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.

Our Angel's Corner archive is here.

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

MAY 1,  2017

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:53 P.M. ET:

MAJOR SHOW-BIZ NEWS – FROM THE GUARDIAN:  Michael Moore is set to star in a Broadway show aimed at taking down Donald Trump. The Oscar-winning film-maker will bring The Terms of My Surrender to the stage with help from Tony-winning director Michael Mayer. His credits include Spring Awakening and Hedwig and the Angry Inch.  “It’s a humorous play about a country that’s just elected a madman – I mean, there’s really no other way to put it,” he said in an interview with the New York Times. The promotional poster reads: “Can a Broadway show bring down a sitting president?”  I am writing this from Manhattan.  I am already in line.  I will sleep on the pavement to guarantee being here when the box office opens in the morning.  I cannot wait.  I hear it's another "South Pacific."

VULGAR – FROM RED ALERT POLITICS:   On Thursday April 20th, Ron Kuby, a leftist radio talk show host on “Curtis and Kuby,” said the women who were sexually harassed by Bill O’Reilly should not have been surprised by what happened to them because they created a culture that permitted his behavior.
“These women… on air… helped create and perpetuate and profit from the right wing Fox culture of hatred, homophobia misogyny, bigotry, racism,” Kuby said. “They helped make that happen and now they are shocked that they got eaten up by that? The same ugliness that they helped perpetuate day in and day out finally came for them.”  Kuby seems to be stating these women deserved to be sexually harassed by O’Reilly simply due to their political views. Because they are conservative women, Kuby has deemed them perpetuators of “hatred, homophobia misogyny, bigotry, racism” and therefore deserving of such mistreatment.  Nothing will happen to Kuby, and so-called "women's groups" will remain silent.  He's a leftist, and therefore immune.

YIKES – FROM LONDON'S TELEGRAPH:  Scientists have revealed a robotic drill that can cut the most sensitive brain surgery down from two hours to two and a half minutes.  The machine, developed at the University of Utah, is being hailed as a potential breakthrough in survival for brain patients as the reduced time they spend in surgery will drastically cut the chances of infection.  Researchers say it can make one type of complex cranial surgery 50 times faster than standard procedures.  What will the mothers of doctors have left to brag about?  Fast drilling?

May 1, 2017       Permalink

WHAT A SURPRISE! – AT 11:50 A.M. ET:   Baltimore is becoming desperate as the murder rate soars.  From CBS local: 

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Baltimore’s mayor is asking for help from the FBI, as the city struggles to contain a soaring murder rate. But will bringing in the feds stop the killings?

The mayor pulled no punches earlier this week when she said the murder rate is out of control. She wants to bring in the FBI to the city, but will it make a difference? Some people are skeptical of that.

Violence in Baltimore has reached a crisis level, with the number of killings shattering a 20-year high this early in the year, Baltimore’s mayor was blunt.

“I’m calling on all the assistance we can possibly get because I can’t imagine going into our summer months with our crime rate where it is today, what that’s going to look like by the end of the summer,” says Mayor Catherine Pugh.

WJZ has learned Mayor Pugh wants manpower and technology from the FBI.

“Murder is out of control,” says Pugh.

The mayor met with the special agent in charge of the Baltimore division of the FBI, but wouldn’t provide specifics. She says they’ll come out next week, and the FBI isn’t talking.

COMMENT:  Baltimore was recently famous for the Freddie Gray case, in which an African-American prisoner died during a ride in a police van.  Out-of-control prosecutors, seeking to appease irrational public anger, indicted six police officers in the case, none of whom was found guilty.

The Obama administration's answer to Baltimore's situation was not to provide greater resources to law enforcement, but rather to harass the Baltimore police.  They may not be perfect, far from it, but murder is not increasing because of some bad cops.  It may well be increasing because law enforcement officers are often reluctant to get involved in some cases out of fear that they'll be called racists, or worse.

Baltimore is another city where liberal policies and racial politics have failed. 

