Please note that you can leave a comment on any of our posts at our Facebook page.  Subscribers can also comment at length at our Angel's Corner Forum.

I appeared on Silvio Canto's talk show from Dallas yesterday.  It's here.

FEBRUARY 16,  2015

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 9:45 P.M. ET: 

SATISFYING MOMENT – The New York Times, as could be expected, has been running attack pieces on potential Republican presidential candidates.  Why not kick them before they even start?  But one piece, by Times whackjob Gail Collins, went wildly awry.  From The Politico:  "In hindsight, perhaps the headline 'Scott Walker Needs An Eraser' wasn’t the best idea.  In a recent column about the Wisconsin governor, a conservative Republican, New York Times columnist Gail Collins wrote that Walker had cut state aid to education, causing teacher layoffs in 2010. But Walker didn’t take office until 2011.  Conservative news sites had a field day with the error over the weekend, with The Weekly Standard’s John McCormack calling out the (since deleted and corrected, but archived) mistaken section in question."  The Times's correction was minimal.  Collins, whose chief life accomplishment was going to Woodstock, wrote a column based on an entirely false premise, and should face at least a short suspension for her negligence.  Maybe she can be mentored by Brian Williams.

OBNOXIOUS – When news came through that ISIS had beheaded 21 Coptic Christians, most governments in the world, and the Pope, made clear that these innocents had died because of their religion.  But not the United States Government under Barack Obama.  Our State Department deplored the murders, but referred to the victims as "Egyptian citizens."  You'd think, after Obama botched this country's response to the Paris attacks, then refused to refer to the murderous assaults in a Jewish store as anti-Semitic, he would have learned something.  But he learned nothing.  There is something particularly mean-spirited about denying a person's identity in death.  It was 21 Christians who were beheaded.  Their Egyptian citizenship was irrelevant.  Got that, Barack?

HARSH VERDICT – Even presidential historians are turning against Obama, who was their hero not very long ago.  From the Washington Examiner:  "He’s still viewed as a nice guy, but less than two years before he wraps up two terms in the Oval Office presidential scholars don’t believe President Obama ranks anywhere near history’s greats, making him a mediocre 18th in the line of best to worst.  According to a Brookings Institution survey of American Political Science Association scholars, they put Obama on the worst, not best, list by a margin of nearly three-to-one. Here's how Brookings wrote it: 'Those who view Obama as one of the worst American presidents outnumber those who view him as one of the best by nearly a 3-1 margin.'  And, the friendly think tank added, 'nearly twice as many respondents view Obama as over-rated than do those who consider him under-rated.'  Overall, Brookings said, 'Few think of Obama as an excellent president, while many more rate his presidency quite low, with the bulk of experts appearing to give him a passing grade but not one that would get him on the Dean’s list.'"  And this is from a liberal organization.  History's verdict on Obama may well be that he was a great candidate and a terrible president.

I LOVE IT – From Britain's Independent:  "It could explain why The Help received four Academy Award nominations; Oscar votes are often decided by Hollywood’s household maids, Barry Norman has claimed.  The veteran film reviewer told Radio Times: 'There’s the question of whether all the voters actually saw all the films. It’s not unknown for some, especially the elderly, to get their maids to watch them on DVD and deliver their opinions.'  It is widely suspected that the 6,000-plus 'motion picture professionals' who comprise the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences do not watch every film under consideration, as they are required to, before casting their vote."  I'd trust the opinions of the maids over the professionals any day.  "Professional" in Hollywood is, let us say, an elastic term. 

February 16,  2015     Permalink

IN THE FIGHT – AT 10:31 A.M. ET:   Egypt, like Jordan, strikes back after the murder of its citizens.  From Fox: 

Egyptian warplanes struck hard at ISIS militants in neighboring Libya, killing as many as 64 militants and destroying the Islamist terror group's training camps and weapons caches a day after a sickening video surfaced showing black-clad jihadists beheading 21 Coptic Christians.

The strikes came after Egypt's President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi went on national television in the most populous Arab nation and vowed revenge was coming. The address was followed by the airing of military video showing the planes taking off for the mission and an Armed Forces General Command statement saying the strikes were "to avenge the bloodshed and to seek retribution from the killers."

"Let those far and near know that Egyptians have a shield that protects them," it said.

The ISIS video released online showed the Egyptian victims, poor men from Egypt's rural areas who had traveled to Libya looking for work, kneeling before Islamic State executioners. In Egypt, which by some estimates is about 10 percent Christian, the video sent shockwaves through both Muslim and Christian communities. El-Sisi, the U.S.-trained, former military leader who in a landmark New Year's day address called on the Arab world to reject radical terror, and then took the unprecedented step of attending services at a Christian church, told his nation the deaths would be avenged.

