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FEBRUARY 26,  2015

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

THE COST OF EDUCATION – From AP:  " A new study of salaries at Rutgers University finds that 17 employees, including 14 doctors and three athletic coaches, have salaries over $1 million per year. The Home News Tribune (http://mycj.co/1AaTB3s ) also finds that half of the university's nearly 25,000 employees were paid less than $50,000 in 2014.  The lower paid workers include non-faculty support staff as well as part-time lecturers and other adjunct faculty.  The median salary for tenured faculty was just over $120,000."  Major colleges have become big business, with college presidents, and many faculty members, paid corporate salaries.  It's time we started taking a hard, cold look at colleges and universities, how they're run, and the debts that are incurred by students to support these dinosaurs.

SPLIT – Secretary of State Kerry told a Congressional committee yesterday that the threats to Americans have declined.  Field Marshal Obama told us several weeks ago that the threat of terrorism was being hyped by the news media, meaning Fox News.  But now we have this, from the New York Daily News:  "Testifying on Capitol Hill, the country's top intelligence chief said 2014 was the worst year on record for global terrorism.  National Intelligence Director James Clapper told members of Congress that terror attacks reached their highest number since such records started being archived. 'When the final accounting is done, 2014 will have been the most lethal year for global terrorism in the 45 years (since) such data has been compiled,' he told the Senate Armed Services Committee."  Maybe members of the administration should occasionally talk to each other.

LOSE YOUR HEAD?  HEY, NO PROBLEM – From London's Telegraph:  "The first human head transplant could take place in just two years, it was reported on Thursday.  Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero, from the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, claims the Frankenstein-style procedure to graft a living person’s head on to a donor body will soon be ready."  Some political figures might benefit.  Please e-mail us suggestions as to what combinations you'd like to see.  comments@urgentagenda.com

I'M SHOCKED, SHOCKED – From WaPo:  "In a report to Texas elected officials, the state Department of Public Safety says border security agencies have arrested several Somali immigrants crossing the southern border who are known members of al-Shabab, the terrorist group that launched a deadly attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, and Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, another Somalia-based group once funded by Osama bin Laden. Another undocumented immigrant arrested crossing the border was on multiple U.S. terrorism watch lists, the report says."  If only we'd given them government jobs.

February 26,  2015     Permalink

I'M SO RELIEVED – AT 11:56 A.M. ET:  An Iranian dissident group revealed this week a secret nuclear facility in Iran.  Now John Kerry says, yeah, we're on the case.  We really, truly are.  From the Washington Free Beacon: 

Secretary of State John Kerry admitted before Congress on Wednesday that the United States is aware of a secret Iranian facility that an Iranian opposition group identified this week as part of an undisclosed parallel nuclear program.

The group, the National Council of the Resistance of Iran (NCRI), has a history of disclosing the existence of Iranian nuclear facilities that the United States has been later forced to confirm were indeed part of a clandestine nuclear program.

Kerry, under questioning before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, acknowledged that the United States has evidence of the facility, but declined to elaborate to lawmakers about its nature.

“Did the [Iranian] regime tell us about existence of this new nuclear facility,” Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R., Calif.) asked Kerry at the hearing.

“What you’re saying is it’s a nuclear facility,” Kerry responded. “That is yet to be determined, but we know about the facility, yes.”

“So had they disclosed that facility to us?” Rohrabacher asked.

“It has not been revealed yet as a nuclear facility,” Kerry insisted. “It is a facility that we are aware of, which is on a list of facilities we have. I’m not going to go into greater detail, but these things are going to have to be resolved [in negotiations] as we go forward.”

Questions about the site come in the wake of a report released Tuesday by an Iranian dissident group claiming to provide evidence of “an active and secret parallel nuclear program” in the suburbs of Tehran.

COMMENT:  We are dealing with people who want a nuclear bomb, who cheat, who hide facilities, who build "peaceful" nuclear facilities into mountains.  And we are depending on Barack Obama and John Kerry to enforce an agreement with these people.

