RUTHFULLY YOURS

Let’s not forget that there actually are some people who are benefiting from Obamacare. It’s too bad, though, that we can’t all be corrupt DC insiders!

Sigh. Another day, another grim Obamacare update. Actually, we have two updates on the never-ending disaster of government-run healthcare.

Our first story comes from the Washington Times, which reports that the company hired to fix the failed Obamacare website is way behind schedule and way over budget.

“Fixing the Obamacare website to get it ready to handle a second round of enrollments will cost the federal government $121 million… The deal, which Accenture announced on its website Tuesday, costs more than the $93.7 million it took to build HealthCare.gov in the first place. It’s also $30 million more than the government projected for fixes just a few months ago… “There doesn’t seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel for Obamacare website expenses,” said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa, California Republican.”

I’m mystified, by the way, why taxpayers always have to cough up more money on these contracts.

If some company promises to do X in exchange for Y amount of money, shouldn’t that contract be binding? Instead, this is just the latest chapter in the endless book of government cost overruns.

Our second story comes from the Washington Examiner, which reports that there are some big problems with Obama’s supposed success of bribing and coercing people into Obamacare.

“…officials from President Obama down have touted 8 million Americans signing up for coverage through the program’s exchanges. But, among other things, they haven’t revealed how many of those individuals formally completed their enrollment by paying their premiums. …what the committee heard back was that just 67 percent of individuals signing up for health insurance through the federal health exchange as of April 15 paid their first month’s premiums and actually completed enrollment.”

~Effective today, the Sultan of Brunei has made his lucky people the first in eastern Asia to live under a national Sharia law:

“With faith and gratitude to Allah the almighty, I declare that tomorrow, Thursday 1 May 2014, will see the enforcement of sharia law phase one, to be followed by the other phases,” the absolute monarch said in a royal decree on Wednesday.

Plans for the sharia penalties – which will eventually include flogging, severing of limbs and death by stoning – triggered condemnation on social media sites in the tiny sultanate earlier this year…

67-year-old Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah – one of the world’s wealthiest men – said in his decree that the move was “a must” under Islam, dismissing “never-ending theories” that sharia punishments were cruel in comments clearly aimed at detractors.

“Theory states that Allah’s law is cruel and unfair but Allah himself has said that his law is indeed fair,” he said.

The initial phase beginning on Thursday introduces fines or jail terms for offences ranging from indecent behaviour, failure to attend Friday prayers, and out-of-wedlock pregnancies.

A second phase covering crimes such as theft and robbery is to be implemented later this year, involving more stringent penalties such as severing of limbs and flogging.

Late next year, punishments such as death by stoning for offences including sodomy and adultery will be introduced.

Brunei is a Commonwealth country whose ultimate court of appeal is the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London. It will be interesting to see how culturally sensitive their Lordships are to the first gay stoning that lands on their desks.

Islamic law is a bitch to live under because it has a complete lack of proportion, an inability to tolerate any dissent from orthodoxy, and a disinclination to recognize the concept of private space. On the other hand, in a western world in which a man can be fined $2.5 million for expressing the view in a private conversation in his own home that he’d rather his mistress didn’t go around with black men, who are we to judge?

In Sir Henry Wotton’s famous formulation, an ambassador is a man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country. In the case of Susan Rice, a UN ambassador is a broad sent to lie to her country for the good of her man — President Obama. Happily, it worked. A year-and-a-half after going on five Sunday talk-shows and pinning Benghazi on some unseen YouTube video, Miss Rice is National Security Advisor, and the Administration’s designated fall-guy, the director of that unseen video, is still in jail.

I’m not surprised by anything in the emails belatedly released this week. My view of Benghazi has been consistent since my column of September 14th 2012, three days after the attack and two days before Susan Rice peddled to the nation an agreed story she and the President and the Secretary of State knew was utterly false. Unlike her September 16th TV appearances, my September 14th column still holds up:

As I say, I’m inclined to be generous, and put some of this down to the natural torpor and ineptitude of government. But Hillary Clinton and General Martin Dempsey are guilty of something worse, in the secretary of state’s weirdly obsessive remarks about an obscure film supposedly disrespectful of Mohammed and the chairman of the joint chiefs’ telephone call to a private citizen asking him if he could please ease up on the old Islamophobia.

