Most Politicians aren’t elected because they are smart they are elected to give free things to the voters. Jihadists kill 17 in Paris and Obama promises free community college in the US.
Tag Archives: Eric Garner
MALIK OBAMA
Well now all Barack is doing is helping his brother Malik in doing his job. Its a family business destroying America! Their dad would be proud of them!
Muslim family wound 14 police in revenge attack in Germany
Muslims do what their “religion” tells them to do and they do it with enthusiasm when ever they get a chance; they go out and kill rape and plunder!
But yes, our economy has recovered to almost Utopian levels. They keep telling us that, and then…
This is a direct result of ObamaCare! The law caused many employers to cut back hours so they would not have to pay for healthcare. That cut family incomes and although that was not the only reason Household disposable income has taken a big hit as the medium income has fallen close to 10%. Unfortunately that’s money off the top as shelter food and other necessities now take all the money these families have.
Some of the largest retail chains in the U.S. just announced that they’re closing dozens of stores and laying off thousands of employees. Two of the brands with the most closures are Macy’s, which is shutting down 14 locations, and JCPenney, with 39 stores closing.
Even worse, business experts say that there is a larger trend of layoffs hitting retailers all across the country.
“I believe that we are on the verge of a number of business failures of specialty retailers as well as some national general retailers which in turn will have a domino effect on those dealing with the retail industry,” stated Chuck Tatelbaum, an expert on business bankruptcy.
“Because of the changes in buying habits of U.S. consumers, as a result of the continuing hesitancy to spend, the 2014 holiday season was not sufficiently successful for many retailers that have either over expanded, fell out of favor or had…
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Six trivia questions to see how much history you really know.
Be honest; it’s kind of fun and revealing. If you don’t know the answer make your best guess. Answer all of the questions (no cheating) before looking at the answers.
And, no, the answers to these questions aren’t all Barack Obama.
1) “We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.”
- A. Karl Marx B. Adolph Hitler C. Joseph Stalin
D. Barack Obama E. None of the above
2) “It’s time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few, and for the few… and to replace it with shared responsibility, for shared prosperity.”
- A. Lenin B. Mussolini C. Idi Amin
D. Barack Obama E. None of the above
3) “(We)…. can’t just let business as usual go on, and that means something has to be taken away from some people.”
- A. Nikita Khrushchev B. Joseph Goebbels C. Boris Yeltsin
D. Barack Obama E. None of the above
4) “We have to build a political consensus and that requires people to give up a little bit of their own … in order to create this common ground.”
- A. Mao Tse Tung B. Hugo Chavez C. Kim Jong II
D. Barack Obama E. None of the above
5) “I certainly think the free-market has failed.”
- A. Karl Marx B. Lenin C. Molotov
D. Barack Obama E. None of the above
6) “I think it’s time to send a clear message to what has become the most profitable sector in (the) entire economy that they are being watched.”
- A. Pinochet B. Milosevic C. Saddam Hussein
D. Barack Obama E. None of the above
Scroll down for answers…
… and the answers are:
(1) E. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/29/2004
(2) E. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 5/29/2007
(3) E. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/4/2007
(4) E. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/4/2007
(5) E. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/4/2007
(6) E. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 9/2/2005
Want to know something scary?
She may be the next president!
American Entrepreneurship: Dead or Alive?
Story Highlights
- The birth and death trends of U.S. business must be reversed
- The economy is more important to security than the military
- America has misdiagnosed the cause and effect of job creation
The U.S. now ranks not first, not second, not third, but 12th among developed nations in terms of business startup activity. Countries such as Hungary, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Sweden, Israel and Italy all have higher startup rates than America does.
We are behind in starting new firms per capita, and this is our single most serious economic problem. Yet it seems like a secret. You never see it mentioned in the media, nor hear from a politician that, for the first time in 35 years, American business deaths now outnumber business births.
The U.S. Census Bureau reports that the total number of new business startups and business closures per year — the birth and death rates of American companies — have crossed for the first time since the measurement began. I am referring to employer businesses, those with one or more employees, the real engines of economic growth. Four hundred thousand new businesses are being born annually nationwide, while 470,000 per year are dying.
You may not have seen this graph before.
Until 2008, startups outpaced business failures by about 100,000 per year. But in the past six years, that number suddenly turned upside down. There has been an underground earthquake. As you read this, we are at minus 70,000 in terms of business survival. The data are very slow coming out of the U.S. Department of Census, via the Small Business Administration, so it lags real time by two years.
Net Number of New U.S. Firms Plummets
Business startups outpaced business failures by about 100,000 per year until 2008. But in the past six years, that number suddenly reversed, and the net number of U.S. startups versus closures is minus 70,000.
