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MAY 24,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 6:02 P.M. ET:

LIBERAL SHRINKAGE – From NewsBusters:  "Less than a week after Air America Radio refugee Randi Rhodes signed off with her last broadcast, libtalker Ed Schultz announced that he too is ending his radio show.  Schultz began his decade-old radio program today by saying he will air his last three-hour weekday broadcast on Friday and start an hour-long weekday show accessible from the Internet on May 27, the day after Memorial Day."  And MSNBC is wobbly, at best.  If our side can turn our success in broadcasting into votes, we'd have little to worry about.  We'll see in November.

UNBELIEVABLE – From USA Today:  "ISLA VISTA, Calif. — A Hollywood director and his family say they warned police about disturbing videos weeks before a shooting rampage that they believe their son committed near a Santa Barbara university. Seven people died, including the attacker.  Alan Shifman, attorney for Peter Rodger, assistant director of The Hunger Games series, said the family was told their son is dead after killing six people late Friday night. The family had not yet seen his body.  Shifman said family members called authorities several weeks ago after being alarmed by YouTube videos 'regarding suicide and the killing of people.'  Police interviewed Elliot Rodger and found him to be a 'perfectly polite, kind and wonderful human,' Shifman said. Authorities did not find a history of guns, but did say the 22-year-old had trouble making friends, he added. Authorities had not yet confirmed the identity of the shooter."  If that was the police reaction, that police department needs substantial retraining in dealing with mentally disturbed people.  The police had the videos, the threats.  And they depended on their view of the kid's personality?  That is amateurism, and it has cost lives.

I CAN'T WAIT – From The New York Times:  "WASHINGTON — President Obama, seeking to answer criticism that he has forsaken America’s leadership role, plans to lay out a retooled foreign-policy agenda on Wednesday that could deepen the nation’s involvement in Syria but would still steer clear of major military conflicts.  In a commencement address at the United States Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., Mr. Obama will seek, yet again, to articulate his view of the proper American response to a cascade of crises, from Syria’s civil war to Russia’s incursions in Ukraine, according to a senior administration official who is helping draft the speech.  Sketching familiar arguments but on a broader canvas, Mr. Obama will emphasize his determination to chart a middle course between isolationism and military intervention. The United States, he said, should be at the fulcrum of efforts to curb aggression by Russia and China, though not at the price of 'fighting in eight or nine proxy wars.'"  It's embarrassing.  No one has ever suggested fighting eight or nine proxy wars.  But this president has so weakened our foreign and defense policies that he's actually inviting the wars he wants to avoid. 

May 24, 2014       Permalink

AWFUL – AT 12:30 P.M. ET:   There has been a mass shooting in Santa Barbara, California.  From the Santa Barbara Independent:

A lone gunman killed six people and injured seven more during a shooting rampage Friday night in Isla Vista that Sheriff Bill Brown called “the work of a madman.” The suspect was killed after firing on responding deputies, but it’s not clear if the fatal wound to his head was self-inflicted or the result of return fire.

The seven injured victims are being treated at Santa Barbara Cottage hospital — some for gunshot wounds, others for trauma sustained when the suspect crashed his car as he was pursued — and one recently underwent surgery for life-threatening injuries.

Initial reports suggested that two suspects were involved in the shooting, but Brown said during a 2:30 a.m. press conference Saturday morning that the gunman acted alone. Brown said the man was armed with a semi-automatic handgun and that investigators are working to determine if other weapons were involved.

The names of the victims and the suspect have not been released. Brown, however, confirmed that written and video material left by 22-year-old Elliot Rodger of Calabasas in the hours and days leading up to the shooting is being reviewed as evidence in the massacre. “It appears to be connected,” he said.

In a YouTube video titled “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution” and posted the day before the shooting, Rodger — a Santa Barbara City College Student and Isla Vista resident, according to his social media accounts — laments his life of “loneliness, rejection, and unfulfilled desires.” He blames women for throwing themselves at “obnoxious brutes” but rejecting him, “the supreme gentlemen.”

