RUTHFULLY YOURS

Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has lobbed a series of damning accusations against his old boss, President Barack Obama.

In his new book, Panetta says that Benghazi was always an obvious terrorist attack. He says that Obama approaches the world like a law professor, meaning that he does not usually see reality if it does not comport with his preconceived notions. Panetta writes that Obama’s decisions on Syria and Iraq have paved the way for the rise of of the Islamic State. Panetta writes that Obama has given up on the job, rather than continue to try working with Republicans in Congress.

The merits of some of these charges, as well as Panetta’s timing in launching them, can be debated. Obama never showed any interest in working with Republicans in Congress, for instance. In his first meeting with the opposition party, then in the minority in both houses of Congress, Obama declared “I won” and shut off debate. He lurched farther left after his overreaches, including Obamacare, led to the Republicans taking over the House in 2010. It is also probable that some of Panetta’s charges, whether correct or not, are being lodged now in order to pave the way for his friend Hillary Clinton’s run for the White House. He has revised Clinton’s role in Syria and ISIS, for instance, in a way that makes her look better and Obama look worse.

All of that said, the seriousness of Panetta’s charges isn’t debatable. He writes, essentially, that Obama is unfit for the job of president for multiple reasons. That means nothing will change for the rest of Obama’s term. He might be dragged into fighting ISIS more vigorously, which Panetta supports, but only after the world’s richest terrorist group has accumulated more territory and troops, and only after it has killed even more innocent people and become even more dangerous than it already is. By the time Obama gets around to launching more than four airstrikes per day against ISIS, the group may have further destabilized the Middle East and could even have obtained weapons of mass destruction.

So Panetta’s charges are serious, and they come from a serious man who served in Congress and who led both the CIA and the Defense Department. A man who perhaps could have done more, sooner, to make the case that he is making now — but he is serious.

From Ebola to the Secret Service, U.S. bureaucracies have become a clear and present danger.

“The White House defended the sprawling U.S. response to the Ebola outbreak on Thursday amid complaints that it’s not clear who’s in charge of the effort.”

—CNN, Oct. 2

Ebola, the Secret Service, Veterans Affairs, ObamaCare’s rollout, the Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Behind all these names are federal bureaucracies that are supposed to protect people or help them. Instead they have been putting individuals at risk, or worse.

Ebola’s spread in West Africa was predicted. Government agencies responded late. Now it’s here. The Secret Service is so disorganized it can’t protect, of all things, the White House. Veterans died waiting for admission to VA hospitals. The CDC lost track of anthrax, smallpox and H5N1 bird-flu samples. At the State Department, no one seems to quite know why a U.S. ambassador died in Benghazi. The 9/11 Commission explained in detail how the attackers evaded the bureaucracies. Add to this list the Internal Revenue Service, an agency of extraordinary power that has forfeited the public’s trust.

It is past time to start thinking about how much could be going wrong at so many federal agencies. Watchful waiting isn’t the cure for the next bureaucratic meltdown.

The theoretical defense of bureaucracies is that they perform large, needed tasks in a predictable way. For decades, left and right have argued over the bureaucracies’ accountability, regulatory capture, adverse incentives and the like. Along the way, all this largely got internalized as background noise, the annoying price of a complex society.

My purpose in tackling the issue of immigration is to provide you with perspectives you will not find reported in the mainstream media and will not hear from the great majority of politicians. My goal is to be thought-provoking and to help you to think independently about immigration. I ask that you put your preconceived notions aside. Most of those notions are probably the result of being hammered by a veritable barrage of myths and falsehoods about the most serious challenges and threats facing America today. It is vital to understand that the lack of integrity to the process by which aliens are granted lawful status in the United States — including resident alien status, and United States citizenship, pose an immediate and direct threat to national security.

Immigration is often portrayed by supposed journalists and many so-called political leaders as being a single issue of relatively small consequence to the nation. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Immigration is in fact a singular issue that profoundly impacts nearly every challenge and threat facing America today. Our immigration laws were enacted to achieve the primary and vital goals of protecting the lives and jobs of Americans. It is hard to imagine an American of any political stripe who would not want those two vital goals to be met. When politicians talk about the work “Americans won’t do,” they are insulting hard-working Americans.

