HALF-FULL REPORT 09/27/13

Four days after al Shabaab, a Somali terror group affiliated with al-Qaida, attacked the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, the Kenyan government (apparently with some help from the Israelis) claimed Tuesday it had taken "full" control of the mall.  Somalia, a failed state, borders Kenya on the north.

There were 12 to 15 terrorists, two or three of whom were from America. They attacked at lunch time, throwing grenades and spraying automatic fire from AK-47 assault rifles. The terrorists went from shop to shop, killing some, taking others hostage. Many hostages were tortured and mutilated. The terrorists murdered at least 72 people and injured about 175 more.  Five of the injured were Americans.

The body count was so high in part because mall security personnel weren’t allowed to carry firearms.  It might have been much higher, but for the fact that a former Royal Marine (whose name is being withheld for security reasons) was in the mall having coffee when the terrorists attacked.  As is his custom, he had his sidearm with him.

"He went back in 12 times and saved 100 people," a friend told the London Daily Mail.

The attack was timed to coincide with the 9/11 anniversary, al Shabaab’s leader said.

The "Americans" involved were two teen-aged Somali immigrants from Minneapolis, one from Kansas City.  We’ve got to be more careful about who we let into the country.  The next batch of Muslim terrorists recruited here might not bother to travel overseas to kill infidels.  The Department of Homeland Security is urging malls here to tighten security.  Ed Morrissey of Hot Air has more detail, and a suggestion:

"The Mall of America declared itself a "gun free zone" in response to the expansion of carry permits in Minnesota.  Maybe they should rethink that policy in light of recent events."

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There was also a terrible attack on a Christian church in Pakistan Sunday.

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The State Department feared Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Cal, would be targeted by terrorists after details of his "secret trip" to Libya were leaked by the ranking Dem on the committee.

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Obama’s surrender to Putin on Syria is now complete.  Assad is crowing about it.

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Zero was at the UN Tuesday, where he gave a lousy speech, and got snubbed by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

"Has the U.S. ever fallen in global stature as far and as fast as it has under the Obama administration?" asked the editors of Investors Business Daily.  It was a rhetorical question. "Not even Jimmy Carter drew so many snubs, insults and slights from world leaders in such a short period as Obama has in this past month," IBD said.

Just because the speech was lousy doesn’t mean it wasn’t significant.  From the perspective of our allies in the region, who the prez has undermined, "the White House has changed sides."  

Marco Rubio, R-Fla, and 10 other GOP senators who opposed U.S. military involvement in Syria sent a letter to the prez telling him he’d better toughen up on Iran.

Rots of Ruck with that, fellas.  Even if he were so inclined – and he may not be – the spineless wimp in the White House will do nothing to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.  Only an Israeli strike can keep Iran from getting the bomb.  It’s a very ugly reality, but it’s the reality, so we should prepare for the consequences.

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Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the Coptic Christian Egyptian immigrant who produced the Youtube video which had absolutely nothing to do with the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, was released from prison Thursday. 

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Obamacare officially begins Tuesday.  As evidence mounts that efforts by the Obamunists to implement it will be what those in the military call a cluster**** of monumental proportions, flop sweat is accumulating in gallons on the brows of Democrats. Thomas Lifson noted this sign of how desperate the administration has become.

First to jump ship is Sen. Joe Manchin of West Va., who announced he’ll vote with Republicans to delay implementation.  Manchin has to run next year, and his poll numbers don’t look good.  A member of the Black Caucus, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo, is backing away.  So is Debbie Dimwit, chair of the Democrat National Committee.

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It’s easy to see why Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex, was a champion debater.  Especially delicious is how – at an hour when most of us would have been groggy from lack of sleep — Cruz lured the insufferable Dick Durbin, D-Ill, into a trap, and eviscerated him.  Cruz is scary smart.  Conservative pundits who share my view the course of action he’s advocating is suicidal had high praise for the magnificent show he put on during his faux filibuster.

It was all for show.  Cruz & Co. – he was assisted by Sens. Mike Lee, R-UT, Marco Rubio, R-Fla, Jim Inhofe, R-OK, and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala – didn’t delay Dingy Harry’s schedule by a single minute. 

Not many Americans saw the show, because few in the "mainstream" media mentioned it.  The contrast with how they covered the filibuster of pro-abortion Texas State Sen. Wendy Davis made their hypocrisy and bias so evident even the very liberal Dylan Byers, media critic for Politico, was appalled.

But CSPAN is forever.  No one has articulated the case against Obamacare as well as Ted Cruz has. Lots of terrific ads can be made from the things he said. Cruz will benefit enormously if Republicans don’t do what he’s urging.  Obamacare already is hugely unpopular, based mostly on anticipation of harm.  As millions suffer actual harm from its botched implementation, and the incompetence of the Obamunists becomes too glaringly obvious for the news media to hide or spin, Zero and his party will plummet to depths rarely seen in politics.

And all people will remember then about his mock filibuster is there stood Ted Cruz, like Horatius at the Bridge, warning of and fighting against the catastrophe to come.  He’d have a gale wind behind him when he begins his campaign for president.  Cruz already is planning for it.  The online petition to defund Obamacare he’s sponsoring will do absolutely nothing to hurt Obamacare.  But it’s a terrific way to build a mailing list for the primaries.

If Republicans shut down the government, Cruz will get the lion’s share of blame.  His presidential hopes will be ashes. Which is why I feel confident he just wants to appear to be Obamacare’s foremost opponent.

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The most conservative Republicans in the House have issued their plan for a replacement for Obamacare.  Andrew Stiles of National Review summarizes it here.

