We now know five things unequivocally. First, Hillary Clinton issued a statement about the Benghazi attack prior to 10:42pm EST on 9/11/12. We know this because an AP report published at that time made reference to it. We also know that Hillary and Barack Obama had a phone conversation at approximately 10:00pm EST on 9/11/12 (unless Jay Carney lied again). Third, Clinton's statement made a general reference to the anti-Muhammad video. Fourth, the AP took that general reference and made the leap that UN Ambassador Susan Rice attempted to bolster on 9/16/12.
Protesters angered over a film that ridiculed Islam's Prophet Muhammad fired gunshots and burned down the U.S. consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, killing one American diplomat, witnesses and the State Department said. In Egypt, protesters scaled the walls of the U.S. embassy in Cairo and replaced an American flag with an Islamic banner.
It was the first such assaults on U.S. diplomatic facilities in either country, at a time when both Libya and Egypt are struggling to overcome the turmoil following the ouster of their longtime leaders, Moammar Gadhafi and Hosni Mubarak in uprisings last year.
The protests in both countries were sparked by outrage over a film ridiculing Muhammad produced by an American in California and being promoted by an extreme anti-Muslim Egyptian Christian campaigner in the United States. Excerpts from the film dubbed into Arabic were posted on YouTube.
Fifth, we now know that four months prior to the 9/11/12 attack, Eric Holder's Justice Department was intimately involved with what was going on at the AP, seizing all kinds of phone records from them:
In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown, but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.
For some reason, the Justice Department was very close to what a supposedly independent news agency was doing long before the Benghazi attack. This begs a question: To what extent did the Obama administration influence the AP's reporting on the night of 9/11/12? If Hillary was willing to issue a statement that referred to the video in broad terms, the AP was certainly willing to report on the video as being the cause of the attacks before Doherty and Woods (the two Navy SEALs) were even murdered.
It would seem that Hillary provided the canvas, brush, and paint via the statement (between 5:30pm EST - 10:42pm EST) and the AP provided the finished painting.
What inspired the AP to take the anti-Muhammad ball and run with it?
Something - or someone - clearly did.
On May 28th, Charles Krauthammer was on the O'Reilly Factor and discussed Benghazi. Pay attention to this particular line in the video below:
...five hours in he calls the Secretary of State. And after the phone call she releases a statement essentially about the video and how we denounce any intolerance.
Below is a screen shot of the statement Krauthammer appears to be referring to. Terrence Jeffrey of CNS News, reported on January 24th that this statement was released some time before 11pm EST / 5am Benghazi time and after the recovery of Sean Smith's body at approximately 5:30pm (reference made in first paragraph of statement).
That leads us to the words of White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, who said the following to CNS News in February:
“He (Obama) was in regular communication with his national security team directly, through them, and spoke with the secretary of state at approximately 10 p.m. He called her to get an update on the situation.”
That would have been 42 minutes before the AP - the same AP that was being very closely monitored by Eric Holder's Justice Department - report was released.
Incidentally, the AP report in question - published less than one hour after Obama's call with Hillary - went into extensive detail about the men behind the film. That's awfully quick reporting, especially in light of the fact that we now know this report is completely fallacious and based on a false premise that was pushed by the administration for two weeks.
Why was the AP so quick to push such a narrative that is demonstrably false? The 10:42 report should drop the AP below the National Enquirer on the list of credible media sources.
If the AP is truly outraged about the Justice Department's intrusion, perhaps we could get some answers from the authors of the 10:42pm EST article - Maggie Michael and Sara El Deeb.
'Gang of Eight' member, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) attended a 'May Day' rally in Chicago. During that rally, he spoke to a crowd that had clearly identified itself as being filled with communists. In fact, as Durbin was speaking, there was a rather large Che Guevara flag being waved from about the tenth row; there is no way that Durbin didn't see it. Though, when asked by a reporter from Breitbart, he attempted to laugh off as ridiculous, any notion that there were communists or socialists in the audience.
Little more than two weeks ago, Rubio made the Sunday talk show circuit and was asked about Jay-Z's trip to Cuba. Rubio pointed out that one of Jay-Z's heroes is Che Guevara. The Senator from Florida then pointed out that Guevara was a racist and a murderer.
It's not just that Durbin spoke at a rally that had a Guevara flag. It's that the movement he was speaking to - and attempted to defend when it became obvious he couldn't deny - was communist and that support for Che Guevara in that crowd was pervasive.
Rubio understands communism and he knows the history of Cuba better than most Americans. Marco himself is quite educated on the subject as well. He often talks of his close childhood relationship with his grandfather, who couldn't stand Castro.
His alliance with Durbin on anything was misplaced and ill-advised. For starters, communists lie so when someone like Durbin attempts to deny he spoke to communists and then defended the act because it was his only play at that point, it's right to ask if he'd be lying if he says he isn't a communist sympathizer.
Back in January, I wrote that Rubio's first mistake with the 'gang of 8' was engaging with members of that group at all; aligning with Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) on anything was a mistake. The optics of Rubio yucking it up with these guys would not do him any favors. Nonetheless - and for whatever reason - he thought he could get something done by working with them. Conservatives knew better.
Since joining the Gang of Eight, Rubio has had a lot of trouble selling it. In the end, the only thing he might have to show for it is this:
As an aside, here is another instance of Durbin-style denial on May Day. Only in this instance, the person in denial is a local NBC News reporter in New York City. If you've ever found yourself scratching your head about why the mainstream media doesn't cover what's blatantly obvious, here is the perfect microcosm for you.
This woman's responses are worse than Durbin's. When asked about Communist flags at the event she's covering, she pretends they don't exist despite the fact that they're waving all around her.
