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JUNE 6,  2016

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 9:25 P.M. ET: 

THE FUTURE PRESIDENT? – There's a new book coming by a Secret Service agent who guarded the Clintons when they were in the White House.  FROM LONDON'S DAILY MAIL:   A former Secret Service officer who helped protect Hillary Clinton while she was in the White House charges in a new tell-all book that the former first lady had a 'volcanic' temper and occasionally got violent with her husband – and that a loud 1995 fight left the president with a black eye.  In the book, 'Crisis of Character,' former agency officer Gary Bryne, details arriving at work after a 1995 shouting-match that left a light blue vase 'smashed to bits' and Bill sporting a 'real, live, put-a-steak-on-it black eye.'  Things got so bad that Secret Service agents had discussions about the possibility they might have to protect the president from his wife's physical attacks, the New York Post reported in advance excerpts of the book.  Hillary will twist this as proof that she favors a strong national defense.

WHAA..? – FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:   Buyers walking into a Cadillac dealer in the near future could find an interesting thing on the car lot: nothing.  General Motors Company's luxury division has about three times as many U.S. stores as German luxury auto makers or Toyota Motor Company’s Lexus, but sells only about half the volume. Short of steering around rigid state franchise laws and hammering out financial settlements to shutter stores, a plan is being hatched to convert a portion of Cadillac’s 925 stores into virtual dealerships that will be low on overhead and big on sophisticated technology.  In a somewhat unprecedented way of moving metal, Cadillac President Johan de Nysschen will this month begin looking for commitments from some store owners willing to set up showrooms where buyers can get a car serviced or learn about products via virtual reality headsets without getting behind the wheel. Driving off immediately with a new vehicle will be impossible because these stores won’t have inventory.  Yessiree, that's what I always wanted – the chance to buy a luxury car without ever driving it.  This will not go down as one of history's great ideas.

BULLETIN – CLINTON CLINCHES – FROM NBC NEWS:   Hillary Clinton has secured a majority of delegates to the Democratic National Convention, NBC News projected on Monday evening — making the former secretary of state the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party.  Clinton, whose first quest for the Democratic nomination ended in a concession speech almost exactly eight years ago to the day, now becomes the first woman ever to win the nomination of a major political party in the United States.  Clinton reached the majority of 2,383 delegates with a combination of pledged and unpledged "super delegates." The new tally includes pledges from over a dozen new superdelegates as well as her accumulation of 36 pledged delegates in Sunday's Puerto Rico primary.  Clinton was widely expected to reach the 2,383 threshold on Tuesday, when six states hold their nominating contests on one of the final primary nights of the race.  She's got it, unless Bernie Sanders can turn her superdelegates.  Highly unlikely, although the FBI probe might produce that very result.  Nothing is certain this year.

June 6, 2016       Permalink

TO BERNIE, IT'S 1917, AND THIS IS MOSCOW – AT 11:56 A.M. ET:   Bernie refuses to bow to reality.  This is a revolution.  They are in the streets.  The royal family is running away.  Princess Anastasia is missing!  From the Washington Post: 

SAN DIEGO — Bernie Sanders concluded a hurried day of campaigning Sunday by delivering a defiant rebuttal to the growing calls from some Democrats for him to drop out of the presidential race.

Rousing more than 4,000 supporters as the sun set over his rally near Qualcomm Stadium, Sanders signaled that he plans to fight on to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia and is far from ready to cede the nomination to his rival, Hillary Clinton, who picked up more delegates in contests over weekend as she inched closer to clinching.

The sprawling and rebellious scene in Southern California captured the spirit of the Sanders campaign ahead of the primaries that will take place Tuesday here and in five other states. Instead of beginning to accept Clinton’s likely ascent, the Vermont senator and the people behind him are responding with simmering indignation about the forces they believe are aligned against him.

COMMENT:  This is what happens when you allow a man to run for the nomination of a party, even though he's not a member of that party.  Ditto Donald Trump.

