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SECOND SUBSCRIPTION DRIVE – 2016 – DAY THREE

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JUNE 15,  2016

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

NOTE THE LANGUAGE – FROM THE L.A. TIMES:   Travelers, sports fans and concertgoers may see more police and tighter security screening at airports and events this summer in the wake of Sunday night’s mass shooting in Orlando, Fla., according to a Department of Homeland Security bulletin issued Wednesday.  While no intelligence indicates a “specific and credible” threat of an impending terrorist plot, the bulletin cites the shooting at an Orlando nightclub, as well as recent attacks at a county building in San Bernardino, at an airport and subway in Brussels, and at restaurants and a concert all in Paris as examples of terrorists targeting of crowded public spaces.  “In this environment, we are particularly concerned about homegrown violent extremists who could strike with little or no notice. The tragic events of Orlando several days ago reinforce this,” the bulletin states.  "Homegrown violent extremists."  No reference to jihadists.  And we see a continuation of the "homegrown" myth.  Jihadists are not "homegrown."  Even if they're born here, their radicalization comes from foreign sources and websites.  But the Obama administration won't admit it.  Violates political correctness.

GOOD IDEA – FROM THE HILL:  Senators are planning to use a wide-ranging appropriations bill to push for more funding for the FBI in the wake of the Orlando, Fla., shooting. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) has filed an amendment to the Senate's Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill that would provide the agency an additional $190 million.  Most of that money, $175 million, would be used for "personnel, training and equipment needed to counter both foreign and domestic terrorism, including the lone wolf actors."   Another $15 million would be used to bolster active shooting training.  "Words are one thing, deeds are another," she told reporters after a classified briefing Monday evening. "While America grieves and America bleeds, we want to take action to prevent it from happening again, and that goes to a resourced FBI."   The proposal comes days after a gunman killed 49 people during a shooting in a packed gay nightclub. Dozens more were injured.   Looks like a mature proposal, assuming the funds are actually put to good use.  But follow the money carefully.  I'll bet the Obamans try to divert some of it to fight "Islamophobia."

GREAT MOMENTS IN EDUCATION:   FROM LONDON'S DAILY MAIL:   Yale University has found itself embroiled in controversy once again this year after English students complained that courses in the department were 'hostile' to students of color.  Under the most fire is the Major English Poets course, a prerequisite for undergraduates in the major to study the works of at least seven major poets, all of whom are white men.  An anonymous petition has demanded the department not only change the English 125/126 course, which has existed since 1920, but abolish it entirely. It also asks that the major's pre-1800/1900 requirements be changed to include literature relating to 'gender, race and sexuality'.  I hope Yale will resist this trendy nonsense, but I'm afraid they'll give in.  The administration is weak, and afraid of its students. 

June 15,  2016     Permalink

IN THE REAL WORLD – AT 11:27 A.M. ET:  Medical care still remains one of the major issues facing Americans.  And Obamacare, this genius administration's answer to the issue, is increasingly wobbly.  From AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Premiums for popular low-cost medical plans under the federal health care law are expected to go up an average of 11 percent next year, said a study that reinforced reports of sharp increases around the country in election season.

For consumers, the impact will depend on whether they get government subsidies for their premiums, as well as on their own willingness to switch plans to keep the increases more manageable, said the analysis released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

The full picture on 2017 premiums will emerge later this summer as the presidential election heads into the home stretch. The health law's next sign-up season starts a week before Election Day. Democrat Hillary Clinton wants to build on President Barack Obama's health overhaul, which has reduced the uninsured rate to a historically low 9 percent. Republican Donald Trump wants to repeal it.

The Kaiser study looked at 14 metro areas for which complete data on insurer premium requests is already available. It found that premiums for a level of insurance called the "lowest-cost silver plan" will go up in 12 of the areas, while decreasing in two. The changes range from a decrease of 14 percent in Providence, Rhode Island, to an increase of 26 percent in Portland, Oregon.

Half of the cities will see increases of 10 percent or more. Last year, only two of the cities had double-digit increases.

COMMENT:  As costs go up and up, so will the number of uninsured or underinsured.  I also want to see the details on that claim that the uninsured rate is at a "historically low 9 percent."  What kind of insurance are some of these folks getting?  Coverage of cuts and bruises?

The fact is, no one in recent years was truly uninsured.  There are state programs like Medicaid, and hospitals would normally be required to treat patients, either as part of those programs or under charitable arrangements.  We didn't have dead bodies in the streets.

Obamacare itself needs an overhaul. 