It is amazing what the liberal mind will deny in the interest of ideology. This has got to be a form of mental illness on display.
During an interview on MSNBC, Barack Obama senior adviser David Axelrod toll Chuck Todd that when the Boston marathon bombings went off, Obama thought they may have selected April 15th because it was 'tax day'. Axelrod then started to suggest it was someone with a "pro..." agenda. He caught himself and didn't finish the word but in light if the Kermit Gosnell trial, odds are that 'pro-life' or 'pro-gun' were the options rolling around beneath the combover.
Remember Michael Bloomberg telling Katie Couric that the Times Square bomber could have been someone unhappy with Obamacare?
At the bottom of this post is an extremely important documentary entitled 3801 Lancaster. It is solely about the horror story that took place inside Kermit Gosnell's "clinic". Like many of the Nazis before him, Gosnell is essentially on trial for his crimes against humanity.
Godwin's Law states that the longer a debate goes on, the greater the possibility that comparisons involving Hitler or Nazis will be made and that the person who makes those charges actually ends / loses the argument. In the case of Dr. Kermit Gosnell and his Philadelphia aborturary, those comparisons are valid right out of the gate. Those who don't make said comparisons risk losing the debate.
The Limbaugh theorem states that no matter how much damage Barack Obama is directly responsible for, he always escapes culpability because he is so successful at keeping his fingerprints off the levers that cause such damage when they're pulled. Obama essentially pulls those levers while wearing latex gloves and then is seen as someone who is trying to fix the problem. That's not the case when one looks at his votes on abortion while a State Senator in Illinois.
Check out this excerpt from a 2008 Wall Street Journal article by Daniel Allott:
As an Illinois state senator, Barack Obama twice opposed legislation to define as "persons" babies who survive late-term abortions... Mr. Obama said in a speech on the Illinois Senate floor that he could not accept that babies wholly emerged from their mother's wombs are "persons," and thus deserving of equal protection under the Constitution's 14th Amendment.
This brings us both to the trial of a 21st Century Nazi named Gosnell, who personally murdered countless babies that either survived abortions or were simply born alive before they could be aborted. Save for the conditions in Gosnell's Philadelphia abortuary and the death of at least one adult who was over-medicated, Obama cannot argue against what Gosnell did to those babies; the president opposed legislation that would make such things illegal in his state.
When one correctly accepts the premise that the mainstream media is little more than a series of little ventriloquist dummies for the Obama administration's ventriloquist apparatchiks, the aforementioned points of agreement between Obama and Gosnell provide all one needs in order to understand why the mainstream media has been so reluctant to cover Gosnell's trial.
Fortunately, at least one liberal - Kirsten Powers - has not abandoned intellectual honesty. In a recent op-ed that appeared in USA Today, Powers wrote:
Infant beheadings. Severed baby feet in jars. A child screaming after it was delivered alive during an abortion procedure. Haven't heard about these sickening accusations?
It's not your fault. Since the murder trial of Pennsylvania abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell began March 18, there has been precious little coverage of the case that should be on every news show and front page. The revolting revelations of Gosnell's former staff, who have been testifying to what they witnessed and did during late-term abortions, should shock anyone with a heart.
NBC-10 Philadelphia reported that, Stephen Massof, a former Gosnell worker, "described how he snipped the spinal cords of babies, calling it, 'literally a beheading. It is separating the brain from the body." One former worker, Adrienne Moton, testified that Gosnell taught her his "snipping" technique to use on infants born alive.
How can one find any difference between that and what Obama supported as an Illinois State Senator? Any attempts to do so would reveal distinctions without differences.
Remember this during the 2008 campaign?
Here is Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) in 1999 on the Senate floor, telling then Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) that a baby is not a person until it's taken home (poor audio):
Like Obama, Boxer may - for political reasons - take issue with the conditions in Gosnell's abortuary and the death of an adult there but based on her position, she can't really take issue with his murdering these babies before they go home.
When Generals Dwight Eisenhower and George Patton visited the Ohrdrup concentration camp after liberating it from the Nazis, the former sent a cable to George Marshall that relayed his eye witness account from the pit of hell. To illustrate how heinous was the carnage that Eisenhower saw, even Patton's war-hardened, cast iron stomach wasn't enough to allow him to look at it all.
"The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said that he would get sick if he did so. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to 'propaganda'."
In the Philadelphia abortuary run by Gosnell, an evil very much on par with what Patton and Eisenhower discovered in Nazi concentration camps is coming to light in a courtroom not all that dissimilar from one during the Nuremberg trials... if people are willing to admit it.
During the first of those trials, prosecutor Robert Jackson said the following in his opening statement:
"The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated."
How is this dissimilar from what happened on Gosnell's watch, in his office?
The Philadelphia Inquirer's Joseph Slobodzian, who has been covering the trial daily, reported the following:
Testifying under a plea agreement with prosecutors, Williams, 44, had told the Common Pleas Court jury of a time when she followed Gosnell's practice of "snipping" the spines of late-term fetuses born alive during abortions.
One of her duties, Williams said, was to clean up and dispose of fetuses some women spontaneously aborted in the waiting room after getting large doses of drugs to dilate the cervix.
One day, Williams testified, a woman expelled a fetus into the toilet and she saw its arm moving. Williams said she took a pair of scissors and snipped the spine as Gosnell showed her.
"I did it once and I didn't do it again because it gave me the creeps," Williams said.
Consider the testimony of Marie Claude Vallant-Courturier at Nuremberg. She was a holocaust survivor from France.
