Benghazi -- No Mere 'October Surprise'

By Jonah Goldberg

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

 

If you want to understand why conservatives have lost faith in the so-called mainstream media, you need to ponder the question: Where is the Benghazi feeding frenzy?

 Unlike some of my colleagues on the right, I don't think there's a conspiracy at work. Rather, I think journalists tend to act on their instincts (some even brag about this; you could look it up). And, collectively, the mainstream media's instincts run liberal, making groupthink inevitable.

 

In 2000, a Democratic operative orchestrated an "October surprise" attack on George W. Bush, revealing that 24 years earlier, he'd been arrested for drunk driving. The media went into a feeding frenzy. "Is all the 24-hour coverage of Bush's 24-year-old DUI arrest the product of a liberal media almost drunk on the idea of sinking him, or is it a legitimate, indeed unavoidable news story?" asked Howard Kurtz in a segment for his CNN show "Reliable Sources." The consensus among the guests: It wasn't a legitimate news story. But the media kept going with it.

 

One could go on and on. In September 2004, former CBS titan Dan Rather gambled his entire career on a story about Bush's service in the National Guard. His instincts were so powerful, he didn't thoroughly check the documents he relied on, which were forgeries. In 2008, the media feeding frenzy over John McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, was so ludicrous it belonged in a Tom Wolfe novel. Over the last couple of years, the mainstream media has generally treated Occupy Wall Street as idealistic, the "tea parties" as racist and terrifying.

 

To be sure, there have been conservative feeding frenzies: about Barack Obama's pastor, John Kerry's embellishments of his war record, etc. But the mainstream media usually has tasked itself with the duty of debunking and dispelling such "hysteria."

 Last week, Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin reported that sources on the ground in Libya say they pleaded for support during the attack on the Benghazi consulate that led to the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. They were allegedly told twice to "stand down." Worse, there are suggestions that there were significant military resources available to counterattack, but requests for help were denied.

 

If true, the White House's concerted effort to blame the attack on a video crumbles, as do several other fraudulent claims. Yet, last Friday, the president boasted that "the minute I found out what was happening" in Benghazi, he ordered that everything possible be done to protect our personnel. That is either untrue, or he's being disobeyed on grave matters.

 

This isn't an "October surprise" foisted on the media by opposition research; it's news.

 

This story raises precisely the sort of "big issues" the media routinely claim elections should be about. For instance, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said last week that the "basic principle is that you don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on, without having some real-time information about what's taking place." If real-time video of the attack and communications with Americans on the ground begging for assistance doesn't constitute "real-time information," what does?

 

This is not to say that Fox News is alone in covering the story. But it is alone in treating it like it's a big deal. During the comparatively less significant Valerie Plame scandal, reporters camped out on the front lawns of Karl Rove and other Bush White House staff. Did Obama confiscate those journalists' sleeping bags?

 

On Oct. 28, of the five Sunday news shows, only "Fox News Sunday" treated this as a major story. On the other four, the issue came up only when Republicans mentioned it. Tellingly, on NBC's "Meet the Press," host David Gregory shushed a guest when she tried to bring up the subject, saying, "Let's get to Libya a little bit later."

 

Gregory never did get back to Benghazi. But he saved plenty of time to dive deep into the question of what Indiana U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock's comments on abortion and rape mean for the Romney campaign. Typically, Gregory's instincts about the news routinely line up with Democratic talking points, in this case Obama's ridiculous "war on women" rhetoric.

 

I am willing to believe that journalists like Gregory are sincere in their desire to play it straight. But among those who don't share his instincts, it's hard to distinguish between conspiracy and groupthink. Indeed, it's hard to think why one should even bother trying to make that distinction at all.

Youth Vote: Obama's Most Loyal Supporters Are Jumping Ship

By Celia Bigelow

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

 

The S.S. Barack Obama is slowly submerging.

 

A Pew Research poll released on Monday showed the President’s support is waning in key demographics from his 2008 election--including the youth vote--despite his best efforts. Though he handily won over the MTV generation in 2008 by a 33 point margin over Senator McCain, it appears that a handful of young people are thinking twice this time around.

 

The Pew poll shows President Obama with 56 percent of the youth vote, a 21 point lead over Governor Romney. Though he still holds a strong lead among young Americans, a 10-point drop in support from four years ago is nothing to ignore.

 

Senator Obama won the hearts of young people in 2008 with the promise of hope and change for America. He promised he would “cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term” with “the most transparent administration ever.” President Obama also said, “when I’m President, I will make college affordable for every American.” He was cool, optimistic, and appealing.

 

Four years later, President Obama has nothing to show for hope and change other than higher tuition, massive student loan debt, $16 trillion national debt, and unemployment.

 

Young people have suffered more from President Obama’s economic policies than any other demographic. In the last four years, young Americans have seen tuition increase 25 percent, average student loan debt climb to more than $27,000, and gas prices skyrocket. All the while, students have about a 30 percent chance of moving home with their parents after college, and those who are lucky enough to find a job are taking a 6 percent cut in their income.

 

Optimism has faded and reality has set in. Young Americans couldn’t be more disappointed, which is exactly why youth voter enthusiasm--young people who say they will “definitely vote”--has fallen 30 percent since 2008, from 78 percent to 48 percent.

 

But this isn’t stopping President Obama from pandering to them. He needs their vote.

 

If we saw the same voter turnout from 2008 for every other age demographic, President Obama would need at least 55 percent of the youth vote to guarantee a win in 2012. He knows he is drawing a thin line, which is why he has increased his visits on college campuses 175 percent since 2011.

 

But his message isn’t working. While the Obama campaign is focusing on free contraception, young people are focused on their empty wallets. A Generation Opportunity poll showed that 89 percent of young people say that the poor economy is impacting their daily life, and 84 percent of those surveyed said they have either delayed, or plan to delay, major life changes because of the weak economy. The Obama economy has economically devastated young people, which is why the polls show that President Obama has only lost, not gained, their support.

