The Obama administration tends to shoot first and some time later attempt find answers. The administration has argued, to no end, that the attacks on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya were spontaneous, and not preplanned. All this if face of evidence the attackers fielded heavy weapons, such as mortars. Jay Carney plays the fool, Transcript, via RCP:
REPORTER: Our people on the ground have seen the fragments – the remains of the mortars – the heavy weapons that were used.
CARNEY: We’ve been clear that there were armed assailants who used heavy weapons, we obviously haven’t disputed that.
REPORTER: So this was just a random crowd carrying heavy weapons, who, incited by this film, decided to go blow up…
CARNEY: There has certainly been precedent in the past where bad actors, extremists who are heavily armed, in different countries, in different regions of the world have taken advantage of and exploited situations that have developed in order to either attack westerners or western assets or Americans and American assets.
[…]
CARNEY: All I can tell you is that based on the information we had at the time – we have now – we do not yet have indication that it was pre-planned or pre-meditated. There’s an active investigation. If that investigation produces facts that lead to a different conclusion, we will make clear that that is where the investigation has led. It’s not – our interest is in finding out the facts of what happened, not taking what we’ve read in the newspaper and making bold assertions that we know what happened. We’d rather investigate.
Video:
Now I am just a retired airman, but even flyboys know something about heavy weapons. For one they are heavy. You just don’t carry around mortars, what a three man crew served weapon, for the halibut of it. Yet Carney is in essence arguing that an angry mob just happened to arose but one armed with heavy weapons Further the some spontaneous just happened to know the location of the safe house and had it pre-targetted.
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Well, at least it gives them an excuse for what they do anyway. The French are currently having a discussion about free speech rights.
Thing is, they don’t have a first amendment. We do.
Its amazing how much sympathy violent lynch mobs will get the other situations like this. I mean, isn’t it about time we called them such? Inded, I’ve not seen this much sympathy for lynch mobs from Democrats since Bull Connor, as I’ve said before, this week.
I don’t care to join in on that sympathy.
Oh… I see where the Arab Spring has fostered an attempt by the Muslim Brotherhood to get the Blind Sheik released.
Yeah, you read that right. And of course the MSM is ignoring the story. The reaction would kill off what little chance Obama had for re-election.
Now, this may surprise some of you, but….Know what? I think we SHOULD release him…. from about 40,000 feet, over Cairo. Without a parachute.
Tags: BitsBlog, religion of peace
Posted from my phone… read the Link and explain to me why anybody takes Mother Jones seriously. Leaving a side of course the CNBC polling which suggest something on the order of 75 percent of Americans agree with Romney on the point. Clearly, the desperation is setting in.
(Edit: Fixed link, ENF)
President Obama took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, and he promised to be President to all the People. Well now Barry has chance to uphold his oath, actually do his job, and to keep a promise.m the BBC:
Authorities in Cairo have ordered the arrest of seven US-based Egyptian Coptic Christians for their alleged involvement in an anti-Islam video.President Obama promised to defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States, and he promised to be President of all American. Now Barry has chance to uphold his oath and to keep a promise, for once:
The crude production posted on YouTube has sparked violent protests and riots across the Muslim world for its depiction of the Prophet Muhammad.
It is unclear who made the film, but it has been linked to an Egyptian Coptic Christian living in the United States.
[…]
The office added that all the accused could face the death penalty if convicted.
Man up Barry, and tell the Egyptians just where they can put their bleeding warrant.
Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rices gives a great impression of stupid for Jake Tapper of ABC News:
video:
text:
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice told me this morning on “This Week” that the United States is not “impotent” in the face of violent protests sweeping the Muslim world being aimed at American interests.
“We’re not impotent,were not even less popular to challenge that assessment” said Rice. ” What happened this week in Cairo, in Benghazi and many other parts of the region was a result, a direct result, of a heinous and offensive video that was widely disseminated, that the U.S. government had nothing to do with, which we have made clear is reprehensible and disgusting.”
President Obama has been very public since the start of his presidential term that he intended to heal relations with the Middle East that were damaged during the Bush administration.
Hat tip and reax, Donald Douglas, American Power:
At the video above, Rice indicates that President Obama “picked up the phone” and told President Morsi in Egyp to get with the program. Okay, sure. Morsi doesn’t want to lose his foreign aid. But if the U.S. had real power — if Obama’s Cairo foreign policy had any real effect — those protests would have never taken place to begin with. And with protests, the Egyptian military could have smashed them with the blink of an eye. What popularity? The banner at the ABC News clip has 33 countries now mounting anti-American protests. This is the biggest popular repudiation of America I can remember in my lifetime. And Ambassador Rice is sticking with the meme that the “Innocence of Muslims” video is 100 percent the cause of all the violence and outrage? It’s getting obscene to listen to this administration’s dissembling and lies.
