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DECEMBER 27,  2015

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:49 P.M. ET: 

REALITY DAWNS – There are some leaders who actually understand the world.  From AFP:   Czech President Milos Zeman has called the current wave of refugees to Europe "an organised invasion", adding young men from Syria and Iraq should instead "take up arms" against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) group.  "I am profoundly convinced that we are facing an organised invasion and not a spontaneous movement of refugees," said Zeman in his Christmas message to the Czech Republic released on Saturday.  He went on to say that compassion was "possible" for refugees who are old or sick and for children, but not for young men who in his view should be back home fighting against jihadists.  Compassion and reality are compatible.  There are people all over the world who would like to come to free nations.  Why are we giving such preference only to Muslims from combatant nations?  It does look very political.  Clearly, our ethic insists that these people be cared for in a civilized manner.  But we don't have to open our doors wide to new immigration while they are closed to many others.  A solution, consistent with the Judeo-Christian ethic, can be found.

NOT SO EASY – From AP:   Islamic State fighters are putting up a tough fight in the militant-held city of Ramadi, slowing down the advance of Iraqi forces, a senior Iraqi commander said Sunday.  Iraq launched the long-awaited operation to retake the Anbar provincial capital, which was captured by IS militants in May, but after an initial push across the Euphrates River, their progress stalled.  Gen. Ismail al-Mahlawi, head of Anbar military operations, told The Associated Press that the advance was hampered by suicide bombers, snipers and booby traps.  Iraqi troops will “need days” to get to the city’s central government complex, said al-Mahlawi, adding that the troops were about one kilometer (half a mile) from the complex on Sunday.  We were hoping for a quick victory, but once again ISIS is showing far more resilience than anticipated.  Even if they lose Ramadi, experience tells us that they'll regroup to fight somewhere else.  Not easy.

THE END – Italy has launched an all-out war on air pollution, but one is troubled by some of the measures.  From Bloomberg:  In the town of San Vitaliano, near Naples, the mayor has decreed a three-month prohibition on cooking pizzas in wood-fired ovens after air-pollution alert levels were breached regularly over the past six months, La Stampa reported.  When Italy goes after pizza, it's the end of civilization as we know it.  It was fun while at lasted, but I sensed the end was near when they came out with low-fat hot dogs. 

December 27, 2015       Permalink

THIS IS CHILLING – AT 12:40 P.M. ET:  I stress that this is speculative journalism, but the speculation seems well founded, and the reporting is excellent.  From the New York Post: 

An alleged jihadist arrested in June on charges that he plotted to blow up Times Square may also be the fiend who stabbed a 9-year-old Staten Island boy in the neck five months earlier in what some investigators now believe was a botched ISIS audition. 

But NYPD detectives investigating the Jan. 9 knife attack have been frustrated by the feds, who won’t give them access to terror suspect Fareed Mumuni, said a source familiar with the probe.

Mumuni, 21, lived only 600 yards from Jermaine Culver, who was stabbed as he walked to school in the Mariners Harbor section of Staten Island.

A surveillance camera on a home across the street captured a stocky attacker as he stalked the boy from behind on Union Avenue before grabbing him around the neck and stabbing him in his back, head, neck and arm.

Jermaine is seen stumbling a few steps before he regains his footing and runs.

“It looks like he’s trying to kill that kid,” said Luis Padilla, 44, the home’s owner. “He went straight for the jugular.”

COMMENT:  Please read the whole thing.  If the logic of the article is correct, it reinforces the belief that "they are here."  And I think they are.

December 27, 2015       Permalink

TRUMP ON THE ATTACK – AT 11:54 A.M. ET:  It's no secret that I'm no big fan of Donald Trump.  He has some good instincts, and ideas, but his vulgarity simply turns me off.  We don't have royalty in America, so we depend on the president to be the "good steward," and behave accordingly. 

However, one positive thing about Trump is that he, or his representatives, will say what others dread to say, and some of these things need saying.  Consider this, from The Hill: 

Donald Trump’s campaign is escalating its war of words with Hillary Clinton, claiming that the Democratic front-runner bullied women to hide her husband’s “sexist secrets” and accusing her campaign of “acting like 9-year-old little girls.”

In an interview late Wednesday on CNN, Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson unloaded on Clinton and her campaign, returning fire after Clinton condemned Trump’s “penchant for sexism.”

“What you have on Hillary Clinton’s side are a bunch of people, including women — liberal women — who want to run around talking about the war on women,” Pierson said. “They want to burn their bras and complain about equal pay and be treated as men, and the second they get criticized for anything they start acting like 9-year-old little girls.”

And...

“But Hillary Clinton has some nerve to talk about the war on women and the bigotry toward women when she has a serious problem in her husband.”

At a rally on Tuesday, Clinton declined to address the controversy with Trump directly, but said voters “shouldn’t let anybody bully his way into the presidency.”

In a personal attack, Pierson on Wednesday said Clinton is the bully.