 

The President’s economic record is sinking his ship, and no one wants to go down with him--even his most loyal youth supporters. We can expect President Obama to have a rude awakening on November 6th when the youth polls are closer than he hoped.

Black and White Standards

By Walter E. Williams

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

 

The Washington Post (10/25/2012), in giving President Barack Obama an endorsement for another four years, wrote, "Much of the 2012 presidential campaign has dwelt on the past, but the key questions are who could better lead the country during the next four years -- and, most urgently, who is likelier to put the government on a more sound financial footing." The suggestion appears to be that a president is not to be held accountable to his promises and past record and that his past record is no indication of his future behavior. Possibly, the Washington Post people believe that a black president shouldn't be held accountable to his record and campaign promises. Let's look at it.

 

What about Obama's pledge to cut the deficit in half during his first term in office? Instead, we saw the first trillion-dollar deficit ever, under any president of the United States. Plus, it has been followed by trillion-dollar deficits in every year of his administration. What about Obama's pledge of transparency, in which his legislative proposals would be placed on the Internet days before Congress voted on them so that Americans could inspect them? Obama's major legislative proposal, Obamacare, was enacted in such secrecy and with such speed that even members of Congress did not have time to read it. Remember that it was Rep. Nancy Pelosi who told us, "But we have to pass the (health care) bill so that you can find out what is in it." What about Obama's stimulus packages and promises to get unemployment under control? The Current Employment Statistics program shows that in 2008, the total number of U.S. jobs was more than 138 million, compared with 133.5 million today. As Stanford University economics professor Edward Lazear summed it up, "there hasn't been one day during the entire Obama presidency when as many Americans were working as on the day President Bush left office."

 

While Obama's national job approval rating is a little less than 50 percent, among blacks his job approval is a whopping 88 percent. I'd like to ask people who approve of Obama's performance, "What has President Obama done during the past four years that you'd like to see more of in the next four years?"

 

Black support of politicians who have done little or nothing for their ordinary constituents is by no means unusual. Blacks are chief executives of major cities, such as Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington, Memphis, Atlanta, Baltimore, New Orleans, Oakland, Newark, Cleveland and Cincinnati. In most of these cities, the chief of police, the superintendent of schools and other high executives are black. But in these cities, black people, like no other sector of our population, suffer from the highest rates of homicides, assaults, robberies and shootings. Black high-school dropout rates in these cities are the highest in the nation. Even if a black youngster manages to graduate from high school, his reading, writing and computational proficiency is likely to be equivalent to that of a white seventh- or eighth-grader. That's even with school budgets per student being among the highest in the nation.

 

Last year, in reference to President Obama's failed employment policies and high unemployment among blacks, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., who is chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said, "If Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House." That's a vision that seems to explain black tolerance for failed politicians -- namely, if it's a black politician whose policies are ineffectual and possibly harmful to the masses of the black community, it's tolerable, but it's entirely unacceptable if the politician is white.

 

Black people would not accept excuses upon excuses and vote to re-elect decade after decade any white politician, especially a Republican politician, to office who had the failed records of our big-city mayors. What that suggests about black people is not very flattering.

Why Romney Will Win

By Michael Novak

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

 

Many friends are telling me that most of the European media are expecting President Obama to be reelected. If so, they are likely to be shocked on election day. In the U.S., there are 26 national polling firms. The one I count most trustworthy is Rasmussen (which came closest to hitting the exact result for 2008), and the oldest and best known is Gallup. As of October 23 (just after the third and final debate), both showed Governor Romney beating the president with over 51 percent, and by between four and six points.

 

Even the poll of all the polls (reported daily at RealClearPolitics.com) shows Romney climbing everywhere and day by day pulling ahead in state after state.

 

For myself, I expect Romney to win by just over 52 to 46 percent, with two minor candidates gathering about 2 percent between them.

 

The United States has never before had to make a choice like this — between two different ways of life. This is a choice about whether we want the United States to become more like the European welfare states. Or, rather, to stick to our own traditional ways: risk, creativity, growth, and opportunity. Obama acts consistently to make the United States like Europe. No wonder many Europeans cheer him on.

 

Of course, Obama could yet win. The week remaining before the November 6 election might still hold many surprises. The Democratic party is famous, when it is losing, for launching October Surprises — dramatic actions, or sudden damaging revelations about the opposing candidate. Besides, our media (except for Fox News) have become extremist in their support for Obama.     

 

Yet this lack of balance is not necessarily a disadvantage for Governor Romney. The press is misleading the public (and itself) about what is really happening on the ground, among ordinary people.

 

To keep one’s feet on the ground in the United States, one must watch which candidate working males — steelworkers, miners, gas-station attendants, truck drivers, and so on — are favoring. And which way married women are trending. Ever since Reagan, most working males and married women trend markedly Republican. They are especially strong for Romney.

 

By contrast, the Democrats, the Party of Government, strongly attract single women, both unmarried and widows. President Obama also appeals to the new “counterculture” that celebrates abortion, gay marriage, and a morally relaxed culture. They are locked in a “culture war” against traditional American virtues ( biblical, Jewish and Christian). In Europe, many refer to these as “puritan” values.

 

But, then, the narrow, strict “puritan” culture of Massachusetts and Rhode Island did not extend its sway to the South and the West.

 

“Out there,” Christianity was barely present in the “churchy” forms familiar to Europeans. The South and the West favored the relaxed style of the “free churches” — more informal, associational, open and friendly, “Spirit-moved,” even a bit enthusiastic.

 

Persons formed in this environment are less inclined to accept statism and its bureaucracies, and labor unions and their enforced electoral solidarity. They take pride in self-reliance, self-government, and personal self-control. Their type of living requires certain solid habits in people, not the “loose” ways of urban secularism.

