Benghazigate enters new phase

By Thomas Lifson
There are a few conclusions to draw from Jay Carney’s performance yesterday before the White House press corps when responding to questions from ABC News’s Jonathan Karl on the Ben Rhodes email released by court order following a Judicial Watch lawsuit.

The White House is desperate.

Carney resorted to an easily provable lie that the email was about the Middle East situation in general, not about Benghazi. The email was released in response to a FOIA request on Benghazi, and discusses Benghazi specifically. As John Hinderaker writes:

Carney’s answer is ridiculous. Of course the email bears more broadly on conditions across the Middle East, but it relates most specifically to Benghazi. Why was Susan Rice appearing on every Sunday morning talk show? Because four Americans were killed in Benghazi. Why was the administration’s top political team gathering to prepare her for those appearances? Because four Americans were killed in Benghazi. Why does the email begin with the stated goal of conveying that the Obama administration is doing everything it can to protect its people abroad? Because four Americans were killed in Benghazi. Why is the group talking about “bringing people who harm Americans to justice”? The only place where Americans were harmed was Benghazi. Obviously, the email relates to Benghazi. And equally obviously, its reference to “underscor[ing] that these protests are rooted in an internet video, and not a broader failure of policy” was intended to deflect blame for the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi.

....The public does not trust the Obama administration’s or Hillary Clinton’s stories.

Even before the latest revelations, in February:

“Sixty-six percent of voters want Congress to keep investigating the White House’s handling of Benghazi. That includes 50 percent of Democrats, 68 percent of independents and 83 percent of Republicans.

“About a third opposes lawmakers continuing to investigate the attack (31 percent).”

And a slim majority do not believe Hillary Clinton’s story that she never saw requests for extra security for the Benghazi facility.

If Speaker Boehner choose to appoint a select committee, this could blow wide open.

For reasons unknown, so far Speaker Boehner has declined the obvious step of appointing a select committee that would not encounter the jurisdictional problems faced by the multiple committees so far investigating, and that would have the trained staff and budget for a professional investigation. We now can see the desperation at work, and there is obviously worse information yet to eb uncovered, owing to redaction and classification strategies used for the purposes of cover-up.

Even is Boehner declines, there will be a new Congress in 2015.

Even is Boehner is re-elected Speaker (which is not a certainty), the atmosphere following an expected disaster for the Democrats will be very different. Obama will have cost a lot of Democrats their seats. The survivors, at least some of them, will want to save their own sorry butts. Obama is taking America down, economically, diplomatically, and strategically. There will be a blowback.

So fasten your seatbelts. This is going to be a bumpy ride.

The Missing Benghazi Email

New evidence that Ben Rhodes told Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton to blame the video.

....Mr. Rhodes's email provides the answer. The message directive came directly from the White House and was followed to the word. Mr. Rhodes alluded to the video in five spots in his email. On Wednesday, Mr. Carney still insisted Ms. Rice had "relied on points about the Benghazi attack that were produced by the CIA." He must think the press corps is stupid.
The Rhodes email shows a White House political operative trying to protect his boss two months before Election Day. Mr. Obama's campaign said al Qaeda was on the run and it was time for "nation-building at home." The terror attack on Americans in Benghazi didn't fit this story. It did, however, expose the "broader failure of policy" (to use Mr. Rhodes's phrase) in North Africa in the wake of the Arab political upheavals in 2011.
After the election, the Administration was slow to cooperate with congressional investigations. The "talking points" emails were released last May only after parts were leaked to the press. The Rhodes email was subpoenaed last August, but the White House blocked release until it seemed obvious it would lose its attempts to keep them secret.
All of this bears directly on Mrs. Clinton's qualifications to be President. Her State Department overlooked repeated warnings about a growing militant threat in Benghazi, denying requests for improved security. And the father of a CIA contractor told media outlets that Mrs. Clinton tried to comfort him by promising that the maker of the YouTube video would be "prosecuted and arrested," though the video had nothing to do with his son's death.
The several congressional investigations into Benghazi have been undermined by turf battles and shoddy work. We long ago advised that a select committee could focus the effort and bring overdue clarity to a shameful episode in American history. It still could.

