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MAY 6,  2017

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

OPTIMISM IN GEORGIA – FROM POWERLINE:   In the first round of voting in the Georgia Sixth congressional race, Jon Ossoff, boy Democrat, declared that he had won a “victory for the ages.” In reality, he had captured around 48 percent of the vote, short of what he needed for actual victory.  Ossoff’s nearest rival, Karen Handel, ran far behind Ossoff, with only around 20 percent of the vote. However, her count was depressed by the fact that the field was full of Republican candidates. In addition, Ossoff had raised around $8.3 million. Even with those advantages, he still fell short of true victory.  Now, a new poll by WSB-TV, Landmark Communications shows Handel with a slim lead over Ossoff. She’s at 49.1 percent; he’s at 46.5 percent. However, the margin of error is 4 percent. Thus, the race is neck-and-neck.  Democrats, though, must be discouraged to see their young champion at below the number he reached in the first round. And Handel must be delighted that Republican support appears to have coalesced so uniformly behind her.  The election, though, is June 20th, more than a month away.  Dems are portraying Ossoff as their new fair-haired boy, reasonable, able to work with both sides.  From what I see, he's standard-issue Democratic liberal.  I'm sure Handel is hitting that point.

GOOD MOVE, AND NECESSARY – FROM BREITBART:  Iowa on Friday became the latest state to enact a voter-ID law to protect the integrity of its election process, and the state’s elected leaders are already bracing for a legal challenge seeking to invalidate that law before it can go into effect next year.  Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican who is the longest-serving governor in the nation, signed the legislation into law on May 5. The bill, House File 516, specifies voter-identification requirements to cast a ballot in elections, shortens the time period for early voting, and updates the state’s absentee-voting procedures.  The legal challenges will come, claiming voter i.d. laws are unfair to minorities.  In fact, every poll shows that minorities support these laws by wide margins.  It's the activists who don't like them.  I'm sure Branstad will stand firm.

FROM SHERLOCK HOLMES TO SIGMUND FREUD – FROM THE NEW YORK POST: A prospective NYPD cadet claims he was rejected for being “too honest” about his anxiety.  Kevin Carumba of the Bronx dreamed of being a New York City cop, but the department disqualified him in 2015 “for having a fair amount of anxiety,” according to court papers Carumba filed to overturn the decision.  “I want to be able to help people, make them feel safe, and not let them live in fear,” Carumba said in the Manhattan Supreme Court filing against the city’s Civil Service Commission, which oversees the process.  But Carumba “was trying to be as honest as possible during his interview and due to a misunderstanding might have exaggerated some events or thoughts that occur rarely,” according to the lawsuit, which insists the rejection “should be reversed.”  A psychologist who examined Carumba after the 2015 rejection said Carumba “is not nearly as anxious as he reported.”   Hire him and assign him to a university to protect the safe spaces.

May 6, 2017       Permalink

THEY WANT TO GO BYE-BYE – AT 1:18 P.M. ET:  This is more amusing than significant, but a good Saturday story.  There are secession movements in a number of states.  They won't succeed, but secession has been a recurring story in America, almost from the start of this Republic.  Abe Lincoln dealt with it in a major way.  But some people never get over it.  From PewTrusts:

APPOMATTOX COURT HOUSE, Va. — When two generals signed papers here 152 years ago bringing the Civil War to a close, they ended the bid by 11 Southern states to secede from the Union. And that, most believed, was that.

Yet ever since the South’s Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to the North’s Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in 1865, groups across the United States have advocated seceding from the country, their own states, or in a few cases, their cities. Recently, these efforts have ranged from fairly large, ongoing campaigns in Texas and California to smaller pushes in Oklahoma, Maine, Utah, West Virginia and New York’s Long Island, among others.  

Just last month, a longshot effort to allow Californians to vote on seceding fell apart after one of the founders dropped out amid criticism of his ties to Russia. But a new group pushing secession has vowed to collect the nearly 600,000 signatures required by July to put the measure on the November 2018 ballot.

