10/11/12

Cavuto: We’re stuck with ‘better’

Hat Tip: BB

Krauthammer: Everything Susan Rice Said Was An Invention

Hat Tip: BB

CBS Reporter Says Islamic Terrorists Are Winning

CBS News correspondent Lara Logan is making big news by accusing the Obama Administration of lying about progress in the war on terrorism. She also urged the administration to avenge the murders of four Americans in Libya, and declared that Islamist terrorists want to destroy the West and the American way of life.

An FBI investigation is not the best way to handle the murders in Libya, she said. “I hope to God that you’re sending in your best clandestine warriors to exact revenge and let the world know that the United States will not be attacked on its own soil, that its ambassadors will not be murdered and the United States will not stand by and do nothing about it.”

It appeared to some commentators that she was arguing for a stronger U.S. military response, which was certainly true in the case of the murdered Americans in Libya, but it is also clear that she sees Pakistan, an Islamic state with nuclear weapons, as one of the main problems facing the U.S. and the region that few political leaders want to address. Pakistan is considered by many politicians, Democrats and Republicans, to be a U.S. ally, and it receives billions of dollars in foreign aid.

In a sensational charge, Logan said that “Pakistani lobbying money” was behind the “narrative” that the U.S. can withdraw from the region and even negotiate a peaceful solution with the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. She implied that U.S. policymakers were being bribed to have the U.S. leave the region under circumstances that would only benefit Islamist forces who seek a world-wide Islamic state, or “caliphate.”

She said it was not “propaganda” to point out that the enemy wants to destroy the United States and the West. “Our way of life is under attack,” she said. “And if you think that is government propaganda, if you think that’s nonsense, if you think thats warmongering, you’re not listening to what the people who are fighting you say about this fight.”

Logan is the female war correspondent who was in the middle of this fight and raped while covering the “Arab Spring” that was encouraged by the Obama Administration. The policy has resulted in the Islamist takeover of Egypt and a major al-Qaeda presence in Libya, where Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were recently killed.

One cannot watch her remarks without concluding, based on the eyewitness testimony of someone who has been in the middle of these wars and conflicts for years, that Obama’s weak foreign policy is encouraging more anti-American terrorism, and that another major strike on U.S. soil may be forthcoming.

A native South African, she urged Americans to understand the sacrifices that U.S. military personnel have made by visiting military hospitals as well as the “fresh graves” at Arlington National Cemetery.

This is not the first time she has focused on Pakistan, which she accused of supporting anti-American terrorists. CBS News ran this story, “Logan: Pakistan has U.S. ‘blood on its hands,’” back on May 3, 2011. “If you walk in Arlington Cemetery, past the fresh graves of American soldiers coming back from the field over there, Pakistan has some of the blood on its hands. They need to answer for that,” she said.

In her recent report from Afghanistan, “The Longest War,” she questioned President Hamid Karzai about this.

Here is part of the transcript:

Lara Logan: Why has the U.S. failed to address the issue with Pakistan, do you think?

Karzai: Perhaps politics.

Lara Logan: What has been the cost of that?

Karzai: Heavy for us. Disastrous for us.

Lara Logan: Would Afghanistan look completely different today if the issue of sanctuary and safe haven in Pakistan had been dealt with years ago?

Karzai: Absolutely. Completely different. Much more peaceful. Much more progressed. Much more stable. And a society that would have been thriving on its own.

Lara Logan: Does that make you angry?

Karzai: Absolutely. Very much. And we have shown it.

Lara Logan: Was there much yelling and screaming behind closed doors?

Karzai: Plenty of that.

Lara Logan: Listening to you I get the feeling that there’s a lot of anger towards the United States. There’s been bad blood. What went wrong? Why do you feel this way?

Karzai: I don’t feel angry. I’m—Afghanistan feels let down.

She also questioned ISAF/US commander Gen. John Allen about the problem:

Lara Logan: Ultimately, it’s not going to matter what you do if you do not address the critical element of the safe havens that the enemy has inside Pakistan, across the border, in many ways, out of your reach.

