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JUNE 19,  2015

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:54 P.M. ET: 

VULGAR – I'm no fan of Donald Trump as political entry, but Hillary Clinton's linking of Trump to the Charleston horror is beyond the pale, even for her.  From Breitbart:  "GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump says he thinks Hillary Clinton lost all credibility when she blamed him for the massacre at a church in South Carolina.  The 2016 Democratic presidential frontrunner hinted that the shooting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina is in some way connected to Donald Trump’s recent presidential announcement. Clinton told an interviewer:  'Public discourse is sometimes hotter and more negative than it should be, which can, in my opinion, trigger someone who is less than stable. I think we have to speak out against it. Like, for example, a recent entry into the Republican presidential campaign said some very inflammatory things about Mexicans. Everybody should stand up and say that’s not acceptable.'"  After the Oklahoma City bombing, President Bill Clinton tried to link it to talk radio.  I guess we know where Hillary's observation came from.

TOUGH GUY – Governor John Kasich of Ohio is getting set to enter the Republican presidential race, and it sounds as if his gloves are already off.  From CBN:  "In an exclusive one-on-one interview with The Brody File, Ohio Governor John Kasich says that if he runs for president of the United States he’ll enter the race as a man of accomplishment. 'It’s experience and record. Amateur hour is over,' Kasich tells us from the Faith and Freedom Road To Majority Conference in Washington DC.  Kasich is a popular governor who can tell an economic turnaround story in a key swing state. Impressive credentials indeed. 'We have come back almost from the dead and the record is good and I think if you have that experience and you have the record, it’s not about ‘tell me’ it’s about ‘show me’ and I think its time that we’re able to support somebody that has a solid record of accomplishment because that’s what we need in America. No more on the job training.'"  Comments like that may not make Kasich too many friends among the candidates.  He has a tough road ahead anyway, but he's worth listening to.  I'd like to know more about his national-security positions.

ANOTHER SCANDAL? – From Fox:  "EXCLUSIVE: A former charity executive who helped expose a questionable $500,000 donation to the Clinton Foundation is now being threatened by her old bosses with a lawsuit seeking tens of thousands of dollars, FoxNews.com has learned.  Sue Veres Royal, former executive director at the Happy Hearts Fund, was initially quoted in a May 29 New York Times article that said the charity lured Bill Clinton to a 2014 gala only after offering a $500,000 donation to The Clinton Foundation. His office previously had turned down the charity's invitations, but this time he accepted; the accompanying donation amounted to almost a quarter of the gala's net proceeds.  Veres Royal, who spoke to FoxNews.com about the fallout from that report, is now embroiled in a legal battle with the charity. She filed a formal complaint June 4 with the New York attorney general's Charities Bureau, as the charity itself threatened her with legal action for allegedly breaking her confidentiality agreement."  This is just developing.  Stand by for more details.  With the Clintons, it's always something, and it's rarely pretty.

DIGNITY – Relatives of the Charleston victims appeared in court today as the alleged murderer was being charged.  They were permitted to speak, and conducted themselves with complete dignity, even forgiving the alleged assailant, in the Christian manner.  Their dignity and class made a mockery of the political phonies who simply use tragic moments like this for their own advancement.  And they made a mockery of the president, who politicized the tragedy immediately, then ran off to fundraisers. 

June 19, 2015       Permalink

WAIT!  I THOUGHT THAT OBAMA SPOKE AND TERRORISM ENDED – AT 11:32 A.M. ET:  Not so fast.  It's more complicated than that.  From The Hill: 

The number of terrorist attacks and people killed from terrorism has risen dramatically in the last year, according to new State Department research.

Between 2013 and 2014, the number of attacks rose by 35 percent to 13,463, the department claimed in a report on the state of global terrorism released on Friday. The number of deaths from terrorism increased by 81 percent to a total of 32,727.

That is a remarkably high figure.  I'm sure it's much higher than most people have imagined. 

The State Department claimed that the startling increase was largely due to activity in Iraq, Afghanistan and Nigeria. While terrorist attacks took place in 95 countries last year, the majority of them happened in just those three countries as well as Pakistan and India.

Additionally, more than 9,400 people were kidnapped or taken hostage as part of a terrorist attack last year, a three-fold increase from 2013.

Twenty-four Americans were killed as result of terrorism overseas in 2013, and three were kidnapped.

The report points to the growing deadly role of groups like Nigeria’s Boko Haram and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which have the ability to launch lethal attacks that kill scores of people at once.

There were 20 attacks that killed more than 100 people last year, according to data compiled by the State Department, compared to just two in 2013. Five of those attacks were carried out by ISIS in Iraq, and nine were by Boko Haram.

