Washington power couple Victoria Toensing and her husband Joseph diGenova are representing Benghazi witnesses who will testify next week at the House Oversight and Reform hearing.
Toensing has been claiming all week that access to her client was being inhibited by pressure from unidentified administration officials. On Fox News, Mr. diGenova claimed that the hurdles he faced amounted to a “cover-up” and that the Accountability Review Board had failed to interview key witnesses for its report.
However, a source at the State Department told the Washington Times that “the board already interviewed 100 witnesses, including all the CIA and State Department personnel involved in the defense of the diplomatic post and of the secret CIA base known as the annex a few miles away.”
Mrs. Toensing also told Fox News on Monday that she had been refused a clearance to represent a Benghazi whistleblower she said was a career Foreign Service officer.
The State Department replied Wednesday that it had not received any such requests for a security clearance.
That tale took another twist Thursday with department spokesman Patrick Ventrell accusing Mrs. Toensing of “lying.”
Since the State Department issued its denial, he said, Mrs. Toensing “has been in contact with us and is now going through the procedures to get a security clearance. But this individual was on TV repeatedly saying that they were being held back from getting a security clearance before they’d even picked up the phone to call us.”
“She was making false statements,” Mr. Ventrell added, “false statements are lying. … We had somebody who was on national television saying that we were blocking them from getting a security clearance, which was not true.”
For the third day in a row, Ms. Toensing declined to grant The Washington Times’ request for an interview.
But she did appear on Fox News, this morning to answer the charge that she’s been lying.
“The American people deserve integrity in government and they’re not getting that with this State Department,” Toensing began.
“Mr. Ventrell has been making up stuff about me all, week, and attacks my credibility”, she continued. ”Here’s what he does, he made up a statement and says I said it, when I never said it and because the statement is false, he says I’m lying.”
Ah- the classic strawman technique so favored by the president.
Toensing demanded that Sec. of State John Kerry apologize for Ventrell’s aspersions.
In keeping with how the Obama administration usually handles these types of sticky situations, blame has been shifted, and no disciplinary action has been recommended…
WASHINGTON (AP)– An independent panel charged with investigating the deadly Sept. 11 attack in Libya that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans has concluded that systematic management and leadership failures at the State Department led to “grossly” inadequate security at the mission in Benghazi.
“Systematic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department resulted in a Special Mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place,” the panel said.
The report singled out the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the Bureau of Near East Affairs for criticism, saying there appeared to be a lack of cooperation and confusion over protection at the mission in Benghazi, a city in Eastern Libya that was relatively lawless after the revolution that toppled Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi.
Despite those failures, the Accountability Review Board determined that no individual officials ignored or violated their duties and recommended no disciplinary action now. But it also said poor performance by senior managers should be grounds for disciplinary recommendations in the future.
***
…it confirmed that contrary to initial accounts, there was no protest outside the consulate and said responsibility for the incident rested entirely with the terrorists who attacked the mission. (Duh)
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The report also discounted speculation that officials in Washington had refused appeals for addition help after the attack had begun.
“The Board found no evidence of any undue delays in decision making or denial of support from Washington or from the military combatant commanders,” it said. To the contrary, the report said the evacuation of the dead and wounded 12 hours after the initial attack was due to “exceptional U.S. government coordination and military response” that helped save the lives of two seriously wounded Americans.
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The report also called on Congress to fully fund the State Department’s security initiatives, noting that budget constraints in the past had led some management officials to emphasize savings over security despite numerous requests from the Benghazi mission and embassy in Tripoli for enhanced protection.
“For many years the State Department has been engaged in a struggle to obtain the resources necessary to carry out its work with varying degrees of success,” it said. This has led to efficiencies but also “had the effect of conditioning a few State Department managers to favor restricting the use of resources as a general orientation.”
It said the number of Diplomatic Security staff in Benghazi before and on the day of the attack “was inadequate despite repeated requests … for additional staffing.”
“The solution requires a more serious and sustained commitment from Congress to support State Department needs, which, in total, constitute a small percentage of the full national budget and that spent for national security,” it said. “Congress must do its part to meet this challenge and provide necessary resources.”
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John Bolton, former Ambassador to the UN was on Fox News, Tuesday afternoon to discuss the imminent report with Bill Hemmer. He noted that the Board was appointed by the State Dept itself, in other words, the people who did the appointing, are the people whose decisions are being questioned. He said that their assertions might not necessarily withstand scrutiny.
Bolton suggested that Hillary avoided scrutiny for two months in order to wait until the report from the Accountability Review Board came out when she could tailor her testimony accordingly.
Here are the predictable answers to the questions Bolton claimed the Accountability Board should have been able to answer:
Q.Why did the State Dept reject continued requests for enhanced security before Sept. 11?
A. The Board found ”systematic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department and the “grossly inadequate security” was partially the fault of Congress for not fully funding State Dept. security initiatives.
Q. Could we have done more to protect our people during the attack?
A. The board found support from Washington during the attack to be “exceptional”.
Q. Who came up with this ridiculous story that the whole thing was provoked by the Mohammed video?
A. (This one’s a toughie.) “Contrary to initial accounts, there was no protest outside the consulate and said responsibility for the incident rested entirely with the terrorists who attacked the mission.”
Still no answer on who came up with the ridiculous story.
Congress will hold a hearing on Benghazi, this Thursday.
Fox News has learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. consulate and subsequent attack several hours later was denied by U.S. officials — who also told the CIA operators twice to “stand down” rather than help the ambassador’s team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.
Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to “stand down,” according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to “stand down.”
Although the State Department Accountability Review Board sent its findings and recommendations to Congress back in December, Rep. Darrell Issa and three other House committee chairmen are not satisfied. They’re requesting more information from the State Department about the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi.
Issa said, “Unfortunately, the (review board) did not address some important questions about the attacks in Benghazi, which we believe may contain crucial lessons learned for other U.S. facilities abroad to follow.”
Issa, Edward Royce and Jason Chaffetz co-wrote a letter Tuesday to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that asks for the State Department to provide emails, cables and memorandums sent or received by her and several others that pertain to security in Benghazi, a complete list of every individual interviewed by a special review board and video footage of the attack by Feb. 11.
Issa, R-Vista, is the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Royce, R-Brea, chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Chaffetz, R-Utah, chairs the Oversight and Government Reform’s Subcommittee on National Security.
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The letter states the board failed to interview several senior officials at the State Department, including Clinton, and calls it a critical omission of the facts leading up to the attack. The letter also questions why a security support team was withdrawn from Libya.
On NBC’s Meet Meet the PressSunday, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa announced that the Committee will formally ask the Benghazi Accountability Review Board co-chairs, Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Admiral Mike Mullen, to submit to bipartisan depositions with Committee investigators. The Oversight and Reform Committee is interested in hearing the co-chairs’ response to assertions made by career State Department officials that the ARB report and process was flawed and let senior officials off the hook.
Before the House Benghazi hearing, last Wednesday,Joseph Di Genova, who is representing State Dept. Whistleblower, Mark Thompson declared that the hearing would indicate that the Accountability Review Board conducted by General Pickering and Admiral Mullen would prove to have been a cover-up- “one of the worst jobs ever done in the history of governmental reporting” partly because they didn’t bother to interview the Sec. of State for their report.
After today’s interview, Ambassador Pickering told Chairman Issa that both he and Admiral Mullen would accept the invitation.
“There are three distinct areas that haven’t been answered. First of all, a full understanding of why urgent requests repeatedly for more security before the attacks were denied. We’ve had statements that it wasn’t about money, but at the same time, people are asking for more security – they got less. The British ambassador has two assassination attempts and yet we keep a facility that was not able to withstand even a few minutes of attack. Then, those seven hours while the attack was going on: Was the response correct? Could it have been better? Why wasn’t – why weren’t things at least tried or revved up to be tried? Those are important questions. And then afterwards, how could you change talking points twelve times from what seems to be relatively right to what seems to be completely wrong.”
Issa on Next Step in Investigation:
“On Monday, I’ll be sending Ambassador Pickering a request for a deposition. We’re going to want to go through at length how the ARB reached its conclusions, who it interviewed, and why we believe there are shortcomings .. We have one witness who says I wanted to be interviewed and I wasn’t. One of the questions that came out of our hearing, Gregory Hicks – the acting ambassador – has not been allowed to look at the classified ARB report even though he is the foremost authority on at least what was happening in Tripoli and what the communication was.”
[After the interview, Ambassador Pickering told Chairman Issa that both he and Admiral Mullen would accept the invitation.]
Pickering Declines to Defend White House on Dishonest Account of Events:
David Gregory: “The Press Secretary to the President, Jay Carney, said back in November … this is what he said:”
Carney (video): “The White House and State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of these two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because consulate was inaccurate. Those talking points originated from the intelligence community, they reflected the IC’s best assessments of what they thought had happened.”
Gregory: “We know that’s not accurate. We know that, in fact, the State Department, Victoria Nuland was involved in removing from the talking points previous warnings about security and references to a terrorist group – an extremist group – being involved in the attack based on what was being reported on the ground and by intelligence. Is the Administration guilty of playing politics with terrorism?”
Pickering: “With full respect, the Accountability Review Board was there to look at the question of security. We did not examine talking points after the fact. It was not in our remit.”
If you were a journalist reporting on Benghazi whistleblower Gregory Hicks, wouldn’t you find it interesting that he was a Democrat who voted for Barack Obama twice?
Someone at NBC News didn’t according to Hicks’s attorney Victoria Toensing who disclosed the spike job to NewsMax host Steve Malzberg on WMAL radio Saturday
VICTORIA TOENSING: By the way, Mr. Hicks is a Democrat. He voted for Hillary – I’ve yet to announce this – he voted for Hillary in the primary and Obama twice. You know what? NBC spiked the story where I told it before the hearings. It’s just amazing what the press is still trying to do to cover this up
I’m sure Petraeus is fuming after Carney threw him under he bus on Friday.ABC Report: Petraeus’ Reaction To Revised Benghazi TPs: “I Would Just As Soon Not Use Them” (May 12, 2013)
Lady Macbeth may have been one of literature’s most famous villains, but at least she had the guilty conscience to eventually try and wash the blood off her hands.It is doubtful that Hillary Rodham Clinton will start hallucinating bloody spots on her palms during the book tour for her upcoming 14-million-dollar tome or compulsively washing her hands during the 2016 campaign.
If she does make it into the White House, it is even more doubtful that she will wander it in a nightgown crying out for the blood that can never be washed away. Real life villains are more likely to ask what difference it makes; the solipsistic query of the sociopath to whom the feelings of others are abstract things.
“The order to actually engage troops in a rescue operation has to come from the president unless it’s a military facility and then the commander has certain authorities. But it has to come from the president to put troops in harm’s way. Now, in that case, because we don’t know enough of the details, that could have come from the commander from the Africa command who told them to stand down. But play that all the way out, who told him not to allow them to… You are under attack, we are going to be there. That was the whole point of it. And so to say that we didn’t know enough, I don’t buy that. I think that is incredible and I think someone needs to be taken to task over it.”
