The moist frustrating aspect of President Obama is that once he gives a speech of makes a statement, he doesn’t follow it up.

Americans actually like him and if he would just continue talking about some of these things, the Republicans approval would keep droping.

‘Talk of impeachment is in the air’.

‘It was striking that, asked point blank Sunday on ABC whether Obama should be impeached over Benghazi, Sen. John McCain did not say no’.

‘Instead he said he wanted a select committee to investigate the terrorist attacks that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans on Sept. 11, 2012′.

‘The Clinton era was exhausting’.

‘Some fringe conservatives were convinced that the Clintons were involved in a drug murder in Arkansas and also had killed their good friend Vincent Foster, who in real life, had tragically committed suicide’.

‘The Clintons were investigated endlessly over Whitewater, a real-estate investment that yielded them no money, and special prosecutor Ken Starr then used his office to explore Clinton’s sexual peccadilloes’.

‘That led to Monica Lewinsky, her stained blue dress, impeachment, and Hillary Clinton’s anger at what she called the “vast right-wing conspiracy.”

‘While the economy and Bill Clinton’s approval ratings were good, the daily diet of scandal was wearing on the public’.

‘Unlike Bill Clinton, Obama isn’t handing ammunition to Republicans in the form of self-created personal scandals’.

‘And yet he is presiding over a conflict-ridden era that is, if anything, even more wearying and exasperating than the Clinton era’.

‘The GOP is blocking his judges and Cabinet secretaries, attacking his budget proposals as both too austere and not austere enough, trying to withhold money for a smooth transition to the new health care law, and threatening again to ignore the debt limit and the perils of default’.

‘Now add multiple investigations of the IRS and Benghazi, some warranted and some excessive. Where will it all lead’?

‘Shortly after the September 1998 release of the Starr report (with its graphic sexual references and 11 proposed articles of impeachment), and before they went on to impeach and try Clinton, Republicans contradicted historical patterns by losing House seats’.

‘The public, it turned out, was tired of scandal, investigations, and conflict. Obama can only hope the same dynamic plays out in 2014′.
From : http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/will-the-benghazi-and-irs-probes-do-more-damage-to-obama-or-the-gop-20130513

‘Want a real Washington scandal — one worse than the (phony) Benghazi scandal and the (apparently real, but apparently limited) IRS scandals combined’?

‘Try the continuing, and possibly accelerating, obstruction of executive branch nominees by Senate Republicans’.

‘Don’t think it’s a scandal? It’s pretty basic: Republicans, by abusing their Constitutional powers, are — deliberately, in several cases — preventing the government from carrying out duly passed laws’.

‘The New York Times yesterday highlighted two of the more recent ways that Republicans have manipulated loopholes in Senate rules to delay confirmation of Secretary of Labor nominee Thomas Perez and Environmental Protection Agency nominee Gina McCarthy’.

‘It’s worth stepping back and realizing: what’s happening here is that Republicans are delaying these nominations beyond their eventual insistence that almost all nominees must get 60 votes. In other words, they’re filibustering on top of their own filibusters.

That’s just two examples. There are numerous others; again, with virtually all nominees required to have 60 votes, one can accurately say that Republicans are filibustering every nomination’.

‘But perhaps the worst are the “nullification” filibusters, in which Republicans simply refuse to approve any nominee at all for some positions — the National Labor Relations Board, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — because they don’t want those agencies to carry out their statutory obligations’.

‘In doing so, Republicans are not breaking the rules of the Senate’.

‘They are, however, breaking the Senate itself, and harming the government’.

‘And remember that this is entirely unprecedented. Until very recently, simple majority confirmation was the norm on executive branch nominations with only a handful of exceptions’.

‘Not only that, but both Democrats and Republicans agreed that in almost all cases presidents were entitled to their choices when it came to these posts’.

‘Yes, I know that in the way Washington works, this kind of routine disruption of normal government procedures doesn’t qualify as a Scandal’!

‘But it should’.

‘And while it’s quite proper for those concerned about good government to be outraged by the IRS story, this one is a much bigger deal, and the facts of it are plain for all to see — in fact, the people responsible are openly bragging about what they’re doing’.

‘Now that’s a scandal’.
From : http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/05/13/you-want-a-scandal-heres-a-scandal/

3 layers should do it.

Oh, one more thing. i really love to watch skippy sweat.

From the http://www.dailymail.co.uk

By DAVID MARTOSKO IN WASHINGTON

PUBLISHED: 16:18 EST, 13 May 2013 | UPDATED: 16:20 EST, 13 May 2013

The Internal Revenue Service wrote to the Richmond Tea Party last year demanding to know the names of all its financial donors and volunteers, as part of a 55-question inquisition into its application for tax-exempt status, MailOnline has learned.

The agency wanted to know ‘the names of the donors, contributors, and grantors’ for every year ‘from inception to the present.’

It also demanded ‘the amounts of each of the donations, contributions, and grants and the dates you received them.’

‘How did you use these donations, contributions, and grants?’ the IRS asked. ‘Provide the details.’

And in addition to the names of board members, officers and employees, the nation’s taxing authorities insisted on knowing the names of everyone who helped the Richmond Tea Party without compensation.

‘Please identify your volunteers,’ the January 9, 2012 letter from the IRS read.

The agency also required the Virginia conservative group to provide copies of sections of its website that only its members can access.

