“Men Threatened By Women”: John McCain Is Not Very Bright, And Neither Is Lindsey Graham
Neither is Lindsey Graham. The rest of the Republicans who persist with smear campaigns against U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and other women, especially women of color, aren’t too smart either. To the 97 members of the House, who wrote a letter to President Obama attacking Rice, I say, you are even stupider.
The Monday letter was written by Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), chairman of a House subcommittee on terrorism. Those that signed the letter are among the most conservative House Republicans, and at least 10 of them lost reelection bids this month.
Buh bye.
They should have figured out by now that women go to the polls more than men, and more black and Latina women voted for Barack Obama than did their male counterparts.
But men like McCain who are ruled by an overweening sense of personal privilege are not very bright. Though they sit on committees with the word “intelligence” in the name of the group, it doesn’t seem to have rubbed off. In fact, all this macho posturing and bluster in front of the cameras may put the nation at risk. Loose lips sink ships.
My assessment has nothing to do with his courage, or past service to the country in war.
Men who feel threatened by women of strength and superior intelligence, who resort to bullying, bluster and lying when challenged by said women, are simply lacking smarts.
Their bigotry tends to crowd out brain cells.
I have a rule of thumb when judging the males of our species. I choose to look at their behavior towards women to understand their character. Men who exhibit bonhomie towards other men, yet choose trophy wives (who they demean while pimpin’ off of them), who can’t or won’t deal on a level of equality with women (especially women of color), or accept that there are women who are smarter than they are, have a part of the brain that has never fully developed. It has been culturally limited, constrained, constricted and shaped by our cultural gender norms and as such many would never even recognize it as a failing.
In fact, there are those who see it as admirable. They see them as “manly men.”
I’m not one of them.
I’m happily married to a man who is pleased as punch to tell his male friends that his wife is smarter than he is. He isn’t the least bit uncomfortable about it. In fact, he thinks he’s pretty smart for marrying me. I agree. I’m pleased that he is more talented than I am. We respect each other. That’s what makes a good partnership.
Politics is about partnerships. Political leadership requires selecting and building a smart team. If your team doesn’t have smart women in it, you won’t get my vote.
Let’s take this latest Benghazi bullcrap being used to taunt and demean U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice. It has nothing to do with Benghazi really, which I wrote about in Black Kos last Tuesday. The racism, blended with their sexism is blatant.
By now those who didn’t know her credentials are aware of them. Those of us who have her back, from the president on down to a coalition of congresswomen, to bloggers and commentators like Soledad O’Brian and Rachel Maddow, have made it clear that she is not only a brilliant Rhodes scholar, but is an astute diplomat, with an important background in not only international affairs in general, but Middle East terrorism specifically.
President Obama is not afraid of strong smart women. He’s surrounded by them.
Republicans have attacked his wife, his mother-in-law, his daughters, appointees like Valerie Jarrett, Susan Rice, Melody Barnes and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Republicans have gone after Tammy Duckworth on her military record. Teh stoopid ruled. Scott Brown went after Elizabeth Warren on her pride in having Native American ancestry.
So McCain lost an election partly because of his choice of a female running mate. Her selection—based on her having a uterus rather than brain cells—was stupid.
The War on Women launched by the Teapublicans was stupid.
Escalating that war to target Susan Rice is the height of stupidity.
Targeting women of color is political suicide.
Keep it up.
See how well stupid works out for you in 2014 and 2016.
By: Denise Oliver Velez, Daily Kos, November 25, 2012
“Blown Out Of The Water Like Naval Scrap”: Petraeus Benghazi Testimony Shreds GOP Attack On Rice
On Friday the Republican politicians who had so angrily demanded the testimony of David Petraeus about Benghazi got what they wanted—and what they deserved—when the former CIA director set forth the facts proving that their conspiracy theories and witch-hunts are dead wrong.
Appearing behind closed doors on Capitol Hill, Gen. Petraeus, recently resigned from the spy agency over his illicit affair with biographer Paula Broadwell, answered questions from legislators concerning the tragic Sept. 11 assault that left Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other diplomatic personnel dead.
When the session concluded, Petraeus was spirited away. And Senator John McCain (R-AZ), whose criticism of the Obama administration over Benghazi has verged on hysterical, emerged from the hearing room with very little to say to the reporters waiting outside.
“General Petraeus’ briefing was comprehensive. I think it was important; it added to our ability to make judgments about what was clearly a failure of intelligence, and described his actions and that of his agency and their interactions with other agencies,” said McCain, adding, “I appreciate his service and his candor” before abruptly fleeing as reporters tried to question him.
McCain’s curt statement was in sharp contrast to his voluble remarks on Thursday, when he denounced UN Ambassador Susan Rice for what he and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) described as her misleading description of the attack on Sunday television shows a few days after it occurred. (It later emerged, embarrassingly, that his posturing before the cameras on Benghazi had prevented him from attending a scheduled hearing on that subject. He didn’t want to to discuss that either.)
