Some text, for now.

I almost do not want to even bother quoting Carney's responses, because they're non-responsive. Ask him if security was adequate, and he starts talking about consultations and investigations. Like Obama, his answers are kneeldowns-- running out the clock.

TAPPER: Lieutenant Colonel Wood and Eric Nordstrom, the former regional security officer, have both suggested that there were efforts from the U.S. embassy in Libya to have more security, and the State Department — State Department officials wouldn’t let it happen. Why? Why didn’t the State Department listen to these men on the ground in Libya who wanted there to be more security?

CARNEY: Jake, as I said, there is no question that the result of what happened in Benghazi is not acceptable. Four Americans killed is not an acceptable situation, and that is why the president moved so quickly to ensure that an investigation was launched to bring the perpetrators to justice, the killers to justice, and a review was launched at the State Department to look at our security posture at the Bengali — I mean, not Bengali — at the Benghazi facility and elsewhere.

You know, those matters are under investigation.

I have a question for Jake Tapper. I'm not asking this as a bitch, because he seems to remember the job of the reporter is not to report the stories and narratives the Administration wants to report -- after all, the Most Powerful Man on Earth can get his narrative out without the press' help -- but rather to report the stories and narratives the Administration (any Administration) doesn't want reported.

But I think he's getting snowed here, and I would like try to unsnow him.

Carney is conflating two investigations -- one which can be accomplished quickly, and one which will take time and money and FBI agents and foreign contacts to ferret out.

One investigation -- the harder one -- is to determine who carried out these attacks, and how.

The other investigation -- the easy one -- is to find out who in the Administration denied these requests, and why, and if they consulted with higher-ups in so denying the requests for improved security. And to find out who decided to direct a disinformation campaign at the citizens of the United States -- "spontaneous attack," "despicable YouTube video."

Note this investigation solely involves US personnel and US memos. The physical "search" for this investigation consists of walking down the halls of the State Department, knocking on a door of a co-worker, and asking a question.

The Administration is trying to claim that the easy investigation is all wrapped up with and inextricably linked to the more difficult one, so they are claiming they can't answer the easy questions (easily answered in a day or two) until they answer the hard ones (which will take, fortuitously enough, until after the election to resolve).

Now actually I don't know if Tapper is being snowed by this or understands it perfectly. He seems like a savvy enough guy.

So I guess what I'm asking for is for Tapper to call Carney out on this deliberate conflation, and ever-so-gently remind him that the FBI is not required to find the memos in which US State Department personnel rejected requests for very necessary security.

State could release these at any time. The search, on their computers, would take no more than 1-2 days.

They are pretending mystifaction about something they already know the answers to.

Sure, they don't know yet who the terrorists were. But they damn well already know who nixed all the security requests. And they damn well know which higher-ups told the underlings to nix the requests.

We don't need to find out Which unknown twenty foreign terrorists carried out the attack? to answer the much-easier question Which US personnel denied the requests for security? or Who decided to trot out the "spontaneous protest"/"YouTube video" lie when all intelligence indicated this was a planned terrorist attack having nothing to do with a video or protest?

These are separate questions and separate investigations. The fact that one may take weeks doesn't change the fact that the other takes hours -- hours, plus a willingness of State to tell the truth.

"Normalization:" Apparently the theory State was employing was "Normalization." Which I take to mean: Let's treat Benghazi (and Libya) as if it is a normal country, with normal, low threat of violence against our embassies, and it will thus become so.

Naive? I think so. I bet Romney thinks so too. Especially given that his main critique of Obama's foreign policy is naivete.

Annnnddd... Videos are now coming out. Great timing, Me.

And here's Jake Tapper and Ed Henry grilling the Hapless Hack Jay Carney. Tapper asks him specifically if the administration "shot first and aimed later." Carney babbles again about investigations.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:47 PM | Comments (226)
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How did this happen? Where did this come from?

peaking at a NATO conference of defense ministers in Brussels, Panetta said the U.S. has been working with Jordan to monitor chemical and biological weapons sites in Syria and also to help Jordan deal with refugees pouring over the border from Syria. The troops are also building a headquarters for themselves.

