Why Hillary Will Get Away With Benghazi

The issue of Benghazi and the September 11, 2012 attacks remains alive and well.

(Western Journalism) – No matter how many times it is called “phony” or the administration blames Fox News for keeping the scandal alive, the issue of Benghazi and the September 11, 2012 attacks remains alive and well. And this fact is damaging to presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, the former Secretary of State under President Barack Obama. A recent Pew Research Center/USA Today poll ranked the death of those four Americans that night in Benghazi as the “worst thing about the career of [Hillary] Clinton,” followed by her husband’s affair, according to Bloomberg this March.

The Democratic establishment has started to complain that this is Republican politicking because of Clinton’s unannounced, but presumed, candidacy. But the issue cuts both ways: the Democratic establishment has a glaring conflict of interest when it comes to finding out the truth about the Benghazi attacks because they don’t want some of their own tarnished in the process.

“The total cost of compliance with Benghazi-related congressional requests sent to the department and other agencies is estimated to be in the millions of dollars,” stated the Pentagon in a March 11 letter, according to the Associated Press.

“Congressional Republicans have been relentless in investigating the attack, arguing that the Obama administration misled the American people about a terror attack during the heat of the presidential campaign,” reports the Associated Press. “The GOP is determined to press ahead, especially since the assault on the mission occurred during Hillary Rodham Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.” This manufactured public relations framework is aided by the fact that the House GOP established a website dedicated to the investigation into the Benghazi attacks, and has released a number of reports that are authored by the House majority without input from their increasingly alienated minority Congressional partners.

But the converse remains true. Why hasn’t the Democratic leadership forged ahead on the Benghazi issue to investigate and then close it once and for all? There are real issues that remain to be settled in this controversy, such as why the security was so inadequate at the U.S. Mission that night despite escalating threats, and why the military was so poorly positioned on the anniversary of September 11, 2001. One must ask whether this reluctance comes because the investigation might harm those in power at the time—President Obama and Hillary Clinton?

And if the Republicans are engaged in a “witch-hunt,” as Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA)—who solicited the Pentagon letter—contests, why, then, has House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) refused to create a Select Committee to investigate the scandal despite ongoing pressure from a number of groups and even relatives of the deceased?

“Instead, media consumers are left with the narrative that this is a political battle rather than a search for the truth, and that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and his Oversight and Government Reform Committee are composed of belligerent politicians who care little about decorum or etiquette,” I wrote for Accuracy in Media back in October last year. “(That, according to Politico, seemed to be the greater takeaway.)” And the same messaging has continued to this day.

Now this issue is heating up, and the complicit media are quick to promote the party in power’s message. “A House Republican chairman is doggedly pursuing the question of whether military personnel were told to ‘stand down’ during the 2012 deadly assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya,” reported the Associated Press on March 28. “The panel’s persistence on an issue the military considers settled underscores that Republicans have no plans to relent in their politically charged investigation of the attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans as President Barack Obama sought re-election that fall” (emphasis added).

In the MSNBC piece “Some Conspiracy Theories Aren’t Cheap,” Steve Benen writes that “These GOP lawmakers aren’t just spinning their wheels, looking for election gimmicks; they’re wasting our resources.” Politico says that Benghazi has “become a catchphrase signifying conservative suspicion of the Obama administration” and reports that all 17 Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee “demand” that Chairman Darrell Issa end his probe into the attacks.

Politico’s John Bresnahan also made sure to mention the Hillary connection. “Democrats privately believe that Issa is using Benghazi to try to hurt Clinton’s possible presidential ambitions in 2016,” he reports. At least Bresnahan was more honest; he reports the source of such complaints as being with the party in power instead of placing the blame on the GOP for politicizing the issue, as Businessweek and the Associated Press did.

“[Oversight spokesman Frederick] Hill said the reason the panel continues to probe the attacks—as well as pursues its investigation into allegations that the IRS improperly targeted conservative nonprofit groups—is because the Obama administration has turned it into a battle between the committee and the administration’s legal teams, slowing down the process dramatically while exponentially increasing costs,” reports Bresnahan. So the fight goes both ways. The media shouldn’t excuse the administration in the process.

