"No Tie to Global Terrorism Is Seen" headlines the NYT.

That appeared at the NYT yesterday, at the top of the front page, and you can see the time stamp: 3:20 PM.

That caught my eye because of the way the NYT, in an earlier report, blogged here, made Donald Trump seem bad for for saying "I must tell you that just before I got off the plane, a bomb went off in New York and nobody knows exactly what’s going on." The Times followed that by saying that Hillary Clinton "seemed to scold Mr. Trump for his quick assessment. 'I think it’s always wiser to wait until you have information before making conclusions,' Mrs. Clinton said." The Times omitted what Hillary said right before that: "I've been briefed about the bombings in New York and New Jersey." All we had were 2 candidates having heard about what happened and calling it a bomb. But the NYT presented it to look as though Trump was impulsive and Hillary was sober and thoughtful.

How little should it take before we jump to impugn others for "making conclusions"? If we're going to be super-sensitive, no one will escape reproach. How was it possible for the NYT to say "No Tie to Global Terrorism Is Seen" less than a day after a bomb explodes with an investigation getting underway?

Meanwhile, this morning, we're getting a new report — "Police Raid New Jersey Home in Search of Manhattan Bomber":

Hours after five pipe bombs were discovered near a train station in Elizabeth, N.J., federal agents and the police raided a home nearby early Monday morning as part of the sweeping search for the person or people responsible for Saturday night’s bombing in Manhattan.

The police released a photograph of a 28-year-old man, described as a naturalized citizen of Afghan descent, , [sic] Ahmad Khan Rahami, who is wanted in connection with the attack.

It's just a name. Just a place of origin. Remember: It’s always wiser to wait until you have information before making conclusions.

ADDED: It's dangerous to elevate Hillary Clinton for issuing the sober bromide "it’s always wiser to wait until you have information before making conclusions," because it makes me want to think of the times when she made a conclusion before she had information. For example: "We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with."

Hillary's communications director Jen Palmieri sounded utterly terrified facing questions from George Stephanopoulos.

Palmieri should have been perfectly prepared. She's the communications director so she should be an ace at communications. She knew the precise issue she would be asked to address: Hillary's statement, in the previous night's debate, that Donald Trump is "ISIS's best recruiter" and that ISIS is "going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists." Palmieri knew everyone was demanding to know whether there were actual videos. All she needed was a packaged answer, the best answer under the circumstances, and to deliver that answer with confidence. Here's the video. Here's the transcript.

Why did she fumble, look scared, and speak in a trembling voice?! 

Palmieri's segment followed a phone interview with Donald Trump, Donald Trump had just totally overwhelmed Stephanopoulos, and Stephanopoulos's first question to Palmieri incorporated the formidible Trump: "Your response to Donald Trump?" Maybe she was prepared, but Donald Trump unnerved her. She began:

Hillary Clinton calls the movie about Kim Jong-un "disgusting and reprehensible."

"The United States government had absolutely nothing to do with this movie. We absolutely reject its content and message. To us — to me personally — this movie is disgusting and reprehensible. It appears to have a deeply cynical purpose — to denigrate a revered world leader and to provoke rage..."



Oh... wait... that was that "Innocence of Muslims" movie about Muhammad that some sleazy guy made. Is he still in jail? This Kim Jong-un movie is a different matter. Free speech! Free speech! How dare the North Koreans object to "the fiery, slow-motion assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, to the tune of Katy Perry's 'Firework'"!

“We will make it less gory," the [director Seth Rogen responded to Sony Pictures' Amy Pascal who had some concerns]. "There are currently four burn marks on his face. We will take out three of them, leaving only one. We reduce the flaming hair by 50%." In October, Rogen sent Pascal a follow-up message with the subject line "Kim Face Fix," noting that "the entire secondary wave of head chunks" had been removed. A special-effects technician later weighed in with an update: "the goop from the head pop is darker, specifically to make it less flesh-like and more surreal."