And yet Obama shuns El-Sisi because he overthrew the anti-American, anti-Semitic Muslim Brotherhood, for whom Hussein Obama has a definite soft spot.  While El-Sisi is not our idea of a democrat, he is emerging as one of the great Arab leaders of the day, and one willing to take on Islamic terrorists by name.

"These cowardly actions will not undermine our determination" said el-Sissi, who also banned all travel to Libya by Egyptian citizens. "Egypt and the whole world are in a fierce battle with extremist groups carrying extremist ideology and sharing the same goals."

On Monday, el-Sissi visited the main Coptic Cathedral of St. Mark in Cairo to offer his condolences on the Egyptians killed in Libya, according to state TV.

Egyptian state-run news service Al-Ahram, citing a Libyan military spokesman, reported that the strikes, which were coordinated with Libyan officials, killed 64 Islamic State fighters and left dozens wounded. Egyptian officials told the news service the strikes were the first of several to come.

Egypt is already battling a burgeoning Islamist insurgency centered in the strategic Sinai Peninsula, where militants have recently declared their allegiance to ISIS and rely heavily on arms smuggled across the porous desert border between Egypt and Libya.

COMMENT:  There is very little coverage of the murder of Coptic Christians in the American media.  It's a disgrace. 

February 16, 2015       Permalink

A GOOD DEMOCRAT – AT 9:38 A.M. ET:  There are good Democrats.  There really are.  Occasionally I read about one.  Leon Panetta served with distinction as both CIA director and secretary of defense in the Obama administration.  He has made it clear since leaving government that he was underwhelmed by what he saw in Obamaland.  Now he's warning about our current foreign and defense policies.  From Newsmax:   

Leon Panetta, President Barack Obama's former secretary of Defense and CIA director, dodged when asked if the Islamic State (ISIS) is winning in Iraq, but he said the United States can't defeat them by not confronting them.

The United States and its allies have a good chance of being able to push ISIS back out of Iraq, Panetta said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union." "The big question mark in my mind is Syria and just exactly how long is it going to take us to be able to confront ISIS in Syria, because if they had a safe haven there, they may continue to be trouble for a long time.

"I think it's important to understand that this is not an enemy that you can kind of stand aside and not confront," he said.

Panetta hasn't been shy about offering honest assessments of his former boss' performance, even when it has angered the White House. Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett has been critical of Panetta and former Defense Secretary Robert Gates for criticizing Obama in their respective books.

One of the "mistakes" Panetta said Obama made was not acting after Syrian President Basher Assad crossed a "red line" drawn by Obama of using chemical weapons in the country's three-way civil war.

The White House has challenged that, saying ISIS would have taken control of the country by now had Assad been removed from power.

Panetta said he doesn't buy that argument.

COMMENT:  We are now on our fourth secretary of defense in the Obama administration, an extraordinary number.  Ashton Carter has a fine reputation, but he also has a reputation for independence.  He has just taken over, at a critical time.  I have no idea how long he'll last, but he doesn't strike me as the kind of man who'll put up with defeat, or the weakening of the United States.  We may just get number five.

February 16, 2015       Permalink

DENMARK – AT 9:14 A.M. ET:  More is coming out about the perpetrator of Europe's latest terror attacks.  Some news organizations are being very straightforward.  Others are choking on the term "Islamist," even pretending that we aren't really sure of the motivation of the attacker.  From London's Telegraph: 

Two men were charged on Monday as accomplices of the suspected Islamist terrorist who shot dead two people in a double attack in Copenhagen at the weekend.

The men, described as “young”, appeared in court in a closed hearing and have not been named.
They denied helping the 22-year-old suspect, Omar el-Hussein, obtain guns and hiding him for several hours after the first attack on a free speech debate at a cafe, where he killed a filmmaker.
"The two men are charged with helping through advice and deeds the perpetrator in relation to the shootings at Krudttonden and in Krystalgade," the police said in a statement, referring to the locations of the two attacks.

El-Hussein, of Palestinian descent but born and brought up in Denmark, died in a shootout with police early on Sunday as he returned home after the second attack on a girl’s Bat Mitzvah celebrations at a synagogue. He pretended to be a drunken member of the party to get past a police cordon but was stopped by a Jewish economist acting as a volunteer security guard, whom he shot dead before fleeing on foot.

Police traced his home address from CCTV footage that showed him abandoning his stolen getaway car after the cafe attack and boarding a taxi.

Police believe El-Hussein was radicalised in prison. He was released about two weeks ago after serving a two-year sentence for aggravated assault. He was convicted of stabbing a man at a railway station in 2013, injuring him in the leg and buttock.

El-Hussein, who had a criminal record going back to his teens for gang-related offences including possession of firearms, was “on the intelligence radar” as a potential threat, Denmark’s spy chief Jens Madsen said.

COMMENT:  There will be other attacks.  They are inevitable.  But also inevitable is the reaction of the political left, as represented by Barack Obama, to the effect that these individuals do not reflect larger movements, but are lone attackers distorting a religion. 

