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JANUARY 5,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:28 P.M. ET:

CLASS – One thing about Mitt Romney, he knows how to show class.  From The Hill:  "Mitt Romney on Sunday accepted an MSNBC host’s apology for joking about his adopted black grandson, saying he has made 'plenty of mistakes myself.'  The 2012 GOP nominee, appearing on 'Fox News Sunday,' said the recent apology from the host, Melissa Harris-Perry, was 'clearly heartfelt,' and that he and his wife, Ann, were ready to move on.  'People like me are fair targets. If you get in the political game, you can expect incoming. But children, that’s beyond the line. And I think they understand that,' Romney said.  'I think it’s a heartfelt apology. And for that reason, we hold no ill will whatsoever.'"  And that's the way it's done.  Now we will look forward to the next time MSNBC needs to apologize.  It's a regular occurrence.

THE PRESIDENT'S HAWAII VACATION – We just thought you'd like to know.  From The New York Times:  "Mr. Obama’s vacation schedule was nothing if not routine.  He went to the gym at Marine Corps Base Hawaii for a sunrise workout. He played golf nine out of 15 days. And he and the first lady, Michelle Obama, stepped out for dinner at a few of their favorite restaurants: Alan Wong’s, Morimoto Waikiki (twice!) and Nobu Waikiki.  Island Snow, the president’s favorite spot for shave ice — the island’s syrupy, brightly colored and refreshingly sweet version of the snow cone — even had a message board in its back room reminding its employees to 'wear Island Snow T-shirts all week long while the president is here!!'  Last week, Mr. Obama finally joined his daughters, who had been making solo shave ice runs for most of the trip, at the shop, emerging with a cherry and lemon-lime confection in a paper cone."  Your tax dollars at work.

MORE ANTARCTICA FUN IN THE FREEZE – "The Australian Maritime Safety Authority’s Rescue Coordination Centre (RCC Australia) has requested the US Coast Guard’s Polar Star icebreaker to assist the vessels MV Akademik Shokalskiy and Xue Long which are beset by ice in Commonwealth Bay.  The US Coast Guard has accepted this request and will make Polar Star available to assist.  The Polar Star has been en route to Antarctica since 3 December, 2013 – weeks prior to the MV Akademik Shokalskiy being beset by ice in Commonwealth Bay. The intended mission of the Polar Star is to clear a navigable shipping channel in McMurdo Sound to the National Science Foundation’s Scientific Research Station. Resupply ships use the channel to bring food, fuel and other goods to the station. The Polar Star will go on to undertake its mission once the search and rescue incident is resolved."  I hope we send those global-warming fanatics a large bill for our Coast Guard's services.  They've caused a lot of trouble, and disturbed the penguins, who must have a low regard for humans.

January 5, 2014        Permalink

AN UNSAFE SEAT? – AT 11:52 A.M. ET:  It's been assumed that Mark Warner, the Dem senator from Virginia, would have an easy re-election run this year.  But things seem to be happening in Virginia that may indicate a real battle for Warner's seat is possible.  From Paul Mirengoff at Powerline:

Politico reports that Ed Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chairman, is likely to jump into the Virginia Senate race later this month. The Senate seat in question is held by Mark Warner, Virginia’s popular former governor.

Gillespie is a shrewd guy with no interest in a quixotic bid for office. The fact that he is seriously considering a run tells me that Warner’s hold on the seat isn’t safe.

Presumably, Gillespie is seeing approximately the same poll numbers that Warner sees. Michael Barone has inferred, based on Warner’s sudden recent efforts to pose as a moderate, that Warner has seen “bad poll numbers.” Barone defines bad poll numbers in this context as Warner “running significantly below 50 percent against a lesser-known challenger running farther behind.”

If he runs, Gillespie will not be handed the nomination on a silver platter. One potential candidate, State Sen. Jeff McWaters, is eschewing a run to make way for Gillespie. However, at least two other candidates are already in the race.

The nominee will be picked at a June convention, rather than in a primary. This selection method tends to empower activists, among whom an establishment figure like Gillespie may not be popular.

But as McWaters says, “if you can’t get 1,500 or 2,000 raging fans to Roanoke, Va., for a night and a day, then you probably can’t beat Mark Warner anyway.”