Essentially, McCain and Graham, joined by Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), accused Rice on Thursday of lying and covering up the fact that the Benghazi consulate had been attacked by terrorists affiliated with al Qaeda. They vowed to prevent her confirmation as Secretary of State, should the president nominate her to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton.
But with McCain departing so abruptly after the Petraeus hearing, it was left to others, including House Intelligence Committee chair Peter King (R-NY), Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) to reveal what their Arizona colleague didn’t care to discuss. In his testimony, Petraeus blew apart the half-baked theories offered by McCain and Graham—and left them looking foolish.
On earlier occasions, King had echoed the same complaints made by McCain and Graham, but after Friday’s hearing he reluctantly admitted the truth: Petraeus had confirmed that the CIA had approved the talking points used by Rice, tentatively blaming the incident on a notorious anti-Muslim video sparking demonstrations in Cairo and elsewhere at the time. Although Petraeus said he had believed that terrorists were responsible, that suggestion was removed from the talking points in order to protect the ongoing FBI investigation into Benghazi, which Rice also mentioned.
As King explained in response to reporters’ questions, Petraeus not only confirmed that any allusion to al Qaeda had been removed from the talking points given to Rice, but that his agency had consented to that decision:
Q: Did he say why it was taken out of the talking points that [the attack] was al Qaeda affiliated?
KING: He didn’t know.
Q: He didn’t know? What do you mean he didn’t know?
KING: They were not involved—it was done, the process was completed and they said, “OK, go with those talking points.” Again, it’s interagency—I got the impression that 7, 8, 9 different agencies.
Q: Did he give you the impression that he was upset it was taken out?
KING: No.
Q: You said the CIA said “OK” to the revised report –
KING: No, well, they said in that, after it goes through the process, they OK’d it to go. Yeah, they said “Okay for it to go.”
In short, Rice was using declassified talking points, developed and approved by the intelligence community, when she discussed the Benghazi attack. So McCain’s nasty personal denunciation of her , along with most of his claims about how the White House handled Benghazi, has been blown out of the water like so much naval scrap. The Arizona senator, his colleagues, and their loud enablers on Fox News and elsewhere in the wingnut media will never apologize to Rice. But that is what they owe her.
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, November 17, 2012
“The Man Needs An Intervention”: Wayward John McCain And The Two Rices
What is going on with John McCain? Maybe he just despises Barack Obama so completely that he almost can’t help himself. That’s one option. Another is that he has decided for whatever reason to finish his Senate career as a full-out tea partier. A third is that he’s just a nasty man, which is pretty widely known to be true in Washington.
Hard to say. But this jihad of his against Susan Rice really is about the nastiest thing we’ve ever seen him do. Rice had nothing to do with security at the Benghazi consulate. Nothing. That just isn’t her portfolio. The only thing she had to do with Libya, in any substantive way, is that she worked like a dog to assemble the coalition that toppled Muammar Ghaddafi, and she did an outstanding job at that. Indeed, as Eleanor Clift reported for the Beast back in January, Rice did travel once to Benghazi and was given a hero’s welcome there.
All Rice had to do with the Sept. 11 Benghazi attack was that she happened to be the one who was sent out on television that fateful Sunday in September to state the talking points. As the Wall Street Journal has reported, and as I’ve passed along to you previously, she said what she was told that morning to say, and intelligence was being revised toward a conclusion that the attack was a terrorist act at the very moment that she was on the air.
McCain knows all this. He just wants a scalp, he and Lindsey Graham, over the whole Benghazi thing. And he wants to show he’s relevant. The two of them are trying to make do with Kelly Ayotte now in the old Joe Lieberman role, but they’ve lost their bipartisan cover, which takes their whining and wailing down one notch on the legitmacy big board, and even the new independent coming into the Senate, Angus King, said yesterday that he thought McCain was out of line in his attack on Rice.
Now let’s bring in another Rice, Condi. Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post had the great idea today of comparing how McCain is conducting hmself now vs. what he said when Condi was up for secretary of state in 2005:
[Condi Rice] was confirmed by a vote of 85 to 13, which were the most negative votes cast for a secretary of state in 180 years. (One of those “no” votes was from John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, who is vying with Susan Rice to be the nation’s top diplomat.)
Ironically, the key issue then was Condi Rice’s public use of intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq. Now McCain and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) are seizing on Susan Rice’s citing of initial intelligence about the Benghazi attack to disqualify her.
Here’s what Condi Rice said on a Sunday television show in 2002, “We know that he [Saddam Hussein] has the infrastructure, nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon. The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
No weapons of mass destruction, let alone nuclear weapons, were ever found.
