Six months later, where are Benghazi’s survivors?
[HotAir.com]
posted at 1:21 pm on March 12, 2013 by Ed Morrissey
Yesterday marked six months from the date that four Americans were killed in a terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, the first American ambassador murdered in the line of duty in 33 years. While the Obama administration begrudgingly cooperated with Congressional panels looking into the attack and the White House response by sending officials to testify, one group still has not yet been made available. CBS’ Sharyl Attkisson wonders — where are the survivors?
Today marks six months since the September 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. compounds in Benghazi, Libya in which four Americans were killed, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Some watchdog groups, members of the media and Republican members of Congress are asking: Where are the more than two dozen U.S. personnel who survived the attack but haven’t been seen nor heard from in public since? There were also an undisclosed number of witnesses at the U.S. compounds in Tripoli but they also have not spoken publicly.
In a recent press report, Secretary of State John Kerry said he visited one survivor at “Bethesda hospital,” and referred to him a “remarkably courageous person who is doing very, very well.” Kerry added, “I’ve called his wife and talked to her.” But the identities, condition and testimony of the survivors and witnesses have been closely held from the public.
Santorum sweeps back into the race
[HotAir.com]
posted at 8:40 am on February 8, 2012 by Ed Morrissey
Last night when discussing the trends in the three non-binding Republican contests, I tweeted that Rick Santorum’s win in Missouri was only surprising in gaining a majority, but that a win in Minnesota would be surprising — and a win in Colorado would be shocking. As it happens, National Journal agrees with that assessment. Santorum shocked the Republican race with a clean sweep of Tuesday’s caucuses and primary, and may have pushed himself into serious consideration as the long-sought conservative consolidation alternative to Mitt Romney:Rick Santorum on Tuesday completed his sweep of states with a stunning upset of Mitt Romney in Colorado’s caucus, according to state Republican officials, shaking up a GOP presidential race that has seen more drama than Romney’s campaign envisioned even a week ago.
Santorum earlier won Minnesota’s caucus and a non-binding Missouri primary. Romney – who won Colorado handily in 2008 — had long remained the odds-on favorite to prevail in that state’s caucus, as polls had shown him with a double-digit lead.
A jubilant Santorum told supporters that he isn’t the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney:
“I don’t stand here to claim to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney,” he told supporters earlier in the evening. “I stand here to be the conservative alternative to Barack Obama.”
Rasmussen Nat’l Poll Showing Second Gingrich Boomlet?
[HotAir.com]
posted at 11:10 am on January 18, 2012 by Ed Morrissey 
After a brilliant debate performance by Newt Gingrich on Monday, some wondered whether it was too late in the cycle for a second bounce. According to a Rasmussen poll taken yesterday of 1,000 likely GOP primary voters, Mitt Romney’s team may want to keep the party favors in the box for a little while longer:
The race for the Republican presidential nomination is now nearly even with Mitt Romney still on top but Newt Gingrich just three points apart.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Republican Primary Voters nationwide shows Romney with 30% support and Gingrich with 27% of the vote. Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, who was running second two weeks ago, has now dropped to 15%.
Obama admin attempting another Congressional end-around on ObamaCare defect
[HotAir.com]
posted at 1:55 pm on November 16, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
Under ObamaCare, the IRS becomes the arbiter of health-insurance acceptability. Now Barack Obama needs the IRS to rescue ObamaCare entirely, thanks to a massive legislative defect that the President has no hope of rectifying in the new Congress. Thanks to sloppy legislative work, the PPACA’s subsidies to taxpayers won’t apply in states that refuse to create exchanges — which means that the states have a clear mechanism to block ObamaCare’s implementation.
That is, unless the IRS just bypasses Congress and corrects the law:
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act offers “premium assistance”—tax credits and subsidies—to households purchasing coverage through new health-insurance exchanges. This assistance was designed to hide a portion of the law’s cost to individuals by reducing the premium hikes that individuals will face after ObamaCare goes into effect in 2014. (If consumers face the law’s full cost, support for repeal will grow.)
