The Council Has Spoken!! This Weeks' Watcher's Council Results

 

Alea iacta est...the Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and we have the results  for this week's Watcher's Council match up.


"What did the President know and when did he know it?" - Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker (R-TN), 1974

"Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi — why aren’t we talking about something else?" - Rep. Nancy Pelosi, May 1, 2014

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. -Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

 


Benghazi refuses to go away, it rots and festers like an open wound. Speaker of the House John Boener was finally forced to name a select committee to investigate it fully, and the Obama Regime's defenders lost no time in surfacing to spin the unspinnable and defend the indefensible. This week's winning entry, The Left's Forked Tongue Brigade Continues To Circle The Wagons On Benghazi over at Joshuapundit is my reaction. Here's a slice:

The Professional Left continues to try and disparage the Benghazi select committee investigations with all its might, and the Obama media are certainly doing their best to help by ignoring the actual facts as much as possible.The Forked Tongue Brigade is out in all their putrid glory.

Two old Leftist camp followers conveniently provide us with an overview of the sort of talking points being used to attack the committee in advance, so that its findings can be 'discredited' before they surface. Lets look at them, shall we?

Eleanor Clift is simply an old line, loudmouth Marxist whom the Daily Beast inherited from News-weak. She hasn't has an original thought in years, but pretty much parrots the usual talking points going around. However, when she does improvise, it's a real doozy. On PBS' The McLaughlin Group the other day, she actually managed to come up with one - That Ambassador Chris Stevens wasn't murdered in Benghazi..he, umm, died of smoke inhalation:




The fact that Chris Stevens may very well have been clinging to life when he was raped and beaten (we have no way of really knowing) and the violent way the other three Benghazi victims died doesn't seem to make an impact on Eleanor Clift. Using her logic, I suppose if someone sneaked into her penthouse digs, tied her up and put duct tape over the nose and mouth on her heavily botoxed face, we could say she wasn't murdered either..it was, you know, respiratory failure.

After discussing her faux pas with the usual suspects and getting a fresh briefing on the proper talking points, Ms. Clift decided to double down today in the Daily Beast (I refuse to link to this garbage but I'm sure you can easily find it).

Now her story is that she was taken out of context (she wasn't) that it was the CIA's fault, and that it was Chris Steven' fault because he 'took risks he shouldn't have'.

Next, she puts out some cock and bull tale she's sourced to an unnamed 'ambassador' about the reason for the attack being an attempt to free prisoners being held at the CIA annex. Of course, that fable doesn't account for why the consulate was attacked, rather than just the annex. And even if that was remotely true, what about all the lies on 'it was the video'? And why the subsequent cover up?

After that it's time to play 'look at Reagan'. She cites an article written by a fellow Leftist shill that calls what happened in Beirut in the 1980's 'Reagan's Benghazi'. She relates how the Democrat majority House investigated and found 'very serious errors in judgment' and recommended additional security measures, but 'did not see it as an opportunity to score political points'.

Actually, there's a pretty good reason for that. The 'serious errors in judgment' had nothing to do with the president or anyone else in DC, but the judgment of the house committee that the commanders on the ground at a time before this kind of tactic was common should have somehow foreseen that some Hezbollah jihadi would drive a truck though the barriers and set off a suicide truck bomb.

And the reason the Democrats failed to 'score political points’? Well, that's another difference between Benghazi and Beirut, Ronaldus Maximus and Barack Obama. The Left didn't score political points because they couldn't. From Day One, President Reagan was completely cooperative with the investigation. He allowed Congress complete access to all information, and instead of lying and stonewalling, the Reagan Administration was an active partner in wanting to get to the bottom of what happened.

There were no lies for partisan political purposes, no documents hastily reclassified in an effort to hide them, no witnesses or survivors hidden away. And could anyone even remotely imagine President Reagan leaving our people to fight to the death for nine hours and doing nothing to save them because he was busy resting up for a fundraiser?

A different kind of president and a different kind of man entirely. Someone the Forked Tongue Brigade could never understand.

I'm taking the time to deconstruct this because trust me, you're going to hear this kind of horse manure again and again.

