It’s Friday, January 16th, 2015…but before we begin, a brief bit of humor courtesy of Randy Weber, the Republican congressman who replaced the GOP’s Crazy Uncle in the Attic, Ron Paul:
Weber has since apologized; we only wonder…why? After all, like Joe Wilson before him…
…Weber was only speaking the truth; so why apologize?!?
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up, with all due respect to my Roman Catholic brothers, yet another strike against the concept of papal infallibility…at least as applies to this Pontiff:
“Alluding to an attack on a French magazine that left 12 people dead in reprisal for satirical depictions of Muhammad, Pope Francis today condemned the violence, but also said there are limits to free speech — especially when it involves religion.
In particular, the pope said, one shouldn’t abuse freedom of expression to “provoke” or “offend” others deliberately, and also shouldn’t be surprised when they react to such taunts. Even in the case of a dear friend, Francis said, “If he says a swear word against my mother, he’s going to get a punch in the nose. That’s normal.”
“People who make fun of, who toy with other people’s religions, he said, risk running into “what would happen to [that friend] if he said something against my mother.”…”
Really?!? So much for turning the other cheek. Punch in the nose…kill 12 people; makes sense to us! We don’t know the type of friends Francis hangs around with, let alone what they say about his mother; we can only respond…
Personally, we prefer the position espoused by Salman Rushdie:
We for one are confident our Lord and Savior is beyond besmirching by any human being, whatever they might say; and certainly capable of dealing with blasphemers in his own way and time.
On the other hand, Francis’ stand against unfettered free expression is in keeping with the position…
Professor Kari Marie Norgaard: any science-based skepticism—based on actual, not fictional data—should be “recognized and treated” as some sort of aberrant behavior.
…of his new-found friends in the Environazi movement.
For a realistic appraisal of the facts, we turn to the editors at NRO, who offered this assessment of the situation immediately following the attack:
“…A religion that commands murder as the punishment for blasphemy offends the God it professes to worship. In reality, it worships the Devil. And by such deeds as the half-random murders of innocent people ye shall know that truth.
Is Islam that religion? For most of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims, it is not. They follow the precepts of the Koran and seek to live harmoniously alongside their infidel neighbors, and where two Koranic interpretations clash, they choose to believe the one that conforms more to the civil laws and social customs of their societies. Most of the time they don’t ponder much on religious texts but get on with the daily business of living.
That is not so, however, for a large minority of Muslims — maybe hundreds of millions worldwide — who cleave to interpretations of their faith that enjoin murder, rape, torture, and cruelty as pious, even mandatory, acts. They take their diabolic faith seriously, and the result is what we saw in Paris today.
Thus, there are in practical terms two Islams — a religion, if not of peace, then of peaceful accommodation, and a religion of death.
Western political leaders try to dismiss this second death cult as a perverted or false Islam, or even as nothing to do with Islam at all. That dismissal is false and, worse, completely unpersuasive. The death cult has learned imams and sophisticated theologians among its adherents. They can quote Islamic texts in support of their revolting doctrines — and do so far more convincingly than President Obama, David Cameron, or Tony Blair do in support of their own. Their scholarship strengthens the faith of the suicide bombers and child soldiers. And because they justify murder and issue fatwas mandating it, they exercise some intimidation even over the leaders of the other Islam…”
Case in point: the consistent position of the Washington, DC chapter of the Neville Chamberlain Appeasement Society, aka “Team Tick-Tock”:
“Radical Islam”?!? Never heard of it!
So how does Islam’s newest, bestest friend respond?
But The Obamao and his prevaricating Progressive puppets couldn’t have pulled this off without the complete complicity of his devoted disciples in the MSM, as Commentary Magazine‘s Evelyn Gordon observes:
Which is the way the Western MSM will report it!
