“When [Obama] came over to our little area” at Andrew Air Force Base, says Woods, “he kind of just mumbled, you know, ‘I’m sorry.’ His face was looking at me, but his eyes were looking over my shoulder like he could not look me in the eye. And it was not a sincere, ‘I’m really sorry, you know, that your son died,’ but it was totally insincere, more of whining type, ‘I’m sorry.’” Woods says that shaking President Obama’s hands at his son’s memorial service was “like shaking hands with a dead fish.”
Not feeling the love....
ReplyDeleteRentier CEOs Advocate Austerity for America
Felix Salmon did an admirable takedown of a “CEOs [sic] Deficit Manifesto” in the Wall Street Journal. It’s yet another entry in the long-running, dishonest campaign funded by billionaire Pete Peterson to pretend that all right thinking people (and of course CEOs believe they have the right to think for everybody else) should be all in favor of trashing the middle class and the economy through misguided deficit cutting. Salmon could have gone further in his critique, but the letter was so lame he didn’t need to, and the issues he raised would be plenty persuasive to most Americans.
Felix correctly styled the letter as “self serving” and described the idea of deficit cutting now as “ridiculous”. Debt to GDP is falling and the economy would tank if we were to reduce the Federal deficit while the economy is deleveraging. But these corporate leaders tried overegging the pudding by depicting the current federal debt levels as a security threat. One aspect of this debate that doesn’t get the attention that it deserves is that the deficit hawks keep claiming that the US is about to hit a 90% federal debt to GDP ratio, which Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff claim is correlated with lower economic growth. Aside from the fact that this study is questionable (it mixes gold standard countries with fiat currency countries, plus correlation is not causation; in many cases, a major financial crisis produced both the low growth and an increase in debt levels, meaning its spurious to treat debt as a driver of lower growth), the US is actually not at any imminent risk of breaching this level. The CBO, astonishingly, has kept publishing reports that project gross debt levels, not net debt. This 2010 analysis by Rob Johnson and Tom Ferguson shows what a large adjustment netting out the government’s financial assets makes (click to enlarge):
Loathing and contempt seem so ... inadequate.
But, Doris,
ReplyDeleteit's working so well for Greece!
But, to be serious, Wall St. ALWAYS wants a Republican President, and it ALWAYS does better with a Democratic one.
DeleteKind of like kids and candy; mommy forgets to put away the halloween candy when she leaves the house, and the little darlings eat until they end up with a bellyache.
DeleteExcept, in the case of Wall St., they end up bankrupting the country, and crashing the world economy.
.
DeleteAs usual, one side of the story.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Democratic Fiscal Cliff Divers
Worried about the people? Hilarious. It's all about politics, one-upmanship, and saying "we won".
They are all dicks.
.
The EU story is getting interesting. While wretchard's crew is busy crowing over the ultimate demise of the "euroweenie socialist model" I'm hearing more and more voices call for the tighter union required to make the experiment work - fiscal and political as well as monetary. It's becoming one of those "it could happen" scenarios. The differences between the two political classes - EU and USA - are becoming apparent as we work through the various messes. Waiting like vultures in the wings are the End Government Now crew of malcontents, misfits, and misogynists. And Pete Peterson looks so innocuous. Lloyd Blankfein. Jamie Dimon. ......... Let the abortion cats steal all the thunder. Then pounce while the War on Women wages vigorously against the Flying Squirrels.
DeletePeggy Noonan can't understand why the race is so close after the "real Obama" exposed himself. That's like comparing a flirtatious wink with an open raincoat.
Whatever happens, Pub's need to remember "It's God's will."
The Big money in Greece is made in "shipping." Greece is, IIRC, either number one, or two, Globally, in carrying cargo, worldwide.
DeleteIncome from One industry is Not taxable in Greece. Care to guess what that industry is?
Greece is the Republican Dream come to fruition.
:)
DeleteWell, I spoke with my mother this afternoon, who is a life long Democrat and loathes most Republicans accept for her sons who are all Republicans or Libertarians. She remains a Democrat through this election. She and Rufus should go bowling or play scrabble.
ReplyDelete:)
DeleteThink, now; has Mom ever told you wrong?
The thing is, I might vote Republican again some day.
DeleteBut, not today.
The Pubs have to get well first. Right now, they're just batshit crazy.
I am content. Who ever wins, I will despise their foreign policy and make money on their domestic agenda.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the only effect on me is, I might actually make a little more money off a Republican win (has to do with Obamacare.)
DeleteAnd, regardless of how this election turns out, the longer term trends are pretty unmistakeable.
However, we only get one bite at the apple, Today, and today I'll cast that vote to make it a little bit better (maybe a whole lot better) for my kids in the short/medium term.
I wouldn't be nearly as sanguine if I thought the Pubs had a chance to win both the Presidency, And the Senate.
DeleteThe public debate was compromised. The process was incremental. Read David Frum's election analysis in today's Huffington Post. Witness the rise of Libertarian fundamentalists in tandem with evangelical fundamentalists. The public's BS meter is in unknown territory. Did the Republicans get snake bit sometime after Reagan or did the small incestuous community we know as Washington inbreed an explosion of "dicks?"
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if it was a decline in political performance, or a failure (rather abrupt in historical terms) of a political infrastructure that served "OK" for 200 plus years - the "globalization demanded more" argument. I could go on but I'll stop there. The point is that Americans seem to grasp the basic historical trend lines, without the ideological foodfight. Less clear is what to do. The Republicans have put on an entertaining and convincing display of what not to do. I predict it will cost them this election and more to come.
Either way, these elections will matter, if for no other reason than to send a signal to the corporate whiners. Like, whatev.
When Economic Times get tough, and stay tough, and look like they might become even tougher, people will start to do some strange things. They will start to believe some strange things, and even, elect some strange leaders.
DeleteA reversion to tribalism, and extreme religiosity is almost a dead-bang certainty. The veneer of civility, and moderation can be lost almost overnight.
Add in a Large Dollop of Self-serving, Greedy beyond imagination, Multi-Billionaires beating the drum of "it's the fault of the other," and you have all you need for the nightmare to commence.
DeleteAnd, those nightmares Never end any way but horribly.
And kudos to Sue Herrera of CNBC for being the first to note that any CEO message to Washington should properly include a broader sampling of industry sectors beyond the titans of finance.
ReplyDeleteWhen Economic Times get tough, and stay tough, and look like they might become even tougher, people will start to do some strange things. They will start to believe some strange things, and even, elect some strange leaders.
ReplyDeleteA reversion to tribalism, and extreme religiosity is almost a dead-bang certainty. The veneer of civility, and moderation can be lost almost overnight.
Hohoho
But you are describing the Obama democrats, your people.
Tribalism? Take a look. Deuce mentioned a high caliber one in Colin Powell just recently. 97%
The veneer of civility?
Have you seen the deaths threats by the dozens against Romney that I posted?
Moderation? ObamaCare shoved up our ass in the middle of the night? No discussion, no compromise.
Extreme religiosity? You got to be joking. Obama is their god, socialism is their god. Folks like me are suddenly on the watch list, for going to one really laid back protest. I have found myself playing the devil part.
Tunnel vision.
If Obama loses, and he is going to, then you will see some missing veneer, more so than now.
Burn, baby, burn.
Romney tells 18,000 people in Toledo that Chrysler is moving ALL Jeep production to China.
ReplyDeleteChrysler comes out immediately, and says, "Bullshit, we're adding 2,700 Jeep jobs in the Midwest, including 500 in Toledo!
Yesterday, at a company called "Kinzler Construction Services" Romney attacked the Stimulus as a failure of a program that did no one any good.
DeleteKinzler received $600,000.00 in Stimulus Money.
What was it, five or six months ago, that the Mittster was at Springfield Spring and Wire, and harangued the crowd about how Obama wouldn't stand up to China?
DeleteYeah, you guessed it; Obama, in '97, at the U.S. Company's request, filed unfair trade charges against China for dumping "spring and wire," and imposed a tariff on the Chinese product (thus saving the U.S. company's bacon.)
That Romney, he's a world-class researcher ain't he?
uh, '97? Musta been 2009, huh?
DeleteThe veneer of civility?
ReplyDeletehahahahha
Obama's books were written by Bill Ayers, the terrorist and cop killer, whose group planned to kill 30 million Americans, to get us straight with their god, Marxism.
That is your civility and religiosity.
And you are voting for it.
Obama has lost the independents.
ReplyDeleteMost "independents" aren't really all that "independent."
DeleteObama is, however, winning Moderates by about 25%
Why I Think Obama Is Toast
ReplyDeletehttp://www.redstate.com/2012/10/26/why-i-think-obama-is-toast/
Really good, though long, analysis of the voting patterns.
Dang it, can't find it now but was reading an article about how something around 16% of the stimulus money has actually been used in something approaching a proper manner.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/26/audit-green-jobs-stimulus-program-wastes-cash/
DeleteObama's "veneer of civility"
ReplyDeletePOLITICO
Ben Smith
Obama brings a gun to a knife fight
Main Content
Obama brings a gun to a knife fight - Ben Smith: Obama brings a gun to a knife fight
June 14, 2008
Categories:
Obama brings a gun to a knife fight
The McCain campaign and RNC are pouncing on another line from the Obama pool report:
“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said in Philadelphia last night. “Because from what I understand, folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”
McCain and the RNC took on the comment in terms that will be very familiar to people who followed Clinton campaign statements last year:
“Barack Obama’s call for ‘new politics’ is officially over. In just 24 hours, Barack Obama attacked one of America’s pioneering women CEOs, rejected a series of joint bipartisan town halls, and said that if there’s a political knife fight, he’d bring a gun," McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said, referring also to the Obama campaign's shot at Carly Fiorina's lavish pay package and role in layoffs at Hewlett-Packard.
“Why is Barack Obama so negative? In the last 24 hours, he’s completely abandoned his campaign’s call for ‘new politics,’ equating the election to a ‘brawl’ and promising to ‘bring a gun,' " said the RNC's Alex Conant.
