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SEPTEMBER 12,  2014

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

THE END IS NEAR – We know this from Nancy Pelosi, who told Bill Maher that “it would be very important for the Democrats to retain control of the Senate.  Civilization as we know it today would be in jeopardy if the Republicans win the Senate.”  Well we certainly wouldn't want that, would we?  I never realized how much we owe to Harry Reid.

POLITICAL ADVICE – From the New York Post:  "He must be taking lessons from Anthony Weiner!
Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), the third-ranking House Democrat, got his tech lingo mixed up when he recommended 'sexting' as a vital tool for organizing voters.  The 72-year-old pol — who apparently meant to say 'texting' — slipped up on C-SPAN over Labor Day weekend, when a caller asked about how to promote change in the wake of the Michael Brown murder.  'We’ve got great tools to communicate … We can, uh, text. Uh, what do we call it? Sexting. Let’s do some voting, uh, uh, organizing over the Internet. We’ve got the tools,' he said."  This man has security clearance.

NEVER COMPLAIN, NEVER EXPLAIN – Good advice from Henry Ford II.  But the "climate science community" never got the message.  From Daily Caller:  "It’s been a busy year for climate scientists, who have been trying to explain why there has been no global warming for nearly two decades.  The Daily Caller News Foundation reported in February there were eight mainstream explanations for the pause, but there are now a whopping 52 explanations for why there has been no warming trend for the last 215 months.  Explanations for the pause in global warming range from ocean oscillation cycles to Chinese coal plant emissions, volcanic activity to some scientists even saying there is no hiatus in warming."  There are large grants available to those who preach the party line, so the party line will never die.

MICHAEL MOORE SPEAKS, UNFORTUNATELY – From UPI:  "Filmmaker Michael Moore says he's given up hoping President Obama will leave a memorable legacy.  The liberal documentarian, who is perhaps best known for eviscerating George W. Bush in Fahrenheit 9/11, said Obama is 'a huge disappointment.' Speaking with the Hollywood Reporter at the Toronto Film Festival, Moore said Obama will only be remembered as the first African American elected to the job.  "When the history is written of this era, this is how you'll be remembered: 'He was the first black president,'" Moore said, directing his comments at the president.  'Okay, not a bad accomplishment, but that's it.'"  I guess that's definitive, assuming anyone remembers Michael Moore. 

September 12, 2014       Permalink

OBAMA FANTASIES – AT 10:32 A.M. ET:  One of the more absurd assertions President Obama made in his speech Wednesday night was that ISIS (or ISIL) isn't Islamic.  If it isn't Islamic, why does it call itself the Islamic State?  Why not MSNBC?  Dan Pipes, at NRO, sets the president straight: 

In a televised address on how to address the Islamic State this evening, President Barack Obama declared the organization variously known as ISIS or ISIL to be “not Islamic.”

In making this preposterous claim, Obama joins his two immediate predecessors in pronouncing on what is not Islamic. Bill Clinton called the Taliban treatment of women and children “a terrible perversion of Islam.” George W. Bush deemed that 9/11 and other acts of violence against innocents “violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith.”

None of the three has any basis for such assertions. To state the obvious: As non-Muslims and politicians, rather than Muslims and scholars, they are in no position to declare what is Islamic and what is not. As Bernard Lewis, a leading American authority of Islam, notes: “It is surely presumptuous for those who are not Muslims to say what is orthodox and what is heretical in Islam.”

And...

In the end, though, neither U.S. presidents nor Islamist apologists fool people. Anyone with eyes and ears realizes that the Islamic State, like the Taliban and al-Qaeda before it, is 100 percent Islamic. And most Westerners, as indicated by detailed polling in Europe, do have eyes and ears. Over time, they are increasingly relying on common sense to conclude that the group is indeed profoundly Islamic.

COMMENT:  We are obsessed in the West with finding the "good" in people.  Okay, that's fine.  But if we don't understand the bad in people, there'll be none of us left to search for the good.

September 12, 2014       Permalink

SENATE SCORECARD – AT 10:04 A.M. ET:   We are getting increasing signs, if trends continue, that Republicans may well take control of the Senate in November.  There is no better political reporter than John Fund.  From NRO: 

Two things are becoming clear about this November’s U.S. Senate races. First, more and more analysts now say Republicans are likely to win at least the 51 seats needed for control of the Senate. Second, the result is that Democrats will run even more desperately negative campaigns in an effort to hold onto power. But don’t expect too much media thumb-sucking about “attack ads” this fall, since the worst are almost certain to come from the left.

