One reason Benghazi-gate is more sinister than Watergate . . .

. . . is that, 40 years ago, the mainstream media was in full-investigation / relentless pitbull mode from day one, whereas now the state-run propaganda arm of this regime is trying to run out the clock on the sordid truth coming to light before the election.

Our scumbag overlords

The regime is offering to pay fines and legal fees for defense contractors who may have to lay off workers or close plants due to the upcoming and seemingly inevitable sequestration in order to keep them from doing so prior to the election.  That's called trying to influence electorate opinion using taxpayer dollars.  And by coaxing businesses to break a law to boot.

"We've crossed a new and frightening line"

Roger L. Simon at PJ Media explains in all its chilling detail why the Benghazi cover-up is far, far worse than Watergate.

Nobody was trying to bring down Western civilization in Watergate.

It gets worse

US embassy in Egypt issues terror warning to Americans living there, particularly women engaged in missionary work.

Then there's the $300 million the MEC regime is sending to Gaza and the West Bank to fund construction projects in anticipation of a Palestinian state.


Then there are the Syrian chemical weapons that US intelligence can no longer track.

And did you realize that the recent Camp Bastion attack in Afghanistan resulted in the worst loss of US air power in over 40 years?

Auditioning to be the bitch of the world's bad guys

On the heels of Morsi's set of demands for letting the US be Egypt's friend, the MEC regime announces - as in moving ahead without involving Congress - an emergency financial aid package for that Muslim Brotherhood-run country in which our embassy was recently attacked.

This regime holds Israel in utter contempt - today's edition

The MEC had time to meet face-to-face with Netanyahu - he had the afternoon off yesterday after two fundraisers - but didn't.  And Susan Rice skipped out on Bibi's UN address.

Time to call it a cover-up

The regime knew within 24 hours that the Benghazi consulate debacle was a terrorist attack, and still sent out Jay Carney and Susan Rice for days afterwards to insult our intelligence.  Meant in both senses of the word.

We know we're not safer

Per Rasmussen, 17 percent fewer Americans feel our country is winning the struggle against terrorist jihad than did when the MEC was inaugurated.

It's on purpose - today's edition

Second-quarter GDP growth revised downward from 1.7 percent to 1.3.

In a sane world, not one penny of our tax dollars would have ever gone to this dog-vomit organization

Planned Parenthood's Facebook page for teenagers exults the notion of sluttiness.

When cattle don't get their feed, they stomp their hooves and head-but the sides of their pen

Violent protests in Spain and a strike in Greece at the mere mention of an attempt at staving off collapse.

Spaniards are foraging for edible garbage.

He's envisioned a nation of cattle all along

You may have already seen the video from 1998 in which the MEC strategizes about a majority coalition of "working poor" and welfare recipients.  It, of course, includes the notorious line about believing in redistribution.

It still needs the widest possible dissemination.  And it can't be said often enough: this guy cares not a whit for the United States of America, except as a vehicle for realizing his mad socialist vision.

Full circle right under our noses

Of her many strengths as a warrior for Western values, Michelle Malkin's greatest is her prowess as an investigative journalist.  As is often the case in exposing a web of ties among centers-for-this, institutes-for-that and the like, the trick is to keep the reader's eyes from glazing over.   She deftly guides you through the maze with the assurance that when the big picture becomes clear at the end of a piece, you'll see why all the information was necessary.  Such is the case today with the story of a guy named Hisham Altalib who visited the White House in March to meet with the head of the Faith-Based Initiatives program.  He is a native Iraqi who came to the US in the 1970s to get a EE degree from Purdue and then entered the web of Muslim Brotherhood front groups.  Read to the end of the column and you'll learn about his ties to one of the people implicated in the recent terrorist attack in Libya.

She then makes the point that it makes the United States look pretty ridiculous, since this knowledge is out there even as the MEC regime prattles about YouTube videos.