Sleep well tonight.

February 26, 2015       Permalink

I.D.'d – AT 10:24 A.M. ET:  "Jihadi John," seen in those grisly ISIS execution videos, has been identified.   And, no, he isn't a poverty-stricken alienated youth.  From WaPo: 

LONDON — The world knows him as “Jihadi John,” the masked man with a British accent who has beheaded several hostages held by the Islamic State and who taunts audiences in videos circulated widely online.

But his real name, according to friends and others familiar with his case, is Mohammed Emwazi, a Briton from a well-to-do family who grew up in West London and graduated from college with a degree in computer programming. He is believed to have traveled to Syria around 2012 and to have later joined the Islamic State, the group whose barbarity he has come to symbolize.

“I have no doubt that Mohammed is Jihadi John,” said one of Emwazi’s close friends who identified him in an interview with The Washington Post. “He was like a brother to me. . . . I am sure it is him.”

A representative of a British human rights group who had been in contact with Emwazi before he left for Syria also said he believed Emwazi was Jihadi John, a moniker given to him by some of the hostages he once held.

COMMENT:  Remember how Obama, only a week or so ago, wailed about how these jihadists – excuse me, these violent extremists – came from terrible backgrounds that forced them to do terrible things?  Remember how some State Department hack spokeswoman told us that if only we'd give them good jobs, they wouldn't do these nasties? 

But Jihadi John is, according to the story, "a Briton from a well-to-do family who grew up in West London and graduated from college with a degree in computer programming."  Gee, what a tough upbringing.  I want to go in and rescue the guy.

In fact, the whole myth about "alienated youth" comes right out of "West Side Story."  Remember the line, "I'm depraved on account of I'm deprived"?

Osama bin Laden was a multimillionaire.  Many of the leading jihadis are highly educated.  They have been captured, not by their own frustrations, but by an ideology that, they're convinced, will take over the world.

We're making the same mistake we've made many times before when we underestimate the power and appeal of fanaticism.  A price will be paid.  It's already being paid.

February 26, 2015       Permalink

A MEASLY HALF MILLION – AT 9:20 A.M. ET:  It is becoming clear that foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation will be a major issue in the 2016 presidential campaign, assuming Hillary is the Dem nominee.  It's a very big deal because we pride ourselves as independent of other nations.  If an American president has been influenced by foreign contributions, it is offensive, and possibly illegal.  From Fox: 

The Clinton Foundation was on the defensive Wednesday after disclosing that it had accepted millions of dollars from several foreign governments while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, including one donation that violated the foundation's ethics agreement with the Obama administration.

Most of the contributions -- which had not previously been detailed by the foundation -- were possible due to exceptions written into the organizations's 2008 agreement with the White House that limited donations from foreign governments, according to The Washington Post, which first reported the contributions.

But foundation officials acknowledged that they should have sought approval from the State Department's ethics office in one instance. In a statement to Fox News, the foundation said it had received an unsolicited donation of $500,000 to its Haiti earthquake relief fund from the Algerian government in 2010.

"As the Clinton Foundation did with all donations it received for earthquake relief, the entire amount of Algeria's contribution was distributed as aid in Haiti," the foundation's statement read, in part. "This donation was disclosed publicly on our website, however, the State Department should have also been formally informed. This was a one-time, specific donation to help Haiti and Algeria had not donated to the Clinton Foundation before and has not since."

The statement did not make clear when foundation officials found out that the donation violated the ethics agreement or why the foundation did not alert the State Department at the time.

At the time of the contribution, Algeria, which has sought a closer relationship with Washington, was spending heavily to lobby the State Department on human rights issues.

The revelation that foreign countries with interests before the U.S. government were allowed to donate millions of dollars to the foundation could raise questions about Clinton's impartiality while serving as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. Earlier disclosures made on the foundation's website have revealed an increase in donations by foreign governments since Clinton left the State Department in 2013.