Vallant-Couturier described how a Nazi orchestra played happy tunes as soldiers separated those destined for slave labor from those that would be gassed. She told of a night she was "awakened by horrible cries. The next day we learned that the Nazis had run out of gas and the children had been hurled into the furnaces alive."
Babies / children being hurled into furnaces or toilets is, as mentioned earlier, a distinction without a difference.
It was a scene the Philadelphia District Attorney called "a house of horrors." A warning to readers, some of the details in this story are gruesome.
West Philadelphia doctor Kermit Gosnell is on trial for running an abortion clinic in which he allegedly killed babies who had survived illegal, late-term abortions, and where a woman allegedly died of a botched painkiller injection.
Charges were brought against Gosnell a little over two years ago. Here is Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams in an interview with CNN at the time. Note how the detail provided by Williams actually causes the anchor to stop him, saying none of it has been proven. Williams, who appears a bit taken aback, ultimately asserts that he's merely relaying grand jury testimony.
Think it's a stretch to compare Gosnell to a Nazi? Well, didn't the Nazis seek to murder Jewish children?
Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, was determined to exterminate all Jewish children. His policy was set out in the secret speech he gave at Poznan, Poland on October 6, 1943.
“I do not consider it justifiable to exterminate the men, meaning to kill them or get them to be killed, while allowing the revengers, in the form of children, to grow up and face our sons and grandsons,” said Himmler.
The Nazis deliberately killed children: the toll of minors in the Holocaust is estimated at as much as 1.5 million.
Here is a documentary about Gosnell's abortuary.
**WARNING FOR GRAPIC DEPICTIONS AND IMAGES**
There is something else this story allows us to conclude.
Barack Obama's fingerprints can be found on his opposition to legislation that would make this despicable evil illegal.
Regular visitors to this blog know that I've been calling for gun rights advocates to go on a counter-offensive with the gun grabbers, instead of playing defense all the time. The best way to do that is to contrast the exploitation of Sandy Hook by the Obama administration with how it handled Operation Fast and Furious.
Practically every point, argument, and position taken by Obama's media ventriloquist dummies can be responded to with a Fast and Furious reference.
Selling guns to bad guys: You want to talk selling guns to bad guys? In Fast and Furious, Obama's ATF didn't allow gun store owners to sell to bad guys; they ORDERED them to.
Background checks: You want to talk background checks? How about the gun store owners who didn't want to sell to straw purchasers they knew were going to walk guns into Mexico? It was Obama's ATF that insisted those gun store owners make the sales despite background checks that told them not to.
Murder: You want to talk about guns being used to murder people? How about the straw purchasers mentioned above, giving those guns to Mexican drug cartels who have used those guns to murder hundreds of Mexicans and at least one American border patrol agent? All with the approval and mandate of the ATF.
Banning assault weapons: You want to talk about banning assault weapons? Why did the ATF allow thousands of assault weapons (AK-47s and .50 Cal.) to be placed into the hands of the most violent cartels on earth?
Shutting down gun stores: You want to talk about shutting down operations? How about leaving the responsible gun store owners, who didn't want to sell weapons to bad guys, alone and shutting down the ATF, which mandated those gun store owners sell those weapons to bad guys?
Gun Trafficking: You want to talk about gun trafficking? How about the ATF - after mandating that gun store owners sell to bad guys - looking the other way as those bad guys not only trafficked weapons out of the country but gave them to hardened criminals whom they knew would murder innocent people with them.
In this clip below (fast forward to the 6:18 mark), Nugent hits Burnett with a question about stopping gun traffickers. Burnett, predictably agrees right before Nugent asks her if she thinks Attorney General Eric Holder should be arrested for... gun trafficking.
Burnett's reaction tells the whole story. She was rendered speechless.
If the gun rights crowd wants to win this debate, it must make these arguments. Hopefully, this is the first instance of many.
If you have time - though not necessary - check out this related post before continuing.
Race-baiting, Alinsky-acolyte Chris Matthews has practically been hyperventilating at the prospect of the white supremacist group - Aryan Brotherhood of Texas - being responsible for the murders of two District Attorneys in Kaufman County, Texas (Mark Hasse on January 31st and Mike McLelland on Easter weekend) and the Executive Director of the Colorado state prison system, Tom Clements.
As Breitbart's Brandon Darby points out, the mainstream media in general has been eager to push this narrative as well.
Once established, the premise is easy to understand. The likes of Chris Matthews and the rest of the Obama media are attempting to compare these white supremacists to conservatives, Tea Partiers, and Republicans. As is so often the case with these leftists, any time they attempt to make these connections, they usually implicate themselves.
This is where, once again, the left runs into huge problems.
First, take the case of Clements' murder. The primary suspect is the now deceased Evan Ebel, whose father - a Democrat - is close friends with Colorado's Democratic Governor, John Hickenlooper. In an interview with Denver's NBC affiliate, Hickenlooper admitted that Jack Ebel - Evan's father - contributed to his campaign.
Hickenlooper confirmed his relationship with Jack Ebel to The Denver Post and KUSA-TV Friday evening and then in a written statement Friday night. State records show Ebel donated $1,050 to the governor's 2010 campaign. But there's no indication that Hickenlooper's relationship with the Ebels played a role in the shooting.
Hickenlooper denied having any role in Evan Ebel's parole.
"Although Jack loved his son, he never asked me to intervene on his behalf and I never asked for any special treatment for his son," Hickenlooper's written statement said.
Though Hickenlooper may be telling the truth, he's a Democrat and if there's one thing we know about Democrats, it's that they lie with impunity.
