Ken Berwitz

There is a rumor floating around that Hillary Clinton may testify at the latest Benghazi hearing (which, with Trey Gowdy as chair instead of Darrell Issa, may actually get some results).

If so, it will be nice to see Hillary again....given that, other than a one day, two-event, day in Canada, she has not headlined an event since December 15th of last year, and is not scheduled to do so again until some time in February.

The party line seems to be that she is resting and revving up for her big campaign push.  That may be true per se, but it doesn't begin to explain this long a period of time away from the spotlight for the usually-ubiquitous Ms. Clinton.

Here are a couple of possible alternative reasons:

-She has physical issues that have to be addressed.  Remember when we were told by Hubby Bubba that she needed 6 months to recuperate from a concussion last year?

-Or she is waiting for, and hoping that, the Jeffrey Epstein scandal will blow over.  It is not good for a presidential campaign if, a number of years ago, the potential President's spouse was cavorting with underage girls, courtesy of a convicted pedophile. 

Personally, if I were betting, I'd be betting on the Epstein thing. 

See, if it were only Bill Clinton, the Accomplice Media - which loves the Clintons like Esther Blodgett loved Norman Maine (sorry, that's the classic movie buff in me) - would probably just bury this juicy little scandal. 

But they have a problem:  one of the then-underage girls in question (she's now over 30) also fingered (in a manner of speaking) Alan Dershowitz. 

And Mr. Dershowitz, who is not running for public office, not only vehemently denies her allegations, but is demanding that everything be put out in the open, on the square, in the middle of the table, so he can prove he wasn't involved and thereby clear his name.

Do you need me to tell you that, if Bill Clinton was having sex with underage girls in Epstein's plane and on his private island, it is going to, er, hang heavily over Hillary Clinton and her campaign?

Let's put it this way:  if it can be shown that Hubby Bubba did what he is accused of....

as we used to say in the neighborhood, she will be dorked by the dangling genital region of destiny (ok, we said it a little differently, but I'm trying to be at least somewhat G rated here).

Is that the way of things?  Time will tell.  And Alan Dershowitz being who he is, we won't have to wait long.

Stay tuned.

Ken Berwitz

President Obama, I have a question.

I'm sure you remember ISIS -  the radical islamist group which, since you dismissed it as a "jayvee squad" last year, has taken over enough of Iraq and Syria to form its own state.

 Now that there is video footage of ajihadist from ISIS

-standing over a Kurdish soldier, 

-stating "Know, o Obama, that we will reach America.  Know also that we will cut off your head in the White House and transform America into a Muslim province",

-and then beheading the Kurdish soldier...

...do you still think radical Islam is not a threat?

Just asking.

Ken Berwitz

I do not have the verbatim transcript yet.  But, in this morning's confirmation hearing, Loretta Lynch, appointed by Barack Obama to replace eric holder as Attorney General, informed us that people who are here illegally should have equal dibs on jobs with legal citizens.

She tried to dance around the question, but that is what she said.

Ms. Lynch also made it clear that the de facto amnesty granted by President Obama - without the advice and consent of congress - was "reasonable":  i.e. she has no problem with it.

A question for you: if millions of illegals - preponderantly Mexican, and preponderantly undereducated/inexperienced, therefore looking for entry level positions - have an equal claim to jobs as legal citizens who would be looking for the same kind of work, which population segment do you think will be most adversely affected?

Congratulations, President Obama.  You are screwing Black people again...even as you continue to convince most of them that, because you share the same skin color, you must be looking out for their interests.

Ken Berwitz

Charles Blow is a New York Times op-ed columnist.  He has a son who attends Yale University.

On Monday, Mr. Blow's column was an impassioned account of his son being stopped, while walking from the library to his dorm, by an officer - with gun drawn - who told him to to identify himself, asked a number of other questions, and eventually let him continue on his way.

It turned out that a burglary had taken place and Mr. Blow's son matched the description given to police.

