What I’d like to hear is Barack Obama resigning over Benghazi, the most extreme public mishandling of an attack on American personnel ever, certainly in my lifetime. If I (or most people) had been president and something like that happened on my (our) watch — and then I had lied about it myself while urging others to cover up — I would be so ashamed of myself I wouldn’t be able to come out in public.

But that’s not what happened. In fact, the reverse occurred. The president acted as if it was Mitt Romney’s fault for ever bringing the subject up. And he had a willing co-conspirator in the morally stunted Candy Crowley.

Obama’s outrage during the second debate even at being questioned on his response to the terrorist killings is one of the ugliest displays of narcissism I have ever witnessed from a politician and certainly the ugliest if you consider the ramifications of his behavior.

That the mainstream media ignored this reaction is a testament to their enduring pathology. Or perhaps to a secret longing for the divine right of kings.

But it doesn’t matter. If Barack Obama does not resign on Monday, his reputation will be destroyed forever, even if he wins a second term, because Benghazi will not go away.

This is not just because of the seemingly insoluble conundrums described so thoroughly by Watergate author (among other things) James Rosen in his Wall Street Journal oped — “The Three Benghazi Timelines We Need Answers About” — but for a reason yet more disturbing.

Only a man with a leftover undergraduate ambivalence about Western civilization would have dealt with the Benghazi catastrophe in such a fashion in the first place. Barack Obama responded to the terrorism like a Columbia junior stoned on a reefer, particularly one from his era. He took another toke and moved on. And then when he was told he couldn’t do that, he got angry at the people telling him.

How that will play out in Monday night’s debate, I have no idea (beyond my wish that he would resign and spare us any more of this). But Mitt Romney would be well advised to remember his opponent is a man who has not fully grown up. He doesn’t know how to take responsibility in an adult manner, so the chances that he will lash out are strong. He also may be aided and abetted in that enterprise by Bob Schieffer who, of the three debate moderators, is the longest card-carrying member of legacy media. In fact, he is one of the most long-standing around. You can count on his bias to shine through, overtly and covertly, because this could be the last hurrah of that clique (and they know it). Given public response to the debates and the moderators, it’s hard to be believe we will see the same dumb show in 2016. If we do, shame on us.

And one final thing I would like to hear in the foreign policy debate but will not: It’s time to name our enemy. And by that I don’t mean al-Qaeda. That’s just the joker in the pack, the villain with a thousand faces, able to reappear in any mask imaginable and in any location. No, the real enemy is the pack of cards itself — Islamism. But Obama’s administration never mentions it. They don’t even use the word “terrorism.” It would be really interesting if Mitt Romney asked Obama what motivated Major Hasan’s mass murder of his fellow soldiers at Ft. Hood. I bet the answer wouldn’t even be worthy of an undergraduate.

http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2012/10/22/should-barack-obama-resign-tonight/

“Something very, very big concerning the president of the United States,” he said. “It’s going to be very big. I know one thing — you will cover it in a very big fashion.” Trump, who said he will announce the news on Twitter “sometime probably Wednesday,” suggested it could “possibly” impact the election.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/82701.html#ixzz2A2LvXv5e

while golfing 600 HRS! prior to this tragedy, bet Barry thought Benghazi was some exotic golf course he hadn’t yet played… Mitt better hammer hard tonight!
	Report: Obama Misses Over Half His Intelligence Briefings Source: breitbart.com White House Press Secretary Jay Carney calls a new Government Accountability Institute (GAI) report finding that President Obama has missed over half of his daily intelligence briefings “hilarious.”

President Obama is getting so desperate about Romney-trending election polls that he is calling on an old, discarded ally to help his get out the vote effort: Rev. Jeremiah Wright. According to former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, “If Obama looks as if he’s going black, he could turn off white people. So he’s largely been lying low on the race issues – visibly pushing for the Latino vote, the gay vote, the women’s vote, but not the black vote. But last weekend, he held a conference call with a collection of black preachers that included his old pastor,Jeremiah Wright. He wanted to talk to them about getting out the vote.”

Wright, of course, was so controversial that then-candidate Obama was forced to throw him under the bus during the 2008 election cycle. Wright told author Edward Klein that Obama tried to pay him $100,000 to keep his mouth shut during the election cycle.

