It’s Friday (although belatedly, due primarily to Eddie Gorey dragging us out to a cigar bar Thursday night!), March 13th, 2015…but before we begin, a quick photo comparison from Wink Martindale which tells you all you need to know about contemporary crusaders for “civil rights”:

What do you expect when those leading the march honor another…

…standard?  Seriously; can anyone ever recall Moochie waving the Stars and Stripes?

An isolated incident?

To quote the Duke:

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First, regarding the Obamao/Holder-inspired cop-shooting in Ferguson, our Quote of the Day above from Hope ‘n Change speaks for us.

Next, before we get into the latest on Mailgate, courtesy of Commentary Magazine, Rich Richman compares…

Presidential Commitments Then and Now

“…President Obama is currently negotiating an arms control agreement in secret, refusing to disclose the details of the offers his administration has made to Iran, a terrorist state according to his own State Department, and a self-described enemy of the United States since 1979. He has opposed not only a congressional debate before he concludes the deal but also a congressional vote afterwards. If he closes a deal with Iran on that basis, it will not be binding on any future president–at least not if that president chooses to follow the precedent Obama himself set in 2009…”

…for what they’re worth; which, particularly with The Obamao in the Offal Office, is about as much as the paper on which his birth certificate is printed!

In a related item, City Journal‘s John McGinnis reveals…

Why Progressives Mislead

Their coalition is fragile.

“…today’s progressives must resort to more misleading and sometimes coercive measures, as they seek to bring about equality through collective responsibility; they must rally support by looking beyond economics, to cultural and social identifications, in a bid to maintain the support of voters with little need for government intervention. They also want to limit the voices of citizens at election time, and thereby magnify the influence of the press and academia, which lean sharply in the progressive direction.

…Some have labeled the president’s economy with the truth a personal failing, but it’s more like a professional necessity. Modern progressivism’s business model requires obscuring the reality that new programs have winners and losers—and the losers are spread throughout the general population, not confined to members of the so-called 1 percent. As the Affordable Care Act goes fully into effect, the losers will become more visible. If people had known the truth about Obamacare in 2010, the bill would almost certainly have been defeated. If they had known it in 2012, Obama would likely have lost his reelection bid…”

“Likely“?!?  More like DEFinitely.  And the worst is yet to come!

Moving on to what we believe spells the end of Clintononia, the WSJ offers the key to deciphering…

Clinton Unclassified

How could she do her job if she didn’t send classified emails?

“…Mrs. Clinton insisted Tuesday that “I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified material. So I’m certainly well aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material.” With the Clintons, you always have to parse the meaning of “is,” and Mrs. Clinton didn’t say she never received classified information via email. But if she meant both send and receive, then how could she have done her job given the hundreds of thousands of miles she traveled during her four years at Foggy Bottom?

…Surely she had to inspect classified material on numerous occasions while she was on the road doing highly sensitive government business. If some aide had to carry a separate device for classified communications, then that blows away her “convenience” excuse for using a personal email account because she only wanted to carry one device. Maybe the real question is whether anything in her story is true.“

As always, Bill’s got his version of the truth:

And for those who missed the presser, i.e., had to work to pay for the Obamas’ next multi-million dollar vacation (yes, $3.7M in travel expenses alone!), Business Insider observed:

“…When Clinton arrived, she began by making brief statements on women’s rights, the US nuclear negotiations with Iran, and the emails. Once she was finished, her spokesman, Nick Merrill, handpicked which reporters got to ask questions throughout the press conference. Journalists who attempted to get their questions in outside of this process were ignored.“

And first in line was a Turkish television reporter who explored this conveniently-critical aspect of the blossoming Mailgate scandal:

Gee…no set-up here!

For cryin’ out loud, even Ron Fornier was able to figure it out:

“Clinton said she didn’t delete any official emails, but won’t turn over the server to prove it. She said she emailed no classified information (presumably even to her husband), but won’t cough up the server to prove it. She said there were no security breaches, but won’t produce the server to prove it.

…It’s like saying that somebody who robs bank, once they get the money to their house, they get to decide how much to return.“

As Jonathan Tobin notes at Commentary Magazine…

Democrats Are Ready for Hillary and Stuck with Her

“…That a person serving in an administration pledging transparency would think it more “convenient” to merge her work and personal emails together on a home server certainly raises questions about the former secretary of state’s judgment.

…But it bears repeating that allowing her to decide which emails were private or public is not, despite her assertions, what all government employees must do. To the contrary, she appears to be the only person so empowered. That she then deleted those emails she considers personal is not only troubling; it is inexplicable.

…You don’t have to be a conspiracy monger or a Clinton hater to realize that this is all very fishy. Even if wrongdoing is not being covered by her absurd decisions, the story makes her appear foolish if not downright stupid…”

We’ll let Hillary provide our response to her “trust me” statement…in the same words with which she addressed another soon-to-be-convicted criminal:

How ironic; she’s now clearly followed in Betrayus’ footsteps.

As the WSJ notes:

“…Now, that’s what we call convenient. With those emails gone, and her private server off-limits to investigators, no one else will be able to see how much of that “private” business really was private. Though Mrs. Clinton conducted both State business and personal business in her personal account, only she gets to determine what was really personal and what was the business of State.“

This tweet from Jim Geraghty summarizes our view on where Hillary stands:

Turning now to The Dear Misleader’s diplomatic equivalent of a fire-sale benefiting the Mullahs, writing at the WSJ, Doug Feith identifies…

The Fatal Flaw in Obama’s Dealings With Iran

Taking a collaborative approach to negotiating with bad actors always turns out badly. Better to coerce them.

