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MAY 9,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:26 P.M. ET:

THE NIGERIAN GIRLS – From London's Daily Mail:  "President Barack Obama is punting his administration's outrage over Nigerian terror group Boko Haram's violence to his wife Michelle, giving her the duty of delivering the White House's weekly radio address on Saturday."  Real hero, that Barack.  Of course, he's just following the standard leftist line on the missing girls – express outrage and do nothing.  I just checked the website of the National Organization for Women, which claims to have an interest in women's issues.  Not a word about the girls.  I guess they just don't count unless the masters of leftist politics give the big okay.  I'd love to see how many times Michelle uses the term "Islamic terrorism" in her radio address.  I'm not holding my breath.

OBAMA UP? – Gallup reports that President Obama's approval has just jumped to 47%.  I wonder if this is just polling noise, as almost everyone else has it about 41%.  We'll follow the polls to see if there's a trend toward the president, but I can't find any reason for one. 

NOW THAT'S A REALITY SHOW – From the New York Post:  "Honesty will take you a long way to making an impression on your first date.  But there are some things you probably should keep to yourself.
If only someone had mentioned that to Sefer Calinak, a 62-year-old man looking for a wife on a TV dating show in Turkey.  Calinak stunned the host and studio audience after revealing that he had murdered his first wife and later killed a lover with an ax during an argument, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet Daily News reports.  He made the shocking revelation while appearing this week on Flash TV’s 'The Luck of The Draw,' adding he is now an 'honest person looking for a new wife.'"  And he wasn't thrown off the show.  But who are we to judge another culture?

HEALTH OR HARASSMENT? – From Bloomberg:  "The Obama administration began a process that may result in the first federal regulation of chemicals used in fracking, a drilling technique that has transformed energy production while eluding oversight sought by environmentalists.  After three years of delay, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said today it’s considering rules requiring oilfield service companies such as Halliburton (HAL) Co. to send it details on the health and safety of the chemicals used. The agency said it may decide to stop short of rules, and use incentives or voluntary steps."  We have to watch this closely.  If there are legitimate health and safety issues, they should be dealt with.  But EPA has a history of overreach and rough politics.  Fracking is an exciting, emerging technology that can massively help the campaign to make this country energy independent.  It must not be stopped by a political agenda.

May 9, 2014         Permalink

COMING TO THEIR SENSES? – AT 10:32 A.M. ET:  It's rare for liberal Democrats, but it might be happening.  Their initial temptation to boycott the new Benghhazi committee formed in the House may be giving way to the realization that a boycott gives them no voice. 

They may also realize that committee Chairman Trey Gowdy is one of the shrewdest Republicans in Congress, and can be deadly as a prosecutor.  From the Washington Examiner: 

A top Democratic House lawmaker and close ally of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi wants Democrats to post only one member to the newly created Select Committee on Benghazi.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., sent a letter to Democrats who are meeting on Friday morning to discuss how to respond to the newly created committee, which is comprised of seven Republican seats and five Democratic seats.

DeLauro, who is co-chair of the Democratic Steering Policy Committee, which determines committee assignments, said Democrats should resist boycotting the panel, which “would leave our caucus with no voice to engage in committee proceedings.”

Instead, she suggested in the letter, Democrats should seat just one member of their party on the panel.

“Such a participant could maintain Democratic access to committee proceedings and material, question witnesses, monitor the House Majority's activities and provide a powerful voice to raise issues and make appropriate public comments,” DeLauro wrote.

The House voted to create the panel on Thursday. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, is expected to name members on Friday. He has tapped Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., to serve as chair.

Republicans rejected a request by Democrats to make the committee bipartisan with an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. Such a move would have given Democrats the power to block subpoenas and other actions taken by the panel, which aims to investigate the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

COMMENT:  Dems complain that the Benghazi committee is about politics, an attempt to damage Hillary Clinton before the 2016 presidential race.  That may well be part of the motivation, but so what?  Political motivation is appropriate in a democracy, where elections are about putting up the better candidate and making the better argument. 

Maybe the Dems will participate.  If not, it will look strange to many Americans, especially if Gowdy is in his best form.

