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MONDAY,  JUNE 7,  2010

PRIMARIES TOMORROW – AT 8:16 P.M. ET:  Don't forget that there are major primaries tomorrow in California, Nevada, Arkansas, and South Carolina. 

The California GOP will nominate candidates for governor and U.S. senator, and it's possible that a female team of Meg Whitman (gov) and Carly Fiorina (Senate) will be leading the ticket in November.  In Nevada, Republicans will nominate a candidate to run against Harry "Mr. Excitement" Reid, the Senate majority leader.  In Arkansas, Democratic incumbent Senator Blanche Lincoln is trying to beat off a challenge from her political left, mounted by labor unions.  In South Carolina, we'll see if Palin-endorsed candidate Nikki Haley can overcome charges of marital infidelity to become the GOP gubernatorial candidate.  If she wins, and wins in November, the GOP will have two southern governors who are children of immigrants from India.  Take that, liberals.

We'll be here monitoring the returns as they come in, and live blogging.

June 7, 2010     Permalink

AND THE TERROR BEAT GOES ON – AT 7:56 P.M. ET:  Apparently, not all Americans visiting Yemen are tourists or religious pilgrims.  From Fox:

Yemeni authorities have 12 Americans in custody, and the arrests may be linked to a joint U.S.-Yemeni anti-terror campaign, a State Department spokesman said Monday.

Spokesman PJ Crowley told reporters the U.S. was trying to get more information, but did not provide any further details.

The spokesman, P.J. Crowley, declined to provide details about the case, except to say the State Department is aware of the arrests and is seeking more information about the individuals being held.

Last Wednesday, Yemeni security officials said authorities had detained several foreigners, including Americans, Britons and an Australian woman, in connection with an investigation into Al Qaeda's increased activity in the country.

The arrests reported last week were made after foreign intelligence agencies provided lists of names of people they wanted to have detained or put under surveillance, according to two Yemeni security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not permitted to brief journalists.

COMMENT:  We're glad that some progress is being made in rounding up suspects, but it does seem to me that we've seen a marked increase in terror activity since Barack Obama took office.  This is another example.

The war against terror, even though the phrase has been banned by the Obamans, is far from over.  It may just be starting.

June 7, 2010     Permalink

DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD – AT 7:26 P.M. ET:  Helen Thomas has resigned from Hearst, following her crazed, bigoted remarks about Jews, and the uproar they caused.  The White House, to its credit, denounced the remarks today.

But don't think Helen will be without defenders.  She'll probably become a martyr.  Maybe they'll name one of those Gaza "relief" ships for her.  She can sail on it herself, offering to take candy to Gaza and Jews back to Poland and Germany.

And already some of the leftists in the press are out, pleading for mercy for Helen.  It's the usual suspects, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Ellen Ratner.  Janeane Garofolo will undoubtedly be heard from.   And we'll no doubt get the "free speech" brigades on the left, who believe that any criticism of a leftist is a violation of the individual's free speech.

But she's gone.  And we should be grateful for that.  She should have been gone 20 years ago.  A White House birthday party for her, celebrating her 90th birthday, has been canceled.

June 7, 2010     Permalink

COMING SOON TO A GOVERNMENT NEAR YOU – AT 9:56 A.M. ET:  Well, at least there's one leader who'll tell it like it is:

LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron said Monday that Britain’s financial situation was “even worse than we thought” and that the country would have to make savage spending cuts to bring its swelling deficit under control.

Stern and grim-faced in a speech in Milton Keynes, just north of London, Mr. Cameron said, “How we deal with these things will affect our economy, our society — indeed our whole way of life.”

“The decisions we make will affect every single person in our country,” he said. “And the effects of those decisions will stay with us for years, perhaps decades, to come.”

Mr. Cameron said that at more than 11 percent, Britain’s budget deficit was the largest ever faced by the country in peacetime. But he warned that the structural deficit was more worrisome. Britain currently owes a total of more than $1.12 trillion , he said, and in five years will owe nearly double that if nothing is done now.

COMMENT:  Let's see how the British people take this.  The left over there, and over here, would rather lead a country to ruin than see any social program cut. 

Britain's future lies in the balance. 

Of course, there are actually two Britains.  There's the Britain of Winston Churchill, and the Britain of Neville Chamberlain, the Britain of raw guts, and the Britain of the nanny state.  

