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MAY 3,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:56 P.M. ET: 

UNBELIEVABLE – From Allen West via Fox News:  "Whenever you hear our dear politicians in Washington DC say there’s nothing more to cut or that they’re just like us, let me give you a friendly reminder. As Breitbart reported after his jail sentencing, convicted ex-congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) receives $8,700 per month in government disability pay, as well as a partial federal pension of $45,000.  That generous $8,700 in disability comes thanks to Jackson’s sudden development of a 'mood disorder' as the federal government began looking to indict him. Jackson, who was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison, had no history of mental illness during his prior 17 years in Congress."  Daddy taught him well.

PROBE – An odd development in the probe of the missing Malaysian airliner, from the Daily Mail:  "A group of 11 terrorists with links to Al Qaeda were yesterday being interrogated on whether they are behind the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.  The suspects were arrested in the capital Kuala Lumpur and in the state of Kedah last week and are members of a violent new terror group said to be planning bomb attacks in Muslim countries.  The interrogations come after international investigators, including the FBI and MI6, asked for the militants, whose ages range from 22 to 55 and include students, odd-job workers, a young widow and business professionals, to be questioned intensively about Flight MH370."  Interesting, but I've seen no evidence whatever that terrorism was involved, although some have speculated that a member of the cockpit crew was a terrorist operative."

GRIM VIEW ON JOBS – From Newsmax:  ""In April, almost a million Americans left the labor force in one month. I think that's the largest exodus from the labor force since they began keeping the statistics,' economist Peter Schiff says, adding that he doesn't believe 280,000 jobs were created.  'Better than 80 percent of them potentially were just made up by the government because over 240,000 of the jobs were the result of the birth-death assumptions where the government simply assumes that new businesses were created in April and that they hired people,' Schiff told J.D. Hayworth and Miranda Kahn on 'America's Forum' on Newsmax TV.  'But they don't have any actual proof that any of this happened and it's the statisticians at the Bureau of Labor Department — everybody assumed that people hired more people in April because the weather got better,' he added.  And that is why Schiff says that he doesn't 'even believe the 280,000 jobs being created.'" I suspect there's a lot of truth here, for if the "recovery" were real, people would be sensing it around them, and they aren't.

May 3, 2014      Permalink

AWARENESS IN BRITAIN – AT 11:23 A.M. ET:  As America wallows in political correctness, some educators in Britain are repeatedly raising warnings about an attempted Sharia takeover of parts of the British school system.  Naturally, our own mainstream media is showing little interest, although these attempts will surely be made here.  From London's Telegraph: 

Concern of 'Trojan Horse' plot spreads to three more state primaries as head teachers' leaders voice concerns for the first time over the Islamic infiltration at schools in Birmingham.

Schools across Britain are likely to have been targeted in an alleged Islamist plot to take over classrooms, head teachers have warned.

The National Association of Head Teachers said it had found “concerted efforts” to infiltrate at least six schools in Birmingham.

But the union also said that the scandal had “connections” to other large cities.

The Telegraph understands that there are growing concerns about the possible infiltration of schools in Bradford, Manchester and parts of east London.

The acknowledgement from the professional body follows a series of exposés by The Telegraph which disclosed how a “Trojan Horse” plot in Birmingham had put schools under pressure illegally to segregate classrooms and change teaching to reflect radical Islamic beliefs.

COMMENT:  Pretty chilling.  And yet, if a newspaper exposed the same thing here it would be called Islamophobia. 

We are beginning to see what surrender looks like.

May 3, 2014        Permalink

UKRAINE ON THE BRINK – AT 11:04 A.M. ET:  The situation in Ukraine is erupting into open, armed conflict.  It is only a matter of time, I fear, before Russia announces that "provocations" demand its intervention.  From Fox: 

Ukraine resumed a military offensive against pro-Russian forces in the country's east on Saturday, as military observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe who were held for more than a week were released.

Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said Ukrainian forces had seized control of a television tower in Kramatorsk, near the rebel stronghold of Slovyansk where at least three were killed in fighting on Friday, Reuters reported.

"We are not stopping," Avakov wrote on his Facebook page early Saturday.

And...

Oleksandr Turchynov, Ukraine's acting president, said many insurgents were killed or wounded Friday in the eastern offensive that also underlined the military's vulnerability. The military action came two days after Kiev said it had lost control of eastern Ukraine.

Both sides said two Ukrainian helicopters were shot down by the insurgents near Slovyansk, killing two crew members, while authorities said another seven people also died: three separatist gunmen, two soldiers and two civilians.

By nightfall, Ukrainian troops and armored personnel carriers blocked all major roads into Slovyansk, and the central part of the city remained in the hands of pro-Russia gunmen, according to Associated Press journalists inside. Most shops were closed, and the few that were open were crowded with customers stocking up on supplies.