Two points:
One, it does not take a great military genius to see that the attack on the American consulate in Libya was an coordinated military ambush. Ambassador Stevens was taken to a supposed safe house which came under coordinated heavy weapons fire. Mere mobs do not carry RPG’s and mortars, nor know the exact location of a safe house.
Two Ambassador Rice has an unbelievable amount o f faith that this stupid internet video was the sole Muslim grievance against the Un9ited States. The video was put up in July and the attacks break on on the eleventh anniversary of Nine Eleven. In the intervening time the Obama administration has continued drone attacks and spent a week in Charlotte spiking the I killed Usama bin Laden football. Yet killing Muslims and bragging about it, is not considered to be aggrevation, only a stupid internet video.
Back along about the end of 2006, during a Christmas break, I wrote an extended piece about Islam and some of the problems in the world with relation to it. I’ll post it here, because I think it’;s ideas are still of import, and particularly because it is important to the extended discussion I’m about to start.
-1–=–=-Start of post from December 29th, 2006
In my job, I am if nothing thing else, a diagnostician. Rule number one in fixing problems, is diagnosing them correctly in the first place. Without that first at being accomplished you don’t have a hope in hell of solving the problem.
Well, similarly, part of our problem with our analysis of our success or failure in Iraq, and the whole of the middle eastern region, is that we have misidentified some of the problems. Some of these misidentifications have been for reasons that we’ve been force-fed all our lives. the equality of all men, etc.. I will certainly not argue against that wisdom. The problem is, While all men are created equal all cultures, are not. The cultures we’re dealing with over there don’t see it that way. They are driven by something else… a different world view, entirely.
Jason Pappas at Liberty and Culture makes this important point, by way of John Agresto, former president of St. John’s College‘s Santa Fe campus. That point being, that when we make judgments about our success or failure in Iraq, we miss in both directions, because of a complete misunderstanding of the rocky culture and the religion on which so much of it is based:
“We generally have a benign view of religion. We always insist that those who kill infidels or torture in God’s name have somehow ‘hijacked’ their religion. We consistently failed to understand that not all religions have the same view as we do of peace, of brotherhood, or of justice. Islam in general, and parts of Islam in particular, are not post-Enlightenment faiths. But why would they be? We desperately kept looking for the supposed ‘moderates’ among the clergy in Iraq. Moderate as compared to what? Just because we believe that God wants everyone to enjoy equal rights, or that killing Jews or stoning apostates is wrong, doesn’t mean that our beliefs are shared in other faiths.
And therein, lies a point that I made over a year ago now, which was unfortunately lost in the transition to this new web site. I will try to reconstruct it from memory and snippets. It generally made the point, that Islam was still waiting for its Martin Luther. I would suggest to you that Luther, more than anyone else at this time, paved the way toward the age of enlightenment. Prior to Luther’s arrival, there was no such thing as a moderate Catholic. Similarly, then, there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim today.
As I asked Bill at his excellent INDC blog back at the beginning of this year:
Where are the long lines of local Muslims angry at what’s been done to their peaceful religion? There are none, or not enough to make any difference.
The more I investigate this the more I’m convinced that the Pope, of all people, got this one right. Islam, being Islam, simply cannot reform itself. Therefore I submit, that there is no such thing as moderate Islam. More correctly, that there is no such animal as a moderate Muslim.
At least, at the moment. Which, translates into “it may be possible to inject some change down the road.” But, frankly, I consider it an open question, whether or not reform can ever occur.
Consider the state of Islam vs the state of Christianity, since the Reformation of the latter.
From an objective standpoint Christianity at least has the advantage of viewing government and religion on two separate levels. It was Christ himself who urged us to give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s. Islam, meanwhile, has no separated perception in this area. At least part of this is a problem of point of view from the average Muslim; The Islamic world looks forward to the 15th century. So, perhaps viewing it from this angle will help your overall perspective. If you were a citizen of 14th century Spain, let’s say… would you have been able to envision such a separation between Rome and Madrid?
OTOH, and by the same token, the point of view differs from our standpoint…part of our inability to get our mental arms around this whole concept of the limitations of Islam to reform itself is due to the fact that whereas we deal with religion and social values on separate levels, those in the Islamic world do not, as a rule…. and that’s not much different than the point of view of the denizen of fourteenth century Spain, is it?
That’s problem number one, and it’s the easiest to describe in terms of trying to propagate a secular society.
