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JANUARY 7,  2011

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE –  AT 9:58 P.M. ET:

DEBATE ON – The Republican candidates are sparring in New Hampshire at this hour, broadcast on ABC.  Thus far there have been some hefty exchanges, but nothing that, in my view, will seriously move the numbers.  There have been sustained attacks on frontrunner Romney, but one thing he has done very well in these debates is to handle attacks, and he's done that again tonight.

BROTHERS ROMP IN EGYPT – With the final round of voting now complete in Egypt, it appears that the Muslim Brotherhood will come out with about 40% of the vote and an even more extreme Islamist party will wind up with about 20%.  It wasn't many months ago that Egypt was a firm ally of the United States, although, it is true, it was run by a dictator.  Now, through a democratic process that may or may not be repeated, the Egyptians will have a parliament whose majority will espouse values essentially hostile to ours.  Another triumph for Obama, who rushed Hosni Mubarak out of power, with little regard for who would replace him.

IRAN BECOMES GENEROUS – The Iranian government is offering to share nuclear technology with African countries that possess uranium reserves.  Iran says it has perfected the enrichment process, which makes uranium usable as nuclear fuel, and is in a sharing mood.  This is a reckless step that could bring unstable African countries closer to the ability to produce the kind of materials used in nuclear weapons.  I'd imagine Iran would get its cut.  The dangers are obvious.  Thus far we've made no dent in Iran's nuclear program.

January 7, 2011      Permalink

MITT HAS THE CARDS – AT 11:33 A.M. ET:  No matter whether you agree or disagree that Mitt Romney should be the GOP nominee,  one must admit that he's run a capable, well financed campaign.  He's on track to win Tuesday's New Hampshire primary, and he's doing remarkably well in South Carolina, where he was expected to falter.  After South Carolina comes Florida, on January 31st. 

If Romney can run the table, winning everything in January, it's tough to believe anyone else can win the nomination.  Who else would have the resources to continue, except for Ron Paul, who will not be the nominee?  The Washington Post summarizes the situation this way:

TILTON, N.H. — After preparing for a drawn-out nominating battle that would stretch well into the spring, Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign is now quietly shifting gears in an effort to steamroll his underfunded opponents — and lock up the Republican nomination by the Florida primary at the end of this month.

Buoyed by a narrow win in the Iowa caucuses and his commanding lead in the New Hampshire polls, Romney has turned his attention to South Carolina, where he is dispatching a slew of high-profile surrogates and relocating some staffers ahead of the Jan. 21 primary. Looking further ahead, Romney has begun a massive advertising blitz in Florida and launched an aggressive outreach program to early voters in the state.

Romney campaign advisers insist that they are moving forward one state at a time and not taking any contest for granted. Yet Republican observers see Romney executing an ambitious strategy that would quickly maximize his momentum and try to quash any further surges by his rivals.

“If Romney wins the first four states, he’ll be the de facto nominee of the party,” said Steve Schmidt, a senior strategist on Sen. John McCain’s 2008 GOP campaign who is unaffiliated in the current race. Ed Rogers, another unaffiliated Republican strategist, said the notion that Romney may wrap up the nomination by Jan. 31 is “perfectly plausible.”

COMMENT:  The key figure to look at is Romney's startling 18-point lead in the latest South Carolina poll over second-place Rick Santorum.  Romney's opponents must stop him in South Carolina.  If they can't, they concede that he can win anywhere in the country. 

If Romney does run the table, look for him, after a Florida victory, to urge the party to coalesce around a candidate – him – and that may largely happen, with some holdouts.

But this has been a strange campaign thus far.  A surprise, such as a new entrant into the race, would not be shocking.

January 7, 2011       Permalink

THE NAMING OF THE SHREW – AT 10:48 A.M. ET:  Oh, there is gossip this morning.  A new book by a New York Times reporter, while generally favorable to the Obamans, paints Michelle in a rather unflattering light – at least unflattering to we mere mortals.  Some American papers are dancing around the subject, but London's Telegraph typically gets right to the point, including this:

The book, written by New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor, claims that the chief of staff refused to allow the president's wife into high-level morning meetings, leading a brooding Mrs Obama to berate other senior advisers by email.

