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

JANUARY 11,  2016

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

ADVICE FOR THE DEVOTED JIHADIST – From Britain's Independent:   Militants fighting for Isis in Syria and Iraq have issued a chilling guide advising would-be jihadis living in the West on how to avoid security services while plotting Paris-style attacks.  The 58-page English-language manual, which has been published online, tells fanatics to trim their beards, wear Western-style aftershave and even pretend to be Christians by wearing cross necklaces in order to avoid arousing suspicion.  The document is titled ‘Safety and Security Guidelines for Lone Wolf Mujahideen’ and explains not only how militants can avoid having a plot thwarted by Western security officials, but also suggests potential targets to attack.   I'm sure this is just a misunderstanding.  This Islamophobia must stop.

THE ENEMY AMONG US – From the Washington Times – Sens. Ted Cruz and Jeff Sessions said Monday the number of people implicated in radical Islamic terrorist plots in the U.S. has jumped to 113, and they said it’s yet another reason to impose tighter immigration controls.  The senators have been trying to pry loose from the administration the immigration histories of those individuals, saying the public has a right to know how each of them entered the U.S. and what level of scrutiny they got.  The two also added 41 new names to their list Monday, including the two Iraqi refugees who were arrested last week on terrorism-related charges.  Good for Cruz and Sessions.  We have a right to know who is admitted to this country, especially in an age of terror.

HYPOCRISY IN SWEDEN, NOT THE FIRST TIME – From Bloomberg:   Swedish police have come under criticism for keeping quiet about alleged sexual assault incidents by young immigrant men over the past couple of years at a music festival in Stockholm.  The allegations came to light in a report over the weekend by newspaper Dagens Nyheter, citing internal police memos, and mirror similar incidents over the New Year’s holidays that have sparked investigations in Germany.  National Police Commissioner Dan Eliasson vowed to investigate whether there had been a cover up.  “If what’s alleged is true, it’s serious from several vantage points,” he said in an interview with newspaper Expressen. “We could perhaps have prevented that girls had been molested if we had talked clearly about this. Secondly, it’s obviously not our role to take various political aspects into account.”  The bureaucratic language just flows.  Sweden is falling apart, the victim of its socialist madness.  But its leaders march around the world lecturing everyone else on human rights.  I wonder what Swedish women think about all this.

January 11, 2016       Permalink

AND NOW, MORE TROUBLE FOR HILLARY – AT 10:51 A.M. ET:  I'm beginning to feel her pain.  I really am.  I must fight these pangs of sympathy, but I'm such a kind-hearted man.  Stop laughing.  From Fox: 

EXCLUSIVE: The FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of private email as secretary of state has expanded to look at whether the possible “intersection” of Clinton Foundation work and State Department business may have violated public corruption laws, three intelligence sources not authorized to speak on the record told Fox News.

This track is in addition to the focus on classified material found on Clinton’s personal server.

"The agents are investigating the possible intersection of Clinton Foundation donations, the dispensation of State Department contracts and whether regular processes were followed," one source said.

The development follows press reports over the past year about the potential overlap of State Department and Clinton Foundation work, and questions over whether donors benefited from their contacts inside the administration.

The Clinton Foundation is a public charity, known as a 501(c)(3). It had grants and contributions in excess of $144 million in 2013, the most current available data.

Inside the FBI, pressure is growing to pursue the case.

One intelligence source told Fox News that FBI agents would be “screaming” if a prosecution is not pursued because “many previous public corruption cases have been made and successfully prosecuted with much less evidence than what is emerging in this investigation.”

COMMENT:  Hillary is not a good advertisement for the Yale Law School.  You'd think she'd have used some common sense, some good judgment.  On the other hand, she showed her judgment when she married Bill.

Not presidential material.

January 11, 2016       Permalink 

WHERE THE PARTIES STAND – AT 9:39 A.M. ET:   Dems are at an all-time low in the Gallup Poll, but the GOP doesn't fare much better.  From The Politico: 

The share of Americans identifying as Democrats dropped to a record low in 2015, according to the latest Gallup results published Monday, in the latest indication that Americans’ attachment to either political party is at or nearing historical lows.

Overall, 42 percent over the course of the past year identified as independents, a slight drop from the 43 percent who identified as such in 2014. While Democrats maintained a small advantage over Republicans — 29 percent to 26 percent — the Democratic share is at its lowest in Gallup history.

