'13 Hours' Challenges Hillary's Benghazi Story

Liberals really want you to skip seeing “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi,” and with good reason.

It’s very existence defies the White House narrative of “phony scandals” and answers back in defiance Hillary Clinton’s screeching whine, “What difference at this point does it make?”

It makes quite a bit of difference, as it turns out, and that’s part of what makes “13 Hours” a great movie. It makes that point without ever trying to. Rather than spending any time finding fault or laying blame, the movie just lays out what happened (ramped up by director Michael Bay’s action aesthetic), and the point comes screaming out from behind the details.

If you’re not mad at your government at the end of “13 Hours,” you weren’t paying attention or you’re one of those people who lives in a state of permanent denial.

It’s always advisable to apply some salt when Hollywood tackles “real” events. But featuring a superb cast, including compelling performances by John Krasinski (Jim in “The Office” TV series) as Jack Silva and James Badge Dale as Tyrone “Rone” Woods (one of the four men killed), the movie is an invaluable illumination of a modern-day event that has been whitewashed by the media at large and highly watchable as a pure action picture. Other notable performances include David Costabile (Gale Boetticher in “Breaking Bad”) as the hapless CIA station chief and David Giuntoli (Nick Burkhardt on “Grimm”) in a supporting role as the ambassador’s bodyguard.

Clinton is not mentioned once in the entire two-hour-24-minute film, and POTUS is only mentioned once in a line about a briefing, but anyone who’s even peripherally aware of politics will hear the former secretary of state, now presidential hopeful, coming through loud and clear. There is one brief mention by one of the characters in the middle of all the mayhem that he’s heard from his family that news reports back home are talking about protests over a video.

And that’s pretty significant.

Told from the viewpoint of people who were there, the lack of support for Americans in the middle of what was a full-scale battle with multiple sorties by the enemy is palpable.

The movie tries to be fair to the higher-ups at the Pentagon and elsewhere, showing scenes at the beginning of the fight of military intelligence personnel scrambling and generals being briefed, with orders being given to “spool up” reaction forces.

But then, nothing. Except for a small evacuation team, no help comes until dawn, and even then it’s a security force of Libyans. “Still no Americans,” one of the team comments.

The absence of the White House and the U.S. military covers the entire series of events like a smothering blanket.

To its credit, the movie doesn’t attempt to explain why things happened the way they did, including the stand-down order that to this day the CIA and White House deny happened but that the people who risked their lives trying to save Ambassador Chris Stevens say they heard with their own ears.

But one thing the movie establishes is that the security situation in Benghazi was known, and it was understood by the personnel stationed there, particularly the potential danger to the ambassador, who insisted on staying in an embassy compound that didn’t even have the standard basic security precautions of other embassies and that relied on protection by mercenary forces.

There is much about the activities of Islamist groups in the area, and the combat action itself as depicted, that suggests the assault first on the embassy outpost and then on the well-known “secret” CIA compound was planned in detail.

Which makes the mention of blame being placed on a nonexistent protest over an Internet video so important. It’s a specific but strangely random explanation for a complex series of events that itself seems to have been well-coordinated but that oddly drew no response from the White House and Pentagon. How that happened and what more may have been behind that cover story is the question Clinton was trying to dodge with her shrieking reply to the congressional hearing.

During her testimony, Clinton said it was less important "why these militants decided they did it than to find them and bring them to justice."

So how's that search going, Hillary? A little like O.J. Simpson's search for the "real killers"?

Why Benghazi happened and why it was covered up is a question that still needs answering, particularly as one of the people at the center of the situation wants to be the next leader of the free world.

“Thirteen Hours” doesn’t ever ask that question. But it demands an answer nonetheless.

Improved Relations With Iran Pay Off Big Time

Now that's what John Kerry's talking about.

The Obama Administration's chief Pollyanna gave the Davos World Economic Forum a pep talk this week, listing all the reasons that amid looming economic collapse, rising terrorism and the specter of war that people should really be upbeat about the world's future.

