This is So Cool, Erin Burnett and CNN Broadcast Benghazi Propaganda For Conservative Republicans

This is So Cool, Erin Burnett and CNN Broadcast Benghazi Propaganda For Conservative Republicans

CNN's special The Truth About Benghazi pushed long-debunked myths about the September 2012 attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, with host Erin Burnett and CNN correspondent John King asking questions that were answered months ago -- often by CNN itself -- and leaving important context out of many claims.

CNN: Was The Removal Of Terrorist Group Names From Benghazi Talking Points 'Nefarious'?

CNN: Couldn't U.S. Military Have Responded To Attacks More Quickly?

CNN: Why Didn't U.S. Heed Warnings Of Benghazi Attacks?
CNN: Was The Removal Of Terrorist Group Names From Benghazi Talking Points 'Nefarious'?

CNN Recklessly Speculated About Why Terrorist Groups Were Removed From Benghazi Talking Points. During The Truth About Benghazi special, CNN chief national correspondent John King questioned why the names of specific terrorist organizations were removed from the unclassified talking points on the Benghazi attacks that were provided to then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice. King asked whether the editing was done "to protect the investigation" or whether "it was done just politically to protect the department? Or more nefariously" to protect the State Department or President Obama. During a prepared video package, CNN played haunting music behind their description of the talking points edits before King noted that the first draft "referenced Islamic extremists with ties to Al Qaeda," but that former State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland "objected to naming terror groups" in an email discussion about the talking points without providing the reasoning behind her objection. [CNN, The Truth About Benghazi, 8/6/13]
Answer: Talking Points Altered For Security Purposes, As CNN Itself Has Reported

Former CIA Director David Petraeus: Names Of Terrorist Groups Were Removed To Avoid Tipping Them Off. In November, former CIA Director David Petraeus explained to lawmakers in congressional testimony that the names of terrorist organizations suspected of participating in the attacks "were removed from the public explanation of the attack immediately after the assault to avoiding alerting the militants that American intelligence and law enforcement agencies were tracking them." [The New York Times, 11/16/12]

Former State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland Was Concerned Naming Terrorist Groups Could "Prejudice The Investigation." In emails exchanged between the CIA, State Department, and other administration officials concerning the drafting of the talking points on Benghazi -- emails made public by CNN in May -- Nuland expressed concern that publicly naming specific terrorist organizations could "prejudice the investigation" into who was behind the attacks. [Media Matters, 5/15/13]

CIA's General Counsel: FBI Instructions Said Not To Reveal Names Of Terror Groups Due To Criminal Investigation. In another email released by CNN in May, the general counsel of the CIA expressed concerns that naming terrorist organizations in the talking points could "conflict with express instructions from NSS/DOJ/FBI that, in light of the criminal investigation, we are not to generate statements with assessments as to who did this." [Media Matters, 5/15/13]
CNN: Couldn't U.S. Military Have Responded To Attacks More Quickly?

CNN Special Pushed Republican Claim That Military Could Have Responded To Attacks Faster, Ignores Initial Assistance Sent To Benghazi. During CNN's special, John King highlighted a Republican congressman's claims, contrary to testimony from military officials, that military responses could have responded to the first Benghazi attack in time to assist with the second attack hours later at a nearby compound:

    REP. ADAM SMITH (D-WA): The bottom line is there was not a force available that could get there in time. And that has been clearly and unequivocally established and answered over and over again.

    KING: Republican Jason Chaffetz begs to differ.

    CHAFFETZ: They're in Northern Libya, right there on the coast. That we couldn't get U.S. military there for 24 hours, that's embarrassing if it's true. But I really question whether or not that's the actual truth.

    KING (on camera): So essentially you're saying General Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest-ranking uniformed officer in the United States of America, isn't telling the truth?

    CHAFFETZ: I think there are other assets and other things that could have been put into motion. That cavalry never comes over the hill to help. That's just stunning to me.

Later, Erin Burnett expressed shock that the military could not respond faster:

    BURNETT: So John, the military says, right, they couldn't have gotten to Benghazi in time, but the United States has the greatest military in the world. So, that seems shocking.

