It’s Friday, March 29th, 2013…but before we begin, courtesy of Bill Meisen, a brief rebuttal to a Talking Ass:

Speaking of someone talking out their posteriors, check out these Progressives professing their sacred personal principles on the subject of gay marriage:

Aaahh!  But that was then; this is now:

Why is it we get the feeling Hillary, like both her husband, former boss or most any politician, will always hold deeply-personal beliefs supporting whatever positions the ever-shifting winds of political expedience dictate?

Now, here’s The Gouge!

We lead off the last edition of March with the “Coming Soon to a Country Near You!” segment, and a report detailing…

Cypriots express anger at the country’s bailout as they descend on bank branches, open for the first time in almost two weeks.

 

Cyprus’ banks have opened their doors after the longest enforced bank holiday in Europe’s history. Queues grew outside branches across the country, with no signs of panic as employees limited the number of customers allowed in at any one time. But many residents expressed anger at the country’s controversial bailout – which requires Cyprus to raise 5.8bn euros (£4.9bn).

“They have stolen our money,” Milton Loucas told Sky News. “I have been working for 60 years. I am 80 years old. I cannot work again for my living – they have cut the lot. “Our money, our social insurance – they have cut them. How are we going to live?”

Another Cypriot, Stelios, came out of the bank empty handed. “I tried to get my February wages and they gave me a piece of paper only,” he said. “I have two children in the army and they asked for money – I don’t have money to give them. “The Government didn’t pay anybody. My old parents didn’t get their pension.”

…Large depositors face losses of as much as 40% of their savings as part of the deal, leading to fears that customers would attempt to withdraw large amounts of money when the banks reopened.

For more on the subject of Cyprus, we turn the latest installment of Bill Whittle’s Afterburner:

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, forget the Dow and focus on what the MSM’s not:

US economy expands at 0.4 percent rate

 

Forget “anemic”; the canary in America’s coalmine is comatose.

But as the subject of today’s “We Can Afford Everything But Defense; Oh, and White House Tours” segment proves, despite the supposed rigors of sequestration, it’s business as usual in the nation’s capital:

Feds Fund $880,000 to Study Benefits of Snail Sex

 

The National Science Foundation awarded a grant for $876,752 to the University of Iowa to study whether there is any benefit to sex among New Zealand mud snails and whether that explains why any organism has sex.

The study, first funded in 2011 and continuing until 2015, will study the New Zealand snails to see if it is better that they reproduce sexually or asexually – the snail can do both – hoping to gain insight on why so many organisms practice sexual reproduction.

From the Dimocratic perspective, it’s like, “Debt…deficits…sequestration…

Which brings us, appropriately enough, to our “You Can’t Fix Stupid” segment, brought to you today by WWBT-TV:

VA police officers refused service because of guns

 

A server at Buffalo Wild Wings reportedly refused to serve eight police officers, because they had their weapons displayed. The Prince William County Police officers were on-duty, but were in plain clothes, reports the Manassas Patch. They were refused service by an employee who stated that the property was a gun-free establishment. The officers had their badges displayed but still weren’t served.

Scott Lupton, the general manager of the Manassas Buffalo Wild Wings location says the incident was a “huge misunderstanding.”

Perhaps; though we’re relatively certain the employment process at most Buffalo Wild Wings doesn’t include an intelligence test.  Then again, what establishment volunteering to host the next Jared Loughner/Adam Lanza copycat would want armed police officers scaring away their “target” customer?!?

Speaking of ignorance, it’s the topic of our latest “MSM Bias…WHAT Bias?!?” segment, as Luke Russert’s inability to understand Tony Perkins’ obvious point leads us to conclude he’s either stunningly stupid or hopelessly biased:

And since we’re on the subject of hopeless, we turn to the “Do As I SAY, NOT As I DO!” segment, as Special Report exposes the rank hypocrisy at the heart of modern Liberalism:

Off Limits?

 

This week, Matthew Boyle of Breitbart.com reported where Sasha and Malia Obama are spending their spring break. Salon’s Joan Walsh published a scathing critique. Quote — “Reporters don’t write about minor first children except when they’re attending ‘official or semi-official events.'”

But consider this article that Mediaite discovered written by that same Joan Walsh written back in 2001, when the Bush daughters were caught drinking underage while in college.

She questioned if there was a connection between the girls’ partying and then-president George W. Bush’s struggle with alcohol.

Today, after that article was revealed, Walsh said she regrets covering the Bush daughters’ drinking but maintains what Breitbart did was worse because revealing the Obamas’ vacation in a big hotel could be a security risk.

Yeah; after all, prior to Boyle’s report, no one had a clue Sasha and Maliah were anywhere close to the Bahamas…

…oh,…never mind!

As Al Delgado noted at Mediate.com:

“…So, in The-World-According-to-Walsh, Boyle’s reporting on a taxpayer-funded vacation (noteworthy, in light of the White House citing Secret Service costs in shutting down tours of its premises) reeks of racism and is wholly inappropriate … but reporting on a teenage girl’s partying in detail and implying she may have possibly inherited her father’s drinking problem? A-okay.”

The Left: were it not for double-standards, they’d have no standards at all.

Shifting to the Right, courtesy of the WSJ, Liz Cheney, former State Department official under Bush II, offers an amazingly concise summary of The Obamao’s impact on America while urging…

Republicans, Get Over the 2012 Loss—and Start Fighting Back

Those who counsel that the GOP should move left are wrongheaded or Democrats, or both.

 

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it and then hand it to them with the well-taught lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same. And if you and I don’t do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.”

—Ronald Reagan, March 30, 1961

President Reagan’s words, spoken 52 years ago this weekend, still ring true, with one modification. If we don’t defend our freedoms now against the onslaught of President Obama’s policies, we won’t have to wait until our sunset years for American freedom to be a distant memory.