June 15, 2016       Permalink

THE OBAMA WE SAW YESTERDAY – QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 9:41 A.M. ET:   President Obama, in full "me" mode, went on the offensive against Donald Trump yesterday.  What we saw wasn't pretty.  It was a failed president.  From the excellent Michael Goodwin at the New York Post:

Obama’s demeanor and tone were far from presidential — tantrums rarely are. Nor was he effective in rallying the nation to his cause. No surprise there. His cause is himself, always and only, and his greatly diminished historic presidency looks especially insignificant next to the bloodshed in Orlando. The iconic redeemer who promised hope and change never seemed so small and hopeless.

America saw Barack Obama at low tide yesterday, revealed as brimming with fury and bankrupt of ideas and even sympathy for the dead. The man who had an answer for everything and a solution to nothing is now also out of excuses.

And...

Forty-nine innocent people were gunned down in a gay nightclub by an Islamic terrorist, another 53 lie wounded, yet Obama feels only his own pain. Public confidence in his effort to combat terrorism on his own peculiar terms while soft-pedaling the links to Islam were among the casualties in the Pulse nightclub. The world knows he’s a failure and he can’t stand the embarrassment.

COMMENT:  Absolutely accurate.  But I do fear that Americans, especially young voters, will be taken in by Obama's empty but vigorous rhetoric.  And he will have the liberal press on his side.

We need new leadership.  I don't see it coming, do you?

June 15, 2016       Permalink 

WHAT A MESS – AT 8:46 A.M. ET:  Just look at these poll numbers.  Just look at them.  From The Hill:

Donald Trump is viewed unfavorably by seven in 10 Americans in a new national poll.

Fully 70 percent of U.S. adults have an unfavorable view of the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, according to the ABC News/Washington Post poll released Wednesday, a 10-point increase since last month.

That nears Trump's record unfavorability in the poll, 71 percent, which was logged in May 2015. Since then it's hovered closer to 60 percent and had fallen toward the end of the GOP primary.

Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate, is also viewed unfavorably by a majority of Americans, 55 percent, a new high in the poll for her. Forty-three percent view her favorably.

Those unfavorable numbers come as Clinton secured the final number of delegates to clinch the title of being the presumptive Democratic nominee. Still, national polls asking whom voters will support in November have shown Clinton pulling ahead.

Clinton enjoys higher favorability among members of her party than Trump does his in the ABC poll: 75 percent of Democrats view Clinton favorably, while just 65 percent of Republicans view Trump favorably.

Independents, which both candidates will need to secure, are also tepid on both: 68 percent hold unfavorable views of Trump and 63 percent hold unfavorable views of Clinton.

COMMENT:  I have never seen a situation where both major presidential candidates were so intensively disliked.  It is serious, not funny.  We are talking about the future of our country, and neither candidate could get through a vote of confidence if this were a parliamentary democracy, like Britain.

I've always favored the two-party system, and discouraged the notion of a third party.  This year is an exception.  We need a third choice, a wise man or woman who doesn't enter the general-election campaign with more baggage than American Airlines.  But I'm afraid, this late in the race, that a third choice will probably be a fantasy.

We are in political trouble.

June 15,  2016     Permalink

JUNE 14,  2016

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

IT'S A THING AMONG DEMOCRATS –  FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:  WASHINGTON — Two groups of Russian hackers, working for competing government intelligence agencies, penetrated computer systems of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to emails, chats and a trove of opposition research against Donald J. Trump, according to the party and a cybersecurity firm.  One group placed espionage software on the committee’s computer servers last summer, giving it unimpeded access to communications for about a year. The committee called in CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm, early last month after the Democratic Party began to suspect an intrusion.  Why, they should have called in Hillary.  She knows all about these things.

ASK FOR THE DETAILS – FROM BREITBART:   Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) says he be may be “open” to placing new gun controls on law-abiding citizens following the terror attack on Pulse Orlando.  According to CBS News’s Steven Portnoy, McConnell has a meeting with FBI director James Comey and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Wednesday. Portnoy Tweeted that McConnell has signaled he may be willing to consider new gun controls after that meeting.  The suspected gunman in the Orlando attack passed background checks for his guns, submitted to a waiting period before picking up his handgun, and held a Florida Security Officer license and a Statewide Firearms License. There is no word on what additional gun controls McConnell might be “open” to discussing.  All the legal mechanisms were in place to prevent the Orlando shooter from obtaining guns, but they didn't work.  The FBI had investigated the man, but the information was never placed in the federal database that is used in background checks.  Very baffling, and requires a Congressional probe.

AND OBAMA ALLOWS THIS – FROM AP:   MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Mexican authorities say migrant traffickers have adopted a new trick to smuggle Central American clients to the U.S. border: renting high-end tour buses.  Mexico's Immigration Institute says it has found 102 migrants on two buses being used to whisk them across the length of the country.  The migrants reported paying between $7,000 and $10,000 to go from an area near the Guatemalan border to Reynosa, a city across from McAllen, Texas.  The institute said Monday that because the traffickers wanted to move quickly, they had not stopped to get the migrants food or water for two days.  Where are the "human rights" organizations?  Maybe this is their vacation time.

