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.

I appeared on Silvio Canto Jr's talk show from Dallas last night.  It's here.

JULY 24,  2017

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 10:18 P.M. ET: 

MSNBC RISES – FROM NBC:  NEW YORK (July 24, 2017) – For the first time in the network’s 21-year history, MSNBC finished the week as the most-watched cable network during weekday prime (M-F 8-11pm) in total viewers. According to Nielsen, MSNBC ended the week of July 17-21 as the #1 cable network for all weekday prime, averaging 2.34 million viewers, ahead of FOX News at 2.25 million. MSNBC was previously #1 in cable news in weekday prime during the weeks of May 15, 2017 (behind TNT) and September 3, 2012 (behind USA) among total viewers, but this was the 1st time MSNBC was #1 among all of cable.  Additionally, MSNBC’s 7pm through midnight lineup was the #1 cable network in total viewers.  Can't deny they're doing well, but I wouldn't despair just yet.  Their "victory" over Fox was narrow, and Fox has had a particularly bad year, with constant personnel problems.  MSNBC is now the go-to network for the left, and is probably grabbing viewers from CNN, which is going through an identity crisis.  I don't see MSNBC having the clout that Fox still has.

I'M NOT SO SURE THIS IS PROGRESS – FROM FOX:    A Wisconsin tech company says they are about to become the first business in the U.S. to offer microchip implants to its employees.  Three Square Market (32M), a River Falls-based software design company, says starting August 1st, it will be offering microchips to all their employees. The chips will be implanted underneath the skin between the thumb and forefinger, which will allow employees to pay for food and drinks in the company’s break room, open security doors, and login into their computers without any special cards—or passwords.  And what do you do if someone steals your password, run to the emergency room and demand a chip-o-dectomy?

THE NEW DEMOCRATS? – FROM REALCLEARPOLITICS.COM:  Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) ripped President Trump for his immigration policy in a sermon at Chicago's Lincoln United Methodist Church on Saturday. The Democratic Congressman said Trump is the "major criminal" and he will "eliminate" him as president when the Democrats win a majority in the House.  The Lincoln United Methodist Church is a sanctuary church and according to Gutierrez's website, he "spoke to a packed house about the need to defend DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and other forms of legal immigration status that are under attack from Republicans and Donald Trump."  Gutierrez said that while Trump is attempting to criminalize immigrants, the president is the "real criminal." The Congressman said illegal immigrants are not criminals and that history will determine who the true criminals are.  If an immigrant is illegal, how can he or she not be a criminal?  I'm afraid this is the new Democratic Party, and it will drown out any voices of reason.

July 24,  2017     Permalink

SOME PROGRESS – AT 11:51 A.M. ET:   Occasionally the good guys get going.  And bad guys get hammered.  It may take some time, but it's gratifying when it happens.  From College Fix: 

Yvette Felarca may be the highest profile militant leftist activist in America based on her leading role in black-bloc riots, including those that forced the cancellation of Milo Yiannopoulos’s UC-Berkeley event last year.

Now the Berkeley Unified School District teacher and By All Means Necessary leader has finally been arrested, more than a year after she was captured on video beating up a “white nationalist” at a rally in Sacramento.

The Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office announced last week Felarca was arrested in southern California “on charges of Assault by Means of Force Likely to Inflict Great Bodily Injury, Participating in a Riot, and inciting a riot. We have no further information as to Felarca’s court date at this time.”

The office noted the Traditional Worker’s Party had legal permits for the June 26, 2016 protest, but Felarca and her comrades did not: “In the hours that followed, violent clashes occurred between the two groups resulting in a number of assaults and several stabbings.”

COMMENT:  We have reason to fear that, as the new academic year starts, and the runups to the 2018 midterms begin, there will be more violence and more provocations.  Only firm action and the certainty of punishment will keep the peace.  That is a lesson we have to learn over and over.   Some never learn it at all.  They're called liberals.  Or professors.

July 23, 2017       Permalink

FASCINATING – AT 11:29 A.M. ET:  One of the great political games is to try to determine how popular a president is at any given time, and how that popularity translates into achievements...or failures. 

The pollsters, love 'em or not, are critical to these analyses.  Gallup has an interesting take on Trump, state by state.  From The Hill:   

President Trump has averaged a job approval rating of 50 percent or higher in 17 states since taking office earlier this year, according to a Gallup survey.

Trump has recorded a job approval rating of below 40 percent in the same number of states, however, according to the poll.

The president has had some of his highest approval ratings in the Southern, Plains and Mountain West states. His highest marks came in West Virginia, North Dakota and South Dakota, where his approval ratings were near 60 percent.

Trump received some of his lowest job approval ratings in states in the Northeast and along the West Coast. Those states include Vermont, Massachusetts, Maryland and California, where Trump received job approval ratings of 30 percent or less.

The results are based on Gallup tracking polls from Jan. 20 to June 30 that included interviews with more than 81,000 adults.

COMMENT:  Not shocking and not particularly disturbing.  Even though Trump won the election, his approval on election day, on average, was in the forties.   He always underpolls.  The actual result is better than his poll numbers.  I think some of his potential opponents realize that.  Even reporters might realize it.