May 1, 2017       Permalink

TRUMP WARNS NORTH KOREA – AT 10:44 A.M. ET:  The president is building his international credibility.  North Korea should take his words very seriously.  From Fox: 

With the first 100 days in the rearview mirror, President Trump is entering the next phase of his administration vowing to confront the crisis with North Korea – saying in an interview that “we have to be prepared for the worst,” as Congress moves on a separate front to apply new sanctions. 

Trump told The Washington Examiner that he sees Kim Jong Un as "very threatening.”

"We have to be prepared to do what we have to do. We cannot allow this to go on,” Trump said.

In a separate interview, Trump declined to rule out military action. And his National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster told “Fox News Sunday” that it’s “important for all of us to confront this regime.”

The Trump administration, Congress and the international community continue to consider multiple options, however, for cooling the tensions with North Korea, not the least of which is Trump’s bid to court China to exert pressure on Pyongyang. 

The North Korea situation stands as perhaps Trump’s most pressing international concern, even as he looks to notch legislative achievements in Washington on health care and tax reform -- two goals that eluded him during his first 100 days.

On Capitol Hill, the House plans to debate and vote on a new North Korea sanctions bill Monday night. The new push would target its shipping industry and those who employ North Korean slave labor abroad.

COMMENT:  We hope for a peaceful solution, but Trump has now drawn his own red line in the sand, or the mud, or wherever a red line is drawn in east Asia.  "We cannot allow this to go on," is pretty blunt.  Translated, the problem must be solved to our satisfaction, not kicked down the road.  Trump must pass this test.  He must show a result.

May 1,  2017     Permalink

ARE DEMS HEADING FOR DISASTER? – AT 10:15 A.M. ET:  With the media solidly on their side, with the Republican Congress divided on a host of issues, you'd think the Democrats would have a relatively easy path ahead.  But their party may well face catastrophe, even in the 2020 presidential election.  Historian Victor Davis Hanson explains that the Dems may not have learned the lessons of the past.  From RealClearPolitics: 

Will the 2020 end up like 1972 for Democrats?

So far, the similarities are eerie.

Hillary Clinton lost the election but won the popular vote over Trump. Had she campaigned more in the so-called "blue wall" states of the Rust Belt and Midwest, and not stupidly labeled a quarter of the country "irredeemable" and "deplorable," Clinton may have won in the Electoral College as well.

As in 1968, the future lesson from the lost 2016 election was for Democrats to appeal more to working classes -- and not to pander on polarizing hot-button cultural and social issues.

But it appears that Democrats may be on their way to another hard-left McGovern-style blowout.
Democrats are now even blaming Clinton for being too centrist rather than for running a terrible campaign. The newly elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Tom Perez, is a polarizing far-left figure.

The highest-profile Democratic Party supporters are increasingly smug Hollywood actors, rich Wall Street and Silicon Valley elitists and embittered members of the media, along with careerist identity groups and assorted protest movements -- a fossilized 1972 echo chamber.

Democrats' politically correct messaging derides opponents as deplorable racists, sexists, bigots, xenophobes, homophobes, Islamophobes and nativists. That shrill invective only further turns off middle America. Being merely anti-Trump is no more a successful Democratic agenda than being anti-Nixon was in 1972.

COMMENT:  Very well said.  Bill Clinton understood that the Democratic Party, after being trashed by Ronald Reagan, was moving too far to the left.  He tried to correct the drift, and was rewarded with two presidential terms.

Barack Obama, elected by sheer force of personality in 2008, and by a biased press determined to make him president, saw no problem with a new leftward drift, and in fact encouraged it.  The American people rewarded his party with a loss of a thousand legislative seats during the Obama reign.

Now the party is spinning out of control.  Its base is truly crazy, like something out of China's Cultural Revolution.  The millennial generation is proving to be far more practical than Dems had thought.

The Republican future is far from guaranteed, and fate has a way of messing things up, but the Democrats are making it easier for the GOP.

