http://frontpagemag.com/2013/tom-thurlow/the-clinton-scandal-playbook-and-benghazi/print/ The punditocracy is pulling out its collective hair, wanting to know why there have apparently been multiple layers of cover-ups in the evolving Benghazi story. An early scandal from the Clinton administration, the so-called “Travelgate” scandal, may be instructive. Recall that in the 1993 firings of employees at the White House Travel Office, a […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/gov-rick-perry-why-texas-works/
HE IS MY FAVORITE GOVERNOR….NOT A GOOD CANDIDATE OR DEBATER ….BUT AFTER BASHING HIM IN THE PRIMARIES, ALL THE OTHERS ADOPTED HIS POLICIES….RSK
Editor’s note: Below is the video and transcript of Gov. Rick Perry’s speech at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s Texas Weekend. The inaugural event took place May 3rd-5th at the Las Colinas Resort in Dallas, Texas.
Rick Perry: And, David, it’s an honor to get to see you again and be in your presence. And we’re certainly glad to have you here in Texas. And even if your mailing address does continue to be in California. (laughter) I mean, really, California? It — all the cool kids are moving to Texas, David. (laughter)
But I’m just kidding because, I mean, God knows, if there is a place that needs David Horowitz, it is California. (laughter) So, you know, the basic question I love to ask folks when I talk to people in California or Illinois or overseas, for that matter, is that, you know, what makes Texas so special?
And there’s a number of ways to go about that answer. We are a unique culture. We’re proud. We are patriotic. Fiercely dedicated to the values of individual freedom and responsibility. We are a mix of backgrounds.
We are incredibly diverse state, culturally, ethically, philosophically. No matter where you come from or what you believe, you can feel right at home in Texas. Granted, if you’re a liberal, Austin’s probably about the only place that you’re going to feel really at home. (laughter)
But it’s a great place and they love it there. If you enjoy the finer things in life from world class orchestras to world class food, you can find it in Texas. Same if you enjoy camping, fishing, hunting, hiking or even surfing, we have it all.
Of course, that’s what truly sets us apart over the last decade has been our economic climate. And that’s something that we’ve worked very hard to develop, to cultivate. It’s a climate built upon the fiscally conservative principles that have served us well through good economic times and throughout major national recessions.
CEOs are looking for something simple. And that simplicity is predictability. And in Texas, they know that they’re going to get just that. They know they won’t be taxed into bankruptcy. They know that they — that we have a low tax burden here. That’s the foundation of this state’s tax philosophy.
We do that because we realize that more money in the hands of Texans is how you create more jobs in this state. We realize that more jobs for hard working Texas tax payers means more options, more freedom, healthier Texas families.
People have gotten that message, too. Our population continues to grow at somewhere north of 1,000 people every day move into this state. Employers also know that they can put down roots in Texas. That they won’t be tied up in miles and miles of government red tape.
That doesn’t mean that we don’t take care of our own. That we don’t have appropriate regulatory climates. As a matter fact, we’ve cleaned up our air in the last decade more than any other state in the nation during that same period of time.
But it’s proof that you can have thoughtful regulation and at the same time lift your environmental quality as well. What it means is that we’re reasonable. We’re efficient when it comes to the regulatory process.
Don’t a — just take my word for it. Ask people like Andy Puzder. Andy was the CEO of Carl’s Jr.’s, headquartered out in California. He said that opening a new restaurant in California takes eight months.
Eight months before you can even break ground to start the construction. In Texas, it takes about six weeks. That’s a big reason you’re seeing more Carl’s Jr.’s as you drive around, Pat. I don’t know if you use that establishment or not but you’re going to see a lot more of them in Texas.
Employers know that the Texas court system, for instance, won’t allow for over suing. Someone in the audience said a thank you as I walked in for — in 2003 we passed the most sweeping tort reform in the nation. And there — and in 2011 we passed loser pay.
