Tuesday, May 14, 2013

News You Can Use


Despite my best efforts, I find myself unable to keep up with the news at home the way I used to.  I’m overseas, I’m busy and, frankly, most of the stuff I used to read closely has lost its appeal.  Finding myself alone today at lunch, a very rare occasion, I decided to catch up.  Let me see if I have this right, in no particular order:

--  Young black men in New Orleans opened fire on a Mother’s Day gathering.

--  AP complains that the Obama Administration has been recording its top editors phone calls and monitoring both landline and cell phones at the press agency.

-- The Obama Administration’s IRS has been conducting investigations and audits on groups that appear aligned with the Tea Party movement.

-- The DCM at U.S. Embassy Tripoli testified that that attack on Benghazi was an orchestrated terrorist attack, that he spoke directly with Secretary Clinton and there was never any question raised as to what they were speaking about, yet the Obama Administration pinned the blame for the attack on a demonstration against an anti-Islam film on You Tube, whose maker was then arrested by L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputies and is now in prison on Federal charges.

-- According to the Detroit City Manager, the capital of black America is bankrupt and may need a Federal bailout.

-- It is looking more and more likely that the Borat Brothers killed three people in Boston on Sept 11, 2011.  Police were stumped at the time, but it turns out that the nearly decapitated bodies covered in marijuana were the former friends, roommates and workout buddies with Borat the Elder, who was known widely to enjoy marijuana.

-- Latino men abducted and held three European-American girls as sex slaves for over a decade.

-- Malcolm X’s grandson, a career criminal, was murdered in a Mexico City nightclub after he refused to pay the (grossly inflated) bar tab for all the women and booze.

-- A black doctor in Philly is found guilty of butchering newborn babies, which the mainstream press calls “abortion.”

-- A Dominican gang in New York City was charged with stealing $45 million dollars from ATMs.

-- The Post Office lost 1.9 billion dollars in the Second Quarter of 2013 alone.

-- Civil Rights ground zero, Birmingham, Alabama, is bankrupt and wracked with violence. The Klan is nowhere in evidence.

-- Republican are big, lying liars and meanies and all of this is their fault.

See? I told you Obama winning was the best thing that could ever happen to us.  At this rate, we should have a sane country and a new government by 2030, at the latest. Meanwhile, I’ll be in France, in “dead Europe” where thousands of young people are partying for the National Front in Paris while I type this.

18 comments:

  1. Hi Kevin ... you said:

    -- The DCM at U.S. Embassy Tripoli testified that that attack on Benghazi was an orchestrated terrorist attack, that he spoke directly with Secretary Clinton ...

    Yes he did, and I watched him testify on C-Span-3 streaming live on line...actually I watched it all day. Here is a time line I roughly calculated from the testimony and from reporting protocols I myself have participated in crisis elsewhere...e.g., CRITIC encrypted messages and calls that go out within 10 minutes of an incident initiation. I posted it on another site, but it serves well enough here...

    9:40 PM Libya time [+/-], 3:40 PM Washington DC time, 9/11/2012, the attack begins on the Consulate.

    10:00 PM Libya time, 4:00 PM Washington time, 9/11/2012, [even allowing 10 extra minutes] the CRITIC message was sent to all of the offices cited [by XXXX & me]...which includes, State, CIA, DOD, NSA and NSC, plus others. [An Officer of the Day or Duty Officer, whatever would have been required to send the CRITIC ... unless under the ad hoc organized mess in Benghazi, protocol was ignored and it was another John Brennan operation that bypassed agency oversight coordination and just used assets ... a near perfect clone of LBJ's Robert Komer and CORDS, Phoenix, et al utilizing even the ubiquitous USAID ]

    2:00 AM Libya time, 8:00 AM Washington DC time, 9/12/2012, Secretary Clinton [and others on her line] telephones Gregory Hicks in Libya and he reports the *attack* directly to Secretary Clinton.

    4:00AM Libya time, 10:00 AM Washington DC time, 9/12/2012, the Annex in Benghazi is attacked.

