Please note that you can leave a comment on any of our posts at our Facebook page.  Subscribers can also comment at length at our Angel's Corner Forum.

JANUARY 21,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:18 P.M. ET: 

AUTOMATED ARMY?  From Britain's Telegraph:  "The US Army is considering replacing thousands of soldiers with robots as it deals with sweeping troop cuts.  A senior American officer has said he is considering shrinking the size of the Army’s brigade combat teams by a quarter and replacing the lost troops with robots and remote-controlled vehicles.  The American military is still far from fielding armies of Terminator-type robotic killers though.  Ideas under discussion instead include proposals to see manned lorries and transporters replaced by supply trains of robots vehicles."  Imagine R2D2 as the next star West Point quarterback.  Nah.  Guys are better.

SAD – He once was a bright light in the Republican Party.  From the Washington Examiner:  "Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, were charged with illegally accepting gifts from a businessman who sought special treatment, the Associated Press reported.  Peter Carr, a spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department, says McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, were indicted Tuesday. The 14-count indictment includes conspiracy, wire fraud and other charges.  The charges come from the couple's relationship with Jonnie R. Williams Sr., a former CEO of dietary supplement maker Star Scientific.  Authorities alleged the McDonnells lodged frequent requests for money, clothes, vacations and other gifts, the Washington Post reported. In exchange, the couple lent the prestige of the governorship to Williams' struggling company."   They're innocent until proved guilty, but this sure doesn't look good.

THE VERY LATEST SOCIAL NEWS – From the New York Post:  "France’s first lady has lost the love triangle battle with President Francois Hollande’s new girlfriend and Hollande is 'in negotiations, including legal ones' to end their nine-year relationship, it was reported Monday.  Elysee palace sources told Britain’s Telegraph that Valerie Trierweiler wanted to remain a couple with Hollande but the president was insistent.
When word Hollande’s secret affair with actress Julie Gayet broke earlier this month sources close to Trierweiler said she wanted to weather the storm with him in the fashion of Hillary Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.  Trierweiler was recovering from the shock at a Paris hospital last Thursday when Hollande told her he 'needed time,' according to Paris Match, which employs Trierweiler as a writer."  The French do scandal with so much more style than we do.  They make it a regal event.  So we'll have Julie Gayet at the upcoming White House state dinner for the French president.  Don't tell Michelle.

DISGRACE – From CNS:  "A record 20% of American households, one in five, were on food stamps in 2013, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).  The numbers also show there was a record number of individuals on food stamps in 2013 and that the cost of the program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), was at an all-time high.  The USDA says that there were 23,052,388 households on food stamps in the average month of fiscal 2013, an increase of 722,675 from fiscal year 2012, when there were 22,329,713 households on food stamps in the average month."  The economic recovery is really blazing.

January 21, 2014       Permalink

SOCHI LATEST – AT 11:14 A.M. ET:  The press is now taking an active interest in the security nightmare surrounding the Sochi Olympics scheduled to start two weeks from Friday.  We know there is deep concern over the possibility that so-called "black widows" – widows of suicide bombers, have entered Sochi with the goal of launching terrorist attacks.  From Reuters: 

MOSCOW — Police have killed a senior Islamist militant in a shootout in Russia’s North Caucasus ahead of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, the National Anti-terror Committee said on Tuesday.

The shooting of Eldar Magatov, a suspect in numerous attacks on Russian targets, at a house where he had taken refuge in the Dagestan region was part of an intensifying security clampdown as the Games approach.

Meanwhile, Russian security officials are hunting down three potential female suicide bombers, one of whom is believed to be in Sochi.

President Vladimir Putin has staked his political reputation on organizing a successful Olympics and tightened security nationwide after insurgents who hope to create an Islamist state in the North Caucasus threatened to attack the Games.

COMMENT:  These are the most threatened games since the Munich Olympics of 1972, when Israeli athletes were attacked, some killed.  One of the problems we reportedly face is that the Russians are not very cooperative with American anti-terror forces, probably out of national pride, and will not permit any foreign troops on their soil to assist.

We watch this every day and will keep you informed.

