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JUNE 25,  2017

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

SPIRIT OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT – FROM THE WASHINGTON TIMES:   “As a nation, the U.S. has a deep and enduring connection to guns. Integrated into the fabric of American society since the country’s earliest days, guns remain a point of pride for many Americans. Whether for hunting, sport shooting or personal protection, most gun owners count the right to bear arms as central to their freedom,” reports a wide-ranging new poll from the Pew Research Center.  It found that 74 percent of all U.S. gun owners say owning a gun is “essential to their freedom.” Another 73 percent of the owners say they could never see themselves “not owning a gun.” Half say that “all or most of their friends” also own guns.  In many areas of the country it is responsible gun owners who provide critical protection to the citizenry and their own homes, especially in areas where police patrols are spotty and police response times, due to great distance, are inadequate.

THIS DATE:   On this date in 1950, forces of North Korea, with vast Soviet support, invaded South Korea, starting the Korean War.  Most Americans today don't know much about that war, but if they're aware of a free, prosperous, pro-American South Korea, they know something of the result.  President Truman's decision to resist the invasion was one of the most critical decisions a modern president has had to make.  Aggression was punished, and the Communist states learned that we would indeed fight back if our vital interests were threatened.  Some 37,000 Americans lost their lives in the Korean War, and their sacrifice must never be forgotten.  They contributed mightily to the ultimate, and successful end to the Cold War in the late 1980s.

UGLY MARK FOR A BEAUTIFUL STATE – FROM HAWAII NEWS NOW:  At least we're consistent: For a seventh straight year, Hawaii has been named the worst state to make a living thanks to its astronomical cost of living.The ranking, put together annually by MoneyRates.com, says while Hawaii has the 10th-highest median wage nationwide, that's not enough to make up for living expenses that are two-thirds higher than in the rest of the nation. The high cost of living is compounded by one of the highest state tax income burdens in the nation.  To put together the ranking, MoneyRates considered median salary, state tax rates, cost of living and unemployment rates.  It's also a very liberal state politically, which may have something to do with its economic problems.  But we still love Hawaii.  And it's still our first line of defense in the Pacific. 

June 25,  2017     Permalink 

THE OBAMA CURSE – QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 1:48 P.M. ET:  What is the cause of the rise of Trump?  Well, one cause is a guy named Barack Hussein Obama Jr.  Michael Goodwin, the superb pundit at the New York Post, puts Obama's influence in sane perspective.  It's not the kind of report card you bring home to mama:

For Republicans, luck can’t get much better. While Clinton and Pelosi were hardly innocent bystanders in the historic rout of Democrats at every level of government, the main culprit was Obama.

It was Obamaism, more than Clintonism or Pelosism, that elected Donald Trump and gave the GOP both houses of congress. The former president’s coercive liberalism at home and appeasement abroad led to the greatest upset in American politics.

His two biggest achievements, ObamaCare and the Iran nuclear deal, were sold on the backs of lies. President Trump is Obama’s legacy.

And now Dear Leader wants to “help” Dems again. Let’s see how many Clinton and Pelosi critics have the courage to tell him “No, thanks, you’ve done enough.”

Obama’s desire to re-litigate his tenure comes amid other signs that the siege of the Trump White House is lifting and the political momentum is shifting.

Suddenly, Dems are the fighting, fractured party with no agenda or leader while Republicans finally show signs of uniting their majorities to get big things done.

Indeed, Obama’s return to the fray coincides with a belated congressional focus on his administration’s misconduct on the Clinton investigation and his failure to counter Russian interference in the election.

COMMENT:  Well said.  Now the Republicans must handle the health-care issue carefully and sensitively.  It's health we're talking about.  If they can pass a good plan they can build toward tax reform and head into the 2018 election with confidence.

June 25, 2017       Permalink

THE CONDITION OF THE DEMOCRATS – AT 11:57 A.M. ET:  It's terrible.  I almost weep.  Almost.  Well, almost almost.  From AFP: 

Washington (AFP) - Frozen out of power in Washington and having lost a string of congressional races this year, Democrats are struggling to craft winning strategies to convert disillusionment with President Donald Trump into victory in 2018's midterm elections.

The party fielded a hodgepodge of candidates in four special elections in recent months, including a banjo-strumming cowboy poet in Montana. Most recently Democrats nominated a young novice in Georgia, where the party, judging it had its best pick-up opportunity, threw millions of dollars into the race.

Yet each time, Republicans beat back the advances. And Democratic lawmakers, strategists and party officials have been left scratching their heads about how to turn it around and launch a viable bid to reclaim Congress next year.

"They're definitely licking their wounds," Kerwin Swint, professor and chair of the political science department at Georgia's Kennesaw State University, told AFP.

Debate has swirled among Democrats about what strategy to deploy: going all in with a nationwide anti-Trump agenda, or tailoring individual races to local economic issues in a bid to repair fraying connections between the Democratic Party and the common voter.