Now, understand please, I still take the question of Islam’s ability to reform within the bounds of the religion framework an open question. Mostly this is due to a lack of understanding of what the religion encompasses at it’s foundations. I don’t pretend to understand Muslim culture. But I can’t help but speculate, here; what if the problems of reforming Islam are due to a lack of understanding of the religion by its adherents, much the same as there was a lack of understanding about the Christian faith amongst most of its adherents in Luther’s time , pre-Guttenburg?
As I have said elsewhere, Luther’s biggest contribution to the Catholic church, and ultimately to the world, was the concept that he opened the Bible and the understanding of it up to the average parishioner. Most of the people of that day who called themselves Christian, really didn’t understand the religion they claimed as their own. That’s because the majority of them couldn’t read, And even if they read English, they couldn’t read Latin, and were therefore utterly dependent on what the priest told them the book said.
So it was, that up until the time that the printing press came along, that intimate understanding, that study, was pretty much limited to the clergy, and even there, to the upper levels thereof. I’m willing to bet that’s the case in Islam… who steadfastly refuses, for example, to provide education for it’s women.
Along comes Luther with his printing press, who teaches them how to read the Bible for themselves, and gain the needed understanding of it… who tells them that a personal relationship with God is necessary, and with that personal understanding comes the reform of tolerance, which over hundreds more years becomes the church we know today.
In light of this, I would suggest to you a trend:
Here in western society, people tend to be better educated than they are in everyday Iraq, or even Egypt and Turkey, for example. This results in vastly different perceptions of everything in the world, including religion. They tend to read more, for one thing, having the ability. While I am sure that the western civilization tends to breed more placid people particularly in regards to spiritual matters, because of cultural influence alone, I would also suggest that the violence we see inherent with Islam is directly connected to the education level and therefore the understanding of that religion by its adherents.
Muslims we see here in the west are at least somewhat more peaceful than what we’ve been seeing in the MiddleEast. Is this a result of their having a better understanding of their religion, I wonder? A good understanding of one’s religion is difficult to obtain at the point of a machete , which is how Islam is so often taught in that region today.
This is one reason I’ve always been somewhat uncomfortable with the phrase “Islamic fundamentalism”; There is still a great deal of argument as to specifically what that phrase means, because the fundamentals of Islam are still in the discussion stage, even among its most adherent followers. For someone to call themselves fundamentalist, assumes that said person has a fundamental understanding of their religion. yet, that still his ill defined at best, because they themselves can’t agree on what it means, on any more than a superficial level. Without that understanding the phrase “Islamic fundamentalism” simply does not apply anymore than “Fundamental Christianity” does to pre-Guttenburg Christians.
Thus the question; If greater understanding of the religion by the very people involved in it is the answer, does this suggest a path for us to take?
If it does, then that path is going to be made somewhat more complex by the fact that there is no real hierarchy within the Muslim religious world as there is in say the various offshoots of Christianity. Even the various Christian sects are not nearly as disparate in their beliefs (and thereby the definition of being within the religion) as Muslims would seem to be. This presents some complications in terms of getting the “true Islam” message out; the various leaders themselves because there is no hierarchy, cannot seem to agree on what Islam IS… the tenants of the religion; Without the strong leadership model, the messages being sent on mixed at best. In a very real sense, there’s nobody to question as regards religious tenants.
Think about this; when it came time in the Christian church for reform, Luther had the advantage of having Pope Leo to proverbially set on fire. A focal point, if you will, to aim at. I daresay that Luther would not been able to be nearly as effective had he needed to fight a decentralized authority.
OTOH in the Islamic world, there is no such person, no such leader, no such group, even, to ask such questions of. Worse, still, the process of asking such questions can often be dangerous, if not fatal. That makes the process of questioning these radicalized versions of Islam all the harder, even assuming one isn’t going to get killed for asking the questions, or raising challenges.
To whom does one go for an authority of view on what, specifically, Islam is? I have asked that question many times in the past and usually get referred to the Koran. That answer of course, is problematic, given the number of different slants on the meaning of the Koran that there are. Certainly there are a number of different slants as well on the Bible. However I would point out that there is still an authority structure in place there, which tends to narrow the Interpretations down by quite a bit.
Without such a structure, all kinds of things pop up… The religion becomes whatever certain protagonists say it is… such as the Wahabi, for example… And there’s nobody of authority within the religion to say ‘no’.
More of a comparison; The Catholic church certainly had its bloody periods. And why did these stop? Someone sitting in authority, was there to challenge, and once that authority saw the reason in the challenge that somebody within the church said “stop”.
Who is of the like in the Islamic world? Nobody that I can see.
Yet.
And that’s a problem. But more;
Islam is still waiting for its Luther.