Allen: Well, we’re doing a great deal right now. The relationship that we have between ISAF forces and the Pakistani military has improved dramatically—

Lara Logan: But it doesn’t stop Pakistanis helping our enemies kill U.S. soldiers.

Allen: Well, that’s not going to stop immediately. We’ve got to work at that. It’s not a solution that can be had ultimately by a military solution. These are policy issues, these are government to government issues. I’m not going to be able to wage war in Pakistan. But this is hard. There’s a very complex relationship with Pakistan. And we’ll work very hard and very closely with the Pakistani military to achieve common objectives. But to some extent the Pakistani military has been successful in cooperating with us in the last several months with regard to complementary operations on both sides of the border, but much more needs to be done.

Lara Logan: Your deadliest enemies on the Afghan battlefield have complete freedom of movement inside Pakistan with the blessing of the Pakistanis. And every commander that’s sat in your shoes has had to try and build a relationship and go through the same motions time and time again and the effect on the battlefield remains exactly the same. American soldiers continue to die because of the support Pakistan gives to America’s enemies.

Allen: You’ve just stated the truth.

Lara Logan: [The situation] has got to make you mad.

Allen: Yes, it does. Yes, it does. And within the context of my authorities, we’re going to do everything we can to hunt down and kill every one of those Haqqani operatives that we can inside this country. And those other elements that come out of those safe havens that ultimately threaten my troops, threaten the Afghan troops and the Afghan society, the Afghan civilians, and ultimately the Afghan government.

Logan has certainly put the spotlight on Obama’s disastrous foreign policy decisions. But the issue of what to do about Pakistan affects both presidential campaigns. A Rasmussen poll from last year found that 65 percent want to end all military and financial aid to Pakistan. Only 11 percent wanted it to continue. Mitt Romney says he wants to somehow pressure Pakistan to cooperate with the U.S.

While Logan was outspoken about U.S. foreign policy, she also had some interesting comments on how the Islamists use the media, noting that the beheading of journalist Daniel Pearl was filmed by the terrorists, obviously for propaganda value in order to demonstrate their ruthlessness.

She observed that Osama bin Laden, who was killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan, had access to Jihadist forums, his own magazine and also used “Arabic news channels to send his tapes to.” The latter was a reference to Al-Jazeera, the Arab propaganda channel that became known as the voice of al-Qaeda and which covered up the assault on Logan in Egypt, so as not to depict the “pro-democracy” protesters in a negative light.

Al-Jazeera English is still waging a major campaign for carriage on U.S. cable and satellite systems in the U.S.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected].

10/11/12

Cutter Stands by Libya Comments, Refuses to Resign

John Bolton slams the Administration: They can’t be left in the same room with our national security

Hat Tip: BB

Betsy McCaughey: Obamacare Could Cost 35,000 Elderly Patients Their Lives Every Year

Accuracy in Media

In recent remarks to the AIM conference, “ObamaNation: A Day of Truth,” Betsy McCaughey said that the regulations and cuts in Barack Obama’s healthcare law could lead to the deaths of 35,000 hospital patients who otherwise might have recovered, had they received the care available at a higher spending institution.

McCaughey, the former Lt. Governor of New York and an expert on the new healthcare law, cited the drastic cuts to Medicare in detailing how seniors will suffer under the provisions of the law. McCaughey is the author of two books on Obamacare: Obama Health Law: What It Says and How to Overturn It and Decoding the Obama Health Law: What You Need To Know.

McCaughey cited a study in the Annals of Internal Medicine, which shows that over a four year period, in California, “nearly 14,000 seniors with common conditions—stroke, pneumonia, heart attack, congestive heart failure, hip fractures, and others, died in low-spending hospitals—bottom quintile—but would have survived and recovered and gone home had they received the care available at a higher spending hospital.” She said, “despite this evidence—in fact, in disregard of this evidence—the Obama administration is pushing hospitals in all 50 states to imitate the low-spending hospitals where the death rates are higher!” McCaughey concluded that “It is reasonable to predict, based on this evidence, that the regulations and cuts in this law will cost at least 35,000 elderly patients their lives every year. 35,000 patients in hospitals, dying, who could have recovered had they received the care available at a higher spending institution.”

