Classified Relativism

The NY Times has an interesting feature today on former diplomat Robin Raphel, charged last year with delivering classified information to Pakistan.  Why interesting?  Because, as the story notes, the case against Raphel has "fizzled".  Hmm, as the bloggers say.

The Times goes on to mention numerous figures on the right and left who've been involved in mishandling classified information--yes, even Hillary.  For some reason they forgot to mention "Obama's favorite general" Hoss Cartwright, a person of interest in leaking Stuxnet intelligence on Iran to the media.  At last check that had fizzled due to complexities with the Iran nuke deal or something. 

That aside, it's been well-reported that the Obama administration has prosecuted more leakers than all other administrations combined, mostly lower level folks.  The Times article notes that current FBI Director James Comey was a little upset with the Justice Department's deal with General Petraueus as they feared it might set precedence for future cases--indeed that's exactly what Raphel's defense team seems to be doing.  But who cares about Raphel, right?  How does this relate to anything else?     

The cynic might say this points in one direction--the Clinton server in Chappaqua.  The cynic might also say the left needs a way to dumb-down the severity of mishandling classified information with their leading 2016 hopeful in the situation she's in.  So, have the media point to the relativism of past prosecutions and make everything muddy with hopes the peeps can get past such peccadillos worthy of putting lesser luminaries in Leavenworth.  Is that what's going on here?   

By the way, in a previous mention here of Ms Raphel there was a link to this 1996 LA Times story.  It's truly one of those "must-reads" from the past that shines light on how messed up things got later.  A snip, emphasis added:

And a Taliban official, Shirmohammed Stanekzai, gave public assurances this week that under the Islamic militia's rule, this country will no longer serve as a training ground or haven for foreign extremists. "As the Islamic movement of Taliban, we don't want to interfere in others' affairs," Stanekzai said. "We don't want to send people to create problems in other countries."

If foreign terrorists fall into the Taliban's hands, he said, "we will punish them hard."

Such words--uttered at a news conference for the foreign media, which have flocked to Kabul since the Taliban captured this capital last Friday--will be sweet music for officials in Washington. Combating terrorism and the global trade in narcotics are leading items on the U.S. foreign policy agenda.

The current conspiracy theories are understandable, even plausible, given the great mystery that still shrouds the Taliban's rise and rapid advance. How did a ragtag force that emerged in late 1994 among Muslim religious students in the southern region of Kandahar and adjacent areas of Pakistan grow so quickly that two years later, it has become master of three-quarters of Afghanistan?

Who paid for its weaponry, ammunition and vehicles? Who organized its training and logistics? Is intelligence or military assistance received from outside one of the reasons the Taliban has enjoyed astonishing, and relatively bloodless, successes over experienced moujahedeen commanders who, for nearly a decade, fought occupying Soviet troops?

Generous support for the Taliban from Pakistan, which wants to pacify its war-racked neighbor for its own strategic and economic motives, has been well documented. But is Pakistan's powerful ally, the United States, also involved in some way? Many in Kabul believe so, though again, their proof is circumstantial.

Notice the LAT refers to it as a conspiracy theory, but who remembers hearing that the Clinton administration propped up the Taliban back before 9/11?  Surely Ms Raphel has a memory of it.  Maybe she has a book in her?   And maybe Robert Redford can do another "truth" movie about this whole thing... maybe get Valerie Plame to star as Ms Raphel.  If they get to work soon they can have it out right after Hillary gets the nomination.  

About that Section 8 in the Burbs Thing..

The story that broke the other day, at least on conservative sites, about Obama's HUD wanting to use federal money as a kind of extortion racket to force municipalities to change zoning laws to basically break up affluent suburbs (and their voting blocs) is not really new news.

It actually broke in 2012. Someone wrote a book about it.  The same guy has been yelling about it for awhile.

The only word that comes to mind here is craven. Not necessarily for the Obama people--they promised change and Obama had socialist roots after all--but for our disgraceful national media.  They've buried this story and countless others in their eight year quest to help the historic first black president.  And he's taken every advantage. 

Investigation Update

Breaking today--the Dept of Justice might charge General Betrayus with leaking classified info to his Lt. Colonel mistress.

Only fair, right?  Leaking is leaking.  Little guys like Jeffrey Sterling, who will stand trial soon, and John Kiriakou, who went to jail, were not immune. Matter of fact, General Petraeus was quoted as saying the following about Kiriakou:

General David Petraeus, CIA director, made a statement to CIA employees: "This case yielded the first IIPA successful prosecution in 27 years, and it marks an important victory for our Agency, for our Intelligence Community, and for our country. Oaths do matter, and there are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws".

Ouch. So there's a little room for schadenfreude there. 

Then again former Clinton NSA Sandy Berger never served time for stealing and destroying documents from the National Archives that might have pertained to 9/11.  And speaking of generals, what about "Obama's favorite general" James "Hoss" Cartwright, who was told in 2013 he was a target in a probe investigating the Stuxnet leak to an Obama-friendly NY Times reporter back in 2012?   What's happening with his case?

We don't know.  We do know that Jill Abramson, the editor of that Obama-friendly newspaper was fired last year only months after calling the Obama administration the most secretive she had ever dealt with in the midst of discussing the record number of leak prosecutions.  

So it's hard to figure whether Holder will go out the door by taking Petraeus down.  It would be typical Obama, but he's a pretty astute politician, too.     

ISIS fighters in Mexico and Maloof

The WaPo's fact checker Glenn Kessler gives the recently hyped reports about ISIS-linked fighters being captured at the Mexican border, specifically claims by Arkansas congressman Tom Cotton, four Pinocchios:

As we’ve noted, just because something is on the Internet doesn’t mean it’s true. As a lawmaker, Cotton needs to be careful about making inflammatory statements based on such flimsy evidence. At the very least, he needs to expand on his sources of information. He earns Four Pinnochios for trying to turn idle speculation into hard facts.