The IRS came under fire on Friday when its Office of Inspector General released a draft of an investigative timeline showing that the agency had played political favorites with nonprofit groups seeking tax-exempt status.

In 2010, according to that investigation, the Cincinnati-based IRS office responsible for vetting tax-exempt applications began targeting groups with ‘Tea Party or similar’ words in their names – including words like ‘patriots’ and ’9/12′ – for tighter scrutiny.

The Richmond Tea Party received this demand along with dozens of others from the IRS, asking for a list of its donors and the amounts they had contributed. The group refused, citing their donors’ right to privacy

The IRS ultimately identified approximately 300 such organizations, many of which were independently organized in 2009 and 2010 under the larger ‘tea party’ banner. Those groups had a decisive impact in the 2010 midterm congressional elections, and became a thorn in the side of the Democratic party, costing it race after race, especially in the House of Representatives, which shifted to Republican control.

In the nearly three years since the IRS began looking more closely at conservative nonprofit groups than others, 125 of the 300 target organizations have been approved for tax-exempt status. Another 25 withdrew their applications. The remainder are still waiting.

The Office of Inspector General’s timeline shows that in Washington, senior officials with the IRS were made aware of the practice by at least August 4, 2011. On that date, the chief counsel of the IRS met with the agency’s Rulings and Agreements unit ‘so that everyone would have the latest information on the issue.’

But during a press gaggle about Air Force One on Monday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney insisted the White House was unaware of the investigation or its political implications until last month.

The Rest Of The Story Here..       

Below is Link to list  . Sorry as it gets all jumbled when I try and paste it in. Trust me it’s a good read, providing you have your head protection on.

Link To LIST!!

Vince Lattanzio reports for NBC10 Philadelphia that after 10 days of deliberations and an announcement that they were deadlocked on two charges, the jury in the murder trial of former Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell just reached a verdict.

Guilty! – on 3 of 4 counts of first-degree murder.

Guilty! – of involuntary manslaughter in the death of former patient Karnamaya Mongar.

The jury of seven women and five men weighed more than 250 counts against Gosnell with the most serious being four counts of first-degree murder.

Gosnell, a resident of West Philadelphia, was charged on January 14, 2011 with 263 crimes, including first-degree murder in the deaths of four babies. Prosecutors allege Gosnell delivered the babies alive during abortion procedures and then killed them by snipping their spinal cords with scissors.

The 72-year-old is also charged with third-degree murder in the of former patient Karnamaya Mongar, 41, who died after she was given a lethal dose of pain killers and anesthesia during a 2009 abortion procedure at Gosnell’s West Philadelphia clinic, the Women’s Medical Society.

The majority of the 268 charges levied against Gosnell are related to Pennsylvania abortion-law violations. Whereas his defense attorney argued Gosnell would inject a drug into his patients’ uterus to stop the fetuses’ hearts before they were delivered, prosecutors Joanne Pescatore and Ed Cameron say Gosnell regularly performed late-term abortions on babies older than 24 weeks — the cutoff age in Pennsylvania.

At 24 weeks, a baby can hiccup and begins trial breathing with his own lungs. The baby can now survive outside of the mother’s womb with medical help.

This is what a 24-week-old baby looks like. His name is Toby and he was born premature. Toby is now a healthy 4-year-old boy:

Kermit Gosnell’s crimes came to light on February 10, 2010 after investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Drug Enforcement Agency raided the inner-city clinic at 3801 Lancaster Avenue following a tip that a prescription pill mill was operating inside.

Agents were met, not with an illegal narcotics drug operation, but rather, unsanitary conditions. Investigators testified they found blood-stained rooms, filthy and old equipment and untrained staff. Aborted fetuses were stored in a basement freezer in plastic food containers and bags next to employee lunches. Severed feet from aborted babies were found preserved in jars around the clinic.

Warning! Pictures below!

†

The conditions found inside the clinic led Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams to call the clinic a “house of horrors” in a 2011 grand jury report.

Over the course of the trial which started on March 18 and lasted two months, former clinic employees testified against Gosnell.

Adrienne Moton, 35, was the first to testify that several abortion procedures in court including one where the mother delivered the baby into a toilet. The baby struggled in the bowl before she snipped its neck with scissors. Moton admitted to cutting 10 babies’ necks, calling the snipping  “common practice” at the clinic. One baby boy was nearly 30 weeks old when he was aborted. Gosnell even joked about the baby’s size saying he was so big the baby could have walked to the bus stop.

Lynda Williams, 44, with no formal training and only an 8th grade education, testified how she would administer pain killers and anesthesia acting as the clinic’s anesthesiologist. Williams was the person who delivered four doses of drugs to Mongar during her procedure. She described how the woman’s skin turned gray and her breathing slowed following the last dose. She also admitted to snipping the neck of one of the babies Gosnell is charged with murdering.

Both women pled guilty to third-degree murder in exchange for their testimony against Gosnell. They face 60-120 years in prison.

Other workers described babies being born alive, watching them breathe and seeing their limbs move before being “snipped.” Some described the babies as “aliens” who squealed and made odd noises, others said it would “rain fetuses” in the clinic.

During her opening arguments on March 18, prosecutor Pescatore told jurors that for Gosnell, his abortion practice was all about the money. “He had high volume and maximum profit,” she said. Police found $250,000 in cash during a 2010 search of his home.

