Please note that you can leave a comment on any of our posts at our Facebook page.  Subscribers can also comment at length at our Angel's Corner Forum.

APRIL 9,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:48 P.M. ET: 

I DUNNO ABOUT THIS – From The National:  "ABU DHABI // Former US president Bill Clinton will address students at New York University Abu Dhabi’s first graduation ceremony.  The inaugural commencement ceremony takes place on May 25 and will see 140 students from 49 countries graduating.  The ceremony itself will be held at NYU’s newly built campus on Saadiyat Island, which is set to officially open this summer."  I'm uneasy.  An American president delivering a commencement address in a country not exactly known for freedom?  There have been rumors over the years about the Clintons making fortunes in Gulf states.  I wonder what the check will be for this speech?  Wife might be president.

OUR FRIEND, VLADIMIR – From Fox:  "The Russian government declined to provide American authorities with information about one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects two years before the attack, which likely would have led to more extensive scrutiny of the suspect, according to a published report.  The New York Times, citing an inspector general's review of how American intelligence and law enforcement agencies could have prevented the deadly bombing last April that claimed three lives and wounded hundreds, reported that Russian authorities told the FBI in 2011 that Tamerlan Tsarnaev 'was a follower of radical Islam.'  But after an initial investigation by FBI agents in Boston, the Russians declined several bureau requests for additional information they had about Tsarnaev, who was killed in a shootout with police days after the attack."  Guess that reset button continues to malfunction.

PRESIDENTIAL WISDOM – From the Washington Examiner:  "President Obama isn't worried about the Rev. Al Sharpton's history as an FBI informant with ties to the mafia, his spokesman said, and doesn't think that the news makes his impending visit to Sharpton's National Action Network awkward.  'Rev. Sharpton and the National Action Network have made significant contributions to civil rights efforts, and the President looks forward to appearing at the conference,' White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters during the Wednesday press gaggle."  I've always been impressed by Obama's high standards and taste in people.

VICTORY – From the Washington Times:  "A federal court Wednesday ordered the University of North Carolina-Wilmington to promote and give $50,000 in back pay to a conservative professor in what is described as a landmark anti-discrimination case.  The restitution was ordered three weeks after a jury found the university guilty of retaliating against criminology professor Mike Adams, a popular conservative columnist on Townhall.com, after denying him a promotion to full professor in 200.  'This ruling sends a message to public universities: Academic freedom isn’t just for the Left, it’s a constitutional right for all professors — even Christian conservatives,' said David French, senior counsel at the conservative American Center for Law and Justice, which represented Mr. Adams."  Mike Adams is terrific.  Sometimes things go right, but only if you fight for them.

April 9, 2014       Permalink

THUMBS DOWN ON OBAMACARE – AT 10:21 A.M. ET:  A new poll shows that Obamacare isn't about to win any popularity contests.  From CBS: 

WASHINGTON (CBSDC/AP) — A majority of Americans believe that President Barack Obama’s signature health care law will be repealed.

A new Rasmussen Reports poll found that 62 percent of likely voters believe that Republicans will repeal Obamacare, which recently marked its fourth anniversary.

Only 23 percent of those polled believe that the health care law has been a success, compared to 46 percent who describe the law as a failure.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, offered a Republican alternative to Obama’s health care overhaul last week, saying states should play a greater role in containing health care costs while giving consumers more flexibility in choosing insurance plans.

Jindal said Obama’s health care law should be “repealed in its entirety” but said Republicans need to offer a better way to reform the health care system, wading into one of the most contentious policy issues in the upcoming midterm elections.

Jindal, a former congressman and Bush administration health care adviser, has sought to establish himself as an outside-the-Beltway policy leader in the early jockeying for the next presidential campaign. His plan aims to separate himself from congressional Republicans who have repeatedly sought to repeal the law but struggled to find consensus on a viable replacement.

“Repealing all of Obamacare is a good and necessary step — but not one sufficient by itself to achieve the real health reform America needs,” Jindal said in the plan released by America Next, a nonprofit he formed to promote conservative policy ideas.

COMMENT:  Jindal is right.  Republicans must come up with clear, popular alternatives to Obamacare.  Otherwise, the Dems will engage in their usual scare campaign:  "If you elect Republicans, they'll take away your health care."  We see it all the time.  They used to say that Republicans will take away Social Security.  Or your children.

I have the sense that the Republican National Committee has begun to learn its lessons.  But the party is divided, and can either triumph or destroy itself.  This year's midterms are a test run for 2016.   We are balanced on a knife edge.  Early polling favors the Republicans, and even gives them a good shot at taking the Senate.  But the verdict is seven months away, twenty lifetimes in politics.

