It’s Monday, September 23rd, 2013…but before we begin, three quick items which explain how everything wrong with America is of the government, for the government and attributable to policies designed solely by the government:

Chicago Police Chief Calls for Nationwide Assault Weapon and High-Capacity Magazine Ban

“They’re already illegal?  Well as of now, they’re double-secretly illegal!”

On Thursday, 13 people were shot and injured in a park in Chicago. The shootings were carried out by an “assault style rifle” with a high-capacity magazine, both of which are already banned in the city of Chicago. Nevertheless, Chicago Police Superintendent Garry F. McCarthy has called for a nationwide ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

“Illegal guns drive violence. Military-type weapons, like the one we believe to have been used in this shooting, belong on a battlefield, not on a street or in a corner or in a park.”

Sooo…making what’s already illegal twice as illegal will somehow cause criminals to suddenly adhere to gun laws…how?!?  This is a man with no effective plan to curtail the violence in his own city looking to cast the blame anywhere other than where it belongs.  And saving his bacon means depriving hundreds of millions of law-abiding Americans of their Constitutional rights, so be it.  Then again, he’s learned…

…from two experts!

Next, as Roll Call reports…

House CR Forks Over $174,000 for Late Senator’s Wife

There are many things House Republicans liked about the government continuing resolution. It defunds Obamacare, locks in the sequester spending cuts and keeps the government running. But there’s one provision tucked into the CR that may anger constituents back home: Among the various sections of the House-passed CR are 28 words that would pay $174,000 to the widow of the late Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, D-N.J.

“Sec. 134. Notwithstanding any other provision of this joint resolution, there is appropriated for payment to Bonnie Englebardt Lautenberg, widow of Frank R. Lautenberg, late a Senator from New Jersey, $174,000.”

The death gratuity — a long-practiced, little-known, unofficial perk of office — has been a staple of congressional deaths. A Congressional Research Service report on members who die in office says:

“…it has been the typical practice of the House to provide a death gratuity equal to the member’s annual salary, payable to the deceased member’s widow or widower, or children either in the annual legislative branch appropriations act or a measure providing supplemental funds for the legislative branch. By statute, a death gratuity is considered a gift.”

Before Lautenberg’s death, he was No. 8 on Roll Call’s 50 Richest Members of Congress with a net worth of at least $56.8 million.

And hey, $56.8 million only gets a grieving widow so far!  $56.974, on the other hand…!  Tell us again why we can’t afford an effective Military under sequestration?!?

Lastly, come October 1st, it’s Toyota Time for the Feminazis: they asked for it…

…they got it!  Radical women across America may now unite in joyous celebration; abortions on demand and free birth control for all…provided of course Uncle Sam’s permitted to oversee, administer and adjudicate every single other aspect of their healthcare

As Benjamin Franklin so eloquently observed, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”  And as current trends in America clearly indicate, those who refuse to actively oppose Progressive policies won’t achieve either.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, in the “Draw Your Own Conclusions” segment, courtesy of Katie Pavelich and Townhall.com:

Spitting on Their Graves: Democrats Leave Benghazi Hearing Before Testimony From Families of Victims

During the second portion of a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing about Benghazi Thursday on Capitol Hill, the majority of Democrats on the Committee left the room and refused to listen to the testimony of Patricia Smith and Charles Woods. Ms. Smith is the mother of Sean Smith, an information management officer killed in the 9/11 Benghazi attack. Charles Woods is the father of Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods, who was also killed.

In the interests of fairness, it appears only six Republican congressmen stayed to listen to Smith and Woods, yet they still outnumbered the remaining Dimocrats by 3:1.  We report…you decide.

Moving to other News of the Middle East, as ABC News details…

Obama Rejects Criticism of Shifting Syria Policy: ‘I’m Less Concerned About Style Points’

Syria policy?  WHAT Syria policy?!?

This eerily recalls the last guy we remember who rejected any criticism of his policies…

….particularly those involving the Eastern Front!

And in a related item, Lurch demonstrates he at least knows not to bite the hand that feeds him:

Kerry: ‘I Want to Thank President Putin’

Next up, courtesy of NRO, Mark Steyn describes what he terms…

American Ineffectualism

Every American ally is cringing with embarrassment at the amateurishness of the last month.

This is diplomacy for post-moderns: The more you tell the world that you have to bomb Syria to preserve your credibility, the less credible any bombing raid on Syria is going to be — especially when your leaders are reduced to negotiating the precise degree of military ineffectiveness necessary to maintain that credibility. In London this week, John Kerry, America’s secretary of state, capped his own impressive four-decade accumulation of magnificently tin-eared sound bites by assuring his audience that the military devastation the superpower would wreak on Assad would be “unbelievably small.” Actually, the problem is that it will be all too believably small. The late Milton Berle, when challenged on his rumored spectacular endowment, was wont to respond that he would only take out just enough to win. In London, Kerry took out just enough to lose.