The jihadists can make a lot of progress even without blowing up any planes, because we think we're such clever multiculturalists.  One of their most effective weapons is our own penchant for patty-cake.

Inviting jihad to claw out our entrails

The MEC reaffirms his patty-cake foreign policy at the UN.

And Dana Milbank isn't easily outraged by the MEC's antics

The WaPo columnist says that the First Couple's appearance on The View, even as the MEC meets with zero world leaders at the NYC UN pow-wow "borders on scandalous."

Why the H-word Creature would have been at least every bit as bad as the Most Equal Comrade

Now she's pushing for a global tax on "elites."

The death rattle of Western civilization

France bans the words "mother" and "father" from official documents in preparation of implementing its redefinition of marriage.

Totalitarianism doesn't even taste good

High school kids across the nation, particularly athletes, are giving a big thumbs down to the Michelle-driven USDA-mandated new government-school lunch regs.

Well, okay, so we'll get the word out by other means

The Sept. 30 newspaper column I submitted won't see print.  My editor said it amounted to an endorsement of Mitt Romeny, and I guess it does, however tepidly.  So now I have to come up with a replacement column.
In the meantime, the original piece has to be disseminated as widely as possible, so why not start here at LITD and then take it to the social networks?

Here's what I turned in last Friday:

You know what America’s situation is. You know its global-competitiveness ranking has slipped from first to seventh over the last four years. You know unemployment has been over 8 percent for 44 months. One in seven Americans is on food stamps. Standard and Poor and Egan-Jones have downgraded our creditworthiness, and Moody’s will probably do likewise.

While it’s time to consider how economic opportunity has dwindled and uncertainty has increased, that’s not all you need to consider. You see, it’s deliberate. America’s decline is on purpose.

The challenger for the position of U.S. president doesn’t seem inclined to make the ideological argument against his opponent, so I will do it for him. His opponent is the culmination of three waves of leftward shift of the party he leads. The first was the progressive wave of a century ago, guided by such figures as Herbert Croly, John Dewey and Woodrow Wilson. The second was the statist-yet-nationalist wave that lasted from the onset of the 1930s through 1968. Its political and intellectual leaders advocated pervasive government involvement in domestic economic matters, but were willing to face external security threats. The third wave has its roots in the moral-equivalency thinkers of the 1950s such as historian William Appleman Williams, who thought that the U.S. and the Soviet Union were equally to blame for tensions on the world stage. Williams’s disciples took to the streets in the 1960s, eventually bombing public buildings and making common cause with communists in Vietnam, Cuba and elsewhere.

These radicals saw that their tactics did them no good in the 1968 election cycle, so they decided to work within the system. They finished law school, journalism school and divinity school, worked with labor unions, took control of the entertainment world and infiltrated the education world that had just spawned them.

The incumbent striving to keep his position as president was deeply involved in the web of socialist groups in Chicago in the 1990s. He was mentored by people who had begun their work as hands-on radicals in the revolutionary phase of the New Left. He clearly saw himself as countercultural and made sure no one could view him as a “sellout.”

He embraces an ideology that sees America and the West generally as fundamentally flawed, arrogant and in need of having their stature diminished. It sees what you and I call basic freedom as unfairness.

To try to explain why this current government is squeezing the oil and coal industries even as we learn we’re awash in both resources, even while it subsidizes non-viable energy sources, as anything other than orchestrated decline is futile. The same is true for its contempt for our culture’s Judeo-Christian foundation, as exemplified by a Health and Human Services Department that forces Catholic institutions to provide insurance coverage for the extermination of fetal Americans. That contempt is on full display in the open rift it has allowed to develop between the United States and the only Western democracy in the Middle East, Israel. It has utterly disregarded the urgency of Iran’s threat to annihilate Israel.

Of course, we just saw its priorities on full display in its insistence that a silly, obscure video was behind the torching of several Middle East embassies by a jihadist movement it had told us was dead. America suffered worldwide humiliation, and it concerned the overlords not a whit.