White House spokesman Jay Carney cautioned that he could not immediately respond to live testimony from the committee but went on to say that the administration remained unsure of the identity and affiliations of the attackers, noting that Ansar al-Sharia had taken credit for it on Twitter but then later recanted.
“What I can tell you is that it was the assessment of our intelligence community that the attacks were participated in by extremists,” he told reporters at a regular daily briefing. “That’s what I’ve said. That’s what Ambassador Rice said. She said on that Sunday that extremists were involved. What we didn’t know is what their exact affiliation was.”
“As you know, with regard to this group, there was a claim of responsibility, then there was a disowning of responsibility. So anybody who pretends to have known all the facts instantly is just mistaken,” he continued. “And it is always the case that things like this require careful investigation.”
Of course, that didn’t stop Jay, or his boss, or Hillary from making some very definitive statements about Benghazi for days and weeks after the attack.
On September 14, Jake Tapper asked Carney if the anniversary of September 11 might have been a good time to have extra security around diplomat and military posts.
After assuring us that they are always very vigilant on anniversaries like 9/11 (no they’re not), Jay said, but “let’s be clear….these protests were in reaction to a VIDEO that had spread to the region….”
Jake: “In Benghazi?”
Jay: “We don’t know otherwise. We have no information to suggest that it was a preplanned attack.” (Yes they had) ”The unrest we’ve seen around the region has been in reaction to a video that many Muslims find offensive, and while the violence is reprehensible and unjustified it is not a reaction to 9/11 or US policy.”
More Jay from Sept. 14 repeating the youtube video drumbeat, “the unrest in the region has been in response to this video”. …”the cause of the unrest was a video…”
Reading from his script, he said “We reject its contents, we find it both disgusting and reprehensible/ America has a history of religious tolerance and has respect for religious beliefs, and that respect goes back to our nation’s founding.”
Jay Carney on Sept. 19, argued that they didn’t have evidence that it was a pre-planned attack. “Bad actors” had come on the scene of a protest armed with RPGs and mortars. “We prefer to have an investigation…”
The reporter, clearly not buying it, said, “so a random crowd that had come together with their heavy weapons – got insulted by the film, and decided to – you know – blow up…”
Carney doubled down with, “there has certainly been precedent in the past where bad actors - extremists who are heavily armed who have exploited situations that have developed in order to attack Americans…”
This is the 19th of September now, mind you, and he’s refusing to admit the obvious because that would reflect badly on the regime.
Jay Carney October 10, 2012: Benghazi Terror Attack: Jake Tapper Presses Jay Carney on WH Misstatements on Consulate Attack:
Note how everything that they knew the night of the attack was “still under investigation”. Note also how much faith Carney was putting into the Regime’s ringer “Accountability Review Board” that was looking into the attacks.
“Given the fact, that so much was made of the video, that apparently had absolutely nothing to do with Benghazi, there wasn’t even a protest, didn’t President Obama shoot from the hip?” Jake Tapper asked.
Carney responded that it was a moving picture, and some people were trying to politicize a situation that shouldn’t be politicized.
“There was a lot of talk about the video….” Jake persisted.
On November 9, 2012, Jake Tapper asked White House Press Secretary Jay Carney if and when the White House is going to put out a detailed “tick-tock” surrounding its response to the Benghazi attacks.
Note, Jake asked a specific question about Obama’s actions and whereabouts on 9/11 and Carney launches into a long, defensive answer about “the investigation” that was taking place.
Carney fell back on the Regime’s boilerplate: “Nobody is more interested than the president in making sure the facts are collected, we find out exactly what happened, that we bring to justice those who killed 4 Americans and that we take measures to ensure that what happened in Benghazi does not happen again.”
“We’re never going to get a tick tock” complains one of the reporters.
“That’s not at all what I said”, Carney huffed.
Dec. 20, Carney Gets Testy Over Benghazi Questions:
Here, Carney took a question from Fox News’ Ed Henry, and got huffy at the idea that anyone higher up than a few low level State Department flacks should be held responsible. “What are you suggesting, Ed, Carney demanded, the disgust and contempt dripping from his voice. Based on the holy Gospel according to the ACB report, some reporting turned out to be wrong, Carney sneered, clearly alluding to Fox News.
As Keith Koffler noted at White House Dossier, yesterday “there is no mention in the report of the what Clinton or Obama did related to Benghazi.”
In fact, Obama isn’t mentioned at all in the document, and Clinton only once – in the context of her appointing the Review Board. There is no suggestion that Clinton or Obama were interviewed or even examined by the investigation.
What’s more, Accountability Review Boards are part of statutory State Department process that is not legally permitted to investigate the president.
It’s not even clear that an Accountability Review Board is permitted to probe the Secretary of State. The purview of a Review Board covers “employees” of the State Department who could be subject to discipline by the Secretary of State, who presumably would not be tasked to discipline herself.
Yet Carney Wednesday suggested the Review Board report exculpated Clinton.
From the briefing:
Q So the White House is confident that Hillary Clinton acted appropriately throughout this process?
MR. CARNEY: We are. And I think I would point you to the Accountability Review Board and what –
Q Which didn’t –
MR. CARNEY: I think I would point you to the report the put out. I would point you to what the two heads of that board, Ambassador Pickering and Admiral Mullen — each highly praised by both sides of the aisle for their long, distinguished careers — put out in a statement this week: “From the beginning of the ARB process, we had unfettered access to everyone and everything, including all of the documentation we needed. Our marching orders were to get to the bottom of what happened, and that is what we did.”
Again, this is an unsparing report done by two career professionals, nonpartisan career professionals, that contain within it very serious recommendations, found shortcomings that needed to be corrected, and the State Department acted immediately on that.
Apparently that answer satisfied the reporters in the room. Koffler reports there was no follow up question.
Senator Lindsey Graham spoke with Greta Van Susteren of Fox News, last night about Benghazi and the importance of finding out the truth about what happened there. Graham said there should be bipartisan support for finding out what happened to these brave people, and why the story told by Washington was so wrong.
MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell interviewed Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) about tomorrow’s Benghazi hearing.
She pushed the Accountability Review Boards version of events in Benghazi, on Sept. 11, 2012 but Chaffetz countered, ”the ARB report is really questionable”.
“Do you want to call Pickering and Mullen and others involved in that process and ask them why they didn’t pursue those leads?” Mitchell asked
Chaffetz answered that they have invited them to “chat” since the ARB was released.
“They’ve refused every outreach we’ve made to chat with them – sit around a table, ask and pepper them with questions, they just refuse to do it. We’d do it in a bipartisan way – they just refuse to do it,” he said.
Chairman of the Oversight and Reform Committee, Darrell Issa was a guest on Megyn Kelly’s Fox Show, this afternoon…
Chairman Issa takes to Fox News to discuss the expected testimony of three State Department whistle-blowers who will be testifying at Wednesdays Oversight hearing.
Yet in the 10:00 p.m. hour Washington, D.C. time on Sept. 11, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a written “Statement on the Attack in Benghazi” that said: “Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious belief of others.”
That statement–which also said that an unnamed State Department officer (later revealed to be Information Management Officer Sean Smith) had been killed–was released while what was in fact a series of terrorist attacks was still unfolding in Benhazi. In the course those attacks, which lasted more than seven and a half hours, four Americans were killed, including Smith and Amb. Chris Stevens (who died at the U.S. State Department’s mission) and Woods and Doherty (who died at the CIA Annex).
At Monday’s briefing, CNSNews.com asked: “That statement was put out before former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods died in Benghazi. Who specifically told Hillary Clinton that there were some people blaming this on inflammatory response to–inflammatory material on the internet? Where did she get that idea at 10 p.m. on September 11th?”
Ventrell responded: “Look, these are issues that have been looked at in great detail, that have been answered in great detail to the Congress, to the American people, and you’re asking about something that is many months prior. And we’ve been very clear, and the ARB has looked at all of these issues and done so in great detail.”
The dam seems to be breaking on the nearly eight-month-long cover-up concerning the deadly jihadist attack on Americans and their facilities in Benghazi, Libya.
Here are some reasons to believe the moment of truth — or, more accurately, the moment for truth — is finally arriving: The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is scheduled to hold a potentially explosive hearing Wednesday. The Weekly Standard has obtained an official timeline showing White House and State Department skullduggery with respect to the administration’s very first briefing to Congress that suggests a deliberate effort to mislead the public and its elected representatives.
In addition, there are now indications that despite reported intimidation by the Obama administration — long-silenced witnesses are determined to reveal what they know. At the instigation of Rep. Frank R. Wolf, Virginia Republican, and with encouragement from more than 700 special operations veterans and family members of those lost in Benghazi, some 135 legislators in the House of Representatives and three U.S. senators are calling for a special investigatory committee. (To join the appeal for such a select committee with full subpoena powers, visit EndtheCoverup.com.)
To be sure, Team Obama seems as determined as ever to defy efforts to ferret out the truth about Benghazi. In this, they have been aided by the failure of Congress to date to mount a single, concerted investigation of what led up to, happened during and took place after the attack.
Well, that depends. Does she want to be President of the United States?
Quite a lot of news about Benghazi today. First, Vince Coglianese reports:
As the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya raged on for more than seven hours, a team of U.S. special forces in Tripoli was blocked from flying in to attempt a rescue, according to a top American diplomat who was in the region.
In previously secret testimony given by Gregory Hicks — the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya — to congressional investigators last month, Hicks revealed two possible courses of action that could have saved American lives that night: allowing U.S. special forces to enter Benghazi and flying a fast-moving U.S. military aircraft over the scene of the attacks…
There’s “no question” someone from Hillary Clinton’s circle – if not the former secretary of state herself – was involved in the “cover-up” of any missteps by the administration following an attack on a U.S. consulate last Sept. 11 in Benghazi, Libya, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., told CBS News on Monday.
“If Hillary Clinton is not responsible for the before, during and after mistakes… it’s somebody close,” Issa told CBS News correspondent Nancy Cordes on Monday. “There certainly are plenty of people close to the former secretary who knew, and apparently were part of the problem.”
Ahead of a hearing on Benghazi in Issa’s committee this week, Fox News reportedthat Mark I. Thompson, the deputy coordinator for operations in the State Department’s counterterrorism bureau, will testify that Clinton attempted to cut out the bureau from communications about the attack. Such charges would likely cripple not only Clinton’s pristine record as secretary, but also the chance that she’ll decide to launch a presidential bid in 2016.
The fast-tracking of Nakoula’s jailing was highly irregular. Among other things, I’d like to see the Congressional investigators get Nakoula’s prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Dugdale — and perhaps his boss, U.S. Attorney André Birotte Jr. — under oath about communications from the White House or the Justice Department regarding this case.