And again, sending the message (applause) that you can come to the State of Texas and you won’t be over sued. The more time and money that’s spent in courtrooms is less time that you’re creating jobs in this state.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/obamas-fruits-of-falsehood?f=puball There is an understandable reluctance in President Barack Obama’s critics – a reluctance verging on a fastidious decorum and civility regarding the office of the President – that stops them from making the ultimate judgment of President Barack Hussein Obama and his administration. It is a damnation they have avoided. Perhaps it is too […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/a-nation-divided-then-and-now?f=puball It is fair to say that the nation is as divided today as it was in the decades leading up to the Civil War that came about by the decision to secede and thereby destroy the Union. The seeds of that decision were planted in the Constitution because of the compromises that were needed […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-old-potomac-two-step
Give ’em the old razzle dazzle
Razzle Dazzle ’em
Give ’em an act with lots of flash in it
And the reaction will be passionate
Give ’em the old hocus pocus
Bead and feather ’em
How can they see with sequins in their eyes?
Give ’em the old double whammy
Daze and dizzy ’em
Back since the days of old Methuselah
Everyone loves the big bambooz-a-ler
Give ’em the old three ring circus
Stun and stagger ’em
When you’re in trouble, go into your dance
Chicago lawyer Billy Flynn, as played by Richard Gere in Chicago: The Musical (2002),
Miramax Films
—-
“Inexcusable… I am angry about it. I will not tolerate this kind of behavior”
The foregoing words were spoken by Barack Obama in response to the growing scandal at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), after disclosures that the agency was targeting the Tea Party and other conservative groups, in effect using the IRS as a weapon against the political enemies of the White House. Obama announced that Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew had relieved IRS acting commissioner Steven Miller of his duties. Obama continued,
“I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency, but especially in the IRS, given the power that it has and the reach that it has into all of our lives. As I said earlier, it should not matter what political stripe you’re from, the fact of the matter is that the IRS has to operate with absolute integrity. I’ll do everything in my power to make sure nothing like this ever happens again,”
Just how gullible and stupid does this man think we are? From the looks of it, Obama and his top people think the citizens of this nation just fell off the turnip truck yesterday on the way into town. Does he really think anyone is still buying his line of unmitigated bull? What a liar this man is! In reality, Obama is using one of the oldest and most-underhanded political tricks in the book, a tactic some folks would call the “Potomac Two-Step.” Obama probably learned it from former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley or maybe former President Bill Clinton – both of whom were past masters at the art of committing dirty tricks while keeping their hands clean. Here’s how it works…
Once you move into the corner office and are in charge, you select your administration – the people who will actually implement your agenda. You choose carefully, and make certain your people know exactly what you want done, down to the smallest detail. You are careful not to leave your fingerprints on any of the instructions, but that isn’t too tough, because – away from the cameras and microphones, of course – you have thoroughly briefed trusted subordinates on what you want. If anything is committed to paper or saved electronically, you are careful to cover your flanks in case anything goes wrong… what the pros call plausible deniability. That done, you get out of the way and set your people loose.
Thursday on America Live with Megyn Kelly, and we discussed the Obama Justice Department’s extensive subpoena of phone records for AP reporters and the IRS scandal: specifically, President Obama’s non responsive answer to a question about what the White House knew of the IRS’s harassment of conservative organizations, which, I argued, was an implied admission that the White House did know, adding that the scandal reflects the ethos of the IRS under Obama — the agency did it because officials understood they had the green-light.
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/america-live/index.html#http://video.foxnews.com/v/2387120642001/reaction-to-holders-testimony-on-capitol-hill/?playlist_id=87651
Bestselling author Andrew C. McCarthy’s latest book is Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy (Encounter Books, 2012). It is now available in paperback. See this new YouTube video about the book.
Andy is a senior fellow at National Review Institute and a contributing editor at National Review. His two previous books, The Grand Jihad (2008) and Willful Blindness (2010), are New York Times bestsellers.
