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.

Our Angel's Corner archive is here.

NOVEMBER 12,  2016

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:52 P.M. ET:

WHY, OF COURSE – FROM FOX:  Hillary Clinton has offered a couple of private but candid explanations about why she lost her White House bid, telling high-dollar fundraisers Saturday that FBI announcements about a second probe into her emails from her time as secretary of state were too damaging.  Clinton said, "Our analysis is that Comey’s letter raised doubts that were groundless and baseless..." and "stopped our momentum," a DNC fundraising source who was on the call told Fox News.  Clinton made the remark on a roughly 30-minute conference call with Democrats who raised more than $100,000, according to Politico.   Again, the famous Hillary Clinton tin ear.  Why doesn't she just remain silent and lose gracefully?  The old "it's someone else's fault" line doesn't play.  And blaming law enforcement, a left-Democratic tradition, is unbecoming.  The FBI didn't set up that server, or run a foundation that took millions from foreign dictatorships.

COMBAT CORRESPONDENT – FROM AP:  PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof fought with and restrained an intruder he found in his Philadelphia hotel room.  Kristof said in a message on Twitter that there had been "big excitement" when he "interrupted an intruder" in his room early Saturday at the Franklin Hotel near Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell.  He said there was a chase and then a fight but restrained the man, who he said was apparently a thief. Kristof said in another message that he had a wrenched thumb from the fight but was "otherwise OK." He said "fortunately, he was a wimpish thief."  Kristof is a true-believing New York Times leftist.  He'll probably be deluged with complaints that he didn't express "understanding" of the thief's pain, whereupon he'll return to Philadelphia, apologize to the thief, and urge the judge to give the thief a four-year education.  It's the least we can do.

EVEN AT MY ALMA MATER – FROM COLLEGE FIX:   Early Wednesday morning approximately 300 University of Chicago students gathered at the Quad to engage in a collective “primal scream” and light aflame Donald Trump campaign paraphernalia.  “Around midnight several students lit a Trump banner on fire at the cheers and encouragement of the crowd..,” The Chicago Maroon reports. “On the fringes a student played a mournful national anthem on his trumpet.” Student Andrew Xue said the scream “was the greatest display of collective effervescence [he’d] ever seen.”  I'm glad it was only 300 students.  The university has thousands.  Maybe the others are a bit more mature.

November 12,  2016     Permalink

TRUMP AND REAGAN – AT 1:24 P.M. ET:   Nobody is comparing the style of Donald Trump to the optimistic, airy style of Ronald Reagan.  But, statistically, Trump may have gone far to rebuild the Reagan majority.  From IBD:

Election 2016: Did Donald Trump reconstitute the old coalition that handed President Ronald Reagan two terms in office? Looking at the data, it sure looks that way.

Yes, Trump won the election, but also did something else no one predicted: His election had coattails. Amid near-unanimous predictions that Republicans would at least lose the Senate and possibly the House, both remain in Republican control and losses were far fewer than expected.

Looking at the numbers from the final IBD/TIPP Presidential Tracking Poll and from exit polls taken right after the election, just as Reagan, Trump won substantial majorities among white voters, male voters, married voters, those with less than a college education, self-described Christian voters. But he also exceeded expectations among minorities and union members.

"These are, historically, the 'Reagan Democrats,' who gave Ronald Reagan a similarly stunning election result in 1980, and a massive landslide re-election in 1984," noted former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton.

He's right. Trump proved he had crossover appeal. According to exit polls posted by CNN, Trump won 9% of the Democratic vote, while Hillary Clinton won just 7% of Republicans — even though pundits were predicting a mass exodus of GOP "never Trump" voters to Hillary. It didn't happen.

COMMENT:  Read the whole thing and save the column.  We really did see a political earthquake on Tuesday night. 

November 12, 2016       Permalink

THE NUTCASE PARTY – AT 11:36 A.M. ET:  The Democrats are doing it again.  They lost the 1968 election to Richard Nixon in part because many Dems stayed home, rejecting their own presidential nominee, Hubert Humphrey, as not ideologically pure enough.

Do you think they learned?  Of course not.  They were Democrats.  Why learn when you can feel?  And after 1968 they doubled down, went even further left, and nominated George McGovern in 1972, in a convention hall filled with the aroma of marijuana.   McGovern lost 49 states.  President Richard Nixon received 520 electoral votes to McGovern's 17.

Still not satisfied, the Dems nominated the pathetic minor leaguer Jimmy Carter in 1976.  Now, Carter squeezed by Gerald Ford, who'd become president following Nixon's resignation.  A narrow win.

Carter went on to be demolished by Ronald Reagan in 1980.  Reagan got 489 electoral votes.  Carter got 49.

Not content with that defeat, the Dems doubled down again, nominating Carter's vice president, Walter Mondale, in 1984.  Reagan got 525 electoral votes.  Mondale got 13, nostalgically putting him in McGovern territory.

Moving right along, the Dems learned nothing and nominated Michael Dukakis in 1988 to face Vice President George H.W. Bush.  Bush carried 40 states, Dukakis 10, plus the ever-reliable People's Republic of the District of Columbia.

