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JUNE 4,  2016

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:54 P.M. ET:

INSANITY – FROM DAILY CALLER:    Charlotte Marine veteran Allen Thornwell, who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, was fired by Time Warner Cable for lowering the company’s flag to half-staff on Memorial Day. Thornwell was employed in technical support after serving as a radio operator in the Marine Corps from 2005-2014.  A manager at the veterans placement company who arranged the job for Thornwell said Thornwell’s “passion for the flag and political affiliation” disturbed Time Warner. The company confirmed to the Charlotte Observor Thornwell was “no longer under contract” but declined any further comment.  In response to the incident Thornwell told the Charlotte Observor, “I’m not even mad right now” elaborating “I don’t know what kind of moral compass you need to fire a veteran on Memorial Day for lowering the flag.”  I hope this Marine veteran gets a load of job offers.  I hope Time Warner gets a load of letters.

KNOWLEDGE EVERYONE NEEDS – FROM THE WASHINGTON POST:   People don’t take hurricanes as seriously if they have a feminine name and the consequences are deadly, finds a new groundbreaking study.  Female-named storms have historically killed more because people neither consider them as risky nor take the same precautions, the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes.  Researchers at the University of Illinois and Arizona State University examined six decades of hurricane death rates according to gender, spanning 1950 and 2012. Of the 47 most damaging hurricanes, the female-named hurricanes produced an average of 45 deaths compared to 23 deaths in male-named storms, or almost double the number of fatalities. (The study excluded Katrina and Audrey, outlier storms that would skew the model).  Why do I think the truth here lies somewhere else?  I mean, how stupid do they think people are?  Have you ever heard anyone minimize a hurricane's threat because it's named Linda?  Call me skeptical.

IT'S ABOUT TIME – FROM THE NEW YORK POST:   US and Cuban officials are reportedly discussing an exchange that could bring New Jersey cop killer Joanne Chesimard back to American soil.  The talks between the two countries, which have normalized diplomatic relations, could also send notorious Cuban spy Ana Montes back to the Caribbean nation, according to NBC.  “Cuba has been a haven for US fugitives,” a federal law-enforcement official told NBC.  Chesimard, a former Black Panther and an aunt of hip hop legend Tupac Shakur, escaped prison in 1979 after she was convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper. She has been hiding out in Havana since the mid-1980s.  Getting Chesimard back should have been achieved before we agreed to normalize relations.  We got nothing from that agreement.

June 4, 2016       Permalink

WHAA..? – AT 1:52 P.M. ET:  Donald Trump is trying to make up for a blunder.  From the Santa Fe New Mexican:   

In a stunning reversal of rhetoric and tone, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Thursday said he respects New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez and wants her endorsement. Trump’s comments in a phone interview with The New Mexican came just days after he castigated Martinez in front of 8,000 people in Albuquerque, saying her job performance was so poor that he might have to run for governor of New Mexico.

Trump’s criticisms of Martinez turned to praise Thursday, signs of their monthslong war thawing to a détente.

“I’d like to have it,” Trump said in a phone interview when asked if he wanted Martinez’s support. “I respect her. I have always liked her.”

Trump’s attack on Martinez, the nation’s only Latina governor, became a national story, both because he denigrated the chairwoman of the Republican Governors Association and because Martinez is part of demographic groups with which Trump support is especially weak — women and Hispanics.

Martinez, in turn, has been critical of Trump. She publicly chided him for making sweeping, negative comments about Mexican immigrants. Later, while she was at a private fundraising event for Republican governors at the Florida home of billionaire David Koch, Martinez slammed Trump for his campaign promise to build a wall on the Mexican border.

Trump phoned a reporter for The New Mexican after learning from his press staff that Martinez earlier in the day had maintained her pattern of keeping open the possibility of endorsing Trump but again declined to do so.

COMMENT:  There really is a limit to how many of these antics Trump can pull.  I'm being harsh on him because he deserves it.  His true believers may accept anything, but Trump's job now, as we've noted earlier, is to get the support of the great American middle.  Tactics more familiar to New York real estate than presidential politics won't cut it.  You can't destroy a governor's reputation one day, then say how much you like her the next.  Even Hillary couldn't get away with such a Hillaryism.

June 4, 2016       Permalink

NEW THREAT – AT 11:51 A.M. ET:  I would take this seriously.  They've been credible before.  From Bill Gertz at the Washinton Free Beacon:

The Islamic State is urging jihadists in the United States and Europe to carry out terror attacks during what a group spokesman promised would be “the month of conquest and jihad.”

A U.S. government advisory warned that ISIS attacks, either directly sponsored or simply inspired by the group’s rhetoric, could be carried out during Islam’s month of Ramadan that begins June 5.

The threatened attacks were announced in an ISIS video made public May 21.

In the video, ISIS spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani called on jihadists to “get prepared, be ready … to make it a month of calamity everywhere for nonbelievers…especially for the fighters and supporters of the caliphate in Europe and America.”

A report by the State Department-led Overseas Security Advisory Council said the threat could be credible because three deadly terror attacks took place last year shortly after Adnani issued a similar call to arms.