They Knew and They Lied About Benghazi

By Kurt Bardella

.....But let’s step back for a second and talk about why this really matters. Regardless of where you sit on the ideological spectrum, we can all agree that public officials should not lie to the American public.
In the aftermath of a genuine national tragedy, where innocent people have been murdered, with the backdrop of 9/11, in a heightened state of fear, uncertainty and emotion, that is when the American people expect the best of their government.
That’s when they expect the truth. Forget the politics – why can’t we just have the facts?
The talking points matter because the designated representative of this government, of this nation, was sent on national television to tell millions of Americans who wanted to be informed, who wanted the facts, she was sent out there and lied.
Can anyone really blame the American people for having absolutely no trust and confidence in their government?
...At the end of the day, beyond who knew what and when and who wrote what and why, this entire fiasco is a microcosm of a bigger and much more troubling reality – lying is the status-quo and the people who are being lied to are becoming more and more apathetic and pessimistic because of it.

Obama’s ‘Blame the Video’ Fraud Started in Cairo, Not Benghazi

By Andrew C McCarthy

...Why would Carney claim, with a straight face, that Rice was being prepped “about protests around the Muslim world”? Because, other than Benghazi, the “protest around the Muslim world” that Americans know about is the rioting (not “protest,” rioting) at the U.S. embassy in Cairo a few hours before the Benghazi siege. When Benghazi comes up, the administration — President Obama, Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Jay Carney, et al. — loves to talk about the Cairo “protests.” Why? Because the media, and thus the public, have bought hook, line, and sinker the fraudulent claim that those “protests” were over the anti-Muslim video. Obama & Co. shrewdly calculate that if you buy “Blame the Video” as the explanation for Cairo, it becomes much more plausible that you will accept “Blame the Video” as the explanation for Benghazi — or, at the very least, you will give Obama officials the benefit of the doubt that they could truly have believed the video triggered Benghazi, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary.
You see, the Benghazi fraud hinges on the success of the Cairo fraud. If you are hoodwinked by the latter, they have a much better chance of getting away with the former.
But “Blame the Video” is every bit as much a deception when it comes to Cairo.
Thanks to President Obama’s policy of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic supremacists in Egypt, post-Mubarak Cairo became a very hospitable place for jihadists. That included al-Qaeda leaders, such as Mohammed Zawahiri, brother of al-Qaeda emir Ayman Zawahiri; and leaders of Gama’at al-Islamia (the Islamic Group), the terrorist organization led by the Blind Sheikh — Omar Abdel Rahman, the terrorist I convicted in 1995 for running the jihadist cell that bombed the World Trade Center and plotted to bomb other New York City landmarks.
In the weeks before September 11, 2012, these jihadists plotted to attack the U.S. embassy in Cairo. In fact, the Blind Sheikh’s son threatened a 1979 Iran-style raid on the embassy: Americans would be taken hostage to ransom for the Blind Sheikh’s release from American prison (he is serving a life sentence). Other jihadists threatened to burn the embassy to the ground — a threat that was reported in the Egyptian press the day before the September 11 “protests.”
The State Department knew there was going to be trouble at the embassy on September 11, the eleventh anniversary of al-Qaeda’s mass-murder of nearly 3,000 Americans. It was well known that things could get very ugly. When they did, it would become very obvious to Americans that President Obama had not “decimated” al-Qaeda as he was claiming on the campaign trail. Even worse, it would be painfully evident that his pro–Muslim Brotherhood policies had actually enhanced al-Qaeda’s capacity to attack the United States in Egypt.
The State Department also knew about the obscure anti-Muslim video. Few Egyptians, if any, had seen or heard about it, but it had been denounced by the Grand Mufti in Cairo on September 9. Still, the stir it caused was minor, at best. As Tom Joscelyn has elaborated, the Cairo rioting was driven by the jihadists who were agitating for the Blind Sheikh’s release and who had been threatening for weeks to raid and torch our embassy. And indeed, they did storm it, replace the American flag with the jihadist black flag, and set fires around the embassy complex.
Nevertheless, before the rioting began but when they knew there was going to be trouble, State Department officials at the embassy began tweeting out condemnations of the video while ignoring the real sources of the threat: the resurgence of jihadists in Muslim Brotherhood–governed Egypt, the continuing demand for the Blind Sheikh’s release (which underscored the jihadists’ influence), and the very real danger that jihadists would attack the embassy (which demonstrated that al-Qaeda was anything but “decimated”).
The transparent purpose of the State Department’s shrieking over the video was to create the illusion that any security problems at the embassy (violent rioting minimized as mere “protests”) were attributable to the anti-Muslim video, not to President Obama’s policies and patent failure to quell al-Qaeda.
Because there was a kernel of truth to the video story, and because the American media have abdicated their responsibility to report the predominant causes of anti-Americanism in Egypt, journalists and the public have uncritically accepted the notion — a false notion — that the video caused the Cairo rioting. That acceptance is key to the administration’s “Blame the Video” farce in connection with the lethal attack in Benghazi.
At about 10 p.m. Washington time on the night of September 11 — after they knew our ambassador to Libya had been murdered and while the siege of Benghazi still raged — Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama spoke on the telephone. Shortly afterwards, the State Department issued a statement from Secretary Clinton blaming the video for the atrocity in Benghazi. That was the beginning of the fraud’s Benghazi phase — the phase Susan Rice was prepped to peddle on nationwide television. But it wasn’t the beginning of the fraud.
Secretary Clinton’s minions at the State Department had started spinning the video fraud hours earlier, in Egypt. The sooner Americans grasp that, the sooner they will comprehend the breathtaking depth of the president’s Benghazi cover-up.

