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NOVEMBER 30,  2016

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

AGAIN – FROM FOX:   A Tacoma, Wash. police officer died late Wednesday after being shot several times while responding to a domestic violence call, officials said.  The male officer, who has not been identified, was shot by a suspect believed to be barricaded inside a home on Tacoma's east side with a gun. The officer was pronounced dead at 9:13 p.m. local time after undergoing emergency surgery at Tacoma General Hospital.  "We've suffered a great loss and I think the community has suffered a great loss," police spokesman Loretta Cool said. "I don't know how to put that into words."  Let's see if the mainstream media takes any interest.

WHAA..? – FROM GATEWAY PUNDIT:   CNN is just losing its mind at this point.  In a recent segment, CNN brought on a Muslim woman to talk about how she doesn’t “feel safe” wearing a hijab in public anymore because President-Elect Trump.  “Maybe there will be a movement where people wear the head scarf in solidarity. You know, even if you’re not Muslim,” suggested CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota on CNN’s “New Day,” WND reports.  “Maybe it’s the way people shave their heads, you know, sometimes in solidarity with somebody who is going through something,” she said.  So non-Muslim women should start wearing the hijab to help Muslims feel safe? Sounds like Sharia Law.  So to show “solidarity,” CNN’s Alisyn Camerota says American women should all wear the hijab to show “solidarity” with Muslim Americans.   CNN is giving up all its credibility.  It is now just a trendy, left-wing network, speaking to a declining viewership.  And they don't seem to care.

DEATH OF A GIANT – FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:   Grant Tinker, who produced “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and other television hits in the 1970s and transformed NBC from a perennial ratings loser to a powerhouse of literate, sophisticated network programming that helped change America’s viewing habits in the ’80s, died on Monday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 90.  NBC confirmed the death on Wednesday.  To a generation whose tastes were shaped by the tube, Mr. Tinker was the unseen hand behind many of the most stylish, critically acclaimed sitcoms and dramas on television. He did it by giving his writers space to thrive, shielding them from those foolish studio and network executives who said they liked the story, all right, but wanted to change the boy to a dog — and usually got their way.  One of the great executives in television history.  He had taste and class, and raised the level of his industry. 

November 30, 2016       Permalink

A THREAT TO TAKE SERIOUSLY – AT 10:16 A.M. ET:  As we go through a political transition, our enemies are getting stronger.  From the great defense reporter Bill Gertz at the Washington Free Beacon:   

The United States is vulnerable to future attack by hypersonic missiles from China and Russia and is falling behind in the technology race to develop both defensive and offensive high-speed maneuvering arms, according to a new Air Force study.

“The People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation are already flight-testing high-speed maneuvering weapons (HSMWs) that may endanger both forward deployed U.S. forces and even the continental United States itself,” an executive summary of the report says.

“These weapons appear to operate in regimes of speed and altitude, with maneuverability that could frustrate existing missile defense constructs and weapon capabilities.”

Hypersonic missiles are ultra-high speed weapons that travel along the edge of the earth’s atmosphere at speeds above Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. The missiles also can maneuver to avoid current missile defenses—all of which were developed to hit ballistic missiles with predictable flight paths.

The unclassified summary of the report, “A Threat to America’s Global Vigilance, Reach, and Power: High-Speed, Maneuvering Weapons,” was produced by a blue-ribbon panel of experts for Air Force Studies Board at the National Academies of Science. The summary was made public earlier this month.

It is the first U.S. military study to sound the alarm about an arms race quietly underway for several years to develop hypersonic missiles for both strategic nuclear weapons and conventional rapid strike systems.

COMMENT:  And we're debating transgender bathrooms and creating "safe spaces" on college campuses to protect students from ideas. 

I hope the new administration will recognize the danger and take action.  I get the feeling they will.  And they'll be opposed by the mainstream media and the academic/leftist complex.

November 30, 2016       Permalink

WHO IS TEACHING OUR CHILDREN? –  An Ohio State University "diversity" officer is expressing sympathy for the apparently ISIS-inspired student who rammed a group of students and bystanders Monday, then attacked others with a knife on Monday before being shot dead by a police officer.  It's hard to make this stuff up.  From PJ Media: 

The Ohio State University assistant director of residence life allegedly expressed sympathy for Somali stabber Abdul Razak Ali Artan in a bizarre Facebook post Monday that has since gone viral.

Stephanie Clemons Thompson urged her followers to have compassion for Artan after he expressed a desire "to kill a billion infidels" and then tried to kill as many as he could at OSU. She also urged people to “think of the pain he must have been in,” and used the hashtags #BlackLivesMatter and #SayHisName (which BLM uses to denote victims of police brutality).

If Ohio State officer Alan Horujko had not been able to quickly take Artan down, the terrorist could have ended up killing many people, rather than only sending ten of them to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries (one of them critical). No one in their right mind could possibly consider his actions an example of police brutality against a minority. But Thompson seemed to do so in her Facebook post.

The fact that she urged her friends not to share the Facebook post seems to indicate she understood how negatively her message would be viewed by a wider public.