You are not going to see increased opportunity for yourself from this regime. You will see your freedom and wealth shrink further.

That’s the choice you are faced with. Certain grimness, or the possibility of revival. It’s up to you.

Presided over by someone who thinks the American experiment and Western civilization are some kind of joke

The MEC can get real serious when he wants to - for instance, when he's plotting how to stick it to what he perceives as some kind of privileged class, or when he's talking March Madness brackets or barbecued ribs, or playing golf.  He can't bring himself to really take seriously the fundamentals of his job, though.

More Americans every day are wising up to the fact that a whole lot of folks in our intelligence community - even some right there on the ground in Libya - knew in advance that jihadists were planning an attack for the time frame around 9/11.  They understand that this regime has utterly reversed what it insisted on as true for days afterward.  It's looking more and more like a stinking cover-up all the time.

Then there's the continuing signs that he doesn't give a flying frick about Israel.  His remarks last night to Steve Kroft's 60 Minutes about "noise" and "one of our closest allies in the region" really ought to seal the deal for anyone who still needed to be convinced of his sinister vision.

The reason I've never gone in for the accusations that he's a Muslim - and, yes, I am aware he was schooled as such during his youth in Indonesia - is really the same reason I don't call him a Christian.  (His only contact with that faith was that poison-spewing liberation-theology proponent at Trinity Church.)   Hard-core leftists with totalitarian ambitions are by nature too nihilistic to embrace even vague spirituality, let alone a specific religion.

I really hope this gets the attention it deserves from the pundit world today.  This is getting really chilling.

A shot of real music

John McLaughlin with Doc Severinsen's Tonight Show band, 1985, tearing up "Cherokee." They kick it off - at a breakneck tempo - as he's walking out onstage.  So he has the x number of seconds until he sits down to discern the groove.  Incredible.

The phrase "off-putting attitude" comes to mind

I really do not care for new Egyptian president Morsi.  He takes an awfully contrarian stance in his haughty defense of a failed Arab culture, and an insistence that the Palestinians are ready to have their own actual state.

The autumn of our realized fears

For a few days I've had a big-picture-type post germinating inside me.  The reasons it hasn't sprouted yet (to continue my metaphor) are varied.  I've been busy once again with paid-writing work.  Along with the hired-gun magazine work, I have been preoccupied with the last opinion column of mine that will run before the election.  I wrote the first draft of it last Sunday and have been considering it all week, as well as seeing if subsequent developments on the world stage warranted a revision.  It's my last chance to reach that audience, and it is imperative that I knock it our of the park, that it be as point-blank-between-the-eyes as possible.  I think I succeeded.  I turned it in this morning.
The main reason, though, was that I've had to put my horror and disgust in proper perspective, so that such a post would be spot-on yet not unduly purple.
It's been quite a week, hasn't it?  The Susan Rice - Jay Carney narrative that the Benghazi torching / murders were merely a spontaneous protest that got our of hand has been thoroughly discredited by the Libyan president as well as witnesses on the scene.  And even though that's so, the Most Equal Comrade and the H-Word Creature felt compelled to pay for advertising time on Pakistani television to once again grovel sheepishly and implore the wild-eyed mobs there to refrain from their mayhem.
The flames of West-hatred burn worldwide now - from the Phillipines to Iraq to Germany.  This is about as urgent as it gets, folks.
We already know that the regime is full of cracks and fissures: rancor between and within departments, politics running roughshod over policy.  One has to believe that veteran professionals in capacities like defense and diplomacy are aghast.
We're not safe.  We're not safe from economic apocalypse, not from the threat of nuclear annihilation and not from jihadist conquest.
This regime has failed at its first Constitutional duty: to keep us safe.
Allowing the Democrat vision to get this far was the worst mistake a free people has ever made.

