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FEBRUARY 27,  2015

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

FINE ACTOR – From The New York Times:  "Leonard Nimoy, the sonorous, gaunt-faced actor who won a worshipful global following as Mr. Spock, the resolutely logical human-alien first officer of the Starship Enterprise in the television and movie juggernaut “Star Trek,” died on Friday morning at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. He was 83.  His wife, Susan Bay Nimoy, confirmed his death, saying the cause was end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease."  He has been beamed up.

THREAT FROM IRAN – From the Jerusalem Post:  "A senior Iranian cleric with close ties to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed on Friday that 'we will raise the flag of Islam over the White House' in response to the killing of Hezbollah and Revolutionary Guards operatives on the Golan Heights last month."  Fella, you don't have to.  It's already up.

MOSCOW'S WAY – From AP:  "MOSCOW (AP) — Boris Nemtsov, a charismatic Russian opposition leader and sharp critic of President Vladimir Putin, was gunned down Saturday near the Kremlin, just a day before a planned protest against the government.  The death of Nemtsov, a 55-year-old former deputy prime minister, ignited a fury among opposition figures who assailed the Kremlin for creating an atmosphere of intolerance of any dissent and called the killing an assassination. Putin quickly offered his condolences and called the murder a provocation."  Putin must know if it's a provocation, as he's the guy who probably caused it.  His "condolences" remind me of the old Mafiosos who sent huge wreaths to the funerals of the guys they whacked.

NO MORE TODDLIN' TOWN – From Reuters:  "CHICAGO (Reuters) - Chicago drew closer to a fiscal free fall on Friday with a rating downgrade from Moody's Investors Service that could trigger the immediate termination of four interest-rate swap agreements, costing the city about $58 million and raising the prospect of more broken swaps contracts.  The downgrade to Baa2, just two steps above junk, and a warning the rating could fall further still, means the third-biggest U.S. city could face even higher costs in the future if banks choose to terminate other interest-rate hedges against fluctuations in interest rates. All told, Chicago holds swaps contracts covering $2.67 billion in debt, according to a disclosure late last year."  I'm sure the president will fix things when his term ends and he returns to Chicago.  Stop laughing.

February 27,  2015     Permalink

NEWT GETS IT RIGHT – AT 11:40 A.M. ET:  I am always amazed at what a remarkable resource Newt Gingrich is.  He's consistently right, incredibly articulate, and a national asset.  Consider his analysis of Hillary's latest headache, foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation, and the growing threat of radical Islam.  From The Hill: 

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich warned on Friday that the threat of radical Islam has crept into U.S. society through soft money funding the nation’s universities, think tanks and political commentators.

In the first speech of the day at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, Gingrich urged Congress to hold hearings on the threat of radical Islam, and to expand its focus beyond violent Jihadis.

“Some of our greatest universities now accept millions from dictators whose values are fundamentally alien to us…people who show up on talk shows, do they tell you who's paying them?” Gingrich asked.

The former Speaker strongly implied that the Clintons have been improperly influenced by large donors from the Middle East contributing to their foundation.

“I’m very uncomfortable…they sit in a room with a dictator to get $10- or $15-million and we have no idea what they discussed,” Gingrich said. “It shouldn’t shock anybody, Bill for one of his first acts, raised money from Saudis for an Arkansas school.”

“The Clinton foundation is going to have to say in actual dollars every foreign money they’ve gotten, period,” he continued. “That includes travel, yachts, mansions…all of it ought to be public and we ought to know about it.”

Gingrich blasted President Obama and and Secretary of State John Kerry for being unprepared to deal with the threat of terrorism.

“The president and secretary of state have no concept what planet they're on and no idea what universe they’re in,” Gingrich said. “When Joe Biden is confused you just know it’s Joe Biden; when Obama and Kerry are confused it’s because you know they live in a different world with a different value system.”

“This is a matter of national security,” Gingrich said. “This is not an issue just of politics, it raises a very core question about the ability of foreigners to put cash into the U.S. for the purpose of reshaping public policy.”

COMMENT:  Right on the button.  I especially like Newt's outing of universities, which accept vast amounts from tainted sources.  I've seen estimates – I cannot precisely confirm them – that 80% of the Mideast studies departments in American universities are financed by Saudi Arabia.  I doubt if the Saudis write the checks to advance neutral views of themselves.

As for the Clintons, they've had "for sale" signs on their backs for years.

February 27, 2015       Permalink

THIS MODERN TECHNOLOGY, IT'S SO CONFUSING – AT 10:40 A.M. ET:   Remember Lois Lerner, the IRS lady?  She's back in the news.  From the Washington Times: 

The IRS’s inspector general confirmed Thursday it is conducting a criminal investigation into how Lois G. Lerner’s emails disappeared, saying it took only two weeks for investigators to find hundreds of tapes the agency’s chief had told Congress were irretrievably destroyed.

