Please note that you can leave a comment on any of our posts at our Facebook page.  Subscribers can also comment at length at our Angel's Corner Forum.

MARCH 3,  2018

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

EXPLOITATION – FROM THE HILL:  A survivor of the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., last month is now helping the Democratic National Committee (DNC) fundraise ahead of the midterm elections in an effort to back lawmakers who support gun control measures.   In a DNC email blast Saturday, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student Sara Imam urged supporters to not forget the 17 students and faculty who died in the Feb. 14 school shooting and register to vote for the fall elections.  "This week the Democratic Party launched IWillVote -- a national campaign to organize voters and get them to the polls," Imam wrote in the party's release, which links to the DNC's voter registration page. Respondents who provide their information are then asked to donate money "to help Democrats win."   I guess we should praise kids for wanting to get involved in elections, but some of this is taking the form of exploitation.  We can sympathize with a survivor of a tragedy, however that doesn't mean we have to accept his or her arguments.  "Believe the children" has been, on too many occasions, a false rallying cry.  Children often ask the right questions and come up with the wrong answers.

TRUMP LAUGHS AT HIMSELF – FROM THE HILL:   President Trump on Saturday participated in the Gridiron Club Dinner's longstanding tradition of presidential speeches filled with self-deprecating humor, flinging barbs at his own administration as well as the usual targets.   Since its foundation in 1855, almost every president has attended the annual white tie dinner at least once during their administration. The club extends a standing invitation to the president every year.  The event is known for its roast-style speeches, skits and political comedy, with lawmakers and journalists going after one another throughout the dinner.  I'm glad he did it.  His best line: "I won't rule out direct talks with Kim Jong Un, I just won't. As far as the risk of dealing with a madman is concerned, that’s his problem not mine," Trump said. 

MADNESS – FROM THE WASHINGTON TIMES:   Global warming skeptics, beware: A play with the alarming title “Kill Climate Deniers” may be coming to a theater near you.  Written by Australian playwright David Finnigan, “Kill Climate Deniers” kicked off Thursday the 2018 season of the Griffin Theatre in Sydney after a week of previews, with the final show scheduled for April 7.  The plot? “As a classic rock band take the stage in Parliament House’s main hall, 96 armed eco-terrorists storm the building and take the entire government hostage, threatening to execute everyone unless Australia ends global warming. Tonight,” said the play’s website.  The play was commissioned in 2014 with a $19,000 grant from the Australian government, but its first staging was shut down following a backlash led by conservative Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt.  “How does the ACT Government justify spending taxpayers’ money on a theatre work entitled ‘Kill Climate Deniers’?” asked Mr. Bolt in a column dated Sept. 30, 2014. “What sane Government donates to a project urging others to kill fellow citizens, even as a ‘joke’? Are these people mad?”  Yes, I'm afraid they're mad, and quite proud of it.  There are in fact people who believe that those who disagree with them should die.  These are people who play with fire, but who never take responsibility for the blaze that follows.

March 3,  2018     Permalink

DEATH OF A NATION – AT 11:38 P.M. ET:   Fighting apartheid in South Africa was one of the trendy causes of the 1970s and 80s.  You really were in, especially on Western college campuses, if you were in the "movement" to end white rule in the predominantly black country.

When apartheid ended, though, the TV news departments pulled the plug, turned off the lights, and went home.  The print reporters did likewise.  The people of South Africa were no longer interesting.  Who cared what happened to them?  There were no marches in the West for good government.

One thing the country did right was to ask the whites to stay.  They had the expertise to keep the economy going.  But in the intervening years, South Africa, under the rule of an essentially Communist government, started slipping, and slipping more, and becoming a dangerous, unruly place, with a terrible record of crimes against black women.  No one in the West was interested. 

Now the South African government is turning against the whites, and the result can easily be another Venezuela.  From Daily Mail: 

White South African farmers will be removed from their land after a landslide vote in parliament.
The country's constitution is now likely to be amended to allow for the confiscation of white-owned land without compensation, following a motion brought by radical Marxist opposition leader Julius Malema.

It passed by 241 votes for to 83 against after a vote on Tuesday, and the policy was a key factor in new president Cyril Ramaphosa's platform after he took over from Jacob Zuma in February.

Mr Malema said the time for 'reconciliation is over'. 'Now is the time for justice,' News24 reported.

'We must ensure that we restore the dignity of our people without compensating the criminals who stole our land.'

Mr Malema has a long-standing commitment to land confiscation without compensation. In 2016 he told his supporters he was 'not calling for the slaughter of white people - at least for now'.

A 2017 South African government audit found white people owned 72 per cent of farmland.

Rural affairs minister for the ruling African National Congress party said 'The ANC unequivocally supports the principle of land expropriation without compensation'.

'There is no doubt about it, land shall be expropriated without compensation.' 