The Most Equal Comrade, our Freedom-Hater-in-Chief

Here he is, folks.  Dear Leader's ideology on full dispay.

"Shameful," "scurrilous," "dangerous," "pathetic," "disastrous" all come to mind, but they only begin to hint at how bad the MEC is

Not only will he not meet with Bibi next week in NYC, he won't be meeting with any Israeli official.  But he will be meeting with Morsi.

It's on purpose - today's edition

From 1980 through 2000, the United States had the worlds' third-freeest economy.  It is now the 18th freeest.

Noteworthy numbers

CNBC and Yahoo Finance readers took polls at those sites respectively and, by substantial margins, dug Mitt's comments in the Mother Jones video.

Passing up low-hanging fruit because it might squirt juice on his starched-white shirt

As I perused the comments under Michael Walsh's white-hot post at NRO's The Corner, I started to consider that maybe those saying he was letting his frustration get the better of him had a point.

Then I watched the new campaign ads to which Quinn Hilyer at The American Spectator linked and I had my fears about the advanced stage of Mitt's Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome sparked all over again.

He makes it hard for any of us to make the case for him. 

Aren't there any moles who can tell us if he's even remotely aware of the alarm level out here?

This one bears watching

The dispute between Japan and China over the Senkaku Islands is leading to violent protests against Japanese companies plants in in China.

Socialism in real time

General Motors would like the government to sell its stake in the company.  It's harmed its reputation and government-imposed caps on what GM can pay people has made it difficult to attract top talent.

Damn straight, you'd be on your own (but you'd come to cherish it)

I recently threw a wrench into family relations.  I sent my sister-in-law a private Facebook message, on the assumption that she had her head on straight, asking what could be done to persuade her daughter, who is one of those who, at this late date still outspokenly gushes over the Most Equal Comrade, to rethink her views before election day.  The response was indignant in tone.  She said her whole family embraced the pro-MEC view.  She asked how I "could support a candidate who is against gay rights."  We have to assume she means Romney.  I responded, "You have no idea how sad and horrified I am" and have left it at that.

The continued exchange I have run through my mind since then, though, goes something like this:

The place of homosexuality in our society is not even one of the top thirty most pressing issues in our nation at present.  Still, since it's the subject at hand, I do have a question: What, pray tell, is a "gay right?"  We know that all American citizens, and by inference, per the Declaration of Independence, all human beings, do have certain rights.  This is true for people of any demographic group.  Is there some special kind of "right" above and beyond these that homosexual people have?

At which point, the response would probably be something along the lines of  "They are denied the right to get married in most states."

Um, no, they're not.  It's just that homosexual people aren't interested in exercising that right, as it entails bonding with someome of the opposite gender.

The exchange might then go to the matter of homosexual couples not getting the same benefits packages from their workplaces.

What that presents is a compelling argument for decoupling health insurance and retirement programs from employment.  Just pay people a salary or wage and let them see to their own health care and provisions for their sunset years.

At which point a likely rejoinder would be, "Well, benefits packages have become so entrenched in our society that it would be prohibitively difficult at this point to change that expectation."

Bingo.  Now we get to the heart of the matter.  That's what it all comes down to.  The real war we conservatives have been waging for a century is against entrenched assumptions.

Government is not here to provide a bulwark against risk, against change, or against the thoughts of one's fellow human beings, be they fleeting opinions or deeply held values.

The United States government was created to protect your individual sovereignty, period.  What you do with that sovereignty is up to you.

That's the real reason Freedom-Haters find our core principles unacceptably scary.

What could possibly have Maureen Dowd and Pat Buchanan reading off the same page?

An antisemitic basis for their dislike of neoconservatives.

It would seem we have conflicting accounts

Libyan president Yousef El-Magariaf says he's certain the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi was planned well in advance.

The MEC regime's ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, says it was spontaneous.

There are so many people currently in the US government who need to be fired immediately and so thoroughly disgraced that their careers are over.

