It’s Wednesday, April 1st, 2015…but before we begin, a quick April Fools question: why are “deadlines” like “redlines”…particularly when they apply to terrorist-supporting tyrranies?  Because they can be moved, reset and ignored…

No nuke agreement yet: Iran talks push past deadline

…at The Obamao’s Marxist/Muslim whim!  And the MSM WON’T REPORT IT!!!  So you tell us: with the world on the edge of immolation, who’s the fool?!?

Not to mention how much the travel, meal and lodging tab alone for this utterly useless, incredibly dangerous charade is costing the country. 

Now, though we’re up to our neck in alligators and busier than a beaver in a pulp plant, in what’s admittedly an abbreviated version, here’s The Gouge!

First up from the Washington Examiner, Michael Barone wonders…

Can family breakdown in low-education America be reversed? Maybe

“…Starting in the late 1960s, rates of divorce, unmarried births and single parenthood rose sharply among all segments of society. About a decade later they fell and leveled off among the college-educated, who almost entirely raise their kids in Ozzie-and-Harriet style families today (except that mom usually works outside the home).

Among the bottom third of Americans in education and income, however, the negative trend accelerated. In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan was alarmed that 26 percent of black births were to unmarried children. The rate is about twice that for the least educated third of Americans of all races today. 

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Charles Murray’s 2012 book Coming Apart describes the same phenomenon among white Americans. Curiously, Putnam refers only glancingly to Murray’s work. But Putnam agrees with Murray (perhaps grudgingly) that this is bad for the kids involved.

They’re careful to concede that single parents have a hard job and that some do well at it. But the data says those are the exception rather than the rule. On average and by a wide margin, children raised in such households do worse in school, have more trouble with the law and make less money and gain less satisfaction in life than those from the stable families of the upper third…”

But it’s their RIGHT to behave in a way they personally believe to be right, regardless of its effect on society as a whole…RIGHT?!?

In a related item directly connected to the on-going societal disintegration of America, and which places Liberals in direct contradiction to their stand on most any other social issue, NRO’s Rich Lowry confronts feelings with facts…

In Defense of Indiana

“…the country has an enormous wedding industry not known for its hostility to gays. The burgeoning institution of gay marriage will surely survive the occasional florist who doesn’t want to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding for religious reasons.

As a practical matter, such a dissenting florist doesn’t make a difference; the affected couple might be offended but can take its business elsewhere. But for the Left, it’s the principle of the thing. (A principle which runs in direct contradiction to the Constitution!) For all its talk of diversity, it demands unanimity on this question — individual conscience be damned. So it isn’t bothered when religious wedding vendors are sued or harassed under anti-discrimination laws for their nonparticipation in ceremonies they morally oppose.

It’s not clear that Religious Freedom Restoration Acts will shield these kinds of business people (they haven’t, to this point). It might be that more specific exemptions are necessary. But the mere possibility that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act might protect a baker opposed to gay marriage is enough to create a furious, unhinged reaction.

Yes, there is intolerance afoot in the debate over Indiana, but it’s not on the part of Indianans.

Gee…what a surprise.

Turning now to today’s Environmental Moment, courtesy of G. Trevor and The New York Slimes, we learn…

Obama’s Strategy on Climate Change, Part of Global Deal, Is Revealed

“…Mr. Obama’s plan, part of a formal written submission to the United Nations ahead of efforts to forge a global climate change accord in Paris in December, detailed the United States’ part of an ambitious joint pledge made by Mr. Obama and President Xi Jinping of China in November.

The United States and China are the world’s two largest greenhouse gas polluters. Mr. Obama said the United States would cut its emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025, while Mr. Xi said that China’s emissions would drop after 2030…”

Absent, of course, any input from the Republican-controlled Congress!

Since we’re on the subject Liberal lies, deceptions and deliberate misrepresentations, Townhall.com‘s Matt Vespa reports on a…

Study: Fracking Doesn’t Mess With Your Drinking Water

As the Libs are so fond of observing, the science is settled!

“…The new study of 11,309 drinking water wells in northeastern Pennsylvania concludes that background levels of methane in the water are unrelated to the location of hundreds of oil and gas wells that tap hydraulically fractured, or fracked, rock formations. The finding suggests that fracking operations are not significantly contributing to the leakage of methane from deep rock formations, where oil and gas are extracted, up to the shallower aquifers where well water is drawn.

The result also calls into question prominent studies in 2011 and 2013 that did find a correlation in a nearby part of Pennsylvania. There, wells closer to fracking sites had higher levels of methane. Those studies, however, were based on just 60 and 141 domestic well samples, respectively.

“I would argue that [more than] 10,000 data points really tell a better story,” says hydrogeologist Donald Siegel of Syracuse University in New York, whose team published the new study online this month in Environmental Science & Technology. Chesapeake Energy Corp., which has large oil and gas stakes in Pennsylvania, supplied the researchers with the database, the largest of its kind, and also funded the work…”

Which means, in the Liberal lexicon, the team must have lied!

Since we’re on the subject of the greatest weapon in the fight against The Left’s war on fossil fuels, the WSJ‘s Holman Jenkins relates how we’re now living in…

A World Remade by Fracking

With storage tanks full, panickers have no place to hoard oil in response to Middle East fears.

“…Fracking overnight has relieved Saudi Arabia of its swing-producer dominance. Fracking overnight has relegated the Middle East to a sideshow, albeit a still-important sideshow, in the world economy.

Things change fast and could change back. A sizable share of the world’s oil still flows from the Persian Gulf and so far production has not been disrupted. Prices would shoot up—they’re already creeping up. But a weight on U.S. fracking would also be lifted. At prices below $50, much fracking becomes long-term unprofitable. But then there’s the flip-side: the flexibility exhibited by the U.S. wildcat sector, allowing drilling to ramp up quickly in response to higher prices, helping to counteract any damage to global growth…”

On the Lighter Side…

Take THAT Charles Krauthammer!

Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with “JT; the early years”:

Thankfully…and VERY fortunately, Becky thought he was hot!

Magoo