“According to Islamic practice, sacrifice during Ramadan can be considered more valuable than that made at other times, so a call to martyrdom during the month may hold a special allure to some,” the report said.

COMMENT:  Eternal vigilance, as they say, is the price of liberty.  If an attack occurs here, it will be just before the national conventions.  Inevitably, there could be a devastating political impact.  It could make Donald Trump president, if he is seen as the strong leader who can handle the situation.  Or, very important, it can ruin him if he responds like a small-time neighborhood bully.

I'm concerned.  We should all be concerned.

June 4, 2016       Permalink

IS CLINTON SURGING? – AT 11:36 A.M. ET:  We stress that national polls at this stage are not indicative of future findings.  But a new poll indicates what I think many are sensing, that Donald Trump, after a fast run upward, has begun to stall.  From The Hill:

Hillary Clinton is leading Donald Trump by double digits in a hypothetical general election match-up, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll released Friday.

Forty-six percent of voters say they'll back Clinton, a Democrat, while 35 percent say they'll vote for Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. Nineteen percent said they won't vote for either candidate.

The poll surveyed 1,421 voters between May 30 and June 3.

Trump had been quickly gaining ground and in some cases overtaking Clinton in polls over the last few weeks. The most recent RealClearPolitics average, not including the Reuters poll, puts her up by just 1.5 points.

COMMENT:   Hard to know if the poll is accurate or an outlier.  However, I do sense that Trump's big mouth and boorish manner are having a negative effect on voters outside his base.  He has now said he has no intention of changing his manner, a big mistake.  The American people expect a presidential style in a presidential candidate.  Even Nixon could fake it. 

Yesterday, while the government was releasing devastating job-creation figures, which should be a major issue for Trump the businessman, he was talking about a personal legal case and attacking the judge.  That kind of misjudgment, and ego-based drifting, can cost Trump the election.  One of Trump's arguments is that he's a "big guy."  Big money.  Big thinking.  In fact, he often comes off as a petulant, thin-skinned little man, and someone has got to read the riot act to him.

June 4,  2016     Permalink

JUNE 3,  2016

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET: 

ALI DEAD – FROM FOX:   Muhammad Ali, the three-time heavyweight champion boxer whose electrifying prowess in the ring and controversial outspokenness outside of it made him one of the world’s most recognizable personalities of the 20th Century, died Friday after a battle with a respiratory illness. He was 74.  Ali, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s syndrome in 1984, died at a Phoenix hospital. Ali family spokesperson Bob Gunnell said in a statement that Ali’s funeral will take place in his hometown of Louisville, Ky.  RIP, but I must say that I preferred the quiet dignity of Joe Louis, the "brown bomber," who became a champion as well as a patriot.

YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS UP DEPARTMENT – FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER:  Over mocking objections from their own staff, two top Democrats on the politically divided Federal Election Commission voted to investigate one-time Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee for joking that he hoped supporters would shower him with million dollar contributions.  In the latest display of FEC Democratic efforts to regulate speech and target Republicans, Commissioners Ann Ravel and Ellen Weintraub backed a complaint against Huckabee, who made the joke during his May 2015 presidential candidacy announcement.  We must not have humor in politics.  If humor were a good thing in politics, the  Declaration of Independence would begin, "A funny thing happened to the mother country today..."

HOMELAND INSECURITY – FROM CNN:   (CNN) An accused war criminal living in the United States is now working as a security guard at Dulles International Airport near Washington, DC.  A CNN investigation found that Yusuf Abdi Ali, who is accused of committing atrocities while he was a military commander during Somalia's brutal civil war, has been living a quiet life near the nation's capital for about 20 years.  He is just one of more than 1,000 accused war criminals living and working in the United States.  I'm sure they're all just misunderstood.

June 3, 2016       Permalink

NO GROWTH POLICY – AT 10:35 A.M. ET:  We expect presidents to grow in office.  Some do, Obama doesn't.  In many respects he's the same man we saw in 2008 – small, petulant, contemptuous of his own country, sure of his godlike qualities.

And now he's done it again.  In a speech a few days ago he seemed to belittle Americans as too easily influenced by right-wing radio and other sinister and dark forces.  He picked the wrong crowd this time.  One of the groups he mentioned as easily swayed was the Veterans of Foreign Wars.  They struck back.  From Fox:   

The nation’s largest veterans group hit back at President Obama on Thursday and urged him not to “denigrate” their intelligence after the president suggested their members were easily swayed by cable news and “right-wing radio.”

The Veterans of Foreign Wars called out the president after Obama referenced the political opinions at “VFW halls” in an Indiana speech Wednesday that toggled between campaign politics and the economy.

“I don’t know how many VFW Posts the president has ever visited, but our near 1.7 million members are a direct reflection of America,” VFW National Commander John A. Biedrzycki Jr. said in a statement. “We don’t have confused politics, we don’t need left or rightwing media filters telling us how to think or vote, and we don’t need any President of the United States lecturing us about how we are individually [affected] by the economy.”

