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

TRUMP EXPECTING IOWA TROUBLE – From Bloomberg:   The normally confident Donald Trump is anticipating unwelcome headlines from a Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll set for release Saturday evening.  At a rally in Des Moines Friday night, the Republican presidential front-runner warned the crowd he's being set up by a hostile media. "The Des Moines Register is the worst. The worst," he declared of the newspaper, which earlier this year editorialized that he should leave the race. "Everytime I have a Des Moines Register Poll, I do poorly. I also do poorly with the Bloomberg polls. I don't know why."  Trump's comments came several hours after Bloomberg Politics tweeted that results of the latest poll, commissioned in partnership with the Register, will be published Saturday at 6 p.m. Eastern Time.  I have no idea what these early polls mean in such a volatile, odd race.  But, clearly, there is a major move within the GOP to defeat Donald Trump and bar him from the nomination.  This could get bloody.  If he gets angry enough, Trump can break his pledge to support the Republican nominee and run as an independent, probably guaranteeing Hillary's election.

CALL IT WHAT IT IS – From Fox:   The California college student who stabbed four people last month in a campus spree that ended when he was killed by campus police was described by his roommate as "an extreme Muslim" and carried a manifesto and a photocopy of an ISIS flag -- more than enough to convince John Price he was a terrorist.  Yet, more than a month after the Nov. 4 attack at University of California Merced, local and federal authorities continue to insist that Faisal Mohammad, 18, carried out the vicious attack because he'd been banished from a study group. Price, whose son Byron Price, a 31-year-old construction manager for the family business who was working nearby and was stabbed when he heroically intervened, suspects the White House's reluctance to identify acts of radical Islamic terror has trickled down to investigators who are still probing the Merced attack.  “Why don’t we just call it what it is -- domestic terrorism?" said Price. "Everyone is afraid to be politically incorrect. I do believe in law enforcement and believe they will do their job, but it seems like to me we aren’t getting the whole story. I just wonder how much of this is driven from way higher up and is politically driven -- I just don’t know.”  His suspicions are correct.  The president of the United States is a leftist, not a liberal, with strong pro-Muslim leanings.  His behavior on the issue of terror has been disgraceful.  I cannot think of a parliamentary democracy that would allow a man like this to remain in office.  Maybe we need a Constitutional change to prevent this kind of disaster in the future.

CONFIDENCE IN GOVERNMENT ON TERROR PLUMMETS – From Reuters:   NEW YORK - Confidence in the US government to protect its citizens from militant attacks has fallen to its lowest in more than a decade after a pair of suspected militant Islamists gunned down 14 people at a holiday party in California, a poll released on Friday found.  Only 55 percent of respondents said they had "a fair amount" or "a great deal" of confidence that authorities could protect the country from further attacks, according to data collected by Gallup on Dec. 8-9, just days after the San Bernardino massacre.  The finding represents a drop of 12 percentage points since June and extends the gradual erosion in confidence that began soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by militant Islamists in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. It is the lowest reading since Gallup began asking the question, following the 2001 attacks.   It's all about Obama.  The American people are on to him, despite the efforts of the Obama press to keep the peasants in line.  One more attack and you may see a major political upheaval in the United States.

December 11, 2015