Seriously…“we’re the slaves who built the White House” and “the Navajo Code-Talkers”; no, REALLY?!? What about the Japanese who bombed Pearl Harbor: are “we” them? How about the Mexican government elite that purposely and callously impoverishes their own people, then uses the U.S. as a safety valve: are “we” them? Are “we” the tens of thousands of White aviators and aircrewmen who died alongside the Tuskegee Airman over the skies of Europe? Are “we” Branch Rickey? What about the over 300,000 White Union soldiers who died freeing the descendants of the “slaves who built the White House”?
Most importantly, are “we” the WhiteDemocrats who seceded from the Union to preserve “that peculiar institution”; the WhiteDemocrats who interned Americans of Japanese ancestry during WWII; not to mention the WhiteDemocrats who formed the Ku Klux Klan, lynched Blacks across the South and instituted the very Jim Crow laws the Selma march was organized to oppose?!?
No, didn’t think so. What The Great Divider means is “we” are anything and everyonebut Aryan, xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic, racist, reactionary Republicans…i.e., anything but the truth!
And why is the march not over? Two reasons; (a) absent opposition to the fabricated racism, sexism and “genderism” rampant in the right flank of the Republican ranks, these lying hypocrites have nothing to offer America.
And (b) because, like another infamous hypocritical psychopath, The Dear Misleader’s self-serving version of doin’ right…
…ain’t got no end! Not what’s right for America, mind you; in fact, exactly the opposite. Only what’s optimum for Progressive policies and politics.
Oh, and we’re glad to see Harrison Ford is going to make; as they say, any landing you can walk away from…or get carried away from with a steady pulse and regular respiration. What intrigues us wasn’t Indiana’s controlled crash, but rather this series of disturbing photographs clearly indicating Han had more than The Force with him that day:
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up on the Monday edition, a quick quote from Donald Boudreaux writing at Café Hayek and courtesy of the WSJ entitled:
The economic miracle of individual water bottles.
“I remember back in the late 1970s or early 1980s when I first noticed that still water began to be offered for sale in single-sized bottles. I was convinced that this product would fail. “Who would pay for still water in single-sized bottles when still water can be gotten for free out of water fountains and water coolers or at zero marginal cost out of faucets at home?” I reasoned. Whether I reasoned rightly or wrongly, my prediction proved wrong. Reason, you see, is a wonderful and necessary tool, but also one of limited power. My reason could not reveal to me the preferences of millions of other people. My reason could not reveal to me the ambitions and the creativity of entrepreneurs. My reason could not reveal to me the details of an open-ended future in which people are free to spend their money—as consumers, as producers, and as investors—as they wish.
Had I been a government planner in the 1970s or early 1980s—a planner with the finest training, the highest integrity, and a most intense desire to serve my fellow citizens well—I would have counseled against directing society’s scarce resources into the production and distribution of single-sized bottled still water. My reason would have assured me of the prudence and correctness of my decision. And if I were such a government planner whose diktat would have been heeded, no one would ever have learned that my decision stunk.“
And if you don’t believe this happens every second the federal bureaucracy’s in operation, you need to wake up and…
…smell the tyranny.
In a related item detailing government acting solely in its own interest, what’s wrong with the picture portrayed by thisWSJ headline?
Bringing the total number of Americans NOT in the labor force in February, at least according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, to a staggering record92,898,000. Yet they aren’t counted in the unemployment numbers.
Hells Bells; why not just report full employment every month, lay off every statistician at the Labor Department and spend the extra money on more vacations for the First Family?!?
Thanks, Barry: you did at least…
…build this!
Next up, courtesy of George Lawlor and NRO, the latest from Kevin Williamson who urges America, when it comes to Hillary and 2016, think Soup Nazi:
“As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton schemed to subvert record-keeping and transparency rules for reasons that are probably more or less communicated by her surname: The Clintons are creeps and liars and scoundrels and misfits, always have been, always will be. They are the penicillin-resistant syphilis of American politics.
It’s easy to enforce the law on people who are inclined to be law-abiding, which means those of us in the middle, mainly: We have enough to lose that there’s a real cost to breaking the rules, but we don’t have so much that we can conduct our personal and professional lives as though we had sovereign immunity. The people in the middle cannot go about their ordinary business — working at a job, driving a car, renting or owning a home, traveling — without preemptively complying with all manner of government mandates. But millions of illegals can flout the law with impunity — and their well-off enablers in Washington can flout the law with impunity, too. When the law does not apply to the lawmakers and law-enforcers, you are not being governed: You are being ruled. And we are ruled by criminals.
If you treat IRS rules the way the IRS treats IRS rules, you go to prison; if you treat federal law the way the secretary of state does, you go to prison. If you treat immigration controls the way our immigration authorities do, you go to prison. If you’re as careless in your handling of firearms as the ATF is, you go to prison. You cook your business’s books the way the federal government cooks its books, you go to prison.