No Mention of Benghazi Revelations on CBS Evening News

CBS Evening News curiously did not cover the new Benghazi revelations Wednesday on their newscast. Among the stories that were deemed more relevant included the weather, Oklahoma executions, and the arrest of a former Irish Republican Army operative. CBS was the only major network to ignore the story on their evening program.
Emails uncovered by Judicial Watch reveal White House aid Ben Rhodes prepped Susan Rice prior to her Sunday show appearances to erroneously attribute the September 11, 2012 attack to an anti-Islam video.
However, it turns out Ben Rhodes is actually the brother David Rhodes, President of CBS News.
The lack of coverage this evening further evidences CBS’s clear conflict of interest in covering the Benghazi story. Free Beacon contributor Larry O’Connor writes:

Let’s be clear: this is not an appearance of conflict, it is an actual conflict. Whether that conflict actually affects the way the story is being covered at CBS News is an open question.

Valerie Jarrett Dodges Questions After Closed-Door Meetings With Liberal Donors

By Alex Pappas

One of President Obama’s closest advisers doesn’t want to talk about her secret meetings

with wealthy liberal donors this week.
White House aide Valerie Jarrett attended this week’s meeting in Chicago of the Democracy Alliance of super rich, liberal donors. But when a reporter for Politico approached Jarrett at the conference and asked her if Democrats were being hypocritical by raising money from wealthy liberals while slamming conservative donors as part of their 2014 election strategy, the aide refused to talk.
Ken Vogel of Politico wrote Wednesday: “Democratic attacks on the Koch brothers for secretive campaign spending have become a virtual plank in the party’s platform, but it turns out big-money liberals can be just as defensive when their own closed-door activities are put in the spotlight.”
Vogel reported that, “Jarrett refused to make eye contact” when he approached her at the conference at the Ritz Carlton and attempted to ask her questions.
The story also noted that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Kentucky Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes attended the conference but avoided answering questions as well.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been trying to create a conservative bogeyman for the 2014 election cycle by taking to the Senate floor to lambast the billionaire Koch brothers for their political contributions to conservative groups.

Obama's $40 Million Travel Tab

By Jeannie DeAngelis

While the American people continue to struggle to survive in any way they can, the Obamas live like leeches on the blood, sweat, and tears of every hardworking person.

Days after taxpayers found out that the hotel tab for just two days of Michelle Obama’s eight-day China jaunt cost $222K for 144 rooms at the Shangri-La Hotel in Chengdu, educational foundation Judicial Watch released a report revealing that vacation travel costs to transport the first family around the globe have topped $40 million. According to the U.S. Air Force, just two of Barry-the-Duffer’s recent golf outings have cost “north of $3 million dollars.”

As usual, Barack used official business as an excuse to spend $2 million on flying Air Force One to California, and decided the best time to do it was while Michelle was busy skiing in Colorado.

In California there was a perfunctory meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan and a few speeches on drought conditions and water conservation. Then, in a typical Obama move, it was off to golf at a Palm Springs oasis that is one of 124 desert courses that require one million gallons of water a day to remain green.

The cost to shuttle Barack, his golf clubs, and his saddle shoes to Palm Springs while Michelle swooshed down the slopes in Aspen: $2,066,594.