May 9, 2014       Permalink

LATEST PRESIDENTIAL POLL – AT 9:23 A.M. ET:   The news here is not on the Republican side, which is unformed, but on the Dem side, where Hillary continues to lose steam as more and more comes out about her actual record.  From The Politico: 

Rand Paul and Jeb Bush are top dogs in a wide-open 2016 Republican presidential field, a new poll says.

The Kentucky senator and former Florida governor each received 13 percent of the vote among Republicans and independents that lean right, according to a CNN/ORC International poll released Tuesday. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee, came in at 12 percent.

Bush has gained ground since early March, improving by 4 points, while Paul has dropped 3 points in that time.

Other notable marks include former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at 10 percent, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 9 percent and Texas Gov. Rick Perry at 8 percent.

The poll comes as a potential Republican field might be forming with many contenders but lacking a clear front-runner.

I get the sense that this is about name recognition, and will continue to be so until next year, when the race really gets started.  I'd like to see some other names in the ring, like Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin. 

The Dem side:

Democrats, on the other hand, have a familiar name out front — former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who came in with 64 percent of the vote among Democrats and left-leaning independents. Still, that mark is 6 points worse than in January, when she scored 70 percent of the vote in a CNN poll.

COMMENT:  She's still the overwhelming favorite, but declining numbers aren't helping her political image.  If she drops five more points she'll be in the 50s, which is not coronation territory.  Hillary is one of the best-known figures in the country.  Everyone knows her, but almost everything coming out about her is either negative or neutral.  There is no new positive news, nothing about any secret accomplishment.

At $200,000 a speech, Hillary won't elicit much sympathy.  The issue may not be whether she can win the Democratic nomination, but whether she can win a general election against a good, well-organized Republican candidate.  I'd imagine initial polls will show her ahead, but that those polls will narrow rather quickly.

Or, maybe, if her numbers continue to decline, Hillary will decide that grandmotherhood is better than another losing race.

May 9, 2014       Permalink

LOUISIANA SENATE RACE – AT 8:57 A.M. ET:   No race this year is more critical to GOP hopes of taking over the U.S. Senate than the one in Louisiana, pitting incumbent Mary Landrieu against an as-yet-unchosen contender.  Landrieu's numbers are dropping.  From The Hill:

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) posts her lowest level of support yet in a new poll of her tough reelection fight.

The survey, from Louisiana-based bipartisan pollster Southerm Media & Opinion Research, gives Landrieu just 36 percent support among likely voters to 35 percent support for Rep. Bill Cassidy (R). Retired Air Force colonel Rob Maness (R) takes 7 percent and state Rep. Paul Hollis (R) has 4 percent support. Seventeen percent are undecided.

It’s the lowest numbers she’s posted in any survey of the race yet, and it’s a drop of five points from SMOR’s last survey, conducted last November.

In Louisiana, all candidates appear on the ballot in November, regardless of party, and if no candidate tops 50 percent support the top two vote-getters head to a December runoff, an outcome expected this cycle.

Though SMOR has done work for candidates of both parties, their last survey of the race was reportedly financed by local GOP donor and businessman Lane Grigsby.

COMMENT:  Assuming the poll is generally accurate, Landrieu is clearly in trouble, but her position is not impossible.  She doesn't poll 50%, but neither does any of her GOP opponents.  Putting the polling numbers of all GOP contenders together yields 46%.  Undecideds usually break for the challenger, so, if the election and runoff were held now, a GOP candidate would probably squeeze by with a victory.

That's good news, but I wouldn't take it to the bank.  This is still a fight, and winnable with the right Republican.

May 9, 2014       Permalink

HOLLOW WORDS – AT 8:46 A.M. ET:  Increasingly, President Obama is not taken seriously.  Maybe it's because his words ring so hollow after five and a half years in office.  From the New York Post: 

President Obama said he wakes up thinking of the Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by Islamist extremists and facing a life as sex slaves, and wishes he “could reach out and save those kids.”