In doing so Kessler mentions a World Net Daily article by Michael Maloof as contributing to the hysteria, reminding the readers that Maloof was a Neocon working for Doug Feith to find a link between AQ and Iraq immediately after 9/11.  He ended up getting his clearance pulled for associating with a Lebanese-American gun runner involved with arming former Liberian strongman president Charles Taylor:

The whole thing seems to have started with a highly speculative account on July 4 in WND, labeled an “exclusive” and titled: “New Border Risk: ISIS Ties to Mexican Drug Lords.” (ISIS and ISIL are other names for Islamic State.) The article quoted Michael Maloof, who it described as a former “top Defense Department analyst” and “expert on the Middle East...”Who is Michael Maloof? He gained notoriety in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq as one of the key people involved in a DOD intelligence effort to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein had ties to al-Qaeda and was likely to provide weapons of mass destruction to terror groups.

In other words, he's probably a boogeyman spreading more false info on Iraq.  What Kessler could not do is actually refute the ground reports evidently originating with actual Border Patrol agents (who have not been identified and likely will not be), but since US officials with security agencies say it ain't so, it ain't so.  As a result these congressmen will not likely be vindicated anytime soon.

Whether this is hype or truth is still not settled.  Secretary Johnson was not completely candid when first asked about the four 'terrorists' who were busted on 9/10 at the border--they have now been identified as PKK Kurds, with much emphasis on their stance against ISIS.  Kessler could have activated his James Comey spidey sense regards government truth and pointed to the obfuscation coming from some of these same type of officials after Border Agents told Breitbart that illegal aliens were being allowed to use "notice to appear" papers as valid ID to fly commercially (at taxpayer expense), a story later verified.

But while researching the evil Neocon Michael Maloof, a man who helped lead us down the primrose path to the dumb war, some interesting stories popped up.  Keep in mind Mr. Maloof was not front and center at the Office of Special Plans back in the day--that honor went to Douglas Feith, Stephen Cambone and Rummy.  Maloof and his partner in research (one has to be careful using the singular word partner anymore) David Wurmser worked under the radar for the most part.  In 2006 PBS Frontline interviewed Maloof, who said the intelligence had always pointed more to a nexus between AQ and other terror groups and certain Islamic states, including Iraq, than it did to Saddam having WMDs. Matter of fact, he called into question the 2002 NIE, which talked about the threat of Iraqi WMDs:

Tell me about the NIE [National Intelligence Estimate] in October of 2002. Was it flawed?

I thought it was flawed. It basically talked about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. I just didn't see it, and I wrote a memo up to my immediate boss saying this is not correct, but it was something that came out. Until August of 2002, we were talking about terror as the basis [on which] to deal with Iraq. Then this NIE comes out in October 2002, and then, by December, you have George Tenet, the former director of CIA, going in and personally briefing the president, saying that Iraq had all this WMD.

I'm told that even he questioned how solid the information was, and that's when Tenet gave the infamous statement that "It's a slam dunk; the evidence is a slam dunk." ... To this day I don't know what prompted their October 2002 report. It's something they did on their own. ... What changed between August and October of 2002? What happened? To this day I don't have it. I think it might have been their desire to try to take back the initiative. It's the only thing I can conclude. ...

Maloof also told Frontline that all their data was cross-checked with CIA for accuracy but the animosity was so strong they never got back much confirmation.  He thinks they were simply afraid to say they missed it (9/11) and didn't want somebody second-guessing.  Maloof claims his group was working to get policy makers useful info on a tight timeline--they all thought AQ or others would attack again very soon.  One could even wildly speculate that Maloof and his outfit might explain the entire Plame affair--an attempt by CIA to get back at Cheney and these guys.

Anyway, it's impossible for a yahoo blogger on the internets to independently vouch for his overall credibility but based on the interview he certainly doesn't sound like a crazy kook fantasist.  Fast forward to 2013; Maloof is interviewed by RT about the chemical weapons attack in Syria that prompted Obama to nearly go cowboy on Bashar Assad. His contention at the time was that the Sarin gas was being produced in..... Iraq:

RT: Can you tell us more about that classified document you’ve seen, which shows that the US knew that Al-Qaeda linked rebels in Syria had sarin gas?

MM: The document itself was published in August 2013 by the National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC). It’s part of the intelligence community. The fact that some of it was actually captured in May along the border in Turkey and it was actually Al-Qaeda, and since it was disseminated my sources are telling me that production has probably increased significantly and sarin gas is being produced quite widely now. That it's actually ongoing and there's actually a Saudi financier whose name I’m trying to obtain right now.

There's that crazy Neocon, blaming WMDs on Iraq again!  But wait, this time his information was also mentioned by a former UN inspector, the head of the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria, and by none other than Pulitzer Prize winning liberal journalist Seymour Hersh, in a blockbuster expose completely ignored by US mainstream press outlets, which actually pissed off the socialists!

So OK, the stories about the ten ISIS fighters at the border or reports about ISIS working with Mexican drug lords may or may not be true.  There doesn't seem to be any hard evidence other than a few anonymous sources.  But certainly such a concept cannot be out of the realm of the possible, considering the ISIS-inspired terror attack that Canadian and American authorities claim they recently stopped in Canada.  Matter of fact, those concerned with Islamic terrorism should probably be more concerned on the northern border considering history.

But singling out a Neocon relic of the Bush years now working for World Nut Daily in an attempt to tamp down anti-Muslim hysteria (regardless of whether that person is credible or not), is something that usually works pretty well in today's vacuous media, unless or until disproved by actual events. And sometimes not even then.  So we will have to wait and see on this one.

Uh???

How did this happen?

WASHINGTON — A Texas man who scaled the White House fence made it through the North Portico doors on Friday night before being apprehended, the Secret Service said.

The intruder, Omar J. Gonzalez, 42, was arrested just inside the doors and taken to George Washington University Hospital after complaining of chest pains, said Ed Donovan, a Secret Service spokesman.

As the article says, most fence scalers are tackled immediately after they successfully cross. Yet this 42 year old guy was able to get over the fence then sprint to the White House and go in the front door before 'being tackled'?  No shots fired, not even any dogs?

