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Breitbart tells us about the NY Democrat state assemblyman who is campaigning for Romney in Florida.
In a move to enlighten the Jews of Florida about the dangers of reelecting Barack Obama, Orthodox Jewish Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a Democrat, is heading to South Florida to convince Democrats to vote for Mitt Romney.
Hikind is convinced that the election is of huge importance for America and Israel, saying:
“This is one of the most important elections I have ever been a part of. I hope to convince my fellow democrats that the choice this year should be a Republican. Looking at the last four years, I can’t think of a single area where we have been successful. People in Florida have asked me to come down and speak to Democratic voters. I am more than happy to do my part to help and, in fact, I made that offer on national television when I appeared with Neil Cavuto on Fox News. I am going down there, as a Democrat, to speak to Democrats about my concerns.” …
Thomas Sowell on Libya and lies.
It was a little much when President Barack Obama said that he was “offended” by the suggestion that his administration would try to deceive the public about what happened in Benghazi. What has this man not deceived the public about?
Remember his pledge to cut the deficit in half in his first term in office? This was followed by the first trillion dollar deficit ever, under any President of the United States — followed by trillion dollar deficits in every year of the Obama administration.
Remember his pledge to have a “transparent” government that would post its legislative proposals on the Internet several days before Congress was to vote on them, so that everybody would know what was happening? This was followed by an ObamaCare bill so huge and passed so fast that even members of Congress did not have time to read it.
Remember his claims that previous administrations had arrogantly interfered in the internal affairs of other nations — and then his demands that Israel stop building settlements and give away land outside its 1967 borders, as a precondition to peace talks with the Palestinians, on whom there were no preconditions?
As for what happened in Libya, the Obama administration says that there is an “investigation” under way. An “on-going investigation” sounds so much better than “stonewalling” to get past election day. But you can bet the rent money that this “investigation” will not be completed before election day. And whatever the investigation says after the election will be irrelevant. …
Someone in the administration leaked to Reuters three damaging emails that blow the Obama Libya cover story. Jennifer Rubin posts.
President Obama is playing the media and, in turn, the American people for fools on the Libya scandal. Reporters and columnists who carried his water have been hung out to dry. The White House cover story — namely that CIA got it all wrong and the White House (in urging us to believe the murder of four Americans was the result of a video riot gone bad) was telling us what it knew, when it knew — has been severely undercut. Three e-mails sent to the White House within two hours of the attack identify it as a terrorist operation and inform the White House that local jihadists with al-Qaeda connections claimed responsibility. Reuters reminds us:
U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Benghazi assault, which President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials ultimately acknowledged was a “terrorist” attack carried out by militants with suspected links to al Qaeda affiliates or sympathizers.
Administration spokesmen, including White House spokesman Jay Carney, citing an unclassified assessment prepared by the CIA, maintained for days that the attacks likely were a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim film
This was false. And we know now the White House knew better. Three separate e-mails were sent to the White House on Sept. 11:
The first email, timed at 4:05 p.m. Washington time — or 10:05 p.m. Benghazi time, 20-30 minutes after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission allegedly began — carried the subject line “U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack” and the notation “SBU”, meaning “Sensitive But Unclassified.”
The text said the State Department’s regional security office had reported that the diplomatic mission in Benghazi was “under attack. Embassy in Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well.” …
Mark Steyn with a Corner post on free speech in danger in the U.S. and Australia.
The other day, Andy McCarthy wrote that “it’s not just Obama’s lies, it’s the premise of Obama’s lies” – ie, the notion that a video (or a cartoon, or a book, or a play) can legitimately be blamed for murderous violence:
Constitutionally protected speech can never be legitimized as a cause of violence. Period.
It’s not a small thing when the President of the United States chooses for political advantage to inflict significant damage on America’s commitment to free speech. One thing the western left shares with Islam is a ferocious need to punish dissent – or (to give it its proper name) apostasy. Down Under, something called the “Australian Communications and Media Authority” (that’s to say, the usual bunch of statist hacks) has just ordered Alan Jones, the country’s Number One morning man, to undergo “factual accuracy training” (that’s to say, re-education camp) for saying the following:
’The percentage of man-made carbon dioxide Australia produces is 1 per cent of .001 per cent of carbon dioxide in the air,” Jones told his listeners on March 15 last year. “Nature produces nearly all the carbon dioxide in the air.”
