Carson "says governing with faith and character is more important than experience." Uh, Ben? Which "faith"?

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COMMENTS: 
*  Yep, lets all run out and vote for a candidate that calls us stupid. And he thinks he's smart.
*  For the record. Do not confuse intelligence and wisdom or knowledge. They are not the same things. There are also multiple types of each of these. Someone can be very intelligent or knowledgeable with book learning, yet be dumb as a stump with real world scenarios. There are things I like about Dr. Carson; however, some of the things he has said, and some things he is now beginning to say concern me. ...
*  Some Americans are stupid but that has never stopped them from running for President.
*  is this guy for real? .... It proves going to college doesn't make you smarter, just an educated idiot!!
*  "Ben Carson Says Many Americans Are 'Stupid'"  I agree. Just look at this crop of GOP presidential candidates
*  Govern with faith? Which faith? How can you govern We The People by imposing your faith on us all? I don't want your faith.
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Ben Carson Says Many Americans Are 'Stupid'
By Abigail Abrams, November 3, 2015

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, whose poll numbers have taken off thanks to enthusiastic populist support, seems to hold a more skeptical view of voters than he usually displays on the campaign trail. In a speech from last year, Carson said in reference to the American people, “Many of them are stupid," Mother Jones reported Tuesday.

His statement came during a stop on a book tour, when Carson spoke at the Richard Nixon Library on Oct. 19, 2014. Many in the crowd seemed to want Carson to run for president, chanting “run, Ben, run” as he entered the room. When an audience member asked if he would enter the 2016 presidential race as an independent, Carson said he would not do so because it would split the Republican vote.



Carson broadened his speech from specific political parties to vague political enemies, who he said were permeating various aspects of American society in a quest to control the country:

They can twist and turn things as much as they want. But what they don't understand—and they miscalculated. They were doing a great job in terms of fundamentally changing this nation. In terms of infiltrating the school systems. In terms of infiltrating the media. All of this—they've done a great job. Everything was perfect. Except they underestimated the intelligence of the American people. The people are not as stupid as they think they are. Many of them are stupid. Okay. But I'm talking about overall.

However, these enemies did not seem to worry Carson as he boasted that he could use social media to avoid the infiltration and corruption of mainstream politics. Fox News was the only mainstream network Carson considered immune from evil. “Even if all the media tries to shut you down, which they have tried very much to do with me, but they can't because the good Lord has provided me with mechanisms like my syndicated column and like Fox News,” Carson said. “We'd be Cuba if there were no Fox News.”

Carson has made comments about people plotting to take over U.S. society before. As Mother Jones pointed out, he is a big fan of the right-wing conspiracy theorist W. Cleon Skousen, whose 1958 book “The Naked Communist” depicts a Cold War-era kind of dystopia where communists "penetrated every echelon of American society, including some of the highest offices of the United States Government."

Skousen apparently shares other ideas with Carson, who has once again overtaken rival Donald Trump in the most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. Causes that Skousen claimed were part of a communist plot to take over the United States included: the civil rights movement, homosexuality, abstract art and modernism, Medicare, Social Security and other government welfare programs. Carson has cited Skousen in interviews, and the most recent edition of the book includes a quote from the presidential candidate on the cover.

On the campaign trail, one of Carson’s consistent points has been that decisions should be made with “We the people” in mind, and that regular Americans’ opinions matter more than those of the Washington elite. He has criticized other politicians for condescending to voters and says governing with faith and character is more important than experience.


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Sasse "admonished senators for not doing the job that the chamber was designed to do ..."

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About 4 minutes of Sasse's speech: "Senator Ben Sasse Maiden Speech: The 5 Unique Things about the Senate"

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COMMENTS:
*  There are reasonable Republicans. Who would have known?
*  Just when I thought that the Grand Old Party went the way of the Goonie Bird, a real Republican is discovered. Perhaps there are more 
*  Now if only BOTH SIDES would listen. The man was TALKING SENSE....
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Nebraska newbie senator: 'A six-year term is a terrible thing to waste'

Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse took an unusual theme for his maiden speech: how to fix the US Senate.

By Francine Kiefer, November 3, 2015

Like the historian and turnaround specialist that he is, rookie Sen. Ben Sasse (R) Nebraska spent his first year in the US Senate privately interviewing his colleagues, both Republicans and Democrats, trying to find out why the Senate is broken and how to fix it.

On Tuesday, in an unusual maiden speech, the newbie shared his findings, basically holding up the mirror to his colleagues. Even more unusual, a good number of them stayed to listen, from the Senate majority leader, to GOP presidential candidates Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, to a dozen-or-so Democrats.

The freshman from Nebraska – a former college president, not a politician, he emphasized – spoke with a winsome earnestness, revealing what so many in this body already know:

In private, hardly any of them considers members of the other party to be “evil or stupid or bribed.” And that, shamefully, they have allowed “short-term-ism and the sound-bite culture to invade” the chamber.

What the Senate should be doing is debating the big issues of the day that need solving – from the challenges of violent jihad to the need for entitlement reform. He rejected the view that the Senate simply reflects the polarization of the country, calling polarization beyond Washington “overstated.”

“The hundred of us should mitigating, not exacerbating, the polarization,” he said.

In a good-natured, yet serious way, he admonished senators for not doing the job that the chamber was designed to do – essentially throwing away the opportunity and breathing room that a six-year term provides for full debate and resolution of major issues.

Bluntly talking about these issues is not "naive idealism," said the boyish-looking senator, who is occasionally mistaken for a page. It's a necessary discussion, he said, because "a cultural recovery" in the Senate is needed for "a national recovery."

Senator Sasse expressed particular concern with executive overreach – but said part of the reason for this was because of “legislative under-reach.” Senators are not willing to lead or take hard votes, and so successive presidents of both parties “gobble up more and more power.”

“A six-year term is a terrible thing to waste,” he concluded, and judging from the response of his colleagues – a standing ovation – the senators seemed to agree. Sen. John Cornyn (R) of Texas, the No. 2 GOP leader in the Senate, called the speech “outstanding.”

“Thoughtful, pointed, constructive, needed,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D) of Delaware, who, already 40 minutes late to a meeting, had to fend off texts from his staff because he wanted to stay and hear Sasse out.

Will the Nebraskan's comments amount to a pebble thrown into a pool, creating a little ripple but nothing more as it sinks to silence?

“I seriously doubt that Senator Sasse will only throw a pebble,” said Senator Coons. “I suspect there will be a steady rain of little rocks.”
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Bush = worst president. "'The unpleasant, almost unbearable conclusion ... is that in the face of numerous warnings of an impending attack, Bush did nothing.'"