June 14, 2016     Permalink

THERE, SHE USED THE WORDS – AT 11:14 A.M. ET:  Until yesterday Slick Hilly went along with the Obama line and refused to use the words "radical Islamism."  Suddenly that has changed.  The internal polling probably went sour.  From The Hill:

Revealing her more hawkish side, Hillary Clinton on Monday made a significant pivot by using the term “radical Islamism” to describe the terror threat posed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Clinton, after coming under criticism from Donald Trump, said she was “happy to say either” radical jihadism — a term she has used before — or radical Islamism to describe terrorist groups.

“I think they mean the same thing,” Clinton said, adding that from her perspective, “It matters what we do more than what we say.”

The fight over the term took on a new dimension after a gunman killed 49 people at an Orlando, Fla., nightclub early Sundaymorning. The man pledged allegiance to ISIS during the attack, underlining the threat to the homeland from homegrown terrorism inspired by the foreign group.

Democratic strategists said Clinton’s choice of words represented a significant alteration to her message, and Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, immediately took credit for it.

COMMENT:  Clinton has secured the nomination.  The hard-left Sanders people won't like the change in vocabulary, but there's little they can do about it.  It's the great political center where the election will be won, and Clinton is polling poorly among independents. 

Clinton must be calculating that another attack will come during the campaign.  The public will become more hawkish, and, indeed, she is regarded as much more hawkish than the administration she served as secretary of state.  I'm sure she also sees the possibility of picking up moderate Republicans who are turned off by Donald Trump, and that can make a difference in a close race. 

June 14, 2016       Permalink

AT LEAST THEY GET IT – AT 9:06 A.M. ET:  We often associate European public opinion with self-delusion and a bent toward appeasement.  Maybe, with poll results like this things are changing.  You can hide reality only so much.  From Reuters: 

BERLIN, June 13 (Reuters) - Europeans view the militant group Islamic State as the biggest threat facing their countries, ahead of climate change, economic instability and refugees, a survey by the Pew Research Center showed on Monday.

Respondents in nine of 10 European countries surveyed said they saw IS, also known by the acronyms ISIS and ISIL, as the greatest danger, with 93 percent of Spaniards and 91 percent of French describing the group as a "major threat".

Most of the surveys were conducted in April, a month after militants loyal to IS killed 32 people at the Brussels airport and metro. The Pew report was published a day after a gunman who had pledged allegiance to IS killed 49 people at a nightclub in Orlando, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

Greece, struggling to return to growth after nearly seven years of recession, was the only country where respondents did not list IS as the top threat. Instead, 95 percent of Greeks said that global economic instability posed the greatest risk to their country.

COMMENT:  The question, of course, is whether the European elites, and the governments they control, feel the same way.  After all, it's not "sophisticated" or "intellectual" to be overly concerned about ISIS.  Some of the European elites still take their cue from the hopeless Barack Obama.

It is much easier for ISIS or Al Qaeda operatives, based in the Mideast, to strike Europe rather than America.  Europeans know this, and know that something big is coming.

June 14, 2016       Permalink

SHOCK IN FRANCE – AT 8:53 A.M. ET:  The murder of a French police officer and the torture/murder of his wife, is now growing into a major international story, probably because of Islamic extremist links.  From Fox: 

A Muslim radical who was being investigated for terror ties stabbed a French police chief to death outside his home, then tortured the man's wife in front of their toddler son - all while livestreaming his rampage on Facebook.

The shocking attack in Magnanville, 35 miles north of Paris, ended after a three-hour standoff, when French commandoes stormed the home, rescuing the boy and killing Larossi Abballa, 25. Before the raid, Abballa, a French national with a prior terrorism conviction and ties to jihadists based in Pakistan, made a horrific appeal to his Facebook followers, writing, "I don't know what I'm going to do with the boy."

Jean-Baptiste Salvaing, 42, was not in uniform when he was ambushed and stabbed repeatedly in the stomach outside of his home shortly before 8.30 p.m. on Monday. His wife, a 36-year-old secretary at a local police station, was killed with a knife inside the residence while the couple's 3-year-old son hid behind a couch. The French interior minister called the slaughter "an abject terrorist act."

Three men believed to have close ties to Abbala were brought in for questioning by French police shortly after the attack, officials said.

Word that Abbala had filmed a 12-minute video of the attack and posted it on Facebook Live shocked the nation Tuesday morning. Abbala also tweeted twice during the killings.

COMMENT:  Please note that this monster used knives, not guns.  Other terrorists use explosives. 

This is the third stunning terror attack during the month of Ramadan.  One in Israel, one in Orlando, and now another in France.  We must brace ourselves for more, while the president of the United States still refuses to use the term "Islamist terror."

June 14,  2016     Permalink