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JULY 8,  2015

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:57 P.M. ET:

REPUBLICANS OPPOSE COURT ON GAY MARRIAGE – From Reuters: Almost two-thirds of Republicans oppose the Supreme Court’s backing of gay marriage, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, which gives hope for conservative presidential candidates who have come out strongly against marriage equality.  Republicans would struggle to make opposition to same-sex marriage a winning issue in next November’s general election because more than half of Americans support it, according to the online survey.  But there is still a clear majority of Republicans - 63 percent - who think the court’s historic decision last month to legalize gay marriage nationwide was wrong.  This is not a good issue for Republicans in a general election.  Statistically, it's at best a wash, and it's unlikely the Supreme Court will reverse its decision on the matter.  Republicans should focus on carving out religious-protection exceptions, which I think most reasonable Americans would support.

GONE – From the AP: BALTIMORE — Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said Wednesday that she has fired Police Commissioner Anthony Batts, 2½ months after riots broke out in the city following the death of a man who was injured in police custody.  Rawlings-Blake announced her decision in a three-paragraph news release that also noted she has named Deputy Police Commissioner Kevin Davis as interim commissioner.  The mayor scheduled a news conference with Davis for later Wednesday afternoon.  Rawlings did not give a reason, but the move comes amid a spike in the city’s homicide rate.  Cosmetic change.  The crazed appeasement of criminals in Baltimore will probably continue.  It's the current party line of the left.

MADNESS – From AP: NEW YORK (AP) — Thousands of New Yorkers accused of low-level or non-violent crimes won't face the prospect of raising cash for bail under a plan that seeks to keep such suspects out of the troubled Rikers Island jail complex.  The $18 million city plan, detailed to The Associated Press ahead of the announcement on Wednesday, allows judges beginning next year to replace bail for low-risk defendants with supervision options including daily check-ins, text-message reminders and required drug or behavioral therapy.  What about book contracts?  Guaranteed access to literary agents?  Look, there may be good reasons for canceling bail for some crimes, but the change is one of many that have the effect of creating an image of a city that's gone soft on criminals.  That can only bring back the bad old days, before Rudy Giuliani cleaned up the city.

TRUMP ROMPS – From Breitbart:  GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump is the leading choice among North Carolina Republican primary voters in a recent Public Policy Poll. Trump received 16 percent, while former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush received 12 percent.  I wouldn't take that to the bank.  These are early polls, and Trump is making a lot of noise and saying some things that are popular.  Bottom line, though, he isn't very presidential and has little to say beyond the headline-grabbing zingers he throws out.  Many Republican strategists worry that he's taking attention away from candidates who have a serious chance to win the general election.

July 8, 2015       Permalink

BALTIMORE AGAIN – AT 9:32 A.M. ET:  A multiple murder in Baltimore.  Does anyone care?  The press is doing handstands to avoid mentioning anything about the backgrounds or group-identities of the victims, or shooters.  From WaPo: 

Three people were killed and one wounded late Tuesday in a shooting a few blocks from the Baltimore campus of the University of Maryland, according to a Baltimore law enforcement source.

In the incident, campus police said, two vans pulled to the side of the road. One person got out of each of the vans, and opened fire at a group of people on the corner.

Baltimore police said two of those shot were male and two were female.

The matter was under investigation early Wednesday.

According to the campus police, the shooting occurred just before 11 p.m. in the 900 block of W. Fayette Street, near Poppleton Street. The intersection is in a residential area of modest two- and three-story brick houses.

There was no immediate indication that any of the four were students at the campus, which provides graduate and professional education on a 71- acre campus in West Baltimore, near the Inner Harbor. During the academic year it enrolls more than 6,000 students.

It is in a neighborhood that lies about a half mile west of the campus, and separated from campus buildings by Martin Luther King Boulevard, a six lane thoroughfare with a wide median.

Homicides in Baltimore increased sharply in the weeks after rioting broke out in April following the death of Freddie Gray who was injured while in police custody.

However, there have been few if any recent occasions in which as many as three people were killed in a single incident.

