Gender, Abortion & Rand Paul's Handling of the MSM

Rand Paul is now officially in the race for President. The attacks from the left have commenced. One, Paul is mean to women. Two, let's try to get Paul in a corner on the abortion issue.

The left seems to have their knickers in a bunch over the latest salvo in the war on women. The headline from Salon: “No no no no no no no no: Listen!” He-man Rand Paul lectures a lady — again. From Washington Post, it's Rand Paul's problem with female interviewers just cropped up again. Really? The left's going to play the victim card now when a Republican gets testy with a reporter in an interview if the reporter happens to be female? This would be the same left that spends their days and nights bemoaning a supposed lack of gender equality and looks upon the slightest hint of chivalry as yet another example of white male patriarchy?

Here's the video clip:



The interviewer, Savannah Guthrie, is, in fact, editorializing as part of a question, and the editorial is not favorable to Rand Paul. Paul's not having it, so he stops her in mid-question. In all fairness to both parties, Guthrie is doing what reporters should be doing, and Paul is perfectly within his rights to contest it. Frankly, Paul should be the example for how everyone on the right should be treating the MSM these days.

But apparently the left wants now to complain because Rand was mean to a lady. The hypocrisy is mindnumbing. If a woman is going into professions such as the law, politics, or journalism, their arguments are owed no deference because of their gender. This is the left trying to create a mountain out of a molehill, and I suspect this complaining has less to do with Rand Paul's lack of deference to a female member of the MSM than it does with battlespace prep for Hillary Clinton's candidacy.

Update: This from Ann Althouse's post, The Rand Paul Has Problems With Women Meme:

But even for those of us who don't want special sensitivity to women and who think it will hurt women's opportunities — in journalism, in politics, and elsewhere — we observe how well women are treated with an understanding of what has gone on in the past when women were subordinated and diminished and dissuaded from entering the fray. . . . With that background understanding, what is objectively equal treatment may feel unequal.

Of course, it's also true that Rand Paul has his opponents who will use whatever works, and I fully expect them to accuse him of sexism whenever they can now. Once it's a meme, that's how it goes. If he remains "short tempered and testy," whatever hits women will be highlighted as Rand Paul's problem with women. If he manages to take the edge off, because he's trying "to get better," what niceness is aimed at women will be characterized as patronizing and even exclusionary. His opponents will want to box him in. Whatever he does will be wrong.

Update: Fox News ladie Dana Perino think this will play poorly for Rand Paul, while Megyn Kelly feels otherwise and indeed, takes offense at this effort from the left to "protect" the ladies, finding that in and of itself sexist.

But that is not all Rand Paul is in the news for today. A reporter in the interview below (at the 8:00 mark) asked Rand Paul to state his specific position on exemptions for abortion. Paul's response is probably the perfect one:



Allahpundit at Hot Air notes:

And this is no idle tu quoque. The great majority of Americans oppose late-term abortion; the vast majority, maybe a unanimous majority at this point, of Democratic leaders support it without restriction. They are, without exaggeration, absolute fanatics on this subject. And proudly so. . . .

Obama feels no differently. Neither does Nancy Pelosi, who’s gone as far as to use the word “sacred” when discussing her feelings on this topic. Paul’s response should be a stock answer for any GOP candidate who gets a question on a third-rail social issue going forward: We’ll weigh in just as soon as Hillary Clinton does. Want to know what Marco Rubio thinks about abortion exceptions? No problem — just as soon as Hillary tells us when life begins. Want to hear Ted Cruz’s take on gay marriage? He’d be happy to provide it — just as soon as Hillary answers a simple question about how many genders she thinks there are. The wedge question should cut both ways this campaign, whether the media likes it or not.

Well done, Rand Paul.

For the record, abortion is not and should not be a Constitutional issue. The decision to adopt it as such in Roe v. Wade was pure judicial activism and, by imposing their own personal morality under the guise of a "penumbra" of a Constitutional right, the Courts created a horrendous political divide in this country. It was an issue of social policy falling outside the text of the Constitution, and by the 10th Amendment, was a decision to be left to the individual state's to decide. Personally, if asked to weigh in on the issue at state level, I would allow abortion through the first two trimesters. That is a moral, ethical and pragmatic question for the mother. It becomes a societal issue, however, once the baby would be viable outside of the womb. Late term abortions are nothing more than murder.

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Is Charlie Manson The Model For Our MSM?

Bookworm Room has posted on her belief that "Mainstream media is the spiritual descendant of Charlie Manson." It is a very creative and well made argument. Says Book:

Manson had a goal: he envisioned a new world order, with himself and his followers as the leaders. To bring about this new world order, he first had to destroy the existing one. He came up with an idea that he called “Helter-Skelter“: he was going to incite race warfare because he was pretty sure that would bring America down, leaving room for him and his followers to take over. He figured that the best way to start an apocalyptic race war was through violent murder. He wasn’t going to do the murder himself, of course, but he did incite his dumb, sexually-opiated, often drugged followers to commit the deeds on his behalf.

Now, let’s think about the mainstream media. The MSM has a goal: a completely Democrat-dominated political machine, with the MSM and the politicians it’s created in total control. Because this will be a statist new world, the MSM must first destroy completely America’s current, still vaguely capitalist market and individualist ideology. To that end, the media has decided that it will incite race warfare, because it’s pretty sure that race warfare will destroy existing institutions and allow it and its political class to take over. Media members figure that the best way to start this societal breakdown is to sow so much division between blacks and whites in America that the country becomes dysfunctional and, if necessary, bloodied. The media elite are not going to sully their own hands, of course, but they will work hard to incite their followers to commit the deeds on their behalf. (And sadly, to the extent they have followers in black inner cities, these are young people who are minimally educated, inundated with unhealthy sexual messages from movies and rap songs, and too often on drugs. Just think of Trayvon….)

I can’t prove the MSM’s goal, but I can prove its tactics. . . .

Do read her whole post. Her reasoning is solid. I have to take issue on only one point - Charlie Manson was merely a cog in the great socialist wheel. I would name the spiritual progenitors of our MSM as Marx, Lenin and Stalin.

Here are the comments she and I made to her post:

Me:

A fascinating piece, but in the pantheon of mass murders with dreams of grandeur and world change, I think you aim a bit too low. I would have picked Stalin as the MSM’s ideological progenitor. He in fact worked to change an entire country, and indeed, under him, there came to be the division between objective truth and socialist truth. There was control of the media to communicate only approved messages. Etc., etc. And some of the old Soviet movies – particularly the post WWII biopic on Ivan The Terrible – are probably pretty analogous to The Butler in that both teach a version of history not grounded in fact, but rather in message.

On a final note, if you are going to point out things about Oprah, I think that you are missing the most outrageous – her assertion that Trayvon Martin is the “Emmett Till of our time.” Oprah rather surprised me, actually. She built her career by being careful to appear as a normal American rather than an “African American.” She was accepted on those terms. Yet now it turns out that she too is a closet race hustler. May her career be effected accordingly.

Book:

I agree with you about the media’s general leftism, along with its global domination plans. What struck me, though, was how tightly their script regarding racism follows Charles Manson’s plans. It’s as if, when it comes to destroying the U.S. specifically through racial divisions, the media poured over Manson’s evil plans for sowing racial disharmony, and made those plans their own.

Me:

Book, as to racism generally, the only reason blacks weren’t targeted as part of the leftist ideology in Stalin’s Russia was because there were none in that country. But that said, the very foundation of socialism and the left has always been the disparity between the “oppressed and the oppressor.” It is their entire schtick. Blacks were being heavily recruited into the communist party of the USA in the lead up to the 60′s. Even Thomas Sowell was recruited into communism as a young man. The treatment of blacks as a victim class fits hand in glove with the opening lines of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. Manson’s view of a race war was nothing new. It was in fact Marx’s view of all human history.

