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DECEMBER 6,  2015

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 10:05 P.M. ET: 

FRANCE VOTES – From BBC:  France's far-right National Front (FN) appears to have made big gains in the first round of regional elections, estimates show.  They put the FN ahead in at least six of 13 regions in mainland France.  The elections are the first electoral test since last month's Paris attacks, in which 130 people were killed.  The centre-right Republicans party led by former President Nicolas Sarkozy appeared to be in second place ahead of the governing Socialist Party.  A second round of voting will be held on 13 December.  The attacks have had their electoral effect.  FN is far right by European standards, but perhaps not as far right as European "intellectuals" like to think.  We're hoping, though, that Sarkozy's party rallies in the second round.  They're reasonably conservative without some of the rough ethnic edges of the FN.

VENEZUELA VOTES – From AFP:  Caracas (AFP) - Venezuelans voted Sunday in tense elections that could see the opposition seize legislative power from the socialist government and risk sparking violence in the oil-rich, cash-poor nation.   Hundreds of people turned out before dawn as voters fed up with soaring prices and food shortages cast their ballots to back the opposition, while others vowed to push on with the "revolution" of the left, in control since 1999.  Electoral commission deputy chief Sandra Oblitas said there was "very high turnout" as polls closed at 2230 GMT, with first results expected from 0230 GMT Monday at the earliest.  With the country of 30 million people suffering soaring inflation and poverty, a broad coalition of opposition parties is vying to gain control of the National Assembly for the first time in 16 years.  They want to force a change of course by anti-US leader Nicolas Maduro, criticized by international authorities for jailing his opponents and barring foreign observers from monitoring the vote.  The issue is whether the government will steal the election.  Barring foreign monitors is the first stage in that kind of effort.  (Late note:  Indications from Venezuela point in the direction of a win for the opposition.  But let us wait for the "official" count, which may or may not be honest.)

THE PRESIDENT'S SPEECH – So President Obama addressed the nation on terrorism tonight.  As Johnny Carson used to ask, "Notice the difference?"  Yes, the president spoke with 7.1% more passion about terrorism than he has in the past.  We were overwhelmed with the heat.  And yes, he finally mentioned "terrorism" without uttering "workplace violence" in the same sentence.  Nor did he even blame BUSH (!!) or CHENEY (!!!!).  But he really didn't say anything significant either.  I was impressed with the comments of Michael Weiss of CNN, a real expert on terrorism, who noted that the president seemed constantly to imply that we were facing "new" or "evolving" threats, when in fact we're facing the same threats we faced during his first term, but which he never acknowledged with real seriousness.   So we'll just have to wait to see if there is any new sense of urgency, or just another speech down the road.  Meanwhile, Americans are justifiably anxious, and fearful that another shock awaits us.

December 6,  2015     Permalink

VENEZUELA VOTES – AT 11:32 A.M. ET:   One of the most underreported stories of the last year is the pushback against socialism in Latin America, the most recent case being the election of a free-enterprise government in Argentina.  Now Venezuela is going to the polls.  Will the trend continue?  From The Wall Street Journal:

CARACAS, Venezuela—Venezuelans began casting ballots Sunday in an election expected to give a frustrated opposition control of congress and the chance to roll back the power of a socialist government whose economic policies have led to long food lines and a collapsing currency.

Voters in pro-government districts nationwide were wakened before dawn by fireworks—a reminder by President Nicolás Maduro’s populist government that it was time to get to polling stations and cast ballots for the self-styled revolution of his predecessor and mentor, the late Hugo Chávez.

The election of the 167-member National Assembly is seen as a plebiscite on Mr. Maduro’s rule of a country that has the world’s highest rate of inflation, topping 200% year-to-year, and an economy the International Monetary Fund says will contract 10% this year.

Stringent currency controls, with only the state permitted to sell dollars, has resulted in shortages of everything from basic food items to shampoo to car parts, leading factories to drastically cut output and an overwhelming majority of Venezuelans to tell pollsters that the country is headed in the wrong direction.

In a barrio not far from the presidential palace in Caracas, voters like Norka Teresa Heredia reeled off complaints about the government, from rampant crime to corruption scandals to long food lines.

“We cannot find coffee, rice, sugar, toilet paper, sanitary napkins, spaghetti,” she said.

Standing nearby was Josefina Villalba, 75 years old, who said she also planned to vote for the opposition alliance known as MUD.

“We want Venezuela to be free from this yoke. It is not Communism, it is savagery. It is thievery. It is not the Venezuela we had before.”

A varied group of pollsters have said the opposition could win anywhere from a simple majority—84 seats or just a few more—to as many as 110.

COMMENT:  We'll report on the results.  Good luck to freedom.

December 6, 2015       Permalink

A NEW WARNING – AT 10:55 A.M. ET:  A warning from Europe about the technological capabilities of ISIS.  From the Jerusalem Post: 

The European Union should prepare for the possibility of a chemical or biological attack on its territory by Islamic State terrorists, a new report by the European Parliament warns.

