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.

LAST SUBSCRIPTION DRIVE OF 2016

(After a truly excellent opening to our subscription drive on Monday, Tuesday kind of sagged.  Please do consider subscribing or donating.  You'll be helping us fight the good fight, and you'll feel good about yourself – which means you'll feel the way liberals feel every day.)

Urgent Agenda depends on subscriptions and donations to survive.  Running a website that is well sourced and researched is costly, and our costs during this presidential election year were extreme – much more research, many more off-the-record briefings, and a deluge of Republican primary candidates to follow and study.  Our finances need to be firmed up. 

When you subscribe or donate to Urgent Agenda you are supporting our work.   That's the main reason for subscribing or donating.  But you also receive our twice-weekly e-mailed page, The Angel's Corner, containing the Urgent Agenda Forum.  At the Forum, subscribers and donators may write, within reasonable length, on any subject they wish.  The Forum is our most popular feature, and the quality, reflecting our readers' experience and wisdom, is really quite remarkable.

So please join us.  You can do so by going to the right-hand column opposite these words and subscribing or donating through PayPal.   Subscriptions of a year or six months are available, as are gift subscriptions.  Or you can use SENDINC, which is highly popular with our readers, and is absolutely secure.  The description of SENDINC is also in the right-hand column. 

If you prefer to write a check and use traditional mail, just send us an e-mail at service@urgentagenda.com, and we'll provide you with a mailing address.

We need new subscribers and donators.  We have a very high retention rate – many subscribers have been with us since we launched in 2008 – but there are realities over time, and we have had some losses. 

And, of course, additional support from our current subscribers and donators is always welcome.

Come aboard.  We have a great group.

DECEMBER 7,  2016

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 9:41 P.M. ET:

TRUMP HITS 50% – FROM THE DAILY MAIL:   Half of the country – 50 percent – now view President-elect Donald Trump favorably, up 17 points from August, a new Bloomberg National Poll shows.
The survey also gives Trump a glimmer of good news as two-thirds of U.S. adults believe Trump needs to choose between being president and a businessman, though a higher percentage, 69 percent, believe it's a step too far to force him to sell off his businesses to become president of the United States.   Another 51 percent say they believe the billionaire will put what's best for the country ahead of his own individual interests.  Americans are also giving the president-elect some wiggle room on issues, with three-quarters saying it's OK for him to re-calibrate some of his campaign pledges, including one to 'lock up' his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.   'The public seems to be giving him a long leash,' said pollster J. Ann Selzer, whose in charge of the survey. 'Most Americans don't seem concerned about him changing positions that were the core of his campaign.'   The poll reflects, I believe, Trump's genuinely thoughtful approach to picking his Cabinet. I also believe the American people have started to see through the press bias that is directed at Trump every day.

TRUMP ON PEARL HARBOR DAY – FROM BREITBART:   President-elect Donald Trump issued a statement remembering the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor today.  He’s urging the country to remember the 2,403 Americans killed and the 1,178 Americans who were wounded.  “Their shared sacrifice reminds us of the great costs paid by those who came before us to secure the liberties we enjoy, and inspires us to rise to meet the new challenges that stand before us today,” Trump said.  He recalled Reagan’s use of the quote of Gen. Douglas MacArthur reminding Americans that “there is no substitute for victory” in war.  “Today we are the bearers of the torch of freedom these brave Americans passed on to us,” he said. “In honor of their faithfulness, and for the sake of generations to come, we will never allow that flame to be extinguished.”  Very well put.  Trump is developing a presidential style all his own, and it is working.  We're entitled to have our concerns about him, but I'm being won over.

