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DECEMBER 3,  2018

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

I'M SO RELIEVED – FROM SKY NEWS:   The Nigerian president has denied rumours he died following a period of ill health and was replaced by a Sudanese clone.  Muhammadu Buhari addressed the speculation as he met members of the Nigerian community in Poland, where he is attending the UN COP24 climate summit.  "It's the real me, I assure you," he said, answering a question from the audience. "I will soon celebrate my 76th birthday and I will still go strong."  The repeated claims, spread on social media and in YouTube videos, alleged that the Nigerian leader was an impostor named "Jubril".  According to a statement issued by the president's spokesman Garba Shehu, President Buhari said: "A lot of people hoped that I died during my ill health.  "Some even reached out to the vice president to consider them to be his deputy because they assumed I was dead."  The leader branded those behind the rumours "irreligious" and "ignorant", but said later in a tweet that they were "not surprising".  I worried about this every night. 

HE APPARENTLY HEARS THE CALL OF THE PEOPLE – FROM THE WASHINGTON FREE BEACON:   CNN President Jeff Zucker said he is "very interested in politics" and is considering running for office some day in a newly released interview.  Ex-Obama administration official David Axelrod for his podcast "The Axe Files" asked Zucker where he thought he would be in five years at the end of their discussion published on Monday.  "With regard to be where I'll be in five years … I don’t know for sure where I’ll be but here’s the two things I do know: if the Miami Dolphins call, that’s where I’ll be," Zucker said. "And number two, I still harbor somewhere in my gut that I’m still very interested in politics."  "You turned down an opportunity to work for Al Gore in 2000," Axelrod said. "You've talked in the past about potentially running for office."  "So, I’m still interested in that and it’s something I would consider," Zucker said.  It would get him out of CNN, which would be a plus for viewers.

WELCOME, FRIENDS – FROM THE SUN:  A NASA scientist admits that it's entirely possible aliens have already visited Earth – and we simply never noticed.  The space expert also noted that not all UFO sightings can be "explained or denied", and said scientists should be more open-minded about the possibility of alien visitors.  NASA has long been investing in SETI, the "search for extraterrestrial intelligence" – better known as aliens.  And in a recently publisher paper on SETI, Professor Silvano P. Colombano suggested that alien life may have already visited us.  He suggested that aliens could look so different from how we expect, and that they may be able to travel huge distances – because we simply can't comprehend their make-up or technology.  "I simply want to point out the fact that the intelligence we might find and that might choose to find us (if it hasn’t already) might not be at all be produced by carbon based organisms like us," said Professor Colombano, of NASA's Ames Research Centre in California.  I think he's right.  I've long wondered about the origins of some liberal members of Congress.

December 3, 2018       Permalink

FRENCH TOAST – AT 1:55 P.M. ET:  France is in deep trouble.  The government is more unpopular than a mature adult at the Democratic National Convention.   From Reuters: 

France’s prime minister met with opposition leaders on Monday as President Emmanuel Macron sought a way to defuse nationwide protests over high living costs that led to widespread rioting in Paris at the weekend and are hurting the economy.

The “yellow vest” revolt caught Macron unawares when it erupted on Nov. 17 and poses a formidable challenge to the 40-year-old as he tries to counter a plunge in popularity over his economic reforms, which are seen as favoring the wealthy.

Riot police were overrun on Saturday as protesters wrought havoc in Paris’s fanciest neighborhoods, torching dozens of cars, looting boutiques and smashing up luxury private homes and cafes in the worst disturbances the capital has seen since 1968.

The unrest is hitting the economy: hotel reservations are down, retailers are suffering, unsettling investors, and Total said some of its filling stations were running dry.

Tourism and transport stocks fell in an otherwise buoyant market.

Emerging from Prime Minister Edouard Philippe’s office, opposition leader Laurent Wauquiez of the centre-right Les Republicains said the government failed to understand the depth of public anger.

“The only outcome from this meeting was word of a debate in parliament,” Wauquiez told reporters.

“What we need are gestures that appease, and these must be born out of the one decision every Frenchman is waiting for: scrapping (fuel) tax hikes.”

The “yellow vest” movement, whose supporters cut across age, job profile and geographical region, began online as an impromptu rebellion against higher fuel prices but has morphed into a broader outpouring of anger over the squeeze that living costs are putting on middle-class household budgets.

COMMENT:  In truth Western Europe is in decline.  The West Europeans lecture America, but cannot run their own affairs.

Increasingly, this looks like the Asian Century, preventable only if the United States becomes great again, the nation of doers, dreamers and empire builders.  The president is trying.  The opposition party isn't helping.

December 3, 2018       Permalink

WE REALLY NEED THIS – AT 10:52 A.M. ET:  Bernie Sanders takes himself seriously.  That is regrettable.  From AP:

BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — An insurgent underdog no more, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is laying the groundwork to launch a bigger presidential campaign than his first, as advisers predict he would open the 2020 Democratic presidential primary season as a political powerhouse.