Obama doesn't actually use the phrase "new politics" a lot, and this is a box that the Clinton campaign tried, and failed, to keep him in last year, when it emerged early that he was happy to throw punches, and even to start fistfights, sending, for instance, the first negative mail to hit in Iowa last fall.
Obama never paid much of a price for his willingness to go negative. He also, to be fair, never promised that he wouldn't attack, and indeed often promised to be tougher than past Democrats, and bragged of his Chicago training. He disavowed nasty character attacks, but then everybody disavows nasty character attacks.
Obama's 'veeer' done wore off way early on.
No veneer to begin with, no veneer at all, from then up until right now, when his ad compares first time female voting to having first time sex with ol' O his very exalted self.
ReplyDeleteThis current democratic party is not the democratic party I remember when growing up. If they
ReplyDeleteget back to that, I'll give them a look, because I have voted for the dems on occasion in the past.
ReplyDeleteThe Blog
Petraeus Throws Obama Under the Bus
6:05 PM, Oct 26, 2012 • By WILLIAM KRISTOL
Breaking news on Benghazi: the CIA spokesman, presumably at the direction of CIA director David Petraeus, has put out this statement: "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate. ”
Barack Obama
So who in the government did tell “anybody” not to help those in need? Someone decided not to send in military assets to help those Agency operators. Would the secretary of defense make such a decision on his own? No.
It would have been a presidential decision. There was presumably a rationale for such a decision. What was it? When and why—and based on whose counsel obtained in what meetings or conversations—did President Obama decide against sending in military assets to help the Americans in need?
That's bizarre.
DeleteBack in the Real world:
ReplyDeleteObama has Never led among Married Women, or White Women.
However, you can go here
IBT/TIPP Poll
and, by going through the back links see how he has really narrowed that gap in the last three days.
One 1,000,000th Solar Panel installed at San Luis Obispo solar farm (8,000,000 to go.) :)
ReplyDeleteMovin' right along
And, yes, Bob; First Solar is one of the Companies you had listed (their share prices fell - as a result of lower profit margins due to competition from China, I believe it was.)
They have another project the same size underway in Arizona (Phoenix, I believe,) and another one I think in San Antonio - plus all their International business. Oh, and that other company? It's owned by Warren Buffet, the largest Solar/Wind farm investor in, I guess, the world.
"Shaking hands with a dead fish" sounds like some sort of koan.
ReplyDeleteThe Master invited us to dinner and we ate shaking hands with a dead fish.
Meditate upon this in your inner being.....
Did the dead fish enjoy eating the shaking hands as well?
DeleteThe Island Where People Forget To Die
ReplyDeleteAs soon as you take culture, belonging, purpose or religion out of the picture, the foundation for long healthy lives collapses.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-where-people-forget-to-die.html?_r=4&pagewanted=4&hp&pagewanted=all
from The New York Times
Isn't it kind of a bummer when the state that elected you Guvnor votes against you by 20%?
ReplyDeleteMaybe it has to do with being 47th in Job Creation, and leaving them with the biggest budget deficit in their history? Or, the 1.5% GDP Growth?
Or, maybe it was trying to force their daughters to carry Rape-induced pregnancies to term?
Or, maybe they just forgot how awesomely great you were. :)
.
DeleteAre you fucking nutz, Rufus?
You have been going on about this 'forcing rape-induced pregnacies to term' for days now.
You put up a list of senate 'candidates' from a Huffington Post article that says the guys, as you put it, want to force their daughters to carry rape-induced pregnancies to term. Candidates. I don't know enough about the guys listed to know their real feelings on the subject but I do know they are all not going to make it to the Senate. One I know well, Pete Hoekstra, has been trailing Debbie Stabenow by a substantial margin the entire campaign.
You're post also showed some careful editing. No link to the article or to the polling referenced which showed 76% of Republicans oppose the same stance you oppose. Even among the most liberal, at 90%, that position is not unamimous. And the Independants came in closer to the Rupublican percentage than to that of the Dems.
You rant on about Mourdock yet he says while he personally opposes an exception for rape he recognizes others disagree and that he respects their position. His position appears much more tolerant that that of a bunch of flaming liberals who would oppose any restrictions on abortion and proclaim that our society has no right to comment on the subject. Frankly, it seems more tolerant than yours.
Hell, even the Catholic Church, one of the biggest opponents of abortion, notes exceptions when it comes to the life of the mother. The US Church while opposing Roe v Wade recognizes it is the current law of the land and must be confirmed with. It merely asks that it not be asked to pay for services it morally opposes.
You rant on about all the 'crazies' out there, meaning I suppose, people who disagree with you. But you are basically as intolerant as some of the 'crazies' on the right. You neither recognize nor respect others opinions on the matter whether it's the product of their religious training or just a morality that rejects the thought of taking an innocent life in sometimes barbaric ways.
You pounce on Romney despite him saying he has shares the same view as you on rape and abortion.
I have tried to remain civil in this post but your hysterical hyperbole on the subject over the past few days has become tiresome.
.
What are you talking about, Rufus?
ReplyDeleteYou need some more beauty sleep.
If you are referring to Romney, which is, unless you are referring to the days when you was Guvnor, and your miserable re-election attempt, the only thing I can figure, he didn't run for re-election as Governor, IIRC.
DeleteHe once lost to Kennedy in an impossible Senate race before he ran for Governor.
Kennedy won the election with 58 percent of the vote to Romney's 41 percent,[56] the smallest margin in any of Kennedy's re-election campaigns for the Senate
I am trying to make up a chart that shows who has thrown whom under the bus in the Benghazi affair.
ReplyDeleteIt is getting complicated.
The main thing to remember is that Obama threw the dead Ambassador and the others under the bus, along with the American people.
He also threw Hillary under the bus.
Everyone tried to throw the video maker under the bus.
Hillary tried to throw the intelligence community under the bus.
They have tried to throw her under the bus.
Obama threw Qadaffi under the bus. The jihadis to say thanks threw all of us under the bus.
Petraeus, who knows who is going to win the election, has thrown Obama under the bus.
And now Panetta is throwing Gen. Ham and Gen. Dempsey under the bus.
The American people are going to throw this entire dysfunctional administration under the bus.
Monday Morning Quarterbacks Bother Poor Leon Panetta
By: Repair_Man_Jack (Diary) | October 26th, 2012 at 03:52 PM |
You know what? SECDEF Leon Panetta is way too important for any of you to criticize. Unlike the rabble, he knows about running operations. He manages risk. He bristles at the Monday Morning Quarterbacks who deign to question his perspicacity and strategic brilliance in how he handled the tragic events of September 11, 2012 in Benghazi, Libya. He also has a rather pompous 4th point of contact in need of cover and concealment. He throws General Ham, and General Dempsey under the bus below.
“(The) basic principle is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on; without having some real-time information about what’s taking place,” Panetta said, according to The Associated Press. “And as a result of not having that kind of information, the commander who was on the ground in that area, Gen. Ham, Gen. Dempsey and I felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation.”
Can you think of any additions?
We finally know the answer to that question from the democratic primary campaign in 2008.
Who would you rather have answering the red phone at 3:00am, Hillary, or Barry?
(It actually rang a little after 3:00 pm in the event)
Answer: Mitt Romney
He can do no worse. And won't fly off to Vegas, and The View.
Bogus letters, official looking, have been sent to registered Republicans in Florida advising them not to vote because they could be arrested. The FBI has begun an investigation on the federal crime of intimidation of voters, and I'm sure Eric Holder is RIGHT on it.
ReplyDelete.
ReplyDeletePannetta is a dick.
I recognized this a few years ago. His original position, prior to working for Obama, was that torture was illegal and worse ineffective. However, when he had to defend the CIA, he gave a long rambling testimony to Congress which many took as a defense of torture. Yet, if you look at the words he used carefully, you will note he never really came out and reversed his initial position on the subject. Obfuscation, a key tool in the arsenal of the dick.
.
There have already been, I think, a Million people vote in Ohio. What I would love to know is,
ReplyDeleteHow many of those early voters would have made it through the "Likely Voter" screen?
Even the IBD Poll, which, admittedly, probably runs a couple of points on the blue side, shows the Whites voting for Mitt Romney by about +15.
DeleteAre we to the point in this country where a candidate can lose the Whites by Fifteen Points, and still win the Presidency? Really?
If so, This Ain't Your Grandfather's United States, any more.
Opinion Contributor
ReplyDeleteObama's fuzzy Ohio early vote math
The author writes that 220,000 fewer Democrats have voted early in Ohio compared with 2008. | Anne Schroeder Mullins
By ADRIAN GRAY | 10/26/12 3:18 PM EDT
At this point in an election cycle, many campaign staffers are busy fighting the press on what they call “process stories.” The candidates and their staffs want to talk about their plans and policies while reporters covering them find their audiences demand a play-by-play of the horse race.
The result is constant overstuffing of campaign metrics and polling that only serve to muddy the waters for most political observers. In a close race, such as we have today, there is often plenty of data for both sides to use to their favor. One poll says this, another says that.
This makes it especially surprising to see the piece put out by President Barack Obama’s field director this week on early voting in Ohio. When things are ugly for a campaign, these types of memos can start flying. It is troubling for the president’s supporters that they could not come up with at least a handful of positive data points in Ohio. I worked as director of strategy at the Republican National Committee during the difficult 2006 election cycle — I know firsthand how hard it it is to come up with positive data in a negative cycle.
There are normally three signs you know a campaign metrics memo is purely spin.
1. Anecdotes: “We have seen groups as big as 100 voters going to vote in Athens, Ohio.” Only 604 democrats have voted in person in the entire county and no more than 40 in a single precinct (that would be Athens 3-5, for those scoring at home).
2. Unverifiable Data: “Precincts that Obama won in 2008 are voting early at a higher rate”: This is unverifiable and misleading because there is no such thing as an “Obama precinct.” Every ten years, the entire country rebalances its voting districts based on a constitutionally mandated census. In 2010, this process redrew the lines of reportable voting areas that were used in 2008. So this year, we have entirely new precincts, thereby making it impossible to validate their claim.
