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JUNE 30,  2015

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

SUCH BRILLIANCE – From the Washington Free Beacon: Former President Jimmy Carter referred to the United States as the most “warlike country on Earth” last week during an interview with the nonprofit Aspen Institute.  “I think the American superpower goal should be to the champion of peace, and to be the champion of human rights, and to be the champion of the environment and to be the most generous nation on Earth,” he said. “Those are the elements that I hope eventually the United States will set as goals. We are the most warlike country on Earth. We are laggard in addressing the problem of global warming, for instance, and we are now violating about ten of the 30 paragraphs in the universal declaration of human rights, so I think this is something we should look upon as our duties for the future.”  In the interview uploaded June 23, Carter also recommended the U.S. step back from what he called an “unquestioned domination” of world events.  “This may not be a good thing to say to a group of Americans, but I think the historical trend is for the United States to relinquish its unquestioned domination of the world’s politics and economy and cultural influence,” he said.  Yes, sir, we saw how Carter's policies worked out when he was president, and we're seeing how a policy of weakness and appeasement is working out under Obama. 

GOODBYE, DON'T COME BACK – From the Washington Times:  Zandria Robinson, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Memphis, has parted ways with the university after she came under fire for a number of tweets in which she blasts “whiteness” and even equates it with terrorism.  By Tuesday evening, Ms. Robinson’s Twitter account was set to private and her faculty page was deleted from the University of Memphis website.  “Zandria Robinson is no longer employed by the University of Memphis,” the university tweeted Tuesday.  The professor first raised ire when she wrote Wednesday to her 2,820 followers that the Confederate flag is “more than a symbol of white racial superiority. It is the ultimate symbol of white heteropatriarchal capitalism.”  I'm sure the screams of "academic freedom" will now be heard, but freedom comes with responsibility, and this "scholar" clearly has none.

DEMS LACK ENTHUSIASM – From the Christian Science Monitor:  Washington — Democrats believe they have a winning agenda heading into the 2016 presidential election. And for the first time, the “base” of their party – unmarried women, people of color, and young voters – represents a majority of voting-eligible citizens, according to survey data released Monday.  But none of that matters if Democrats don’t turn out. As of now, 16 months before Election Day, that’s the challenge for them: The Democratic Party faces a big enthusiasm gap with the Republicans, according to a poll sponsored by Democracy Corps and Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund.  Among Republicans, 67 percent reported the highest level of interest in the 2016 elections – rating it a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10 – compared with 52 percent of Democrats. Among the so-called rising American electorate (unmarried women, minorities, and Millennials), only 48 percent responded with a 10.  I guess it's just too hard even for fanatical Democrats to get worked up over Hillary, which is like getting worked up over a 1992 Pontiac.

June 30, 2015       Permalink

CHRISTIE IN – AT 11:06 A.M. ET:  I don't know why, but Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey today enters the race for the Republican presidential nomination.  He's the 1,279th candidate in the race.  From The New York Times:

LIVINGSTON, N.J. — Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, whose dazzling rise as a national Republican in his first term was matched only by his spectacular loss of stature at home in his second, enters the 2016 presidential race on Tuesday morning bearing little resemblance to the candidate he once expected to be.

The economic recovery he promised has turned into a cascade of ugly credit downgrades and anemic job growth. The state pension he vowed to fix has descended into a morass of missed payments and lawsuits. The administration he pledged would be a paragon of ethics has instead conspired to mire an entire town in traffic and the governor’s office in scandal.

Just three and a half years ago, Mr. Christie seemed so popular, compelling and formidable, such an antidote to all that ailed the Republican brand, that senior figures in the party pleaded with him to run for president as a substitute for their eventual nominee, Mitt Romney.

But today, a staggering 55 percent of Republican primary voters say that they cannot envision voting for Mr. Christie, according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll, a remarkable deficit from which to embark on a national campaign. The only candidate less palatable: Donald J. Trump, the bombastic developer-turned-reality television star.

