Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:24 PM | Comments (793)
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You wanted the truth.

You'd take abashed silence.

You get this:

Sharyl Attkisson, whose reportage was somehow not appreciated by the network news organization headed by David Rhodes, brother of Ben Rhodes, who wrote this email, continues reporting for no employer but her readers.

Relatively few documents have been provided that shed light on White House involvement in the post-Benghazi narrative. Previously, emails showed that then-deputy national security adviser Denis McDonough, on Rhodes' behalf, assigned Hillary Clinton-aide Jake Sullivan to work with Deputy Director of the C.I.A. Mike Morell to edit the talking points on Benghazi.

As the various agencies worked to edit and approve the talking points on Sept. 14, Rhodes emailed that there would be a Deputies meeting the next morning to work out the issues. "That's polite code for let's not debate this on e-mail for 18 hours," one official involved told me last year.

Multiple government officials including those in the military, State Department and C.I.A. have stated in documents or under questioning that they immediately believed the attacks, using heavy weaponry and mortar shells, were the work of terrorists. Prior to the attacks, there had been multiple warnings of al Qaeda threats in Libya and, specifically, in Benghazi.

In fact, in an early version of the government’s “talking points,” the C.I.A. stated that it had “produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al-Qa'ida in Benghazi and eastern Libya,” and that “These noted that, since April, there have been at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British Ambassador's convoy. We cannot rule out the individuals has previously surveilled the U.S. facilities, also contributing to the efficacy of the attacks." The administration later removed these C.I.A. disclosures about the advance warning of a threat.

Morell testified to Congress earlier this month that he, and not the White House, was responsible for making some of the most controversial revisions to the talking points, including removing the language about the advance warnings.

Morell, you'll remember, had previously not told anyone that he himself had edited the talking points and made various edits.

In fact, at one point, he claimed he "believed" the FBI had done so.

He would later claim his "belief" that the FBI had made these edits, when he himself had done so, was an "error."

Morell had helped shepherd the "Internet video/spontaneous protests" story along, by assiduously rejecting reports that this was a planned, organized, non-spontaneously-evolving Internet Video Attack.

[Morell] did confirm that he overruled guidance from the CIA chief of station in Libya that the attacks were "not/not an escalation of protests."

Morell, explaining his decision, effectively challenged the evidence his chief of station brought to the table in his message, sent via email a few days after the attack. He said the claim that there was no protest was based only on "press reports" and reports from officers who arrived in Benghazi after the attack had already started.

He said that basis was not "compelling" enough.

The email written by Ben Rhodes relied heavily upon the yeoman's work Morell did for Team Hillary and Team Obama in so thoroughly "balancing the equities" (which I'm told is code for "protecting the reputations of senior political personnel) earlier.

And just to remind, where is Morell now?

Morell has since gone to work as counsel for Beacon Global Strategies, a strategic relations PR firm dominated by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton officials and Obama administration officials. (Disclosure: In January, Morell was hired as an analyst for CBS News where I was previously employed.)

Posted by: Ace at 03:14 PM | Comments (492)
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Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Matt Yglesias, the wellborn son of a professor who recently bought a $1.4 million condo, sat down with Thomas Piketty, to discuss income inequality over some very expensive drinks.

The Free Beacon has staged a dramatic recreation of the meeting.

Meanwhile, incredibly, MSNBC now informs its brain-dead audience that Animal Farm is a pro-socialist tract about income inequality.

Matthew Yglesias informs us that Thomas Pinketty is not a Marxist, but rather is a fan of capitalism:

Thomas Piketty is not the anti-capitalist radical that his critics fear.

"The market economy," he tells me at the bar of the St Regis Hotel in downtown Washington, DC, "is a system that has a lot of merit." (The location was chosen by the publicist for the English edition of his book; she admitted to me that perhaps it was a little too "top one percent," but it fit everyone's schedule nicely.)

Maybe just a little "top one percent." But both of you guys are, aren't you?

But to my main point--

Not a radical? Not anti-capitalist?

Oh?