And now Jeremiah Wright’s back, and better than ever. When push comes to shove, Obama’s still Jeremiah Wright’s mentee.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/romney-receives-endorsement-of-orlando-sentinel/?hp

In advance of the Third Presidential Debate in Florida on Oct. 22, which will focus on foreign policy, it is useful to examine whether President Barack Obama kept the ambitious foreign policy promises he made in 2008…

1. “End the War in Iraq Responsibly.” Obama claims he has kept that promise, but the War in Iraq was actually ended by George W. Bush, and Obama merely abided by the withdrawal timetable that Bush negotiated before leaving office. The key word is “responsibly.” Obama said in 2008 that he would keep a residual force in Iraq to maintain security. But he–and Vice President Biden–failed to negotiate a new agreement with the Iraqi government. The result was a total withdrawal, against the advice of military leaders and the wishes of the Iraqi government. Obama took the hard-fought sacrifices of tens of thousands of Americans and squandered them, leaving a potential ally and strategic foothold at the mercy of the hegemonic ambitions of Al Qaeda and Iran.

2. “Finish the Fight Against Al Qaeda and Turn the Tide Against Global Terrorism.” Give Obama credit for ordering the successful raid on Osama Bin Laden. The past several weeks have made it clear that the fight against Al Qaeda is not finished, nor have we turned the tide. Indeed, Obama has now dropped the line “Al Qaeda is on the run” from his stump speech. The long refusal of the Obama administration to acknowledge that the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya was an act of terror is part of a broader pattern in which it has refused to identify radical Islam itself as a threat to the U.S. Obama is learning something that he once mocked Bush for saying out loud: that bin Laden is one man, and that the real problem is much bigger.

3. “Rebuild a Strong Twenty-first Century Military.” Obama began doing the opposite almost as soon as he took the oath of office. While wasting hundreds of billions of stimulus dollars on companies that failed and jobs that were never created, Obama cut the F-22 Raptor–which, whatever its demerits, was not only “shovel-ready” but combat-ready. Obama also ended the military’s two-war strategy and oversaw plans for a managed decline that will see the U.S. Navy shrink alarmingly. He has taken the country to the fiscal brink, and massive new cuts to defense loom unless he abandons his quixotic quest to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans–not for the sake of balancing the budget (which such taxes cannot possibly achieve alone) but for “fairness.”

4. “Stop the Spread of Nuclear Weapons.” After four years, Iran is much closer to obtaining enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon because Obama refused to confront the Iranian regime, then resisted tough economic sanctions against it, and now rejects a firm red line beyond which diplomacy will cease. Obama insisted on re-inventing the wheel, starting talks anew as if years of effort by Bush and our European allies meant nothing. In addition, Obama cancelled the missile defense plans that Bush had negotiated with Poland and the Czech Republic to help defend the U.S. and our allies from an Iranian (or Russian) nuclear attack. In North Korea, the death of Kim Jong-Il was an opportunity wasted: it remains a dangerous nuclear power.

5. “Renew Our Alliances to Meet New Global Challenges.” Obama has damaged many alliances. The worst case has been Israel, which Obama confronted openly, adopting negotiating postures more radical than those of the Palestinians and thwarting Israeli attempts to build a stronger front against Iran. But Obama also undermined relations with Eastern Europe (see above), attempted to isolate a democratic government in Honduras, and hastened the fall of pro-American regimes in the Arab Spring while deferring action against the anti-American Syrian dictatorship. Our allies in East Asia worry about our commitment to protecting them from China, and “reset” relations with Russia are allowing Vladimir Putin to advance his own interests, not ours.

0-for-5. Yes, Obama kept some of the detailed promises within these promises–hence Politifact’s findings–but he did not honor his overall goals. It is also unclear how he intends to address these failures in a second term.

‘If four Americans get killed, it’s not OPTIMAL’: Obama’s extraordinary response to Comedy Central question about shifting story after Benghazi attack

PUBLISHED: 16:44 EST, 18 October 2012 | UPDATED: 18:11 EST, 18 October 2012

Obama was speaking to Jon Stewart of The Daily Show for a programme to be broadcast tonight.

Stewart, a liberal whose young audience is full of potential voters prized by the Obama campaign, asked the president about his handling of the aftermath of the Benghazi attack.

Not optimal: President Barack Obama, pictured left, discussed the killing of four men in Benghazi while speaking to Jon Stewart, right, on The Daily Show

Ambassador Chris Stevens, diplomat Sean Smith and security men and former U.S. Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods were killed by terrorists on the 11th anniversary of 9/11 – an attack that the White House initially blamed on a spontaneous protest about an anti-Islam movie made in California.

More…

• ‘I wanted to take a swing at him’: Mitt Romney’s son says he wanted to PUNCH Obama after he called his father a ‘liar’ as rivals’ bad blood boils over
• ‘I’m pro-life and I’m happy to say that’: Ann Romney stands up to the ladies of The View as she discusses her stance on abortion

Stewart asked: ‘Is part of the investigation helping the communication between these divisions? ‘Not just what happened in Benghazi, but what happened within.