Cameron is off to a good start, with the blunt, hard truth.  He may put Obama to shame.  Well, that's not much of a standard, is it?

June 7, 2010     Permalink

WILL THERE BE MITCH MANIA? – AT 9:23 A.M. ET:  Republican Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana is one of the nation's best governors.  He is also hugely popular in his home state.  And there is buzz about the presidency in 2012.  From The Politico:

Daniels gets cover-boy treatment in the new Weekly Standard, with a drawing of him in a motorcycle jacket, aboard a bike, “RIDE ALONG WITH MITCH … from the Indiana statehouse to the White House,” by senior editor Andrew Ferguson: “He’s 5′7″. His pale coloring is set off by his reddish gray hair, and the day is fast approaching when the combover will no longer be able to work its magic. … And voters, apparently, find it all endearing. In 2008 he garnered more votes than any other candidate in the state’s history, even as Obama became the first Democratic candidate for president to win the state since 1964. Daniels won 20 percent of the black vote and a majority of the youth vote. …

“[H]e has yet to set foot in New Hampshire or Iowa, as other potential nominees have. So far his only scheduled campaign appearance out of state is in Ohio, at a rally for John Kasich, the Republican candidate for governor. ‘I really don’t want to run,’ he said … ‘It’s very important this time around that the party get it right. It’s not going to be enough to be the un-Obama. We need to focus more on the What of the campaign than the Who. … What we’ve seen in the past year, what I call shock-and-awe statism, has put the American experiment at risk. … For the first time in my life, the country faces survival-level issues.’ Those would be, along with ‘terrorism in a WMD world,’ the national debt and the recurring federal deficits.” DEFINITELY not interested. Wink, wink.

COMMENT:  Daniels is a fascinating guy whose smallish frame and understated style remind us of another famous Hoosier, the World War II correspondent Ernie Pyle.  And Indiana seems to be doing pretty well, compared with other states that are near bankruptcy.

Daniels has some negatives, though.  I heard him speak in New York recently, and the speech was, frankly, dull.  Now, that could actually work in Mitch's favor if he's presented as the competent, no-flash candidate.  Problem is, the flash candidate usually wins, especially when the flash is named Obama.

I'd like to see Daniels run, though.  Let's see how voters react to an all-business, no-show-business candidate with a proved record.  Hey, you never know.  And you won't find a more capable guy.

June 7, 2010     Permalink

TIME TO GO, HELEN – AT 8:41 A.M. ET:  Well, at least some people have a moral compass.  Vulgar senior White House correspondent Helen Thomas has been dropped by her speaking service.  And a high school in the Washington area has dropped her from its graduation ceremony.

This comes in the aftermath of Thomas's anti-Semitic remarks, caught on tape. 

It's time for Thomas to resign quietly and be gone.

I doubt if that will happen.  Anti-Christian and anti-Semitic remarks have become accepted by a certain trendy segment of American society in recent years.   Jesse Jackson, in 1984, referred to Jews as hymies and New York as hymietown, and survived quite well.  The current president ridiculed Americans who "cling to their guns and their religion," meaning the Christian faith, and he got elected.

The nation's elites seem to be upset only by bigoted comments directed against groups popular on the political left.  Arizona is called "racist" for passing an anti-illegal immigration law that actual provides all kinds of civil-liberties safeguards.  And yet, it is perfectly acceptable in some circles to make the worst comments about Cuban-Americans, among our hardest-working and most patriotic citizens.  Cuban Americans are perceived as anti-Castro, a sin in leftist circles.

Helen Thomas's disgusting call for Israeli Jews to "go home" to Poland and Germany, where the Holocaust took place, is even more sinister than it seems.  Remarks like that are part of an international campaign to delegitimize the state of Israel by denying that Jews have a history there.  But many of the same forces behind this campaign are also militantly anti-Christian.  After all, if Jews have no history in Israel then, by definition, Christianity was never invented, since there could not have been a Jew named Jesus.

There is actually a textbook floating around in some American schools that describes Jesus as "a Palestinian," an absurd concept, but one that strips him of both Judaism and Christianity. 

The hard left's war against Western religion is fought in many ways.  Some are coming to the surface.

We await the moment when President Obama calls on Helen Thomas at a news conference. 