"We are not the prisoners of a predetermined future," he said. "Change is occurring in our world for the better and it is occurring faster, moving faster than ever before."

Kerry cites a global increase in life expectancy, rising numbers of girls being educated, that Paris climate agreement and, oh yeah, the Iran deal that quote-unquote ended that country's nuclear program.

In Paris, the world powers vowed to prevent the weather from just going all willy-nilly as it has been wont to do in the past and to keep that global warming under a couple of degrees above pre-Industrial levels.

The agreement doesn't exactly explain which pre-Industrial level -- the Medieval Warm Period, which was warmer than now, or the last Ice Age, or anything in between -- but it's obviously paying off quick dividends as sections of the East Coast are being buried under record levels of snow this week that have shut down Washington, D.C., to the great benefit of the entire country.

So that's a plus.

The Iran agreement -- similarly successful. Iran has vowed to continue it's nuclear development and its long-term goal of destroying Israel. (That was the point of those talks, right?)

Plus, after capturing two of our Navy vessels and 10 of our sailors, humiliating them publicly in violation of the Geneva Convention, examining our boats for our latest military technology and castrating President Obama in front of the entire world on the night of his last State of the Union speech, Iran actually gave our military personnel back to us -- all in exchange for a huge PR coup and a few billion dollars from the lifting of sanctions.

But that's not even the best payoff or surest sign of the world becoming safer.

No, that came from Iran's Supreme Leader Snoke -- excuse me, I meant Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei -- who downgraded us in a speech from "The Great Satan" to "The Great False Idol."

I don't know about you, but I'm touched. Kinda gets you right in the ol' ticker.

Rest assured, we are still at the top of Iran's list of enemies, but even our allies in Europe and elsewhere have been downgraded to "Secondary False Idols."

So you see "Lieutenant Ketchup" Kerry was right, the world clearly is a safer place. Thanks to Supreme Leader Obama, instead of vowing to kill us with nuclear fire, Iran now promises to kill us quickly with nuclear fire.

Hey, it's a step.

Could We Pick Worse Candidates?

One of the top items on my bucket list: I would like, just once before I die, to experience a presidential election in which I get to choose between two good candidates.

Maybe it's just a pointless fantasy. Perhaps the cynics are correct and there have never been any qualified presidential candidates, just members of the establishment who have waited in line long enough.

I wish I could have voted for Reagan, but he was before my voting time.

Instead, I've been faced with two Bushes, a Clinton and an Obama. Not a stellar lot.

I'm relatively certain that Hillary Clinton won't make it to election day without being clapped in irons or at least having to post bail, so I'm feeling at peace on that count.

But right now, the race is shaping up to be Trump and Sanders ... and Sanders is slightly ahead in the latest poll.

When Americans voted Obama -- twice -- I took it as proof positive that the Left was insane and liberalism was a mental illness.

I've seen nothing that would incline me to change that opinion, as the same bunch of morons are gravitating to avowed socialist Bernie Sanders, if they haven't already donated a kidney to the Spider Woman.

But now all of a sudden, people on the Right are falling for Trump's born-again conservative act, which I find just as transparent as any of Obama's campaigns.

Is it just desperation? Is the Right so anxious to get somebody -- anybody -- into the Oval Office that they'll overlook Trump's truckload of character faults?

Meanwhile Ted Cruz, the guy who should be the nominee, is running a distant second.

Trump is such a showboat that the conspiracy talk about him being a false flag candidate designed to get Hillary (or Bernie) elected doesn't sound so far fetched.

Trump's narcissism certainly seems to be just as raging as King Obama's. I can definitely see him continuing the rule by executive order and other mischief.

The only reason I'm not suicidal this time around is that I do believe Trump when he says he loves America, something I can't say about Obama. He's also a devoted capitalist, which is a major plus after eight years of barely concealed socialist agendas.

