Werthless wrote:The running theme of the Romney/Ryan campaign, at least according to the liberal side of this board, is to lie their asses off. And because of all this lying, Romney may wiggle his way into the White House, where he will proceed to be a worse President than Obama. This is the current state of the board, basically. And now, when evidence arises that the Obama administration lied about evidence surrounding a terrorist attack on 9/11, and they continue to dig deeper by making false claims about how the security detail is funded, how does the board react? Predictably. Now, I don't expect any Obama supporter to really dive in and say "The President is wrong on this," but it's amazing that liberals will are trying to spin this into Romney/Ryan misleading the public. It's absurd. We should expect the truth.

The CIA drafted the initial talking points, and they were not "edited to minimize the role of extremists, diminish terrorist affiliations, or play down that this was an attack," said a second U.S. official familiar with how the material was edited.

David H. Petraeus, the former CIA director, told the House and Senate intelligence committees in closed hearings Friday that he believed almost immediately that the Benghazi assault was an organized terrorist attack, according to lawmakers who attended the hearings. But he said the CIA initially withheld reports that extremists with links to Al Qaeda were involved to avoid tipping off the terrorists.

Petraeus also said some early classified reports supported the possibility that some attackers were motivated by violent protests in Cairo earlier that day over the anti-Islam video.

When the CIA drafted language that Rice could use for her TV appearances, it circulated the language to officials at Clapper's office, which has a supervisory role in the intelligence community. In the editing process, the word "attack" was changed to "demonstration," and the phrase "with ties to Al Qaeda" was removed, officials said. The word "terrorism" also was removed.

If intelligence professionals were responsible for the changes, it might dispel charges from some Republicans that political operatives at the White House had manipulated the narrative to downplay the possibility of an Al Qaeda attack when the Obama administration was campaigning on its successes in degrading the terrorist group.

One of the most vocal critics, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), said he was "somewhat surprised and frustrated" Tuesday after CBS broke the news.

During the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last week, McCain said, "senior intelligence officials were asked this very question, and all of them, including the director of national intelligence himself, told us that they did not know who made the changes. Now we have to read the answers to our questions in the media."

McCain said the episode "is another reason why many of us are so frustrated with, and suspicious of, the actions of this administration when it comes to the Benghazi attack."

JFLNYC wrote:Easy there, my friend. Just wanted to be sure I didn't miss something important. My opinion is that after enduring a month of having 100 rockets fired at them, Israel had no choice but to respond. Under those circumstances I don't consider their response as a breach of any truce or cease fire but, rather, a legitimate response to a breach.

That's my opinion.

You've got to hand it to Slate. The greybeards of counterintuitive journalism still have the ability to make a totally inane argument and get attention for it. Witness Daniel Engber's clever response to Marco Rubio's perplexing statements about the age of the earth. He dug up this 2008 Obama quote:

Q: Senator, if one of your daughters asked you -- and maybe they already have -- "Daddy, did God really create the world in six days?," what would you say?

A: .... What I've said to them is that I believe that God created the universe and that the six days in the Bible may not be six days as we understand it. It may not be 24-hour days, and that's what I believe. I know there's always a debate between those who read the Bible literally and those who don't, and that I think it's a legitimate debate within the Christian community of which I'm a part. My belief is is that the story that the Bible tells about God creating this magnificent Earth on which we live - that that is essentially true, that is fundamentally true. Now, whether it happened exactly as we might understand it reading the text of the Bible -- that, I don't presume to know.

Engber jumps to insist that this means Rubio and Obama are both the same. They're both shameless panderers! "Both senators refuse to give an honest answer to the question. Neither deigns to mention that the Earth is 4.54 billion years old .... They both go so far as to disqualify themselves from even pronouncing an opinion. I'm not a scientist, says Rubio. I don't presume to know, says Obama," Engber writes. "In light of these concordances, to call Rubio a liar or a fool would be to call our nation's president the same, along with every other politician who might like to occupy the Oval Office."