A final decision has not been made, but those closest to the 77-year-old self-described democratic socialist suggest that neither age nor interest from a glut of progressive presidential prospects would dissuade him from undertaking a second shot at the presidency. And as Sanders’s brain trust gathered for a retreat in Vermont over the weekend, some spoke openly about a 2020 White House bid as if it was almost a foregone conclusion.

“This time, he starts off as a front-runner, or one of the front-runners,” Sanders’ 2016 campaign manager Jeff Weaver told The Associated Press, highlighting the senator’s proven ability to generate massive fundraising through small-dollar donations and his ready-made network of staff and volunteers.

Weaver added: “It’ll be a much bigger campaign if he runs again, in terms of the size of the operation.”

Amid the enthusiasm — and there was plenty in Burlington as the Sanders Institute convened his celebrity supporters, former campaign staff and progressive policy leaders — there were also signs of cracks in Sanders’s political base. His loyalists are sizing up a prospective 2020 Democratic field likely to feature a collection of ambitious liberal leaders — and not the establishment-minded Hillary Clinton.

Instead, a new generation of outspoken Democrats such as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and California Sen. Kamala Harris are expected to seek the Democratic nomination. All three have embraced Sanders’s call for “Medicare for All” and a $15 minimum wage, among other policy priorities he helped bring into the Democratic mainstream in the Trump era.

COMMENT:  The country doesn't need this aging child running a presidential race.  There's an old saying – we've quoted it here before – that democracies survive until people realize they can raid the nation's treasury.  Sanders embodies that idea.

He might win.  The press is corrupt enough to put him in office, just as it mightily helped a glorified town councilman, Barack Obama, win the presidency.

Sanders is a fool.  He and I went to the University of Chicago at the same time, although I don't recall ever meeting him.  I know his roots.  They're Obama's roots on steroids.  He's a bad piece of work.

December 3,  2018     Permalink

DECEMBER 2,  2018

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

COLLEGE MADNESS – FROM PJ MEDIA:  Many left-leaning students at the University of Washington-Seattle harbor feelings that Republicans and conservatives are "evil," "inhuman," or "not even a person," according to a new study led by a team of UW psychology professors.  The study, "Improving Relations among Conservatives and Liberals on a College Campus," set out to do just that: bring students from opposing sides of the political divide together in an honest attempt to cultivate empathy and understanding.  The results, published November 10 in the Journal of Contextual Behavioural Science, should raise worry for any parent with a conservative kid in college.  "Here at UW, we're a predominantly liberal campus," said Jonathan Kantor, a professor at UW and the study’s lead researcher, on Tuesday.
"But we have a decent number of students who come from small towns or rural places who are feeling politically marginalized and isolated. That's problematic," Kantor told PJ Media by phone when asked what inspired his research.  It's good to see that there are some scholars who agree that bigotry toward conservatives is problematic.  It's a start, with a long way to go.

VIRTUE SIGNALING GONE WILD – FROM FOX:  Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) joined migrants in Tijuana, Mexico, on Saturday and blasted President Trump for creating a "humanitarian crisis" at the border.
Jayapal, first vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, met with migrants who are seeking asylum in the United States. She told Politico on Friday that Trump is "lying about this caravan."  "He’s trying to use people who are seeking asylum and literally running from death just for his own political benefit and that’s a disgrace," she told the outlet.  In a video posted to Jayapal's Twitter page, she stated that there needs to be a way to process asylum-seeking migrants quickly and called the situation "a humanitarian crisis of Donald Trump's making."  She's a far leftist, a socialist from Seattle, where socialism is all the rage.  But you may be sure the mainstream media will take her seriously.

TROUBLES OF THE NFL – FROM BLOOMBERG:   (Bloomberg) -- For the TV industry, this National Football League season has brought good news and bad news.  The good: Ratings for professional football -- the most valuable type of TV programming -- are up 5 percent compared with last year. NFL broadcasts are averaging 15.8 million viewers this season, boosted by record-high scoring and more competitive games.
The problem is, advertisers typically buy commercial time before the season starts and negotiate ad prices based on ratings from the previous year, and last year’s ratings were down 10 percent from 2016-17. As a result, ad revenue for NFL broadcasters like CBS Corp., Comcast Corp.’s NBC, Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN and 21st Century Fox Inc. fell 19 percent in the first two months of the season, according to Standard Media Index.  “The effects of the lower audiences last year are spilling into this season,” said James Fennessy, chief executive officer of the advertising research firm.  If this year’s NFL ratings increase holds through the end of the season, however, it could mean those TV networks will see a bump in advertising revenue next season.   I suspect the real reason for the audience increase is the fading of the "take a knee" controversy of last year.  But the NFL handles crises badly, and the league's image is tarnished.  One more round of bad publicity could be devastating.  Football, in part because of concern over serious industries, has lost a part of its luster.