But in 2005, McCain and Graham fiercely defended Condi Rice from Democratic attacks of “lying,” arguing she had been misled by intelligence. “I can only conclude we’re doing this for no other reason than because of lingering bitterness at the outcome of the elections,” McCain complained when Condi Rice’s nomination came to a vote.
Amazing. The man needs an intervention. Isn’t there anyone who loves him who can tell him what he’s doing to what remains of his reputation?
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, November 15, 2012
“Lingering Bitterness”: The McCain-Graham Blisteringly Stupid And Painfully Dishonest Arguments
As a top official in the Bush/Cheney administration, Condoleezza Rice said wildly untrue things about Iraq to the American people. Soon after, she received bipartisan support to become Secretary of State.
As a top official in the Obama/Biden administration, Susan Rice said entirely credible things about Benghazi based on the collective judgment of the intelligence community. Soon after, Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham launched a smear campaign against Rice to prevent her from becoming Secretary of State.
Zeke Miller highlights the disconnect from Graham…
[I]n 2005, Graham was fiercely protective of Rice as she faced confirmation to take over the State Department, chaffing at terms used by Democratic lawmakers to describe her testimony. “The words like ‘misleading’ and ‘disingenuous,’ I think, were very unfair,” Graham said on Fox News.
Asked if then-Sen. Mark Dayton’s use of the word “liar” was justified, Graham pounced. “Yes, that’s even more unfair. Because it was all in terms of weapons of mass destruction and misleading us about the war and what was in Iraq. Well, every intelligence agency in the world was misled. And to connect those two to say that she’s a liar is very unfair, over the line.”
…and from McCain.
“So I wonder why we are starting this new Congress with a protracted debate about a foregone conclusion,” he said [in 2005], adding that Rice is qualified for the job. “I can only conclude that we are doing this for no other reason than because of lingering bitterness over the outcome of the election.”
When Condoleezza Rice lied about WMD, McCain said she had unquestionable “integrity.” When Susan Rice told the truth about Benghazi, McCain said she’s guilty of “not being very bright.” The former received McCain’s support; the latter received McCain’s contempt.
It’s troublesome when partisan hacks launch smear campaigns against public officials who don’t deserve it, but it’s especially offensive when partisan hacks launch lazy smear campaigns based on blisteringly stupid, painfully dishonest arguments.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, November 14, 2012
“Let’s Bomb Syria”: The Three Amigos Of Death Make The One Suggestion They Always Make
The three amigos of death are back with a hot new Washington Post joint editorial, and you’ll never guess what they’re recommending this time! (War.)
Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., are three of the most respected foreign policy experts in all of Washington. They became three of the most respected foreign policy experts in Washington by following a simple, one-step plan: Always demand more war, everywhere.
This time, they would like us to intervene in the deadly civil war raging in Syria, where rebels are fighting the forces of brutal strongman Bashar al-Assad. The administration is in favor of the removal of Assad, and has offered the rebels non-military assistance, but it has been reluctant to actually send arms or troops. McCain, Graham and Lieberman would obviously like to change all that. It is time for “active involvement on the ground in Syria,” you see, and “we can and should directly and openly provide robust assistance to the armed opposition, including weapons, intelligence and training.” That’s well and good, but isn’t something missing?
Ah, wait, there it is, in the second-to-last paragraph:
Second, since the rebels have increasingly established de facto safe zones in parts of Syria, the United States should work with our allies to reinforce those areas, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton suggested last week. This would not require any U.S. troops on the ground but could involve limited use of our airpower and other unique U.S. assets.
There you go. That means bombs! We definitely need bombs.
The best part of any McCain/Lieberman/Graham editorial is when they say “we know the risks of [MORE WAR EVERYWHERE]” and then they just never actually say what the risks are because they don’t actually ever care about the risks and downsides of military intervention:
We know there are risks associated with deepening our involvement in the profoundly complex and vicious conflict in Syria. But inaction carries even greater risks for the United States — in lives lost, strategic opportunities squandered and values compromised.
Maybe you agree with the liberal interventionist case for greater U.S. involvement in the fight, as argued by Anne-Marie Slaughter and others. Maybe you think in the wake of the failure of Kofi Annan’s mission, there’s a better case to be made for acting forcefully to remove Assad. Maybe your opinion has changed as the conditions have changed, like a responsible thinking person.
But with McCain, Graham and Lieberman, the actual facts on the ground, the details of this fight, don’t actually matter at all, because McCain, Graham and Lieberman were calling for bombs and arms five months ago — before Kofi Annan’s assignment even commenced — and they’re calling for bombs and arms now and they’ll keep calling for bombs and arms everywhere as long as there are still newspaper editorial sections and Sunday morning political chat shows. If they accidentally stumble upon the correct response to Syria, please stay tuned for when they turn their attention back to Iran! (And the Washington Post editorial page, which has never met an overseas military intervention it didn’t declare urgent with barely concealed glee, will be happy to print whatever they come up with.)
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, August 6, 2012
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