3. Cherry-picking random sub-poll data: “Time poll shows the President up 60-30” among early voters. That sub-sample was asked of 145 people and was one of many of similar ilk (with a huge variation in results). Their central data argument is that 43 more people told Time’s pollster over a two-day window they supported Obama. If that is their best claim to a lead in Ohio, it is a troubling picture for the president.
I have always been a believer in data telling me the full story. Truth is, nobody knows what will happen on Election Day. But here is what we do know: 220,000 fewer Democrats have voted early in Ohio compared with 2008. And 30,000 more Republicans have cast their ballots compared with four years ago. That is a 250,000-vote net increase for a state Obama won by 260,000 votes in 2008.
politico
I went to that article, and read the comments.
DeleteIt seems that Ohio voting started Later this year, so yeah, fewer votes have been cast at this exact point in time.
Of course, the boundaries have changed in "some" precincts, but you can definitely identify which precincts will go Obama, and which will go Republican.
And, third, it's not just the Time Poll, but Every poll that's telling the same story.
Right now, it looks like the "general" narrative is correct. Obama's up by a couple in Ohio, and it's going to be hard to overcome it.
Obama is a dead fish.
ReplyDeleteWell, we voted identically this time. Romney/Ryan, McKenna for guv, yes on marriage equality, yes on legal pot, no on various tax increases, no on Senator Maria Cantvotewell.
ReplyDeleteYou done good.
Delete:) Yes on Romney/Ryan, AND Yes on "Marriage Equality."
DeleteDidn't that give you a slight sense of Vertigo? :)
:)
DeleteUnlike yourself, Miss T is a genius in the Scott Fitsgerald sense, able to hold opposing thoughts in the mind at the same time, and not be disturbed about it.
She done really good.
And:
Delete"Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes."
Walt Whitman
From a life time of fishing, I have come to believe that the saying that a dead fish rots from its head is incorrect.
ReplyDeleteNow I finally have some backup --
Not according to David Groman, a fish pathologist at Atlantic Veterinary College, which is part of the University of Prince Edward Island, in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Groman may not be the Quincy of fish (he’s not a forensic fish pathologist), but he does make it his business to know how and why fish die. Which means that he knows how and why fish rot.
Groman found time between his fish autopsies to comment on the rotting-fish metaphor. “I don’t know where that proverb comes from,” says Gromon. “But it’s a poor metaphor. And, I must say, it’s biologically incorrect. When a fish rots, the organs in the gut go first. If you can’t tell that a fish is rotting by the smell of it, you’ll sure know when you cut it open and everything pours out — when all the internal tissue loses its integrity and turns into liquid.”
Having learned about dead fish, the CDU next went looking for information about fresh fish: The call went to Richard Yokoyama, manager of Seattle’s famous Pike Place Fish Market, which has been in operation since 1930. “Before I buy a fish from one of our dealers, I always look at the belly,” says Yokoyama. “On a fish, that’s the first thing to go. That’s where all the action is — in the gut. If the belly is brown and the bones are breaking through the skin, I toss the fish out. It’s rotten.”
http://www.brainstormwarning.org/2008/10/30/the-fish-rots-from-the-head
A rotting fish is like a beautiful tomb: like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.
DeleteMatthew 23:27
Endeth here the Bible study for the day.
I'm not real sure Jesus actually said that, to be honest about it.
DeleteBobbo: Unlike yourself, Miss T is a genius in the Scott Fitsgerald sense, able to hold opposing thoughts in the mind at the same time, and not be disturbed about it.
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing contradictory about Libertarianism. I want the gummit to keep its hands out of my purse AND out of my crotch.
So you vote for Mitt Romney, and Paul Ryan? Really?
DeleteBut, you want your home mortgage interest, and your employer paid health insurance to be deductible, and you want the gummint to keep paying you to fix those torpedos.
DeleteAnd, you're not the least bit worried about Romney, and Ryan's views on DOMA, and Gay Rights.
Gotcha.
I forgot just how "Libertarian" Romney and Ryan are. :)
DeleteLet me guess; you think R&R are going to reduce "Your" Taxes, right?
Delete:) Good luck wit dat.
Maybe she didn't want four more years of this horseshit -
ReplyDeletePresident Obama’s green jobs training program, which was part of his stimulus, has failed on most key jobs measures, according to a new internal audit that found it was training workers who already had jobs that didn’t need green energy skills, and was failing to place new enrollees in jobs once they finished the training.
The Labor Department’s inspector general also said grantees who received the green jobs-training money did a poor job of reporting their results.
Only 38 percent of those who have completed training got jobs based on it, and only 16 percent kept jobs for at least six months — the key measure of success for the program. …
Of those workers who already had energy-sector jobs, the auditors said they were retrained, even though they didn’t need it.
Washington Times
Or this kind of shit -
ReplyDelete“All in all in the solar field, l think it is extremely easy to pick losers and I really do not know how to pick winners.”
EDITOR OF REDSTATE
Did Barack Obama Intentionally Mislead KUSA’s Kyle Clark About ‘Abound Solar’?
By: Erick Erickson (Diary) | October 27th, 2012 at 11:53 AM |
President Obama gave an interview to Kyle Clark of Colorado NBC affiliate KUSA. In the interview, which saw the President answer and try to dodge some of the toughest question he’s been asked the whole campaign season, the President claimed the White House has no involvement with stimulus funds going to a company called Abound Solar. The company, as you can guess, is another loser picked by the Administration that has now failed.
The President, when asked about Abound Solar, told Kyle Clark,
“These loans that are given out by the Department of Energy for clean energy have created jobs all across the country.” … “Some of them have failed but the vast majority of them are pushing us forward into a clean energy direction.”
“These are decisions, by the way, that are made by the Department of Energy, they have nothing to do with politics,” President Obama said.
The company, like most of the other, is owned by major Obama donors.
The website Complete Colorado has obtained emails between Department of Energy loan executive Jonathan Silver and the Department of Energy’s Credit Advisor, Jim McCrea, claiming the White House was pressuring the Department of Energy to move the loan forward for Abound Solar. Even more troubling, Complete Colorado also has internal Department of Energy emails that suggest the Department of Energy’s Credit Advisor had serious reservations about giving any money to Abound Energy. Previously, emails have surfaced from the credit advisor, Jim McCrea, in which he wrote, “All in all in the solar field, l think it is extremely easy to pick losers and l really do not know how to pick winners.”
Nonetheless, the government did give Abound Solar money and did so after Department of Energy officials, in writing, admitting they were getting pressure from the White House.
.....
Obama lies about everything, doesn't he? Yes, he does.
Democrats at work and play -
ReplyDeleteJeffco ‘Democrat Of The Year’ Convicted Of Felony Theft
October 26, 2012 5:54 PM
JEFFERSON COUNTY, Colo. (CBS4)- The woman named “Democrat of The Year” this year by the Jefferson County Democratic Party has been convicted of felony theft by a Jefferson County jury for stealing from a developmentally disabled 71-year-old woman.
“The jury did right,” said Cindy Maxwell, an advocate for the victim.
On Thursday, a jury convicted 66-year-old Estelle Carson of felony identify theft and felony theft from an at risk adult for stealing checks from the woman and using them to pay her own cable, cell phone and internet bills.
The victim is partially blind, developmentally disabled, has cerebral palsy and is confined to a wheelchair. She is on a fixed income of $596 per month according to the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office.
Nearly as bothersome as the theft itself to Maxwell and other supporters of the victim, is the fact the Jefferson County Democratic Party was made aware of the ongoing criminal investigation and honored Carson anyway.
http://denver.cbslocal.com/2012/10/26/jeffco-democrat-of-the-year-convicted-of-felony-theft/
heh
Mark Steyn at his best.
ReplyDelete“Lie back and think of England.”
‘We’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video,” said Hillary Clinton. No, not the person who made the video saying that voting for Barack Obama is like losing your virginity to a really cool guy. I’ll get to that in a moment. But Secretary Clinton was talking about the fellow who made the supposedly Islamophobic video that supposedly set off the sacking of the Benghazi consulate. And, indeed, she did “have that person arrested.” By happy coincidence, his bail hearing has been set for three days after the election, by which time he will have served his purpose. These two videos — the Islamophobic one and the Obamosexual one — bookend the remarkable but wholly deserved collapse of the president’s reelection campaign.
You’ll recall that a near-month-long attempt to blame an obscure YouTube video for the murder of four Americans and the destruction of U.S. sovereign territory climaxed in the vice-presidential debate with Joe Biden’s bald assertion that the administration had been going on the best intelligence it had at the time. By then, it had been confirmed that there never had been any protest against the video, and that the Obama line that Benghazi had been a spontaneous movie review that just got a little out of hand was utterly false. The only remaining question was whether the administration had knowingly lied or was merely innocently stupid. The innocent-stupidity line became harder to maintain this week after Fox News obtained State Department e-mails revealing that shortly after 4 p.m. Eastern, less than a half hour after the assault in Benghazi began, the White House situation room knew the exact nature of it.
We also learned that, in those first moments of the attack, a request for military back-up was made by U.S. staff on the ground but was denied by Washington. It had planes and special forces less than 500 miles away in southern Italy — or about the same distance as Washington to Boston. They could have been there in less than two hours. Yet the commander-in-chief declined to give the order. So Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods fought all night against overwhelming odds, and died on a rooftop in a benighted jihadist hellhole while Obama retired early to rest up before his big Vegas campaign stop. “Within minutes of the first bullet being fired the White House knew these heroes would be slaughtered if immediate air support was denied,” said Ty Woods’s father, Charles. “In less than an hour, the perimeters could have been secured and American lives could have been saved. After seven hours fighting numerically superior forces, my son’s life was sacrificed because of the White House’s decision.”
