Well, Benghazi, anyway. My New York Post column today examines the unfolding mess that is the Libyan situation:

How is the Obama White House going to fit the entire State Department and the intelligence community under the bus?

Last month’s Benghazi fiasco saw four Americans — including our ambassador to Libya — murdered by elements of al Qaeda in a military-style assault timed to coincide with the 11th anniversary of 9/11.

The weeks afterward saw the administration blaming a video that, even the White House now admits, had nothing to do with it. And the months before the attack saw Washington adamantly reducing security in Benghazi — despite pleas for reinforcements from the folks on the ground.

Yet President Obama’s top spokesman — and Vice President Joe Biden, in last week’s debate — have been busy pointing fingers of blame at State and the IC.

It won’t work. Neither Foggy Bottom nor the intel community’s legion of spooks, analysts and secret-keepers is likely to go quietly.

And that’s an understatement. Behind the scenes — in Langley, Fort Meade, Anacostia, and elsewhere in the Intelligence Community — spooks and analysts are sharpening their knives for the Obama administration, which, having chosen to pick a fight both with the IC and the Clintons, apparently has some sort of death wish.

The national media’s still doing its level best to keep Benghazi off the front pages, but its effort is doomed to failure. It’s worth repeating: our ambassador to Libya was (it now seems) lured to Benghazi and assassinated; that night, Barack Hussein Obama, evincing not the slightest interest in or sympathy for Chris Stevens’ fate, flew off to Las Vegas for a fundraiser. Instead, his increasingly desperate administration issued a squid-ink fog of confusion, blaming an obscure YouTube video for what the IC knew almost immediately was a terrorist assault on American soil. And then, when that legend collapsed, blamed the State Department and the IC for letting it down.

They knew it because — and perhaps this is just the thriller writer in me — there may have been double agents within State or the IC itself who lured Stevens back to Benghazi with a false sense of security, and thus to his death.

In the wake of last night’s bizarre vice-presidential debate, the takeaway notion is clear: an insane person is currently a heartbeat away from the White House. A giggling, mugging, eye-rolling, head-shaking lunatic, who was clearly under instruction from his political masters to go out there and show the country that the Left is not just a bunch of kumbaya kommie pansies but real red-blooded all-Americans, the kind of guys you’d want to be in a bar fight with.

Biden’s performance is being widely compared to the Joker in the Batman comics and movies, but say what you will about the Joker, he had least had a seriousness of purpose behind his grimacing mien. What’s Biden’s excuse? He doubled down on the suicidal stupidity of trying to blame the Intelligence Community for the political and moral evil that occurred last month in Benghazi — an unforced error necessitated by electoral desperation and President Obama’s overweening and arrogant sense of his own genius that will cost the administration dearly in the back alleys of foreign policy, where the IC can seriously affect the outcome of the game. He insulted Ryan (a man who’s never given Biden any personal affront) to his face, repeatedly — a blunder that won’t quickly be forgotten or forgiven when Ryan moves into the Naval Observatory. He embarrassed and shamed those good folks on the other side of the aisle who truly believe in the rightness of their cause.

And he seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself as he did so.

In short, Biden’s no Joker. He’s Tommy Udo in Kiss of Death. And the kiss of death is what he just gave to the Obama campaign:

The Democrats were right about that wheelchair thing; they just had the wrong guy pushing it.

Also read:

America Won’t Survive Another Four Years of Obama

If there’s anything more tiresome than listening to conservative complaints that the media hates them and the polls are rigged — amazing how that meme turned around in a hurry after last week’s debate! — it’s listening to Hollywood conservatives complain that they’ve been blackballed by the Industry due to their political views. While this may be true in some cases, particularly in the “below the line” crafts, it’s difficult to reconcile with the larger picture — which is that “conservative” movies do get made. And “liberal” movies. And movies with no political point of view at all. Amazingly, even in Hollywood, not everything is about politics.

