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JANUARY 1,  2015

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

PASSING – Mario Cuomo, former governor of New York and an oft-mentioned possibility for president, has died.  His son, Andrew, was just sworn in for his second term as New York's governor.  Mario Cuomo was always talked about for the White House, but he never could make up his mind to run.  Thus, he was labeled, "Hamlet on the Hudson."  His son, Andrew, is also mentioned for higher office, but the mentioning has trailed off.  Andy lacks dad's solid presence, and often looks as if he's ready to draw a gun and take revenge.  Not presidential.  Mario Cuomo symbolized the Democratic Party's liberal wing, and represented it decently. 

SAME OLD STORY – From Fox:  "The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose more than expected last week, but not enough to change views of a sustained strength in the labor market.  Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased by 17,000 to a seasonally adjusted 298,000 for the week ended Dec. 27, the Labor Department said on Wednesday. That followed four straight weeks of declines.  Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims rising to 290,000 last week. The prior week's data was revised to show 1,000 more applications received that previously reported. Claims are volatile around the Christmas holiday period."   We watch these things week by week.  While the job market appears to be improving, it can hardly be called strong.  Wages are stagnant, and economists say that the solid growth in the economy during the last quarter is unlikely to be repeated.  Obama has promised more regulation of business.  Not smart at all.

CUBA RESPONDS TO OBAMA'S CHANGE IN OUR POLICY – From Britain's Guardian:  "Cuban police have detained at least three leading dissidents ahead of a planned free-speech demonstration in the Plaza de la Revolución.  The arrests of Antonio Rodiles, Eliezer Avila and Reinaldo Escobar look set to be the biggest test yet of diplomatic relations with the US since they were restored earlier this month after 53 years of tension.  The crackdown came around lunchtime on Tuesday, just hours before local performance artist Tania Bruguera was due to stage an open-microphone event in Havana’s most politically sensitive square.  Police had denied Bruguera a permit for the “Yo tambien exijo,” [I also demand]” demonstration and warned activists not to participate, but several had indicated their willingness to participate in this test case for public dissent.  The authorities did not give them a chance."  Still the old dictatorship.  Note the indifference by the left wing of the Democratic Party.

January 1, 2015        Permalink

de BLASIO'S SLOW SUICIDE – AT 11:38 A.M. ET:  New York may be a liberal city, but the elections of Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg showed that the right Republican or moderate can be elected mayor. 

Currently, New York has, in Bill de Blasio, the most left-wing mayor in its history, a former (and maybe current) supporter of the Sandinistas and Fidel Castro.  He has become public enemy number one among police officers for his criticism of police and his apparent siding with anti-police demonstrators.

A meeting between de Blasio and police union chiefs several days ago, held to relieve tensions, went poorly.  de Blasio has ignored pleas to apologize to the NYPD for insensitive remarks.  The assassination of two New York City cops, coming after much anti-police rhetoric and poisonous demonstrations, increased the gulf between de Blasio and the police dramatically.

Now de Blasio seems to have gone out of his way to make matters worse.  From the New York Post:   

Mayor Bill de Blasio delivered another blow to New York’s Finest on Wednesday when he reappointed a Brooklyn judge who freed without bail two men who threatened cops just days after the Bed-Stuy double police assassination.

A New Year's Eve reappointment, done when the city wasn't looking.

The stunning decision came even as one of the suspects — a gang member charged with posting police death threats online — skipped a court date and had a warrant out for his arrest, sources said.
Brooklyn Criminal Court Judge Laura Johnson had faced a midnight expiration of her term. She was appointed by then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg in January 2013.

Obviously, a Bloomberg mistake.

Her one-year, interim reappointment by de Blasio outraged law enforcement officials a day after he met with the heads of five police unions to heal his fractured relationship with cops.

“The mayor’s actions of reappointing this judge are completely hypocritical to his argument that he’s pro-police and counterproductive to what he claims to be an effort to open dialogue going forward,” said sergeants union chief Ed Mullins.

“He had the opportunity to demonstrate good will and support for the police, and he once again has demonstrated the opposite.”

The head of the state ­court officers union, Dennis Quirk, called de Blasio’s decision “a disgrace.”

COMMENT:  de Blasio probably figured that he could not fail to reappoint this incompetent judge without infuriating his leftist base.  So he's taking more heat from police, whom the base despises.