Prosecutors claimed Gosnell would upcharge for pain killers and let the patients choose the amount of anesthesia they wanted. They were broken down into four categories — local, heavy, twilight and custom.

Pescatore also said Gosnell, who is black, would treat patients differently based on their race. White women would be taken to cleaner exam rooms and be treated directly by Gosnell. Black women would get dirty rooms and unlicensed workers.

†

This is for all the babies murdered by Kermit Gosnell, and for the hundreds of millions of babies aborted in America and across the world:

~Eowyn

“Jay walking”

Guilty on the other 248 charges 

After 10 days deliberating the case, jurors say they can’t reach a consensus on two 

By Vince Lattanzio

|  Monday, May 13, 2013  |  Updated 11:40 AM EDT

Defense attorney Jack McMahon delivers his closing argument in the capital murder trial of former abortion doctor Jack McMahon.

The jury deliberating in the capital murder trial against former Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell says they’re hung on two counts.

The jury of seven women and five men are weighing more than 250 charges against the Gosnell with the most serious being four counts of first-degree murder.

It is currently unclear on which charges the jury is deadlocked, but the group told the court it has reached unanimous decisions on all other counts.

Around 10:00 a.m. Monday, the jury passed a note to Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey P. Minehart explaining their situation. The admission came on the 10th day of deliberations.

By law, according to attorneys for both sides, Judge Minehart is required to re-instruct the jury to deliberate on the two charges a second time and attempt to reach a verdict.

Around 10:00 a.m. Monday, the jury passed a note to Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey P. Minehart explaining their situation. The admission came on the 10th day of deliberations.

By law, according to attorneys for both sides, Judge Minehart is required to re-instruct the jury to deliberate on the two charges a second time and attempt to reach a verdict.

udge Minehart brought the jury into the courtroom on the third-floor of the Philadelphia Criminal Justice Center around 11:15 a.m.

Over a five minute meeting, he reminded the jury they must be unanimous on all counts and asked the group to return to the jury room and discuss the charges further. The group was grim-faced as they were led from the court.

Judge Minehart called the jury sincere, considerate and serious. The judge also said he wanted to make sure the group was not confused over the charges.

The jury now has three options: return to court with a question, request to re-examine evidence to try and break the deadlock or re-iterate they’ll be unable to reach a consensus on the charges.

Gosnell faces four counts of first-degree murder for his alleged role in the deaths of four babies. Prosecutors allege Gosnell delivered the babies alive during abortion procedures and then snipped their spinal cords with scissors to end their life.

The 72-year-old is also charged with third-degree murder in the of former patient Karnamaya Mongar.

Mongar, 41, died after she was given a lethal dose of pain killers and anesthesia during a 2009 abortion procedure at Gosnell’s West Philadelphia clinic, the Women’s Medical Society.

The former doctor’s defense attorney has argued Gosnell would inject a drug into his patients’ uterus to stop the fetuses’ hearts before they were delivered.

The majority of the 268 charges levied against Gosnell are related to alleged Pennsylvania abortion-law violations. Prosecutors say Gosnell regularly performed late-term abortions on babies older than 24 weeks — the cutoff age in Pennsylvania.

Jurors are also deliberating a handful of crimes against Gosnell’s co-defendant Eileen O’Neill. Prosecutors say O’Neill deceived patients and insurance companies by pretending to be a licensed physician and billing for those services.

Her defense has said while O’Neill was not licensed, she did have a medical degree and would always have Gosnell sign off on her recommendations and prescriptions. O’Neill’s attorney also said there is no evidence of the 56-year-old charging for her services.

The trial, which began on March 18, stretched on for nearly two months before being handed off to the jury.

The alleged crimes came to light on February 10, 2010 after investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Drug Enforcement Agency raided the inner-city clinic at 3801 Lancaster Avenue following a tip that a prescription pill mill was operating inside.

Agents were met, not with an illegal narcotics drug operation, but rather, unsanitary conditions. Investigators testified they found blood-stained rooms, filthy and old equipment and untrained staff. Aborted fetuses were stored in a basement freezer in plastic food containers and bags next to employee lunches. Severed feet from aborted babies were found preserved in jars around the clinic.

The conditions found inside the clinic led Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams to call the clinic a “house of horrors” in a 2011 grand jury report.

If convicted of first-degree murder, Gosnell faces the death penalty.

 http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Gosnell-Murder-Deliberations-Stretch-into-10th-Day-207178491.html

~Steve~

The University of Southern California (USC) is no different.

A month ago, I wrote about an aging loser of a political science professor at USC, Adjunct Assistant Professor Darry Sragow, who used classroom time to bash white people, Republicans, and conservatives, although he himself is white.

How is Sragow an academic loser?

“Assistant Professor” is the title of the lowest rung of professorship — typically of  young fresh-out-of-grad-schools Ph.D.s.  “Adjunct” means Sragow is hired only on a year-by-year basis. All of which means that Sragow was hired as a junior Assistant Professor in another college or university many years ago but was denied tenure there. So now he makes his living drifting from one university to another as an Adjunct.

In other words, Darry Sragow is a loser — a failure in academe. How can I say this so confidently? Because I know academe, having gone through the ranks, from young assistant professor, to tenured associate professor, to full professor, to full professor emeritus. I had never ever misused my authority as a professor to use the classroom to advance my partisanship or to hurl insults at political figures.

