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SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27,  2010

CRISIS IN KOREA – AT 9:44 P.M. ET:  To its credit, the administration is going ahead with military exercises with South Korea, despite North Korean threats.  But a spark could ignite this tense situation. 

YEONPYEONG ISLAND, South Korea (AP) — The United States and South Korea prepared for war games Sunday as South Koreans demanded vengeance over a deadly North Korean artillery bombardment that has raised fears of more clashes between the bitter rivals.

The North, meanwhile, worked to justify one of the worst attacks on South Korean territory since the 1950-53 Korean War. Four South Koreans, including two civilians, died after the North rained artillery on the small Yellow Sea island of Yeonpyeong, which is home to both fishing communities and military bases.

North Korea said civilians were used as a "human shield" around artillery positions and lashed out at what it called a "propaganda campaign" against Pyongyang.

It claimed the United States orchestrated last Tuesday's clash so that it could stage joint naval exercises in the Yellow Sea with the South that include a U.S. nuclear powered supercarrier — enraging the North and making neighboring China uneasy.

COMMENT:  The North Koreans are, in their mentality, stuck in Stalinist days.  They are also a major proliferator of nuclear technology.  For years, with the help of such brilliant international visionaries as Jimmah Carter, they've gotten away with murder by engaging in deceptive, prolonged negotiations.  They have violated any agreements that have come out of these talks. 

Firmness on our part now may not only deter the North, but might influence other nations, like Iran, who have also been pushing and pushing.  Laxness on our part now is the surest road to war. 

November 27, 2010    Permalink

SNIPPET OF THE DAY – AT 11:57 A.M. ET:

(AFP) - After billions of years the Sun finally has an owner -- a woman from Spain's soggy region of Galicia said Friday she had registered the star at a local notary public as being her property.   Angeles Duran, 49, told the online edition of daily El Mundo she took the step in September after reading about an American man who had registered himself as the owner of the moon and most planets in our solar system.

Just wait 'til Spain's socialist government sends her the property tax bill.

November 27, 2010       Permalink

ARE YOU BELIEVING THIS?  OUR WONDERFUL FRIENDS IN ACTION – AT 11:21 A.M. ET:  When will we understand?  From AFP:

PAKISTANI Muslims have threatened anarchy if the Government pardons a Christian mother sentenced to death for blasphemy, calling hundreds of protesters onto the streets.

Hundreds of Muslims marched in the eastern city of Lahore after the most influential Sunni Muslim alliance in Pakistan urged the Government not to grant mother-of-five Aasia Bibi clemency.

A crowd of several hundred called for "Jihad" and pledged to sacrifice their lives to protect the honour of Muhammad.

The rally was organised by a subsidiary of banned charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which the United Nations has blacklisted as a terrorist organisation.

"We will hold nationwide protests if the government pardons the Christian woman," the subsidiary's chief coordinator, Qari Yaqub, told participants.

COMMENT:  What year is this?  I think it's 2010.  I didn't think it was the Middle Ages.

Now, where are the feminists?  Haven't heard a word.

Where are the so-called "multiculturalists"?  Nothing from them either.  Are we required to "respect" the above "cultural narrative"?  I don't think so.  I really don't.

Oh, and, finally, what "policies" of the United States led these people to think the way they do?  None.

We await editorial comment from the mainstream media.  Don't hold your breath.

November 27, 2010      Permalink

OUT OF TOUCH – AT 11:05 A.M. ET:  It is stunning to see how out of touch President Obama is.  Moreover, he doesn't seem to understand, or care about, the workings of a democracy.  From The Politico:

President Barack Obama, in a wide-ranging, reflective interview with Barbara Walters, staunchly defended his controversial policies — including sweeping health care reforms and the massive economic stimulus package — as bold but necessary steps to help transform an economy that was at the brink of collapse to one that is "growing."

"The notion that somehow you can only do one thing at once is simply not true," Obama told Walters in the interview, which aired on ABC Friday evening. "The fact is, that we stabilized the financial system ... we turned an economy that was contracting to one that was growing. We have added a million jobs over the last year to the economy."

And despite the intense criticism and political costs, the president said the health care overhaul will be "a lasting legacy that I am extraordinarily proud of."

COMMENT:  It's as if the opinions of the American people count for nothing.  Mr. Obama may be "extraordinarily proud" of the new health law, but Americans don't like it, and have said so repeatedly, most recently in this month's congressional elections.  They never wanted an overhaul.  They wanted specific reforms.  They should have been listened to, and respected.