    KING: It does seem shocking -- 24 hours for the first boots on the ground, for the fire department to first make it to Libya, and then only to Tripoli? I think a lot of Americans are stunned by that. [CNN, The Truth About Benghazi, 8/6/13]

Answer: Notion That U.S. Forces Could Have Assisted Sooner Shows "Cartoonish Impression" Of Military

Former Secretary Of Defense Robert Gates: Notion That Military Forces Could Have Assisted Sooner Shows A "Cartoonish Impression" Of U.S. Military. In an interview on CBS' Face the Nation in May, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates explained that claims that the military response to the Benghazi attacks could have arrived sooner than it did "would have been very difficult if not impossible" and shows a "cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces." [Media Matters, 5/12/13]

Decision To Not Send Second Force From Tripoli Was Made By The Head Of The Military's Africa Command, Who Was Concerned About Security In Tripoli. The commander of U.S. Africa Command during the attacks was concerned about threats to the Tripoli embassy complex, and a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed that the assessment of Special Operations Command Africa leadership at the time was that "it was more important for those guys to be in Tripoli" for embassy security. [Media Matters, 5/9/13]

Deputy Chief Of Mission In Libya: Additional Reinforcements Would Not Have Been Able To Get To Benghazi Before The Second Attack Was Concluded. In an interview with congressional investigators, Gregory Hicks, deputy chief of mission in Libya at the time of the attacks, stated that while a team of special forces troops in Tripoli had been told to protect the embassy in Tripoli instead of traveling to Benghazi, the flight they would have taken to Benghazi was scheduled to take off after 6 a.m. local time -- approximately 45 minutes after the attack at the CIA annex that killed two people. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), a member of the House Oversight Committee who has actively pursued investigations into the Benghazi attacks, also told The Washington Post that the special forces team that Hicks was referring to "would have arrived after the attack." [Media Matters, 5/7/13; The Washington Post, 5/6/13]
CNN: Why Didn't U.S. Heed Warnings Of Benghazi Attacks?

John King: U.S. Had "Warning After Warning That Benghazi Was A Disaster Waiting To Happen." King suggested that the U.S. had plenty of warning that the Benghazi attacks would occur, yet was caught unprepared:

    KING: Michael Hayden is the former CIA director.

    HAYDEN: Act one is, what were the intelligence estimates? What kind of warnings were given? What was the plan? Why do we have so few options in act two?

    KING: Act one is numbing, warning after warning that Benghazi was a disaster waiting to happen.

    [...]

    KING: The evidence was overwhelming: attacks that convinced the British, the Red Cross and the United Nations to leave Benghazi; two prior attacks on the U.S. mission; an IED thrown over the fence by former security guards in April and another IED in June that blew a huge hole in a compound gate; and detailed warnings, CNN is told, in 4,000 classified cables, including updates on new Al Qaeda training camps near Benghazi.

    CHAFFETZ: How come that didn't rise to the level where somebody said, "You know, we just can't operate in this environment"? It was a death trap. [CNN, The Truth About Benghazi, 8/6/13]

Answer: Experts Say There Is No Known Intelligence Warning Of The Attacks

GOP Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers: No Evidence U.S. Had Information To Prevent Attacks. During an interview on Fox News days after the Benghazi attacks, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers was asked whether the U.S. had knowledge that could have prevented the attacks. Rogers responded: "As chairman of the Intelligence Committee, I have seen nothing yet that indicates that they had information that could have prevented the event." [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 9/14/12]

NY Times: No Evidence Of "A Warning That The Diplomatic Compound Would Be Targeted And That Was Overlooked By Administration Officials." The New York Times reported in October that there was no evidence that the government knew of an attack in Benghazi and ignored it:

    Interviews with American officials and an examination of State Department documents do not reveal the kind of smoking gun Republicans have suggested would emerge in the attack's aftermath such as a warning that the diplomatic compound would be targeted and that was overlooked by administration officials.

    [...]

    State Department officials have asserted that there was no specific intelligence that warned of a large-scale attack on the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, which they asserted was unprecedented. The department said it was careful to weigh security with diplomats' need to meet with Libyan officials and citizens.

    "The lethality of an armed, massed attack by dozens of individuals is something greater than we've ever seen in Libya over the last period that we've been there," Patrick F. Kennedy, the State Department's under secretary for management, told reporters at a news conference on Oct. 10. [The New York Times, 10/29/12]

State Department Accountability Review Board: There Was "No Immediate, Specific Tactical Warning" Of Benghazi Attacks. The State Department's Accountability Review Board's unclassified findings about the Benghazi attacks found that there was no specific warning of the Benghazi attacks:

    The Board found that intelligence provided no immediate, specific tactical warning of the September 11 attacks. Known gaps existed in the intelligence community's understanding of extremist militias in Libya and the potential threat they posed to U.S. interests, although some threats were known to exist. [State.gov, accessed 8/7/13]

