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JANUARY 6,  2017

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

MAJOR CONTEST NEWS – FROM COLLEGE FIX:   The University of Chicago’s admissions office is offering an incentive to its student tour guides: Come up with “a creative way to dispel the negative perception'” that the city is unsafe.  The Chicago Maroon obtained a copy of the email Assistant Director of Admissions Colleen Belak had sent out to the guides. The student who provided the message asked to remain anonymous due to a “confidentiality policy.”  In her email, Belak manages to toss in the name of the president-elect:  “If you’ve paid attention to the national news (or Donald Trump’s tweets) over the last few months, you’ll notice that the city of Chicago is often painted with a broad brush as an ‘unsafe’ or ‘scary’ place to reside,” Belak wrote to the campus tour guide listhost.   “Of course, certain realities should not be ignored, but at the end of the day most of us are proud Chicago residents with a deep love of the city,” [Belak continues].  “With that spirit in mind, we have an opportunity for you to win some money—$500 to be exact. If you are able to come up with a creative way to approach this negative perception, be it a video series, blog post, photo, or something else (and better) entirely… Keep in mind that the audience is a high school student and his/her family.”  Strange.  When I was a student at the University of Chicago many decades ago, the problem was exactly the same, word for word, line for line.  In that same period, New York, under Rudy Giuliani, lowered its murder rate 80%.  Maybe the university should award a prize for the best essay on why some places solve their problems and other places don't.

ANOTHER BRILLIANT IDEA FROM THE LEFT – FROM BREITBART:   Rosie O’Donnell, Debra Messing, Ed Asner and Michael Shannon are among the dozens of artists, entertainers, and activists who have attached their names to an effort calling for a month-long protest to stop President-elect Donald Trump.
“No! In the Name of Humanity We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America!” reads a full-page ad placed in the New York Times on Wednesday by the group Refuse Fascism.  “Donald Trump, the President-elect, is assembling a regime of grave danger,” the ad says. “Millions of people in the US and around the world are filled with deep anxiety, fear, and disgust. Our anguish is right and just. Our anger must now become massive resistance –before Donald Trump is inaugurated and has the full reins of power in his hands.”  These people are insane.  I will help pay for their medication.

IT'S ACTUALLY GETTING SERIOUS – FROM THE NEW YORK POST:    Run, Hillary, run — for mayor.  Local Democratic activists said they would rally to Clinton’s side if she decided to take on Mayor de Blasio in a ­primary this year.  “If Hillary entered the race, she would be the best candidate. I would support her because we need a change in New York City,” said Gregory Floyd, president of Teamsters Local 237.  Floyd, who represents school safety officers and Housing Authority workers, has clashed repeatedly with City Hall over policy.  “Hillary would be a better mayor than de Blasio. Every week we hear about investigations about fund-raising and city property being given away to real estate developers,” he said.   Clinton captured 79 percent of the vote in the five boroughs during her failed November presidential run.  The Rev. Patrick Young, pastor of First Baptist Church in East Elmhurst, Queens, said Clinton could make history by shattering the mayoral glass ceiling in Gotham.  “Hillary would have been the first female president. She would be the first woman mayor in the history of New York City,” he said.  I want to see it happen, just for the comedy.  Of course, she will claim that she is related to one of New York's early mayors, DeWitt Clinton.  It isn't true, but who'll care? 

January 6,  2017     Permalink

THE OBAMA RECORD, AND HOW IT CAN BE REVERSED – AT 12:09 P.M. ET:  Michael Barone is one of our leading political analysts.  He examines the Obama style of "governing," – government by faculty lounge – and how it led to a record that can be cast aside by the new administration.  From RealClearPolitics: 

Obamacare was based on the shaky premise that mandating often expensive and limited health insurance would be seen as guaranteeing good health care. As a result, as historian Walter Russell Mead recently wrote for The American Interest, "it did not generate enough public support to protect itself from its opponents."

Regulations imposed on coal and other fossil fuel production -- instituted after Democrats, even with strong congressional majorities, were unsuccessful in passing cap-and-trade legislation -- failed to impress a population that did not share liberal elites' faith that climate change is certain to produce catastrophe.

