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APRIL 5,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:04 P.M. ET:

MORRIS – Dick Morris is trying to make a comeback after his catastrophically wrong predictions in 2012 and his involuntary departure from Fox News as a result.  Do we trust him?  I don't know.  But you might be interested in his latest Senate prediction.  From Newsmax:  "Republican Senate candidates now lead their rivals in seven contests, including three involving Democratic incumbents. Republicans need to win six seats to gain control of the Senate.  For an eighth seat, the Republican is tied with a Democratic incumbent. And, in a ninth contest, the GOP candidate trails the Democratic incumbent by only two points."  Good, optimistic prediction.  But we'll see in November whether Dick is out of the doghouse.

RELIGIOUS CONFLICT NEWS – From Fox:  "Muslim moms and dads in Dearborn, Mich. are upset after students received flyers promoting an Easter Egg hunt at a local Presbyterian church. The parents say the egg hunt violates the U.S. Constitution.  The Muslims told the Detroit Free-Press that they were concerned about the religious implications of Cherry Hill Presbyterian Church’s 'Eggstravaganza!'  They were also troubled by images of a bunny rabbit."  I will carefully investigate the bunny rabbit threat.  I know you can't wait.  Geez.

AIRLINER LATEST – Australian authorities have just announced that the Chinese ship that detected what may have been a brief signal from a black box in the missing Malaysian airliner has now heard the same signal again.  Australian ships are on their way to the scene to try to verify the Chinese reports and determine whether the "pings" are indeed coming from the black box, deep in the sea.  There may be some news on this tomorrow.

April 5, 2014         Permalink

THE TRUTH COMES OUT – AT 11:21 A.M. ET:  The Obama administration is boasting that we've now made up for all the jobs lost during the recession.  As we noted recently, the figures are deceptive.  Many of the new jobs "created" under Obama are part-time, and far below the level that the job holder was at before.  From CBS: 

NEW YORK -- The U.S. economy has regained all the private-sector jobs it lost in the Great Recession; it took six years. The Labor Department said Friday that America added 192,000 jobs in March. The unemployment rate remained 6.7 percent.

After five years of being in and out of work, Tara Dublin found a job a few weeks ago as a hostess at a restaurant in Portland, Ore..

"I've been hired by this restaurant I absolutely love, but it's a part-time position," Dublin says.

She makes $11 an hour, plus tips.

In March, of the 192,000 jobs created, 30,000 were in food services. Restaurants and bars have added 323,000 workers over the past year, but Dublin is earning a fraction of what she used to make.

"The first time I came home and saw a foreclosure notice taped to my front door and my sons saw it, that was a really bad day," Dublin says.

COMMENT:  The fact is, working Americans aren't really doing well at all.  The quality of jobs has declined.  The middle class is shrinking.  The requirements of Obamacare are forcing many companies to drop some of their work force to part-time status.

This isn't the American dream.

April 5, 2014       Permalink 

CAREFUL! – AT 10:58 A.M. ET:  With the virtual collapse of the Israel-Palestinian peace talks, and our inability to do anything about Ukraine, and the ongoing horror of Syria, and...and...other bad stuff, the Obamans will be looking for a foreign-policy success.  Given who's in charge, this is the time to be ultra-careful.  We're dealing now with Iran.  From The Hill:

The United States and other world powers will begin drafting a comprehensive final nuclear deal with Iran next month, a U.S. official said Friday.

Negotiators have made progress in the nuclear talks, the official said.

The Obama administration and its partners in the P5+1 want to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, and Iran wants relief from sanctions that have hurt its economy in recent years.
Diplomats will meet for a third round of negotiations next week in Vienna, Austria.

The meetings result from the six-month interim deal struck last November to slow Iran’s nuclear program. After taking effect in January, the United Nations says Iran is complying with its requirements so far.

COMMENT:  I think we have every reason to worry about this.  What kind of "progress" are they talking about?  If there's been real, meaningful progress, we'd know about it by now.  Everyone would be crowing.

I fear that the "comprehensive final nuclear deal" will be neither final nor comprehensive.  Most of the Europeans, especially the Germans, don't care.  They just want to do business in Iran.  American companies are also lining up.  Boeing was just given permission by the Obamans to sell spare aircraft parts to the Iranians.  Kind of reminds me of how we sold scrap iron to Japan before World War II.  It came back to us shaped as bullets. 

