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JANUARY 6,  2012

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 9:12 P.M. ET:

ROMNEY ROMPS – A new TIME/CNN/ORC poll has Mitt Romney well up in South Carolina.  Romney has 37%, Santorum has risen to 19%, Gingrich is at 18% (a dramatic drop from his previous 43%), Ron Paul is at 12% and Rick Perry holds down the bottom with 5%.  If Romney can take South Carolina on the 21st, and then Florida on the 31st, I think he'll be all but unstoppable. 

IN THE PRESIDENT'S CITY – Fourteen people were wounded in separate shootings in Chicago yesterday.  You'd think the president would show some interest in his home city, but he has been remarkably indifferent to the various messes in which Chicago finds itself.  Violent crime has been reduced in New York by 80% since Rudy Giuliani first became mayor, but the experience hasn't been duplicated in Chicago, which has succumbed to the old 1960s excuse machine:  It's (check one or more) 1) the gun manufacturers, 2) the war in Iraq, 3) socio-economic conditions resulting from Republican administrations, or 4) Wall Street.

RUBIO RISES – Terrific Senator Marco Rubio of Florida says he isn't interested right now in either the presidency or vice presidency, but he is certainly staying in the news.  This morning he sent a very public and very extraordinary letter to President Obama, accusing the president of turning America into a country increasingly seen as a "deadbeat nation."  He then said that he would oppose Obama's impending request for still one more raising of the national debt limit.  Rubio would be on anyone's list for vice president, and I hope he can be persuaded.

NEBRASKA IN PLAY? – When moderate Democratic Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska announced his retirement, Republicans assumed the state would be an easy Senate pickup in November.  But now there's word that former Democratic Governor and Senator Bob Kerrey, a medal of honor recipient, is considering returning to Nebraska to run again for the Senate.  That would immediately put the state in play again.  One problem Kerrey has is that he's spent years away from Nebraska.  But that didn't stop Dan Coats, a former Indiana Republican senator, who returned to the state in 2010 to reclaim his Senate seat, and won the election.

January 6, 2012      Permalink 

SNIPPET OF THE DAY – AT 11:04 A.M. ET:

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:   A man stopped for aggressive driving in a carpool lane last month had an unusual passenger: A seat-belted, plastic skeleton.  A Washington State Patrol trooper had stopped the man on Interstate 5 at South 272nd Street near Dec. 20. The trooper had clocked the driver going 82 miles per hour and watched him make some dangerous lane changes.   The driver, in a silver Mazda, had also been driving in the carpool lane. At first, the trooper thought he had a passenger. Then he realized it was a propped-up, plastic skeleton, draped in a white hoodie, with some kind of metal cookie tin between its thighs.

Skeleton?  Come on.  In Chicago they call that an active Democratic voter.  And the tin of cookies would be a little gift from the local precinct captain.  The guy is just in the wrong city.

SIEGE OF SANTORUM ESCALATES – AT 10:28 A.M. ET:  As night follows day, as soon as a Republican candidate starts rising in the polls, the press suddenly "discovers" that he has sinned, and sinned mightily. 

The new target is Rick Santorum, who, we are now informed breathlessly, has made money.  From the Washington Post:

Rick Santorum has vaulted to the front ranks of the Republican presidential nomination race in part by depicting himself as a religious family man of lowly beginnings who would bring needed change to Washington.

But that characterization leaves out two decades in which Santorum was a central and often high-ranking player in Washington politics, with connections to K Street lobbyists and a lucrative consulting career that made him a millionaire.

In the Senate, for example, he played a pivotal role in advancing the controversial K Street Project, a highly organized effort to pressure industry groups and lobbying firms to hire Republicans for influential jobs and punish those who brought in Democrats. ­Santorum oversaw regular Tuesday meetings with lobbyists in which he solicited their views on pending legislation and discussed potential jobs, according to documents and news reports and a lobbyist who attended the meetings.

COMMENT:  You know, just once I'd like to see a liberal paper do a projected hit piece on a Republican candidate and finally say, "This paper has come to the conclusion that he's a great guy, stand-up fella, well loved by people around him, and has never cheated on his wife.  And his kids aren't spoiled.  And he wears reasonably priced shoes."

Hope springs eternal.

