RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/347437/print

“Which leaves us with Mr. Watt, a political creature who would seem odd if he were not so familiar: the race-baiting left-winger funded by Wall Street. Mr. Watt’s top financial benefactor is Bank of America, a firm recently sued by FHFA. (If it has occurred to anybody at the White House that this presents a conflict of interest, they have said nothing about it.) In 2009, about half of Mr. Watt’s campaign funds came from banking and real estate. The usual suspects are well represented: Goldman Sachs, the Credit Union National Association, Wells Fargo, the National Association of Realtors — all make appearances on his top-donors list.”
President Obama keeps telling the country who he is, and the country, to its continuing discredit, refuses to listen. The latest entry in the personnel-is-policy file comes in the form of Mel Watt, an irresponsible racist from the Democratic Socialists of America caucus, whom the president wishes to put in charge of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. On the record of his public pronouncements alone, Mr. Watt is unfit to hold any federal office; given that the FHFA has oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the corrupt government corporations at the center of the 2008 financial crisis, this nomination is particularly worrisome.

One must admit to a certain grudging respect for Barack Obama’s handling of questions stemming from his association with impenitent racists such as the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and old-school socialists such as Van Jones. In 2008, Obama was taking a beating in the primaries over his association with the Reverend Wright, the divine who lamented that “them Jews ain’t gonna let him talk to me” after the nation evinced some discomfort with his racist “Black Liberation Theology,” his blaming 9/11 on American “chickens coming home to roost,” his Pearl Harbor conspiracy theories, and his “God damn America!” chants, and who today spends his time worrying about the effects of “white racist DNA.” Ankled by his association with this paranoid racist ranter, Obama responded by lecturing the country at large on racism, a move roughly equivalent to Mark Sanford’s giving a sermon on the seemliest means for exiting a marriage. But the country, or at least enough of the country, was willing to be snookered by Barack Obama.

President Obama continued to offer more of the same, and now serves up a heaping helping of race-obsessed political opportunism in the form of Mr. Watt’s nomination. Mr. Watt, a member of the House representing North Carolina, in 2005 angrily declared that a majority of white voters would never vote for a black candidate, so sick is our country with the plague of racism. Barack Obama was shortly thereafter elected. We suppose he almost had a point — in 2008, Barack Obama in fact did not receive a majority of white votes, which no Democrat has since the party’s shift to the hard left in the 1960s. But Barack Obama was more popular with white voters than any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson, a fact that does not square with Mr. Watt’s libel on the American people.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324695104578416871045535226.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF THE SUCCESS OF TEXAS UNDER GOVERNOR RICK PERRY….RSK

Texas and California have been competing for years as U.S. growth models, and one of the less discussed comparisons is on energy. The Golden State has long been one of America’s big three oil producing states, along with Texas and Alaska, but last year North Dakota surpassed it. This isn’t a matter of geological luck but of good and bad policy choices.

Barely unnoticed outside energy circles, Texas has doubled its oil output since 2005. Even with the surge in output in North Dakota’s Bakken region, Texas produces as much oil as the four next largest producing states combined. The Lone Star State now pumps nearly two million barrels a day, and Texas Railroad Commissioner Barry Smitherman (who is also oil commissioner) says “total production could double by 2016 and triple by the early 2020s.” The entire U.S. now produces about seven million barrels a day.

The two richest fields are the Eagle Ford shale formation in South Texas, where production is up 50% in the last year alone, and the 250-square mile Permian Basin. Midland-Odessa in the Permian is one of America’s fastest-growing metro areas.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/bill_ayers_and_the_culture_of_rape.html

Bill Ayers told a University of Oregon social justice class in 2012 “our fate hinges on our ability to open our eyes.” Well, Bill, rumor has it you are rapist, so let’s open the discussion.

Frontpage Magazine and several other sites published Donna Ron’s account of what happened one Friday night in 1965.

