Who Changed the Benghazi Talking Points?

From Sharyl Attkisson at CBS News (via Memeorandum):

Who within the Obama administration deleted mention of "terrorism" and "al-Qaeda" from the CIA's talking points on the deadly Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi?

It isn't the only unanswered question in the wake of the tragedy, but it's proven to be one of the most confounding.

The question was first raised 12 days ago when former CIA Director General David Petraeus told members of Congress that his original talking points cleared for public dissemination included the likely involvement by terrorists and an al-Qaeda affiliate. Petraeus said somebody removed the references before they were used to inform the public.

The Obama administration has declined to directly answer who made the edits. And the nation's top intelligence officials appear either confused or not forthcoming about the journey their own intelligence took.

On Fri. Nov. 16, Petraeus told members of Congress that it wasn't the CIA that changed the talking points.

The White House and the State Department said it wasn't them.

The CIA then told CBS News that the edits were made at a "senior level in the interagency process." Intelligence officials said the references were dropped so as not to tip off al Qaeda as to what the U.S. knew, and to protect sources and methods.

Soon thereafter, another reason was given. A source from the Office of the Director for National Intelligence (ODNI) told CBS News' Margaret Brennan that ODNI made the edits as part of the interagency process because the links to al Qaeda were deemed too "tenuous" to make public.

On Tuesday, Acting CIA Director Mike Morell provided yet another account. In a meeting with Republican Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., Morell stated that he believed it was the FBI that removed the references. He said the FBI did so "to prevent compromising an ongoing criminal investigation."

"We were surprised by this revelation and the reasoning behind it," wrote the senators in a joint statement Tuesday.

But it was just a matter of hours before there was yet another revision. A CIA official contacted Graham and stated that Morell "misspoke" in the earlier meeting and that it was, in fact, the CIA, not the FBI, that deleted the al Qaeda references. "They were unable to give a reason as to why," stated Graham.

A U.S. intelligence official on Tuesday told CBS News there was "absolutely no intent to misinform." The official says the talking points "were never meant to be definitive and, in fact, noted that the assessment may change. The points clearly reflect the early indications of extremist involvement in a direct result. It wasn't until after they were used in public that analysts reconciled contradictory information about how the assault began."

If Obama and his minions would have just told the truth from the start there'd be no need for all these unending "revisions." But that's what we've come to expect from "the most transparent administration in history."

U.S. District Court Dismisses Walker v. Kimberlin

More in the "freedom to blog" series.

At The Other McCain, "U.S. District Court Dismisses Walker v. Kimberlin.

And at Hogewash, "Dread Pirate #BrettKimberlin Wins Round One in Federal Court."

'Raising taxes today will put us back into a recession...'

Financial writer Carol Roth cleans Robert Reich's clock, Robert "#Occupy" Reich:

Roth is the author of The Entrepreneur Equation: Evaluating the Realities, Risks, and Rewards of Having Your Own Business. She doesn't appear to tolerate anarcho-communist shills like Reich very well.

'You have been in a bubble of denial for the past five years, so a tidal wave of evidence of the happy family life you feel these cheaters stole from you is bound to be overwhelming...'

I can't recall ever reading a "Dear Abby" story quite like this, although it's not Abigail Van Buren but "Dear Prudence."

See: "Unbearable Betrayal" (via Instapundit).

Some Texas Schools Teaching Boston Tea Party Was Terrorism

From Warner Todd Huston, at Right Wing News:

It has been revealed that some Texas schools were teaching that the Boston Tea Party, an event widely understood as having helped spark the American Revolution, was actually a “terrorist” attack on British authorities.

At least up until January of 2012, Texas schools utilizing the history curriculum from CSCOPE, a non-profit and supposedly non-partisan education service, taught that the most famous tax protest in American history was akin to terrorism.

More at that top link, and at The Blaze, "Was The Boston Tea Party Terrorism? Texas Schools Are Teaching Just That."

Facebook Censors Photo of Woman in Bathtub With Elbows Showing

This is an amazing story, at Theories of the Deep Understanding of Things, "This was probably the craziest situation we ever had to face one post created this unstoppable swirl..."

