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FEBRUARY 7,  2018

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:46 P.M. ET:

I'M CRUSHED – FROM THE WASHINGTON FREE BEACON:  Oprah Winfrey said she is not running for public office Wednesday, seemingly putting to bed rampant speculation that she was considering a 2020 White House bid.  In a conversation with Hamilton star Lin-Manuel Miranda at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, the subject of Donald Trump's election came up, according to The Daily Beast. Miranda, an opponent of the Trump administration, said he was aware of the platform afforded him by Hamilton‘s success.  "But that’s it," he said. "I’m not running for public office."  According to the report, Winfrey interrupted to say, "I'm not either!"  Well, there goes our future.  And we were so close to a utopia.

GEEZ – FROM BREITBART:    House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) spoke for more than eight hours on the floor of the House of Representatives on Wednesday, using her prerogative as a party leader to mount a filibuster to draw attention to the cause of illegal aliens....During her remarks, she hailed the “Dreamers,” whom she said had arrived in the country illegally through no fault of their own.  She then went on to thank the parents of the “Dreamers” — i.e. those who deliberately broke the law.  “I say to their parents: Thank you for bringing these Dreamers to America. We’re in your debt for the courage it took, for you to take the risk, physically, politically, in every way, to do so,” she said.  An absolutely disgraceful comment.  Imagine how you'd feel if you were in a foreign country, trying to come to America legally, and read that a former speaker of the House is praising those who broke American law to cross our borders. 

THE NANNY STATE – FROM THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE:   The House voted Tuesday to prohibit sexual relationships between lawmakers and their employees, a remarkable rule change that brings the institution in line with the military and the private sector after a rash of sexual harassment and misconduct allegations roiled Capitol Hill.  The prohibition, pushed by Rep. Barbara Comstock, R-Va., took immediate effect as Congress moved toward changing the system for reporting and adjudicating employees' claims of sexual harassment. The House approved language Tuesday establishing an office to advocate for employees during that process and a separate bill requiring lawmakers to reimburse taxpayers when they are involved in workplace settlements.  "Thanks to the #MeToo movement, the American public has made it clear that they have had enough," said Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif. "They expect Congress to lead, and for once we are."   Treating adults like children.  There is a difference between an inappropriate power situation and an entirely normal relationship between consenting adults.  They whom the powers make slaves are first made juveniles.

February 7, 2018       Permalink

TRUMP AS POLITICAL ASSET – AT 12:08 P.M. ET:   The thinking among Republican strategists has changed.  From RealClearPolitics: 

While conventional wisdom holds that Donald Trump will be a drag on Republican chances of maintaining control of the House, those vying to expand the party’s majority in the Senate are embracing the president as a unique asset in the upcoming campaigns.

Unlike the House map, the Republicans' path to success in the upper chamber runs through 10 states Trump won in 2016 -- five of them by double-digit margins. But beyond those favorable fundamentals, the GOP is looking to the president to lead something of a mass-marketing campaign against well-known Democratic incumbents.

Party operatives see the president's penchant for coining catchy -- and pejorative – nicknames, along with his made-for-television campaign rallies, as particularly helpful through the long primary process, helping to define the opposition while Republicans pick their nominees.

"The messaging power and the branding power Trump has is different from any elected official," said one Republican familiar with Senate races this year. "It's a very valuable asset he has, and that he alone has been able to hone."

Despite the party’s favorable map, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has cautioned Republicans not to "fall in love" with it. Most of the Democratic incumbents in the 10 so-called Trump states are battle-tested, well financed and have made names for themselves as independent of the national Democratic Party and as officeholders in sync with their electorate. And in some of those states, Republicans have yet to field a credible challenger.

But the GOP is counting on the president to spotlight the incumbents’ votes, particularly on the tax reform bill. Strategists point to Vice President Mike Pence's trip to West Virginia last week as an example of what is to come from the top. There, he hit Sen. Joe Manchin for voting against the tax bill, health care repeal and other Republican priorities, repeating the phrase "Joe Voted No" and following up later with a series of tweets. Manchin fired back, defending his votes and calling Pence divisive and partisan.

