In his interview today on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, Dan Pfeiffer, Senior Advisor to the President for Strategy and Communications, said it was a “largely irrelevant fact” where the President was that night.  Irrelevant.  Really?

After watching Pfeiffer’s answers to the line of questioning from Wallace, and trying to turn the tables by using the term “offensive” to suggestions the President wasn’t involved, one tends to believe that wherever the President was and what he was doing during the Consulate attack, might be very damaging, bordering on egregious, if ever revealed.

Andrew McCarthy in his National Review article also raises the question of the 10:00pm phone call that Secretary of State Clinton had with the President, the call she referred to in her testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  It was most likely that phone call where the YouTube video was sanctioned.

As more information is forthcoming about the Benghazi and IRS scandals, despite the Administration’s efforts to bloviate the subject, “low information voters” are slowly but surely beginning to connect the dots.  When the full force of Obamacare hits in 2014, Joe Biden may yet see his Presidential wish come true, earlier than expected.

On February 26, 1993, a truck bomb detonated at the World Trade Center in New York City.  On September 11, 2001, the World Trade Center twin towers imploded through an act of terrorism.

Al-Qaeda may or may not be involved in Monday’s bombing, but one thing we can all be sure of is that they’re watching.  They’re watching our police response, medical response, government response.  They’re learning.  They’re waiting.

As immigration reform moves to center stage again, one can only imagine the number of Al-Qaeda operatives who have entered the US through Mexico forming sleeper cells throughout the United States.  As far back as 2005, probably even earlier, the warnings were being sounded.

“I’m worried about our border,” Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona said at a March 17 Senate hearing on threats facing the US. “We have now hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who are crossing illegally every year. And we are now seeing a larger number of people cross our southern border who are from countries of interest as opposed to just Latin American [countries].”

The “countries of interest” that Senator McCain refers to are those so designated by the US government as known to house radical, if not terrorist, groups.”

Amazing, isn’t it, how the issue of handling security internally within US borders, is left out of the national discussion, especially by the “Gang of Eight.”  Rather, it’s about which political party will bring the largest number of Hispanic voters into its fold.  In fact, border security, comes second behind legalization.

Then we have the gun control debate.  Some legislators across the United States are fighting for increased universal background checks and databases, while others want gun control through taxation, legislation or confiscation.  Meanwhile, Americans gun owners, after watching the aftermath of Boston, Benghazi (remember Benghazi?) New York, know exactly why gun rights and the Second Amendment are so important to not only themselves but to the national interest.

Our leaders hesitate to call acts of terror for what they are.  They ask us to report to law authorities if we see something suspicious, but that depends if we can do so without being accused of racial profiling or bigotry.  And let’s not forget, “GM is alive and bin Laden is dead.”

Monday evening, former Dept. of Homeland Security Secretary, Tom Ridge, in an media interview, said, “we have watches, they have time.”  Unfortunately, for many Americans, time is already running out.

The City of Chicago has some of the toughest, strictest gun laws in the country.  In 2010, the City Council still under the aegis of Mayor Richard M. Daley, hastily passed [emphasis mine] ”The Responsible Gun Ownership” ordinance (h/t The Reader):

The “Responsible Gun Ownership” ordinance allows any adult in Chicago with a clean record to register one handgun a month for self-defense at home—but only one gun at a time can be “assembled and operable,” and the owner can’t take it out of the home, even into the backyard. The weapons have to be registered with the state and city, and their owners must be trained and fingerprinted. Guns in homes where minors live have to be locked away or equipped with trigger locks. And anyone convicted of a gun offense is required to disclose the information in a publicly accessible registry modeled after those for convicted sex offenders.

The keywords here are “self-defense at home.”

The April 9 surveillance tape below was taken at the Logan Square neighborhood gift shop, Quizhpe’s Gifts and Sports.  The tape reveals the robbery and shooting of proprietor, Luis Quizhpe, who despite being shot in the thigh, refused to give in and fought back his assailants with a baseball bat, swinging for his life.  Yes, you read right.  A baseball bat against two gun-armed thugs.  Quizhpe’s brother, also present during the robbery and who fought alongside his brother, remarked that the shooter “ran out of bullets because he stopped shooting at us.”   The police found 10 shell casings on the ground.  You think those robbers had FOID cards?

