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NOVEMBER 26,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:09 P.M. ET: 

DECLINE OF A NEWSPAPER – From Fox:  "The New York Times, whether consciously or not, has just endangered Darren Wilson’s life.  With tensions running high in Ferguson over the lack of an indictment for Wilson’s killing of Michael Brown, the paper has published the officer’s approximate address -- the street and town where he lives with his new wife, who also is named.  Given the racial animosity unleashed by Brown’s death, given the rioting and the looting and the stores that were set afire, how can a news organization make it easier for some crazy zealot to track down Wilson?  But there it is in the paper: “Officer Wilson and [blank] own a home together on [blank] Lane in [blank], Mo., a St. Louis suburb about a half-hour drive from Ferguson.”  An absolute breach of journalistic ethics.  The Times should not only apologize, it should offer to relocate Wilson and pay for doing it.  It won't.

MITT RISES – From Reuters:  "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mitt Romney, the Republican Party's unsuccessful presidential nominee in 2012, leads the field for the 2016 election among Republican voters, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday.  The former Massachusetts governor would have a slight edge over potential Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by 45 percent to 44 percent in a general election, the poll found.  Among possible Republican candidates, Romney's 19 percent put him ahead of former Florida governor Jeb Bush with 11 percent, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Ben Carson each with 8 percent each, and U.S. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky with 6 percent.  Carson, a former neurosurgeon with no political experience, is a conservative commentator and author of "One Nation," which topped the New York Times best-seller list in June."  This is the first poll I've seen where Romney tops Hillary.  The pros, and the money people, are probably very intrigued.  Romney-Carson anyone?

HOPE AND CHANGE? – From Fox:  "Businesses reportedly will have a $3,000-per-employee incentive to hire illegal immigrants over native-born workers under President Obama’s sweeping action on illegal immigration.  Because of a kink in ObamaCare, businesses will not face a penalty for not providing illegal immigrants health care, The Washington Times reports. Illegal immigrants are ineligible for public benefits such as buying insurance on ObamaCare’s health exchanges.  Congressional aides condemned the loophole saying it puts illegal immigrants ahead of Americans in the job hunt.  'If it is true that the president’s actions give employers a $3,000 incentive to hire those who came here illegally, he has added insult to injury,' Rep. Lamar Smith, Texas Republican told The Washington Times. 'The president’s actions would have just moved those who came here illegally to the front of the line, ahead of unemployed and underemployed Americans.'"  Let's see if the new Congress fixes this in January, and whether Obama goes along.

November 26, 2014       Permalink

THE PEOPLE SPEAK – AT 10:58 A.M. ET:  First polling is in regarding Obama's immigration actions.  The people are displeased.  From London's Daily Mail: 

The Rasmussen poll released Monday afternoon and lost in the overwhelming news coverage of the Ferguson riots found that 62 per cent oppose Obama's decision to grant legal amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants without approval from Congress.

Just 26 per cent are in favor of Obama's plan.

After years of claiming he couldn't act unilaterally to enact immigration reform because of the U.S. Constitution's emphasis on a separation of executive and legislative powers, Obama declared last week that he had the legal authority to do so on a temporary basis.

Only 24 per cent of those who spoke to Rasmussen's pollsters agree.

Fifty-seven per cent said he was right the first time, deciding that he not have the legal right to implement his plan.

Worse for the White House, 55 per cent told Rasmussen that Congress should challenge Obama's executive actions in court.

COMMENT:  This isn't only a disaster for Obama, it's a disaster for potential Democratic presidential nominees in 2016.  All of them will have to take a stand on the Obama program.  What do they say?  Do they alienate Obama, or the American people?  They lose either way.

The year 2016 is a golden opportunity for Republicans, if only they develop the candidate who can exploit it.

