COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Friday, October 05, 2012

Benghazi was a complete intelligence failure and coverup by the Obama Administration



In Libya, contingency plan seemed to go awry during attack on U.S. outpost
By Michael Birnbaum, Published: October 4 Washington Post
BENGHAZI, Libya — Amid the chaos of the attack on the U.S. mission in this coastal city last month, neither the militia charged with guarding the compound nor American diplomats appeared to follow plans for what to do under assault, according to Libyan officials and guards, as well as documents found in the wreckage.
In addition, at least three Libyan guards hired to defend the compound said in interviews that they had met with American officials to express concerns about lax security, and two said they had done so on Sept. 11, the day of the attack.
A directive, dated Sept. 9, two days before the attack, specified that members of the 17th February Martyrs Brigade, a Libyan militia, would call for backup from within their own ranks in case of attack, the documents show.
In practice, three Libyan officials said, the designated militia asked another ultraconservative Islamist militia to join in the response, and the fleeing Americans do not appear to have trusted those Libyan guards with details about their movements.
The directive and a year-old contingency plan for responding to an attack were found by a Washington Post reporter this week in the debris of the U.S. mission in Benghazi, where Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in last month’s assault. The first step in the contingency plan called for securing the ambassador.
“Of course there were contingency plans drawn up for our personnel in Benghazi — that is the kind of prudent security planning that takes place at our missions worldwide,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said. But he declined to comment about whether those plans were followed.
The attack and its aftermath have presented the Obama administration with a political challenge just weeks before the election. House Republicans have criticized the slow pace of an investigation and questioned whether warning signs were disregarded in the weeks and months before the attack.
For the first time since the onslaught, an FBI team accompanied by a “small footprint’’ of U.S. military personnel visited Benghazi, Pentagon spokesman George Little said. A spokesman for the Libyan Interior Ministry in eastern Libya, Ezzdeen Alfizany, said that the Americans spent less than five hours in the city, including about an hour at the ransacked U.S. mission, and visited a tatty bazaar called the “two dinar” market, apparently in search of items looted from the compound.
Also on Thursday, U.S. officials confirmed that two Tunisians with possible connections to the attack in Benghazi have been arrested by authorities in Istanbul. The U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said the pair may have been transiting Turkey when they were detained. The officials would not discuss the nature of the possible ties to the attack.
The Libyan guards interviewed by The Post had been hired by Blue Mountain, a British company employed under contract by the U.S. mission. The guards said their training had anticipated a small attack on a single entrance — not a large-scale assault by heavy weaponry from three sides.
At the time of the siege, the security force inside the compound included three armed militia members, four unarmed guards and a handful of armed American personnel, the guards said. One guard said he had told American officials on Sept. 11 that the single Libyan police car typically posted outside the compound was not sufficient.
“The same day as the attack, I told the American Embassy that the one car was not good to protect this mission. I said we need many cars from the military,” said the Blue Mountain guard, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his safety.
A soot-soaked copy of a memorandum found in the looted security office shows that as late as Sept. 9, American security officials were working to “clarify the work requirements and expectations” of the 17th February Martyrs Brigade, the militia that had been tasked with securing the Americans since they established the mission in 2011.
The document, cast as a request, specified that in case of an attack the guards “will request additional support” from their militia’s nearby base. The guards did so during the Sept. 11 attack, according to Libyan security officials, guards who were present from the beginning and other members of the 17th February militia who were summoned within minutes.
But a second militia, Rafallah al-Sehati, that had not previously been involved in guarding the Americans, was also asked to provide assistance that night, a spokesman for the militia said. The group has been backed by the Libyan government and provides security in Benghazi, which has a minimally developed police force. But one of its leaders has described himself as a “jihadist,” and Rafallah al-Sehati officials said that weapons capable of taking down airplanes were stolen when their compound was overrun by protesters last month.
Jamal Aboshala, a spokesman for Rafallah al-Sehati, said the request came at 3 a.m. local time from Fawzi Bukhatif, the commander of the 17th February militia. He said that American officials had initially declined an offer of help, and were later reluctant to share with militia members the precise location of an annex to which they had retreated.
“Really, they mixed up. They didn’t know an enemy from a friend,” said Fawzi Wanis al-Gaddafi, the head of Benghazi’s Supreme Security Committee. “It was a messy night.”
The American protocols were posted on the wall in the former security office and scattered on the floor in the form of laminated index cards when a reporter entered the mission this week. The protocols were dated 2011 and appear to have been at least partly outdated. Among telephone numbers listed as emergency contacts to summon extra security support, one routed to a former commander who said he left the militia six months ago.
Among the items listed as priorities in the case of an emergency, the first was “secure principal officer,” or the ambassador. Stevens went missing in the blaze and had not been accounted for when the Americans evacuated to the annex, a step that was called for under the protocols.
Posted on the wall was a gloomy accounting of security incidents in Benghazi, detailing attacks, explosions and battles between June 1, 2011, and Sept. 2 of this year. Of the 38 incidents, 27 happened since July 26 of this year.

Abigail Hauslohner in Cairo, Ayman Alkekly in Benghazi, and Anne Gearan and Greg Miller in Washington contributed to this report.

87 comments:

  1. Obama was shown by Romney to be what many of us always knew that Obama was, a mediocre empty suit that has no business or suitability to be president.

    This debacle in Benghazi, the shabby aftermath and attempted coverup are indicative of the failure of a regime that has been bred and coddled by corrupt American media.

