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TUESDAY,  JUNE 8,  2010

WE'RE LIVE BLOGGING THE PRIMARY RETURNS IN KEY RACES.

12:39 a.m. ET:  Sharron Angle has won the GOP Senate nomination in Nevada, and will face Harry Reid in November.  As we've reported, many GOP strategists are uneasy with Angle, believing her an amateur with a loose mouth.  She'll need coaching, but of course we wish her well.

12:32 a.m. ET:  We are awaiting results from the Democratic primary in California's 36th congressional district, pitting veteran incumbent, and pro-defense Democrat Jane Harmon against political fringe operator Marcy Winograd.  The California Democratic Party is very extreme, probably the most extreme "mainstream" party organization in the country.  It produces nut cases like Maxine Waters and Pete Stark.  Winograd is a "progressive" (read socialist, and probably Marxist) who, if elected, would become the new Cynthia McKinney.  For example, she doesn't even believe Israel should exist.  But Winograd is given a good chance of defeating Harmon, who pro-defense stand and grown-up approach to her job doesn't sit well with the later-day flower children of her district.  We'll be watching.

12:24 a.m. ET:  Sharron Angle is building up a strong lead in the GOP primary for U.S. Senate.  With 45% of precincts reporting, Angle has 37.4% to Sue Lowden's 29.4%.  Not all Republicans are jumping for joy at this, believing Angle, because of a certain kookiness, might not be the strongest candidate against Harry Reid in November.

12:17 a.m. ET:  Carly Fiorina has won the Republican nomination for the Senate in California.  She will oppose incumbent Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, renowned for having a brain that operates on one cylinder.  However, California is a Democratic state and Boxer is a fierce campaigner.  This will be a tough, probably close race.  Ironically, former Republican Congressman Tom Campbell, whom Fiorinia defeated, was running more strongly in the polls against Boxer than was Fiorina, but many Republicans considered him too moderate, and some past associations with pro-jihadist elements in the American Muslim community hurt him. 

11:47 p.m. ET:  Carly Fiorina is off to a commanding lead in the GOP Senate primary race in California.  Money talks in the golden state, which requires huge campaign expenditures.  Fiorina has the cash, as does Meg Whitman, who just won the GOP primary for governor.  Not a great comment on our politics.  Personal money ("buying the election") will probably become a campaign issue.

11:46 p.m. ET:  Associated Press has just declared Meg Whitman, former CEO of Ebay, as the winner of the GOP primary for Governor of California.  She will face former governor and 72-year-old elder statesman Jerry Brown in November.  Ebay will be taking bids for the governor's mansion.  (No, no, no.)

11:26 p.m. ET:   Tea-party favorite Sharron Angle has a slight lead in the Nevada GOP Senate primary, with Sue Lowden just behind.  Both candidates have about 34%.  This is a complicated story.  Angle has run a come-from-behind campaign, with vigorous tea-party support, but she is an untried candidate with a history of making kooky remarks.  As former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum said tonight on Fox News, she hasn't been fully vetted, which is not a compliment.  The primary winner will face Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.  Conventional wisdom has it that Angle would be the easiest candidate for Reid to defeat. 

11: 03 p.m. ET:  Polls in California are just closing.  We'll be looking at these races:  The GOP gubernatorial primary; the GOP Senate primary; the GOP primary for secretary of state, where a "birther" candidate, who doubts President Obama's birth claims, is running, and is considered an embarrassment to the party, and a Democratic congressional primary pitting veteran pro-defense Congresswoman Jane Harmon against a real, genuine hard leftist, Marcy Winograd.

11:01 p.m. ET:  BULLETIN:  Associated Press is declaring Sen. Blanche Lincoln the winner in the Arkansas Democratic primary runoff for the U.S. Senate nomination, over Lt. Gov. Bill Halter.  We'd said earlier that the trend was in Halter's favor, but that trend apparently wasn't enough to overcome Lincoln's small lead.  Lincoln currently has 52%, Halter 48%.  This is a major victory for "moderates" in the Democratic Party.  Halter was backed by the strong-arm tactics of leftist groups and public-employee unions, who essentially created his candidacy as a means of punishing Lincoln because of suspicion of moderation.  That Halter came so close in a moderate state indicates both Lincoln's unpopularity and the clout that leftist groups still have.

