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MARCH 29,  2017

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

LAW AND ORDER IN CHICAGO – FROM CBS CHICAGO:   An 18-year-old Back of the Yards woman faces weapons charges after she was stopped by Chicago Police as she pushed a baby stroller with a rifle, handgun and ammunition inside early Monday morning.  Yarisma Martinez lived a few blocks down from a house in the 4500 block of South Hermitage, where a police surveillance camera spotted a man firing a rifle on the street around midnight, prosecutors said Tuesday.  The camera showed 18-year-old Martinez and another woman arriving at the house soon after, carrying a bag as they entered the house. The pair left the house, this time pushing a stroller and carrying a diaper bag.  I think it's so touching – a baby stroller, a diaper bag, an arsenal.  I'm sure she's just a good mother with a penchant for marksmanship sports.

THE END OF CIVILIZATION – FROM THE TELEGRAPH:  Chocolate bars are likely to shrink by a fifth in the next three years after Public Health England told sweet manufacturers they could meet obesity targets by cutting product size.  Today PHE published new guidelines which call on food manufacturers to reduce the sugar content of cereals, breakfast goods, yoghurts, biscuits, ice creams, sweet spreads and confectionery by 20 per cent by 2020.  The cuts are intended to reduce the number of children who are overweight or obese by the end of the decade and take 200,000 tons of sugar out of the British diet each year.  Don't these children have parents?  Don't the parents control the kids' diets?  Is anyone responsible for anything these days?  Keep our chocolate bars!

REAL CLASS – FROM THE WASHINGTON TIMES:   President Trump threw a White House party for the Senate, but most Democrats couldn’t be bothered to attend.  In a sign of how difficult it could be for Mr. Trump to carry out his stated desire of working across party lines on his biggest priorities, 28 of 46 Senate Democrats snubbed an invitation to the White House on Tuesday night for a spring soiree of music and fellowship. Independent Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont, a member of the Democrats’ leadership team, also was a no-show.  At least 44 of the Senate’s 52 Republicans attended the East Room reception, which was co-hosted by first lady Melania Trump and featured the U.S. Army Chorus and Marine Band.  White House press secretary Sean Spicer called it “an amazing opportunity to have a moment sort of free of politics and to enjoy some collegial moments with each other in the White House.”  I think most Dems actually wanted to go, but were desperately afraid of being "named" by the party's increasingly vicious and irrational base.  The once-great Democratic Party seems awfully small.  Do the Democrats have any program at all?

March 29, 2017        Permalink

HMM – AT 12:28 P.M. ET:   Is there political scheming afoot?  Could it affect the 2020 presidential election?  From the Washington Examiner: 

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch said he would be open to step aside and not run for re-election in 2018 if a candidate like Mitt Romney were to run for his position in his stead.

In an interview with National Journal, the Republican senator who has been in office since 1976 said he "might very well consider" not campaigning for another term if an "outstanding person" were to run for his position.

Asked if he had any people in mind, Hatch replied: "Well, Mitt Romney would be perfect." He added that he has reached out to Romney about the idea.

In February, Romney declined to rule out a run for a Senate seat in the future.

COMMENT:  A seat in the Senate would be the perfect perch from which Romney could run again for president.  In 2020 he'd be 73, which is fine, given today's age spans. 

That, of course, would depend on Trump, and whether he'll run again, or even want to.  And it might also depend on Mike Pence's status.

At least the GOP has a good bench of potential presidents.  The Dems have Elizabeth Warren and...Hillary?

March 29, 2017       Permalink

OH DEAR, DID SOMEONE JUST SLIP SOMETHING ABOUT THE OBAMA CROWD? – AT 11:45 A.M. ET:   Maybe President Trump wasn't so far wrong when he claimed he'd been surveilled.  From Fox: 

A former top Obama administration official has acknowledged efforts by her colleagues to gather intelligence on Trump team ties to Russia before Donald Trump took office and to conceal the sources of that intelligence from the incoming administration.

Evelyn Farkas, deputy assistant secretary of defense under Obama, made the disclosure while on the air with MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski.

“I was urging my former colleagues, and frankly speaking the people on the Hill, it was more actually aimed at telling the Hill people, get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves the administration,” Farkas, who is now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said.

“Because I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior [Obama] people who left, so it would be hidden away in the bureaucracy ... that the Trump folks – if they found out how we knew what we knew about their ... the Trump staff dealing with Russians – that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we no longer have access to that intelligence.”

COMMENT:  This all needs to be unraveled.  Clearly, the Trump people had contact with Russian officials, but that is routine for a transition team.  And, clearly, the Obama administration had information, gathered secretly, on the transition team's actions.  Who got that information?  How was it used?  Whose names came up?