While Stalin and Lenin didn’t have blacks, what they had was class warfare. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve listened to Obama and thought that his words could have come from the mouth of Lenin demonizing the Kulaks. Indeed, I looked up some of Lenin’s old speeches old speeches on the Kulaks just to verify my thought – and I was 100% correct. Class war and race war are virtually one in the same – both rely on the oppressed and the oppressor paradigm, both involve demonization of the other, and both are political tools used in precisely the same manner. It is just Marx’s paradigm pointed in two slightly different directions.

I am not saying that your choice of Charlie Manson was in any way wrong. Indeed, I would say that it causes much more of an emotional response to think of it that way then the pedantic argument that I am making. I admit to a bit of shock when I was your post heading in a way that I wouldn’t have been if it referenced Stalin instead of Manson. Thus I will bow to your choice on this one.

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Benghazi: Who Put The 3 A.M. Phone Call On Hold?

Benghazi was the administration's 3 A.M. phone call. Someone in the administration, perhaps Obama himself or with his knowledge, put that phone call on hold, abandoning our people in Benghazi to their death. Their inaction, no doubt borne of political calculations, is criminal. No need to take my word for it.

Admiral James Lyons, U.S.N., Ret., former commander of the Pacific Fleet, doesn't hold back on the Obama administrations failures in Benghazi or the degree of deception he sees being practiced. Adm. Lyons writes in the Washington Times today, calling for immediate and "full disclosure of what has become the “Benghazi Betrayal and Cover-up:"

Once the attack commenced at 10:00 p.m. Libyan time (4:00 p.m. EST), we know the mission security staff immediately contacted Washington and our embassy in Tripoli. It now appears the White House, Pentagon, State Department, CIA, NDI, JCS and various other military commands monitored the entire battle in real time via frantic phone calls from our compound and video from an overhead drone. The cries for help and support went unanswered.

Panetta's claim that there was insufficient intelligence to launch our military assets in support of the Benghazi mission is just pure, unadulterated bullshit. He had better real time intel than any commander could hope to have going into a combat situation. As to Panetta's claim that Gen. Ham and Gen. Dempsey concurred - I want to hear that with my own ears. That is simply unbelievable. More on Gen. Ham at the bottom of this post.

To continue from Adm. Lyons:

The Obama national security team, including CIA, DNI, State Department and the Pentagon, watched and listened to the assault but did nothing to answer repeated calls for assistance. It has been reported that President Obama met with Vice President Joseph R. Biden and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in the Oval Office, presumably to see what support could be provided. After all, we had very credible military resources within striking distance. At our military base in Sigonella, Sicily, which is slightly over 400 miles from Benghazi, we had a fully equipped Special Forces unit with both transport and jet strike aircraft prepositioned. Certainly this was a force much more capable than the 22-man force from our embassy in Tripoli.

I know those Special Forces personnel were ready to leap at the opportunity. There is no doubt in my mind they would have wiped out the terrorists attackers. Also I have no doubt that Admiral William McRaven, Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, would have had his local commander at Sigonella ready to launch; however, apparently he was countermanded—by whom? We need to know.

I also understand we had a C-130 gunship available, which would have quickly disposed of the terrorist attackers. This attack went on for seven hours. Our fighter jets could have been at our Benghazi mission within an hour. Our Special Forces out of Sigonella could have been there within a few hours. There is not any doubt that action on our part could have saved the lives of our two former Navy SEALs and possibly the ambassador.

Having been in a number of similar situations, I know you have to have the courage to do what’s right and take immediate action. Obviously, that courage was lacking for Benghazi. The safety of your personnel always remains paramount. With all the technology and military capability we had in theater, for our leadership to have deliberately ignored the pleas for assistance is not only in incomprehensible, it is un-American.

To anyone without any military experience, Panetta's claim that there was not sufficient intelligence and that, as a matter of doctrine, we don't put soldier's in harms way without a complete intel picture probably sounds reasonable. I can virtually assure you that to every current and former military officer - on the facts of Benghazi - Panetta's explanation is ludicrous. It is meant to gloss over deliberate inaction that was criminal. As Adm. Lyons concludes:

Somebody high up in the administration made the decision that no assistance (outside our Tripoli embassy) would be provided, and let our people be killed. The person who made that callous decision needs to be brought to light and held accountable. According to a CIA spokesperson, “No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need.” We also need to know whether the director of CIA and the director of National Intelligence were facilitators in the fabricated video lie and the overall cover-up. Their credibility is on the line. A congressional committee should be immediately formed to get the facts out to the American people. Nothing less is acceptable.

Obama was asked directly, at the Town Hall debate, who denied the requests for additional security in Benghazi in the run up to 9-11 and why they denied those requests. Obama did not answer the questions. Obama was asked directly by a reporter last week whether the administration denied requests for help during the Benghazi attack. Obama did not answer the question. Obama is trying to string this out until after the election. This is a scandal far worse than Watergate, and yet Obama is being aided at every turn by a MSM totally vested in his reelection. This really is surreal.

Update: This from Michael Ramirez at IBD captures the situation perfectly:

The first person we need to hear from is Gen. Ham, the AFRICOM commander during the Benghazi attack. Panetta claims that Gen. Ham agreed with him, that there was insufficient intel to send military support to Benghazi. There is a rumor that Gen. Ham was relieved of his command on that night because he was preparing to disobey an order to stand down. We know that Gen. Ham is still listed as the AFRICOM Cdr, but that Panetta announced his replacement two weeks ago after Gen Ham had only been in command for 18 months. Further, we now learn that Gen Ham is no longer even at his post, he has returned to the U.S. and is being processed out of the Army into retirement. It would be very unusual indeed for a Commanding officer to physically leave his post at any time before a change of command ceremony in which both he and the incoming commander would participate. Someone needs to interview Gen. Ham.

(H/T Hot Air)

Update: The White House has just released photos of Obama in the WH Situation Room, looking at a large screen video link and getting an update on Sandy. Instapundit links to various twitter responses, asking where the pic is of Obama in the Situation Room during the Benghazi attack. Where indeed?

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The Real Story Of The Gingrich Ethics Complaints

The below article comes from Byron York at the Washington Examiner.  It is the definitive story of Newt's "disgrace," as Romney is putting it.  It is worth reading in full, for it gives the picture of just how partisan was the attack on Gingrich and just how much the MSM of the time, which then had a total monopoly on the news, hated and demonized Gingrich:

The Romney campaign has been hitting Newt Gingrich hard over the 1990s ethics case that resulted in the former Speaker being reprimanded and paying a $300,000 penalty. Before the Iowa caucuses, Romney and his supporting super PAC did serious damage to Gingrich with an ad attacking Gingrich's ethics past. Since then, Romney has made other ads and web videos focusing on the ethics matter, and at the Republican debate in Tampa Monday night, Romney said Gingrich "had to resign in disgrace."

In private conversations, Romney aides often mention the ethics case as part of their larger argument that Gingrich would be unelectable in a race against President Obama.

Given all the attention to the ethics matter, it's worth asking what actually happened back in 1995, 1996, and 1997. The Gingrich case was extraordinarily complex, intensely partisan, and driven in no small way by a personal vendetta on the part of one of Gingrich's former political opponents. It received saturation coverage in the press; a database search of major media outlets revealed more than 10,000 references to Gingrich's ethics problems during the six months leading to his reprimand. It ended with a special counsel hired by the House Ethics Committee holding Gingrich to an astonishingly strict standard of behavior, after which Gingrich in essence pled guilty to two minor offenses. Afterwards, the case was referred to the Internal Revenue Service, which conducted an exhaustive investigation into the matter. And then, after it was all over and Gingrich was out of office, the IRS concluded that Gingrich did nothing wrong. After all the struggle, Gingrich was exonerated. . . .

