Opinion

Some Brazilians want to forget Lula with a “junta”

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Image result for lula cartoons

Not long ago, Brazil was run by a military junta.  Then came a “democracy” that quickly derailed into “Lula populismo”.   It expanded the the central government, promoted crony capitalism, and ultimately corruption.

All of a sudden, one of the largest-GDP nations in the world looks as dysfunctional as any other country consumed with “populismo”.

So what do you do when elected leaders can’t keep the streets safe or give you economic growth?

Some Brazilians are yearning for law and order or “el hombre fuerte,” which is a syndrome all over the pages of Latin American history.

This is an update from Brazil, from The Guardian:

Hundreds of truckers and their supporters had gathered at a gas station on a highway near São Paulo, for a rally in support of a nationwide protest that has brought South America’s biggest economy to its knees.

But among the slogans and Brazilian flags were signs not usually seen at strike demonstrations: slung from a nearby overpass were banners calling for “military intervention”, a sign that this shutdown has taken on a political dimension all of its own.

As a nationwide truck strike reaches its 10th day, gas stations have finally begun to receive fuel deliveries and truckers have started drifting back to work – some unwillingly.

But hundreds of demonstrations have continued on highways across Brazil – and many of those still protesting are calling for a return to the rightwing dictatorship that ran Brazil for two sombre decades until 1985.

Look before you leap is my message to Brazilians.

Unlike Chile’s General Augusto Pinochet, a man who made his country the economic envy of the Third World, most Latin American military leaders clean up the streets, crack a few heads, make the trains run on time, and then collapse from corruption or abuse of power.

Or as my late father used to say, they bring “order” and forget “law.”  In other words, order without law is a problem, too.

My good guess is that there won’t be a junta in Brazil’s future.  The country is so messed up that the military wants no part of it, unless things get so out of hand that the military has no choice.

At the same time, you can’t blame the people of Brazil for wanting something better or having a terrible “Lula” hangover.

PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.

Some thoughts about Lopez-Obrador & Mexico

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The latest news from Mexico is thatSr. Lopez-Obrador is increasing his lead and referred to as a “Tropical Messiah“.

As The WSJ wrote today:

“If Mr. López Obrador is sworn in as president—this time for real—it isn’t entirely clear which man will turn up.
Many fear it will be the fervent social activist with an authoritarian streak who sees the country divided in two camps, what he calls a “mafia of the powerful” against Mexico’s “good and honest people.”
Others hope it will be the López Obrador who as Mexico City mayor proved to be a pragmatic manager, joining with telecom magnate Carlos Slim to restore down-at-the-heels neighborhoods.”

Time will tell but it looks likely that LO will be the one sworn in.     I do caution that polls are polls as we learned in the US in 2016!

What does that mean for the people invested in LO’s message?   My guess is that major disenchantment lies ahead and whatever political consequences come with it.

It’s not too late for Mr. Anaya, Mr. Meade & “El Bronco” to consider their options.   It may be good for the country for them to unite and give the Mexican people one real alternative against Mr. LO.

How is Mexico going to react to a Lopez-Obrador victory?   Keep your eyes on the “peso”.   It could erode if LO is elected!

PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.

RFK Jr. Throws Dead Kennedys Under the Obama-Cuba Bus

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kennedys

The title of the piece is “We have so much to learn from Cuba”.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. opens his latest op-ed, this one regarding the Obama administration’s diplomacy-warming of a U.S.-Cuba relationship by embargo change, by putting blame on two of his own relatives…

In early December, President Barack Obama announced the restoration of diplomatic relations with Cuba after more than five decades of a misguided policy which my uncle, John F. Kennedy, and my father, Robert F. Kennedy, had been responsible for enforcing after the U.S. embargo against the country was first implemented in October 1960 by the Eisenhower administration.

RFK Jr., I guess, thinks shaking his head and finger at his father and uncle, AND pointing out his privileged visit to the island, solidifies his views that the embargo is broken and must be scrapped, or something. He manages to basically scold the Castro regime for being bad communists.