But the revelation of U.S. military personnel so close to the 19-month-old Syrian conflict suggests an escalation in the U.S. military involvement in the conflict, even as Washington pushes back on any suggestion of a direct intervention in Syria.

Do we no longer debate these decisions? This came out of nowhere (or at least it was never highlighted by the Administration or the press) so I have no instantaneous opinion on the advisability of it.

I do seem to remember a time when troop movements into Theaters of War got a brief national debate, and a formal announcement of the Administration's plan to do so (or consideration of doing so).

Bang. Troops in Jordan. They were kind enough to let us know after-the-fact.

Posted by: Ace at 12:17 PM | Comments (227)
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Your honor, let me explain why I wound up all up in that 15 year old runaway's business: I was too much the gentleman to turn her aside. What would that have done to her self-esteem?

I don't have to go into detail about why the CritiBrag -- the claim of self-criticism which, oddly enough, winds up being a brag on one's virtue -- is kinda sorta complete 100% bullshit. Every time you've told a prospective employer that your "greatest failing" was that you "are too details-oriented" and "can't learn to separate myself from my work" you've deployed the CritiBrag.

And your interviewer rolled his eyes. If not his visible ones, then internal one called the pineal gland.

So, Obama's searching probe into his failings has concluded thus: Romney lied, and I was just too gallant to say so.

“Well, two things. I mean, you know, the debate, I think it’s fair to say I was just too polite, because it’s hard to sometimes just keep on saying and what you’re saying isn’t true. It gets repetitive."

Goodness knows, Obama avoids being repetitive at all costs.

"The good news is, is that’s just the first one. Governor Romney put forward a whole bunch of stuff that either involved him running away from positions that he had taken or doubling down on things like Medicare vouchers that are going to hurt him long term. And, you know, I think it’s fair to say that we will see a little more activity at the next one,” President Obama said on this morning’s broadcast of Tom Joyner Morning Show on the radio.

To sneak some poll stuff into this (and why shouldn't we?), Romney is up 1 point in the RCP average, and if you drop out the ancient CBS poll (pre-debate), that rises to +2.5.

At least @philipaklein says so. I don't do math.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:35 AM | Comments (294)
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A very smart man -- long-winded, sure, but makes a hell of a point -- was just saying this.

Actually commenters were pushing back against my statement that Obama had been bad, rather than that Romney had been great. As I said, though, it's just easier to make jokes in a negative fashion.

But the truth of it is that Obama was not that bad -- for Obama. This is what Obama is. He is a droning, meandering, hectoring scold who has few facts or insights at his command. The pony's single trick is variations on the "fairness" theme, and it has always been such.

It's just that Romney was great. Great. Flat-out, great. As people have said-- this may have been the best presidential debate performance since Reagan, and probably since Kennedy.

But that observation has no upside for the left. If Obama was bad and off his game, he could, you see, get better.

Thus, the Obama-Was-Just-Bad is a preferable Narrative to "Romney was Masterful." Especially because the Romney Was Masterful Narrative reinforces some things that Romney has been trying to tell the country, to little success: That he tends to be highly, highly competent at whatever challenge he chooses to throw himself at.

Plus, it's not plausible that Romney is incompetent by this reading. See, a smart man may have a very bad, very dumb day, but it's unheard of for a dumb man to have a very good, very smart day. One can perform below one's capability; but one cannot really perform above one's maximum capability.

Good analysis by Althouse, excerpted by Instapundit:

Here’s why they did it. Romney was so much better than Obama. Romney was vigorous, vividly in command of the facts, principles of economics, free-market ideology. Like Obama, he had a strategy to appeal to moderates, and he jumped into the moderate ground and occupied it — stunningly — with modesty and charm. He radiated competence and readiness to work for us. There he stood, the brilliant candidate, who wants only to help us, knows how to help us, and deeply, passionately cares that we need help. Wow.

Don’t let that be the story! Don’t look at that! Look at pathetic woeful Obama. He was off his game. That’s not good for Obama — as his drop in the polls shows — but it was better than the alternative: talking about how Romney dramatically topped the President — the President, who came to the debate with all the gravitas of the presidency and all the knowledge and understanding that he has through working as the President these last 4 years.

