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JUNE 15,  2014

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

WHAT, AGAIN? – Hillary Clinton is really falling apart.  In a new interview she uttered the following nonsense:  "Whoever runs has to recognize that the American political system is probably the most difficult, even brutal, in the world.”  Really?  As Washington Post reporter Ed O'Keefe tweeted in response, "Would Indira Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto agree?"  Both female leaders were, of course, murdered.  We have to wonder whether there really is something not right with Hillary.  It's a gaffe a day.

SHADES OF VIETNAM, 1975 – From Fox:  "The Obama administration said Sunday the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad will remain open amid the growing sectarian violence in Iraq but will increase security and that some embassy staff will be temporarily evacuated.  State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the staff will be moved to U.S. Consulate Generals posts in Basra and Erbil and to the Iraq Support Unit in Amman, Jordan.  The embassy is within the Baghdad's Green Zone. It has about 5,000 personnel, making it the largest U.S. diplomatic post in the world."  It's also supposed to be the most secure.  Yeah, right.

CNN RAPPED ON BIAS...BY SHAREHOLDERS – From Breitbart:  "Time Warner Chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes was blasted for CNN's left-wing bias at Time Warner's annual shareholders meeting Friday. The Hollywood Reporter's Paul Bond reports that Bewkes was confronted by shareholder Justin Danhof of the Free Enterprise Project of the National Center for Public Policy Research, with a litany of complaints about CNN's sharp turn to the left under Jeff Zucker.  Danhof's comments were met with applause from other shareholder."  The bias, and perception of bias, are some of the most important factors in CNN's ratings doldrums.  But the people running the cable network refuse to see.

June 15, 2014       Permalink

STUNNING – AT 11:40 A.M. ET:  That's the word for Obama's reckless commencement address at the University of California, Irvine, in which he once again demonstrated his contempt for his country.  In this case he mocked and ridiculed anyone who doesn't believe in the religion of global warming.  Mark Sappenfield, in the Christian Science Monitor, wonders how smart this is: 

Obama said some members of Congress duck the question of human-induced climate change, otherwise they'd "be run out of town by a radical fringe that thinks climate science is a liberal plot."

Let's put aside for a moment the fact that the overwhelming weight of scientific research and analysis backs Obama on climate change. The fact is that 43 percent of Americans don't agree, and another 9 percent aren't sure, according to a new Bloomberg poll. This statement characterizes the belief of that 43 percent: "I think scientists manipulate their findings for political reasons."

Forty-three percent is a pretty big fringe.

And I'd question the assertion that "...the overwhelming weight of scientific research and analysis backs Obama on climate change."  There actually are many shades of opinion on specific aspects of the issue, and science isn't about consensus anyway.  It's about proof and observation.  In addition, many of the skeptics are heavy hitters in scientific fields.

Further...

...the comment brings back shades of 2008, when candidate Obama was speaking at a fundraiser in San Francisco. Addressing the resentment in rust belt Pennsylvania towns, Obama said: "It's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Clearly, Obama is not a president for the right. But comments like these – and the ones made Saturday – raise the question of how well he understands the right, if at all.

COMMENT:  I doubt if he cares.  Obama's world exists between his ears.  He's remarkably uncurious.  In his second term we're beginning to see the Obama we feared – ideological, dogmatic, yet strangely uninformed and undisciplined.  Great shape we're in.

June 15, 2014        Permalink

MITT?  REALLY? – AT 10:48 A.M. ET:   It may seem odd, but there's actually a bit of a boomlet for Mitt Romney for the 2016 GOP nomination.

The reason:   There is no obvious favorite for the nomination, and Romney retains a certain amount of stature within the party.  He's "presidential."  Of course, he also got beaten by Barack Obama, but the Republican Party has always been big on second chances.  From CBS: 

Far from being excommunicated by Republicans after his loss to President Obama, 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is enjoying a brand resurgence of late, drawing several potential 2016 candidates to his "ideas summit" this weekend in Utah and even earning some 2016 speculation himself.

Meanwhile, some other potential candidates are in Iowa for the state Republican Party's convention there Saturday. And not to be left out, Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., was in California Friday to raise money for the Republican gubernatorial candidate there and participate in a Facebook chat.