January 21,  2014     Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 9:41 A.M. ET:   Amazing.  The liberal Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi has taken on Hillary Clinton.  This is a sin of the first magnitude in Boston, and I don't know what will happen to Joan.  Purgatory has been discussed.  As reported by Peter Wilson in American Thinker:

Imagine my surprise then when I opened the Boston Globe and discovered an op-ed by predictably left-wing columnist Joan Vennochi -- a woman, to boot! -- titled, "Clinton deserves Christie-level scrutiny." The piece begins:

TIME MAGAZINE'S current cover depicts a tiny man hanging onto the heel of a shoe that's emerging from a pant-suit wearing leg. "Can Anyone Stop Hillary?" reads the accompanying text.  Maybe, if the cover also showed her tripping over the Senate Intelligence Committee's just-released report on the attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, while she was secretary of state.  If New Jersey Governor Chris Christie must answer for four days of traffic jams on roads leading to the George Washington Bridge, surely Clinton has the same obligation to address a deadly assault that the bipartisan committee found "preventable."

Oh dear.  Joan is now on Hillary's enemies list.  Nixon must be smiling.

Benghazi also raises those old questions about Clintonian candor or, more accurately, sometimes the lack of it.
[...]
Yet despite Clinton's dismissive response [What difference at this point does it make?], it does matter who attacked and why.
[...]
The theory of Clinton as unstoppable... could change with time and new revelations.

Democrats portray Benghazi as a baseless smear of Hillary by a desperate GOP. If Hillary has lost the Boston Globe, maybe, maybe her chickens are coming home to roost.

COMMENT:  Well, I don't think she's quite lost the Globe.  We know from bitter experience that the leftist press will always come around to support its candidates.  And they will quickly turn on anyone who argues for the opposition.  

Look, if Hillary runs they almost have to give her the nomination.   Can they turn a woman down again, after Hillary was nearly assured the nod in 2008...before Barack appeared?  In that contest we saw the obvious, that on the political left race always trumps gender. 

Yes, you say, but the Dems could always turn to Elizabeth Warren, who is to Hillary's left, and more simpatico with the left-wing base of the party, and also female.  Hmm.  I dunno.  Winning in Massachusetts is very different from winning the presidency.  And Warren is wobbly as a candidate.  Things can change, of course, and the base can go nuts and turn to a Mayor Bill DeBlasio of New York – radical leftist, African-American wife.   As Ira Gershwin wrote, "Who could ask for anything more?"

But, if I had to bet, I'd still bet on Hillary getting the nomination, if she runs at all.   That bet will be good for three days.

January 21,  2014     Permalink

BUSH RESURGENT – AT 9:08 A.M. ET:  Ah, what a difference five years makes.   Some Americans of certain political persuasions used to laugh at a poster of George W. Bush asking, "Miss me yet?"  No one is laughing any longer.  Polls show that Bush is now more popular than Obama.  And some of Bush's associates are going with the flow.  From The Hill:

As George W. Bush's public image improves, more former Bush officials are running for office — and are starting to tout their connections to the former president rather than running from them.

Top former Bush advisor Ed Gillespie included photos with his old boss and talked of his work in the White House in the video announcing his Virginia Senate bid on Thursday.

Gillespie isn’t the only Bush alumnus looking to be on the ballot this fall. The former Republican National Committee chairman joins a long list already looking to launch their own electoral careers: Alaska Senate candidate Dan Sullivan (R); Elise Stefanik, the current GOP front-runner for retiring Rep. Bill Owens's (D-N.Y.) seat in upstate New York; North Carolina congressional candidate Taylor Griffin (R) and West Virginia House candidate Charlotte Lane (R).

Former Bush officials Tom Foley (R) and Asa Hutchinson (R) are also running for governor in Connecticut and Arkansas. Neel Kashkari, who served both the Bush and Obama administration as assistant Treasury secretary running the Troubled Asset Relief Program, is mulling a bid to the GOP nominee for governor in California. One of Gillespie’s little-known Republican primary opponents, Howie Lind, served in Bush’s Department of Defense.

COMMENT:  Is that another omen?  Are Americans now realizing that Bush was actually a pretty solid president, and that conservative principles have much to offer?

It is indeed another good sign.  The races will be tough this year.  Republicans must pick up six seats to take control of the U.S. Senate.  It's a tall order, but Senate races in Virginia and Michigan, states that have been trending Democratic, are now going into the "questionable" column.  That means that the Democrats will have to devote more resources to these races than they'd planned. 

