OUR MUSLIM PRESIDENT'S FAILED FOREIGN POLICY WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY LEAD US INTO WAR WITH IRAN

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ROS-LEHTINEN: Obama still trying to sweet-talk Iran out of building the bomb

Weak foreign policy poses serious threat

By Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen

Friday, October 19, 2012 

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

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  Illustration Iran’s Weapons by Greg Groesch for The Washington Times more >

Just a few days ago, Mansour J. Arbabsiar pleaded guilty to working with Iran’s Quds force to carry out an attack on U.S. soil and assassinate a foreign diplomat stationed in Washington. 


Earlier this month, Hezbollah, a terrorist proxy of the Iranian regime, reportedly launched an Iranian-supplied drone that penetrated Israel’s airspace before being shot down. 


Late last month, the Iranian navy launched four missiles as a show of force and its capacity to shut down access to the Persian Gulf. 


These are just a few examples of how the Iranian threat has become more dangerous since the Obama administration took office.
Unfortunately, despite its rhetoric to the contrary, the administration has not done what is necessary to effectively address the threat from Tehran. 


Iran’s nuclear program, particularly its ability to produce enriched uranium, has expanded exponentially since President Obama took office in 2009. Yet the president continues to embrace engagement and meaningless negotiations with Tehran while refusing to set clear red lines with respect to Iran’s nuclear program. 


The administration’s behavior has sent a clear message to our allies and the Iranian regime: The United States is not willing to do what it takes to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability.
Nonetheless, sanctions spearheaded by Congress — even with the administration fighting us every step of the way — have made an impact. Iran’s oil revenues are falling and could drop much lower as the embargo on Iranian oil expands and investment in Iran’s oil sector dries up. Economic sanctions also are inflicting increasing damage on Iran’s long-term oil-production potential. Concurrently, Iran is experiencing a currency crisis that could threaten the stability of the regime. 


The Iranian regime also reports that consumer prices rose more than 40 percent from spring 2010 to spring 2012. Updated data have not been published in recent months, presumably because the data show further hyperinflation. 


We must exploit this vulnerability. To do so, the president must make full and immediate use of the tools Congress has provided him. Sanctions on Iran’s oil industry and banking system are curtailing the foreign partnerships on which Iran’s oil industry has relied. Given these trends, it is not unreasonable to contemplate the end of oil exports from Iran, with resulting damage to government finances, foreign exchange earnings and the larger Iranian economy.


However, incremental, a la carte implementation of sanctions limits the potential impact on the Iranian regime’s ability to pursue its dangerous activities. The effectiveness of these foreign-policy tools has been further undermined by the Obama administration’s naive view that if we keep “talking” to the Iranians and convince them to return to the negotiating table, Iran will stop its drive for nuclear capability.


 he Iranians in the past have agreed repeatedly to discussions over their nuclear program, in some cases even giving the impression that a deal was in place before reneging. Thus, Tehran’s tactics have another, more fundamental purpose: Iran benefits from dragging out the negotiations as long as possible in order to provide its nuclear program extra time to keep refining uranium, getting Iran its goal of a bomb. Again, if the Iranians can convince the P5+1 countries that negotiations are leading toward an agreement, it is possible the European Union and the administration will quietly ease sanctions, as part of the “flexibility” Mr. Obama thinks he will have in his second term.


There is a growing disconnect between the president’s public rhetoric and the process by which U.S. diplomatic efforts have allowed Tehran to do the stalling that he claims he opposes.


We need an administration that will implement a coherent policy to compel the Iranian regime to abandon its nuclear program and other dangerous activities. America and our ally Israel cannot afford another four years of failed Obama administration policies on Iran, policies that will not produce a deal but only buy Tehran more time to cross the nuclear finish line.



Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Florida Republican, is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Read more: ROS-LEHTINEN: Obama still trying to sweet-talk Iran out of building the bomb - Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/19/obama-still-trying-to-sweet-talk-iran-out-of-build/#ixzz29x4o0bes
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COMING SOON TO A NEIGHBORHOOD NEAR YOU

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Muslims in America

This is great satire in the UK ... rest assured this

is

  coming to the USA, to a neighborhood near YOU.

  

 

www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=wq_lhlIn1e0

HERE ARE FIVE QUESTIONS ROMNEY NEEDS TO ASK OBAMA AT MONDAY NIGHT'S DEBATE

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Five (Non-Libya) Questions for Monday’s Debate

Alana Goodman | @alanagoodman 10.19.2012 - 3:35 PM 

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/10/19/five-non-libya-questions-for-mondays-debate/ 

 

Are you safer now than you were four years ago? That’s the most important question that needs to be answered in Monday night’s foreign policy debate. Unfortunately for President Obama, there’s ample evidence that the answer is no. His administration killed Osama bin Laden, but the war on terror is still very much alive. And while the Benghazi attack has been getting most of the attention lately, it’s just the latest symptom of a much more systematic national security problem for this administration.
Here are some questions that are indirectly related to Benghazi that would be interesting to raise at Monday’s debate. And since it’s never a good idea to ask a question at a debate that you don’t know the answer to, the answers to all of these are already known:


Question One: Did you underestimate al-Qaeda’s Arabian Peninsula affiliate before the 2009 Christmas Day bombing attack?
Answer: Yes.