Willie Robertson came out this week and endorsed Trump for president. I like the "Duck Dynasty" boys, but it's Willie.

The Duck Commander Phil Robertson, on the other hand, is a Cruz man, so I've got to go with the Cruz missile.

I just hope Uncle Si doesn't endorse Bernie Sanders.

Bill Would Force Journalists to Register With State

There are always politicians who want to shut up journalists and control the media, going all the way back to the days when a “journalist” was essentially a guy with a knapsack and a horse who would bring messages to the local king. Enough kings didn’t like what they heard that to this day we have the saying of “don’t kill the messenger.”

President Obama loves to blame Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the conservative blogosphere for the well-deserved criticism of him and his policies. But he’s far from the only complainer.

In our modern day America, politicians on both sides of the aisle like to rail against the media, and with the boom in online information including video, there’s no real wonder why. Still, most politicians seem to understand that the First Amendment protects the conveyers of information, and if they don’t most of them have staff members who will soon remind them.

Not so apparently in South Carolina, where a Republican lawmaker, Mike Pitts, has proposed a bill that would require journalists to register with the government and pay a fee before reporting on the state’s news.

The full text of the bill isn’t available at the time of this writing, but according to the Associated Press, the “responsible journalism registry” would come with requirements that someone would have to meet before he could work for a news outlet anywhere in the state.

The bill would also provide for fines and criminal penalties for people who violate the law.

Ashley Landess of the South Carolina Policy Council said, “I hope that this insane attempt at shutting up any hint of criticism finally wakes everyone up to how dangerous and how out of control our legislators are.”

It won’t, of course. Such is the state of education and civic duty in this country.

The effort by the state to control the media, either directly or indirectly (such as through PR managers), is never good. It’s one of the hallmarks of every tyranny that’s ever existed throughout history.

Truth is always the first victim.

Still, it’s not like the media are so innocent or responsible that they haven’t brought this sort of thing on themselves.

Case in point, the AP story about this bill also mentions that Pitts opposed removing the confederate flag from the state capitol, as if there’s a direct connection. It’s one of those little tricks the professional media like to pull to make you the reader equate conservatives with racism, which is the closest the liberal wing of the media will come to using the word “evil.”

Efforts to make journalists more responsible aren’t actually a bad idea. It just can’t come from government because there would always be ulterior motives other than delivering the truth to the public. The government manipulates the media now when it’s mostly illegal. Imagine if there was a law allowing that to happen?

Those who consider themselves professional journalists (a very small percentage of information producers these days) should give some thought to issues like responsibility and respectability. It would ultimately be to the benefit of journalists and the public they are supposed to serve.

College Reserves Month for Shaming Whites

"Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns." -- Matthew 16:23

If you've hung around a college campus in recent decades, you've no doubt heard of Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, Asian Pacific American Heritage Month and maybe a few others.

What you likely have not heard of is anything like a White History Month.

Well, Portland Community College aims to rectify that, but with a twist.

Rather than a month devoted to celebrating the contributions of "white" culture, Whiteness History Month will be committed to the idea of deconstructing the skin color and culture that is apparently the root of all racism.

That's right. A publicly funded educational outlet is going to spend an entire month shaming people for their skin color, in the name of creating "a nationally renowned culture for diversity, equity and inclusion."

That is, unless you're a Honky-American.

On the college's Whiteness History Month website, the college's Cascade Campus Diversity Council states, "Whiteness History Month: Context, Consequences and Change is a multidisciplinary, district-wide, educational project examining race and racism through an exploration of the construction of whiteness, its origins and heritage. Scheduled for the month of April 2016, the project seeks to inspire innovative and practical solutions to community issues and social problems that stem from racism."

The event is needed, according to the council, because "the construction of the white identity is a brilliant piece of social engineering. Its origins and heritage should be examined in order to add a critical layer of complexity to a national conversation sorely lacking in nuance."

In case you missed it, the nuance is that whites cause racism, and everything about "white" culture -- which you can suppose means Western civilization in general -- is racist, designed to keep nonwhites at bay.