[H/T WesternJournalism: Bethany Stotts]

Oliver Stone and ‘Jewish Domination’

(American Thinker) – In a recent interview, Oliver Stone, defender of Marxist thugs, complained that “Jewish domination of the media” prevents Americans from putting the Holocaust in context.  Stone also opined that Hitler was the product of industrialists and that the Nazi invasion of Russia caused more deaths than the Holocaust.  In one fell swoop, Stone revealed the Orwellian thought control that is the black heart of leftism.

The Holocaust was a crime of almost unimaginable human suffering, and if Stone’s remarks were intended to remind us that Polish Catholics and Gypsies, particularly, suffered genocide at Nazi hands as well, then perhaps Stone has a point.  That, however, is not what he means.  In fact, Stone seems utterly indifferent to human suffering caused by socialist totalitarian regimes like Nazi Germany.

The dull old tale that “industrialists” brought Hitler to power is Bolshevik invention – an ironic lie because, as the famous German Marxist Eduard Berstein noted, the reactionary German government gave Lenin fifty million marks to finance his, more than anyone suggests German industrials gave Hitler.  In fact, the overwhelming majority of German industrialists opposed National Socialism; this extended even to the Krupp family, the largest armament manufacturer in Germany, whose members opposed Hitler right up to the time he came to power.

Who did bring Hitler to power?  German Communists, acting on orders from Moscow, joined the Nazi Party.  Communist and Nazi labor unions joined together to support the general strike of Berlin transportation workers just prior to the November 1932 election.  Many Nazis likewise found Communism attractive; Plotkin noted in 1932 that “[w]henever a Hitlerite leaves the Nazis, he goes straight to the Communists.”  LeFore observed that German Communists “quite literally linked hands with Nazis in protest demonstrations” before the fall of the Weimar Republic.  Schelle, in his history of Weimar Germany, observed that German Communists “did not hesitate to collaborate with the Nazis.”  Many German Communists joined the Nazi Party, and Hitler observed that if the Nazi Party disappeared, “[t]here will be another 10 million Communist votes in Germany.”  

The Soviet Union was the principal ally of Nazi Germany for the first twenty-two months of the Second World War – a closer ally than Fascist Italy or Imperial Japan – and throughout the world, Communist parties did everything possible to secure Nazi victory over Churchill’s Britain, including bullying labor unions in America into wildcat strikes at critical armaments factories.

But what is most perverse about Stone’s comments is that his imagined “Jewish domination” of the entertainment, education, and communications networks has failed utterly to make the world aware of the second-greatest crime against the Jewish people: the Marxist persecution of Jews.  Although Jews had been prominent in the Bolshevik Party, within ten years of the Bolshevik junta, Jews on the Politburo  were purged and murdered.  Hebrew was banned.  Synagogues were sacked.  Rabbis were sent to the Gulag.  

Communists alleged that German Jews were secret allies of Hitler, noting after the 1933 Nazi boycott of Jews that “[i]n a few days you will find that all the big Jewish stores still exist, that Jewish bankers, capitalists and stock jobbers are still carrying on their businesses, and that no Jewish industrialist has suffered any damage.”  Menachem Begin, future prime minister of Israel, experienced firsthand the anti-Semitism of the Bolsheviks when he was interrogated by the NKVD in 1940: “Talmudism!  I heard the word for the first time in my life[.] … A new expression invented by the N.K.V.D. philologists[.]”  This Marxist pogrom against Jews continued until the end of the Evil Empire.

Why has the “Jewish domination” failed to inform the world of the long, vile war of Marxism against Jews?  It is because what has a stranglehold on all the chokepoints of public discourse is not a Jewish cabal, but rather a leftist hive.  Consider a perfect illustration of how crimes as vile as the Holocaust have been utterly ignored by this leftist collective.

