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.

JANUARY 15,  2022

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT: 

IT'S GOVERNOR YOUNGKIN – OVERNIGHT – FROM FOX:   Virginia’s newly sworn-in Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed 11 executive actions on his first day in office, including ending the use of Critical Race Theory in schools, investigating officials' alleged wrongdoing in Loudoun County, and allowing parents to decide if their children should wear masks in schools. Youngkin announced the list of executive actions in a news release after being sworn in as the commonwealth’s 74th governor, the first Republican elected since 2009, on Saturday in Richmond.

The governor signed nine executive orders that address the following issues:
• To restore excellence in education by ending the use of divisive concepts, including Critical Race Theory, in public education.
• To empower Virginia parents in their children’s education and upbringing by allowing parents to make decisions on whether their child wears a mask in school.
• To restore integrity and confidence in the Parole Board of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
• To investigate wrongdoing in Loudoun County.
• To make government work for Virginians by creating the Commonwealth Chief Transformation Officer.
• To declare Virginia open for business.
• To combat and prevent human trafficking and provide support to survivors.
• To establish a commission to combat antisemitism.
• To withdraw from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).

Youngkin is on his way, after a remarkable victory in the November election.  If he continues his winning ways, he would be a logical contender for national office.

January 15, 2022       Permalink

OUR SITUATION – OVERNIGHT:  After another catastrophic week, the Biden administration is trying to fight back, but its leader is sinking in the polls, and nothing seems to be working.   Conrad Black sums up the Democratic dilemma in American Greatness: 

The Democrats, along with America and the world, are now stuck with the most incompetent administration in the country’s history. Biden clearly lacks the mental energy required of such a challenging position, and Kamala Harris seems simply to be a moron.

None of their policies attract majority support from the country and their great COVID ally of 2020 is now an albatross around their necks. Inflation is eating the incomes of the middle- and working-classes, the southern U.S. border is open not only to millions of destitute people but to a large number of serious undesirables who are flooding in. China, Russia, Iran, are all exploiting American weakness and the departure from Afghanistan was the greatest military fiasco in U.S. history. 

Consequently, Democratic leaders in Congress have effectively given up getting the grossly unfeasible Build Back Better giveaway through, and are pushing their only reelection hope: the Freedom to Vote and John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Acts. These measures would make it difficult to update voting rolls, would ban highly popular voter ID rules, expand mail-in balloting, restrict efforts to validate signatures, and promote ballot harvesting. When taken with the Democratic effort to admit as many people as possible to the United States and permit them to vote without the irritating bourgeois formality of first becoming citizens, this is a recipe for ensuring that the Democrats and look-alike Republicans never again suffer the embarrassment that they did in 2016 of actually losing an election to a conservative opponent. 

In all of their antics, from the Trump-Russia collusion nonsense through the very questionable election and now the effort to impose a durable theft of an electoral advantage implausibly disguised as protecting African-American voting rights, the Democrats have forced Republicans to denounce the Democrats as the real threat to democracy. 

The national political media, complicit as they are in the Russia hoax and other anti-Trump frauds, have confirmed their embrace of the Democrats, come what may. They are staring down the barrel of a Trump return in 2024, either personally or through a candidate he endorses, in varying states of denial. 

The distinguished Brit Hume, not apparently a Trump-hater, still claims Trump has no legitimate complaint over the 2020 election. (He knows better.) Peggy Noonan, otherwise the most gracious of women, writes viciously about Trump while still giving this wax-works effigy of a president advice on how to be a more effective orator. Andrew McCarthy, an outstanding legal scholar and former prosecutor, and quasi-Trump-hater, took the Russian bunk much too seriously, and is now reduced to acknowledging that Trump had just complaints about the COVID-related voting regulation changes, but that they may have been legal. If they facilitated a materially tainted election result (very likely), McCarthy knows as well as anyone that the Democratic vote-rigging derring-do in the swing states was not legal. 

The Democratic media have been exposed as morally bankrupt in their rabid partisanship and dishonesty. The Democratic-media alliance gambled everything on 2020, but in corrupting democracy in the name of protecting the country from an enemy of democracy, and in inflicting upon America an almost totally incompetent administration, the Democrats and their media allies tied themselves to a sinking ship. 

Donald Trump has many failings but he is no threat to democracy. The elites have failed: the bipartisan political class, cowardly big business leaders, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, professional sports, almost all the political media, and the academy; all have failed miserably. This is now a war to the political death, and the Democrats have had their great feast of Belshazzar, and they will soon learn that they “have been weighed in the balance and have been found wanting” by the people.