November 26, 2014       Permalink

THE QUESTION – AT 10:08 A.M. ET:  With Ferguson on our minds, many Americans are no doubt baffled by the "strategy" of some activists in pushing forward two highly flawed cases – Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown – in trying to prove racial injustice to the American people.  Martin and Brown were highly problematical individuals, certainly not role models.  While their deaths were tragic, their behavior won't win too many converts to the side of the activists.  John Hinderaker, at Powerline, explains the curious strategy: 

It is striking that the activists and race-baiters have chosen to raise two such weak cases to mythic status. In both instances, they were wrong on the facts. They claimed that Zimmerman shot Martin “execution style,” when in fact Zimmerman was on his back, getting his head banged into the pavement by Martin and in fear for his life. They said that Brown was trying to surrender–”hands up, don’t shoot!”–when in fact, he attacked Wilson inside Wilson’s police vehicle and was advancing on him again when the fatal rounds were fired.

Why did activists bet so much on two such weak cases? Can no instances be found where African-Americans have been shot by whites when it was NOT in self-defense? That can’t possibly be true. But those whites probably weren’t policemen, or even neighborhood watch volunteers. Maybe the activists just didn’t have any better cases to politicize.

Beyond that, though, I wonder whether the activists are really disappointed that, once again, their campaign to imprison a white man has failed. In their world of perpetual grievance, failure is success. If there had been a strong case against George Zimmerman, he would have been convicted. If there had been a strong case against Darren Wilson, he would have been indicted. But those results would not have advanced the Left’s preferred narrative: America is still a racist country.

For leftist race-baiters, failure is success. When they press a weak case and it fails, they claim vindication.

COMMENT:  Very well said.  Read the whole thing.  I do think that many thoughtful African-Americans realize the damage that the race baiters, the Sharptons, have done to them.  They simply don't have the voice or the power to stop it.  And the race baiters get plenty of support from the chic radicals in the American media. 

November 26, 2014       Permalink

THE BLUNT TRUTH – AT 9:38 A.M. ET:  We've said before that some of the best reporting on America comes from the British press.  Britain is heavily involved in the Iran nuclear negotiations, which have now collapsed...and are being extended.  Tom Rogan, in Britain's Telegraph, is blunt about what the next step by the United States needs to be, but won't be:   

President Rouhani is the face, Ayatollah Khamenei is the master. When negotiating with a theological absolutist, excessive flexibility is not a good idea. And yet abundant flexibility is the cornerstone of Barack Obama’s present negotiating strategy. On Monday evening in Vienna, John Kerry announced a seven-month extension to the nuclear negotiations. He claimed it’s the common-sense approach.

It's not. It’s a grievous error.

With another deadline expired, Khamenei is empowered. Recognising President Obama’s desperation, Khamenei has realised that waiting will bring no new penalties, and he is refusing to authorise Rouhani to make real concessions. And while some claim the negotiations are making progress, the record suggests otherwise. Iran continues to obstruct the IAEA by concealing its weaponisation programmes and demanding retention of its plutonium facility at Arak. Iran insists it be allowed to keep tens of thousands of centrifuges after any deal, and that the sanctions be removed immediately rather than progressively. Iran refuses a robust inspections regime.

There’s only one way this recalcitrance can be resolved:  President Obama must alter Ayatollah Khamenei’s strategic calculations. To do so, he needs to escalate his military threats against the Islamic Republic.

The military option against Iran is inherently complicated. Much of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure is hardened against aerial attack. This means that any operation would, at best, only degrade Iran’s nuclear capability for three to four years. Still, that doesn’t mean the military option is false. The US military has highly advanced bunker penetration munitions and could launch multiple attacks. Of course, air strikes would also risk Iranian retaliation through missile attacks, small boat attacks in the Persian Gulf, or terrorism from the Islamic Republic’s intelligence and proxy networks.

Yet the risks of a nuclear armed Iran are far greater.

COMMENT:  In a long list of failures, Iran is perhaps Obama's greatest, at least internationally.  The Iranians play him like a violin.  And Kerry, of course, has been wrong on every major foreign-policy question of our time, rivaling the distinguished record set by Joe Biden. 

I doubt if Obama will revive the military option, although it is needed.  Instead, prepare for a very bad deal, which will be presented as our salvation.

November 26, 2014       Permalink

SLAP IN THE FACE – AT 9:16 A.M. ET:  I have to say that this is one of the most intriguing political stories I've read this year.  From Fox: 

Former Defense official Michele Flournoy has taken herself out of the running to succeed Chuck Hagel as the next Defense Secretary because, according to a source, she wants to be Hillary Clinton’s Pentagon chief -- not President Obama’s.