But never mind.  Who are those peasants out there?  Why, they didn't even go to the right colleges.  Who are they to tell the Obama Palace what to do?

The president talks of adding a million jobs, but the unemployment rate is still over 10 percent, and even his own administration's employment predictions are discouraging.

And spending is out of control, another factor that American voters responded to on election day.  Our citizens can do the math.  We cannot sustain this spending and this debt. 

Mr. Obama seems to think he was given an unlimited mandate in 2008.  He was not.  And any illusion in that regard should have been dispelled by his party's loss of 63 seats in the House just weeks ago.

We expected a White House political operation as good as the one we saw in the 2008 campaign.  Instead, the White House is isolated and drifting.  There is only one man who can fix that, and so far he doesn't seem to realize that he has a problem.

November 27, 2010       Permalink

BULLETIN:  ANOTHER TERROR ATTEMPT HERE – AT 10:30 A.M. ET:  From Fox, with a hat tip to reader Joseph J. Gallick:

PORTLAND, Ore. – Federal agents in a sting operation arrested a Somali-born teenager just as he tried blowing up a van he believed was loaded with explosives at a crowded Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, authorities said.

The bomb was an elaborate fake supplied by the agents and the public was never in danger, authorities said.

Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, was arrested at 5:40 p.m. Friday just after he dialed a cell phone that he thought would set off the blast but instead brought federal agents and police swooping down on him.

Yelling "Allahu Akbar!" -- Arabic for "God is great!" -- Mohamud tried to kick agents and police after he was taken into custody, according to prosecutors.

COMMENT:  A great success by our security forces.  But another close call.  The guy actually pulled the trigger.  And had he not been intercepted earlier, hundreds might have been killed.

We have been so lucky so far.  And we have been blessed by the kind of effective security disparaged and ridiculed by the far left.  But there is a law of averages.  The enemy – and it is an enemy – only has to be lucky once. 

Maybe this incident will wake up some people on our flakey West Coast, where voters went to the polls on election day and elected the same liberal crowd that has trouble seeing the reality of what we face.

November 27, 2010    Permalink

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 26,  2010

NOW THIS IS GOOD – AT 7:01 P.M. ET:  I admire people in politics who, if they make a mistake, work to correct it.  It's far better than to make excuses or, Obama style, blame someone else.  Again, from Fox:

In the wake of the Tea Party's 2010 victories and losses, a new effort is underway to improve vetting and candidate recruitment. It is an explicit acknowledgement of past mistakes to avoid in the future.

Ned Ryun of MajorityAmerica.org is running a nationwide "New Leaders" program with several Tea Party factions and says the movement is going through some rigorous self-appraisal.

"I will say this when I'm talking with these local leaders they have mentioned by name Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle and said we'd prefer not to have that again in 2012. In many ways they felt it was damaging to the movement to have candidates like," Ryun said.

It is a goal being embraced by several of the major organizations within the broader Tea Party movement.

"We've got to do some vetting of the candidates because we don't want someone getting out there announcing they're a Tea Party candidate, getting some good support and suddenly we discover something terrible about them," said Judson Phillips who organized the first Tea Party Convention as a founder of Tea Party Nation.

Tea Partiers admit they did not know much about Republican Christine O'Donnell's background before supporting her for the GOP nomination in Delaware. It will never be known if a well-run Republican campaign in Nevada may have ousted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, but Tea Partiers are painfully aware that Sharron Angle spent more time running from reporters than she did waging a credible campaign.

To the Tea Party, such setbacks amount to growing pains and the operative word is growing. "We want to see candidates that can be far more credible, that are able to effectively communicate the ideas that we know are winning ideas. And not have the other things that came with O'Donnell and Angle campaigns," Ryun said.

COMMENT:  Wonderful attitude.  Examine what went wrong, and fix it.  The Tea Partiers are, of course, denounced as kooks, extremists, racists, nutballs.  In fact, they appear to be thoughtful people who know how to build a movement and improve it as they go.  Kudos.

November 26, 2010      Permalink

ANOTHER "HUMAN RIGHTS" ORGANIZATION UNMASKED AND PUNISHED – AT 6:46 P.M. ET:  ACORN, an organization that used to count Barack Obama among its supporters, is no more, but the melody lingers on.  From Fox:

The scandal-plagued ACORN may no longer exist, but its tarnished legacy lives on in court, as the activist group and its former employees face criminal punishment.

So far this year, at least 18 former workers have admitted guilt or been convicted on varying charges of election fraud. The punishment has ranged from probation to several months of prison time.

