Tasty.

Democrats have long railed against the lack of transparency in political funding, but security was airtight this week as a hush-hush network of progressive moneymen and activists held a closed-door conference to map out their plan to shift U.S. policy to the left.

At the elegant Ritz Carlton hotel in downtown Chicago, wealthy donors, Democratic politicians, and representatives from left-leaning activist groups met for a conference hosted by the Democracy Alliance, a progressive donor network that funnels millions of dollars to undisclosed activist groups and political causes.

The four-day conference, which was closed to the public and media, drew high-profile Democrats including DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, and White House adviser Valerie Jarrett.

Access to the conference was invite-only and tightly controlled...

Most attendees were not allowed in the “Partners Only” room.

Partners in the Democracy Alliance are reportedly required to contribute a minimum of $200,000 per year to activist groups approved by the organization and pay annual dues of $30,000.

Why does this keep happening to them?

...

David Axelrod dined at the hotel’s restaurant Deca, which had a sign outside advertising its $100 grilled cheese sandwich filled with “40-year aged Wisconsin cheddar infused with 24K gold flakes.”

Picture at the link.

Incidentally, the Free Beacon has published a picture of its Income Inequality Venn Diagram, I assume by popular demand.

This is completely unrelated, I'm certain.

If You Want To Live Fat Like Socialists, You'd Better Vote Red Like Republicans

Posted by: Ace at 07:53 AM | Comments (531)
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This is from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. It's a Democratic-written document, but in terms of the actual emails, I assume it's reliable enough-- they can't fake emails.

Point is, I keep saying, incorrectly, that the White House and/or Ben Rhodes created the "spontaneously evolving protests" lie.

This idea -- for which I have never seen a single drop of evidence -- is alluded to, in a way, in these talking points, from the unnamed Director of the CIA Office of Terrorism.

Read carefully-- it doesn't say what you expect it to say, as you've been conditioned to expect the fiction that would be spontaneously inspired from this first attempt at a cover story.

1) Fri., Sept. 14th 2012,_11:15 a.m.-· ·written by Director, CIA Office of Terrorism Analysis

• We believe based on currently available information that the attacks 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.

See what they did there?

Note that this does not claim there were protests at Benghazi -- rather, this seems to be some kind of compromise language which drags this fiction of the protests into the matter, without saying there were actually protests at Benghazi.

Read it closely -- it claims the "attacks" in Benghazi were "spontaneously inspired" by protests not occurring in Benghazi, but rather in Cairo.

No actual claim of demonstrations in Benghazi -- rather that the "attacks" were "spontaneously inspired by" (and what the f*** does that mean) demonstrations in Cairo.

While all the elements for the ultimate fiction are present -- "spontaneously" evolving and "demonstrations" -- the Talking Points do not yet claim that demonstrations in Benghazi got out of hand and spontaneously evolved into a highly coordinated pre-planned attack.

They will, oh they will. But it will take some further edits.

This reads to me like someone was trying to get the idea of "protests spontaneously evolving into attacks" into the talking points early, and the writer was agreeing to meet that individual half-way, without fully blessing this fictitious claim.

Only after a series of edits -- with various State, White House, and CIA officials massaging the talking points -- do the talking points themselves "spontaneously evolve" to include a direct claim that there were demonstrations in Benghazi:

9) Saturdav, Sept. 15th 9:45 a.m.-edits made by CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell

• 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

The Talking Points began by speaking of "attacks" with no prior "demonstrations" occurring in Benghazi, to ultimately claiming there were in fact "demonstrations."

While that the earlier draft said the "attacks" had been "spontaneous inspired" by demonstrations occurring elsewhere, this new edit -- even as more information comes in, further disproving the idea of "protests" in Benghazi -- the talking points actually move towards the fictitious notion of protests evolving into an attack.

As the evidence moves away from the "demonstrations" story, the talking points actually move closer to that story.

Later, the Senate report, in reviewing the record, claims:

We now know that the CIA's September 15, 2012, talking points were inaccurate in that they wrongly attributed the genesis of the Benghazi attacks to protests that became violent. However, as stated in the report, this characterization reflected the assessment by the IC of the information available at that time, which lacked sufficient intelligence and eyewitness statements to conclude that there were no protests.

Note that it was Mike Morrel who rejected efforts to get this "spontaneous protest" fiction out of the talking points, claiming there was insufficient evidence to disprove it.

This whole episode has an Alice in Wonderland quality.

I have never seen Tweets from jihadis about a protest in Benghazi.