The Post reported that rarely, if ever, has a potential presidential candidate been so closely associated with an organization that has solicited financial support from overseas. Clinton is widely expected to declare her candidacy for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination sometime in the coming months.

COMMENT:  The Clintons always seem to be involved in one dubious activity or another.  "Sleaze" is their middle name.  There have been serious questions asked over the years as to how many millions Bill Clinton has taken from Gulf nations. 

But, no bother.  Hillary will still be the queen of the media if she runs.  The standard for the presidency set by Barack Obama is so low that Hillary might even be seen as an improvement.  But we should worry about where a number of checks came from.

February 26, 2015       Permalink

RUDY WAS ON TO SOMETHING – AT 8:58 A.M. ET:  Rudy Giuliani was roasted for suggesting that Barack Obama doesn't love America.  I mean, the very idea of saying something so accurate was deeply upsetting to a media still attached to the Obama "narrative."  Turns out that many Americans are backing Rudy.  From John Fund at National Review: 

Once again, surveys show we are a divided nation. In the furor over Rudy Giuliani’s comment that President Obama doesn’t “love America,” the polling site YouGov.com decided to see how many Americans agreed with him.

The answer: a surprising number. Democrats are convinced he does love his country (85 percent of those surveyed answered yes in the poll), while Republicans (69 percent no) are skeptical. Independents break in the president’s favor by only 42 percent to 38 percent. Nationally, only 47 percent of people think the nation’s leader loves America while 35 percent do not.

I thought Giuliani’s comments inappropriate, but the White House should be concerned to the extent their own signaling and policies have led to such a result. It is indeed hard to imagine similar results for any modern president. As for Americans themselves, love of country still runs deep: 90 percent of conservatives say that they love America, compared to 85 percent of moderates and 82 percent of liberals.

COMMENT:  It's absolutely clear that Obama has a certain hostility to the American people.  He actually has made it quite clear in comments about people who "cling to their guns and their religion," and in constantly talking down to his fellow citizens.  Michelle Obama said during the 2008 that her husband's nomination for president marked the only time she's been proud of her country. 

I simply don't understand how so many Americans could have been so taken in by Obama.  Maybe they thought they were doing "the right thing" by electing a man with his background.  They were doing the wrong thing.

February 26,  2015     Permalink

FEBRUARY 25,  2015

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:51 P.M. ET: 

IT'S A START – Some 50 Coptic Christians picketed the White House today in orange jumpsuits, similar to those warn by the Coptic Christians beheaded by ISIS a short time ago.  It is good to see Christians in the United States stand up for their brothers and sisters abused by radical Islam.  They chanted, "Obama, Obama, did you see? Christian blood in the sea."  There is no evidence that Obama gives a damn.

DISGRACEFUL – Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, one of our closest allies, will address Congress on Tuesday, having been invited by Speaker Boehner.  Obama opposes the speech, and his henchmen were all out today making abusive remarks about Netanyahu in public.  John Kerry was particularly offensive, noting in testimony before a Senate committee that Netanyahu supported the Iraq war.  The problem with the charge is that Kerry also supported it, so it's hard to say what Kerry was trying to show.  This all stems from Barack Obama's hostility to Israel and Netanyahu, and pretty much every important US ally.  We're learning that our worries about Obama, when he ran for president, were entirely justified.

AND JORDAN, TOO – To prove the point of the post "Disgraceful," just above, consider what the Obamans have done to Jordan, one of our best allies in the Mideast, in the last few weeks.  First, Field Marshal Obama sat down with Jordan's King Abdullah the day the video of the Jordanian pilot being burned to death by ISIS was made public.  The meeting was apparently meaningless.  Abdullah went over to another meeting, with members of Congress, and didn't even mention Obama.  Then Abdullah struck back against ISIS, apparently humiliating our indifferent president.  Then came the report that Obama had turned down Jordanian requests for drones.  This was followed by Obama turning down Jordanian requests for intelligence information on ISIS.  Just today we learned that the Obama administration released secret information about a training base in Jordan, which Jordan had requested be kept secret.  And today the Obamans warned Americans about the dangers of traveling to Jordan.  Nice, huh?  Why would Jordan want to remain our ally?

ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT – From People:  "In a strange turn of events, a New York City college professor who trains police and firefighters how to diffuse heated situations has been charged with misdemeanor assault.  Joann Baney, an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, is accused of assaulting her longtime boyfriend, Walter Frey, 46, while he slept inside her Upper West Side apartment about 10:45 p.m. on Saturday, the New York Daily News reports."  In the academic world this qualifies her for a promotion because now she has practical experience in her specialty. 

February 25,  2015     Permalink

RIGHT AT HOME – AT 1:18 P.M. ET:  They're here.  From The New York Times, developing: 

Three men living in Brooklyn were arrested and charged on Wednesday with providing material support to the Islamic State, a terrorist organization that controls large parts of Iraq and Syria and has been actively recruiting Westerners to its fight.

One of the men was arrested early Wednesday morning at Kennedy International Airport, where he was attempting to board a flight to Istanbul and then planned to travel to Syria, according to the authorities.

The men were identified as Abdurasul Hasanovich Juraboev, Akhror Saidakhmetov, and Abror Habibov.

According to a criminal complaint unsealed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, the authorities first became suspicious about at least two of the men in August and are concerned that more individuals might have been involved.

According to the complaint, one of the men who sought to travel to Syria to fight said that if he failed to make it overseas, he would launch attacks in the United States, including planting a bomb on Coney Island and attacking President Obama.

COMMENT:  Hard to know where these gents are from.  The names don't look Arabic.  But the Islamic State is here, and is recruiting.  And its greatest recruiting tool is victory.  As long as it keeps gaining, it will get young soldiers to join.  If it's defeated on the battlefield, recruiting will be much more difficult.  No one wants to join a losing cause.

February 25, 2015      Permalink 

OH REALLY? – AT 10:14 A.M. ET:  And to think, I believed we actually had a functioning Constitution.  Silly me.  From CNS: 

(CNSNews.com) – Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday declined to “get into” what negotiators are proposing to the Iranians in the nuclear talks, and defended the president’s authority to execute foreign policy, saying he did not believe a negotiated agreement should go through a “formal approval process” by Congress.

“I don’t think there ought to be a formal approval process,” he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, adding that the administration was consulting with Congress and that lawmakers would ultimately have to vote on lifting sanctions on Iran.

“You certainly have a right to have whatever hearings and whatever further examinations you want to have, if a deal is struck,” he said in response to questions by Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.). “I mean, that’s your prerogative at any point in time. And ours is to respond to you.”

Asked by Gardner whether he believed then that Congress should have “no other role or feedback” apart from hearings, Kerry said, “No, I believe this falls squarely within the executive power of the president of the United States in the execution of American foreign policy.”

COMMENT:  A nuclear weapon in Iran's hands is an existential threat to many of America's allies in the region and a dire threat to the United States itself.  You would think that a responsible president would want to involve the Congress at every stage.

But we don't have a responsible president.  He have a hardened left winger with a silver tongue, with a soft spot in his heart for Islamic regimes. 

Congress can, though, raise an uproar and alert the American people.  Public opinion polls matter in Washington, and if the people of this country turn decisively against Obama's foreign policy excursions, even Democrats will have to listen.  We hope it won't be too late.

February 25,  2015     Permalink

BETRAYAL – AT 9:21 A.M. ET:  Why is it that this administration so often winds up betraying America's allies?  From the Washington Times: 

The Pentagon let slip that one of its training camps to help fight Islamic State terrorists is in Jordan — information the pro-U.S. kingdom had specifically requested be kept private, and the latest gaffe in a series of sensitive leaks coming out of the Department of Defense.

