Like Slimey Cockroaches & their crooked President, Liberals Spread Disease

[Warph]

Obama Lied After People Died
By Frank Gaffney
10/4/2012


Suddenly, the President's new clothes seem embarrassingly transparent. The contention relentlessly promoted by Team Obama, to the effect that the Commander-in-Chief's performance with respect to foreign policy and national security was simply unassailable, is being seen for what it is: an utter fraud.

The deal-breaker has been the accumulating evidence that President Obama and his subordinates disinformed the American people - to put it charitably - about a present danger: the outbreak of violence against our diplomatic personnel and facilities and other interests in more than 30 countries around the world. Specifically, they denied that a carefully planned and executed jihadist attack against our consulate in Benghazi was responsible for the murder of the Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three of his colleagues on September 11, 2012.

The party line assiduously pushed for days thereafter by administration spokesmen including, most risibly UN Ambassador Susan Rice, was that the attack spontaneously ensued from a demonstration outside the U.S. compound prompted by an American video, "Innocence of Muslims," which reviles the founder of Islam. And, so the story went, the demonstrators got carried away and wound up sacking the consulate and a nearby safe house, in the course of which the four victims were killed.

It turns out that Team Obama knew early on that such representations were untrue. In a blog post headlined "Some administration officials were concerned about initial White House push blaming Benghazi attack on mob, video," ABC News' Jake Tapper recounted on September 27th that, "The Daily Beast's Eli Lake on Wednesday reported that intelligence officials said 'the early information was enough to show that the attack was planned and the work of al Qaeda affiliates operating in Eastern Libya.' 'There was very good information on this in the first 24 hours,' one of the officials told Lake.

For one thing, on September 10th, al Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri, had issued a public call for retribution against the United States for a recent assassination by drone strike of one of his senior commanders. The consulate in Benghazi was low-hanging fruit - a vulnerable facility in a jihadist-infested city with a high-value target, a U.S. ambassador, who had no security.

Insult was added to injury as our Commander-in-Chief - he who has not been able to find time for most of his daily intelligence briefings - reportedly went to bed after being advised that the consulate was under attack. When he awoke, Mr. Obama made a Rose Garden statement expressing regret at the loss of the four Americans' lives and rejecting "all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others." (Astonishingly, he neglected to mention anything about the roughly concurrent attack on the U.S. embassy in Cairo.)

Then, on September 18th, President Obama insisted during an appearance on David Letterman's show that the attacks on a number of diplomatic missions "including the one in Libya" were conducted by "extremists and terrorists" who "used...as an excuse" popular anger at the release of the video by a "shadowy character who lives here." The President could not at that point have been under any illusion about the veracity of that statement concerning the Benghazi bloodletting. It was, in short, a lie. Worse yet, it was, as we shall see, a lie that served the interests of America's enemies.

Incredibly, even after his own press spokesman acknowledged on September 20th that the murderous assault in Libya was not the spontaneous work of a mob, Mr. Obama used his speech before the UN General Assembly on September 25th to perpetuate the meme that those offended by our freedom of expression are responsible for such attacks - not jihadists doctrinally obliged to seek our destruction.

While the President used much of the speech to profess his opposition to such behavior, he declared that, "The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam." That is a call for non-Muslims to abide by shariah blasphemy laws that could have been uttered by any Islamic supremacist, including al Qaeda's Osama bin Laden, the Muslim Brotherhood's chief jurist Yusef al-Qaradawi or Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini.

After all, it has been a top priority of these and our other Islamist foes - notably, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) - to begin establishing their dominion over the rest of us by restricting what we can say, and therefore know and do, about Islam and its totalitarian doctrine known as shariah. President Obama and his subordinates (notably, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her "Istanbul Process") have been playing directly into such adversaries' efforts to prohibit and criminalize shariah blasphemy with their serial complaints and apologies about the video. By so doing, the Obama administration is effectively inviting more violence against Americans deemed "offensive" to the Islamists, making the world a more dangerous place for all of us.

Critics of George W. Bush harshly chastised him for allegedly misleading the American people about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction in order to get us into a needless and unjustified war. They insisted that "Bush lied, people died." Never mind that it wasn't true. Mr. Bush acted on the basis of what was known at the time: Saddam had used such weapons previously and had not verifiably eliminated either his remaining stocks or the capacity to make more.

Will those once so vociferous about presidential truth-telling be equally seized with the fact that "Obama lied after people died"?

[Warph]

VP Debate Moderator Has Close Obama Ties

Ken McIntyre
October 10, 2012 at 4:53 pm

http://blog.heritage.org/2012/10/10/vp-debate-moderator-has-close-obama-ties/?utm_source=Featured%2BPosts&utm_medium=FP3&utm_campaign=Top%2BNav%2BFeatured%2BPosts

It's a pretty big story that Barack Obama attended the wedding of Martha Raddatz, the ABC News senior foreign correspondent picked as the moderator for Thursday night's vice presidential debate.

It's an especially good story since Obama was close enough to the groom, Julius "Jay" Genachowski, that he appointed him as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission shortly after being sworn in as President almost 20 years later.

Funny thing is, The Daily Caller, which first learned that Obama was a guest at the 1991 wedding, is not exactly getting credit from politicos and fellow news outfits for keeping 'em honest. Even though the October 10 story was Dally Caller reporter Josh Peterson's eyebrow-raising follow-up to his August 23 report first detailing the Obama–Raddatz–Genachowski connection.

Actually, not many eyebrows raised—until the Drudge Report led with a link to Peterson's story. ABC News dispatched spokesman David Ford to play down and beat back Peterson's guest-at-the-wedding story by "pre-leaking" it October 9 to sympathetic outlets such as The Daily Beast and Huffington Post.

"This is absurd," Ford huffed.

But is this more important than Big Bird?