I figure that was part of the idea, going into Iraq in the first place: Establishing a democracy in such a place, after all, would certainly lend itself to work toward altering, and, need I say it, pacifying, Islamic society, and controlling the more violent and radical elements. My take is that if such a person or group is to rise up against the Wahhabists or Salfi, they will be the product of a freshly reformed, and democratic Iraq. Which would do a fair job of explaining why the Syrias and the Jordans and the Irans are so very concerned, just now.
The very reason that those hardline Islamic states are so concerned about the insertion of democracy into Iraq is because they see ….apparently more clearly than we… that democracy, for all its faults, has one major advantage ; That it by its very nature injects social change, by way of what I will call “Social Darwinism”. Such evolution has no chance whatever under, say, a Saddam… but it DOES stand a chance under a Democracy. Under a democracy, the ideas and ideals of western culture will filter through, as they have every other place where Democracy has been installed. Japan, for example. South Korea. Etc.
This change will undoubtedly allow a more western attitude, and thereby will create the environment in which Islam’s Luther can stand forth. But this isn’t going to be a quick process. It’s going to be along slow and likely (given whom we’re dealing with) very bloody process, because changing hearts and minds is always the longest , slowest, hardest job there is. And, of course, that assumes we actually have the courage to see it through. Given the recent election, I have my doubts.
We have to stick with the plan. The consequences of not doing so are utter failure, for both they, and us. I say again; It’s not going to be quick. We in the west, cannot expect that kind of seed change to occur overnight. What we’re talking about, is dragging Islam and its followers fast forward from the fourteenth century. We cannot do that quickly, or by force and not expect violent reaction. Forced change, is never long lasting , and seldom satisfactory for anybody concerned. What needs to be done therefore, is to create an environment in which an Islamic version of Luther can stand forth, so that the culture can change ITSELF.
And all of this is exactly why I’ve said that a democracy in Iraq is a good place to start; It’s only under such conditions that Islam can it last find its own Martin Luther. But I wonder if the democrats in Congress are up to creating the conditions where all that can happen.
-=–=-<end of post from December 29th, 2006
So now the other day, along comes Fran Porretto, of Eternity Road and an article called After Islam. Fran is apparently not so optimistic as I as regards the possibility of co-existence:
With regard to Islamic penetration of the West and the hazards to life and liberty that have accompanied it, your Curmudgeon isn’t completely alone in proclaiming the inevitability of quarantine or genocide, but he comes pretty damned close. The usual dissenter’s rejoinder is that “we can’t.” Can’t what? Can’t quarantine all Muslims in the existing Islamic states? Can’t kill them all? Can’t kill some and quarantine the rest? Answers are infrequent; the conversation usually trails off at that point.
In point of fact, we — the United States of America — jolly well could do any of the three. We’re not incapable; we’re reluctant. But the time is drawing near when we must choose among them. Rest assured: choose we most certainly will, for the alternative is the extinction of the United States in particular and Western civilization in general. Whichever path we select, and by whatever process we select it, it will occasion great moral agony for its executors, for a good nine-tenths of Muslims worldwide are at worst passive enablers for their jihadist brethren.
Ouch.
While I share his outlook on co-existence under the current set of conditions, I wonder just a bit at his insistance that there’s no cure for the situation from within Islam itself.
The various fables told about Saracen Spain, the most frequently raised “example” of peaceful and tolerant Islamic rule, have all been debunked. No comparable arrangement has fared any better.
Well, that’s certainly true enough, but what of changing Islam from within, as I mention in the old article reprinted here? Well, Fran’s dialogue takes a left turn at the end of the piece, which tends to make my point for me:
Islam did not give birth to the savageries practiced by its adherents; rather, it provided them with a pseudo-theological justification for what they were inclined to do anyway. If Islam were washed away completely — if the last known Qur’an were destroyed and all memory of its contents effaced from the world — the savagery it legitimized would still exist. It would remain so until social and economic evolution had raised the afflicted peoples to something approximating the Judeo-Christian ethos — an interval at whose length your Curmudgeon is indisposed to guess.
Correct. Which is exactly why, as I said back in 2006, that the way out of this is inserting a Democracy in their midst. Such a move would provide the social and economic path forward, the lack of which entraps so many in that 14th century culture.
As for how long…. there are no shortcuts to this process. Changing minds is always the hardest path. It’s also, in the end the most rewarding.
-0-
Back to today, and with the thoughts of yesterday’s post still fresh in my mind, I will add this comment; That looked for event, that understanding, will never occur with the current administration still infesting the White House.
The misguided and frankly cowardly act of appeasing the violent as Obama and his people are doing only begets more violence. Certainly it made the Arab Spring, the Islamic Winter, by empowering the radial Muslims. The so-called Democratic vote, at least in Egypt, was a farce because of the all too evident threats of force by the Islamic Radicals.
