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JANUARY 16,  2018

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

SAD – FROM US NAVAL INSTITUTE:  The commanders of the two guided-missile destroyers that were involved in fatal collisions with merchant ships in 2017 will face military criminal charges that include charges related to dereliction of duty, hazarding a vessel and negligent homicide, after the two incidents that resulted in the death of 17 sailors total, USNI News has learned.  Cmdr. Bryce Benson, former commander of USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62), along with three Fitzgerald junior officers, face a mix charges that include dereliction of duty, hazarding a vessel and negligent homicide related to the June 18 collision between the ship and ACX Crystal that resulted in the death of seven sailors, defense officials confirmed to USNI News.
Cmdr. Jessie L. Sanchez, former commander of USS John S. McCain (DDG-56), faces similar dereliction of duty, hazarding a vessel and negligent homicide charges for the Aug. 21 collision between the guided-missile destroyer and a chemical tanker off the coast of Singapore that resulted in the death of 10 sailors.  The individuals will have the charges preferred via Article 32 preliminary hearings soon, defense officials confirmed to USNI News.  How sad, but the charges indicate how seriously the Navy takes these incidents. 

PRESIDENT'S BRAIN FUNCTIONING, DEMOCRATS SHOCKED! – FROM THE SUN:   CAN you count backwards in sevens, draw a clock that reads 10 past 11 or memorise a list of five words?  These tasks may seem pretty basic but they make up questions in the world's standard cognitive assessment test, which Donald Trump passed with flying colours.  The President scored a perfect 100 per cent on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) - a 30 question task created by medical professionals to test for dementia.
It's designed to assess attention, memory, concentration, orientation, visual skills, calculations and executive functions.  To the able-minded, the test may seem overly simple but they are some of the basic mental processes people with the disorder sadly lose.  Trump's doctor earlier revealed how the president scored a perfect 30 on the test, where anything above 26 is considered "normal" and anything below is a cause for concern.  The test, first used in Montreal, Canada, is now one of the most widely respected methods for assessing cognitive health across the globe and is available in 55 languages.  The Democrats and their friends in the press will still suggest that the president has mental problems.  They're down to that.

MORE BRILLIANCE – FROM METRO:    Oddly, the founder of the church of Satan, Anton Lavey, predicted sex robots more than two decades ago – and today’s Satanists still believe they could save us all. In Lavey’s ‘Five Point Plan’, drawn up in the Eighties, he recommended the use of ‘humanoids’ as an outlet for people’s darker impulses. The Church of Satan’s Magistra Blanche Barton wrote, ‘Scientists and techno-geeks are doing a bang-up job in these departments, developing exceedingly realistic artificial human companions, both of the Real Doll and virtual Facebook-friend variety.’  Yeah, that sounds like Satan.  Please reject any offers.  Real men and real women will prevail!

January 16, 2018       Permalink

NO MORE! – QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 2:12 P.M. ET:  The brilliant Myron Magnet, in City Journal, cuts through the haze and all the yapping on CNN, and defines how Donald Trump, with all his faults, is changing this country for the better.  This is a must-read.  Send it to others:   

Peggy Noonan’s Journal column observes that after Trump there will never again be a “normal” president. Never again, that is, will we elect some apparatchik from the haughty, out-of-touch, overpaid political class that has given us generations of arbitrary rule by the Administrative State’s unelected “experts” too inept to see a financial hurricane brewing; that has allowed the Supreme Court to cram the ethical beliefs of the coastal elites down the throats of a gagging nation—so that nuns have to sue not to hand out birth control, as if freedom of conscience were not the first of our freedoms; that admits immigrants by the carload without a thought of whether they will help or harm America and Americans; that goes to war foolishly believing that toppling dictators will magically turn their tribal subjects into democratic republicans; and that lets the IRS tax as tyrannically as George III. No more!