Something will happen here.  As it is said, we have to be lucky every time.  The terrorists only have to be lucky once.

February 16, 2015       Permalink

BUT WE WERE TOLD THEY WEREN'T THERE – AT 8:46 A.M. ET:  This is an extraordinary story about WMD in Iraq – you know, the weapons that didn't exist.  From The New York Times: 

The Central Intelligence Agency, working with American troops during the occupation of Iraq, repeatedly purchased nerve-agent rockets from a secretive Iraqi seller, part of a previously undisclosed effort to ensure that old chemical weapons remaining in Iraq did not fall into the hands of terrorists or militant groups, according to current and former American officials.

The extraordinary arms purchase plan, known as Operation Avarice, began in 2005 and continued into 2006, and the American military deemed it a nonproliferation success. It led to the United States’ acquiring and destroying at least 400 Borak rockets, one of the internationally condemned chemical weapons that Saddam Hussein’s Baathist government manufactured in the 1980s but that were not accounted for by United Nations inspections mandated after the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

The effort was run out of the C.I.A. station in Baghdad in collaboration with the Army’s 203rd Military Intelligence Battalion and teams of chemical-defense and explosive ordnance disposal troops, officials and veterans of the units said. Many rockets were in poor condition and some were empty or held a nonlethal liquid, the officials said. But others contained the nerve agent sarin, which analysis showed to be purer than the intelligence community had expected given the age of the stock.

The buying of nerve-agent rockets from an Iraqi seller in 2006 was the most significant recovery of chemical weapons until that point in the Iraq War.

A New York Times investigation published in October found that the military had recovered thousands of old chemical warheads and shells in Iraq and that Americans and Iraqis had been wounded by them, but the government kept much of this information secret, from the public and troops alike.

COMMENT:  Oh, so Saddam did have WMD.  Well, as Hillary might say, what difference does it make?

It makes a lot of difference.  We were told by liberals that "Bush lied, thousands died."  No, Bush didn't lie.  Even before the Iraq war, there were serious, credible reports that convoys from Iraq into Syria had been detected from the air.  There was informed speculation that they might be carrying WMD to Syria for safekeeping.  And, what do you know, we've learned in the last few years that Syria has a large arsenal of chemical weapons.  They must have gotten them online from Amazon. 

It is true that our inspectors didn't find stockpiles of WMD in Iraq, but they did find the WMD manufacturing programs ready to be restarted once UN sanctions on Iraq were lifted.  It is a more complicated story than the liberal press told us.  But they also had told us that we'd lost the war in Vietnam even though we'd won every battle. 

Why read novels.  If you want to read fiction, there's plenty published every day.

February 16,  2015     Permalink

FEBRUARY 15,  2015

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:25 P.M. ET: 

BARBARIANS – From Fox:  "A video released on Sunday by militants in Libya claiming loyalty to the Islamic State terror group purports to show the mass beheading of Coptic Christian hostages.  The video, which appeared on the Twitter feed of a website that supports Islamic State, depicts several men in orange jumpsuits being led along a beach, each accompanied by a masked militant. The men are made to kneel and one militant, dressed differently than the others, addresses the camera in North American-accented English.  'All crusaders: safety for you will be only wishes, especially if you are fighting us all together. Therefore we will fight you all together,' he said. 'The sea you have hidden Sheikh Osama Bin Laden's body in, we swear to Allah we will mix it with your blood.'"  We do hope that the president will take some time out to notice this, and to contemplate his statement last week that terrorism has been overplayed by the media.  Maybe he'll even issue a statement.

GOOD ADVICE – From The Hill:  "Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) said in an interview broadcast early Sunday that President Obama must 'put the fear of God' in Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants, but won’t.  'You don’t tell the enemy in advance this is not what you’re going to do,' King, who serves as chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee’s subcommittee on counterterrorism and intelligence, told host John Catsimatidis on 'The Cats Roundtable' on AM 970 in New York.  'You don’t tell the enemy in advance this is going to expire in three years … The enemy plans accordingly [as they did in Afghanistan],' he added.  'I want ISIS to think that we’re going to use a million troops; we’re going to stay there 100 years; and we’re going to use every weapon,' King said."  He's right, of course.  But Obama depends on military strategies developed at Disney World.

WOULD YOU BUY A USED CAR..? – From Yahoo News:  "Outgoing senior Obama adviser John Podesta reflected on his latest White House stint Friday, listing his favorite moments and biggest regrets from the past year. Chief among them: depriving the American people of the truth about UFOs.  Podesta’s longtime fascination with UFOs is well-documented, as his brief political hiatus following four years as President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff freed him up to pursue his otherworldly passion."  He assured Obama that the creatures in the UFO's aren't anti-Muslim, but are against the Keystone Pipeline.

