http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=v494e8bab&v=001KdaRoZmLBVwh7NHbQlfiKz-JlautdtctpNRGsZbqc0Tk7iclqCO3rwVXLfn-CeSBIKdaUxZi5s9cByO-WJGQDhQA5wJFKlJMdzMf4_baqH-8I3cqvU50M3UZPulk6pJX8mY6ocoftkmvnRAfiY-OEg%3D%3D President Morsi Acts Out Egypt’s Tragedy How should we understand the apparently erratic behavior of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi? In September, he seemed an unreliable ally, if an ally at all, after his tardy and diffident response to mob attacks on America’s Cairo embassy. Morsi rose sharply in Western esteem after the November 21 […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/334279
Jonah, those are all excellent points — and I especially agree that Steve has long been right (as have you) in pointing out the White House’s propensity to downplay terror attacks (I’d call them “jihadist” attacks if we were still allowed to say “jihad”). I just want to react to two things you cover, not to disagree but to make a couple of points worth making.
I do think Benghazi could be an impeachable scandal, and I don’t think this is an extreme position. Impeachment is a political remedy for gross abuses or power (including derelictions of duty). We do not yet have the answers about what happened on September 11 — most significantly, when did the commander-in-chief learn of the terrorist attack on the compound and what action did he take to defend Americans who were besieged for over seven hours under circumstances where there were U.S. military assets an hour away? We also do not know how the Mohammed movie cover-up was orchestrated, although the evidence and common sense point to the White House. With four Americans killed and the nation appallingly misled in the stretch-run of a presidential campaign, this is a far more consequential matter than those that led to the Watergate and Lewinsky investigations. A commander-in-chief’s dereliction of duty and his administration’s intentional lying to the American people — to say nothing of its overbearing prosecution of the filmmaker in a transparent effort to shift responsibility to him — would be impeachable offenses if they are proved.
Understand, I am not under any illusions that the Benghazi scandal will actually result in anyone’s impeachment, much less removal from office. Again, impeachment is a political remedy, not a legal one. At a critical political moment, Mitt Romney, as the GOP’s presidential candidate, was the leader of the president’s opposition party. For whatever reason, he calculated that it was in his interest not to focus on Benghazi — indeed, he and his advisers somehow decided it was to his advantage to allow no daylight between Obama’s handling of foreign affairs and what a President Romney would do.
I point this out not to dwell on daftness of this strategy, but to make the simple point that it is very hard to resurrect a serious scandal when the opposition’s standard-bearer treats it like a trifle and the matter thus fades away for three or four weeks. Even if Benghazi bears out our worst suspicions, the average person will reasonably ask: “How can this be impeachable when Romney didn’t even think it was worth talking about?”
Second, your excerpt of the Rice interview by Jake Tapper is very interesting — raising something I’d missed up until now. Amb. Rice is quoted as claiming: “[W]e had a substantial security presence with our personnel … and the consulate in Benghazi. Tragically, two of the four Americans who were killed there were providing security. That was their function.” (Emphasis added.)
Question: Why did Rice refer to our “consulate in Benghazi”?
We now know that the U.S. facility in Benghazi was not a consulate. Consular functions in Libya are handled in Tripoli. More to the point, Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy national security adviser, has explained that the “talking points” from the CIA off which Rice was working had been edited by the White House to reflect that there was no consulate in Benghazi. As Fox News reported on November 17:
The White House denied allegations Saturday that it scrubbed terrorist involvement from original CIA talking points on the fatal Libya attacks – part of a weekend back and forth in which both parties continued to defend their positions.
White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said only one minor change was made by the Oval Office.
“The only edit that was made by the White House and also by the State Department was to change the word ‘consulate’ to the word ‘diplomatic facility,’ since the facility in Benghazi was not formally a consulate,” Rhodes told reporters Saturday aboard Air Force One.
“We were provided with points by the intelligence community that represented their assessment. The only edit made by the White House was the factual edit about how to refer to the facility,” Rhodes also said.
This raises at least two issues. First, it certainly appears that Ambassador Rice was not going strictly by the CIA talking points, as she has claimed. She said it was a consulate even though the White House had taken pains to remove the designation “consulate” from the talking points.
Second, and more importantly, what was the administration up to in Benghazi? In the Jake Tapper interview, Rice asserted — at least incorrectly, if not falsely — that two of the Americans killed on September 11 had the assigned “function” of “providing security” for a “consulate.”