“What’s interesting about this, this notion of being bullied is, I mean, I can think of quite a few women that have been bullied by Hillary Clinton to hide her husband’s misogynist, sexist secrets,” Pierson said.

COMMENT:  She is correct.  And why is Hillary so silent about the unspeakable treatment of women in much of the Muslim world?  Guess speaking out would violate the approved "narrative."

The gender card may not work this time because of Clinton's own hypocrisy.  There is only so much of her phoniness that the country can take. 

December 27, 2015       Permalink

IT'S ABOUT TIME – AT 11:33 A.M. ET:  We don't praise the Obama administration too often, but give credit where it's due.   Washington is trying to cut this nation's forced "contribution" to the UN budget.  The step is long overdue.  For too long we have paid an inordinate share to keep that corrupt organization going.  From the great George Russell at Fox: 

The U.S. is locked once again in a back-room struggle with developing nations over how much of the United Nations tab Washington will pick up over the next three years, especially the bill for peacekeeping activities.

There is cautious hope among diplomats that the U.S. can chip away at least marginally at the U.N.’s “scale of assessments”-- a dues system loaded in favor of many poor and not-so-poor countries that pay less than their fair share, and saddle the small number of rich countries -- especially the U.S. -- with the difference.

In broad terms, the bottom line will remain the same: the U.S. will continue to pay billions more than everyone else. Last year, the U.S. handed over $3 billion toward the U.N.’s so-called “regular” Secretariat budget and its peacekeeping forces, though the full amount of U.S. contributions to the U.N. system -- the Obama administration does not divulge them -- was much more.

Wonder why they don't divulge them.  Not exactly the transparency we were promised as part of the overall hope 'n' change package.

The last official tally of overall U.S. contributions, in 2010, was about $7.6 billion, and that was widely considered a low-ball figure.

The basis of U.S. giving is the U.N. assessments scale -- currently set so that the U.S. pays 22 percent of the so-called “regular” U.N. Secretariat annual budget (about $2.8 billion in 2015), and 28.36 percent of its peacekeeping budget, which has ballooned in the past few years to $8.47 billion in 2014-2015.

The bigger the overall bills, the bigger is the share in dollar terms the U.S. must pay because of its outsized dues percentages.

COMMENT:  There are some good things the UN does, but so much of the organization is a bad joke –  inflated bureaucracies, heavy corruption, and the vast influence of the 57 Muslim nations, few of which even resemble democracies.  

We also tire of supporting "third world" nations, many of which will probably be "third world" forever.  As the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan asked one "third world" leader, "If we can grow food, why can't you grow food?"  The answer will undoubtedly be in the mail.

December 27,  2015    Permalink

DECEMBER 26,  2015

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET:

THINK IT'S TOO WARM? – From KCEN:   (WFAA) -- The long-awaited storm system is making its way into Texas, and promises to bring a variety of weather through Monday. A crippling winter storm will strike West Texas with heavy snow and high winds leading to what the National Weather Service is calling a "historic blizzard."  Meanwhile, severe weather will break out in our part of the state and points south. All forms of severe weather will be possible, including large hail, damaging winds, and tornadoes. Flash flooding will also be a concern.  But it should also be pointed out that many areas will just be getting a simple soaking rain.  Strong to severe storms will break out to the west and northwest of Dallas-Fort Worth on Saturday afternoon, spreading slowly to the east during the evening.  Take that, global warmers!

UK AMBASSADOR WAY OUT OF LINE – From The Hill:  The United Kingdom's top diplomat in the United States is a fan of President Obama.  “I think the legacy, the balance sheet, doesn’t look bad," Sir Peter Westmacott, the outgoing British ambassador in Washington, said in an interview with The Guardian newspaper.  "It certainly doesn’t feel to me like this is a lame-duck presidency which has given up," he added. "He’s motoring along and he’s doing through executive action what he needs to.”...He lauded the deals Obama struck with Iran and Cuba, saying they took "political courage."  Both Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner, "did a remarkable job of making America loved again after the difficult years of the previous regime,” Westmacott said.   Entirely inappropriate comments by a foreign ambassador regarding our internal affairs.  Unusual for a British diplomat, who should know better.  As for our being "loved again," I wonder who the lovers are.  This man deserves a reprimand, but he's retiring anyway.

FROM THOSE INVENTIVE YANKS – From the TimesGazette.com:   Scientists from the UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science come with significant results in creating an incredibly strong but still lightweight new structural metal by using a novel way.  Scientists announce that the new metal shows extremely high specific strength (the weight, which a substance can resist before breaking) and particular modulus (stiffness-to-weight ratio). The metal is produced when magnesium is mixed with dense ceramic, silicon carbide nanoparticles, which are equally spread in magnesium. The particular material might be used in creating cars, lightweight airplanes, mobile electronics, spacecraft as well as medical devices. Because of its light weight, this unique metal may also assist in improving the fuel effectiveness of airplane and spacecraft, or other vehicles.  Leave it to our guys to come up with something great.  If the story proves out, this could have an important impact on energy policy.

