Remembering 9-11

"A year after the first US ambassador in 33 years was killed on duty, Chris Stephen, one of the first western reporters on the scene in Benghazi, pieces together what really happened from witness accounts, official reports, and the ruins of the compound," writes the U.K. Guardian newspaper.

Thus begins one of the most enlightening reports to date on the 9-11 Benghazi terrorist attack — and one that should thoroughly embarrass the US government and the American media.

Concludes the article:

One year after the killings, no suspects have appeared in court, either in Libya or in the US. Until that happens, and until the gap between claims made in the US and reality on the ground is explained, the American public will remain in the dark about the events of 11 September 2012 in Benghazi.

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UPDATE: Michelle Malkin writes:

Before we head to Syria to avenge the mass murder of their kids, how about we finish avenging ours?

When I say “finish,” of course I really mean “start.” A dozen years after the 9/11 attacks, the trials against the jihadist plotters who incinerated pregnant women, firefighters, grandparents, newlyweds, toddlers, and schoolkids on their first-ever plane rides have yet to begin.

Justice not only has been delayed and denied. Justice has been demoted, disowned, and deserted. Justice for the 9/11 victims and families isn’t blindfolded. She’s gagged and hog-tied. The terror-coddling Obama White House squandered precious years trying to shut down Gitmo to appease the peaceniks, transnationalists, and Muslim grievance-mongers...

Read the rest.

Mark Levin's The Liberty Amendments

Those longing for a way to reverse the "disturbing and seemingly unstoppable coalescence of both major parties into an amalgamation of autocrats, ambitious to maintain their own power and anxious to relieve us of our property and liberty" should look to Mark Levin's latest book, The Liberty Amendments,  suggests Dave Clark at ricochet.com.

Having studied the text of the Constitution, along with the background and even the correspondence of the Framers, Mark Levin has offered a provocative and compelling alternative that deserves a careful reading and consideration.

Where Barack Obama sought to "fundamentally transform" America into something the Founders risked everything to escape, Mark Levin seeks nothing less (or more) than the fundamental restoration of a great republic.  From term limits on Congress and the Supreme Court to an amendment to limit the growth and reach of the administrative branch of government (which issued some 3,000 new regulations just last year), and an amendment to allow states to directly amend the Constitution, Levin proposes a total of eleven amendments geared toward reining in a runaway bureaucracy that has become unmoored from its constitutional foundation and openly mocks citizens with the temerity to challenge its incursions into their private lives.

Noting that his proposed amendments are by no means chiseled in stone, Levin was careful to make two important observations last night.  First, his immediate goal is to start a grass roots conversation among the good people of this country that could spread to the state legislatures themselves, gaining momentum as citizens again realize that the country belongs to them, not to state functionaries.  Second, while conservatives are perfectly capable of working at the federal level, which is to say electing the most conservative candidates possible to federal office, they would be well advised to simultaneously pursue the method that the Framers provided in Article V of the Constitution to address a ruling class that consistently and arrogantly governs against the will of the people.

Millennials' Employment Prospects

"Our economic struggles," writes Millennial Evan Feinberg, president of the non-partisan Generation Opportunity, "are a direct result of years of an ever-growing regulatory regime, in which reams of red tape are making steady, full-time employment for young people harder to find and more difficult to keep. ... Millennials’ unemployment crisis exists precisely because the opportunity we need and crave is being stifled by the government."

Among the job-killing regulatory examples, Feinberg cites:

• Obamacare — "a frontal assault on young adults' chances of securing a full-time job. ...  The law’s new definition of a full-time work week, at 30 hours per week rather than 40, will make part-time employment more widespread as businesses seeks to avoid financial penalties associated with the law—a process that’s already underway across the country."
• "Growing taxation on businesses—and the uncertainty about where it will stop—has left employers unable to estimate future revenue, thus limiting how much they can hire"
• Environmental Protection Agency's "regulations on coal are killing good middle-class jobs across the country."
• "Government licensing requirements [that] are keeping Millennials from starting businesses or pursuing certain careers."

