"GOP Senator Pushes Gun-Running Conspiracy Theory During Benghazi Hearing."

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.

Was Giglio chosen for the inauguration benediction in order to provide cover for Chuck Hagel?

"An evangelical pastor from Atlanta [Rev. Louie Giglio] announced Thursday that he would not give the benediction at President Obama’s swearing-in ceremony after a sermon he gave on homosexuality in the mid-1990s resurfaced earlier this week."

Suspicion: Giglio was chosen with full knowledge of that sermon and the intention that it would "resurface" and that he would then conspicuously withdraw. This would promote Obama's pro-gay stance and take the heat off Chuck Hagel, who's got an anti-gay remark in his record which the Obama people would like to submerge. It was all planned: the desire for Hagel to become Secretary of Defense, the known problem of his anti-gay remark, the desire to perform a conspicuous expiation, the identification of Giglio as a plausible benediction-giver with an anti-gay remark in his history, choosing Giglio, revealing the old Giglio sermon, Giglio bowing out in a tribute to Obama's rejection of homophobia, Hagel saved by the scapegoat.

I'm not saying I believe this is what happened, and I certainly have no inside knowledge. I'm just noticing the correlations and putting together a hypothesis. Please discuss.

You can pull me back from this suspicion if you make a great case for why else Giglio would have been chosen for this honor. He's a white male, by the way.

Professor who teaches a course called Culture of Conspiracy...

... is denounced for "inquir[ing] whether the Sandy Hook shooting ever took place — at least in the way law enforcement authorities and the nation's news media have described."

People these days seem to be so confused. If we hear about something terrible happening, it's as if talking about the details is equivalent to saying you don't care about the people who were hurt. This is a dangerous development, which itself ought to be examined as a possible conspiracy.

Why is it "inhumane" and "idiotic" to question the veracity of the claims that have been made about Hillary Clinton's various medical conditions?

James Carville is saying:

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.

What's Happening to Hillary? Only a clod would say the clot is a plot!

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.

Here's medical expert Kent Sepkowitz:

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."

AND: I've got a bit more to say here. 

"Local TV news is a sad thing. They ask sad questions and get sad answers."

"It's easier to laugh about it than to think about how State House coverage is dying," said Daniel Moraff, a Brown student and "aspiring comedy writer," whom some fools denounced as an idiot for saying things like "I don't really believe there's a hurricane... I know the government wants us to think that...."

Let's judge Paul Ryan.

Buzzfeed's Andrew Kaczynski put this up yesterday with the title: "Paul Ryan Gets Testy and Walks Out of Interview."



Buzzfeed has now changed the title to "Paul Ryan Gets Testy And Ends Interview," because he obviously doesn't walk out, and they've also put this up now:

The reporter knew he was already well over the allotted time for the interview when he decided to ask a weird question relating gun violence to tax cuts. Ryan responded as anyone would in such a strange situation. When you do nearly 200 interviews in a couple months, eventually you’re going to see a local reporter embarrass himself.

So... not only doesn't he walk out, he doesn't end the interview.

Maybe Kaczynski is straining to win back lefty friends after he called "handkerchief" on the Romney "cheat sheet" conspiracy theory.

Anyway, let's focus on "testy." Did Ryan get testy? Ryan speaks eloquently about guns and crime and a need to restore "civil society" to the inner cities, which prompts the reporter to ask "And you can do all that by cutting taxes? By — with a big tax cut?" It's not a terrible question, really, but it does reveal the reporter's liberal mentality. Ryan's civil society — the basis for individual "discipline" and "good character" — is "what charities and civic groups and churches do." That's standard conservative ideology, but the reporter, presumably thinking in terms of government finding ways to rebuild individual good character, leaps to the issue of tax cuts. He can't envision the private groups — charities and civic groups and churches — building civil society. He's got the "you didn't build that" attitude.

So he asks a tax question and Ryan responds as if the reporter had made the assertion implied in the question and says "Those are your words, not mine." That's abrupt. He could have said your question shows that you don't understand what civil society is and explained the deep ideological difference between conservatives and liberals, but the reporter isn't his ideological opponent. He's a reporter, supposedly asking neutral questions, and the implied argument about the role of government would need to be spelled out before it could be refuted.

