From last night’s 60 Minutes:
If you’re more offended by Romney saying “47%” than Obama saying our murdered ambassador is a “bump in the road,” #YouMightBeALiberal.
Yeah, those guys “bumped up” against Chris Stevens and the three other Americans who were trying to protect him, didn’t they? It was, as PBS’s Gwen Ifill phrased it, a “dust-up.” I wonder what will need to happen before this whole thing is upgraded to “kerfuffle”?
Take heart, though, America. Obama admits that he’s responsible for his actions as president… “to some degree.” Just don’t think that you get to decide the degree. He does. The buck stops here, “here” being a relative concept.
And if you have a problem with that, as Obama told Steve Kroft, he’s just going to “block out any noise that’s out there.”
Meanwhile, there’s a scandal brewing between two of my favorite organizations in the world, CNN and the State Department. Associated Press:
CNN reported on the personal journal of slain American ambassador Christopher Stevens over objections from his family, a State Department spokesman said Saturday.
The news channel, in a story posted online Saturday, said that it found a journal belonging to Stevens four days after he died in a Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Three other Americans also were killed.
CNN broke a pledge to the late ambassador’s family that it wouldn’t report on the diary, said State Department spokesman Philippe Reines, a senior adviser to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
In a blistering statement, Reines called CNN’s actions “indefensible.”
I’m torn on this. On the one hand, if CNN did make that promise to Stevens’ family, then they deserve criticism for breaking it. On the other hand, they helped expose the State Department’s lie that nobody had any idea an attack was coming. Stevens himself was worried about it, and we wouldn’t know that now unless CNN had done the “indefensible.”
Not to mention that, considering my own encounter with the State Department and the way they’ve handled it — lying and stonewalling — it’s nauseating to watch them pontificate about ethics. To them, I’m just another “bump in the road.” Literally.
Hey, didn’t they say they weren’t going to talk about Benghazi anymore? Oh wait, that’s right, they said they won’t answer questions:
Hot potato. Whenever somebody asks a government functionary about Benghazi, it’s passed off to another government functionary, who says, “No questions.” Jay Carney did the same thing to Jake Tapper last week. Tapper asked about Benghazi. Carney referred him to the State Department. The State Department isn’t answering questions about it. Problem solved!
Lying and stonewalling, instead of opening themselves up to the possibility of having to admit error. Just another day in the Most Transparent Administration Ever.
Update: Sacking of Benghazi consulate “a catastrophic intelligence loss.”
Update: Obama cancels election-season meeting with Egyptian Islamist Morsi. He’s passing up a chance to apologize for our free speech in person? Guess he figures it’ll be redundant after he does so in his speech to the UN tomorrow.