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.

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

NOVEMBER 22,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT: 

THE TRUTH COMES OUT – FROM BREITBART:   Darrell E. Brooks Jr., the suspect charged with five counts of homicide in Sunday’s Waukesha Christmas parade massacre, appears to have posted several politically charged songs online under the name “Mathboi Fly,” according to several reports.  Multiple outlets, including the Sun and Heavy, have connected Brooks to Mathboi Fly music videos, matching his appearance to mugshots and other social media photos of the 39-year-old Milwaukee man. The YouTube channel hosting those videos has now been deleted. A Soundcloud profile under the same artist’s name is still accessible  Brooks uploaded a song titled “X” to Soundcloud three years ago. The song opens with a quote from Malcolm X, saying, “I think it would take a whole lot of nerve for white people today to ask negros do they hate them.” The next lyric from Brooks after the Malcolm X quote is “yeah.”  The song is pinned to a Twitter account that reportedly belongs to Brooks...The first verse continues Brooks’s Anti-American tirade as he sings lyrics about “devils” trying to take him down and murdering police officers.  Oh, I'm so shocked.  Haven't we been assured by the local constabulary that there is no possibility that the massacre was a terrorist act?  I wonder where that came from?  In fact, there hasn't been a word about motive.  I guess the powers that be calculate that, since the perp isn't a white supremacist, the story will fade away after a few days.  They could easily be right.  What an outrage.

November 22, 2021       Permalink

THE DEMOCRATS' DILEMMA – OVERNIGHT:  There's an old saying in politics:  If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.  The Dems are in a hole, and they just keep digging.   They face a grim future.  From Rich Lowry at the New York Post: 

The GOP has had plenty of reason for good cheer in recent months.

Nothing can compare, though, with the glad tidings of a potential showdown between Vice President Kamala Harris and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to be President Joe Biden’s successor in 2024 should he decide not to run for re-election.

Surely, there would be other serious candidates in that circumstance, but there is no doubt that Harris and Buttigieg would be high on the list of potential contenders, as various journalistic outfits noted last week.

As it happens, they exemplify the contemporary Democratic Party’s electoral deficiencies, while bringing their own flagrant personal political weaknesses to the equation.

If this is really the choice Democrats would face should Biden decline to run, they better hope he defies age, bounces back to robust political health and is prepared to serve again well into his 80s.

Harris flamed out in the 2020 Democratic nomination well before the Iowa caucuses, unable to settle on a message or political identity. Her staff was obsessed with the progressive hothouse of Twitter, which is a powerful device for creating a false sense of what real voters, even Democratic primary voters, care about.

As VP, she’s basically picked up where her desultory campaign left off. In the latest USA Today-Suffolk University poll, Harris had a dismal 28 percent approval rating. It’s difficult to rate that low without getting indicted or suffering some other embarrassing scandal.

Her allies, of course, complain that she’s being treated unfairly because she’s a woman of color. This fixation on race and gender plays much better with the left-wing activist class than with the public.

The simpler explanation for Harris’ woes is that she’s a below-average politician serving as an unpopular president’s VP.

Buttigieg appeals to the party’s college-educated progressive voters.

Pete Buttigieg has had a happier tenure. With his surprising success in the 2020 Democratic primary, he bootstrapped himself into a Cabinet position and now is enjoying a windfall of resources thanks to the infrastructure bill.

He embodies, to a fault, the party’s growing strength among college-educated whites. He’s smooth, credentialed, hyper-articulate and a quick study who knows enough — sometimes just enough — to charm and impress journalists and other white-collar creative types.

If a management consultant were to design a progressive white Democrat in a bottle, the result would look a lot like Buttigieg, himself a former management consultant.

It’s become increasingly clear, though, that the Democratic Party’s new base among college-educated voters is a trap if it is pursued to the exclusion of an appeal to working-class voters. The party’s poor standing with non-college-educated voters has begun to show up in eroding support among Latinos, a constituency that was presumed to be a key pillar of the Barack Obama-crafted “coalition of the ascendant.”

A successful post-Biden Democratic future is more likely to be found in the likes of New York Mayor-elect Eric Adams than Harris or Buttigieg.

He is an African-American former cop with a hard-knocks upbringing that gives him working-class street cred. He knows that woke bromides aren’t the way to appeal to African-American voters, who put him over the top in the Democratic primary.

He’s a standard progressive in many respects, but he has proved immune to fashionable left-wing causes. He not only defused a hot-button cultural issue — namely, crime — he campaigned on it and made it a strength, an ability that most national Democrats have lost as the party has moved left since 2016.

It’s far too early to know how Adams’s City Hall tenure will actually turn out, but Adams has the qualities and approach that, in theory, could be fruitful for Democrats nationally.

