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JANUARY 5,  2016

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

INCREDIBLE – From AP:   WASHINGTON — An industry tally shows more airline deaths worldwide were due to deliberate acts in 2015 than to accidental air crashes, for the second year in a row.  A report by Flightglobal, an aviation news and industry data company, says there were only eight accidental airline crashes last year, accounting for 161 passenger and crew deaths — the fewest crashes and deaths since at least 1946.  The tally excludes a German airliner that was deliberately flown into a mountainside in the French Alps last March, and a Russian airliner packed with tourists that exploded over Egypt. The toll for those two incidents was 374 killed.  A sign of our times, I'm afraid.  And this is occurring despite intensified airline security, or so we're told.

APPALLING – From Breitbart:  The Obama administration is expected to release 17 detainees as early as next week, including “al Qaeda followers” who have been cleared for release from the Guantánamo Bay prison by a board established by the president.  Secretary of Defense Ash Carter told lawmakers last month that 17 Guantanamo prisoners would be sent to other countries in January.  A source, who has reportedly reviewed the list of individuals who are supposed to be moved out, told Fox News that the group of 17 includes “bad guys” and “Al Qaeda followers,” without revealing the identities of the prisoners.  And if one of these murderers kills Americans on Hillary's watch, and she's asked why they'd been released from Gitmo, she'll probably reply, "What difference does it make?"  Yuch.

BULLETIN – From The New York Times:  North Korea declared Tuesday night that it has detonated its first hydrogen bomb, a weapon far more powerful than it has set off previously. If the claim is true, it would drastically escalate the nuclear challenge from one of the world’s most isolated and dangerous states.  It would also devastate any claim that Obama has handled North Korea adequately.  Once again we're surprised and humiliated.  We'll probably have more on this tomorrow.

January 5, 2016       Permalink

TREACHERY – AT 10:51 A.M. ET:   Lost in the new eruption of conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran is the fact that President Obama has caved in to Iran once more, increasing the risk to our national security.  From the Washington Examiner: 

Since signing a nuclear deal with the Obama administration last summer, Iran's theocratic regime has twice been caught testing ballistic missiles, in one case firing them near a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf. This is a black-and-white violation of the nuclear deal and it carries a prescribed consequence in the form of new punitive sanctions.

In fact, when Congress considered whether to block the deal or allow it to proceed, many nervous Democrats were persuaded by this provision and others like it.

Yet now that the Iranians have violated it, Obama prefers to throw away one of the few solid achievements that emerged from his negotiations with the mullahs. His administration announced last week that sanctions would be delayed, prompting statements of disappointment from Republicans and Democrats alike.

The reason for the delay is that Iran is threatening to back out of the deal if Obama enforces it. Iran's defiance and Obama's havering demonstrate that the mullahs feel less bound by the deal than he does. He's worried that it will collapse, but they aren't. Obama seems willing to sacrifice enforcement to preserve the illusion that a two-sided deal really exists.

Because the president wants this deal more than the Iranians do, the only truly binding part is the bit that imposes obligations on Washington, such as $100-150 billion in sanctions relief.

COMMENT:   What a disgrace.  We have a president who doesn't even like his own country, and is selling it out, for his greater glory.  I'd love to see what his post-presidency will be like.  It may well be like the post-presidency of Jimmy Carter, who also concluded that the American people weren't good enough for him. 

January 5, 2016       Permalink

TRUMP STILL LEADS IN GOP POLL – AT 10:09 A.M. ET:   But can he actually reach the 50% mark to win the nomination?  That is the key question.  From The Hill:

Donald Trump continues to hold a big lead in the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, leading his closest rivals by double digits in an NBC News/Survey Monkey poll released Tuesday.

Trump is supported by 35 percent of Republican and GOP-leaning registered voters in the online survey, with Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Marco Rubio (Fla.) at 18 and 13 percent, respectively.

All other candidates poll in single digits, with retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 9 percent, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush at 6 percent, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 4 percent and businesswoman Carly Fiorina at 3 percent.