Follow him at AndrewCMcCarthy.com, as well as on Twitter @AndrewCMcCarthy and Facebook: Andrew C. McCarthy
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/348589/big-government-deroy-murdock If Obama’s Rose Parade of scandals gives you a headache, here’s why: This is your brain on Big Government. The deteriorating developments on Benghazi, the IRS, the Justice Department’s Associated Press probe, health secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s Obamacare shakedown, and the “Affordable” Care Act’s unaffordability all offer a vivid, daily tutorial on the costs and […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/348559/print
White House Wordplay Benghazi may not be another Watergate, but the administration has a credibility crisis.
Note to the GOP re Benghazi: Stop calling it Watergate, Iran Contra, bigger than both, etc. First, it might well be, but we don’t know. History will judge. Second, overhyping will only diminish the importance of the scandal if it doesn’t meet presidency-breaking standards. Third, focusing on the political effects simply plays into the hands of Democrats desperately claiming that this is nothing but partisan politics.
Let the facts speak for themselves. They are damning enough. Let Gregory Hicks, the honorable, apolitical second-in-command that night in Libya, movingly and grippingly demolish the president’s Benghazi mantra that “what I have always tried to do is just get all the facts” and “every piece of information that we got, as we got it, we laid it out for the American people.”
On the contrary. Just hours into the Benghazi assault, Hicks reported, by phone to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself, on the attack with absolutely no mention of the demonstration or video that was later to become the essence of the Susan Rice talking points that left him “stunned” and “embarrassed.”
But Hicks is then ordered not to meet with an investigative congressional delegation. And when he speaks with them nonetheless, he gets a furious call from Clinton’s top aide for not having a State Department lawyer (and informant) present. His questions about the Rice testimony are met with a stone-cold response, sending the message: Don’t go there. He then finds himself demoted.
Get the facts and get them out? It wasn’t just Hicks. Within 24 hours, the CIA station chief in Libya cabled that it was a terrorist attack and not a spontaneous mob. On Day Two, the acting assistant secretary of state for the Near East wrote an e-mail saying the attack was carried out by an al-Qaeda affiliate, Ansar al-Sharia.
What were the American people fed? Four days and twelve drafts later, a fiction about a demonstration that never was, provoked by a video that no one saw (Hicks: “a non-event in Libya”), about a movie that was never made.
The original CIA draft included four paragraphs on the involvement of al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists and on the dangerous security situation in Benghazi. These paragraphs were stricken after strenuous State Department objections mediated by the White House. All that was left was the fable of the spontaneous demonstration.
http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/historys-jury-is-out-has-gosnell-rocked-our-conscience/
The right to a dead baby. That’s not pretty. That’s not a euphemism. That’s not how we talk about abortion in the United States of America. But that is the reality of abortion in the United States of America.
When a woman walks into an abortion facility, that’s what she expects from the doctor and that’s what the doctor is expected to provide.
That’s what the Kermit Gosnell trial exposed.
Now that he has been convicted of at least some of the deaths of women and babies under his care, history records this as a hinge moment. We cannot pretend to not understand the logic of legal abortion: Human dignity is not inherent; a child is not a human life unless its mother wills it to be. We choose to continue to tolerate this or we make it stop.
Kermit Gosnell provided the service expected of him, in his filthy, torturous practice, as officials looked away at complaints about conditions and crimes within.
In the shadow of his trial, Lila Rose’s Live Action released a series of undercover videos, raising grave questions about just what doctors are doing inside top-of-the-line abortion businesses, too. Dr. LeRoy Carhart tells the actress in her 26th week of pregnancy who approached him to schedule an elective late-term abortion: “I think you’ll be affected for the positive. I think you have — I think you can make very difficult, hard decisions that help shape the life — the rest of your future and [that will] make you work harder for the things, you know, that are important.”
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=4347 One argument made by opponents of a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities is that there is still time for sanctions and/or a diplomatic solution to prevent the Islamic republic from acquiring the bomb. To support such an assertion, politicians and pundits point to the great success that the West has had in setting […]