“…Iran is a bad actor, and history teaches that constraining bad actors through arms control and peace accords is a losing bet. The arms-control approach is to invite bad actors to sign legal agreements. This produces signing ceremonies, where political leaders can act as if there’s nobody here but us peaceable, law-abiding global citizens. The deal makers get to celebrate their accords at least until the bad actors inevitably violate them.

Nazi Germany violated the Versailles Treaty. The Soviet Union violated the Biological Weapons Convention, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, various nuclear-arms treaties and other international agreements. The Palestine Liberation Organization violated the Oslo Accords. North Korea violated the Agreed Framework.

Patterns emerge from this history. When leaders of democratic countries extract promises of good behavior from bad-actor regimes, those democratic leaders reap political rewards. They are hailed as peacemakers. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was cheered when he returned from Munich in 1938 with “peace in our time.” These leaders have a stake in their deals looking good. When those deals are violated, the “peacemakers” often challenge the evidence. If the evidence is clear, they dismiss the violations as unimportant. When the importance is undeniable, they argue that there aren’t any good options for confronting the violators.

In the end, the bad actors often pay little or nothing for their transgressions. And even if the costs are substantial, they are bearable. Just ask Russia’s Vladimir Putin , or Syria’s Bashar Assad or North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.

The Obama administration has wedded itself to a cooperative policy toward Iran. The White House rejects the coercive approach as not viable. But if Iran violates its deal with us, won’t our response have to be coercive? President Obama insists that his policy is the only realistic one. In doing so, he is showing either that he is naïve and uninformed about the relevant history or that he no longer considers an Iranian nuclear weapon “unacceptable.””

As Jim Geraghty notes, in keeping with the MSM’s kid-glove treatment of America’s first half-white Chief Executive, the impact of The Dear Misleader’s hopelessly misguided Marxist/Islamist foreign policy isn’t restricted to Tehran obtaining a Tel Aviv-destroying nuke:

Which brings us, appropriately enough, to Tales From the Darkside, and today’s installment featuring two entries, the first from BizPac Review:

No whites allowed: Blacks-only HS assembly outrages white parents, so how did principal defend it?

Progressives’ definition of “progress”; is it any wonder they’re enamored of Islam?!?

“The only thing missing were the “Colored Only, No Whites Allowed” signs of the past. In a move that harkens back to the days of segregation in the Deep South, as dictated by Jim Crow laws, only in reverse order, an Illinois high school principal held an event that white students were not allowed to attend.

Nathaniel Rouse, principal of Oak Park and River Forest High School located in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Ill., organized a “Black Lives Matter” event in association with Black History Month, according to the Chicago Tribune. The assembly was held on Feb. 27, and was “limited to black students only,” the Tribune reported. And the edict was strictly enforced.

According to some upset parents, white students who tried to attend were turned away — so much for diversity and inclusion. It’s not clear if other students of color were also denied entry.

But Rouse, an African-American, said that the event that excluded white students was not intended to be seen as exclusionary. “First and foremost, this is not meant to give a connotation that we were trying to be exclusive,” he told the Tribune.

Instead of acknowledging the boneheaded decision to discriminate against better than half the student population — according to the school’s website, the student population last year was 55 percent white — the school issued a statement defending its actions. In the release, the event was justified as “an opportunity for students who identify as black to speak openly, honestly, and productively.” “Racial affinity groups are often used in learning communities to help facilitate positive identity exploration and provide people with similar experiences a space in which to pose questions and process topics,” the statement said.

“I found it has been far easier for me to talk about my experiences with racism with individuals that look like me,” Rouse said. “I still struggle myself with talking about my experiences with people who don’t look like me.”

The content of one’s character aside…”

Second, courtesy of Patriot Update, David Goetsch examines the self-defeating stratagem of…

Black Students Claim using Proper English means “Talking White”

“As a college professor, I am seeing more and more black students who refuse—in their words—to “talk white.” What they mean by “talking white” is speaking proper English. Why black students think speaking proper English is “talking white” I don’t know. It’s not like all white people speak proper English. In fact, most don’t. But here is the rub. The most successful people, regardless of race, do speak proper English. An individual’s command of the English language is a key determinant of success in life. We tend to form our opinions of others in part by how well they speak. The ability to use proper English is a sign of an educated person. Then there is the role speaking properly can play in promoting effective communication. An especially important rationale for learning to use proper English in America is that sharing a common language is the best way to create common ground among people of diverse backgrounds.

What is even more disturbing than black students viewing the use of proper English as “talking white” is that an increasing number of these students are applying peer pressure to other black students to coerce them into rejecting proper English. It is as if using proper English is viewed as a betrayal of the black students’ cultural heritage. The distinguished journalist, Jason Riley, who happens to be black, told of an encounter with this attitude in an article for Imprimis (January 2015). During a visit with his sister Riley had a conversation with his niece, the seven or eight-year old daughter of his sister. She asked him, “Uncle Jason, why you talk white?” Then she commented to a friend, “Don’t my uncle sound white? Why he tryin’ to sound so smart?” In his article Riley relates that this episode jolted him. “I couldn’t help thinking: Here were two young black girls, seven or eight-years old, already linking speech patterns to race and intelligence. They already had a rather sophisticated awareness that, as blacks, white-sounding speech was not only to be avoided in their own speech but mocked in the speech of others…other black professionals have told similar stories. What I had forgotten is just how early these attitudes take hold—how soon this counterproductive thinking and behavior begins.”…”

Not to mention the degree to which “Ebonics” is tacitly promoted by Progressives through the dumbing-down of public education.

On the Lighter Side…

Magoo