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SECOND SUBSCRIPTION DRIVE – 2014 – LAST TWO DAYS

The first two weeks of our new subscription drive went quite well, the first better than the second.   Thank you to new subscribers and to our old reliables.  But more is needed. We'd like to end this drive strongly.  Please help keep Urgent Agenda running by subscribing or donating.

We're in the last week of our second subscription drive of 2014.  This is a critical year for Urgent Agenda – perhaps the most important midterm election year in America's recent history.  But maintaining our daily, day and night, coverage of this year is costly.  It is subscribers and donators who keep us going.

Like all political sites, we face increasing competition each week as more bloggers join the internet.  As a site in our sixth year, we face the reality that some subscribers will drop out, and some will pass.  We've had several sad moments in the last few months.  Our retention rate is still spectacularly high, but there will still be a certain amount of slippage.

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JULY 12,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:58 P.M. ET: 

MORE EMBARRASSMENT – From wattsupwiththat.com:  "Antarctica continues to defy the global warming script, with a report from Meteo France, that June this year was the coldest Antarctic June ever recorded, at the French Antarctic Dumont d’Urville Station.  According to the press release, during June this year, the average temperature was -22.4c (-8.3F), 6.6c (11.9F) lower than normal. This is the coldest June ever recorded at the station, and almost the coldest monthly average ever – only September 1953 was colder, with a recorded average temperature of -23.5c (-10.3F).  June this year also broke the June daily minimum temperature record, with a new record low of -34.9c (-30.8F)."  The global warmers are investigating whether the French use a different numbers system.

FANATIC – From BBC – "Climate change is 'the biggest crisis our civilisation faces,' says former US Vice President Al Gore.  Mr Gore sat down with the BBC's Jon Donnison in Australia, where his organisation, The Climate Reality Project, was holding training sessions to educate future leaders in the fight against climate change.  Australia's conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott is viewed by many as a climate change sceptic and once described the science behind human-induced global warming as 'absolute crap.'"  No matter what developments continue to show, Gore pushes the party line.  This is now a religion, and enormous damage can result.  I fear that the "climate change" religionists will distort the face of science.  I am neither a denier nor a believer, but I am certainly a skeptic.  There are too many problems with the "science," too many predictions that have fallen apart.  But the demands increase for huge checks to be written.

SIGN OF THE TIMES – From Fox:  "New York police arrested two men for operating two small drones over the George Washington Bridge that nearly took out a police chopper on Monday.  The Aviation Unit helicopter was on patrol around 12:15 a.m. when it spotted one of the unmanned aircraft near the bridge. The drone continued to circle the bridge, forcing the chopper to swerve to avoid it.  Police said the drones, which were operated by remote control, came within 800 feet of the police chopper."   Well, it's a new day.  But I'd hate to see some great kids who build a remote-controlled model plane fall into the sights of the law. 

July 12, 2014     Permalink

THE BABE – AT 11:21 A.M. ET:  We missed this, but yesterday was the 100th anniversary of Babe Ruth's debut in major-league baseball.  From Fox: 

George Herman “Babe” Ruth played his first Major League Baseball game 100 years ago Friday, marking the beginning of a legendary career and legacy that lasted decades.

One hundred years after Ruth took to the Fenway Park mound and tossed seven innings against the Cleveland Naps, he is still known to any Pee Wee league player trying to break in a glove today as simply, "The Babe."

Ruth, who was 19 and, according to one teammate, looked like a "big overgrown pea" at the start of the game, went on to play for 22 years, 15 of those with the New York Yankees. He amassed 714 home runs and 1,330 strikeouts.

He jokingly rationalized the strike percentage by saying, "Every strike brings me closer to the next home run."

One of his most memorable home runs came during the 1932 World Series at Chicago's Wrigley Field, when he appeared to point to the outfield stands to call his shot.

Ed Sherman, the author of "Babe Ruth's Called Shot: The Myth and Mystery of Baseball's Greatest Home Run," writes about whether Ruth was indeed predicting a homer, or pointing at players in the Cubs dugout who were apparently yelling things at him.