However, his belief is the U.S. embargo was behind the Cuban government’s reasoning and justification for treating Cuba’s people like starving prisoners and keeping the country’s economy down. Yeah, we made them do it.

It is almost beyond irony that the very same politicians who argued that we should punish Castro for curtailing human rights and mistreating prisoners in Cuban jails elsewhere contend that the United States is justified in mistreating our own prisoners in Cuban jails.

Imagine a U.S. president faced, as Castro was, with over 400 assassination attempts, thousands of episodes of foreign-sponsored sabotage directed at our nation’s people, factories and bridges, a foreign-sponsored invasion and fifty years of economic warfare that has effectively deprived our citizens of basic necessities and strangled our economy.

No, what’s ironic, Bobby Jr., is the conspiracy theory of Castro’s alleged involvement in your POTUS Uncle JFK’s assassination. But, eh…

The Cuban leadership has pointed to the embargo with abundant justification as the reason for economic deprivation in Cuba.

The embargo allows the regime to portray the United States as a bully and itself as the personification of courage, standing up to threats, intimidation and economic warfare by history’s greatest military superpower.

It perpetually reminds the proud Cuban people that our powerful nation, which has staged invasions of their island and plotted for decades to assassinate their leaders and sabotaged their industry, continues an aggressive campaign to ruin their economy.

Yeah, he said that. The same-old same-old claptrap that has been heard for years. Sort of flies in the face(s) of half a century of countless Cubans climbing into dangerous, leaky rafts to sail deadly shark-infested waters to get here to the great Satan … Doesn’t it?

Oh, and I found this one priceless…

Unlike other Caribbean islands where poverty means starvation, all Cubans receive a monthly food ration book that provides for their basic necessities.

But you read and judge.

A week ago A.J. Delgado wrote, “Arguing with idiots about #Cuba”, where she counters many of the anti-embargo talking points liberals, such as RFK Jr., are constantly regurgitating. The fact is Barack Obama’s new age plan for changing diplomacy with Cuba is yet another one of his foreign policy decisions granting trust where trust is not deserved … and is already evident.

“Ojo y mucho cuidado”: Elections in El Salvador

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(My new American Thinker post about the elections in El Salvador)

Not long ago, Central America was a big part of our foreign policy discussion in the US.

Remember the contras? Noriega and the Panama invasion?  El Salvador civil war?

We don’t have those problems anymore and we’ve spent a lot of time looking at Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil and so on.  Nevertheless, the region faces violence and economic challenges.   It is also a source of illegal immigration to the US.

Last Sunday, the left won the first round of the El Salvador election, as reported in The NY Times:

 “In El Salvador, a divided right may have benefited the front-runner of the left-leaning Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, known as the F.M.L.N., which appeared in good position to hold on to the presidency. It won the office for the first time in 2009, after a string of losses to conservatives following peace accords in 1992 ended one of the bloodiest civil wars in the Americas. The F.M.L.N. candidate, Salvador Sánchez Cerén, a former guerrilla commander and the vice president, got 49 percent of the vote, but not the majority needed to avoid a March 9 runoff, according to preliminary results.”

The right should do better in the 2nd round because many of the 3rd party votes are more likely to go right then left.  At the same time, the left goes to the “runoff” with 49% of the vote in the first round.  As they say, I’d rather go to the runoff with 49% in the first round than 39%!

No matter who wins, the people are not happy with the political class because of a sluggish economy and rampant gang violence.The winner of the election will have a very brief honeymoon and face citizens who want quick results. It won’t be easy governing El Salvador.

Central America has come a long way from “contras” and “the civil war” of the early 1980s in El Salvador.  Unfortunately, they face a new set of problems, such as mindless gang violence and insecurity.

And let’s not forget that Central America is a source of illegal immigration to the US. It’s in our interest to have jobs and economic growth in the region.

P. S. You can hear my chat with Fausta Wertz (Fausta’s Blog) and Miguel Portillo-Cuadras from El Salvador & follow me on Twitter @ scantojr.

 

 

“La realidad” has landed in Buenos Aires!

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“La realidad” has finally arrived in Argentina.

