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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: steve harris who wrote (56978)	10/13/2012 3:02:29 PM
From: greatplains_guy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

There is no question that another Obama term would put us on the brink of being a socialist hell hole. Thankfully the voting public seems to be moving to prevent that.

To: steve harris who wrote (56978)	10/21/2012 12:57:26 AM
From: greatplains_guy	1 Recommendation Respond to of 71588

Benghazi: Four Americans Died, Obama Lied, And The Press Complied Bill Flax, Contributor 10/18/2012 @ 10:12AM The recent fiasco in Libya and the manner in which President Obama’s media minions have abetted his deception provides an epitaph for the soon to be demised Obama administration: Four Americans died. Obama lied. The press complied. Republicans have been trying to highlight the terrorist attack on our Libyan embassy for weeks, but recognizing how damaging this episode was to Obama’s credibility, media coverage has been subdued. Who requested what security and when is important, but these things always appear obvious in hindsight. Much more telling is the way our hyper-partisan press ignored how the administration initially attributed Benghazi to some YouTube video nobody watched. This was a fiction the press corps condoned. It took Team Obama two weeks before acknowledging that it was a well orchestrated terrorist attack. Blaming “The Innocence of Muslims,” yielded Obama an alibi. His foreign policy failings could be excused. For a president prone to apologizing to Muslims, this was perfect: it was America’s fault. If only those pesky Christians back home would behave, peace would come to the Islamic World. Our UN ambassador Susan Rice repeatedly attributed the attack to a spontaneous protest erupting in response to the “heinous” film. Obama mentioned the movie six times in his own speech to the UN. He did this despite credible proof there had not been any protest. Libyan officials had already confirmed it as terrorism. Our enemies conducted a coordinated assault against a lightly guarded consulate on September 11th. Obama “led from behind” in toppling Muammar Qaddafi’s dictatorship in Libya, then boastfully declared victory. But the ferocious attack which left four Americans dead exposed the president’s flaccid diplomacy. His legacy in North Africa smolders. Libya appears on the verge of becoming another Somalia, a failed state ruled by roaming warlords. Egypt could well be controlled by Islamic fascists. However, the administration’s blatant lies may be even more troubling. A consistent failing of Team Obama has been its disingenuous spin; a government by altruistic sound bites masking their personal ambitions. This entire presidency reflects a choreographed charade calculating every action per its electoral ramifications. The second presidential debate provides an exclamation point to the scurrilous interlude of this administration. In one entertaining exchange, Mr. Romney called the president’s bluff. He asked Obama to state for the record that he had denoted the battle at the Benghazi embassy “terrorism” before jaunting off to Las Vegas for a fundraiser the next day. The president, exhibiting an incredible poker face, stared straight into the cameras and misled the American people about what he said and when; even challenging Romney to “get the transcript.” As Mitt Romney rounded third to score the winning run, Candy Crowley, the debate moderator, butted in; tripping Romney to affirm the president, “He — he did call it an act of terror. It did as well take — it did as well take two weeks or so for the whole idea there being a riot out there about this tape to come out. You are correct about that.” A gloating Obama chimed in, “Can you say that a little louder, Candy!” He later scolded Romney about how “offensive” it was for him to question the administration’s selfless intentions. He does have stones. But even the hyper-partisan press could not sanction this lie for long. After the event, Ms. Crowley quickly backtracked, admitting that Romney was “right in the main.” This is like in an umpire deliberately getting in a runner’s way, calling him out during a decisive World Series moment, then admitting the call was blown at a postgame press conference. Benghazi, the White House cover-up and an enabling media offer a microcosm for the whole Obama presidency. His economic policies have been wasteful and counterproductive; doing more to buttress cronyism than bring recovery. His social policies radically depart from traditional American values. Obama’s foreign policy is in shambles. Allies no longer trust us. Enemies no longer fear us. The president’s outreach to the Muslim world has predictably backfired. No amount of spin can fix what his meddling has broken. Qaddafi in Libya and Mubarak in Egypt were not nice guys. But, and this is crucial, Mubarak was our guy. By letting them topple the alternative wasn’t Mother Theresa. We now have chaos across the Middle East and North Africa. Fortunately for Obama, liberals control the dissemination of thought. The media, entertainment industries, educational system and much of government skew very far left of Middle America. If the press were honest, or at least kept Democrats honest, Obama would probably still carry Washington D.C., but few if any states. But even this decided home field advantage won’t save Obama’s presidency. forbes.com

To: steve harris who wrote (56978)	10/23/2012 9:11:58 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

Libya and Lies By Thomas Sowell - October 23, 2012 It was a little much when President Barack Obama said that he was "offended" by the suggestion that his administration would try to deceive the public about what happened in Benghazi. What has this man not deceived the public about? Remember his pledge to cut the deficit in half in his first term in office? This was followed by the first trillion dollar deficit ever, under any President of the United States -- followed by trillion dollar deficits in every year of the Obama administration. Remember his pledge to have a "transparent" government that would post its legislative proposals on the Internet several days before Congress was to vote on them, so that everybody would know what was happening? This was followed by an ObamaCare bill so huge and passed so fast that even members of Congress did not have time to read it. Remember his claims that previous administrations had arrogantly interfered in the internal affairs of other nations -- and then his demands that Israel stop building settlements and give away land outside its 1967 borders, as a precondition to peace talks with the Palestinians, on whom there were no preconditions? As for what happened in Libya, the Obama administration says that there is an "investigation" under way. An "on-going investigation" sounds so much better than "stonewalling" to get past election day. But you can bet the rent money that this "investigation" will not be completed before election day. And whatever the investigation says after the election will be irrelevant. The events unfolding in Benghazi on the tragic night of September 11th were being relayed to the State Department as the attacks were going on, "in real time," as they say. So the idea that the Obama administration now has to carry out a time-consuming "investigation" to find out what those events were, when the information was immediately available at the time, is a little much. The full story of what happened in Libya, down to the last detail, may never be known. But, as someone once said, you don't need to eat a whole egg to know that it is rotten. And you don't need to know every detail of the events before, during and after the attacks to know that the story put out by the Obama administration was a fraud. The administration's initial story that what happened in Benghazi began as a protest against an anti-Islamic video in America was a very convenient theory. The most obvious alternative explanation would have been devastating to Barack Obama's much heralded attempts to mollify and pacify Islamic nations in the Middle East. To have helped overthrow pro-Western governments in Egypt and Libya, only to bring anti-Western Islamic extremists to power would have been revealed as a foreign policy disaster of the first magnitude. To have been celebrating President Obama's supposedly heroic role in the killing of Osama bin Laden, with the implication that Al Qaeda was crippled, would have been revealed as a farce. Osama bin Laden was by no means the first man to plan a surprise attack on America and later be killed. Japan's Admiral Yamamoto planned the attack on Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into World War II, and he was later tracked down and shot down in a plane that was carrying him. Nobody tried to depict President Franklin D. Roosevelt as some kind of hero for having simply authorized the killing of Yamamoto. In that case, the only hero who was publicized was the man who shot down the plane that Yamamoto was in. Yet the killing of Osama bin Laden has been depicted as some kind of act of courage by President Obama. After bin Laden was located, why would any President not give the go-ahead to get him? That took no courage at all. It would have been far more dangerous politically for Obama not to have given the go-ahead. Moreover, Obama hedged his bets by authorizing the admiral in charge of the operation to proceed only under various conditions. This meant that success would be credited to Obama and failure could be blamed on the admiral -- who would join George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton and other scapegoats for Obama's failures. realclearpolitics.com