In the Obama era, to modify Teddy Roosevelt, America chatters unceasingly and carries an unbelievably small stick. In this, the wily Putin saw an opening, and offered a “plan” so absurd that even Obama’s court eunuchs in the media had difficulty swallowing it. A month ago, Assad was a reviled war criminal and Putin his arms dealer. Now, Putin is the honest broker and Obama’s partner for peace, and the war criminal is at the negotiating table with his chances of survival better than they’ve looked in a year. On the same day the U.S. announced it would supply the Syrian rebels with light arms and advanced medical kits, Russia announced it would give Assad’s buddies in Iran the S-300 ground-to-air weapons system and another nuclear reactor.

Putin has pulled off something incredible: He’s gotten Washington to anoint him as the international community’s official peacemaker, even as he assists Iran in going nuclear and keeping their blood-soaked Syrian client in his presidential palace. Already, under the “peace process,” Putin and Assad are running rings around the dull-witted Kerry, whose Botoxicated visage embodies all too well the expensively embalmed state of the superpower.

As for Putin’s American-exceptionalism crack, he was attacking less the concept than Obama’s opportunist invocation of it as justification for military action in Syria. Nevertheless, Democrats and Republicans alike took the bait. Eager to mend bridges with the base after his amnesty bill, Marco Rubio insisted at National Review Online that America was still, like, totally exceptional.

Sorry, this doesn’t pass muster even as leaden, staffer-written codswallop. It’s not the time — not when you’re a global joke, not when every American ally is cringing with embarrassment at the amateurishness of the last month. Nobody, friend or foe, wants to hear about American exceptionalism when the issue is American ineffectualism. On CBS, Bashar Assad called the U.S. government “a social-media administration.” He’s got a better writer than Obama, too. America is in danger of being the first great power to be laughed off the world stage. When the president’s an irrelevant narcissist and his secretary of state’s a vainglorious buffoon, Marco Rubio shouldn’t be telling the world don’t worry, the other party’s a joke, too.

Then there’s what we can only hope and pray is this accurately apocalyptic view from Peter Wehner writing at Commentary Magazine:

The Collapse of the Obama Presidency

How bad has 2013 been for Barack Obama? Let us count the ways.

In the first year of his second term, the president has failed on virtually every front. He put his prestige on the line to pass federal gun-control legislation–and lost. He made climate change a central part of his inaugural address–and nothing has happened. The president went head-to-head with Republicans on sequestration–and he failed. He’s been forced to delay implementation of the employer mandate, a key feature of the Affordable Care Act. ObamaCare is more unpopular than ever, and it’s turning out to be a “train wreck” (to quote Democratic Senator Max Baucus) in practice. The most recent jobs report was the worst in a year, with the Obama recovery already qualifying as a historically weak one. Immigration reform is going nowhere. And then there’s Syria, which has turned out to be an epic disaster. (To be sure, Mr. Obama’s Middle East failures go well beyond Syria–but Syria is the most conspicuous failure right now).

In watching the Obama presidency dissolve before our eyes, there is a cautionary tale to be told. Every presidency falls short of the expectations that the candidate sets. But no man has ever promised more and delivered less than the current occupant of the Oval Office.

All of the extravagant promises and claims–of “Yes We Can!” and “we’re the ones we’ve been waiting for;” of hope and change and slowing the rise of the oceans; of claiming his candidacy would “ring out across this land as a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, make this time different than all the rest”–lie in ruin. (I’d urge you to watch this short video clip from the 2008 campaign  to more fully appreciate the crushing disappointment that results from what Mr. Obama said he would achieve versus what he’s been able to achieve.)

In all of this one is reminded of the wisdom of the Book of Proverbs, which warns that “pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” The president has been shown to be a man out of his depth time and again. But here’s the problem: Mr. Obama’s failures have inflicted great and durable harm on the United States. This may be worth keeping in mind the next time an eloquent community organizer decides he’s ready to be commander in chief.

Here’s hoping…and praying…America survives long enough to see it.

On the Lighter Side…

And in the Wonderful World of Sports, courtesy of one Clay Travis “covering” the Alabama-A&M outcome, the most biased, bizarre and unfounded bit of sportswriting idiocy we’ve ever had the misfortune to review:

“…Sure, there’s a segment of conservative white America that wanted to see Johnny Manziel humbled, wanted Nick Saban and his rigorous process to knock the crap out of this cocky, audacious pipsqueak of a quarterback who dared to speak out of turn and freelance and sit courtside for NBA games and hang out with the rapper Drake and not genuflect at the false altar of forced sporting modesty.

I suppose these people have their own reasons. Lots of us crave law and order and the tamping down of individuality. We all bring our values to sports, and for conservative fans there’s a “right way” and a “wrong way” to play football. And Johnny Manziel plays “the wrong way.” The subtext here is clear: He’s too uppity and needs to be shown his place by a conservative society.”

Funny; we’re about as Conservative and White as anyone in America…and we were just DYING to see A&M beat the stuffing outta Nick Saban and Alabama.

Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with the Medical Section, and this from Christine Rouselle and Townhall.com:

California to Legalize Non-Physician Abortions

Christine’s closing thought says it all:

“…In California, if an animal needs an abortion, the procedure must be carried out by a licensed veterinary surgeon. It appears now that the State of California views humans as deserving a lower standard of care than a housecat.”

Magoo