It’s Friday, January 9th, 2015…but before we begin, an incredibly powerful, must-see video forwarded by one of our favorite 2nd Amendment stalwarts, Bill Meisen, detailing the education and conversion of a man who’s finally seen the light:
If only two other “Reverends” we know…and a number of other race-baiters we can think of…
…were as interested in the truth, let alone honesty.
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up, the WSJ‘s Dan Henninger details the way in which, thanks to the moral and spiritual blindness championed by present-day Progressives…
“…As a kind of footnote to the Charlie Hebdo massacre Wednesday, an al Qaeda suicide-bomber at about the same hour in Sana, Yemen, blew up 37 people. It will pass virtually without notice.
After each major terrorist act that catches the world’s attention—the four-day attack in 2008 in Mumbai by the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba; the 2013 assault on a Nairobi shopping center by al-Shabaab; the eruption of the Islamic State beheaders in Iraq this year—one thinks that this will be the event that causes the West’s political leadership to get serious about the global threat of Islamic fundamentalism, whose primary political instrument is homicide.
But it’s hard to focus. Terrorist bombs set off in crowded places obliterate not only what were once people but obliterate awareness of what has occurred. One way or another, it’s mostly blood-soaked debris.
The Peshawar massacre in December was different and more difficult to let drop from memory. One can imagine seven adult men walking from one classroom to another, methodically executing boys and girls in white shirts and blouses at their desks. Rather than the act of a random insane person, Peshawar, in the minds of the Taliban, was a rational, well-planned military atrocity. A success. Just like every other terrorist act dating back to 9/11 and before.
Past some point, it is feckless to call these events “incidents.” They are acts in a war. The people committing them think so and they say so. Why don’t we?…”
“Why don’t we?” Well, one reason…
…and one particular political persuasion…
…immediately come to mind!
In a related item, writing at Commentary Magazine, Jonathan Tobin states what’s obvious to anyone with half a clue:
“The blood of the victims of the Charlie Hebdo terror attack in Paris yesterday hadn’t yet been washed away from the floor of the newsroom before a persistent meme started working its way into the coverage of this atrocity. Even as people around the world reacted with shock and horror to the murder of 10 journalists and two police officers by Islamist terrorists, some in the media began speaking of a possible backlash against Muslims as the most important consequence of the crime. While such fears are not entirely unreasonable, it is important to understand that much of the discussion about a backlash has less to do with the actual plight of Muslims in the West as it does with an effort to reshape the narrative of this event to one in which political Islam is taken off the hook for what it has wrought. As much as we ought to condemn any actions that seek to target innocent Muslims, the impulse to treat Islamist beliefs as the victim rather than part of the problem is a terrible mistake.
Talk about a backlash should have a ring of inauthenticity to Americans. Many here rightly understand that the notion of a post-9/11 backlash is largely a myth that has been promoted by those who wish to change the subject from that of the very real threat from Islamism to a non-existent threat to U.S. Muslims from their fellow citizens. There is no statistical proof of a surge in attacks on Muslims after 9/11. If anything, both the country’s political leadership and those who guide popular culture have gone overboard in their attempts to disassociate Islam from those who kill in its name…”
Or for that matter, any other kind of proof…not to mention even the slightest scintilla of a hint. But when has The Left let facts get in the way of what their feelings tell them to be true?!?
Since we’re on the subject of Liberal hypocrisy and double-dealing, as Guy Benson notes at Townhall.com…
Sure…unless the image in question is of the Christian Messiah…
…and the AP can realize a profit from promoting it…and not get shot in the process!
Which brings us, appropriately enough, to today’s edition of the “Sh*t You Just Can’t Make Up” segment, in which The Washington Times tells us…
Mexican president offers Obama help with amnesty documents
“Mexico’s president told President Obama Tuesday that his government will supply the documents necessary for millions of illegal Mexican immigrants to prove they’ve been living in the U.S. prior to 2010, a move that will help them qualify for Mr. Obama’s recently announced deportation amnesty.
In an Oval Office meeting, President Enrique Pena Nieto praised Mr. Obama’s executive action on amnesty as “very intelligent and audacious,” and said his government will do everything in its power to ensure that Mexicans who want to stay in the U.S. can do so…”
Gee…what nominal leader of a kleptocratic oligarchy like Mexico wouldn’t want to help a neighbor willing to take tens of millions of uneducated, unemployable, potentially-revolutionary peons off his hands?!? Well, at least Tom Coburn agrees with Pena’s opinion of our President’s prodigious perspicacity!