June 7, 2010      Permalink

ANOTHER ACHIEVEMENT TO BE PROUD OF – AT 8:30 A.M. ET:  From Bloomberg:

President Barack Obama is poised to increase the U.S. debt to a level that exceeds the value of the nation’s annual economic output, a step toward what Bill Gross called a “debt super cycle.”

The CHART OF THE DAY tracks U.S. gross domestic product and the government’s total debt, which rose past $13 trillion for the first time this month. The amount owed will surpass GDP in 2012, based on forecasts by the International Monetary Fund. The lower panel shows U.S. annual GDP growth as tracked by the IMF, which projects the world’s largest economy to expand at a slower pace than the 3.2 percent average during the past five decades.

“Over the long term, interest rates on government debt will likely have to rise to attract investors,” said Hiroki Shimazu, a market economist in Tokyo at Nikko Cordial Securities Inc., a unit of Japan’s third-largest publicly traded bank. “That will be a big burden on the government and the people.”

Gross, who runs the world’s largest mutual fund at Pacific Investment Management Co. in Newport Beach, California, said in his June outlook report that “the debt super cycle trend” suggests U.S. economic growth won’t be enough to support the borrowings “if real interest rates were ever to go up instead of down.”

COMMENT:  Well now look, stop complaining.  Please remember that all that spending is for the children.  Oh, wait.  The children will be paying for it.  Well now look, who needs children? 

Remember the classic tactic, developed by Marxists in the late fifties and early sixties:  Wreck the system.  Bring it down by flooding it, overburdening it.  Then pick up the pieces and create the Marxist paradise on Earth.

Why is it that, the more I see of Obama and his program, the more I see those tactics at work?   No, no, I must not think such thoughts.  Christiane Amanpour wouldn't approve.

June 7, 2010     Permalink

MISSING IN INACTION – AT 8:12 A.M. ET:  There was a D-Day ceremony yesterday in the Virginia town that paid the highest price in casualties on that day:

BEDFORD, Va. (AP) -- In a stirring tribute to the D-Day sacrifices of American soldiers and their allies, the U.S. military's top officer said Sunday that World War II's defining moment should remind all that returning warriors need not "suffer in quiet desperation."

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke in the peaceful setting of this small town, which bore the heaviest share of American losses in the June 6, 1944, landings on the beaches of Normandy. The National D-Day Memorial was established here in 2001 as a tribute to those who died in the invasion of German-occupied Europe.

Adm. Mullen drew a parallel with the needs and aspirations of the men and women returning from today's battlefields, many with the invisible psychological wounds of war.

"They, too, have seen and done things we cannot know," he said. "Their lives, too, are forever changed. And just as previous generations of heroes did, they must likewise adjust themselves to peace."

COMMENT:  Absent:  President Barack Obama, who apparently couldn't be inconvenienced while preparing for last night's music festival at Ford's Theater, his second musical gala of the week.  Gotta hear that beat. 

Obama could have gone to Bedford.  He should've been there.  Of course, he should have been at Arlington on Memorial Day as well.  And he should have been at the Gulf spill many days earlier.

This man has gotten too many passes. 

June 7,  2010     Permalink 

SUNDAY,  JUNE 6,  2010

TERROR ARREST UPDATE – AT 9:51 P.M. ET:  Those two rollicking fun guys from New Jersey who were arrested trying to make it to Somalia to sharpen their terror skills, apparently have quite a history.  From Fox:

Federal authorities on Sunday unsealed charges against two New Jersey men arrested the night before as they allegedly tried to join an Al Qaeda-linked group in war-torn Somalia and kill Americans there.

The men were inspired at least in part by Omar Hammami, the Alabama-born face of the Somalia-based terrorist group, and Anwar al-Awlaki, the New Mexico-born cleric now hiding in Yemen who has been linked to the Fort Hood shootings, the Christmas Day bombing attempt and the failed Times Square car bomb plot, according to federal prosecutors.

20-year-old Mohamed Mahmood Alessa of North Bergen, N.J., and 24-year-old Carlos Eduardo Almonte of Elmwood Park, N.J., have been charged with conspiring to kill or injure persons outside the United States. Both are U.S. citizens.

And...

