Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased to see President Obama issue a de facto two-year delay on the individual mandate. They also groan as the House and Senate can’t even agree on aiding Ukraine. And they have fun with Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee claiming our Constitution is 400 years old.
More Benghazi Bombshells
American diplomats in Benghazi made even more urgent pleas for beefed up security than previously thought and officials also refused to consider at least five military scenarios that could have saved the lives of two Americans in the 2012 terrorist attacks, according to a new book chronicling the heroism of Navy SEALs.
In “Eyes on Target: Inside Stories from the Brotherhood of the U.S. Navy SEALs,” authors Richard Miniter and Scott McEwen point to newly discovered government reports showing Ambassador Chris Stevens and his colleagues desperately requesting additional security and better personnel than the suspect Libyans already on the job. Those intelligence reports came in addition to multiple requests for additional security.
“We discovered three intelligence reports that circulated in the months before the attack. Each of those reports show intelligence agencies warning the State Department (and) warning the Defense Department there’s an Al Qaeda build-up in Benghazi. One of those reports included photographs of more than 300 Al Qaeda operatives in Martyr’s Square. That’s downtown Benghazi. That’s less than a mile from the diplomatic outpost where the ambassador died,” said Miniter.
“In those photographs in the intelligence report, they show them waving guns. There’s a quote mentioned in this intelligence report in which the leader of Al Qaeda in Benghazi said if the U.S. doesn’t leave they were going to kill the U.S. Ambassador. You can’t get any clearer than that,” said Miniter.
“Somewhere in the bowels of the State Department there’s a bureaucrat who has got the three intelligence reports and on the other part of his desk he’s got the three or four security requests from the ambassador begging for more security guards. After reading those intelligence reports and seeing those pictures, he stamped each one of those denied, denied, denied,” he said.
The attack in Benghazi came just weeks before the 2012 presidential election and while President Obama’s campaign portrayed Al Qaeda as effectively dismantled and the ouster of Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi as a major victory, wouldn’t a quiet increase in security be a less risky decision than leaving a diplomatic post vulnerable to attack?
Miniter says it was a political calculation.
“They were concerned that if somehow the American public were to learn that there was additional security for the ambassador or the diplomatic staff in Benghazi, it would take away the two winning arguments that they thought they had on foreign policy,” said Miniter. “So if they admitted that there was a massive Al Qaeda build-up in Libya, that crosses off their two foreign policy successes and undermines the president’s case for re-election. So as crassly political as it was, that appears to be the motivation, according to the Benghazi eyewitnesses. These are participants in the tragedy that we interviewed.”
While Ambassador Stevens and diplomat Sean Smith were killed within the first 40 minutes of the initial attack, Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty fought on for another seven hours. While the Obama administration contends any military response would have taken 20 hours to mobilize and reach the fighting, “Eyes on Target” offers five different different response scenarios that Miniter and McEwen say would have ended the fighting much sooner and most likely saved the lives of Woods and Doherty.
The options ranged from Air Force fighters from Aviano Air Base to Navy fighters in Gaeta, both located in Italy to a drone strike and even a cruise missile strike from the Mediterranean Sea. Miniter says the mere presence of fighter jets would have ended the crisis.
“The scenario that seems the best is simply dispatching F-16 Fighters from Italy and having them fly over Benghazi. The loud jet roar overhead would be enough to scatter the attackers. They certainly know that when facing the U.S. Air Force or U.S. Navy in the sky, death comes from above. With more than a hundred attackers, mortars, rocket attacks they would know that they were targets. Without firing a shot they could have been driven off. That’s the kind of thing that President Obama, who doesn’t like combat, would tend to favor,” said.
In addition to denying permission for Doherty to go to Benghazi and any other sort of military intervention, “Eyes on Target” details the Obama administration’s paralysis in making any decisions on response to the attack. After an early evening briefing from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Obama was out of contact the rest of the night. So should he bear any blame for failing to launch military action or does the responsibility lie with Panetta?
“While Americans were fighting and dying in Benghazi, the president was unreachable. According to congressional testimony, Panetta’s last conversation with the president was before 6:30 p.m. Washington time. Remember, Glen Doherty and Ty Woods, the two SEALs who fought to save the Americans wouldn’t die for almost another seven hours. In that period, the president disappeared. He refused to take calls,” said Miniter.
Eighteen months later, the Benghazi investigation essentially falls along party lines, with Democrats saying there is no scandal and Republicans are on a fishing expedition and the GOP accusing the administration of leaving Americans on the field of battle and concocting a story around a spontaneous demonstration spurred by an internet video to deflect from the many security warnings.
Will the final story on Benghazi simply be a matter of political opinion? Miniter doesn’t think so.
