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DECEMBER 21,  2014

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

OBAMA RISING? – The Gallup poll of presidential approval shows Obama rising to 47%.  He was at 41% in late October, just before the election.  It's hard to know whether this is an outlier, a normal fluctuation, or actual improvement.  Obama has been far more active in usual following the drubbing his party took at the polls last month.  The poll may simply reflect increased activity.  His disapproval declined to 49% from a recent 55%.  We'll have to see what other polls say in coming weeks.

GOOD DECISION – From Fox:  "A large sign outside a New Jersey elementary school that misspelled “December” appears to have cost the principal her $108,000 a year job.  The Bergen Record says the sign outside School 20 in Paterson also notified people of the date for “progress reepor” and contained a backward numeral 1.  City school board member Corey Teague circulated a photo of the error-filled signage and complained why nobody noticed for more than a week. December was spelled 'Dicember.'  'If this is how the administration takes care of signage, how can we expect the students to do better? We must be held to a higher standard,' he wrote in an email accompanying the photo.  Days after Teague brought up the sign, education officials announced that the principal, Antoinette Young, was being demoted and transferred to another school."  Good outcome.  Mr. Teague, who is African-American, will probably feel the heat from some "community" activists.  He is brave and did the right thing.

ABOUT TIME – From Fox:  "New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is urging President Obama to demand that Cuba return convicted police-killer Joanne Chesimard before he proceeds with efforts to improve diplomatic relations with that country.  Chesimard was found guilty of killing New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster in 1973 before escaping from prison and fleeing to Cuba. The 67-year-old Chesimard has since been provided safe haven by the Cuban government.  'Cuba’s provision of safe harbor to Chesimard by providing political asylum to a convicted cop killer … is an affront to every resident of our state, our country, and in particular, the men and women of the New Jersey State Police,' Christie wrote. 'I urge you to demand the immediate return of Chesimard before any further consideration of restoration of diplomatic relations with the Cuban government.'"  Good move by Chris, but it won't happen.  Obama's party is controlled by people who probably think Joanne Chesimard was a victim.

December 21, 2014       Permalink

IS THIS REAL? – AT 10:44 A.M. ET:  What's next, having an Iranian mullah serve as secretary of state?   The wisdom of Obama in action, from Fox: 

The Obama administration has asked China for help with curbing North Korea's ability to launch cyberattacks like the one federal officials say crippled Sony Pictures, according to a published report.

The New York Times reports that the White House requested help from Beijing in recent days, but the Chinese have not responded. However, a senior Obama administration official claimed to the Associated Press that the U.S. and China have shared information about the Sony attack. The official also says China agrees with the U.S. that destructive cyberattacks violate the norms of appropriate behavior in cyberspace. 

Oh, I'm sure they agree.  Really.

The United States has previously attempted to use China as a channel for influencing North Korean policy, particularly on matters such as nuclear tests, weapons launches, and relations with South Korea. However, successes have been rare and fleeting. In the specific case of the hack on Sony Pictures, The Times reports that Chinese cooperation would be the key to blocking North Korea's cyberwarfare capabilites, since virtually all of the country's telecommunications run though Chinese operated networks.

COMMENT:  I cannot wait to see what the Chinese do for us.  Maybe they'll write a letter, and, in exchange, Obama will give China the design for our latest fighter.

December 21, 2014       Permalink

WE GOT NOTHING – AT 10:21 A.M. ET:  Senator Marco Rubio of Florida said it best, after learning that President Obama had agreed to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba.  Rubio, noting how little the United States got for granting this gift, called Obama one of the worst negotiators in presidential history.  Now Cuban boss Raul Castro piles on, making it clear that Cuba gave up virtually nothing for the historic coup.  From The Hill: 

Cuban president Raul Castro thanked President Obama for “a new chapter” in U.S.-Cuban relations on Saturday, but said the resumption of diplomatic relations would not mean abandoning communist governance.

“Every country has the inalienable right to choose its own political systems,” Castro said, according to the New York Times. “No one should believe that improving relations with the United States means Cuba renouncing its ideas.”

Its ideas?  If they're Cuban ideas, how about subjecting them to free elections.  Cuba is a dictatorship.  It's the dictators whose ideas count.

Castro said the island nation would begin undertaking gradual economic reforms to allow a system of “prosperous and sustainable communism” to take hold.

He also said that the rapprochement between the two countries was just beginning, saying of the sweeping changes to U.S. trade and travel policies that “the only way to advance is with mutual respect.”

I'd love to know what Castro's definition of "mutual" is.  Can there be doubts?