It all adds up to a busy weekend for the early 2016 Republican presidential sweepstakes.

In Utah, Romney has billed his summit as an opportunity for a new generation of conservative thinkers and political leaders to strategize about the best path forward for the party and the country. No fewer than six potential 2016 GOP candidates made the trek to the Park City, including Christie, Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, Gov. Susana Martinez, R-Ohio, former Gov. Mike Huckabee, R-Ark., and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who was Romney's running mate in 2012.

Romney once worried he'd be branded a "loser for life" by his party if he failed to unseat the president, but it hasn't quite worked out that way. Despite the crowd of up-and-comers at his summit, many people there were more abuzz about the possibility that Romney himself could jump into the race in 2016.

Rommey "is the only person that can fill the stage," said MSNBC host and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough at a private dinner on the summit's opening night, according to The Washington Post.

"He would be a giant in a field of midgets," added Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat who's weighing a 2016 bid himself.

COMMENT:  Look, you never know.  I'd love to see a potential polling matchup between Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney.  Maybe the result will surprise us.

Both Romney and Hillary Clinton were born in 1947. 

June 15, 2014        Permalink

HILLARY NOT SIZZLING – AT 10:28 A.M. ET:  A new poll out confirms what we've begun to feel, that Hillary Clinton's political position inside her own party is deteriorating.  She's still well ahead, but traffic is heading in the opposite direction.  From CNN:

Washington (CNN) - Most Democrats say they'd support Hillary Clinton if she wins their party's nomination, but a new national survey indicates only a minority are excited about that prospect.

The CNN/ORC International poll released Sunday also indicates the race for the GOP nomination remains a wide open contest with no obvious frontrunner among the potential Republican White House hopefuls.

According to the survey, 63% of Democrats and independents who lean toward the party said they'd most likely support Clinton as the nominee.

That's virtually unchanged from CNN's May poll, but down from the seven in 10 Democrats who in February said that they'd back the former secretary of state, senator and first lady.

Clinton has been the overwhelming frontrunner for the nomination in just about every national and state poll conducted over the past 18 months.

Twenty-percent of those questioned said they'd support a more conservative Democrat for the nomination, with 11% saying they'd back a more liberal candidate.

"Clinton remains the prohibitive frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, but there are signs that rank-and-file Democrats may be willing to consider other candidates," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

Forty-one percent of Democrats questioned said they'd be enthusiastic if Clinton wins the nomination, with 42% saying they'd be satisfied. One in 10 said they'd be dissatisfied, and 5% said they'd be upset.

"There are big differences between liberal and moderate Democrats that indicate that a primary challenger who runs to the right of Clinton may get more traction than a progressive challenger would," adds Holland.

"Fifty percent of liberal Democrats say they would be enthusiastic about Clinton winning the nomination, but only 36% of moderate Democrats feel the same way.

COMMENT:  Will moderate Democrats finally realize that they've been had by the Obama wing?  I hope so.  Maybe the party can be moved back to sane territory.  But the left wing is powerful, vicious, and well financed.

The Democratic nominating race now needs some real candidates.  It may not be in the bag for Hillary, if she runs at all.

June 15,  2014     Permalink

JUNE 14,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:49 P.M. ET: 

OUTRAGEOUS – Why do we have to read this in a London paper, the Daily Mail?  "Border Patrol agents overwhelmed by a recent influx of immigrant children crossing the border illegally have been knowingly letting gang members enter the country.   Art Del Cueto, president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 2544 in Tucson, Arizona told the National Review that officers who recognize gang tattoos on the minors are supposed to treat them like everyone else.   For the most part, that means letting these unaccompanied children be reunited with their parents or other relatives already living in the United States.
'It’s upsetting that a lot of them are 16 or 17 years old and a lot of them are not going to face deportation,' Cueto said."  And what will happen when an American family is brutalized by gang members?  We'll be told by the Obamans that the gang bangers are just victims of big business.