My dad and I were having one of those “father-son chats” many years ago. He said one of the most profound things that I’ve ever heard. He told me that reality always has the last word.

My father was not speaking about Argentina but reality is clearly having the last word down there.

It is really tough, and getting worse, according to news reports:

“”When I went to buy it, the price had gone up 25% since when I checked prices last week,” she complained outside the Alto Palermo shopping mall.

“The same thing just happened to me at the pharmacy where I went to buy the medicine my husband takes: the price was up 20%.”

The economic panic leading to price mark-ups of this kind began in mid-January, whenArgentina’s central bank reserves dipped below $30bn, forcing the government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to drop its policy of injecting large quantities of dollars into the exchange market to shore up the overvalued peso.

The sudden dollar scarcity on Argentina’s exchange market sent the peso’s official value crashing to eight pesos to the dollar, while the “blue” illegal rate shot up to nearly 13 pesos.

Retailers immediately marked up their prices to reflect the new reality. In some cases, items were pulled en masse from the shelves, as retailers pondered how much to mark up their goods.”

In the past, President Cristina Fernandez, who replaced her husband Nestor a few years ago, has demonized the opposition and promised more “free stuff” to voters.

That was then and this is now.

Reality does not allow her to play that “tango” anymore.

Argentina is going to enter a very serious crisis and the public is in for a very uncomfortable ride.   We will likely see a default of Argentina’s foreign debt, as Fausta Wertz has been saying.

There are two options for Argentina.

First, they can look to Chile, bite the bullet and better days will come. Argentina has the potential for a huge comeback but they need a political class that looks to Chile not Cuba for economic ideas.

Second, they can “double down” on class warfare and implode.  Yes implode like “implode”!

“Don’t cry for me Argentina” should be changed to “Don’t vote for such stupid leaders Argentina”.

P. S. You can hear CANTO TALK here & follow me on Twitter @ scantojr.

 

“The United States government is the ultimate giant unworkable mess”

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Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog puts into brilliant context exactly why government cannot do or build the things a culture with real individual incentive can build, no matter how much money the government continually throws at it…

The ObamaCare website is the natural spawn of that technocracy who love the idea of using modernity to make things faster and easier, but have no idea what anything costs or how it works.

It’s hard to have a functioning technocracy without engineers. A technocracy made in Silicon Valley with its complete disregard for anything outside its own ego zone would be bad enough. But this is a Bloombergian technocracy of billionaires and activists, of people who think that “progress” makes things work, rather than things working leading to progress.

Healthcare.gov showed us that behind all the smoother and shinier designs was the same old clunky government where everything gets done because the right companies hire the right lobbyists and everything costs ten times what it should.

If the government can’t build a health care website, how is it going to actually run health care for an entire country is the obvious question that so many are asking. And the obvious answer is that it will run it the way it ran the website. It will throw wads of money and people at the problem and then look for programs it doesn’t like to squeeze for extra cash.

The Navy had to be cut to the bone and the Benghazi mission had to make do without security so that a Canadian company which began employing a classmate of Michelle Obama’s could score over half a billion to build a broken website. Obama mocked Mitt Romney’s criticism of his Navy cuts by telling him that we don’t fight with bayonets and horses anymore. Bayonets and horses are outdated. In our glorious modernity, we spend fortunes to build websites that don’t work instead.

Modernity has to be built. It has to be constructed brick by bit by rivet by cable by people who know what they are doing. Modernity without competence is as worthless as the ObamaCare website which looked pretty enough to give the illusion of technocratic modernity, but didn’t actually work.

Competence is the real modernity and it has very little to do with the empty trappings of design that surround it. In some ways the America of a few generations ago was a far more modern place because it was a more competent place. For all our nice toys, we look like primitive savages compared to men who could build skyscrapers and fleets within a year… and build them well.

Those aren’t things we can do anymore. Not because the knowledge and skills don’t exist, but because the culture no longer allows it. We can’t do them for the same reason that Third World countries can’t do what we do. It’s not that the knowledge is inaccessible, but that the culture gets in the way.