COMMENT:  She should be fired like a shot, but, of course, will not be.  She is protected.  This is a public university, paid for by the taxpayers of Ohio.  I hope there's an uproar.

November 30, 2016       Permalink

A BLOW AGAINST FREEDOM – AT 9:19 A.M. ET:  Whatever happened to Charlie Hebdo, the irreverent French satirical magazine, whose headquarters were attacked by Islamic terrorists?  The answer is sad.  From Gatestone Institute: 

Over twenty years, fear has already devoured important pieces of Western culture and journalism. They all disappeared in a ghastly act of self-censorship: the cartoons of a Danish newspaper, a "South Park" episode, paintings in London's Tate Gallery, a book published by the Yale University Press; Mozart's Idomeneo, the Dutch film "Submission", the name and face of the US cartoonist Molly Norris, a book cover by Art Spiegelman and Sherry Jones's novel, "Jewel of Medina", to name just a few. Most of them have become ghosts living in hiding, hidden in some country house, or retired to private life, victims of an understandable but tragic self-censorship.

Only the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was missing from this sad, long list. Until now.

The disappointment with what Charlie Hebdo has become is reflected in the words of the French journalist, Marika Bret: "From Italy we receive many threats." The reference is not to some Italian jihadist cell, but to a September Charlie Hebdo cover that mocked victims of the earthquake in Italy. It seems that the satirical weekly, almost destroyed by French Islamists two years ago, has been "normalized".

Take Charlie's recent covers. Against terrorists? No. Against those who called them "racists"?  No. It was against Éric Zemmour, the brave French journalist at Le Figaro who has led a public debate about French identity. "Islam is incompatible with secularism, incompatible with democracy, and incompatible with republican government," Zemmour wrote.

Laurent Sourisseau, aka "Riss," now the publishing director and majority owner of Charlie, was shot during the 2015 attack on the magazine, and lives under police protection. He depicted Zemmour on the cover with an explosive vest, effectively comparing him to a terrorist.

Charlie Hebdo also recently satirized Nadine Morano, a critic of Islam, depicting her as a baby with Down Syndrome.

Riss also recently published a comic book attacking another easy target of submissive conformists, entitled "The Dark Side of Marine Le Pen." Le Pen leads France's National Front party, with a platform fighting for national sovereignty and Europe's Judeo-Christian identity. In Charlie, the political leader of the French "right" is dressed as Marilyn Monroe.

COMMENT:  We see it all the time, don't we?  Gradually, free speech and free press are disappearing, replaced by useful idiots and compliant journalists.  "Political correctness," the modern form of left-wing McCarthyism, has taken over college campuses and even high schools.

We used to say that it can't happen here.  It's happening here, and all over the Western world.

November 30,  2016     Permalink

NOVEMBER 29,  2016

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

THE DONALD STRIKES – FROM FOX:  Air conditioning company Carrier said Tuesday that it had reached an agreement with President-elect Donald Trump that would keep 1,000 jobs in Indianapolis. Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence, Indiana's outgoing governor, planned to travel to the state Thursday to unveil the agreement alongside company officials.   Watch the mainstream media try to disparage and minimize this important step toward keeping jobs in America.  The American people will understand it, though.

DIETICIANS IN A PANIC – FROM REUTERS:  VERBANIA, Italy (Reuters) - Emma Morano, thought to be the world's oldest person and the last to be born in the 1800s, celebrated her 117th birthday on Tuesday, still swearing by her diet of two raw eggs a day.   Morano was born in November 1899, four years before the Wright brothers first took to the air. Her life has spanned three centuries, two World Wars and over 90 Italian governments..."When I first knew her she used to eat three eggs a day. Two raw, and one fried. Today she has slowed down a bit, reducing the number to two some days because she says three can be too much," her doctor Carlo Bava told Reuters TV.  "She has never eaten much fruit or vegetables. Her characteristic is that she always eats the same thing, every day, every week, every month and every year."   How dare she violate the rules set down by Vogue.  Who does she think she is?

MAJOR POLITICAL NEWS – FROM YAHOO:  President Obama says both he and first lady Michelle Obama will be “very active” in working with people at the grass-roots level to support progressive causes once he leaves office. But despite her popularity and natural public-speaking ability, Michelle isn’t interested in a career in politics.  “Michelle will never run for office,” the president told Rolling Stone in an interview conducted the day after the election. “She is as talented a person as I know. You can see the incredible resonance she has with the American people. But I joke that she’s too sensible to want to be in politics.”   I'm devastated.  I just can't accept a world in which Michelle isn't president.  Find me a safe space.

November 29, 2016       Permalink             

THE HORROR GOES ON – AT 12:46 P.M. ET:   As the Obama administration comes to a close, we note the continued agony of Chicago, the president's home town.  It's a shooting gallery.  We're told that black lives matter, but apparently these black lives don't matter to political activists.  From the Chicago Tribune: 

Chicago saw one its most violent Thanksgiving holidays in years, with eight people killed and 62 others wounded between late Wednesday afternoon and early Monday.

The toll towers over the number of shootings in the previous two Thanksgiving holiday weekends, according to data kept by the Tribune.