Why we call them Freedom-Haters - today's edition

It's come to this.

This news item is going to have a well-duh quality for savvy people such as LITD readers, but it will be a revelation to the Honey Boo Boo crowd

Per USA Today, at least the attacks in Egypt and Libya were planned well in advance of the silly-ass movie's appearance on YouTube.

Come on over, Kirsten

For a while I've thought that Dem activist / pundit Kirsten Powers was perhaps the next Artur Davis - that is, the next prominent party figure to realize her party had morphed into something too grim and gruesome for her to feel welcome in.

The collapse of the MEC's foreign policy and the MSM's complicity in trying to change the subject just may have done it.  In this video, she seems none too pleased with what FHers have been up to this week.

They smell weakness - today's edition

Radical Muslims attack Camp Bastion in southern Afghanistan.  Two dead.

Don't do it, America

As Paul Ryan tells the Values Voter Summit, if the MEC is reelected, out culture will never again return to recognizability.

It's on purpose - today's edition

Egan Jones downgrades the US's bond rating from AA to AA-.

This clown doesn't really believe his own hoo-ha, does he?

Jay Carney - today - saying our government has no conclusive evidence that any of these attacks have been preplanned and is still going on the thesis that they are caused by that silly-ass video.

They smell weakness - this hour's edition

Austin, Texas

Fargo, North Dakota

London

Tunis, Tunisia

They smell weakness - today's edition

Thousands of West-hating radical Muslims storm German embassy in Sudan.

West-hating radical Muslims set a Hardee's restaurant in Tripoli, Lebanon ablaze.

Does he get it?

The singularly incisive Kimberly Strassel at the WSJ notes with some alarm the return of Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome symptoms in Mitt.  I like her thematic development, crafting her argument around a scene from a 1968 Henry Fonda movie.  She also lays much of the blame for the return to blandness on campaign bigwig Stuart Stevens, who doesn't appear to have a conservative bone in his body.

Mitt, you're the repository for all our hopes of a future that spares America from tyranny and chaos.  Act like you understand that.

Funny money chasing after funny money

The Federal Reserve embarks on QE3, which involves purchasing $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities each month - indefinitely.

To whom that makes more sense than just cutting the corporate tax rate, cutting everybody's income tax rate, repealing Dodd-Frank and FHer-care, prying the EPA's grip off the coal and oil industries, preparing to put Medicare and Social Security on a voucher basis in about ten years, and shutting down the Departments of Energy, Education, Agriculture and Health and Human Services is beyond me.  Well, actually, it's not.  It makes all the sense in the world to the egg-heads and Marxists who constitute the Overlord Class.

The MEC is clearly no genius; he has no idea when he's making himself look stupid

He throws a reliable US ally under the bus, insists on early elections in the subsequent Egyptian power vacuum, and now concedes he doesn't know what kind of relationship we have with the regime that won that election.

The echoes of 1979 get louder. Jimmuh did the same thing with regard to Iran and Nicaragua.

This is what a collapsing foreign policy looks like.

It also has parallels to the whole "the-projects-weren't-as-shovel-ready-as-we-thought" episode.

And this clown has the temerity to accuse Mitt of shooting first and aiming later.

It's on purpose - today's edition

Jobless claims up sharply.

They smell weakness - this morning's edition

Radical Muslims attach the US embassy in Yemen.

On what grounds?

Egyptian president Morsi calls on the US to "take legal action" against the maker of that goofy film.

UPDATE: It seems some appeasers right here in out own culture want to do something like that.  You sure won't hear them call for such measures against those who routinely insult Christianity.

UPDATE: Now Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey is gettting into the dhimmitude act, calling pastor Terry Jones and asking him to withdraw support for the movie.  Get your brain around that: top military brass asking a private citizen to curb his First Amendment freedom.

They smell weakness - this hour's edition

State Department issues warnings about protests at our embassies in Morocco, Sudan and Kuwait.