In the battle for Senate control, analysts from left to right give the GOP an edge. Mark Blumenthal, the pollster for the Huffington Post, this week gave Republicans a 55 percent chance of taking back the Senate, which the Democrats have held since 2007. Among the close races, he says Arkansas and Louisiana are likely to tilt Republican, while Colorado and Iowa are “truly 50–50 races.”
Other analysts ranging from Larry Sabato to Charlie Cook to FiveThirtyEight.com’s Nate Silver also give the GOP the edge. Silver, who predicted Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection on the nose, says the GOP has a 65 percent chance of capturing the Senate. In his analysis: “Republicans can win the Senate solely by winning Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia, states which voted for Mitt Romney over Barack Obama by an average of 19 percentage points in 2012.”

Then there is political analyst Stu Rothenberg, who has been observing elections since 1980. This week he wrote in Roll Call that he now believes the Republicans will crest a political wave and make a net gain of seven Senate seats, but he wouldn’t be surprised if they went higher. “The combination of an unpopular president and a midterm election (indeed, a second midterm) can produce disastrous results for the president’s party,” he concluded.

Even before this week’s predictions of doom by political analysts, Democratic senators were already running hysterical ads against their opponents. The Washington Free Beacon noted that “Senator Mark Begich (D., Alaska) was recently forced to pull an inflammatory ad falsely linking his GOP opponent, former state Attorney General Dan Sullivan, to a gruesome murder, after the victims’ family expressed outrage at not being consulted and accused Begich of exploiting a tragedy for political gain.”

COMMENT:  And the Dems are trotting out the old "war on women" charge, which will become more vociferous as election day approaches.  The line is failing badly in Texas, where Wendy Davis is in near-collapse in her campaign for the governorship.  Women just aren't buying, and for good reason.  It may come as a shock to Democrats, but women are interested in other things besides birth control and abortion. 

Anything can happen in the remaining weeks of the campaign.  But the trend, although not all that strong yet, appears to be in our direction.

September 12, 2014       Permalink

ALL DOWNHILL – AT 9:18 A.M. ET:  We continue to monitor reaction to Field Marshal Obama's speech about the Islamic State.  At best, reaction is lukewarm.  No one is enthusiastic.  No one has collapsed in awe of how brilliant the plan is.   The trend is downward, with many experts warning that the plan is inadequate and cannot possibly succeed without ground troops.  From Rowan Scarborough at the Washington Times: 

Trying to uproot and destroy the Islamic State’s army of terrorists in Iraq without American ground troops, as President Obama promoted Wednesday night, is doomed to failure, national security experts say.

At the least, the president needs to get ground troops closer to the fight, say some politicians and analysts. He should introduce special operations units to advise and join the Iraqis on hunt-and-kill missions against Islamic State leaders, as well as insert controllers to point out targets for warplanes.

“What a waste of time,” said Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst and counterterrorism official at the State Department. “We have not learned a thing in 80 years. [The Islamic State] is an army. The air power is not going to get the job done. Until you put troops in and kill these guys, they’re going to continue. They adjust to tactics. They meld into [the] civilian population.”

Militants in the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, are so embedded in Mosul, Fallujah, Ramadi and other Iraqi towns that it will take skilled land combatants to evict them, block by block, analysts say. Relying on the Iraqi security forces, even with front-line U.S. air power, is iffy at best, because Iraqi troops have conducted mass retreats rather than standing and fighting in major battlefield offensives.

Said an Army officer in the Pentagon: “Air power alone cannot win wars. [The president’s] stated strategy ignores this widely accepted truth. But with troops on the ground, in very small numbers, we can team with Kurds and Shia to support those ground forces in rapidly defeating ISIS.”

Retired Army Gen. John Keane, an architect of the 2007 troop surge carried out by Gen. David H. Petraeus, said that, at the least, the campaign needs American advisers closer to battle

“If the U.S.-led coalition conducts a very aggressive air campaign that hits ISIS hard, sustained and simultaneous[ly] in Iraq and Syria, then ISIS will lose freedom of movement [and] initiative, and will become defensive,” Mr. Keane said. “However, defeat requires a ground counteroffensive to retake lost territory, led by the Iraqi army and the Free Syrian Army [and] supported by close air support.”

