The Benghazi trial

"...weighed on the scales and found wanting." Daniel 5:27

Perhaps not since the Moscow show trials have we seen such rhetoric as directed by our progressive intelligentsia at the reactionary "right-wing". Which is only fitting, considering that those trials were exactly against the "right opposition". As well as against the "left" one. Here is what one of my progressive comrades is dreaming about: "I think joe [Biden] would headbutt him [Ryan] right in his perfectly shaved chest thereby exploding his blackened, right-wing heart." Apart from the suggestive body imagery, the only thing different is that the dreams of those who called for death of the enemies of the People in Moscow of the 1930's came true - often just before the dreamers themselves were tried as well and executed. This mind-paralyzing hatred, producing verbal vomit of vulgarity at the slightest attempt of the opponent to bring up information to the contrary, makes impossible any discussion.

Supposedly capable of thinking critically, intelligent scientists recite as if on command - without a second thought (or a first one) - the trivial and pathetically petty talking points offered to them by the party apparatchiks via the tame media: free contraception for women, dog on Romney's car roof, Romney's "magic underpants" and "binders". This is at the time when the terror attack and murders in Benghazi draw into the sharpest focus the incompetence, cowardice and dishonesty of Obama's junta. The free minds of intelligentsia suspend their abilities and repeat those talking points like a character in a science fiction novel by the Strugatsky brothers, The Snail On The Slope: suddenly a little violet cloud would form around his head, taking over control of his mind, and he would start announcing senseless but jubilant headlines about the Glorious Girlfriends' successes in the ongoing transformation of the Forest.

It is painful to watch the grimacing of the dissembling Obama Politburo, unable to disguise their lies, and the sad slant of Obama's speechifying head 1.5 months after the Benghazi events that the next day did not prevent him from enjoying his trip to Vegas and his laughing there at his own jokes. Or was a day not enough for the four deaths he observed happening in real time to sink in? To understand that he was responsible for them - that it was due to his and his coterie's negligence or willfully fatal decision that the people were dead? "Sacrificed their lives", as per the trite and false solemnity of Hillary Clinton's, whose honorary position of a former US president's wife, shared in part with others, made her eligible to be a foreign minister of the only superpower. The sacrifice was indeed made - but not by the ambassador and the fallen heroes who, denied any support, held for hours against the incredible odds, fighting mortar-armed thugs. They were sacrificed - by Obama,  Biden, Clinton, Panetta and who knows who else - on the altar of Islam-appeasing progressive ideology and self-congratulatory conclusions that "al Qaeda is on its heels". 

The Benghazi 9-11 would be the downfall of any administration - and not through its natural convenient removal by the upcoming elections, but by the public outcry demanding immediate impeachment and criminal prosecution. In the show trials of the 1930's in the Soviet Union, the guilt was invented - to get rid of Stalin's possible competitors and to suppress any dissent, the perennial dream of the progressive intelligentsia. The actual 9-11 crime and lies of Obama's clique should be enough to shatter that dream and put him out of his political misery. 

Everybody knows...

Everybody knows the deal is rotten.

                                             Leonard Cohen, "Everybody Knows"

Everybody knows Obama lies, but admitting it requires comprehending the ugly reality of Obama's incompetence rather than unquestioningly worshiping him. This worship allows one to consider those lies pia fraus, pious fraud, and justify them fully. If the words are taken for what they fully are, one can see it was with regret that Obama said in his UN speech, "There is no video that justifies an attack on an embassy. There is no slander that provides an excuse for people to burn a restaurant in Lebanon". There was indeed no video Obama and his clique could use for these purposes - they lied there was. He inadvertently admitted that.

On top of these lies, Obama apologized for our freedoms: "I know that not all countries in this body share this particular understanding of the protection of free speech. We recognize that. But in 2012, at a time when anyone with a cell phone can spread offensive views around the world with the click of a button, the notion that we can control the flow of information is obsolete." See, they would really like to control, to cancel that pesky protection of free speech - but just cannot in 2012. Perhaps they'll be able to in 2013.