My hunch is that no one talks about the birth and death rates of American business because Wall Street and the White House, no matter which party occupies the latter, are two gigantic institutions of persuasion. The White House needs to keep you in the game because their political party needs your vote. Wall Street needs the stock market to boom, even if that boom is fueled by illusion. So both tell us, “The economy is coming back.”
Let’s get one thing clear: This economy is never truly coming back unless we reverse the birth and death trends of American businesses.
Dead-Wrong Thinking
It is catastrophic to be dead wrong on the biggest issue of the last 50 years — the issue of where jobs come from. Our leadership keeps thinking that the answer to economic growth and ultimately job creation is more innovation, and we continue to invest billions in it. But an innovation is worthless until an entrepreneur creates a business model for it and turns that innovative idea in something customers will buy. Yet current thinking tells us we’re on the right track and don’t need different strategies, so we continue marching down the path of national decline, believing innovation will save us.
I don’t want to sound like a doomsayer, but when small and medium-sized businesses are dying faster than they’re being born, so is free enterprise. And when free enterprise dies, America dies with it.
Let’s run some numbers. You will often hear from otherwise credible sources that there are 26 million businesses in America. This is misleading; 20 million of these reported “businesses” are inactive companies that have no sales, profits, customers or workers. The only number that is useful and instructive is the number of current operating businesses with one or more employees.
There are only 6 million businesses in the United States with one or more employees. Of those, 3.8 million have four or fewer employees — mom and pop shops owned by people who aren’t building a business as much as they are building a life. And God bless them all. That is what America is for. We need every single one of them.
Next, there are about a million companies with five to nine employees, 600,000 businesses with 10 to 19 employees, and 500,000 companies with 20 to 99 employees. There are 90,000 businesses with 100 to 499 employees. And there are just 18,000 with 500 employees or more, and that figure includes about a thousand companies with 10,000 employees or more. Altogether, that is America, Inc.
Let me be very clear. America, Inc. is far more important to America’s security than our military. Because without the former prospering — and solvent — there is no latter. We have enormous military power only because of a growing economy that has, so far, made it possible for the government to pay its bills. When former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, was asked in a Senate hearing on June 28, 2011, to name the biggest current threat to the security of the United States, he didn’t say al-Qaida. He didn’t say Iran’s nuclear capabilities. He answered, “I believe our debt is the greatest threat to our national security.”
Declining Businesses Mean Declining Revenues for Social Spending
Keep in mind that these 6 million businesses, especially small and medium-sized ones, provide jobs for more than 100 million Americans and much of the tax base for everything. These small, medium and big businesses have generated the biggest economy in the world, which has allowed the country to afford lavish military and social spending and entitlements. And we’ve been able to afford all of this because, until now, we’ve dominated the world economy.
When new businesses aren’t being born, the free enterprise system and jobs decline. And without a growing free enterprise system, without a growing entrepreneurial economy, there are no new good jobs. That means declining revenues and smaller salaries to tax, followed by declining aid for the elderly and poor and declining funding for the military, for education, for infrastructure — declining revenues for everything.
America has maintained the biggest tax coffers in the world because its 300+ million citizens have produced and owned one-quarter of virtually all global wealth. The United States clobbered everyone in the battle of free enterprise, in the battle of business building, and in the battle of inventing the future. Until recently, America had blown the world away in terms of economic success. We are now quickly losing that edge, and everything we’re trying to do to fix the problem is dead wrong.
Here’s why: Entrepreneurship is not systematically built into our culture the way innovation or intellectual development is. You might say, “Well, I see a lot of entrepreneurial activity in the country.” Yes, that’s true, but entrepreneurship is now in decline for the first time since the U.S. government started measuring it.
The whole country and subsequently the world are having their own dead-wrong moment, and it is causing America and the whole world to make everything worse. And people know it, though they may not know why. When Gallup asked Americans to rate how much they personally worry about particular problems facing the country, the top three issues that respondents worry about a “great deal” were the economy (59%), federal spending and the budget deficit (58%), and the availability and affordability of healthcare (57%).
The more we execute on our leadership’s erroneous belief in innovation, the more our engine stalls out — and the more people rightly worry about economic issues.
Because we have misdiagnosed the cause and effect of economic growth, we have misdiagnosed the cause and effect of job creation. To get back on track, we need to quit pinning everything on innovation, and we need to start focusing on the almighty entrepreneurs and business builders. And that means we have to find them.
Are YOU on the Feds “Extremist” LIST? Saboteur365 Is!
