This is another in a long string of just bold faced whoppers coming from the Democrat leadership.
This is no longer the party of JFK. The Democratic Party leadership has been taken over by Saul Alinsky radicals that use lies as a means of calculated aggression. If you doubt it watch the following video.
The “it was the video” concocted story was a manufactured lie for political reasons that we explained previously HERE.
Emails from the administration are being leaked and it is now clear that members of the Obama Administration and likely members of the intelligence community have turned against Obama and his concocted story. Obama scolded Governor Romney in the debate how he resented having his truthfulness questioned when it comes to national security.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the attack, official emails show.
The emails, obtained by Reuters from government sources not connected with U.S. spy agencies or the State Department and who requested anonymity, specifically mention that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks.
The brief emails also show how U.S. diplomats described the attack, even as it was still under way, to Washington.
U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Benghazi assault, which President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials ultimately acknowledged was a “terrorist” attack carried out by militants with suspected links to al Qaeda affiliates or sympathizers.
Administration spokesmen, including White House spokesman Jay Carney, citing an unclassified assessment prepared by the CIA, maintained for days that the attacks likely were a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim film.
While officials did mention the possible involvement of “extremists,” they did not lay blame on any specific militant groups or possible links to al Qaeda or its affiliates until intelligence officials publicly alleged that on September 28.
There were indications that extremists with possible al Qaeda connections were involved, but also evidence that the attacks could have erupted spontaneously, they said, adding that government experts wanted to be cautious about pointing fingers prematurely.
U.S. intelligence officials have emphasized since shortly after the attack that early intelligence reporting about the attack was mixed.
Spokesmen for the White House and State Department had no immediate response to requests for comments on the emails.
MISSIVES FROM LIBYA
The records obtained by Reuters consist of three emails dispatched by the State Department’s Operations Center to multiple government offices, including addresses at the White House, Pentagon, intelligence community and FBI, on the afternoon of September 11.
The first email, timed at 4:05 p.m. Washington time – or 10:05 p.m. Benghazi time, 20-30 minutes after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission allegedly began – carried the subject line “U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack” and the notation “SBU”, meaning “Sensitive But Unclassified.”
The text said the State Department’s regional security office had reported that the diplomatic mission in Benghazi was “under attack. Embassy in Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well.”
The message continued: “Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four … personnel are in the compound safe haven. The 17th of February militia is providing security support.”
A second email, headed “Update 1: U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi” and timed 4:54 p.m. Washington time, said that the Embassy in Tripoli had reported that “the firing at the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi had stopped and the compound had been cleared.” It said a “response team” was at the site attempting to locate missing personnel.
A third email, also marked SBU and sent at 6:07 p.m. Washington time, carried the subject line: “Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack.”
The message reported: “Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli.”
While some information identifying recipients of this message was redacted from copies of the messages obtained by Reuters, a government source said that one of the addresses to which the message was sent was the White House Situation Room, the president’s secure command post.
Other addressees included intelligence and military units as well as one used by the FBI command center, the source said.
It was not known what other messages were received by agencies in Washington from Libya that day about who might have been behind the attacks.
Intelligence experts caution that initial reports from the scene of any attack or disaster are often inaccurate.
By the morning of September 12, the day after the Benghazi attack, Reuters reported that there were indications that members of both Ansar al-Sharia, a militia based in the Benghazi area, and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the North African affiliate of al Qaeda’s faltering central command, may have been involved in organizing the attacks.
One U.S. intelligence official said that during the first classified briefing about Benghazi given to members of Congress, officials “carefully laid out the full range of sparsely available information, relying on the best analysis available at the time.”
The official added, however, that the initial analysis of the attack that was presented to legislators was mixed.
“Briefers said extremists were involved in attacks that appeared spontaneous, there may have been a variety of motivating factors, and possible links to groups such as (al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Ansar al-Sharia) were being looked at closely,” the official said.
Related:
Everything you need to know about how Obama lied about the embassy attacks in two minutes (video) – LINK
White House Timeline Video of Lies About Embassy Attacks – LINK
I write a great deal about the desire of people to comply with elite media narratives and the desire to make what you WANT to believe into “reality”. The desire to fit to that narrative or belief is so overwhelming that people will lie at the drop of a hat as we see in this video:
[Note – for more on this subject click HERE.]
And if you think this is staged, aside from this link HERE watch this video:
This is not the first time the Obama Administration has helped these groups with arms. He helped them take over Egypt and he helped them take over parts of Libya – VIDEO (Megynn Kelley and Marc Thiessen from AEI). The Muslim Brotherhood is the most organized group in Syria at the moment.
As this very writer said March 11th:
The situation is portrayed as a crazed dictator indiscriminately slaughtering his own people who want democracy – and that description is a load nonsense if their ever was one. We were told the exact same thing about Libya and Egypt, and as soon as we helped the Muslim Brotherhood take over the freedom crowd vanished instantly. The Muslim Brotherhood is now murdering Christians in Egypt, murdering black Africans in Libya, imposing Sharia Law and abusing women. The now Muslim Brotherhood controlled Egypt is sabre rattling at Israel
The dictators in the Middle East kept the Muslim Brotherhood and the Al-Qaeda’s at bay. Mubarak was critical to maintaining the Israeli/Egyptian Peace Treaty and many of the worlds terror groups want to replace the Arab dictators with Sharia inspired regimes.
Now President Obama is arming the Middle East to the gills, including modern M1 battle tanks to Egypt in spite of the fact that the new authorities are engaging in Taliban like behavior such as attacking peaceful Coptic Christians with armored military vehicles.
If our entire policy is designed to undermine Israel’s security it explains why Obama was not interested in helping the Iranian freedom movement.
There has been every indication, as Prof. Niall Ferguson (video) pointed out as the Egyptian protests began in early 2011, that the so called “Arab Spring” is being coordinated by the Muslim Brotherhood.
With all of this information now known so publicly, advocacy of Syrian intervention is not only irrational, it aids our enemies and Israel’s enemies in the middle-east.
Rebel Arms Flow Is Said to Benefit Jihadists in Syria
October 15, 2012 6:03 pmBy DAVID E. SANGER / The New York TimesWASHINGTON — Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster, according to American officials and Middle Eastern diplomats.
That conclusion, of which President Obama and other senior officials are aware from classified assessments of the Syrian conflict that has now claimed more than 25,000 lives, casts into doubt whether the White House’s strategy of minimal and indirect intervention in the Syrian conflict is accomplishing its intended purpose of helping a democratic-minded opposition topple an oppressive government, or is instead sowing the seeds of future insurgencies hostile to the United States.
“The opposition groups that are receiving the most of the lethal aid are exactly the ones we don’t want to have it,” said one American official familiar with the outlines of those findings, commenting on an operation that in American eyes has increasingly gone awry.
The United States is not sending arms directly to the Syrian opposition. Instead, it is providing intelligence and other support for shipments of secondhand light weapons like rifles and grenades into Syria, mainly orchestrated from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The reports indicate that the shipments organized from Qatar, in particular, are largely going to hard-line Islamists.
The assessment of the arms flows comes at a crucial time for Mr. Obama, in the closing weeks of the election campaign with two debates looming that will focus on his foreign policy record. But it also calls into question the Syria strategy laid out by Mitt Romney, his Republican challenger.
In a speech at the Virginia Military Institute last Monday, Mr. Romney said he would ensure that rebel groups “who share our values” would “obtain the arms they need to defeat Assad’s tanks, helicopters and fighter jets.” That suggests he would approve the transfer of weapons like antiaircraft and antitank systems that are much more potent than any the United States has been willing to put into rebel hands so far, precisely because American officials cannot be certain who will ultimately be using them.
But Mr. Romney stopped short of saying that he would have the United States provide those arms directly, and his aides said he would instead rely on Arab allies to do it. That would leave him, like Mr. Obama, with little direct control over the distribution of the arms.
American officials have been trying to understand why hard-line Islamists have received the lion’s share of the arms shipped to the Syrian opposition through the shadowy pipeline with roots in Qatar, and, to a lesser degree, Saudi Arabia. The officials, voicing frustration, say there is no central clearinghouse for the shipments, and no effective way of vetting the groups that ultimately receive them.
Those problems were central concerns for the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, David H. Petraeus, when he traveled secretly to Turkey last month, officials said.
The C.I.A. has not commented on Mr. Petraeus’s trip, made to a region he knows well from his days as the Army general in charge of Central Command, which is responsible for all American military operations in the Middle East. Officials of countries in the region say that Mr. Petraeus has been deeply involved in trying to steer the supply effort, though American officials dispute that assertion.
One Middle Eastern diplomat who has dealt extensively with the C.I.A. on the issue said that Mr. Petraeus’s goal was to oversee the process of “vetting, and then shaping, an opposition that the U.S. thinks it can work with.” According to American and Arab officials, the C.I.A. has sent officers to Turkey to help direct the aid, but the agency has been hampered by a lack of good intelligence about many rebel figures and factions.
