No shortage of commentary on Ben Rhodes and Obama's contempt for the press

"Remember, it was also Rhodes who authored the Benghazi “smoking gun” email which sought as a goal to “underscore” that the attacks that killed four Americans resulted from “protests [that] are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.' ”  Roger Aronoff 

Times Article On Ben Rhodes Exposes White House Contempt For The Press And Public  . . . "We have consistently reported on the administration’s use of false narratives to sell policies to the press, and thereby the American people. For example, it was the Obama administration that argued Congress’ choice for an Iran deal was between war and supporting a disastrous agreement that would eventually grant Iran nuclear weapons. The mainstream media then reported this as the only two options regarding Iran.

"Rhodes’ fingerprints were all over this effort. “It was Rhodes who framed the Iran deal as a choice between peace and war,” wrote Lee Smith for The Weekly Standard, continuing, “and it was Rhodes who set up a messaging unit to sell the deal that created an ‘echo chamber’ in the press.' ” . . .

Obama’s ‘compadres’ in the press still serving as his King’s Guard

Leftist, fawning and lazy, the media were easy marks for Team Obama

 

. . . "Members of JournoList, a listserv made up of hundreds of left-wing journalists from major media organizations, were outraged that ABC News’ George Stephanopolous had asked Mr. Obama why it had taken him so long to dissociate himself from Rev. Wright’s comments. The left-wing journalists jumped into action, with Thomas Schaller of the Baltimore Sun suggesting, “Why don’t we use the power of this list to do something about the debate” and writing a “smart statement expressing disgust” at the questions Mr. Stephanopolous had asked Mr. Obama.

"No wonder so many in the left-wing media sought to protect Mr. Obama. With religious fervor, they believed in the man and his mission and did whatever it took to make his presidency a reality. . . .

. . . "The intensity with which these media organizations were called out, dressed down and punished was astonishing — and served as an effective deterrent to anyone else who might be inclined to probe the administration’s actions. It was — and continues to be — an outrageous abuse of power, submitted to willingly by much of the press.

"Throughout his interminable presidency, Mr. Obama has enjoyed the protection of this King’s Guard. Mr. Rhodes simply exploited their shallow idolatry and professional lassitude. And the country has been damaged immeasurably because of it."  

Monica Crowley is editor of online opinion at The Washington Times.

Has the Left Lost Its Mind on Transgenderism?

Weekly Standard  . . . "What he finds particularly annoying, however, is the pushiness and heavy-handedness of transgender activists and their liberal enablers:

The political agenda of the transgender community often seems to demand that we be complicit in their convictions, that we humor them, pretend that we view them as the genuine article when in fact they seem to be staging a kind of masquerade, dressing in a costume, playing at make-believe. We are not asked just to follow the humane policy of live and let live, exhibiting acceptance and tolerance as well as fighting for their rights as human beings, but we are required to act as their enablers, enter into their fantasies, protect them from the truth of a devastating fallacy. We are expected both to support them politically, an easy task for most liberals, and affirm their deeply guarded conceptions of selfhood, something that lies well outside the province of the struggle for equal protection under the law—in truth, that lies firmly in the field of counseling or psychotherapy. I know of no other human-rights movement in which supporters are adjured, not only to advocate for the greater civil liberties of a minority, but to aid and reinforce its self-delusions, to guard those who harbor them from the truth.

The Department of Justice Tries to Create a Third Sex  . . . "The letter from the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) cited four cases in which, they claim, that federal courts have accepted “transgender” as a sex with the right to protection from discrimination that is identical to the protection enjoyed by males and females." . . .

A Sad Video Highlights the Contradictions and Tragedy of the Transgender Moment  

. . . "But we can’t let a discussion of intellectual contradictions mask the human tragedy. A deeply confused teenager is on the verge of mutilating himself — of literally opening a wound that his body will consistently attempt to close — for the sake of hoping to find love with straight men. The level of psychological confusion and pain is difficult to grasp, but rather than speak the truth to that young man and work diligently to counsel and mentor him, an entire class of people believe that he should irrevocably harm his own body, and the rest of us should believe a lie — that he’s “really” a girl." . . .

Dirty Hands: Past, Present and Future

A "guest-essay on the magnitude of the moral corruption that infected the Western democracies during the Second World War."

Gates of Vienna

General Heinz Guderian and Lieutenant Colonel Gustav-Adolf Riebel together with Brigadier Semyon Krivoshein, Commander of the Soviet 29th Tank Brigade, in Brest-Litovsk, September 1939

. . . "We therefore have a duty to ensure that truth, justice and compassion remain at the centre of our own lives, as the politicians we elect go about the business of running our country. And we have a duty to speak out when we see politicians make moral compromises in our name, even when they claim to be making such compromises in order to achieve a greater good. If the British state visits harm upon its own citizens in order to prevent dissenting voices from being heard, then it is possible that our country will begin to travel down an evil road, and there will be no means of altering course. So we must learn from history, and we must speak out whenever we see politicians act in ways that run counter to our own sense of truth, justice and compassion. The alternative is to risk an uncontrollable descent into a different kind of reality, where knowledge of what happened in places like Katyn will be seen not as reminders of what some human beings are capable of, but as milestones we passed long ago on the road to hell on earth." 

White House’s Susan Rice: U.S. national security agencies are too white

Washington Times

"In a White House often accused of being stacked with loyalists, President Obama’s national security adviser said Wednesday there are too many white people in key government posts, endangering national security because they think alike.

"Speaking at Florida International University’s commencement, Susan E. Rice, who is black, said a diversified government workforce is more likely to yield “better outcomes” than a predominantly white one.