Yeah, this bit about the first lady not being an official of the government – apparently no one told her. 

She allegedly sent furious notes to Alyssa Mastromonaco, the president's director of scheduling, and to Valerie Jarrett, a Chicago friend who now serves as one President Obama's top advisors.

Ms Jarrett was said to remove the First Lady's name before circulating the emails widely within the West Wing.

The then-press secretary Robert Gibbs was apparently often dispatched to placate Mrs Obama when limits were put on the amount she could spend on clothes or White House redecoration, as well as to explain why she could not take private holiday while on state visits.

So we on our side haven't been entirely wrong about the extravagance of this White House.  Can you imagine the reaction of the mainstream media if this were a Republican first lady?

Aides were said to refer her East Wing office as "Guam" because it was "pleasant but powerless".

An insult to the noble people of Guam.

COMMENT:  Oh dear, oh dear.   There has been talk that Obama might replace Joe Biden on the ticket with Hillary Clinton.  Better, maybe he should replace Michelle with, say, Oprah, or Beyonce, or, better still, Halle Berre, who at least can act.

I suspect this book will loosen other lips in Washington.

January 7, 2011       Permalink

BEWARE OF SMILES – AT 10:25 A.M. ET:  Brace yourselves for the playing of violins.  The U.S. Navy rescued some Iranian fishermen from pirates, and now the Iranian government is gushing praise for the act.  From Fox:

TEHRAN – Iran's foreign ministry on Saturday labeled the U.S. Navy's rescue of 13 Iranians from pirates who had hijacked a fishing vessel a "humanitarian and positive" act.

"We consider the actions of the U.S. forces in saving the lives of Iranian seamen to be a humanitarian and positive act and we welcome such behavior. We think all nations should display such behavior," Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told broadcaster al Alam.

U.S. forces rescued the Iranian sailors Thursday after a Navy helicopter spotted a suspicious skiff alongside an Iranian-flagged boat and picked up a distress signal from its captain.

Ironically, the forces that came to assist the sailors were assigned to the USS John C. Stennis strike group -- the same aircraft carrier that was subject to an Iranian threat just days earlier amid heightened tensions between Washington and Tehran over the Islamic Republic's pledge to close the Strait of Hormuz.

A counter-piracy team from the Navy destroyer USS Kidd boarded and detained 15 pirates who had been holding the boat's crew hostage for more than a month, using their ship, the Al Molai, as a launch pad to mount raids on other vessels.

The captured pirates were put on board the Stennis while authorities considered prosecuting them.

COMMENT:  The usual suspects will undoubtedly come out of the woodwork to announce that we now have peace in our time.  You see, these Iranian leaders are just folks like us, really appreciative.  Why, if only we would act like this routinely, instead of listening to those nasty right-wingers.

They used to call it a "charm offensive" when the old Soviets did it. 

The Iranians have been making some noises recently that they want to re-start negotiations with the West over their nuclear program...negotiations that went absolutely nowhere for years.  The economic sanctions on Tehran have begun to squeeze, and the Iranians would surely like to get out from under them, but there's no indication that they have any intention of giving up their nuclear progress, which will certainly lead to a bomb or the capability to make one. Negotiations to Iran are a stalling tactic, a part of a strategy.

Beware the charm.

The charm offensive is joined by some journalists saying that Iran is really a weak country, and that we have nothing to worry about.  The leader in this is the very esteemed and revered Fareed Zakaria of CNN, who, to the best of my knowledge, has never been right about anything, including, presumably, his choice of a dentist.  Iran is, yes, a weak country by many measures.  But weak countries are like wounded animals.  They can strike irrationally, even in desperation.  And a weak nation with nuclear weapons becomes strong overnight.  We are deeply concerned about Pakistan, a weak country in chaos, because it has the bomb.  If it uses three nuclear weapons, its GNP won't mean a thing.

So be on guard.  The charm offensive, joined by the apologists and appeasers in the West, are a package waiting to explode.

January 7,  2011     Permalink

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