Killed: Ambassador Chris Stevens, left and diplomat Sean Smith were among those killed in the attack on Benghazi

Heroic: Former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods, right, and Glen Doherty, left, were also killed in the mortar attack

Attack: The men were killed in the September 11 assault on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, pictured

Rage: A protester hols his rifle during the assault on the Benghazi consulate

‘Because I would say, even you would admit, it was not the optimal response, at least to the American people, as far as all of us being on the same page.’

Obama responded: ‘Here’s what I’ll say. If four Americans get killed, it’s not optimal.’

He continued: ‘We’re going to fix it. All of it. And what happens, during the course of a presidency, is that the government is a big operation and any given time something screws up.

The Daily Show: Mr Obama, left, was responding to a question from Jon Stewart, right

‘And you make sure that you find out what’s broken and you fix it.

‘Whatever else I have done throughout the course of my presidency the one thing that I’ve been absolutely clear about is that America’s security comes, and the American people need to know exactly how I make decisions when it comes to war, peace, security, and protecting Americans.

‘And they will continue to get that over the next four years of my presidency.’

The word ‘optimal’ was first used by Stewart in the question. But Obama’s use of it in a sound bite that could be used to portray him as somewhat casual about the deaths, lit up conservatives on twitter after it was first reported in a White House pool report by Mike Memoli of the ‘Los Angeles Times’.

Obama’s slip could help Mitt Romney recover from an awkward moment in the presidential debate in Long Island, New York on Tuesday when he challenged Obama over whether he had initially characterised the Benghazi attack as terrorism.

During a question about security at the Benghazi compound, Obama said he was ultimately responsible as commander-in-chief. Romney then questioned whether or not Obama had called the consulate attack an ‘act of terror’ in his Rose Garden address the following day.

While Obama cut across Romney – saying ‘get the transcript’ – the Republican turned to Candy Crowley, the CNN anchor and moderator, and said; ‘I want to make sure we get that for the record, because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.’

Crowley responded: ‘He did in fact, sir.’ To clapping in the debate hall, including from Obama’s wife Michelle, in breach of the debate rules, Obama said: ‘Can you say that a little louder, Candy?’

She continued: ‘He did call it an act of terror. It did as well take two weeks or so for the whole idea of there being a riot out there about this tape to come out. You are correct about that.’

The Romney campaign blasted Crowley and said that Obama had been referring only in general terms to ‘acts of terror’ rather than talking specifically about Benghazi, which Obama and White House blamed on the anti-Islam video for a fortnight.

Joe Trippi, the veteran Democratic strategist, told Fox News that the exchange was ‘going to help the president’, adding: ‘There’s a ref, and the ref just threw the flag.’

In the Comedy central interview, Stewart referred to ‘the perception that State was on a different page than you’, noting that Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, falsely tied the attack to a protest over the video on a raft of Sunday talk shows some five days after the murders.

Obama interrupted him, saying: ‘Jon, the truth is that information comes in, folks put it out throughout the process, people say it is still incomplete. What I was always clear about was we are going to do an investigation and figure out what happened.

Asked what caused the confusion about what was behind the attack, he replied: ‘Well, we weren’t confused about the fact that four Americans had been killed, I wasn’t confused about the fact that we needed to ramp up diplomatic security around the world right after it happened, I wasn’t confused about the fact that we had to investigate exactly what happened so it gets fixed and I wasn’t confused about the fact that we were going to hunt down whoever did it and bring them to justice.

‘So, as I said during the debate, nobody is more interested in figuring this out than I am. When a tragic event like this happens on the other side of the world immediately a whole bunch of intelligence starts coming in and you try to piece together exactly what happens.

‘And what have always tried to do is just get all the facts figure out what went wrong and make sure it doesn’t happen again and we’re still in that process now. But every piece of information that we got as we got it we laid it out for the American people, and the picture eventually gets fully filled in and we know how to prevent it in the future.

Stewart also asked whether Obama – who nearly three years ago ordered the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison within a year – had changed during his four years in office and whether he still believed ‘we don’t have to trade our values for our security’.

Obama said: ‘We don’t, there’s some things that we haven’t gotten done, I still want to close Guantanamo, we haven’t been able to get that done. One of the things that we’ve got to do is put a legal architecture in place and we need congressional help to do that to make sure that not only am I reigned in, but any president’s reigned in in terms of some of the decisions that we’re making.

‘Now there’s some tough trade-offs, I mean there are times when there are bad folks somewhere on the other side of the world and you’ve got to make a call and it’s not optimal.

