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I appeared on Silvio Canto Jr's talk show from Dallas last night.  It's here.

DECEMBER 12,  2011

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 9:43 P.M. ET:

PRETTY PLEASE – President Obama informed the press today that he has asked Iran to return the super-secret drone that was brought down in Iranian territory.  He did not say whether he used the term "pretty please" in making the request, or whether he offered a lollipop in exchange for the drone.  This is real amateur stuff, and signals what some analysts are now fearing openly – that our policy toward Iran has essentially failed, and that Obama has no intention of doing anything about it.

THE COURT AND ARIZONA – The United States Supreme Court will take up the issue of Arizona's controversial immigration law.  Associate Justice Elena Kagan, who was solicitor general under Obama, will recuse herself, presumably because she was involved in discussions about that law while in the Justice Department.  The key justice once again will be Anthony Kennedy, the court's swing vote.  If he sides with the assumed position of the four conservatives, there could be a 5-3 vote in favor of upholding the law.  But if he sides with the liberals, the court will be deadlocked, letting stand a Ninth Circuit opinion striking down part of the Arizona statute.

HEZBOLLAH OUTS CIA AGENTS – Hezbollah, the militant Mideast group which operates under the thumb of Iran, has revealed the names of agents it says are working for the CIA in Lebanon, placing them in immediate danger of their lives.  We aren't sure how Hezbollah got these names, but some sources say a double agent was involved.  Let's see if there's as much consternation in liberal circles over this as there was when Valerie Plame was allegedly "outed" by a member of the Bush administration, a wildly overrated and overreported case.

CHRISTIE SOLID FOR ROMNEY – Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey held a major fundraiser for Mitt Romney tonight in Christie's home state.  Christie thus seems to be solidly behind Romney, with no intention of running from his endorsement.  This is important because there is increasing talk of members of the GOP establishment trying to get behind a candidate who isn't yet running to try to stop Newt Gingrich.  It doesn't appear that Christie is in any way interested, and I doubt he'd take the bait unless Romney pulled out, which seems highly unlikely, even if he loses the early primaries.

December 12,  2011          Permalink

DOES RICK PERRY LIVE? – AT 9:41 A.M. ET:   Rick Perry went from conservative darling to also-ran after a series of poor debate performances.  And his gaffes continue – like saying last week that the Supreme Court had eight justices, and not knowing the name of the one he was discussing, Justice Satomayor.

But Perry is now asking the electorate to look him over once again.  Clearly, he's trying to position himself as the acceptable alternative to Romney and Gingrich, hoping the two will destroy each other in the early primary fights.  He also says he's over a medical issue.  From the Des Moines Register:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, fresh from a solid performance in Saturday’s Iowa debate, said he’s a “new candidate” since he’s fully recovered from back surgery in July.

“My back is great, I’m back running again for the last six weeks so I think part of the reason you’ve seen a somewhat different candidate on the debates is that my health is, really both physically and mentally, just really back in the game from the standpoint you have a fusion on your back and it takes you a while to get back on your game,” he said.

I asked him if he wasn’t feeling well during the early debates. Perry and his campaign were downplaying the effect of the surgery as recently as a month ago. But today, he acknowledged it took a toll.

“I would suggest to you I was pretty fatigued,” he said. “But no excuses, it was there, it’s what it is and, look, if anybody’s looking for a perfect candidate I’m not it. If they’re looking for the perfect debater, if they’re looking for someone that is going to have the answer to every question and never make a mistake, I’m not their candidate.”

I also asked Perry why he didn’t take that $10,000 bet that Mitt Romney offered in last night’s debate. Perry still thinks he was right about what Romney’s book, “No Apologies,” originally said about his Massachusetts individual insurance mandate being a model for the national plan. (The Washington Post’s Fact Checker has said Perry’s wrong about that.)

But, he said, “I don’t have $10,000 to bet and I was a little shocked, frankly,” he said. He called it a “clarion moment” in the debate.

“…That’s just a lot of money for most people and I guess not for Mitt,” he said.