Frankly, I now regard as an open question, if any one can quell the situation given the amount of gasoline that Mr. Obama and company have poured on fire.
Failure after failure…
Our foreign policy is guided by the leftist principle that all we need to do is show respect for the thugs of the world and they’ll love us. VP candidate Paul Ryan describes the result of those policies as well as anyone:
Look across that region today, and what do we see?
– The slaughter of brave dissidents in Syria.
– Mobs storming American embassies and consulates.
– Iran four years closer to gaining a nuclear weapon.
– Israel, our best ally in the region, treated with indifference bordering on contempt by the Obama administration.
Gary Bauer adds in the speech I posted here yesterday:
“The blood-thirsty mobs in the streets of Cairo and Libya are further proof that the ‘Arab Spring’ is in fact an Arab winter. The Muslim Brotherhood is on the ascendency everywhere in the region and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are clueless. Even in the wake of the murderous attack, our government was condemning a movie as if a creative work can ever be a legitimate excuse for murder. What a shameful statement of appeasement on the anniversary of 9/11.
“The vapid response of both President Obama and his Secretary of State refuses to acknowledge the source of the problem: the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic extremism, made possible in part by Obama’s naive foreign policy. This great offense, the murder of U.S. ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens and three other embassy staff, comes as Obama continues to send billions of dollars to the Egyptian and Libyan regimes.
This can be nothing less than a catastrophic failure in foreign policy. The problem, the cause for the failure, is the ideals laid out underneath that policy. Ambassador Chris Stevens, and his three staff members, were fully believing in the leftist mantra that all we had to do was show respect and we’d win the day. I wonder, if in the moments before they expired, they realized the error of that line of non -thought. I rather tend to doubt it. Sadly fact never hinder the mantra of a leftist.
In the meantime, we, in the form of Obama, apologize to to the protesters and the murderers of ambassador Stevens and his staff, instead of responding as we should have. Indeed, there’s not been this much sympathy for Lynch Mobs since Bull Connor. In effect, the Obama administration doubled down on its stupidity . They’ve yet to figure out that there are some things some ideas some ideals and some cultures that deserve no respect. That’s some situations require that no respect be shown. I would argue that radical Islam is one such.
Of course, the response of the Obama administration to this is to tell us that we need to not exercise our free speech. But that’s not the issue. As Limbaugh said… Thursday, I think;
So far, folks, the entire narrative of the reason for the mob activity in the Middle East has been false. It’s a false narrative. A so-called fundamentalist pastor who never even saw this YouTube video that nobody else has seen, that’s supposedly produced by an Israeli Jew who turns out to be a Coptic Christian. A film that, in fact, may not actually exist. But if it does, nobody has seen the entire thing, as best we can tell.
And we, nevertheless, are to believe that hundreds of thousands of Arabs in the Middle East are driven to march, riot, maim, and kill, based on this? Sorry, folks. I’m not buying this. I’m not joining this media bubble, this movie, whatever this is. If anything, it could even be a hoax. But it has nothing to do with this, other than being used to incite the rabble. But it is the reason this is happening. It just happens to occur on 9/11, by the way, and thereafter.
I guess that’s just a coincidence!
Meanwhile, 9/11 comes around, but our embassies and consulates are not fortified. Apparently there were no additional security measures. The Marines didn’t have bullets in Egypt. The president doesn’t bother with intel briefings since the 6th of September. That’s the last one he had. A British paper reports, citing senior American diplomats, that 48 hours prior to the attacks on our consulate and embassy, the government was aware of credible threats and didn’t do anything.
And whose choice was it not to reinforce the embassy at Benghazi? Hillary Clinton. Now, at least, we have an explanation for why the Clinton run State Department is refusing to answer any questions on the matter. Not only had the British told us repeatedly that attacks were coming, CNN reports that the Libyans did as well.
I’d personally find it interesting that white house adviser Valerie Jarret has a full contingent of secret service personnel surrounding her, and yet for some reason this White House couldn’t figure out the people in the Middle East needed at least that amount of security. I wonder, however, if by virtue of this failure, we’re going to see less heavy Democrat campaign donors angling for ambassadorships around the world. Particularly, to the Middle East. I suppose there’s a never ending supply of true believers among leftists.
And here’s Jay Carney out there saying, “Eh, it’s a movie. It’s not about American policy. That Benghazi attack? We don’t know that it was preplanned. It’s not a case of protest directed at the US.” If that’s right, how come they’re screaming, “Death to America! Death to America!” Why are they burning the American flag? I don’t see ’em burning videocassettes or DVDs. Why are they killing an American ambassador? Why are they attacking American interests?
