Greta Van Susteren and Lindsey Graham just keep deceiving the public!

THURSDAY, MAY 23, 2013

Last night, the edification never stopped on Fox: In an earlier post, we documented Greta Van Susteren’s ongoing grisly misconduct.

Greta keeps playing her viewers for fools, several million at a time.

(Last night’s numbers still aren’t in. But last Wednesday, May 15, Greta had 2.12 million viewers at 10 PM, with more getting conned by her 1 AM rerun. By way of contrast, Lawrence had 685,000 viewers at 10 PM that night on The One True Liberal Channel.)

Whatever! Greta keeps saying she has no idea where Susan Rice got that crazy tale about the spontaneous protest and the YouTube video. Last night, she played this same card when she spoke with Lindsey Graham, who began embellishing facts as soon as he opened his mouth.

On Sunday, a White House spokesman said Rice was owed an apology. Needless to say, Greta was baffled by this strange suggestion.

As for Lindsey, he was brave and defiant. The first Q-and-A went like this:

VAN SUSTEREN (5/22/13): We repeatedly see this, the White House representative on the five Sunday shows this weekend, as well, asking Republicans, I suppose they mean you, for an apology to Susan Rice. Are you going to apologize?

GRAHAM: Not only does she not deserve an apology from me or anybody else for the way she misled the American people, she deserves to be subpoenaed by the Congress and have to give answers to hard questions, something she's never had to do before. She should apologize to Greg Hicks, the number two in Tripoli, the number two guy, second behind Chris Stevens, who said, and I quote, "When I heard her testimony my jaw dropped, my heart stopped, and I've never been more embarrassed.”

Just that quickly, Graham embellished what Hicks really said. See below for an accurate transcript.

In the second Q-and-A, the rubber began to hit the road concerning Rice’s ridiculous story about the spontaneous demonstration and the YouTube video. You could see that Lindsey Graham was just plenty upset:

GRAHAM: Was she an empty vessel that they could pour misinformation through? She was chosen because she was the most politically compliant person. She just didn't say this was caused by a video, a spontaneous event. She said, well, we obviously did have a strong security presence. She said there was a significant security presence defending our consulate and our facility in Benghazi, and that did not prove sufficient to the moment.

Graham had made his first reference to the spontaneous protest/video nonsense.

Finally, in his third statement, Graham really tore the bark off the weepin’ willow. He described his reaction when he spoke with Rice in private last fall:

GRAHAM: Oh, I was convinced that she was completely misrepresenting the facts. If she looked at the classified information behind the talking points, she couldn’t have suggested to anyone on the planet this was caused by a video and spontaneous in nature. All of the information coming from Libya, there's 100 pounds of information suggesting a coordinated Al Qaeda-sponsored terrorist attack, and one ounce suggesting a protest, and they picked the ounce.

Don't lose sight of the fact that they story she told on behalf of President Obama and the administration was the best story they could tell seven weeks before election, totally disconnected from the facts. And she could be apologizing to Greg Hicks, to all the families involved, and she should be subpoenaed.

When will someone apologize to poor abused Gregory Hicks? Meanwhile, Graham was deceiving the public again about the spontaneous demonstration and the YouTube video.

Where did Rice get that crazy account, with which she completely misrepresented the facts? Graham couldn’t imagine! But as we noted this morning, Rice was simply repeating the CIA’s basic account of the Benghazi attack.

Below, you see the CIA’s first account of the attack in Benghazi. This account remained in the talking points all the way through to the next day’s final version:

ORIGINAL CIA TALKING POINTS (9/14/12): We believe based on currently available information that the attacks in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex.

According to the CIA, the attacks in Benghazi “were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo”—and the protests in Cairo were protests about that insulting video! Everyone on the planet knows this, except the millions of people who watch Fox News each night.

Obviously, Greta and Graham know where Rice got that account. That said, they can also feel sure that Fox viewers don’t know—and they know that people like Glenn Kessler just can’t stop wetting their pants when they think, for even a moment, about fact-checking Fox.

They also know that the children on MSNBC have no plans to fight back about matters like this. They know that Rachel will continue to clown, helping us learn the various ways to adore her more fully.

In our next post, we’ll show you how Lawrence spent his first twenty minutes last night.

Greta and Graham understand that they can continue this crap forever. MSNBC is a very bad joke.

Greta and Graham both know that.

What poor abused Hicks really said: Why repeat what Hicks really said when you can make it that much better? Below, you see what Hicks really said in his testimony, and you see Graham's embellishment:

Statement and embellishment:
HICKS (5/8/13): I was stunned. My jaw dropped. And I was embarrassed.
GRAHAM (5/22/13): Hicks said, and I quote, "When I heard her testimony my jaw dropped, my heart stopped, and I’ve never been more embarrassed.”

Lindsey makes life seem fuller!

Don’t get us wrong. We have no idea why Hicks’ jaw dropped, and no one asked him to explain. Hicks said a lot of dumb shit that day, thus making himself a hero.

But just for the record, Hicks didn’t say that his heart stopped. And he left open the possibility that he has been more embarrassed.

We’ll guess that his ridiculous conduct has given him several chances. At this point, the experience seems beyond the reach of Fox Hews host Greta Van Susteren.

The wages of our refusal to fight!

THURSDAY, MAY 23, 2013

Congressman Jordan just couldn’t hold it in: Each night, on The One True Liberal Channel, the millionaire children keep forgetting to fight.

When one team refuses to fight, the other team can say what it likes. In the New York Times, Jeremy Peters reports on yesterday’s congressional hearing concerning the IRS:

PETERS (5/23/13): At times, committee members could hardly conceal their contempt for the I.R.S. and the Obama White House.

Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, tried to link the I.R.S. scandal with other controversies that are dogging the Obama administration.

“This administration, which told us and told the American people that the attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi was the work, was caused by a video, is now the same administration who expects us to believe that this scandal was just the result of two rogue agents in Cincinnati,” he said. “The people don’t buy it.”

Is that really what “this administration” told us? We’ll invite you to look again at what Susan Rice said on This Week.

Warning, though! Some reading skill is required!

Over on The One True Channel, the children have let claims of this type go unchallenged for more than eight months. The children keep refusing to fight—or to clarify, or to correct or explain.

As the children keep their traps shut, American voters keep hearing these claims from every part of their world. According to Peters, people like Jordan just can't hold it in!

It seems they try to conceal their contempt. Without correction or challenge, they fail!