COMMENT:  Well, okay, that's a New York Times story, and no GOP candidate can find much love at The Times.  But, bottom line, it's not wrong.

Christie is in a poor position.  He's not a fresh face any longer, has no experience in foreign policy, and he's losing popularity at home.  He faces a GOP field of far more attractive candidates.  I suspect he's getting in because he knows there'll never be another chance.

June 30, 2015       Permalink

WEEKEND THREAT – AT 10:18 A.M. ET:  It's becoming clear that federal authorities are taking very seriously the chance of a terror attack this holiday weekend.  From Fox:   

The FBI is establishing command centers around the country to monitor any potential terrorist threats around the July 4 weekend, a federal law enforcement source told Fox News.

The source said while there is no specific, credible threat surrounding the holiday, its symbolic nature offers a potential target for terror groups like ISIS. Authorities are particularly concerned about soft targets like shopping malls and other areas where there are large gatherings of people and rather light security, according to the source.

Information from local, state and federal law enforcement agencies will be sent to the command centers so officials can gauge the threat level and respond quickly.

Another law enforcement source told Fox the FBI’s strategy has shifted toward getting ISIS supporters off the streets as soon as possible, given that it’s hard to predict when one might go operational. This could include arresting individuals on lesser charges and then building a broader case once that person is in custody.

COMMENT:  One reason authorities make public plans like this is to create a deterrent effect – to convince terror groups that they won't get away with it, that they'll either be stopped or caught.  I've noticed that terrorists rarely if ever strike when there's this much advance warning by law enforcement.  They like the element of surprise. 

But, sooner or later, we'll be hit again.  Will Americans respond with the same determination they showed after 9/11?  Or will they be Obamafied, find blame in their own country, and "move on"?

June 30, 2015       Permalink 

ON DEADLINE – AT 9:46 A.M. ET:  Today is the theoretical deadline for reaching a nuclear agreement with Iran.  It will not be met.  Talks are being extended, if only for a few days.  That is not in itself worrying.  What is worrying is the agreement that appears to be taking shape.   It is shocking to many in Washington who watch this issue.  Our worst nightmares may be coming true.  From The Politico: 

Days away from a potential nuclear deal with Iran, senior Republican senators are plotting a strategy to undermine the multilateral accord just as the Obama administration tries to sell it to a skeptical Congress.

For weeks, Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee and Republicans on his Foreign Relations Committee have gleaned fresh intelligence from classified briefings with senior administration officials and policy experts — information they intend to use against the White House when it pitches the plan to lawmakers.

Corker has told President Barack Obama it’s “breathtaking” that his administration has allegedly backed off its insistence on aggressive inspections of Iran’s nuclear plants, a key outstanding issue in the talks. Along with Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Corker has ratcheted up demands for disclosure of a classified document articulating the long-term future of Iran’s nuclear development program.

In a private conversation this spring, Corker told Secretary of State John Kerry he can define his legacy by walking away from a “bad deal.” And Republicans including Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina are calling on Kerry and the Obama administration to suspend the talks in light of the stated insistence by Iranian leaders that sanctions be lifted immediately after an agreement is reached and that inspectors be barred from military sites.

If and when a deal is inked, GOP leaders are weighing a legislative strategy that would force Congress to vote on a motion of approval, a move that would be designed to show that only a minority of lawmakers back the nuclear plan. That could embarrass the president, even if he persuades 34 Senate Democrats to help him sustain a veto and keep the accord alive.

For Obama, the activity points to a treacherous road ahead in Congress if his administration manages to strike an accord in the coming days. Republicans are attacking the potential agreement as dangerous to national security, and GOP presidential candidates are vowing to abandon it if they win.

COMMENT:  This could be the Republican hour, the hour when the Republican Party asserts itself as the instrument of national defense and national strength.  If Obama were smart, and he is not, he would do a Reagan and walk away from the talks himself, saying to the Iranians, "When you're serious, we'll meet again."  He'd come out a national hero.