Because what it’s looking like is that Nakoula was targeted and jailed so as to provide a scapegoat/villain in a politically motivated cover story that the White House knew was false. If that’s the case, it’s extremely serious indeed, and in some ways more significant than whatever lapses and screwups took place in Benghazi. I’d also be interested in hearing from Nakoula’s attorney, Steven Seiden, about any threats made by the government to secure a plea deal.
If there’s an impeachable offense anywhere in the Benghazi affair — and at this point, I’m not saying there is — it’s more likely in what happened with Nakoula than in the problems abroad, which by all appearances are simple incompetence, rather than something culpable. Railroading someone in to jail to support a political story, on the other hand, is an abuse of power and a breach of trust.
The answer isn’t as obvious as you might think. Or, rather, it’s exactly as obvious as you think, but the left will of course attempt to claim that any number of persons might have given this order and we’ll never know who they were so oh well let’s move on to something else.
We have known for a long time – and the MSM is going to have to finally reckon with the fact – that the “video” narrative was a fraud, a political construct to cover ass, protect campaign talking points, and misdirect accountability for the four deaths in Benghazi. The Susan Rice spectacle has been pounded on over and over, and rightfully so, but there’s one nuance that needs to be shoved repeatedly into Hilary Clinton’s face:
Hilary pushed the fraudulent video narrative while standing over the caskets of Ambassador Stevens and the other three murdered Americans.
The optics on this alone should haunt her for the rest of her sad, pathetic, cravenly political life. I’ve transcribed her comments, and also have a link to the full, unedited video of the memorial service below.
Clinton comments occur from 16:25-17:45
“This has been a difficult week for the State Department and for our country. We’ve seen the heavy assault on our post in Benghazi that took the lives of those brave men. We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful internet video that we had nothing do to with. It’s hard for the American people to make sense of that, because it is senseless, and it is totally unacceptable. The people of Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Tunisia, did not trade the tyranny of a dictator for the tyranny of a mob. Reasonable people and responsible leaders in these countries in these countries need to do everything they can to restore security and hold accountable those behind these violent acts. And we will, under the president’s leadership, keep taking steps to protect our personnel around the world.”
Hume, speaking on Tuesday’s broadcast of “America Live,” said there is no feasible way for her to escape any responsibility since she had to be involved in the crafting of the talking points that came out after the attack that resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including then-U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
“There’s really no way for her to escape responsibility for this if this testimony does what we all expect now that it will do,” Hume said. “Of course, over the years in Washington I’ve seen many a hype hearing fail to live up to expectations. But if it does live up, there’s no way I think she can escape this. I think she recognized from the start that this was trouble. I don’t think it was an accident that Susan Rice, the U.N. ambassador, who was kind of an unusual choice, was the person who went out on the Sunday shows to recite those talking points. I think then-Secretary Clinton knew that the talking points were shaky.”
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Ca) appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation, Sunday morning to talk about the upcoming hearing on Benghazi that will be held this Wednesday.
The Chairman of the Oversight and Reform Committee said the administration’s talking points on the Benghazi attacks were a “fatal error” because they were harmful to the FBI’s investigation after the attack. I agree with him on principle, but think that “error” is the wrong choice of words to use in this situation. The Regime knew exactly what it was doing when it was peddling the bogus talking points. They were in error, obviously, but it wasn’t an innocent mistake.
Issa called the State Department investigation “questionable” because although it met the statutory requirement to do an investigation, it didn’t answer any real questions or place blame on people who were involved with the failure.
In keeping with how the Obama administration usually handles these types of sticky situations, blame has been shifted, and no disciplinary action has been recommended…
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Here are the predictable answers to the questions Bolton claimed the Accountability Board should have been able to answer:
Q.Why did the State Dept reject continued requests for enhanced security before Sept. 11?
A. The Board found ”systematic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department and the “grossly inadequate security” was partially the fault of Congress for not fully funding State Dept. security initiatives.
Q. Could we have done more to protect our people during the attack?
A. The board found support from Washington during the attack to be “exceptional”.
Q. Who came up with this ridiculous story that the whole thing was provoked by the Mohammed video?
A. (This one’s a toughie.) “Contrary to initial accounts, there was no protest outside the consulate and said responsibility for the incident rested entirely with the terrorists who attacked the mission.”
Still no answer on who came up with the ridiculous story.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa today announced three witnesses who will appear at a full committee hearing, “Benghazi: Exposing Failure and Recognizing Courage,” on Wednesday, May 8, 2013, at 11:30 AM in 2154 Rayburn House Office Building.
“I applaud these individuals for answering our call to testify in front of the Committee. They have critical information about what occurred before, during, and after the Benghazi terrorist attacks that differs on key points from what Administration officials – including those on the Accountability Review Board – have portrayed,” said Issa. “Our committee has been contacted by numerous other individuals who have direct knowledge of the Benghazi terrorist attack, but are not yet prepared to testify. In many cases their principal reticence of appearing in public is their concern of retaliation at the hands of their respective employers. While we may yet add additional witnesses, this panel will certainly answer some questions and leave us with many new ones.”
Witnesses:
Mr. Mark Thompson
Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism
US Department of State
Mr. Gregory Hicks
Foreign Service Officer and former Deputy Chief of Mission/Chargé d’Affairs in Libya
US Department of State
Mr. Eric Nordstrom
Diplomatic Security Officer and former Regional Security Officer in Libya
US Department of State
In October 2012, the Oversight Committee held the first hearing on the Benghazi attacks, which exposed denials of security requests and forced the Administration to acknowledge that the attacks were not sparked by a protest of a YouTube video, contrary to claims made by Obama Administration officials.
*** NOTE: Press seating will be reserved, but limited. Please arrive early (hearing room will open to press at 10:30 AM) to guarantee a seat. An overflow area will be available. ***
Hicks is a veteran Foreign Service officer whose overseas postings have also included Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican and committee member, said Hicks was in Tripoli at 9:40 p.m. local time when he received one of Stevens’ earliest phone calls amid the crisis.
“We’re under attack! We’re under attack!” the ambassador reportedly shouted into his cell phone at Hicks.
Chaffetz, who subsequently debriefed Hicks, also said the deputy “immediately called into Washington to trigger all the mechanisms” for an inter-agency response.
“The real-life trauma that [Hicks] went through,” Chaffetz recalled to Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren, “I mean, I really felt it in his voice. It was hard to listen to. He’s gone through a lot, but he did a great job.”
Fox News talked to former UN Ambassador, John Bolton who said he was stunned at the stature of these whistleblowers. He said the hearing, next week could be very dramatic.
Congressman Trey Gowdy appeared on Fox News, this afternoon to talk about the new information that’s come out about Benghazi.
Noting that he is primarily concerned about the eye witnesses, he said, “it is sad that someone would have to cloak themselves in confidentiality for fear of reprisal, but that’s where we are…”
Responding to the Pentagon’s assessment that there was no way that military assets had time to get to Benghazi and stop the siege. Gowdy responded, “Here’s my question, Martha – How did they know they couldn’t have made it there? They had no way to know when it was going to end? They know when the attack started, but how in the world could they have possibly have known when it was going to end while it was going on?”
As for the Accountability Review Board’s findings, he said he could care less about the fact that the State Dept. cleared the State Dept…”It’s Congress’s job to provide the oversight.”
An issue he will be focusing on in the next hearings is whether Susan Rice’s ” intentionally misleading” videotape narrative effect our ability to investigate the crime scene in Benghazi.
There’s a big difference between being wrong, and being intentionally misleading, he said.
Early in the Iraq war, on April 7, 2003, ground forces ran into trouble on the North Baghdad Bridge. Enemy fighters had blocked the site, with allies advancing. A-10 fighter pilot and then-Capt. Kim Campbell was called in to provide air support. Campbell, call sign “Killer Chick,” deployed explosive rockets and scored a direct hit. But returning from that weapons pass, her A-10 sustained heavy damage. The jet rolled left, pointed toward the ground. Nothing Campbell did worked. She had lost all the jet’s hydraulics. At that point, Campbell flipped the jet into manual reversion—still with no steering, no brakes—regained control, flew the jet more than a 100 miles back to Kuwait, and became one of just a handful of people to land an A-10 manually. Lt. Col. Campbell was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross for her efforts.
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the media would use the tenth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War as an opportunity to try and cement the dishonest failure-narrative they crafted in 2004 to hand the presidency over to John F’n Kerry.
So why aren’t Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, et al. out in force pushing back?
Insurgents in Iraq left a bloody anniversary message on the day that marks the 10th anniversary of the Iraq war. Today was the deadliest day in Iraq this year. Almost two dozen bombings left at least 65 people dead and more than 200 wounded.
10 years ago tonight at 10:16 p.m. ET, President George W. Bush addressed the nation from the Oval Office. 1.5 million American troops have served in the war, 4,488 service members were killed, 32,221 service members were wounded, and more than 1,000 Iraqis died.
It has been over a year since U.S. troops left Iraq, but the country remains a bloody battlefield. Bret Baier reported that the death toll from today’s apparently coordinated bombings could still rise.
(CNSnews.com) – The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a $384,949 grant to Yale University for a study on “Sexual Conflict, Social Behavior and the Evolution of Waterfowl Genitalia”, according to the recovery.gov website.
Thank God this important work is still being done.
Dana Loesch this morning expressed disappointment that disgraced former Gov. Mark Sanford finished first in the South Carolina GOP congressional special-election primary. But it’s a runoff state, and Sanford only got 37 percent of the vote, while former Charleston City Councilman Curtis Bostic was second with 13 percent in the 16-candidate field. There are only two weeks until the April 1 runoff and, as National Review‘s Jim Geraghty notes, the Republican establishment seems to be lining up behind Sanford, so . . .
What about Curtis Bostic? His campaign page is StopSpending.com — a basic Tea Party theme — and it seems entirely possible that the grassroots, tired of the corrupt GOP establishment’s old-boy style of politics, could rally behind Bostic.
Moton sobbed as she recalled taking a cellphone photograph of one baby because he was bigger than any she had seen aborted before. She measured the fetus at nearly 30 weeks, and thought he could have survived, given his size and pinkish color. Gosnell later joked that the baby was so big he could have walked to the bus stop, she said.
He’s talking about killing babies the way hunters might talk about their biggest deer.
The teen’s grandmother had brought her to the clinic. But she didn’t want the abortion herself. That didn’t faze Gosnell, who strapped her to the operating table.
Etc. Ace says the media is reluctant to cover the Gosnell story because it’s so grim and it puts abortion in such a negative light. Another possible reason – - Gosnell is being tried for murdering babies born as the result of botched abortions – the type of babies Obama fought so hard to keep the state from protecting when he was a State Senator in Illinois.
As we know from past experience, those who earn that top spot don’t even have to do anything particularly controversial for the media to go on the attack. The mere act of eating, drinking, breathing, or looking over bills before they pass them, is enough to inspire a blizzard of media attacks.