COMMENT:  It's much too early to be sure of any strategy or trend.  Under Trump, the Republicans fight, and fight hard.  That has not always been their style.  It is now. 

History tells us that the GOP is likely to lose seats in both houses.  I don't think the Trump operation is wedded to history.

February 7, 2018       Permalink

A CLEAR UPCOMING CRISIS – AT 11:34 A.M. ET:  The Iranian threat is growing in the Mideast.  Iran's fingerprints are all over Lebanon and Iraq.  And it refuses to rein in its deadly ICBM program.   There is trouble ahead.  From AFP:   

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday that negotiations on the country's missiles programme were out of the question.

"We will negotiate with no one on our weapons," said Rouhani in a press conference in Tehran.
"Iranian-made missiles have never been offensive and never will be. They are defensive and are not designed to carry weapons of mass destruction, since we don't have any," he said.

What a crock.  An ICBM is designed to carry only weapons of mass destruction.

He reiterated that the nuclear deal signed in 2015 with six world powers could not be renegotiated, despite threats from US President Donald Trump to reimpose sanctions unless fresh curbs were put on Iran's missiles and regional behaviour.

"The key to the problems between Tehran and Washington is in Washington's hands. They need to stop their threats and sanctions and pressure, and automatically the situation will improve and we can think about our future," Rouhani said.

COMMENT:  Thank you, President Obama, for putting us in this position.  We get some support from our allies in confronting Iran, but nowhere near enough.  A number of our European allies are too busy making fortunes in Iran, the world's largest sponsor of terror.

Iran will have nuclear weapons within a decade, when the limitations of the nuclear agreement end.  It will also have the missiles to carry them.

Barack Obama will be receiving honorary degrees from the admiring faculties of major universities.

February 7, 2018       Permalink

GUNS ARE STARTING TO SMOKE – AT 10:39 A.M. ET:  I guess it had to come to this...some evidence that Barack Obama was involved in improper activities during the 2016 election campaign.  It's early.  We proceed with caution.  From the Washington Times: 

A new batch of text messages between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page revealed President Barack Obama wanted updates on the bureau’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, according a report released Wednesday.

On Sept. 2, 2016 — just weeks away from election day — Ms. Page texted Mr. Strzok, her lover, about preparing a report for then-FBI Director James B. Comey because “potus wants to know everything we’re doing.”

That raises questions about Mr. Obama’s involvement in the Clinton investigation, the report said.

The message were released in a report by Sen. Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Republican, who is chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, one of six congressional committees reviewing the Strzok-Page texts.

Newly released texts also raised questions about whether the FBI waited nearly a month to reopen the Clinton investigation after new emails from the former secretary of state were discovered on the laptop computer of former Rep. Anthony Weiner, New York Democrat, whose wife was a top Clinton campaign aide.

On Sept. 28, 2016, Mr. Strzok told Ms. Page he was called into the office of then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to discuss “hundreds of thousands” of emails, including some possibly sent by Mrs. Clinton, that Mr. Weiner’s attorney turned over to the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. The emails were turned over as part of an unrelated investigation into Mr. Weiner sending explicit messages to an underage girl in North Carolina.

COMMENT:  The whole thing is sordid.  Equally sordid is the clear, obvious attempt by the mainstream media to play down any improper activity by Democrats.  It is a frightening abdication of press responsibility, and a threat to the very idea of a free, independent press.

It is hard to keep up with all the probes going on in Washington, but I believe the GOP strategy is to have plenty of ammunition ready against the Democrats should Robert Mueller come up with any serious charges against President Trump.