On the bright side, the children on The One True Channel are being paid big bushels of money. Does that make you feel somewhat better as Jordan goes in for the kill?

THE REFUSAL TO FIGHT: What Greta keeps telling your neighbors and friends!

THURSDAY, MAY 23, 2013

Interlude—Where our cowardice takes us: A remarkable exchange took place on Fox last night.

Check that! In a morally serious nation, last night’s exchange would have been remarkable. In this country, last evening’s exchange was commonplace—thoroughly par for the course.

During the 10 PM hour, Greta Van Susteren spoke with Rep. John Boehner, the Ohio Republican, the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Boehner is one of the nation’s highest-ranking officials. For more than eleven years, Van Susteren has hosted a nightly program on the Fox News Channel.

By a very wide margin, Fox is the nation’s most-watched “news channel.” Several million people were watching last night when this exchange occurred:

VAN SUSTEREN (/5/22/13): Have you determined why the whole YouTube video thing was brought up in Benghazi in the first place, whose idea it was, and why they seized upon it and held onto it for so long?

BOEHNER: Don't know yet, but we're going to find out.

VAN SUSTEREN: You have no sort of conceivable theory about, like, you know—

BOEHNER: Our job—our job is to get to the facts. Even while we're doing all of this, our big job here is to work on jobs. You know, the economy is just not producing jobs like the American people want. And we've had this anemic economic growth for the last four years.

As several million people watched, Greta Van Susteren seemed to commit an act of fraud. She said she has no idea where the story about that YouTube video came from.

Question:

When Susan Rice appeared on the Sunday programs last September, why did she mention “the whole YouTube video thing?” To all appearances, Van Susteren has no earthly idea where that craziness came from!

One prays that Van Susteren is lying. Surely, she must know where that story came from by now. Here’s why:

On May 10, ABC News released twelve versions of the talking points which helped guide Rice that day. By now, everyone and his crazy uncle has mentioned a basic fact which emerged that day.

Here is that basic fact:

Right at the start of its first account of what occurred that night in Benghazi, the CIA said what follows. In this passage, we see how the video which was in fact roiling the world came to be linked to Benghazi:

ORIGINAL CIA TALKING POINTS (9/14/12): We believe based on currently available information that the attacks in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex.

Duh! Right from the start, the CIA said the attacks in Benghazi were “spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.” But as everyone knows, the protests in Cairo, like those occurring elsewhere the world, were protests against that offensive YouTube video.

That is where the YouTube video entered the story concerning Benghazi. Since mid-October of last year, it had been known that this claim appeared in the final version of the talking points which guided Rice. On May 10, everyone learned an additional fact:

This account had been in the talking points right from the start. This account had come from the CIA. Rice had stated their account on those September 16 Sunday programs.

Just to refresh you, here she was on ABC’s This Week, speaking with guest host Jake Tapper:

RICE (9/16/12): Well, Jake, first of all, it's important to know that there's an FBI investigation that has begun and will take some time to be completed. That will tell us with certainty what transpired.

But our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous, not a premeditated, response to what had transpired in Cairo. In Cairo, as you know, a few hours earlier, there was a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video that was disseminated.

We believe that folks in Benghazi, a small number of people came to the embassy to—or to the consulate, rather—to replicate the sort of challenge that was posed in Cairo. And then, as that unfolded, it seems to have been hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons, weapons that as you know in, in the wake of the revolution in Libya are, are quite common and accessible. And it then evolved from there.

We'll wait to see exactly what the investigation finally confirms, but that's the best information we have at present.

As she started and as she finished, Rice warned viewers that she was offering a preliminary assessment. In that preliminary assessment, she offered the account which originated with the CIA on September 14.

As of May 10, everyone knew that the statement about a spontaneous demonstration in response to Cairo had come from the CIA. There was no longer any mystery about where this account came from, unless you’re one of the millions of people who get conned about basic facts by hosts like Van Susteren on Fox.

Poor Greta! As of last night, she was still trying to determine where that story came from! Last night, in apparent bewilderment, she posed her question to Boehner.

Boehner played along, then rapidly changed the subject.

In a different world, this would count as a truly stunning exchange. In our world, this basic exchange occurs on Fox night after night after night.

Last Thursday evening, to cite one example, Greta spoke with Donald Rumsfeld. As always, Greta was puzzled about the origins of that story about the video:

VAN SUSTEREN (5/16/13): You used the term "cover-up." Let's go back to Benghazi. Do you suspect that was sort of a cover-up?...

I think everyone agrees we should have had more security at Benghazi. And we had the heat of the moment when the Benghazi facility is under attack. Then we have what happened afterwards with the video and the statements by Ambassador Rice. Was that a cover-up?

RUMSFELD: I don't know how you can call it anything else. I say that because if the president then goes to the U.N. and talks to people about a YouTube video as being part of the problem, or the problem, and if Mrs. Clinton goes to the families of the people who were killed and says we are going to get the person who did that YouTube video, days, many days after everyone who had anything to do with it knew that these people were well-armed, that there had been warnings about attacks, that the British had pulled their people out, and that it was certainly—they were so well-armed it could not be a spontaneous demonstration.

Greta was utterly puzzled that night. In his response, Rumsfeld instantly began to dissemble about what various people had said.

If Van Susteren were an actual journalist, she would have challenged Rumsfeld’s implied account of what Rice had said. As you can see from our This Week transcript, Rice made a point of noting the fact that the extremists who staged the killing attacks were heavily armed. She said it was those heavily-armed extremists who staged the attacks, not the people who had staged the spontaneous protest.

But Van Susteren doesn’t seem to be an actual journalist. One night before, she had played this same game in an interview with the very sincere Rep. Jason Chaffetz.

One hundred e-mails had just been released. Van Susteren played her viewers:

VAN SUSTEREN (5/15/13): We've gone through the 100 emails. The topic of the video doesn't come up until [September] 15th. It comes up in a subject line, which is the day before the talking points, which was the 16th when Ambassador Rice went on. For the life of me, I can't figure out why they were stuck on that and kept pushing that on us, unless it’s, as many Republicans say, as the president said a week before at the convention, that Al Qaeda was on the run, essentially—

CHAFFETZ: Look, there was clarity when this event happened. We heard testimony from the people on the ground. We see an email that was going out to the senior leadership within the State Department. There was clarity. That then turned to a cluster, which then gravitated to a bunch of untruths that never got untangled.

