Perhaps Kevin McCarthy is clumsy enough to be a Speaker Democrats can really get behind.
After McCarthy’s candid admission that the House Benghazi committee only exists to beat up Hillary Clinton, House Oversight Committee chair Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) is rebuking McCarthy for saying something so totally outrageous as what everybody knows to be obviously true. But let’s go a little further in stating the painfully obvious. The “Benghazi” story, issue, whatever you want to call it, has always been about and solely about exploiting the death of four Americans for partisan political gain.
Always.
From day one.
Full stop.
From longtime TPM Reader JG ….
With regard to Russia’s military intervention in Syria and what it means for U.S. policy there, a few points that have been on the outskirts of the discussion deserve more attention.
First, the actual deployment is very small. In terms of the airwing, it is roughly the equivalent of what the non-U.S. coalition members have flying over Iraq and Syria, keeping in mind that the U.S. is still flying the majority of sorties now. The Russians are armed with non-precision munitions, meaning the likelihood of civilian casualties is high. The small size and lack of precision mean that it will have limited strategic impact in terms of bombing runs (although it will be able to provide the Assad regime with air support for ground operations).
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We, who are about to report the news, thank you.
I just watched CNN go full Breaking News, all-hands-on-deck about the Russian airstrikes in Syria today and the very real concern about having NATO and Russia both running non-coordinated air operations over a single country, albeit at least for now different parts of the same country. There was lots of heavy breathing and dramatic music. But the whole thing brought home to me not simply the incoherence of our own Syria policy but the incoherence of the entire world’s Syria policy.
How many times have we heard this?
1. Don’t make a sex tape if you’re a top elected official
2. Don’t store your sex tape on your cell phone
3. Don’t forget your cell phone in Canada
4. Don’t put yourself in a vulnerable position where Canada can hurt you
One thing we don’t discuss a lot about Prime is the RSS feature. Fewer people use RSS today than did five or ten years ago. But if you’re an RSS user and a TPM Reader, one of the features of Prime is full RSS feeds with zero ads. Prime also gives you the ad-free version of TPM on mobile. Yet another reason to sign up for Prime as part of our subscription drive.
So we’re planning on starting a podcast that will just be me talking to interesting people.
Fiorina campaign spokesperson Anna Epstein on today’s Fiorina Defends Five Biggest Fibs list. “Considering how far you’ve had to bend over backwards to try to construe these statements in a way that fits your left-wing narrative, I’d say that sort of contortionism speaks for itself.”
Now that the Iran Deal is a done deal and with the stunning news of John Boehner’s retirement, you may have missed this. It’s not so much surprising, if you’ve been paying attention. But it confirms a basic reality, which is that the hysteria from Benjamin Netanyahu, much of the Israeli political establishment, purportedly ‘pro-Israel’ conservatives in the US, and others, was never shared by the Israeli defense establishment and, in a real sense, was manufactured BS meant to leverage the U.S. political climate.
New Speaker of the House candidate is tight with disgraced Duggar Family cult leader.