Some will point out that the presidential entourage had just left the grounds so the first family was not in jeopardy, while CNN is reporting that Gonzales "was known" to the Secret Service, as if to say they knew he was more a nut than a terrorist, but if they didn't consider his act dangerous they wouldn't have evacuated the West Wing.  For all they knew he had a bomb sewn in his underwear and was going to blow up the Oval Office.  

Something doesn't smell right here.

MORE  9/20/14

The WaPo has more:

A sensor alarm automatically goes off when any unauthorized person crosses the fence line, and is transmitted to every on-duty agent’s radio and in the joint-operations command center. In many scenarios, if the jumper ignores demands to stop, a canine-team handler will release a trained dog to subdue the person.

But the dog was not released in this case, according to officials’ review of the event and evidence from Friday night. The Secret Service’s security review will look closely at why that dog wasn’t released. It typically takes a person sprinting across the grounds at least 20 to 25 seconds to make it from the fence line to the mansion.

Canine teams are trained to have their dog in position to be released within four seconds of the alarm sounding. The dog is trained to bite the arm or leg of the person they are sent to stop, and usually hold the person on the ground until their handler arrives. “We’re asking, why not release the dog?” said one law enforcement person who is reviewing the incident. “That would have stopped this.”

In October 2013 the Secret Service gunned down a woman in her car outside the White House with a baby on board after she allegedly tried to ram a gate on the property.  On September 11 this year dogs were used to subdue a white guy who jumped the fence dressed in a Pokemon hat and he only got about 10 yards from the fence line.  Let's hope political correctness has not intruded on Secret Service policies/actions.

It's hard to believe anyone would have time to say, "hey, don't shoot him or release the dogs because he's Hispanic and that might look bad for Obama in the media" but one also has to wonder whether things would have been done differently if he was wearing a black ISIS shirt or God forbid, a "Don't Tread on Me" flag shirt.   

MORE  9/21/14

Turns out Mr. Gonzales did have a weapon after all. Quite frankly a policy of "suspect doesn't appear to have a weapon or backpack" or however the Secret Service explains their reluctance to shoot is pretty much unbelievable considering what someone could be carrying without showing.

Of course the national mainstream media is all over this--as they should be--especially since Gonzales is reported to be an Iraqi vet suffering from PTSD.   Contrast their coverage of this with their almost non-existent coverage of Ali Mohammed Brown, a suspected domestic terrorist who killed 4 people, including 2 gay men, presumably in the name of Allah.  Yeah, just sayin.

MORE  9/22/14

This continues to be a little weird.   In one story we learn Mr. Gonzalez is a modern 'Chicken Little', allegedly telling the Secret Service the 'atmosphere was collapsing' and that he needed to get the word out to the big guy so he could warn everyone.  Yeah, nuttier than a fruitcake.

Yet in another story we get this:

However, neither prosecutors nor Gonzalez’s assigned defense attorneys invoked his mental competency as an issue for now. Assistant Federal Public Defender David Bos said Gonzalez understands the proceeding against him.

No doubt the national media is very interested in this story due to Mr. Gonzalez' background, which they might see as the Tea Bagger gun nut category--perfect to pound before the upcoming mid-terms--but saying 'the atmosphere is collapsing' is more in line with an environmental loon.   And that's a rabbit hole they will likely not descend within. 

CNN goes to bat for IRS commish

CNN headline: "Top IRS official beats back Republican barrage". 

The story is a glowing portrait of the Democratic fix-it man, who formerly took over Fannie Mae after the financial crash.  Now he's facing the grilling of Congress, mainly from the GOP, over the IRS targeting scandal and CNN frames its coverage as that of a grizzled vet 'beating back' the Republican attack.  

But take a look at Gowdy's questioning of this man, which shows an entire exchange and see if you think the CNN article accurately portrays the situation..



Gowdy is making a solid case that Eric Holder should appoint a special prosecutor to determine whether laws were broken (assuming the FBI is no longer on the case).   This clip also shows what's so great about Gowdy.  Arrogant SOBs come in front of him, hear the southern accent and see the wild haircut and think "what a goofball, I got this guy".  By the time it's over they are left saying "who is this guy and WTF just happened?"  

All Wee-Wee'd up again...

This is only making news on liberal blogs, Twitchy and Breitbart and a few other places for some reason, but the Prez really bristled over a question asked by Ed Henry of Fox during his final presser in the Philippines yesterday.  The question?  Simple, describe the Obama Doctrine (on foreign policy).  Who could forget the last person criticized for not being able to describe a presidential foreign policy doctrine.   

Of course the lefties are crowing that he chewed Henry up for breakfast, or made tofu out of him, or turned him into a rice cake--however the analogies go on the port side.  You be the judge... 



That clip did not include Henry's question to the Filipino president, which was actually tougher.  You can see it here by forwarding to 40:50.  It was about the killing of journalists in his country, which he answered rather calmly.

On the contrary Obama was, as Twitchy put it, rhetorically 'stomping his foot', bashing Fox, Bush and anyone not in agreement with his doctrine (on the right, because the left agrees with it), whatever that might be.  As is usual with Obama replies, there was an answer in there somewhere, it was just hard to pin down aside from the jab at Henry for daring ask the question, which was clear.

The biggest strawman was the notion that those opposed to to his rather timid foreign policy want war.  Hmm, at last check nobody forced him to draw a red line in Syria or threaten the various consequences over Ukraine; not John McCain, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh or Tweedle Dum.  It was he, trying to act tough while telegraphing a reluctance to back it up.   This is called smart 21st Century power.

At one point he stated that some of his critics haven't 'learned the lesson of the last decade', which seems odd.  What exactly is the lesson?   Is he saying Iraq would now be thriving now under Saddam, with Israel far better off still having him tied with Arafat/Fatah at the hip?  Surely he doesn't think Bush should have invaded Pakistan, since it's obvious his Afghanistan surge will not defeat the Taliban, while our leaving threatens to return the region back to 2001.