I LOVE THIS – FROM THE BANGOR DAILY NEWS:   PORTLAND, Maine — Thirty-five people gathered at a popular Portland bistro on a recent weeknight to learn how to talk.  Cards were passed and conversations sparked, but this group of branders, photographers, auditors and teachers weren’t merely networking. They were “adulting.”  “Small talk is hard for me,” said Julie Moulton, a thirtysomething marketing coordinator who was attending the happy hour networking class at Sur Lie on Free Street.  The event was organized by The Adulting School, a new program devoted to helping people learn skills they might not have picked up in college or from their parents. The founders take their inspiration from a similar program, The Society of Grownups, in Brookline, Massachusetts.  Adulting is a newly verbed noun that Time magazine described as a way for millennials to “acknowledge and/or make fun of and/or come to grips with that transition [to adulthood] (or how late they are to it).”  Long overdue.  You might wish to send anonymous scholarships to young people you know.

December 7, 2016       Permalink

ON THIS DAY – AT 12:31 P.M. ET:  This is the 75th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, or, as leftists would have it, the imperialist American warmonger attack on Japanese tourist planes making a peaceful visit to their brethren in the far islands. 

To those of us of a certain age, December 7th will always be sacred.  It is one of a small number of days on which a single event marked our time – September 2, 1945, when World War II ended; November 22, 1963, when the president was assassinated; September 11, 2001, when we were attacked in our own homeland. 

Young people today know very little about Pearl Harbor.   They are taught very little contemporary history.  And so they really don't understand the sacrifice, bravery, and determination of "the greatest generation," a generation that survived the Great Depression of the 1930s, only to face bullets and bombs.

Here is a great, and personal, Pearl Harbor story.  Please read the whole thing...and note the last paragraph, which will get to you.  From Reuters:

LOS ANGELES/HONOLULU (Reuters) - It has been 75 years, but U.S. Navy veteran James Leavelle can still recall watching with horror as Japanese warplanes rained bombs down on his fellow sailors in the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into World War Two.

Bullets bounced off the steel deck of his own ship, the USS Whitney, anchored just outside Honolulu harbor, but a worse fate befell those aboard the USS Arizona, USS Oklahoma, USS Utah and others that capsized in an attack that killed 2,400 people.

"The way the Japanese planes were coming in, when they dropped bombs, they'd drop them and then circle back," said Leavelle, a 21-year-old Navy Storekeeper Second Class at the time of the attack.

Leavelle, now 96, was among 30 Pearl Harbor survivors honored at a reception in Los Angeles before heading to Honolulu to mark Wednesday's 75th anniversary of the attack.

The bombing of Pearl Harbor took place at 7:55 a.m. Honolulu time on Dec. 7, 1941, famously dubbed "a date which will live in infamy" by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt. Fewer than 200 survivors of the attacks there and on other military bases in Hawaii are still alive.

Wednesday's commemoration at a pier overlooking the memorial to the sunken USS Arizona built in the harbor is set to begin with a moment of silence at precisely that time.

About 350 World War Two veterans and their families will be serenaded by the Navy's Pacific Fleet Band with a musical remembrance made bittersweet by the knowledge that every member of the USS Arizona band - one of the best in the Navy - died that day.

Attendees will watch a parade, and two families will participate in a private ceremony in which the ashes of crew members who survived the attack and later died, will be interred in a turret of the Arizona.

Across the United States on Wednesday, Americans will pause to remember those who died at Pearl Harbor, and the long and difficult war that followed.

And...

For his part, Leavelle would be touched twice by the hand of history. After the war, he became a policeman in Texas. On Nov. 24, 1963, he was the Dallas officer handcuffed to Lee Harvey Oswald when the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy was shot to death by nightclub owner Jack Ruby.

COMMENT:  Present at history twice.  How remarkable.

December 7, 2016       Permalink

REAL HOMELAND SECURITY – AT 11:38 A.M. ET:  President-elect Trump chooses another experienced military man for his Cabinet.  The left is reaching for its Zoloft.  From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump has settled on Gen. John F. Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general whose son was killed in combat in Afghanistan, as his choice for secretary of homeland security, placing defense of American territory from terrorism in the hands of a seasoned commander with personal exposure to the costs of war.

General Kelly, 66, who led the United States Southern Command, had a 40-year career in the Marine Corps, and led troops in intense combat in western Iraq. In 2003, he became the first Marine colonel since 1951 to be promoted to brigadier general while in active combat.