"Referring to criticism that the U.S. national security workforce is “white, male and Yale,” Ms. Rice told the graduates, “In the halls of power, in the faces of our national security leaders, America is still not fully reflected.' ” . . .

So the pressure will be to lower qualification standards to increase the number of many of the right ethnic group. This was done long ago in the *Rampart Division of the LA Police Department with the result that many problems resulted with arrests and convictions.

*Ann Coulter comments at length on this issue.

"In a massive, detailed 2000 study of the effect of court-ordered affirmative action plans on police departments, economist John Lott found that the more minorities on a police force, the higher the rates of murder, manslaughter, violent crime, robbery and aggravated assault will be. Violent crime increased by a minimum of 3.3 percent every year after affirmative action policies went into effect -- and the spike in crime was highest in black neighborhoods. 

"The problem was not with black cops, Lott's study showed, but rather with the lowering of standards across the board, resulting in less-qualified officers of every race. To get more of MSNBC's "voices of oppression" on police forces, requirements are reduced for all recruits. (Just as quality declined at MSNBC when "voices of oppression" had to be added to their lineup.) 

"We end up with cops who are criminals, the Rampart scandal of the 1990s and great movies like "Training Day." . . . 

Liberals cannot be made to learn from history. TD

EXCLUSIVE: Persian Gulf Sheikhs Gave Bill & Hillary $100 Million

Daily Caller  . . . "Yet as secretary of state, Clinton consciously and actively sought to legitimize the sheikdoms through many new Department of State programs.

"It’s unclear what kind of promises or concessions the Clintons may have given the monarchs in return for their lavish financial support over the years, but last month the candidate reversed her long-standing support for fracking.

"Hillary’s new position, unveiled last month at a CNN presidential debate with Democratic opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders, put her in alignment with the Gulf State policy that opposes North American oil and gas fracking." . . .

Barack Obama’s deeply demoralizing “You didn’t build that” commencement speech at Howard.

The Post Turtle* President Speaks   "One wishes that after seven-plus years of demoralizing, ugly, incompetent and divisive leadership, there would be at long last something one might find in Barack Obama that an average American could make peace with.

"But in one of the latter speeches of his presidential tenure, a commencement address at historically black Howard University over the weekend, Obama showed himself incapable either of uniting the country he’s misgoverned since January of 2009 or even giving its citizens reasons to believe they can improve their own stations.

"According to Obama’s Howard speech things are terrific — both in comparison to when he took office and also in comparison to the time of a far more successful president than he.

"Obama opened the speech by warning that he was going to give what he called a “hot take,” and then suggested that the country is in every way better than it was “when I was in college,” and picked 1983, the year Ronald Reagan’s presidency took off as well as the year Obama graduated from Columbia, as his benchmark." . . .

Hilarious (yet deeply sad): Enthusiastic Hillary rally speaker chokes on saying ‘under God’ as Hillary smiles standing next to her

Thomas Lifson   "It's your must-see video moemnt of the day -- 16 seconds that crystallized the religious stance of the modern Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s distance from the Deity. At a rally yesterday in Blackwood, NJ, Susan Shin Angulo, a member of the Camden County Board of Freeholders, was trying to whip up crowd enthusiasm to Sanders-level enthusiasm, and got carried away. She visibly and audibly appeared to choke on the words “under God” as a familiar phrase from a better time made it way from her brain to her lips.

“Only Hillary can bring us together, one nation…ugh, err indispizzable”

"This is not the first time Democrats have rebelled publicly against invoking the Deity. This moment from the last Democratic National Convention says it all:"

Clinton’s Public Server, Sanders’ Public Blindness

Debra J. Saunders

Why is Bernie Sanders scared of answering questions about Hillary’s “home-brew” server?

. . . "So I asked Sanders: Do you think the secretary of state’s use of a personal server was safe and legal? Are you worried that foreign intelligence services might have hacked her account? Forget about whether she’s indicted. Clinton’s unforced error of using a “homebrew” server is the real story. It was reckless. In 2013, the Romanian hacker known as “Guccifer” released information about her personal account after he drilled into the AOL emails of former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal. If Chinese and Russian operatives were paying attention — how could they not? — Clinton’s use of an unsecured system opened a door for their prying eyes. Former CIA Director Michael Hayden calls the secretary of state’s decision to use a private server for official correspondence Clinton’s “original sin.”

"Sanders’ reply? “I’m gonna answer that question the same way I did famously back then. And that is, look, there is an investigation, as we all know, undergoing. You’re asking me my opinion.  Presumably, the people who are doing the investigation have a lot more information on that than I do or you do. And whatever happens will happen.” Sanders added that he prefers to focus on issues that impact American lives, such as “why the middle class of this country is in decline.”

"It’s odd how Sanders trusts the Department of Justice to investigate Clinton’s emails when he repeatedly faults the feds for not charging Wall Street banks for criminal fraud despite his stated belief in their guilt." . . .

A search of "security review" turned up businesses

Comey: No such thing as a 'security inquiry' in Clinton email probe
. . . "The Clinton team is adept at using the English language to obfuscate rather than illuminate. "Security inquiry" sounds so innocent, so routine, when what the FBI is really doing is investigating to see if a crime has been committed. It won't become a criminal investigation until they determine if any laws were broken. They may already done so, but for obvious reasons, are choosing not to go publuc quite yet.

"Some experts have speculated that career prosecutors in the Justice Department may already have gone before a grand jury and have begun to present a case. But that would be extraordinarily difficult to keep secret, given the players involved." . . .

Trees and CO2

http://terrellaftermath.com/