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.

JUNE 30,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

SHOCKED, SHOCKED – FROM THE HILL:    The U.S. media is the least trustworthy in the world, according to a comprehensive new Reuters Institute survey encompassing 46 countries.  Yes, you read that right. The country with among the most resources in this arena – human, technical and otherwise – finished dead last. Finland ranked the highest, with a 65 percent trust rating. In Kenya, the trust rating clocked in at 61 percent.   But here in the U.S.A., the home of global media giants including the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN, we’re trusted by a whopping 29 percent of those reading and watching.  Is anyone really surprised? Because in looking at polls over the past few years (even pre-Donald Trump) we’ve been trending in this dubious direction for some time.    For example, one Axios/Survey Monkey poll in 2019 found that nearly 8-in-10 independent voters said they believed that news organizations report news “they know to be fake, false or purposely misleading.” Ninety-two percent of Republicans felt the same way, as did even a majority of Democrats.   Which means readers and viewers believe that the "mistakes" we so often see, particularly in the political media that dominates the national landscape, are not happening because of human error, which is a convenient excuse offered up from left-leaning "journalists" when "bombshell" reports end up being false, fake or purposely misleading.   In my view, the credibility of the press has been trending downward since the Vietnam War.  I don't think some of the worst institutions, like CNN, can be repaired.  We need new, well-financed news organizations to take their place and restore the traditional idea of a newspaper or TV news outlet – to report the news without fear or favor.

THE POLITICAL VET GETS IT RIGHT – FROM FOX:    House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., said Democrats' use of slogans like "defund the police" is "cutting the throats of the party" in an interview with The New York Times.  Clyburn was responding to a question about his decision to endorse Cuyahoga County Councilwoman Shontel Brown, a moderate Democrat, for Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Marcia Fudge's former Ohio congressional seat over Nina Turner, the progressive frontrunner of the race, who co-chaired Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential run.  "What I try to do is demonstrate by precept and example how we are to proceed as a party," Clyburn told the Times. "When I spoke out against sloganeering, like ‘burn, baby, burn’ in the 1960s and ‘defund the police,' which I think is cutting the throats of the party, I know exactly where my constituents are. They are against that, and I’m against that.  The House majority whip, who has repeatedly voiced concerns against calls to reduce police funding, made similar comments in November when he told Axios that Democrats struggled in the 2020 elections "because we were not able to discipline ourselves according to voter sentiment."  Words of experience, but will the woke crowd listen?

June 30, 2021       Permalink

ANOTHER REASON TO START EMPHASIZING FOREIGN POLICY – OVERNIGHT:  We should be focusing on China, and on the continuing threat from Iran.  But as the World War II generation fades into history, America seems increasingly less interested in the fact that an incident in Asia can result in the drafting of a boy in Des Moines.  From Fox: 

In what experts say may signal plans to significantly expand its nuclear capabilities, China has begun constructing more than 100 new missile silos in a desert area in the western part of the country, according to a report.

Work at 119 sites was clearly visible and resembled existing missile-launch facilities, according to satellite images obtained by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

The sites were not the only areas in China where launch facilities were under construction, one nuclear watcher told the newspaper.

"If the silos under construction at other sites across China are added to the count, the total comes to about 145 silos under construction," said Jeffery Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, according to the Post.

"We believe China is expanding its nuclear forces in part to maintain a deterrent that can survive a U.S. first strike in sufficient numbers to defeat U.S. missile defenses," he added.

The work in China signals possible intentions to upgrade the country’s nuclear arsenal from the existing 250 to 350 weapons – a more modest total when compared to the U.S. and Russia, the Post reported.

The U.S. is believed to have a total of more than 5,500 nuclear warheads, including around 1,700 that have been retired and are awaiting dismantlement, according to the website of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

COMMENT:  There will be attempts by the usual suspects to downplay this news, citing the nuclear arsenals of the United States and its allies.  However, it doesn't take that many nuclear warheads to create a hell on Earth, and Chinese nuclear weapons are intended in part to scare and intimidate other nations in Asia.  They are also intended to be used against the U.S. Navy in the Pacific.  With China once again threatening the independence of Taiwan, that Chinese capability cannot be ignored or trivialized.