Forget the free-speech arguments. In this case, as Secretary Clinton and General Dempsey well know, the film has even less to do with anything than did the Danish cartoons or the schoolteacher’s teddy bear or any of the other innumerable grievances of Islam. The 400-strong assault force in Benghazi showed up with RPGs and mortars: That’s not a spontaneous movie protest; that’s an act of war, and better planned and executed than the dying superpower’s response to it. Secretary Clinton and General Dempsey are, to put it mildly, misleading the American people when they suggest otherwise.

One can understand why they might do this, given the fiasco in Libya. The men who organized this attack knew the ambassador would be at the consulate in Benghazi rather than at the embassy in Tripoli. How did that happen? They knew when he had been moved from the consulate to a “safe house,” and switched their attentions accordingly. How did that happen? The United States government lost track of its ambassador for ten hours. How did that happen? Perhaps, when they’ve investigated Mitt Romney’s press release for another three or four weeks, the court eunuchs of the American media might like to look into some of these fascinating questions, instead of leaving the only interesting reporting on an American story to the foreign press.

But the court eunuchs never did take an interest, and it would be foolish to expect them to now. Nevertheless, if Washington had a healthy media culture, the Ben Rhodes email outlining the Administration’s four goals for Susan Rice’s telly marathon would be devastating:

*To convey that the United States is doing everything that we can to protect our people and facilities abroad;

*To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy;

*To show that we will be resolute in bringing people who harm Americans to justice, and standing steadfast through these protests;

*To reinforce the President and Administration’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.

All four “goals” are bunk, but the second was an explicit lie.

Who is this colossus of Rhodes? He’s not part of the State Department or the “intelligence community”; Ben Rhodes is a political guy in the White House. And it was the political guys who called the shots, rather than the diplomats or spooks or military or anyone else who knew what actually happened that night in the Libyan town of Benghazi, as opposed to the stage-set “Benghazi” the White House constructed and dressed with lies. Rhodes & Co “politicized” Benghazi because that’s all these fellows know how to do:

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

ANOTHER SON

Obama doesn’t directly state that Oklahoma’s execution of Clayton Lockett was racist, but he implies it.

Remember that is the monster that Barack Hussein Obama is empathizing with.

“The men beat her and used duct tape to bind her hands and cover her mouth.

“Neiman was forced to watch as Lockett’s accomplice, Shawn Mathis, spent 20 minutes digging a shallow grave in a ditch beside the road. Her friends saw Neiman standing in the ditch and heard a single shot.

“Lockett returned to the truck because the gun had jammed. He later said he could hear Neiman pleading, “Oh God, please, please” as he fixed the shotgun.

“The men could be heard “laughing about how tough Stephanie was” before Lockett shot Neiman a second time.

““He ordered Mathis to bury her, despite the fact that Mathis informed him Stephanie was still alive.”

Obama Says Execution of Man Who Shot and Buried Teenage Girl Alive is Racist and “Deeply Troubling”
A 66-YEAR-OLD CHILD

The high points of her national career are negative; terminated from Watergate after unethical behavior, a failure on government health care as First Lady, an Iraq War vote that she spent five years lying about and the abandonment of Americans in Benghazi as Secretary of State.

In the Senate, she was for a ban on flag burning, Cap and Trade, nuclear power, for Israel, for Palestine, for abortion, against abortion, for harsh criminal penalties, against harsh criminal penalties, for No Child Left Behind, against No Child Left Behind, for gay marriage, against gay marriage, for medical marijuana and against medical marijuana.

And she has tried to make up for it with childish lies like claiming to have come under sniper fire in Bosnia, claiming to have negotiated open borders for refugees in Kosovo and claiming to have been instrumental in the Irish peace process.

