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DECEMBER 4,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:44 P.M. ET: 

THE REAL PROBLEM – There are so many problems in black America, but too many "activists" and their media allies insist on focusing on the alleged sins of whites.  From My9NJ:  "In Paterson, New Jersey only 19 kids who took the SAT's are considered college ready. This means that they scored at least a 1500 out of 2400 on the standardized test, and this number is truly shocking considering how large the school district is.  Paterson resident Jason Williams is one of the lucky ones. He just graduated high school last year and has been enrolled in college since September, after taking the SAT's three times determined to score over 1500. He says that the key to his success was not falling victim to the streets.  'Just last summer, my friend and teammate, he was shot and killed that summer and that really affected me,' he said.  Derrick Fritts was shot during National Night Out on the streets of Paterson and wasn't found until the next day. Williams said most of the football players stopped paying attention to school after that, but that's when he buckled down."  Blame the cops.

WEIRDNESS – From Breitbart:  "Social media lit up Wednesday evening with complaints about former Hootie & the Blowfish lead singer Darius Rucker performing 'White Christmas' at the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony at New York City's Rockefeller Square. Some activists had threatened to attack the ceremony after a grand jury declined to indict a New York police officer in the death of unarmed Eric Garner during a confrontation over cigarette sales in July.  The ceremony went ahead under police protection, and Rucker performed 'White Christmas,' a classic written by a Jewish immigrant, Irving Berlin. The song refers to snow, not to race, in recalling a traditional Christmas scene."  Watch.  Irving Berlin will soon be called a racist.

MARY'S PAIN – First indications from early voting in Saturday's Louisiana Senate runoff confirm predictions we ran this morning that Mary Landrieu is toasty.  From National Journal:  "Louisiana's Senate runoff is Saturday, but voters have already been casting ballots, and the early returns look ugly for Mary Landrieu. Early-voting rates are down across the board, in almost every demographic group and almost every parish, compared with the early-voting period before the November all-party primary. But that decline has been most acute among groups the Democrat incumbent needs if she is to pull off a victory against challenger Bill Cassidy. With Landrieu's Senate career on the line, women, registered Democrats, and especially African-Americans were more likely than others to drop out of the runoff's early electorate, according to voting statistics released by the Louisiana secretary of state."  Republicans ran a great race this year.  Hats off.

MITT? – From Business Insider:  "Mitt Romney held meetings with donors in New York this week that left one attendee convinced he is running for president again in 2016.  A member of Romney's inner circle who spoke to Business Insider said the former governor of Massachusetts traveled to New York City on Monday where he met with key financial backers of his past campaigns to lay the groundwork for a 2016 White House bid."  This same story seems to pop up periodically, and never gets confirmation.  But the fact is that Mitt has been awfully active recently.  He's also doing well in the polls. A few more good polls might convince him and his family, although it's widely reported that he won't run if Jeb Bush does.

December 4, 2014       Permalink

WATCH HER – AT 10:57 A.M. ET:  For someone who's not running for president, Elizabeth Warren is making all the right moves.  I'd watch her carefully.  Lazy she is not.  From The Hill: 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) will be taking her populist economic message to the AFL-CIO in January, when she will be the labor union's keynote speaker at an event devoted to wages.

The union on Thursday announced Warren would speak, calling her a "true champion of working people."

"Senator Warren knows how to protect Main Street from Wall Street, fight for jobs and rebuild the American Dream. She has a defined set of values and unlike many politicians, she actually sticks by those and fights to implement them," said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. "That’s exactly what this summit is all about.”

The summit is aimed at tackling a lingering economic concern for millions. While the overall economy has largely recovered from the recession and the stock market is at record highs, overall wage growth has been basically flat, leaving many Americans grappling with stagnant paychecks.

COMMENT:  Politically, Warren is on to something.  Don't laugh her off.  Hillary is stumbling, increasingly seen as the voice of a past era.  Warren's base in the Democratic Party is still narrow, but it is passionate.  Remember that Obama came out of nowhere.  He's still nowhere, but he's president. 

If Warren runs she will have considerable media backing.  She passes the gender test.  The Democrats want to nominate the first woman president.  She has just gone on her first foreign tour as a senator, adding to her resumé.  She is hitting the hot-button issue of wage inequality.  And, perhaps most important, she has the ability to attract the white working class, which has been deserting the Democratic Party.