YIKES A ROOTIE!  That is a real slap in the face.  What she's really saying is that she doesn't trust Field Marshal Obama on national defense.  Good for Michele.  Someone finally is saying it.  I like her already.

A source familiar with the circumstances of the decision confirmed to Fox News Tuesday that Flournoy has taken her name out of the running for the job. Flournoy had been discussed as a front-runner for the position after Hagel announced he was quitting Monday.

Fox News has learned that Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson is now being considered to succeed Hagel. Before heading DHS, Johnson was General Counsel for the Department of Defense.

A wonderfully unimaginative choice.  Nothing wrong with Johnson, but not the giant we need at Defense right now.  The president should go large and bring in someone who has the confidence of the military, not another hanger-on.

Among the other names mentioned to replace Hagel are former high-ranking Defense official Ashton Carter and senior Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Jack Reed. However, multiple sources told Fox News that rumors that White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough is in the running are untrue and he is not in consideration.

A well-placed Senate source told Fox News Tuesday that Flournoy would not take the nomination if she was offered it because Flournoy aspires to serve in the post under Hillary Clinton, should Clinton eventually become president.

“It’s pretty well known that she wants to be Hillary’s SecDef – not Obama’s,” the source said.

COMMENT:  She's brash, and her stand may actually hurt Clinton, who is dropping in the polls and must keep on good terms with the Field Marshal. 

There'll be much buzz on this one.  The Dems are bailing on the man they worshiped as a godlike figure only a few years ago.

November 26,  2014     Permalink

NOVEMBER 25,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:07 P.M. ET:

STUNNING – For the first time today we saw Darren Wilson, the officer involved in the Ferguson shooting, interviewed.  He was interviewed by George Stephanopoulos of ABC, with excerpts run on CNN.  I was absolutely stunned by how professional, mature and poised Officer Wilson was.  He could have easily been a teacher in a school.  Obviously, I did not witness the shooting, but commentators pointed out that Wilson's replies to questions were in line with other evidence developed by investigators.  Wilson gave a good account of himself.  It is only my non-professional judgment, but I thought he was telling the truth.

RUNNING? – Speculation is increasing that Elizabeth Warren actually is preparing to run for president, despite her denials.  From frontpagemag.com:  "Sen. Elizabeth Warren is traveling to the Middle East countries, her first trip abroad as a senator.The Massachusetts Democrat met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday in Tel Aviv, according to the Jerusalem Post. She then attended the Knesset — the Israeli legislature — before meeting with other Israel officials.  Warren, who arrived in Israel Saturday, is expected to meet with Israeli, Palestinian and United Nation officials in the region, while traveling to both the West Bank and Jordan, according to the Boston Globe."  Israel is one of the first stops for many presidential candidates.  There is no compelling reason, other than politics, for Warren to hang out in Tel Aviv...unless she is searching for her Cherokee heritage.

CREEP – From Reuters:  "GENEVA (Reuters) - U.S. authorities need to tackle a 'deep and festering' mistrust in some sectors of the population and examine how race relations affect law enforcement, the U.N.'s human rights chief said on Tuesday.  About a dozen buildings in surburban Ferguson, Missouri, burned overnight and police fired tear gas at protesters angry that a grand jury had cleared police officer Darren Wilson in the Aug. 9 shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown.  Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein at the United Nations said he was 'deeply concerned at the disproportionate number of young African Americans who die in encounters with police officers, as well as the disproportionate number of African Americans in U.S. prisons and the disproportionate number of African Americans on Death Row.'"  Have you ever noticed how these UN "human rights" creeps are always "deeply concerned" about something or other?  Never just "concerned," always "deeply concerned."  This gent is from Jordan, a monarchy, part of an Arab world where hundreds of thousands of people are being murdered by governments and terrorists.  Let's see him show he's "deeply concerned" about that.  We'll take care of our own affairs.