January 6, 2012      Permalink

GOOD JOBS FIGURES – AT 9:32 A.M. ET:  A new jobs report out this morning presents a cautiously optimistic picture of the American economy.   From Bloomberg:

U.S. employers added more workers to payrolls than forecast in December and the jobless rate declined to an almost three-year low, showing that the labor market gained momentum heading into 2012.

The 200,000 increase followed a revised 100,000 rise in November that was smaller than first estimated, Labor Department figures showed in Washington. The median projection in a Bloomberg News survey called for a December gain of 155,000. The unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 8.5 percent, the lowest since February 2009, while hours worked and earnings climbed.

Sustained payroll gains are needed to chip away at joblessness and support household spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the world’s largest economy. The labor market figures follow recent data showing increased manufacturing and a rebound in consumer sentiment that show the U.S. is weathering Europe’s debt crisis.

“You got the trifecta -- more people working, wages up and the average work week up,” said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group Inc. in Pittsburgh, who accurately forecast the December payrolls gain. “You can’t really argue that that isn’t a sign of significant improvement in the job market.”

COMMENT:  The political impact of this, if the trend continues, could be profound, and obviously would help Obama substantially.  Indeed, a strengthening economy could guarantee his re-election. 

The question is whether the trend continues.  The European debt crisis is ongoing.  Defense cuts will mean layoffs in American factories.  I think another three months of figures will be required to determine if this is a lasting trend or a temporary bubble.

January 6, 2012      Permalink 

A DOUBLE WARNING – AT 9:08 A.M. ET:  Just as the president was cutting American defense, two serious warnings from serious people were issued regarding Iran.  We have seen, in recent weeks, a rising concern about Iran from the world's grown-ups.  The first warning came from former CIA director Michael Hayden:

Tehran will be the top threat in 2012, former CIA Director Michael Hayden predicted Wednesday as Iran dominates foreign policy debate even while national security officials appeared to dismiss the Islamic Republic's latest threat to close the Strait of Hormuz.

You can be sure you'll hear a lot of "dismissing" of threats, as our national defenses are weakened.  The result will be greater threats, not lesser ones.

"It is the single greatest destabilizing element right now with regards to global security," Hayden told Fox News, adding that the outlook is not encouraging.

"Of all the things that I left, when I was in government, the situation with Iran, and particularly their nuclear program has continued on a trajectory that gets darker with each passing day, week and month. They seem on this inexorable arc in the direction of a nuclear capability and there seems to be nothing that we or other like minded nations can do that will stop them."

Hayden is right.  The economic sanctions are clearly hurting Iran, but we've learned from bitter experience that even countries that are crippled economically will devote inordinate resources to their weapons, and that those weapons can mount a powerful threat.  Consider North Korea.

In World War II, the Soviet Union had a pathetic economic base.  It was a poor country.  But Stalin focused his resources on the military, which then made mincemeat of Hitler's divisions.  Many Americans don't realize that more than 80% of the casualties suffered by the Nazis were suffered at the hands of the Red Army, representing a country with a third-world economy.

The second warning came from stalwart American ally, Canadian Prime Minister Steve Harper, one of the real good guys serving today, and a man usually ignored by President Obama.  (We wonder why.)  Harper:

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Iran poses the "world's most serious threat to international peace and security," and opined that a coordinated international response is requisite to confronting Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

"In my judgment, [Iran] is the world's most serious threat to international peace and security," Harper said on Calgary radio station CHQR.

Harper said he was sure Tehran is seeking nuclear weapons.

"The is a regime that wants to acquire nuclear weapons," he said.

The Canadian prime minister said his country was working with its allies to impose strict sanctions on the Islamic Republic in an attempt to counter their bid for nuclear armament.

Yeah, but our noble president, after signing into law a new Iran sanctions act insisted on by Congress, announced that he would be "flexible" in enforcing the sanctions, a signal that he would be soft.  This led to a warning by Republican Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois, the co-drafter of the sanctions act, that if Obama failed to enforce it adequately, he'd have the entire Congress against him.  The act passed the Senate unanimously.

Other countries are now stronger in opposition to the Iranian mullahs than we are.  And this is before Obama's hoped-for second term.  Can you just imagine what's coming?