ADL and NJDC: Enablers for Anti-Semitism
Why would nominally Jewish organizations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) whitewash anti-Semitic hate speech, one of the nation’s most vicious racists and, most recently, Secretary of State John Kerry’s contribution to militant Islamic efforts to destroy Israel? The ADL’s and NJDC’s foremost loyalty is clearly to the left wing of the Democratic Party, and are willing to exploit their nominally Jewish identities to support this agenda regardless of how dishonest and dishonorable it might be.

Here is Abraham Foxman’s whitewash of Kerry:

We welcome Secretary Kerry’s clear affirmation that Israel is not an apartheid state nor headed in that direction should talks with the Palestinians fail. He now has publicly acknowledged that he made a mistake in using that term. Apartheid is a particularly loaded epithet that has repeatedly been used by Israel’s worst enemies to delegitimize the Jewish state and suggest it promulgates abhorrent racial policies similar to those of the apartheid regime in South Africa.

While we may disagree from time to time, we have never doubted Secretary Kerry’s commitment to Israel’s security and his good faith efforts to find a fair, equitable and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is a true friend of Israel. His statement makes that clear, and we consider this chapter closed.

The problem is, however, that Kerry is not even sorry he accused Israel of becoming an apartheid state; he is sorry he exposed himself to “partisan” political backlash. The reference adds that this is the first time a U.S. official of Kerry’s stature has used this kind of language to describe Israel.

Mr. Foxman said the following about the genocide of Armenians in 1915, although he didn’t go so far as to deny that it happened. “The Turks and Armenians need to revisit their past. The Jewish community shouldn’t be the arbiter of that history, nor should the U.S. Congress.” Another individual said something very similar in 1939: “Who, after all, speaks to-day of the annihilation of the Armenians?” The fact that too few people spoke of it was why Hitler thought he could similarly get away with exterminating Poles and, by implication, Jews.

NJDC and ADL also used their purportedly Jewish identities to whitewash MoveOn.org’s knowing and willful hosting of anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic hate speech, and 9/11 denial on its Action Forum. This whitewash continued after both organizations were given proof, in the form of material from MoveOn.org’s own Web sites, that MoveOn.org continued to host the hate speech after it said it had removed it. These ethics are entirely consistent with NJDC’s whitewash of Kerry.

NJDC applauds Secretary of State Kerry for his statement expressing his regret for using the word “apartheid” in his remarks last week. He has always been a staunch friend of Israel and a promoter of peace, and we are proud to be among his supporters. The matter is now closed.

What was Obama doing while terrorists attacked Americans in Benghazi?

You couldn’t help but feel for Robert Lovell. The retired brigadier general is haunted by the failure of AFRICOM, the U.S. military’s Africa Command, to respond when Americans were under siege in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. His congressional testimony this week was somber — no faux “What difference, at this point, does it make?” indignation, no “Dude, this was two years ago” juvenilia for him.

Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the State Department’s Sean Smith were killed in the early stage of the jihadist attack. By then, the actions that would surely have saved their lives — e.g., an adult recognition that Benghazi was no place for an American diplomatic facility, or at least the responsible provision of adequate security — had already been callously forsaken. It seems unlikely AFRICOM could have gotten there in time for them on that fateful night, though that does not come close to excusing the failure to try.

Former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty are a different story. They fought valiantly for many hours after our military learned, very early on, that the battle was raging. Unlike AFRICOM, the SEALs did not stand pat. They ran to the sound of the guns. After saving over 30 of their countrymen, they paid with their lives. The armed forces, General Lovell recalled, knew that terrorists were attacking them. Yet no one came to their aid.

Lovell bears the burden of their abandonment with a heavy heart. His moving testimony made that clear. Still, his version of events is deeply unsatisfying. Why did AFRICOM fail to respond? “Basically,” he stammered, “there was a lot of looking to the State Department.” Unfortunately, we’re told Secretary Hillary Clinton and her minions were unclear “in terms of what they would like to have.” Come again? “They didn’t come forward with stronger requests for action.”

This Foggy Bottom focus had me groping for my pocket Constitution. Sure enough, Article II was as I remembered it. Much as Hillary Clinton may desire to be the commander-in-chief of the United States armed forces, that job does not belong to the secretary of state.

