This is not a Saturday Night Live sketch, this is real [I cannot stop laughing]. This has to be the ultimate representative optic of all things liberal and ridiculous.
In an effort to repair the optics stemming from the White House skipping the French “unity rally”, someone, somewhere, probably Secretary Kerry himself, thought it would be a great idea to take James Taylor to France to sing “you’ve got a friend” publicly, on stage, with Secretary Kerry – as the liberal audience/media look on swooningly….
I just cannot stop laughing. This is too funny to even be embarrassed. Watch:

(more…)

With the movie “Selma” seemingly shut out from Oscar Nominations -except best picture- the Reverend Al Sharpton has an opportunity to exploit his most recent antagonism.
Many people might remember the controversy over the Sony Entertainment hacked and leaked emails which showed some tongue-in-cheek snark toward President Obama.
The presidential advisor on race issues, Al Sharpton, compared the Sony Executives to formerly labeled racist LA Clippers owner, Donald Sterling; then demanded a meeting with the Hollywood executives to lay down his expectations for improvement.  They acquiesced:

[December 18th, 2014] (Reuters) – Civil rights activist Reverend Al Sharpton on Thursday did not call for Co-Chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment Amy Pascal to step down over racially insensitive emails, despite expectations that he might seek her resignation.

The private emails, leaked through a massive hacking attack on Sony Corp, included joking remarks related to U.S. President Barack Obama and his taste in movies. (more…)

Sharyl Attkisson has provided some new information on the closed door Benghazi Select Committee hearings and investigative inquiry.

Including the following from Trey Gowdy:

[…]  “The committee is continuing its probe into all aspects of Benghazi and is currently focused on ensuring access to all first-hand accounts from those on the ground that night. This process will be ongoing and in some respects must remain classified.”–Benghazi Select Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C.

We took a lot of fire -following the Benghazi Brief– when we explained why this would be the case.  The risks of sunlight are essentially equal to both Republicans -who approved the program(s) basic goals via intelligence oversight- and Democrats alike.
Apparently we were correct.

A new batch of emails show how IRS official Lois Lerner intentionally tried to stop inquiry about the IRS Targeting scheme back in April of 2012, and how the IRS was seeking to block congressional inquiry into the activity of the prior two years.
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released a new batch of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documents, including a series of emails from former IRS official Lois Lerner to then-Tax Exempt and Government Entities (TE/GE) Division Deputy Director Joseph H. Grant strongly objecting to his planned visit to the IRS Cincinnati office “smack dab in the middle” of congressional inquiries into the IRS targeting of conservative groups. Lerner also expresses concerns about a pending investigation by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) into the IRS’s handing of Tea Party applications. (more…)

Credit where credit is due. The messaging from the White House about why they haven’t called the terrorist attacks “Islamic Terrorism” must have been a top priority in the past 48 hours. As noted in this shift expressed by Josh Earnest. The question was posed:

“The leader of France, your ally in this effort, has put a name on this ideology, which he calls radical Islam,” noted NPR’s Mara Liasson. “You have bent over backwards to not ever say that. There must be a reason.”

Josh Earnest Responds: “The first is accuracy. We want to describe exactly what happened. These are individuals who carried out an act of terrorism and they later tried to justify that act of terrorism by invoking the religion of Islam and their own deviant view of it. (more…)

Both President Obama and Francois Hollande have refused to connect the terrorism in the U.S., France, Australia, Canada and North Africa to Islamic Extremism.  This cognitive disconnect they continue to exhibit exists despite the terrorists themselves clearly proclaiming their intents and motives.
(Via Vocativ) A new video released by an official ISIS forum shows Amedy Coulibaly, the 32-year-old terrorist who murdered four men during the Hyper Cacher siege in Paris, declaring his loyalty to the Islamic State.

“I’m a soldier of the Caliphate [ISIS] since the beginning,” Coulibaly says in the video. “Our group was coordinated before the attack. France is a legitimate target because [of] what they are doing to us.”
Coulibaly explains how he helped the Kouachi brothers prepare for the attack: “We did a few things together and a few things separately to maximize the impact. I helped them by giving them a few thousand euros to buy what they needed.” (more…)

People keep asking: why won’t the Obama administration admit the terror threat is specifically from Islamic extremists? The reason is simple.  They won’t admit it because once the problem is defined, they become responsible for an action plan to address it.  The administration does not want to address it, ergo as long as the threat can be obfuscated, no-one will be expected to do anything specific.
Hence, when Kelly File guest host Martha MacCallum confronts State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf about why the White House won’t openly say that radical Islam specifically is a major threat to the world – Harf avoids the specifics.

Harf told MacCallum that Islamic extremism is “not the only kind of extremism we face,” though when pressed to name other examples of troubling extremism, she simply said people all over the world want to kill each other for a “variety of causes.”

WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Barack Obama’s administration admitted it erred by failing to send a higher-ranking representative of the United States to the Paris unity march on Sunday.
He said Obama himself would have liked to attend the march “had the circumstances been a little different.” But planning began Friday night, 36 hours before the event began, and there wasn’t enough time for the “onerous and significant” security work that needed to take place ahead of a presidential visit, Earnest said. He said Obama’s presence also would have meant extra restrictions on the people who were there. (read more)

But, but, no-one from the secret service was ever queried:

…Alan Greenspan’s wife, Andrea Mitchell, is critiquing you on MSNBC.
President Obama spent the day Sunday watching football. Joe Biden also spent the day at home watching the playoffs in Delaware.