I'm all for free speech, myself. Even for corporations like Citizens United and Sony. But why is this movie deserving of high-level government support when "Innocence of Muslims" was treated like the garbage that — on an artistic/expressive level — it actually was? Let's have some consistency! Do we love free speech and stand up to foreign bullies or don't we? Pick one!

"Two expressions that became especially popular with CBS News brass, [Sharyl Attkisson] says, were 'incremental' and 'piling on.'"

"These are code for 'excuses for stories they really don’t want, even as we observe that developments on stories they like are aired in the tiniest of increments.'..."

The administration, with the full cooperation of the media, has successfully turned “Benghazi” into a word associated with nutters, like “Roswell” or “grassy knoll,” but Attkisson notes that “the truth is that most of the damaging information came from Obama administration insiders. From government documents. From sources who were outraged by their own government’s behavior and what they viewed as a coverup.”...

She notes that the program, which under previous hosts Dan Rather, Katie Couric and Bob Schieffer largely gave her free rein, became so hostile to real reporting that investigative journalist Armen Keteyian and his producer Keith Summa asked for their unit to be taken off the program’s budget (so they could pitch stories to other CBS News programs), then Summa left the network entirely.

When Attkisson had an exclusive, on-camera interview lined up with Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the YouTube filmmaker Hillary Clinton blamed for the Benghazi attacks, CBS News president Rhodes nixed the idea: “That’s kind of old news, isn’t it?” he said.

Jane Harman recited not the talking points, but the opposite of talking points on Benghazi.

The former Democratic Congresswoman went too far on "Fox News Sunday" yesterday. She intended, I think, to present the Democrats' talking points on Benghazi, but at one point — in just a few words — she let us see the way Democratic Party strategists are talking to each other behind the scenes about the effect the talking points are supposed to have on the public mind. I'm visualizing a memo that has bullet points of what one ought to say out loud and a narrative section of things you don't want to say.

The host Chris Wallace turned to Harman for discussion of the new efforts to investigate what happened 2 years ago in Benghazi, and she quickly got to the declaration "This is a circus" and the suggestion that the idea is "to get Hillary Clinton or some way to embarrass her during the election season."

There's some talk about the Rhodes memo (with Harman saying that maybe it only came out when it did because there was "some claim of executive privilege") and assertions that there was "legitimate confusion" when Susan Rice received her preparation to go on all the Sunday shows and to attribute the Benghazi attack to spontaneous protests over the "Innocence of Muslims" video. It was "an intelligence failure." And on saying that phrase "intelligence failure," and just before saying "it's time to move on and focus on the real problems," she wedges this in:

And, by the way, this was an intelligence failure. But it wasn't a conspiracy. And there aren't aliens in Area 51 and Vince Foster wasn't murdered.

And there aren't aliens in Area 51 and Vince Foster wasn't murdered. That was too revealing! I suspect... Look, I realize I can be accused of "conspiracy" thinking to suspect something and to speak as if I know what they're saying behind our back... but here's the kind of thing Harman's Area-51-Vince-Foster remark made me feel they are saying in private:

We need people to hear the word "Benghazi" as a buzzword of nuts. Somebody says "Benghazi" and the reflex reaction is "Oh, no, here we go again with the conspiracy theories." It should be like when somebody brings up Area 51 or Vince Foster was murdered. A normal person is like "Ugh! Leave me alone." That's the way "Benghazi" should feel. Somebody says "Benghazi" and all anybody thinks is "conspiracy nutcase." Nobody who wants to be considered mainstream in this election should be able to say "Benghazi" anymore. Case closed, and you've built in the respect for Hillary saying "What difference at this point does it make?" Everybody decent — if we get this idea across — will react to Benghazi with a Hillary-esque exasperated "What difference does it make?" If it makes a difference to you, you're crazy. This is a circus. You're a clown. A scary clown. Boo! Aliens! Benghazi! Vince Foster!

"Newly released emails on the Benghazi terror attack suggest a senior White House aide played a central role..."

"... in preparing former U.N. ambassador Susan Rice for her controversial Sunday show appearances -- where she wrongly blamed protests over an Internet video."

