No New England restaurants on the list?
Fahgettaboutit.
A suggestion to Romney for the 3rd debate
In the second debate Obama ordered somebody—Crowley, Romney, all of us?—to “get the transcript” of his Rose Garden speech.
So maybe Romney should oblige, and say something like this:
Mr President, last week during our debate you told the American people that you had called what happened in Benghazi an “act of terror” in your Rose Garden speech. When I said that you had actually taken much longer than that to call it an act of terror, you said “get the transcript.”
Well, I took you up on that.
Mr. President, you are an excellent speaker with a good command of the English language. If you had meant to call them acts of terror you had plenty of opportunity to do so. But according to the transcript, you did not.
And then he should describe what the president did say.
I doubt that Romney will do it. And maybe that’s for the best. Perhaps it’s best to not go over that territory again, because at this point it may seem like repetitive nit-picking. But if Obama decides to revisit the topic, it needs to be countered.
Yes, there are a lot more important things than this fussing over words and their meaning. The are extremely vital issues of foresight, protection, and veracity involved. But it is galling to see Obama get away with his fake outrage.
For all the verbiage around this incident, how many people have actually done what Obama told them (or told someone, perhaps Crowley) to do: get the transcript? And how many people have actually read the whole thing?
Dance teachers I have known: Finis Jhung
I came across a video that was touted as amazing, featuring a 75-year-old man who still teaches ballet.
My first thought was, “That’s not the least bit amazing.” Quite a few of the ballet teachers of my youth reached that sort of advanced age without retiring—an age which, by the way, no longer sounds all that advanced.
My second thought was, “I bet it’s Finis Jhung.”
And sure enough, it was (here’s the video, which can’t be embedded).
Finis Jhung was one of many teachers with whom I studied back in the day. The place: New York. The time: the early 70s, which would have made him a relatively young man somewhere in his mid-thirties. He was phenomenal even then, having committed the single most astonishing physical feat I’ve ever seen a dance teacher perform.
A small, slight man, he was unimpressive-looking for the most part, although pleasant enough. His studio had a peculiarity that I assume he had constructed to his specifications: a loft-like platform way above the large airy high-ceilinged room where we ballet students labored.
From his superior perch he could see us all; there was no hiding from his sharp eyes. He never demonstrated the steps, but sat in a chair the entire time and explained the movements he wanted.
Jhung was unfailingly soft-spoken and yet demanding. Towards the end of one particular class, we just could not understand a combination of jumps he was trying to set on us. As he repeated himself and we floundered, he showed a rare spark of exasperation. Throwing his hands up, he asked, “Do I have to come down there and show it to you?
The idea that he might actually come down from his perch was as strange as the notion that he might actually be feeling a bit of anger. But sure enough, he descended (a ladder? a small staircase? I can’t remember) and came down to the floor, level with us.
I need to make it clear that he’d been sitting up there for about an hour and a half, perhaps more; this was towards the end of a very long class. In order to dance, a person needs to be warmed up with a series of graduated moves designed to get the muscles loose and the juices properly flowing. Otherwise it is highly likely a muscle will be pulled. And it is almost a given that the dancing will be highly substandard even if the dancer manages to get by without injury.
In short, it shouldn’t be done, and most people couldn’t do it. But Jhung immediately began the combination, which featured huge and difficult jumps (the ones most likely to lead to injury under these circumstances). He performed them with such finesse, flair, and elevation that it was like watching a bravura stage performance.
It seemed Jhung was made of different material than the rest of us—stretchier, more resilient, more graceful, springy, and powerful. So it surprises me not at all that he’s still moving fluidly at seventy-five, although not anything like he did at thirty-five.