COMMENT:  I've never seen a party, in modern times, in so much trouble as the Democratic Party is in today.  It seems to work as hard as possible to lose votes, a skill that was once the specialty of the Republicans.  Some older Republicans from the pre-Reagan era might be jealous and resentful.

There is no "wanting" of Biden out there.  And there is certainly no "wanting" of Harris.  The Dems have no apparent stars.  The most political excitement this week came from the realization that their best bet in 2024 might well be...Hillary Clinton.  Look, she has a lock on the left-wing feminist nostalgia vote. 

Our 2022 midterms are in November.  In a year of failed wokeness, the results will point us to the future of this country.  Be there.   

January 15, 2022       Permalink

JANUARY 14,  2022

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT: 

YEAH, RIGHT – FROM FOX:  After a year of struggles and missteps, Vice President Kamala Harris’s team is planning a reset to get the seeming once heir apparent to President Biden back on track in 2022, according to a report.  Harris was a popular choice for vice president among Democrats before the 2020 election and inspired many as the first woman and Black or Asian person to hold the office, but after a few months in the White House she didn’t seem to be living up to the job’s expectations.  After several high-profile staff departures, Harris has hired a veteran political operator, Jamal Simmons, as her communications director and she is showing a more united front at events with Biden after months of them often being separated, according to the Washington Post. Her aides also hope that returning her to the campaign trail, stumping for Democrats ahead of the 2022 midterms, will remind voters of why she became popular in the first place, the newspaper said, citing several sources speaking anonymously.  Are we serious here?  When was she ever popular?  After months of campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, she dropped out before one ballot was cast because her poll numbers were so poor.  She is sinking because she doesn't do the job, often seems flustered and uninformed, and acts as if she's owed something.  Kind of Hillary 2.0.

January 14, 2022       Permalink

AND IN THE REAL WORLD – OVERNIGHT.  While we watch the train wreck in Washington, other nations are moving forward with grand plans.  And they can soon envelop us.  From Reuters: 

The United States is concerned that Russia is preparing for an invasion of Ukraine soon by fabricating a pretext for war if diplomacy fails to meet its objectives, the White House said on Friday.

Talks between the United States, its European allies and Russia ended in a stalemate this week with no current plans to meet again about Russia's deployment of tens of thousands of troops along Ukraine's border. A cyber attack against Ukraine has further inflamed tensions.

A spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said it was not yet clear who was responsible for the cyber attack but that President Joe Biden had been briefed on it.

"We are in touch with the Ukrainians and have offered our support as Ukraine investigates the impact and nature and recovers from the incidents. We don’t have an attribution at this time," the spokesperson said.

Biden has warned of severe economic consequences for Russia if Russian President Vladimir Putin launches an invasion of Ukraine. Russia denies plans to attack Ukraine and has demanded NATO stop its eastward expansion and agree to legally binding security guarantees, demands that the United States and NATO have rejected.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters the United States is concerned the Russian government "is preparing for an invasion into Ukraine that may result in widespread human rights violations and war crimes should diplomacy fail to meet their objectives."

"As part of its plans, Russia is laying the groundwork to have the option of fabricating a pretext for invasion, including through sabotage activities and information operations, by accusing Ukraine of preparing an imminent attack against Russian forces in eastern Ukraine," Psaki said.

The Russian military "plans to begin these activities several weeks before a military invasion, which could begin between mid-January and mid-February," she said.

Psaki said it is up to Putin to determine the path forward, and that a tough US response awaits should he launch an invasion.

"If they decide they want to engage in diplomatic conversations and talks, we are very open to that and we're hopeful they will do that. But ultimately, it's a choice they need to make," she said.

A US official said the United States has information that indicates Russia has already positioned a group of operatives to conduct "a false-flag operation" in eastern Ukraine.

"The operatives are trained in urban warfare and in using explosives to carry out acts of sabotage against Russia’s own proxy-forces," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official also said that indications are that "Russian influence actors are already starting to fabricate Ukrainian provocations in state and social media to justify a Russian intervention and sow divisions in Ukraine."

Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said if history was a guide, it would be difficult to see these kind of activities without the knowledge of senior Russian leaders.

Asked whether the US military would continue to support Ukrainian forces with security assistance in the event of a Russian invasion, Kirby said: "We have and we will continue to provide security assistance to Ukraine to help them better defend themselves."

COMMENT:  Bottom line – Putin is looking at a hopelessly weak American administration, and weakness always makes war more likely. 

We're watching this closely, as we are any moves by China toward Taiwan.  We're not in a good place.  The governing party in Washington today has shown little interest in defending American interests.

January 14, 2022       Permalink