By the administration’s own admission, the facility was not a consulate. So what exactly were those two Americans doing at this “diplomatic facility”?
Henry White (March 29, 1850 – July 15, 1927) was a prominent American diplomat during the 1890s and 1900s, and one of the signers of the Treaty of Versailles/
Theodore Roosevelt who was president during the peak of White’s career, described White as “the most useful man in the entire diplomatic service, during my Presidency and for many years before.Other called him “the most accomplished diplomatist this country has ever produced.”
In November of 1905, as Ambassador to Morocco he wrote the following to the Algeciras conference:
“Concurrent testimony positively affirms the intolerance of the Mohammedan rule in that country toward non-Musselmans….Jews, especially, appear to suffer from painful and injurious restrictions.”
http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/
Be sure to read this new report, with accompanying footage, of how Hamas idealises the killers of Jews and Israelis. Examples (given in the above report) during Israel’s counter-terrorist Operation Pillar of Cloud:
“Bless [Hamas’] Al-Qassam men, guardians of Palestine…
Oh pride of Salah Shahada, oh wisdom of Immad [Aqel]
(i.e., Hamas leaders killed by Israel)
[Oh] the explosives of [Yahya] Ayyash (i.e., Hamas bomb maker killed by Israel),
Martyrdom,
[Oh] lovers of the trigger:
Killing the occupiers [Israelis] is worship that Allah made into law…
Arabic text on sign:
‘Killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah’
Arise, oh determined men. The color of [the Martyr’s] blood protects the land.
Oh masked one wearing a keffiyeh (i.e., Arab head scarf), terrifying the Jews…
call out in Zionism’s face: ‘Muhammad’s army has begun to return.'”
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-bawer/the-truth-about-gang-rape-in-the-u-k/print/ First of all, let me make it clear that I’m no fan of Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. Born in Uganda, she’s a British Muslim columnist who contributes regularly to the left-wing Independent, supports the Liberal Democrats, and has a habit of saying unpleasant things about white men. Her opinions on the issues of the day are, […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/334219
Winter is “fast approaching” in the Arab world, Ruthie Blum warns.
One U.S. president “enabled the rise of and spread of a pernicious form of radicalism that threatens the globe to this day.” That president was Jimmy Carter, who “opened the door to this radicalism in Iran three decades ago.” But it is our current president, she contends, whose “policies are laying out the welcome mat for it to flourish in the rest of the Middle East today.” Blum talks with National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez about her new book — To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the “Arab Spring” — and about the Mideast’s past, present, and future.
KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: Was the presidential election in the United States a disappointment for Israel?
RUTHIE BLUM: It was certainly a disappointment for all those in Israel — including, no doubt, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who understand how bad President Barack Obama has been for the West as a whole. Since Israel is on the front lines of the global war against the West, all Jews and Israelis should have been disappointed by the results of the American election. But this is not the case. In fact, most American Jews supported Obama, as did the Israeli Left. Nor is “disappointment” the issue here. I am convinced that the U.S. presidential-election results are bad for Israel and for America.
LOPEZ: We do seem to be standing by Israel for the moment?
BLUM: It is true that the Obama administration did not throw Israel under the proverbial bus during the recent Gaza operation. It was, indeed, a pleasant surprise. Less surprising is its having elevated Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi to ill-deserved international respectability. Even worse, by brokering a cease-fire between Israel and a terrorist organization, the United States placed the two sides of the imbalanced conflict on a par. So I don’t really see America as standing by Israel at the moment any more than I see it standing by itself.
LOPEZ: What was the recent flare-up in Gaza about? Will the cease-fire hold?
BLUM: The flare-up was the result of Israel’s finally having had enough of the Iran-backed missile fire from Gaza, and Israel’s targeted assassination of one key terror master. It is highly unlikely that the cease-fire will hold, since Hamas has no compunction about making deals and breaking them. Furthermore, Hamas’s aims are neither local nor based on territorial issues with Israel. No temporary truce for media or State Department consumption will put a dent in the terrorists’ ultimate goal of global jihad.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/334222/misremembrance-things-past-charles-c-w-cooke Smarter conservatives winced when Francis Fukuyama made his declaration that the closing decade of the 20th century marked the “end of History.” But their disquiet was nothing compared with the sheer wretchedness of those who had spent the prior decades hoping history would progress ever leftwards. When Fukuyama pronounced the endpoint of History, classical […]
http://spectator.org/archives/2012/11/27/the-next-mitt-romney/print The Next Mitt Romney???? Jeb was neutral. Say again, neutral. As Ronald Reagan might say, there he went again. What was Jeb Bush neutral about? The choice between liberal Charlie Crist and conservative Marco Rubio for the Republican nomination for United States Senator from Florida. Oh, he finally came around. After then-Governor Crist endorsed […]
PULEEZ! JUST SAY NO!….I LOATHE POLITICAL DYNASTIES…NO MORE CLINTONS, NO MORE BUSHES, NO MORE KENNEDYS, …..RSK
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/11/look_out_here_comes_jeb_bush_for_president.html
“Bush III?” Haven’t we had enough with Bush I and II? Not if those very same establishment Republicans who gave us Mitt “Flat Tire” Romney have their ways.