In 2002, Thomas Piketty supported and advised Ségolène Royal, a Socialist candidate for French President. And when I say "Socialist," note the capital S-- she's a member of the Parti Socialiste, and for some time its leader.

She's officially a Socialist. Or, as the Washington Post would call her, "technically" a Socialist.

In 2007, Thomas Piketty wrote an editorial urging the election of François Hollande, Royale's then boyfriend and still babydaddy (it's France, it's complicated; she's like two mistresses ago).

Hollande is a lifelong Socialist and current leader of the Parti Socialiste.

Or, again, as the Washington Post actually put it two weeks ago, he's "technically" a socialist.

The Parti Socialiste routinely forms governments with the Communist Party, and runs on the same ticket (in run-off elections) as the Communist Party, so that their candidates do not sap each votes from each other.

Perhaps I should say the French Communist Party is "technically" a Communist party.

Thomas Piketty's parents worked for a hard-left weekly newspaper* called Lutte ouvrière (which means something like "Workers' Struggle"), which is the house organ of the Communist Union (Trotskyite) [and that by the way is how it refers to itself, with that (Trotskyite) self-descriptor right there in the title], which is one of the principle groups of the Internationalist Communist Union. Even the French refer to this as "l'extreme gauche."

The Washington Post would call the "Communist Union (Trotskyite)" "technically" Trotskyite, technically communist, and technically a union.

Matt Yglesias calls it "a fan of capitalism and free markets."

This is what Matt Yglesias calls "Voxsplaining the News."

See, the left has a problem here. For about 50 years, since they stopped being "Sociailst" and Wobblies and became instead "Roosevelt Democrats," they have sworn up and down on a stack of Das Kapitals that they weren't socialists.

But they're not getting fully engorged and throbby about a book which is titled to deliberately reference Marx's famous text ("Capital" vs. "Capital in the 21st Century") who is an open official not-namecalling-here-it's-what-the-party-is-called Socialist in a socialist country.

How to square that circle?

Simple, just claim he's not a socialist, even though, like, he's more than a "socialist," he's an actual Socialiste.

Just lie, lie, lie. Like they've been doing since the Communist and Socialist parties merged with the Democrat Party 50 years ago.

* If I'm reading this right, they then went on to study... goats.

Or, creatures which are technically goats.

Posted by: Ace at 01:00 PM | Comments (325)
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Baghdad Bob just emailed me to say "This kid has chops."

Confronted with the newly-released emails in which White House National Defense Fixer Ben Rhodes stated the most important goal (following reassuring the public that the president was devoted to protecting the American people and fundraising in Las Vegas) was...

To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.

...Jay Carney insists that that goal refers to the protests in Cairo, not Benghazi. Or, as Carney says, it was about "the overall environment in the Muslim world."

Of course, there's also this quote from the Talking Points Q & A:

Q: What's your response to the Independent story [they mean the UK newspaper the Independent -- ace] that says we have intelligence 48 hours in advance of the Benghazi attack that was ignored? Was this an intelligence failure?
We are not aware of any actionable intelligence indicating that an attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi was planned or imminent. The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the US consulate and subsequently its annex.

Karl points out that Carney has repeatedly insisted from the White House spokesman podium that these claims came from the CIA, not the White House.

I don't understand Carney's response to this. He only says, basically, this has all been answered before.

He has no answer as to why the White House held this email back.

The White House's claim has been (for eighteen long months of lies) that whatever misrepresentations entered the talking points, and whatever truths departed from them (such as evidence that this was an Al Qaeda attack, that there had been previous attacks, that there had been previous warnings, etc.), it had nothing to do with the White House, as other people, not anyone in the White House, constructed the talking points.

Now comes this email from Ben Rhodes telling Ambassador Rice to go out there and sell the Internet Video cover story and so what does Jay Carney do?

He claims the talking points weren't about Benghazi.

Exit Quote: "If you look at the document in question, it is not about Benghazi."

Second Exit Quote: "The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the US consulate and subsequently its annex."