February 7,  2018     Permalink
 

FEBRUARY 6,  2018

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:48 P.M. ET:  

IS THIS MAN INSANE? – FROM BREITBART:   Democratic Sen. Tom Carper says ‘dreamer’ illegal immigrants should be hired to replace millions of Americans who supposedly are too unskilled, uneducated, unethical or drugged up to work for companies.  “I think the business community is saying that to the administration [and] they are certainly saying that to those of us in the Congress, and we should focus on that,” Carper told MSNBC.  “We have a moral responsibility to them,” Carper said about the roughly 690,000 ‘dreamer’ illegals, not about Americans. Carper added, “doing a deal with the dreamers is as much about —  as I said earlier — is about making sure we have the folks who can go to work tomorrow.”  I hope the Republicans in Delaware have a good candidate to put up against this bizarre nut.

AND ANOTHER NUT – FROM DAILY CALLER:  Democratic Illinois Rep. Danny Davis defended Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan as an “outstanding human being” on Monday.  Farrakhan is known for embracing radically anti-Semitic and anti-white views, as even the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center has acknowledged. Farrakhan’s history of racially extreme comments includes blaming Jews for the September 11 attacks, saying white people “deserve to die” and praising Adolf Hitler as a “very great man.”  A bombshell new photo emerged last week, showing former President Barack Obama smiling with Farrakhan at a Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) meeting in 2005. The journalist who took the photo said he suppressed its publication to protect Obama’s presidential aspirations.  Recently we learned that a man seeking a GOP congressional nomination in Illinois is a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi and admirer of Adolf Hitler.  Republican leaders at all levels instantly denounced him.  Thus far the comments of Danny Davis have been met only by the silence of leading Democrats, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.  Says something, doesn't it? 

SELLING THE L.A. TIMES – FROM THE WRAP:  Tronc, Inc., the owner of the Los Angeles Times, is expected to sell the paper to L.A.-based billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, multiple outlets reported Tuesday. According to the New York Times the deal, said to be worth approximately $500 million, could be announced as soon as Wednesday.  Soon-Shiong, the founder of Culver City-based NantHealth and a major shareholder in Tronc, is also expected to purchase the San Diego Union-Tribune, according to a Washington Post report.  It's been a troubled paper for years.  Of all the major city papers in the U.S., the L.A. Times seems to have the least influence.  I generally find its journalism shallow, with some noted exceptions.  The Times needs to be less like the city it serves.

February 6, 2018       Permalink

FASCINATING, AND POSSIBLY A GOOD OMEN – AT 12:40 P.M. ET:   You may recall that Harvard is looking for a new president.  But what kind of president?  It's easy to fear that, given the current fads in higher education, the country's most influential university might choose a trendy, hip, member-of-the-right-group symbol.  The cocktail-party set in Boston would love it.

But wait a second.  Can it be?  The New York Sun, an excellent online paper, has discovered the names of some of the leading candidates, and they don't fit the expected picture:

BOSTON — Harvard University will choose its next president in the coming weeks. Surprises are always possible, but the search looks like it’s headed in a direction that tells a story of national, even international significance. Among the leading contenders for the job are reportedly the:

• dean of Harvard Business School, Nitin Nohria, whose bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering is from the Indian Institute of Technology.

• president of the Broad Institute, Eric Lander, whose undergraduate and graduate work were in mathematics and who was a professor at Harvard Business School and in MIT’s biology department before founding Broad, which does health-related genetics research.

• dean of Harvard’s faculty of arts and sciences, Michael Smith, whose Ph.D. in electrical engineering is from Stanford.

• provost of Harvard, Alan Garber, an economist who has an M.D. from Stanford.

• president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, a 1991 graduate of Harvard Medical school who was featured in this past weekend’s New York Times as a big pal of Harvard presidential search committee member and billionaire David Rubenstein.

Notice any common themes emerging?

Three of the past five presidents of Harvard were trained in the humanities. Nathan Pusey was a classicist. Neil Rudenstine is a scholar of Renaissance literature. The outgoing president, Drew Faust, is a historian.