Barack Obama spent a good part of his presidency in the low forties.  It was only toward the end that he began to rise again, possibly the result of some racial good will in the population.  But his policies were never particularly popular, nor did the public seem to have great confidence in him.  There was a hollowness about the Obama presidency, a feeling that nobody was home. 

One of Ronald Reagan's major strengths was the belief of most Americans that he would do the right thing for his country.  There was that gut confidence.  That's golden in politics.  It cannot be replaced, and often cannot be explained.  Call it spiritual if you wish.  It is one of the reasons Reagan is so revered by so many. 

Trump has not yet achieved that confidence.  It will come if he can produce solid achievements, can stay out of his own way, and enhance the connection with the American people that led to his November victory.  He is a work in progress, or a work in deterioration, depending on how you see it.

July 23, 2017       Permalink 

JARED SPEAKS – AT 10:08 A.M. ET:  Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, will testify before Congress today on his contacts with Russia.  I doubt if most Americans care at this point, as months of "reporting" have discovered nothing particularly unusual about those contacts.  But the Democrats care passionately, as conspiracy theories have replaced policy in their ranks.  From NBC News:

President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner on Monday released a statement detailing four contacts with Russians during the election and transition, hours before he was due to be interviewed by staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government,” he said in the statement. “I had no improper contacts.”

The Intelligence Committee is investigating Russia's alleged attempted interference in the 2016 presidential election. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the covert operation was intended to damage Hillary Clinton's campaign and evolved into an attempt to help Trump win.

If that was their intent, they didn't get much for the effort.  Trump is tougher on the Russians than Obama ever was.

Kushner arrived at Capitol Hill for his interviews around 9:40 a.m., and did not respond to questions being shouted by reporters.

He is expected to be questioned about his relationships with Russian officials, including his participation in a meeting last year with a Kremlin-linked lawyer.

“I have not relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector,” he said in Monday’s statement. “I have tried to be fully transparent with regard to the filing of my SF-86 form [for White House security clearance] above and beyond what is required. Hopefully, this puts these matters to rest.”

He also said that a June 2016 meeting that included Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya was such a “waste of time” that he asked his assistant to call him out of the gathering.

COMMENT:  The White House has begun actively to fight back against the rumors and accusations.  The president can expect no help from the press or even his own wayward party.  But don't underestimate the resilience of the family.

July 24, 2017      Permalink

JULY 23,  2017

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:54 P.M. ET: 

QUEEN MAXINE SPEAKS – FROM GATEWAY PUNDIT:   In her speech to the Strafford County Democratic Committee’s annual picnic goers, California Congresswoman Maxine Waters unleashed on President Trump. “This man is deplorable, dishonest, a liar, a bully and I want him impeached,” Waters told New Hampshire Democrats. Crystal Paradis, a self-proclaimed writer, “intersectional feminist,” tweeted notable lines from Maxine Waters’ speech. “Mr. President we are organizing. And we are organizing to bring you down. And bring your agenda down,” threatened Maxine Waters.  Intersectional feminists make the best reporters.

A LEGITIMATE FRENCH PROTEST – FROM THE NEW YORK POST:   The French are furious over a new historical movie that, they say, diminishes their country’s role in a World War II evacuation.  “Dunkirk,” the Christopher Nolan-directed film that hit theaters last week, shows a “scathing rudeness [and] deplorable indifference” toward France for its role in the Dunkirk evacuation of 1940, said a blistering review in the French newspaper Le Monde.  “Where in the film are the 120,000 French soldiers who were also evacuated from Dunkirk?” critic Jacques Mandelbaum wrote. “Where are the 40,000 who sacrificed themselves to defend the city against a superior enemy in weaponry and numbers?”   I have not seen the film, but I suspect the protest is accurate.  France can be exasperating, and some of its leaders have exhibited a certain rudeness.  But the fact is that France suffered horribly in World War II, and many Frenchmen fought courageously, either as soldiers or as members of the resistance.  Total French deaths were 600,000.   France has not been shown proper respect for its sacrifice.

ARMED AND READY – FROM AFP:  Her hands slowed by rheumatoid arthritis, 71-year-old Marietta Crowder stands in front of her paper target, steadies her gun and pulls the trigger. Shots are fired in quick succession.  Crowder is perhaps not the typical patron of a gun club.  But she is one of seven women learning to safely handle firearms at a shooting range in a suburb of Chicago, a city wracked by gun violence and a soaring murder rate.  Important story.  Women and African Americans are among the main driving forces of gun sales in the United States.  I don't think the leftists in the feminist movement would approve, but women are taking matters, and guns, into their own hands.  Lock and load!

July 23, 2017       Permalink

ECONOMIC PROGRESS – AT 2:35 P.M. ET:   Trump bashing is the national political sport, and sometimes the bash is deserved.  But the president has actually achieved much in his first six months in office, even though much of the press refuses to acknowledge it.  From Stuart Varney at Fox:     

Donald Trump has been president for six months. The media coverage of the president is overwhelmingly negative: the press remains contemptuous, and they're pushing to get him out before he completes his first term. 

