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MARCH 26,  2016

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:57 P.M. ET: 

BERNIE BURNS – From Fox:   Sen. Bernie Sanders was projected to win the Alaska and Washington Democratic presidential caucuses -- victories he hopes will spark a Western states comeback and help him cut into frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s substantial lead.  The Associated Press projected Sanders the winner of both contests. The results of Saturday’s third presidential contest, the Hawaii Democratic Caucus, will not be announced until at least midnight.  Hillary is still well ahead, and she has a lock on the superdelegates, who are party regulars. 

WHO CARES WHAT THE PEOPLE THINK? – From the Washington Examiner:   In a brief Easter weekend radio address, President Obama vowed to decimate the self-proclaimed Islamic State, but he said the United States will do so by offering an example of freedom, tolerance and open society.  "Our openness to refugees fleeing ISIL's violence; our determination to win the battle against ISIL's hateful and violent propaganda — a distorted view of Islam that aims to radicalize young Muslims to their cause," are paramount in the fight, Obama told Americans during his weekly radio address.  Admitting entry to Syrian and Iraqi refugees has become a divisive issue in the U.S. as well as Europe, but Obama made clear he has no plan to back off his promise to admit 100,000 to the U.S. this year.  America is a compassionate nation, but we have a right to wonder how many of those 100,000 will be here to do violence to us, not to live among us.  It is not bigotry to ask that, and expect an honest answer. 

THE IRONY – From AFP:   BRUSSELS — The organizers of a “March Against Fear” planned for Sunday to mark the Brussels terror attacks said they had cancelled the event after the authorities asked them to do so because of security fears.  “We understand this request. The security of our citizens is an absolute priority. We join the authorities in proposing a delay and ask people not to come this Sunday,” the organizers said in a statement on Saturday. The organizers of a “March Against Fear” planned for Sunday to mark the Brussels terror attacks said they had cancelled the event after the authorities asked them to do so because of security fears.  “We understand this request. The security of our citizens is an absolute priority. We join the authorities in proposing a delay and ask people not to come this Sunday,” the organizers said in a statement on Saturday.  Hmm.  A march against fear cancelled because of fear.  Only in the European Union.

March 26, 2016       Permalink

POLITICS LATEST – AT 12:31 P.M. ET:  There's stuff going on this weekend on the Democratic side, where the presidential contest is between a congenital liar and an old Marxist.  God Bless America.  From ABC News: 

Bernie Sanders pushed for a trifecta of wins in Saturday's Democratic presidential caucuses in Hawaii, Alaska and Washington state, hoping to stoke a spring comeback against the commanding front-runner, Hillary Clinton.

The Vermont senator spent much of the week on the West Coast, trying to build his enduring support among liberal activists into a Saturday sweep that could help him narrow a gap of 300 delegates won in primaries behind Clinton. That's about double the margin that then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama held over Clinton in the 2008 primaries.

While Sanders faces a steep climb to the nomination, a string of losses for Clinton would highlight persistent vulnerabilities within her own party. Sanders continues to attract tens of thousands to his rallies — drawing more than 17,000 in Seattle this week — and has collected more than $140 million from 2 million donors.

But turning that passionate support into the party nomination is growing increasingly difficult. Clinton has a delegate lead of 1,223 to 920 over Sanders, according to an Associated Press analysis, an advantage that expands to 1,691-949 once the superdelegates, or party officials who can back either candidate, are included.

Based on that count, Sanders still needs to win 58 percent of the remaining delegates from primaries and caucuses to have a majority of those delegates by June's end.

His bar is even higher when the party officials are considered. He needs to win more than 67 percent of the remaining delegates overall — from primaries, caucuses and the ranks of uncommitted superdelegates — to prevail.

"I have gotten 2.6 million more votes than Bernie Sanders," Clinton told supporters crowded into a union hall in Everett, Washington, this week. "We are on the path to the nomination, and I want Washington to be part of how we get there."

COMMENT:  If I had to make a choice between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, and that is some awful choice, I'd take appropriate pain killers and tranquilizers and choose Hillary.  At least she's the Devil we know, and quite a Devil at that. 