Was bombing Libya after Daffy gave up his nuke program (thanks to seeing Saddam crawling out of a spider hole) an example of smart power?  What would Ben Rhodes say?   Was the reset button with Russia a smart move, all things considered?  Ed Snowden?  Trusting the Russians to get our astronauts to the ISS?  How about trusting the Iranians?  Abbas?  Was it Bush's blunder that the Indians are ticked off at America moreso than during the Bush years?   Do tell, Mr. President.

In a way his long wandering snippy answer to a pretty basic question IS the answer.  The doctrine appears to be confusion, ambiguity, and mish-mosh, with rear view mirror thinking while leading from behind, all while criticizing anyone not smart enough to see the genius.  He's not going to be dumb and start a war, unless his bombing likely won't start a war.  It's not hard to see how this might confuse certain foreigners, wondering what has happened to the most powerful nation on Earth and the biggest force for good the world has ever known.

C

CNN headlines finally find Bundy

After 45 days of almost nothing but MH370 headlines--including a 'breaking news' version the other day over a piece of random sheet metal floating off the coast of Australia--the Communist News Network has finally found the Bundy ranch story..

Racist comments from Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy – who earlier this month appeared to win a highly publicized standoff against federal authorities over his two-decade long illegal grazing of cattle on public land – are giving Democrats a new weapon to attack some top Republicans who earlier came to Bundy's defense.

To be fair, CNN did sorta cover the story when the BLM special agents had their dogs and guns staring down the various men, women, and children, but as more an afterthought. None of the other networks covered the ranch story when it was breaking, now every network is headlining Bundy's racism.  Dog bites man.

As to Bundy, evidently he was crudely trying to make a point about Johnson's Great Welfare Society and its effects on the black community, ie, single mother homes/babies out of wedlock, crime, unemployment, etc. Personally I don't care if he's a racist.  Hell, Harry Reid had to apologize for his 'racist remarks' about Obama.  Any support I had for Bundy wasn't personal, it was because there was an overreaction.  I had the same feeling when Elian Gonzales was ripped out of that Miami home by federal agents carrying automatic weapons and sent safely back to Castro so he could be used as a propaganda tool.

Nothing Bundy says about race changes the fact that federal agents were removing his cattle and threatening him with weapons over a past due bill.  They weren't doing it because he wasn't politically correct.  It's almost as if some liberals are saying, 'see, he deserved to be gunned down by a BLM sniper because he's a racist!"  Meanwhile Al Sharpton has a show on NBC and gets to hobnob with the President while owing over a million in back taxes.  Yes, the same guy who has made many a racist remark in his time.

But OK, the left/media has their story now. They'll try to connect Bundy to every GOP politician from here through the midterms, probably using his comments about race as some kind of litmus test in the debates, or maybe even trying to tie supporters to Ted Bundy.  After all, they are terrorists.

MORE  4/26/14

It's tempting to kneejerk a reply to Dana Milbank's WaPo hit piece on the Bundy ranch racist fallout.  But isn't it true, to some degree?  There are racists out there and they do tend to associate themselves with conservatism. Those on the right would do well to stand back and take a look at some of their bedfellows without the emotion of the Bundy cause. 

Yeah, one can easily point to the left and criticize their bad behavior in the same area, such as embracing people like Bill Ayers, Mumia Abu Jamal and other known radicals, or Pelosi kissing up to the Occupy Wall St movement (who unlike the Tea Party contains some actual domestic terrorists).

But for the conservative movement to advance within a biased climate of left wing media and the low information attention spans they try to manipulate, conservative leaders need to acknowledge racism and some of the other nuttiness that occasionally gets lumped with the right in general.   No, it's not fair--the current president hobnobbed with an actual domestic terrorist and the media yawned, which would not have happened had McCain been associated with a figure in the Sovereign Citizens movement.  But it is what it is. 

Remaining silent will simply further the disinformation and allow the left to smear the entire movement.  Speaking out will give conservative leaders the credibility to point out bad behavior of the same stripe on the other side, knowing the media will not.    

Aviation Update

Drudge is pointing to this Daily Mail story with angst..

A new photo of a mysterious flying object over Kansas has been revealed. It appears to be the same aircraft as one that was snapped soaring over Texas last month. The exact identify of the aircraft remains a mystery, but rumours abound that it could be a secret jet.

Here's the Daily Mail photo:

Now, here's a few photos of a United States B2 bomber:

Seems pretty close to me.  The wingspan on today's photo doesn't look like the one the Daily Mail claims is the secret aircraft.  B2 bombers are stationed at Whiteman AFB near Knob Knoster, MO, so seeing one in Kansas would hardly be shocking.

MORE  4/20/14

Some have said it appears the picture up top shows a smooth trailing edge to the flying V, as opposed to the B2 which is jagged.   That's apparent when looking closely at blowups of the pic.  Part of the uncertainty is the high altitude at which this plane is flying along with the camera zoom needed to capture it.  The contrails line up with the B2's engine position, the wingspan appears similar, the region is close to the B2's home base.  But if the trailing edge is indeed smooth (and this isn't an illusion created by atmospheric conditions or photography effects) then obviously it could be a new model.

The next question would be, whose new model?   

Cash they can believe in

Obama back in the day..

As a candidate, Obama criticized President George W. Bush for rewarding his donors and friends with key positions. Now, however, the Obama administration has unequivocally dismissed criticism of the president's business-executive and big-time-bundler ambassador nominees, including an old college roommate, former Sen. Tom Daschle's ex-wife and the chairman of the Pittsburgh Steelers football team.

"It would be disingenuous for me to suggest that there are not going to be some excellent public servants but who haven't come through the ranks of the civil service," Obama said at a Jan. 9 press conference, according to a report from Bloomberg News Service.

Fast forward to yesterday, where Jen Psaki, State Dept Spokeschick, replied to a question from ABC's Jon Karl about another non career appointment in 2014..