At the center of the controversy was a course Gingrich taught from 1993 to 1995 at two small Georgia colleges. The wide-ranging class, called "Renewing American Civilization," was conceived by Gingrich and financed by a tax-exempt organization called the Progress and Freedom Foundation. Gingrich maintained that the course was a legitimate educational enterprise; his critics contended that it had little to do with learning and was in fact a political exercise in which Gingrich abused a tax-exempt foundation to spread his own partisan message.

The Gingrich case was driven in significant part by a man named Ben Jones. An actor and recovered alcoholic who became famous for playing the dim-witted Cooter in the popular 1980s TV show The Dukes of Hazzard, Jones ran for Congress as a Democrat from Georgia in 1988. He won and served two terms. He lost his bid for re-election after re-districting in 1992, and tried again with a run against Gingrich in 1994. Jones lost decisively, and after that, it is fair to say he became obsessed with bringing Gingrich down.

Two days before Election Day 1994, with defeat in sight, Jones hand-delivered a complaint to the House ethics committee (the complaint was printed on "Ben Jones for Congress" stationery). Jones asked the committee to investigate the college course, alleging that Gingrich "fabricated a 'college course' intended, in fact, to meet certain political, not educational, objectives." Three weeks later, Jones sent the committee 450 pages of supporting documents obtained through the Georgia Open Records Act.

That was the beginning of the investigation. Stunned by their loss of control of the House -- a loss engineered by Gingrich -- House Democrats began pushing a variety of ethics complaints against the new Speaker. Jones' complaint was just what they were looking for.

There's no doubt the complaint was rooted in the intense personal animus Jones felt toward Gingrich. In 1995, I sat down with Jones for a talk about Gingrich, and without provocation, Jones simply went off on the Speaker. . . .

Jones and his partner in the Gingrich crusade, Democratic Rep. David Bonior -- they had been basketball buddies in the House gym -- pushed the case ceaselessly. Under public pressure, the Ethics Committee -- made up of equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats -- took up the case and hired an outside counsel, Washington lawyer James Cole, to conduct the investigation.

Cole developed a theory of the case in which Gingrich, looking for a way to spread his political views, came up with the idea of creating a college course and then devised a way to use a tax-exempt foundation to pay the bills. "The idea to develop the message and disseminate it for partisan political use came first," Cole told the Ethics Committee. "The use of the [the Progress and Freedom Foundation] came second as a source of funding." Thus, Cole concluded, the course was "motivated, at least in part, by political goals." Cole argued that even a hint of a political motive, was enough to taint the tax-exempt project, "regardless of the number or importance of truly exempt purposes that are present."

Cole did not argue that the case was not educational. It plainly was. But Cole suggested that the standard for determining wrongdoing was whether any unclean intent lurked in the heart of the creator of the course, even if it was unquestionably educational.

Meanwhile, Democrats kept pushing to raise the stakes against Gingrich. "Anyone who has engaged in seven years of tax fraud to further his own personal and political benefits is not deserving of the speakership," Bonior said just before Christmas 1996. "Mr. Gingrich has engaged in a pattern of tax fraud, lies, and cover-ups in paving his road to the second highest office in the land…I would expect the Justice Department, the FBI, a grand jury, and other appropriate entities to investigate."

With the charges against Gingrich megaphoned in the press, Gingrich and Republicans were under intense pressure to end the ordeal. In January, 1997, Gingrich agreed to make a limited confession of wrongdoing in which he pleaded guilty to the previously unknown offense of failing to seek sufficiently detailed advice from a tax lawyer before proceeding with the course. (Gingrich had in fact sought advice from two such lawyers in relation to the course.) Gingrich also admitted that he had provided "inaccurate, incomplete, and unreliable" information to Ethics Committee investigators. That "inaccurate" information was Gingrich's contention that the course was not political -- a claim Cole and the committee did not accept, but the IRS later would.

In return for those admissions, the House reprimanded Gingrich and levied an unprecedented $300,000 fine. The size of the penalty was not so much about the misdeed itself but the fact that the Speaker was involved in it.

Why did Gingrich admit wrongdoing? "The atmosphere at the time was so rancorous, partisan, and personal that everyone, including Newt, was desperately seeking a way to end the whole thing," Gingrich attorney Jan Baran told me in 1999. "He was admitting to whatever he could to get the case over with."

It was a huge victory for Democrats. They had deeply wounded the Speaker. But they hadn't brought him down. So, as Bonior suggested, they sought to push law enforcement to begin a criminal investigation of Gingrich.

Nothing happened with the Justice Department and the FBI, but the IRS began an investigation that would stretch over three years. Unlike many in Congress -- and journalists, too -- IRS investigators obtained tapes and transcripts of each session during the two years the course was taught at Kennesaw State College in Georgia, as well as videotapes of the third year of the course, taught at nearby Reinhardt College. IRS officials examined every word Gingrich spoke in every class; before investigating the financing and administration of the course, they first sought to determine whether it was in fact educational and whether it served to the political benefit of Gingrich, his political organization, GOPAC, or the Republican Party as a whole. They then carefully examined the role of the Progress and Freedom Foundation and how it related to Gingrich's political network.

In the end, in 1999, the IRS released a densely written, highly detailed 74-page report. The course was, in fact, educational, the IRS said. "The overwhelming number of positions advocated in the course were very broad in nature and often more applicable to individual behavior or behavioral changes in society as a whole than to any 'political' action," investigators wrote. "For example, the lecture on quality was much more directly applicable to individual behavior than political action and would be difficult to attempt to categorize in political terms. Another example is the lecture on personal strength where again the focus was on individual behavior. In fact, this lecture placed some focus on the personal strength of individual Democrats who likely would not agree with Mr. Gingrich on his political views expressed in forums outside his Renewing American Civilization course teaching. Even in the lectures that had a partial focus on broadly defined changes in political activity, such as less government and government regulation, there was also a strong emphasis on changes in personal behavior and non-political changes in society as a whole."

The IRS also checked out the evaluations written by students who completed the course. The overwhelming majority of students, according to the report, believed that Gingrich knew his material, was an interesting speaker, and was open to alternate points of view. None seemed to perceive a particular political message. "Most students," the IRS noted, "said that they would apply the course material to improve their own lives in such areas as family, friendships, career, and citizenship."

The IRS concluded the course simply was not political. "The central problem in arguing that the Progress and Freedom Foundation provided more than incidental private benefit to Mr. Gingrich, GOPAC, and other Republican entities," the IRS wrote, "was that the content of the 'Renewing American Civilization' course was educational...and not biased toward any of those who were supposed to be benefited."

The bottom line: Gingrich acted properly and violated no laws. There was no tax fraud scheme. Of course, by that time, Gingrich was out of office, widely presumed to be guilty of something, and his career in politics was (seemingly) over.

Back in January 1997, the day after Cole presented his damning report to the Ethics Committee, the Washington Post's front-page banner headline was "Gingrich Actions 'Intentional' or 'Reckless'; Counsel Concludes That Speaker's Course Funding Was 'Clear Violation' of Tax Laws." That same day, the New York Times ran eleven stories on the Gingrich matter, four of them on the front page (one inside story was headlined, "Report Describes How Gingrich Used Taxpayers' Money for Partisan Politics"). On television, Dan Rather began the CBS Evening News by telling viewers that "only now is the evidence of Newt Gingrich's ethics violations and tax problems being disclosed in detail."

The story was much different when Gingrich was exonerated. The Washington Post ran a brief story on page five. The Times ran an equally brief story on page 23. And the evening newscasts of CBS, NBC, and ABC -- which together had devoted hours of coverage to the question of Gingrich's ethics -- did not report the story at all. Not a word. . . . .

All of which leads to the question, just how ethical is Romney's attack on Gingrich?

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Newt News

Rush on an important consideration in picking the Republican nominee for President.