In graphic and unsettling detail, he describes how he plans to launch an assault on the streets of Isla Vista the next day and become a God who “exacts my retribution on all those who deserve it.” (The video is posted below. Please be warned: it is extremely disturbing.) Photographs taken by The Santa Barbara Independent of the suspect’s crashed vehicle on Del Playa Drive show a license plate number that matches the one on the car featured on Rodger’s Facebook page.

COMMENT:  Once again we find a heinous crime committed by a person who is clearly disturbed, and left signs of his anguish.  One question that must be answered is how a man with this mental makeup got access to firearms.  Were they legally bought?  Did he undergo a background check?  Was there mental-health information on file for the check?  Had he actually sought mental help?

Virtually every mass shooting in our recent history has involved someone with a "mental" history, and yet there is still resistance to putting mental-health information into the background-check system.  Invasion of privacy, some say.  No, I don't think so.  The purchase of a firearm is a serious step.  I'm a gun owner, and a believer in the Second Amendment.  But no right is absolute, and it is important that we incorporate mental-health histories into the background check system. 

May 24, 2014       Permalink

MR. PAUL CONFRONTS HIS CRITICS – AT 11:24 A.M. ET:  As readers of this site know, I am not a big fan of Rand Paul.  While many of his ideas are fine, his view on foreign policy are more appropriate for a dorm room bull session than for the U.S. Senate. 

As a nation, we are currently paying the price for weakness.  A weak, leftist, anti-defense, vacillating president, who seems to have a certain contempt for his own country, is in charge, and the international system is descending into chaos. 

And yet Rand Paul might well continue the worst elements of Obama's foreign policy, reversing the age of Reagan in the Republican Party.  The Reaganites are fighting back.  I hope (and believe) that they will make Paul unelectable.  From The New York Times: 

WASHINGTON — Rand Paul had just finished his opening remarks at a private gathering of Republican power brokers at the Four Seasons in Georgetown last fall when Phil Gramm, the former senator from Texas, shot up his hand with the first question.

“Let’s say you knew for certain that by May 1 of next year that Iran would have generated enough highly refined uranium to build a bomb,” Mr. Gramm said. “Would you support attacking?” Mr. Paul, the Republican junior senator from Kentucky, had a dodge at the ready. “Can I give you Romney’s answer?” he asked, drawing a few laughs from the crowd as he said that he did not answer hypotheticals.

Mr. Gramm demanded more of a response.

“What would you do?” the former senator insisted, but Mr. Paul was again vague.

An awkward silence fell over the room, and the moderator at the gathering quickly moved on to the next question.

The exchange, a recording of which was provided by someone in the room, showed how difficult it will be for Mr. Paul to straddle the treacherous fault line splitting the hawks of the Republican Party from others who favor a less aggressive foreign policy as he tests the waters for a presidential run in 2016.

As Mr. Paul opens new doors to younger voters and others who have turned away from Republicans, few issues have proved more persuasive for the libertarian-minded senator than his wariness of centralized authority and his skepticism of military intervention. Yet those same positions have alarmed powerful elements of the Republican base who have undertaken a campaign to portray Mr. Paul as dangerously misguided.

They include right-leaning supporters of Israel, neoconservative think tanks, veterans of the George W. Bush administration and the widely read writers of The Weekly Standard, National Review and the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. Underscoring the potential threat to Mr. Paul, these are not just influential voices but people who hold considerable clout in the moneyed circles that control the flow of cash into campaigns and “super PACs.”

COMMENT:  Rand Paul's best course is to stay in the Senate as a gadfly, and present ideas.  But he is simply too unformed to be running the show.  His views on foreign policy contradict everything we have learned about how peace is achieved.  No war ever got started because America is too strong.  Wars start from weakness and indecision, when one side believes it can get away with aggression.