Charles Blow was scared out of his mind.  What if his son, who, having never been in such a situation and probably scared out of his mind, had made the wrong move - maybe reached for his ID before being asked, or spontaneously jerked his body out of fear?  He might have been shot dead on the spot. 

I would have felt the same way if that were my son.

Mr. Blow was also furious because he felt the gun should not have been drawn at that time, only if the suspect/his son made some kind of threatening move. 

I would have felt the same way about that too.

Mr. Blow did not mention the fact that his son is Black - though the fact that he is a Black man who writes almost exclusively from a Black perspective makes the racial angle implicit to any regular reader of his columns.  

Perhaps that is why he did not mention that the police officer who accosted his son, gun drawn, was also Black.

I have a great deal of sympathy for Charles Blow's emotional account of what his son went through.  As the parents of two children who went to out-of-town universities, My wife and I worried constantly about what might happen to them while they were far away from home.  And, if I were the father of a Black child, I would have an extra worry - a huge one - to deal with that Mr. Blow knows and I can only imagine.

That said, I would love to hear the officer's side.  Wouldn't you?

Was there a reason he was concerned/fearful enough to quickly - maybe prematurely - draw his gun; one which, for some reason, was not included in Charles Blow's column?  For example, had there been recent incidents of violence involving young men matching Mr. Blow's son's description, which caused him to do so?

I hope we find out.  But since I am guessing that everyone, on all sides, would like this incident to disappear into the memory hole as quickly as possible, I doubt we ever will.

Ken Berwitz

Here's a little bit of news most mainstream media won't be providing you with...because it reflects badly - very badly - on ObamaCare.

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), ten million people will be pushed off of employer-based insurance coverage by 2021.  Originally, it had projected just one million.

Ten million?  Up from one million?  For a system about which the President originally told us - dozens of times - that "if you like your coverage you can keep your coverage"?  If that isn't news, what is?

Well, it isn't.  Not for most media venues. 

Why?  Because, like the burying of the Bowe Bergdahl investigation, and the fact that radical Islamic terrorism is not "virtually decimated" but alive, well, and stronger then ever, it is embarrassing to Barack Obama.  And we can't have that, can we?

A question for anyone who can provide a credible answer:  why did the CBO get this so wrong?  Was it because they're all impossibly incompetent?  Was it because the data they were provided by Obama & Co. were so fraudulent that it caused this kind of disparity?  A combination of the two? 

And if the CBO can be so wrong about this element of ObamaCare, why would we believe anything else they have projected about any other element of it?

My final question:  what would it take for mainstream media to stop acting like Barack Obama's Accomplice Media, and report this information with the same flair it reported supposed "successes" for ObamaCare (remember how it covered the now-debunked 8.1 million signups ObamaCare was supposed to have achieved by last March?)

Or, put more simply, when are they going to be actual journalists again, rather than a cheering section for Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats?

Ken Berwitz

There are people - a good number of them, evidently - attacking Governors Cuomo of New York, Christie of New Jersey, Malloy of Connecticut and Mayor bill de blasio of New York City for overreacting to the blizzard that, for the most part, turned into little more than a good-sized snowfall (as opposed to Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Maine, where it was everything the forecasters predicted).

That is ridiculous.

The closing of schools, highways, etc. was not done on a whim or anyone's neuroses.  These leaders worked with the information they were given, by forecasters whose training and technology told them an epic blizzard was on the way. 

Instead of breathing a sigh of relief that things changed (as they often do with storms that come up the northeast corridor), it was much easier to take a cheap shot at the people who were trying to protect us.

What would these same geniuses have said if only minimal precautions were taken, and the blizzard fully materialized?  Would they be first on line to lay blame for the resulting stranded cars, accidents and fatalities on Cuomo, Christie, Malloy and de blasio?

I thank them all for doing the right thing. 