The law encourages states to create health-insurance exchanges, but it permits Washington to create them if states decline. So far, only 17 states have passed legislation to create an exchange.
Zuckerman: America has a competency crisis in the White House
HotAir.com
Earlier today, we had the unusual instance of a politician endorsing a former opponent for the Presidency. In today’s Wall Street Journal, we have the somewhat less rare instance of a former supporter arguing against his earlier endorsement. Mort Zuckerman has already made it clear that he regrets his decision to back Barack Obama on a number of occasions over the last thirteen months, and now he wonders whether Obama has the competency to address the national malaise at all. In fact, Zuckerman accuses Obama of having only one plan:
It is no surprise that many have begun to doubt the president’s leadership qualities. J.P. Morgan calls it the “competency crisis.” The president is not seen fighting for his own concrete goals, nor finding the right allies, especially leaders of business big or small. Instead, his latent hostility to the business community has provoked a mutual response of disrespect. This is lamentable given the unique role that small business especially plays in creating jobs.
New Fed Study Suggests Net Job Creation From Porkulus Was … ZERO
HotAir.com
posted at 10:12 am on December 6, 2010 by Ed Morrissey
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[Unemployment has reached 9.8%; that's proof!]
Via Reason, the economists at e21 take a long look at a new study by Daniel Wilson at the San Francisco Fed on the effect on employment from the Obama administration’s stimulus plan, which indicates that the impact was a lot less than advertised. Instead of adding two million jobs to the economy, the Fed finds that any new jobs added had disappeared by August of this year (via The American Thinker):
It is difficult to properly calculate the effects of the 2009 ARRA bill, as it was a nation-wide program. Though employment and growth failed to respond to ARRA as the Administration had suggested, fiscal stimulus advocates have argued that employment levels would have been lower still without the program.
Wilson’s study makes an important contribution to this debate by focusing on state-by-state comparisons. A large portion of stimulus funding at the state level was based on criteria that were entirely independent of the economic situation that states faced. For example, the number of existing highway miles was used to calculate additional transportation spending.
The study uses this resulting variation in state-level stimulus funding to determine what impact ARRA funding had on employment — including both the direct impact of workers hired to complete planned projects, as well as any broader spillover effects resulting from greater government spending. Administration economists have repeatedly emphasized the importance of this indirect employment growth in driving economic recovery.
NRCC response ad: Grayson a National Embarrassment
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posted at 8:48 am on October 1, 2010 by Ed Morrissey
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If Dan Webster hadn’t found a theme for his campaign before last weekend, Alan Grayson managed to hand it to the him and the NRCC with his “Taliban Dan” attack. As Webster’s new ad reminds voters in his district, it’s not the first time that Grayson has made an ass out of himself on the national stage. Hot Air readers will remember most of these incidents, and Webster wants to make sure voters do as well — because it paints an ugly, but entirely accurate, picture of disgrace:
I had forgotten about Grayson’s “whore” remark, aimed at Ben Bernanke aide and economist Linda Robertson. Recall what Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner said about Grayson in response, before Grayson later apologized for the remark.
Outspoken Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson is under fire from both Republicans and Democrats after a month-old radio interview was posted online in which Grayson is heard calling an adviser to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke a “K Street whore.”
You can hear Grayson making the comment about the Bernanke adviser, who is named Linda Robertson, here. “This lobbyist, this K street whore, is trying to teach me about economics,” he said.
Grayson has been widely criticized for his comment, as Politico and the Associated Press report. Republican Washington Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers said Grayson is “out of control,” while Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner asked, “Is this news to you that this guy’s one fry short of a Happy Meal?”
It doesn’t surprise us, but it probably surprises most of the people in Florida’s 8th CD who voted for him the first time. Hopefully, they won’t make that same mistake again.
Update: That should have been the NRCC, not the NRSC. I’ve corrected the headline and the lead paragraph. Thanks to Dustin S for the heads-up.