Prior to 2015, the lowest share of Americans identifying as members of the Democratic Party came in 2014, with 30 percent. Going back to 1988, 29 percent is the lowest overall share of self-identified Democrats since the polling institution began interviewing subjects via telephone instead of in person. According to its data from 1951 to 1987, however, there was never a year in which less than 37 percent identified themselves as Democrats, making the 29 percent the lowest in Gallup’s 65 years of asking the question.

Meanwhile, the share of self-identified Republicans is just 1 percentage point above its Gallup historical low of 25 percent in 2013, dating back to 1988. In its years of in-person interviews prior to 1988, Gallup had several years in which Republicans polled lower than 25 percent. Over roughly the past quarter-century, more Americans have consistently identified as Democrats, though Republicans have pulled even in four years — namely those associated with the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Iraq (2002-2003) and the rise of the tea party (2010 and 2011).

COMMENT:  We should point out that Republicans, as a general political rule, are more likely to vote on election day, so the GOP may actually have a slight edge.  But neither party is deeply loved by the public.

January 11, 2016       Permalink

AND SHE HASN'T EVEN HIT THE ICEBERG YET – AT 9:14 A.M. ET:  Hillary Clinton takes a dive in the polls.  From IBD: 

With just 21 days until the presidential primaries officially begin in Iowa, Hillary Clinton's support among Democrats nationally has taken a serious tumble, falling eight points to 43%, according to the latest IBD/TIPP Poll. Support for her chief rival, Bernie Sanders, climbed six points to 39%.
As a result, Clinton's lead over Sanders, which had been 18 points, is now just 4 points.

Other polls have shown the race tightening in Iowa, which holds its caucuses on Feb. 1, and New Hampshire, which has its primary eight days later. Two recent New Hampshire surveys have Sanders in the lead, and the latest NBC poll in Iowa has Sanders just three points behind Clinton.
But the IBD/TIPP Poll is the first to show the race significantly tightening nationwide.

Clinton, in response to her sagging poll numbers, has started to turn up the heat on Sanders, after all but ignoring the self-described socialist whose maverick campaign has been surprisingly resilient. CNN reported over the weekend that "a sense of anxiety is cascading through Hillary Clinton's campaign" over Sanders' gains.

COMMENT:  I have to believe that part of Hillary's slide has to do with Donald Trump calling her out on the subject of women's rights – recalling her own trashing of those women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual offenses.  I think that was a decisive moment, exposing Hillary as a fraud.

January 11,  2016     Permalink

JANUARY 10,  2016

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:06 P.M. ET: 

NO ENDORSEMENT FROM THE CHIEF – From Fox:   President Obama will not endorse a Democratic candidate in the 2016 presidential primary race, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said Sunday.  "That's not our job,” McDonough said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “That's the job of the party to make those decisions and then they'll take a look at the agendas and the positions of those candidates."  McDonough said that Obama, in the final 11 months of his presidency, will wait until voters pick a nominee, as he has in the past.  Squirm, Hillary, squirm.  What does Obama know about you that prevents him from nominating his first secretary of state?

HILLARY'S NIGHTMARE – From Newsmax:  The FBI and intelligence community "would go ballistic" if there's no indictment in the case of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of her private email server to conduct government business, former federal prosecutor Joseph diGenova tells Newsmax TV.  In an interview with "Newsmax Now" hosts John Bachman and Miranda Khan on Friday, the former U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia says the FBI will wrap up its probe of Clinton's email use in the next two to three months.  "This case is about the future of enforcement of classified information," diGenova declared. "[Clinton] has gotten a pass up to this point on any accusation being made public. But those days are going to be short lived."  Put some gas in Joe Biden's car.  He's ready.

TRUMP ON CRUZ –  Donald Trump renewed pressure Sunday on fellow GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz to resolve questions over his eligibility to run, warning that the matter could be used against him by Democrats in a general election.  Trump, in a tight race with Cruz in the fast-approaching Iowa caucus vote, said on “Fox News Sunday” that he was unsure whether the Texas senator, born in Canada to a U.S. citizen mother and a Cuban citizen father, is a natural-born American citizen.  “I really don't know,” he said. “Does natural born mean born to the land? In that case he's not. But nobody knows what it means. And … it hasn't gone to the Supreme Court. I speak well of Ted. I'm only saying that Ted has to get this problem solved because if he's running against a Democrat, and they bring a lawsuit, he's got a hell of a thing over his head.”  Trump again said he thinks Cruz should get a declaratory judgment to clear up the matter.  This is absurd.  Ted Cruz's mother is an American, born in Delaware.  Trump was born in Canada while his parents were working there.  I doubt if any federal court, including the Supreme Court, would have the audacity to declare ineligible a presidential candidate, especially if he has his party's nomination, unless his citizenship was based on outright fraud.  The American people would never tolerate such blatant interference in the political process.

