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JANUARY 29,  2016

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

GREAT MOMENTS IN LEARNING – From CBS Local:   PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – According to a new study, college students are spending one-fifth of their time in class on their cell phones or digital devices when they should be learning.  The study was done by the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  Researchers say the main culprit is texting.  Almost nine out of 10 students reported that texting was their main diversion during class.  This is not what got us to the Moon.

GREAT MOMENTS IN ACADEMIC RESEARCH – From Britain's Independent:   A new study by Florida State University academics Jessica Ridgway and Russell Clayton found that people who were more satisfied with their body image posted more selfies to Instagram – confidently showing off, you might say. But in turn, they reported experiencing more conflict with their romantic partner – such as jealous arguments about attention others had paid their photos online – and poorer relationship quality. So does this mean that Instagram selfies are bad for relationships?  The study’s authors speculate that when one partner frequently posts attractive selfies, the other partner may feel jealous or threatened. This may lead to excessive monitoring of the other’s Instagram feed, which means they see even more of the attention the photos receive from followers, potentially winding them up still further. This could potentially lead to greater conflict, cheating, or a break-up.  I wonder how much taxpayer money went into this deeply intellectual exploration of the human spirit.  Just askin'.

DEBATE RATINGS – From Fox:   Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate on FOX News Channel scored 12.5 million viewers, making it the second-highest rated telecast in the network’s history.  The debate topped all television shows -- including broadcast programs -- on Thursday night in total viewers. It also pulled in 3.5 million viewers in the advertiser-friendly demo of adults aged 25-54, according to Early Nielsen Research.  The debate beat CNN and MSNBC combined in both total viewers and the 25-54 demo. Those networks aired segments of a Donald Trump rally, which was scheduled after the GOP contender withdrew from the Fox News debate.  Donald Trump's acting fee just went down.

January 29, 2016       Permalink

A WARNING – AT 10:09 A.M. ET:  Who is working at our airports?  It is a question security people worry about bigtime.  And this is the reason why.  From Reuters:

An EgyptAir mechanic whose cousin joined Islamic State in Syria is suspected of planting a bomb on a Russian passenger plane that was blown out of Egypt's skies in late October, according to sources familiar with the matter.

So far Egypt has publicly said it has found no evidence that the MetroJet flight, which crashed in the Sinai Peninsula after takeoff from Sharm el-Sheikh airport, killing all 224 people on board, was brought down by terrorism.

A senior security official at the airline denied that any of its employees had been arrested or were under suspicion, and an Interior Ministry official also said there had been no arrests.

But the sources, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the ongoing investigation, said the mechanic had been detained, along with two airport policemen and a baggage handler suspected of helping him put the bomb on board.

"After learning that one of its members had a relative that worked at the airport, Islamic State delivered a bomb in a handbag to that person," said one of the sources, adding the suspect's cousin joined Islamic State in Syria a year and a half ago.

"He was told to not ask any questions and get the bomb on the plane."

Another source said of the other suspects: "Two policemen are suspected of playing a role by turning a blind eye to the operation at a security checkpoint. But there is a possibility that they were just not doing their jobs properly."

None of the four have been prosecuted so far, the sources told Reuters.

COMMENT:   This makes you wonder how secure our airports are.  Who works in them?  Who looks the other way to avoid "profiling"?  Who gets a job despite dubious backgrounds?

All it takes is one bad guy.

January 29, 2016       Permalink

YIKES! – THIS IS NOT A GOOD ECONOMY – AT 9:57 A.M. ET:  New economic statistics are pretty devasting, and clearly will be a drain on the Democratic candidate for president.  From the Washington Examiner: 

Economic growth slowed to a 0.7 percent growth rate to end 2015, the Department of Commerce reported Friday morning, a decline even worse than expected.

Private sector economists had expected GDP growth to slow from 2 percent in the third quarter to 0.9 percent in the fourth quarter, according to a poll conducted by Bloomberg.

The slowdown was attributable to slower consumer spending and business investment, and falling exports. Those factors were partly offset by faster federal government spending and a slowdown in imports, which are counted against GDP.

COMMENT:  We seem to be in the economic doldrums, somewhere between modest improvement and the next recession.  Certainly the Dems cannot brag about their "recovery," which has been going on since Obama took office.

Where's the recovery?

Where are the good jobs?

Does Bernie know?

January 29, 2016       Permalink

NO CHANGE IN IRAN – AT 8:21 A.M. ET:  This is real reporting, with the kind of detail we usually don't find in the mainstream media.  Iran is, well, still Iran.  From the great Eli Lake, at Bloomberg: 

... on Sunday Iran's hardliners voted to disqualify nearly all of President Hassan Rouhani's political allies from running in next month's parliamentary elections.

The disqualifications are a blow to President Barack Obama and European leaders who had hoped the nuclear accord would benefit Iran's moderate (by comparison) president. Much of U.S. strategy in the nuclear talks has been aimed at strengthening perceived moderates in the hopes of weakening perceived hardliners. This was Obama's argument to Congress when he urged Democrats to oppose sanctions on Iran. Privately, U.S. officials have pointed to February's elections as a chance for Iranians to give the nuclear deal popular legitimacy inside Iran.