WOW I think I’m close to all of them … lol
“New Information” from State Dept. on Benghazi
More information on Benghazi from Sharyl Attkisson
Sharylattkisson.com
Posted: 14 Jan 2015 04:41 PM PST
Most of the work done by the House Select Committee on Benghazi is happening behind closed doors. Today, Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C. announced that members have just wrapped up a classified briefing with State Department officials.
“The Department of State provided new information to the committee and answered questions raised by committee members,” said Gowdy in a press statement.
In addition to questioning State Department officials, the Benghazi Committee has had a closed-door meeting with Justice Department officials regarding document product and potential witnesses.
So far, the committee isn’t tipping its hand as to what information has been gleaned. Gowdy confirms there will be public hearings in the future, but that the bulk of the effort will be done “in classified settings or through investigative techniques that do not lend themselves to public hearings.”
Democrats have said that continued inquiries about the September 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya constitute “a witch hunt.” They point out there have been seven investigations to date, and that Gowdy’s committee is providing an eighth.
Gowdy says,
“The committee is continuing its probe into all aspects of Benghazi and is currently focused on ensuring access to all first-hand accounts from those on the ground that night. This process will be ongoing and in some respects must remain classified.”–Benghazi Select Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C.
Gowdy also reports the committee held a closed-door meeting with the Department of Justice regarding document production and potential witnesses related to the committee’s ongoing probe. He went on to say while the bulk of the committee’s work will have to be done in classified settings or through investigative techniques that do not lend themselves to public hearings, he still plans to hold more public hearings.
A House Intelligence Committee report recently concluded that no orders using the words “stand down” were given to intelligence officers the night of the Benghazi attacks. However, it stated that would-be rescuers were directed to “wait” for a short period of time when they wanted to depart immediately to help. Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, a Republican, acknowledged that the committee’s findings on that point are at odds with testimony from first-hand participants who claimed they were given “stand down” orders (using those words).
A number of news reports portrayed critical analyses of what went wrong as “dark conspiracy theories,” and claimed the Intelligence Committee report “dismissed the bulk of the most damning [criticisms] against the administration” and “cleared the administration of wrong doing.” One news report stated that the report “utterly destroys everything right-wing conspiracy theorists have been pushing for more than two years about the deadly attack…literally every accusation has been debunked. No exceptions.”
In fact, the House Intelligence Committee report was, in many respects, the opposite of those descriptions. As the report and Chairman Rogers stated: since the report focused on the intelligence community, it was not a comprehensive examination of the many controversies. It generally did not attempt to examine, indict or exonerate actions by the White House, the State Department or the military.
Written by the committee that conducts oversight of the intelligence community–and works closely with it– the report portrayed actions of the intelligence community in a positive light stating that there was no intelligence failure on the intelligence community’s part.
But it also verified many long-standing accusations: the Obama administration’s many accounts blaming a YouTube video were incorrect, “there was no protest,” the State Department ignored warnings and denied security requests, none of the witnesses interviewed ever thought the attacks were anything other than the work of terrorists (though Obama officials maintained otherwise), some Obama officials gave incomplete and incorrect information and testimony, the State Department was ill-prepared for attacks, that the CIA provided prior warnings of a likely attack in Benghazi (though not a specific time and date), the talking points furthered by U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice were incorrect (though the committee says it did not have access to information to determine what she personally knew prior to speaking on the talking points).
Read “The ‘Other’ House Intel Committee Benghazi Report”
The House Benghazi Committee was formed last year after the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch obtained internal government emails that had been withheld from Congress, though subpoenaed. One of the emails showed that White House adviser Ben Rhodes wanted to ensure the underlying public message provided after the attacks would “underscore that these protests are rooted in [an] Internet video, and not a broad failure or policy.” Another email revealed then-CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell played a major role in altering the so-called “talking points,” which removed mention of al-Qaeda, terrorism and prior warnings provided to the State Department. Morell had kept his role in drafting the talking point changes secret, though questioned about it by members of Congress.
A year and a half after the attacks, an internal government email revealed that the morning after Sept. 11, 2012, the State Department informed Libya that the attacks were the work of terrorists–at the same time the Obama administration was publicly saying it was the result of a spontaneous protest.
In an exclusive story for CBS News in May of 2013, I reported that Obama officials acknowledged many mistakes but claimed they were more the result of incompetence than malice.
Last fall, former State Department official Raymond Maxwell stepped forward to reveal that he witnessed what he called a “document sorting” session at State Department headquarters in the basement shortly after September 11, 2012, after a call to turn over documents. Maxwell, a Democrat who donated to President Obama’s campaign, claimed the operation appeared to be supervised by top aides to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Some Republican Senators have pressed to join the House investigation into Benghazi by forming a joint select committee, but there has been no public response from Republican leadership, which would have to make such a decision.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, a Democrat from California, has said that Gowdy wants to put the Obama administration on trial and accused Republicans of using Benghazi to “score cheap political points.”