ACORN, once a powerful advocate for low-income and minority voters, shuttered its operations amid plummeting revenues in March, six months after conservative activists posing as a pimp and prostitute caught on video some of the group's employees offering them tax advice.

But the group is still facing charges in Nevada on conspiracy to commit the crime of compensation for registration of voters.The trial, originally scheduled to begin Monday, has been postponed likely until next year.

COMMENT:  If it weren't for Fox News, I don't think we'd know much about these cases.  But we can only wonder how many close elections have been affected by ACORN'S corrupt activities. 

I fear that another group like it will take its place.  They really don't help minority voters, of course.  They only help the politicians who get elected to "serve" minority communities.  Left-wing groups tend to be top-down operations.  While blabbering about "the people," they actually are more committed to leaders.  And, eventually, these groups become businesses, then rackets, as the philosopher-longshoreman Eric Hoffer once pointed out.

November 26, 2010     Permalink

EARLY RETIREMENT FOR OBAMA? – AT 9:21 A.M. ET:  We are already in the 2012 presidential election cycle.  And Byron York of the Washington Examiner thinks the indicators for President Obama are not very good:

A look inside his poll numbers suggests that if he cannot turn around some key trends, he'll be a one-term president.

Just look at the exit polls from 2008, which reveal the demographic contours of Obama's support. Compare those with Gallup's weekly analysis of the president's approval rating, drawn from multiple polls broken down by age, gender, political philosophy, and the like. Throw in some insights from the midterm elections, and the mix shows a dramatic deterioration in Obama's 2008 support.

And...

Start with voters who call themselves independents. Obama won 52 percent of them in 2008; now, according to Gallup, he is at 42 percent. Obama's party as a whole fared even worse among independents in the midterms, losing them to Republicans by 19 points. If Obama does anywhere near that badly in 2012, he'll lose.

Next, women. In 2008, Obama won 56 percent of female voters. Today, he's at 49 percent. If that number doesn't improve, he'll be in deep trouble. (Obama is also down with men, from 49 percent in 2008 to 44 percent now.)

Even younger voters, a key part of Obama's coalition, are peeling away. In '08, Obama won 66 percent of voters 18-29 years of age. Now, he's at 58 percent.

And...

Then there are white voters. In '08, Obama won 43 percent of whites. Now, he's at 37 percent -- a dangerously low number for his re-election hopes. He won 67 percent of Hispanic voters in 2008; now, he's at 58 percent...

...Just one group has stuck with Obama through it all. In '08, he won 58 percent of people with graduate degrees. Now, he's at 59 percent. It appears that academic types will be with Obama always, but they're not enough.

Yeah, the anthropology vote just isn't as decisive as it once was. 

There are counter-arguments, of course, but they seem weak:

Obama supporters point to the example of Bill Clinton, whose approval dipped to 40 percent after losing Congress in 1994, only to climb to 54 percent before winning easy re-election in 1996. Maybe that will happen again.

But Clinton's former pollster, Doug Schoen, doesn't see it that way. Schoen recently did a survey asking voters whether Obama deserves to be re-elected and found that 56 percent believe the president doesn't deserve another term, while just 38 percent believe he does.

York makes the point that major Republican blunders can still save the president, and we observe that the Republican Party has often proved itself blunder-friendly.  We must especially be concerned about the party's militant base demanding a presidential candidate who is unelectable. 

But, York says, "at this point, it will be hard for Obama to save himself. He'll need a lot of help to win a second term in the White House."

I don't think the picture is entirely bleak for the president.  An economic turnaround can save him.  So can an astute handling of a foreign crisis, although the record isn't encouraging.  "Astute handling" is not Obama's middle name.

First item of business:  to identify the Republican candidates who can beat Obama, who can run a professional campaign against a hostile press.  The bench is not all that great.  I get the sense that many in the party are looking for a dark horse, or wishing that Marco Rubio was older.  Without the best candidate, the message can turn to dust.

November 26, 2010      Permalink

Y'THINK? – AT 8:40 A.M. ET:  It will come as a shock, but some people in authority are actually starting to think intelligently about airline security.  Calming medications may be required as you absorb this shock.  From The Politico:

If Americans don’t want the government touching their “junk” to improve air security, the alternative may well be greater scrutiny of passengers’ travel histories and personal backgrounds, security experts say.

The public backlash against the aggressive pat-downs the federal government rolled out this month could put more pressure on the government to introduce security measures previously rejected on privacy grounds, including in-depth interrogations of travelers at airports, government scrutiny of passengers’ airline information, and even creation of a secure, standardized national ID card.