The email [from Ben Rhodes, an assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for strategic communications] lists the following two goals, among others:

"To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy."

"To reinforce the President and Administration's strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges."

"The minute you knew what happened, you knew it was a terrorist attack."

Said Dianne Feinstein, on yesterday's "Meet the Press," where she was the one defending the Obama administration, but even she moved to get some distance between her and them.

 “When you see a group going up with RPGS and weapons to break into one of our facilities, you can assume it’s a terrorist attack. Unfortunately, the word extremist was used which is not as crystal clear as terrorist. The real-time video which we have all seen reveals that there was virtually no defense. The militia from Libya sent to guard the embassy disappeared the minute these people came down the street. These people just walked right into the facility.”

Why was the word "extremist" preferred to "terrorist"? I don't think either word is "crystal clear." I think both words are "not a crystal, transparent and unchanging, [but] the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in colour and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used" (to quote Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.).

Considering the the circumstances and time in which "extremist" was used and "terrorist" was actively avoided, what was the living thought within each of those 2 words?

Terrorist relates to the war on terrorism. A terrorist seems connected to a network of terrorism, specifically al Qaeda. It suggests organization and it connects a problem of violence to an entire religion. It seems to magnify the significance of the attacks as the leading edge of a group that has been elevated for 12 years as a military enemy, an enemy the Obama administration would like to say it has defeated. One way to claim victory is to stop using the word that is connected with the long war, to demote these violent characters from the status of terrorist. A terrorist terrifies. We are not terrified. We won. We need to get that message out: We won! And we're going to keep winning. We need to win... the war and the election.

Extremist relates to the mind of the individual who's moved into an extreme form of ideation, who's gone from the normal way of thinking about power and politics and has become a crazy nut who will cross the line — perhaps suddenly and insanely — into murderous violence. This misguided individual may have heard a lot of talk — perhaps suddenly, perhaps via YouTube — that he cannot process properly. He's gone into furious thinking and loses control. There's no global network of organized action — nothing like a military enemy in a war — but just the network of disordered thinking within the small globe of a man's skull. This is, unfortunately, something that happens. It happened to Jared Loughner and to Timothy McVeigh. We need to reach and soothe the minds of young men that might burst out into violence. Let them know we care, perhaps through the political theater of distancing ourselves from a disgusting and reprehensible video.

"Nakoula Basseley Nakoula deserves a place in American history."

"He is the first person in this country jailed for violating Islamic anti-blasphemy laws."

"For there to have been a demonstration on Chris Stevens's front door and him not to have reported it is unbelievable."

"I never reported a demonstration; I reported an attack on the consulate. Chris - Chris's last report, if you want to say his final report - is, 'Greg, we are under attack,'" said Greg Hicks, who was "the highest-ranking U.S. official in Libya after the strike." This was quoted on yesterday's "Face the Nation," where the guest was Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who chairs the the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, before which Hicks will testify this week.

"...I've never been as embarrassed in my life, in my career, as on that day," Hicks continued in his interview with investigators. "The net impact of what has transpired is, [Rice,] the spokesperson of the most powerful country in the world, has basically said that the president of Libya is either a liar of doesn't know what he's talking about. ....My jaw hit the floor as I watched this....

"You can't insult a foreign leader in a greater way than happened literally here, just those few days later," Issa said. "Ambassadors know that the one thing you can't do is contradict your host, especially at a time when you need their cooperation. This was a fatal error to our relationship, at least for a period of time. And we can't find the purpose. [Secretary of State Hillary Clinton] should have been among - above all else - the person who was on the same sheet of music with the Libyan government, and she wasn't."

Watch this segment of the show:



Here's the very meaty transcript.

"We know what happened in Benghazi now... but what we don't know is why we were misled."

Ron Johnson, questioning John Kerry. I'm breaking out what I think is the main quote. Look how differently this exchange is presented at TPM.

This was the same disconnect that Hillary Clinton tried to pull off when Ron Johnson questioned her the other day and she had her "What difference does it make?" outburst. She wanted us to focus on the point in time when the attackers decided to attack.