“It has been obvious that the GOP’s obsession with Benghazi has never been about getting to the truth of what happened or preventing future attacks against U.S. personnel overseas,” said Boxer.
Last fall, Democrats portrayed the work of the Benghazi Committee as a waste of time, claiming there are no outstanding questions or conflicts. The committee’s top Democrat Elijah Cummings stated,
“The point is that these questions have been investigated and answered.”–Elijah Cummings, D-Md.
Democrats say the investigation to date has been exhaustive, including:
• 9 Congressional committee investigations
• 17 hearings
• 50 briefings
• 25 transcribed interviews
• 8 subpoenas
• 25,000 pages of documents reviewed
However, as each investigation has looked at different pieces of Benghazi events, new information has come to light. Much of it has directly contradicted original information released by the Obama administration.
“Since all documents responsive to congressional inquiries into the Benghazi terrorist attack have not been produced, it is fair to say that not all questions have been asked and answered,” a committee spokesman responded, at the time.
Benghazi Unanswered Questions: A SeriesBenghazi story links
Unanswered Benghazi Questions: 7th in a SeriesPosted: 14 Jan 2015 03:30 AM PST
[Above image: Aftermath of Benghazi attacks, obtained by Judicial Watch in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the U.S. State Dept.]
7. Why did Gen. David Petraeus, as head of the CIA, allow his deputy, Mike Morell, to call the shots on development of the Benghazi talking points, removing references to prior warnings and terrorism that Petraeus had wanted included?
One of the unravelled mysteries surrounding the aftermath of Benghazi is why, as documents reveal, CIA Director Gen. Petraeus begrudgingly allowed his subordinate, Mike Morell, to overrule him on content of the Benghazi talking points.
Morell first denied to members of Congress that he played a key role. But later, after documents revealed it, Morell admitted he removed language that his own agency had included in the talking points disclosing that the C.I.A. had provided “warnings” in advance of the attacks. Morell differed with his boss, Petraeus, who wanted the warning language included.
“I reacted very strongly to inclusion of the warning language,” Morell testified to Congress last year in explaining the changes he made. He was asked to appear before Congress to clarify discrepancies in his accounts of the talking points. “I thought it was an effort on the C.I.A.’s part to make it look like we had warned and shift any blame to the State Department…I made a decision at that moment I got the talking points I was going to take the… language out.”
It was left unexplained as to why Morell was put in the driver’s seat and was defending the State Department’s interests rather than his own agency’s and that of his boss.
Documents show that Petraeus was so disgusted by all of the edits made to the talking points that he said he’d rather they not be used at all.
Upon learning of Petraeus aquiescence, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) commented, “Petraeus seems so passive I’ve never know anyone so passive…Why was he sitting back the way he was?” That has never been publicly explained.
As the talking points were being developed, Petraeus was under F.B.I. investigation for his alleged extramarital affair, which later prompted his resignation, but Morell says he was unaware of Petraeus’ troubles at the time.
Below are previous questions published in this series.
6. Who made the decision not to convene the Counterterrorism Security Group during the Benghazi attacks, as required under Presidential directive?
Under Presidential directive installed after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S., a special Counterterrorism Security Group (CSG) was to be convened in the event of any action against the U.S. that could potentially be terrorist-related. The idea, say sources familiar with the directive, was to allow for the best inter-agency coordination of information and response available.
However, after the Benghazi attacks, sources told me that the Obama administration declined to convene the CSG, much to the chagrin of some of its members who felt they had valuable contributions to make but were not consulted.
An Obama administration official who was involved with the process told me that the CSG wasn’t necessary because agency principals were engaged at the highest level. However, some of these top agency officials were people who — even after the attacks — were wholly unaware of all of the resources available to the U.S.
Another question: Since the Presidential directive wasn’t followed, has the Obama administration now altered or dismissed the directive?
Had the response to the attacks gone better, it would be more convincing to argue the CSG’s expertise wasn’t needed. However, considering the night’s tragic outcome, the reasons behind the failure to use the group is worth exploring.
5. What do military After Action Reviews on Benghazi reveal? If early drafts differ from final drafts in the record, what changes were made and by whom?
The military describes an After Action Review as “a keystone of the evaluation process.” It’s difficult to imagine a scenario in which evaluation is more crucial than after Benghazi. Yet more than two years after the attacks, the After Action Reviews remain secret even to members of Congress who requested copies.
