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JANUARY 22,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 9:22 P.M. ET:

BASIC ECONOMICS – From The Hill:  "The conservative American Action Forum (AAF) released a study on Tuesday saying that the individual mandate penalty may never be substantial enough an incentive to get young adults to buy into the ObamaCare exchanges.  The study finds that after accounting for cost-sharing and subsidies in 2014, it would still be cheaper for 86 percent of young adults to forgo coverage and to pay the individual mandate instead.  That percentage decreases to 71 in 2015, and 62 in 2016, as the individual mandate penalty goes up.  'Even after the mandate penalty is fully implemented, a majority of young adult households will find that it is financially advantageous for them to forgo health insurance, pay the mandate penalty, and personally cover their own health care expenses,' the study says."  Well, the Obamans can always turn to waterboarding and incarceration to get young people to buy.  That's their kind of mentality.

OBAMA RATES LOW – From Newsmax:  "A majority of U.S. voters disapprove of the job President Barack Obama is doing on four of five top priorities they say the president and Congress should focus on this year, a new poll has found...Specifically, 56 percent of respondents disapprove of the president's handling of the economy, against 39 percent who approve. Fifty-nine percent disapprove of the way Obama is handling healthcare, while 36 percent support his policies. Forty-nine percent have a dim view of how he is handling foreign policy, compared with 40 percent who approve, and 47 percent give him a poor grade on his approach to Iran, compared to 39 percent who say he's on the right track."  This matches other polls that have the president's approval hovering in the high 30s to about 40%.

WE'RE BOOMING, WE'RE BOOMING – From CNBC:  "Get ready for the next era in retail—one that will be characterized by far fewer shops and smaller stores.  On Tuesday, Sears said that it will shutter its flagship store in downtown Chicago in April. It's the latest of about 300 store closures in the U.S. that Sears has made since 2010. The news follows announcements earlier this month of multiple store closings from major department stores J.C. Penney and Macy's.  Further signs of cuts in the industry came Wednesday, when Target said that it will eliminate 475 jobs worldwide, including some at its Minnesota headquarters, and not fill 700 empty positions.  Experts said these headlines are only the tip of the iceberg for the industry, which is set to undergo a multiyear period of shuttering stores and trimming square footage."  Obama will blame global warming. 

DeBLASIO SURVIVES – New York's hard-left new mayor, Comrade Bill DeBlasio, has survived his first crisis.  He got most of the streets plowed during the storm of the last few days.  But no cigar from people living in the upper precincts of Manhattan, the so-called "silk-stocking district," who complain that their streets went unplowed for too long.  We have to give the comrade a chance.  His standard of comparison is the Moscow Sanitation Department, so getting up to speed may take some time.  Ah, snow in the Kremlin.  What a gorgeous sight in the middle of a revolution.

January 22, 2014       Permalink

SYRIA CONFERENCE – AT 9:21 A.M. ET:  I hate to be so grim this morning, but we must take the world as it is.  There is a new "peace" conference underway in Switzerland to try to stop the Syrian civil war.  That war has been off the front pages for some time, the better to concentrate on destroying Chris Christie's career.  But AP provides us with a stark reminder of what is at stake in Syria, and why stopping the genocide is so difficult:

Syria's conflict was sparked by an act of brutality — the detention and torture of schoolchildren who spray-painted anti-government graffiti in a southern city. In the three years since, the conflict has evolved into one of the most savage civil wars in decades.

The atrocities have been relentless. Protesters gunned down in the streets. An opposition singer whose vocal cords were carved out. Beheadings and mass sectarian killings. Barrels full of explosives dropped from warplanes onto bakeries and homes.

It will be hard enough to find a political solution to Syria's crisis at an international peace conference convening in Switzerland on Wednesday, given the vast differences between the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad and the opposition. But in a nation drowning in blood, reconciliation and justice over the atrocities seem even more distant.

"The ethical and moral fabric of this society has been stretched to beyond breaking point," said Amr al-Azm, a U.S.-based Syrian opposition figure and professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio. "For a country to recover from such a traumatic rupture of the very glue that holds it together is not easy."