COMMENT:  Obviously, this was a coordinated attack.  Two of the three dead are female.  Will the dead be mentioned, their names read out?  That will depend on whether their deaths are politically useful to some "leader."

July 8, 2015       Permalink

APPLAUSE, APPLAUSE – AT 9:08 A.M.  ET:  One of the standard lines of the climate-change left is that those who question global warming are kooks, crackpots, oil-industry shills, and worse.  But what do you say about a Nobel laureate in physics who asks questions, and takes intellectual aim at President Obama?  I love this.  From Daily Caller: 

In 2008, Dr. Ivar Giaever joined over 70 Nobel Science Laureates in endorsing Barack Obama for president, but seven years later the Nobel Prize winner now stands against the president on global warming.

“I would say that basically global warming is a non-problem,” Giaever, who won the Nobel for physics in 1973, told an audience at the Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting earlier this month.

Giaever ridiculed Obama for stating that “no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.” The physicist called it a “ridiculous statement” and that Obama “gets bad advice” when it comes to global warming.

“I say this to Obama: Excuse me, Mr. President, but you’re wrong. Dead wrong,” Giaever said.

Giaever was a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s School of Engineering and School of Science and received the Nobel Prize for physics for his work on quantum tunneling. Giaever said he was “horrified” about the science surrounding global warming when he conducted research on the subject in 2012.

Ironically, just four years earlier he signed a letter with more than 70 other Nobel winners saying the “country urgently needs a visionary leader” and that “Senator Barack Obama is such a leader, and we urge you to join us in supporting him.”

But by 2011, Giaever left the American Physical Society because it officially stated that “the evidence is incontrovertible … [g]lobal warming is occurring.” The Society also pushed for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“Global warming really has become a new religion,” Giaever said. “Because you cannot discuss it. It’s not proper."

COMMENT:  He is absolutely right.  It is a new religion, or a new religious doctrine within the religion of liberalism.  One does not question.  One does not oppose.  One goes along.  Of course, if one must drive one is permitted to go to gas stations, as long as one mumbles something about carbon.  Mumbling is acceptable.

There are plenty of scientists who've expressed doubts about global warming.  They get nowhere.  The high priests of politics have spoken.

July 8, 2015       Permalink

NEWS!  COMMON SENSE FROM LIBERALS! – AT 8:58 A.M. ET:   San Francisco is a sanctuary city, meaning it doesn't extend much cooperation to federal officials, or even federal law, in the handling of illegal immigrants.  But after a young woman was murdered last week while walking with her father, allegedly by an illegal, even some liberals are walking back the sanctuary policy, which has always been embraced by the liberal trendiest.  From Fox:

Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton joined the condemnation of San Francisco’s “sanctuary” policy Tuesday.

Clinton chided law enforcement officials in an interview with CNN, saying the city was wrong to ignore an Immigration and Customs Enforcement request to hold Francisco Sanchez for federal authorities. Sanchez is accused of killing a young California woman along a pier last week.

"The city made a mistake, not to deport someone that the federal government strongly felt should be deported," Clinton said. "So I have absolutely no support for a city that ignores the strong evidence that should be acted on."

Clinton wasn’t the only one criticizing the city. Both of California’s senators also slammed the city’s policy.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein called on San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee to start cooperating with federal immigration officials who want to deport felons such as Sanchez. Feinstein served as San Francisco mayor from 1978-1988.

"I strongly believe that an undocumented individual, convicted of multiple felonies and with a detainer request from ICE, should not have been released," Feinstein said. "We should focus on deporting convicted criminals, not setting them loose on our streets."

The mayor’s office has said it reached out to Homeland Security officials to determine if there’s a way to cooperate while still upholding the city’s sanctuary policy.

And...

Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, also a Northern California native, said she asked Gov. Jerry Brown if state law was followed in Sanchez’s release.

"For decades, I have supported deporting violent criminals, and I have always believed that sanctuary should not be given to felons," Boxer said.

COMMENT:  All this sudden law-and-order talk from liberals.  What comes next?  The Pledge of Allegiance?