The terms “psychological rape” or “date rape” had not yet been coined but Ms. Ron’s story, the kind the Left are so fond of, suggests Ayers was at most a rapist; at least, a sexual deviant.

So when Ayers talks about women’s rights, or mentions rape as he does in the University of Oregon lecture, he conveniently forgets to mention his own allegedly sordid past with women.

Any woman who has suffered the psychological and physical humiliation of forced sex never forgets. Donna’s ability to remember graphic details after many years is typical of those who have endured sexual trauma.

The young women introducing Ayers to the University of Oregon class probably had no idea they were standing next to a possible sexual predator. If they dismiss Ayers’ history of violence against innocent police officers and his later refusal to renounce his actions, chances are these same young people that Ayers advises to critically examine the world around them, will not care about one young woman who had the misfortune of meeting up with the terrorist.

But in light of the recent University of Wyoming hoax involving Ayers fan and co-plaintiff in a 2010 lawsuit against UW regarding his speaking engagement at the college, Meg Lankers-Simon and her efforts to draw attention to the “culture of rape,” young women at liberal colleges should take a second look at the former Weather Underground terrorist.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/05/radical_islamic_files_reportedly_found_on_bombers_wifes_computer.html Radical Islamic files reportedly found on bomber’s wife’s computer Were they Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s? Or was his wife radicalized as well and participated in the planning and execution of the terrorist attack?   Fox News:   Radical Islamic materials and an al Qaeda magazine were found on the computer of Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s […]

http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/while-hezbollah-arms-un-peacekeepers-in-lebanon-teach-yoga-and-knitting/?singlepage=true The news is full of reports that Israeli air strikes have targeted Iranian-supplied missiles in Syria, which Israeli officials believe were intended for Hezbollah — Iran’s satellite terrorist organization in Lebanon. Midway through a New York Times story on this development comes a reminder that : Hezbollah is now believed to have more missiles […]

http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2013/05/05/syria-attack-shows-theres-no-alternative-to-neutralizing-iran/?print=1 There’s only one way to cut the Gordian Knot of regional conflict in the Middle East, and that is to de-fang Iran–destroy its capacity to make nuclear weapons and destroy the bases of the Revolutionary Guard. Israel’s reported strike on a stockpile of Iranian missiles near Damascus overnight highlights the extent of Iran’s military […]

http://pjmedia.com/michaelwalsh/2013/05/05/benghazi-blues/?print=1

Shame of a Nation

No matter what happens with Darrell Issa’s congressional committee meetings this week, we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the Obama administration, and the cause is Benghazi. It’s impossible to overestimate the blowback that has been gathering steam for the past seven months, now about to erupt with full force. Few reputations will emerge unscathed, Obama’s presidency will be crippled, Hillary Clinton‘s 2016 candidacy will be destroyed — and perhaps some new heroes will be born.

My New York Post column on Friday, which was also linked at RealClearPolitics, sets the stage:

On Wednesday, the FBI released photos of three men present at the deadly jihadist attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya; the bureau has asked the Libyans’ help in identifying them.

Which nicely highlights the fact that it’s been more than seven months since Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other brave Americans were killed — and yet there’s been no justice, nor even vengeance, in the matter.

Nor much exposure: We know little more today than we did in the immediate aftermath of the fiasco.

That’s because, right from the jump, the administration has been lying through its teeth about what happened on the night of Sept. 11, 2012 — the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, as it happens. It transparently lied about the Mohammad video, threw the scapegoated filmmaker in jail (where, last time I looked, he still is), and convened a bogus “accountability” board to whitewash the whole damn thing so as not to disrupt the precious Narrative that Osama was dead and al-Qaeda was on the run.