Final Q2 GDP: 1.7%
HotAir.com – Reuters – AP
posted at 9:30 am on September 30, 2010 by Ed Morrissey
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Commerce released its final revision of the annualized rate of growth from the second quarter. Initially estimated at 2.4% in July, the number got sharply revised to 1.6% in August. Now, with the final numbers in place, economic growth still looks moribund:
Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at an annual rate of 1.7 percent in the second quarter of 2010, (that is, from the first quarter to the second quarter), according to the “third” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP increased 3.7 percent. …
The increase in real GDP in the second quarter primarily reflected positive contributions from personal consumption expenditures, nonresidential fixed investment, exports, private inventory investment, federal government spending, and residential fixed investment. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.
The deceleration in real GDP in the second quarter primarily reflected a sharp acceleration in imports and a sharp deceleration in private inventory investment that were partly offset by an upturn in residential fixed investment, accelerations in nonresidential fixed investment and in federal government spending, and an upturn in state and local government spending.
The third quarter numbers for “Recovery Summer” will be out at the end of next month. That won’t look much better, thanks to a summer of almost across-the-board declines and a crash in home sales and construction. We will be lucky to get to 1.7%, unless September delivers some eye-popping upticks in sales and lowering of inventories, which have grown all summer long thanks to low demand.
Poll: Among cable-news networks, MSNBC trusted by … 12%
HotAir.com
posted at 10:55 am on September 27, 2010 by Ed Morrissey
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In an otherwise serious poll from Politico and George Washington University, the survey also asks respondents which cable-news network they access most for political news. The results aren’t terribly surprising, as they more or less mirror the ratings, but are still noteworthy for one network’s almost-total marginalization. While Fox News Channel sailed to an impressive 42% and CNN got a substantial if unimpressive 30%, MSNBC got …
More people are getting their news about the upcoming election from cable television than any other source, and from Fox News more than any other cable channel, according to a POLITICO/George Washington University Battleground Poll released Monday.
Wow: Whitman up eight points over Brown in CA? [Go Meg!]
HotAir.com
posted at 2:57 pm on August 26, 2010 by Ed Morrissey
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Earlier this month, Rasmussen had former two-term Governor Jerry Brown edging Republican Meg Whitman, 43/41, with neither candidate showing much momentum. In less than a month, Rasmussen shows a ten-point move by Whitman and a potentially commanding lead, while Brown appears to be fading. With leaners, the news gets even worse for Brown:
The tie is broken for now, with Republican Meg Whitman, coming off last weekend’s state GOP Convention, moving out to her best showing yet in the race to be the next governor of California.
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in California finds Whitman earning 48% support, while Democrat Jerry Brown picks up 40% of the vote. Six percent (6%) prefer some other candidate in the race, and six percent (6%) are undecided. …
Early this month, Brown was slightly ahead 43% to 41% in a contest that has been neck and neck since last September. Brown, currently the state’s attorney general, bounced briefly ahead immediately following the state Democratic Convention in April, but the race tightened again in June after Whitman’s Republican primary win.
Being from California, I can attest to the fact that a state convention isn’t going to give a candidate a ten-point bounce. It’s good mainly for some earned media, but the candidates get chosen in primary contests in the Golden State, not conventions. Since the primary took place in June, the Republican convention last weekend was mainly aimed at organizing, and not the kind of candidate boosting that grabs headlines and moves polls.
Reid: No illegals in the workforce in Nevada?
HotAir.com
posted at 1:36 pm on July 13, 2010 by Ed Morrissey
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How many different ways can the immigration debate backfire on Democrats? Harry Reid may have invented a new way to shoot himself in the foot. When confronted by the CBS affiliate in Las Vegas over Reid’s block of a vote to require e-Verify for construction workers, Reid offered the standard platitude that immigration enforcement can’t be done “piecemeal” but has to wait for an overhaul of laws to replace the laws that the federal government doesn’t feel like enforcing. When pressed on the topic by the reporter, Reid insists that there are no illegal workers in Nevada (via the Boss Emeritus):
The report doesn’t offer the big quote from the interview, however (emphasis mine):
REPORTER: Why didn’t you allow for a vote?
