TODAY IS 10/11/12.
Archive for 2012
October 11, 2012
ED MORRISSEY: Benghazi: White House Cover Up or Just Incompetence? Either way, it’s criminal.
THE HILL: GOP senators to White House: Cyber order would be ‘a mistake.’ “The three Republicans contend that only Congress has the power to enact cybersecurity policy that would incentivize companies to follow best practices for securing their networks, including offering them liability protection from legal action if they are hit by a cyberattack. They also argue that only legislation would offer privacy protections for Americans’ sensitive information and provide a long-term solution that would endure ‘from one administration to the next’ for protecting the nation from cyberattacks.”
Apparently they missed the memo that we now use Executive Orders in place of legislation for anything controversial.
DODGED A BIG ONE: Cuba Almost Became a Nuclear Power in 1962: The scariest moment in history was even scarier than we thought.
Long after the world thought the Cuban Missile Crisis had ended, with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s withdrawal of his medium-range nuclear missiles announced on October 28 — and two days after President John F. Kennedy announced the lifting of the quarantine around Cuba — the secret crisis still simmered. Unknown to the Americans, the Soviets had brought some 100 tactical nuclear weapons to Cuba — 80 nuclear-armed front cruise missiles (FKRs), 12 nuclear warheads for dual-use Luna short-range rockets, and 6 nuclear bombs for IL-28 bombers. Even with the pullout of the strategic missiles, the tacticals would stay, and Soviet documentation reveals the intention of training the Cubans to use them.
But Fidel Castro was livid. Khrushchev had not consulted or even informed Castro about any deals with the Americans — Fidel heard about the missile withdrawal from the radio. The Cuban leader refused to go along with any onsite inspections in Cuba, and raised further demands. The Soviets had their own Cuban crisis: They had to take back what the Americans called the “offensive weapons,” get the U.S. to confirm its non-invasion pledge, and most importantly, keep Cuba as an ally.
A mess that could have become a much bigger mess.
MICHAEL BARONE: The Open Fields of November.
NOEMIE EMERY: The Liberal Media Loved Obama To Death.
MORE ON OBAMA’S CONNECTION WITH VP DEBATE MODERATOR MARTHA RADDATZ. Hey, if you disqualified all the journalists who have close marital and social ties to Democratic pols, you’d be left with a (small) subset of Fox News. And we couldn’t have that — they’d be biased!
Meanwhile, a reader emails:
The bit about most of the HLR being invited to the Raddatz-Genachowski wedding seems designed to suggest that the couple weren’t close friends with Obama.
But in The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama thanks “Several good friends, including David Axelrod, . . . Julius Genachowski, . . . Cass Sunstein” for taking the time to read the manuscript and make suggestions. (Audacity of Hope, p. 364, paperback ed.)
Also, Genachowski’s donations to Obama’s campaigns go all the way back to a $1,000 donation in 1999, the year before Obama lost his primary for the House of Representatives. At the time, Nov. 1, 1999 (four months into fundraising), Genachowski’s donation tied (with many others) for Obama’s largest single donation from a donor outside of Illinois and tied for second largest single donation overall. (There were, however, some donors who donated $1,000 more than once.)
So at least Genachowski (who was married to Raddatz until 1997) was indeed a “good friend” of Obama’s.
As folks in the Midwest sometimes put it: “I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’.”
Indeed.
GOOD TO KNOW: A guide to the proper pronunciation of Scots Whiskeys.
A MILK-CARTON APPEAL: Whatever Happened To Sam Tanenhaus? “When last I checked, The Death of Conservatism could be purchased for one cent from Amazon.com, and the sales ranking for Tanenhaus’s formerly acclaimed volume was 585,392—not even among the top half-million most popular books.”
Well, she knows all the secrets.
RICHARD FERNANDEZ: The Incompetent President. “Here’s a thought. What Andrew Sullivan saw being pummeled in public last week was the real Obama not the one who is petulantly withholding his genius. The same incompetent he trusts to keep him safe; the very same one who is making the decision on Libya and the one he hopes will win an election to another four-year term. You know, the Billion Dollar Man. Maybe Chris Rock has got it all wrong. It’s not Osama’s skull that is in the president’s hands. It’s our skulls that are in his keeping. People knew that once, back when they remembered that being president was a deadly serious job.”
FOLLOWING the money.
October 10, 2012
NEEDLESS TO SAY IN THIS COMPANY, I HAVE SEVERAL FRIENDS WHO ARE LAWYERS: But sometimes you’re reminded of WHY people make lawyer jokes. Eric Marshall of Lawyers Committee Opposes Voter Fraud Warnings. And unfortunately THAT’s not a joke.