Here is a video from March 22nd, one day after Evan Ebel's death. In it, an NBC 9 reporter attempts to get some answers from Hickenlooper about his relationship with Jack Ebel and whether the contributions to Hickenlooper's campaign prompted the Colorado Governor to talk to Clements about the son of his friend.
It's already been reported that Evan Ebel was released four years earlier than he should have been. We have also been told that solitary confinement got to Evan and may be responsible for making him become more violent / crazy.
Attorney Jack Ebel testified before the Colorado Legislature two years ago that solitary confinement in a Colorado prison was destroying the psyche of his son, Evan.
When Jack Ebel's longtime friend, Gov. John Hickenlooper, was interviewing a Missouri corrections official for the top prisons job in Colorado, he mentioned the case as an example of why the prison system needed reform. And once Tom Clements came to Colorado, he eased the use of solitary confinement and tried to make it easier for people housed there to re-enter society.
If there is an aspect to the charge that Evan Ebel murdered Clements that doesn't make any sense, it's that Ebel was released four years early while Clements was in charge of decisions relative to parole and had already begun to ease up on solitary confinement. In that respect, Clements was not someone that Ebel should have targeted.
At about the 3:25 mark, the reporter asks a question that sets Hickenlooper off (a must-watch).
Now, consider the case of D.A. Mike McLelland. While MSNBC's Chris Matthews was visibly wishing that "white supremacists" were involved in McLelland's murder, he overlooked two things.
McLelland and his wife were both white (for that matter, so were Clements and Hasse).
McLelland won a three-way race in the 2010 Republican primary and ran unopposed in the general election. Burns said he and McLelland kept in touch "here and there" until January, when McLelland's assistant district attorney, Mark Hasse, was shot to death in a still-unsolved case.
Chris Matthews, et. al. are so desperate that they are willing to play up the narrative that 'white supremacists' (who are apparently tied to Democrats and who murdered whites and Republicans) are responsible for murdering... whites and Republicans.
Back on February 17th, Dr. Ben Carson appeared on ABC's This Week to talk about his speech at the National Prayer breakfast, during which he politely ripped Obama. During his appearance on This Week, Carson said that he thought "both sides" need to "tone down the rhetoric" and that such people are acting like children.
About six weeks later, after having to endure endless attacks on him from the left, Dr. Carson accused white liberals as being 'the most racist people' during an interview with Mark Levin.
Dr. Ben Carson, a black Johns Hopkins University neurosurgeon and conservative favorite after challenging President Barack Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast, said Monday on "The Mark Levin Show" that white liberals are "racist."
"And you're attacked in many respects because of your race. You're not supposed to think like this, and supposed to talk like this. A lot of white liberals just don't like it, do they?" said Levin, host of the syndicated radio show.
"Well, they're the most racist people there are. You know, they put you in a little category, a little box -- you have to think this way. How could you dare come off the plantation?" responded Carson.
While it would appear that Dr. Carson isn't following his own advice, we can cut him some slack because he's realizing that conservatives don't need to tone down the rhetoric at all. We need to ratchet it up because the left will only continue to smear and bully unless we do.
First of all, that CNN in general - Anderson Cooper in particular - is given any credibility is amazing in itself. CNN has a history of featuring dishonest flacks and news stories. Consider what Drew Griffin did to Walid Shoebat and Sarah Palin or what Sara Sidner reported from Gaza, or the Pallywood news footage that featured a large man faking an injury that Cooper was busted airing on his program and had to retract.
In the case of Sidner, she featured a news story that left viewers to believe that a Palestinian boy was killed by Israeli rocket fire. When it became apparent the boy had to have been killed by an errant Palestinian rocket, CNN's Don Lemon issued a pseudo-retraction right before he went to... wait for it... Sara Sidner for an update.
At about the same time, Cooper had to issue a retraction for airing the footage of the large man faking an injury. It's good he did so but c'mon, Palestinians staging scenes and passing it off as news is incredibly pervasive and none of it should be trusted, which would seem to indicate the retraction was issued only because the error was so egregiously obvious.
This brings us to the hit piece on Michele Bachmann this week by Cooper and Dana Bash, which focused on aspects of Bachmann's CPAC speech that included examples of Barack Obama's extravagant lifestyle as President. Cooper's report began with a short clip of Bachmann demanding answers to the attacks in Benghazi, after which Cooper said CNN has been critical of Benghazi and then began to move on to the small portion of Bachmann's speech about lavish White House spending.
The items of interest for Cooper were Bachmann's reference to a book that charged Obama as being the $1.4 Billion president. Examples provided were five chefs on Air Force One, two projectionists at the White House, and someone being paid to walk BO the dog. Cooper then proceeded to introduce reporter Dana Bash, who was almost apoplectic that she had to chase Bachmann down a hallway to ask her about the Congresswoman's statements during the speech.
Roger Aronoff does a good job of dismantling the report by Cooper and Bash and exposes it for what it is - a hit piece. It's quite apparent after reading it that Bachmann's words were twisted to intentionally smear. By airing a clip of Bachmann's comments on Benghazi and then saying CNN has been critical of the handling of Benghazi, Cooper asks viewers to accept the premise that he is balanced, objective, and without an agenda.
The premise is faulty. Whatever criticism CNN has had for Benghazi, it's been nowhere near interested enough in getting to the truth and unless I've missed something, I don't recall Bash chasing / badgering any administration official for answers, though I could be wrong. In any event, the attention given to a small part of a CPAC speech by a congresswoman could have been better spent doggedly pursuing answers to Benghazi, hey Dana?
