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AUGUST 14,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:36 P.M. ET: 

GREGORY OUT AT "MEET THE PRESS" – NBC has dropped David Gregory as host of "Meet the Press," the longest-running program in American broadcasting.  Chuck Todd will replace Gregory, who will leave the network.  I never thought Gregory had the depth to anchor the venerable show, but that's hardly unusual in today's TV journalism.  I have DVD's of "Meet the Press" from the early 60s, and the difference between then and now is stark.  There was a seriousness back then, a formality, and a courtesy.  The questions were sharp, and guests were expected to deliver real answers, even if they had to take more than five seconds to do so.  Lawrence Spivak ran the show, and ran it well.  It ain't the same today.

RUNNING MATE – Hillary, clearing eyeing a presidential run, is looking around for campaign company.  From WaPo:  "As she expands her political network in advance of an expected presidential run, Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband have been cultivating an important ally who some believe could become her vice presidential running mate.  Former president Bill Clinton invited Julian Castro, a former San Antonio mayor and incoming Obama Cabinet secretary, to the Clintons’ home in Washington last week for a private dinner that friends described as a chance for Democratic leaders from different generations to become better acquainted.  Castro, 39, who is scheduled to be sworn in Monday as secretary of housing and urban development, traveled to New York in July to join Hillary Clinton, as well as Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, at a children’s song and dance performance for the Bronx Children’s Museum’s youth arts program."  Interesting possibility, but I think the GOP is on to the identity politics game.  I'd imagine the V.P. choice on the Republican ticket will also be a minority. 

ABSURDITY – There's all kinds of reporting going around about a new "crisis" in American-Israeli elections, apparently as a result of the intense dislike between Obama and Netanyahu.  The State Department confirmed that the U.S. is reviewing some military aid to Israel, following the Gaza war.  Real smart on our part.  This comes a few days after Russia agreed to provide military aid to Egypt, which used to get its arms from the U.S.  Obama froze those arms because the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt was overthrown.  Odd.  The Muslim Brotherhood is anti-American, but Obama never cut off arms to them.  So, we have Egypt moving toward Russia and master strategist Obama reviewing aid to another American ally, Israel, our only stable ally in the region.  Israel is involved in a delicate negotiation to bring peace to Gaza, and this just undercuts the Israelis and strengthens Hamas, a terrorist group.  This is what passes for foreign policy in the profoundly left-wing Obama administration.

DANCING WITH THE STARS – Frankly, it was embarrassing – seeing pictures of Barack Obama, successor to Fred Astaire, dancing it up at a posh birthday party in Martha's Vineyard last night while there was rioting in Ferguson, Missouri, and American forces were carrying out a dangerous rescue mission in Iraq.  You'd think he'd have the style to return to the White House.  You just get the feeling he has a contempt for the traditions of his office, and for his country generally.  He parties on.

August 14, 2014       Permalink

THIS IS NUTS – AT 10:47 A.M. ET:  As readers know, there is racial tension and violence in Ferguson, Missouri, after the shooting death of an unarmed black teen by a local police officer.

The shooting does raise very legitimate questions, and a thorough, impartial investigation is called for.  I'm very pro-police, but I'm not blind to police misconduct.  That's why police departments have internal affairs divisions. 

But, as expected, the incident has drawn not only legitimate protestors but the usual suspects – the looters, the TV-addicted "leaders," the bomb throwers.  They will only diminish the cause of justice, not enhance it.  The NAACP, once relevant, has stepped in, and gone crazy.  From Breitbart: 

U.S. civil rights advocates aired their concerns about the recent Michael Brown shooting to the United Nations in Geneva, according to a press call from the organizations on Wednesday.

“This issue was front and center,” Hilary O. Shelton, director of the NAACP Washington Bureau, explained during the call.

If you want support from the American people, you don't go to an international, anti-American organization in Switzerland.  This is real amateurism.