Investors might think differently. The great success of the Trump presidency thus far, is not what he's done, but what he promises to do, namely, get the economy going again.  Evidently, investors believe he might yet get it done. 

Look at this: since his election win, the Trump rally has added $4.1 trillion to the nation's wealth. Anyone with a 401k, an IRA, college savings, retirement savings, mutual funds. Anyone with a dime in the market has taken a piece of that $4 trillion. 

Also, during this presidency, five American companies have emerged as global technology leaders. You know their names: Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Facebook. It’s a technology world, and American companies have seized the future.  I find it astonishing that the world of money is so exuberant, while the political world is so contemptuous of this president and his policy of growth.

COMMENT:  That's true, although I'd argue that the American companies that emerged as global technology leaders did so much earlier than Trump's inauguration.

Still, Trump must be credited with changing the economic atmosphere, at least at the high level of the economy.  What he must do now is make sure the average American feels that new reality in his own pocket.  The quickest way to do that is through tax relief.  If Trump cannot get Congress to pass meaningful tax reform, he will have little to show the person on the street as we enter the 2018 election year.

The president cannot depend on the press to spread the good news.  It will not do it.  Reagan produced results, but Reagan also knew how to speak over the heads of reporters and directly to the American people.

July 23, 2017       Permalink 

ARE DEMS GETTING SMART? – AT 12:18 P.M. ET:  It's highly unlikely, but it could happen.  We must be on guard. 

The Dems are trying to come up with a strategy, and, this is the big news, an actual program.  It's hard when your party has been the lead member of the Church of Perpetual Grievance.   

In addition, some party leaders are attempting to bring a bit of maturity.  From the New York Post: 

Democrats said they will counter President Trump’s “The Art of the Deal” with “A Better Deal.”
Party leaders will unveil a new economic battle plan on Monday that will highlight job-training programs, renegotiating trade deals and a $15 an hour “living wage” as they try to focus their message to voters, the Washington Post reported.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said his party can’t blame anyone else for their devastating defeat to Trump in November.

“When you lose to somebody who has 40 percent popularity, you don’t blame other things – Comey, Russia – you blame yourself,” Schumer (D-NY) said in an interview with the newspaper posted online Saturday night. “So what did we do wrong? People didn’t know what we stood for, just that we were against Trump. And still believe that.”

The Democrats will announce the new slogan – “A Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future” – and their upgraded platform of economic proposals drafted during strategy sessions over the past few months on Monday afternoon.

COMMENT:   Chuck is right.  The party must blame itself, and its clueless candidate.  But how much influence Schumer has is debatable.  He represents the more traditionalist wing.  The Democratic Party nationally is led by a chairman, Tom Perez, who curses in public, with children present.  His vice chairman, Keith Ellison, is a former member of the Nation of Islam, who claims he has changed.

The party's new great hope for president – there's a new flavor every month – is Senator Kamala Harris of California, who, like Tom Perez, sometimes flavors her "speeches" with foul language, and is known for rude behavior.

So how much the party has learned must be questioned.  I, for one, do not think Chuck Schumer and his faction will be leaders much longer.

July 23, 2017       Permalink

IT'S ABOUT TIME – AT 11:29 A.M. ET:  Maybe the administration is getting serious about plugging the leaks that have been so damaging, and have made it so hard for the president to govern.

As we've said here before, leaks are not benign.  There may be some that are initiated by true patriots who see something outrageous that is improperly classified and decide to take the risk of leaking.  But I'm afraid many leaks are made for partisan, petty purposes, to do damage to the political opposition by the improper disclosure of classified information.  From Fox: 

Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director, said Sunday that stopping damaging West Wing leaks is a top priority and that he will take “drastic action" to achieve that goal.

“We have to get the leaks stopped,” Scaramucci, named Friday to the post, told “Fox News Sunday.”

“What’s going on right now is a high level of unprofessionalism, and it’s not helping the president. … I will take drastic action to stop the leaks.”

Trump’s roughly 7-month-old presidency has been mired in the controversy about Russia meddling in the 2016 White House race and whether Trump associates were involved.

The controversy has been fueled in part by information leaked inside and outside of the White House.
Scaramucci on Sunday said he would “pare down the staff” to stop White House leaks, but made clear that such efforts will be limited to the communication office and that he wants to start anew.

“As far as I’m concerned, there will be a new start for everybody on the team,” said Scaramucci, whose appointment as communications director forced the resignation of Sean Spicer, who had held that post.

Scaramucci, a former Wall Street executive, acknowledged that he could never change Washington culture and stop the leaks coming from federal agencies within an administration.

He also said the mainstream media still has a “level of objectivity,” but allowed that so-called “fake news” exists to the extent “some individuals ... do stretch stories.”

COMMENT:  I like this guy.  He's very tough, but balances his strength with a diplomatic approach.  I think he'll work out.  But you may be sure that the so-called mainstream press is already researching him to dig up anything negative they can find.

July 23,  2017     Permalink