Robin Gibbs Of The BeeGees Sings About Israel

Robin Gibbs, the Australian singer who just passed away at age 62 of cancer had a song called "Israel" that he wrote after a trip to Israel that was performed by his group the BeeGees back in 1971 .

This soulful tune definitely rates an encore. RIP Robin Gibbs.

(h/t, Carl via Ofir Gendelman on Twitter)

RIP: Duck Dunn Makes The Passage

Another of the all-time greats moves on. Donald 'Duck' Dunn, The bass player for Booker T and the MG's died this morning in Tokyo..playing music, of course. He was only 70.

Memphis born and bred. Aside from his work with the MGS, he was the left ventricle of the pumping heart of Stax/Volt, playing on hits by Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett and Albert King, among many others.

He'll be missed.

Khaddaffi: The Fall Of The Brother Leader

Rebels entered Tripoli today from the west, meeting almost no resistance. A planned uprising within Khaddaffi's stronghold broke out as the rebels attacked the city.

According to what rebel spokesperson Adel Dabbechi told Reuters, Khaddaffi's younger son Saif Al-Islam had been captured and his eldest son Mohammed Al-Gaddafi have surrendered to rebel forces.

The rebels have secured Green Square in central Tripoli, there are racous celebrations going on and the city appears to have fallen although sporadic fighting continues.

And the Brother Leader? Conflicting reports. Some reports on Twitter say he was shot and killed near the Rixos Hotel while trying to escape. Other reports have him in Algeria and en route to Tunis and exile.

In any case, the regime has obviously fallen. But before we break out the champagne, there's an important thing to consider - what happens next?



As those regular members of Joshua's Army know, the rebels are severely divided and there are Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda factions among them. The Obama Administration got us involved in this costly adventure on behalf of one side in a civil war without even a clear idea of whom we're helping.

At this point, Khaddaffi's arsenals have been looted and the booty widely dispersed, including cute little toys like SA-7 missiles, portable shoulder fired surface-to-air heat seeking missiles that can be used against civilian and military aircraft.

What happens next? My bet is chaos as various factions fight for the spoils.And I doubt the ultimate outcome is going to be what the Obama Administration expected.

I only hope he doesn't waste more of our money on another farcical nation building extravaganza.

Between this and an Islamist regime taking over in Egypt, the foundations for the New Caliphate have likely been laid.

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Huckabee Bows Out - And What That means

Ex-Governor of Arkansas and FOX commentator Mike Huckabee made the announcement on his show as promised...he's definitely not going to run for president.

"All the factors say go, but my heart says no," Huckabee, who cleverly saved the announcement for the last few minutes of his show, thus insuring a nice ratings boost.

"The past few months have been times of deep personal reflection," Huckabee said. "Even though I wasn't actively establishing a campaign organization or seeking financial support to run again, polls have consistently put me at or near the top to be the Republican nominee."

"But I know that under the best of circumstances, being President is a job that takes one to the limit of his or her human capacity," he continued. "I can't know or predict the future, but I know for now my answer is clear and firm: I will not seek the Republican nomination for President this year."

Since his run at the presidency back in 2008 where he finished second to John McCain, Mike Huckabee has had a very different life. He went from being the governor of a small state to a national celebrity, and parlayed that into a successful and very lucrative career as a broadcaster. One political pundit I respect told me about a month ago, "The guy just started building a new beachfront house, one he could never of dreamed of being able to afford when he was a politician. No way he gives all that up to run for president."

I'm sure that weighed in his decision, but I also think that he thought about the effect a nation-wide presidential candidacy would have on his family and his own peace of mind, and he simply decided, "I like it just fine the way things are."

So, with Mike Huckabee out of the race, who picks up his supporters? Nate Silver is a Lefty who blogs over at Pravda-on-the-Hudson,but he is a numbers guy whose analysis is worth reading, even when his conclusions are colored by his political views.

What he did here is to assign a 'point value' to the prospective GOP candidates based on what he saw as Huckabee's appeal - that he's a social conservative, an evangelical, a political outsider, a Southerner, runs strongly in Iowa, and works for FOX. Guess who he sees as getting the most benefit and picking up most of Huckabee's supporters? Herman Cain, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and Michele Bachmann.

Cain was the clear winner in last week's South Carolina debate, which was most notable because most of the major candidates didn't participate. Governor Sarah Palin, of course, would have wiped the floor up with the ones who did had she appeared.

The way I see things stacking up is quite differently than Nate Silver when it comes to cui bono, who benefits, since I weight the factors differently.

Tim Pawlenty and either Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann are the top choices of the evangelical/social conservative crowd, and out of the three, Sarah Palin is the obvious choice in terms of charisma and star power should she decide to run.