COMMENT:  It is certainly true that Perry had his best debate Saturday night.  But Douglas MacArthur once remarked that all disasters begin with two words:  "Too late."   And I wonder if it's just too late to try for a comeback. 

Yes, John McCain's campaign fell apart during the 2008 primary season, and then was put back together.  Newt was counted out early in this campaign, and his staff defected to Perry.  But we are much further along right now, and one good debate does not a candidacy make.  Perry would have to live down his reputation as being not quite ready for prime time.

Also, Perry still has not convinced the nation that he can campaign outside Texas.  He has that "local" image.  But we'll be watching him.  This race is far from over.  We may be in for some real shocks down the road, if nobody grabs the nomination early.

December 12, 2011       Permalink

FUR HAT IN THE RING NEWS – AT 9:19 A.M. ET:  There is political news this morning from Moscow.  Donald Trump, eat your heart out.  From Bloomberg:

Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov said he’ll run for president against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in March elections after the biggest anti-government demonstrations in a decade emboldened Russia’s opposition.

“This is the most important decision of my life,” the New Jersey Nets basketball team owner told reporters in Moscow.

I honestly didn't know that the Nets were owned by a billionaire Russkie.  But strange things happen in New Jersey, where billionaires do well...like former Governor Jon Corzine.

Prokhorov, Russia’s third-richest man with a fortune Forbes magazine put at $18 billion, said that he’ll seek to build support from the grassroots level and that he opposes “revolution” and “populism.” Prokhorov, 46, quit as leader of the Pravoye Delo, or Right Cause, party on Sept. 15, accusing President Dmitry Medvedev’s administration of blocking the group’s preparations for parliamentary elections in December.

That Dec. 4 vote, in which Putin and Medvedev’s United Russia party retained its majority, was neither free nor fair, observers from the U.S. and Europe said. Thousands of Russians took to the streets in the week after the contest to protest the results amid widespread reports of ballot-stuffing. Police estimated the crowd at Moscow’s Dec. 10 rally, the largest in the country, at 25,000, the same figure they ascribed to a pro- United Russia rally near Red Square today.

COMMENT:   Not a bad idea to have a competitive race for president of Russia, but I think it's hilarious that the old KGB guy, a real old-time red, will be opposed by a super-capitalist of the new Russia.  The election will probably go to the candidate who buys the most votes. 

December 12, 2011      Permalink

READERS BEWARE – AT 8:36 A.M. ET:  I want to alert readers to a trend, although expected, that I've noticed in some journals in recent weeks – an attempt to sanitize election results in the Arab world. 

It is being led, naturally, by writers like Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times, but has even crept into conservative publications like the Washington Times.  The argument is not new.  You can go back to the 1930s and find it under the general heading:  "Mussolini made the trains run on time."  It goes like this:  Yes, there are some troubling things about these Islamic movements, but, gosh darn, they certainly do deliver services, which is why people vote for them.

Yup, look at that great social security system that the Third Reich established.  And the employment record!

Same argument.

Readers, the Muslim Brotherhood doesn't call itself the Muslim Brotherhood to put mushrooms on dinner tables.  It has an agenda.  And, once again, we're being assured by "experts" that this agenda is being sidelined in favor of services to "the people." 

Why, Mr. Kristof has actually broken bread with Muslim Brotherhood leaders and voters, and, while he concedes there may be some bothersome ideological points, he sees many of them simply as folks interested in democracy and bettering lives. 

Note:  People returned from the Berlin Olympics of 1936 filled with praise for the Hitler regime.  Where was all this racial hatred they'd read about?  Of course, all the anti-Semitic and racial signs had been taken down for the games, and put right up again when the tourists left.

And, once again, the same mistake is being made that is regularly made by reporters in the Mideast.  They listen to what people tell them in English, but ignore what these same people say in Arabic...because they don't know Arabic. 

Of course, we do hope that the Islamic parties become more moderate, but there's no reason to be overly optimistic about that.  There is no history that justifies optimism.