One thing the national Republican planners are doing well is fighting for more and more states, more and more districts.  The idea of even being competitive in a Michigan Senate race was but a dream only a year ago.  And Colorado now looks competitive.  A private note from a good friend there informs me that probable GOP candidate Ken Buck, who lost a winnable race several years ago, has learned from his mistakes and is getting better and better as a candidate. 

As Sinatra might have said, leave us we should pray.

January 21, 2014       Permalink

AN OMEN? – AT 8:51 A.M. ET:  Do little things mean a lot?  In politics, they can signal trends.  From Paul Mirengoff at Powerline:

While I was away seeking (and finding) global warmth in the Dominican Republic, voters in Northeast Arkansas sent an ominous message to Democrats by overwhelmingly electing a Republican in a special State Senate election. The Republican, John Cooper, captured 57 percent of the vote to win a seat (District 21) that has never been held by a member of his party.

The race centered on the issue of whether to continue the Arkansas’ “private option” plan to expand Medicaid. Under a plan approved by the state legislature (Republicans were split, Democrats were in favor) and signed by Democratic governor Mike Beebe, Arkansas uses federal money to purchase private insurance for thousands of low-income residents now eligible for Medicaid thanks to Obamacare. Cooper, the Republican in the race, opposes the “private option;” his Democratic opponent Steve Rockwell supports it.

Cooper’s resounding win in a traditionally Democratic corner of the state is good news for Tom Cotton and bad news for Mark Pryor. It speaks not only to the dramatically declining fortunes of Democrats in Arkansas, but also to the unpopularity of anything related to Obamacare. Without Pryor’s vote, Obamacare would not have been enacted.

COMMENT:  Mark Pryor is the sitting Democratic U.S. senator, up for re-election in November.  Tom Cotton is his terrific Republican opponent.  We're rooting madly for Cotton, a Harvard graduate who gave up a promising legal career to fight for his country.  For Tom, the Senate may only be a stop on the way up.

January 21, 2014       Permalink

JANUARY 20,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 9:06 P.M. ET:

LATEST SOCIAL NEWS – From the New York Post:  "If she gets the boot, she might not get the keys.
France’s First Lady, Valerie Trierweiler, fears she could wind up homeless if her cheating partner, President Francoise Hollande, dumps her for the younger actress he’s rumored to be seeing, according to a published report.  Trierweiler, 48, has left the Paris hospital she checked into for a week after reports of Hollande’s alleged fling with 41-year-old Julie Gayet. She is resting at La Lanterne, a hunting lodge and presidential retreat in Versailles.  An article on the website of Paris Match – the trendy magazine where Trierweiler works – said 'Valerie oscillates between depression and rage' and has told colleagues she worries she’ll have no home to return to because the First Couple’s Paris apartment is in his name."  Don't worry, Valerie.  Under Obamacare you'll be able to take your health insurance with you, no matter where you live...as long as you can get onto the website.

SOCHI UPDATE – From the New York Daily News:  "Russian authorities are looking for as many as four women who could be used in terrorist attacks during the Winter Olympic games — including one suspect who may have already slipped through the ring of security in Sochi.  Ruzanna (Salima) Ibragimova, 22 — the widow of an Islamic militant killed during a gun battle with police last year — has been missing from her Dagestan home since last month, ABC News reported.  Wanted posters with Ibragimova’s picture littered area hotels and even a nearby airport last weekend, the news station reported, after authorities launched a massive search for the woman.  The posters describe Ibragimova as having a 10-centimeter scar across her left cheek and a stiff left arm, because she can’t bend her elbow.   Investigators believe she may have entered the city about 10 days ago, according to the report.  Ibragimova is one of as many as four 'black widows' — the term given to the wives of dead terrorists — who being sought by security officials, NBC News reported."