For the life of her, Van Susteren couldn’t imagine where that story about that video could have come from!

On that same program, Van Susteren was similarly bollixed as she spoke with Karl Rove:

VAN SUSTEREN (5/15/13): Go ahead.

ROVE: Well, the final and most interesting point to me is, the question we've never gotten answered is, Who is responsible for cooking up the story that the anti-Muslim video is what caused this?

[...]

So my question is, who was responsible for cooking up this story? And maybe Aaron Pelton, Ben Rhodes, Tommy Vietor or somebody else at the U.S. U.N. mission who was involved in sending those e-mails ought to step forward and answer the question of whether or not it was them who cooked up this story.

Who was responsible for cooking up this story? Rove had no idea!

But how strange! Five days earlier, on May 10, ABC News had answered that question: The CIA had “cooked up that story!” Right from the start, the CIA had said it believed that the attacks in Benghazi “were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo”—protests against that YouTube video—“and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex.”

The CIA “cooked up that story,” as everyone had known since May 10. But Van Susteren now told Rove that the deceptions about Benghazi had occurred “for one simple reason. They just didn't want to tell us the truth from the get-go!” (More Van Susteren: “The overriding question I have is: Why didn't everyone just tell the truth from the get-go?”)

Finally, viewers were treated to this astounding exchange. Aaron Pelton is a U.S. official at the United Nations:

ROVE: Finally, the question is, was it Pelton at U.S. U.N. who briefed Susan Rice? And did Pelton come up with the lie about the video?

[...]

This is the biggest lie we’ve been—and we had it told over and over again by a wide variety of people. The question is, Who’s responsible for propagating it? And the American people deserve to know.

VAN SUSTEREN: I think—and let me just add one thing. When it’s a matter of life and death, you know, I think we ought to be honest.

“I think we ought to be honest,” Van Susteren said, without so much as batting an eye. But how odd! To all appearances, Van Susteren has been deceiving her viewers about this topic since May 10. This apparent scam continued through last night’s session with Boehner.

We’re focusing on Van Susteren, but this deception is quite common on Fox. Here you see the completely befuddled Monica Crowley, speaking with Sean Hannity and Bob Beckel last Friday night:

HANNITY (5/17/13): Monica, when Americans are under attack wouldn't you like to know a president protects them?

CROWLEY: Yes. And there are so many unanswered questions here. I disagree with you, Bob. I think the Benghazi scandal is the biggest of all because there were four dead Americans. We want to know where was the commander-in-chief? And where was the secretary of state, they are unaccounted for that night. Who gave the stand down order as Bob points out? Who came up with the fiction of the video and why?

Was there a bigger agenda to criminalize anti-Islam speech and that is why they settled on the video as part of the explanation?

Crowley just couldn't figure it out! Beckel, a Fox Democrat, spoke next, instantly changing the subject.

Every night, millions of people are getting deceived in this manner. But over at the Washington Post, fact-checker Glenn Kessler keeps wetting his pants, completely unable to speak.

He keeps obsessing on narrow distinctions about various things Obama has said. In Sunday's card-copy Post, he gave Obama four of his famous Pinocchios in a heavily tortured piece. (We'll review that piece in an upcoming post.)

But Kessler will never fact-check Fox. He is too broken to do so.

That said, it isn’t just Kessler, who has turned into a very strange analyst. At MSNBC, the various children just keep refusing to fight.

Perhaps they don’t know how to fight. It may be that their owners won’t let them—and their owners pay them very good salaries, so good that you aren’t allowed to know what their salaries are.

Whatever! This garbage has been churned on Fox for more than eight months, but the children have gamboled and played and refused to fight in the way cowards always do.

Last fall, they all ran off and hid in the woods when the attacks on Rice began. Tomorrow, we’ll look at what Rachel did when she finally pretended to fight.

Tomorrow: The utterly silly work of a cowardly millionaire child

Petraeus, king of the self-promoters!

WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 2013

His response to a sane man’s request: In this morning’s Washington Post, Scott Wilson and Karen DeYoung present an important front-page report.

Kevin Drum gets the nugget quote right. But first, let’s get clear on the background.

In the wake of the Benghazi attack, some of the capital’s decent people wanted to behave in a responsible way. Not everyone in DC is crazy.

According to Wilson and DeYoung, at least one congressman wanted to avoid the most obvious types of errors:

WILSON AND DEYOUNG (5/22/13): The controversy over the Obama administration’s response to the Benghazi attack last year began at a meeting over coffee on Capitol Hill three days after the assault.

It was at this informal session with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that the ranking Democrat asked David H. Petraeus, who was CIA director at the time, to ensure that committee members did not inadvertently disclose classified information when talking to the news media about the attack.

“We had some new members on the committee, and we knew the press would be very aggressive on this, so we didn’t want any of them to make mistakes,” Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (Md.) said last week of his request in an account supported by Republican participants. “We didn’t want to jeopardize sources and methods, and we didn’t want to tip off the bad guys. That’s all.”

Ruppersberger has been in Maryland politics a long time. He isn’t crazy and he isn’t evil. Whatever you think of his politics, he’s basically normal and sane.

As everyone has always known, Ruppersberger asked Petraeus to create a certified, secure account of what had occurred at Benghazi. This was a sensible request.

Now we get to the nugget quote. According to Wilson and DeYoung, here’s how Petraeus responded:

WILSON AND DEYOUNG (continuing directly): What Petraeus decided to do with that request is the pivotal moment in the controversy over the administration’s Benghazi talking points. It was from his initial input that all else flowed, resulting in 48 hours of intensive editing that congressional Republicans cite as evidence of a White House coverup.

A close reading of recently released government e-mails that were sent during the editing process, and interviews with senior officials from several government agencies, reveal Petraeus’s early role and ambitions in going well beyond the committee’s request, apparently to produce a set of talking points favorable to his image and his agency.

The information Petraeus ordered up when he returned to his Langley office that morning included far more than the minimalist version that Ruppersberger had requested. It included early classified intelligence assessments of who might be responsible for the attack and an account of prior CIA warnings—information that put Petraeus at odds with the State Department, the FBI and senior officials within his own agency.

Petraeus has long been known as king of the hustlers. Sadly, that’s why the “press corps” has always fawned about his greatness.

In this case, Petraeus inserted a bunch of junk into the talking points. Even his career subordinates at CIA found his conduct unprofessional.

Might we tie this detailed report to our post from this morning?