December 26,  2015     Permalink

HMM.  SOMETHING UP? – AT 11:35 A.M. ET:  Remember Jim Webb?  He's the former Democratic senator from Virginia who, earlier this year, challenged Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Webb, a moderate pro-defense former Republican, never had a shot in a party that is increasingly leftist.  He departed the race early, but there were lingering questions as to whether he would mount a third-party challenge, positioning himself as a traditional, middle guy between Democratic and Republican extremes.  And now there's this, from The Hill: 

Former Democratic presidential candidate Jim Webb is accusing his party’s front-runner for her “inept leadership” in Libya as secretary of State.

“Hillary Clinton should be called to account for her inept leadership that brought about the chaos in Libya, and the power vacuums that resulted in the rest of the region,” Webb wrote in a Facebook post Saturday.

Webb said Clinton has tried to frame the situation in Libya as a successful point in her tenure at the helm of the State Department.

But he said the removal of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has only destabilized the region, giving rise to radical Islamic terrorism and fanning the flames of the Syrian civil war.

“The predictable chaos was bad enough, but it also helped bring about the disaster in Syria,” he said.

“While she held that office, the U.S. spent about $2 billion backing the Libyan uprising against Qaddafi,” he continued. “The uprising, which was part of the Arab Spring, led directly to Qaddafi being removed from power and killed by rebel forces in 2011. Now some 2,000 ISIS [Islamic State in Iraq and Syria] terrorists have established a foothold in Libya.

“Who is taking her to task for this?”

That is a stunningly strong attack.   And then there is this:

The former U.S. senator from Virginia dropped out of the Democratic primary race in October, but said he would still consider running as an independent.

COMMENT:  From the tone of his comments, it sounds like he's very serious.  Even if he takes three or four points away from Hillary, that could be decisive in a close race. There may be many surprises up ahead.

December 26, 2015       Permalink

AFTERMATH OF THE ATTACKS IN FRANCE – AT 11:56 A.M. ET:   More and more recruits from France are slipping off to Syria.  The question is, what will they do when they return?  From Fox: 

NICE, France – Valérie Aubry-Dumont got the news in a WhatsApp message from deep inside Islamic State territory. "Mom, you're going to be a grandmother," wrote her teenage daughter, Cléa.

When Aubry-Dumont last saw her daughter, Cléa was a 16-year-old girl attending Catholic school in a Paris suburb. After a breakup, Cléa met a young man online and within months the couple fled France to live in a stretch of northern Syria ruled by Islamic State.

"I wish Cléa never had children," Aubry-Dumont, a child-care worker, says now that her grandson has been born. Her daughter talks some days of returning to France, Aubry-Dumont said, but is afraid of losing her baby if she tries to leave. “She is trapped.”

In France, the West’s biggest supplier of foreign fighters in Syria, the loss of sons, daughters and grandchildren to Islamic State has been a slow-motion tragedy. For some French families, the Paris attacks, while deepening the wedge between militants and the West, were a painful reminder of their ties to the enemy.

The French wife of Foued Mohamed-Aggad—who along with two others killed 90 people in Paris's Bataclan concert hall on Nov. 13—is living in Islamic State territory and ready to give birth “any day now,” said Françoise Cotta, a lawyer Mohamed-Aggad’s mother approached in an attempt to bring the child back to France.

“An alarming number of young men and women are leaving France to start a family in Syria,” said Alain Ruffion, director at Unimed, a group that works to prevent the radicalization of residents around the southern French city of Nice.

COMMENT:  We know that a tiny number of fanatical jihadists can pull off a major attack.  The 9-11 attacks in the United States were carried out by 19 aircraft hijackers.  So even a small number of people leaving a country like France, and returning, can wreak havoc.

There have been a number of reports of young Muslims, especially from the Minnesota area, suddenly disappearing after being radicalized by online sites.  We can expect them back.

December 26, 2015       Permalink

BACK TO THE REAL WORLD – AT 10:18 A.M. ET:  A new terror warning in Europe.  From AP:

BERLIN — Police in Vienna say they have stepped up security precautions after a warning to several European capitals about the possibility of an attack using explosives or firearms between Christmas and New Year, but they see no need to call off any events.

Vienna police said in a statement Saturday that the tip from an unidentified "friendly" intelligence service came in the days before Christmas. It said authorities also were given several names of potential attackers, but examination of that list and other investigations brought no "concrete further results" so far.

Police spokesman Christoph Poelzl told the Austria Press Agency there was no concrete threat to a specific place at a particular time.

COMMENT:  The number of successful attacks in 2015 was dramatically high, as were the number of arrests in the United States tied to terrorism.

I suspect the number of terror attacks in 2016 will depend on how terror groups think their actions will affect our presidential election.  However, their sophistication about American politics may not be great.

December 26,  2015     Permalink