Kenneth Berwitz

Dennis Prager, writing for National Review, has done something I would have thought nearly impossible:  he has made an honest man of Barack Obama.

Mr. Prager did it by taking last week's State Of The Union Speech, putting up selected comments by Mr. Obama, and then putting up what Obama would have said if he were disposed to being honest.

Here is a little swatch of Prager's handiwork (you can read the rest by clicking here).  Enjoy the laugh, or gnash your teeth.  Maybe both:

President Obama (PO): "Six years ago, nearly 180,000 American troops served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, fewer than 15,000 remain. And we salute the courage and sacrifice of every man and woman in this 9/11 generation who has served to keep us safe."

Honest President Obama (HPO): "While I salute the courage of all the Americans who served there, my withdrawal has rendered their sacrifices meaningless. I made it possible for the Islamic State to rise and to control Mosul and other areas of Iraq, and enabled Iran, the most dangerous country in the world, to fill the void we left."

PO: "The shadow of crisis has passed, and the state of the union is strong."

HPO: "The shadow of my crisis has passed. I was reelected, my approval ratings are stable, and the 2014 elections that held me back from doing whatever I want to do are done with. As regards America and the world, however, the shadow of crisis is probably darker than at any time since World War II. And what I really meant when I said the state of the union is strong is that the state of the government is strong. The government controls more of Americans' lives than ever before."

PO: "Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well?"

HPO: "I know that in every country in the world only a few do spectacularly well. And as long as some human beings have more ability, work harder, and/or have more luck than others, that will always be the case. So why did I ask this pointless question? Because it foments class anger."

PO: "Will we allow ourselves to be sorted into factions and turned against one another?"

HPO: "In my six years as president it is we Democrats who have sorted Americans into factions - blacks against whites, women against men, and the poor and middle class against those who are richer - more than at any time in American history. How else can a Democrat win an election? If blacks don't resent whites, women don't think they're being suppressed by male sexism, and the 99 percent don't resent the 1 percent, Democrats will never win an election."

The bottom line? Dennis Prager is a very smart man.  And Barack Obama is a very dishonest one.

End of blog.

Ken Berwitz

Why will Barack Obama refuse to meet with Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu when he comes to the USA in March to address a joint session of congress? 

Because, according to the party line spouted by Obama & Co. for the past week, Israeli elections are later that month, and President Obama has a "long-standing policy" of not interfering with other country's elections. 

The fact that the Middle East is exploding, and Mr. Obama continues to facilitate Iran's development of a nuclear bomb...which, it has made clear, Israel would be primary among the targets it would use that bomb for?  Irrelevant'n'immaterial.  We don't get involved in other countries' elections.

The problem with this, readers, is that they are lying.   Flat-out lying.

Excerpted from Thomas Rose's piece at breitbart.com:

Just days after the Obama White House accused House Speaker John Boehner of "breaking protocol" by inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress, a team of up to five Obama campaign operatives has reportedly arrived in Israel to lead a campaign to defeat the Israeli Prime Minister in upcoming national elections scheduled for March 17.

The anti-Netanyahu, left wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports a group called "One Voice," reportedly funded by American donors, is paying for the Obama campaign team. That group is reportedly being lead by Obama's 2012 field director Jeremy Bird.

As Jerusalem Post columnist and putative Knesset candidate Caroline Glick reported on her Facebook page, "Obama won't meet Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington when he addresses the Joint Houses of Congress in March because of Netanyahu's visit's proximity to the Israeli elections. And Obama, of course believes in protocol and propriety which is why he won't get involved." And yet, Glick adds, "He's just sending his 2012 field campaign manager to Israel to run a campaign to defeat Netanyahu."

Let me say it again. They are lying.  Flat-out lying.

Do President Obama and the people around him ever tell the truth about anything?  And could President Obama possibly care less about the safety and security of Israel - one of our staunchest allies in the world?

Two more years of this nightmare.  I count the seconds.