An accurate and unaltered After Action Review could provide keen insight into what went right and what went wrong from a military standpoint. It could shed light on which public claims are correct and which are faulty.
The Benghazi After Action Reports were not even shared with the Benghazi Accountability Review Board (ARB) which nonetheless concluded, “The interagency response was both timely and appropriate but there simply was not enough time given the speed of the attacks for armed U.S. military assets to have made a difference.”
The ARB’s conclusion differs with other official accounts and analyses. It also doesn’t explain how the military could supposedly know there was no point in launching assets because “they wouldn’t get there in time,” when it had no idea how long the assaults would last or whether there would be further attacks in the region on the anniversary of Sept. 11.
When pressed during Congressional testimony as to why he did not personally review any After Action Reports, ARB co-chairman Admiral Mike Mullen stated that he was “read a summary” of an After Action Report and was satisfied with the information. He didn’t elaborate on why—as a lead investigator into what really happened—he wouldn’t have sought a firsthand review of these key, comprehensive documents.
An After Action Review is “a professional discussion of an event, focused on performance standards, that enables soldiers to discover for themselves what happened, why it happened, and how to sustain strengths and improve on weaknesses. It is a tool leaders and units can use to get maximum benefit from every mission or task.”
What specifics could a Benghazi After Action Review provide?
Read a Sample After Action Review
According to the military, an After Action Review provides:
- Candid insights into specific soldier, leader, and unit strengths and weaknesses from various perspectives.
- Feedback and insight critical to battle-focused training.
- Details often lacking in evaluation reports alone.
U.S. Military on After Action Reviews:
“Evaluation is the basis for the commander’s unit-training assessment. No commander, no matter how skilled, will see as much as the individual soldiers and leaders who actually conduct the training. Leaders can better correct deficiencies and sustain strengths by carefully evaluating and comparing soldier, leader, and unit performance against the standard. The AAR is the keystone of the evaluation process.”
4. What do photographs taken at the White House and/or of the President throughout the duration of the Benghazi attacks show and why won’t the White House release them?
White House photographer Pete Souza is often on hand to record photographs of President Obama in action. According to the New Yorker, Souza takes an average of 20,000 photos of President Obama per month. Photographs captured the night of the Benghazi attacks–likely hundreds of them–would reveal much information about the executive branch’s actions.
Several weeks after the attacks, when it became clear that the White House was withholding information on the President’s actions and whereabouts, my CBS News producer and I requested copies of any photos taken that night. The White House photo office promised a prompt response, likely by day’s end.
However, release of the photos was apparently blocked by the White House press office. The White House photo office told us that, in this instance, their release would have to be approved by Josh Earnest. Earnest was then a deputy White House press secretary. He has since been promoted to White House press secretary.
We contacted Earnest through the White House press office but he would not return our calls. We attempted this process for days, weeks, and then months, but Earnest would not respond. We asked the photo office to provide an alternate means for us to obtain the photos since the method they required, contacting Earnest, was a dead end. But they simply kept referring us back to Earnest.
According to the White House: “Pete Souza, Chief Official White House Photographer and Director of the White House Photography Office, has access unlike any other. Camera in tow, Souza travels alongside President Obama to visually document each meeting, trip and encounter for historical record. Check out his work on the White House Flickr photo stream and in the photo galleries on WhiteHouse.gov.”
The “most transparent administration in history” should release the Benghazi night photos. The media and Congress should demand them. Earnest and Souza—both paid by tax dollars and working in offices funded by tax dollars and supposedly working on behalf of the public—should be asked about the photos and what they observed that night.
The White House photo office is meant to record historical photos of the President. Yet a number of major news organizations allege it has been turned into a propaganda arm of the administration. In November of last year, more than 30 major news and media organizations, national newspapers and television networks wrote a letter protesting the Obama administration’s unprecedented limits on photo access. The news outlets include ABC, FOX, CBS, CNN, NBC,Bloomberg and the New York Times.
According to the letter:
“Journalists are routinely being denied the right to photograph or videotape the President while he is performing his official duties. As surely as if they were placing a hand over a journalist’s camera lens, officials in this administration are blocking the public from having an independent view of important functions of the Executive Branch of government.”
At the time, Earnest told reporters, “We’ve taken advantage of new technology to give the American public even greater access to behind-the-scenes footage or photographs of the president doing his job…I understand why that is a source of some consternation to the people in this room, but to the American public, that is a clear win.”
Read the journalists’ letter of protest to the White House
Doug Mills, a photographer for The New York Times who has covered the White House since the Reagan administration complained to then-White House press secretary Jay Carney that the “most transparent administration” in history was actually behaving more like the Soviet Union.