It wasn't until 1992 that the Dems got Bill Clinton, Slick Willie.  No ornament to morality, Clinton, though, understood that bad candidates and leftist, ideological politics don't win elections.

So now it's 2016.  The Dems just got beaten badly, losing Midwest states they traditionally carry.   And their response?  Double down again, go further left.  The first official act of the post-election Democratic Party is to choose a new national chairman.  Will they pick a competent professional, a sane operator who knows the country?  Are you kidding?  The favorite, the man around whom the delusional left is massing, is...Keith Ellison.

Who is Keith Ellison?  He's the nation's first Muslim congressman, a guy from Minnesota so far left that he makes Barack Obama look like Ronald Reagan.  Of course, Bernie Sanders yearns for him.  Others yearn.  Who cares if he's had past ties with Louis Farrakhan?   From Scott Johnson at Powerline: 

From the time of Ellison’s first published article in the University of Minnesota Daily in 1989 under the name Keith Hakim through the time he first ran for public office ten years later under the name Keith Ellison-Muhammad, unsuccessfully seeking the Democratic endorsement for a state legislative seat, Ellison was a self-avowed advocate of the Nation of Islam. Ellison’s self-identification as a member and leader of the Nation of Islam remained one of the deep secrets of his 2006 campaign. 

COMMENT:  Read Scott's whole piece.  It's a masterpiece of fine reporting.  Then think of Ellison as the chairman of a national party.  The party of Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy is becoming a joke.

November 12, 2016       Permalink

THE TRUTH – AT 11:21 A.M. ET:  I don't think I've ever quoted Michael Moore, the filmmaker, at Urgent Agenda.  But in recent months he's actually become very helpful in understanding the millions of working-class people who voted for Donald Trump.  As Moore points out, they're not "racists."  Many of them voted for Barack Obama.  From Daily Caller: 

Michael Moore disputed the notion that all the people who voted for President-elect Donald Trump are racist Friday, reiterating the fact that millions of them voted for President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.

“They’re not racist,” Moore said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “They twice voted for a man whose middle name is Hussein. That’s the America you live in.”

Moore was pushing back against another panelist who said “deep racial animus” at the heart of the country was behind Trump’s win. “What I’m trying to get at, is at the heart of this country is some deep racial animus that animates the very communities we’re trying to lift up,” Eddie Glaude Jr., chair of the African American department at Princeton University told the panel.

“Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough replied: “I have to repeat it again because it’s maddening. People who live by data should die by data, and the data according to Nate Cohn of the New York Times says this, and let those who have ears to hear, hear: The very people who helped elect Barack Obama president of the United States twice just elected in Wisconsin, in Michigan, in Ohio and Pennsylvania, Donald J. Trump. It’s the data.”

COMMENT:  The hypocrisy of the left is overwhelming.  They claim to be interested in the "people," but they actually despise the "people."  Indeed, they call them the "flyover people," not the kind they would talk to or have to dinner.

The left is made up of people, many affluent, who believe the iPhone is made possible by Apple Computer.  No, the device is supplied by Apple Computer.  The iPhone runs on signals provided by the Communications Workers of America.  Many on the left have never met a member, nor would they want to.  Why would one talk to anyone who hasn't majored in art history?

November 12,  2016     Permalink

NOVEMBER 11,  2016

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

THE NIGHTMARE CONTINUES – FROM FOX:  Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton reportedly is being mooted as a future congressional candidate.  The New York Post reported that Clinton, 36, is being eyed to take Rep. Nita Lowey's place when the 79-year-old incumbent decides to leave the House of Representatives.  Lowey represents New York's 17th District, which covers part of Westchester County, including Bill and Hillary Clinton's hometown of Chappaqua. The Post reported that the Clintons have purchased the home next door to theirs, in which they plan to install Chelsea, her husband and their two children.  Chelsea Clinton currently lives, and is registered to vote, in Manhattan. She introduced Hillary Clinton when her mother accepted the Democratic nomination for president at this summer's national convention in Philadelphia.   That's MY Congressional district, and there goes the neighborhood.

WHAA..? – FROM NBC NEWS:  In the wake of Hillary Clinton's stunning loss this week, progressives are moving quickly to fill the power vacuum left in the Democratic Party and eyeing a takeover of the Democratic National Committee, with Rep. Keith Ellison gaining momentum as the left's apparent candidate of choice to lead it.  The next chair of the DNC will play a key leadership role as the party builds itself back from defeat, and their election early next year will be a key test in the struggle for control of the party between the so-called establishment and a more populist wing that largely backed Bernie Sanders in the primary.  This is complete madness.  Rather than learn from Tuesday's stunning defeat, the Dems are doubling down on a radical agenda.  Ellison is a leftist Muslim congressman, anti-Israel, who will drive the party off the cliff.  He is Bernie Sanders's candidate for party chairman.  It is important for centrist Democrats to counter this craziness, but they may no longer have the strength. 