Harvard hasn’t had a scientist or engineer as president since James Bryant Conant stepped down from the job in 1953. It appears as if the university is ready for another one.

COMMENT:  Read the whole thing.  The Sun documents the collapse of the Humanities and Social Sciences into a scrap heap of leftist ideology.  Many of our colleges are becoming public embarrassments.  "Social justice," which means justice only for selected groups, is the new motto.

Maybe Harvard, by choosing a practical, mature, scientifically literate president, can signal that some good change is coming.

February 6, 2018       Permalink

GOING AFTER RUSSIA – AT 11:34 A.M. ET:  One of the absurd things about the inquiries into alleged Trump collusion with Russia, is the way in which the media avoids covering the president's actual policies toward Russia.   In fact, he is far tougher on Moscow than Field Marshal Obama ever dreamed of being.   We're seeing it right now.  From the Washington Free Beacon: 

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Monday criticized Russian efforts to "whitewash" the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons.

Haley said at a U.N. Security Council meeting that reports of a chlorine gas attack on Sunday followed "a troubling pattern" in Syria, where Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has repeatedly used chemical weapons on his own people. She laid out expectations for Syria to destroy its chemical weapons arsenal under the Chemical Weapons Convention and U.N. Security Council resolution 2118, but implicated Russia in protecting Assad.

"It's a true tragedy that Russia has sent us back to square one in the effort to end chemical weapons use in Syria," Haley said. "But we will not cease in our efforts to know the truth of the Assad regime and ensure that truth is known and acted on by the international community."

She argued that Russia's actions to prevent accountability is detrimental to the U.N.'s credibility.

"So what do the American people see? What do people of all countries see?" Haley asked. "They see a council that can't agree to take action, even after the investigative mechanism created by this council found that the Assad regime used chemical weapons."

She said evidence of dozens of victims in the latest attack led the U.S. to propose a statement condemning it, but Russia has delayed the statement.  

COMMENT:  Not exactly a love fest with Moscow.  As usual, our heroine, Nikki Haley, was terrific.  But I wish "journalists" would look at this administration's actual policy toward the Russians.  It's tough and realistic, and Putin cannot be happy.

February 6, 2018       Permalink

AND ANOTHER ONE – AT 10:49 A.M. ET:  You'll recall that, some weeks ago, a state employee in Hawaii sent out a live alert warning that Hawaii would be hit by an incoming ICBM.  It created a near-panic and wasn't corrected until more than a half hour later.  Now there's been another false emergency alert.  These things are dangerous, costly, and unacceptable.  From NBC News: 

Some residents along the East Coast received a false tsunami warning on Tuesday morning as part of a monthly test by the National Weather Service. 

A tweet from the National Weather Service (NWS) in Charleston, South Carolina, said the alert was sent around 8:30 a.m. ET. 

"We have been notified that some users received this test message as an actual Tsunami Warning," the NWS tweeted, adding that a tsunami warning was "not in effect." 

In a statement to NBC News, the NWS said that a routine test was sent out and that the agency is investigating why it was communicated as an actual tsunami.

"The test message was released by at least one private sector company as an official Tsunami Warning, resulting in widespread reports of tsunami warnings received via phones and other media across the East Coast, Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean. We're currently looking into why the test message was communicated as an actual tsunami warning, and will provide more information as soon as we have it," the NWS said.

The agency said their test message "was not disseminated to the public via any communications channels operated by the National Weather Service."

The push notification sent to phones in South Carolina was reportedly sent by the AccuWeather app, according to The Post and Courier of Charleston.

AccuWeather also tweeted that the notification was a test, not an actual warning.

COMMENT:  A presidential commission is required to look into all emergency services and their communications systems.  Fortunately, no one was killed or seriously injured as a result of this latest blunder, but we can easily imagine serious accidents and deaths as people panicked and tried to get away from the incoming "tsunami." 

Not acceptable.  Serious action required.

February 6,  2018     Permalink