It’s our very hollow modernity that gets in the way of our truly being modern. We can no longer build big things because the ability to implement vision on a large scale no longer exists. We can still do impressive things as individuals, but that’s also true of Kenya or Thailand. And in China, they can carry out grandiose projects, but those projects have no vision or competence.

Read in full…

MORE:

Obamacare Catastrophe Reveals Barack’s Entire Paper-Mache Fantasy World

“Las monjas se van a enojar con Obama” for spying on Pope Francis

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I hope that they didn’t tell President Obama about this one:

“The National Security Agency spied on the future Pope Francis before and during the Vatican conclave at which he was chosen to succeed Benedict XVI, it was claimed on Wednesday.

The American spy agency monitored telephone calls made to and from the residence in Rome where the then Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio stayed during the conclave, the secret election at which cardinals chose him as pontiff on March 13.

The claims were made by Panorama, an Italian weekly news magazine, which said that the NSA monitored the telephone calls of many bishops and cardinals at the Vatican in the lead-up to the conclave, which was held amid tight security in the Sistine Chapel.

The information gleaned was then reportedly divided into four categories — “leadership intentions”, “threats to financial system”, “foreign policy objectives” and “human rights”.

At that time, Benedict XVI was Pope, suggesting that the Vatican may also have been monitored during the last few weeks of his papacy.”

My guess is that the White House will distance President Obama from this.

It’s one thing to get the Germans or the Europeans angry.  It’s quite another thing to spy on the Pope before he became Pope.

This is not going to go down well with Catholic nuns!  Watch for the nuns to lineup outside the White House ready to slap President Obama’s hands.

Let me tell you something from personal experience.  There is nothing more scary in the planet than an angry nun with a ruler!

P.S. By the way, I miss Alvarez-Guedes on days like this one!  Can you imagine what he would say about the President of the US spying on a bishop waiting to become Pope?

 

Dear Mr Leisman: Cruz is Cuban and the jobs report is pre-shutdown

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Steve Leisman of CNBC had a very embarassing moment today:

“There was a brief moment of awkwardness on CNBC Tuesday morning when, during a discussion of the weak jobs report and Senator Ted Cruz, reporterSteve Liesman asked for some “Mexican music” to be played while they talked about Cruz.

Liesman said, “We’re going to call this the Senator Ted Cruz jobs report. These are the jobless claims of Senator Ted Cruz.”

When a picture of Cruz appeared on the screen, he continued, “Can we get some music to go along with that? Some Mexican music, maybe?”

There was also some music briefly playing for a few seconds before immediately being cut.”

Leisman is wrong on two counts:

First, and less important, the reference to Mexican music misses the point that Senator Cruz is Cuban American.  I’m not worked up about this but there is a double standard in the media.  Would he have said “play Mexican music” if he was talking about a Mexican American Democrat?  My guess is no!

Second, and very important, the jobs report is all pre-shutdown:

“September’s report predates the culmination of the most recent fiscal showdown, whose effects are more likely to be found in the October employment report.”

So Mr Leisman got the wrong music and bad analysis of the numbers.

The jobs report was very weak.    We created a lousy 148,000 jobs but the big story that 10 millions have now dropped out of the labor force.

We are in the 5th year of the Obama stimulus and we have very little to show for the $847 billion spent.

Forget the music.  It’s the policies!

 

I Can See The “Community Organizer” From My House…

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community organizer

Recall in 2008 during the then presidential election campaigns how all the in-the-know Obama supporters in the democrat party and in the media were so eager to elevate the man, with little to no experience at even an actual job, to a would be indisputable level of “Community Organizer” that would trump anything a crazy Vietnam-vet-McCain/Alaska-hick-Palin ticket could possibly offer the country … or the WORLD!!! As we have seen in recent weeks, when Obama’s claim to supreme expertise in the specialty of ‘organizing communities’ has been called upon, he has shown himself far over-sold even in that job.

Silvio Canto, Jr. holds up the mirror for all to see…

As you may recall, much of Senator Obama’s message in 2008 was about international coalitions. He mocked President Bush for “going at it alone.” I guess that 40-something countries in Iraq was not a big enough coalition. Or, having UK, Canadian and other NATO soldiers take bullets in Afghanistan was not enough either.