Obama, speaking in Elkhart, Ind., had lamented the “primary story” he claimed Republicans are telling about the economy – one that focuses on how “moochers at the bottom of the income ladder” are squeezing middle-class families.

“We have been hearing this story for decades,” Obama said. “Tales about welfare queens, talking about takers, talking about the ‘47 percent.’  It's the story that is broadcast every day on some cable news stations, on right-wing radio, it's pumped into cars, and bars, and VFW halls all across America, and right here in Elkhart.”

Obama continued: “And if you're hearing that story all the time, you start believing it. It's no wonder people think big government is the problem.”

Biedrzycki suggested veterans are not so easily swayed.

“Our nation was created and continues to exist solely because of the men and women who wear the uniform,” he said. “Let’s not denigrate their service, their sacrifice or their intelligence.”

COMMENT:  Good for the VFW.  Obama doesn't know his own country.  He should be introduced sometime. 

June 3, 2016       Permalink

AMERICA – QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 9:51 A.M. ET:  The pompous and usually forgettable commencement addresses are largely over, but we were struck by one comment that actually wasn't part of a commencement address, but of a speech given to a private organization by a woman who's never invited to deliver commencement addresses.  She isn't politically correct.  She won't follow the leftist party line. 

She is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Muslim woman born in Somalia, a political activist in the Netherlands for years, and now a devoted American.   She spoke at a Gala given by the conservative magazine, The New Criterion: 

America: it’s an idea. I repeat it, it’s an idea. I’ve never felt more at home in any other place than in the United States of America. I’m at home with the idea of America. That doesn’t make me disloyal to being Somali or having lived in Kenya for several years. There are many things about Kenya and Nairobi that I’m attached to. I lived in The Netherlands and I was given a great deal of freedom. I couldn’t be who I am if I hadn’t happened to have lived in The Netherlands.

But there’s something that is unique and so exceptional about being in the United States of America and belonging to that idea of America. Four nights ago, I went to see Hamilton. Now, think about any other nation on the planet where you could have that kind of reflection on the founding fathers, all cast with African Americans and other minorities. Throughout, I thought, “I wish they were alive. I wish they could see this. I wish Thomas Jefferson could see this. I wish Alexander Hamilton could see how he was portrayed.” And maybe, in this audience, I am speaking to the choir. I know you appreciate how exceptional America is.

We have to pass on these ideas to the next generation. We often think about the next generation as our children. I have a four-year-old son. We’re teaching him about the flag and all, but he’s only interested in the swords and spears and the fighting process of it. But the next generation also includes immigrants. And we appreciate it more than you who are born here. In fact, I think that there are more immigrants willing to die for the idea of America than Millennials. I teach a class at Harvard, and there was someone who came to the Kennedy School, and he said, “I don’t care what America looks like 500 years from now. I don’t care if it’s dominated by Islam.” And I just thought, cringing, “Of course I care. I care. I don’t want the idea of America to be dominated by Islam.”

COMMENT:  Now you can see why she's not invited to deliver commencement addresses.  A few years ago she was offered an honorary degree by Brandeis University, and then saw the offer withdrawn publicly because of objections from the far-left faculty. 

But her words resonate.  The words of her detractors are quickly, and properly, forgotten.

June 3, 2016        Permalink

STUNNING ECONOMIC DECLINE – AT 9:17 A.M. ET:  Job creation in the United States fell to its lowest point in six years last month.  From Bloomberg:

Employers in May added the fewest number of workers in almost six years, reflecting broad cutbacks that may raise concern about U.S. growth and prompt Federal Reserve policy makers to put off an increase in interest rates.

The addition of 38,000 workers, the fewest since September 2010, followed a 123,000 advance in April that was smaller than previously estimated, a Labor Department report showed Friday. The increase in May was less than the most pessimistic forecast in a Bloomberg survey. The jobless rate dropped to 4.7 percent, the lowest since November 2007, as Americans left the labor force.

Smaller employment gains reduce the odds of a more pronounced upturn in household spending and economic growth after a poor start to the year. Fed officials will take into account more judicious hiring, at a time when corporate profits are on a downswing and global markets remain weak, as they consider whether to raise interest rates again.

“The slowdown in job growth looks pretty pervasive across industries,” said Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York. “It raises some questions about the momentum of growth and about the outlook. The easy thing to say is, this takes June off the table for a Fed hike. To get to July, we’re going to need a pretty nice rebound in the data.”

The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a 160,000 gain in May employment. Estimates of 90 economists in ranged from job gains of 90,000 to 215,000 after an initially reported 160,000 increase in April. Revisions to prior reports subtracted a total of 59,000 jobs from payrolls in the previous two months.

COMMENT:  Yikes.  Those are miserable numbers, yet President Barack ("J.P. Morgan") Obama assures us that we're soaring.  He also assured us that the oceans would recede once he became president. 

Numbers like that will hurt the Democratic nominee, and may help Donald Trump, who, in his blustering manner, is running as a businessman who knows how to create jobs.  He'd better know how.  If he's elected, and the economy tanks, he'll be escorted out of Washington after one term, unless they get him on an impeachable offense sooner.

June 3,  2016     Permalink