Saving Hillary 262
We found this via PowerLine. It was made by Tim Donovan.
And we also enjoyed this, by Andrew Malcolm at Investors’ Business Daily:
On the surface, wannabe president Hillary Clinton is having a no-good, very bad, terrible August. Despite several attempted and ultimately unsuccessful campaign launches to re-introduce herself to Americans who grew tired of her years ago, Clinton’s favorability and trust numbers are seriously declining.
Tuesday came new poll results that New Hampshire’s uppity voters have dramatically shifted their Democrat allegiances since March and now favor what’s-his-name, the ancient socialist from next-door Vermont. That’s got to sting to fall behind a Mr. Magoo.
This week Clinton finally agreed to turn her controversial private email server over to the Justice Department and FBI, which is allegedly looking into her unauthorized use of the unsecured system and the reported presence on it of classified materials from her disappointing days as secretary of State.
This was widely described by mainstream media as a Clinton cave. But it’s a mysterious one. Why give up now after five months of nope-its-mine-I’m-keeping-it stonewalling?
Here’s a News Flash: She and her cronies have had five months to wipe that thing clean, erase every single little byte of anything there. If there’s one speck of anything incriminating left on that thing, then Hillary should be impeached and expelled as incompetent from that conniving clan of Clintons.
Now, we would hope that sufficient professionalism remains in the vaunted FBI that its techs and agents are seriously investigating one of the president’s worst one-time enemies transformed into close political ally, the potential presidential protector of whatever his political legacy is.
But let’s look back at the law enforcement diligence of Obama’s Justice Department during these endless 2,396 days of his reign:
The [lack of] conscientiousness of its agents probing the renegade Fast and Furious gun-running operation and Atty. Gen. Eric Holder’s stonewalling of the congressional probe.
The inability of agents to find anything worthy of prosecution in the Internal Revenue Service’s obvious intimidation of Obama political opponents and the clearly willful destruction of evidence.
The promised swift application of justice to the murderers of four Americans by a Benghazi mob that resulted, a couple of years later, in the arrest of one whole guy.
Not to mention the State Department’s accountability review of the botched Benghazi business that didn’t bother talking to the woman in charge and conveniently found no one person at fault — just, you know, some systemic housekeeping problems requiring tidying.
So, Clinton could surrender her email server safe in the knowledge that A) it sounds good on TV and B) there’s nothing left there for Justice folks to have to not find.
Remember the 18 missing minutes on the Nixon tapes? Before Ms. Rodham got fired from the Watergate commission, she learned an all-important lesson about destroying evidence.
Her approach follows the Obamafication of political defenses: Drag everything out as long as possible. Make your responses as arcane as humanly possible to deny value to any video replays. Prolong. Prolong. Prolong. With the modern-day need for immediacy by media and its tacit complicity, “news” becomes “old” quite quickly.
And Americans in 2015 seem easily distracted. Look! There’s a Confederate flag!
Conventional wisdom is the chronic Clinton delays will push these messy stories into election year, hurting her 2016 chances. Remember her Benghazi House testimony is Oct. 22.
But wait! How much did stonewalling Fast and Furious, Solyndra, one trillion wasted stimulus dollars and Benghazi, for example, hurt Obama’s reelection in 2012? He concocted a fleeing al-Qaeda and cancer-causing Romney.
Obama’s off golfing again for two weeks. But he’s still president with 525 days left.
So the nation must brace itself – almost certainly, worse is to come to the American people.
And Hillary could still remain above the law.
A ray of hope for a change 380
What was just a suspicion this spring has now become a clear national trend, confirmed by a series of new polling numbers: Americans’ faith in Barack Obama’s basic competence as president and commander-in-chief is crumbling beneath the weight of accumulating scandals, inept images and overseas crises in which Obama often seems surprised, unprepared, hesitant to act and easily out-maneuvered.
We quote from an Investors’ Business Daily article by Andrew Malcolm, who goes on to say:
Additionally, the alleged economic recovery, the worst in more than a half-century, remains stalled on the fourth anniversary of Obama’s much-heralded Recovery Summer of 2010.
As the American military’s hard-won Iraq war gains appear endangered by renewed sectarian fighting of barbaric proportions, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News Poll out today finds the country’s approval of the Democrat’s foreign policy efforts has sunk to its lowest level ever, just 37%.
Obama’s overall job approval, which had begun a slow recovery from its historic nadir of 41%, has slid back down to its lowest point ever.
Nearly two-out-of-three Americans say the country is on the wrong track. The RealClearPolitics average of such surveys finds 64% wrong track and 29% right track under Obama.
A convincing majority of Americans (54%) believes Obama is unable “to lead the country and get the job done.” Forty-two percent still think he can. But 41% now say his performance has worsened in the past year, compared to a paltry 15% who think it has improved.
Worse for Obama and his party, the erosion of support for him, his goals and cool, detached style has now spread from the crucial independent bloc of voters to key elements of Democrats’ political base, young people and Hispanics.
The share of Hispanics who view Obama favorably and approve of his job has plummeted from 67% early last year to 44% this past week. …
“I don’t want to pit red America against blue America,” Obama professed in November 2007. “I want to be the President of the United States of America.”