February 15, 2015       Permalink

SOMETHING ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF DENMARK – AT 11:21 A.M. ET:  There have been two terror attacks in Copenhagen, following in pattern the attacks in Paris several weeks ago.  Latest from CNN: 

Copenhagen, Denmark (CNN)  After a frantic manhunt involving "all the country's police forces," Danish police say they've killed the man they believe is responsible for a pair of possible terrorist attacks that left two people dead.

Authorities later said that the alleged perpetrator was known to intelligence units.  That pretty much tells us that he was on a terror watch list.

"As a nation, we have experienced a series of hours we will never forget," Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt said Sunday.

"We have tasted the ugly taste of fear and powerlessness that terror would like to create. But we have also, as a society, answered back."

The carnage began Saturday afternoon, when a gunman stormed a Copenhagen cafe where Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks was attending a free speech forum.

Vilks is known for his controversial depictions of the Prophet Mohammed and has been targeted for death by Islamic extremists because of his work.

The cartoonist wasn't hurt, but the gunman did kill a 55-year-old man and wounded three officers before fleeing, police said. The man who died in the cafe shooting has not been named by authorities.

Hours later, someone approached two officers near a Copenhagen synagogue and started shooting, police said.

The officers were wounded. But 37-year-old Dan Uzan, who was providing security for a confirmation party behind the synagogue, died, the Jewish Society of Denmark said.

"The Jewish Society is in shock about the attack, but everyone's thoughts are first and foremost with Dan's family and friends, and with the wounded police officers and their families," the Jewish Society said.

Denmark's Queen Margrethe II offered her condolences and urged residents to "stand together and and guard the values upon which Denmark is built."

COMMENT:  The United States issued a tepid statement of condemnation after the first attack.  Even CNN noted that other nations reacted much more strongly, but other nations aren't run by Barack Obama.  The U.S. has not issued a statement specifically condemning the synagogue attack. 

We can expect more.  These attacks are, sadly, great recruitment tools. 

February 15, 2015       Permalink

ISIS ON THE MOVE – AT 10:17 A.M. ET:  There is so much happening that it's hard to keep up.  But things aren't going our way, despite the brilliance of Field Marshal of the United States (including parts of New Jersey) Barack Obama.  From Fox: 

The Islamic State has reportedly seized al-Baghdadi, in Iraq’s Anbar Province, 5 miles from an air base staffed by Marines, as the terror group continues its push beyond its bases in Syria and Iraq in an attempt to establish militant affiliates in other countries.

Hundreds of Islamic State fighters reportedly captured most of al-Baghdadi, which is 55 miles from the capital Ramadi, on Thursday.

On Friday, Iraqi soldiers had retaken several government buildings, but early Saturday, the soldiers withdrew, handing the town back to the militants, The New York Times reported, citing local security officials.

One local Iraqi official told Reuters that, "Ninety percent of al-Baghdadi district has fallen under the control of the insurgents."

According to The Times, American intelligence officials estimate that the terror group’s fighters have reached as many as 31,000 in Syria and Iraq.

A Defense Department spokeswoman confirmed to Fox News that “heavy fighting” took place in that area on Thursday, but referred questions about the status of the town to the Iraq government.

“There was no direct attack on the Al Asad air base,” the spokeswoman assured, while acknowledging reports of “ineffective indirect fire in the vicinity of the base.”

COMMENT:  It is imperative that our Marines not be encircled.  That could lead to a siege, and a siege can have devastating effects, both on the troops involved and on the morale of the American people.

Has someone told Obama?  Does he care?

February 15, 2015      Permalink

OH DEAR, OH DEAR, SUCH UPSET – AT 8:40 A.M. ET:  We usually don't quote Maureen Dowd of The New York Times here, but this is just too juicy to miss.  Quote of the day.  Great moment in journalism:

The Rottweilers will be unleashed.

Once the Clintons had a War Room. Now they have a Slime Room.

Once they had the sly James Carville, fondly known as “serpenthead.” Now they have the slippery David Brock, accurately known as a snake.

Brock fits into the Clinton tradition of opportunistic knife-fighters like Dick Morris and Mark Penn.

The silver-haired 52-year-old, who sports colorful designer suits and once wore a monocle, brawled his way into a Times article about the uneasy marriage between Hillary Clinton’s veteran attack dogs and the group of advisers who are moving over from Obamaland.

Hillary hasn’t announced a 2016 campaign yet. She’s busy polling more than 200 policy experts on how to show that she really cares about the poor while courting the banks. Yet her shadow campaign is already in a déjà-vu-all-over-again shark fight over control of the candidate and her money. It’s the same old story: The killer organization that, even with all its ruthless hired guns, can’t quite shoot straight.

COMMENT:  Oh, read the rest.  You have permission to have fun.

February 15,  2015     Permalink