Yes, Raddatz and Genachowski divorced in 1997, about 10 years before Genachowski used his net-roots know-how to help his buddy from the Harvard Law Review, a freshman U.S. senator, win the White House.

But the news business used to say the angle for this kind of story was the need to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest in public matters. Good newsrooms applied the principle and the angle to situations involving liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans.

But Mike McCurry, co-chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates that runs the show and picks the moderators, says he doesn't see it that way.

In August, McCurry told The Daily Caller:
We selected the [debate] moderators based on their reputations for integrity and journalistic impartiality among other things.
What counts is the quality of their work, not who they may have been married to in the past.
http://blog.heritage.org/2012/10/10/vp-debate-moderator-has-close-obama-ties/?utm_source=Featured%2BPosts&utm_medium=FP3&utm_campaign=Top%2BNav%2BFeatured%2BPosts

McCurry, a communications pro and former press secretary to President Clinton, knows better. And he knows he knows better. Picture this: President George W. Bush is in the final days of a tough re-election fight. A liberal news organization reports that the moderator of the upcoming vice presidential debate used to be married to Bush's FCC chairman. It follows up with a story that Bush himself had attended their wedding. The moderator's employer trashes the story before it's published.

One can imagine the media asking some hardball questions about the moderator's ability to be fair. The news organization that employs the moderator—not to mention the sponsoring debate commission, its reputation also at stake—might feel pressure to be super-transparent in disclosing the potential conflict and describing steps to ensure no bias in favor of the Bush ticket.  Even to the point of replacing the moderator.

Peterson's stories on ABC's Raddatz seek to ask and answer some of the right questions, as did Daily Caller colleague Neil Munro's earlier one on the leftward leanings of the debate commission.


It's not hard to imagine the sort of questions that any good reporter or assignment editor would want answered:

>>>Did ABC News or the Commission on Presidential Debates ask Raddatz about personal ties to either side? (And did the debate commission do so before making its other moderator picks?)

>>>What was the nature of Raddatz's relationship with Obama in 1991, and how did it change over the years?

>>>When did Raddatz disclose her ties to Obama, including his attending her wedding, to superiors at ABC News? If she didn't, why not? If she did, what ethical constraints did ABC put on her? When and how did the debate commission learn of these ties, and to what extent?

>>>Can ABC spokesman Ford back up his written assertion that "nearly the entire [Harvard] Law Review" attended the Raddatz–Genachowski wedding, implying that Obama's presence was no big deal? (A contemporaneous photo shows the law review had 70 staffers at the time.) If Ford doesn't have those facts, why did he circulate that assertion to reporters?

>>>And finally, now that The Daily Caller has followed up its August 23 report of the Obama–Raddatz–Genachowski connection with the wedding story, how do ABC and the debate commission plan to fully inform the public before the debate begins at 9 p.m. Thursday?

If these and related questions aren't answered before the candidates for vice president take the stage in Danville, Kentucky, it's fair to keep them in mind as Raddatz questions both men.

[Warph]

Angry old man yells at Paul Ryan for 90 minutes

The expectations were set incredibly low for Joe Biden.  As Ryan would put it to him during the debate, "Sometimes words don't come out of your mouth the right way," eliciting laughter from the gallery.  As a man who wouldn't be taken seriously entering this debate, he couldn't possibly be more buffoonish.  So why not go ballistic and interrupt Ryan at every turn?

The move paid off.  The only times Ryan got to enjoy uninterrupted time to make his pitch to the American people were during his opening and closing statements.  Every other moment was shared with Biden or the moderator, Martha Radditz.

Ryan's strength comes from his knowledge of the math and the numbers.  He needed to establish with the American people that he was a competent, thoughtful aspiring vice presidential candidate who could work across the aisle.  Just a month ago, he was being protrayed as a right-wing radical with ideas too crazy for independents.  That's why his pitch was so focused on how he would focus on working with Democrats to reach a solution on the budget or on foreign policy, contrasting that to the experience of Obuma's first term.

While David Freddoso argues that Biden needed to reinvigorate the base to reassure them that Obuma's lousy first debate performance was not representative of the campaign's energy level, Biden also needed to appeal to independents and undermine Ryan's own working class credentials.  Laughing at Ryan was supposed to make him look silly, unqualified, unpresidential. 

Instead, Biden looked like an impatient bully, unconfident in his own record and desperate to change the subject.

One place this most stood out was in Biden's carping about how it was somehow novel for a Republican to call for bipartisanship. 
The past Republican Congresses were nowhere close to bipartisan in their approach, he argued.  But in political years, that was long past history. Yes, Joe, you might have disliked how Republicans in Congress behaved under Dubya.  But who cares?

Biden might have come closer to resonating with viewers if he'd allowed his points to stick.  His arguments about how "We Are All The 47 Percent" might have stuck (if only those in the 47 percent would admit to themselves that's who they are!). 

But instead, his over-the-top interruptions took the stage.  Most mainstream reporters on Twitter I noticed caught it and repudiated it to some degree.

In other words, Biden had a choice: Play the elder statesman who knows better, or the smart alec who wants to put the upstart kid in his place.  Doing both meant being the elder statesmen who condescended to his opponent, and it won't play well.

After all: The independents, and not the base, are the ones who matter.

[Warph]

"Hey Geithner... wake up Crazy Joe.  He's snoring to loud!"

        Ronald Reagan on Biden: 'Smooth But Pure Demagogue'

By Jeffrey Lord on 10.11.12 @ 6:11AM

DEMAGOGUE:
"Emotive dictator: a political leader who gains power by appealing to people's emotions, instincts, and prejudices in a way that is considered manipulative and dangerous."

The Gipper accused VP of being part of "lynch mob."

Ronald Reagan was not impressed with Joe Biden.

In fact, writing in his diary in his usual abbreviated style on June 15, 1987, Reagan described Biden this way:

He's smooth but pure demagog [sic]-- out to save Am. [America] from Reagan Doctrine.

