Colonel: Hillary Made Decision Not to Post Marines at Benghazi/ V.D. Hanson on the Wages of Libya

Big Government   "Breitbart News has attempted to secure a copy of the State Department Rules of Engagement for Libya, but officials at the State Department have stonewalled, as this email correspondence from Friday reveals:

To [State Dept Spokesperson]:
(A) Status of my document request for the State Department rules of engagement for Libya?
(B) Can you help me find answers to these two questions:

1. Who provided security inside the Benghazi mission at the time of the 9-11-12 attack, how were they armed, and how many of them were there?

2. Who provided security on the perimeter of the Benghazi mission at the time of the 9-11-12 attack, how were they armed, and how many of them were there?

"Here is the official response from that State Department spokesperson:"

Michael -
I do not yet have more information on the rules of engagement document, which as discussed last night, might require a FOIA request. I will let you know as soon as I receive feedback. However, and this also applies to your two follow up questions, we do not discuss security details for the safety of our missions. The two questions below are addressed to the fullest extent possible in both briefings I sent you last night.
[State Department Spokesperson]

More on this at the link....

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/171620441.html?refer=y

Victor Davis Hanson; The Wages of Libya  "When he took on the CIA job, he apparently was asked to retire from the military. There is a pattern here: selfless service to the United States, but recently in the context of a politicized administration that has used the enormous prestige of Petraeus in ways that have reduced his influence. Directing responsibility away from the administration to the CIA is more of the same, and it puts a historic figure like Petraeus in an unfair predicament."

What laser capability did Benghazi team have?  "Pentagon spokesman George Little says, “On the night of the attack on American personnel and facilities in Benghazi, there were no armed unmanned aerial vehicles over Libya, and there were no AC-130s anywhere close.” "

A young man's thoughts on the election and its effect on education

I got this from a 16-year-old young man who wishes to remain anonymous and am posting it as it came to me without edits or redactions.
I asked his permission to print this and he was fine with that with just that one stipulation, so please consider his thoughts on Tuesday's election. TD

We all want to be successful; success drives all of us, I know that it drives me. I always want to be the best, and I want to be prepared for my future, so that I can be successful. In America, a good education is possible and vital to get, but it is becoming harder and harder to reach, and getting more and more expensive to obtain. Why? Our education system has been neglected for years, and is in desperate need of reform. No one has a better plan for education reform than Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, whose state is a leader in education.

Governor Romney realizes that we will perform better when we are in comfortable learning environments. Part of his reform allows students to choose the school they want to attend, and not have to worry about any financial aid a student might be receiving, which would transfer along with the student. It is also important that students know which schools to attend; this is why Governor Romney would make it mandatory for schools to take a test, and create a school “report card.” Schools that are successful will be rewarded, while under-performing schools would be remedied. Mitt Romney’s reform would also allow superintendents to relieve under-performing teachers of duty. All of these changes will help us, students, reach a higher level of success.

A major component of success is a college education. With jobs becoming harder and harder to get, it is increasingly more important to have a college education, but with tuition costs soaring higher and higher it is increasingly harder to obtain. For us to be a successful work force the sky high level of tuition costs need to be brought down. The way to bring down tuition is to put the Federal Financial Aid Program on a diet. The reason an action like this is necessary is because the Federal Financial Aid Programs have given out so much money, that colleges have bloated tuition rates. So by lowering the amount of Federal Financial Aid granted to students, Mitt Romney plans to fight high tuition rates. To replace Federal student loans, Governor Romney wants schools to cooperate with local banks for student loans, which will help the economy, and will help more students become successful.

If you ask a group of students if they want to go to college, I bet at least 80% of them will say that they want to, and I know that if you asked them if they wanted to be successful all of them would say that they would. A key to success is a good education, but for students to be successful and receive the good education that they require we need to drastically reform our education system. There is no feeling like being successful, like graduating from school, and we all want to feels this, this is why we need to reform or education system. Governor Mitt Romney has a plan for our education system, which will help everyone be successful, his plans have helped his state become one of the best states in the country, and he can do the same for us. So vote to be successful and vote for Mitt Romney for President.