Meanwhile, even if the GOP is on a roll at the moment, it shouldn’t get its hopes up. At the end of the day, a 2024 Democratic primary dominated by Harris and Buttigieg is probably too good to be true.

COMMENT:  Wonderfully stated.  In fact, that's the best analysis of the Democratic Party's plight that I've read recently.  However, there is always the possibility that sensible Democrats could start exerting some effort in a drive to save their party, and avoid the formation of a new center-left party, which would be a true Democratic nightmare.   Let's enjoy our current good fortune, but not too much.

November 22, 2021       Permalink

NOVEMBER 21,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT: 

UNBELIEVABLE – FROM FOX:   Some U.S. Navy sailors have been forced to take out loans over months-long delays in pay to some service members who earned increases in their housing allowances this year due to recent marriages or moving somewhere with a higher cost of living.   "This is happening a little bit of everywhere," Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society Vice President Gillian Gonzalez said in an interview with Military.com. "It doesn't seem to hit one geographic area more than another."  Gonzalez recounted that her group has seen an uptick in loan applications from sailors who are struggling to keep up with living expenses but did not have an exact figure on the increase.  Cmdr. Matt Knight, public affairs officer at Navy Personnel Command, told the outlet that the Department of Defense requires the Navy to process Basic Allowance for Housing change requests within 30 days, but noted delays can happen.  "Navy Personnel Command and our subordinate commands take every measure to ensure the volume of transactions does not exceed our capacity, but occasionally backlogs do occur due to a variety of reasons. These backlogs are resolved as quickly as possible to limit the impacts to sailors," Knight said.  Great way to retain good people.  Maybe the Navy could get a quick loan from the illegal immigrants who'll be paid $400,000 a family, should pending legislation pass, if the U.S. violated their "rights."  Some way to run a country.

November 21, 2021       Permalink

WISCONSIN HORROR – OVERNIGHT:  The obscene attack on a Christmas parade in Wisconsin yesterday reminds us that terror – individual, foreign, domestic, state-sponsored – is still very much a threat.  At this hour we still don't know very much about it, except that approximately five were killed and 40 injured when a red car plunged through a parade in progress.  We know that authorities have the car that was involved, and we know that a person of interest is in custody.  We know nothing else.

It's these hours that worry me – the hours between an attack and the announcement of who was allegedly responsible.  It's not paranoid to wonder what calls are being made, what pressure is being applied, what interests are being protected, if any.   If the fix will be in, this is when the fix begins.  We've seen many examples around the world of attempts to underplay the involvement of certain groups because the wrong people might be embarrassed.

We hope to know more today.  This had the markings of a terrorist attack, but we cannot say that with certainty at the moment.  From Fox: 

Authorities in a Milwaukee suburb continued overnight to deal with the aftermath after a red SUV plowed into Christmas parade marchers and spectators Sunday evening, striking more than 20 adults and children.

Some fatalities occurred at the Waukesha event, police Chief Dan Thompson told reporters at an evening news conference, according to FOX 6 of Milwaukee.

Wauskesha city officials early Monday confirmed that at least five people had died and more than 40 suffered injuries. They warned that both numbers could change.

More information was expected at a news conference expected later Monday.

Chilling videos on social media showed the SUV plowing into parade participants, with loud screams audible from those who witnessed the horror. Other videos showed people running to the aid of the injured people.

"Oh my God!" a woman shouts over and over in one video, after a group of girls in Santa Claus hats and waving white pompoms is struck. Another video shows members of a marching band being hit, The Associated Press reported.

"There were pompoms and shoes and spilled hot chocolate everywhere," Corey Montiho, a Waukesha school board member and parent told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. "I had to go from one crumpled body to the other to fund my daughter. My wife and two daughters were almost hit. Please pray for everybody. Please pray."

Gunshots were heard in the area but authorities said they came from a police officer who was trying to stop the vehicle, the AP reported. No one was hurt by gunfire, authorities said.

A Roman Catholic priest, multiple parishioners and Catholic schoolchildren were among those injured at the parade, an Archdiocese of Milwaukee spokeswoman told the AP.

Parade performers the Milwaukee Dancing Grannies also were affected by the tragedy – and shared on Facebook that they were awaiting more information about their members who were injured.

"Please keep the Grannies, all those injured, and all those who witnessed this horrible event in your thoughts and prayers," the group wrote.

COMMENTS:  There was a terrorist attack in Britain a few weeks ago.  The prime minister, Boris Johnson, warned Britons that there would probably be more.  The nation's alert status was immediately raised.

We'll be watching to see whether our government responds with that kind of seriousness if this does indeed turn out to be a terrorist incident.

November 21,  2021     Permalink