That was a year after Reagan made a note about Biden and Senators Ted Kennedy and Howard Metzenbaum, who were busy making "vitriolic attacks on TV" about Reagan's nominee for Chief Justice of the United States, then Associate Justice William Rehnquist. Wrote Reagan:

They really are a lynch mob.

As America settles in tonight to watch now-Vice President Biden face off in debate with Congressman Paul Ryan, whom no one has ever accused of being either a "smooth but pure demagogue" much less part of "a lynch mob," it's worth a look at exactly why the nation's 40th president saw Biden this way -- and how Reagan's assessment is reflected in the conduct of today's Obama-Biden administration. Reagan never recorded of Biden as he is seen by many today -- as a gaffe-prone fool.

Reagan's point was that no matter the issue -- it could have been the Reagan Doctrine one day or the confirmation of Reagan appointees the next day (on one occasion Biden smilingly told a nominee for an obscure government board, "by my definition you are a racist") or something else the day after -- Joe Biden was always there to play the role of the "smooth but pure demagogue" -- the hot headed guy in the leftist political lynch mob brandishing the rope.

For Americans who have watched with alternating amusement and incredulity, this is precisely the trait that Biden has repeatedly displayed in the four years of his vice presidency. This is exactly what was going on when Biden took to a Danville, Virginia podium back in August and bellowed to a largely African-American audience:

"Look at what they [Republicans] value, and look at their budget. And look what they're proposing. [Romney] said in the first 100 days, he's going to let the big banks write their own rules -- unchain Wall Street. They're going to put y'all back in chains."

It was what was going on in Iowa the other day when Biden pushed his class-warfare theme by saying:

"...we're going to ask the wealthy to pay more. My heart breaks. Come on, man."

To be a demagogue, of course, is to exhibit a personality trait not a policy. To appeal to prejudice. There is more to all of this Biden demagoguery than just the theatrical performance of personality and appeals to prejudice. In the Reagan-era Biden used -- still uses today as Obama's Number two -- the tools of a demagogue to push specific policies. And he has three policy favorites in which his addiction to demagoguery most frequently surface: foreign policy, race, and economics.

In matters of foreign policy, as Reagan noted with Biden's opposition to the Reagan Doctrine, Joe Biden was and is still today as Barack Obama's vice president a thorough-going partisan of left-wing, quasi-pacifist foreign policy precepts that effectively date to FDR's discredited (and dumped) Vice President Henry Wallace. Wallace lost out to Harry Truman, his policies losing out both with post-World War II Democrats and with the country at large in the election of 1948.

But the same far-left foreign policy principles of Wallace finally took over the Democrats with the ascension of South Dakota Senator George McGovern as the Democrats' nominee in 1972. McGovern had been a Wallace disciple, a delegate to the 1948 Progressive Party that nominated Wallace for president to oppose Truman. And it was in 1972, when McGovern-Democrats swarmed the party apparatus, that an ambitious 29-year old lawyer -- Biden -- took on the aging Republican Senator Caleb Boggs of Delaware and beat him in an upset.

Reagan specifically noted that Biden was opposed to the Reagan Doctrine.

Biden certainly wasn't alone. Every liberal senator breathing in the 1980s opposed the Reagan Doctrine. What was it? The Reagan Doctrine, so-named by Charles Krauthammer in a Time magazine column in April of 1985, was a description of Reagan's determination to mount a global challenge to the Soviet Union. The policy strategy that reflected Reagan's succinct belief of how to deal with the decades-old Cold War and the Communist Soviet Union:

"We win. They lose."

Senator Biden vehemently opposed the Reagan Doctrine, and took every opportunity to display that opposition, employing his talents for demagoguery whether the issue at hand was personnel or policy.

Yesterday, Reagan biographer Paul Kengor shared a story about then-Senator Biden's treatment of William Clark, Reagan's appointee in 1981 as Deputy Secretary of State. The story is a classic of Biden demagoguery for which Reagan had such disdain. And there's more to the story.

The humiliation of William Clark was merely the opening round in Biden's eight-year crusade to oppose Reagan's strategy of "we win, they lose".

Senator Biden would go on to oppose Reagan's successful effort to win the Cold War at every turn, never shy at using the tools of demagoguery to advance his goals. The Reagan Doctrine, Biden thundered, should be summed up as the idea that "we [the United States] will give up something, if they [the Soviets] give up everything." In other words, Biden saw Reagan as -- yes! -- being unfair to the heirs of Stalin! Really!

From opposing the Strategic Defense Initiative (aka "Star Wars") to opposing the Nicaraguan contras to opposing deployment of the MX missile and more, Biden furiously opposed every Reagan effort to bring down the Soviets and end the Cold War. Which Reagan ended, as Margaret Thatcher would later say, "without firing a shot."

In every single instance Biden would take what might be called the McGovernite, quasi-pacifist stance, which was repeatedly colored by Biden's own insistence on playing politics with foreign policy (as with everything else).

Biden backed the liberal favorite of a so-called "nuclear freeze," which Reagan dismissed out of hand as giving the Soviets a "huge advantage" in land-based nuclear missiles with multiple warheads. "Well-meaning or not," Reagan scoffed, "the nuclear freeze movement had an agenda that could have been written in Moscow." Biden replied by assailing Reagan for not seeking yet another arms agreement, insisting that if Reagan were serious about arms control "the freeze movement would evaporate tomorrow." The idea that Reagan wanted the Soviet Union to evaporate was something that simply appalled Biden.

Biden's demagoguery surfaced again and again and again as he dealt with Reagan foreign policy.

