RUTHFULLY YOURS

‘Where’s the scandal?” Bill Maher shouted, and if you want the voice of the incoherent and self-satisfied progressive id, you could do worse than to take the temperature of Bill Maher. The scandal, if you don’t know, is the White House’s maliciously misleading the American public about four dead Americans killed by preventable al-Qaeda attacks on the anniversary of 9/11 in order to serve its own narrow political purposes. The scandal itself is not very difficult to understand, unless you have a personal commitment to not understanding it. Such commitments frequently are rooted in partisanship and ideology, but in the case of our supine media and Democrats occupying the commanding heights of culture, it may be simple shame. They were intentionally misled by an administration that holds their intelligence in light esteem even as it takes for granted their support.

The odd thing is that Benghazi did not have to be a scandal. We may be used to, if not exactly resigned to, politicians who distort the facts or fabricate outright lies when it seems politically necessary to do so; nobody really expected Bill Clinton, a man constitutionally incapable of honestly answering a question about what he wants for lunch, to simply confess to what he was up to with the White House intern pool. What’s unusual in this case is the unnecessary dishonesty, as though the Obama administration simply reflexively recoiled from the truth.

How bad would it have been to own to up what happened in Benghazi and Cairo? After the worldwide exertions of the Bush years, with their attendant expenditures and terrible loss of life, a great many Americans not only were and are weary of being perpetually waist-deep in the snake-pit that is the Middle East but also are genuinely confused about what our role in the world should be going forward. The death of Osama bin Laden combined with the drawing down of our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan might have provided an opportunity to pause and reflect, and Barack Obama was elected to the presidency partly in the naïve hope that his elevation to that office might provide a respite, a period of relative quiet. If President Obama ever intended such a thing, he has been successful to only a very modest degree: The war abroad has been expanded to include the assassination of American citizens, while the omnipresence of the surveillance state at home has been revealed as being even more complete than most of us had feared.

It doesn’t matter if you belong to the 0.1 percent as long as you say the right things.

The qualifications of a Tommy “Dude” Vietor or Ben Rhodes that placed them in the Situation Room during Obama-administration crises were not years of distinguished public service, military service, prior elected office, a string of impressive publications, an academic career, previous diplomatic postings, or any of the usual criteria that have placed others at the nerve center of America in times of crisis. Their trajectory was based on yeoman partisan PR work, and largely on being young, hip, and well connected politically. I don’t think either of these operatives has a particular worldview or competency that would promote the interests of the United States. But they do talk well, know the right people, and are hip. Again, they have no real expertise or even ideology other than that.

Al Gore is said to be our leading green activist, and the Steyer brothers the most preeminent green political donors. But do they really believe in reducing carbon emissions to cool down the planet?

Not really. The latter made much of their fortune in the sort of high-stakes speculations that the Left supposedly despises. Many of their financial payoffs derived from promoting coal burning abroad, of the sort most liberals wish to stop.

As for Gore, he cannot really believe in big green government or he would not have tried to beat the capital-gains tax hike when he peddled his failed cable network to a petrodollar-rich Al Jazeera, whose cash comes from the very sources of energy that Gore claims he hates. Do you make millions, and then in eleventh-century fashion repent so that you can enjoy them all the more? Gore certainly in the past has not lived modestly; the carbon footprint of keeping Al Gore going — housing, travel, and tastes — is quite stunning. Both the Steyers and the Gores of our human comedy know that it is lucrative business to appear green, and that by doing so one can keep one’s personal life largely exempt from scrutiny in general and charges of hypocrisy in particular. For them, 21st-century liberalism is a useful badge, a fashion not unlike wearing good shades or having the right sort of cell phone.

Bestselling author Andrew C. McCarthy’s new book, Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment, will be published by Encounter Books on June 3. It is now available for pre-order on Amazon.

The Benghazi Massacre — specifically, the commander-in-chief’s derelictions of duty and his administration’s fraudulent depiction of the terrorist attack in the 2012 campaign stretch — was the subject of my weekend column, as well as a column late last week after newly revealed e-mails corroborated what several of us have been arguing ever since four Americans were killed in the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack: “Blame the Video” was an Obama administration-crafted lie. It now looks like House speaker John Boehner will finally do what he should have done at least a year and a half ago: Appoint a select committee with subpoena power to get to the bottom of what happened.