Last May, the Texas Nationalist Movement came within two votes of adding Texas independence language to the state’s Republican platform. And in Oklahoma, Republican state Sen. Joseph Silk in January introduced a bill to remove the word “inseparable” from the sentence in the state constitution describing Oklahoma as “an inseparable part of the Federal Union.”

The move for independence, whether it’s from the right of the political spectrum as in Texas, or the left as in California, reflects the political division felt across the country, said Edward Meisse, a supporter of the Yes California secession group that just disbanded. “We have two diametrically opposed philosophies in our country, and we’re just not getting anywhere,” he said. “I think we should allow states to secede so California can be California and Texas can be Texas.”

Nationwide, interest in seceding is fairly strong. An online survey by Reuters in 2014 found that nearly one in four Americans want their state to secede. The desire was highest — 34 percent — in the Southwest, which includes Texas.

And...

Despite the heightened interest in secession, many lawyers and constitutional scholars say it’s legally impossible for a state to secede because the U.S. Constitution doesn’t address the issue, and has no provision to allow it.   

COMMENT:  And do you think Democrats would ever let California leave?  Without California, they'd never win a national election.

Of course, there are people we'd like to see leave.  But that's another story.

May 6,  2017     Permalink      

THE OBAMA LEGACY STRIKES AGAIN – AT 12:20 P.M. ET:  We may have to send more troops to Afghanistan, another tribute to the military planning of Field Marshal Obama and Grand Admiral Kerry.   From Fox: 

President Trump could be asked next week to send more troops to Afghanistan as the 16-year war grinds on in a bloody stalemate.

The U.S. commander in Afghanistan wants 3,000 more troops and Pentagon officials told Congress this week that the war plan recommendations being sent to Trump are aimed at moving “beyond the stalemate” with the ISIS-affiliated Taliban insurgency.

Afghan soldiers are suffering what Pentagon auditors call "shockingly high" battlefield casualties, and prospects are narrowing for a negotiated peace settlement with the Taliban. The insurgents may have failed to capture and hold a major city, but they are controlling or influencing ever more territory.

"The situation is deteriorating," said Stephen Biddle, a George Washington University professor and close Afghan war observer.

This grim picture forms the backdrop for administration deliberations on a way ahead in Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are supporting beleaguered Afghans against the Taliban insurgency and stepping up attacks on an extremist group considered an Islamic State affiliate. The three most recent U.S. deaths in Afghanistan were in combat last month against the IS affiliate, which also was the target of a much-publicized U.S. airstrike April 13 using the "mother of all bombs."

Army Gen. John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has asked the Pentagon for 3,000 more U.S. and allied troops to bolster support for the Afghan army.

COMMENT:  What war was that?  Anyone interested?  I'm not so sure the American people will support sending more troops to a war we've been fighting for 16 years, without much success.  I can't blame it all on Obama.  The Bush administration let things drag on for 7 years, and didn't seem to have much of a plan for victory.  It turned its attention to Iraq and the Middle East.

Obama probably thought the enemy had legitimate grievances.  Despite the ghastly behavior of the Taliban toward women, the American left, and the feminist left, never showed much concern.  To do so would have meant supporting BUSH (!!) and CHENEY (!!!!).  Eventually we learn that there's a pecking order on the left, and women don't rank very high, even in some "feminist" groups. 

Trump has difficult decisions to make on Afghanistan.  He's results-oriented, and I have at least some confidence that he'll ask the right questions.

May 6, 2017       Permalink

FRANCE VOTES TOMORROW – AT 11:56 A.M. ET:  And the final days of the campaign have been marked by a huge hack of the frontrunner's e-mails that has jolted the election, but probably won't change the outcome.  From Reuters: 

PARIS, May 6 (Reuters) - France sought to keep a computer hack of frontrunner Emmanuel Macron's campaign emails from influencing the outcome of the country's presidential election with a warning on Saturday it could be a criminal offence to republish the data.

Macron's team said a "massive" hack had dumped emails, documents and campaign financing information online just before campaigning ended on Friday and France entered a quiet period which forbids politicians from commenting on the leak.