COMMENT:  Civilian leaders are routinely sold air campaigns as a kind of "clean" warfare, with glamorous jets flying overhead.  Air power, of course, is critical, but the experts are right.  To win a war, ground must be taken.  And it can only be taken by ground troops.  We love to use the phrase, "no American boots on the ground."  It's like a love song that is sung by a teenage boy  Not much substance. 

September 12, 2014       Permalink

DEATH OF A NETWORK – AT 8:41 A.M. ET:  It is sad to watch the slow death of a news network, but that is what we are seeing at CNN.  It's a network with many fine reporters, but it cannot get its act together.  A change in management has had no positive effect.

The problem is bias.  Despite all its proclamations, and the attempts by some of its journalists to play it straight, CNN is a liberal network.   Fox is far more balanced.

Consider the recent adventures of CNN:   Gaza, where the network went out of its way to demonstrate its pro-Palestinian bias, agonizing over every Palestinian casualty while showing little interest in the fact that thousands of Israelis were existing, and educating their children, in underground shelters.  We have yet to see CNN read the hateful, Nazi-like, Hamas charter to its viewers, or even the relevant parts of it.   It took brave journalists of European and Asian news organizations to break the silence and, when they left Gaza, explain to their viewers and readers what really goes on in the Gaza police state – rockets fired from the parking lots of schools and hospitals, intimidation of journalists, and, now we are finally being told, intimidation of UN personnel.  CNN always seemed behind the story.

Then came Ferguson, with CNN in full liberal tilt.  Obviously, this was a tragedy.  Michael Brown, a black teenager, was killed by police gunfire.  Instead of investigating the circumstances and reporting carefully, CNN went into full Trayvon Martin mold.  (Recall that the first TV picture we saw of Martin was Martin as an 11-year-old, even though he was actually in his late teens.)  Brown, we were told, was a "gentle giant."  After a few days, even CNN had to acknowledge that he was anything but gentle, that in fact he'd allegedly robbed a convenience store only minutes before his death.  It may well turn out that the police officer committed a crime.  But I'd like to see the facts on that, not have his guilt, if any, inferred from liberal reporting.

And now we have CNN's obsession with the Ray Rice story.  I have no use for this man.  Any creature who'd punch out a woman is off my "human being" chart.  But CNN's obsession with the story simply reflects, not the tragedy of one woman, but the network's embrace of the feminist agenda.  You watch the lead story on Fox this week, and normally it's been America going to war again.  You click to CNN and it's...Ray Rice.  When you consider the heartbreaking number of children shot in Chicago every week, you wonder where CNN's priorities are.  Oh, by the way, please note that CNN does documentaries, but has not seen fit to do the most obvious documentary of all – a comparison between New York and Chicago, which asks the question, why has one city largely solved its crime problem and the other city has failed?  CNN won't do that documentary for obvious reasons.  It would have to give huge credit to Rudy Giuliani, the visionary Republican mayor of New York, and that's not on CNN's agenda.

Right now CNN is a waste of talent.  I still enjoy watching many of its people.  But the tilt is too obvious, and, after a time, you wonder what part of the story you're getting. 

I don't see a way back for CNN.  The damage, over the years, is too great.

September 12,  2014     Permalink 

SEPTEMBER 11,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:48 P.M. ET: 

THE DAY – Fortunately, we did not sustain any terrorist attacks on September 11th.  But it did strike me as ironic that, 13 years after the original 9-11 attacks, we're still debating how to defeat Islamic terrorism.  Oh, excuse me, we're assured by Field Marshal Obama that it really isn't Islamic.  Maybe that's part of the problem.  When you won't even acknowledge your enemy's name, how do you expect to defeat him?  Imagine if FDR, on December 8, 1941, had gone before Congress to proclaim, "Yesterday, December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of a nation that wrongly claims to be Japanese."  We've reached that level of absurdity.

THE NEW REALITY OF ISIS – From Fox:  "The CIA said Thursday that the number of Islamic State fighters has grown to as many as three times previous estimates; a day after President Obama announced he is drastically expanding the U.S. military campaign against the militants.  A spokesperson for the agency told Fox News that new assessments show that the militant group can muster between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters across Iraq and Syria.  The spokesperson said the new figures were determined after a review of 'all-source intelligence reports' on the group from May to August.  The new numbers are a big jump from the agency’s previous estimate that there were at least 10,000 Islamic State fighters."  How do you defeat a force that grows that quickly, and whose growth is based both on fear and a simplistic idea?  I don't know, but it will take a lot more than air strikes.