When Secretary of State George Shultz appeared in front of Biden's Foreign Relations Committee to discuss South Africa, Biden launched again. The Reagan administration staunchly opposed apartheid but was deeply concerned the country could dissolve in bloodshed -- a bloodletting related in part to the presence of Cuban troops and a heavy Soviet influence in nearby Angola. Instead of a rational discussion Biden famously played the demagogue, furiously attacking the genteel Shultz by saying Reagan's policy was "nauseating." With the cameras running, but of course, Biden dramatically shouted that:

"People are being mugged and shot, imprisoned, killed smothered.... these people are dying... you feel frustration, they're dying. They are being shot. Children are -- They are lining up and shooting children."

When Shultz persisted in urging caution, Biden exploded:

"Hell, they've [South African blacks] tried compromise for 20 years! They've tried everything in their power."

When Reagan's "we win, they lose" strategy worked and Soviet Union was carted off to the ash heap of history against Biden's active opposition -- wonder of wonders the Cubans left Angola. A mere two years later, apartheid was gone and Nelson Mandela was President of South Africa.

But of course, the exchange with Shultz made every mainstream television newscast -- which is to say, every newscast then in existence.

Noticeably, the New York Times was coming to the same conclusion about Senator Biden's standard operating procedure as Ronald Reagan. The only difference being the Times would think Biden's approach just ducky -- and never use the word demagogue.

A week after Biden's rant on South Africa, the Times ran a piece by reporter Robin Toner solely focused on Biden's by now clearly distinct habit of playing the demagogue -- and what it really meant. Said the Times:

From his angry sparring with Secretary of State George P. Shultz to his intensive questioning of Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware has emerged as an aggressive presence on the Washington stage....

As a result of all this, Democratic activists and analysts say Mr. Biden has gained heightened recognition as a possible Presidential contender.

"He, more than any other Democratic candidate [for president in 1988], is aggressively speaking out, becoming visible, and that's a key part of the game, especially in the early days," said Frank Greer, a Democratic consultant.

Unsurprisingly, the then-chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party agreed, saying the obvious about what Biden's style had accomplished:

"His recent activities certainly haven't hurt him. He's been on the front pages here."

The then vice-chair of the DNC chimed in approvingly:

"It's name recognition, and it's becoming known in a way that imprints in people's minds. A Senator raising his voice and his fist in anger at the Secretary of State... is not something you forget right away."

Not something you forget right away.

Exactly. That would be the point, and hence Biden's style of politicizing everything, including American foreign policy, is precisely what Reagan saw as the work of the "smooth but pure demagogue."

Is there any wonder then as the reports of the discussions inside the Obama administration over whether or not to pull the trigger on the Seal Team Six operation to get Osama Bin Laden proceeded -- it was Biden who opposed the operation?

Why?

Reports the November issue of Vanity Fair in excerpting author Mark Bowden's new book The Finish: The Killing of Osama Bin Laden, Biden was true to form. Yes, it was Joe Biden who opposed getting Bin Laden right to the end. Why?

The vice president was never shy about political calculations. "Mr. President, my suggestion is: don't go." ...Biden believed that if the...the effort failed, Obama could say good-by to a second term.

In other words, whether he was opposing Reagan on ending the Cold War by supporting the nuclear freeze and opposing the Reagan Doctrine, or whether he was opposing President Bush 41 on the Persian Gulf War, or opposing President Bush 43 on the surge that finally won the war in Iraq -- or opposing President Obama on the decision to kill Osama Bin Laden, Joe Biden has never changed.

He has missed one foreign policy call after another from Reagan to Obama. Getting them wrong and wrong again, from ending the Cold War to getting Osama Bin Laden.

He is to this moment the man Ronald Reagan believed would always appeal to Americans with the raw emotions of prejudice -- using race, class-warfare, leftist foreign policy or anything else that was handy.

Joe Biden, Ronald Reagan concluded, was nothing more -- or less -- than a "smooth but pure demagogue."

The Gipper called it as he saw it.

The word is out that Biden belongs in an insane asylum because of his demeanor and crazy statements.  The man is dangerous to his own party.  Just saying....  Warph

[Warph]

Obuma getting ready to throw Hillary under the Bus?

Klein: Clinton-Obama rift intensifies after Libya, Obama's debate performance

by Edward Klein

After Bill Clinton delivered his electrifying speech at the Democratic National Convention, many political observers concluded that the Clintons and Obamas had called a truce to their long-running feud. Under their armistice, Clinton agreed to make speeches and appear in TV commercials for Obama, acting like a booster rocket for the Democratic ticket in the remaining weeks of the campaign.

It was a pretty picture, but as I have learned from several sources inside the Clinton camp, it turned out to be a case of wishful thinking.

In fact, since the convention, Clinton and Obama have had a serious falling-out over two issues: the president's preparation and lamentable performance in his debate with Mitt Romney, and the question of who should be assigned blame — Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — for the intelligence and security screw-up in Benghazi, Libya.
http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/1897634548001/rift-between-obama-secy-clinton-over-libya-attack/

This new rift, which the Clintons and Obamas have managed to keep secret from the media, has poisoned their relations to such an extent that it could conceivably have an impact on the outcome of the presidential election.

                                                             * * *
The latest quarrel began when Clinton heard that Obama was behaving so cocky about his first debate against Mitt Romney that he wasn't taking his debate prep seriously. Out of concern, Clinton had an aide call the White House and say that the former president would be more than happy to give the current president some pointers and advice on how to get the best of Romney.

Clinton waited several days for a response, but none was forthcoming. According to my sources, the former president was dumbfounded that Obama had ignored his offer, and his hurt feelings quickly boiled over into anger.

"Bill thought that he and Obama were on friendly terms after the convention," one source told me. "He couldn't believe that the White House didn't even extend him the courtesy of a return phone call. He concluded that Obama's arrogance knows no bounds."

The fact is, these two proud and egocentric men have a long and acrimonious history. Four years ago, after Obama's South Carolina primary victory over Hillary Clinton, Bill called Obama's campaign "a fairy tale." Not to be outdone, Obama referred to the Clinton presidency as a "psychodrama."