And regulations legalizing the presence of millions of undocumented immigrants have failed to pass muster in federal courts, thanks to legal maneuverings as sloppy as the legislative legerdemain that shoved through Obamacare.

Public policies prove to be enduring when they address what people regard as genuine needs and thus create constituencies that politicians dare not defy. Social Security retirement benefits are a prime example. You can jigger the taxes and benefits, as a bipartisan majority did in 1983, but voters who believe they paid for their benefits will insist they not be taken away.

Policies that induce long-term reliance also tend to endure, a prime example being the home mortgage interest deduction. There's a good argument that this policy, like the Social Security benefit formula, unduly benefits the affluent. But that argument doesn't move most voters.

In my view, Obama owed his election and re-election to the feeling -- widely shared by Americans, including many who didn't vote for him -- that it would be a good thing for Americans to elect a black president.

What they didn't expect, but got, was a president who governed according to the playbook of campus liberals, imposing -- or attempting to impose -- policies that he believed would be good for people, whether they knew it or not.

This was governance that was both inattentive to detail and law and out of touch with how policies affect people's lives. That is why so many of these policies seem headed for the ash heap of history.

COMMENT:  Government by theory.  This is another proof of how the Democrats lost touch with their constituency. 

But Republicans must demonstrate skill in overturning Obama's programs, recalling the admonition within the medical profession, "First, do no harm."  Obamacare can't just be chopped down like a tree.  It must be replaced by something better.  Ditto Obama's trendy energy policy, based heavily on the "science" of climate change, which sometimes seems more like political science.

January 6, 2017       Permalink

MORE LEGACY – AT 10:41 A.M. ET:  We are not winning the war on terror.  If anything, it is getting worse.  Remember that Obama came to office insisting that acts of terror be called "manmade disasters."  When a rogue Army doctor attacked fellow soldiers at Ford Hood, Texas, shouting Islamist slogans, the Obama administration insisted on calling it "workplace violence."  But the terror goes on, no matter what the label.  From The Times of Israel:   

The year 2016 was the deadliest in the history of suicide terrorism, an Israeli think tank said, with 469 suicide bombings carried out by 800 perpetrators in 28 countries, causing the deaths of about 5,650 people.

Islamic State was the leading perpetrator of suicide bombings worldwide, being directly or indirectly responsible for approximately 70 percent (322) of the attacks, according to statistics compiled by the Terrorism and Low Intensity Conflict Research Program at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS).

As the terror group loses territory, “it appears that suicide terrorism will be a key tool for the Islamic State in consolidating its image as invincible, creating deterrence against its enemies, and taking revenge for the international activity against it,” the think tank said Thursday.

“The Islamic State’s partners and other terrorist groups will also likely redouble their efforts to carry out mass casualty large-scale terrorist attacks.”

Yoram Schweitzer, the senior research fellow who headed the study, said the rise in suicide bombings underlined the growing intensity of terrorism worldwide. “They are the litmus test when it comes to assessing terrorism,” he told The Times of Israel, “because of their devastating effect and the sense of threat they create.”

COMMENT:  President Kennedy said, not long before his assassination, that an assassin could get through if he was willing to give up his life in the attempt.  The same is true of suicide bombers.  Once they give up the wish to live, they become almost invincible.  There is no hesitation, no normal self-defense mechanism.  They will plunge into a target, no matter what the consequence to themselves will be.

We are now getting repeated warnings about the intention of ISIS to carry out mass-casualty attacks, primarily in Britain and Europe.  Given the events here of September 11, 2001, we should be on maximum alert, not assuming an attack will occur somewhere else.

January 6, 2017       Permalink

THE LEGACY – AT 9:57 A.M. ET:  It's all legacy all the time.  Obama leaves office trying to convince us that he still walks on water, and never gets wet.  Ask the American worker about that.  From CNS: 

(CNSNews.com) - Barack Obama's presidency began with a record number of Americans not in the labor force, and it's ending the same way.

The final jobs report of the Obama presidency, released Friday, shows that the number of Americans not in the labor force has increased by 14,573,000 (18.09 percent) since January 2009, when Obama took office, continuing a long-term trend that began well before Obama was sworn in.