Today, President Obama stands alone in the world. He can’t even get the UK in Syria. He has found some “moral support” but no one is offering airplanes or missiles.

President Obama is saying that the world drew a “red line.” However, no one seems ready to enforce it or fight for the innocent people of Syria.

President Obama is painfully learning that it was easier to build coalitions in the campaign trail than from The Oval Office.

This is the latest about the coalition that won’t coalesce:

[…]

We’ve come a long way from that summer of 2008 when Obama was treated like a rock star in Europe.

Frankly, we have a perfect storm here: We have a man who made outregously silly statements about international relations when he was a candidate and a crowd silly enough to believe it.

Silly speaker plus silly listeners equals what we are seeing today.

Continue…

Oddly, the strongest ally Obama has been able to organize into his tiny “Bomb Assad/Syria” community is his old 2008 foe Sen. John McCain … with Gov. Palin allowing, “Let Allah sort it out” … Which, of course, is far far worse than bombing the hell out of Syria, or something.

MORE:

“WH Chief of Staff: U.S. Has No Military Allies for Syria Strike”

One Person’s Opinion

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This is a guest post from frequent commenter Honey.

* * *

William Buckley often used to use the expression “History begins where you want it to when you want to win an argument.” I am sure most people understand what that means. But how many times have you listened in exasperation when someone takes the current set of facts and makes conclusions based on that and ignores all that led up to it?

So I cringed when Laura Ingraham on Fox News Sunday, June 2nd, in discussing whether the U.S. should intervene in Syria now, asked, in mockery of the idea, remember when Bush talked about those dominoes that were going to fall as the middle eastern countries were going to want democracy when they saw it was possible in Iraq. She said now look what we have wrought. Then she added insult to injury when she said that America has to grapple with the idea that its influence on the world has declined and we have limited power to intervene in a world where the parties are unknown.

I was glad that the outnumbered Jennifer Rubin on the panel got in the comment that we should remember what happens when the U.S. does nothing to stand up to power and that our current problems were CAUSED by this administration.

Now I don’t think at this moment we have a dog in the fight in Syria. But I would have felt a bit more comforted by Ingram’s terrible assertions if she had at least alluded to many things that got us into this place, like for example why we are in a world where the parties are unknown.

I always astonish my friends because I say unpopular things. It doesn’t mean I am incorrect. Most of the time what I say turns out to have been prophetic, but no one who disagreed with me ever comes to me to say, ” You were right. I should have listened.”

And I am guessing few would say that to me now in regard to many of the assertions I will be making here.

I loved Ronald Reagan. I loved him because he recognized that there was evil in the world and was willing to name it and its location. But here is where I may hit nerves. I also loved George Bush for the same reason.

People love to engage in historic revisionism. Iraq was a free country after Bush pushed the situation in the surge. Remember all of those who criticized the surge and had to eat crow because it worked after all? Iraq had free elections, luxury hotels booked for years to come, many new organs of a free press – it was a free country.

But Americans these days do not have the patience that Americans had, say, during the Second World War. A favorite poster now asserts that “War Is Not the Answer”. “Can’t we all just get along?”, is the latest homily.

Iraq is not free today. But imagine if we had nominated a candidate and elected a president who was like Bush and understood that there is evil in the world and if we allow it free rein, evil will take the reins and stampede. Instead the American people elected and (perhaps) reelected a different kind of president. So what is an Iraqi leader to do? Once you understand that there is no America to back up your freedom because war is such a bore, what would you do? So he warmed up to his dangerous neighbor, Iran, for some protection.

Elections have results.

Here are just a few of them:

The biggest one is that we ignored the Greens in their efforts in Iran to make trouble for the Islamist government. The Iranian people are a natural ally of the west. There are of course many faithful to the Mullahs there. But the majority of the Iranian people want to overthrow their tyranny. Our president said empty words and left those brave people to their terrible fate. Can you picture Bush doing that? That behavior alone set the tone that America is a paper tiger and anyone who chooses to confront tyranny does not have an ally in this White House.

