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MAY 19,  2015

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:53 P.M. ET: 

RIGHT NEAR US – From Canadian Broadcasting Company:  "Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested 10 Montreal youth they believe were trying to leave the country to join jihadists in Turkey and Syria.  The force confirmed its Integrated National Security Enforcement Team made a series of arrests at Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport last weekend.  No charges have been laid and the investigation is continuing.  The passports of those arrested have been confiscated.  RCMP said investigators have met with the friends and families of the people trying to leave Canada."  Remember, the war on terror is over.  Field Marshal Obama has assured us of this.

HUGE RECALL – From Fox:  "The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Tuesday that Japanese company Takata Corp. has agreed to recall roughly 34 million vehicles because of defective air-bags, in the largest recall in the agency's history.  Takata agreed to the recall of the 33.8 million vehicles amid mounting pressure and fines from the agency over roughly the past year.  The company was being fined $14,000 a day since late February, which now amounts to $1.2 million.  The faulty air-bags have reportedly been linked to as many as six death and dozens of injuries.  Many of Takata's air-bags can explode with too much force, blowing apart a metal canister and sending shrapnel into the passenger compartment."  They've recalled the airbags.  Now if we can only recall the windbags.

WE HOPE IT'S A LONG TRIP – From The Politico:  "Gloria Steinem is among 30 women activists marching from Beijing through the demilitarized zone dividing North and South Korea in a call for peace next Sunday. The event marks the International Women’s Day for Peace and Disarmament.  The 81-year-old activist told Reuters that 'it seems to me that the past of no contact has not worked,' invoking former President Ronald Reagan’s call to tear down the Berlin Wall."  The left knows it's in trouble when they start invoking Ronald Reagan.

GREAT MOMENTS IN ETHICS – From the Washington Examiner:  "Former President Bill Clinton netted millions in speaking fees from appearances around the world while his wife served as secretary of state, but earned far less from abroad in the years since Hillary Clinton left the State Department.  Bill Clinton took in $2.2 million from just six international speeches in 2014, according to financial disclosure forms released Friday as required by Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy.  By contrast, the former president reportedly earned more than twice as much for appearances made across borders while Hillary Clinton was in office. He reportedly made $4.8 million from 13 speeches in foreign countries in 2010, his wife's first year as secretary of state.  In 2011, Bill Clinton reportedly drummed up at least $5.96 million in speaking fees for appearances he made outside the U.S."  I'm sure people paid those extortionist fees just to hear Bill Clinton's wisdom.  If you believe that, the bridge in Brooklyn is still available.  Needs paint.

May 19, 2015       Permalink

GATES SPEAKS – AT 10:45 A.M. ET:  I haven't always agreed with him, but former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates is a serious man, well respected in Washington.  His "Face the Nation" comments on the Iran nuclear negotiations are devastating, and should be taken seriously.  From CBS:

I have several concerns that I hope can be addressed in the negotiations between now and June – the first is the timing of the lifting of the sanctions. Is it-- are they going to be lifted right away as long as the Iranians agree to implement the agreement. Or will be-- they be phased over time based on performance which has been our position all along. The second is verification. Unless we have sort of on-demand inspection at all facilities, including military facilities, I think, there is a great potential to cheat. Third, I think that this-- the-- the idea of being able to have these snapback sanctions, that sanctions could be re-imposed once lifted is very unrealistic. I think that the pursuit of the agreement is based on the President's hope that over a ten-year period with the sanctions being lifted that the Iranians will become a constructive stakeholder in the international community. That-- that as their economy begins to grow again, that-- that they will abandon their ideology, their theology, their revolutionary principles, their meddling in various parts of the region. And, frankly, I believe that's very unrealistic.

And...

I don't think the alternative is war. One alternative is better deal. I think that you go back to the sanctions, I think you reinforce the sanctions, and you basically say, here are the additional things we need for this agreement to work and to be worthwhile, and an agreement that reassures our allies or at least doesn't scare them half to death. If they choose not to come back to the negotiations, but to race to a nuclear weapon, well my guess is that will show that they intended to do that all along. Despite all their protestations, that they have no interest in a nuclear weapon, but I think-- I think that there is a potential for a better deal.