In order to hide its flub, which was first announced to reporters during a briefing last week, the Pentagon has scrubbed its public transcripts of any mention of the training camp.

Pentagon officials acknowledged Monday that one of its officers, who was briefing reporters on condition of anonymity last week, likely made the mistake. The Pentagon’s policy is to discuss only the contributions its partner nations are making to its operations against extremists in Iraq and Syria only after those partner nations have publicly spoken about those contributions.

In Jordan’s case, that did not happen, a senior Pentagon official said.

Security analysts are befuddled by the high-level operational “screw-up.”

“Either the official made a mistake or is deliberately leaking information to put the administration’s plans for Syria in a better light in an attempt to defuse criticism that the administration has bungled efforts to aid Syrian rebels,” said James Phillips, a national security analyst at The Heritage Foundation.

The latest information leak comes as the Obama administration is under fire from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle for revealing too much information at the Pentagon’s briefing last week of an upcoming military plan to retake Mosul from the Islamic State, also known by the acronyms ISIS and ISIL.

It was at that briefing where the U.S. military revealed the information about Jordan, which fears retaliation, analysts say, if it’s seen as being too close to the U.S. or getting too involved in neighboring Syria.

COMMENT:  There have also been leaks about Israeli operations.  I can't believe this is all coincidental.  We simply have got to do better, much better, in preserving critical classified information.  Lives depend on it.

But, again, it's strange how much help the Obama crowd has given to our enemies.  I wonder why.

February 25,  2015      Permalink

GREAT SCOTT – AT 8:56 A.M. ET:  Don't you just love the way the media went after Scott Walker as soon as he gained some traction in the presidential race?  The mainstreamers will do the same to any Republican who's got a shot.  But the press assault looks as if it's backfired.  From Hot Air: 

While the members of the press are busily congratulating themselves for having “gotcha-ed” Scott Walker on a variety of matters utterly unrelated to his ability to serve as commander-in-chief, the governor of Wisconsin is quietly consolidating the support of Republican voters ahead of 2016.

According to a new Quinnipiac University survey of the Hawkeye State, Walker leads a pack of 12 prospective Republican candidates ahead of the 2016 caucuses with a full 25 percent. This is the second poll to show nearly a quarter of Iowa’s Republican caucus-goers backing Walker. Last week, the GOP firm Gravis Marketing found Walker netting 24 percent support in Iowa with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Jeb Bush both coming in second with 10 percent.

This Quinnipiac survey also found Paul performing well with the support 13 percent of Iowa’s likely Republican caucus-goers, but he is competing with a much broader field for second place in this survey. Following Paul, Dr. Ben Carson and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee both secure the support of 11 percent of caucus-goers. With 10 percent, Bush narrowly escapes joining the rest of the prospective Republican presidential candidates in single-digit territory.

The Quinnipiac survey found Walker with an impressive favorability rating at 57 percent. Just 7 percent of those surveyed do not have a favorable opinion of the governor. Only Carson and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal have favorability ratings that compare to Walker’s. 74 percent of self-described tea partiers and 58 percent of evangelicals in Iowa have a favorable opinion of Walker. When it comes to the governor’s likability, there is virtually no difference between those who identify as conservative or somewhat conservative; 66 and 61 percent respectively have a high opinion of Walker.

“Walker gets 26 percent of men and 22 percent of women,” Quinnipiac’s release read. “Only 8 percent of caucus participants are less likely to vote for Walker because he does not have a college degree, while 82 percent say that makes no difference in their vote.”

COMMENT:  Scott has two terrific things going for him – a spectacular record of success in saving Wisconsin from fiscal ruin, and a relentlessness as a candidate.  I'm reminded of Lincoln's comment about Grant:  "This man fights."

February 25,  2015     Permalink