In the same paper, Shelby Steele points out that the lesson we should draw from the National Football League protestors—whose kneeling at the National Anthem drew much-publicized jeers from Trump and drove fans away from the stadiums—is that the days of black protest are over, because past years of heroic protest succeeded in making black Americans truly free (as Gene Dattel’s Reckoning With Race argued recently). The campus snowflakes’ worries about microaggressions, the Black Lives Matter protests, the armies of deans of diversity are all obsolete. For all their vociferousness, they are lost in a vanished past, and we no longer have to listen to them. The problem now, Steele notes, is that too many blacks feel naked without their victimhood, feel ashamed that most of Chicago’s or Baltimore’s myriad murderers are black, and don’t know what to do with their freedom. Time to man up, make a worthwhile life, and stop whining. No more!

On this site, Andrew Klavan dazzlingly argues that “rude and crude” President Trump, who “speaks like a Queens real estate guy on a construction site,” nevertheless speaks truths that well-mannered people are too cowed by political correctness to admit...

COMMENT:  Read the whole thing and pass it on.  A teacher I know told me that an African-American young man approached her last week and asked, "Why do I have to be a minority?"  Remember that question.  It may turn out to be the question of the decade.

January 16, 2018       Permalink

OUR ENERGY BOOM – AT 11:18 A.M. ET:  Amidst all the other good economic news, America is becoming energy independent.   Our energy industry is booming, although that may well be stopped if the Dems take power.  From Reuters:

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Surging shale production is poised to push U.S. oil output to more than 10 million barrels per day - toppling a record set in 1970 and crossing a threshold few could have imagined even a decade ago.

And this new record, expected within days, likely won’t last long. The U.S. government forecasts that the nation’s production will climb to 11 million barrels a day by late 2019, a level that would rival Russia, the world’s top producer.

The economic and political impacts of soaring U.S. output are breathtaking, cutting the nation’s oil imports by a fifth over a decade, providing high-paying jobs in rural communities and lowering consumer prices for domestic gasoline by 37 percent from a 2008 peak.

Fears of dire energy shortages that gripped the country in the 1970s have been replaced by a presidential policy of global “energy dominance.”

“It has had incredibly positive impacts for the U.S. economy, for the workforce and even our reduced carbon footprint” as shale natural gas has displaced coal at power plants, said John England, head of consultancy Deloitte’s U.S. energy and resources practice.

U.S. energy exports now compete with Middle East oil for buyers in Asia. Daily trading volumes of U.S. oil futures contracts have more doubled in the past decade, averaging more than 1.2 billion barrels per day in 2017, according to exchange operator CME Group.

COMMENT:  Good, good, and good.  And I don't see us choking in polluted air.  Of course, there are those working to kill off the oil industry, and, indeed, we must invest in new forms of energy.  But for now the world runs on oil, and having plenty of it makes us a more powerful, stable nation in every category. 

January 16, 2018       Permalink

STILL HOLDING – AT 10:29 A.M. ET:  We're watching polling trends to see if the president was hurt by last week's alleged comments about foreign nations.  Thus far we're not seeing any real damage, although CNN thinks it's the end of the world.  From Rasmussen: 

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 45% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Fifty-four percent (54%) disapprove.

The latest figures include 29% who Strongly Approve of the way the president is performing and 45% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -16.

COMMENT:  The president is only one point off his 46% high for the week.  Now, it's possible that other polls will pick up different results.  But my sense is that this is a ginned-up story, milked by the anti-Trump press, but of lesser interest in the real world.

The tax cut will become effective for most families in early February.  Polling in the month after that will tell a much bigger story than polling after a presidential remark. 