“…Once upon a time, Western liberals understood the critical importance of truthful information. They genuinely believed, as the New Testament proclaims, that “the truth shall set you free.” That’s precisely why the West invested so heavily in media outlets like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe during the Cold War: Many Westerners genuinely believed that letting Eastern Europeans and Soviet citizens hear the truth, rather than the propaganda published in Soviet media, would help bring the Iron Curtain down. And history proved them right.
But today, it seems, Western liberals no longer believe in the power of truth. If they did, they would realize that the road to defeating Islamic extremism starts with reporting faithfully on all its victims, day in and day out. For only when people know the truth about the carnage this extremism has wrought might they begin to turn against it.“
In a related item, writing at the Washington Examiner, Byron York points out what we’ve long espoused to be true:
“The uproar over whether President Obama or another top administration official should have attended the massive unity rally in Paris has obscured an important point about the White House’s reaction to the latest terror attacks in Europe. The administration no-shows were not a failure of optics, or a diplomatic misstep, but were instead the logical result of the president’s years-long effort to downgrade the threat of terrorism and move on to other things.
…Even as the march wound its way through Paris, the White House sent out yet another sign of its unseriousness. On Sunday morning, the press office announced the president will host a “Summit on Countering Violent Extremism” on Feb. 18. The plan is to bring together “social service providers, including education administrators, mental health professionals, and religious leaders, with law enforcement agencies to address violent extremism as part of the broader mandate of community safety and crime prevention.”
As the world watched images of black-clad, AK-47-wielding terrorists killing Parisians, Obama proposed to meet the threat with social service providers.
So when the president chose not to attend the Paris march, nor to send the Vice President or Secretary of State, the problem wasn’t a tin-ear sense of public relations. It was Obama’s actual attitude toward the terror threat facing not only Europe but the United States. We’ve dealt with the big stuff, Obama has declared, now let’s move on…”
Yeah…to the next crisis this would-be Marxist dictator’s policies have created. Understand, folks: none of what’s transpired during The Dear Misleader’s reign is by accident; it’s all by design! And he doesn’t give a fig…
…about the consequences. After all, what does he care…as long as he gets his taxpayer funded vacations and golf rounds.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch with The Gang Who Still Can’t Shoot Straight, as the Washington Examiner accurately opines…
“…In defending a gas tax increase, Inhofe remarked to The Hill that “a lot of states are doing that on their own because ‘well if the federal government won’t do it we’ve got to do something about the roads.’”
Inhofe is correct on this point — and that’s why a federal gas tax hike makes even less sense now than it usually would. Conservatives have often spoken in the past about devolving responsibility for transportation back to the states. This dream is possible, but not if Congress keeps raising the federal gas tax…”
The WSJ goes the Examiner one better, suggesting the most effective solution is to…
“Now here is a formula for popularity that only a lobbyist or liberal could love: As one of its first major acts, the new GOP majority would make the commodity that most Americans must buy every week more expensive, offsetting the discretionary-income gains from cheaper gas. Republicans should be talking about downsizing the federal gas tax instead, with a target of zero.
…since the 1990s, the Highway Trust Fund has come to fund much more than new roads and bridges and highway maintenance, abandoning the original “user pays” principle behind a gas tax. Drivers now see about a quarter of their gas taxes diverted to subsidize mass transit in merely six metro areas and sundry other programs for street cars, ferries, sidewalks, bike lanes, hiking trails, urban planning and even landscaping nationwide. Trolley riders, et al., contribute nothing to the HTF.
Federal spending on such side projects has increased 38% since 2008, while highway spending is flat. Here’s what the politicians won’t say: Simply using the taxes that are supposed to pay for highways to, well, pay for highways makes the HTF 98% solvent for the next decade, no tax increase necessary…”
But then, where would the money come from to fund stuff few, if any of us, will ever use? Like California’s…
…Bullet Train to Nowhere; Boston’s…
…Big Dig, or Washington, DC’s…
…Folly Trolley?!?