Today I will play “Myth-Buster” and take on these myths, lies, and propaganda that are nothing short of Orwellian. Having raised the name of George Orwell let me provide a pair of insightful quotes of the author from the book, 1984:

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

The ongoing crisis on the border which is meant to separate the United States from Mexico has moved the immigration issue to the lead story on news programs and newspapers all across the country. The reality is that immigration should have always been a major news story all along. It is so important an issue that while the media almost always labels Americans concerned about border security and the enforcement of immigration laws as “right wing” and may accuse them of bigotry, immigration should actually serve as one issue upon which all Americans can and should agree, irrespective of political orientation. That issue is national security. Immigration is a classic example of an issue that is not about “left or right,” but “right or wrong.”

The agency says they were personal.

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to notify the National Archives about the deletion of thousands of text messages sent or received on top agency official Gina McCarthy’s official mobile phone, Justice Department lawyers told a federal court this week.

An EPA spokesperson, Liz Purchia, tells National Review Online by e-mail that although the “EPA is not aware of any evidence that federal records have been destroyed,” the agency plans to forward information about the deleted text messages to the National Archives “out of an abundance of caution.”

The EPA says that text messages may not even qualify as public records. Nonetheless, Purchia says, EPA employees are instructed to save “any content on mobile devices that qualifies for federal preservation as a public record.” She continued: “The EPA is not aware of any individual non-compliance with this guideline, and finally, even if such destruction occurred, it was likely not unlawful because text messages qualify as transitory records . . . which may be deleted when no longer needed.”

But Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of The Liberal War on Transparency, who is suing over the text-message correspondence, says he believes that McCarthy, who was appointed to run the EPA last year, tried to hide official correspondence and that “her story as to why [they were missing] proved untrue.” As the EPA received a growing number of Freedom of Information Act requests, McCarthy “began texting like a teenager,” Horner says. “She was clearly turning to it as an alternative to e-mail, which it is. But those records must be maintained and produced.”

At the end of the 18th century, there were two great Western revolutions — the American and the French. Americans opted for the freedom of the individual, and divinely endowed absolute rights and values.

A quite different French version sought equality of result. French firebrands saw laws less as absolute, but instead as useful to the degree that they contributed to supposed social justice and coerced redistribution. They ended up not with a Bill of Rights and separation of powers, but instead with mass executions and Napoleonic tyranny.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration is following more the French model than the American.

Suddenly, once-nonpartisan federal bureaucracies have become catalysts for fundamentally transforming America. Often-ideological bureaucrats have forgotten their original mission. NASA might do better to ensure that our astronauts are independent of Vladimir Putin’s Russian rockets rather than claiming that its primary mission is to reach out to the Muslim community.

Intelligence directors vie with one another to please superiors with fatuous but politically correct analysis. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper assured us that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was largely secular. CIA director John Brennan once termed a now-emerging Islamic caliphate as “absurd.” Former Director of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano once warned that returning veterans and right-wingers were the chief domestic terrorist threats, not Islamic jihadists.

The IRS has lost its nonpartisan reputation by hounding perceived ideological enemies. It no longer abides by the historic standards — transparency, rapid submission of documents, honesty — that it demands from those it audits.

The good news is that The New York Times has to dump another hundred reporters. The bad news is that Tom Friedman is still on the beat.

But the paper, constantly eyeing Der Sturmer for inspiration, keeps losing readers in droves. People have begun to catch on.

They’re catching on to what I’ve been saying for years, that The New York Times is the most anti-Semitic newspaper in the entire world. The only people still paying money for it are likeminded loonies who can’t get enough Israel-bashing – like people addicted to porn. They need their daily fix.

Today’s op-ed needle comes from yet another scoffer named Roger Cohen – or is this the same dunce who appears time and again? I don’t know. Honest, I can only read so much from these nutty professors. But I have been wise to the trick for some time. It’s a cut and paste job.