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COMMENTS: 
*  Actually worst of all time goes to Franklin Pierce, so bad his party wouldn't even renominate him, and one of the direct causes of the civil war. Also W's great great grandfather.
*  "in the face of numerous warnings of an impending attack, Bush did nothing"  He DID do something! He cleared brush and went on bike rides in Crawford Texas.
*  You still consider yet another Bush for President ???
*  W's record is hard to beat.
*  No more evidence please--------------those of us that lived through his presidency have had and seen enough--------------
*  The reason republicans don't provide evidence is because they can still win elections if they just point fingers. We have some of the lowest education rates of any developed nation. Like it or not, they win elections by putting their albeit uneducated voice out there. Fight fire with fire. You don't ask them to provode evidence, you show them they are wrong with facts.
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Need More Evidence That Bush Was the Worst President?
By M.W. Jacobs, November 3, 2015

Trump brought it up: George W. Bush's responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. This allowed Elizabeth Drew to address, as she put it, "the heretofore hushed-up public policy question that Trump stumbled into." Drew's "How Much Is George W. Bush Responsible for 9/11?" is the most cogent and damning indictment of Bush on this count that we are likely to get. And it comes just in time to counter an incipient George W. Bush rehabilitation campaign.

Elizabeth Drew is the yoda of politics at the world's premiere intellectual forum, The New York Review of Books. As a journalist, she helped bring down Nixon. From 1972 to '77, she was the director of the prestigious and influential Council on Foreign Relations. She is the author of fourteen books of the shrewdest political analysis. Her pedigree, therefore, is the highest.

In "How Much Is George W. Bush Responsible for 9/11?," Drew relies heavily on the report of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission, which Bush resisted and subverted. She writes, "The unpleasant, almost unbearable conclusion -- one that was not to be discussed within the political realm -- is that in the face of numerous warnings of an impending attack, Bush did nothing."

This is on top of Peter Beinart's recent indictment of Bush for 9/11 in The Atlantic (which relied more on former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke than the 9/11 Commission), and concluded, "Bush was insufficiently vigilant. The evidence is overwhelming."

So some degree of blame for the 9/11 attacks must be added to that list of catastrophic blunders known as the George W. Bush administration. That list already includes some degree of blame for the culminating disaster of his presidency, the 2008 global financial collapse. Bill Clinton gets some of that blame, but Bush gets most of it for being the leader of the deregulation party and for policies, like massive tax cuts for the wealthy and unpaid-for wars, that turned an inherited budget surplus, according to The New York Times, into a 1.2 trillion dollar budget deficit.

As for the pointless Iraq War, Bush gets all the blame for that after lying the country into it and then managing it with such stunning ineptitude. And ineptitude was the salient feature of something else that Bush owns in its entirety, the Hurricane Katrina relief effort. For that we have A Failure of Initiative: the Final Report of the Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina. The Washington Post's article on this report opens with, "Hurricane Katrina exposed the U.S. government's failure to learn the lessons of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, as leaders from President Bush down disregarded ample warnings."

Then there are the lesser crimes: theft of the 2000 election, multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts for cronies, pandering to anti-gay bigotry during his reelection campaign, withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol lowering greenhouse gas emissions, withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, invalidation of the Geneva Convention protocols against torture, and here are 300 anti-environmental actions listed by the Sierra Club.

The point of this rehash is to counter rehabilitation efforts like that of David Brooks, generally considered a housebroken conservative, who recently tried to portray Bush and Cheney as victims of faulty Iraq intelligence. Plus, Bush's rising poll numbers indicate he may be acquiring a glaze of nostalgia. His defenders, including most recently brother Jeb, explain away George W. Bush's record as "bad luck." Another explanation is that an intellectual level, a political philosophy, and a detached governing style combined to create a perfect storm of incompetence. W's record of failures snaps into focus beside his achievements of taking the most vacations, by far, of any modern president, and the longest vacation.

In March of 2008, History News Network polled 109 professional historians, 61 percent of whom declared George W. Bush the worst president. Another 35 percent put him in the bottom ten. It seems likely that back then few if any of those historians would have given Bush the degree of blame for 9/11 that Elizabeth Drew and Peter Beinart propose now.

There are some corrupt incompetent boobs down in that bottom ten, but if there is one, just one, with a record of catastrophic blunders like that of George W. Bush, name him.
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Good luck!

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"... the nation’s GDP has grown more than 45 times faster under presidents with little or no business experience than it has under presidents with successful business careers ..." Obviously leading a nation is different!

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COMMENTS: 
*  Pot meet kettle Whitman...any woman supporting Christie has a few screws loose...
*  Meg should be embarrassed by her comments especially since it demonstrates a character of profound narcissistic qualities.  Meg ran for governor of California without any prior political experience. If California were a country, its 2013 GDP would be ahead of both the Russian Federation and Italy for 8th in the world.  Therefore isn’t her statement incredibly hypocritical?
*  Hahahaha ! this is what I call an endorsement!
*  Not only is her business leadership record not as she portrays it, but her continual suggestions that "the good old boys" are disrespecting her by criticizing her looks, her smile--or lack thereof--etc. is getting a little old as well. No--her looks, smile, etc. are not relevant to presidential acumen, but frankly, who would want a self-proclaimed victim for president?
   *  If you're ruling out victims, that eliminates the whole Republican party.
*   She didn't just lose in California. She got trounced by 10 points. You must have some outsized ego to think that you can win the presidency after getting killed in a Senate run.
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HP CEO Says That Carly Fiorina Is Not Qualified To Be President

"Literally having some experience in politics is probably an important criteria," Meg Whitman says.

By Emily Peck, November 2, 2015

[Video]

Current Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman doesn’t think former HP CEO Carly Fiorina is qualified to be president because the Republican contender has no political experience.

“I just think literally having some experience in politics is probably an important criteria for the highest office in the land,” Whitman told CNN over the weekend. “I think it's very difficult for your first role in politics to be president of the United States. I think having experience in the Senate or as the governor of a state is really important. It’s just hard to be dropped down in Washington, D.C. never having experience in politics before.”

Indeed, only three U.S. presidents have landed the job without some experience in elected office. However, those three -- Ulysses Grant, Zachary Taylor and Dwight Eisenhower -- all served in top leadership positions in the U.S. military.

Whitman’s been running HP since 2011, when she took on the role after a run of disastrous leadership at the struggling computer maker, and she is now preparing to split the company into two publicly traded entities. She’s probably most well-known for leading eBay from a startup to a booming auction site, but she did try her hand at politics in a failed run for governor of California. That's another thing she has in common with Fiorina, who lost a bid for senator in California in 2010.

Whitman also happens to be backing New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in his bid for the presidential nomination. He’s not exactly the leading candidate for the role, and Whitman has declined to say who she will ultimately support in next year’s election.

Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman says Carly Fiorina's lack of political experience pretty much disqualifies her for the job of president.

There’s little evidence that business experience is a critical skill for U.S. presidents. Historically, the presidents with the most business experience have presided over periods of slow economic growth, according to an analysis from Robert McElvaine, a history professor at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi.

“The startling bottom line is that the nation’s GDP has grown more than 45 times faster under presidents with little or no business experience than it has under presidents with successful business careers,” McElvaine wrote in The Washington Post in 2012.

Fiorina and rival Donald Trump, however, have made business experience the cornerstone of their campaigns.

In last week’s GOP presidential debate, Fiorina said the chief executives of public companies are held to a higher level of accountability than those in political office.

“I had to report results every 90 days in excruciating detail,” she said. “If I misrepresented those results in any way I was held criminally liable. Imagine if a politician was held to that standard of account.”

Fiorina was fired from her job as CEO of HP in 2005, after struggling to manage the tech company through the dot-com bust and presiding over a huge drop in the company's stock price. As CEO she engineered a merger with Compaq betting that scaling up into an even bigger computer maker would save the business.

HP has been struggling to recover from the disastrous tie-up ever since.

The problem was that Fiorina apparently failed to understand the direction of the PC business -- it was increasingly becoming commodified. Desktop computers were getting cheaper and less profitable. HP competitor IBM simply got out of the market entirely. Prior to holding the CEO position at HP, Fiorina held a top role at telecom company Lucent.
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"A Republican campaign staffer told CNN that the candidates leaving the agreement makes the weekend's negotiations 'a total waste of time' because 'it only works if everybody signs it.'" Well, yeah!

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COMMENTS: 
*  The Stupid Party's candidates demand not to look stupid. Oh well, too late. maybe in 2020 they can get some better ones.
*  Nothing new here - Republicans can't get it together. Can you imagine this bunch of clowns running the country?
*  republicans working together to accomplish something? of course it fell apart
*  This is the funniest thing in the world.  And Republicans wonder why everybody thinks they're crazy? Look at these nutballs and how they act when they aren't even President. Could you honestly vote for one of these individuals and sleep at night?
*  Looks like the GOP clown car doesn't have A GPS, and they're lost.
*  THE BEST WAY TO BEAT THE SO-CALLED "MEDIA BIAS" IS TO ANSWER THE DAMN QUESTION .....
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The Republican presidential debate demands are falling apart
By Dan Turkel, November 2, 2015

The Republican Party's attempts at collective bargaining for changes in future debates have fallen apart, less than a day after they began.

After last week's presidential debate on CNBC sparked cries that it was full of "gotcha" questions and supposed liberal bias from moderators, representatives from the Republican campaigns met to draft a letter dictating terms for future presidential debates.

But less than 24 hours after the meeting, real-estate mogul Donald Trump's campaign announced that it was opting out of the agreement and would carry out its network negotiations independently.

Shortly after, the campaigns of Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R), New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina announced that they do not intend to sign the debate agreement, according to CNN.

A Republican campaign staffer told CNN that the candidates leaving the agreement makes the weekend's negotiations "a total waste of time" because "it only works if everybody signs it."

"I haven't even looked at the letter," Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told The New York Times late Monday.

A spokesperson for the Trump campaign framed the matter as the continuation of a policy.

"As we have for the previous three debates, the Trump Campaign will continue to negotiate directly with the host network to establish debate criteria that will determine Mr. Trump’s participation," the spokesperson said.

Trump's refusal to participate in any collective negotiation, which came almost immediately after the letter was drafted, did not stop Ben Carson's campaign from indicating to ABC its plans to sign the letter of debate terms with the rest of the "Republican team." However, it's not clear how deep that roster will go.

The reported demands from GOP candidates included:

• 30 seconds or more for opening and closing statements.
• "Parity and integrity" for the questions.
• No "lighting [sic] rounds," in which the candidates are forced to give fast, often one-word answers.
• Approval of graphics displayed during the debate. (This was apparently a demand of Jeb Bush's campaign. During the CNBC debate, a graphic depiction Bush's career ignored his eight-year stint as Florida governor.)

On the decision not to sign, Kasich told reporters, "Whatever we're doing, that's what we'll do. Play it where it lies."
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"... no one in Congress plays the game as well as she does. Even if the results are far from perfect, the American people can at least be grateful for that."

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Once Again, Conservatives Utterly Defeated By Nancy Pelosi
By Ian Reifowitz, November 2, 2015

My late, beloved grandmother loved to play poker. Her name was Doris. She wasn't a World Series of Poker-level player. As a 5-year-old, I once helped her by pointing out that she was about to fold with a full house. The other ladies seated around the folding table in the rumpus room of her co-op building were none too pleased when I did.

One thing you ought not to do in poker is repeatedly overplay your hand--and the same maxim applies to politics. House Republican conservatives, known as the so-called "Freedom Caucus," have done so repeatedly. This week, when the players in Congress finally laid down their cards, one woman--a grandmother of eight, in fact--took the pot. Her name is Nancy. Nancy Pelosi.

The House of Representatives is currently, er, blessed with the largest Republican majority since the 1928 elections brought us President Herbert Hoover. Nevertheless, this week saw the passage of a budget deal where the members of that selfsame Republican majority voted no by a more than 2 to 1 margin. As for the minority party, 187 Democrats voted in favor. None said no. (Note: the Senate passed the deal 64-35, with all thirty-five no votes coming from members of the Republican majority.)

Let's be clear about something: This was not a progressive budget. However, it is a significant improvement over the budgetary levels set by existing law that was put in place by the truly awful sequester--a barrier not easy to overcome given Republican majorities in the House and Senate. The New York Times called the deal a "clear victory" for President Obama, who said he was "pretty happy" about it. Jared Bernstein, considered a strong progressive and Vice President Biden's former chief economic adviser, said of the deal: "there's a lot in here the White House likes and not much they don't."

Conservatives, on the other hand, hated it. Rep. Peter Roskam of Illinois called it "truly terrifying" and a "zombie budget." Washington Examiner managing editor Philip Klein declared: "This is what Republican surrender looks like ... this isn't compromise. This is utter capitulation." Rush Limbaugh proclaimed that he was "literally infuriated" by this "infuriating budget deal." If once is good, twice is even more nice.

Most interestingly, the presumptive incoming Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, tried to have it both ways at the time, voting yes on the deal, but saying the process that created it "stinks." And, like Charlie Brown--who thinks that this time Lucy really will hold the football in place so that he can kick it off into the horizon--the Freedom Caucus actually believes it when Ryan says that next time, under his leadership, things will be different.

