HALF-FULL REPORT 04/12/13

Lady Margaret Thatcher suffered a stroke Monday while reading a book in bed at the Ritz Carlton hotel in London. When Reagan died in 2004, the Iron Lady was already too ill to attend his funeral.  She had this to say then about her great partner in remaking the world:

I worked closely with Ronald Reagan for eight of the most important years of all our lives. We talked regularly both before and after his presidency. And I have had time and cause to reflect on what made him a great president. Ronald Reagan knew his own mind. He had firm principles – and, I believe, right ones. He expounded them clearly, he acted upon them decisively. When the world threw problems at the White House, he was not baffled, or disorientated, or overwhelmed. He knew almost instinctively what to do…. When his allies came under Soviet or domestic pressure, they could look confidently to Washington for firm leadership. And when his enemies tested American resolve, they soon discovered that his resolve was firm and unyielding…

For the final years of his life, Ronnie’s mind was clouded by illness. That cloud has now lifted. He is himself again – more himself than at any time on this earth. For we may be sure that the Big Fella Upstairs never forgets those who remember Him. And as the last journey of this faithful pilgrim took him beyond the sunset, and as heaven’s morning broke, I like to think – in the words of Bunyan – that "all the trumpets sounded on the other side."

If he were alive today, Reagan would say the same thing about her, Marc Thiessen thinks.

We remember her most for defeating Communism abroad. But her success in defeating socialism at home is more pertinent now. When Margaret Thatcher became prime minister in 1979, virtually all the intelligentsia thought Britain’s decline was irreversible.  She turned that around, put the "Great" back in Great Britain, said John Blundell. She was still on top of her game in her last appearance in the House of Commons:

* * * *

America is in "deep doo doo" in the North Korea "crisis," former Vice President Dick Cheney told GOP Congressional leaders this week. But people in South Korea aren’t worried.

"Scores of foreign journalists have been dispatched to Seoul to report on the growing tensions between the two Koreas and the possibility of war. Upon arrival, though, it is difficult for them to find any South Koreans who are panic-stricken," writes Andrei Lankov, who teaches history at Kookmin University there.

It’s "business as usual on the Korean peninsula," he said. North Korea’s government hopes to squeeze more aid from the outside world, but "it does not make sense to credulously take their fake belligerence at face value and give them the attention they want now." 

The most important thing we should learn from this annual kabuki dance with the Norks is how much more of a headache we’ll have if we permit Iran to go nuclear, says Victor Davis Hanson.

* * * *

Guess who think we won the war in Iraq. "Despite all the problems of the past decade, the overwhelming majority of Iraqis agree that we’re better off today than under Hussein’s brutal dictatorship," said Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki.

* * * *

Al Qaeda’s presence in Syria "is now so significant that the terrorist organization has decided it is no longer worthwhile to pretend otherwise."  Despite this, the Obama administration is planning to increase aid to the Syrian rebels.

* * * *

Some 700 retired military special operators are peeved that there has been no serious effort to determine critical details of the attack on our consulate in Benghazi on 9/11/2012.  They want the House to create a Select Committee to investigate, and have provided a list of questions lawmakers should ask.

* * * *

The Senate voted 68-31 Thursday to start debate on gun control.  The news media describe it as a defeat for GOP filibusterers.  But if you’re gearing up to go on a RINO hunt, chill. The vote on whether to stop debate will come later.

Preferably much later. We want debate, because with one exception, Dem gun control measures are popular only with wealthy liberals.  The senators who are most unhappy about the outcome of yesterday’s vote are Red state Democrats who are up for re-election next year. Their gun control push will cost Democrats control of the Senate, predicts the most hated man in the Senate.

The exception is a "compromise" amendment proposed Wednesday by Sens. Pat Toomey, R-Pa, and Joe Manchin, D-WVA, to expand background checks.  The NRA opposes it, for good reason.  ABC News summarized the NRA’s objections remarkably fairly.

There are more NRA members in Pennsylvania than in any other state, so many wonder why Toomey is sponsoring this bill. Here is a clue.  Here’s another:

"While opinions on other gun control measures are mixed in the state, support for universal background checks is nearly unanimous. A Franklin & Marshall poll in February found that 94 percent of Pennsylvania voters favored requiring background checks for all gun sales."

Expanded background checks surely will pass the Senate, but maybe only if they are separated from the measures the Dems really want.  They’ll hail passage of Toomey-Manchin as a great victory.  But "we should remember that this is like 2% of what the libs sought," says Kurt Schlichter. "They’re grabbing crumbs and calling them a cake."

* * * *

It isn’t just us gun loving, trigger happy, child-hating Neanderthals who think gun control won’t work.  According to this survey of 15,000 cops:

• Only 2.7 percent say a federal ban on large capacity magazines will reduce crime (95.7 say it won’t).
• The Dems’ gun control bill will improve their safety, said 11.6 percent of police officers; make it more dangerous for them, say 24.6 percent; have no effect on safety at all, say 60.6 percent.
• What would help, say 81 percent, is arming teachers, like the NRA recommends.

Strangely, the results of this survey haven’t been reported on the Evening News.

* * * *

Maybe it’s time to ban unregistered knives.