Another Middle Eastern diplomat whose government has supported the Syrian rebels said his country’s political leadership was discouraged by the lack of organization and the ineffectiveness of the disjointed Syrian opposition movement, and had raised its concerns with American officials. The diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing delicate intelligence issues, said the various rebel groups had failed to assemble a clear military plan, lacked a coherent blueprint for governing Syria afterward if the Assad government fell, and quarreled too often among themselves, undercutting their military and political effectiveness.
“We haven’t seen anyone step up to take a leadership role for what happens after Assad,” the diplomat said. “There’s not much of anything that’s encouraging. We should have lowered our expectations.”
The disorganization is strengthening the hand of Islamic extremist groups in Syria, some with ties or affiliations with Al Qaeda, he said: “The longer this goes on, the more likely those groups will gain strength.”
American officials worry that, should Mr. Assad be ousted, Syria could erupt afterward into a new conflict over control of the country, in which the more hard-line Islamic groups would be the best armed. That depends on what happens in the arms bazaar that has been feeding the rebel groups. In several towns along the Turkey-Syria border, rebel commanders can be found seeking weapons and meeting with shadowy intermediaries, in a chaotic atmosphere where the true identities and affiliations of any party can be extremely difficult to ascertain.
Late last month in the Turkish border town of Antakya, at least two men who had recently been in Syria said they had seen Islamist rebels buying weapons in large quantities and then burying them in caches, to be used after the collapse of the Assad government. But it was impossible to verify these accounts, and other rebels derided the reports as wildly implausible.
Moreover, the rebels often adapt their language and appearance in ways they hope will appeal to those distributing weapons. For instance, many rebels have grown the long, scraggly beards favored by hard-line Salafi Muslims after hearing that Qatar was more inclined to give weapons to Islamists.
The Saudis and Qataris are themselves relying on intermediaries — some of them Lebanese — who have struggled to make sense of the complex affiliations of the rebels they deal with.
“We’re trying to improve the process,” said one Arab official involved in the effort to provide small arms to the rebels. “It is a very complex situation in Syria, but we are learning.”
Robert F. Worth and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
This is likely unprecedented. A president has never, so far in my research, prevented the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee in Congress from asking a member of the military direct questions. This is stonewalling.
Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, a California Republican and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, stopped short Saturday of calling President Obama a liar. But he says the administration is keeping the American people in the dark when it comes to the deadly terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.
McKeon tells Fox News’ “America’s News Headquarters” he doesn’t know why the Obama administration is dodging questions and blocking the efforts of some lawmakers to get answers.
“They ought to just tell everything they know,” says McKeon. “When there is a cover-up, it’s always worse than the incident itself. They ought to just come clean and tell us what happened. Admit that mistakes were made and make corrections for the future because this is just going to be a deeper and bigger hole they’re digging.”
To add more fuel to the fire, a spokesman for McKeon tells Fox News that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta office stepped in and prevented four senior military officers from answering McKeon’s questions concerning security at the consulate, effectively blocking the investigation. McKeon’s spokesman calls this “nearly unprecedented.”
While on Fox, McKeon acknowledged that he has questioned “senior commanders” within the military about the Benghazi terror attacks and says they’re stonewalling.
“Essentially what I wanted to know was had they or anyone in their command warned the State Department of any problem that they had in Libya or had offered any help,” says McKeon.
The congressman went on to say he gave those commanders 24 hours to respond. On Friday, they did saying they would not and could not respond in a timely manner. McKeon says just thinking Ambassador Christopher Stevens was in Benghazi without adequate protection “sickens him.”
Priceless…..
This is what happens frequently to Israeli soldiers:
Notice the certainty in the provocation and how secure the provocateur feels because he knows that Tsahal (IDF) will not touch him. Surroun
Filming the scene are journalists and left-wing activists eagerly waiting for the soldier to act, ready to capture any perceived misstep in order to use it to damn the IDF. Powerless but resolute, the soldier stands in the face of this provocation with restraint and dignity.
CIA: We Said Benghazi Was a Militant Attack From Day One – LINK
This is just unacceptable.
Karl Rove’s group pounces with this video:
Fox News Report Timeline:
Libya Timeline – Look at the Flag:
UPDATE – The Timeline October 24:
Glenn Beck: They’re lying
Political Arena Editor Chuck Norton – No one wants to have to call out their president as a liar, even if one didn’t vote for him, but after last night’s performance filled with instance after instance where he doubled down on untruths that anyone could unravel in minutes using an internet search engine or looking up facts at government web sites, President Obama left no room for continued benefit of a doubt. If anyone doubted Rudy Giuliani and Phyllis Schlafley when they called out Barack Obama as a Saul Alinsky inspired Chicago style politician all remaining doubts should have evaporated after last night. Not so long ago under President Clinton we were uncomfortable with lies even about sex, now we see lies laid out as a tool for calculated aggression and no one in the elite media bats an eye.
UPDATE – White House Libya lies timeline – LINK
While most elite media outlets did not bother to take the time to fact check most of Obama’s statements in the debate, they did check a few and what we have below from the Romney Campaign is just the tip of the iceberg of the lies that were told last night.
President Obama’s Five Worst Lies & Exaggerations From The Second Presidential Debate
NUMBER 1: President Obama Falsely Claimed He Immediately Characterized The Attacks In Benghazi As Terrorism:
President Obama: “The Day After The Attack, Governor, I Stood In The Rose Garden, And I Told The American People And The World That We Are Going To Find Out Exactly What Happened, That This Was An Act Of Terror.” (President Barack Obama, Second Presidential Debate, Hempstead, NY, 10/16/12)
The Washington Post’s Fact Checker: “What Did Obama Say In The Rose Garden A Day After The Attack In Libya? … He Did Not Say ‘Terrorism’…” “What did Obama say in the Rose Garden a day after the attack in Libya? ‘No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this nation,’ he said. But he did not say ‘terrorism’—and it took the administration days to concede that that it an ‘act of terrorism’ that appears unrelated to initial reports of anger at a video that defamed the prophet Muhammad.” (Glenn Kessler, “Fact Check: Libya Attack,” The Washington Post, 10/16/12)
Politico’s Mike Allen, On President Obama’s Rose Garden Remarks: “He Makes A Reference To 9/11 And He Says, Very Generally, We Will Not Let Acts Of Terror Go Unpunished.” ALLEN: “There’s going to be a bunch of fact checks, but just to do a fact check here. … And I’m looking at the transcript of that White House event the day after and he started by referring to them as selfless acts, which is casted very differently than the sort of very planned action that we now have. Later toward the end, he makes a reference to 9/11 and he says, very generally, we will not let acts of terror go unpunished. So that’s going to be an arguable point.” (Presidential Debate Wrap-Up, Politico Live, 10/16/12)
CNN’s Candy Crowley Admitted Mitt Romney “Was Right In The Main.” CROWLEY: “And I think actually, because right after that, I did turn around and say but you are totally correct that they spent two weeks telling us that this was about a tape and that there was this riot outside the Benghazi consulate, which there wasn’t. So he was right in the main, I just think he picked the wrong word. They’re going to parse and we all know what the definition of ‘is’ is, but, you know, in the end, I think John’s probably right.” (CNN’s “Debate Night In America,” 10/16/12)
NUMBER 2: President Obama Repeated His False Attack About A $5 Trillion Tax Cut:
President Obama: “It Costs About $5 Trillion.” OBAMA: “Look, the cost of lowering rates for everybody across the board 20 percent, along with what he also wants to do in terms of eliminating the estate tax, along what he wants to do in terms of corporates changes in the tax code — it costs about $5 trillion.” (President Barack Obama, Second Presidential Debate, Hempstead, NY, 10/16/12)
Obama Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter: “Okay, Stipulated, It Won’t Be Near $5 Trillion…” BURNETT: “Right. So you’re saying if you lower them by 20% you get a $5 trillion tab, right?” CUTTER: “It’s a $5 trillion tab.” BURNETT: “But then when you close deductions it’s not going to be anywhere near $5 trillion. That’s our analysis.” CUTTER: “Well, okay, stipulated, it won’t be near $5 trillion, but it’s also not going to be the sum of $5 trillion in the loopholes that he’s going to close.” (CNN, 10/4/12)