In December, according to the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, a record 95,102,000 Americans were not in the labor force, 47,000 more than in November; and the labor force participation rate was 62.7 percent, a tenth of a point higher than in November.

The participation rate dropped to a 38-year low of 62.4 percent on Obama's watch, in September 2015. It was only 3-tenths of a point higher than that last month.

COMMENT:  This is what the Obama administration calls a great economic record.  It shows dramatically how detached the modern Democratic Party is from its traditional base, America's working families.  It's unlikely that most Democrats in Washington ever met anyone who wears a blue collar that wasn't designed in Paris.  This detachment is one of the most powerful reasons for Donald Trump's election.

January 6,  2017    Permalink 

JANUARY 5,  2017

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

THE CORRECT CHARGES – FROM FOX:    Hate crime and aggravated battery charges were filed Thursday against four African American suspects who police say tortured a mentally challenged white man for as long as 48 hours, while shouting racial and anti-Donald Trump slurs -- and part of the attack was streamed on Facebook Live.  "Let me be very clear: The actions in that video are reprehensible," Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson told reporters during a news conference.  The suspects -- Jordan Hill, 18, Tesfaye Cooper, 18, Brittany Covington, 18, and Tanishia Covington, 24 -- were set to appear in Central Bond Court on Friday afternoon.  Of course, the usual suspects are out demanding that we look at the "root causes" of the savagery.  We should not take that bait.  Each citizen is responsible for his or her actions, and we're tired of the excuses.  This happened in Chicago, the murder capital of America, where Barack Obama will give his farewell address to the country.  I wonder if he'll notice the barbarity going on around him.

GREAT – FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:   TALLADEGA, Ala. — For a band at a tiny, little-known, historically black college, it seems in some ways to be the gig of a lifetime: a chance to march and perform at the Jan. 20 presidential inaugural parade in Washington. Some of the musicians at Talladega College have been excited to see the capital for the first time.  But because the president-elect is Donald J. Trump, the school has become the subject of an impassioned national outcry, with online petitions, threats to end donations and a flurry of how-could-yous from alumni who feel that performing in the parade would betray the values of an institution founded by newly freed slaves 150 years ago.  On Thursday, after days of speculation that the college administration might bow to the pressure and remove the band from the parade roster, the president of Talladega College, Billy Hawkins, issued a statement confirming the participation of the band, the Marching Tornadoes, and argued, in essence, that the 58th presidential inauguration is about something bigger than Mr. Trump.  “We respect and appreciate how our students and alumni feel about our participation in this parade,” Dr. Hawkins said. “As many of those who chose to participate in the parade have said, we feel the inauguration of a new president is not a political event but a civil ceremony celebrating the transfer of power.”  Superb response.  It's good to see a black college fighting back against the archaic and ineffective black establishment, and its white, radical allies.  We'll cheer the band.

BRITAIN SOARS AFTER BREXIT – FROM THE TIMES OF LONDON:   Britain ended last year as the strongest of the world’s advanced economies with growth accelerating in the six months after the Brexit vote, it was revealed yesterday.  Business activity hit a 17-month high last month, meaning that the economy grew by 2.2 per cent last year — more than the six other leading nations, including the US, Germany and Japan.  Far from slowing after the referendum in June, as predicted by the Treasury and Bank of England, growth appeared to have improved. GDP grew at 0.3 per cent and 0.6 per cent in the first two quarters of last year, compared with 0.6 per cent and an estimated 0.5 per cent in the final period.  Once again the elites were proved wrong.  I hope this influences other European nations to show some independence.

January 5,  2016     Permalink

CONTROVERSIAL – AT 1:39 P.M. ET:  The president-elect is planning some big changes in American intelligence operations.   From The Wall Street Journal: 

WASHINGTON—President-elect Donald Trump, a harsh critic of U.S. intelligence agencies, is working with top advisers on a plan that would restructure and pare back the nation’s top spy agency, people familiar with the planning said.

The move is prompted by his belief that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has become bloated and politicized, these people said.