Now it looks like Iranians won't have this chance. Amin Tarzi, the director of Middle East studies at Marine Corps University, told me Tuesday that "the vast majority of Rouhani's candidates have been disqualified." While Rouhani himself has said he will appeal these decisions, Tarzi does not anticipate most of these disqualifications will be overturned.

"Because of Khamenei's health, the factions in Iran that are loyal to the Revolutionary Guard do not want to take the chance that the next supreme leader will not be one of them," Tarzi told me. "They don't want Rouhani and his faction to benefit from the fruits of the nuclear deal. The gloves are off now."

This is particularly bad news for Secretary of State John Kerry. Kerry is hoping that Rouhani's foreign minister, Javad Zarif, will have the flexibility to reach a political agreement to stop the fighting in Syria in Obama's final year. But a parliamentary election that empowers radicals will not help. If anything, it will embolden the elements in Iran's state that want to humiliate the U.S. and their domestic rivals who struck the bargain with the Great Satan in the first place.

COMMENT:  A little lesson from history:  Ultimately, the most important thing that counts in dealing with a foreign adversary is who has the power inside the enemy country.  Whether that country's people are "pro-Western" or "friendly" is of little value.

The Japanese actually had a so-called "peace" government in place toward the end of World War II, but it was the Army that had the power.  And it would not negotiate a peace with the Allies until the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Emperor intervened. 

The German people weren't necessarily anti-American in World War II.  The largest immigrant population in the United States was German-American.  Two of our most senior commanders in World War II – Dwight D. Eisenhower and Chester Nimitz – were German-American.  But it was Hitler who had the power. 

The Iranian people have always, as a general rule, been friendly to the West, and to the United States.  But they don't have the power, and that's what we should worry about.  It's clear from Eli Lake's story that the America-hating radicals are reasserting themselves.

January 29,  2016     Permalink

JANUARY 28,  2016

NO "SHORT TAKES" TONIGHT SO WE CAN REVIEW THE DEBATE:

The Republicans had their final Iowa debate tonight, without Donald Trump.  It was an intelligent discussion, probably the best so far.  It still, though, suffered from a surplus of candidates.  There were seven.  Four would have been plenty.  It's hard for viewers to separate opinions when there are too many candidates onstage. 

Jeb Bush turned in his best, most vigorous performance.  He is rising in New Hampshire polls, and maybe his zest has gotten zestier.  And Chris Christie turned in his best performance as well.  He was able to exploit his experience as a U.S. attorney in answering questions about the war on terror.  The person most observers seemed to be looking at carefully was Marco Rubio, who some believe has a shot to move up if he does well in Iowa and New Hampshire.  I felt Rubio was a bit off his game in this debate.  He is usually smooth and measured.  But tonight he sounded, at times, nervous and jittery, speaking too quickly, trying to stuff too many points into too little time.  But the points he made were solid, and showed his command of the issues.

Ted Cruz.  He is presumed to be the guy in second place.  With Donald Trump taking a walk, Cruz got most of the arrows.  He has a chance to win the Iowa caucuses on Tuesday.  "Take down Ted" seemed to be the rallying cry of the other candidates.  Cruz, as usual, mastered the issues.  He is a man of unusual intellect, and a debater of consummate skill.  He is also, however, an ideologue, and often comes off as cold, even computer-like.  Mr. Warmth he is not.  But he's a solid conservative, and has strong appeal within the Republican Party.  The establishment, though, dislikes him intently, as he shows the party leadership almost no respect.  I don't think Cruz was hurt by any of the attacks tonight, but he didn't come out stronger either.

I can't say there was any clear winner, or any obvious loser.

One of the big questions of the night was the impact that Donald Trump's absence would have on the debate...and on Donald Trump.  I have to say that the decibel level of the debate seemed to be lower, but that may or may not have been due to Trump's absence.  I don't think his ideas were particularly missed.  His absence actually forced us to give more consideration to the other candidates.

But how did the episode affect Trump?  No one seems to know.  A Frank Luntz focus group leaned toward the idea that Trump owed it to the people of Iowa to show up, but I didn't sense much palpable anger about his no-show.  We'll have to wait for polls, and for the actual vote on Tuesday, to find out if Trump helped or hurt himself, or neither.

It's Iowa.  The Iowa caucuses often surprise us.  I'm looking forward to Tuesday.

January 28, 2016       Permalink

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INCIDENT NEAR PARIS – AT 5:16 P.M. ET:  A close one in a country that has seen too much.  From London's Daily Mail: 

A man has been arrested at Disneyland Paris carrying two handguns, ammunition, and a 'guide to the Koran', but police are still hunting his female companion.

Bomb disposal experts surrounded a car after weapons were detected when the luggage was put through an X-ray machine at the entrance to a hotel, 20 miles east of the French capital.

The 28-year-old man, who was not known to security services, was stopped by Disney staff who found the weapons - two semi-automatic handguns and a knife - hidden in his suitcase at about midday.

Police swooped on the four-star Hotel New York at Disney Village and the man, who had booked a room for two, offered no resistance as he was being taken into custody.