Last Wednesday night on The One True Channel, Isikoff and Maddow were clowning around, entertaining us rubes. They rolled their eyes at the brainless way the “bureaucrats” had mucked around, removing material from the original talking points.

Presumably, Isikoff and Maddow weren’t auditioning for jobs at Fox, though it may have seemed that way.

What were the “bureaucrats” at the State Department really doing as the talking points were developed? In part, they were removing stupid, self-serving shit Petraeus and his hacks had inserted there.

In many ways, they were improving the talking points. They were behaving like serious government employees, as Ruppersberger did.

Maddow and Isikoff were too dumb and too clownish to have such thoughts enter their heads. They chuckled and rolled their eyes at the bureaucrats, just like the other stars do over at Fox.

The time has come when liberals and progressives should really be tired of Maddow’s incompetence. Yes, she’s a convincing self-promoter—but she’s also a fairly large fraud.

Still crazy after these twenty-four hours!

WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 2013

The meltdown of CBS News: One day later, we were puzzled.

Did CBS News really do that, we found ourselves wondering. On May 10, did they really publish the crazy news report we looked at yesterday, via that link from Glenn Kessler’s Fact Checker piece?

For yesterday’s post, just click this.

Out of curiosity, we clicked Kessler's link again—and sure enough, there it was! In the CBS report as it now appears, Sharyl Attkisson explains the way the Benghazi talking points were formulated in mid-September through an extensive e-mail exchange.

Attkisson presents quotations from different versions of the talking points. She also seems to present quotations from various e-mails. But before you see the quotations from the e-mails, this bizarre paragraph appears:

ATTKISSON (5/10/13): E-mails were provided by the Administration to certain Congressional committees for limited review. The committees were not permitted to copy the e-mails, so they made handwritten notes. Therefore, part of the quoted e-mails may be paraphrased.

Part of the quoted e-mails may be paraphrased! Having offered that hall-of-mirrors style advisory, Attkisson presents an apparent set of quotations from various e-mails.

Or maybe they’re just paraphrases! There is no way to tell!

As it now stands, that report is borderline crazy. The original report was worse. We learn from an asterisked Editor’s Note that, due to an editing error (wink wink), that paragraph didn’t appear in this report when it was first posted. You simply saw the quotations from the e-mails, without any warning that the (apparent) quotations may be paraphrases.

Most likely, this is a con. Most likely, Attkisson posted a bunch of quotations from the e-mails without knowing that some of the quotations actually weren’t quotations. Most likely, CBS News tried to cover its tracks once the error appeared, creating the bizarre excuse found in that Editor’s Note.

Is that what happened? We don’t know. But even as the report now appears, it contains one of the craziest paragraphs we’ve ever seen in a news report. As you read this bizarre paragraph, you’re looking at the ongoing intellectual meltdown of your press elite:

ATTKISSON (5/10/13): E-mails were provided by the Administration to certain Congressional committees for limited review. The committees were not permitted to copy the e-mails, so they made handwritten notes. Therefore, part of the quoted e-mails may be paraphrased.

Part of the quoted e-mails may be paraphrased! Amazingly, CBS News doesn’t seem to understand how crazy that paragraph is.

One day later, we were puzzled. Had we imagined that crazy report? Had the report really been posted in the way we thought?

We must have made some mistake, we thought. We must have misunderstood what we saw.

We looked again, and here’s what we found:

The people at CBS News are still crazy after these twenty-four hours!

The new network dramas must be very dumb!

WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 2013

Even Dowd says they’re too shlocky: Luckily, nothing of significance is going on in the world today. There is no issue that needs explanation or clarification.

We know that because Maureen Dowd is writing about the major networks' new TV programs. Apparently, these shows are so dumb that even Dowd has noticed. And the famous Pulitzer winner is just plenty annoyed:

DOWD (5/22/13): It turns out that Washington isn’t the only place where ideas go to die.

TV honchos cling to outmoded programming traditions even as many younger Americans, gorging on a movable feast of platforms, are losing the habit of turning on the TV, and even as top talent peels off to enjoy the freedom of cable and imaginative hubs like Amazon, Hulu, YouTube and Netflix, which is crackling with “House of Cards” and a fresh season of “Arrested Development.”

Networks still prefer to play it safe with likable characters, not darker ones like Tony Soprano, Walter White, Don Draper, Nicholas Brody and face-chewing zombies. Watching the derivative and uninspiring fare served up last week by the networks during their previews to woo advertisers, I was flummoxed at the lack of creativity and modernity.

Dowd spends her whole column listing the problems she finds with various network programs. The Blacklist is “yet another variation on Hannibal Lecter.” Back in the Game is just a knock-off of “Bad News Bears!”

Dowd’s headline is “Serving Up Schlock,” a topic on which she’s the world’s leading expert. When your press corps displays these intellectual horizons, you have basically ceased to have am upper-end press corps at all.

It’s conventional to slam the press corps for its various alleged biases. But above it all, to the depth of its soul, your upper-end “press corps” is empty, fatuous—dumb.

THE REFUSAL TO FIGHT: Adopting Isikoff’s Fox-tinged line!

WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 2013

Part 3—Rachel just isn’t that sharp: With how much skill has The One True Channel analyzed the Benghazi nonsense?

Has this channel been willing to fight?

Alas! Consider the “analysis” which emerged last Wednesday night, May 15, when Michael Isikoff appeared with Rachel Maddow. A bit of background:

Five days earlier, on May 10, ABC’s Jonathan Karl had released twelve versions of the talking points which were crafted last September concerning the Benghazi attack. On May 14, it had been revealed that Karl misquoted one of the e-mails which helped shape those talking points.

On this very day, May 15, a large trove of those e-mails had been released by the White House.

By May 15, journalists had had five full days to consider the evolution of the talking points. But how sad! When Maddow asked Isikoff for his views, this is the way he started:

MADDOW (5/15/13): Joining us now is Michael Isikoff, NBC News investigative correspondent. He has been going through these newly released e-mails since they came out tonight.

Mike, thanks for being with us again...What did you learn from these e-mails that might further explain the scandal or at least the politicization of this scandal?

ISIKOFF: Well, I learned that there actually is a scandal and I think the scandal is all these relatively high-level national security officials spent hours on end exchanging e-mails in order to produce what turned out to be complete bureaucratic mush. I mean, why these talking points were even being written in the first place, and why a committee was doing it, seems inexplicable when you actually look through it.