Don't forget Romney's carcinogenic properties and his Dog-On-The-Roof never-ending drama (I expect a Broadway musical to be made soon by Michael Moore). Dead ambassadors and invasions of sovereign US territory on 9-11 11 years after 9-11 are truly trivial in comparison. What jihad? All is quiet under The One's watch. Once the YouTube Muhammad movies are dealt with by the capable Obama censors, finally controlling the flow of information, we'll sing kumbaya and the wolf shall dwell with the lamb.

Nobody should say Obama's presidency was a complete failure. Obama asked for an "incomplete" grade, and we have seen nothing yet indeed. It will be complete - and we'll be done too - if he gets his second term.

"Grandfather was...", Or Obama's faith

Why is so little attention paid to the choice of vice-president? Unless, that is, this is somebody of whom the left entertainment business can make a bogey like it was made of Palin. Why is there only one debate between the VP candidates, when even on the memory of the present generation the VP has become a POTUS twice? Moreover, aren't they supposed to be a team, in consultation with each other? I would suggest then that the debates should be conducted between the candidate POTUS-VP teams, with the same question answered by both in the couple, first by the prospective POTUSes and then by VPs, with the latter then being able to show their ability to contribute and, if needed, to replace the president. To be sure, the inability would also manifest. Perhaps at some point the debate rules will be so changed. No rules, however, need to be changed in order to discuss the president's convictions. Here we go, with no segue.

I don't care what religion anybody professes, if any, as long as that anybody leaves mine alone. One would think that this criterion should leave me indifferent to the issue of Obama's faith and religiosity. Shouldn't Obama's religion, anyway, concern only those firmly assigned to the category of wingnuts, in the company of "birthers", those certified paranoids who keep pointing out that Obama was listed as "born in Kenya" until after the start of his first presidential campaign? Shouldn't Madonna only  be allowed to call him a "black Muslim in the White House" without raising an outcry? Obama himself has emphatically called himself a Christian, attended a church for 20 years, and held a Reverend from that church as a member of his family until he was told he should not anymore (can happen to anybody). That's what he is then, right?

It seems, however, that the hypothesis of Obama's Islam is viewed as offensive by the Democrats and the media not only because of all  the above, but also because it has been considered to be detrimental to his candidacy - despite his handlers' supposed view of Islam as a religion at least equal to Christianity. Sometimes the stridency of insistence on Obama's Christianity is reminiscent of Clinton's "I-did-not-have-sexual-relations-with-that-woman". Even mentioning his second name is considered an affront, as if it were something shameful and "Barack" were not a Muslim name as well. I have been reprimanded by an Obama faithful for using his three initials, as if that was any different from FDR, JFK or LBJ. A progressive colleague of mine prefers "BO" instead, which is, I think, a real insult. Is it Islamophobia among Democrats, including Obama himself? I can't see any other possible reason for these consistent attempts to dissociate Obama from Islam. Be it as it may, apparently, nobody has been ready to celebrate the first Muslim-born President (in Islam, one is a Muslim if born to a Muslim father) - at least, as much as the first "black" president was celebrated (even though Morgan Freeman says Obama is not "black" - and Freeman should know). 

Do I then smell hypocrisy in Obama's declaration that "part of [his] responsibility as President of the United States [is] to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear" - a promise he has made to no other religion? Not to Christianity in Islamic countries, where conversion to it is punished by death, and Christians are persecuted into extinction, as they are in Egypt and in the "Palestinian" territories. Not to Judaism in both the realm of institutionally antisemitic Islam and in some Christian countries where the Jews are still routinely maligned as hell's spawn. Can you imagine Obama traveling to Jerusalem and telling Israelis that it is his responsibility to fight against antisemitism everywhere? It is hard to imagine him traveling to Jerusalem at all,  the city he called the undivided capital of Israel in front of a Jewish audience - just before he took his words back when no longer facing it. Now nobody in his entire administration can find Israel's capital on the map.  

