The Statement Released After The Meeting

Yesterday Breitbart.com posted the statement released by Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John McCain (R-AZ), and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) after their meeting with UN Ambassador Susan Rice.

This is the statement:

We respectfully disagree with the White House’s statement today that ‘there are no unanswered questions’ about Ambassador Rice’s September 16 Sunday show appearances and the talking points she used. 

Around 10:00 this morning in a meeting requested by Ambassador Rice, accompanied by acting CIA Director Mike Morell, we asked Mr. Morell who changed the unclassified talking points to remove references to al-Qaeda.  In response, Mr. Morell said the FBI removed the references and did so to prevent compromising an ongoing criminal investigation.  We were surprised by this revelation and the reasoning behind it.

However, at approximately 4:00 this afternoon, CIA officials contacted us and indicated that Acting Director Morell misspoke in our earlier meeting. The CIA now says that it deleted the al-Qaeda references, not the FBI.  They were unable to give a reason as to why.

We are disturbed by the Administration’s continued inability to answer even the most basic questions about the Benghazi attack and the Administration’s response. 

Beyond Ambassador Rice’s misstatements, we continue to have questions about what happened in Benghazi before, during, and after the attack on our consulate – as well as the President’s statements regarding the attack.

Perhaps most important, we also need to understand why the U.S. military was unable to respond within seven hours to save American lives in Benghazi and why our consulate was left so unsecure despite a series of previous attacks. 

In more than a dozen letters, we and other Senators have repeatedly requested that the Administration provide answers to our questions.  Yet, today most of them remain unanswered.  We eagerly await their response.

It does seem from this statement that answers to even basic questions about Benghazi are nearly impossible to come by.  At least someone should know who actually changed the talking points or why no help was available to the Americans in Benghazi. At the rate we are going, we might have some of these answers after the 2016 election.

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The Gift Of Distraction

Up until the sex scandal broke, the media had been doing a pretty good job of ignoring the death of four Americans in Benghazi. When the sex scandal broke, the media had something to write about related to Benghazi that didn’t relate in any way to the fact that these Americans were put in harms way and then abandoned. Most of the media (there are one or two exceptions) is continuing to ignore the real story. Every now and then, though, they have to work at it, and were it not for the seriousness of the situation, their efforts would be comical.

The Daily Caller posted a story yesterday with the headline, “Sure, our ambassador was murdered and the Obama administration is lying about it, but the real story is that McCain is a grouch.” Unfortunately, that pretty much sums up the approach taken on Benghazi by most of the major media.

An article at CNN reported this week that Senator McCain skipped a classified briefing by administration officials on the Benghazi attack Wednesday and then got testy when asked about it. What in the world does this really have to do with the attack on Benghazi? How many classified briefings has the President missed?

The article at the Daily Caller reminds us:

Meanwhile, four Americans who fell in service of their country are still dead, a guy who made a stupid YouTube video is still sitting in jail, and the Obama administration is still lying about it. But hey, what is all that compared to Wolf Blitzer’s hurt feelings?

This kind of reporting by CNN is one of the main reasons the alternative media has grown. Unless the Obama Administration seriously limits the First Amendment, Americans looking for real news will continue to turn to the alternative media rather than those sources who have forgotten the concept of actually reporting the news.

 

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Overruling The Law When Convenient

Sequestration is scheduled to occur on January 2, 2013. As usual, note that this is after the November election. Sequestration is essentially drastic cuts to government spending triggered by the fact that Congress was unable to reach a budget compromise. Sequestration will have an incredibly negative aspect on the American economy overall if is actually happens, and as of now, it will happen.

Scott Johnson at Power Line posted an article today about some of the political maneuvering revolving around sequestration. The article explains that under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, defense contractors are required to issue notices of layoffs to employees 60 days before the layoffs occur. Since under sequestration defense contractors can expect major layoffs (January 2, 2013), those notices would go out in early November. Obviously, the Obama Administration does not want that to happen.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has issued a memorandum stating that they do not believe these notices should be issued. Please follow this link to read the entire memorandum.

Some highlights from the memorandum:

DOL (Department of Labor) concluded that it is neither necessary nor appropriate for Federal contractors to provide WARN Act notice to employees 60 days in advance of the potential sequestration because of uncertainty about whether sequestration will occur and, if it did, what effect it would have on particular contracts, among other factors:

Specifically, if (1) sequestration occurs and an agency terminates or modifies a contract that necessitates that the contractor order a plant closing or mass layoff ofa type subject to WARN Act requirements, and (2) that contractor has followed a course of action consistent with DOL guidance; then any resulting employee· compensation costs for WARN Act liability as detennined by a court, as well as attoroeys’ fees and other litigation costs (irrespective of li tigation outcome), would qualify as allowable costs and be covered by the contracting agency, if otherwise reasonable and allocable.

