Three Bags Full

What Liberalism Has Wrought
A retired conservative friend does charitable work in the community delivering meals to the elderly and infirmed. He tells us of making a delivery to a recipient who admired his car and asked what brand it was. When told that it was a Lexus, the individual remarked: "It must be nice to have money."  Leaving our friend who donates his time, the wear on his car, along with the cost of the gas to wonder if this is the inevitable result of the endless class warfare waged by Obama and the Democrats. 


No Dispute
There is a dispute about how important the video was in provoking the terrorist assault on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the United States ambassador and three other Americans. Militants interviewed at the scene said they were unaware of the video until a protest in Cairo called it to their attention. But the video without question led to protests across the globe, beginning in Cairo and spreading rapidly in September to Yemen, Morocco, Iran, Tunisia, Sudan, Iraq, Pakistan, Lebanon, Indonesia and Malaysia. (NYT, 11/25/2012)

It is hysterical watching the New York Times twist itself into a pretzel trying to protect the Obama administration while explaining what is a strait-forward story. 

Here are the Benghazi facts as we know them:
-On the anniversary of 9/11 Al Qaeda-affiliated militants attacked a lightly defended diplomatic post and killed four Americans including the ambassador.
-Obama administration spokespersons including the president himself, Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice immediately and aggressively put forward the storyline that the attack was in response to an anti-Muslim video. 
-Skeptics at Fox News and Republicans challenged the Obama administration on this assertion, believing that the administration did not want to admit that it was terrorism when 1) the election was imminent and, 2) the administration had been stating publicly that Al Qaeda was on the run. 
-The Obama administration then began saying that they never denied it was terrorism.

So now we have the Times spinning away. There is a dispute about the role of the video? Actually there is no dispute. The video played no role. The video led to protests? Well maybe it did, but that is only because the Obama administration put the video forward as the cause of the Benghazi attack, thus publicizing it, thus leading to protests. Self-fulfilling. This is dishonest reporting....from the paper that does it best. 



Creative Destruction
Since Sesame Workshop announced last week that the “Sesame Street” puppeteer Kevin Clash had resigned after being accused of sexual relationships with minors, the nonprofit organization has been struggling to determine how to replace one of its main creative forces. (NYT, 11/25/2012)

Mitt Romney was right! We suspect we will be saying that a lot over the next four years.


Scarcity
The issue of closing Guantánamo scarcely came up in the 2012 campaign. But it was good to hear Mr. Obama recommit to his promise near the end of the race. “I still want to close Guantánamo,” he said during an interview on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” in mid-October. “We haven’t been able to get that through Congress.” (NYT, 11/25/2012)

Since when has Obama let Congress stand in his way? The Imperial President should simply issue another of his executive orders if he really wants to close Gitmo.