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I appeared on Silvio Canto Jr's talk show from Dallas Monday.  It's here.

MARCH 17,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

MY HEART BREAKS – FROM DAILY MAIL:    CNN is losing around a million viewers on average each night since President Donald Trump left office - and is down nearly 50% in the key 24-54 age group, a report said on Thursday.  The cable news channel had averaged 2.5 million prime-time viewers each night from November 4 through Inauguration Day on January 20, according to a Fox News analysis of Nielsen data.   But data shows the network averaged only 1.6 million total prime-time viewers from January 21, the day after the inauguration of President Joe Biden, through March 15, according to the report.  CNN's overall prime-time viewership, from 8pm to 11pm Eastern Time, has dropped 36% since Biden took office in January, according to Fox News.   Meanwhile, since January 21 CNN's prime-time viewership of adults between the ages of 24 and 54 dropped a whopping 47% since Election Day.  The network also suffered a major hit to its daytime viewership.  CNN averaged 1.7 million total daytime viewers from November 4 through January 20 and has since suffered a 34% decline, Fox News reported. CNN has averaged 1.1 million daytime viewers since Biden took office.  Yes, caution is required since this report is based on statistics reported by Fox, a fierce competitor of CNN's.  However, the figures seem consistent with what we're reading elsewhere.  CNN became the anti-Trump network, and the anti-Trump network needs Donald Trump.  Without him, what do they do?  Report the news?  Who'll teach them how?  A really cool move would be for CNN to give former President Trump his own show, no holds barred.  I don't think they will.

March 17, 2021       Permalink

PRESIDENTIAL CALIBER – OVERNIGHT:   REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR RON DeSANTIS OF FLORIDA IS FAST EMERGING AS A MAJOR CANIDATE FOR PRESIDENT IN 2024.   HE ACTUALLY HAS A RECORD, AND AN EXCELLENT ONE, AND HE'S ON THE CUTTING EDGE OF SOME OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUES OF OUR TIME.  NOW HE SEEKS TO LEAD IN THE PUSHBACK AGAINST THE MAD MEDIOCRITY OF OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM.  FROM DAILYWIRE: 

Florida is purging the teaching of “critical race theory and other unsubstantiated theories” from its public schools.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis updated the public on his state’s new educational priorities in a press conference on Wednesday. The governor said that the state’s civic education should focus on “foundational principles” rather than narratives such as critical race theory that views all of history through the lens of race, and suggests that racism still infects almost every institution in the U.S. today.

Critical race theory has gained traction recently, being prominently displayed in The New York Times’s "1619 Project," which reframed the history of the United States as a country entirely built on slavery rather than on the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

“Florida civics curriculum will incorporate foundational concepts with the best materials, and it will expressly exclude unsanctioned narratives like critical race theory and other unsubstantiated theories,” DeSantis said. “Let me be clear, there’s no room in our classrooms for things like critical race theory. Teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other is not worth one red cent of taxpayer money. So we will invest in actual, solid, true curriculum and we will be a leader in the development and implementation of a world class civics education.”

COMMENT:  Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.  And DeSantis says it so well.  He will be called a racist, and lectured to by "journalists" who know so little.  But he'll have the public behind him, and I know he'll be able to present his ideas to minority voters, and win them over.

Major fights ahead.  We have some very good people.

Read the whole piece, please.

March 17, 2021       Permalink

TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY – AT 8:14 P.M. ET:  THERE IS A NEW/OLD ISSUE PERCOLATING RIGHT NOW IN AMERICAN POLITICS.  IT HAS PROVED DEADLY BEFORE, WHICH IS WHY A U.S. SENATOR IS ASKING QUESTIONS.  THE ISSUE, OF COURSE, IS GASOLINE PRICES.  WE LIVE WITH THEM.  WE FEEL THEM.  THEY'RE NOT AN ABSTRACTION.  AND THEY'RE STARTING TO SOAR.  FROM FOX BUSINESS:

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., blamed Joe Biden for the sudden and sharp increase in gas prices nationwide, telling “Varney & Co.” on Wednesday that the president is “not thinking about the poor families in this country” with his energy actions.

The Florida senator argued on Wednesday that Biden’s energy policies will lead to an “unbelievable increase in costs for poor families.”