The Iranians will make some concessions, but I'm guessing there'll be sufficient wiggle room and lack of transparency in the "final" agreement to let them go right on with their nuclear program, which is what they're doing now.  It is no secret, as the Soviets used to put it, that Obama wants to reset American relations with Iran.  He'll be too eager.

April 5, 2014       Permalink

HOPE? – AT 10:32 A.M. ET:  Big story out this morning about the missing Malaysian airliner.  But is it accurate?  From CNN:

(CNN) -- In what may turn out to be a major breakthrough in the monthlong search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370, a Chinese patrol ship searching the southern Indian Ocean discovered Saturday the pulse signal used by so-called black boxes, state news agency Xinhua reported.

But the pulse signal has not been confirmed, China's Maritime Search and Rescue Center reported, according to China Communications News, which is the Ministry of Transport's official newspaper.
The signal reported -- 37.5 kHz -- "is the standard beacon frequency" for the plane's cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, said Anish Patel, president of pinger manufacturer Dukane Seacom.

"They're identical."

The frequency was chosen for use in the recorders "to give that standout quality that does not get interfered with by the background noise that readily occurs in the ocean."

But he said he would like to see more evidence. "I'd like to see some additional assets on site quickly -- maybe some sonobuoys," he said, referring to 5-inch-long (13-centimeter) sonar systems that are dropped from aircraft or ships.

And he said he was puzzled that only one signal had been detected, since each of the recorders was equipped with a pinger, which is also called a beacon.

Other experts cautioned that no confirmation had been made that the signal was linked to the missing plane.

COMMENT:  We should also point out that information from China about this airliner has proved to be inaccurate several times.  Remember the satellite spottings, one off the coast of Malaysia and one in the Indian Ocean?  Released with much fanfare by China, they turned out to be nothing. 

So we'll wait once again.  But if the story is accurate, it can be very big indeed.

April 5,  2014     Permalink

APRIL 4,  2014

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

CULINARY NEWS – From Reuters:  "McDonald's Corp said on Friday it had closed its restaurants in Crimea, prompting fears of a backlash as a prominent Moscow politician called for all of the U.S. fast food chain's outlets in Russia to be shut.  Crimea's annexation by Russia, which Ukraine and the West do not acknowledge, has worried companies with assets in the Black Sea peninsula as it is unclear how the change may affect their business.  McDonald's said the decision was strictly based on business and had 'nothing to do with politics.'"  Michele Obama is sleeping more easily tonight, knowing that Crimean children will not be consuming Big Macs, or any other imperialist food.

BAD MATH – When you work the numbers on Obamacare, you get very dizzy very fast.  From CNS:  "The head of the Maryland Health Insurance Exchange testified Thursday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that only 60,000 people have signed up for Obamacare through the state’s exchange - 13,000 less than the number of individuals reported to lose their insurance due to Obamacare."  I love liberal progress, don't you?

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK – From the Weekly Standard:  "In late March, President Obama took a week-long trip through Europe which included a stop of less than 24 hours in Brussels, Belgium for meetings with the European Union and NATO. The president stayed at The Hotel, a twenty-seven story hotel in the center of the city. The estimated cost for the president's stay, including about two weeks for an advance team, was $1,522,646.36."  I demand to know if they at least got Reward Points. 

INCREDIBLE – My friend Banafsheh Zand alerts us to this.  From Fiscal Times:  "The State Department has no idea what happened to $6 billion used to pay its contractors.  In a special 'management alert' made public Thursday, the State Department’s Inspector General Steve Linick warned 'significant financial risk and a lack of internal control at the department has led to billions of unaccounted dollars over the last six years.'  The alert was just the latest example of the federal government’s continued struggle with oversight over its outside contractors."  Ahem, who was the secretary of state during the greater part of these six years?  I think it was Hillary something.

April 4, 2014       Permalink 

WEAKNESS SPEAKS – AT 10:28 A.M. ET:  The Obama administration is sounding very grand again.  Is anyone listening?  Does anyone care?  From Reuters: 

(Reuters) - China should not doubt the U.S. commitment to defend its Asian allies and the prospect of economic retaliation should also discourage Beijing from using force to pursue territorial claims in Asia in the way Russia has in Crimea, a senior U.S. official said on Thursday.

Daniel Russel, President Barack Obama's diplomatic point man for East Asia, said it was difficult to determine what China's intentions might be, but Russia's annexation of Crimea had heightened concerns among U.S. allies in the region about the possibility of China using force to pursue its claims.

