Lightning Times

Morning Report: 2012-06-17

Obama backs Iraq ambassador nominee Brett McGurk. Reuters: 'President Barack Obama has no plans to withdraw Brett McGurk's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to Iraq, despite Republican demands after revelations that the nominee had engaged in an extra-marital affair with a journalist whom he later married, the White House said on Sunday. ...' I wouldn't care about the affair if it weren't an ambassador post; he's got to represent the United States and he's got to look good.

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Nayef to be laid to rest. BBC: 'Saudi Arabia is preparing to bury Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, who died in Geneva on Saturday. Prince Nayef, who was also deputy prime minister and interior minister, will be buried after sunset prayers in the holy city of Mecca. ...' He'll likely be succeeded by his brother, Prince Salman, who's 76.

Grenade thrown at Greek TV station. Via YNet: 'A hand grenade was thrown outside Greek TV station Skai but did not explode, police said on Sunday, as people voted in the parliamentary election. ...'

Nigeria: Another explosion in Kaduna. Stratfor: 'A third explosion occurred at a church in northern Nigeria's Kaduna state, AFP reported June 17. The number of casualties is unknown.' BBC:

At least three blasts have hit churches in the northern Nigerian state of Kaduna.

A local Red Cross worker told Associated Press that at least two people had been killed and 48 injured in two of the attacks.

Two blasts hit Sunday church services close to the city of Zaria.

No one has yet claimed responsibility, but Kaduna state has previously seen attacks by the radical Islamist group Boko Haram. ...

Steyn: Free the Preening Metrosexual Slug John Edwards

The only thing more disgusting than John Edwards is what's being done to him.

And that's before we get to the affair, and the denial, followed by the admission of adultery but only while his wife's cancer was in remission, and then the admission of non-remission adultery but certainly not leading to any love child, and finally the admission of a non-remission adulterous love child, and the realization that the sainted, stricken Elizabeth was less the victim than a co-strategist in the massive Edwardsian fraud that was his 2008 presidential campaign, and a full participating partner in an even creepier political marriage than the Clintons'.

Oh, and while we're at it, I loathe the American media, whose peculiarly contemptible combination of partisanship, snobbery, and self-neutering of any basic journalistic instinct might easily have led (were it not for the candidacy of Barack Obama) to this preening metrosexual slug's becoming president of the United States.

All that said, his trial is a disgrace.

It should be a national scandal, except that no one this side of the old Politburo is as ruthless as the Democrats at airbrushing former eminences out of the group shot. So, in a critical election season, the Edwards prosecution will be buried at the foot of page 43, and never make the network news.

What's wrong with it? First, there is no crime, if that term is to have any agreed meaning. In Malaysia, the longtime prime minister Dr. Mahathir spent much of the last 15 years battering his political rival, Anwar Ibrahim, with one sodomy trial after another. We're subtler about these things here. ...

Poll of 2008 Voters: 46 Pct McCain, 46 Pct Obama ...

... and the other eight percent were too drunk to remember.

NY-9: Why Turner Beat Weprin

Ben Jacobs at Tablet has a solid take on what happened in New York's Ninth District:

David Weprin should have been a shoo-in to replace Anthony Weiner. New York’s 9th Congressional District, which straddles two Jewish enclaves in Central Queens and Southeastern Brooklyn, was gerrymandered for Jewish, Democratic victories. Weprin looked to be a triple threat: a Democrat, an Orthodox Jew, and a veteran New York politician. He’s a state Assemblyman, his father was the Assembly speaker, and his brother is a New York City Councilman. All of that matters in a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans 3 to 1 and where at least one-third of voters are Jewish. The last time a Republican won there was 1920.

But Tuesday night, voters decisively handed the seat to Bob Turner, an Irish Catholic Republican, by a margin of 54-46. ...

Read the rest at the link.

Sarah Palin: Three Ideas

Anand Ghiridardas at NYT:

She made three interlocking points. First, that the United States is now governed by a “permanent political class,” drawn from both parties, that is increasingly cut off from the concerns of regular people. Second, that these Republicans and Democrats have allied with big business to mutual advantage to create what she called “corporate crony capitalism.” Third, that the real political divide in the United States may no longer be between friends and foes of Big Government, but between friends and foes of vast, remote, unaccountable institutions (both public and private). ...