According to Shelton, Trayvon Martin’s mother Sybrina Fulton and Jordan Davis’s father Ron Davis told their stories about losing their teenage children in shootings in each of the pre-briefings of the process.

“I think that everyone was outraged and horrified to hear that, yet again, it had happened in St. Louis, Missouri,” he said.

The group of activists presented to a U.N. panel in Geneva, Switzerland, documenting their concerns of U.S. compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) treaty.

Shelton also pointed out that U.N. delegates at the hearing made a point of asking the U.S. delegation about African-Americans being “disportionately targeted” by law enforcement.

COMMENT:  We have a black president, we have a black attorney-general, we have a news media that is sensitive to racial issues.  We don't need the UN.  The NAACP, which did some fine work years ago, should be ashamed to let this shooting incident descend into international stunts.

August 14, 2014       Permalink

RAND NOT GRAND – AT 9:52 A.M. ET:  We haven't even gotten through the 2014 midterms, but the race is already on for 2016.  Rand Paul of Kentucky is making all the moves of a presidential candidate.  Frankly, I don't think he'll have much of a chance at the GOP nomination, once his foreign-policy views are better known.  I mean, he'd be running to the left of Hillary!  And Paul has the burden of his father, Ron Paul, who can't keep his mouth shut and keeps embarrassing his son. 

Indeed, some pundits have asked why Ron Paul keeps hurting his son's prospects with whacky comments.  The son, at least, has tried to distance himself from his father's eccentricities.

But Rand has his own set of problems.  Among them is a tin ear.  There are things you just don't do.  From The Politico: 

Sen. Rand Paul irked some Iowans this week after bowing out of a GOP cattle call there and jetting to New York instead to spend time in the Hamptons, including with potential donors.

The Kentucky Republican, a possible 2016 presidential contender, was photographed at a Saturday evening fundraiser for an East Hampton library, an event thrown by liberal actor Alec Baldwin.

The New York Post ran an item about the gathering, prompting a story in The Des Moines Register that raised questions about how Paul was spending his time, especially after he told organizers of the Family Leadership Summit he couldn’t attend because of a family commitment.

The summit is a cattle call for potential GOP presidential hopefuls, and Paul was a co-sponsor. The Register quoted social conservative Bob Vander Plaats questioning Paul’s choice of locations, as other potential 2016 Republican candidates put in face time at the conservative confab.

COMMENT:  I'd imagine this was calculated on Paul's part.  He's been trying to show that he has broad appeal.  That's fine, but he was to sharpen his instincts.  The Hamptons say "rich liberals," and that ain't the message Paul should be sending.

He should have stayed in Iowa. 

Personally, I think the big presidential news of the last weeks has been the rise of Mitt Romney.  It started when a poll showed that Romney would defeat Obama if the election were held today.  Trouble is, it isn't being held today – it was already held – and Obama isn't running in 2016.  I think Romney should run, just to test the waters, and to give the party a potential candidate who already has presidential stature.  But polls show he would lose to Hillary, and that will temper the new enthusiasm for him, if there's anything to it at all. 

August 14, 2014       Permalink

THUMBS DOWN ON OBAMA – AT 8:58 A.M. ET:  The American people seem to know that the world is exploding all over (see post below), but they don't like the way the vacationer-in-chief is handling the situation.  From Fox:   

Voters are generally dissatisfied with how President Obama is handling the world’s hot spots -- most give him a thumbs-down for the job he is doing on Iraq, Israel and Ukraine. At the same time, they approve of U.S. airstrikes he’s ordered against ISIS militants in Iraq.

That’s according to a new Fox News national poll released Wednesday.

Amid new cold war anxieties, most voters say Obama hasn’t been tough enough on Russia, and that Vladimir Putin doesn’t take Obama seriously.

