http://frontpagemag.com/2012/john-perazzo/john-kerry-a-hate-america-veteran-reporting-for-duty/?utm_source=FrontPage+Magazine&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1c40ada24c-Mailchimp_FrontPageMag When Barack Obama nominated John Kerry to be America’s next Secretary of State Friday afternoon, he called Kerry the “perfect choice” to replace Hillary Clinton. Stating that “few individuals … grasp our foreign policies as firmly as John Kerry,” Obama said the Senator will not “need a lot of on-the-job training.” He then praised […]
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ There are as many ways to look at a man as there are at a glass of water. Either half empty or half full. Either people are basically good or they are basically rotten. And all theories of government come down to one view or the other. If people are basically good, then they […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/336343/massacre-innocents-mark-steyn The Newtown killings ought to occasion a little modesty and circumspection. ‘Lullay, Thou little tiny Child, by by, lully, lullay . . . ” The 16th-century Coventry Carol, a mother’s lament for her lost son, is the only song of the season about the other children of Christmas — the first-born of Bethlehem, slaughtered […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/336356
Washington is so broken that our enemies no longer need to make things up to embarrass us.
When your dissolute political establishment sinks to the point of being fit for lectures from Chinese Communists on spending restraint, and from erstwhile Soviet revanchists on foreign-affairs modesty, you are at rock bottom. Welcome to Washington.
Remember two summers ago, the depths of the last Beltway debacle on out-of-control borrowing that charted the course for today’s latest Beltway debacle on spending and taxes. It was then that China’s rulers blasted Uncle Santa for our “debt addiction,” our failure to observe “the commonsense principle” that a nation, like a family, must “live within its means.” At the time, U.S. sovereign debt — of which China is, not coincidentally, a major holder — had been downgraded below triple-A for the first time ever.
The Obamedia, fearing that their hero would be irreparably harmed by this signature achievement, reliably promoted a false narrative: Conservative “extremists” were refusing to extend the president’s tapped-out credit line, sending shivers through the bond markets. In reality, the explanation for the downgrade was not the contretemps over the statutory “debt ceiling”; it was the astronomical debt itself. The ceiling was significant only because it occasioned convincing proof that Washington is not serious about addressing our spending crisis. When you are borrowing to pay the interest on prior borrowing, it is time to cut spending — drastically. Washington won’t even consider it. That is what signals to creditors that our “full faith and credit” may not be credible. When you are burning through other people’s money because you’ve already spent your own people’s money for the next few generations, promises to pay are not very reliable.
http://nsroundtable.org/as-we-see-it/the-conning-of-a-nation/
Behold anatomy of a failure (aka incompetence), courtesy of an inept government, led by an inept Commander-in-Chief (see below).Note the Obama Administration’s use here of a common practice known in the confidence or con racket as “cooling out the mark.”
Very fitting for a bunch of thugs from Chicago. Very disappointing for a once great nation. RS
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/336057/unaccountability-accountability-review-board-bing-west#
After a 13-week investigation, the State Department “Accountability Review Board” has concluded that no one is responsible for the breakdown in security that resulted last September in the deaths of four Americans at the Benghazi consulate. To avoid a repeat of such an attack, the Board recommended more money and more Diplomatic Security (DS) guards.
While stating that there was no protest prior to the attack by terrorists, the Board did not address why U.N. Ambassador Rice, President Obama and other officials had repeatedly implied that the attack was sparked by protesters angered by an obscure anti-Muslim film posted on YouTube.
The Board concluded that “the lack of non-lethal crowd control options precluded a more vigorous defense.” It’s not explained why a terrorist attack merits a non-lethal response. The report was hopelessly vague in describing the actions of the Americans on-scene, whether they had engaged in a heavy firefight, killed any terrorists or if the Diplomatic Security agents ever fired their weapons. When the DS agents, overcome by smoke inhalation, left the consulate, they did come under enemy fire, and in response the CIA agents on-site provided covering fire.
In the event, Ambassador Stevens was missing from 2200 (4 PM Washington time). The report said an Arabic-speaking male called at 0200 to say an American had died at the hospital. But the Board stated that some suspected the call was a ruse to lure Americans into a trap. It was not until eleven hours later that a body delivered to the Benghazi airport was positively identified as Ambassador Stevens.
