Sunday Funnies

Well, Isn't That Convenient?

For over two years we’ve listened to the GOP squawk about Benghazi like a gaggle of parrots demanding a cracker, and now this? For two years the GOP has used Benghazi as a wedge to divide this country, to run their campaigns on, to denigrate the President and the Secretary of State, and now this? For two years, every time something good happened in this country — like better jobs numbers, lower unemployment, a rising stock market, a healthy economy — the GOP began shrieking Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi! and now this?

The Republicans have spent untold amounts of money investigating Benghazi, and then investigating the investigation into Benghazi, and then denying the outcome of each and every investigation when it didn’t jibe with their viewpoint that it’s all some conspiracy being manipulated by the illegal immigrant in the White House, and now this?

Now that the Midterm Elections are over, the House Intelligence Committee — and I won’t make a joke about that — has wrapped up its Benghazi investigation and released their shocking report just moments before the GOP scurried home for their Thanksgiving Day break. And what does it show?

Did it show that the White House sat on intelligence that could have prevented the attack, something the GOP has muttered all along? No, it did not. Did it show that Hillary Clinton's State Department bungled the response to the initial protests in Cairo, which resulted in the attack and the deaths? No, it did not. Did it show, as the GOP has been saying it would for over twenty-four months, that the CIA bungled the military response to the attacks? No, it did not.

It shows the White House and the State Department and the CIA did absolutely nothing wrong, something we have known all along. But the GOP kept on until the midterm elections were safely past and until after Obama’s immigration speech so it would be basically ignored. And now, suddenly, after two years of everyone in the GOP calling the President and the Secretary of State and the CIA a bunch of liars, we’ve learned that the GOP was … wait for it … wrong. Again.

It's not that the committee found nothing to criticize because they did; the State Department facility in Benghazi had inadequate security, and some of the early intelligence after the attacks was inaccurate, and maybe the CIA should have given more weight to eyewitnesses on the ground. But those criticisms were fully acknowledged by the first investigations.

The GOP was wrong, and they basically knew it after the first investigation but they kept at it like a dog with a bone.  There is no scandal — except for the one every Thursday night at (PM, EST — and there never was, but one Republican, who I tend to see of as more like a rabid closeted homosexual dog with a bone, will not accept the findings of his own party, or of any investigation into Benghazi because he says he knows better.

South Carolina’s own Good Old Boy, Lindsey “I am not a Homosexual” Graham has refused … refused I say, refused … to accept that the new House Benghazi report that has cleared both Obama and Hillary Clinton of any wrongdoing in its response to the Benghazi attack.

"I think the report is full of crap."

Graham foot-stomped and head-snapped all over TV this past weekend, insisting that members of the Obama administration altered the Benghazi talking points after the attack.

"I'm saying that anybody who has followed Benghazi at all knows that the CIA deputy director did not come forward to tell Congress what role he played in changing the talking points and the only way we knew he was involved is when he told a representative at the White House, I'm going to do a hard review of this, a hard rewrite."

When CNN host Gloria Borger told Graham, again, that the House report concludes that the administration received bad information at first and did not lie, he hissed:

"That's a bunch of garbage. That's a complete bunch of garbage."

Hell hath no fury like Miss Lindsey scorned, especially when she was hoping to use Benghazi as a weapon if she decides to run against Hillary Clinton for the presidency in 2016.

Someone get the smelling salts.

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ISBL Asshat of the Week: It's A Tie!! Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Elisabeth Hasselbeck

So, a few months back, when it was announced that her arch nemesis Rosie O’Donnell would be returning to The View, Fox News Talking Air Head, Elisabeth Hasselbeck took time from her vacation to phone in to her pals on Fox & Friends to bemoan Rosie’s return, whine about the comeback, and complain about the new job. It reeked of petty jealousy.

And so how does an insecure wannabe handle it when her new job, which is basically just a retread of every single other Fox News job for the blond set, is set to collide with her old enemy’s return to a more popular TV show?

Well, she decides to go full out crazy in the hopes that people will talk about her, and her little show, and not about Rosie and The View. I mean, how else do we explain that just yesterday on her little TV show Elisabeth Hasselbeck said she would require people take a “citizenship test” before they would be allowed to vote; she says it would make voting “more meaningful.”

It apparently all started when two Republican … naturally … Utah legislators announced a bill that would require students to pass a citizenship test before graduating. And so Hasselbeck decided to up the ante and require a citizenship test to vote:

“Should you have to answer, I mean, the majority of these questions? If not by graduation of high school, but by the time you vote? … It’s a more meaningful measure when you vote perhaps too.”

Hasselbeck should heed her own advice and look back into American history when, as recently as the 1960s, these so-called “literacy” tests were used to disenfranchise black voters during segregation. 

Failing that, I think Hasselbeck should take a test to prove she has at least two active brain cells to rub together before she accepts her ISBL Asshat of the Week Award.

Along with her co-winner … Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

Shortly before announcing her campaign for citizenship tests, Elisabeth Hasselbeck used her perch on Twitter to … wait for it … remember she’s a Republican … wait for it … remember she works for Fox News … wait for it … tie the NFL’s domestic abuse scandals to the Obama administration's handling of the 2012 Benghazi attack on the American Consulate in Libya.

Oh, but she did, Tweeting this:

“Imagine if everyone that asked for transparency in the #nfl @nfl Demanded that same #transparency in our #government #Benghazi #IRS”

#STFU.