To you Obama supporters

The Republican Revolution

Hat tip tp Charlene Black; Santa Maria, Ca

Media Bias 101: Benghazi vs. Watergate and Iran-Contra

The American Spectator Foundation   "Question: How is Benghazi different from Watergate and Iran-Contra? The obvious answer: the media. Liberal journalists turned Watergate and Iran-Contra into gigantic national scandals by their consistent, relentless pursuit of both stories; to the contrary, they are consistently, relentlessly ignoring Benghazi."
....
"The way the Reagan team reacted to initial reports on Iran-Contra is precisely the opposite of how the Obama team has responded. But even more telling are the opposite media reactions. For Iran-Contra, the media refused to be satisfied with the initial response of Meese and Reagan. Liberal reporters went absolutely bonkers, all hands on deck, a full-court press to find incriminating information. Today, under Obama, it's the exact opposite."
Hat tip to Christy Waters at Conservative Bloggers on Facebook

http://www.fairpress.org/bert/archives/cat_mediabias.htm

Union said to be halting power repair crews is top Democrat donor; however the report is said to be in error

Washington Secrets  "The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, cited in news reports for halting nonunion repair crews from helping to restore power in superstorm Sandy's New Jersey-New York path, is one of nation's top union donors to Democrats, a group President Obama last year praised in a visit to an IBEW training Center."

WAFF48 in Huntsville, AL, worded their headline like this: Confusion causes utility crew to return from recovery effort
"General Manager Ray Hardin appeared on Fox Business Channel Friday morning saying, "We were presented documents from IBEW that required our folks to affiliate with the unions and that was something we could not agree to."

"Decatur Utilities later released a statement expanding on that, "Upon arriving at a staging area in Virginia, crews were held in place pending clarification of documents received from IBEW that implied a requirement of our employees to agree to union affiliation while working in the New York and New Jersey areas. It was and remains our understanding that agreeing to those requirements was a condition of being allowed to work in those areas." "

CBS reported the WAFF story is in error;  "Alabama power companies are denying a local TV station's report that linemen who had traveled to New Jersey from Alabama (a right to work state) to help restore power to those hit hard by Superstorm Sandy were told they could not work there because they were non-union."
"Huntsville Utilities also said their workers were not turned away and are working in storm-ravaged areas.

"Utilities from other right-to-work states have also reported their crews working in New York and New Jersey, including repair crews with Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas assisting in New York State. Florida Power & Light sent more than 860 employees and contractors to assist seven utility companies from Virginia to New Jersey."

Romney Wins in a Landslide (at Least in Israel): What it Means

Times of Israel  "The Presidential election results are in. Well, at least the votes from Americans in Israel. Not one to keep readers in suspense, I’ll reveal the most important numbers up front: Gov. Mitt Romney received 85%–85%!–of the vote; President Obama managed only 14.3%. This, according to exit polling just released by iVoteIsrael, the non-partisan group promoting and facilitating voting by U.S. citizens currently in Israel. Their statistics reveal some fascinating results. More importantly, these results have implications for the outcome of next week’s election. (Again, not to keep you in suspense: those implications favor the Republicans.)"
....
"An interesting historical note: for almost a century, every Republican candidate who received 30% or more of the Jewish vote was victorious–and it looks like Romney will win well over 30%."

Jerusalem Post

Krauthammer on The choice

Charles Krauthammer  "It is common for one party to take control and enact its ideological agenda. Ascendancy, however, occurs only when the opposition inevitably regains power and then proceeds to accept the basic premises of the preceding revolution.

...."Until Reagan. Ten minutes into his presidency, Reagan declares that “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” "
....
"An Obama second term means that the movement toward European-style social democracy continues, in part by legislation, in part by executive decree. The American experiment — the more individualistic, energetic, innovative, risk-taking model of democratic governance — continues to recede, yielding to the supervised life of the entitlement state.

"If Obama loses, however, his presidency becomes a historical parenthesis, a passing interlude of overreaching hyper-liberalism, rejected by a center-right country that is 80 percent nonliberal.
"Should they summon the skill and dexterity, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan could guide the country to the restoration of a more austere and modest government with more restrained entitlements and a more equitable and efficient tax code. Those achievements alone would mark a new trajectory — a return to what Reagan started three decades ago."  Emphasis added.

Remember Benghazi. POWERFUL!… Navy SEALs Release Ad BLASTING Barack Obama

TheGatewayPundit.com
"A community of Navy SEALs released an ad today blasting Barack Obama.
" “There’s a pervasive feeling across our community that he’s going to use whatever to get elected and he doesn’t really care about the men on the front lines.”

"A community of Navy SEALs released an ad today blasting Barack Obama.

" “There’s a pervasive feeling across our community that he’s going to use whatever to get elected and he doesn’t really care about the men on the front lines.” "

As long as we're discussing how Obama and the SEALs are foxhole buddies, the above post also has this: OPSEC Seeks Donations To Run Anti-Obama Ad Against Seal Team Six Movie

"The email, which links back to the website for OPSEC, a Republican-leaning group of former special operations and C.I.A. officers that has been likened to the Swift Boat veterans that swamped John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, is looking for donations of $25 or more to air its commercial during the debut of Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden on Nov. 4, just two days before the presidential election. OPSEC is not happy that major Obama supporter Harvey Weinstein's The Weinstein Company is behind the film, which, according to the New York Times, has been recut to bolster the President's role in the historic military operation.
"Seal Team Six director John Stockwell and other sources told the Times that the changes were not politically motivated but, rather, were meant to give the movie a more realistic feel. Those sources added, however, that Weinstein suggested some of the changes that were made to the film and that Meghan O'Hara, a producer who has worked with liberal firebrand Michael Moore on his left-leaning films Fahrenheit 9/11 and Sicko was also involved in gathering research."

