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JANUARY 6,  2016

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:53 P.M. ET: 

UNREAL – From Pamela Geller:   The Mayor of the City where hundreds of women were robbed, sexually attacked, molested, and even raped on New Years Eve is blaming the victims. Worse still, the Mayor is a woman.  The mayor of Köln, Henriette Reker, intends to publish a behavioral code for the forthcoming carnival in Köln. But if you think that this behavioral code is meant for the Muslim mobs, you are wrong. This behavioral code is meant for the victims, the women.  Rather than focus on the astonishing number of criminals involved in the incident and the broader issues such violence points to, however, Reker determined women, such as those who were randomly attacked days ago, are the key to a solution. In order “to prevent such incidents from ever happening again,” Reker proposed that women adhere to a “code of conduct,” the Independent reported on Tuesday.  Notice, once again, the silence of the "feminists."  Many "women's" groups in the West have become captives of the far left.  And the far left will not criticize Muslims.

ALSO UNREAL – From The College Fix:   Black college students across the country have demanded that they be segregated from white peers, calling for “safe spaces” on campuses meant only for so-called students of color.  The requests for segregated spaces are found among some of the demand lists put forth by students who took part in protests this fall alleging their campuses are oppressive, discriminatory, and represent institutionalized racism.  The demands have been presented to campus administrators and are chronicled by TheDemands.org, a website run by a racial advocacy group called the Black Liberation Collective.  Not all of the 76 demand lists, each from a different university, seek segregated spaces — but several do.  Isn't this what respectable people were supposed to be against?  Maybe a cutoff of all federal aid to higher education, outside the sciences, would be a helpful jolt.  We have children attending college.

THE H-BOMB – The official position of the United States is that North Korea did not set off a hydrogen bomb, as the North Korean government claimed.  Many scientists are backing this assessment.  However, many others are more cautious, pointing out that North Korea's nuclear program is relentless, and that the blast recorded a few days ago may well be a significant step on the way to an H-bomb.  Given the total failure on our part to stop the North Korean nuclear program, I would choose to go with the most pessimistic assessment.  It's usually accurate.

January 6, 2016       Permalink

OUR PRESIDENT-IN-TRAINING – AT 10:46 A.M. ET:  A reader notes that, despite one crisis after another, President Obama is still seen as untouchable by the national press.  It's understandable.  How can a man sold to us as godlike be blamed for any mistakes.  Perfect men don't make mistakes.  From the Washington Examiner: 

And while Bush was held responsible for every last casualty that occurred anywhere while he held office, Obama is absolved from responsibility for the massacres, rapes and enslavement of innocents that have followed his numerous foreign policy blunders — given a pass as the victim of forces he did not enable and disasters he didn't create.

"Be very glad we don't have a Republican president," Walter Russell Mead told us in May of last year, warning that if such were so we would be enduring a "merciless media pounding" on the series of "failures, mistakes, and false starts" that have been our lot since Obama took office. Instead, we have a Democrat who is allowed by the press to fail quietly, discreetly, and off center stage. Thus, into a second year of beheadings and horror, we see headlines like "Attacks Don't Shake President's Faith in Patient Strategy" (Washington Post); "Speech Was a Plea for Patience and National Unity" (New York Times); and "Obama Addresses a Shifting Landscape," (Washington Post), suggesting support for a put-upon leader facing conditions he never expected to meet.

And...

When Bush ducked a shoe thrown at him by an Iraqi during a press conference in 2008, Eleanor Clift said that he might have deserved it for what he had done to that country by starting the war. By those standards, by letting the war start again after Bush ended it, what Obama deserves from Iraq (and from most of the rest of that suffering region) is a volley of combat boots. But none will be flung by the press of his country, in whose eyes he can do nothing wrong.

COMMENT:  We should note that a small core of journalists is challenging the president, but most of the mainstreamers act as if he were just inaugurated, still wearing his top hat, and needs time to settle into the job.

He'll be out of that job in a year and 14 days.  I'm counting.  Please start.

January 6, 2016       Permalink

QUOTES THAT COME BACK TO HAUNT – AT 8:54 A.M. ET:  We note, in the light of North Korea's claim that it has the hydrogen bomb, that we had an...er...agreement with that nation negotiated under a guy named Clinton.  (Seems he's back in the news.)  That was in 1994.  Here's what President Clinton said then, from the Jerusalem Post:

In 1994, North Korea signed a nuclear agreement with the US, under the administration of former US president Bill Clinton. He said at the time that the deal meant "North Korea will freeze and then dismantle its nuclear program. South Korea and our other allies will be better protected. The entire world will be safer as we slow the spread of nuclear weapons.”

