Tag Archives: morality

Extortion

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Fox News is reporting that the

White House confirmed Thursday that President Obama is prepared to veto legislation that would skirt the so-called “fiscal cliff”—a battery of tax hikes and spending cuts—unless Republicans consent to raise taxes on top earners.

Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama plainly willing to see our economy collapse into another recession every bit as deep as the one from which we’ve not yet recovered solely for the sake of the ego of his getting his way on tax increases.  Obama demands to raise taxes on the 2% of the wealthiest of Americans while leaving taxes alone for the remaining 98% of us.  That’s his number, 2%.  Even though his tax increases will impact far more Americans than that (like anyone with income over $250k—small businesses, for instance, which pass through their incomes to the mom and pop owners/partners for tax payment), let’s take his number for argument’s sake.  What Obama is saying is that he’ll cheerfully blow up our economic future because he can only get 98% of what he claims to want: unchanged taxes for the 98% of the rest of us.

This makes crystalline what Obama really wants: those taxes on that group of Americans which he despises so much.  Obama doesn’t care a whit about the middle class or the poor, whom he could help by calling off his self-imposed gridlock.  He’s only concerned about the rush he’ll get from getting his way and getting over on that unacceptable group of citizens.

But this failure goes far beyond petty ego or the damage done to our economic future; it hits at our ability to protect ourselves from our enemies.  By vetoing any bill that doesn’t have his precious tax increases, even though it would walk us back from the fiscal cliff (just a bit over two months off), he’ll also be vetoing any bill that would end the sequester of an additional nearly half-trillion dollars from our military capacity beyond the already built-in nearly half-trillion dollar cut in spending for defense.  This is having, today, a negative effect on defense-related jobs.  Worse, the veto will put our military’s welfare, training, equipage, and capacity in serious jeopardy.

Here is extortion the Chicago way.  Nice economy you got there….

Three Things

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In preparation for tonight’s third Presidential debate, this time focusing on foreign policy, James Rosen, of Fox News fame, suggested via The Wall Street Journal, three questions to be explored concerning the Benghazi fiasco during which an American Ambassador and three of his fellows were murdered in a terrorist attack.

Rosen’s first question is this:

[T]he facts of the “pre” period before the attacks will tell us how high up the chain, and in which agencies, fateful decisions were made about security precautions for the consulate and annex in Benghazi.  We also stand to learn how the planning for the attacks could have been put in motion without being detected until too late.

We know that the Obama administration has claimed ignorance of the facts (in Vice President Joe Biden’s case, explicitly so).  We know, also, that Charlene Lamb, the Assistant Secretary of State for International Programs, Bureau of Diplomatic Security, in sworn testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, averred that the right amount of security was in place “as agreed” prior to the attack.  We also know from security correspondence, from the late Ambassador Stevens’ correspondence, and from the sworn testimony before that same House committee by the in-country security leadership that multiple requests for enhanced security had been rejected in the months and weeks just preceding the attack.

Rosen’s second question is this, concerning the hours of the attack itself [link added]:

A State Department briefing on Oct 9 offered an account that was riveting but incomplete.  When all of the facts of these hours are compiled, we will have a truer picture of the tactical capabilities of al Qaeda and its affiliates in North Africa.  We will also learn what really happened to Ambassador Stevens that night….

We know, for instance, that there was no crowd of protestors, much less rioters, near the consulate in the hours preceding the terrorist attack, both from that 9 Oct briefing and from video taken from the consulate.  Yet, in addition to Rosen’s capabilities question, there arises the matter of the administration, for two weeks, insisting that the attack was the result of rioting over a YouTube video, even though information to the contrary was available, both during and within hours after the attack.

Rosen’s third question is this, concerning that period of days following the terrorist attack:

[The time frame] stretches eight days—from 3:40 pm on Sep 11, when the consulate was first rocked by gunfire and explosions, through the morning of Sep 19, when Matthew G Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, publicly testified before the Senate that Benghazi was a terrorist attack.

We have the above strong indications—from on-scene—that the attack was a terrorist assault, and we have Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s false claim of having termed it so the day after in a Rose Garden speech.  We also have his UN Ambassador Susan Rice four days later going on five different Sunday talk shows and claiming that the attack was a protest against that video and not a terrorist attack.  This claim was repeated by various members of Obama’s immediate staff over the next several days, and it was even repeated by Obama himself at his UN speech nearly a week after Olsen’s testimony.

It’ll also be interesting to see whether, in the aftermath of Candy Crowley’s interference in the second debate, the moderator of this debate, Bob Schieffer, will allow the questions to be explored, and if so, whether Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney will do so (and if so, whether he’ll do so with less of the clumsiness he displayed in the second debate).