More empty chairs and a media blackout of anti-Obama protestors

Legal Insurrection brings us Election Day Empty Chair Countdown – Day 3

"Today’s Empty Chair photo feast is of photo submissions that include Joe Biden as the Empty Chair Vice

President."

"Each day until Election Day we will feature a previously unpublished photo sent in by a Legal Insurrection reader on National Empty Chair Day, September 3, 2012.

"The countdown continues with 3 days to go.
"Today’s Empty Chair photo feast is of photo submissions that include Joe Biden as the Empty Chair Vice President. After all, we are electing both a president and a vice president in only 3 days."

Also from Legal Insurrection: Media blackout of black Chicago protesters marching against Obama  "Black Chicagoans from the south and west sides took their message to what they say is the source of the problem when they converged outside of a fundraiser held by Mayor Emanuel for Barack Obama and then marched to the studios of ABC News.

"Their message, “let us work in our own community,” was made all the more poignant as the ABC News crew ignored the news event outside their very studious. Not one camera was sent to cover the news that was, literally, placed at their doorstep.
"The protest, which took place Thursday evening, addressed these community members’ growing desperation as their wartorn neighborhoods are redeveloped by political cronies, evicting residents and shutting out local investors, and use union labor from outside the community to do the work. It’s a corrupt cycle of government “work” that takes advantage of the poor, evicting them, and then redeveloping the properties to benefit anyone but the community.
"In the video below, community members who say they are desperate for jobs and investment, focus their protest against liberal leadership, including Obama and Emanuel, so-called community organizations like ACORN, and unions:"

"In an earlier video published by “Rebel Pundit” Jeremy Segal, a community member elaborated on the issue the inner-city black community has with unions: they won’t hire black people. Therefore any work going to their communities for building sites, etc., shuts them out of jobs. Segal writes:"  Read more...

From 'hope' and 'change' to 'revenge'

Thomas Lifson  "Going off teleprompter yesterday, President Obama let the mask slip and revealed the ugliness at the heart of his political mission. Amie Parnes of the Hill:
"President Obama called voting "the best revenge" on Friday at a rally in Ohio."

Nobody knows the troubles I've caused...

http://terrellaftermath.com/

The press builds a wall around Obama

Jake Tapper of ABC; The Benghazi Drip-Drip-Drip  "In the place of a detailed description from the Obama administration about what happened more than six weeks ago comes the drip-drip-drip of stories about the failures of the Obama administration to provide those Americans on the ground in Libya with all the security assets they needed."

http://comicallyincorrect.com/

Media Blackout: Why Obama Dodged the Libya Question  "When the Benghazi issue did surface, other than on Fox, it was invariably brought up by Republican guests, and then deflected by the hosts, who largely ignored new stories this week that implicated the White House in the decision not to intervene to save the life of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and other American staff.

"Here is how the Sunday shows covered the issue:"....

Benghazi a Blip on Media's Radar - Less Than 2 Minutes of Coverage on ABC, CBS; NBC Punts
"As the Big Three's evening newscasts ignored the latest in the controversy over the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya for seven straight days, their morning shows aren't doing much better. On Friday, ABC's Good Morning America and CBS This Morning together devoted less than two minutes of air time - 1 minute, 50 seconds - to the ambush that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three American military veterans."

But there is some light breaking through the media firewall: Benghazi Timeline: More Lies Exposed  Doug Ross has done a brilliant timeline of the events in Benghazi and the events in D.C. Worth cutting and saving. Sharyl Attkisson of CBS news has uncovered even more shocking details of the Administration's mishandling and mendacity about the attacks on our consulate in Benghazi. ...CBS News has learned that during the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, the Obama Administration did not convene its top interagency...

Neal Boortz; Media Bias Intensifying  "I was talking with a former newsman yesterday – a news director and news anchor. He lives way up in the frozen north, right in the middle of Obama territory. He told me that it just cannot be avoided any more – no matter how much he wanted to believe that our national press corps is truly impartial in this presidential race, the obvious blatant bias for Obama simply cannot be denied any more. The media, with exceptions, is in the tank for Obama and the news coverage has been and will be carefully calculated so as to increase the likelihood of Obama’s reelection.