In fact, my favorite e-mail was from Jacob Sullivan, who’s head of policy planning at the State Department, who in the middle of this writes, "I do not understand the nature of this exercise." I think that kind of reflects anybody reading this.

That was a very strange, very dumb start. To watch this whole segment, click here.

In fact, everyone knows “why these talking points were even being written in the first place.” They were written so members of Congress could have an official account of what they could say about the attack without misstating the basic facts and without compromising security interests.

Everybody knows that! But for some reason, Isikoff chose to clown at the start of this session. And as he continued, he gave a deeply clueless, Fox-tinged account of what occurred as the talking points were developed:

ISIKOFF (continuing directly): Look, there is no smoking gun, to say the least. In fact, there’s almost an antismoking gun, which is the e-mail from the general counsel of the CIA, who at one point explicitly writes, "I know there's a hurry to get this, but we need to hold it long enough to ascertain whether providing it"—this is the original talking points, which did have information about al Qaeda, which did talk about Libya being awash in weapons and that, this being likely an attack by extremists—but whether providing it conflicts with the expressed instructions from national security staff, DOJ, FBI, that in light of the criminal investigation, we are not to generate statements with assessments as to who did this.

So that’s coming from the original counsel of the CIA. And that sort of sets the ball in motion in terms of scrubbing out all relevant details about who was behind the attack from the talking points.

“At the end of the day, it all gets taken out, we’re left with the mush where Susan Rice says almost nothing,” the vacuous fellow went on to say. In this manner, Isikoff gave a profoundly dumb synopsis of this whole procedure.

In the highlighted sections above, this unhelpful fellow lamented the loss of all the “information” in the original talking points, “which did have information about al Qaeda, which did talk about Libya being awash in weapons and that, this being likely an attack by extremists.” He shook his head about the way all those “relevant details” got “scrubbed” from the talking points.

Isikoff was simply wrong on one point. In fact, the final version of the talking points did talk about the “extremists” who had staged the attack. Rice used that same term on the Sunday shows, where she repeatedly said that “extremists with heavy weapons” came to the scene and staged the killing attack.

(On those programs, Rice also referred, again and again, to the fact that Libya was awash in weapons.)

Isikoff was quickly wrong about one of his three basic points. That said, his terminal dumbness was revealed in the rest of that passage. To all appearances, it hadn’t occurred to this investigative correspondent that some of that “information” in the first version of the points may not have “information” at all—or that some of the “relevant details” in the original talking points may have been wrong.

Isikoff had read the text of the original version. Sadly, the obvious problems with this text didn’t seem to have registered:

ORIGINAL CIA TALKING POINTS (9/14/12): We believe based on currently available information that the attacks in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex.

The crowd almost certainly was a mix of individuals from across many sectors of Libyan society. That being said, we do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qa’ida participated in the attack.

Initial press reporting linked the attack to Ansar al-Sharia. The group has since released a statement that its leadership did not order the attacks, but it did not deny that some of its members were involved.

Even Isikoff didn’t complain about the dumping of the claim about Ansar al-Sharia—a claim which was stupidly based on “initial press reporting.” That said, it hadn’t occurred to Isikoff that the same lower-level CIA hacks who included that absurd attribution had also penned that passage about al Qaeda.

Did the CIA really “know” that some of the extremists in question had “ties to al Qaeda,” whatever that fuzzy statement might mean? It didn’t seem to have occurred to Isikoff that this initial claim may have been premature too.

It didn’t seem to occur to Isikoff that some of those original “details” may have been premature, unfounded, possibly wrong! Perhaps for that reason, he chose to adopt a mocking, Fox-tinged line about what had happened.

Mockingly, Isikoff described a process by which “information” and “relevant details” were “scrubbed” from the original text. He complained that Rice was left with “mush,” although she articulated two of the three specific points whose absence he lamented.

Duh! As Isikoff kept mocking the process which edited down the original version, he didn’t consider an obvious possibility: The process may have improved the points by removing premature claims!

Instead, Isikoff rolled his eyes, as if on Fox, at the somewhat comical way these agencies “scrubb[ed] out all relevant details,” thereby leaving Rice with “bureaucratic mush.”

Isikoff had had five days to consider the original talking points. Despite this, it hadn’t entered his thick head that the original version may have been ill considered. He laughed as if he were on Fox, mocking the way the bureaucrats left Rice with a puddle of mush.

Rachel had also had five days to consider those talking points. But so what? As the interview ended, Our Own Rhodes Scholar was just as clueless as her useless guest, whose mockery of the bureaucrats she adopted as her own:

ISIKOFF: At the end of the day, it all gets taken out, we`re left with the mush where Susan Rice says almost nothing and then sort of piece of resistance, which is David Petraeus’ e-mail, reading it, seeing all the stuff about the CIA warnings and then writing, "No mention of the cable to Cairo either? Frankly, I just as soon not use this”—this is about the talking points. And then, "No, but it’s NSS’ call”—that’s National Security Staff—“to be sure. You know, regardless, thanks for the great work." I’m not quite sure what the great work was there.

But bottom line is there’s no indication of partisan political motive for scrubbing this because of the election. There is plenty of evidence of this bureaucratic tussle between the State Department and the CIA, and that’s, at the end of the day, what we’re left with.

MADDOW: What I realized is, all of my fantasies built up from all of my years of watching spy movies and reading spy novels about how exciting it must be working as a top-level spy, actually, I don’t want that at all. It sounds like bureaucratic nonsense.

ISIKOFF: You don’t want to be a part of this e-mail chain.

MADDOW: Well, I don’t understand the nature of this exercise. Exactly how I felt reading it.

Michael Isikoff, NBC News investigative correspondent. Mike, thanks very much. Really appreciate your take on this.

For the record, Rachel didn’t just appreciate Isikoff’s take. As she closed, she adopted his take as her own.

Can we talk? As this sad exchange unfolded, the liberal world was being served by two TV stars whose names were Dumb and Dumber. What might Our Own Rhodes Scholar have said when Isikoff rolled his eyes at the “bureaucratic tussle?”

She could have spoken like a person who is angry after all these years of inane right-wing messaging. She could have spoken like a person who wants to fight back against this constant bullroar:

WHAT MADDOW COULD HAVE SAID: You call this a bureaucratic tussle and you act like it was just a big silly mess. But isn’t it possible that the State Department served an important purpose by removing premature claims from the talking points? In the original proposal, the CIA attributed one important claim to “initial press reporting.” Wasn’t it a good thing when that claim got “scrubbed,” as you put it?