One of the problems here is that the organized Republican Party is so weak in New York City.  It often surrenders before the election campaigns begin.  Rudy was a fluke, a man who had built an independent reputation as a prosecutor.  Bloomberg, a zillionaire, could finance his own campaign.

de Blasio is up for re-election in 2017.  Where is the new Rudy?

January 1, 2015       Permalink

JEB GETS READY – AT 11:16 A.M. ET:  It's pretty clear that Jeb Bush is running for president.  Buoyed by early (and somewhat meaningless) favorable polls, he is taking steps to separate himself from any conflicts of interest.  From the Washington Post: 

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, moving closer to a possible presidential run, has resigned all of his corporate and nonprofit board memberships, including with his own education foundation, his office said late Wednesday night.

He also resigned as a paid adviser to a for-profit education company that sells online courses to public university students in exchange for a share of their tuition payments.

Bush’s New Year’s Eve disclosure, coming in an e-mail from an aide to The Washington Post, culminated a string of moves he has made in recent days to shed business interests that have enriched him since leaving office in 2007. The aide said the resignations had been made “effective today.”

The aide said Bush was reviewing other businesses in which he is principal partner or owner, such as Jeb Bush & Associates, a consulting firm, and Britton Hill Partnership, a business advisory group that in 2013 set up private-equity funds investing in energy and aviation.

Aides said Bush wants to devote his time to exploring a return to politics rather than pursuing his business commitments. But separating himself from those interests now could also be a strategic attempt to prepare for the added scrutiny of a hotly contested campaign for the Republican nomination.

Bush’s financial stake in Academic Partnerships, the online education firm, has been relatively small for a millionaire — a $60,000-a-year fee and ownership of a small amount of stock, said Randy Best, the company’s founder and chief executive. Even so, Bush’s affiliation with the firm — which has contracts with schools in a half-dozen states and several foreign countries and has annual sales of $100 million — could complicate his effort to promote his record as an education reformer.

The company receives up to 70 percent of the tuition some students pay to public universities, and some faculty members say it siphons money from the schools while asserting too much control over academic decisions.

COMMENT:  Jeb is already controversial among Republicans, with some conservatives saying he just isn't conservative enough for the modern Republican Party.  His supporters say he will point to a very conservative record as a successful and popular governor of Florida.

There is the dynasty issue.  America doesn't do dynasties.  But that would be neutralized if Hillary Clinton is the Dem nominee, as I expect she will be.  She can hardly point to a Bush dynasty when, standing beside her is a former president, her husband.

2016 has begun.

January 1, 2015        Permalink

CONFRONTATION – AT 10:58 A.M. ET:  Congress to vote on Keystone Pipeline.  From the Washington Examiner: 

The House will hold a vote on authorizing the Keystone XL pipeline in the first two weeks of session next month, a GOP leadership aide confirmed with the Washington Examiner.

The bill will likely pass the House by a sizable margin. The Senate also plans to hold a vote in January, and has a Jan. 7 committee hearing on a bill to green light the Canada-to-Gulf Coast project.

The 1,200-mile pipeline has been under federal review more than six years. Its builder, TransCanada Corp., needs a cross-border permit to complete its northern leg.

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has pledged to have an open amendment process on the legislation. The bill likely has the 60 supporters needed to clear procedural hurdles for a vote, but it remains to be seen whether potentially controversial amendments — such as handcuffing the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to regulate carbon emissions from power plants — would cost Democratic votes.

COMMENT:  The key here is to make sure the legislation isn't hobbled by Republican amendments, forcing President Obama to decide whether to veto a simple authorization of the pipeline.  He's given broad hints that he will indeed veto the pipeline, but that would be a broadly unpopular move and would antagonize organized labor, which hopes for new jobs from the pipeline project.

On the other hand, Obama may decide to let the pipeline go through.  This would infuriate the environmental religionists who believe Keystone is the work of the Devil, but would raise Obama's overall popularity.  We wait and see.

January 1,  2015     Permalink

DECEMBER 31,  2014

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

We won't do "Short Takes" tonight because it's New Year's Eve.  In liberal New York I actually got an invitation to go somewhere.  Miracles happen.

We'll end 2014 by recalling three past New Year's Eves.  On December 31, 1941, Americans were still reeling from Pearl Harbor, and reading about Allied defeats, one right after the other.  Many Americans thought we were through, finished.  But little more than three and a half years later, World War II ended with complete Allied victories, and the emergence of the United States as a superpower.