‘When you look at our track record as to say we’ve ended the war in Iraq, we’re winding down the war in Afghanistan we’ve gone after al-Qaeda and it’s leadership, it’s true that al-Qaeda is still active at least remnants of it are staging in North Africa and the Middle East and sometimes you’ve got to make some tough calls, but you can do so that is consistent with international law and American law.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2219867/Barack-Obama-Benghazi-If-Americans-killed-OPTIMAL-Obamas-extraordinary-response-security-fiasco-Benghazi-massacre.html#ixzz29hP4ZFJo

Critics have tried to make something out of nothing regarding Mitt Romney’s “binder” statement regarding women. Somehow, the fact that the Governor of Massachusetts sought out women to hire at the highest levels of state government is embarrassing because of the physical object which he says housed their résumés.

Some pundits on the left have claimed the “binder” comment reflects a condescending or patronizing view towards women. But how might they react to a reported binder of Muslim Americans that was handed to the Obama White House in an effort to secure jobs within the admin?
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) passed on a collection of 45 Muslim potential hires to President Obama. The effort to match these 45 individuals with jobs inside the administration was moving slowly and quietly until White House officials recently sped the process up.
Said J. Saleh Williams, program director for the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association: “It was mostly under the radar. We thought it would put the president in a precarious position. We didn’t know how closely he wanted to appear to be working with the Muslim American community.”
It would seem, then, that sometimes it takes a binder to help minorities break that glass ceiling — a lesson the President was bound to learn eventually.

Benghazi matters — both for what happened on that terrible night and what happened afterwards.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/10/18/Benghazi-Why-It-Matters

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2012/10/18/Clinton-It-Is-True-Obama-Hasnt-Fixed-Economy

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/10/18/Romney-Crushes-Obama-In-Gallup-52-45

Given that the president enjoys a normal life span, the pension allotment would be worth upwards of $6 million.

The federal budget spends about $3 million annually for the four living ex-presidents. Obama also will get Secret Service protection.

In addition, Obama may be due a nice pension for the eight years he served in the Illinois Legislature as a state senator.

Illinois is infamous for its lavish pension plan for former lawmakers. A Freedom of Information Act request for Obama’s pension amount submitted Wednesday to the General Assembly Retirement System of Illinois was not immediately answered, nor was a call to the Obama campaign.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/49450057

The weekly paper — which in 2008 backed Barack Obama against John McCain — made no bones about why it has changed parties, calling the Republican nominee “not a demagogue but a manager, a candidate whose experience is rooted in the pragmatism of the business world rather than the ideology of partisan politics.”

The Observer, which claims to have the most affluent readership in the Big Apple, said Romney “understands how to build businesses, create efficiencies, make tough deals, and carefully consider divergent viewpoints.”

“America needs a strong leader, a practical leader,” the paper continues in its endorsement. “Mr. Romney knows full well that it would be a tragic mistake to simply assume that the United States will continue to be the world’s economic powerhouse simply because that’s what we’ve been for decades.”

The Observer says that in 2008 Obama “captured the imagination of many Americans with his thrilling message of change,” but has failed to deliver.

“Given the challenges confronting the president — two raging wars and an unprecedented global economic collapse — the desire for a quick fix was unrealistic,” it says, adding that Obama’s presidency “so filled with potential, has failed to deliver the change America needs.”

It adds, “Class warfare might be a successful strategy for cobbling together 270 electoral votes. But it’s not the way to unite a divided nation.”

Sununu acknowledged that Obama “exceeded expectations” in the debate, saying “more than an empty suit showed up.”

Read more on Newsmax.com: Sununu: Obama’s ‘Been a Disgrace’

This week, jobless claims have soared to 388,000–a four-month high. But did NPR bother to revisit its cheerleading from the week before, or did it try to imply broader conclusions about the direction of the economy under Obama?

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/10/18/Media-Suddenly-Muted-on-Jobless-Claims

“The Secret Service is aware of this and will conduct appropriate follow up if necessary,” Brian Leary, a spokesman for the United States Secret Service, says in an email.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/secret-service-aware-threats-against-romney_654788.html

Read more: Welfare spending jumps 32% in four years – Washington Times

Weekly applications for U.S. unemployment benefits jumped 46,000 last week to 388,000, the highest in four months.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/49460659

Benghazi: Emperor Obama’s Waterloo?

By Daren Jonescu
It is now obvious that the U.S. government’s original story about the Benghazi consulate attack, delivered by its two heaviest hitters, the president and secretary of state, was false, and, more importantly, that it was intended to deceive. How can Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton outrun the scandal that now chases them, a scandal that makes Watergate look like cheating at tiddlywinks? As if “Fast and Furious” weren’t enough, the administration now gives America “Slow and Spurious.”

On the morning of September 12, Obama and Clinton gave a that every sentient being could immediately recognize as a pack of lies, delivered (particularly on Obama’s part) with the conviction and intonation of a child actor doing a first read-through of a new script. The president could not have projected less seriousness about the murder of his Libyan ambassador if he had delivered his speech wearing a propeller beanie. (Of course, as we learned during the vice-presidential debate, someone else has dibs on that cap on weekdays.)