The Gulag sucked into its nightmarish camps over 75 million souls, making it even worse that the Holocaust, but the Hollywood of Oliver Stone has never thought this merited a movie or a television series.  Nor has Stone has ever made a film about millions of men, women, and children murdered in the Holodomor, a crime against humanity, committed by Communists in the Soviet Union, equaling the Holocaust and occurring before Hitler came to power.  Or which leftist nabob in the entertainment industry has shown America the betrayal by Communists of those German Communist Jews like Margarete Buber-Neumann, whose book describes the hell of the Gulag as well as the hell of the Nazi concentration camp, and who was delivered by the Soviet Union to the Nazis? 

Surely these are stories that ought to boggle any serious mind and chill any decent heart.  Yet these many untold stories of Communist evil go virtually ignored by men like Oliver Stone.  The problem is not any “Jewish domination of the media.”  The victims were often Jews, whose misery and murder at the hands of evil Leftists goes utterly ignored.  The problem is quite simple and quite dreadful: there is a leftist domination of all the choke-points of information, education, and entertainment.  The leftist cultural overseers operate just as Stone describes his imagined cabal of Jewish controllers.

The only difference is that unlike Oliver Stone’s phantasm leftist domination of our cultural organs is sadly very real.

[H/T AmericanThinker: Bruce Walker]

Obama’s April Fools: You Can Keep Your Doctor

(Washington Free Beacon) – The American Action Network took aim today at President Obama’s record of dishonest healthcare promises in a web-based ad “Keep Your Doctor.”

The video comes in the wake of President Obama’s WebMD interview where he plainly admitted Americans wouldn’t be able to keep their doctor after saying for years that they could.

Like his infamous “keep your plan” promise, Obama pledged multiple times that Americans would not be required to change their doctor under the Affordable Care Act.

The video also notes that on April 7th the Obama Administration is scheduled to finalize deep Medicare Advantage cuts that would result in more seniors losing access to their doctors.

[H/T FreeBeacon]

Ted Cruz’s New ‘Yes We Can’ Video Will Fire You Up

(Western Journalism) – Senator Ted Cruz has release a new video in an attempt to keep the dwindling hope alive within the conservative movement. He demands conservatives stand up for a number of things, such as the Constitution and the free market.

[H/T WesternJournalism: Daniel Noe]

Ted Cruz: Repeal Every Word of It

(Rush Limbaugh) – BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Just a couple of more sound bites. Ted Cruz has weighed in on all of this. He’s the one guy who’s had this nailed from the get-go. And then we will move on to other propaganda, because there is no news anymore.  There is no news in the media.  It’s just propaganda.  It’s the Democrat Party and the Regime talking points disguised as the news.

Ted Cruz, ladies and gentlemen, has just been firing both barrels on this, since he’s been talking about it at all.  And this morning on Fox & Friends he was asked by Steve Doocy, “Okay, Senator Cruz. The White House is claiming victory out there.  They hit their seven million number.  What do you think?”

CRUZ:  The bulk of the people who are signing up had health insurance to begin with — and, you know what?  They probably had their insurance canceled because of Obamacare ’cause we know that over six million people had their health insurance canceled because of Obamacare.  It is abundantly clear this thing isn’t working.  It has caused millions of Americans to lose their jobs, to be forced into part-time work, to lose their health insurance, or to see their premiums skyrocket.  It is the essence of pragmatism to recognize this thing isn’t working. Let’s start over. Let’s repeal every word of it.

RUSH:  Every word of it! I love this guy.  He is not backing down.  He’s exactly right with just some historical context here.  Okay, they’ve got seven million, but how many of them…? One thing he didn’t mention: How many of them are signing up out of fear?  How many of ’em think, “My God, if I don’t sign up I gotta pay a penalty or I might go to jail”?

Remember Pelosi said that it was totally understandable to send somebody to jail for not signing up back in the day.  It’s the law.  You have to have it.  If this thing were universally popular, everybody would have it.  It’s the law.  If we had a law-abiding society, everybody would have health insurance right now.  This was the deadline! Except the individual mandate has been delayed, see?