“I said, ‘Jay, this is just like Tass,’ Mills said in an interview. “It’s like government-controlled use of the public image of the president.”
3. Why wasn’t surveillance video that was recorded at the U.S. compound in Benghazi ever released, as promised?
In fall of 2012, U.S. officials promised to publicly release a declassified version of surveillance video taken by multiple cameras at the U.S. compound in Benghazi, as well as video recorded by an overhead drone. At one point, officials on behalf of the Director of National Intelligence told the news media the video would be released on or about Thanksgiving of 2012. However, the video was never released and, more than two years later, no explanation for the reversal in plans has been provided.
2. When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reportedly told family members of the Benghazi victims that the U.S. was going to find and prosecute whoever made the “awful” Internet video (rather than pledging to catch those who committed the murders), what crime did she envision the video maker had committed? On what information was she relying when she thought that the government could–and should–persecute a filmmaker who was exercising free speech in America? When U.S. officials asked YouTube to remove the video, what was the legal, ethical or policy basis for doing so and who in government was consulted? Had Mrs. Clinton or President Obama watched the entire film prior to disparaging it? What steps, if any, did administration officials take to have Nakoula charged?
The maker of “Innocence of Muslims,” Nakoula Nakoula, describes himself as an Egyptian Christian. He says he made the film about radical extremists who seek to destroy the American culture and way of life. After his film was incorrectly blamed for the Sept. 11, 2012 violence, Nakoula was arrested for violating terms of his probation set after a bank fraud conviction for which he had served one year in jail. The content of film itself broke no U.S. laws.
In the days and weeks after the attacks, top U.S. officials steered fault for the attacks toward the video, though we now know from internal documents that they had almost immediately privately concluded the terrorist group Ansar al Sharia was to blame. The State Department had sent a message to Libyan officials saying so–even as U.S. officials claimed otherwise to the American public.
With whom did Mrs. Clinton and other officials consult before sending the message that the maker of the video would be prosecuted? What crimes did they mistakenly believe had been committed through Nakoula’s free speech act? In asking that the video be withdrawn from YouTube, has the administration set a precedent that dictates any video offensive to some Muslims should not be posted on the Internet? Does that policy extend to videos that offend some Christians or those belonging to other religions — or to no religion? Under what legal basis and on whose specific advice did U.S. officials follow this course of action?
Below is the first article in this series published Dec. 26, 2014
1. Where was President Obama throughout the long night of the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya? What decisions did the Commander-in-Chief make and what actions did he take while Americans were under assault on foreign soil? Considering that the U.S. embassy in Egypt had already been overrun earlier in the day, and that further attacks on other U.S. facilities were anticipated throughout the night, how involved was the President in tracking the volatile, regional developments?
More than two years after the fact, President Obama’s decisions and actions during the Benghazi attacks remain secret with little justification as to why they should be so shrouded. Members of the House Select Committee on Benghazi plan to seek the information. The committee is led by Republican Trey Gowdy of South Carolina. The lead Democrat on the committee is Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland.
The information blackout is in stark contrast to the aftermath of the successful 2011 raid to capture Osama bin Laden when detailed accounts, including a timeline of the President’s briefings, were released to the New York Times and other news media. Then, Obama and his top advisers did not hesitate to reveal details such as:
• The President had received divided advice on whether to move forward with the bin Laden raid.
• President Obama walked into a room adjacent to the Situation Room, said “I need to watch this,” and sat next to Brigadier General Marshall “Brad” Webb, assistant commanding general of Joint Special Operations Command.
• The President said, “We got him,” referring to bin Laden.
• After the raid, the first person the President called was former President George W. Bush. He also called former President Bill Clinton that evening.
In fact, the President’s supposed hands-off approach to the Sept. 11, 2012 Mideast attacks is a divergence from the level of involvement described during the bin Laden raid. By Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s account, Obama told him to “do what he needed to do” to handle Benghazi, then “left [specifics] up to us.” The President reportedly had no further contact with Panetta or Joint Chiefs Chairman General Martin Dempsey during the long night of attacks, deaths and evacuations.
Note: This is the first in a series of articles that will list and examine unanswered questions about the Benghazi terrorist attacks.
Multicultural Suicide
Fueling the Western paralysis in dealing with radical Islam is the late 20th century doctrine of multiculturalism.
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media January 12, 2015 1:51 pm
Multiculturalism is one of those buzzwords that does not mean what it should. The ancient and generic Western study of many cultures is not multiculturalism. Rather, the trendy term promotes non-Western cultures to a status equal with or superior to Western culture largely to fulfill contemporary political agendas.
