SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET:

BANDWAGON – FROM BREITBART:   Sinclair Broadcasting Group, America’s largest television station owner, announced that they will join a slew of other large U.S. companies in using the savings from the just-passed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act to give employees bonuses.  Almost 9,000 Sinclair employees will get $1000 bonuses, according to an accompanying press release.  “We are grateful to our President and legislature for passing the landmark Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and are excited about the benefits it will provide for our country’s economy, our Company, and our employees,” Sinclair Broadcasting President and CEO Chris Ripley said in the press release. “We recognize that our employees are our most valuable resource, truly appreciate their combined achievements for our Company and look forward to a very bright future.”  Good.  I want to see a long list of corporations doing this.  Everyone gains, except the Democrats.

CONFUSED VALUES – FROM FOX:   A Florida man was arrested Friday after he reportedly punched an ATM because it “was giving him too much money” during an incident in November.  Michael Joseph Oleksik, 23, was charged with criminal mischief after Wells Fargo requested Cocoa Police press charges against the man.  Law enforcement told Florida Today that Oleksik was seen on surveillance footage “standing at the ATM, pummeling the electronic teller’s touch screen on Nov. 29.”  He then reportedly called Wells Fargo and apologized for the damage done to the teller machine, but said he was “angry the ATM was giving him too much money and he did not know what to do.”  This man does not appreciate generosity.  So typical of his generation.

MURDER – FROM DAILYWIRE:   Murders in the U.S. rose nearly 9% last year, and one-third of that increase came from just a few neighborhoods in Chicago, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of the FBI’s annual 2016 publication, Crime in the United States.  While violent crime (homicide, rape, assault, and robbery) also rose nationwide from 2015 to 2016 — over 4%— the data show the increase was not uniform, but rather concentrated in cities like Chicago and Baltimore.  Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., meanwhile, saw “meaningful declines in violence [that] have been sustained since the 1990s.”  Interestingly, the paper’s neighborhood-by-neighborhood analysis claimed that areas where homicides spiked had a “lighter street presence by police following officers’ high-profile killings of young black men.”  Gee, you mean a solid police presence reduces murder?  What kind of heresy is that?

December 26, 2017