As a matter of fact, none other than the junior Senator from California, Barbara Boxer, came out with her version of White House talking points today on the always amusing Huffington Post.

Good old Senator Babs is no quiz kid as anyone familiar with her record knows, but she has at least a few IQ points on Eleanor Clift, and of course, much better staffers.

The senator starts out using the standard Democrat slogan for the select committee, calling it 'a political witch hunt'. She calls it that because 'the committee 'rejected House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's offer to have a fair panel with equal representation from Republicans and Democrats' and because a few Republicans are 'fundraising off this tragedy'.

I've already dealt with that previously, but it obviously bears repeating. The 'even split' San Fran Nan wanted is something she would have rejected outright when she was Speaker after she stopped cackling. Actually, no select committee in history has ever been set up in that manner. And does anyone recall how Democrats instantly sent out fundraisers after Sandy Hook, Katrina, Columbine,the Gabby Giffords shooting and every other tragedy you can imagine? Pot, meet kettle.

Much, much more at the link.

In our non-Council category, the winner was Iowahawk with an absolutely hilarious piece, Iowahawk – In New York, Scrappy Local Newspaper Struggles For Survival submitted by Joshuapundit. You are hereby warned not to drink coffee or other liquids near the keyoard while you read it.


Here are this week’s full results. Only TheIndependent Sentinel was unable to vote this week, but was not subject to the usual by the 2/3 vote penalty:

Council Winners

• *First place with 4 1/3 votes! – Joshuapundit-The Left's Forked Tongue Brigade Continues To Circle The Wagons On Benghazi


• Second place with 3 votes – The Independent Sentinel – 19 Nifty Ways to End Free Speech in America


• Third place with 2 votes –Liberty's Spirit – The Fascist-Left and the Destruction of the Liberal Mind


• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote –The Noisy Room – Director of National Intelligence James Clapper Has Uncomfortably Close Ties To The Chinese Government


• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote –The Razor – No Sympathy for Fast Food Worker Strike Here


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Nice Deb – Will Obama Reach Out To His Half-Brother Malik To Save Condemned Christian Woman In Sudan?


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Right Planet – Alarmists Issue Fatwa on Renowned Climate Scientist


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – VA Right! - Cantor Trying to Hide His Record – Here is an Amazing Graphic that Shows Cantor’s Liberal Ideology


• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Colossus of Rhodey – Tim Tebow vs. Michael Sam


• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote –Simply Jews – Dear Canucks - please explain Doug Saunders. Please?

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 2 2/3 votes! – Iowahawk – In New York, Scrappy Local Newspaper Struggles For Survival submitted by Joshuapundit


• Second place with 2 1/3 votes – Sultan Knish –The Progressive Red Guard submitted by The Noisy Room


• Third place with 1 2/3 votes -Daniel Greenfield/FrontPage Mag –Never Again, Again submitted by The Independent Sentinel


• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote-Point Of No Return – Of Nakbas, fools and fingers submitted by Simply Jews


• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote-Mark Steyn – The Descent Of Mann submitted by The Right Planet


• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote-Allen B. West – Sam’s kiss was “brave?” Villanueva has a Bronze Star – now THAT’S brave submitted by Rhymes with Right


• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote-Jews Down Under – Israel: Separated for Security submitted by The Watcher


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -The DiploMad 2.0-Shaking Hand : A memory of Pakistan submitted by Bookworm Room


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -The American Interest – The Real Policy Failure in Libya submitted by The Glittering Eye


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Daniel Henninger/WSJ – Bonfire of the Humanities submitted by Liberty's Spirit


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Kevin D. Williamson/NRO – The Narcissistic Creed submitted by Watcher


• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote - Breitbart – Rand Paul: Do We Continue to Arm the Enemies of Israel and the U.S. in Syria? submitted by VA Right!


• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -PJ Tattler - A Millennial Trashes the Class of ’14 submitted by Ask Marion

See you next week! Don't forget to tune in on Monday AM for this week's Watcher's Forum, as the Council and their invited guests take apart one of the provocative issues of the day and weigh in...don't you dare miss it. And don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter..'cause we're cool like that!