Later, after Obama won the presidency, he and Clinton held a joint press conference at the White House. Clinton promptly took over the podium, edging out Obama and prompting the new president to leave the stage altogether.

Given this history, it was not surprising that Obama was reluctant to give Clinton a starring role at the Democratic Convention. It was only after David Axelrod and other Obama campaign advisers argued that a Clinton speech was essential to a successful convention bounce that the president agreed to let Clinton deliver the prime-time nominating speech. Just as Obama feared, Clinton stole the show and made Obama look smaller by comparison.

In the past, Obama has grumbled that he doesn't enjoy being "lectured to" by Clinton. Perhaps that's why Obama has never once invited Bill and Hillary to the White House for an informal dinner.

             

Despite their mutual lack of trust, Clinton and Obama have managed to keep their personal feelings under control — up to now. But in the wake of the fatal attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Clinton is concerned that the White House and Obama's campaign headquarters in Chicago are moving to dump political and legal blame for the Libya mess on the State Department and, by definition, on Hillary Clinton herself.

My sources tell me that Clinton is working on a strategy that will allow Hillary to avoid having Benghazi become a stain on her political fortunes should she decide to run for president in 2016.

Bill Clinton has even gone so far as to seek legal advice about Hillary's liability in terms of cables and memos that might be subpoenaed by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which this week launched an investigation into the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The committee will also examine the apparent Obama administration cover-up that followed the Benghazi attack.

Finally, I'm told that Bill is playing with various doomsday scenarios, up to and including the idea that Hillary should consider resigning over the issue if the Obama team tries to use her as a scapegoat. That seems unlikely to happen. But if relations between Obama's White House and Hillary's State Department rupture publicly over the growing Benghazi scandal, that could damage the Democratic ticket and dim Obama's chances for re-election.

Edward Klein, author of The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House, is a New York Times bestselling author of numerous books including The Truth About Hillary. He is the former foreign editor of Newsweek, former editor in chief of The New York Times Magazine, and a contributing editor of Vanity Fair.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/12/the-clinton-obama-rift/#ixzz29BRGzq00

[Warph]

                   

Obama Bites The Hand That Feeds Him

by Paul Mirengoff
Posted on October 13, 2012

On Bill Clinton



Former President Clinton has been working overtime to drag Barack Obama across the finish line in this year's election.

Clinton has been hands-down President Obama's most effective advocate. His personal credibility may not be substantial, but unlike Obama, Clinton produced a non-disastrous presidency. Thus, his overall credibility vastly exceeds that of the current president.

So how is Obama awarding Clinton for his heavy lifting? By throwing Clinton's wife under the Benghazi bus, it appears.

On Friday, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters that responsibility for the consulate in Libya fell on the State Department, not the White House.

                   

This followed Joe Biden's claim during the Thursday debate that "we" (apparently meaning Biden and Obama) knew nothing about the Libya mission's request to the State Department for extra security.

To save his political career, Obama would throw his own grandmother under the bus she supposedly rode to her job at the bank everyday because his grandfather thought it would be racist to give her a ride.

                   

And Biden's 2016 presidential ambitions (no, I'm not joking) provide him with an extra incentive to see Hillary Clinton become the fall-gal for Benghazi.

                     

How is Bill Clinton taking this?

                     

According to author Ed Klein, he is not taking it lying down. Klein says that sources close to the Clinton are telling him that Bill Clinton has assembled an informal legal team to discuss how the Secretary of State should deal with the issue of being blamed for not preventing the Benghazi terrorist attack last month.

I'm sure Bill Clinton is furious. But what he hopes to accomplish through a legal team (assuming the accuracy of Klein's report) isn't clear. I don't believe there's a defamation suit in anyone's future over this.

Klein says that the Clintons are contemplating the option of Hillary resigning in the event Obama continues to make her the scapegoat. But this would be a very risky play. If she resigned before the election, Democrats would never forgive her for undermining Obama's reelection chances in a fit of pique. If she resigned after the election, assuming an Obama victory, the president probably would happily accept it, and she would be out in the cold. That might not be a terrible place to be considering what a second Obama term likely would hold in store. However, Hillary would be leaving under a cloud.

Hillary's leverage is at its peak now, when Bill is leading the Obama reelection charge and when a sudden resignation would represent a huge setback for Obama. The Clintons can try to use this leverage to halt White House efforts to scapegoat Hillary. Then, they can hope the issue blows over.

However, the Benghazi story isn't likely to blow over. And after November 6, the Clintons can do nothing to avoid the scapegoating of Hillary by the Obama administration.

[Warph]

(Man... that is one hard-lookin' bitch.  Thank G-d I don't have to wake up to that)
                 

Why Sebelius Campaigns So Hard for Her Boss — and Why He Won't Fire Her

By Michael F. Cannon
10/15/2012

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius has been campaigning so enthusiastically for President Obama that she — whoops! — broke a federal law that restricts political activities by executive-branch officials. Federal employees are usually fired for such transgressions, but no one expects that to happen to Sebelius. Heck, she got right back in the saddle.

Every cabinet official (probably) wants to see the president reelected, and no president relishes dismissing a cabinet official. But in this case, there's an additional incentive for Sebelius to campaign for her boss and for Obama not to fire her.

ObamaCare creates a new Independent Payment Advisory Board that — "fact checkers" notwithstanding — is actually a super-legislature with the power to ration care to everyone, increase taxes, impose conditions on federal grants to states, and wield other legislative powers. According to legend, IPAB will consist of 15 unelected "experts" who are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Yeah, good one.

In fact, if the president makes no appointments, or the Senate rejects the president's appointees, then all of IPAB's considerable powers fall to one person: the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The HHS secretary would effectively become an economic dictator, with more power over the health care sector than any chamber of Congress.

