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OCTOBER 7,  2015

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE –  AT 5:02 P.M. ET:

BULLETIN:  MAJOR POLITICAL NEWS – Donald Trump has won the very coveted Wayne Newton endorsement.  From The Hill:  Wayne Newton is placing his bets on Donald Trump.  The entertainer known as “Mr. Las Vegas” appeared on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday and voiced his support for the GOP presidential candidate.  “I love Donald, and he would make a great president,” Newton told hosts Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Steve Doocy, and Brian Kilmeade.  “Number one, he tells the truth,” said Newton. “Number two, he’s been where most of these guys want to be, in terms of riding on his own plane. He doesn’t have to worry about what hotels he stays in, he doesn’t have to worry about how his family gets to Hawaii, so on and so forth.”  Mr. Newton speaks for embalmed people everywhere.

SCIENCE STAGGERS ON – From London's Telegraph:  Breathalysers could be used to curb alcohol abuse among scientists at US bases in Antarctica following “unpredictable behaviour” caused by excess drinking, including fights and indecent exposure.  Officials from the National Science Foundation told an audit of healthy and safety at the two US-run bases — McMurdo Station and the South Pole — that drinking has led to “unpredictable behaviour that has led to fights, indecent exposure, and employees arriving to work under the influence," according to a report in Wired.  The agency is reportedly considering shipping several breathalysers to the isolated stations, which together house up to about 1,150 people, including scientists and support staff.  Look, I don't want to be rude, or anti-science, or anything like that, but aren't these the guys who take the temperature measurements that tell us all about “climate change"?

VW IN TROUBLE – One of Germany's most iconic companies, Volkswagen, is in trouble, and the trouble looks worse and worse.  From The New York Times:   FRANKFURT — Volkswagen’s new chief executive warned on Tuesday that the financial impact from the company’s emissions cheating scandal would be worse than previously acknowledged, forcing the company to curtail investment at a time when all carmakers are trying to keep ahead of a rush of new technology.  The automaker previously said it would set aside 6.5 billion euros, or about $7.3 billion, to cover the cost of bringing vehicles with illegal software into compliance with emissions standards.  “But that will not be enough,” said Matthias Müller, the Volkswagen chief executive, adding that job cuts might be ahead.  The technological slippage can be critical, even fatal.  Cars, and car manufacturing, have changed dramatically in the last ten years alone.  A few years of technological stagnation could make VW an also-ran.

October 7, 2015       Permalink 

REVENGE FOR THE IRAN AGREEMENT? – AT 10:29 A.M. ET:  It's possible, just possible, that Obama could be headed for a veto override, and the subject is national defense.  From the Washington Times: 

Senators overcame a filibuster on the annual defense policy bill Tuesday, delivering a significant victory to Republicans and teeing up a battle with President Obama over a threatened veto on the bill, which does everything from raising troops’ pay to setting policy for Guantanamo Bay detainees.

It would be the fifth veto of the president’s tenure, and Republicans said given the popularity of the bill and the dangerous threats the military is confronting overseas, an Obama veto would be the equivalent of declaring surrender.

A final vote is expected Wednesday before the bill is sent to the president’s desk.

“I cannot imagine a president of the United States vetoing a bill that authorizes the ability of Americans to defend this nation under these most challenging circumstances,” said Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican and chairman of the Armed Service Committee.

If Mr. Obama follows through on his threat, it would present the best chance yet for Congress to override him, which would take a two-thirds vote in each chamber.

There appears to be more than enough support in the Senate, which voted 73-26 Tuesday to head off a filibuster. From the Democratic caucus, 21 members sided with Republicans.

The House fell short of two-thirds support last week when it voted 270-156. Ten Republicans joined 146 Democrats in opposition, and many of them likely face intense pressure to support an override.

COMMENT:  If an override fails because Republicans in the House can't muster the votes, the political effect on the GOP will be explosive.  However, if truth be told, the vote in the House fell about 20 votes short of the two thirds required to override.  So even if the ten GOP holdouts switched, the veto would still be sustained. 

Also, I wonder if Dems in the Senate would vote to override an Obama veto, given the fact that they were kept almost rigidly in line on the Iran issue.  It's one thing to vote for a bill, another to go against a veto by the president of your own party. 

Tense votes coming.

October 7, 2015       Permalink

MORE "SETTLED SCIENCE" DOWN THE DRAIN – AT 9:51 A.M. ET:   Yeah, settled science again.  Don't drink whole milk.  Bad for you.  You'll start clutching your chest.  Well...maybe.  Maybe not.  There's "research" that questions a great deal of what we've been told.   From WaPo:

U.S. dietary guidelines have long recommended that people steer clear of whole milk, and for decades, Americans have obeyed. Whole milk sales shrunk. It was banned from school lunch programs. Purchases of low-fat dairy climbed.