The couple's car was immediately surrounded by bomb disposal experts, and the hotel car park was shut down.

The semiautomatic 7.65-millimeter pistols were inside cloth bags, along with two magazines and 20 bullets.

Both weapons dates back to the 1980s, and there was also a small booklet entitled 'A guide to the Holy Koran'.

It follows warnings from terrorist groups including Islamic State and Al-Qaeda that Disneyland, some 20 miles east of Paris, was one of their targets.

COMMENT:  Again, we note the relentlessness of the terrorists.  We're seeing attacks, or attempted attacks, every week.  And sooner or later one or more will get through.  If there is a successful attack before the election, it can shape the outcome.

January 28, 2016       Permalink

FLAK FOR DONALD – AT 12:31 P.M. ET:   Donald Trump's plan to put on a rally tonight to benefit wounded veterans, competing directly with the Fox-hosted Republican debate, isn't getting universal applause.  It's being reported that some veterans' groups want nothing to do with a political feud.  From Fox: 

The head of an Iraq and Afghanistan veterans group says they will decline donations from the fundraising event Donald Trump plans to hold Thursday night as he sits out the Republican primary debate.

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America founder Paul Rieckhoff said on Twitter Wednesday that his group had not heard from the Trump campaign and did not know which organizations would be involved in the veterans event.

He then tweeted:

If offered, @IAVA will decline donations from Trump's event. We need strong policies from candidates, not to be used for political stunts.

Rieckhoff’s criticism wasn’t reserved only for Trump. He had a similar message for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz after a super PAC supporting the presidential candidate offered to donate $1.5 million to veterans if Trump accepts a one-on-one debate challenge:

Now it's Cruz yanking vets into the nastiness of the presidential fights before Iowa. This is not what vets need.

COMMENT:  Applause.   Many veterans need serious help and sound policies.  They should not be used as political props.  This whole episode involving tonight's debate has cheapened our politics even further.

January 28, 2016       Permalink

I NEVER KNEW THIS – AT 10:23 A.M. ET:  A lot of whiz-bang technology around.  Can it be used to rig an election?  This is fascinating, I think.  From, of all sources, MSNBC:   

DES MOINES, Iowa – The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is raising questions about the involvement of Microsoft in the Iowa Caucuses, now just five days away, and has built an independent system to check the official results.

For the first time this year, Microsoft partnered with the Iowa Democratic and Republican Parties to provide a technology platform with which the parties will run their caucuses. The software giant created separate mobile apps for each party, which officials at hundreds of caucuses across the state will use to report out results from individual precincts to party headquarters for tabulation.

The arrangement has aroused the suspicions of aides to Sanders, whose regularly warns that corporate power and the billionaire class are trying to hijack democracy. Pete D’Alessandro, who is running the Iowa portion of Sanders’ campaign, questioned the motives of the major multinational corporation in an interview with MSNBC: “You’d have to ask yourself why they’d want to give something like that away for free.”

Ironically, MSNBC originally referred to Microsoft-NBC.

The Sanders campaign has built their own reporting system to check the results from the official Microsoft-backed app. It has trained its precinct captains on using the app, which is designed to be as user friendly as possible, and the campaign will also staff a hotline system as further redundancy.

“It’s just a way that our folks can have an app that we trust to get the numbers to us in a timely fashion,” D’Alessandro said. “I’m always going to be more for sure on the stuff that my people had control over the entire time… If there are any problems, we can spot them right away.”

Other Sanders aides noted that Microsoft employees have donated several hundred thousand dollars to Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton over her career, and questioned why the Iowa Democratic Party didn’t partner with a software company based in Iowa.

COMMENT:  Of course, this could be paranoia on the part of the Sanders team, but I wouldn't rule out attempts, possibly involving hackers, to rig elections.  And I'd look at foreign nations like Iran.

January 28, 2016       Permalink

THE CHAOS – AT 8:55 A.M. ET:  The next Republican debate is tonight, from Iowa.  There is high drama.  Frontrunner Donald Trump is refusing to participate, claiming that one of the Fox News moderators, Megyn Kelly, has disrespected him.  Sounds like something right out of "The Godfather."

I can almost hear Ed McMahon announce, "Donny couldn't make it tonight, but sitting in..."  (If you don't get that reference, please ask anyone with a Medicare card.)

Trump will hold a rally, with proceeds going to Wounded Warriors, in direct competition with the debate.

I don't know about you, but I'm disgusted with this.  We are talking about the presidency of the United States, an office that affects the fate of hundreds of millions of people.  And what have we come to?  I watched CNN last night and their joy at Trump's attack on Megyn Kelly could barely be contained.  One "expert" spent part of his time wondering about the impact this dispute would have on Fox's advertising rates.  I kid you not.

No Iran.

No nuclear weapons.

No faltering economy.

But...Fox's advertising rates.

Seems to me we need some fast growing up.  This country is going down the drain, and some parts of the media seem determined to go with it.

Should be an interesting debate without Trump.  I have no idea how this will impact the Iowa vote on Tuesday.

January 28,  2016      Permalink