Yet A New Benghazi Investigation to Come in September

The U.S. Congress is on vacation for the next 5 weeks, and then they will come back in September for only 10 days of work, then another 5 weeks again in October going through the first week of November. It seems like all that the taxpayers do now-a-days is to fund their vacations, along with funding their do-nothing tactics in Congress, and they seem to get away with this every year. Why doesn't someone sue Congress for doing nothing, or to put it more bluntly, not doing the will of the people.
With so much to do, what do you think that the House Republicans plan to do in September? If you guessed Benghazi, you would be right. Never mind about the children on the border. Never mind tackling the issue of minimum wage or the millions of people that no longer have funds coming in because they lost their jobs because of no fault of their own. Never mind about the bridges scattered throughout the country that desperately need repair. Never mind about those serious issues affected the middle class on a daily basis, but it is OK to continuously poke at something that happened over 2 years ago, still trying to pin the blame on someone, after there has been committee after committee investigating the Benghazi affairs, and nothing of any consequences has been found to blame anyone.  Most likely President Obama will take some type of Executive measure while Congress is gone on vacation, because the Congress has crippled themselves by not acting to solve so many issues facing the country. Then this will give Republicans ammunition to then push for impeachment, which again would be another waste of time. In a sense, just talk about impeachment seems to fire up the Democratic base, something that hasn't happened with Democrats prior to a mid term election in a long time. This may be just what is needed to keep the Senate majority and maybe take back the House.  Impeachment would never pass in the Senate, and even if the Senate turns to a Republican majority in November, House Republicans starting with John Boehner claim that impeachment would be off the table. Do you think that the tea party followers, like Michelle Bachman and Ted Cruz would sit back and not force John Boehner to take up impeaching the President? Of course they would, as they have allot more say about what goes on in the House than the Speaker of the House has control of. Boehner has repeatedly shown that he is nothing more than a puppet of the extreme right wing tea party. It is like he is the Speaker of the tea party, instead of the Republican party.
Trey Gowdy, U.S. Republican Representative has been named the head of a "special House committee investigating the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi and plans to hold his first public hearing in September about changes the State Department has made to better protect diplomats," U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy said.
More witnesses than ever before will be the plan of the day. Most people are tired of hearing the same old story coming up time and time. Benghazi has been so burned out over the past few years since the attack that killed 4 diplomats. So far to date, there has been 7 separate Congressional probes investigating Benghazi.

The 7 committees that have already investigated the allegations by Republicans on Benghazi are as follows:

1) House Intelligence Committee
2) Senate Intelligence Committee
3) House Armed Services Committee
4) Senate Armed Services Committee
5) Senate Homeland Security Committee
6) House Oversight Committee
7) House Foreign Affairs Committee

There has even been one more if you were to count the State Department Independent Accountability Review Board.

Out of all of the committees findings, there has absolutely nothing that came out of any of the hearings, except a concern about protection at the Libyan Embassy. There has been nothing found to prove that the Obama administration tried to cover anything up or screwing up anything in some fairly obvious way concerning Bengahzi,  as there just is absolutely no evidence of ANY wrong-doing.

Because of this, people now are asking why still another hearing. After two years of investigation, now the House Intelligence Committee again has found no apparent wrong doing by the Obama administration. The Intelligence Committee report "confirms that no one was deliberately mislead, no military assets were withheld and no stand-down order (to U.S. Forces) was given." According to Rep. Mike Thompson of St. Helena.

Since all these findings, the Democrats and Republicans in the House Intelligence Committee have voted unanimously to declassify and release the latest report. This hasn't been the first time that a Republican backed committee has found nothing about Benghazi, but the Republicans are bent is spending an additional 3.3 million dollars to investigate the Benghazi attack once again. This will be done when the House Republicans come back from vacation in September.

It is now obvious why the Republicans plan to conduct these hearings in September. Since the committee will only be assembled for a few days in September before going back on vacation, it is just another stall tactic for the Republicans not to have time to do anything else, like pass legislation like immigration. The Republicans know full well that the U.S. Senate will not address the bill that the House just most recently passed because it is so radical and so far to the right that many main stream Republicans really don't support it. The bill is a product of tea party members that are trying to forge their own agenda in the Republican party.

The conspiracy theories keep coming, and one must wonder when it will be enough to actually put Benghazi to bed. Most likely, this will not happen until the mid-term elections in November. At that point in time, all you will hear about is impeaching President Obama.