It is this smell of hypocrisy that drives me wingnuts about Obama's beliefs - that and some concrete facts. For instance, if one is to believe Obama's memoirs, a barber once asked him, upon learning his name, “Barack, huh. You a Muslim?”. To which Barack Hussein gave a rather evasive response, "Grandfather was". The question was not about his grandfather, and he did not say "yes" or "no". Or did he? Hardly any curious barber would be satisfied by this response. 

Then the reader of "The Dreams..." learns that the "Muslim faith" was in Obama's mind "linked with the Nation of Islam". Nowhere in the book that has any negative connotation, while "the much-admired success of the Nation of Islam in turning around the lives of drug addicts and criminals" is noted more than once. He "would occasionally pick up the paper from these unfailingly polite men, in part out of sympathy to their heavy suits in the summer, their thin coats in winter; or sometimes because my attention was caught by the sensational, tabloid-style headlines (CAUCASIAN WOMAN ADMITS: WHITES ARE THE DEVIL)" - but that "sensational, tabloid-style" is the extent of his criticism of the fascist movement. I can't imagine how such a headline could catch anyone's attention, unless it evoked interest rather than disgust. It is then not surprising he got no criticism - until forced to have it - for the man "who helped introduce [him] to [his] Christian faith", another fascist. The latter quote suggests that before Wright's "introduction" he had no such faith. Whether that was the case, and whether he was a Muslim or tabula rasa in that regard, I can't know for sure, but I do surmise that Christianity was more promising in his political  "mind" of an aspiring "community organizer" than Islam, his obvious alternative choice.

What kind of Christianity - is a different matter. As it happens, the religion of Rev. Wright, Obama's spiritual father who baptized Obama's children and connected him to the black community, was such as to give Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award to Farrakhan  - because, in Wright's view, the antisemitic leader of the Nation of Islam "truly epitomized greatness." The award was a year before Obama's election and his abandonment of the Trinity Church under the campaign's pressure. That award must have been part of what Obama called "the much-admired success" of the Muslim faith. Indeed, in many ways, the odious "Christianity" of Wright and the "Islam" of Farrakhan, the fellow antisemites and racists, are alike. It would be an insult to everybody's intelligence to insist that Obama was unaware of that similarity and the mutual sympathies between Wright and Farrakhan, just as it is unlikely he had not heard anything truly revolting throughout the 20 years of his attendance of Wright's sermons.

One would think, however, that by the election time Obama had found out that the Nation of Islam's Islam was a bit different from historic Islam, however diverse that historic one still is. Perhaps that "link" was weakened, but not Obama's with Islam. When the time came for his foreign affairs, he declared "A New Beginning" for the relations between the US and... not another country, as one would think appropriate in those affairs, but with Islam, supposedly a religion. Now, that makes Islam a polity, doesn't it? His first TV interview was with Al-Arabiya, and in it he addressed "the Muslim world" - an entity that exists only in the minds of those who think that Islam unites countries and separates them from the other countries, a split into the world of Islam and the world of "disbelief", a familiar structure of Dar ul Islam and Dar ul Harb, the realm of Islam and the realm of war. Whereas in fact there is no "world of Islam" among the eternally conflicting "Islamic" countries and groups and tribes within them, Obama's declaration of America's reconciliation with the "Islamic world" creates that world in full accordance with Muslim mythology.

Then, of course, came the much-discussed Cairo speech, in the Al-Azhar University, "a beacon of Islamic learning" as the president, ostensibly knowledgeable of that learning, referred to the place. That's the same place whose Grand Imam, Tantawi, legitimized suicidal terror and wrote a 700-page book on antisemitic Islamic exegesis. His death in 2010 was lamented by Obama, as spoken of in his spokesman Gibbs's statement. It is this murderous source of "Islamic learning" who "graciously hosted President Obama last June in Cairo". Sure, Obama did admonish somebody anonymous in that Cairo speech that "Threatening Israel with destruction -- or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews [which is done any time when the Jews are mentioned in a mosque] -- is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve." Bad memories, you see - as if the "peace process" has not resulted in hundreds of terror murders and is not by itself a war negating peace. 