 

Look again at the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, designed by the French to capture the American character. Lady Liberty is a very serious, sober woman — a second-grade teacher. In one hand she holds aloft the torch of reason and light against ignorance and impulse, and in her other hand she carries the Book of the Law. The American hymnodist captures this note perfectly: “Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law.” An inner law.

 

To be sure, urban secularism via television, the movies, and the popular-music industry has spread its magnetic allure all through the countryside by now. But the older ways still matter to churchgoers and married couples. Thus, “the culture war.”

 

More important just now is the havoc wrought on the American economy by President Obama’s statist actions. Middle-class families during the last four years have lost scores of thousands of dollars in the net worth of their homes (their largest investment by far). They have lost over $4,300 per family in real income. Prices of common, humble goods — coal, gas, electricity, food — have risen steadily. In daily life, everything costs more, from food for one’s family to fuel for one’s automobile. The pain is felt many times a day.

 

And still there is the huge weight of public debt — climbing every second of every day, and heading for an additional $5 trillion just in the last four years. This debt is an enormous tax laid on our children and grandchildren. Many count this as cross-generational theft, an immorality of the first order.

 

And opportunity! Opportunity is to Americans what security is to Europeans. Millions wonder, “Where has opportunity gone?” Few new jobs; 21 million people without jobs, including those millions who after four years have given up searching. Almost half of all university graduates last year could not find jobs, and have returned to live with their parents.

 

It would take us too far afield here to explain how President Obama’s abuse of religious liberty — especially but not only of the Catholic Church — has driven away many who voted for him in 2008. For instance, in 2008 a slim majority of churchgoing Catholics voted for Obama. This time, most of those Catholics who go to church “seldom or never” prefer Obama. But those who go to church “weekly or almost weekly” tell pollsters, by a margin of 59 percent to 34 percent, that they will vote for Romney this time.

 Voters who swing from one party to another between elections count twice. They take one vote from Obama, say, and give that vote to Romney. At present, at least 1.5 million churchgoing Catholics say they will switch from Obama to Romney. That counts as a swing of 3 million votes.

 

Under Obama the poor have suffered more than anyone else. Millions have fallen into poverty — back to levels not seen since the late 1960s. The official poverty line is roughly $24,000 annually for a family of four.                        

 

It is always wise to think that your own side is behind, the other ahead. That way, your whole team works harder. By all accounts, this year the Republicans have more enthusiasm and eagerness. The Democrats seem less spirited. Recently every day shows more strength for Romney, especially in the most hotly contested states. But that, of course, can change. In an election campaign, a week can seem an eternity.

 

There is much nail-biting in the United States these days.   

The Wages of Libya

By Victor Davis Hanson

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

 

We have had ambassadors murdered abroad before, but we have never seen anything quite like the tragic fate of Chris Stevens. Amid all the controversy over Libya, we have lost sight of the human — and often horrific — story of Benghazi: a U.S. ambassador attacked, cut off and killed alone, after being abused by frenzied terrorists, and a second member of the embassy staff murdered, as two American private citizens rushed to the rescue, heroically warding off Islamist hit teams, until they were overwhelmed and also killed.

 

Seven weeks after the tragedy in Benghazi, new government narratives just keep appearing, as various branches of government point the finger at one another. Now the president insists that “the minute” he “found out what was going on” he gave “very clear directives” to “make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to.” The secretary of defense argues that he knew too little to send in military forces to save the post. Meanwhile, we are hearing from other sources that the beleaguered compound in extremis was denied help on three separate occasions, and there are still more contradictory accounts.

 

When the government systematically misleads and cannot establish a believable narrative, almost everyone involved is eventually tarred. The final chart of those officials in the Nixon White House who were devoured by Watergate was vast — and so it is becoming with the disaster in Libya. If we have learned anything from Watergate and Iran-Contra, it is that the longer officials deceive and obfuscate, the greater the number of wrecked careers and reputations.

 

Most likely, the political wing of the White House almost immediately made a decision that the attack on our Benghazi consulate should not endanger the conventional narrative of a successful commander-in-chief — ahead in the polls in part because he had highlighted a supposedly successful foreign policy. Key to that story was the notion that the hit on bin Laden and the drone attacks on other Islamists had rendered al-Qaeda all but impotent. In addition, the administration’s supposed lead-from-behind strategy in Libya had served as a model for energizing a democratic Arab Spring. Commander-in-Chief Obama was intent on reminding the country of his competence and toughness as an international leader, and especially of his wise reluctance to rush into areas of instability.

 

In such a landscape, Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans were brutally murdered. And almost immediately it was clear that the ambassador had earlier warned that Libya was descending into chaos and that Americans were not safe there — only to have his requests for further protection rejected.

 

During the actual assault on the consulate, a real-time video, streams of e-mail exchanges, and surveys of Islamist websites confirmed that al-Qaedists were carrying out a preplanned assassination — and over the next seven or eight hours it became clear that our staff was in dire need of military assistance that was somehow never sent. Then for nearly two weeks, the president, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Press Secretary Jay Carney, and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice advanced a counter-narrative that simply could not have been true: A spontaneous demonstration over a two-month-old video — just happening to coincide with the anniversary of 9/11 — got out of hand as some disruptive protesters showed up with machines gun, mortars, and RPGs and began killing Americans. Since it was an American religious bigot who had prompted such terrible but “natural” riots with his video that ridiculed and injured Islam, we should apologize for the uncouth among us in the strongest terms.

 

Obama, Clinton, Clapper, Rice, and Carney strove to outdo each other in damning the obscure video maker — to such an extent that he was summarily arrested on a supposedly outstanding probation charge. The message? Ambassadors die and careful U.S. foreign policy is undermined when right-wing bigots abuse their free-speech rights.

 

Yet almost all of that story is untrue, and it will come back to haunt all those who either by intent or through ignorance engaged in the cover-up. Review the following spinners.