Scott pointed to Biden’s energy actions, including the cancelation of the Keystone XL oil pipeline project and temporarily suspending the issuance of oil and gas permits on federal lands and waters in a series of orders aimed at combating climate change.

President Biden revoked the permit for the 1,700-mile pipeline on his first day in office, ending a project that was expected to employ more than 11,000 Americans this year.

In remarks made by Biden in January before signing executive actions on tackling climate change, the president pointed to “a key plank” of his Build Back Better Recovery Plan, which he noted “is building a modern, resilient climate infrastructure and clean energy future that will create millions of good-paying union jobs.”

Speaking on “Varney & Co.” Scott asked, “If you’re in that [the energy] industry do you want to invest more dollars when the president says he wants to get rid of you?”

And...

Gas prices have been increasing at the pump for the past few weeks, reaching a national average of $2.88 a gallon as of Wednesday, which is 64 cents higher than the same time in 2020, according to AAA.

“This is an unbelievable increase in costs for poor families, for people on fixed income,” Scott said, noting that “their gas is way up in the last month” and “on top of that the utility rates are going up” because “so much of our utilities are done by natural gas.”

COMMENT:  Gas prices will be joined by electricity prices, as the Biden administration's corps of elitists  tries to crush the energy industry, which will get them invited to the right cocktail parties in Georgetown.  This could easily be the defining issue of the 2022 midterms.  Next time you fill up, tell me how happy you are.

March 17, 2021       Permalink

MARCH 16,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

THOSE STINGY AMERICANS – FROM THE NEW YORK POST:    A GoFundMe page set up to pay off the mortgage on Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s $14.6 million California estate has gone bust — after raising a measly $110, a report says.  Anastasia Hanson, 56, of California told Britain’s The Sun that she started the fundraising effort because she seriously felt sorry for the multimillionaire royal couple — after Harry publicly whined to Oprah Winfrey about being financially cut off by the Palace.  “When they came to the USA, they were without jobs and with limited funds,” said Hanson, who lives about 25 minutes from the princely pair’s palatial estate in swanky Montecito.  “They’ve stated that they’ve had a very rough time, so this fundraiser is a way to give help, compassion, and love by paying their home loan in full.”  In Markle and the prince’s bombshell TV sit-down last week, Harry defended their inking of a multitude of uber-lucrative media deals since leaving royal life, saying, “My family literally cut me off financially, and I had to afford security for us.”  Hanson’s online bid to try to financially help the royals was started a few days ago — and shut down by Saturday after just three donations, The Sun said.  Is this a serious story?  I really don't know, but it was too good to ignore.  I'm proud of the fact that only three Americans fell for this stuff.

DISGRACEFUL – FROM BIZPACREVIEW.COM:    California Gov. Gavin Newsom assured MSNBC host Joy Reid during an interview Monday that he would fill Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat with a black woman should she decide to retire.  “I have multiple names in mind. We have multiple names in mind — and the answer is yes,” Newsom, a Democrat who is facing a recall over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, assured Reid, who suggested that an “African-American” woman should be chosen to replace Vice President Kamala Harris.  Feinstein, who has served as a Democratic senator from California since 1992, has not indicated she is preparing to retire. But several Democrats belonging to the party’s more leftist faction have increased calls for her to step down after she angered them over her handling of Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court hearings. Feinstein was civil in her dealings with Barrett and even praised then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) for his handling of the hearings.  Newsom is in trouble, and is facing a recall election.  How sickening to see him grovel like this to get support – pledging to appoint someone to the U.S. Senate if Sen. Feinstein retires, based strictly on that person's race and gender.  This is identity politics at its worst.

March 16, 2021       Permalink

SOMETIMES THERE IS CAUSE FOR CAUTIOUS OPTIMISM – AT 11:50 P.M. ET:  THERE ARE TENTATIVE SIGNS THAT GROWN-UPS ARE FIGHTING BACK AGAINST THE CRUSHING OF FREE SPEECH ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES – FROM THE NEW YORK POST: 

Here’s some fresh hope for free speech on US campuses: Some 200 scholars and professors from across the country last week launched the Academic Freedom Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting back against “cancel culture” efforts to silence faculty targeted by “woke” outrage.