FactCheck.org: “Obama Accused Romney Of Proposing A $5 Trillion Tax Cut. Not True.” “Obama accused Romney of proposing a $5 trillion tax cut. Not true. Romney proposes to offset his rate cuts and promises he won’t add to the deficit.” (Brooks Jackson, “Dubious Denver Debate Declarations.” FactCheck.org, 10/4/12)
ABC’s Jon Karl, On President Obama’s $5 Trillion Claim: “Mostly Fiction.” KARL: “Okay, so, the big thing there, and he came back to it several times, is Governor Romney has a $5 trillion tax cut plan. I rate that mostly fiction.” (ABC’s “Your Voice: 2012Presidential Debates,” 10/3/12)
The Associated Press: “Obama’s Claim That Romney Wants To Cut Taxes By $5 Trillion Doesn’t Add Up.” “Obama’s claim that Romney wants to cut taxes by $5 trillion doesn’t add up. Presumably, Obama was talking about the effect of Romney’s tax plan over 10 years, which is common in Washington. But Obama’s math doesn’t take into account Romney’s entire plan.” (Calvin Woodward, “FACT CHECK: Presidential Debate Missteps,” The Associated Press, 10/3/12)
NUMBER 3: President Obama Claimed Mitt Romney’s Private Sector Experience Involved Outsourcing – A Claim Repeatedly Debunked By Fact Checkers:
President Obama: “As I Already Indicated, In The Private Sector, Governor Romney’s Company Invested In What Were Called Pioneers Of Outsourcing.” (President Barack Obama, Second Presidential Debate, Hempstead, NY, 10/16/12)
FactCheck.org: “We Found No Evidence To Support The Claim That Romney — While He Was Still Running Bain Capital — Shipped American Jobs Overseas.” “But after reviewing numerous corporate filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, contemporary news accounts, company histories and press releases, and the evidence offered by both the Obama and Romney campaigns, we found no evidence to support the claim that Romney — while he was still running Bain Capital — shipped American jobs overseas.” (Robert Farley and Eugene Kiely, “Obama’s ‘Outsourcer’ Overreach,” FactCheck.org, 6/29/12)
The Washington Post, On An Obama Outsourcing Ad: “On Just About Every Level, This Ad Is Misleading, Unfair And Untrue…” “The Obama campaign fails to make its case. On just about every level, this ad is misleading, unfair and untrue, from the use of ‘corporate raider’ to its examples of alleged outsourcing. Simply repeating the same debunked claims won’t make them any more correct.” (Glenn Kessler, “4 Pinocchios For Obama’s Newest Anti-Romney Ad,” The Washington Post, 6/21/12)
The Washington Post: “Obama Never Mentions Another Washington Post Article, One That Detailed How He Has Not Been Able To Fulfill Many Of His Campaign Promises In 2008 To Stem The Outflow Of American Jobs…” (Glenn Kessler, “Fact Check: Pioneers Of Outsourcing,” The Washington Post, 10/16/12)
NUMBER 4: President Obama Claimed He Cut Taxes For The Middle Class – But Didn’t Mention His Policies Are Threatening To Hike Taxes By $4,000:
President Obama: “My Philosophy On Taxes Has Been Simple, And That Is, I Want To Give Middle-Class Families, And Folks Who Are Striving To Get In The Middle Class, Some Relief…” OBAMA: “My philosophy on taxes has been simple, and that is, I want to give middle-class families, and folks who are striving to get in the middle class, some relief, because they have been hit hard over the last decade, over the last 15, over the last 20 years.” (President Barack Obama, Second Presidential Debate, Hempstead, NY, 10/16/12)
President Obama Has Already Raised Taxes On Nearly 5 Million Middle-Class Americans In Obamacare. (“Payments Of Penalties For Being Uninsured Under The Affordable Care Act,” Congressional Budget Office, 9/12)
- An Analysis By The Congressional Budget Office Found That “Nearly 80 Percent Of Those Who’ll Face” Obamacare’s Mandate Tax Are In The Middle Class. “Nonetheless, in his first campaign for the White House, Obama pledged not to raise taxes on individuals making less than $200,000 a year and couples making less than $250,000. And the budget office analysis found that nearly 80 percent of those who’ll face the penalty would be making up to or less than five times the federal poverty level.” (“Tax Penalty To Hit Nearly 6M Uninsured People,” The Associated Press, 9/19/12)
American Enterprise Institute Has Calculated That The Annual Cost Of President Obama’s Current And Looming Debt Burden Amounts To $4,000 Per Year In Higher Taxes On The Middle Class. “In a new paper, AEI’s Matt Jensen looks at the real annual cost of servicing the debt for households at various levels of income — including a potentially higher tax burden. As the table below illustrates, a household making between $100,000 and $200,000 a year could find its tax liability higher by roughly $2,400 every year. Over ten years, that works out to $24,000. And when you add in the debt already accrued the past four years under President Obama (the second table), that’s another $1,600 a year. So now we are now talking about $4,000 a year, $40,000 over ten years.” (James Pethokoukis, “Study: Obama’s Big Budget Deficits Could Mean A $4,000 A Year Middle-Class Tax Hike,” American Enterprise Institute, 10/2/12)
NUMBER 5: President Obama Falsely Claimed He Has Increased Energy Production On Public Lands:
President Obama: “We Have Increased Oil Production To The Highest Levels In 16 Years. Natural Gas Production Is The Highest It Has Been In Decades.” OBAMA: “The most important thing we can do is to make sure we control our own energy. Here is what I have done since I was president, we have increased oil production to the highest levels in 16 years. Natural gas production is the highest it has been in decades.” (President Barack Obama, Second Presidential Debate, Hempstead, NY, 10/16/12)
- President Obama: “We’ve Opened Up Public Lands. We’re Actually Drilling More On Public Lands Than In The Previous Administration.” ROMNEY: “As a matter of fact, oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land, and gas production is down 9 percent. Why? Because the president cut in half the number of licenses and permits for drilling on federal lands and in federal waters.” OBAMA: “Candy, there’s no doubt that world demand’s gone up. But our production is going up, and we’re using oil more efficiently. And very little of what Governor Romney just said is true. We’ve opened up public lands. We’re actually drilling more on public lands than in the previous administration.” (President Barack Obama, Second Presidential Debate, Hempstead, NY, 10/16/12)
The Washington Post: “Contrary To President Obama’s Assertions,” Oil Production “On Public Land Is Down 14 Percent And Production Of Gas On Public Land Is Down 9 Percent.” “Is Gov. Mitt Romney telling the truth when he says oil and gas production is down on public land? Contrary to President Obama’s assertions, Romney’s telling the truth when he says, ‘Production of oil on public land is down 14 percent and production of gas on public land is down 9 percent.’ That’s because energy production on federal lands is down compared to 2010, according to the Energy Information Administration.” (Juliet Eilperin, “The Truth About Oil And Gas Production On Public Land,” The Washington Post, 10/16/12)
ABC’s Jonathan Karl: “It Is True That Those Drilling Leases And Permits Are Down Under President Obama.” KARL: “But on this issue of oil and gas drilling, Governor Romney said that oil and gas drilling is down by 50% on public lands. That is not exactly true but it’s not far off. In fact, we looked at the numbers and oil drilling permits on public land dropped by 37% in the first two years of the Obama administration, 42% in terms of leases for natural gas. So the numbers weren’t exactly right, but it is true that those drilling leases and permits are down under President Obama.” (ABC’s Presidential Debate Coverage, 10/16/12)
UPDATE – Romney was right and Candy Crawley and Obama were both wrong, Obama did NOT call it a terror attack in his Rose Garden statement. Obama’s full statement is in the first comment below. Here is CNN almost sorda kinda apologizing:
Romney got the better of Obama performance wise for about the first hour, but Obama made a comeback in the last 30 minutes or so. Obama was playing a nasty class warfare card that just wasn’t sincere and didn’t fly.
Romney reversed his position on Comprehensive Immigration Reform (remember how he demagogued and misrepresented Rick Perry on this issue?) which I predicted he would do long ago and his answer on Syria was almost a joke.
Obama engaged in a systematic, Alinsky inspired and very deliberate misrepresentation of the facts, especially when it comes to energy policy, healthcare and taxes. Of course Romney was correct on the general idea on Libya but fell into a trap on semantics instead of focusing on how the administration lied about this issue for two weeks and was as caught as caught could be. Obama’s campaign already admitted on national television that the $5 billion dollar tax cut talking point Obama used in the debate really isn’t accurate, but again they used it tonight.
The lies (and misrepresentations with a tiny kernel of truth) were so voluminous that it would take this writer all night long to catalog them and I have to be out the door in seven hours….so no point by point fact check will be posted tonight. If any reader has a specific question I will be happy to answer it. The documentation to demonstrate President Obama’s flamboyant dishonesty is cataloged on this very web site.
Obama Pays Women Less – via yours truly in my old college blog in 2008:
and
and just now in The Daily Caller:
The most powerful moment in the debate was Romney going large in his description of the last four years:
Below is my live blog:
Chuck Norton – I have to say that Romney’s college job answer is a total home run. He looks in charge, calm, confident and ready.
Chuck Norton – Obama looks good, he sounds assertive, but wow the misrepresentation starts already. The fact checkers have dinged Obama on his “Mitt Wants Detroit to go bankrupt” line before.
Chuck Norton – Taxing the wealthy doesn’t give anyone a job, it chases wealth away when they try to avoid the tax.
