So previous reports suggesting Obama got assets prepared for a rescue and counterstrike then made a gutsy call deciding against using them is now being downgraded to Obama didn’t really have any idea what to do or who to call to affect an effective response.
Guess missing all those intel meetings probably wasn’t such a good idea in retrospect, eh President Fairway?
Joe Biden, at a campaign event today : “There’s never been a day in the last four years I’ve been proud to be his vice president.”
Ha! That’s hilarious.
– The idea of Obama sending out a pentagon posse to catch the bad guys puts you in mind of the image of El Jaffe demanding his Bandoleros “Bring me the head of Juan Garcia!”
“Ha! That’s hilarious.”
Or shameful to the entire nation — bespeaking their own stupidity for having put such a moron in office — depending on which stance one takes.
Indeed.
Bronco is losing it. His voice is breaking like an adolescent boy. He’s saying ‘ain’t’ and ‘folks’ a lot. Chuckling at his own not-jokes.
I hope he has lots of juice boxes on AF1.
Andrew Jackson would have known what to do.
Biden is too old for the campaign trail.
… Maybe even reality.
Shame the election isn’t a few more weeks away. It’d be interesting to see Biden start railing about “They going to put you back in purple elephants! For more tears!”
You guys should lay off the golf. In my opinion, he hasn’t really played that much.
If he played as often as Eisenhower did maybe he could get good at it in eight years.
Whatever.
Stand aside, folks. Playing through.
FORE !
Goddamnit. It’s worse. Of course it’s worse, it’s always worse. And it’s going to get worse yet. Why the hell else would the bastards have been covering their asses the way they’ve been unless it’s much worse than anyone could possibly see from the inception of a cascade of lies and disinformation?
Fuck.
To look at the situation from a callously partisan vantagepoint (i.e., to think like a professional Democrat), we should all be grateful that nobody in the administration had the balls to react decisively and forcefully.
If he had, my best guess is that he’d have all but guaranteed his reelection —regardless of the fate of Ambassador Stevens and the others.
Who among the professional Democrats we know have been recommending just such concessional approaches to various policies along the way, offering here and there suggestions which, had they been listened to, would have made the difference in Obama’s success at reelection (a long foregone failure in my view)? I can think of a couple of qualifiers off the top of my head: William Galston and Bill Clinton — two who at least can hear the plaintive cries of those opposed to Obama’s fundamental outlook on the world, if not accept those cries as fully representative of their own understanding of political mission. I’m hard pressed to find any others though.
I meant going into Benghazi and killing people and breaking things, not finding his inner Democratic Leadership Council voice.
That’s clear Ernst. But my point simply takes it a step further, in the sense that any of a handful of sane concessions would have wrought much the same effect, yet all those simple opportunities have been systematically ignored, cast aside, trampled upon etc. Armies of Obamaian yes-men stand at the gates, not least the Obamaian yes-men crowding Obama’s own mind.
It was the just such that threw me.
Something to ponder which just occurred to me: if the stories are true about Clinton and Panetta forcing Obama’s hand over the Bin Laden mission, why didn’t they do likewise in this instance?
Since we can infer that they understand the consequences of inaction from the first instance, what can we infer from the second? A length of rope, an noose and an invitation to Obama to place his neck in it?
The “just such” has unstated antecedents, I think, so guilty as charged. A sense of the antecedent below:
There’s a phrase I used to run into now and again when reading Bloom and Strauss commenting on the fracture between the political man and the philosopher, referring to a characteristic of the political man as such: “the love of one’s own”. And right there is where most people who have been fooled by Obama have lost the thread. (In a sense we only have to look at “voting for revenge” as the most recent example of Obama unintentionally revealing his hidden guide – namely his dislike for what people mistakenly assume to be “his own”.)
In general terms, as I recall it, the love of what is one’s own lays at the basis of all political establishment, be it of family, tribe, clan, city, nation, state, what have we in the way of political organization. And to be sure, we can understand a distinction between a genuine love of what is one’s own, an instinctual embrace so to speak, and a pretended love of what is assumed to be one’s own — assumed by the voting masses, we take it, who do for the most part innocently and genuinely love their own, their polis, but who can be fooled into believing another, who does not love what they love, loves the same as they —
And the “just such” falls into this line, that the gesture seen in a vigorous pursuit of a defense of the men (and women?) in Benghazi would be the simple expectation of a people in defense of their own, whom without even knowing the individuals they nevetheless love as representatives of themselves.
Or, to take another case, that recognizing and acknowledging the rejection and anger at stuffing ObamaCare down the throats of more than half the people of the US would amount to a concession of respect for that majority; withdrawal from ObamaCare to sit to actual negotiations to “repair” its defects, whether producing a repair or not, would amount to a recognition of the politics chosen and not abrogated by the majority of the people. (Pardon the clumsy expression.)
VDH does a pretty good job wrapping up Libya to date…
Bin Ladin is a no brainer. I can see where this one might not be so cut and dried to these sorts.
According to some reports the Bin Laden decision took some time to make.
They didn’t have time to think about this. Not that any should have been necessary.
And by “these sorts”, you of course mean the metro-sexual, Marxist, NWO, colostomy bags inhabiting the Executive branch of our government,
Sweet Jesus. These people are going to get us all killed, and they won’t be happy until there’s no one willing to defend us.
My nephew went in in July. Got himself a bone fracture in basic training. Whether he’ll make it through, medically, is now iffy. Tuesday, I’ll know whether I hope they throw him out.
Yes, Lee. Exactly.
Oddly enough, Judge Jeanine on Fox has been a beast on this. She turned in an excellent show this evening, and she is righteously outraged, as well we all should be.
Only caught the last bit of her show Pablo (from McCain interview on I think): high energy, hard hitting — as has been her aim these last five weeks or so. The segment with Baker and Hunt was a bit on the frantic side I rue. Wish somehow the Fox masterminds could see their way past their accursed format boxes to slow everything down to a cogent unhurried presentation of the totality of their excellent guests’ knowledge, but alas, there’s no sign of an inkling there.
Maybe Bret Baier will do another special.
All that respect I used to have for Petreaus? Gone.
It isn’t so much a special I’d be interested in, at least as I’m interestest less in canned production values and more in substantial conversation, is the gist.
I know they’ve got to cut away to commercials now and again, so interruptions have to be expected, but if rather than confine the allotted time to the nominal hour, let the time run to two, three or whatever is necessary in order to do away with the rush of the interviewer to interrupt a good run of explanation in order to make sure a given topic is covered, interrupting only to the detriment of the topic already under consideration. They just need to slow down, is the thing, and in order to do that they’ll have to allow longer presentations. But the boxes! The boxes! We can’t lose our boxes!
While I appreciate your desire for a more thoughtful treatment, sdferr, I suspect the Fox masterminds understand the general TV audience and the constraints of the available time. Getting the info out is their primary responsibility. Making it pop is #2.
Ha, speaking of slowing down: “interestest” is ‘posed to be “interested”.
Tying to the West piece: More Benghazi Mendacity
Yeah Pablo, I guess the SOB is an establishment weenie after all.
Hurts me bad…
G. Holst — St. Paul’s Suite IV: Finale
Lie down with dogs, etc…
General Betrayus.
Something about broken clocks obtains here.
Generally, I adore irony. This time, not so much.
Where was Obama?
Roger Kimball has a go.
Monique Haas — Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin: beauty & order therein.
Link to Kimball.
Much obliged geoffb.