Freedom Front Plus party leader Pieter Groenewald said the decision to strip white farmers of their land would cause 'unforeseen consequences that is not in the interest of South Africa'.

The deputy chief executive of civil rights group Afriforum said the motion was a violation of agreements made at the end of apartheid.  

COMMENT:  No doubt there's been some unfairness, but this is hardly the way to deal with it.  South African blacks have made little progress in part because their leaders are stuck in the last century's embrace of Marxism. 

We now can expect an exodus of whites, and with them their technical skills and commercial expertise.  Really brilliant.

March 3, 2018       Permalink

THE GOOD GUYS SAY NO – AT 1:20 P.M. ET:  The Czech Republic is one of the few bright lights in Europe – democratic, pro-American, pro-freedom, and wary of refugee groups that do not share those values.  Now the country is taking a stand against the chic, trendy policies of the European Union:.  Root for the Czechs.  From Breitbart: 

Andrej Babiš has said there is ‘no way’ the Czech Republic will agree to Brussels’ demand that the nation accept a quota of migrants from the third world.

Speaking in the country’s parliament on Thursday, the recently elected Czech Prime Minister slammed the European Union’s (EU) mandatory quota scheme as “ineffective” and divisive.

“It is certain that we will not accept anyone, and we are fundamentally against anyone dictating to us who should live and work in our country,” local media reported him saying.

“We consider it absurd that the European Commission sues us for something that is nonsense,” Babiš added, regarding the EU’s decision to sue the Czech Republic alongside Poland and Hungary over their refusal to take part in the quota scheme.

Passed in 2015, after German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the continent’s borders, the controversial rule dictates that asylum seekers who arrive in Europe seeking a new life are “fairly” redistributed across the bloc through a quota system.

Highlighting other contributions the Czech Republic has made to solving the migrant crisis, which includes having sent extra police officers to Hungary and Bulgaria to help protect the external EU border, Babiš pointed to the 35 million euro contribution from Visegrád 4 nations to help Italy crack down on people trafficking from Africa to Europe.

COMMENT:  Countries have a right to control their borders, and to control immigration.  We sympathize with the refugee streams coming from some pretty horrible countries, but a refugee stream can turn into a fifth column, seeking to destabilize a host country rather than integrate into it.  We're having that problem here, although those who thoughtfully point it out are automatically called racists in some quarters.

March 3, 2018       Permalink

TWITTER DOES SOMETHING RIGHT – AT 12:34 P.M. ET:  Twitter has banned an ANTIFA account, finally acknowledging what all rational people know, that ANTIFA is a violent organization.  From Daily Caller:

Twitter banned an Antifa student group after it said “bricks belong best thrown at pig heads,” according to a Wednesday report.

Watchdog group Far Left Watch noticed the Revolutionary Student Front at the University of Texas at Austin’s suspension after The Daily Caller News Foundation published two pieces regarding the comment inciting violence against police, as well as the group’s “self-defense” classes and its recruitment of those with mental illness.

Twitter has suspended the account of the violent communist group that has been advocating for armed violence against “capitalists."

“The primary method of combating the symptoms of mental illness that we face under capitalism must be organizing those suffering to come into violent class conflict with the system that creates their illness,” said the Antifa group, describing its 2017 Revolutionary Mental Health Program.

The Revolutionary Student Front tweeted “bricks belong best thrown at pig heads” and announced in February that it was restarting weekly “self-defense” classes.

COMMENT:  It's good to see a publication describing ANTIFA as a Communist organization, which it is.  To too many journalists, it's a protest group that occasionally gets out of line.

March 3,  2018     Permalink

MARCH 2,  2018

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:48 P.M. ET: 

EQUAL JUSTICE, WE HOPE – FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER:  The Justice Department is processing a pardon application from former Navy sailor Kristian Saucier after denying him a waiver to apply for a pardon last year.  President Trump repeatedly invoked Saucier during the 2016 campaign after he was sentenced to one year in prison for taking pictures inside a nuclear submarine, arguing Saucier was “ruined” for doing “nothing” compared to Hillary Clinton.  The photos Saucier, now 31, took inside the sub were deemed “confidential,” meaning the lowest level of classification, even though some depicted the vessel’s nuclear reactor. Clinton, by contrast, sent and received more highly classified information on a private and insecure email server.  Give the kid a pardon.  What Hillary did was far worse.

THE GUY HOLDS – FROM RASMUSSEN REPORTS:  The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 49% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Fifty percent (50%) disapprove.  The president has had a bad week.  The anti-Trump press is in full fury, the more so since the tax cuts that have just cut in are proving so popular.  And still, Mr. Trump's poll numbers hold.  Maybe the people are tired of the predictable assaults by the fashionably left media..  Maybe they've just tuned out.  After all, a large number of Americans tuned out the NFL, and then the Olympics.  They're showing they can act and think independently, something the left deplores.

