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SEPTEMBER 3,  2016

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

AND ANOTHER POLL SHOWS HILLARY DOWN – FROM IBD:   In a sharp turnaround in an already volatile election season, support for Hillary Clinton tumbled as Donald Trump made gains over the past month, leaving the race a virtual tie.  The latest IBD/TIPP Poll shows that Clinton is now ahead of Trump by just one percentage point, 44% to 43% among likely voters. Last month, Clinton had a seven-point lead over Trump — 46% to 39% -- among registered voters.  Clinton and Trump are tied at 39% each in a four-way matchup that includes Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, who gets 12% support, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who gets 3%.  As the election nears, IBD/TIPP is narrowing the horse-race results from registered to likely voters. This month's survey included a total of 934 respondents, 887 of whom were registered voters and 861 were deemed likely voters. The margin of error for the horse-race results is +/-3.4 percentage points. The IBD/TIPP Poll has been cited as the most accurate in the past three presidential elections.  Hillary is in serious trouble.  The formal campaign starts Tuesday, and she's being roundly criticized for sitting on her lead and trying to run out the clock.

AH, SOCIALISM – FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:   CARACAS, Venezuela — President Nicolás Maduro was chased at a routine political event by a crowd of angry protesters banging on pots and yelling that they were hungry, just days after thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets to call for his ouster, local news media reported on Saturday.  Scenes from the confrontation late Friday, which also appeared in videos uploaded to social media, captured the attention of Venezuelans, many of whom blame the unpopular president for the country’s food shortages.  In one video, Mr. Maduro tries to calm the pot-bangers by walking among them, only to be surrounded as the furious crowd yells obscenities.  Call Sean Penn.  Call Barack Obama.  They'll understand.  They'll help.

GREAT IDEA – FROM BRITAIN'S INDEPENDENT:    A café in Spain has begun charging its customers more for their coffees and pastries if they are rude when ordering.  Restaurant Blau Grifeu in Llanca charges rude customers €5 for their morning pick-me-up while those who behave more graciously pay just €3.  Saying 'please' and wishing the barista a good morning will get you a coffee for as little as €1.30.  Marisel Valencia Madrid, the owner of Restaurant Blau Grifeu, said the scheme is working and that customers are beginning to be more polite to her staff.  “People seem to be in a rush these days and forgetting to say 'please' when they ask for something,” she told the Times.  A very good idea.  Of course, we must make exceptions for cultures where rudeness and beheadings are accepted, and we must adapt.

September 3, 2016      Permalink

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STATE OF OUR MILITARY – AT 12:51 P.M. ET:  This is an important story – it can mean life or death for our service personnel – or for our country.   It symbolizes the state of our underfunded, run-down military, especially the state of military aviation.  Only Fox is emphasizing this critical situation:

Marine Maj. Sterling Norton, 36, was killed when his F/A-18 Hornet crashed on July 28 during a live-fire nighttime training accident in Southern California.

Less than a week later, another F/A-18 from the same squadron crashed outside Naval Air Station Fallon, Nev. The pilot ejected safely – but it was the squadron’s third F/A-18 crash since October - two of which were fatal.

The Marine Corps, in response, conducted a one-day safety stand-down.

But such accidents are becoming more frequent – amid concerns that insufficient training and an aging fleet hobbled by a shortage of spare parts are contributing factors. A Fox News investigation reveals that, overall, the entire U.S. military saw a 48 percent increase in non-combat aviation crashes in 2014 and 2015 compared with the two prior years, based on press reports.

“They are going up partly because they are not getting the training they should get. They're going up because maintenance is harder and harder to accomplish. They are going up because the airplanes are getting older and older,” said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, in an interview with Fox News.

Maj. Norton deployed in combat to Afghanistan in 2012. His commanding officer called him one of his best pilots. According to the Washington Post, a Marine who witnessed the crash said Norton’s jet “broke apart in midair” while in a dive preparing to fire weapons.

