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 10,  2018

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

WILL THERE ALWAYS BE AN ENGLAND? – FROM BREITBART:    Brighton & Hove City Council will equip staff with badges declaring their “preferred pronouns” as part of a project seeking to educate the public that making assumptions about a person’s sex “can be hurtful and distressing”.  Council and voluntary sector staff in the city will be “encouraged” to wear the badges, which include messages such as “My pronouns are she/her/hers” and “My pronouns are they/their/theirs” when they are distributed in the week leading up to ‘Trans Day of Visibility’ on March 31.  The badges will also be made available at libraries, colleges, and council buildings as part of a month-long drive to “raise awareness of Trans and Non-Binary people and that everyone has their own gender identity”, according to a press release.  Local news reported that 16,000 badges are set to be printed, as they will also be made available at libraries, colleges and a range of public buildings during the month-long campaign.   I wonder what Churchill would say about this.  Not their finest hour.

REALLY? – FROM CNN: (CNN) Sen. Elizabeth Warren says she isn't running for president in 2020.
"I am not running for president in 2020," Warren told CNN's Jim Acosta on Saturday.  Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat and staunch critic of President Donald Trump, made the statement in an interview for CNN's "State of the Union," scheduled to air at 9 a.m., ET, on Sunday.  She's said this before.  Oprah has said it.  Others have said it.  None has put it in writing.  The world may look very different in 2020.  Maybe the Democratic nomination won't be worth much.

CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS? – FROM BREITBART:   Oakland coffee shop Hasta Muerte Coffee refuses to serve police due to a concern for the “safety of customers.”  The policy came to light after NBC Bay Area reported the coffee shop refused to serve an officer in uniform on February 16.  KCRA reports that the store took to social media, saying, “We have a policy of asking police to leave for the physical and emotional safety of our customers and ourselves.”   This is the kind of story that tends to grow.  I want to see what happens this week.  I'm sure Fox is on the case.  Who will the owners call if the shop is robbed?  Maybe Nancy Pelosi would rush over.

March 10, 2018       Permalink

OKAY BY ME IN AMERICA – AT 1:18 P.M. ET:   That line, from "West Side Story," sung by a Puerto Rican immigrant to New York, still has merit.  It has been months since the hurricane struck Puerto Rico, and Puerto Rico is still a mess.  Why?  Well, I wouldn't ask any of the politically correct news organizations.  They run from the story.  But Fox gets it right: 

Six months after Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico, many leaders there are pointing the finger at Washington, but the scandal, corruption and waste that now plague the U.S. territory were around long before last summer's storm.

Decades of dysfunction, mismanagement and embarrassing abuses of power left Puerto Rico reeling well before the storm delivered a knockout blow, say observers. Enormous debt, absurd infrastructure projects and a tradition of corruption have hampered the commonwealth's ability to get off the canvas.

“There’ve been so many problems that have built up year after year,” Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., told Fox News. “It’s a tough situation.”

Reckless spending sprees by a revolving door of politicians have turned the commonwealth into a bloated bureaucracy that can’t pay its bills and yet enjoys the benefits of a welfare society without any of the responsibilities attached to it.

Before Maria hit in September, Puerto Rico was already navigating the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. government history at a whopping $120 billion in combined bond and pension debt.

For years, the island blew through billions of dollars in borrowed money.

Pricey and impractical infrastructure projects almost always got the go-ahead.

“Every town in Puerto Rico has a new baseball park," Emilio Pantojas-Garcia, a sociology professor at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, told Bloomberg News. “All these mayors were using borrowed money to build things that were underutilized."

COMMENT:  And yet, how much of this do you read in the mainstream media?  The media tries to blame Trump, cruel Trump.  The idea of blaming the vastly corrupt leadership of Puerto Rico is simply not acceptable. 

Same story during Hurricane Katrina.  The mayor of New Orleans was black, the governor of Louisiana was a woman.  The villains were BUSH (!!) and CHENEY (!!!!). 

Identity politics has a price.  We're paying it.