DeleteAdvertisement
Why would Obama and Biden do such a thing? Because to launch a military operation against an al-Qaeda affiliate on the anniversary of 9/11 would have exposed the hollowness of their boast through convention week and the days thereafter — that Osama was dead and al-Qaeda was finished. And so Ty Woods, Glen Doherty, Sean Smith, and Chris Stevens were left to die, and a decision taken to blame an entirely irrelevant video and, as Secretary Clinton threatened, “have that person arrested.” And, in the weeks that followed, the government of the United States lied to its own citizens as thoroughly and energetically as any totalitarian state, complete with the midnight knock on the door from not-so-secret policemen sent to haul the designated fall-guy into custody.
This goes far beyond the instinctive secretiveness to which even democratic governments are prone. The Obama administration created a wholly fictional story line, and devoted its full resources to maintaining it. I understand why Mitt Romney chose not to pursue this line of argument in the final debate. The voters who will determine this election are those who voted for Obama four years ago and this time round either switch to the other fellow or sit on their hands. In electoral terms, it’s probably prudent of Mitt not to rub their faces in their 2008 votes. Nevertheless, when the president and other prominent officials stand by as four Americans die and then abuse their sacrifice as contemptuously as this administration did, decency requires that they be voted out of office as an act of urgent political hygiene.
At the photo-op staged for the returning caskets, Obama et al. seem to have been too focused on their campaign needs to observe even the minimal courtesies. Charles Woods says that at the ceremony Joe Biden strolled over to him and by way of condolence said in a “loud and boisterous” voice, “Did your son always have balls the size of cue balls?” One assumes charitably that the vice president is acknowledging in his own inept and blundering way the remarkable courage of a man called upon to die for his country on some worthless sod halfway across the planet. But the near-parodic locker-room coarseness is grotesque both in its inaptness and in its lack of basic human feeling for a bereaved family forced to grieve in public and as crowd-scene extras to the political bigshot. Just about the only formal responsibility a vice president has is to attend funerals without embarrassing his country. And this preening buffoon of pseudo-blue-collar faux-machismo couldn’t even manage that.
DeleteBut a funny thing happened over the next six weeks: Obama’s own cue balls shriveled. Biden had offered up a deft campaign slogan encompassing both domestic and foreign policy: “Osama’s dead and General Motors is alive.” But, as the al-Qaeda connections to Benghazi dribbled out leak by leak, the “Osama’s dead” became a problematic boast and, left to stand alone, the General Motors line was even less credible. Avoiding the economy and foreign affairs, Obama fell back on Big Bird, and binders, and bayonets, just to name the “B”s in his bonnet. At the second presidential debate, he name-checked Planned Parenthood, the General Motors of the American abortion industry, half a dozen times, desperate to preserve his so-called gender gap. Yet oddly enough, the more furiously Obama and Biden have waved their binders and talked up Sandra Fluke, the more his supposed lead among women has withered away. So now he needs to enthuse the young, who turned out in such numbers for him last time. Hence, the official campaign video (plagiarized from Vladimir Putin of all people) explaining that voting for Obama is like having sex. The saddest thing about that claim is that, for liberals, it may well be true.
Both videos — the one faking Obamagasm and the one faking a Benghazi pretext — exemplify the wretched shrinkage that befalls those unable to conceive of anything except in the most self-servingly political terms. Both, in different ways, exemplify why Obama and Biden are unfit for office. One video testifies to a horrible murderous lie at the heart of a head of state’s most solemn responsibility, the other to the glib shallow narcissism of a pop-culture presidency, right down to the numbing relentless peer pressure: C’mon, all the cool kids are doing it; why be the last hold-out?
If voting for Obama is like the first time you have sex, it’s very difficult to lose your virginity twice. A flailing, pitiful campaign has now adopted Queen Victoria’s supposed wedding advice to her daughter: “Lie back and think of England.” Lie back and think of America. And then get up and get dressed. Who wants to sleep with a $16 trillion broke loser twice?
footnote: Osama Is still dead, and G.M. Is still alive.
DeleteMaybe Miss T is concerned about things like this, Rufus.
ReplyDeleteMaybe
DeleteShe never struck me as a "Redstate" reader, but maybe.
Perhaps a Michelle Malkin follower?
DeleteIt's disgusting to watch the Obama campaign desperately resorting to the time tested Democrat strategy of "scare the darkies".
ReplyDeleteAbortion, medicare, social security, foreign entanglements and war, outsourcing jobs overseas. The rich getting over on the poor. Blah, blah, bullshit!
Speaking of bullshit. A child could recognize the administration's Benghazi's prevarication as such.
Or, as some would call it, "Discussing the Issues."
DeleteOr as reasonable people call it,"demagoging the issues."
DeleteFor those that are watching the National Polls, here's something you should be aware of:
ReplyDeleteThat Romney surge has been, almost entirely, in the South - in states he was going to win, anyway.
Obama is still 8 or 9 Up in the Midwest.
You can track it Here
Delete
ReplyDeleteThere is a scandal in Mitt Romney's campaign -- namely Glenn Hubbard, Romney's chief economic advisor, who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under George W. Bush, and is now Dean of Columbia Business School. First, Hubbard has an abysmal track record in economic policy, including the very issues that Romney has made the pillar of his presidential campaign. Second, like Romney, Hubbard refuses to disclose critical information about his income, conflicts of interest, and paid advocacy activities. Third, both in public statements and in my personal experience, Hubbard has been evasive, misleading, and even dishonest when discussing both policy issues and his own conflicts of interest. And last but not least, those conflicts of interest are huge: Hubbard has long advocated policies that Wall Street loves, often without disclosing that he is, in fact, highly paid by Wall Street.
Charles Ferguson
(Very nice piece of 'slam bam thank you ma'am' writing.)
Back to racial demagoguery.
["]My party, unfortunately, is the bastion of those people -- not all of them, but most of them -- who are still basing their positions on race. Let me just be candid: My party is full of racists, and the real reason a considerable portion of my party wants President Obama out of the White House has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as commander-in-chief and president, and everything to do with the color of his skin, and that's despicable.["]
The retired colonel also said that "to say that Colin Powell would endorse President Obama because of his skin color is like saying Mother Theresa worked for profit."
Retired Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson
There is an order to the "they're all dicks" dysfunction that currently defines Washington. Some more so than others, with the current crop of Republicans clustered at the top of the federal pyramid.
Arianna and her staff: doing God's work.
>>>>>>>>>>>
More from Erick Erickson, class act:
Erickson was noted for having written on Twitter about Supreme Court Justice David Souter: "The nation loses the only goat f***ing child molester to ever serve on the Supreme Court in David Souter's retirement."[17][18][19][20] In an appearance on the Colbert Report, Erickson said the Twitter statement was "not my finest hour".[15] Erickson stated on his blog: "A while back, Glenn Beck called Barack Obama a 'racist.' Given all the terrorists, thugs, and racists Barack Obama has chosen as close personal friends (see e.g. Rev. Wright), it's not a stretch to say it."[21]
Erickson has tweeted controversial remarks regarding women, including (in response to a 2010 Super Bowl ad) the following: "That's what the feminazis were enraged over? Seriously?!? Wow. That's what being too ugly to get a date does to your brain" [22] and "Turned on twitter today and there was a barrage of angry feminists upset with me telling them to get in the kitchen and learn to cook"; "Good thing I didn't suggest the feminists ... you know ... shave. They'd be at my house trying a post-birth abortion on me"; and "Feminists have no sense of humor, but clearly God did in creating feminists."
Race relations; always a prominent component of the "scare the darkies" campaign strategy.
ReplyDeleteAnyone notice the proliferation of white rascist stories in the MSM, lately?
I spent several years disliking this guy, but, damn, when he's right, he's right, and he does seem to be getting a hell of a lot funnier, lately.
ReplyDeleteDiscussing the Romney Presidency
occasional adult language warning
Fuckin'-A right.
DeleteHeat melting ice is just a theory. (Even funnier was how hard Maher's round table was shaking.)
I now understand the abandonment of risk management by folks who were supposed to know better: It's God's Will. Who are We?
Go Arianna.
I used to hate Bill Maher as well - and Jon Stewart.
DeleteNow I laugh.
Maybe LiLo's ex-publicist should move to Washington.
I've heard that Maher goes down better with a little kool-aid.
DeleteMore on RedState, classy blog:
ReplyDeleteIn 2010 the blog banned new contributors who were posting in support of Ron Paul. The announcement on the blog read, "Effective immediately, new users may *not* shill for Ron Paul in any way shape, form or fashion."[9]
In 2011, one contributor suggested that conservatives 'infiltrate' liberal blogs by pretending to be progressives to 'hurt the democratic party.'[10]
In June 2011, Politico reported that an account executive from Eagle Publishing sent an email advertising a "RedState Endorsement Program Featuring Erick Erickson", including "Erick's Video Endorsement (subject to final approval by Erick)".[11] Erickson said that neither he "nor his boss at Eagle" had seen the email before it went out and that "[his] endorsements are not for sale".[12]
Responses to any viewpoints deemed unwanted by site moderators include banning and replacing all of a person's diaries with messages designed to be offensive.[13] Banned users may be accused of being "progressive trolls"[14] or "moby," the latter being a person with over-the-top political positions making conservatives look bad.[15] Banned users may be greeted with an error message reading "601 Database redigestation error." The site moderators' behavior is a topic of discussion among moderate conservatives and internet discussion sites.[16][17][18][19]--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RedState
Sounds like they're aiming for Tim Matheson, but stuck in a John Belushi food fight.
I browsed the site once, a year or so ago, decided they were nutcakes, and haven't gone back.
DeleteI strongly recommend "Calculated Risk" for straight-up economic reporting, and "Wonkblog" for "Research and Analysis."
DeleteI cruise "The Oil Drum" for their links to data, but take a lot of their commentary with a grain of salt. Rockman is always interesting, and informative. I wouldn't be afraid to take 99% of his stuff to the bank.
"538" blog puts on a good show, but I have no idea how much weight I should put on his analysis.
DeleteYou need to start reading Arianna, Rufus.
DeleteFuckin' A-Right.
DeleteI skim through Huffpo once, or twice/day. They have some good articles.
Delete.