January 10,  2016     Permalink 

WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING – AT 1:10 P.M. ET:  At the end of World War II in Europe, General Eisenhower ordered American troops to be marched through the Nazi death camps.  He said that our soldiers might not always understand what they'd been fighting for, but at least they could understand what they'd been fighting against. 

Today we must constantly be reminded of what we're fighting against.  It is a fanatical ideology.  Here is an example.  From Reuters:

BEIRUT An Islamic State militant executed his mother in public in the Syrian city of Raqqa because she had encouraged him to leave the group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Friday.

The woman in her 40s had warned her son that a U.S.-backed alliance would wipe out Islamic State and had encouraged him to leave the city with her.

She was detained after he informed the group of her comments, according to the British-based Observatory, which monitors the war through a network of sources on the ground.

Citing local sources, the Observatory said the 20-year-old man executed his mother on Wednesday near the post office building where she worked in front of hundreds of people in Raqqa, a main base of operations for the group in Syria.

The Islamic State group, which controls wide areas of Syria and Iraq, has executed hundreds of people it has accused of working with its enemies or breaching of its ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam.

COMMENT:  Mothers' lives matter.

January 10, 2016       Permalink

GLAD TO SEE SOMEONE NOTICED – AT 11:56 A.M. ET:  The rape scandal in Europe is growing due to some good reporting.  From Reuters:

The mass attacks on women in Cologne and other German cities on New Year's Eve have prompted more than 500 criminal complaints, with Cologne investigations focused largely on asylum seekers or illegal migrants from north Africa, police have said.

The attacks, mostly targeting women and ranging from theft to sexual molestation, have prompted a highly-charged debate in Germany about its open-door policy to migrants and refugees, more than one million of whom came to the country last year.

In Cologne, police said that 379 criminal complaints had been filed by individuals or groups, while police in Hamburg said 133 similar complaints had been lodged in the north German city. Frankfurt also registered complaints, although far fewer.

The Cologne attacks also heated up debates on immigration in neighboring Austria and Switzerland.

"What happened in Cologne is unbelievable and unacceptable," Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner, a member of the conservative People's Party that is junior coalition partner to the Social Democrats, told newspaper Oesterreich.

There had been a handful of similar incidents in the border city of Salzburg. "Such offenders should be deported," she said, backing a similar suggestion by German chancellor Angela Merkel.

COMMENT:  There is also a terrible rape problem in Scandinavia, attributable to mass immigration from the Mideast.   But the political left will not acknowledge it.  And neither will "women's" organizations, which often act as front operators for that same left.

January 10, 2016       Permalink

HILLARY NOW SERIOUSLY CHALLENGED BY BERNIE – AT 11:46 A.M. ET:   Few seriously believe that Bernie can win the nomination, but he can hurt Hillary, who is also extremely vulnerable to the results of an FBI investigation.  From The Hill:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has maintained his lead over Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire and pulled to within the margin of error of her in Iowa, a new poll finds.

According to a NBC News-Wall Street Journal-Marist survey released on Sunday, Clinton has only a 3-point lead over Sanders in Iowa, well within the poll’s 4.8 percentage point margin of error. Clinton takes 48 percent support in the Hawkeye State, compared to 45 percent for Sanders.

That’s a much closer race in Iowa than other recent polls have found. According to the RealClearPolitics average of surveys, Clinton leads by 12.5 points in Iowa.

New Hampshire has long been a more competitive race between the two, and here the poll found Sanders leading with 50 percent of the support over Clinton at 46, in-line with other recent polling. According to the RCP average, Sanders leads by 5.3 points in the Granite State.

The Sanders campaign has been seeking to draw attention to polling that finds the Vermont senator performing better than Clinton in head-to-head match-ups against Republicans in the general election, and the NBC survey confirmed those claims.

Sanders leads GOP front-runner Donald Trump head-to-head by 13 in Iowa, while Clinton only leads him by 8. In New Hampshire the disparity is even greater, with Sanders leading Trump by 19, and Clinton only edging him by 1.

COMMENT:  The lack of enthusiasm for Clinton is startling.  The "first woman president" idea seems to have little traction.

But Republicans work hard to lose elections, so I am not ordering my inaugural tickets just yet.  Let's see who the Republicans nominate.

January 10,  2016     Permalink