COMMENT:   A better deal will require, above all, firm American leadership.  Where do we find that right now?  Obama is president.  Kerry is secretary of state.   The appeasement twins, together again for their farewell tour.  They have made one concession after another. 

The negotiating deadline is June 30th, little more than a month from now.  Just yesterday the Iranian foreign minister reiterated his government's position that the deal will include no inspections of military sites.  That should be, in the grown-up world, a dealbreaker.  But we have a national administration that thinks it's running a student government. 

The next month will be critical in American foreign policy.

May 19, 2015       Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 10:08 A.M. ET:  Nobody has summed up the Hillary weirdness better than Noemie Emery in the Washington Examiner: 

Uh, oh. Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post says it offends her that Carly Fiorina is running for president with a career in business behind her, instead of being a former president's wife. If only she had the gravitas of a Mrs. Bill Clinton, skilled in the arts of bimbo suppression, who went on to stellar careers in her post-Bill incarnation, as … well, as what?

Marcus ticks off the public posts held by Hillary: first lady, senator from New York, secretary of state for Barack Obama. But she fails to say what Clinton did with and in these posts. Were she to try, the seemingly impressive picture would become something considerably less bright.

In 1993, then known as "Bill's better half" and a "new kind of first lady," was given the task of designing a government takeover of health care. This had been planned as the jewel in the crown of the liberal edifice, but it proved a tough nut to crack. In September, 1994 the bill was withdrawn, but not before it had become the great cause célèbre of the upcoming midterms, in which Democrats lost control of both the House and the Senate for the first time in forty years. Elected to the Senate in 2000, thanks in part to her husband's fling with an intern, she voted in 2002 to launch the war in Iraq, turned against it the minute it ran into trouble and then tried to atone by opposing the Surge, which in 2007-2008 made Iraq stable.

COMMENT:  Read the whole thing.  It's truly delightful.  So many failures.  So little space.

May 19, 2015       Permalink

CARLY ROMPS AGAIN – AT 9:43 A.M. ET:  We've said here before that readers should watch carefully the rise of Carly Fiorina.  She is doing a terrific job on the stump.  People love her, love the way she goes after Hillary.

I don't think she can get the nomination for the top slot.  But V.P. maybe?  From Byron York at the Washington Examiner: 

Two of the 2016 Republican presidential field's most accomplished speakers, Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., skipped the big Lincoln Day dinner in Des Moines, Iowa over the weekend. But the dinner, which featured 11 candidates addressing the crowd for a strictly-enforced ten minutes each, saw the emergence of another star speaker in the GOP ranks.

Since making a good impression on Iowans at a similar event in January, Carly Fiorina has honed her stump speech to a fine edge. Starting with her own secretary-to-CEO success story, she touches a lot of bases — Hillary Clinton, American exceptionalism, business regulation, taxes, the size of government, the nature of leadership, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Israel, Iran and more. She delivers the message with an intensity that almost forces people to listen.

That's what Fiorina did in Iowa Saturday night. And even though one might think it an amateur mistake to go over the ten-minute limit, as Fiorina did, and to be stopped by rising music and a cut microphone (those were the rules), it didn't appear to hurt Fiorina. When she was cut off — Fiorina was the only candidate who went over — "the crowd groaned," according to Iowa Republican blogger Craig Robinson. They wanted to hear more.

COMMENT:  They always do, when Fiorina speaks.  Keep watching her.  She has star quality, and we can use that on our side.

May 19, 2015       Permalink

AS NIGHT FOLLOWS DAY – AT 9:06 A.M. ET:  Crime is surging in Baltimore.  Gee, I wonder why.  From CBS local: 

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — City crime spike. A dramatic increase in violence in Baltimore. Dozens of shooting and murders in the last few weeks following the riots last month.

Christie Ileto reports some are concerned police are hesitant to crack down after six officers were charged in the death of Freddie Gray.