Then there was Key Largo.

Right after Michelle Obama came home from her extended Hawaiian birthday-treat vacation, and the President’s Day girls-only ski trip to Aspen and boys-only Palm Springs golf getaway, all of which took place just prior to Mrs. Obama’s multi-million dollar excursion to China, the first family spent the weekend savoring a luxurious respite at the classy Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo.

According to Judicial Watch, to join the Ocean Reef Club “members must have a minimum net worth of $35 million.” Income inequality, anyone?

Not counting the five government helicopters and a contingent of 50 Secret Service agents who accompanied the Obamas, the cost for the first family to fly Air Force One to Key Largo for the weekend came to $885,683.

The overall $40 million figure consists only of Air Force jet time. The travel expense total does not include cargo planes loaded up with limousines and helicopters, communications, staff, security and everything else that protecting a president entails. Hotel rooms such as the $8,400-a-night, 3,445 square-foot Jinmao Presidential Suite, which is where Michelle, Grandma Marian, and the Obama daughters kicked back while touring China, weren’t factored in either.

And so, in yet another example of their gross abuse of power, the Obamas continue their in-your-face, highbrow entitlement antics at the expense of a hurting nation. But what’s even more disturbing than the president frittering away millions of tax dollars on vacations and golf trips is the reality that neither Michelle nor Barack will ever be held accountable for taking advantage of the generous nature of those whose pain they ignore.

Coming soon: Interstate highways to become toll roads

By Rick Moran

How should we fund 47,000 miles of interstate highway maintenance?

As it stands now, we have the Highway Trust Fund which gets its money from the 18 cent federal gas tax. But the tax hasn't been raised since 1993 and a combination of inflation and more fuel efficient cars has the government scrambling to find a way to keep the Trust Fund solvent.

There have been goofy ideas - including putting a device in every car in America so that the government can keep track of your driving, charging everyone by the mile driven rather than taking the tax out at the gas pump. The idea never got off the ground and was buried after NSA revelations of government snooping. Lord knows what the government would put in that device.

But the problem remains. These highways were built with tax dollars from Washington. But if Washington won't maintain the roads, who else but the states can do it? And the most sensible way for states to maintain the interstate is to turn them into toll roads.

...If we're going to fund road repairs using the Highway Trust Fund, we should rededicate the gas tax to funding highway programs only. As it stands now, public transportation grants and other non-highway spending is part of the trust fund spending. Before we raise the gas tax a single cent, trust fund spending must be reformed.

Tolls may be a good idea for some states, but most would find that toll roads wouldn't pay for necessary maintenance. You would defeat the purpose of the interstate highway sytsem if there were toll booths every few miles. It would also make goods that are trucked a lot more expensive.

Obama Proposes Tolls on Interstates Across Nation

By Chuck Devore
As with many federal accounts, the Highway Trust Fund is running on empty. Refilled with the 18.4-cent per gallon gas tax and disbursed by politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, the federal highway fund faces a $63 billion shortfall through 2018. Texas gets $2-3 billion per year from the fund which goes towards the roughly $7 billion in yearly Texas Department of Transportation expenditures.
A shortage of funds tends to concentrate the mind—which is why the White House just proposed lifting an old federal restriction against tolling on 46,000 miles of interstate roads. This would allow states to collect tolls on federal interstates for the purpose of funding repairs and expansion.
Organized labor loves the idea as they expect to get the added work at inflated prevailing wages mandated by federal law.
Folks who own the companies that pour concrete love the idea, as they expect to get the new contracts, coupled with reforms to streamline environmental permitting
State transportation officials love the idea as they see bigger budgets.
There’s even something for the progressive-environmentalist crowd. Buried within the White House’s proposal are provisions to double funding for inner city mass transit to $22 billion while increasing potential fines on automakers by nine-fold to $300 million.
What commuters and taxpayers may think of adding tolls on top of taxes is another story however—one that takes a back seat to the powerful interests now speaking to our representatives in Washington.
Of course, we’ve seen this rodeo before: government gets bigger, borrows and spends more tax money, and then, when funds get squeezed, politicians seek ways to increase taxes, fees, or tolls for things large numbers of voters actually use or want, such as safe streets or free-flowing roads. Meanwhile, general revenue that once paid for critical items gets shifted to growing the welfare state and swelling bureaucratic power.