The larger picture that CNN is obviously missing is the runaway spending, a $17 Trillion debt, and annual deficits the likes of which we've never seen. Focusing exclusively on Bachmann's examples without seeming to care about those larger issues is also quite revealing. In fact, instead of doing so, perhaps Cooper could do his job and investigate why there IS so much spending and where all the money is going?
At the 5:00 mark, Cooper also makes reference to the Huma Abedin controversy, saying:
"Congresswoman Bachmann has made other claims that simply do not stand up as well, namely that Huma Abedin, a top adviser to then Secretary of State Clinton, may be under the sway of the Muslim Brotherhood. That allegation was found factually groundless, drew sharp criticism at the time from both sides of the aisle..."
Hey Anderson, how would you know? You never addressed the facts about Abedin's familial background and actually aired news reports that defended her without exploring any of those facts. Ironically, while Cooper was dismissing Abedin's connection to the Brotherhood, he aired B-roll of her actually talking to the president of the Muslim Brotherhood's group in America - Mohamed Magid of the ISNA - at the 5:19 mark (though Magid not seen in the portion of the video that was aired during Cooper's report).
As for the Bash-chasing-Bachmann footage that was shown shortly thereafter, Cooper and Bash were both amazed that Bachmann turned the question about Obama having a "dog walker" back on Bash, when it was Bachmann who brought it up. Actually, as Aronoff points out, Bachmann never said Obama pays for a "dog walker", only that someone is paid to walk it, which is true.
A central theme of the Tea Party that was formed in early 2009 was that its members were willing to defend neither Obama nor his predecessor, George W. Bush when it came to spending. Hindsight is 20/20 but Bachmann could have responded to Bash by reinforcing this sentiment, saying that both administrations have been responsible for our monstrous debt, though it can't be denied that Obama shifted the debt-mobile into overdrive. Bash and Cooper wanted to contrast the money spent on the Obama presidency with that of the Bush presidency.
The fact is that both were (and are) out of control. If only Cooper was as interested in that self-evident truth as he is in smearing a congresswoman who desperately wants to do something about it.
If CNN is effective at anything, it's smearing those it wants to marginalize and running interference for those it wants to protect.
At a joint press conference in Jerusalem, Chuck Todd was playfully cajoled by Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after attempting to ask too many questions, one of which involved asking Obama why he "failed" to achieve Middle East peace. After the laughter died down, Todd asked Netanyahu why Obama hasn't been accepted by the Israelis as much as America's last two presidents (Bush and Clinton). Obama obviously didn't like that question and as he laughed while accusing Todd of being "incorrigible", Obama seemed to give Todd the middle finger.
Just when you thought House Speaker John Boehner couldn't be more out of touch with conservatives, he lowers the bar on himself. During an interview on ABC This Week, in response to a question about whether he trusts Barack Obama, Boehner got immediately serious and did not hesitate to answer in the affirmative, saying, 'absolutely... there's no issue there' (2:30 mark).
Then, about one minute later, Boehner said, 'We do not have an immediate debt crisis.'
One question: Does he want to lose the majority in 2014?
If so, he's implementing the perfect strategy. It's safe to say that a vast majority of the Republican Party's most informed voters absolutely don't trust Obama.
During a February 27th appearance on Morning Joe, Watergate icon Bob Woodward said that the action / inaction of Barack Obama relative to not sending a carrier to the Persian Gulf because of the sequestration cuts was a 'kind of madness'. It didn't take long for the White House to pull out the long knives and go after Woodward. Remember, this administration will say or do whatever it wants in order to protect and defend the progressive agenda.
One of those tactics involves impugning Woodward's mental faculty by implying that he is too old to remain relevant as a journalist. David Plouffe - one of Obama's hatchet men - used twitter to attack Woodward, saying (via Twitchy):
"Watching Woodward last 2 days is like imagining my idol Mike Schmidt facing live pitching again. Perfection gained once is rarely repeated."
Even Media Matters' Eric Boehlert went after Woodward's age for the same reason, despite having praised the former Watergate reporter ten days earlier (via Breitbart):
"funniest/saddest part is porr Bobby Woodward STILL doesn't seem to understand what sequester means"
Boehlert posted that tweet with the hash tag, timetoretire.
So, because Woodward made an intellectually honest critique of Obama, he had suddenly become senile. This is not a new technique from the Obama camp.
Does anyone remember a guy named Gerald Walpin who was the Inspector General for AmeriCorps back in 2009? That scandal unfolded when Walpin wouldn't back down relative to charges that Obama friend and Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson had misused taxpayer funds. Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) pressed for more information about Walpin's abrupt firing by the White House, which was required by law to give Congress a 30 day notice of its intention to terminate any IG.
Guess what rationale the White House gave for firing Walpin. Yep, his age.
The Obama administration has tried to justify its firing of Inspector General Gerald Walpin by strongly implying that the 77-year-old attorney suffers from senility. Norman Eisen, the White House lawyer who drafted a required notification to Congress, accused Walpin of being “confused and disoriented” at a May 20th meeting of the Corporation for National and Community Service.
Check out what the Washington Examiner's Byron York had to say about Walpin's firing:
Walpin and the management of the corporation clashed repeatedly over his investigations into AmeriCorps projects. The disagreements came to a head at a May 20 board meeting when Walpin, by his own account, "lectured" board members for going along with the corporation's politically appointed management and closing out his investigation of Kevin Johnson's educational organization, St. HOPE, which received about $850,000 in AmeriCorps money and misused at least half of it.
"Jerry can never get to the point where you can agree to disagree," the board member said of Walpin. "You either agree with him, or he keeps beating you up."
The board member says at one point in the meeting, Walpin seemed to have trouble concentrating. "There were long pauses on his part," the board member says. "He clearly was not able to answer the questions we were putting to him."