“Replace whole milk and full-fat milk products with fat-free or low-fat choices,” says the the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the federal government's influential advice book, citing the role of dairy fat in heart disease.

Whether this massive shift in eating habits has made anyone healthier is an open question among scientists, however. In fact, research published in recent years indicates that the opposite might be true: millions might have been better off had they stuck with whole milk.

Scientists who tallied diet and health records for several thousand patients over ten years found, for example, that contrary to the government advice, people who consumed more milk fat had lower incidence of heart disease.

By warning people against full-fat dairy foods, the U.S. is “losing a huge opportunity for the prevention of disease,” said Marcia Otto, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Texas, and the lead author of large studies published in 2012 and 2013, which were funded by government and academic institutions, not the industry. “What we have learned over the last decade is that certain foods that are high in fat seem to be beneficial.”

COMMENT:  Oh really?  Look, I'm not an expert in this.  But apparently a lot of other people with letters after their names aren't experts either, but have been dispensing a lot of advice.

Read the article.  Judge for yourself.  Then remind yourself to hit the ceiling the next time you see the words "settled science."

October 7, 2015       Permalink

OH, NOW THEY TELL US – AT 9:09 A.M. ET:  Your national security dollars at work.  Don't expect much value.  From IBD:

As the White House prepares to dump another 10,000 Syrian refugees on U.S. cities, it assures us these mostly Muslim men undergo a "robust screening" process. Not so, admits the agency responsible for such vetting.

Under grilling from GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions, head of the Senate subcommittee on immigration, the Homeland Security official in charge of vetting Syrian and other foreign Muslim refugees confessed that no police or intelligence databases exist to check the backgrounds of incoming refugees against criminal and terrorist records.

"Does Syria have any?" Sessions asked. "The government does not, no sir," answered Matthew Emrich, associate director for fraud detection and national security at DHS' U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Sessions further inquired: "You don't have their criminal records, you don't have the computer database that you can check?" Confessed Emrich: "In many countries the U.S. accepts refugees from, the country did not have extensive data holdings."

While a startling admission, it confirms previous reporting. Senior FBI officials recently testified that they have no idea who these people are, and they can't find out what type of backgrounds they have — criminal, terrorist or otherwise — because there are no vetting opportunities in those war-torn countries.

Syria and Iraq, along with Somalia and Sudan, are failed states where police records aren't even kept. Agents can't vet somebody if they don't have documentation and don't even have the criminal databases to screen applicants.

So the truth is, we are not vetting these Muslim refugees at all. And as GOP presidential front-runners duly note, it's a huge gamble to let people from hostile nations enter the U.S. without any meaningful background check. It's a safer bet just to limit, if not stop, their immigration.

COMMENT:  The fish rots from the head, the saying goes.  Our procedures reflect the values of Barack Obama.  In a parliamentarty system, this make-believe president would have been retired a long time ago.  He is not an American president.  I don't know what he is.

October 7, 2015       Permalink

THE GREATEST THREAT – AT 8:38 A.M. ET:  And it ain't global warming.  It is, of course, nuclear proliferation.  From a superb AP report, via WaPo:

CHISINAU, Moldova — In the backwaters of Eastern Europe, authorities working with the FBI have interrupted four attempts in the past five years by gangs with suspected Russian connections that sought to sell radioactive material to Middle Eastern extremists, The Associated Press has learned. The latest known case came in February this year, when a smuggler offered a huge cache of deadly cesium — enough to contaminate several city blocks — and specifically sought a buyer from the Islamic State group.

Criminal organizations, some with ties to the Russian KGB’s successor agency, are driving a thriving black market in nuclear materials in the tiny and impoverished Eastern European country of Moldova, investigators say. The successful busts, however, were undercut by striking shortcomings: Kingpins got away, and those arrested evaded long prison sentences, sometimes quickly returning to nuclear smuggling, AP found.

Moldovan police and judicial authorities shared investigative case files with the AP in an effort to spotlight how dangerous the nuclear black market has become. They say the breakdown in cooperation between Russia and the West means that it has become much harder to know whether smugglers are finding ways to move parts of Russia’s vast store of radioactive materials — an unknown quantity of which has leached into the black market.

“We can expect more of these cases,” said Constantin Malic, a Moldovan police officer who investigated all four cases. “As long as the smugglers think they can make big money without getting caught, they will keep doing it.”

COMMENT:  Utterly chilling.  It's only a matter of time when some terrorist group or rogue government gets the ingredients for a nuclear weapon, or at least a "dirty" bomb that can spread radioactivity over a wide area of a city.

I haven't noticed much alarm in the Obama administration.  Obama probably thinks it's only fair that Mideast extremists have the same weapons that we Western, whitish, colonialist, warmongering capitalists have.