July 8, 2015       Permalink

EVEN THE INTERVIEWER TURNED THUMBS DOWN – AT 8:41 A.M. ET:  Hillary Clinton did her big-deal interview on CNN yesterday, and the reviews are generally awful.  Even the interviewer, who is not known as a flaming conservative, felt Hillary was a flop.  From The Blaze: 

CNN reporter Brianna Keilar appeared on the cable-news network after her interview with Hillary Clinton and sharply criticized the Democratic presidential contender’s performance.

“I did not hear a more open or transparent Hillary Clinton,” Keilar said.

Keilar listed several questions she asked Clinton in which she was not satisfied with the answer she received in return.

“I heard her not engaging on the issue of Bernie Sanders. He’s a self-described Democratic Socialist and I asked her why is garnering this support and enthusiasm you don’t seem to among Democrats. She wouldn’t engage on that,” Keilar said.

The CNN host added that she felt Clinton wouldn’t engage on other issues, including the idea of a Bush v. Clinton general election and her problem with polls showing many voters don’t find her trustworthy.

Keilar’s sit down with Clinton was the first nationally televised interview since the Democratic presidential contender announced her 2016 bid for the White House.

COMMENT:  Well, if you've lost Brianna...  Of course, I think some of the criticism of Hillary from within liberal ranks is a bit cynical.  It isn't only based on her mechanical performances and pre-programmed delivery.  It's about the fact that many in today's McGovernized, Carterized and Obamaized Democratic Party just don't think Hillary is left-wing enough.  She may even favor national defense!

No, Hillary didn't come off well.  And yet, what's the alternative in the Democratic Party?  I still think she'll get the nomination, possibly by agreeing to some really nutty left-wing stuff, then will have to struggle back to the center to win the election.  There are easier jobs.

July 8,  2015     Permalink

JULY 7,  2015

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:56 P.M. ET: 

HILLARY SPEAKS – Her mouth moved and there were occasional sounds, but, other than that, Hillary Clinton's first major one-on-one TV interview barely came off.  From the Daily Beast:  Any Clinton supporters who hoped that a New Hillary would emerge from Tuesday’s televised grilling of the Democratic presidential frontrunner had to be brutally disillusioned.  The Hillary Clinton who showed up for her 19-minute back and forth with CNN political correspondent Brianna Keilar—touted as Clinton’s first one-on-one interview with a national reporter since she declared her candidacy three months ago—was the same Hillary Clinton the country has come to know over nearly a quarter century on the American political scene.  Advertised by her associates as warm and funny in private, she came across as guarded, quibbling, and pokerfaced under the TV lights.  She even trotted out the old right-wing conspiracy narrative to explain her woes.  But don't underestimate her.  Media support plus the ability to drag millions of frightened low-information voters to the polls may still result in her taking the oath.  I'm biting my tongue.

THE TRUTH ABOUT SYRIA – From The Hill:   Stunning lawmakers on Capitol Hill, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on Tuesday revealed that the Pentagon is only training 60 Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).  While the program was designed to train thousands of fighters to take on the Islamic group, Carter said only a few dozen recruits have made it through the screening process.  “This number is much smaller than we’d hoped for at this point, partly because of the vetting standards,” Carter said.  Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee expressed shock at the sluggish start for the program, which Congress reluctantly approved last fall at the behest of the administration.  “I’ve got to tell you, after four years, Mr. Secretary, that’s not a very impressive number,” Armed Services Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) told Carter.  At least Carter was honest.  He's a good man in an impossible job, and working for an indifferent president, which is a generous description of Barack Obama.

OUR TECHNOLOGICAL FUTURE – From London's Telegraph:   Last week, MegaBots, an American engineering company, challenged Japan's Suidobashi Heavy Industry to a duel.  The battle would pitch the 12,000 lbs (850-stone) MegaBots Mark II against Suidobashi's Kuratas, which weighs 9,000 lbs.  Now, Suidobashi has responded, saying it accepts the challenge - on one condition.  Kogor Kurata, Suidobashi's founder and chief executive, posted a response on YouTube, saying his robot would fight, as long as the fight was hand-to-hand.  "Just building something huge and sticking guns on it. It's... super American," he said.  "We can’t let another country win this. Giant robots are Japanese culture. But you know, we really need… Melee combat."  Seems excessive to me.  If they wanted real robots, at a low cost, they could have just gotten the liberal justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.