    Between 4:00 PM Washington time 9/11/2012 and morning 9/12/2012 [time uncertain] President Obama met with Secretary Panneta and General Dempsey on the Benghazi situation [Obama acknowledges this, and says he told them to do what was necessary ...likely early evening 9/11/2012 DC time].

    By 12:00 Noon Washinton DC time, or before, 9/12/2012,[likely within the 2 hours between 10:00 AM and Noon] Chairman of the Joint chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey telephones a self appointed pastor named Terry Jones in Florida and asks him to cease sponsoring or supporting the offensive video, which he tells Pastor Jones has lead to the death of Ambassador Stevens....then General Dempsy's PAO (Public Affairs Office) immediately notifies Reuters of the call and the content. This "sets" the narrative officially as the offensive video as the cause.

    Footnote: General Dempsey's call to Terry Jones is not the first time Jones has been used as a beard and called by senior defense officials ...both Petraeus and Sec. Defense Gates did the same thing in 2010.

    In short, Obama gave a brief of "his intentions" to Panetta and Dempsey [no citation of him meeting with Clinton in this time frame] and Dempsey carried out the bearding of the situation by using pseudo-pastor Terry Jones and news agency Reuters. Perhaps Clinton found herself with no choice in the matter...her emotional outburst at a session earlier certainly had the look of a cornered cat ready to fight.

    The "confusion" that seemed to prevail at DoD and CIA hints strongly at a Brennan operation...e.g., the agency oversight didn't actually know what was going on therefore how to react.

    Tell me, am I ready for a tinfoil hat?

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    1. Ari - I've read tons of stuff on Benghazi today - put way too much time into it in fact - this is by far the most damning thing I've read. There's a bunch of crap going on about the emails and talking points and yada yada but what you've time-lined here is the way the dots ought to be connected.

      If you could fill in a bit - especially with a link to Dempsey - Jones call - I say put it all in a post and we all of us write Glenn Reynolds and try to get Instalanched. I bet he'd link us.

      (Then we close down, change names and regroup elsewhere, if need be. PITA but maybe worth it...)

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    2. Just noticed this comment Lewy...here's a List of links for Dempsey-Jones.

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    3. Ari, thanks.

      Dempsey is obviously a complete meat puppet.

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  2. I posted my take on Obama's response to the IRS scandal here on ZeroHedge fwiw. (It's a little crude to post here.)

    Kevin I'm not as hopeful as you.

    You know the German reactionaries led by Von Papen thought they could "contain" the National Socialists; Hitler was Chancellor but they had only one other cabinet member (Goering) and he was without portfolio. The reactionaries really thought they had it in the bag. But they had no audacity and no singular purpose; they were outmaneuvered and pushed out before they knew what hit them.

    Same thing is happening to the modern Establishment. And not just in this country.

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    1. What name are you using on zero hedge, or did I not scroll far enough?

      BTW...the Zero Hedge fan club seems as cynical as me and even more conspiratorial in outlook. What's up with that?

      I'm tickled that so many pundits are saying that if the IRS thing had happened under Bush it would be different. News flash for the uneducated...IRS abuse has been going on since FDR at least, LBJ and Nixon were masters of it. What Obama's minions have done more egregiously is to directly connect IRS targeting to the election cycle(s). The EPA has done the same thing.

      The progressive talking heads seem obsessed with the Bush connection to the IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman. Whoop-de-do....Lois Lerner, an SES and level three chieftain [Director]in the IRS, directly responsible organizationally for the abuse now also dates back to Bush and before. Even the lead fog generator for Benghazi, Victoria Nuland, another senior SES, served Clinton, then bush, then Cheney under Bush, and no Obama.

      This sting of SES level institutional bureaucrats do NOT change with administrations, they merely run up a new flag if necessary, which protecting their own flag (yes, an SES has a distinct flag, just like generals). New administrations, when elected, do NOT dispose of these folks because they believe they are the lever pullers that make Washington work....or they can't dispose of them for political reasons...e.g., no SES is without powerful connections in both parties....it is an "appointed" position so they secure it. These are the people who actually run our government.