She is a less-than-brilliant campaigner, but watch her.

December 4, 2014       Permalink

IT'S ABOUT TIME – AT 9:53 A.M. ET:   It appears that the leftist Obama administration is finally preparing to accept the truth about the Islamist-led Ford Hood massacre.  From the Washington Times: 

Victims of the Fort Hood shooting will soon be eligible to receive the Purple Heart, with Congress pushing ahead with a policy change that would officially recognize domestic terrorism as an issue, rather than the “workplace violence” designation the Obama administration had used.

The issue has been contentious since the 2009 attack, with victims and their family members saying Army Maj. Nidal Hasan’s shooting spree was clearly linked to the broader war on terror that the U.S. is fighting overseas.

For years, the families’ congressional allies had butted heads with the Obama administration, which balked at designating part of the U.S. the equivalent of a battlefield.

But the backers finally prevailed, writing the new terrorism designation into the annual defense policy bill that is speeding its way through Congress this month.

“It’s been a long fight, and we’ve always had some stumbling blocks, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed and will be very happy when this thing is signed by the president so we can go back to those people who have been waiting for some acknowledgment of their injuries,” Rep. John R. Carter, Texas Republican, told The Washington Times.

COMMENT:  It's long overdue.  This administration came to office trying to redefine terrorism as "man-made disasters."  It was pure leftist ideology, and it has failed.  Maybe some common sense is finally showing.

December 4, 2014       Permalink

MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE? – AT 9:14 A.M. ET:  We are seeing before our eyes the proof why conservatives are the most mature, most thoughtful segment of the American political scene. 

The intellectual ferment in American life in the last 40 years has been largely on the right – magazines like National Review and Weekly Standard are far more vigorous and probing than their liberal and leftist counterparts.  Fox News dominates television.  Liberalism has become stagnant, old fashioned and entirely predictable. 

In the last 24 hours we have seen the spirit of conservatism at work.  A grand jury in New York declined to indict a police officer in the choking death of a black man being arrested.  Liberals have reacted in their traditional, knee-jerk, "police brutality" manner.  And conservatives are siding with the police, right?  No, wrong.  Leading conservative commentators, being grown-ups and independent, are raising serious questions about the grand jury decision.  In Ferguson we believe the grand jury got it right.  In New York, maybe not.  Charles Krauthammer, refusing to accept any party line, is expressing outrage that no one is being punished.  Judge Andrew Napolitano, of Fox, a solid conservative, is doing the same: 

A grand jury chose not to indict a New York City police officer Wednesday for causing the death of New York City resident Eric Garner. There was ample evidence to indict; and the grand jury made a grievous error by not doing so. I say this not having seen the evidence before the grand jury, not having seen the medical reports, and not having heard what the District Attorney said to the grand jury.

But I have seen a videotape of the incident and it reveals probable cause to show that the police officer used grossly excessive force on a non-violent, non-threatening person. It also reveals he cried and screamed for help because by compacting his chest, his breathing was impaired. The police did nothing to save his live; yet they accelerated his death needlessly. On the basis of the tape alone, I have a clean conscience making such an assertion that an indictment was warranted. The job of a properly instructed grand jury is not to assess guilt or innocence, not to decide who was right or wrong, but solely to determine if there is enough evidence to charge a defendant in a given case.

Garner was selling cigarettes to homeless folks for a dollar. That is the moral equivalent of jay-walking. He should have been sent to another street corner with a warning, rather than arrested for this harmless behavior. We don’t live in a society in which every conceivable criminal charge should be brought against every conceivable defendant. There have been such societies, and we have fought wars against them. Have we won those wars only to become like the governments that we eradicated?

COMMENT:  No one is saying that the police officer set out to kill someone.  But it is clear to many, even on our side, that something went seriously wrong.  The grand jury should have handed down some indictment, perhaps involuntary manslaughter, and let a jury decide, with the evidence before the public.

There will be other investigations. 

We send police officers into dangerous situations on the mean streets of cities.  We ask them to make split-second decisions.  Some are killed.  We feel for them, and we generally give them, properly, the benefit of the doubt.  But we do law enforcement no favors if we cover up improper behavior or failures in training.