The regulatory consequences for 18- to 29-year-olds:

• unemployment rate in the last four months averaged 12% -- over 16% if those who are no longer looking are included;
• only 43.6% held a full-time job in June; and fewer college-educated Millennials are holding full time jobs as well; 
• overall 53% are either jobless or underemployed relative to their education; and
• 36% are still living at home with their parents.

Fracking Helps Poor More than Government Program

"No one is doing more to increase income inequality in America than the affluent environmentalists who oppose natural gas drilling" [i.e., fracking]. — Fracking and the Poor, Wall Street Journal

Fracking has so dramatically lowered the price of natural gas that it "shaved about $10 billion a year from the utility bills of poor families."

To put it another way, fracking is a much more effective antipoverty program than is Liheap [federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program]. In 2012, Liheap provided roughly $3.5 billion to about nine million low-income households to subsidize their home-heating costs. New drilling technologies saved poor households almost three times more. Low gas prices benefit nearly all poor households, while Liheap helps fewer than one in four.

You'd think that good liberal egalitarians would welcome these financial savings to poor households. Yet most green groups, in particular the Sierra Club, continue to oppose fracking and are using lawsuits and political lobbying to stop it. Rich Hollywood types like Matt Damon propagandize against it. No one is doing more to increase income inequality in America than the affluent environmentalists who oppose natural gas drilling.

Obama Economy in One Tweet

"Our drop from 8.1% unemployment to 7.3% is analogous to losing 20 pounds by cutting off a body part." — Tweet by @Travesham

Wall Street Journal explains this week's "drop" in the unemployment rate:

The unemployment rate fell to 7.3% from 7.4%, but that was mainly because another 312,000 working-age Americans left the workforce. The stunner is that the labor force participation fell to 63.2%, which is the lowest rate since August 1978... if those who have stopped looking for work were counted as unemployed, the jobless rate would be closer to 10%. — Another Jobs Lull, with the following graphic:

Looks like Obama's economic policies have cut off a whole lot of body parts since proclaiming the end of George Bush's recession.

Millennials Abandoning Liberalism

Millennials are learning the same hard lessons about liberalism from Barack Obama that Baby Boomers learned from Jimmy Carter in the 1970s, argues Chriss Street in American Thinker. And Stephen Moore's column in the WSJ puts hard numbers to show how bitter those lessons are.

Street writes in The Millennial Generation is Abandoning Liberalism:

On Election Day in 2008, 37.4% of incoming freshman women and 30.5% men identified themselves as liberals or leftists, the most in 35 years. This corresponded four years later to 33% of Millennials describing themselves on Election Day 2012 as liberals. Given that Barack Obama lost a majority of the over 29 year old vote by 50% to 48%, it was his 61% to 36% support among 18-29 year olds that swung the election in his favor. The media proclaimed that Obama's reelection was proof the Millennials would power liberalism to dominate American politics for the many decades.

And now?

...it is the 15% collapse in support by Millennials that is driving Obama's fall. Furthermore, first-year college students self-identifying as liberals has also dropped by five points to 26.4% for men and 32.4% for women.

In "Obama's Economy Hits His Voters Hardest," Steve Moore writes:

Mr. Obama was re-elected with 51% of the vote. Five demographic groups were crucial to his victory: young voters, single women, those with only a high-school diploma or less, blacks and Hispanics. He cleaned up with 60% of the youth vote, 67% of single women, 93% of blacks, 71% of Hispanics, and 64% of those without a high-school diploma, according to exit polls.