    It appears to be unraveling by this post from the Washington Post and here from The NY Times:

    …officials said the (FBI) agents flew from Tripoli in a C-130 military transport plane and were then driven to the compound in armored cars. The officials did not say how many F.B.I. agents were involved or precisely how long they were on the ground. The Pentagon press secretary, George Little, would only say at a briefing that the agents and their military escorts were in Benghazi “for a number of hours” before returning to Tripoli.

    The agents were specialists in evidence collection, according to law enforcement officials, and were there to sift through the wreckage and to determine in better detail how the attack unfolded. It is unclear how much can still be gleaned from the site, which a senior American law enforcement official has described as so badly “degraded” that linking evidence to the attackers will be difficult at best.

    Already looters, curiosity seekers and reporters have been through the site, which is only protected by two private security guards hired by the compound’s Libyan owner, The Washington Post reported Thursday. On Wednesday, a Post reporter at the site discovered loosely secured sensitive documents about American operations in Libya, some of which were turned over to the State Department. Last month CNN discovered Mr. Stevens’s diary in the wreckage.

    It is unclear if the F.B.I. investigators plan to return to the site, but Mr. Little hinted that they might. He offered few details about the military escort operation, adding, “We may need to replicate it in the future, and I wouldn’t want to tip off the wrong people.”

    It appears that the F.B.I. spent little or no time interviewing residents in Benghazi. Typically they would spend weeks, rather than hours, at a crime scene as important to national security as this site. The F.B.I., which always investigates the deaths of American overseas under suspicious circumstances, has agents from its national security division and New York field office in Libya. They have been operating largely out of the American Embassy in Tripoli, now guarded by a force of 50 elite Marines trained to protect American diplomatic posts in crisis.

    But even in Tripoli the investigation has been hobbled by the tenuous security in Libya after the overthrow of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Late last month investigators were so fearful about the risks of taking some potential Libyan witnesses into the American Embassy that they resorted to questioning people in cars outside the embassy.

    The agents are also operating without any help on the ground from the C.I.A., which had about a dozen intelligence operatives and contractors in Benghazi until the attacks, conducting surveillance and collecting information on militant groups in the city. They were among more than two dozen American personnel evacuated from Benghazi after the attack.

    American counterterrorism officials and Benghazi residents are now focused on a local militant group, Ansar al-Shariah, as the main force behind the attack, which occurred on the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

    President Obama has vowed to bring the killers to justice, and the United States is now laying the groundwork for possible operations to kill or capture militants implicated in the attack. The options could include drone strikes, Special Operations raids and joint missions with the Libyan authorities. But the Libyan government opposes any unilateral American military operation in Libya against the attackers, and administration officials say no decisions have been made about attacking any potential targets.

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  2. We all know that Obama never rests. He know that is true because Obama has told us that so often>

    President Obama has vowed to bring the killers to justice, and the United States is now laying the groundwork for possible operations to kill or capture militants implicated in the attack. The options could include drone strikes, Special Operations raids and joint missions with the Libyan authorities. But the Libyan government opposes any unilateral American military operation in Libya against the attackers, and administration officials say no decisions have been made about attacking any potential targets.

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  3. administration officials say no decisions have been made about attacking any potential targets.

    : ) Why would we need a military drone attack on AQ when we all know from Obama, Clinton, Rice and the drones in the US media that the internet video caused the attack?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Pretty damned lame excuse, which held water for around three and a half hours.

      Delete
  4. What an incredibly shabby bunch of trash. I can't wait to see Obama defend this in the next debate. And Afghanistan, Obama's 'necessary war', where we are making no progress at all, except in reverse. And how the muslim brotherhood is truly on the rise all around.

    It's a tough situation no doubt, but when the Ambassador has been killed, really you should spend a day at the office, and not go talk to Barbara Wa Wa on the View, and head off to Vegas.

    And I hope his little 'aside', recorded with an unknown open mike, with Putin's pal Medvedev, comes up too.

    He might be a lot better off if he just stuck an empty suit in an empty chair up there to do the debating in this next round.

    After all if you are a fool it's better to keep the mouth shut, than opening it and proving it beyond all doubt.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ah ha!

    Ohio shocker: GOP closes early voting gap, boosting Romney
    October 4, 2012 | 11:22 am


    In a remarkable reversal of fortune for President Obama in Ohio, the GOP has closed the huge gap in absentee ballot requests used by early voters that favored the Democrats and the president in 2008, setting up what one state analyst said could be a Mitt Romney blowout on Election Day.





    http://washingtonexaminer.com/ohio-shocker-gop-closes-early-voting-gap-boosting-romney/article/2509838#.UG61mFKdG1v


    This is just what your intrepid on the ground reporter and poll worker observed here at Ground Zero, before taking the weekend off for the opening of Keeneland Race track in Lexington today. (City is packed, motel sold out)

    Plenty of in person early voters, and, oh, oh, many dressed in suits and dresses or other nice clothes, with Romney buttons on their shirts and blouses.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Even more dramatic, while the GOP has cut the Democratic advantage in early voting throughout the state, the changes favoring the Republicans in certain counties has been huge. In Franklin County, home to Columbus, for example, a 2008 Democratic advantage of 5 percent is now a 5 percent GOP advantage. In Cuyahoga County, home to Democratic Cleveland, the GOP has shaved six points off the Democrat's 2008 advantage. And in Hamilton County, home to Cincinnati, Republicans have expanded their 2008 advantage to 13 percent.......