FANATICS – Dennis Ross is one of our most experienced Mideast diplomats.  He's quoted today putting the blame for the collapse of the Iran nuclear talks squarely on the Iranians, something our own government refuses to do.  Reports coming out of the nuclear talks are consistent in saying that the Iranians simply won't budge.  They have refused to give on any major point.  I suspect they sense the weakness of the American president, and weakness always leads to belligerency.  The talks have been extended for seven months, but there is no reason to believe that the Iranians will be any more flexible.  As Bill Kristol points out, only escalating sanctions and, very possibly, targeted military strikes, will break the Iranian nuclear program, and Obama won't get on board.

November 25, 2014       Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 10:14 A.M. ET:   Ferguson has distracted our attention from the collapse of the Iran nuclear talks, which were supposed to conclude yesterday with an agreement.  They concluded with...another extension, another gift of time to Iran. 

One of the vulgar aspects of this is the sugar-coating provided by the Obama administration, repeatedly assuring us that Iran is keeping its word in carrying out its responsibilities under an interim agreement to restrain its nuclear program.  In fact, even the UN says that this simply isn't true.  And the Obamans have done it before, once assuring us that Moscow has been carrying out its agreement under an arms-control treaty. 

Why do they lie?  Over and over.  The brilliant Bret Stephens of The Wall Street Journal very perceptively points out the way the Obama mentality works: 

Why the spin and dishonesty? Partly it’s the old Platonic conceit of the Noble Lie—public bamboozlement in the service of the greater good—that propels so much contemporary liberal policy-making (cf. Gruber, Jonathan: transparency, lack of). So long as the higher goal is a health-care bill, or arms control with Russia, or a nuclear deal with Iran, why should the low truth of facts and figures interfere with the high truth of hopes and ideals?

But this lets the administration off too easily. The real problem is cowardice. As a matter of politics it cannot acknowledge what, privately, it believes: that a nuclear Iran is undesirable but probably inevitable and hardly catastrophic. As a matter of strategy, it refuses to commit to the only realistic course of action that could accomplish the goal it professes to seek: The elimination of Iran’s nuclear capabilities by a combination of genuinely crippling sanctions and targeted military strikes.

And so—because the administration lacks the political courage of its real convictions or the martial courage of its fake ones—we are wedded to this sham process of negotiation. “They pretend to pay us; we pretend to work,” went the old joke about labor in the Soviet Union. Just so with these talks. Iranians pretend not to cheat; we pretend not to notice. All that’s left to do is stand back and wait for something to happen.

Eventually, something will happen. Perhaps Iran will simply walk away from the talks, daring this feckless administration to act. Perhaps we will discover another undeclared Iranian nuclear facility, possibly not in Iran itself. Perhaps the Israelis really will act. Perhaps the Saudis will.

All of this may suit the president’s psychological yearning to turn himself into a bystander—innocent, in his own eyes—in the Iranian nuclear crisis. But it’s also a useful reminder that, in the contest between hard-won experience and disappointed idealism, the latter always wins in the liberal mind.

COMMENT:  Very well stated.  We have an arrogant, adolescent administration, a group of people who process information like college freshmen...which some of them never ceased to be.

The problem is that they're dealing with life-and-death issues, and we won't know the extent of their failure until many lives are lost.

November 25, 2014       Permalink

THE EYES DON'T HAVE IT – AT 9:31 A.M. ET:   The journalism surrounding Ferguson has followed the usual pattern.  Some of it has been solid, and restrained.  But the usual suspects, especially at the wobbly CNN, have resorted to 1960s form, lamenting that the authorities couldn't find a way to ruin more lives by trying the officer for murder. 

There is some truly fine journalism also being done.  The Washington Post has run an excellent piece on the unreliability of eyewitnesses.  I hope you read it.  It will help in following any legal proceeding:

Of all the tools at an investigator’s disposal — DNA analysis, forensic evidence, witness testimony — by far the least reliable are the recollections of witnesses, studies suggest. More often than not, they raise more questions than they answer and sometimes produce deeply flawed cases.

“Surveys show that large proportions of people, at least in the United States, think that human memory works like a video tape or a DVD,” Scott Lilienfeld, an Emory University professor who has studied the shortcomings of such testimony, told New York Magazine. “And we know of decades of psychological research that human memory, including eyewitness memory, doesn’t work that way.”