 

President Obama still does not grasp the significance of Libya. When he calls the attacks there and in Egypt “bumps in the road” or “not optimal,” and asserts that they will not play much of a role in the final weeks of the campaign, he sounds either callous or naïve or both. Collate the administration’s statements over the two weeks following the attacks, and they simply cannot be true. The months-old video proved just too much of a temptation for the president to resonate the themes of his Cairo speech in damning uncouth Americans for offending Muslims. When the president claims that he ordered everything to be done to save the compound, he must be aware that subordinates who did not in turn give orders that relief be sent will eventually come forward to either affirm or deny his statement. His further problem is that lax security, administration misdirection, and hesitancy to aid the beleaguered all feed into the earlier attitudes framed by “overseas contingency operations,” “man-caused disasters,” “workplace violence,” promises to try KSM in a civilian court, the al-Arabiya interview, the Cairo speech, and other efforts to contextualize and airbrush radical Islam’s terrorist assault on the West. In other words, fairly or not, we can discern a logic to why the president would not be candid and accurate about Benghazi.

 

Secretary Clinton will have to explain why the State Department did not heed requests for greater security, both before and during the attack. And she is beginning to grasp — and so especially is her husband — that the administration is hanging the disaster around her neck. She crudely blamed the attacks on our embassies in the Middle East on the video (with caskets of our dead as backdrop), reminding us that a few months earlier she had crudely giggled about the murder of Qaddafi (“We came, we saw, Qaddafi died”). All in all, her performance during this disaster has been disappointing, and more so with each new disclosure.

 

Then we come to Ambassador Rice, who apparently was being groomed to succeed Secretary of State Clinton. As part of that trajectory, she was to be point woman for the administration’s spontaneous-mob narrative. That meant that on at least five different occasions Rice hit the Sunday talk shows, apparently to showcase her rhetorical skills, insisting that the attacks in Cairo and Benghazi were ad hoc assaults that had nothing to do with U.S. foreign policy, anti-American animosity, or mistakes in American security preparation. Whether through ignorance or by design, Ambassador Rice repeatedly told an untruth, and did so with energy and dogmatic insistence. Her problem, then, is not just that what she insisted was true was clearly not, but also the unambiguous and forceful manner in which she wove her story. That she suddenly appeared from obscurity to play the sophist, and then retreated back into anonymity, suggests that her diplomatic career will be soon coming to an end.

 

Next is the matter of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. His insistence that a mob had caused the mayhem is one untruth or mischaracterization too many — and a wrong assessment that trumps even his earlier absurdities, such as that the Muslim Brotherhood is largely a secular organization or that Qaddafi would not fall from power. Politicians and bureaucrats err all the time; but when intelligence officers do not appear to have intelligence, then they too usually quietly disappear into comfortable retirement.

 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Martin Dempsey at some point supposedly received information about the attack in real time. Why — given the supposed directive of the president to do “whatever we need to” to save our people — he did not order military assistance will have to be explained. Uncertain conditions will not do, because that is what militaries do: go into uncertain conditions to save lives and defeat the enemy. Armchair tacticians will argue that planes and teams could have been sent and then called off near arrival time if that was what circumstances seemed to warrant; that option would have been wiser than sending no one and thereby ensuring that the compound and annex would be overrun. And because General Dempsey has not been shy in weighing in on matters political by warning retired servicemen not to comment on contemporary politics (General Wesley Clark apparently excepted), and because he has phoned a Florida pastor to tell him to tone down his anti-Islamic rhetoric, the public will all the more expect an explanation. If the chairman can lecture both civilians and retired officers on proper behavior, then he should be able as well to explain why he did not heed the president’s order to do “whatever we need to do.”

 

CIA Director David Petraeus is now by implication being faulted. A brief communiqué that the CIA did not refuse pleas for assistance was prompted by anonymous administration officials’ allegations that it was our intelligence agencies, not the State Department or White House officials, that prevented assistance to our diplomatic mission. At some point Petraeus will probably have to use all his influence and power to correct the administration’s narrative, which is apparently intended to shift culpability to him and his agency. General Petraeus, by his singular record, probably should have been made either chairman of the Joint Chiefs or NATO supreme commander; he apparently received neither offer. After pulling off the surge in Iraq, he was redeployed into Afghanistan under far different — and more difficult — circumstances that limited his range of options, and he had to give up his nominally superior billet as CENTCOM commander. When he took on the CIA job, he apparently was asked to retire from the military. There is a pattern here: selfless service to the United States, but recently in the context of a politicized administration that has used the enormous prestige of Petraeus in ways that have reduced his influence. Directing responsibility away from the administration to the CIA is more of the same, and it puts a historic figure like Petraeus in an unfair predicament.

 

Benghazi was a disaster, whose graphic details most Americans do not fully know and, in some sense understandably, do not wish to relive. Still, we await two simple clarifications: an administration timeline of exactly who was notified, in what manner, and when on the night of the attack, and a full release of all information detailing the administration reaction to the murders, from the hours in which the attack occurred to the present day.

 

Without that honesty, those responsible will only continue to weave their tangled Libyan web.

In Despair, New York Times Pens Suicide Note

By John Ransom

Monday, October 29, 2012

 

The common stock of the New York Times (NYSE: NYT) plunged from $10.87 last week to a close of $8.19 on Friday after the liberal mouthpiece announced that its 3rd quarter net income dropped 85 percent.

 

While analysts are blaming soft advertising revenues, I think something more ominous is happening at America’s national, bleeding-heart newspaper.

 

For sure, advertising revenues are dropping nationally as economic conditions have deteriorated over the last two quarters.

 

Newspapers in general are struggling still as advertisers turn more money over to digital. Unlike newspaper display ads, which are just dead print on a page, digital ads can measured. Advertisers like that, a lot. 