The meme The Bad Obama was — colluding pundits decided — preferable to The Great Romney.

Apparently Rush mentioned her analysis today.

Posted by: Ace at 10:57 AM | Comments (270)
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The most famous V-J day picture in the world.

…Far from being a kiss between a loving couple, we learn that George and Greta were perfect strangers. We learn that George was drunk, and that Greta had no idea of his presence, until she was in his arms, with his lips on hers… It seems pretty clear, then, what George had committed was sexual assault.”

Many movements or eras -- most, probably -- enter a decadent phase at some point. I don't know of a textbook definition of a decadent phase, but my off-the-cuff attempt is this:

a period marked by extremely minor variations on art or thought that has gone before, of recycling, of re-using old tropes rather than creating new ideas;

a period marked not by accumulation or creation of capital, whether monetary capital or capital of another kind, such as intellectual or influential or philosophical, but instead marked by the use/spending of previously acquired capital without replenishing same;

a period of sloth, whether sloth in intellect or sloth in industriousness, and a concomitant lowering of standards so that what little new work is done can be credited as good, important, or noble, albeit by a greatly reduced standard;

a period without vitality;

and, ultimately,

a period marked by inward-turning self-indulgence, of whimsy, of juvenalia and "childish things," and a focus on trivia.

I am not an unbiased critic of feminism, or at least "feminism" as is practiced by the the successors of the Frankfurt School on the left.

Nevertheless, I think it's difficult to argue against the point that feminism -- whatever it was in the past -- has entered a long, dreary Decadent Phase, largely focused on the past glories of a long-faded golden age, now rehashing the same three or four themes endlessly into (very slightly) different configurations.

There's a woman I admire for her smarts. I won't say who. I find her to be a lively and interesting thinker, and funny.

But I frequently hear this woman ask "what do my very minor, trivial fashion choices say about me As A Woman (capitalization implicit)?" and "are my occasional attempts to appear attractive a capitulation to the Male Gaze?" and other such absurdities.

In this particular woman's case, she asks these questions archly, with a bit of ironic distance, so that she is parodying herself at the same time she asks these questions. Nevertheless, these questions occur with such frequency I am reasonably confident that, while she is sort of goofing on herself for thinking about such things, she does think about such things, and not just occasionally, but rather a lot.

Which I consider something of a shame. I don't care about her politics, really. But it does strike me that a bright, insightful woman is inflicting something akin to intellectual lobotomization on herself, filling her head with constant trivialities.

I don't hate this woman. I rather like her. I'm a bit of a fan. I actually feel somewhat bad for her. A not-inconsequential portion of her mind is constantly being used to chew over absurdities of a quasi-religious nature. Is the fact that I have chosen to leave my bra-stap visible beneath my t-shirt a betrayal of the feminist ideal? What does my exposed bra-strap say about me as a person? What messages am I sending to the world? What philosophical implications flow from this casually exposed bra-strap?

I think most people would concede that the question "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" is a terrific waste of time that accomplishes nothing except, perhaps, distracting the mind from more important questions with more tangible implications.

Which is how I feel about feminism (Frankfurt School version). A philosophy -- and feminism is put forth as a philosophy -- should engender interesting questions, further avenues of exploration, rather than a stultifying and stupefying its adherents in a warm bath of easy, predictable answers.

And not just easy answers -- but utterly inconsequential ones.

In this feminism seems to me to be a flight from the world, not an engagement with it. Just as monks cloistered themselves away to ponder upon pins and dancing angels,* so too do Frankfurt Feminists cloister themselves -- or at least large parts of their intellects -- in monastaries of the mind, protected from challenge, relentlessly reinforced in the same old dogmas.

There is also a Geek factor to this. One bad habit of geeks -- they have good habits, but some bad ones as well -- is that they create for themselves a very narrow and inconsequential area of expertise -- Transformers, comic books, Star Trek, what have you -- and spend overmuch time in this psychological Woobie.