Rachel could have said something like that. Instead, she parroted Isikoff’s Fox-tinged line as she dumbly signed off. This was a bunch of dumb stupid shit, “bureaucratic nonsense.”

Multimillionaires can be like that!

We hate to break the news, but Our Own Rhodes Scholar just isn’t all that sharp a great deal of the time. She’s very good at clowning around, thus teaching us how to adore her more fully. She’s amazingly good at pretending that she always corrects her mistakes.

But five days after The Twelve Versions appeared, it still hadn’t occurred to Maddow that the removal of those claims may have improved the talking points by making them less inaccurate. This hadn’t occurred to her on her own—and it seemed her useless staff hadn’t suggested it to her.

And no, it didn’t take a clairvoyant to see this possibility. Because Chris Hayes is less of a clown than Rachel, he had imagined this possibility five days earlier, on the very day when The Twelve Versions were revealed:

HAYES (5/10/13): But what was so fascinating is— You say in the fog of terrorism you don’t know what’s going on. What happens in the course of these talking points is they go from more information to less information, and I could see myself making the judgment that, yes, when there is real confusion about what’s true, say less rather than more because you’re going to have to defend what you say.

Duh! On that very first night, it had already occurred to Hayes that the talking points may have been improved when some premature claims were removed. Sadly, he was talking to Eli Lake, a full-blown Mooney hack who had been booked on his program. For that reason, viewers were instantly treated to push-back in which the removal of those claims was said to be a form of “sugar-coating.”

In large part, MSNBC is perpetrating a con on the liberal world. We’re constantly told that the channel’s hosts are just extremely smart. Why, we even have our own professor! Just like on Gilligan’s Island!

But how smart were Maddow and Isikoff this night? The overpaid pair had had eight months to get their heads straight about this gong-show. By last Wednesday, they had had five days to examine The Twelve Versions.

But when they met last Wednesday night, they recited dumb, Fox-tinged lines about those ridiculous bureaucrats who had scrubbed the talking points of all that information. Most of this would have played quite well on Fox. Maddow was too dumb to know this.

That said, Maddow didn’t do much better when she went after Jonathan Karl, whose name she kept failing to mention.

Tomorrow: Maddow on Karl

Greg Sargent (and others) are playing us rubes!

TUESDAY, MAY 21, 2013

What marks we liberals be: Following Kevin Drum, we’ll cite Greg Sargent’s post concerning the GOP’s possible overreach in pursuit of the current “scandals.”

Liberals are making this happy-talk argument all over the web. What fools we liberals be:

SARGENT (5/21/13): A few of us on the left have been arguing that the current scandal-mania gripping the GOP risks bringing about a rerun of 1998, when the frenzy amid the Monica Lewinsky revelations led the GOP to overreach, resulting in backlash.

Now we have a longtime respected nonpartisan observer, Charlie Cook, arguing that this possibility is very real. Cook’s piece, entitled “Republicans’ hatred of Obama blinds them to public disinterest in scandals,” notes that the scandals have not moved the needle at all on Obama’s approval rating, just as happened in 1998.

What fools we liberals be!

People like Sargent keep telling us rubes that things worked out fine in 1998. When people like Sargent say things like that, you need to check your history.

Things very much did not work out well in 1998. Democrats gained a few seats in the House. But then, these things also happened:

President Clinton got impeached. His ability to drive any kind of agenda came to a screeching halt.

And not only that:

Most significantly, the mainstream press corps unleashed a bloody war against Candidate Gore, Clinton’s anointed successor. That twenty-month war sent George Bush to the White House.

People like Sargent will not tell you that. But he knows that’s what occurred. He knows that 1998 led to disasters all over the world.

The press backlash to Clinton’s impeachment sent George Bush to the White House. Please don’t tell us that Brother Sargent doesn’t know this is true.

When careerists like Sargent tell pretty tales, they are conning us rubes. If we the rubes will agree with their tale, this means that they the leaders don’t have to fight the powerful inside players who are pushing the current wave of scandals.

The careerists get to sit the scandals out, just exactly as they did when the targets were Clinton, then Gore.

That new poll by the Washington Post is an indictment of weak career players like Sargent. Disgracefully, 60 percent of independents said they think the Obama administration “is trying to cover up the facts” concerning Benghazi. Only 28 percent of independents said they think the administration “is honestly trying to disclose what it knows.”

Those numbers are astounding. Click here and weep.

Those numbers are a tribute to the refusal of people like Maddow, Hayes and Lawrence to stand and fight. When one side fights and the other side runs, voters produce crazy numbers. And yes, those numbers may point the way to very bad future outcomes.

Obama’s approval is still 51 percent! On that basis, we city mice continue to frolic and play. We tell ourselves that we’ve done quite well in the current scandal wars.

We haven’t done well at all! Most specifically, our leaders have disgraced themselves since last September with respect to Benghazi. The children refuse to fight.

Can we talk? In the end, the scandal year of 1998 was a disaster for the world. The aftermath of that horrible year sent George Bush to the White House.

Career liberals have always refused to tell you. This week, you’re again getting played.

What could possibly go wrong this time: The current wave of pseudo-scandals is ginning up Fox voters. This could produce a disaster in next year's off-year elections.

Do you think Benghazi couldn't hurt a future Candidate Clinton? Rubes, please think again.

The children ran and hid for two years while Power invented tales about Gore. They've done the same thing for the past nine months as tales were invented about Susan Rice.

Your corporate-paid leaders won't stand up to Power. Dearest darlings! It just isn't done!

Breaking: CBS News is officially crazy!

TUESDAY, MAY 21, 2013

Remarkably, Kessler can’t tell: We’ve been telling you this for years, but as of today, it’s official:

You no longer have an actual press corps. Officially, we’re all living in a post-journalistic madhouse.

It’s hard not to draw that conclusion after reading Glenn Kessler’s latest Fact Checker piece for the Washington Post. For what it’s worth, we agree with some of Kessler’s conclusions about Jonathan Karl’s now-famous May 10 report for ABC News.

In that report, Karl presented twelve versions of the now-famous talking points about Benghazi. Midway through his report, Karl made an horrendous error concerning one of the e-mails which helped create the now-famous talking points.

Karl has largely refused to explain his error in the days since it came to light.

