Archive for 2016
December 22, 2016
“SMART DIPLOMACY:” How the Obama administration pushed Turkey into Russia’s arms.
AN INSTAPUNDIT READER POLL:
Note: If you’re seeing a security popup, it’s just because it’s an http: and not an https: connection. Yes, this means that the NSA, or the Roosians, could theoretically spy on your vote, if that matters to you. . . .
SUSAN PAGE: There’s a clear Democratic front-runner for 2020.
On the theory that it’s never too early to launch the next campaign, the new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll has identified an overwhelming front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020.
It’s someone entirely new.
Literally. Not an identifiable person. Just “someone entirely new.” When that description was included on a list of possible contenders, 66% of Democrats and independents said they would be “excited” to see such a person jump in the race; just 9% thought he or she shouldn’t run. That’s an overwhelming yes-please-run score of 57 percentage points for, you know, whomever.
That seems wise.
TRUMP’S GENERALS: Mike Flynn vs. Al-Qaeda.
At the DIA, Flynn’s perception of the growing threat posed by Islamist extremists put him at odds with the triumphalist narrative coming out of the White House. With the death of Osama bin Laden and many of his top lieutenants in 2011, the Obama administration argued that Al Qaeda “core” was “decimated,” and the threat from terrorism rapidly diminishing. In 2012, the National Intelligence Council had even crafted a draft National Intelligence Estimate — a document supposed to represent the consensus view of the US intelligence community — which reportedly concluded that Al Qaeda was no longer a threat to the United States.
Flynn and a number of other senior intelligence officials had successfully pushed back hard against that conclusion as premature. Flynn had DIA analysts distill that intelligence into a PowerPoint slide that showed that the number of radical Islamist terrorist groups had nearly doubled between 2004 and 2013, and that they occupied a far larger global footprint than before the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Flynn believes that his disagreement with the White House over the nature of the terrorist threat is a major reason he was forced out a year early as head of the DIA. “The intelligence I saw as director of the DIA made it very clear that Al Qaeda and its affiliates were not on the run, but were in fact rapidly expanding,” Flynn said in our recent interview. “The number of terrorist attacks were on the rise, and Iraq was starting to burn again. So that was Obama’s big lie: that the enemy was on the run, and we were beating these guys.”
Read the whole thing.
PERSONNEL IS POLICY: Trump taps Conway as senior counselor.
Conway, who joined Trump’s team as campaign manager in August, announced earlier this week on Fox News she was moving from her New Jersey home to Washington, signaling a pending position in the incoming Trump administration. Thursday’s announcement from the transition team laid out her new role.
“Kellyanne Conway has been a trusted advisor and strategist who played a crucial role in my victory,” Trump said in a statement released Thursday mornig. “She is a tireless and tenacious advocate of my agenda and has amazing insights on how to effectively communicate our message. I am pleased that she will be part of my senior team in the West Wing.”
Conway will work with senior administration officials to communicate and execute Trump’s legislative priorities and action, the statement said.
There was an improvement in consistency, tone, and overall competence to Trump’s presidential campaign almost from the moment Kellyanne Conway was brought on board. She deserves a spot like this at the White House, and will likely excel in the role.
AT AMAZON, 70% Off or More on Metal Working.
IF ONLY THERE WERE A WAY TO MAKE THOSE TARGETS LESS SOFT, SOMEHOW: Expert on deadly Europe attacks: Terrorists constantly seek ‘soft targets’: “we know that terrorists are constantly looking for mass gatherings, soft targets with little to no security.”
HER COUNSEL SO FAR HAS BEEN EXCELLENT: Kellyanne Conway named “Counselor to the President.”
THOMAS SOWELL: The New York Times’ Fictitious Image of Gun Carriers.
I CERTAINLY HOPE SO: Don Surber: Did banning Glenn Reynolds kill Twitter?
COINCIDENCE? I WONDER… Fake Hate Crime Epidemic Peaks Just Days Before Christmas.
THE PREFERENCE CASCADE IN THE OTHER DIRECTION CAN BE BRUTAL, THOUGH, IF IT HAPPENS: Nassim Taleb: The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority.
GROWTH:
Fastest-growing populations in America:
1. Utah
2. Nevada
3. Idaho
4. Florida
5. Washingtonhttps://t.co/jWJ1cYi7oR pic.twitter.com/LoZl51SDs3— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) December 21, 2016
One of only three reliably blue growth states isn’t a state at all — it’s Washington, D.C., which once was a swamp and someday could be again.
CLEAN GOVERNMENT: N.Y. Pay-to-Play Plot Fueled by Bribes, U.S. Says.
A senior investment manager for New York’s state pension fund accepted bribes including drugs, prostitutes and tickets to a Paul McCartney concert from two brokers in exchange for millions of dollars in fixed-income business from the fund, prosecutors said.
Navnoor Kang, who served as the New York State Common Retirement Fund’s director of fixed income and head of portfolio security, was charged along with the two brokers, Deborah Kelley and Gregg Schonhorn, according to court documents filed Wednesday in Manhattan federal court.