Chuck Norton – Romney, including those who dropped out of the workforce the U3 would be 10.7%. Romney explains bankruptcy reorganization.
Chuck Norton – Jobs are created and lost all the time, but adding 5 million jobs when 10 million are what is needed to break even with people losing jobs and coming into the workforce puts the number into perspective.
Chuck Norton – They doubled fuel standards on cars… and now we see these tiny FIAT’s on the road and the emissions devices have raised car prices to out of the world. Chevy Volts cost over $100,000 more than GM is selling them for.
Chuck Norton – Romney explains the difference between private land energy production and production on federal land which Obama has been trying to bring to a screeching halt.
Chuck Norton – Wow, who looks presidential folks. I expected Obama to come back hard but this is so one sided it is unbelievable. (But Obama made a comeback in this area near the end).
Chuck Norton – We are drilling more now because of oil permits approved under Bush that are now coming online that Obama couldn’t stop…. but look at what Obama did stop.
Oil imports are down because the economy has slowed overall demand.
Chuck Norton – The oil leases were yanked because when they looked at what it would take to get through the EPA to actually drill and concluded it would not be profitable so they paid for the lease and concluded with today’s EPA it would be a money loser or too much of a risk to actually try and drill.
Chuck Norton – Wow, if the fact checkers are honest Obama is going to get hammered.
Chuck Norton – Food prices up, gas prices up, insurance prices up family income down $4,000
Chuck Norton – Romney, NO TAX on your savings. Wow that is smart, that is very smart and it encourages middle and low income people to get involved in saving and investing which would be great to help recapitalize the country.
Chuck Norton – Obama want to continue the Bush tax cuts for small businesses??? Since when?
Chuck Norton – Obama’s 97% of small businesses number includes small businesses on paper and ones that do not have more than 1 employee. The vast majority of small businesses that actually employ ten or more people are going to get whacked by the $200k number.
Chuck Norton Wow, Obama’s campaign already admitted that the $5 trillion dollar number he just spouted wasn’t true. Folks this is surreal.
Chuck Norton – Fact checkers are going to cream Obama’s earlier coal and oil production claims. Coal workers are blasting Obama already – Miners Fight Back Against Obama TV Ad: “Absolute Lies”
Chuck Norton – Of course the numbers adds up – Romney
Chuck Norton – Well Obama, first of all your campaign pays women less and so do Democrats in congress when it comes to their staffs….. big opportunity here for Romney.
Chuck Norton – Romney is getting upset and needs to calm don a bit.
Chuck Norton – Obama says that it is ROMNEY who wants people in Washington deciding women’s health decisions.. WHAT –
ObamaCare Panel Targeting Women’s Health Screenings…Again – LINKChuck Norton – Great answer on how Romney differentiates himself from GW Bush.
Chuck Norton – Romney pounds on the broken promises….
Chuck Norton – I have to admit, the BS Obama is putting out sounds good…. …. wow I really hope the fact checkers pay close attention.
Chuck Norton – Romney just reversed himself on “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” that he blasted Rick Perry on in the primary.
Chuck Norton – Libya question – Obama pivots to general national security and the specific question asked to him was not answered.
Chuck Norton – Romney hits Obama for skipping the intelligence briefing the next day and going to a Las Vegas fund raiser.
Chuck Norton – Second Amendment question – Who will tackle it and who will dance.
Chuck Norton – Romney hits Obama on Fast & Furious – about time.
Chuck Norton – Romney was not bold enough on the second amendment follow up
Chuck Norton – Romney: Canada tax rate 15% America 35% where would you rather start a business. Regulations up four times.
Chuck Norton- Obama’s advanced manufacturing answer was a good one. He doesn’t mean any of this because his regulatory war on business is a huge job killer.
Chuck Norton- Wow it was surreal; the misrepresentation of facts has been stunning. While both sides had factual deficits Obama was so dishonest it was amazing.
Friends, this is absolutely Stalisnist and that is not a term we use lightly. This administration has threatened and targeted reporters again and again and is now using underhanded tactics like this to keep the elite media, who is already mostly in the tank for them, in line.
Internal Department of Justice emails obtained by The Daily Caller show Attorney General Eric Holder’s communications staff has collaborated with the left-wing advocacy group Media Matters for America in an attempt to quell news stories about scandals plaguing Holder and America’s top law enforcement agency.
Dozens of pages of emails between DOJ Office of Public Affairs Director Tracy Schmaler and Media Matters staffers show Schmaler, Holder’s top press defender, working with Media Matters to attack reporters covering DOJ scandals. TheDC obtained the emails through a Freedom of Information Act request. (RELATED: TheDC’s complete coverage of Media Matters)
Emails sent in September and November 2010 show Schmaler working with Media Matters staffer Jeremy Holden on attacking news coverage of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation scandal.
Holden attacked former DOJ Civil Rights Division attorneys J. Christian Adams and Hans von Spakovsky on Sept. 20, 2010 for what he called an attempt “to reignite the phony New Black Panther Party scandal.”
Before Holden posted his article at 7:52 p.m., Schmaler sent him several emails with information helping him attack both former DOJ oficials.
“Here’s one Wolf letter,” read the subject of one email Schmaler sent Holden that contained no text. The email was likely a reference to Virginia Republican Rep. Frank Wolf, a member of Congress who led the Republican charge on the New Black Panther Party scandal involving alleged voter intimidation at a November 2008 polling place in Philadelphia.
In response, Holden told Schmaler that “The response to interog 38 is particularly helpful. Thanks!”
Interrogatory 38 was a reference to a question from Congress that the Justice Department answered, concerning the role of several senior officials in discussing litigation related to that voter intimidation case.
A follow-up email shows Schmaler sending Holden more information.
“[H]ere’s another one to Smith,” Schmaler wrote. “[I]t’s about perrelli contact with w. WH. helpful in that it makes clear perrelli didn’t have discussions w/ WH on the case (obviously confirming he knew of it) … but also illustrates [REDACTED] they’ve tried to throw up that won’t stick[.]”
Holden responded at 8:34 p.m. — three hours after Schmaler sent her first email at 5:34 — to say, “Post is live, FWIW [for what it’s worth]. Thanks again.”
Nearly two months later, on Nov. 18, 2010, Holden wrote a new blog post he described as an “EXCLUSIVE,” titled “Right-wing commission to vote on flawed New Black Panthers report.”
“The conservative-dominated U.S. Commission on Civil Rights will vote Friday on an interim report that omits critical evidence disproving allegations that the Obama administration refuses to enforce voting-rights laws against racial minorities, according to Media Matters’ analysis of a copy of the report we obtained,” Holden wrote in the Nov. 18 article.
Holden attacked Adams again, and Christopher Coates — another now-former DOJ attorney.
After Holden published that piece, Schmaler sent him an email titled “Great piece…” and continuing in the body of the message, “On USCCR investigation.’” One minute later, Holden responded, writing, “Thanks!”
Continue reading HERE.
Bob Beckel is as partisan a Democrat hired gun as they come, but one thing I will say for him is that if you lie to him he does not like it one bit and the Administration has lied and while he tries to give them some benefit of the doubt he all but admits that the Obama Administration is just caught, should fess and “should get out from under this thing”.
UPDATE II – It seems we missed that Biden lied about how he voted on the wars. He said he voted against them and trashed Ryan for voting for them, but it turns out that Biden voted for all of the wars. Usually politicians get their own voting records right so we took that one for granted. We will NEVER make that mistake again – Editor.
I have been writing about politics since the early 1990’s and I have to say that while we expect politics to dissemble and spin and occasionally lie to get themselves out of trouble I have never seen a politicians just flat-out lie about facts and subjects that most anyone can check in minutes and out as just plain false. Parts of the debate that are directionally accurate but not precise comes with the territory of a debate with a two minute format so we will be focusing on the whoppers and rank dishonesty.
Ryan lost his assertive footing a few times, but Biden’s smirking and laughing was over played. In general Biden was almost on an emotional roller coaster which comes across as too slick by half and insincere. I would make a commercial with just the faces and the changes in emotions edited together. The way that the debate worked out was that if you listened to it on the radio Biden sounded better, but if you watched it on TV Biden came across as rude and too slick.
In this video you will see Brit Hume’s take which was similar to ours –
UPDATE II – And here is the ad we predicted would be made –
Biden did not want to talk about how the Obama Administration lied about the embassy attacks for two weeks. Every time it came up he changed the subject to Afghanistan or the Iraq surge and such and the moderator let him get away with it.
Washington Post Fact Checker:
“We weren’t told they wanted more security there. We did not know they wanted more security.” —Biden, speaking of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya
Biden’s bold statement was directly contradicted by State Department officials just this week, in testimony before a congressional panel and in unclassified cables released by a congressional committee.
“All of us at post were in sync that we wanted these resources,” said Eric Nordstrom, the top regional security officer in Libya earlier this year. A Utah national guardsman who led a security team, Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, said: “We felt great frustration that those requests were ignored or just never met.”