Part of the conservative conspiracy onslaught is simply blind hatred of President Obama. The other part is about the childish need to even the score. First let's remember that as CNN has correctly pointed out, the diplomatic mission in Benghazi was more of a CIA operation than what would be considered a normal embassy operation - there were over twenty armed and well trained CIA personnel at the compound. Anyway, as patriotic Americans well know, the conservative Bush administration was warned about the possibility of terror attacks in a Presidential Daily Brief and Bush/Cheney ignored those warning. Ooops, conservative said than and now they know what is best for our national security - turns out that just is not true. Conservatives lied and bullied the USA into a three trillion dollar war in Iraq - lying about connections to terrorism, 9-11 and al Qaeda. Conservative national security policies at this point have actually gotten more Americans killed than they have saved. So telling a pack of lies wrapped in conservative tin foil is hardly new.

Why Do Anti-American Conservatives at Power Line and American Thinker Hate America and Want To Expose CIA Operations

Why Do Anti-American Conservatives at Power Line and American Thinker Hate America and Want To Expose CIA Operations (In order to keep all the talking points straight I am reproducing all the facts from the original report at the link)

Does anyone remember when Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) outed the fact that the United States had a CIA compound that was using the consulate in Benghazi as cover during a Congressional hearing back in October? Apparently after months on end of scandal mongering that President Obama was willing to let the consulate there go undefended and ZOMG! he allowed four Americans to be killed and he was AWOL and not paying attention to what was going on in Libya on 9-11, the new "scandal" is that there were a bunch of CIA agents on the ground at that compound in Libya and the CIA really doesn't want them to talk to Congress about what the hell they were doing there.

Steve at No More Mister Nice Blog summed this latest revelation, that doesn't really seem to be all that new, by Tapper here: WINGERS HAPPY TO SCRAP THEIR ENTIRE BENGHAZI SCANDAL IN FAVOR OF A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT BENGHAZI SCANDAL:

    CNN's Jake Tapper has this today about the Benghazi attack:

        ... Sources now tell CNN dozens of people working for the CIA were on the ground that night, and that the agency is going to great lengths to make sure whatever it was doing, remains a secret.

        ... Since January, some CIA operatives involved in the agency's missions in Libya, have been subjected to frequent, even monthly polygraph examinations, according to a source with deep inside knowledge of the agency's workings.

        The goal of the questioning, according to sources, is to find out if anyone is talking to the media or Congress.

        It is being described as pure intimidation, with the threat that any unauthorized CIA employee who leaks information could face the end of his or her career.

        ... Among the many secrets still yet to be told about the Benghazi mission, is just how many Americans were there the night of the attack.

        A source now tells CNN that number was 35, with as many as seven wounded, some seriously.

        While it is still not known how many of them were CIA, a source tells CNN that 21 Americans were working in the building known as the annex, believed to be run by the agency....

    The right, which has been trying to spit the phrase "phony scandals" back in the president's face ever since he used the expression in his Knox College speech, is now cackling in triumph: [...]

    But wait -- wasn't the scandal of Benghazi supposed to be that Obama, who hates America and wants our enemies to win, allowed the consulate to go undefended, then covered up what happened because he was running for reelection claiming to have Al Qaeda on the run, hence the notorious talking points making reference to a spontaneous protest of a YouTube video? Doesn't this kinda blow that narrative completely out of the water?

As Steve discussed in his post, this article from Business Insider explained what really might have been going on there: There's A Reason Why All Of The Reports About Benghazi Are So Confusing:

    "The U.S. effort in Benghazi was at its heart a CIA operation," officials briefed on intelligence told the Wall Street Journal, and there's evidence that U.S. agents—particularly murdered U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens—were at least aware of heavy weapons moving from Libya to Syrian rebels.

    WSJ reports that the State Department presence in Benghazi "provided diplomatic cover" for the previously hidden CIA mission, which involved finding and repurchasing heavy weaponry looted from Libyan government arsenals. These weapons are presumably from Muammar Gaddafi's stock of about 20,000 portable heat-seeking missiles, the bulk of which were SA-7 surface-to-air anti-aircraft missiles.

    What's odd is that a Libyan ship—which reportedly weighed 400 tons and included SA-7s—docked in southern Turkey on Sept. 6 and its cargo ended up in the hands of Syrian rebels. The man who organized that shipment, Tripoli Military Council head Abdelhakim Belhadj, worked directly with Stevens during the Libyan revolution.

He followed up on what a complicated mess this actually appears to be:

    Is what we were doing in Benghazi appropriate or admirable? For months, the right tried to tell us that you'd say it was reprehensible if you were a rock-ribbed, military-loving American, and you'd approve if you were an America-hating hippie. But if we're shipping weapons to Syrian rebels, and that's what's being covered up, John McCain would applaud and many of his fellow Republicans wouldn't.