      Ryun, whose group has opened voter registration efforts in Ohio and other swing states, said that the Buckeye State's efforts to clean up voter rolls has also played a part in tightening the gap. He said that 450,000 dead voters and duplicate registrations have been nixed, and the majority were Democrats.


      Word one is dead democrats are having a harder time than usual making it to the polls this year.



      ....



      QUIRK, PLEASE READ JOHN FUND'S BOOK ON VOTER FRAUD -

      http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/10/01/john_fund_s_new_book_on_voter_fraud_is_well_worth_your_time

      Delete
    2. .


      Rush Limbaugh?

      Seriously?

      You continue to confute the issues involved. Is there voter fraud? Of course, as we have discussed before. However, photo ID, has little to do with it. And photo ID was the subject we were arguing about, you nitwit.

      I have seen a number of cases of voter fraud reported in the news over the last month or so, Arizona, Maryland, other states. We had a case here in MI earlier in the summer where our Rep., Thad Mccotter was forced to resign over it.

      I haven't paid that much attention to it but I had noticed in every case I've seen it was a Republican that was guilty.

      Your poutage on this subject is childish and ill-informed.

      Stick to the ponies.

      .

      .

      Delete
  6. "the U.S. consulate in Benghazi" -- no

    There is no US consulate in Benghazi, which is why State didn't care about security. It was probably, more than anything, a CIA nest with a dozen agents. (Ineffective, of course.)why should State provide security for CIA? Besides, the Agency like to keep a low profile.

    The US does not have an embassy, a consulate or a diplomatic mission in Benghazi. There are none listed on this State Department list of all the US embassies and consulates in the world.
    http://www.usembassy.gov/

    On September 12, 2012, SecState Clinton made two statements. She never used the word “consulate.”To describe the place that was attacked in Benghazi she used instead the words ‘U.S. diplomatic post, compound, our buildings and our office.’
    http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2012/09/197654.htm
    http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2012/09/197630.htm

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, the Bio of the dead Ambassador really reads like an evil genius spy.
      He was as true blue Peace and Love guy as you can find.

      Moron (that would be you)

      Delete
    2. I’d tell you ( Doug) to go fuck yourself but you couldn’t get it hard enough, long enough, to even get it in.

      Delete
    3. You would know:

      Tried, but couldn't bend it.

      (taking advantage of me when I was passed out:
      Have you no shame?)

      Delete
    4. .

      There is no US consulate in Benghazi, which is why State didn't care about security.

      True enough about the 'no consulate' but irrelevant.

      State didn't care? May be true but that is merely one more indictment. Stevens was their friggin Ambassador. They didn't care about his safety or that of the people under him? They didn't care that he had a part time job as a CIA spook?

      Methinks your defense of State is misguided.

      .

      Delete
    5. I heard that this was an attack which has left us blinded towards events on the ground in Libya and Egypt. The question is: What are we now blind to? Is something in the works that someone doesn't want us to see?

      Delete
  7. Now we’ll see how much debates really matter. Often they don’t matter much. But the presidential debate Wednesday night might matter a great deal, not because of what the candidates said, but what the debate told us about who the candidates really are.
    Barack Obama was revealed to be the empty suit with a great gift of gab and a talent only for appealing to the nation’s guilty conscience. Some of us recognized the empty suit four years ago. Like all great salesmen, he can charm prospective customers when he tries, but without a teleprompter he’s hopelessly lost at sea. On Wednesday night, he forgot whether he was selling rubbing alcohol or ladies’ corsets, and it showed.

    Like all presidents, he’s accustomed to watching everybody swoon when he steps into the room, and the only tune on his iPod is “Hail to the Chief,” which he plays often. When Mitt Romney confronted him with something less than a genuflection, the president was rattled for the rest of the evening. Life outside a bubble is tough, particularly for a president.

    Mr. Romney, to our considerable surprise, has a gift for talking to the common man. He may be one of us, after all. This is particularly important in an age when everybody wants the president to feel his pain and the first lady to come over with a green-bean casserole. He arrived with a game plan and kept to it. He used the word “jobs” more than 30 times. It became a mantra. He was confident, respectful, and looked to be the man in charge of the evening. He showed unexpected flashes of humor. Once, mildly rebuking the president for endlessly repeating a canard about a tax cut, he recalled that as the father of five boys he was accustomed to hearing something repeated over and over in hopes that repetition would make it so…


    {…}

    ReplyDelete
  8. Yet, the Ambassador is truly, really really dead.

    ...

    Oh, oh -- George Will uses a horse race metaphor -

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-romneys-trifecta/2012/10/04/8e4fc77a-0e4d-11e2-bb5e-492c0d30bff6_story.html

    Romney hits a trifecta in Denver


    Hey, how's this for having something unpleasant shoved up your ass --

    The Independent Payment Advisory Board perfectly illustrates liberalism’s itch to remove choices from individuals, and from their elected representatives, and to repose the power to choose in supposed experts liberated from democratic accountability. Beginning in 2014, IPAB would consist of 15 unelected technocrats whose recommendations for reducing Medicare costs must be enacted by Congress by Aug. 15 of each year. If Congress does not enact them, or other measures achieving the same level of cost containment, IPAB’s proposals automatically are transformed from recommendations into law. Without being approved by Congress. Without being signed by the president.

    These facts refute Obama’s Denver assurance that IPAB “can’t make decisions about what treatments are given.” It can and will by controlling payments to doctors and hospitals. Hence the emptiness of Obamacare’s language that IPAB’s proposals “shall not include any recommendation to ration health care.”

