"PowerLineBlog recently held a competition for $100,000 for whomever could most effectively and creatively dramatize the significance of the federal debt crisis.
Several entries have gotten a lot of attention, but the one that has gone most viral so far is “The Doorbell.”
If you haven't yet seen it, you may watch it here. It’s 59 seconds long:
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London and its Muslims. No place for London's Jewish population. They need to get the hell out of Dodge! (See 1 below.)
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More on Sec. Clinton from Victor Hanson and Krauthammer . (See 2 and 2a below.)
This from a dear friend, fellow memo reader and my tennis nemesis. He was disgusted with the way the Republicans handled themselves in the Clinton Hearings.
I e mailed him that she purposely held both meetings on the same day to restrict the time for rebuttal etc. (See 2b below.)
Incompetency and lying is something citizens can get used to when they are immersed in it and this is why Sec. Clinton's testimony was such a tragedy.
Obama is the lyingest president in my history and 8 years of this Pinocchion President has laid the foundation for tolerating Hillary.
That she is a clever lawyer and smart is not in question. That she lied about Whitewater, lied about the suicide death of one of her dearest friends and law partners has been forgotten and was covered up at the time. She should have been disbarred along with her husband but she was able to obfuscate and evade.
Move the clock forward and here she is at it again.
Her testimony puts her in a class with Jane Fonda.(See 3 below.)
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I am mostly opposed to women serving in combat for two basic reasons:
1) Equality of being captured and tortured is not something our nation is ready for.
2) Sex on the battlefield and in the bunk house can be disruptive to platoon solidarity and cohesiveness.
I am not opposed to women having opportunities to prove themselves but I believe the battlefield is not the place.
I suspect the idea is another of Obama's desire to bring equality where it does not exist. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)Bye-bye London
Caroline Glick
In an interview with Haaretz in November 2010, British novelist Martin Amis said the following about discussions of Israel in his motherland:
I live in a mildly anti-Semitic country, and Europe is mildly anti-Semitic, and they hold Israel to a higher moral standard than its neighbors. If you bring up Israel in a public meeting in England, the whole atmosphere changes. The standard left-wing person never feels more comfortable than when attacking Israel. Because they are the only foreigners you can attack. Everyone else is protected by having dark skin, or colonial history, or something. But you can attack Israel. And the atmosphere becomes very unpleasant. It is traditional, snobbish, British anti-Semitism combined with present-day circumstances.
After participating last week in a debate in London about Israeli communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines organized by the self-consciously pretentious Intelligence Squared debating society, I can now say from personal experience that Amis is correct. The public atmosphere in England regarding Israel is ugly and violent.
The resolution we debated read: “Israel is destroying itself with its settlement policy. If settlement expansion continues Israel will have no future.”
My debating partner was Danny Dayan, the outgoing head of the Yesha Council.
We debated Daniel Levy, one of the founders of J-Street and the drafter of the Geneva Initiative, and the son of Lord Michael Levy, one of Tony Blair's biggest fundraisers; and William Sieghart, a British philanthropist who runs a non-profit that among other things, champions Hamas. Levy has publicly stated that Israel's creation was immoral. And Sieghart has a past record of saying that Israel's delegitimization would be a salutary proces and calling for a complete cultural boycott of Israel while lauding Hamas.
We lost overwhelmingly. I think the final vote tally was something like 500 for the resolution and 100 against it.
A couple of impressions I took away from the experience: First, I can say without hesitation that I hope never to return to Britain. I actually don't see any point. Jews are targeted by massive anti-Semitism of both the social and physical varieties. Why would anyone Jewish want to live there?
As to visiting as an Israeli, again, I just don't see the point. The discourse is owned by anti-Israel voices. They don't make arguments to spur thought, but to end it, by appealing to people's passions.
For instance, in one particularly ugly segment, Levy made the scurrilous accusation that Israel systematically steals land from the Palestinians. Both Dayan and I demanded that he provide just one example of his charge. And the audience raged against us for our temerity at insisting that he provide substantiation for his baseless allegation. In the event, he failed to substantiate his allegation.
At another point, I was asked how I defend the Nazi state of Israel. When I responded by among other things giving the Nazi pedigree of the Palestinian nationalist movement founded by Nazi agent Haj Amin el Husseini and currently led by Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas, the crowd angrily shouted me down.