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Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky, won handily a straw poll taken at the annual post-Labor Day confab of Michigan Republicans on Mackinac Island.  He got 36 percent of the votes. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, was 2^nd at 18 percent.

No presidential preference poll taken this far in advance of the election means much.  But those who attend the Mackinac conference tend to be the movers and shakers in the Michigan GOP establishment.  If Rand Paul is this popular with those guys and gals, he’s a lot stronger than many believe.

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The flameouts in the New York Democratic primaries of Eliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner "should make Hillary Clinton very nervous," thinks John Crudele of the New York Post.

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Support for the Tea Party "has dwindled to a near record low," according to a Gallup Poll this week.  What the poll data also indicate – but Gallup’s Lydia Saad chose not to mention – is that opposition to the Tea Party also has dwindled to a near record low, notes William Jacobson (Legal Insurrection).

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Finally, a head has rolled in the IRS scandal.  Sort of. Lois Lerner, who led the targeting of Tea Party groups, is retiring.  According to the ranking Democrat on the House Ways & Means Committee, Lerner "is being held responsible for her gross mismanagement of the IRS tax-exempt division."  Jay Sekulow recounts her wrongdoing here.

Lerner’s "retirement" won’t get her out of appearing again before the House Oversight Committee, which determined she improperly claimed the Fifth Amendment protection against self incrimination during her first appearance.  She’s fishing for a plea bargain.

In related news, the Justice Department has told a federal court it will not contest a lawsuit brought by True the Vote, one of the groups improperly denied tax exempt status by the IRS.  The case is now moot, Justice says.  But True the Vote intends to press on.  That’s good, because I suspect Justice fears discovery.

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The UN’s International Panel on Climate Change formally released a 36- page summary of its latest assessment today.  Here are the key findings.

The full 2,000 page report won’t be released until Monday.  I suspect that’s because the IPCC doesn’t want

folks to notice that apocalyptic assertions in the summary are heavily caveated in the body of the report. 

One key finding is: "Global temperatures are likely to rise by 0.3 (trivial) to 4.8 degrees C."  (really bad news).  But you’ll have to wait to Monday that it’s a helluva lot more likely the temperature rise will be closer to 0.3 degrees C than to the uppermost extreme.

The IPCC leaked advance copies of the report to the most friendly journalists Thursday, with disappointing results, because even these tools "quickly realized the IPCC Summary for Policymakers contained several embarrassing walk-backs from alarmist statements in prior IPCC reports," said James Taylor of the Heartland Institute.

The IPCC desperately wants to keep the scam alive, but it has the "who you gonna believe, us, or your lying eyes?" problem on steroids.  It can’t explain why there has been a "pause" in warming for 15-17 years, cooling for the last 2-3 years.  And the IPCC can’t explain why none of the computer models it relies on predicted the "pause."

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Shortly after Ted Cruz finished his talkathon against Obamacare, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, took the floor to deliver what Allahpundit – acidly but aptly – termed "the Democratic response."  Michael Walsh rightly smacked McCain around for the things he said about Cruz.

Walsh had no complaints about the vile and untrue things Cruz said about fellow Republicans.  According to Cruz, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, who has a lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union of 97.6, is a RINO. The worst was when he likened those who don’t support his tactics to Nazi appeasers on the eve of WWII.  Rand Paul called him out on it.

The most unlovely characteristic of the BDR is its belief in addition by subtraction. Success in politics depends on building coalitions, not destroying them.  On welcoming in – not driving away — those who agree on some things but not on others. 

The apogee of insanity was reached when radio talk show host Mark Levin read columnist Charles Krauthammer out of the conservative movement because he criticized Cruz’s tactics.

I’m cursorily aquainted with Mark.  We’ve been friendly.  I said nice things about his book.  But if the Spanish Inquisition were to be revived, he’d be at the head of the list for Grand Inquisitor. Krauthammer isn’t a real conservative, he said, because he came late to the party.  He once was a speechwriter for Walter Mondale. By the Levin Litmus Test, Ronald Reagan wasn’t a "true conservative" either.  He was once a Democrat who admired FDR.

RINOs like Coburn and Krauthammer are Establishment squishes, say the BDR.  We represent the people.  But the BDR pays little attention to what the people think.  In this poll, respondents opposed, 63-27, shutting down the government to defund Obamacare.  In this poll, respondents opposed defunding Obamacare, 44 to 38, and opposed shutting down the government to defund Obamacare, 59-19.  In this poll, Virginians want Obamacare defunded, 43-42, but only 30 percent support shutting down the government to get rid of it.

The things Ted Cruz has said about his colleagues have created a lot of bad feeling.  "He’s taken the only issue that unites the GOP, and divided Republicans with it," said A.B. Stoddard.

And, as Obamacare goes from SNAFU to FUBAR, he’s given the news media the excuse they needed to talk about divisions among Republicans instead.  What Cruz has done, says Mona Charen, is to "sully the reputation of the Republican party just as Obama’s popularity is waning."

Though currently only a narrow plurality of Americans (at best) favors defunding Obamacare, a large majority favors delaying implementation of the individual mandate and other provisions.  Delay of the individual mandate is tantamount to repeal, Obamacare supporters fear. 

Because delay is popular, and difficult to argue against, it’s possible five Democrats in the Senate could be induced to vote for it.  Republicans can win an argument for delay.  But only if Ted Cruz uses his formidable talents for more than promoting Ted Cruz, and the BDR puts as much effort into attacking Democrats as it has into attacking fellow Republicans.

Barack Obama’s presidency is collapsing.  Only the BDR can save it.