Liberals who are doing their usual scream in this case would have far more credibility had they not given us their automatic reaction in Ferguson.  Conservatives are making thoughtful judgments.  Maybe that's why our side is now winning more elections, despite the efforts of the liberal press.

December 4, 2014       Permalink

LOUISIANA HAYRIDE – AT 8:55 A.M. ET:  The Louisiana Senate runoff is Saturday, pitting incumbent Dem Senator Mary Landrieu against Republican Congressman Bill Cassidy.  Unless something goes very wrong, Republicans will have a new senator.  From the Washington Examiner: 

Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu’s bid for reelection “appears doomed,” according to a new and gloomy forecast for Saturday’s runoff between the Democrat and Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy.

In University of Virginia analyst Larry Sabato’s latest political “Crystal Ball” to be posted online Thursday, the Senate seat for the first time is being parked in the “safe Republican” slot, a sign that Landrieu has little or no chance of a comeback.

Crystal Ball Managing Editor Kyle Kondik wrote, “It’s rare for us to completely write off an incumbent. In fact, we only did so in one race this cycle, when we moved Gov. Tom Corbett’s (R) reelection bid in Pennsylvania to Safe Democratic a month before the election. Sure enough, Corbett lost by nearly 10 points.

“Landrieu is basically in the same boat, and it would be an absolute shock if she won. So we’re moving the Louisiana Senate runoff from ‘Likely Republican’ to ‘Safe Republican.’ ”

COMMENT:  Republicans in Congress are in their strongest position since the 1940s, and in some respects since the 1920s.  The question is what they'll do with their majorities in both houses.  The first signs are not all that positive, as Speaker Boehner, a decent man with little backbone, seems all too willing to make premature compromises with Obama on major issues.  But after swearing in occurs in January, there will be a new brigade of strong Republicans in both houses who will demand some strong stands.  We will wait before making assessments.

December 4,  2014     Permalink

DECEMBER 3,  2014

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

A NEW FERGUSON? – A grand jury in New York City has declined to indict a white police officer who got a heavily overweight black man in what appears to be a chokehold during an arrest for a minor offense.  The black man died in the encounter.  There have been demonstrations in New York in response to the decision.  Expect this case to go on.  The entire episode was videotaped, and the tape is disturbing.  Even some conservatives are suggesting that the grand jury might have gotten this one wrong.  The medical examiner ruled the death a homicide, although that does not automatically mean that the officer committed a crime.  The Department of Justice will investigate.  The family of the deceased would appear to have a strong civil case. 

SOME INTEREST PLEASE – From ABC:  "An American woman stabbed to death in an Abu Dhabi shopping mall by an assailant wearing a body-covering abayah was a kindergarten teacher who had been mentoring other teachers.  The victim was identified as Ibolya Ryan, who was from Colorado and was the mother of 11-year-old twins, according to the Footprints Recruiting firm that had placed her in the position.  Ryan, who was originally from Hungary, was a licensed special ed teacher from Colorado. She was hired as a kindergarten teacher in Abu Dhabi in 2013, Footprints Recruiting CEO Ben Glickman told ABC News.  Glickman said that Ryan loved living the United Arab Emirates and was mentoring other teachers.  Abu Dhabi police released surveillance video showing the suspected attacker wearing the Arabian Gulf’s traditional black abayah or robe, fully covered by a face veil."  An American has been murdered.  I'd like to see the president show the same interest in this that he showed in the Ferguson case.  We have a tendency to play down the murder of Americans in foreign countries.

MYSTERY SOLVED – From Fox:  "HOUSTON – School officials say dozens of human brains reported missing from a University of Texas research lab in Austin were actually destroyed about 12 years ago because they were in poor condition."  Some of them have now turned up in the heads of Obama's closest advisers.

CYNICAL – From the Washington Times:  "Department of Homeland Security officials wasted little time in ramping up for President Obama’s amnesty, posting 1,000 job openings the day after his announcement and announcing it already has space for hundreds of employees at a new location in Arlington, Virginia — an indication that it had laid its plans well before Mr. Obama’s announcement.  And even though Mr. Obama said his policy is temporary, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is hiring the employees for permanent positions, at salaries of up to $157,000 a year, according to the job postings listed on the official federal jobs website."  This was obviously set in motion long before the election, and long before the American people could judge the program.  Not the way democracy should work.