December 2,  2018     Permalink

AND ABOUT THAT ELECTION – AT 2:08 P.M. ET:   We have been assured by the highest level of the punditry that we've just had a wave election, won by the purest of people.  But, as the late George Gobel used to say, wait a gosh-darned minute.  There is probably no better political analyst writing today than Salena Zito, who accurately predicted the 2016 presidential election, and gives her cool, sane analysis to the one we've just had.  From the Washington Examiner: 

Between the time Barack Obama took the oath of office in 2009 and the time Donald Trump took the oath in 2017, Democrats lost nearly 1,000 congressional, state House, and Senate seats in nearly every nook and cranny in the country. They also lost the majorities in the state legislatures, governors' offices, and statewide elected offices.

Two years into the Trump presidency, Democrats swung nearly 380 — about one-third — of those state House and Senate seats back into their column. They also flipped seven governors' seats their way as well as 40 congressional House seats, additionally regaining several of the statewide elected offices.

What does this tell us? And how will Washington, D.C., interpret these results?

In 2006, when the Democrats took the House and scored wins up and down the ballot, the party seemed to mistakenly read that as a sign that America really liked them.

Four years, billions in bailouts, and an Obamacare later, Republicans erased the Democrats' House wins and demolished the Democrats in governors’ and state legislative seat races. Republicans, in their folly, thought: Well, America must really like us now.

Eight years later, we swung again as Democrats wiped out the House Republicans' majority with fairly moderate candidates who ran on not voting for Nancy Pelosi for speaker of the House again.

And Democrats are tempted to think: Oh look, America likes us again, and we’ll just get right back on that same the path with the same leadership team, which is very good at raising money!

But does the coast-heavy Democratic leadership know anything about the districts outside of their super ZIP codes of the Beltway, California, New York, and Chicago?

COMMENT:  Read the rest of the piece.  It's an object lesson in the practicality of American politics, which is its strength.  Americans demand a return to the equilibrium in politics.  If Democrats, or Republicans, stray too far from the center, the voters push them back.  American politics is not ideological, it's idealistic.  Zito argues that the fringes, like the socialists, may get the headlines, and make the noise, but the great body of voters keep things on an even keel.

I look forward to more from Salena.  She's based in Western Pennsylvania, outside the punditry capitals of the world, so her mind is clear, and adult.

December 2, 2018       Permalink

THE NEW LANGUAGE – AT 12:46 P.M. ET:  Occasionally there are new phrases that enter into politics, and become part of our political vocabulary.  The newest phrase is "ballot harvesting," and it appears to have had a major impact in flipping Republican congressional seats to the Democrats in the recent election.  From Daily Caller:

As the polls closed on election day last month, six California Republican House candidates, including Representatives Dana Rohrabacher, Steve Knight, and Mimi Walters, were ahead in their prospective races. However, as the absentee and provisional ballots rolled in over the intervening weeks, all six lost to their Democratic opponents.

The case of Korean-American GOP candidate Young Kim was another example critics cited. On election night, Kim held an 8,000 vote lead over her Democratic opponent Gil Cisneros, and even attended freshman orientation in Washington, D.C. before watching her lead, and her victory, slowly evaporate over the subsequent weeks.

The results drew the attention of House Speaker Paul Ryan.

“California just defies logic to me,” said Ryan at a Washington Post live event. “We were only down 26 seats the night of the election, and three weeks later, we lost basically every California contested race. This election system they have — I can’t begin to understand what ‘ballot harvesting’ is.”

The stunning turnaround in California, of all states, can be attributed to several factors, as conservative critics like The Federalist’s Bre Payton wrote, but the most significant of those seemed to be the practice of “ballot harvesting.”

Passed as a barely noticed change in the state’s vote by mail procedures in 2016 and signed by then-Governor Jerry Brown, California’s AB 1921 allows voters to give any third party — not just a relative or someone living in the same household, as was previously the law — to collect and turn in anyone else’s completed ballot.

Called “ballot harvesting,” critics say the practice is ripe for fraud. Consider “Lulu,” who was recorded trying to “harvest” what she thought was a Democratic voter’s ballot in Rep. Knight’s district.

It’s a “new service,” said Lulu, for “like, people who are supporting the Democratic party.”

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that 250,000 such ballots were used in Orange County alone, resulting in a Democratic sweep there.

And...

The San Francisco Chronicle quoted Republicans who admitted that Democrats clearly beat them at the new game and that, to compete, they will have to conduct their own “ballot harvesting” efforts.

Before its passage, a group opposed to the bill wrote: “AB 1921 would allow anybody to walk into an elections office and hand over truckloads of vote by mail envelopes with ballots inside, no questions asked, no verified records kept. It amounts to an open invitation to large-scale vote buying, voter coercion, “granny farming," and automated forgery. AB 1921 solves no problem that a simple stamp can’t solve.”

COMMENT:  Please notice that there are few questions asked about this by the mainstream media.  Why would there be?  The correct side, the liberal side, won in every case.  Why ask questions? 

This has the makings of a major scandal.  It is absolutely true that the new system of "ballot harvesting" has the potential for fraud, for even swinging a presidential election. 

Will it be stopped?  In California the Dems control all the political machinery.  The press is on their side.  Who's there to stop it?

December 2,  2018     Permalink