Then Obama negated that admonishment anyway by equating terror and wars that Israel has been subjected to since before its reestablishment in 1948 with "the pain of dislocation of the Palestinian people" they "have endured" for "more than 60 years", that is, since 1948. No word about how those dislocated came to be dislocated, and what "occupation" he means that he speaks of in the very next sentence. There was no occupation "more than 60 years ago" - unless Obama agrees with the "Palestinian" narrative of "Naqba", whereby it is the very existence of Israel that is the occupation. To Obama, Israelis and Arabs are just "two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history that makes compromise elusive," even though it is only for the "Palestinian people" that the situation is "intolerable" in his view. To Obama, the war waged by Arabs and Islam against Israel is nothing more than finger-pointing - "for Palestinians to point to the displacement brought about by Israel’s founding, and for Israelis to point to the constant hostility and attacks throughout its history from within its borders as well as beyond." In his opinion, to see this conflict from the Israeli side is as wrong as seeing it from the Arab side and means to "be blind to the truth". What is Obama's truth? Simple: forget who the aggressor is and meet the "aspirations of both sides... through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security". Never mind that even in the poisonous internationally doctored prescription for that, "land for peace", Israel's part is "land". Peace is denied by the Arabs, regardless of how much land Israel is willing to give up.

While paying lip service to the need for the "Palestinian Authority" to "develop its capacity to govern" (Abbas's capacity to govern should have expired in January 2009), he demands that "Israelis must acknowledge [Palestine's right to exist] just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's" - as if that "right" of "Palestine" has not been asserted by Israel since Rabin. If Obama thinks that acknowledgment is still lacking, just as the Arabs do, nothing can convince him it's not. It is all the same to him that "privately, many Muslims recognize that Israel will not go away" and that "many Israelis recognize the need for a Palestinian state" (obviously, not privately). Aside from the question about how he could penetrate the private thoughts of "many Muslims" - how exactly can one compare the alleged private thoughts and the official position of the Israeli governments? Another question is why those thoughts are still "private" - despite all the Osloism and "peace process". The response is, of course, that those who might have such thoughts run the risk of being murdered by the "many Muslims" if they make those thoughts public. To Obama, it is "continued Israeli settlements... construction" that  "violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace" - not the continued Arab terror, incitement, the official glorification of "martyrs", and the fact that the articles calling for the annihilation of Israel have never been removed from the "Palestinian" ruling Charter, despite the "peace process". Sure, Obama said that "Palestinians must abandon violence", but in the very next sentence he calls it "resistance", exactly what terror is called by Fatah, Hamas, Hizballah and all other terrorists and terrorism supporters. He is concerned that this "resistance" will not succeed "through violence and killing"  - not about that "Palestinians" have no right to that "resistance", moral or otherwise. This is exactly what is expected from the pupil of the antisemites and Israel-haters Rev. Wright, Rashid Khalidi, and Edward Said.

Just as he whitewashes terror by calling it "resistance", he whitewashes Islam by using the standard lie that "The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent is as -- it is as if he has killed all mankind.  (Applause.)  And the Holy Koran also says whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind.  (Applause.)" As other disingenuous apologists of Islam, he does not give the complete quote of this Koran 5:32 verse, 

"Because of that, We decreed upon the Children of Israel that whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land - it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one - it is as if he had saved mankind entirely. And our messengers had certainly come to them with clear proofs. Then indeed many of them, [even] after that, throughout the land, were transgressors." 

There is a teaching, but it is Jewish, indeed found in the Talmud. It is referred to as a Jewish belief in the Koran, which is "holy" only to the Muslims. Nowhere is it seen that Islam accepts this belief despite all the applause of the Al-Azhar audience. What sounds much more genuine is another statement of Obama's that caused applause, the one expressing his pride that "the United States government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab and to punish those who would deny it". One wonders why the US government does not yet punish those who interfere with the "right of women and girls" to wear burqa - in fact, it wages a war against people who "protect" that right, in Afghanistan, wasting, as it were, the lives of young Americans.