December 3, 2014        Permalink

NEW GOP GAINS – AT 11:56 A.M. ET:   Everybody loves a winner.  More people are now identifying with the just-victorious Republican Party.  From the Politico: 

More Americans are identifying with the Republican Party after the midterm elections and fewer with the Democrats, according to a new poll.

A Gallup poll released on Tuesday found a small shift in party identification, with 42 percent of those surveyed now identify with the GOP compared with 39 percent that identified similarly before the elections.

Democrats have lost a little support among voters. Before the midterm elections, 43 percent of Americans polled by Gallup said that they “identify as/lean Democratic.” Now 41 percent say they identify with Democrats.

This is not the first time that Gallup has seen a post-election Republican lean following a GOP sweep. Similar shifts in party affiliation among Americans occurred in 1994 and 2002, when Republicans gained advantages in Congress.

This poll was conducted Nov. 5-30 among 12,671 adults and has a margin of error of plus or minus 1 percentage point.

COMMENT:  The idea is to build on these gains, not to let them dissolve in time, which is a Republican tradition. 

December 3, 2014       Permalink

CONGRESS TO MOVE ON IRAN – AT 10:45 A.M. ET:  It's perfectly clear that Republicans in Congress, and many Dems as well, have little faith in this administration's foreign policy.  And they don't intend to remain silent about it, especially as regards Iran.  From The Hill: 

Key senators are vowing to move on sanctions legislation against Iran as early as January, when Republicans take over the upper chamber.

"You're going to see Congress and the Senate play a much more robust role in the first quarter," said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who is poised to be chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on Wednesday at the 2014 Foreign Policy Forum.

U.S. and Western allies agreed last month to a seven-month extension of talks with Iran in hopes of reaching an agreement to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons.

Senators from both parties, though, fear that Iran continue its nuclear program and say they will press ahead with sanctions regardless.

Supporters will likely have the 60 votes needed to push sanctions next year, despite the opposition of the Obama administration, which fears legislation could scuttle ongoing negotiations.

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), the current Foreign Relations chairman, said Tuesday he was working to refine a bill he co-authored with Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and hopes it "could be pursued at the earliest possible moment."

Their bill would re-impose sanctions that were temporarily lifted on Iran during negotiations, if no deal is reached.

"After a year of negotiations for which it seems that we have moved towards the Iranians, but the Iranians have made very little progress towards the views that the international community holds ... they need some incentive to move off of their maximalist positions, while we continuously minimize our positions," Menendez told The Hill.

COMMENT:  Good.  Congress must be involved, for the operative principle in Obama's policy toward Iran is appeasement.

Of course, Obama could veto any new legislation, but that could prove very unpopular with the American people, if recent polls are to be believed.  It was sanctions that brought Iran to the negotiating table in the first place.  Sanctions are hurting the Iranian economy.

If Iran broke off talks because new sanctions are being imposed, then they couldn't have been very serious about negotiations in the first place.

December 3, 2014       Permalink

DECLINE OF THE DEMS – AT 9:31 A.M. ET:  Go back to late 2008.  The Democratic Party was in glory.  It had just elected the first black president, and would control both houses of Congress.  Some pundits predicted a permanent Democratic majority.  The Republicans were nowhere, couldn't even get a cab near Capitol Hill. 

Now look at it.  The Dems are a mess, fighting with themselves.  They've lost both Houses.  Their president's approval rating hovers around 40%, and it's that high only because of the understandable loyalty of the black community.  They have only one well-known candidate for president for 2016, and she's fading in the polls.  There is no happiness.  Happy days aren't here again.

And why?  In one of the best pieces I've seen on the subject, Charlie Cook argues that the Democrats lost touch with the American people, especially critical parts of their own constituency.  From National Journal: 

This challenge for Democrats can be sliced and diced a number of ways: by race, by where people live, and—very acutely—by combining race with socioeconomic status. A Nov. 25 report by the Gallup Organization underscored Democrats' problems with noncollege-educated white voters. According to Gallup Editor Frank Newport, "President Barack Obama's job-approval rating among white noncollege graduates is at 27 percent so far in 2014, 14 percentage points lower than among white college graduates. This is the largest yearly gap between these two groups since Obama took office. These data underscore the magnitude of the Democratic Party's problem with working-class whites, among whom Obama lost in the 2012 presidential election, and among whom Democratic House candidates lost in the 2014 U.S. House voting by 30 points."