“We only need to look at today’s headlines — the devastation of Syria, the murders and kidnappings in Nigeria, sectarian conflict, the tribal conflicts — to see that we have not yet extinguished man’s darkest impulses,” Obama said at a Los Angeles fund-raiser late Wednesday.

“I have this remarkable title right now — president of the United States,” Obama said. “And yet every day when I wake up, and I think about young girls in Nigeria or children caught up in the conflict in Syria . . . there are times in which I want to reach out and save those kids.”

COMMENT:  I'm sure we're all so moved.  This president has done all he can to weaken the United States, both militarily and morally.  His interest in the Nigerian schoolgirls apparently began when the story finally hit the headlines.  We now know that his administration refused to label the group holding the girls as a terrorist organization. 

This man is a fraud.  On the day of the Fort Hood terrorist massacre, he went to a government agency and engaged in some light banter before even mentioning the attack.  His administration then labeled it "workplace violence," trying to cover up the Islamist connection. 

I cannot take expression of Obama's concern seriously.

May 9,  2014     Permalink

MAY 8,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 10:54 P.M. ET:

COMMITTEE FORMED – From Fox:  "The House voted Thursday to establish a select committee on Benghazi, formally launching a comprehensive and contentious investigation aimed at answering lingering questions about what happened before, during and after the terror attack that killed four Americans.  The House voted 232-186 to approve the panel. The vote breakdown was 225 Republicans and 7 Democrats in favor, with 186 Democrats voting against the measure. The Democrats who backed the probe were all moderate to conservative party members who face tough re-election campaigns."  Dems may still boycott the committee, rendering it a "partisan" effort.  However, the appointed committee chairman, Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, is a shrewd operator.  If anyone can make this work, he can.

GRIM PROSPECTS FOR COLLEGES – Colleges are faced with soaring student debt, poor job opportunities for graduates, and inflated administrative expenses.  From zerohedge.com:  "As Harvard professor Clayton Christensen has warned, as many as half of the more than 4,000 universities and colleges in the U.S. may fail in the next 15 years, and is 'not sure a lot of these institutions have the cushion to experiment with how to stay afloat.'"  The college bubble is bursting.  It's about time we took a hard, cold look at the cultish notion of "going to college," and whether it's actually right for most young people and beneficial to the country. 

GET A CALCULATOR – Related to the item just above, from watchdog.com:  "Santa Fe Community College has just unveiled a solar array that, it says, will save the college at least $200,000 a year on its utility bills.  But the array, funded by taxpayers in a 2010 bond election, will cost $5 million.  You don’t have to be a math major at the college to figure out it would take 25 years of $200,000 cost savings per year to reach the $5 million mark for the project to just break even."  Maybe taxpayers should be a little more careful next time they wander into a voting booth. 

NOT THE CHATTANOOGA CHOO-CHOO – From China Daily:  "China is considering building a high-speed railway across the Siberia and Bering Strait to Alaska, across Canada to the US. In not so distant future, people can take the train from China to the US, according to Beijing Times Thursday citing Wang Mengshu, a railway expert and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.  The proposed journey will start from China's northeast region, cross Siberia to Bering Strait, and run across the Pacific Ocean by undersea tunnel to reach Alaska, from Alaska to Canada, then on to its final destination, the US. To cross Bering Strait will require approximately 200km undersea tunnel, the technology, which is already in place will also be used on Fujian to Taiwan high-speed railway tunnel. The project will be funded and constructed by China. The details of this project are yet to be finalized."  I love it!  I love trains!  I'll buy the first ticket and rush to the dining car. 

May 8,  2014     Permalink

MILITARY WARNINGS – AT 9:43 A.M. ET:  As the international situation deteriorates, Field Marshal Obama continues to cut our defenses.  Why not?  From a leftist viewpoint, that's victory.  But, increasingly, military leaders are speaking out against these drastic cuts, probably at the risk of their jobs.  From Fox:   

The nation's military leaders told Congress Tuesday that they have raided every other pot of money they have in order to cut spending, and lawmakers must now slow the growth of personnel pay and benefits -- a tricky proposition for Congress.