May 1,  2017     Permalink

APRIL 30.  2017

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:54 P.M. ET:  

OH, THE ANGUISH – FROM THE WASHINGTON TIMES:  Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren says she is “troubled” by former President Barack Obama’s decision to give a Wall Street speech for $400,000 this year.  An interview between Ms. Warren and Sirius XM’s “Alter Family Politics” on Thursday addressed Mr. Obama’s upcoming conference talk run by Cantor Fitzgerald LP. The Democrat likened the money he will make to “a snake that slithers through Washington” and “ultimately threatens democracy.”  “I was troubled by that,” the senator said while discussing “This is our Fight,” her new book. “One of the things I talk about in the book is the influence of money. I describe it as a snake that slithers through Washington.  Oh, what a phony.  It's well known that Warren made millions from corporate law, and that she sold her BMW just before her Senate campaign, apparently to appear the impoverished law teacher.

A PROBLEM FOR NANCY – FROM THE OBSERVER:  Pelosi’s attitude has incited Sanders supporters to recruit progressive candidates to challenge establishment Democrats in their primary elections. Nancy Pelosi’s challenger, employment attorney Stephen Jaffe, recently launched his campaign.  “Two words: Bernie Sanders,” Jaffe said in an interview with the Observer when asked why he was running for Congress. “My goal is to try to pull the Democratic Party away from the establishment, corporations, big money, big oil, big pharma, and return it to the people.”  Yup, Nancy Pelosi, the leader of House Democrats, will have a challenger in the primary preceding the 2018 midterm elections, and I wouldn't be shocked if he won.  The Democratic Party base regards the turf to the left of Nancy as midstream, the norm, where we want to be.  In other words, socialism.

I'M SHOCKED, SHOCKED – FROM THE FEDERALIST:   A new survey of students at Dartmouth College found that those who identified as Democrats are the least tolerant on campus.  In the campus-wide field survey, students of all political stripes were asked how comfortable they would be about living with a roommate who holds opposing political views. Of the 432 students surveyed, only 39 percent of students who identified as Democrats said they would feel comfortable living with a Republican, 16 percent said they felt neutral about the proposed arrangement, while 45 percent, a plurality, said they felt uncomfortable.  A majority of students who identified as Republicans (69 percent) said they were comfortable living with someone of opposing political views, 19 percent said they felt neutral about it, and only 12 percent said they felt uncomfortable.  Doesn't surprise me.  Republicans tend to be far more tolerant than Democrats, and I've even heard some Democrats admit that.  It wasn't always this way.  There's been a role reversal over the years.

April 30, 2017       Permalink

TRUMP ON THE STUMP – AT 12:51 P.M. ET:   The president wisely skipped the White House Correspondents Association dinner last night, making the dinner a non-event.   The pundits spent their time lecturing a president who wasn't there. 

By contrast, Mr. Trump went out on the campaign trail to be among "his people."  And he gave them the red meat.  From Reuters: 

U.S. President Donald Trump hit the road on Saturday to celebrate his first 100 days in the White House with cheering supporters at a campaign-style rally, touting his initial achievements and lashing out at critics.

Trump told a Pennsylvania crowd he was just getting started on meeting his campaign promises. He repeatedly attacked an "incompetent, dishonest" media, saying they were not telling the truth about his administration's accomplishments.

"My administration has been delivering every single day for the great citizens of our country," Trump said in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. "We are keeping one promise after another, and frankly the people are really happy about it."

The rally occurred on the same day as a climate march at which thousands of protesters surrounded the White House, and it also coincided with the annual black-tie White House press dinner in Washington.

Trump and his staff chose to skip the press dinner because of what he said was unfair treatment by the press. Trump said he was thrilled to be away from the "Washington swamp".

"A large group of Hollywood actors and Washington media are consoling each other in a hotel ballroom in our nation’s capital right now," Trump said to loud boos from the crowd. "If the media's job is to be honest and to tell the truth, the media deserves a very, very big fat failing grade."