 

But still advertising revenues for the NYT are plunging in industries where we have been told by no less an authority than –gasp!- the New York Times: “Hurray! The recovery is finally on its way!”

 

If the economy is improving- as the publisher would have us believe- the rest of the paper’s operations didn’t get that memo.       

 

“[T]he lack of business confidence is growing in many, many segments, financial being one of them,” said the Times’ Chief Advertising Officer Denise Warren, according to Poynter.org. “Entertainment was down due to a lack of major releases in the quarter. Department stores had weak retail sales performance, so that impacted us. And then real estate is down, mostly due to the lack of new development in the New York market.”

 

Retail, Finance and Real Estate are experiencing lack of “business confidence,” as are “many, many segments” say the business folks behind the Times. 

 

You wouldn’t know it if you read the pages of the Times, however. On the editorial side- as opposed to the advertising folks who have to pay the salaries for the editorial folks- they think things are improving in our economy.

 

“Rise in Household Debt Might Be Sign of a Strengthening Recovery,” says the Times. “Hard-Hit Cities Show a Housing Rebound”; “The Perils of Feeding a Bloated Industry”- the bloated industry being financial services. “Barack Obama for Re-Election,” say the editors.   

 

But besides using the economic disconnect between editorial and ads as a cheap shot at the questionable content of the New York Times, there is a real-life point.

 

Even as economic conditions continue to deteriorate, the Grey Lady refuses to acknowledge the obvious: Obama’s policies are responsible for the worst post-recession performance since the 1930s.  

 

“President Obama has shown a firm commitment to using government to help foster growth,” says the Times. “He has formed sensible budget policies that are not dedicated to protecting the powerful, and has worked to save the social safety net to protect the powerless.” I don’t know how they wrote this without laughing or crying.

 

The rest of the editorial reads like a desperate suicide note as well, or least a desperate plea for a death panel to decide the fate of the New York Times.

 

They even go so far as to label Mitt Romney “dangerous.”

 

“Mitt Romney offers dangerous ideas,” continues the editorial, “when he offers any.”

 

Mitt Romney is about as dangerous as a cold cup of decaffeinated coffee.

 

But still Mitt brings more experience in running any one thing on his resume than Obama brought to the presidency taking all of his experience combined. 

 

The New York Times, on the other hand, has been a hit parade of bad and reckless ideas for four years. And they have even taken the trouble to list them out for us in their editorial “Barack Obama for Re-Election.” 

 

They are for the ballooning deficit; they are for more stimulus; they are for the codification of Too Big to Fail as expressed in Dodd-Frank; they want to raise taxes, but let the Bush tax cuts expire. They want more money for bad real estate debt; they think the most important right to defend now is the right to abort under any circumstances. 

 

If you had a playbook to deepen our fiscal crisis and keep our economy on artificial respiration, the Times editorial in support of Barack Obama would read as the narrative description.

 

They even go so far as to say that not only did Barack Obama kill Osama Bin Laden, he also “ended the war in Iraq.”

 

Really? There are a half a million fighting men and women who would dispute that notion.

 

When you wonder what happened to the greatness of our country you have to first start with awful financial performance of the Times over the last decade. There might be a connection between their plunging profits and their plunging standards.   

 

I suspect that the Times resents the free market where readers get to decide on their own that they’d rather watch Fox News than read the New York Times.

 

But advertisers don’t resent it at all. They like that kind of market a lot. 

 

So, yes; soft advertising revenues are part of the problem at the New York Times.

 

But the bigger problem at the Times is soft thinking.        

U.S. Elections and Foreign Observers

By John Fund

Monday, October 29, 2012

 

Some conservatives became outraged last week at news reports the United Nations was sending observers to monitor our presidential elections. Representative Connie Mack, the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in Florida, was livid: “The very idea that the United Nations — the world body dedicated to diminishing America’s role in the world — would be allowed, if not encouraged, to install foreigners sympathetic to the likes of Castro, Chávez, Ahmadinejad, and Putin to oversee our elections is nothing short of disgusting.”

 

Soon it was clarified that the 57 planned observers won’t be from the United Nations, but instead from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe — a U.N.-affiliated but separate organization of which Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran are not members. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is part of the OSCE but has been severely criticized by the group for human-rights violations.

 

This clarification did little to mollify critics. Attorney General Greg Abbott of Texas sent a letter to the OSCE warning that its representatives cannot legally enter a polling place and that it “may be a criminal offense for OSCE’s representatives to maintain a presence within 100 feet of a polling place’s entrance.” Greta Van Susteren of Fox News complained: “The election is none of their business. We ought to be able to police our own election.” The ACLU would be a more appropriate election monitor, she suggested, because it’s made up of Americans.

 

Oh, please. Spare us the ACLU. There are legitimate concerns about the election monitors, but I think the bashing of foreigners is a bit much. It’s certainly true that Freedom Watch lists twelve of the 44 countries that make up OSCE as “not free” or “partly free,” and it’s certainly offensive to let the likes of repressive Belarus try to exact revenge for U.S. criticism of their sham elections.

 

But there is nothing new in having the OSCE here. It was George W. Bush who first invited the group, in 2004, to observe U.S. elections. Representative Mack claims that election monitoring “should be reserved for third-world countries, banana republics, and fledging democracies.”

 

Well, no. The 2000 Bush v. Gore Supreme Court case exposed to the rest of the world the fact that Florida and some other U.S. states have sloppy election systems that are far less advanced than, say, countries such as Mexico.

 

Ever since the emergence of multiparty democracy in Mexico in 2000, that country has required voters to present a photo ID, write a signature, and give a thumbprint. The ID that voters carry includes a picture with a hologram covering it, a magnetic strip, and a serial number to guard against tampering. To cast a ballot, voters must present the card and be certified by a thumbprint scanner.