By the way, if you watch the entire exchange it appears that two AP reporters attempt to come to the rescue of Ms Psaki to some degree after Karl's questioning, including the normally sharp Matt Lee who questioned whether Obama said he would appoint more civil servants as opposed to foreign service personnel, which really made no difference to the point.  This same kind of rescue attempt occasionally happens when Fox reporters get too frisky with their probing questions.  Both Lee and AP reporter Arshad Mohammed are good overall and ask many probing questions themselves.  But it's as if they have some kind of of instinctive mechanism to protect their own when someone else roots beneath the liberal skin.

So what, this is just another Obama bash, McCloud?  Well yes, yes it is, but it helps to prove that the 'change' promised was never about changing politics as usual, it was about changing America into a quasi-European socialized state while scaling back our influence in the world. That's what "ending the wars" was all about; that's what O-care was all about.  As everyone has now witnessed, a few lies to help those causes did not fall under the 'change DC' promise.  

Doobie Bowl Sunday

Can't claim much affection for either team.  Seattle seems more like the Cinderella squad this year, so will give it to them.  Either way, don't care who wins or loses, just hope it's a good football game. 

As to the politics, Bill O'Rilly has secured his almost-traditional pre-game Obama interview, of which he's been chest-thumping about for a week or more (along with tempering some of his normal rightward leaning views in the advent of meeting the prez).  Ho-hum.  It's hard to believe he'll ask anything truly controversial.

That said, he'll almost certainly ask tougher questions that any mainstream advocacy-journalist.  He asked 'the folks' to send him some suggestions because one will be used in the interview, so here are some hypothetical submissions..  

1.  Where were you on the night of the Benghazi attack?  Were you in regular contact with the Situation Room?   Did you issue any stand-down orders?   How and when did you realize the attack was over, and where were you at the time?   Why was the mention of "AQ" and "terrorist" removed from the original CIA talking points by unknown State and White House staff?  Did you approve this? 

2.   Have you seen the Seymour Hersh story and the report from a weapons inspector suggesting the Syrian rebels actually fired the chemical weapons that almost triggered a bombing raid on that country?  If you are not familiar with these stories/reports, why not?

3.  Sticking with Syria, Bashar Assad is not delivering the chemicals to the port in a timely fashion, as promised by the agreement.  If he continues to stall what is the remedy?  Is the bombing threat being made through back channels or directly to the Assad government?   Is Russia involved and helping?

4.  Similar question on Iran, what happens if we find them cheating before or after the 6 month preliminary disarmament negotiations?  Will new red lines be issued or does that pretty much mean bomb, bomb, bomb?

5.  If Karzai doesn't sign the BSA before leaving office will we definitely be pulling out all troops from Afghanistan?  By the way, when you say we are 'ending the war', will the enemy consider it a victory if everyone leaves and there's no BSA?  What happens if they allow AQ trainees back into the country or another attack is launched from commanders operating there?

6.  Have you changed your mind on presidential executive powers since your comments in 2008?  If so, do you owe the previous president an apology?

7.  Is Anas al-Liby, who was rendered from Libya last year, being interrogated anymore?  He seems to have lawyered up, with a report saying the Libyan government is paying his attorney fees.  Did we get anything useful out of him on possible pending attacks before he was read rights?   

8.  On the IRS targeting story, you expressed outrage upon learning of the event in the news but later called it a "phony scandal".  How did your half-brother Malik get 501 c4 status so quickly for his Barack H Obama foundation--even having it made retroactive?   Do you not see that as a form of favoritism?  Is the impression left that the IRS was used as a political attack dog something that concerns you?

9.  On a similar theme, why was your uncle Omar and aunt Zentuini allowed to remain in the country after both being ordered deported?  Were you aware of either case in advance?  Do you agree with the outcomes, and if so, do you believe there should essentially be open borders in the United States to the point of getting here means staying, and eventually citizenship?  Does it concern you that people following the legal pathway to citizenship are left looking like chumps when those ordered deported are given asylum or in the event of a general amnesty passed by Congress?      

10.   Which corporations do you think need their 'asses kicked' these days?  Looking back, do you consider that rhetoric as helpful or do you regret using it?

11.  How in the world does a website cost over a half-billion dollars?  Did you know the costs were running that high before rollout?  How did the website pass Initial Operating Capability tests?  Who signed off on these tests, assuming they occurred?   Are the contractors being paid more to fix something they should have delivered on October 1 or is it included in their agreements with the government?

12.  What do you think of the TSA whistleblower whose story is out this week, saying that TSA agents were indeed laughing and abusing the naked scanners at airports?   Surely stories like that in combination with the NSA snooping leaves many people guessing about their own government. How do you combat the negative impression left by such programs?  Should someone apologize?  

13.  You recently pointed out that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have been falling for the last 8 years, which would include the Bush administration.  Actually, the level of carbon increase was fairly stable during the two Bush presidencies, suggesting the decline may not be due to new EPA rulemaking alone.  Do you think this leveling off/decline of US emissions is related to the observed flat trend in global temperatures since 1998?  Do you think it's useful for people like the former Vice President to be running around spouting falsehoods about climate?   Doesn't that undermine efforts to persuade the people?     

14.  Why won't you approve the Keystone Pipeline project?   Does it trouble you that the shale oil is being moved in unit oil trains that might not be safer and definitely produce more greenhouse gases than transport through a pipeline?  Doesn't Keystone fit well with your "all of the above" energy strategy laid out during the State of the Union?  

15.   Is there a war on women, and if so, who are the combatants?  Is Sarah Palin a target or a combatant?  Is it acceptable for Democrats to use a term like 'war' when discussing their political opponents when Palin was blamed for encouraging the Gabby Giffords shooting based on her use of 'target'?

16.   Pete Carroll is being called a "9/11 Truther" by some due to a reported incident where a retired US Army general visited his clubhouse and he reportedly asked if Bush blew the towers.  Whether that's true or not, as president you would have access to all the secrets of the government, right?   It's tempting to ask you to once and for all confirm such things here, but it's understandable if you can't.  It would also be nice to clear up the UFO conspiracies and maybe the TWA 800 crash, which some former investigators recently asked your NTSB to take another look at.