It was the solemn duty of the president to come forward with not requests but commands for action. Why was AFRICOM hanging on the State Department’s preferences? Why were our troops hamstrung by what Lovell described as “deference to the Libyan people?” On the night of September 11, 2012, AFRICOM was not beholden to Mrs. Clinton or Tripoli. They answered to Barack Obama.

Of course, no one can answer to a commander-in-chief who abdicates his command, a commander-in-chief who is AWOL.

Deer Reader,

On Wednesday, Jay Carney explained — as if he was talking to a room full of children — that the Benghazi e-mail the White House refused to release until the White House was forced to release its Benghazi e-mails wasn’t in fact about Benghazi, even though the e-mail talks about Benghazi. This is Monty Pythonesque of “Dead Parrot” proportions. That’s not a Benghazi e-mail, it’s just an e-mail about Benghazi, in a folder marked “Benghazi” e-mails, idiot.

As I said on Fox yesterday, Jay Carney is a very strange creature for Washington. He’s an extremely confident liar — we’ve got a lot of those! — but he’s not very convincing. Usually, confidence = convincing. As George Costanza (and in his own way Bill Clinton) liked to say, it’s not a lie if you believe it when you tell it. But with Carney, he lies in a way that makes it seem not so much like he believes it but that you’re an idiot for not believing it. There’s a kind of the-joke’s-on-you feel to the way he talks that reminds me of that (X-rated and not safe for work) Onion article, “Why Do These Homosexuals Keep [Fellating Me]?”

Carney actually seems shocked and, well, disappointed to the point of contemptuousness, when reporters won’t believe him. It’s like no one told him he doesn’t have Jedi mind tricks at his disposal.

Carney: These are not the droids you’re looking for, idiots.

Ed Henry, Fox News: But Jay, these look exactly like the droids we’ve been looking for. In fact, the serial numbers match.

Carney: Ed, I understand your network is deeply invested in finding a story here. But the simple fact is that these are in no way the droids you’re looking for. Move along.

Henry: One last follow-up, Jay. The golden droid on the right just said, “Excuse me sirs, but we are in fact exactly the droids you’ve been looking for. Thank goodness you found us.”

Carney: No, no they didn’t. And besides — I used to be a journalist as you know — and it’s common knowledge among real journalists [Carney winks to the non-Fox reporters in the room] that one should never believe what droids tell them.

Jonathan Karl, ABC: Jay, related question: Here is a photo of you from last month holding up a picture of these exact droids with the quote in the caption reading, ‘Carney vows the White House will not rest until these droids are found.’ Also, ABC News has obtained footage of you from this morning, hugging the two droids right there, with you saying ‘Thank Obama we found you!’ Can you explain that?

[Carney rolls his eyes and then desperately tries to telekinetically choke everyone in the room.]

Henry: Uh, Jay are you okay? Why are you squinting? What’s up with that hand gesture . .

There are actually two more A words for Kerry….Arrogant Ass…e….rsk
More than exposing his personal prejudices, John Kerry’s recent remarks illustrate how biased against the Jews – i.e. anti-Semitic – the entire discourse on the Palestinian issue has become.

John Kerry Photo: REUTERS
A two-state solution will be clearly underscored as the only real alternative. Because a unitary state winds up either being an apartheid state – or… a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state. Once you put that frame in your mind… which is the bottom line, you understand how imperative it is to get to the two-state solution.
– John Kerry before the Trilateral Commission, cited by The Daily Beast, April 27

John Kerry’s recent use of the term “Apartheid” in reference to Israel’s future was an anti-Semitic act.
– Caroline B. Glick, The Jerusalem Post, April 29

From the outset John Kerry was an ill-advised choice for the position of secretary of state. His history of embarrassing gaffes made his appointment as America’s top diplomat clearly imprudent and inappropriate.

Rage, reproach and ridicule

But for some reason, none of these prior lapses unleashed the same maelstrom of rage, reproach and ridicule as his leaked prognosis that, unless it hastens to embrace “the two-state solution,” Israel may become an “apartheid state.”