Alas, I can find no videos of Finis Jhung performing or teaching in his prime. Perhaps there are none; dancing is an ephemeral art, and used to be more so before the days of the ubiquitous video camera. There are plenty of recent videos of him teaching, though. Here’s a typical one, made just a couple of years ago:
Bringing them to justice
Apparently the wheels of justice grind slow:
Witnesses and the authorities have called Ahmed Abu Khattala one of the ringleaders of the Sept. 11 attack on the American diplomatic mission [in Benghazi]. But just days after President Obama reasserted his vow to bring those responsible to justice, Mr. Abu Khattala spent two leisurely hours on Thursday evening at a crowded luxury hotel, sipping a strawberry frappe on a patio and scoffing at the threats coming from the American and Libyan governments.
Libya’s fledgling national army is a “national chicken,” Mr. Abu Khattala said, using an Arabic rhyme. Asked who should take responsibility for apprehending the mission’s attackers, he smirked at the idea that the weak Libyan government could possibly do it. And he accused the leaders of the United States of “playing with the emotions of the American people” and “using the consulate attack just to gather votes for their elections.”…
…[N]o authority has even questioned him about the attack, he said, and he has no plans to go into hiding…Mr. Abu Khattala, 41, wearing a red fez and sandals, added his own spin. Contradicting the accounts of many witnesses and the most recent account of the Obama administration, he contended that the attack had grown out of a peaceful protest against a video made in the United States that mocked the Prophet Muhammad and Islam…
I continue to wonder how it is that more than 15% of the population can still be planning to vote for Obama.
Obama’s “optimal” remark…
…was most definitely not optimal.
And yet that sort of gaffe isn’t the sort of thing that especially interests me (your mileage may differ). Everyone already ought to be aware that he’s got a cold attitude, and that he’s made a series of egregious moves in connection with Benghazi—including his entire mideastern foreign policy, for starters.
I just can’t get excited about his Spockian technospeak; it doesn’t really add much information to what is already out there.
Follow up: was there collusion between Obama and Crowley?
I admit at the outset I don’t know the answer. But I wonder why no one in the MSM is asking the questions.
I take that back; I don’t wonder. I don’t think they want to know.
But if I were a reporter instead of someone working at my computer in a kitchen somewhere in New England, dressed in blogger PJs (actually, it’s usually sweatpants), there are some questions I’d be asking.
First though, let’s watch the video of the debate. The controversial exchange begins at around 1:12:17 with a question by Crowley (which is interesting in and of itself in terms of whether there might have been collusion between Crowley and Obama):
And here are my questions, for Crowley or others:
(1) What was the content of the papers Crowley was holding?
(2) Do moderators ordinarily have transcripts of the candidates’ speeches on hand to refer to? If not, what made Obama think Crowley (or someone else) had access to the transcript when he summarily ordered her (or someone else) to “get” it?
(3) Whom was Obama addressing in his order to “get the transcript”? It’s impossible to tell from the angle in the video, because we can’t see who he’s looking at, and he doesn’t address anyone by name. Most people have assumed it was Crowley, and some have assumed the papers she’s holding contained the transcript, but we really don’t know the answer to either question (although by her response, it certainly seems that Crowley thought he was addressing her). If C-SPAN or any other news outlet has videos that show different angles, and could clarify any of these questions re the intended target of Obama’s order to get the transcript, it would be very helpful.
(4) I haven’t studied Crowley’s body language throughout the entire debate. But I looked at quite a bit of it, and I noticed that she does have a couple of papers on the table in front of her from the start, papers she sometimes touches and shuffles and looks at but rarely refers to or raises. And yet when the crucial part of discussion in question is about to begin, Crowley starts to fiddle with her papers a great deal more (around 1:12:55), and continues to do so throughout the heated exchange that follows, in a way that seems quite different from before (and prior to Obama’s words “get the transcript”). It’s hard not to suspect that she’s anticipating something, or is for some reason particularly nervous. At the pivotal moment when Obama says “get the transcript” (1:14:21) Crowley instantaneously replies “He did in fact sir” and at the same time stands and waves a paper in her right hand.