Third Exit Quote: After a year and a half of vigorously insisting the White House had no input into these Talking Points -- that all information came from the CIA and FBI -- Carney now says "obviously" the White House had input into the Talking Points.

Fourth Exit Quote:

more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:57 AM | Comments (583)
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Nice.

Remember all that fuss back in 2009 about Obama being a flexible, supple thinker whose wide-ranging mind was unbound by ideological constraints?

Yeah. Good times, good times.

Shot.

he Obama administration sent to Congress legislation that would provide $302 billion for road and transit projects over four years, a measure needed to keep the U.S. Highway Trust Fund from running dry.

The Transportation Department proposal would boost the highway fund $87 billion above current levels to generate more money for deficient bridges and aging transit systems....

The funding proposal is in line with President Barack ObamaÂ’s February budget request. House and Senate panels are drafting their own bills and there are no plans in Congress to consider the presidentÂ’s proposed way to help pay for it: a temporary tax increase on overseas earnings by companies.

Chaser:

Drivers on the nationÂ’s Interstates could soon be paying more to travel.

A transportation proposal sent to Congress by the Obama administration on Tuesday would remove a prohibition on tolls for existing Interstate highways, clearing the way for states to raise revenue on roads that drivers currently use at no cost.

Posted by: Ace at 10:17 AM | Comments (302)
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"Let the monsters fight."

Let them, indeed. more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:57 PM | Comments (292)
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Previously the case had been sent back to a lower court, which found them culpable.

But the Italian system requires an appeals court to agree with the finding for it to be an official conviction.

Which they've now done.

An Italian court says it convicted Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend of murdering her onetime roommate in part because of evidence showing that more than one person killed the British student.

The Florence appeals court released its explanation Tuesday, less than three months after it convicted Knox and Raffaele Sollecito in Meredith Kercher's 2007 death in a retrial.

In the more than 300-page document, the court said that a third person convicted in the murder, Rudy Guede, did not act alone, and cited the nature of the victim's wounds.

Ruling Judge Alessandro Nencini, who presided over the second appeal in the case, said Kercher, 21, and Knox disagreed over the payment of the rent in the house they shared in Perugia and that "there was an argument, then an elevation and progression of aggression."

The Florence court in January said that Knox, who also was convicted of slander, was sentenced in absentia to 28½ years in prison. Sollecito's sentence was 25 years.
They were first convicted of murder in 2009, but the verdicts were overturned on appeal in 2011.

Through her attorney, Knox released a statement proclaiming her innocence.

...

The judge also reasoned that Knox's false accusation of her former boss, Patrick Lumumba, whom she accused of the killing the night she was arrested, proved her guilt.

...

Nencini wrote that the accusation against Lumumba was "indispensable in understanding the crime" and that the accusation "cannot be separated from the murder."

So now it's a trivial argument about the rent (which was like $300 per month) which "escalates" into a brutal three-way rape/murder with a drifter.

Incidentally, this "argument about the rent" is making its first appearance in the Knox/Kercher saga. This has never been proposed before, never been testified to before, and, as far as I know, the judge is just speculatin' about things that coulda maybe happened.

The "argument about the rent" is the Italian court system's third attempt at a motive.

The first attempt was a Satanic Sex Cult Game Gone Wrong (and seriously, how often do they go right?). This was inspired by Harry Potter books, because, for serious, Harry Potter is Sex on Wheels.

The second attempt was when the judge in the first trial basically edited out that silly, embarrassing motive, and suggested a new motive: There was no motive. The organized three-way rape/murder just happened in the twinkling of an eye, without previous planning, and without any actual motive for it.

This third attempt constitutes an advance for Italian justice, as this judge realized, it seems, that Satanic Sex Game Gone Wrong was not a very convincing motive, and yet the alternative motive -- That there was no motive -- also lacked a certain je ne sais quoi.

So he constructs a new motive, about something that people actually kill people over (money).

The only problem is that there has never been any evidence of any kind of argument about money or rent (in fact, Amanda and Meredith didn't argue about anything, except that Amanda was too messy and didn't clean the toilets enough, and also that she played her guitar and sung too often -- again, not your classic murder motives).

