Obama's "Secret" Kill List

I guess 'secret' refers both to the identities of those on the list, including US citizens, and the fact that Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, appears to be unaware of it's existence.

Despite extensive reporting by the New York Times and others, she blows off a reporter like he is the nut in the room.

CBS Does A Positive Segment On Mitt Romney

I wonder how many of these people will still have jobs next week.

European Star Poster

This is remarkable: a new poster celebrating the European Commission.

It seems unlikely to be including the Hammer & Sickle for historical reasons, or else why no swastika or fasces?

Very odd. The Soviets slaughtered far more innocent people than the Nazis.

I guess they were just so darn inclusive they needed to be there. They included Poland, Czechoslovakia, Latvia, Estonia, East Germany, Hungary, Albania...

Movie: Cybergeddon

Looks like an Empowered Chick flick to me:

Gold at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York

I didn't know this:

The (New York) Fed is also home to "the world's largest accumulation of gold," according to the bank's website. Dozens of governments and central banks store a portion of their gold reserves in high-security vaults deep beneath the building. In recent years, it held 216 million troy ounces of gold, or more than a fifth of all global monetary gold reserves, making it a bigger bullion depository than Fort Knox.

It's in the news because a jihadi tried to blow it up today. He got stung.

Pyongyang Department Store Number 1

In 1989 Theodore Dalrymple went to North Korea with a cabal of British Communists.

His experience in watching the crowds at Pyongyang Department Store Number 1 is surreal. I cannot summarize it here in any way which would do it justice. It must be read to understand.

Oddly, one commentor seemed not to like the article, saying "I don't much like it as it smacks of a sense of self-righteousness and smug superiority on the part of the Englishman writing it." Yes, indeed, the self-righteousness of people who think some liberty is better for the human condition than none. That relative liberty produces more human happiness than do oppression, starvation, and terror.

Unless, of course, one identifies with the oppressors and those who terrorize.

Read the whole thing here.

Second Presidential Debate: Moderator Tackles Romney

Of course, she should: Obama went to her wedding.She owed him one:



In any case,Romney had already gotten Obama to assert that he had said the Benghazi attack was terrorism, when in fact for two weeks he called it a demonstration which got out of hand.

We'll see how that plays out.

UPDATE: Several links to comments at InstaPundit, including one to Michael Walsh at NationalReview Online: "If Obama knew it was terrorism on Day Two, then why did his administration continue to blame the video for days afterward?"

Seems to Me the Proper Response is...

...a loud "Go to Hell!" followed by dropping every magazine and book onto the counter and walking away. Repeat.

Country sports enthusiasts are furious at a decision by Britain's biggest newsagent to ban children from buying shooting magazines after a campaign by animal rights activists.

WH Smith says youngsters under 14 will not be sold shooting titles, even though it is legal to hold a shotgun licence below that age....

Earlier this year, Animal Aid, Britain's largest animal rights organisation, published a report which claimed that the "lurid, pro-violence content" of country sports magazines could have a "corrosive, long-lasting effect on impressionable young minds".

The report, Gunning For Children: How the gun lobby recruits young blood, argued that titles promoting guns should be put on the top shelf alongside pornography, and banned for sale to under-18s.

A spokesman for WH Smith said it did not wish to act as a censor...

As a private company, WH Smith has every right to act like everyone's nanny, and everyone has a right to fire that nanny.

'This Is Cornwall' has more here.

New Details From the Bay of Pigs Crisis

I remember sitting on the kitchen counter when I was 9 years old, listening to my sister tell me that Milwaukee was number 33 on the Soviet nuke list. There was more to it than we knew.

But on Oct. 27, one day before the public crisis would end, Castro cabled Khrushchev to urge a preemptive nuclear strike on U.S. targets.

My reaction: take the empty wine bottles out of the trash bucket at the top of the steps to the basement, fill them with water, re-cork them, and put them in the concrete pump room off of the laundry room. Also, to steal a first aid kit from the school bus and hide it in my bedroom closet.

My recollection is that my parents, who did not know about the first aid kit, thought my actions were mildly amusing. My friend's parents built a fall out shelter in the basement. That, apparently, was also something not to take very seriously.

We kids liked to play army, and built a fort in the dark, damp, sandy crawl space under our summer porch, from which we could cover the road, ready to combat the advancing Russian forces.

At the same time, our school had nuclear war drills, herding us into concrete block closets, where we would sit on the floor with our heads between our knees, waiting for Mr. Khrushchev to explode atomic bombs over the school.

More on the Bay of Pigs fiasco here.

Canada PM Stephen Harper on "the Malevolent Ideology" of the Iranian Government

Here, Here.

Benghazi Attack

The US State Department's website has a very interesting transcript of a conference call by senior officials describing the attack on the Benghazi compound on September 11th during which Ambassador Stevens was killed.

It looks like that the attackers were through the gate before security even had time to react to the shooting and explosion by checking the security cameras.

At 9:40 p.m., the agent in the TOC and the agents in Building C hear loud noises coming from the front gate. They also hear gunfire and an explosion. The agent in the TOC looks at his cameras – these are cameras that have pictures of the perimeter – and the camera on the main gate reveals a large number of people – a large number of men, armed men, flowing into the compound.

The compound:

The compound is roughly 300 yards long – that’s three football fields long – and a hundred yards wide. We need that much room to provide the best possible setback against car bombs. Over the next few months, physical security at the compound is strengthened. The outer wall is upgraded, its height is increased to nine feet.It is topped by three feet of barbed wire and concertina wire all around the huge property. External lighting is increased. Jersey barriers, which are big concrete blocks, are installed outside and inside the gate. Steel drop bars are added at the gates to control vehicle access and to provide some anti-ram protection. The buildings on the compound itself were strengthened.

After the survivors, several of them severely affected by smoke inhalation, decided they had to escape rather than hide or resist, they piled into an armored vehicle and made it to the street:

They come up to a knot of men in an adjacent compound, and one of the men signals them to turn into that compound. They agents at that point smell a rat, and they step on it. They have taken some fire already. At this point, they take very heavy fire as they go by this group of men. They take direct fire from AK-47s from about two feet away. The men also throw hand grenades or gelignite bombs under – at the vehicle and under it. At this point, the armored vehicle is extremely heavily impacted, but it’s still holding. There are two flat tires, but they’re still rolling. And they continue far down the block toward the crowds and far down several blocks to the crowd – to another crowd where this road t-bones into a main road. There is a crowd there. They pass through the crowd and on – turn right onto this main road. This main road is completely choked with traffic, enormous traffic jam typical for, I think, that time of night in that part of town. There are shops along the road there and so on.

Rather than get stuck in the traffic, the agents careen their car over the median – there is a median, a grassy median – and into the opposing traffic, and they go counter-flow until they emerge into a more lightly trafficked area and ultimately make their way to the annex.

Insufficient personnel aside, the compound itself seems reasonably well hardened. One listener's question, not directly answered, was how many security agents would it have taken to successfully defend the compound? It sounds like it would have taken a lot.

Transcript here.