COMMENT:  Trump has taken a calculated risk by attacking the media, but it's working for him.  A recent poll showed that more Americans believe the president than believe the press.  The press attacks seem to make him stronger, and larger.

The "100-day" reports are a waste of time, an artificial construction.  Who cares about the date something was done?  The public will care only that it gets done.

April 30, 2017       Permalink

PROGRESS – AT 12:08 P.M. ET:   We've been reporting on the free speech crisis on American college campuses – attempts by the nutbag left to suppress the free speech of anyone who disagrees. 

But there is a backlash growing, and real action being taken.  I'm not sure you'll find the story on CNN, which is busy destroying the president.  From the Chicago Tribune: 

University of Wisconsin students who disrupt speeches and demonstrations could be expelled and campuses would have to remain neutral on public issues under a bill Republican legislators are pushing this week.

The bill comes as free speech issues have grown more contentious on college campuses across the country. Conservatives are worried that right-wing speakers aren't given equal treatment as liberal campus presenters and some students have complained about free expression fanning racial tensions.

In Madison, home to the University of Wisconsin's flagship campus, students shouted down and traded obscene gestures with ex-Breitbart editor and conservative columnist Ben Shapiro during a presentation in November. This week, supporters of conservative commentator Ann Coulter rallied behind her after the University of California-Berkeley cancelled her speech citing concerns that violence could erupt.

The bill is based on a model proposal the conservative Arizona-based Goldwater Institute put together to address campus free-speech issues. Legislation based on the model has been enacted in Colorado, with others being considered in five states, including Michigan, North Carolina and Virginia, according to the institute.

COMMENT:  Good moves.  Now let's see if we can get nationwide action.  Also, I'd like to see Congress extend protections under the Bill of Rights to students and faculty at all colleges and universities receiving federal aid.  That would include private colleges, which currently don't have to observe the First Amendment because they are private.  You want the aid, you observe the Bill of Rights.  A pretty good deal, I think.

But watch.  There'll be people at these colleges, including some faculty, who'll tell students, "You don't need no freedom of speech.  We'll tell you what to think!"  We've seen it so many times before.

April 30, 2017       Permalink

LET'S GET THE PRODUCTION LINES GOING – AT 11:38 A.M. ET:  An outspoken American admiral has made some statements recently that tell it like it is.  From the Daily Mail:

The United States is running out of bombs to blast ISIS terrorists because of the number of targets getting hit, one of the country's top generals has warned.  

US Pacific Commander Admiral Harry Harris has said he needs more munitions to keep up the intensive operations against the terror organisation in Iraq and Syria. 

Admiral Harris admitted he has seen much of his inventory of munitions moved to operations against ISIS. 

Harris outlined his concerns to a high-powered senate hearing late last week.  

He said: 'Critical munitions shortfalls are my top warfighting concern. Munitions are a large part of determining combat readiness in pursuit of national strategic objectives. 

'We are short in “here-and-now” basic munitions like small diameter bombs. Our near-peer competitors continue to modernize their weapons systems and leverage new technologies to close capability gaps between us and them. 

'We must maintain our capability to operate in contested environments. Additionally, we must continue to expand cross domain fires capabilities and focus on joint integration to strengthen deterrence and enable joint combined maneuver. Priorities include long-range and stand-off strike weapons, anti-ship weapons, advanced air to air munitions, theater ballistic/cruise missile defense, torpedoes, naval mines, and a Cluster Munitions replacement.'

Admiral Harris said investment was needed in torpedoes and mines as well as developing systems to defeat incoming missiles.

COMMENT:  The idea that this rich country is short on munitions is outrageous.  Thank the Obama administration, in part, for that.  But also thank the dysfunctional Republican Congress, which is facing a major election in little more than a year, with no record to present to the American people.

In 1948 Harry S. Truman ran against the "do-nothing Republican Congress."  Will we have the phenomenon next year of a Republican president running against another do-nothing Republican Congress?  Trump is very independent.  Don't be shocked.

April 30,  2017    Permalink