The Drudge Report headlines it today as “Bush III.” As in Jeb Bush, former Florida governor and son and brother to George I and George II, respectively. Drudge’s headline links to a short entry at National Review’s “The Corner.”
That would be quite a Trifecta, wouldn’t it? Jeb Bush picking up where his pa and bro left off?
George H.W. Bush won the White House in 1988 on the wave created by President Reagan. With the help of the late Lee Atwater, Bush ran an aggressive campaign against the hapless Michael Dukakis. Winning handily, in forty-eight short months, the elder Bush triumphed in a quick war in Iraq, soared in popularity, and then managed to renege on his “Read my lips, no new taxes” pledge at time when the economy was wobbly, no less.
The elder Bush went down to an ignominious defeat in 1992, garnering only 37% of the popular vote and opening up the White House to everyone’s favorite scoundrel, Bill Clinton (only the second president in U.S. history to be impeached).
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2012/11/27/european-disintegration-animal-prostitution/?print=1
If you ever wondered what lies at the bottom of the slippery slope, go to Germany. There, you will find Europe’s modern moral and cultural bankruptcy on open display. There, you can visit one of many “erotic zoos” and partake in sex with animals for a price.
In a German “erotic zoo,” customers pay to have sex with farm animals. A barnyard pimp collects money from the customers. These businesses are proliferating throughout Germany and Denmark, and are completely legal.
The Telegraph gives us some background to the law’s “enlightened” legalization of bestiality:
Bestiality was legalised in Germany in 1969, the same year that gay sex was also removed from the criminal code. After that, sex with animals was only punishable if the animal was severely injured.
The current proposal would outlaw animal prostitution by banning the pimps at the erotic zoo. That’s right, pimps. The gatekeepers, literally, would be criminalized. If you collect cash from freaks looking for a lamb, it would be a crime for the first time since 1969.
Has Europe really fallen so far so fast?
Apart from Muslim communities across most of western Europe, birthrates have crashed. Mohammed is the most popular boy’s name in England. European law is in full retreat. In the Netherlands, you can order a mobile euthanasia van to your house like we order a pizza. In England, the Royal College of Obstetricians support infant euthanasia, a.k.a., murder. The glorious cathedrals of the west are empty on Sundays, except in still-devoutly Catholic countries like Poland and Ireland.
Might the rise of secular, hip Europe have any relation to the rise of erotic zoos?
The spectacle of German heavy-petting zoos has some lessons for us here in the United States. PJ Media’s Zombie routinely covers the California version of the moral collapse found in the German sheep and bull bordellos. These beastly bordellos pose a vexing question for libertarians here.
Customers at the German erotic zoos consider this a simple lifestyle choice. Alas, the 1969 repeal of German laws got the government out of the bedroom, or, perhaps more appropriately, out of the barnyard. And under a libertarian model, cows and pigs are properly consider chattel, mere property like a chair or tractor. If one wants to do things to a chair or tractor they own, then they certainly aren’t hurting anyone else.
The central tenet of libertarianism is freedom of action as long as you don’t hurt another human. Pigs don’t count.
Live and let live. Heck, who’s to say the sow would object, if she could speak?
When you are done laughing, realize that an effort was made in Congress to amend the uniform code of military justice to legalize bestiality.
And thus we peer down from the top of the slippery slope. This is not to say that libertarianism is a bad thing. Having those strong tendencies myself, I recognize individual liberty is the law’s greatest force for good. That gave birth to this great nation and still sustains it.
The German law puts the government back in the barnyard, or in the bedroom, if you can stand the smell in the house.
To some, moral codes build and preserve civilizations. To others, moral codes impair civilization. This is the fundamental fault line of modern politics. Regular church attendees skew conservative. Secularists skew left.
