Brilliant Politician

Dont like her, nor support her but she certainly is remarkable politician, she is turning her time before committee into a political stump speech opportunity.

 

Kinda funny to hear the pubs complaining about "politicalization" of the process. Kinda like the guy who deliberately ran over a skunk complaining that later motorist were "stinking up the area" by further flattening the dead polecat.

 

The Republican tag team hostile questioners grew tired and frazzled. The woman answering the questions was poised and on top of things for 11 hours.

 

I think it must be quite frustrating to question someone who is blatantly lying about certain aspects of questioning. Everyone who has been following this story since the beginning, when the WH insisted the situation was caused by a video, to HC's ever changing stories about her emails know she isn't telling all the truth. I would be tired and frazzled by watching someone lie so calmly (after days and days of practice), knowing that the person was looking me straight in the eye and stumping for president instead of taking the proceedings seriously. It never should have come to this if she had cooperated from the beginning.

I also puzzled by the awe and admiration that she could sit and answer questions for 10 or so hours. There are many jobs that require more hours of labor, and much more intensive labor at that. One example at one end of the bell curve would a job such as a transplant surgeon, who are often in the OR for 20+ hours, standing and doing precise, physical work, with death looming if a mistake is made. That is real pressure.
On the other side of the curve, take a single mother who works 2-3 low wage jobs to keep food on the table for her family, with little sleep. I, for one, am going to have to yawn at the whole line of people asking "how did she do it!?" (it was yoga, according to HC) and fawning over the fact that she could recite her lines for a long day. She was well prepared, she played her role and never lost her temper. I will give her credit for that.

 

"Blatantly lying" is Republican code for failing to fulfill their fantasies of a smoking gun that points that she had some historic responsibility for stuff that happens in the world when the real responsibility was with a faceless bureaucrat in charge of embassy/consulate security. As scandals and politcal lying go, Benghazi though unremarkable, it was the source of learning Clinton kep email on a private server, which pissed me off and excited Republicans. Not much else to see here.

Three years ago I posted here that at worst Benghazi to Watergate was like comparing a teen accused of drunken driving manslaughter to Jack the Ripper. Sure, the teen should be prosecuted, but if you tied up the entire District Attorney office investigative budget for three years to prosecute it and come up with nothing much, you look kinda stupid.

 

This post is pure tripe. You can't be impressed by all 3 for vastly different reasons? After watching the hearings for roughly an hour my wife turned to me and said "Hillary certainly looked more presidential than at any other point I've seen her in the past." She voted for Romney last election. To that end, the hearings were an abysmal failure despite the FoxNews echochamber proclaiming "breaking news...new information" then showed 30 minutes of 2-3 year old footage. All 12 congressman should each be embarrassed for their behavior. The R's for their stumbling and bumbling through obtuse pre-prepared questioning that often didn't make sense and the D's for their partisan attempts to carry HRC's water. The only truly salient point in the hour I watched was Elijah Cummings evidence that nearly $20M had been spent on Benghazi investigations to date.

HRC needs to be investigated for her email habits and potential mishandling of classified info. That is separate from the Benghazi investigation which uncovered what we already knew. The political spin at the beginning was wrong and we were vastly deficient in security at a location that the Ambassador should never have been. $20M for that? The ARB should have been enough. At the very least, the first 2-3 investigative committees should have sufficed. #8 was simply a political apparatus.

 

She doesn't blatantly lie. She eloquently dances around actuality. After a few hours off and on I couldn't take the drooling by Dems, as if every one was posturing for a position of favor in her administration.
The pubs? Well they in my opinion are brain dead and don't deserve support. The whole thing was quite disgusting.
One wonders how so many requests by the Ambassador for more security never reached her level but then when you consider the American Govt's bureaucratic malaise no one should be surprised. Bottom line is we just witnessed the crowning of the new Pres - first woman Pres.

 

Really? Did you like Bill's; "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." too?

She blatantly lied in the days after Benghazi, period.

 

Her testimony confirmed that she and the rest of the administration were blatantly and repeatedly lying to the public, then they IMPRISONED an innocent man, and used the untrue narrative to question the 1st amendment.

I think the best criticism of the investigation is to what end is all this. I think doing a thorough and public investigation is good thing in and of itself, but now what is an understandable question.

 

Seriously?

 

Seriously. Were you old enough to watch the watergate hearings and learn about the pervasive underhanded illegal dealings of the Nixon Administration? I mean, for God sakes, criminal acts were planned in the White House and executed by people with security clearances. Watergate wasn't about lying to cover up for risks improperly assessed.

 

Hillary was such a scumbag untrusting person she got fired from the Nixon hearings. Great candidate.

 

Tweeting a gif from a hearing investigating the death of American diplomats...brushing off the GOP. Brilliant is not the word I would use.

http://time.com/4092058/republican-debate-hillary-clinton-reaction/

 

Yeah, that doesn't seem very wise. I'm sure some intern is calling their parents right now letting them know they've been let go.