So as the pols in Washington push for broader universal background checks, and stiffer penalties for criminals and others who fail to comply with the law, let’s consider Chicago as the microcosm epicenter of gun control, and how it’s working out.  As The Reader’s columnist reports,

“But only a small portion of gun owners have jumped through all the hoops. About a year after the new law went into effect, 3,153 people had completed the city’s permitting process, a mere 3 percent of the Chicagoans who’d completed state firearm registration.

Things haven’t improved much since then, according to new data from the police department. By the end of February, 7,750 people had successfully applied for city firearm permits—just 6 percent of the 130,000 Chicagoans who have FOID cards. Though not everyone with a FOID card owns a gun—and some gun owners, including police and security guards, are exempt from permits—it’s evident that thousands of firearm owners still aren’t adhering to the city law.”

Number of people shot in Chicago, 2012:  2670

Number of people shot in Chicago as of March 25, 2013:  369

Number of homicides in Chicago, 2012: 535

Number of homicides in Chicago as of April 11: 93

Senator Pat Toomey has stated that his legislation would not have stopped a Newtown shooting. but a universal background check system will be implemented in part to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill.  Except Adam Lanza’s mother was not mentally ill.

“Another key part of the city’s 2010 firearm ordinance was the creation of a gun-offender registry. The idea was that parolees would be required to register with the police department as sex offenders are. Police would then have a database to help them keep track of felons likely to be mixed up in violence.

But even now the registry consists of just 490 names, a fraction of the former gun offenders in the city. In 2011 alone, 1,700 people were paroled after serving time in Illinois prisons on weapons offenses, the vast majority for gun crimes in Chicago. Thousands of others were paroled for gun-related murders, burglaries, and robberies.” (The Reader)

Luis Quizphe, through his quick thinking and refusal to be a victim survived this incident.  But how many more like him do not.  Had Quizphe had a firearm on premises (long guns are permitted by Chicago ordinance), would it have made a difference.  Possibly.  We don’t know.

While gun control legislation makes great political theater and gives some a feel good, we’re taking action kind of moment, is more gun control legislation the answer?  Or, should we start enforcing what’s already on the books.

“Americans have a right to be stupid,” as stated by our new Secretary of State, John Kerry.  We sure do.  The pols in Washington are counting on just that.  The majority of American voters will take their entitlement hand-outs and just shut up.  Then, at every two and four year intervals, we’ll trot out to the polls like good little kindergartners grateful for their candy, and vote them back into office.

Bill Kristol, Editor of The Weekly Standard, who is also Chairman of the Emergency Fund for Israel, was quoted,

“We fought the good fight, and are proud to have done so. We salute all those — Democrats and Republicans, Christians and Jews — who joined with us in the effort to secure a better Secretary of Defense. We are heartened that the overwhelming majority of senators from one of the two major parties voted against confirming Mr. Hagel. We take some comfort in Mr. Hagel’s confirmation conversions on the issues of Israel and Iran, and do believe that, as a result of this battle, Mr. Hagel will be less free to pursue dangerous policies at the Defense Department and less inclined to advocate them within the administration. And since hope is an American characteristic and a Jewish virtue, we will also say that we hope Mr. Hagel will rise to the occasion and successfully discharge his weighty duties. In this task we wish him well.

This battle against Chuck Hagel is over. The fight for a principled, pro-Israel foreign policy goes on.”

What a piece of drivel.  What fight?  When has there ever been a more incompetent candidate sent up for nomination as Secretary of Defense.  John Tower, who was defeated not for incompetence, but for his randy social life (a.k.a. women and booze) and his previous work for defense contractors, looks like Thucydides compared to Chuck.

Despite Senator James Inhofe’s (R-OK) letter to his colleagues, warning that a vote for cloture was a vote for confirmation, his pleas fell on the proverbial deaf ears.  ”Deference to the President,” “the President has a right to choose his Cabinet,” I believe, were the common rejoinders.  The Founding Fathers specifically put in place the checks and balances necessary for a constitutional republic.  Advise and consent.  But then, we’re daily watching our Constitution being trashed with Executive Orders, DHS drones, and other Administration ploys.

Stuck with Chuck we are, joining John Kerry as the second component of Obama’s foreign policy brain trust.  After a recent 2011 speech came to light with Hagel’s statement that India financed problems in Pakistan from Afghanistan, the Obama Administration and US Embassy in India are quickly distancing themselves from Hagel.  The first of many situations to be sure, especially when the University of Nebraska is through indexing and archiving Hagel’s scholarly speeches.