According to the European Parliament research paper, first reported on by the Daily Mail, "European governments and EU institutions need to be on alert, and should consider publicly addressing the possibility of a terrorist attack using chemical, biological, radiological or even nuclear materials."

The report warns that the group appears to have already manufactured rudimentary chemical warfare shells and used them to attack Kurds in Iraq and Syria on at least three occasions.

In addition, the paper cites multiple reports that Islamic State had several opportunities in recent years to gain access to non-conventional materials in Syria, Iraq and Libya.

The group also has the financial resources and proven success in recruiting skilled university graduates able to master the technical challenges of orchestrating a non-conventional attack in Europe, according to the report.

The report suggests that EU governments should begin to take precautions such as routinely equipping emergency crews with antidotes to a non-conventional attack and increasing security around key installations.

COMMENT:   If ISIS can do it there, they can do it here.  Are we ready?  Interested?  Or will party-line leftism block efforts to prepare the American people?  I personally know a thoughtful, peaceful, liberal gentleman who has already bought protective masks, simply based on his own knowledge of what is possible. 

This isn't scare talk, any more than warnings about German rearmament in the 1930s were scare talk.

December 6, 2015       Permalink

HE SPEAKS – AT 10:18 A.M. ET:  President Obama addresses the nation from the Oval Office tonight on the subject of terrorism.  Aren't you excited?  Don't you have your recorder already set?  Aren't you telling members of your family, "Now we'll get the truth"?

No, I didn't think so.

As Clarice Feldman said at American Thinker, "We are led instead by a cowardly, ill-informed, blockhead who has done everything in his power to destroy national unity and power..."

I'm not expecting much tonight.  We've had seven years to figure out that our original concerns about this president were correct, even understated.  He is a leftist, not a liberal.  He doesn't much like his country.  He spent an inordinate amount of time with others who don't much like this country.  At each stage in his "career," odd things seemed to happen that propelled him forward, without much impetus from him.  He refused to release records that presidential candidates routinely release, like his academic records.  He was protected and advanced by a mainstream media that refused to examine him in any detail.  It got so bad that "Saturday Night Live" did a parody of the press, in 2008, sucking up to Obama.  His first "foreign-policy" act as president was to insult Britain, our closest ally, by sending back to London a bust of Winston Churchill that had rested in the Oval Office.

Tonight we will listen to this president tell us how he intends to fight terrorism, a subject in which he seems to have little interest.  I have no expectations of truth or wisdom.  I do have expectations of deceit and an attempt to blame the National Rifle Association for our woes. 

He has 13 months to go in office.  His attorney-general, Loretta Lynch, warned Americans last week that rhetoric that may approach calls to violence against Muslims will be prosecuted. (Who decides how to define that?)   This is the same attorney general who recently watched marchers charge down streets in American cities chanting about the police, "Pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon!"  Where were the prosecutions?

Fortunately, many Americans are waking up.  They know there will be more horrors like San Bernardino.  They have no reason to have any confidence in the national leaders who will respond to those horrors.

December 6,  2015     Permalink

DECEMBER 5,  2015

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:56 P.M. ET: 

INEVITABLE – From WaPo:   LONDON — British police were investigating a stabbing at an east London subway station Saturday evening as a “terrorist incident” after the attacker reportedly claimed he had acted “for Syria.”  The stabbing, which came just three days after the British Parliament approved airstrikes in Syria against Islamic State targets, left three people injured — one seriously. British media outlets reported that the seriously wounded victim had been stabbed in the throat. Two other people were treated for minor injuries.  A video circulating online purportedly shows the aftermath of the attack depicted a gruesome scene, with a large pool of blood smeared on the floor near the ticket turnstiles at the Leytonstone Underground station.  We're certain that this was an isolated incident and should not be attributed to any ideology, religious belief or human being.

WILL SOMEONE PLEASE WRITE A CHECK – From Fox:   The U.S. military says its 15-month bombing campaign on the Islamic State is depleting its munitions supply and that additional money and other support is “critical” for “the long fight.”  "We're expending munitions faster than we can replenish them,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh said Friday. “We need the funding in place to ensure we're prepared for the long fight. This is a critical need."  The Air Force has reportedly fired more than 20,000 bombs and missiles in Syria in the fight to dismantle the self-proclaimed Islamic State.  You'd think the administration would have covered this by now.  Maybe they can find the money in their "war on cops" budget.

A BIT OF TRUTH – From the Washington Examiner:   The New York Times front-page editorial asserts a "gun epidemic," which is an odd phrase, unless you think guns themselves — not deaths or shootings — are an evil.  If the editors meant to refer to a gun-death epidemic or a mass-shooting epidemic, here's a relevant bit of information: Per-capita murders in the U.S. are at their lowest level since FBI records began, and they are trending downwards. The Times editors write "motives do not matter to the dead." I would add that "weapons of choice do not matter to the dead."  See the chart in the story here.

December 5,  2015     Permalink

JOURNALISTIC HISTORY (CHOKE) – AT 12:22 P.M. ET:    If you must, you can read the "historic" front-page editorial in The New York Times here.  As you've now heard over and over, it's the paper's first front-page editorial in 95 years.  From The Times:  "The last time The Times ran an editorial on the front page was in June 1920, when it lamented the nomination of Warren G. Harding as the Republican presidential candidate. It was a move, The Times wrote, that would 'be received with astonishment and dismay by the party whose suffrages he invites.'"