COMMENT:  We had all the cards in the negotiations leading to the change in our Cuba policy.  Cuba is a mess.  Its economy is collapsing.  Its people have no real freedoms.  The aid it was getting from Venezuela is being cut because the Venezuelan economy is similarly sick.  We could have made serious demands of the Castro brothers in exchange for recognition, but we did not.

I don't think Obama is one of the worst negotiators in presidential history.  I just think he sees negotiations as a means toward erasing American sins, as interpreted by the political left.  The president is a leftist, not a liberal or a moderate.  He is punishing his country, which he holds in low regard. 

December 21, 2014       Permalink

THE EXECUTION OF TWO NYPD COPS – QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 8:46 A.M. ET:  The New York Times has not yet seen fit to comment on the execution of two New York Police Department officers at the hands of a crazed black fanatic with a long criminal record.  But the New York Post gets it right:

It’s come to this.

Two NYPD officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, doing nothing more than sitting innocently in their car — murdered in cold blood, in broad daylight.

Officials say it was revenge for the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. Hours earlier, the suspected gunman warned in an Instagram post, “I’m Putting Wings on Pigs Today.” His reasoning: “They Take 1 Of Ours. . . Let’s Take 2 of Theirs.”

Let’s stipulate upfront: The depraved, horrific actions of one crazed killer is not cause to revoke Americans’ 1st Amendment right to protest.

But words have consequences.

Clearly, the protesters — egged on by politicians and professional activists — have engaged in a warped campaign to fuel anger at cops. Even before Saturday’s slaying of these officers, some protesters had become violent and attacked cops.

“What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!” some chanted last week.
Now they’ve got their wish.

COMMENT:  I'd love to see how CNN, which has been whipping the anti-cop rhetoric, will handle this.  My experience has been that, after an incident like this, the leftist press does a couple of appropriate things, then tries to get rid of the story as quickly as possible.  Then, it simply returns to the original party line, as if nothing had happened.  Stand by.

It's a sad and angry day in New York.

December 21,  2014     Permalink

DECEMBER 20,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:29 P.M. ET: 

HORROR – Two New York City police officers, one Asian-American, the other Hispanic-American, were executed today while seated in their patrol car.  The alleged killer, who later took his own life when pursued by police, was an African-American with a long criminal record, who had posted online messages with anti-cop themes  He was apparently swept up in the recent anti-police fervor stoked by radicals, leftist allies, and a few choice public figures like Al Sharpton and Mayor de Blasio of New York.

COPS AND THE MAYOR – Mayor de Blasio faced a wall of cops with their backs turned on him as he entered the hospital where the assassinated officers were taken.  He came into office pledging to abolish or at least reduce the stop, question, frisk procedures in minority communities, despite evidence that the technique has removed many illegal guns from the street.  Last week de Blasio seemed to minimize reports of assaults on police officers during demonstrations protesting recent grand jury refusals to indict cops in the police killings of blacks.  There are going to be major funerals for the two cops slain today, and de Blasio will clearly not be welcome.  There is tremendous tension between the mayor and his police, and I have no doubt there will be calls for his resignation.

DISGRACEFUL – President Obama, who has encouraged the national demonstrations, expressed proper regret over the assassinations, and played golf in Hawaii.

MISSING SO FAR – The alleged cop killer, Ishmael Abdullah Brinsley, posted Islamic writings on the internet.  I've only seen this mentioned on Pajamas Media.  We'll see if it's suppressed.  This is obviously a critical moment in New York, with tensions running red hot.  The press has a special responsibility to get the facts right, and also to report all relevant facts, without political correctness.

December 20, 2014      Permalink

AND NOW FOR THE OTHER SIDE – AT 12:25 P.M. ET:  The police have taken a beating recently, thanks to the behavior of the left, the Obama administration, and the left's amen corner in the American press.  True enough, there are indeed police excesses and police officers who shouldn't be in their jobs.  We make no excuses for a disgraced policeman.

But most police officers are great guys who do terrific work.  Now we're having rallies in New York on behalf of those great guys (and gals).  From the Washington Times: 

Supporters of the New York Police Department marched in the streets Friday night wearing black hoodies with the phrase “I can breathe, thanks to the NYPD.” The rally came as protesting continues over the police killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown.

Mr. Garner’s supporters have used his last statement, “I can’t breathe,” as a mantra against police brutality and racial bias in the justice system. A grand jury decided Dec. 4 against indicting officer Daniel Pantaleo for the July 17 death of Mr. Garner.