It's late in the interview, and the off-camera voice says, "Thank you very much." Ryan, yanking out his microphone, says "That was kind of strange," as if the question were a complete non sequitur. And then: "Trying to stuff words in my mouth," as if it were not a question. I read this as a dominating tactic, and the reporter goes beta: "I don't know if it's strange." Ryan mellows slightly: "No, but it sounds as though you're trying to answer my question for me. That's a little odd." And the reporter meekly agrees.

Ryan could have been a bit nicer, but I liked this display of dominance in managing the reporters who are looking to get their sound bites out of him. I'm sure this reporter would have loved to show Ryan stymied by contradictory aspirations about fixing the inner cities and cutting taxes. The reporter tried to get on top and got schooled. I'm okay with that.

"The unemployment truthers are not helping Romney."

Says WaPo's Greg Sargent, but I'm a Sargent truther. Sargent skews everything to try to help Obama. Of all the mainstream commentators I've been watching over the last few years, he's the most predictable. In no way do I believe he's sincerely and accurately offering advice to Romney supporters.

"Yes it could be a hanky. But it falls kind of heavy, and stays uniform in it's [sic] fold."

"Plus it is flat.  I have never seen a man's hanky be so uniform and flat coming from a front pant's pocket.  Back pocket, yes, breast pocket in a jacket, yes.. but not the front pant pocket."

Daily Kos, theorizing that Romney had a "cheat sheet" during the debate, during which no notes were permitted.

It was a hanky. So Obama's would-be helpers — attempting to besmirch Romney — succeeded only calling attention, once again, to what nearly everybody thought they saw on Thursday: Romney's superior preparation, ability to think on his feet, and eloquence.

ADDED: Gawker gives the history of debate conspiracy theories, and in one of them I — of all people — am the conspiracy theorist. 

"I'm pretty sure Obama owes Nakoula an apology."

Indeed.

We're barraged by new distractions, so let's catch things that are slipping down the memory hole. It's not just Nakoula. It's Chris Stevens. Our ambassador was murdered, and he was murdered after he was targeted and he was not given security.

Shame on those who disrespected Nakoula's freedom of speech. Their faults are apparent and need to be remembered. But what happened to Chris Stevens? I don't trust that we've learned the whole story. Why wasn't he protected? Was he an inconvenient man? We saw such an effort to create static around his death. Look — riots over here, here, and here! Offensive video on the internet! Man with a "towel" around his face! And hey check out the most important thing that happened all week: Romney said "47%" to some people back in May!

The very fact that we're thinking about Nakoula — and futzing with Romney rhetoric — makes me feel that Chris Stevens got stuffed down the memory hole.

Who wanted that forgetting and why?

Michele Bachmann vs. Huma Abedin.

This is a weird story, which I first noticed in the context of Ed Rollins and John McCain denouncing the accusations as ugly and unsubstantiated. It wasn't anything to me until I heard them saying it's nothing. Now, I need to search to figure out what it was that drove Michele Bachmann (and 4 other Congresscreatures) to say Abedin is part of some Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the federal government.

They pointed the finger first at Abedin, who is deputy chief of staff to Secretary Clinton and has been one of her closest aides for nearly two decades. Abedin, who was born in the U.S. and is of Pakistani descent, has been described by both Hillary and former President Bill Clinton as a daughter.

But Bachmann and the others wrote, "Huma Abedin has three family members -- her late father, her mother and her brother -- connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations."...

In a statement, Bachmann did not back down, saying she would "not be silent as this administration appeases our enemies" and saying she wants a full investigation into the Muslim Brotherhood.

Bachmann's antagonists have long been portrayed her as crazy, but this seems crazy.

Why aren't we all talking about the "secret plan to evacuate some residents of Chicago in the event of major trouble during the NATO summit next month"?

3 days ago CBS 2 reported on an e-mail that the Red Cross sent out to volunteers in the Milwaukee area:

It said the NATO summit “may create unrest or another national security incident. The American Red Cross in southeastern Wisconsin has been asked to place a number of shelters on standby in the event of evacuation of Chicago.”

According to a chapter spokesperson, the evacuation plan is not theirs alone.

“Our direction has come from the City of Chicago and the Secret Service,” she said.

What's going on?

You know I'm already agitated about the potential for Chicago folk to come up to Milwaukee to vote in the Scott Walker recall election. (Remember: "Chicago is up in the house!"/"Everyone left is from Chicago"?) The Wisconsin courts, conveniently, have blocked the voter ID law.

And now there's this secret evacuation plan, with the City of Chicago and the Secret Service — the Secret Service, will there be prostitutes?! — working together? And Milwaukee is the evacuation zone?