At another point, I was asked how I defend the Nazi state of Israel. When I responded by among other things giving the Nazi pedigree of the Palestinian nationalist movement founded by Nazi agent Haj Amin el Husseini and currently led by Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas, the crowd angrily shouted me down.
I want to note that the audience was made up of upper crust, wealthy British people, not unwashed rabble rousers. And yet they behaved in many respects like a mob when presented with pro-Israel positions.
I honestly don't know whether there are policy implications that arise from my experience in London last week. I have for a long time been of the opinion that Israel shouldn't bother to try to win over Europe because the Europeans have multiple reasons for always being anti-Israel and none of them have anything to do with anything that Israel does. As I discuss in my book, these reasons include anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, addiction to Arab oil, and growing Muslim populations in Europe.
I was prepared to conduct a civilized debate based on facts and reasoned argumentation. I expected it to be a difficult experience. I was not expecting to be greeted by a well-dressed mob. My pessimism about Europeans' capacity to avail themselves to reasoned, fact-based argumentation about Israel has only deepened from the experience.
One positive note, I had a breakfast discussion last Wednesday morning with activists from the Zionist Federation of Britain. The people I met are committed, warm, hardworking Zionists. I wish them all the best, and mainly that means, that I hope that these wonderful people and their families make aliyah.
While their work is worthwhile, there is no future for Jews in England
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We learned today from Secretary Clinton — “What difference, at this point, does it make?” — that the actual causation and circumstances of the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi are not so important — and by implication that the nation for days was given a false or at least incomplete explanation by its highest officials of a spontaneous, video-fueled demonstration rather than a pre-planned Islamist operation.
Two thoughts arise, aside from her own health issues (no doubt brought on by an admirable but grueling regimen of travel in often inhospitable places) that make such testimony understandably taxing and need to be taken into consideration. But that said, comparing big tragedies to smaller ones: Did it matter, for example, whether Hezbollah pre-planned the Marine barracks bombing or the Khobar Towers attacks, or the American deaths were just the results of angry youths who spontaneously coalesced to commit violence? Do such circumstances matter to the families of the deceased, to national-security officials responsible to prevent further occurrences, to a public that demands honesty and transparency from its officials?
Secretary Clinton did not mean to show indifference, but her rhetorical question was one of the low points in her long career, one that might pass without too much fanfare at the moment but will reverberate a lot in the future.
Yet today’s testimony in some sense does not matter, given that Ms. Clinton is probably going to run in 2016 for president, and has enjoyed a protective media veneer over her long career — shed only once in 2008 when opposing Barack Obama.
Although she has shown moments of teary emotion (cf. the 2008 campaign), had problems with recollections about past events (cf. under fire in Bosnia), and offered scenarios that seemed improbable (cf. subpoenaed documents mysteriously appearing belatedly in a White House anteroom), her testimony today will be seen, as the Washington Post described it, as “an uncharacteristic display of emotion for Clinton, who is usually collected and reserved in public.” Despite Hillarycare, Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, the cattle-futures mess, the circumstances surrounding the 2000 Clinton pardons, “suspension of disbelief,” etc., Ms. Clinton, for not fully explained reasons, remains mostly beyond audit and censure, a fact she has come to appreciate.
2a)Charles Krauthammer reacted to an exchange betweenSecretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the Benghazi attack.
In response to Johnson’s questioning over the anti-Islamic film that was blamed, Clinton said, “Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make?”
Charles Krauthammer said on Special Report tonight, “The difference is between truth and falsehood. And that she should be indignant about somebody who actually wants to point out that difference is rather remarkable.”
He said it comes down to the fact that the Obama campaign was running on the idea of “bin Laden dead” and simply would not admit to a story that contradicted Al Qaeda on the retreat.
Krauthammer commended her for being able to disarm her opponents. “When you’re facing these committees where […] half of the members are just making speeches, […] she was able time and again to do that time-honored trick of saying, ‘well there’s still the FBI looking into this and as long as an inquiry is out there, I can’t answer X, Y and Z.’ It’s the perfect out.”
2b)It is no wonder we lost the election. I watched most of the Hillary interrogation
yesterday, and we were pitiful.It was clear there was no teamwork. Everyone should have been given the same
"points to cover" and told to cover as much as they could on their turn. The next person was
to pick up on the "missed subtleties" and then continue on down the "points to
cover" list, etc etc.