In the latest sign of the brutality, three prominent international war-crimes experts said they had received a huge cache of photographs documenting the killing of some 11,000 detainees by Syrian authorities.

David Crane, one of the three experts, told The Associated Press that the cache provides strong evidence for charging Assad and others for crimes against humanity — "but what happens next will be a political and diplomatic decision."

In the 55,000 digital images, smuggled out by an alleged defector from Syria's military police, the victims' bodies showed signs of torture, including ligature marks around the neck and marks of beatings, while others show extreme emaciation suggestive of starvation. The report — which was commissioned by the Qatar government, one of the countries most deeply involved in the Syrian conflict and a major backer of the opposition — could not be independently confirmed.

"It's chilling; it's direct evidence to show systematic killing of civilians," said Crane, former chief prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

COMMENT:  It is ghastly.  But the international left is much more concerned about "American imperialism" and safety for Edward Snowden.  The left has made itself into a very bad joke.  Problem is, the joke is too often on us.

January 22, 2014       Permalink

MORE ON SOCHI – NEW – AT 9:04 A.M. ET:  London's Express has an exclusive on a newly revealed terror threat facing the Sochi Olympics.  We cannot confirm this independently, but think it's important to report it. 

HIGH speed double-decker trains carrying thousands of tourists from Moscow to Sochi for next month’s Winter Olympics are feared to be the main targets for devastating terror attacks.

Professor Mark Galeotti, a security expert at New York University said the thousand-mile Moscow to Adler railway line is a vulnerable to a strike by extremists.

He said the route was “an obvious target” as it would be outside Sochi’s ring of steel and be consistent with the tactics of previous terror attacks.

An attack during the Games is “inevitable”, he told Express Online.

His warning came as Russian authorities issued a major alert for two alleged female suicide bombers believed to be on the run in or near the Black Sea resort of Sochi

There are also fears that “sleeper cells” of migrant labourers who have been working on the construction of the Winter Games site may already be lurking inside the security cordon.

COMMENT:   Expect more stories like this in the next few weeks.  Even if there are no attacks, the terror groups have already succeeded.  They have forced the expenditure of huge resources on security.  And they have focused attention on their causes.

Always remember that the purpose of terrorism is terror.

January 22, 2014       Permalink

SOCHI UPDATE – AT 8:28 A.M. ET:  As readers know, we're following closely the terror concerns surrounding the Olympics, which will start in two weeks and two days.  I don't think it's reached the level of panic, but I've never seen so much major concern expressed about an upcoming event.

I get the feeling – gut reaction – that security people in Washington and elsewhere know something they're not telling us, and that something ain't good.  In an extraordinary action, President Obama got on the phone with his old, warm pal, Vladimir Putin, and offered American aid.  From Fox:

President Obama offered Russian President Vladimir Putin the full security assistance of the U.S. Tuesday as concerns continue to mount over terror threats at next month’s Olympic Games.

The White House said Obama, in a phone call, offered to help with security during next month’s games. Putin, who has some 40,000 cops deployed inside the 1,500-mile so-called “Ring of Steel,” has so far brushed aside offers from other countries to assist in securing the Black Sea resort town of Sochi, where the games will take place.

There was no immediate indication of Putin's response to Obama's offer.

Officials confirmed Tuesday the two countries were also involved in “exploratory discussions” to use high-tech American equipment to help secure the games.

The discussions between Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey and his Russian counterpart, which were first reported by the New York Times, involve electronic equipment developed by the U.S. to fight IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The equipment is able to detect and scramble signals from a cell phone or radio that could detonate an explosive device. The Times reported Dempsey told Russian chief of the general staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov the Defense Department would need to make sure the technology was compatible with Russian security systems before it could be implemented.

The Pentagon confirmed late Monday that the U.S. military will have two ships and other assets at the ready. The Pentagon maintains that no aircraft are being sent to the region, contrary to an earlier report.

"Air and naval assets, to include two Navy ships in the Black Sea, will be available if requested for all manner of contingencies in support of -- and in consultation with -- the Russian government," U.S. Navy Rear Admiral John Kirby said in a statement, adding, "there is no such requirement at this time."