    But hardcore Obama haters will beat him with any sick the can grab. This will do.

This makes me wonder if Jake Tapper is proving himself to be more than willing to help the right with their Groundswell operation as well.

So hate mongering anti-American conservatives at Power Line (John Hinderaker has previously boosted how proud he was to help lie 4,000 Americans to their deaths in Iraq to help the Republican party win elections) and American Thinker ( never had a clear or pro America thought in their lives)  want the CIA to expose all their secrets about defeating anti-American extremists in Syria. During the Bush era these same conservative news sites pushed for every failed national security policy that costs American lives and got thousands of Americans maimed or wounded. All the while waving the flag and the Bible talking about how righteous their nihilistic hateful conservative ideology was best for America. One wonders why they have not been put on trial for sedition. They pass off their conspiracy theories that endanger our national security as just politics. How ironic that they want to turn the USA into an proto-facist theocracy, yet use the freedoms liberals have fought and died for to do so.

The Week's Link For Patriots

Anti-abortion extremist gets 10 years for Planned Parenthood murder plot. Nowhere in my copy of the Bible does it say that you can act as murderer for what conservative Republicans believe are God's wishes.

Want Evidence Benghazi Is A Phony Scandal? Even the report issued by a conservative Congressional committee will not stop the phony patriots from making up more wacko conspiracy theories. One has to possess some minimum amount of honor and character to have an honest debate, which is all true patriots need to know about conservatives at Fox News.

Democrats introduce Supreme Court Ethics Act to helpfully suggest the Supreme Court have some. Watch for news about anti-American conservative organizations like FreedomWorks and The Federalist Society fighting against ethics legislation. They like the USA to run like a corrupt plutocracy.

Low minimum wage undermines economy. Conservatives, largely the party of the old Confederacy, loves wage slavery. That way they pass health care and other costs along to tax payers.

Could You Survive on Fast-Food Wages? Try Our Calculator. Do you visit fast food restaurants? Very little or not at all? Too bad you subsidize those businesses anyway because the executives take all the money generated by the hard work of the serfs who work there.

Today’s Student Debt Means A $4 Trillion Loss Of Wealth In The Future. Conservatives are passing along the cost of maintaining an advanced industrial and technological society to the nation's future. Yet conservatives have the gall to say they love America.



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Benghazi

McCain (R-AZ) and Graham(R-SC) Look Like Anti-American Fools in Unfounded Attacks on Susan Rice Instead of the Terrorists

McCain (R-AZ) and Graham(R-SC) Look Like Anti-American Fools in Unfounded Attacks on Susan Rice Instead of the Terrorists

The Republican gang-up on Susan Rice is a puzzler. Not only does it make no policy sense to blame the U.N. ambassador for any aspect of the killings at Benghazi, Libya, it makes no political sense either.

So far five GOP senators have objected to the idea of President Obama nominating Rice to be the next secretary of state. Two of those senators—John McCain and Lindsey Graham—are party leaders on foreign policy and frequent visitors to TV news studios. This is what makes the campaign particularly bizarre. Their case against her is not just unusually flimsy and transparently partisan; It also shines a glaring light on their own brazen hypocrisy (something most politicians do all they can to avoid).

First, the facts. The weekend after terrorists attacked the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, killing four officials including the ambassador to Libya, Susan Rice went on the talk shows to deliver the administration’s position. The official line at the time was that the attack began as a spontaneous protest—similar to the one that sparked violent demonstrations outside U.S. embassies in Egypt and elsewhere—to an American-made anti-Muslim movie that had gone viral on the Internet. As it turned out, and as she explained in a meeting with senators on Tuesday, Rice was only reciting an unclassified “talking points” sheet prepared by the U.S. intelligence community. Acting CIA Director Michael Morrel, who joined Rice at the meeting, affirmed that those talking points were consistent with classified intelligence reports at the time. He also noted that, to the extent that Rice’s authorized comments differed from the top-secret version (for instance, they left out the finding that a jihadist group was involved in the attack), it was for security reasons.

Was this an intelligence foul-up, worthy of a congressional hearing or two? Possibly. Was there a scandalous cover-up? Doubtful. Whatever an investigation turns up, is all this a valid excuse for denying higher office to the ambassador who went on TV and recited the intelligence community’s talking points? Of course not. More than that, the five senators must know it’s absurd, so trumped-up are their rationales for thinking otherwise.