Because the movies that do get made are, by Industry standards, “good movies,” which is to say scripts that are well-crafted and well-executed on the page, that somehow will speak to the Zeitgeist two years from the minute the exec picks it up, can be made for a reasonable amount of money (always excepting superhero tentpole films), and won’t get the exec fired the next day.

In fact, based on my perhaps atypical experience, I would say very few things are politically tinged at the working level. ( I know that many of my screenwriter colleagues are going to disagree with me on this one.) I’ve worked with one of the great producers, the late Daniel Melnick — a good old-fashioned red-diaper baby and proud of it — and our relationship was warm both personally and professionally. I count among my friends some of the most famous, and famously liberal, names in the Industry. If a conservative can’t work with progressives in Hollywood, he or she is going to be very lonely and very unemployed. As I wrote in 2009 in Dan’s obituary:

One final point, and it’s important, especially these days: politics never entered into our relationship. It’s not that we didn’t discuss them, but it was after the fashion of Yankee fans versus Mets fans: it never affected our professional and personal love for one another. Dan was a classic NY/LA liberal. I was, well, the multilingual son of a Marine Corps officer who had spent much of my career in eastern Europe and the old Soviet Union, who was there at the Berlin Wall with a sledgehammer when the Wall came down 20 years ago next month. But – and this is a truth I keep pounding home on both sides of the contemporary political divide in our wonderful town – none of that mattered if the story was served. And that’s the way it should be. In the end, in our business, story – and execution – will out. The rest is, or should be, commentary.

Sure, as John Fund notes over at NRO, the critics are hating Won’t Back Down, while audiences are loving it. But so what? That says more about the skewed state of American journalism these days — even sportswriters and food critics now feel free to toss in a Bush or Romney drive-by when the spirit moves them — than it does about filmmaking. And I highly doubt whether Maggie Gyllenhaal or Viola Davis chose to attach to the project because of innate conservative sentiments.

The first lesson any fledgling screenwriter learns, or should learn, is to write a part an actor wants to play. Your script is not primarily about its music cues, its philosophy, its social consciousness, its crackling dialogue, or its politics. It’s about getting made, which means it’s about character.

Especially yours.

By the way: the most “conservative” movie ever made was written by a card-carrying Communist. Enjoy:

(Thumbnail on PJM homepage based on a modified Shutterstock.com image.)

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Dr. Helen responds at PJ Tatler.

So here I am, waiting patiently for the vaunted Mitt Romney for President campaign to begin.

Have I missed it? The only evidence so far is a series of ads on You Tube, each one I’m told, better than the last, and all adding up to the devastating indictment that, gee, Barack Obama is a nice guy but he’s just in over his head, and how about that bad economy, and what this country really needs, instead of a good five-cent cigar, is a corporate turnaround executive.

I’m told that the big push is just around the corner, that Mitt’s schedule is consumed with fund-raisers for the nonce, but fasten your seatbelts because over the course of the last month of the campaign, it’s gonna be a doozy.

And then, if all else fails, there are always the debates.

So here’s my rude question: if the Romney campaign falls in the forest and no media are around to cover it, does it make a sound? Because a paid-advertising campaign just isn’t going to cut it. And some point — and very soon — Mitt Romney is going to have to deal with and engage the media, or else run the risk of becoming a hologram of his own candidacy.

Yes, I know the media is in the tank for Obama. They’re led by the Jake Lingle of his day, David Axelrod, in a never-ending puppet show that goes something like the video on the next page.

Sure, it’s easy to whine that the polls are skewed and that the media hates you — but none of that is any excuse for the passive Romney “campaign” we’ve been witnessing, which apparently boils down to victory through advertising. It’s nearly past time for Mitt to get mad and man up, strike hard at Obama, bite back a la Gingrich at the media and generally raise hell about the state of the country and the world.

So here’s the speech Mitt Romney needs to give to Eric Fehrnstrom,, Stuart Stevens, et al. in Boston to get his campaign back on track — but of course never will. From the great David Mamet, this memorable scene from the movie version of Glengarry Glen Ross. (Language warning, but you know that already):

Go and do likewise, gents.