Why?

Per the Government Accountability Insitute, the Most Equal Comrade has blown off over half of his daily security briefings since he began his rule.

No time to meet with the PM of one of our closest allies - whose country is under immediate threat from the world's most evil regime - but there's time to sit on Letterman's couch

The Most Equal Comrade will be a guest on the show of David Letterman - he of the insulting joke about Sarah Palin's daughter - when he is in NYC.

But lots of folks read them first

The State Department has been scrambling to delete tweets that put its moral skewedness regarding the latest northern African developments on full display.

Arab Spring in reverse

Now it's spread to Libya, where the US ambassador has been killed by Muslim yay-hoos enraged over that film.

UPDATE: Now it's spreading to Algeria and Tunisia.

What you get when you put America-haters in charge of the American government

The US embassy in Cairo issues a statement in response ot the scaling of its walls and the burning of its flag that is focused on some kind of nonsense about not hurting Muslims' feelings.

The Most Equal Comrade hates Western civilization - today's edition

Benjamin Netanyahu requested a meeting with the MEC when he comes to the US next week.  The White House turned him down.

Interesting development on the anniversary of 9/11

Muslim fanatics storm the walls of the US embassy compound in Cairo and burn the US flag.  It's over some obscure movie being made in the US that disses Mohammed.

How come we're not hearing about this from the MSM (That's a rhetorical question, of course)

The same polls that showed a post-convention bounce for the MEC show a double-digit lead for Romney among independents.

It's on purpose - today's edition

The US slips to 7th place in the World Economic Forum's ranking of nations' global competitiveness.  It's our fourth year of slippage.

Moody's may downgrade America's AAA rating.

Inheriting a bad situation can't explain this:

 

 

 

But it explains our once-great nation's diminished stature in the world.

More urban decay by the lake

A couple of noteworthy things about the Chicago teachers' strike: the loudmouth wackjob leading it, and the fact that, per the federal Department of Education, 79 percent of the city's eighth-graders can't read worth doodly.

One of the main culprits in the financial crisis the MEC is always talking about having inherited is . . . himself

By agitating, during his community-organizer days, against red-lining in the mortgage industry, the young MEC helped bring about the conditions that led to the sudden popping of the bubble in 2008.

Fluke Nation

The magnificent Mark Steyn points up the absurdity of one of America's two major political parties bestowing prominence on a 31-year-old freshly graduated law-school alum whining about the threat to the government gravy train that subsidizes mink behavior, while ignoring that the gravy train itself is nothing but pretend money which may run out really soon.  Even if we ignore the likes of Sandra Fluke and begin to sensibly address the situation.  That's how broke we are.  That's how dire our predicament is.  But apparently we would rather gaze at our navels, pausing only for another round of mink behavior.

Why we call them Freedom-Haters - today's edition

Let's say the grim scenario is the one, among the possibilities for what happens after early November, that becomes reality.  Let's say it's some time in, say, early 2014, and you come down with a serious illness.  Say you look at how much money you have access to with which you can address it: direct government help, insurance claims, and your very own money.  Say you use all those resources and you still need a bit more.  You and your loved ones sit down and the kitchen table and come up with some more of your very own money to put toward the situation.  How are you going to feel about a government bureaucrat - who, let us not forget, may be a smiley-faced, narrow-shouldered little dweeb, but who has the full backing of the armed force at the core of government's power - telling you, "Sorry, but that would put you over the limit for what you can spend on your situation"?

That, in the name of "fairness," is exactly what Ezekiel Emanuel, Donald Berwick, and Peter Orzag are recommending in a New England Journal of Medicine article. 

That's because, as Paul Hsei at PJ Media points out, if the state controls some sector of economic activity, it has to treat it as if it were a finite pie.  When people are economically free, inventiveness and innovation keep the pie expanding.  But the pointy-heads can't have that in their quest to turn us into a nation of cattle.