No parent should ever have to bury a child, but it’s Vel Hick’s reality.

“He took my baby away from me. That’s my baby,” she said.

Her 33-year-old son Louis is now one of 96 homicides in Baltimore this year–an undercurrent of violence that’s up almost one-third from this time last year.

“People have said its because morale is down, or it’s because the officers were charged. We don’t know that,” said Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

While city leaders are working to curb the rash of bloodshed.

A Baltimore police officer who chose to remain anonymous says the Freddie Gray case impacted policing.

“If you want them to be proactive in patrolling and trying to catch people, I could see them not being interested in doing that,” the officer said.

William Scipio heads Sandtown’s Resident Action Committee–an area once at the heart of April’s unrest.

Ileto: “When was the last time you’ve personally seen an officer in Sandtown?”

Scipio: “Since the riots.”

COMMENT:  If you were a Baltimore cop, how enthusiastic would you be about your job?  You go out there and risk your neck, and see six cops overcharged over the death of a detainee, by a politically driven prosecutor. 

Crime is rising in New York as well, as the anti-cop mayor's popularity plunges.

May 19,  2015     Permalink

MAY 18,  2015

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

SILLY – From The Hill:  "PHILADELPHIA — Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul says he will bash Hillary Clinton over her husband’s record of putting 'a generation of black men in prison' if he is the nominee.  Paul, a freshman senator from Kentucky, says he will compete with Clinton in Philadelphia, where Democrats have a 7-to-1 registration advantage, and other impoverished cities by highlighting his support for criminal justice reform."  Rand is getting a little unhinged.  As a general rule, people go to prison when they're convicted of crimes.  Bill Clinton, despite his substantial defects, did not himself put a generation of black men in prison.

JINDAL READY TO JUMP – From the Washington Times:  "Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal announced Monday he is launching an exploratory committee to help him decide whether to run for president in 2016 — the clearest signal yet Mr. Jindal is moving toward a White House run on the Republican side.  'If I run, my candidacy will be based on the idea that the American people are ready to try a dramatically different direction,' Mr. Jindal said. 'Not a course correction, but a dramatically different path.'  Mr. Jindal said President Obama has started to redefine the American dream and 'turn it into the European nightmare.'"
Jindal would probably be the most exciting candidate, and he's been a superb governor of the ungovernable state of Louisiana.  I'm not sure he can make it as a presidential prospect, but V.P. might be in his future.

WORKING GIRL – From the Washington Post:  "In one of her last gigs on the paid lecture circuit, Hillary Rodham Clinton addressed an eBay summit aimed at promoting women in the workplace, delivering a 20-minute talk that garnered her a $315,000 payday from the company. Less than two months later, Clinton was feted at the San Francisco Bay-area home of eBay chief executive John Donahoe and his wife, Eileen, for one of the first fundraisers supporting Clinton’s newly announced presidential campaign."  The only "woman in the workplace" Hillary Clinton cares about is Hillary Clinton.

MAJOR ANIMAL NEWS – From the New York Post:  "MARKSVILLE, La. — A young black bear has been a backyard spectacle in a central Louisiana neighborhood where he has spent the past week up one tree or another as he searches for a new home.  The bear is among three to five that have wandered into populated parts of Louisiana in the past 10 days, said wildlife biologist Maria Davidson, head of the large carnivore program for the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries."  President Obama has already offered the bear a free college education, medical benefits and a driver's license.  He declared that bears like this should have a path to citizenship.

May 18,  2015     Permalink

THE MAD MEN ARE GONE – AT 10:55 A.M. ET:   The most common request I get at Urgent Agenda is to write more about popular culture.  I say I will, and then I don't.  Just call me Hillary.

But there was an important moment in popular culture last night, the final episode of "Mad Men," the series about a Madison Avenue advertising agency in the 1960s.  It became a phenomenon, and showed that cable systems can turn out fine work.  "Mad Men,"put on by the American Movie Classics (AMC) channel, has been the traditional wakeup call to the big-four TV networks – CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox – that there are other games in town.