There are many reasons for this decline in support for Democrats among certain groups. But an argument can be made that it is because Democrats have subordinated their traditional focus on helping lower- and working-class Americans move up the economic ladder in favor of other noble priorities, such as health care, the environment, and civil rights. Whether these were the right or wrong priorities is totally subjective, but they have come at a cost. Sen. Chuck Schumer recently committed the classic case of a political gaffe, once defined by Michael Kinsley as "when a politician tells the truth—some obvious truth he isn't supposed to say." The Democratic Left went crazy when Schumer suggested that the early focus on health care reform in 2009 and 2010, when he says Democrats should have been concentrating on economic growth and job creation, had cost them greatly (something that I have written about for over five years).

And...

At the tail end of the George W. Bush administration and in the early Obama years, financial markets were stabilized (the overwhelming majority of the Troubled Asset Relief Program funds have been repaid, with many of the investments yielding profits for Uncle Sam), and the Obama administration should be applauded for rescuing the automobile industry. But while those actions can be legitimately seen as a good start, we then saw a grand pivot to the environment and health care, with grave consequences for the party. At another time and in different fashion, both are important priorities, but the focus on these issues has effectively decimated the Democratic Party in specific areas and among specific voter blocs. The evidence is the difference in the partisan makeup of the Congress that will be sworn in next month, compared with the one from eight years ago.

COMMENT:  Well said.  The Democratic Party today serves the elites and their intellectual interests.  It actually shows contempt for the very groups that originally built the Roosevelt-Truman-Kennedy coalition.  The contempt for the working American, who is not a minority, is clear and overwhelming.  Eventually, a price is paid.

Some of this can be attributed to the crazy emphasis in universities on "race, gender and ethnicity."  It became a conceit.  Working people might be struggling, but it was just assumed they were racists.  The great works of history were shrugged off as the product of "dead white men." 

This could be the Republican hour.  The party just ran a great campaign.  It had, for the most part, fine candidates, replacing the goofballs of recent vintage.  Now it needs a first-class presidential campaign to complete the retaking of the U.S. government. 

The next two years will be exciting.  They will also be dangerous, as a reckless, embittered Barack Obama does as much damage as possible, and Republicans fight their demons to put a man or woman in the White House. 

December 3, 2014       Permalink

SOWELL SPEAKS ON FERGUSON – AT 8:56 A.M. ET:  Tom Sowell is one of the most brilliant commentators around.  As an African-American with conservative instincts, he's had to brave the artillery fire from the black establishment and its white radical allies (who never have to suffer from the damage they do.) 

Sowell appeared with Sean Hannity, and his comments about the line that has come to symbolize Ferguson protests – "Hands up, don't shoot" – are among the most provocative I've seen.  From RealClearPolitics: 

I thought of Joseph Goebbels' doctrine, people will believe any lie if it's repeated often enough and loud enough. They're repeating it often enough and loud enough. And it will pay off for them personally and politically. People who are out to forward their political careers say and do things that have no relationship whatever to reality or to anybody else's interests but their own. I think what happened in Ferguson, Missouri, it is going to adversely affect blacks yet unborn who will still be paying the price for it 10, 20 years from now because you're not going to have businesses there that you had before. I've seen this happen in other cities. Detroit, is a classic example. Harlem. You run through the whole list of them. A city doesn't get over this kind of stuff in a few years.

COMMENT:  Of course that's absolutely accurate.  It's ordinary black people who pay the price for the racial agitators and the damage they do to a city. 

In New York, whole neighborhoods became war zones in the 1960s.  The professional race baiters and white radicals moved on, but the common people were left with the wreckage.  Then the white radicals would return to their tenured positions in universities and lament, "Look at the condition of these neighborhoods.  Look what white racism does."  The lies flowed, but the trendy media looked to their "higher truth."

December 3,  2014     Permalink