A 74-percent majority thinks Obama hasn’t been tough enough on Russia, up from 66 percent in March. Six percent say Obama has been too tough, 10 percent volunteer “about right” and 11 percent have no opinion. Sizable majorities of Democrats (65 percent), independents (69 percent) and Republicans (88 percent) agree Obama should be tougher on Russia.

The Democratic number is particularly fascinating.  It may show that the troopers of the hard left don't have quite the clout in the Democratic Party that they claim.

Just 16 percent of voters think Putin takes Obama seriously, while 77 percent think he doesn’t. That jumps to 87 percent among those who think Obama hasn’t been tough enough on Russia.

Some 64 percent of Democrats say the Russian president doesn’t take Obama seriously.

Overall, 64 percent think it is likely there will be a new cold war with Russia. That’s up from 54 percent who felt that way in August 2008, during the conflict between Russia and the Republic of Georgia. Democrats (+6 points), independents (+12) and Republicans (+15) are all more inclined to expect another cold war now than they were six years ago.

Thirty-one percent of voters approve of how Obama is handling the situation in Ukraine, while 50 percent disapprove. Approval among Democrats (52 percent) is far outweighed by disapproval among Republicans (70 percent).

The president’s ratings are similar on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: 30 percent approve, while 54 percent disapprove.

And...

All in all, more voters continue to disapprove (53 percent) than approve (35 percent) of Obama’s handling of foreign policy.

COMMENT:  This is speculation, but maybe Hillary Clinton had some inkling of these numbers from earlier polls when she gave her interview last week chiding her former boss for his foreign policy.  Just wonderin'.

August 14, 2014       Permalink

PHILOSOPHICAL WISDOM NEWS – AT 8:41 A.M. ET:  The secretary of defense, an obscure gent named Chuck Hagel, has given us a profound strategic assessment of the state of civilization.  I, frankly, feel privileged to have a man of such learning in such an important position.  Thank you, Field Marshal Obama, for having the courage to appoint such an intellect.  From The Weekly Standard: 

Fresh off a trip to India and Australia, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel addressed a group of Marines in San Diego, California Tuesday, and may have delivered a line that will show up in Republican campaign ads this election cycle. After updating the troops on some issues in the Pacific region and the Middle East, Hagel took questions from some of the Marines and gave a stark assessment of the global security situation: "The world is exploding all over." The remark came in response to a question about the Obama administration's realignment of the military towards the Asia-Pacific theater:

Q: Good afternoon, sir. My question is that, given that the administration's primary focus is on the Pacific theater, how has all of the issues popping up in the world today, Russia, Iraq, Africa, the rest of the theaters pretty much affected that current mission? And how do you foresee that affecting the mission in the future?

SEC. HAGEL: Thank you. That's a -- go ahead, sit down -- that's a question I got often when I was in India and Australia. And the trip I just came from was my sixth trip to the Asia Pacific area in the last year-and-a-half. I've got four planned this calendar year. And so I get that question all the time. It's a legitimate question for the very reasons you asked.

The world is exploding all over. And so is the United States going to continue to have the resources, the capabilities, the leadership, the bandwidth to continue with the rebalance toward the Asia Pacific? And the answer is yes.

COMMENT:  Yup, the world is exploding all over, and our secretary of defense is there to take care of things.  In his wisdom, he is gutting our military, firing commissioned officers, cutting procurement, and doing all the things necessary to contain the explosions, which are occurring, as he profoundly states, all over. 

This just in:  The Pentagon has just announced that June is busting out all over.

August 14,  2014     Permalink

AUGUST 13,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:21 P.M. ET: 

A LITTLE MESSAGE FROM FRANCE – From London's Daily Mail:  "French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has a message about Iraq for Barack Obama: Get back to the White House and do something.  'I know it is the holiday period in our Western countries,' Fabius told a radio interviewer Tuesday in France, 'but when people are dying, you must come back from vacation.'"  The notion of a French foreign minister speaking that way to the president of the United States tells us just how low Obama's standing has slipped.