"Part of the beauty of the whole story is that we'll never have a definitive answer," Sherman told The Chicago Tribune. "But if you look at the video, there's something there. Was he pointing to center? Did he say, 'I'm going to hit a home run here and now'? I can tell you one thing: Ruth was challenged, and he responded to the challenge, and the World Series effectively ended right there. It just took the life out of the Cubs. They were done."

Ruth was known for his larger-than-life personality.

Jim Reisler, the author of "The Best Game Ever," wrote in The New York Times that Ruth could visit a "ballpark, a brothel and an orphanage in a single day," and pointed out that when he met President Warren Harding, he said, "Hot as hell, ain’t it Prez?"

Ruth did not resemble today's athletes who look like they live at the gym and sustain themselves on protein shakes. He looked like the affable uncle who just got up off the couch, but could hit the cover off a fastball.

COMMENT:  Ah yes, a real person.  How rare.  When, one season, he was paid $75,000, he was asked by a reporter how he could justify a salary higher than that of the president of the United States.  His answer:  "I had a better year than he did."

I'm old enough to remember the day in 1948 when Babe Ruth died.  We were sitting on the porch of our tiny house in Queens, New York, when the news came by radio.  A pall was cast over all of New York for days.  He'd only been 53.  Babe Ruth was, in our minds, larger than life, in part because we never saw him on a 12-inch television screen. 

In one of my assignments at The New York Times I had a desk right next to Sam Falk, the legendary Times photographer, who had covered Ruth extensively.  He confirmed the description in the story above.  Ruth was a bad boy, a legendary party animal, who'd party late into the night, despite an important game the next day.  He wasn't all that kind to adults, but he did in fact love kids.  He also loved women, a bit too much.  His womanizing caused his first wife to leave him, but he did hold on to his second, Claire, who died in 1976. 

Ruth had two adopted children – Dorothy, who died in 1989, and Julia, who is 97, and threw out the first ball this year at Wrigley Field in Chicago, in a game commemorating Babe's 1932 "called shot." 

July 12, 2014       Permalink

THIS CANNOT BE TRUE, AND MUST BE SUPPRESSED! – AT 10:52 A.M. ET:   Stories like this are dangerous to the accepted Obaman view.  Do your part!  Ridicule them.  Disparage them.  This is not happening.  From The Australian: 

If you are lucky enough to be reading this from the comfort of your blankets, it might be best to stay there, as Brisbane has hit its coldest temperatures in 103 years.

Not since July 28 1911 has Brisbane felt this cold, getting down to a brisk 2.6C at 6.41am.

That's 37 degrees Fahrenheit.

At 7am, it inched up to 3.3C.

Matt Bass, meteorologist from BOM, said the region was well below our average temperatures.

“If it felt cold, that’s because it was, breaking that record is pretty phenomenal for Brisbane,” Bass said.

“The average for this time of year is 12C (54F), so Brisbane was about 9C below average, it is pretty impressive really, to have the coldest morning in 103 years is a big record.”

The coldest place across the state was Oakey which got down to -6.1C (21F), which was the coldest temperature for the town since 2011.

COMMENT:  Al Gore, already reeling from reports that we're about to have a cold snap in parts of the United States, went into deep hysteria.  He was last seen running around Aspen shouting, "Lies, all lies!"

It seems to me, though, that so many of the predictions made by the global-warming religionists never seem to come true.  There are rushed explanations and justifications by "scientists," who assure us that anyone who disagrees with "climate science" must be a "flat Earther." 

What we need, as I have advocated many times, is a Challenger-type commission to investigate global warming and tell us what we know, what we don't know, and what we must know to justify the huge expenditures that the global warmers and Barack "it's really hot outside" Obama are demanding.

July 12, 2014       Permalink

DISGRACE – AT 10:25 A.M. ET:  Reader Jacqueline Reckseit alerts us to the latest of the Obama administration's parade of outrages, the longest parade in town.   From Breitbart: 

MCALLEN, Texas—Illegal aliens are being allowed to fly on commercial airliners without valid identification, according to the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC). “The aliens who are getting released on their own recognizance are being allowed to board and travel commercial airliners by simply showing their Notice to Appear forms,” NBPC’s Local 2455 Spokesman, Hector Garza, told Breitbart Texas.