Hillary is dishonest, reckless, but marginally sane.  Sanders, as noted here before, is a dangerous man with ideas that come right out of the Swedish left.  As Mort Sahl used to say, he's fine, if you're 12.  I'll add that if you're more than 12, it's a problem.

And if Hillary is indicted?  Pray the Dems then go for Biden, who is also marginally sane, and has the added attraction of being basically decent, if wrong.

What a choice on the Dem side this year.  Geez. 

And on the GOP side, I wish they'd get off the subject of each other's wives, and get back to adulthood.  I want to see a debate between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.  Trump won't agree, I'm afraid, because Ted would cream him in a New York minute. 

March 26, 2016       Permalink

WHAT TO DO? – AT 11:51 A.M. ET:  After every terrorist attack we ask the same questions, but the answers are often constricted by "political correctness."  Must not be impolite.   Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy is not politically correct, and he gives some seasoned and sane advice.  From NRO:   

With no hope of winning an argument on the facts, demagogues resort to the argument ad hominem. Too often, it works. And in the modern “progressive” West, no demagogic tactic works better than branding one’s political adversaries as racists. That is why the Muslim Brotherhood, the world’s most influential Islamic-supremacist organization, dreamed up the term “Islamophobia.” It is why Western progressives, stalwart allies of the Brotherhood, have lustily embraced the Islamophobia smear tactic — even sought to engrave it in our law, in brazen violation of the First Amendment.

It beats trying to refute the irrefutable nexus between Islamic scripture, sharia supremacism, and jihadist terror. It beats trying to rationalize the sheer idiocy of a policy, their policy, that idealizes Islam as the irenic monolith they would like it to be, rather than the complex of competing and contradictory convictions it is. Of the latter, the most dynamic is the conviction that Islam is an alternative civilization determined to conquer the West by force, by political pressure, by cultural aggression, and by exploiting Western civil liberties (liberties that are forbidden in the sharia societies Islamists would impose).

Ted Cruz found himself in the middle of this demagogic storm this week. Reacting to the latest jihadist atrocity in Brussels, in which 31 were killed and 230 wounded, Senator Cruz argued that to protect our national security against radical Islamic terror networks, it is imperative for law enforcement to conduct surveillance in Muslim communities.

Cruz was not calling for a dragnet targeting all Muslims. In his presidential campaign (to which I am an adviser), he has stressed the importance of identifying the enemy as radical Islam. That is not campaign rhetoric; it is how we figure out who warrants surveillance — and far from being anything new, it is how counterterrorism was done before President Obama came to power. Yet, as night follows day, the Islamist-leftist alliance pounced with the fury of an emperor whose lack of clothes has just been noticed.

COMMENT:  I urge you to read the whole piece.  Common sense defined.  Of course we must guard civil liberties, but, as the saying goes, the Constitution is not a suicide pact.  We don't have to destroy ourselves just to be respectable in the faculty lounges of the Ivy League or the plush parlors of Georgetown. 

March 26, 2016       Permalink

OUR WARM NEW FRIENDS – AT 10:43 A.M. ET:  I guess the North Koreans are just jealous over the attention we're giving Europe right now.  We understand.  It's not fun to be ignored.  From The New York Times:

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea released a propaganda video on Saturday that depicts a nuclear strike on Washington, along with a warning to “American imperialists” not to provoke the North.

The four-minute video clip, titled “Last Chance,” uses computer animation to show what looks like an intercontinental ballistic missile flying through the earth’s atmosphere before slamming into Washington, near what appears to be the Lincoln Memorial. A nuclear explosion follows.

“If the American imperialists provoke us a bit, we will not hesitate to slap them with a pre-emptive nuclear strike,” read the Korean subtitles in the video, which was uploaded to the YouTube channel of DPRK Today, a North Korean website. “The United States must choose! It’s up to you whether the nation called the United States exists on this planet or not.”

Such remarks are in line with recent threats and assertions from North Korea about its nuclear and missile capabilities. The North recently threatened a nuclear strike against Washington in retaliation for new United Nations sanctions, which were imposed this month to punish North Korea for its most recent tests of a nuclear device and a long-range rocket.