January 16,  2018     Permalink

JANUARY 15,  2018

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:56 P.M. ET:

TECHNOLOGY'S DOWN SIDE – FROM CBC:  If you want to drive through the small residential streets of Leonia, N.J., you'll have to move there.  Starting Jan. 22, the town will ban all non-residents from driving on 60 of its streets during the morning and evening rush hours.  The new rules aim to crack down on urban-dwellers who take shortcuts through the town while following instructions from navigation apps like Waze, Google Maps or Apple — a phenomenon Mayor Judah Zeigler says is causing gridlock, costing money and putting people in danger.  "What's happening with the adoption of Waze and Google Maps and other navigational apps is these vehicles are ending up on our narrow streets," Zeigler told As It Happens host Carol Off.  "It takes people 15 minutes to get out of their driveway sometimes."  Excellent point.  These apps provide alternative routes when main roads are clogged.  The alternatives are often in quiet neighborhoods.  What's called for is some intelligent negotiation with the tech companies. 

OH, SO THAT'S THE SECRET? – FROM DAILY CALLER:   This Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the NAACP wants man-made global warming to be seen as a civil rights issue, arguing King’s vision of a society free of racial injustice can’t be achieved without addressing warming.  “We see climate change as a civil rights issue,” Jacqueline Patterson, head of the NAACP’s environmental and climate justice program, said in an online radio spot for the Yale Center for Environmental Connection.  Environmental activists have been increasingly framing global warming as a matter of “environmental justice,” since “minority and low-income populations are disproportionately affected by global warming,” Patterson told Yale’s online radio Climate Connections.  Traditionally, such concerns focused on traditional pollutants from factories or vehicles, but the NAACP is expanding it to carbon dioxide, which scientists blame for warming the Earth in recent decades.  The environmental movement has fretted in recent years that it’s not diverse enough, and groups, like 350.org, have tried to draw parallels between global warming and alleged police brutality that sparked riots in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014.  Hmm.  I'd look at this argument with two eyes, three if you have them. 

FINALLY GIVING TRUMP THE CREDIT – FROM TOWNHALL:   CNBC’s economic survey released prior to Christmas showed that for the first time in over a decade a majority was optimistic about the economy, and there was a shift as to who should receive credit for the booming economy: Donald J. Trump. The economic growth for the fourth quarter was near four percent. Over 100 companies gave bonuses of at least $1,000 or more to over a million workers, even some part-timers got a piece of that action. The GOP tax bill, which the Left said was going to be a prelude to Armageddon, was exactly the opposite for the American worker, who the Democratic Party decided to bet against to try and undercut Trump. Over 90% of middle class Americans will be receiving a tax cut. The Democratic Party is going to have to explain that move, especially when this tax bill becomes more popular.  As for the economy, economists said we should expect to see unemployment continue to go down and the economy to grow in 2018. Economists credit two things: President Trump and his tax bill. For Obama, his polices received good grades for providing financial stability, though they led to anemic economic growth and job creation.  In November, all Democrats in the House will be up for re-election, and they all voted against the tax cut.  Great GOP ammo.

January 15,  2018     Permalink

RETURN OF WESTERN CIV? – AT 11:51 A.M. ET:  Under assault on many left-wing campuses, Western Civ is making a comeback on some.  Be thankful for small blessings.  From College Fix:   

Back in the 1980s, Jesse Jackson led 500 Stanford students in a chant of “Hey hey, ho ho, Western Culture’s got to go.” And it’s continued to be mostly downhill for Western Civ at colleges since.

The idea of learning important things from so-called “dead white dudes” has become a siren call for social progressives who argue that the skin color of the author they’re reading matters more than content.

A small but brave group of independent-minded thinkers who recently tried to re-champion Western Civ at Stanford failed in their effort. That’s not unique.

Today’s student protesters — backed by like-minded faculty — clamor for authors who “look like them.” Curriculums, unfortunately, acquiesced to that demand.

Yet at one college, the narrative has flipped — for the better. In November, The College Fix reported on the Bronx-based Hostos Community College, where Western Civ is taught at a school in a low-income neighborhood that enrolls mostly students of color.