Obama’s counterterrorism advisor John Brennan surprised reporters when he referred to AQAP as “one of the most lethal, one of the most concerning” extensions of al-Qaeda at a press briefing two weeks after the attack, and noted that “They carried attacks against Prince Mohammed bin Nayef in Saudi Arabia, against Saudi targets, inside of Yemen, against Yemeni as well as against U.S. targets.”
U.S. targets — and yet the Obama administration hadn’t even designated the group as a terrorist organization until after the failed attack.
“We had a strategic sense of sort of where [al-Qaeda-Arabian Peninsula] were going, but we didn’t know they had progressed to the point of actually launching individuals here,” Brennan added. “And we have taken that lesson, and so now we’re all on top of it.” At least until the next attack.


Question Two: Did you call the Christmas Day bomber an “isolated extremist” three days after the attack?
Answer: Yes.


Despite the fact that there was already evidence that showed Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had been training in Yemen weeks before the attack, and despite a statement from AQAP taking credit for the attack, President Obama called him an “isolated extremist” in his first public speech on the matter.
“This incident, like several that have preceded it, demonstrates that an alert and courageous citizenry are far more resilient than an isolated extremist,” said Obama.
It’s one thing for the president to say he wanted to wait for facts before making a definitive judgment on Abdulmutallab’s al-Qaeda ties. But Obama actually did make a definitive judgment — that Abdulmutallab was not affiliated with al-Qaeda, despite evidence to the contrary.


Question Three: Did John Brennan admit before the U.S. attack that al-Qaeda’s Yemen affiliate was capable of attacking the homeland?
Answer: Yes.


In John Brennan’s January 2010 press conference, he said the Obama administration “saw the plot was developing, but at the time we did not know in fact that they were talking about sending Mr. Abdulmutallab to the United States.” Again, if they saw the plot developing, why had they not characterized AQAP as a threat to the country? Why was Obama so reluctant to say Abdulmutallab was tied to al-Qaeda?


Question Four: Did you underestimate the Pakistani Taliban’s ability to attack the homeland prior to the Times Square bombing?
Answer: Yes.


The administration was caught flat-footed by the 2010 failed Times Square car bomb attack, which was carried out by a terrorist tied to the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Until then the TTP was not widely regarded as a group that was capable of carrying out an attack on U.S. soil.
And yet after the attack, Brennan told Fox News that the TTP was a significant threat that was “almost indistinguishable” from al-Qaeda.


Question Five: Did you miss warning signs in 2009, when CIA officers were killed in a suicide attack by a double-agent?
Answer: Yes.


Seven CIA operatives were killed when a fake informant working for the Pakistani Taliban blew himself up inside a U.S. base in Afghanistan. A subsequent investigation found numerous red flags and intelligence breakdowns, including one CIA officer who had been warned about the informant weeks in advance, but hadn’t passed on the information. The investigation said that CIA officials may have ignored warning signs because they were desperate to find someone who could lead them to al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.


The U.S. can’t have eyes everywhere all the time, and there is always the possibility that a plot will be missed. But all of these incidents show that the Benghazi attack wasn’t an isolated lapse. The Obama administration has a pattern of intelligence breakdowns and missing clear signs prior to an attack. It also has a pattern of downplaying threats that may be politically harmful.


This isn’t just a critique of past failings. There are implications here for the future. As Jeffrey Goldberg wrote yesterday: “Biden said [at the vice presidential debate] the U.S. would know if the Iranians had begun to manufacture a warhead. But the U.S. didn’t know its ambassador in Libya would be assassinated. It didn’t know that the World Trade Center would be attacked. American intelligence doesn’t know a lot of things. Such is the nature of intelligence. Biden’s sanguine approach to weaponization suggests either that he strayed far from Obama administration policy, or that the White House is more relaxed and confident about stopping Iran than it should be.”


Can we rely on the Obama administration — the same administration that overlooked the threat from AQAP, dismissed the threat from the Pakistani Taliban, and ignored the multiple attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that led up to the 9/11/12 attack — to have a clear grasp of the Iranian nuclear threat? 

Preventing an Iranian bomb means that we’ll need to rely heavily on intelligence, something the Obama administration has not had a great track record of gathering, processing, or acting on for the past four years.

Topics: 2012 presidential election, al-Qaeda, Benghazi, Iran, national security, Pakistiani Taliban, war on terror

THE ECONOMY IS IMPORTANT BUT ROMNEY CANNOT AFFORD TO NEGLECT BENGAZI

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October 19, 2012

Clearing the record of a fiasco in Libya

By Wes Pruden

Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are on a collision course over Libya, and both men want to talk about something else.

Mr. Romney wants to talk about the economy. When he does, his questions and answers are sure, sharp, crisp and right on target. He doesn’t have to look at a teleprompter for facts and figures. 