It bears repeating that in assessing Newt and, particularly his performance as Speaker of the House, one needs to keep at the forefront of their mind the context of the times.  In the mid-90's, the left wing MSM wholly controlled the media and Newt was not merely the left's mortal enemy, but he was demonized to the to a degree not seen again until the emergence of Sarah Palin.  Indeed, it is notable that, in a recent segment of Hardball, Chris Matthews explicitly referred to Gingrich as "evil."  That should give you a feel for just how out-of-control the 90's MSM were in their hatred of Gingrich.

Moreover, to the extent that members of his own party turned on Gingrich at the end, I think it more than likely that they were responding to the unrelenting attacks on Gingrich coupled with the ambition of a few in the party to wrest control from him.  In particular, ask yourself if the Republican party was better served by Gingrich or the disaster that was Tom Delay or the non-entity that was Denny Hastert.

At any rate, I will start keeping a running tally on this blog of Newt-mainia, both pro and con.  It is actually befitting the gravity of this upcoming election that there is so much interest and passion about the Republican nomination.  It is impossible to to over-estimate what is at stake.  Thus it is all the more important to dig through the tons of BS being spewed to get to the nuggets of truth at the bottom.

  

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Enhanced Interrogation & The Death Of Bin Laden

The fact that we found bin Laden has had an unfortunate consequence for the left - it has shined a spotlight on the fact that Obama has virtually gutted our most important tool in the war on terror - the ability to gain intelligence by interrogating high level terrorists. The unassailable fact is that the seeds that allowed us to finally locate bin Laden arose out of interrogations of high level detainees who had been subject to the CIA's Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. Probably no one does a better job of laying this out than Ace at Ace of Spades:

1. 2003: Enhanced Interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad Results in the Nom De Guerre of bin Ladin's Courier. . . .

2. 2004: Enhanced Interrogation of al-Qahtani Confirms the Nom De Geure of bin Ladin's Courier. . . .

3. 2006 (?): Enhanced Interrogation of an Al Qaeda Captured in Iraq, Ghul, Produces the Real Name of the Courier. . . .

4. 2006-2009: NSA Begins Furiously Intercepting Any And All Communications Made By Anyone "al-Kuwaiti" Has Ever Known. . . .

5. Late 2010 (?): al-Kuwaiti Places a Very Ill-Advised Phone Call [that gives away his location]. . . .

6. 2011: Surveying Abbottabad, We Grow Confident We've Found Bin Ladin's Hideout. . . .

Do read the whole post as it both goes into detail while responding to the NYT and others who are busy indeed trying to pretend that enhanced interrogation played no or minimal role in finding bin Laden. (Likewise is this post from Ace on the same topic.)

Honestly, watching the left trying to spin this is like watching small children with their fingers in their ears stamping their feet in a tantrum while they scream: "Enhanced Interrogation is TORTURE, it is EVIL, and it had NO BEARING on our ability to find bin Laden." It would be merely pathetic were it not that our national security is very much at issue.

As a threshold matter, it bears repeating ad infinitum that, despite the labeling by the left, none of the CIA enhanced interrogation techniques - including waterboarding - rose to the level of "torture" as defined by the UN Convention Against Torture and U.S. law. It is also worth a reminder just how Obama and the left have gone about completely gutting our ability to interrogate high level al Qaeda detainees. As I wrote in a post last year:

Obama superimposed his warped morality on the mosaic of our national security. Obama baldly – and wrongly - slapped a label of “torture” on waterboarding and all the techniques of enhanced interrogation. In his effort to demonize the right and establish himself as the nation's Arbiter of Morality In Chief, he began to war on the CIA.

He allowed a witch hunt to go forward against the Office of Legal Council (OLC) attorneys who authored legal opinions responsive to questions asked by the CIA. The subject of those opinions was the legality of certain interrogation techniques. Obama thus ensured that, perhaps for decades to come, we will have risk averse intelligence agencies and that no OLC attorney in their right mind will ever again give legal approval to anything remotely controversial, regardless of what the law and precedent may be.

Obama's next step, in April [2010], was his decision to declassify those portions of the OLC opinions that suited his purpose of attacking the Bush regime. But Obama withheld – and does so even to this day – fully unredacted copies of memos showing that the enhanced interrogation techniques were at the heart of our success in the war against terror during the Bush years.

Assuming that a recent Rasmussen poll regarding U.S. attitudes towards waterboarding and interrogation of the undiebomber is accurate, Obama has clearly failed to convince the nation that his morality should trump his duty to use all legal means to see to the safety of Americans. Yet Obama, ever the ideologue, in his most recent speech, chastised his critics for their moral failings in disagreeing with him.

Obama further damaged the standing and morale of the CIA when, after Nancy Pelosi called the CIA liars over the substance of her briefings on waterboarding, Obama remained silent and allowed the charges to stand. By all accounts, morale at the CIA is at its nadir.

Not satisfied with merely ending the “waterboarding,” Obama went far beyond that. Almost as soon as he took office, Obama not only tossed out all of the techniques of “enhanced interrogation used by the CIA, he limited future interrogations to those 19 techniques used in the Army Field Manual. But the reason enhanced interrogation techniques were developed in the first place was because those techniques set out in the field manual, while they had historically yielded results in over 90% of interrogations since the WWII, proved near worthless when it came to interrogating the religiously motivated fighters of al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Ultimately, Obama took the step of taking the CIA out of the interrogation business. As of August, 2009, all high level interrogations were solely to be carried out by a team controlled by the FBI and under direct White House oversight.

The death of bin Laden should in fact bring the issue of interrogation and enhanced interrogation front and center. Since Obama took office, we have not interrogated a single high level al Qaeda operative. Obama would much rather kill them than have to deal with interrogating them. Nothing proves that more than raid on the bin Laden compound, where only one of the four men, all al Qaeda operatives, was armed and fired on the SEALS. Nonetheless, all four men on the compound were killed. Why were none, including bin Laden and his wife, captured? They could have been captured easily we now know. Unfortunately, by doing otherwise, we cost the U.S. the single greatest intelligence find we could possibly ever have grasped. It is a travesty.

We can either have the argument about enhanced interrogation now, or we can have it later, following the next major successful terrorist attack from al Qaeda or its clones. To date, the two major attacks, the Times Square Bomber and the Undiebomber, were thwarted not by the Obama administration acting on intelligence, but rather by some combination of the grace of God or terrorist incompetence. The only thing of which we can be sure is that more similar attempts will be made. Nonetheless, Obama and the left hope to put the argument off until after the 2012 election, irrespective of what that means for our national security.

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Palin & A Surreal MSM Narrative

For the past several days, the right have been savaged in the media with what is accurately described as a blood libel - a false assertion that one is responsible for murder. And in particular, no one on the right has been so savaged as Sarah Palin. So if anyone has a right to respond and push back against this morally bankrupt attempt by the left to delegitimize and silence conservative speech in America, it is and was Sarah Palin.

And she did so yesterday morning. After making a statement of condolences for the dead and injured, Palin stated that speech by the right was not responsible for mass murder in Arizona and that, "within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel."

This has lit a fire under the already energized MSM hacks:

ABC opined that "instead of trying to get beyond this controversy, Palin has put herself back in the middle of it" and that "Sarah Palin, once again, has found a way to become part of the story." Could those statements be anymore surreal. Palin didn't insert herself into the middle of the story, nor did she by her acts "become part of the story." All of that was forced on her by a rabid, morally bankrupt left-wing media. ABC is turning this on its head with a none too veiled criticism of her for having the temerity of defending herself.

CBS's treatment was by far and away the most outrageous, with Don Farber, EDITOR IN CHIEF of CBS News, writing a libelous screed that ends with him accusing Palin of playing the "victim card." Faber is apparently signalling his desire to take over at MSNBC if a slot opens up.