In late November 2009, Alessa was recorded saying that if he and Almonte can’t kill targets overseas, then they’ll "start doing killing here" in the United States, according to court documents. He later said he would return to the "crap hole" of the United States if "the leader ordered me to come back here and do something," court documents allege.

Alessa also allegedly spoke of U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, who allegedly killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., last year after corresponding with al-Awlaki. Alessa threatened to do "twice what he did," according to court documents.

More recently, on April 25, Almonte allegedly said he was happy to hear rumors that Americans would soon be arriving in Somalia to help fight al-Shabaab. Almonte said killing more than Africans would be particularly gratifying, according to prosecutors.

COMMENT:  Of course, we all understand how wrong it is to pre-judge these gentlemen.  In fact, we're waiting for the first series of excuses and explanations to come out. 

Maybe they could get some PR advice from Helen Thomas.  She's available.

June 6, 2010     Permalink

THANKS, BARACK – AT 9:31 P.M. ET:  You will notice how frightened the Iranian mullahs are of Barack Obama.  Why, just look at the latest shakin'-in-our-boots move by those guys from Tehran:

Iran has warned that it could send Revolutionary Guard naval units to escort humanitarian aid convoys seeking to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza – a move that would certainly be challenged by Israel.

Any such Iranian involvement, raised today by an aide to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would constitute a serious escalation of already high tensions with Israel, which accuses Tehran of seeking to build a nuclear weapon and of backing Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls Gaza.

"Iran's Revolutionary Guard naval forces are prepared to escort the peace and freedom convoys that carry humanitarian assistance for the defenceless and oppressed people of Gaza with all their strength," pledged Hojjatoleslam Ali Shirazi, Khamenei's personal representative to the guards corps.

COMMENT:  It is inconceivable that such a threat, essentially an invitation to war, would have been made with George W. Bush in the White House.  But the mullahs have Obama's number.  I suspect they've figured out by now that he isn't just a paper tiger, he's a paper mouse.  And recycled paper at that. 

Earlier this week, the increasingly Islamist Turkish delights from Istanbul threatened to send their Navy to Gaza, and, as could be expected, Washington said nothing.  Maybe they're waiting for the translation from Berlitz. 

Obama was the president who would bring peace on a cooled Earth and good will toward all men, women and those in between.  All we have is increasing chaos, and enemies growing bolder by the day.

June 6, 2010    Permalink 

CRAZY, JUST CRAZY – AT 12:01 P.M. ET:  One thing about Obama – he never learns.  Great presidents grow in office.  Obama shrinks.  In a story about the nomination of Undersecretary of Defense James Clapper to be the new director of national intelligence, The Politico reports:

According to intelligence sources, the White House sounded out other more prominent individuals, such as former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) about the job, but none was interested. Some former officials said that the Obama administration’s decision to side with the Central Intelligence Agency over Blair in personnel and briefing disputes made power players reluctant to take the DNI post.

COMMENT:  Huh?  Chuck Hagel?  If this doesn't tell you the mentality of the White House, nothing will.  Hagel, as a U.S. Senator, and ostensibly a Republican, was so bad that he had to retire.  He probably couldn't have gotten his party's nomination for another term.  He was anti-Bush, cool to the war on terror, and, without any evidence, considered himself a strategic genius.

The fact that Hagel could be asked to take such a high position demonstrates that this whole administration is simply the anti-Bush.  These are small-time politicians trying to make it in the big leagues, and failing every day.  Petty people with petty thoughts.  And at the top is Mr. Smalltime himself. 

At least Dick Cheney's Secret Service codename was "bigtime," and he was. 

June 6, 2010      Permalink  

DISGRACEFUL – AT 10:50 A.M. ET:  Do some "journalists" actually think about what they write before putting it in print?  There is this guy, Greg Sargent, at WaPo, and this is what he wrote yesterday:

Hearst Newspapers is refusing to say whether it will stand by White House veteran reporter Helen Thomas in the wake of conservative outrage over her remarks about Jews leaving Palestine and going back to Europe.

Conservative Web sites have been banging away at Thomas ever since video surfaced of her urging Jews to "get the hell out of Palestine" and go back to Germany and Poland. Beyond these comments, Thomas has aggressively questioned the Obama administration's support for Israel in the wake of the flotilla raid, angering the right, and some Republicans are now seizing on her latest comments to call for her firing.