The economy is his home field. Foreign policy is his road game.
The president wants to talk about anything but Libya. It’s his No. 1 screw-up abroad and he knows it. He thought he could talk his way out of taking responsibility for what happened in Benghazi and in the subsequent public-relations fiasco. But for once his remarkable gifts of blab and bluster have failed him. The cover-up of the sad, tragic story of what happened to Ambassador Chris Stevens, and why, continues to unravel. The president promises an investigation, but is trying to run out the clock until after the election, when the real story can’t any longer cost him.



The mainstream media, as usual, is doing what it does best, rooting through effluvia in search of trivia, sensation and irrelevancy. Some of the media glitteries seized on Mr. Romney’s use of the word “binders” to describe where he kept names of qualified women for high positions in state government when he was governor of Massachusetts. 


Certain women too delicate to go out in the sun without a parasol accuse Mr. Romney of wanting to put them in some sort of kinky exercise. But “binder” is a perfectly appropriate word for “loose-leaf notebook” (available at any Staples or Office Depot); if he had said “loose-leaf notebook” he could be accused of wanting to consort with “loose women” -- and it’s a good thing for him he didn’t say he kept the lists of women “under covers.”



The New York Times even took Mr. Romney to task for recalling how, as governor, he prescribed flexible hours for women with small children, to enable them to leave the office early to get home to make supper for them. This enraged the editorialists: “But what if a woman had wanted to go home to study Spanish? Or rebuild an old car? Or spend time with her lesbian partner?” (Neither Jonathan Swift nor Evelyn Waugh could make up satire as good as this.)



But Mr. Romney isn’t addressing his campaign to lesbians eager to get home to finish ring-and-valve jobs on old Pontiacs while listening to their partners tutor them in Spanish pronoun declensions. Instead, he’s casting a wider net for votes. He wants to assure women – even “the little lady [eager] to go home early and tend to her children” – that he understands the burdens and responsibilities of women and wants to make their lives easier. Such women, as alien as they may be to the mainstream media, have been hurt, and badly, by the economic incompetence of Barack Obama.



Just ask them. When CBS News, no friend of Republican candidates, asked a polling sample just after the second presidential debate who they thought was better on the economy – the most important issue in the campaign – 65 percent of them answered “Romney.” Only 34 percent said “Obama.”



Results like this encourage Mr. Romney, as some of his wise men have, to go easy on the Libyan fiasco in the final debate. But he shouldn’t. With considerable help from an inept moderator, President Obama further muddled the miserable record on how he screwed up on Libya. Candy Crowley admitted afterward that Mr. Romney was “essentially” correct when he said that for two weeks the president couldn’t admit the Benghazi tragedy was a terrorist attack.



The president, with Miss Crowley’s help, took refuge in the ambiguous transcript of his muddled remarks in the Rose Garden the day after the attack, but Mr. Romney has one last opportunity to put the record straight. For 14 days, the president, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his ambassador to the United Nations, and his press flack spun the imaginative tale that the tragedy was the result of an Internet video that almost nobody saw. This conflicted with the fiction, peddled endlessly by the president, that he destroyed Islamic terrorism when he dispatched Osama bin Laden to wherever evil Muslims go when they die. This is the lie Mr. Romney must drive a stake through.

Pool Photo

Going after Obama foreign-policy mistakes and misadventures cries out for the sure, sharp, crisp questions and answers Mr. Romney displays when he talks about the economy. The overriding concern in this campaign is the consistent, driving incompetence of Barack Obama in everything he touches – at home and abroad. That’s what Mr. Romney must make him talk about.



Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.

WELFARE RECIPIENTS MAY WELL DETERMINE THE OUTCOME OF THE VOTE ON NOVEMBER 6

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Welfare spending jumps 32% during Obama’s presidency.

• People wait in line to enter the Northern Brooklyn Food Stamp and DeKalb Job Center, Friday, Feb. 24, 2012 in New York. The state of the nation's economy is a dominant issue in this presidential election year. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
• In this photo provided by the Michigan Lottery, Amanda Clayton holds her $1 million lottery check. The state says Clayton who won a $1 million lottery prize but continued to get food stamps has been removed from a food assistance program. (AP Photo/Courtesy Michigan Lottery via Detroit Free Press) DETROIT NEWS OUT; AOL OUT
• In this Sept. 15, 2011 photo, Bill Ricker, 74, looks out the screen door of his trailer home on a rainy day, in Hartford, Maine. Ricker, who has two college degrees, has worked as an electronics repairman, a pastor and a TV cameraman. He and his first wife had seven children. Now he receives food stamps and heating fuel assistance and gets donations from a local food pantry. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
• A photo shows a brochure promoting the Food Stamp Friday event at the Rose Supper Club in Montgomery, Ala., Friday, March 30, 2012. The club will start "Food Stamp Friday" theme nights in April. Manager Harman Wilson says the night is meant to complement the club's other theme nights, such as Fat Tuesday, Karaoke Wednesday or Thirsty Thursday. Wilson says patrons will not be able to use their food stamps to purchase alcoholic beverages. He says he hopes the novel approach will draw people to the club. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)
•      s goes into effect in Pennsylvania, which critics say will disqualify thousands of low-i

The Washington Times

Thursday, October 18, 2012

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Federal welfare spending has grown by 32 percent over the past four years, fattened by President Obama’s stimulus spending and swelled by a growing number of Americans whose recession-depleted incomes now qualify them for public assistance, according to numbers released Thursday.



