Back to Salem

It is fitting that Hillary Clinton should be hauled before the Benghazi committee so close to Halloween because this alleged hearing has all the credibility of the Salem Witch trials. There is no way that anyone who watched Hillary Clinton being grilled for eleven hours by gougey Gowdy, et al. can doubt that Kevin McCarthy was telling the truth when he said the Republicans are holding the Benghazi hearings for the purpose of driving down Hillary Clinton's favorability ratings.

The Republicans are trying to justify this farce by saying they discovered new information from Hillary's emails. I find that very interesting since there were no new discoveries revealed during the eleven hours of her testimony. Ah, but the Republicans never let go of any allegation! “It's the emails!” they shout. “Hillary Clinton has to be hiding something truly nefarious in those emails! She is a Clinton, you know?”

So emails became the star of the show regardless of the fact that emails were not the favored means of communication for Hillary Clinton or the rest of the State Department. “Oh look at this big stack of emails form 2011 about Benghazi, and this little stack of emails from 2012 about Benghazi. Does that mean you lost interest in Benghazi in 2012?” This was actually one of the absurd lines of questioning!

In particular the Republicans focused in on emails to and from Sidney Blumenthal, even though he was not a part of the State Department. But what the hell do facts have to do with anything? Hillary passed some of Blumenthal's comments about Benghazi on to members of her staff and others, and that was enough for Republicans to characterize Blumenthal as Hillary's advisor on Benghazi. One of the reasons Mr. Gowdy was so eager to embrace the notion of Mr. Blumenthal being Hillary's advisor is because of Mr. Blumenthal's vitriolic criticism of some members of Obama's cabinet. As a prosecutor Mr. Gowdy knows how prejudicial that criticism is as evidence, but fairness is not what Mr. Gowdy was after. I might add here that Republicans seem to have a hard time understanding friendship. Just because you do not correct something a friend says in private does not mean you agree with him. One GOP idiot even asked asked why a friend, Sidney Blumenthal, should have Hillary's home phone number and address while a colleague, Ambassador Stevens, did not.

I think the biggest problem with the hearings, however, is that few people could watch them and even fewer did watch them. What this means is that most of the people who are interested (and there are too few who are) will depend on what the lame stream media chooses to report. I have already been subjected to how absurd that is by KTLA this morning. Those dumb asses were actually characterizing as a new revelation an email from Hillary in which she said terrorists attacked the complex at Benghazi. The confusion over what was being reported to Hillary and others directly after the attack is well documented and has been discussed ad nauseam. The reports were contradictory and this email added nothing new! My point is that what happened at Hillary's hearing is less important than what people think happened. So keep a close eye on the lazy slugs of the lame stream media who know that dramatic sound bites will allow them to sell more beer than complex facts will!