Here’s the thing: What does this deadline mean anyway?  It’s meaningless because the mandate’s gone.  They’ve delayed the mandate.  The individual mandate requiring you to have it, they’ve delayed that ’til after the election.  But they promised — Sebelius and the others promised — seven million. So they have to make it look like the country loves this boondoggle.

So even though the individual mandate’s been delayed and you don’t have to sign up… You can claim a “hardship” for any reason, including the website itself.  You can claim that that is a hardship, as an excuse for not signing up.  So you don’t have to be signed up today when you get right down to it. Just a few people do.  It’s not even signed up.  They’ve gotta start paying the penalty for not having it if they don’t.

Those are people that file quarterly estimated taxes.  However, Cruz is exactly right here.  The mandate is gone.  Look at how many people have lost hours, been converted to part time so their companies could comply. How many people have lost their jobs because of Obamacare? How many people are signing up because they’re doing it out of abject fear of the authorities tracking them down if they don’t?

How many of those signing up did not have health insurance? How many signing up did have it but it was canceled?  So the Regime making a big deal out of this is all smoke and mirrors.  It’s another giant scam, especially when you throw in that the individual mandate that makes this a hard-and-fast date, is gone.

The real way to look at this, I think, is if this law is now miraculously popular, if for some reason after this four months of intense advertising and all the other things… Who was that actress that went on with Biden and started crying about this?  What was her name?  Rosario Dawson?  Don’t bother looking it up.  It doesn’t matter.  Some actress went on TV with Biden and started crying over spilt milk.

“Oh, Obamacare is so important!”  (interruption)  Rachael Ray!  Rachael Ray, that’s who it was.  Rosario Dawson, Rachael Ray.  I don’t know who Rachael Ray is.  All I’m telling you is, I read the story and I remember the name.  But if this thing were so popular, wouldn’t more than seven million people have signed up?  If Obamacare was so wonderful, if it were so the answer?

If Obamacare was actually the solution to all of the health care problems that everybody has, wouldn’t more than seven million people have signed up by now?  Yeah.  When you add in the reality, the fact that people that can’t afford it are gonna get subsidies — they’re gonna get help in paying for it — don’t you think there would have been a mad dash?

Don’t you think there would be lines of excited people signing up?  Yet they’re out there characterizing seven million as some big, great, over-the-top number.  It’s embarrassingly low, and they probably haven’t even hit that.  So Cruz is right here. “It is the essence of pragmatism to recognize this thing isn’t working,” and to step back from it.

Well, at that, Steve Doocy said, “You’re kind of in a minority out there when it comes to this, Senator Cruz.  I know the Democrats are saying mend it, don’t necessarily defend it. But you look at the polling, Senator, and a lot of Americans like parts of it. They’d like to see parts of it continue. So to blow the whole thing up, I don’t know if people are behind that.”

CRUZ:  The support for Obamacare is in the thirties.  This is the most profoundly unpopular law we have seen in modern times, and the reason is it’s personal.  A lot of folks are not necessarily optimistic that it can be repealed because the president tells ’em every day, Harry Reid tells ’em every day, and a lot of news media tell ’em every day, “It can’t be repealed.”

DOOCY: Mmm-hmm.

CRUZ: But I’ll tell you, you can’t force this on the American people.  I think it’s going to be repealed ’cause I think the American people are demanding that.

RUSH:  Now, you hear him say support for Obamacare’s in the thirties.

He may not have heard about the ABC News/Washington Post poll, which, again, shows support for Obamacare for the first time in a plurality, 49-48%.  Now, he’s probably talking about the AP poll four days ago.  Just to remind you, four days ago the Associated Press and their polling partner, GfK (not to be confused with Zach Galifianakis), found 26% support for Obamacare.

So he found a poll with 30%.

END TRANSCRIPT

[H/T RushLimbaugh]

Newt Gingrich’s Plan to Stave Off the Apocalypse

Whether it’s from solar explosions or North Korean nukes, Newt has a plan to save the world.

(National Journal) – Within a year, nine out of 10 Americans could be dead. And whatever causes the national apocalypse—be it North Korean malice or the whims of the sun—the downfall will ultimately be our own fault.