COMMENT:  What?  Is this serious reporting?  Is Mr. Sargent suggesting that only conservatives are outraged by Helen Thomas's vulgar, anti-Semitic remarks?  Are only those on "the right" angry about the way Helen Thomas has abused her senior position in the White House press corps?

This is the liberal mindset, or what it's degenerated into over the years.  Liberals, at one time, would have been first out of the gate to denounce bigotry.  Today, they calculate who's engaged in the bigotry, whether we care about that group, and how many party invitations will be lost by denouncing the outrage. 

They also calculate the effect of the bigotry on their favorite causes.  Right now that's the "legitimate rights of the Palestinian people."  Next week it'll be something else.

Sometimes people reveal themselves.  Mr. Sargent has revealed himself.  I have no doubt that many, many decent liberals are sickened by Helen Thomas, and would like to see her sink into retirement.  Apparently, Mr. Sargent doesn't know any. 

June 6, 2010     Permalink

THE DATE – AT 10:36 A.M. ET:  This date, June 6th, is permanently etched in the memory of those of us of a certain age.  On June 6, 1944, Allied troops, under the command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, invaded northern Europe, at Normandy.

We know the date.  But, as Victor Davis Hanson said in a television talk last night, young people don't.  It isn't, as Hanson said, that they've never heard of Normandy, or Iwo Jima, or Okinawa.  It's that they aren't even familiar with World War II.  Repulsive changes in our educational system, often forced by "educators" who aren't, have resulted in a dumbing down of the curriculum, and the replacement of real history by pseudo-history.

Hanson explained that there have always been controversies about individual wars and individual battles.  But, beginning with Vietnam, there's been a rejection in self-proclaimed "intellectual" circles, of war itself, despite the fact that war, ugly as it is, has saved us from a multitude of horrors. 

The memories are fading.  The number of World War II veterans declines by the thousands each day.  Who will tell their story?  Who will tell it accurately?

Some years ago, as many of you will remember, an act of corruption occurred at the Smithsonian.  Fashionable "curators" put up an exhibit containing the Enola Gay, the plane whose crew dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.  The text of the exhibit was a gratuitous insult to veterans of World War II, suggesting that Japan was merely defending its "sacred empire," a vast distortion of the Japan of the 1930s and 1940s.  Veterans objected vehemently, and the exhibit was ultimately changed.  The upshot?  The veterans, who'd actually been there, were accused of "hijacking history" by The New York Times, whereas the curators were presented as intellectual heroes.

That is the problem.  The problem is not going away.  We, on our side, have been far too reluctant to criticize corruption in education, but we'd better start.  The future of this country may depend on it, and our politeness is out of order.

June 6, 2010      Permalink

AGAIN – AT 10:18 A.M. ET:  Once again the imperialist American authorities, reflecting the evil legacy of BUSH (!!) have put upon some sweet innocents merely trying to explore their culture:

NEWARK — Two New Jersey men intent on killing American troops were arrested Saturday as they boarded flights to link up with a virulent jihadist group in Somalia, authorities said.

The men, both North Jersey residents, were charged with conspiring to commit an act of international terrorism through a group tied to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network, according to officials familiar with the details of the arrests.

Mohamed Hamoud Alessa, 20, of North Bergen, and Carlos Eduardo "Omar" Almonte, 24, of Elmwood Park were apprehended at John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens before they could board separate flights to Egypt, where they were to start journeys to Somalia. The men were arrested by teams of state and federal law-enforcement agents who have been investigating the pair since October 2006, according to the officials, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the operation publicly.

Late Saturday night, the state homeland security agency confirmed a police action at the airport but gave few details.

And...

...investigators believe Alessa and Almonte were recruited by others, who are also now coming under scrutiny. "We hope this will lead to a spider web of arrests," said one official briefed on the case.

COMMENT:   An excellent, superbly reported piece from NJ.com, which actually did some historical research.  I can barely find the story in the more "established" news organs. 

How many incidents can we now count since Barack Hussein Obama Jr. took office?  I can't recall, but there seems to be one a month.  But at least, as the philosopher and deep thinker Paul McCartney says, Obama knows what a library is.

We have been lucky so far, at least in most terrorist cases.  Our luck will run out.

June 6, 2010    Permalink