      An amusing display of ignorance was on display when Jay Carney, and a few others, purported that the IRS is an independent agency....uh, no it isn't, it is part of Treasury under Geithner and now Lew. Both Lew and Geithner are classic examples of the institutional executives embedded in Washington through multiple administrations....with occasional interludes in academia or defense contractor offices. Rumsfeld and Cheney both stared their executive lives in the Nixon west wing and look how long they lasted?

      Your comment about how Von Pappen was deceived by self deception...well, that's a pretty fiar parallel to the elctorate in the USA since Nixon at the least. I liked Bush, for the most part, but truthfully, someone needs to show me how Bush 43's 2nd term was much different than Obama. It wasn't...Bush did not sell his soul (his words), but I think he had it overwhelmed by the institution of governance.

      It seems "normal" to me that both parties feed the senior executives like spawn...I'm from Michigan and until 2011 in my entire lifetime (70 years) the only difference between Dem and Repub was the animal pin in their collar. Time will tell if our current Republican governor is any different long term. The tax structure that destroyed (income tax and single business tax) was devised and implemented by a Republican governor (Milliken). Kevin mentioned that Detroit is broke....not news, Detroit has been broke since the 1980's and is only now making it official....everyone points to white flight as the cause...ignoring the black flight that has followed suit for the same reasons, to the same suburban places. Only people left in Detroit proper are those who cannot afford to move out...and a few in the gentrification set (like my daughter)who can afford the pricey lofts and condos in the new city core district...and hope to one day have ordinary conveniences like grocery stores nearby....and they all carry guns with a CPL license.

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    2. Clarification: I said ...

      These are the people who actually run our government.

      What I meant to say was ...

      These are the people who actually run our government policy.

      The fact is that, with a very few exceptions, they are wonks with almost NO lever pulling skills...which they leave to the civil servants they oversee. They arrived in the heights by shuck and jive for their appointments....frequently moving through civil service grades by job changing every couple years to fabricate a resume of skills that cannot be learned sufficiently to do squat in a mere two years here and there. All shine, no depth.

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    3. Aridog, it was on the 2nd page of comments last night, he uses the same nick.

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  3. I think your comment there was right on the money, lewy.

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  4. I think it is quite natural for people to fear a Nazi like movement coming out of any European or European-American nationalist movement, and I understand where these people are coming from.

    But my people aren't Nazis. We beat the Nazis.

    We aren't German. Nazism was purely a German phenomena.

    We will not simply lay down and die because people are scared of what happened in Germany a lifetime ago.

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    1. A substantial part of the alliance that defeated the Nazi Third Reich was Communist...at least their government was and ruled with an iron fist equal to the Nazis. The primary resistance to the Nazis pre-WWII were Communists in Germany. Franz Von Papen contributed to Hitler's rise and didn't object until his allies were being killed off. Communists were also noisy agitators in the United States pre-WWII especially. Is it possible that Communists could eventually try a coup here?

      Remember, we now have a government with no budget, thus no legislative control over spending. We have a supreme court afraid of being ignored, as lower federal courts already are being ignored...so afraid it plays semantic games with penalty versus tax to avoid displeasing the autocracy. How long before a **Chancellor** is appointed to take over where we've abandoned self-governance?

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    2. Kevin it looks like you misinterpreted my comment about Von Papen.

      [Yet another thing to hate about the Nazis; they're so useful in small slices of analogy but invariably suffer from semantic bleed-through...]

      In short, National Socialists were to German Reactionaries as Progressives are to the Washington Establishment.

      The Establishment decided to get in bed with them - not just the likes of Maureen Dowd, but the likes of Peggy Noonan. Sure, why not coddle the Progs... everyone else is stale and their new shiny will enhance our brand. Coddle, co-opt, control. What could possibly go wrong?

      The various conservative factions of German political and military society were at a similar stalemate in 1932. One failed government after another. They figured some new blood and energy would help and keep the NS from sniping from the sidelines. They were mistaken.

      One thing Hindenburg succeeded in was to compel the betrayal of Ernst Rohm and the SA in the Night of the Long Knives. After that they really figured Hitler was "their guy".

      Perhaps the Democratic Establishment (including its nominally Republican branch) has accumulated too much dirt on the Progressive insurgents, and when they wouldn't betray their own, decided to risk open conflict as they realized the Progs were really getting out of hand.