“Ultimately, I think this is going to be a turning point in the country’s assessment of the president. The media are supposed to be referees, but instead they’re on the field being players. Too many of the media are simply playing to the White House’s agenda. Really, they should be watchdogs, not lapdogs,” said Miniter.
‘The Revolt Is Underway’
Tens of thousands of Connecticut residents are refusing to register their firearms in defiance of new gun control laws and law enforcement officers in that state and others are simply refusing to enforce the recently imposed restrictions.
In December 2012, the nation was horrified by the merciless killings of a classroom of young children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. In response, the Democratic state legislature approved sweeping new gun control laws and Gov. Dan Malloy signed them into law. Several other states followed suit, including New York, Maryland and Colorado.
In addition to banning new sales of many types of firearms and larger capacity magazines that were previously legal, the state is also requiring residents who legally purchased those weapons and magazines to register them with the state.
For many Connecticut residents, that is a bridge too far and they are refusing to comply with the law. Gun rights groups are standing with them.
“The revolt is underway. Tens of thousands of people in Connecticut have intentionally missed the deadline. They are not registering. Some of them actually said they would not when they were at the hearing when the law was being considered in the legislature,” said Gun Owners of America Executive Director Larry Pratt.
Pratt says the backlash does not stop there. He says Connecticut state lawmakers from both parties who supported the new gun laws are facing fierce tests at the ballot box.
“Almost all of the RINOs in the State Senate that voted for the measure are being opposed in the primary,” said Pratt. “Democrats, you might have to face some angry voters in November, but Republicans are looking over their shoulder right now.”
He also says that Connecticut and other states with new gun control laws will have a tough time enforcing them because of a growing resentment towards the law among police officers.
“Two hundred fifty police (in Connecticut) have signed a letter that they are not going to enforce the law. They have no intention of collecting anyone’s firearms,” said Pratt, who notes that the resistance from law enforcement in Colorado is even stronger.
“All but two of the state’s county sheriffs have said, ‘We’re not enforcing the law.’ To the surprise, I think, of a lot of legislators, it turns out lawmen are not particularly enamored with gun control. After all, they own guns personally. A lot of them enjoy recreational use of guns, and for them to be put in the position of collecting guns for some liberal ideologue in the legislature, they didn’t really sign up for that,” said Pratt.
Gun Owners of America is urging residents in Connecticut, Colorado and other states to reject new laws requiring the registration of newly illegal weapons. But at a time when many on the right condemn President Obama for alleged selective enforcement of laws, are those same conservatives guilty of a double standard in this situation?
Pratt says the Constitution provides the road map in both situations.
“Frankly, I don’t have a constitutional problem with what the president is doing. We can deal with him and his party using the means provided in the forthcoming elections. If we end up sending a tsunami wave over his party and making his last two years in office totally miserable, that’s the way the system permits it to be done,” said Pratt.
“Same thing in Connecticut. People are saying, ‘I’m prepared to go to jail.’ Well, if you get so many tens of thousands of people saying that, it becomes difficult to imagine how that (many arrests) can happen, especially if there aren’t any police around to arrest them in the beginning,” he said.
“I think it’s an American’s right to exercise his conscience. He has to be prepared to take the consequences, just like Martin Luther King. He exercised his conscience. (Rosa) Parks went and sat down right in the front of the bus. Now she was taken off the bus and escorted away and she was put in jail for a bit. She was prepared to take the consequences, but she had decided, ‘No more.’ The people of Connecticut, I think, are in the same frame of mind,” said Pratt.
Three Martini Lunch 3/12/14
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleasantly surprised that a flawed Republican won a special congressional election in Florida. They also groan as Alaska Democratic Sen. Mark Begich runs TV ads demonizing the Koch brothers. And they rip President Obama for telling people they can afford Obamacare if they just get rid of their phones and cable.
Guns and Medicine
A Senate confirmation showdown is looming for President Obama’s choice to be U.S. Surgeon General, largely as a result of the nominee’s ardent gun control advocacy.
Thirty-seven-year-old Dr. Vivek Hallegere Murthy is lauded for his leadership abilities and for his ability to promote healthy lifestyles in a dynamic manner. He is also the co-founder of Doctors for America, an organization that advocates gun control and urges physicians to ask detailed questions of their patients about gun ownership and usage.
Gun Owners of America Executive Director Larry Pratt says that alone ought to disqualify Dr. Murthy.
“His urging that particular policy shows that he does not understand medical ethics. That is a question so far outside of anything to do with medicine. It shows that he is a willing tool of the state, even as German doctors and Soviet doctors would send to the regime information about the people that were in their care. This is an extremely alarming attitude. This guy clearly looks at himself as a government functionary before he considers anything about medicine,” said Pratt.
So how exactly could a conversation with your doctor about guns in the home lead to an erosion of our Second Amendment rights? Pratt believes once the data exists, those rights are endangered.