Oh dear.  Isn't that...dare I say it in polite circles...the Israeli system?  Must not say it.  Might offend some very sensitive people.

“The question is, which kind of privacy do you want to have?” said Stewart Baker, a top Department of Homeland Security official during the Bush administration. “This has been a pretty searing experience for DHS. Obviously, we’re not going to do more in this area [of physical checks] and it would be welcome if we could do less….The alternative is to look for terrorists in advance.”

That approach to security, Baker said, calls for singling out suspicious passengers and subjecting them to intense questioning.

Can you just hear the reaction among "civil liberties" groups?  These are the same groups that are curiously silent about the scanners and pat-downs.  Bit of hypocrisy on the left, no?

We are paying the price for political correctness, but why should we be shocked?  Political correctness on college campuses has led to outrageous breaches of freedom – like speech codes and different standards for different ethnic groups.  A true civil libertarian told me some years ago that what gets taught in colleges becomes national policy 20 years later.  Chickens are coming home to roost.

November 26, 2010      Permalink

LONDON TERROR THREAT – AT 8:14 A.M. ET:  Will London become the major target for terrorists in the next two years?  Remember that there are two spectacular events planned in that city – the April wedding of Prince William, and the 2012 Olympics.  Thus far, the wedding announcement having just been made, British security has been focused on the Olympics.  From London's Telegraph:

Hundreds of street parties, local festivals and big screen events across the country timed to coincide with the London 2012 Olympic Games could be vulnerable to terrorist attack, a government security assessment has found.

The results of the review, released by the government, highlight the risks posed by “parallel events” run alongside the games but not part of them.

With just 20 months before the games, security officials are concerned by what they call “displacement” in which terrorists change their plans to attack well-protected Olympic venues and aim instead at softer targets.

A campaign is to be launched to get every event registered with local authorities by the end of March so that police can make an assessment of the risk, the Daily Telegraph has learned.

But...

Assistant Commissioner Chris Allison, in charge of the policing operation at Scotland Yard, said there was likely to be a shortage of trained search officers, explosives dogs and handlers, firearms officers, close protection officers and mounted officers.

Advertising that fact may not be the wisest course, in my view. 

If there are willing terrorists in Britain, among the country's partly radical Muslim population, or if they can be smuggled in through holes in the travel and immigration security net, there may be little police can do to prevent terror attempts...as long as the terrorists are willing to give up their lives.  The suicide bomber has his own guidance system – himself – and is not seeking any protection.  Beyond that, we have to hope for technical incompetence, like the kind shown recently in New York when a huge bomb planted in Times Square failed to go off.

Britain is going through drastic reductions in spending, and it's been made clear that security for the Olympics is not exempt from those cuts...another message one might wish would be kept private. 

The purpose of terror is to terrorize and to convince a population that its government must change policies.  A royal wedding and the Olympics are ideal targets.

November 26, 2010       Permalink

HIGH TENSION IN KOREA – AT 7:58 A.M. ET:  From Fox:

Tensions have soared between the Koreas since the North's strike Tuesday destroyed large parts of this island, killing two civilians as well as two marines in a major escalation of their sporadic skirmishes along the sea border.

The attack — eight months after a torpedo sank a South Korean warship further west, killing 46 sailors — has also laid bare weaknesses in South Korea's defense 60 years after the Korean War. The skirmish forced South Korea's beleaguered defense minister to resign Thursday, and President Lee Myung-bak on Friday named a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the post.

The heightened animosity between the Koreas is taking place as the North undergoes a delicate transition of power from leader Kim Jong Il to his young, inexperienced son Kim Jong Un, who is in his late 20s and is expected to eventually succeed his ailing father.

As Washington and Seoul pressed China to use its influence on Pyongyang to ease tensions amid worries of all-out war, the U.S. prepared to send a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to South Korean waters for joint military drills in the Yellow Sea starting Sunday.

COMMENT:  There are no reports of any troop buildup on the North Korean side of the border.  We're down to educated guessing as to why the North launched this latest barrage.  Most analysts seem to think it's a show of defiance combined with a demand for attention. 

The appeasement crowd, led by Jimmah Carter, says the North wants to negotiate.  Negotiate what?  We've been negotiating with them for years, but never seem to get anywhere.  The appeasement crowd believes negotiations are the goal of negotiations.

Iran will be watching how President Obama handles North Korea, as a sign of how far it can push in the Middle East.  North Korea would not have launched this latest attack if it felt there was a serious chance of a major American response.

November 26, 2010     Permalink