Farber starts by stipulating that which we now know, that Loughner was insane and was not motivated by Sarah Palin or anyone else on the right to commit murder. Then Farber brushes it off as meaningless - in other words, asking the reader not to confuse the issue by worrying about the facts:

Regardless of what motivated Loughner to pull the trigger, the tragedy in Tucson has put the tone of political discourse, and those who tend to inflame more than inform, in the spotlight."

After this non-sequitur, Faber focuses fully on the utterly discredited meme that Palin's use of crosshairs on a campaign map has, in and of itself, taken political discourse in America to a heretofore unseen level of militancy, concluding:

But Palin doesn't seem to think that there are any negative consequences associated with her campaign words and images."

Precisely what those consequences are, Faber never says, but he does his level best to imply that one of those consequences was Loughner's mass murder. Seizing on her defense, that the left is involved in a blood libel against her and the right, Faber states:

Blood libel is the false accusation, perhaps originating in the 12th century, that Jews murder children to use their blood for religious rituals and holidays. Palin appears to be appropriating the term to indicate that she is a victim, as a result of some groups and individuals claiming that her political rhetoric contributed to the actions of the deranged, lone gunman.

But the real victims are Rep. Giffords and the others who were wounded or killed, not Palin, . . .

Could Faber be more scurrilous, insinuating both that Palin has not been tarred with the tsunami of accusations against her and that she is trying to callously make of herself a victim on par with those shot and wounded. This is Pravda territory. That this hyper-partisan, intellectually dishonest joker is the senior editor for CBS News should indeed give everyone pause.

NBC, for its part, had Anderea Mitchell declare Palin "ignorant" for using the term "blood libel," as have many others. Why it is "ignorant" Mitchell does not explain. But indeed, the first person to call the acts of the left concerning this mass murder a "blood libel" was no one less than Robert Avrech, the deeply religious Jewish award winning screen writer, on his blog, Seraphic Secret. Moreover, famed Jewish lawyer and Harvard Law Prof. Alan Dershowitz, when asked for an opinion, stated that he found Palin's use of the phrase "blood libel" wholly appropriate in this context.

And in a sign, for those who believed the President's oh so careful phrasing in his speech last night was telling those on the left to stop the blood libel, the NYT apparently interpreted his speech differently, writing today:

The president’s words were an important contrast to the ugliness that continues to swirl in some parts of the country. The accusation by Sarah Palin that “journalists and pundits” had committed a “blood libel” when they raised questions about overheated rhetoric was especially disturbing, given the grave meaning of that phrase in the history of the Jewish people.

Note what the NYT is doing here, turning reality on its head. Seraphic Secret spoke to this well worn technique of the left the other day, preemptively accusing one's opponent of committing the sins of which the accuser is guilty. These people are deeply unethical. And Politico's take on this is no better than the NYT.

And in a final exclamation point to this surreal media feeding frenzy, there was this from ABC News this morning:

This morning on “Good Morning America,” ABC’s Ashleigh Banfield sat down with Zach Osler, a high school friend of Jared Loughner, the suspect in the Tucson massacre.

Osler says his friend wasn’t shooting at people, “he was shooting at the world.” Regarding the high-pitched talk radio and cable news political rhetoric, Osler says his friend didn’t even watch the news.

He did not watch TV. He disliked the news. He didn’t listen to political radio. He didn’t take sides. He wasn’t on the left. He wasn’t on the right.

Facts are fickle things for the left.

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More On Jared Loughner's Slaughter In Arizona & Leftwing Media Hypocrisy

Two exceptional essays by Byron York and Ed Morissey on the mass murder by Jared Loughner and the media / left's rush to tie this act to Sarah Palin and the Tea Party. Byron York compares this rush to the media / left's actions after the Ft. Hood shooting by Nidal Hassan. Morissey builds on that, pointing to CNN's scurrilous reporting, and points to some words used by the left - the very tip of the iceberg - during the last campaign by Obama and the DNC concerning politics and bullseye's on targets for Democratic pickup.

This from Byron York:

On November 5, 2009, Maj. Nidal Hasan opened fire at a troop readiness center in Ft. Hood, Texas, killing 13 people. Within hours of the killings, the world knew that Hasan reportedly shouted "Allahu Akbar!" before he began shooting, visited websites associated with Islamist violence, wrote Internet postings justifying Muslim suicide bombings, considered U.S. forces his enemy, opposed American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as wars on Islam, and told a neighbor shortly before the shootings that he was going "to do good work for God." There was ample evidence, in other words, that the Ft. Hood attack was an act of Islamist violence.

Nevertheless, public officials, journalists, and commentators were quick to caution that the public should not "jump to conclusions" about Hasan's motive. CNN, in particular, became a forum for repeated warnings that the subject should be discussed with particular care.

"The important thing is for everyone not to jump to conclusions," said retired Gen. Wesley Clark on CNN the night of the shootings.

"We cannot jump to conclusions," said CNN's Jane Velez-Mitchell that same evening. "We have to make sure that we do not jump to any conclusions whatsoever."

"I'm on Pentagon chat room," said former CIA operative Robert Baer on CNN, also the night of the shooting. "Right now, there's messages going back and forth, saying do not jump to the conclusion this had anything to do with Islam."

Actually, that was responsible reporting at the time, at least until it became conclusively shown that Nidal in fact was motivated by Salafi Islam to carry out his mass murder. But as York goes on to discuss, in the very hours after this murder, with no evidence initially and then with the mounting evidence to the contrary, the left wing generally, and the left wing media in particular, have been falling all over themselves to tie this to Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, and the rise in "hate speech" that the left wants everyone to believe is a phenomena unique to the past two years.

Ed Morrisey points out the massive hypocrisy of CNN to speculate that Palin and the Tea Party were responsible in any way for this mass murder and adds:

. . . as has been repeatedly pointed out in the hours since, Democrats have also used crosshairs and bulls-eye imagery in their own political communications, including one in Arizona “targeting” J. D Hayworth of Arizona. As far as the “reload” comment, it was less than three years ago that Barack Obama himself talked about responding to political opponents with a gun analogy:

Mobster wisdom tells us never to bring a knife to a gun fight. But what does political wisdom say about bringing a gun to a knife fight?

That’s exactly what Barack Obama said he would do to counter Republican attacks

“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said at a Philadelphia fundraiser Friday night. “Because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”

The comment drew some laughs and applause. But it also struck a chord with his Republican rival. John McCain’s campaign immediately accused the Democratic candidate of playing the politics of fear. They also mentioned that Obama said he would use a gun that would be illegal under Obama’s plans to cut down on illegal firearms.

Getting hysterical about the use of war terminology in politics is about as hypocritical as one can possibly get, as Howard Kurtz explained yesterday, especially for journalists covering politics . . .

To add a few thoughts, as to the Tea Party at least, the left would like us to believe that a determination to stop deficit spending, to lower taxes, and an inchoate desire to return to the Constitution at the time of the founding somehow is an invitation to violence. To the contrary, it is a call for a return to law.

The same cannot be said of at least a portion of the violent left wing rhetoric that has been with us since the days of Vietnam. Indeed, that was a world that gave us The Weathermen and many others who called for violence and who, in fact, did commit politically motivated violence, murder and mayhem. And to pretend violent rhetoric is an artifact of the right is ridiculous. The left's violent rhetoric was raised to an art form during the Bush years and, indeed, is still with us.





And on a closely related issue, where is the media outrage when we have seen, over the past few years, vile reverse racism, all of it accepted without comment by the left. Seemingly at the drop of a hat, the left calls virtualy anything they don't like "racism," wholly irrespective of racial animus. These people in fact have motivated mass murders, including the sniper murders by John Allen Mohammed and the murders by Omar Thorton, who last year at a distributorship in Connecticut, killed eight of his co-workers.




Silence.

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Losing The MESSAGING WAR Yet Again - This Time On Obamacare

When will our Congresscritters on the right figure out that their messaging is absolutely broken. They may be on the side of the angels, but as long as the left dominates the MSM, they have to work three times harder to get their message out.