      What the Establishment will find is that after signing on to the open vilification of half the country for the last 5 years, they will themselves be susceptible to the "you're with us or you're with the teabaggers" threats of the Progressives - who wield plenty of credible soft and hard power and have demonstrated conviction to carry through on their threats. The defenestration of Bob Woodward being the latest example.

      The hard-core cadres are everywhere - are at every business meeting and at every party. Nobody speaks ill of them except at their peril.

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    3. Lewy ... couldn't a similar parallel between the establishment post-revolution in Russia and the hard core Leninist-Stalinist faction?

      I think we are saying similar things. My favorite example of "establishment" today is Victoria Nuland. Her political employment history at the SES level or higher...

      Clinton
      Bush
      Cheney re Bush
      Obama

      You will discover a similar history under the skin of most Beltway establishment senior administrators. Side steps to academia and/or government contractor offices are merely steps up the ladder.

      Next, reference *defenestration* ...a bloodless version has been imposed on our military, to the point where we've had guys like Mullen and Dempsey rise to the top, even McChrystal and Petraeus were conned & canned [and deserved it IMO]. Noteworthy is the fact that since Vietnam, we've had no military theater commanders who served for a *duration* of a conflict or until relieved [fired outright] for failure. How many Generals got their *ticket punched* in Iraq, and now Afghanistan? Oddly, the *ticket punching* routine began in earnest in Vietnam for junior officers, frequently assigned for 6 months of a combat tour and 6 months in country in REMF slots. Any semi-continuity among Junior officers, field grade officers below Colonel, and all NOC's was voluntary on their part by extension or applying for additional tours as soldiers. Much has improved since then, we're back to unit rotations on line, for example, but our senior command continuity is weakened to the point of most being one-battle-wonders, with most hyped exploits more a product of public affairs offices.

      Make no mistake, I admire our military ranks and believe they are faster, stronger, tougher than we ever were in my day...but the most senior ranks have been culled of fighters for promotion of politicians.


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    4. Ari - exactly, the Bolsheviks at the Mencheviks... and the Maoists ate the Bolsheviks...

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  5. And here I was seeing a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel...silly me.

    The media thought they were exempt from the creeping tyranny; they believed with all of their black progressive hearts that they were Obama's buddies, the kool kidz on the block. It's truly funny to see how gobsmacked they are by the news that their hero spied on them, trampling the first amendment after they gave him implicit permission to trample the second.

    Aridog and lewy, I've been hoping the media would turn on O and his ilk like savage dogs protecting a bone. I can see from your comments here and at ZH that I've got my head in the clouds.

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. Just my opinion, but the media are like abused women who repeatedly return to their abusive spouses.

      Worse, I am cynical enough now to suspect this sudden dump of scandals is contrived for a purpose....fog generation. Create enough hoopla and pretty soon nothing deserves hoopla anymore. Everything stinks but we've grown used to it. Anybody recall Fast & Furious?

      Benghazi was serious, very serious...bold faced lying to the electorate and to our allies. Has anyone yet been told just what work was being done in Benghazi? 20+ survivors know...heard anything? Nothing is too much to utilize to distract from Benghazi. The government began the fogging before noon EDT 12 September....that is how serious it was to hide. You can tell by the liberal talking heads dismissing Benghazi as if it is just misunderstanding...but the time lines do not lie, just the politicians.

      This is the guy, Terry Jones , that General Dempsey called in the morning of 12 September 2012, to ask forbearance and advised him that Ambassador Stevens had been killed in a protest over the purported offensive video. Reuters news agency was also notified immediately of the Terry contact and content. Did you know Stevens had been killed before noon EDT on 12 September? Did you?

      Jones the guy on the left of the photo,[taken here where I live] with a gun on his hip. Does he look like a principle contact for the Executive Branch, let alone the Chairman JCS, for international affairs? No? He is a beard used to set the video narrative...and one used before the same way by Gen Petraeus in 2010 vis a vis Korans.

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  6. I'm watching bits and pieces of Holder's hearing right now and it consists of the usual grandstanding and pompous speeches.

    I'm so effing sick of all these guys. I'm frustrated beyond belief.

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