I don't know how many of you have actually watched "Mad Men," so I won't discuss the show in detail.  It was superbly written and acted, and the setting in the 1960s was beautifully handled, complete with sixties music and news events as background.  Many advertising people will tell you, probably correctly, that it wasn't all that accurate.  It was a drama, and, I'm sure, plenty of license was taken.  But the show used an ad agency as a platform to portray the lives of the agency people in the suburbs, in Manhattan, and in their adventures outside their work.  The writers were able to bring in the social changes of the time, particularly the greater acceptance of minorities and women.  It was a time of upheaval, and assassinations.

It was never hokey.  Matthew Weiner, the creator of "Mad Men," rarely tried to sell a political line.

"Mad Men" symbolized something important in our popular culture, and that is the coming of a second golden age of American television.  The feature-film industry is fading away, a victim of its own greed, arrogance, excess, lack of talent, and contempt for the audience.  Television is now dominant in Hollywood, and is no longer the junior partner to the feature people.  With the expansion of the number of channels available, through cable or satellite, television has had the outlets to experiment, to create new forms, and to rebel.  It is the most creative time in the industry since the 1950s, when fine dramas like "Playhouse 90" could easily be found on the dial.  Today we have "The Americans," "Homeland," and, on the major networks, the occasional gem like "Friday Night Lights."  It is a good era in which to watch.

Goodbye to the mad men.  I welcome the next entry in the quality sweeps.

May 18, 2015        Permalink

THE NIGHTMARE IS COMING TRUE – AT 9:31 A.M. ET:  Many observers predicted that our appeasement of Iran would lead directly to a nuclear arms race in the Mideast.   The first steps have apparently been taken.  From the Times of Israel: 

Saudi Arabia has reached out to its ally Pakistan to acquire “off-the-shelf” atomic weapons as a nuclear arms race begins to shape up with Shiite rival Iran, US sources said.

“For the Saudis the moment has come,” a former US defense official told the UK’s Sunday Times. “There has been a longstanding agreement in place with the Pakistanis and the House of Saud has now made the strategic decision to move forward.”

The anonymous former official said the US did not believe that “any actual weaponry has been transferred yet,” but declared that “the Saudis mean what they say and they will do what they say.”

Tensions between Tehran and the kingdom have grown in the past few months as Saudi Arabia stepped up its air campaign against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. King Salman of Saudi Arabia refused an invitation to attend a landmark summit hosted by US President Barack Obama last week, amid ongoing angst over US-led nuclear talks with Iran.

Former Saudi intelligence head Prince Turki bin Faisal expressed the kingdom’s desire for a nuclear weapon last month at the Asan Plenum, a conference held by the South Korean-based Asan Institute for Policy Studies. “Whatever the Iranians have, we will have, too,” he said, according to The New York Times.

Faisal also warned that the Iranian nuclear deal “opens the door to nuclear proliferation, not closes it, as was the initial intention.”

COMMENT:  And so the nuclear arms race begins.  And a Saudi bomb, in turn, will lead to nuclear ambitions by Egypt and the Gulf states.

Iran, seeing what is happening, will only increase its clandestine nuclear activities.  And Barack Obama will leave office in the meantime, with serious suggestions that he be placed on Mount Rushmore.

May 18, 2015       Permalink

INCREDIBLE – AT 9:05 A.M. ET:   It takes incredible courage for a college professor to tell the truth these days, if the truth contradicts the leftist party line.  At Duke University, where political correctness is the order of the day, one professor is trying, and the result is predictable.  From the College Fix: 

An 80-year-old Duke University professor is under fire for arguing Asian-Americans have integrated into America better than African-Americans.

Political science professor Jerry Hough posted the controversial statements on a New York Times editorial headlined “How Racism Doomed Baltimore.”

Hough argued:

This editorial is what is wrong. The Democrats are an alliance of Westchester and Harlem, of Montgomery County and intercity Baltimore. Westchester and Montgomery get a Citigroup asset stimulus policy that triples the market. The blacks get a decline in wages after inflation.