    By Obamacare’s terms, Congress can repeal IPAB only during a seven-month window in 2017, and then only by three-fifths majorities in both chambers. After that, the law precludes Congress from ever altering IPAB proposals.


    ....

    This last 'Obama debate' was his worst debate since he debated Cling Eastwood.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Hippo Oath will be ammended to read:

      "First, make no profit..."

      Delete
  9. {…}

    But will it matter? Several presidential candidates have survived bad debate nights and gone on to win election. Ronald Reagan, remembered as the original Great Communicator, wandered from first base to center field and into the dugouts in his first debate with Walter Mondale in 1984, and then won 49 states, giving Minnesota to its native son only as a gentleman’s gimme. George Bush the elder lost a debate to Michael Dukakis before clobbering him in 1988, and George the son lost his debate with John Kerry in 2004 and subsequently torpedoed the swift boat in November.
    Nevertheless, Mr. Romney’s stellar performance and the subsequent media meltdown after the debate was the tonic his supporters needed, and might even have stiffened the spines of some of the Republican summer soldiers who were ready to quit the fight and go home to sulk. The demoralization of the president’s camp followers in the media won’t last; they’re already finding happy portents in the wreckage of Wednesday night. But the meltdown was fun while it lasted, and some of the media celebrities revealed themselves to be the gong-show partisans everyone knows they are. The meltdown makes the convincing argument of media bias and connivance in a way that conservative critics never could.
    Chris Matthews, who has the loudest mouth on cable TV and thrives in a state of 24/7 hysteria, was rendered into a vast pool of lard. He was typical for the night. He was so overwrought, you might have thought the creepy-crawly he usually feels on his leg when he hears Mr. Obama speak had crawled into his underwear. He offered to tutor the president for the next two debates.
    “He would learn something about [how to] debate. There’s a hot debate going on in this country. You know where it’s being held? Here on [MSNBC] is where we’re having the debate. We have our knives out. We go after the people what was [the president] doing tonight? He went in there disarmed Obama should watch MSNBC. He will learn something every night on this show and all these shows. This stuff we’re watching, it’s like first grade for us. We know all this stuff.”
    Barack Obama went into the garage Thursday morning for an overhaul, a ring-and-valve job at a minimum, and the mechanics will have him ready for the next presidential debate Oct. 16 at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. Mitt Romney can’t count on getting a weak, confused and bumbling opponent next time. But the messiah’s honeyed words no longer charm. The novelty of voting for the first black president to assuage white liberal guilt has just about worn off. The Obama dilemma is that he must go on the offensive, whether presidential or not. But defending the indefensible, as he learned Wednesday night, is a fool’s errand.
    • Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.



    Read more: PRUDEN: Debate aftermath: Deadly peril outside the media bubble - Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/5/pruden-debate-aftermath-deadly-peril-outside-the-m/#ixzz28QCeKhhD
    Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

    ReplyDelete
  10. Chris Matthews, who has the loudest mouth on cable TV and thrives in a state of 24/7 hysteria, was rendered into a vast pool of lard.

    He was typical for the night. He was so overwrought, you might have thought the creepy-crawly he usually feels on his leg when he hears Mr. Obama speak had crawled into his underwear. He offered to tutor the president for the next two debates.

    “He would learn something about [how to] debate. There’s a hot debate going on in this country. You know where it’s being held? Here on [MSNBC] is where we’re having the debate.

    We have our knives out. We go after the people what was [the president] doing tonight? He went in there disarmed Obama should watch MSNBC. He will learn something every night on this show and all these shows. This stuff we’re watching, it’s like first grade for us. We know all this stuff.”

    ReplyDelete
  11. Romney turned on the light and the cockroaches scattered through the floorboards.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Was Obama rattled by developing donor scandal story?

    President Obama's reelection campaign, rattled by his Wednesday night debate performance, could be in for even worse news. According to knowledgeable sources, a national magazine and a national web site are preparing a blockbuster donor scandal story.

    Sources told Secrets that the Obama campaign has been trying to block the story. But a key source said it plans to publish the story Friday or, more likely, Monday.

    According to the sources, a taxpayer watchdog group conducted a nine-month investigation into presidential and congressional fundraising and has uncovered thousands of cases of credit card solicitations and donations to Obama and Capitol Hill, allegedly from unsecure accounts, and many from overseas. That might be a violation of federal election laws.

    The Obama campaign has received hundreds of millions in small dollar donations, many via credit card donations through their website. On Thursday, the campaign announced a record September donor haul of $150 million.

    At the end of the 2008 presidential campaign, the Obama-Biden effort was hit with a similar scandal. At the time, the Washington Post reported that the Obama campaign let donors use "largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity."

    ReplyDelete
  13. mmmhmmmm I thought this was all but over two weeks ago and now Dougo tells us Obama’s terrible donor secrets to be revealed this weekend.

    "President Romney" sounds good,

    Time to redecorate the WH ,bring back the Winston Churchill bust...

    ReplyDelete
  14. He was tired: Obama looked world-weary at best and downright grim at worst during the debate. And, his inability (or unwillingness) to go after Romney’s record — or rebut some of Romney’s claims about his own — gave off the impression that Obama just wasn’t well prepared enough to do so.

    It’s understandable for a president to be a little worn down — he is the president after all — but it’s up to he and his staff to understand that these debates matter a lot and that just assuming you will be able to fake it until you make it isn’t good enough.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. All those hours in the Whitehouse straining that great brain about World Events, ya know.

      Delete
    2. I was worried that mind-meld with Mr Global Test would leave him invincible.