The case exposes the seamy side of the management of pension money, where investment professionals sometimes engage in so-called pay-to-play tactics to win lucrative commissions. Along with cash and prostitutes, their alleged bribes included ski trips to Utah, a long weekend in New Orleans and cocaine for a pension fund official overseeing tens of billions of dollars in assets held on behalf of more than 1 million state employees.
The allegations are the latest to rock the state pension fund, the nation’s third largest with $184 billion in assets.
Why are Democrat-run states such cesspits of prostitution, drugs, and white-collar crime?
SO MUCH WINNING: Trump plots two-for-one assault on Obama regs. “President-elect Donald Trump is setting out to gut the Obama administration’s regulations, starting with a mandate that would slowly chip away at the number of rules on the books.”
BLUE STATE BLUES: Illinois’ population has shrunk by 78,000 in three years.
In fact, the Census reports that 114,144 residents fled Illinois last year — the equivalent of the entire city of Peoria, the state’s seventh largest municipality. When offset with local births, deaths, and others moving in, it comes to a net loss of 37,508 residents in just one year. And the Tribune report adds that this is not just a rural or downstate problem, as some might have expected previously — Chicago has been losing population as well.
And then there’s this, which makes the idea behind Donald Trump’s clumsy and patronizing pitch for black votes seem a bit less crazy, and in fact possibly even something potent if ever made competently:
Leading the exodus to warmer states is the black population, in search of more stable incomes, safe neighborhoods and prosperity. Between 2014 and 2015, more than 9,000 black residents left Cook County.
The overall number of residents that Illinois has lost is alarming in historical terms. It was about 12,000 in 2014, 28,000 in 2015, and nearly 40,000 this year, for a net loss of nearly 80,000 residents over three years. That represents the equivalent of Bloomington — Illinois’ twelfth largest city. The shrinkage is so acute that Pennsylvania could soon overtake Illinois as the nation’s sixth-largest state, even though it lost (a mere) 8,000 residents on net last year.
But where are they going, and are they bringing their failed voting habits with them?
TAKING SIDES: Metro’s special inauguration SmarTrip cards won’t feature Trump. “The 2013 and 2009 inauguration-edition SmartTrip cards both featured a smiling image of President Barack Obama.”
Well, when Trump privatizes Metro, it’ll be fine.
STRONG HORSE: NATO’s 2nd-largest military is ‘bending’ to Russia — and leaving the US out in the cold.
“This is Turkey bending to Russia,” Aaron Stein, an expert on Turkey and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told The New York Times on Wednesday. “This is putting a fine point on Turkey’s policy of ‘Assad must go’ no longer being the policy.”
The Turkish-Russian rapprochement — which has been ongoing since Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan apologized to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, for Turkey’s shooting down a Russian warplane in November 2015 — is likely to continue after the assassination of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, Andrey Karlov, in Ankara on Monday.
Statements released by Russian and Turkish officials in the aftermath of Karlov’s death suggested the countries were determined not to let the incident derail their renewed friendship, while Erdogan and Putin said the assassination had only strengthened their resolve to jointly fight terrorism.
Officials and lawmakers in both countries, meanwhile, have implied that the US may have played a role in Karlov’s assassination, an insinuation the US State Department has vehemently denied.
If we’re not the strong horse we might as well play the scapegoat.
JONAH GOLDBERG: Will Trump Be the Transformative President Obama Wanted to Be?
JONATHAN ADLER: Putting the N.C. GOP’s legislative power grab in some historical and political perspective.
Since the election, many commentators have raised the alarm about post-election efforts by North Carolina Republicans to limit the power of the incoming governor — a Democrat — in a lame-duck legislative session. The new reforms drastically reduce the number of officials the governor can appoint within state government, require legislative confirmation of Cabinet-level appointments, eliminate partisan majorities in the state board of elections and strip the governor of the power to make appointments to the University of North Carolina Board of Trustees.
These reforms, which largely rescind prior legislative grants of power to the governor, were hastily cobbled together and passed without significant deliberation. This is anything but responsible behavior. Yet, as seems lost on many commentators (including some historians), this sort of thing is par for the course in the Tarheel State.
It’s different when Democrats do it.
YEAH, THIS’LL WORK: EU agrees new gun rules in face of terrorism.
EU officials said the proposals, which were first mooted in 2015, will restrict access to some high-caliber weapons and give law enforcement authorities new tools to trace the weapons’ origins and avoid them being sold on the black market.
Support for the new rules gained traction following several terror atrocities on European soil, including the Paris, Nice and Brussels attacks over the past two years.
“We have fought hard for an ambitious deal that reduces the risk of shootings in schools, summer camps or terrorist attacks with legally held firearms,” European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said in statement.
But Juncker said Brussels “would have liked to go further.”
I’m sure.
OH, YEAH, THIS IS STILL ON SALE FOR 99c, THOUGH GOING OFF SOON: Sword And Blood.
For those unsure about it, here’s a prequel short story, for free, on my blog: First Blood.
And for those waiting for the sequel, it is coming. I just got a whole lot of traditional work sent my way, so the indie stuff has to wait a couple/three more months.