Here are my observations on the news of the day.

 THAT BALLISTIC MISSILE ALERT “mistake” in Hawaii certainly caused a panic among residents and tourists. I heard that people huddled in their bathtubs and closets, and on television I saw a gentleman lowering a child into an open manhole in a street. Maybe okay in a tornado alert, but a missile attack?

There are questions regarding how this could happen. As it turns out, someone didn’t just push a button. Activation of the system requires more than that. We’ll most likely hear what happened in the days ahead.

I have simpler questions. Are there adequate shelters, equipped with supplies, to handle everyone? Are tourists, a key economic boon to the islands, properly instructed on where to go in the event of an alert?

But the larger question I have is, why the investment in this goofy system. Should a ballistic missile – assuming it is nuclear-tipped – hit Hawaii, survival would be questionable. Which begs the questions, do they know how to prepare for the blast flash and how to prepare for radioactive fallout?

Much has been written about the warning system. In the limited research that I have been able to do, I read that the alert system is a modern version of the CONELRAD system established in 1951, “powerfully effective in their ubiquity and power.”

It seems to me that they have just developed a better warning system to send our children under their desks, which provide no protection.

THAT LEADS ME TO THIS – Having served in the Strategic Air Command for eight years, I recall the emphasis on deterrence, demonstrating that we were equipped to completely annihilate any enemy that dared fire on us. It served us well through the Cold War.

While President Trump has been criticized for his warning that any attack by North Korea would be “met with fire and fury and frankly power the likes of which the world has never seen before,” it’s a message of deterrence that had to be sent.

Unfortunately, President Obama allowed our military to decline over his last term, thanks to the bipartisan sequestration that cut the defense budget by 15 percent. Surely, you’ve heard about the percentage of combat aircraft that cannot fly and ships unable to sail, not to mention the lack of proper training. Be assured that Kim Jung Un knows this.

Although President Trump endeavors to rebuild our military, he faces an up-hill battle for funds with the Democrat Party. Clearly, the men and women of our armed services know that he has their back; he appreciates their efforts and is determined to provide them with the systems they need.

MORE FROM ARIZONA’S FLAKE – Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ). Ironically, two stories addressing fake news crossed my monitor this morning. The first one: John Hinderaker’s report on the Associated Press’s inability to understand why the people don’t trust the media; and William A. Jabobson’s post that Flake will be speaking on Wednesday to draw his comparison of President Trump’s frequent references to fake news to that of Soviet Russian dictator Joseph Stalin’s “enemy of the people” references.

I wonder if “the Flake” will compare the facts, unlike with Stalin, that “not a single reporter has been arrested or a single newspaper or media shut, and that Trump frequently has sit-down interviews and holds press conferences with the media,” as Jacobson suggests?

With Americans already in a quandary over who can be trusted to tell them reliably what their government and their commander-in-chief are doing, Flake’s decision to elevate this to a speech on the senate floor will only serve to further authenticate his RINO status.

Someone should remind Flake that America’s opinion of Congress is even lower than that of the media.

LAUGH FOR THE DAY – In an interview with Politico, former UN Ambassador Samantha Power revealed that she invited 37 women ambassadors to her penthouse for an election night party to watch Hillary Clinton shatter the glass ceiling only to see it end in despair.

“So confident was Power,” wrote David Rutz, “she said she was afraid Clinton’s victory would be too early in the night.”

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was there, as was Gloria Steinhem. She even invited HBO to capture it all. “I wanted to milk the soft power dividend of this moment … with all of that sense of promise and excitement.”

“I’ve had a lot of bad ideas in my life,” Power told Politico’s Susan Glasser, “but none as immortalized as this one.”   No argument there.

“OPRAHYSTERIA” – Mathew Continetti, writing in the Washington Free Beacon, speculated how the other potential Democrat presidential candidates must have reacted to a possible run by Oprah Winfrey. He noted an uncomfortable Mark Warner (D-VA) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) being interviewed by Bret Baier on Fox News Channel. “A boring Virginia centrist,” and Warner as “a liberal woman,”

“Oprahysteria signified nothing less than Democratic leeriness and hesitancy at the upcoming primary fight,” reported Mathew Walter of The Week. he referred to the Democrat stable as “crowded, aged, liberal, boring and pale,” he says there’s “no reason for excitement.”

“The Democrats are missing an agenda. They need to have something to offer the public. Right now they have nothing,” says Continetti.

Let’s hope they don’t wake up and realize the anti-Trump resistance, accusing him of racism, being unfit for office, and talk of impeachment is wearing on their voters.

The Dreamer issue, you suggest? Not so fast. “The media attention is remarkably out of proportion and intensity with the relevance to the everyday voter,“ believes Continetti. While terrorism (76 percent) and the economy (73 percent) rank the highest in public priorities, immigration ranked fifteenth at 43 percent.

JUDICIAL WATCH is still pressing for those Hillary Clinton e-mails, and announced that their pressure resulted in U. S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg ordering the State Department to complete its processing of the 72,000 pages of records by September 28, 2018, accelerating it from a rate that would continue until 2020. Hats off to Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton for keeping the pressure on. The “deep state” people in the State Department and Department of Justice want to slow the process, hoping interest in uncovering Clinton’s activities will die out.

HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN? – An illegal Mexican immigrant, who had been deported five times, threatened passengers on a Greyhound bus travelling from Chicago to Madison, Wisconsin over the weekend. He was arrested after the bus was stopped with a spiked road strip deployed by the police. A search of the Mexican revealed no weapon. I hope the passengers on the bus were registered Democrats who favor open borders.