OBAMA FADING – I don't know if last night's speech will help him – the reaction hasn't exactly been electric – but Obama is losing key parts of his coalition.  From WaPo:  "Women surveyed said they disapprove of Obama by a 50 percent to 44 percent margin — nearing an all-time low in the poll. It’s almost the reverse of the 55 percent to 44 percent breakdown for Obama among female voters in 2012, according to exit polls.  His approval rating among women has slipped four percentage points from a year ago and 16 points since his second inaugural in January 2013, when his approval was 60 percent among the group.  Among younger voting-age Americans, Obama’s approval rating stood at 43 percent. That marked an 11-point drop since June among those 18 to 29 years old. Voters younger than 30 supported Obama by 60 percent to 37 percent in 2012.  Meanwhile, support for Obama among Hispanics stood at 57 percent, which is down markedly from the first half of 2013, when approval among Latinos soared to about 75 percent."  We shouldn't assume this is good news for Republicans.  To take advantage of the situation, Republicans must reach out to these groups and demonstrate clearly how they can gain from Republican governing principles, if we can agree on those principles.

GREAT MOMENTS IN INTELLECT – From Fox:  "A public school teacher in Washington who instructed sixth-graders to compare former President George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler has learned her own lesson, according to district officials, but critics wonder why she still has a job.  D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson responded to the controversy late Wednesday on Twitter, saying no curriculum intended to make the comparison 'in any way' and that the district and unidentified teacher are 'deeply apologetic' about the matter. Henderson said the teacher has been ordered to apologize to the class. 'No DCPS curriculum says 2 make these comparisons in any way,' Henderson wrote. 'Teacher used poor judgment & will apologize.' Marc Thiessen, who worked for years as Bush’s speechwriter, said the teacher should be terminated immediately.  'A person who can’t tell the difference between George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler shouldn’t be teaching children,' Thiessen told FoxNews.com. 'This isn’t even political bias, this is utter incompetence.'"  I agree with Thiessen, but standards in D.C. are low. 

September 11, 2014       Permalink

ALMOST IN TALL COTTON – AT 11:23 A.M. ET:   One of the most crucial Senate races this year is in Arkansas, pitting Republican Tom Cotton against ultra-establishment Democrat Mark Pryor.  Pryor is from an old-line political family.  Cotton is an Iraq war vet who quit a lucrative legal career to serve in the military.  From The Hill: 

Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) might have seized the upper hand against Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) in an important Senate battleground following months of hard punching by both sides.

Cotton has inched ahead of Pryor in most recent public polling of the race, as Pryor struggles to overcome an unpopular president and attacks on his own record.

Strategists on both sides say the race remains close, but Republicans are feeling increasingly hopeful about their chances in the critical contest.

“It’s a very close race, and it’s really a race that’s all about turnout,” said Hendrix College professor Jay Barth. “I’d give Cotton the slight advantage.”

Cotton has led in five of the last six nonpartisan public polls of the race going back to late July, with his lead ranging from 2 to 5 points in most surveys. Internal GOP polling is even more bullish for Cotton.

Democrats privately admit that the race has moved toward Cotton since early in the summer, but they say it is still a pure toss-up. An NBC News/Marist poll over the weekend pegged Cotton with a 5-point lead, 45 percent to 40 percent.

A recently released survey conducted for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s independent expenditure arm had Pryor up by 2 points, narrower than the 5-point edge he had in a poll conducted for the state Democratic Party in early August.

COMMENT:  At this point we can say that momentum is heading in the Republican direction in many contests throughout the country.  That is not a guarantee, of course.  In Arkansas the question is whether a conservative like Cotton, whose values match those of the state, can overcome the connections and pure political expertise of the Pryor family. 

September 11, 2014       Permalink

GOP ROMPS ON NATIONAL SECURITY – AT 9:44 A.M. ET:  Despite President Obama's almost-get-tough speech last night, the Republicans have won the fight over fitness to handle national security.  From The Hill: 

The public thinks Republicans will do a better job keeping the U.S. safe by a wider margin than at any time since 2002, according to a Gallup poll.

The poll finds that 55 percent of adults think Republicans will do a better job protecting the country from terrorism and military threats, while just 32 percent think Democrats will.

The poll comes as fears of ISIS have dominated the news, despite statements from U.S. officials that the group is not currently known to be plotting attacks on the U.S. It was conducted Sept. 4-7, before President Obama's speech on Wednesday night laying out a strategy to defeat ISIS.