But is it really such a stretch to compare the bombing of an American Embassy with a man who punched his girlfriend in the face on an elevator, or the man who took a switch and beat his son across the testicles?

Not such a stretch since the people who sign her paycheck, and possibly pay to keep her blond and stupid, Fox News, has devoted hundreds upon hundreds of hours and “journalists — it’s hard to type that without laughing … Fox News journalist — to the alleged cover-up by the White House. And not such a stretch since her husband made quite the lovely living in the NFL.

The only thing that is truly transparent is Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s desperate need for attention, to make herself feel relevant, or even intelligent, because it’s not working.

And that is why she gets the Second ISBL Asshat of the Week Award for the week!

Elisabeth Hasselbeck Voter's Test

Elisabeth Hasselbeck NFL-Benghazi

Asshats Of The Day Week Month Year Decade Century: The GOP

Remember that day back in 2001, after the attacks on the World Trade Center, when President George W. Bush stood before the nation and held up an old timey Wanted: Dead or Alive picture of Osama bin Laden and told us we’d hunt him down to the ends of the Earth and then didn’t?

The Republicans don’t remember that, either, because even after bin Laden was captured on President Obama’s watch they tried to say it was a victory for Bush.

And remember when President George W. Bush — draft-dodging George W. Bush — flew a fighter plane onto the deck of an aircraft carrier at sea in 2003 and proclaimed the war in Iraq was over even though the fighting went on and on for years and years after?

The Republicans don’t remember either, and now, with a new crisis in the Middle East their laying the blame for all that at the feet of Obama.

But what galls me most about this group of whiners and do-nothings and asshats is that now, after how many months of their phony Benghazi hearings and months of their fake Benghazi theories and scandals — created only in an attempt to make the President look bad — how is that now, under Obama’s watch, again, when the senior leader of the Benghazi terror branch, Ahmed Abu Khattala, was captured, the GOP only whines about how long it took, how it seems a little too convenient, and how it’s just a ruse, a distraction, to take our minds off all those other scandals that the GOP rails about instead of doing the jobs for which they were elected.

Remember when the Republicans criticized President Obama as being weak on radical Islamic extremists for his “failure” to apprehend the suspects in the embassy attack? Remember when then-presidential failure Mittsy Romney said Obama was weak on terrorism?

Well, they don’t remember that either, because now, in the manner of Mittsy that will forever be known as The Flip-Flop, the GOP doesn’t think that the capture of  Khattala should detract us, and by us I mean them, the GOP, from their now nearly six-year struggle to bring down the President.

See, now the GOP, and its lapdog FoxNews, is saying that the capture of this terrorist was orchestrated simply to take our minds off the IRS mess … or Hillary running for president … or because Obama wants to boost his approval ratings.

Seriously, GOP?

Fox News has a theory that the capture occurred because Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State and perhaps the next President of the United States, is on a book tour. Yes, Fox News said this was done to make Hillary look good; on their program ‘Outnumbered’ the host said:

“You have a former Secretary of State who is in the middle of a high profile book tour, I think this is convenient for her to shift the talking points to some of the things she has been discussing.”

Yup, we captured a terrorist to get Hillary’s book to the top spot on a Best Sellers List.

Even has-been Eric Cantor, just before the door hit him where the Good lord split him, released a statement through his spokesman saying:

“While it’s great to see they caught the Benghazi suspect, it’s important to remember, he wasn’t really hiding.”

Seriously GOP? But they must be serious because the rest of the party took to Twitter to test their theories as to why Obama let this terrorist roam the world before capturing him at this most opportune moment, Chief wingnut in the asshat parade, Allen West, a Teabagger who can’t get elected and can’t shut up, Tweeted this:

Then former Representative and deadbeat dad, Joe Walsh chimed in:

And, of course, South Carolina’s own Lindsey Graham, who’s done nothing while in office but kvetch about Obama, added his two-cents — though I think he’s overcharging us — by saying:

Then, as if on cue, Rush Limbaugh set down his bottle of prescription meds to imply that this was all too coinky-dinky and so it must not be right:

“Isn’t it an amazing, timely coincidence here that they have found a militia leader of the Benghazi attack and they’ve arrested him? So I guess the video really wasn’t to blame. Because the guy that did the video is in jail, he’s who knows where anymore. Remember the video made these guys do it, so whoever did this really can’t be blamed. They were just incited by this video. But all of a sudden we’ve got the militia leader. But isn’t it fortunate that President Obama get a headline using the US military when he really needs one.”

Seriously GOP? The terror suspect was captured and you found a way to twist that into yet another scandal, another cover-up, another falsehood, in order to make the President look bad?

Stop already. And though I know none of you can stand Harry Reid, maybe take a page out of his book, just this once, and then go back to be the Party Of Loons, again:

"It doesn’t matter what your ideology is, you should feel good about this. There’s no conspiracy here, this is actual news. But the reaction of some of the Republicans, I’ve been told, is to downplay and insult the brave men and women of our special forces and the FBI….They’re insulting these good men and women who did some courageous things, heroic things, in order to criticize President Obama. I think they’ve lost touch with reality; it’s really pathetic, there’s no other word for it."

Think, as Reid suggests, about the men and women who captured Khattala, who risked their lives to do their jobs, and stop using this as another feeble attempt to attack the President.

Unless you like being the Asshat Party …

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