Specifically what I am referring to was the left's gambit of having the CBO send a letter on day one of the 112th Congress asserting that repeal of the monstrosity of Obamacare would add $270 billion to the deficit.

Here is reality:

Ryan said this afternoon at the National Press Club that the only reason a Congressional Budget Office letter claims the national health care law will reduce the deficit--i.e. bring in more revenue through tax hikes and Medicare cuts than it spends on Obamacare--is because "the books have been severely cooked"--not by the CBO but by the Democrats who wrote the bill.

"CBO has to score what you put in front of them," Ryan explained. "And if you put a bill in front of them that ignores the discretionary cost of the $115 billion you need to spend to run this new Obamacare program, that double counts the Medicare savings, that double counts the CLASS Act revenue, that double counts the Social Security revenue, that does not count the "Doc Fix"--you add all that stuff up, net it out, we're talking about a $701 billion hole--deficit."

"So if you actually do real accounting, get away the smoke-and-mirrors, get away the budget gimmicks, this thing is a huge deficit-increaser. . . .

That's great. But if the general public doesn't hear it, it is useless. Every Republican in Congress should be jumping up and down on camera calling the left lying sob's for having CBO write this piece of fantasy and trying to sell it to the American people. Otherwise, what will happen is what I just watched a few minutes ago - on Studio B no less - where the story was Republicans pusshing ahead with an attempt to repeal Obamacare even though the CBO will add $270 billion to the deficit. End of story. Absolutely f*** incompetent idiots.

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The MSM - America's Fifth Column Laid Bare

Just how dysfunctional is the mainstream media (MSM)? Today we have the answer to that question in the left-wing MSM's own words. They are a fifth column, conspiring to effect political change by twisting the news, burying stories, and attacking the right with baseless charges of racism, sexism, etc..

The right has known this for years. except that none of it has been proven by admissions of these left wing journalists. But today, those charges are given substance in an expose by Johnathan Strong in the Daily Caller. Someone leaked at least a portion of Journolist e-mails to Strong - those that occurred during the time frame that tapes of Rev. Jerimiah Wright surfaced. Journolist, for those of you that have lived in a cave for the past several months or been receiving your news only from the MSM, was Ezra Klein's invitation only internet site for left wing reporters, pundits and academics.

Obama's association with Rev. Wright for 20 years was a huge story that flared on Fox then died in the left wing press. It went directly to issues of Obama's honesty and character. Johnathan Strong today in the Daily Caller exposes how many in the left wing media conspired to kill the story and delegitimize those on the right who followed up on the story. You really need to read the entire article to understand the full extent of coordinated efforts by the Journolist members to kill the Wright story. That said, several points made plain in the story deserve particular attention.

One is how these members of the media plotted to use baseless charges of racism against the right in order to deflect attention away from Wright and end any debate on the topic:

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.” . . .

[Ackerman would later write] . . . What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.

Using baseless charges of racism to delegitimize opponents of the left wing's agenda and shut down debate has for decades been an indispensable tactic for the left. But when the journalists who are supposed to objectively inform us of the news practice the same tactic, it shows a complete lack of ethics and intellecutal honesty. And on a related note, I sincerely hope that someone with an ounce of honor provides the Journolist correspondence relating to the rise of the Tea Party movement and the outrageous - and at least partially effective - efforts to smear the movement as racist, violent and as an outgrowth of extreme right wing militias. There is no doubt in my mind that there has been a coordinated effort by members of the MSM to do precisely that.

Most of the communications on Journolist dealt with coordinating efforts to bury the Wright story. For instance, the Daily Caller reports that "Chris Hayes of the Nation posted on April 29, 2008, urging his colleagues to ignore Wright. Hayes directed his message to 'particularly those in the ostensible mainstream media' who were members of the list":

Hayes urged his colleagues – especially the straight news reporters who were charged with covering the campaign in a neutral way – to bury the Wright scandal. “I’m not saying we should all rush en masse to defend Wright. If you don’t think he’s worthy of defense, don’t defend him! What I’m saying is that there is no earthly reason to use our various platforms to discuss what about Wright we find objectionable,” Hayes said.

One journalist who responded to Hayes pointed out, perhaps unintentionally, the utter hypocrisy of the left's defense of their favored politicians:

Katha Pollitt – Hayes’s colleague at the Nation – didn’t disagree on principle, though she did sound weary of the propaganda. “I hear you. but I am really tired of defending the indefensible. The people who attacked Clinton on Monica were prissy and ridiculous, but let me tell you it was no fun, as a feminist and a woman, waving aside as politically irrelevant and part of the vast rightwing conspiracy Paula, Monica, Kathleen, Juanita,” Pollitt said.

No kidding? At any rate, it was left to Spencer Ackerman both to acknowledge the fact that what these Journolist members were doing was unethical - but in his mind, justified. Responding to Ms. Pollitt, Ackerman wrote:

“Part of me doesn’t like this shit either,” agreed Spencer Ackerman, then of the Washington Independent. “But what I like less is being governed by racists and warmongers and criminals.”

So, for the left wing media, the ends - electing their favored politician - justifies a complete abdication of journalistic ethics and a descent into the worst kinds of hypocrisy and outrageous attacks. They truly are a fifth column in America today.

This is perhaps the most important story to be reported in years since it goes to the very trustworthiness of a MSM that asks the nation to trust the honesty and objectivity of their reporting. A story such as this should be making the biggest of headlines. Yet, as one would expect, the MSM has buried this story in a vault miles below ground. For instance, the web-site Memorandum carries the major stories of the day and links to sites, including MSM sites, that have weighed in on the story. Here is the Memorandum entry for the Daily Caller's story as of 12:15 today:

Jonathan Strong / The Daily Caller: It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama's political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. . . .

Discussion: Politics Daily, Another Black Conservative, Left Coast Rebel, Hit & Run, Instapundit, Sweetness & Light, Right Wing News, Stop The ACLU, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, Weasel Zippers, theblogprof, Hot Air, Breitbart.tv, Mediaite, Althouse, NewsBusters.org, NewsReal Blog, Moe Lane, The Corner on National Review, Real Clear Politics, sisu, Gateway Pundit, Big Journalism, Say Anything, Pajamas Media, The Future of Capitalism, The Right Scoop and JustOneMinute

Who don't you see there? How about the Washington Post, the New York Times, ABC News, and NBC News among others. Bastards.

Let's give the final word on this to Andrew Breitbart:

Talk radio and the Internet have allowed outsiders the ability to challenge a multiple generational shift from journalism being about the story, to journalism being crafted toward a partisan end. From Newsweek killing the Lewinsky story to the Swift Boat veterans (until the undermedia pressure got too big) to the Dan Rather implosion to the open attempt to keep the Al Gore masseuse story under wraps to the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter debacle to the Van Jones admission of missing the story to the networks ignoring the ACORN video footage to the media playing up trumped up charges of racism in the Tea Party — while ignoring exculpatory evidence — to the mother of all media-as-political weaponry: the non-vetting of candidate Obama, the mainstream media has shown that it is in an ideological death spiral. And the ground is right here.

American journalism died a long time ago; today Tucker Carlson got around to running the obituary. What The Daily Caller has unearthed proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that most media organizations are either complicit by participation in the treachery that is Journolist, or are guilty of sitting back and watching Alinsky warfare being waged against all that challenged the progressive orthodoxy. The scandal predictably involves journalists posing as professors posing as experts. But dressed down they are nothing but street thugs. They deserve the deepest levels of public consternation. We must demand that they do.