WARNING TO REPUBLICANS – FROM THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE:   Texans have already set a record for early voting in a non-presidential primary election year, and there’s still one more day to go on Friday.  More than 602,000 voters had cast ballots in the state’s largest counties in either the Democratic or Republican primaries through Wednesday. That does not count Thursday’s totals that were not available late Thursday, or Friday’s, when polls will again be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Four years ago, fewer than 600,000 people voted in the entire early voting season.  Harris County has also seen a new record. More than 116,000 people have voted early or by mail already with two days remaining to add to that total. Four years ago, just 105,508 people in Harris voted during the entire early voting period.  Democrats represent a major reason for the records and have been out-voting Republicans since the start of early voting on Feb. 20. There have been 25,000 more Democratic ballots than Republicans have cast. That is a big change from the last two gubernatorial election cycles when Republicans dramatically outvoted Democrats in the primaries by well over 100,000 in each year.  Republicans aren't doing the job.  The upcoming midterm elections may well be decided by which party turns out its voters.  Dems seem much more animated and driven this year.  If Dems take over both houses of Congress, Trump will surely be impeached, despite lack of any basis for it, and we'll have an even greater mess than we have today.  The fact that Mr. Trump is holding in the polls should not give us any special confidence.

March 2, 2018       Permalink

TRULY CHILLING – AT 11:14 A.M. ET:  Vladimir Putin has plans for us.  Big plans.  He's had them for years, but a certain president we had for eight years just wasn't listening.  From Newsmax: 

Florida's in the crosshairs of Russia's beefed-up nuclear weaponry.

During his annual address to Russia's Parliament, President Vladimir Putin rolled out a video hyping the nation's military tech that featured multiple nuclear warheads streaking through space before raining down on what appears to be the outline of Florida, CNN reported.

"We've developed new strategic weapons that don't use ballistic trajectory at all, which means that missile defense will be useless against it," he boasted.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said department officials didn't enjoy the show.

"It was certainly unfortunate to have watched the video animation that depicted a nuclear attack on the United States," she told CNN. "That's certainly something that we did not enjoy watching. We don't regard that as the behavior of a responsible international player."

One CNN analyst said the video had a target audience of one: President Donald Trump, whose home-away-from-home is in Florida.

"I do think Vladimir Putin was speaking to one audience," national security analyst Samantha Vinograd said. "It wasn't anyone in Russia. It was Donald Trump."

COMMENT:  George W. Bush mistakenly said that he'd looked into Putin's eyes and believed he could work with him.  Trump has said some equally foolish things. 

Obama was beyond salvation, even being caught on tape, when he didn't know the mike was on, promising the Russian president that he could be more flexible after the 2012 election was over.  Nothing like a little honesty, Barack.

I hope the wishful thinking is over.  As Mitt Romney said in the 2012 campaign, to much ridicule, Russia is our greatest geopolitical challenge.  Let's act that way.

March 2, 2018       Permalink

MICHELLE MAKING HER MOVE? – AT 8:52 A.M. ET:  Have you noticed that Michelle Obama is making news again?  Gee, I wonder why.  It couldn't possibly be some polling showing she would be a very competitive presidential candidate, would it?  Nah.  From Business Insider: 

Michelle Obama is hopeful about the next generation of leaders in the US.

The former first lady of the US, 54, has been meeting many younger leaders through her work with the Obama Foundation. It's given her a lot of optimism about their approach to leading the country.

"They're tired of watching us do the same old thing and expect different results," Obama said at Klick Health's Muse event in New York on Tuesday. "So I'm optimistic about the future. There are some bright young people out there doing some amazing things."

Those interactions have helped to solidify her plans, which likely won't involve a run for office.

"This is why I'm not going to run for president" she said. "Because I think it's a better investment to invest in creating thousands of mes."

Oh please.  She's not running until she's running.  Oprah said she wasn't running, and now says she'd run if God told her to run.  Her advance men are emailing God.

Rather than just having one "Michelle Obama" vying for the presidency, she hopes to help more people get into leadership positions.

"We don't need just one, we need thousands and thousands," Obama said.

Obama spent eight years in the White House as first lady. The idea of swapping spots with her husband President Barack Obama doesn't appeal to her.

"As an older leader I think an important part of leadership is stepping out of the way and making room," Obama said.

If the Obamas were to trade spots and Michelle decided to run for office, that would limit the country. "We're not finding that new energy out there," she said.

COMMENT:  Of course, most potential candidates say they're not running, and then they answer the overwhelming call of the people, which only they hear.   How can a public servant resist?

President Michelle doesn't sound good to me.  I hope it doesn't sound good to you either.

March 2,  2018     Permalink