10:23 p.m. ET:  With 49% of the precincts in, incumbent Arkansas Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln is leading her primary challenger, Bill Halter, by only two points, 51-49%.  Despite Lincoln's lead, the trend is in Halter's favor.  As we reported earlier, Halter, the lieutenant governor, is a creation of left-wing political groups and public-service unions.  Arkansas is the last place you'd expect a guy like that to win, but remember that this is a Democratic primary. 

9:53 p.m. ET:  Polls close in Nevada in seven minutes.  The key race will decide who will face Senate Majority Leader Harry "Mr. Excitement" Reid in November.  Polls close in just over an hour in hugely important California, where GOP candidates for governor and U.S. senator are being chosen.

9:52 p.m. ET:  In Arkansas, with 20% of the vote in, incumbent Dem. Senator Blanche Lincoln is only leading her primary challenger, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter by four points, 52-48%.  Looks like a long night. 

9:46 p.m. ET:  Associated Press is declaring that Nikki Haley will not get the 50% needed to avoid a June 22nd runoff for the GOP gubernatorial nomination in South Carolina.  However, with about 84% of the vote in, Haley has 48%, her nearest competitor 21%, so Haley is pretty much assured of winning the nomination in two weeks, unless the charges of marital infidelity she's battled during the primary can be proved by 3-D videotape.

9:22 p.m. ET: With 70% of the votes in, Nikki Haley has 49% of the vote in the South Carolina GOP gubernatorial primary, just short of the 50% needed to avoid a runoff against Gresham Barrett, who has 21%.

9:02 p.m. ET:  With only four precincts in, incumbent Senator Blanche Lincoln, generally a moderate, leads Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, 54-46%, for the Democratic Senate nomination.  Halter is a creation of unions and leftist activist groups.

8:52 p.m. ET:  With 42% of the vote in, Nikki Haley continues leading with 46% of the vote in the South Carolina GOP gubernatorial primary.  Gresham Barrett has 25%.  But, as we've said, Haley needs 50% to avoid a runoff.

8:38 p.m. ET:  With 28% of the vote in, Palin-endorsed Nikki Haley is well ahead with 46% of the vote.  Her nearest competitor is Gresham Barrett, with 24%.  But Haley needs 50% to avoid a runoff.  She's been harassed by charges of marital infidelity, but polls do not show that the charges have hurt her.  She is from a family that immigrated from India.

8:36 p.m. ET:  Polls in Arkansas have just closed.  This runoff will decide the fate of Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln.  See our post, "The Liberal Sandbox," below.

THE LIBERAL SANDBOX – AT 7:23 P.M. ET:  Don't you love it when politicians fight over nothing, like an almost-worthless Senate nomination?  Watch that play out tonight in Arkansas. 

Incumbent Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln is in the fight of her life, competing in a runoff for renomination against Lt. Gov. Bill Halter.  What makes the race interesting is that Halter is running well to Lincoln's left in a decidedly unliberal state.  He is a creature of a national campaign organized by ultra-lefty MoveOn.org, one of the most oddly named political groups I've ever seen, and major public-employee unions, determined to punish Lincoln for frugal thoughts.

Lincoln has not been an outstanding senator.  Representing a state with little in common with New York, Massachusetts or California, she's had to balance the required moderation with the demands of a "progressive" national party.  She usually winds up botching it, but has tried to appear at least somewhat centrist.  That is not sufficient for the party's ultras, who prefer candidates with the mentality of Japanese kamikaze pilots.  Just crash your campaign.  You will meet Karl Marx in socialist heaven, which is located above Sweden.

So Halter, beneficiary of a huge national effort, and funding to match, may actually win the Deem runoff tonight. 

But then comes November.  Republican candidate John Bozeman is well ahead of both Lincoln and Halter in the polls.  Someone would have to prove that Bozeman does strange things with antelopes to dent his lead.  So the Deem nomination, decided tonight, will probably be worthless.