Maybe Biden was too busy in debate prep to watch?
The embassy attacks issue came back up later. Biden tried to blame the lack of security at our embassies on Paul Ryan who voted to cut a part of the embassy budget some time ago. The Obama Admin was using the Embassy Budget to buy Chevy Volts for diplomatic staff… and its Ryan’s fault that the Obama Admin cut security in Benghazi? That was so dishonest that it even set an old pro like me aback. Ryan hit home with (paraphrase) “Look this was the anniversary of 9/11 and they had security taken away”.
Washington Post Fact Checker:
“The congressman here cut embassy security in his budget by $300 million below what we asked for.” –Biden
Ryan, as head of the House Budget Committee, set broad targets for spending in his budget blueprint that would have cut nondefense discretionary spending by 19 percent in 2014.
There were no specific cuts in embassy security, but Democrats have extrapolated the number, across the board, to come up with this statistic. But it is not a real number with true budget impact.
By the way, our definitive timeline on shifting administration statements on the Libya terrorist attack can be found here.
Again about Libya Biden pivots to Osama bin Laden:
Washington Post Fact Checker:
“Prior to the election, prior to him being sworn in, Governor Romney was asked the question about how he would proceed. He said, ‘I wouldn’t move heaven and earth to get bin Laden.’” –Biden
Romney made this statement in a 2007 interview with the Associated Press: “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.”
But Biden has ignored the rest of the interview, in which the AP quoted Romney as saying “he supports a broader strategy to defeat the Islamic jihad movement.” Just a few days later, Romney expanded on his remarks during a debate:
“We’ll move everything to get him. But I don’t want to buy into the Democratic pitch that this is all about one person — Osama bin Laden — because after we get him, there’s going to be another and another. This is about Shia and Sunni. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and al-Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is a worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate.”
The subject turns to Iran. Ryan charged that the Obama Administration counted on watered down sanctions. That is true and is compounded by the fact that oil rich countries are VERY good at getting around such sanctions…. Saddam Hussein was getting around the sanctions and the UN was helping Iraq get around them with bribes all the way up to Kofi Annon’s son. Sanctions just let the Obama Administration talk tough, while really doing very little and giving Iran time to enrich uranium.
USA Today Fact Checker:
The facts: This is mostly true. Iraq’s exports fell from 2 million barrels of oil a day in early 2012 to 1 million barrels a day by July, though they recovered to 1.2 million barrels by September, according to the Financial Times of London. [Political Arena Editor’s Note – Iran has already recovered 20% of the lost oil exports that we tried to block through the sanctions….and that is just what we are able to measure.]
Joe Biden says “we will not let Iran get a nuclear weapon and they don’t have a weapon to put uranium into”, this was my “throw the brick at the TV” moment. The simple truth is that once Iran has the uranium, making the weapons is easy. Every test detonation of a nuclear warhead with the proper amount of fissionable material in history has resulted in a nuclear detonation (there have been fizzles from failures to achieve critical mass but state sponsored bomb programs have always been able to get by that problem eventually and there is a great deal more nuclear know how readily available today); I know as I have expertise on WMD’s. There is no way that Biden doesn’t know this. This level of dishonesty is just not acceptable.
Washington Post Fact Checker:
“When Barack Obama was elected, they [Iran] had enough fissile material — nuclear material to make one bomb. Now they have enough for five. They’re racing toward a nuclear weapon. They’re four years closer toward a nuclear weapons capability…In Congress, I’ve been fighting for these sanctions since 2009. The administration was blocking us every step of the way.” –Ryan
Ryan greatly simplifies things here. Iran has built up its supply of nuclear material, but none of it is useable in a weapon yet [Political Arena Editor’s Note – as far as the Washington Post knows. Remember that Ryan and Biden get intelligence that the public will never see. What does matter is that Iran is producing uranium that is enriched over 20% and when that is achieved the ability to make a bomb becomes simply a matter of time.] Most experts say the United States and its allies would have ample warning if Iran tried to enrich its nuclear material to weapons grade. (Biden confused matters by asserting that both the Israelis and the United States would know when Iran starts “building a weapon”–that is much more difficult to track.)
Meanwhile, the debate on Iran sanctions is rather familiar. If you go back four years, you will see that it was the Obama campaign that made claims of weakness and fecklessness on Iran. President George W. Bush had considered the building of a multinational coalition seeking to negotiate with Iran as one of his foreign-policy legacies, but Obama officials were critical, saying it offered “weak carrots and weak sticks.”
Joe Biden blasted Romney for saying that we need “let foreclosures hit the bottom”. Folks this is a fact of basic market economics. The market needs to bottom out before it can recover. People jump back in when people thinks it hits bottom and the result is a quicker recovery. The housing problems lingers and drops over 40 months because government is trying to prop up housing prices… and they are failing miserably in the process.
Joe Biden pulled the old nonsense class envy card, so Ryan pulls out “This is not what a real recovery looks like” card and goes right into the “Five Point Plan” which are solid and simple talking points. That got repetitive during the debate and was a wash.
Paul Ryan went into a “Mitt Romney is a good man” speech which was devastatingly effective. A YouTube moment that we are going to see for a long time and we will post the video as soon as it is available.
Biden said that the economic collapse was because of the Iraq war and the highly successful (came in 40% under budget folks) prescription drug benefit passed by Republicans. Wow, even for a politician that is a whopper. Biden then went after Paul Ryan for helping some constituents apply for stimulus dollars. Wait a minute – so when Ryan’s office helps a constituent apply for stimulus dollars that is a policy position?? Joe knows better than that. It is the duty of every Member of Congress to help with such requests once the law is enacted. There is no excuse for this.
When the debate turned to Medicare Paul Ryan started quoting the published numbers from Obama’s own Medicare Actuary which showed that ObamaCare will drive up deficits and health care costs and Biden denied his own administrations published numbers and conclusions (that they have not publicize but has been reported). This very writer wrote about the Medicare Actuary and these numbers HERE – HERE – HERE and HERE.
Washington Post Fact Checker:
“Their own actuary from the administration came to Congress and said one out of six hospitals and nursing homes are going to go out of business as a result of this.” –Ryan
“That’s not what they said.” –Biden
Ryan is right, and Biden is wrong.
“It is doubtful that many [hospitals and other health care providers] will be able to improve their own productivity to the degree” necessary to accommodate the cuts, Medicare actuary Richard S. Foster has written. “Thus, providers for whom Medicare constitutes a substantial portion of their business could find it difficult to remain profitable, and, absent legislative intervention, might end their participation in the program (possibly jeopardizing care for beneficiaries. [Our] simulations…suggest that roughly 15 percent of [hospitalization] providers would become unprofitable within the 10-year projection as a result of the [spending cuts].”
Last time we checked, 15 percent is just shy of “one out six” (16.67 percent) .
When Ryan talks numbers he does well. He drew a solid contrast when he talked about how the Obama Administration wants to tax small businesses at 44% and Romney wants to tax them at 28%. Ryan also points out that Canada has lowered their business taxes to even quite a bit lower. NOTE – Ryan’s 44.x figure includes payroll taxes, but if memory serves the 28% figures does not, so it would have been more accurate for Ryan to say 39.9% vs 28%. So in this case Ryan is getting cute with that comparison and should not have. There is no excuse for that kind of mistake, unless of course, the Romney 28% proposal includes payroll taxes.
When Paul Ryan hit Biden on the illegal abortion mandate against Catholic institutions it hit home so Biden of curse, lied about it. Biden – “No Catholic Institution has to pay for abortions or abortion drugs or birth control and that is a fact”. Yes, it is today, BUT next year when the MANDATE KICKS IN then the mandate is the fact Joe. Then Catholic institutions will be forced to pay for abortions services and drugs etc through any insurance they buy. I am still in shock over the level of dishonesty.
Washington Post Fact Checker:
“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, 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.” –Biden
Biden went a bit far saying it is “a fact” that religious groups will not pay for contraceptives under the health care law.
Biden was referring to the so-called contraceptive mandate, which requires insurers to provide coverage for birth control without charging additional co-payments. (We has touched on this issue in two separate columns).
Biden was instrumental in brokering that accommodation in an effort to quell an outcry from Catholic leaders otherwise sympathetic to the Obama administration.
The Obama administration made a decision to fully exempt religious institutions such as churches from this rule. It also said it will exempt religiously affiliated organizations such as Catholic schools and hospitals, but their insurance providers must still cover birth control with no out-of-pocket costs for the insured. [Political Arena Editor’s Note – So all that has happened is that the person who writes the final check has been one step removed. The premiums will rise and if a religious institution wants to buy health insurance for its employees it MUST provide the birth control/abortion mandate. Biden’s accommodation amounts to a distinction without a difference].
Rep. Paul Ryan pointed out that the accommodations failed to satisfy many religious groups. “If they agree with you … why would they keep suing you?” he asked.
