I listened to the Rivero show yesterday, and he nailed the propaganda pre$$ coverage of the hearings. It's Hillary the victor having vanquished her opponents:
"Clinton remained unruffled throughout the day and night and did not appear to suffer any new political damage. Democrats on the Benghazi committee portrayed the panel’s work as a partisan exercise, noting that seven other congressional committees have already investigated the attacks and more than $4 million in taxpayer funds has been spent on the current probe. They lobbed softball questions for Clinton."
He also made another good point: even if you discard the unanswered questions, talk of stand-downs, the various "conspiracy theories" that are all speculative, one fact remains from the most recent round of e-mails: Clinton and the administration stuck to a story they knew to be a lie for months. They knew it was a "terror" attack from the beginning, and then peddled that spontaneous film crap.
What more do you need to know?
"Clinton’s aura of inevitability returns" by Annie Linskey Globe Staff October 23, 2015
WASHINGTON — They “all feel good,” Katy Perry will perform at a rally for her, and the “only thing that can stop her from winning the nomination now is the FBI.”
The biggest challenge is herself.
And one singular weakness remains: Clinton’s trouble connecting an emotional level with the base of the party. The dynamic leaves space for her strongest opponent, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, and his urgent message for vast political change.
“I worked my heart out for Barack Obama,” said Beth Silberman, a Democratic activist from North Carolina who heard Clinton speak at a conference on Friday. “I’m not really excited about her.”
She said she likes Sanders because she believes he means everything he says — but Silberman doesn’t believe he can be elected president.
Her dilemma did not concern her, however. “I don’t think you have to be excited about her when you look at the other party,” she said.
That other party — the Republicans — helped galvanize the Democratic base on Thursday when they spent 11 hours grilling Clinton with scant new evidence about the September 2012 attacks on a US facility in Benghazi, Libya.
That's the narrative being rolled out, and it is simply not true.
And what's that about a spying bill?
The hearing was perhaps best summed up by the Republican leading the committee, Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, who held a news conference minutes after it ended.
“I don’t know that she testified that much differently today than she has in the previous times she’s testified,” Gowdy told reporters.
You can read through some if you like, as the pre$$ attention turns to more important matters.
Clinton’s campaign raked in donations from supporters watching her during the hearing. The 60 minutes after it ended — from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. — was the campaign’s best fund-raising hour since Clinton announced her presidential bid, according to a campaign aide. The campaign didn’t release the amount raised.
The Clinton money machine is now fueled by 500,000 contributors, and gained more than 100,000 new donors in just this month, the aide said.
Clinton has lagged behind Sanders with small donors. His campaign is mostly fueled by donations that are less than $200, and he announced last month that he had reached 1 million separate contributions.
Good thing they don't actually go vote.
Clinton made a plea for small donations on Friday as she addressed Democratic women gathered in Washington for a conference Friday morning, pressing those in the audience to give even $5 to the campaign. She referenced her time in the Benghazi committee witness chair.
“As some of you know, I had a pretty long day,” she said.
She was scrounging around for $5 dollars while whining for sympathy?
Which pool reporter was allowed to cover that?
In a nod to how potent a threat the sitting vice president could have been, Clinton struck a theme he’d been pushing. “I wanted to rise above partisanship and reach for statesmanship,” she said.
And she offered kind words for her would-be challenger. “I’m confident that history isn’t finished with Joe Biden,” Clinton said. “If I know Joe he’ll be right there with us on the front lines.”
I wonder what they have on him, because Beau didn't want this.
"In a hastily organized news conference in the Rose Garden, he roughly 15-minute speech ended months of speculation about Biden’s intentions, a drama that had begun to consume official Washington."
He made the right call, but who cares? He's out.
Clinton did not mention either of the other two men who left the contest this week — not even a nod to Chafee, who had announced his withdrawal from the same stage about an hour earlier.
Why would she? His whole campaign was hammering her over foreign policy.
Supporters were giddy the Clinton campaign appears to have found its footing.
“It turned a page,” said Carol Pensky, a former DNC treasurer. “It turned a wonderful page.”
Yeah, just turn the page and bury the bodies!
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Related:
New testimony shows Clinton ‘devastated’ by Benghazi attack
Then what is with the note of levity.
Mother of contractor slain in Benghazi hopes hearing is ‘end of it’
Glen Doherty was “an independent contractor who worked for the CIA.”
Meanwhile, on the Repuglican side:
Boehner names 3 women from GOP to panel reviewing Planned Parenthood
He is supposed to be gone soon, and this guy known for strolling the Capitol with headphones blaring music by Rage Against the Machine will be taking over.