On December 31, 1950, Americans were distressed and fearful again.  President Truman had courageously led a coalition of nations to resist the Soviet-sponsored invasion of South Korea.  For a time, the effort, led by General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, was spectacularly successful.  Then China intervened, pushing American troops back.  By New Year's Eve we thought we could lose the war.  But the replacement of MacArthur by Matthew Ridgway, and a new strategy, stabilized the line.  The war ended with a truce in July of 1953, and South Korea was saved as an independent nation.  Today it is a firm ally with one of the strongest economies in the world.

On December 31, 1979, Americans faced another period of despair.  We had experienced years of drift and cynicism – the counterculture of the late sixties, assassinations, riots, the Nixon scandals, the political betrayal of our effort in Vietnam, the pathetic Carter administration, a declining economy marked by stagflation, and then the taking of American hostages in Iran.  A friend of mine asked, "Can we do anything right?"  We didn't realize on that New Year's Eve that great change would come in 11 months with the election of Ronald Reagan and a new morning in America. 

It's always morning in America.  Have that thought on New Year's Day.

December 31, 2014       Permalink

A CAUTIONARY NOTE – AT 12:06 P.M. ET:  This story struck me as so typical of some of the political figures we're seeing today, although we've always had a dose of it in our history.  No politician was more heralded when she made her first political splash than Wendy Davis.

She became a feminist heroine when she stood on the floor of the Texas legislature, in sneakers, and filibustered an anti-abortion measure.  Beautiful, engaging, an up-from-poverty graduate of the Harvard Law School, she started receiving huge amounts in campaign contributions, most from eager supporters outside Texas, who saw her as the next governor, maybe president, maybe queen, maybe empress of the United States. 

But Wendy turned out to be a disappointment – poorly prepared, a bit deceptive about that up-from-poverty story, rather behind-the-times in her abortion stances, and one of the worst candidates for governor of Texas ever.  Now we find that Wendy was really just an old-style vote hustler, who didn't even tell the truth about where she stood.  A lesson to us all about politics.  From the Washington Examiner: 

And it didn’t even work.

Former Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, in her first interview after losing by 20 points to governor-elect Greg Abbott, admitted she only claimed to support an open-carry gun law in order to win votes.

“There is one thing that I would do differently in that campaign, and it relates to the position that I took on open-carry,” Davis told the San Antonio Express-News on Monday. “I made a quick decision on that with a very short conversation with my team and it wasn't really in keeping with what I think is the correct position on that issue.”

Davis added that she does support “people’s right to own and to bear arms in appropriate situations,” but fears that open carry would be used “to intimidate and cause fear.”

Is that what she thinks of Texans?

The term “open-carry” refers to laws that allow gun-owners to carry their weapons in full view of the public. Typically (although not always) such laws still require those who want to carry concealed weapons to apply for a permit.

During her gubernatorial campaign, Davis said she supported an expansion of gun rights in Texas that included open-carry.

Davis now says that she has “always been true to my core beliefs.” Except, of course, when she wasn't.

COMMENT:  Lesson:  Journalists shouldn't make heroes or heroines out of people they really don't know.  Get the facts first.  Examine the person.  Check that person's claims.  We're going into a presidential election year, when we'll need first-class reporting.  We'll get some.  We'll get the other kind as well.

December 31, 2014       Permalink

DARE TO SPEAK OUT – AT 11:16 A.M. ET:  Used to be a time when journalists were supposed to use their eyes and ears before engaging their "intellect."  No more.  Today, in too many news organizations, the "analysis" comes before the facts. 

And so it's refreshing to see common-sense observation.  Gateway Pundit publishes a piece that finally notes the number of old reds in the anti-police marches we're witnessing these days.  Following the tradition begun by the newly fashionable press of the Vietnam war, which described pro-Communist marchers as "anti-war activists," the mainstream media of today hasn't noticed. 

Many of the signs being carried by the protesters of the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” and “I Can’t Breathe” thugs are printed by RevCom (seen printed at the bottom of many of their signs). A quick investigation reveals that “RevCom” is shorthand for “Revolution Communists” with connections to Weather Underground.

How odd… almost like the connection between Obama and Bill Ayers… huh?