“This is not the CBP [Customs and Border Protection] or another federal agency renting or leasing an aircraft, these are the same planes that the American public uses for domestic travel,” said Garza. “This just adds insult to injury. Not only are we releasing unknown illegal aliens onto American streets, but we are allowing them to travel commercially using paperwork that could easily be reproduced or manipulated on any home computer. The Notice to Appear form has no photo, anyone can make one and manipulate one. They do not have any security features, no watermark, nothing. They are simply printed on standard copy paper based on the information the illegal alien says is the truth.”

Spokesman Garza continued, “We do not know who these people are, we often have to solely rely on who they say they are, where they say they came from, and the history they say they have. We know nothing about most of them, ICE releases them into the American public, and now they are boarding aircraft at will with a simple paper document that anyone can easily alter or reproduce themselves.”

COMMENT:  In other words, security for these essentially unknown individuals is lower than for an American grandmother, who couldn't get on an airliner without voter i.d.  How does it feel to be a second-class citizen in your own country?

It's been widely reported that, among the undocumented aliens coming across our southern border, are some from the Mideast.  How blind are we?

July 12,  2014     Permalink

JULY 11,  2014

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

MARCO IN? – Marco Rubio, who went through a tough patch over some stands on immigration that other Republicans didn't like, seems to be edging back into presidential contention.  From The Hill;  "Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) believes he can beat Hillary Clinton in the race for the 2016 presidency. 'Multiple people can beat her. Hillary Clinton is not unbeatable,' the GOP presidential hopeful told radio host Hugh Hewitt in an interview Friday.  When asked whether he's concerned about Clinton's extensive foreign policy background if he or another Republican candidate ran against her, Rubio quickly slammed the potential Democratic frontrunner.  'I'd ask her: You were the secretary of State during the first four years of the Obama administration, name one significant foreign policy achievement, now or after you left?,' he said."

WAR ON WOMEN? – Apparently, American women do indeed have the capacity to think for themselves, without the guidance of Nancy Pelosi.  From Breitbart:  "A new Economist/YouGov poll shows that the mainstream media and Democrats are way out of step with the recent Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision protecting the First Amendment religious rights of people, even after they commit the sin of opening a business.  Though we have been assured the Court's decision is a winning War on Women issue for Democrats just four months out from the midterm elections, the poll shows that in reality women are split on the issue, with only 46% disapproving of the Court decision, while 43% approve.  Hot Air's Ed Morrissey looked deeper at the poll's crosstabs and found that the subset of women who feel strongly about the issue are just as evenly split, 32%/34%.  Apparently, a full court media press loaded with all kinds of misinformation isn't able to convince even 50% of women that their rights are being violated if the government can't force someone to buy them something."

CAMPAIGN ISSUE, READY MADE – From the Washington Free Beacon:  "The Clinton Foundation and the terror group Hamas share a key donor: The government of Qatar, a leading backer of terror groups that has emerged in recent years as Hamas’s chief financial lifeline.  Qatar, which has been designated by the State Department as a 'significant terrorist financing risk,' has pledged more than $400 million to Hamas since 2012 and has long harbored one of the terror group’s senior leaders, Khaled Mashaal.  At the same time, Qatar has sought to curry favor with elite Westerners, donating between $1-million and $5-million through 2013 to the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.  The foundation has been dogged by ethical questions over its willingness to accept money from questionable sources, including authoritarian regimes such as Kuwait and Oman."  Get those talking points ready.  How does Hill explain this?