The data leak emerged as polls predicted Macron, a former investment banker and economy minister, was on course for a comfortable victory over far-right leader Marine Le Pen in Sunday's election, with the last surveys showing his lead widening to around 62 percent to 38.

"On the eve of the most important election for our institutions, the commission calls on everyone present on internet sites and social networks, primarily the media, but also all citizens, to show responsibility and not to pass on this content, so as not to distort the sincerity of the ballot," the French election commission said in a statement on Saturday.

However, the commission - which supervises the electoral process - may find it difficult to enforce its rules in an era where people get much of their news online, information flows freely across borders and many users are anonymous.

French media covered the hack in various ways, with left-leading Liberation giving it prominence on its website, but television news channels opting not to mention it.

Le Monde newspaper said on its website it would not publish the content of any of the leaked documents before the election, partly because the huge amount of data meant there was not enough time to report on it properly, but also because the dossiers had been published on purpose 48 hours before the election with the clear aim of affecting the vote.

COMMENT:  Macron is well ahead in the polls and should win easily tomorrow.  But the extent of the hack is stunning, and needs thorough investigation.  Some have suggested that Moscow did it, but no proof has been supplied.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?  Welcome to our 2016 election, more or less. 

It makes cybersecurity a major issue in the survival of democracies.

Results from France tomorrow night.

May 6,  2017     Permalink

MAY 5,  2017

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

WORDS HAVE CONSEQUENCES – FROM VARIETY:   FCC chairman Ajit Pai said that his agency will be looking into complaints made against Stephen Colbert for what some labeled a homophobic joke about President Donald Trump.  “I have had a chance to see the clip now and so, as we get complaints — and we’ve gotten a number of them — we are going to take the facts that we find and we are going to apply the law as it’s been set out by the Supreme Court and other courts and we’ll take the appropriate action,” Pai told Philadelphia’s Talk Radio 1210 WPHT.  “Traditionally, the agency has to decide, if it does find a violation, what the appropriate remedy should be,” he continued. “A fine, of some sort, is typically what we do.” Pai was appointed to the FCC in 2012 by President Barack Obama. He was elevated to the chairmanship of the commission by Trump in January.  They could always apply Mother's Law, and wash Colbert's mouth out with soap.

LITTLE IDIOTS – FROM THE FEDERALIST:    Even as Middlebury College administrators investigated students who were disruptive and violent against libertarian social scientist Charles Murray, the school’s student government expressed its sentiments that penalizing their behavior is unjust.  On Monday, the Middlebury administration announced it had disciplined 30 students so far for their actions during the Murray event...The student bill argued that arresting students who engage in violent and disruptive behavior would result in “psychological trauma for marginalized students.” That’s right, the student government essentially argued that people it deems “marginalized” should get a free pass on violence and disorderly conduct.  The students also associated arrests and criminal charges “with police violence and the carceral state, which law professor Michelle Alexander refers to as ‘the New Jim Crow.’”  And parents keep paying that tuition.  Are they more immature than their kids?

WOULD TAXPAYERS APPROVE THIS? – FROM FOX:   Sacramento became the latest city this week to go above and beyond ‘sanctuary’ policies by approving the use of taxpayer dollars to support the legal defense of illegal immigrants facing deportation.  The City Council voted unanimously Thursday night to draw $300,000 from the general fund to “provide urgent legal and support services to Sacramento families facing the immediate threat of separation due to deportation.”   The plan, backed by the mayor, fits a trend of local and state lawmakers taking similar action. As the Trump administration separately faces a court setback in its bid to cut off federal funds to sanctuary cities, those jurisdictions are only doubling down.  Earlier in the week, officials in Michigan's Washtenaw County gave initial approval to pay such legal bills with taxpayer funds.  Proposals to directly or indirectly pay for legal assistance to illegal immigrants have also gained approval in Providence, R.I.; Austin, Texas; San Francisco, Calif.; and Newark, N.J.  It seems to me that funds for legal defense for illegal immigrants should be provided by private foundations, not government agencies.  This strikes me as more politics than justice.