Of course it was not reported this way. The Pravda press for this administration never reports the failures as being bad. All that this administration chooses to do is good according to them.

The pattern from January 20th, 2009, was immediate and consistent. Spend the country into oblivion. Spend so much, mostly to reward cronies or big contributors, and almost nothing to make things better, that the private economy is destined for ruin. Then spend so much more, and keep piling on demonizing your political enemies in permanent campaign mode, so that the country cannot survive. Spend so much that you must crowd out defense spending and therefore have done with any thought of protecting the American people anymore. Then let the press praise your every decision and demonize anyone who says a word against you.

More of the pattern was to run around the world apologizing for America and giving the impression that we are not unique but just another country.

Add to this that nothing that goes wrong is the fault of the administration and blame everyone and everything. No matter how ludicrous you sound let political operatives and the msm cover for you in their blather.

Oh, and, yes, declare the war on terror over.

Finally in all conflicts take the wrong side. In Honduras, support the tyrant over the freely elected representatives; in economic thought isolate American allies and reward enemies of freedom; Pull out of Iraq and get the predictable result and go into Afghanistan and get more American service people killed by a factor of three in three years than died in six years under Bush. Jeanine Garafolo and Cindy Sheehan will not be on talk shows crying for the lost ones now as they were ubiquitously under Bush, nor will the main TV news shows be counting the number of dead on every broadcast.

The reasons we lose so many now are the horrible rules of engagement.

Use the IRS to squelch opposition by ruining lives of any who decide to wish for a return to the Constitution. Have your operatives demonize anyone who is not on your wavelength. Have your intelligence services spend their time treating some in the press as if they were enemy agents; instead of building up your intelligence to be able to go under cover when needed to ferret out who our friends are and who our enemies in conflicts overseas, which Bush so ably did. But, no, who needs intelligence when you can rashly do actions without worrying about consequences? So say Mubarek must go, and allow Egypt, a stable ally which did not make trouble against Israel, to go Islamist. Do nothing to stop Iran getting the bomb or spreading terrorism at will. Ignore homeland threats.

Above all, never call it terrorism when it blatantly is just that. Use euphemisms. Let Americans get killed in Benghazi. Not to worry. The press will cover you. Do so many illegal things in a pile on that when your political opposition has the courage to take you on, they look like it is all just playing politics.
I could go on, but you get the idea.

So now if you were one faction in a country who wanted power against the leadership, what would you do under the circumstances? You have a militarily and economically weak America with an administration that is not knowledgeable about the world and how it works – well, just go ahead and stir up rebellion. The baddies on both sides can have a field day and those who really want to live in freedom are lost in the shuffle. So more tyranny and chaos can reign and less freedom ensues.

Why is it lost on so many that most of this was kept tamped down under Bush and there were no ( fill in euphemism) acts of terror?

And now we get back to Laura Ingraham and her remarks. Now we can see that it needn’t have all turned out this way.

Here is a quote from a book Jay Nordlinger was reviewing in Impromptus:

“civilization, luxury, safety, and justice could be swept away in the blink of an eye; and that no matter how apparently certain and sweet were the ways of peace, they were not permanent.”

So my conclusion:

I still believe America is the greatest country in the world. I still believe we work best when our leaders stick to the Constitution. But who are to be our leaders? Are we to choose a nice man like Romney again? As one speaker on a recent NR cruise said and got a huge ovation, “Romney is a very nice man. You would want him as your neighbor. But I don’t want a nice man next time. Next time I want a bastard.” Will we choose a good green eye shade person? Will we choose a get-along-and-be-sure-to-appeal-to-several-interest-groups person? Will we choose an isolationist libertarian?