REID: That’s the reason we need to do comprehensive immigration reform. We cannot do it piecemeal.
REPORTER: You go to the unemployment office, though, and there’s many US citizens who are unemployed construction workers and they don’t have specific jobs because, right now, some of those construction companies find it easier to hire undocumented workers.
REID: I think that any information you have in that regard is absolutely without foundation
VOICEOVER: We told Senator Reid of a Pew Hispanic Center study showing 17% of all construction workers are here illegally.
REID: That may be someplace, but it’s not here in Nevada.
VOICEOVER: But their latest 2009 numbers show that Nevada is the state with the highest percentage of unauthorized immigrants in the labor force.
Who told Obama deep-sea drilling was “absolutely safe”?
HotAir.com
posted at 11:36 am on June 18, 2010 by Ed Morrissey
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Byron York gives us a great whodunit today, and actually a second Obamateurism of the Day. In his speech on Tuesday, Obama defended his earlier decision to expand off-shore drilling because he had been told that such activity was “absolutely safe.” If Obama actually believed that, then a few people would like to sell him a bridge or two:
There was one particularly striking moment in President Obama’s widely panned Oval Office speech on the Gulf oil disaster. About midway through his talk, Obama acknowledged that he had approved new offshore drilling a few weeks before the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion on April 20. But Obama said he had done so only “under the assurance that it would be absolutely safe.”
Absolutely safe? Even before the Gulf spill, few defenders of offshore drilling would go that far. And when the president announced his drilling plan, on March 31, he said it was “not a decision that I’ve made lightly” and that he and his advisers had “looked at [it] closely for more than a year.” Surely he was told of the possible risks.
CNN: Americans too stupid to comprehend Obama’s genius, or something
HotAir.com
posted at 10:12 am on June 17, 2010 by Ed Morrissey
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Why did Barack Obama lay an egg with his Oval Office speech this week? Most people assume that his failure to give any specifics on fixing the problem, his attempts to leverage the spill for his policy agenda, and his empty promises of yet another commission and a “czar” painted Obama as an empty suit far out of his depth. CNN has a different analysis of Obama’s failure — that we’re out of his depth:
President Obama’s speech on the gulf oil disaster may have gone over the heads of many in his audience, according to an analysis of the 18-minute talk released Wednesday.
Tuesday night’s speech from the Oval Office of the White House was written to a 9.8 grade level, said Paul J.J. Payack, president of Global Language Monitor. The Austin, Texas-based company analyzes and catalogues trends in word usage and word choice and their impact on culture.
Though the president used slightly less than four sentences per paragraph, his 19.8 words per sentence “added some difficulty for his target audience,” Payack said.
Helen Thomas’ agency dumps her as client
HotAir.com
posted at 5:30 pm on June 6, 2010 by Ed Morrissey
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Perhaps Helen Thomas hoped that her apology would suffice in tamping down the furor over her videotaped rant telling the Jews to “get the hell out of Palestine.” It turns out that even her own agents didn’t buy it. Nine Speaker announced that it has dropped Thomas as a client, while Lanny Davis blasted the doyenne of the White House Press Corps as “an anti-Semitic bigot”:
Senior White House Press Corps member Helen Thomas may have apologized for her recent on-camera remarks calling on Jews to “get the hell out of Palestine” and go home to Europe, but her reputation seems beyond repair amid the abounding calls for her resignation.
In the wake of the incident, Thomas’ agent Nine Speaker Inc. announced that it would no longer represent her.
“It is with a heavy heart that Nine Speakers Inc. announces its resignation as the agent for Helen Thomas, Dean of the White House Press Corps,” wrote Diane Nine, agency president.
“Ms. Thomas has had an esteemed career as a journalist, and she has been a trailblazer for women, helping others in her profession, and beyond. However, in light of recent events, Nine Speakers is no longer able to represent Ms. Thomas, nor can we condone her comments on the Middle East,” wrote Nine.
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