In the end, it does not matter whether Obama's choice is antisemitic Islam or Wright's racist version of Christianity, the "black liberation theology". Both are terrible. What matters is Obama's position on the concrete issues that is defined by his ideology. This position, in which the perfectly legal building construction is equal to murder, Israel is called to return to the pre-1967 "borders" with no tangible obligation on the part of Arabs, and Jerusalem is no longer Israel's capital. This is the position where America's enemies are to be mollified and promised "more flexibility", while America's friends are to be let into the White House clandestinely, if at all, and maligned behind their backs.  It is of no interest what Obama's grandfather's faith was. His grandson's is no good, whatever its name.

Losing a Facebook friend, Or Obama's new duties

"Wowie! Wowie-wa-wa-wow!" says Cristopher Walken's amazed character in "The Continental" - and so do I. Then, of course, Walken's ladies' man only pretends to be amazed that he is rejected. He should not be amazed, because he has just offended the lady. Neither should I. 

Well, I won't torment my scarce and thus precious readership with the prelude to my dramatic story any longer. Everybody, of course, remembers my Facebook "friend" (FBF) I mentioned before, a fine statistician but, regrettably, a leftist. I have just found out he "unfriended" me. He could not take me anymore. You can see my post on his page, linking to "Filmmaker Taken in For Questioning", and the discussion that ensued, which I know I will cherish as my last memory of the dear FBF. How have I found out I was disowned? Facebook mercifully does not notify its users of those friends who  cruelly reject them, and only checking the number and then the names allows the hapless loser to detect the loss. How then? I did check. I did  - not because I keep track of that number, but because of the question I had asked my now former FBF. That question was intended to drive him into eliminating me from his virtual friendship, as I am not fond of dramatic gestures myself. Here is that entry of mine: 

"Whatever have I already been in your astute analysis of my person - and now this, "UNPLEASANT"! "Most unpleasant" out of 427 friends, no less (for statistics, I'd love to know how many of them are rated simply unpleasant). And none of this astronomical number has apparently pointed out to you the deficit of common courtesy in your "interacting", while it's hard for me to believe I've been the only one graced with your rudeness. A question arises, why you continue keeping my unpleasant self among that selected circle, let alone interacting, while you quite obviously hate my guts. Even more mysterious is how you can expect any continued "interacting" after your first paragraph in your last post - not that it is unique in your stream of personal attacks." 

I really could not imagine "interacting" (as he put it) with him any longer - not because I was offended by the ad hominems filling his posts, but because that last fit of his philistine rudeness clearly showed me the futility of my talking with him. 

Here is what it was about: I tried to present the case that the "movie" had little if anything to do with the ambassador's murder. I started with suggesting that the arrest of the author of the video smacked of violation of the 1st Amendment, and made a point that the real cause of the murders was murderous Muslim fanaticism. He started with protecting the right of Obama to distance himself and the government from the "movie" (as if anybody even as fanatical as the Muslim mob could believe that the US government had anything to do with it), and defended Nakoula's arrest despite the obvious contradictions in the account he cited:  "federal probation authorities called on the local sheriff's office to bring Nakoula in for questioning", he was taken for "a voluntary interview", "never handcuffed, he was never arrested, never detained, never in custody -- it was all voluntary" (all lies, as he has suddenly become a "flight risk"). This was topped by the FBF's own contradictions: while taking Muslim fanaticism for granted and contending that there might have been a group that targeted the ambassador, he still needed the "movie" to play a role in that - he had to, because so spake Obama and his camarilla. Then, of course, there was his unbeatable if calumnious argument that my thinking is guided by my "requirement of incessant hatred of all Islamic people", and his keeping to the line that "in Libya the people knew something about the film and the film was used to get them to the embassy" (which was in fact the Benghazi consulate and a so-called safe house) even though it was a "military group". Contradictions do not matter when whatever "Obama says ... about the video, he is only trying to weaken that opportunity [for using the video] by making it clear to as many people as possible that the video was not created by the US government nor endorsed by it, and we also condemn it. By doing that he weakens the power of people like Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah..." Imagine how much Nasrallah's power has been diminished by Obama's condemnations, unique in their sensitivity to Muslim and no other religious sentiments. 