Clinton said that the “United States and international inspectors will carefully monitor North Korea to make sure it keeps its commitments. Only as it does so will North Korea fully join the community of nations."

Twelve years later, in 2006, North Korea detonated its first underground nuclear explosion.

COMMENT:  As they say, a lesson from history.  I hope Clinton's quote is used against Hillary in the upcoming campaign.  She bought into that childlike thinking when she was secretary of state.

The nuclear agreement with North Korea failed.  We never stood up to North Korea's violations.  The nuclear agreement with Iran is already failing, as Iran blatantly tests nuclear-capable ICBM's.  Our reaction is meekness.  The only thing we seem to have learned from our failure with North Korea is how to fail again, more quickly this time.

January 6, 2016       Permalink

THE BOMB – AT 8:56 A.M. ET:  Clearly the biggest story of the day, and a major story in international affairs.  This, and the Saudi-Iranian crisis in the Mideast, show how quickly events can overtake us, and probably affect the presidential election. 

North Korea's announcement that it has exploded a hydrogen bomb, if truthful, gives that country a vastly more powerful weapon than anyone thought they possessed.  As news organizations are reporting, it would put the West Coast of the United States within missile and H-Bomb range.  From CNBC: 

North Korea tested a hydrogen nuclear bomb on Wednesday, state news agency KCNA reported, marking the politically isolated country's first nuclear test in three years, a move that was condemned by the U.S., Britain and Japan, among others.

The report on the KCNA website came within hours of reports from various agencies that a large earthquake had been detected near a known North Korean nuclear test site.

According to KCNA, North Korea tested a miniaturized hydrogen nuclear bomb "in the most perfect manner," putting it in possession of hydrogen bomb capability, which it described as "the most powerful nuclear deterrent."

North Korea wanted what it called "the H-bomb of justice" as protection from the "ever-growing nuclear threat and blackmail by the U.S.-led hostile forces," according to the statement on KCNA.

It would use the weapons only if its sovereignty was encroached upon, the statement on KCNA said, but would not roll back its nuclear development until the U.S. had dropped its "vicious, hostile" policy toward the isolated Communist state.

"The U.S. is a gang of cruel robbers which has worked hard to bring even a nuclear disaster to the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korean], not content with having imposed the thrice-cursed and unheard-of political isolation, economic blockade and military pressure on it for the mere reason that it has differing ideology and social system," according to the statement.

COMMENT:  So it's our fault.  The U.S., under the weakest president it has had in living memory, is a threat to North Korea, according to North Korea.

Afraid not.   I doubt if North Korea would have conducted this test if we had a real president in the White House instead of the president from Disney World.  The North Koreans, allies of Iran, have watched us buckle before every Iranian demand.  They're following the leader.

And, if the news turns out to be accurate, Iran can be the beneficiary of this thermonuclear technology.

January 6,  2016     Permalink

JANUARY 5,  2016

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

INCREDIBLE – From AP:   WASHINGTON — An industry tally shows more airline deaths worldwide were due to deliberate acts in 2015 than to accidental air crashes, for the second year in a row.  A report by Flightglobal, an aviation news and industry data company, says there were only eight accidental airline crashes last year, accounting for 161 passenger and crew deaths — the fewest crashes and deaths since at least 1946.  The tally excludes a German airliner that was deliberately flown into a mountainside in the French Alps last March, and a Russian airliner packed with tourists that exploded over Egypt. The toll for those two incidents was 374 killed.  A sign of our times, I'm afraid.  And this is occurring despite intensified airline security, or so we're told.

APPALLING – From Breitbart:  The Obama administration is expected to release 17 detainees as early as next week, including “al Qaeda followers” who have been cleared for release from the Guantánamo Bay prison by a board established by the president.  Secretary of Defense Ash Carter told lawmakers last month that 17 Guantanamo prisoners would be sent to other countries in January.  A source, who has reportedly reviewed the list of individuals who are supposed to be moved out, told Fox News that the group of 17 includes “bad guys” and “Al Qaeda followers,” without revealing the identities of the prisoners.  And if one of these murderers kills Americans on Hillary's watch, and she's asked why they'd been released from Gitmo, she'll probably reply, "What difference does it make?"  Yuch.

BULLETIN – From The New York Times:  North Korea declared Tuesday night that it has detonated its first hydrogen bomb, a weapon far more powerful than it has set off previously. If the claim is true, it would drastically escalate the nuclear challenge from one of the world’s most isolated and dangerous states.  It would also devastate any claim that Obama has handled North Korea adequately.  Once again we're surprised and humiliated.  We'll probably have more on this tomorrow.