GETTING CLOSER TO THE TRUTH – From the Washington Free Beacon:  "A second federal judge Friday ordered the Internal Revenue Service to explain under oath how the agency lost two years of emails from former IRS official Lois Lerner.  At a hearing for a lawsuit brought against the IRS by the conservative group True the Vote, U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton told government lawyers on Friday he wants an affidavit explaining how the emails were lost.  The IRS said Lerner’s computer suffered a crash in 2011 that destroyed many email records. Subsequent attempts to recover the emails failed, according to the agency.  True the Vote brought its suit against the IRS after being subjected to what it claims was politically motivated scrutiny from the agency, as well as the FBI."  We must demand a special prosecutor. 

July 11, 2014       Permalink

RESISTING THE DEMIGOD – AT 9:37 A.M. ET:  Was a time when no respectable Democrat would take on President Obama.  Obama was, after all, in a class above us all.  With the border crisis, those days are over.  Dems are worried about their own futures, and Obama is volunteering for the high office of lame duck.  From The Hill: 

A bipartisan 2008 bill intended to crack down on child trafficking has become a flashpoint in the debate over an emergency spending bill to address the immigration crisis in Texas.

President Obama has asked for $3.7 billion and increased authority to deal with 57,000 unaccompanied minors from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador who have streamed across the border illegally. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson warned Thursday the number could reach 90,000 by the end of September.

Unlike illegal immigrants from Mexico, these minors are guaranteed a court date by the trafficking law. They are often released to relatives to wait out their pending appeal, a process that results in only 1,800 per year being deported to their countries of origin.

Obama has asked Congress to amend the 2008 William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act to let him send them home more quickly but has met with stiff resistance from senior Senate Democrats.

Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, informed Obama of his concerns in a recent phone call.

“I want to make sure that the children who are going through this have proper advocacy and representation,” he said.

Durbin said he would not support changing the law unless the unaccompanied minors are guaranteed proper representation. He also wants U.S. officials to ensure there are social infrastructures that can take care of them in their home countries.

“He called and we talked about the same thing,” Durbin said of his conversation with the president. “I told him I’m concerned about what’s going to happen to these kids. God forbid some of these children go right back in the hands of murderers and rapists.”

The surge of minors has come primarily from three Central American countries plagued by violence and gang activity.

COMMENT:  Obama is advocating an accelerated repatriation schedule to save himself politically.  If he was all that concerned, he would have appeared at the border yesterday when he was in Texas. 

Durbin is playing to his party's left, which really has no problem with the flooding of children across the border. 

One thing is clear, though, and that is that blindly following Obama is a thing of the past.  He's seen as a weak president with rapidly diminishing popularity.

July 11, 2014       Permalink

WATCH RICK – AT 9:16 A.M. ET:   No doubt Texas Gov. Rick Perry would like to be president.  He tried once, in 2012, but did poorly in debates and in the primaries.  However, he's leaving the governor's mansion at the end of this year, and will have plenty of time to practice on the campaign trail should he decide to make another run.  The border crisis has given him an opportunity for exposure, and he's taking it.  From London's Daily Mail: 

Texas Governor Rick Perry toured the U.S.-Mexico border today without President Barack Obama, who ultimately decided to return to Washington, D.C. this afternoon after making a pit stop for BBQ in Austin.

Perry's office says he took a boat ride down the Rio Grande river and a chopper tour of the Rio Grande Valley with the Texas Department of Public Safety this afternoon.

Meanwhile, President Obama spoke at a Democratic Party fundraiser, met with someone who wrote him a letter and gave remarks on the economy before stopping by Franklin Barbeque, where he dropped more than $300 on food for his staff and people he cut in line.

Perry repeatedly invited the president to visit the border with him, including during a face-to-face meeting yesterday, but the White House declined, saying the updates Obama was receiving from administration officials who had been down there were good enough.

'The first thing I asked him when I got on to Air Force One,' Perry told Fox News' Sean Hannity last night after his meeting with Obama, is if he would come to the border.

'I said Mr. President, I said,' "I really want you to come and see this cause this is important for you to absorb as a father, but more importantly as the president of the United States to see the humanitarian crisis and to also understand how you can move the border patrol forward, away from the 45 miles or so back they are today to be right on the border to see what the Department of Public Safety is doing with our gun boats in the river to stop the criminal activity that's going on.