Sorry to verge into the conspiracy-theory area of thinking, but why isn't this evacuation plan story big news?

ADDED: Instapundit links and says "Well, I did have a post last week, though this sounds bigger." That link goes to this:

Residents of a Chicago condo whose building will be in the eye of the NATO storm are being warned that they should move out for the weekend ... or risk being trapped inside by rioters.

Wow.

"It’s the iPads and laptops with the plausible-but-fake information that you leave out in the car. Oh, right."

Ah, yes!

And when they use that material, we will know who the thieves are. Fiendishly devious.

Jeffrey Toobin on the SG's argument today: "This was a train wreck for the Obama administration."

"I don't know why he had a bad day," said Toobin. "He is a good lawyer, he was a perfectly fine lawyer in the really sort of tangential argument yesterday. He was not ready for the answers for the conservative justices."

Aha! I might know why the Solicitor General Donald Verrilli was so bad. I told you last October 2d I had a theory:

I have a conspiracy theory, but I won't tell you what it is...

... because I hope the conspiracy — if it exists — succeeds. Some time next year, I'll tell you what the theory was, as this is a conspiracy that will play out within a limited time frame. Don't try to drag it out of me. I am not in this conspiracy, but I don't want to blow the lid off of it. It's has to do with certain political actors seeming to be pursuing one goal, when actually they seek the opposite.

What say you? Did the SG throw the game?

When Satan set his sights on America, the place were he was "most successful and first successful was in academia."

Said Rick Santorum in that 2008 speech at Ava Maria University. I've lived in that purported stronghold of Satan for the last quarter century, so that caught my attention.

He understood the pride of smart people. He attacked them at their weakest, that they were, in fact, smarter than everybody else and could come up with something new and different. Pursue new truths, deny the existence of truth, play with it because they're smart. And so academia, a long time ago, fell.

And you say "what could be the impact of academia falling?" Well, I would have the argument that the other structures that I'm going to talk about here had root of their destruction because of academia. Because what academia does is educate the elites in our society, educates the leaders in our society, particularly at the college level. And they were the first to fall.

And so what we saw this domino effect, once the colleges fell and those who were being educated in our institutions, the next was the church.

Interesting that he said "domino effect" while speaking at Ave Maria University and saying that Satan has reached into academia and the church. Ave Maria University was founded with the fortune that Tom Monaghan made selling Domino Pizza. Exactly how deep does this Satanic plot go? All the way back to Ypsilanti in 1960 when Tom and his brother bought that small pizza store. I have lived in Ypsilanti. I know Ypsilanti. I have seen the mark of the devil in Ypsilanti. The Domino's Pizza logo has 3 dots. They were going to add dots for each store that they opened, but they stopped at 3, the number of stores they had in 1969, when the logo was designed. The company headquarters is in Ann Arbor, the location of the University of Michigan, where I arrived in 1969. Was the Devil digging his hoofs into academia, beginning right there and then? I'm no expert at numerology, but I can't help noticing that if you take the 1 in 1969, grip it tightly, and knock the two 9s over, you get 666.

But here's where my blood ran cold. I said "Oh, Lord!" out loud. (Causing Meade to say: "Lord? The Dark Lord?!") I was reading on in the above-linked Wikipedia article on Domino's Pizza, and I came to this:

In 1998, after 38 years of ownership, Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan announced his retirement and sold 93 percent of the company to Bain Capital, Inc. for about $1 billion and ceased being involved in day-to-day operations of the company.

Bain Capital! The bane of our existence!

To say that something or someone is "the bane of my existence" means that the person or thing is a constant irritant or source of misery. As a cliché, "bane of my existence" has lost its edge to a large degree over the years...

But "bane" was once a very serious word.  The Old English "bana" meant literally "slayer" in the sense we now use "killer" or "murderer."  Early on, the English "bane" was also used in the more general sense of "cause of death," and by the 14th century "bane" was used in the specialized sense of "poison," a sense which lives on in the names of various poisonous plants such as "henbane" and "wolfbane."

Connect the dots, people! The dots. Not just the 3 dots in the Domino's Pizza logo. There were many more dots, but they withheld them from the logo. They didn't want you to see that many dots. You must struggle to see the dots before you can even hope to connect them. Bain/Bane Capital is reaching everywhere, into our pizza, into our university. It was Bain's billion that built Ave Maria University where Santorum came to deliver his warning about Satan in academia. And now we have the 2 men left standing. Santorum, who is warning us, and Romney — r omney/r money/our money — who is the Bain/Bane of our existence. We've lost Cain — Cain ≠ Bain — a man — her man — who rose like Ave Maria, out of pizza. But it was Godfather Pizza. God the Father's pizza, not the Satanic 3-dots pizza.

