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JUNE 22,  2017

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 6:05 P.M. ET:

COINCIDENCE OR NOT? – FROM CNBC:   A new study finds an increase in accident insurance claims in three states that have approved the sale of marijuana for recreational use.  According the Highway Loss Data Institute, the number of vehicle collisions reported to insurance companies in Colorado, Oregon and Washington is 3 percent higher than what would have been expected if those states had not made it legal to buy pot.  "We're concerned about what we're seeing," said Matt Moore, the institute's senior vice president. "We see strong evidence of an increased crash risk in states that have approved recreational marijuana sales."  While Moore's research finds a greater crash risk, his study does not say if the increase in collisions in the three states were directly caused by drivers who were high.  Further study is needed, but that drug has to have at least some effect.  We're talking human life here.

I THINK SHE'LL BE SPENDING MORE TIME WITH HER FAMILY – FROM FOX:   It's been more than seven months since Election Day, but Americans' opinions of Hillary Clinton remain the same.  A new Gallup poll finds just 41 percent of Americans have a favorable view of the former presidential candidate, with 57 percent expressing an unfavorable view.   It's the same split that Gallup found in December 2016. Gallup said that historically, losing presidential candidates have gained popularity after the election.   Let's not be unduly harsh.  She's been nationally famous for 25 years, and it's unlikely that opinions of her will change that much.  She's also dragged down by an unpopular party.

I LOVE IT – FROM FOX:   On "The Fox News Specialists," Katherine Timpf said no picture summed up the left's dismay at Jon Ossoff's (D) loss in Georgia than a screenshot of crestfallen CNN contributors.
As CNN cut to a break, the internet caught politics editor Mark Preston, political analyst Gloria Borger, political director David Chalian and reporter Dana Bash frowning as they sat around a table.  The photo was also shared on several blogs and websites.  Timpf said the media and Democrats billed the race as a referendum on President Trump.  Go to the link.  It includes the photo.  Send those people a word of encouragement.

June 22, 2017       Permalink

I WANT TO HEAR THE EXCUSE – AT 11:18 A.M. ET:   Germany complained mightily when it was revealed that US intelligence was regularly tapping Angela Merkel's cell phone.  Well, well, look what has just been revealed.  From AFP:

Germany's foreign intelligence service long spied on numerous official and business targets in the United States, including the White House, Spiegel weekly reported Thursday.

The magazine said it had seen documents showing that the intelligence service, the BND, had a list of some 4,000 so-called selector keywords for surveillance between 1998 and 2006.

These included telephone or fax numbers, as well as email addresses at the White House as well as the US finance and foreign ministries.

Other monitoring targets ranged from military institutions including the US Air Force or the Marine Corps, space agency NASA to civic group Human Rights Watch.

Hundreds of foreign embassies as well as international organisation like the International Monetary Fund were not spared, Spiegel said.

The BND declined comment in the Spiegel report.

Germany had reacted with outrage when information leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 that US agents were carrying out widespread tapping worldwide, including of Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone.

Merkel, who grew up in communist East Germany where state spying on citizens was rampant, declared repeatedly that "spying among friends is not on" while acknowledging Germany's reliance on the US in security matters.

COMMENT:  This hardly shocks me, and really doesn't disturb me all that much.  Of course friends spy on friends.  A friend can be an enemy tomorrow morning.  But now maybe the Europeans will be a little less self righteous when lecturing the United States on these matters.

June 22, 2017        Permalink

OH, THIS IS REALLY SMART – AT 10:29 A.M. ET: – Another kamikaze squadron within the Democratic Party.  From Fox: 

The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) said Wednesday that its members had voted to reject an invitation to meet with President Trump, claiming that the administration's policies are causing "legitimate alarm" among African-American lawmakers and their constituents.

So you deal with it by refusing to meet the man who could modify those policies.  Genius.

CBC Chairman Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., wrote in a letter to Trump that proposals in the president's budget would "not only devastate the communities that we represent, but also many of the communities that supported your candidacy."

Richmond specifically cited proposed cuts to Pell Grants for low-income college students and eliminate the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps seniors and others on fixed incomes heat their homes. He claimed those cutbacks would "destroy minority communities, all while your Administration and Congressional Republicans consider proposals to provide tax cuts for the richest Americans."

The chairman also criticized the Republican effort to repeal and replace ObamaCare, claiming the Affordable Health Care Act passed by the House last month would "strip millions of black people of their health care."

Richmond said the caucus had expressed its concern several times, including in eight letters and a document, but the administration has failed to respond.  Trump and top members of the caucus met in March, but Richmond said there has been no follow-through on promises like helping black lawmakers meet with Trump's Cabinet.

COMMENT:  These may be legitimate complaints, but you don't turn down a chance to have the ear of the president.  Make your argument, and get your facts right.  When Bill Clinton eliminated "welfare as we know it," there were also predictions that the sky would fall.  It didn't.  It improved things.

