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.

I appeared on Silvio Canto Jr's talk show from Dallas yesterday.  It's here.

JUNE 8,  2015

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

MAJOR PIGLET NEWS:  From Fox:  "Hundreds of piglets were on the loose in southern Ohio Monday night after a semi tractor-trailer transporting them overturned.  WXIX, citing Greene County dispatchers, reported that the accident took place at around 7 p.m. local time Monday on State Route 35, east of Dayton. The station reported that two people were inside the truck at the time, and the passenger was taken to an area hospital for treatment of minor injuries.  Several police and fire agencies from surrounding areas were attempting to round up the piglets, who scattered into a wooded area by the site of the road."  Hillary Clinton rushed in and immediately registered all the piglets to vote.

FADE-OUT:  From showbiz411.com:  "The Tony Awards were down 25% last night from last year, the lowest ratings ever for the telecast. Lack of a star host was the issue, as Alan Cumming and Kristen Chenoweth were fun, but had no pull. Total viewers were just over 6 million– that’s not a lot of eyes...NBA Finals, Game 2, had 15.65 million viewers."  It didn't help when the magnificent "An American in Paris," with its Gershwin music, lost out to "Fun Home," a gay- and gender-based musical.  Great way to attract middle America. 

BERNIE? – From The Politico:  "Hillary Clinton is crushing the rest of the Democratic presidential field in national polls, but over the weekend, in a Wisconsin straw poll, there was reason to give the Clinton camp pause and the Bernie Sanders camp hope — Sanders scored a strong second-place finish with 41 percent of the vote, to Clinton’s 49 percent.  The Vermont senator, a self-described democratic socialist and a long shot for the White House, received 208 of 511 delegate votes at the Wisconsin Democratic Party convention in Milwaukee on Saturday, while Clinton won votes from 252 of the delegates, leaving her just short of a majority."  Hey, you never know.  What if the Dems nominate a socialist for president?  I'll tell you this:  At least Bernie is honest about his beliefs.  Obama is a socialist, but covers it up. 

June 8, 2015       Permalink

THE BEST – AT 10:31 A.M. ET:  Sometimes there is good news, and often there are good people.  From the Washington Times:   

Sarah S. Brown, who has spent the past two decades battling the “intractable” social problem of teen pregnancy, is retiring in an unusual place: on top.

Unwanted teen pregnancies and births have not been eliminated in the U.S., of course, but Ms. Brown, the longtime chief executive of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, has witnessed — and contributed greatly to — one of the best turnaround stories in public health today. Both teen pregnancy and birthrates are at historically low levels, having fallen by half over the past 20 years.

The “intractable” problem, Ms. Brown said in an interview, turned out to be treatable with smart public policy and the adroit use of media to change attitudes and influence behavior.

The use of media to address teen pregnancy has turned out especially well, Ms. Brown said in a recent interview.

“Millions and millions of teen girls and boys” have watched programs such as MTV’s reality show “16 and Pregnant,” she said.

Far from getting a glamorized or scripted view of teen parenthood, they got an unvarnished — and sobering — look at the strains of everyday life with a baby, she said. A 2010 study of 1,000 teens showed that almost half of the girls “agreed strongly” that watching such shows would cause them to “think harder” about avoiding pregnancy.

COMMENT:  In other words, you have to change the culture, and Sarah Brown understood that.  Sadly, our colleges and universities are filled with "scholars" who don't understand that, who believe we must accept every aspect of some group's culture.  We don't.  And we shouldn't.

We wish Sarah Brown well.  As Casey Stengel would have said, "She swung the bat pretty good."

June 8, 2015       Permalink

THE NEW NARRATIVE – AT 9:56 A.M. ET:  There is a new political narrative making the internet rounds, to the effect that Barack Obama has destroyed the Democratic Party, leaving Hillary Clinton in a precarious position.   He has, according to this narrative, destroyed the party by narrowing its base, ignoring white working people who were once the heart of the party, and failing to encourage the development of young Democratic leaders.  It's all been about Barack.  And now they're stuck with Hillary.  From the Washington Times: 

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s recent dip in the polls has Democrats taking a fresh look at their choices for presidential nominees and finding that the party doesn’t have any other A-list contenders.

