"To my friends at The New York Times: Journalism has died at this paper."

Althouse  "Do you really believe this wasn't a pre-planned terrorist attack — preplanned terrorist attack with Al Qaeda affiliates in charge?" asked Lindsey Graham today.

"There's not one report coming from Benghazi about a protest around the embassy.... People in charge of security never reported a protest because there was not one...."

And John McCain, calling the NYT an "ever-reliable surrogate for the Obama administration," said:

"The false narrative that The New York Times has been trying to further is intended to undermine the conclusion that the Senate Intelligence Committee has effectively arrived at, that is, that the administration knew or should have known of the terrorist threat present in Benghazi during the relevant period and should have pre-positioned assets, or made other preparations, that would have prevented Americans there from being harmed or otherwise ensured their security."

The Israel Double Standard

This post was one of several included in a compilation here earlier today titled:
Reading list: Boy, did we ever stiff those Iranians!  We feel it should stand alone.

Victor Davis Hanson  .... "Nazis and racists used to spearhead Jewish hatred using ancient crackpot defamations that date back to the Jewish diaspora into Europe after the Roman destruction of Judea. But lately, anti-Semitism has become more a left-wing pathology. It is driven by the cheap multicultural trashing of the West. Jewish people here and abroad have become convenient targets for those angry with supposedly undeserved Western success and privilege.

"Aside from the old envy, and racial and religious hatred, I think cowardice explains the new selective anti-Semitism. Kanye West would not dare slander radical Muslims, given the violence and threats against European cartoonists and filmmakers who have dared to create work perceived as insulting to Islam. The American Studies Association would not call for a boycott of Russia despite its endemic persecution of gays. After all, Russian president Vladimir Putin is as unpredictable as Israeli politicians are forbearing." ....

(Below) This is how Artintifada ("Artists against Zionism, Artists against Racism, Artist(sp) against Israel") would have us picture Israel.

Artists for Justice

The Communist Party Hails De Blasio

Did you know Mayor De Blasio honeymooned in Castro's Cuba?

American Thinker  "For a long time, the communist left has used the word "progressive" to cloak its agenda. This phenomenon is hardly new. It has gone on since at least the 1930s, not long after the American Communist Party was founded in Chicago."
....
"Unfortunately, thanks to the left's takeover of education and media, it continues unabated, and is moving full steam ahead in Barack Obama's fundamentally transformed America, where the far left seems invigorated unlike ever before. The communist left has sudden new energy in the "progressive" mayoral victory of Bill De Blasio, the New York mayor who once raised money for the Nicaraguan communists and honeymooned in Castro's Cuba." More.
....
This ain't my daddy's Democrat Party.
"Bobby and Jack [Kennedy] despised communists, who hated them in return, and even targeted them for assassination. They would have easily detected the loaded words carefully chosen (and omitted) in De Blasio's speech."...

The Communist Party's publication "is carefully avoiding the "c" word (communism) in favor of the "p" word (progressivism)."

You expected this, didn't you? Hitler finds out he can't keep his doctor under Obamacare

  Youtube; Hat tip to Harley Standlee of Placerville, CA  

Hitler Downfall parodies: 25 worth watching
"Subtitled parodies of Adolf Hitler's last days in the Berlin bunker, as depicted in the 2004 Second World War film Downfall, have become one of the web's most enduring memes."  Language advisory in a number of them, regrettably.
 

More here

Sen. John McCain: Obama Is ‘Absolutely’ Responsible For The Fall Of Fallujah. Brit Hume agrees, wouldn't you say?

Downtrend  ... "McCain, while appearing on Al Jazeera, talked about recent events in Fallujah, Iraq. He said that the, during the second battle of Fallujah, our country lost 96 great soldiers. In addition to that, some 600 were wounded.

"And now, today, there are black flags flying all around that city, an indication that it has fallen to Al Qaeda forces." ... 