ReplyDeleteJust got up from a nap and the wife was flipping through channels. Came to MSNBC and the moderator (whoever it is at 3:00 pm) was questioning a couple of young people, one at least, the girl, who favored Romney in this year's election. The moderator was making the point that Obama had already been on Leno, Letterman, the Daily Show, the View and other popular entertainment shows but that Romney had not; therefore, it was obvious Romney didn't care about young people the way Obama did.
Pure genius. And all so logical.
Similar to some of the comments we see posted here occasionally.
.
Fuckin' A-Right.
DeleteThe brain dead media sees only what they want to see; hears only what they want to hear, and reports only what they want to report. This country has no real news media. We just have a bunch of propaganda agencies pushing their agendas. Liberal or conservative, they are all the same and nothing they report can be trusted. I have the same low contempt for people in the media as I have for politicians. They are the scum of the earth. There is nothing lower.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing lower.
DeleteYes there is: the Big Five (now Four) Wall St houses (used to be called investment houses but now, with the public backstop, they do it all) and organized religion, of which Rev Wright is a part.
God's will is a mysterious thing.
"God's Will" is giving me a severe pain in the backside. :)
DeleteA musical video just for Rufus on his level that he can understand, from the kids (the ones that haven't been aborted) -
ReplyDeletehttp://hotair.com/archives/2012/10/27/video-and-now-an-important-message-from-the-children-about-reelecting-barack-obama/
Fuckin' A
ReplyDeleteReagan Defense Official: If Obama Really Gave the Order to Secure Libya Personnel, ‘There’s a Paper Trail’
Posted on October 27, 2012 at 10:05am by Madeleine Morgenstern
A former Department of Defense official said Friday that if President Barack Obama really gave an order to secure U.S. personnel when the consulate in Libya came under assault, there will a paper trail to prove it.
Francis “Bing” West, who served as an assistant secretary of defense under President Ronald Reagan, told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren that the president’s explanation about his actions when the U.S. mission in Benghazi was attacked should be easily verifiable.
“President Obama today said that he gave an order to everyone while the attack was going on to do everything they could to secure the personnel,” West said. “Now that’s really big because that means that those who were turning down [former Navy SEAL] Ty Woods when he was asking for the help were going against the orders of the president of the United States.”
Woods was one of four Americans killed in the Libya assault. Obama on Friday wouldn’t answer directly whether pleas for help on the ground were denied during the attack, telling KUSA-TV, “the minute I found out what was happening, I gave three very clear directives. Number one, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to.”
“A chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff doesn’t take an order from the president when he says ‘do everything’ and not put that in writing and send it out to the chain of command,” West said. “If that actually happened the way President Obama today said it happened, there’s a paper trail and I think people reasonably enough can say, ‘well can we see the order?’ because hundreds of others supposedly saw this order.”
“But if there is no order then people have to ask some very basic questions, ‘what the heck happened?’” he said.
Hot Air
Fuckin' B-HO lies like sonbitch.
It certainly does look as if Obama sacrificed those military people and the Ambassador to his political narrative and expediency.
ReplyDeletePuhleeze, Bob, you're making yourself sound silly (sillier.)
DeleteEven if he was such a person, there's no way he could game it out in his mind that such a thing could redound to his benefit.
DeleteAgain, man, those guys get paid to write nonsense like that. Nobody's paying you to be so foolish as to take it seriously.
Rufus - do you read Tyler Durden (pseudonym I understand) at ZeroHedge, and did you ever make up your mind about Karl Denninger at The Market Ticker?
ReplyDeleteI don't mess with either one. Their research is shoddy, and usually has an agenda. I can get enough of that Here.
DeleteForgot the :)
DeleteI pretty much search out "Data," Doris. I'd rather do my own "analyzin', and spekulatin'." :)
Delete:)
DeleteDenninger is hyperbolic. Still not sure about ZeroHedge, but it doesn't really matter since the conversation tends to fly over my head, and that always makes me a little suspicious.
Like looking for the God Particle while "the heat is melting the ice."
That's why I follow IBD/TIPP Polls. I know (or, am pretty sure) they're running two, or three points hot to the Demo side, right now;
Deletebut I can go throught the back issues, and look at the geographic, demographic trends (of course, adding only a couple of hundred a day, you have to take those with a little salt, also.)
They're gonna be getting us a room pretty soon but I'll sneak this in - you are very good with numbers.
DeleteI had some more but I'm going dark for awhile.
Fight the good fight.
There are degrees of assholytude and the Repub's are pushing that envelope.
I used to "getaroom" from time to time (but I'm having a hard time remembering "Why?") :)
DeleteI will say this, from watching the "job approval" numbers, I'm quite sure that Obama needs to spend less time watching the hip young kids at The Cycle, and start paying more attention to James Carville, and Bill Clinton.
The Voters don't seem to be as impressed with "Big Bird, Binders, and Romnesia" as Krystal Ball, and Toure, and would probably like to hear a little more serious talk about "Jobs, China, and Taxes."
Maybe he's saving that for his last push, but . . . well, that would be now, wouldn't it? We'll see.
Another very good point Rufus. I respect Carville. Have from the get-go and was not impressed that Billy Boy couldn't find a White House job for old "serpent head."
DeleteBut Obama needs the two of them now more than ever. I'm thinking it sticks in his craw a little bit that he's actually got to do some gutter fighting, but grown-up games are best played by grown-ups.
Carville, like Clinton (Bill) is a numbers/data guy.
DeleteCarville is really obnoxious if he's on "the other side" (and, sometimes, I imagine, if he's on Your side,) but he can slice to the heart of the matter quicker than just about anyone in the game.
DeleteAnd, I get the feeling that, rat now, he's not impressed.
Caught him yesterday, and all he said was, "he needs to show a little passion." 'bout sums it up for me, too.
Obama really needs to spend more time "fighting back" against Romney, and DROP the "making fun of" Romney.
DeleteWhite Men are a huge voting bloc, and while they'll accept one of their own getting his butt kicked, they won't accept the snarky, black man making fun of their tribe-mate while he's doing it.
Obama can get too cutesy-pie by about half, sometimes.
Delete
DeleteCarville is really obnoxious...
Most of my family, life-long Dems, couldn't stomach the man. His presentation evolved post-Clinton and post-marriage (and I expect becoming a father to two young girls.) I find listening to the post-Carville much less of an exercise or maybe exorcism, not completely unlike the Maher/Stewart change.
But half of the world is never going to be impressed no matter what you do, half of the world wants to rent your influence if you have any, and the other half really doesn't care if you live or die.
None of which is to say that Obama shouldn't dive deep in search of his missing parts. I think he can and will.
Dr. Phil over and out.
Yah, I'm about opined out, also. Kinda like Deuce, I'll be so worn out by Nov 6, it'll be a relief no matter who wins.
DeleteNap time. :)
God works in mysterious ways.
DeleteThe lines are 6 1/2 hrs long in Florida, today.
ReplyDeleteWhy? Because the pub governor has decreed that everyone must "take a pledge to vote only once" before they're allowed to vote.
This, after cutting the "Early Voting Hours" by half this year, and closing the polls on the Sunday before election tuesday (put a stop to that whole "souls to the polls, nonsense.)
No one is getting out of line, and leaving; but, will they show up Tomorrow?
Some probably won't.
Proud of your party's voter suppression tactics, boys?
You better fact check yourself, man.
DeleteYou just tell me "where," and I'll do it.
DeleteHundreds stood in Florida voting lines today as the Democratic party kicked off its "Vote Early, Vote Often" initiative.
ReplyDeleteMore tonight at 11:00.
That's what I said. The lines were, by some accounts, 6 1/2 hrs long.
DeleteIt makes no difference, Obama is falling out of the night sky without a parachute.
DeleteThe danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting an inexperienced man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama Presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their President. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America . Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their President.
ReplyDeleteAgain, some fact checking might be in order.
ReplyDeleteI've seen reports of an hour and a half so I can see how every time some lefty repeated the voter suppression meme by late afternoon the number would be up to 6/1 hours.
I can also see how the truth would be twisted from Scott "pledging" to that everyone entitled to vote would be allowed to do so into him requiring voters to "pledge" to vote only once.
Obama’s whole aura was pre-planned and scripted in 2008, some of us saw thru it, hopefully now, so does everybody else that were the fools that voted in their Prince of Fools.
ReplyDeleteObama will have the wind in his face for the balance of this election cycle. The disgraceful behavior of the American media cannot help him now. They go any deeper on a losing cause, I think not. They like to make winners not support losers.
ReplyDeleteObama 2012 vs Obama 2008 became obvious to them on the first debate. Obama is truly fucked.
Jenny above is right.
ReplyDeleteGALLUP: Obama's Job Approval Drops 7 Points in 3 Days...
No parachute.
Only a Rufus could deny Obama's complicity in the Benghazi abandonment.
Why was General Ham relieved of his African Command on October 18, 2012?
ReplyDeleteOn 18 October 2012, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta participated in a "DOD News Briefing on Efforts to Enhance the Financial Health of the Force." In his introductory remarks, Mr. Panetta said: "Today I am very pleased to announce that President Obama will nominate General David Rodriguez to succeed General Carter Ham as commander of U.S. Africa Command . . ."
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/10/has_general_ham_been_fired.html#ixzz2AX0qcMjY
from the Dreaded American Thinker.
The Incoherent Rufus Drinker was until now unaware of this move by Panetta.
The question is why, what is behind it?
Smirks, snark and passion deficits - hard to tell if the subject is Obama or GWB.
ReplyDeleteThe Obama hatred, positioned adjacent in history to the execrable Bush/Cheney/Wolfowitz years, is a mystery. It strikes me as more closely related to the Clinton hatred than the Bush hatred. Bush was American dynasty. Obama and Clinton, slightly seedy-around-the-edges outsiders. At a minimum this presidential election is half "belonging" and half policy.
George Bush, the younger, never would have been president without his father and family fortune. Barack Obama owes his good fortune to GWB , Obama’s exotic story (it is almost a virgin birth, born in a manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes type of deal.) Favorable pigmentation and white guilt gave Obama the trifecta.
