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JULY 4,  2016

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

THE OFFER – The story apparently floated by the Clinton camp – we noted it this morning – that Hillary might want to keep Loretta Lynch on as attorney general, has gone viral, even on July 4th.  There is a general revulsion expressed on conservative sites, but I haven't seen any comment from liberals.  This is sordid stuff, essentially a bribe offer made public.  In our post this morning we urged Loretta Lynch to announce that she will not serve a new administration, removing any possibility that she could be asked to continue as a reward for taking care of Hillary's FBI problem.  No such announcement has been made.  Let's see if any reporters decide to ask the attorney general about it.

THE DEMS USED TO BE PRO-LABOR – FROM THE NEW YORK POST:   Hillary Clinton’s campaign had even its lowliest staffers working on Independence Day, according to sources.  A Hamptons insider told us that one of Clinton’s summer interns was overheard grousing over the weekend in the Hamptons that, “Clinton was ‘not giving anyone the day off on July Fourth,’ so the girl had to head back to work on Monday.”  The source added that the intern “was saying that she and some of her co-workers were unhappy about it.”  A rep for Clinton didn’t get back to us.  It's quite possible that Hillary Clinton doesn't recognize our Independence Day as a legitimate holiday.  It's a left-wing thing.  We'll never understand.

AND AGAIN – FROM FOX:   At least four security officers were killed and five injured in a suicide bombing Monday outside an Islamic holy site in Medina, according to the Saudi Interior Ministry.  The Monday evening attack took place just as thousands of worshippers were about to hold sunset prayers in the mosque where the Prophet Muhammad is buried in Medina.  The mosque is visited by millions of Muslims from around the world annually performing pilgrimage in Mecca.  The ministry statement, carried Monday on the state-run al-Ekhbariya news channel, said the attacker set off the bomb after security officers raised suspicions about him. The attack took place in a parking lot outside the sprawling mosque complex.  The bombing happened the same day that two suicide bombers struck different cities in Saudi Arabia, one of them near a U.S. consulate. No group has yet claimed responsibility for any of the attacks.  There had been calls from some terror groups to increase attacks during the month of Ramadan.  Ramadan ends tomorrow.  We'll see if there's any reduction.  But since last September the pace of terror has been relentless, including attacks in Paris, Brussels, San Berdardino, Orlando, and Bangladesh. 

July 4, 2016       Permalink

WILL SOMEONE PLEASE TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY? – AT 1:18 P.M. ET:  The Olympics start in a month in Rio, and we are getting warning after warning that Rio isn't ready.  From CNN:  

Rio de Janeiro (CNN) A month before Rio welcomes thousands of visitors for the 2016 Olympic Games, the city's mayor has lashed out at state officials over the policing of violent crime.

"This is the most serious issue in Rio and the state is doing a terrible, horrible job," Eduardo Paes told CNN, during an interview in his downtown office.

"It's completely failing at its work of policing and taking care of people."

His comments come after Rio de Janeiro state, which manages the region's military police force, issued an executive order requesting emergency funds from the federal government in order to pay outstanding bonuses and overtime to police officers.

The 2.9 billion-real bailout (roughly $850 million) was made available last week, after acting governor Francisco Dornelles said Games could be a "big failure" without the funds. It's believed that the back pay will be distributed this week.

The state's police officers vented their anger last week with a sign saying "Welcome to Hell" outside Rio airport. "Police and firefighters don't get paid, whoever comes to Rio de Janeiro will not be safe," the sign said.

Rio has been rocked by a spate of negative headlines in recent weeks, including an Australian Paralympic athlete who was robbed at gunpoint, reports of 20 armed men breaking into a municipal hospital to free a drug kingpin, and a doctor killed by random gunfire on the main artery connecting the airport to the city.

Several international TV crews, including two German broadcasters, which had a truck with more than $400,000 worth of equipment hijacked at gunpoint, have also been robbed.

The Justice Ministry said 85,000 additional officers, including police from other states and military personnel, will be arriving to the city in late July and patrolling throughout the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

"(During the Games) the army, the navy, everyone is going to be here," Paes said. "Fortunately the state will not be responsible for security during that period."

