HALF-FULL REPORT 09/28/12

It may be a scandal too big for the news media to cover up.  The Obama administration knew within 24 hours the attack on the consulate in Benghazi was the work of al Qaida, had nothing to do with an obscure video mocking the prophet Muhammad, but lied about it for a week.  Even Sen. John Kerry thinks something’s amiss. Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post has a timeline of administration statements here.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described security measures at the consulate as "robust," but she was lying. Security in the consulate proper, and in an annex from which the CIA was monitoring Islamist activity in Libya was less than standard.  State had no "actionable intelligence" beforehand that the consulate would be attacked, Secretary Clinton said. She was lying about that, too.

"The more we learn, the more Benghazi looks like a gross security failure," said the Wall Street Journal.

"It’s a catastrophic intelligence loss," said one American official who has served in Libya and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the F.B.I. is still investigating the attack. "We got our eyes poked out."

Ambassador Stevens was worried about security, according to his journal, which CNN found at the scene.  The State Department doesn’t want to answer questions about security, and is rude to journalists with the temerity to ask.  State is withdrawing all our people from our embassy in Tripoli.  Does this mean more trouble is on the way?

"We seemed to have reached a tipping point in the liberal media’s coverage of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi," said Conn Carroll of the Washington Examiner, referring to Kessler’s time line. "President Obama appears to be the only member of his administration still sticking to the original lie that the Benghazi attack was prompted by a video."

Carroll was referring to the president’s speech at the UN Tuesday:

 "The theme is this: absolutely nothing can go wrong with political change in the Middle East, and the United States helps moderate forces, defined as anyone who isn’t actively trying to kill Americans, said Barry Rubin.  "The fact that some to many of those revolutionary forces favor killing Americans is outside his purview. And the fact that his policy has supported militantly anti-democratic groups far more than the (far weaker) moderate ones is airbrushed away."

Netanyahu’s speech was better. This is what an American president should have said:

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Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the man chiefly responsible for the video President Obama blames for the unrest in the Middle East, was arrested Thursday (9/27) for violating parole.

Walid Shoebat, a former jihadist who converted to Christianity, suspects the video may have been an Islamist provocation. 

"Court documents reveal that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the producer of the movie Innocence of Muslims, partnered in a scheme with Eiad Salameh, my first cousin.  Eiad is a Muslim terror supporter and is not an Egyptian Copt."

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Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to meet with Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, President Obama decided. Or maybe it seemed too much like work.

"Unlike years past, the president will not be sitting down with any of the more than 120 world leaders who are here in New York, CBS reported Monday. "Simply put, the White House is prioritizing the president’s reelection effort. Most heads of state will be here all week, but the president will be in New York less than 24 hours, and even then will spend most of his time away from this conference."

The prez did make time to appear on "The View."  He’s "eye candy" for the gals, Zero said. Even  journalists whose noses rarely stray far from The One’s buttocks were puzzled by his priorities. Deroy Murdock has more on the slacker-in-chief.

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In his 60 Minutes interview Sunday, the president described the events of 9/11/2012 – in which Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed – as "bumps in the road.

Charles Krauthammer was not amused.

The rest of the interview was a tissue of lies.  The Wall Street Journal dissects some of them here.

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President Obama and his crack foreign policy team are farting away our hard won victory in Iraq, Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor say in their new book.  Gordon is chief military correspondent for the New York Times.  Trainor is a retired Marine general.

"Given the prominent role that the Iraq story played in Obama’s approach to the 2008 election, it is ironic that it seems to play no role whatsoever in 2012," said Peter Feaver, who served on the National Security Council staff in both the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. "The closer one looks at the facts, the less they seem to support the campaign spin of a "responsible" end to a troubled war."

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The economy sucks, too.  Durable goods orders plunged 13.2 percent in August, a sign of impending recession.  The economic growth rate for the 2^nd quarter was revised downward to a pathetic 1.3 percent.

"The anemic, three-year-old U.S. recovery is already running out of steam," said James Pethokoukis. "It may be several more years before we see unemployment below 8%."

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The day he was nominated, the oceans stopped rising, and the planet began to heal, Barack Obama said in 2008.  The president hasn’t said anything quite so extravagant this year, but his friends in journalism revived Messianism in the "loaves and fishes" rally in Milwaukee last Saturday (9/22).

"The crowd of about 18,000 in a steady drizzle was the largest yet of Obama’s reelection campaign," said the Associated Press. This was remarkable, because the BMO Harris Pavilion, where the president spoke, seats only 5,000, and it wasn’t quite full.

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Remember when Barack Obama pledged to cut health insurance premiums for middle class families by $2,500 by the end of his first term?  He hopes you don’t, because premiums have increased by more than $3,000 during his presidency.

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Turbotax Tim Geithner shielded Citibank’s management from accountability at the height of the financial crisis, while leaving taxpayers on the hook. 

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If it seems these days that Zero is just mailing it in, it may be because that’s just what he’s doing. Kevin Dujan of Hillbuzz said Aug. 31 the Obamas are planning to move to Hawaii in January:

"I have a friend whose family knows Michelle’s mother; they have been crystal clear that the elderly Mrs. Robinson regularly says that she’ll be in Hawaii next year permanently with her daughter and granddaughters," Dujan wrote.