Well, it’s not a coordinated attack. It’s just the movie, just the movie.
What could be more factually wrong than saying these protests were not aimed at the United States of America? Does this White House think we’re idiots? Listen to this, from the UK Independent. This cleared last night. “Senior officials are increasingly convinced, however, that the ferocious nature of the Benghazi attack, in which rocket-propelled grenades were used, indicated it was not the result of spontaneous anger due to the video, called Innocence of Muslims. Patrick Kennedy, Under-Secretary at the State Department, said he was convinced the assault was planned due to its extensive nature and the proliferation of weapons.”
There were 400 people, and yet here’s the president’s spokesperson saying it wasn’t planned.
So Carney’s contradicting the undersecretary of state. He’s contradicting the UK Independent and other sources quoted. “It wasn’t planned. It’s the movie.” Clearly this guy’s been told to go out there, “Jay, we don’t care how bad it tastes, you tell ’em it’s the movie. We don’t care what you have to swallow, Jay, it’s the film. That’s the answer to every question.” So he dutifully walks out there, and that’s his answer. This would be like blaming Abu Ghraib riots on Polaroid, or Kodak. It’s exactly what this is.
Let’s put a bit of s spin on this:
I would point to the double standards being applied…. I observe that for example, the very same president who doesn’t seem to have a problem with insulting Christians calling us “Bitter clingers” and disregarding the first amendment rights of Catholics as regards abortion etc., tells us that we should not be insulting to Islam. Forgive me, but something doesn’t add up. And I wonder; if anti-Islam movies are responsible, does this mean that we’ll have to stop showing the pro-Obama propaganda film, that was created to help Obama’s re-election, “Zero Dark Thirty”? You may recall, the makers of that movie were given all sorts of access to classified material so as to make the movie more compelling and the re-election of Obama more possible. Of course, this is the same political philosophy that arranged for government support for “Piss Christ”, So perhaps the current excesses are not all the unbelievable, after all.
Now, of course, Rush is correct, this isn’t about the movie. The movie is an excuse. But if the left… this administration included, really thought that the movie was the issue, wouldn’t “Zero Dark Thirty” be axed? Jay Carney’s denials aside, the issue is the failure of Leftist policy.
And what is Obama’s reaction to these horrific events, dead Ambassadorial staff, flags and embassies burning? More failure….He apologizes to the jihadis, as if WE did something wrong, and then goes off for a couple of fundraisers in Vegas and Colorado. Ponder the double standard here, as well… Can you possibly imagine the reaction of the press to, say, and George W. Bush doing that? I suspect that they would be running 24*7 “coverage” between now and the election.
The failures are not just in foreign policy… The home front is strewn with Obama failures, as well, all seemingly based on the idea that if we just grew government enough and spent trillions of taxpayer money on industries and products that leftists like, or at least are not trying to eliminate outright with the force of government, that things would be all right. The continued and breathtaking unemployment figures are testament to the fact that liberal policy doesn’t work in that area either.
We handed control of GM and Chrysler to the UAW, and in return got the Chevy Volt… which they just shut down production on last month…. It’s simply not selling. And GM loses $40,000 on every Volt they sell. Clearly, these policies are being generated by somebody who figures that the government is the answer to everything and has no clue about how private enterprise works. That description would seem to fit this administration quite well.
There’s always the crony capitalism the scene the last three years, as evidenced by though not limited to Solyndra.
There’s the war on energy, specifically oil and coal. That alone has done more than most of the damage to our economy.
Then there’s health care. Unpopularly known as Obamacare, we have discussed this many times in these pages, and there seems little point on a long discussion on the point. It, too, can be considered is nothing less than a catastrophic failure.
Obama is most certainly the food stamp president. He has created more dependency on government than any president in history, short of FDR. And yes, I’ll get to him in a minute. I would urge reading Doctor Thomas Sowell on the subject.
Now, despite enlarging the dependency class to ever higher numbers, he still doesn’t have enough to get himself reelected. Yes, that means that I think that was a direct Evert at creating more dependency, so as to create a situation where reelection for the Liberal providing the government largess is easier. But clearly, he hasn’t spent enough tax money to buy himself votes.
Trouble is, there is not one success , not one, that Obama can claim as his own during his administration. As has been discussed here many times, Mr. Obama had a specific job to do ; diminish America. He’s done it well. And who can argue otherwise? At all turns, he marched, no, lunged in precisely the wrong direction…. if advancing America’s interests in the world and its economic interests here at home, and individual freedom or it all on the plate. I suggest that there is no way you can obtain that kind of consistency without two things going for you; competency, and intent.
In any event, that’s how we get where we are. And where from here?
