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APRIL 12,  2015

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

SHE HAS COME TO SAVE US – Following Emperor Obama we now have Queen Hillary, who has interrupted her busy schedule of $200,000 a pop speeches to condescend to run for office.  She launched her campaign today.  Notice the difference?  Why, peace has come to the Earth, the oceans have receded, humankind is soaring, and...and...  Wait, that was Obama.  Hillary?  Well, she brought a slickly produced first campaign ad showing the ordinary peasantry at work, and assuring us that she is there for them.  Never mind that Bill has made an estimated $100-million since leaving the White House.  At heart, Hillary is just a super-competent grandma who understands how to plant a flower garden at call a baby sitter.  It reminded me of the song from Camelot, "What Do the Simple Folk Do?"  I wasn't very impressed.  It was high-gloss pandering, with no sense of us being part of a great nation.

I LOVE IT!  THEY'RE ATTACKING EACH OTHER ALREADY – It didn't take long after Hillary's announcement for the knives to come out.  The first blade was directed at her former campaign manager, now the mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio.  The charge:  Insufficient loyalty.  From Weekly Standard:  "Earlier today, Hillary Clinton's former campaign manager, Bill de Blasio, passed up an opportunity to endorse his former boss. De Blasio, the mayor of New York City, told NBC's Chuck Todd he'd wait to see 'an actual vision' from Clinton before offering his support.  But that appears to have upset a leader of the pro-Clinton super PAC Ready for Hillary.  Hilary Rosen, who is on the super PAC's finance council, took to Twitter to voice her displeasure.  '@BilldeBlasio's self aggrandizing on #MeetthePress at @hillaryclintons expense won't go un noticed. #Ridiculous,' tweeted Rosen, a Democratic strategist."  Yeah, a real hot strategist.  Attacking the mayor of the country's largest city because he's delaying his endorsement may well reflect the real personality of Clinton's campaign.  I'm not surprised.

ADVICE FROM THE CUBAN REGIME – From ABC News:  "Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told ABC news in an exclusive interview hours after the famous handshake between Raul Castro and Barack Obama that the U.S. president should use executive action to remove parts of the embargo immediately.  'The U.S. president keeps very broad basis, very wide executive powers, for use in with a real determination and the president could make the difference in the practical implementation of the blockade,' he said. 'And there is a practical indication to engage to the congress in a debate on these matters.'"  Thanks for the advice.  But I do think we can make these decisions by ourselves.  When Bibi spoke before Congress, the Obamans accused him of interfering in the internal affairs of the United States.  I wonder if the same charge will now be made against the Cuban foreign minister.  Don't hold your breath.  We know where Obama's sympathies lie.

April 12,  2015     Permalink

PATHETIC – AT 12:31 P.M. ET:  President Obama regularly reminds us of why he's often called "the amateur."  It's because he is.  From Reuters: 

(Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama expressed optimism on Saturday that major world powers and Iran could finalize a deal to curb Iran's nuclear program despite strong words this week from the country's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Obama downplayed Khamenei's demands that a final deal result in an end to all sanctions on Iran, telling reporters at the Americas summit in Panama that Khamenei and others in Iran were addressing their own internal politics.

"Even a guy with the title 'Supreme Leader' has to be concerned about his own constituencies," Obama said.

The Supreme Leader executes his opponents.  He doesn't worry about them.

"There may be ways of structuring a final deal that satisfy their pride, their optics, their politics, but meet our core practical objectives," Obama said at the news conference.

That is impossible by definition.  Doesn't this student-government president understand that?

Iran and world powers reached a framework nuclear agreement on April 2 that would require Iran to shut down parts of its nuclear program that could be used to build a bomb, and accept intrusive inspections, in exchange for the West lifting economic sanctions.

Negotiators need to finalize technical details by June 30.

"What I've always said, though, is that there's the possibility of backsliding," Obama said, noting the final deal would require tough talks and may not result in a deal that he would sign.

COMMENT:  The problem is that we've already made so many concessions that the deal, even whitewashed, is less than the very minimum that Obama set for it only a few years ago.

We also now learn that Iran's ballistic-missile program is off the table.  They won't discuss it.  It will be taken up by the UN, which means it won't be taken up seriously at all.  But why?  The only purpose for ballistic missiles is carrying nuclear warheads.  If Iran weren't intent on developing nuclear weapons, why would they need ICBM's?  Why won't they even discuss them?