John Kerry, too, in his new role as Secretary of State, will eventually learn that Kyrzakhstan is not a country, but Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan are.  Remember, “Americans have a right to be stupid.”

North Korea’s boy-leader continues his country’s nuclear tests, China wages cyber war against the US, when it’s not busy ramping up in the South China Sea testing Japan’s will over the Senkaku Islands, thousands more are killed in Syria, rockets are fired into Israel from Gaza, and Iran edges closer to a nuclear weapon.   Not to worry, we can all be assured that Chuck and the two Johns (Kerry and Brennan) have our backs.  And with Jack “okay, so I lied about the sequester” Lew at Treasury, we’ll all go broke together as a country, that is, if there’s still a country left.

Chris Kyle

Kyle wrote a book, American Sniper, about his experiences in Iraq.  In an interview with the Dallas Morning News in January 2012,

“I wanted to be able to let people know about the sacrifices that not only people in the service make, but what their families go through. I knew this would give me a voice so I could speak about the guys I know who were killed. I wanted to get their story out and I wanted to raise awareness for veterans.

“It is so hard becoming a civilian,” Kyle said. “When you are in the military, everything you do is for the greater good. And as a civilian, everything you do is for your own good.

“When you’re in the military, you are facing life and death every day. And then you come home and hear people who are unhappy about the little things. And you think, are you kidding me? Two weeks ago, I was shot. And this is your problem.”

During Kyle’s four tours in Iraq (1999-2009), he was shot twice, and lived through six IED attacks that killed many of his buddies.  He was awarded two Silver Stars, five Bronze Stars with Valor, two Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medals, and one Navy and Marine Corps Commendation.  Yet, despite holding the US military record for most sniper kills (150), he said in an interview in Texas Monthly:

“It was my duty to shoot the enemy, and I don’t regret it. My regrets are for the people I couldn’t save: Marines, soldiers, buddies. I’m not naive, and I don’t romanticize war. The worst moments of my life have come as a SEAL. But I can stand before God with a clear conscience about doing my job.”

Some people may question why one should consider Chris Kyle a hero, especially given the role he played in the theater of war.  The US heavily used snipers in Iraq because the collateral damage that would be caused by bombs or drones was considered unacceptable.  When you reflect on the stress that Kyle was under on a daily basis, in trying to correctly identify and then neutralize threats to keep his Company safe, through four tours of duty, then it becomes easier to understand how extraordinary individuals like Kyle really are.   Chris Kyle is also synonymous of the hundreds of the hundreds of thousands of men and women, along with their families, who sacrificed through the years, so that millions of us “civilians” can pursue our livelihoods in safety and security.  Remember the line from A Few Good Men, “because they stand on a wall and say, “nothing’s going to hurt you tonight, not on my watch.”

For the service members whose lives Chris saved with his rifle skills, and their families, thank you’s can probably never be said too many times.  But Kyle only considered it his duty, and never thought of himself as a hero.  And that’s why he was one.

Our sincere condolences to his wife and two children.  Our hearts and prayers are with you.

Eternal rest grant unto him O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.  May he rest in peace.

Amen

US Embassy entrance in Ankara after suicide bombing (AP)

Security cameras were not recording at the moment of the blast due to a power outage in the area, according to claims.

It is surprising–and a significant vulnerability–that security cameras would be dependent upon the local power supply, rather than an independent source. Benghazi revealed serious flaws which had developed in embassy and consulate security during the past four years and perhaps before.  It seems, however, that Benghazi exposed only some of the complacency which has developed.

How many Americans and businesses across the US own that novel piece of equipment known as a power generator, or have other forms of backup power supply in case of power outages.  Yet, our US Embassy in Turkey, a country sharing a border with one of the unstable hotspots of the world, Syria, relies on the local power supply, rather than have its own self-contained security system.  The suicide bomber, it was reported, was on his way through security when the bomb was detonated.  One can imagine the potential loss of life and damage if the bomber had gotten into the actual Embassy compound.

State Department spokesperson, Victoria Nuland, was quick to point out that Congress is to blame for lack of funding, yet the budget numbers prove quite the opposite.

Budget numbers, though, show the overall diplomatic security budget has ballooned over the past decade. While there were modest decreases in funding in recent years — and Congress has approved less than was requested — the overall security budget has more than doubled since fiscal 2004.

For that year, the budget was $640 million.  It steadily climbed to $1.6 billion in fiscal 2010. It dipped to $1.5 billion the following year and roughly $1.35 billion in fiscal 2012.