      Delete
  15. Make a Hell of an imposing linebacker in cleats instead of heels.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Po' ol' Rufus, one must have compassion on po' po' ol' Rufus, gross violator of the UN Declaration on Human Rights, sinner, Obama supporter, all round scalliwag, fierce nordic with a little peaceful Cherokee thrown in, Ruf down there in swampy Mississip at 100 feet above sea level is the only one around who can't in his own defense play the 'high altitude sickness card'.

    :)

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  17. Rasmussen Tracking Poll didn't budge - still Obama +2

    ReplyDelete
  18. The 7.8% unemployed number has miraculously arrived one month before the election. Rick Santelli had a look on his face that must have been the same as Joseph’s when Mary tried explaining to him the concept of immaculate conception.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Replies
    1. This was an all-around great jobs report. The unemployment rate went down for all the "right" reasons.

      The working-age population was up. Those finding work was Way up 873,000 (the unemployment rate is taken from the "household survey" which covers new, small, and mid-sized businesses that aren't reached in the "Establishment Survey" which showed a gain of 114,000.)

      Those losing jobs was way down (468,000.)

      This was probably the best report since the Crash.

      BLS Report

      Delete
    2. .

      The unemployment rate will be talked about and other meaningly data ignored. For instance, the number of jobs created each month has been dropping for the past three months and average jobs created per month has dropped to 146,000 this year while last year the average was 153,000.

      Not a very robust picture.

      .

      Delete
    3. .

      The 7.8% rate is the same as when Obama took office. After four years, we are back at square one.

      .

      Delete
    4. Yeah, but the "Direction" is certainly different. :)

      Delete
  20. Doug: It’s understandable for a president to be a little worn down — he is the president after all —

    Yeah, all those rounds of golf, all that fancy footwork ducking Netanyahu, all those appearances on The View plum wear a man out. He needed some deep fried moon pies from Chick Fil A or something.

    Unemployment rate plummets to 4.3% - for government workers.

    Santelli Smells A Rat: 'I Told You They'd Get It Under 8%—They Did!'

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And Rufass has 3 Orgasms!

      ...takes all kinds.

      Delete
  21. Welch and Santelli are loons. There are way too many people involved in aggregating the numbers for them to be cooked. Dozens of mid-level career employees of both parties are involved in putting the reports together. You couldn't possibly keep a manipulation such as that a secret. Kind of like the Moon Landing deal.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. .

      Welch a loon? Not sure. Anyone who has read about him (or worked with him) knows that he revels in his dickdom. He is a true representative member of the 1%. I too doubt there was any manipulation of BLS numbers. Of course, we will have to wait to see how good they are and which way the revisions skew.

      Santelli is a different cat. IMO, a mixed bag. While I think he takes his Tea Party mantra too far, I do agree with him on some things such as the opinion that QE is currently doing little at its best and more harm than good at its worst.

      .

      Delete
    2. Jack Welch was a Great businessman in his day. But, they fired him for a reason; he was getting old (and, now, he's gotten older.) :)

      I agree on Santelli. He has his moments, but he does get a bit carried away from time to time.

      I wuz (this time) Being hyperbolic. They're not "Loons." They're just, occasionally, over-excitable partisans. :)

      Delete
  22. 433: Should JESUS have been killled? Strange body parts

    This is my gift to Rufus, for all the times I have sinned (owned his ass) against his sweet Socialist Soul:

    You might just skip through the Strange body parts segment, and get to the Meat of the podcast, JESUS!

    Harland Williams on how God Screwed Up by not having his son walk among us, be featured on CNN, Twitter (I made that up) and all the cool ways to broadcast the good news.

    ...and all he would have had to do is wait a mere 2,000 years instead of having the poor SOB be nailed to a fucking cross!

    ...like those crazy flips!

    (no offense, T, I know you're part of the Diaspora that does not partake in that shit.)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There's a big difference between whipping yourself and having a Roman do it for ya.

      Delete
    2. You got a point.

      ...as opposed to Rufass who follows by avoiding some truly hilarious stuff just to keep his green socialist ass high and tight.

      Delete
  23. I don't read articles, books, etc about religion, Doug. Pro, Con, or otherwise. I'd rather watch WWF.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Payroll Numbers for July, and August Revised UP 86,000.

    This is a good report.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You got us:

      The Guy's Capitalism's Fucking God, come down to Earth, just to bless our mortal souls.

      Delete
    2. A lot of people confuse the American System with the long-discredited system of "Laissez-Faire" Capitalism.

      We dumped "laissez-faire" a long time ago. That it remains a religion amongst a certain block of nutters isn't surprising. An extremely large percentage of the population believe the world is 6,000 years old, or that JC is going to pop up in St. Joseph, Mo, any day now.

      Delete
    3. Yep, Romney's a Fuckin Moronic (Mormonic) Loser.
      You got it.
      ...fwiw

      Delete
    4. I wouldn't call him a moron, but I'm not sure that he can convince the plurality of American voters that he should be President (he sure hasn't convinced me.)

      Delete
  25. Pathetic

    ORLANDO, Fla. -
    American Airlines says a combination of wear, poor design and even soda spilled into the tracks can cause seats on its Boeing 757s to pop loose during flight.

    The airline has canceled 44 flights Friday, including eight into and out of Orlando International Airport, while it fixes the problem. The airline scrubbed 50 flights Thursday.

    American Airlines spokeswoman Mary Frances Fagan said on Friday that passengers spilling soda and coffee "gunked up" the seat locking mechanism over time on certain planes.