Consider these recent headlines from Wonkette, Raw Story, Daily Kos, and others in the left-wing fever swamps:
“Hero Senator Ted Cruz Will Death Panel Everyone With M.S.”
Ted Cruz: Multiple sclerosis commemoration is part of a Democratic plot to ‘malign’ me
Politico, at least, posted Cruz’s side of the story, albeit under the false and misleading headline, “Cruz opposes MS resolution.”
“The Senator, like many of his colleagues, will not grant consent to call up and pass a resolution or bill at the last minute without time for review,” spokesman Sean Rushton said in a statement. “The Texans who sent him to Washington expect nothing less.”After the story was posted about Cruz’s opposition to the resolution, his office pushed back harder.
“Senator Cruz does not oppose the substance of the MS resolution, and he never did,” his spokesman said. “Unfortunately, the sponsors of this resolution circulated their request for unanimous consent less than 48 hours before they wanted it passed. A member of Sen. Cruz’s staff–who herself suffers from MS–asked for time to review the language, and to perhaps suggest revisions to the language, as is typical. It appears that Senate Democratic staff, instead of working to ensure unanimous consent, instead decided to leak this story to try to malign Senator Cruz.”
House Republicans are standing strong in their pursuit of Operation Fast and Furious documents, The Hill’s Jordy Yager reports, undercutting a narrative the Department of Justice has tried to seep into the media.
President Barack Obama asserted executive privilege over the documents minutes before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform voted Attorney General Eric Holder into both civil and criminal contempt of Congress last summer. The full House followed up voting on a bipartisan basis to hold Holder in contempt shortly thereafter, spurning the current lawsuit against the administration for the documents. The DOJ has declined to pursue criminal charges against Holder.
“A fight over President Obama’s use of executive privilege on the documents that led to Attorney General Eric Holder’s contempt charges is increasingly likely to be decided in court,” Yager wrote on Tuesday. “The way the court decides could drastically limit congressional subpoena powers — or curb the extent to which the president can claim executive privilege.”
When the Inspector General of the Department of Justice (henceforth DoJ) last week issued a report blistering DoJ’s Civil Rights Division, much attention focused on the IG’s recognition that division chief Perez, under oath, had “not reflect[ed] the entire story regarding the involvement of political appointees” in the now-infamous 2009 decision to dismiss voter-intimidation cases against several New Black Panthers in Philadelphia.
While this aspect of Perez’s dishonesty deserves all the attention it can garner (also deserving attention is the extreme dubiousness of the IG’s assertion that Perez’s lies about political-appointee interference were not “intentional”), it is far from the only example, from that very same testimony, of Perez pushing stories that were flagrantly false.
Perez came awfully close to perjury, and some might argue that he committed it, when discussing the far more important, broader issue that was the main focus of the IG report. (It boggles belief, by the way, that the IG never even discussed this untruth, considering that it so directly involved the larger substance of his report.) That broader issue was the question, fairly definitively answered in the affirmative by the IG, of whether the Civil Rights Division is a hotbed of hostility against the very idea of race-neutral enforcement of civil rights and voting rights laws.
Will President Obama really nominate billionaire Chicago gal pal Penny Pritzker to head his Commerce Department? “It’s a done deal,” according to a White House source close to the Chicago Sun Times. As further confirmation, Pritzker resigned abruptly from the Windy City’s school board late last week. The crony fix seems to be in.
Taxpayers, beware. Pritzker is a deep-pocketed doyenne with a family history of dodging taxes — or siphoning them away from the public for her own family’s gargantuan private gain. If you want to see how she’ll oversee a $10 billion government agency, look at her own wealth redistribution record.
Most notoriously, Pritzker headed up subprime lender Superior Bank. Even after it went under in 2001 and left 1,400 mostly poor and minority customers destitute, Pritzker was pushing to expand its toxic subprime loan business. As I’ve reported previously, Pritzker and her family escaped accountability by forking over a discounted $460 million settlement over 15 years after the bank collapsed.
If you’re like me, you took a little vacation from the news, this past week to focus on Christmas. I actually avoided the news because I didn’t want it to dampen my spirits. There’s little good news out there, I’m afraid.
Yes, as much as I respect John Boehner, he’s been muffing up the Fiscal Cliff talks, very badly. He made a huge tactical error when he agreed to Obama’s tax hike, as Phil Klein explains at The Washington Examiner:
After the election, when Obama came out with his $1.6 trillion demand, Boehner should have done a better job of communicating that this represented double what Obama pushed for during the campaign. But that point was never driven home well. Instead, early on in the process, Boehner offered around $800 billion in revenue, and that became the floor for tax increases rather than the ceiling. The Wall Street Journal reported on the following exchange earlier this month:
At one point, according to notes taken by a participant, Mr. Boehner told the president, “I put $800 billion [in tax revenue] on the table. What do I get for that?”
“You get nothing,” the president said. “I get that for free.”
In reality, post-election, Boehner should have started off at $0 and Obama should have been at around $800 billion. But now, Boehner has already gone as high as $1 trillion in tax hikes and Obama says that’s insufficient. At the same time, Obama says that his willingness to accept $1.2 trillion in tax hikes — 50% more than he campaigned on — represents a compromise on his part.
When conservatives shot down Boehner’s fiscal cliff “Plan B” vote last week, they were sending a message loud and clear that they weren’t pleased with his handling of the issue. Because of this, and his failure to deal with ObamaCare effectively, it appears that some House members might try to unseat Boehner as speaker.
The Republican Party for the Sixth Congressional District of Virginia has formally requested its GOP congressman, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, to oppose the re-election of House Speaker John Boehner, Breitbart News has learned.
On November 10, the local district committee–which officially represents Republicans, including Goodlatte, in his district–unanimously passed a resolution to ask Goodlatte to vote for someone other than Boehner. The party believes Boehner hasn’t used his full power to fight against Obamacare.
“The imposition of Obamacare against the wishes of the people is an unequivocal expression of the anticipated tyrannical powers,” the district committee wrote to Goodlatte. “Yet even though every member of the House of Representatives is aware of his ability to thwart this measure, no such effort of protection is forthcoming. Apparently few enough care more about the people they purport to represent than about their own political aspirations.”
Circle March 25, 2013 on your calendar. That’s the last day you can submit your claim form from this official U.S. government website to collect fifty thousand tax-free American dollars, courtesy of the Obama administration in its current multi-billion giveaway scheme.
No, you don’t need a potted plant and you don’t even to be black or even Hispanic; as long as you are a woman (or related to one) and you fill out the forms correctly, you can collect the money because nobody will verify your information.
Welcome to the Love settlement for women farmers, the close relative of the Pigford black famers settlement that has already paid out billions of dollars to thousands of claimants and the Garcia Hispanic / Latino farmer settlement that is in progress right now.
Here’s how you can collect $50,000, tax free.
This first point can’t be stressed enough; nobody will verify the information you provide. Any claim you make will be accepted as true.
You read that correctly; nobody will verify what your claim. This is the same standard used in the Pigford settlement, and the fact that nobody will verify any information collected was confirmed in a Government Accountability Office report last month. Legally, nobody CAN verify any information; the law was written to make it impossible for the people looking at the claim forms to verify that their information is correct.
If you’re still nervous that someone might actually run down your information to make sure it’s actually true, you don’t have much to worry about from the media, either. We’ve been reporting on the multi-billion dollar fraud in the Pigford settlement for over two years and despite exposing the fraud, for the most part the mainstream media has turned a blind eye. Literally, thousands of people have collected billions of dollars already in a scheme that black farmer Lucious Abrams calls ‘the biggest fraud perpetrated on the American taxpayer in history’ and there’s been an effective blackout.
And guess what? The Republican establishment can’t be bothered with the billions of dollars of fraud going into these settlements. They might be called raaaaacist, so they just look the other way.
President Obama has a very serious ego problem, and when he goes off teleprompter, it sticks out like a sore thumb. His eulogy for Senator Inouye on Friday was grotesque in its focus on the speaker, not the dearly departed.
Unsurprisingly, President George W. Bush delivered a graceful eulogy for Gerald R. Ford’s funeral, a model from which his successor should, but will not, learn. As David Paulin points out:
A great funeral eulogy and not a single mention of “I” or “me” by President Bush. He says “us” and “we” at two points, both only in respect to the American people. Bush’s speech is devoted entirely to Ford’s life, character, and public service — and he provides wonderful anecdotes that brings these things to life.
For those who like to keep count, in the short 1,600 word speech, Obama used the word “my” 21 times, “me” 12 times, and “I” 30 times. But that’s not even the worst of it…
The story of the trip set up the punch line. He told Inouye’s mourners that “my mother that summer would turn on the TV every night during this vacation and watch the Watergate hearings,” and he was forced to watch, too. Of course, the senator who “fascinated” him most was “this man of Japanese descent with one arm, speaking in this courtly baritone, full of dignity and grace.”
This story would work only if Obama had toured the United States during the summer of the Watergate hearings, 1973, when he was eleven years old going on twelve, but in his memoir Dreams from My Father, he tells another story — a much more specific one. Yes, he made the same trip, but he did so “during the summer after my father’s visit to Hawaii, before my eleventh birthday.” This would have been 1972, when Watergate was still a third-rate burglary that had gotten little media traction.
In Dreams, Obama mentioned a Kansas City stop along the way, and Madelyn’s youngest brother in suburban KC would later provide photographic evidence of the same. He confirmed the year as 1972. This disparity did not stop Obama from relating in Dreams how in that elusive summer he “watched the Watergate hearings every night before going to bed.” There was no mention of Senator Inouye. He was apparently trying to make some other point.
I still can’t believe this cretinous maroon got reelected.
If you live in New York’s Westchester and Rockland counties, The Journal News gave rapists, thieves and murderers the best Christmas present they could ever hope for… a roadmap of the homes they should avoid and those which they can target without fear.
The Journal News decided to aid and abet criminals by publishing the names and addresses of hundreds of law abiding citizens who have a legal permit for a gun.
A criminal’s worst nightmare is being confronted by a would-be victim who has the means to protect themselves and their family. The criminal’s intention is to commit their crime and get away with it. Clear-thinking people know this.
Think of all the homes you’ve seen with a “Beware of Dog” sign. Property owners post a sign like this to deter criminals by letting them know of the violent force they’ll encounter should they attempt to enter the property. Home security systems are another method of protection used by millions of families to deter criminals.
Thanks to The Journal News, criminals now know the addresses of those who may confront them with a gun. But most importantly, the published list lets them know the homes where they will NOT be confronted with a gun, thereby further increasing the chance of their success in committing the intended crime.
…in the 21st century, where it seems nothing is truly private, a few mouse clicks coupled with righteous anger can be quite productive.