My most serious fear is that this kind of Kristof-style thinking will find its way into the American intelligence establishment, and the defense establishment, both of which have been infiltrated by political correctness during the Obama administration.  Only last week the Pentagon described the Fort Hood massacre, carried out by a committed Islamist, as "workplace violence."  And we must remember that, during the 1930s, prominent Americans like Joseph P. Kennedy and Charles Lindbergh became water carriers for the Nazis.  In the 1940s and 1950s, other prominent Americans, like Paul Robeson, performed the same function for the Stalinists, and some later fronted for Fidel Castro.

Be skeptical about the sunshine reports.  The Obama White House will encourage them.  Our universities will advance them.  And we may pay the price in the end.

December 12, 2011       Permalink

THE INDEPENDENT VOTE – AT 8:09 A.M. ET:  The election will be decided in the great political center.  Obama has been having trouble holding independents recently, a bloc that went solidly for him in 2008, and recent polling in Florida and Ohio, two critical states, is instructive, as is polling in Pennsylvania.  From the Weekly Standard:

A new Quinnipiac poll shows that President Obama is now trailing both Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney among independents in the crucial swing states of Florida and Ohio. The poll shows that, among independents, Gingrich leads Obama by 4 percentage points (45 to 41 percent) in Florida and by 1 percentage point (39 to 38 percent) in Ohio, while Romney leads Obama by 10 points (46 to 36 percent) in Florida and 4 points (41 to 37 percent) in Ohio. Romney also leads Obama among independents in Pennsylvania (42 to 38 percent) — a nearly must-win state for any Democratic nominee — while Obama leads Gingrich there (44 to 36 percent).

The results are both encouraging and troubling.  Romney is now well behind Gingrich among Republicans in the race for the nomination, but Romney polls better in matchups with Obama.  Obama, remember, is the one to beat in November, not another Republican.  But Gingrich is closing the gap: 

Quinnipiac’s Peter Brown observes, “Gingrich’s surge in the GOP race is accompanied by a better showing among independent voters in a general election race against President Obama, although he still has a ways to go.” In Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, Brown says, “Romney runs only slightly better against Obama, diluting his claim that he has the best chance to win.” Brown adds, “The media says the White House wants to run against Gingrich because he will be easier to beat than Romney, but the data is less clear today than it was last month on that point.”

COMMENT:  There is increasing talk that the Republican establishment may step in within a few months to try to deprive Gingrich of the nomination, believing him unelectable, and also believing that he'd be a poor president.  If Gingrich can close the polling gap with Romney in general-election polling, the establishment's arguments will be weakened.  The problem, of course, is that Gingrich has a very vivid history of self-destruction, and one gets the feeling, in sampling opinion, that the Washington Republicans are just waiting for another episode to happen.  So is Mitt.

December 12, 2011     Permalink

DECEMBER 11,  2011

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:15 P.M. ET:

DELICIOUS – The Illinois Humanities Council is offering, for a contribution of $2,500, a chance for the lucky winner of a drawing, and five friends, to enjoy a dinner cooked by 60s radical and Obama mentor Bill Ayers, formerly of the Weather Underground, and his equally weathered wife, Bernadine Dohrn, who was on the lam for years.  The offer advertises "fascinating conversation."  Yeah, I can't wait.  If I win, I want a food taster.

SYRIA STILL ERUPTING – Army defectors fought government troops today in one of the biggest battles of Syria's nine-month uprising.  And dissident Syrians in neighboring Jordan stormed the Syrian embassy in Amman.  Despite condemnation by the Arab League, and the international community generally, Syria's President Assad shows no sign of stepping down.  Condemnation by the United States has been relatively strong, but not firm enough.  The U.S., incredibly, just returned its ambassador to Syria, despite the government campaign against its own citizens.  Why is it that the Obamans are so flexible toward Iran, and Iran's leading ally in the Arab world, Syria?  Hmm.