Well, now comes the task of re-election, despite these obvious and massive failures. They’re desperate to get past this speed bump known as the first Tuesday in November. How to do it?
The answer is unfolding in front of us.
Obama likes to paint himself as the new FDR…. not that the old one was all that great… FDR with his “Bold Experimentation” as Obama likes to say, extended what should have been a small downturn in the economy to a depression lasting over a decade… and the only reason we got out of the depression was WWII. Which makes some wonder aloud if history isn’t repeating itself. After all, FDR knew full well that the Japanese were planning attack on Pearl Harbor. And did nothing.
Sound familiar?
Most certainly, Pearl Harbor was the back door into the European war for FDR. Clearly, a way out of the current economic crisis of the time, and somewhat less clearly a guaranteed reelection.
There are those who will suggest that Obama and company are too incompetent to pull off this kind of deception. I disagree. In political terms Obama and his people have been more than competent to the task that they were set …. installing the Liberal mantra as law, regardless of the consequences. I certainly wouldn’t put an FDR -like deception in this matter, past them.
Assuming what I’m suggesting is correct, we’re going to see some military action in a big way between now and the first Tuesday in November. Which, given the de-funded state of the Military… another part of the leftist mantra… will be at least somewhat muted. At the very least, assuming that Obama does not get reelected, Romney has a serious clean-up task in front of him I’d not wish on anyone.
I’ve had my disagreements with Gary Bauer over the years, but I’m in complete agreement with him here.
I’ve posted the whole speech here broken into two parts.
Did Obama spark the Arab riots? Not by being evil, but being overwhelmingly
Did the dumb sand niggers get duped by Dim Won’s soothing words, from Alllah Pundit, Hot Air:
Go look at the map of today’s protests assembled by the Atlantic. To the extent that anyone involved actually cares about the movie, what they care about is the fact that the U.S. government refuses to censor it. The government would like to censor it, clearly, but they’re barred by the First Amendment; Islamist totalitarians have trouble with that concept, though, so they’re holding the White House responsible for the film’s publication despite Carney’s obsequious stammering over how mean and disgusting and reprehensible and awful it is. They’re protesting the idea of free speech, in other words, which is supposed to be — supposed to be — “U.S. policy.”
Dim Won promised to reach out the the Islamists, and as Islamists believe they are never wrong, reach can only mean acts of dminitude. The Islamists are bothter4ed by our First Amendment, and Dim Won led them to believe he could make it go away, video:
Trranscript:
I truly believe that the day I’m inaugurated, not only the country looks at itself differently, but the world looks at America differently…If I’m reaching out to the Muslim world they understand that I’ve lived in a Muslim country and I may be a Christian, but I also understand their point of view…My sister is half-Indonesian. I traveled there all the way through my college years. And so I’m intimately concerned with what happens in these countries and the cultures and perspective these folks have. And those are powerful tools for us to be able to reach out to the world…then I think the world will have confidence that I am listening to them and that our future and our security is tied up with our ability to work with other countries in the world that will ultimately makes us safer…
The former Soviet Union was evil but not stupid. Dim Won may nor may not be evil, but is is stupid and hence for more dangerous.’
It matters little if Dim Won actually believed his fable about hie mere inauguration some how soothing the Arab world. He Arabs believed him. As always, Dim Won over promised and under delivered. Now the Middle East in in flames and good people are dying. IN the mean time, Obama plays golf.
Addendum: Deleted auto-play video, and added transcript.
The Obama administration has made it clear that does not like freedom of speech. from Eileen Sullivan Stephen Braun, Associated Press:
Attorney General Eric Holder said that Justice Department officials had opened a criminal investigation into the deaths of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other diplomats killed during an attack on the American mission in Benghazi. It was not immediately clear whether authorities were focusing on the California filmmaker as part of that probe.
A federal law enforcement official said Thursday that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, was the man behind “Innocence of Muslims,” a film denigrating Islam and the Prophet Muhammad that sparked protests earlier in the week in Egypt and Libya and now in Yemen. U.S. authorities are investigating whether the deaths of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Libya came
o two point
One, why is the federal government making public a name of private citizen? Nakoula Basseley Nakoula has not been charged with any new crimes. Making bad film hardly qualifies as a federal offense. If Holder is sober and serious, this looks like a reincarnation of the Salem Witch Trials. The idea that the film “Innocence of Muslims” some how sparked Islamic riots in not a fact, it is not a theory backed by evidence, it is a media talking point.
Two, why to Sullivan and Braun assert as facts that Nakoula is responsible for the film and that the film caused any deaths? The some media which still calls Orenthal James Simpson an accused murderer.
I think the American Civil Liberties Union needs to look into Holder’s actions, and that Sullivan and Braun should retain some good attorneys.