WHAT A SHOCKING REQUEST – It is just amazing what these state legislatures ask of public education these days.  Why, it's just like HITLER!   Or BUSH!  From Fox:  "The South Carolina legislature has rankled liberal groups after requiring that a pair of public schools use state funds to teach the U.S. Constitution and other founding documents -- on the heels of a budget fight over gay-themed books in the curriculum.  State House lawmakers previously had cut funds from two public universities in retaliation for required-reading material containing homosexual themes. A revised budget passed by both the House and the Senate earlier this month, though, restored the money -- but dictated that exact amount be spent 'for instruction in the provisions and principles of the United States Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Federalist Papers, including the study of and devotion to American institutions and ideals.'"  It's so 1700s.  All those documents written before Microsoft Word.  How good could they be?

OUR LEADER LEADS!  HE LEADS! – From The Hill:  "President Obama laid out a billion-dollar climate change challenge on Saturday, urging the nation to help combat the effects of natural disasters.  'Can you imagine a more worthy goal, a more worthy legacy, than protecting the world we leave to our children,' the president said as he delivered the commencement address at the University of California, Irvine.  'U.S. action is critical on climate change, as the world is watching and will follow the U.S.’s lead,' he said. 'This is a fight America must lead.'  Obama announced a $1 billion fund for towns and cities recovering from disasters that would 'help communities prepare for the impacts of climate change and build more resilient infrastructure across the country.'"  Isn't that what we already do?  We already have emergency funds.  They're released to towns, cities and states after every disaster.  Someone tell Obama. 

June 14, 2014       Permalink

THE BORDER DISGRACE – AT 10:14 A.M. ET:  We seem almost unaware of the horror story taking place on American's southern border right now.  After all, there are so many other crises going on, so many other Obama failures.

But thousands of kids are coming across our border.  Nothing is really being done to stop the flow.  Maybe Obama sees these people as potential Democrats.  IBD has a great piece on the tragedy, and the scandal: 

As an unprecedented wave of undocumented children from Central America spills over our Texas border, a veteran lawmen's organization has declared it an "orchestrated" event. If so, who benefits?

To date, there hasn't been a word from the White House or its agencies urging families in Honduras, Guatemala or El Salvador not to send their children alone through Mexico's merciless badlands infested with cartel criminals to reach the U.S. There's some Twitter activity and little else.

But the newspapers and television stations throughout Central America are falsely reporting that amnesty will be theirs if they can just make it through the Mexican obstacle course — and that the time to do it is now.

It doesn't matter that these children are likely to succumb to desert heat, be snatched by vicious human traffickers, forced into prostitution, slavery or the drug trade, or simply murdered as has already happened to thousands, as the white crosses at the border can attest.

Not since the radio broadcasts that triggered Rwanda's Tutsi massacres in 1994 has such false information been spread unchecked by authorities who might be able with just their words to make a difference.

U.S. embassy websites still have no warnings to Central Americans about not sending children north, and until recently the U.S. embassy in Guatemala's website prominently featured links to President Obama's campaign website with his speech declaring to Guatemalans that "our immigration system is broken."

So no wonder the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers, after 50,000 apprehensions of border crossers in south Texas, declared this week that "certainly we are not gullible enough to believe that thousands of unaccompanied minor Central American children came to America without the encouragement, aid and assistance of the United States government."

COMMENT:  Obama promised to "fundamentally change" America, and he's doing it.  Lawbreaking means nothing to this man.  The House probably has just cause to impeach him, but the Senate will never convict, and the word "racism" will be heard every few seconds. 

Did anyone ever think it would come to this?  Where children in the thousands cross our border – those who survive – and are being taken care of at American military bases?  The first thing Eric Holder did when this started was to rush legal assistance.

A few National Guard divisions could probably be very effective in stopping this tragedy, but Obama will never activate them.  We all know he'll give this new flood of illegal immigrants amnesty, and they will potentially vote accordingly. 

We must, of course, feel for the children, and the cynical way they're being used.  Yes, of course we'll take care of them.  Our religious ethic demands it.  But the deterioration of our society under Obama just sickens me.  We don't do conspiracy theories here, as our readers know, but I really am starting to wonder where Obama's loyalties really lie.