It was all a lie, of course, and some of us knew it at the time. I wrote about it repeatedly on the Post’s Op-Ed page: you can find examples here, here and here. In this case, however, what happened in Benghazi, Foggy Bottom, the White House, and the Obama re-election campaign headquarters in Chicago was (as the saying going) worse than a crime: it was a blunder. And that blunder may now bring down the man who never should have been president in the first place, for grotesque dereliction of his duty as commander-in-chief:

Indeed, the State Department’s Inspector General is now investigating the Accountability Review Board that reported on Benghazi in December, Fox News reported yesterday. What Fox called “well-placed sources” say the IG is trying to find out if the State panel failed to interview key witnesses who’d come forward.

In fact, Washington power attorney Victoria Toensing — a Reagan-era deputy assistant attorney general with a strong background in intelligence work — says she’s got a whistle blower inside State who’s itching to go public.

But so far she’s been stymied by officials who won’t act on her request for a security clearance so she can deal with classified material the case entails. Other attorneys for as many as three other potential witnesses from inside State and CIA say they’re having the same problem.

In fact, some whistleblowers allege that they’ve been threatened with reprisals should they come forward — even though federal law explicitly protects whistleblowers.

At his Monday press conference, President Obama shrugged off questions about all this, saying, “I’m not familiar with this notion that anybody has been blocked from testifying.”

There’s another lie — this one of Nixonian quality. From the moment Obama learned of the attack on the Benghazi compound — learned in part from Ambassador Stevens’ frantic phone calls to Washington, begging for help — what did he do? He went to bed early and flew off to Las Vegas in the morning for a campaign appearance; after all, first things first. And since Barry’s only real function in this administration is as its frontman/pitchman, he was only doing what he does best.

He’ll be aware soon enough. Next week, the House Oversight Committee, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R.-Calif.), will open new hearings on Benghazi — and they could be explosive. He promises to expose new information the administration “has tried to suppress.”

Issa — who previously held the administration’s feet to fire over the still-unresolved Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal — has twice requested guidelines from State, but a department spokesman recently denied that any whistleblowers have come forward and scoffed at reports that they’ve been intimidated.

In fact, word is that some of the whistleblowers may testify that help in the form of a rapid-response force was only hours away — but, for whatever reason, was not authorized.

Hillary, about to find out what difference it makes.

This is going to be a significant test for Issa, who spearheaded the Fast and Furious investigation but wound up frustrated and impotent, unable to get the truth out of Eric Holder et al., although he did managed to get the attorney general cited for contempt of Congress. The Southern California congressman had better bring his A game and his best fastball as he goes up against seasoned prevaricators like Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state whom the late Bill Safire once memorably called — in the pages of the New York Times, no less — a “congenital liar.” In fact, what Safire, writing about Whitewater and other Clinton scandals, said back in 1996 is worth revisiting:

Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady — a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation — is a congenital liar.

Drip by drip, like Whitewater torture, the case is being made that she is compelled to mislead, and to ensnare her subordinates and friends in a web of deceit…

Therefore, ask not “Why didn’t she just come clean at the beginning?” She had good reasons to lie; she is in the longtime habit of lying; and she has never been called to account for lying herself or in suborning lying in her aides and friends.

Home The president of the United States is jeopardizing national security with his public and his executive team’s cutting the umbilical cord of jihadist terrorism to Islam.    By refusing to identify the terrorists as a part, however pernicious, of the overall Muslim community, he makes it difficult if not impossible for the kind of […]

http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=11002b90be7384b380b467605&id=c06ce0a483&e=50abfffa13 A thorough analysis of the Gang of Eight bill’s enforcement and compliance provisions by the Center for Immigration Studies finds serious flaws which will have public safety, national security, and enforcement implications. The extent of the problem is often hidden by S.744’s deceptive language; it contains misleading subtitles which mask the rewards and protection […]

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3703/fourth-great-war The clear implication is that regardless of what members of the Syrian opposition say to the U.S. to win our support, their long-term aims may be incompatible with ours. The announcement by Secretary of Defense Hagel that the United States will “rethink all options” including arming Syrian rebel groups, was carefully hedged. “It doesn’t […]