A third of white evangelicals surveyed, 33 percent, support Trump, while Cruz gets 21 percent and Rubio 10 percent of that group, a key support group candidates are focusing on in the early voting state of Iowa.

Trump is also supported by 35 percent of "very conservative" voters, versus 30 percent for Cruz and 8 percent for Rubio.

The poll comes about a month out from votes being cast in the race in the Iowa causes Feb. 1, where Cruz is the favorite to win, and the New Hampshire primaries Feb. 9, where Cruz and Rubio poll behind Trump.

Cruz and Rubio have largely avoided attacking Trump and have focused their barbs on each other recently, duking it out on the issue of national security and immigration heading into the next debates later this month.

On the Democratic side of the field, Hillary Clinton leads Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) 53 percent to 36 percent, with just 2 percent of registered and leaning Democrats supporting former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley.

COMMENT:  I just don't see Trump's 35% as that impressive.  It means that 65% are not for him, and he has been, by far, the most publicized candidate. 

If Trump loses Iowa, the psychological effect may well be to increase interest in other candidates.  I think the conventional wisdom here is correct – it will come down to a race among Trump, Cruz, and Rubio.  And there is a possibility of an open convention.

January 5,  2016     Permalink

UNSPEAKABLE – AT 9:16 A.M. ET:   Where, precisely, are the so-called "feminist" groups?  And why isn't the mainstream media asking?  From London's Express:

Police in Cologne are hunting for the group of up to 1,000 “Arab and North African” men who seriously sexually assaulted more than 80 women.

Victims had their underwear ripped from them, fingers inserted into orifices and their handbags rifled for valuables.

Police Chief Wolfgang Albers called the attacks "crime in a completely new dimension".

With hundred of thousands of people expected on the streets in coming weeks for carvival celebrations he said video monitoring of crowds is being considered.

CCTV cameras in the main station are being examined to try to identify the attackers although no footage has been released to the public. The attackers are described by police as being of North African or Arabic appearance.

Around 1,000 men fitting the description were at the station on New Year's Eve but police stressed they had no idea how many were offenders.

German police received numerous complaints from women who claimed they were assaulted around the city’s main train station last week.

The group also robbed their victims and threw fireworks at a crowd of people, police said.

COMMENT:  Nice, huh?  But who are we to judge other cultures?  Right?  And why do I have to go to a British paper to read about this?

January 5,  2016     Permalink

JANUARY 4,  2016

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:53 P.M. ET:

BILL'S OPENING NIGHT  Why do we often have to depend on British journalists for the hard truth about American politics?  From London's Daily Mail:   Former U.S. President Bill Clinton made his first solo campaign appearance in support of his wife's White House bid on Monday in Nashua, New Hampshire, but the female voters standing behind him on stage – and one eighth-grader – were stone-faced and unimpressed.  They stood on risers through his 28-minute speech at Nashua Community College, alternating between frowns, grimaces and eye-rolls, even looking uninterested as they applauded a few of Clinton's lines.  I saw the same thing on the TV screen.  Bill comes off as an interloper, trying to steal the show and turning his wife into his assistant.  I'm not even sure he wants her to win. 

I HOPE THIS DOESN'T TURN INTO A MOVEMENT – From Fox:   NEW YORK – New York City police say the stepdaughter of U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch was taken into custody after an argument with an Uber taxi driver over an unpaid fare.  Kia Absalom was riding in the car Dec. 28. Police say she believed her fare was automatically paid via the Uber app. But the driver tells the Daily News she hadn't paid.  Police say the two argued and the driver took her to a Brooklyn police station. They say after it was determined she owed the driver about $20 she was detained in a cell while her boyfriend went to pay the fare.  Well, we'll just wait for the facts...and the full FBI investigation of the Uber driver and the oppressive presence of the NYPD. 