The White House later accused Walpin of being "confused, disoriented [and] unable to answer questions" at the meeting. Walpin concedes he was not feeling well but does not recall serious problems.
The Obama administration will stop at nothing to get what it wants. Had Walpin backed down, he would have been completely sane. Ditto for Woodward not the 69 year-old icon not challenged the president. It's beyond obvious that this administration is more than willing to assassinate someone's character if that someone says or does something the administration doesn't like, to include exercising one's first amendment right, as was the case with Woodward.
In Walpin's case, it was apparently just for doing his job.
Juan Williams is a bit of a conundrum; he makes ridiculous left-wing arguments that make you want to scream but he somehow maintains a characteristic of likability and gets along quite well with those whom he disagrees with. At some point, one would think he would wake up and free himself from the grips of left-wing ideology. Perhaps the best case in point was when he was fired by NPR for expressing an opinion about how he felt with sharing a plane with passengers that consisted of men in Muslim garb.
That leads to this very interesting interview between Williams and Ginni Thomas (wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas). As I watched Williams in this interview, I found myself asking one simple question:
How is it that you can have this perspective and yet still be liberal?
For some reason, Juan has identified and acknowledged the groupthink dynamic in the liberal media while not seeing the corresponding flaws in all of liberalism's premises. He doesn't seem to understand that the reason groupthink exists is because liberalism can't exist without it.
One interesting takeaway from the interview happens at the beginning when Williams makes an Archie Bunker reference, admitting that he used to believe that character represented conservatives. As an example of Williams not connecting one more dot, the man who created Archie Bunker's character (Norman Lear) is a hardcore liberal, which makes Bunker a caricature (not just a character) of the right, created with left-wing bias and preconceptions.
It would seem that Williams isn't far from an awakening. Then again, I thought the same thing after he was fired by NPR.
"I've been sitting here, getting more and more fed up with all of this talk about these pieces of machinery having no legitimate sporting purpose, no legitimate hunting purpose. People, that is not the point of the second amendment. The second amendment is not about duck hunting and I know I'm not going to make very many friends saying this but it's about our right, all of our rights to be able to protect ourselves from all of you guys up there." - Suzanna Gracia-Hupp in 1993 Congressional testimony about banning assault weapons.
It may seem like I'm beating a dead horse but remember, doing so is warranted when the truth lies in that horse's bones. Like Gracia-Hupp in that 1993 hearing, I too am getting "fed up" with the gun control debate, not because I don't think it's legitimate but because practically everyone who is engaging in it is arguing the wrong points while playing defense instead of going on offense.
There are two arguments that second amendment proponents never seem willing to address. First, the reason for the second amendment is to protect against tyranny and second, it's the government that should be the subject of a gun control debate relative to Operation Fast and Furious.
To his credit, CNN's Piers Morgan is giving plenty of gun rights advocates their say on his show but few of them seem all that interested in deviating from the terms of Morgan's debate, which is that no one needs an AR-15 for home defense. When guests argue the point that they do, it sounds a bit loopy. Most of the arguments have to deal with fending off multiple intruders. When that's the argument, people like Morgan are more successful than they should be.
It's like pro-lifers allowing leftists to make the argument about whether abortions should be permitted in the cases of rape, incest or risk to the mother's health. Those cases are so rare as a percentage of the overall number of abortions that they're outside the bounds of the central issue, which is whether abortion is murder. Conservatives constantly allow the debate to shift away from the real issue.
The same thing continues to happen with the gun control debate. Here are two examples. First, staunch conservative radio talk show host Dana Loesch does battle with Piers Morgan. Notice what the debate is about - the nuances of the difference between automatic and semi-automatic weapons. While Loesch is correct and makes some good points, Morgan is far more successful with viewers because Loesch doesn't shift the debate to what the second amendment is really about (see Gracia-Hupp quote above).
Pay attention at the 3:00 mark. Morgan's question to Loesch is:
"What would you personally do and authorize Washington's politicians to do, to curb gun violence in America?"
Her answer:
"Stop disarming law-abiding citizens."
She's right but doesn't go on offense. She also has a problem coming up with another example when prompted by Morgan to do so but does ultimately add that there should be...
"...tougher penalties for criminals who kill people with illegally obtained firearms."
Once again, this would have been a perfect opportunity to inject the government's role in Fast and Furious into the debate. Consider Morgan's response if Loesch would have said something like:
"Well, Piers, perhaps we could start with more transparency in Operation Fast and Furious. How about you demanding that President Obama lift Executive Privilege on subpoenaed documents by the House Oversight Committee that Eric Holder doesn't want you to see? How about we dig a little deeper into how the ATF - with the approval of the Justice Department - was allowed to put assault weapons, to include .50 Caliber rifles, which are much more powerful than AR-15's, into the hands of drug cartels? It seems to me, Piers, that you're being a little biased in this debate."
Until conservatives engage in the real debate, the progressives will continue to make gains. It's really a shame because Loesch is very conservative and never afraid to debate the hard issues.
Here is another example. Two young conservative women in an interview with Piers Morgan do the same thing Loesch did; they allow Morgan to make the debate about whether an AR-15 is necessary for home defense (See Suzanna Gratia-Hupp quote again). This is not the reason the second amendment was put in the Constitution. While one of these women accurately cited a news story about how an AR-15 came in handy relative to home defense, the pro-second amendment crowd has got to start going on offense instead of simply playing adequate defense.
This video Pretty much nails it. One very basic truth in all of this is that any and all who subscribe to this Obama worship must either necessarily be atheists or are consciously choosing to violate the very first Commandment (innocent children excluded).