WHO, ME? – President Obama said in a CBS "Sixty Minutes" interview that he didn't overpromise on the economy when he ran in 2008.  Why, of course he didn't.  Barack Obama doesn't overpromise on anything.  Note, for example, his modest comment in 2008 that, when he took office, the oceans would start to recede.  Okay, he's a little late, but that's not an overpromise, is it?  I mean, there's still time for drying at the beach.  And he promised that Iran would never get a nuclear weapon.  Okay, maybe they'll get a teensy-weensy one.   But it was ball park, wasn't it?  In fact, the promises made to "fundamentally transform" America have fallen flat on their face, in part because America doesn't want to be transformed.  Aren't we silly.

December 11, 2011       Permalink

DRONE DISASTER, FOLLOW-UP – AT 11:25 A.M. ET:   We reported yesterday that defense officials are assessing the damage done by our losing one of our most advanced drones in Iran.  Experts believe the Iranians, with Russian or Chinese help, hacked into the control system and brought down the drone. 

The outrage is that we apparently knew where the drone went down, but President Obama rejected three separate plans to either go in and retrieve it, or blow it to bits, depriving the Iranians of the technology.  Might be an act of war, the former law professor in the White House worried.  (Or maybe he worried about "offending" a Muslim country.)

Now the Iranians themselves are giving us a prediction of what we might be facing.  From their own news agency:

TEHRAN (FNA)- A senior parliamentarian underlined Tehran's advanced technological capabilities and possibilities, and said the Iranian Armed Forces intend to simulate the design and reproduce the US RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft that they downed in Eastern Iran last week.

"Relying on their scientific capabilities, the Armed Forces will be able to simulate the RQ-170 aircraft soon," Vice-Chairman of the parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Hossein Ebrahimi told FNA on Sunday.

"Iran enjoys different possibilities and precious technologies that the enemies are not aware of," he added.

Ebrahimi stressed the importance and preciousness of the drone for Iran, and said understanding and using the technology of the stealth drone and its systems is the best thing Iran can do at present.

On Saturday, another Iranian lawmaker said Tehran has the needed technology to decode the intelligence gathering systems of the drone.

"Since the hi-tech drone was downed, Americans have been seriously worried about the intelligence inside its systems, but they should know that the Islamic Republic of Iran will decode the intelligence and data existing in the drone systems by means of its highly-advanced technology," member of the parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Seyed Hossein Naqavi told FNA.

He reiterated that decoding the intelligence in the RQ-170 spy aircraft will provide the Islamic Republic of Iran's Armed Forces with vitally important information.

The unmanned surveillance plane lost by the United States in Iran was a stealth aircraft being used for secret missions by the CIA, US officials admitted earlier this week.

The aircraft is among the highly sensitive surveillance platform in the CIA's fleet that was shaped and designed to evade enemy defenses.

COMMENT:  Some may see these comments as the usual boasting of a dictatorship.  I would be more sober about it.  Iran is not a third-world country.  It has advanced capabilities, some provided by its larger allies, and it is moving toward a nuclear weapon.  It already has long-range missiles.  This may not be boasting. 

Thanks, Barack.  Your refusal to blow up that drone on the ground has handed an enemy a victory.  It is barely being covered by the media, a taste of what's to come in the election coverage we're about to experience.  But Americans may die because of the technology we've now lost.

December 11, 2011        Permalink 

UN MEETS ON CLIMATE – NOTICE THE DIFFERENCE? – AT 10:58 A.M. ET:   Why, I feel the cool breezes already.  And the streets seem free of cars.  And the oceans are receding.  And...and...oh, it's just too much.

Steve Hayward, at the great Power Line blog, tells it straight:

“A prolonged and solemn farce” was Churchill’s description of the disarmament talks of the 1930s, but it applies even more accurately to the annual round of United Nation’s climate talks, which just wrapped up their 17th year of world-saving negotiations in Durban, South Africa, with another 11th hour “breakthrough” agreement that amounts only to an agreement to meet again next year and repeat the farce. Basically the agreement says all nations of the world will reach a legally binding treaty, similar to the Kyoto Protocol, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but not until 2015, to take effect in 2020. They’ve kicked the can so far down the road it’s already been cleared out from the recycling bin.