The site goes on to state:

"Whiteness is a socially and politically constructed behavior. It has a long history in European imperialism and epistemologies. Whiteness does not simply refer to skin color but an ideology based on beliefs, values, behaviors, habits and attitudes, which result in the unequal distribution of power and privilege based on skin color. Whiteness represents a position of power where the power holder defines social categories and reality—the master narrator. Whiteness originates racism. It is relational. “White” only exists in relation/opposition to other categories in the racial hierarchy produced by whiteness."

So if "whiteness" is an ideology, does that make freckles a denomination?

Wonder if the month will include studying how white liberals created the KKK, supported the Nazis and Communists, and opposed the Civil Rights Movement?

Probably not.

But I'm betting it will include a good deal of talk about racist white conservatives.

I'm hoping they might go so far as to have a booth selling traditional white foods. Like vanilla. Or Wonder Bread. Or bologna sandwiches on Wonder Bread with mayonnaise, and vanilla ice cream for desert. The culinary possibilities boggle the imagination.

At any rate, the program's goals are still being developed, although among the questions listed on the website for students to contemplate are "What are alternatives to a culture of white supremacy?" and "What are approaches and strategies to dismantling whiteness?"

Let's see. Strategies to dismantle whiteness. Hmm ... tanning beds?

As for alternatives to a culture of white supremacy, how about ... a culture in which as many as 850,000 people died in the fight over ending slavery? And where countless more fought to build a country that lived up to the words of its founding document, "that all men are created equal"?

Nah. That would never fly.

Obama's Next Bad Idea: Wage Insurance

By Tad Cronn

Just in case you thought there wasn’t a worse economic idea in the Democrats’ bag of tricks than raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, President Obama has just found one.

The president’s proposal is looking to “reform” the federal unemployment insurance system by forcing all states to provide coverage for at least 26 weeks (nine states don’t). But the crown jewel in Obama’s plan is to force states to provide not just unemployment insurance but wage insurance.

The way this will work, according to the Associated Press, is if someone loses a decent paying job and goes out looking for work but can only find something that is less than they were making, up to $50,000 annually, then the state would have to make up half of the difference.

As it stands currently, the proposal would limit the coverage to $10,000 over two years. But we all know how government programs work. That $10,000 is just a starting point.

So if the Democrats get their druthers, not only will McDonald’s be paying a minimum wage of $15 per hour, but the states will be forced to kick in several thousand a year more, even if the person is not collecting unemployment.

From one angle, it sounds like an OK deal for someone who needs to pay his bills, but that money will essentially be coming out of thin air. The employees won’t actually be earning it, and it’s not being generated on the free market.

That means the only way to pay for this scheme is higher taxes all around, which means dragging everybody down with higher costs of goods and services, caused by your government.

Unlike raising the minimum wage, this doesn’t sound like it would cause a new wave of unemployment, but it might tend to encourage people who should be looking for higher-paying jobs or perhaps creating businesses to become content with lower-paying work.

Plus it’s for a limited time and amount, which is setting up a situation where some people likely will demand to be on the state payroll longer or for higher pay.

The most insidious thing about this proposal, however, is that it’s a sleight-of-hand way to promote the move toward a centrally planned economy. Once the state starts paying employees of allegedly private businesses, it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to state ownership of industry.

That’s the ultimate plan for the Democratic Party, of course, everyone under the state’s thumb with the political elites doing the squashing of anyone who stands up to them.

It’s been coming for years, with numerous Democrats barely concealing the fact of their socialist tendencies behind the “Progressive” label – a label that anyone familiar with the history of the 20th century should be leery of.

Their advances have been slow and steady, to the point that the founder of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Bernie Sanders, is now comfortable with running for president as an open socialist.

The election and then re-election of Barack Obama were huge missteps for this country. If a Sanders or a Clinton wins the upcoming election, the spiral will only accelerate.

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