March 10, 2018       Permalink

BOOM ON – AT 12:29 P.M. ET:  They said it couldn't be done.  Even Barnum and Bailey couldn't do it.  The "it" is bringing manufacturing jobs back to America.  From Breitbart:

Over the last 12 months, manufacturers have added 224,000 jobs. That’s the biggest annual gain since 1998, according to Wall Street economist Joe LaVorgna. Since the 2016 election, the economy has added 263,000 manufacturing jobs. Last month, 31,000 new manufacturing jobs came online.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way, according to the Very Wise People. Donald Trump’s promises to bring back manufacturing jobs was widely derided as impossible, and his supporters were mocked as suckers.

“Trump won’t be able to ‘make American great again’ by bringing back production jobs,” Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution wrote.

“What happens when people realize they’ve been taken?” Wharton emeritus professor of management Stephen J. Kobrin asked. “When people realize that he can’t bring back jobs and that they are not better off than they were two years ago, how does he use it–who does he blame it on?”

“Manufacturing jobs are never coming back,” Ben Casselman of FiveThirtyEight declared in the summer of 2016.

Instead of focusing on reviving the manufacturing sector, politicians should focus on managing its decline, the Very Wise People insisted.

“[R]ather than play to that anger [over lost manufacturing jobs], candidates ought to be talking about ways to ensure that the service sector can manufacturing’s former role as a provider of dependable decent-paying jobs,” Casselman wrote.

Why was it supposed to be impossible to revive manufacturing? Globalization couldn’t be reversed. Automation would make human manufacturing jobs redundant. Trump had offered “few specifics” about how he would change policies to benefit workers.

COMMENT:  We realize that not all attempts to bring back manufacturing jobs will succeed.  Some probably are gone forever, not so much to foreign competition as to robotics.  But there is manufacturing where robotics do not play a large role, and Trump is bringing back some of those jobs.  He should get a medal.  Instead, the mainstream media sends him ridicule.

March 10,  2018     Permalink

MARCH 9,  2018

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

JUSTICE DONE – FROM FOX:  Kristian Saucier, the former U.S. Navy sailor who served a year behind bars for taking photos of classified areas in a nuclear submarine, has been pardoned, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Friday.  Saucier recently received a letter from the Department of Justice saying it was taking a new look at his request for a pardon. Although he was released from jail last year, he remained under house arrest.  President Trump had denounced the government’s handling of Saucier’s case, calling it a political move and saying it contrasted with the velvet-gloved response to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s mismanagement of classified information through a private server.  "The president has pardoned Kristian Saucier, a Navy submariner,” Sanders said in a press briefing Friday afternoon. “Mr. Saucier was 22 years old at the time of his offenses and has served out his 12-months sentence. He has been recognized by his fellow service members for his dedication, skill and patriotic spirit.”  Good, decent move by the president.

WOODWARD RAPS WAYWARD SCRIBES – FROM THE WASHINGTON FREE BEACON:   Veteran journalist Bob Woodward criticized reporters on the right and left alike who were becoming too emotionally invested in their coverage of Donald Trump, calling them "unhinged."  "You’ve described the Trump presidency as being a "test" for the news media. Do you think the media is failing the test?" asked Newsweek.  The former Washington Post reporter—now an associate editor—responded journalists could always do better, including himself, but that he thought the media had not "failed" to date.  "But we have a lot of work to do," he continued. "A number of reporters have at times become emotionally unhinged about it all, one way or the other."   He's being mild.  The mainstream press is in danger of being sidelined in this country because of its left-wing bias.  Approval numbers for the press are ghastly, especially among moderates and conservatives.  Impartial journalism isn't even seen by many "journalists" as desirable.  One must "make a difference."

WISE WORDS – FROM THE WASHINGTON FREE BEACON:  Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) said on Friday that the United States "must remain deeply skeptical" as it approaches a meeting with North Korea and should avoid granting "unilateral concessions" to the Kim Jong Un regime.  "The patterns of U.S.-North Korea crises are well-worn and North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities are obvious. A summit could possibly break those patterns and lead to the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," Cotton said in a statement released in response to an announcement President Donald Trump and Kim will meet in the coming months.  The senator went on to caution against conceding to North Korea and conveyed skepticism about the intentions of the Kim regime.  He is perceptive, as usual.  Reagan quoted the old Russian proverb, "Trust but verify."  Cotton's words are in the same spirit.