Now comes news that another USC political science prof, Richard Dekmejian, has also been caught on video using his class as a platform for bashing conservatives.

Oliver Darcy and Josiah Ryan report for Campus Reform, May 7, 2013, that student Tyler Talgo secretly recorded Dekmejian’s 20-minute rant in a political science class in Fall 2012.

In the video, Dekmejian claims former President George W. Bush suffered from mental instability and stupidity during his time in office. He said Bush was bound by “serious intellectual and mental problems” and must have been “stupid or lying” to initiate Operation Iraqi Freedom for the reason of promoting democracy.

Dekmejian also leveled a number of derogatory comments against members of the Bush administration, alleging both Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice “lied” to the American people during their service. The professor instructed his students that “You have to use that term [lying] people. Don’t use that term mislead.”

Dekmejian also accused Christians of salivating over violence in the Middle East: “The right wing evangelical community… these are the people who get happy on television every time there is a conflict in the Middle East. They think that the book of revelation tells them that the messiah…the Christian messiah, Jesus is going to come…all we need is a war in the Middle East involving Israel and the Arabs.”

Dekmejian did, however, praise former President Jimmy Carter (D) for his service during and after his presidency: “He’s still going around doing good things by the way, Carter. That Carter, very respectable.”

Elizabeth Garrett, provost and senior vice president for Academic Affairs at USC, told Campus Reform in a written statement that “faculty members are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subjects. The freedom to take unpopular positions and the freedom to express those positions publicly are at the foundation of what it means to be a faculty member of a university. One of the most important principles of an academic community has been that academic inquiry and discussion be free from censorship or undue outside control.”

Blah, blah, blah.

But for Garrett, “academic freedom” seems only to apply to faculty but not to students. She noted that USC’s student code of conduct “expressly prohibits” students from videotaping their professors in the classroom, but declined to say whether Talgo would be disciplined for releasing his video of Professor Dekmejian to the public.

Here’s the video of Dekmejian:

Richard Dekmejian is a full professor of political science. Surprisingly for a full professor, Dekmejian’s faculty profile lists only his “conference and other presentations” and his university service, but no book or even a refereed journal article. On Rate My Professors, on a scale of 1 to 5 (with 5 signifying “excellent”), he scored an overall rating of a decidedly mediocre 3.4.

Here’s Dekmejian’s contact info:

E-mail: dekmejia@usc.edu
Phone: (213) 821-3943
Office: VKC 327

I searched for the Chair of the USC Political Science Department, but cannot find who he/she is. To contact the department:

email: posc@college.usc.edu
Phone: 213-740-6998

To contact USC’s President:

C. L. Max Nikias, President
Office of the President
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089-4019
Phone: (213) 740-2111; (213) 821-1342
email: president@usc.edu

~Eowyn

And who can forget all of the Republican’s Oversight hearings with each of these deaths…….

Except that there weren’t any Republican Oversight hearings……..

Now tell me how the Republicans aren’t making Benghazi political.

(AP) Some U.S. diplomats and officials who have been killed while working abroad:
_2008: American diplomat and humanitarian aid official, John Granville, shot to death in his car in Khartoum, Sudan.

_2006: David Foy, a facilities maintenance officer at the U.S. embassy in Karachi, Pakistan, killed by a suicide bomber slamming into the diplomat’s car outside the U.S. consulate on the eve of President Bush’s trip to the country.

_2004: Edward Seitz, an agent with the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, killed when a rebel-fired rocket or mortar shell crashes into the trailer where he sleeps at an American base near the Baghdad airport.

_2002: Laurence Foley, U.S. Agency for International Development officer, gunned down in Amman, Jordan.

_2002: Barbara J. Green, an embassy worker in Pakistan, killed when a man hurled grenades into a church in Islamabad. She was in the process of becoming a full-time embassy employee.

_1998: 12 Americans killed in embassy bombing in Nairobi, Kenya.

_1995: Consulate workers Gary C. Durell, a communications technician, and Jacqueline K. Van Landingham, a secretary, killed by unidentified gunmen in Karachi, Pakistan.

_1993: Freddie Woodruff, reported CIA officer, shot dead outside Tbilisi, Georgia, in what was perhaps a robbery attempt.

_1989: Army Col. James Rowe assassinated by the New People’s Army in Manila, the Philippines.

_1988: Capt. William Nordeen, defense attache at embassy in Greece, killed by terror group November 17 in Athens.

_1988: Marine Corps Lt. Col. William R. Higgins kidnapped and murdered by Iranian-backed terrorists while serving with a U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon.

_1985: Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique Camarena Salazar and his pilot kidnapped, tortured and executed under the orders of narcotrafficker Rafael Cero Quintero in Mexico.

_1984: William Buckley, CIA station chief in Beirut, Lebanon, kidnapped and murdered by the Islamic Jihad.

_1983: 17 Americans killed by suicide truck-bomb attack on embassy in Beirut, Lebanon.

_1983: Navy Capt. George Tsantos assassinated in 1983 by terror group November 17 in Greece.

_1979: Adolph Dubs, ambassador to Afghanistan, kidnapped by Islamic extremists and killed in gunfire exchange with Afghan security forces.