As far as Syria, if we help the forces who are fighting Assad we will be effectively handing the country over to the Muslim Brotherhood. There is no good way the Syrian problem ends so our take is that Biden and Ryan are both wrongheaded on this issue.
It is likely that Ryan had other factual deficits, but Biden’s were so whopping and fast coming that I was working to keep them straight. I will look over the YouTube later and focus on Ryan more. This piece also focused less on Ryan because the things he said in the debate are things the Romney/Ryan team has been saying for some time now so there was very little that was new.
Washington Post Fact Checker:
“He’ll keep saying this $5 trillion plan, I suppose. It’s been discredited by six other studies…Six studies have guaranteed — six studies have verified that this math adds up.” –Ryan
Romney would cut tax rates by 20 percent and eliminate the estate tax, the alternative minimum tax and reduce the corporate tax, which analysts say will reduce revenue by $5 trillion over ten years. But Romney also has said he will make his plan “revenue neutral” by eliminating tax loopholes and deductions, much as Ronald Reagan did when he passed a tax reform in 1986. [Political Arena Editor’s Note – Like we said previously HERE ].
The fact checkers, if they do their job, are going to hit Biden good tomorrow. The best line in the debate was probably from Paul Ryan when he said, “If you can’t run on your record paint your opponent as someone to run from.” That is what Biden tried to do tonight.
This is absolutely heart breaking. You have been warned.
This is very educational and important, a must see.
Logan: Our way of life is under attack. I chose this subject because, one, I can’t stand that there is a major lie being propagated,” Logan said about the administration touting the weakening of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Not only were our guys murdered, they were raped and sodomized. The Obama Administration doesn’t like American mercenary companies so some of the bodyguards hired were Libyans. It was those body guards who gave up the locations of our peoples secret safe house. Be sure to see our previous post : Everything you need to know about how Obama lied about the embassy attacks in two minutes (video) – LINK
Representative Trey Gowdy (SC):
Congressman Jason Chaffetz – Politics is being used to make security decisions and not security:
Jake Tapper to White House: Wasn’t it Obama who shot from the hip and not Romney?
ISSA OPENING STATEMENT – “The Security Failures of Benghazi”
Lt. Col. Wood: “On the Ground Truth” about Security in Libya Before 9/11 Attack
Benghazi Libya Attack: State Department’s Charlene R. Lamb Opening Statement
Benghazi Attack: Ambassador Patrick Kennedy Opening Statement
LIBYA HEARING: Nordstrom Refuses Oversight Staff, Given Guidelines by Own Agency
Chaffetz: US Security Experts Actually IN Libya Didn’t Get Resources They Needed & Asked For…
Rep. Burton During the Oversight Committee Hearing On Diplomatic Security in Libya (Part 1) where a State Department Official Refuses to Admit that the Attack was done by Terrorists:
Devastating 13 minute video of broken promises. Politicians sometimes forget that YouTube is forever.
UPDATES – Not only were our guys murdered, they were raped and sodomized. The Obama Administration doesn’t like American mercenary companies so they hired Libyan’s to act as bodyguards. It was those body guards who gave up the locations of our peoples secret safe house. Videos from the White House Press Room and the House Oversight Committee highlights can be seen HERE.
This ad is spot on accurate, and only leaves out a couple of points. Think about this, not only was security not beefed up at our embassies on 9/11, but there are credible, yet disputed reports from forces on the ground that they were not given live ammunition at several of the embassy posts.
OK so let me get this straight. The White House released secret methods while coordinated with Sony Pictures in the making of the film “Zero Dark Thirty” about the killing of Osama bin Laden….and that won’t inflame the Islamic world at all…but a tiny film trailer from a Coptic Christian is the cause of the world’s unrest?
So why lie? Ironically the Obama Administration has put itself into a “Mission Accomplished” moment. They say that “We got bin Laden”, “Al-Qaeda is dead – finished”, after we finished Iraq that was it etc. Well they have overplayed that card so the news of coordinated Al-Qaeda attacks against our embassies on 9/11 when they were in essence ordered to essentially stand down by the refusal to allow extra security and safety measures does not bode well politically.
Remember this Lie? White House: This is not a case of protests directed at the United States … and in the video below not only was the White House lying because now it was out that not only did they know what the truth was with 24 hours, they were warned in advance. In the video they also lie and said that they took appropriate measure to give extra security on 9/11. Now we know those requested measures were denied:
Judge Jeanine Pirro: Obama White House Lied About Embassy Attacks for Two Weeks:
Yahoo/Reuters News:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. security officer twice asked his State Department superiors for more security agents for the American mission in Benghazi months before an attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans, but he got no response.
The officer, Eric Nordstrom, who was based in Tripoli until about two months before the September attack, said a State Department official, Charlene Lamb, wanted to keep the number of U.S. security personnel in Benghazi “artificially low,” according to a memo summarizing his comments to a congressional committee that was obtained by Reuters.
Nordstrom also argued for more U.S. security in Libya by citing a chronology of over 200 security incidents there from militia gunfights to bomb attacks between June 2011 and July 2012. Forty-eight of the incidents were in Benghazi.
A brief summary of Nordstrom’s October 1 interview with the Republican-controlled House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was contained in a memo prepared by the committee’s minority Democratic staff.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee leaders today sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking why requests for more protection were denied to the U.S. mission in Libya by Washington officials prior to the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. The denials came after repeated attacks and security threats to U.S. personnel.
“Based on information provided to the Committee by individuals with direct knowledge of events in Libya, the attack that claimed the ambassador’s life was the latest in a long line of attacks on Western diplomats and officials in Libya in the months leading up to September 11, 2012. It was clearly never, as Administration officials once insisted, the result of a popular protest,” the committee’s chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and subcommittee chairman, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, write. “In addition, multiple U.S. federal government officials have confirmed to the Committee that, prior to the September 11 attack, the U.S. mission in Libya made repeated requests for increased security in Benghazi. The mission in Libya, however, was denied these resources by officials in Washington.”
The letter outlines 13 security threats over the six months prior to the attack.
“Put together, these events indicated a clear pattern of security threats that could only be reasonably interpreted to justify increased security for U.S. personnel and facilities in Benghazi,” the chairmen write.
The Committee indicated it intends to convene a hearing in Washington on Wednesday October 10, 2012, on the security failures that preceded the attack.
Aside from our own coverage of Egypt and Libya be sure to see these related stories:
President Obama Skipped His Intel Brief the Day After the U.S. Ambassador to Libya was Murdered by Terrorists – LINK
Cheney: Obama Administration “Involved In A Cover Up” Of Libya Attack – LINK
Even Rush Limbaugh had this one right – LINK
US knew Ambassador Stevens assassination was work of terrorists within 24 hours of attack – LINK
Obama dispatched U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to Fox News Sunday to keep spreading the lie a week after – LINK
Liberal Magazine Salon.com cites diplomatic sources who say that U.S. officials had prior warning of coming attack – LINK
There was not even a demonstration against the movie before the embassy attacks – LINK
NPR – Libyan President: Preposterous to think consulate attacks were spontaneous protest – LINK (2)
Mediaite: White House Misrepresented the Facts, Much of Elite Media Silent – LINK
Intelligence officials angered by Obama administration cover up of intelligence on Iranian, al Qaeda surge in Egypt and Libya – LINK
The Obama Adsministration/Muslim Brotherhood Timeline from IBD – LINK
Many politicians tend to spin or dissemble, but in the case of this group from Chicago, the lies are so stark that it is a simple case of calculated aggression.
No president has ever been re-elected since FDR who had an unemployment number over 8%, so walla 7.8%…but the numbers just don’t add up…
Florida Republican Rep. Allen West defended his skepticism surrounding the September non-farm payrolls report in an interview on CNBC early this afternoon. The so called “objective reporter” from NBC’s cable channel, Tyler Mathisen, got rather testy with Allen West and tried to interrupt him so he could not explain his point of view. West would have none of Mathisen’s nonsense. Mathisen is on the verge of becoming unhinged during much of the interview skin to a Chris Mathews meltdown.
Here is the exchange:
MATHISEN: “You are alleging specifically that the president is engaging in a cover-up of the data. You are saying that the administration is actively manipulating that data. Correct?”
WEST: “Well, absolutely. Look at what happened with our GDP numbers. Fourth-quarter GDP numbers last year were 3 percent…”
MATHISEN: “Do you have any basis on which you say that? Do you have any basis on which you say that? Any source? Anyone that has come to you and said, ‘This is the case?’ I mean, do you realize how difficult it would be for someone to pull off that kind of conspiracy, given the number of people in the labor department, given the number of surveyors out there, one of whom would probably say, ‘Wait a minute! That’s not the right number!'”