But Obama doesn't want to be a national hero.  He wants to be a hero of the international left, and a hero to Islam.  And it is becoming obvious that he is serious about his goals.

June 30, 2015        Permalink

DEFINING OUR CULTURE – AT 9:08 A.M. ET:  Much talk this past week about America's culture, with the liberal left celebrating the "rapid" changes.  The Washington Post breathlessly asked whether the Republican Party can keep up with the changes.  Nothing like a little bias to start us off.

But, in fairness to the Post, it is also chronicling another aspect of our culture, a shameful one, and that is the mass marketing of the Clintons.  They are in the influence business, and selling their influence by selling themselves is part of the racket.  The thought that this family should return to the White House should sicken anyone with a moral compass.  From WaPo: 

When the University of Missouri at Kansas City was looking for a celebrity speaker to headline its gala luncheon marking the opening of a women’s hall of fame, one name came to mind: Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But when the former secretary of state’s representatives quoted a fee of $275,000, officials at the public university balked. “Yikes!” one e-mailed another.

So the school turned to the next best option: her daughter, Chelsea.

The university paid $65,000 for Chelsea Clinton’s brief appearance Feb. 24, 2014, a demonstration of the celebrity appeal and marketability that the former and possibly second-time first daughter employs on behalf of her mother’s presidential campaign and family’s global charitable empire.

More than 500 pages of e-mails, contracts and other internal documents obtained by The Washington Post from the university under Missouri public record laws detail the school’s long courtship of the Clintons.

Chelsea Clinton, second from left, appears with her parents and husband, Marc Mezvinsky, at mother Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign kick-off rally June 13 in New York City. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

They also show the meticulous efforts by Chelsea Clinton’s image-makers to exert tight control over the visit, ranging from close editing of marketing materials and the introductory remarks of a high school student to limits on the amount of time she spent on campus.

The schedule she negotiated called for her to speak for 10 minutes, participate in a 20-minute, moderated question-and-answer session and spend a half-hour posing for pictures with VIPs offstage.

As with Hillary Clinton’s paid speeches at universities, Chelsea Clinton made no personal income from the appearance, her spokesman said, and directed her fee to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

COMMENT:  Oh yes, the Foundation.  That's the place that gets funding from a lot of strange foreign sources, all of whom are sincerely interested in improving the world (choke). 

It's sickening.  It really is.  And the soldiers of the left, who tolerate this kind of thing among their own, are the first to decry the influence of "big money" in American politics.

June 30,  2015     Permalink

JUNE 29,  2015

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:54 P.M. ET:

MARKETS WOBBLY – From CNBC: U.S. stocks plunged nearly 2 percent or more on Monday with the Dow and S&P 500 wiping out gains for the year on escalating tensions between Greece and its creditors.
"I think the uncertainty around Greece is just making people skittish and we haven't had a meaningful pullback for some time," said Ben Pace, chief investment officer at HPM Partners. "It's hard for anybody to fight this uncertainty."  Greece has gotten too little attention in the United States.  The country, economically, is collapsing, with a possible ripple effect throughout the West.  Happy days aren't here again.

IMPORTANT TRAVEL NEWS – From London's Daily Mail:   Michelle Obama says she'll do more foreign travel to promote education for girls in developing countries.  The first lady announced a new program earlier this year to help adolescent girls improve their lives by attending and staying in school called, 'Let Girls Learn.'  She since has traveled to Japan, Cambodia and London to promote the initiative and even stopped to have tea with Prince Harry.  She'd do a lot more good by staying home and donating the vast savings on her trips to a respected scholarship fund for girls.

