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DECEMBER 31,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET: 

We won't do "Short Takes" tonight because it's New Year's Eve.  In liberal New York I actually got an invitation to go somewhere.  Miracles happen.

We'll end 2014 by recalling three past New Year's Eves.  On December 31, 1941, Americans were still reeling from Pearl Harbor, and reading about Allied defeats, one right after the other.  Many Americans thought we were through, finished.  But little more than three and a half years later, World War II ended with complete Allied victories, and the emergence of the United States as a superpower.

On December 31, 1950, Americans were distressed and fearful again.  President Truman had courageously led a coalition of nations to resist the Soviet-sponsored invasion of South Korea.  For a time, the effort, led by General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, was spectacularly successful.  Then China intervened, pushing American troops back.  By New Year's Eve we thought we could lose the war.  But the replacement of MacArthur by Matthew Ridgway, and a new strategy, stabilized the line.  The war ended with a truce in July of 1953, and South Korea was saved as an independent nation.  Today it is a firm ally with one of the strongest economies in the world.

On December 31, 1979, Americans faced another period of despair.  We had experienced years of drift and cynicism – the counterculture of the late sixties, assassinations, riots, the Nixon scandals, the political betrayal of our effort in Vietnam, the pathetic Carter administration, a declining economy marked by stagflation, and then the taking of American hostages in Iran.  A friend of mine asked, "Can we do anything right?"  We didn't realize on that New Year's Eve that great change would come in 11 months with the election of Ronald Reagan and a new morning in America. 

It's always morning in America.  Have that thought on New Year's Day.

December 31, 2014       Permalink

A CAUTIONARY NOTE – AT 12:06 P.M. ET:  This story struck me as so typical of some of the political figures we're seeing today, although we've always had a dose of it in our history.  No politician was more heralded when she made her first political splash than Wendy Davis.

She became a feminist heroine when she stood on the floor of the Texas legislature, in sneakers, and filibustered an anti-abortion measure.  Beautiful, engaging, an up-from-poverty graduate of the Harvard Law School, she started receiving huge amounts in campaign contributions, most from eager supporters outside Texas, who saw her as the next governor, maybe president, maybe queen, maybe empress of the United States. 

But Wendy turned out to be a disappointment – poorly prepared, a bit deceptive about that up-from-poverty story, rather behind-the-times in her abortion stances, and one of the worst candidates for governor of Texas ever.  Now we find that Wendy was really just an old-style vote hustler, who didn't even tell the truth about where she stood.  A lesson to us all about politics.  From the Washington Examiner: 

And it didn’t even work.

Former Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, in her first interview after losing by 20 points to governor-elect Greg Abbott, admitted she only claimed to support an open-carry gun law in order to win votes.

“There is one thing that I would do differently in that campaign, and it relates to the position that I took on open-carry,” Davis told the San Antonio Express-News on Monday. “I made a quick decision on that with a very short conversation with my team and it wasn't really in keeping with what I think is the correct position on that issue.”

Davis added that she does support “people’s right to own and to bear arms in appropriate situations,” but fears that open carry would be used “to intimidate and cause fear.”

Is that what she thinks of Texans?

The term “open-carry” refers to laws that allow gun-owners to carry their weapons in full view of the public. Typically (although not always) such laws still require those who want to carry concealed weapons to apply for a permit.

During her gubernatorial campaign, Davis said she supported an expansion of gun rights in Texas that included open-carry.

Davis now says that she has “always been true to my core beliefs.” Except, of course, when she wasn't.

COMMENT:  Lesson:  Journalists shouldn't make heroes or heroines out of people they really don't know.  Get the facts first.  Examine the person.  Check that person's claims.  We're going into a presidential election year, when we'll need first-class reporting.  We'll get some.  We'll get the other kind as well.

December 31, 2014       Permalink

DARE TO SPEAK OUT – AT 11:16 A.M. ET:  Used to be a time when journalists were supposed to use their eyes and ears before engaging their "intellect."  No more.  Today, in too many news organizations, the "analysis" comes before the facts. 