I have never seen pictures of a protest in Benghazi.

I have never heard eyewitness accounts of a protest in Benghazi.

In fact I've heard the opposite. For example, one of the men killed that day reported that the annex was being cased by men who looked like they were plotting an attack.

He did not report a "protest." He reported men alone or in pairs looking the place over.

Eyewitnesses present at Benghazi, and military leaders getting information in real time, fail to report any "protests" going on.

In fact, they report the attack came out of the blue, rather than "evolving." Like a planned, coordinated attack.

I have never seen a single bit of evidence suggesting there was even a single protester near the Annex on September 11, 2012, and yet this "factoid" was inserted into the talking points and resisted all efforts at dislodgement.

Furthermore, when military and intelligence analysts as well as on-site, first-hand witnesses attempted to get this fiction removed from the talking points, it was claimed that there was not enough evidence to disprove the "protests" took place.

Not enough evidence to disprove they took place?

What evidence ever existed in favor of their existence? The convenient factoid just shows up in the talking points, without any evidence for it having ever been presented by anyone at any time, and all challenges to this utterly-lacking-in-evidence factoid are rejected on the grounds that first-hand accounts of no protest occurring in Benghazi are not enough to disprove the "protests" which the talking points, and no one else on earth, claim to have "spontaneously evolved" into an attack.

The White House, and State, and the CIA are all fond of saying that the "currently available intelligence" they had at that time suggested there was a "protest."

They admit this was wrong, now, but they claim, at the time, that was their best "currently available intelligence."

Has anyone ever seen any intelligence from that time showing evidence of a protest?

If so, let me know.

Serendipity: On FoxNews, Bret Baier interviewed Tommy Vietor (a White House flack who was involved in the editing of the talking points).

He specifically asked him about the "attacks" to "demonstrations" edit.

I only discovered this change thirty minutes ago myself.

Here was Tommy Vietor's answer to whether he was responsible for the change in wording. He claimed he couldn't remember, shrugged, and then chided Baier:

"Dude, this was like two years ago."

Bret Baier exploded at him, "Dude, it's what everyone's talking about today."

More: From that interview, which I missed:

Jim Hoft ‏@gatewaypundit 2m
HUGE!!! Tommy Vietor – Former NSA Spox – Admits Obama Never Made it to Situation Room During Benghazi Attack! (Video) http://shar.es/SgwvS

Tommy Vietor: I was in the Situation Room that night. Ok. And we didnÂ’t know where the ambassador was. Definitively.

Bret Baier: Was the president in the Situation Room?

Vietor: NoÂ…

Baier: Where was the president.

Vietor: In the White House.

Baier: He wasnÂ’t in the Situation Room.

Vietor: Uhh. At what point in the evening. He was constantlyÂ… ItÂ’s well known that when the attack was first briefed to him it was in the Oval Office. And he was updated constantlyÂ…

Baier: Sp then when Hillary Clinton talks to him by phone at 10 PM, heÂ’s where?

Vietor: I donÂ’t know. I donÂ’t have a tracking device on him in the residence.

Baier: But you were in the Situation Room and he wasnÂ’t there.

Vietor: Yes.

Thanks to Costanza Defense.

Video: "Attacks" evolve into "demonstrations" in the Talking Points, and hence "demonstrations" evolve into "attacks" in the historical record.

"That's what bureaucrats do all day long," Vietor reassures us.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:30 PM | Comments (838)
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Even David Gregory understands the emails scotch the White House lies, and he's no Rhodes Scholar.

Speaking of Rhodes Scholars, Sharyl Atkkisson, before she was forced out of CBS, thought it would be a good idea to disclose that CBS News President David Rhodes is the brother of Obama Equities Balancer Ben Rhodes. Her superiors told her not to make this very basic routine bit of journalistic hygiene, because it wasn't "relevant."

Note that David Rhodes was not the source of this decision; it was some unnamed manager.

[I]n a couple of stories when Ben RhodesÂ’ name appeared or began to surface a long time ago, I argued that we needed to disclose the relationship because thatÂ’s what we should to do. Not because thereÂ’s any guilt or guilt by association or that we had done anything wrong, but disclosure is your friend. It protects you. And as journalists, if we disclose that off the top of a story then people wonÂ’t look back later and say that we hid it. So I did argue the case and was told by a manager it was not necessary because it wasnÂ’t relevant. Which I disagreed with. In another case I wrote a story on the web and I did make the disclosure and Rhodes had no problem with it as far as I know, I didnÂ’t hear from him.