Though vague about details, Obama and Clinton were clear, unequivocal and emphatic about a few key points during that official statement: (1) this assault on the Libyan consulate was an expression of understandable anger in the Arab world about a YouTube video mocking Muhammad; (2) the American government will not tolerate any intolerance toward Islam; and (3) violence – even as an expression of understandable anger over “disgusting” and “offensive” YouTube videos – never solves anything.

The administration, through its various mouthpieces, continued to emphasize these three points over the days and weeks following the Libyan consulate assassination/movie review. As time passed, however, and various truth missiles from beyond Washington’s reach found their way through Obama’s media defenses and into the American mainstream, the fissures in the government’s official story became increasingly inescapable, even to those who had desperately hoped to help Obama escape them.

Obama himself, in his town hall interview on September 21, fell back on his original script, connecting the attack to a “natural protest” (“natural”?) about a video, days after his own administration had begun to pull away from this script in the face of ridicule and exposure. So indefensible has this grand lie become that Martha Raddatz, though thoroughly devoted to the task of holding Joe Biden’s hand through his debate with Paul Ryan, was forced to begin the evening with a carefully worded question about the lie:

The State Department has now made clear there were no protesters there. It was a pre-planned assault by heavily armed men. Wasn’t this a massive intelligence failure, Vice President Biden?

Biden’s response, naturally, ignored the thrust of the question, repeating the usual talking points about “the ongoing investigation” before quickly moving on to praise the broader Obama foreign policy.

But the phrasing of Raddatz’s question is itself part of the issue. Much like George Stephanopoulos’ famous question to Obama regarding his relationship with Bill Ayers, it was designed and framed, not to discover anything, but to give the Democrat a chance to answer an unavoidable charge, and then move on.

Notice that the question was not, “Why did Obama and his surrogates run immediately to the media, to the American public, and to the UN, to blame a YouTube video and downplay any talk of a planned terrorist attack, when this was in fact an Al-Qaeda operation with no connection whatsoever to any video?”

“Intelligence failure” is a cute way of deflecting blame from the administration itself. “Failure” suggests error and ignorance, rather than dishonesty and duplicity. Blaming the “intelligence” is a clever attempt to produce some “fog of history” around the initial moments of this story, in the hope that the public will accept the inaccuracy of the administration’s official narrative as an honest mistake.

But the primary scandal here, masked by the establishment media’s new “intelligence failure” trope, is not that an assault on the Libyan consulate occurred “without warning” — there was warning — but rather that the government knowingly and repeatedly lied about the attack’s cause and meaning.

Candy Crowley’s unconscionable intervention into the second presidential debate, falsely affirming that President Obama attributed the Benghazi attack to pre-meditated terror in his September 12 Rose Garden address, has merely served to keep in the public eye the trail of deception and misdirection as the administrations scrambles to reconcile its multiple conflicting stories about the terror attack.

Do a quick internet search about the Arab protests over the YouTube video. You will find that every story is dated September 11 or later. No one was talking about this video at all prior to that time frame. How did it become the administration’s convenient “root cause” cover story in the hours after the Benghazi attack? And why were they so quick and unequivocal in embracing a storyline which, as we now know, was completely unsupported by any facts?

The video — a purported “trailer” for an alleged film — was posted on YouTube in July. No one saw it or cared, until, on September 8, Sheikh Khaled Abdullah, a host on the Egyptian Islamist TV station Al-Nas, played an excerpt from it on the air. (Note: Al-Nas altered the video, blurring out a female character, because they do not allow women to be seen on the air.)

Three days later, which just happened to be September 11 (“don’t jump to conclusions,” the White House warned), a larger than usual group of “protesters” swarmed the American embassy in Cairo. As Ian Lee, the CNN reporter on the scene, noted during his from Cairo that day, this was “not the usual crowd that we see at most protests,” but rather “definitely a very Islamic-looking crowd — we see a lot of men in their traditional garb.”

Members of this “very Islamic-looking crowd” tore down the embassy’s American flag and replaced it with a black al-Qaeda flag.

Then, within hours, came the “intelligence failure” in Libya, in which hundreds of armed movie critics, knowing exactly where to look, attacked both the U.S. consulate and an alternate safe-house location, killing the ambassador and three of his protectors — protectors who, as Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew Wood , were woefully undermanned and ill-armed, due to the administration’s explicit refusal to provide requested reinforcement, and the State Department’s explicit demand to stop asking for reinforcement.

By September 12, mainstream media sources from everywhere but the United States were reporting on this attack as an al-Qaeda plot carried out behind the thin cover of “ordinary protesters.” These media sources were relying on statements from members of the Libyan government, reports from witnesses on the scene, and even statements from “U.S. officials.”