May 5, 2017       Permalink

THIS IS A REAL CRISIS – AT 11:52 A.M. ET:   The word is overused, but it applies here.  We have a virtual collapse of police morale across the country.  From the Washington Times: 

An unclassified FBI study on last year’s cop-killing spree found officers are “de-policing” amid concerns that anti-police defiance fueled in part by movements like Black Lives Matter has become the “new norm.”

“Departments — and individual officers — have increasingly made the decision to stop engaging in proactive policing,” said the report by the FBI Office of Partner Engagement obtained by The Washington Times.

The report, “Assailant Study — Mindsets and Behaviors,” said that the social-justice movement sparked by the 2014 death of 18-year-old Michael Brown at the hands of an officer in Ferguson, Missouri, “made it socially acceptable to challenge and discredit the actions of law enforcement.”
FBI spokesman Matthew Bertron said the study was written in April.

“Nearly every police official interviewed agreed that for the first time, law enforcement not only felt that their national political leaders [publicly] stood against them, but also that the politicians’ words and actions signified that disrespect to law enforcement was acceptable in the aftermath of the Brown shooting,” the study said.

As a result, “Law enforcement officials believe that defiance and hostility displayed by assailants toward law enforcement appears to be the new norm.”

COMMENT:  We've seen soaring murder rates in some cities.  Most of the victims, and probably most of the perps, have been black.  I guess those black lives don't matter.

The innocent African-American is the most victimized by radical leftist organizations.  They're simply cannon fodder for the leftist machine.

May 5, 2017       Permalink

WAA...?   DOES FORMER PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA READ THE PAPERS? – AT 9:12 A.M. ET:   He seems to feel that the rules don't apply to him.  From AP:

PARIS — Barack Obama has waded into France’s presidential election, in support of Emmanuel Macron.

In a message posted on Macron’s Twitter account, the former US president said he was endorsing the centrist candidate “because of how important this election is.”

Macron is facing far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in Sunday’s runoff vote. Polls suggest Macron is well ahead.

Obama said: “I’m not planning to get involved in many elections now that I don’t have to run for office again, but the French election is very important to the future of France and the values that we care so much about.”

He continued: “I have admired the campaign that Emmanuel Macron has run. He has stood up for liberal values. He put forward the vision for the important role that France plays in Europe and around the world. And he has committed to a better future for French people. He appeals to people’s hopes, and not their fears.”

Obama ended his message with the words “En Marche” (Macron’s political movement) and “Vive La France.”

COMMENT:  Are we serious here?  Congress, egged on by his own party, is currently investigating Russian interference in the 2016 American presidential election, and Obama is interfering in the French election?  Doesn't this kinda muddle the message?  I sure think so.

Hillary, call Barack.  Tell him to go back to the beach.  In the immortal words of Don Rickles, give him a cookie.  He'll go away.  The man is out of it.

Of course, he was out of it for eight years.

May 5, 2017       Permalink

APRIL JOBS REPORT MIXED – AT 8:50 A.M. ET:  But the news is generally good.  From Business Insider: 

The US economy added 211,000 jobs in April, rebounding after an unexpectedly weak month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Economists had forecast that nonfarm payrolls rose by 190,000, according to Bloomberg.

The bounce in jobs growth confirmed that the slowdown in March was a weather-related aberration, said Tony Bedikian, head of global markets for Citizens Bank. 

"Businesses are certainly hiring and there's no sign that we see of any bump in the road in hiring trends," he told Business Insider. 

The gains in March were revised down by 19,000 jobs to 79,000.

And...

Wage growth slowed last month, with average hourly earnings increasing by 2.5% year-on-year, down from 2.6%. Labor-force participation also slipped, to 62.9% from 63%. The share of American civilians over 16 working or looking for a job has plunged since the recession. An August 2015 analysis by the President's Council of Economic Advisers suggests that about half of the drop comes from structural, demographic factors: the baby boomers, an immensely large cohort of Americans, are getting older and starting to retire.

COMMENT:  We're heading in the right direction.  Jobs are up.  There is actual wage growth.  If Trump can bring a serious number of manufacturing jobs back to America, we'll be even better.

Cause for cautious optimism.

May 5, 2017       Permalink