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ FACTS ARE THE STUBBORNEST OF THINGS Of the 5 worst shooting rampages, only one happened in America, and none were carried out by Americans. Of the 5 worst massacres, two were carried out by Asians and one by an African constable. Only two were carried out by white men. The next man on the […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/336356 When your dissolute political establishment sinks to the point of being fit for lectures from Chinese Communists on spending restraint, and from erstwhile Soviet revanchists on foreign-affairs modesty, you are at rock bottom. Welcome to Washington. Remember two summers ago, the depths of the last Beltway debacle on out-of-control borrowing that charted the course […]
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=3095 Palestinians prepare for Israeli elections They are not doing this for purposes of emulation, however. On the contrary, nation-building in the Palestinian Authority has always taken a back seat to nation-destroying. Indeed, while spending all its energy — and other countries’ billions — on trying to take down the Jewish state, the PA has […]
http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/ ‘Reunification of the Arab populated areas of the West Bank with Jordan – as existed between 1948 and 1967 – has again emerged as the most viable solution to the Jewish-Arab conflict. This follows revelations in the London-based Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper that the Palestinian Authority (PA) President and PLO Chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, has asked […]
http://standpointmag.co.uk/features-january-february-13-welcome-to-obamas-parallel-universe-john-bolton-susan-rice-obama-benghazi
Now that he has been safely re-elected, Barack Obama’s personal foreign and defence views no longer pose any risk to him in domestic political terms. Unfortunately, however, the international risks caused by his radical ideology, naivety and simple ineptness, added to the damage already done in the first term, are increasingly apparent. The Obama Administration’s failures to date cover the full spectrum of national security affairs. At the strategic level, there is utter incoherence in dealing long term with powers like Russia and China, or the swirling morass of conflicts in the Middle East. In the immediate future, the Iranian and North Korean nuclear and ballistic-missile programmes are speeding ahead as regional and global threats, without even effective tactical opposition by the United States and its allies.
These and many other dangers, new and emerging, were all present in Obama’s first term. But only near the end of the long election campaign, in the September 11 terrorist attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, did many of the Administration’s failures stand fully exposed to public view. Although Republican political leaders failed to communicate Benghazi’s import to the voters (indeed, they essentially fled from the issue), its significance, domestically and globally, should not be underestimated. To be sure, identifying historical turning points is a tricky business. Events that, in their own time, seem sure to qualify can fade away, while obscure happenings later become, in history’s judgment, major departures. Take Zhou En-lai’s 1972 remark that “it is too soon to tell” about the consequences of the French Revolution. Or perhaps he was referring to the 1968 Paris riots; either way, Zhou’s prudence makes the point.
But with events unfolding at a truly dizzying pace, we must still ask, even if hazardous, whether a turning point occurred on September 11 in Benghazi, with the murder of the American Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three others. Certainly, the attack and its consequences continue to roil the US political debate. Some commentators compare Benghazi to Watergate, noting sarcastically that no one died at Watergate. Neither the bungled burglary nor the terrorist attack materially disrupted the incumbent president’s path to electoral victory, this time despite Obama’s utterly lame explanation that the attack resulted from local outrage over an internet video ridiculing the prophet Muhammad. Nonetheless, the damage to Obama’s second term, as to Nixon’s, could be considerable. Obviously, occurring on the 11th anniversary of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Libya killings have added resonance, even though the 2012 butcher’s bill was mercifully far lower.
There are, however, clear differences. Both Watergate and the first September 11 produced press extravaganzas, whereas Benghazi and the White House “explanation” initially seemed likely to disappear from the media radar screen. Among the major players, only Fox News kept investigating and reporting new information in the weeks that followed. In Watergate, there was unquestionably a White House-led cover-up to prevent the facts from emerging, which may or may not characterise Obama and Benghazi. The even more worrying truth could be that Obama’s ideological conviction that al-Qaeda has been defeated and that “the tide of war was receding” might simply have blinded his Administration to reality.