Here at NRO, the editors do a great job today of explaining why Benghazi matters. Steve Hayes is on the case again at TWSunwinding the administration’s misrepresentations. In addition, Jed Babbinmakes all the right points today at TAS regarding how the committee should be staffed, what its mandate ought to be, and how it should proceed.

I’d be delighted if Representative Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.) were chosen to head the committee because he is experienced and competent, and because he has been highly engaged and effective in pursuing the truth despite the severe limitations of the congressional committee format that is so ill-suited to investigations of this kind. But, as Jed urges, neither Representative Gowdy nor anyone else should accept the assignment without assurances of the committee’s ability to conduct an investigation that follows the facts wherever they go and for however long it takes to get through the formidable Obama stonewall. A proper select committee is vital; a poorly conceived select committee would be worse than what we have now.

On that score, I am flattered beyond words that people for whom I have great respect — particularly Hugh Hewitt and Istanpundit’sRandy Barnett — have suggested that I’d be a good choice as the committee’s special counsel. Yet, tempting as the prospect seems, I think it would be a mistake to pick me or someone like me — specifically, a commentator who has publicly drawn conclusions based on the already-known facts.

The Palestinian Authority’s new unity pact with Hamas “surprised officials in Washington,” The New York Times reports. The Obama administration was “apparently taken unawares” by the P.A.’s move, according to the Washington Post.

It’s hardly the first time.

In December 1988, the incoming George H.W. Bush administration announced that recent statements by Yasser Arafat were sufficiently “moderate” to warrant U.S. negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Eighteen months later, the Palestine Liberation Front, a PLO constituent group, launched a major terrorist attack against Israel and Arafat refused to condemn it. Surprise, surprise. The shocked Bush administration ended its dealings with the PLO.

In 2000-2001, during the wholesale terror of the “second intifada,” the George W. Bush administration insisted that Arafat and his Palestinian Authority were peace-loving moderates and repeatedly pressured Israel to make more concessions to the P.A. Israel warned that Arafat had never changed his terrorist ways, but nobody listened. Until January 2002, that is, when Arafat was caught red-handed after Israel intercepted the Karine-A, a ship loaded with several tons of rockets, mines, assault rifles, explosives and ammunition that Arafat bought from Iran. Once again, the White House was shocked.

In 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice thought that having Palestinian elections in the Gaza Strip would be a great idea. It turned out that democratic elections do not always produce democratic leaders: Gazans voted to install a Muslim Brotherhood-style theocracy headed by the Hamas terrorists. The White House was surprised. Israel got stuck with the consequences, in the form of rockets fired daily at the kindergartens and synagogues of Sderot, including several last week on the last day of Passover.

Now Israel’s “peace partner” Mahmoud Abbas walks away from nine months of negotiations relentlessly pursued by John Kerry and signs a unity deal with Hamas.

The question is: Why are U.S. officials always so surprised by Palestinian actions?

Mountain Man News has been accused of occasional bouts of sarcasm, and recently one of our gentlest readers suggested that I engaged in reductio ad absurdum (which I had always thought was the name of Paraguay’s foremost nuclear physicist). The truth is that we have striven (boy that doesn’t sound right) to be a purveyor of truth. Like Fox and CNN, MMN always uses facts when nothing else is available. I must share with you a secret longing. For years I have coveted a particular award. I really, really want a Pullitoff Prize for Journalism.

As most of you know the Pullitoff Prize is the highest award for journalists. Nicholas Kristof and Tom Friedman have so many of these, that when their families get together for a picnic lunch on Yom Kippur, they use them as frisbees. They deserve even more of them. Kristof got one for assuring the Chinese protestors at Tienanmen that they would be safe as long as the NY Times was covering the event. Of course, he didn’t know the difference between the Beijing militia and the Chinese Army. The former consisted of local merchants, and the latter consisted of peasant soldiers. Chinese peasants love students (in order to test their shooting skills). Kristof also told us that China was well on its way toward democracy. Kristof was right on target (though not as much as the Chinese soldiers). I was surprised that he only got one Pullitoff Prize for his acumen.