June 14, 2014       Permalink

HILLARY CRISIS? – AT 9:46 A.M. ET:  It's just stunning – the degree to which Hillary Clinton has flopped.  She's declining in popularity polls, and her public appearances are terrible, bordering on bizarre.  Normally friendly journalists are growing publicly skeptical.  This woman is not ready for a presidential campaign.  John Hinderaker, at Powerline, gives a great take on the great decline. 

The Democrats have a Hillary Clinton problem. She is, at the moment, their only plausible presidential contender for 2016. The clownish Joe Biden apparently is her chief rival, and when pressed to identify a possible new face, the only one the Dems can come up with is the Governor of Maryland, Martin O’Malley, whom hardly any voters have heard of. So the party has a great deal riding on Hillary’s supposedly powerhouse candidacy.

The problem is that Hillary is a pretty lousy candidate. She got elected to the Senate by cheating, essentially: she ran in New York, a state where she did not live, while she was residing in the White House as First Lady. That was her big win. In 2008, she supposedly was the candidate of destiny, but it turned out that she couldn’t beat the lightly-qualified Barack Obama, who, until well into the process, was generally thought to be running for the vice-presidential slot on the ticket.

Since Hillary launched her 2016 campaign with a book tour, we have been reminded once again of what a tin-eared candidate she is. Apparently sensitive about the Clintons’ vast, and largely ill-gotten, wealth, and remembering how her own party pilloried Mitt Romney for his financial success–in his case, deserved–Hillary tried to pose as a woman of the people, claiming that she and Bill were “dead broke” when they left the White House. Of course, they earned (if you want to call it that) well over $12 million in their first year as private citizens, so their “dead broke” condition didn’t last long.

And this was a completely unforced error. “Dead broke?” Seriously? Wait until she has to answer questions about Benghazi! And Syria. And Russia. And Iraq.

COMMENT:  And it gets worse.  Whenever Hillary is taking heat, she pulls out the gender card.  As AP reported:  'We live with a double standard' Clinton told ABC News as she kicked off a tour for 'Hard Choices,' her memoir. 'People ought to think about their own daughters, their own sisters, their own mothers, when they make comments about women in public life.'"

Huh?  We aren't allowed to comment about women in public life?  Strange, I never heard that excuse from Sarah Palin, or from female Republican governors like Nikki Haley in South Carolina or Susana Martinez in New Mexico?  Or from Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, who's becoming a major player in the U.S. Senate. 

Maybe Hillary is special. 

June 14, 2014       Permalink

REMEMBER THE IRS SCANDAL? – AT 9:30 A.M. ET:  Or, as Obama says, what scandal?  There was a scandal?

It centered on Lois Lerner, who allegedly had much to do with the IRS targeting conservative groups.  Well, poor Lois sent out many e-mails.  Congress wants those e-mails.  But...oh dear...it's so hard to keep track of those thingies.  Reader Joseph J. Gallick refers us to the latest report.  Remember that Nixon only lost 18 minutes of a tape.  From The Wall Street Journal: 

The IRS—remember those jaunty folks?—announced Friday that it can't find two years of emails from Lois Lerner to the Departments of Justice or Treasury. And none to the White House or Democrats on Capitol Hill. An agency spokesman blames a computer crash.

Never underestimate government incompetence, but how convenient. The former IRS Director of Exempt Organizations was at the center of the IRS targeting of conservative groups and still won't testify before Congress. Now we'll never know whose orders she was following, or what directions she was giving. If the Reagan White House had ever offered up this excuse, John Dingell would have held the entire government in contempt.

The suspicion that this is willful obstruction of Congress is all the more warranted because this week we also learned that the IRS, days before the 2010 election, shipped a 1.1 million page database about tax-exempt groups to the FBI. Why? New emails turned up by Darrell Issa's House Oversight Committee show Department of Justice officials worked with Ms. Lerner to investigate groups critical of President Obama.

COMMENT:   This is one of the most incompetent and corrupt administrations I've ever seen.  But maybe that's its secret:  It may depend on "scandal fatigue" on the part of the public to protect it.  After a while, you tune out.

June 14,  2014     Permalink