TEXAS STORY – Wendy Davis shot to fame in Texas because of her pro-abortion stand in the state legislature and her touching life story.  Now she is running for governor.  But the Dallas Morning News, doing what a newspaper should do, has checked her story, and it ain't what she said it was.  From the Washington Post:  "Texas State Senator Wendy Davis, who is running for governor of Texas, has admitted that some of the public details about her personal history are incomplete or inaccurate, according to a report in the Dallas Morning News.  Davis, a rising Democratic star, has touted herself as a Texas success story. She has said she was a divorced teenage mother who went from living in a mobile home, juggling low-wage jobs and going to community college to graduating from Harvard Law School.  The up-from-nowhere narrative, which emerged during an 11-hour filibuster she staged in June to oppose abortion restrictions, has been a central part of her candidacy and appeal, helping to boost her national profile and fundraising efforts.  But the Dallas Morning News reveals a more complicated narrative."  Yeah, the excuses will now start flying.  The liberal press will largely ignore the story, but it's out there, and Davis admits she hasn't been entirely honest.   We'll watch the polls.

NEW IRAN WARNING – From WND:  "If Iran breaks its deal with the West tomorrow, the country would be only two to three weeks away from producing enough highly enriched uranium to assemble a nuclear weapon, according to Olli Heinonen, former deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency.  Heinonen directed the safeguards division of the United Nations body charged with enforcing the Non-Proliferation Treaty."  We are being completely outmaneuvered by the Iranians, who are also increasing their influence at the UN, which doesn't care if a country is a brutal dictatorship.  Not a problem at all. 

January 20, 2014       Permalink

REQUIRED READING – AT 10:08 A.M. ET:   Dan Balz, the excellent political reporter for the Washington Post, has written an analysis of Republican prospects in the 2016 presidential election.  It is not pleasant reading, but it's important.  And I agree...this will be an uphill fight requiring the best candidate and superb, modern tactics.  From WaPo:

A recent conversation with a veteran of GOP presidential campaigns raised this question: Which, if any, of the recent battleground states are likely to become more Republican by 2016? The consensus: very few.

That reality highlights one problem Republicans face as they seek to regain the White House after six years under President Obama. Lots of factors affect elections: the quality of the candidates, the state of the economy, the effectiveness of the campaigns. But in a country whose demographics continue to change, Republicans will begin this campaign with one significant disadvantage.

Over the past three decades, the political leanings of many states have shifted dramatically. What once was a sizable Republican advantage in the electoral college has become a decided Democratic advantage.

One way to look at this is by comparing two overlapping 20-year periods. In the first, 1980 through 2000, Republicans won four of six presidential elections. In the second, 1992 through 2012, Democrats won four of six.

COMMENT:  Please read the whole thing.  It's worth it.  A Republican candidate can win in 2016 under the right conditions, but one of those conditions is to abandon the self-defeating habit of the Republican Party in giving up whole sections of the population without a fight.  I want every vote.  I want to win.  I don't think there's any honor in "losing well."  We are talking about the future of our country.

January 20, 2014       Permalink

THE AMATEUR PRESIDENT – AT 9:33 A.M. ET:   When it comes to national security, Mr. Obama's view of reality should send us all to the nearest bunker.  Some of his ideas are truly bizarre, and entirely contemptuous of history.  From a site we haven't noted before, Truth Revolt: 

In his New Yorker interview published over the weekend, President Obama stated that current Al Qaeda was “jayvee” – and said that his analogy was often used around the White House. “The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” Obama said. He then added, “I think there is a distinction between the capacity and reach of a bin Laden and a network that is actively planning major terrorist plots against the homeland versus jihadists who are engaged in various local power struggles and disputes, often sectarian.”

Attempting to respond to the growing power of Al Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula, including the takeover of the Iraqi city of Fallujah, Obama said that Al Qaeda’s activities didn’t always threaten American interests: “how we think about terrorism has to be defined and specific enough that it doesn’t lead us to think that any horrible actions that take place around the world that are motivated in part by an extremist Islamic ideology are a direct threat to us or something that we have to wade into.”

Last week this was reported on CNN:

(CNN) -- From around Aleppo in western Syria to small areas of Falluja in central Iraq, al Qaeda now controls territory that stretches more than 400 miles across the heart of the Middle East, according to English and Arab language news accounts as well as accounts on jihadist websites.

Indeed, al Qaeda appears to control more territory in the Arab world than it has done at any time in its history.

The focus of al Qaeda's leaders has always been regime change in the Arab world in order to install Taliban-style regimes. Al Qaeda's leader Ayman al-Zawahiri acknowledged as much in his 2001 autobiography, "Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet," when he explained that the most important strategic goal of al Qaeda was to seize control of a state, or part of a state, somewhere in the Muslim world, explaining that, "without achieving this goal our actions will mean nothing."