Yes, the 'do-nothing' Congress will live up to its name most likely at least until the Presidential elections in 2016. At that time, it is my belief that the Republican party or the tea party will get disbanded, as an internal war on the Republican side will take place, and just maybe the right wing party will gain some legitimacy. But unfortunately for them, until they can win over minorities and the middle class, it will be a long time before they can get another Republican President put in the White House. Before this is all over, I highly expect that Congress will once again be Democratically led in both the Senate and the House, with another Democratic President. Will the citizens of America be willing to allow what just happened with Congress be allowed to happen again? When will the Republicans wake up and realize that until they support middle-class families of all races, not just whites, that their agenda will not have any place in American society.

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President Obama Full Press Conference – 8/1/14

Prior to the House of Representatives successfully ramming new bills through their own body, the President spoke openly for 40 minutes, to include an already foregone conclusion that whatever the House Republicans were trying to pass, it would be too little, too late, as the U.S. Senate had already left for their summer recess. Because of the House Republican obstructionism and their lack of leadership to pass bills in their own caucus, the President highlighted that he most likely will have no choice with acting on their in-action regarding the people crossing the Southern border, mainly into South Texas.

 The highlighted points of his speech which can be watched immediately below the highlighted points in his speech are as follows:

 1) The economy created over 200,000 new jobs in July after creating 300,000 new jobs in the prior month of June, a streak that has been happening for at least 6 months in a row. A total of 9.9 million new jobs have been created during the past 53 months. According to the President, it is the largest streak of job creation in U.S. history.

2) The President highlighted on what he believes that Congress seems to throttle down that would help the economy, but has failed to do so, that includes:

    a) Rebuilding the U.S. infrastructure in ways that are sustained over many years.
    b) Advocating to raise the minimum wage
    c) Making it easier for people to pay off their student loans
 
Bills associated to what has been mentioned above has been blocked by members of Congress. It is the reason why President Obama is taking action on his own to help working families. All of these facts are stated in his video below.

3) Congress did pass legislation to strengthen the VA.

3) Congress decided to continue to fund transportation project for the next few months, but it is not the long term solution that the President is looking for. The Congress is not doing a thing in this regard to accellerate the economy by not providing funds to cover for the long term.

4) Things that affect middle class families are not getting done in Congress.

Examples:

    a) Child migrants on the border of Texas, as the Republicans passed the most extreme and unworkable bill that they already know that is going nowhere, even after they have been setting an a bi-partisan immigration bill for over a year. It is just a message bill that they can take back to their constituents when they go back home on vacation to show them that they are doing something and the President will do nothing.  Because the Congress will be out on vacation, the President says that he will have to make some tuff choices to meet the challenge. Immigration has not been addressed.

  b) A student loan bill where people have debt that could be re-financed at lower rates did not pass.

  c) The transportation bill just gets the country through the spring instead of planning years in advance, according to the President.

  d) States and businesses are raising the minimum wage for their workers, because the U.S. Congress fails to act on the minimum wage bill already passed in the U.S. Senate. The Speaker of the House John Boehner will not even bring the bill to the floor. Why? Because he knows it will pass, and that is against his agenda while President Obama is in office, and that is to 'do-nothing' to give ANY credit to the President.

4) Approving career diplomats with bi-partisan support for posts throughout the world are not getting done, and for a brief time during the voting, the Republicans were trying to block the new ambassador to Russia, even in a time when the Ukraine has become a world issue involving President Putin of Russia, who has received some of the stiffest sanctions to his country since the cold war. The Congress is blocking ambassadors from serving in countries where we need  to have a presence there. It now involves over 40 diplomats waiting for confirmation, but the House just will not act.

5) Congress is still blocking the Ambassador to Sierra Leon where there is an EBOLA outbreak.

6) Congress is blocking the Ambassador to Guatemala as the Republicans demand that the U.S. do more in stopping unaccompanied children from Guatemala.

The President wants Congress to focus on people's concerns, and they are just not doing that in Congress at this time. The economy could be allot better and the country could be much further along if Congress would just do their job, which is to create and pass laws, not to stop them from being created.

7) The President claims that he will not stop trying to help middle class families, and will continue his fight with Congress when they get back from their vacation. Broad agreement must be made in key areas of issue between both the Democrats and Republicans need to take hold. The President mentions this and and also claims that Congress is standing in the way of our country's success.

The President's comments didn't originally include the problem in the middle east, but reporters were sure to immediately bring the topic up in the first question after his prepared speech.

1) The President says that he condemns Hamas, the Palestinian factions responsible for killing even right after a stated cease-fire was announced. Another soldier was abducted, but most likely would be killed.

2) The President says that Israel has the right to defend itself, including the right to destroy tunnels being built under their land for use in terrorist attacks.