GUN SALES SOAR – From the Washington Free Beacon:  The FBI processed a record number of firearms-related background checks last year, indicating that more guns were sold in 2015 than in any previous year in American history.  More than 23 million checks were processed through the National Instant Background Check System in 2015, an all-time record.   The all-time record for yearly sales comes after May, June, July, August, September, October, November, and December 2015 each set sales records for their respective months. In December the FBI conducted 3,314,594 checks, an increase of more than half a million checks over the previous single-month record set in December 2012.  This is due, I feel, to an increased sense of security on the part of the American public.  Many people no longer believe they're well protected by government agencies.  They want their own protection.

January 4, 2016       Permalink

STRANGE PRIORITIES – AT 2:56 P.M. ET:  Ms. Hillary announces one of the first tasks for her administration.  From the Washington Times:

It was an unusual question, but the candidate answered it. During a campaign stop late last week in New Hampshire, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton was asked her opinion about UFOs and whether the U.S. government would ever acknowledge the existence of such unearthly craft.

In a casual conversation with the Conway Daily Sun, a local paper, Mrs. Clinton vowed, “Yes, I’m going to get to the bottom of it.” She later added, “I think we may already have been visited. We don’t know for sure.” Mrs. Clinton also suggested that a future task force could be assembled to investigate Area 51, a top secret military installation in Nevada long rumored to have had dealings with UFOS.

It did not take long for the global media to pick up on the exchange. The British press in particular have seized upon the story, which also has a role for former President Bill Clinton - who joins his wife on the campaign trail this week - and former White House adviser John Podesta.

During a 2014 appearance on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Mr. Clinton chatted about possible alien encounters, telling his host, “It may be the only way to unite us in this incredibly divided world of ours. If they’re out there, we better think of how all the differences among people on Earth would seem small if we felt threatened by a space invader.”

COMMENT:  And imagine:  we've had such doubts about Hillary's judgment.  I guess they're all relieved now. 

Geez.

January 4, 2016       Permalink

BILL IS BACK – AT 11:22 A.M. ET:  Ace political reporter John Fund weighs in on Bill Clinton's return to the campaign trail, on behalf of his sometime wife.  From NRO: 

Bill Clinton, perhaps the best natural campaigner of his generation, will stump for his wife’s presidential campaign in New Hampshire on Monday. He will inject an energy into her sometimes lackluster campaign, but bringing Bill back comes with a price.

Bill Clinton made a famous 1992 campaign promise that if people voted for him, it would be a package deal that included Hillary: “Buy one, get one free.” Now Hillary is in danger of reminding voters that in voting for her, they also get Bill Clinton and what he brings with him — from the dubious dealings of the Clinton Foundation to his “woman problem” and his renowned talent for evasion (“It all depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”). Democratic primary voters aren’t likely to care much, but polls show many independent voters in a general election would be leery of the baggage the couple drags with them. In a new Quinnipiac national poll, only 23 percent of independent voters view Hillary Clinton as “honest and trustworthy.”

Donna Brazile, a CNN commentator who was Al Gore’s 2000 campaign manager, has bluntly said that “one of the most important things [Bill Clinton] can do in this election cycle is basically stay out of the way. Let Hillary Clinton make the case for herself.”

But Hillary is prone to tactical stumbles. Last month she accused Donald Trump of “sexism,” prompting the real-estate mogul to fire back. Saying that Hillary’s attack left him “no choice” but to bring up Bill’s colorful past with women, he went on the attack — over and over again. He not only brought up Bill’s 1997 affair with Monica Lewinsky, a 22-year-old White House intern, but he referenced three women who had accused Clinton of sexual harassment or worse. “I hope Bill Clinton starts talking about women’s issues so that voters can see what a hypocrite he is and how Hillary abused those women!,” he tweeted Saturday.

COMMENT:  It is staggering that after 24 years in the public eye, Hillary Clinton can only get 23 percent of independent voters agreeing that she is "honest and trustworthy."  I can't imagine that number getting any better.  After all, they've known her all these years.

If Hillary is sworn in as president, she'll have been in the public eye for as long as FDR had been on the day he died.  He became a public figure in 1920, when he was the Democratic Party's vice-presidential candidate.  He died in 1945, during his fourth term as president.  Some 25 years.  Hillary became a national figure in 1992, when her husband became the Democratic nominee for president.  The inaugural year of 2017 will mark 25 years.