Is that the only time she does anything of the sort during the debate? It’s the only time I noticed it, but a closer and more careful perusal of the video would reveal whether this was true. If so, this singular and unusual body language from Crowley during the debate at that particular juncture would seem significant. Also, at least to the best of my knowledge, this is the only time Crowley attempts to “fact-check” in real time (something I don’t think has ever been done by a moderator in a presidential debate). Why did she decide to do this?
(5) Assuming the answer to question #1 is “not a transcript”—when Crowley said to Romney “he [Obama] did in fact, sir,” what was she referring to? What exactly did she think Obama had “in fact” said during the Rose Garden speech? Was she aware of his actual words? Had she memorized his Rose Garden speech? Did she not know that merely using the phrase “acts of terror” the way Obama did was not calling Benghazi a terrorist attack, and that it was at best ambiguous? And if she knew that, why state it as though it were otherwise? And if she didn’t know what Obama actually said, why would she think she could guess and speak as the voice of authority, as though she had actually looked it up on a transcript? Why did she wave the paper around at that point? Did she want people to believe she’d looked it up when she hadn’t?
(6) Or if the answer to question #1 was that the paper was in fact a transcript, why would she have had this transcript with her? And did she even have time to look it up? How was she able to answer so quickly? If it was a transcript, why didn’t she find a quote and read it?
(7) Are there other camera angles (perhaps at C-SPAN) that could be studied for more information about Crowley and the papers? Any close-ups of what was written on them, for example?
[ADDENDUM: It turns out that Jack Cashill is asking some of the same questions (hat tip: commenter “Curtis.”]
Michael Totten wants to go back to Libya…
…and you might want to help him get there:
Will [Libya] disintegrate into a failed militia state like Somalia with terrorists controlling some of the fragments? Will it lapse again into authoritarian or even totalitarian rule, the only kind of government it has ever known? Or will it beat the odds and cohere into something that looks like democracy?
Nobody knows, but I’m going over there to take a look and report on what’s happening now. My first-person narrative dispatches from Middle Eastern countries at war and in the throes of revolution garnered me three blogging awards and a book prize, but I still work as a freelancer. I don’t have a salary, let alone a travel expense account.
That’s where you come in. Fund my next trip””to Libya near the end of this year””so I can produce a brand-new batch of first-person narrative dispatches. You can follow along as I publish them on my blog. And at the end of the project, I’ll publish all my material as a dispatch pack””including full-color photographs””that you can read on your iPad, your Kindle, or any other tablet or reading device. And if you don’t have a tablet or reading device, you can just read them on your computer. Generous donors will receive public thank-yous from me, on my blog and in the dispatch pack when it’s published.
I’m not asking you for donations. I’m asking you to participate and will give you something back in return. Let’s go to Libya.
Romney does stand-up
And very very well, too:
And let me just say, at the risk of being thought shallow, that nobody can do white tie like Romney can do white tie. As he acknowledged: “It’s nice to finally relax and wear what Ann and I wear around the house.”
And here’s Obama, who gets in a few good jokes too (although not nearly as many, IMHO):
[Hat tip: Ace.]
At the risk…
…of becoming a bloody bore on the topic of Crowley, Obama, the debate, and Benghazi—even more than I may have already done—please bear with me for one more post.
When I took another look at the text of Obama’s Rose Garden speech after Benghazi (I do this tedious stuff so you don’t have to), I noticed the number of times Obama characterized the Benghazi violence in some way. I’ve highlighted every one of them in bold:
THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. Every day, all across the world, American diplomats and civilians work tirelessly to advance the interests and values of our nation. Often, they are away from their families. Sometimes, they brave great danger.
Yesterday, four of these extraordinary Americans were killed in an attack on our diplomatic post in Benghazi. Among those killed was our Ambassador, Chris Stevens, as well as Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith. We are still notifying the families of the others who were killed. And today, the American people stand united in holding the families of the four Americans in our thoughts and in our prayers.