Friedman is uncanny in his predictions. He guaranteed that Yasser Arafat was honest and trustworthy, which was a blessing for the European bankers who then stored the hundreds of millions of dollars that Arafat stole. As Snopes often points out, Friedman’s love affair with Saudi Arabia is truly heartwarming. Even Friedman’s books are loaded with prescience. In the “World is Flat” he assured us that the combination of fiber optics and Walmart as a model, would bring prosperity to all of us. Later, he would explain that what he meant was that Walmart’s selling of fiber products would bring regularity to the world, and his intended title was “The World is Flatulant.” Friedman’s reporting on the Middle East and his opinion pieces are so uncannily inaccurate that he deserves many, many awards. If nothing else, his “what I really said” articles also merit Edgar awards for mystery fiction.

I have used these two eminent journalists as my model. Their ability to be so wrong so frequently and yet be considered as sages, is nothing short of admirable. What really sets them apart, however, is their ability to act like politicians but talk like scholars. Hard to keep getting it wrong but to assure everyone that they got it right, They do always pull it off, which I guess is why they get that award. But I deserve it as well.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/us-envoy-to-resign-after-blaming-settlements-for-talks-failure/#ixzz30r4Quj3O
‘US envoy to resign after blaming settlements for talks failure’
Martin Indyk cited as member of Kerry team who warned, in anonymous account of negotiations at weekend, that Palestine will rise ‘whether through violence or via int’l organizations’

Martin Indyk, US special envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, reportedly will resign from his position following the recent failure of the US-backed talks.

The Israeli daily Ha’aretz reported that Indyk is considering resigning in light of President Barack Obama’s intention to suspend US involvement in seeking a negotiated end to the conflict, citing unnamed Israeli officials “who are close to the matter.” Indyk has informed the Brookings Institute that he will soon return to his vice president post, from which he took a leave of absence during the negotiations, Haaretz reported.

It also said Indyk is being identified in Jerusalem as the anonymous source in a report by Yedioth Aharonoth columnist Nahum Barnea on Friday in which unnamed American officials primarily blamed Israel for the failure of the peace talks.

“There are a lot of reasons for the peace effort’s failure, but people in Israel shouldn’t ignore the bitter truth – the primary sabotage came from the settlements,” the official told Barnea. “The Palestinians don’t believe that Israel really intends to let them found a state when, at the same time, it is building settlements on the territory meant for that state. We’re talking about the announcement of 14,000 housing units, no less. Only now, after talks blew up, did we learn that this is also about expropriating land on a large scale. That does not reconcile with the agreement.

“At this point, it’s very hard to see how the negotiations could be renewed, let alone lead to an agreement. Towards the end, [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas demanded a three-month freeze on settlement construction. His working assumption was that if an accord is reached, Israel could build along the new border as it pleases. But the Israelis said no.”

The official said the world community pays more attention to Israel’s actions than other countries because “(I)t was founded by a UN resolution. Its prosperity depends on the way it is viewed by the international community.”

Lars Hedegaard, the intrepid Danish historian and journalist, who was nearly assassinated last year by a jihadist (who was just recently apprehended), gave an impassioned speech yesterday (5/4/14), commemorating Denmark’s Day of Liberation from the World War II-era Nazi occupation.

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[W] e are told that this ideology of conquest is an enrichment and if something is an enrichment, you cannot get enough of it. Consequently our political and spiritual masters see to it that Islam’s influence grows by the day and fall over each other to comply with every demand raised by the prophet’s strongmen. While doing this, our masters accuse everyone who refuses to toe the line of being racists and Fascists. Why don’t we – all of us common people – turn our backs on political parties, politicians, intellectual icons, journalists and priests who endeavor to destroy our country? So far we are not in a situation similar to the one faced by our comrades in the anti-Nazi Resistance. We can still speak our minds. We don’t have to vote for parties that open a door to evil and thus hand over their compatriots to foreign oppressors. We can stop buying newspapers that fill us with lies and propaganda. And if our priest agitates for an ideology he has promised to oppose, we can attend another church. We can refuse to give money to the erection of our enemies’ barracks and command and control centers.