He may not be sincere, but he's an undeniably powerful presence

Ace of Spades makes a compelling case for going after Billy Jeff the Zipper's claims in his DNC speech.  They're not true, but undecided voters aren't going to get that by themselves.

"Nice guy in over his head" ain't gonna cut it in this home stretch

Stanley Kurtz has an unsettling post at NRO's The Corner to the effect that righties may be underestimating the impact of the FHer convention, or even whistling past the graveyard.

A couple of key money lines:

It is completely accurate to say that the Democrats are pushing a bogus reformulation of the American way of life — slapping a bunch of flags on their Julia ad and turning classic conceptions of civic and religious community into covers for a cradle-to-grave welfare state. Unfortunately, this way of thinking is becoming the new normal in this country, and Obama and his convention have only helped to cement the change.
 

In other words, given the combination of the deliberate economic stagnation  and the decades-long cultural rot that still has not been seriously addressed in America, lots of people are perfectly okay with a country in which we "belong to government."

So we know what we need to do, correct?  Not so fast.  Maybe you and I do, but Mitt seems to still be exhibiting symptoms of Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome:

I can’t say for certain that Romney’s strategy is wrong. But I do think it’s far riskier than we realize. Treating Obama as a nice guy in over his head, rather than a smart leftist who knows exactly what he’s doing, leaves the Democrats’ bogus narrative about government unanswered. America is changing, and Republicans are naive to rely on the public to simply recognize the problems in the Democrats’ claims without significant help from our nominee.

 

 This is why the guy was not among my first four choices.  The main source of hope is that, every so often, the Most Equal Comrade lets loose with something so blatant - "You didn't build that" comes to mind - that Mitt rises to the occasion and really wages war.  Beyond hoping for such moments, us footsoldiers will have to do what is necessary.

It's on purpose - today's edition

Dismal job growth numbers for August


You don't get this kind of economic condition if you sincerely want to see your country resume its viatlity and greatness.

Consensus among the sober: didn't move the needle

And even among some of the Kool-Aid-besotted: Michael Tomasky at The Daily Beast

Peter Beinart at same

But, also, as I say, among pundits addressing the normal-people swath of the public:

Dick Morris

Yuval Levin

The editors at Bloomberg News

Whatever he says tonight, he's on record as saying this

As I understand it, this puts the burden on the attending physician who has determined, since they were performing this procedure, that, in fact, this is a nonviable fetus; that if that fetus, or child - however way you want to describe it - is now outside the mother's womb and the doctor continues to think that it's nonviable but there's, let's say, movement or some indication that, in fact, they're not just coming out limp and dead, that, in fact, they would then have to call a second physician to monitor and check off and make sure that this is not a live child that could be saved.

If you oppose honor killings, you're a hater

. . . according to Keith Ellison , anyway.

The Knesset speaker ain't buyin' it

Reuven Rivlin says the only reason the MEC and the FHers put Jerusalem-as-capital back in the platform was political CYA.

The Speaker stood his ground on the matter of seizing any more of Americans' assets at gunpoint

ABC News says that Bob Woodward's next book gives a detailed account of the day the MEC and John Boehner almost reached a deal on debt reduction.  When they finally spoke by phone, the MEC said something to the effect of, "So a tax increase is part of our agreement, correct?"  Boehner said "Ixnay," and the MEC's fury was so palpable Boehner picked up on it clear at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

When Pubs get backbones, freedom gets defended.

The twisted worldview of the Freedom-Haters

On the heels of the scaled-back participation in joint exercises with Israel, the People's Republic of Obamica participates in exercises with Muslim Brotherhood-ruled Egypt.

Why did they boo?

So the FHers decided to put the Jerusalem-as-Israel's-capital plank back in their platform.  But it was not without contention.

Why?

It's on purpose - this hour's edition

Heavy-duty truck orders have collapsed.