"Was it because of a protest or because of guys out for a walk one night who decide to kill some Americans, what difference at this point does it make?"

It. She has the wrong it. Johnson's question to her and then to Kerry related to the point in time when the people in the Obama administration decided to mislead the public by actively pushing a phony story about the "Innocence of Muslims" video. That was a strange thing to do, and both Clinton and Kerry have doggedly distracted us by pretending the question is why the attack occurred.

"The seven countries where the state can execute you for being atheist."

Only 7. And it's not really about being atheist. It's about talking about it. This is the old freedom of speech issue, and we still have a problem with that in the United States. Last I noticed, that man who made the "Innocence of Muslims" video was in prison, right here in the U.S.

"An Egyptian court convicted in absentia Wednesday seven Egyptian Coptic Christians and a Florida-based American pastor..."

"... sentencing them to death on charges linked to an anti-Islam film that had sparked riots in parts of the Muslim world."

It's late autumn in the Arab spring.

"Fight over Susan Rice holds political risks for White House."

So say Anne Gearan and Steven Mufson, writing in the Washington Post, prompting me to think the opposite.

I say we're being played by a political maneuver designed to keep us from looking deeply and broadly into the issues surrounding the Benghazi attack. It's all about Susan Rice, but why? She isn't even the nominee for Secretary of State. She just might be. Focus on her. She was sent out onto 5 Sunday talk shows a few days after the attack, to say something about that terrible video, which is itself a contrivance, a distraction. So make it about the video and embody that in a specific person, whom we never noticed before. And let's yammer about her for weeks and months until we're tired of talking about her, and then — who knows? — John Kerry is the real choice for Secretary of State. Rice was always expendable. She was the capsule into which the Benghazi scandal was enclosed for burial. Once we're tired of Rice — she's been battered and beaten and those who've done the beating have been accused of black-woman-battering — we'll automatically already be tired of talking about the Benghazi scandal, which never even broke!

Political risk? Political genius!

An interview with Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the imprisoned filmmaker behind "Innocence of Muslims."

The NYT forefronts the fact that Nakoula is angry and without remorse. I think he should be angry, and the NYT should show far more concern about free speech and political persecution, but there's some detailed material, e.g.:

Mr. Nakoula’s supervised release barred him from using aliases. But he resumed work on his movie under the name Sam Baccil, said Jimmy Israel, who assisted with preproduction. Mr. Israel, who still thought Mr. Nakoula had been away battling cancer, placed casting notices on Backstage.com. One advertised 11 roles that included “George: male, 20-40, a strong leader, romantic, tyrant, a killer with no remorse, accent.” Mr. Israel said Mr. Nakoula told him that “Muhammad would be named George to mislead the actors.”

You're supposed to believe he is in prison because of the alias?

Did Petraeus lie to the House Intelligence Committee in the hope of keeping his job?

And did the Obama administration take advantage of that hope then oust him when the election was over? That's what Charles Krauthammer thinks.

Petraeus told the committee (on September 14th) that the Benghazi attack arose out of spontaneous protests over the “Innocence of Muslims” video. His prestige gave great weight to the administration's story in those key days after the attack. That testimony, Krauthammer says, is "the thing that connects the two scandals, and that’s the only thing that makes the sex scandal relevant."

Otherwise it would be an exercise in sensationalism and voyeurism and nothing else. The reason it’s important is here’s a man who knows the administration holds his fate in its hands, and he gives testimony completely at variance with what the Secretary of Defense had said the day before, at variance with what he’d heard from his station chief in Tripoli, and with everything that we had heard. Was he influenced by the fact that he knew his fate was held by people within the administration at that time?...

Of course it was being held over Petraeus’s head, and the sword was lowered on Election Day. You don’t have to be a cynic to see that as the ultimate in cynicism. As long as they needed him to give the administration line... everybody was silent. And as soon as the election’s over, as soon as he can be dispensed with, the sword drops and he’s destroyed....