_1978: Francis E. Meloy Jr., ambassador to Lebanon, assassinated.

_1975: Richard Welch, CIA station chief in Athens, Greece, assassinated by the terror group November 17.

_1974: Rodger Davies, ambassador to Cyprus, assassinated in Nicosia.

_1973: Cleo Noel, ambassador to Sudan, assassinated at the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Khartoum by Yasser Arafat’s Black September group. Also killed was senior embassy officer George Curtis Moore.

_1970: USAID police adviser Dan Mitrione kidnapped in Montevideo, Uruguay, by the Tupamaros terrorist group; his body was found more than a month later.

_1968: Gordon Mein, ambassador to Guatemala, assassinated in Guatemala City by a rebel faction.

___

Sources: U.S. Department of State, American Foreign Service Association and news articles.
From : http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-01-01-2036205597_x.htmhttp://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-01-01-2036205597_x.htm

‘Conservative Republican New York Times Columnist David Brooks has been getting a lot of analysis on issues correct (here, here) with a few missteps. Following is the exchange he had with David Gregory on Meet The Press Today’.

‘David Gregory:

“David Brooks as we, talk again about Benghazi, here this morning, what’s new this morning, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee is falling short of saying this was Hillary Clinton and President Obama’s fault. But he does say the administration essentially directed the intelligence community to back off what they wanted to say”.

‘David Brooks:

“There is an underlying narrative here which I actually think is wrong”.

“The underlying narrative is it says this bunch of technically pure nonpolitical and then they produce a product which is then doctored by a bunch of political people either at State or at the Whitehouse”;

“My reading of the evidence is that a very terrible event happened at a CIA, basically a CIA facility, they went into intense blame shifting mode, trying to shift responsibility onto the State Department, onto anywhere else, and the State Department pushed back”.

“They said no, it is not our fault. It’s you facility”.

“And so they push back and they say why we are suddenly releasing information that we haven’t been releasing so far”.

“So the CIA was super aggressive, there was some pushback, out of that bureaucratic struggle all the talking points were reduced to mush and then politics was inserted into it”.

“So I don’t think we should necessarily say this is politics intruding on a CIA pure operation”.

‘Earlier in the show Chairman of the Oversight And Government Reform Committee Rep Darrell Issa (R-CA) tried to give the impression that this was a real story in which the administration was not answering questions because it was hiding something’.

‘Ultimately he had nothing substantive that indicated either the President or Secretary of State Clinton did anything wrong’.

‘When David Gregory showed with graphic that there was nothing astonishing about the event compared to the number of Americans and diplomats that have sadly lost their lives on missions overseas through Republican and Democratic presidencies alike, Issa tried to change the subject’.

‘Issa even lied about Ambassador Pickering who was sitting next to him. Issa said Ambassador Pickering refused to come before his committee. Pickering jumped in before his time to speak and said it was not true. Pickering said he told them the day before the hearing he was willing to appear and Issa’s committee said he was not welcomed at that hearing and that he could come at another time’.
From : http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/05/13/conservative-republican-david-brooks-gives-correct-perspective-to-benghazi-tragedy-video/

‘Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates forcefully defended the Obama administration against charges that it did not do enough to prevent the tragedy in Benghazi, telling CBS News that some critics of the administration have a “cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces.”

‘Said Gates: “Frankly, had I been in the job at the time, I think my decisions would have been just as theirs were.”
From : http://politicalwire.com/archives/2013/05/13/gates_would_have_handled_benghazi_same_way.html

I’ve been getting a lot of ‘click’s’ and some really crazy responses to this post I did back in February.

And by crazy I mean really crazy.

Almost every ‘response’ cites that ‘only one American was killed’.

How does that diminish that fact that there were 11 Embassy’s attacked and 52 people were killed?

Ask any one who works in the Foreign Service and they will tell you that there ‘mission’ is to be an extension’ of America – our principles and values – to the peoples of other Countries.

The people that were killed, many of them worked for the Embassys or provided services or were there for assistance or maybe were just passing by.

But go ahead and look the members of their families in the eye and tell them that since they aren’t ‘Americans’, their deaths don’t count.

Go to England, France, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Germany and tell the family members of those who have died in terrorists attacks that since they weren’t ‘Americans’, they don’t matter.

We are in a World wide war on terror.

It’s not a war on terror against Americans.

It’s a war on terror.

To make less of the deaths of anyone killed in a terrorists attack because they were’t ‘Americans’, is to prevert ‘American Exceptionalism’.

Can YOU name the 11 Embassys attacked under President Little Bush?

Wonder why?

The Democrats didn’t politicize them.

‘While there have been two embassy attacks and four deaths during the four-plus years of the Obama administration, this represents a significant slowdown in such violence’.

‘During the eight years of the Bush administration there were eleven such attacks on U.S. embassies and consulates, with 52 deaths. So why are these attacks suddenly front and center in the headlines, even as they become more rare’?

‘Benghazi was the first embassy attack to be politicized, as republicans in congress attempted to turn the attack into a scandal or controversy in an effort to hinder Obama’s reelection bid, and more recently to hamper any future presidential ambitions of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’.