In a rare combined appearance on Capitol Hill, the military chiefs said their forces worry more about not having the best training and equipment. And they said that the skyrocketing personnel costs are forcing them to cut the number of troops they have, and erode their ability to maintain forces ready for combat and provide necessary, modernized equipment.

Congress is debating the proposed $496 billion defense budget this week and military pay is one of many sensitive issues within that bill.

"There's nothing left under the mattress," Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. He added that the uncertainty of the budget cuts is a greater cause of stress to the troops than what would be a longer-range plan to slow pay increases. The Pentagon has proposed a 1 percent pay hike this year, rather than a 1.8 percent increase.

Senators expressed reservations about slowing the increase in pay rates, and pressed the chiefs on other ways to trim spending. Several continued their opposition to the Pentagon's efforts to cut the A-10 aircraft, which provides close air support for combat troops.

The proposed retirement of the A-10 Thunderbolts has been a particular flash point for some senators, including those whose states house bases that are home to the aircraft.

Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona has been vocal in his opposition to the retirement insisting that the aircraft can better defend ground troops and that U.S. forces are more comfortable with that aircraft overhead than the F-16 jet fighters and B-1 bombers that the Pentagon has suggested could be used instead of the A-10s.

COMMENT:  What a pathetic mess.  The world's greatest military is being compromised to satisfy the budget demands of the welfare state, and, sadly, the budget demands of isolationist Republicans.

Our children will pay the price.

May 8, 2014        Permalink

IN THE HOUSE OF OBAMA – QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 9:21 A.M. ET:  The superb Andrew Malcolm, writing at IBD, gives us a word picture of the house of Obama, when that house becomes a mobile home and goes on the road:

For months now Barack Obama has been saying he's run his last political campaign. Uh-huh. If you believe Obama would give up his favorite pastime just to focus on the nation's business and because he's not a candidate, then you can keep your health plan. Period.

In good times and bad, Obama is out there raking in the money for himself or the party or congressional campaign committees. You may recall, the day after the four Benghazi murders, he was fundraising in Vegas. The same day as the most recent Fort Hood shooting memorial service, he was fundraising in Houston.

And Wednesday after a quick survey of Arkansas tornado damage, Obama was fundraising.
In California, of all places. Obama doesn't even make a pretense of listening or speaking to real voters there. For the man who's presided over a steep jump in income inequality, the golden state is merely the nation's most populous ATM full of faithful, gullible rich folks.

Word is it's a little bit harder these days to sell out his events. So, they're held in backyard tents that can more easily be filled.

And his fundraising speeches are shorter too. For couples who paid $64,000 to dine in the Bel Air backyard of Disney chairman Alan Horn, the experience of hearing Hillary Clinton's former boss cost almost $5,000 per minute -- or $41 for each of Obama's 1,570 words, 23 of them "I."

Obama forgot to say words like "Affordable Care Act" or "ObamaCare," for reasons possibly connected with their steaming unpopularity.

This spring's fundraiser-speech theme is "OMG, we've got to keep Senate control and win back the House so California's own Nancy Pelosi can help protect all the wonderful things we have accomplished these past five years." Also, "Our people are not as diligent about voting in midterms as the other side."

COMMENT:  This administration is fading out early.  But beware of the wounded who face defeat.  They can become fierce and fanatical.  I dread to think what Obama will do after this year's midterms are over and he gets the chance to run wild until his second term is up.

May 8, 2014       Permalink

CRACKS IN THE WALL – AT 8:56 A.M. ET:  The global-warming industry tries to present itself as having the only valid opinion on climate change.  "The debate is over" is the current rallying cry.  But the debate is far from over.  There has now been a major defection from the global-warming camp.  From Breitbart, London:   

One of the world's most eminent climate scientists - for several decades a warmist - has defected to the climate sceptic camp.

Lennart Bengtsson - a Swedish climatologist, meteorologist, former director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg and winner, in 2006, of the 51st IMO Prize of the World Meteorological Organization for his pioneering work in numerical weather prediction - is by some margin the most distinguished scientist to change sides.