And at London's Daily Mail, "Given the elbow: Facebook remove risqué picture of blonde woman reclining in bathtub (whatever did they think it was?)," and Huffington Post, "Facebook Reinstates Image Of Woman In Bathtub – After Apparently Mistaking Elbows For Nipples (PHOTO)."

The New York Times Touts California's 'Resurgence'

While heading out for lunch today at the Village Cafe in Lakewood, I was reminded of this morning's New York Times front-page story, "California Finds Economic Gloom Starting to Lift." As I was pulling up to the restaurant I noticed an empty storefront across the street, with real estate vacancy signs posted all across the front window. "There's that New York Times economic rebound," I thought to myself. It's true that things are getting better in California, but not much. And I certainly don't think the state's economic prospects warrant the Grey Lady's boosterism. I didn't bother to snap a photo, although shots of run-down urban areas and the still wobbly real estate market would be much more accurate than the picture of the cellphone hipster  at the beach which graced the cover of the paper's national edition this morning.

In any case, here's Victor Davis Hanson, "It’s Hard to Screw Up California — But We Try Our Best." Hanson observers three flaws regarding California by the Times, with the  omission of immigration problem perhaps most glaring:

The Times piece also deliberately ignores the third rail of all California decline stories — illegal immigration. About 40 percent of all illegal immigrants are believed to be living in California. Probably about a $20 billion share in the much larger figure of annual remittances to Latin America comes from California. And such facts do help explain why once-competitive California public schools now rate 49th in many math/science/English national tests, one-third of all U.S. welfare recipients live in California, 8 million out of the last 11 million added to the state’s population went on Medicaid, and why the Central Valley is suffering from record unemployment, depressed housing prices, and mass exoduses of higher-income residents. In this regard, note the following Times sentence: “California has the worst poverty in the nation. The river of people coming west in search of the economic dream, traditionally an economic and creative driver, has slowed to a crawl.” In fact, “the river of people” long ago ceased “coming west” to California, but rather for 30 years has been coming “north” into the state — a direction that is politically incorrect to note.

And here's a bit from Hanson's conclusion:

In sum, things may not be becoming worse in California, but it is not because of anything that Jerry Brown or the legislature has done, or the expectation that all these new record-high taxes (not yet exacted) have so excited the private sector that we are already anticipating a new recovery. Again, agricultural exports boom despite not because of Sacramento; there is renewed interest from private parties in our vast natural resources, whose prices are at record levels; illegal immigration has slowed; and after four years of recession, there is always a natural American cycle of recovery. But until the state deals with its cumbersome regulations, record taxes, hostility to resource development — and supports closing the border and promotes ethnically blind assimilation rather than serial amnesties and ethnic chauvinism — we will continue to have the nation’s worst schools, worst infrastructure, worst business climate, and highest exoduses, as California plods on, coasting on the fumes of what nature and our ancestors so generously bequeathed to us.

RELATED: From Joel Kotkin, in 2011, "The Golden State Is Crumbling." And from earlier this year, at the Wall Street Journal, "The Great California Exodus."

Democrats Fight to the Death for Bigger Government

My headline is only partly in jest. Government just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and congressional Democrats see this month's election as a mandate for even bigger government.

At the New York Times, "Efforts to Curb Social Spending Face Resistance":

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s re-election and Democratic gains in Congress were supposed to make it easier for the party to strike a deal with Republicans to resolve the year-end fiscal crisis by providing new leverage. But they could also make it harder as empowered Democrats, including some elected on liberal platforms, resist significant changes in entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.

As Congress returned Monday, the debate over those programs, which many Democrats see as the core of the party’s identity, was shaping up as the Democratic version of the higher-profile struggle among Republicans over taxes.

In failed deficit reduction talks last year, Mr. Obama signaled a willingness to consider substantial changes in the social safety net, including a gradual increase in the eligibility age for Medicare and limits in the growth rate of future Social Security benefits. An urgent question hanging over the new round of deficit talks is which of those changes Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats would accept today.

While a potential change in calculating Social Security increases was part of the talks with Speaker John A. Boehner last year, the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, made clear on Monday that the administration was not considering changes to the retirement program as part of the deficit talks.