WEST: “Well, if you would stop yelling in my ear and allow me to answer your questions, maybe we could get to the bottom of this. When you look at the GDP numbers — which have gone from 4.1 percent, then it went to 1.9 percent, then it was at 1.7 percent. It got revised down just about a month ago to 1.3 percent. We’ve got numbers that are all over the place. And we don’t understand the direction this economy is going. … I don’t see these numbers that people are talking about, and I don’t see how they can come back later in this month and say they’re revising the numbers from July and August. So I’m very questionable with what we do see out of this administration, because the numbers don’t add up.
When a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) panel associated with the ObamaCare Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) [ Also at times referred to as the death panel – Editor] targeted breast cancer screenings for women over age 40 talk radio and the alternative media was able to make such a stink that even some of the Obama favoring elite media couldn’t help but report on it. As a result it was reversed.
Why is it that women’s and minority health are the first to be targeted for cuts as ObamaCare takes over? It is because those groups vote Democrat in such large numbers, that the Democrat leadership can do whatever it wants and likely keep that group secured as a voting block. With the elite media covering for them most of the time they can get away with it. Do you ever wonder why inner city minorities get the worst teachers, worst schools, worst city services and worst police protection in cities and areas ran by Democrats? It is for the same reason. No matter what the Democrats do they believe they will always get 85% or better of the black vote, so they put resources in swing districts to win swing voters.
If you doubt it just keep reading…..
Remember this from 2009?
Breast Exam Guidelines Test Obama Cost-Cutting
Nov. 20, 2009 (Bloomberg) — A medical debate over breast-cancer screening that has turned political may set the tone for a battle over President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul that will resonate for years.
The furor over a federal panel’s recommendation against mammograms for most women in their 40’s shows the obstacles the U.S. may face trimming costs in a $2.5 trillion health system, even when research suggests the cuts may be appropriate, said Uwe Reinhardt, a Princeton University economist.
With a health-care overhaul nearing a Senate vote, Republicans said the recommendations by the panel, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, for fewer mammograms proved Obama’s agenda will lead to rationed care. Democrats, fearful of antagonizing a key voting group in women, said the U.S. won’t change federal reimbursements to support guidelines that most women shouldn’t get regular mammograms until age 50.
The panel’s suggestions provided “the perfect place to throw a bomb into the health-care debate,” said Representative Lynn Woolsey, a Democrat of California and co-leader of the 82- member Congressional Progressive Caucus, in an interview. “We’re not going to ration anything. We’re going to give people choices based on science.”
‘Worst-Case Scenario’
The new guidelines would reduce annual mammograms by more than half under a “worst-case scenario,” said Junaid Husain, a Boston-based analyst at Soleil Securities, in a note to investors Nov. 17. Senator Sam Brownback, a Republican of Kansas, said the task force’s recommendations represent the start of an Obama administration plan to ration health care to pay for its overhaul.
“There are other ways to reduce costs,” Brownback said in an interview. Data show that 17 percent of breast-cancer deaths occur in women from ages 40 to 50, he said. Those statistics mean the panel “is effectively saying 17 percent wasn’t high enough to warrant spending the money to save lives.”
Democrats active in supporting the health-care overhaul legislation sought to distance themselves from the panel’s advice. Woolsey said resources will have to be used more efficiently, “but we’re not going to start with women.”
Medical economists said the U.S. will have to prepare itself for these kinds of decisions if it wants to cut health- care costs. Health-care legislation calls for comparative effectiveness research, as a way to determine whether treatments and procedures aren’t being overused.
Oh they are basing those decisions on science alright – political science; and politics is exactly why they reversed it. After all if it was based on “real science” and decisions are based on that basis only then why reverse it? Almost one if five breast cancer deaths are women aged 40-50. So to Obama’s appointees one in five breast cancer deaths is a safe gamble to ensure that services aren’t overused. They are not going to start with women? Oh really?
Our friend Steven Tucker who runs the Health Insurance Tips and Advice Blog put up on his Facebook page:
My wife had her routine physical today and she was asked to sign the new “voluntary” HHS data mining form for the BarryCare IPAB rationing panel. She said I’m not comfortable signing this. And, they told her, well we can’t bill Blue Cross if you don’t sign it. Oh, so it’s not really voluntary then? THEN her doctor informed her of the new “guidelines” on pap smears. Kathleen Supercillious has decided that pap smears are only needed every 5 years now. Folks, Ameritopia is already upon us. ” Forward” …. to Cervical cancer.
So I started doing some digging and look at this, not only are these “voluntary” ObamaCare becoming mandated over time, but the IPAB is targeting women’s pap tests for cuts [the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is a part of HHS/IPAB]. What happened to not letting the government get between you and your doctor? Here is the positive spin from NBC News:
Pap smear every five years? Panel says it’s safe.
Most women can go as long as five years between cervical cancer screenings as long as they make sure to get both a Pap smear and an HPV test when they do get examined, a government panel said Wednesday.
The interval between cervical cancer screenings can safely be extended for women between the ages of 30 and 65, according to the new recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.
Women ages 21 to 30 should still get a Pap smear every three years, the interval currently recommended. But those younger than 21 and older than 65 can skip the screen altogether, the experts concluded.
The panel is urging a extended intervals in screenings in an attempt to cut back on the number of women who end up being treated for lesions that might resolve on their own.
The downside could be a very small potential increase in the number of women who might die of cervical cancer, experts said.
“It’s a trade-off,” said Dr. Michael LeFevre, co-vice chair of the task force and a professor of family and community medicine at the University of Missouri at Columbia.
Some expert who is also a far left professor that helped come up with this guideline says it’s safe so it must be so right NBC? Let is by clear, like the 17% of breast cancer deaths above, this isn’t science, it is gambling. It is gambling with women’s lives and if they get away with this minorities will be next. These recommendations will be phased into being mandatory over time.
There is a reason why insurance companies have set their guidelines for pap screenings to every three years, they did it because it was better for customers, saved lives, and it increased profits as fighting cancer is the early stages is much cheaper than fighting it at a late stage…BUT that is not the case when you factor in these same patients when they retire and go on Medicare. Fending off and fighting cancer in those over 65 with a history of it is very expensive, so the IPAB is content with letting such citizens die off, but all that death panel talk was just fear mongering…
Related:
Obama’s Own Cousin Dr. Milton Wolf – ObamaCare does harm, rations care – LINK
British National Health Service: late cancer diagnosis kills 10,000 a year – LINK
Doug Schoen was Bill Clinton’s pollster in the White House and Pat Caddell had the same position for Jimmy Carter. These are not “right wing” bloggers and pundits. These two men have been as in the center of Democratic Party politics as it gets for the last 35 years.
We have written about the incredible amounts of media bias that has been at a whole new level since 2008, and while that bias has been there since the 1960’s, it has never been as outrageous as it is today.
Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen with Megyn Kelly:
To see the entire video where Pat Caddell makes his case go HERE.
Here is the Gallup Poll that is referred to in the conversation:
September 21, 2012
U.S. Distrust in Media Hits New High
Fewer Americans closely following political news now than in previous election years
by Lymari Morales
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans’ distrust in the media hit a new high this year, with 60% saying they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. Distrust is up from the past few years, when Americans were already more negative about the media than they had been in years prior to 2004.
The record distrust in the media, based on a survey conducted Sept. 6-9, 2012, also means that negativity toward the media is at an all-time high for a presidential election year. This reflects the continuation of a pattern in which negativity increases every election year compared with the year prior. The current gap between negative and positive views — 20 percentage points — is by far the highest Gallup has recorded since it began regularly asking the question in the 1990s. Trust in the media was much higher, and more positive than negative, in the years prior to 2004 — as high as 72% when Gallup asked this question three times in the 1970s.
This year’s decline in media trust is driven by independents and Republicans. The 31% and 26%, respectively, who express a great deal or fair amount of trust are record lows and are down significantly from last year. Republicans’ level of trust this year is similar to what they expressed in the fall of 2008, implying that they are especially critical of election coverage.
Independents are sharply more negative compared with 2008, suggesting the group that is most closely divided between President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney is quite dissatisfied with its ability to get fair and accurate news coverage of this election.
More broadly, Republicans continue to express the least trust in the media, while Democrats express the most. Independents’ trust fell below the majority level in 2004 and has continued to steadily decline.
Lyon also talks about how the Obama Administration abuses the Justice Department to frighten reporters.
And now CNN is threatening award winning reporter Amber Lyon for blowing the whistle.
Those who know journalism know that CNN International is a joke. It is biased and milk-toast government/corporate sponsored news. We have been aware of this for a number of years, but even so, you can imagine our surprise to see one of the biggest names at CNN go public saying just that. She also talks about how the Obama Administration is abusing the “Espionage Act” to go after reporters who report things they don’t like.
Of course government/corporate sponsored news is nothing new in the elite media:
ABC did a one hour news special in support of ObamaCare and allowed no GOP response or any critique at all from the other side.