It's comforting to revisit and revisit and revisit again the same well-known corridors of information. I keep saying that there should be a word for this phenomenon -- preferably German, I think -- to describe "the pleasure one feels by hearing something one already knows to be true."

This is why Shark Week is so popular. People who watch Shark Week already pretty much know everything they're going to see in Shark Week. They know, for example, the Latin nomination for Great White Shark. But it gives them pleasure to hear the words they already know -- Carcharodon carcharias. There's just a comforting pleasure that is hard to describe in "learning" things one has already learned.

It's reassuring. And I think it's also falsely complimentary. When we hear something we already know, a sweet-sounding bell rings in our head-- Pinggg. "I already knew that. I'm knowledgeable. I'm covered on the 'knowing-stuff' front."

There is nothing wrong with this, exactly. All humans have this, I think, to one extent or another.

But I would contend that when a philosophy, or an alleged philosophy, is chiefly made up of the "philosophical" equivalent of Shark Week (Shark Week for the Vagina?), it has ceased being a philosophy and simply become a crutch, an escape. A Woobie.

There is no doubt that the Frankfurt Feminists know everything there is to know about the Male Gaze, the Vagina's para-mind, the philosophical implications of eyeshadow, and the New Holocaust known as "slut-shaming."

Just as there is no doubt that a Trekkie knows precisely where the elevators on the Enterprise run, to what decks.

But Trekkies generally do not call their obsession area of interest a philosophy or a politics. Generally they acknowledge, abashedly, the silliness of it, and will confess, if asked sharply, "Sure, there are more important things."

As humans we are not required to delve into the Most Important Things at all times. Escape is an underrated thing. A simple pleasure is no sin.

Nevertheless, a fundamentally trivial pursuit ought not be elevated to the plane of a supposedly rigorous philosophy which substantially defines the core of one's intellectual being.

We chuckle at people who wear Star Trek uniforms on the street, but when women dress as Singing Vaginas it is put to us, quite seriously, that we are to take this as a Political Statement.

It's not. It's arrogant geekery, the geekery of the geek who doesn't realize his passion is, while understandable enough on a human level, rather silly.

This is my problem with currently-configured Frankfurt Feminism. I don't fear it as an ideology. Just as I don't fear the Trekkie ideology.

But when I see a woman whom I rather like and respect filling her head with such nonsense -- thinking about Gender Issues, as it were, once every seven seconds -- I feel bad that she's been conned, and that her brain is simply not firing on all cylinders, clogged, as it is, with bubblegum and sillystring.

I guess it's not really my place to tell anyone else "You can be more than this. You can cast your gaze further than these comforting, but cramped, nearby shores."

So I won't tell them this.

But this is what I think about them. I think it's frankly sad, and I think it's actually a betrayal of women to fill their heads with this Cosmo Confuscianism -- and to insist to them that they're Not Really Women unless they are constantly deranging their thoughts with sabotaging their intellects with Meditations Upon a Bra-Strap.

I don't find it so terrible when I see dumb women do this -- fine. Dumb things for dumb people. Fools need their foolscap, too.

But when I see smart women so trapped in trivia, I do cringe a little. And I do nod -- very condescendingly -- when I hear assertions like "I am a serious, intelligent woman, and therefore I will now write about the silliest bubblegum mock-politics imaginable for the next hour, or the next ten years of my career."

Rape: The easy rejoinder to this, which I of course perfectly predictable and perfectly silly (and hence a perfect illustration of what I'm talking about), is "You're calling rape a trivium?!?!"

Um, no. Of course not. What I'm saying is that Frankfurt Feminists are connecting fundamentally unserious things to a serious thing through convoluted logic in order to call the unserious things "serious."

A bad sort of Star Trek Geek might attempt to defend his obsession by claiming that "Star Trek teaches us about war, about fundamental truths of humanity, about philosophy, and about man's ultimate destiny in the stars," or some crap.

Thus he will attempt to link his trivia about Yeoman Rand's first name to something weighty and with legitimate import.

But we reject this. Knowing that Rand's first name is "Janice" has nothing to do with that other stuff.