Investigators have already scoured 744 backup tapes and gleaned 32,774 unique emails, but just two weeks ago they found an additional 424 tapes that could contain even more Lerner emails, Deputy Inspector General Timothy P. Camus told the House Oversight Committee in a rare late-night hearing meant to look into the status of the investigation.

“There is potential criminal activity,” Mr. Camus said.

He said they have also discovered the hard drives from the IRS’s email servers, but said because the drives are out of synch it’s not clear whether they will be able to recover anything from them.

“To date we have found 32,744 unique emails that were backed up from Lois Lerner’s email box. We are in the process of comparing these emails to what the IRS has already produced to Congress to determine if we did in fact recover any new emails,” Mr. Camus said.

Democrats questioned the independence of Inspector General J. Russell George, who is overseeing the investigation, saying he’s injected politics into his work.

COMMENT:  Of course.  Politics, as in "the truth."   This new phase of the investigation into the IRS is building just as the 2016 race is getting started.  It can turn out to be an important issue, especially if more evidence emerges that Lois Lerner and her band of brothers and sisters targeted conservative groups for special attention. 

Hillary Clinton could not be reached for comment.  She'll probably blame it on a YouTube video.

February 27, 2015       Permalink

IF ONLY WE'D GIVEN THEM JOBS, WITH VACATION DAYS – AT 9:28 A.M. ET:   A portrait of our opponents.  From The New York Times: 

ISTANBUL — The reports are like something out of a distant era of ancient conquests: entire villages emptied, with hundreds taken prisoner, others kept as slaves; the destruction of irreplaceable works of art; a tax on religious minorities, payable in gold.

A rampage reminiscent of Tamerlane or Genghis Khan, perhaps, but in reality, according to reports by residents, activist groups and the assailants themselves, a description of the modus operandi of the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate this week. The militants have prosecuted a relentless campaign in Iraq and Syria against what have historically been religiously and ethnically diverse areas with traces of civilizations dating to ancient Mesopotamia.

The latest to face the militants’ onslaught are the Assyrian Christians of northeastern Syria, one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, some speaking a modern version of Aramaic, the language of Jesus.

Assyrian leaders have counted 287 people taken captive, including 30 children and several dozen women, along with civilian men and fighters from Christian militias, said Dawoud Dawoud, an Assyrian political activist who had just toured the area, in the vicinity of the Syrian city of Qamishli. Thirty villages had been emptied, he said.

COMMENT:  Of course, we must remember, learning our lessons from Field Marshal Obama, that these were merely random attacks, the flailing out by those whose unemployment benefits have expired.  If only a few had been made CEO's of corporations, all this could have been avoided.

February 27, 2015       Permalink

SHE KNEW – AT 8:45 A.M. ET:  Andy McCarthy, in National Review, examines new documents pried from the federal government by a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, and concludes that Hillary Clinton knew from the first moments that Benghazi was a terrorist assault.  Clinton, however, told the American people that it was a result of a YouTube video.  She lied.  She continues to lie.  Lying is her way of life, and the way of life of the Obama administration, which she served.  From NRO: 

From the very first moments of the terrorist attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her top aides were advised that the compound was under a terrorist attack. In fact, less than two hours into the attack, they were told that the al-Qaeda affiliate in Libya, Ansar al-Sharia, had claimed responsibility

These revelations and others are disclosed by a trove of e-mails and other documents pried from the State Department by Judicial Watch in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The FOIA litigation focuses on Mrs. Clinton’s involvement in the government actions before, during, and after the Benghazi attack, in which Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, was murdered by terrorists. Also killed in the attack were State Department information management officer Sean Smith, and two former Navy SEALs, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, who were contract security employees and who had fought heroically, saving numerous American lives. At least ten other Americans were wounded, some quite seriously.

COMMENT:  Read the whole thing.  It's a superb piece, and it's definitive.  Andy McCarthy has done his usual great job.

Benghazi should be a significant issue in the 2016, if Hillary is the nominee.   She got her famous 3 a.m. call, and blew it.  She then lied about it.  She is not qualified to be commander-in-chief.

February 27,  2015     Permalink

FEBRUARY 26,  2015

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

THE COST OF EDUCATION – From AP:  " A new study of salaries at Rutgers University finds that 17 employees, including 14 doctors and three athletic coaches, have salaries over $1 million per year. The Home News Tribune (http://mycj.co/1AaTB3s ) also finds that half of the university's nearly 25,000 employees were paid less than $50,000 in 2014.  The lower paid workers include non-faculty support staff as well as part-time lecturers and other adjunct faculty.  The median salary for tenured faculty was just over $120,000."  Major colleges have become big business, with college presidents, and many faculty members, paid corporate salaries.  It's time we started taking a hard, cold look at colleges and universities, how they're run, and the debts that are incurred by students to support these dinosaurs.

