– You Just Can’t Make This Stuff Up –

Obama’s Syria / ISIS  Plan:

√ Step One – Tell New York Times :  “It’s always been a fantasy,” he said, “this idea that we could provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth.”

√ Step Two – Go Golfing (vacation)

√ Step Three –  Interrupt vacation – Tell Media it’s horrible to see U.S. Journalists beheaded.

√ Step Four – More Golf.

√ Step Five –  End vacation – Announce you have no plan/strategy to deal with ISIS in Syria.

√ Step Six  – Conduct Polling

√ Step Seven – Apologize for golfing while U.S. journalists are beheaded by ISIS, and announce goal to develop a plan to deal with ISIS in Syria – details later.

√ Step Eight –  Review Polling Data – Keep results super secret.

√ Step Nine –  Call in MSNBC contributors to assemble sales pitch to deal with ISIS.

√ Step Ten  –  Construct marketing plan to sell the previously dismissed approach.  We will now “provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth.” in Syria.

√ Step Eleven –  Call in congressional leadership to inform them his MSNBC team has “got this” plan, are ready to sell it, and he doesn’t need congress. (link)

Step Twelve – Tell American electorate in prime-time speech to the nation how providing arms to the “moderate Syrian forces” will insure success in Syria.

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I-N-D-O-C-T-R-I-N-A-T-I-O-N (EVENT LINK)

CNN Pundit Paul Callan points out the problems with Eric Holder rushing in his civil rights division to Ferguson, Missouri.

(CNN) — If the United States Department of Justice has any real interest in obtaining justice in the tragic shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement of a new civil rights investigation in Ferguson, Missouri, (population 21,000) was a step in the wrong direction.

The department’s ham-handed effort to improve the political “optics” of active federal involvement may, ironically, create the reasonable doubt that will ultimately clear the shooter, Officer Darren Wilson.
The Department of Justice is likely to be impeding justice by proceeding prematurely with a federal investigation while local law enforcement authorities struggle with the facts of the complex and controversial case.
The DOJ investigations (there now appear to be two that have been officially announced) are highly prejudicial to the local prosecutor’s presentation of the case to the grand jury. The non-sequestered grand jurors who return home every night after scrutinizing evidence in the case are almost certain to hear of the existence of the new federal investigation.
After all, the investigation was personally announced by the attorney general himself after the President publicly commented on the case. The grand jurors might reasonably wonder why the federal government would open a civil rights investigation at the very same time they are hearing evidence about Ferguson’s most famous homicide. (more…)

We pointed this out last night and apparently it was so brutally obvious even Andrea Mitchell had to admit it:

The bigger story is actually who is not present. Within the list of the absent you can identify President Obama’s approach. (more…)

Yesterday we noted that CNN had buried their poll reflecting vast unfavorable public opinion of President Obama.
Indeed, even though the poll was taken by CNN/ORC they didn’t even provide the raw poll data that’s customarily available. Instead they couched their perspective on the information inside an article discussing Syria and ISIS:

[…] Obama’s upcoming speech comes as two Americans were murdered and grisly images and stories of the terrorist group needlessly killing enemies have emerged from Iraq and Syria. So far, Americans are not happy with how Obama has addressed the ISIS situation. The CNN/ORC poll shows that only 30% of Americans think that he has a clear plan for dealing with ISIS.

Overall, the President’s approval rating is 43%, while 55% disapprove how he is handling his role as commander in chief. (link)

Setting aside the fact that oddly 30% of Americans think President Obama has a clear plan for dealing with ISIS – after he said last week he did not have a strategy for ISIS – we can only assume 30% of those polled don’t watch or read the news.  I digress…
Occasionally serendipity steps into the room and provides an opportunity to expand on the discussion. This time serendipity is an MRC Study released yesterday which takes an empirical and historical look at media reported polling for President Obama (2014) vs. President Bush (2006). The results are as eye-opening as they are staggering.
(MRC) It’s no secret that television news has long been addicted to public opinion polls; decades ago, all three broadcast networks decided to partner with an influential newspaper (ABC News with the Washington Post; CBS News with the New York Times; and NBC News with the Wall Street Journal) to sponsor their own regular surveys for use in their political coverage. (more…)