I have no desire to gloat about my perspicacity in detecting Obama's clique's lying as well as its likely cause, which is their desire to get rid of their responsibility for criminal negligence and incompetent assessments and to mollify Muslims. There is no glory in understanding the obvious while Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton, Carney and Obama himself were still lying about the "spontaneous attack", and no happiness can derive from that event that has only recently become "an assault on America" after lying that "it is not a reaction to the 9/11 anniversary that we know of or to U.S. policy." As we know now, there was no "protest" - to the "movie" or otherwise - in Benghazi. By now it has been recognized by the administration and even by the US intelligence that it was a preplanned terror act having nothing to do with any "movie" - real or imagined, - which was followed the next day by the obscene act of Obama's smiling and enjoying himself in Vegas. He must be forgiven his insouciance - he could not possibly think that anything as mean as that could be organized after all his reaching out and bowing to Muslims. That was exactly the sentiment expressed by Hillary in the aftermath of the attack: "how could this happen? How could this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction?" Indeed, how? One has to be a rabid Islamophobe like myself to be able to see that it is 9-11 and what it represents that in the triangle of 9-11, the Benghazi attack and the "movie" is the source of their co-occurrence. As I told my unlamentedly former FBF, YouTube is full of anti-Islam videos. The Bakoula video that was used could be replaced by any other. Anything - everything - can be used as the pretext for murderous Muslim mobs to start rioting in the realm of the "religion of peace", and no pretext is needed for Muslim terror against America, Americans, Israel, or any other country or individual who does not share Muslim values. Perhaps Obama should establish a department for finding parole violations or any alleged crimes for all of the anti-Islam posters on YouTube - that would surely disempower Hizballah, al Qaeda and the rest of the "hijackers" of peaceful Islam, so readily converted by them into the powerful mass murder weapon.

It would only be consistent with the fact that the president of the United States has turned from the sworn protector of the US Constitution with all its inconvenient amendments into the protector of Islam, declaring from the UN podium that "[t]he future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam". The only question remains is how exactly he intends to deprive them of their future. His language is different from that of jihadis only in that they clearly explain what should happen "to those who slander the prophet of Islam". Meanwhile, he slanders those who speak of Muhammad by calling them slanderers, because it is they who speak the truth: the "prophet" was a genocidal highway robber chieftain, extortionist, child rapist... - there are too many inhumanities of his to list them in one sentence.

As befits such a dramatic change in the duties of the US President, Obama's campaign logo has now replaced the American flag (before clicking, beware that your computer may freeze - only fitting: such is Obama's commerce). It remains only to put his iconic picture - with oddly familiar raised chin - on that mutilated emblem.

Which brings me back to my sad story of losing the FBF. What is convenient about the left is their robotic predictability. Because they are firmly held within the strict confines of their Manichean ideology, dichotomizing the world into the "left" and "right" as respectively good and evil, the entities at war, anybody familiar with this ideology can say with near certainty what their reaction will be to anything that concerns it. Because the ideology is totalitarian, virtually anything concerns it, and anything can become a point where the dimension of opinions breaks into the irreconcilable dichotomy. With him, it could have happened earlier - for instance, when he compared Republican education plans with Auschwitz, because Republicans "promote this working-student program". Or when he supported his correspondent's deranged viewpoint that people hold the anti-abortion position because it would "keep the labor supply up and the labor costs down" "for the bourgeois to take advantage of" (the progressive view should then be to increase abortion rate: that should really hurt Obama's "millionaires and billionaires"). In retrospect, our inevitable falling out took too long. Unfortunately, America's falling out with its FBF in the White House may take much longer.