COMMENT:  The Olympics are about money, not sport.  I wonder if we can depend on the Brazilian authorities and our own U.S. Olympic Committee to protect our young athletes.  I wouldn't depend on the International Olympic Committee for anything.

July 4, 2016       Permalink

CAN THIS BE? – AT 12:33 P.M. ET:   I get the sense that this story was floated by the Clinton campaign.  From Daily Caller: 

Hillary Clinton is considering retaining Loretta Lynch as Attorney General if she wins the presidency, according to a report from The New York Times.

Picking Lynch as a holdover from the Obama administration would help Clinton’s stated goal of making her cabinet gender-equal. But the choice would likely prove controversial given that Lynch is the ultimate arbiter in the Justice Department’s investigation into the potential mishandling of classified information on Clinton’s private email server.

Concerns over conflicts of interest reached new heights last week after Lynch, the first black female AG, met in secret with Bill Clinton at Phoenix’s international airport.

The conclave was held just days before investigators interrogated Hillary Clinton at FBI headquarters on Saturday.

COMMENT:  Have we really reached this point, where there is no shame or pride left?  Loretta Lynch came to office with a fine reputation.  Even Rudy Giuliani supported her.  That reputation is already sullied.  If she had any dignity, she'd immediately issue a statement saying she would not, under any circumstances, stay on as attorney general in a new administration.  Let's see if she has the sense to do so. 

July 4, 2016       Permalink

THE DECLARATION – AT 11:56 A.M. ET:  On this July 4th, let us quote the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence, adopted this day 240 years ago:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

COMMENT:  Those are some of the most important words ever written.  I doubt if most of our young people have ever seen them, or could identify them.

I ask you to examine those words, not only in light of our own history, but of recent history in Britain, once our mother country.  Don't those words perfectly describe Brexit, the decision by the British people to leave the European Union?  They could have easily used the words of our own Declaration of Independence from Britain to describe what they did.

History doesn't repeat itself.  The psychology of history repeats itself.

July 4,  2016     Permalink

JULY 3,  2016

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

CLOSE CALL – FROM REUTERS:   A suspected suicide bomber was killed after detonating an explosive device near the US consulate in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah on Monday, the BBC reported, citing Saudi media.  Two policemen were reportedly wounded in the attack that occurred in the early hours of Monday, said the British Broadcasting Corp said on its website.  The Jeddah consulate was the scene of a militant attack in 2004 in which nine people were killed, the BBC said.   A new incident every few days.  One by one by one.

CHICAGO HORROR – FROM CBS:   The city of Chicago is dealing with a major spike in gun violence. Ten people were shot overnight Friday.  Last month, 72 people were shot to death. There have already been 350 homicides in Chicago this year, outpacing the total for the same period in 2015.  The city may even surpass 600 murders for the first time in more than a decade.  Chicago police are warning the city could see one of its most violent and deadly holiday weekends on record.  To combat the violence, the city's embattled police force is adding 5,000 more officers to patrol its Navy Pier and city neighborhoods.  The new police chief, Eddie Johnson, said he's also putting 150 officers that were on desk duty back on the streets.  Good moves.  At least they've stopped blaming the gun manufacturers and full moons.  But there has to be a reason why New York reduced murder by so much and Chicago did not.  I think the name is Giuliani.

IT'S ALL ABOUT SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEPRIVATION, ISN'T IT? – FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:    DHAKA, Bangladesh — Bangladesh’s capital city reeled in shock on Sunday as clues began to flood social media about the privileged backgrounds of the half-dozen attackers believed to have butchered 20 patrons of a restaurant during a bloody siege here late last week.  The six attackers were killed when the army stormed the Holey Artisan Bakery to end an 11-hour siege early Saturday.  The police declined to name the young men because nobody had shown up as of Sunday night to identify their bodies, but friends and relatives recognized photographs that were posted on a messaging app by the Islamic State, along with praise for the violence.  The men, all in their late teens or early 20s, were products of Bangladesh’s elite, several having attended one of the country’s top English-medium private schools as well as universities both in the country and abroad.  Among them was the son of a former city leader in the prime minister’s own Awami League, the governing party.  Rest assured, we'll still be told by the 1960s crowd that controls the U.S. Government that they were oppressed, despite their bank accounts.