THE UPSTAGER – Hillary did a book signing on Martha's Vineyard, where a certain B. Omama is also frolicking.  From the Martha's Vineyard Times:  "'We love you,' 'Please run, we need you,' 'I’m such a fan of yours,' and variations of the same were heard again and again from people who had waited in line, some for four hours, to purchase a book and spend precious seconds with the former first lady and rumored presidential candidate.  Ms. Clinton’s appearance on the Island stole some of the media attention from her former boss, President Obama, who was staying dry in his Chilmark vacation home. About 30 members of the press attended the event. The Obamas, Ms. Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, were scheduled to attend a birthday party for Ann Jordan, wife of Washington insider Vernon Jordan, Wednesday night."  I would have loved to be at that party just to see Obama greet Hillary and tell her to start serving.

RARE GOOD NEWS – It appears that the rescue operation for those minority-group Iraqis stuck on a mountain is going well, and that it will be unnecessary for us to mount a larger rescue effort.  That's the good news.  The bad news, noted by a number of commentators, is that this is a tiny victory compared to the challenge of ISIS in Iraq and Syria.  The barbarians are truly at the gate, and the administration appears not to have a plan to deal with their growing power.  Maybe when the vacation is over...

MR. POPULARITY – From pix11.com:  "A New Jersey man has raised a flag that is causing concern among his neighbors.  The man recently hung what some neighbors called an ISIS flag outside his home in Garwood. When a picture was posted onto Twitter, neighbors on Winslow Place called the police.  The flag, which is used by an Islamic extremist group responsible for violence in Iraq, has since been removed from display. Even so, neighbors still wonder why the flag was there to begin with.  PIX11 has confirmed the flag was on display at the home for at least three weeks.  The man told NJ.com that he has flown the flag outside his home during Ramadan and on Fridays for about 10 years. It has never been a problem, he said, until a photo of it was posted on Twitter on Tuesday."  Watch.  Multiculturalists from local universities will visit this guy to express intellectual solidarity. 

August 13, 2014       Permalink

AND THE LIBERAL HYPOCRISY FLOWS – AT 9:47 A.M. ET:   It's hard to believe that Chicago politics can get any rougher or more bizarre.  But leave it to a local liberal icon, who shakes her fist at the rich and well-born, to be exposed as a total phony.  From the Chicago Sun-Times: 

Karen Lewis, the Chicago Teachers Union president now considering whether to run for mayor, has frequently railed against the influence of the wealthy.

“Why do people of wealth and privilege try to convince the world they have neither?” she said on Twitter last year. “Be honest that you don’t have a clue about poverty.”

She has ripped Mayor Rahm Emanuel as a tool of corporate Chicago, labeled him “Mayor 1%” and described herself as “not egotistical or rich.”

Lewis isn’t as wealthy as Emanuel, a multimillionaire who made his fortune during a short stint as an investment banker. But she makes more than $200,000 a year and has an ownership interest in three homes, records show.

That includes vacation homes in Hawaii and in the upscale “Harbor Country” area of southwestern Michigan, where Emanuel has a second home, property records show.

Lewis, 61, has said she has launched an informal exploratory committee in anticipation of a possible mayoral run in February’s election, when Emanuel will be seeking a second term. Last week, Lewis put the odds at “50-50” she will run.

A recent poll done for Early & Often, the Chicago Sun-Times politics portal, gave Lewis a 9-percentage-point lead over Emanuel in a hypothetical mayoral matchup.

In the wake of the 2012 teachers’ strike and a record number of school closings last year, a Lewis campaign for mayor appears poised to key on growing income disparity in Chicago. The teachers union leader already has called for raising taxes on the richest to fund education.

The mayor makes $216,200 a year.

That’s about $15,000 more than Lewis made from her two union salaries, according to the most recent union tax filings.

COMMENT:  I love it.  She makes two hundred grand a year, has interests in three houses, and rails against the one percent. 