June 30, 2021       Permalink

JUNE 29,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT: 

ANOTHER GREAT BRAIN ELEVATES US – CHOKE – FROM THE NEW YORK POST:    A Boston University professor is facing calls for his termination after he suggested President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett is a “white colonizer” who uses her two adopted Haitian children as “props.”  Ibram X. Kendi, author of the New York Times bestseller “How to Be an Antiracist,” made the comments on Twitter Saturday.  “Some White colonizers ‘adopted’ Black children,” he wrote. “They ‘civilized’ these ‘savage’ children in the ‘superior’ ways of White people, while using them as props in their lifelong pictures of denial, while cutting the biological parents of these children out of the picture of humanity.”  Kendi was responding to a since-deleted tweet showing a woman who has since been identified as Barrett’s sister, Carrie — not Barrett herself — holding two children, according to the Daily Mail.  One of the great racial racketeers of our time.  A racial divider whose theories only do harm, as he racks up a fortune.

AND THERE'S MORE TO THE DRY ROT – FROM BIZPACREVIEW.COM:   A U.S. district judge nominated by former President Barack Obama has dismissed a case against a shooting suspect from the Bronx in New York City over a lack of “diversity” in the jury.  In her ruling, Judge Analisa Torres agreed with William Scott, the defendant, after he argued that there were not enough black and Hispanic people in the jury pool after an indictment was returned against him a year ago this month.  Charged in the White Plains division of the Southern District of New York, Scott was allegedly in possession of ammunition linked to a shooting in the Bronx, the New York Post reported.  Scott argued through his attorney that since he was charged in the White Plains district and not the more diverse Manhattan district, potential jurors from southern counties were excluded by prosecutors, thus prejudicing the outcome.  “Defendant has produced clear statistical evidence of underrepresentation of Black and Latinx individuals in the pool from which his grand jury was drawn, and a jury selection process that was susceptible to abuse,” the judge wrote.  So, I guess if I'm charged with a crime I can demand a certain number of conservative writers and jokesters on the jury.  Sounds about right to me. 

June 29, 2021       Permalink

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, IT'S A WRECK OF A TOWN – OVERNIGHT:  The New York mayoralty election is already a mess.   New York is a place where the Board of Elections can't count from one to ten.  The pseudo-intellects here imposed on the voters a new system called "ranked choice," which, according to the self-same pseudos, makes election results more reflective of what voters really meant when they cast their ballots.  Accurate numbers?  Who needs accurate numbers?  It's the feelings that count.   From Fox: 

The New York City Board of Elections on Tuesday faced swift backlash over an error that resulted in 135,000 pre-election test votes being counted because they were not properly purged from the system.

The BOE took to Twitter to announce the issue and said these test votes were not cleared from the Election Management System. The board apologized and said it took "immediate measures to ensure the most accurate up to date results are reported."

Yeah, right.  Accurate.

Karol Markowicz, a columnist for the New York Post, tweeted, "Can’t be overstated how damaging this kind of thing is to public trust in elections."

The New York Times pointed out that the city used ranked-choice voting, which allows voters to list their top five candidates in order. Since no candidate was the first choice of more than 50% of voters, a computer on Tuesday tabulated ballots in a series of rounds that worked like instant run-offs.

In each round, the candidate in last place was eliminated. Votes cast for that person were then redistributed to the surviving candidates, based on whoever voters put next on their ranking list. That process repeated until only two candidates were left.

That data had indicated that Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, a former police captain who would be the city’s second Black mayor, had lost much of his lead and was ahead of former sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia by fewer than 16,000 votes. Besides Adams and Garcia, civil rights lawyer Maya Wiley was also still within striking distance of victory.

The New York Post reported that it was Adams who first spotted a 100,000-vote discrepancy on Tuesday.

"The vote total just released by the Board of Elections is 100,000-plus more than the total announced on election night, raising serious questions," an Adams spokesman said. "We have asked the Board of Elections to explain such a massive increase and other irregularities before we comment on the ranked-choice voting projection."

The final result is not expected until mid-July.

COMMENT:  Already the people are losing faith in the new system.  And there are thousands of absentee ballots that haven't even been counted. 

And New York is the premier city in the United States.  Give me any small town.

When the geniuses announce the "results" in July, look for possible rioting to follow.  Someone, after all, will be upset.  And that requires a riot.

June 29,  2021     Permalink