Translated into English, this says don’t send out the notices and the government will pay any legal penalties.

The Hill reports:

“The Obama Administration is cynically trying to skirt the WARN Act to keep the American people in the dark about this looming national security and fiscal crisis,” Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) said in a statement. “The president should insist that companies act in accordance with the clearly stated law and move forward with the layoff notices.”

No one actually knows if sequestration will happen, but right now it is scheduled to happen. The law needs to be followed, regardless of the politics involved. The government is not supposed to be used as a campaign committee. This is totally over the top.

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A Case Of Misplaced Priorities

The Obama Administration has become more concerned with its image in America’s liberal media that it is with doing its job.

The Hill reported today that the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal got more complete briefings from Hillary Clinton on the attack that killed U.S. envoy Christopher Stephens in Libya than Senate Republicans received.

The article reports:

“I was very disappointed in the briefing yesterday, too. The bottom line is, we asked questions like, ‘How many people were at the Benghazi consulate?’ You pick up The New York Times and you get a blow-by-blow description of what supposedly went on,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The Times published a timeline of the attacks chronicling militants gaining access to the U.S. compound after 9:35 pm on Sept. 11, American security forces attempting to retake it at 10:45 pm and American and Libyan forces regaining control of the main compound around 11:20 pm, before evacuating.

The article further states:

“We were told nothing. We were told absolutely nothing,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), ranking Republican on the Armed Services Panel.

McCain said the details lawmakers sought were in The Times and The Journal.

“If that isn’t an incredible disrespect to the members of the United States Senate, I don’t know what is,” he said. “It’s an example of the disdain with which this body is held by the administration, including, I’m sorry to say, the secretary of state.”

“She didn’t talk about anything,” McCain said of Clinton in a subsequent interview.

Senators asked Clinton about the sequence of events during the Benghazi attack. She and other officials declined to provide any specifics, citing an ongoing investigation.

If Washington is broken, part of the reason may be the fact that in an important national security matter, the Obama Administration chose to brief the friendly media rather than Congress.

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Politicizing Every Part Of Government

One of the most distressing aspects of the Obama Administration has been the politicization of every area of government. The Department of Justice dropped prosecution of an obvious voter intimidation case, the National Labor Relations Board tried to stop a company from opening a manufacturing facility in a non-union state, and the Department of Justice’s involvement in Fast and Furious is still being uncovered. The latest example of this sort of playing politics with things that should not be political has to do with the impact of the defense cuts the Obama Administration has caused by refusing to engage in serious budget negotiations.

Yesterday Investors.com posted an article explaining the government’s interference in the enforcement of the WARN law. The article reports:

Federal law under the WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notice) Act required employers to give workers a minimum of 60 days notice before potential mass layoffs.

Because of sequestration, quite a few people who work for companies related to the defense industry will be getting layoff notices just before the November election. Many of those people live in swing states with electoral votes the President needs to win the election.

The article reports:

To avoid the electoral consequences of these cuts, the Department of Labor (DOL) is informing defense contractors that since sequestration hasn’t actually happened yet, and some in Congress are trying to find ways around it, it might be nice if they didn’t obey federal law and send out the pink slips just this once.

I don’t want sequestration to take effect, but as of now, it will happen. Therefore, the law should be followed, regardless of electoral consequences.

The article concludes:

“Sequestration is currently the law of the land, and our nation’s workers have a right to know how these sequestration cuts which begin in January may impact them,” Sen. McCain noted.

They deserve to know when they’re about to lose their jobs, and that President Obama did it for them. So do the voters.

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Who Is Vetting These People ?

Last week we saw the media (and John McCain) attack Michele Bachmann for requesting an investigation of the influence of Muslim Brotherhood in Washington, D. C. Breitbart.com posted an interesting article last week on some of the more obvious problems with the Muslim Brotherhood and its relationship to Washington.

The article at Breitbart cites the case of Louay Safi, a Syrian-American Islamic leader who has been actively involved with groups close to the Obama White House.

The article reports:

Safi himself has been fairly influential in government circles. For several years, he was only one of two endorsing agents for the Pentagon’s Muslim military chaplain program as Director of Leadership Development for the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). He was also responsible for teaching about Islam to American troops deploying to Afghanistan and Iraq.

It should be noted that the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) Trial (the largest terrorism financing trial in American history) in 2008.

The book, Shariah The Threat To America, states:

Thanks to the HLF trial, it is now public knowledge that nearly every major Muslim organization in the United States is actually controlled by the MB (Muslim Brotherhood) or a derivative organization. Consequently, most of the Muslim-American groups of any prominence in America are now known to be, as a matter of fact, hostile to the United States and its Constitution.

So where does this lead us?