That said, Kessler jumps several sharks as he fumbles about in the dark concerning errors made by various journalists in reports about those e-mails. Good God! Just consider what he says about a May 10 report filed by CBS News under Sharyl Attkisson’s name.

Attkisson is a major CBS correspondent of long standing. On May 10, she also filed an on-line report discussing those famous e-mails.

In her report as published, Attkisson quoted one of the e-mails inaccurately. (Her error differed from Karl’s.) In his new Fact Checker piece, Kessler explains, or pretends to explain, how that error occurred.

Below, you see your “press corps” in action, though Kessler shows no sign of seeing how crazy this story actually is. Below, we will translate Kessler’s prose into English:

KESSLER (5/21/13): A columnist for Mediaite reported that Attkisson, when she filed her story, warned these e-mails were paraphrased. After Garrett’s report aired, Attkisson reiterated that point in an e-mail to reporters and editors: “The talking point draft emails read to CBS News last Friday were from handwritten notes, and the attorney source explained why they were not direct quotes and could not be represented as such, as I noted at the top of my reporting for important context.”

Attkisson did not respond to a request for comment. But since then, CBS has updated her original May 10 story with similar language, noting that this paragraph was “included in the original story submission but was omitted from a previous version due to an inadvertent error in the editing process.”

Based on the other facts in this case, the highlighted statement by Kessler seems to be inaccurate. Having noted that, let’s try to retell Kessler’s story.

This is the story Kessler seems to be trying to tell:

According to Attkisson, she sent a report to her editors which carried a warning. For background on this matter, Kessler links to this Mediaite report.

According to Attkisson and her editors, this warning paragraph appeared right at the top of the copy she submitted:

ATTKISSON’S ALLEGED WARNING: Emails were provided by the Administration to certain Congressional Committees for limited review. The Committees were not permitted to copy the emails, so they made handwritten notes. Therefore, parts of the quoted emails may be paraphrased.

We’re sorry, but that is insane.

“Parts of the quoted e-mails may be paraphrased?” According to CBS News, Attkisson placed that warning right at the top of the report she submitted to her editors.

If that is true, it’s now official: Attkisson is insane.

What does it mean to say that “part of the quoted e-mails” in a news report “may be paraphrased?” Presumably, it would mean that Attkisson didn’t know whether she had been given quotations from the e-mails or mere paraphrases.

In a situation like that, a journalist would have to be out of her mind to do what Attkisson purportedly did—to file a report with a bunch of apparent quotations, while warning her editors that some of the quotations may be paraphrases.

That said, the story gets worse:

Over at the CBS web site, Attkisson’s original report is still available, with that crazy paragraph inserted into the middle of the copy. After providing that crazy warning, the report offers quotations from various e-mails—except the report has already said that the quotations may not be quotations!

You can see the report as it currently exists at CBS News. As posted, the report is just this side of insane—and this is CBS’s attempt at “correcting” the original report, which simply presented a bunch of apparent quotations and got one of them wrong!

That report as it currently stands is just this side of crazy. Kessler seems to have no idea how crazy this whole story is.

We’ve long since ceased to have a press corps. Most strikingly, Kessler can’t tell.

Still coming: We plan to discuss Jonathan Karl’s report in the next few days. It has been hard to keep pace with the post-journalistic lunacy here.

For the record, some of the errors have been authored by MSNBC’s exercised hosts. We're in a post-journalistic age all over the upper-end “press corps.”

Government bureaucrat said to be sharp!

TUESDAY, MAY 21, 2013

You rarely see statements like this: In this morning’s New York Times, three major figures—two from the GOP—defend the administration’s conduct with respect to the AP.

We aren’t saying they’re right or wrong. We simply want to call attention to one of their statements.

We were struck by the highlighted statement. In our world, you rarely see statements like this:

BARR, GORELICK AND WAINSTEIN (5/21/13): At the time the [AP] article was published, there were strong bipartisan calls for the Justice Department to find the leaker. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. gave that assignment to Ronald C. Machen Jr., the United States attorney for the District of Columbia, who is known for his meticulous and dedicated work. Importantly, his assignment was to identify and prosecute the government official who leaked the sensitive information; it was not to conduct an inquiry into the news organization that published it.

Say what? Machen “is known for his meticulous and dedicated work?” Within our degraded national discourse, you almost never see statements like that.

Please understand: In that statement, the writers are discussing someone who could be described as a “government bureaucrat.” Within our degraded national discourse, you almost never see such people praised for their diligent, competent work.

Over the past fifty years, powerful forces have worked very hard to denigrate people like Machen. If you work for the government, it’s assumed that you’re worthless, just no darn good.

Government bureaucrats totally stink! In recent years, so do teachers! Powerful forces have worked very hard to lodge these ideas in American minds.

We were pleased to see three prominent writers push back against this idea.

THE REFUSAL TO FIGHT: What, our TV stars worry?

TUESDAY, MAY 21, 2013

Part 2—Why doesn’t Hayes want to fight: Liberals and Democrats ought to be angry about the Benghazi pseudo-scandal.

As part of that anger, they ought to be angry at the way their TV stars keep refusing to fight.

Right from the start, the attacks against Ambassador Susan Rice have illustrated a familiar theme of modern politics: It’s easy to generate bogus attacks against major Democrats.

The attacks on Rice are a perfect example of this familiar problem. Last September 16, she discussed the killing attack in Benghazi on four of the major Sunday programs. (On CNN, she wasn’t asked about Benghazi.)

Reaction was quick—and familiar. On Fox, bogus accounts were quickly offered of the various things Rice had said. Other statements by Rice disappeared, never to be heard again.

In a very familiar pattern, viewers of Fox were being misled about what Ambassador Rice had said. Rather quickly, this bogus narrative jumped to the mainstream press.

Our favorite TV stars kept quiet.

If you were watching MSNBC last fall, you barely knew Rice existed. From September 16 until the election, her name was never mentioned on the Rachel Maddow Show. Her name was mentioned only once on the Ed Show, in that instance by a guest. She was never mentioned at all on Lawrence’s useless Last Word.

Incredibly, it was left to Chris Matthews, of all people, to develop some actual information about the attacks on Rice. He did so on October 19 and 22, in interviews with a trio of major press figures.

In the latter session, Matthews interviewed David Ignatius. Here’s what Ignatius said:

MATTHEWS (10/22/13): David Ignatius, the first question was, was Susan Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, when she went on Meet the Press on September 16, five days after the assault on our consulate that cost the life of Chris Stevens, was she speaking on the level with the best intel she had?