COMMENT:  Some might be inclined to dismiss threats like that.  I'm not.  Dictatorships often threaten what they're really thinking.  And, after 9/11, why should we assume we're immune to a nuclear attack?  We never assumed that during the Cold War, after all.  That's why we maintained, and continue to maintain, a massive nuclear deterrent.

But what if a nuclear-armed country cannot be deterred?  What if its fanaticism overcomes all reason?  That is a legitimate fear, especially when dealing with nations like North Korea.  It is equally legitimate when dealing with terrorist groups, who inevitably will obtain some kind of weapon of mass destruction.

March 26,  2016     Permalink

MARCH 25,  2016

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

INSPIRATION – From The Washington Times:   President Obama told a group of young people in Argentina not to worry about the differences between capitalism and communism and “just choose from what works.”  “So often in the past there’s been a sharp division between left and right, between capitalist and communist or socialist,” the president said Wednesday during a Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative town hall meeting in Buenos Aires. “And especially in the Americas, that’s been a big debate, right? Oh, you know, you’re a capitalist Yankee dog, and oh, you know, you’re some crazy communist that’s going to take away everybody’s property.  “And I mean, those are interesting intellectual arguments, but I think for your generation, you should be practical and just choose from what works."  What an inspiring concept.  Hey, it's all the same.  Can you imagine this gent trying to write the Declaration of Independence?  "We hold these truths...well, maybe they aren't exactly true.."

AND FROM KINDERGARTEN – From The Hill:   Portland literally “put a bird on it” at a Bernie Sanders rally in Oregon on Monday.  A bird landed on the Democratic presidential candidate's podium during his speech, and the crowd went wild.   “That bird really is a dove asking us for world peace,” Sanders said.  Yeah, right.  Bernie has spoken personally to the bird.  I'm sure he's a fine old guy, but Bernie Sanders appeals mostly to adolescents of all ages.  In his own kindly way, he's a very dangerous man, the kind whose weakness provokes other nations into starting wars.  Even the bird can't change that.

ANOTHER GREAT MOMENT IN SCHOLARSHIP – From Fox:   School and police officials in Southern California said Thursday that a kindergarten play at an elementary school has been canceled after parents fought over seating arrangements.  The Riverside Press-Enterprise reported that kindergarten students from Ridgemoor Elementary were set to put on a performance at Hans Christensen Middle School. Menifee Union School District spokeswoman Betti Cadmus said more than 300 people were in attendance.  However, Riverside County Sheriff’s Deputy Michael Vasquez said at around 7 p.m., several parents got into a fight “regarding seating and viewing privileges.”   “Some people walked to the front row and began filming,” Vasquez told the newspaper. He said a verbal altercation then turned physical.  According to the Press-Enterprise, the play was called off and authorities were called to the school.   Please understand that this is all caused by American imperialism and Israeli settlements.  Otherwise, these people would be calm, serene, and content.  Oh, another cause is Donald Trump's wife.

SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO – From Breitbart:   The leaders of Democracy Spring, a coalition of far-left groups plotting a mass civil disobedience movement to begin next month, told Breitbart News they have already confirmed 2,912 protesters who pledged specifically to risk arrest.  I think we should grant their wish.  We should also televise the court proceedings as these soldiers of democracy explain their deep, penetrating philosophy of government. 

March 25,  2016     Permalink

WISCONSIN FOR CRUZ? – AT 11:40 A.M. ET:  A new poll by a polling organization I don't know has Ted Cruz beating Donald Trump in Wisconsin.   From The Hill:

Ted Cruz leads Donald Trump by 5 percent in Wisconsin according to a conservative poll out Friday that shows the Texas senator’s lead being hampered by the candidacy of John Kasich.

Cruz scores 36 percent support in Wisconsin compared to Trump’s 31 percent and Kasich’s 21 percent in the Washington Free Beacon poll. But in a one-on-one contest against Trump, Cruz hits 48 percent to Trump’s 36 percent.

The Free Beacon, a right-leaning website, commissioned the poll by Basswood Research. The polling group has done work for mostly conservative causes including the Club for Growth’s political arm, the Senate Conservatives Fund, and both the House and Senate Republican campaign arms.
The lead is just outside the poll’s 4.4 percent margin of error.