As you can guess this is not what I would wish for. I want the person who will stand for America and recognize that we are unique and the greatest country in the world. I want someone who wants the Fair Tax, but I will take the flat tax – zero tax on corporations, capital gains, interest, dividends, and estates, who will work to overturn Obamacare 100% and replace it with a private system, who will privatize Social Security and Medicare, who will close whole departments, especially the Department of Education, energy and agriculture, and cut spending and power in Washington and give more power to the states. What I want is a Club for Growth candidate. And it should be someone who will beef up our military and intelligence services and who knows who our friends are and who our enemies, and treats them accordingly, and calls them what they are, and who will secure our borders before he even thinks of immigration reform. I want someone who will make enemies afraid to create mischief because they know there will be serious repercussions.

Does such a person exist? Well, it sure ain’t Christie or Rand Paul.

Where are you, my knight in shining armor? Man or woman? Where are you? Show your face. Are you real? Are you possible any more in this age of compromise and appealing to different constituencies? Where is the one who will tell it like it is and assure Laura Ingram that America’s influence need not be on the decline, that we can and must be that shining city on a hill? Where are you? Hurry up and show yourself.

The Rhodes to The Benghazi Cover-Up?

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rhodes obama

It’s an interesting bit of twisted incest, if you will. Follow along…

CIA career officials clearly and repeatedly identified Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda-linked Islamic terrorists as the culprits behind the murder of four Americans.

Of course, this would cause embarrassment for the Obama team, especially in the few weeks before the election. They had been boasting for years that Al Qaeda had been decimated, the “tide of war” was receding; they had been on a mission to whitewash the prospect of Islamic terrorism as a threat to America (see Lauri Regan’s superb column (“Can a President who has promised to stand with Muslims protect America? ). Obama’s Cairo speech before an audience that included Muslim Brotherhood officials that he compelled Egypt to include, was a paean to Islam. It was also, to a great extent, a work of fiction that included grandiose and subsequently disproven claims about the positive contributions Islam has made to America and the world.

That speech was written by Obama’s foreign policy speechwriter and now National Security Council team member, Ben Rhodes.

That is the man who Hayes “outs” as a key person behind the Benghazi cover-up.

He reportedly altered the CIA talking points to delete references to Islamic terrorists, “attacks” (they became “demonstrations”) and other negative references to Islamism. Also, someone at the White House level apparently dreamt up the idea of blaming an inconsequential video for triggering a spontaneous protest, that in the frenzy of events, led to the murder of Americans. These CIA talking points were eviscerated to whitewash the role of Islamic terrorism.

There was a White House whitewash that should not be dismissed over events that occurred a ‘long time ago;” contrary to Hillary Clinton saying that responsibility for the deaths of Americans serving their nation does “matter.” And despite Secretary of State’s John Kerry’s dismissiveness towards the Benghazi murders – “we got a lot more important things to move on to” – justice for the America’s dead demands we find who is responsible.

Ben Rhodes should be called to account for trying to divert blame away from Islamic terrorists and the Obama team members whose feckless negligence led to the Benghazi massacre.

I have previously written about Ben Rhodes and his role in the Obama White House. It is shameful that this “kid” (he is all of 35) has been given any responsibility at all in our government.

In “Does it bother anyone that this person is the Deputy National Security Adviser?” I noted his problematic background for someone given so much power by Obama. But then again he does specialize in fiction-writing.

Read in full…

I am not sure just to what degree somebody such as Ben Rhodes should shoulder the weight of the Benghazi cover-up. After all, the buck stops at the desk where Obama props-up his feet, and in the worn sensible pumps Hillary Clinton walked the halls of the State department.

American Thinker contributor Clarice Feldman reminds me that the brother of Ben Rhodes is the president of CBS News, David Rhodes. As I stated earlier today, it has been CBS’s investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson who has been basically pulling teeth (and at times getting bitten) trying to get the truth out about what happened in the Obama administration’s “Fast and Furious” gunwalking project and the attack in Benghazi, and the political cover-up(s) aftermath. It is also important to point out Attkisson has been doing this tough and responsible journalist-thing, much to CBS’s chagrin, and I remind you that roughly a month ago she was in talks with CBS management to get out of her contract with the network. However, I am sure my Monday afternoon speculating over these ‘connections’ may appear a bit weak to some … but that’s probably because it is not a republican administration n`nat (as they say in Pittsburgh). “What difference does it make?”

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