From Warren Harding to gun control.  Nothing in between. 

The in betweens got it right.  This front-page editorial is almost laughable in its simple-mindedness, lack of information, and, actually, lack of urgency.  It is not laughable in its timing.  It is so clearly designed to draw attention away from terrorism and toward the anointed president's favorite subject – gun control.  The editorial offers nothing new, but follows the sacred party line.  It tells the viewer that The Times, which once advertised its independence, is now simply part of the regime press.

In a way, this decision to blow it all on a ridiculous "historic" editorial was inevitable.  The Times is run by a member of the owning family, and is operated with an adolescent's passion and a fanatic's single-mindedness.  The paper was bound, ultimately, to make a fool of itself at some point. 

We await the next "historic" editorial.  Planned Parenthood?  Stop and frisk?  Lack of safe spaces in the anthropology department?  You can predict every word.

December 5, 2015       Permalink 

JEB STILL A FACTOR? – AT 11:25 A.M. ET:   Jeb Bush, to paraphrase an old watch commercial, takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'.  But is he still a factor?  From The Politico: 

Jeb Bush didn’t fix it. His attempted attacks on rivals have fallen flat. His $30 million in TV ads have failed to move his numbers. And now, with the Iowa caucuses less than two months away, he’s polling at a miserable 3 percent nationally.

But there’s one significant success that is keeping his campaign alive: Jeb Bush has convinced major GOP donors and supporters that the polls are wrong.

“I am like the Israelites following Moses, and I am not the only one,” said Mike Fernandez, the top donor to Bush’s super PAC, after a new CNN poll showed Bush an astounding 33 points behind the poll leader. “Unfortunately, it might not be that many of us.”

While rival campaigns boast that some Bush backers are making side bets on other candidates, hardly any Bush donors have publicly abandoned him — largely out of unwavering loyalty to an incomparable Republican dynasty and to a candidate many put on a pedestal in spite of his political shortcomings.

“Given the poll numbers currently, you would think there would be these massive defections from a campaign like this,” said Slater Bayliss, a Florida-based GOP operative and longtime Bush ally. “And the reason there haven’t been is Jeb Bush; because people believe he’s in it for the long haul and believe he’s a serious candidate — even in a cycle where serious doesn’t seem to be selling. They like him because he’s serious. Eventually, they think serious will sell.”

Outside the steady-under-fire nature of Bush’s top-level donors, he has kept his campaign together because of the true-believer nature of campaign manager Danny Diaz and longtime adviser Sally Bradshaw. Both are expert in making regular, data-filled pitches of proprietary campaign research that put worried donors at relative ease.

The two, along with longtime Bush aide and South Carolina director Brett Doster, will make yet another presentation to top donors on Saturday in Miami. Their bottom-line message is unchanged: National polls aren’t predictive of primary success and the campaign’s organizational efforts will bear fruit. More privately, Bush’s team says there’s still time to engineer an unlikely comeback.

COMMENT:  I admire Bush's stamina, but I just don't think this is his year.  Obviously, that is speculation.  He's a serious man with a fine record as governor of Florida, and he reminds us that there are Republicans running who've actually governed.  It is a very strange year.  The nominations are nine months away.

December 5, 2015       Permalink

BRITAIN IN THE CROSSHAIRS? – AT 10:45 A.M. ET:  There are reports that Britain will be the next target of ISIS.  From London's Daily Mail:

ISIS fanatics have identified the UK as their next target, a security expert has warned.
British-born jihadists who have travelled to Syria to join the extremist group have been tasked with returning home to carry out a Paris-style terror attack within weeks, it was claimed.

European security agencies have reportedly obtained 'specific intelligence' that Britain is next on the ISIS hit list, with the risk heightened in the wake of the Commons vote which saw a majority of MPs back airstrikes on the terrorists' strongholds in Syria.

In a chilling warning, CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank said he had spoken to an unnamed 'senior European counter-terrorism official' who received intelligence that ISIS is 'aiming to hit the United Kingdom next'.

He said: 'The intelligence suggests that British ISIS operatives in Syria and Iraq are being tasked to return to the UK to launch an attack against the United Kingdom.

He added: 'They are treating this very, very seriously indeed' but said 'it is not clear how imminent this threat is'.

During the debate in the lead-up to the airstrike vote, MPs were told that seven ISIS plots have been foiled in the last year, with intelligence agencies warning attacks are being orchestrated from Syria.

Last month it emerged that the number of Britons who have fled the country to fight for ISIS or rebels in Syria has hit 800. The defence review said up to 400 are now back in the UK.

COMMENT:  It is an ideological battle that we refuse to understand.  Some of the countries hit – like France – have some of the most pro-Arab and pro-Muslim policies in the world.  And yet, they are far from immune.  Ideology is not interested in temporary policy changes.  It is interested in total domination.

December 5,  2015     Permalink