"Jeb Bush’s struggling campaign orders pay cuts, staff reduction
Jeb Bush has ordered pay cuts and slashed staff positions at his Miami headquarters — a drastic shake-up for a campaign that has performed far short of early expectations.
UH-OH! That's never a good sign for a presidential campaign.
According to an internal memo, Bush plans to reduce payroll costs by 40 percent this week, cut salaries for all but the most entry-level staff members, cut travel costs by 20 percent, and significantly reduce headquarters staff.
A quarter will remain in Miami, a quarter have already been dispatched to early-voting states, and most of the rest are being offered positions in early states or as part of ballot access efforts, but with pay cuts, the memo said.
“We will be working with staff today and going through each person’s situation, but expect sizable changes,” Danny Diaz, Bush’s campaign manager, said on Friday.
The memo, reported by Bloomberg News on Friday morning, cast the changes as foresighted, arguing that Bush remained best positioned to win the nomination and the general election and highlighting his extensive field operations in early-voting states.
He's in single digits, he'll finish no higher than fourth, it's winner-take-all, but he's best positioned to win, yup.
I think he's getting ready to get out now that Ship Hillary has been righted. The Clintons and Bushes are one clan now, and have been since Mena, Arkansas. Both sides of the family will protect the secrets.
The campaign is planning to place even more emphasis on New Hampshire, which was already seen as critical to Bush’s fortunes, and the memo said that voters across Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada should expect “to see more visits from Jeb and longer trips.”
Rig job then. We don't want him.
Still, the memo acknowledged that the race has veered sharply off course, particularly with the rise of Donald Trump.
“It’s no secret that the contours of this race have changed from what was anticipated at the start,” the memo said, adding, somewhat defensively, “We would be less than forthcoming if we said we predicted in June that a reality television star supporting Canadian-style single-payer health care and partial-birth abortion would be leading the GOP primary.”
Who is he talking about?
That isn't going to help you cut him down, unless it's thrust forward as a narrative for another Bush steal.
For weeks, Bush has languished in the polls, both nationally and in the early voting states. Back-to-back polls in Iowa, by Quinnipiac University on Thursday and The Des Moines Register and Bloomberg on Friday, showed Bush with support from 5 percent of Iowa caucus voters.
The spending cuts by Bush’s campaign follow an initial series of staff members’ salary reductions over the summer."
Only problem is his campaign has hundreds of millions.
Now to continue with the narrative:
"Carson passes Trump in Iowa, but mogul says he’s not worried
Donald Trump may have lost his grip on Iowa, as the second poll in two days shows the billionaire Republican presidential candidate trailing Ben Carson in the state that kicks off the nominating process.
A new Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll shows Carson with support of 28 percent of the likely participants in Iowa’s Republican caucuses, with Trump at 19 percent. In August, Trump was leading Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, by a margin of 23 to 18. The poll has a margin of error of 5 percentage points.
Trump frequently parades his strong poll numbers as a top qualification, raising questions about how he will respond if a string of polls show his support falling. In an interview with Fox Business Network on Thursday, he maintained that he was not worried.
The Donald's first test, and how interesting that it comes as he challenges Bush on 9/11 -- and now both campaigns are falling apart.
Yes, the societal managers and mind-manipulating propagandists simply can't have that as a topic for discussion in a presidential campaign. It would lead to way too many uncomfortable questions regarding AmeriKan empire and who was really behind what happened that awful late summer day.
“We’ll see what happens, but certainly, we have a long road to go,” he said.
Friday’s survey, which follows a poll from Quinnipiac University on Thursday that showed Carson overtaking Trump in Iowa, revealed the challenges that the real estate mogul and reality television star faces in courting evangelical Christian conservatives. Only 32 percent said they were sure that Trump is a committed Christian while 62 percent said they found it attractive that Carson was guided by his faith.
That is a real switch from what the Globe reported recently, and they are telling us they drifted to Carson?
What are you guys doing, making this stuff up?
Among the other Republican candidates, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas comes in third place at 10 percent, while everyone else remains stuck in single digits.
Where's Huck? I would expect to see Huck up there somewhere!!
I mighty have to Linc up with Huck because he's the only one who can stop, you know (has done it before and he's on home ground agin 'em).
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton topped Bernie Sanders by a margin of 48 to 41 percent."
And in New Hampshire:
"More than six in 10 likely voters in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation Democrat presidential primary next year say it would be acceptable to have a democratic socialist president of the United States, according to a WBUR poll set for release Thursday morning. The finding bodes well for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-declared democratic socialist seeking the Democratic nomination for president, but the survey suggests it will be important for Sanders to frame himself as a “democratic socialist” rather than a “socialist.” Sanders has repeatedly called for a political revolution. Three percent of respondents said the political system is “functioning well.”