April 9, 2014       Permalink

BACKLASH – AT 9:51 A.M. ET:  By this time all of you know the story of how Brendan Eich, the new CEO of Mozilla, which runs the popular Firefox browser, was forced out of office after only one week because someone discovered he'd made a 2008 contribution to a drive to ban gay marriage in California. 

The ouster, at first praised by the politically correct, has now created a huge backlash.  And I'm happy to say that some liberals and gay-rights advocates have joined the backlash.  They realize that this is nothing more or less than modern-day McCarthyism.  And what is ironic is that Eich was taking, in 2008, the same position on gay marriage as Obama and Hillary Clinton.  I don't see anyone asking that either of these two be banned from public life.

Sane liberal Kirsten Powers examines what has happened in this case, and a related one, in a fine piece at USA Today: 

Last week brought a chilling reminder of how mercilessly some liberals will work to silence and marginalize people who hold views with which they disagree.

Even for those of us who support same-sex marriage, the virtual manhunt of Mozilla chief Brendan Eich was scary to watch. His heresy was a private donation in support of an anti-gay marriage initiative six years ago. Mob rule enforcing groupthink is as illiberal as it gets, and yet it was liberals demanding uniformity of thought — or else.

Another incident of muzzling those without the proper worldview received less attention. Kickstarter, the nation's biggest crowd-funding site, refused to accept a film about convicted abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell unless descriptions of his crimes were removed.

COMMENT: Read the whole piece.  The detail is well worth it.  It doesn't matter how you feel about gay marriage or late-term abortion, or anything else.  The destruction of reputation, the ruining of careers, over a difference of opinion, is simply unacceptable in American society.  And another thing that is unacceptable is pinning the label "bigot" or "racist" on anyone who disagrees.

Demonizing an opponent is one of the recommendations in Saul Alinsky's infamous manual, "Rules for Radicals."  It's McCarthyism at its worst.  Brendan Eich is a brilliant software engineer, who should not have been fired because he ran afoul of the liberal thought police.  I don't know if he is employable now, since companies shy away from controversy.  But I'll bet he can write a whale of a book.

April 9, 2014       Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – SPEAKING THE TRUTH – AT 9:16 A.M. ET:   John McCain has been eminently fair to Kerry – too fair, in my view.  But yesterday McCain spoke for all of us when he came down hard on our secretary of state for the Obama administration's disastrous foreign policy.  From The Hill:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Tuesday accused Secretary of State John Kerry of presiding over a “trifecta” of foreign policy disasters.

McCain lambasted his former Senate colleague at a hearing in which Kerry faced wide-ranging criticism about the administration’s handling of crises in the Middle East and Ukraine.

“I think you’re about to hit the trifecta,” McCain declared.

“Geneva II [a Syrian peace meeting] was a total collapse, as I predicted to you that it would be. ... The Israeli-Palestinian talks, even though you may drag them out for a while, are finished,” McCain said. “And I predict to you that, even though we gave the Iranians the right to enrich, which is unbelievable, that those talks will collapse too.”

Kerry hit back: “It’s interesting that you declare it dead, but the Israelis and the Palestinians don’t declare it dead,” Kerry said of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

“We’ll see,” McCain interrupted.

“Well, yeah, we will see,” Kerry shot back.

“It has stopped. It has stopped. Recognize reality,” McCain retorted.

COMMENT:  The root problem, it seems to me, is that people like John McCain, who sees the world of foreign policy realistically, believe that neither Obama nor Kerry do.  The critics believe, correctly, that Obama and Kerry live in a kind of fantasy world, where everyone is basically decent (except the United States), and negotiations will get us everywhere. 

We can graciously praise Kerry's efforts – he has certainly worked harder than Hillary Clinton and gotten into the thick of things – but if the premise is wrong, the result is going to be wrong. 

You know, you can learn a great deal from comedians.  If they're good, they're sharp observers of the human condition, which is what makes them funny.  When I worked for Johnny Carson he used to teach us, "You buy the premise, you buy the bit."  It's a good lesson for politics.  The Obama administration is based on wrong premises, and so we can't buy what comes out in the end. 

And those premises, which are premises of the left, will not change.

April 9, 2014        Permalink

CHILLING – AT 8:50 A.M. ET:  Even John Kerry admits the Iranians are within shooting distance of a nuclear weapon.  Not a comfortable situation for us.  From Reuters:

(Reuters) - The United States said on Tuesday Iran has the ability to produce fissile material for a nuclear bomb in two months, if it so decided, as Tehran and six world powers swung into a new round of talks in Vienna on resolving their atomic dispute.

Secretary of State John Kerry's comments in Washington highlighted Western concerns about Iran's nuclear intentions and the wide divisions between the two sides that could still foil a deal. Iran says its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful.