This would be fairly convincing, but for one minor issue. Obama and Rubio weren't asked remotely the same question. GQ's Mark Hainey asked Rubio point blank how old the earth is; he dodged. Obama also didn't say how old he thinks the earth is, because no one asked him. If you instinctively grasped that difference on the first read, you might be too sensible to work at Slate. As Steve Benen notes, the settings and context for these questions are also completely different (secular for Rubio, religious for Obama). Unfortunately, this spurious argument took in Dan Amira as well as the Huffington Post. Matt Lewis also seemed to fall for it.

...

False equivalence of the he-said, she-said variety is already dangerously endemic in political journalism. Lord knows there's no need for writers to contort themselves to introduce any more into the conversation.

While long-term deficit reduction is important and deficits remain very large by historical standards, the reality is that the government already has its foot on the brakes.
In this sense, the "fiscal cliff" metaphor is especially poor. The government doesn't need to apply the brakes with more force to avoid disaster. Rather the "cliff" is an artificial one that has sprung up because the two parties are able to agree on so little.

From fiscal 2009 to fiscal 2012, the deficit shrank 3.1 percentage points, from 10.1% to 7.0% of GDP.
That's just a bit faster than the 3.0 percentage point deficit improvement from 1995 to '98, but at that point, the economy had everything going for it.

The mayor — who interacts frequently with his Twitter followers — challenged one of his followers, @MWadeNC, to join him in the challenge of living on food stamps, after the tweeter, who bills herself as an “Army Veteran, Army Daughter, Army Wife … fighting against any and all forms of socialism/communism,” criticized Booker for quoting the Greek historian Plutarch on Sunday.
“An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics’ Plutarch ancient Greek historian (c. 46 �“ 120 CE)” Booker tweeted.
“We pay 4 HUGE back end govt programs: prisons, police, etc. If we invested in Schools, nutrition, etc we’d save $ & create wealth,” Booker tweeted to another follower another who charged that Booker wanted to “redistribute wealth,” to which @MWadeNC responded, “nutrition is not a responsibility of the government.”
“We have a shared responsibility that kids go to school nutritionally ready 2 learn,” Booker answered, receiving a “why is there a family today that is ‘too poor to afford breakfast’? are they not already receiving food stamps?” tweet back from @MWadeNC
The back and forth culminated with Booker offering @MWadeNC a challenge: “Lets you and I try to live on food stamps in New Jersey (high cost of living) and feed a family for a week or month. U game?”
@MWadeNC accepted on Twitter “sure, Mayor, I’m game.”
Tuesday Booker took to Twitter again to confirm his commitment on the challenge.
“Been challenged by thoughtful people 2 go longer. I will & after Thanksgiving start MT@melmeyer23: Going to live on foodstamps 4 a wk?” he tweeted.

The Nightman Cometh wrote:Booker sucks!!!!

[O]ur political system is dysfunctional: in addressing income inequality, in confronting climate change and in maintaining national infrastructure.

The National Climatic Data Center has just reported that October was the 332nd month in a row of above-average global temperatures. As the environmental Web site Grist reported, that means that nobody younger than 27 has lived for a single month with colder-than-average global temperatures, yet climate change wasn’t even much of an issue in the 2012 campaign. Likewise, the World Economic Forum ranks American infrastructure 25th in the world, down from 8th in 2003-4, yet infrastructure is barely mentioned by politicians.

So time and again, we see the decline of public services accompanied by the rise of private workarounds for the wealthy.

Is crime a problem? Well, rather than pay for better policing, move to a gated community with private security guards!

Are public schools failing? Well, superb private schools have spaces for a mere $40,000 per child per year.

Public libraries closing branches and cutting hours? Well, buy your own books and magazines!

Are public parks — even our awesome national parks, dubbed “America’s best idea” and the quintessential “public good” — suffering from budget cuts? Don’t whine. Just buy a weekend home in the country!

Public playgrounds and tennis courts decrepit? Never mind — just join a private tennis club!

I’m used to seeing this mind-set in developing countries like Chad or Pakistan, where the feudal rich make do behind high walls topped with shards of glass; increasingly, I see it in our country.