January 6, 2012       Permalink

PATHETIC – AT 8:35 A.M. ET:  The American people wake up this morning knowing that their president wants to cut the personnel of their armed forces by almost a third over ten years.  This comes as international threats are mounting, not receding.  But Obama is beginning to vindicate the faith placed in him by the left wing of the Democratic Party and its amen corner in the media.

Of course, the new defense plan announced by the president yesterday is being sold as a "smarter" way to do national defense.  That's a big word in an administration that seems to judge people by their College Board scores:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama unveiled a defense strategy on Thursday that would expand the U.S. military presence in Asia but shrink the overall size of the force as the Pentagon seeks to reduce spending by nearly half a trillion dollars after a decade of war.

The strategy, if carried out, would significantly reshape the world's largest military from the one that executed President George W. Bush's "war on terrorism" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Cyberwarfare and unmanned drones would continue to grow in priority, as would countering attempts by China and Iran to block U.S. power projection capabilities in areas like the South China Sea and the Strait of Hormuz.
But the size of the U.S. Army and Marines Corps would shrink. So too might the U.S. nuclear arsenal and the U.S. military footprint in Europe.

Troop- and time-intensive counter-insurgency operations, a staple of U.S. military strategy since the 2007 "surge" of extra troops to Iraq, would be far more limited, with the force no longer sized for large-scale, long-term missions.

No matter how you slice it, we will be weaker.   The emphasis on Asia is reasonable, but it comes at a time when Russia is expanding its strength and acting very much the bully in Europe.

Britain's defense minister is expressing worry that the U.S. might not be able to supply the new planes that Britain needs, but Britain's hard-line leftist paper, the Independent, gleefully states:

The mighty American military machine that has for so long secured the country's status as the world's only superpower will have to be drastically reduced, Barack Obama warned yesterday as he set out a radical but more modest new set of priorities for the Pentagon over the next decade.

After the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that defined the first decade of the 21st century, Mr Obama's blueprint for the military's future acknowledged that America will no longer have the resources to conduct two such major operations simultaneously.

What an opportunity for foreign opponents, especially those who might choose to work together.  Squeeze American interests in two places at the same time.

This is pathetic.  The savings over ten years will be about half a trillion dollars.  Now, that's real money, but we can afford it if we have the will to afford it.

We have done these drawdowns before, and we've always come to grief.  Part of the reason for a robust force in being is that it acts as a powerful deterrent.  That deterrent is now being weakened. 

We have, under Obama, dramatically reduced our influence in the Middle East, just as we're seeing a rise in Islamist power.  Mr. Obama doesn't seem terribly concerned.

Some Republicans have made token statements opposing these cutbacks, but the party as a whole seems to have no real defense policy.  And it's leaderless.

By the way, many Democrats in Congress want greater cuts. 

The sound you hear is champagne corks being popped in Tehran, Moscow, and points east.

January 6, 2012       Permalink

JANUARY 5,  2012

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 9:53 P.M. ET:

GLOBE BACKS HUNTSMAN – The Boston Globe, which is owned by The New York Times, has endorsed Jon Huntsman for the Republican presidential nomination.  The Globe is one of the most left-leaning mainstream papers in America, and its endorsement will do Huntsman no good inside a party where he is clearly uncomfortable.  The Globe will back Obama for re-election anyway, so its nomination endorsement will quickly be neutered.

AND NOW IT'S RICK'S TURN – It's now Rick Santorum's turn to be under the spotlight, and the attacks are becoming strident, portraying Santorum as everything from a racial bigot to a religious nut.  It's amazing how, as soon as any Republican rises in the polls, the mainstream media starts the attacks.  In this case the attacks are joined by Mitt Romney and other GOP rivals.  Much is being made of the fact that Santorum was booed at a rally in New Hampshire today.  What wasn't noted is that these rallies are open to all, and are being infiltrated by Occupy types and others on the left, with the clear intent of embarrassing the candidates.

RICK NOW SECOND – In the topsy-turvy race for the GOP nod, Rick Santorum has moved into second place, according to the Rasmussen national survey.  The numbers are Romney 29%, Santorum 21%, Gingrich 16%, Ron Paul 12%, with Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman at 4%.  Polls in advance of the New Hampshire primary still give Romney a sizable win, with Santorum picking up some support, but not enough to come anywhere close to challenging the frontrunner.