That’s the fear of Newt Gingrich and other members of a high-profile coalition who are convinced that our fragile electrical grid could be wiped out at any moment.

Their concern? Electromagnetic pulses, the short bursts of energy—caused by anything from a nuclear blast to a solar flare—that can wreak havoc on electrical systems on a massive scale. And the coalition believes it’s coming soon.

“I think we’re running out of time,” said Peter Pry, a former CIA officer and head of a congressional advisory board on national security. And if the worst happens? “This gets translated into mass fatalities, because our modern civilization can’t feed, transport, or provide law and order without electricity,” he said.

While some see the coalition as alarmist—and others dismiss them as out-and-out quacks—the coalition boasts some prominent and influential names. Pry and Gingrich are joined by former CIA Director James Woolsey.

“It wasn’t difficult persuading them” to join the coalition, Pry said. Gingrich “has known about EMP and cared about it for many years.”

Last year, Gingrich told members of Congress that an EMP attack “could be the kind of catastrophe that ends civilization—and that’s not an exaggeration.”

The coalition’s members insist the scenario is a real threat, and not the plot of a Michael Bay movie or a Cormac McCarthy novel. They believe a single nuclear blast at 300-400 kilometers in altitude—about the height of the International Space Station—could take down all power in the U.S. Even an explosion just 30 kilometers up would take out the Eastern grid, which supplies three-quarters of the country’s power.

What happens post-detonation is not a pretty picture, Pry says: “You’d have massive industrial accidents. One hundred four nuclear reactors going Fukushima, spreading toxic clouds everywhere. Oil refineries burning down, oil pipelines exploding.… Airliners crashing down.”

That’s just day one. With no power, the country would lose transportation, our food would go bad and we’d lose the communication tools we’ve come to rely on. To envision what that would look like, just picture New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Pry says.

The coalition estimates that we’d lose up to 90 percent of our population within a year.

But it wouldn’t necessarily take a hostile foreign power’s nuclear trickery to spark the downfall: The coalition claims American demise could come from the flares of a fickle sun.

A giant solar flare that triggers a geomagnetic storm could inflict the same damage as a high-altitude nuclear blast—but do it on a global scale.

The last such flare—known as the Carrington Event—happened in 1859, frying telegraph lines around the planet. According to Pry, such events happen about every 150 years, so we’re already overdue for another.

By comparison, a Lloyd’s of London study used a wider range of 100-250 years. The study also said a solar event would only cause extended blackouts for 20-40 million people—not an insignificant number, but nowhere near the globe-encompassing disaster the EMP Coalition predicts.

And Kristof Petrovay, a Hungary-based solar physicist whose work is often cited by NASA, said predicting the interval of such flares is more-or-less a fool’s errand. “There’s really no way to tell when or how often it will happen again,” Petrovay said.

Regardless of when or if another flare hits, there’s a wide range of assessments of its potential damage.

Most observers stop short of forecasting the doomsday scenarios laid out by the Pry-Gingrich coalition, but they still see serious problems.

In 2008, the National Academy of Sciences looked at the possibility of a solar flare and its effects. Its findings, while less apocalyptic than the EMP Coalition’s warnings, were still dire. A solar storm two-thirds the size of the Carrington Event could still knock out power for 130 million people. The fallout? “[W]ater distribution affected within several hours; perishable foods and medications lost in 12-24 hours; loss of heating/air conditioning, sewage disposal, phone service, fuel re-supply and so on.”

If we were hit with another Carrington-sized storm, the report said, it could take months to get parts of the grid back to functional. In the first year alone, it would take an economic toll of $2 trillion, about 20 times the cost of Hurricane Katrina.

According to Petrovay, the worst effects of the flare would be felt in North America, where the highly-connected grid could exacerbate problems and systems running near peak capacity have less room for error. “I have doubts whether [a solar storm] would really take out the whole grid, but probably shutdowns would occur in many places,” he said.

So how can the U.S. avoid going dark?