Retired Air Force Brigadier General Robert Lovell, who served as (and this is a mouthful) "Deputy Director for Intelligence and Knowledge Development Directorate for AFRICOM" at the time of the Benghazi attack, testified that the government knew almost immediately that there were no "spontaneously evolving protest/highly coordinated attacks," just hours after the attack.

W]hat we did know quite early on was that this was a hostile action,” he said in his prepared remarks. “This was no demonstration gone terribly awry.”

He was pressed on this point by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who asked how quickly it became clear that Al Qaeda was involved.

“Very, very soon,” Lovell said. “When we were still in the very early, early hours of this activity.”

“Was it a video?” Chaffetz asked?

“No sir.”

Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) also asked Lovell when he heard of the notion that the attack was a response to a video. Lovell said he heard it only briefly, but not as a serious theory.

When Issa asked if he had heard of this idea before 3:15 a.m. on September 12, 2012, Lovell said it was well before that time, and that the theory was quickly debunked.

“I would have to say [we] probably dismissed that notion by then, by working with other sources,” Lovell said.

“As the highest ranking person working that moment, you dismissed the idea that this attack was in fact a demonstration that had went awry and it was based on a YouTube video out of Los Angeles,” Issa then stated.

“Yessir, short answer,” Lovell responded.

While the responsible intelligence and military officials (some of them on-the-ground in Benghazi) all said this was a coordinated military attack likely conducted by an Al Qaeda affiliate, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and their various partisan Advertising Executives 2500 miles away in Washington, DC, settled on the more politically convenient "YouTube Video Theory of the Crime," and overruled the people who actually knew what the hell they were talking about.

And then, for eighteen months, they lied about this, and claimed the YouTube Video Theory of the Crime actually came from intelligence and military analysts, rather than their own MiniTruth chop-shop.

Lowell also says the United States should have ordered an action to save the lives of the the Benghazi operatives, rather than spending so much time saving the political futures of Obama and Hillary.

(My words, not his.)

Posted by: Ace at 12:53 PM | Comments (295)
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There's a claim made about good movies, that if you removed all music and dialogue from a movie, so that it was just silent visuals, it should still tell a story. You should still get the gist, you should still be able to follow it.

Here's a story without music or dialogue:

So adorbz.

Niedermeyer's Dead Horse (@mflynny) sends the full story, which is unreasonably cute.

Below, the movie version, with dialogue, music, and subtitles.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:50 AM | Comments (259)
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Yup. more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:46 PM | Comments (192)
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As I was just saying: The script gets flipped from "You're stupid to accuse Obama of something he could never, ever do" to "You're stupid to make a big deal out of something Obama obviously would always do."

John Dickerson goes into Ben Smith/Dave Weigel mode to Voxsplain to you why something he later concedes is a smoking gun isn't a smoking gun at all.

Here's his conclusion. The part before this excerpt concerned Carney's amazing claim as to why this email wasn't released when Congress subpoenaed all emails on Benghazi -- that this email wasn't about Benghazi.

The White House should not rely on super-literal word games. Although this explanation may be a defense against not releasing Rhodes’ email, it dooms the administration when it comes to the question of who inserted the “video” into the Benghazi conversation. The word video doesn’t show up in any of the emails from the CIA or State Department that were used to prepare Rice. Former CIA Director Michael Morell testified that he doesn’t know where the discussion of the video came from. So if you want to be hyperliteral, it’s obvious that Rice and the White House were the ones who emphasized the video, and that’s the end of that. Condemnation all around.

Note the way he says that so off-handedly, as if this is a trivial thing. "Condemnation all around." Yes, the White House lied, so now we in the press will finally admit it; condemnation all around, and now let's MoveOn.org.

Proof of a hot political dispute has been discovered, and John Dickerson's claim is There is no news here.

Indeed, that's how he begins his piece:

Has the Benghazi “smoking gun” been found? Some White House critics believe that new documents wrestled from the White House by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, prove that the Obama administration concocted a cover-up: Political advisers pushed a false story that the murder of four Americans grew out of a protest against an anti-Islamic video in order to hide a policy failure that might hurt the president in an election year. The documents clearly show that the White House pushed the video story, but there’s also proof that the White House believed the story they were pushing.

And that's his argument, that this is No Big Deal because, as George Costanza observed, "It's not a lie if you believe it."