Kerry has, of course, been responsible for measures far more substantially detrimental to Israel than his facile forecast as to its future – such as the abhorrent release of convicted terrorists as a grotesque gesture to coax the Palestinians to the negotiating table. Yet, somehow it was his brandishing the specter of anticipated apartheid that precipitated an unprecedented assault on his competence and character, and even calls for his resignation Thus in a withering review of Kerry’s performance, acerbically titled, “Kerry challenging Biden for ‘most gaffe-prone’” (April 29), Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin wrote: “When ultra-conservative Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and super-liberal Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) are both blasting you, you know you’ve blown it… In a sense, Kerry’s latest debacle can’t really undermine his standing any further. His buffoon-like gaffes… already have made him the subject of derision.”

Rubin concludes her column with the caustic comment: “Kerry over and over again has proven himself to be, if not the worst secretary of state, then certainly the most error-prone.”

‘Apartheid’ & ‘anti-Semitism’ – Countervailing A-words?

“Apartheid” is an emotive “A-word” and Kerry’s use of it was pounced on by both friends and foes of Israel.

A headline on The Washington Free Beacon website, “Palestinians Echo Kerry on ‘Apartheid’: Kerry comments influencing region, harming Israel” summed up the situation its usage has created.

http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2014/05/03/pakistani-muslims-protest-at-3rd-anniversary-of-bin-laden-killing-63-opposed-killing-70-see-us-as-enemy/

Pakistanis Protest at 3rd Anniversary of Bin Laden Killing; 63% Opposed Killing & 70% See US as Enemy

In April and May of 2011 (as summarized in USA Today), the Pew Center’s Global Attitudes Project conducted polls among 1,970 and then 1,251 Pakistanis, sampling areas that represented 85% of the country’s population. Here are the salient findings:

63 percent of Pakistanis disapproved of the bin Laden raid, while 10 percent approved and 27 percent gave no opinion.

70 percent of Pakistanis surveyed view the U.S. as an enemy, while fewer then 1 in 10 see it as a partner, both surveys showed.

Three in four have an unfavorable opinion of America, both polls showed.

That’s the unspoken, if not actively denied “background” for scenes like this today (5/3/14) in Pakistan, where Muslim protesters decried the U.S. on the third anniversary of the righteous killing of the jihad terrorist and mass murderer Osama Bin Laden.

Members of Kerry’s team slam Netanyahu, empathize with Abbas, warn Palestine will rise ‘whether through violence or via int’l organizations’
American officials directly involved in the failed Israeli-Palestinian peace process over the last nine months gave a leading Israeli columnist a withering assessment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the negotiations, indicated that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has completely given up on the prospect of a negotiated solution, and warned Israel that the Palestinians will achieve statehood come what may — either via international organizations or through violence.

Speaking on condition of anonymity to Nahum Barnea, a prominent columnist from Israel’s best-selling daily Yedioth Aharonoth, the officials highlighted Netanyahu’s ongoing settlement construction as the issue “largely to blame” for the failure of Secretary of State John Kerry’s July 2013-April 2014 effort to broker a permanent peace accord.

They made plain that US President Barack Obama had been prepared to release spy-for-Israel Jonathan Pollard to salvage the talks. And they warned that “the world will not keep tolerating the Israeli occupation.”

Barnea, who described his conversations with the American officials as “the closest thing to an official American version of what happened” in the talks, said the secretary is now deciding whether to wait a few months and try to renew the negotiating effort or to publicize the US’s suggested principles of an agreement.

Detailing how the US sought to solve disputes over the core issues of a two-state solution, Barnea wrote on Friday that, “Using advanced software, the Americans drew a border outline in the West Bank that gives Israel sovereignty over some 80 percent of the settlers that live there today. The remaining 20 percent were meant to evacuate. In Jerusalem, the proposed border is based on Bill Clinton’s plan — Jewish neighborhoods to Israel, Arab neighborhoods to the Palestinians.”

He quoted the Americans saying that while the Israeli government made no response to the American plan, and also failed to draw its own border outline, Abbas agreed to the US-suggested border outline.