If Obama wins in November, he would have zero incentive to appoint any IPAB members. The confirmation hearings would be a bloodbath, not unlike Don Berwick's confirmation battle multiplied by 15. Sebelius, on the other hand, would not need to be re-confirmed. She could assume all of IPAB's powers without the Senate examining her fitness to wield those powers. If Obama fired her, or the voters fire Obama, then the next HHS secretary would have to secure Senate confirmation. Again, bloodbath. That makes Kathleen Sebelius the only person in the universe who could assume those powers without that scrutiny.

No wonder she's campaigning so hard. No wonder Obama won't fire her.

[Warph]

More on the IPAB:



IPAB, Obama, and Socialism
By Stanley Kurtz
April 18, 2011
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/264988/ipab-obama-and-socialism-stanley-kurtz#comment-bar

They're back. Rationing, death panels, socialism, all those nasty old words that helped bring Republicans victory in 2010, and that came to seem so impolite after November of that year. They're back because of IPAB. Remember that acronym. It stand for The Independent Payment Advisory Board. IPAB is the real death panel, the true seat of rationing, and the royal road to health-care socialism. President Obama won't admit to any of that, but his speech in response to Paul Ryan's plan did push IPAB out of the shadows and into public view, however briefly. If Republicans don't seize the IPAB issue and run with it, they'll be losers in 2012. Policy wonks and political junkies may know a bit about this health-care rationing panel, but most Americans have barely heard of it. That has got to change. And the only way to expose and explain the dangers of IPAB is to tell the truth about Barack Obama.

In his speech on the deficit, Obama pointed to IPAB as an answer to Paul Ryan's plan. In Ryan's vision, competition among insurers will force efficiencies and lower prices. Under Obama's plan, in contrast, health-care prices for the elderly would be controlled by IPAB. Ryan's plan puts consumers in the driver's seat, but also exposes them to the risk of bad choices and limited subsidies. While Obama's plan offers government-guaranteed care, IPAB's price controls will lead to one-size-fits-all rationing. As IPAB caps Medicare payments for various services, the elderly will be unable to obtain many kinds of care, or will experience de facto rationing via long treatment delays and sharp declines in the quality of care. And by the way, IPAB rationing will hit many current seniors, whereas Ryan's reform of Medicare will never affect anyone now 55 or older.

So far so good. It sounds like we're in for a much-needed debate over competing public-policy visions: freedom of choice, with all it's risks, versus bureaucratic rule, with its mixture of guarantees and deprivations. Yet there's a lot more going on here than a straightforward policy debate. That's because Obama doesn't want to tell you in detail what his alternative to Ryan actually involves, especially when it comes to IPAB.

A month ago here at NRO, my EPPC colleague James Capretta described the real plan by which the president and his allies aim to close the fiscal gap. Their goal, says Capretta, is to work by stealth, so voters never fully realize that the government has adopted their strategy. The first part of the plan involves taxing "the rich" for Medicare and health insurance, but without Reagan-style indexing of taxes to inflation. That way, inflation-driven "bracket creep" will raise health-care taxes on the middle class without congressional Democrats ever having to vote for new taxes. (See Ross Douthat on this today.)

The second part of the plan involves IPAB-imposed price controls and the large-scale rationing of health care that implies. But to work, IPAB's authority has got to extend beyond Medicare. The idea, says Capretta, is to wait until the massive financial strains brought on by Obamacare bring calls for cost control. That's when the Democrats will push for IPAB's authority to be extended beyond Medicare to all of Obamacare, at which point we'll be very close to a single-payer health-care system with Canadian-style rationing.

The president's speech last week tracks well with Capretta's predictions. Obama promised tax hikes for "the rich," and vaguely alluded to plans to expand IPAB's powers as deficits mount. Of course, even as he laid the groundwork for strengthening IPAB, Obama gave no real hint of the massive health-care rationing that would imply. And at the moment, the Congressional Budget Office predicts little or no savings from IPAB's price-setting, so Obama's speech came off as an unserious reply to Ryan. But as Mark Hemingway points out, Obama's IPAB plan makes sense if we see it as "a Trojan horse" for a regime of "command-and-control rationing" quietly installed over the long term.

Rationing, death panels, socialism, and deception. It's all there. When Sarah Palin first raised the "death panel" issue, she was referring to end-of-life counseling. But IPAB is the real death panel (as Palin herself later noted), a body of unelected bureaucrats with the power to cut off care through arbitrary rules based on one-size-fits-all cost calculations, just as in Britain. IPAB is the key to socialized, single-payer health-care, which is and has always been Obama's ultimate goal. If Republicans remain unwilling to point out Obama's unavowed socialist aims, they will be thrown onto the defensive by Obama's class warfare rhetoric. That spells defeat in 2012.

One of the most frequent responses to Radical-in-Chief, my political biography of Obama, is to ask what difference the president's socialist past makes to his policies in the present. After all, Obamacare couldn't have passed if it hadn't been supported by the Democratic Party as a whole. There are at least two answers to this question.

First, Obama's socialist policies blend well with the Democratic platform because the left side of the Democratic Party has long been pushing an incrementally socialist (or if you prefer "social democratic") program. In that sense, Obama's socialist roots are important as a revelation of the broader Democratic left's unavowed ideological intentions.

The IPAB issue also brings out a second and less well understood aspect of the Obama puzzle. Obama's gradualism and ideological stealth have helped to mask significant distinctions between his own position and that of many other Democrats. IPAB was never included in the original House version of the health-care bill. In fact, in January of 2010, 72 House Democrats joined Republicans in sending a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi asking that IPAB be excluded from the bill. (This mixed moderate Democrats opposed to rationing with some far-left Democrats worried that a future Republican president could use the board to gut Medicare.) Imagine how many more moderate Democrats would have opposed IPAB in 2010 had Obama been honest about his ambitious long-term plans for IPAB rationing. Even now some (mostly) moderate Democrats are beginning to join again with Republicans aiming to repeal IPAB. So on the American political spectrum, Obama and his core left-Democratic allies remain ideological outliers. That is precisely what their habitual stealth is designed to disguise–and what the truth about Obama's past reveals.