Read the rest at the link.

Remarks. The column opens with the observation, "Let us begin by confessing that, if Sarah Palin surfaced to say something intelligent and wise and fresh about the present American condition, many of us would fail to hear it. ..." No kidding. So if

The next day, the “lamestream” media, as she calls it, played into her fantasy of it by ignoring the ideas she unfurled ...

then maybe it's not a "fantasy" on Palin's part after all?

(HT Marc Danziger, via FB.)

Government as Special Interest

Walter Russell Mead, writing at Business Insider, takes a look at pollster Stanley Greenberg's interpretation of eroding support for Democrats.

The progressive ideal of administrative cadres leading the masses toward the light has its roots in a time when many Americans had an eighth grade education or less. It always had its down side, and the arrogance and tin-eared obtuseness of self assured American liberal progressives has infuriated generations of Americans and foreigners who for one reason or another have the misfortune to fall under the power of a class still in the grip of a secularized version of the Puritan ideal. But in the conditions of late nineteenth and twentieth century America, the progressive vanguard fulfilled a vital and necessary social role.

The deep crisis of the progressive ideal today is that it is no longer clear that the American clerisy is wanted or needed in that role.

At bottom, that is what the populist revolt against establishments of all kinds is about. A growing section of the American population wants to think and act for itself, without the guidance of the graduates of ivy league colleges and blue chip graduate programs.

The fight for limited government that animates so many Americans today isn’t a reaction against the abuses and failures of government. It is a fight to break the power of a credentialed elite ...

Read it all at the link.

ACORN Faked Thousands of Voter Registrations in Indiana, Officials Say

CNN:

CROWN POINT, Indiana (CNN) -- More than 2,000 voter registration forms filed in northern Indiana's Lake County by a liberal activist group this week have turned out to be bogus, election officials said Thursday.
An official enters the Las Vegas, Nevada, ACORN office, which is under investigation for alleged voter fraud.

The group -- the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN -- already faces allegations of filing fraudulent voter registrations in Nevada and faces investigations in other states.

And in Lake County, home to the long-depressed steel town of Gary, the bipartisan Elections Board has stopped processing a stack of about 5,000 applications delivered just before the October 6 registration deadline after the first 2,100 turned out to be phony.

Ace of Spades:

ACORN in Lake County, Indiana: All 2,100 of First 2,100 ACORN Registrations Fraudulent

Every. Single. One.

From Drew Griffiths, apparently the only reporter at CNN capable of doing a negative story on Obama and his stooges. ...

Power Line:

This is one of those news stories you can hardly believe. In Lake County, Indiana, ACORN turned in 5,000 new registrations. The authorities there started reviewing them, and quit after they found that the first 2,100 were all fraudulent. The mind boggles: ACORN turns in thousands of new registrations, and not a single one represents a legitimate voter.

30,000 Florida Felons Registered to Vote

WOKV:

A newspaper investigation finds more than 30,000 felons who should have been stripped of their right to vote are still registered in Florida.

The Sun Sentinel discovered that at least 4,900 felons turned out in past elections and another 5,600 are still in prison.

Of the felons who are registered, Democrats outnumber Republicans more than two to one. ...

Via Insty.

PREVIOUS: Obama courts the felon vote.

Remember the Keating Five!

The Keating Five was four Democrats, plus John McCain. And McCain was cleared.

McCain Advisers Lobbied for Airbus Contract

Gateway Pundit:

Senator John McCain has some serious explaining to do.

-- Top McCain advisers lobbied for the Airbus tanker contract.
-- Airbus was not even in the running in the beginning.
-- Airbus was thinking of scrapping their bid for the DOD tanker contract because they did not see themselves meeting the capability metrics
-- The original contract was altered last year to favor the larger Airbus tankers over the Boeing planes.
-- The contract was awarded to Airbus over America's Boeing Company ...