June 22, 2017        Permalink

ARE DEMS STARTING TO UNDERSTAND? – AT 9:51 A.M. ET:  I doubt it.  "Understand" is not normally a word in their vocabulary.  But maybe a few brave Democrats are starting to realize why they lose and lose and lose.  From Howard Kurtz Fox: 

Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator from Connecticut, made some candid comments that caught my eye yesterday.

When he’s back home, Murphy said, he sometimes chats people up on a commuter bus, and “they are never talking about issues like Russia. They are not talking, frankly, what’s on cable news at night.”

And then, in the “Morning Joe” interview, he took a whack at his own party: “The fact that we have spent so much time talking about Russia has been a distraction from what should be the clear contrast between Democrats and the Trump agenda, which is on economics.”

Bingo. Running mainly against Donald Trump didn’t work for the Dems in 2016, and it’s not working now.

The news peg for these recriminations, of course, is the Democrats losing Tuesday’s special election for a House seat in Georgia. I never spent much time on that race because I never believed that Jon Ossoff, despite raising $25 million, was going to win in a heavily Republican district that he didn’t even live in.

But since the media collectively declared it a referendum on Trump—and would have gone haywire if Ossoff had won—there is a reckoning about what the Democratic Party stands for.

Ohio Democratic congressman Tim Ryan told the New York Times that his party is “toxic” in large swaths of the country: “Our brand is worse than Trump. We can’t just run against Trump.”

COMMENT:  In the immortal words of Ed McMahon, "You are correct, sir."  Yes, your party's brand is worse than Trump's.  It is seen as snobbish, elitist, out of touch, and catering only to what special group is popular on the left this year.  Not the party of Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy.  More the party of George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, and Barack Obama.

June 22,  2017     Permalink

JUNE 21,  2017

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

A CHANGING AMERICA – FROM AP:   WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States is growing older and more ethnically diverse, a trend that could put strains on government programs from Medicare to education, the Census Bureau reported Thursday.  Every ethnic and racial group grew between 2015 and 2016, but the number of whites increased at the slowest rate - less than one hundredth of 1 percent or 5,000 people, the Census estimate shows. That's a fraction of the rates of growth for non-white Hispanics, Asians and people who said they are multi-racial, according to the government's annual estimates of population.  I would not read too much into this.  Predictions of what a country will be in 20 years are often notoriously wrong, as groups change over time, and so do political allegiances.  Remember the solid Democratic South?  Or the heavily Republican "affluent" suburbs?  At one time the "black vote" was Republican, but no more.  And the "Catholic vote" was a lock for the Democrats, but no more.

NEW TALES OF THE TAPE? – FROM FOX:  Sean Spicer, the White house press secretary, said Tuesday that he expects an announcement “this week” on whether there are taped phone conversations between President Trump and his former FBI director, James Comey.  So far Trump has, at best, been coy about his possession of such tapes.  In May, Trump fired a loud warning shot, tweeting, “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”  The president last month told reporters that "I'll tell you about that maybe sometime in the near future" but offered no hints as to whether the tapes exists, except saying that some journalists would "be very disappointed" to find out the answer.  Maybe we'll have an entirely new era in entertainment.  Or maybe we'll be stuck with the current soap opera.

A NEW McCARTHYISM – FROM DAILY SIGNAL:  The nation’s leading source of information on U.S. charities faces mounting criticism for using a controversial “hate group” designation in listings for some well-known and broadly supported conservative nonprofits.  GuideStar, which calls itself a “neutral” aggregator of tax data on charities, recently incorporated “hate group” labels produced by the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center.  The decision by the tracker of nonprofits prompted 41 conservative leaders to protest the move in a letter provided exclusively to The Daily Signal. The letter, dated June 21, asks the website to drop the “hate group” labels put on 46 organizations.   Reminds me of the lists published in the early 1950s, accusing people of Communist sympathies.  Same tactics.

June 21,  2017     Permalink

THE WORST-RUN STATE? – AT 11:46 A.M. ET:   Right now it has to be Illinois.  Even though the state finally has a Republican governor, he's struggling with the disasters built up over time.  He may not make it.  This is worse than global warming.  From Fox:

Illinois is grappling with a full-fledged financial crisis and not even the lottery is safe – with Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner warning the state is entering "banana republic" territory. 

Facing billions in unpaid bills and pension obligations, the state is hitting a cash crunch that is rare even by Illinois standards.

A top financial official just warned 100 percent of the state's monthly revenue will be eaten up by court-ordered payments. Rauner is calling a special session of the Democrat-led General Assembly in a bid to pass what he hopes will be the first full budget package in almost three years.
And Illinois will – literally – lose the lottery if the budget fails. 

The state lotto requires a payment from the legislature each year. The current appropriation expires June 30, meaning no authority to pay prizes. In anticipation of a budget deadlock, the state already is planning to halt Powerball and Mega Millions sales. 

“It is disappointing that the legislature’s inability to pass a budget has led to this development and will result in Illinois lottery players being denied the opportunity to play these popular games,” Illinois Lottery Acting Director Greg Smith told Fox News.