The article at Breitbart reports:

Safi himself has been fairly influential in government circles. For several years, he was only one of two endorsing agents for the Pentagon’s Muslim military chaplain program as Director of Leadership Development for the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). He was also responsible for teaching about Islam to American troops deploying to Afghanistan and Iraq.

So it was particularly curious last year when Safi reappeared last August as the director of the political office of the newly-formed Syrian National Council (SNC). His profile appears on the SNC’s website, and pictures taken at the unveiling of the SNC in Istanbul shows Safi front and center of the leadership.

His new SNC role and his connections to the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood were first reported by the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report.

Now Safi’s presence on Al-Jazeera is nearly ubiquitous when it comes to matters concerning Syria and the efforts of the SNC and its subordinate Free Syrian Army to topple the regime of Bashar Assad:

But what is the relationship between the SNC and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, historically one of the most violent Muslim Brotherhood offshoots in the world?

The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist allies have complete control of the SNC–as testified to in multiple media reports, including the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Michele Bachmann is correct in questioning ties between the Muslim Brotherhood and  those in power in Washington, D. C. The rest of us should be asking those same questions.

 

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Why We Need More Of The Tea Party In Congress

Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article about the recent budget votes in Congress. He echoes the feelings of many Americans in stating that the budget cutting is a sham and that nothing in Washington has changed since 2010.

Jeff Sessions, who voted against the bill, explains why:

Beyond my concerns over the last-minute vote, there are several important reasons why I have decided to oppose the spending bill in its current form. Rhetorically, leaders in Washington have made a commitment to reduce spending. But, if the offsets do not pass—and I fear Senate Democrats will oppose them—Congress will actually end up increasing discretionary spending by $4 billion over last year. Even if the offsets do pass, due to previous discretionary appropriations, Congress will still fall short of the $7 billion discretionary reduction that was promised as part of the budget deal this summer—spending $2 billion more than the $1,043 cap identified as the maximum spending level.

John McCain stated:

“Here we are again,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). “Not one member of this body has read the 1,221 pages of this bill representing $915 billion of the taxpayers’ money. Here we are with 15 minutes to consider a document representing $915 billion of taxpayers’ money filled with unauthorized, unrequested spending.”

“It’s outrageous,” continued McCain. “I have amendments to save billions and billions of the taxpayers’ money, but never mind because we are going home for Christmas.”

We are at this point because the Senate has refused to pass a budget–even when the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives, the White House, and the Senate. As Jeff Sessions pointed out, almost 1,000 days have passed since Senate Democrats have offered a budget.

The Tea Party Republicans in the House of Representatives have made serious efforts to cut the budget. The Democrats and the establishment Republicans have fought them at every turn. There are places where a conservative Republican cannot be elected. I understand that. However, where voters have a choice, we need conservative Republicans to change the climate in Washington. Otherwise, we will have more of the same.

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Solyndra Through The Eyes Of James Pethokoukis

Image representing Solyndra as depicted in Cru...

Image via CrunchBase

On Friday, James Pethokoukis at Reuters posted an article about the scandal surrounding government loans to Solyndra. Mr. Pethokoukis reminds us that President Obama intended to reorganize the American economy around ‘green energy’ in view of the dangers of global warming (which is NOT settled science).

The article points out:

At its core, Obamanomics is about the top-down redistribution of wealth and income. Government spending on various “green” subsidies and programs, along with a cap-and-trade system to limit carbon emissions, would enrich key Democrat constituencies: lawyers, public sector unions, academia and non-profits.

Oh, and Wall Street, too. Who was the exclusive financial adviser to Solyndra when it was trying to secure the $535 million loan from Washington? Goldman Sachs. And had the cap-and-trade scheme been enacted, big banks stood ready to reap billions from the trading of carbon emission credits.

Thank God cap and trade did not pass. The entire ‘green energy’ plan was a scheme to put money into Democrat party supporters’ pockets so that they could in turn donate substantial amounts of that money to Democrat campaigns.

My understanding of the Solyndra business plan was that they would build a solar panel for six dollars and then sell it for three. Even under new math, that won’t work for very long. The good news here is that Americans are aware of what happened and the crony capitalism that was involved. We need to understand that there will always be some degree of crony capitalism. Think about it–if you hold office, wouldn’t you rather do business with someone you know than someone you don’t know? The challenge is to avoid using large amounts of taxpayer money to fund businesses that do not have a viable business plan.

Part of the problem with the Obama administration is that it exists in the first place. We as voters need to be more aware of the backgrounds of the people we nominate and the people we elect. I cannot guarantee that John McCain would have made a better President, but I can say that I did not feel that John McCain was the best candidate the Republicans had to offer. The challenge for all Americans in the coming year is to be involved in the primary election process and to do everything we can to make sure that the candidates chosen represent us–regardless of which side of the political spectrum we fall on.

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