State Department Report: 40% rise in terrorism last year

By Rick Moran

The State Department released its annual report on global terrorism showing a 40% increase in terrorism attacks last year compared to 2012.

The reason? That organization that President Obama claimed during his re-election campaign was "on the run" has been revitalized and it's offshoots and franchies are wreaking havoc around the world.

Associated Press:

A surge in the number of aggressive al-Qaida affiliates and like-minded groups the Middle East and North Africa poses a serious threat to U.S. interests and allies, the State Department said Wednesday in reporting a more than 40 percent increase in terrorist attacks worldwide between 2012 and 2013.

The department also singled out Iran as a major state sponsor of terrorism that continues to defy demands it prove its atomic ambitions are peaceful even as Washington pursues negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear program.

In its annual global terrorism report, the department said that losses in al-Qaida's core leadership in Pakistan and Afghanistan "accelerated" the network's decentralization in 2013. That has resulted in more autonomous and more aggressive affiliates, notably in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, northwest Africa, and Somalia, it said.

"The terrorist threat continued to evolve rapidly in 2013, with an increasing number of groups around the world - including both AQ affiliates and other terrorist organizations - posing a threat to the United States, our allies, and our interests," according to the strategic assessment of the "Country Reports on Terrorism."

...Funny, but I don't see any right wing militias or any other conservative groups on that list of most active terror organizations. In fact, they are all violent, extremist Muslim groups.

Don't tell Homeland Security that, however. It would upset their delicate sensibilities about just who they should be keeping an eye on.

Going Viral: Princeton University Student’s Bold Response After Allegedly Being Told Repeatedly to ‘Check Your Privilege’

By Jason Howerton
Tal Fortgang, a freshman at Princeton University, says he has been ordered to “check your privilege” by his “moral superiors” several times this year because he happens to be a white male. In a column in the Princeton Tory, Fortgang takes on the ideology he says ”assumes that simply because I belong to a certain ethnic group I should be judged collectively with it.”
....His column has received both praise and criticism. One commenter told Fortgang that as a “white male, you are most likely ignorant of the ingrained racism or sexism that lives in society today.”
“You want to play oppression olympics? What about the millions of blacks enslaved in America for 300 years, who then had to deal with segregation and Jim Crow while new immigrants were allowed to assimilate into white culture within one or 2 generations,” another wrote.
One commenter on the College Fix website replied, “From a black guy (although my pic doesn’t show it), good for him. And nicely said.”

PK'S NOTE: Tal Fortgang's column in its entirety follows:

Checking My Privilege: Character as the Basis of Privilege

By Tal Fortgang
There is a phrase that floats around college campuses, Princeton being no exception, that threatens to strike down opinions without regard for their merits, but rather solely on the basis of the person that voiced them. “Check your privilege,” the saying goes, and I have been reprimanded by it several times this year. The phrase, handed down by my moral superiors, descends recklessly, like an Obama-sanctioned drone, and aims laser-like at my pinkish-peach complexion, my maleness, and the nerve I displayed in offering an opinion rooted in a personal Weltanschauung. “Check your privilege,” they tell me in a command that teeters between an imposition to actually explore how I got where I am, and a reminder that I ought to feel personally apologetic because white males seem to pull most of the strings in the world.
I do not accuse those who “check” me and my perspective of overt racism, although the phrase, which assumes that simply because I belong to a certain ethnic group I should be judged collectively with it, toes that line. But I do condemn them for diminishing everything I have personally accomplished, all the hard work I have done in my life, and for ascribing all the fruit I reap not to the seeds I sow but to some invisible patron saint of white maleness who places it out for me before I even arrive. Furthermore, I condemn them for casting the equal protection clause, indeed the very idea of a meritocracy, as a myth, and for declaring that we are all governed by invisible forces (some would call them “stigmas” or “societal norms”), that our nation runs on racist and sexist conspiracies. Forget “you didn’t build that;” check your privilege and realize that nothing you have accomplished is real.
But they can’t be telling me that everything I’ve done with my life can be credited to the racist patriarchy holding my hand throughout my years of education and eventually guiding me into Princeton. Even that is too extreme. So to find out what they are saying, I decided to take their advice. I actually went and checked the origins of my privileged existence, to empathize with those whose underdog stories I can’t possibly comprehend. I have unearthed some examples of the privilege with which my family was blessed, and now I think I better understand those who assure me that skin color allowed my family and I to flourish today.
Perhaps it’s the privilege my grandfather and his brother had to flee their home as teenagers when the Nazis invaded Poland, leaving their mother and five younger siblings behind, running and running until they reached a Displaced Persons camp in Siberia, where they would do years of hard labor in the bitter cold until World War II ended. Maybe it was the privilege my grandfather had of taking on the local Rabbi’s work in that DP camp, telling him that the spiritual leader shouldn’t do hard work, but should save his energy to pass Jewish tradition along to those who might survive. Perhaps it was the privilege my great-grandmother and those five great-aunts and uncles I never knew had of being shot into an open grave outside their hometown. Maybe that’s my privilege.
Or maybe it’s the privilege my grandmother had of spending weeks upon weeks on a death march through Polish forests in subzero temperatures, one of just a handful to survive, only to be put in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where she would have died but for the Allied forces who liberated her and helped her regain her health when her weight dwindled to barely 80 pounds.
Perhaps my privilege is that those two resilient individuals came to America with no money and no English, obtained citizenship, learned the language and met each other; that my grandfather started a humble wicker basket business with nothing but long hours, an idea, and an iron will—to paraphrase the man I never met: “I escaped Hitler. Some business troubles are going to ruin me?” Maybe my privilege is that they worked hard enough to raise four children, and to send them to Jewish day school and eventually City College.
Perhaps it was my privilege that my own father worked hard enough in City College to earn a spot at a top graduate school, got a good job, and for 25 years got up well before the crack of dawn, sacrificing precious time he wanted to spend with those he valued most—his wife and kids—to earn that living. I can say with certainty there was no legacy involved in any of his accomplishments. The wicker business just isn’t that influential.Now would you say that we’ve been really privileged? That our success has been gift-wrapped?
That’s the problem with calling someone out for the “privilege” which you assume has defined their narrative. You don’t know what their struggles have been, what they may have gone through to be where they are. Assuming they’ve benefitted from “power systems” or other conspiratorial imaginary institutions denies them credit for all they’ve done, things of which you may not even conceive. You don’t know whose father died defending your freedom. You don’t know whose mother escaped oppression. You don’t know who conquered their demons, or may still conquering them now.
The truth is, though, that I have been exceptionally privileged in my life, albeit not in the way any detractors would have it.
It has been my distinct privilege that my grandparents came to America. First, that there was a place at all that would take them from the ruins of Europe. And second, that such a place was one where they could legally enter, learn the language, and acclimate to a society that ultimately allowed them to flourish.
It was their privilege to come to a country that grants equal protection under the law to its citizens, that cares not about religion or race, but the content of your character.
It was my privilege that my grandfather was blessed with resolve and an entrepreneurial spirit, and that he was lucky enough to come to the place where he could realize the dream of giving his children a better life than he had.
But far more important for me than his attributes was the legacy he sought to pass along, which forms the basis of what detractors call my “privilege,” but which actually should be praised as one of altruism and self-sacrifice. Those who came before us suffered for the sake of giving us a better life. When we similarly sacrifice for our descendents by caring for the planet, it’s called “environmentalism,” and is applauded. But when we do it by passing along property and a set of values, it’s called “privilege.” (And when we do it by raising questions about our crippling national debt, we’re called Tea Party radicals.) Such sacrifice of any form shouldn’t be scorned, but admired.
My exploration did yield some results. I recognize that it was my parents’ privilege and now my own that there is such a thing as an American dream which is attainable even for a penniless Jewish immigrant.
I am privileged that values like faith and education were passed along to me. My grandparents played an active role in my parents’ education, and some of my earliest memories included learning the Hebrew alphabet with my Dad. It’s been made clear to me that education begins in the home, and the importance of parents’ involvement with their kids’ education—from mathematics to morality—cannot be overstated. It’s not a matter of white or black, male or female or any other division which we seek, but a matter of the values we pass along, the legacy we leave, that perpetuates “privilege.” And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Behind every success, large or small, there is a story, and it isn’t always told by sex or skin color. My appearance certainly doesn’t tell the whole story, and to assume that it does and that I should apologize for it is insulting. While I haven’t done everything for myself up to this point in my life, someone sacrificed themselves so that I can lead a better life. But that is a legacy I am proud of.
I have checked my privilege. And I apologize for nothing.