Another Thought on Racism in Education

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Florida’s Department of Education has set race-based goals for its K-12 students (the Florida’s DoE Strategic Plan can be found here and here.  For reading, these goals are

  • Asian students: 90% reading at or above grade level
  • White students: 88% reading at or above grade level of white students,
  • Hispanic students: 81% reading at or above grade level
  • Black students: 74% reading at or above grade level
  • American Indian students: 82% at or above grade level

The math goals are

  • Asian students: 92% at or above grade level
  • White students: 86% at or above grade level
  • Hispanic students: 80% at or above grade level
  • Black students: 74% at or above grade level
  • American Indian students: 81% at or above grade level

These are not trivial differences.  Education Sector’s Director of Strategic Communications, Kristen Amundson, notes

I understand that this is recognition that students are beginning at different places—and that’s honest—but I think it is, at best, ill-advised to set different learning standards for students based on the color of their skin.

She’s being generous.  This is a blatantly racist program, and it harkens back to Woodrow Wilson’s paternalistic racism.  Some races, the Florida DoE seems to be suggesting, are just inherently inferior to others, and so they should not be held to the same standards.

Adding failure to injury, while this…policy…correctly recognizes that some groups of children start from different—lower—bases than others, it does absolutely nothing to correct those differences—which are educational, not innate capability.  Recognizing that these kids start out at different levels of preparation for school, and that much of these differences correlate with race (they also correlate with a host of socioeconomic factors—family income, family stability, and so on; these factors subsume race into them, so there’s a bit of double-counting here), makes for a useful start point.  But the Florida DoE is telling these kids that nothing will be done to help them finish school on a more-or-less equal footing with their peers.  “There’s no point in teaching you to do better.  You just can’t catch up.”

Yet the Florida School Board Association Executive Director, Dr Wayne Blanton, said this—and he was serious:

The message could have been portrayed a little clearer, but as far as racism, I see nothing in wanting to raise test scores that would be racist.  You’re trying to raise all test scores, not just in one particular group.

No, doctor, the message was portrayed quite clearly.  As clearly as your own disingenuousness.  No one is suggesting Florida is trying to raise test scores only in “one particular group.”  That’s just a cynical red herring.  What Florida is doing is providing drinking fountains, or bathrooms, to all groups—but some will be better maintained than others.

Lies of the Democrats, Part 5

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This is Part 5 of my series on the lies told by Democrats during the present administration’s term in office.  As I said earlier, I’m not concerned with his broken campaign promises so much as I am with the dishonesty while in office.

There’s this from State in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on our Consulate in Benghazi that included the murders of our Ambassador to Libya and three of his staff.  Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice on 16 Sep, five days after the attack:

Putting together the best information that we have available to us today, our current assessment is that what happened in Benghazi was in fact initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo, almost a copycat of the demonstrations against our facility in Cairo, which were prompted, of course, by the video….

Yet we know from sworn testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee the day prior to the Vice Presidential debate last Thursday that the intel community had concluded that it was a terrorist attack within 24 hours—four days before Rice’s claim.

Next, in that Vice Presidential debate, Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate Joe Biden said in all seriousness that the reason security for the Ambassador, or for the consulate in Benghazi, had not been beefed up was because no such requests for added support had been made.

Yet we know from sworn testimony at that same hearing that repeated requests for additional personnel and equipage had been repeatedly denied.  LtCol Andrew Wood, former head of our Tripoli embassy’s military security, expressed his frustration at not only not getting the additions he’d been requesting but getting the assets he already had materially reduced:

We were fighting a losing battle. We couldn’t even keep what we had[.]

Eric Nordstrom, erstwhile head of regional security for State, testified that he asked for a team of 12 diplomatic security agents to replace departing commandos, but he was told “you’re asking for the sun, the moon, and the stars,” and his request was denied.

Now, assume Biden is telling the truth on this, that he wasn’t lying.  What does that say about how isolated from what’s actually happening in—forget the world—Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s own administration that his Vice President can be so uninformed?

Yeah, But

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accepted responsibility for our fiasco in Libya, saying “The buck stops with me.”  Then she excused the confusion with “the fog of war,” and

…the confusion you get in any type of combat situation.

Remember, this was an attack that went on for hours.  There had to be a lot of sorting out. … Everyone said, here’s what we know, subject to change….

However, it’s been widely reported that the fact that this was a concerted terrorist attack and not anything else was well known in near-real time.

Who’s fog?  Who’s confusion?