But if Lincoln is defeated, the crazies in the party will have proved their clout.  They're willing to destroy the house just to prevent anyone else from living in it.  They've gotten behind Halter as a warning to anyone who plans on challenging the public-employee unions.  After all, why stop at bankrupting New York and California?

June 8, 2010     Permalink

WAKE UP, BARACK – AT 9:53 A.M. ET:   One thing about weakness in foreign policy – it produces immediate results.  Barack Obama, bringer of peace and good will, hasn't quite cut it on the international circuit, and others are filling in the vacuum that he leaves.  From The New York Times:

ISTANBUL — Leaders of Russia, Turkey and Iran convened at a security summit meeting in Istanbul on Tuesday in a display of regional power that appeared to be calculated to test the United States just days before a scheduled American-backed debate in the United Nations Security Council on imposing tighter sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program.

When will Barack Hussein Obama Jr. realize that Turkey is no longer an ally, but an increasingly Islamic state, that relations with Russia have not been "reset," and that Iran will not change a thing?  He will probably never realize these things because Obama's beliefs amount to a religion, not subject to facts, judgment or maturity.  The president increasingly acts like a character in "Hair."

In remarks at the gathering of regional leaders, the third of its kind dedicated to increasing cooperation and security in Asia, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran said a nuclear agreement brokered by Turkey and Brazil last month was a one-time opportunity and other countries had called to express their support for it.

“We’ve seen a lot of support from the international arena,” he said, according to the Turkey’s official Anatolian News Agency. “This is the voice of everyone’s heart.” Mr. Ahmadinejad also maintained a defiant posture toward the United States.

“If the U.S. and its allies think they could hold the stick of sanctions and then sit and negotiate with us, they are seriously mistaken,” he told a news conference, according to Iran’s state-run Press TV satellite broadcaster. European and American officials say the vote on sanctions could come as early as Wednesday.

Yes, sanctions will probably be voted on at the UN this week.  But what kind of sanctions?  It is highly unlikely that anything acceptable to China and Russia, who have veto power, would have any effect on the Iranians.

Other nations have sensed Obama's weakness, his Carteresque foreign policy, and are establishing their own arrangements.  But Obama hosts really good music concerts at the White House.

June 8, 2010     Permalink

WHERE IS HE NOW? – AT 9:14 A.M. ET:  We cannot confirm this story, but there have been other stories to this effect, and I think it's wise to present it as part of the conversation.  The translation comes from MEMRI: 

The Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa reported on June 7, 2010, that Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, and five other high-ranking Al-Qaeda figures have been hiding for five years in the mountains of Sabzevar, a city in Khorasan province in northeastern Iran (220 km west of Mashhad).

According to Al-Siyassa, the information, which came from a source linked directly to Iranian security apparatuses, was that bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri had entered Sabzevar at the invitation of Iran and through the mediation of Lebanese Hizbullah.

COMMENT:  If true, and we stress that we can't back it up, that might explain the baffling disappearance of bin Laden from Afghanistan, and our difficulty in finding him.

This is absolutely intriguing, and I hope journalists pursue it.  If Iran is protecting bin Laden, it will challenge the conventional wisdom about relations between terrorists and their supporters.

June 8, 2010    Permalink

OFF THEIR MEDS AGAIN – AT 8:53 A.M. ET:  The "progressive" movement in America can be compared to a rejected suitor who stalks a woman thinking that, if he's around enough, she'll come to love him.  Don't these people get the message?  From WaPo:

Progressive movement activists gathered in Washington on Monday declared themselves dismayed, even angry, at President Obama and Democrats in Congress for being too timid and compromising in pursuing change on issues from health care to the environment to the economy.

These are the kind of people who'd rather have a pure nothing than an impure 50%.

Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the liberal news Web site the Huffington Post, referred to Obama's 2008 campaign message by saying: "It's clear that 'hope' is not enough. What we need is Hope 2.0, and that is taking matters into our own hands."

If this woman hadn't married the fabulously wealthy Mr. Huffington, and gotten a huge divorce settlement, do you think she'd be anybody?

By seeking bipartisanship, Huffington said, Democrats have made too many concessions on legislation. She invoked the Gulf of Mexico oil spill by saying bipartisanship resulted in lax government oversight of BP. "We are seeing bipartisanship," she said. "Washing on the shores of Louisiana every day we see more pictures of pelicans and dolphins covered in bipartisanship."