So what did it become the job of the White House to become film critics? From Josh Gerstien, Poitico:
White House: anti-Islam film ‘truly abhorrent’
A top White House official has blasted as “truly abhorrent” the anti-Islam film which appears to have triggered an outpouring of violence against U.S. diplomatic posts in Egypt and Libya.
Speaking to an international religious freedom conference in Washington Wednesday, Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough endorsed efforts to create “a world where the dignity of all people—and all faiths—is respected.”
From what I have seen on the film, its production values are somewhat south of South Park. So if if you don’t like bad films about Islam, don’t watch them. It is a free country. As such, it the job of the Obama White House to defend constitutional liberties, like Free Speech, and not to criticize them.
If Dim Won, b/k/a Barack Obama is so freeping concerned about the sensitivities of Muslims, he should have have spent the entire democrat convention spiking the “I killed Usama bin Laden” football.
Secretary of Defense accuses President of Treason, or words to that effect, from Byran Preston, PJ Media:
Among the information that [Secretary of Defense] Panetta now says the president authorized to be released were the identities of the leaders of the SEAL team that killed bin Laden. Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers released that classified information to Hollywood producers who were working on the film Zero Dark Thirty, which was at that time intended for release just weeks before the 2012 presidential election. Vickers remains in his job. No one in the administration has come under any penalty for the numerous and damaging leaks of other operations, including President Obama’s “kill list,” US assistance to the rebellion in Syria, and the ongoing cyber war against Iran.
Now we know why: Despite the administration’s denials, President Obama himself authorized those leaks.
Say it aint so Barry.
On the Eleventh Anniversary of Nine Eleven the towel heads came to show their respect, reported via Other McCain:
Egyptian protesters scaled the walls of the U.S. embassy on Tuesday, tore down the American flag and burned it during a protest over what they said was a film being produced in the United States that insulted Prophet Mohammad. . . .
Once the U.S. flag was hauled down, some protesters tore it up and showed off pieces to television cameras. Others burned the remains outside the fortress-like embassy building in central Cairo. . . .
“This movie must be banned immediately and an apology should be made,” said 19-year-old Ismail Mahmoud, a member of the so-called “ultras” soccer supporters who played a big role in the uprising that brought down Hosni Mubarak last year.
Reac, from the Senior McCain:
Hey, Ismail: Do you think this flag-burning stuff is smart? You want to turn this into war? You want my son to come kill you?
I don’t know anything about this movie you and your “ultra” mob are all excited about, Ismail, but attacking a U.S. embassy isn’t the kind of thing that Americans take lightly, no matter what gutless apologies you get from the pussies at the State Department. And the same goes for that mob of violent savages in Benghazi:
May the Lord have mercu on their souls, the rag heads have pissed off the Clan McCain. The camel jockeys may not have pissed off Dim Won, b/k/a Barack Obama, been noticed by the Smartest Woman in the World, b/k/a Mrs. B.J. Clinton, but they have pissed America off.
The democrats tried to foist off the rumor some how Barack Obama was some kind of world class intellect. For her part Clarice Feldman shredded this notion in 2009. Yet some liberals can not comprehend the obvious and continue to cling to the notion that somehow President Fift Seven States is some how intelligent, from one Steven L. Taylor, Outside the Beltwey:
Hinderaker then notes a video (you can see it at the link) wherein Obama makes a reference to “three little words” and then quotes “made in the USA” which, clearly, is not a formulation made of three words.
One suspects, and it doesn’t take much charity to do so, that Obama was thinking “Made in America” as the three words in question, and yet the synonymous phrase “the USA” came out.
I find this kind of stuff increasingly silly and annoying. We are not talking here about an actual inability to count, but rather what amounts to verbal typos. As one who speaks for a living, I make of lot of those (and, likewise, make more than my share of the typed type as well).
from your truly:
Obviously Ms Jarrett has never read any of Clarice Feldman. Ms Feldman does not so much debate Barack Obama;’s purported intelligence, she destroys the nation that Obama is intelligent, see Clarice, here, here and here.
With the birth certificate issue, there was circumstantial evidence, albeit not proof, that Obama was born in the United State. However when it comes to the notions, that Obama is an educated and intelligent man, we have little beyond democrat talking points and outright urban legend.
President Fifty Seven States is over fifty. If he had demonstrated his legendary level of intelligence, there was be some evidence some where.
If you can’t count to four, or keep track of the difference between 50 and 57 states, maybe that helps to explain why you don’t understand the significance of a $16 trillion debt. In a world where numbers are all just a fog, what’s the difference?
John Hinderaker, Powerllne.
Math is not Mr. Obama’s friend, and Mr. Obama is no friend of America.