 

It's easy to be a brilliant politician when most of the media outlets are your cheerleaders. Since Watergate has been brought up, let's look at how the MSM has pretty much ignored this administrations abuse of the IRS to target political opponents. A high ranking IRS director takes the 5th at a Congressional hearing. Sounds pretty Nixonesque to me.

 

The IRS thing has been covered and investigated by the Administration and Congress. Comparing that "scandal" to Watergate is like comparing Connor Brewer quarterbacking career to Joe Montana's. Again, Watergate was a scandal that caused a president to resign, an attorney general, White House Counsel, White House Chief of staff and a raft of other top politicos to get convicted of felonies and spend time in prison.

 

I'm not sure the multiple investigations turned up what you think it should have turned up. We went to war with Iraq with the same thought process, start with a conclusion then find the evidence to support it. The evidence showed gross incompetence. Did anyone expect any less from the IRS?

 

Let's be honest. If Nixon was a Democrat, nothing would have happened to him. The media would not have even investigated to start with. Your dismissal of a high ranking IRS official taking the 5th amendment at a Congressional hearing is a case-in-point. Give me a break.

 

Not dismissing it, just think it bizarre and laughable you think the media would ignore that sort of scandal. Hell they media, the special prosecutor, etc. investigate Whitewater for longer than it investigated Watergate. Just not as much to find. I was just a high schooler during Watergate, but the scale and scope of they lying and corruption blew my mind. There was no CNN or Nightline in the day, so there was obviously more focus on the fact and less air time for speculation, wacky sources, etc.

 

Was Darrel Issa trying to find the truth or were politics behind his motivations? I strongly believe that congressional hearings used to be less political and actually served a purpose. Now too many are simply an attempt at smearing the opposite side.

 

They seem to be ignoring the fact that Lois Lerner is covering up her actions at the IRS. Please explain to me why she took the 5th if there was no wrongdoing?

 

Not to mention the convenient loss of her emails, jeez.

 

If the media ignored it, how did you find out about it? You follow the hearings in person?

 

Nice dodge. If there was no wrongdoing at the IRS then why did Lois Lerner take the 5th? Why after a year do we still not know what Lerner was covering up? Why is Obama allowed to call this a "phony scandal" without being forced to answer why his IRS targeted political opponents and then covered it up? If this were a Republican president, the White House press conferences would be dominated with questions regarding this scandal until the President was forced to answer. Since its a black Democrat, the news cycle life is minuscule and the follow-up is non-existent.

 

I see what you are doing ChE. You want me to make the comparison of Watergate to the Lois Lerner scandal, Joe Montana's Quarterbacking career vs. Case McCoy's. Sorry, Case gave us some great moments and memorable plays/wins. First of all, at worst Lerner was simply trying to unequally force political groups to pay taxes they justifiably owed. Secondly, the scandal of perhaps unequal enfocement was a mid-level screw up, not a pattern of lawbreaking and deception directed and controlled from the White House.

As far as the 5th amendment, invoking it is not an admisssion of guilt. Back in my day you could expect at least that level of understanding in Constitutional law from every UT graduate, no matter the major.

 

I was waiting for that predictable response and the characteristic liberal condescension. Lerner is fully within her constitutional right to invoke the 5th, but that raises all types of red flags that the media should have investigated further and continued pushing the Obama administration until they addressed it. Why did she take the 5th if there was no wrongdoing. You have no reasonable answer to this question.

And to be clear, I do think Nixon was a crook and I am glad he was exposed. Just like I would hope that you would have been disgusted by the likely abuse of the IRS and subsequent cover-up. But apparently that is too much too expect. I suspect you probably thought the recent CNBC Republican primary debate was fairly moderated.

 

Lois Lerner, Benghazi, Whitewater ... all have been addressed, voluminous investigations completed and results out in the open. Maybe in 30 years after the historians have looked it over we can revist whether any of them are comparable to Teapot Dome and Watergate or even Reagan's arms for hostages deal. Personally, I don't think they are as consequential and frankly can't see why anyone would.

 

Incompetence isn't a reasonable answer? Why does it have to be a conspiracy? The former is what the justice department investigation showed but then again I'm sure whatever they exposed would be written off due to a Dem in the Whitehouse.

Occam's Razor. I don't think anyone would ever accuse the IRS of being an efficiently run government agency. Incompetence is extremely plausible in my book. Now, were I Lois Lerner, would I want everyone to know I was incompetent?

 

Not even close to a reasonable answer. If this were only incompetence and not targeting of political opponents then the groups targeted should have been random. We know that conservative groups were targeted at disproportionately higher rates specifically Tea Party groups.

In any case, my point was not to get into a long discussion about the IRS scandal, but rather to point out that the mainstream news media did not follow-up as aggressively as they would have if it were a Republican president.

 

You know for a fact that was an intern? Or is this another Clinton responsibility deflection play?

Hey y'all! I'm not responsible for my Twitter. It's THE INTERN'S FAULT!!!