To the extent that Obama effectively defeats the Ryan plan by securing reelection, he may eventually force even some Republicans to get behind his vision of socialized medicine. Once the Ryan plan is dead and Obamacare is the only game in town, budget hawks will have little choice but to demand stricter rationing by IPAB. In fact, it's already happening. The bipartisan Simpson-Bowles deficit commission, appointed by Obama, essentially had no choice but to work within the framework of Obamacare. And Simpson-Bowles has pushed for IPAB to be granted a much wider range of powers, including the extension of its authority beyond Medicare to all of Obamacare (as per Capretta's warnings). Obama hasn't gone that far himself yet, but he's already using the political cover provided by Simpson-Bowles to call for expanded IPAB authority.

Four months ago, Obama's compromise on the Bush tax cuts looked like a pivot to the center. Today, Obama has answered Ryan by making class-warfare-themed opposition to the Bush tax cuts the centerpiece of his 2012 campaign. Meantime, the president continues to stealthily consolidate his socialist plans for health care. Will Republicans have the guts to expose Obama's strategy and call him on it, as they did in 2010? Will they go after IPAB and the permanent health-care rationing regime Obama means to cement in place, or will they merely defend Ryan's proposal against the avalanche of attacks sure to come? Telling the truth about Obama's radical plans is the only way to win.


The Interior Department is unable to manage parks.

The Energy Department cannot manage energy.

The Education Department mismanages education.

The Homeland Security Agency is a disaster.

These are all inconveniences to liberty and can be corrected easily. 

Health mistakes are much more difficult to fix via legislation.

Keep the government out of it.... period!

...Warph

[Warph]

                     

On the Road to Death Panels

By Star Parker
10/15/2012
With the first presidential debate and the only vice-presidential debate behind us, it seems pretty clear that so-called "social issues" are not going to get much attention in this year's presidential politics.

It's unfortunate, I think. We deceive ourselves to permit the assumption that values and behavior are not the real drivers behind our economic problems.

The fiscal crisis of our entitlement programs is the direct result of these values and behavior.

The fiscal soundness of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is rooted in the assumption that those who work can fund the needs of our elderly through payroll taxes. In the case of Social Security, we're talking about retirement income; in the case of Medicare, health costs of the aged; and Medicaid, long-term care of low-income elderly.

When these programs were founded, using payroll taxes to fund care for our elderly seemed like a viable idea.

The bottom has fallen out, however, because of changes in our behavior. There are fewer and fewer workers per retiree as result of longer life spans and a shrinking workforce.

In 1950, there were 16 working Americans for every retiree. Today, there are fewer than three. By 2030, it's projected there will be fewer than two.

It doesn't take a supercomputer to realize that if we don't reduce the retirement and health care resources available to our elderly, the burden on each working American to provide those resources increases substantially.

Yet the discussion about this crisis is 100 percent focused on how to cut the spending and zero attention is spent on restoration of values that could rebuild families, produce more children and stop destroying the unborn.

According to a new report just out from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the overall fertility rate of American women -- defined by the number of births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 -- is the lowest ever recorded since the government started gathering this information. After years of hovering slightly above 2.1, it has now dropped below to 1.9.

According to demographers, a fertility rate of 2.1 -- in which each adult woman produces 2.1 children on average over her lifetime -- is necessary to keep the overall population steady.

Which means the overall U.S. population is shrinking.

We generally look to Europe to see low fertility rates and shrinking populations. However, according to the Economist magazine, the U.S., at 1.9, now has a fertility rate lower than France, whose fertility rate stands at 2.0.

A change in prevailing values could reverse this trend. But the opposite is happening.

According to a new Gallup poll, for the first time the majority of Americans feel that government should not promote any particular set of values.

In 1993, the first year that Gallup did this annual survey, 53 percent said that government should promote traditional values and 42 percent said that no particular set of values should be promoted. Now, in this latest survey, it is the opposite: 52 percent say no particular set of values should be promoted and 44 percent say government should promote traditional values.

With no rebirth of traditional values that could lead to more babies, caring for our elderly will become an increasingly onerous burden. Where can this soulless materialism lead?

In a Sept. 16 New York Times op-ed, Steven Rattner -- a New York investment banker and former counselor to the Treasury secretary in the Obama administration -- provided a shockingly candid answer.

The op-ed began by saying, "We need death panels."

Rattner then qualified this by saying, well, maybe not "exactly."

But, he concluded: "We may shrink from ... stomach-wrenching choices, but they are inescapable."

[Warph]

               

Really, Mr. President? Five False Obama Claims To Watch For (in tonights Debate)

By: Mark LaRochelle
10/16/2012 02:05 PM


1. THE BUSH TAX CUTS FLIM FLAM

President Obama and Senate Democrats in April unsuccessfully pursued a proposal for the so-called "Buffett Rule," named for Obama supporter and Berkshire Hathaway founder Warrant Buffett. The rule would establish a minimum tax rate of 30 percent for any taxpayer with income of $1 million or more.

This is necessary because, according to the President, "billionaires" are "paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries," a claim this column debunked. This tax hike is needed, the President told the Associated Press luncheon April 3, because of the Bush tax cuts for "the wealthiest Americans."

(Even The AP had to call B.S. on this, reporting: "You wouldn't know from [Obama's] statement that taxes in 2001 and 2003 were cut across the board, not just for the wealthy.")

By allowing the rich to avoid paying their "fair share," claims the President, the Bush tax cuts are to blame for Obama's budget deficit, which will exceed $1 trillion this year for the fourth year in a row, pushing the National Debt over $14 trillion dollars.