DeleteClinton was Elmer Gantry. Trailer trash made good.
Obama was seduced by the trappings. A jump from a Chrysler 300 to a “being there” 747 was more than the lad could handle.
Clinton 2, Bush 0, Obama ?
Some people just don't like Marxist smart alecks, Dort. Slime buckets that vote to kill children that survive abortions. All the while calling themselves Constitutional scholars.
ReplyDeleteWhat can one say? Some people feel strongly about retaining at least some of their freedoms.
The MSM is really playing the race card right now. Last night, Nightline had a report on the resurgence of the Klan. Today, Yahoo has an AP story about "Majority Harbor prejudice against blacks."
ReplyDeleteGet out the vote - "scare the darkies"
DeleteThe voting in Clark County, Nevada (Las Vegas) seems to be going a little better for the Republicans than anticipated, at this early point.
ReplyDeleteObama just doesn't know yet what the hell happened.
ReplyDeleteJake Tapper
Political Punch
Oct 26, 2012 6:31pm
President Obama Begs Off Answering Whether Americans in Benghazi Were Denied Requests for Help
In an interview with a Denver TV reporter Friday, President Obama twice refused to answer questions as to whether the Americans under siege in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012, were denied requests for help, saying he’s waiting for the results of investigations before making any conclusions about what went wrong.
After being asked about possible denials of requests for aid, and whether it’s fair to tell Americans that what happened is under investigation and won’t be released until after the election, the president said, “the election has nothing to do with four brave Americans getting killed and us wanting to find out exactly what happened. These are folks who served under me who I had sent to some very dangerous places. Nobody wants to find out more what happened than I do.”
No one in their right mind would buy this line of shit.
Hi
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
Delete.
DeleteGood to hear from you Mel.
Who are you voting for?
More importantly, have you taken any road trips lately? Got any details you can share?
.
Hi Mel.
Delete
ReplyDeleteTHE WEEKLY STANDARD understands that it will take some time to "gather all the facts" about what happened on the ground in Benghazi. But presumably the White House already has all the facts about what happened that afternoon and evening in Washington—or, at least, in the White House. The president was, it appears, in the White House from the time the attack on the consulate in Benghazi began, at around 2:40 pm ET, until the end of combat at the annex, sometime after 9 p.m. ET. So it should be possible to answer these simple questions as to what the president did that afternoon and evening, and when he did it, simply by consulting White House meeting and phone records, and asking the president for his recollections.
1.) To whom did the president give the first of his "three very clear directives"—that is, "make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to?"
2.) How did he transmit this directive to the military and other agencies?
3.) During the time when Americans were under attack, did the president convene a formal or informal meeting of his national security council? Did the president go to the situation room?
4.) During this time, with which members of the national security team did the president speak directly?
5.) Did Obama speak by phone or teleconference with the combatant commanders who would have sent assistance to the men under attack?
6.) Did he speak with CIA director David Petraeus?
7.) Was the president made aware of the repeated requests for assistance from the men under attack? When and by whom?
8.) Did he issue any directives in response to these requests?
9.) Did the president refuse to authorize an armed drone strike on the attackers?
10.) Did the president refuse to authorize a AC-130 or MC-130 to enter Libyan airspace during the attack?
THE WEEKLY STANDARD has asked the White House these questions, and awaits a response.
In support of Jenny above --
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nationalreview.com/corner/331828/two-polls-have-chicago-terrified-josh-jordan
Two Polls That Have Chicago Terrified
No parachure.
hi
hello.
ReplyDeleteDo any of you brainiacs remember Mogadishu?
ReplyDeleteRemember how that "Black Hawk Down" came about?
.
DeleteWhat exactly is your point, Rufus.
Spell it out for us.
.
Rushing troops into an unknown situation in Indian Country led to a major disaster. Look, I don't know the timeline, and neither do these other yahoos. They're just grasping at straws. I don't know what time any surveillance drone got overhead. I don't know what the assessments were. I don't know what the concerns of the Generals were. I don't know when the "buck" got to the Generals.
DeleteI don't know if they thought it was a trap. I don't know if they thought it was too late to send in a team. I don't know if they were afraid of killing children at a school next door. I don't know squat. And, none of these other assholes know squat. I do know it would have been a clearly military decision, and that the President depends on his military to make such decisions.
The idea that the President would be the one to flip the coin is ludicrous. I haven't responded much to, and won't any more in the future, because it is pointless. Panetta has already named the 3 people involved in the decision-making, and I know enough about the military to know that sometime after that Panetta would have informed the President of the Decision of himself and the Generals, and of their future course of action. I won't waste any more keystrokes on this. It's just a waste of time.
.
DeleteI thought that was what you were getting at but it misses the point that started this issue off.
There may have been practical, non-political reasons why additional security wasn't granted when it was asked for. The problem is we haven't heard them yet.
It's possible the decision was made that it was too dangerous or unwise, for any of the other reasons you've listed, to send troops or planes in. But we haven't heard that either.
What we have heard are some silly stories about videos. We have seen a lot of finger pointing and a lot of denials, by State, by our UN ambassador, by the VP, by the military, by the CIA, by....well.
The truism still applies, it's not the crime (figuratively) but the cover up that usually gets these guys.
.
.
DeleteIt's been about six weeks since the compound was attacked. There were videos of the attack and communications describing it from those on the ground on Day 1. The administration gave us a story in the first few days. When that story proved incorrect, the finger pointing started but the soldiers refused to fall on their swords. The result has been confusion and accusations.
Both Clinton and Obama have accepted responsibility but so far no one has accepted any blame and neither has any been assigned.
We are told there is an internal investigation going on. Wonder if we will get any results from that investigation prior to November 6.
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DeleteI'm through talking about the attack myself; however, I can't help commenting on this following point.
The idea that the President would be the one to flip the coin is ludicrous.
:)
Mine is not a comment on the specific attack on the compound but rather a comment on Obama and is driven by the cynic in me. I have no idea how the chain of command works in terms of providing support for those on the ground in Benghazi. I find it hard to believe the President wouldn't be involved but what do I know.
However, we have seen the videos and Obama speeches after OBL was taken out. If things had worked out, if support was sent, if the ambassador and the others who died had lived, does nayone doubt that we would have been inundated with a veritible shitstorm of "I" and "me" from Obama from Day 1 through November 6 and beyond?
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This is my very last thought on Obama's part. My gut tells me he asked Panetta, "well Leon, what have you'all found out? What's happening? Is there anything we can do? And, Panetta said something like this, "Mr. President, we think it's about over. It was lightly defended, and the attackers seem to have gained entrance pretty quickly. It's unclear just how many more of the unfriendlies might be in the area. We just don't see much that we can do at this time. I'm sorry."
DeleteLike I said, that's just my gut feeling. Which is probably worth just about the same as everyone else's gut feelings.
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DeleteMaybe that the way it happened. But you are merely quibling over details.
It hardly explains or excuses the amatuerish way this was handled from the get go or the attempts to sell it to the public. It doesn't explain the finger pointing and subsequent denials. It speaks of either ineptness or dishonesty.
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On to something I Am interested in,
ReplyDeleteI recently had the fortunate chance to interview Gordon Gill, “one of the world’s preeminent exponents of performance-based design” and a trendsetter in the realm of net–zero energy and net-positive–energy design. Gordon will be a featured speaker at the upcoming Total Energy USA conference (you can still register for that conference here).
Gordon’s work, “which ranges from the world’s largest buildings to elements of a single home, is driven by his philosophy that there is a language of performance: a purposeful relationship between design and the performance-based criteria placed on the subject,” a Total Energy USA news release notes.
Clean Technica (http://s.tt/1r2jz)
Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2012/10/27/interview-with-designer-of-worlds-1st-net-zero-energy-skyscraper-worlds-1st-large-scale-positive-energy-building-gordon-gill/#FqXVZ3PkUsJLgAK2.99
Interview with the designer of the world's first zero net energy skyscraper
I found it interesting that the President talked about energy-efficient buildings in his MTV interview.
C-130, Brainstem, or facsimile, bang, bang, bang. You're just reaching now.
DeleteBob, unlike you, I have been up close and personal with C-130 bodycounts. A couple of dead water buffalo. Cut down a lot of trees, though. Don't believe everything you read in Soldier of Fortune, or see on Youtube. That rain of tracers looks like a snake coming down, not a laser beam. Accuracy, from that altitude is not its strength. They're not used very often.
DeleteDems up 17% in early voting in Clark County; 9% Statewide.
Deleteseems to be more interest in whether Heller can hang onto his senate seat than in the Presidential race
Rufus, the point is, there were some options, none of which were used. A couple of strafing and bombing runs around the outside might have ended it early on.
DeleteCut down a lot of trees, though.
DeleteThere you go. The Vietnamese were just great at dodging bullets. Or, more likely, they were shooting where they were not. Absolutely leveled the area, deforested it, but the Vietnamese had left.
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ReplyDeleteAt least 22 people were killed in clashes between Syrian rebels and Kurdish militia men in Aleppo, Syria's largest city.
The fighting broke out despite a truce brokered in honour of the Muslim festival Eid al-Adha, which was also broken in other areas of Syria with sporadic bombings and clashes.
The clashes occurred after rebels pushed into largely Kurdish and Christian areas that have remained relatively quiet during the three-month battle for the city.
Kurds say the rebels had pledged to stay out of their districts. Kurdish groups have for the most part tried to steer a middle course in the conflict between the rebels and the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Some figures have allied with the rebels, others with Assad, while others have remained neutral...
Syrian Rebels and Kurds Clash in Aleppo
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ReplyDeleteUK Refuses US Inquiry on Using Bases for Pre-Emptive Strike on Iran
It states that providing assistance to forces that could be involved in a pre-emptive strike would be a clear breach of international law on the basis that Iran, which has consistently denied it has plans to develop a nuclear weapon, does not currently represent "a clear and present threat".
"The UK would be in breach of international law if it facilitated what amounted to a pre-emptive strike on Iran," said a senior Whitehall source. "It is explicit. The government has been using this to push back against the Americans."