Piers Morgan is apparently a glutton for punishment because after being thoroughly and roundly defeated in a debate with Larry Pratt last month, he had Pratt on again. The result was the same. This time, Pratt even brought up Fast and Furious. Morgan's reaction was predictable.
Pratt also brought up Operation Fast & Furious and tagged Morgan for refusing to discuss the Obama Administration’s “culpability to commit mass murder” while supervising an operation that flooded our southern border with illegal firearms.
Fast and Furious should be brought up by gun rights activists in EVERY. SINGLE. GUN. CONTROL. DEBATE.
It's the magic bullet (metaphorically speaking) in this entire saga.
Susan Rice has got to have steam shooting out of her ears... We now know that Hillary Clinton issued a statement on 9/11/12 that pointed to the anti-Muhammad video as being involved in the Benghazi attack:
"Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the internet." - Hillary Clinton, 9/11/12
Question: What individuals made up the "some" to which Hillary was referring?
U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice is not getting Hillary Clinton's job for one primary reason. She appeared on five Sunday talk shows five days after the 9/11/12 attack in Benghazi and lied; she said the attack on our consulate was in response to the anti-Muhammad video. Despite not having any responsibility over the State Department, Rice is the one who was punished politically.
Secretary of State Clinton said she was ultimately responsible for the security of State Department personnel and commissioned the Accountability Review Board (ARB) to investigate. The ARB found no one accountable.
Now we have a great find, courtesy of Terrence Jeffrey at CNS News, who has pointed out that five days prior to Susan Rice blaming the video, Hillary did the same thing... on the day of the attacks and before the death of the two former Navy SEALs.
According to Jeffrey's research, this statement released by Hillary Clinton was published at 10:58pm EST on September 11th. Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods were killed by mortar fire sometime between 11:16pm EST - 11:26pm EST.
Here is a screenshot of the statement posted to the State Department website before the deaths of Doherty and Woods (click on image to enlarge):
What has been Susan Rice's defense in the face of warranted criticism about her lies on September 16th? She said the following in an interview with NBC's Brian Williams that aired on December 13th:
When I went on the Sunday shows on September 16th, I was doing just as I have always done, providing the best information available to me and available to our government at the time. I was very careful to explain that the information was preliminary, and it could change. And yet I think it was misconstrued and contorted into something much more nefarious, it was never indeed the case nor my intention.
This begs a very important question: If Susan Rice conceded to Brian Williams on December 13th that the information she provided on September 16th was wrong, though based on "the best information available", what does Hillary have to say about her statement, released before two of the four dead Americans were murdered?
This means that Hillary went public with a lie five days before Rice told the same one and became persona non-grata as a result.
Clinton's comments in that September 11th statement are also relevant based on what she said in the days before Rice echoed them.
Here is Clinton on September 13th. Note how close she comes to blaming the video directly. Though she doesn't, the implication is absolutely there. When you couple that implication with what she said in the aforementioned 9/11/12 statement, it means Clinton was clearly on the same page Rice was on 9/16/12. Take note at the :37, the 3:09, and the 3:42 marks as Hillary's comments about the video are like three puzzle pieces that beg for the one found by Jeffrey to complete a four-piece jigsaw patch:
One day later, Clinton was on-hand at Andrews Air Force Base when the caskets holding four dead Americans arrived home. During her speech, she said the following:
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 to do with.
Here is the video of Clinton at Andrews on 9/14/12 (13:15 mark):
It's also worth remembering that the father of one of those Navy SEALs told radio talk show host Lars Larson that upon meeting Hillary at the Andrews Air Force ceremony, was told by the Secretary of State that the maker of the anti-Muhammad film would be arrested and prosecuted.
Let's take a look at that one sentence from Hillary's 9/11/12 statement in particular:
Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the internet.
Based on the fact that she made that statement before Doherty and Woods had been killed, are we not left to conclude that Hillary is part of the "some" to which she refers?
Perhaps she might be available to testify "some" day.
Those of us who aren't mindless, left-wing drones who believe Al Gore's alarmist warnings about climate change and global warming (when he isn't selling out to big oil), have known the truth all along. Now, an unlikely source is actually reporting on what global warming is really all about as the mainstream media in the U.S. continues to do the bidding of the climate change hucksters.
For years, the Elites of the West have cranked up the myth of Man Made Global Warming as a means first and foremost to control the lives and behaviors of their populations. Knowing full well that their produce in China and sell in the West model and its consiquent spiral downward in wages and thus standards of living, was unsustainable, the elites moved to use this new "science" to guilt trip and scare monger their populations into smaller and more conservatives forms of living. In other words, they coasted them into the poverty that the greed and treason of those said same elites was already creating in their native lands.
What better way to staunch protests at worsening economic and life conditions than to make it feel like an honourable job/duty of the people to save "Gia". At the same time, they used this "science" as a new pagan religion to further push out the Christianity they hate and despise and most of all, fear? Gia worship, the earth "mother", has been pushed in popular culture oozing out of the West for a better part of the past 1.5 decades. This is a religion replete with an army of priests, called Government Grant Scientists.
Various groups have fought back. This is including Russian hackers, who published a huge database of UK government, scientific and university emails depicting the fixing of data to sell Global Warming, er Climate Change (as if it never changed on its own). And while taking hit after hit, the beast, like Al Quida, will not die. As a matter of fact, the beast is on a steady come back, as it is quite useful during the down times recession. The US alone spends $7 billion each year on warming "studies", which is, in truth, nothing but a huge money laundering operation, as no real science is conducted and vapid alarmist reports the only product generated.