“We should address the drivers of the deficit, and Social Security is not currently a driver of the deficit,” Mr. Carney said.

Republicans insist that changes in the major entitlement programs be on the table in exchange for their willingness to accept increases in tax revenue. But Democrats have given no indication that they are willing to consider policy changes or savings of the magnitude demanded by Republicans. The underlying dispute highlights a reason the politics of the deficit are so thorny: even as many voters say they want Washington to reduce the budget deficit, they oppose many of the benefit cuts and tax increases that could help achieve that goal.

As the negotiations enter a crucial phase, influential outside advocacy groups like AARP and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare are weighing in, alerting their members to possible changes in the popular programs.

In the current negotiations with Congress over deficits and the debt, Mr. Obama said he would take a serious look at how to “reform our entitlements” because “health care costs continue to be the biggest driver of our deficits.” Unless Mr. Obama and Congress reach some agreement, tax increases and budget reductions will take effect automatically on Jan. 1.

Mr. Obama’s room for maneuvering is limited by several political factors. In the presidential campaign, for example, he attacked cost-cutting proposals by his Republican opponents and won support from millions of voters by promising to defend Medicare.

Moreover, since the Supreme Court upheld the new health care law in June, Mr. Obama has become skittish about cutbacks in Medicaid, the federal-state program for low-income people. The court said the expansion of Medicaid was an option for states but not a requirement. Cutting federal Medicaid payments to states could reduce the federal budget deficit, but could also cripple Mr. Obama’s efforts to persuade governors to expand the program, the foundation of his health care overhaul.

Even if Mr. Obama and Republican leaders in Congress could agree on savings in Medicare and Medicaid, the president would face resistance from some liberal members of his party who oppose cuts in the two giant health care entitlement programs. Medicare and Medicaid insure one-third of all Americans, account for more than one-fifth of the federal budget and are expected to grow much faster than the economy in the coming decade.

I would hate to be a college-aged individual these days. As I've been reporting with the ObamaCare monstrosity, as government continues to expand the Democrat collectivist welfare state is literally raping today's generation of young people.

Car Bombs in Damascus Kill at Least 34 people

At the Los Angeles Times.

When Work is Punished

From Tyler Durden, "The Tragedy of America's Welfare State."

Exactly two years ago, some of the more politically biased progressive media outlets (who are quite adept at creating and taking down their own strawmen arguments, if not quite as adept at using an abacus, let alone a calculator) took offense at our article "In Entitlement America, The Head Of A Household Of Four Making Minimum Wage Has More Disposable Income Than A Family Making $60,000 A Year." In it we merely explained what has become the painful reality in America: for increasingly more it is now more lucrative - in the form of actual disposable income - to sit, do nothing, and collect various welfare entitlements, than to work. This is graphically, and very painfully confirmed, in the below chart from Gary Alexander, Secretary of Public Welfare, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (a state best known for its broke capital Harrisburg). As quantitied, and explained by Alexander, "the single mom is better off earnings gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income and benefits of $57,045."

And Check Instapundit as well from some video, "It’s as if there’s some kind of Dependency Agenda at work here."

Professor Julien Bauer, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Targeted With Anti-Semitic Vandalism

The tolerant pro-Palestinian left.

At National Post, "Pro-Israel professor’s Montreal office door sprayed with anti-Semitic graffiti."

Hope and Exchange

At the Wall Street Journal, "The feds blame the states for refusing to become ObamaCare subsidiaries":

ObamaCare is due to land in a mere 10 months—about 300 days—and the Administration is not even close to ready, so naturally the political and media classes are attacking the Governors and state legislators who decline to help out. Mostly Republicans, they’re facing a torrent of abuse in Washington and pressure from health lobbies at home.

But the real story is that Democrats are reaping the GOP buy-in they earned. Liberals wanted government to re-engineer the entire health-care system and rammed the Affordable Care Act through on a party-line vote, not stopping to wonder whether it would work. Now that implementation is proving to be harder than advertised, they’re blaming the states for not making their jobs easier.