Uk Says No
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The British have recently arrested some folks political who have been trying to resist the dhimmitude of their old England.
DeleteFrom the sounds of it they weren't exactly afforded the traditional rights of Englishmen.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/10/darkness_descending_in_england.html
By Pam Geller, wonderful lady.
Did Obama Refuse To Aid Our Men In Benghazi?
ReplyDeleteBy: streiff (Diary) | October 27th, 2012 at 07:28 PM | 34
In the month and a half since our consulate in Benghazi was sacked and our ambassador and three other staffers killed the Obama regime is no closer to presenting a coherent, truthful narrative of what happened before, during, and after the incident than it was when it uttered its first deliberate lies and misdirections on September 12.
Right now we are being treated to the vision of the highest level of the ongoing criminal enterprise that governs us playing the equivalent of a game of musical chairs.
About a week ago, the political branches of the regime decided to finger the intelligence services as the culprits. We’ve been told over and over how there just wasn’t sufficient intelligence provided to either anticipate the attack or to determine the identities of the attackers. Of course, we now know that both those stories are unmitigated falsehoods.
The newest question is who allowed the four men to be killed in Benghazi, or conversely who forbade any attempt to save their lives. This decision seems to reach all the way into the Oval Office.
What we now know is that the attack was monitored, in real time, in the State Department, the Pentagon, the White House, and at Africom HQ in Germany. We know there was a Predator drone overhead and we know the consulate provided live audio feed of the attack until the end.
An important fact is buried here.
Predators don’t just magically appear on the scene. They have to be launched and they have to have a mission when they are launched. A Predator UAV has a range of 675 miles with a max speed of 135mph. The UAV almost certainly had to have been launched from the US facility at Signonella in Sicily.
This means that the UAV was launched over three hours before the attack began and the operation order issued some time before launch. This implies that hours before the attack was launched there was sufficient concern about something in Benghazi that a UAV was tasked to be on station.
The administration is also fond of referring to the attack being at night. While that is true, what they are trying to do is create the illusion that the attack happened in the middle of the night in Washington. It didn’t. The attack began around 2pm EST, right in the middle of the duty day with everyone who was needed to make the required decisions on hand.
ReplyDeletePresident Obama met with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Vice President Biden in the Oval Office at 5 p.m. ET, a little more than an hour after the onset of the attack. The Pentagon began moving military assets:
– Eight from Special Operations were sent from Tripoli.
– A “FAST team” (Fleet Anti-terrorism Security team) of Marines from Rota, Spain, were sent to guard the Embassy in Tripoli.
– A Special Operations force was moved from central Europe to Sigonella Air Base in southern Italy, just 480 miles from Benghazi.
– F-16s and Apache helicopters remained parked and unused at Aviano Air Base in northern Italy.
– Two Navy destroyers already in the Mediterranean Sea were moved off the coast of Libya on the day of the attack but were never used.
Asked why the U.S. military did not do more, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday the first rule in such a situation is not to deploy troops into harm’s way unless there is a clear picture of what is happening.
One doesn’t know what to make of Panetta’s statement. You never have a “clear picture” of an evolving combat operation. This is what Clausewitz referred to as “friction” and the “fog of war.” It seems that a reasonable observer would conclude that real time video feed plus real time audio communications with the people in the consulate provided as close to a “clear picture” as possible in the absence of a Vulcan Mind Meld with the terrorist leader.
So we have a rescue force staged in Sigonella. We have the people on the ground begging for help. And we seem to have had an AC-130 gunship in near proximity to the action. And a decision was made by someone that caused the death of these four men just as surely as any action by a Libyan terrorist:
Fox News has learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. consulate and subsequent attack several hours later on the annex itself was denied by the CIA chain of command — who also told the CIA operators twice to “stand down” rather than help the ambassador’s team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.
Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to “stand down,” according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to “stand down.”
Woods and at least two others ignored those orders and made their way to the consulate which at that point was on fire. Shots were exchanged. The rescue team from the CIA annex evacuated those who remained at the consulate and Sean Smith, who had been killed in the initial attack. They could not find the ambassador and returned to the CIA annex at about midnight.
DeleteAt that point, they called again for military support and help because they were taking fire at the CIA safe house, or annex. The request was denied. There were no communications problems at the annex, according those present at the compound. The team was in constant radio contact with their headquarters. In fact, at least one member of the team was on the roof of the annex manning a heavy machine gun when mortars were fired at the CIA compound. The security officer had a laser on the target that was firing and repeatedly requested back-up support from a Spectre gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to provide support to Special Operations teams on the ground involved in intense firefights.
Pay special attention to the last graf. The security officer was painting a target with a laser designator. You don’t do that unless the AC-130 is close enough to acquire the target.
Not long after Jennifer Griffin filed the report quoted above, CIA Director David Petraeus issued a statement:
“No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate. ”
What it doesn’t say practically screams at the reader. He is clearly saying that someone denied help but it wasn’t anyone in the CIA. He doesn’t even deny that the CIA passed on the bad news.
DeleteNow the White House has said it wasn’t them:
The White House on Saturday flatly denied that President Barack Obama withheld requests for help from the besieged American compound in Benghazi, Libya, as it came under on attack by suspected terrorists on September 11th.
“Neither the president nor anyone in the White House denied any requests for assistance in Benghazi,” National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor told Yahoo News by email.
The White House statement really doesn’t mean anything. First and foremost, this White House lies just to keep in practice. They’ll lie about what cereal Obama had for breakfast so lying about something akin to manslaughter is hardly unsurprising. As we parse the statement, keep in mind the White House doesn’t actually command military forces. Any order from the White House would be relayed by way of the Secretary of Defense who is increasingly looking like the guy with no chair nearby as the music stops.
Panetta’s weaselly “clear picture” statement gives the impression of a man with a guilty conscience. He is the guy who exercised command authority over all the resources available to attempt a rescue and he is the guy who would have told them to not respond. But the idea that the President of the United States just abruptly left the situation room and did no participate in the decision is ludicrous on its face.
The facts now seem fairly clear. Forces were positioned to effect a rescue of at least some of the men who are now dead. An order was given by the Secretary of Defense to not launch a rescue attempt either by the reaction force staged in Sicily or by an AC-130 gunship orbiting over head. The White House had video feed and audio feed available presenting them with a clear picture of the situation on the ground. And the President of the United States decided four dead Americans was a small price to pay for preserving the political fiction of the Arab Spring.
http://www.redstate.com/2012/10/27/did-obama-refuse-to-aid-our-men-in-benghazi/
DeleteIt seems there was a drone overhead. Where did that come from? Italy? Was there before the attack. Why was it sent?
ReplyDeleteThis -
ReplyDeletehttp://usmilitary.about.com/od/afweapons/a/ac130.htm
is the weapon Ruf says can level a jungle and never kill anyone.
You're hopeless. You fire that gatling gun into a city, and there's no telling which house, or even "block" you're going to level.
DeleteYou're not worth it, but let me try to 'splain it to you, dumbfuck. At the altitude from which they fire the rounds will encounter MULTIPLE Wind Currents. Some going this way, some going that way. The damned round is liable to end up on three blocks over from where you're aiming.
If the friendlies aren't already dead, the odds are YOU are going to kill them. Not to mention half the neighborhood. You people are just babbling about shit of which you know squat.
Here's a Marine that disaqrees with Ruf -
ReplyDeleteEnderr
Panetta is lying. He claimed "we didn't have on site intel and we don't send our troops in to harms way". Lies. That is the purpose of the military, to go in harms way. At least it was when I was a Marine. You had live video feed from the consulate cameras, drones over head and Seals on the ground. I never had that kind of good intel going in on an op in almost 10 years of service. Most of the time you got little intel or it turned out to be wrong. But just aircraft coming in would have been enough to turn the course of the attack. Instead they now know we are being lead by incompetent cowards.
Remember at one time obama said he would always side with the muslims. After the attack in June, which succeeded in breaching a wall before being stopped, more security was requested. Instead they removed security and hired local rent a guards with radios.
From democrat history with an election weeks away and a fund raiser in Las Vegas the next day, barry went back to bed. Clinton to cut troop deaths in Bosnia ordered every one to stay on their bases and just watch the ethnic cleansing happen in front of them. In Somalia after the Black Hawk Down incident we retreated. The Somalia pirate incident obama sent the FBI to prevent the Seals from shooting the muslim pirates. The ship's captain ordered them to shoot when he thought the hostage was in danger. If that had gone bad he would have been the scapegoat instead of obama taking a victory lap.
Obama was counting on the media backing the video story. After all if all you watch is the MSM you wouldn't even know a war is going on. You wouldn't know troops were dying, they stopped reporting the deaths every hour when obama took office. He has disgraced the office and left Americans to die horrible deaths at the hands of savages. Yet he still has a 40+ approval rating and could still win reelection.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/10/has_general_ham_been_fired_comments.html#disqus_thread#ixzz2AYYYrxb6
But just aircraft coming in would have been enough to turn the course of the attack, he says.
DeleteHe's full of shit. He doesn't know a damned bit more than you or I know. He just hates Obama, same as you, and will say anything that he hopes might hurt the guy in the white house.
DeleteLook, once the front door is kicked in, the deal is basically done. You can fly the entire Marine Air Wing overhead, and all you're doing is putting on a show.
Q- However, we have seen the videos and Obama speeches after OBL was taken out. If things had worked out, if support was sent, if the ambassador and the others who died had lived, does nayone doubt that we would have been inundated with a veritible shitstorm of “I“ and “me” from Obama from Day 1 through November 6 and beyond?
ReplyDeleteita vero
I believe this guy, Ruf.
ReplyDeleteThe AC-130U is a very effective third-generation fire-support aircraft, capable of continuous and extremely accurate fire onto multiple targets. It has been used numerous times in Iraq and Afghanistan to save pinned-down allied forces, and has even been credited with the surrender of the Taliban city of Kunduz
It was purpose-built for a select number of specific mission types, including point-defense against enemy attack. It was literally built for the kind of mission it could have engaged in over Benghazi, if the administration had let it fire. As the excerpt above clearly shows, we had assets on the ground “painting” the targets with the laser.