Yeah, right.  The Gulf oil spill was caused by bipartisanship.  The American people will really believe that.  And the environmental extremists, who force oil companies to drill in dangerously deep water, where accidents are more likely, have no blame at all. 

This is pathetic stuff.  This crowd represents maybe 20% of the electorate, but they truly believe that the army of the people is behind them, marching forward, chanting odes to tofu.

The problem is that these people have an inordinate influence in education, which is why we must still be on guard for our future.  They grab our kids and teach them.  Otherwise, the "progressive" movement, which isn't very progressive, is perpetually out of synch with America.

June 8, 2010     Permalink

A JOKE – AT 8:37 A.M. ET:  There's this rich guy in Australia who wants to do good, and started this foundation that rates countries according to their peacefulness.  You know exactly what's coming, don't you?  From the Washington Times:

America, land of peace? Forget about it.

The United States is just the 85th most peaceful nation on earth, according to the fourth annual Global Peace Index (GPI), a statistical ranking based on a spectrum of 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators — from political stability and military expenditures to gun sales, violent crime and "respect for human rights."

Well, we know exactly where these chaps are coming from.  Military expenditures make a country less peaceful.  No, military expenditures, when correctly applied, help keep the peace.  Most people with a mental age above 12 understand that.  Unfortunately, that rules out a number of the world's self-proclaimed "intellectuals."

The 85th position does not even rank the U.S. in the upper half in the 149-nation list, which was released Tuesday.

But some of the countries ranked ahead of the U.S. may raise a few eyebrows: China, Cuba, Libya, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Chile and the United Arab Emirates are among them, based on their relative peacefulness within their own borders and with neighbors. At its most basic, the GPI simply defines peace as "an absence of violence."

Look at that list of peace-loving states.  Can't wait to settle down in peace-loving Libya, China, and Cuba.  Might even live to see an election.

The top 10?

For the second year in a row, New Zealand is in first place, followed by Iceland, Japan, Austria, Norway, Ireland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Finland and Sweden.

When countries don't have external challenges, when they appease threatening immigrant populations, when they choose not to live up to their international responsibilities, they sure can seem "peaceful."  And some of those, like Denmark, are fine countries.  Others, like Sweden, are "peaceful" because they don't lift a finger to keep international peace, and buy off their own populations.

The bottom 10 countries are North Korea, Congo, Chad, Georgia, Russia, Israel, Pakistan, Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia and, in very last place, Iraq.

That tells the story.  Put Iraq, now a liberated and struggling country, in last place.  Must slap down those Americans.  And of course, Israel, with one of the lowest crime rates in the world, must also be near last, to satisfy the international left.

The sad thing is that lists like this are believed.  They're read in "intellectual" and academic circles, and reprinted in magazines. 

It's interesting how low we rank after 17 months of Obama.  I guess he hasn't made that much of an impression.

June 8, 2010     Permalink

AS MICHIGAN GOES? – AT 8:13 A.M. ET:  Michael Barone examines his home state of Michigan as a possible bellwether for national politics, and finds the results troubling for the Democrats.

Michigan, with its auto industry, has been severely hit by the national recession.  Its governor is an Obama-supporting Democrat. 

In 2008 Michigan was 4% more Democratic than the national average: 57%-41% for Barack Obama....

...Standard political analysis would suggest that Michigan should have moved even farther toward the Democrats since 2008. In the deep recession Michigan has consistently been the nation’s number one unemployment state. And the federal government under the Obama administration bailed out General Motors and Chrysler, two of Michigan’s largest employers.

The standard analysis fails:

But Michigan voters have been moving right, not left. A recent poll taken for the Detroit Free Press poll showed that only 43% of Michiganians support the Obama Democrats’ health care bill and 53% are opposed.

And...

Moreover, Republicans have been consistently leading in the open race for Michigan’s governorship...This poll also shows negative job ratings for Barack Obama (44%-54%) and Jennifer Granholm (28%-71%).