Federal spending on more than 80 low-income assistance programs reached $746 billion in 2011, and state spending on those programs brought the total to $1.03 trillion, according to figures from the Congressional Research Service and the Senate Budget Committee.
That makes welfare the single biggest chunk of federal spending — topping Social Security and basic defense spending.



Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee who requested the Congressional Research Service report, said the numbers underscore a fundamental shift in welfare, which he said has moved from being a Band-Aid and toward a more permanent crutch.

“No longer should we measure compassion by how much money the government spends but by how many people we help to rise out of poverty,” the Alabama conservative said. “Welfare assistance should be seen as temporary whenever possible, and the goal must be to help more of our fellow citizens attain gainful employment and financial independence.”

Welfare spending as measured by obligations stood at $563 billion in fiscal year 2008, but reached $746 billion in fiscal year 2011, a jump of 32 percent.



Complex story



The numbers tell a complex story of American taxpayers’ generosity in supporting a varied social safety net, including food stamps, support for low-income AIDS patients, child care payments and direct cash going from taxpayers to the poor.



By far, the biggest item on the list is Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for the poor, which at $296 billion in federal spending made up 40 percent of all low-income assistance in 2011. That total was up $82 billion from 2008.



Beyond that, the next big program is food stamps at $75 billion in 2011, or 10 percent of welfare spending. It’s nearly twice the size it was in 2008 and accounts for a staggering 20 percent of the total welfare spending increase over those four years.



Several programs to funnel cash to the poor also ranked high. Led by the earned income tax credit, supplemental security income and the additional child tax credit, direct cash aid accounts for about a fifth of all welfare.



Mr. Sessions’ staff on the Senate Budget Committee calculated that states contributed another $283 billion to low-income assistance — chiefly through Medicaid.



Richard Kogan, senior fellow at the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said that while the dollar amounts for low-income assistance are growing, they still represent about the same slice of the budget pie when viewed over the long run. He said the costs may have spiked during the recession, but are projected to drop back to more normal levels once the economy recovers.  “In short, whatever one thinks about the merits or costs of these programs, other than Medicaid, they are contributing nothing to long-run budgetary pressures,” he said.



As for Medicaid, where major spending increases have been made, Mr. Kogan said even there it may be a savings.
“Medicaid provides health care at a noticeably cheaper price than Medicare does, and both are cheaper than the cost of private-sector health insurance,” he said. “The problem is not that the programs are badly designed — it is that the entire health care system in the U.S. is much more expensive than in any other advanced country.”
Combined with several programs also directed at health care, the category made up 46 percent of total welfare spending in 2011.
Mr. Kogan said the cash assistance figure was “a shockingly small amount of money” in the scheme of things.



“Virtually all the rest is in the form of in-kind assistance: Medicaid, SNAP, WIC, housing vouchers, Pell Grants, LIHEAP and child care vouchers; or in the form of direct services, such as community health centers, Title 1 education, foster care, school lunch and Head Start,” he said.



Rather than straight transfers, those other programs provide support for services Congress has deemed worthy of funding. SNAP is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that used to be called food stamps; LIHEAP is the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program; WIC is the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program; and Pell Grants provide assistance for college costs.
The conservative Heritage Foundation said roughly 100 million Americans get benefits from at least one low-income assistance program each month, with the average benefit coming to around $9,000.



The think tank estimates that if welfare spending were transferred as straight cash instead, it would be five times more than needed to lift every American family above the poverty line — though many of the programs help those above the poverty line.



Mr. Sessions’ Budget Committee staff said that at current projections, the 10 biggest welfare programs will cost $8.3 trillion over the next decade.



The Congressional Research Service looked at obligations for each program as its measure of spending. It included every program that had eligibility requirements that seemed designed chiefly to benefit those with lower or limited incomes. The report looked at programs that had obligations of at least $100 million in a fiscal year, which meant some small-dollar welfare assistance wasn’t included.



Political wrangle



The report was released as President Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney fight over the size and scope of government assistance.



Mr. Obama has taken heat from Republicans for a new policy that Republicans argue would remove work requirements from the 1996 welfare reform. The administration said it is merely adding more flexibility for states, which still would have to prove the law is meeting its jobs goals.



Mr. Romney was damaged last month by caught-on-camera remarks in which he said 47 percent of Americans are dependent on government and see themselves as victims.
In Tuesday’s debate, Mr. Romney blasted Mr. Obama for overseeing a 50 percent increase in the number of people on food stamps, which has risen from 32 million to 47 million.
But the two men also share some agreement on safety-net programs. In the debate, Mr. Romney said he wants to increase the Pell Grant program to help low-income students pay for college.