“Despite the fragmentation of al-Qa’ida and its affiliates, weak or failed governance continued to provide an enabling environment for the emergence of extremist radicalism and violence,” the State Department said in its report.

COMMENT:  Our great concern, of course, is that the increase in attacks will present itself in the United States.  We are the Great Satan, and the great target.

June 19, 2015       Permalink

HILLARY'S DILEMMA – AT 10:08 A.M. ET:  And it makes us so sad.  From The Politico:   

It may be time for Hillary Clinton to take the challenge from Sen. Bernie Sanders more seriously.

Sanders is surging in the race for the party’s presidential nomination.

The Vermont Independent has drawn huge crowds of supporters in Iowa and New Hampshire, and pulled within striking distance of Clinton in some Granite State polls.

“This is not a protest campaign,” Sanders declared at a breakfast with reporters in Washington last week. “This is a campaign to win.”

He’s also a powerful presence on social media, where supporters are eager to share news about his campaign.

While Clinton remains the runaway favorite, the strength of the Sanders challenge — particularly in the states hosting the first two contests — is starting to get attention.

“Primary voters in New Hampshire are looking around,” said Democratic strategist Brad Bannon. “They at least want to shop around a little bit before buying. Based on that alone, it’s probably time for the Clinton campaign to take Sanders seriously.”

COMMENT:  It is perfectly clear that there is no yearning for Clinton.  I suspect that most Democrats would rather have someone else, but there's not much depth to the list of possible presidential hopefuls in the Democratic Party.  In fact, there is no list.

It's highly unlikely that Sanders will ever get the Democratic nomination, but he can hurt Clinton by showing her vulnerability and lack of popularity.  As the cliché goes, her support is a mile wide and an inch deep.  And should she falter, or fall ill, Sanders will be the man in waiting. 

Many people like Sanders.  He has an appeal, in large measure because, unlike Clinton, he has a reputation for integrity and has a consistent point of view.  Remember that it was a virtually unknown senator, Eugene McCarthy, who helped bring down a sitting Democratic president, Lyndon Johnson, in 1968. 

June 19, 2015       Permalink

BY CONTRAST – AT 9:31 A.M. ET:  I fully support the extensive coverage given to the awful church massacre in Charleston – innocent people engaged in Bible reading.  But I wonder why so little attention is given to horror stories elsewhere, in which black lives are also wantonly taken.  From the Chicago Tribune: 

Three men were killed and at least 17 people have been wounded in shootings since Thursday evening across the city’s South Side, police said.

Nine people were shot in the Englewood neighborhood, and two fatal shootings happened within a mile of each other in the Chatham neighborhood.

Around 9:50 p.m., a 43-year-old man died after being shot in the West Woodlawn neighborhood on the South Side, police said.

The man was wounded while walking near his home in the 6600 block of South Champlain Avenue, police said. He was hit in the abdomen, chest and hip and was taken to Stroger Hospital, where he later died, police said.

Five minutes later, a 23-year-old man was fatally shot and a 20-year-old man was wounded during a shooting about 9:55 p.m. in the Chatham neighborhood, police said.

And...

One man walked through an alley past the crime scene tape, an earbud in his ear. "You just don't care around here," he said.

"Wow," another passer-by said to a reporter. "You don't hear that. You don't see that on the North Side.

"What is this? What is the world coming to?" she said.

COMMENT:  And those numbers are typical.  We see them duplicated in parts of Baltimore, where chaos and gunfire reign.

And all we get from certain politicians is a cry for more gun control.  The guns, of course, are not firing themselves. 

We're told that black lives matter, and they do.  But they only seem to matter to some political leaders if these leaders can benefit from the heartbreak.  And that is the truth.

June 19,  2015     Permalink

NOTHING TO SEE, NOTHING TO SEE – AT 9:07 A.M. ET:  These pesky little ISIS people keep turning up on our doorstep.  Maybe we should just try to understand them.  After all, every culture has its own validity.  Right?  Wrong.  From AFP: 

A fourth US citizen has been arrested in the greater New York area in less than a week on allegations of supporting the Islamic State extremist group, officials said.

Samuel Rahamin Topaz, 21, from Fort Lee, New Jersey, was charged with conspiracy to provide material support to the IS group, which has declared a "caliphate" based in Iraq and Syria.
He faces 15 years in prison if convicted and was remanded without bail after being arrested at home on Wednesday, prosecutors said.

Court papers allege he was in close contact with Munther Omar Saleh, a 20-year-old student from New York who was arrested last Saturday after trying to stab an FBI surveillance officer.
The FBI accused Saleh of trying to recruit Topaz, who was allegedly making plans to travel to join the IS group in the Middle East.