The thing is, this is how it's been for a while now in the Republican-led House: Namely, the right wing pushes too far and forces the speaker to work with Democrats. The extreme conservatives--who formally organized themselves earlier this year as the Freedom Caucus (the already existing group for House Republicans wanting to designate themselves as conservatives, the Republican Study Group, wasn't conservative enough for these guys)--have no one but themselves to blame. Time after time, they have sought to use the fact that Republicans on their own cannot pass legislation without them to force the Republican leadership to do their bidding. And time after time, the extreme conservatives have failed.

In 2013, just about every piece of major legislation passed out of the House violated the "Hastert Rule." In other words, the law passed even though it lacked majority support among Republicans. The most important one was the fiscal cliff deal that set new, permanent income tax brackets and pushed the tax code in a more progressive direction. Only a couple of weeks before that deal passed--with Republicans opposing it almost 2 to 1 while Democrats supported it 9 to 1--House Republicans put the kibosh on Boehner's initial compromise proposal. That proposal would have been more conservative (i.e., it preserved more income tax cuts for the wealthy) than the final deal Boehner ended up making. Way to go, right-wingers!

You may also remember that these same right-wingers allied with Sen. Ted Cruz to shut down the government in the fall of 2013. Ultimately, they lost when a budget deal passed even though conservative groups such as Heritage Action, FreedomWorks, and the Club for Growth all strenuously objected. Sixty-two House Republicans voted no that time, compared with only 32 Democrats.

The final shoe to drop after Republicans backed down on the shutdown was the vote in February 2014 for a clean extension of the debt limit, i.e., one without any of the demands Republicans made in return for not defaulting on our country's debt. That vote saw all but 28 House Republicans vote no. A major bill passed a Republican-dominated House with only 12 percent of Republicans voting yes. Think about that.

House Republican conservatives vowed that they wouldn't let such a thing happen again this fall. No how, no way. With another debt ceiling and budget crisis looming, they made their stance quite clear. They would rather push John Boehner out of his speaker's chair than allow him to stay in it and push through another deal. So they pushed him out.

Of course, Boehner cleaned up the barn before turning over the gavel to Mr. Ryan, leaving the latter's hands clean. "I didn't want [the incoming speaker] to walk into a dirty barn full of you know what," Boehner said earlier this week, after sealing the deal that the Freedom Caucus promised would happen only over their dead bodies. Speaker Boehner managed to get all of the you know what on to his shovel before throwing out it right out of that barn--and right into the Freedom Caucus members' faces.

In reality, this was where the story was headed all along. In July 2013, back when Democrats still had a majority in the Senate, I predicted that Boehner would ultimately have no choice but to work with Democratic Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi to pass a decent budget and a clean debt ceiling bill out of the House in an agreement "that would allow Boehner to remain the titular speaker at the head of a coalition of Democrats and a few dozen not-insane Republicans."

And that's exactly what Speaker Boehner has been since announcing his impending resignation. Freed from the yoke of the extremists to his right, he has passed major legislation largely with Democratic votes. I added two years ago that, "Rep. Pelosi strikes me as the kind of person committed enough to substance to let someone else hold the gavel while she wields the real power and does what is right for the American people." I stand by that assessment.

As for Boehner, we can say that, in the end, he put his country over his party at a time when he could simply have walked away without making any kind of deal. And Paul Ryan? He'll soon find out what it's like to lead a group where one faction, when given a choice between half a loaf and none, decides to blow up the oven.

Nancy Pelosi, on the other hand, has shown that no one in Congress plays the game as well as she does. Even if the results are far from perfect, the American people can at least be grateful for that.
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"... the elephant party’s problem: They’re betting on someone who’s using ostrich logic."

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COMMENTS: 
*  What is really needed in 4 out of 5 questions is for the moderators to remind the answering candidate after 10 seconds: "You're not answering my question". After 20 seconds: "You're still not answering my question". And after 30 seconds "You haven't answered my question. Next."
*  Why have "debates" at all if the candidates control what is asked of them? Instead, call them infomercials with a screened audience playing its role, applauding and laughing on cue.  If the media buys into the GOP drama queens' manipulations, then we should rename the "debates" for what they really are: censorship.
    *  And a question for one about the other is OK? One about a speech that has nothing to do with the issues and is from a long time ago? A question about fantasy sports? The lame MSNBC folks deserve all the stuff they got and plenty more.
       *  Isn't that what FOX News is? A censored media source? So the GOP debates will be for FOX's core "alternative" reality audience.
*  The field was so used to tongue baths on Fox and talk radio that they could not handle real questions about , you know, their records and policy positions. They want a debate without questions. what a bunch of whiners
    *   They didn't like the Fox moderators questions either.
*   Let me get this straight. They all claim they can hold their own against Putin, but they can't stand up to a few questions from CNBC?
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Gotcha, G.O.P.
By Charles M. Blow, November 2, 2015

Here we go again with attacks on the “mainstream media” and the invocation of the dreaded “gotcha question” to excuse poor performance and intellectual flat-footedness.

After being asked at last week’s debate about his ties to the shady nutritional supplement company Mannatech and saying “I didn’t have an involvement with them” and dismissing claims of a connection as “total propaganda,” Ben Carson called Thursday for an overhaul of Republican debate formats.

“Debates are supposed to be established to help the people get to know the candidate,” Carson said, according to The Washington Post. “What it’s turned into is — gotcha! That’s silly. That’s not helpful to anybody.”

I think the question was a fair one, and I’m not alone. Carson’s business manager, Armstrong Williams, said Thursday on CNN that the question wasn’t a gotcha one but an “absolutely” fair one.

And on the credibility of Carson’s denial, PolitiFact ruled:

“As far as we can tell, Carson was not a paid employee or official endorser of the product. However, his claim suggests he has no ties to Mannatech whatsoever. In reality, he got paid to deliver speeches to Mannatech and appeared in promotional videos, and he consistently delivered glowing reviews of the nutritional supplements. As a world-renowned surgeon, Carson’s opinion on health issues carries weight, and Mannatech has used Carson’s endorsement to its advantage.

“We rate Carson’s claim False.”

The idea of the gotcha question and gotcha journalism have decades-long roots, at least. In 1999, Calvin Trillin in Time Magazine called gotcha journalism, “campaign coverage dominated by attempts to reveal youthful misbehavior.” But the questions the Republican candidates received were not of that genre.

In a 1992 New York Times Magazine article about Barbara Walters, one of her producers told Bill Carter that Walters always went for the “gotcha question, the one that reveals the person.”