BULLETIN – In a major scholarly breakthrough, a team of European and British researchers have determined that men and women are different.  The news hit like a bombshell, and Gloria Steinem has gone into a bunker.  The research showed that women scored higher in sensitivity, warmth and anxiety; men scored higher in emotional stability, dominance, rule consciousness and wariness.  In other words, women are sensitive enough to know that the car is lost; and men are too wary to make the changes that will get you back on the right road.  I can't deny it.

January 5,  2011     Permalink 

THE COST OF CUTS – AT 10:18 A.M. ET:  The president will go to the Pentagon today to announce a new defense strategy, which will be based on a smaller force, the result of budget cuts.

Budget cuts, though, have consequences.  The most immediate are within the services themselves.  But they trickle down to the civilian sector.  Consider this loss:

WICHITA, Kan. (AP/CBS Seattle) – Faced with defense budget reductions, the Boeing Co. announced Wednesday it will close its defense plant in Wichita by the end of 2013, moving future aircraft maintenance, modification and support to its plant in San Antonio, Texas, and engineering work to Oklahoma City. Work on the Air Force refueling tanker will be performed in Puget Sound, Wash.

Boeing did not clarify whether the work would be done in Everett or Seattle.

The closure will cost more than 2,160 workers their jobs and end the firm’s presence in a city where it has been a major employer for generations.

The decision was not entirely unexpected. The company said in November it was studying whether to close the Wichita facility, which specializes in modifying commercial aircraft for military or government operations, to address Defense Department budget cuts. The first layoffs are expected to begin in the third quarter of 2012.

COMMENT:  Boeing built B-29s in Wichita in World War II.  We are going to see other stories like that as our forces are cut.  These cuts come at a time when international threats are growing, not receding.  It is a strange way to defend the country.

We should point out that every modern drawdown in American military forces has been a failure.  We had to build them right up again when the next crisis came.  This is false economy, but it will make the president's "anti-war" base very happy. 

January 5, 2012       Permalink

IT'S ALL IN THE POLITICS – AT 9:24 A.M. ET:  As we've said about Obama before, third-rate president, first-rate candidate.   The man spends most of his time running for office, something he does very well.  Once he gets the office, well, what a bore. 

Obama's latest stunt was to fly to Ohio at enormous public expense to make an announcement he could have made in Washington.  Ah, but the politics of it all.  From the increasingly liberal Politico:

Three years after pledging a new era of post-partisan cooperation, President Barack Obama on Wednesday declared war with congressional Republicans by unilaterally installing his nominee to head a new consumer protection bureau.

And the White House sees only political gold in doing so.

Obama inflamed Washington Republicans by using a rarely invoked legal argument to appoint former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray — a move ensuring that an irate Congress may truly do nothing this year except extend the payroll tax cut. But Obama had abandoned hopes of a real working relationship with Republicans long before Wednesday.

So instead, he tried to reap the benefit once again of playing an outside game, aligning himself with voters against a Congress that they hold in historically low regard on an issue that crosses party lines.

It was the latest milestone in Obama’s journey from bipartisan conciliator to partisan agitator, perhaps the starkest break to date from his campaign promises to change the tone in Washington.

COMMENT:  If we can break through the laudatory, worshipful commentary for a moment:  The legal maneuver was a recess appointment.  When Congress is not in session, the president may appoint public officials who would ordinarily need confirmation by the Senate.  Those appointed, however, may only serve for a limited time.  (I believe it's about a year, but I'm not sure of the legal technicalities.) 

The problem with the president's action, though, is that the Senate is not technically out of session.  It has been kept in session precisely to block recess appointments.  So this move may face a Constitutional challenge.

As to the politics, the Politico gets it right.  The mainstream media won't harp on the details.  The president will be seen as protecting the consumer, while Republicans will be seen as blocking the protection.  Republican fumbling on the Social Security tax cut extension provided an immediate, if temporary boost in the president's poll ratings.  The unpopularity of the Republican House can drag down the GOP presidential nominee.

It's Truman's 1948 campaign strategy all over, although Obama lacks Truman's energy and spark. 

I'm afraid that, once again, the Republicans are outmaneuvered by a master politician who fights for the job, but really doesn't do it.