And so it's refreshing to see common-sense observation.  Gateway Pundit publishes a piece that finally notes the number of old reds in the anti-police marches we're witnessing these days.  Following the tradition begun by the newly fashionable press of the Vietnam war, which described pro-Communist marchers as "anti-war activists," the mainstream media of today hasn't noticed. 

Many of the signs being carried by the protesters of the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” and “I Can’t Breathe” thugs are printed by RevCom (seen printed at the bottom of many of their signs). A quick investigation reveals that “RevCom” is shorthand for “Revolution Communists” with connections to Weather Underground.

How odd… almost like the connection between Obama and Bill Ayers… huh?

Right Wing News reports the following:

I wrote an article over the weekend on the agitators behind the New York protests and cop killings. Part of that article mentioned the gang which NYPD cop killer, Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley, may have belonged to, the Black Guerilla Family. This gang is allied with US Leftist groups and worked as an ideological partner with Bill Ayers’ Weather Underground terrorist organization. The Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) is also directly connected to the Weather Underground and is providing protest signs across the nation. They are for revolution, not peaceful protests.

COMMENT:  And there's more.  I've seen this deaf-and-dumb approach by the MSM so often, it seems almost routine.  A few days ago I noticed, in one photo of anti-police marchers, an inordinate number of Arab scarves.  Yet the people wearing them didn't seem Middle Eastern.  I wondered why.  Is this a fashion statement?

In fact, many of the red groups of today, like International Answer, have been heavily infiltrated by radical pro-Palestinian activists.  It's part of the game.  Not much reporting on that, as you've seen.

Anyone who dares to tell the truth is immediately labeled a "McCarthyite."  That's part of the game, too.

December 31, 2014       Permalink

ALAN, WE HARDLY KNEW YE – AT 10:29 A.M. ET:  Alan Greenspan's wife, Andrea Mitchell of NBC, must be mortified.  She sometimes sounds like a spokeswoman for the Obama administration, and here is her husband, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, warning that the Obama economy is still in trouble.  From Bloomberg: 

Just when you thought the U.S. economy was roaring back to health, Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is here to tell you otherwise.

“The United States is doing better than anybody else, but we’re still not doing all that well,” Greenspan, 88, said today in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop” with Betty Liu. “We still have a very sluggish economy.”

And that, of course, is the point.  If you're getting C's in school, and everyone else is getting D's, you're at the top of your class.  But you're still getting C's.

Greenspan said the economy won’t fully recover until American companies invest more in productive assets and the housing market bounces back.

“Almost all of the weakness in the last four, five, six years has been in long-lived investments” in capital goods and real estate, Greenspan said. “Until these pick up, we’re not going to get the kind of vibrant growth that everyone is hoping for.”

Greenspan, who retired from the Fed’s helm in January 2006, said he expects growth to dip below a 3 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter of this year. His forecast is in line with the estimate of 2.5 percent in a Bloomberg survey of economists.

He spoke a week after revised figures showed gross domestic product expanded at a 5 percent rate in the third quarter, the fastest pace since 2003. The data helped drive the Dow Jones Industrial Average above 18,000 for the first time.

COMMENT:  That 5 percent figure is being seriously challenged, and may have been helped along by some serious cooking of the books, not surprising for the Obama crowd.  Look around you.  Are you really seeing boom times?  The "jobs recovery" is nothing of the kind.  Americans who once were well employed are having to settle for second-rate jobs or part-time jobs.

Greenspan is right.  I hope he survives the day.

December 31, 2014        Permalink

WOULD YOU BELIEVE THIS? – AT 10:16 A.M. ET:  A New Year's Eve gift to Americans, while Congress is out of town and the people are distracted by the holiday.  From Fox: 

The Defense Department announced Wednesday that five more prisoners will be transferred out of Guantanamo Bay to another nation, in the latest step by the Obama administration to whittle down the prisoner population in pursuit of ultimately closing the camp.

The five men will be transferred to the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan for resettlement, the U.S. government announced.