The majority of respondents had concerns with Trump’s temperament and questions about his conservative chops.

COMMENT:  As noted, I don't know the pollster, but the Free Beacon, which commissioned the poll, is a responsible publication.  The Wisconsin primary takes place a week from Tuesday.  If Cruz can defeat Trump, it could be a major development in the campaign, and slow Trump's momentum. 

The Cruz forces are hoping for an open convention.  They believe that Trump, if he doesn't win on the first ballot, would start to fade because of the intense opposition to him from within the party. 

This is theoretical stuff.   The voters will have a say in it.

March 25, 2016       Permalink 

ISIS IS GOING GLOBAL – AT 10:34 A.M. ET:  Despite reassurances from Grand Admiral Kerry that ISIS is being defeated, it appears that the terror group is simply changing its strategy.  From the Washington Institute for Near East Policy:    

According to the latest EUROPOL counterterrorism report, the Paris attacks and subsequent investigations demonstrate a shift by the Islamic State toward "going global" in its terrorism campaign. The Islamic State has developed an "external action command," EUROPOL notes, which "trained for special forces style attacks in the international environment." The police organization's warning for Europe was stark: "There is every reason to expect that [the Islamic State], [Islamic State-]inspired terrorists or another religiously inspired terrorist group will undertake a terrorist attack somewhere in Europe again, but particularly in France, intended to cause mass casualties amongst the civilian population."

If the evolution of the Islamic State threat to Europe was not yet perfectly clear after the Paris attacks, it has become so in the wake of the Brussels bombings. And yet, while Europe is now fully aware of the scope of the threat, it remains unprepared to cope with it. This includes shortcomings in both the counterterrorism capabilities of European states as well as their efforts to integrate immigrant communities into the larger European societies in which they live.

COMMENT:  And the United States isn't providing much leadership.  The Paris attacks were in November.  Brussels was this week, only four months later.  ISIS is stepping up its pace.  We can expect another attack before our election, and it could be here. 

ISIS is based on an ideology  It recruits through ideology, not by offering scholarships.  As we learned from World War II, it is extremely hard to defeat an ideology.  In that war we had to defeat and occupy the main ideological perpetrators.

I'm afraid there's a great deal of conflict ahead.  Obama has done so much damage to our national will, and national will is in very short supply in Europe. 

March 25, 2016       Permalink

UPDATE, AT 10:25 A.M. ET:  From the New York Post:   New York City siblings Sascha and Alexander Pinczowski were killed in the suicide bombings in Brussels, it was confirmed Friday.

AMERICANS DIED IN BRUSSELS – AT 9:21 A.M. ET:  For some reason, Americans haven't focused on the fact that their fellow citizens died in the Brussels attacks.  And, incredibly, we still don't know their names.  From Fox: 

At least two Americans are among the dead from the twin terror attacks in Brussels earlier this week, a senior U.S. official told Fox News on Friday.

Authorities have not released the identities of the U.S. citizens who were among the 31 people killed in coordinated bombings Tuesday at Zaventem Airport and a metro station. But Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged the deaths of Americans after meeting with Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel Friday.

"The United States is praying and grieving with you for the loved ones of those cruelly taken from us, including Americans, and for the many who were injured in these despicable attacks," Kerry said after meeting Michel in Brussels.

A senior official said the families of two Americans had been informed of their deaths. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not have further details.

Relatives of siblings Sascha and Alexander Pinczowski, Dutch nationals living in New York known to have been at the aiport, issued a statement Thursday confirming that the pair was not on a list of survivors.

COMMENT:  A number of Americans, some interviewed on CNN this morning, were also injured.  There are also stories out of Belgium and France of a number of raids today. 

Why is it that, after a major attack, there are so many raids in the first few days.  Weren't these targets known before the attack?  Is this new information?  Where is it coming from?  I'd like to know.

With the news that at least two Americans died, Obama's behavior in the last two days – going to a baseball game in Cuba and doing the tango in Argentina – looks even more abominable.  I don't think he cares.

March 25,  2016     Permalink