‘None of the eleven attacks during the Bush adminstration were politicized by democrats in congress’.
From : http://www.stableytimes.com/news/under-obama-there-have-been-2-embassy-attacks-and-4-deaths-under-bush-there-were-11-embassy-attacks-and-52-deaths/1341/

Here are the 11 Embassys attacked under President Little Bush :
June 14, 2002, U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan
Suicide bomber kills 12 and injures 51.
February 20, 2003, international diplomatic compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Truck bomb kills 17.

February 28, 2003, U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan
Gunmen on motorcycles killed two consulate guards.

July 30, 2004, U.S. embassy in Taskkent, Uzbekistan
Suicide bomber kills two.

December 6, 2004, U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Militants stormed and occupied perimeter wall. Five killed, 10 wounded.

March 2, 2006, U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan
Suicide car bomber killed four, including a U.S. diplomate directly targeted by the assailants.

September 12, 2006, U.S. embassy in Damascus, Syria
Gunmen attacked embassy with grenades, automatic weapons, and a car bomb (though second truck bomb failed to detonate). One killed and 13 wounded.

January 12, 2007, U.S. embassy in Athens, Greece
A rocket-propelled grenade was fired at the embassy building. No one was injured.

July 9, 2008, U.S. consulate in Istanbul, Turkey
Armed men attacked consulate with pistols and shotguns. Three policemen killed.

March 18, 2008, U.S. embassy in Sana’a, Yemen
Mortar attack misses embassy, hits nearby girls’ school instead.

September 17, 2008, U.S. embassy in Sana’a, Yemen
Militants dressed as policemen attacked the embassy with RPGs, rifles, grenades and car bombs. Six Yemeni soldiers and seven civilians were killed. Sixteen more were injured.
From : http://m.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/12/1130950/-If-diplomatic-attacks-are-a-sign-of-weakness-Bush-was-the-weakest-of-all

Jiggs McDonald, NHL Hall of Fame broadcaster speaking in Orillia, Ontario, says, “I am truly perplexed that so many of my friends are against another mosque being built in Toronto. I think it should be the goal of every Canadian to be tolerant regardless of their religious beliefs. Thus the mosque should be allowed, in an effort to promote tolerance.”

“That is why I also propose that two nightclubs be opened next door to the mosque, thereby promoting tolerance from within the mosque. We could call one of the clubs, a gay club, ‘The Turban Cowboy,’ and the other a topless bar called ‘You Mecca Me Hot.’”

~Steve~

——————————————————————————————

MAY 10, 2013  POSTED BY ALEX KOPPELMAN

http://www.newyorker.com

SPINNING BENGHAZI

It’s a cliché, of course, but it really is true: in Washington, every scandal has a crime and a coverup. The ongoing debate about the attack on the United States facility in Benghazi where four Americans were killed, and the Obama Administration’s response to it, is no exception. For a long time, it seemed like the idea of a coverup was just a Republican obsession. But now there is something to it.

On Friday, ABC News’s Jonathan Karl revealed the details of the editing process for the C.I.A.’s talking points about the attack, including the edits themselves and some of the reasons a State Department spokeswoman gave for requesting those edits. It’s striking to see the twelve different iterations that the talking points went through before they were released to Congress and to United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, who used them in Sunday show appearances that became a central focus of Republicans’ criticism of the Administration’s public response to the attacks. Over the course of about twenty-four hours, the remarks evolved from something specific and fairly detailed into a bland, vague mush.

From the very beginning of the editing process, the talking points contained the erroneous assertion that the attack was “spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved.” That’s an important fact, because the right has always criticized the Administration based on the suggestion that the C.I.A. and the State Department, contrary to what they said, knew that the attack was not spontaneous and not an outgrowth of a demonstration. But everything else about the changes that were made is problematic. The initial draft revealed by Karl mentions “at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi” before the one in which four Americans were killed. That’s not in the final version. Nor is this: “[W]e do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qa’ida participated in the attack.” That was replaced by the more tepid “There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.” (Even if we accept the argument that State wanted to be sure that extremists were involved, and that they could be linked to Al Qaeda, before saying so with any level of certainty—which is reasonable and supported by evidence from Karl’s reporting—that doesn’t fully explain these changes away.)

Democrats will argue that the editing process wasn’t motivated by a desire to protect Obama’s record on fighting Al Qaeda in the run-up to the 2012 election. They have a point; based on what we’ve seen from Karl’s report, the process that went into creating and then changing the talking points seems to have been driven in large measure by two parts of the government—C.I.A. and State—trying to make sure the blame for the attacks and the failure to protect American personnel in Benghazi fell on the other guy.

But the mere existence of the edits—whatever the motivation for them—seriously undermines the White House’s credibility on this issue. This past November (after Election Day), White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that “The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because ‘consulate’ was inaccurate.”

Remarkably, Carney is sticking with that line even now. In his regular press briefing on Friday afternoon (a briefing that was delayed several times, presumably in part so the White House could get its spin in order, but also so that it could hold a <href=”#.uy1gksebagw.twitter”>secretive pre-briefing briefing with select members of the White House press corps), he said:

The only edit made by the White House or the State Department to those talking points generated by the C.I.A. was a change from referring to the facility that was attacked in Benghazi from “consulate,” because it was not a consulate, to “diplomatic post”… it was a matter of non-substantive factual correction. But there was a process leading up to that that involved inputs from a lot of agencies, as is always the case in a situation like this and is always appropriate.