I stand by my assessment that Warner will be reelected unless 2014 turns out to be a pro-Republican wave election of the order of magnitude of 1994 and 2010. It is too early for me to assess whether 2014 will turn out that way.

COMMENT:  Virginia Republicans must run this race as if victory is in sight.  No giving up.  No nominating goofballs who lose on the very first day of the campaign.  Gillespie is a serious operator.  I think he has a shot.  I hope he gets the nomination.

The convention system is awful.  It really doesn't give the rank-and-file a chance to be heard. 

January 5, 2014       Permalink

AND IN AMERICA... – AT 10:55 A.M. ET:  My friend, Iranian rights activist Banafsheh Zand, alerts us to a strange story out of Minneapolis.  You may have seen that a building blew up in that city on New Year's Day.  There are three confirmed dead. 

Immediately there were claims of a gas explosion.  We were told that witnesses "smelled" gas, but, strangely, none of those witnesses seemed to have names.  One person interviewed who had a name said he smelled no gas.  And the power company later announced that the area had no gas leaks and no reported incidents of gas odor.

We were then told that the FBI and Department of Homeland Security were on the case.  Then the names of victims started coming out.  From Fox: 

ST. PAUL, MINN. – A third person injured in Minneapolis apartment building explosion has died, the Hennepin County Medical Examiner's office said Saturday.

Abdiqani Adan, 29, who did not live in the building, died Friday at the Hennepin County Medical Center, according to the office.

Meanwhile, two survivors still in the hospital recounted jumping from windows to save themselves. Abdi Qobey, 59, was sitting in bed watching television early on New Year's Day when he heard a boom and saw the walls buckle.

And...

Ali Jama, 41, was visiting friends and sleeping in a second-floor apartment when he heard the loud boom. The windows shattered.

"When the windows were blown out, I took a look downstairs," said Jama, a truck driver from North Carolina. He tried to go down the stairs, but there was too much smoke. He kicked the rest of the window glass and sat in the window opening.

And...

One of the two people who didn't make it out of the building was identified Friday as Ahmed Farah Ali, a 57-year-old resident. His body was recovered Thursday.

COMMENT:  Okay, the building is near a mosque and, yes, it is possible all those people lived or visited there to be near the mosque.  But when you see this, and realize that buildings don't just suddenly explode, especially when there's no documented gas leak, it raises the gravest suspicions.

Oh, by the way, the building was demolished the next day.  Why was this permitted?  That is the destruction of evidence.

I guess there's nothing to see, nothing to see.  But this looks remarkably like what the Israelis politely call a "work accident" – where a bomb being built goes off.  The building is in the heart of the Somali community.  We make no charges without evidence, but some members of that community are believed by intelligence sources to be involved in possible terrorist activity. 

The press is asking no questions, naturally.  Political correctness all the way.  Another coverup?  Maybe.

January 5, 2014       Permalink 

UNBELIEVABLE – AT 10:25 A.M. ET:  This is happening in Britain right now.  And why not?  Hasn't President Obama told us that the war on terror is over?  From London's Daily Mail:

Seven dangerous Al-Qaeda suspects are to be freed from Government curfews and able to walk the streets within days, it has emerged.

The men, some of whom are suspected of plotting to kill thousands on transatlantic airliners, will no longer be bound by electronic tags or curfew restrictions after the terrorism prevention orders are lifted.

The measures were introduced in 2012 to replace Labour government rules which, according to the Liberal Democrats, undermined the suspects' human rights.

Let's not forget that "liberal Democrats" are part of the current governing coalition in Britain.

However they only last two years unless the government can prove the suspects have engaged in 'new' terrorist-related activity.

Officials say such proof is hard if not impossible to come by as the men, who have not been named, know their behavior is being monitored.

Under the curbs, suspects are required to stay at home for up to 10 hours each night, wear electronic tags and are banned from certain places.

Among the seven due to be freed this month is a would-be suicide bomber known only by his initials, AM.

The Sunday Times reports the 26-year-old was involved in what investigators called 'Operation Overt', a plot to attack flights from London to America in 2006.

Another is, BF, a former train driver who was part of a group of British extremists seeking terrorist training in Pakistan.

Others include a 30-year-old who attended a training camp alongside four of the attempted suicide bombers involved in failed attacks on London in 2005, and a man who was trained by al-Shabaab,

The whereabouts of two suspects is unknown, including that of Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed who cut off his electric tag while visiting a mosque last November.