3) The President continues to support Israel in what is known as 'the Iron Dome Program', which is a missile system designed to intercept rockets being fired by Hamas into Israel before they hit their targets.

4) The President stated that at the same time that innocent civilians in Gaza that get caught in the cross-fire coming from Israel needed to be protected.

    a) A cease-fire was the first way that killings of innocent civilians could be at least temporarily stopped so that both sides could step back and try to resolve some issues diplomatically without further bloodshed.
It was a 72-hour cease fire that Israel committed to, but was violated in less than an hour into the cease fire by Hamas.

    b) The President gave John Kerry credit for his persistence and for enduring unfair criticizm by the people in Israel. John Kerry will be continually committed in this objective to aim for peace in the region, according to the President.

    c) The President wants to see everything that is possible that can be done so that Palestinians would not be killed.

The President says that a dilemma exists.

  1) Israel has the right to defend itself, and to go after the rockets and destroy the tunnel network.
   2) On the other hand, because of the incredibly irresponsible reactions of Hamas to include rocket launchers located right in the middle of civilian neighborhoods, innocent Palestinians are getting hurt.
   3) The President has been pushing hard for a cease fire because of the innocent civilians that have been either maimed or killed during the Israel attacks.

The second question was regarding the U.S influence in the world, or the loss of it according the the reporter asking the second question.

    1) The President says that the people have forgotten that even America, the most powerful nation on earth still does not control everything around the world.  He claimed that diplomatic efforts take time. He claimed that diplomacy does not always include steps forward, but also will include steps backward that need to be re-addressed.   Proof of this has been the middle-east crisis, in Europe and Asia, which is the nature of world affairs.

   2) The President claims that we have delivered necessary sanctions to Russia,  actions that the U.S. said that it would do, now to include European Nations siding with the United States, especially now if  Russian President Putin continues to arm separatists with heavy armaments, as evidence shows were responsible for 300 innocent people dying on a Malaysian flight over Ukraine. The President claims that Russia continues to break international law and disregards the sovereignty of Ukraine.  The President has attacked Russian energy, Russian defense and their financial systems with the sanctions to date. Further sanctions are possible, but careful sanctions that would backfire onto Europe and the U.S. are weighed in the President's decision with sanctions he imposes to Russia.  Still, the President talked to President Putin prior to his speech and is willing to resolve issues with Russia diplomatically if Putin respects and honors the right of Ukraine to determine their own destiny.

Just because we cannot finalize solutions to issues between countries does not prove the fact that U.S. influence around the world is diminishing.

The President mentions the issues of Kosovo and Bosnia, that raged for some time but ultimately the problems there were resolved.

The third question concerned 'Executive Orders' and does the President take any blame for not reaching agreement with the Republican led House of Representatives.

   1) The President brings up immigration as a bi-partisan bill passed in the Senate cosponsored by Democrats and some very conservative Republicans to include labor, the Evangelical community to law enforcement. He claims that the real disagreement is between House Republicans and Senate Republicans and the House Republicans and the business community, the House Republicans and the Evangelical community. He claims that he is just one of the people that they seem to disagree with on this issue regarding immigration.

  2) Regarding the short term crisis involving the Rio Grande valley, the President claims that the Republican House states that Texas needs more resources, tougher border security in the area where unaccompanied children are showing up.   The President agreed, so the President offered a supplemental amount of funds needed to succeed in what the Republican House claims that the U.S. should be doing, and Congress could not pass the bill. The President claims that the Republicans cannot even pass their own version of the bill, even though after the statements of the President, the House did finally pass their own radical version of the bill, even though they know that it cannot pass in the Senate. The Senate now vows not to even take it up on the floor. So their bill, the Republican bill that the House spent during their so called first day of vacation, is dead on arrival in the Senate.  The President will not even see their bill to sign.

The President claims that he is taking Executive actions because of the failure of Congress to pass bills that the American people care about. Regarding the border supplemental, the President stated that he will have to act alone, because presently the U.S. does not have enough resources, as an example, the resources will have to be re-allocated in order to make sure that some of the basic functions that must take place are in force.
For example, the unaccompanied children need to be properly housed. Enough immigration judges need to be available to process their cases. So the President will now have to act alone. The President claimed that all that would have to be done for him not to act on Executive Orders is for Congress just to pass legislation, then there would be no need for such actions by the President.

The President claims that the Republicans cannot even act on what they say their priorities are. They will not compromise even with Senate Republicans on certain issues.

Again, all of these facts are reiterated in the speech by President Obama in his Press Conference on August 1, 2014.


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The Dysfunctional House of Representatives - polluting the U.S. Congress

Earlier in the week, the U.S. Congress spent a whole day in discussion and then a vote on suing the President of the United States regarding his so called 'misuse of Executive Power'.