    The "gunk" affected the track on the ground "that locks the seats to the aircraft floor," she said.

    “We are taking extra steps to ensure that the seats do not dislodge from the track," Fagan said.


    The "extra steps” used to be called cleaning the plane.

    ReplyDelete
  26. If a little soda pop throws'em off their game you have to wonder how those fastenings would hold up in a "Crash." /)

    ReplyDelete
  27. Golly all the bloveating about the debate and, as rufus said...

    Rasmussen still has Obama up by 2%

    ReplyDelete
  28. In fairness, it Is a 3 day tracking poll, and only one of those polling days has been in the wake of the debates. I wouldn't be surprised to see it tick down a point tomorrow, or the next day (but, Rasmussen does, without a doubt, skew Republican, anyway.)

    The race is, almost undoubtably, in about the same place (for all practical purposes) as it was before the debate. Obama will win Ohio, and is a favorite to pick up either Iowa, or Nevada, and that gets him over the hump. All else is noise.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. :)

      Big Bird's job is probably safe.

      Delete
    2. This debate will be remembered as the debate when Romney threatened to fire Big Bird. :)

      Sounds crazy, but I believe that.

      Delete
  29. Republicans are deluding themselves if they believe that 11% number that Romney's throwing around.

    I'll tell you why. If you go to the BLS link I gave above you will see that the Labor Force grew by a Million folks in the last year. That's about right,

    Especially if you consider the Increasing Rate at which people are Retiring, and drawing Social Security Benefits - a Rate that, is best I can figure out, almost double the norm up to the last year, or so.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Well, This just shows to go ya:

    Obama ticked UP a point in the Gallup Tracking Poll.

    Realclear Politics

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I guess Romney really scared'em with that threat to Fire Big Bird. :)

      Delete
    2. Millions of mothers across the land said, "shit, who's going to babysit the little bastards, Now?"

      :)

      Delete
  31. Millions of mothers across the land said, "shit, who's going to babysit the little bastards, Now?"

    :)

    The mothers in your camp don't need babysitters, cause they don't work. They sit on their lard asses everyday and collect government checks. And Bastards is right, since most don't know who they daddy is. :0 :0 :)

    Ive had enough gang, I am going to the house and have an adult beverage(of my choice), and hang out with my bride.

    I hope all you EBers have a great weekend. You too, Trish. Gag out.

    ReplyDelete
  32. October 5, 2012
    Obama camp may be freaking out today
    Richard Baehr

    New swing state polls are out today from Rasmussen and We Ask America, all taken yesterday after the first Presidential debate. In Rasmusssen surveys, Romney is up 1

    in Virginia (he had been down 1) , up 2 in Floria (he has been down 2) and down 1 in Ohio (same as before)

    We Ask America has Romney up 3 in Virginia (last survey had Obama up 3), up 1 in Ohio (first survey in this cycle for the state), and up 3 in Florida (last survey had Obama up 3).

    The average of the surveys from the two polls in each of the three most critical swing states puts Romney up 2 in Virginia, up 2.5% in Florida, and even in Ohio.

    A new Gravis poll has Obama up 1 in Nevada, another swing state.

    We Ask America also has a new poll in Illinois 10, the most Democratic district now represented by a Republican in Congress (Obama won by well over 20% last time). Freshman GOP Rep. Bob Dold is up 2% and amazingly, Obama, too, is only up 2% in a district he won by 23% in 2008. This is a heavily Jewish district, so maybe there is evidence of some blowback over Israel policy.

    Of course Nate Silver's model will probably absorb all this, and since lately it seems to work like the model that produces the monthly unemployment rate, will conclude that Obama's chances to win have gone up from 88% to 90%.

    Correction: Obama vote corrected to 2008

    Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/10/obama_camp_may_be_freaking_out_today.html#ixzz28T72I1PK

    ReplyDelete
  33. I must sadly report to the drinkers there was a United Arab Emirates flag flying along side Old Glory at Keeneland today.
    Asked about it. There is a big horse boy from OilLand invested heavily around here. On further questioning, I found they change the flag every meeting day to another nation, spreading the Kentucky Welcome around the whole wide world.

    But it put me off my race game at first.

    Wonderful race track, actors and singers were doing material from The Phantom of the Opera near the paddocks before the race, which is playing at the performing arts center in old downtown Lexington. (Which is clean and neat, and mostly new)

    Idaho put on a good show, losing to North Carolina in football by only 66 - 0 in a game near here.

    Go Vandals!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. To be precise about it, after hearing they change the flag most every meeting day, I asked the young lady, who's tomorrow, Saudi Arabia?

      She said she didn't know, but most all countries get up there after a while. She said people were pissed though about the United Arab Emirates flag, flapping away at the same level as our Old Glory.

      They have a dress code in the restaurants at the track. I was discriminated against, cause I was wearing jeans.

      Rufus would approve.

      I will have to uniform up. Really nice dressed crowd though, and a lot of the girls were really good looking, neatly dressed, hair all done up wonderfully.

      Delete
  34. I see the unemployment rate has suddenly plummeted to under 8%.

    All I can say is -

    Bwashahahahhahahaha

    What a farce.

    And, our Ambassador has come back from the dead, The White House announced.

    ReplyDelete
  35. Hey Ruf, you wanna go pardners on a race horse? At $50,000 Claiming, the lowest price I saw today, it would only be 25K each, we could pasture it in Idaho in the summer, Mississippi in the winter, share the trailer costs, and I know someone who would give 24/7/365 Total Horse Care for only 6K a month. You could use your Casino Cash, and I my Farm Subsidies, but we'd have to go to Goodwill Industires and buy some fancy dress up clothes and used shoes so as to fit in properly at the lower end of the acceptable dress code around here. I did see a shoeshine and barber out at Keeneland.