Mr. Trump, a person briefed on the decision said, has not yet formally offered the job to General Kelly, in part because the general is out of the country this week. The president-elect plans to roll out the appointment next week, along with his remaining national security positions, including secretary of state.

In 2010, General Kelly earned a painful distinction when his son, Lt. Robert Michael Kelly, was killed after stepping on a mine while leading a platoon in Afghanistan. General Kelly became the highest-ranking military officer to lose a son or daughter in Iraq or Afghanistan.

General Kelly has said little about that experience, but it played a role in his selection by Mr. Trump, according to people close to the Trump transition. Mr. Trump, his aides said, wanted people on his national security team who understood personally the hazards of sending Americans into combat.

COMMENT:  Once again Trump shows his analytical side, and the thought he puts into choosing the people around him.  General Kelly, like General Mattis – Trump's choice for secretary of defense, is outstanding.

December 7, 2016       Permalink

MAN OF THE YEAR – AT 10:46 A.M. ET:  TIME has made its choice, and it's an obvious one.  From TIME: 

This is the 90th time we have named the person who had the greatest influence, for better or worse, on the events of the year. So which is it this year: Better or worse? The challenge for Donald Trump is how profoundly the country disagrees about the answer.

It’s hard to measure the scale of his disruption. This real estate baron and casino owner turned reality-TV star and provocateur—never a day spent in public office, never a debt owed to any interest besides his own—now surveys the smoking ruin of a vast political edifice that once housed parties, pundits, donors, pollsters, all those who did not see him coming or take him seriously. Out of this reckoning, Trump is poised to preside, for better or worse.

For those who believe this is all for the better, Trump’s victory represents a long-overdue rebuke to an entrenched and arrogant governing class; for those who see it as for the worse, the destruction extends to cherished norms of civility and discourse, a politics poisoned by vile streams of racism, sexism, nativism. To his believers, he delivers change—broad, deep, historic change, not modest measures doled out in Dixie cups; to his detractors, he inspires fear both for what he may do and what may be done in his name.

COMMENT:  Well, I guess that's kind of fair, although I wish one mainstream journalist would have the guts to call the cries of "racism" what they are, grossly false.  I have not seen any racism coming from the mouth of Donald Trump.  There may have been some poorly phrased comments early in his campaign, but certainly no racism.  The way he runs his companies proves the charge to be a fraud.

I was not enthusiastic about Trump, as readers know.  But I must say that I've been impressed by the way he's managed his transition.  He comes off as thoughtful, contemplative, willing to listen to others.  Perhaps most important, he's learned to speak over the heads of the media, as Reagan did.  I look forward to his inauguration.

December 7,  2016     Permalink

DECEMBER 6,  2016

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 10:46 P.M. ET:

THOSE DEMS, SO BRILLIANT – FROM NEED TO KNOW NETWORK:   On Tuesday, disgruntled Democrats held a forum to discuss the possibility of replacing the Electoral College.  Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) conceded that Democrats could not get rid of the Electoral College due to the way the United States Constitution is written.  “I don’t think we can sustain our American democracy by having the majority ruled by the minority. And so the question is how to fix this since the Constitution is written in such a way that it’s almost impossible to amend,” Lofgren said.  Lofgren went on to say she is open to a Constitutional Convention, “We are three states away from calling for a Constitutional Convention. It’s something I’ve always been opposed to, …. But I’ll say because, for the second time in sixteen years, people the American voters elected did not become president. Rational people, not the fringe, are now talking about whether states could be separated from the U.S., whether we should have a Constitutional Convention. And I think as time goes on that is apt to become more the case unless we here can figure an answer to preventing the majority from being ruled by the minority.  It's kind of typical of liberal Democrats to want to change the rules if they don't win the game.  It's like the way they run to the courts if legislatures won't pass their bills.  The country is called the United States of America.  We vote by state.  The founders saw that as the wisest way to have all regions represented, and not have mob rule.  It's worked out pretty well.