Hillary Clinton is not going to prison. She’s going to release whatever emails she feels like releasing and dare any of you peons or your elected representatives to try to make her do otherwise. You’ll take what she offers, and you’ll like it.
The perverse thing is: Some do like it. The Clinton name remains golden among Democrats…”
And other mindless myrmidons with the thinking skills of sea slug.
Still, Ricochet.com’s Rick Wilson urges Conservatives to…
Go Dark
A brief note to my Republican friends; go dark. Seriously. Stop talking.
The Clinton machine in all its arrogance and inertia is careening toward political disaster as the story of her illegal private email servers collides with a Washington and New York press corps that can’t, for once, easily look away.The story has a lot more stink in it than even what’s come to light so far.
Only the GOP and conservatives can save her.
The press is possessed of a boundless desire to Change the Subject right now, and some intemperate remark would fit the bill perfectly. Don’t give them a shiny object. Don’t give them an excuse turn this into “Krazee Republicans Sure Hate Hillary Because She’s A Woman.” For God’s sake, take a deep breath and skip talking about your favorite social issue.
In the next two weeks, try something new; maintain discipline, hold focus, and keep an eye to a bigger objective than your daily press release. Try to play the long game, and help Hillary Clinton self-destruct.
Proceed against Clinton with a measured pace and tone. Don’t make it all about Benghazi or the records-keeping laws. Focus instead on the grave national security risks that her amateur-hour email server shenanigan posed.Do it with the sickly-sweet, sincere tone of “I just want to work in a bipartisan way for good, transparent government… and to protect national security secrets from the Chinese, Russians, and other threats” that the Acela media claims to worship.
Press the sore spots, subtly, but constantly. Use it as way to leverage discussion of the Clinton family’s infamous contempt for the law and remind the public of their their obsessive secrecy, paranoia, habitual lawbreaking. Wonder, in serious tones, how much of the email traffic has to do with the other scandal that reporters have been desperately trying to cover up; the Clinton Foundation’s scuzzy foreign-money vacuum. Welcome the chance for Mrs. Clinton to give her side of the story in press conferences, and hearings.
When you talk to the press, do it in measured tones, and avoid making wild claims about either the substance or political outcomes. Reduce expectations, rather than raise them. Be persistent. Be serious. Be smart. (Which is where the GOP has fallen short to date with frightening regularity!)
We’re in a political moment that requires our side to be more mindful than we have a tendency to be. Hillary’s team is trying to run the same playbook they’ve always run; browbeat reporters, and if that doesn’t work, start screaming. If that doesn’t work, start blaming Republicans. They’re good at it, and it’s worked for a long time.
This time, though, this case is unspinnably bad, and even the Clinton-friendly Acela media folks are forced to look into the ugly, seething mass of the Clinton’s behavior. Don’t give them a reason to look away.
“‘Our schools will show real, quantifiable student achievement and with those results finally dispel the misguided and simplistic notion that the union contract is an impediment to success.” So declared teachers union chief Randi Weingarten in 2005 upon launching the United Federation of Teachers charter school in Brooklyn, New York.
The UFT quietly let slip last week that this showcase K-8 charter school is closing after a legacy of failure. Ms. Weingarten’s experiment in education of the union, by the union and for the union is a case study in the problems with the status quo of union dominance over American public education.
…The school’s results speak for themselves: In 2014, 11% of students were rated proficient in English and 18% in math compared to 28% and 36% in schools with similar demographics, and 59% and 92% at the Harlem Success Academy, which enrolls more kids with disabilities. The union charter performed worse than 96% of its peers on subjective standards like “instructional core” and “systems for improvement” measured from parents, teacher and student surveys. On almost all counts the district middle school next door did better…”
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, as Townhall.com. tells us, not only are Republicans The Gang That Still Can’t Shoot Straight, they apparently can’t even recognize the target:
Perhaps if Marco had served in the Military he’d understand you don’t abandon your post, particularly in time of war, owing to frustration or other reason. So down a little more agua and suck it up, magdalena…er,…cupcake! Otherwise…
But as NRO’s Andrew McCarthy details, Rubio isn’t the only Republican to disappoint of late:
“In assessing the Benghazi select committee headed up by Chairman Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), there are two possibilities, and they are not mutually exclusive: (1) The committee is just a Potemkin probe erected by the Republican establishment to get restive conservatives to pipe down, and (2) the committee is incompetent.
The panel, of course, was commissioned by the Republican-controlled House to investigate the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2012, attack in which al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists killed Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three other Americans — information-management officer Sean Smith and two former Navy SEALs, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, contract employees whose valor saved dozens of lives during the siege.
The select committee’s ten sleepy months of operation have not warranted much attention — except to observe its lethargy. But questions about it arise thanks to the newly erupted Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal. Mostly, it is one question: Why is the scandalnewlyerupted?…”
Inquiring minds would certainly like to know!