Downsize Nation's chickens come home to roost

A Charlotte television weather forecaster asks, would a concert or sporting event get moved 24 hours in advance of a 20 percent of rain?

The party of cattle

I will never, ever retract or feel the least bit sheepish about calling Democrats Freedom-Haters.

It's on purpose - today's edition

Per the World Economic Forum survey, the US has slipped from 5th to 7th in its global competitiveness ranking.

Just answer the question, Senator

I saw this live last night.  Brett Baier of Fox News merely asked Sen. Richard Durbin why the direct reference to God was removed from the FHer platform.  He got obfuscation and righteous indignation in response.  He asked again.  Same response.  This went on about five times before Baier looked at the dwindling time for that broadcast segment and decided to move on.

If you're going to be combative, you really ought to bring some substance along with it.

Here's a little something to send a chill up your spine as we enter into FHer Week (the way we would ease into a bath of sewage if there were no choice)

Just watch this video that was shown at FHer-fest this afternoon.  Just. Watch. It.

Well, folks, it's official now

The federal debt has topped $16 trillion.

Lordy, we sure have some work to do after we defeat the Freedom-Haters.

Not so fast, Deb

The DNC chair, addressing a group of Florida Jewish Democrats, says that Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to th US, has lambasted Pubs for criticizing the MEC's "stellar" record on Israel.

Oren sets the record straight.

UPDATE: Maybe The Frizzy One would like to explain to those Jewish Dems why a key section of the 2008 FHer platform  - one that deals with Hamas and affirms that Jerusalem is the Israeli capital - is missing from the 2012 edition.

Biggest falloff in three years

That's manufacturing output in August.  Construction contracted sharply, too.

It's on purpose, people.

Sink, Comrade, sink!

New poll from The Hill: 54 percent of likely voters don't think the MEC deserves a second term based on his economic performance.

Tampa and Charlotte

Haven't been posting much over the past few days, have I?  Certainly the fact that it was a holiday weekend was a factor.  The main factor, though, continues to be the workload.  In fact, I only have a few minutes this morning to compose this and then it's back to cranking out articles.

I also have still not said a whole lot about the RNC in Tampa.  Enough time has now passed, enoough of the speeches are now on YouTube, and enough commentary from others has been disseminated that my reactions to specific moments would mostly have the ring of reduncancy.

Two words surface in my mind, though, as I digest the big picture of the entire convention: energy and virtue.

The Pubs have the electricity this year, as well as a field team and a deep bench full of fantastic people.  One of the main benefits of the convention was to give us a fuller understanding of who our presidential nominee is.  No, he was no my first choice.  Nor my second or third.  But until Tampa, I was not aware of what a thoughtful, generous, perceptive, multifacted guy he is.  His selection of Paul Ryan as running mate has proven to be sheer genius.  And, armed with the content and delivery style of all those marvelous speeches, we're ready to fight and win on the basis of ideas and principles.

FHers meet in Charlotte today with no such energy.  Yes, their platform is full of specifics, and there is a certain type of person who will call it bold.  In reality, it's full of planks and positions that were long ago proven to be unworkable and / or just plain mad.  Minimum wage, same-sex "marriage," flouting the law in the realm of immigration - these are not the stuff of a truly noble vision.

The overall message from the Pub confab was "the great principles are back - real family, common sense, recognition of the individual's potential for greatness."  It was delivered by people who live it personally - Mia Love, Nikki Haley. Paul Ryan.

All this supposed exaltation of unique identity- Transgendered!  Illegally here!  Sustainable and off the grid! - is really in the service of the great leveling effect of leftism.  All that superficial navel-gazing is only possible with the support of government largesse.  The overall message that America will pick up from Charlotte this week is more  of the same nightmare we've been experiencing for four years, and, in some ways, for fifty years, and, in yet some more ways, for the last century: Most human beings need to be treated like cattle by a wise elite that can magically keep the gravy flowing, and it's prefectly alright that most of the gravy goes to them.