Of course, no one ever accused this president of humility.
While thousands of Iraqis were beheaded, crucified and machine-gunned in mass executions in recent days, Obama and wife Michelle took a long getaway weekend to sunny southern California.
There, a detached or disconnected Obama ignored the bloody foreign news dominating TV’s across the country and exhorted college grads to do something about global warming. He sounded upbeat to Democrat donors at a Newport Beach fundraiser despite the ominous political clouds gathering for the Nov. 4 midterm elections. And, of course, Obama got in plenty of golf. …
The administration’s lack of preparation and response readiness for the 9/11 Benghazi attack in 2012; Obama’s professed ignorance of the IRS harassment of conservative political groups, which the president’s lawyer knew about; the totally botched roll-out of the ObamaCare website, which Obama claimed to be unaware of even days later; shoddy, tardy medical treatment of veterans at VA hospitals, which Obama … claimed to be unaware of; White House surprise about the outrage over releasing Taliban leaders – these, among others, have combined to mold a solidifying image of incompetence.
So, many who voted him into power now see him as an incompetent failure. But our guess is that though he must hate being unpopular – or anything less than adulated – he sees himself as a success. Did he intend to wreck the economy? To diminish America’s global status and power? To strengthen Islam? To humiliate the military? To expand government? …
In any case, however he is perceived by the electorate –
That needn’t bother Obama, who’ll never face voters again.
But his party mates will in just 139 days.
Even without scandals, ongoing economic pain and foreign bungling, historic patterns show a president’s party suffers congressional losses in a second term’s midterms. The GOP already controls the House and a pickup of only six seats gives the party Senate control.
Which would mean that the House could impeach him and the Senate could try him – but only remove him from office by a two-thirds majority vote. Chances are, Obama will not be removed from office. Still, it will be good if he – and the Democrats – fear that possibility.
We particularly like the way the rather happy article concludes:
The growing shadows of his incompetence bode ill for the presidential ambitions of what’s-her-name with the new book.
Moments of the sun 91
Our text and the video it refers to come from an article in Investor’s Business Daily, by Andrew Malcolm.
He starts with a delectable irrelevance about a man who didn’t take much notice of the sun when attributing the warming of the earth to humankind:
Former journalist, former representative, former senator, former vice president, former husband, former cable channel owner, former inventor and former environmentalist barker Al Gore has obviously given up the global warming game. It’s amazing what a few hundred million petro-dollars will accomplish.
Malcolm is alluding of course to Al Gore’s sale of his TV company to Al Jazeera.
But now we turn to the sun:
Our Sun has reached middle age as stars go, about four billion years old. It’s grown about 6% in that time and — oh, look, Albert was sort of right about one thing — increased its surface temperature about 300 degrees. You probably didn’t notice. …
In another 4.5- to 5-billion years, right about the time Obama’s national debt will be paid down, our Sun will have used up all its hydrogen fuel. That begins a very long, very nasty decay process that involves cataclysmic things like collapsing and expanding in size out to envelope its three closest planets–Mercury, Venus and — oh-oh — Earth. …
Scientists know all this because, thanks to a generation of space telescopes like Hubble, we can watch the slow-motion decay of other distant suns, even though they may well actually have disappeared by the time the light of their decay story reaches Earth.
NASA is also studying our own star. The Solar Dynamics Observatory was launched three years ago. Even though it’s circling the Earth at nearly 7,000 miles an hour and the Earth itself is moving through space about 46 miles every minute, the observatory can stay focused on the Sun.
It snaps a “photo” of the Sun every 12 seconds in 10 different wavelengths.
This new NASA video includes images at the wavelength of 171 angstroms. … The sun particles you see are a little more than one million degrees Fahrenheit.
The four-view of the Sun near the video’s end includes additional wavelengths.
A couple of things to watch for in the fast-moving video below: At 1:11:02 you’ll see the largest solar flare of this cycle, from Aug. 9, 2011. At 1:28:07 watch the frozen Comet Lovejoy flash by on a very close encounter of the solar kind on Dec. 15, 2011. …
And at 1:51:07 that black dot zipping by in the upper left is Venus passing between Earth and the Sun, as it does every century or so. …
NASA constructed this video by taking two images per day from the observatory’s first three years.
Scientists chose this light range to allow views of the Sun’s increased activity over three years of its 11-year activity cycle. The video’s elapsed time also allows human eyes to detect the Sun’s 25-day rotation. (If it looks like the Sun tilts at times, it’s not. It’s the spacecraft rolling to recalibrate focus.)
Little ‘un threatens US – so let’s whimper and bow to him 200
This is from Investor’s Business Daily, by Andrew Malcom:
In the satellite photo above on a typical night, note the bustling glow of South Korea and the power-less dark North.
Obama administration officials … rushed to play down their own recent announcements of defensive U.S. military movements in response to threats and provocations from the hermit kingdom of North Korea. …
As with Iran, President Obama has chosen a diplomatic path of international sanctions to discourage the weapons program. As with Iran, they haven’t worked. So, as with Iran, Obama has chosen to apply more of them.