Not only will Obamacare “cut $247 billion of future funding for payments to hospitals over the next decade,” said McCaughey, in a follow-up interview, “In October 2012, the Obama administration will start awarding ‘bonus points’ to the hospitals that spend the least per senior…And it whacks the higher spending hospitals with demerits, not only for what they spend on a patient while the patient is in the hospital, but also what is spent on that patient for the three months after hospitalization. So hospitals also get hit with demerits for recommending physical therapy after the patient leaves the hospital, or even recommending a doctor’s visit; it’s all counted. These regulations are not going to wring out the fraud, waste, and abuse. No, they are going to force these hospitals to provide a lower standard of care.”

Watch Betsy McCaughey’s interview here:

Watch Betsy McCaughey’s full speech below, and watch it with the transcript here:

10/11/12

7.8% Unemployment Figure Shown Phony, Jack Welch was Right

Gulag Bound

With its link, the entire article from CNBC is shown below, due to its brevity. See its video too, at their page.

Jack Welch

Stand Up America

Editor’s Note – So Jack Welch supposedly joined the “conspiracy theorists” when he tweeted his doubts and blamed the Chicago thugs for cooking the books. Well, now it appears he was dead on!

How can the so-called “experts” who work at the “non-partisan” Bureau of Labor Statistics miss a whole state? Reportedly a large state, likely large enough to skew the results, was left out of the numbers? Did no red flags pop up when the report was compiled?

CNBC and Dow Jones have both confirmed that this latest weekly jobless claims report was missing data from one large state. Bloomberg noted that the Labor Department spokesperson said that one state accounted for most of the plunge in claims.

Why Jobless Claims May Not Be as Good as Market Thinks

By: Kelly Evans – CNBC Reporter

For the second time in a week, a government unemployment report is sowing confusion—and may not be as positive as the markets think.

Financial markets immediately rallied on the news. (Read more: Stocks Rise After Jobless Claims Hit 4-Year Low.)The Labor Department on Thursday said the number of people filing jobless claims last week dropped by a seasonally adjusted 30,000—a pretty sharp decline, and one that left the total number of filings at a four-year low of 339,000.

While the government didn’t note any unusual factors in the release itself, a Labor Department official did tell news agencies covering the release about a quirk which partly accounted for the larger-than-expected drop.

As Dow Jones reported: “A Labor Department economist said one large state didn’t report additional quarterly figures as expected, accounting for a substantial part of the decrease.”

The wording of that statement, along with the accompanying headlines, left the impression that one major state didn’t turn in its figures.

Here’s what actually happened. The state did report weekly jobless claims but did not process and report its quarterly claims number (when many people have to reapply for benefits for technical reasons as opposed to being newly laid off). As a result, there wasn’t the expected spike in claims that normally happens at the start of the quarter.

It is unclear why that happened or how unusual that is. What is clear is that the expected spike in claims around the start of each quarter was smaller this time than usual. Coupled with the seasonal adjustment (that expected a bigger increase), that pushed down the headline figure.

In other words, the drop of 30,000 last week had more to do with the lack of expected re-filings at the start of the fourth quarter than with any particular improvement in labor market conditions.

That also means that the decline which usually follows the spike won’t be as pronounced this time around, so the headline tally of jobless claims is likely to rebound next week.

All told, these two weeks’ worth of jobless claims will end up being more noise than signal. That may frustrate those who follow the series closely for clues into the health of the U.S. labor market. Coupled with last week’s payrolls report, it is also likely to fuel perception that labor market figures in general can’t be trusted.

The Labor Department appears to have had little choice in this matter, however; it couldn’t estimate what the one large state would or should have reported. Still, it may have been able to avoid more confusion had it more clearly articulated that in its weekly press release.

And now, there is one state’s labor department with plenty of explaining to do.

10/11/12

Obama’s Cousin

Hat Tip: BB
MRCTV

10/11/12

Beck Walks Through Libya Timeline and Describes ‘Massive Cover-Up…Bigger Than Watergate’

From Glenn Beck and The Blaze. I said the very same thing on the magnitude of the cover-up in my article last weekend: Spooks in the Machine Speak Up.