July 3, 2016       Permalink

IT'S ABOUT TIME – AT 12:30 P.M. ET:  It appears that a few brave souls in Europe are willing to confront the discontent with the European Union recently expressed in Britain's vote to leave the organization.  From the Guardian:   

The German government has been canvassing support for a senior political leader to gather views in European capitals on a new future for the continent in the wake of the Brexit vote, with the aim of completing the task before the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome next March.

EU heads of state, reeling from the UK’s vote to leave the European Union, want to be seen to be responding to the Eurosceptic mood, and some want a new “vision for Europe” document that distils the conflicting thinking.

EU heads of government are due to gather in Bratislava for an informal summit on 16 September to discuss the fallout from Brexit, but mainly focused on how the EU will operate in the future, including what more it can do to reduce youth unemployment, straighten out the eurozone and strengthen security. In practice, the meeting may also see a first EU response to the election of a new Tory party leader, and the pace at which Brexit talks will take place. Those talks are to be led by a Belgian diplomat, Didier Seeuws, a former staffer for the former European council president Herman van Rompuy.

COMMENT:  Well, we should be skeptical.  Europe's track record in getting things right isn't strong, and without the power of the United States I'm not sure that Western Europe would even exist.  The British vote was a wake-up call in a continent where waking up is prohibited by EU regulations. 

July 3, 2016       Permalink

TERROR IN AMERICA? – AT 11:21 A.M. ET:  It's too bad we have to note these things on a holiday weekend, but it's our obligation.  From The Hill:   

A New York Police Department (NYPD) official says a domestic terror attack is “inevitable,” but insists that the city will be prepared for it.

“I think that it’s inevitable that there’ll be another attack in this country,” Chief James Waters, head of the NYPD Counterterrorism Bureau, told ABC News. “We are well-prepared to respond to that.”

Officials insist that there is no specific terror threat against any American city, but Waters says New York could be a prime target for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has called for attacks in the U.S.

The NYPD’s security measures include more than 9,000 surveillance cameras around the city and license plate readers.

“It’s our way of protecting New York,” he said, calling the operation a “ring of steel.”

COMMENT:  New York has probably done the best counterterrorism job of any American city, but that is no guarantee of safety.  All it takes is one fanatic to get through to do terrible damage.  We saw that in Orlando a few weeks ago.

How do we defeat terror absolutely?  Maybe there's no one answer, but the best one I've heard is that we must defeat it at its ideological source, the way we defeated Nazism and Japanese imperialism.  I know that the implications of that prescription are grim, but we may ultimately have to face them.

July 3, 2016       Permalink

IRAQ HORROR – AT 10:53 A.M. ET:  Terror in Baghdad, presumbly carried out by ISIS.  From CNN: 

(CNN) Iraq's capital was once again the scene of bloody carnage this weekend, with two separate car bombs killing at least 126 people.

The first detonation occurred Saturday on a busy shopping street in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Karrada, killing 125 people -- including 25 children -- and wounding 147 others, police said.

Firefighting crews pulled injured and trapped people from adjacent buildings damaged in the massive blast, including a coffee shop, stores and a gym.

The second bomb exploded at an outdoor market in the Shaab neighborhood of southeastern Baghdad, killing one person and wounding five others, police said.

The so-called Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Karrada attack in a statement posted on Twitter. The group claimed it was targeting Shiite neighborhoods. Karrada and Shaab are predominately Shiite.

COMMENT:   We've kind of forgotten about Iraq.  Didn't Obama declare that a victory, or somethin'?  Yeah, maybe.

But the fact is that the Iraq War is still being fought, and ISIS is very much present. 

Another fact is that the sheer number of terror attacks recently is staggering.  Brace yourselves.  There will be more, all over the world.

July 3,  2016     Permalink