The constant question surrounding Rand Paul is the degree to which he is influenced by his father, whom I found thoroughly obnoxious.  An isolationist, some of Ron Paul's views came uncomfortably close to racism and bigotry.  Rand seems more moderate and thoughtful, but we shouldn't have to be convinced of a candidate's commitment to national defense and a strong foreign policy.  It should be in the record, and it isn't.

May 24, 2014       Permalink

CLIMATE SCIENCE? – AT 11:06 A.M. ET:  I must tell you that I've noticed a growing backlash against political correctness recently.  The steps may only be tentative, they may fade away as the thug left reorganizes, as it always does.  But there may also be a "fed up" point that is being reached. 

We note that, even in the "climate change" community there is now discussion of intimidation, of academic threats.  From Spiegel of Germany: 

After joining a controversial lobby group critical of climate change, meteorologist Lennart Bengtsson claims he was shunned by colleagues, leading him to quit. Some scientists complain pressure to conform to consensus opinion has become a serious hindrance in the field.

News that Lennart Bengtsson, the respected former director of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, had joined the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), sent shockwaves through the climate research community. GWPF is most notable for its skepticism about climate change and its efforts to undermine the position of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The tremors his decision sent through the scientific community shocked Bengtsson.

The scientist said colleagues placed so much pressure on him after joining GWPF that he withdrew from the group out of fear for his own health. Bengtsson added that his treatment had been reminiscent of the persecution of suspected Communists in the United States during the era of McCarthyism in the 1950s.

COMMENT:  Most "McCarthyism" today comes from the left, and especially from the leftist establishment in the academic world.  We recently saw the McCarthyist thugs successfully intimidate commencement speakers and those who invited them. 

But maybe people are starting to notice.  At Haverford College in Pennsylvania, one of the most liberal schools in the country, a commencement speaker was shouted away, but his replacement came and denounced the students and faculty who'd committed the thuggery.  He got a standing ovation from graduates.  When I see that I think change may be coming.

Change often is generational.  The sixties generation of radicals is fading on college campuses, and it's been reported that the new generation is, while not in any way conservative, far less radical.  I hope so.  I have to see more proof.  Democracies move slowly, but, when they move, they move decisively.  Right now the left is fighting more viciously than ever, possibly a sign of desperation.  Let us hope.

May 24,  2014     Permalink

MAY 23,  2014

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

OUT THERE – From London's Daily Mail:  "Aliens are real - not little green men visiting Earth as depicted in movies, but rather microbial life in our own solar system and intelligent life beyond.  That’s according to two leading Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Seti) researchers, who yesterday took part in a hearing at the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology in Washington DC.  During the talk dubbed ‘Astrobiology and the Search for Life in the Universe’, the scientists laid out the evidence and reasoning for believing we are not alone."  And you may be sure Obama will include the aliens under the Affordable Care Act, and will allow them to keep their spaceship if they want to.

CUTIE PIE – From London's Daily Mail:  "President Barack Obama made a rare visit to his hometown yesterday.  The President jaunted over to Chicago, Illinois, last night for a pair of Democratic Party fundraisers after a trip to Cooperstown, New York, to visit the National Baseball Hall of Fame.  At the fundraisers, Obama noted how nice it was to finally see his friends. 'All of you look the same and I look like Morgan Freeman,' the president told attendees of a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee event, according to the White House pool report.  'So the job has been wearing me down a little bit, I admit, gray hair and all that. But Michelle still thinks I'm cute. She’s not ready to trade me in yet.'"  Unlike most of the country, according to the polls.