I like Herman Cain, but one thing the debate did reveal was the fact that he is going to have to do some serious studying up on foreign policy issues to be credible.Also, running a government is quite different than running a business, where a CEO can expect to have his orders obeyed and has a lot more leverage than a president does if they aren't.

Right now, the official front runner is Mitt Romney,and his ability to self finance and his familiarity to voters in the early primary in New Hampshire are definite pluses for him. I doubt that will be enough to overcome his doubling down on RomneyCare or the fact that he's simply another Harvard-trained Big Government technocrat, and one without the ability to viscerally connect with voters. I still maintain that Obama would find Mitt Romney easier to beat than any other GOP candidate except Ron Paul.

I put Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump at about an equal level of seriousness, and Rick Santorum has limited support and his manner may be problematic for a lot of people.

The race will probably come down to a battle between Romney, an establishment Republican anti-Romney candidate, ( probably Mitch Daniels or John Huntsman if they get into the race) and a Tea Party outsider candidate, which is going to end up being Herman Cain, Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann.

The only other candidate I see in the current menagerie who likely has the staying power to hang in there for awhile is Tim Pawlenty, provided he gets better known, better funded and comes across better in debates.

The big question now, of course, is what Sarah Palin is going to do. If she gets in, she's going to consume a lot of the oxygen in the room simply because of whom she is. Will she, or won't she?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that Governor Palin is still making her decision, but planning a run. If I were her,what would I do at this point?

The conventional wisdom is that prospective candidates spend a lot of face time in New Hampshire and Iowa, put together a high profile 'exploratory committee' to fundraise and button hole influential supporters and participate in every dinner, meeting and media opportunity available to raise their name recognition.

However, Governor Palin has never done things in the conventional way. She's always followed her instincts. The one time she didn't was the 2008 presidential campaign, when she allowed the 'professionals' to run her, the same people who later tried to palm off their own ineptness by blaming her for the loss. I'm sure that was a very valuable lesson she hasn't forgotten.

If I were Governor Palin, I'd likewise be waiting for awhile to announce whether I was a candidate. She has no problem with name recognition, and she has the ability to draw large crowds in Iowa and New Hampshire anytime she wants to simply by showing up if she decides to get in. She already has SarahPac in place as a fundraising mechanism, and my sources tell me she also has a couple of very behind-the-scenes supporters campaigning and canvassing for her in Iowa and South Carolina.

Governor Palin is unique in that she not only has high name recognition but she appeals to a wide range of fiscal conservatives, evangelicals, Tea Party adherents, foreign policy conservatives and Reagan Democrats. She also has the advantage of having been slimed as much as possible by the Democrats and their media allies to the point where there are no new negatives possible. If Sarah Palin borrowed five dollars from an aide and forgot to pay it back, it's already be on the front page of the New York Times, and there not too much more of that sort of thing that can be done without it starting to backfire and lose it's effect.

I wouldn't be surprised if Governor Palin was simply waiting to watch some of the other prospective candidates do themselves some damage or otherwise eliminate themselves - it's already worked with Mitt Romney, Donald Trump and with Mike Huckabee, someone who was seen as her chief competitor for the same constituency.

The next debate between the so-called major GOP candidates occurs June 13th in New Hampshire, and there will likely be a casualty or two in that fracas as well. After that, you might just see the Arctic Fox announce in the mid summer or early fall.

The first real primary is the Iowa caucus on February 6th, 2012, followed by New Hampshire a week later and South Carolina February 28th.

I don't often quote Pat Buchanan, but he does understand politics. He has remarked on more than one occasion that if Governor Palin runs, she'll likely win in Iowa and South Carolina and will then be very difficult to stop once she has that kind of momentum.

I agree with him.

And I personally think that an articulate, charismatic conservative Republican who's unafraid to hit President Obama hard on his dismal record has to be his worst nightmare come 2012.

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Democrat Jane Harman To Resign From Congress

Rep. Jan Harman ( D-CA), congresswoman for California's 36th District has announced that she will be resigning from Congress after two decades and will not be completing her current term.

Instead, she's going to be replacing former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton as president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a fairly high level think tank.

Harman was the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security’s intelligence subcommittee and I can testify personally, had an in-depth knowledge of foreign policy and national security matters. She would probably have been the Committee chairman when the Democrats held the majority if she hadn't been made untouchable by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who loathed Harman personally and because of Harman's relatively sane and centrist positions. Instead, Pelosi put Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) in the Chair, who knew so little about intel or foreign affairs that he failed a basic intel quiz with questions about al Qaeda and Hezbollah on it.

Like a lot of relatively sane Democrats. there simply wasn't much of a place left for her in today's Donkey Party. I'll be sorry to see her go.

(via memeorandum)

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