So now they had a huge argument that no one ever heard of before over the trivial monthly rent that both could easily afford and that led to Amanda using her Sexual Wiles to enlist a smelly drifter to come up to their flat and join her and her new boyfriend in a Satanic Sex Cult Game Gone Wrong Extreme Rent Mediation Session.

Posted by: Ace at 09:09 AM | Comments (472)
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Perhaps I've miscalculated, but are they claiming that those making minimum wage are spending $300 per month on a used car payment?

What planet are they on?

For more, check them out on Twitter.

Open thread til the boss shows up.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:23 AM | Comments (479)
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Trigger Warning: These two stories may drive you to drink and/or a stroke.

Healthcare spending the first quarter of 2014 grew at a faster rate at anytime since the third quarter of 1980. Coincidentally I'm sure, this was also the first quarter in which ObamaCasre was in full effect.

With millions of Americans gaining coverage through President Obama's health care law, health care spending spiked by a staggering 9.9 percent in the first quarter of 2014 — the fastest rate since 1980 — according to data released Wednesday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Obamacare was pitched as a plan to reduce health care spending, and formally titled the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act." In 2009, Obama called the status quo — in which health care spending was accelerating toward becoming one-fifth of the economy — "unsustainable."

Funny aside...it was just a few months ago Obama was touting how slowly healthcare spending was growing (even though the promise of ObamaCare was to decrease costs).

From November 20, 2013:

The slowing growth in health care costs isnÂ’t just a fluke or a remnant of the recession, the White House asserted in a report released Wednesday, but rather a result of reforms in Obamacare.

The White House report is an attempt to shape the debate over how much credit should be given to the Affordable Care Act for the growth in health care spending dropping to its lowest levels since the 1960s.

President Barack Obama has cited the data as evidence for why the law is working, despite the bumpy rollout of HealthCare.gov. But the debate over the reduction in health care costs is far from settled, as studies conclude other factors have been more significant, namely the drop in employment and health care utilization during the recession.

Jason Furman, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, which authored the report, said the Affordable Care Act “is a very important part of the story.”

Prediction: ObamaCare won't be seen as "an important part of" today's story.

The other possible spin will be, "See how much pent up demand there was for health care? Sure it's expensive but damn it people needed it". (Added: Yep)

I'm sure Vox.com is figuring out all you need to know about this as we speak. Spoiler: It won't include "repealing ObamaCare".

But at least the Obama recovery is growing the economy so fast we can now afford this new spending.

Oh.

The U.S. economy slowed in the first quarter to one of the weakest paces of the five-year recovery as the frigid winter appeared to have curtailed business investment and weakness overseas hurt exports.

Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced across the economy, advanced at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 0.1% in the first quarter, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had forecast growth at a 1.1% pace for the quarter.

The broad slowdown to start the year halted what had been improving economic momentum during much of 2013. In the second half of last year, the economy expanded at a 3.4% pace. The first-quarter reading fell far below even the lackluster average annual gain of near 2% since the recession ended.

It seems the media has settled on a narrative here.

The U.S. economy grew in the first quarter — but very, very, very slowly. Frigid winter weather dampened forward progress. Improved economic data out since the quarter ended, however, caused many people to minimize the weight they were placing on the figure even before it was released Wednesday morning.

See, unlike every other year in recorded history, this year had....a winter. What can you do about that sort of freak occurrence? Certainly you can't blame Obama.

Predicted (and possibly true) Vox.com spin..."If not for all the government spending on healthcare there'd have been negative GDP growth! You're welcome."

I say possibly true (estimates are without the huge jump in spending "growth" would have been -1%)because if people hadn't had to spend so much money on health insurance and health care they might have put that money to more productive uses and generate actual economic growth. There's going to be a lot of arguing about this.

Bottom line: Health care costs through the roof, economy at or near recession.

BTW- If "winter" is the cause of economic slowdowns, shouldn't we speeding up "global warming"?

Added: For a non-winter look at why growth collapsed read this.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:19 AM | Comments (674)
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Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:15 AM | Comments (284)
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