Here’s what McCain said on Fox News, after the meeting with Rice and Morrel:

We knew in hours of all the details when we got bin Laden, they’re making a movie out of it, and [yet] here we are, ten weeks later [i.e., after the Benghazi attack] finally our ambassador to the United Nations, who appeared on every national Sunday show, is now saying that she gave false information concerning how this tragedy happened.

I don’t know if this is, as Talking Points Memo Editor Josh Marshall put it, the “stupidest thing McCain ever said,” but it’s probably one of the three or four most desperate. First, we knew everything about the raid on Bin Laden’s compound so quickly because (this should be really obvious, senator) the commandos who did it, our own Navy SEALs, were there. They streamed it live. By contrast, the details of a firefight at a remote outpost in Libya are more likely than not to be shrouded in confusion and ambiguity, for a while. Second, giving “false information,” which is legal parlance for “lying,” is an over-the-top characterization of what Rice did. Third (and this really should shut the door on the whole business), when McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate in the 2008 presidential election, he forever disqualified himself from commenting on any nominee for any high office—and the media should treat any such comments accordingly.

Sen. Graham has made many foolish remarks in this sorry saga as well, but the jaw-dropper is his comparison, also made after Tuesday’s meeting, between Rice and John Bolton, who was President George W. Bush’s controversial (and ultimately rejected) nominee for U.N. ambassador. As Graham summarized the Bolton fight, “Democrats dug in their heels and said, ‘We’re not going to vote, we’re not going to consider this nomination until we get basic answers to our concerns.’ ” His point, presumably, was that he plans to do the same if Obama nominates Rice for secretary of state.

There are several differences between Bolton and Rice. For instance, Bolton had made highly critical statements about the legitimacy of the United Nations—and even of international law. Many Democrats and a few Republicans thought these were inappropriate sentiments for a U.N. ambassador. The Democrats held up Bolton’s nomination, pending the release of documents concerning precisely those sentiments—not some peripheral matter over which the nominee had no say or control.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.)—who seems to be auditioning for the “third amigo” now that Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) is retiring, leaving McCain and Graham bereft of a traveling companion—says she will try to block the confirmation of any nominee for secretary of state. “My view is we should hold on this until we get sufficient information” on Benghazi, she said. Well, at least she’s honest about her motives.

McCain and Graham both lied to America about WMD and manipulated the nation into a costly and unnecessary war in Iraq. They have no credibility. They have never apologized or retracted their lies. Why they have not been tared and feathered and sent to live in exile is the only real mystery. There have been attacks on U.S. embassies during the Bush 43 and Reagan administrations, many of these same conservative hypocrites did not go looking for someone to scapegoat in those Republican administrations, Conservative Republican Freak Whitewashes Bush's History To Bash Obama Over Embassy Attack

Gun Enthusiast Kills 17-Year-Old for Playing Loud Music; Lawyer Says He Acted "Very Responsibly"

Extending Unemployment Insurance Would Create 300,000 Jobs Next Year

There is No Reasoning With Republican Freaks Who Have No Values: Conservatives Invent New Bengahzi Conspiracy Theory: Top U.S. Intel Official Is A Liar

There is No Reasoning With Republican Freaks Who Have No Values: Conservatives Invent New Bengahzi Conspiracy Theory: Top U.S. Intel Official Is A Liar

The Republicans’ new focus of attack in the faux “Benghazi-gate” scandal is Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper, claiming that he lied about the source of changes to talking points on the Benghazi attack given to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice.

Yesterday, a DNI spokesperson debunked accusations made by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and other Republicans that the White House changed Rice’s Benghazi talking points, saying that it was the intelligence community that made the “substantive” changes to the talking points. Moreover, former CIA head David Petraeus and other top intelligence officials have said there was no politicization of the process and that the talking points were not altered to minimize the role of extremists but to reflect the best intelligence at the time.

McCain appeared to accept the new information but wondered why Clapper and other DNI officials did not provide this information during closed door hearings last week. And now that all their earlier attacks on Rice have fell apart, Republicans and conservative media figures are directing their attacks at Clapper, a George W. Bush appointee:

    – BILL O’REILLY: Now it’s James Clapper, President Obama’s national security guy who is saying, “Oh, it’s me. I sent Rice out there and I took out all the al Qaeda stuff.” I’m not buying it. None of this adds up. … All right so there’s a lot of lying going on here.

    – CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: I’m not buying it because the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said that a week ago in classified testimony that same Clapper said that they had no idea who changed the talking points and now a week later he seems to say he did? That’s kind of strange. I mean I’ve seen amnesia in my day in my clinical days and that one is pretty quick, one week.