October 7,  2015     Permalink

OCTOBER 6,  2015

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:52 P.M. ET: 

HE'S BAACK! – From Reuters:   BERLIN - A German actor who dressed up as Adolf Hitler and traveled through the country for four weeks chatting to smiling voters and stroking their pets for a film that opens this week says he was shocked by the warm welcome he received.  The film "Look Who's Back" is an adaptation of a satirical novel by Timur Vermes which has sold over a million copies. In it, Hitler wakes up in modern times, becomes a celebrity and enters politics again.  Vermes has said he wrote the book to lambast what he calls Germans' complacency about the Nazis and highlight his belief that Hitler would have a chance to succeed today, even though the modern German state is constructed to ensure that Nazi tyranny can never return.  The film's director and lead actor said that the time spent touring Germany, shooting footage that has been incorporated into the movie, had opened their eyes and that they had witnessed a shift to the right in attitudes.  The World War II generation is almost gone, and with them the lessons from that grim time.

CHARM CITY? – From Fox:   Baltimore's bloody summer ended with a barrage of bangs, as the rate of homicides and gun crimes continued to spike in the wake of the racially charged case of Freddie Gray, whose death in police custody left citizens angry and cops demoralized.  For September, homicides were up 39 percent and non-fatal shootings nearly doubled over the same month in 2014, continuing a disturbing trend that has gripped the Charm City since Gray's death in April and the rioting that followed. For the year, murders are up 52 percent and non-fatal shootings 80 percent over last year.  "We have highly motivated bad guys in Baltimore," Baltimore police spokesman T.J. Smith told FoxNews.com.  I wish the schools were that motivated.

TRUMP'S MOUTH – From Fox:   Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump took a swipe at former President George W. Bush Tuesday night on Fox News’ “Special Report with Bret Baier,” saying he had been a “disaster” and entering the Iraq War was “one of the worst decisions ever made.”  In a sit-down interview with Baier, the front-running GOP candidate also said he thought eminent domain, the right of the government or a builder to take away property from its owner for compensation, was “wonderful.”  Trump, a billionaire real estate mogul, suggested property owners shouldn’t hold out in situations where a factory or other job-creation project is proposed and discredited the charge eminent domain meant the government simply grabbed Americans’ homes and other properties.  Frankly, I'm getting bored with Trump.  We know him well here in New York.  He's essentially a landlord.  But he doesn't understand that staring down Al Qaeda or ISIS isn't the same as staring down a battalion of interior decorators. 

October 6, 2015       Permalink

JOE, WHERE ARE YOU? – AT 11:58 A.M. ET:  I'm getting a sense that Democrats are becoming a bit frustrated by Joe Biden.  They sympathize with the loss of his son, but we're talking about the presidency of the United States here, and Joe just isn't showing up.  Will he or won't he?  And, in the end, will the people of the country care?  From Andrew Malcolm at IBD:    

Joe Biden is 86.7% certain to make a run for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, uninformed aides say. Maybe 87.4%. The vice president is delaying his formal announcement until final new-job numbers come in from his guaranteed stimulus summer of 2010.

Biden has been playing the media like a violin in recent weeks. He is running. He isn’t running, according to advisers so sure of their prediction they decline to be identified. Aides are already compiling a file of fresh gaffes for Biden to try.

A Biden wink means it’s a go. Or maybe there’s something in his eye. Every smile is reminiscent of all those wasted grins in two previous stunningly unsuccessful runs. The one where the most voluble Democrat since Hubert Humphrey got caught plagiarizing. And the one where Joe gave up before he got crushed.

The only reason Biden’s name comes up now is because the Democrat front-runner is living down to her husband’s reputation for scandals.

Mark Oct. 22 on your calendar. That’s her appointment in Samarra before the House Select Committee on Benghazi when we may learn what difference at this point her testimony about that deadly night makes.

A lot of Dems say they don’t trust Hillary Clinton. They don’t like Hillary Clinton. But they’re sticking with Hillary Clinton now because, they’ve got no other realistic choice at this point. Would her party really nominate a 74-year-old socialist because he draws big crowds?

So, what are they gonna do, vote for Joe because he’s only 73? Until next month when he turns 74 too. Or go all out for young seniors with Hillary, who turns 68 in 20 days?

COMMENT:  There's an old saying that a presidential candidate is never so popular as on the day before he announces.  Then the scrutiny comes.

There is no "wanting" of Joe.  We cannot hear the cheers.  He would be brought in from the bull pen to try to save the Democrats' game because Hillary is getting hit too often.  If Hillary starts coming back in the polls, Joe may not be needed.  If she doesn't start coming back, he's probably in. 

The Dem bench is thin, and aging.  But you can't beat somebody with nobody, and so far the GOP is not uniting behind a winner.