CHICAGO CULTURE – From Breitbart:   Chicago’s 47th annual gay pride parade was disrupted several times by the usual city disruptions — gang activity, gunshots, and drunks — but the event was also disrupted by a car driving into a group of bystanders. Then there was an even larger interruption by “black lives matter” protesters.  Just about every Chicago parade these days features gunfire in the perimeters as gangs clash with police and drunks have probably been a parade disruption since forever. But this year a man tried to drive into the parade route, ramming his car into some bystanders — but not hurting anyone seriously.  Police swarmed the vehicle, smashed in the rear window and yanked out the driver, a middle-aged white man, and arrested him. Chicago police have released no details on the man’s identity nor his motivations for ramming the barricades for the parade.  But by far the biggest disruption was from a large group of “black lives matter” protesters. The group was joined by members of the black queer community of Chicago who announced the disruption on their website.  The respect among oppressed groups truly shows the unity that Barack Obama (come to save us) has brought to the United States.  Four more years!

June 29,  2015     Permalink

SUPREMES BLOCK EPA – AT 10:55 A.M. ET:  The Supreme Court, which last week tilted liberal, is showing its more thoughtful side this week.  From The New York Times: 

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday blocked one of the Obama administration’s most ambitious environmental initiatives, one meant to limit emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants from coal-fired power plants.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the majority opinion in the 5-to-4 decision, joined by the court’s more conservative members.

Industry groups and some 20 states challenged the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to regulate the emissions, saying the agency had failed to take into account the punishing costs its regulations would impose.

The Clean Air Act required the regulations to be “appropriate and necessary.” The challengers said the agency had run afoul of that law by deciding to regulate the emissions without first undertaking a cost-benefit analysis.

The agency responded that it was not required to take costs into account when it made the initial determination to regulate. But the agency added that it did so later in setting emissions standards and that, in any event, the benefits far outweighed the costs.

The two sides had very different understandings of the costs and benefits involved. Industry groups said the government had imposed annual costs of $9.6 billion to achieve about $6 million in benefits. The agency said the costs yielded tens of billions of dollars in benefits.

COMMENT:  Now maybe the EPA, which sometimes seems to have near-dictatorial powers, will be more careful, but I doubt it.

June 29, 2015       Permalink

IRAN TALKS ON THE BRINK – AT 10:14 A.M. ET:  The Iran nuclear talks are supposed to end tomorrow with an agreement, but they won't.  It's now assumed they'll go past the deadline because there are still major disagreements.  The Iranian foreign minister has gone home.

There is substantial worry among grown-ups in Washington that Obama will make last-minute concessions that will turn any agreement into a farce.  From The Hill: 

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden said on Sunday that he worries Iran has more momentum than the U.S. heading into final talks over Tehran’s nuclear arms research.

“I would actually fear that the Iranians have the upper hand right now,” Hayden told “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace.

“I would hope this is not the final round of talks,” he added.

Hayden argued on Sunday that the proposed deal does not do enough in preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

“We get them out of the penalty box for their nuclear activities,” Hayden said.

“Then they’re free and empowered to do all their other activities in the region,” he added.

A senior U.S. official told reporters that negotiators will push back a self-imposed June 30th deadline.

“Now we’re down to brass tacks,” Hayden said. “What it is they say has to be what they actually agreed to.”

Hayden added that anytime, anywhere inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities are the most important concession the U.S. could secure in any final bargain.

COMMENT:  Even a group of former Obama advisers warned last week that they feared we would agree to provisions that fall short of minimum standards.  We're getting very little information out of the talks that's definitive, so it's hard to say precisely where we are.

I've seen some very good ideas from Dennis Ross and others that we simply extend the talks for months, not days, and go for a better deal.  The Iranians need this more than we do. 

June 29, 2015       Permalink

MORE HORROR FROM ISIS – AT 9:16 A.M. ET:  Are we becoming immunized to the threats from the Islamic State?  They get more and more dire, yet our reactions are muted, and the Obama White House appears unmoved.  Consider this, from the Algemeiner: 

Leaflets distributed in Jerusalem in the name of the Islamic State terror group threatened Christians residents of the city with a “massacre” if they do not evacuate by the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, according to Israeli media reports.