Moving on, the WSJ‘s Holman Jenkins reports on…
“…The system being demonstrated on the road to Vegas, Audi says, is simply a natural extension of existing safety technology designed to relieve drivers of tedious or burdensome tasks. Its journalist test drivers, who underwent special certification, were supposed to be able to hand control over to a computer when creeping along in stop-and-go traffic or when droning down the superslab. To maintain a fixed freeway speed, the computer was even supposed to be able to cope with slow traffic by changing lanes and passing without assistance from the driver.
But here’s a question: Why would a driver activate such a system except to turn his attention elsewhere? Yet Audi’s piloted-driving system expects the driver to remain alert enough to respond within a few seconds if the computer decides to hand back control to him. If the driver isn’t ready, reportedly the car will turn on its flashers and find a way quickly to bring itself to a stop.
Is this not crazy, the equivalent of an airplane computer dumping the job of flying back in the pilot’s lap just at the moment when 10 things are going wrong at once? When I was growing up, a friend’s mother was known for driving around town with a book propped open on her steering wheel. Nobody should be psyched by the prospect of roads filling up with drivers like my friend’s mom…”
Yeah; can you say…
…Asiana Flight 214? We KNEW you could!
Speaking of delusions, courtesy of The Boss and The Fresno Bee…
Anyone else wondering who footed the bill for the EPA Administrator to attend this sorry soiree?!?
“…In a shrewd bit of staging, the podium was arranged so that television cameras (and there were plenty from across the state) pointed away from the streets and the dozen or so protesters who lined the fence. Those with strong lungs focused on two key themes: First, that high-speed rail makes no economic sense, that the price tag for something this complicated is beyond anyone’s ability to accurately predict, and the burden of debt would crush future generations; and second, if the government is going to print money like there’s no tomorrow, why not spend the dough on something vital like water security?
…Critics can’t understand how their fellow Californians got everyone into what they see as a stunning mess. “This plan is not what we voted for,” said Carole Jacoby of Fresno.
In a news conference before the ceremony, Assembly Member Jim Patterson, a Republican and former Fresno mayor and high-speed rail opponent, said that while he supports progress, “what we cannot support is financial foolishness and government deceit, and that is what this high-speed rail project is all about. Nothing the government has promised the people, either at the ballot box or afterward, is coming true.”
Patterson said he spoke on behalf of Republicans in the state Assembly and Senate in asserting that the trains will not go as fast and will cost more than promised, that prime agriculture land is being torn out, and no money has been identified to finish the project. “What we are seeing here is basically a phony groundbreaking,” he said. “This is a stunt, and it covers over the hard facts that this is a financially irresponsible plan.”
As Mr. Meisen noted…
The Big Dig in Boston was estimated to cost $4 billion at it’s inception. The actual cost came in at $14.6 billion. It cost 3.65 times the original budget. That’s not uncommon on government projects. (Not uncommon? It’s SOP!!!)
Therefore, you can expect the actual costs based on a $68 billion budget to come in at about $248 billion or about a quarter of a trillion dollars. If you assume that a ticket to ride on this rail is $50 bucks, a conservative estimate, California would need to have 5 billion people ride this train in order to break even. That would mean that every man, woman and child in America would have to pay to ride on this train 17 times. Does anyone in their right mind think that this is realistic. It will never pencil out. Also keep in mind the state will likely be paying interest on that $248 billion, so that cost will go much higher.
This is a project based on liberal, feel good emotion with nothing at all to do with financial acumen.
Welcome to the reality of modern Liberalism!
But since reality works both ways, Kim Strassel offers a dose to those who think GOP control of the Senate equates to unfettered Republican control over Congress:
“Were anyone wondering how Sen. Harry Reid intended to manage life in the minority, it took one day of the 114th Congress to get the answer: Exactly as he did in the majority. Republicans would be wise to understand what he’s up to.
The Senate these past four years has been a supermassive black hole—a place where everything good went to die. The chamber was designed as a forum for debate, amendments, deliberation and coalition-building. Mr. Reid instead wielded it as a means of party protection—using its many procedural tools to block every bill, and to shield his members and the Obama White House from tough issues.
And while he isn’t officially running the Senate anymore, he’s still running on a Senate dysfunction agenda. New Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has vowed to restore the place to “regular order,” though he recently got a taste of how hard that might prove. Mr. Reid this week again accused the former Republican minority of “gratuitous obstruction and wanton filibustering,” and vowed such tactics would not “be a hallmark of a Democratic minority.” He then proceeded to unleash all the obstruction and filibustering in Christendom to slow Mr. McConnell ’s first priority: authorization of the Keystone XL pipeline…”
Meanwhile, Mitch, like his House soulmate John Boner…
…continues to display all the realpolitik of a beached beluga whale.
On the Lighter Side…
Finally, we wrap up the week with three keepers from Fielding Cocke:
Magoo
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