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NOVEMBER 9,  2017

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

HOW DEMEANING – FROM ABC7:   WASHINGTON (ABC7) — The DC Council has taken a large step towards placing a statue of former Mayor Marion Barry in front of its home.  In a meeting Tuesday, the DC Council Committee of the Whole voted unanimously to a measure that would advance the possibility of adding a statue dedicated to the late mayor in front of the Wilson Building.  The matter was not actually passed today, Council Chairman Phil Mendelson said because someone forgot to publish it in the city register, as required by law. Mendelson said it is now on the Consent Agenda of non-controversial items that will be passed all together with one vote in the next council session.  That session could come in as little as two weeks.  What a disgrace, what an embarrassment for African Americans.  The man was a convicted felon, a druggie, a tax cheat, and much more.  I'm sure we'll see calls in Washington in coming years to tear down the Lincoln Memorial and Jefferson Memorial.  But Marion Barry will remain.

ONCE A GREAT IDEA – FROM THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS:  Following a year of layoffs, ESPN is expected to have another round after Thanksgiving.  Over 100 staffers could lose their jobs in the layoffs, including positions on the television side, producers, executives and those in digital and technology, according to Sports Illustrated. SportsCenter is expected to be "hit hard" and some on-air talent could be out of a job.  ESPN declined to comment to Sports Illustrated about the looming job cuts.  Layoffs have been occurring at ESPN multiple times throughout the last two years.  In October 2015, the company laid off over 300 employees and this past April over 100 reporters and personalities lost their jobs.   People tune to ESPN to see a game, not to get a political lecture.  ESPN hasn't figured that out, and is losing audience by the trainload.

GREAT SENSE OF PRIORITIES – FROM CBS LOCAL:    CHICAGO (CBS) — If you’re not careful, you could be one step away from a big city fine.  CBS 2’s Audrina Bigos reports that two Chicago leaders want you to pay up if you’re texting or talking on the phone while crossing the street.  “Everybody does it and then everybody is irritated when someone else does it. So my total view is I want to look at it. I think it has something to do with peoples own safety,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said.  According to city numbers, 27 pedestrians have been killed in Chicago so far this year, which is one death up from last year.  To enforce the proposed ordinance, Chicago Police would hand out tickets with a fine anywhere from $90 to $500.
Ald. Edward Burke and Ald. Anthony Beale are proposing the ordinance. While the ordinance has been sent to a committee to review, there is no timeline on whether or not it could pass.  Undoubtedly a problem, but nothing compared with Chicago's enormous crime problem.  Crossing the street while texting?  Bad.  Crossing the street while being shot at?  Horrible.

November 9, 2017       Permalink

ALERT ON BRITAIN – AT 12:44 P.M. ET:   It hasn't been emphasized by the American press, but the very pro-American British government of Prime Minister Theresa May is in serious trouble.  There is a growing belief that it may not last the year.  May has made series of mistakes, and her campaigning in Britain's election earlier this year was abysmal, bringing the opposition Labour Party back into contention as a major party that could actually take power.

Ordinarily, this would be inside ball.  After all, there are other conservatives, besides May, who could become prime minister.  However, something very ugly is happening in British politics.  The Labour Party, always problematical for its less-than-enthusiastic attitude toward America, is now being run by the most extreme leader it has ever had – a hard leftist who admires Communist dictatorships, has little use for the United States, despises Israel, and is running a party that has become increasingly pro-Islamic and anti-Semitic.  Other than that, he's okay. 

His name is Jeremy Corbyn.  Read about him.   Some months ago, Atlantic ran a profile.  This will keep you up at night:   

Corbyn’s problems represent more than just the rough edges of a career back bencher suddenly thrust onto the dais—there’s an unrefined quality to his world view, a blinkered embrace of far-left positions over the years that make him seem divorced from reality. If left-wing populists don’t jettison their hoarier positions, they risk wreaking as much havoc as their right-wing populist counterparts—if they ever win outright, of course.

Corbyn isn’t an anodyne Danish-style socialist; at times, he seems willing to go all-in, Venezuela-style. He’s so far to the left that he makes Bernie Sanders look like Dick Cheney. “Thanks Hugo Chavez for showing that the poor matter and wealth can be shared,” he tweeted in 2013. “He made massive contributions to Venezuela & a very wide world.” Venezuela, for the record, is currently suffering chronic shortages of everything from food to toilet paper, a mass civil insurrection and murderous police brutality. Last November, Corbyn hailed Cuba’s dead communist dictator Fidel Castro as “a champion of social justice.”