For most of his career, he has been a prominent member of the warmist establishment, subscribing to all its articles of faith - up to and including the belief that Michael Mann's Hockey Stick was a scientifically plausible assessment of the relationship between CO2 emissions and global mean temperature.

But this week, he signalled his move to the enemy camp by agreeing to join the advisory council of Britain's Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the think tank created by the arch-sceptical former Chancellor Lord Lawson.

Though Bengtsson is trying to play down the significance of his shift - "I have always been a sceptic and I think that is what most scientists really are" he recently told Germany's Spiegel Online, denying that he had ever been an "alarmist" - his move to the GWPF is a calculated snub to the climate alarmist establishment.

"He's a big, big player. The biggest by far to change sides," says the GWPF's Benny Peiser. "What's particularly significant is that his speciality is climate modelling - and computer models, as you know, are at the heart of global warming theory. He is the most significant figure to admit, as many modellers are beginning to notice, that there is an increasing discrepancy between what the models predicted and what the real world data is actually telling us."

COMMENT:  A major event.  And there have been others.  While the warmers try to portray skeptics as kooks or stooges of oil companies, the fact is that the skeptic camp, and neutral camp, include many prominent, respected scientists.

I wonder how the mainstream media will handle this important defection.  Probably by ignoring it.

May 8, 2014       Permalink

WAKING UP – AT 8:41 A.M. ET:  One of our great frustrations has been the indifference of religious groups to the persecution of Christians and Jews around the world.   Many of these groups – like the National Council of Churches or Jewish Voice for Peace – hang out on the political left, and their leftism has often replaced their religion.

Now, though, faced with undeniable facts, some Christian leaders are waking up.  From Fox:

On Wednesday, May 7, history is being made. On behalf of the suffering churches of Egypt, Iraq and Syria, a broad array of American Christians, with a degree of unity rarely seen since the Council of Nicaea in 325, have joined together in a “pledge of solidarity and call to action.”

Their action results from deepening concern about the “wave of persecution” in the region of Christianity’s roots.

In the “We the People” tradition, the pledge is a grass roots effort, with input from many sources. It is being released publicly on Wednesday morning by Reps. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) and Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), but it does not have any particular institutional sponsor nor a political leader spearheading it.

Some 200 Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox leaders have signed on -- from Catholic Cardinal Wuerl, to National Association of Evangelicals’ chair Leith Anderson, to Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal Church to Armenian Orthodox Archbishop Oshagan Cholayan.

They include many lay civic society leaders, including Robert George of Princeton University, Jim Wallis of Sojourners, George Weigel of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, journalist Kirsten Powers, George Marlin, chair of Aid to the Church in Need-USA, and Lynne Hybels of Global Engagement of the Willow Creek Church.

These Christian leaders have come together across faith traditions and political affiliations in response to the increasingly dire appeals from Middle Eastern Christians. As Baghdad’s Catholic Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako recently cried out: "We feel forgotten and isolated. We sometimes wonder, if they kill us all, what would be the reaction of Christians in the West? Would they do something then?"

As the pledge recounts:

“While Christians have been leaving the Middle East for many years, and, in these three countries, members of all communities—including smaller religious communities and Muslims—suffer from violence and political turmoil, the Egyptian, Iraqi and Syrian Christian communities, under the additional scourge of intensifying religious extremism, are experiencing a sudden, massive exodus of their members from the region.”

With the rise of Islamist extremists, this situation has become so acute that, regarding the Christians, it is not only individuals who are threatened. The presence of the entire Christian community in the region of its birth is at stake. The pledge emphasizes:

“Since these communities account for most of the indigenous Christians in today’s Middle East, the continued presence of Christians in the region where Christianity originated 2,000 years ago is threatened.”

COMMENT:  It's a start, but only a start.  We see the absence of organized Christian churches.  We hear silence on the left. 

There will be pushback, especially from the Middle Eastern departments at American colleges, their Marxist allies, and Muslim student groups, many of whose members come from dictatorships and are cleared for "study" in the United States. 

Now, in the face of the horror of Nigeria, is the time to stand firm.

May 8,  2014     Permalink