 

Of course, the concern of Texas’s attorney general is that the OSCE will focus not on ballot security but on so-called voter suppression. The OSCE has “reportedly met with organizations that have filed lawsuits challenging election integrity laws enacted by the Texas legislature,” Abbott noted on October 23 in a letter to the OSCE. Further, he objected:

 

One of these organizations, Project Vote, is closely affiliated with ACORN, which collapsed in disgrace after its role in a widespread voter-registration-fraud scheme was uncovered. . . . According to a letter that Project Vote and other organizations sent to you, OSCE has identified voter ID laws as a barrier to the right to vote. That letter urged OSCE to monitor states that have taken steps to protect ballot integrity by enacting Voter ID laws.

 

It is a legitimate concern that the OSCE and voters themselves will give too much credence to exaggerated claims that voter-ID laws disenfranchise voters. But I think such claims deserve a response: Evidence shows that voter-ID laws do not decrease minority turnout. Georgia has had a photo-ID law for more than five years, and in both the 2008 and 2010 elections, the turnout of African Americans and Hispanic voters rose dramatically nationwide, and the rate of increase in Georgia was even greater. The same was true in Indiana, which has one of the strictest voter-ID laws in the country, according to the U.S. Supreme Court.

 

In the past, the OSCE observers have issued solid reports that relied neither on hearsay nor on anecdotal evidence. In the report of the group’s Election Observation Mission on the 2004 U.S. presidential election it found that:

 

The EOM noted concerns, mainly by several African-American voters’ advocacy groups but also reported in the national media, regarding the so-called suppression of the vote. This term was used to describe the allegedly intentional effort to decrease minority voter participation through administrative shortcomings, such as inaccurate voter registers, purges of the voter register intended to remove ex-felons but which removed non felons, inaccurate voter information, and cases of voter intimidation. Other than press reports, the EOM was not aware of such instances and was not able to identify any first-hand evidence for alleged vote suppression. . . . While recognizing the seriousness of such allegations, the EOM was not provided with substantial evidence that such practices existed.

 

As for its mission this year, there are signs that the OSCE will prevent U.S.-bashers from having free rein to criticize U.S. elections.

 

This week, Russian foreign-ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich bitterly criticized the OSCE for its “strange attitude” toward monitoring the U.S. election, evident, he said, in its plan to send only a small team of observers. “Our efforts for organizing full-fledged control of the voting by the OSCE have failed to meet with the understanding of that organization’s leadership.” He noted that there will be only one Russian delegate in the group’s 57-person team.

 

I am confident that the voter-ID laws and other ballot protections that are in place in many U.S. states will not disenfranchise voters; on the contrary, they will increase public confidence in the integrity of our elections.

 

Given the hyper-partisan rhetoric of the ACLU, the NAACP, and the Advancement Project in denouncing sensible steps to clean up our election process, I’ll take my chances on having foreign observers come in and look at things dispassionately. But if they don’t find evidence of “voter suppression,” don’t expect to hear much about their conclusions in the mainstream media.

Putting on the Fresh Person Fifteen

By Mike Adams

Monday, October 29, 2012

 

Note: The use of an asterisk indicates that the college or university has revised its speech code thanks to the work of my friends at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE. (See www.TheFire.org). The best source of information about campus speech in general is: Greg Lukianoff. Unlearning Liberty. New York: Encounter Books, 2012.

 

All week long, people have been sending me emails expressing their outrage at UNC Chapel Hill's decision to remove the word "freshman" from all university documents in order to be gender inclusive. But why are they surprised? And why are they writing to me to express their outrage? I've been telling readers for over a decade that they need to directly call and write the universities that are responsible for encouraging hypersensitivity through the use of campus speech codes.

 

If you do not know what a speech code is then you are probably new to my column. So here is a list of some examples that have actually been implemented at colleges and universities across America. If you write to complain, make sure your messages are written in stark violation of their campus speech codes. You are about to learn that it may not be very difficult.

 

*At Drexel University, prohibited harassment once included "inconsiderate jokes" and "inappropriately directed laughter." Students at Drexel had to be careful. If someone made a joke that was funny, they had to look directly at them. Looking the other way and laughing could have constituted harassment.

 

*Florida Gulf Coast University actually banned expressions deemed "inappropriate." Did you hear that one? I've always hated the expression "know what I'm saying." Does that make it a violation of the speech code? Or is it racist for me to suggest that it is? Know what I'm saying?

 

*Ohio State University actually banned jokes about differences related to "socio-economic background and etc." Hey, do you know the different between a Republican and a Democrat? A Republican drinks 12 year old wine; a Democrat drinks wine when he's 12 years old. Don't laugh! That could be a speech code violation! No need to rely on the catch all "etc" to violate it. Man, that’s rich! I mean person that’s poor.

 

*College of the Holy Cross implemented a speech code that banned even unintentionally causing emotional injury through careless or reckless behavior. Even a dog knows the difference between being tripped over and being kicked. But a Holy Cross administrator doesn’t seem to know. They got rid of the word “unintentional” but left the word “careless.” So you can still be nailed to a cross for accidentally violating this (w)hol(l)y ridiculous dictate.

 

Grambling State University has an email policy that prohibits offensive comments about "hair color." So if you make a dumb blonde joke, you might get charged with violating the school's hair-assment policy. I guess that sort of thing needs to be highlighted and then rooted out of the educational system. Bald assertions probably need to go, too.

 

Marshall University bans incivility or disrespect of persons. Better not go around saying "we are Marshall." That's exclusive and, of course, exclusivity is disrespectful.

 

*California State University - Chico banned stereotypic generalizations including continued use of generic masculine terms. How about this for a stereotype: most college administrators are bed wetting liberals. Hehehehehe!

 

*The University of Florida once threatened disciplinary action against organizations or individuals that upset the "delicate balance of communal living." I have no idea what that means so I can't say much in response. I just know it was written by an imbalanced communist.