For example, Reuters, while spouting Obama’s official line, also neglected, in the confusion of those early hours, to delete the actual reporting that had slipped into its original story:

U.S. government officials said the Benghazi attack may have been planned in advance and there were indications that members of a militant faction calling itself Ansar al Sharia — which translates as Supporters of Islamic Law — may have been involved.

They also said some reporting from the region suggested that members of Al-Qaeda’s north Africa-based affiliate, known as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, may have been involved.

Ansar al-Sharia has been identified as the name of a variety of al-Qaeda front groups. Within hours of the attack, while many of the details remained understandably confused, and while the White House was preparing its official position — to paraphrase, “we despise our deplorable infidels as much as you do, so please stop killing our ambassadors” — the BBC was reporting eye-witness accounts of Ansar al-Sharia’s involvement.

On September 11, the Daily Telegraph described al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri’s message, issued on September 10, calling for jihadists to “puncture” America’s arrogance in revenge for the death of Libyan al-Qaeda commander Abu Yahya al-Libi. The next day, following the murder of Ambassador Stevens, the Telegraph observed, pointedly, that (a) Zawahiri’s message of September 10 was too late to have provoked such a carefully planned and successfully staged attack, and (b) the calls for protests against the video seemed to have fallen on deaf ears in Libya, as no protest took placein the capital, Tripoli, where the actual U.S. embassy is located.

The efforts, in the days immediately preceding September 11, of a hard line Egyptian Islamist broadcaster, along with the official head of al-Qaeda, to drum up protests and anger against the evil empire, in conjunction with the well-orchestrated attack in Benghazi on the very day those protests were to be staged, suggests more than an opportunistic connection between the two. Rather, it seems plausible that Islamists were attempting to stoke general public protests as a smokescreen for their assault team(s), or perhaps that they hoped, having drawn a crowd, to commandeer the assembled mob in order to swell their jihadist numbers, in a well-known strategy of militant revolutionary groups worldwide. (This technique was attempted by the Weather Underground, for example, during Chicago’s Days of Rage in 1969.)

The key to this Slow and Spurious scandal, however, is that all of this information — Libyan officials’ descriptions of a planned attack, eye-witness accounts of armed Ansar al-Sharia militants approaching the consulate, the direct involvement of al-Qaeda’s leader in calling for revenge for the death of a Libyan commander, repeated requests from Ambassador Stevens and his security team for more resources, and, obviously, the fact that this was the eleventh anniversary of September 11, 2001 — was readily accessible to the entire world on September 12. And yet on that same day Obama and Clinton, who would have had access to all of this information and more, issued their joint statement explicitly blaming the whole thing on a cheap video exhibiting disrespect for Islam, a narrative the administration and its media enablers attempted to cling to for weeks, while the rest of the world — along with Americans who seek their information beyond the bubble of the American legacy media — was learning more and more about the horrors and indignities of the ambassador’s murder, and the extent of the planning and security breaches that made it possible. (More on this latter issue from James Lewis atAmerican Thinker.)

Hundreds of armed men carried out a carefully planned attack in a public place. Many witnesses described the events. U.S. and Libyan personnel who were at the scene, and survived, were already being debriefed on the attack.

The real question is not, “Wasn’t this a massive intelligence failure?” The administration’s new template of “intelligence failure” is just a convenient and untenable diversion from the central issue.

Rather, the real questions are: Why did the president and the secretary of state try to hide the facts about this attack, facts that were being reported by mainstream media sources in Europe and Canada from day one? Why did they try to deny that this was a planned al-Qaeda operation? Why did they repeatedly recite and disseminate the script about a “deplorable” video, and their disavowal of “religious intolerance,” when they knew that Ambassador Stevens’ death had nothing to do with any video, or any slight against Islam? Why did the world have to suffer through weeks of conflicting and contradictory tales from the administration, as they tripped all over each other trying to conceal their own obfuscations?

Current events reveal the complete and tragic disaster of Obama’s Middle East policy of combining appeasement, apology, and empathy for Islamists with showy targeted attacks on individual terrorists. This policy has turned most of the region into civilization jihad’s playground, and signaled open season on representatives of the self-emasculated Great Satan. The Bush policy may have been foolish. The Obama policy is suicidal.

The coordinated and concerted effort to conceal the relevant facts about the Libyan attack is merely the final and most egregious lie in the continuing cover-up of the realities of Arab Spring, and the Obama administration’s complicity in this reality. And this cover-up is, in turn, just one facet of the sparkling jewel of subterfuge, concealment, and untruth that is the Obama presidency.