What was missed:
Of course it was important to report quickly and well to the public and observe
we lost the election because no one has called them out on the YouTube;
No, money was not the issue. The State Dept has a budget on 1.3 billion
for Global warming. what the hell does that have to do, since we waste at
least that much on that subject in the UN budget;
Are you telling me you were not interviewed by the ARP. Come on, no real
study would do so; and what about the President, and what about the
militarily responsible people with assets within reach within the 7 hour window;
You talked to the Pres "at night" - what time of night and what was the conversation;
When did you think it appropriate to call it "terrorism" and not "YouTube". what day, what time
and why;
Was this another good example of "leading from behind";
"Our military were in Bengazi "to destroy classified items". You must be shitting me;
else don't ever ask me to be an Ambassador;
(Where by the way was the Jason Chaffetz - who seems unlike everyone else to
actually be a lawyer and know how to ask questions and followups)
More and more, but I tire
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3)Digging the Benghazi Memory Hole
By Jack Cashill
With Wednesday's hearing, Hillary Clinton played her uniquely dramatic role in the one shovel-ready project in Obama's America -- the Benghazi memory hole. She spent the day burying the whole sordid Benghazi mess. Don't expect the media to exhume it. They have already started chastising those who try.
The reader may think it impossible for Ms. Clinton to forget an incident in which she embraced "the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters" of the Benghazi dead, not to mention "the wives left alone to raise their children." Indeed, the very memory of this moment caused her to tear up during the hearing.
But this was not her first memory hole, nor even her biggest. On the night of July 17, 1996, she stayed up well past her bedtime to start digging the mother of all memory holes. As her official schedule attests, she and President Clinton attended a gala for the Women's Leadership Forum of the DNC at the Sheraton Washington Hotel that evening. At 8:35 p.m. she and Bill left the Sheraton by presidential motorcade and headed back to the White House.
At 8:31 p.m., however, a few hundred miles away, two FAA veterans at the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center observed a target arching and intersecting with TWA Flight 800 as it headed east off Long Island's south shore.
By 9 p.m., Clinton's anti-terror czar, Richard Clarke, was driving in to the White House to convene an emergency meeting of his security group to address the disaster.
"I dreaded what I thought was about to happen," Clarke wrote in his memoir, Against All Enemies, "The Eisenhower option." Had Iran been behind the downing of TWA Flight 800, the president would have had to respond. Nearly three weeks later, Clinton was telling historian Taylor Branch that Iran was almost assuredly behind this seeming missile attack. "They want war," Branch recorded Clinton as saying.
This had to have been a harrowing time for Hillary. She was holed up that first night in the family quarters with Bill and White House fixer Sandy Berger. A week later, she flew with Bill to Long Island to console the families of the 230 victims. Clarke went with them. He talked about the Clintons "praying with [the families], hugging them, taking pictures with them" and then seeing "Mrs. Clinton" alone in a makeshift chapel, praying "on her knees."
Eight years later, Hillary wrote about this turbulent time in her 500-plus-page memoir, Living History. To this extraordinary incident, one that Clarke called "The Almost War, 1996," she dedicated exactly one-third of a sentence. That's it. Not to be outdone, in his 900-plus-page memoir, My Life, Bill Clinton dedicated just one paragraph. He wrote more words about a June 1996 day in Albuquerque where he discussed that community's curfew program than he did about that July night a month later when 230 people were killed and the nation almost went to war.
The Clintons could safely stuff this tragedy down the memory hole because they were confident their accomplices would do the same. In his memoir, My FBI: Bringing Down The Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror, former FBI director Louis Freeh gave the tragedy two sentences: "Three weeks later. On July 17, TWA flight 800 exploded off Long Island minutes after taking off from John F. Kennedy International Airport. No one knew what brought it down: mechanical failure, a bomb, a ground-to-air missile all seemed possible in the early stages." That's it. Despite the fact that this highly controversial investigation involved hundreds of FBI agents full time for months and some agents for years, Freeh could only spare it a tweet.
In July 1996, former CIA Director George Tenet served as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence. In his memoir, At the Center of the Storm, he wrote about a 1995 National Intelligence Estimate, which highlighted civil aviation as a target for radical Islamists, and a 1997 one that made the same point even more forcefully. Yet so powerful was the gravitational field of the TWA 800 memory hole that not even a single proton of information about the doomed flight escaped it into Tenet's book -- not a word.