Right Wing News reports the following:

I wrote an article over the weekend on the agitators behind the New York protests and cop killings. Part of that article mentioned the gang which NYPD cop killer, Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley, may have belonged to, the Black Guerilla Family. This gang is allied with US Leftist groups and worked as an ideological partner with Bill Ayers’ Weather Underground terrorist organization. The Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) is also directly connected to the Weather Underground and is providing protest signs across the nation. They are for revolution, not peaceful protests.

COMMENT:  And there's more.  I've seen this deaf-and-dumb approach by the MSM so often, it seems almost routine.  A few days ago I noticed, in one photo of anti-police marchers, an inordinate number of Arab scarves.  Yet the people wearing them didn't seem Middle Eastern.  I wondered why.  Is this a fashion statement?

In fact, many of the red groups of today, like International Answer, have been heavily infiltrated by radical pro-Palestinian activists.  It's part of the game.  Not much reporting on that, as you've seen.

Anyone who dares to tell the truth is immediately labeled a "McCarthyite."  That's part of the game, too.

December 31, 2014       Permalink

ALAN, WE HARDLY KNEW YE – AT 10:29 A.M. ET:  Alan Greenspan's wife, Andrea Mitchell of NBC, must be mortified.  She sometimes sounds like a spokeswoman for the Obama administration, and here is her husband, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, warning that the Obama economy is still in trouble.  From Bloomberg: 

Just when you thought the U.S. economy was roaring back to health, Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is here to tell you otherwise.

“The United States is doing better than anybody else, but we’re still not doing all that well,” Greenspan, 88, said today in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop” with Betty Liu. “We still have a very sluggish economy.”

And that, of course, is the point.  If you're getting C's in school, and everyone else is getting D's, you're at the top of your class.  But you're still getting C's.

Greenspan said the economy won’t fully recover until American companies invest more in productive assets and the housing market bounces back.

“Almost all of the weakness in the last four, five, six years has been in long-lived investments” in capital goods and real estate, Greenspan said. “Until these pick up, we’re not going to get the kind of vibrant growth that everyone is hoping for.”

Greenspan, who retired from the Fed’s helm in January 2006, said he expects growth to dip below a 3 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter of this year. His forecast is in line with the estimate of 2.5 percent in a Bloomberg survey of economists.

He spoke a week after revised figures showed gross domestic product expanded at a 5 percent rate in the third quarter, the fastest pace since 2003. The data helped drive the Dow Jones Industrial Average above 18,000 for the first time.

COMMENT:  That 5 percent figure is being seriously challenged, and may have been helped along by some serious cooking of the books, not surprising for the Obama crowd.  Look around you.  Are you really seeing boom times?  The "jobs recovery" is nothing of the kind.  Americans who once were well employed are having to settle for second-rate jobs or part-time jobs.

Greenspan is right.  I hope he survives the day.

December 31, 2014        Permalink

WOULD YOU BELIEVE THIS? – AT 10:16 A.M. ET:  A New Year's Eve gift to Americans, while Congress is out of town and the people are distracted by the holiday.  From Fox: 

The Defense Department announced Wednesday that five more prisoners will be transferred out of Guantanamo Bay to another nation, in the latest step by the Obama administration to whittle down the prisoner population in pursuit of ultimately closing the camp.

The five men will be transferred to the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan for resettlement, the U.S. government announced.

The two men from Tunisia and three from Yemen -- who have been at the camp for a dozen years -- had been cleared for release from the prison by a government task force but could not be sent to their homelands. The U.S. has sent hundreds of prisoners from Guantanamo to third countries but this is the first time Kazakhstan has accepted any for resettlement.

Their release brings the prison population at Guantanamo to 127, according to a Pentagon statement on Tuesday.

The transfer appears to be the latest step in the administration's strategy to rapidly bring down the prison population at Guantanamo, potentially to under 100, so that the White House can make a more aggressive argument to Congress that the camp should be closed. Congress continues to block Guantanamo prisoners from being brought for detention on the U.S. mainland.

Many vocal critics of the administration's push to close the camp, though, have not backed off their concerns. And the accelerated prisoner transfers have raised additional security concerns.

COMMENT:  Those concerns are legitimate.  It reminds me of this country's practice, before World War II, of selling scrap iron to Japan.  It came back to us in the form of bullets and shells.

Closing Gitmo was one of Obama's promises to the far left of the Democratic Party.  It's clear from recent actions that he intends to keep those promises during his last two years in office, when he no longer has to face the voters.

December 31,  2014     Permalink