The current rumpus is over ObamaCare’s “exchanges,” the bureaucracies that will regulate the design and sale of insurance and where 30 million people (and likely far more) will sign up for subsidized coverage. States were supposed to tell the Health and Human Services Department if they were going to set up and run an exchange by October, but HHS delayed the deadline to November, and then again at the 11th hour to December.

Sixteen states have already said they won’t participate. Another 11 are undecided, while only 17 have committed to doing the work on their own. Six have opted for a “hybrid” federal-state model. That means HHS will probably be responsible for fallback federal exchanges in full or in part in as many as 25 or 30 states.

Continue reading.

It sucks. It's bad law. It'll be interesting to see how the massive resistance of the states plays out.

More at National Review, "States Should Absolutely Refuse to Set Up Obamacare Exchanges."

Sucking at the Teat of the Progressive Welfare State

Well, I thought this was pretty good, at Maggie's Farm, "Normalizing and universalizing welfare: You pitiful masses still have unmet needs."

Welfare includes crony capitalism, tax breaks for businesses, mortgage deductions, bailouts, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid right down to disability and the now ubiquitous EBT cards.

Naturally, we Conservatives think it best to eliminate all forms of welfare and charity from government control except for the most desperate or hopeless of individual cases. Remove welfare from the middle classes and provide a safety net for the desperate: Restoring a True Safety Net.

The Left, on the other hand, aspires to normalize and universalize welfare programs. Hayek's serfdom under a benevolent, altruistic, and all-powerful state. With Obomacare on track to fail resulting in a total government take-over, Liberals are beginning to comtemplate their next project: The Great Society's Next Frontier - Now that Obamacare—the largest expansion of the social-safety net in the last 60 years—is safe, what's next for the liberal economic project?

It's true, you know?

Here's just one example, at the Democrat-socialist Daily Kos, "Let's Defend Social Security and Other Entitlements With the Second Bill of Rights."

How Much Would You Pay for One Hour With Sandra Fluke?

Hmm, an interesting question, although it's not exactly what you might imagine. From Nathan Harden, at The College Fix.

Now, if this was what you imagined, how much would you pay for an hour with her?

Butler University Liberal Arts Indoctrination

Quite the story, "STUDENTS TOLD TO DISAVOW 'AMERICAN-NESS, MALENESS, WHITENESS, HETEROSEXUALITY'."

Young People Getting Even More Screwed Under ObamaCare

This is freakin' mind-boggling. The news on the ObamaCare monstrosity gets worse by the day.

At Forbes, "Young People under Obamacare: Cash Cow for Older Workers":

It’s official: the health care law will unduly stick it to young Americans by making them pay far higher premiums starting January 1, 2014. New rules announced this month are even worse than expected when it comes to shoveling an unfair burden onto our nation’s youth. Moreover, they also perversely increase the incentives of young people to remain uninsured.

The newly announced rules limit insurers to charge their oldest customers no more than three times as much as younger ones. As shown in the following chart based on estimates by international management consulting firm Oliver Wyman, the rule will force insurers to hike rates for 18- to 24-year-olds by 45 percent even as rates for those 60 and older drop by 13 percent in most states. That means a 22-year-old waitress paying $2,068 for her health insurance will have to fork over $3,000 when Obamacare takes effect.[3] And these figures even underestimate the actual impact....

The real-world consequence of this regulatory misjudgment is that young people will have an even greater economic incentive to simply pay the $695 annual penalty for not having coverage and wait until they are sick before they purchase it. [4] In short, it is now even more likely that Obamacare will amplify the perverse incentives for “free-riding” that it was intended to counter.

Clearly, until we observe actual behavior next January, we won’t know precisely how large an adverse selection problem has been unnecessarily created by these new rules. But what we can say for certain is that for young adults who elect to have health coverage, it will be way more expensive next year than it is today.

Is this fair? Ask the typical 20-24 year-old—whose median weekly earnings are $461—whether it’s fair to be asked to pay 50 percent higher premiums so that workers age 55-64—whose median weekly earnings are $887—can pay lower premiums. Think about that. The median earnings for older workers are $420 a week more than those of younger workers, or roughly $20,000 more a year. How is mandating a price break on health insurance for this far higher income group at the expense of the lower income group possibly fair?