All that slop leaves a mark.
Time to walk away from this for a while.
NDUs:
"Carson gets boost in polls, book appearance in Iowa" by James Pindell Globe Staff October 24, 2015
WATERLOO, Iowa — It is good to be Ben Carson in Iowa these days.
He's getting twice as many people at his events.
It caps what has been a good week for Carson, a week when he technically wasn’t even campaigning because of his book tour. Polls on Thursday and Friday showed him taking a solid lead over Trump in Iowa for the first time.
You can buy into the narrative if you want; I don't believe it anymore.
For Trump, who has bragged about his dominant standing in Iowa polls and elsewhere, the drop to second place in Iowa brought his first retraction — and his first direct attack on Carson.
After a Quinnipiac Poll on Thursday showing him in second place for the first time in Iowa, Trump retweeted a disparaging comment about Iowans: “Too much #Monsanto in the #corn creates issues in the brain?” He later blamed the tweet on a “young intern.”
Oh, another reason Trump must be done away with. He's aware of GMOs. Given he is also a birther, this makes sense. He has to be done away with. Too much of a wild card even if he is a creature of the $y$tem.
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And look who else doesn't like him:
"Bush, at 91, finds volatile ’16 race irritating — and invigorating" by Jonathan Martin and Matt Flegenheimer New York Times October 24, 2015
NEW YORK — He reads three print newspapers daily, dials into briefings given by advisers to his son Jeb’s presidential campaign, and stays up to watch prime-time debates — after sitting through the undercard debates, too.
I can hardly get through one.
Former president George Bush, 91 and frail, is straining to understand an election season that has, for his son and the Republican Party, lurched sharply and stunningly off script. And he is often bewildered by what he sees.
“I’m getting old,” he tells friends, appraising today’s politics, “at just the right time.”
These are confounding days for the Bush family and the network of advisers, donors, and supporters who have helped sustain a political dynasty that began with the Senate victory by Prescott Bush, the older Bush’s father, in Connecticut 63 years ago.
Look at that, they mention the guy who worked with the fascists in this country (so said Smedley Butler) and was helping to fund the Nazi war machine.
They have watched the rise of Donald Trump with alarm, and seen how Jeb Bush, the onetime Florida governor, has languished despite early advantages of political pedigree and campaign money.
On Friday, the Bush campaign said it was slashing staff salaries and positions after disappointing polls and lackluster debate performances, a recognition that a vast operation built early this year cannot be maintained.
No one, it seems, is more perplexed than the family patriarch.
All signs of senility, right?
*********************
This weekend, generations of Bush loyalists plan to descend on a Houston hotel for a gathering for Jeb Bush’s campaign that will feature both the 41st and 43rd presidents. Strategists are eager to reassure them and highlight the campaign’s relative organizational strength, fund-raising capacity, and ability to endure a long delegate battle.
The crime family all together. If there was ever a call for a drone strike.... sigh. (Blog editor frowns at how mass-murdering war criminals, drug runners, and all the rest, are allowed to roam around because they are above the law elites.
But those who have long been in the Bush family orbit are also being forced to reckon with a party that seems to be moving on from them.
Is that ever true. I'd take anybody before him as the nominee. With Linc out I'm going to be voting in the Repuglican primary again. Anti-Bush if anything.
“I have no feeling for the electorate anymore,” said John H. Sununu, the former New Hampshire governor who helped the elder Bush win the 1988 primary there and went on to serve as his White House chief of staff. “It is not responding the way it used to. Their priorities are so different that if I tried to analyze it I’d be making it up.”
Contempt for Trump runs deep in the clan.
And look at how the campaign is now playing out. Coincidence?
Two people interviewed, who are in direct communication with the elder Bush but requested anonymity to avoid betraying a confidence, said Trump had revived painful memories among the Bushes of another blunt populist who upended an election: H. Ross Perot. The family have long believed Perot’s third-party candidacy helped Bill Clinton capture the White House from Bush in 1992.
Looking back now, that was all a game. Clinton was groomed to take over from Bush. His state was an intricate part of the Iran-Contra gun- and drug-running. Perot never really had a chance.
“They’re all challenged by what’s going on,” Andrew Card said about the Bush family, referring to the “roller-coaster ride” of a campaign.
Andy Card, the guy who whispered in W's ear during the reading of "My Pet Goat."
But Card, who served key roles in both Bush administrations, said that though the current race had not gone as planned, it had been a boon for the first president Bush.
“It’s keeping him young,” Card said.
Good. We don't want him dying because then we would have a sickening state funeral with more bipartisanship than you can shake a stick at.
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