    ReplyDelete
  36. BOUNCE IN POLLS:

    R PULLS AHEAD IN VA...

    R +3 IN FL...

    R +3 IN OH among those 'certain' to vote...Drudge

    ReplyDelete
  37. Obama failures and cover ups abound -

    Career intel officers: Obama’s not telling you how far Al Qaeda has penetrated into Libya and Egypt
    posted at 7:21 pm on October 5, 2012 by Allahpundit

    I don’t get it. Why would the Foreign Policy President, who supported the revolutions in Libya and Egypt, not want to talk about that?

    I thought he likes talking about foreign policy.

    Weeks before the presidential election, President Barack Obama’s administration faces mounting opposition from within the ranks of U.S. intelligence agencies over what career officers say is a “cover up” of intelligence information about terrorism in North Africa.

    Intelligence held back from senior officials and the public includes numerous classified reports revealing clear Iranian support for jihadists throughout the tumultuous North Africa and Middle East region, as well as notably widespread al Qaeda penetration into Egypt and Libya in the months before the deadly Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi…

    Officials with access to intelligence reports, based on both technical spying and human agents, said specific reporting revealed an alarming surge in clandestine al Qaeda activity months before the attack in Benghazi…

    “The Obama Administration is afraid to admit al Qaeda is running rampant throughout the region because it would expose the truth instead of what President Obama so pompously spouted during the Democratic Convention” said the official.

    Follow the link for allegations that AQ is coordinating in Egypt via Al-Azhar University with the help of Mohammed al-Zawahiri, brother of you-know-who and, until this year, a prisoner of the Egyptian government. That was news to me, but the possibility of Al Qaeda setting up shop in Libya was not. Two reports prepared for Congress and released in August — before the attack in Benghazi — warned explicitly that the power vacuum in Libya combined with easy access to heavy weapons stolen from Qaddafi’s stockpiles made the country a natural draw for jihadists. One of those reports claimed that Al Qaeda’s senior leadership in Pakistan had dispatched top operatives to Libya with orders to start setting up a new network there under a different name. All of this was an entirely foreseeable consequence of toppling Mubarak and Qaddafi, and arguably a price worth paying in order to set those countries on track to democracy and, maybe someday, more liberal societies. But note: Entirely foreseeable. If you’re going to up-end the political table in these countries in the name of ousting autocrats, then you need to plan for an inevitable period of chaos — and terror — in the aftermath. Did we do that in Benghazi? Based on what we know right now, it looks like we did the opposite: Less security, not more, even when more was requested. Watch the new clip below from ABC and Jake Tapper for the latest on that. Madness.

    I’d love to hear the Foreign Policy President explain why his State Department didn’t think to ramp up protection for Chris Stevens in Al Qaeda’s new backyard, but I think we all know what his “public statement” about the situation is going to be. No explanations forthcoming.


    http://hotair.com/archives/2012/10/05/career-intel-officers-obamas-not-telling-you-how-far-al-qaeda-has-penetrated-libya-and-egypt/

    Say it ain't so, Obama promised us the 'most transparent administration ever'.

    How could this possibly be? After he promised?

    Could it be that WiO is right and that they are at war with us?

    ReplyDelete
  38. Question:

    Who believes the unemployment numbers were massaged?

    ReplyDelete
  39. The Blog
    Jobs Report Met with Skepticism
    Labor secretary responds.
    10:23 AM, Oct 5, 2012 • By DANIEL HALPER


    This morning's jobs report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is being met with skepticism. The report found that, from August to September, the unemployment rate dropped from just above 8 percent to 7.8 percent.

    In fact, when Labor Secretary Hilda Solis appeared on CNBC this morning, the first two questions for her were whether the books have been cooked:

    See video: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/jobs-report-met-skepticism_653731.html

    Solis called the charges insulting and "ludicrous."

    Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former economics adviser to John McCain and the former head the Congressional Budget Office, calls the numbers "implausible."

    "Sept. unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent due to an extraordinary – but implausible – estimate of 873,000 #jobs in household survey,” said Holtz-Eakin on Twitter.

    “The report presented a slew of contradictory data points, with the total employment level soaring despite the low net number,” said CNBC's Jeff Cox.

    The Washington Post's Neil Irwin adds, "Weird that payrolls are exactly on forecast but household survey is far better."

    And the Wall Street Journal warns that these numbers should be taken "with a grain of salt."

    ReplyDelete
  40. Reuters tracking poll: Romney gains four points on Obama in two days after debate
    posted at 8:36 pm on October 5, 2012 by Allahpundit

    Like Ed said this morning, you’ll have to wait a few more days for public reaction to be fully priced in.

    But that doesn’t mean we can’t end a very good week on a hopeful note.

    President Barack Obama’s lead over challenger Mitt Romney has narrowed to just two percentage points since the Republican’s strong performance in their first debate, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday.

    In more bad news for Obama, one in five voters said the Democrat’s performance in the contest in Denver on Wednesday made them feel more negative about him and almost a third said they felt more positive about his Republican challenger…

    Obama had led Romney by 6 percentage points in the poll released on Wednesday and the edge narrowed to five points – a 48-43 percent lead for Obama – in polling up to Thursday. That was the first including a day of interviews after the meeting in Denver…

    More than 9 out of 10 registered voters – 91 percent – said they had seen, heard or read something about the debate, and 54 percent said they thought Romney had done a better job.