It's not fair.

Seriously. "Fair" isn't even the word for this. Shoot, is it legal? Young Americans are practically being raped by ObamaCare. The effective violations of liberty with this law are so freakin' astounding, people should be screaming violently in rage. And the thing is, young people don't even know what's about to hit them. I know this for a fact. I've been discussing the consequences of the election for the preservation liberty in my classes. Students were literally shocked when I told them they were going to be taxed under the individual mandate if they were uninsured beginning in 2014. Students will be even more glum when we open debate on current events for the remainder of the week.

Ignorance is very costly, and it's sad too since so many young people practically worship this president.

Jamie Lee Curtis Shows Off Her Lovely Figure at the Premiere of 'Hitchcock' in Los Angeles

She's having fun.

At London's Daily Mail, "Foxy in her 50s! Jamie Lee Curtis honours her mother Janet Leigh as she attends the Hitchcock premiere in off-the-shoulder white dress."

Senator Kelly Ayotte 'More Troubled Today' After Meeting With Ambassador Susan Rice

I'm not surprised by this at all, although I'm pleased the Senator Ayotte's not rolling over the Obama's corrupt "spontaneous protest" shill Susan Rice.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Senator Vows to Block Any Clinton Successor: After Meeting With Potential Secretary of State Nominee, Republicans Demand More Answers on Fatal Attack in Libya":

WASHINGTON—Ambassador Susan Rice’s attempt to repair her standing with Senate Republicans fell short Tuesday, as a trio of GOP senators emerged from a meeting with her even more harshly critical of the comments she made following the U.S. consulate attack in Libya.

One of the senators, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, said she would try to block the confirmation of Ms. Rice or another nominee to succeed departing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “My view is we should hold on this until we get sufficient information,” she said.

Ms. Ayotte and Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said the meeting on Capitol Hill left them more concerned than ever about the public statements Ms. Rice made in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, where U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed. “All I can say is that the concerns I have are greater today than they were before,” Mr. Graham said after the meeting. “We’re not even close to getting the basic answers.”

Ms. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, is seen as a front-runner to succeed Mrs. Clinton. In a statement issued after the meeting, Ms. Rice conceded that part of her comments about the attack in television interviews days afterward were incorrect, but said they were based on evolving intelligence.

In the interviews, Ms. Rice said the attack grew out of protests over an anti-Islamic video; officials later said there was no protest in Benghazi that day.
“The talking points provided by the intelligence community, and the initial assessment upon which they were based, were incorrect in a key respect: There was no protest or demonstration in Benghazi,” she said in her statement. Ms. Rice added that she didn’t intend to mislead and said “the administration updated Congress and the American people as our assessments evolved.”

Ms. Ayotte said there was clear evidence early on that people with ties to al Qaeda had carried out the Libya attack.

Criticism of Ms. Rice by the Republican senators had appeared to be abating, but the Tuesday meeting rekindled hostilities. That may complicate her chances for the secretary of state slot. Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, a Democrat, is another possibility for the job. President Barack Obama may announce his choice as soon as this week.

More at The Hill, "McCain: ‘I would be hard-pressed’ to support Rice for secretary of State." (At Memeorandum.)

Democrats Used to Love the Filibuster

Behold yet more epic hypocrisy from the Douchebag Party.

At Washington Examiner, "‘Those who would attack and destroy the institution of the filibuster…’."

More at Memeorandum, especially the idiots at Talking Points Memo, "Dems Defend Filibuster Reform Effort: ‘McConnell Has Broken The Social Contract’."

Anything to justify power for these people, the scummy disgusting Democrat douchebags.

The Debate About Tax Rates

I've been reading the November/December issue of Foreign Affairs, and Grover Norquist's got an essay therein, which is timely, considering how much he's in the news. See, "Are Taxes Too Damn High?":

Andrea Campbell tips her hand partway through her essay “America the Undertaxed” (September/October 2012) when she writes that “the central debate in U.S. politics is whether to keep taxes, particularly federal taxes, at their current levels in the long term or emulate other advanced nations and raise them.”