ABC edited the film “The Path to 9/11” at the insistence of the Clinton’s and the Democratic Leadership and refuses to release the film on DVD (LINK – LINK – VIDEO)
NBC shut down the show “The Playboy Club” (which was more about Chicago politics than bunnies) under pressure from the White House and is not releasing shows to pay services,
CNN admitted it was doing puff pieces for Saddam Hussein and white washing government atrocities in order to keep access.
Several countries in the Middle-East pay huge sums to Associated Press for (big scare quotes here) “news content” for their airwaves.
The NY Times has admitted that they and others are submitting quotes and content to the White House for editing before it is published.
White House officials leaned on Ford Motor Company to yank a popular TV and Internet ad critical of competitors who took federal bailout money.
Andrea Seabrook left NPR after 14 years “in order to actually do some real journalism” because they had her just reporting spin from certain politicians.
The White House launched a profanity laced tirade against CBS Reporter Sharyl Attkisson for her very responsible coverage of the Justice Department Gun Running Scandal (VIDEO). CBS has now backed off of the story and prevented Atkinson from doing radio interviews for some time after her interview on Laura Ingraham.
Why didn’t CNN’s international arm air its own documentary on Bahrain’s Arab Spring repression?
A former CNN correspondent defies threats from her former employer to speak out about self-censorship at the network.
In late March 2011, as the Arab Spring was spreading, CNN sent a four-person crew to Bahrain to produce a one-hour documentary on the use of internet technologies and social media by democracy activists in the region. Featuring on-air investigative correspondent Amber Lyon, the CNN team had a very eventful eight-day stay in that small, US-backed kingdom.
By the time the CNN crew arrived, many of the sources who had agreed to speak to them were either in hiding or had disappeared. Regime opponents whom they interviewed suffered recriminations, as did ordinary citizens who worked with them as fixers. Leading human rights activist Nabeel Rajab was charged with crimes shortly after speaking to the CNN team. A doctor who gave the crew a tour of his village and arranged meetings with government opponents, Saeed Ayyad, had his house burned to the ground shortly after. Their local fixer was fired ten days after working with them.
The CNN crew itself was violently detained by regime agents in front of Rajab’s house. As they described it after returning to the US, “20 heavily-armed men”, whose faces were “covered with black ski masks”, “jumped from military vehicles”, and then “pointed machine guns at” the journalists, forcing them to the ground. The regime’s security forces seized their cameras and deleted their photos and video footage, and then detained and interrogated them for the next six hours.
So CNN spent $100,000 making this documentary and then refused to air it in spite of Lyon’s work earning awards. Then look at the lengths CNN went to to keep the story quiet – continue reading HERE.
CNN and the business of state-sponsored TV news
The network is seriously compromising its journalism in the Gulf states by blurring the line between advertising and editorial.
Even so, the network’s relationships with governments must bear closer examination. CNNi has aggressively pursued a business strategy of extensive, multifaceted financial arrangements between the network and several of the most repressive regimes around the world which the network purports to cover. Its financial dealings with Bahrain are deep and longstanding.
CNNi’s pursuit of sponsorship revenue from the world’s regimes
CNNi’s pursuit of and reliance on revenue from Middle East regimes increased significantly after the 2008 financial crisis, which caused the network to suffer significant losses in corporate sponsorships. It thus pursued all-new, journalistically dubious ways to earn revenue from governments around the world. Bahrain has been one of the most aggressive government exploiters of the opportunities presented by CNNi.
These arrangements extend far beyond standard sponsorship agreements for advertising of the type most major media outlets feature. CNNi produces those programs in an arrangement it describes as “in association with” the government of a country, and offers regimes the ability to pay for specific programs about their country. These programs are then featured as part of CNNi’s so-called “Eye on” series (“Eye on Georgia“, “Eye on the Phillipines“, “Eye on Poland“), or “Marketplace Middle East“, all of which is designed to tout the positive economic, social and political features of that country.
The disclosure for such arrangements is often barely visible. This year, for instance, CNNi produced an “Eye on Lebanon” series, which that nation’s tourist minister boasted was intended “to market Lebanon as a tourism destination”. He said “his ministry was planning a large promotional campaign dubbed ‘Eye on Lebanon’ to feature on CNN network.”
Below is a video interview Alex Jones did with Amber Lyon. Now let us be clear – Alex Jones is NOT a reliable source of solid information as half of what he says is exaggerated or worse – with that said, listen to Amber in her own words explain what she witnessed:
[Editor’s Note – heaps of respect for Amber Lyon, and even though her eyes are opening she is still naive about a few things. Most of these “pro-democracy” protesters she talks about in the video are not pro-democracy at all, they are Muslim Brotherhood. In 1979 when Carter helped the current regime come to power they were all about Democracy….all about it until they took power and to think us they stormed our embassy and we had the Iranian hostage crisis.
The Muslim Brotherhood learned from this, they were all about “democracy” in Egypt until they got it and when the Muslim Brotherhood took power the “pro-democracy” people vanished. The same tactic was used to take over Lebanon and was also used in Libya. Once the brotherhood takes power, much like after the election in Gaza, after the election is over there is never another one; political opposition is dealt with most harshly.]
Mike Pence has said as much in letters to his colleagues several times. It is the lesson of 2006 and 2008. It is time for the governing to match the rhetoric, and now people are paying more attention. The GOP will either walk the walk or it will go the way of the Whigs.
“How long do politicians have to keep on promising heaven & delivering hell before people catch on” – Thomas Sowell
I’m not the biggest fan of Eisenhower or Nixon, but they (and Reagan) are clearly preferable to this post-Reagan Republican Party. Those presidents won national majorities for a reason. They weren’t strict conservatives, but they certainly weren’t any less conservative than the Bushes, McCain, or Romney. They didn’t pretend they were going to abolish the welfare state — often, they didn’t even pretend they would cut the welfare state — unlike so many of today’s Republicans, who don’t follow through but do use their rhetoric to polarize. That gives us the worst of both worlds: big government plus the delusional sense within one party that it represents the antithesis of big government and may freely hate other Americans who don’t mouth the mantra. And what goes for big government goes for Judeo-Christian values, a strong national defense, and all the rest: the GOP’s rhetoric occupies a separate mental compartment from its actions, even as its voters and ideological apologists continue to believe that there is a profound moral difference between them and the rest of the country. It’s a losing strategy, and worse, it’s made the country ungovernable even as government grows.
UPDATE – Bill Clinton’s pollster agrees with Caddell, the elite media has become a threat to Democracy by not informing the American people – LINK.
Pat Caddell is a familiar name in American politics. He has worked for Democrats in the White House since the 1970’s. He is an old fashioned Democrat and has a record of speaking out against government corruption, so it is no surprise that the current White House (Obama) has him essentially blacklisted.
Pat speaks about how corrupt and bias the Washington Press Corps and the elite media establishment has become. We have been cataloging just a fraction of this bias and corruption, and only a fraction of it is all we can report as the problem is every day and there is no way that we could report it all. As Pat points out that major media figures have been caught more than once coordinating defense of Obama and attacks on Republicans. This is also evidenced by that fact that the only tough interview President Obama had in recent memory was from Univision.
Pat also speaks of something that is often said by political insiders, he refers to the Democrats as “The Corrupt Party” and the Republicans as “The Stupid Party” (a reference to how they are often politicking and media stupid).
This is a rare piece of decent journalism from CNN. Every once in a while the elite media does this so they can claim they are fair and balanced, but honestly like this is infrequent to put it mildly.
This is one of the big problems I have with the progressive secular left; if you read their heroes from Lenin, Walter Lippmann, almost anyone from the Frankfurt School, Antonio Gramsci, Max Weber, Saul Alinsky etc, they all advocate deception as a legitimate political tactic.
Leftism assumes that people cannot govern themselves and that freedom leaves too much to chance, and therefore the rabble must have rationality imposed upon them from above, preferably by incrementalism, but eventually by force if need be. All forms of leftism, from liberalism, progressivism, socialism, communism, marxism, critical theory, grievance studies are all favor movement towards a leviathan state ran by an oligarchy, some of the flavors wish to maintain the illusion of limited government and a genuine democratic process, some don’t.
The Obama campaign would like voters to believe that Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan would “end Medicare as we know it” — privatizing the whole system and costing seniors more than $6,000 extra a year.
But the campaign, even before Ryan was selected as Mitt Romney’s running mate, has effectively been running against the wrong Ryan plan.
The president’s accusations largely refer to Ryan’s 2011 plan, ignoring the fact that the House Budget Committee chairman rolled out a different version in 2012 — taking into account Democratic critiques. Though the 2012 plan is more moderate, Obama and his surrogates have all but ignored the newer version as they amp up their accusations against the Romney-Ryan ticket.
Most glaringly, the campaign has omitted a key point.
While Ryan’s 2011 plan proposes to give seniors a government payment to buy private insurance, his 2012 plan offers seniors a choice.
Under the blueprint, seniors could use the payment to buy private insurance or stay in traditional Medicare.
Political Arena 