Krauthammer's theory contains the assumption that the administration didn't need Petraeus anymore after Election Day. Yet the very statement of the theory hurts the administration, and that injury only occurs because they did drop the sword on Petraeus. The administration still needs to get through its Benghazi problem. This presents a puzzle. What's the advantage in exposing Petraeus now? Perhaps the idea is for him to embody the misbegotten "Innocence of Muslims" story, which is now rejected. Others who passed that story along — notably Susan Rice, who may be the Secretary of State — can be restored to health after the surgical removal of the Petraeus cancer. Rice's conspicuous Sunday show appearances took place on the 16th. She said:

Based on the best information we have to date ... it began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo, where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy sparked by this hateful video. 

Based on the best information... Make that Petraeus... and now he's gone. Except he's not gone. He's the most conspicuous man in the world right now. The cancer on the Presidency is lying exposed —  grisly and repulsive — on the surgical tray that is the media.

"Attention is not some monolithic brain process. There are different types of attention..."

"... and they use different parts of the brain. The sudden loud noise that makes you jump activates the simplest type: the startle. A chain of five neurons from your ears to your spine takes that noise and converts it into a defensive response in a mere tenth of a second — elevating your heart rate, hunching your shoulders and making you cast around to see if whatever you heard is going to pounce and eat you. This simplest form of attention requires almost no brains at all and has been observed in every studied vertebrate."

Excerpt from "Why Listening Is So Much More Than Hearing."

That passage calls to mind the subject of "incitement" in the constitutional law of free speech. Here's Justice Brandeis in 1927:

Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. Only an emergency can justify repression. Such must be the rule if authority is to be reconciled with freedom. Such, in my opinion, is the command of the Constitution. It is therefore always open to Americans to challenge a law abridging free speech and assembly by showing that there was no emergency justifying it.

There's a distinction between what is heard and what is listened to.

***

I Googled "incitement and free speech" to get a nice clear link to insert in the sentence between the 2 links above. Virtually everything that came up on the first page of results had to do with the "Innocence of Muslims" video/Muhammad cartoons.

"The California man behind an anti-Muslim film that led to violence in many parts of the Middle East was sentenced Wednesday to a year in federal prison..."

"... for probation violations in an unrelated matter, then issued a provocative statement through his attorney."

The statement, delivered through his lawyer was: "President Obama may have gotten Osama bin Laden, but he didn't kill the ideology." The lawyer professed not to understand the statement. That is, the man had a lawyer, and the lawyer held him at a distance. How hard is it to understand the statement? But it's dangerous to have such a statement sticking to you, and the lawyer acted accordingly.

Biden said "Did your son always have balls the size of cue balls?”

... to the father of one of the former Navy SEALs killed in Benghazi.

Art heist in Rotterdam.

Stolen: Pablo Picasso’s 1971 “Harlequin Head”; Claude Monet’s 1901 “Waterloo Bridge, London” and “Charing Cross Bridge, London”; Henri Matisse’s 1919 “Reading Girl in White and Yellow”; Paul Gauguin’s 1898 “Girl in Front of Open Window”; Meyer de Haan’s “Self-Portrait,” around 1890, and Lucian Freud’s 2002 work “Woman with Eyes Closed.”

Marinello said the thieves have limited options available, such as seeking a ransom from the owners, the museum or the insurers. They could conceivably sell the paintings in the criminal market too, though any sale would likely be a small fraction of their potential auction value.

The problem selling these things is obviously not protection enough to keep thieves from bothering.



IN THE COMMENTS: chickelit said:

From the link: the idea that an unscrupulous private investor might have commissioned the works’ theft was far-fetched. 'That’s something that comes from Hollywood movies,' he said.

Should they blame a Hollywood video or lax security?

UPDATE: Confession of destruction.

Hillary: "I take responsibility" for security in Benghazi.

CNN reports:

Clinton insisted President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are not involved in security decisions.

"I want to avoid some kind of political gotcha," she added, noting that it is close to the election.

ADDED:

“I’m not sure what that means,” said an absolutely baffled Larry Kudlow.

“What we need to know is who told Ambassador Susan Rice to go onto news shows and tell the public that the attacks were spontaneous.”