UPDATE 9/9/14 @4:20pm : Eleven Arrests – MEMPHIS — Eleven teenagers have been arrested and charged in connection with an attack on several people in a grocery store parking lot in Memphis, police said Monday.
The teens, ranging in age from 14 to 19, face charges including aggravated assault and aggravated riot, police said.  Police did not release the names of the boys and girls who were charged after the fight Saturday night outside a Kroger grocery store.
The fight was caught on cellphone video.
They identified the 19-year-old as Raheem Richardson. It was not immediately known if he had a lawyer late Monday.  Police said a group of teenagers first attacked a 25-year-old customer as he left his car to enter the store. (read more)
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Do you remember when President Obama was debating Mitt Romney and he said this:

Well check out the list of advisors attending tonights’ Think Tank dinner:
We are doomed. RT @Bridget_PJM: The let’s-strategize-on-ISIS dinner list tonight, via the White House pic.twitter.com/kJI02cdBhI
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) September 9, 2014
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If you wanted to find a copy of the CNN/ORC Poll that Jake Tapper referenced during his Monday evening “The Lead” TV show, good luck.
Young Tapper stated the results of a CNN poll released today were “devastating to [president] Obama“. Apparently Tapper is correct because you won’t find the poll data on any CNN website.
And you won’t find any high visibility mention of it either.
If you dig far enough you’ll find an article on Syria / ISIS that references it, but that’s as far as it goes.  And if you read all the way down the article you find:

[…] Obama’s upcoming speech comes as two Americans were murdered and grisly images and stories of the terrorist group needlessly killing enemies have emerged from Iraq and Syria. So far, Americans are not happy with how Obama has addressed the ISIS situation. The CNN/ORC poll shows that only 30% of Americans think that he has a clear plan for dealing with ISIS.
Overall, the President’s approval rating is 43%, while 55% disapprove how he is handling his role as commander in chief. (link)

BINGO – Now we know why the actual poll data is missing. Candy Crowley must have it under her office cushion.
Nothing to see here folks, move along… move along.

The key issue is not that ISIS is using U.S. made weapons.  Given ISIS geographic conquests it would be expected, vis-à-vis Iraq, they were able to capture weapons and armament.     No, it’s the *type* of weapons, specifically boxed M16’s, which identifies the covert shipments to Syria we outlined within the Benghazi Brief.   

In 2012 those small arms were shipped to Syria as a result of President Obama’s authorization.  Saudi Arabia and Qatar were providing the financing, Turkey provided an initial storage base near Adana where the nerve center for supporting what became ISIS was set up.   The UN peacekeeper Kofi Annan was pulled out of Syria, and U.S. weapons were poured in.

On September 5th 2012 a Libyan flag ship called Al Entisar docked in the Turkish port of Iskenderun, it carried small arms and rockets from the U.S. originally destined for the Free Syrian Army.  However, by that point the FSA had collapsed and most of the leaders defected to join what is now ISIS.

(Via Raw Story) Islamic State fighters appear to be using captured US military issue arms and weapons supplied to moderate rebels in Syria by Saudi Arabia, according to a report published on Monday.

The study by the London-based small-arms research organisation Conflict Armament Research documented weapons seized by Kurdish forces from militants in Iraq and Syria over a 10-day period in July.

The report said the jihadists disposed of “significant quantities” of US-made small arms including M16 assault rifles and included photos showing the markings “Property of US Govt”. (more…)

As predicted:  The “Mike Brown Effect” Comes To Memphis Tennessee – A white male is jumped in the parking lot of a grocery store.  Two store employees try to stop the beating.   Video shows the cheering crowd chasing and then gleefully beating and kicking the employees. A young black female videotaped the assault while gleefully proclaiming “they got a white dude.”  This beating took place Saturday September 6th – Reverse the races and Don Lemon/Anderson Cooper/Sonni Hostin would be airing 24/7…..
[…] According to police, three white people were jumped by a large group of teenagers who were chanting “fam mob.” The black group, who came from CiCi’s Pizza, reportedly attacked a 25-year-old white customer as he left his car to enter Kroger.

Two white employees, ages 17 and 18, were attacked while trying to stop the fight. Both were “struck several times in the head and face while being knocked to the ground”. The victims say large pumpkins were thrown at their heads. They both were eventually knocked unconscious. (more…)