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The NYT Finally Addresses The Obama Administration - GM Fraud

I posted here on the fraud being jointly perpetrated by GM and the White House as regards GM early repayment of its government loan. Touted by both GM and the White House as proof of GM's profitability and responsibility, they failed to note that the repayment was accomplished using TARP funds. The Bush administration would have been roasted to a smoking husk over this in the MSM had his administration engaged in such a blatant fraud. Nonetheless, as with most things involving the left, it has been virtually ignored by the left. Today, weeks after the story broke, the NYT has posted an article addressing the fraud:

. . . Truth seekers the nation over . . . are indebted to Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, who in recent days uncovered what he called a government-enabled “TARP money shuffle.” It relates to General Motors, which on April 21 paid the balance of its $6.7 billion loan under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

G.M. trumpeted its escape from the program as evidence that it had turned the corner in its operations. “G.M. is able to repay the taxpayers in full, with interest, ahead of schedule, because more customers are buying vehicles like the Chevrolet Malibu and Buick LaCrosse,” boasted Edward E. Whitacre Jr., its chief executive.

G.M. also crowed about its loan repayment in a national television ad and the United States Treasury also marked the moment with a press release: “We are encouraged that G.M. has repaid its debt well ahead of schedule and confident that the company is on a strong path to viability,” said Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary.

Taxpayers are naturally eager for news about bailout repayments. But what neither G.M. nor the Treasury disclosed was that the company simply used other funds held by the Treasury to pay off its original loan.

Neil M. Barofsky, the inspector general overseeing the troubled asset program, revealed this detail when he spoke before the Senate Finance Committee on April 20.

“So it’s good news in that they’re reducing their debt,” Mr. Barofsky said of G.M. But he went on to note that G.M. was using other taxpayer money to make the loan repayment, according to the transcript of his testimony.

Armed with this information, Mr. Grassley fired off a letter to Mr. Geithner on April 22, asking for details of the transaction. “I am concerned ... that this announcement is not what it seems,” he wrote. “In fact, it appears to be nothing more than an elaborate TARP money shuffle.”

Mr. Grassley heard back from the Treasury last Tuesday. Herbert M. Allison Jr., assistant secretary for financial stability, confirmed that the money G.M. used to repay its bailout loan had come from a taxpayer-financed escrow account held for the automaker at the Treasury.

Emphasizing that the cash in the account was “the property of G.M.,” Mr. Allison said that the department had approved the company’s use of the money to retire the original debt because it was “consistent with Treasury’s goal of recovering funds for the taxpayer and exiting TARP investments as soon as practicable.”

It’s certainly understandable that G.M. would want to spin its repayment as proof of improving operations. But Mr. Grassley said he was troubled that the Treasury went along with the public relations campaign and didn’t spell out how the loan was retired.

“The public would know nothing about the TARP escrow money being the source of the supposed repayment from simply watching G.M.’s TV commercials or reading Treasury’s press release,” Mr. Grassley said in a speech on the Senate floor last Wednesday, saying that “many billions” of federal dollars remained invested in G.M.

“Much of it will never be repaid,” Mr. Grassley added. “The Congressional Budget Office estimates that taxpayers will lose around $30 billion on G.M.”

(Taxpayers still own $2.1 billion in preferred stock of G.M. and almost 61 percent of its common equity.) . . .

Of course, there is much joy in Mudville when a recipient of government aid repays its obligations. And it is also natural that the administration is keenly interested in reassuring taxpayers that losses on their bailout billions will be smaller than expected. Still, employing spin and selective disclosure is no way to raise taxpayers’ trust in our nation’s leadership. . . .

I pointed out in my initial post that this fraud and collusion likely fell afoul of securities regulations. And today, Hot Air and Powerline conclude similarly. This is more than a bad act - it is a potentialy criminal scandal. It is certainly a scandal deserving of far more than a buried article in the business section of the NYT, though that is at least a small start.

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"These Are My People . . . Americans"

The gap between the MSM and race baiting industry and reality is a wide one indeed. Kathy Kelly interviews a tea party protester in the video below.



(H/T Hot Air)

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And The Prize For Most Inane MSM Article Of The Day Goes To . . .

. . . The Boston Herald for trying to tie their eupohoric victory lap over the passing of Obamacare with a supposed right wing backlash to the election of Scott Brown to the Kennedy's ancestral Senate seat, since he didn't kill Obamacare. These left wing authors show the same degree of grace and intellectual honesty in victory that the left displays at all other times. And in this case, the lefties at the Herald don't simply stretch logic, they murder it:

Republicans feeling blue as Scott Brown win backfires
By Jessica Van Sack and Hillary Chabot

Republican folk hero Sen. Scott Brown is being taunted by triumphant Democrats - and slammed by irked conservatives - after the historic health-care bill he was elected to kill was signed into law by President Obama yesterday.

“If he were a milk carton, he would be expired,” said Massachusetts Democratic Party chairman John Walsh.

Brown’s backers from the insurgent Tea Party movement want to know if they’ve been had. . . .

Given that Brown never had a chance to vote on the healthcare bill being rammed down our throat, why would - or could - anyone possibly make the leap in logic to lay the blame for that on Scott Brown. But Brown is the 41st vote - and the bottom line is that the left's ability to radically remake our country beyond the insanity of Obamacare is now very much at issue.

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Delegitimizing Obamacare Protests

It seems that ugly crowd of protestors harassing members of Congress in the Capitol complex this afternoon got even uglier than we thought. As noted earlier, in addition to menacing behavior toward multiple members of Congress, one protestor called Rep. Barney Frank a "faggot", a taunt greeted by laughter from fellow protestors.

We're now getting reports that other protestors yelled "nigger" at Rep. John Lewis (D-GA).

Talking Points Memo, True Colors (Even Worse Than We Thought), 20 March 2010

Yesterday, estimates are that 30,000 to 40,000 people turned out in Washington to protest the coming vote on Obamacare. NRO has a good first hand account of the rally with numerous photos:

The rally earlier today on the West Lawn in opposition to the health-care legislation before Congress had all the fingerprints of a somewhat organic celebration of democracy. There was a pretty focused message, but mostly displayed on handwritten signs . . .

As I walked around, if it weren't for the congressmen and some right-wing organization types speaking, one might think people had gathered for an Independence Day celebration. There were smiles and babies and families and goodwill. Now and again I would run into some lone guy responding to a speaker with "then we'll dismantle the government." But that guy also got weird looks — and not just from me. I was struck by how few mass-produced signs there were. Many groups might try to take credit for the rally, but concerned Americans are responsible for it. . . .

Apparently, the worst that the NRO author saw from this mass of people - peaceably assembled to petition the Government for a redress of grievances - was repeated use of the F-word. Freedom.

But the meme of the day among the left wing MSM was not the protests - and certainly not the substance of the protesters' complaints - but allegations that the mob was angry, ugly, and motivated by racism and homophobia. As ABC's John Muir announced breathlessly on World News Tonight: “Protesters against the plan gathered on the streets of the capital where late today we learned words shouted turned very ugly, reports of racial and homophobic slurs, one protester actually spitting on a Congressman.”

Is it possible that this actually happened? Perhaps. And indeed, it is human nature that when emotions run very high, as they do at the moment, people are more inclined to say hateful things. But one, does that mean it actually happened, and two, is that the way the protests involving tens of thousands of people should have been reported? The answer to the second question is obviously not - unless the purpose was to delegitimize the opposition to Obamacare and the remaking of our country into a socialist nation.

As to the fist question. let's see any proof at all. I have zero trust in the veracity of the left wing members of Congress nor the MSM. Thus, I awaited the video on youtube of the angry mob, or an audio tape from MSM. Yet, surprisingly, none was forthcoming. One would think that with every MSM network out in force, we would have gotten some of this on Youtube or even some first hand accounts from the reporters. Nope. None. Nada. Zip. Yet these allegations were used by the left and the MSM to define the protests.