Beyond Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic presidential field includes two with loose affiliations to the party and another who is a virtual unknown on the national stage. There is a dearth of Democrats even testing the waters for a run, and party officials are at a loss to point to anybody on the Democratic bench who would be capable of entering the race late and mounting a viable campaign.

In the early-voting state of South Carolina, Democratic Party State Executive Committee member Ed Harley said he wasn’t worried about Mrs. Clinton’s campaign collapsing. But if it did, he said, the party would have to turn to its second-tier candidates.

“You probably would have to go to the next level,” he said, adding that former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley might be able to step up to fill the void.

Mr. Harley was at a loss to name another Democrat who would rise to the occasion or who would be ready to start a run.

“I would have no idea,” he said. “They’re out there. I don’t know, maybe they are waiting for a reason [to run] or maybe they’re waiting for the right time to make their move.

“If you’re a candidate and you stick your nose up there to run and you don’t have any support, you’re just making a bad mistake,” Mr. Harley said.

Mr. O’Malley, who undertook a monthslong run-up to the campaign before announcing his candidacy a week ago, has struggled to register in the polls. A recent survey found that three-quarters of Americans don’t know enough about Mr. O'Malley to form an opinion about him.

COMMENT:  What a mess for a party to be in.  The Dems have lost the House, the Senate, most governorships, and most state legislatures.  If they lose the presidency next year they'll be down to being major powers in high-school student governments all over the country. 

They're experts on Social Security because most of their leaders are on it.

June 8, 2015     Permalink

ISIS THE CAPABLE – AT 9:18 A.M. ET:  We learn almost each day about the expanding capabilities of the Islamic State.  This report is based on information from Australia.  From AFP: 

The Islamic State group has shown it is prepared to use chemical weapons and is likely to have among its recruits the technical expertise to develop them, Australia’s foreign minister, Julie Bishop, said.

In a speech late on Friday, Bishop said Australia had no doubt the Syrian regime had used toxic chemicals including sarin and chlorine over the past four years.

But she said apart from some crude and small scale endeavours, the conventional wisdom had been the Islamic State group’s intention to acquire and weaponise chemical agents was largely aspirational.

“The use of chlorine by Daesh, and its recruitment of highly technically trained professionals, including from the west, have revealed far more serious efforts in chemical weapons development,” she said in Perth, using the Arabic acronym for IS.

“Daesh is likely to have amongst its tens of thousands of recruits the technical expertise necessary to further refine precursor materials and build chemical weapons.”

The use of chlorine in homemade bombs has been reported in several parts of Iraq and Syria, with car and roadside bombs easy to rig with chlorine canisters.

And in March, Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan government said analysis of soil and clothing samples showed IS used chlorine gas in a car bomb attack in January.

COMMENT:  Why do we have to learn this from an Australian official?  Because it is the practice of the Obamans, with their solidly left-wing roots, to minimize the capabilities of our enemies.  It's part of the left-wing party line, which begins with the idea that we are the problem, not the barbaric forces we face.

June 8, 2015       Permalink

SOME SPINE ON OUR SIDE, FOR A CHANGE – AT 8:58 A.M. ET:  The European Union is reading at least the preamble to the riot act to Iran.  From AP:

The European Union is telling Iran to cooperate with a stalled U.N. probe of suspicions that it worked on atomic arms if the country wants a nuclear deal that will see removal of sanctions.

The cautionary EU statement comes ahead of a June 30 target date for such an agreement. It was obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its delivery at a meeting of the U.N's International Atomic Energy Agency that opens Monday.

Iran denies any work on — or interest in — nuclear arms and has fended off IAEA demands for cooperation with its investigation. The EU statement says getting to the bottom of the allegations "will be essential" to a nuclear deal.

Iran also would have to accept limits on its present nuclear activities.

COMMENT:  There are some signs coming out of the nuclear talks that they are in serious trouble.  They probably are, for the stands taken by Iran are unacceptable to anyone who wants a serious agreement.  But remember that we have as president one Field Marshal Barack Obama, who treats America's enemies far better than he treats its friends.  He has a tendency to cave in, and that is what worries me.