    – TUCKER CARLSON: I hate to think that the director of National Intelligence lied, is a liar. But I’m not sure I see an alternate explanation. Apparently, he’s contradicting what he testified to just last week. Is there another explanation for this?”

    – FOX NEWS’ STEVE DOOCY: They did say it is out of the [DNI] office. It’s not him per se, so we’re supposed to believe that a Clapper aide changed what Petraeus had said? That’s very, very curious.

[   ]....The right wing has spent months trying to bring down the Obama administration in politicization the attacks in Benghazi that left four Americans dead and after all of their conspiracy theories and baseless attacks have been debunked, the rabbit hole appears to have led to Clapper and who knows where it will end.

Everyone one of these conservative truth seekers has a record of lying over and over again to the American people, here, here, here and here. They have no credibility, they have no integrity and lack the humility and moral backbone to apologize for their serious lies. If Republicans hate the USA so much maybe its time for them to start packing. They can start the totalitarian theocratic dystopia they have always dreamed of.

Macy’s CEO to American People: Drop Dead

Science for Hire: Why Industry's Deep Pockets May Be Depleting the Last of Our Fisheries

Corporate Welfare Queens Walmart Owners Look to Slash Federal Tax Payments

Bill O'Reilly Says Single Women, Hispanic-Americans, and African-Americans Are Not Part Of Traditional America. Pasty faced Anti-American proto-fascists such as Bill are not part of traditional America.

Lie and Lie Some More. What I Learned at a Republican Think Tank

Lie and Lie Some More. What I Learned at a Republican Think Tank

The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., has always had a special place in my heart. In the late 1980s, during the presidency of George Herbert Walker Bush, the right-wing think tank provided me with my first job as a young conservative intellectual. My first assignment was to write a policy brief about presidential war powers. I was removed from the project after I wrote a draft that began with the observation that the U.S. constitution divides war powers between Congress and the president, and gives the most important war powers — the power to declare war and to fund it — to Congress. The higher-ups at Heritage reassigned the paper to a Wall Street Journal staffer, who provided them with what they wanted: a brief arguing that the president has absolute, uncontrollable power in foreign affairs.

One of my next assignments was to write a policy paper justifying a forthcoming bill from the late Sen. Jesse Helms, a belligerent reactionary from North Carolina. When I met with the senator’s staff, I was told to wait because Helms wasn’t sure what he was going to put in the bill. After I failed to turn in the policy brief on time, I received an official reprimand from my supervisor, which I treasured until I lost it during a move. The reprimand said, in effect, that at Heritage we write policy papers first and add the facts later.

Things went downhill. I soon left Heritage and, a few years later, the conservative movement altogether. When several colleagues and I founded the New America Foundation in the late 1990s, I held up Heritage as a model of what a genuine think tank ought not to be.

I am amused to report that my former colleagues at the Heritage Foundation have lost none of their willingness to sacrifice truth to propaganda. The Heritage Foundation has published an “Index of Dependence on Government [3]” by William W. Beach and Patrick Tyrrell which seeks to bolster Mitt Romney’s theme that at least 47 percent of Americans are parasitic, government-dependent “takers” rather than “makers” (hat tip to Thomas B. Edsall [4]):

    Today, more people than ever before depend on the federal government for housing, food, income, student aid, or other assistance once considered to be the responsibility of individuals, families, neighborhoods, churches, and other civil society institutions. The United States reached another milestone in 2010: For the first time in history, half the population pays no federal income taxes. It is the conjunction of these two trends — higher spending on dependence-creating programs, and an ever-shrinking number of taxpayers who pay for these programs — that concerns those interested in the fate of the American form of government.

What caught me eye in this latest piece of Heritage agitprop was this sentence: The United States reached a milestone in 2012: For the first time in history, half the population pays no federal income taxes.

This is not just wrong.  It is an error embarrassing enough to shame even a shameless propaganda mill like the Heritage Foundation.

Heritage implies that a majority of Americans paid federal income taxes throughout American history, presumably back to the 1790s. Nothing could be further from the truth. For much of American history, one hundred percent of the population paid no federal income taxes, because there were none. And the federal income tax began to fall on the middle-class masses, not just the upper classes, only in the 1940s.

The first federal income tax in the U.S. was enacted in 1861 to help pay for the Civil War. It was abolished afterward, but recreated in 1894. After the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional, because it was not “apportioned among the states” the constitution was amended by the 16th Amendment to give Congress the power to levy income taxation.