There’s also Corbyn’s embrace of a virtual planet-wide rogue’s gallery of dictators and terrorists. “It will be my pleasure and my honor to host an event in parliament,” he said two years ago,“where our friends from Hezbollah will be speaking. ... I also invited friends from Hamas to speak as well.” Moments later, never-minding Palestinian suicide-bombings and rocket attacks against Jewish civilians, he insisted that Hamas is dedicated to “long term peace and social justice” and that Britain’s labeling of it as a terrorist organization is “a big, big historical mistake.” He reportedly praised Muammar Qaddafi’s “achievements” right at the moment NATO was debating whether or not to intervene on behalf of Libya’s civilian population in Benghazi, an intervention he opposed along with every other military action the U.K. has participated in since World War II. And while he has insisted that former prime minister and fellow Labour Party member Tony Blair should stand trial for war crimes, he was part of a movement in parliament opposing the U.K.’s decision to strike against Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic—an actual genocidaire— denying that the butcher of Belgrade attempted yet another round of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo in 1999.

Corbyn also appeared on Iran’s hysterical state-run propaganda channel Press TV as a paid guest, even after the U.K. suspended its broadcasting license. When U.S. Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden, Corbyn went on the channel to complain that there was “no attempt whatsoever that I can see to arrest him and put him on trial, to go through that process” and that “this was an assassination attempt, and is yet another tragedy, upon a tragedy, upon a tragedy.”

COMMENT:   Had enough?  It's worrisome that some polls have Corbyn as the most popular politician in Britain.  It is conceivable he could be the next prime minister, but unlikely.  "Conceivable" worries me enough.  And he is changing the Labour Party into a true national and international menace.

Follow events in Britain.  If Corbyn ever gets in, the American left will celebrate, and look for an equivalent for us. 

Quick, my pills!

November 9, 2017       Permalink

ON THE BALL – AT 11:56 A.M. ET:  House Republicans are marking up, making changes in, their tax bill.   The adults in Washington understand that the final bill sent to President Trump, will look entirely different from the House bill now being developed.  The Senate hasn't even weighed in.

And it appears that the Republicans are listening closely to critics.  It turned out that a version of the House bill would have actually increased taxes on the middle class as years went by.   No way, says the Trump White House.  From Newsmax: 

Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said Wednesday that if the Republican tax plan contains any increases for middle-class Americans, President Donald Trump "will not sign it."

"If our numbers here at the White House show the same thing, if they show taxes are going up on the middle class — on the House plan, the Senate plan, on some combination of the two — he won't sign it," Mulvaney, the former South Carolina Republican congressman, told Erin Burnett on CNN.

"He wants lower taxes on hard workers — and he wants it to be easier for them to pay their taxes," he said. "That's one principle.

"The other is he wants that lower corporate rate" of 20 percent, from the current 35 percent, Mulvaney said.

"If those two things are violated, he's not going to sign a piece of legislation," he told Burnett.

"At the end of the day, if we believe this is a middle-class tax increase, he's not going to sign it."

COMMENT:  It couldn't be clearer.  Some "journalists" act as if they've never seen a bill developed before.  Well, maybe they haven't. 

I think Republicans are absolutely determined to get a good bill passed, although the final actions may stretch into 2018.  If there's a delay, CNN and its brethren will jump all over the president.  But if the final bill is good, and Americans get a good break, that's all that will count.

November 9, 2017       Permalink

TAKING IT SERIOUSLY – AT 10:33 A.M. ET:   Some Americans feel the North Korean threat personally.  They have a history.  They remember Pearl Harbor.  And action is being taken.  From the Honolulu Star Advertiser: 

The North Korean nuclear threat will soon enter Hawaii living rooms a little more forcefully as the state adds an “attack warning” wavering-tone siren to its monthly “attention alert” tests for hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes.

At 11:45 a.m. Dec. 1, during regular siren tests on the first business day of each month, 50 seconds of the steady-tone alert will be followed by a pause and then 50 seconds of the attack warning tone, said Hawaii Emergency Management Agency Executive Officer Toby Clairmont.

Clairmont said the last time Hawaii residents heard the attack warning siren test was around 1980 during the Cold War. The siren, if used as an actual warning, would signal the need to immediately seek shelter.

The Russian threat, now far more removed, has been replaced by the unpredictability of North Korea, which exploded a nuclear device Sept. 3 that may have had yielded 250 kilotons or more. By comparison, the Hiroshima blast was about 15 kilotons.