Reader “Jeff” sends along a link to the latest article in the White Plains tabloid, Journal-News, reporting on the hornets nest occasioned by their publication of an interactive map showing the identity and address of all registered gun owners in Westchester County and surrounding areas.
Editor Cyndee Royle defends her decision and in fact sounds quite smug about it. Let’s keep those cards and letters (and telephone calls, of course) coming.
EDITOR:
Miss Royle’s married name is Lambert. She lives in White Plains and here is her Facebook page complete with pictures of her and her kids. Hello Sanctimony.
The map indicates the addresses of all Journal News Employees in the New York Tri-State area. Each dot represents an individual Journal News employee — a reporter, editor or staffer. The data does not include freelancers — reporters or photographers — which can be hired without being an employee. Being included in this map does not mean the individual at a specific location is a responsible reporter or editor, just that they are a reporter or editor.
Oh dear … the plot grows ever thicker. David Gregory, currently under investigation for brandishing a high-capacity magazine on “Meet the Press,” may be guilty of not only violating DC gun laws, but of doing so intentionally. An email purportedly from the DC Metropolitan Police Department suggests that NBC inquired about using a high-capacity magazine for the “Meet the Press” segment and that the request was denied.
Throw the book at him.
***
A few more names to add to your list of conservative friendly businesses that you might want to patronize:
A global activist group is targeting two large hotel chains because they give discounts to members of the National Rifle Association.
The organization is putting pressure on the hotel chains to force them to disassociate from the gun-rights group after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.
The group, Avaaz, described as a “a global campaign network of 17 million people” is pressuring “Wyndham Hotels Worldwide – which owns Ramada, Days Inn, Wingate and Super 8 – and Best Western” because both organizations are listed as “friends of the NRA” on the NRA’s website.
Joseph Huff-Hannon, a senior campaigner at Avaaz, said the hotels needed to “get out of bed with the extremist NRA,” and “Newtown must mark the end of the group’s stranglehold on our politics.”
Avaaz has organized a petition that has “at least 66,000″ signatures, and some of Avaaz’s members have written that the hotel chains should “get out of bed,” parroting Huff-Hannon’s comments on the offical Facebook pages of the Wyndham Hotels and Best Western.
That increase in gun sales following the Newtown shooting might have had a little bit to do with Christmas season, as a lot of people are flaunting their new firearms on social media today, a trend first-noticed by The Verge’s T.C. Sottek. As the AR-15 is a popular rifle of choice these days both for consumers and murderers, we decided to take a look at all the brand-new owners of that make of semi-automatic.
I shared an excerpt of an e-mail I received from Joe Cascarelli of Westcliffe, CO, in my syndicated column today (here), which is adapted from my recent blog post on things parents can do post-Newtown without relying on government. Cascarelli describes a community organizing effort that every liberty-loving parent can get behind. I’m reprinting more of the e-mail for you below. If you do something like this in your school district/neighborhood, speak up and let me know. I’d like to spotlight as many examples as possible.
The petition, addressed to the British Home Secretary Theresa May simply states: “Stop Piers Morgan from being deported back to the UK from America.”
The request to keep Morgan out includes a nine-minute YouTube video of Morgan, former News of the World editor, testifying before the before the 2011 Leveson inquiry into British press ethics following the mobile phone hacking scandal at News of the World.
If he didn’t believe in karma before, Piers Morgan must surely do now.
The ex-newspaper editor, now a columnist for The Mail on Sunday’s Live magazine, took great delight in making fun of President Bush for falling off a Segway – the two-wheeled, motorised, gyroscopically balanced scooter that, its makers promise, will never fall over.
His paper, the Daily Mirror, ran the headline in 2003: “You’d have to be an idiot to fall off, wouldn’t you Mr President.” It added: “If anyone can make a pig’s ear of riding a sophisticated, self-balancing machine like this, Dubya can.” So, it seems, can Mr Morgan.
Scroll to the bottom of the page to watch our exclusive video of Piers’s fall…
When you argue for a living, you can tell how an argument is going for you. The evidence and my gut both tell me that the liberals have lost control of the gun control narrative.
Not for lack of trying – it was almost as if they were poised to leap into action across the political, media and cultural spectrum the second the next semi-human creep shot up another “gun free zone.” This was their big opening to shift the debate and now it’s closing. They’ve lost, and they are going nuts.
The evidence is all around that this is not going to be the moment where America begins a slide into disarmed submission through an endless series of ever-harsher “reasonable restrictions” on our fundamental rights. You just have to look past the shrieking media harpies to see what’s really happening.
President Obama will return to Washington from Hawaii Thursday while First Lady Michelle Obama and her daughters plan to continue their vacation, adding at least $100,000 and probably more than $200,000 to taxpayer costs for the excursion.
Instead of accompanying her husband home on Air Force One, Mrs. Obama will fly on her own Air Force jet at a later date and require security and staff to remain in place in Hawaii for the length of her stay, which reportedly could extend until January 6.
The White House does not reveal the price tag for the Obamas’ vacations. But an estimate can be made given several known and likely expenses.
Assuming Mrs. Obama uses the type of plane she has flown before to Hawaii, the Air Force C-40B Special Mission Aircraft, the cost of a flight from Honolulu to Washington would be about $63,000. If the C-40B must be flown out to Hawaii to retrieve Mrs. Obama, as would seem likely, the first lady’s travel costs could amount to about $126,000, assuming the jet is dispatched from Washington.
***
Hot Air: Benghazi penalties “bogus,” officials returning to work?
Via Drudge, it looks like accountability for the four deaths of Americans in Benghazi turned out to be temporary. The New York Post has learned that the four State Department officials that supposedly resigned after the Accountability Review Board report slammed Foggy Bottom for its “systemic failures” and “leadership and management deficiencies” will return to work after all — and all but one in the same post:
The four officials supposedly out of jobs because of their blunders in the run-up to the deadly Benghazi terror attack remain on the State Department payroll — and will all be back to work soon, The Post has learned.
The highest-ranking official caught up in the scandal, Assistant Secretary of State Eric Boswell, has not “resigned” from government service, as officials said last week. He is just switching desks. And the other three are simply on administrative leave and are expected back.
There are moments in our lives when we have an opportunity to ignite tremendous positive change—not just in the lives of the customers and communities we serve every day, but in our country.
Etc.
Shorter McCain:
Or….how about shut up and sing pour me some coffee.
Brett Kimberlin, a convicted perjurer and bomber who abused the justice system by seeking and obtaining “peace orders” prohibiting blogger Aaron Walker from writing about him, a legal atrocity that was only overturned with great effort. In Aggravation: Kimberlin engaged in a campaign of bombing terror, wounded a man so badly that he later took his own life, laughed off the judgment against him for years, and now thinks that the law should prevent people from writing about him. In Mitigation: Nothing. Not a damn thing. Nothing at all. Except this. Maybe…
The United States had an unmanned Predator drone over its consulate in Benghazi during the attack that slaughtered four Americans — which should have led to a quicker military response, it was revealed yesterday.
“They stood, and they watched, and our people died,” former CIA commander Gary Berntsen told CBS News.
The network reported that the drone and other reconnaissance aircraft observed the final hours of the hours-long siege on Sept. 11 — obtaining information that should have spurred swift action.
But as Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three colleagues were killed by terrorists armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, Defense Department officials were too slow to send in the troops, Berntsen said.
“They made zero adjustments in this. You find a way to make this happen,” he fumed.
“There isn’t a plan for every single engagement. Sometimes you have to be able to make adjustments.”
The Pentagon said it moved a team of special operators from Central Europe to Sigonella, Italy — about an hour flight from Libya — but gave no other details.
Fighter jets and Specter AC-130 gunships — which could have been used to help disperse the bloodthirsty mob — were also stationed at three nearby bases, sources told the network.
How did Obama even go to bed, that night, knowing what was happening?
Watch this video of all the lies and obfuscations Jay Carney told in the days following the attack. We now know beyond a shadow of a doubt – they knew the whole time that it was a terrorist attack. They were obviously a covering-up the inconvenient facts because 1. it interfered with their preferred narrative, and 2. it was their lack of security, and lack of any kind of rescue effort that allowed those four Americans to be slaughtered in the nightmarish way they were.
There are a few basics about being president which not incidentally coincide with the responsibilities of being an adult. One is that you cannot lie. Two is that if caught in a lie, you should ‘fess up. And three is that if you lie to cover up your original lie, that’s called malice aforethought (often leading, in Washington, to criminal investigation and obstruction of justice charges, at least if the perp is a Republican). Now, Benghazi. It is perfectly fair for the White House to assert that in the fog of an attack on U.S. facilities, facts were mistaken. It’s important to emphasize that almost anytime one sees a senior official muddling his facts, odds are he’s got bad data, he’s incompetent, or whoever was briefing him was wrong. But… That is clearly not the case in the Benghazi scandal.
Rather, the story of Benghazi is that while the White House’s initial response may have been confusion (because other attacks were taking place at the same time), very soon thereafter, the outright lying began. And now that we have seen the emails that went to the White House within two hours of the attack naming the perpetrators — a known terrorist group operating in eastern Libya — the fact that officials from the President on down were intentionally and falsely insisting the 9/11/12 attack was not an act of terrorism is screamingly obvious.
Is the man the Obama administration appointed on October 4 as key investigator for the terror attacks in Benghazi an Islamist-sympathizer? According to recently published reports, the new chairman of a State Department’s “Accountability Review Board,” which is heading the federal investigation into the Benghazi terror attacks, has been accused of being an “apologist for Islamic terrorism who has a cozy relationship with Iran.”
What’s more, the man in question — former Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering — has documented ties with the controversial group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR, of course, is a documented Muslim Brotherhood affiliate and was named unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation trial — the largest terror-funding trial in U.S. history.
To make matters worse, Pickering is also co-chairman of the board of George Soros’ International Crisis Group who has ties to other Islamic organizations as well, including the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), which has been described as pro-Iran “front group.”
NIAC lost what Matthew Vadum at FrontPageMag describes as ”an important defamation case in federal court last month in which it unsuccessfully argued the group was not a tool of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
The White House’s position is preposterous. Their early intelligence was correct, and is vindicated by later intelligence. They’re claiming, basically, that in the “middle period,” right around Susan Rice’s press blitz, suddenly they had intelligence casting doubt on the early intel and so, for a couple of weeks, had it wrong, but blamelessly so.
So: The early intel said planned terrorist attack, and the final intel said planned intelligence attack, but somewhere in the middle there they were misled by intelligence that disagreed with the first reports and the later reports.
One problem: We see lots of leaked cables (not leaked by Obama, by the way, but by whistleblowers) demonstrating that intelligence pointed to a planned terrorist attack, and none at all supporting this claim of a “fog of war” where suddenly there was intelligence strongly indicating this was a “sponatenous attack” over a “YouTube video” that got “out of hand.”
Where is this intelligence? Because as the actual intelligence stands, there seems to be no “fog of war.” There seems instead to be a bright stab of light, constant throughout the entire affair, pointing at one and only one conclusion.