He claims that the White House believed that the Youtube Video really cause the spontaneous highly-coordinated attack. He concedes that belief is false, of course, but that the White House convinced itself of a self-pleasing deception, and Serious You Guys, who doesn't do that?

Condemnation all around.

However, Dickerson de-emphasizes the actual story here in order to offer his Fake but Honestly Believed defense.

The story here is that the White House has been always been culpable for cooking up this Internet Video excuse and foisting this lie on the public.

He is conflating two entirely different falsehoods:

1. That the YouTube Video caused a highly-coordinated attack to "spontaneously evolve." The White House could, possibly, deceive itself into thinking this.

2. That it was other agencies and not the White House which inserted the false narrative about the YouTube into the Talking Points. The White House could not conceivably deceive themselves into thinking this is true, as people generally know the things they themselves did.

But Dickerson deliberately conflates the two, and suggests that because the White House might have stupidly, childishly told itself a fairy-tale about how Benghazi happened, then maybe their deception as to who foisted this fairy-tale on the public can also be excused as an innocent (albeit infantile) self deception.

No.

Just, no.

The White House lied about its role here for eighteen months, always claiming it was other agencies who made these changes, and that the White House only requested the changing of a single word.

They hid emails that would contradict that narrative.

This is now proven.

So does John Dickerson's "They believed it" defense also apply to these lies? When they repeatedly lied to the public about who had inserted the Youtube Video narrative into the talking points, did they believe that?

Dickerson deliberately conflates two false claims: That the Youtube Video was responsible for spontaneous protests that evolved into an attack, and that the White House had nothing to do with inserting this false narrative into the national consequence.

These are two separate misrepresentations -- and the White House could only have plausibly deceived itself into believing one of them.

And, by the way, I doubt that too, and I also would say that, even if it were true in this case, an administration's capacity for believing things which are in its interest to believe but which are also obviously not true is not the sterling defense Dickerson imagines it to be. I happen to think this administration tells itself a lot of stupid lies -- about its competency, about its integrity, about the effects of its policies on America.

The only thing the Obama Administration is more committed to than leftist ideology is its extremely high self-regard. That too should be a major story; or should we just say of it, "Condemnation all around"?

It is not plausible they also deceived themselves into thinking it was the FBI or CIA which inserted the Youtube Video narrative into the talking points when they themselves did it.

That's a straight-up lie, and a conscious, deliberate one. It's not a case of innocent "self-deception" as Dickerson avers.

How could Dickerson confuse two such obviously different matters such that a defense that can only plausibly attach to one is instead used for both?

Well how about this possibility: Maybe Dickerson is also guilty of allowing a little political and career self-interest lead him into some understandable self-deception:

The “smoking gun,” according to Sen. Lindsey Graham and others, is an email from deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes. (Rhodes is the brother to CBS News President David Rhodes; I also work for CBS.)

As Dickerson is assuring me that "self-deception" convincing oneself of a self-interested narrative is very common and completely excusable, I hope he won't be too offended when I suggest that perhaps this very common, completely excusable defect might be affecting him as well.

The administration lied to the public for 18 months, and the media, almost to a man, covered up and amplified their lies for them.

And now that proof of this is obtained, the media can only say: Condemnation all around.

Boys will be boys, you know? Such rascals.

Why the darling little rogues are guilty of little more than a bit of juvenile high-spiritedness.

That is a telling thing. Because people say that sort of thing about their own precious children.

About other people's children's misbehaviors, they take far greater umbrage.

But of their own beloved rapscallions' misadventures, they just shrug and say, "Boys will be boys."

I think the media is pretty much screaming at this point that they consider the Obama Kidz to be Mommy's Little Angels.

Unlike those horrible misbehaved neighbor-kids, the Republicans. The little monsters.

And Now a Guest Commentary CBS News' Chief Political Analyst, Eric Stratton, Rush Chairman:

You can't hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few, sick twisted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn't we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn't this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg - isn't this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we're not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America!

From a commenter, but he just used a sock so I can't credit him.

Oh, And I'm Sure This Is Just a Coincidence: CBS entirely embargoes major story about emails sent by the brother of the president of CBS News.

Oh, and, by the way, Mike Morell, who did the preparatory work on all this by rejecting testimony from first-hand witnesses that there was no protest, is now an "analyst" with CBS News.

It's all in the family.

They're rather like a gang, aren't they?

Posted by: Ace at 10:26 AM | Comments (535)
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We saw this script change in the case of Bill Clinton, after the revelation of the Blue Dress.