HE'S PROBABLY RIGHT – From AP:  "WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland's former president and Nobel Peace laureate, Lech Walesa, said Friday he plans to urge President Barack Obama to take a more active world leadership role when he visits Poland in June.  Speaking to The Associated Press, Walesa said 'the world is disorganized and the superpower is not taking the lead. I am displeased.'  The former Solidarity leader said that when he meets Obama in Warsaw, he wants to tell him that the U.S. should inspire and encourage the world into positive action.  'The point is not in having the States fix problems for us or fight somewhere, no,' Walesa said. 'The States should organize us, encourage us and offer programs, while we, the world, should do the rest. This kind of leadership is needed.'"  It is amazing how quickly we have slipped downhill in the eyes of the world's freedom fighters.  I'm sure the Muslim Brotherhood thinks Obama is just swell.

APPALLING – From the Washington Times:  "President Obama is taking a swipe at the Founding Fathers, blaming his inability to move his agenda on the 'disadvantage' of having each state represented equally in the Senate.  At a Democratic fundraiser in Chicago Thursday night, Mr. Obama told a small group of wealthy supporters that there are several hurdles to keeping Democrats in control of the Senate and recapturing the House. One of those problems, he said, is the apportionment of two Senate seats to each state regardless of population."  I guess successful presidents didn't have these problems.  We must have had a different Constitution somewhere along the way.  The president might note that the name of the country is The United States of America.  It's not the People's Republic of America.

May 23, 2014       Permalink

AN ABSOLUTE DISGRACE – AT 9:18 A.M. ET:  From Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit: 

This is just shameful.  Former Pentagon spokesman JD Gordon, who made 30 trips to Guantanamo Bay Prison, told Eric Bolling Thursday on Hannity that Gitmo terrorists get better healthcare than US veterans.

“Well, at Guantanamo there is about 150 detainees there right now and they have a medical unit of about 100 doctors, nurses, aides and support staff. Now it’s about 1.5 detainees to one medical official. But if you look at veterans in this country, there are 21 million veterans. And, of those 21 million veterans, 9 million are receiving VA care. But, if you look at VA employees, it’s 267,000. That’s a 35 to one ratio. So, I think President Obama has a flawed sense of priorities. He’s taking better care of Al-Qaeda detainees in Guantanamo than our own veterans.”

COMMENT:  For Obama, that's probably just right.  Considering his background, he probably buys into the thesis that the detainees at Guantanamo were driven by American militarism, adventurism, colonialism, and any other ism that comes to mind.

But the contrast cited in the story tells you where we are.

May 23, 2014       Permalink

I LOVE IT! – BRITAIN STRIKES GOLD, KNOWN AS OIL – AT 9:02 A.M. ET:   From London's Daily Mail: 

Billions of barrels of oil have been found in the ground beneath the south of England, according to a report out today.

The official analysis by the British Geological Survey (BGS) revealed the vast scale of energy reserves lying under parts of Sussex, Hampshire and Kent.

The BGS report, commissioned by the Department for Energy and Climate Change and released this morning, estimates that there are 4.4billion barrels-worth of oil in the ground under the Weald Basin in Kent and parts of Sussex and Surrey.

How much of this is recoverable is not yet known - further drilling and testing of new wells will be needed to establish this, but the discovery is set to spark a new stage in the battle between environmentalists and energy firms over the controversial topic of fracking.

Green MP Caroline Lucas condemned news of the findings as 'disastrous' from a climate change perspective in general, and for those living in the south east in particular.

COMMENT:  Yeah, right.  Those people might actually have a stable, booming economy.  Must avoid that.  Not good for Marxist ideology.

This could be a great moment for Britain, if the country can balance the obvious economic and energy benefit with thoughtful environmental protections.

May 23, 2014       Permalink

CLINTON FUMBLE – AT 8:36 A.M. ET:  The mainstream media is playing it down, as they're slipping into "protect Hillary at all costs" mode, but the Clintons took a battering this past week.  From crusty old Wes Pruden, an experienced Washington hand: 

These are not happy times for Hillary Clinton. Nor Bubba, either. They got a wake-up call Tuesday that was less a call than a fire bell in the night. Neither has slept a wink since.