“Once you’ve put information in a computer then it’s anybody’s game. I would say a 14-year-old would be able to obtain that data. The Canadians had a registry for long guns for several years and they found the thing was being hacked, typically by younger people because they’re so good at computers. They finally took the registry down,” said Pratt.
“So if the Canadians have learned that you can’t put this kind of sensitive information in some central pot, then hopefully we’ll learn from them,” he said.
The office of Surgeon General provides a platform to speak out on various issues, but Pratt admits Murthy would have no power to compel doctors to discuss firearms with their patients. Still, he says the wrong person in that job can still do damage and the nomination continues what he considers a disturbing trend from this administration.
“The only thing he can really do is push money out the door to anti-Second Amendment organizations that would do ‘medical research’, do studies about how guns are epidemic in our country and things of that sort. That’s been done before in years past and has largely been disregarded,” said Pratt.
“But it’s clear they are looking for any way they can find to try to put their finger on the scale and change the debate. It’s the same thing they were doing when they intentionally got people murdered in ‘Fast and Furious’, hoping that would change the gun control debate,” he said.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul vows to stop the Murthy nomination over his Second Amendment views. However, Democrats hold a 10-seat majority in the Senate and recently relaxed the rules for approving presidential nominations. However, Pratt says the recent rejection of Debo Adegbile to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Right Division shows Democratic senators might not want to stick their necks out too far for President Obama right now.
“We’ve already seen one nominee fail because there are a number of Democrats running in Republicans states this November and they decided they really like their job a whole lot more than just pleasing a lame duck president,” said Pratt.
Three Martini Lunch 3/11/14
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review applaud Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker for rapidly growing his state’s economy and giving back surplus dollars through tax cuts. They also cheer West Virginia’s Democratic-led legislature for approving a ban on abortions after 20 weeks. They wonder how Jeffrey Thompson’s confessions to shady campaign fundraising will affect Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Finally, they poke fun at Senate Democrats for having a climate change talk-a-thon when they can’t even get their own caucus on board.
Obamacare and Amnesty
President Obama is telling immigrant families that those who are here legally are eligible for Obamacare and none of them need to worry because no health care information will end up in the hands of immigration officials.
Obama made the statement last week in a forum with prominent Hispanic media outlets, sponsored by the likes of Univision and Telemundo. One of the questions dealt with concerns by legal immigrants that signing up for health care through the new laws would expose the illegal status of family members.
“It’s true that the undocumented are not eligible. That’s how the law was written,” said Obama. “None of the information that is provided in order for you to obtain health insurance is in any way transferred to immigration services.”
Now a longtime Republican member of Congress says this is the latest evidence of why Obama’s approach to immigration reform is fatally flawed and provides additional reasons why Obama may not be fit to serve the remainder of his term.
California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a fierce opponent of the the immigration reforms being promoted in Congress. He is disgusted, but not surprised, by Obama’s statement.
“This is consistent with the president’s commitment to the law and to the Constitution. We have him over and over again stating that he’s going to do what he wants. Whether or not this is consistent with the Constitution isn’t even part of his consideration,” said Rohrabacher, who says the job of government is to enforce the laws.
“We actually hire these people, including the president, in order to enforce the laws that have been created by ‘We the People’ through the Congress. Obviously, he thinks he can ignore some laws and enforce others. This is the first president that has been so blatant,” he said.
In addition to alleging Obama is selectively enforcing federal laws, Rohrabacher says failing to crack down on illegal immigrants is adding great sums to our debt, with Obamacare being a prime example.
“We clearly have a president who is dedicated to the well-being of people who are here in our country illegally. Instead of watching out for the interests of the American people, we have him watching out for the interests of foreign people who come here illegally. It is not in our interest to have people consuming health, education and limited other dollars…when our own people are struggling to make the payments that are necessary to provide these services for our own people. So this is an outrage,” said Rohrabacher.
The congressman also says encouraging government agencies not to share vital information is a terrible practice and not long ago led to one of the greatest calamities in American history.
“The last time the issue was whether or not people transmit information from one branch of government to another in order to enforce the law, we ended up with 9/11. We ended up with a major catastrophe for our country,” said Rohrabacher, referring to the “wall” that prevented information sharing between the FBI and CIA during the 1990s.
“Now this isn’t going to happen with the fact that some illegals are now consuming government resources that they shouldn’t be consuming in terms of limited health care dollars, but it still reflects the type of attitude that is a big minus for our country,” he said.
In the wake of unilateral Obamacare delays and adjustments in immigration policies in recent years, frustrated Americans often ask why Congress doesn’t do something about the president’s allegedly selective enforcement of U.S. laws. Rohrabacher says their answer is in the mirror.
“The most important thing we can do is mobilize the American people. The American people can’t sit back and say, ‘Well, Congress has to handle this.’ We all have to do it. We have three years to get this guy out. Let me put it this way, he probably has been engaged in these unconstitutional approaches that may make his own ability to stay in office a question,” said Rohrabacher.