January 5, 2012       Permalink

FROM THE WONDERFUL GUYS WHO BROUGHT YOU 9-11 – AT 8:44 A.M. ET:  The Mideast is boiling.  I have never seen a time of so much convulsion in so many countries, none of it very positive for the United States.  From AP, via Fox: 

BAGHDAD -- A suicide bomber targeting Shiite pilgrims in southern Iraq killed 30 people, just hours after a wave of bombings hit Shiite areas in Baghdad and killed 27 others, officials said.

The coordinated attacks targeting Shiites bore the hallmarks of Sunni insurgents linked to Al Qaeda and added to a deepening sectarian crisis in Iraq that exploded just as soon as the last Americans troops left in mid-December. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Yeah, that total pullout, which satisfied Obama's left-wing base, was certainly an act of genius, wasn't it?

And From Fox:

The Arab Spring may quickly become an Islamist Winter in Libya, reads a new report circulated among federal law enforcement and written for policymakers on Capitol Hill.

An advance copy of the report entitled "A View to Extremist Currents In Libya" and obtained by Fox News, states that extremist views are gaining ground in the north African country and suggests a key figure emerging in Libya formerly tied to al Qaeda has not changed his stripes.

"Despite early indications that the Libyan revolution might be a largely secular undertaking ... the very extremist currents that shaped the philosophies of Libya Salafists and jihadis like (Abd al-Hakim) Belhadj appear to be coalescing to define the future of Libya," wrote Michael S. Smith II, a principal and counterterrorism adviser for Kronos LLC, the strategic advisory firm that prepared the report.

Notice the great interest in Washington.  And in the press.

And this:

CAIRO – Assured by the Muslim Brotherhood’s repeated assurances that it wants to build a modern democratic Egypt, the United States is shifting its decades-long policy on Islamists to forge closer ties with the country’s most powerful group.

It would be “totally impractical” not to engage with the Brotherhood “because of US security and regional interests in Egypt,” a senior administration official involved in shaping the new policy told The New York Times on Wednesday, January 4.

“There doesn’t seem to me to be any other way to do it, except to engage with the party that won the election.”

COMMENT:  Of course we have to have dealings with them.  But notice how little is said in the mainstream media about what the Brotherhood actually stands for.  It is essentially a fascistic organization, whose history included collaboration with Nazism, and an organization that believes in Muslim dominance of the world. 

Of course, in the usual Mideast tradition, the Brotherhood will say one thing in English, to satisfy us, and something entirely different in Arabic.  The Palestinians have been playing that game for years. 

The third round of voting just occurred in Egypt.  The Brotherhood and its even more extreme allies expect to have a solid majority in the new parliament.  Oh, by the way, a year ago the punditry was assuring us that the Brotherhood probably wouldn't even run in elections.  Nothing to see here, folks.  Nothing to see.

January 5, 2012       Permalink

UNBELIEVABLE – AT 8:25 A.M. ET:  No introduction required.  Just read this, written by ace national-defense reporter Bill Gertz, in the Washington Times:

President Obama signaled Congress this week that he is prepared to share U.S. missile defense secrets with Russia.

In the president’s signing statement issued Saturday in passing into law the fiscal 2012 defense authorization bill, Mr. Obama said restrictions aimed at protecting top-secret technical data on U.S. Standard Missile-3 velocity burnout parameters might impinge on his constitutional foreign policy authority.

As first disclosed in this space several weeks ago, U.S. officials are planning to provide Moscow with the SM-3 data, despite reservations from security officials who say that doing so could compromise the effectiveness of the system by allowing Russian weapons technicians to counter the missile. The weapons are considered some of the most effective high-speed interceptors in the U.S. missile defense arsenal.

There are also concerns that Russia could share the secret data with China and rogue states such as Iran and North Korea to help their missile programs defeat U.S. missile defenses.

Officials from the State Department and Missile Defense Agency have discussed the idea of providing the SM-3 data to the Russians as part of the so-far fruitless missile-defense talks with Moscow, headed in part by Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher, who defense officials say is a critic of U.S. missile defenses.

COMMENT:  What can one say?  The secretary of state is Hillary Clinton.  Under her husband's checkered administration, the United States permitted the transfer of sensitive technical data to China.  That whole episode has been buried by an obliging media.

Now we do it again.  Apparently, our State Department hasn't noticed that Russia is being Russia again, openly hostile to the United States, and playing us like a violin.

This is what we have to look forward to if Obama is reelected. 

January 5,  2012     Permalink