Slightly more has been requested for fiscal 2013.

With regard to the US consulate attack in Benghazi, budget was also not at fault.

Still, then-Deputy Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security Charlene Lamb testified in October that the size of the attack — and not the money — was the issue.

Asked if there was any budget consideration that led her not to increase the security force, she said: “No.”

The eighth attack on a US Embassy in the last four years (h/t Gateway Pundit.)  When, not if, another attack occurs, will the MSM and the American people be less forgiving with newly appointed Secretary of State, John Kerry.  We’ll know soon enough.  Already there are warnings akin to Benghazi arising out of Kabul.

Cross-posted at www.political-woman.com

Hagel was unnerved and clearly did not acquit himself well, especially during the Cruz round of questioning.  If ever there was an individual  who by his own words, has proved himself uniquely unqualified for the position of U.S. Secretary of Defense, it is Mr. Hagel.  His contempt for Israel, a long-time ally of the United States, an ally that took 39 SCUD missiles during the Kuwait war without retaliating at our request, was accused of “sickening slaughter” and war crimes against Hezbollah.  Senator Cruz not only raised Hagel’s past conduct towards Israel, but raised the spectre of future conduct as well.

While the President has indicated that he is digging in for a fight on Hagel, it depends upon whether Hagel himself has the stomach for it, or whether the damage being done over the course of these hearings is enough to send him the way of Zoe Baird, Lani Guenier, Linda Chavez, Bernard Kerik, Anthony Lake, John Bolton, or whether it’s a slam-dunk bi-partisan rejection like John Tower.   Now that would send a message our current emperor would not be able to miss.

Without even elaborating on the subject of Second Amendment rights, the increasing government incursion into our daily lives, and the government assuming a tyrannical posture not witnessed before in this author’s lifetime, my submission of the Illinois “Firearm Owners Identification” (FOID) application removed all doubts that I took the right course of action for my personal safety, and that of hearth and home, now and especially for the future. While I understand that the Illinois State Police needs your affirmations in writing so they can background check you for any “gotchas” and thus deny your FOID card, if this application is any indication of our government’s ability to keep firearms out of the hands of felons and the unstable, you can understand why we have Newtowns, Chicagos, and other yet to be determined crises.

In Illinois, our brilliant governor and state legislature recently passed a law allowing illegal aliens (oops! undocumented workers) to qualify for Illinois driver licenses.  Therefore, the wisdom behind this application and some of its questions, is illustrative of life in Illinois.  Excuse my naivete if apparent, but who would answer yes to these questions:

Q4.  Are you addicted to narcotics?

Q5.  Are you intellectually disabled?

Q10.  Are you an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States?

The IL State Police contracts with third parties to do criminal background checks, with lying on your application making you subject to a felony 2 conviction.  However, unless you have an arrest record, have been institutionalized, or there’s a trail that can be found through databases available to law enforcement or their investigator sub-contractors, etc., I daresay, you’d stand a pretty good chance of approval for a FOID card.   As Paul Appelbaum, the director of the Division of Law, Ethics and Psychiatry at Columbia University’s department of psychiatry, summarizes about states and their collective efforts to keep guns our of the hands of people most likely to commit violent acts:

“What we’ve been pursuing here has been not just a failed strategy, but a strategy that is unlikely ever to be implemented successfully. We’re both sweeping up lots of people about whom we probably shouldn’t be worried and omitting many people about whom we should.”

Oh, and by the way, the January 2013 death toll is up to 42 in Chicago and we still have another day before the month ends, worst January in 10 years.

Three weeks ago I was at a regional sporting goods store, and people were three deep, take a number, at the gun counter.  I was one of two women handling guns in that male bastion, with the other woman purchasing a rifle.  The amount of knowledge and experience about firearms that was present in that crowd, and advice as to which one to buy, was, for this first time owner, quite astounding.  Whether target shooting aficionados, hunters, or people simply looking for self/home protection, one could feel a sense of unease at that counter, and a realization  as more people are waking up to the power of an over-reaching government, and some of its officials who adhere to the rule of ideology rather than the rule of law.

One of my dear friends suggested to me that I might have a “bunker mentality.”   “What do you need a gun for?” she asked.  I’ve never needed a firearm before, true. But then Americans don’t need 207+ religious denominations, yet we have them because it is our Right to have them.  Therefore, consider my firearm a symbol of my Right to have it.  And since practice makes perfect, should I have to use it, pray God it doesn’t ever come to that, this Annie Oakley will be ready.