On college campuses, multiculturalism not so much manifests itself in the worthy interest in Chinese literature, Persian history, or hieroglyphics, but rather has become more a therapeutic exercise of exaggerating Western sins while ignoring non-Western pathologies to attract those who see themselves in some way as not part of the dominant culture.
It is a deductive ideology that starts with a premise of Western fault and then makes evidence fit the paradigm. It is ironic that only Western culture is self-critical and since antiquity far more interested than other civilizations in empirically investigating the culture of the other. It is no accident that Europeans and Americans take on their own racism, sexism, and tribalism in a way that is not true of China, Nigeria or Mexico. Parody, satire, and caricature are not Chinese, African, or Arab words.
A multicultural approach to the conquest of Mexico usually does not investigate the tragedy of the collision between 16th-century imperial Spain and the Aztec Empire. More often it renders the conquest as melodrama between a mostly noble indigenous people slaughtered by a mostly toxic European Christian culture, acting true to its imperialistic and colonialist traditions and values.
In other words, there is little attention given to Aztec imperialism, colonialism, slavery, human sacrifice, and cannibalism, but rather a great deal of emphasis on Aztec sophisticated time-reckoning, monumental building skills, and social stratification. To explain the miraculous defeat of the huge Mexican empire by a few rag-tag, greedy conquistadors, discussion would not entail the innate savagery of the Aztecs that drove neighboring indigenous tribes to ally themselves with Cortés. Much less would multiculturalism dare ask why the Aztecs did not deploy an expeditionary force to Barcelona, or outfit their soldiers with metal breastplates, harquebuses, and steel swords, or at least equip their defenders with artillery, crossbows, and mines.
For the multiculturalist, the sins of the non-West are mostly ignored or attributed to Western influence, while those of the West are peculiar to Western civilization. In terms of the challenge of radical Islam, multiculturalism manifests itself in the abstract with the notion that Islamists are simply the fundamentalist counterparts to any other religion. Islamic extremists are no different from Christian extremists, as the isolated examples of David Koresh or the Rev. Jim Jones are cited ad nauseam as the morally and numerically equivalent bookends to thousands of radical Islamic terrorist acts that plague the world each month. We are not to assess other religions by any absolute standard, given that such judgmentalism would inevitably be prejudiced by endemic Western privilege. There is nothing in the Sermon on the Mount that differs much from what is found in the Koran. And on and on and on.
In the concrete, multiculturalism seeks to use language and politics to mask reality. The slaughter at Ford Hood becomes “workplace violence,” not a case of a radical Islamist, Major Nidal Hasan, screaming “Allahu Akbar” as he butchered the innocent. After the Paris violence, the administration envisions a “Summit on Countering Violent Extremism,”apparently in reaction to Buddhists who are filming beheadings, skinheads storming Paris media offices, and lone-wolf anti-abortionists who slaughtered the innocent in Australia, Canada, and France.
The likes of James Clapper and John Brennan assure us of absurdities such as the Muslim Brotherhood being a largely secular organization or jihad as little more than a personal religious journey. Terrorism is reduced to man-caused violence and the effort to combat it is little more than an “overseas contingency operation.” The head of NASA in surreal fashion boasts that one of his primary missions for the hallowed agency is to promote appreciation of Muslim science and accomplishments through outreach to Islam. The president blames an obscure film-maker for causing the deaths of Americans in Benghazi (when in reality, it was a preplanned Al-Qaeda affiliate hit) — and then Obama makes it a two-fer: he can both ignore the politically incorrect task of faulting radical Islam and score politically correct points by chastising a supposedly right-wing bigot for a crime he did not foster.
What is the ultimate political purpose of multiculturalism? It certainly has contemporary utility, in bolstering the spirits of minority groups at home and the aggrieved abroad by stating that their own unhappiness, or failure to achieve what they think they deservedly should have, was due to some deep-seated Western racism, class bias, homophobia, or sexism otherwise not found in their own particular superior cultural pedigree that was unduly smothered by the West.
For the useful idiot, multiculturalism is supposedly aimed at ecumenicalism and hopes to diminish difference by inclusiveness and non-judgmentalism. But mostly it is a narcissistic fit, in which the multiculturalist offers a cheap rationalization of non-Western pathologies, and thereby anoints himself both the moral superior to his own less critical Western peers and, in condescending fashion, the self-appointed advocate of the mostly incapable non-Westerner.
Multiculturalism is contrary to human nature. Supposedly if Muslims understand that Westerners do not associate an epidemic of global terrorism and suicide bombing with Islam, then perhaps Muslims — seeing concession as magnanimity to be reciprocated — will appreciate such outreach and help to mitigate the violence, all the more so if they also sense that they share with the more radical among them at least some legitimate gripes against the West.