Sparked by conversations among faculty at Princeton University about fading support for free expression on American campuses, the alliance aims to help educators “speak, instruct and publish without fear of sanction, bullying, punishment or persecution.” Membership fees and donations will help cover legal fees for professionals in hot water over free-speech controversies.

In recent years, universities have been hyperactive in penalizing staff for alleged insensitivity, as administrators strive to appease student outrage, no matter how unjustified and counter to the fundamentals of academic freedom.

In 2015, the University of Chicago released a statement affirming the centrality of free speech in education. Six years later, only 81 of the 4,000-plus US higher-education institutions have adopted or endorsed it.

Princeton’s Keith E. Whittington, a leader of the new group, points to two cases last year that show why faculty need protection.

In one, the University of Southern California put a prof on leave for lecturing about a common phrase in the Chinese language that some students felt sounded too much like the N-word. In another, Auburn University pulled a professor from the classroom for expressing an opinion about police on his personal Twitter account. Both academics later apologized — in effect, for exercising fundamental free-speech rights.

With members across the political spectrum, the alliance means to “foster a national conversation about these kinds of issues.” Cross your fingers that this will inspire more faculty to stand by their peers when politically correct mobs of students (and, all too often, faculty) start waving their pitchforks.

COMMENT:  Good luck to them.  They are brave, and facing enormous opposition and ridicule.  What we have today on too many college campuses is students not having their freedoms taken from them, but, instead, giving them up quite voluntarily.  It goes along with an old Communist Party admonition – "You don't need your rotten freedoms.  We'll tell you what to think."  And too many kids, already softened up by the totalitarian message in American high schools, go right along with it.  Much easier than to resist.  And thinking independently is, wow, kinda like hard, and, hey, oppressive, like slavery or Trump.

March 16, 2021       Permalink

THE CONTINUING TRAGEDY OF PORTLAND – AT 6:40 P.M. ET:   WHEN THE WOKE LEFT TAKES OVER, IT DESTROYS.  PORTLAND IS NOW IN A DIVE TOWARD THE BOTTOM.  THE MOVING VANS ARE GOING OUT, NOT COMING IN.  FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER:

Last June, the city of Portland, Oregon, hopped on the “defund the police” bandwagon. Now, it is flooded with gun violence, and the mayor is already backtracking from his support for the cuts.
Mayor Ted Wheeler has requested $2 million in emergency funding for the police department, pointing directly to the surge in gun violence. At this point last year, Portland had seen just one homicide. This year, that number is 20, with 208 shootings in the city so far.

Wheeler backed the Portland City Council’s decision to cut $15 million from the police budget last June, which included disbanding police units that investigate gun violence. Predictably, that move backfired in a city that saw 100 consecutive days of violent rioting last year.

Riots are back once again in the city, thanks to Wheeler’s spinelessness. Rioters have once again targeted a federal courthouse in the city, a reprise of the violent storming of the courthouse last July. In June, it was reported that the city lost around $24 million due to the riots. Damage to federal buildings totals roughly $2.3 million.

Portland, like Minneapolis, doesn’t have and never did have an overpolicing problem. The city has an underpolicing problem, compounded by cowardly city leaders who pander to anti-police activists. Portland city leaders, just like their Minneapolis counterparts, humored these leftist ideologues while turning a blind eye to riots. Now, they reap the whirlwind in the form of a surge in violent crime.

And this is Portland, so there is no Republican to blame for this issue. Wheeler is a Democrat. So are the city council members, with one independent who was endorsed by the council’s Democratic members. Gov. Kate Brown, who said that former President Donald Trump was “provoking confrontation for political purposes” by protecting the courthouse, is a Democrat. So is President Biden, who currently has federal agents trying to protect the courthouse.

Nor is there any plausible way to blame the availability of guns in Oregon or in neighboring states. Guns are exactly as available today as they were before this 2,000% surge in murders.

This is what happens when people who are tasked with actually running a city embrace ridiculous ideologies to please activists. I would say that Portland residents deserve better, but this is the leadership they chose for their city. Given the failures of Wheeler and the city council to this point, the voters are the only ones who can change course. 

COMMENT:   It is happening throughout our country.  A nation dies when it will not protect its citizens.  A nation dies when it forgets what made it great.  And a nation dies when it learns it can raid its treasury.  In America today, all three conditions are present.

March 16, 2021       Permalink