But the idea of the “gotcha question” gained new primacy in the 2008 election, when William Safire wrote in The Times of MSNBC’s Chris Matthews’s prediction that “The gotcha politics will begin,” and noted that “Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, used the word in defense of having the audience question candidates at a CNN/YouTube debate instead of allowing reporters to have at his party’s candidates. He preferred to ‘let the American people back in’ than endure questions ‘from a press corps that wants to play gotcha!’ ”

But perhaps it has its most resonance because of its use by the disastrously ill-equipped Republican vice presidential candidate, who repeatedly used the phrase as an excuse for her train wreck interviews.

Gotcha questions have come to mean any question one doesn’t want to answer, any question whose answer would or could reveal something unflattering. In a way, a question is simply a question and only becomes a gotcha if you, the answerer, feel convicted and unsettled by it. Gotcha is in the mind — and spine — of the interviewee.

Carson simply wasn’t prepared for the Mannatech question and wasn’t completely honest in the answer. If that is gotcha journalism, I’m here for it “every day of the week and twice on Sunday,” to borrow a phrase from Mike Huckabee.

This is not to say that the debate wasn’t a bit of a mess. It was. Nor is it to say that some of the questions weren’t questionable. They were. But questions that seek clarification of a candidate’s past are fair.

Yet Republicans have decided that attacking the media makes good optics. Not only is the party considering overhauling the debate process, it has suspended an upcoming NBC debate because, according to the Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, “CNBC’s moderators engaged in a series of ‘gotcha’ questions, petty and meanspirited in tone, and designed to embarrass our candidates.”

But gotcha questions aren’t the Republicans’ problem. A frustration among Republican voters with political professionalism and a hodgepodge of fatally flawed candidates is. The more traditional portion of the Republican field is littered with candidates with strong résumés — I use the word strong here loosely, to mean the existence of governmental experience, not the quality of it — but relatively weak rhetorical skills.

Of the nontraditional lot, there is a former neurosurgeon whose strategy seems to be to appear barely awake while delivering word salads of outlandishness in a murmur, a real-estate mogul full of bluster and bawdiness, and a fired C.E.O. engaged in a breathtaking example of pink-slip revisionism.

Marco Rubio is thought to have won the last debate, not so much because he brilliantly articulated reasonable, or intellectually invigorating policy — “I’m against anything that’s bad for my mother” is a kindergarten truism, not a nuanced policy position — but because he remained relatively even and unperturbed.

And yet, it’s Carson who is now the front-runner, one of the candidates who spoke the least during the last debate and who seemed to want to say nothing at all. And that candidate is the one worrying about the precious few questions he will have to answer. That is the elephant party’s problem: They’re betting on someone who’s using ostrich logic.
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"This is what the liberal media always does – it attacks the messenger ..." What a crock, "Snarly"!

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COMMENTS:
*  What?  Carly admitted that she told a LIE.   What about all the other lies you have told.  Especially the one " I have seen the Video".   That was a whopper.
*  She is wrong about SO many things.  And this is the ONE that she is willing to admit to?
*  Republican policies as they impact women, and attempt to impact women are very clear. No reproductive rights, cumbersome voter ID laws, proposals to create a lower minimum wage for women, bills that attempt to place 100% of the burden of proof on victims of rape (yes, including children) - oh, the list goes on and on. In this instance, Fiorina "misspoke" and handily provided misinformation that she want out here to get  women to vote for her. women. The terms "misspoke" and "spoke in error" and "made a mistake" need to banned for all politicians, candidates and their spokespeople. Let them tell the truth - "I lied".
*  Again I say Carly should always continue to wear dresses and skirts, otherwise her pants will always be on fire. 
*  So Collie Purina thinks she should get extra points for admitting she was wrong.  Comical thing is that she twist her admission in the next paragraph and insults the media, as if they caused her to spout her usual lies and deceit.
*   You only were wrong once, Snarly ?  You were wrong at Lucent, you were wrong at HP and you are wrong for America. Go home and count the shekels in your HP golden parachute.
*  When Republicans talk, they blame others for whatever damage they have done to the American people; in Psychiatry that is called projection and the majority of members of that party need a full evaluation of their mental and emotional status because there are gross abnormalities going around with that crowd.
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Fiorina: ‘Fact-checkers are correct,’ I was wrong on 92% remark
By Jane C. Timm, November 1, 2015

Carly Fiorina acknowledged Sunday that one of the facts she used to criticize President Obama during the third GOP presidential debate last week was misleading, after fact-checkers called her out.

“In this particular case, the fact-checkers are correct,” Fiorina said on ABC’s “This Week.” Fiorina had said that 92% of the jobs lost during Obama’s first term were held by women. “The 92% it turns out was the first three-and-a-half years of his term and in the final six months things improved.”

Still, Fiorina argued that her message – albeit not her statistic – was correct.

“This is what the liberal media always does – it attacks the messenger trying to avoid the message – here is the message, it is factually true that women have been hit very hard by progressive policies. It is factually true that the women living in extreme poverty is at the highest rate in recorded history, it’s factually true that 16.1 percent of women live below the poverty line, the highest level in 20 years, it’s factually true that 3 million have fallen into poverty, there is no denying that progressive policies have been bad for women,” the Republican candidate said, nearly shouting over the moderator to finish her point.

The 92% statistic is not new to fact-checkers; it was first championed by the GOP’s last nominee Mitt Romney in 2012. He cited numbers between January 2009 and March 2012, when there were 749,000 fewer non-farm payroll jobs according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Of that amount, 683,000 – 92% – were indeed held by women.

But, as fact-checkers pointed out when Romney first made the claim, the president took office two-years into a recession and the job losses cannot be entirely blamed on his leadership. Furthermore, overall during the Great Recession, too, more men lost their jobs in the recession – they just lost them earlier in the recession.

While Romney’s numbers were up to date during his race, by Wednesday’s debate when Fiorina re-upped the remark, the full numbers of job losses during Obama’s first term were readily available: the number of women employed in the U.S. from January 2009 to January 2013 actually increased.
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Gee, Paul, we could have told you that!

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COMMENTS: 
*  That's not true at all. Republicans have a vision and it's the following:  1. Continue the war on women; 2. Continue to attempt to discriminate against gays; 3. Continue to hate minorities; 4. Blame Democrats for everything; 5. Continue to repeal the ACA and replace it with 'let them die in the streets'; 6. Continue to take from the poor and give to the rich; 7. Lie, cheat steal, push phony 'scandals' to try and discredit your opposing political party members.
*  Ryan calls for Republicans to have a vision and an "alternative." Alternative to what? Presumably he means the Democrats' vision. Perhaps he or someone might enumerate 10 points in the Democratic "vision." Five points? One? How about this one: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." A good one for both parties. (Thanks to JFK).
*  I respect Mr. Ryan's honesty and candor when he says that Republicans don't have a vision.......Vision and a politically sensible plan would be preferred over obstruction and anger at others.
*  Thanks for the news Paul..you just figuring it out now ?
*  Ryan has some appeal because of statements like this. But he ignores Republican policy has been to fail Obama, country be damned. Oh, and the tax cuts for rich, with some magical formula that won't create budget deficits, with Ryan saying 'we'll figure out how to get rid of the deficits'. Right.
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Republicans 'don't have a vision,' Paul Ryan says
By Mike DeBonis, November 1, 2015

House Speaker Paul Ryan, in his first series of interviews since his election on Thursday, blamed a policy vacuum for causing months of Republican infighting on Capitol Hill.

