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

BUMPY – The president had another bumpy day today, making some gaffes that required the heroic Sarah Sanders to go out and explain what he meant.  He apparently is also being warned that some of his comments are affecting the morale of intelligence officers, and that some high-profile security people could resign.  The president might consider taking a few days off and resting.  He got punched this week, and the first step on the road to a rebound is to accept that his public performances were self-destructive.  At the same time, he is lucky in his enemies.  To watch the Dem buffoons come out and accuse him of treason, or almost-treason, was a throwback to the early 1950s, when Joe McCarthy accused the Democrats of "20 years of treason."  Didn't work then, won't work now.

SANITY IN LA LA LAND? – FROM THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE:  The state Supreme Court removed the “three-Californias” initiative from the November ballot Wednesday but said it would decide later whether the plan to break up the state was within the voters’ power to consider at a future election.  In a unanimous order, the six justices said that “significant questions regarding the proposition’s validity” and that the “potential harm” of allowing a public vote before those question are resolved “outweighs the potential harm in delaying the proposition to a future election.”  The court said it would consider both sides’ arguments at a hearing before deciding whether to place the measure on the 2020 ballot.  Carlyle Hall, a lawyer for opponents who sued to take the initiative off the ballot, said the court’s order was welcome but not surprising.  “This was such an abuse of the initiative process that the court obviously felt it could not allow it to be on the ballot,” he said.  Tim Draper, the Bay Area billionaire and venture capitalist who qualified the measure for the ballot, could not be immediately reached for comment.  The whole thing is absurd.  A state cannot, under our federal system, became three states, and thus produce four more seats in the US Senate.  I can't wait for Rhode Island to declare itself 23 new states. 

THE KAMIKAZE DEMOCRATS – FROM DAILY CALLER:  Democratic Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, the deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), claimed on Wednesday that America’s national borders create “an injustice” by keeping Mexican workers from traveling to the United States to look for higher-paying jobs.  Ellison claimed in an interview with progressive activist Rabbi Michael Lerner that America’s “prosperity is based on the want that is experienced in other parts of the world” and complained that “people, regular people, cannot go back and forth across the border seeking out the highest wages.” “We just have to say that the 12 million undocumented people in the United States are here because somebody wants them to be. But they want them here to do the work, but they don’t want them to get any rights."  I'm sure that party line will play well in Midwest towns where people struggle just to stay above water.

July 18,  2018