COMMENT:  As we've said before, there's a Great Britain and a Not-so-great Britain.  This is an example of the latter.  Britain always seems to be on a knife edge, between the forces of freedom and the forces of appeasement.  In the 1930s, appeasement came close to winning.  We may be seeing a repeat, and I don't see Churchill on the horizon.

January 5,  2014     Permalink

JANUARY 4,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 9:01 P.M. ET: 

A BILL FOR OUR KIDS – From CNS:  "Uncle Sam—AKA the federal government—went on a New Year’s Eve binge, adding a net of $125,202,709,546.99 to its total debt in just the one day of Dec. 31, 2013, according to the U.S. Treasury.  That equals approximately $1,088.60 for each of the 115,013,000 households the Census Bureau currently estimates there are in the United States."  Disgraceful.

PATHETIC – From AP:  "GLEN RIDGE, N.J – Some schools want to end their traditional role as polling places because of security concerns since the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, leaving their communities without easy alternatives for voting sites.  A presidential commission has been hearing from election officials across the country worried about schools trying to move balloting out of their buildings. Among them is the Glen Ridge School District, a prosperous community less than 20 miles from Manhattan where the Linden Avenue and Forest Avenue Elementary Schools are now closed to balloting."  What a great lesson for children.  No voting here because we can't protect the school.  If Glen Ridge is "properous," how about hiring some trained, armed guards to secure the school on voting days.  But that may violate the precious ideologies of the community leaders.

FASCINATING – From London's Daily Mail:  "Contact lenses that allow the wearer to see high-definition virtual screens are to be unveiled in Las Vegas next week.  Dubbed iOptik, the system allows the users to see projected digital information, such as driving directions and video calls.  The tiny 'screens', which are the invention of Washington-based group Innovega, sit directly on a users' eyeballs and work with a pair of lightweight glasses."  I'm not so sure I want an Obama speech that close to me.  We'll take a look and see what this is. 

January 4, 2014      Permalink

A PAINFUL VOTE – AT 11:53 A.M. ET:  One of the most important union votes in recent history has just taken place in the state of Washington.  Members of the machinists union, defying their local leadership, voted to accept a contract that will reduce their benefits, but presumably guarantee that a Boeing assembly line will be kept open.  From Fox:

SEATTLE – Boeing machinists approved a contract Friday that would concede some pension and health care benefits in order to secure assembly of the company's new 777X airplane for the Puget Sound region, solidifying the aerospace giant's presence in the Seattle area for many years to come.

The offer fractured the union and drew unusual pleas from politicians who said the deal was necessary to support the area's economic future. Boeing has been exploring the prospect of building the 777X elsewhere, a move that could trigger a steady exodus of aerospace jobs from the place where Boeing was founded.

Local union officials, meanwhile, urged their 30,000 members to oppose the deal, arguing that the proposal surrenders too much at a time of company profitability. They had opposed taking a vote at all but were overruled by national leaders in the Machinists union.

Tina Shrader, a Boeing worker for eight years, said she was voting no.

"I don't want to mess with my pension. I'm here for my paycheck and for my pension," Shrader said.

Bob Dennis, an inspector at Boeing for six years, said he was voting for the contract because it represented the best chance to keep the 777X jobs in Washington state.

COMMENT:  As readers of Urgent Agenda know, I'm a union member.  It may only be the Writers Guild, but it's an AFL/CIO union.  Ronald Reagan was not only a union member, he was a union president.  I am pro-union, as long as that union delivers, in an honest way, for its members. 

The vote was correct.  The most important goal is to keep Boeing in the area, then work on building the company so profits can be used to provide better lives for union members.  I understand the pain of the vote.  Givebacks are always painful, especially when measured against the outrageous, sometimes obscene salaries paid to "executives," many of whom fail to deliver. 

So let's give a hand to the machinists who voted to make sacrifices to achieve a larger objective.  And let's remember that they build our planes, military and civilian, and are as important a part of the company as the shareholders and executives.

January 4, 2014       Permalink

FIGHTING BACK – AT 10:32 A.M. ET:  The New York Times, now going hard left, created an uproar this week with an editorial advocating clemency for turncoat Edward Snowden.   The Times got support from the usual suspects, but others are fighting back.  That includes former secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, now head of the University of California system.  At least she has some common sense.  From The Hill:

Former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Friday that she “would not put clemency on the table” for NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

“I think Snowden has exacted quite a bit of damage and did it in a way that violated the law,” Napolitano said in an interview airing on "Meet the Press" this Sunday.