Parties are private organizations.  They can, within the law, make their own rules, and it's time to revisit the rules of each of our major parties.  A year like this must never happen again.  I'd rather go back to the smoke-filled rooms, where professional politicians made professional choices, then have this disorganized madness. 

We've been given bad choices this year.  As I've said, deciding between Clinton and Trump is like deciding between Bonnie and Clyde.  And the Dems' second choice, Bernie, is a political nut case who thinks the proletariat yearns for him. 

Each party had better people available, and failed to deliver.

June 6, 2016       Permalink

GEEZ! – AT 10:54 A.M. ET:  Is Donald Trump on a kamikaze mission?  He simply refuses to get off this obsession with the judge in his private case involving the now-defunct Trump University.  From the Washington Examiner:   

Donald Trump insisted Monday that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel is treating him unfairly in the Trump University case, even after facing criticism from Republicans and Democrats that his charge is racist.

"One hundred percent. This is a case that should have been thrown out a long time ago by the judge," Trump said on "Fox and Friends" Monday morning when asked if he'd be found innocent in the case.

"It shouldn't even be a case," Trump continued. "This case should have been thrown out on summary judgment. If someone else was in charge, this would have been thrown out on summary judgment."

While the judge was born in the U.S., Trump has said the judge's Mexican heritage has biased him in the case, since Trump has said he would build a wall on the southwestern U.S. border.

Hillary Clinton, many Republicans and members of the media have charged that Trump is making a big mistake by leveling that charge. Clinton called Trump's remarks inexcusable, and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Preibus called for Trump to "evolve" on the issue.

COMMENT:  Shut up, Donald!  Right now!  Nobody gives a damn about your private court case.  You're showing yourself to be too small a man to be president.  One can already sense the growing panic in the Republican Party.

We'd expected better.  We'd thought that, once you'd clinched the presidential nomination, you'd grow in stature, become a president, not a glorified landlord.  But, instead, you've gone in the other direction, giving us early Trump, the reality TV star. 

We don't even know what you stand for.  It's one thing one day, the opposite the next.  You viciously attack anyone who disagrees with you, then have a kiss-and-make-up meeting.  Eventually, some people may not want to make up.

You will argue that your tactics have gotten you the nomination.  Maybe.  But what helped enormously was having an initial field of 17 candidates, who hopelessly divided the opposition. 

Wise up.  Ross Perot, also a successful businessman, ran for president in 1992, at one point leading in the polls.  But he could not rise above pettiness and eccentricity.  He became an asterisk.  You're on track to the same fate, Donald, unless you put your ego in your pocket and your brain out front. 

June 6, 2016       Permalink

TODAY – AT 10:16 A.M. ET:   Today is D-Day.  To those of us of a certain age, the day still has deep meaning. 

It was on this day in 1944 that Allied forces invaded northern France, breaching Hitler's wall, and entering the heartland of Europe.   World War II in Europe would be over in less than a year. 

We seemed to understand D-Day, and its importance, for many decades after the war.  After all, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, Dwight D. Eisenhower, became president of the United States in 1953, leaving office in 1961.  And Ronald Reagan gave the most moving of all D-Day speeches in 1984, some 40 years after the invasion.  His successor, George H.W. Bush, who left office in 1993, was the last American president to serve in the Second World War.

In the years since, our memory of the war, and its meaning, have faded.  A new, poorly educated generation, a product of the fever swamps of American colleges, seems little interested in the sacrifices of its ancestors.  We have become soft and spoiled.  CNN anchorwomen regularly announce that we are today a "war weary" nation.  Really?  What has made us war weary?  Being inconvenienced at an airport?

Six months after D-Day we fought the Battle of the Bulge, where 20,000 Americans were killed by Nazi forces in six weeks, out of an America of 139 million.  That's war weariness.  What we have today, outside our armed forces, is bother.