Think Progress reports on one sign at the protests: "If Brown can't stop healthcare, Browning can" - that of course being a reference to the gun manufacturer. We are a tremendously long ways away from blood on the streets at this point. But as the sign indicates, we are not so far away that it is unthinkable. As the left dreams up more ways to get around our Constitution and our democratic process, to dillute the vote, to force fundamental social changes upon our country outside of the ballot box, to criminalize political differences, and to demonize, delegitimize and silence their opposition with the help of a compliant MSM rather than engage in debate, then no, it is not unthinkable. The day the majority of the people in this country - and it should be noted that the vast majority self-identify as conservative - feel that their vote no longer is fully counted and their voice is silenced, then we will be at a tipping point - one our Constitution was designed to prevent.

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Yes, Virginia, There Are Stupid Questions

Whoever said that there are no such thing as stupid questions, only stupid answers - they were 180 degrees of wrong. There are some questions whose answers are so obvious that they leave one wondering how the person asking it is able to breathe without regular reminders. There are some questions that, after being asked, leave one with the firm impression that the person asking it is likely mystified by the daily rising and setting of the sun. The stupid - it really does burn.

So it is today from the Michael Calderone at the Politico where he asks Does the press really vet presidential candidates?

Wait . . . wait . . . . it gets even worse. In excusing the MSM's failure to report on John Edward's, Calderone opines:

And with numerous candidates in both parties to cover, it’s not surprising that news organizations largely ignored the report of a “love child” between Edwards and Hunter just a few weeks before the Iowa vote.

Clearly, there is a disconnect here. You can bet your right arm that had it been McCain or Palin instead of Edwards, the issue of a love child coming on top of their repeated denial of an affair while their spouse was ill with terminal cancer would have had every last reporter in our MSM - and more than a few editors - pivoting and leaving a trail of slime all the way from Iowa to the nursrey inside of Hunter's home.

We just went through an election cycle to elect a man with no experience in the executive or military, a man with no business experience, a man with less then a year in the Senate when he began to run for office, a man with an open history of radical friends and alliances, a man who wrote an autobiography explaining how a preacher speaking of "white man's greed" moved him to his core, and this press turned a blind eye to all of it. Obama sat in the pews of the bomb throwing uber-racist Rev. Wright for 20 years, yet claims that Rev. Wright only spoke sweetness and light whenever he was there. Yet not a member of the MSM bothered to follow up. Where were the people who were supposed to be vetting Obama? Clearly they weren't at John Edward's house either. Those that weren't writing hit pieces suggesting McCain was having an affair with a lobbyist were all in Alaska checking sifting through the frozen dirt in Sarah Palin's home town.

If Calderone does not realize that the left does vet in painstaking detail - but only Republicans - well, suffice it to say, I am amazed he knows enough grammer and has sufficient command of vocabulary even to compose his question.

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A Scandal in Bare Duet

Once or twice a year, I compose a post that is in complete sync with a later article by my favorite pundit, Charles Krauthammer. The unfortunate part is that the topic this time around is the scandal that is Obama's national security apparatus. It is a scandal exposed by the Obama administration's handling of the Undiebomber, Abdulmutallab. After nine years, Obama has deconstructed our national security apparatus to the point that it is dysfunctional and passive. What is equally as troubling is that this is being largely ignored by the MSM. This one will get people killed.

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Climategate Update 12: The AGW Walls Start To Crumble, The Smoking Code & The Tiger Woods Index

While an unscrupulous American MSM maintains a blanket of silence on the greatest scientific scandal at least of our age, the science community itself is convulsing. Yesterday we were treated to Michael "Hockey Stick" Mann tossing his fellow AGW scientist, Phil "Hide the Decline" Jones under the bus on the BBC. Today, we learn that the IPCC's Chairman Mao, Rajendra Pachauri, who has completely stonewalled on Climategate up to this point, that he has now relented and called for a UN investigation. For him to do this on almost the eve of the Copenhagen Summitt means that heat must really be on. This from the BBC:

The head of the UN's climate science body says claims that UK scientists manipulated data on global warming should be investigated.

Dr Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said the matter could not be swept "under the carpet".

The allegations emerged after e-mails written and received by UK climate researchers appeared on the internet.

The police are investigating whether the scientists' computers were hacked.

Dr Pachauri told BBC Radio 4's The Report programme that the claims were serious and he wants them investigated. . . .

That is pretty momentous, and even if they try to whitewash it at this point, it is still going to be a giant elephant sitting in the middle of Copenhagen. That is something even the BBC acknowledged in a subsequent article.

While the IPCC may have had a reality check, at least one other person is stonewalling with the help of our media. Al "green-backs" Gore, perhaps the most successful con man of all time, sits for an interview with the Politico, while the two interviewers, John Harris and Mike Allen, do not bring up a single issue surrounding Climategate. You can tell from the comments the readers of this white wash dribble were not impressed.

Over at Watts Up With That, a guest poster, Robert Greiner, a scientist and self-described AGW agnostic, pulls apart the code downloaded from the CRU and shows, line by line, how its been used to distort data. He concludes:

As you can see, (potentially) valid temperature station readings were taken and skewed to fabricate the results the “scientists” at the CRU wanted to believe, not what actually occurred.

Where do we go from here?

It’s not as cut-and-try as one might think. First and foremost, this doesn’t necessarily prove anything about global warming as science. It just shows that all of the data that was the chief result of most of the environmental legislation created over the last decade was a farce.

This means that all of those billions of dollars we spent as a global community to combat global warming may have been for nothing.

If news station anchors and politicians were trained as engineers, they would be able to find real proof and not just speculate about the meaning of emails that only made it appear as if something illegal happened.

Conclusion

I tried to write this post in a manner that transcends politics. I really haven’t taken much of an interest in the whole global warming debate and don’t really have a strong opinion on the matter. However, being part of the Science Community (I have a degree in Physics) and having done scientific research myself makes me very worried when arrogant jerks who call themselves “scientists” work outside of ethics and ignore the truth to fit their pre-conceived notions of the world. That is not science, that is religion with math equations.

Do read the entire post.

It bears remembering that the impact of climate change legislation will have little impact on global temperatures, it will vastly enrich many a rent seeker, and it will negatively impact on all of the rest of us, with, as Evangelicals point out in a recent press release, the poor being hit by far the hardest. That matters not to the far left and the rent seekers with vested interests in AGW. Just look at the ethanol/biofuel insanity. The World Bank estimates that the establishment of ethanol and bio-fuel mandates, with its negative impacts on agriculture, has driven 100 million people below the poverty line.

Lastly, John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel, thinks that the American MSM, so heavilly invested in promoting the AGW meme, is now in a corner, waiting for the scandal to blow over or for some act that will allow them to report that they were "misled." Writing at PJM, he hopes for the latter but sees the former as still possible. I disagree in the long run at least. FOIA requests are about to be honored. Programs will be requested and will eventually have to be released. "Climate science" will see the light of day. Part of the reason is the internet. And until our overlords invoke the Chinese option and start controlling internet searches, the biggest search words of the day now concern Climategate. Do see EU Referendum for the Tiger Woods Index, developed by Dr. North to answer the questions "Is the public more interested in Tiger Woods than Climategate? And does the media coverage reflect the public interest?"


Prior Posts:

Climategate and Surrealism
More Climategate Fallout
Climategate Update 3
Climategate Update 4: CRU Records Worthless
Climategate Update 5: IPCC's Chairman Mao
Climategate Update 6: Climategate In Video
UNEP, Green Religion & Global Governance
Climate Update 7: IPCC's Chairman Mao Plays The Obama Card, Peer Review Analyzed, Scientific Method Explained For Paul Krugman
Climategate Update 8: The NYT Reports
Climategate Update 9: CRU Head Phil Jones Steps Down During Investigation, An MIT Prof Explains The Holes In AGW Theory, And Climate Fraud Is Everywhere
Climategate Update 10: Climategate Reverberates From The UK To Down Under
Climategate Update 11: Finally An AGW Consensus, "Hockey Stick" Mann Attacks Jones, Gore Goes To Ground

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