The two men from Tunisia and three from Yemen -- who have been at the camp for a dozen years -- had been cleared for release from the prison by a government task force but could not be sent to their homelands. The U.S. has sent hundreds of prisoners from Guantanamo to third countries but this is the first time Kazakhstan has accepted any for resettlement.

Their release brings the prison population at Guantanamo to 127, according to a Pentagon statement on Tuesday.

The transfer appears to be the latest step in the administration's strategy to rapidly bring down the prison population at Guantanamo, potentially to under 100, so that the White House can make a more aggressive argument to Congress that the camp should be closed. Congress continues to block Guantanamo prisoners from being brought for detention on the U.S. mainland.

Many vocal critics of the administration's push to close the camp, though, have not backed off their concerns. And the accelerated prisoner transfers have raised additional security concerns.

COMMENT:  Those concerns are legitimate.  It reminds me of this country's practice, before World War II, of selling scrap iron to Japan.  It came back to us in the form of bullets and shells.

Closing Gitmo was one of Obama's promises to the far left of the Democratic Party.  It's clear from recent actions that he intends to keep those promises during his last two years in office, when he no longer has to face the voters.

December 31,  2014     Permalink

DECEMBER 30,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:52 P.M. ET: 

OBAMA RISES – Obama continues to show improvement in his approval ratings.  His Gallup rating stands at 48% approval, 48% disapproval, a tie.  First time approval has come up to disapproval since the middle of 2013.  I can't really account for this.  Last year at this time only 42% approved of the president, and 52% disapproved.  Maybe is getting a sympathy vote following the drubbing his party took in last month's midterms.

SHOCKING, A RETURN TO SLAVERY – From London's Daily Mail:  "Target is under fire from angry consumers over its use of predominantly white models to promote a new clothing line inspired by the recent remake of hit musical Annie, which is led by an African American actress.   A Change.org petition issued by motivational speaker L'Sean Rinique Shelton, based in Bear, Delaware, calls for the retail giant to remove the 'disrespectful' in-store displays and apologize to the movie's 11-year-old star, Quvenzhané Wallis.  'In the current stench of racism and division amongst Americans, why would Target singlehandedly disrespect Quvenzhané Wallis and add more pain to injury as it relates to race relations?' poses Ms Shelton, a mother-of-three."  One of the great issues of our time, I'm sure. 

GRIM TRUTHS – From Fox:  "WASHINGTON – The number of law enforcement officers killed by firearms in the U.S. jumped by 56 percent this year and included 15 ambush assaults, according to a report released Tuesday.  The annual report by the nonprofit National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund found that 50 officers were killed by guns this year, compared to 32 in 2013.  In all, the report found that 126 federal, local, tribal and territorial officers were killed in the line of duty in 2014. That's a 24 percent jump from last year's 102 on-duty deaths. Shootings were the leading cause of officer deaths in 2014 followed by traffic-related fatalities, at 49."  Al Sharpton could not be reached for comment.

WHOOPS – From Real Science:  "The area of Arctic sea ice is nearly identical to 30 years ago.  Arctic sea ice is cyclically returning to the NSIDC cherry-picked date of 1979.  The area of sea ice on Earth has moved into unprecedented territory. When it was declining, they blamed it on global warming. Now that it is increasing, they blame it on global warming.  The amount of solar energy in Antarctica is at its peak for the year, so the record amount of ice is having maximum cooling effect on the planet.  All of these things are the exact opposite of what experts forecast. Hansen predicted peak sea ice loss in the Weddell Sea, right where the peak gain has occurred."  Don't tell Al Gore.  He has so many troubles, what with paying the electric bills for his mansions.  Be kind.

December 30, 2014       Permalink

BARONE ON CONGRESS – AT 8:42 A.M. ET:  This is a must-read – an analysis of the makeup of the new Congress, compared with the mid-1940s.  Michael Barone is one of our best political reporters and historians.  He shows how American politics has evolved in our lifetime.  From the Washington Examiner: 

Before Christmas, Arizona finished its 2nd Congressional District recount, showing Republican Martha McSally beating incumbent Democrat Ron Barber by 167 votes. This means there will be 247 Republicans in the House in the 114th Congress — one more than was elected to the House in the 80th Congress in 1946. It’s the most Republican House since the one elected in 1928, a year when very few of today’s voters were alive.