Turning back to the Senate, any chance this announcement would have been made, let alone charges ever filed…
…had Menendez not been as vocal in his opposition to The Obamao’s feckless foreign policy initiatives with Cuba and Iran?!? This is not to say Menendez isn’t corrupt; really, he’s from New Jersey. It’s just that we doubt you’d have seen any action on the part of Justice had he remained silent…like the rest of the Dimocratic contingent on Capitol Hill.
Since we’re on the subject of the most vindictive and mendacious President in American history, in today’s edition of the Environmental Moment,we present the WSJ‘s take on…
“In an interview last weekend with a North Dakota TV station, Mr. Obama said: “I’m happy to look at how we can increase pipeline production for U.S. oil, but Keystone is for Canadian oil to send that down to the Gulf. It bypasses the United States and is estimated to create a little over 250, maybe 300 permanent jobs.” Except for the prepositions, everything in that statement is false.
…A February report by consultant IHS Energy estimates that 70% of the resulting refined products—gasoline, diesel—would be consumed in the U.S.No country would benefit more from Keystone than America…”
To borrow a phrase from Johnny Dangerously, don’t try telling us this lousy cork-soaking, somanumbatching fargin icehole has any semblance of love for America.
“…Oil is overflowing U.S. storage facilities partly because of the 40-year-old export ban.The wave of bankruptcies and layoffs that many have predicted for the U.S. energy sector may finally be coming, but less because of the distressed price of oil than because producers will have to stop producing if they have nowhere to send their output.
…It costs $2 a barrel to ship Texas crude to Europe or Asia and $7 to ship it to Philadelphia. If the Jones Act were left in place but the export ban lifted, a great deal of U.S. oil would go to overseas refineries solely to take advantage of cheaper shipping rates.
…So forget the Saudis. The biggest danger to America’s fracking revolution may be one of America’s hoariest protectionist lobbies, the Jones Act gang.“
Unions, can’t live with ’em…if only we could shoot ’em!
Herein lies the REAL reason The Obamao continues to oppose the KeystoneXL: the world really is full of oil, and an awful lot of it is right here in the United States!
Which definitively spells the end of the Green agenda…along with the hundreds of millions…if not billions…of dollars of support this and other pompous prevaricating Progressives pull in.
The Keystone isn’t about safety of pipelines; there are currently over 2.5 million miles of oil pipelines in the U.S. alone. It’s rather about the fact America contains over 600 years of known reserves, which would allow us to be a net exporter of oil, far into the foreseeable future.
Which means The Left’s renewable energy scam, already bleeding like a ruptured femoral artery from the drop in oil prices and Solyndra-like corporate cronyism, would collapse. It would demonstrate there’s NO shortage of fossil fuels, and that so-called “green” energy can’t compete on anything remotely resembling a level playing field.
For anyone interested, here’s another good analysis of the issue from Geoffrey Styles.
Which brings us to the latest on The Religion of Pieces, brought to us by David Pinault, director of Santa Clara University’s program in Arabic, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies:
“…Listening to good Quran chanting (and the chanter on this video was very good indeed) is a pleasure akin to hearing a fine performance of Shakespeare — Patrick Stewart, say, reciting Prospero’s lines in “The Tempest.”
Let me be clear: I’m a Christian, a Catholic. If I shut my eyes to the malicious violence being perpetrated in the video and just listen to the Arabic recital, I can conjure the pleasure of attending the Easter Vigil service (I was an altar boy once, when the mass was still said in Latin) while the priest sang the “Exultet” and lighted the Paschal candle.
Yes, I can conjure all this—until I translate the particular Quranic verses chosen for the video by Islamic State.These are from Chapter 21, and involve the figure of Abraham. The Quran depicts him as having been reared in a family of idol worshipers. He condemns his own father’s paganism—“What are these statues, to which you’re so devoted?”—and then smashes the family’s idols to bits.
Immediately after the recitation of these verses, a militant is shown reminding viewers that the Prophet Muhammad “removed and destroyed the idols with his own exalted and noble hands when he conquered Mecca.” Historic accounts say that a circle of idols once surrounded the Meccan shrine of the Kaaba. But with the prophet’s conquest in 630, the Kaaba was “purified” and the idolatrous traces of Mecca’s pre-Islamic past were expunged.
Thus Islamic State marshals both Quranic scripture and the actions of Muhammad himself as precedents to justify the group’s attack on these ancient treasures.So much for President Obama ’s claim that Islamic State’s actions have nothing to do with Islam.
No question, we’re watching a recruitment video here. Think what it offers for young extremists: a chance to re-enact actions from the life of the prophet, to imitate Abraham, imitate Muhammad himself…”
Nothing remotely connected to Islam here…
…move along. And by the way, Muhammad; no worries:
He beat you to it!
On the Lighter Side…
Then there’s another startling story torn from the pages of the Crime Blotter:
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