Advocates say the solution is as simple as surge protectors Americans use to protect their personal computers—though on a much larger scale.

The coalition wants such protectors placed across the electrical grid to block harmful currents. In addition, advocates want to protect the extra-high-voltage transformers we depend on with metal, current-absorbing boxes called Faraday cages. And more replacement parts, especially the giant transformers that can take years to make, need to be at the ready in case we lose critical pieces of the gid. That way, even if an EMP damaged key infrastructure elements, the U.S. would have replacements ready to go.

Without those backups, blackouts could last up to two years, said the Lloyd’s report. Pry pegs it somewhere between four and 10 years. “That’s optimistic because it assumes people would live that long,” he said.

These aren’t new solutions. In 2010, the House passed the GRID Act, which would have protected 300 of the country’s biggest transformers. The measure died in the Senate later that year.

Last June, Reps. Trent Franks and Yvette Clarke introduced the SHIELD Act, which mandates many of the same safeguards.

When the bill was introduced, Gingrich voiced his support, but the House Energy and Commerce Committee has yet to take it up. For that, Pry blames Chairman Fred Upton, who he says is beholden to electricity utilities that don’t want Congress to assert regulatory authority over the power grid.

Upton’s staff responded with a statement following a Wednesday grid security briefing. “We have been active in our oversight of the nation’s energy grid vulnerabilities and we remain vigilant over all emerging threats to the grid, including cyber and physical attacks, solar storms, and electromagnetic pulses,” Upton said.

According to the coalition, protecting the electrical grid would cost only $2 billion, and could be completed in less than five years. Safeguarding all essential infrastructure would come in between $10-20 billion.

Those who are OK with the status quo, Pry says, are “like the zeppelin industry in the 1920s.” By his estimate, utilities could fund grid-protecting efforts by tacking on just 20 cents per year to ratepayers’ bills.

For now, frustrated with Congress, the EMP Coalition is focusing on state-level efforts—while still pushing for action on the SHIELD Act. Maine’s state government recently passed legislation to protect its power supply from EMPs. “We’ve already made more progress at the state level than in five years of beating our heads against the wall in Washington,” Pry said.

 It’s clear the head-banging has gotten to Pry. At times, the frustration and urgency in his voice is palpable. He brings up North Korean nuclear tests, a sniper attack on San Diego transformers and missiles found last year aboard a North Korean freighter in the Panama Canal. “All of this looks like preparation for a larger, more coordinated attack,” he said.

[H/T NationalJournal: Alex Brown]

Shot of the century kills six Taliban fighters with one bullet

Photo: Reuters

 

(New York Post) – A British sniper, similar to the soldiers shown here, took out six Taliban fighters with a single shot when he struck an insurgent’s suicide vest.

One bullet, six dead insurgents in Afghanistan.

A British sniper, firing from over 930 yards away, amazingly hit the trigger switch of a suicide bomber’s vest, killing the attacker and five others in the ensuing blast, The Telegraph reported.

The unnamed 20-year-old soldier, a lance corporal in the Coldstream Guards, has been credited with stopping a potentially devastating attack by the Taliban.

British forces in Kakaran in southern Afghanistan later found a second suicide vest packed with 40 pounds of explosives nearby.

“The guy was wearing a vest. He was identified by the sniper moving down a tree line and coming up over a ditch,” said Lt. Col. Richard Slack. “He had a shawl on. It rose up and the sniper saw he had a machine gun.

“They were in contact and he was moving to a firing position. The sniper engaged him and the guy exploded. There was a pause on the radio and the sniper said, ‘I think I’ve just shot a suicide bomber.’ The rest of them were killed in the blast.”

Photo: Reuters

The astounding feat of marksmanship happened in December but has only just been disclosed.

The sniper, who was using the British army’s most powerful sniper weapon, the L115A3 gun, had previously managed to kill a Taliban machine-gunner from 1,465 yards away with his first shot on the tour of duty.

The astounding incident has been revealed as British forces gradually decrease their presence in Helmand province, handing over security to the Afghan armed forces.

[H/T NewYorkPost]