"The net effect is to put more pressure on China to demonstrate that it remains committed to the peaceful resolution of the problems," Russel, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Russel said the retaliatory sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States, the European Union and others should have a "chilling effect on anyone in China who might contemplate the Crimea annexation as a model."

COMMENT:  I'm sure the Chinese are chilled and frightened by our threats.  Do we laugh now, or do we laugh later?  Our words are not backed up by action, which is the only thing that foreign enemies care about.

April 4, 2014       Permalink

TROUBLING – AT 9:32 A.M. ET:  The names of the six jurors in the George Zimmerman case – you'll recall that he was charged with murdering Trayvon Martin – have been made public.  Apparently this is required by Florida law.  From the Orlando Sentinel: 

The names of the six-member jury panel that acquitted George Zimmerman in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin have been made public for the first time, after a new court order, records show.

Circuit Judge Debra Nelson, who had previously ordered the jurors' identifying information be kept confidential, granted access to the names in a ruling March 21.

Zimmerman's defense asked the judge in June to keep the names secret until six months after the verdict. The judge set no timeline then, but noted in her new order they have been withheld more than eight months.

Attempts to reach the jurors by phone and in-person Thursday were unsuccessful.

In Florida, the names of jurors are typically public and are announced and used by the judge and attorneys during jury selection.

Nelson's order follows an inquiry last month by the Sentinel.

In a letter, Sentinel attorneys asked Nelson for a specific ruling on how long she planned to maintain the jurors' anonymity, noting it was already "well past the six month 'cooling off' period requested by the defense."

The defense, in its motion, argued a delay was needed beyond the trial to allow "for any community passions to cool."

COMMENT:  I'm not sure passions have cooled.  I worry whether jurors in hot cases, knowing their names will be made public, will render an honest verdict.  The media will probably hound these jurors right now, and some race hustlers will call them racists.  It's the way the game is played.

There has to be some mechanism for maintaining juror anonymity in specific cases.  Otherwise you'll have jury intimidation, and that ain't justice.

April 4, 2014       Permalink

GOVERNMENT MOTORS IN CRISIS – AT 8:59 A.M. ET:  General Motors, "saved" by government money, is in trouble again.  This time is the failure of the company to act quickly to replace a defective part that could produce fatal accidents.  The company is turning to outside help, not to build better cars, but to manage its crisis.  From The New York Times:

As soon as she was excused from a Senate subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, the G.M. chief executive was hustled out the door and into an elevator, surrounded by a cadre of company officials.

It was a hasty retreat from what has become a searing crisis for Ms. Barra and a management team that had hoped the congressional hearings would buy the company time to start its recall of 2.6 million small cars and complete an internal investigation of why it failed to fix a deadly safety defect for more than a decade.

Instead, the hearings showed that G.M.’s strategy to put Ms. Barra front and center, relying on its own team of advisers, has not defused the growing anger among lawmakers and consumers’ disgruntlement with the company.

Now Ms. Barra is increasingly looking outside for help.

On Thursday, G.M. confirmed that it had hired a crisis management adviser, Jeff Eller, who cut his teeth in the Clinton administration and also represented Firestone in its tire recall in 2000. He joins Kenneth Feinberg, a lawyer who specializes in compensation claims for victims of disasters, and Anton R. Valukas, a former United States attorney who is conducting an internal investigation.

COMMENT:  GM's failure to fix a deadly defect is unconscionable.  The company is doing the right thing by bringing in outside experts.  GM has a culture, and it isn't always about cars. 

April 4, 2014        Permalink

SO-SO JOBS REPORT – AT 8:42 A.M. ET:  The administration will spin this as great economic news.  It's nothing of the kind.  It's mediocre.  From The New York Times:

The economy added 192,000 jobs in March, as the end of winter and better weather in many parts of the country encouraged employers to begin hiring workers slightly more aggressively.

The new data, released by the Labor Department on Friday morning, suggested businesses did a bit of catching up last month, but not as much as some analysts had predicted.

The unemployment rate remained flat from last month, at 6.7 percent.

After a surge last fall, job creation slowed noticeably in December and January, setting off a debate over whether wintry weather was to blame for the weakness or something more fundamental in the economy was at work.

COMMENT:  A likely story.  As we've noted, it takes about 150,000 new jobs every month just to keep up with population growth.  So our net growth last month was about 42,000 jobs.  That's nothing in an economy like ours.

And many of the jobs we "create" turn out to be part-time, or below the level of the last job the job seeker had.

We are not really making progress, and I think Americans know it.

April 4,  2014     Permalink