It’s Friday, July 25th, 2014…but before we begin, we offer, to borrow a phrase from the great Thomas Sowell, a few thoughts on the passing scene.  More specifically, here’s what we find to be the three most utterly inexplicable tenets of the modern Left, i.e., three points of Progressive politics we’ll never understand nor support.  

Exhibit A: their dogmatic dedication to the destruction of the unborn:

Nice try, Nancy, but no cigar; though neither Joseph nor Mary were Roman citizens, they were in fact legal residents of the Empire.  More importantly, as Mary was an unmarried virgin at the time of Christ’s immaculate conception, He was technically born of an unwed mother.  Thus had Mary lived in contemporary times, the Savior would have been an ideal candidate for the tender ministrations of Planned Parenthood, or even Kermit Gosnell; as supported, funded and defended to the hilt by B. Hussein Obama, Nancy Pelosi and the vast preponderance of Progressivism.

Exhibit B: their unyielding support of professional, practicing terrorists:

Watch the most infuriating interview on the Israel-Gaza conflict yet

 

Infuriating only if one recognizes Tara Reid, like almost every supporter of the mythical “Palestinians”, (outside of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood and the rest of the Koran-reading terrorist world), knows next to nothing about either the history of the modern state of Israel, the implacability of her foes, or the nature of the warfare presently being waged.  In other words, she might as well be arguing quantum physics with Stephen Hawking for all the value her opinions and questions offer on the subject at hand. As Yid with Lid details, whether or not Hamas is using civilian as human shields really isn’t even a legitimate question: 

So You Want Proof Hamas Uses Civilians As Human Shields? Here Are Ten Examples.

 

Note the MSLSD reporter featured above doesn’t offer any independent assessment, either from his own personal observations or that of other…”reporters”…, but relies solely on the assurance of the representative(s) of Hamas, formally named a Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization by none other than the mealy-mouthed appeasers from Foggy Bottom back in October of ’97. Israel isn’t perfect; but given the fact they’re the only functioning democracy in the entire Middle East, the country was founded and has flourished in the face of implacable opposition while repeatedly giving land and other concessions without any quantifiable quid pro quo and grants the same rights to all its citizens irrespective of race, color or religion, all while under the constant threat of total annihilation, we’re going with…

…the good guys!  What we cannot fathom is those who cannot differentiate between, to paraphrase Bibi Netanyahu, a democracy who uses its missiles to protect its people and a terrorist organization using its people to protect its missiles…along with hospitals, schools and any other site or building the destruction of which could result in significant civilian casualties suitable for viewing on the “Palestinian”-protecting Evening News!

Lastly, Exhibit C: their complete and utter surrender to self-absorption.  Case in point: 

Then again, with the Narcissist-in-Chief as their role model… 

…what else can one expect from Millennials, a generation produced by a public school system which doesn’t educate, churches which teach complete moral equivalency, parents (assuming their kids know who they are) who don’t do either (being too busy or selfish to care), and which gets their news from…

Jon Stewart’s Moral Lunacy

 

…The Daily Show?!? As Ronald Reagan so accurately observed…

Now we’ll step down off our soapbox and give you The Gouge!

First up, a logical follow-on to our intro, as the WSJ‘s Dan Henninger calls The Obamao’s detachment what it actually is:

Obama to World: Drop Dead

The most provincial U.S. president in at least a century.

 

“Asked on “Meet the Press” Sunday whether this was the lowest moment in U.S.-Russia relations since the Cold War, America’s robo-Secretary of State John Kerry replied: “We live in an extremely complicated world right now, where everybody is working on 10 different things simultaneously.” Well, not everyone.

As the world burns, the president spent this week fiddling at fundraisers in the living rooms of five Democratic Party fat cats in Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. As White House communications director Jennifer Palmieri famously explained, changing the president’s fundraising schedule “can have the unintended consequence of unduly alarming the American people or creating a false sense of crisis.”

Crises…WHAT crises?!?

…This week the original 9/11 Commission put out an update on global terrorism. The report says the “complacency” that led to 9/11 “is happening again.”