In subsequent posts, Dujan said Chicago billionaire Penny Pritzker, who was Obama’s finance chairman in 2008, is raising money to buy this mansion in a posh Honolulu suburb. 

Last week Jerome Corsi of WorldNet Daily, citing "a confidential source within Pritzker’s Chicago organization," also said the Obamas plan to be in Hawaii in January. "The source told WND that highly confidential internal polls conducted by the Obama campaign indicate Obama cannot win re-election, despite public surveys that show him in the lead."

I’d put this in the too good to check file.  But the Ulsterman’s White House Insider told him this week the president’s internal polls show a dead even race. 

There was a lot of angst this week about polls showing Zero pulling away.  I’ve beaten that subject to death in the last two HFRs, so this week I’ll simply note that GOP pollster John McLaughlin thinks they are a voter suppression effort; that Rasmussen, the most accurate pollster in 2008, shows Romney with a miniscule lead; and that according to Rasmussen, the president’s approval rating on Sept. 27, 2012, is almost exactly the same as it was on Sept. 27, 2010.  The midterms didn’t turn out so well for Democrats.

In case you’ve forgotten, in October of 1980, Jimmy Carter had an 8 point lead on Ronald Reagan, according to Gallup.

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Mitt Romney made $13.7 million last year, mostly from investments.  He paid $1.936 million in taxes, and donated $4 million to charity, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, which prepared his return.  Romney’s effective tax rate was 14.1 percent. 

Over the last 20 years, Romney paid an effective tax rate of 20.2 percent, and gave to charity 13.45 percent of his adjusted gross income, PricewaterhouseCoopers said.

The average effective tax rate for all American taxpayers is 11 percent, according to the Tax Foundation.   President Obama paid an effective tax rate of 20.5 percent on an income of $789,674 last year.  Vice President Biden and his wife paid 23.2 percent on an income of $379,035.  Paul Ryan paid 20 percent on $323,416.

"The release of these tax records leaves no doubt about one thing: Mitt Romney is an extraordinarily, remarkably, astonishingly generous man," said John Podhoretz. "There is no ‘but.’ Anyone who says otherwise is ignorant, stupid or a liar."

Podhoretz described Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Even Howard Dean (grudgingly) admitted Dingy Harry has some credibility issues. And so much for the Obama ads that Romney "probably paid less than you."  Under Romney’s tax reform plan, Romney’s effective rate would go up, Paul Ryan says.

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Fauxcahontas apparently has been practicing law without a license.

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Taxpayers spent $1.4 billion last year to staff, house, transport and entertain President Obama and his family last year.  Britain’s royal family cost British taxpayers just $57.8 million.

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A November, 1979 column in the Chicago Tribune by the former father in law of de facto White House chief of staff Valerie Jarrett may explain why Zero bows to Saudi princes.

Oil rich Arab nations were going to give San Francisco attorney Donald Warden, who had converted to Islam and taken the name Khalid al Mansour., "$20 million per year for 10 years to aid 10,000 minority students each year, including blacks, Arabs, Hispanics, Asians and native Americans." Vernon Jarrett wrote.

Mansour was instrumental in getting Obama admitted to Harvard, former Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton said in 2008:

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More than 60 blacks and Hispanics are running for Congress this year as Republicans.  Strangely, the "mainstream" media hasn’t mentioned this.  It appears that there will be a black Republican woman in Congress next year, for the first time ever.

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When Paul Ryan spoke at the AARP gathering in New Orleans a week ago Friday, he got booed, most news organizations which covered the event noted in their leads.

Well, duh. Kim Strassel writes here of the AARP’s stealthy alliance with the administration on Obamacare.

 "The herd of independent media minds missed the real story, which is that the Republican Vice Presidential nominee went into the heart of the entitlement culture, told some hard truths, and even won applause for doing so" said the Wall Street Journal.

"Rather than listen to the two minutes selected by those who would say that grass was blue if Ryan said it was green, I encourage you to listen to Ryan yourself," suggests Ross Kaminsky.  You can do so here.

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Mitt Romney must take on the news media or he’ll lose, think Doug McKinnon and Michael Walsh and Democrat pollster Pat Caddell.  I say: Remember Spiro Agnew.  His attacks on liberal journalists as "effete snobs" and "nattering nabobs of negativism" got a lot of attention, and were popular.

The media must be taken on, directly, and in a big way.  But Mitt Romney is temperamentally unsuited to the role of attack dog.  Traditionally, that’s the job of the vice presidential candidate.  Paul Ryan demonstrated yet again in his AARP speech that no one can tell hard truths better.  The election may hinge on whether Ryan goes after the media.

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This was another bad week for America.  But before Nov. 6, bad weeks for America are also bad weeks for Zero, which means we can look forward to better times in January.  You’ve doubtless noticed that Jack Wheeler isn’t doing the HFR this week, as I said last week he would be.   But he really, really really ought to be back next week.  Be safe, be determined, be optimistic.  We will prevail.