And her constituents will buy it.  They always do.

August 13,  2014     Permalink

WHY CAN'T THEY JUST ALL GET ALONG? – AT 9:18 A.M. ET:  It's just so upsetting, this dispute between two people of such high character and integrity – Barack "hope and change" Obama and Hillary "I'm rich, deal with it" Clinton.  The Politico gives us the latest suds in the soap opera:

A split between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama was inevitable. Now that they’ve made peace, keeping it will be the challenge.

The Obama and Clinton camps tried to mend their differences Tuesday, but certain dynamics won’t be as easy to overcome in the months ahead as Clinton mulls a White House bid: Some advisers around both politicians have a hard time letting bygones be bygones. The press is determined to continue to dissect the relationship. And Obama and Clinton have genuinely different interests and instincts on some big questions facing the country.

The tiff began when, in an interview with The Atlantic, Clinton dissed the president’s foreign policy philosophy and called his early approach to Syria a “failure.”

White House aides then groused anonymously to The New York Times that Clinton was far more muted on areas of disagreement when she was actually serving in Obama’s Cabinet. And hours later, longtime Obama adviser David Axelrod escalated the situation, swiping at Clinton on Twitter for her Iraq war vote years ago.

By Tuesday afternoon, Clinton had called Obama as part of a very public attempt to kill the ugly headlines.

Obama aides and some Clinton allies downplayed the 72-hour episode with dismissive complaints about a voracious media that have been looking for fissures between the two camps since the 2008 Democratic primary, and both sides made it clear they wanted to move on.

“To me, this story is a classic August self-licking ice cream cone,” said Tommy Vietor, a former Obama aide who assisted Clinton with the rollout of her recent memoir, “Hard Choices.”

But the maneuvering nonetheless demonstrated how the Obama-Clinton alliance, long viewed as mutually beneficial, will be tested repeatedly.

COMMENT:  No, it's not a self-licking ice-cream cone.  Everyone knows that the Clintons are bitter at the Obamas over the way the latter wrecked Hillary in 2008, even suggesting that Bill Clinton had racist tendencies.  And everone knows that Obama appointed Clinton as secretary of state in accordance with the old wisdom of organized crime – "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer."  He wanted her under his control.  Everyone also knows that Hillary is more hawkish than Obama, although that's not so hard to be.  The bar is so low.

Both Obama and Hillary are petty.  Obama's godlike status is much diminished.  Hillary has gone for the cash and the glory. 

Hillary has the harder job here – to distance herself from an unpopular president while keeping his base loyal to her.  It was pointed out at Fox this morning that Vice President Hubert Humphrey tried that while running for president in 1968, when he tried to distance himself from Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam policy, while keeping the Johnson voters.  He failed.  Neither the anti-war crowd nor the Johnson crowd wound up trusting him, and many stayed home on election day.  Nixon won.

August 13, 2014       Permalink

MORE TROUBLE IN IRAQ – AT 8:41 A.M. ET:   There's an old saying in military science that all war plans become obsolete on first contact with the enemy.  The reason, of course, is that the enemy has a brain.  When he sees what his opponent is doing, he tries to adjust.  It is now happening in Iraq.  From Fox: 

Islamic militant forces in northern Iraq appear to be shifting tactics in the face of the newly launched U.S. airstrike campaign, Defense officials say, posing a new challenge to the Obama administration as it seeks to at least slow the terrorists’ advances.

According to officials, until now the Islamic State (IS) was behaving like a well-organized army, moving with strategic intent and pursuing military objectives. Now, officials are seeing at least a partial shift to classic insurgency tactics, as militants begin to blend in among the population, making targeting more difficult.

“One of the things that we have seen with the [IS] forces is that where they have been in the open, they are now starting to dissipate and to hide amongst the people,” Lt. Gen. William Mayville Jr., director for operations with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said. “The targeting in this is going to become more difficult.”