This is an incredible thing for Carney to be saying. He’s playing semantic games, telling a roomful of journalists that the definition of editing we’ve all been using is wrong, that the only thing that matters is who’s actually working the keyboard. It’s not quite re-defining the word “is,” or the phrase “sexual relations,” but it’s not all that far off, either.

~Steve~                                H/T My Bud I-Man

Evangelical Pastor: How does the church justify the sin of silence on abortion?

by Rolley Haggard – LifeSiteNews – May 3, 2013

Pro-Life Activism Is Not a Mission of the Church. It Is THE Mission of the Church.

Now that I have your attention, permit me to explain.

There’s an ongoing debate in Reformed and Evangelical circles regarding the mission of the church. That’s good, because the Body of Christ needs to be clear on what the Head expects the hands and feet to be doing.

But the way one frames the question can greatly affect the answer. So we need to make sure we’re rightly framing the question.

Rightly Framing the Question

More often than not, the question “What is the mission of the church?” is framed so as to give either the exclusive mission, or the comprehensive mission, rather than the primary mission. As important as the first two are, the third is, by definition, the most important.

Exclusive mission means those things that the church and the church alone has responsibility for. There is no serious debate regarding the exclusive mission of the church. All parties are pretty much agreed that the church’s exclusive mission is to minister the Word of God, particularly in fulfillment of the Great Commission. If the church doesn’t do that, no one else will.

Comprehensive mission means all things the church has responsibility for. The comprehensive mission of the Church is what the aforementioned debate centers on. It involves determining what things are “official” church responsibilities and what things are not.

Primary mission means those things that are the church’s most important responsibilities: the things she will be held most accountable for by Christ. Unfortunately, neither side of the debate is giving much consideration to this, and, incredibly, it is falling through the cracks. Christ and His apostles laid it out so plainly it is difficult to understand how we are overlooking it, but we are.

The Church’s Primary Mission

So what is the church’s primary mission, her most important responsibility? Jesus summed it up in what He called “the first and great commandment”: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Matthew 22:37). He linked it inextricably with “the second [commandment]” which He said is “like unto [the first]: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (v. 39). “On these two commandments,” He asserted, “hang all the law and the prophets” (v. 40).

The apostle Paul was even more concise: “All the law,”  he wrote, “is fulfilled in one word . . . love. . . .”

Biblical examples of the primacy of love could be listed almost endlessly. The church’s primary responsibility, collectively and individually, is to love God and people. God is pro-people and expects His body, the church, to be likewise. It is impossible to be an obedient Christian or an obedient church without loving people, for to love people for God’s sake is to love God. It is hard to imagine anything being more clear. And yet.

We’ve Made Our Highest Priority Our Lowest

The church—the evangelical church in particular—is guilty of a spectacular sin of omission when it comes to loving people, especially the people Jesus referred to as “the least of these”: those we deem least important and easiest to neglect.

No people in America better fit the description “the least of these” than pre-born babies whose mothers choose, often under pressure and with subsequent regret, to abort them. Fifty-five million murdered now makes us statistically nearly ten times worse than the Nazis. And by “us” I mean the church, because it is largely our collective silence that has enabled the butchery to continue virtually unopposed.

I’m an evangelical, and I’ve been asking myself for four decades, how on earth does the church justify such egregious sins of omission as silence on abortion? The answers I’ve found center on the same thing: worldview. We rationalize our culpable inaction on the basis of flawed worldview.

We think we have a biblical worldview, and in many essential ways we do (that’s why I’m still an evangelical). But in many other, equally essential ways, we do not. I described two examples of flawed worldview impinging on the abortion issue in previous BreakPoint articles, here and here. This whole question about the mission of the church is a third. Owing to a defective worldview on the Church’s mission we have effectively made our highest priority our lowest.

The Rationale

There are at least two key aspects to the misguided rationale for our neglect of the church’s primary mission, love.

First, sins of omission are easier to commit and justify than sins of commission. A study published in “Psychological Science” suggests that this is because people know others will think worse of them if they do something bad, than if they merely let something bad happen.

Second, we mistakenly think we are loving people as we ought simply by sharing the gospel with them. The church today is characterized by words without works.

True, the words we share are the words of God. But we forget that talk is cheap, and we assume that because we speak God’s words our sparse actions are excusable, that our merely saying “be warmed and filled” is somehow reckoned an acceptable substitute for actually filling the need.

But even the words of God are cheap if the life dispensing them does not show the love of God it preaches. That is the whole point of James, chapter 2. We say “God is love,” yet demonstrate by our self-absorbed Christianity that this means exactly nothing except “God is willing to overlook the sins of those who speak well of Jesus, act religious, and win souls.”

This is not Christianity. And yet it is; it is what we have made of it. The body of Christ has more resemblance to the insular Pharisee avoiding lepers than to the unselfconscious Good Samaritan showing—not speaking, but showing—compassion for the needy, regardless of cost.

There is no difference between one who says “be warmed and filled” and does nothing, and one who says “I’m pro-life” and does nothing. Faith without works is dead; love without action is not love.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “The Church is the Church only when it exists for others.” The German Evangelical Church ignored him, and innocents within the borders of the Reich were slaughtered by the trainload, without opposition. Ironically, we vilify the German Evangelical Church.

Pro-life activism is not a mission of the Church; it is the mission of the church because the mission of the church is loving people. If we are to be the Body of Christ we must care about “the least of these” as our Master did. That, or quit calling ourselves the church.