The Georgia race showed "the effectiveness of Trump's staying power" despite the scandals rocking the White House, Swint said.

"Democrats should not focus their campaigns about him, they should be about jobs," he added. "They need a much more focused economic pitch."

COMMENT:  This is not the Democratic Party of old.  This is the Democratic Party of Barack Obama.  Talk about the average voter, but never talk to the average voter.  I mean, who would be inerested in those dull people who work 9 to 5?  Where do they go on holiday?  Some local beach?  The Washington Monument?  Avoid these peasants!

June 25, 2017       Permalink

OH HOW JUICY – AT 11:41 A.M. ET:  With news that Senate Republicans will look into Loretta Lynch's behavior at the Justice Department, it has now been shown that the GOP has at least some pulse.  And there's more.  The "Russian" issue is getting complicated in ways the Democrats may not have anticipated.  From the New York Post: 

A secretive Washington firm that commissioned the dubious intelligence dossier on Donald Trump is stonewalling congressional investigators trying to learn more about its connections to the Democratic Party.

The Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month threatened to subpoena the firm, Fusion GPS, after it refused to answer questions and provide records to the panel identifying who financed the error-ridden dossier, which was circulated during the election and has sparked much of the Russia scandal now engulfing the White House.

What is the company hiding? Fusion GPS describes itself as a “research and strategic intelligence firm” founded by “three former Wall Street Journal investigative reporters.” But congressional sources says it’s actually an opposition-research group for Democrats, and the founders, who are more political activists than journalists, have a pro-Hillary, anti-Trump agenda.

"These weren’t mercenaries or hired guns,” a congressional source familiar with the dossier probe said. “These guys had a vested personal and ideological interest in smearing Trump and boosting Hillary’s chances of winning the White House.”

Fusion GPS was on the payroll of an unidentified Democratic ally of Clinton when it hired a long-retired British spy to dig up dirt on Trump. In 2012, Democrats hired Fusion GPS to uncover dirt on GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. And in 2015, Democrat ally Planned Parenthood retained Fusion GPS to investigate pro-life activists protesting the abortion group.

COMMENT:  I love it!  Turn the tables.  Turn on the TV cameras.  This has the potential to turn into a major investigation, taking some of the heat off Trump. 

June 25,  2017     Permalink

JUNE 24,  2017

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

TAKING ON THE MEDIA – FROM GATEWAY PUNDIT:  Texas Trump supporter Kyle Courtney bought a billboard to bash ABC News over their “unfair” and “excessive” coverage of the Russia investigation.   The Boerne, Texas resident has the following message on his billboard:  “I grew up with you. We are through. The Russians didn’t elect Donald Trump. I did.”  Great message.  Click on the link to see the actual billboard.  Despite all Trump's problems, a number self-inflicted, his support in at least some polls is holding at a respectable level.   And he and his followers regularly do better in actual elections than in polling. 

PARTYING AGAIN – FROM STRAITSTIMES:  UBUD, Indonesia (AFP) - Barack Obama has kicked off a 10-day family holiday in Indonesia that will take in Bali and Jakarta, the city where he spent part of his childhood, officials said on Saturday (June 24).  The casually dressed former president arrived in the resort island of Bali with his wife Michelle and their two daughters, a local military commander said.  "They arrived late last night and went straight to the hotel in Ubud," a local military commander, I Gede Widiyana, told AFP.  One thing Barack Obama learned to do as president was to party.  He is the world's expert, and certainly deserves to run the entire world, based on that talent.  That's right, isn't it?

CALIFORNIA FLOPS ON HEALTH CARE – FROM THE SACRAMENTO BEE:  Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon put the brakes on a sweeping plan to overhaul the health care market in California Friday, calling the bill “woefully incomplete.”  Rendon announced plans to park the bill to create a government-run universal health care system in Assembly Rules Committee “until further notice” and give senators time to fill in holes that the bill does not currently address.  “Even senators who voted for Senate Bill 562 noted there are potentially fatal flaws in the bill, including the fact it does not address many serious issues, such as financing, delivery of care, cost controls, or the realities of needed action by the Trump administration and voters to make SB 562 a genuine piece of legislation,” Rendon said.  A few minor problems.  Neither party has addressed health-care legislation on the state or federal level with the seriousness it deserves.  Both parties will have trouble facing the voters next year. New parties anyone?

June 24,  2017      Permalink

YEAH, I'D SAY HE WAS TOO CAUTIOUS – AT 10:16 A.M. ET:   As noted in our first post this morning, attention is now being paid to the Obama administration's actions during the late presidential campaign, especially as they involve the Russians.  Some balance, finally.  From The Hill:

The Obama administration is under fresh scrutiny for its response to Russian meddling in the election after new details emerged this week about how the White House weighed its actions against the 2016 political environment.

Then-President Obama was too cautious in the months leading up to the election, frustrated Democratic lawmakers and strategists say. 

“It was inadequate. I think they could have done a better job informing the American people of the extent of the attack,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee who co-chairs the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee.