Will the Benghazi cover-up become Obama’s Waterloo? If so, then it is fitting that in this Battle of Waterloo, the role of the Duke of Wellington, the emperor’s nemesis, will be played by Truth itself, which, as Shakespeare wrote, will out.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/10/benghazi_emperor_obamas_waterloo.html#ixzz29eXPsTDi

CNN MANAGING EDITOR SENDS STAFF EMAIL DEFENDING CROWLEY

Late this afternoon, TMZ reported a leaked email from CNN Managing Editor Mark Whitaker to the staff of CNN, defending disgraced second presidential debate moderator Candy Crowley. It’s a full-throated list of Barack Obama talking points. Here’s the email:

Let’s start with a big round of applause for Candy Crowley for a superb job under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. She and her team had to select and sequence questions in a matter of hours, and then she had to deal with the tricky format, the nervous questioners, the aggressive debaters, all while shutting out the pre-debate attempts to spin and intimidate her. She pulled it off masterfully.

The reviews on Candy’s performance have been overwhelmingly positive but Romney supporters are going after her on two points, no doubt because their man did not have as good a night as he had in Denver. On the legitimacy of Candy fact-checking Romney on Obama’s Rose Garden statement, it should be stressed that she was just stating a point of fact: Obama did talk about an act (or acts) of terror, no matter what you think he meant by that at the time. On why Obama got more time to speak, it should be noted that Candy and her commission producers tried to keep it even but that Obama went on longer largely because he speaks more slowly. We’re going to do a word count to see whether, as in Denver, Romney actually got more words in even if he talked for a shorter period of time.

This is ridiculously biased, partisan, and stupid – or, as CNN might put it, brilliant.

CNN’s a joke. Candy Crowley’s a joke. They’re perfect for each other.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/10/17/CNN-sends-letter-to-employees-defending-crowley

http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/17/michelle-obama-ann-romney-commit-unfathomable-fashion-faux-pas-photos/

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2012/oct/17/reporters-applaud-obamas-slam-romneys-wealth/#ixzz29aO7Au5W

http://www.infowars.com/threats-to-assassinate-romney-explode-after-debate/

LOW GAS $$ = WEAK ECONOMY..

HIGH GAS $$ = STRONG ECONOMY..

wow! that is pure genius! what the “F” did we do before this shadowy character came along????

THE-TRUTH-IS-OUT-THERE (Obama Files)

“the TRUTH is right in our face!”

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/10/17/Crowley-interrupts-28-times-Romney

MICHELLE BROKE RULES, LED APPLAUSE AT DEBATE…

Email

During the heated exchange over President Obama’s failure to describe the attacks at the American consulate in Libya a terrorist act, the audience at last night’s debate in Hofstra University broke out into applause several times, defying the strict rules laid out beforehand. In this revealing clip, first lady Michelle Obama is seen (at the 19 second mark, dressed in fuchsia at the bottom of the screen) as leading a round of applause after moderator Candy Crowley sides with Barack Obama in the dispute.

Here is a picture of Mrs. Obama after the debate where she is clearly wearing the same dress as seen in the clip:

CANDY’S FALSE FACT CHECK SAVES PRESIDENT, DERAILS DEBATE…

***UPDATE 4: Politico’s Dylan Byers: “After the debate, even Crowley seemed to acknowledge that she had erred.”

***UPDATE 3: Even Politico’s Mike Allen Crowley’s call.

***UPDATE 2: Even Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler says Crowley got it wrong: Obama “did not say terrorism.”

***UPDATE: After the debate, Anderson Cooper was the first member of the CNN post debate group to question whether or not Romney really got the Libya issue wrong. They then brought Crowley on and after all the damage she had done during the debate, she finally admitted that Romney was “right” but “picked the wrong word.”

Romney “picked the wrong word!” And for that sin the the referee ran onto the field and tackled the other guy!

This is a scandal; a total and complete media scandal committed by a woman who promised to violate her contract and to insert herself into the debate. All she did for weeks was brag about how she intended to grab the spotlight — and boy did she ever.

Absolutely disgraceful.

We’re done with the second presidential debate, but it was apparent 45 minutes in that between the questions Crowley chose and her handling of who was allowed to speak and when, that this debate was a total and complete setup to rehabilitate Barack Obama.

If these are truly undecided voters, they’re apparently undecided between Obama and the Green Party. Moreover, as I write this, Obama’s already enjoyed four more minutes of speaking time than Romney. In a ninety-minute debate, that’s a big deal.

The lowest and most dishonest part of Crowley’s disgraceful “moderation” was when she actually jumped into the debate to take Obama’s side when the issue of Benghazi came up. To cover for his and his administration’s lying for almost two weeks about the attack coming as the result of a spontaneous protest over a YouTube video, Obama attempted to use as cover the claim that he had called the attack a “terrorist attack” on that very first day during his Rose Garden statement.

Romney correctly disputed that.

Crowley, quite incorrectly, took Obama’s side and the crowd exploded.