REALLY, MR. PRESIDENT?

Obama's ballooning deficit is due not to declining revenues, but to runaway spending. The Bush tax cuts did not cause tax revenues to fall, but to rise. Since the final round of Bush tax cuts was enacted in 2003, federal revenues have actually increased by about 29 percent, from $1.9 trillion to $2.3 trillion.

The problem is that spending has increased more than twice as fast — a staggering 67 percent, from $2.2 trillion to $3.6 trillion. As a result, the deficit has more than tripled, from $378 billion to $1.3 trillion, while the National Debt has more than doubled, from $6.8 trillion to $14.8 trillion.
(April 17, 2012)


2. CLASS WAR RHETORIC OF 'FAIR SHARE'

President Obama has opted for demagogic tactics and class-war rhetoric, endlessly pretending that he wants to raise taxes only on "millionaires and billionaires."

His plan, however, would actually raise taxes on every family making at least $250,000 (about 2 percent of households) and every individual making at least $200,000 annually (more than 3 percent of all returns as of 2008). Obama claims that excluding these people – huge numbers of them small businessmen — from the extension of the Bush tax cuts will force them to "pay their fair share."


REALLY, MR. PRESIDENT?

There is no evidence that tax rate cuts reduce the share of total income taxes paid by high-income people. (See table at HumanEvents.Com, March 12, 2012 Debunker.) When Bush cut the top marginal rate by 3.5 percentage points, the share of the total income tax burden borne by the top one percent (those who earned more than $343,947 annually, as of 2009) actually increased by 6.5 percentage points by 2007. Indeed, every reduction in the top marginal rate has increased the share of income taxes paid by high earners.

According to progressive Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, fully 93 percent of the income gains made during the Obama "recovery" in 2010 went to the despised top one percent, while the other 99 percent of Americans have seen only a 0.2 percent growth in real income.

This is a far worse performance than the much-maligned Bush, under whom the top one percent garnered only 65 percent of the income gains during the 2002-2007 expansion, while the bottom 99 percent saw real income grow by 6.8 percent.

In other words, Obama's recovery has been 43 percent better for the top one percent than the Bush expansion, while the Bush expansion was 34 times better than Obama's recovery for the bottom 99 percent.
(March 12, 2012)


3. THE 'BLAME BUSH FOR DEBT' FEINT

According to President Barack Obama's 2013 budget estimate, the National Debt this year is a staggering $16 trillion dollars. The President blames his predecessor George W. Bush, saying "we cut taxes without paying for them over the last decade; we ended up instituting new programs like a prescription drug program for seniors that was not paid for; we fought two wars, we didn't pay for them," etc.

REALLY, MR. PRESIDENT?

It's certainly true, as Human Events has pointed out before, that Bush was profligate, outspending LBJ and proclaiming, "I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system."

In Fiscal Year 2009, in response to the financial crisis, Bush increased spending by more than half a trillion dollars, while revenues simultaneously fell more than $400 billion, producing the first trillion-dollar deficit in history.

But Obama has continued this spending spree, running trillion dollar deficits every year since, and planning to do so again this year. Yes, Bush increased the debt by an average of $750 billion per year, but Obama has increased the debt by an average of $1.4 trillion annually – about 85 percent faster than Bush – and plans to continue doing so.
(April 10, 2012)


4. OIL PRODUCTION CANARD

In his weekly radio address Feb. 25, the President said that "under my administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years. In 2010, our dependence on foreign oil was under 50 percent for the first time in more than a decade."

This came two days after he told a crowd in Miami, "we have a record number of oil rigs operating right now — more working oil and gas rigs than the rest of the world combined."

REALLY, MR. PRESIDENT?

While it's true that U.S. oil and natural gas production are up, this is not thanks to, but in spite of Obama. All the increased production has come from state and private lands, where the President has little power. On federal lands controlled by Obama, production has actually fallen.

According to an Institute for Energy Research analysis of data from the Interior Department's Office of Natural Resources Revenue, production of oil increased 14 percent and natural gas 12 percent on private and state lands in Fiscal Year 2011, while on federal lands, production of oil declined 11 percent and natural gas 6 percent.
(March 8, 2012)


5. JOBS APLENTY IN OBAMA RECOVERY

The U.S. economy has generated more jobs during the Obama recovery than it did during the Bush recovery or even the Reagan recovery, according to Obama's Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter. On a recent episode of MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Cutter told co-host Willie Geist: "... over the past, you know, 27 months we've created 4.5 million private sector jobs. That's more jobs than in the Bush recovery, in the Reagan recovery, there's obviously more we need to do ..."

REALLY?

According to the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Obama recovery didn't begin 27 months ago, but 37 months ago, in June 2009. Cutter skipped the first ten months of the recovery—during which the private sector lost 800,000 jobs, a decline of about 0.8 percent. Understandably, the Obama campaign wants to drop this period—encompassing that embarrassment the administration dubbed "recovery summer"—down the memory hole.

Cutter's 27 months begin in the employment trough of April 2010, the tenth month of the recovery. Starting from that point, according to the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, private sector employment in the U.S. increased by about 4.2 million (not 4.5 million)—from about 107 million to more than 111 million. That's an increase of 3.9 percent over these 27 months.

How does this compare with the Bush and Reagan recoveries? To find out, we must compare analogous periods, starting with each recession's employment trough and ending 27 months later.

During the Bush recovery, private-sector employment bottomed out in December 2003 with 108.7 million jobs. Over the following 27 months, it increased by more than 5 million jobs, to about 113.8 million in March 2006—an increase of approximately 4.7 percent.

During the Reagan recovery, private-sector employment bottomed out at about 73 million jobs in March 1983. Over the ensuing 27 months, it rose to about 81 million in June 1985. That's an increase of nearly 7.9 million jobs—more than 10 percent!
(Sept. 9, 2012)