"We fight over tactics because we don't have a vision," Ryan, R-Wis., said on "Fox News Sunday" in the first five interviews to be broadcast on morning news programs. "We've been too timid on policy; we've been too timid on vision -- we have none."

Ryan told Fox and other networks that he would put forth a more robust GOP agenda that would serve as a blueprint for Republican candidates going into the 2016 presidential and congressional elections.

"We have to have a vision and offer an alternative to this country so that they can see that if we get the chance to lead, if we get the presidency and if we keep Congress, this is what it will look like, this is how we'll fix the problems working families are facing," Ryan said on Fox.

In another interview, with CNN's Dana Bash, Ryan pledged to "go on offense" as speaker: "We've been too timid for too long around here."

Ryan's election ended a monthlong scramble to identify a successor to John Boehner, R-Ohio, who left Congress last week after nearly five years as speaker. Ryan, thanks to his chairmanships of the House Budget and Ways and Means committees and his 2012 nomination for vice president, was seen as uniquely positioned to unite a House Republican conference badly divided over how to oppose President Barack Obama on issues as diverse as fiscal policy, regulation and immigration.

Ryan made public Sunday at least one commitment he had made in private settings in recent weeks: not to take up an immigration-reform package while Obama is president.

"Specifically on this issue, you cannot trust this president," Ryan said on CNN, referring to Obama's 2014 executive orders granting some illegal immigrants a path to legal status: "This president tried to write the law himself. ... Presidents don't write laws; Congress writes laws."

Ryan has supported comprehensive immigration-reform legislation that would include a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and Boehner had hoped to take up such a bill as recently as last year. But a conservative backlash, seen in the surprise ouster of then-Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., in a primary election last year, arrested that momentum.

In addressing the immigration issue in recent private meetings, Ryan pledged to obey the "Hastert rule," bringing to the floor only those bills supported by a majority of Republicans. But Ryan on Sunday opened the door to breaching the rule on other matters.

"There are always exceptions to the rules, and when circumstances dictate, we have to look at all options available. But I believe it's important going forward that we operate on a consensus basis," he said on Fox.

Ryan also declined to take up another crucial issue to many conservatives: a push to defund Planned Parenthood in spending legislation that must be passed by early December. Although he said the group "shouldn't get a red cent from the taxpayer," he would not commit to including defunding language that would spark a showdown with Obama and congressional Democrats.

"Being an effective opposition party is being honest with people up front about what it is we can and can't achieve," Ryan said on CNN. "Are we going to let Congress work its will? Yes. ... I don't know what the outcome is going to be."

Ryan, 45, who has three young children, was also pressed on his request to maintain his weekend time with his family as a prerequisite for agreeing to serve as speaker. That demand touched off a wide conversation about how American workers are able to balance their personal lives with their professional lives -- and it has led to calls for legislation guaranteeing paid family leave.

Ryan dismissed those suggestions: "I don't think people asked me to be speaker so I can take more money from hardworking taxpayers to create some new federal entitlement," he said on Fox. "I'm going to keep living in Janesville, Wis. Yes, Sundays are going to be family days, and Saturdays are family and constituent days. That is what most people want in their life -- is a balance."

During the week, he told CNN, he will continue to sleep on a cot in his Capitol Hill office -- as he has done since arriving in Washington in 1999.

"I'm just a normal guy," he told Bash, explaining the decision.

"Yeah, but normal guys don't sleep in their office," Bash replied.

Ryan said the practice "actually makes me more efficient."
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OK, Ryan, you can't name anything "the country will be impressed with", so how about something that we WON'T be impressed with?

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Paul Ryan Asked To Name One Thing He Can Accomplish In The Next 6 Months, Can’t Come Up With Answer
By Judd Legum, November 1, 2015

Appearing on Meet The Press, newly elected House Speaker Paul Ryan was directly asked by host Chuck Todd to name one thing he could accomplish in the first six months that “the country will be impressed with.”

Ryan did not answer.

Instead, Ryan went through a litany of Republican talking points. “Working families are falling behind, the economy is stale… our foreign policy is a disaster,” Ryan said.

He then retreated to even safer ground: Obamacare. “Look at the the disaster that the rollout of Obamacare is continuing to be,” the new House speaker opined, still not answering the question.



The difficulty is that, despite Ryan’s election as Speaker, the Republican Congressional delegation remains bitterly divided. Ryan will have to reckon with the House Freedom Caucus, which is pushing for an even more confrontational approach with President Obama and Democrats in Congress.

Ryan, perhaps to placate the Freedom Caucus, has already agreed to rule out bringing comprehensive immigration reform to the floor of the House. Previously, Ryan had championed comprehensive immigration reform and supported its passage. He urged former Speaker John Boehner to bring a comprehensive bill to the House floor, even if most Republicans opposed it.
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C'mon, Ryan, there are more important things to deal with than this!

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COMMENTS: 
*  Smoking is against the law in Federal facilities. This is just another incident where the laws that apply to everyone else, do not apply to Congress.
*  The stench isn't from cigarettes, it's that of a long dead ideology.
*  Stench is synonymous with GOP.
*  Asked if he is going to be able to get the smell of smoke out of the place, the fitness-conscious congressman said, "That's a really good question. And we've been talking about that."  There's your typical politician response to just about every question.
*  Why is he allowed to sleep in his office... it's a place of business not a dormitory
*  ...so he sleeps in his office. If only he were so frugal with the taxpayers money.
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U.S. House speaker in a fog over cigarette stench in new office
By Will Dunham, November 1, 2015

Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan can add one more burning issue to his agenda as the new speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives: how to get rid of the stench of cigarette smoke.

Ryan said on Sunday he has been trying to come up with ways to remove the smell of cigarettes from the House speaker's office that he took over on Thursday after he replaced the retiring John Boehner, a heavy smoker.

Asked if he is going to be able to get the smell of smoke out of the place, the fitness-conscious congressman said, "That's a really good question. And we've been talking about that."

"They have these ozone machines, apparently, that you can detoxify the environment. But I'm going to have to work on the carpeting in here," Ryan told the NBC program "Meet the Press."

"You know, if you ever go to like a hotel room or get a rental car that's been smoked in? That's what this smells like," Ryan added.