However there is something you can answer.  Allegedly Coach Carroll asked the general about the 9/11 attack during a discussion about Iraq. You are famously on record as calling the Iraq war 'dumb', so here's the question-- what would you have done about Saddam if he were still around when you took office in 2008?   Would you have continued the sanctions and no-fly zones indefinitely?  Or do you think Middle-East peace would be possible with his regime still in power, as in, do you think he could have been brought to the table to honestly broker a peace treaty amongst Iran, Syria, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Russia?       

Thank you sir.             

AFTERMATH  2/2/14

Hate to say "I told you so" (so here it comes) but the team with better defense usually wins the big games.  In Seattle's case they were the number one defense to boot.  Also, they were severely misunderestimated, which is often a formula for victory.  Russell Wilson wasn't the team, the team was the team.   

As to BO vs BO, or O'Reilly vs O'bama, score one for the first prevaricator.  He turned every question around as a slam on Fox News, as if nobody in the country cares about the scandals he's already proclaimed as 'phony'.  Even BO couldn't effectively cut off BHO's filibustering, allowing him to run down the clock and limit any dents in the presidential armor.  Of course BO had to worry about his career and Fox's future access so he couldn't go for the jugular so to speak, but he could have pressed the president as to what he means by holding people accountable when nobody has even been demoted or placed into less-demanding jobs.  The other questions largely backfired on BO because he can't challenge the person who was there on scene and who holds all the power.  So as predicted, yawn.

Finally, this was tweeted out from HQ prior to the game....

A few initial questions come to mind.  One, why is the president looking up?  Is he trying to throw it to some guy in the stands?   Two, where is NATO field?    

Indicting the Critics

News is breaking that Dinesh D'Souza, the "controversial" (the term will be used by every MSM outlet reporting on this) conservative writer who penned "The Roots of Obama's Rage" and the huge-grossing documentary "2016: Obama's America" that aired during the 2012 campaign season has been indicted by SDNY US Attorney Preet Bharara on a campaign finance charge.

They didn't name the candidate, but speculation points to his long-time friend Wendy Long, who was blown out by Democrat Senator Kristen Gillibrand in 2012.

As to the why/how, the WaPo had this comment, sourced to the SDNY, saying:

The indictment was the result of a routine review by the FBI of campaign filings with the FEC by various candidates after the 2012 election, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

But the NY Times explained it this way:

It is not clear from the court documents what led investigators to Mr. D’Souza in a fund-raising case involving relatively small donations, in a race that ended in a blowout win for Ms. Gillibrand. Ms. Long raised about $785,000 in the race.

So where lies the truth? How did they come upon this? Were they searching through the backlog of Hillary's Chinese bundlers looking for something and stumbled across it? 

D'Souza might be as guilty as sin--we'll see--but does the Obama administration not understand how utterly partisan and utterly Stasi this looks, considering his previous work and the upcoming debate scheduled with Bill Ayers along with the pending release of his new movie "America"?   Not to mention that India is still ticked off about the strip-search of their diplomat.     

Of course Carney will probably tell us tomorrow that Obama found out about it by reading a blog.

Hey, He Lied...

...but Charles, he's getting away with it...

Translation: They were never really serious about Afghanistan. (Nor apparently about Iraq either. Gates recounts with some shock that Hillary Clinton admitted she opposed the Iraq surge for political reasons, and Obama conceded that much of the opposition had indeed been political.)

The Democratic mantra — Iraq War, bad; Afghan War, good — was simply a partisan device to ride anti-Bush, anti-Iraq War feeling without appearing squishy. Look, they could say: We’re just being tough and discriminating. Iraq is a dumb war, said Obama repeatedly. It’s a war of choice. Afghanistan is a war of necessity, the central front in the war on terror.

Having run on that, Obama had a need to at least make a show of trying to win the good war, the smart war. “If I had ever come to believe the military part of the strategy would not lead to success as I defined it,” writes Gates. “I could not have continued signing the deployment orders.” The commander in chief, Gates’s book makes clear, had no such scruples.

Yep, duh. And Secretary Gates comes off looking like he just fell off the turnip truck at 70 expressing shock that Obama would not feel any passion about Afghan.  Most of us in the blogosphere knew the liberals were playing politics with national security back in 2004 and would do or say anything when Dr. Dean started the "Bush lied" meme. Obama was just the culmination of the grand plan to grab back power.


And yes, Mr. Austin Bay, you write a very good expose about Benghazi, speculating in all the right areas...

From the get-go, many of us didn't buy this crock. For starters, it leveraged several shop-worn left-wing "blame America" tropes, including that Americans are anti-Muslim bigots. The hooey was also at odds with on-the-ground reports, which emerged immediately after the horror. Pro-U.S. Libyans had warned that a well-armed militant Islamist militia intended to launch attacks in Benghazi. Granular reports of an extended firefight between the militiamen and a U.S. security element proved to be very accurate.

History has substantiated the heroism of former U.S. Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty as fact. They resisted for over six hours before being killed by enemy mortar fire. Ah, yes, peaceful demonstrators impulsively employing heavy infantry weapons. According to the now-available congressional transcripts, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey (after speaking with AFRICOM commander General Carter Ham) informed President Barack Obama that the consulate had suffered a terror attack.

Panetta and Dempsey told the president within an hour after the first assault began. Yet Obama Administration officials continued to peddle the "video did it" canard for almost two weeks after the assault. Why peddle a blatant falsehood? Because "the video did it" narrative advanced a propaganda campaign supporting central Obama re-election political themes. Obama claimed his presidency would dramatically change Arab Muslim perceptions of America. Though he never equated killing Osama bin Laden with defeating al-Qaida, he implied al-Qaida was fading fast. The Benghazi disaster countered these touts. Obama had to leave the American public with the definite impression that the Benghazi assault was spontaneous. Why, that nasty video incited inexplicable anger!