C-17 transport planes will be on standby at U.S. bases in Germany in the event that Americans need to be evacuated from the Olympics. The planes will be approximately two hours away from Sochi.

One Defense official, referring to the preparations, said the Pentagon has "learned a lot of lessons from Benghazi" and is preparing for the possibility of an evacuation. Any evacuation would be done in coordination with Russia, U.S. Defense officials told Fox News.

COMMENT:  Our government's concerns seem to be awfully late in coming.  But at least there's activity.  Our young athletes should be a major concern.  So, of course, are ordinary citizens, who are easy targets. 

We approach the Olympics with both excitement and apprehension.  The U.S. has some fine athletes going, including some outstanding figure skaters.  (My wife and I are skating fans.)  We just hope they're safe.

January 22, 2014       Permalink

THE MARCH OF TERROR – AT 8:02 A.M. ET:  As worry about Sochi increases dramatically, Israel has made some major arrests, possibly preventing a huge attack on the US embassy.  From the Jerusalem Post, just in:

The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) announced on Wednesday that it arrested three Palestinians from east Jerusalem recruited online by an al-Qaida operative in Gaza, who were in the midst of preparations to carry out a string of large-scale bombing and shooting attacks on multiple targets in Israel.

The intended targets included the Jerusalem Convention Center, a bus traveling between the capital and Ma'aleh Adumim, the US embassy in Tel Aviv, and emergency responders who would have arrived at the scene of attacks

The Shin Bet said an Al-Qaeda operative in Gaza, named as as Ariv Al-Sham, recruited the men separately from one another, and had planned to activate three independent terrorist cells via his recruits. Senior Shin Bet sources said they believed Al-Sham received his orders directly from the head of Al-Qaeda's central structure, Ayman Al-Zawahri.

COMMENT:  This is the crowd that our fearless leader, Field Marshal Barack Obama, refers to as the junior varsity.  Yeah, very junior.  Had the US embassy been leveled, I wonder what the field marshal's explanation would have been.

January 22,  2014     Permalink

JANUARY 21,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:18 P.M. ET: 

AUTOMATED ARMY?  From Britain's Telegraph:  "The US Army is considering replacing thousands of soldiers with robots as it deals with sweeping troop cuts.  A senior American officer has said he is considering shrinking the size of the Army’s brigade combat teams by a quarter and replacing the lost troops with robots and remote-controlled vehicles.  The American military is still far from fielding armies of Terminator-type robotic killers though.  Ideas under discussion instead include proposals to see manned lorries and transporters replaced by supply trains of robots vehicles."  Imagine R2D2 as the next star West Point quarterback.  Nah.  Guys are better.

SAD – He once was a bright light in the Republican Party.  From the Washington Examiner:  "Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, were charged with illegally accepting gifts from a businessman who sought special treatment, the Associated Press reported.  Peter Carr, a spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department, says McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, were indicted Tuesday. The 14-count indictment includes conspiracy, wire fraud and other charges.  The charges come from the couple's relationship with Jonnie R. Williams Sr., a former CEO of dietary supplement maker Star Scientific.  Authorities alleged the McDonnells lodged frequent requests for money, clothes, vacations and other gifts, the Washington Post reported. In exchange, the couple lent the prestige of the governorship to Williams' struggling company."   They're innocent until proved guilty, but this sure doesn't look good.

THE VERY LATEST SOCIAL NEWS – From the New York Post:  "France’s first lady has lost the love triangle battle with President Francois Hollande’s new girlfriend and Hollande is 'in negotiations, including legal ones' to end their nine-year relationship, it was reported Monday.  Elysee palace sources told Britain’s Telegraph that Valerie Trierweiler wanted to remain a couple with Hollande but the president was insistent.
When word Hollande’s secret affair with actress Julie Gayet broke earlier this month sources close to Trierweiler said she wanted to weather the storm with him in the fashion of Hillary Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.  Trierweiler was recovering from the shock at a Paris hospital last Thursday when Hollande told her he 'needed time,' according to Paris Match, which employs Trierweiler as a writer."  The French do scandal with so much more style than we do.  They make it a regal event.  So we'll have Julie Gayet at the upcoming White House state dinner for the French president.  Don't tell Michelle.