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/10/26/ac-130u-gunship-was-on-scene-in-benghazi-obama-admin-refused-to-let-it-fire/
Maybe they have improved since your day. Probably have. They were, I read, painting the target.
There were other 'assets' as well.
http://www.redstate.com/2012/09/25/president-obama-declares-the-future-must-not-belong-to-practicing-christians/
"The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam."
You should read the article. Christians 'slander' islam in islamic eyes by being Christians. Just by being what they are.
I'm sure this means nothing to you. You after all hate all religions. The Amish are 'fuckin' slackers'. You hate this, you hate that. You are the big hater around here.
I don't hate Obama Rufus. I used to hate my cousin, but that has blown over. Now we get along great and I am going to see her soon. I don't hate anyone at the present time. I think Obama is totally disgusting human being and unfit to be President. His sympathies are not with us.
He goes to the UN and blabs nonsense. But, by God, Ruf can't see a thing amiss about it!
heh, if it weren't such a sad situation it would be funny.
If Bush had pulled this caper and lied his ass off about it you'd be all over him for months on end.
I mean honestly, there Obama is at the UN apologizing about a video.....while our guys are dead.
There seems to have been a drone hovering around at the time. I'd like to know who sent the drone, when, and why.
ReplyDeleteJust happenstance? Or did someone suspect, or know, something was up?
Obama of course is saying he doesn't know anymore about it than I do. And is waiting anxiously, until after the election, to find out.
well hardeharharhar
Only a Rufus might believe that. And I think in his heart of hearts he doubts it too, in fact, knows it is not true.
Even Boston newspapers -
ReplyDeleteIncompetence in Benghazi
By Boston Herald Editorial Staff
Saturday, October 27, 2012 - Updated 1 day ago
EmailE-mail PrintablePrint Comments(54) Comments LargerSmallerText size Bookmark and Share Share
With every passing day and with every new revelation about the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, it becomes more apparent why the Obama administration was so intent on a cover-up.
Yesterday, Fox News, quoting sources on the ground in Benghazi that day, reported that “officials in the CIA chain of command” denied repeated requests for military backup for the embattled consulate and its annex (the supposed “safe house”).
They also reported that at the time the first shots were fired at the consulate two former Navy SEALs, Tyrone Woods and Massachusetts native Glen Doherty, were at that CIA-run annex and requested permission to go to the consulate (about a mile away) and help out. They made at least two requests and each time were told to “stand down.”
Woods, Doherty and at least two others eventually ignored the order and while the consulate was still under fire managed to rescue its remaining occupants and retrieve the body of Sean Smith. Ambassador Chris Stevens, killed in the attack, was at that point missing. Woods and Doherty lost their lives in the operation. We have always known they died as heroes; we just didn’t know that that heroism included defiance of an incompetent chain of command.
But it gets worse. The attack on both facilities lasted for more than seven hours during which there were a number of requests for military support, a special ops team and a second specializing in counterterrorism rescues was at an airbase 480 miles away — less than two hours. They were never deployed.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta insists, “There’s a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking going on here.”
True enough. But there should be no covering up incompetence — especially with talk of YouTube videos. That’s shameful. But we have come to expect shameful from this administration.
Another view of Benghazi -
ReplyDeleteObama's Taqqiya Unravels
By Nonie Darwish
I have never entertained the idea that Obama was a Muslim and always believed he was a socialist. But Obama's behavior over the last four years regarding Islam has convinced me that Obama has a Socialist/Islamic centered worldview -- a combination that is not uncommon in many parts of the Muslim world.
Having been a journalist in Egypt for six years in the seventies, I have witnessed socialism with an Islamic twist to be a popular political ideology, especially amongst Arab journalists and intellectuals. Socialism, and even communism, have managed to survive in the ruthless Islamic political system as an alternative to full-fledged Sharia. The two ideologies have blended together in cases including the Baath Party in Syria and Iraq and socialist regimes in Egypt and Yemen. One major difference between the two ideologies is that Islam uses Allah, while socialism uses atheism, to fight the God of Christianity. Free democracies, such as the United States, are alien to Islam and socialism both because they regard government as a servant of the people and hold that human rights are granted by God and not by government or the code of Sharia.
Both Sharia and socialism are united in their envy of Western society and need to change it. That is why Obama has become the savior of both Islam and socialism. He embodies both ideologies. The claim that Obama is a Christian was a silly joke, but a necessary lie for the greater cause of changing America to fit the goals of both creeds.
Obama became the One, the savior of both Islam and socialists. To do that, Obama had to deny who he really was, which explains why his actions and words have never added up. At the recent Alfred E. Smith Catholic Charity dinner speech, Obama did not seem to be just kidding when he said that Romney uses his middle name Mitt and "I wish I could use my middle name." Obama was referring, of course, to his Islamic middle name of Hussein. In Obama's mind, he was not ashamed for having deceived America -- he blamed America for putting him in the position of having to deny his true pride in his middle name.
That brings us to an important discovery by WND in an article by Jerome Corsi titled: "Obama's Ring: 'There is no God But Allah'." The article featured close-up photos of a ring still worn by Obama today in the White House, one that he has worn since his visit to Pakistan as a young man. The ring, which later also became his wedding ring, has very tiny and discrete Arabic calligraphy that means nothing to Americans, but to Arabic-speaking people like myself and Dr. Mark Gabriel, means quite a lot. Such Islamic calligraphy is commonly found throughout the gold markets of the Muslim world. I am not a writing expert, but I can clearly see on the ring the word 'La Ilaha IllaAllah. ("There is no god but god.")' Such a sentence in Arabic has a lot of the letters A and L which in Arabic are simply a straight line like the number one.
The only explanation for Obama's exciting ring secret is that he is a closet Muslim and feels that he can serve Islam best if he denies his being a Muslim for the purpose of a higher aspiration to serve the Muslim world from the White House, in Islamic terms the "higher jihad." Obama has no problem whatsoever in lying for the sake of "Hope and Change" since lying about being a Muslim in a majority non-Muslim country is allowed under Islam. Lying for the purpose of jihad (known as "taqqiya") is not only allowed, but an obligation to be proud of and even serves as a reason to blame the enemies of Islam for one's lies. Sharia law states: "Lying is obligatory if the purpose is obligatory." Muslim clerics have no problem in lying not just to the non-Muslim world but even to the Muslim masses, since Islam also allows Muslims to lie in order to bring Muslims together in harmony and friendship.
DeleteThat brings us to the current debacle in Libya, which can only be understood if we grasp Obama's worldviews as regards the "Muslim World." Like the so-called 'moderate' Muslims, Obama insists Islam in and of itself has nothing to do with terrorism and blames previous American foreign policy (along with Israel), for Islamic anger. Obama narrowed down the problem of Islamism to Al Qaeda while embracing other Islamic groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, as moderate. In the process, Obama dismissed the Brotherhood's long history of terror, which in fact gave birth to Al Qaeda and hundreds of other terror groups. Nothing in Obama's world is the fault of Islam, which is why he ordered the Fort Hood massacre to be classified as "workplace violence" and not Islamic terrorism.
Obama believes that he uniquely understands the Muslim world and will bring about a new era of peace with Islam, at least during his administration. There are strong rumors in Egypt that when Obama met with the Egyptian foreign minister, he confided in him that he was a Muslim and that he would assist the Islamic cause in America after he passes the Health Care Bill.
But as president of the United States, Obama was caught in a quagmire between protecting American lives and appearing loyal to Islam. Placing American Marines at US consulates in dangerous terror-infested Islamic countries created the possibility of a bloody confrontation between American security and Islamists. That would discredit Obama's attempt to separate Islam from terrorism. Also, if Obama confronted militant Muslim jihadists in Islamic countries, his entire claim to opening a new page in American/Islamic relations would fall apart. He would then be no different from his predecessors, Bush or Reagan.
DeleteThat explains why the demands for American security by U.S. ambassador Stevens went unanswered. Obama did not want to deal with the possibility that American Marines would shoot at Muslim attackers in order to save American lives.
According to Sharia, it is a capital crime for a Muslim individual or leader to shoot at fellow Muslims -- even Islamists -- for the purpose of protecting Americans. That would make Obama a violator of Sharia and an apostate. If Obama considers himself a Muslim and wears an Islamic ring, then he must have had a very hard time deciding on how to protect the consulate without killing Muslim attackers. His solution? Settling for the lesser of two evils: getting Muslims, in the form of Libyan security, to guard the property and in this way, forcing Muslims to shoot other Muslims in order to defend the consulate. But that plan was useless because even the Muslim guards had to follow Sharia, and ran away and left the Americans to be killed rather than violate Sharia themselves by killing other Muslims. Obama gambled with the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others and left them as sacrificial lambs rather than violate the dictates of Sharia.
The Benghazi fiasco merely underlined Obama's failed promises of peace with the Muslim world. The murder of Americans at the hand of Muslims did not even get us an apology from any Muslim leader or cleric. No one is taking responsibility, not even Obama himself.
With the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Islamists and jihadists made it clear to us that they could care less about Obama, his appeasement, his apologies, and even his Islam. They could not put jihad on hold or restrain themselves on behalf of an American president who wanted to help build a better image of Islam. They could not play the game with Obama and refrain from jihad even during the Obama presidency. The jihadists in effect declared that Obama, Muslim or not, is just another American president who should not be trusted. No leader, Muslim or not, can get away from the wrath of Islamic jihad, and that is why angry Islamic mobs were recently seen torching Obama's effigy.
DeleteIt is unfortunate that it took a tragedy in Libya and the lives of decent Americans to prove that Obama is unfit to be president of the USA. Obama has fooled many Americans for four years and that is why, when he sees the face of Mitt Romney, he is reminded of a reality that he could not fully eliminate. Obama knows the game, and his presidency, is over.
Nonie Darwish author The Devil We Don't Know and President Former Muslims United.