And they’re loving it. Now The Wall Street Journal has picked up the story in a powerful piece that paints a picture on just how much:

On her first day of English class at Hostos Community College during the fall 2017 semester, Maria Diaz glared at the reading handout, a Plato excerpt on the trial of Socrates. “I used to be like, ‘Prof, why are we reading this? It’s so boring and confusing,” she recalls. But only months later, Ms. Diaz would gush about the merits of the Western canon, quoting Socrates’s claim that “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

While much of academia continues its progressive and postmodern lurch, these courses at Hostos, first offered in 2016, represent a move in the opposite direction. One of the classes even was designed especially for students who score a “high fail” on their literacy tests. Profs. Andrea Fabrizio and Gregory Marks, along with their colleagues in the English Department, created the courses in collaboration with Columbia University. They borrowed heavily from the Ivy League school’s core curriculum for liberal-arts undergraduates.

COMMENT:  One small step.  I think it will be a long time before this becomes a national trend, as the left has a lock grip on many schools, and is often supported by the party-line press, and identity-politics "leaders."  But the fight is always worth it.

January 15, 2018       Permalink

ANOTHER KING SPEAKS – AT 10:57 A.M. ET:   It is Martin Luther King Day, and the usual suspects will be out denouncing President Trump.  But Dr. King's niece, Alveda King, has a different opinion.  From Breitbart: 

Dr. Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., joined Breitbart News Sunday on the eve of her uncle’s namesake holiday, hitting back at racism accusations against President Donald Trump and levying her own complaints against ultra-liberal Facebook.

“I agree that President Trump is not a racist. He has done so much,” King told host and Breitbart News Washington Political Editor Matthew Boyle.

“Just now … [Trump signed] the bill that was sponsored by Congressman John Lewis making the Martin Luther King Jr. historic site in Atlanta a national park — the first park to be named after an African-American man,” King continued. She defended the president against a rash of new “racism” accusations supposedly stemming from vulgar remarks Democratic staffers are claiming Trump made about third-world countries that send the United States massive numbers of immigrants.

She went on:

"And there’s all other kind of legislation and things that President Trump is passing, including getting a lot of black folks out of jail — he’s working on doing that believe it or not and putting them back to work. And putting America back to work — African-Americans especially because our job rate or our hiring rate was so low and it’s going up along with everybody else’s rate. So President Trump is not a racist. He cares about America period. And he said, 'No matter what color our skin is, we all bleed red.' So he sees black people, all people as people. He sees Americans as the people he is supposed to serve and he’s doing that. And he is not a racist. I just really want to say that."

COMMENT:   Read the whole thing.  President Trump, whether you like him or not, has been a public figure in New York for decades.  If he were a racist, we would have known it long before now. 

The cry of "racism" is itself the new McCarthyism.  It is used to destroy the reputations of political opponents, whether they are racists or not.

January 15,  2018     Permalink

IT'S BRAINWASHING, IT'S BRAINWASHING, THAT'S WHAT IT IS – AT 10:38 A.M. ET:  Stunning poll results show President Trump's popularity rising among blacks, just as the establishment left and establishment black leaders try to pin the label of "racist" on him.  From Breitbart: 

Two new polls show President Donald Trump’s rising support among black voters, highlighting his political gains from pushing employers to hire Americans instead of lower-wage migrants.

The growing support from blacks — despite furious Democratic claims of racism — could become a shocking political validation in November when Trump will face millions of upper-income Democratic voters who are angry at his “Buy American, Hire American” policies.

Among black men, Trump’s “2017 average approval rating significantly exceeds his 2016 vote share,” admitted a January 11 article in the Atlantic by author Ronald Brownstein. “23 percent of black men approved of Trump’s performance versus 11 percent of black women,” said the article.
That score averages out to 17 percent, or twice the 8 percent score he was given in the 2016 exit polls.

In November 2016, Trump got 13 percent support among black men and 4 percent support among black women, according to the exit polls....

...The poll was “a cumulative analysis of 605,172 interviews SurveyMonkey conducted with Americans in 2017,” according to the Atlantic.

COMMENT:    There have also been reports that the president is cutting into Democratic support among Hispanic voters.  If he can make dents in the huge Democratic advantage in black and Hispanic communities, it would severely damage the Democratic Party in national elections.

January 15, 2018       Permalink