MEGYN ROMPS – From the Hollywood Reporter:   Megyn Kelly is on a roll. Fresh off of a rare month atop the cable news ratings heap, the Fox News Channel host is extending her hot streak into July.  The first week of July saw The Kelly File win among the adults 25-54 demographic, averaging 458,000 viewers in the advertiser-favored group over No. 2 The O'Reilly Factor's 431,000.  Bill O'Reilly's 8 p.m. telecast is perennially No. 1 across cable news, but Kelly scored a monthly win in June — only her second month atop the heap since her 2013 move to primetime.  O'Reilly still topped the cable news race with total viewers, netting 2.5 million, but Kelly is gaining ground there too. Her No. 2 status was by a margin of little more than 200,000 viewers, averaging 2.2 million for the week.  She is becoming a major star, based on superb ability and, of course, that great look.  The question is whether Fox News will be able to keep her.  She'd be worth a fortune to any network.

July 7,  2015     Permalink

BERNIE SPEAKS – AT 10:31 A.M. ET:   Look, the guy is getting big crowds.  He's everyone's contrarian uncle.  People like him.  Now he's going after the Obama administration's economic claims.  From Daily Caller: 

Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders undermined a key Obama administration talking point Monday when he said the actual unemployment rate in the U.S. is double what the federal government claims.

“When you talk about the economy we also have to have an honest assessment of unemployment in America,” Sanders told a crowd of 7,500 gathered at a presidential campaign rally in Portland, Maine.

“Once a month the government publishes a set of figures, and the last figures they published said that official unemployment was 5.4 percent,” the Democratic nominee continued, slightly misstating the Labor Department’s most recent report which put June’s unemployment rate at 5.3 percent.

“But there is another set of government statistics,” Sanders continued, “and that that real unemployment if you include those people who have given up looking for work and the millions of others who are working part-time 20, 25 hours a week when they want to work full-time, when you all of that together, real unemployment is 10.5 percent.”

That dose of reality is like a wet blanket on President Obama’s recent claims that the economy is improving.

COMMENT:  Very brave to go after Obama the way he's going after Clinton.  The odds are still very much against Bernie, but they're a lot better for him than they were two months ago. 

People like him because he isn't a fake.  I think he'd make a disastrous president, especially in foreign policy, but it's refreshing to hear a candidate truly speak his mind. 

July 7, 2015       Permalink

IRAN TALKS, ANOTHER OVERTIME – AT 9:58 A.M. ET:  The Iran nuclear talks have been extended through Friday.   Hotels in Vienna are jubilant.  From AP and AFP:

The terms of the 2013 interim nuclear deal between Iran and major powers have been extended until Friday, the US said Tuesday, meaning this is the new effective deadline for talks on a final deal.

“To allow for the additional time to negotiate, we are taking the necessary technical steps for the measures of the Joint Point of Action (the 2013 agreement) to remain in place through July 10,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said.

“We are continuing to negotiate for the next couple of days,” EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini told reporters during a break from the negotiations in Vienna.

“This does not mean we are extending our deadline. I told you one week ago more or less. We are interpreting in a flexible way our deadline, which means that we are taking the time, the days we still need, to finalize the agreement,” she said.

She added that a deal is “something which is still possible even if we are now getting into the difficult time. I am here to stay, to continue together with all the teams. All the six teams are here.”

She said that foreign ministers may leave the talks but “are ready to come back in the coming hours and days.”

An Iranian spokesman told AFP meanwhile that for his delegation, “we have no deadline.”

COMMENT:  The key question here is whether negotiations through Friday trigger a provision in American law that would give Congress a full 60 days to consider any agreement.  It now stands at 30 days, but we've been told repeatedly that, after July 9th – which is Thursday – the consideration period doubles.  That would give opponents valuable time to build their case against what appears to be a very defective agreement.