And most important:

While the Obama Democrats’ ratings remain relatively high in New York and California, where affluent secular liberals are one of the largest Democratic constituencies, they certainly are not doing so in Michigan, where such voters are a much smaller part of the electorate. Tentative conclusion: rich liberals may be able to afford Obamastimulus and Obamacare, but voters with modest incomes don’t think they can.

Yes, I'm afraid we see it here in New York:  Liberals of a certain class continue to cling to Obama the way they cling to global warming and the UN.  New York is losing more residents through out-migration than any other state, because of high taxes and high living costs, its state government is collapsing, and its political leadership is a joke...but liberal Democrats remain near shoo-ins for high state offices.  In New York, liberalism is the state religion.

We hope trends in Michigan point the way to the future, and that New York and California fall, politically I mean, into the sea.

June 8, 2010     Permalink

MONDAY,  JUNE 7,  2010

PRIMARIES TOMORROW – AT 8:16 P.M. ET:  Don't forget that there are major primaries tomorrow in California, Nevada, Arkansas, and South Carolina. 

The California GOP will nominate candidates for governor and U.S. senator, and it's possible that a female team of Meg Whitman (gov) and Carly Fiorina (Senate) will be leading the ticket in November.  In Nevada, Republicans will nominate a candidate to run against Harry "Mr. Excitement" Reid, the Senate majority leader.  In Arkansas, Democratic incumbent Senator Blanche Lincoln is trying to beat off a challenge from her political left, mounted by labor unions.  In South Carolina, we'll see if Palin-endorsed candidate Nikki Haley can overcome charges of marital infidelity to become the GOP gubernatorial candidate.  If she wins, and wins in November, the GOP will have two southern governors who are children of immigrants from India.  Take that, liberals.

We'll be here monitoring the returns as they come in, and live blogging.

June 7, 2010     Permalink

AND THE TERROR BEAT GOES ON – AT 7:56 P.M. ET:  Apparently, not all Americans visiting Yemen are tourists or religious pilgrims.  From Fox:

Yemeni authorities have 12 Americans in custody, and the arrests may be linked to a joint U.S.-Yemeni anti-terror campaign, a State Department spokesman said Monday.

Spokesman PJ Crowley told reporters the U.S. was trying to get more information, but did not provide any further details.

The spokesman, P.J. Crowley, declined to provide details about the case, except to say the State Department is aware of the arrests and is seeking more information about the individuals being held.

Last Wednesday, Yemeni security officials said authorities had detained several foreigners, including Americans, Britons and an Australian woman, in connection with an investigation into Al Qaeda's increased activity in the country.

The arrests reported last week were made after foreign intelligence agencies provided lists of names of people they wanted to have detained or put under surveillance, according to two Yemeni security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not permitted to brief journalists.

COMMENT:  We're glad that some progress is being made in rounding up suspects, but it does seem to me that we've seen a marked increase in terror activity since Barack Obama took office.  This is another example.

The war against terror, even though the phrase has been banned by the Obamans, is far from over.  It may just be starting.

June 7, 2010     Permalink

DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD – AT 7:26 P.M. ET:  Helen Thomas has resigned from Hearst, following her crazed, bigoted remarks about Jews, and the uproar they caused.  The White House, to its credit, denounced the remarks today.

But don't think Helen will be without defenders.  She'll probably become a martyr.  Maybe they'll name one of those Gaza "relief" ships for her.  She can sail on it herself, offering to take candy to Gaza and Jews back to Poland and Germany.

And already some of the leftists in the press are out, pleading for mercy for Helen.  It's the usual suspects, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Ellen Ratner.  Janeane Garofolo will undoubtedly be heard from.   And we'll no doubt get the "free speech" brigades on the left, who believe that any criticism of a leftist is a violation of the individual's free speech.

But she's gone.  And we should be grateful for that.  She should have been gone 20 years ago.  A White House birthday party for her, celebrating her 90th birthday, has been canceled.

June 7, 2010     Permalink

COMING SOON TO A GOVERNMENT NEAR YOU – AT 9:56 A.M. ET:  Well, at least there's one leader who'll tell it like it is:

LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron said Monday that Britain’s financial situation was “even worse than we thought” and that the country would have to make savage spending cuts to bring its swelling deficit under control.