How, then, to explain someone who claims he can run the country and a troubled world out of his back pocket while he flies from fundraiser to fundraiser? Barack Obama is the most provincial U.S. president in at least a century. The progressive Democrats who displaced the Clinton machine in 2008 and came to power with Mr. Obama have no interest beyond consolidating political and electoral power inside the U.S. Not even the White House of Lyndon Johnson, the ultimate pol, was so purely politicized.

The fundraising is a frantic effort to protect this new Democratic voter machine. The world doesn’t vote, so the world doesn’t matter. Unless, of course, the American people in November decide that a world defined by events like Flight 17 does matter.“

Otherwise, Punxsutawney Phil is calling for…

…two more years of the same…or worse!

Next up, writing at The Federalist, noted misogynist Daniel Payne names names in listing…

The Many Fabricated Enemies of Feminists

Today’s feminists are adroit at manufacturing a successive series of mystical antagonists in order to advance their causes.

 

“…There is a word that embodies the kind of single-minded fanaticism of modern feminism: a cult. Theodore Dalrymple has written of the cult-like churches that exist in England today, headed as they are by “self-proclaimed authorities who rush in to fill the moral vacuum.” Having joined such churches, the vulnerable are brainwashed into accepting not the Gospel of the Lord but the gospel of the church in question, creating a situation in which, as Dalrymple writes, “the meaninglessness of pre-cult existence was replaced by the equally dispiriting deep meaningfulness of the most trivial of desires and actions.” Thus, too, does a fun, lighthearted event such as tossing a bouquet of flowers become a fraught self-examination of whether or not one is supporting and indulging The Patriarchy…“

Since we’re on the subject of fanciful fabrications, as well as the mid-term elections, here’s some news which could impact the results in November:

Senator Says He Had PTSD When He Wrote Thesis

 

“I don’t want to blame my mistake on PTSD…but I AM!”

“Sen. John Walsh of Montana said Wednesday his failure to attribute conclusions and verbatim passages lifted from other scholars’ work in his thesis to earn a master’s degree from the U.S. Army War College was an unintentional mistake caused in part by post-traumatic stress disorder.

…Walsh told The Associated Press when he wrote the thesis, he had PTSD from his service in Iraq, was on medication and was dealing with the stress of a fellow veteran’s recent suicide. “I don’t want to blame my mistake on PTSD, but I do want to say it may have been a factor,” the senator said. “My head was not in a place very conducive to a classroom and an academic environment.”

…Walsh’s military record was first questioned in January when records revealed the Army reprimanded him in 2010 for pressuring guardsmen to join a private association for which he was seeking a leadership role. Walsh was adjutant general at the time and wanted to become vice chairman of the National Guard Association of the United States. In the reprimand, Army Vice Chief of Staff Peter Chiarelli said he questioned Walsh’s ability to lead.

Political scientist David Parker of Montana State University said Walsh’s thesis combined with the reprimand raise questions about the senator’s integrity. “If this were it, in isolation, I don’t think it would be a big deal,” Parker said. “But now we’ve got two issues of honor and competency.”

Sooo…the guy’s a dishonorable, incompetent plagiarizer…with a marked inability to lead:

No wonder the Left loves him!  Rumors Walsh has been earmarked by the Dimocratic Establishment for higher office remain unconfirmed. Then again, thanks to the current Administration, the bar…

…isn’t exactly high.

Speaking of dimwits…

EPA Chief: ‘This Is Not About Pollution Control…It’s an Investment Strategy’

 

Yeah…and then we’re gonna lower everyone’s electric bills…using pixie dust!

