Saturday morning roundup

Think about the post immediately below this one; fully take in the degree of humiliation to which Iran subjected post-America in the Navy-boat incident. Now, avail yourself of the vile dog vomit Josh Earnest spewed at yesterday's White House press briefing:

 There’s no doubt Earnest is saying what his boss thinks here.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Friday that Republicans seemed “unhappy” that 10 U.S. Navy sailors, captured by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard this week were released, and said following their advice would have led to war…

“I think the only people unhappy about it are the Republicans for some reason,” Earnest told reporters…

“If followed advice of some of the Republican critics of the administration, we’d probably be in a bloody war with Iran right now over our sailors,” Earnest added. “The fact is our sailors right now are out of harms way.”

There’s the ol’ “our way or war” straw man. Republicans aren’t angry because Obama declined to fire a cruise missile across Iran’s bow to hurry along the sailors’ release. They’re angry because Iran made a spectacle of American sailors in captivity, which is an oddly hostile thing to do when Obama’s getting ready to release $100 billion in sanctions.

World stock markets continue to take a severe beating. Worst start to a year since the Great Depression. The DIJA was off 391 points at closing Friday. Is this a blip that will settle down into something, if not robust, at least not so hair-raising, or is the global economy just plain slowing down?

And how's this for a campaign-season stat?

Hillary’s national lead, and her standing in the first two voting states, is worse today than it was at a similar point in 2008.

At this point in 2008, Hillary still enjoyed a 20 point lead against her rivals for the nomination in national polls. Today, however, her lead over Socialist Sanders is just 8 points in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls.

It should be noted that Hillary’s nearly 20 point lead in 2008 at this point in time was against TWO credible rivals, Sens. Barack Obama and John Edwards. Today, Hillary’s only rival for the nomination is Sanders. Yet, she enjoys less than half the polling advantage.

Even with the vote split three ways in 2008, she enjoyed a stronger base of support in absolute terms than she does today against a single rival. In other words, Hillary today is up against an historic mathematical conundrum.

Jihad never sleeps. This time it's a luxury hotel in Burkina Faso.

Per Generation Opportunity, 48 percent of millennials believe the American dream is dead.

Let's end on a light note. At today's WSJ, Dion DiMucci tells the story of how "Runaround Sue" came about.