UPDATE: Yes, Mitt, something like this.

Here’s how he’d probably sort out the Middle East in response to the atrocities in Libya and the violation of diplomatic protocols elsewhere (language warning ahead, but you know that already):

Instead, we get this.

This never would be happening if Gen. Martin Dempsey were chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Oh, wait a minute…

So the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, has called pastor Terry Jones to remonstrate with a private citizen over his involvement in the Mohammed video that is allegedly the cause for the current round of rioting in the Middle East.  A clearer breaching of the civilian-military relationship can hardly be imagined, and Gen. Dempsey ought to resign in disgrace for his appalling lapse in judgment.

But, of course, he won’t.

The military’s top uniformed leader decided on his own to phone an extremist Florida pastor linked to an inflammatory anti-Islamic online video, the Pentagon said Thursday – no one else asked him to do so.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey called Florida pastor Terry Jones on Wednesday to ask him to withdraw his support for the video that some reports have linked with anti-American unrest in the Muslim world, a spokesman said.

So should HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who has been cited by the Office of Special Counsel for blatantly violating the Hatch Act.

But, of course, her actions have already been excused by the administration she works for, and whose anti-Catholic, nominally Catholic, usefully idiotic hatchet woman she is.

White House spokesman Eric Schultz explained in a statement that the administration has already taken action on the matter, though, putting Sebelius through training and making sure taxpayers were reimbursed.

“As the Office of Special Counsel has noted, these were extemporaneous remarks, the Health and Human Services Department has since reclassified the event to meet the correct standard, the U.S. Treasury has been reimbursed and Secretary Sebelius has met with ethics experts to ensure this never happens again,” Schultz said.

“This error was immediately acknowledged by the Secretary, promptly corrected and no taxpayer dollars were misused.”

He said the administration holds itself “to the highest ethical standards.”

Hillary Clinton, the secretary of State, has been revealed to be complicit in executing a naive and appeasing foreign policy that has now resulted in the deaths of at last four Americans in Benghazi, reduced America’s stature in the world, and greatly increased the threat to Americans both at home and abroad. Here’s what she said regarding the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and Sean Smith:

Today, many Americans are asking – indeed, I asked myself – how could this happen? How could this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction? This question reflects just how complicated and, at times, how confounding the world can be.

She ought to be out on her ear — but, of course, that will never happen. The Clinton Restoration beckons in 2016.

As Ned Sparks wonders in the greatest movie of all time: “Is everybody nutty?”

Or have we fully entered into a post-American era, the ultimate triumph of the Frankfurt School and “critical theory,” in which all previous virtues are now vices and all vices now virtues? Certainly that is the philosophy that motivates the radical Left, which sees every issue through its Marxist prism of race, class, sex, and group identity, and which preaches a form of “tolerance” that is really antipathy to all previous social, political, and moral norms in disguise.

If the chairman of the JCS, second to only the president in his command of the American armed forces (which are supposed to battle foreign enemies, not fellow citizens), can pick up the phone to intimidate an ordinary American, then we have surely crossed some sort of Rubicon; talk about an imbalance of power! And why did he do it? The explanation will sicken you:

“He called of his own initiative over concern that the violence incited by the film would pose risks to U.S. service members around the world,” said Marine Col. Dave Lapan.

… the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have devolved into futile exercises in imaginary nation-building. The “democracy” in Iraq will soon enough become a Shia, sharia-compliant state, joining the arc of fundamentalist Islam (of both Sunni and Shia varieties) from North Africa to Iran, while the tragic farce in Afghanistan continues to play itself out, with an ending we can all see coming.

… Saudi Arabia, the home of most of the 9/11 commandos, continues to spew its Wahhabist poison around the world, financing new mosque construction all over the Dar al-Harb, And the American motorists — at the behest of their own government — continue to pay the Arabs handsomely for the privilege of sapping Western culture and society.