It works even less when it turns out that an “eyewitness” didn’t witness a thing. That happened in testimony before the grand jury that investigated the Ferguson killing, said McCulloch. Some described what happened at critical moments, he said, only to concede “in subsequent interviews” or testimony that they didn’t actually see what they were describing.

And...

“The most common element in all wrongful convictions later overturned by DNA evidence has been eyewitness misidentification,” according to the Innocence Project, which works to exonerate people it believes have been wrongly convicted of capital crimes. In fact, in the past few decades, 73 percent of 239 convictions overturned through DNA testing were because of faulty eyewitnesses, Scientific American reported. “One third of these overturned cases rested on the testimony of two or more mistaken eyewitnesses,” Hal Arkowitz and Lilienfeld wrote in the article. “How could so many eyewitnesses be wrong?”

Simple, found Scientific American. And many of the reasons can be seen in Ferguson. They include: “extreme witness stress at the crime scene or during the identification process; presence of weapons (because they can intensify stress and distract witnesses); [and] a racial disparity between the witness and the suspect.”

COMMENT:  Absolutely fascinating material.  We want to see the bad guys locked up.  But we don't want to see the innocent go to prison.  I'm afraid "eyewitness" testimony is the culprit too many times.

November 25, 2014       Permalink

THE STORY ISN'T OVER – AT 9:09 A.M. ET:   Ferguson is far from over.   You can be sure of that.  There is too much TV facetime to be had, too many reputations to be polished.  Eric Holder assures us that the beat goes on.  From Daily Caller:

Attorney General Eric Holder emphasized Monday night that while a St. Louis grand jury chose not to indict Officer Darren Wilson, the Justice Department’s investigation isn’t over yet.

“While the grand jury proceeding in St. Louis County has concluded, the Justice Department’s investigation into the shooting of Michael Brown remains ongoing,” Holder said in a statement Monday night. “Though we have shared information with local prosecutors during the course of our investigation, the federal inquiry has been independent of the local one from the start, and remains so now.”

The Department of Justice launched a civil rights investigation into police officer Darren Wilson’s shooting of Michael Brown in early September. Early leaks of DOJ’s investigation hinted that there wasn’t enough evidence to charge Wilson, but Holder slammed the leakers for revealing “selective information.”

“Even at this mature stage of the investigation, we have avoided prejudging any of the evidence,” Holder continued. “And although federal civil rights law imposes a high legal bar in these types of cases, we have resisted forming premature conclusions.”

COMMENT:  If there is evidence, it should be pursued.  But there doesn't really appear to be convincing evidence against the police officer involved.  Of course the whole thing is a tragedy.  No one denies that.  But a tragedy is not a crime.

There will probably be a civil suit against the city of Ferguson, possibly for negligence in training police officers.  That has happened in several cases in New York.  That one might stick, but no one will go to jail.  Ferguson might have to pay some compensation to the family.  I could live with that if the facts are there.

November 25, 2014       Permalink

WORSE THAN PREDICTED – AT 8:52 A.M. ET:  Updated reports tell us that the rioting in Ferguson last night was much worse than predicted.  From Fox: 

There were more than 80 arrests made in the St. Louis area overnight as protesters fired more than 100 gunshots, burned and looted as many as 25 buildings and vandalized police cars in Ferguson, Mo. after a grand jury did not indict a police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black teenager in August, authorities said Tuesday morning.

St. Louis County police released records early Tuesday showing 61 people were arrested in Ferguson on charges including burglary and trespassing. And St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay said 21 people were arrested in the city.

Heavily armed police fired pepper spray and smoke canisters to disperse the crowds of protesters. Police seized a .45 mm automatic handgun as well.

"We have no loss of life, but I am disappointed the night turned out this way," St. Louis Police Department Chief Jon Belmar said.

Belmar said he heard more than 150 shots ring off in the night.

"What I've seen tonight is probably worse than the worst night we had in August," Belmar said.

COMMENT:  As I watched last night I saw burning buildings.  I guess it's part of the fight for "justice."  I wonder who'll pay to have those buildings rebuilt.

Some of the protesters and protest leaders might reflect that their behavior will probably make Ferguson a dead town, where people will not want to live or work because of the town's name.  What an accomplishment!

November 25,  2014     Permalink