GEE, WHAT A SURPRISE – FROM THE POLITICO:   Donald Trump’s first major action as president-elect — the deal he and Vice President-elect Mike Pence struck last week with Carrier Corp. — is earning high marks from American voters, a new Politico/Morning Consult poll shows.  Voters surveyed overwhelmingly view Trump’s negotiations with Carrier — which resulted in about 1,000 manufacturing jobs at the heating, ventilation and air conditioning company remaining in Indiana rather than moving to Mexico — as an appropriate use of presidential prerogative. And a majority of voters say the Carrier deal gives them a more favorable view of Trump, though his overall favorability ratings were virtually unchanged from mid-November.  While some conservatives and conservative groups — including The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board and former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin — have decried the Carrier deal as “crony capitalism,” the Politico/Morning Consult poll shows it’s a political winner for Trump. Sixty percent of voters say Carrier’s decision to keep some manufacturing jobs in Indiana, where Pence is still serving as governor, gives them a more favorable view of Trump. That includes not only 87 percent of self-identified Republicans, but also 54 percent of independents and 40 percent of Democrats.  Yeah, jobs are popular.  Will someone whisper that to the Democratic National Committee?

WHO NEEDS MATH WHEN YOU CAN GO OUT AND DEMONSTRATE? – FROM US NEWS: WASHINGTON (AP) — American students have a math problem.  The latest global snapshot of student performance shows declining math scores in the U.S. and stagnant performance in science and reading.  "We're losing ground — a troubling prospect when, in today's knowledge-based economy, the best jobs can go anywhere in the world," said Education Secretary John B. King Jr. "Students in Massachusetts, Maryland, and Minnesota aren't just vying for great jobs along with their neighbors or across state lines, they must be competitive with peers in Finland, Germany, and Japan."  Math was a stubborn concern. "This pattern that we're seeing in mathematics seems to be consistent with what we've seen in previous assessments ... everything is just going down," said Peggy Carr, acting commissioner at the National Center for Education Statistics.  The 2015 Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, study is the latest to document that American students are underperforming their peers in several Asian nations. The U.S. was below the international average in math and about average in science and reading. Singapore was the top performer in all three subjects on the PISA test.  But do those foreign kids know words like "microaggressions"?  I'll bet they don't.  And do they know where the safe spaces are in their schools, places where they won't be bothered by dangerous ideas?  Not a chance.   Who needs a lotta them numbers?

December 6,  2016     Permalink

PICTURE OF A CAMPUS – AND IT'S REVOLTING – AT 11:43 A.M. ET:  How did students and professors at Ohio State react to the recent terrorist attack there, as compared to the election of Donald Trump?  Is there any doubt?  From College Fix:   

An Ohio State student named Mackenzie called into Sean Hannity’s radio show Dec. 1 to voice her frustration over how campus leadership responded to President Donald Trump’s election compared to how it responded to the recent terrorism-inspired rampage on campus.

The person responsible for the car-and-knife attack at Ohio State University on Monday that left nearly a dozen hospitalized is 18-year-old student Abdul Razak Ali Artan, a Somali refugee and lawful permanent resident of the U.S. He was shot and killed by a campus police officer.

“After this terrorist attack I’ve truly learned that the left is more scared of conservatism and Trump and Republicans than they are of ISIS and terrorists,” Mackenzie told Hannity. “Because after this terror attack I haven’t heard anything about, you know, ‘We’re praying for the victims’ or this and that. I’ve heard things about how we need to understand Islam, the vibrant Somali community we have here, how we need to embrace them even though this is the third attack by a Somali in the last year here in Columbus, and all this stuff about, you know, Muslim sensitivity.”

“That’s all they care about,” she continued, “and they are more scared of the Right and Trump than they are of this terrorist attack that just happened on our campus. It’s sickening to me because I feel like they are gambling with my life in order to reach this multiculturalism lie that they worship in all of my classes — and it’s crazy.”