So, no, it is not Roger Cohen all the time. The paper runs the same column every week, only it slaps on a different name. Last week it was somebody else.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jamie-glazov-and-luke-kruse/a-cartoon-the-death-wish-of-islam-denial/

Frontpage Editor Jamie Glazov and illustrator Luke Kruse have joined forces to depict the taboo truths about the Unholy Alliance between the Left and Islam. Below is their first production:

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Don’t miss Frontpage Editor Jamie Glazov discuss his book “United in Hate” and the Left’s romance with Islam below:

The NYPD hate Crime Task Force is investigating a bias attack, after a man was pyscially attacked by pro-Palestinian supporters in Brooklyn Tuesday night, following the Nets – Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball game at Barclay’s Center, according to a press release sent out by Kings Bay Y.

Leonard Petlakh, Executive Director of the Kings Bay Y, says he was physically attacked by anti-Israel protesters while exiting the Barclays Center arena with his children and friends.

As the anti-Israel demonstrators chanted “Free Palestine” and “Your people are murderers,” one of them struck Petlakh in the face. Petlakh was taken to Methodist Hospital, where he was treated for a fractured nose and lacerations under his eye that required eight stitches. The attacker fled the scene.

The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Unit is investigating the incident, which occurred in the presence of hundreds of people and was caught on camera.

In a statement, Petlakh said he hoped that the “vile anti-Semitic hooligans masquerading as anti-Zionists will be caught soon.” He also called for a more active police presence at venues that host Israel-related events and noted that the anti-Israel protest was publicized days in advance.

“I am upset that my children witnessed this unprecedented violence, but I hope it sends a strong message to them to stand up for their values as proud Americans and as those who will eventually volunteer to serve in the Israel Defense Forces,” Petlakh said.

Riot police separate hundreds of Kurds and Islamist supporters in Germany after at least nine are killed in protests in Turkey

Kurdish protesters confronted Salafist Muslims outside a mosque
Both sides came armed with iron bars, machetes and sharp objects
Police say 14 people were injured before they could quell disturbance
Tear gas fired in Ankara and Istanbul after demonstrations erupt there
Activists are demanding more support for Kurdish fighters in Kobane
Protests spread across Europe and saw demos in Germany and France

“From the first moment I heard about Che, Ernesto Guevara,” gushes Columbia University’s SDS (Student’s for a Democratic Society) leader in 1968 Mark Rudd, “he was my man, or, rather, I was his. Brilliant, young, idealistic, a daring commander of rebels, willing to risk his life to free the people of the world, I wanted to be like him. I was a member of the cult of Che. Who wouldn’t fall for this rifle-toting poet … ?”

Columbia University College Republicans, for one. The Young America’s Foundation (YAF) for another. Indeed such is these organizations’ penchant for blowing raspberries and horse-laughs at the staggering imbecilities swallowed (and spouted) by gasping groupies like Mark Rudd that they’re a staging a “No More Che Day” at Mark Rudd’s own Columbia University on Oct. 9th.

Worse still (for such as Rudd and fellow Che groupies), this event features a speaker who — you might say — “wrote the book” on exposing the real Che Guevara and the staggering stupidity (or other mental malfunctions) that motivate those who idolize this amazing sadist, coward and epic idiot.

For starters, most of Che’s “rifle-toting” was done in the face of utterly unarmed enemies. “When you saw the beaming look on Che’s face as the victims were tied to the stake and blasted apart by the firing squad,” said a former Cuban political prisoner Roberto Martin-Perez to your humble servant here, “you saw there was something seriously, seriously wrong with Che Guevara.”

Even as a youth, Ernesto Guevara’s writings revealed a serious mental illness. “My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any vencido that falls in my hands!” This passage is from Ernesto Guevara’s famous Motorcycle Diaries, though Robert Redford somehow overlooked it while directing his heart-warming movie.

The Spanish word vencido, by the way, translates into “defeated” or “surrendered.” And indeed, “the “acrid odor of gunpowder and blood” very, very rarely reached Guevara’s nostrils from anything properly describable as combat. It mostly came from the close-range murders of defenseless men (and boys). Carlos Machado was 15 years old in 1963 when the bullets from the firing squad shattered his body. His twin brother and father collapsed beside Carlos from the same volley. All had resisted Castro and Che’s theft of their humble family farm, all refused blindfolds and all died sneering at their Communist murderers, as did thousands of their valiant countrymen. “Viva Cuba Libre! Viva Cristo Rey! Abajo Comunismo!” “The defiant yells would make the walls of La Cabana prison tremble,” wrote eyewitness to the slaughter, Armando Valladares.