The ninth, and penultimate, entry in the Benghazi Files- the documents dropped on Friday, October 19th.
By rights, the next document I should review is U.S. Department of State Foreign Affairs Manual Volume 12 – Diplomatic Security. I am not for a couple of reasons. First- it bores me. If it bores me, it would probably put many, if not most, of my readers to sleep. Second, I don’t know enough about the contents to digest them. I’ll leave my “review” of that document to this, then: It starts on page 59 and continues through page 66. The most important thing it says is that any of the requirements contained therein must be waived by the Secretary of State. Since we can be fairly certain that some of those standards were not met, we must assume, then, that Hilary Clinton directly signed off on those choices. It is unbelievable that the disposition of the delegation to a country Barack Obama had been hailing as a foreign policy success would not have been discussed with him. In short: he and Hillary both knew the precise dangers to the Libyan detachment, both in Tripoli and Benghazi.
The next document I will review is perhaps the most depressing. It is a litany of the “Security Incidents Since June 2011.” It begins on page 67 of the documents and continues through 117. Obviously, just reviewing this document could be the subject of several posts. I’ll just take some highlights. These will focus on events in Benghazi, or US Embassy staff directly.
Christie pals said the pol’s “mind-blowing” experience at the Reagan library in California Tuesday changed his thinking.
“We need you. Your country needs you to run for president,” one woman pleaded after Christie’s moving speech there.
Yet when the governor first arrived at the Reagan library, he was still telling his inner circle he was a definite “no” for a presidential run — and planned to make that clear in his appearance.
Something changed that night, sources said.
Behind the scenes, sources said, the discussions about running took on a more serious and “surreal tenor,” as the encouragement from Reagan, Kissinger, Bush and others began to sink in.
Even Christie’s wife, Mary Pat, has warmed to the idea of becoming First Lady after months of discouraging a run.
I disagree with conservatives who call Christie an “establishment Republican”, or worse, a “Rockefeller Republican”. I like to think of him as an “effective” Republican.
There are times when I am truly sickened by what I see from the current breed of television anchors and hosts. Today is one of them.
Martin Bashir on the MSNBC program bearing his name finished Wedneday’s show with a segment attacking New Jersey governor Chris Christie concluding, “Go home, Mr. Christie. Your state needs you much more than America does” (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Not that I believe that the current field is hopeless. No, I’m not a fan of Mittens, and Perry leaves me cold. But Herman Cain is surprising everyone with his strong showings in the latest polls. Hot Air has the latest: Florida poll puts Romney up two points over …
Maybe that P5 straw poll in Florida had more significance than some thought. A new poll by Survey USA of likely Florida primary voters shows Mitt Romney ahead in the GOP nomination race at 27%, but the second-place finisher comes within the margin of error — and it’s not Rick Perry:
In the Florida Republican Primary for President, Mitt Romney at 27% edges Herman Cain at 25%, according to a SurveyUSA poll conducted for WFLA-TV Tampa. Rick Perry finishes 3rd with 13%, others further back. The Primary is tentatively, and controversially, scheduled for 4 months from today, on 01/31/12.
Daniel Henninger looks into Herman Cain’s successes as a businessman in his WSJ Piece: Taking Cain Seriously:
In the late 1970s, Mr. Cain was recruited from Coca-Cola in Atlanta, his first job in business, to work for Pillsbury in Minneapolis. His rise was rapid and well-regarded. He joined the company’s restaurant and foods group in 1978 as director of business analysis. In the early 1980s, Pillsbury sent him to learn the hamburger business at a Burger King in Hopkins, Minn. Then they assigned him, at age 36, to revive Pillsbury’s stumbling, franchise Burger King business in the Philadelphia region. He succeeded. According to a 1987 account in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Pillsbury’s then-president Win Wallin said: “He was an excellent bet. Herman always seemed to have his act together.”
In 1986, Pillsbury sent the 41-year-old Mr. Cain to turn around their Godfather’s Pizza business, headquartered in Omaha. The Herman Cain who arrived there April 1 sounded like the same man who roused voters last Sunday in Florida: “I’m Herman Cain and this ain’t no April Fool’s joke. We are not dead. Our objective is to prove to Pillsbury and everyone else that we will survive.”
Pillsbury sold Godfather’s to Mr. Cain and some of his managers in 1988. He ran it until 1996 and served as CEO of the National Restaurant Association from 1996-1999. This June, Mr. Cain visited with the Journal’s editors and put the issue of health-insurance availability inside the context of the restaurant industry. He said the restaurant association tried hard to devise a health-insurance program able to serve the needs of an industry whose work force is complex—executives and managers, full-time workers, part-timers, students and so forth. Any conceivable insurance system would require great flexibility in plan-choice and design.
It’s from this period that one finds the famous 1994 video, now on YouTube, of Herman Cain on a TV screen from Omaha debating Bill Clinton about his national health legislation during a town-hall meeting. After the president estimates the profitability of Mr. Cain’s company, suggesting he can afford the legislation, Mr. Cain essentially dismantles the Clinton math, in detail. “The cost of your plan . . . will cause us to eliminate jobs.”
You can watch that video, here. Dems will underestimate this man at their own peril.
This just might be the smoking gun we’ve been waiting for to break the festering “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal wide open: the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives apparently ordered one of its own agents to purchase firearms with taxpayer money, and sell them directly to a Mexican drug cartel.
Let that sink in: After months of pretending that “Fast and Furious” was a botched surveillance operation of illegal gun-running spearheaded by the ATF and the US attorney’s office in Phoenix, it turns out that the government itself was selling guns to the bad guys.
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So where’s the outrage?
There’s none from the feds. Attorney General Eric Holder has consistently stonewalled Rep. Darrell Issa, Sen. Chuck Grassley and other congressional investigators.
In a constantly evolving set of lies, Holder has denied knowing anything about Fast and Furious while at the same time withholding documents from the House and Senate committees looking into the mess while muzzling some witnesses and transferring others.
Justice calls the allegations about Dodson’s operation “false.” But Grassley says that’s “a lie,” as he told Greta van Susteren the other day. “The ATF ordered this ATF agent to purchase these guns and in turn sell them, and supposedly track them,” he said. “But he was a lone wolf in the operation — they wouldn’t give him any help for 24-hour surveillance.”
So now the wheels have come off the official explanation for Fast and Furious. Of course, that explanation never made much sense in the first place.
For one thing, the ATF had no authority to track the guns once they were in Mexico; for another, nobody bothered to inform the Mexicans of this intrusion on their national sovereignty.
Further, we now know that a host of federal agencies (including the ATF, the FBI and IRS, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Drug Enforcement Administration and, very probably, top officials at the Department of Homeland Security) were all in the loop at various levels, as was the White House.
So calling “Fast and Furious” a cockamamie operation gone wrong just isn’t going to cut it anymore.
There are two possible explanations. The first is that the anti-gun Obama administration deliberately wanted American guns planted in Mexico in order to demonize American firearms dealers and gun owners. The operation was manufacturing “evidence” for the president’s false claim that we’re to blame for the appalling levels of Mexican drug-war violence.
If this is true, then Holder & Co. have got to go — and the trail needs to be followed no matter where it leads. For the federal government to seek to frame its own citizens is unconscionable.
A second notion is that the CIA was behind the whole thing, which accounts for all the desperate wagon-circling. Under this theory, the Agency feared the los Zetas drug cartel was becoming too powerful and might even mount a coup against the Mexican government. So some 2,000 weapons costing more than $1.25 million were deliberately channeled to the rival Sinaloa cartel, which operates along the American border, to keep the Zetas in check.
Of course, there’s a third explanation — that both scenarios are true, and that those in charge of Fast and Furious saw an opportunity to shoot two birds with one Romanian-made AK Draco pistol.
Time for a special prosecutor, who’s both fast and furious.
In April 2009 Barack Obama traveled to Mexico and blamed US gun sellers for “This war being waged with guns purchased not here but in the United States.”
Keep in mind, that 90% number was widely debunked at the time.
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In related news, it’s good to know that Holder’s ATF will go after gun “trafficking” that doesn’t involve criminal gangs, but does involve Republican Car dealers:
Despite the White House harassment, and the loss of financing and insurance arrangements that came in the past, the Butler, Mo., car dealer who will be giving away AK-47’s again starting in October.
“Guess what? We are doing it again! It is the Fourth Annual Great Guns and Gas Give-Away!” said Mark Muller, the owner of Max Motors, whose July 17, 2009 interview with CNN’s Carol Costello about his promotion was great publicity, but brought him unwelcome attention.
Within days of the CNN broadcast, three agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives arrived at the dealership, he said.
“I was not there, they identified themselves and asked who was in-charge, and everybody pointed at each other,” he said.
Undeterred, the agents demanded to see the guns, he said. When it was explained that there were no actual guns, and that the promotion was really for vouchers towards the purchase of an AK-47, the agents did not believe it.
“There was an empty gun box here from a gun dealer in North Carolina, and they took that and demanded to see the gun that came with that box,” he said. The agents also went into storage rooms and took photos.
The next day, Muller received a call from the ATF asking him to come in for a meeting with all of his personal guns, which they insisted they had to authority to order, he said. Muller held his ground and refused to submit to the audit without first going through due process.
“The ATF people were just as nice as can be. They were not mean or hateful—and finally I asked the lady on the phone: Don’t you have something better to do?” he said. He then re-explained that there were vouchers for guns and that no guns were being given away.
“She said: ‘Let me tell you how important this is, the White House started their morning with a briefing on you. We got a call from Washington, D.C. this morning. They wanted you checked out,” he said.
Feel safer, now?
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PETA is up to its stupid anti-human tricks, again, as Ace reports:
Charles Wickersham, a 21-year-old guy, was bitten by a shark while fishing with his friends in the Bay Area near Anna Maria Island. Sharks. Bite. Near death. Beyond scary. Anyone with a modicum of a soul would hope that Wickersham gets better (he’s still in intensive care right now) and lives a happy life. Those more equipped might help with the hospital bills or raise awareness on how to prevent such animal accidents from happening. A human survived a traumatic shark attack, what a story that is, amiright? That’s normal behavior for normal people with normal emotions.
PETA is not normal. No. They’re insane.
In response to Wickersham’s accident, those heartless pricks are launching an insensitive ad campaign against all types of fishing. They’re using a man, who almost died, as their soapbox. Their rallying call. Might as well accuse him of being Michael Vick, why don’t you. Their photo, which will be plastered across benches and billboards in the Bay Area, shows a shark chewing on a bloody human “drumstick” (leg) with the tagline: “Payback is Hell. Go Vegan.”