The chances of such an agreement being reached is zero, for the same reasons that a successor to the Kyoto Protocol couldn’t be adopted in Copenhagen two years ago. Meanwhile, the UN groupies committed to providing $100 billion a year in climate aid for developing nations, but there’s no mechanism for coughing up the money. They call this “aspirational” in diplomatic circles. Looks a lot like the Eurozone negotiations to me.

The fact that the entire UN process has gone well past its “sell-by” date can be seen in this morning’s media coverage. While the Washington Post’s Juliet Eilprin, perhaps the worst environmental reporter among the major media outlets, calls it “a significant agreement,” her story runs in page 8 of the Post, which tells you something about how significant her editors think the story is.

COMMENT:  And yet American universities now have appointed administrators who are supposed to oversee "climate" issues on campus.  I wonder how they do that.  Do they take the temperature every day?  Measure how fast ice melts?  Look for penguins in distress in fraternity houses?

The UN has failed on "climate" because it went about the issue in its usual arrogant, dictatorial way,  and turned it into a shakedown, with "developing" nations that never seem to develop demanding climate reparations from developed nations.  Add to that the shaky science, and you have a large nothingness.

December 11, 2011       Permalink

THE DEBATE – The Republicans, minus Herman Cain, held their latest debate in Iowa last night.  The key musical question was whether Newt Gingrich, new frontrunner, could hold his own against the expected onslaught from all the others.

In looking through reviews this morning, it's clear that Gingrich more than held his own.  This observation, from Joanathan Martin at The Politico, pretty much sums it up:

In a campaign that has been chiefly shaped by debates, Newt Gingrich demonstrated Saturday night why he tops the polls — and why he won’t easily be dethroned.

Facing tough questions from his Republican rivals and debate moderators in Des Moines, Gingrich parried blow after blow without losing his cool or showing the much-discussed undisciplined side of his personality.

It was the former House speaker’s first debate as the undisputed frontrunner and not only did he stand up to the fresh scrutiny, he reminded Republican primary voters of his command of the issues, his intellectual dexterity and his self-assured, forceful arguments.

When Mitt Romney scolded Gingrich for his provocative claim that Palestinians are an “invented” people, the former Georgia congressman concisely captured why his brand of bombast is playing so well with a roiling GOP electorate.

“I think sometimes it is helpful to have a president of the United States with the courage to tell the truth, just as was Ronald Reagan who went around his entire national security apparatus to call the Soviet Union an ‘evil empire’ and who overruled his entire State Department in order to say, ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,’’ said Gingrich, calling himself a “Reaganite” and then adding a memorable kicker: “ I will tell the truth, even if it’s at the risk of causing some confusion sometimes with the timid.”

Romney suggested Gingrich is a “bomb-thrower,” but the applause Gingrich received in the Des Moines debate hall after his answer illustrated that Republican primary voters prefer pugnacity to sobriety at this moment.

What makes Gingrich so formidable in these debates, and in the larger nominating contest, is that he’s not only appealing to the Republican heart, but to its head. The former history professor offers the sort of articulate answers matched on stage only by Romney, while using language that channels the give-em-hell vibe of GOP voters girding for a confrontation with President Obama.

COMMENT:  I think that's pretty accurate.  At the same time, I worry about Newt in a general election.  New polling shows him losing to Obama in both Florida, an absolutely critical state, and even South Carolina, a traditionally safe Republican state.  Now, that NBC/Marist poll is suspect, because it's hard for me to believe that any respectable Republican candidate could lose South Carolina.  But Newt may have a tough time with independents, especially once the Democratic attack machine starts defining him.

At the same time, there is no question that Newt's Trumanesque style will wake up the Republican base in a way that Romney cannot.  Romney had a weak night last night, which may well confirm to many Republicans that he hasn't got the stuff to carry the fight to Obama.

The first voting, in Iowa, is barely three weeks away. 

December 11,  2011     Permalink