I'm not sure Congress can truly investigate these items, considering the poisonous atmosphere in Washington.   Maybe a "Challenger"- type commission is called for, the kind of commission that probed the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger during the Reagan administration.

March 29,  2017     Permalink

BYE-BYE – AT 10:18 A.M. ET:   On this historic day, Britain has taken the first formal steps to separate from the European Union.  Rule Britannia!  From Daily Mail: 

Theresa May vowed to restore Britain's 'self-determination' as our historic EU divorce letter was finally delivered to Brussels today - including a stark warning that trying to punish the UK would be a 'costly mistake'.

As Tory MPs roared her to the rafters in the Commons, the Prime Minister confirmed her envoy Sir Tim Barrow had handed the formal notification to European Council president Donald Tusk in the Belgian capital.

She gave an upbeat assessment of the country's 'bright future' once it regains control after 44 years ties to the EU, while stressing she wanted to forge a 'deep and special special' bond with our old partners.

But the letter also included stark threats about the 'fragile' condition of the bloc, making clear that efforts to give Britain a bad deal would be seriously damaging for the bloc's own prosperity and security.

The point of no return was reached at 12.20pm today UK time, as the handover between Sir Tim and Mr Tusk happened at his HQ in the Belgian capital.

Mrs May was greeted with cheers by MPs as she arrived in the Commons chamber for her regular PMQs session. Meanwhile, outside parliament Europhile protesters were still vainly demanding a rethink.

COMMENT:  Theresa May is becoming another Margaret Thatcher.  She's terrific, and a stand-up woman.  The British decision to leave the EU, made in an open referendum by voters, is correct.  The EU is an arrogant, creaky, and unrepresentative institution.

Now the fun begins.

March 29,  2017     Permalink

MARCH 28,  2017

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 9:05 P.M. ET: 

THE MADNESS CONTINUES – FROM DAILY CALLER:   A university will be hosting a “Masculinity Confession Booth” along with a number of other workshops and screenings to combat “hypermasculinity.”  “We have all reinforced hypermasculinity one way or another regardless of our gender!!” explains the University of Regina event description. “Come and share your sins so we can begin to discuss how to identify and change our ways !!!”  The “Man Up Against Violence” initiative will be hosting these events at the University of Regina in Canada during the present week.  The Masculinity Confession Booth will be making its debut Monday, but is also listed on the schedule for Tuesday through Thursday — days on which students can also attend a “Healthy Relationships and Healthy Masculinity Workshop.” Yet another event will seek to redefine the phrase, “man up.”  I'm rushing with my application.

CONFIDENCE UP – FROM MARKETWATCH:   Consumer confidence in March soared to the highest level in more than 16 years, according to data released Tuesday.  The Conference Board said its consumer confidence index leapt to 125.6 in March from 116.1 in February, coming in well ahead of the MarketWatch-compiled consensus of 114.1.  The reading gave a pop to U.S. stocks DJIA, +0.73% , which turned higher after the report. The Dow closed 150 points higher.  Consumer confidence has taken off since the election of President Donald Trump, on the prospect of lower taxes and more infrastructure spending. Confidence has yet to be impacted by Congress’s inability so far to enact the president’s ambitions. The cutoff data for responses was March 16, before Republicans were forced to scrap a vote on repealing and replacing Obamacare.  I hope the Republican Congress understands the importance of consumer confidence, and doesn't destroy it by refusing to pass the president's economic program.

PRACTICALITY – FROM FAST FORWARD:   Brandeis physicist Daniel Perlman loves wine, but hates wine stains.  So he put himself to studying — for three years — how wine flows out of wine bottles, Daniel Perlman and has finally figured out how to prevent wine from dripping down the side of the bottle.  Perlman’s invention is simple, consisting of a small groove cut into the neck of the bottle just below the lip. The groove requires liquid to fight against gravity to move down the neck of the bottle, forcing the liquid to drip into the cup rather than down the side of the bottle.  Perlman is currently talking to bottle manufacturers about implementing his design in their products.  It's such a relief to see a college professor do something practical.  Build a statue to him at Brandeis:  Conquerer of Stains.  Man of the Century.

March 28, 2017        Permalink

BITTER DIVIDE IN FRANCE – AT 11:45 A.M. ET:   France has an election coming up, and a new poll reveals deep divisions and tension in the country.  From the Daily Mail:

Sixty one per cent of French people believe Islam is incompatible with their society, according to a new poll.

That figure had been falling sharply until the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January 2015, and has been steadily growing ever since, an Ipsos survey found.