SPLIT – Secretary of State Kerry told a Congressional committee yesterday that the threats to Americans have declined.  Field Marshal Obama told us several weeks ago that the threat of terrorism was being hyped by the news media, meaning Fox News.  But now we have this, from the New York Daily News:  "Testifying on Capitol Hill, the country's top intelligence chief said 2014 was the worst year on record for global terrorism.  National Intelligence Director James Clapper told members of Congress that terror attacks reached their highest number since such records started being archived. 'When the final accounting is done, 2014 will have been the most lethal year for global terrorism in the 45 years (since) such data has been compiled,' he told the Senate Armed Services Committee."  Maybe members of the administration should occasionally talk to each other.

LOSE YOUR HEAD?  HEY, NO PROBLEM – From London's Telegraph:  "The first human head transplant could take place in just two years, it was reported on Thursday.  Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero, from the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, claims the Frankenstein-style procedure to graft a living person’s head on to a donor body will soon be ready."  Some political figures might benefit.  Please e-mail us suggestions as to what combinations you'd like to see.  comments@urgentagenda.com

I'M SHOCKED, SHOCKED – From WaPo:  "In a report to Texas elected officials, the state Department of Public Safety says border security agencies have arrested several Somali immigrants crossing the southern border who are known members of al-Shabab, the terrorist group that launched a deadly attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, and Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, another Somalia-based group once funded by Osama bin Laden. Another undocumented immigrant arrested crossing the border was on multiple U.S. terrorism watch lists, the report says."  If only we'd given them government jobs.

February 26,  2015     Permalink

I'M SO RELIEVED – AT 11:56 A.M. ET:  An Iranian dissident group revealed this week a secret nuclear facility in Iran.  Now John Kerry says, yeah, we're on the case.  We really, truly are.  From the Washington Free Beacon: 

Secretary of State John Kerry admitted before Congress on Wednesday that the United States is aware of a secret Iranian facility that an Iranian opposition group identified this week as part of an undisclosed parallel nuclear program.

The group, the National Council of the Resistance of Iran (NCRI), has a history of disclosing the existence of Iranian nuclear facilities that the United States has been later forced to confirm were indeed part of a clandestine nuclear program.

Kerry, under questioning before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, acknowledged that the United States has evidence of the facility, but declined to elaborate to lawmakers about its nature.

“Did the [Iranian] regime tell us about existence of this new nuclear facility,” Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R., Calif.) asked Kerry at the hearing.

“What you’re saying is it’s a nuclear facility,” Kerry responded. “That is yet to be determined, but we know about the facility, yes.”

“So had they disclosed that facility to us?” Rohrabacher asked.

“It has not been revealed yet as a nuclear facility,” Kerry insisted. “It is a facility that we are aware of, which is on a list of facilities we have. I’m not going to go into greater detail, but these things are going to have to be resolved [in negotiations] as we go forward.”

Questions about the site come in the wake of a report released Tuesday by an Iranian dissident group claiming to provide evidence of “an active and secret parallel nuclear program” in the suburbs of Tehran.

COMMENT:  We are dealing with people who want a nuclear bomb, who cheat, who hide facilities, who build "peaceful" nuclear facilities into mountains.  And we are depending on Barack Obama and John Kerry to enforce an agreement with these people.

Sleep well tonight.

February 26, 2015       Permalink

I.D.'d – AT 10:24 A.M. ET:  "Jihadi John," seen in those grisly ISIS execution videos, has been identified.   And, no, he isn't a poverty-stricken alienated youth.  From WaPo: 

LONDON — The world knows him as “Jihadi John,” the masked man with a British accent who has beheaded several hostages held by the Islamic State and who taunts audiences in videos circulated widely online.

But his real name, according to friends and others familiar with his case, is Mohammed Emwazi, a Briton from a well-to-do family who grew up in West London and graduated from college with a degree in computer programming. He is believed to have traveled to Syria around 2012 and to have later joined the Islamic State, the group whose barbarity he has come to symbolize.

“I have no doubt that Mohammed is Jihadi John,” said one of Emwazi’s close friends who identified him in an interview with The Washington Post. “He was like a brother to me. . . . I am sure it is him.”

A representative of a British human rights group who had been in contact with Emwazi before he left for Syria also said he believed Emwazi was Jihadi John, a moniker given to him by some of the hostages he once held.

COMMENT:  Remember how Obama, only a week or so ago, wailed about how these jihadists – excuse me, these violent extremists – came from terrible backgrounds that forced them to do terrible things?  Remember how some State Department hack spokeswoman told us that if only we'd give them good jobs, they wouldn't do these nasties? 