Stern and grim-faced in a speech in Milton Keynes, just north of London, Mr. Cameron said, “How we deal with these things will affect our economy, our society — indeed our whole way of life.”

“The decisions we make will affect every single person in our country,” he said. “And the effects of those decisions will stay with us for years, perhaps decades, to come.”

Mr. Cameron said that at more than 11 percent, Britain’s budget deficit was the largest ever faced by the country in peacetime. But he warned that the structural deficit was more worrisome. Britain currently owes a total of more than $1.12 trillion , he said, and in five years will owe nearly double that if nothing is done now.

COMMENT:  Let's see how the British people take this.  The left over there, and over here, would rather lead a country to ruin than see any social program cut. 

Britain's future lies in the balance. 

Of course, there are actually two Britains.  There's the Britain of Winston Churchill, and the Britain of Neville Chamberlain, the Britain of raw guts, and the Britain of the nanny state.  

Cameron is off to a good start, with the blunt, hard truth.  He may put Obama to shame.  Well, that's not much of a standard, is it?

June 7, 2010     Permalink

WILL THERE BE MITCH MANIA? – AT 9:23 A.M. ET:  Republican Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana is one of the nation's best governors.  He is also hugely popular in his home state.  And there is buzz about the presidency in 2012.  From The Politico:

Daniels gets cover-boy treatment in the new Weekly Standard, with a drawing of him in a motorcycle jacket, aboard a bike, “RIDE ALONG WITH MITCH … from the Indiana statehouse to the White House,” by senior editor Andrew Ferguson: “He’s 5′7″. His pale coloring is set off by his reddish gray hair, and the day is fast approaching when the combover will no longer be able to work its magic. … And voters, apparently, find it all endearing. In 2008 he garnered more votes than any other candidate in the state’s history, even as Obama became the first Democratic candidate for president to win the state since 1964. Daniels won 20 percent of the black vote and a majority of the youth vote. …

“[H]e has yet to set foot in New Hampshire or Iowa, as other potential nominees have. So far his only scheduled campaign appearance out of state is in Ohio, at a rally for John Kasich, the Republican candidate for governor. ‘I really don’t want to run,’ he said … ‘It’s very important this time around that the party get it right. It’s not going to be enough to be the un-Obama. We need to focus more on the What of the campaign than the Who. … What we’ve seen in the past year, what I call shock-and-awe statism, has put the American experiment at risk. … For the first time in my life, the country faces survival-level issues.’ Those would be, along with ‘terrorism in a WMD world,’ the national debt and the recurring federal deficits.” DEFINITELY not interested. Wink, wink.

COMMENT:  Daniels is a fascinating guy whose smallish frame and understated style remind us of another famous Hoosier, the World War II correspondent Ernie Pyle.  And Indiana seems to be doing pretty well, compared with other states that are near bankruptcy.

Daniels has some negatives, though.  I heard him speak in New York recently, and the speech was, frankly, dull.  Now, that could actually work in Mitch's favor if he's presented as the competent, no-flash candidate.  Problem is, the flash candidate usually wins, especially when the flash is named Obama.

I'd like to see Daniels run, though.  Let's see how voters react to an all-business, no-show-business candidate with a proved record.  Hey, you never know.  And you won't find a more capable guy.

June 7, 2010     Permalink

TIME TO GO, HELEN – AT 8:41 A.M. ET:  Well, at least some people have a moral compass.  Vulgar senior White House correspondent Helen Thomas has been dropped by her speaking service.  And a high school in the Washington area has dropped her from its graduation ceremony.

This comes in the aftermath of Thomas's anti-Semitic remarks, caught on tape. 

It's time for Thomas to resign quietly and be gone.

I doubt if that will happen.  Anti-Christian and anti-Semitic remarks have become accepted by a certain trendy segment of American society in recent years.   Jesse Jackson, in 1984, referred to Jews as hymies and New York as hymietown, and survived quite well.  The current president ridiculed Americans who "cling to their guns and their religion," meaning the Christian faith, and he got elected.