Roughly 100 people protested outside City Hall in New York City on Friday night wearing the controversial customized sweatshirts, the Daily Mail reported Saturday.

The NYPD supporters shouted “Don’t resist arrest!” at a group of nearly 200 counter-protesters.

COMMENT:  Get rid of the bad cops, but praise and honor the good ones, who are the great majority.  They're out there every day, and they never know what day may be their last.

December 20, 2014       Permalink

NICE MANEUVER – AT 11:36 A.M. ET:  This is the way it's done in Washington.  From Fox: 

The Internal Revenue Service is crying poor in the face of budget cuts and weighing the possibility of its own short-term shutdown -- even warning that tax refunds could be delayed next year.

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen gave details Thursday on ways the tax-collection agency might try to cut costs. He said everything from taxpayer services to enforcement efforts could be affected.

But, in a move that could impact millions, he said there could be a lag in refunds being processed.

"Everybody's return will get processed," Koskinen told reporters. "But people have gotten very used to being able to file their return and quickly getting a refund. This year we may not have the resources, the people to provide refunds as quickly as we have in the past."

In recent years, the IRS says it was able to issue most tax refunds within 21 days, if the returns were filed electronically. Koskinen wouldn't estimate how long they might be delayed in the upcoming filing season, which is just a few weeks away.

Congress cut the IRS budget by $346 million for the budget year that ends in September 2015. The $10.9 billion budget is $1.2 billion less than the agency received in 2010. The agency has come under heavy fire from congressional Republicans for its now-halted practice of applying extra scrutiny to conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.

COMMENT:  I suspect this will all be worked out.  No political party wants to be linked with delayed refunds. 

Reminds me of the stories about the Navy, just before World War II, announcing that enemy submarines had been sighted off our East Coast, the announcements coming just before the Navy budget was up for approval.

Of course, we still don't know the full truth about the IRS scandals.  Maybe now, with a Congress entirely controlled by Republicans, we'll find out.

December 20, 2014       Permalink

THE END? – AT 11:05 A.M. ET:  Walter Russell Mead is one of the best commentators writing today.  He teaches at ultra-liberal Bard College in New York, and yet he has survived.  He argues that all the lefty ferment we've seen recently may be desperation, that liberalism is fading.  From the American Interest: 

As the United States staggers toward the seventh year of Barack Obama’s tenure in the White House, a growing disquiet permeates the ranks of the American left. After six years of the most liberal President since Jimmy Carter, the nation doesn’t seem to be asking for a second helping. Even though the multiyear rollout of Obamacare was carefully crafted to put all the popular features up front, delaying less popular changes into the far future, the program remains unpopular. Trust in the fairness and competence of government is pushing toward new lows in the polls, even though the government is now in the hands of forward-looking, progressive Democrats rather than antediluvian Gopers.

For liberals, these are bleak times of hollow victories (Obamacare) and tipping points that don’t tip. For examples of the latter, think of Sandy Hook, the horrific massacre in Connecticut that Democrats and liberals everywhere believed would finally push the American public toward gun control. Two years later, polls show more Americans than ever before think it’s more important to protect gun access than to promote gun control.

And...

In all of these cases, liberals got what, from a liberal perspective, appeared to be conclusive evidence that long cherished liberal policy ideas were as correct as liberals have always thought they were. In all of these cases the establishment media conformed to the liberal narrative, inundating the airwaves and flooding the cyberverse with the liberal line. Some of the stories, like the UVA rape story, collapsed. Some, like the Ferguson story, became so complex and nuanced that some of their initial political salience diminished. But even when, as with Ferguson, other follow-up stories seem to reinforce the initial liberal take (the Garner case, for example), the public still doesn’t seem to accept the liberal line or draw the inferences that liberals want it to draw. It’s becoming hard to avoid the conclusion that many Americans will continue to disagree with many liberal policy prescriptions no matter what.

And...

...the Obama administration may represent “Peak Left” in American politics, and what we are getting from the left these days is a mix of bewilderment and anger as it realizes that this is as good as it gets. America is unlikely to go farther to the left than it went in the wake of the Iraq War and the financial crash, and while that wasn’t anywhere near enough of a shift for left-leaning Democrats, the country has already moved on.

COMMENT:  Read the whole thing.  Remember, despite all the leftist stuff we've seen coming out of Washington in the last month, it's the right that won the election hands down.  And our new Republican Congress will be sworn in within weeks. 

But the conservative gains are incomplete without a president in the White House.  That must be the grand goal. 

December 20,  2014     Permalink