The pair allegedly met up at a Manhattan subway station a few blocks from the World Trade Center on May 31.

Prosecutors in New York have accused Saleh of planning to carry out a bomb attack in the city.
Topaz told a friend that "they" promised him $7,000 a week and four wives, possibly in Iraq, and cited this as reason not to enroll at community college, court papers show.

He allegedly posted selfies on Facebook dressed in militant-style head garb and wrote about his intention to go to Jordan, which prosecutors called a cover story for travel to IS-controlled territory.
Court papers released on Thursday listed two other co-conspirators, both of whom were dual US-Jordanian citizens...

...Topaz allegedly told a friend, when asked what he thought of IS that "it was not bad because they are protecting what they believe in and that news in the United States is corrupted."

COMMENT:  They may be amateurs, and childlike, but they can be equipped with explosives that can easily be slipped across our southern border.  And then they can turn deadly.

June 19, 2015       Permalink

JUNE 18,  2015

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:54 P.M. ET:

DISGRACEFUL – President Obama, who rarely reveals skills of leadership, disgraced himself today by his response to the awful shootings in Charleston.  Instead of a dignified expression of grief, he seized the opportunity to disparage his own country and call for gun control.  He said mass killings like this don't happen in other civilized countries.  Paris, anyone?  You'll recall that after the recent terrorism in Paris, world leaders gathered for an anti-terror march down a Parisian boulevard.  And guess who didn't show up.  Barack Obama.  He's getting a bad press on his political comments today.

MORE POOR TASTE – From Variety:  "Hours after delivering a statement on the shooting massacre of nine people at an historic church in Charleston, S.C., President Obama and a group of entertainment industry donors had a lengthy discussion about the roots of gun violence in the first of two Hollywood-centric fundraisers in Los Angeles on Thursday, according to an attendee who was present.  About 30 people attended the event at the Pacific Palisades home of Chuck Lorre, executive producer of 'Two and a Half Men.' Tickets for what was billed as an intimate discussion with the president sold for up to $33,400 each, with proceeds going to the Democratic National Committee."   Obama needs advice from Hillary, who gets $200,000 a speech, minimum, and gives the money to her own foundation.  Always such class.

IMMIGRATION MESS – The numbers are just staggering.  From AP:  "MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Mexico now deports more Central American migrants than the United States, a dramatic shift since the U.S. asked Mexico for help a year ago with a spike in illegal migration, especially among unaccompanied minors.  Between October and April, Mexico apprehended 92,889 Central Americans. In the same time period, the United States detained 70,226 'other than Mexican' migrants, the vast majority from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador."  I have no solution for this, but what North America clearly needs is some kind of international immigration system.  What we have now is chaos, with the potential for terrorists to slip in among the migrants.

AND JUST WHO ARE YOU? – From The Politico:  "The U.S. Census Bureau is experimenting with eliminating the word 'race' altogether in its 2020 survey, according to a report from the Pew Research Center on Thursday.  As part of its final research push before finalizing its 2020 wording, test-census forms will be sent to 1.2 million households later this fall in without any references to “race” or “origin.” Instead, the forms will ask: 'Which categories describe person 1?' Respondents will then be able to choose from the usual list of racial and ethnic categories."  Each citizen will get a chance to invent himself.  Not much for a census, but great for political correctness.

June 18, 2015       Permalink

OUTRAGE – AT 8:46 A.M. ET:  In what is becoming a huge news story, nine innocent people, all black, were murdered last night in Charleston, South Carolina.  The gunman, caught on surveillance video, is apparently white.  From Fox: 

A frantic manhunt was on in South Carolina, hours after a "horrible scoundrel" opened fire in a historic African-American church in downtown Charleston, killing nine, including the prominent pastor and state senator, during a regular prayer meeting.

Police immediately branded the shooting spree, which began just after 9 p.m. Wednesday, a hate crime, and released surveillance images of a white man fleeing the scene at 180-year-old Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church after the horrific incident, which left six women and three men dead.

"This is an unspeakable and unfathomable act by somebody filled with hate and a deranged mind," Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley said in a Thursday morning press conference. He vowed that authorities were "committed to finding this horrible scoundrel."

COMMENT:  The role of the media in the face of this awful crime is to report the news, not to make matters worse.  It may well have been a hate crime, but branding it as such is probably a mistake.  We don't know the facts.  It could have been a personal grudge, or a revenge killing.  Nothing justifies it, but this is not a time for press hysteria, especially at outlets like CNN.

The usual suspects, the Sharptons, will be out there, trying to make gains out of this enormous personal tragedy.  The media should impose the greatest discipline in keeping the story straight.