In 2014, five people were killed, including a woman inside the Nordstrom's store on Michigan Avenue, and 14 others were wounded. Last year, eight people were killed, including a 16-year-old boy, and 20 were wounded, the data show.

This year's tally does not include the three people shot dead by Chicago police over the holiday period.

In one of those shootings, authorities said officers fired at a man who had just shot two people, one of them fatally, early Friday in the Homan Square neighborhood on the West Side. In another shooting Sunday night, authorities said an officer shot and killed a man who wounded a pregnant woman in West Garfield Park.

Early Saturday in the South Chicago neighborhood, a 20-year-old man was killed and five others were wounded at a house party, police said.

The number of people shot in Chicago this year is around 4,000, more than 1,000 above this time last year, according to Tribune data.

COMMENT:  Would you just look at those numbers.  Where is the outrage from the liberal press? 

And once again we ask why the media will not focus on the contrast between New York and Chicago.  New York made a huge dent in crime, Chicago sees crime increasing.  Why?  The reason, of course, is that New York had a great mayor named Rudy Giuliani, who set out to make his city safe, and succeeded.  However, Rudy is a Republican, so it doesn't count.  Nothing to see, nothing to see.

November 29, 2016       Permalink

DEMS TRY TO GET IT TOGETHER – AT 10:45 A.M. ET:  The more mature Democrats, both of them, know that it will be a long haul.  The first challenge to the Dem establishment comes tomorrow.  From The Hill:

House Democrats return to Washington on Tuesday grappling over the best course for the party’s future.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), facing a challenge from Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), is seen as the heavy favorite in elections on Wednesday to keep her top leadership spot, where she’s been perched for the past 14 years.

Democrats will decide on their new leader in a secret ballot vote that highlights the caucus’s restlessness and resurrects internal tensions that have simmered since Democrats lost control of the lower chamber in 2010.

While House Democrats gained at least six seats this cycle — several contests remain too close to call — that figure was a far cry from the 25 pickups Pelosi had predicted. Seeking more accountability for the dismal results, dozens of restive lawmakers successfully delayed the party’s leadership elections to this week to allow more time for reckoning. But in the eyes of Ryan and his supporters, nothing short of a change at the top will get the party back on a winning track.

“The level of frustration in our caucus is as great as I have seen it,” Ryan said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

It’s a battle few envisioned just a few weeks ago as Democrats headed into the elections with high hopes that Donald Trump’s incendiary presidential campaign would be a curse on vulnerable Republicans, leading to big gains for Democrats in the House.

Instead, Trump’s message drew droves of white, working-class voters to the polls, bolstering down-ballot Republicans while leaving Pelosi and the Democrats to ponder what went wrong and plot a path out of the minority wilderness.

Ryan’s challenge hinges largely on the argument that Pelosi, a San Francisco liberal widely despised in conservative circles, simply projects the wrong image for a party hoping to broaden its appeal to the Rust Belt voters who flocked to Trump.

COMMENT:  Ryan is right.  Pelosi has a net worth in the tens of millions, and represents one of the most left-wing cities in America.  Ryan comes from a family of working stiffs, and is much more like the old Democratic Party, where people who punched a time clock felt welcome.  Today's Democrats never heard of a time clock.   Should they buy one, it would be by Rolex.

If the Dems had their act together, they'd choose Ryan, and replace other old warhorses as well.  But the party is still gripped by identity politics, and each group has its little interest.  If Trump succeeds, the Democrats could be in the wilderness for years.

November 29, 2016       Permalink

OH, IT'S SO HARD TO FIND A MOTIVE – AT 9:28 A.M. ET:  A Somali immigrant with grievances against those he felt had damaged Muslims went on a rampage at Ohio State yesterday, running his car into a group of students, then going on a knifing spree, ultimately injuring or wounding ten before he was shot dead by a heroic police officer.  And they're looking for a motive?  How politically correct is that?  From CNN:

(CNN) Investigators are searching for a motive behind an Ohio State University student's knife attack on campus Monday morning that wounded 11 people.

Abdul Razak Ali Artan, a student who recently transferred there, had written in a Facebook post he had grown "sick and tired" of seeing fellow Muslims "killed and tortured," according to federal law enforcement officials. Authorities are now looking into whether the attack was terrorism but said it would take time to determine a motive.

In a Facebook post shortly before the rampage, the Somali immigrant urged America "to stop interfering with other countries, especially the Muslim Ummah," a term for Muslim people at large.
"By Allah, we will not let you sleep unless you give peace to the Muslims," he wrote. "You will not celebrate or enjoy any holiday."

Artan rammed his car into a group of people on the Columbus campus. He then exited the car and charged at passersby with a knife.

Ohio State Police Officer Alan Horujko shot Artan after he failed to obey orders to stop -- ending his life and stopping the tragic attack.

COMMENT:  The fact is that anti-terror experts have long worried about the infiltration of the Somali immigrant community by terrorists.  I think that's where you begin.

The police officer who stopped the attack had training in Israeli anti-terror techniques.  We await the first demonstration protesting that. 

November 29,  2016     Permalink