We have always had a core citizenry that will keep the flame, those whom FDR called the "unending line" of patriots.  They are the ones who today, and into the future, will remember D-Day.

I like to think that most of the readers of Urgent Agenda are part of that line. 

Ronald Reagan's speech on D-Day, 1984.

June 6,  2016     Permalink

JUNE 5,  2016

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

FINALLY, WE WIN ONE – FROM FOX:   At Ohio State University, a Chinese student took tests for Chinese classmates for cash last year, guaranteeing an A.  At the University of California, Irvine, some international students used a lost-ID-card ruse to let impersonators take exams in place of others.  At the University of Arizona, a professor told of Chinese students handing in multiple copies of the same incorrect test answers.  A flood of foreign undergraduates on America’s campuses is improving the financial health of universities. It also sometimes clashes with a fundamental value of U.S. scholarship: academic integrity.  A Wall Street Journal analysis of data from more than a dozen large U.S. public universities found that in the 2014-15 school year, the schools recorded 5.1 reports of alleged cheating for every 100 international students. They recorded one such report per 100 domestic students.  Maybe all is not lost with the young generation.

HILLARY WINS ANOTHER – FROM FOX:   Hillary Clinton on Sunday won the Puerto Rico Democratic Primary, inching closer to getting enough delegates to clinch the party’s presidential nomination.  After a blowout victory Saturday in the U.S. Virgin Islands and a decisive win in the U.S. territory, Clinton is now 28 delegates short of the 2,383 needed to win the nomination, according to an Associated Press count.  The results were slow to arrive on Sunday, as officials counted ballots by hand and focused first on releasing results tied to the island's local primary elections, said Kenneth McClintock, Puerto Rico's former Democratic National Committeeman.  "We just won Puerto Rico! ¡Gracias a la Isla del Encanto por esta victoria!" tweeted Clinton.  She'll essentially clinch the nomination on Tuesday, when California and New Jersey vote.  But that assumes the loyalty of the superdelegates pledged to her.  I wouldn't be surprised if Bernie Sanders, who's turning out to be the consummate homewrecker, tries to pry them away.

A LITTLE LATE – FROM THE HILL:  Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton called for a stop to violence at Donald Trump's campaign rallies in an interview that aired Sunday, blaming the presumptive Republican presidential nominee for setting a "very bad example."  "This has to end. He set a very bad example. He created an environment in which it seems to be acceptable for someone running for president to be inciting violence, to be encouraging his supporters," Clinton said on CNN's "State of the Union."  "Now we're seeing people who are against [Trump] responding in kind. It should all stop. It's unacceptable."  A recent Trump rally in San Jose, Calif., was marred with violence by anti-Trump demonstrators.   It can't be denied that Trump has made some very foolish statements in egging on his supporters at rallies.  And it's happening on other issues as well.  He has simply got to impose some discipline on himself.  His campaign right now, which should be setting the stage for a national effort based on major issues, is still in "destroy everyone" mode.  Many in the voting public are clearly turned off, and a late Reuters poll shows Hillary Clinton regaining her past, strong lead over Trump.  You have to know how to run for president.

June 5, 2016       Permalink

LAST MAJOR PRIMARIES ON TUESDAY – AT 1:08 P.M. ET:  California and New Jersey, two very important states, vote in two days.   From The Hill:   

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton holds a slim lead over rival Bernie Sanders in California ahead of Tuesday’s primary, according to a new poll.

Clinton leads Sanders 49 percent to 47 percent among likely Democratic primary voters in the CBS News Battleground Tracker Poll released Sunday morning.

The majority of Sanders supporters in California, 57 percent, said the main reason they are voting for him is to influence the party, even if they don't think he can get the nomination. Six in 10 Sanders supporters want him to fight on to the Democratic National Convention in late July.

And among California Democrats overall, 71 percent want Sanders to endorse Clinton and have a unified convention when the primaries are over.