IGNATIUS: Amazingly enough, because she has been attacked so stridently for her comments, she was stating almost word for word the talking points the CIA had prepared the previous day, September 15.

I know that because I was given by a senior intelligence official a copy of those talking points, and they included the phrase that she got hammered for about the spontaneous inspiration for the Benghazi events being what had happened to Cairo.

That view was revised a little bit since then. But what’s amazing, a month after these events, is that our intelligence analysts still aren’t sure exactly what led to that attack on the compound in Benghazi. And if Mitt Romney tries to claim otherwise, he’s going against our most senior intelligence people.

“Amazingly,” Ignatius said, Rice had been stridently attacked, even though she had presented the CIA’s official account that day. That official account had even “included the phrase that she got hammered for about the spontaneous inspiration for the Benghazi events being what had happened to Cairo.”

And not only that! More than a month after Benghazi, “our intelligence analysts still aren’t sure exactly what led to that attack.” But so what? Despite these remarkable facts, Matthews and this channel’s other hosts kept ignoring the attacks on Rice. As they kept their heads in the sand, the attacks against Rice only grew.

(On one of the channel’s weekend shows, Chris Hayes actually parroted the Fox-invented story line about the deceptions. Hayes reversed himself one week later, on October 21.)

This past weekend, we saw where this kind of silence takes us. Seven months after speaking with Matthews, that same Ignatius wrote a grossly illogical column in Sunday’s Washington Post. Ignatius attacked various administration figures for their failure to produce a “detail rich” set of talking points for Rice, even though he started his column by saying that “officials were still basically clueless three days after the attack.”

No, that column didn’t make sense; just see our previous post. But in the months since Ignatius played Hardball, the world of Fox has continued to push its Benghazi line—and our liberal TV stars have remained politely silent.

This is the way career liberals have always behaved over the past twenty years.

To what extent have our TV stars refused to defend Susan Rice? To what extent have they refused to rebut ridiculous claims from the right about Benghazi? Consider MSNBC’s weekend programs on November 11 and 12, as this pseudo-scandal again began picking up steam. First, a bit of the background:

On Wednesday, November 8, a high-profile congressional hearing featured the peculiar claims of Gregory Hicks, the State Department’s number-two man in Libya at the time of the Benghazi attack.

As he testified, Hicks was relentlessly snide about Rice. Dramatically, he even said that his “jaw dropped” when he watched her on those Sunday shows. Rice should have agreed with what the Libyan president said, this peculiar man strangely said.

Hicks’ assessment made little sense, but your liberal TV stars failed to say so, and the attacks against Rice were back. Two days later, a report by ABC’s Jonathan Karl showed that Obama spokesman Jay Carney had been less than truthful in some of his statements concerning the genesis of the now-famous talking points.

Karl made a groaning error in his report, but his error wasn’t yet known. Nor did the error, however gruesome, undermine the basic accuracy of his claim about Carney. (More on that later this week.)

Thanks to Hicks and thanks to Karl, the talking points bullroar was back with a vengeance. And sure enough! Over the weekend, two of MSNBC’s major hosts completely ignored the situation. Melissa Harris-Perry hosted four hours of programs that weekend; according to Nexis, she never mentioned Rice or Benghazi. Neither did Steve Kornacki, in his own four hours on the air.

By Tuesday night, Karl’s gruesome error had been revealed. On that evening’s All In, Hayes overstated the significance of this error, then offered this cri de coeur (this “cry from the heart”):

HAYES (5/14/13): Now, you might ask yourself, and in fact I am asking myself: Why am I talking about an e-mail about a talking point? No, I mean that seriously. Tell me, why am I on national television talking about this right now, about e-mails about talking points? Because believe me, I don’t want to be. I really don’t want to be.

And here is the answer. This chart, posted by Nate Silver, shows Google searches for political news around the low end of where they’ve been over the last nine years. I’ve talked with bloggers and web editors about the incredible traffic drop-off on websites. I’ve even heard cable news is experiencing something similar.

It is under these conditions that scandals explode. Political scientist Brendan Nyhan offers great analysis, writing "new scandals are likely to emerge when the president is unpopular among opposition party identifiers." Nyhan also found that media scandals are less likely to emerge as pressure from other news stories increases.

In other words, when there’s a lot going on in the news politically, scandals are unlikely; when there’s not a lot of political news, well, you get the point. And Nyhan adds, Obama is in his second term, which is when scandals are most likely to take place.

So there you have it. Republicans don’t like the president. There’s an empty news cycle. The president is in his second term. We’ve got the perfect storm. In fact, it is predetermined that reporting on an overblown scandal is what the media are going to be doing.

Poor Hayes! He didn’t want to be discussing e-mails and talking points! And sure enough! Instead of debunking the bogus claims which were sweeping the political world, he offered an intellectualized explanation of why the bogus claims existed! Complete with references to two of his favorite liberal intellectuals. (For the record, we like Nyhan and Silver too.)

Hayes is bright; we assume he’s sincere. But that presentation perfectly captures a major problem of the past twenty years.

Guess what, losers? Hayes should want to be talking about those e-mails and talking-points! He should have been eager to tackle this topic back in the fall, when he got himself thoroughly conned by all the scamming from Fox.

He should have been eager to tackle this subject because this represents the heart of our modern politics!

For nine solid months dating back to September, a set of bogus claims had been lodged against Rice, who had been cast in the role of Obama’s Official Demon. These bogus claims were repeated again and again and again, to the point where Rice’s career got thrown down the stairs.

Much more significantly, tens of millions of American voters were being grossly misled in the process. As of last week, this process had been going on for nine months.

This process of partisan fabrication has come to define our politics. But some voice inside Hayes’ head was telling him that he didn’t want to discuss those e-mails and talking-points! Indeed, in that same segment, he went on to discuss what President Reagan had done in Guatemala! In the 1980s!

At that point, the analysts lowered their heads and cried.

Why didn’t Hayes want to fight that night? We don’t have the slightest idea. Tomorrow, we’ll show you the nonsense which emerged the next night when Rachel discussed the talking-points with Michael Isikoff.

That said, this instinctive refusal to fight has been the norm among career liberals for the past twenty years. What keeps our tribe’s biggest TV performers from relishing the chance to fight back against the bullroar which defines our world?

We can’t answer that question for you, but the children simply refuse to fight. And when they finally try to fight, it seems they may not know how.

Tomorrow: Isikoff speaks