So the choice facing Americans is between maintaining the size of the government under President Barack Obama and expanding it further? Who knew? In framing things this way, Campbell posits a Brezhnev Doctrine for U.S. government spending and taxation: what the government takes and spends today is forever ceded by Americans to the state, and that portion of their income not yet taken by the government is negotiable. Such ideological blinders limit the author’s ability to understand or explain how the United States arrived at its present level of historically high spending and taxation -- and what the American people would like its government to do and how much it would like it to cost in the future.

The U.S. government was created to maximize liberty. Unlike the European nations Campbell offers as models for how much Americans should be taxed, the United States was not organized around defending or promoting historical land claims or one religion, tribe, or ethnicity. Americans are a people of the book: the Constitution. According to the founders, government should play a limited role in the lives of Americans, by providing for a common defense, the rule of law, property rights, and a justice system that protects them.

Despite these strict limits, the U.S. federal government has grown enormously in size, cost, and power over the last two centuries, mostly as a result of the country’s engagement in successive wars. With each conflict, Washington increased its spending and powers of taxation under the false flag of temporary necessity and appeals to patriotism. After each war, the government refused to return to its previous size and level of power.

This growth can be seen in the numbers. The federal government consumed less than four percent of GDP in 1930, 9.8 percent in 1940, and 16.2 percent in 1948. By 1965, the number had climbed to 25 percent of GDP, and it hit 30 percent in 2000 (compared with the average among members of the Organization for Cooperation and Development of 37 percent). Today, Campbell claims, raising taxes still higher, “perhaps by a few percentage points of GDP,” would “provide the government with much-needed revenue. And it might not have a detrimental impact on the U.S. economy, perhaps even spurring it.” But the economic crisis in Europe, where taxes and spending are already higher, makes that argument a little difficult to swallow.

The United States’ major political parties are now diametrically opposed on the question of the size of government. Gone are the days when Nixon Republicans and Kennedy Democrats argued about whether the government should get bigger or much bigger, and how quickly. No Republican House member voted for the 2009 stimulus package, and only one Republican member of Congress voted for Obamacare’s 20 tax hikes and massive spending increases (and he is no longer in Congress). Meanwhile, the modern Democratic Party has shifted from one that cast 56 Senate votes for the 1964 Kennedy-Johnson tax cut and 33 Senate votes for the 1986 Reagan tax reform into a high-tax ideological party that cast no votes for the 2001 income tax cut, under President George W. Bush, and only one vote for the capital gains and dividends tax cut of 2003 (and that voter is set to retire this year).

The budget that Obama released in February 2012 shows annual federal spending increasing by $1.5 trillion over the next ten years, producing $11 trillion in additional federal debt. Paying for all that spending will require dramatic hikes in taxes. Obama promised in the 2008 presidential campaign that under his plan, “no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase.” On August 8, 2012, however, Obama changed his pledge, saying, “If your family makes under $250,000 . . . , you will not see your income taxes increase by a single dime next year.” The promise to oppose all tax increases on incomes less than $250,000 was replaced by a promise to prevent only income tax hikes -- and only for 12 months. Obama’s new language opened the door to a value-added tax (VAT) at any time and to income tax hikes starting in January 1, 2014.
Obama’s shift is important, for as Campbell points out, the difference between U.S. and European levels of taxation is mainly due to the prevalence of VATs in Europe. The United Kingdom has a VAT of 20 percent, France one of 19.6 percent, and Sweden one of 25 percent.

Advocates of higher taxes in the United States know that only a VAT or steep taxes on energy can cover the higher levels of spending in Obama’s budget projections. Higher income tax rates do not raise useful amounts of money. The “Buffett rule,” which would raise rates on earnings of more than $1 million a year would, according to the Congressional Budget Office, take in only $47 billion over a decade, less than one-half of one percent of the $11 trillion in debt that Obama’s planned spending would produce.

Continue reading.

The Campbell essay is here: "America the Undertaxed."

And for the debate on Norquist and congressional Republicans, see Robert Stacy McCain, "Retire #Taxby Chambliss."

BONUS: At NewsBusters, "Grover Norquist: 'Warren Buffett Should Write a Check and Shut Up'." And also, "Greg Mankiw, "A Master of Tax Avoidance."