To complicate things, Ryan does not have a residence in Washington and sleeps in his office.

"I'm just a normal guy," Ryan told CNN's "State of the Union" program.

CNN interviewer Dana Bash, with a laugh, then told him, "Yes, but normal guys don't sleep in their offices."

Ryan said that he lives in Janesville, Wisconsin, and commutes back and forth to Washington every week.

"I just work here. I don't live here. So I get up very early in the morning. I work out. I work until about 11:30 at night. I go to bed. And I do the same thing the next day," Ryan said.

"It actually makes me more efficient. I can actually get more work done by sleeping on a cot in my office. I have been doing it for at least a decade, and I'm going to keep doing it."
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Brownback, we told you so!

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COMMENTS: 
*  What a perfect case study for the ludicrous Republican economic plan. Even more ludicrous will be the fact that they will still push this idea that has been proven to fail time and time again over the last 3 decades.
*  Kansas you wanted this man and you got him. Need to think next time about your life instead of what the Koch's want for you. You now like it or not have to pay for that vote and the brothers are still laughing as they send checks to the banks in their off shore tax havens. Their is some that vote for a good man then their is the voters of this state.
*  Following the same path - Christie in NJ, who tripled corporate tax cuts in less than three years with more coming this year. $1.7 billion revenue shortfall this year in NJ due to more than $600 million in corporate tax cuts that failed to deliver economic growth, increase revenue, or create job growth.
*  Anyone that isn't a lame brain fleabagger knew this was going to happen.
*  Where are the know it all republicans now? Not much to say when the facts are laid out for everyone.... I'm tired of their rhetoric... It makes me nauseous just listening to most republicans speak...
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Kansas tax patches fail as tea-party experiment riles residents
By Tim Jones, October 29, 2015

Kansas lawmakers in June approved the largest revenue increase in state history thinking they'd closed a $400 million hole created by income-tax cuts Republican Governor Sam Brownback pushed through three years earlier. They hadn't.

The state took in $66 million less than expected in the three months ending Sept. 30, and the turmoil is expected to worsen next week when a panel of economists issues its annual projections. They are likely to confirm the need for the Republican-controlled legislature to adjust the budget again because promised benefits from the decrease in taxes still haven't materialized.

"The income-tax cuts passed in 2012 and '13 were way too steep and way too quick," said State Sen. Jeff Longbine, a Republican from Emporia. "The revenue continues to decline and we have to do something."

The state's budget drama encapsulates a broader ideological debate over the influence that tax cuts have on economic performance. Republican presidential candidates have each endorsed federal tax reductions in the belief that they will spur investment. In Kansas, the idea is being tested as residents await the promised jolt.

"This is absolutely a cautionary tale, because it's basically cutting revenue without figuring out how to cut expenditures," said Norton Francis, senior research associate at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. "At the federal level, it's different because they can deficit-finance, but you can't be a deficit hawk and a tax cutter at the same time."

Brownback, a former U.S. senator elected governor in 2010, embraced the supply-side economics theory of tax-cutting and said Kansas could become the Texas of the grasslands by luring businesses with lower income levies. His intent is to eventually eliminate the tax. Yet Kansas has fallen short of revenue projections almost every month since the cuts were enacted.

"They're still in the soup," said Duane Goossen, a former state budget director who served under Republican and Democratic governors.

Eileen Hawley, a spokeswoman for Brownback, didn't respond to an email seeking a comment on Brownback's plans to deal with the deficit. The governor said this month that spending cuts wouldn't be an option, nor new taxes.

"We're not going that route," Brownback was quoted as saying in the Topeka Capital-Journal. He has counseled taking a long view.

"We can be patient and give it more time if the revenue numbers were meeting expectations," Longbine said. "But they're not. We have to be fiscally responsible."

In 2012, the legislature cut the top income-tax rate by 26 percent, increased standard deductions for married and single head-of-household filers and eliminated levies on about 191,000 small-business owners. More than 330,000 filers identified themselves as small businesses, however, causing larger-than- forecast revenue losses.

Lawmakers moved to find more money without rolling back the cuts, acceding to Brownback's strategy of shifting taxation from earnings to consumption.

Less than four months ago, the legislature raised the sales tax to 6.5 percent from 6.15 percent, and boosted the cigarette levy by 50 cents a pack. Lawmakers eliminated most income-tax deductions and halved property-tax and mortgage-interest deductions. They enacted a six-week tax amnesty program, allowing laggards to pay without penalties, anticipating it would generate $30 million.

The effort included cuts to education and borrowing to make required pension payments. From 2013 through the 2016 fiscal years, more than $400 million was siphoned from the highway fund, which is used for road construction and maintenance.

"THIS IS HIGHWAY ROBBERY," says a billboard along the Kansas Turnpike sponsored by the Kansas Contractors Association. It features a man in a ski mask, about to point his handgun.

"$1 million per day taken from roads and bridges," the billboard reads.

In an Aug. 13 report, Moody's Investors Service assigned an Aa2 rating to the state transportation department's highway revenue bonds. The company noted the state's practice of tapping transportation funds, calling it "a key weakness."

Bob Totten, executive vice president of the contractors' group, said highway maintenance has been scaled back sharply. Instead of repairing 115 bridges annually, this year will be 58. Instead of 1,200 miles of roads maintained, it'll be about 200 or less, Totten said.

"The tax cuts might work, but I think it'll take 11 or 12 years," Totten said. "We're not a tourist state, we don't bring in a lot of people. And we haven't had a beach in Kansas in more than 3 million years."

Brownback, who won re-election last November, is paying a price. Three-fifths of Kansans surveyed said his income-tax cuts have been "a failure" or "a tremendous failure," according to the Docking Institute of Public Affairs at Fort Hays State University.

The poll released Oct. 23 also showed the governor is less popular in Kansas than Democratic President Barack Obama. Eighteen percent said they were satisfied with Brownback's performance, compared to 28 percent for Obama.

Hawley, the Brownback spokeswoman, has dismissed the poll results.

"Less than one year ago, there was an election and the people of Kansas chose between two candidates," she told the Capital-Journal on Oct. 23. "Polls don't accurately reflect the views of Kansans; elections do."

Lawmakers aren't scheduled to return to the capitol until January. The Nov. 6 release of revenue projections, though, is expected to increase the sense of urgency.

"In a normal political universe, poll numbers like this should be pushing the legislature to do something," said Bob Beatty, a political science professor at Washburn University in Topeka, the capital. "But the disconnect between the policies coming out of the capital and public opinion is so vast."

Totten said he doesn't expect big changes in fiscal policy until 2019, after term limits force Brownback to leave office.