But until World War II a majority of Americans did not pay any federal income tax, either because they made too little money to be required to file returns, or because exemptions like the standard deduction eliminated any federal income tax liability. According to the conservative Tax Foundation [5], which has a friendlier relationship with facts than does the Heritage Foundation, as recently as 1940 the percentage of those who filed (a group smaller than the working-age population) who owed federal income taxes was 49.4 percent. In that year, Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie missed the opportunity to sneer at “the 49 percent.”

It was only during World War II, with the institution of the income tax with-holding system, that a majority of Americans became subject to federal income taxation. If it were accurate, the sentence in the Heritage Foundation’s “Index of Dependence on Government” would read: The United States reached a milestone in 2012:  For the first time since World War II, half the population pays no federal income taxes.

But this in itself undermines the recent right-wing talking point that the country is becoming a nation of moochers living off a dwindling number of heroic Ayn-Randian “job creators.”  That is because, until recently, conservative Republicans were leading the campaign to remove low-income Americans from liability for federal income tax.

President Ronald Reagan and his successors have supported an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) as an alternative to a higher minimum wage.  A “negative income tax” of the kind favored by conservative economist Milton Friedman, the EITC reduces or eliminates federal income tax liability for many of the working poor.  If their incomes are too low, the tax credit is “refundable,” which means that the IRS sends them checks.

Another refundable tax credit created with the support of conservatives like Newt Gingrich is the child tax credit. Like the EITC, this tax credit reduces federal income tax liability for millions and is refundable for some.

From all of this it follows that if conservatives like the authors of the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Dependence of Government are sincere in their outrage about the growing number of nonpayers of federal income tax, they should praise President Franklin D. Roosevelt for turning the income tax, originally a tax on the economic elite, into a tax on the majority of Americans.  And they should denounce Reagan, Gingrich, the Bushes and others for supporting tax credits that have eliminated millions of low-income Americans from liability for federal income tax payments.

Certainly at this point no American with a few functioning brain cells thinks that Republicans lie all the time is shocking. Mildly shocking is that it is institutionalized into the structure of the conservative movement by one of it's most prominent "think tanks".

The conservatives urban conspiracy theories about Benghazi dies like all such conservative bullsh*t,  Sources: Office of the DNI cut "al Qaeda" reference from Benghazi talking points, and CIA, FBI signed

Even the Evil and Incompetent Rep. Peter King (R-NY) Admits CIA Approved U.N. Ambassador Rice Talking Points On Libya

Even the Evil and Incompetent Rep. Peter King (R-NY) Admits CIA Approved U.N. Ambassador Rice Talking Points On Libya

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) has admitted that the CIA and intelligence community approved U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice’s talking points before she made her much-derided Sept. 16 appearance on several Sunday news shows to discuss the attacks in Benghazi. King, one of the most outspoken critics of the Obama administration’s response to the attack, came to his conclusion following testimony from former CIA Director David Petraeus.

After leaving the closed-door hearing, King spoke with reporters for several minutes about Petraeus’ statements. Rice’s television appearances were among the topics discussed, leading King to indicate that while Petraeus did not personally write Rice’s talking points, the CIA did approve them:

    Q: Did he say why it was taken out of the talking points that [the attack] was Al Qaeda affiliated?

    KING: He didn’t know.

    Q: He didn’t know? What do you mean he didn’t know?

    KING: They were not involved — it was done, the process was completed and they said, “Ok go with those talking points.” Again it’s interagency — I got the impression that 7, 8, 9 different agencies.

    Q: Did he give you the impression that he was upset it was taken out?

    KING: No.

    Q: You said the CIA said “OK” to the revised report –

    KING: No, well, they said in that, after it goes through the process, they OK’d it to go. Yeah, they said “Okay for it to go.”

Watch King’s statements here:

Rice has been hit by Republicans for weeks for indicating that the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi stemmed from a spontaneous protest related to an anti-Islamic video. However, as Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) has pointed out, the talking points used by Rice were the same unclassified points given to both the administration and Congress by the intelligence community.

Contrary to the current GOP narrative, Petraeus’ testimony made clear that various intelligence sources at of the time of his initial briefing to Congress indicated that a protest arising in response to a similar one in Cairo was the impetus for the attack in Libya. While those initial assessments were later disproved, the Wall Street Journal has previously reported that this change in thinking began too late to alter Rice’s talking points.

Today’s comments by King towards the intelligence community’s assessments also mark a sharp departure from his previous accusations that Rice should have known sooner that the intelligence that was presented to her was incorrect. Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have both also recently said that Rice should “have known better” than to make the statements she did during her interviews.