June 18, 2015       Permalink

HILLARY HIT AGAIN IN POLLS! – AT 8:24 A.M. ET:   Americans just don't see her as selling Girl Scout cookies.  From CNN:

(CNN) A majority of voters in three key presidential swing states view Hillary Clinton as not honest and trustworthy, according to a new poll out Wednesday.

The Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll finds that by margins of 8 to 14 percentage points voters in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania are skeptical of Clinton's trustworthiness.

In Florida, 51% of voters hold the negative view of Clinton, compared to 43% who feel she is trustworthy. In Ohio, 53% of voters find Clinton not trustworthy, compared to 40% who do. And in Pennsylvania, 54% of voters don't find her honest, while 40% do.

Compounding the possible issue for Clinton, being honest and trustworthy is also the top issue to voters in all three early states.

Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the poll, said that Clinton is experiencing a "continuing slide" with how she is "perceived by voters who continue to say she is not honest and trustworthy."

Clinton's early state honest and trustworthy numbers follow what a CNN/ORC poll released earlier this month found: 42% of Americans consider her honest and trustworthy, while 57% don't.

COMMENT:  One thing is clear:  she isn't the Teflon candidate.  The attacks on her have clearly taken their toll, in part because they reinforce an idea that was already out there, that the Clintons are not to be trusted. 

Obviously, that is a charge that Republicans must pursue.  It is likely that more damage will be done to Clinton as more opposition research is conducted in the coming months. There seems to be no end of scandal.  Can her decline cost her the nomination?  The smart money today would say no, but I wonder if it's really the smart money.  If she continues to sag, the Democrats might just go with any opponent with a pulse.  The sense of excitement would be enormous.  Or, we might see a genuine draft of Elizabeth Warren at the convention.  The networks would love it.  Oh, the ratings. 

June 18, 2015       Permalink 

IRAQ GONE? – AT 8:16 A.M. ET:  Is Iraq still a country?  Increasingly, the answer appears to be "no."  You can't blame it all on Field Marshal Obama, but his reckless childlike pullout from Iraq didn't help.  From the Washington Examiner: 

At a hearing Wednesday focused on the strategy for Iraq, the Pentagon conceded that the hope for a multi-sectarian, unified Iraq is becoming a less likely outcome. More likely, they said, is a three-way split of the country.

"Iraq is fractured," said House Armed Services Ranking Member Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash. "You can make a pretty powerful argument, in fact, that Iraq is no more."

Smith said that while new Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has pledged support for a multi-sectarian Iraq, the lower-ranking Shiite members who fill out the rest of the government are not committed to that goal. That makes it likely that no matter how many additional U.S. forces are added to recruit Sunnis into the fight, it won't stick.

"Does [Abadi's] writ run through Iraq?" Defense Secretary Ashton Carter responded. "That's what we are waiting to see."

"How do we offer the Sunnis, you know, a reasonable place to be if they don't have some support from Baghdad?" Smith asked. "I think we need to start thinking about it."

Carter said the Defense Department does consider a future that involves three Iraqs, not one. The nation could be split into a Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite territory if Iraq's central government cannot convince Sunnis and Kurds they will be an inclusive and protected part of a unified Iraq.

COMMENT:  Then why are we putting more military assistance personnel into Iraq?  I think that's a question that Congress should pursue vigorously.  There appears to be no real strategy, a function of a disengaged, uninvolved president.

We do not seem to have much real influence in the Mideast.  This may well be Obama's real legacy.

June 18, 2015       Permalink

THE HILLARY DECEPTION – AT 8:05 A.M. ET:  The story of the Hillary Clinton e-mails is far from over.  She has, shock, apparently lied about them.  Fox News is on the case: 

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used her personal email account to handle high level negotiations in 2011 for a no-fly zone to help topple Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, according to a series of emails obtained by Fox News, challenging her claim the private server did not hold classified information.

The emails, linked here, conflict with Clinton's statement that she did not put national security at risk by using a personal account.

"I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified material," Clinton, now a candidate for president, told reporters in March. "I'm certainly well-aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material."

That claim was hard to test because emails released by the State Department are heavily blacked out. But an email chain from March 23, 2011 -- with virtually no redactions -- shows a message for senior administration staff including then Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough, then-Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Michele Flournoy among others. It goes point by point, explaining what Turkey, France and Britain will likely accept in the deal.

COMMENT:  I can't believe that Hillary Clinton broke no law in the way she conducted herself.  And if she did break the law, why is she not being prosecuted?  I hope that question comes up, and is pursued during the campaign.

June 18,  2015     Permalink