On the Lighter Side…
Then, courtesy of Dick Mayer, there’s The Obamao’s version of “playing through”:
Which brings us, appropriately enough, to today’s installment of Idiots on Parade, courtesy of PETA:
“While the world was enraptured by last week’s video of the giant panda bear Bao Bao as the cub frolicked in the snow in Washington, D.C.’s Smithsonian National Zoo’s, frigid temperatures were claiming the life of two endangered monkeys in Louisiana.
The cotton-top tamarins, which each weigh less than a pound, died after a caretaker “overlooked” them and left them out on Jan.7 at the Alexandria Zoological Park, city officials said. A third monkey survived the exposure. The death of the monkeys were only made public this week.
…Now, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, is calling for a federal investigation into the deaths of the tamarins, saying that their deaths were preventable.“
Uhhh…PETA…
“The cotton-top tamarins, which each weigh less than a pound, died after a caretaker “overlooked” them and left them out on Jan.7 at the Alexandria Zoological Park, city officials said.” Case closed!
But as every cloud has its silver lining…
…even this simian misfortune leaves some potentate in India as happy as The Obamao with a crispy-fried canine!
Finally, courtesy of Ed Harvey, we’ll call it a wrap with a truly heart-warming…as well as hand-warming…tale of private charity; the only kind which actually works:
When a man who appeared to be in need walked into Mark Meadows’ Alabama Chick-fil-A, Meadows does what he has done many times before. He asked how he could help.
“We made eye contact and I asked him what would he like, what we could do for him and then he said – he asked if he could do some work to get something to eat,” Meadows, the owner-operator of the Chick-fil-A franchise on Highway 280, told ABC News in a Monday interview. Meadows told the man that he would give him a meal on the house. Meadows doesn’t know whether the man was homeless, but said he was carrying many garbage bags and “looked, maybe, like he had most of his possessions with him.”
Meadows also noticed that the man wasn’t wearing gloves and his hands appeared to be cold. On that day – Wednesday – Birmingham was experiencing a cold snap, with temperatures down to the upper 30s, according to AccuWeather.com. Meadows, who has operated his Chick-fil-A for 25 years, asked the stranger whether he had any gloves. The man said he didn’t.
“I said, ‘Take my gloves,’ and when I went and got them … he was kind of taken aback, like he didn’t want to take them,” Meadows said. Eventually, the man accepted the gloves.
“…Meadows is struck by the power of social media but isn’t very comfortable with the consequences. “I don’t particularly like the attention or the notoriety or the popularity or whatever else,” he said. He said he felt compelled to help the man in need because “It was the right thing to do.”
Indeed, his staffers have been instructed to help anyone who asks for food, he said. “I’ve given food and I’ve put gas in people’s car but I will not give them cash,” he said, describing the ways he’s helped out. “I draw the line at cash because I don’t know what’s going to happen with it … .” (Unlike the idiots running the federal government, who STILL haven’t figured this out!)
Meadows last year extended his generosity to drivers who had been stranded by a Jan. 28 ice and snowstorm in Birmingham. He served up hundreds of free sandwiches and more than 1,000 biscuits. Those people were “very, very appreciative,” Meadows said.
People on Facebook praised Meadows’ actions toward the needy man. “I wish I could ‘like’ this a million times!!! What a wonderful example of showing God’s love to another,” Deborah Lafayette wrote. Kristen Mason Wade added: “Warmed my heart! Chick-fil-a is AWESOME!!”
Truly; or perhaps more accurately, truly Truett! All we can say is…
Back in the mid-80’s, we had the window seat in the first row of coach next to a unimposing elderly gentleman on a flight to Atlanta. Imagine our surprise when, after the traditional banter between seat-mates, he handed us a business card which read:
S. Truett Cathy
Chairman
Chick-fil-A
Despite the coupon for a free Chick-fil-A sandwich on the back, we still have the card. And we’re confident, upon shuffling off this mortal coil, we’ll see him again!
Magoo
P.S. If you made it this far, be sure to weigh in on our latest poll!
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