'That's what the president needs to see,' Perry continued. 'He needs to understand instinctively and intuitively and with his own two eyes what’s going on on the border.'

Perry said Obama was only 311 miles from border town McAllen, Texas, which doesn't take long to get to in a plane.

'Air Force One's a pretty fast ride,' he said.

COMMENT:  Score one for Rick.  He handled the situation perfectly.  He's Mr. Manager and the president is Mr. Campaigner.  The contrast could not have been greater. 

If Rick continues this way, he might be back in the game.

July 11, 2014       Permalink 

NEW HAMPSHIRE OPINION – AT 8:47 A.M. ET:  New Hampshire plays an outsized role in American politics because it is the site of the first presidential primary.  So there's a lot of polling done in New Hampshire.  The latest survey shows Hillary Clinton slipping and no one in particular leading in the GOP race...unless...  From The Politico: 

Hillary Clinton still leads the Democratic field in the race for 2016, but her advantage might be slipping in New Hampshire, according to a new poll.

Fifty-nine percent of 257 likely Democratic voters in the state say they would vote for the former secretary of state in the presidential primary, per the latest WMUR Granite State poll released Thursday. While Clinton still holds a 45-point advantage on Vice President Joe Biden, the results mark a drop of six percentage points in the Granite State since April and an overall drop of 15 points in the last six months.

No doubt Hillary has been hurt by her own gaffes.  And there's a distinct lack of enthusiasm for her among the leftist base of the party.  But she's still way ahead, with Joe Biden not a realistic possibility because of age, and Elizabeth Warren at only 8 percent.  The question, of course, is whether she'll run at all, especially if she has another health setback.  The Democratic bench is very weak.  Hillary is the only candidate who looks like a serious contender right now.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie leads a crowded GOP field among 251 likely primary voters with just 19 percent. But voters indicated that if Mitt Romney were to jump in the race, he would lead the field by a significant margin. Romney grabbed 39 percent of the hypothetical vote, leading the runners-up Christie and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, by 32 percentage points.

COMMENT:  There's increasing buzz about Romney getting into the race.  He would have instant name recognition, but he also ran a mediocre race in 2012.  His main argument is that he's an experienced manager, and we need one.  But does he have the excitement factor behind him?  I'm doubtful.  I can't see a "wanting" of Romney.

July 11, 2014       Permalink

WE'RE JUST PRESENTING FACTS – AT 8:31 A.M. ET:  I hope it isn't racist to report this.  I don't think it is.  The president's approval ratings among religious groups presents a fascinating picture of where his support lies.  You can draw your own conclusions.  From The Politico: 

President Barack Obama’s approval rating is higher among Muslims than any other religious group, a new poll says.

According to a Gallup poll released Friday that tracked responses for the first six months of 2014, 72 percent of Muslims said they approve of the president, compared with just 20 percent who disapprove.

Mormons were the least approving religious group, with 18 percent of Mormons approving and 78 percent disapproving of the president. Mormons in the past have ranked as the most conservative major religious group in the U.S.

The survey underscores a religious divide when it comes to presidential approval — Obama is more popular among non-Christians and less popular among Christians.

Those who classify as “Other non-Christian” gave the president a 59 percent approval rating, while Jewish Americans gave Obama a 55 percent approval rating and atheists or those who subscribe to no religion have a 54 percent approval rating.

Catholics, on the other hand, have only a 44 percent approval rating of Obama, compared with 51 percent disapproval. Protestants and other Christians are more critical, with 37 percent approving and 58 percent disapproving.

Friday’s findings are in line with Gallup results on religious groups’ approval ratings of Obama since the beginning of his presidency — the relative rank of the groups have not changed in the six years Obama has been in office. The president’s approval rating in every group for the past six months has dropped 5-7 points from the average of his entire presidency.

COMMENT:  And yet, despite these bizarre numbers, Obama was elected.  Go figure.  The White House can't be happy with these lopsided results.   Most American voters clearly see in Obama a kind of cultural distance.   That represents a major failure on his part, or maybe it's just the truth.

July 11,  2014     Permalink