For the foreseeable future, the additional monthly attack warning sirens will be the new norm statewide. Hawaii Emergency Management unveiled a sample of the wavering siren at a preparedness presentation Saturday and in a new public service announcement now running.

COMMENT:  We think of Hawaii as one of the most liberal states in the Union, but Hawaii has a long military history, and its people take defense seriously.

I hope the news networks cover this first test.  It will remind the audience that the North Korean threat is real, and involves actual people.

November 9,  2017     Permalink

NOVEMBER 8,  2017

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

NO SURPRISE HERE – FROM NEWSBUSTERS:  Paul Bedard at the Washington Examiner reports a new poll shows more voters than not find the Big Three network newscasts and the nation’s three largest liberal newspapers “untrustworthy.”   The latest Zogby poll asked: “Compared to four years ago, how trustworthy do you think the mainstream media is? When we say mainstream media, we mean network newscasts – NBC, CBS, and ABC, along with large newspapers such as the New York Times, L.A. Times, and Washington Post?”  The results? Forty-eight percent believe these outlets are untrustworthy while 45 percent said they did trust them. The rest were unsure. The chart showed it broke down to 17.3 percent picked “very trustworthy” and 28 percent said “somewhat trustworthy, while 21.2 percent selected “somewhat untrustworthy” and 26.3 percent insisted they were “not at all trustworthy.”...Two-thirds of Democrats say they trust the media.  Sixty-nine percent of Republicans don’t trust the networks and three newspapers.  The major media must now be considered a branch of the Democratic Party. 

THE PRESIDENT IN CHINA – FROM THE DAILY MAIL:   Chinese President Xi Jinping and wife Madame Peng Liyuan rolled out the red carpet for Donald and Melania Trump on Thursday morning in an official welcome ceremony at Beijing's Great Hall of the People.  Trumpets blared and a military band played the U.S. and Chinese national anthems as a ceremonial cannon fired shots in Tiananmen Square.
Presidents Trump and Xi will participate in several hours of official talks, then deliver a joint press statement. A state dinner is on the agenda for this evening, complete with a cultural performance.   I'm linking this basic story so you can scroll down through the photos, and see the magnificent reception the president and first lady received.  A very big deal it was, and Melania Trump was magnificent as usual.  The closest I ever came to this was some good local takeout, duck sauce included.

IS FOOTBALL DOOMED? – FROM USA TODAY:  As far as longtime sports broadcaster Bob Costas is concerned, the future of football in the United States is clear — and bleak.  “The reality is that this game destroys people’s brains," he said Tuesday night.  Speaking at a roundtable discussion at the University of Maryland, Costas, who hosted Football Night in America on NBC for more than a decade, said the sport could collapse over time, barring a development in technology to make it reasonably safe. He said the decline of football, which was once “a cash machine,” is the most significant story in American sports.
“The cracks in the foundation are there,” Costas said. “The day-to-day issues, as serious as they may be, they may come and go. But you cannot change the nature of the game. I certainly would not let, if I had an athletically gifted 12- or 13-year-old son, I would not let him play football.”  I hear that same comment all the time from parents.  And I knew a Miami Dolphins star who later turned against the game for the same medical reasons.  Also, in the last few years the NFL has become racially charged, further damaging the image of football.  I'm afraid the Costas assessment is correct.   

November 8,  2017      Permalink

AND IN THE REAL WORLD – AT 1:14 P.M. ET:  The war against terror continues, as we await the next incident in America.  From The Local:   

Nine suspects were arrested in a series of anti-terror operations carried out around France on Tuesday, with French media reporting a planned attack on the city of Nice had been thwarted.

The raids took place in the greater Paris region of Île-de-France and the Provence-Alpes-Côtes-d'Azur region of the south east.

According to reports some nine individuals aged between 18 and 60-years-old were arrested in the raids carried out by France's specialist counter-terrorist police.

The arrests were reportedly made in the Val-de-Marne department to the south west of Paris, Seine-Saint-Denis to the capital's north, the city of Aix-en Provence, north of Marseille and the town of Menton, on the border with Italy.

Those held included two brothers who were known to have been radicalised, sources told AFP.

An arrest was also made in Switzerland which brought the total number of suspects held to 10.

The 27-year-old man arrested in Switzerland was in contact with a 14-year-old French boy who was "about to carry out the attack," one of the sources said.