 

Read more: Welfare spending jumps 32% during Obama's presidency - Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/18/welfare-spending-jumps-32-percent-four-years/#ixzz29kykpxbW
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IT WASN'T "CHRIS" WHO WAS KILLED, IT WAS THE AMBASSADOR OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE TO THE GOVERNMENT OF LIBYA

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According to the Getty caption for the image below, the photo shows Libyan civilians attempting to help Stevens following the overnight attack.

A second image was posted by Getty, again captioned as Libyan civilians helping an unconscious man identified as 52-year-old Christopher Stevens:

Both photos via AFP/Getty Images




Obama and Hillary talk about "Chris" being killed but they carefully avoid referring to Chris as "The American Ambassador" because they prefer to focus on the loss of a friend named "Chris" rather than the fact that the United States had it Ambassador to Libya assassinated by al Queda.
They know that American outrage will be a lot less over the loss of a friend of Barack and Hillary than over the loss of a representative of the people of the United States of America which is what an Ambassador is.

- Leo Rugiens

Yes, They Played Politics on Libya

Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary 10.17.2012 - 1:07 AM

 
  

COMMENTARY

 President Obama went ballistic during the presidential debate at Hofstra University when Mitt Romney questioned the conduct of the administration in its reaction to the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya:

And the suggestion that anybody in my team, whether the secretary of state, our U.N. ambassador, anybody on my team would play politics or mislead when we’ve lost four of our own, Governor, is offensive. That’s not what we do. That’s not what I do as president. That’s not what I do as commander in chief.

It was potentially a strong moment for the president as he was able, at least for the moment, to deflect concern about the administration’s failure in Libya and turn into a question of whether Romney overstepped the mark in his criticism. 


But a dispassionate look at the question on which the president made his grandstand play shows that his administration stands guilty of doing exactly what he denied.




The whole point about the administration spending more than two weeks trying to claim that the assassination of the U.S. ambassador to Libya was merely the result of an overheated reaction to an offensive film is that it dovetails with the political needs of the Obama re-election campaign.



We have yet to discover exactly what President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice knew about Libya and when they knew it as well as why the consulate’s requests for security were denied and who made that decision. The president was asked a direct question about that at Hofstra and chose not to answer it.



Though this issue was diverted into one largely about whether the president called the incident a terror attack the next day, what is being ignored is the fact that even though Obama uttered the word “terror” the following day, his administration spent the following days and weeks shouting down those who spoke of it as terrorism.



Their motivation wasn’t just the product of confusion about the available intelligence. It was the product of a desire to silence any speculation about the revival of al-Qaeda affiliates in Libya.
In the aftermath of the 9/11 anniversary, U.S. diplomatic facilities were attacked throughout the Middle East with American flags being torn down and replaced by al-Qaeda banners. Throughout the region, Islamist terrorism continues to fester and even gain strength in certain countries.



That’s a grim fact that not only needs to be acknowledged but understood as a major cause of the Libya disaster. But it is not something that the administration is comfortable saying because the keynote to the president’s foreign policy and security re-election platform is the notion that al-Qaeda is as dead as Osama bin Laden.



Having staked so much on the “bin Laden is dead” theme, the administration dragged its feet when it came to telling the truth about Islamist terrorism in Libya. They repeatedly claimed that the ambassador died as the result of film criticism run amuck. While they claim this was the result of faulty intelligence, there’s no mystery about why they embraced this false narrative so enthusiastically. 


Talking about an offensive anti-Muslim video (albeit one that virtually no one has actually seen) allowed the president’s foreign policy team to avoid saying the words “terror” and “al-Qaeda.” Instead, they talked about a movie for which they endlessly apologized. The president’s faux outrage notwithstanding, if that isn’t playing politics with security issues and misleading the American public, I don’t know what is.

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Obama and the “T” Word

Alana Goodman | @alanagoodman 10.17.2012 - 11:05 AM

COMMENTARY

When did President Obama refer to the Benghazi attack as an “act of terror”? According to Candy Crowley and White House spin artists, it was in his Rose Garden speech on September 12. But as I wrote last month, the reference was ambiguous at best. It was never clear whether Obama was referring to the Benghazi attack, the 9/11 attacks, the unrest across the Muslim world, or just terrorism in general.


However, at Foreign Policy, Josh Rogin dug up a transcript of Obama referring to the Benghazi attack more directly as an “act of terror” on Sept. 13 — at a campaign event in Colorado:

President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney sparred over whether Obama called the Sept. 11 murder of four Americans in Benghazi a “terrorist” attack. In fact, Obama did refer to the attack as “an act of terror,” but he did not do so directly in the Rose Garden the next day.
Romney said during Tuesday night’s debate that it took 14 days for Obama to acknowledge that the attack was a terrorist attack, while Obama and CNN’s Candy Crowley agreed that Obama said so Sept. 12 in remarks in the Rose Garden. In those remarks, journalists noticed, he did not explicitly refer to the Benghazi attack as an “act of terror,” though he did use those words. …
But on Sept. 13, at a campaign event in Colorado, Obama again used the phrase “act of terror” and this time tied it directly to the Benghazi attack.
“So what I want all of you to know is that we are going to bring those who killed our fellow Americans to justice. I want people around the world to hear me: To all those who would do us harm, no act of terror will go unpunished.