“…“And the great thing about this proposal is it really is an investment opportunity. This is not about pollution control. It’s about increased efficiency at our plants…It’s about investments in renewables and clean energy. It’s about investments in people’s ability to lower their electricity bills by getting good, clean, efficient appliances, homes, rental units,” McCarthy told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

“This is an investment strategy that will really not just reduce carbon pollution but will position the United States to continue to grow economically in every state, based on their own design,” McCarthy added…“

Yeah; just like…

Which brings us to today’s installment of the Environmental Moment, as James Taranto details how the anthropogenic global warming scammers claim to have been right even when they were most definitely wrong:

They Were Global Warmists Before It Was Cool 

 

“There’s been a lot of debate over the global warming ‘pause’ that has occurred between 1998 and 2013,” reports ScienceWorldReport.com:

Now, though, researchers may have found out why this pause has occurred. . . .

The deceleration in rising temperatures after 1998 is often referred to as a pause, or a hiatus, in global warming. It’s raised questions about why the rate of surface warming on Earth has been markedly slower than in previous decades. What’s more curious is that levels of greenhouse gases have continued to rise throughout the period.

In order to better understand why global warming seemed to be on hold, the researchers applied a statistical methodology developed in a previous paper. This earlier study used pre-industrial temperature proxies to analyze historical climate patterns and ruled out the possibility that global warming in the industrial area is just a natural fluctuation in Earth’s climate. The researchers applied the same approach to the 15-year period after 1998.

So what did they find? It turns out that there has been a natural cooling fluctuation of about .28 to .37 degrees Celsius since 1998. This pattern is in line with variations that occur historically every 20 to 50 years.

So the scientists who claim to understand the climate have just now figured out that temperatures are subject to natural variation?

Where the hell would we be without such experts?!?

In a related item, as The Hockey Schtick reports…

New paper finds only ~3.75% of atmospheric CO2 is man-made from burning of fossil fuels

 

“A paper published today in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics finds that only about 3.75% [15 ppm] of the CO2 in the lower atmosphere is man-made from the burning of fossil fuels, and thus, the vast remainder of the 400 ppm atmospheric CO2 is from land-use changes and natural sources such as ocean outgassing and plant respiration.
According to the authors:

We find that the average gradients of fossil fuel CO2 in the lower 1200 meters of the atmosphere are close to 15 ppm at a 12 km × 12 km horizontal resolution.

The findings are in stark contrast to alarmist claims that essentially all of the alleged 130 ppm increase in CO2 since pre-industrial times is of man-made origin from the burning of fossil fuels, finding instead that only 15 ppm or ~11.5% of the increase is of fossil fuel origin. The findings cast additional doubt upon the IPCC carbon-cycle Bern Model, previously falsified by the atomic bomb tests. 
Furthermore, if use of fossil-fuels has contributed such a small part of total atmospheric CO2 levels, restricting use of fossil fuels will have little effect upon CO2 levels…“

But like the Dims dogged devotion to the “plight” of the “Palestinians”, no amount of factual refutation will ever change Progressives’ position on the junk science that is the theory of anthropogenic global warming.  As with their complete and absolute adoration of The Anointed One, Libs are “all in“…with nary a pair in their hand!

And in the Entertainment Section, we learn…

David Gregory’s time on ‘Meet the Press’ is almost up

 

David Gregory’s recent hard-hitting interview with John Kerry.

“According to insiders, NBC political director and chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd is the rightful heir to Gregory, but he has not been officially offered the job.

…MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” team of Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski have also been said to be angling for a Sunday slot, but NBC insiders said there are concerns about putting a partisan host in charge of “Meet the Press,” as Scarborough is a former Republican congressman…“

Thus, in the tortured minds of NBC‘s senior management (and concurrently, the White House), former RINO congressman Joe Scarborough is a probable partisan, while a former Democrat staffer married to a Democrat operative, such as…let’s say…Chuck Todd…isn’t?!?  We wish we could say…

…but we’re not!  And likely, neither are you.

Which brings us, appropriately enough, to the Lighter Side…

Next, since we’re on the subject of multi-millionaires who never do much of anything but party, our old buddy Bruce Knapp forwarded what should be the first consequence of any government shutdown:

Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with the Wonderful World of Science, and this just in from Atlanta:

Doctor Claims That Dogs Understand What Humans Say To Them

 

Like…

…DUH?!?  Cats, on the other hand…

Magoo