"I want to wait for the investigation report. However, these jets are too old and should not be flown anymore," Norton's mother, Mary Anne Vanderhoof, told Fox News.

On Capitol Hill in July, the head of Marine Corps aviation seemed to share her concern.

“I worry about my young aviators that aren't getting the number of hours they need to. And so it's the mishaps that loom over the bow that we don't see coming just now … Will they have the experience to keep that bad thing from happening?" said Lt. Gen. Jon "Dog" Davis.

COMMENT:  The Republicans in Congress probably share the blame, but the president is commander-in-chief, and he seems to feel no urgency about the state of our military.  He mocks the idea that we are weakening, but we are. 

We await comment from Commissar of the Army Hillary Clinton.

September 3, 2016       Permalink

RUMBLES FROM FRANCE – AT 12:10 P.M. ET:   Britain has now voted for "Brexit," to pull out of the European Union (Brexit - meaning "British exit").  The vote was a major international bombshell.  But now there are rumblings from France, where support for the EU has been waning.  If France goes, can the EU survive?  From The Hill: 

A French right-wing leader is promising a nationwide referendum on whether the country should leave or remain in the European Union if she gets elected.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of France's anti-immigration National Front, on Saturday said she would hold an EU referendum if elected president next spring, according to The Associated Press.

Le Pen also denounced "mass immigration" and called Islamism "the new totalitarianism of the 21st century."

The United Kingdom held a similar referendum this summer, with the majority of voters voting to leave the EU. The country has not yet begun the process of the so-called Brexit.

COMMENT:  French politics are fluid right now, but we must take Le Pen seriously.  Her stock has been rising, and a promise to hold a EU referendum could make her more popular.  That promise could also lead other candidates for the presidency to make the same pledge, guaranteeing a referendum, British-style. 

A French vote to leave would probably kill the European Union and cause a mass upheaval in the organization of Europe.  Without France and Britain, what would be left of the EU? 

This is what elitist bureaucrats get when they ignore the feelings of the people they're supposed to be serving.

September 3, 2016       Permalink

THE BLUNT WORD – AT 11:08 A.M.  The FBI, in what is elegantly called a "document dump," released a great deal of information late yesterday about its investigation of Hillary Clinton.  A document dump late on a Friday, just before a holiday weekend, is meant to minimize attention to what is being released.

Didn't work all that well this time.  The more serious reporters are examining the FBI release.  There are gems there, if Trump can only exploit them.  From Catherine Herridge and Pamela Browne at Fox: 

The 11-page FBI summary released Friday of Hillary Clinton's July 2 interview in the criminal email investigation shows bureau agents focused their questions to her on the 22 “Top Secret” emails considered too damaging to national security to make public.

These emails contained some of the U.S. government's most closely held secrets, known as Special Access Programs (SAP), as first reported by Fox News.

Though the summary is heavily redacted, it shows FBI agents asked Clinton about an Afghan national identified as "Salehi," who appeared in her emails, which included a discussion of a New York Times report about his alleged ties to the CIA. Clinton said she did not remember the email, had no reason to believe the discussion involved classified information, and had "no reason to doubt the judgment of the people working for her on the 'front lines.'"

The discussion of a foreign national working with the U.S. government raises security implications -- an executive order signed by President Obama said such unauthorized disclosures are “presumed to cause damage to the national security."

The Salehi email, and the discussion of a possible relationship with the U.S. government, was first reported by Fox News as an example of how human spying intelligence, known as humint, was contained in the Clinton emails. The sharing and discussion of such intelligence puts lives at risk.

COMMENT:  Putting lives at risk seems to be a Hillary Clinton specialty – witness her actions in and comments about Benghazi. 

The odd thing here is that Clinton has a reputation in Washington for taking national security seriously, unlike the president she worked for.  Maybe that reputation is ill-deserved.  It certainly has been damaged.