Haaretz reported the discovery of leaflets in several Jerusalem locations on Saturday that were signed by “Islamic State, Jerusalem Emirate” and stated, “We tell the heretic Christians, you must clear out immediately or we’ll massacre you on Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan, and one month is time enough to evacuate.” Additionally, Israel National News reported that leaflets signed by “ISIS Palestine,” vowing “revenge” against Christians, were found in eastern Jerusalem on Thursday.

Islamic State is notorious for its brutal slaughtering of Christians and other regional minority groups during its conquests in Iraq and Syria.

COMMENT:  What is appalling is the near-silence of Christian organizations in the West.  The evangelicals have spoken out, but the "liberal" groups, like the National Council of Churches, seem to reserve their ire for the United States and Israel. 

Christians should insist that liberal groups show the same opposition to anti-Christian hate as they do to "Islamophobia." 

June 29, 2015       Permalink

DR. BEN – AT 8:51 A.M. ET:  Dr. Ben Carson has won another important straw poll, leaving political observers baffled.  What is it about this man that makes him so popular among some conservative groups?  Byron York, in a very solid analytical piece for the Washington Examiner, tries to explain.  This is the kind of journalism I like, because York actually thinks about what he writes. 

DENVER — Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon who has never held or run for elective office, is currently fourth in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls — ahead of five governors, four senators, one CEO and one billionaire. Carson has been climbing in the polls since he announced his candidacy on May 4. On the day before the announcement, Carson was at 4.8 percent in the RCP average; now, he's at 9.4 percent.

The combination of Carson's rise and his unorthodox campaign style — Carson's short-on-specifics stump speech is like no other — has left some of his rivals baffled. "I just don't get it," one said in a private conversation recently. "I don't get it."

And...

Carson has scored points before audiences around the country by arguing that his lack of political experience is an asset, not a liability. "The professional pundits say, you can't do it because you're not a politician," he told a crowd at the Western Conservative Summit in Denver Saturday night. "I would say I can do it because I'm not a politician." A certain type of conservative crowd — usually ones who are fed up with Republicans — loves that line.

Carson makes the case that everyday life can prepare a person to be president. "Experience can actually come from a variety of different things," he said in Denver, "and I've had a lot of lifetime experiences that I think are very useful — experiences growing up in dire poverty, and experiencing every socio-economic level in our society. I think that's valuable experience, because it helps you see a lot of things."

Of course, not everyone grows up to be a world-renowned surgeon. But doing anything is better than being a politician, in Carson's view; as he tells it, political experience is a uniquely unqualifying experience for public office. "Ordinary people, citizens, can have all kinds of experiences," he explained. "For those who happen to have spent their lives pushing papers around and trying to get re-elected, to think that that is better life experience when it comes to solving problems, that they have the best experience, I think it's a suspension of intellectual activity, to believe something like that." More applause.

By the end of the Denver gathering, Carson came out on top of the straw poll.

Why do conservative audiences like him so much? The simplest answer is that Carson is a really appealing man. Another is that he speaks to the throw-'em-out strain among conservatives, the same kind of thinking that would be open to a third-party candidate. Yet another is that Carson's it's-really-very-simple commonsense approach to complex issues resonates with a significant segment of the party. And finally, as the only black candidate, Carson's race might have something to do with it; he might appeal to that part of the Republican mind that has been scarred by years of accusations of racism, and also to those who believe the GOP needs a minority candidate to win more minority voters.

COMMENT:  And Bernie Sanders, an avowed socialist, is rising among Democratic voters.  Maybe a message is being sent – that many of the party faithful, in each party, are tired of the same resumes, the same college majors, the same "and then I was appointed to" backgrounds. 

Read the whole piece.  Very instructive.

June 29,  2015     Permalink