The bottom line? CNN’s Candy Crowley seriously erred in “correcting” Romney on that point, since Obama’s comment in the Rose Garden speech was debatable from the context. However, if the president now wants to clarify that he was referring to the Benghazi attack as an “act of terror” on September 12, let’s take him at his word.


Of course, clearing that up raises more questions than answers.
For one, why, if the president immediately knew Benghazi was a terrorist attack, did he fly to Las Vegas for a fundraiser the very next day? Why didn’t he inform UN Ambassador Susan Rice before she went on the Sunday shows and blamed the attack on the anti-Islam film? Why didn’t he tell his own spokesperson, who insisted days later that “We have no information to suggest that it was a preplanned attack…And while the violence is reprehensible and unjustified, it is not a reaction to the 9/11 anniversary that we know of, or to U.S. policy”? Why did the president himself go on “The View” nearly two weeks later, and — when asked point-blank whether Benghazi was a terrorist attack — say that “well, we’re still doing an investigation” and “it wasn’t just a mob action”?
More importantly, if President Obama believed it was a terrorist attack from Day One, why didn’t he share this with the American public? Why would he make a vague one-line reference to it in a single campaign stump speech in Ohio, but not give a full address to the American people, outlining what he knew?

 

Topics: 2012 presidential election, Benghazi, presidential debate

FED CHAIRMAN BEN BERNANKE'S EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT

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Ben Bernanke

This is truly an extraordinary find!

Rare footage of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's childhood has recently surfaced...


http://i.imgur.com/XaiUx.gif

THE BRITISH HAVE A KEEN INSIGHT INTO OUR POLITICS

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I really love British humor.  I loved "Are You Being Served",, "Frawlty Towers", even the comedy of some of their more bawdy comics.  However, I really do admire the candor with which the British Press view the current antics of our President.  Here is just a little sample:
 


 












 
 

HARRY TRUMAN, "THE BUCK STOPS HERE!"

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Hillary Apologizes for Benghazi, But Where’s Obama?

Alana Goodman | @alanagoodman 10.16.2012 - 10:00 AM 

COMMENTARY


 

  

President Harry Truman at his desk in the Oval This is nothing short of disastrous
 for President Obama.

After dodging responsibility for the Benghazi attack for over a month, pointing fingers at everything from the State Department to the intelligence community, theWhite House is outclassedby…HillaryClinton.

By taking the blame now, Hillary effectively 1.) Undermined Obama’s leadership, 2.) Put pressure on him right before a major debate to take the heat:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday tried to douse a political firestorm around the deadly assault on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya, saying she is responsible for the security of American diplomatic outposts.

 “I take responsibility” for the protection of U.S. diplomats Clinton said during a visit to Peru. But she said an investigation now under way will ultimately determine what happened in the attack that left four Americans dead. …

Clinton said President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are not involved in security decisions.
“I want to avoid some kind of political gotcha,” she added, noting that it is close to the election.

This puts Obama in an incredibly uncomfortable position.


If he let’s an underling like Hillary accept responsibility, he’s going to look even weaker than he has over the past few weeks. But even if Obama does step up and take the blame for the Benghazi attack today, it might be too late. Not only will it look like he did it under political pressure, but Hillary falling on her sword just highlights the politically-craven blame-game the White House has been playing for the past month.

Topics: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Libya consulate attack, State Department


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"THE MOST BEAUTIFUL SOUND IN THE WORLD IS THAT OF THE MEUZZIN CALLING THE FAITHFUL TO PRAYER"

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Important - look at this! It is very short but very interesting!

This just broke. Share this quickly as YouTube may scrub it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Jhx_2TqffE

YouTube - Videos from this email

SMALLER LOVE HATH NO MAN THAN OBAMA'S, THAN TO LAY DOWN HIS "FRIEND" FOR A COUPLE OF POINTS IN OHIO

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Published: Oct. 12, 2012 Updated: Oct. 13, 2012 2:24 p.m.

 

Mark Steyn: 'Politicized' Benghazi distracts from Big Bird

The first successful terrorist attack on U.S. sovereign territory since 9/11, and on the very anniversary and by al-Qaida-linked killers, was not helpful to the Obama team.

 

By MARK STEYN / Syndicated Columnist

"The entire reason that this has become the political topic it is, is because of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan."


Thus, Stephanie Cutter, President Obama's deputy campaign manager, speaking on CNN about an armed attack on the 9/11 anniversary that left a U.S. consulate a smoking ruin and killed four diplomatic staff, including the first American ambassador to be murdered in a third of a century. To discuss this event is apparently to "politicize" it and to distract from the real issues the American people are concerned about. 

 For example, Obama spokesperson Jen Psaki, speaking on board Air Force One on Thursday:

Vice President Joe Biden smirks during the vice presidential debate at Centre College, Oct. 11, in Danville, Ky.

GETTY IMAGES

"There's only one candidate in this race who is going to continue to fight for Big Bird and Elmo, and he is riding on this plane."