“At the very least, we need to make sure after three years that we get a president who will set us back on the right path and we have a Congress, meaning a Senate and a House, that can stand unified and try to prevent the damage you have from an arrogant president who thinks he can enforce only the laws he agrees with,” he said.
Last month, House Speaker John Boehner said immigration reform is on indefinite hold in the House because a strong majority of GOP members simply don’t trust the president to enforce all aspects of any legislation that gets approved. Rohrabacher says Obama’s statement on health care and illegal immigration is a perfect example of that mistrust.
“I think this is a major factor in every piece of legislation that will actually be a reform of the system. We can actually put down in black and white in terms of what the new system is going to look like,” said Rohrabacher. “But if we’re doing that with the knowledge that the President of the United States will pick and choose how exactly he’s going to enforce that law or how he will structure his reaction to this new mandate by Congress, then it is a deterrent for us to thinking that we can solve any major problems in the next three years.”
Three Martini Lunch 3/10/14
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are happy to hear former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist sound clueless about Obamacare as he runs for his old job as a Democrat. They also reluctantly agree with former Defense Secretary Bob Gates 19 predictions that Crimea is already lost to the Russians, and also discussion the USA and EU’s insufficient response to Putin. Finally, they explore Geraghty’s experience at CPAC and Rand Paul’s success in the CPAC straw poll.
‘It’s Hard to Put Any Lipstick on This Pig’
The U.S. economy added slightly more jobs than expected in February, but the pattern of job creation remains very sluggish and President Obama only has his own policies to blame, according to Heritage Foundation Chief Economist Stephen Moore.
On Friday, the Labor Department announced the economy added 175,000 jobs last month, although the overall unemployment rate ticked up to 6.7 percent. The job numbers beat the expectation of 149,000 new jobs and mark the 48th straight month of positive job numbers but the number of people leaving the labor force remains a major concern and experts like Moore say by now the jobs numbers should be much better.
“The long-term trend now for five years has been very disappointing job growth. We’re at about half the level of job creation that we should be at. The real unemployment rate, when you include people who have given up looking for work or people who are underemployed, is close to eleven percent. Those are really lousy numbers and it’s hard to put any lipstick on this pig,” said Moore.
“We’ve got an economy that’s just not growing fast enough. It’s not creating the jobs we need. We need about 250,000-300,000 jobs a month,” said Moore, noting that jobs across the pay scale remain scarce.
So what is stopping a spurt in hiring? Moore points his finger at Obama administration policies, namely Obamacare and taxes.
“Obamacare is clearly a job-killer and it’s already having an impact. Of course, the Congressional Budget Office said that we could lose 2.5 million jobs. That is a significant negative for employers and for workers. I think that the tax increase I think the tax increase that we had last year is reducing people’s investment in businesses. I think most of the policies in Washington are negative for the economy. If we shifted toward something like a flat tax, it would be huge,” said Moore, who elaborated further on why he thinks a flat tax could provide a massive economic push.
“We need lower tax rates and we need to get rid of double taxation on savings and investment. We need to become one of the lowest tax rate countries, not the highest tax rate country, especially for our businesses. We’re penalizing businesses with our tax code right now. We have the highest corporate tax rate in the world. That is not a policy that is geared toward growth,” said Moore.
Neither party has approached the flat tax legislatively and Republican bills that pass the House rarely get noticed in the Democratically controlled Senate. Moore says many of the GOP ideas are good, but politics prevent much from getting done.
“It’s such a poisonous atmosphere right now, where everything the president is for is bad for the economy. Everything the Republicans are for is probably a benefit to the economy for the most part, except that those can’t get done. The best situation now would be for Washington to do nothing, because the only things the president would allow to get done are things that are negative for jobs,” said Moore.
“The Republicans are kind of in the fetal position right now. They don’t want to do much of anything. The one thing they do want to do is fight against Obamacare, which is certainly a good thing to repeal or correct its worst feature. That’s not enough of an agenda. They have to have a positive solution for growth. They have to be a solutions party,” said Moore.
“When I hear them just being against what Obama’s for, I’m not sure that’s enough to win the elections in 2014 because all of this discussion is in the context of major midterm elections,” said Moore.
Moore says he doesn’t see a single component in the new Obama budget blueprint that he believes will foster stronger job growth. As a result, he says America’s economy will continue to fall further behind.
“We know the formula to do it but we’re not following that formula. That’s why I would say right now, less out of Washington is the best we can hope for,” said Moore.
There Is Nothing Like Ukraine
The world’s attention is focused on Ukraine and it’s not the first time. Ten years ago, another political firestorm unfolded there and Capitol Steps are here to share their classic parody. Our guest is Steps co-founder and star Elaina Newport.