Apparently, according to a global warm-monger of dubious provenance himself, the correct figure is 0.45 per cent. So the percentage of non-Australian carbon dioxide in the air is 99.55 per cent rather than 99.99999 per cent. For this outrageous crime, Alan Jones must report for “factual accuracy training”.
The death of free speech doesn’t seem immediately relevant to people worried about jobs and mortgages, but it is: When it’s a crime to be skeptical of “climate change” alarmism, it’s harder to object to the diversion of tax dollars from you and yours to Solyndra and other “green” boondoggles. Killing freedom of expression renders honest discussion of everything from the economy to foreign policy all but impossible – which suits both the left and Islam just fine.
If Australia keeps this nonsense up, I may have to come back for another nationwide tour. If they let me in.
Andrew Malcolm notes Obama’s slide.
Barack Obama’s reelection campaign is in trouble. It’s silently slowing down in North Carolina and now, even Florida. Even raising hundreds of millions in a record number of fundraisers, his campaign has had to borrow from a bank. Obama can’t admit it all though.
And he desperately needs to motivate his vaunted ground troops in these last 13 days.
So, in Monday’s debate the Democrat wasn’t trying to stem the hemorrhaging of independents and women from his side. He was trying to serve some red meat to rally party loyalists after his disappointing debate performances. Hence, his sarcastic praise for Gov. Mitt Romney agreeing that al Qaeda is a threat.
And hence this less-than-presidential response to Romney’s concern over the Democrat’s planned massive cuts in the nation’s defense spending:
“But I think Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works.
“You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military has changed.
“We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. And so the question is not a game of Battleship where we’re counting ships; it’s what are our capabilities.”
This from the half-black man who suckered so many millions of countrymen into believing he was sincerely interested in uniting Americans of all kinds and colors for a new day. That seems so much farther away than merely 1,373 days ago.
But re-reading Obama’s attempted debate mocking, there is some sweet justice watching a man show off how much he knows but actually reveal instead, not only a pettiness, but how little he actually knows. Like his speech last year when he hailed a heroic Navy corpsman as a “corpseman.” …
So far the reviews have not been very kind, but it’s still good news when Tom Wolfe writes another novel. USA Today has an interview.
… It’s Wolfe’s fourth novel, his first in eight years, and coincides with the 25th anniversary of his prescient best seller The Bonfire of the Vanities, about the financial and moral collapse of a Wall Street trader.
Blood (the title refers to bloodlines) is “highly journalistic,” says Wolfe, who became a literary celebrity in the 1960s and ’70s. He pioneered the “New Journalism,” using novelistic techniques in non-fiction, including The Right Stuff, his 1979 best seller about American astronauts.
In his living room, he describes Miami as “the only city in the world where more than half the residents are recent immigrants, and not just Cubans, but Haitians and Russians and Nicaraguans. In the past 33 years, the Cubans have staged a political takeover — not through an invasion but at the ballot box! It’s probably the only city like that.”
Wolfe is dressed in what has become his uniform: a three-piece white linen suit, blue shirt, polka-dot tie and black-and-white shoes, which he calls “faux spats.” (Which leads to the first of several digressions: “Did you know that spats came of age when there was no central heat?” he asks. “Only I have looked into this matter.”)
Wolfe’s closets are filled with 32 white suits, he says. “I used to have more. A bit overboard?” he suggests with a smile. …
Weather Nerd has a warning for the east coast about Hurricane Sandy.
… After Jamaica, Sandy will briefly re-emerge over water, but will then hit eastern Cuba. By the time it emerges from its passage over Cuba, the upper-level wind shear will have increased, likely preventing much further strengthening — at least as a pure warm-core tropical system. (More in a moment on what I mean by that.) All things considered, it is unlikely Sandy will, in its purely tropical phase, ever be worse than a Category 1 hurricane.
However, after Sandy crosses Jamaica and Cuba, things get really interesting — and dangerous — because the atmospheric setup is uniquely conducive for Sandy to become a bizarre and, possibly, extremely destructive hybrid storm, injecting its tropical moisture, warm core, and low barometric pressure into a dynamic atmospheric situation involving a diving upper-level trough, driven by the jet stream, and the resulting clash between warm and very cold air. We could end up with a “subtropical hurricane” — a category that isn’t even supposed to be able to exist — bashing the U.S. East Coast with fierce wind, rain and surge, while its back side produces extremely heavy snow over the northern Appalachians. It would be like a nor’easter on steroids. …