Connect the dots! Find all the dots and connect them, lest Satan's already successful plot further succeed, perhaps vaulting the baneful Romney to the Presidency! But, oh, you say, Althouse is herself an academic. She is swollen with the pride of smart people, and therefore vulnerable to Satan's depredations, pleased to offer up something new and different, tantalizing us with new truths, denying the existence of truth, playing with truth because she's so smart.

Close the box — that 3-dot box — on the melted cheesy atrocity. Move along, smart people. There's nothing see here. Look, over there. It's Mitt, that terribly handsome man. Hail, President Romney!

"I’m tired of being accused of being anti-American... They call it class warfare... if anything, it’s warfare against people who have no class..."

Says Van Jones, "the former Obama Administration green czar who resigned in controversy, [who] appears on the fast track to a political comeback — emerging as a star at this weekend’s California Democratic convention and lauded by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as a 'leader of the future.'"

[Jones] argued that under-30 voters critical to Democratic successes in 2012 will find appealing “the idea that the people that already climbed that ladder (of success) will give something back.”...

Jones apologized for some of his actions, including signing a petition for 911Truth.org which appeared to suggest the Bush Administration “may indeed deliberately have allowed 9/11 to happen.”

What if Alan Colmes — calling Santorum crazy for "playing" with his dead baby — secretly intended to boost Santorum?

This is a conspiracy theory. I'm not saying I believe it. I'm just going to spin it out for your consideration. Everybody's talking about what Alan Colmes said about Rick Santorum, and... ah! Looking for a link, I see that Allahpundit has already articulated the conspiracy theory:

You’d think liberals would want to pull their punches against Santorum until he’s built up enough momentum nationally to complicate life for Romney, yet here’s Colmesy throwing an uppercut straight to the groin.

Uppercut to the groin? How short is Colmes?

Pure instinctual ideological bloodlust? Or … is this actually a sly bit of jujitsu in which AC, through a calculated display of jerkiness, forces the viewer to sympathize with Santorum, thus giving him another little boost before tomorrow night? It’s good cop/bad cop co-starring Rich Lowry. Fiendishly clever!

More here from Allahpundit, demonstrating how effectively Santorum and his wife Karen — the neonatal nurse! — have been able to parlay the Colmes attack into some incredibly positive media that goes straight to the hearts of the Christian conservatives of Iowa.

But Allahpundit, at that first link, says "No, I kid. Obviously, it’s bloodlust." Is the conspiracy theory obviously too far-fetched? I think boosting Santorum really is some a devious hardcore liberal would want. Promote somebody who can slow down Romney and keep the Republicans fighting each other. You might think it hurt Colmes too much to appear so callous, but did it? He's got us saying his name and associating it with lively talking-heads TV.

Did Colmes secretly intend to help Santorum?
	Yes. It probably was a devious plot to hurt the Republicans.
	No. It's too evil and too weird a combination of smart and stupid to be believed.
pollcode.com free polls

"Ron Paul Flips Out Over Accusation That He Believed 9/11 Conspiracy Theories."

Says Laura Bassett in HuffPo.

I despise that sort of overstatement. Go ahead and listen to the video at the link. Ron Paul got testy and aggressive, but he didn't "flip out," that is, he didn't seem crazy or out of control. Bassett hypocritically indulges in exaggerated speech to describe exaggerated speech.

"Conspiracies are the sinister doppelgängers of our attempts to understand the world around us in rational terms."

"And, of course, we love them. With its promise of initiation into occult mysteries, and its revelation of order where others only see chaos, the conspiratorial frame of mind brings distinct psychological pleasures."

Writes David A. Bell, reviewing Umberto Eco's "The Prague Cemetery."

I have a conspiracy theory, but I won't tell you what it is...

... because I hope the conspiracy — if it exists — succeeds. Some time next year, I'll tell you what the theory was, as this is a conspiracy that will play out within a limited time frame. Don't try to drag it out of me. I am not in this conspiracy, but I don't want to blow the lid off of it. It's has to do with certain political actors seeming to be pursuing one goal, when actually they seek the opposite.