The overarching goal of the powers - Britain, France, China, Russia, Germany and the United States - in the talks is to persuade Iran to scale back its programme to the point that it would take it much longer, perhaps as long as a year, to produce fuel for a bomb if it chose to do so.

"I think it's public knowledge today that we're operating with a time period for a so-called 'breakout' of about two months. That's been in the public domain," Kerry testified at a Senate hearing.

Iran's "breakout" time is defined as how long it would take it to produce fissile material for one nuclear weapon, if it decided to build such weapons of mass destruction.

COMMENT:  So our goal is to extend the breakout period.  Presumably, we would have precise intelligence that would allow us to measure that period precisely.  I'm somewhat skeptical about that, considering the number of times the United States has been surprised.  Note that the "intelligence community" recently judged that Russia would make no significant move in Crimea.  Little mistake there.

My great fear is that we will cave in under pressure from commercially oriented allies, and agree to an inadequate deal with Iran, just to get something on paper.  Then Obama can have his Neville Chamberlain moment, telling us he's brought peace in our time.

April 9,  2014     Permalink

APRIL 8,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:57 P.M. ET: 

AIRLINER – The Australian team running the search for the missing Malaysian airliner has just announced that the Australian ship Ocean Shield reacquired the "pinger" sounds heard over the weekend, and that analysis of these "pings" indicate that they are consistent with those sent by a flight data recorder carried by airliners.  The impression given is that the aircraft has been located within a specific search area.   There will now be an attempt to narrow that area.  After that, search equipment is expected to be lowered to scan the ocean floor for aircraft debris.

SPINE IN WASHINGTON? – Hard to believe it, but the Obama administration is actually showing a little spine in responding to Iran's choice for its new UN ambassador.  From AFP:  "WASHINGTON — The United States said Tuesday it had told Iran the selection of a UN ambassador who is allegedly linked to the 1979 American embassy hostage crisis was 'not viable.'   The disclosure from the White House came a day after the US Senate passed a resolution that would deny the diplomat, Hamid Aboutalebi, a US visa. 'The US government has informed the government of Iran that this potential selection is not viable,' White House spokesman Jay Carney said."  I hope they'll now refuse to give the guy a visa, and not cave in.

FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH NEWS – From London's Daily Mail:  "New York researchers say they have found a link between people likely to forgive themselves for mistakes and damage to their bodies caused by stress.  The key to a long and happy life, they say, is to 'cut yourself some slack.'"  Based on this research, Obama will probably go to 120.

SOMEONE'S BEEN THERE? – From SFGate.com:  "A NASA camera on Mars has captured what appears to be artificial light emanating outward from the planet's surface.  The photo, beamed millions of miles from Mars to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., was taken last week, apparently by one of two NASA rovers on the red planet."  Watch.  The Environmental Protection Agency will send a rocket up there to be sure they're using energy-efficient bulbs.

April 8, 2014       Permalink

NOTHING TO SEE, NOTHING TO SEE – AT 9:53 A.M. ET:  I'm so glad our president has declared the war on terror over, aren't you?   Oh, of course there's a bit of bother here and there.  From AP:

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) — FBI officials say they've arrested a Moroccan national in Connecticut in an alleged plot to fly bombs on drone-like devices into a school and a federal building.

Authorities say they arrested 27-year-old El Mehdi Semlali Fahti on Monday and found wires and tools in his Bridgeport apartment. The Connecticut Post (http://bit.ly/1lHz2Y8 ) first reported the arrest.

Fahti hasn't been charged with terrorism, but authorities say that could come later in the investigation. He's charged with immigration-related crimes for allegedly staying in the U.S. for seven years after his student visa expired after flunking out of Virginia International University.

The FBI says Fahti targeted an out-of-state school and a federal building in Connecticut. The exact locations weren't released.

Fahti is detained without bail. His public defender declined to comment Tuesday.

COMMENT:  We will of course be told that he's a lone wolf.  No threat, no threat.  Just like the guys who inflicted havoc on last year's Boston Marathon.

In fact, real terror experts are warning that the threat is actually increasing, and Al Qaeda itself is publishing articles on its website urging jihadists to engage in car-bomb attacks in the United States.

April 8, 2014       Permalink

SOME GOOD NEWS? – AT 9:31 A.M. ET:  We're always glad to report good news, if we can find it.  I went to a lecture last week by the truly distinguished Middle East and Islam expert Walid Phares, who noted that many Muslims, especially young Muslims, are starting to turn away from radicalism because they see that it leads nowhere for them.  From The New York Times:

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Last September, ultraconservative Islamic groups telegraphed their power, railing against an international beauty contest until the government ordered it to be staged entirely on the Hindu resort island of Bali. In 2012, radical Islamic groups known for their violent tactics and religious conservatives raised enough of a fuss that Lady Gaga canceled a concert here in the Indonesian capital. And hundreds of local governments in recent years have passed rules on morality and dress inspired by Shariah, or Islamic law, and instituted bans on alcohol.