A chronology of crucial moments leading up to and in the aftermath of the attacks is provided below courtesy of the Heritage Foundation:

April 6: IED thrown over the fence of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.
April 11: Gun battle erupts between armed groups two-and-a-half miles from the U.S. Consulate, including rocket-propelled grenades.
April 27: Two South African contractors are kidnapped by armed men, released unharmed.
May 1: Deputy Commander of U.S. Embassy Tripoli’s Local Guard Force is carjacked, beaten, and detained by armed youth.
May 1: British Embassy in Tripoli is attacked by a violent mob and set on fire. Other NATO embassies attacked as well.
May 3: The State Department declines a request from personnel concerned about security at the U.S. Embassy in Libya for a DC-3 plane to take them around the country.
May 22: Two rocket-propelled grenades are fired at the Benghazi office of the International Committee of the Red Cross, less than 1 mile from the U.S. Consulate.
June 6: A large IED destroys part of the security perimeter of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. Creates hole “big enough for 40 men to go through.”
June 10: A car carrying the British ambassador is attacked in Tripoli. Two bodyguards injured.
Late June: The building of the International Red Cross attacked again and closed down, leaving the U.S. flag as the only international one still flying in Benghazi, an obvious target.
August 6: Armed assailants carjack a vehicle with diplomatic plates operated by U.S. personnel.
September 8: A local security officer in Benghazi warns American officials about deteriorating security.
September 11: Protesters attack the U.S. Cairo embassy. U.S. Embassy releases statement and tweets sympathizing with Muslim protesters/attackers.
September 11: U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya is attacked, Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans are killed.
September 12: Secretary Clinton and President Obama issue statements condemning both the video and the attacks.
September 12: U.S. intelligence agencies have enough evidence to conclude a terrorist attack was involved.
September 13: Press Secretary Jay Carney condemns video and violence at a news conference.
September 14: Carney denies Administration had “actionable intelligence indicating that an attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi was planned or imminent.”
September 14: The bodies of slain Americans return to Andrews Air Force Base. President Obama again blames the YouTube video.
September 16: U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice appears on Sunday talk shows and says the attacks were provoked by the video, exclusively.
September 16: Libyan President Mohamed Magarief says, “no doubt that this [attack] was preplanned, predetermined.”
September 17: State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland refuses to call attacks an act of terror.
September 19: CNN reports having found Ambassador Stevens’s diary, which indicates concern about security threats in Benghazi.
September 19: Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Matthew Olsen tells Congress the attack in Libya was “terrorism.”
September 20: Carney tries to back up Olsen, says it was “self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack.”
September 20: Obama refuses to call attack terrorism, citing insufficient information.
September 21: Secretary of State Clinton, at meeting with Pakistani Foreign Minister, says, “What happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack.”
September 25: On ABC’s “The View,” Obama says, “we don’t have all of the information yet so we are still gathering.”
September 25: To the U.N. assembly, Obama blames “A crude and disgusting video sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world.”
September 26: Libya’s Magarief on the “Today” show says, “It was a preplanned act of terrorism directed against American citizens.”
September 26: Published reports show U.S. Intel agencies and the Obama Administration knew within 24 hours that al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist were involved.
September 27: Innocence of Muslims filmmaker Mark Basseley Youseff (aka Nakoula Basseley Nakoula) is arrested and denied bail on the charges of “probation violation.”
September 28: Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, Jr., issues a statement backing the Obama Administration’s changing story about the Libyan attack. Says facts are evolving.
October 2: Carney declines to comment on reported requests from diplomats in Libya for additional security, citing the State Department’s internal investigation.

Michelle Malkin: “This Administration Has Been Malicious & Reckless With the Truth!”

RightSightings:

“What you have here is a den of lying liars and crap weasels, who are all behind the scenes trying to figure out who to hang out to dry” says Syndicated Columnist, NY Times #1 Best Selling Author, Michelle Malkin, as she offers her perspective on the White House Cover-up of the facts regarding the Benghazi attack that took place on the 11th anniversary of 9-11.