All of which should be obvious to just about anyone with a political brain, including most MSM reporters. Which means they don't want to consider it because of the damage it could do.  Some are even reporting on how Fox is covering it wrong instead of actually digging for any stories.  Meanwhile the same reporters speculate wildly about Christie's Bridgegate. They couldn't telegraph their bias any better with a skywriter.  Oh, and yes, Fox News is biased to the right, but they owe their very existence to the mainstream bias.

Hey, how about Snoop-gate? NSA-gate? No, there will be no 'gates' for Obama except Professor Henry Gates, which was the first look into our social justice president's true mind after the election (Joe the Plumber was our first true glimpse beforehand and look what happened to him).  The constitutional scholar president who campaigned on Bush's trashing of the Constitution, in part due to NSA surveillance, actually made it worse in 2011 before anyone was looking:

What had not been previously acknowledged is that the court in 2008 imposed an explicit ban — at the government’s request — on those kinds of searches, that officials in 2011 got the court to lift the bar and that the search authority has been used.

Tomorrow he will do what he always does--give a speech. That will satisfy most of the media with the exception of Greenwald and maybe Fox News.  A real media might connect some dots between Robert Gates' revelations, Dr. Krauthammer's assessment of fighting the 'good war' along the 'central front in the War on Terror' in Afghanistan, and the New York Times' recent apologia explaining how becoming president steeled Obama's spine with each PDB, and maybe question what the hell is actually going on.

For instance, they could question why we need more NSA snooping to protect us from terrorists while the administration downplays the terror threat, saying we might leave Afghanistan if there's no deal with Karzai.  They could question why we have no intention of sending troops back to Iraq or Syria to fight affiliates of AQ, which we're being told are somehow different than  "core AQ", while at the same time sending troops to Africa to look for Joseph Kony.   But they already know the answers. 

Finally, Obamacare. Not only did he outright lie to the public about keeping their plans and doctors, now it appears he is lying about how many have signed up for Medicaid:

Essentially, then, it is ridiculous to suggest, as the @BarackObama tweet does, that the people who have selected a health plan in the exchanges are in anyway equivalent to the 3.9 to 4.2 million who were deemed eligible for Medicaid.

After all that, along with the IRS, AP and Rosen snooping issues, a competent media might be wondering if this president can be trusted on anything for the next three years. The polls would say maybe not.  Swap political affiliations and how would the coverage be going now?  But the media helped him get elected, twice, so there's no going back now.  Attacking him (as they would attack Christie) is in effect an attack on themselves.   So he's getting away with things.   But for most of them, if we could see their journolist communications, probably think things are going well right now.

Working on 404care, 24/7

That's the message from the White House--they are working to fix the faulty 404care site "24/7".  This has been repeated over and over.   So the question is, who?  Who is working on this site in three shifts?  Does the government now own the software, meaning government employees are doing it, or is it still a contractor providing this 24/7 repair service?

It should be the contractor, since the government had no business ever accepting such a piece of junk system without first confirming that it worked.  So did they?  Are the taxpayers now having to pay extra for the contractor to fix this what should have never been accepted?  Sounds like they are calling in new contractors (experts) because Obama says he's pissed (and that's enough).

So are these new hired guns being hired under no-bid contracts via competitive bidding? Byron York claims the implementation money has already been spent.  So again, are taxpayers being saddled with fixing something already paid for which should have never passed IOC (Initial Operating Capability) or final acceptance?   We await the HHS Czarina's testimony.  Whenever that may come.    

Stop Listening!

From our Leader today..

..all of us need to stop focusing on the lobbyists and bloggers and the talking heads on radio, and the professional activists who profit off conflict..

At least he's not blaming Uncle Jim anymore.   But wait, did he suggest bloggers are bad and should not be focused on?  Say it ain't so!

Seriously, does anyone take this stuff seriously anymore?

Remember, we were promised that all bills out of Congress would be held up 72 hours after passage so the peeps could get a look at them before signing.  We were promised an end to earmarks.  We were promised a new tone and the end of business as usual.   We've received pretty much none of that yet.  And even in this latest showdown we were told by the president and Harry Reid that they would accept nothing less than a "clean" CR and Debt Ceiling increase or no deal.   Now everyone sees the earmarks and special favors in the bill, of which there will be no explanation.  Business as usual. 

The purpose of the shutdown was to take a chink out of Obamacare and in that respect it failed.  But it was also to send a message--not only to the president and Senate Democrats but to the establishment Republicans who sneeringly want to maintain business as usual and who look down their noses at the average Americans who support the Tea Party because they are worried about their future.  In that context it was a success because now the public knows exactly where everyone stands and what their representatives are really made of, something empty words after the fact cannot change. 

Winning

Was it worth it?  Yes.  Rolling over is never a strategy.  There was going to be a showdown over debt anyway so an impasse was certain.  But it's hard to fight against the President, Senate, most of the media, Hollywood and international bodies, especially if your own army is divided. 

Handicapping the players, well Dirty Harry Reid acted predictably, figuring he could stonewall the divided GOP caucus and force them to cave, and he played that role brilliantly.  If the president was involved it was hard to tell where, but his non-involvement was a chosen strategy.  Whatever it takes in the craven march to our Euro-socialist future.  Boehner actually showed more resolve than I figured he would but in the end his hands were tied.  He wasn't going to blow everything up to please the likes of Sean Hannity.  Live to fight another day.    

But people like John McCain deserve to be addressed directly:  Sir--just shut the fork up about any financial matters from here forward please.  You screwed it up in 2008 and here you are again blabbing with blinders on.  If you feel the need to jab your fellow Republicans in the back do it to your bathroom mirror.  If you feel the need to talk publicly, stick to talking about terrorists.  Your political enemies do not want to be friends with you, k?  They want to skewer you with hot pokers and leave you naked and cuckolded in the street holding a sign saying 'racist'.  OK, my friend?  Thanks.  

As to the overall fight and what it means, I can't say it any better than the White House Dossier guy...

I realize that sounds quite delusional to many people, particularly here in Washington. But it makes total, absolute sense.