Brit Hume: Considerable Strategic Gains In Iraq, Bought With US Blood And Treasure, Are Fast Disappearing    “ 'What was bequeathed to President Obama was an Iraq described as recently as last September, by the U.S. State Department, as a ‘key partner for the U.S. in the region as well as a voice of moderation and democracy in the Middle East,’ but it hardly seems to be that now. Not only did President Obama pull all U.S. troops out of the country, after failing to negotiate an agreement to allow a residual force to stay, he has generally acted since as if Iraq did not exist…' ” 

Congress offers glimmer of hope for incandescent lightbulb

theweek.com

Fox News  "The House's passage of a $1.1 trillion spending bill Wednesday that dictates the budgets for all federal agencies may be a desperately needed lifeline for the lightbulb.
"The bill includes a prohibition on funding for “the administration’s onerous ‘lightbulb’ standard,” as Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., described it, which had sought to dramatically improve the energy efficiency of ordinary incandescent lightbulbs but ultimately spelled the end of the road for the century-old technology." ...

Wearing your pants down under

Tim Whyatt

"Tim Whyatt is a cartoonist who lives on a remote island
about 10,000 miles off the coast of New Jersey called Australia."
Hat tip to Brian Lindgren;  Casper, Wyoming

Reading list: Boy, did we ever stiff those Iranians!

http://terrellaftermath.com/

 

Gatestone Institute: Kerry's Peace Process Double Standards It is interesting to see how one comment from an Israeli minister has managed to strain relations between the U.S. Administration and Israel, while fiery rhetoric and street demonstrations against Kerry and Obama in the Palestinian territories and Arab capitals are completely ignored by Washington. If Kerry really cares about the peace process, he also needs to ask the Palestinian Authority and Arab governments to lower the tone and stop inciting against him and the U.S. Unless, of course, those statements and protests do not offend him. Khaled Abu Toameh

George Will has this point of view: ‘Iran is Claiming Victory and I Think Probably Rightly So’  

JAWA: John Kerry Opens Mouth, Proves He's Stupid   "Of course, many Leftists would simply call this level of stupidity sophistication, not knowing that to be sophisticated has until recent times been a bad thing.

Your Sec. State:

And so we have a huge common interest in dealing with this issue of poverty, which in many cases is the root cause of terrorism

Michael Rubin in 2008 asked; Can a Nuclear Iran Be Contained or Deterred?

 Ya’alon apologizes for personally offending Kerry, but does not recant   "Israel’s Defense Minister Ya’alon was forced to apologize Tuesday night, Jan. 14, for off-the-record remarks he made to reporters, which relegated US Secretary of State John Kerry’s role in the oft-stalled Israel-Palestinian peace talks to “misplaced obsession and messianic fervor.” He was also quoted as dismissing the US security plan as “not worth the paper it was written on.' ”

John and Joe's Iranian Adventure!

Victor Davis Hanson: The prejudice against Israel in diplomatic matters is as troubling as more crude bigotry against Jews.    ... "The sort of anti-Semitism we see from buffoons like Dieudonné M’bala M’bala is appalling, but the double standard to which Israel is held in matters of foreign policy by those who should know better is in many ways even more galling."

Instructing Iran in Terrorist Etiquette   ... "Iran’s senior officials suffer from no such delicacy toward the U.S. On Tuesday, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani gloated on Twitter that in the recent Geneva agreement, “world powers surrendered to Iranian nation’s will.” Meanwhile, Iran’s foreign minister ... Javad Zarif, made a point while visiting Lebanon of going to lay a wreath on the grave of assassinated Hezbollah terrorist kingpin... Zarif did this before a bevy of photographers, ensuring that his thumb-in-the-eye to the U.S. would make news."