But Jihadi John is, according to the story, "a Briton from a well-to-do family who grew up in West London and graduated from college with a degree in computer programming."  Gee, what a tough upbringing.  I want to go in and rescue the guy.

In fact, the whole myth about "alienated youth" comes right out of "West Side Story."  Remember the line, "I'm depraved on account of I'm deprived"?

Osama bin Laden was a multimillionaire.  Many of the leading jihadis are highly educated.  They have been captured, not by their own frustrations, but by an ideology that, they're convinced, will take over the world.

We're making the same mistake we've made many times before when we underestimate the power and appeal of fanaticism.  A price will be paid.  It's already being paid.

February 26, 2015       Permalink

A MEASLY HALF MILLION – AT 9:20 A.M. ET:  It is becoming clear that foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation will be a major issue in the 2016 presidential campaign, assuming Hillary is the Dem nominee.  It's a very big deal because we pride ourselves as independent of other nations.  If an American president has been influenced by foreign contributions, it is offensive, and possibly illegal.  From Fox: 

The Clinton Foundation was on the defensive Wednesday after disclosing that it had accepted millions of dollars from several foreign governments while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, including one donation that violated the foundation's ethics agreement with the Obama administration.

Most of the contributions -- which had not previously been detailed by the foundation -- were possible due to exceptions written into the organizations's 2008 agreement with the White House that limited donations from foreign governments, according to The Washington Post, which first reported the contributions.

But foundation officials acknowledged that they should have sought approval from the State Department's ethics office in one instance. In a statement to Fox News, the foundation said it had received an unsolicited donation of $500,000 to its Haiti earthquake relief fund from the Algerian government in 2010.

"As the Clinton Foundation did with all donations it received for earthquake relief, the entire amount of Algeria's contribution was distributed as aid in Haiti," the foundation's statement read, in part. "This donation was disclosed publicly on our website, however, the State Department should have also been formally informed. This was a one-time, specific donation to help Haiti and Algeria had not donated to the Clinton Foundation before and has not since."

The statement did not make clear when foundation officials found out that the donation violated the ethics agreement or why the foundation did not alert the State Department at the time.

At the time of the contribution, Algeria, which has sought a closer relationship with Washington, was spending heavily to lobby the State Department on human rights issues.

The revelation that foreign countries with interests before the U.S. government were allowed to donate millions of dollars to the foundation could raise questions about Clinton's impartiality while serving as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. Earlier disclosures made on the foundation's website have revealed an increase in donations by foreign governments since Clinton left the State Department in 2013.

The Post reported that rarely, if ever, has a potential presidential candidate been so closely associated with an organization that has solicited financial support from overseas. Clinton is widely expected to declare her candidacy for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination sometime in the coming months.

COMMENT:  The Clintons always seem to be involved in one dubious activity or another.  "Sleaze" is their middle name.  There have been serious questions asked over the years as to how many millions Bill Clinton has taken from Gulf nations. 

But, no bother.  Hillary will still be the queen of the media if she runs.  The standard for the presidency set by Barack Obama is so low that Hillary might even be seen as an improvement.  But we should worry about where a number of checks came from.

February 26, 2015       Permalink

RUDY WAS ON TO SOMETHING – AT 8:58 A.M. ET:  Rudy Giuliani was roasted for suggesting that Barack Obama doesn't love America.  I mean, the very idea of saying something so accurate was deeply upsetting to a media still attached to the Obama "narrative."  Turns out that many Americans are backing Rudy.  From John Fund at National Review: 

Once again, surveys show we are a divided nation. In the furor over Rudy Giuliani’s comment that President Obama doesn’t “love America,” the polling site YouGov.com decided to see how many Americans agreed with him.

The answer: a surprising number. Democrats are convinced he does love his country (85 percent of those surveyed answered yes in the poll), while Republicans (69 percent no) are skeptical. Independents break in the president’s favor by only 42 percent to 38 percent. Nationally, only 47 percent of people think the nation’s leader loves America while 35 percent do not.

I thought Giuliani’s comments inappropriate, but the White House should be concerned to the extent their own signaling and policies have led to such a result. It is indeed hard to imagine similar results for any modern president. As for Americans themselves, love of country still runs deep: 90 percent of conservatives say that they love America, compared to 85 percent of moderates and 82 percent of liberals.

COMMENT:  It's absolutely clear that Obama has a certain hostility to the American people.  He actually has made it quite clear in comments about people who "cling to their guns and their religion," and in constantly talking down to his fellow citizens.  Michelle Obama said during the 2008 that her husband's nomination for president marked the only time she's been proud of her country. 

I simply don't understand how so many Americans could have been so taken in by Obama.  Maybe they thought they were doing "the right thing" by electing a man with his background.  They were doing the wrong thing.

February 26,  2015     Permalink