Obama's amateurism, combined with his chronic deceit, is a very dangerous brew for this country and for civilization.  This is what happens when you put a kid in the White House.

April 12,  2015     Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 11:14 A.M. ET:  I don't usually quote Maureen Dowd, of The New York Times, but occasionally she nails it.  She does so today, with her column on Hillary Clinton's entry into the 2016 presidential sweeps.  You can just feel the knife going into Clinton's back. 

As the old maxim goes, if you can fake humility, you’ve got it made. But seeing Rahm and Hillary do it in the same season might be too much to take.

President Obama has said: “If she’s her wonderful self, I’m sure she’s going to do great.” But which self is that?

Instead of a chilly, scripted, entitled policy wonk, as in 2008, Hillary plans to be a warm, spontaneous, scrappy fighter for average Americans. Instead of a woman campaigning like a man, as in 2008, she will try to stir crowds with the idea of being the first woman president. Instead of haughtily blowing off the press, as in 2008, she will make an effort to play nice.

It’s a do-or-die remodeling, like when you put a new stainless steel kitchen in a house that doesn’t sell.

In 1992, Clinton strategists wrote a memo aiming to recast Hillary in a skeptical public’s mind as a warm, loving mother. They even suggested an event where Bill and Chelsea would surprise Hillary on Mother’s Day.

Now, after 25 years on the national stage, Hillary is still hitting the reset button on her image, this time projecting herself as a warm, loving grandmother.

COMMENT:  And that is the point.  After eight years of a president we really can't claim we know, a president who abruptly changed his policies after the 2014 elections, do we really want another fraud in the White House?

Do we really want another "first," regardless of quality or integrity?

Are we really ready for Hillary?

I hope we aren't.  The country is in trouble, and we need character in the White House, someone we can trust.  Many people who voted for Ronald Reagan didn't agree with him on some issues, but they trusted him.  He'd shown he was a man of principle, not someone who changed with the tides.  He never "reinvented" himself.  There was never a need for a "new Reagan."  The fact that there's a need for a "new Hillary" should disqualify her from an office that has been abused since 2009, and must now be restored.

April 12, 2015       Permalink

SHE DIDN'T NEED THIS – AT 8:46 A.M. ET:  As we breathlessly anticipate Hillary's announcement today that she will run for Queen, it is clear that there are forces out to hurt her.  From Fox: 

PANAMA CITY – President Barack Obama says he thinks Hillary Rodham Clinton would be "an excellent president."

Clinton is expected to launch her long-anticipated second run for president on Sunday with an online video.

Obama says Clinton was a formidable candidate against him when they competed for the Democratic nomination in 2008.

He says she became a great supporter of his in the general election that year, and that she was an outstanding secretary of state during his first term.

Says Obama: "I think she would be an excellent president."

He adds that Clinton will have strong messages to deliver if she does decide to run.

COMMENT:  It's like the embrace of the Mafia.  What Obama was really saying to Hillary with that "endorsement" was, "You'll support all my policies and give me public love...or else." 

Obama's comments came after a rash of stories yesterday reporting that the Clinton team is deciding how close to Obama Clinton needs to be.  Now he's telling her bluntly.  He's an unpopular president, but she needs his support to avoid trouble from the left wing of the Democratic Party, which is loud, rude, and obnoxious.

April 12,  2015     Permalink

APRIL 11,  2015

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 8:09 P.M. ET: 

VULGAR – I watched CNN's vulgar coverage today of the meeting between President Obama and Cuba's President Castro, or Castro II, or whatever they call him.  CNN went into full-fawning mode, with anchor Poppy Harlow (I love that Disneyesque name) practically throwing kisses to our heroic president, who announced that all presidents before him had failed in their Cuba policy, so he was going to change it.  Look, how can you argue with a self-appointed god.  Then there was CNN's Rosa Flores, who was beside herself announcing how much Obama is loved in Cuba.  Flores also lamented that there were "still" Cubans who complained of being oppressed.  Silly people.  Who needs free elections, freedom of speech, freedom of the press?  Why can't these traitors appreciate what they're given?  It would have been nice had someone at CNN pointed out that Barack Obama is an elected president who will leave office a year from January, with no troops required in the streets.  Raul Castro is a dictator, appointed by his brother, the senior dictator.  I guess this democracy thing just isn't trendy.