These days Washington careens from crisis to crisis, most of them manufactured. The Obama White House and its allies are engaged in the kind of sky-is-falling melodrama normally reserved for the lives of teenage girls. (As the mother of teenage girls, I speak with authority on this, though the comparison does a disservice to teenagers.) With our attention diverted by each fiscal cliff or sequestration drama, we are at risk of missing the real threats to the republic.

President Obama is the most radical man ever to occupy the Oval Office. The national debt, which he is intent on increasing, has passed $16 trillion. He believes that more government borrowing and spending are the solution to every problem. He seems unaware that the free-enterprise system has lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system devised by man. (He knows; but as he thrives on discord and misery…

…he just doesn’t care!)

Perhaps his ignorance of that fact explains his hostility toward the private sector. In one of his autobiographies, the president writes that he felt “like a spy behind enemy lines” during his brief stint working for private industry.

The president has launched a war on Americans’ Second Amendment rights. He has launched a war on religious freedom. He has launched a war on fossil fuels. He is working to nationalize one-sixth of the economy with job-killing ObamaCare. He wants to collect a greater portion of every American paycheck, not for the purpose of paying down the national debt but to expand his governing machine. He doesn’t believe in creating a bigger pie with more opportunity for all. He believes in greater redistribution of a much smaller pie. If you’re unsure of what this America would look like, Google “Cyprus” or “Greece.”

The president has so effectively diminished American strength abroad that there is no longer a question of whether this was his intent. (Or that our senior military leaders willingly assisted him.) He is working to pre-emptively disarm the United States. He advocates slashing our nuclear arsenal even as the North Koreans threaten us and the Iranians close in on their own nuclear weapon. He has turned his back on America’s allies around the world and ignored growing threats.

Al Qaeda is resurgent across the Middle East. President Obama stood by and did nothing when its affiliates in Libya killed the U.S. ambassador and three other brave Americans in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11. Then he and his administration misled the American people about the attack. Today, more than six months later, no one has been held to account. The clear message of this episode to America’s enemies around the world is: Attack us with impunity. You will suffer no consequences.

In the face of this reality, it is time for Republicans to get over their loss in 2012. We are all that stands between this president’s policies and a damaged and diminished America. It is time to get back in the fight. (We, like you, never left it!)

And I do mean fight. Republicans are being counseled to move the party to the left, but in my experience, those who advocate more liberal policies for the GOP are wrongheaded or Democrats, or both. You can be sure that President Obama would welcome an America in which the Republican Party is preoccupied with remaking itself into a watered-down version of the Democrats.

It is time to defend our values with vigor and courage. We are conservatives. We believe in limited government, low taxes, a strong national defense, individual freedoms, self-reliance, the importance of the family, and the miracle and authority of America’s founding documents. We know that government is best that governs least and governs closest to the people. We know that the private sector is the engine of economic growth. We know that America is the exceptional nation, the best that has ever existed. We know that the men and women who wear the uniform of the U.S. military are the greatest fighting force and the greatest force for good that the world has ever known.

We know that preventing this president from enacting devastating policies is not obstructionism. It is patriotism.

The miracle of the Constitution resides to a large extent in the first three words, “We the People,” placing sovereignty with us, not with our rulers. We are the inheritors of these blessings of liberty, and it is our solemn duty to fight for, protect and defend our freedom. Now is the time to pick ourselves up, brush ourselves off, and man the barricades for freedom.

Any questions?!?  Okay then,…

Oh…and no more Romneys, McCains or any other species of RINO.

And in the Environmental Moment, the Journal‘s Kim Strassel juxtaposes the truth against The Obamao’s lies:

Which begs the question why Romney wasn’t ready, willing and able to provide the same statistics.

Next up, today’s Money Quote, and the acerbic wisdom of Ann Coulter:

“Liberals’ advice to rape and domestic abuse victims is: Lie back and enjoy it. The Times‘ advice is: Get a protective order. The NRA’s advice is: Blow the dirtbag’s head off. Or, for the delicate: Resist with a gun, the only effective means to stop an attack.“

On the Lighter Side…

Then there’s this forward from Balls Cotton which seems to us simple common sense…

…and likely why it hasn’t occurred to anyone in Washington.

Then there’s this from the Dean Vernon Wormer Memorial “No Fun of Any Kind” segment:

Dodgeball ban at New Hampshire school district after bullying

 

A New Hampshire school district has banned dodgeball and other “human target” activities over concerns about violence and bullying. The school board in Windham voted 4-1 last week to remove the game and nine others from the district’s curriculum. The Eagle-Tribune reports the board voted after a committee of physical education teachers studied the issue. A middle school parent complained his child was bullied during a dodgeball game.

The committee recommended eliminating the game, and others, including prison ball, slaughter, and bombardment. “We spend a lot of time making sure our kids are violence free,” Windham superintendent Dr. Henry LaBranche said. “Here we have games where we use children as targets. That seems to be counter to what we are trying to accomplish with our anti-bullying campaign.”

School Board member Dennis Senibaldi cast the sole vote against the ban. “We have rules that are set in place to deal with bullying,” he said. “We don’t need to ban an entire round of games just to enforce those rules.”

The National Association for Sport and Physical Education said there are any number of reasons to drop dodgeball. “It’s an elimination game,” said Andrew Mead, program manager at NASPE. “Games like dodgeball and tag don’t keep kids involved and physically active. They objectify slower students who don’t catch as well.”

You know…sorta like life.

Finally, courtesy of Mike McKee, proof positive confession is good for soul, even for Man’s Best Friend:

http://imgur.com/a/7k6MH

God bless you all this Easter weekend.

Magoo