… the Democratic Party, which has hardly ever met a group or a cause antithetical to the nation’s founding pirnciples it didn’t like, has openly turned against Israel and wholeheartedly embraced the Palestinian cause, going so far as to boo both God and Jerusalem at their Charlotte convention.

… with Iran threatening to wipe out Israel, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request to meet with the American president has been rejected.

… the U.S. military has become a laboratory for social experimentation, its warfighting capabilities threatened by sequestration cuts of $500 billion.

… the American economy, which never fully recovered from the 9/11 attacks, is heading over a cliff, with a $16 trillion national debt and no end to entitlement spending in sight.

… Moody’s, the credit-rating agency, is warning of a downgrade.

… political correctness is more virulent than ever, having long since passed the point of parody and now lurching into outright insanity.

… “white male” has become an all-purpose term of opprobrium.

… a mob has stormed the American Embassy in Cairo and torn down our flag, while Libyan rabble have fired the American consulate in Benghazi.

… Osama bin Laden is both dead and the subject of a major motion picture.

… and the president of the United States is Barack Hussein Obama II.

Also read: The Second 9/11: Today will go down in infamy as the day our government became our enemy

All presidents have to endure the grip and grin of a White House photo-op with leaders from around the world. But couldn’t the Greatest Orator since Pericles of Athens go beyond the phoning-it-in boilerplate and at least fake sincerity? Apparently not. Let the mockery begin:

You know you’ve become a punch line when tiny, harmless Scandinavian countries like Denmark make fun of you. Wonder if the Nobel Peace Prize committee is having second thoughts. They punch above their weight, too.

So Todd Akin — against the urging of just about every Republican with an IQ higher than room temperature — has decided to stay in the race against the former sure loser, Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri. If Mitt Romney wants to show conservatives he has the right stuff, it’s time for the political equivalent of a Jack Woltz wake-up call.

Akin, almost completely unknown outside the Show-Me State until a few days ago, has just thumbed his nose at Mitt, Paul Ryan, a group of former Missouri Republican senators, and most of the conservative punditocracy. If Romney — up against a Chicago machine that is equal parts Al Capone and Saul Alinsky — lets this insult go unanswered, it bodes poorly for him in the upcoming election.

Yes, yes — I know about party rules, and how helpless the national GOP is against a rogue like Akin; shades of Weepy John Boehner, whining that he’s only one half of one third of… zzzzzzzzz.  It’s as if the entire Republican Party has become the Circumlocution Office in Dickens’ Little Dorrit, dedicated to explaining why nothing can ever be done — about anything:

It is true that How not to do it was the great study and object of all public departments and professional politicians all round the Circumlocution Office. It is true that every new premier and every new government, coming in because they had upheld a certain thing as necessary to be done, were no sooner come in than they applied their utmost faculties to discovering How not to do it. It is true that from the moment when a general election was over, every returned man who had been raving on hustings because it hadn’t been done, and who had been asking the friends of the honourable gentleman in the opposite interest on pain of impeachment to tell him why it hadn’t been done, and who had been asserting that it must be done, and who had been pledging himself that it should be done, began to devise, How it was not to be done…. All this is true, but the Circumlocution Office went beyond it.

Well, this is not the time for How Not to Do It. Romney and Ryan are not stupid; they can see what a tough shot control of the Senate is going to be, even should this turn out to be an anti-Obama wave election. Thanks to the moral cowardice of Chief Justice John Roberts, which will live in infamy, repeal of Obamacare hinges on control of the Senate — and yet Akin now bids fair to join Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell as part of an unholy trio whose ineptitude cost the GOP victory in one of the most important philosophical battles of the modern era. At least he’s not a witch.

But if you’re apologizing, you’re already losing, and as Akin’s imaginary “lead” over McCaskill evaporates over the new few days, it’s going to become increasingly apparent that the War of 2012 may already have been lost at the Battle of Missouri. And for what?