And even after the election was over, they say, the penalties Obama levied were too mild to appropriately punish what by all accounts was an unprecedented attack on a U.S. election.
Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), another House Intelligence member, called the penalties “barely a slap on the wrist.” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who supports tougher sanctions Russia, said in a statement Friday that the administration “abjectly failed to deter Russian aggression” and “failed to impose any meaningful costs on Russia.”

Some Republicans argue the Obama administration only started to take the Russia threat seriously after President Trump had won the election.

COMMENT:  Slowly, a more complete picture of the Russia issue is starting to emerge.  The Obamans don't look any better than the Trumps.  I wish Washington could accelerate the investigative process, and allow the new administration to govern.  I think that's what they were elected to do.

June 24, 2017       Permalink

A GOOD DECISION – AT 10:01 A.M. ET:   Whether you are pro-life or pro-choice, or somewhere in the middle, it's important that the civil liberties of those who represent these positions be protected.  A good court decision has been made in California.  From The Weekly Standard: 

Even in famously abortion-friendly California there is justice for abortion foes. On June 21, the San Francisco County Superior Court threw out 14 of the 15 felony counts that California Attorney General Xavier Becerra had brought against David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, the anti-abortion activists who had made widely circulated undercover videos of Planned Parenthood officials haggling and joking over the compensation they expected to receive for supplying the organs of fetuses aborted at Planned Parenthood clinics to for-profit “tissue-procurement” companies.

I wrote about the case for THE WEEKLY STANDARD shortly after Becerra lodged the felony charges on March 28, and it seemed to me more persecution than prosecution. California law forbids the recording of conversations without the consent of all parties involved, so Becerra, a former Democratic congressman from Los Angeles, assigned a separate criminal count to each of 14 secretly recorded conversations that Deleiden and Merritt, posing as tissue-procurers themselves, had had with high-level Planned Parenthood employees at restaurants, abortion conventions, and other venues during 2013 and 2014, and also with the CEO of StemExpress, a Placerville, California, tissue supply firm, that had partnered at the time with some of Planned Parenthood’s Northern California clinics to retrieve fetal body parts onsite. For the statute in question, California Penal Code Section 632, prosecutorial discretion allows charges to be brought as either felonies or misdemeanors. Becerra went the felony route. His aim seemed to be to put Daleiden and Merritt behind bars for as long as legally possible; each separate felony conviction for violating Section 632 could entail a year in state prison plus a hefty fine.

There were always legal issues that could have stood in the way of automatic Section 632 convictions for the pair: How much expectation of privacy—an essential element of a violation of the anti-recording law—did the alleged victims really have in the public places where the conversations occurred, for example. But what really killed the greater part of Becerra’s case, at least for now, was his office’s insistence on keeping secret such key information as the names of the alleged Planned Parenthood victims. Superior Court Judge Christopher Hite ruled that those 14 charges were simply legally insufficient. “The complaint did not provide Merritt with the minimum notice required by the Constitution and California law as to what she supposedly did wrong, so that she can mount a proper and vigorous defense,” her lawyer, Mat Staver of LibertyCounsel said.. “The complaint was also vague and full of inconsistencies.”

COMMENT:  It was political persecution.  Increasingly, our courts are being used by the left to make social decisions, rather than legal ones, or to enforce political correctness.

We've seen some pushback recently, and this decision is part of it.

June 24, 2017       Permalink

LORETTA DEAR, YOU'RE NEXT – AT 9:46 A.M. ET:  Republicans are finally moving on a probe of former Attorney General Loretta Lynch.  This is long overdue, and may send a message to the Dems that the other side knows how to investigate as well.  From the Washington Times: 

The Senate Judiciary Committee has opened a probe into former Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s efforts to shape the FBI’s investigation into 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, the committee’s chairman announced Friday.

In a letter to Ms. Lynch, the committee asks her to detail the depths of her involvement in the FBI’s investigation, including whether she ever assured Clinton confidantes that the probe wouldn’t “push too deeply into the matter.”

Fired FBI Director James B. Comey has said publicly that Ms. Lynch tried to shape the way he talked about the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s emails, and he also hinted at other behavior “which I cannot talk about yet” that made him worried about Ms. Lynch’s ability to make impartial decisions.

Mr. Comey said that was one reason why he took it upon himself to buck Justice Department tradition and reveal his findings about Mrs. Clinton last year.

The probe into Ms. Lynch comes as the Judiciary Committee is already looking at President Trump’s firing of Mr. Comey.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley, chairman of the committee, said the investigation is bipartisan. The letter to Ms. Lynch is signed by ranking Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein and also by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Sheldon Whitehouse, the chairman and ranking member of the key investigative subcommittee.

COMMENT:  I suspect there's a lot there.  The whole Justice Department under Barack Obama was heavily politicized.  Even those who came to office with fine reputations, like Loretta Lynch, may well have been compromised.

June 24,  2017     Permalink