Does this make sense? If you look at the facts, it does not make one bit of sense. The Congress has just about a 0% chance of successfully suing the President, but they decided that this was more important to pass than to actually work on the VA issues up before them and also about immigration and the border issue with thousands of children crossing into Texas. They wait until the last minute to do ANYTHING, and then when they act, it's too little and too late.

Ok, so NOW they have now voted and formally plan to sue the President?

Really?!?/!

So the next order of business came late in the day on Thursday, when the House of Representatives were supposed to introduce a bill to enhance security on the U.S. southern border. In a bill presented to the House by the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, before the bill actually reached the floor of the House on Thursday, he decided to scrap the bill because the House Speaker knew that he could not get his own Republican caucus in the House to vote in favor of his own bill.

What an embarrassment for the Speaker of the House. Actually, Boehner has become one glaring embarrassment to the Republican party, as a Speaker of the House of Representatives that cannot get his caucus to vote on literally ANYTHING worth while, or bills that would pass in his House of Representatives, but he elects to only push bills through for a vote that has Republican party interest, not Democratic interest, or the interest of the voters, especially the middle class.

Talk about a misuse of power, John Boehner is the one who should be sued by the U.S. taxpayers for misrepresentation of his office.  Then the Speaker turns around and formally initiates a lawsuit of President Obama, who is only reacting for the House of Representatives non-action, doing the will of the people and now has been formally told through this lawsuit that he is misusing his executive powers.

A Republican Senator of the U.S. Senate - Ted Cruz, convinced his tea party followers that they should not vote for John Boehner's bill. Michelle Bauchman agreed with Cruz in an effort to go against the Speaker of the House and now all of a sudden Boehner did not have enough Senators in his own Congressional body of the U.S. House of Representatives to vote in favor of his bill. This is direct proof that he has no control of his own party as Speaker of the House.

So in response, the House of Representatives elected to postpone their month long vacation in August, and stay through Friday to re-create a border bill in reckless fashion with much haste, and the new $694 million bill was born. It had NO Democratic support in the House. The vote was strictly on party lines. Does it have a chance to pass in the Senate? Of course not. It in itself is more radical than the bill that John Boehner originally introduced into the House of Representatives that they did not get the chance to vote on. Why? Because the tea party that controls the Republican party, led by junior Senator Ted Cruz gets to dictate now what he thinks is better. He's the same guy directly responsible for shutting down the U.S. government last year, with his over-reaching power to other Conservatives in the House of Representatives, which incidentally is not the body of Congress that he actually works in. His position resides in the U.S. Senate. So why then, does he pose so much power over the House of Representatives as a junior Senator in the U.S. Senate. Yes, it is mind-boggling, but the fact is, that the House of Representatives has no true leader.

So why waste time creating a bill that will not pass the Senate? Why take a day away from your very unearned vacation to work on a bill that will not pass the Senate, and as the President Stated in an earlier national address, even if the Senate would pass the bill, he (President Obama) would veto it?

Does this sound like government is working? It sounds kind of dysfunctional to me.

The answer to the questions are simple. Now that they are going on a vacation for a month, and most all are planning to go home to try and convince their own followers of their party that they are doing something in Washington, and that the reasons why things are not happening in Washington are because of President Obama, or the U.S. Senate failures. Does that make any sense? It does if you understand that the U.S House of Representatives only motive until President Obama leaves office is to refuse to do any work or pass any bills in Congress until Obama leaves office. So it must be the President's fault for being President for a second term! Right? The Republicans apparently are second guessing the American People, saying that they were wrong for electing Obama for a second term. Even if that were true, who did they have to oppose him, Mitt Romney! Right!!!!

But what the Republicans are doing here will backfire. Yes, they passed a border security bill, but will ANYONE benefit by it? Of course not, especially the people who came across the southern border and many will continue to stay. Eventually if any of these people become U.S. Citizens, will they vote for the party who wanted to deport them? Of course not? Republicans must open their eyes and observe that this is not only a 'white race' country anymore, and really never was, and that unless they support issues affecting the minority and middle class, they will never again elect a Republican president.  Instead of directly addressing the issues when they had time before their summer break, the only thing they concentrated on was suing the President. So what will happen now? What will continue to happen is that an average of 400-500 immigrants will cross the southern border each day during the Congress's absence, and then the Congress expects the President of the United States to just wait for them to perform more inaction when they come back because they will turn right around and go on another undeserved vacation. There could be an upwards of 15,000 more people crossing the border by the time they come back instead of really addressing the issue when they had the time to do so, instead of trying to sue the President.