The comments, on one hand, demonstrate how effective airstrikes can be. One of the reasons the militants marched so quickly across Iraq is that the Iraqi Air Force didn't really exist.

On the other hand, in order for the airstrikes to be effective at this stage, U.S. ground forces would be needed to permanently push the group formerly known as ISIS back -- something that has been ruled out by Obama administration officials.

Mayville, as well as President Obama, described the operation Monday as limited in scope.

Mayville, while saying the strikes have “slowed” the group’s “operational tempo and temporarily disrupted their advances towards the province of Irbil,” also appeared to voice skepticism about how much impact they could have.

“The strikes are unlikely to affect its overall capabilities or its operations in other areas of Iraq and Syria,” he said. Mayville described the impact as “very temporary,” and predicted the forces would “look for other things to do, to pick up and move elsewhere.”

COMMENT:  I wonder if Obama has ever thought about that.  But, of course, there are so many other things to think about at Martha's Vineyard.  I mean, that golf course is mean.  And there are so many selections in the restaurants.  What's a president to do?

To think, we have two and a half more years of this.

August 13, 2014       Permalink

OBAMA'S MADNESS – AT 8:21 A.M. ET:  Egypt is the most important country in the Arab world, the seat of Arab civilization.  It has, for years, been an ally of the United States and, despite some internal exceptions, one of the moderate Arab nations.

But Barack Obama doesn't like Egypt anymore, and he has wrecked the military aid program we had with that country.  You see, the current government of Egypt ousted the Muslim Brotherhood from power in Egypt.  The Muslim Brotherhood is an virulently anti-American, anti-Israel movement despised by Arab moderates...but not despised by Barack Obama.

So who are the Egyptians now turning to for aid?  Russia.  Another foreign-policy triumph for Obama.  From the Washington Free Beacon: 

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has asked Russia to supply Egypt with high-tech fighter jets, attack helicopters, and anti-tank missile systems, according to regional reports.

Sisi made the request in Moscow Tuesday during a meeting with his counterpart, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who met with the Egyptian leader to discuss expanding arms exports.

The request for these advanced weapons comes just months after the Saudi Arabian government donated $2 billion to Egypt to finance the purchase of Russian-made weapons.

Sisi’s reliance on Moscow for these arms is another sign that the Egyptian government is growing more distant from Washington, which, under the Obama administration, has slashed aid to Cairo and cut back on key weapons shipments that help the country combat terrorism.

Sisi is likely seeking to cement a weapons gap left by the United States’s abrupt refusal to fulfill its arms deals with Cairo following the ousting of former Muslim Brotherhood-backed President Mohamed Morsi.

During the powwow with Putin, Sisi reportedly asked for top-line equipment, including MiG29 fighter jets, Kornet anti-tank missile system, Kamoc Ka-25 attack helicopters, Mil Mi-28 attack helicopters, and various transport helicopters, according to an Arabic report on the meeting published by Youm7.

While the State Department did not respond to requests for comment on the meeting, regional experts told the Free Beacon that the weapons request is no surprise given the Obama administration’s efforts to distance itself from Cairo.

“Putting aside how disconcerting it is that Saudi Arabia—which is so angry with Putin’s support to Assad—is earmarking funding for Russian weapons, a potential deal comes as little surprise,” David Schenker, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Program on Arab Politics, told the Free Beacon.

COMMENT:  Obama's recklessness, his pro-Muslim attitudes, his hard leftism, are costing this country.  The foreign-policy defeats we're suffering today may result in the drafting of a boy in Des Moines five years from now.  But not too many people seem to care.

There is also some reporting out of Israel claiming that the Palestinians will soon ask that Egypt be ousted as mediator between Israel and Palestinian groups.  Apparently Egypt is not sufficiently pro-Hamas.  What would the U.S. do in response to such a Pal demand?  I'll bet Obama supports it. 

August 13,  2014     Permalink