The prophet’s followers certainly do not lack for passion or singleness of purpose. How about the rest of us?

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Remember our glorious forebears – and reflect

On Denmark’s Day of Liberation, May 4, Dispatch International’s Editor-in-Chief Lars Hedegaard spoke at Copenhagen’s Grove of Commemoration for the patriots who gave their lives as members of the Danish Resistance against the Nazi occupation 1940-1945.

Lars Hedegaard

At Stadsgraven between Christianshavn and Amager there is a monument for 76 men and women from the Copenhagen district of Amager who gave their lives fighting the German occupation during the World War II. The monument carries an inscription by the poet Otto Gelsted:

“You wanderer who stops at this spot
remember those
who gave their lives for freedom and right
and our common home
and when again you hurry to your day’s work
then remember
that you are still standing in a freedom front”
Otto Gelsted was a Communist and it may sound strange that he would talk about our common home.

But there was a time when Danes almost regardless of their political persuasion were certain that we had something in common – something worth protecting and keeping.
It was so important that thousands were willing to risk their lives to defend the inalienable gift that is Denmark and the freedom without which nothing matters. Today hardly anybody talks about Denmark as our common home and even fewer can imagine being part of a freedom front. That is very strange for the enemies of freedom who have entered our country and gained powerful allies among our ruling elites certainly do not lack for determination. They know what they want – which is to replace our man-made laws and democratic order that are the results of a thousand-year history with a law they claim has been handed down by a god and therefore cannot be changed.

Between the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012 and the presidential election on November 6, there were only fifty-six days. What followed in those fifty-six days was a calculated effort by the president, his administration, and the media to conceal what happened in Benghazi before, during, and after the attacks. That effort was motivated with one goal: to manipulate the news before the election to protect the Obama campaign.

Bob Tyrrell and I outlined the events that surrounded the Benghazi attacks — and the administration’s unbounded efforts to conceal the facts and control the flow of information — in our article in the March issue of TAS. Thanks to the January 2014 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s investigative report, we know that from March to August 2012, Western targets — people and facilities — suffered twenty terrorist attacks. We know that beginning in March, State Department security officials in Benghazi made repeated requests for reinforcements (the requests later joined in by Amb. Christopher Stevens) that the State Department ignored.

Our article also showed that there were ten terrorist camps in Benghazi itself operating at the time of the attacks. We showed that there were no protests before the terrorist attacks and that the attacks were known to be just that from the time they began according to the reports flowing from Benghazi to the State Department and the CIA. And we showed that no American forces were put on alert to come to the rescue in Benghazi or any of the other likely terrorist targets on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11.

Last week, more White House emails were released showing how the facts were twisted over the five days between the attacks and the Sunday morning television appearances by UN Ambassador Susan Rice in which she falsely blamed the attacks on an obscure anti-Muslim video. How that assertion got into the infamous talking points shows how desperate the White House was to manipulate the news before the election.

The talking points were drafted in the days between the attacks and the Friday before Rice’s television appearances. Previously released redacted copies of the emails in which the talking points were drafted show one thing very clearly: there was absolutely no mention of the anti-Muslim video. Throughout the drafting process, the attacks were (also falsely) linked only to the previous protests at the Cairo embassy. The draft talking points first showed that the attacks were believed to have been perpetrated by Ansar al-Sharia, an al-Qaeda affiliate in Libya. Those facts were expunged.

Until today, the world in which the Israeli economy operated was driven by Europe and America; in 2014 Israeli sales to Asia, at just over a quarter of overall exports, will for the first time exceed exports to the US.
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They laughed hard in Turkey this week, as Syria announced it would set up an office dedicated to boycotting its northern neighbor’s economy.

Set aside the Syrian allegations, laughable in their own right, that Turkish firms were sabotaging the Syrian economy and also helped loot Aleppo; an economic basket-case like Syria threatening an economic giant like Turkey is a mouse roaring at a lion.

It wasn’t always this way. A similar threat leveled from Damascus at the newly founded Jewish state was actually quite potent, and cast a dark cloud on the already challenging childhood that awaited the embryonic Israeli economy.