Nothing is certain at this point except uncertainty.

October 6, 2015       Permalink

AH YES, I REMEMBER IT WELL – During the Cold War, including its hotter moments, the Soviet Union and its allies would claim that troops fighting for various Communist causes were "volunteers."  Just proud, patriotic guys who wanted to join the struggle for social justice.   The term is now returning.  Oh, Putin's nostalgia for the good old Kremlin days.  Is there any end to it?  From The New York Times: 

MOSCOW — Ratcheting up the confrontation over the Syria war, Russia said Monday that its “volunteer” ground forces would join the fight, and NATO warned the Kremlin after at least one Russian warplane trespassed into Turkey’s airspace.

The saber-rattling on both sides reflected a dangerous new big-power entanglement in the war, as longstanding differences between Russia and the United States over President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and his opponents increasingly play out not only in the halls of the United Nations but on the battlefield in Syria.

Russia squared off with Turkey and its NATO allies, calling the air incursion on Saturday an innocent mistake because of foul weather — a claim American officials rejected.

News services said late Monday that a second airspace violation might have been committed on Sunday, but that report could not be immediately confirmed.

The Russian air and ground deployments in Syria challenge the regional policies of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, President Obama and NATO.

COMMENT:  I'm not sure they necessarily challenge the policies of Obama.  I'm not sure he even cares.  But he has to put on an act.

Oh, by the way, please note the name of one candidate for president who seems to have no problem with Russian activity in the Mideast.  His name is Donald Trump, and some of his foreign-policy positions are bizarre, and way to the left.  As far as I'm concerned, that disqualifies him for the Republican nomination, but apparently others disagree.

October 6, 2015       Permalink

THE OBAMAN LIE – AT 9:06 A.M. ET:   When examining the fabrications of this administration, it's hard to know where to begin.  But let's try.  Reuters, not known for its hostility to Barack Obama, is running a stunning story reporting that enforcement of our presumed arms embargo against Iran slipped considerably during the Iran nuclear talks, despite assurances to the contrary:

Addressing concerns that a landmark nuclear deal reached this year could boost Iran's military power, the Obama administration reassured critics that it would maintain and enforce its remaining tough sanctions against the country.

Yet the U.S. government has pursued far fewer violations of a long-standing arms embargo against Iran in the past year compared to recent years, according to a review of court records and interviews with two senior officials involved in sanctions enforcement.

The sharp fall in new prosecutions did not reflect fewer attempts by Iran to break the embargo, the officials said. Rather, uncertainty among prosecutors and agents on how the terms of the deal would affect cases made them reluctant to commit already scarce resources with the same vigor as in previous years, the officials said.

The more relaxed enforcement raises questions over how strictly the arms embargo and other remaining sanctions will be applied in future, since the nuclear deal still needs to be implemented and Iran will likely remain sensitive to a tough sanctions regime.

In the 2014-15 fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 30, U.S. law enforcement officials filed fresh charges just twice against those suspected of attempting to smuggle weapons and related technology from the United States to Iran, according to court records.

Eight such cases were brought in 2013-14. By comparison, around 10 to 12 such cases were brought in each of the preceding six years.

"There's been a precipitous drop-off," said one of the senior U.S. officials, who declined to be identified. "The facts are the facts – there's no other explanation."

The official added there was already a "reticence" in some agencies and U.S. federal prosecutors' offices to pursue the cases because they are so tough to build and time-consuming.

COMMENT:  Translated into English, no one in the Obama administration will have the enforcers' backs if they try to do their job.  The foreign policy of the United States has now become a policy sympathetic to Iran, and hostile to American allies, especially Israel and the Gulf states.  The last year of the Obama administration may well turn out to be the nightmare we've feared.

October 6, 2015       Permalink

OH PLEASE! – AT 8:38 A.M. ET:   There are whoppers, and there are major-league whoppers.  From the Washington Examiner: 

Attorney General Loretta Lynch condemned the anonymous release of information about the FBI probe of Hillary Clinton's private emails during a Justice Department press conference Monday.

Although Lynch was at the event to address the BP oil spill, she fielded a question about the leaks that have driven interest in the FBI's investigation.

"I think leaks are detrimental to any matter, no matter what it is, no matter who is involved," Lynch said.

"Everyone wants matters investigated the way the department does — thoroughly, efficiently," she added.

The attorney general declined to comment on the specifics of the case.

COMMENT:  Oh yes, oh yes.  There is anguish.  There is pain.   There is agony at the Justice Department over the leaks.  If only the attorney general could find out what evil doers are leaking this sensitive information! 

Well, she might start with the White House.  It's hardly a secret that the little guy from Chicago hates the idea that Hillary might succeed him.  I somehow think that he could find a way to stop that investigation if he really, really tried.  He hasn't tried.

October 6,  2015     Permalink