DISGRACE – From CNS:  "A record 20% of American households, one in five, were on food stamps in 2013, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).  The numbers also show there was a record number of individuals on food stamps in 2013 and that the cost of the program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), was at an all-time high.  The USDA says that there were 23,052,388 households on food stamps in the average month of fiscal 2013, an increase of 722,675 from fiscal year 2012, when there were 22,329,713 households on food stamps in the average month."  The economic recovery is really blazing.

January 21, 2014       Permalink

SOCHI LATEST – AT 11:14 A.M. ET:  The press is now taking an active interest in the security nightmare surrounding the Sochi Olympics scheduled to start two weeks from Friday.  We know there is deep concern over the possibility that so-called "black widows" – widows of suicide bombers, have entered Sochi with the goal of launching terrorist attacks.  From Reuters: 

MOSCOW — Police have killed a senior Islamist militant in a shootout in Russia’s North Caucasus ahead of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, the National Anti-terror Committee said on Tuesday.

The shooting of Eldar Magatov, a suspect in numerous attacks on Russian targets, at a house where he had taken refuge in the Dagestan region was part of an intensifying security clampdown as the Games approach.

Meanwhile, Russian security officials are hunting down three potential female suicide bombers, one of whom is believed to be in Sochi.

President Vladimir Putin has staked his political reputation on organizing a successful Olympics and tightened security nationwide after insurgents who hope to create an Islamist state in the North Caucasus threatened to attack the Games.

COMMENT:  These are the most threatened games since the Munich Olympics of 1972, when Israeli athletes were attacked, some killed.  One of the problems we reportedly face is that the Russians are not very cooperative with American anti-terror forces, probably out of national pride, and will not permit any foreign troops on their soil to assist.

We watch this every day and will keep you informed.

January 21,  2014     Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 9:41 A.M. ET:   Amazing.  The liberal Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi has taken on Hillary Clinton.  This is a sin of the first magnitude in Boston, and I don't know what will happen to Joan.  Purgatory has been discussed.  As reported by Peter Wilson in American Thinker:

Imagine my surprise then when I opened the Boston Globe and discovered an op-ed by predictably left-wing columnist Joan Vennochi -- a woman, to boot! -- titled, "Clinton deserves Christie-level scrutiny." The piece begins:

TIME MAGAZINE'S current cover depicts a tiny man hanging onto the heel of a shoe that's emerging from a pant-suit wearing leg. "Can Anyone Stop Hillary?" reads the accompanying text.  Maybe, if the cover also showed her tripping over the Senate Intelligence Committee's just-released report on the attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, while she was secretary of state.  If New Jersey Governor Chris Christie must answer for four days of traffic jams on roads leading to the George Washington Bridge, surely Clinton has the same obligation to address a deadly assault that the bipartisan committee found "preventable."

Oh dear.  Joan is now on Hillary's enemies list.  Nixon must be smiling.

Benghazi also raises those old questions about Clintonian candor or, more accurately, sometimes the lack of it.
[...]
Yet despite Clinton's dismissive response [What difference at this point does it make?], it does matter who attacked and why.
[...]
The theory of Clinton as unstoppable... could change with time and new revelations.

Democrats portray Benghazi as a baseless smear of Hillary by a desperate GOP. If Hillary has lost the Boston Globe, maybe, maybe her chickens are coming home to roost.

COMMENT:  Well, I don't think she's quite lost the Globe.  We know from bitter experience that the leftist press will always come around to support its candidates.  And they will quickly turn on anyone who argues for the opposition.  

Look, if Hillary runs they almost have to give her the nomination.   Can they turn a woman down again, after Hillary was nearly assured the nod in 2008...before Barack appeared?  In that contest we saw the obvious, that on the political left race always trumps gender. 

Yes, you say, but the Dems could always turn to Elizabeth Warren, who is to Hillary's left, and more simpatico with the left-wing base of the party, and also female.  Hmm.  I dunno.  Winning in Massachusetts is very different from winning the presidency.  And Warren is wobbly as a candidate.  Things can change, of course, and the base can go nuts and turn to a Mayor Bill DeBlasio of New York – radical leftist, African-American wife.   As Ira Gershwin wrote, "Who could ask for anything more?"