She's right! The United States is the first nation in history whose democracy has evolved to the point where its leader is provided with a wide-body transatlantic jet in order to campaign on the vital issue of public funding for sock puppets. Sure, Caligula put his horse in the Senate, but it was a real horse. At Ohio State University, the rapper will.i.am introduced the President by playing the Sesame Street theme tune, which, oddly enough, seems more apt presidential walk-on music for the Obama era than "Hail To The Chief.



Obviously, Miss Cutter is right: A healthy mature democracy should spend its quadrennial election on critical issues like the Republican Party's war on puppets rather than attempting to "politicize" the debate by dragging in stuff like foreign policy, national security, the economy and other obscure peripheral subjects. But, alas, it was her boss who chose to "politicize" a security fiasco and national humiliation in Benghazi. 


At 8.30 p.m., when Ambassador Stevens strolled outside the gate and bid his Turkish guest good night, the streets were calm and quiet. At 9.40 p.m., an armed assault on the compound began, well-planned and executed by men not only armed with mortars but capable of firing them to lethal purpose – a rare combination among the excitable mobs of the Middle East. There was no demonstration against an Islamophobic movie that just got a little out of hand. Indeed, there was no movie protest at all. Instead, a U.S. consulate was destroyed and four of its personnel were murdered in one of the most sophisticated military attacks ever launched at a diplomatic facility.


This was confirmed by testimony to Congress a few days ago, although you could have read as much in my column of four weeks ago. Nevertheless, for most of those four weeks, the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and others have persistently attributed the Benghazi debacle to an obscure YouTube video – even though they knew that the two events had nothing to do with each other by no later than the crack of dawn Eastern time on Sept. 12, by which point the consulate's survivors had landed safely in Tripoli.


To "politicize" means "to give a political character to." It is a reductive term, capturing the peculiarly shrunken horizons of politics: "Gee, they nuked Israel. D'you think that will hurt us in Florida?" So media outlets fret that Benghazi could be "bad" for Obama – by which they mean he might be hitting the six-figure lecture circuit four years ahead of schedule. 


But for Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, it's real bad. They're dead, over, gonesville. Given that Obama and Secretary Clinton refer to Stevens pneumatically as "Chris," as if they've known him since third grade, why would they dishonor the sacrifice of their close personal friend by peddling an utterly false narrative as to why he died? You want "politicization"? Secretary Clinton linked the YouTube video to the murder of her colleagues even as the four caskets lay alongside her at Andrews Air Force Base – even though she had known for days that it had nothing to do with it. It's weird enough that politicians now give campaign speeches to returning coffins. But to conscript your "friend's" corpse as a straight man for some third-rate electoral opportunism is surely as shriveled and worthless as "politicization" gets.



In the vice-presidential debate, asked why the White House spent weeks falsely blaming it on the video, Joe Biden took time off between big toothy smirks to reply: "Because that was exactly what we were told by the intelligence community." That, too, is false. He also denied that the government of which he is nominally second-in-command had ever received a request for additional security. At the risk of "politicizing" things, this statement would appear also to be untrue.



Instead, the State Department outsourced security for the Benghazi consulate to Blue Mountain, a Welsh firm that hires ex-British and Commonwealth Special Forces, among the toughest hombres on the planet. The company's very name comes from the poem "The Golden Journey To Samarkand," whose words famously adorn the regimental headquarters of Britain's Special Air Service in Hereford. Unfortunately, the one-year contract for consulate security was only $387,413 – or less than the cost of deploying a single U.S. soldier overseas. On that budget, you can't really afford to fly in a lot of crack SAS killing machines, and have to make do with the neighborhood talent pool. 


So who's available? Blue Mountain hired five members of the Benghazi branch of the February 17th Martyrs' Brigade and equipped them with handcuffs and batons. A baton is very useful when someone is firing an RPG at you, at least if you play a little baseball. There were supposed to be four men heavily armed with handcuffs on duty that night, but, the date of Sept. 11 having no particular significance in the Muslim world, only two guards were actually on shift.



Let's pause right there, and "politicize" a little more. Liberals are always going on about the evils of "outsourcing" and "offshoring" – selfish vulture capitalists like Mitt Romney shipping jobs to cheap labor overseas just to save a few bucks. How unpatriotic can you get! So now the United States government is outsourcing embassy security to cheap Welshmen who, in turn, outsource it to cheaper Libyans. Diplomatic facilities are U.S. sovereign territory – no different de jure from Fifth Avenue or Mount Rushmore. So defending them is one of the core responsibilities of the state. 


But that's the funny thing about Big Government: the bigger it gets, the more of life it swallows up, the worse it gets at those very few things it's supposed to be doing. So, on the first anniversary of 9/11 in a post-revolutionary city in which Western diplomats had been steadily targeted over the previous six months, the government of the supposedly most powerful nation on Earth entrusted its security to Abdulaziz Majbari, 29, and his pal, who report to some bloke back in Carmarthen, Wales.



In the days before the attack, Joe Biden had been peddling his Obama campaign slogan that: "Bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive." The first successful terrorist attack on U.S. sovereign territory since 9/11, and on the very anniversary and by al-Qaida-linked killers, was not helpful to the Obama team. And so the nature of the event had to be "politicized": Look, over there – an Islamophobic movie! "Greater love hath no man than this," quoth the President at Chris Stevens' coffin, "that a man lay down his life for his friends." Smaller love hath no man than Obama's, than to lay down his "friend" for a couple of points in Ohio.