* * *

“Lord, when saw we Thee naked, an unloved fetus, and did not march, did not preach, did not vote or write letters or hold signs, did not agonize over Thee, did not advocate for Thee?”

* * *

Transfiguration

How like this little fetus, Holy God,
You writhed, enwombed in suffocating pain,
Until sharp instruments unpumped your blood
And left your form transfigured to a stain.
How like a loving mother’s natal pine
Your prayer, encrypted as a primal groan,
Umbilical from heaven’s soul to mine,
Proved you unwilling to unpair your own.
How like a wand commanding miracles
Your hand, atwitch in death, transmuted blood
Of murder into healing pharmicals,
Coagulating evil into good.
How like one crucified, my little boy
Now makes me, sick with wellness, retch in joy.

(Dedicated to the precious women who profoundly regret their abortions)

If I could talk to this man, and others in his position, I would apologize. I would tell him, “You have no faith in our president, and you shouldn’t. Do not trust him. Many Americans do not trust him either.

“Sadly, there is a large group, seemingly a majority, in our country who are content to vote for someone based on his appearance, adeptness at social media, and support of fashionable causes that make some people feel good about themselves, like gay marriage or free contraception. The rest of us remain embarrassed and chagrined to be governed by such a man. We long for a leader like those we have had before, who shaped coherent foreign policy that served the interests of us and our allies, and who promoted a free society rather than one dependent on governmental babysitting and impressed by political posturing. As much as in us is, we continue to fight for that kind of a country.

“But it remains to be seen whether or not that fight is lost; whether or not we will continue down the foolish road, secularized and desensitized, already trod by so many European nations, and which has rendered them minor players on the world stage, mired down in the economic snarl created by leaders whose ideology matches President Obama’s.

“So look to yourselves, and in all reality, do not count Barack Obama and his administration to intervene should you find yourselves in peril, but do not forget us. We are fighting for victory in our country, and yet it is by no means won. Our position as a force to be reckoned with on the international stage still holds, but is growing weaker, and we still have years to go of this administration, and the likelihood is great that after Obama, Hillary Clinton will be president, continuing his disastrous agenda.

“Finally, the Body of Christ in this country reaches out to our brothers and sisters worldwide. Pray for us, as we pray for you.

“Sincerely,

Katharine

So……You had the E Mails back in February……..And nobody had any problem with them…….But NOW you want us to think you JUST learned about them…..

So……

Rep Darrell Issa ‘dumps’ classified State Department communications detailing names of people in Lybia helping us……..

Rep. Darrell Issa has an open hearing revealing that the ‘Mission’ in Benghazi was really a classified CIA operation…..

And now you ‘demand‘ the release of E Mails that you had back in February…..

So what exactly is the ‘cover up’ now?

Takling points?

Who really has harmed American interests more and who is making this just political?

‘Republican members of Congress raised no objections when they first saw internal emails detailing the evolution of the administration’s talking points on Benghazi almost two months ago, senior administration officials said in response to a question from Salon today, and House Speaker John Boehner declined to attend or send a representative to that briefing’.

‘Lawyers with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence briefed House and Senate Intelligence Committee members in March about the emails, which ABC News released today to much hullabaloo, after officials said they would make them available to members of Congress in February’.

‘The emails about the September 2012 attack on the diplomatic post in Libya were shared with members of Congress during negotiations over the confirmation of CIA Director John Brennan’.

‘If Republicans had had major problems with what the emails revealed, they probably would have said something at the time and not confirmed Brennan 63-34, White House spokesperson Jay Carney said during his daily press briefing this afternoon’.

“This is an effort to accuse the administration of hiding something that we did not hide,” Carney said’.
From : http://www.salon.com/2013/05/10/wh_republicans_had_no_concerns_about_benghazi_emails/

(Newser) – ‘Some Congressmen are really, really bad at keeping a secret’.

‘In their zeal to embarrass the Obama administration over the attack on the Benghazi consulate, House Republicans “accidentally blew the CIA’s cover” in a hearing yesterday, Dana Milbank alleges in the Washington Post’.

‘Oversight Committee members didn’t come right out and say that the “annex” Americans retreated to was a CIA base, but they might as well have’.

‘Rep. Jason Chaffetz, for instance, objected to a satellite photo of the site, saying, “I was told specifically while I was in Libya I could not and should not ever talk about what you’re showing here.”

‘Darrell Issa belatedly ordered the photo hidden, since it “may still in fact be a facility of the United States government.”

‘Lawmakers revealed that there had been a “rapid response force” run by some “other government agency,” which, Issa revealed, was not the FBI’.

‘Gee, Milbank quips, “maybe they were referring to the Department of Agriculture.”

‘What’s more, their slip means that blame they’re attempting to lay at the door of the State Department really belongs with the CIA, Milbank notes’.

‘Issa eventually ended the hearing in favor of a classified briefing. “Good idea,” Milbank writes. “Too bad he didn’t think of that before putting the CIA on CSPAN.”
From : http://www.newser.com/story/155607/congress-just-blew-the-cias-cover-in-libya.html

Dana Milbank’s post :

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-letting-us-in-on-a-secret/2012/10/10/ba3136ca-132b-11e2-ba83-a7a396e6b2a7_story.html