Pollsters surveyed 1,187 likely California voters and 674 likely Democratic primary voters from May 31 to June 3. Their findings have a margin of error of 3.9 percentage points for likely voters and 5 points for likely Democratic voters.

Clinton has a wider lead over the Vermont senator in New Jersey, however, at 61 to 34 percent.

COMMENT:  Bottom line:  Clinton will probably come through Tuesday with enough votes to clinch the nomination.  Bernie will then have to decide whether to seek unity, or become a homewrecker.  I wouldn't be surprised either way.

June 5, 2016       Permalink

STATE OF THE NATION – QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 11:52 A.M. ET:  This is a terrible political year.  Look at the choices we're being offered?  Is a third choice imperative?  From Greg Orman and Patrick H. Caddell at RealClearPolitics: 

There is a crisis of legitimacy threatening the 2016 election. As the primary process wraps up, it appears that the electorate will be offered the choice between two candidates who have the highest unfavorability ratings in the history of American presidential elections. With the middle class under siege from stagnant wages and rising costs of living, our entitlement programs on an unsustainable path, and systemic corruption infecting our politics, a majority of Americans are shaking their heads in disbelief that these are our only choices.

This crisis of legitimacy isn’t confined to the presidential election. Grassroots Americans are challenging the competence, legitimacy, and performance of its governing elite. Some three-fourths of the American people believe that the government in Washington no longer operates with the consent of the governed. There is no way that the current status quo establishment, which did not even perceive the gathering storm before it arrived, can reform, revive, and restore the country.

And...

Only a new movement, which offers not a singular savior but a candidacy around which the American people can rally, will be able to start the process of healing our country. Only a new movement that empowers Americans from every segment of society to bring a new energy and sensibility to our politics will allow us to chart a course that lifts up every American who is willing to work for the American Dream. It would be more than a single candidate. It would be a ticket of partners and a leadership team driven by a broad movement of grassroots supporters.

And...

Who can make this happen? Those of you who are reading and agree with this essay. Those who could help fund an effort both to secure ballot access and to publicly inform and give exposure for this effort to the millions of Americans who wait in hope. Those who could join the effort to secure the necessary signatures. Those who would be willing to give their time and energy to bringing a campaign for such a candidacy to light. And the final and most important: an American or two who are in a credible position to step forward -- as a candidate or a ticket -- in service to the cause of America.

COMMENT:  Read the whole thing.  The piece is well argued.  But, at the end, we're still left with the reality of a presidential election in five months.  And we're left without a candidate.  Without that name, all the talk of a third party is meaningless.  It's the old story:  You can't beat somebody with nobody.

I agree that we have terrible choices.  And we have no Eisenhower to step in, as he did in 1952.  And there is no Reagan, as in 1980.

If you know anybody, write to me.

June 5, 2016       Permalink

A NATION OF LAWS? – AT 11:31 A.M. ET:  A stunning investigative report by, remarkably, the very liberal Boston Globe: 

They were among the nation’s top priorities for deportation, criminals who were supposed to be sent back to their home countries. But instead they were released, one by one, in secret across the United States. Federal officials said that many of the criminals posed little threat to the public, but did little to verify whether that was true.

It wasn’t.

A Globe review of 323 criminals released in New England from 2008 to 2012 found that as many as 30 percent committed new offenses, including rape, attempted murder, and child molestation — a rate that is markedly higher than Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have suggested to Congress in the past.

The names of these criminals have never before been made public and are coming to light now only because the Globe sued the federal government for the list of criminals immigration authorities returned to neighborhoods across the country. A judge ordered the names released in 2013, and the Globe then undertook the work that the federal government didn’t, scouring court records to find out how many released criminals reoffended.

COMMENT:  Praise goes to the Globe.  Read the whole piece.  We are supposed to be a nation of laws.  Under the Obama regime we have become a nation of laws that the Obama crowd likes.  The other laws are ignored.

June 5,  2016     Permalink