Here’s what Obama said that day:

No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.

Context matters and the context here is that Obama connected this “act of terror” to … a mob action over a YouTube video — not a deliberate terrorist attack. Obama was using the term generically and it would be almost two weeks before he used it again.

Let’s not forget that Susan Rice said declaratively on the five Sunday shows four days later that it was NOT an act of terror.

And during those two weeks the Obama administration lied like a rug. For Crowley to step in and attempt to correct Romney on a statement that is at best arguable, was completely out of line. The debate over this debate has only begun.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2012/oct/16/ross-perot-endorses-mitt-romney/#ixzz29UML7O7h

The women of “The View” won’t get to throw cheap shot questions at Mitt Romney after all.

The GOP presidential candidate was slated to appear on the show Thursday, a program featuring an overwhelmingly left-of-center panel.

Now, Romney has changed his mind but his wife, Ann Romney, will keep her date with the ABC show.

“Over the weekend, his people said that he had scheduling problems, and would not be coming on with us, nor did they think he would reschedule,” Walters said. “We are sorry that we won’t have Governor Romney. He can change his mind, and we hope he does. It would be our pleasure to have him on the program.”

President Barack Obama has appeared repeatedly on “The View,” often making time for the show over talking one-on-one with world leaders.

Documents detailing multiple legal threats from the AFL-CIO and Florida Democratic Party operatives indicate a new effort to keep citizens from acting as election observers and assisting in the maintenance of their local voter rolls.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/10/15/AFL-CIO-Florida-Democratic-Party-Coordinate-Voter-Intimidation-Efforts

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/michelle-obama-votes_654559.html

This isn’t a poll. Its propaganda. But, its very weak propaganda. The WaPo tripled the Democrat’s advantage in this poll and Obama didn’t pick up any more support. The WaPo and ABC have, sadly, become addicts, needing higher levels of doping simply to maintain a level buzz. Hopefully, they can start rehab on November 7th.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/10/15/wapo-packs-dems-into-poll-to-lift-obama

The coal miners of Ohio, unlike some workers who are intimidated by their unions, are unafraid of standing tall and confronting the Obama Administration head-on.

You don’t have to be a coal miner to stand up and cheer for these men fighting for the truth. You just have to be a real American…

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/10/14/Ohio-Coal-miners-condemn-Obama

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/10/08/in-second-term-obama-will-allow-un-to-tax-americans/?intcmp=obnetwork#ixzz29EenpdOe

“If Romney wins I’m Starting a Riot….Who’s WIT ME???”

“I Hope The USA Is Well Aware That If In The Event This Character Romney Wins The Election, The People Will Start A Country Wide Riot! #Power”

“If Romney is elected president, its gon be a riot its gon be a riot.”

“If ROMNEY GETS IN THE WHITE HOUSE …U MIGHT AS WELL KILL ME NOW …..CAUSE ITS GONNA BE A ************ RIOT !!!”

“If Romney became President and took away welfare Downtown Cincinnati would become a riot”

“If Romney takes away food stamps 2 Chainzz in this bit IMMA START A RIOT”

“If Romney wins. (which i highly doubt) THERE WILL BE A RIOT—”

http://www.infowars.com/will-the-election-results-cause-massive-riots-to-erupt-all-over-america/

A nasty rift has opened up between President Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over the fallout from the terrorist attacks on the U.S. consulate in Libya that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens. This feud may undermine and threaten Obama’s reelection chances …

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/10/12/Obama-Clinton-Rift-Over-Libya-Threatens-Obama-Re-election

Joe Biden, who is Catholic, long ago left Catholic doctrine behind with his stand on abortion, and today the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) called him out on his lie in last night’s debate about Catholic institutions being exempt from government control.

Last night Biden said:

With regard to the assault on the Catholic Church, let me make it absolutely clear. No religious institution — Catholic or otherwise, including Catholic social services, Georgetown hospital, Mercy hospital, any hospital — none has to either refer contraception, none has to pay for contraception, none has to be a vehicle to get contraception in any insurance policy they provide. That is a fact. That is a fact.

No, it’s not, and the USCCB harshly condemned Biden for lying. In a statement, they said:

This is not a fact. The HHS mandate contains a narrow, four-part exemption for certain ‘religious employers.’ That exemption was made final in February and does not extend to ‘Catholic social services, Georgetown hospital, Mercy hospital, any hospital,’ or any other religious charity that offers its services to all, regardless of the faith of those served.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/10/12/Catholic-Bishops-Blast-Biden-for-Debate-Lies

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/10/12/Damage-Control-Obama-Campaign-Tries-to-Excuse-Bidens-Bizarre-Behavior-in-Debate

http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/bus-driver-fired-after-bullying-child-over-romney-sign.html