COMMENT:  Meanwhile, it's becoming increasingly clear that Western Europe, led by Germany, is following its classic appeasement tradition and has little stomach for imposing truly harsh sanctions on Russia for its role in directing and sponsoring pro-Russian insurgents in Ukraine, the insurgents who now control the eastern part of the country.  Western Europe sees an aggressive Russia on one side – a Russia important to the European economy – and a weak America on the other.

A fine fix.  No presidential leadership.  Not even an Obama speech on the crisis.  Who really cares? 

May 3, 2014       Permalink

A DISGRACE – AT 10:18 A.M. ET:  As has been reported here, former Secretary of State Condi Rice was invited to deliver the commencement address at Rutgers University this spring.  This sparked an uproar among hard-left faculty and students, who consider her a "war criminal."  They demanded that the invitation be rescinded.

To its credit, Rutgers held its ground and refused to be ruled by the mob.  Unlike wimpy (and very left) Brandeis University, which rescinded an invitation to the courageous women's rights advocate Ayaan Hirsi Ali after Muslim and leftists students complained, Rutgers emphasized the importance of free speech.

But now the Rutgers uproar has claimed its victim.  Secretary Rice has withdrawn.  From Fox: 

Condoleezza Rice announced Saturday that she will not be delivering the commencement address at Rutgers University’s graduation ceremony this month, saying the invitation has become a "distraction."

Commencement should be a time of joyous celebration for the graduates and their families. Rutgers' invitation to me to speak has become a distraction for the university community at this very special time,” the former secretary of state under President George W. Bush said in the statement.

"I am honored to have served my country. I have defended America's belief in free speech and the exchange of ideas. These values are essential to the health of our democracy. But that is not what is at issue here. As a professor for thirty years at Stanford University and as (its) former Provost and Chief academic officer, I understand and embrace the purpose of the commencement ceremony and I am simply unwilling to detract from it in any way."

On Monday, roughly 50 Rutgers University students staged a sit-in at a school administration building in New Brunswick to protest the school's invitation to Rice to appear at the university's commencement.

The school's Board of Governors voted to pay $35,000 for her appearance at the May 18 ceremony. She was going to be awarded an honorary degree.

But several faculty members and students wanted the invitation rescinded because of Rice's role in the Iraq War. Rutgers' New Brunswick Faculty Council passed a resolution in March calling on the university's board of governors to rescind the invitation.

COMMENT:  Disgraceful, disgraceful, disgraceful.  That students cannot hear a former secretary of state because militant leftists on the faculty and in the student body object.

I'm very sorry that Secretary Rice withdrew.  It was the wrong decision.   She has bowed to the mob, just as Brandeis bowed to the mob. 

Ronald Reagan used to say that we are always one generation away from losing our freedom.  He was right.

May 3,  2014     Permalink

MAY 2,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:07 P.M. ET: 

BENGHAZI CENTER STAGE AGAIN – From Fox:  "House Republicans moved on two fronts Friday to dig for answers on Benghazi, with Speaker John Boehner announcing a special committee to investigate and a key panel subpoenaing Secretary of State John Kerry to testify.  In a significant shift, Boehner announced that the House will vote on establishing a select committee to investigate, on the heels of newly released emails that raised additional questions about the White House's response.  Top Republicans claimed those emails should have been released to Congress months ago, and Boehner signaled those concerns prompted him to rethink the need for a select committee."  Shades of the old Watergate committee.  And you can just see Hillary Clinton in the crosshairs.

WOMEN AND JOBS – From CNS:  "(CNSNews.com) - The number of women 16 and older not in the labor force climbed to a record high of 55,116,000 in April, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).  This means that there were 55,116,000 women 16 and older who were in the civilian noninstitutional population who not only did not have a job, they did not actively seek one in the last four weeks. That is up 428,000 from the 54,688,000 women who were not in the labor force in March."  Anyone hear something about a war on women?  This is a real war on women.

MAJOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL NEWS – From WND:  "Bill Clinton’s appearance earlier this month on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” – where he was asked about his interest in UFOs – has been subjected to body-language analysis by an investigator of paranormal claims, who says the former president exhibited signs of 'significant apprehension, stress and guarded behavior.'  News of Clinton’s inquiries, after he became president, into what information the government held on UFOs and space aliens has been widely reported.  Following the first portion of Kimmel’s interview and prior to a commercial break, Kimmel announced he would be asking about UFOs upon return. While Clinton concluded he found no evidence they exist, he said, 'if we were visited someday, I wouldn’t be surprised.'"  Hillary would say, "What difference does it make?"