In his memoir, Off With Their Heads, presidential advisor Dick Morris referred to TWA 800 as one of "three attacks" in the "terror summer of 1996." "Americans demanded action," Morris wrote of the three attacks. "But all they got were speeches." About two of the attacks, Khobar Towers and the Olympic Park bombing, Morris has been forthcoming. About TWA Flight 800 he has been silent beyond its mere mention. A few years back, Morris and I were both on Paul Schiffer's Cleveland-area radio show at the same time. Three times I asked him to elaborate on the TWA Flight 800 crash. Three times he absolutely evaded the question.
On Sept. 11 2001, George Stephanopoulos, former assistant to President Clinton, talked with Peter Jennings on ABC TV about how the president would use the White House "situation room" to communicate with key staff in the wake of an attack. Said Stephanopoulos: "In my time at the White House [the situation room] was used in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, in the aftermath of the TWA Flight 800 bombing, and that would be the way they would stay in contact through the afternoon." In his memoir All too Human, Stephanopoulos did not mention a single word about TWA Flight 800, let alone what he knew about the "bombing" of the same.
Once upon a time, we could rely on the media to tell us what the political insiders wouldn't. Remember Watergate? Today, the insiders are the media. Don't hold your breath about Benghazi.
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4)Panetta officially ends US ban on women serving in combat
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey signed an order rescinding the ban on women serving in combat units Thursday, setting in motion a three-year plan to open up as many as 237,000 positions to female service members.
The Pentagon leaders said that the policy change will not automatically open every combat position to women, but now the onus will be on the services to make the argument why women should not serve in a particular occupation or unit.
“Not everyone is going to be able to be a combat soldier. But everyone is entitled to a chance,” Panetta said before he and Dempsey signed the order that lifted the ban at Thursday's press briefing.
With the 1994 ban on women serving in ground combat units rescinded, the military service chiefs will prepare plans for implementing the new policy that will be submitted to the Defense secretary in May.
The services have until January 2016 to decide what positions might remain closed to women, and senior military officials said they expect that new occupations will be opened to women incrementally.
The White House said Thursday that President Obama supported the decision. Panetta’s potential successor as Defense secretary, former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), also supports the move, according to a senior defense official.
The official said this policy change has been studied for more than a year by the services, and it was unconnected to Panetta’s tenure at the Pentagon nearing an end.
“This was not a snap decision by the secretary,” the official said.
The Army and Marine Corps are planning tests in the coming months to look at physical capabilities of men and women as they examine the physical standards for the occupations.
Military officials emphasized that lifting the ban will not lead to loosening or strengthening for new positions, and all standards will remain gender neutral.
Of the 237,000 positions currently closed to women, 53,000 are closed because of the unit they are part of, even though women are allowed to serve in those occupations. Those jobs are likely to be the first made available to women. The remaining 184,000 are closed based on occupation, and the services will now evaluate those policies.
The officials said no decisions have yet been made about exemptions that would potentially be sought, such as whether women would serve in special operations units like the Navy SEALs or Army Rangers.
Without weighing in on how the policy will shake out, Dempsey said that he and other top military leaders think some women would be able to handle the high physical abilities required.
“I think we all believe there will be women who can meet those standards,” he said. “The burden used to be that we should say, 'Why should a woman serve in particular specialty?' Now it’s 'Why shouldn’t a woman serve?'”
Beyond physical capabilities, Dempsey and Penatta said they were less concerned about issues like privacy, where some Navy submarines, for instance, remain closed to women and don’t have facilities for them.
“We can figure out privacy,” Dempsey said, adding that those types of issues were dealt with during the Desert Storm operation where troops were essentially nomadic in the desert.
Another policy issue that must be resolved is whether lifting the combat ban for women will also require them to register with the Selective Service. The Pentagon is required to report on how changing the ban effects the constitutionality of the Selective Service Act being “males only.”
Senior defense officials said those legal issues still need to be worked out. Panetta said Thursday that would be a future judgment call — though he wasn’t sure who was making it.
“I don’t know who the hell controls Selective Service, if you want to know the truth,” Panetta said at the press briefing to laughter. “Whoever does, they’re going to have to exercise some judgment based on what we just did.”
The Defense Department still has to give Congress 30 days notice before making any changes to the ban, which defense officials said would likely occur around the time that the services submit their plans in May.
While most members of Congress from both parties said they supported the Pentagon’s policy change, the new top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), criticized the Pentagon for an “unacceptable” leak to the press before informing lawmakers.
A senior defense official said the defense committees were briefed on the decision Wednesday.
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