Ace has some ideas of how sane humans can fight this insensitive idiocy:
The only thing I can think of is to set up a website promoting meat-consumption every time they run one of these viciously anti-human ads. Something like a mass agreement to go to a meat-serving restaurant during a specific week. And maybe not just meats, but the sort of meats that PETA gets especially weepy over — veal, for example. Or game meats, venison, bunny rabbits. There are some neat restaurants that specialize in hunted, exotic meats, like ostrich or kangaroo.
Bunny rabbits, Ace? Just no!
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Seton Motley, President of Less Government, responds to Media Marxist outfit Free Press’s lawsuit – “which absurdly claims the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s illegal Network Neutrality Internet power grab is…not authoritarian enough: Media Marxist Outfit Free Press’s Net Neutrality Lawsuit Wins Them ‘Most Out of Touch Award’”:
“Has Free Press not been paying attention to the political discourse – and the sea change political movement – in this country these past three years? Americans are in overwhelming, historic numbers demanding less taxes and less regulation. They want less of everything from government – except accountability, of which they want much more.
“So who’s more tone deaf and out of touch than the Obama Administration’s FCC – which illegally seized control of the Internet so as to then impose in unauthorized fashion Network Neutrality? That would be Free Press, which sues to contest the power grab claiming – it wasn’t power grabby enough.
“Throw in the fact that Free Press’s first bout of Net Neutrality litigious inanity was laughed out of the D.C. Circuit Court – while the judges were unanimously throwing out the FCC’s first attempt to illegally impose it – and you have our ‘Most Out of Touch Award’ winner.
“This once and for all proves that Free Press is not a ‘public interest’ group. They are not a ‘consumer interest’ group. They are a government interest group. They serve only the interest of Huge Government.
“The public has time and again demonstrated that they are not at all interested in Free Press’ Huge Government policies. With this ridiculous lawsuit, Free Press has yet again demonstrated they are not at all interested in what the public wants. They are only interested in what they want – which is illegal, authoritarian, out-of-control Huge Government.”
(RCP) — Janeane Garofalo: “Herman Cain is probably well liked by some of the Republicans because it hides the racist elements of the Republican party. Conservative movement and tea party movement, one in the same.
“People like Karl Rove liked to keep the racism very covert. And so Herman Cain provides this great opportunity say you can say ‘Look, this is not a racist, anti-immigrant, anti-female, anti-gay movement. Look we have a black man.’”
Of course!
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Here’s reason #68,641 why people shouldn’t scoff at the idea that Obama is systematically going about destroying our capitalist economy:
Earlier today, I noted that one of the new loans approved by the Department of Energy for green-tech stimulus just happened to favor a company with connections to Nancy Pelosi’s family. That’s not the only connection in the batch of new loan approvals from the DoE, as the Daily Caller discovered. Digging into investment records and public statements, it appears that a number of key donors will benefit from the Obama administration’s largesse — including a central figure in the collapse of Solyndra and the destruction of a half-billion dollars in taxpayer money:
The Hill newspaper reported Wednesday that the Santa Monica, Calif.-based SolarReserve has secured a $737 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy for a Nevada solar project.
That company has ties to George Kaiser, the Oklahoma billionaire who raised $53,500 for President Obama’s campaign in 2008. Through his Argonaut Private Equity firm, Kaiser holds a majority stake in Solyndra.
Argonaut has a voting stake on SolarReserve’s board of directors in the person of Steve Mitchell, who also serves on Solyndra’s board of directors.
John Rossomondo also notes the connection to Ron Pelosi at SolarReserve, but there are more connections to big Democratic donors…
To oppose the Koranic mandate of death for apostasy is to take on the entire sharia-enforcing Muslim world.
Which is why you never hear purported anti-death penalty bleeding-heart celebrities say a peep about it.
It takes no guts or brains for Hollywood liberals (hello, Alec Baldwin) and America-bashing Brit journalists (hello, U.K. Guardian editors) to bemoan the execution of a convicted Death Row cop-killer who was able to pursue every last legal avenue for more than two decades.
There’s lots of Herman Cain buzz, today, and the rising GOP star deserves it. After observing Texas Governor Rick Perry in action for the past few weeks, people are finally taking notice of Florida straw-poll winner, Herman Cain.
With the third-quarter fundraising deadline looming Friday, all eyes will be on what the two top GOP presidential contenders have raised. The big question: Can Rick Perry, after entering the race in mid-August, haul in more than Mitt Romney, who already tapped many of his top supporters in the previous quarter?
Among Republican insiders, the assumption is that both will clear $10 million – but few have a feel for by just how much.
Blablabla, who cares? What about Herman Cain?
Here’s the picture that goes with the story. See if you if notice anyone is missing:
In case you’re wondering, Cain gets 0 mention in the four page story. John Huntsman who has wavered between 1 and 2% in the polls is featured prominently. Uh – huh.
Insiders and political pros never recognize a superstar when they see one. Herman Cain is just such a star. Now that Rick Perry has been unmasked as a weak debater and an even weaker opponent of illegal immigration, conservatives are turning their lonely eyes to Cain. A stellar debate performance on Fox News led to a smashing victory in the President5 straw poll in Florida and a strong third place finish — behind Romney and Perry — in the Michigan straw poll. Both Michigan and Florida are likely among the seven states that will hold primaries or caucuses in February (and they are the two biggest of the seven).
Here is a man who offers an alternative to Obama’s class warfare. His life story shows that Obama’s route to the top — through affirmative action, community organizing, and a climb up the political ladder — is not the only one available to minorities. His combination of hard work in the private sector, entrepreneurial initiative, and managerial skill can also get you there. He embraces the successful as role models not as objects of envy. He does not hate rich people. He wants us all to become rich.
Perry’s Thursday debate debacle created a dilemma for many of the 3,500 delegates credentialed for the straw-poll who had come to Orlando planning to cast their ballots for the front-runner from Texas. Among those was state Rep. Scott Plakon, a popular conservative from a district north of Orlando. “Like a lot of people, he showed up expecting to vote for Perry,” said Republican activist Sarah Rumpf, who was sitting with Plakon and his wife Susie — all supporters of GOP Senate hopeful Adam Hasner — at a candidate forum Friday afternoon when Plakon mentioned he was thinking about endorsing Cain. Rumpf immediately contacted Cain’s campaign staff and, a few hours later, the Plakons met privately with Cain and found they had much in common. Like Cain, Plakon is a businessman and a strong foe of Obamacare, and was recently named Florida Legislator of the Year by Americans for Prosperity, an activist group deeply involved in the Tea Party movement. Plakon’s endorsement lent important prestige to Cain’s candidacy and, when it was announced at a gathering of Cain’s supporters Friday night in a packed ballroom at the Rosen Centre Hotel, the atmosphere was “electric,” Rumpf said.
Conservative presidential candidate called Barack Obama’s latest stimulus plan – bullsh*t and told reporters Obama’s latest “math” was a lie.
He must be racist. The Ticketreported:
After a few caffeine-heavy refills at our corner table, I asked him about President Obama’s new effort to raise taxes on the wealthy, and Cain just about blew a blood vessel–especially when I mentioned the part where Obama says it’s about “math” not “class warfare.”
“Can I be blunt? That’s a lie,” Cain said, before the sound of his voice began to rise noticeably higher. “You’re not supposed to call the president a liar. Well if you’re not supposed to call the president a liar, he shouldn’t tell a lie. If it’s not class warfare, it’s highway robbery. He wants us to believe it’s not class warfare, oh okay, it’s not class warfare. Pick my pockets, because that’s what he’s doing!”
Cain paused, took a breath and looked at me.
“I’m not mad at you, I just get passionate about this stuff,” he said. “I have to tell people because I get so worked up . . . . I’m listening to all this bullshit that he’s talking about, ‘fairness’ and ‘balanced approach’ to get this economy going.”
Cain views his surprise win as a pushback against the media’s narrative about the GOP primary.
“The voice of the people is more powerful than the voice of the media. The media has been trying to turn this into a two-person race,” Cain says, noting that coverage prior to the straw poll had been fixated on Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.
“When the media’s not happy with who are the supposed frontrunners,” Cain adds, “they keep trying to recruit somebody else. So now they’re saying ‘Well, it’s wide open, Governor Christie, why don’t you get in the race?’” Cain thinks the media doesn’t represent what Republicans are thinking. “The people in Florida said, ‘the voice of the people is going to make that determination.’”
On the heels of presidential candidate Herman Cain’s win in the Florida straw poll last weekend, the radio host Dennis Miller announced Monday that he’s endorsing Cain for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.
Two weeks ago, the media’s heart went aflutter when it learned that the president had borrowed a page right out of ole’ Joe McCarthy’s communist witch hunt book with the launch of Attack Watch. The response by everyone, even fans of Obama, was immediate and brutal. Yet where Obama took about 24 hours to crash and burn, someone else has stepped in with a far stealthier method of ferreting out the traitors amongst us: none other than our old friends, the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States, which in a Request for Proposals filed to companies that are Fed vendors, is requesting the creation of a “Social Listening Platform” whose function is to “gather data from various social media outlets and news sources.” It will “monitor billions of conversations and generate text analytics based on predefined criteria.” The Fed’s desired product should be able to “determine the sentiment [ED:LOL] of a speaker or writer with respect to some topic or document”… “The solution must be able to gather data from the primary social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Forums and YouTube. It should also be able to aggregate data from various media outlets such as: CNN, WSJ, Factiva etc.” Most importantly, the “Listening Platform” should be able to “Handle crisis situations, Continuously monitor conversations, and Identify and reach out to key bloggers and influencers.” Said otherwise, the Fed has just entered the counterespionage era and will be monitoring everything written about it anywhere in the world. After all, why ask others to snitch for you and anger everyone as Obama found out the hard way, when you can pay others to create the supreme FIATtack WatchTM using money you yourself can print in unlimited amounts. And once the Internet is completely “transparent”, the Fed will next focus on telephone conversations, and finally will simply bug each and every otherwise “private” location in the world. Because very soon saying that “printing money is treason” will be treason, and such terrorist thoughts must be pre-crimed before they even occur.
Want to make a cable-news Democratic party-strategist squirm? Ask her what she means by the “fair share” that must be paid by the rich. (No point further tarrying over what she means by “the rich,” since we already know they are billionaires and millionaires who jump about in corporate jets while somehow making only $200,000 a year.) In response to the “fair share” question, you will hear how Bush single-handedly destroyed the economy. You will hear about the diabolical Republican plan to desert the elderly, starve the young, and exploit everyone in between. You will hear a vague concession that “the rich” must be allowed to keep some semblance of their wealth — enough, at least, to keep them in the game of “paying it forward” to future generations of government wards. But what you won’t hear is a number.
This week, I had the pleasure of watching the Fox Business Channel’s Stuart Varney expertly press the Obama Left’s glib evaders on the subject. How much is a “fair share,” he doggedly inquired? A quarter? A third? Should the rich have to split their take 50-50 with Leviathan? Or is their success such a blight on social justice that the government (and the Teamsters, and the teachers’ unions, and the basket-case blue states) should get something much closer to all of it?