This winter the North set off another underground nuclear test. Then, in recent weeks its officials grew increasingly bombastic, threatening South Korea, shutting down joint economic projects and talking of imminent war with the United States. …
Reports from intelligence posts, so sophisticated they can eavesdrop on conversations between individual troop commanders, were leaked to the media, telling of ominous military movements in the North.
This is familiar behavior for Pyongyang, which regularly ramps up tensions for domestic political reasons and to be mollified by shipments of food and fuel oil and loosening of currency and trade restrictions.
It’s also possible, given the youth and inexperience of the new exalted great leader, Kim Jung-un, that the bombast reflects an internal power struggle. Few senior officials – even their first wives – get to retire in North Korea. They get dead, like Kim’s grandmother when she’d served her purpose.
North Korea is a nation of about 25 million diminutive people, a result of long-term malnutrition to support one of the world’s larger armies. A single modest bag of rice can cost a month’s salary. Brutal concentration camps house an estimated 150,000 political prisoners and release no survivors. …
The most immediate threat from North Korea … is not yet to the American mainland. It’s to South Korea (the capital of Seoul is barely 30 miles from the North). And it’s to Japan, where the U.S. maintains considerable forces, and Guam, home to major Pacific B-52 and nuclear submarine bases.
Just days ago Pentagon officials touted the build-up as involving B-52 “training mission” flyovers of the South, the deployment of anti-missile naval assets to the area and Guam, F-22 stealth Raptor flights and long-range “Hey, watch this” missions of B-2 bombers capable of carrying standard or nuclear weapons. The displays and maneuvers were meant to “reiterate the U.S. commitment to the security of our allies and partners,” spokesmen said.
Voice from a sensible American: “Well done and well said! The iron will of Barack Obama on display. The only superpower on earth warning the potty little tyranny in North Korea to pipe down or else.”
Voice from the Obama administration: “Who said that? Why are you calling us a superpower? Don’t you know it riles all the countries of the Third World? Hurts their feelings? Suggests they are inferior? If we don’t treat them with respect they may come to hate us. Do you want to take that risk? Shut up!”
Now Obama officials appear to be caving to the North’s threats and bluffs.
“We’re trying to turn the volume down,” an unidentified [shivering] one told CNN.
“We are absolutely trying to ratchet back the rhetoric,” another worried official told the cable channel.
“We became part of the cycle [of belligerent talk and gestures]. We allowed that to happen.”
“Oh, we are covered with shame! Are our faces red! We are soooo sorry, Kim Jung-un! Please forgive us? Here – here are some shiploads of food for you and your henchmen. Here’s some oil. And a heap of money. And more apologies.”
All delivered with a smiley face.
“Okay now?”
*
Three days ago The Blaze reported:
Amid mounting tensions with North Korea, the Pentagon has delayed an intercontinental ballistic missile test that had been planned for next week at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California …
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel decided to put off the long-planned Minuteman 3 test … because of concerns the launch could be misinterpreted and exacerbate the Korean crisis.
Flame 139
We praised the Stuxnet computer virus for doing an enormous amount of harm to Iran’s centrifuges.
Now we are delighted with the news that more harm is being done to Iran by a virus named Flame.
This is from Investor’s Business Daily, by Andrew Malcolm:
Someone has developed a computer virus that can infiltrate foreign networks and installations, eavesdrop on conversations near laptops, grab images off the screens and send it all back home without being detected. …
The Russians were the ones who blew the cover on this clandestine op, apparently aimed at Iran. According to the Russian internet security firm, Kaspersky Lab, which reported the Flame virus this week, it was Kaspersky Lab, which reported the Flame virus this week, it was designed for espionage.
Not sabotage like the Stuxnet virus that was silently delivered by someone into Iranian nuclear project computers back in 2009. It [Stuxnet] was even programmed to silence infection alarms, so it had time to penetrate deeper and successfully screw up Iran’s centrifuge program more …
Experts said the Flame virus was likely the most complex and sophisticated ever discovered. It’s like unearthing the tip of an ancient pyramid buried in desert sands. No one yet knows how large it is or what all is inside. Much of the virus has yet to be found and gauged. But it’s been reported widespread in the Mideast, primarily Iran, Lebanon, Palestinian areas and Saudi Arabia.
Flame even controls its own spread to avoid detection, can turn on internal desktop microphones to record nearby conversations, can capture and encrypt screen images such as blueprints and transmit the material undetected outside to shifting sets of servers positioned globally to defy locating.
They suggest, given its nature and scope, that it had to be developed by a nation.
Let’s see, it could actually be disinformation from Russia. But who else might be up to such trickery aimed primarily at Iran?
Tuesday Iran announced it had been the victim of a cyber-attack, accusing the U.S. and Israel. Well, we can certainly rule out the United States as Flame inventor. The jabber-mouths of the Obama administration couldn’t keep that kind of secret for two days, let alone two years. They were so eager to garner credit for the campaigning president that they blew the cover on the British mole underwear bomber inside al Qaeda a couple of weeks ago.
So who then? But it matters not, just as long as the thing is working against Iran and the Islamic enemy in general.