That is compared with six per cent of people who believe Catholicism is incompatible and 17 per cent who believe Judaism is incompatible.

A further 79 per cent of French people supported banning headscarves on university campuses, while another 77 per cent want to see the burkini banned.

France already has a nationwide law banning anyone from wearing a full-face veil, while several French Riviera towns attempted to ban full-body 'burkinis' in 2016, but the law was overturned.

COMMENT:  Those numbers are grim.  You just get the feeling that another terrorist attack could spark major violence.  Or, a real nationalist can be elected and pull France out of the European Union.

We are living in interesting times.  Too interesting.

March 28, 2017       Permalink

MAYBE THEY'RE LEARNING SOMETHING – AT 10:46 A.M. ET:  Some Democrats (not all) are studying the last election to determine what went wrong.  What they're finding is no ornament to their leaders.   From The Politico: 

As they investigate the forces behind the party’s stunning losses in November, Democrats are coming to a troubling conclusion. The party didn’t just lose among rural white voters on Election Day, it may have failed to capture them in its pre-election polling as well.

Many pollsters and strategists believe that rural white voters, particularly those without college degrees, eluded the party’s polling altogether — and their absence from poll results may have been both a cause and a symptom of Donald Trump’s upset victory over Hillary Clinton in several states.

Determining what exactly happened is one of the most pressing problems facing the out-of-power party. In order to win those voters back — or figure out a future path to victory without them — party strategists say they first need to measure the size of that rural and working-class cohort.

John Hagner, a partner at Clarity Campaign Labs, a D.C.-based Democratic analytics firm, said 2016 taught the party a hard lesson about polling in the Trump era.

“The folks who would talk to a stranger about politics just aren’t representative of people who wouldn’t,” he said.

The first evidence of the party’s polling blind spot surfaced in a governor’s race, the 2015 contest in Kentucky. Both public and private polls going into the election showed Democrat Jack Conway and Republican Matt Bevin running neck-and-neck — Conway had a 3-point lead in the final RealClearPolitics average — but Bevin won by a comfortable, 9-point margin.

Like some of the more Democratic states where Trump upset Clinton last year, Kentucky has a large rural and a large working-class white population (often there is considerable overlap in the groups). Whites make up 88 percent of Kentucky’s population, and fewer than a quarter of Kentucky residents over age 25 have a college degree.

COMMENT:   Read the whole thing.  It's an excellent analysis of a recurring political phenomenon – a party losing contact with its constituency. 

We saw it in 1980 with the emergence of the Reagan Democrats – mostly working people who felt the Democratic Party was ignoring them.  They went to Reagan.  And last year they went to Trump.

Republicans shouldn't gloat.  The Democrats are now working the problem.  The Republicans in Washington are giving them plenty of ammunition.

March 28, 2017       Permalink

TERRORISM?  WHAT TERRORISM?  – AT 9:35 A.M. ET:  My, how quickly the media swept past that terror attack at the halls of Parliament in London last week.  Nothing to see, nothing to see.  Just a confused young man who visited the wrong websites.

But historian Niall Ferguson warns us, in our quote of the day, that there's plenty to see.  From the Boston Globe: 

Let's not be parochial. The world is in the grip of an epidemic of Islamist terror. Of the last 16 years, the worst year was 2014, with 93 countries experiencing attacks and close to 33,000 people killed. The second worst was 2015, with over 29,000 victims. In that year, four radical Islamic groups were responsible for three quarters of all deaths from terrorism: Islamic State, Boko Haram, the Taliban, and Al Qaeda.

Khalid Masood, who attacked Britain's Parliament, killing four people and wounding some 50, was born Adrian Russell Ajao, London's top counterterror officer said Friday.

Although Muslim-majority countries suffer the most from jihadist violence, the West is increasingly under attack. There were 64 ISIS-affiliated attacks in Western countries in 2015, including the massacres in Paris (137 dead) and Orlando (50 dead). Thus far, Britain has got off lightly.

No doubt there will whining about security lapses in the Masood case. But the reality is that only the constant vigilance of the UK security services has stopped many more people from being killed in the past dozen years. In 2014 and 2015, there were more terrorism-related arrests than in any year since 2000. What we must face is that even this intensified effort cannot pre-empt every jihadist.

The term "lone wolf" is a misleading one. No one becomes a jihadist all by himself, just by watching beheading videos. As my wife Ayaan Hirsi Ali argues in a powerful new report, jihad is always preceded by dawa - the process of non-violent but toxic radicalization that transforms the petty criminal into a zealot.

COMMENT:  Wonderfully said.  But will anyone in America listen, or will it take another 9/11 to accomplish that?

March 28,  2017     Permalink