Sig Sauer P226

Madame Secretary then follows her arrogant-sounding comment with, to paraphrase, it’s less important to find out why these militants did this, than to find them and bring them to justice.  Yes, and here we are four months later, still looking for the perpetrators.  Now we also learn that some of the militants involved in the latest attack on the BP plant in Algeria were also present in Libya:

The New York Times quoted an Algerian official saying that three of the militants captured alive told their interrogators that Egyptian members of their team had also been involved in last September’s attack in Benghazi against the American diplomatic mission in Libya.

So, “what difference, at this point, does it make?”  The difference it makes is knowingly supporting and perpetuating the YouTube video farce, of which the Secretary was an all too willing participant (remember her filming an advertisement that played over the airwaves in Pakistan) vs. recognizing the transnationalization of Al Qaeda jihadists and the intent behind their actions; that North Africa is fast becoming the new Afghanistan and the Administration’s probable failure to realize this; which has resulted in the needless deaths of four Americans.

When Secretary Clinton admited she did not read the cables from her ambassador requesting more security, in an area that undoubtedly ranked as one of the world’s “hotspots”, her culpability, responsibility and failure of leadership became all the more incongruous and unforgivable.  The arrogance displayed today should come as no surprise to followers of Mrs. Clinton through her political career.  And when all else fails, obfuscate, bloviate, shift the blame — in this case, to Congress and lack of authorized funds for security.

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) got it right (h/t Daily Caller):

“Had I been president at the time and I had found that you had not read the cables from Benghazi, you had not read the cables from Ambassador Stevens,” he went on, “I would have relieved you of your post.”

Hopefully, the American people will relieve her of her dreams of the Presidency.

It’s rather depressing.  Unemployment is teetering below 8%, but the U-6 rate which counts the U-3 unemployed, plus the discouraged/stopped looking, working part-time, is above 14%.

U-6 unemployment through 2012.

Our GDP growth rate was 3.1% in Third Quarter, although I’m comparing our recovery with a Government that wants to control everything, to the Reagan years and previous Presidents.

And here we are, one day after the formal swearing in of the President for his second term, and we haven’t recovered yet from his first.  I know, it’s Bush’s fault, at least that’s what 51.4% of the people obviously still believe.

While we watch the value of our homes continue to stagnate, our healthcare turned over to decisions of bureaucrats, while our taxes rise precipitously to pay for the largesse given to those uninsured, and what wealth we have redistributed to those who didn’t earn it for the cause of social justice, I give you this prescient comment from Out of the Box author, Mark Grant, via Zerohedge:

We make more than we’ve ever made, we owe more than we’ve ever owed, and we have less than we’ve had in decades which is distributed to those that did not earn the money. This is a working definition of Trouble. The stock market is at an all-time high while the financial condition of the country has seriously deteriorated. We are printing $90 billion a month of little green pieces of paper while the Democrats yell at the Republicans to up the debt ceiling as they want to spend even more money to promote social welfare programs. We cannot afford the bills that we have now and we are being asked to add more to them. This is a recipe for disaster and I am reminded of those months right before the financial crisis of 2008/2009 where no documentation loans for Real Estate flourished and easy money was the normal course of things.

Perhaps the landscape has shifted from “money for nothing” for property to “money for nothing” for our national debt. Fiscal responsibility has evaporated in a grand scheme to get voters and Obama has put the Chavez Plan in place which appeals to the poorest of citizens, hands them money and expects their support at the polls. Hard work and earning a living are the ethics of past generations that are slowly being ground to dust in the flurry to socialize America and re-distribute wealth and having succeeded and having money is now thought of as a crime not far behind rape and arson.

You cannot keep printing money without consequences and when absolute and intrinsic valuations replace relative valuations then the game is afoot. Lower and lower yields also eventually have a serious impact on the people of a nation, pension funds, insurance companies and backlashes are certainly possible as the lives of people and institutions are put at financial risk. When the survival of the State puts its people in dire straits then, eventually, the citizens will rebel as the nation has forgotten just who composes its constituents. The people and institutions that have the capital will only go along quietly for so long when nations try to take what they have earned and dispossess it for others. The rich will become poorer and the poor will become poorer and when those with the capital have been deprived of it so that everyone is worse off then the Lords of Chaos will be in control once again.

By the way, the worst states to live in if you’re unemployed:

Four more years, four more years ….

Cross-posted at www.political-woman.com