COMMENT:  Mackenzie is very discerning.  She has it right.  Our campuses have become sanctuaries for the far left, and there is an aroma of intimidation within them.  Go along, or you're branded a racist, a misogynist, a warmonger.  Free speech is often discouraged, or even prohibited.  The American flag is viewed as a symbol of oppression.

And taxpayer money is subsidizing this disgrace.

December 6, 2016       Permalink

THE THREATS OUT THERE – AT 10:21 A.M. ET:  We are in a very vulnerable period, the time between an outgoing administration and an incoming administration not yet operating.  And our opponents know that.  From the L.A. Times:

An overseas tip about an imminent bombing of the Metro Red Line’s Universal City station has forced federal and local law enforcement in Los Angeles to swiftly ramp up security across its sprawling transit system, authorities said Monday.

An anonymous man warned of a potential attack on Tuesday and provided the information on a tip line abroad, according to Deidre Fike, the assistant director in charge of the FBI's office in Los Angeles.

The tip line was run by an unidentified foreign government, which relayed the information Monday morning to an FBI terrorism task force. Fike declined to specify from which country the tip originated but said it was delivered in English.

At a hastily called news conference Monday night, the FBI as well as Los Angeles-area law enforcement leaders said the threat was considered specific and imminent, but investigators were still examining its credibility.

“This could be real, it could be a hoax,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell. “We’re asking the public to stay calm and vigilant.”

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said that area law enforcement reviews threats “constantly” but that this particular incident was “very specific” and forced a rapid response.

“We don’t have the time to vet this threat in the way we would like,” Beck said. “This one we had to move quickly on.”

COMMENT:  Most of these tips turn out to be wrong or hoaxes.  But anti-terror forces have to be right 100% of the time, and took the right action in L.A.

There are other reports of threats – including one to disrupt the presidential inauguration.  We will have to be vigilant, and hope that the mainstream media doesn't automatically blame Trump for any incident.

December 6,  2016     Permalink

NOW HE TELLS US – AT 9:53 A.M. ET:  Is Obama a weak, confused, indecisive president?  Of course not.  He's Barack, come to save us.  He's perfect, a gift from the Chicago political machine to the United States, and to history.

Uh, well, not really.  You know, even perfection has its limits.  How do we know?  Why, John Kerry tells us.  From an editorial in the New York Post:

Secretary of State John Kerry told a painful truth on Sunday, admitting that President Obama’s “red line” fiasco in Syria “cost us significantly” by leading other nations to see America as weak.

Obama drew the line in August 2012 — as a way to avoid getting involved in Syria’s civil war without having to actually justify that restraint. He did so by saying he would intervene if the government did the truly awful, by using chemical weapons.

“We have been very clear to the Assad regime … that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized,” he said, also calling “chem” use a “game-changer.”

It was universally seen as a threat of massive consequences for Bashar al-Assad if he crossed the line. But when Assad did launch chemical attacks a year later, Obama stalled.

First he tried to get allies on board with a campaign of airstrikes. Britain declined, but France said yes — yet Obama then asked Congress to OK the bombing. Congress signaled reluctance to “buy in” — and then Obama accepted a diplomatic lifeline from Moscow to negotiate a deal for Syria to (supposedly) turn over all its chem munitions.

The president had blinked at making good on his own threat. Around the globe, US allies and enemies were on notice that America might not live up to its word.

It’s no coincidence that Russia took control of Crimea within the year, and later intervened decisively in Syria to save Assad. Nor that Iran was able to virtually dictate the terms of its nuclear deal with Team Obama.

Kerry on Sunday fell back on two excuses. First he argued that it was a “misperception” that Washington had been weak, since Assad did give up (many of) his chems. But even he had to admit that “it doesn’t matter. It cost. Perception can often just be the reality.”

COMMENT:  Yup.  Perception is reality, and often the perception is accurate.  Obama is weak, indecisive, cynical, and loves going after America's allies.  What a great skill set.

December 6,  2016     Permalink