The Israeli economy has since matured and learned to survive by joining the global economy and ignoring its region’s hostility. As it turns 66, however, the global economy itself is transforming, in ways that may hold promise for the Jewish state.

The Arab boycott’s threats were initially effective.

French automaker Renault, which was assembling cars in Israel, surrendered in the mid-’50s and left Israel; Ford canceled a plan to manufacture cars here; and all Japanese car makers except Subaru avoided Israel until the 1980s. The list of surrendering companies ran much longer.

Yet even more daunting than the boycott was the young economy’s burden of war. Lacking peace with any of its neighbors, the new state was predestined to spend much of its meager income on defense.

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, the United States needs to invest $3.6 trillion to return our roads, airports, bridges, schools and parks to good repair by 2020. $3.6 trillion is only slightly less than the annual budget of the federal government. How did the Country that won World War II and the Cold War, the biggest economy in the world, the Country that still embodies the hopes and dreams of all mankind reach a point where 20% of its bridges are structurally deficient, and airports and city streets resemble those in third-world countries?

The answer lies in the fact that we have diverted funds increasingly toward entitlements and away from projects designed to improve our highways, bridges, airports and mass transit facilities, what the government calls “discretionary” projects, no matter the urgency. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, other healthcare programs, welfare and other entitlements comprised 60% of 2013 federal spending. Interest expense took another 6%. Were interest rates at their post-World War II average, interest expense would have been closer to 15%. That would place mandatory spending at 75% of federal government spending. Sometime between 2030 and 2040 it is expected that mandatory spending will exceed federal revenues. When the highway program was instituted in the 1950s, mandatory spending was about 30% of total spending. That difference – 36% to 45% of our annual budget – represents about $1.5 trillion.

This is not an argument suggesting we forego all public assistance. We should not. But today government gives money not just to the needy, but to many who would be better off with less assistance, those who can work and care for themselves. Why should a resident of Connecticut, for example, take a minimum-wage job when state and federal aid pays twice what they would earn?

Two decades after the end of World War II, the United States was feeling flush. As a nation, we were rich. The Eisenhower highway program had made us connected as never before. We had the largest economy in the world and the highest standard of living among all nations. Lyndon Johnson inherited the Presidency following the assassination of President Kennedy. While he vigorously pursued the Vietnam War, his real interest lay in his vision for a “Great Society.” He wanted the state to assume a bigger role in the caring for those less able to care for themselves. The concept of a safety net had been devised earlier, with Social Security in 1933. The “Great Society” expanded government’s role, with the additions of Medicare, Medicaid and other social welfare programs. In an era of “guns and butter,” too little attention was paid to the long-tail costs of such programs; too little attention was paid to the inhibiting nature of a government that has since become an even bigger part of GDP, and too little attention was paid to the deleterious effect of such programs on the able-bodied.

It has been widely known for years that we would be facing a cash crunch in programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Attempts at reform never got off the ground – they are referred to as the “third rail” of politics. However, the precarious nature of our nation’s financial condition can no longer be ignored. Cash deficits are expected to grow dramatically. Ratings on U.S. Treasuries were lowered one notch by S&P in August 2011. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), both Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security will be in deficit by fiscal 2019. The Highway and Mass Transit Trust Funds, which are already operating at deficits, have only survived because of transfers from general funds.

As the Country moved increasingly leftward, generous contractual agreements for healthcare and pensions were offered municipal and state workers. With the Affordable Care Act, we have moved further in the direction of Western Europe. These were noble gestures, supposedly made with the best of intentions. (Though I suspect politics played a not insignificant role.) Besides allowing our infrastructure to deteriorate to Third-World levels, the unintended consequences have been manifested in two distinct ways. We made promises without providing the means to honor them and we have created a class of citizens overly reliant on the state. The former has forced some cities into bankruptcies and threatens the financial health of some states. The latter has been detrimental to the recipients in terms of diminished self-respect and abandoned aspirations. Mayor de Blasio’s settlement with (or payoff to) the New York City’s teacher’s unions is a case in point. It is structured so that tax payers in 2019 and 2020 will be paying for work done in 2009 and 2010. By then, de Blasio will be gone and the burden of finding the funds will fall on the shoulders of a new Mayor.