But, if I had to bet, I'd still bet on Hillary getting the nomination, if she runs at all.   That bet will be good for three days.

January 21,  2014     Permalink

BUSH RESURGENT – AT 9:08 A.M. ET:  Ah, what a difference five years makes.   Some Americans of certain political persuasions used to laugh at a poster of George W. Bush asking, "Miss me yet?"  No one is laughing any longer.  Polls show that Bush is now more popular than Obama.  And some of Bush's associates are going with the flow.  From The Hill:

As George W. Bush's public image improves, more former Bush officials are running for office — and are starting to tout their connections to the former president rather than running from them.

Top former Bush advisor Ed Gillespie included photos with his old boss and talked of his work in the White House in the video announcing his Virginia Senate bid on Thursday.

Gillespie isn’t the only Bush alumnus looking to be on the ballot this fall. The former Republican National Committee chairman joins a long list already looking to launch their own electoral careers: Alaska Senate candidate Dan Sullivan (R); Elise Stefanik, the current GOP front-runner for retiring Rep. Bill Owens's (D-N.Y.) seat in upstate New York; North Carolina congressional candidate Taylor Griffin (R) and West Virginia House candidate Charlotte Lane (R).

Former Bush officials Tom Foley (R) and Asa Hutchinson (R) are also running for governor in Connecticut and Arkansas. Neel Kashkari, who served both the Bush and Obama administration as assistant Treasury secretary running the Troubled Asset Relief Program, is mulling a bid to the GOP nominee for governor in California. One of Gillespie’s little-known Republican primary opponents, Howie Lind, served in Bush’s Department of Defense.

COMMENT:  Is that another omen?  Are Americans now realizing that Bush was actually a pretty solid president, and that conservative principles have much to offer?

It is indeed another good sign.  The races will be tough this year.  Republicans must pick up six seats to take control of the U.S. Senate.  It's a tall order, but Senate races in Virginia and Michigan, states that have been trending Democratic, are now going into the "questionable" column.  That means that the Democrats will have to devote more resources to these races than they'd planned. 

One thing the national Republican planners are doing well is fighting for more and more states, more and more districts.  The idea of even being competitive in a Michigan Senate race was but a dream only a year ago.  And Colorado now looks competitive.  A private note from a good friend there informs me that probable GOP candidate Ken Buck, who lost a winnable race several years ago, has learned from his mistakes and is getting better and better as a candidate. 

As Sinatra might have said, leave us we should pray.

January 21, 2014       Permalink

AN OMEN? – AT 8:51 A.M. ET:  Do little things mean a lot?  In politics, they can signal trends.  From Paul Mirengoff at Powerline:

While I was away seeking (and finding) global warmth in the Dominican Republic, voters in Northeast Arkansas sent an ominous message to Democrats by overwhelmingly electing a Republican in a special State Senate election. The Republican, John Cooper, captured 57 percent of the vote to win a seat (District 21) that has never been held by a member of his party.

The race centered on the issue of whether to continue the Arkansas’ “private option” plan to expand Medicaid. Under a plan approved by the state legislature (Republicans were split, Democrats were in favor) and signed by Democratic governor Mike Beebe, Arkansas uses federal money to purchase private insurance for thousands of low-income residents now eligible for Medicaid thanks to Obamacare. Cooper, the Republican in the race, opposes the “private option;” his Democratic opponent Steve Rockwell supports it.

Cooper’s resounding win in a traditionally Democratic corner of the state is good news for Tom Cotton and bad news for Mark Pryor. It speaks not only to the dramatically declining fortunes of Democrats in Arkansas, but also to the unpopularity of anything related to Obamacare. Without Pryor’s vote, Obamacare would not have been enacted.

COMMENT:  Mark Pryor is the sitting Democratic U.S. senator, up for re-election in November.  Tom Cotton is his terrific Republican opponent.  We're rooting madly for Cotton, a Harvard graduate who gave up a promising legal career to fight for his country.  For Tom, the Senate may only be a stop on the way up.

January 21, 2014       Permalink