 

Mansfield University bans any behavior that would diminish "self esteem" or "striving for competence." Right now I want to say that Mansfield administrators are incompetent idiots. But that might hurt their self esteem while they are striving for competence. It'll never happen. But let's make them feel warm and fuzzy while they try to strive for mediocrity. Sexist idiots! I mean, why don’t they call themselves Persons-field University?

 

*The University of Wisconsin - Whitewater banned "obnoxious jerk harassment" including "jokes, catcalls, whistles, remarks, etc." I don't get this. Does it mean I cannot harass an obnoxious jerk? What about Keith Olbermann? He's man enough to take it. Come to think of it, so is Rachel Maddow.

 

Some freshmen put on weight because they become physically lazy. Almost every other student becomes intellectually lazy throughout his college years. The reason is simple: someone is always telling him it's easier to be a victim than to respond to bad speech with speech that is better.

Obama's 'Battleship' Argument Has Holes in its Hull

By Jonah Goldberg

Friday, October 26, 2012

 

In the third and final debate, Barack Obama scored huge points with the media, college kids and die-hard liberals -- in other words, his base -- when he mocked Mitt Romney's concern about our historically small Navy.

 

"But I think Governor Romney maybe hasn't spent enough time looking at how our military works," the president said. "You -- you mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines."

 

"And so," he added, "the question is not a game of Battleship where we're counting ships," The question is "what are our capabilities."

 

This struck me as an example of how thoroughly liberalism has confused sneering for intellectual confidence. It shouldn't be surprising, given that comedy shows often substitute for news programs, particularly for younger liberals. That's probably why the president has been spending more time talking to DJs, entertainment shows and comedians than to reporters. He desperately needs the support of low-information voters, who've replaced the old adage "it's funny because it's true" with "if it's funny, it must be true."

 

Obama's argument -- if that's not too generous a word -- is that the Navy in particular, and the military in general, can do so much more because of technological advances.

 

And that is certainly true.

 

But it's also true that there have been huge advances in the technology used to sink our ships and blow up our planes as well. And, to date, no breakthrough innovation has led us to figuring out how to put one ship in two places at once.

 

There's another problem. What innovation does he have in mind? Many of our warplanes and nearly all of our major naval vessels are much older than the pilots and sailors flying and sailing them. It's great to talk up the benefits of innovation, but that argument starts to sputter when you realize we are often relying on the innovation of older generations. For all his talk about the game Battleship, we haven't built a real battleship in almost 70 years, and the Navy hasn't had one in its arsenal for decades.

 

But what I find most interesting about this argument is how selective it is. For instance, defenders of Obama's Keynesian economic policies are constantly touting the benefits of big, high-tech spending programs because of the "multiplier effect" -- the increased economic activity "primed" by government spending.

 

Indeed, the economists who subscribe to these views tend to tout military spending as particularly good evidence in their favor. Many argue that it was the massive spending during World War II that really pulled us out of the Great Depression (a flawed theory but more credible than the New Deal itself, which mostly prolonged the Great Depression).

 

And yet, it seems that military spending is the only Keynesian pump-priming this president doesn't like.

 

Conversely, his argument that technological advances should deliver increased savings by providing more "bang for the buck" doesn't seem to enter his thinking anywhere else. In the private sector he finds improved efficiencies to be a burden -- all of those ATM machines taking away good bank teller jobs.

 

And where are the technological efficiencies making government more effective for less money? Surely the breakthroughs in productivity, information management and telecommunications would afford us a huge opportunity to cut away some of the obsolescence in the non-defense parts of our government?

 

But no. Obama is constantly yearning to hire more government workers. The private sector, he said not long ago, was doing fine. The place we needed more jobs was in the federal, state and local bureaucracies.

 

Indeed, in his new "plan" he promises -- again -- to hire 100,000 new teachers. He is constantly assuring us that our "crumbling" schools with leaky roofs are robbing children of their education. The honest truth: You can teach kids in a school with a leaky roof pretty easily. A submarine with a leaky roof? That's a problem.

 

The amazing thing is that we've been increasing federal government spending on education at a blistering pace for decades. Where is the return on the investment? Where are the improved capabilities and efficiencies from investments in technology?

 

The military, which thrives on precisely the civic virtue Obama insists is on full display in public education, has a lot to show for the investments of the past Obama would like to curtail. Where's a similar return in the non-defense sector? And has Obama ever bothered to ask that question?

The Liberal Media Unites to Stop Romney

By Douglas MacKinnon

Saturday, October 27, 2012

 

With many of the polls and much of the momentum trending for Mitt Romney, much of the mainstream media is in full-panic mode as they work overtime to tilt the "news" in favor of Barack Obama.

 

For a recent example of such bias, one need only look at the October 25th edition of USA Today. On their front page was the headline: "Economists see less pain in 2013."

 

Even while pushing such an Obama-friendly headline, their own facts belie the trumped-up prediction. Of the 48 "economists" surveyed, 83 percent said the economy will actually stay the same or get worse. A percentage which would track with the beliefs of most Americans, who for the first time in their lives, fear their children will have it worse than them.

 

Maybe instead of spinning dubious numbers and headlines to benefit team Obama, the editors at USA Today might better serve their readership by talking with various mayors, county officials, and governors to hear how the corrupt public-employee unions are not only bankrupting their budgets but literally robbing from the desperately poor and crumbling infrastructures in the process.

 

Next, in this national paper on the same day we have not one, but two major headlines about how Republicans are destroying their election chances because they happen to be pro-life and their "opposition to abortion rights for victims of rape and incest."

 

Like most of the liberal and compromised media, USA Today chose to cherry-pick two controversial comments from Missouri senate candidate Todd Akin and Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock (two men who could still win by the way) and attempt to hang them around the neck of Mitt Romney and the GOP.

 

No surprise there. As my former boss and friend Bob Dole once told me: "If World War III were breaking out tomorrow, liberal reporters would still ask Republicans about abortion."

