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JUNE 9,  2015

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:52 P.M. ET: 

AMERICANS ON TRADE – From NBC News:  "Despite a heavy push by President Barack Obama for a sweeping multinational trade deal, a majority of Americans echo the concerns of labor unions and a number of Democratic members of Congress that the trade accord will negatively impact U.S. workers and companies.  Two-thirds of Americans say protecting American industries and jobs by limiting imports is more important than allowing free trade so they can buy products at lower prices from any country, according to the most recent NBC News online survey conducted by SurveyMonkey from June 3-5."  Obama just hasn't made the case.  He seems indifferent to the need to explain and sell his policies.

CARLY GAINING – From Fox:  "GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina jumped to fourth place, according to Fox News’ 2016 Power Index."  I don't know how the index is compiled, but Fox is running the first debate, and apparently plans to limit the number of candidates participating.  There'll be a cutoff point, it's reported, based on poll position.  Carly hasn't yet moved up in the polls, but it would be a political crime if she wasn't permitted to participate.  She's gotten more buzz on the campaign trail than any other candidate.

NOT A GOOD SIGN – From the Washington Examiner:  "Back in January, Bush stood nearly six points ahead of his nearest rival in the RealClearPolitics...  'I'm still for him,' says an adviser to Jeb Bush's presidential campaign, 'but it hasn't gone very well so far, and we've got to face that. It's going to take some remedying.'  The remedying began Monday with word that Bush has shaken up his campaign before the campaign has even been formally announced. The Bush team sent out word that Danny Diaz, a respected, hard-charging Republican operative, will become the campaign's manager instead of Bush's original choice, the highly thought-of Iowa strategist David Kochel, who will move to another senior position in the campaign.'"  Well, they can do all the shuffling they wish, but the problem starts at the top.  Jeb is a decent man, and was a fine governor of Florida, but he just doesn't generate the excitement we need right now.  He'll have to ignite some fires to get back to the top.

NIGHTMARE – From the Washington Examiner:  "Since she has already expressed an openness to running for Senate in New York, it only makes sense that buzz would begin over Chelsea Clinton one day becoming president.   Democrats promoting a Clinton dynasty have whispered about it, but now a prominent Republican pundit is openly detailing a possible path to the presidency for Chelsea Clinton.  In his new book 'The Queen,' top radio talker Hugh Hewitt lays it out in memo style to Hillary Clinton."  Reports say that Chelsea is thoroughly obnoxious and drives people away from the Clinton Foundation.  Well, I guess that's a start. 

June 9, 2015       Permalink

QUICK!  TELL MICHELLE – Someone didn't get the word about good diets and that fun-killing health stuff.  From The Hill: 

Robert Gibbs, President Obama’s former press secretary, has been hired by McDonald's as an executive vice president, the company announced Tuesday.

Gibbs will be McDonald's global chief communications officer, focusing on government and public affairs for the world's largest hamburger chain.

McDonald's CEO Steve Easterbrook described Gibbs and Silvia Lagnado, hired from Bacardi for marketing, as "highly-respected, talented leaders who will bring a wealth of experience and outside perspective to McDonald’s as we build a more modern, progressive burger company."

Yeah, right.  A progressive burger company.  LOL, LOL.

“Returning excitement to our business proposition and brand is foundational to our turnaround plan, and Robert and Silvia — with their respective teams — will play critical roles in bringing this strategy to life," Easterbrook said in a statement.

Gibbs, who served as press secretary during the first two years of Obama's presidency, most recently worked at a strategic communications advisory firm he cofounded in 2013 with fellow Obama alum Ben LaBolt.

That firm, The Incite Agency, is "full speed ahead" after Gibbs's departure and has plans for agency expansion in the near future, LaBolt said in a statement.

Gibbs joins other top former Obama aides who have jumped to the private sector in recent years, including his successor as press secretary, Jay Carney, who joined Amazon earlier this year to lead global corporate affairs.

Former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe was recently promoted to the board of Uber. He joined the ride-hailing company last fall.

COMMENT:  Why do I think Gibbs won't be invited to any further White House picnics?  He's in the greasy-fries business now. 

Money talks.

June 9, 2015       Permalink

UGLY – AT 9:56 A.M. ET:  Have you noticed how Hillary Clinton is increasingly playing the race card?  And then of course she's got the gender card.  And probably some other cards that, when played, divide us and turn the race ugly.  From the American Spectator: 

Well, that didn’t take long.

Here we are barely at the half-way mark of the year before the presidential election — and right on cue Hillary Clinton is out there playing the race card, this time using the vehicle of voter ID cards. Ah yes. Nothing like using racism to stir the liberal base.