Now al-Zawahiri is closer to his goal than he has ever been. On Friday al-Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq seized control of parts of the city of Falluja and parts of the city of Ramadi, both of which are located in Iraq's restive Anbar Province.

COMMENT:  Now, which one do you believe?

January 20, 2014       Permalink

IRAN AGREEMENT IMPLEMENTED, WE HOPE – AT 9:03 A.M. ET:  The interim agreement with Iran on its nuclear program has gone into effect, with deep apprehension over whether Tehran will actually live up to its part of the bargain.  From Fox:

The United Nations nuclear watchdog reported Monday that Iran had halted its most sensitive uranium enrichment work as part of an interim deal struck with six world powers last November.

A report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Monday that Iran had halted its 20 percent uranium enrichment, which is just steps away from bomb-making capability, and begun diluting its stockpile of uranium enriched to that level.

This is what we see.  But a UN official said just last week that there's much that the UN isn't seeing.

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf confirmed that the IAEA report had been received by officials from the U.S., the European Union, and the parties to last year's P5+1 talks in Geneva, Switzerland.

"[We] are now studying this report [and] will have further public comment after all parties have had the opportunity to review the report," Harf said in a statement.

Earlier Monday, Iranian state TV reported that workers had cut the link feeding cascades enriching uranium at its facilities at Natanz and Fordo. The state TV report also claimed that inspectors from the IAEA were present to observe the procedure.

Under the six-month agreement reached by Iran, the U.S., Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China on Nov. 24, confirmation from the IAEA that Iran has curbed its enrichment would clear the way for the partial suspension of U.S. and EU sanctions. That in turn would allow Iran to resume some key exports, including petrochemicals. Iran would also be able to resume trading in gold, other precious metals, and automotive parts.

COMMENT:  I have absolutely no faith in the integrity of the Tehran regime.  But I have great respect for the skill of its diplomats.  I think they will be able to convince those who want to be convinced that they're tearing down their nuclear-weapons program, all the time denying that they ever wanted the bomb.  But what they're doing secretly may well be another story. 

The name of the game here is money.  Western companies are lining up in Tehran to do business, with Germany particularly eager.  And Iran, whose regime murders people in the streets, is actually increasing its influence in the UN.  All the while, President Obama sits on the sidelines, showing no particular interest in the danger.

January 20, 2014       Permalink

SOCHI – AT 8:38 A.M. ET:  The Sochi Olympics are two and a half weeks away.  You can simply sense, by reading what comes across the internet, the growing concern among political and security officials in the United States, about a terrorist attack.  From Fox:

Top Capitol Hill lawmakers on Sunday expressed concerns about terror attacks at the upcoming Olympic games in Sochi, Russia, amid nearby terror attacks and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assurances that his country will “do whatever it takes” to protect athletes and visitors.

“The threats are real,” Texas GOP Rep. Mike McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told ABC’s “This Week.”

McCaul is among those who think an attack during the games next month will most likely occur outside of the Olympic city and that terrorists will go after “soft targets” such as roads and transportation systems.

McCaul, who is in Moscow this weekend, declined to directly answer the question of whether he would tell Americans they would be safe to travel to the games, saying only that he will “do everything I can” to make sure the games are safe for everybody, including the estimated 15,000 Americans who will attend.

His comments were preceded on the show by an interview with Putin, who said the job of the Olympic host is to provide security and “we will do whatever it takes.”

The concerns follow a string of threats and apparent terror attacks in Russia.

On Sunday, in a new video that was posted on the website of the Chechen militant group Vilayat Dagestan, two militants vowed that tourists and Russians attending the games would not be safe.

In the video, the Russian-speaking men sitting in front of black banners with Arabic verses warn Putin that if the games are held, "we will give you a present for the innocent Muslim blood being spilled all around the world."

They add that "for the tourists who come there will be a present, too."

COMMENT:  We hope it's bluster, but the terror groups operating within Russia, and in bordering regions, have a deadly track record. 

Sochi was a terrible choice for the Olympics.  However, the International Olympic Committee has never been a bastion of purity or idealism.  

As the games approach, there'll be more and more stories about security. 

January 20,  2014     Permalink