New York Times effort to rehabilitate Hilary Clinton & Obama on Benghazi "completely false"

Fifteen months after the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, the narrative of the attack continues to be shaped, and reshaped, by politicians and the press.

But a New York Times report published over the weekend has angered sources who were on the ground that night. Those sources, who continue to face threats of losing their jobs, sharply challenged the Times’ findings that there was no involvement from Al Qaeda or any other international terror group and that an anti-Islam film played a role in inciting the initial wave of attacks.

“It was a coordinated attack. It is completely false to say anything else. … It is completely a lie,” one witness to the attack told Fox News.

h/t Kathy S 

Madonna booed at New Orleans concert while trying get audience to vote for Obama

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Madonna drew boos and triggered a walkout by several concertgoers after she touted President Barack Obama on her "MDNA Tour" in New Orleans. 

The Material Girl asked during Saturday night's performance: "Who's registered to vote?" She added: "I don't care who you vote for as long as you vote for Obama.

h-t Drudge Report 

Larry Summers to leave Obama White House after Congressional elections

Please nobody say "the rats are leaving the sinking ship". Summers isn't a rat.

Full story here

El Presidente must not be seen to follow the Zionists or American Imperialists!!

This wasn't Hosni Mubarak's fault.

Egyptian President Mubarak walked the red carpet along with other leaders Obama, Netenyahu, Abbas and King Abdullah at the recent Israeli/Palestinian peace talks in Washington. Obama, as the host, led the way.

But in true traditions of  that part of the world where maintaining face and pride take precedent over everything else, the state-run Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram decided it was unseemly that their president was trailing the Zionist and American Imperialist leaders. Fortunately technology offered a solution that reality didn't, so they photoshopped the picture to put Mubarak at the front.

However, the switcheroo was observed and exposed by keen-eyed Egyptian blogger Wael Khalil and now spoofs of the picture have appeared with Mubarak walking on the moon, winning the World Cup, etc...

By trying to grovel to their leader, Al-Ahram has provided Mubarak with quite a domestic embarrassment.

See the photos and complete story here in The Guardian.

Former Presidential Candidate Gary Bauer on the Two State Solution

As a strong supporter of Israel and its right to exist in peace and security as a Jewish state, I have sometimes been criticized for my skepticism about a two-state solution. But invoking the two-state mantra is not a panacea for what ails the Middle East. Two-state advocates differ wildly about what form each state would take. More fundamentally, there is voluminous evidence that many Palestinians, including those involved with groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, desire not two states but the destruction of Israel.

Read the rest here.

FAIL: Another funny case of contextual advertising for illegal alien advocacy group

The extremist illegal immigrant advocacy group, No One is Illegal has organized an online petition to support the Tamil refugees who appeared on the coast of British Columbia and have stirred up national outrage amid accusations of being economic immigrants who are "queue-jumping."

No One Is Illegal might want to consider using a free online polling service that uses different ad-servers:

(Click on picture above to enlarge)

George F. Will on Israel's Netanyahu: "The anti-Obama"

From George Will's op-ed in The Washington Post:

Two photographs adorn the office of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Together they illuminate a portentous fact: No two leaders of democracies are less alike -- in life experiences, temperaments and political philosophies -- than Netanyahu, the former commando and fierce nationalist, and Barack Obama, the former professor and post-nationalist.

One photograph is of Theodor Herzl, born 150 years ago. Dismayed by the eruption of anti-Semitism in France during the Dreyfus Affair at the end of the 19th century, Herzl became Zionism's founding father. Long before the Holocaust, he concluded that Jews could find safety only in a national homeland.

The other photograph is of Winston Churchill, who considered himself "one of the authors" of Britain's embrace of Zionism. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 stated: "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." Beginning in 1923, Britain would govern Palestine under a League of Nations mandate.

Netanyahu, his focus firmly on Iran, honors Churchill because he did not flinch from facts about gathering storms. Obama returned to the British Embassy in Washington the bust of Churchill that was in the Oval Office when he got there.

Read the full column here.

Christopher Hitchens: "I see no reason not to take out the Iranian regime"

Hitchens discusses the need to bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities and remove the regime in this video:




A fascinating article about Benjamin Netanyahu and the possibility of an Israeli strike against Iran here from The Atlantic

Obama Administration voices contempt for "the professional Left"

From The Hill:

The White House is simmering with anger at criticism from liberals who say President Obama is more concerned with deal-making than ideological purity.

During an interview with The Hill in his West Wing office, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs blasted liberal naysayers..

"Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy.”

The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying:

“They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”

More on this story here from the Weekly Standard

UPDATE:  Congressman Alan Grayson (D- Florida), the inspiration for MyCongressmanIsNuts.com has referred to Gibbs as "Bozo the Spokesman" and called for him to be fired for the comments reported on above.

Mideast Peace: Time to get serious about a 3 State Solution

There is little optimism at the United States' latest attempt to kick-start negotiations aimed at achieving an Israeli/Palestinian peace agreement.

President Obama has threatened to downgrade relations with the Palestinian Authority unless they enter direct negotiations with Israel by mid-August.

PA President Abbas has so far refused to speak directly to the Israelis unless they commit to a total freeze on settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has agreed to direct talks with the Palestinians as long as there are no preconditions.