"The new governor will have the hellacious duty of having to raise taxes," Totten said. "And he'll serve one term."
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"Mr. Ryan said the speaker’s job was to facilitate consensus, not to be 'dictator of the House.'" How about tossing in some compromise, Ryan?

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Paul Ryan Says He Won’t Work With Obama on Immigration Reform
By Nicholas Fando, November 1, 2015

Speaker Paul D. Ryan said in a series of televised interviews on Sunday that he would not work with the Obama administration on changing immigration policy, effectively pushing off the issue to at least 2017.

“Look, I think it would be a ridiculous notion to try and work on an issue like this with a president we simply cannot trust on this issue,” Mr. Ryan said in an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “He tried to go it alone, circumventing the legislative process with his executive orders, so that is not in the cards.”

The message from Mr. Ryan, who was elected on Thursday, signaled an antagonism toward the White House that both echoed his predecessor, John A. Boehner, and is likely to appeal to the party conservatives who forced Mr. Boehner’s resignation.

Mr. Ryan taped five Sunday morning news shows, where he laid out his agenda for unifying his party and his approach to relationships with congressional colleagues, Mr. Obama and Republican presidential candidates.

When asked to comment on the statements about immigration, a White House spokesman referred to a news briefing Friday by Josh Earnest, the press secretary, who described the speaker’s stance as “a source of deep disappointment.”

Mr. Ryan said that if the Republicans were to be a successful opposition party between now and the presidential election, they would need to become an aggressive “proposition party,” laying out a clear policy vision with alternatives to Democrats, like plans for reforming the tax code and replacing the Affordable Care Act.

“We have been too timid for too long around here,” Mr. Ryan said on ABC’s “This Week.” “We have been bold on tactics but not on policy, not on an agenda. We have to show people what our alternatives are, and that is the kind of leadership I think people are hungry for here.”

Such proactive agenda-setting, Mr. Ryan added, will help avert the kind of brinkmanship over spending that was common under Mr. Boehner’s leadership. It also requires that congressional leaders be “honest with people up front about what it is you can and cannot achieve,” Mr. Ryan said in response to a question on CNN’s “State of the Union” about defunding Planned Parenthood.

Mr. Ryan repeatedly made it clear that he would take an approach different from that of Mr. Boehner, whose almost five-year tenure as speaker was rife with Republican Party infighting. In a nod to the conservatives who have demanded that power in the House be decentralized, Mr. Ryan said the speaker’s job was to facilitate consensus, not to be “dictator of the House.”

“I don’t think leadership should be trying to, you know, covet power and write legislation,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I think I want to have a more participatory process, which is really what the founders envisioned the House to look like. And that is something that so many of us, myself included, have been concerned about the way this place has been run.”

Mr. Ryan, the Republican Party’s 2012 vice-presidential nominee, said he would remain neutral in the Republican presidential nomination race. The Republican presidential aspirants, he added, have offered a model for the kind of policy alternatives he hopes to see in the House.

“I looked at that stage and said every one of these people would be a far better president than Hillary Clinton,” he said on ABC.

Asked by “Fox News Sunday” how long he expected his honeymoon period as speaker to last, Mr. Ryan offered a quick joke.

“About 35 minutes,” he said.
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"Politicizing an attack on Americans is shameful, and if last week’s hearing is any indication, a losing political strategy."

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BENGHAZI GAME LOST BEFORE IT BEGAN
By Jason Stanford, October 26, 2015



Here’s some free advice for congressional Republicans. If you don’t want to make it seem like you’re focusing on Hillary Clinton, it’s a bad idea to put her in front of television cameras for 11 hours. The Benghazi hearing was a failure as both a show trial and as an example of representative democracy, succeeding only as a showcase for a woman of epic patience if nothing else.

Pity poor Trey Gowdy. The game was lost before it began thanks to the careless admissions by his two colleagues and a major in the Air Force Reserves that the Benghazi investigation was more focused on punishing Clinton than preventing terrorist attacks. Most Americans agree that partisan politics is driving the endless investigations into Benghazi. It fell to Gowdy to insist that the Earth was flat in his opening remarks.

“Madam Secretary, I understand some people have suggested this investigation is about you,” he said. “I assure you it is not.”

It went downhill from there for the next 11 hours. He might as well have said, “Hold my beer. Watch this, y’all.” For the next 11 hours, we learned why Barack Obama asked Clinton to be our top diplomat and why Congress is polling worse than gonorrhea, traffic jams and cockroaches.

For 11 hours, Clinton had the grace not to tell the yelping backbenchers to go to the beach and pound sand. For 11 hours, she laughed off insinuations of treason and calmly set the facts in order when bellyaching congressmen and women knocked them aside.

I can’t endure the minor inconveniences of modern life without at least an outward demonstration of my irritation. It should not shock us that Clinton could remain composed in the face of rank amateurs turning a terrorist attack into political fodder, but we should be awed that anyone could do this for 11 hours.

All the “Lord of the Rings” movies don’t last 11 hours. They just seem like they do.

The longest boxing match ever was only seven hours long, and they called that a draw because both fighters were too exhausted to continue.

You could have fit the longest baseball game in major-league history in the middle of the Benghazi hearing and had three hours left over. (Coincidentally, the Republicans lost that game, too.)

You could have taken off from Reagan National Airport when Gowdy gaveled the hearing into session, landed in Paris, enjoyed a leisurely dinner, and caught the end of the hearing in your hotel room.

How long is 11 hours? This year two men stowed away in the wheel well of an airliner from South Africa to London. One of them died. That flight was 11 hours long.

If Gowdy had paid for the same amount of time with the most expensive prostitute in New York, it would have cost $22,000. Though expensive, this would have cost a lot less than the $4.5 million of our money that Congress has spent going after Clinton, and at this point I don’t think they’re ever going to get her.

The Benghazi hearing lasted longer than the Battle of Bunker Hill and at similar cost both in treasure and in political capital. Republicans attacked on Benghazi, on emails, and on and on since the night of the attacks in Benghazi on Sep. 11, 2012. When GOP Reps. Kevin McCarthy and Richard Hanna showed the whites of their eyes by admitting what we could all plainly see, Democrats returned fire. Republicans dragged Hillary before a hearing but at great cost.

When the hearing started, 72 percent of Americans believed politics was behind this, the eighth congressional investigation in Benghazi. After essentially rehashing debunked conspiracy theories for longer than it takes to drive across Texas the long way, that majority has surely grown.

Unfortunately, congressional Republicans are showing no sign of abandoning this losing strategy. As Clinton said, you can’t represent American interests abroad from a bunker, but neither can you represent Americans at home with a bunker mentality. Politicizing an attack on Americans is shameful, and if last week’s hearing is any indication, a losing political strategy.
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