* * * *

A little more than two months late, President Obama has submitted a budget to Congress.  This is not a big deal, because Democrats pay as little heed to his budgets as Republicans do.  Even Big Labor panned it. I mention it only because libs are freaking out over the possibility he might agree to reductions in entitlement spending.  Rush Limbaugh speculates here about the implications of lib anger.

* * * *

It’ll cost twice as much as they’ve budgeted for to set up Obamacare’s health care exchanges, the administration admitted this week.  Implementing Obamacare has been more difficult than she anticipated, said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. That’s in part because she doesn’t know what insurance is.  Obamacare is becoming too complicated to implement, says one of its sponsors in the Senate.  This decision makes Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) think it is "just a scam intended to kill private insurance."

Obamacare will be the number one item in the election campaign next year, says the House GOP whip.  Which is why Sebelius is trying to blame Republicans for her screwups.

* * * *

Lib commentators have turned pessimistic about the prospects for Zero’s second term, notes former Newt Gingrich press secretary Rich Galen. He asks: "If Washington Pundicrats are throwing in the towel on Obama’s second term, how long do you think it will be before all those Democrats in the House and Senate start running as fast as they can not just for reelection; but away from Obama?"

* * * *

My belief that Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky, is the smartest politician among Republicans in Washington was reinforced by the speech he made Wednesday at historically black Howard University in Washington D.C.

"Paul’s appearance at Howard University is the first by a national Republican figure in nearly two decades, putting into practice some of the Republican National Committee’s recommendations for increased minority outreach," said the Business Insider.

It’s about time.  Failure to respond to five decades of lies from Democrats has cost the GOP dearly.  Probably for the first time, the students heard from Paul that it was the Democratic Party that was the party of slavery and segregation.  Speaking of that, yesterday was the 100^th anniversary of Democrat and Progressive hero Woodrow Wilson’s order to segregate the civil service.

For the most part, he received polite, and at a couple of times, enthusiastic responses," said Elahi Izadi of The Atlantic magazine. "A number of students said they came with an open mind and were impressed by the gesture."

Libs don’t think Sen. Paul’s outreach efforts will persuade many.  But they don’t have to persuade many.  If a GOP candidate gets 15 percent of the black vote, the Democrats are doomed.

Here’s his prepared text.  You can watch him speak here. Reviews are here here, here, here, here and here.

* * * *

I wrote last week about the exposure of the latest hockey stick fraud, and The Economist’s partial recantation on global warming.  This week hasn’t been so hot for the greenie weenies, either, says Steven Hayward.  Dr. David Deming summarizes the case against the warmists here. But "educators" still plan to fill the heads of our children with lies.

* * * *

If you own a small restaurant in California, you may not for much longer.

* * * *

Testimony in the murder trial of Pennsylvania abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell has been graphic and gruesome.  The revelations should "shock anyone with a heart," says Kirsten Powers, a liberal who still has one. But there’s been not a word about the trial on the television news broadcasts, precious little in the big newspapers.

"If Dr. Gosnell had walked into a nursery and shot seven infants with an AR-15, it would be national news and the subject of presidential hand-wringing,"said Investors Business Daily.  "Instead, Gosnell is ignored, charged with the deaths of seven aborted babies who were born alive and then killed, their spinal cords cut with scissors."

* * * *

What ABC and NBC did report is that Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, contemplated making a campaign issue of the, ah, "eccentricities" of actress Ashley Judd, should Judd run against him for the Senate next year.  Their stories were based on an expose in Mother Jones magazine by David Corn, which very well may backfire, because it appears to have been based on an illegal wiretap.  The culprit is Progress Kentucky which, say fellow libs, is doing more for our cause than for theirs.  Wanna guess who’s behind Progress Kentucky?

During the Bush administration, Corn was incensed the National Security Agency was listening in on conversations of non-citizens overseas who were thought to be connected with al Qaeda. He’s no hypocrite, Ron Radosh thinks Corn would say. Those guys were just terrorists.  McConnell is a Republican. He’s more dangerous to America than Kim Jong-Un, says this deranged lib.

* * * *

Many conservatives were saddened this week by the death of Margaret Thatcher.  I wasn’t, both because I think she’s much happier now than when she was a frail shadow of the woman she had been, and because the tributes to her are a timely reminder to conservative pessimists here of how much more she had to overcome to put the "great" back in Great Britain than President Rubio (or Jindal or Paul or Carson or Ryan or Cruz) will have to do to restore the republic after Barack Obama.

Zero’s "Bloomberg presidency" is headed for a great fall, Matt Continetti thinks, because "the meddling and moralistic overreach of rich liberals generates its own backlash."

I agree.  The failures of liberal policies are becoming so evident even our maleducated 20-somethings have begun to notice. A new generation of GOP leaders, with brains and guts we’re not accustomed to seeing in Republicans, is prepared to tell them the truth.  I think we’re on the verge of the most dramatic shift in public attitudes since the Great Depression…if we don’t go wobbly.

So the glass is more than half full.  I’m going to fill mine with a good English ale, and drink a toast or three to the woman who ranks with Pitt and Churchill as the greatest of British prime ministers.