June 8,  2015     Permalink

JUNE 7,  2015

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:57 P.M. ET: 

GOOD NEWS – From PJ Media:  "Turks went to the polls today in parliamentary elections, and the era of single-party Islamist rule appears to be over.  President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had been counting on the continued rule of his AKP party to change the country’s constitution after these elections, consolidating his already increasingly authoritarian rule into something even more dastardly.  But a 2/3 majority of AKP in parliament is needed to change the constitution.  Today, the Islamist party walked away with only 41 percent of seats.  That’s an eight percent drop from 2011.  In a country where the Islamists have garnered the animosity of all manner of opposition groups, from nationalists to Kurds, good luck forming a coalition."
Obama once described Erdogan as his best friend in the Mideast.  Now we'll see how Obama defines "best friend."  I'll bet Erdogan winds up under the same bus where Obama's other best friends wound up.

MAJOR SCIENCE NEWS – From Buzzfeed:  "Malaysia’s government is blaming a group of foreign tourists for causing a deadly earthquake on one of the country’s sacred mountains.  The magnitude 5.9 earthquake on Mount Kinabalu killed at least 13 people on Friday, the Associated Press reported. Authorities are still searching for at least six missing people.  On Saturday, the deputy chief minister of the state of Sabah told reporter that he believes the earthquake was caused by a group of 10 tourists who stripped naked on the mountain a few weeks ago.   Tan Sri Joseph Pairin said that the earthquake was a 'confirmation' that the mountain is sacred, and humanity 'cannot take it lightly,' according to the Malay Mail Online."  I don't know what we're going to do about the naked tourist problem.  It's reached crisis proportions.

THEIR GOOD HEARTS – from freebeacon.com:  "A little-known private foundation controlled by Bill and Hillary Clinton donated $100,000 to the New York Times’ charitable fund in 2008, the same year the newspaper’s editorial page endorsed Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary, according to tax documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.  The Clinton Family Foundation, a separate entity from the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, has been the family’s vehicle for personal charitable giving since 2001.  It is funded directly by the Clintons and distributes more than $1 million a year to civic and educational causes."  I'm sure the Clintons weren't trying to buy influence.  Who would accuse them of that?

June 7, 2015       Permalink

THE REALITY OF ISIS – AT 1:16 P.M. ET:   Obama called ISIS the "junior varsity."  It is junior no more, if it ever was.  In fact, it potentially is far, far more frightening than Al Qaeda.  From IBD:

Jihad: In the latest edition of its propaganda rag, the Islamic State says it has enough cash to buy a nuclear weapon from Pakistan and smuggle it into the U.S. through Mexico. This is the sum of all fears, and it's not overblown.

The new issue of "Dabiq," IS' English-language webzine, includes a chilling article, "The Perfect Storm," that claims the group has amassed enough funds to purchase a "nuclear device" from Pakistan.

"The Islamic State has billions of dollars in the bank, so they call on their wilayah (province) in Pakistan to purchase a nuclear device through weapons dealers with links to corrupt officials in the region," the magazine says. The weapon could be smuggled through drug-running routes from Islamist-controlled Nigeria to Central America to Mexico "and into the U.S.," it adds.

Far-fetched? Not when you consider that IS has the means to buy nukes or dirty bombs, and the opportunity to smuggle them through our porous borders.

A Rand Corp. study says IS has more than $2 billion in assets from seized oil fields and refineries, kidnap ransoms and taxation. The think tank figures the terror group now controls fields with a production capacity of more than 150,000 barrels a day. It smuggles this oil out in tanker trucks and sells it at steeply discounted rates to buyers in Syria, Turkey, Kurdistan and elsewhere.

Despite falling world oil prices that have slowed IS energy revenues to about $2 million a week, the terror group is still raking in more than $1 million a day in extortion and taxes alone. IS has also stolen some $500 million from state-owned banks in Iraq.

This is far more cash than al-Qaida had access to before 9/11. And IS is more ambitious — and fanatical enough to actually detonate a nuke inside a U.S. city.