The planning comes as Mr. Trump has leveled a series of social-media attacks in recent months and the past few days against U.S. intelligence agencies, dismissing and mocking their assessment that Russia stole emails from Democratic groups and individuals and then provided them to WikiLeaks for publication in an effort to help Mr. Trump win the White House.

One of the people familiar with Mr. Trump’s planning said advisers also are working on a plan to restructure the Central Intelligence Agency, cutting back on staffing at its Virginia headquarters and pushing more people out into field posts around the world. The CIA declined to comment.

“The view from the Trump team is the intelligence world has become completely politicized,” said the individual, who is close to the Trump transition. “They all need to be slimmed down. The focus will be on restructuring the agencies and how they interact.”

COMMENT:  This is a hot potato, even within Trump's own party.  There have always been problems with intelligence operations, especially when the intelligence turns out to be wrong. 

The Central Intelligence Agency was founded in 1947 to provide a central clearinghouse for intelligence information, free of the political slants sometimes given by intelligence units that were pushing particular policies.  It was something of a fantasy because the CIA itself is prone to developing its own view of intelligence.

If Trump can improve the intelligence sector, fine.  But even Republicans are apprehensive about his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and how this might affect his view of intelligence.

Maybe the wise thing would be to appoint a bipartisan commission of eminent citizens to examine our entire intelligence apparatus and make recommendations for change.

January 5, 2017       Permalink

HE EARNED IT – AT 11:25 A.M. ET:  Reports now say that Tucker Carlson will replace Megyn Kelly in the coveted 9 p.m. slot at Fox. 

This is a clear case of someone earning the position.  Carlson has been around a long time, and took over Greta Van Susteren's slot when she left Fox.  He became an instant ratings hit because his show is damned good.  It's filled with news and solid interviews.  He confronts his guests without bullying.  He's a pleasure to watch.  It's good to see a fine journalist make it.  From Drudge: 

2017 starts off with a BANG! as FOX NEWS executives will announce Tucker Carlson replaces the vacating Megyn Kelly at 9 PM ET, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

The dramatic move caps Carlson's rapid rise at the nation's top-rated cable channel.

"Tucker has already proven to be an audience powerhouse at 7 PM, now sky is the limit!" an insider explains.  "FOX NEWS will not be tamed."

In recent weeks, the Carlson show hit #1 audience and demo with a mix of explosive interviews and hard-hitting topics.

Timing isn't everything in the business, it's the only thing, and Carlson arrives just as the Trump presidency begins.

The broadcast wunderkind previously anchored shows on CNN, MSNBC and PBS.

COMMENT:  Fox is doing it right, promoting someone for the long term.  A lesser operation would have looked for a movie star who knew where the White House is, more or less.  We wish Tucker well.

January 5, 2017       Permalink

OH SAVE US, PLEASE SAVE US – AT 10:33 A.M. ET:  When does the curse end?  I ask you, when does it end?  From Daily Caller:

Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is “talking about” running for New York City mayor, Newsmax reports.

It has only been 57 days since President-elect Donald Trump defeated Clinton. During the election slog, Clinton, 69, collapsed getting into a Secret Service van, had multiple coughing fits during speeches and seemed to have trouble walking up steps at a rally in Lake Worth, Fla.

“If she ran, she’d win,” a Newsmax source said.

She was a New York senator from 2001 to 2009. During that time, her popularity peaked at 60 percent in 2001 and ping-ponged from as low as 47 percent in December 2002 to 57 percent in 2005 and then back down to 48 percent in May 2008 when she conceded the Democratic nomination to then-Sen. Barack Obama.

Clinton easily beat Trump in New York during the 2016 election, grabbing 59 percent to his 36.5 percent. She trounced Trump in New York City, winning 78.59 percent with 1,969,920 votes...

...“She’s talking about it,” a former elected city official told Newsmax.

COMMENT:  You know why she's talking about it?  I'll tell you why she's talking about it.  Because if she runs and wins, she'd be mayor of Trump Tower, that's why.  I can just see her arranging for Trump Tower to fail its elevator inspections.  Nobody gets above the first floor.  I can see her running to the White House to personally hand President Trump the citations.  I can see her demanding that he call her "your honor."  I can see him having her arrested for trespassing. 

January 5,  2017     Permalink