September 3,  2016     Permalink

SEPTEMBER 2,  2016

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

BUT IS IT TRUE? – FROM THE HILL:   Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by just one point in Virginia, according to a new poll from Emerson College that shows a closer race than other recent surveys.  The Emerson surveys out Friday also find Trump with a five-point lead in the swing state of iowa.  Emerson College’s surveys have consistently found Trump running closer to Clinton than other polls concerning the 2016 race. Some pollsters have questioned the polls’ methodology due to the results relying solely on landline telephone interviews.  Emerson College conducted its latest sampling of 800 likely voters in Virginia via landline telephone interviews from Aug. 30-Sept. 1. It has a 3.4 percent margin of error.  Emerson College sampled 600 likely voters in Iowa, meanwhile, via landline telephone interviews during the same period. It sports a 3.9 percent margin of error.  Other polls show Clinton ahead in Virginia by double digits, and that can't be right also.  We present these numbers and ask that they be read with caution.

ARE YOU READY TO TRAVEL? – FROM FOX:   Vacation in Syria? Seriously?  The war-torn nation's Ministry of Tourism released a promotional tourism video featuring Tartus, one of its pristine coastal towns, in hopes of attracting tourists. Missing from the pitch was the fact that a suicide bomber killed dozens on that same beach earlier this summer, and residents of Homs, just 60 miles away, are running from government-sacntioned bombings.  The one-minute, 43-second video-- presumably filmed by an unarmed drone-- is titled “Syria--Always Beautiful.” With festive music and sunseekers on jet skis and frolicking on beaches, the idyllic footage is akin to advertisements Americans might see luring them to a place like Myrtle Beach, S.C.  The video is one of a dozen videos uploaded by the ministry with no mention of the country’s bloody conflict that has killed at least 400,000.   I have no doubt that some student groups from America's left-wing universities are ready to go, bags packed.

THE CLINTON-TRUMP DEBATE MODERATORS – FROM MEDIAITE:   The first debate on September 26 will be moderated by Lester Holt of NBC...Anderson Cooper of CNN and Martha Raddatz of ABC will co-moderate the second presidential debate on October 9, which will take place in St. Louis, Missouri...Finally, Fox anchor Chris Wallace will host the third debate on October 19, live from UNLV in Las Vegas, Nevada...Elaine Quijano of CBS News will also serve as moderator on October 4, during the debate between vice-presidential candidates Tim Kaine and Mike Pence. The VP debate will take place in Farmville, Virginia on the campus of Longwood University.  A heavily liberal group, but that's what we expect.  It will be up to Trump to overcome that, but that's now the job of any GOP presidential candidate.

September 2,  2016     Permalink

UNDERSTANDING HILLARY – QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 11:38 A.M. ET:  Trump is the fascinating candidate, love him or despise him.  But what about Hillary?  She's been nationally famous for as long as FDR was on the day he died in 1945.  (He'd become a national figure when running for vice president on the Democratic ticket in 1920.) 

And yet, she seems directionless, lacking any real passion or policy, someone up there who wants to be president because she wants to be president.  What makes her tick?  Peggy Noonan has an insight, and our quote of the day.  From The Wall Street Journal:   

I was at one of her rallies in a high-school gym in a handsome suburb. It was well-organized—good lighting and security, a buzzy crowd. Mrs. Clinton was introduced and she bounded out—blue pantsuit, well made-up, high-energy, pointing out friends, real or imagined, in the crowd. I thought: Give it to her, she’s 60-something, she’s out in America working the room, making the speech, enacting the joy, when she could be home on a Saturday night watching TV.

Then it struck me. If she weren’t here, she’d be in an empty house in Chappaqua, N.Y., the focus of no eyes—not important, not glamorous, no aides or staffers. I thought: She needs to run, it’s this or reruns on Bravo. I thought: This is why you pick up that there is no overarching purpose, theme or mission to her candidacy—because there isn’t. There is only her need—not to be powerless, not to be away from the center. It’s not The America Project, it’s The Hillary Project.

You see that a lot in politicians, but not always those running for president. That night I think I saw it in her.