BYRON YORK: Will Ryan hit Biden hard on Libya scandal? “In a series of events that could not have been predicted just a few weeks ago, the day before the VP debate saw a significant addition to President Obama’s record. A House committee heard extensive testimony establishing that the Obama administration refused requests for heightened security from ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and his aides, requests made just weeks before Stevens and three other Americans were murdered in a terrorist attack timed to coincide with the anniversary of September 11. House testimony also established beyond any doubt that Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, White House spokesman Jay Carney, and UN Ambassador Susan Rice all made untrue statements when they attributed the attack to angry protests over an anti-Muslim video.”
UPDATE: Biden faces different debate challenges than in 2008.
WHY ARE FEWER MEN GETTING MARRIED? It’s a mystery.
LOWEST PRICES OF THE YEAR at the Amazon Levi’s Sale. (Bumped).
OBAMA’S MIDDLE EAST RECORD: ZERO PERCENT SUCCESS? By Obama’s own criteria. Plus this:
An American reader writes me, “I’ve tried explaining the situation in the Middle East to friends and there are blank stares. I believe what they’re thinking is that how come, if it is so bad, I haven’t seen it in the newspapers or on the national news? The New York Times doesn’t mention it at all.”
That’s how you know it’s a miserable failure. . . .
HE SHOULD PUT MORE TIME INTO QUELLING HIS BEDBUG PROBLEM AT HOME: Mayor Bloomberg Behind Media Matters’ Attacks on NRA?
No, really: The Insta-Wife and I were looking at a trip to NYC and every hotel we checked on BedbugRegistry.com seemed to have a lot of problems. It made us rethink the trip. . . .
IN RESPONSE TO LAST NIGHT’S POST on Power Line adapters, reader Ron Cullinan writes:
Glenn, I go to your site multiple times a day and keep noticing the number of people who are excited about having power line adapters since you told them about the ability to have “wired” internet in an unwired home. I’ve helped a lot of my clients with this same issue (I’m a Realtor) and they are always amazed at how easy it is.
However, you might also mention to people that the system is MUCH more amazing than they think. One of the modern problems is that we have all these devices that can connect to the internet, particularly the TV (think Roku, DVD player, the TV itself, the Satellite/Cable box) and you have a problem with insufficient connections if you don’t realize it’s pure Ethernet. When I looked at this issue, I quickly realized that all one needs to do is plug the adapter into an inexpensive Ethernet switch and voila, you have all the connections you need. These switches run from $15 to $50 and are invaluable to me. I have one with ten outlets for my main TV another with five for the bedroom TV setup and in my office, I have a dozen or more switch connections going (not sure anymore, too many to count, given the jumble of cables running in here.)
Anyway, thought you might want to update your next reference about these wonderful devices and let people know it’s not limited to the single outlet from the receiving adapter.
Done!
CONDEMNATION IS NICE, BUT BURNING A FEW OF THEM AT THE STAKE WOULD HAVE MORE IMPACT: Just About Everyone in Pakistan Condemns Shooting of 14-Year-Old Girl. “Despite the overwhelming outpouring of support for Malala, observers doubt the incident will spark widespread defiance of the Taliban. A 2009 video showing a fighter flogging a girl also momentarily aroused public anger, but the rage petered out fairly quickly. In all likelihood, the anger will subside this time too.”
PROF. JACOBSON: Elizabeth Warren’s implausible Dow Chemical claim.
EXCEPT NOBODY DIED AT WATERGATE: Jennifer Rubin on Watergate Redux — “In hearing, the Libya scandal boils over:”
So where is the president? He’s not come forward to explain any of this, although his vice president will be on the hot seat at the debate tomorrow night. After all, Jay Carney’s dissembling, Susan Rice’s misleading TV appearances, and the president’s own assertions, including his Setpember 25 speech to the UN (“a crude and disgusting video sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world”) have left an evidence trail a mile wide.
Whether incompetent or dishonest or a combination of the two, Obama needs to face the American people and be held accountable. And the media, both reporters and pundits, who have tried studiously to downplay or ignore a scandal that in a GOP administration would be compared to Watergate, have their chance to show they are more than apologists for a president whose stature is shrinking by the minute.
Rubin writes for the Washington Post. If only that paper had some experience in exposing presidential scandals…
(Well, Democratic scandals at least.)
UPDATE: Video: Mother of State Dep’t worker killed in Benghazi begs White House to stop stonewalling her.