The United States condemns in the strongest terms this outrageous and shocking attack. We’re working with the government of Libya to secure our diplomats. I’ve also directed my administration to increase our security at diplomatic posts around the world. And make no mistake, we will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the killers who attacked our people.
Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. But there is absolutely no justification to this type of senseless violence. None. The world must stand together to unequivocally reject these brutal acts.
Already, many Libyans have joined us in doing so, and this attack will not break the bonds between the United States and Libya. Libyan security personnel fought back against the attackers alongside Americans. Libyans helped some of our diplomats find safety, and they carried Ambassador Stevens’s body to the hospital, where we tragically learned that he had died.
It’s especially tragic that Chris Stevens died in Benghazi because it is a city that he helped to save. At the height of the Libyan revolution, Chris led our diplomatic post in Benghazi. With characteristic skill, courage, and resolve, he built partnerships with Libyan revolutionaries, and helped them as they planned to build a new Libya. When the Qaddafi regime came to an end, Chris was there to serve as our ambassador to the new Libya, and he worked tirelessly to support this young democracy, and I think both Secretary Clinton and I relied deeply on his knowledge of the situation on the ground there. He was a role model to all who worked with him and to the young diplomats who aspire to walk in his footsteps.
Along with his colleagues, Chris died in a country that is still striving to emerge from the recent experience of war. Today, the loss of these four Americans is fresh, but our memories of them linger on. I have no doubt that their legacy will live on through the work that they did far from our shores and in the hearts of those who love them back home.
Of course, yesterday was already a painful day for our nation as we marked the solemn memory of the 9/11 attacks. We mourned with the families who were lost on that day. I visited the graves of troops who made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq and Afghanistan at the hallowed grounds of Arlington Cemetery, and had the opportunity to say thank you and visit some of our wounded warriors at Walter Reed. And then last night, we learned the news of this attack in Benghazi.
As Americans, let us never, ever forget that our freedom is only sustained because there are people who are willing to fight for it, to stand up for it, and in some cases, lay down their lives for it. Our country is only as strong as the character of our people and the service of those both civilian and military who represent us around the globe.
No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.
But we also know that the lives these Americans led stand in stark contrast to those of their attackers. These four Americans stood up for freedom and human dignity. They should give every American great pride in the country that they served, and the hope that our flag represents to people around the globe who also yearn to live in freedom and with dignity.
We grieve with their families, but let us carry on their memory, and let us continue their work of seeking a stronger America and a better world for all of our children.
Thank you. May God bless the memory of those we lost and may God bless the United States of America.
You can see that in his speech Obama characterizes the Benghazi violence and/or its perpetrators ten separate times, in an address that is only about 800 words long in its entirety. Each time, he might have chosen to have said “terrorist attacks” or “terrorists” or “terrorism,” but each time he chose not to do so. Instead, he used the words “attack” or “attackers” seven times, the word “act” twice, and the word “violence” once. He’s not shy about employing adjectives to modify those words, either: he calls them “senseless,” “brutal,” “terrible,”outrageous,” and “shocking.”
Note, however, that the word “terrorist” is never used as an adjective to modify Obama’s descriptions of what happened in Benghazi, nor is it used as a noun to describe the perpetrators. There is no question that the omission was intentional on Obama’s part, because if Obama had wanted to call it a terrorist attack it would have been natural to actually, like, you know, do so.
The only mention of terrorist acts by Obama comes, as I wrote yesterday, in his generic statement of resolve after mentioning both the 9/11 attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (9/11 being an unequivocal act of terrorism, and both wars being part of what used to be called the “War on Terror”).
Obama’s Rose Garden speech was carefully written to make sure the President sounded as though he may have been hinting at quite a few things that he’s not really saying, in order to keep all his options open later.
Speaking of options—watch the tape of the moment in the debate when Obama makes the claim. The words I’m talking about occur right at the beginning where Obama says [emphasis mine], “The day after the attack, Governor, I stood in the Rose Garden, and I told the American people and the world that we were going to find out exactly what happened, that this was an act of terror, and I also said that we were going to hunt down those who committed this crime.”