We saw this script change much more recently in the case of Obama's "If you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance lie," when the script flipped from "You're stupid and crazy to doubt Obama" to "Of course you can't keep your insurance, that's at the heart of the program's cost-control measures; you're stupid and crazy to have not realized this sooner!"

And now reliably thoughtless yabbering baboon Donnie Deutsch executes the pivot on Benghazi.

“What about the cover-up for the White House?” Scarborough interjected. “I’ve got everybody here apologizing for the White House. What about a cover-up, Donnie?”

“Why are you jumping to political strategy?” he continued. “So, tell me, what’s the politics of the White House lying about something that we all know they’re lying about?”

“You see the White House spokesperson lying on national television. You see an ABC Newsperson shocked that he’s lying and treating the press corps like they’re stupid. He says it’s not about Benghazi. Republicans and conservatives have been called fools for a year now for saying this happened. They don’t release it with the original the documents. They finally, reluctantly are forced to release it. Then you have the White House lying about it, saying it’s not about Benghazi, and you’re only reaction is, ‘Hey, Republicans better not overreact to the cover-up?’”

“We, as voters, understand both Republicans and Democrats are political animals and are going to manage a crisis to their favor,” Deutsch contested before he was interrupted.

“So, when Democrats cover something up, it’s politics,” Scarborough interjected. “When Republicans cover something up, it’s a scandal.” He closed by calling his co-hosts reaction to the White House’s behavior a “disgrace.”

So Scarborough says "we all know they're lying," and Deutsch finally -- finally -- does not dispute that, but instead chooses to recharacterize the acts of serial lying and cover-up as just some understandable political-animal crisis management.

For eighteen months the line from Obama -- and therefore the line from the White House's communications shops at ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN -- has been that Obama was not a "political animal," and certainly not on a matter of national security.

Now that the Blue Dress Proof of the emails are released, the defense changes to "Of course, this is all obvious, how stupid are you are for dwelling on obvious things."

The Other Defense... suggested by Deutsch (and coming soon from the mouths of every other braindead hack on TV and in print) is that this is such a minor political maneuver -- you know, "Everybody Does It."

Well let's examine that. If this is a very minor transgression, as Deutsch posits, that means that Obama has lied to the entire nation and corrupted its press (to the extent such a thing is further possible) in order to cover up a very minor transgression.

One may understand when a man lies over something extremely consequential. A normal man would do that (a highly ethical man might not, but a normal man would), and would not be branded a habitual liar.

But if a man also lies about inconsequential matters --as Deutsch assures us this is -- then that man is in fact a casual liar, equally given to lying about matters large and small, not discriminating among the profound and trivial, because his preferred mode of expression -- his natural, unthinking mode of expression -- is simply to lie.

So: Is that what is is, then, Donnie?

Posted by: Ace at 08:45 AM | Comments (546)
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• 2.45 Million Obamacare Enrollees Paid Their Premiums By April 15
  
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• The Shrinking Private Sphere
  
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• The Conservative Case Against Today's Copyright Law
  
• Another Video Of Rob Ford Smoking Crack Has Been Released
  
• VDH: The End Of Affirmative Action
  
• The Nightmare Of A Defenseless America
  
• This One Chart Explains Everything You Need To Know About Income Inequality
  
• Does The Free Market Punish Racism?
  
• Dark Money Dilemma
  
• PA Cops No Longer Need A Warrant To Search Vehicles
  
• MSM Claiming Obamacare Saved The Moribund American Economy
  
• Peaches Geldof Died Of Heroin Overdose
  
• The Hill Asking The Important Questions
  
• Ha!
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 04:55 AM | Comments (568)
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The perfect May Day story: SEIU membership, revenues plummet after state ends 'underhanded scheme'

Funny, when people aren't forced to be in a labor union, they tend not to join.

And speaking of forced membership in things, can I interest you in a health plan?

Data provided to the [House Energy & Commerce] committee by every insurance provider in the health care lawÂ’s Federally Facilitated Marketplace (FFM) shows that, as of April 15, 2014, only 67 percent of individuals and families that had selected a health plan in the federally facilitated marketplace had paid their first monthÂ’s premium and therefore completed the enrollment process. (emphasis added)

Now, there are a couple of problems with this stat, but the White House reaction is hilarious, given that they have the actual numbers:

Help me liberal "fact checker", you're my only hope!

Live by "stray voltage"; die by "stray voltage".

Posted by: andy at 02:20 AM | Comments (368)
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Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:24 PM | Comments (793)
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