The nation's elites seem to be upset only by bigoted comments directed against groups popular on the political left.  Arizona is called "racist" for passing an anti-illegal immigration law that actual provides all kinds of civil-liberties safeguards.  And yet, it is perfectly acceptable in some circles to make the worst comments about Cuban-Americans, among our hardest-working and most patriotic citizens.  Cuban Americans are perceived as anti-Castro, a sin in leftist circles.

Helen Thomas's disgusting call for Israeli Jews to "go home" to Poland and Germany, where the Holocaust took place, is even more sinister than it seems.  Remarks like that are part of an international campaign to delegitimize the state of Israel by denying that Jews have a history there.  But many of the same forces behind this campaign are also militantly anti-Christian.  After all, if Jews have no history in Israel then, by definition, Christianity was never invented, since there could not have been a Jew named Jesus.

There is actually a textbook floating around in some American schools that describes Jesus as "a Palestinian," an absurd concept, but one that strips him of both Judaism and Christianity. 

The hard left's war against Western religion is fought in many ways.  Some are coming to the surface.

We await the moment when President Obama calls on Helen Thomas at a news conference. 

June 7, 2010      Permalink

ANOTHER ACHIEVEMENT TO BE PROUD OF – AT 8:30 A.M. ET:  From Bloomberg:

President Barack Obama is poised to increase the U.S. debt to a level that exceeds the value of the nation’s annual economic output, a step toward what Bill Gross called a “debt super cycle.”

The CHART OF THE DAY tracks U.S. gross domestic product and the government’s total debt, which rose past $13 trillion for the first time this month. The amount owed will surpass GDP in 2012, based on forecasts by the International Monetary Fund. The lower panel shows U.S. annual GDP growth as tracked by the IMF, which projects the world’s largest economy to expand at a slower pace than the 3.2 percent average during the past five decades.

“Over the long term, interest rates on government debt will likely have to rise to attract investors,” said Hiroki Shimazu, a market economist in Tokyo at Nikko Cordial Securities Inc., a unit of Japan’s third-largest publicly traded bank. “That will be a big burden on the government and the people.”

Gross, who runs the world’s largest mutual fund at Pacific Investment Management Co. in Newport Beach, California, said in his June outlook report that “the debt super cycle trend” suggests U.S. economic growth won’t be enough to support the borrowings “if real interest rates were ever to go up instead of down.”

COMMENT:  Well now look, stop complaining.  Please remember that all that spending is for the children.  Oh, wait.  The children will be paying for it.  Well now look, who needs children? 

Remember the classic tactic, developed by Marxists in the late fifties and early sixties:  Wreck the system.  Bring it down by flooding it, overburdening it.  Then pick up the pieces and create the Marxist paradise on Earth.

Why is it that, the more I see of Obama and his program, the more I see those tactics at work?   No, no, I must not think such thoughts.  Christiane Amanpour wouldn't approve.

June 7, 2010     Permalink

MISSING IN INACTION – AT 8:12 A.M. ET:  There was a D-Day ceremony yesterday in the Virginia town that paid the highest price in casualties on that day:

BEDFORD, Va. (AP) -- In a stirring tribute to the D-Day sacrifices of American soldiers and their allies, the U.S. military's top officer said Sunday that World War II's defining moment should remind all that returning warriors need not "suffer in quiet desperation."

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke in the peaceful setting of this small town, which bore the heaviest share of American losses in the June 6, 1944, landings on the beaches of Normandy. The National D-Day Memorial was established here in 2001 as a tribute to those who died in the invasion of German-occupied Europe.

Adm. Mullen drew a parallel with the needs and aspirations of the men and women returning from today's battlefields, many with the invisible psychological wounds of war.

"They, too, have seen and done things we cannot know," he said. "Their lives, too, are forever changed. And just as previous generations of heroes did, they must likewise adjust themselves to peace."

COMMENT:  Absent:  President Barack Obama, who apparently couldn't be inconvenienced while preparing for last night's music festival at Ford's Theater, his second musical gala of the week.  Gotta hear that beat. 

Obama could have gone to Bedford.  He should've been there.  Of course, he should have been at Arlington on Memorial Day as well.  And he should have been at the Gulf spill many days earlier.

This man has gotten too many passes. 

June 7,  2010     Permalink