And very silly things -- fashion choices, art fancies, and the like -- are being invested with a false import by constantly linking them, somehow, after a couple of tendentious claims and a few logical leaps, to rape.

There was actually a Star Trek, or two, that had some rape in it. Or rape-like stuff, like Kirk and Uhura being forced into sexual contact against their will. By uh, mind control.

I can't play the Rape Card, though, to insist that this makes Star Trek of serious importance.

And yet this is the method by which all of these fundamentally unserious things in Frankfurt Feminism are invested with false seriousness -- tie them to rape (or... metaphorical rape), and Bob's Your Uncle. Now it's serious.

Headline Theft: "VJina" swiped from dang(c), in the comments. It's too good.

* I realize monks did more than this, including charitable works and keeping the enlightenment alive during the Dark Ages as well as pondering much more relevant theosophical questions. This is what we call a partially accurate metaphor. Most metaphors are only partially accurate. Only A = A. Forget it, he's rolling. more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:08 AM | Comments (302)
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Just starting his remarks now. It's also on CSPAN.

Nordstrom's Remarks. Wood just spoke, now Nordstrom is.

John E. tips this as a WTF?

Nordstrom was worried -he did not know how much the Americans could rely on members of a local Libyan militia in Benghazi that provided security — the “17th of February Martyrs Brigade.” Mostly merchants and shopkeepers before the war, they seemed eager, but they hadn’t much experience and other than a daily $30 stipend for food from the U.S. Embassy, they hadn’t been paid in months.

Hadn't been paid in months.

Right now, he's making the point that the Libyan state was very weak post-revolution, and could not protect embassies as other states could. He lists a series of violent actors -- Kadaffi loyalists, "roaming militias," etc. -- presenting a danger.

However, his thrust, if I understand it, seems to be one defending the Administration.

Not only were the Libyan guards not American (and not being paid), they were also unarmed.

Nordstrom is "proud" of how he and his guards performed.

Proud? In what scenario would you be less than proud?

Disinformation Campaign: Ben Howe's video for Heritage, again: more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:39 AM | Comments (680)
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Something to get your blood pumping on this hump day ... a great new video by Ben Howe appears below the fold. more...

Posted by: andy at 08:20 AM | Comments (96)
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Poll links developing.

Horrible, horrible news for Romney out of Pennsylvania. After trailing the President by double-digits pre-debate, Romney is now in the awful, no-good, ugly position of trailing him by 5, 46%-51%, in the latest Rasmussen poll. This on the heels of the awful Susquehanna and Sienna polls that have already narrowed the race there.

EVEN WORSE for Republicans, Tom Smith in Pennsylvania is now in an M.O.E. fight with Senator Bob Casey, trailing him 46-44 in the latest Susquehanna poll.
Horrible, awful, terrible numbers.
Clearly no bounce.

Posted by: CAC at 07:42 AM | Comments (257)
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Obama is winning 81% of black voters and 54% of hispanic voters there.
Horrible news.

John Kerry did better in 2004, snagging 86%/60% respectively, which is obviously bad news for Mitt Romney. The President has seen his share of the respective blocs decline 13 and 24 points respectively, again reflecting horribly on Mitt Romney who is now only tripling and doubling McCain's share of these same blocks. Terrible.

Romney outperforming Bush amongst minority voters (when Bush won with less in 04) is a bad thing, as our resident troll I am sure will be happy to explain.

Obama's 12 point win in 2008 here is down to a scant 1 point edge in this latest Survey USA poll, which again our troll will be delighted to tell us is terrible, horrible, no-good news for Mitt Romney.

Because you win by losing chunks of your core supporters and bleeding independents, of course.

No good, rotten numbers for Romney, indeed.

Posted by: CAC at 07:11 AM | Comments (228)
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Below are the Week 5 pick'em results.

Leaderboard
HailMaryHector 48
enneadeka 42
Dawgyear 42
Hatrick Swayzes 42

Management
JWF 40
Andy 40
Ben 34
CDR-M 31
Russ From Winterset 29

Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:11 AM | Comments (85)
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