials had shown poor leadership.
"I didn’t want to see a confirmation process that was very prolonged, very politicized, very distracting and very disruptive because there are so many things we need to get done," she says.
I stand by what I said 2 weeks ago: We were "being played by a political maneuver designed to keep us from looking deeply and broadly into the issues surrounding the Benghazi attack." We were lured into focusing on and talking about Rice:
She was sent out onto 5 Sunday talk shows a few days after the attack, to say something about that terrible video, which is itself a contrivance, a distraction. So make it about the video and embody that in a specific person, whom we never noticed before. And let's yammer about her for weeks and months until we're tired of talking about her, and then — who knows? — John Kerry is the real choice for Secretary of State. Rice was always expendable. She was the capsule into which the Benghazi scandal was enclosed for burial. Once we're tired of Rice... we'll automatically already be tired of talking about the Benghazi scandal, which never even broke!
Ah, but the news comes out today — coincidence? — that Hillary Clinton is going to testify on Benghazi before both the House and the Senate committees.
My question: Has Hillary Clinton ever registered an actual accomplishment? She's been given some positions of responsibility, and now she's stepping down (perhaps to return). But tell me: What are her achievements, if any?
Here's the whole page frozen in time right now, but let me close in on these 4 photos:
"You will feel it" is — of course — a line from Clinton's convention speech, but illustrated with the finger pointed up, it takes us back to the Lewinsky days, when we heard about finger-shaped things inserted into vaginas and a finger was famously wagged at us for imagining that he had sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.
Right underneath Bill Clinton — double meaning right there — is Hillary Clinton, and she's getting "snubbed." The snub is by the Chinese VP, but we imagine other snubs. Additional lines under Hillary's picture have her "dubbed" a "sneaky troublemaker."
And, speaking of troublemakers, we're reminded that Hillary is "half a world away" "[a]s Bill speaks." In case that's not a sharp enough nudge to get you to think about things Bill might do while his wife is away, your eyes are drawn quickly to the swelling bosom of Scarlett Johansson, who is one of "Barack's Angels," who will be on the convention stage tonight. (Scarlett's golden hair rolls and flows all down her breasts, while Hillary's hair, in that other pic, is dull, lank, and flat.) And what else are these beautiful young women up to in Charlotte where Hillary is half a world away? In Drudge tease, the trio of beauties "makes push."
And that push? You will feel it.
IN THE COMMENTS: Paul Zrimsek said:
And here I thought the true caption for the Scarlett Johanssen photo was the line above it, not the line below.
She talked chickens with female farmers in Kenya. She listened to the excruciating stories of rape victims in war-torn eastern Congo. And in South Africa, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited a housing project built by poor women, where she danced with a choir that was singing her name.
Clinton’s seven-country trip to Africa, which ends today, has sent the clearest signal yet that she intends to make women’s rights one of her signature issues and a higher priority than ever before in American diplomacy.
Clinton’s goals include pressing governments to crack down on sexual abuse and retooling US aid programs to put more emphasis on women.
These are worthy things, but speaking of women's issues, this woman, Hillary Clinton, has been subordinated.
Clinton isn’t the first female secretary of state, but neither of her predecessors had her impact abroad as a sort of pop feminist icon....
Clinton mentioned “women’’ or “woman’’ at least 450 times in public comments in her first five months, twice as much as her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice.
Clinton’s interest in global women’s issues is deeply personal, a mission she adopted when her husband was in the White House after the stinging defeat of her health care policy forced her to take a lower profile.
And what now is forcing her to take a lower profile? Condoleezza Rice didn't pay special attention to women's issues because she took on the traditional work of the Secretary of State. Why is Hillary Clinton going back to the traditional work of the First Lady, work that she didn't originally want to be relegated to when she was First Lady, but that she retreated to after her work on health care reform collapsed?
And why bring up the fact that Condoleezza Rice didn't say "woman" and "women" a lot in her speeches and not compare Madeleine Albright too? I think we know the answer. The Boston Globe is straining to put Hillary in a good light, as she is consigned to foreign affairs work that does not involve important American interests. She's doing "women's work," unlike Albright and Rice, and that makes her look inferior. Quick! How can we make that seem superior? Compare her to bad old Condi Rice, who didn't spend her time with female chicken farmers and rape victims. Doesn't that make it look like a step up? No, it's a big step down, and Hillary knows it.
Obama is hogging all the glory, while Hillary is left with the hens. She know it and it's irksome. Look how pissed she is:
At least the collapse of health care reform will fall on Obama this time. I wonder how Hillary feels about that? I think she feels deeply gratified. I think she feels like running for President. In 2012? Is there a path? When she's sitting there in her tight blue pantsuit, panting in the heat of the Congo, where it seems somebody wants only to know what her husband — her infuriatingly charismatic husband — thinks, she's all prickly and ready to snap — quite aptly! — the gears are turning in that head — that don't-tell-me-I'm-ill-coifed head — and she's trying to figure out the way to oust Obama from her rightful place, the presidency.
Let's see: 1. Health care reform collapses, 2. Obama takes the blame for that and other things, 3. His popularity plumments, 4. Some G.O.P. star rises, 5. The Democrats get desperate for a new star of their own, and 6. That star is me! First woman President! Hello! But wait! Here I am in Africa, encouraging female farmers and consoling rape victims. I'm being marginalized, marginalized as a woman — with women. It's so unfair. My plan requires a major achievement or 2 before I resign and mount my new campaign. But I'm penned in and subordinated in Africa — Obama's homeland (in his dreams) — where major achievements are not possible and I'm looking like a First Lady — a used-up First Lady from the past.
Obama’s transition team gave the green light to Clinton’s nomination after lawyers worked out a remarkable agreement addressing potential conflicts of interest for former President Bill Clinton, who has extensive financial ties abroad.
Most remarkably, the former president agreed to release the long-secret list of 208,000 donors to his presidential library and foundation. As one of nine concessions, he has promised to put out the list by the end of the year.
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