January 5, 2016       Permalink

TREACHERY – AT 10:51 A.M. ET:   Lost in the new eruption of conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran is the fact that President Obama has caved in to Iran once more, increasing the risk to our national security.  From the Washington Examiner: 

Since signing a nuclear deal with the Obama administration last summer, Iran's theocratic regime has twice been caught testing ballistic missiles, in one case firing them near a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf. This is a black-and-white violation of the nuclear deal and it carries a prescribed consequence in the form of new punitive sanctions.

In fact, when Congress considered whether to block the deal or allow it to proceed, many nervous Democrats were persuaded by this provision and others like it.

Yet now that the Iranians have violated it, Obama prefers to throw away one of the few solid achievements that emerged from his negotiations with the mullahs. His administration announced last week that sanctions would be delayed, prompting statements of disappointment from Republicans and Democrats alike.

The reason for the delay is that Iran is threatening to back out of the deal if Obama enforces it. Iran's defiance and Obama's havering demonstrate that the mullahs feel less bound by the deal than he does. He's worried that it will collapse, but they aren't. Obama seems willing to sacrifice enforcement to preserve the illusion that a two-sided deal really exists.

Because the president wants this deal more than the Iranians do, the only truly binding part is the bit that imposes obligations on Washington, such as $100-150 billion in sanctions relief.

COMMENT:   What a disgrace.  We have a president who doesn't even like his own country, and is selling it out, for his greater glory.  I'd love to see what his post-presidency will be like.  It may well be like the post-presidency of Jimmy Carter, who also concluded that the American people weren't good enough for him. 

January 5, 2016       Permalink

TRUMP STILL LEADS IN GOP POLL – AT 10:09 A.M. ET:   But can he actually reach the 50% mark to win the nomination?  That is the key question.  From The Hill:

Donald Trump continues to hold a big lead in the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, leading his closest rivals by double digits in an NBC News/Survey Monkey poll released Tuesday.

Trump is supported by 35 percent of Republican and GOP-leaning registered voters in the online survey, with Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Marco Rubio (Fla.) at 18 and 13 percent, respectively.

All other candidates poll in single digits, with retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 9 percent, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush at 6 percent, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 4 percent and businesswoman Carly Fiorina at 3 percent.

A third of white evangelicals surveyed, 33 percent, support Trump, while Cruz gets 21 percent and Rubio 10 percent of that group, a key support group candidates are focusing on in the early voting state of Iowa.

Trump is also supported by 35 percent of "very conservative" voters, versus 30 percent for Cruz and 8 percent for Rubio.

The poll comes about a month out from votes being cast in the race in the Iowa causes Feb. 1, where Cruz is the favorite to win, and the New Hampshire primaries Feb. 9, where Cruz and Rubio poll behind Trump.

Cruz and Rubio have largely avoided attacking Trump and have focused their barbs on each other recently, duking it out on the issue of national security and immigration heading into the next debates later this month.

On the Democratic side of the field, Hillary Clinton leads Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) 53 percent to 36 percent, with just 2 percent of registered and leaning Democrats supporting former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley.

COMMENT:  I just don't see Trump's 35% as that impressive.  It means that 65% are not for him, and he has been, by far, the most publicized candidate. 

If Trump loses Iowa, the psychological effect may well be to increase interest in other candidates.  I think the conventional wisdom here is correct – it will come down to a race among Trump, Cruz, and Rubio.  And there is a possibility of an open convention.

January 5,  2016     Permalink

UNSPEAKABLE – AT 9:16 A.M. ET:   Where, precisely, are the so-called "feminist" groups?  And why isn't the mainstream media asking?  From London's Express:

Police in Cologne are hunting for the group of up to 1,000 “Arab and North African” men who seriously sexually assaulted more than 80 women.

Victims had their underwear ripped from them, fingers inserted into orifices and their handbags rifled for valuables.

Police Chief Wolfgang Albers called the attacks "crime in a completely new dimension".

With hundred of thousands of people expected on the streets in coming weeks for carvival celebrations he said video monitoring of crowds is being considered.

CCTV cameras in the main station are being examined to try to identify the attackers although no footage has been released to the public. The attackers are described by police as being of North African or Arabic appearance.

Around 1,000 men fitting the description were at the station on New Year's Eve but police stressed they had no idea how many were offenders.

German police received numerous complaints from women who claimed they were assaulted around the city’s main train station last week.

The group also robbed their victims and threw fireworks at a crowd of people, police said.

COMMENT:  Nice, huh?  But who are we to judge other cultures?  Right?  And why do I have to go to a British paper to read about this?

January 5,  2016     Permalink