INTERESTING POLL ON CUBA – From the Panama Post:  "A survey by InterAmerican Security Watch (ISW) challenges the notion that normalization with Cuba will enjoy popular support. ISW acknowledges that right now a slim majority of US citizens agree with President Barack Obama’s move to restore diplomatic ties. Their findings, however, suggest that support evaporates as the same individuals learn of the Castro regime’s foreign-policy record and human-rights violations.  ISW, a policy institute that monitors regional security issues, questioned 700 likely US voters by phone from March 16 to 23, including an 'oversample' of 300 Cuban Americans. On March 24 they then published a 51-versus-38 percent tilt in favor of normalization with Havana. However, when respondents were presented with evidence of negotiations between Cuba and terrorist groups, and alliances with Russia and North Korea, levels of approval flipped, to considerable margins of 30-40 percent.  Surveyors emphasized the shipment of 240 tons of weaponry that the regime of Raúl Castro attempted to send to North Korea in 2013. After hearing of this, for example, 64 percent of respondents preferred to maintain sanctions on Cuba until there is progress towards free and multi-party elections, the release of political prisoners, and respect for human rights."  We're cautious about any single poll, but Americans are being told very little about Cuba's current abuse of human rights.  The press has, shock, fallen down on the job.

WHY? – From Fox:  "NEW YORK – A New York City woman is accused of marrying 10 times over an 11-year period without ever getting a divorce.  Liana Barrientos is charged with filing a fake instrument.
The Bronx district attorney's office says she faces two counts of felony fraud charges at her arraignment Friday.  According to a criminal complaint, the 39-year-old woman allegedly obtained two of the marriage licenses in the Bronx. It says the others were obtained in Westchester County and Long Island. The first one allegedly was obtained in 1999.  The complaint says she was arrested following a probe of her most recent marriage in 2010.  It wasn't immediately clear if she had a lawyer."  What happened to the husbands?  Inquiring minds want to know. 

April 11, 2015        Permalink

THE COUNTDOWN – AT 12:08 P.M. ET:  Can you stand the tension, just waiting for Hillary to make her announcement tomorrow?  It will be so wonderful having a fresh face that's only been around for 25 years. 

Oh wait.  I didn't notice.  There's no coronation on the national schedule.  From The Politico: 

House Republicans investigating the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi and Hillary Clinton’s email practices as secretary of state said in interviews that her official entry into the presidential race won’t have any bearing on their probes.

But the political stakes of the Clinton congressional investigations are about to skyrocket. Both parties will be watching the committee’s work intently for ammo to use against Clinton or to call foul on the GOP for attempting to smear a presidential contender.

“Secretary Clinton’s decision to seek the presidency of the United States does not and will not impact the work of the committee,” said Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi. “The Committee needs to and expects to talk with Secretary Clinton twice, as ensuring the committee has all relevant material is a condition precedent to asking specifically about Libya and Benghazi.”

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) said the committee is prepared to take criticism from Clinton allies once her campaign launches but won’t be deterred from fully probing the attacks just because she is running for president.

“I don’t think anybody is going to stop her and her camp from saying anything we do is … political. She’ll use this in her campaign,” Westmorelnd said. “It’s not political. We would have had her in a long time ago if we had her emails. This is something she has brought on herself and the State Department brought on.”

But Democrats would like nothing more than an ongoing spectacle of congressional Republicans looking like they’re tripping over themselves to go after Clinton. Avoiding such an atmosphere amid the heightened attention will be a major political challenge for Gowdy, a former U.S. attorney tapped to head the Benghazi panel and the initial investigation into Clinton’s email use.

COMMENT:  I have confidence that Gowdy can pull it off.  The press will, of course, side with Hillary, portraying her as a helpless victim and grandmother.  And, of course, following the regimen of 2008, every attack on Hillary will be called "sexist."  That's the way the 1960s game is played, and Hillary is still stuck in the 1960s.

The important thing for Republicans is to stand firm, not to make the mistake John McCain made in 2008, when he was far too deferential to Barack Obama, apparently fearing that he'd be called a "racist" if he wasn't.

Hillary may also get some real competition from within the Democratic Party, which would help the Republicans make their case.

I think we might well have the most interesting presidential race since the Reagan election of 1980.

April 11, 2015       Permalink

BLUNTLY STATED – QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 11:21 A.M. ET:  What's with this Iran "deal"?  After years of negotiating we were told by the Obamans that a "deal" had been reached over Tehran's nuclear-weapons program.  But was it? 