"ISIS has billions of dollars, and if they plan an attack from over there, it's going to be 75% successful and larger than 9/11," warns terror expert Jeffrey Addicott of St. Mary's University. Indeed, IS's magazine boasts that IS is "looking to do something big, something that would make any past operation look like a squirrel shoot."

COMMENT:  I would take this very seriously.  I'm sure many of our intelligence people do, but I wonder if the man at the top does.  He has done nothing about our borders, and his appeasement policies are undoubtedly noticed by the ISIS high command.

I fear it will take another huge event to wake us up again. 

June 7, 2015       Permalink

THE HILL GAME – AT 11:46 A.M. ET:  An excellent New York Times piece outlines the emerging Hillary Clinton campaign strategy – consisting of a cynical attempt to scare the Democratic base into voting, but very else.  Look for cries of "racism" and "war on women."  That kind of thing.  From The Times: 

WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton appears to be dispensing with the nationwide electoral strategy that won her husband two terms in the White House and brought white working-class voters and great stretches of what is now red-state America back to Democrats.

Instead, she is poised to retrace Barack Obama’s far narrower path to the presidency: a campaign focused more on mobilizing supporters in the Great Lakes states and in parts of the West and South than on persuading undecided voters.

Mrs. Clinton’s aides say it is the only way to win in an era of heightened polarization, when a declining pool of voters is truly up for grabs. Her liberal policy positions, they say, will fire up Democrats, a less difficult task than trying to win over independents in more hostile territory — even though a broader strategy could help lift the party with her.

This early in the campaign, however, forgoing a determined outreach effort to all 50 states, or even most of them, could mean missing out on the kind of spirited conversation that can be a unifying feature of a presidential election. And it could leave Mrs. Clinton, if she wins, with the same difficulties Mr. Obama has faced in governing with a Republican-controlled Congress.

Already, it is causing consternation among Democrats in conservative states that could be given short shrift by her campaign or bypassed altogether.

COMMENT:  The Obama coalition is based on identity politics, and has failed at governing.  Clinton, an even more divisive figure than Obama, is pursuing a two-nation strategy rather than a one-nation strategy.  It is bad for the country, bad for her party, but may work for her.

And in Hillaryland, anything that works for the Clintons is fine. 

June 7, 2015       Permalink

IRAN COUNTDOWN – AT 11:21 A.M. ET:  There are 23 days to go to the deadline for the Iran nuclear talks to produce an agreement.  Now an Iranian official tells us that there's no trust among the parties, not a good sign.  From AFP:

A top Iranian official, in an unusual declaration Saturday, said there remains no trust between Tehran and world powers and either side could yet abandon a nuclear deal after signing.

In comments that laid bare a paradox of long-running negotiations between Iran and the West, Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said an agreement — due by June 30 — was “very slowly” nearing despite neither side trusting the other.

A final accord could rein in aspects of Iran’s nuclear program while allowing it to continue to enrich uranium in exchange for a lifting of sanctions, but breaches could see the deal being ripped up.

“Our basis is mistrust and this is the reality,” Araqchi was quoted by state television as saying at the end of the latest round of talks in Vienna with the P5+1 group of nations that has been talking to Iran for almost two years.

“We don’t trust the other side at all and they don’t trust us either,” Araqchi said, noting so-called “snapback” provisions would be as relevant to Iran as to the United States if measures are reneged on.

“Thus all the provisions in a deal… whenever each party feels the other side is violating the commitments, they can snap back and implement whatever existed before the agreement.

“We have taken every necessary measure so this would happen for us. Naturally, the other side will do the same for sanctions,” he added.

US officials have also said they are negotiating under a policy of “distrust and verify,” in touting what they say are robust safeguards built into the emerging agreement.

COMMENT:  Reagan said "trust but verify."  His agreements lasted.  The reason they lasted is that Reagan, unlike Obama, was a serious man, and a man with a spine.  His spine was enhanced by the American military power he brought into being.  Obama is reducing our power, and his spinelessness and lack of seriousness are matters of record.

We should know the story of this "agreement" in about three weeks, unless there's an extension.

June 7,  2015     Permalink