July 7, 2015       Permalink

SICKENING – AT 8:41 A.M. ET:   Obama did it again yesterday – he tried to present a moral equivalence between the United States and its enemies, and he did so in the presence of America's military leaders.  The man is a disgrace.  From Breitbart:

Monday at the Pentagon, after meeting on the military efforts against ISIS with his national security team, President Barack Obama urged caution to the America people and said that not only Muslims commit acts of terror, saying, “Here in the United States, we’ve all kinds of home grown terrorism.”

Obama said, “I think it is important for us to recognize the threat of violent extremism is not restricted to any one community. Here in the United States, we’ve all kinds of home grown terrorism. And tragically, recent history reminds how even a single individual can inflict horrendous harm on Americans. So our efforts to counter violent extremism must not target any one community, because of the patriotic Muslim Americans who are partners in keeping our country safe.”

COMMENT:  The American people don't have to be told that we have some bad actors in the United States.  Most countries do.  We also don't have to be told that Muslims are not the only people to engage in terrorism. 

What outrages me is the president's constant need to throw "domestic terrorism" in our faces, as if it's the same thing we face internationally.  We can take care of our domestic nuts.  I'm not sure we're taking care of the foreign ones, not under this president. 

When Obama took office, some commentators – and they were laughed at and ridiculed – wondered if he was the Manchurian Candidate.  I don't make the charge, but I think the question of where this president's loyalties lie has become serious and respectable.

July 7, 2015       Permalink

STUNNING, AND FROM A LIBERAL PAPER – AT 8:16 A.M. ET:  It is rare that a newspaper editorial provides a watershed, but an editorial in yesterday's Washington Post qualifies.  The Post is a liberal paper, a supporter of the Obama administration.  Its editorial page, though, has been responsible, reasoned, and mature, words we never apply to the editorial page of The New York Times. Yesterday the Post raised a profoundly troubling question about Obama's approach to Iran, a question that has been on many of our minds.  From the Post: 

...a recent controversy over Iran’s compliance with the interim accord now governing its nuclear work is troubling. The deal allowed Iran to continue enriching uranium, but required that amounts over a specified ceiling be converted into an oxide powder that cannot easily be further enriched. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran met the requirement for the total size of its stockpile on June 30, but it did so by converting some of its enriched uranium into a different oxide form, apparently because of problems with a plant set up to carry out the powder conversion.

Rather than publicly report this departure from the accord, the Obama administration chose to quietly accept it. When a respected independent think tank, the Institute for Science and International Security, began pointing out the problem, the administration’s response was to rush to Iran’s defense — and heatedly attack the institute as well as a report in the New York Times.

This points to two dangers in the implementation of any longterm deal. One is “a U.S. willingness to legally reinterpret the deal when Iran cannot do what it said it would do, in order to justify that non-performance,” institute President David Albright and his colleague Andrea Stricker wrote. In other words, overlooking Iranian cheating is easier than confronting it.

This weakness is matched by a White House proclivity to respond to questions about Iran’s performance by attacking those who raise them. Mr. Albright, a physicist with a long record of providing non-partisan expert analysis of nuclear proliferation issues, said on the Foreign Policy Web site that he had been unfairly labeled as an adversary of the Iran deal and that campaign-style “war room” tactics are being used by the White House to fend off legitimate questions.

In the case of the oxide conversion, the discrepancy may be less important than the administration’s warped reaction. A final accord will require Iran to ship most of its uranium stockpile out of the country, or reverse its enrichment. But there surely will be other instances of Iranian non-compliance. If the deal is to serve U.S. interests, the Obama administration and its successors will have to respond to them more firmly and less defensively.

COMMENT:  We learned yesterday of a phone call from the White House to sympathizers in many leftist organizations that laid the groundwork for what looks like a vicious smear campaign against anyone who dares oppose a deal with Iran, with special emphasis on Congressional Democrats who may waver.

The Post gets it right.  Responsible Americans are worried about a deal with Iran, and some are brave enough to worry about the loyalties of the president of the United States.

July 7,  2015     Permalink