This Congress, they are accustomed to doing nothing, and they’re comfortable with doing nothing, and they keep on doing nothing,” President Obama whined at a September 15 Democratic National Committee gathering in a private Washington residence.
Now that his “Blame Bush” hobby horse finally has retired to the glue factory, Obama resorts to pinning America’s woes on the “Do-Nothing Congress.” If only these parliamentarians would stop taking endless lunches, sipping cocktails at Capitol Hill happy hours, and napping at their desks, America might have some chance of returning to normal.
Obama speaks as if the entire Congress were in lock-step Republican opposition to his every initiative. Damn those pesky elephants!
Of course, Obama’s rhetoric cynically turns things upside down.
Congress consists of a do-something House of Representatives, run by Republicans, and a do-nothing Senate controlled by Obama’s very own Democrats. Obama evidently believes that if he can keep spouting clever lies and distortions, no one will call him on it. Well, it’s time to do so.
The 112th Congress has been characterized by a very active legislative pace in the Republican House, featuring the passage of many measures designed to revive America’s exhausted economy.
The Democratic Senate, meanwhile, is a much lazier place, where House Republicans’ measures go to die.
ObamaCare is not about health care, per se; rather, it is intended to dictate to business and the individual what insurance they must buy, what health care they are allowed to access, and ultimately what behavior is acceptable — all at the whim of a centralized bureaucracy. The Dodd-Frank Bill firmly establishes the concept of “too big to fail” for certain financial institutions, thereby subjecting them to the absolute control of the state while allowing, and in many cases forcing, others to cease doing business, as well as instituting lending and operating policies determined by government regulators.
The Obama regime has thrown out the rule of law when it comes to the rights of private investors by their actions against the bondholders of Chrysler and General Motors, as well as forcefully taking over and operating both companies and others as quasi-private entities. They have chosen which businesses will succeed or fail by the taxpayer financing of companies such a Solyndra among a score of others, others of which have failed. The Obama appointees to the National Labor Relations Board are now dictating to companies where they can locate and are attempting to force their workers into unions without secret ballots.
The mantra of public-works spending is alive and well and constantly being used to justify massive government spending. The demonization of the rich has taken on a new role in the Obama era, as the rich are now being singled out as responsible for all the problems created by the Obama policies and are a potential target for retaliation. The current proposal to raise taxes on the wealthy and the so-called “Buffett Tax” are solely an attempt to rally the people into a unified anger over the need to punish a perceived foe — in order to shift the spotlight off the failure of the current government.
A key characteristic of the reality of fascist thinking is rampant cronyism and corruption. Certain capitalists, wishing to ingratiate themselves with the state, are willing to fund the election of those in power in exchange for favorable government contracts and avoidance of regulatory wrath. Recently, much of Wall Street, Hollywood, the unions, major companies such as General Electric, and the super-wealthy such as Warren Buffett are willing to sleep with those in power and be used as props in any propaganda campaign initiated by the Obama regime.
The Obama administration has, through the Justice Department and other agencies, behaved exactly as many quasi-fascist regimes in the past — almost all of whom have been governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect themselves and their friends from accountability.
Here’s one the mainstream media isn’t going to tell you: County sheriffs in Wyoming are demanding that federal agents actually abide by the Constitution, or face arrest. Even better, a U.S. Federal District Court agreed.
The court decision was the result of a suit against both the BATF and the IRS by Mattis and other members of the Wyoming Sheriff’s Association. The suit in the Wyoming federal court district sought restoration of the protections enshrined in the United States Constitution and the Wyoming Constitution.
Guess what? The District Court ruled in favor of the sheriffs. In fact, they stated, Wyoming is a sovereign state and the duly elected sheriff of a county is the highest law enforcement official within a county and has law enforcement powers exceeding that of any other state or federal official.” Go back and re-read this quote.
The court confirms and asserts that “the duly elected sheriff of a county is the highest law enforcement official within a county and has law enforcement powers EXCEEDING that of any other state OR federal official.” And you thought the 10th Amendment was dead and buried — not in Wyoming, not yet.
A new bill has been introduced in the Montana State Legislature which require the County Sheriff be notified before any federal agents are allowed to enter the state with the intention of carrying out law enforcement actions. The bill provides not only for pre-notification, but the Sheriff must also give consent before federal agents may proceed.
I think most people have seen this first video from 3-24-2009, by now. Many people have mistakenly viewed it as a smoking gun because Deputy Attorney General David Ogden declared that Project Gun Runner was launched under the orders of Obama with the knowledge of Holder.
But Project Gun Runner was an above board gun-running investigation that began years ago under Bush. What makes this video compelling is Ogden’s announcement that the Obama Administration was launching a new and aggressive ‘comprehensive plan’, purportedly aimed at curtailing gun trafficking between the United States and Mexico, while at the same time they were blaming American gun sales for violence in Mexico’s drug wars (fabricating the 90% statistic). What we’ve seen as a result of their efforts is thousands of high powered weapons delivered safely into the hands of Mexican drug cartels which have killed at least 150 Mexican soldiers, federal agents, and civilians, as well as 2 American border patrol agents. Basically, the United States has been supplying Mexican drug cartels (and God Knows who else) with thousands of weapons to kill innocent people with.
Representatives Maloney, Cummings, and Carolyn McCarthy seem to be far less interested in holding those responsible for Gunwalker to account than they are in persecuting gun owners and hobbling the investigations into the scandal being played out in the House and Senate.
We saw this disreputable behavior from Cummings when he held a minority forumseveral weeks ago that was focused on blame-shifting instead of accountability, and in the 26-page political report that minimized the magnitude of the crimes perpetrated under the guise of law enforcement while building the case for gun control
Anti-gun Democrats are pushing laws that would only affect the law-abiding, while attempting to direct attention away from what appears to be a widespread criminal conspiracy by executive branch agencies to arm narco-terrorists and then use the violence caused by those weapons to influence U.S. gun laws.
This is stunning–President Obama one-on-one with a Mexican journalist, and no handlers? President Obama considers a Mexican journalist more important to talk with about Gunwalker than the American people, the American
press/media, and the Congress?
If I’d not see this, I would not have believed it. This is proof of some combination of ineptitude (getting caught); not having a Plan B to handle something going awry (unskilled implementers); hubris (thinking that a bunch of pointy-headed intellectual knuckleheads could pull off a strategy so blatantly stupid); and what I’d call a Black Swan (from Nassim Taleb’s book of that name, “the highly expected not happening”, footnote on page xviii, meaning that President Obama and his retinue expected ATF Special Agents to carry the water, and they didn’t.) Instead, they disavowed the activity. Quite profound, in my view.
Obama’s interview with Univision’s Jorge Ramos was not put on YouTube until April 8, a delay that perhaps explains its only 367 views:
Note, that Obama, almost as if frozen in time between March 2009 and March 2011, once again calls for a “comprehensive approach” to interdicting guns. It’s amazing how Obama’s “comprehensive approaches” to things always seem to end up in disaster, whether it’s the stimulus, ObamaCare, bailouts – what have you - I for one do not want to see anymore comprehensive plans from this man.
Earlier this week Barack Obama sat down with Univision’s star anchor Jorge Ramos and was asked the direct question: “The Mexican Government complains that they were not informed about the ‘Fast and Furious’ operation (Gunwalker). Did you authorize this operation and was President Calderon properly informed about it?”
President Obama responded quickly and firmly stating that neither he nor Attorney General Eric Holder authorized the operation. This was Barack Obama’s equivalent to “I’m not a crook” statement. The question is not whether the President authorized it; it is when he knew about it. Did the President of the United States know about Project Gunwalker when he slapped the back of President Calderon and told him that they were working to stop the flow of guns, when in fact the operation was engaged in just the opposite? In the Univision interview Obama revealed more than he would have liked. At one moment he tried to claim that the American government has “too many moving parts” for him to keep up with things like Project Gunwalker. It was a thinly veiled attempt to divert the conversation, but it left Obama looking as if the injuries and deaths of at least 150 Mexican nationals didn’t rate his attention. However, that fact is getting a lot of attention in Mexico where the PGR, or the Mexican Attorney General’s office is seeking information on U.S. agents who might have committed crimes by facilitating the movement of arms into Mexico.
Alberto Morales of El Universal, a Mexican national newspaper closely following the developing scandal, has subsequently written an article based on the CBS report by Sharyl Attkisson that featured Darren Gil, former ATF attaché to Mexico. In the interview Gil revealed that he had on numerous occasions requested permission to inform the Mexican government about “Fast and Furious.” This would seem to be in direct conflict with the impression left by President Obama only hours before that high-level officials had no knowledge of the operation.In the interview, Darren Gil revealed that when he asked his supervisor about Fast and Furious he was told that “not only is the director (of the ATF) aware of it, but the Department of Justice is aware of it.” Sharyl Attkisson asks: “They didn’t want you to inform your Mexican counterparts?” Gil: “That’s correct.”
A Pajamas Media source within the DOJ concurs that the DOJ OIG Schnedar is not trusted internally to run impartial investigations, and that DOJ employees now avoid going to OIG with concerns.
Aside from Schnedar’s credibility gap, the source further noted the Obama administration’s history of intimidating inspectors general, citing the firing and smearing of Inspector General of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) Gerald Walpin, who was investigating the AmeriCorps scandal, which had in its sights Obama’s friend Kevin Johnson.
Put simply, the DOJ-OIG’s impartiality and competence have been challenged, which has in no way been helped by the Obama administration’s thuggish intimidation of previous OIGs that have gotten too close to Obama’s allies.
The DOJ-OIG’s report won’t be worth the “black paper” the agency submitted in attempts to stonewall the Oversight Committee’s investigation in June.
The severity of the charges demands that a compromised DOJ-OIG be removed from the case, and that an independent prosecutor be appointed to determine who in the Obama administration authorized a gun-running operation that is responsible for graveyards filled with police dead.
Calls for a Special Prosecutor for the gunwalker scandal are growing.…What are Issa and Grassley waiting for?
As Mark Steyn describes it: “United States taxpayers were picking up the tab for Mexican drug lords’ weaponry in order that the ATF could identify high-up gun-traffickers. But, as it turns out, these high-up gun-traffickers were already known to other agencies — FBI, DEA, and other big-spending acronyms in the great fetid ooze of federal alphabet soup in which this republic is drowning. And, indeed, some of those high-ups are said to have been paid informants for those various federal agencies. So, in case you’re wondering why Obama’s second annual Recovery Summer is a wee bit sluggish at your end, relax: Stimulus dollars went to fund one federal agency to buy guns for the paid informants of another federal agency to funnel to foreign criminals in order that the first federal agency might identify the paid informants of the second federal agency.”
RT @DarrellIssa: Would you want @hhsgov employees helping you find health coverage under #obamacare to have access to your SSN without a ba… 1 hour ago