 

Obama Tells Congress to ‘Give Peace a Chance’ After Setting Jan. 20 (in time for the State of the Union address)Iran Deal Implementation  “ 'Given these stakes, it’s regrettable that the president does not want to work with Congress to bolster his negotiating hand with additional sanctions, which would go into effect should Iran fail to meet its commitments. If Iran is committed to comprehensively addressing its nuclear program, there is no reason such legislation shouldn’t be welcomed.' ”

 

Gates: Obama White House Spent All Their Time Bashing Bush…

Weasel Zippers

"ROBERT GATES: I think the book is clear that when the president responded to Hillary’s comments that he was vaguely agreeing that opposition to the surge broadly had been political. And I absolutely believe that, having lived through that in the spring of 2007 up on the Hill. There are two things that made me remember what Hillary had said.

"The first was that I was on the opposite side of the table. Admiral Mullen and I used to joke, particularly in the first months of the Obama administration, when kind of every meeting in The Situation Room, everybody would trash the Bush administration and everything the Bush team. You know, what a bunch of bums the Bush team were and everything. And we’re sitting there thinking, what, are we invisible? We were integral members of that team, and so the fact that she would say something like that." ...

Is Chris Christie Less Believable Than Tawana Brawley?

Ann Coulter  "I agree with MSNBC. I find it hard to believe that Gov. Chris Christie knew nothing about his staff's plotting a massive traffic jam on the ramp to the George Washington Bridge for political retribution.

"On the other hand, I also find it hard to believe that Obama didn't know his own IRS was auditing his political enemies.

"And I find it hard to believe that Obama didn't know you wouldn't be able to keep your doctor under Obamacare.

"But most of all, I find it hard to believe that MSNBC host Al Sharpton didn't know Tawana Brawley was lying when she claimed to have been gang-raped by rogue cops on the Wappingers Falls, N.Y., police force." Full article.

 

....
Coulter concludes with this appropriate question (that I expect Chris Matthews will condemn as racist). "What kind of culture exists at MSNBC to encourage such willful blindness?"

'Oh, Kylie! What did you do? Next time, please don’t...': What mother told Military Cross hero daughter who twice braved hails of bullets to tend war wounded

UK Daily Mail 

"When Lance Corporal Kylie Watson was summoned to the office of her commanding officer for a ‘fireside chat’ she feared the worst. ‘Do you know why you are here?’ he asked the combat medic. ‘Am I in trouble, Sir?’ she enquired. ‘No,’ he told her. ‘You’ve been awarded the Military Cross.’
"The 23-year-old, whose tour of Afghanistan’s Helmand province was her first as a fully qualified battlefield medic, was stunned.
" ‘Are you sure you’ve got the right soldier?’ she asked. But there was no mistake. The extraordinary heroism she displayed by twice running into Taliban fire to treat wounded comrades had been recognised with one of the UK’s highest honours."   Read more.

...."The motto of the Royal Army Medical Corps is ‘In Arduis Fidelis’: Steadfast in Adversity. And so Lance Corporal Kylie Watson MC has proved."

Benghazi-gate Update: Obama Admin knew with 15 MINUTES it was a Terror Attack:

Common Cents 

 

Lieberman: Benghazi ‘Obviously a Terrorist Attack by Any Definition of Terrorism’  "Former Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) told a House committee this morning that the Obama administration rush to blame the Benghazi attack on an anti-Muhammad video underscored the White House’s narrow definition of Islamic terrorism."

These next two from Lucianne
 

Senate report: Attacks on U.S. compounds in Benghazi could have been prevented

“In spite of the deteriorating security situation in Benghazi and ample strategic warnings, the United States Government simply did not do enough to prevent these attacks and ensure the safety of those serving in Benghazi,” said Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Benghazi: Obama Administration Lied Before They Lied  ... "In the fall of 2012, the Obama White House was focused on re-election to the point that it was shutting its real duties out. President Obama was shutting his own real duties out, campaigning far more than governing. He hadn’t met with his jobs council in months. He was skipping his daily security intel briefings. The Sept. 10 release was sent out to make him look presidential, without actually performing the duties of president. There was no security meeting, and no forces were actually moved around anywhere to gear up for the 9-11 anniversary. There was a conference call, a conversation, and a press release."   Bryan Preston