The teenager was arrested in the Paris region on June 20 and charged by an anti-terror judge, the sources said.

COMMENT:  At least the Trump administration takes it seriously.  Compare please to Obama's description of terrorism as "manmade disasters."

November 8, 2017        Permalink

DON'T CARRY ME BACK TO OLD VIRGINNY – AT 10:49 A.M. ET:  Let the explaining begin.  Let the excuses fly.  And let us change the channel.

We got beat in Virginia.  That's it.  The geniuses, who are only geniuses after the election, will be "analyzing" the statistics for weeks.  Bottom line:  This was a wake-up call to the Republicans, stating bluntly that they can lose the House next year, and possibly the Senate, setting up an almost certain impeachment of the president.  Never mind that there probably won't be any legal grounds for impeachment.  The left-wing bar will invent some.

Many of the analyses seem to fall short.  Virginia really isn't one state.  It's now several, with dramatically different cultures.  If truth be told, the Virginia suburbs around Washington D.C. are far more similar to the suburbs around New York than they are to the towns of the Old South.  Virginia was the only Southern state to go for Clinton last year.  So the Democratic victory wasn't so shocking, although the nine-point margin was not expected.

Doug Schoen, a lifelong Democrat but a critic of the current party, offers some light, noting that the incoming governor, Ralph Northam, is from the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, not the nutbag wing which is rapidly taking over the national organization.  From Fox: 

Most encouragingly, Northam campaigned on a moderate platform and offered the type of alternative agenda that the Democratic party must advance in order to succeed in 2018 and beyond.

To be sure, this victory alone does not change the disorder that was made abundantly clear in Donna Brazile’s recent revelations about the relationship between the DNC and Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Throughout the course of the Virginia campaign, Northam was never beholden to the Democratic party’s loudest, most liberal voices, as evidenced by his shift on sanctuary cities just last week. In fact, he defeated the progressive base’s preferred choice in the June primary.

Northam put forward a well-structured economic plan, involving job training and re-training, as well as advancing the Democratic party’s tradition values in the areas of women’s issues and gun violence prevention.

COMMENT:  I doubt if the national Dems will learn anything from the Virginia race.  They're going headlong into building a hard-left party that will try to remove a president. 

But Republicans must now start building a record that they can take to the people in next year's midterms.  Virginia may be just what the GOP needed to wake it from its slumber.

November 8, 2017        Permalink

TRUMPIAN SPEECH – AT 9:18 A.M. ET:  President Trump, now in China, made a superb speech to the South Korean legislature last night, earning two standing ovations.  He pulled no punches, he sugar-coated nothing.  He made clear he was not Barack Obama.  From CNN: 

Seoul (CNN) Standing near the front line of the world's tensest standoff, President Donald Trump on Wednesday issued a direct and personal warning to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, declaring during his first major speech in Asia that continued nuclear provocation could result in the communist nation's obliteration.

"The weapons you are acquiring are not making you safer, they are putting your regime in grave danger," Trump said during an address at South Korea's National Assembly in Seoul. "Every step you take down this dark path increases the peril you face."

In a bruising insult of the repressive regime founded by Kim Il-sung in the middle of last century and governed in his image ever since, Trump diminished the kingdom now ruled by his grandson.
"North Korea is not the paradise your grandfather envisioned," he said. "It is a hell that no person deserves."

It was a frank and cutting personal insult directed at the man who Trump has previously derided as "rocket man." He avoided that term on Wednesday, but was unsparing in his description of a failed state where the majority of citizens live in misery.

And while Trump similarly avoided his prior threats to rain "fire and fury" on North Korea should their nuclear threats persist, he was unequivocal in his vows to counter provocations with military force.

"That would be a fatal miscalculation," he said of North Korean threats to strike the US and its allies. "This a very different administration than the United States has had in the past. Do not underestimate us. And do not try us."

COMMENT:  Take that, John Kerry.  And you too, Barack.  It was wise for Trump to maintain his hard line and not to, in the words of Maggie Thatcher, "go wobbly."  North Korea is a direct threat, through its nuclear and missile programs, to the United States.

The president is now in China, the most critical part of his Asia trip.  He wants concessions from China on trade policy, but also wants the Chinese to apply more heat on North Korea.  This is an uphill climb, as China increasingly sees itself as a great world power in competition with the United States.  If Trump can get something substantial out of the Chinese, it would have to be considered a major accomplishment in foreign policy.  Whether it will be reported that way is a different story.

November 8,  2017     Permalink