But now, just ahead of Wednesday’s national legislative elections, polls and analysts suggest that Islamic-based parties are poised for what could be their worst showing since Indonesia’s democratic era began in 1999. At least two of the parties are polling so low that they might lose any presence in the House of Representatives.

“You’re looking at a substantial drop for them,” said Paul Rowland, a Jakarta-based political consultant. “They are not a significant factor.”

The slide in popularity, first noticed in the 2009 elections, appears to be worsening despite studies showing that Indonesians are becoming more pious.

Why political Islam has not taken deep root on a national level in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country — where about 90 percent of people are among the faithful — is a complicated question. The reasons lie in Indonesia’s history as a secular nation and in the Islamic parties’ own recent record.

COMMENT:  We also saw, last weekend, a very successful election in Afghanistan, showing that democratic gains have been made there, on our watch.  Sadly, President Obama is withdrawing from Afghanistan this year, and those gains might be lost.  Not that he cares.

And the Muslim Brotherhood was overthrown in Egypt.  Against Obama's will.

Many Muslims may finally be learning the cost of being kept in the tenth century.  But as they are, they are getting precious little help from the likes of Barack Obama and other "sophisticates" and "multiculturalists" in the West, whose interest in human freedom is marginal at best.

April 8, 2014       Permalink

MADNESS – AT 9:14 A.M. ET:  The Obama administration continues its march of appeasement, which will get worse after the November midterms, when Obama's political obligations to his party end.  From the great Michael Ledeen at PJ Media: 

Somebody on Twitter posted an upbeat message saying the US delegation to the latest round of talks with Iranian officials was quite optimistic. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a born optimist and I love optimism, but I’d rather revel in victory than hope for good news, and the Iranians have every reason to revel. The Obama crowd has just ok’d something the Tehran tyrants have desperately wanted since the eighties: spare parts for their long-grounded American passenger aircraft. Boeing and General Electric were given export licenses by the Treasury Department and everyone involved has been chanting “we take aircraft security very seriously,” in order to cloak this latest gift to the Khamenei-Rouhani regime in humanitarian hues.

Frankly I’d rather they took national security very seriously. Iran uses its commercial aircraft for military purposes (one of the reasons that eery flight between Tehran and Caracas is so worrisome), and the mullahs have been limited by the degradation of the national fleet. The Boeing planes and GE engines date to the 1970s, and very few of them are in service. Back in the mid-eighties, when I spent quite a bit of time with Iranian officials, they repeatedly asked for spare parts, both for the passenger planes and for the aging military craft, the F4s and F5s. Secretary of Defense Weinberger of course vetoed any such discussions, and the embargo has held until just now.

Now we’re arming Iran.

COMMENT:  Why shouldn't we arm Iran?  After all, didn't we sell scrap iron to Japan before World War II, and see it come back to us in the form of shells?

History doesn't repeat itself.  It's the psychology of history that repeats itself.  And the psychology of appeasement is all the rage in "progressive" circles right now.  The appeasers, to cite Churchill's observation, are feeding the alligator in the hope that they'll be eaten last.

April 8, 2014       Permalink 

UKRAINE – AT 8:58 A.M. ET:  Let us not forget this critical crisis.  From The Hill:

The White House accused Moscow on Monday of stirring up trouble in Ukraine, as pro-Russian demonstrations provoked fears that President Vladimir Putin might mount a second invasion there just weeks after annexing Crimea.

The administration said demonstrators who seized government buildings in the cities of Lugansk and Donetsk were not locals, and were part of a carefully orchestrated campaign backed by the Kremlin.

State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said the demonstrations were “not a spontaneous set of events,” and White House spokesman Jay Carney said evidence suggested some protestors were paid.

A further Russian incursion “either overtly or covertly” would seriously escalate the crisis, he added.

“We call on President Putin and his government to cease all efforts to destabilize Ukraine, and we caution against further military intervention,” said Carney, who warned that the U.S. would retaliate by targeting specific sectors of the Russian economy.

Secretary of State John Kerry called on Russia to “publicly disavow” the activity by separatists in Ukraine.

COMMENT:  Come on, it's over.  No one takes the Obama administration seriously.  There are increasing "pro-Russian" activities in Eastern Ukraine.  It's a chilling reminder of events in the late 1930s, when Germany demanded that those of German origin in nearby countries be "protected."  It's the international protection racket.  Germany moved in to do the "protecting."

Expect things to get worse.  Russia paid no penalty for annexing Crimea.  Why should they fear?

April 8,  2014     Permalink