COMMENT:  And I think Peggy Noonan is right.  Hillary is the ultimate ticket puncher, going from job to job, accomplishing little, but aiming for the next promotion.  Few think she's a woman of high character, yet she wants to be the first female president of the United States.   I look around the Congress and the governors' offices, and see a number of outstanding women, of both parties, and wonder why "the first" couldn't have been one of them. 

We have a leadership deficit at the very top in America.  Barack Obama, a vastly underqualified candidate, is president.  He may well be succeeded by Hillary Clinton, a vastly dishonest one.  And most Americans have a dim view of Trump.

Maybe we should look hard at our presidential nominating process.

September 2, 2016       Permalink 

AMERICANS AND NATIONAL SECURITY – AT 10:56 A.M. ET:  On this anniversary of the end of World War II, Americans are apprehensive about national security.  From Fox: 

A record-high 54 percent of American voters feel the U.S. is less safe today than it was before 9/11, according to the latest Fox News national poll.

Voters also think:

- A major terrorist attack is likely in the near future.

- Last year’s U.S.-Iran agreement on Iran’s nuclear program made the U.S. less safe.

- The $400 million the U.S. paid Iran after American prisoners were released was ransom.

- Terrorism is one of the most important issues facing the country.

- Hillary Clinton can do a better job handling the issue of terrorism than Donald Trump.

Here are the details behind those findings:

Most voters, 80 percent, think it’s at least somewhat likely a major attack “causing large numbers of American lives to be lost” will happen in the near future.

Moreover, 37 percent feel it’s “very likely” an attack will happen soon. While that’s down from the high of 43 percent in 2007, it’s up from 24 percent who felt that way in 2011 (the last time this question was asked on a Fox News Poll).

Some 54 percent think the United States is less safe now than before the September 11 attacks. Thirty-nine percent say the country is safer. Last year, it was 53-38 percent (March 2015). This is a fairly recent shift. Prior to September 2014, more voters than not said the country was safer.

COMMENT:  Americans are reacting to events around the world, and in Orlando and San Bernardino in this country.  They are not encouraged, and clearly not enamored of their leadership.

I'm struck by the fact that poll respondents believed Hillary Clinton would be better at handling terrorism than Donald Trump.  This is the same Hillary Clinton who told the nation, dishonestly, that the Benghazi attack was the result of an online video.  And yet, I understand the response.  Trump has yet to ignite confidence in the idea that he can be commander-in-chief.  It is a dramatic failure.  If Trump loses, and that is still statistically probable, that will be one of the reasons.

September 2, 2016       Permalink 

THIS DATE – AT 10:08 A.M. ET:  On this date in 1945 the Second World War came to an end.  Japan formally surrendered on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay.

Today the Missouri is a museum ship docked at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  It is close to the sunken battleship USS Arizona, which was destroyed by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  That attack forced America to enter the war.  The symbolism of the two ships – one representing an American defeat, the other the ultimate American victory – cannot be missed.

I note the date in part because of Donald Trump's campaign theme – "Make America Great Again."  Some scoff at it, but it has meaning. It reflects the belief that we have lost something in America, not necessarily anything physical or touchable, but a certain spirit – a belief that, with all our faults, we are the last great hope of humankind.  Certain self-appointed "sophisticates," including our president for the next four months, scoff at it, too.  To them, American exceptionalism is just a juvenile, simplistic idea.  But it is not.  It is the reason millions of people from around the world want to migrate to the United States each year.  Are they all misinformed?  Victims of Fox News?  Islamophobes?

The American phase of World War II lasted only three years and nine months.  Somehow, we think of it as much longer, perhaps because World War II was "the war," the central event of the 20th century, the drama around which many of our families' lives revolved.  In that short period the United States, reflecting its traditional spirit, went from a relatively weak and unprepared nation to the world's superpower, creating what has been called the "American century."

In recent decades it has been fashionable to denigrate America, to doubt its greatness, to question its abilities.  During those moments we often think back to the era of World War II – the bravery, the war production, even the music, and we hope to once again be that good.

September 2,  2016     Permalink