For some reason, I'm suddenly in the mood for an Al Gore poem and the sickening sycophantic reaction of CBS' Harry Smith. Incidentally, this vomit-inducing, blasphemous, left-wing, commie-pinko, love fest took place as Climategate was bursting on the scene in 2009:
First of all, I challenge anyone to find where I said Hillary Clinton's fall never took place. That claim was never made but critical thinking was applied to the situation. In fact, I concluded that her fall was indeed 'fortuitous' when factoring in the Benghazi situation; it's beyond apparent that she doesn't want to testify.
That said, Hillary hack James Carville appeared on CNN with Wolf Blitzer and decided to plant a flag on the moral high ground, identifying anyone who raised questions about Hillary's illness as 'inhumane'.
That's beyond hypocritical because I challenge James Carville to explain how Hillary Clinton nemesis Peter Paul is still in prison, long past the maximum sentences for his alleged crime.
Peter Paul began dealing with the Clintons back in 2000. He was arrested in 2001 for charges related to stock manipulation. The maximum sentence for his crime was ten years. He's not scheduled to be released from prison until 2014.
Do the math.
Mr. Carville, what's happening to Peter Paul is inhumane. Perhaps you should look into why he's been imprisoned for so long.
Here's the trailer for the Peter Paul documentary on Hillary Clinton:
The first chapter of Unsung Davids is entitled, "Hillary Clinton vs. Peter Paul".
**UPDATE** Well, it looks like Mr. Gore, though he did his level best, was unable to close the deal before the end of the year. According to the Washington Examiner, Gore is out nearly $9 Million by missing the deadline.
Current TV, Al Gore's brainchild, has been fledgling and flailing for quite some time. Luckily for him, not only was Gore able to sell his ownership stake for $100 Million but he was able to do so just before the Bush tax cuts expired on December 31st. Perhaps unluckily for all of us, the buyer has quite the checkered past and questionable allegiances.
Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab news giant, has long tried to convince Americans that it is a legitimate news organization, not a parrot of Middle Eastern propaganda or something more sinister.
It just bought itself 40 million more chances to make its case.
Al Jazeera on Wednesday announced a deal to take over Current TV, the low-rated cable channel that was founded by Al Gore, a former vice president, and his business partners seven years ago. Al Jazeera plans to shut Current and start an English-language channel, which will be available in more than 40 million homes, with newscasts emanating from both New York and Doha, Qatar.
For Al Jazeera, which is financed by the government of Qatar, the acquisition is a coming of age moment. A decade ago, Al Jazeera’s flagship Arabic-language channel was reviled by American politicians for showing videotapes from Al Qaeda members and sympathizers. Now the news operation is buying an American channel, having convinced Mr. Gore and the other owners of Current that it has the journalistic muscle and the money to compete head-to-head with CNN and other news channels in the United States.
Al Jazeera has worked quite diligently at softening its brand for western consumption but to what extent is this the result of a legitimate, journalistic awakening?
Make no mistake; Jihad in the United States is far more delicate than say, Jihad in Egypt today. But this is something that has evolved and been massaged.
For example, on the day of 9/11/01, while on a Los Angeles radio program, founder and director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) - Salam Al Marayati - said the following:
"If we're going to look at suspects, we should look at the groups that benefit the most from these kinds of incidents, and I think we should put the state of Israel on the suspect list because I think this diverts attention from what's happening in the Palestinian territories so that they can go on with their aggression and occupation and apartheid policies."
Not only does Al Marayati not speak like that today but he has learned that a completely different message is more effective. By seeking outreach to bleeding heart leftists, useful idiots, and Chrislamists, Islamists can better play the Islamophobia card. The MPAC founder recently visited the far left All Saints Episcopal Church in California, which hosted his group's annual convention.
Similarly, in 2002, Al Jazeera aired an interview with renowned KKK Clansman David Duke, without informing viewers of Duke's credentials as an American Nazi Party leader and KKK member. In that interview, Duke echoed comments that virtually mirrored those of Al Marayati on 9/11:
Late last fall, for instance, you had Ku Klux Klanner David Duke—Dr. David Duke, as he was described—appearing on the Al Jazeera talk show Without Borders, authoritatively explaining that the Mossad knew of plans to destroy the World Trade Center and had warned Israelis to get out before the planes hit.
In much the same way that Al Marayati has softened his tone, so too will Al Jazeera likely do when it takes Al Gore's network and airs its newscasts not far from Ground Zero.
Gore himself capitalized on the anti-American / anti-Israel / Pro-Muslim meme relative to 9/11 during a visit to Saudi Arabia in 2006. He said that after 9/11, Arabs had been...
"...indiscriminately rounded up, often on minor charges of overstaying a visa or not having a green card in proper order, and held in conditions that were just unforgivable."
Al Jazeera and Al Gore don't just share a first name; they have both said and done things that should cause grave concern.
One month after the 9/11/12 attack in Benghazi, Hillary Clinton took responsibility for the security of everyone who works for the State Department. In a sane world, that would mean that she should have to answer some very hard questions about why the consulate there was repeatedly denied security - in some cases, security was withdrawn. Also worthy of note this week has been Clinton's expected testimony in front of House and Senate foreign relations committees.
Therefore, in her interview with ABC's Barbara Walters, a sane interviewer would want to get some answers relative to Benghazi and the plethora of unanswered questions about that which Hillary said she was responsible for. That's not what happened.
Walters found at least two things more important to ask Hillary about.
Her hair
Her plans for 2016
That's right. Walters was disinterested in asking questions about Hillary's role in a scandal that could make her unfit for another presidential run.