 Republicans, another word for people who have all the honor of rat turds, just can't seem to get traction on inventing scandals or exploiting deaths for political advantage. They lost the election, their conspiracy theories are falling apart, the general public are waking up to the anti-American agenda of the conservative movement. So expect them to continue to act like whiny lying rats with their tails caught in a trap.

Who's to Blame for the Hostess Bankruptcy: Wall Street, Unions, or Carbs? Its sad to lose the jobs - until Hostess is bought by a new company anyway, but why all the crocodile tears over the loss of tasteless bleached flour stuffed with sugar - oh the injustice, no one will ever be able to do that again.

When Right-Wing Republican Taliban Christians Stopped Thinking of Women as People

John McCain (R-AZ), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-NC) and Fox News Join In On Shameless Lies About Susan Rice and Libya

John McCain (R-AZ), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-NC) and Fox News Join In On Shameless Lies About Susan Rice and Libya

Fox News has seized on what it believes is a new angle to continue making an issue of the Obama administration's response to the Libya terrorist attack. Discussing President Obama's news conference on Wednesday, Fox treated Obama's statement that the White House chose Ambassador Susan Rice to discuss the attack publicly as new and "significant," claiming Obama's admission is "one of the most important parts" of what he said during his press conference.

It's unclear why Fox believes Obama's statement is significant considering Rice's position as a top official in the Obama administration.

In her capacity as one of the United States' top diplomats -- she was nominated by President Obama as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in January 2009 -- Rice is a member of the Obama administration whose job is to speak for the White House on government decisions and policy.

Not only that, but the White House's reasons for why it specifically asked Rice to discuss the situation in Benghazi publicly have been known for at least a month. The Washington Post reported on October 15: "The White House has said that it turned to Rice to make the administration's case on the Benghazi attack because it made sense to have a top diplomat speak to the loss of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens."

On September 16, five days after the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Rice appeared on the Sunday talk shows to talk about what the administration knew about the attack. In the interviews, Rice made clear that definitive conclusions would only follow from an administration investigation, which she stressed was under way.

On Wednesday, during his first press conference since being re-elected, Obama addressed Republican criticism of Rice, saying:

    OBAMA: [L]et me say specifically about Susan Rice, she has done exemplary work. She has represented the United States and our interests in the United Nations with skill and professionalism and toughness and grace. As I've said before, she made an appearance at the request of the White House in which she gave her best understanding of the intelligence that had been provided to her.

    If Senator [John] McCain and Senator [Lindsay] Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me. And I'm happy to have that discussion with them. But for them to go after the U.N. ambassador, who had nothing to do with Benghazi and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received and to besmirch her reputation is outrageous.

Discussing his comments on Fox News' America Live, however, host Megyn Kelly and Fox contributor Kirsten Powers expressed surprise at Obama's statement that Rice's appearances on the Sunday talk shows were "at the request of the White House."

Powers claimed the admission was "probably one of the most important parts" of what Obama said, "which is admitting that the White House is the one who told her what to say and that this did come from the White House, which had been mostly been speculated upon."

Kelly went on to say that "the reason she's been taking such incoming fire is because now according to President Obama, he told her to. He's the one who put her in the line of fire."

And yet, a day ago, Kelly told viewers that the reason Rice has been repeatedly criticized is because "she's the one who went on all the Sunday talk shows and told us that everything that happened in Benghazi was linked to this video, which we now know was not the case."

Indeed, Fox has led a sustained campaign against Rice, alleging that she made inaccurate statements about the attack when in fact her remarks were in line with assessments from the intelligence community.

Later on America Live, Kelly again brought up Obama's statement about Rice, asking Fox senior White House correspondent Ed Henry his thoughts about this "explicit admission from the president." Henry replied that "it's significant" but "not surprising -- it just hadn't been said by the president yet perhaps."

He then seemed to undermine the significance of Obama's statement by saying: "But whenever a top official goes on the Sunday talk shows, they're being put out there by the White House."

The public is now well aware of the Benghazi time-line. While some details were slow to emerge - as is usually the case when facts still needed to be sorted out, the only people lying now are anti-American conservatives out to exploit those tragic deaths for political gain. Still more pathetic irony from the uber fake patriots, John McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-NC) Supported Condi Rice for Sec. of State After Massive Intelligence Failure. Concerned Americans should contact the Senate Ethics Committee and call for the impeachment or resignations of the sleazy lying senators McCain and Graham. McCain's bitterness at being defeated by president Obama in 2008 seems to be clouding the irreverent old fart's judgement.