The fire bell is not about Hillary’s fragile health or even, at the moment, about what she did — and more important, didn’t do — as secretary of state. It’s far more serious than that.

The Clinton mojo isn’t working. This is two in a row on the losing end of selected congressional races. Bubba still has the impish smile, the ingratiating cock of the head, the schoolmaster’s bony index finger stabbing the air to punctuate his talking points, the calculating eyes that sent some women into a swoon and other women looking for a place to hide. None of that was working on this election night.

The disappointment in Pennsylvania follows the Democratic debacle in Florida, where a Republican lobbyist from Washington defeated a Democratic golden girl, who two years earlier had come within a whisker of being elected governor. She collected millions for her congressional race, and her opponent collected thousands. Bubba raced in with robo-calls just in time to crack open the champagne. Only the champagne turned out to be beer, and it was flat.

Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District, which includes Philadelphia suburbs, seemed ready-made for swooning at the feet of Bubba and the lady. Swooning at the sight of a Democrat is what the district’s voters regularly do on cue, and Marjorie Margolies, a liberal’s liberal, was attempting a comeback 20 years after she was bounced out of the seat. Name recognition was out of sight, and she led in the early polls by a ton-and-a-half.

Enter Bubba and Hillary, with television commercials urging Pennsylvanians to do the right thing and send Mrs. Margolies back to Washington. Bubba made robo-calls with the usual boilerplate blah-blah, reprised from the Florida failure, about the need to send someone to Washington who would dutifully eat her organic vegetables, do good and work “across the aisle.” Voters heard the familiar good-ol’-boy accent in their very own telephones.

COMMENT:  Read the rest.  It's a gem.  Marjorie Margolies is, of course, Chelsea Clinton's mother-in-law, but the Clinton "magic," or "tarnish," didn't quite rub off.  (Or maybe it did.)  Marjorie was swamped by a little-known state senator who favors abortion restrictions, in a heavily Democratic district.  Bill and Hill had no impact at all.  We're talking a former president and a maybe president-to-be, although we hope not.

Why are we hearing the word "inevitable" less and less?

May 23, 2014        Permalink

SMOKING GUN – AT 8:22 A.M. ET:  The Feds have released the note found in a boat where one of the two Boston Marathon terrorists hid.  It proves the point that these were jihadists, and that they must be considered part of a worldwide movement.  From The Hill:

Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev expressed anger at the United States and jealousy that his brother had died a martyr in a note written while hiding from authorities, according to court documents released Wednesday.

Officials found the note Tsarnaev wrote in a boat he hid in just before he was captured last year following the deadly Boston Marathon bombing.

His brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who prosecutors say planned the attack with him, had just died. The younger Tsarnaev wrote that his brother’s soul was still alive and that he was in the Islamic paradise.
“I’m jealous of my brother who ha[s] [re]ceived the reward of jannutul Firdaus (inshallah) before me. I do not mourn because his soul is very much alive,” wrote Tsarnaev.

“God has a plan for each person. Mine was to hide in this boat and shed some light on our actions,” he continued. “I ask Allah to make me a shahied (iA) to allow me to return to him and be among all the righteous people in the highest levels of heaven.”

Tsarnaev also wrote that he did not like killing innocent people, but believed his actions were justified because the U.S. was killing Muslims.

“The US Government is killing our innocent civilians but most of you already know that,” he said. “I can’t stand to see such evil go unpunished, we Muslims are one body, you hurt one you hurt us all.”

Tsarnaev said U.S. actions had “awoken the mujahideen."

"[K]now you are fighting men who look into the barrel of your gun and see heaven, now how can you compete with that,” he continued.

COMMENT:  The usual explainers say that these two guys were "lone wolves."  That must be rejected.  The people who radicalized them didn't expect them to sit around and do nothing, or watch old prints of "Lawrence of Arabia."  The radicalizers, who use the internet effectively, train for action.  And they got it in Boston.

May 23,  2014     Permalink