“We’re like a banana republic,” Rauner said earlier this month, after the General Assembly failed, yet again, to pass a budget package by the regular session deadline. “We can’t manage our money.”
The governor has called for a special session starting Wednesday. The state so far is operating on a series of stopgap spending packages. 

COMMENT:  There is a one-word description of this mess:  Chicago.  Chicago is the biggest influence in Illinois, and the city is in chaos.  It's Barack Obama's home city, and you'd think he'd show some interest.  Maybe the interest will start when his library is built.

June 21, 2017       Permalink

AND A CLOSER VIEW OF THE GEORGIA RACE – AT 10:28 A.M. ET:  You gotta know the territory.  Seems the voters of Georgia's Sixth C.D. were not interested in what the Democratic Party was selling.  From Fox: 

Turns out…money can’t buy you love. Or a House seat in Georgia’s 6th District.

Democrats pulled out all stops in their effort to show that the #Resistance isn’t just about marches and slogans and insulting the president, but also about flipping the House in 2018. They poured tens of millions of dollars into what became the most expensive House race ever, trying to elect 30-year-old nonentity Jon Ossoff to fill the seat of HHS head Tom Price. They cast the race as a referendum on Donald Trump, and a bellwether for 2018. Republicans will be elated with the outcome, and hopeful that both those claims are true.

What is undoubtedly true is this: despising Donald Trump is not much of a platform.

Ossoff, who received gobs of money from outside Georgia and doesn’t even live in the 6th District, started his campaign by exhorting voters to “Make Trump Furious.” But more recently he backed off that attack line, and ran what even the New York Times called a “milquetoast” campaign. He portrayed himself as a centrist, with a platform about as thin as his resume. Apparently he came to realize that those activists sending contributions from LA and New York would not be showing up in the voting booth, and that he had to win the hearts and minds of Georgia Republicans.

Democrats’ eagerness to put Trump in the middle of the race may have been a misstep, but they were  swayed by the president’s declining approval ratings and by his narrow victory in the district in November. He won the 6th by only 1.5 percentage points, while Mitt Romney had a 23 point margin four years earlier and Tom Price had been reelected by 24 points last year.

But it turned out that suburban Atlanta’s voters had other things on their minds, including possibly hoping for a candidate better able to serve their interests than the youthful former congressional aide and documentary filmmaker. Despite a torrent of ads casting the election as a way to vent their disapproval of President Trump, the largely Republican district came through for Karen Handel, who has worked her way up through state politics and was a reliable middle-of-the-road candidate. 

COMMENT:   I think that's very accurate.  The Dems put up a candidate whose candidacy made no sense.  They should have put up a giantkiller, but instead ran a perfectly respectable young man with nothing much to offer.  And he could have taken an apartment in the district, just to show some respect.  The fella couldn't even vote in his own election. 

Also, President Trump may not be as unpopular as some polls show.  Remember that he consistently underpolled during the election campaign.  His current Rasmussen approval number is 45%, which is about where Obama spent most of his presidency.  A recent poll showed that he would still beat Hillary Clinton.  Never underestimate his political skills.

June 21, 2017        Permalink

THAT GEORGIA RACE – QUOTE OF THE DAY – Oh, the Dems must be in anguish this morning.  To paraphrase Cole Porter in "Kiss Me, Kate" – another election, another loss.  Politico says it nicely:

Good Wednesday morning and happy first day of summer. THE FACTS -- KAREN HANDEL quite easily beat JON OSSOFF in Georgia. House Republicans are now 4-0 in contested special elections since PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP won the presidency. That means Democrats have failed -- despite millions of dollars in spending -- to win a single race with a president who has a record low approval rating. Democrats are even further from the majority than they thought. Let’s be clear: something ain’t working for Democrats, party insiders privately tell us. The Ossoff race galvanized national donors and activists in a way that led many to believe House Democrats were en route to wresting control of the chamber from Republicans. That’s not how they feel this morning. Caveat: this is a Republican seat. Being close is nice. But after six years in the minority, that’s about all it is.

-- REP. SETH MOULTON (D-MASS.) (@sethmoulton): “#Ossof Race better be a wakeup call for Democrats - business as usual isn’t working. Time to stop rehashing 2016 and talk about the future.” … “We need a genuinely new message, a serious jobs plan that reaches all Americans, and a bigger tent not a smaller one. Focus on the future."

COMMENT:  Maybe the Dems will finally figure out that they're not loved.  They think because Trump's approval ratings are low, that the voters will run into their arms.  They will not.  The Democratic Party is a train wreck.  It has lost the White House, the Senate, the House, most governorships and most state legislatures.  It has lost a thousand legislative seats nationwide since Obama took office.

Most Americans really don't like what the Dems stand for.  And I'm sure plenty of Americans are sickened by the fact that leading Dems, like Senator Kamala Harris of California and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, as well as National Chairman Tom Perez, drop curse words into their speeches.  Who are they trying to appeal to?

June 21, 2017     Permalink