She said damage from Snowden’s actions will be seen for years to come.

Asked if the administration should consider a deal that would allow Snowden to avoid jail time in return for unreleased documents, Napolitano said she couldn't judge without knowing what information the former defense contractor still had.

“But from where I sit today, I would not put clemency on the table at all,” she said.

The New York Times and another former Obama administration official are among the voices calling for Snowden to be given a break.

On Thursday, Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former State Department director of policy planning, tweeted that she agreed with an editorial in the Times that argued Snowden was “clearly justified in believing that the only way to blow the whistle on this kind of intelligence-gathering was to expose it to the public and let the resulting furor do the work his superiors would not.”

“Considering the enormous value of the information he has revealed, and the abuses he has exposed, Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight,” the editorial says. “He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service.”

Last month, Richard Ledgett, who heads an National Security Agency task force handling unauthorized disclosures, suggested in a “60 Minutes” interview that the U.S. should consider a deal offering Snowden amnesty in exchange for returning additional documents outlining the government's top-secret surveillance programs.

“My personal view is, yes, it’s worth having a conversation about,” Ledgett said. “I would need assurances that the remainder of the data could be secured, and my bar for those assurances would be very high. It would be more than just an assertion on his part.”

But White House press secretary Jay Carney dismissed the suggestion, saying that the administration's position on Snowden's need to return home to face justice had not changed “at all.”

“Mr. Snowden has been accused of leaking classified information and he faces felony charges here in the United States,” Carney said.

COMMENT:  Here is one case (rare) where I side with the White House.  Snowden is no whistleblower.  Whistleblowers don't run to China, then Russia, and negotiate with Venezuela for asylum. 

Snowden has committed awful acts for which many might die.  The self-appointed intellectual classes don't care about things like that, any more than they care about victims of crime.  They care only about their posturing, their ideology, and their acceptable by other members of the club.

No deal for Snowden.  If he had any character, which he doesn't, he'd accept the consequences of his actions.

January 4, 2014       Permalink

WHAT A TRAGEDY – AT 10:01 A.M. ET:  President Obama's hasty, disorganized pullout from Iraq, without negotiating a continued American presence, has dishonored the American troops who fought so bravely here, and this is the proof, if any were needed.  From WaPo:

BEIRUT — A rejuvenated al-Qaeda-affiliated force asserted control over the western Iraqi city of Fallujah on Friday, raising its flag over government buildings and declaring an Islamic state in one of the most crucial areas that U.S. troops fought to pacify before withdrawing from Iraq two years ago.

The capture of Fallujah came amid an explosion of violence across the western desert province of Anbar in which local tribes, Iraqi security forces and al-Qaeda-affiliated militants have been fighting one another for days in a confusingly chaotic three-way war.

Elsewhere in the province, local tribal militias claimed they were gaining ground against the al-Qaeda militants who surged into urban areas from their desert strongholds this week after clashes erupted between local residents and the Iraqi security forces.

In Fallujah, where Marines fought the bloodiest battle of the Iraq war in 2004, the militants appeared to have the upper hand, underscoring the extent to which the Iraqi security forces have struggled to sustain the gains made by U.S. troops before they withdrew in December 2011.

The upheaval also affirmed the soaring capabilities of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the rebranded version of the al-Qaeda in Iraq organization that was formed a decade ago to confront U.S. troops and expanded into Syria last year while escalating its activities in Iraq. Roughly a third of the 4,486 U.S. troops killed in Iraq died in Anbar trying to defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq, nearly 100 of them in the November 2004 battle for control of Fallujah, the site of America’s bloodiest confrontation since the Vietnam War.

Events Friday suggested the fight may have been in vain.

COMMENT:  No, it was not in vain.  It was our current president who destroyed the gains.  Obama, the most left-wing member of the Senate when elected president in 2008, had always opposed our action in Iraq.  He did not end the Iraq war, as he grandly claims to his cheering worshipers, he simply pulled American troops out.  Today's tragedy is the result.  Obama's ego, not the American interest, consumed him.

January 4,  2014     Permalink