THE RIGHT THING TO DO – From NewsBusters:  "On Friday, CBS Evening News caught up with its Big Three competitors and reported on the latest developments on the controversy surrounding the September 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. facility in Benghazi, Libya. CBS also finally mentioned its own president's family connection to a White House official involved in the Obama administration's handling of the immediate aftermath of the attack.  Nancy Cordes gave a full report on how the 'the White House released previously unseen e-mails' about the federal government's response to the terrorist strike, which led to House Speaker John Boehner forming a new select committee to investigate the attack. Scott Pelley also disclosed that 'Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy national security advisor mentioned in Nancy's story, is the brother of CBS News President David Rhodes.'"   That is correct disclosure, and should be routine in journalism.

May 2,  2014     Permalink

A LITTLE REALITY – AT 11:23 A.M. ET:  The hype out of Washington says that the Syrian regime is shedding its chemical weapons, in accordance with the agreement reached late last year.  In fact, they're practically Boy Scouts.  The truth may be very different.  From the Daily Beast: 

Concerns are growing among Western intelligence services that Syria still has a significant and undeclared arsenal of chemical weapons, including crude chlorine-filled bombs, secret stockpiles of sophisticated nerve gasses or their components—and the scientific know-how to rebuild a larger-scale, higher-grade chemical weapons effort once the Bashar al-Assad regime has escaped the international spotlight.

“A ghost of CW [chemical weapons] program in a place riven with conflict—that’s a real concern,” one American intelligence official tells The Daily Beast.

But it’s not the only worry. Within the U.S. intelligence community, there’s also lingering unease about the Assad regime’s biological weapons program that has never been the focus of international inspections and that American officials confess they just don’t have the resources to track down.

To be sure, the deadly and publicly-declared chemical arsenal that Assad had a year ago, that allegedly was used to kill hundreds of people in August, and that he agreed to destroy in September under threat of an American attack is “no longer in existence,” according to the inspectors on the ground in Damascus. Only 7.5 percent of the 1,300 metric tons of chemical agents and precursors that the regime declared remain in the country, and the means of combining those elements to make sophisticated weapons of mass destruction like vx and sarin gas has been destroyed.

But the inspectors are only commenting on the chemical arsenal Assad admitted he had. There’s mounting concern that the Syrian regime may have a second unconventional weapons program—one Assad never told the international community about.

COMMENT:  Hmm.  More chemical weapons.  Probable biological weapons.  Before the Iraq war there were credible, well-sourced reports of long convoys going from Iraq to Syria.  The informed opinion was that these convoys contained some of the Iraqi WMD that we failed to find.  Of course, these reports were scoffed at when they first came out.  I'm not so sure they're being scoffed at now. 

It was always childlike to think that Assad, a mass murderer, would declare all the WMD that he actually has.  We must assume that a stockpile still exists in Syria, but we'll just pretend that it isn't there.  Just as we'll pretend that Iran's nuclear program is under control after we reach some full-of-holes agreement with the Iranians in Geneva.

May 2, 2014       Permalink

SICKENING – AT 9:46 A.M. ET:   The United Nations Committee against Torture, on which the U.S. serves, is getting tough.  No, not tough with Syria, or with Iran, or with North Korea.  The target?  The Catholic Church.  This has to be read to be believed.  From Fox: 

The United Nations Committee against Torture, which requires nations to come before the panel and defend their human rights records, will put an unlikely subject on its hot seat next week when it calls in the Vatican.

The UN panel, which includes representatives from China, the U.S. and eight other nations, will meet in Geneva and call the Vatican to account for its record on torture and inhumane punishment in a procedure to be aired live on the Internet beginning Monday. It's standard procedure for all 155 nations that signed on to the committee's convention to submit a report and come before the panel, and the Vatican is both a nation-state and a signatory. Cyprus, Lithuania, Guinea, Montenegro, Sierra Leone, Thailand and Uruguay are also scheduled to appear beginning next week.

“The Holy See initiated the procedure by submitting their written report,” Felice Gaer, the U.S. representative and a vice-chair of the committee, told FoxNews.com.

At past sessions, nations that carry out or condone practices universally recognized as inhumane have been forced to defend their records. The Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, has called for the committee to grill the Vatican regarding longstanding allegations of sexual abuse among clergy, contending failures in the Holy See’s response to the scandal amounts to a violation of the convention.

I have no sympathy for priests who sexually abuse anyone, but please note that the Center for Constitutional Rights is a pro-Communist organization, essentially a front group.

While it is possible the panel will raise longstanding allegations of sexual abuse among clergy, the Vatican report focuses mostly on what the church has and has not done to stop other nations from carrying out human rights violations.

“The Holy See notes that in times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order, often without protest from the pastors of the church, who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture," reads a passage from the Vatican's report. "Regrettable as these facts are, the church always taught the duty of clemency and mercy.”