But while the party numbers are almost precisely the same in the Houses elected this year and 68 years ago, the composition of the two parties’ caucuses (the Republicans call theirs a conference) is sharply different.

One reason is that the reapportionment of House seats following the seven censuses from 1950 to 2010 has shifted many seats from the Northeast, Midwest and Mississippi Valley to Texas, South Atlantic and Western states.

Altogether, 100 seats have been transferred from 27 states to 17 other states. Only six small states have the same number of seats as they did in 1946. The big losers have been New York (down 18 seats), Pennsylvania (down 15), Illinois (down 8) and Ohio (down 7). The big gainers have been California (up 30), Florida (up 21) and Texas (up 15).

The House Republican Conference that assembled in January 1947 was dominated by members from New York (28), Pennsylvania (28), Illinois (20) and Ohio (19). Most came from courthouse towns and sought to roll back the New Deal. They provided the impetus behind the Taft-Hartley Act, which limited the power of labor unions — a law that passed despite Harry Truman’s veto and is still in effect today.

They had the votes to override because the House Democratic Caucus included many conservatives in 1947. A majority of its members — 117 of 189 — came from the South (defined here as the 11 old Confederate states plus West Virginia, Kentucky and Oklahoma).

COMMENT:  Read the whole thing.  Print it and keep it.  You'll be referring to Barone's analysis for a long time.

December 30, 2014        Permalink

THE COST OF ANTI-COP RHETORIC – AT 8:31 A.M. ET:   Two police officers have already been assassinated in New York.  There have been attempts on others around the country since.  So this story should not be surprising.  A price is being paid.  From the New York Post: 

With cops on edge following the assassination of two patrol officers on a Brooklyn street, many officers have started turning a blind eye to some minor crimes, sources told The Post, while a union mandate that two patrol cars respond to all police calls has led to slower response times to non-emergencies.

“I’m not writing any summonses. Do you think I’m going to stand there so someone can shoot me or hit me in the head with an ax?” One cop said Sunday, referring to the Dec. 20 slayings and another recent attack on the NYPD.

“I’m concerned about my safety,” the cop added. “I want to go to home to my wife and kids.”

An NYPD supervisor noted, “My guys are writing almost no summonses, and probably only making arrests when they have to — like when a store catches a shoplifter.”

And the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association directive for cops to respond with at least two patrol cars has resulted in a manpower shortage that’s delaying response times to non-emergencies — such as burglaries or car crashes without injuries — to as much as four hours, sources said.

COMMENT:  The real losers here will be members of minority communities, who depend on police coverage for their very lives.  Maybe, if something horrible happens, they can call Al Sharpton.  Or Eric Holder.  They have police cars, don't they?

December 30, 2014       Permalink

THE SAD SEARCH – AT 8:20 A.M. ET:  Now we know that the Malaysian airliner went down, we know where, and we see the aftermath.  From Fox: 

At least 40 bodies have been found in the area where AirAsia Flight 8501 last made contact with air traffic controllers, along with debris from the plane.

The bodies were found in the Java Sea about six miles from the plane’s last known point of contact. The plane disappeared Sunday with 162 people on board traveling from Surbaya, Indonesia to Singapore.

The bodies were were not wearing life jackets, according to Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Director, SB Supriyadi.

Rescue workers were shown on local TV being lowered on ropes from a hovering helicopter to retrieve bodies. Efforts were hindered by 6-foot waves and strong winds, Supriyadi said, adding that several bodies were later picked up by a navy ship.

"The warship Bung Tomo has retrieved 40 bodies and the number is growing. They are very busy now," a navy spokesman added.

Sky News also reports that the "shadow" of a jet has been spotted on the seabed.

COMMENT:  Please note that the Malaysian jet that disappeared last March is still missing.   That remains the great airliner mystery of our time.

December 30,  2014     Permalink