©MARK STEYN

YOU KNOW THAT THERE IS TRULY HOPE WHEN THE WASHINGTON POST AND NEWSWEEK WRITE NEGATIVELY ABOUT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA

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The liberal media bashing Obama!  Now this is a story!!!!.

 Take a few minutes to read this -- Subject:  Washington Post and Newsweek hit Obama

THE   WASHINGTON POST HITS OBAMA

Finally, the Washington Post and Newsweek speak out about Obama. This is timely
and tough. As many of you know, the Washington Post and Newsweek have a reputation
for being extremely liberal. The fact that their editors saw fit to print
the following article about Obama and the one that appears in the latest Newsweek, makes this a truly amazing event,
and a news story in and of itself. At last, the truth about our
President and his agenda are starting to trickle through the
"protective wall" built around him by the liberal media.

___________________________
I Too Have Become Disillusioned.

By Matt Patterson (columnist - Washington Post, New York Post, San
Francisco Examiner)

Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack
Obama as an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, the result of a
baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the
Middle Ages. How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of
professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could
manage the world's largest economy, direct the world's most powerful
military, execute the world's most consequential job?

Imagine a future historian examining Obama's pre-presidential life:
ushered into and through the Ivy League, despite unremarkable grades
and test scores along the way; a cushy non-job as a "community
organizer;" a brief career as a state legislator devoid of legislative
achievement (and in fact nearly devoid of his attention, so often did
he vote "present"); and finally an unaccomplished single term in the
United States Senate, the entirety of which was devoted to his
presidential ambitions.

He left no academic legacy in academia, authored no signature
legislation as a legislator. And then there is the matter of his
troubling associations: the white-hating, America-loathing preacher
who for decades served as Obama's "spiritual mentor"; a real-life,
actual terrorist who served as Obama's colleague and political
sponsor. It is easy to imagine a future historian looking at it all
and asking: how on Earth was such a man elected president?

Not content to wait for history, the incomparable Norman Podhoretz
addressed the question recently in the Wall Street Journal: To be
sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken
hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist
like Bill Ayers, would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama
was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberal Dom to have
hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if
they were a bit extreme, he was given a pass. Let that sink in: Obama
was given a pass - held to a lower standard - because of the color of
his skin.

Podhoretz continues: And in any case, what did such ancient history
matter when he was also so articulate and elegant and (as he himself
had said) "non-threatening," all of which gave him a fighting chance
to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of
racism to rest?

Podhoretz puts his finger, I think, on the animating pulse of the
Obama phenomenon - affirmative action. Not in the legal sense, of
course. But certainly in the motivating sentiment behind all
affirmative action laws and regulations, which are designed primarily
to make white people, and especially white liberals, feel good about
themselves.

Unfortunately, minorities often suffer so that whites can pat
themselves on the back. Liberals routinely admit minorities to schools
for which they are not qualified, yet take no responsibility for the
inevitable poor performance and high drop-out rates which follow.
Liberals don't care if these minority students fail; liberals aren't
around to witness the emotional devastation and deflated self-esteem
resulting from the racist policy that is affirmative action. Yes,
racist. Holding someone to a separate standard merely because of the
color of his skin - that's affirmative action in a nutshell, and if
that isn't racism, then nothing is.

And that is what America did to Obama. True, Obama himself was never
troubled by his lack of achievements, but why would he be? As many
have noted, Obama was told he was good enough for Columbia   despite
undistinguished grades at Occidental; he was told he was good enough
for the US Senate despite a mediocre record in Illinois ; he was told
he was good enough to be president despite no record at all in the
Senate. All his life, every step of the way, Obama was told he was
good enough for the next step, in spite of ample evidence to the
contrary.

What could this breed if not the sort of empty narcissism on display
every time Obama speaks? In 2008, many who agreed that he lacked
executive qualifications nonetheless raved about Obama's oratory
skills, intellect, and cool character. Those people - conservatives
included - ought now to be deeply embarrassed.

The man thinks and speaks in the hoariest of clichés, and that's when
he has his Teleprompters in front of him; when the prompter is absent
he can barely think or speak at all. Not one original idea has ever
issued from his mouth - it's all warmed-over Marxism of the kind that
has failed over and over again for 100 years.

And what about his character? Obama is constantly blaming anything and
everything else for his troubles. Bush did it; it was bad luck; I
inherited this mess. Remember, he wanted the job, campaigned for the
task. It is embarrassing to see a president so willing to advertise
his own powerlessness, so comfortable with his own incompetence. But
really, what were we to expect? The man has never been responsible for
anything, so how do we expect him to act responsibly?

In short: our president is a small-minded man, with neither the
temperament nor the intellect to handle his job. When you understand
that, and only when you understand that, will the current erosion of
liberty and prosperity make sense. It could not have gone otherwise
with such a man in the Oval Office

Steven Morrison