COMMENT:  The Church is a huge institution, and it has made mistakes.  The Church just last week canonized two great men of the 20th century – John XXIII and John Paul II – who made gallant attempts to correct some of those mistakes, as well as being superb inspirational leaders. 

But the Church also does fine work around the world.  It takes care of more AIDS patients, for example, than any other institution, and its school network is one of this nation's most successful. 

All religious institutions are imperfect.  They can be centers of learning and morality, and they can also be centers of bigotry and backwardness.  But the Catholic Church seems to be a special target these days, and especially a target of the Obama administration.  I suspect this dragging of the Vatican before a ludicrous UN panel, which contains that great exemplar of human rights, China, could have been avoided had the U.S. engaged in some back-room maneuvers.  But I don't think Obama's representatives truly cared.

May 2, 2014       Permalink 

THE JOBS REPORT – AT 9:18 A.M. ET:  Coming a day after a discouraging rise in unemployment claims was reported, today's jobs report is good news, at least for the Obama administration and and the Democrats.  From The Washington Examiner:   

U.S. job growth picked up in April, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday morning, with payrolls growing by 288,000.

Those gains were stronger than analysts expected, and the headline numbers added evidence that the labor market is headed for a spring resurgence after a unusually harsh U.S. winter that Obama administration and Federal Reserve officials say took a considerable toll on commercial activity. Other details of the report, however, were not as rosy.

The unemployment rate drifted downward, falling from 6.7 to 6.3 percent. It dropped, however, for the wrong reason: not because more workers found jobs, but because the labor force shrunk by more than 800,000 in April. The labor force participation rate, a measure of all Americans with jobs or seeking work, fell to 62.8 percent, back to multi-decade lows, after rising the previous three months.

Friday's report also revised up the numbers for February and March. Over the past three months, payrolls have averaged roughly 240,000, well above the roughly 180,000 average that has prevailed since the jobs recovery began in late 2010. Over the past year, monthly job gains have been only slightly better, at just under 190,000.

COMMENT:  Obviously, the Dems will shout the news, but their shouting might be premature.  True, the 288,000 number is solid, but we don't know where those jobs came from and what wages are being paid.  If bad weather affected employment performance in the winter months, we must ask what jobs are most affected by weather.  They are mostly retail jobs because shoppers stay home. 

As the story says, the labor participation rate is awful, and not really getting better.  And we know that a disturbingly high number of new jobs are in low-paying industries. 

I'd wait before rejoicing.  I want to see the numbers behind the numbers.

May 2, 2014        Permalink

JUST AWFUL – AT 8:58 A.M. ET:  A new poll shows a devastating shift in American public opinion that will have horrible effects down the line.  This is the new America in the age of Obama.  From NBC: 

A near-majority of Americans say the United States should become less active in world affairs, a dramatic change from the post-9/11 national environment and one that comes as President Barack Obama tries to juggle crises in the Middle East and the Ukraine.

In a new NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll, 47 percent of respondents said the U.S. should dial down its activity in foreign affairs, versus 19 percent who said the country should be more active around the globe. Three in ten respondents said the current level is correct.

That represents a major flip in how Americans view world affairs since the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks. At that time, nearly 4 in ten Americans said they wanted to see more engagement around the world, and just 14 percent said the nation should be less active.

Comparable studies in the mid-1990s found that about a third of Americans believed the U.S. should reduce its foreign policy footprint.

COMMENT:  Why do Americans feel that way?  Part of it is the awful educations they're receiving in our colleges and universities, spearheaded by leftist professors who believe that America is the problem, not the solution.

And part of it is press reporting, which, since the Vietnam War, has disparaged American attempts to resist dangers abroad.  (And where are American journalists "educated"?) 

But the bulk of the change comes, I believe, from lack of presidential leadership.  Citizens in a democracy must be led in foreign policy.  They don't see the effects of that policy around them, as they see the effects of a bad economy.  It takes a bold president to say, "We have a problem.  Here is why it's important.  Here is what I plan to do.  Let me explain why you should support it."

The Obamans say they're giving Americans the foreign policy they want.  That is true.  But they want it because no one is leading in the correct direction.  In a way, Obama has been wildly successful as president, as a man of the left sees success.  He has weakened America, weakened our defenses and demoralized our population in terms of its relation to the rest of the world. 

When a crisis occurs, Americans still react in their traditional manner.  But that reaction quickly fades into a kind of isolationist despair at the hands of Barack Obama.

No foreign enemy could have done the damage that Obama has done.  It is true that some parts of the press have turned on him.  But it is also true that, on America's college campuses, the left has actually been increasing its militancy, not decreasing it.

The damage, of course, extends beyond the left.  Even in the Republican Party there is a new isolationism.  We know how the last era of isolationism, in the 1930s, worked out.  Ask the association of Gold Star mothers.

May 2,  2014     Permalink