Republicans' lead on the issue has widened drastically in just two years, as foreign crises have grown to plague Obama. In 2012, the parties were essentially tied in the public's mind on keeping the country safe. In 2013, Republicans had a six-point lead. Now they have a 23-point lead.

Republicans have led for most of the years since Gallup began asking the question in 2002, following the September 11 attacks, but Democrats did briefly hold a lead in 2007. That was during a low-point in President Bush's popularity.

On the domestic side, Republicans also have the lead, with possible repercussions in the midterm elections. Asked which party will do a better job keeping the country prosperous, 49 percent say Republicans and 40 percent say Democrats.

COMMENT:  Things are starting to look encouraging for the midterms, which are less than two months away.  But the time remaining is still sufficient to see reversals.  We must fight as if 20 points behind, which is what all pros do.

September 11, 2014       Permalink

THE SPEECH – AT 9:06 A.M. ET:  More reaction to President Obama's speech last night is coming in, and I've noticed that some of it, especially from terror experts, is turning quite negative.  Consider this from terrorism expert Con Coughlin at London's Daily Telegraph: 

Hallelujah! Barack Obama has finally come up with a strategy for dealing with the Islamist fanatics in Iraq and Syria. Two weeks after the most laid-back president in American history said he had no strategy for dealing with Islamist menace, on the eve of the 9/11 attacks he finally managed to make a statement on his plans for dealing with Isil.

The only problem is that it is not going to work. The American president's psychological aversion to putting boots on the ground – a condition that is also prevalent in Whitehall – effectively means that Washington is farming out responsibility for tackling the extremists to local proxies – in Iraq the Kurds' Peshmerga fighters and Iranian-backed Shia militias, in Syria the hopeless Western-backed opposition groups that have so far singularly failed to make any impact whatsoever in Syria's brutal civil war.

All that America and its allies will be doing is bombing Islamist positions in Iraq and Syria without getting their hands dirty on the ground.

You don't need a doctorate in Middle Eastern studies to recognise that this is not only a recipe for disaster, but it will not deliver the stated objective of destroying Isil.

Firstly, could someone at the White House kindly explain how backing pro-Iranian Shia militias in Iraq squares with supporting anti-Assad rebels in neighbouring Syria? Iran, you might remember, is backing the Assad regime, so we already have a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the Obama doctrine – in Iraq we are with the Iranians, in Syria we are against the Iranians. Furthermore, Mr Obama's claim that he can bomb Syrian air space without first asking permission of the country's elected government – a position that is supported in London – is a clear breach of international law, a fact I am sure the Russians will seek to raise at the UN Security Council.

Then there is the moral bankruptcy of a policy which relies on others to do your dirty work for you.  Isil poses a direct threat to American and British interests, and it is therefore the duty of those governments to take the appropriate action to protect their citizens. Outsourcing that responsibility to other groups might be politically expedient, but it is unlikely to provide the long-term stability and security that they deserve.

COMMENT:  Very well said.  Given Obama's history, I can't say that I have much confidence in him as a military commander.  One skeptical columnist said that Obama will remain committed to the goal of destroying ISIL until the American people lose interest.  I fear that's dead on.

September 11, 2014        Permalink

SEPTEMBER 11TH – AT 8:46 A.M. ET:  It is September 11th.  Now, it is true that most anniversaries of the 9-11-01 attacks have gone off without event.  No terrorist attacks.  But two years ago, in Benghazi, that pattern was broken, with a vicious terror attack on the U.S. Consulate, resulting in the murder of the American ambassador and three other Americans. 

There is great apprehension this year because of the rise of the Islamic State, a vicious group, and a more violent rival to al Qaeda.  Thus far the day has been calm.  It is just starting in our homeland, but it is late afternoon in the Middle East, where the chances of an attack are greater.  It is, as this is written, 3:51 p.m. in Baghdad and Jerusalem.  But please note that the Benghazi attack occurred at night.

Clearly, there is concern here in New York, still considered one of the prime targets at home.  The NYPD assures us that there are no known credible threats.  We'll be monitoring things throughout the day.

A terrorist group may or may not consider September 11th a good day to mount an attack.  On the one hand, an attack announces that the group is active and deadly.  On the other, it brings down the wrath of the American people, meaning the possibility of increased American action.  Terrorists groups also know that our guard is up today, with anti-terror personnel on high alert.

By the way, President Obama said last night that Americans are safer today than they were earlier.  I don't think anyone believes that.

September 11,  2014     Permalink