Andy McCarthy, a first-class federal prosecutor and now a first-class commentator at NRO, has perhaps the most lucid view of what has just gone down:

Is it true, as the president likes to say, that we should never be afraid to negotiate? Only if we enter negotiations with a firm grasp of our bottom-line requirements. Those must be non-negotiable. We should be afraid of “negotiations” that entail abandoning bottom-line requirements. If that’s what “negotiation” means, it’s just a euphemism for selling out our national interests. They wouldn’t be national interests if they could be compromised without fearful consequences.

In the middle of their negotiations with Obama, the mullahs had one of their top military commanders announce that, as far as Iran is concerned, “erasing Israel off the map” is “nonnegotiable.” That is one of their bottom-line requirements. Obama’s job is to move them off their bottom line, not erase ours.

He isn’t even trying. Thus, the details of Obama’s negotiations with the mullahs are beside the point; the fact that we are negotiating becomes a humiliating defeat — an implicit admission that we accept Iran’s aggression. Nevertheless, if we bypass this inconvenient reality for the moment and consider Obama’s “framework,” its chicanery is manifest. In the first five minutes of law school, students are presented with a formal principle that, they quickly realize, they have understood since childhood: An agreement is a meeting of the minds. Absent a mutual understanding by both parties of what each has promised to do, you don’t have a “framework” with some “er . . . details” to be worked out. You have bupkis.

And that’s what Obama will surely end up with. Such disdain does the Iranian regime have for the United States, such contempt for our president and his desperation, that Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei won’t even allow Obama the pretense of a deal. With relish, he mocked the president’s phony “framework” this week, declaring the undeniable truth that there is no agreement, that the parties are not even close on the fundamental elements of a pact, and that the “White House fact sheet” is the product of “lying and breaching promises.”

COMMENT:   Andy McCarthy can always be counted on to strip away the nonsense and get right to the basics.  Read the entire column and send it to friends.  It's worth it.

April 11, 2015        Permalink

IGNORED – AT 11:08 A.M. ET:  It's sad, but former Governor Rick Perry of Texas is being ignored as he tries to get back into presidential politics.  True, he made a mess of his campaign the last time around, but he's learned, and, in fact, he's saying some of the most interesting and provocative things.  For example, he's blunt in noting that the gutting of our national defense hasn't been done exclusively by Democrats.  From the Washington Times: 

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry is calling out both Democrats and Republicans for what he described as depleted armed forces and an aging military infrastructure, saying the two parties have “treated our defense forces as a pawn in a budgetary game of chicken.”

Facing overseas threats, Mr. Perry wrote, the Obama administration has made “grave miscalculations,” accusing the administration of “wishful thinking instead of making sober assessments based on realities on the ground.”

“Moreover, the Obama administration and Congress have failed to prioritize military spending, and our preparedness is suffering as a result. After two grueling wars and a weak economy at home, our military is being decimated by major budget cuts,” Mr. Perry wrote in a piece for the New Hampshire Union Leader. “Because of the failed leadership of both parties — who treated our defense forces as a pawn in a budgetary game of chicken — our armed forces are depleted, our military infrastructure is aging, and our technological advantages are being severely challenged at a time when the world is increasingly dangerous.”

Mr. Perry, who is weighing another run for president in 2016, went on to write that the Republican-led Congress is making some progress on increasing defense spending, but that the defense spending in the current budget is still “insufficient.”

The House and Senate each advanced their respective budget blueprints last month that both boost money for the Pentagon through war spending so as to not break through budget sequester caps. Members return next week, when they will try to reconcile the differences ahead of an April 15 deadline.

“If I were president today, I would reframe the entire defense debate: from what do we have leftover to spend on defense to what we must spend to keep America safe,” Mr. Perry wrote. “It is time to tell the truth to the American people that both parties have gutted our defenses rather than impose spending discipline on other areas of government. It is time to get real about the fact that while our enemies are building ships, we are reducing the size of our fleet. That while fanatics are growing their armies, ours is at risk of being reduced to dangerous lows.”

COMMENT:  I don't hear other candidates speaking so directly.  Perry had a fine record in Texas as the country's longest-serving governor.  His poor showing in 2012 should be ignored, and the press should focus more on what he is saying now.  He makes sense.

April 11,  2015     Permalink