The pressure on the Palestinians from the US and the Arab League's acquiescence to direct negotiations are expected to give Abbas the latitude to reverse his position and join negotiations in September.

But what sort of peace will they be negotiating?

Abbas' Fatah in the West Bank and  Hamas-ruled Gaza do not speak with one voice. Neither recognizes the other's legitimacy. Gaza is a disastrous, terrorist-infested mess, ruled by a fanatical theocratic party whose founding charter reads as if it were written by psychopaths suffering from paranoid delusions. It includes references to talking trees wanting to kill Jews and an international conspiracy of Zionists, Freemasons and the Rotary and Lions Clubs.

Israel will not agree to a right of passage between the two Palestinian territories while one of them is controlled by a group committed to the Jewish state's destruction. Hamas' policies have completely sidelined them from participating in the expected upcoming round of negotiations.

For the past few years, the roadmap for peace has talked about a "two-state" solution, but what is becoming increasingly apparent is that the only hope for an agreement would be the more recently proposed 3 State Solution.

With the seemingly insurmountable difficulties of achieving peace with Gaza, which has developed its own political culture, there will be a need for 2 Palestinian states, one in the West Bank and one in Gaza.

This idea was proposed, in a form, in early 2009 by John Bolton, the former US Ambassador to the United Nations.

In Bolton's scenario, Jordan would assume control of the West Bank and Egypt would assume responsibility for Gaza. While that aspect of the solution is unfeasible, since both those Arab countries have rejected that idea and the administrative quagmire that would accompany it, the idea of Israel forming a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and shelving Gaza for the time being seems the only feasible option.

A single agreement with the West Bank will be difficult enough, given Israel's disastrously inefficient system of proportional representation that allows fringe parties to have disproportionate power in government. It will be a nightmare for Israel to have to remove the fanatically orthodox settlers from the West Bank, who have a messianic commitment to their theologically-inspired vision of  a Greater Israel. But sensible forces in Israel, including former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, understood there was no other way. That was part of his motivation for building the Security Barrier between Israel and the West Bank. It has served its primary purpose of virtually eliminating suicide attacks from the west bank, but it is also no great secret that the barrier is the most likely future border between Israel and the Palestinians.

While East Jerusalem would remain a point of contention, it appears that the Palestinian side has also recognized this new reality.

While the Gaza situation would remain an open wound where its intractable government, which acts as an Iranian proxy, cannot be dealt with, there is also movement in that area. There is growing support for an international solution to Gaza, which would see Israel cede authority to an international force that would provide security for Israel while assuming responsibility for that territory.

Once a democratic peaceful Palestinian state emerges on the West Bank, it would place enormous pressure on Gaza to find a means of achieving peace. It would alleviate some pressure on Israel and the US in the region, and further isolate hostile dictatorships and their operatives like Syria, Iran and Hezbollah.

A Democratic Strategist describes Obama's worst nightmare for 2012: Bush. JEB Bush

From Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, a former Clinton administration official:

"Jeb [Bush] is married to a Latina, is fluent in Spanish, speaks on Univision as a commentator, his Spanish is that good," Rosenberg said of the former Florida governor and brother to the 43rd president during a lunch at NDN headquarters last week. "And if you look at the electoral map in 2012, you have to assume that Obama is going to have a very hard time in holding North Carolina and Virginia. The industrial Midwest, where the auto decline has been huge, has weakened Obama's numbers... a great deal. So Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin become a bit more wobbly. So if you're Barack Obama, the firewall is the Latin belt from Florida to southwestern California. And there is only one Republican who can break through that firewall. And it is Jeb."

More from The Huffington Post here.

Uh-Oh.. President Obama looked worried. Now I'm worried

For those who missed President Obama's speech yesterday, you can see it here. The White House posted it on YouTube.




I like Obama. He has done something about health care in the US which I think is progressive [no, not "progressive" meaning "I'm a Marxist but use this as a code word," "progressive" meaning "making progress".] At least he was able to do something where so many others haven't. No President comes into office without difficult situations to deal with, be he really did get handed a lot at once that wasn't his fault.

The world's economy was haywire, Iran is building an A bomb, Israel was blasting Gaza and America was, and is, fighting two wars, one in each of Afghanistan and Iraq, or as I view it, one war on two fronts. He had "enemy combatant ants" in Guantanamo, which he had promised to release or try, but realized, once in office, that that was a lot easier said than done.

All-in-all, a lot to deal with.

He's made good choices about his Cabinet positions and has managed things fairly well so far. He hasn't demonstrated the deft political skills of Bill Clinton, but on the other hand, he's not going to be the indecisive, ineffectual president Jimmy Carter was.

Without commenting on the substance of his speech last night, which dealt mainly with the crisis surrounding the BP oil spill, what struck me was his tone and demeanour.

Obama usually exudes confidence; often almost to the point of seeming smug. But last night, there was something different. He seemed nervous.

That of itself was unnerving to me. How dangerous is this oil spill going to be and when will it be stopped? Obviously no one has that answer yet, but when Obama's scared, I'm not happy.

I just hope it was all just because Michelle told him he has to stop smoking..or else...!