Representing “The O’Reilly Factor,” correspondent Jesse Watters attended the annual Sundance Film Festival to talk some politics and see if any celebrities would admit they are disappointed with President Barack Obama’s job performance.
Actress Marisa Tomei walked away when Watters asked her about Obama, saying “yuck” to the simple question. Meanwhile, actor Philip Seymour Hoffman “abruptly ended his smoke break” when he saw him approaching….
The Right Scoopquickly adds to the HULK confrontation:
Jesse Watters went to Sundance Film Festival and spoke to a few actors and actresses about Obama and politics. When he got to Mark Ruffalo, who played the Hulk in Avengers, he brought Benghazi up and this liberal buffoon had the audacity to blame Republicans for Benghazi because he said they cut funding for security – even though we know that is absolutely false based on congressional testimony. Which is why we call him a buffoon.
A while ago, Breitbart put up this exchange in Congress about this very issue:
The Daily Callermakes the point that i will follow up on with an example from the Bush days about veterans benefits:
…“Since gaining the majority in 2011, House Republicans have voted to reduce embassy security funding by approximately half a billion dollars below the amounts requested by the Obama Administration,” the memo reads. “Although the Senate has been able to restore a small portion of these funds, the final appropriations enacted by Congress in the previous two Fiscal Years have been far below the amounts requested by the Administration for embassy security, and far below the levels enacted in Fiscal Year 2010, the last year Democrats controlled the House.”
What Cummings and the Democratic Oversight Committee staff are referring to is the final fiscal year 2012 omnibus appropriations package that included $2.075 billion for the programs – $567.5 million less than the Obama administration’s request.
Cummings and the Democratic staff memo don’t mention that Democrats made those cuts into embassy security funding possible.
In testimony Wednesday before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Charlene Lamb, a deputy assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, was asked, “Was there any budget consideration and lack of budget which led you not to increase the number of people in the security force there?”
Lamb responded, “No, sir.”
Recall that Lamb is the person who denied requests from the top diplomatic security officer in Libya to retain a 16-man team of military personnel who had been protecting diplomats.
…the woman responding “no” in the video above, said “no”. A tactic used often in politics is to say somethig is “cut” that is merely a decrease IN ACTUAL increases in spending. From the Bush days we heard Democrats harping that Bush “cut” veterans benefits, when they have increased every year till then:
(Only in politics can an increase in a budget be considered a negative.) And this budget graph (below) likewise supports that the State Department got all the monies needed for their security, via Heritage (h/t, Publius1787):
….It is tempting to look for a scapegoat for the tragic events in Libya. However, if one exists, the overall budget for embassy security is not it. Funding for that purpose has risen sharply over the past decade. Moreover, the State Department has considerable latitude in allocating security funds based on current events and intelligence on possible threats. Why that latitude was not applied in Libya deserves further scrutiny.