Drawing upon a Sentier Research report of median household incomes, Moore shows how those demographic groups have done economically under Obama policies since 2009:

• single women, with and without children, saw their incomes fall by roughly 7% [about $2,300/yr];
• those under 25 experienced an income decline of 9.6%;
• Black heads-of-households saw their income tumble by 10.9% [about $4,000/yr];
• Hispanic heads-of-households' income fell 4.5% [about $2,000/yr]; and
• incomes of workers with high-school diploma or less fell by about 8%.

Hard Lessons Learned—Street argues that Carter won heavy Baby Boomer support because of his promises, "but after 4 years of poor economic growth, high inflation, rising interest rates, continuing energy crises, and the Iran hostage crisis ... Baby Boomers shocked the media by abandoning Carters' well-intentioned liberalism for the blatant conservatism of Ronald Reagan."

Today, only 46% of Millennials approve of Obama's job as president, which Street suggests that like the Baby Boomers before them, "the millennial generation appears to be abandoning liberalism."

Majority Opposes Syria Strike; GOP Should Vote 'Present'

From the Washington Post: "Americans widely oppose launching missile strikes against the Syrian government for its alleged use of chemical weapons, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll that finds little appetite for military action across the country despite a growing drumbeat in Washington. Nearly six in 10 oppose missile strikes ... Democrats and Republicans alike oppose strikes by double digit margins, and there is deep opposition among every political and demographic group in the survey. Political independents are among the most clearly opposed, with 66 percent saying they are against military action."  [See poll results here; chart below]

What are Republicans in Congress to do? Paul Rahe suggests the GOP should "respond in kind."

In the Senate, after expressing openly and publicly their conviction that sending 'a shot across the bow' will accomplish nothing, the Republicans should all vote present. In this circumstance, if Harry Reid can get a majority of his caucus to vote to authorize action, the motion will pass. If he cannot do so, it will be clear that the President does not even have the support of his own party. In the House, John Boehner should bring the pertinent motion to the floor, and the members of the Republican caucus should vote present, similarly leaving passage to the Democrats.

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WP/ABC Poll: United States launching missile strikes against the Syrian government       

 Dark blue = Support     Light blue = Oppose

20

40

60

All

Democrats

Republicans

Independents

Created with Datawrapper            Source: Washington Post-ABC News poll

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Liberal Chickens Coming Home to Roost

If the stakes weren't so high, these two Labor Day stories of liberal chickens coming home to roost might be very satisfying indeed.

Syria—

Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Barack Obama first embraced Syria's Bashar al-Assad as a 'reformer' to be wooed and won. When Assad embarrassed them, liberals called for Assad to be ousted (which made Al Qaeda very happy) and Obama made a very foolish public threat setting 'a red line' about Assad's use of chemical weapons on his own people.

Assad called liberals' bluff: he didn't leave power, and chemical weapons were used.

Backed into a corner, Obama let it be known he was ready to insert American cruise missiles into Syria's civil war between Assad-the-tyrant and Al Qaeda-the-uprisers.

Finding no international partners to stand with him (Britain's Parliament voted 'no involvement' last week), Obama now wants Congress to vote yea or nay on military force in Syria.

GOP Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham believe the U.S.'s reputation is on the line, but Americans aren't persuaded and a plurality/majority (depending on the poll) doesn't want U.S. intervention. With the ineptitude of Obama, Clinton and Kerry on full display, it seems few Americans on the left or right are willing to invest American blood to save their liberal faces.

This weekend as Victor Davis Hanson asked Now What?, liberal anti-war protesters picketed John Kerry's townhouse in Boston.

Unions and Obamacare—
Labor unions that fought mightily to enact Obamacare are bitterly upset that the liberal healthcare takeover is biting them in the arse, specifically in their members' work hours and 'Cadillac' healthcare plans.

In July, the AFL-CIO and two other unions "sent a scorching letter to the White House demanding Obamacare be changed before it permanently destroys the 40-hour work week."

This weekend, this headline: "Bloodbath: 40,000 Union Members Leave AFL-CIO Over Obamacare."

Liberal chickens coming home to roost!