 

From there, USA Today blares the headline: "Romney skips entertainment TV."

 

Could that be because almost all of the shows and their hosts are far-left and openly support Mr. Obama? Clearly either USA Today thinks its readership fools or simply doesn’t care what they think as they openly put their thumb on the scale for the president.

 

In the story, the USA Today "reporter" not only seems to praise Mr. Obama for going on such shows as "The View," "Late Show with David Letterman," and "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart, but question the judgment of Mr. Romney for logically avoiding the programs. Really?

 

As the reporter and her editors know, some of the hosts of these programs -- such as David Letterman, Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, and Jon Stewart -- have made no secret of their deep affection for Mr. Obama or their distain for conservatives. On the far-left extreme you have the likes of Mr. Letterman and Ms. Behar who seem to spew irrational hatred of conservatives, the Tea Party, or the Republican party in general on a daily basis. On the less extreme side of left-leaning hosts you have Jon Stewart and Jay Leno who will at least take their team to task from time to time to make a point or get a laugh.

 

Whether these hosts are far-left or simply liberal, most Americans understand why Mr. Romney steers well clear of these shows. Just as they understand why USA Today -- and most of the mainstream media -- is working so hard to create a false issue.

 

Again, these examples are just from one edition of one liberal newspaper on one day. A "newspaper" -- like ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and a majority of the top newspapers -- which bases much of its hiring not on qualifications or experience, but on political correctness, diversity, and a liberal bias.

 

Knowing that, while understanding that these "news" outlets will be unethically shaping their "news" coverage to favor Mr. Obama until the last second, it's almost jaw-dropping to realize what Mr. Romney is up against in the closing days of the election.

 

Fortunately, in large part because of this disgraceful liberal bias, a majority of voters are going to send multiple messages by electing Mr. Romney the next president of the United States.

Obama Stoops, Doesn’t Conquer

By Charles Krauthammer

Thursday, October 25, 2012

 

“L’état, c’est moi.”

— Louis XIV

 

“This nation. Me.”

— Barack Obama, third presidential debate

 

Okay, Okay. I’ll give you the context. Obama was talking about how “when Tunisians began to protest, this nation, me, my administration, stood with them.” Still. How many democratic leaders (de Gaulle excluded) would place the word “me” in such regal proximity to the word “nation”?

 

Obama would have made a very good Bourbon. He’s certainly not a very good debater. He showed it again Monday night.

 

Obama lost. His tone was petty and small. Arguing about Iran’s nuclear program, he actually said to Mitt Romney, “While we were coordinating an international coalition to make sure these sanctions were effective, you were still invested in a Chinese state oil company that was doing business with the Iranian oil sector.” You can’t get smaller than that. You’d expect this in a city-council race. But only from the challenger. The sitting councilman would find such an ad hominem beneath him.

 

That spirit led Obama into a major unforced error. When Romney made a perfectly reasonable case to rebuild a shrinking Navy, Obama condescended: “You mentioned . . . that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed.”

 

Such that naval vessels are as obsolete as horse cavalry?

 

Liberal pundits got a great guffaw out of this, but the underlying argument is quite stupid. As if the ships being retired are dinghies, skipjacks, and three-masted schooners. As if an entire branch of the armed forces — the principal projector of American power abroad — is itself some kind of anachronism.

 

“We have these things called aircraft carriers,” continued the schoolmaster, “where planes land on them.”

 

This is Obama’s case for fewer vessels? Does he think carriers patrol alone? He doesn’t know that for every one carrier, ten times as many ships sail in a phalanx of escorts?

 

Obama may blithely dismiss the need for more ships, but the Navy wants at least 310, and the latest Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel report says that defending America’s vital interests requires 346 ships (versus 287 today). Does anyone doubt that if we continue, as we are headed, down to fewer than 230, the casualty will be entire carrier battle groups, precisely the kind of high-tech force multipliers that Obama pretends our national security requires?

 

Romney, for his part, showed himself to be fluent enough in foreign policy, although I could have done with a little less Mali (two references) and a lot less “tumult” (five).

 

But he did have the moment of the night when he took after Obama’s post-inauguration world apology tour. Obama, falling back on his base, flailingly countered that “every fact checker and every reporter” says otherwise.

 

Oh yeah? What about Obama declaring that America had “dictated” to other nations?

 

“Mr. President,” said Romney, “America has not dictated to other nations. We have freed other nations from dictators.”

 

Obama, rattled, went off into a fog beginning with “if we’re going to talk about trips that we’ve taken,” followed by a rambling travelogue of a 2008 visit to Israel. As if this is about trip-taking, rather than about defending — versus denigrating — the honor of the United States while on foreign soil. Americans may care little about Syria and nothing about Mali. But they don’t like presidents going abroad confirming the calumnies of tin-pot dictators.

 

The rest of Romney’s debate performance was far more passive. He refused the obvious chance to pulverize Obama on Libya. I would’ve taken a baseball bat to Obama’s second-debate claim that no one in his administration, including him, had misled the country on Benghazi. (The misleading is beyond dispute. The only question is whether it was intentional, i.e., deliberate deceit, or unintentional, i.e., scandalous incompetence.) Romney, however, calculated differently: Act presidential. Better use the night to assume a reassuring, non-contentious demeanor.

 

Romney’s entire strategy in both the second and third debates was to reinforce the status he achieved in debate No. 1 as a plausible alternative president. He therefore went bipartisan, accommodating, above the fray, and, above all, nonthreatening.

 

That’s what Reagan did with Carter in their 1980 debate. If your opponent’s record is dismal and the country quite prepared to toss him out — but not unless you pass the threshold test — what do you do?

 

Romney chose to do a Reagan: Don’t quarrel. Speak softly. Meet the threshold.

 

We’ll soon know whether steady-as-she-goes was the right choice.