    He gained three points in just the past 24 hours, in other words, as the news of Wednesday’s win rippled through the electorate. Rasmussen also saw some positive movement last night but says it’ll be Sunday before we know f it’s more than noise. The eeyorish take on all this is that it’s just a bounce, much like O’s post-convention surge, and will be tamped down in due time by today’s, ahem, “good” jobs report, the next debate, etc. The optimistic take — which I share in this case — is that Romney fundamentally changed public perceptions of himself by dominating a sitting president on national TV. The media’s pre-debate portrayal of him as essentially a lost cause was a real threat, especially since big-money donors were nearing the point of deciding whether to give up on the presidency and contribute to congressional races instead. All that’s changed now. Doesn’t mean he’ll be in the lead next week, but he did exactly what he needed to do to give himself a shot at victory.

    Now then. Want to see a brutal political ad? Behold the power of silence: http://hotair.com/archives/2012/10/05/reuters-tracking-poll-romney-gains-four-points-on-obama-in-two-days-after-debate/


    I'm off to dream of noble horses racing, well dressed beautiful women, polite conversation and fine whiskey.

    ReplyDelete
  41. Ezra Klein stated something, today, that I haven't fact-checked, because I trust EK explicitly. He said that there was a very similar bump in teenage employment in September, last year. (the big bump in employment was blacks, and teenagers.)

    Maybe it's the "rich kids go to college, and the poor kids go to work" effect?

    I don't know, but the idea of organizing some sort of conspiracy between the dozens of career bureaucrats (democrats and republicans) at the BLS, and the White House is simply bizarre.

    ReplyDelete
  42. Here's something that Klein, and Everyone Else is missing. Go Here

    BLS Data

    486,000 Fewer people Lost their jobs this month than last. That is a Big Deviaton from the Norm.

    That accounts for more than half of the reported Improvement in the "number employed."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You see, you have to understand that in a 150 Million person workforce such as ours, Millions of people are Hired, and Fired, and Quit Every Month. A deviation from the norm in the number fired/quit is significant in the overall number.

      Delete
  43. Too bad that dumb-ass "ambassador" didn't know who he worked for, according to limp-wristed "Jen"
    Sends mail to the wrong place!
    ...too dumb to live

    Email Shows State Department Rejecting Request of Security Team at US Embassy in Libya
    Jake Tapper

    ABC News has obtained an internal State Department email from May 3, 2012, indicating that the State Department denied a request from the security team at the Embassy of Libya to retain a DC-3 airplane in the country to better conduct their duties.

    Copied on the email was U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed in a terrorist attack on the diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, Sept. 11, 2012, along with three other Americans. That attack has prompted questions about whether the diplomatic personnel in that country were provided with adequate security support.

    No one has yet to argue that the DC-3 would have definitively made a difference for the four Americans killed that night. The security team in question, after all, left Libya in August.

    But the question – both for the State Department, which is conducting an internal investigation, and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is holding hearings next week – is whether officials in Washington, D.C., specifically at the State Department, were as aware as they should have been about the deteriorating security situation in Libya, and whether officials were doing everything they could to protect Americans in that country.

    Earlier this week, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and another member of the committee wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton listing 13 incidents leading up to the attack, ranging from IED and RPG attacks to a “posting on a pro-Gaddafi Facebook page” publicizing early morning runs taken by the late Ambassador Stevens and his security detail around Tripoli.

    “Was State Department headquarters in Washington aware of all the above incidents?” they asked Secretary Clinton, requesting written responses by Oct. 8. “If not, why not? If so, what measures did the State Department take to match the level of security provided to the U.S. Mission in Libya to the level of threat?”

    The subject line of the email, from Miki Rankin, the post management officer for Libya and Saudi Arabia, reads “Termination of Tripoli DC-3 Support.”

    Rankin informs Stevens and the others on the email, whose names have been redacted, that Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy “has determined that support for Embassy Tripoli using the DC-3 will be terminated immediately. Post’s request to continue use of the plane in support of the SST was considered. However, it was decided that, if needed, NEA will charter a special flight for their departure.”

    You can read the email HERE.

    An “SST” is a Security Support Team, about 16 Special Forces troops assigned to protect officials from the U.S. State Department. This particular SST was assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli.


    Shown the email uncovered by ABC News, a spokesman for the committee said the “document is consistent with what the Oversight Committee has been told by individuals who worked in Libya. Ambassador Stevens and the diplomatic mission in Libya made multiple security related requests that were turned down by Washington based officials. Security related transportation has been identified as one of the particular items where embassy personnel did not receive the support they sought.”

    ReplyDelete
  44. Provided with a copy of the e-mail, a senior State Department official downplayed the importance of the denied request. The official told ABC News that “the DC-3 was pulled from Iraq and moved to support Libya early on when there was no commercial airline service into Libya. When commercial service was re-established in Libya, the aircraft was reassigned to other State Department business. We use our aircraft when no commercial flights exist.”

    The U.S. government official who provided the email to ABC News – and wanted to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the matter – described the small DC-3 plane as an asset for a security team to more freely and safely move throughout the country, and to more easily transport arms and other security equipment. In short, having the plane allowed the security team to better perform its duties, the official said.

    The State Department official acknowledged that the plane was used to get around Libya, not just to get in and out of the country. But once commercial air service was re-established, the State Department decided that the SST didn’t need the plane anymore. The security team, it would seem, disagreed...

    ReplyDelete