Because of their in-actions, the President most surely will come up with another Executive Order. This time, the undocumented aliens, the mothers and children will gain the rights to permanently stay in the U.S., especially if the child has a relative in the United States who is a U.S. Citizen or a legal alien. That is the most popular guess, and I also believe this to be right. It may not be accurate, but you can surely bet that the Republicans will act strongly against whatever action the President takes, especially if he acts favorably on the children at the border, and does not consider the House bill. Of course, he doesn't have to consider it formally at this time, because it must get through the U.S. Senate first, and that is not going to happen. Even if it did get passed in the U.S. Senate, the President would VETO it.

It is like the Republicans who know what is about to happen with this Executive order to come, is now coaxing the President to perform an executive action. What? First, they say that the President is over-riding his power in Executive actions, but now want him to perform an Executive action.  Actually, the Speaker of the House, the one who initiated the suit to sue the President of the United States now even made a formal public announcement that he encouraged the President to perform the action. What would this action lead to? Of course, most on both sides of the isle would say would lead to impeachment hearings. But again, the Republicans will fail, as the Senate would never impeach President Obama. It happened to our last Democratic President, Bill Clinton, and it surely will happen again if it were up to the Republicans. Of course, President Clinton stayed and was not evicted from the White House, and neither will President Obama, regardless of what he does on immigration on the border when the Congress is out of Session.

Now is that Hippocratic or what? John Boehner is nothing short of an child, who is performing at the level of the worst Speaker of the House of Representatives ever known to Congress of either party for that matter. He has become the puppet of the tea party, and cannot stand on his own. He can only do things that the far right, the tea party caucus want. The regular Republican establishment has no say so on their own any more, at least not at the moment. It will be interesting to see what is going to happen with the Republican party, and the tea party for that matter if and when the House goes Democratic this fall, or if another Democrat is elected as President to succeed President Obama in 2016. One or the other will become extinct.

Now for the second order of business for what was supposed to be their first day of vacation in August. There was another bill that would speed up child deportations. Presently, only Mexican and Canadian nationalists can be immediately deported. Thanks to President George W. Bush, he passed a law that stated that Latin countries did not fit in this group of 'immediate export' aliens. So now the Republicans are passing a bill the the House of Representatives that even go against what George W. Bush signed when he was in office. The House then votes 216-192 to scale back Pres. Obama's 'Dreamers' program.  Does this have a chance to reach President Obama's desk..  Not a chance! EVER. Even if it did, the President would VETO it!

So if laws cannot get passed in Congress, it is a forgone conclusion that the Congress is very Dysfunctional, yet the country must go on, and in some cases, without them and with the help of Executive Orders by the President of the United States.

So what else did they vote on at the last minute. A bill for the VA? My goodness! They are working so hard on their first day of vacation. Actually, what they have done when they were supposed to be doing when they were not scheduled on vacation, absolutely nothing is what their own constituents will tell them when they actually go home for vacation. But when they get home, I expect those Republican Senators to receive a wake up call, one that they received after President Bush was re-elected, and that was to go out and help the middle-class in their issues, to welcome immigrants to this country, and ESPECIALLY do not condemn innocent women and children at our southern border trying to flee persecution from their own country.

What the Republicans have successfully done is energize the Democratic base, and I can now foresee a record turnout of Democratic voters in November, and a good chance that the House of Representatives will go Democratic. At that time, if the Democrats keep the U.S. Senate, President Obama most likely will have free rein on passing bills that he could not get passed with the 'do nothing' Republican House. He will no longer be considered a 'lame-duck' President.

Then who knows. If Hilary Clinton becomes President in 2016, and if the House and Senate stay controlled by the Democrats, many more things will get done, one of them being to tame the Republican caucus and get rid of the tea party, as the tea party has been absolutely poison to the Republican cause, under the internship of Ted Cruz, who at the moment has more influence as a new Senator than John Boehner ever had with all of his experience and years in office in Washington. If and only if the Congress is led by Democrats will you see the middle class re-gain the stature it deserves as citizen's of the United States.

Now check this out...  Here is an immigrant, Ted Cruz from Canada, who has voted against bills that would directly affect him if he were trying to enter this country now, instead of in his past. Most recently, he had to renounce his Canadian citizenship, as for whatever reason he had discovered that he may have dual-citizenship, and of course unless you are a citizen of another country, then you cannot run for office as President of the United States, and most everyone knows he plans to run for President, where he will further damage the cause of the Republican party and others to oppose him to become the Republican nominee for President in 2016.

Yes, dysfunction is the name of the game for the ALL Republicans in Congress who happen to be destroying their own cause as Republicans.

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