DEEPLY DISTURBING – FROM THE NEW YORK POST – The shock and anger over Donald Trump’s ascension to the White House has triggered a flood of calls on Twitter and other social media outlets for the president-elect to be assassinated — and authorities will investigate all threats deemed to be credible, The Post has learned.  Trump met Thursday with President Obama in the Oval Office, with the Republican businessman calling the hour-plus session a “great honor.” Obama said they had an “excellent” and “wide-ranging” conversation, while urging all people to “now come together.”  But that message of inclusion was apparently lost in social media circles, particularly Twitter, where a simple search can reveal dozens and dozens of calls to gun down the next leader of the free world. Some posts called for both Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence to be assassinated, and there’s even an #AssassinateTrump hashtag.  I would take this development very seriously.  The mainstream media likes to emphasize extremists on the right, but there are many, many extremists on the left.  I am worried about the safety of President-elect Trump, his family, and his associates.

November 11, 2016       Permalink

THE RIGHT THING TO DO – WITH STYLE – AT 10:20 A.M. ET:   The style of the president often tells us much about him.  From the New York Post: 

President-elect Donald Trump called slain NYPD Sgt. Paul Tuozzolo’s widow Thursday morning and personally extended his “condolences” to her on the day that thousands of police officers paid tribute to the fallen Finest at his funeral.

“I’m very sorry I cannot be there with you today. My thoughts and prayers are with you and your family during this difficult time,” Trump told the grieving woman, according to a source.

“I want to express my condolences from me and my family.”

Tuozzolo, a married father of two, was shot and killed last week by 35-year-old ex-con Manuel Rosales. Tuozzolo had been responding to a report of a break-in.

A line of officers extended for nearly a mile as a hearse carrying his flag-draped casket made its way to St. Charles & Resurrection Cemetery in East Farmingdale for his interment.

Friends and family described the 19-year veteran as a “family man” and “protector” who was willing to do anything he could to save lives.

COMMENT:  This is happening more and more.  The murder of police officers is up dramatically.  I have to believe it's caused in part by the not-very-subtle war on cops waged by the political left.  I think Trump will stop that war.

November 11, 2016       Permalink

THE RESPONSE – AT 9:51 A.M. ET:  I have no problem with legitimate dissent.  But some of the clowns engaged in "protest" marches around the country are, as usual, carrying it too far.  Don't they realize that this is exactly the kind of behavior that helped bring Trump to office?  From KATU, Portland:   

PORTLAND, Ore. — A once-peaceful protest in Portland turned violent Thursday evening as anarchists burned flags, broke store windows and damaged cars.

Officers arrested at least 26 people, according to Portland Police. No law enforcement officers were hurt in what officials labeled as a riot.

The third day of the protests against President-elect Donald Trump started around 5 p.m. at Pioneer Courthouse Square. About 4,000 people marched over the Hawthorne Bridge, through the Lloyd Center. At that point, the protest appeared to break apart when some people began using bats to bash in cars at a Honda dealership.

The largely peaceful protest continued west over the Broadway Bridge at around 9 p.m. and into the Pearl District with dozens of people who are describing themselves as anarchists and radicals. They broke windows of several businesses and restaurants, and bashed in a transformer in an effort to cut electricity.

Police in riot gear responded to the North Park Blocks area, where an apparent showdown occurred between rioters and officers. Portland Police officials went on a loudspeaker and told the peaceful members of the group to disperse or head back to Pioneer Square.

COMMENT:  Expect more of this.  I wouldn't be shocked if some of these self-righteous babies try to disrupt Inauguration Day. 

November 11, 2016       Permalink

WHAT COMES NEXT? – QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 9:15 A.M. ET:   That is the big question, and everyone is asking.  Charles Krauthammer has an overall prescription for Trump success, and it makes sense.  From the New York Daily News:   

During the campaign, Trump’s populism often clashed with traditional Reaganism. The key to GOP success is to try to achieve an accommodation, if not a fusion. Two agendas: one ideological, one socioeconomic. They both need to be addressed. Onto the Reaganite core of smaller government and strict constitutionalism must be added a serious concern for the grievances of the constituency that animated the Trump insurgency, the long-suffering, long-neglected working class.

If Reaganite conservatives want to head off wrongheaded solutions — such as massive tariffs, mercantilist economics and trade wars — they must be prepared to accept such measures as federal wage subsidies and targeted restraints on trade. This involves giving up a measure of economic efficiency. But the purpose is to achieve a measure of social peace and restore dignity and security to a stressed and sliding working class. Some might even call it compassionate conservatism.

The key to success for a Trump presidency is for the Reaganite and populist elements in the party to be willing to advance each other’s goals even at the cost of ideological purity. This will require far-reaching negotiations between a Trump White House and a GOP Congress. The Republicans have gained control of all the political branches. They have the means to deliver. They now have to show that they can.

COMMENT:  Very well said.  You gotta know how to do stuff, not just want stuff.  Ideological purity is a curse, and it has destroyed many movements.  Ronald Reagan once said that if he got 80% in a negotiation, he'd succeeded.  He knew he had to compromise.

We'll be watching Trump's appointments to see if he selects men and women who can do stuff.  Obama has been comfortable with true believers, and you see what's happened.

November 11,  2016     Permalink