To me it appears that Obama feels that he is putting down some extremely tempting bait for Romney, hoping his opponent will bite.
He has rehearsed this approach in preparation for a Libya/Benghazi question; he believes it to be his trump card, and he knows Crowley will cover for him—or, if she fails to do so, that the MSM will do it for her.
It’s also possible that Obama (or his surrogates) have worked this out ahead of time with Crowley. I don’t know; it’s certainly possible, because her waving those papers around when asked to look at the transcript of the speech (are they actually a transcript? Or something else?) is rather odd. Whichever it is, pre-arranged or no, Obama seems especially delighted at what Crowley says, asking her to repeat it and setting up a nice round of forbidden applause (led by Michelle–preplanned as well?) from the audience. Gotcha!
Note also Obama’s affect when Romney questions him as to whether he really means to assert that he called it an act of terror the day after the attack. The camera zooms in on Obama as the president says to Romney “Please proceed, Governor,” and then cuts away just after the fleeting ghost of a faint smile crosses Obama’s face (mostly in his eyes; it occurs at about 1:22). It is at that point that Obama summarily orders Crowley to “check the transcript” (no “please” for Obama), and she immediately answers that Obama did say it that way. Not only do we know that assertion is false, but she didn’t even seem to have time to check any transcript between Obama’s request and her answer.
Crowley attempts to explain it all here:
No one told [Crowley] that Obama had, in fact, uttered the word “terror” the day after the Benghazi attack, and no one had to. “I’d heard it in the Rose Garden,” she said, “I’d seen it before. I’d heard this conversation before.”
Alert!: non-election post
Tired of the election? Tired of my writing about it?
Don’t despair. Here’s a thread to pause and refresh. Take a big drink of water and a deep breath.
In other news, it’s a beautiful day here in New England. So was yesterday. There’s a little nip of fall in the air, but not too much. Just right, says Goldilocks.
This fall hasn’t been one of the most beautiful of autumns because we had so much rain earlier in the season that the most brilliant colors, the ones that come out first, dropped prematurely. But what’s left is still very beautiful, and I have the photos I took yesterday to prove it.
I was going to post them, but for a technical glitch (“technical glitch”; my middle name). That’s because I got a spiffy new phone the other day, a Samsung Galaxy III, and of course I’m having transition problems. All of the usual ways I’ve learned to transfer photos to my computer aren’t working, so my next move will be to locate the manual online.
Which brings us to a big pet peeve of mine: online manuals. Yes, I know the reasons they’ve become so ubiquitous. But I hate, hate, hate them. I prefer a hard copy, which enables me to flip around and find the relevant parts easily, not just the information the search engine deems relevant. I like to see the whole picture, and for me it’s much much easier to do that with an actual booklet in my hand—a preference that marks me once again as the dinosaur that I am.
The meme of Romney the woman-hater must be preserved at all costs…
…even to the point of a ridiculous fastening on a phrase whose meaning is quite clear in context, and non-pejorative.
Thus, the binder brouhaha. The left believes it necessary because Mitt Romney cannot be seen as he really is, a governor of Massachusetts who had a great many women in his administration, many of whom speak very highly of him.
I still think Romney would do well to make a campaign ad out of Jane Edmonds’ speech at the RNC—a woman, a liberal, and a black woman at that, who has nothing but nice things to say about him. It would blow the minds of the feminist left—unbind them, as it were (if such a thing be possible, which I doubt).
In case you missed Edmonds’ address, here it is:
Election 2012: it seems The Onion is everywhere
Hard to believe that this is serious—and seriously meant to demonstrate “objectivity.” But according to Powerline’s John Hinderaker, who is relying on TMZ, it’s a copy of an internal CNN email responding to criticism of Candy Crowley’s debate moderation.
But this, this is obviously satire. It is, isn’t it? Isn’t it??