But the blacks get symbolic recognition in an utterly incompetent mayor who handled this so badly from beginning to end that her resignation would be demanded if she were white.The blacks get awful editorials like this that tell them to feel sorry for themselves.

In 1965 the Asians were discriminated against as least as badly as blacks. That was reflected in the word “colored.” The racism against what even Eleanor Roosevelt called the yellow races was at least as bad.

So where are the editorials that say racism doomed the Asian-Americans. They didn’t feel sorry for themselves, but worked doubly hard.

I am a professor at Duke University. Every Asian student has a very simple old American first name that symbolizes their desire for integration. Virtually every black has a strange new name that symbolizes their lack of desire for integration. The amount of Asian-white dating is enormous and so surely will be the intermarriage. Black-white dating is almost non-existemt because of the ostracism by blacks of anyone who dates a white.

It was appropriate that a Chinese design won the competition for the Martin Luther King state. King helped them overcome. The blacks followed Malcolm X.

As news of the comments spread via social media, the professor was called “racist” and “ignorant.” The university also denounced the professor’s views to several news outlets, saying “the comments were noxious, offensive and have no place in civil discourse.”

Compare please to the vile comments made every day by racial agitators, leftists, Palestinian causists, and similar personalities.

But Hough, who is on administrative leave as part of a retirement plan, largely stands by them, The News & Observer reports.

“I don’t know if you will find anyone to agree with me,” he said in an email to The News & Observer. “Anyone who says anything is a racist and ignorant as I was called by a colleague. The question is whether you want to get involved in the harassment and few do. I am 80 and figure I can speak the truth as I see it. Ignorant I am not.”

COMMENT:  Cheers to Professor Hough.  If African American students will only listen, they can gain by what he is saying.

Asian Americans come to this country, many speaking not one word of English.  Five years later their children are at the top of their classes...in English. 

My family and I used to go to a Vietnamese restaurant in Charlottesville, Virginia.  At a table, just inside the front door, we usually spotted a textbook and a violin.  One of the daughters of the owners would wait on tables, then, on breaks, study or practice.  That's how you make progress.

Yet no fashionable professor or journalist points out the barriers Asian Americans might still face.  They are not one of the groups acceptable on the left...because they succeed!

May 18, 2015       Permalink

TRAGEDY – AT 8:47 A.M. ET:  Ramadi, one of the major cities of Iraq, has fallen to ISIS.  From Fox: 

ISIS overran the beleaguered Iraqi army to take control of the key city of Ramadi Sunday, killing an estimated 500 soldiers and civilians, sending thousands of residents fleeing for their lives and grabbing up U.S.-issued arms left behind as the embattled nation's fighters fled, witnesses reported.

The takeover followed a three-day siege that began with a wave of ISIS car bombs and which dealt a devastating blow to the Baghdad government and the U.S. forces providing logistical support. On Monday, Shia militias converged on the city, some 70 miles west of the capital, a bid retake it.

The retreat by Iraqi forces was reminiscent of the nation's earliest battles against ISIS, including the fall of Mosul, when poorly trained Iraqi soldiers shrank from the black-clad Islamist army, leaving guns and other gear behind for the terrorists to capture. In Ramaid Sunday, bodies littered the streets as local officials reported the militants carried out mass killings of Iraqi security forces and civilians. Online video showed Humvees, trucks and other equipment speeding out of Ramadi, with soldiers gripping onto their sides.

"Ramadi has fallen," Muhannad Haimour, a spokesman for the provincial governor of Anbar, told AP Sunday. "The city was completely taken. ... The military is fleeing."

COMMENT:  We now await attempts by the Obama administration to minimize the extent of the tragedy, or its importance.  We also await claims that this was caused by BUSH (!!) or CHENEY (!!!!).

This is a tremendous setback.  It requires a statement of intent by the president, or at least the secretary of state, as to how this will be reversed.

May 18,  2015     Permalink