January 4, 2016       Permalink 

DEVASTATING – QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 9:35 A.M. ET:  Michael Barone, one of our sharpest political observers, has another take on Hillary Clinton, based on his vast knowedge of American election history.  From the Washington Examiner:   

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton's career predates the Obama presidency by a lot. At Yale Law she worked for Joe Duffey's Senate campaign in the election of 1970, when Obama was nine and Rubio and Cruz were not yet born.

But this year Clinton is running more on, or to the left of, the platform of Obama (who has 44 percent job approval) than on that of Bill Clinton (who left office with 65 percent job approval). She is obviously, though not particularly deftly, responding to a leftward lurch among Democratic voters, an impulse often seen in the final years of Democratic administrations: Bernie Sanders 2016 follows Gene McCarthy 1968, Ted Kennedy 1980 and Ralph Nader 2000.

Clinton hopes to replicate Obama's 51 percent coalition at a time when partisan preferences have been stubbornly stable for two decades. But turnout generally has been falling during the Obama presidency, Clinton is unlikely to match Obama's turnout and percentage numbers among blacks and Republican debate viewership has set new records. It's possible that the Obama presidency, having reshaped the nomination contests, may be reshaping the general electorate — and not to Democrats' benefit.

COMMENT:  I truly hope that Barone is right.  The election is now ten months away, a hundred lifetimes in politics.  And the unexpected can happen.  It is going to be the most exciting election since 1980.  And we have to win, or this country will lose.

January 4, 2016        Permalink

THIS IS REAL – AT 9:12 A.M. ET:  The holidays are over.  No more excuses for the political class to take time off.  Today starts the real presidential campaign, the campaign of 2016, the campaign for actual votes cast by people who don't have "pundit" stamped on their foreheads. 

And the Democrats are worried.  From the Washington Times: 

Democratic Party activists are conflicted over whether Hillary Clinton can take on Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump in the general election, with some fearing she provides too much ammunition for the flamboyant businessman’s style of attack.

While Mr. Trump is leading the national polls and calling the shots in what’s become a circuslike GOP primary season, Mrs. Clinton tops a sedentary Democratic race with two other opponents respectfully nipping at her without doing much damage — and party stalwarts are happy to have it that way.

“I hear a lot of people saying, ‘You know, I’ve watched the Democratic debates and the Republican debates, and they’re so different. I’m sure glad I’m on the Democratic side and they’re talking about the issues. They don’t always agree with one another, but they explain why,’” said David Allen, a Democratic Party leader in Barnstead, New Hampshire. “Democrats have resolved themselves to not go into a circus and tear one another down.”

But Mr. Allen said he does worry about how the eventual Democratic nominee will stand up to the sort of withering barbs Mr. Trump has dished out to his own side.

“We’re going to start to have to look at how the [Democratic] candidates play against Donald Trump, because he’s certainly holding onto his lead in the Republican Party, and he has certainly played the Republican candidates in a way that has hurt some of his opposition, and I think people are going to start asking, ‘All right, who’s going to stand up under his type of campaigning?’” Mr. Allen said. “If Bernie [Sanders] is the candidate, Trump will play up how un-American socialism is, and if Hillary gets it, he will dig up everything in the past 40 years and use it — and won’t mince words in using it.”

Other activists say there’s a sense that, while it’s Mrs. Clinton’s turn to run, there’s no swell of on-the-ground enthusiasm for her to carry the party’s banner into the general election.

COMMENT:   Hmmm.  Her turn.  Yeah, that's the way the old Republican Party used to work, but not this year.

It is true that there's no "wanting" of Hillary, except maybe among her legion of mink-coat 1960s feminists.  Her record is poor, her campaign style boring.  Bill Clinton is now out campaigning for her, which makes her look weak and needy.

Republicans can win, if they don't mess it up.

January 4, 2016     Permalink