The muttering class Inside the Beltway is very pleased with itself: The doomed Tea Party strategy is foundering on the shoals of idiocy, just like they said it would. The Republican “brand” has been downgraded yet again. America is looks foolish abroad: “The world has reacted mostly with disbelief that a superpower could fall into such dysfunction,” wrote the New York Times today. Reasonable people will soon be back in charge so they can do reasonable things in a reasonable way without all these Tea Party lunatics stirring up trouble.

Let me tell all of you something: THIS COUNTRY IS ALREADY IN A STATE OF TOTAL DYSFUNCTION, AND HAS BEEN FOR YEARS.

A state of dysfunction, mind you, brought to you by the “reasonable” people who have been striking deals for years that have created $17 trillion in debt and a possibly irreversible degree of Socialism that is lobotomizing our tradition of independent thinking and creativity, crippling free enterprise, and carving the soul out of the moral, God-fearing ethic that has made this nation the greatest on earth.

The shaky status-quo moderates who helped get America to this point will not be remembered well in the course of history.

Convenient Transparency

No, it's not a revelation that the "most transparent administration in history" is only transparent when it helps them.  It's displayed weekly, but sometimes it's a little more subtle.  Take Jay Carney, for example. 

One might think the most transparent administration in history would want their number one press spokesman out front during a crisis, answering away.  But that's not always the case.  When the Syria WMD story began to explode in late August the time it blew over during the week of September 11th,  Jay Carney made only a handful of appearances in front of cameras.

To be exact, between August 28th and September 10th, as the Syria crap was hitting the fan, he only made one appearance, and that was alongside national security staffer Tony Blinken on the 9th.  That was the same day the Syrians and Putin pulled the president's rear out of the fire.

During the same time period--a total of ten possible briefing days--there was only one televised briefing, which was performed by backup spokesman Josh Earnest on Thursday August 29th.  Friday August 30th was the day Obama claimed he did the walk-around on the White House yard with his Chief of Staff and decided to throw the bombing decision over a congressional vote. Saturday August 31st was when he announced the decision.  Thereafter followed five straight days where no press briefings were given.

Contrast that to recent events with the CR and debt ceiling.  Carney has suddenly found his groove and is out there every day spewing talking points.   He's done the last six in a row and eight out of nine back through September 25th.  The Ted Cruz filibuster ended on the 24th.  Very transparent.  

Congressional Update

Here's some news about Congress...

Is anyone in charge on Capitol Hill? October's two-week-long melodrama over shutting down the government was not an isolated instance.

Recently Congress voted for a $749 billion package of tax cuts, and only a few months later was locked in debate over a constitutional amendment for a balanced budget. The House voted in favor of Ronald Reagan's plan to almost double the number of nuclear warheads in the U.S. arsenal, and not long after voted in favor of the nuclear freeze.

Only once in the past six years has Congress finished the budget appropriations before the beginning of the fiscal year; many spending bills have not been completed until months after the spending they supposedly control has begun. Long periods of legislative stalling are followed by spasms in which bills are passed with wild abandon, and these often contain "unprinted amendments" whose contents congressmen have never had an opportunity to read.

Many provisions of "tax leasing" became law that way, as, in 1981, did the phone number of a woman named Rita. Rita's number had been scribbled in the margin of the only copy of an amendment being voted on, and the following day it was duly transcribed into the printed copy of the bill.

"The system is a mess, and what's amazing is how many members of Congress are fully aware that the system is a mess," says Alan Dixon, a senator from Illinois.

In case you missed some of the names, that was actually a synopsis of the Congress from a 1984 article in the Atlantic.  One of several government shutdowns was looming, carnage in the budget fights between Democrat Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan.  Notice the tone of the reportage--Congress needs 'adult supervision'.  Not much has changed, so maybe it's not really getting worse after all.  

The Games Begin

It's all about fault now.  Here we have the Democrats, who refuse to negotiate on anything, harping about Tea Party this, Tea Party that, extremists suicide bombers hostage takers (meaning they only bargain with real terrorists these days).

The amazing thing is that they are so confident on the media's bias and the public's indifferent stupidity they just plow ahead with the nonsense, convinced a great win is around the corner after they teach these teabaggers a lesson.  And they've no doubt been coached to say this stuff by the best Democratic strategists money and power can buy, many of whom went through the Clinton shutdown.

But in explaining this today the WaPo revealed something.   Everyone has heard the old saying about lies--repeat the same one over and over and eventually people will come to believe it.  The Democrats and media are lying about how the previous shutdown impacted the GOP, trying to parlay it into this one, but rarely does a political operative openly admit it (emphasis added):

Republican leaders are all too aware of how they came to be seen as the losers during the last government shutdown, in the winter of 1995 and 1996. At the time, the Clinton administration argued that House Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) and his Republican caucus were too extreme.

“We just repeated that over and over again until it sunk in,” said Democratic strategist Mike McCurry, who was White House press secretary at the time.

The WaPo also posted a chart of government shutdowns and their duration. Here it is:

As can be seen, there have been plenty of funding lapses.  They don't occur by mistake, they occur over policy differences.  But if the current crop of Republicans are bomb-strapping terrorist extremists for standing up for their position now leading to a shutdown, what were the House Democrats during the Carter administration?   Was Tip O'Neill an extremist?  

What About..

A picture is beginning to emerge of the Navy Yard shooter, including some anger at white people and for America in general:

"He felt a lot of discrimination and and racism with white people especially," she said. There was also a growing sense of entitlement and disrespect, she said. "He did have the tendency to feel like people owed him something all the time."

At least that's the picture today.  It will be interesting to see how the gun control zealots might play this kind of a victim angle.  Chances are they are still confused.  

But notice something missing?

The man was in his mid 30s but so far hardly any stories mention girlfriends, ex-girlfriends, ex-wives or anything of a romantic nature. They have quoted a female "friend", but not identified her a girlfriend. Was he a loser with women? If so that would certainly fit the profile of almost all of spree killers, a pattern that seems to cross racial, religious and cultural boundaries (to include suicide bombers and other jihadies).