So multiculturalism is the twin of appeasement. Once Americans and Europeans declare all cultures as equal, those hostile to the West should logically desist from their aggression, in gratitude to the good will and introspection of liberal Westerners. Apologizing for the Bush war on terror, promising to close down Guantanamo, deriding the war in Iraq, reminding the world of the president’s Islamic family roots — all that is supposed to persuade the Hasans, Tsarnaevs, and Kouachis in the West that we see no differences between their cultural pedigrees and the Western paradigm they have chosen to emigrate to and at least superficially embrace. Thus the violence should cease.
At its worst, multiculturalism becomes a cheap tool in careerist fashion to both bash the West and simultaneously offer oneself as a necessary intermediary to rectify Western sins, whether as a -studies professor in the university, an activist journalist or politician, or some sort of community or social organizer.
It is always helpful to turn to Al Sharpton for an illustration of the bastardized form of almost any contemporary fad, and thus here is what he once formulated as the multicultural critique of the West: “White folks was in the caves while we [blacks] was building empires. … We built pyramids before Donald Trump ever knew what architecture was … we taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it.” Note that Sharpton was not calling for new mathematics academies in the inner city to reclaim lost African arts of superior computation. Note also that Sharpton himself did not dream up these supposed non-Western superior African achievements.
In the psychological sense, multiculturalism also serves as a way of dealing with affluent Western guilt: one does not have to put his kids in an inner-city school, visit the barrio to shop, or invite undocumented aliens over for dinner, when one can both enjoy a largely affluent and apartheid existence in the concrete, while praising the noble Other in the abstract. In the European context, the liberal French or British elite welcomes in the Muslim Other for low-wage jobs and to feed his multicultural sensitivities — only to outsource the immigrants to outlander suburbs that devolve into no-go zones even for the police. In the Clinton context, when Hilary lectures us that we must understand and even empathize with the minds of our enemies, we assume that Chelsea is not on the barricades trying to fathom what drives the violent Other.
Ultimately multiculturalism is incoherent, claiming that all cultures are equal, but then (privately) disturbed that Iranians behead gays or Saudi women cannot drive a car — or radical Muslims prefer to live in Europe than among the believers in Yemen. Yet even multiculturalism cannot quite equate honor killings with the glass ceiling.
Radical Muslims both emigrate to the West and yet, once there, seek through Sharia law to destroy the very foundations of what made the West attractive to them in the first place. Clean water, advanced medicine, entitlement support and free speech ultimately cannot exist in a society that routinely assassinates the outspoken satirist. In a less dramatic sense, the entire open-border, La Raza movement is based on the anomaly that the United States is such an inhospitable and racist place, while Mexico is such a benevolent homeland, that 11 million risk their lives to reach the former and abandon the latter.
In the end what is multiculturalism? A global neurosis. For its elite architects, it is a psychological tic, whose loud professions square the circle of enjoying guilt-free the material comfort that only the West can provide. For the rest, multiculturalism is a sort of fraud, a mechanism to blame something that one secretly desires in lieu of addressing the causes of personal or collective self-induced misery.
For Muslims of the Middle East, there is a clear pathway to economic prosperity and a secure lifestyle; countries as diverse as South Korea, Japan, and Chile are proof of it. Within wide parameters, success only asks adherence to a mostly free market, some sort of freedom of expression, religious tolerance, a separation of science from orthodoxy, the rule of law, and consensual constitutional government — along with a cultural ethos of rough parity between the sexes, merit-based evaluation instead of tribal favors, and tolerance for ethnic and religious minorities.
Fail that, and human misery follows of the now familiar Middle East sort, in turn followed by the tired blame that the Jews, the Americans, the Europeans, or the West caused these self-generated pathologies.
If the Western establishment were truly moral, it would reject multiculturalism as a deductive, anti-empirical, and illiberal creed. It would demand that critics abroad first put their own house in order before blaming others for their own failures, and remind Western elites that their multicultural fantasies are cheap nostrums designed to deal with their own neuroses.
Finally, it would also not welcome in newcomers who seek to destroy the very institutions that make the West so unlike the homelands they have voted with their feet to utterly abandon.
Suburbs and the New American Poverty
The problem this article doesn’t talk about is that the old middle class manufacturing jobs are long gone. They have been replaced by low paying retail and food service jobs as shown in all the BLS Employment situation reports. The older workers who lost their jobs went on disability since at their age they was little hope of employment. As a result there are fewer and fewer people working as a percentage of the population. This puts more and more stress on the government to provide support but the one that are working are only making low wages to the government is forced to borrow more money. This is a death spiral that is masked by the large number that have dropped out of the work force.
Centinel2012 