March 9,  2018     Permalink

BUT WILL SHE HAVE A CAREER? – AT 1:08 P.M. ET:  Has a line been crossed?  Has history been made?  Or has a mortal sin been committed?  Erin Burnett, a CNN anchor, has now stated clearly, and before God and man, that President Trump may turn out to be an important president.  As of this morning, it's reported that she still had a beating heart.  And a company-provided telephone.  But you never know.  I hope she's escorted everywhere by two guys with Glocks.  From The Hill: 

CNN's Erin Burnett said Thursday that if President Trump can solve the U.S. problem with North Korea, he "would be going down as a great president."

The commentary from the "Outfront" host followed the White House announcement that Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would meet "by May" in an effort to negotiate the denuclearization of North Korea.

“Just an extraordinarily evening and of course opening the door to the big question, if President Trump can truly solve this problem, that would be going down as a great president. And there’s no way around that. That is the reality here," Burnett said at the end of her show.

Earlier in the show, a former adviser on the National Security Council under President Obama said there's "no way" Trump is ready for a direct meeting with Kim by May, as announced by South Korea's national security adviser on Thursday.

"There is no way that President Trump can be ready, by May, to have a high stakes negotiation on denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula. It's just impossible," said Samantha Vinograd, who also serves as a CNN national security analyst. 

Trump expressed optimism around the meeting on Twitter Thursday night, stating that "great progress [is] being made" while cautioning that "sanctions will remain" against North Korea "until an agreement is reached." 

COMMENT:  The heretical remark has been uttered.  A great president?  Isn't he Hitler?  Most of the press, from what I can see, has been somewhat restrained in its approach to the announcement of the talks.  They despise Trump, but they don't want to be seen as opposing a peace conference.

Trump might succeed.  He may solve the North Korea problem.  If he does, though, I doubt he'd be given a Nobel Peace Prize, although Kim Jong Un might be given one.  The Nobel Prize is a leftist's prize.  No conservative peacemakers need apply.  Reagan never got one, although he brought the Cold War to a close. 

March 9, 2018       Permalink

BUT...A NUMBER TO WATCH – AT 10:40 A.M. ET:   As noted yesterday, the president's poll ratings are taking a hit this week.  He's down again in Rasmussen this morning: 

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 44% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Fifty-four percent (54%) disapprove.

The president’s overall job approval ratings have been trending down at week’s end. Is the good will he appears to have generated with his conciliatory State of the Union speech at the end of January going away?

COMMENT:  That's a drop of six points in a week.  Does it involve tariffs?  Reports of Trump's affair with a porn star?   

I'm hoping that the positive news this week will reverse the sudden, alarming trend.  If it continues, though, the White House will have to do some internal polling to find out why.  The president needs the highest poll numbers he can achieve to help his party in the November elections. 

The president is at his best when he speaks over the heads of the reporters, as Reagan did, and directly to the American people.  We need more of that.

March 9, 2018       Permalink

EGADS!  DON'T TELL NANCY PELOSI – AT 10:16 A.M. ET:  There is fever, there is pain, in liberal ranks this morning.  Added to the White House announcement of dramatic progress on the North Korea front, there is the jobs report.  The deplorables are coming back to work!  What will happen to political correctness?  From CNBC: 

The economy added 313,000 jobs in February, crushing expectations, while the unemployment rate remained at 4.1 percent, according to a Labor Department report Friday that could help quell inflation fears.

Economists surveyed by Reuters had been expecting nonfarm payroll growth of 200,000 and the unemployment rate to decline one-tenth of a percent to 4 percent.

An increase in the labor force participation rate to its highest level since September 2017 helped keep the headline unemployment number steady, as the number of those counted as not in the workforce tumbled by 653,000 to just over 95 million.

The total counted as "employed" in the household survey surged by 785,000 to a record 155.2 million.

A separate measure that takes into account those out of the workforce and the underemployed — sometimes referred to as the "real" unemployment rate — held steady at 8.2 percent.

Stocks surged following the report, with the Dow industrials opening more than 150 points higher after being slightly negative before the news.

COMMENT:  Who are these outrageous fools who want to work?  Can't they be satisfied with a Democratic welfare program?  What has happened to our leftist values?

The Democratic answer will probably be to move further left.

March 9,  2018     Permalink