In last year’s election cycle Americans had to wait until the closing days of the campaign before Democrats running for office in states like Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, and North Carolina began the usual left-wing race baiting. The Wall Street Journal noted this here-we-go-again tactic in an October 26, 2014 editorial titled: “The 2014 Race Card: Democratic appeals to racial division are worse than ever.”

True. And that’s saying something. Also, noted the WSJ: “Black voter turnout exceeded white turnout in states like Georgia and Indiana after voter ID laws passed.”

Right. But pay no attention to the reality that African-American voters, like every other American, already possess ID cards or they could never navigate a society that requires a picture ID for everything from getting a book out of the local library to driving a car, cashing a check or buying a plane ticket and oh so much more.

Yet here we are again, this time with Hillary Clinton making the racial pitch at Texas South University. In an irony of ironies, she was accepting an award named for former Texas Rep. Barbara Jordan, an African-American who made her mark impeaching a president who lied to the American people back there in 1974. As one recalls, Mrs. Clinton has a distinctively selective approach to presidents who look the American people in the eye and don’t tell the truth. Mrs. Clinton, it must also be noted, is only the latest in a very, very long line of prominent Democrats stretching back centuries to employ the formula of stirring racial animosity to win votes for the progressive agenda.

COMMENT:  Read the whole piece.  It's great.  The Dems are getting ugly early.  It's going to be a vicious campaign, a campaign designed to portray Republicans as racists, bigots, and soldiers in a war on women.  The GOP should snap back quickly, and vigorously.   One of the problems of the 2008 and 2012 campaigns was that Republicans were too gentlemanly.

And our side should also snap back against the press when it misrepresents us or publishes regular hit pieces against our candidates, but not the other side's.  You may notice that The New York Times is now engaging in its usual practice of trying to tear down any Republican who seeks the highest office. 

June 9, 2015       Permalink

PROTECTING US FROM EVIL – NOT – AT 9:22 A.M. ET:   Our tax dollars are marching once more.  Do you feel cozy and safe?  Don't.  From Fox: 

On the heels of Transportation Security Administration workers flunking a security test at airport checkpoints, the results of a new audit show that -- while the agency keeps a robust system for screening commercial airport workers -- it still failed to flag 73 airport workers "linked to terrorism."

Apparently, TSA does not have access to all the terror watchlist information it needs to make those judgments.

“The TSA did not identify these individuals through its vetting operations because it is not authorized to receive all terrorism-related categories under current interagency watch-listing policy,” the June 4 Inspector General report stated.

According to TSA data, the people in question were working for major airlines, airport venders and other employers.

The agency acknowledged that individuals in these categories “represented a potential transportation security threat,” according to the report.

COMMENT:  Republican Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska says it best:  "We are not safe. It is time to start effectively protecting U.S. flights from those hell-bent on killing us.”  And this is 14 years after 9-11. 

June 9, 2015       Permalink

SHOCKING – AT 9:06 A.M. ET:  Field Marshal Obama finally admits what we all knew, that he has no real strategy to defeat ISIS.  From an editorial in the Washington Examiner: 

Speaking Monday at a news conference in Germany, President Obama acknowledged that the United States does not yet have a "complete strategy" for training Iraqi forces to fight Islamic State militants in Iraq.

If that admission sounds familiar it's because Obama said almost the same thing last August when he told White House reporters "We don't have a strategy yet" for defeating the Islamic State.

So, what exactly has the administration been doing for the last 10 months?

We know that the U.S. has been conducting air strikes over both Syria and Iraq. The main result, according to a top State Department official, has been more than 10,000 dead Islamic State fighters.

But that's a dubious claim. With no American troops on the ground to assess death tolls from air strikes, the number of terrorists killed cannot be known. What's more, the administration's emphasis on body counts is eerily evocative of Vietnam, a war in which the number of enemy casualties became the subject of frequent official reports as a measure of military success. In those times, the emphasis on body counts concealed just how badly the war was going in every other respect.

By most other measures, the Islamic State has been flourishing in the time since Obama's first "no strategy" remark. Not only has the terrorist group seen an influx of recruits — including as many as 100 from the U.S. — but it has also made significant territorial gains in both Iraq and Syria.

COMMENT:  And then there's the little matter of the wealth that ISIS is building up from oil revenues and other sources.  You can buy a lot of firepower in this world with real money, and you also have the power to bribe.

ISIS is doing well.  It will have setbacks, but there's a good chance it's here to stay, and a direct threat to those it despises, including us.

June 9,  2015     Permalink

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