It’s Friday, June 12th, 2015…but before we begin, a teachable moment for The New York Times: this…

…is a fishing boat.  This…

…is a “luxury speedboat”.  And THIS…

…is a yacht…a $7,000,000+ yacht, on which the owner evaded some $500,000 in taxes, over six times the cost of Rubio’s “luxury speedboat”!  Though, since the owner of said yacht is one John Kerry, The Times never saw fit to highlight his hypocrisy by ever reporting it.

Or, as the great Michael Ramirez memorializes the MSM‘s blatant bias:

Now, here’s The Gouge!

Along with many of you, we’ve been questioning the GOP rolling over and playing dead for The Obamao on his top-secret trade deal.  And, given the complete and utter lack of trust in which most Conservatives understandably hold anything The Dear Misleader says or does, a jaundiced view of his trade pact is more than understandable, particularly in light of recent revelations such as… 

The Secret Immigration Chapter in Obama’s Trade Agreement

“Discovered inside the huge tranche of secretive Obamatrade documents released by Wikileaks are key details on how technically any Republican voting for Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) that would fast-track trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal would technically also be voting to massively expand President Obama’s executive authority when it comes to immigration matters.

The mainstream media covered the Wikileaks document dump extensively, but did not mention the immigration chapter contained within it, so Breitbart News took the documents to immigration experts to get their take on it. Nobody has figured how big a deal the documents uncovered by Wikileaks are until now.

…In 2003, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution that said no immigration provision should be in trade agreements – and in fact, former Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) voted for this resolution. The existence of these 10 pages is in clear violation of that earlier unanimous decision, and also in violation of the statements made by the U.S. Trade Representative.

“He has told members of Congress very specifically the U.S. is not negotiating immigration – or at least is not negotiating any immigration provisions that would require us to change our laws. So, unless major changes are made to the Trade and Services Agreement – that is not true,” said Rosemary Jenks, the Director of Government Relations at Numbers USA…”

Yet the Republican leadership inexplicably continues to tout this Trojan horse like its the second coming of Secretariat.

But finally, on the eve what we feared was a fiasco only The Gang Who Still Can’t Shoot Straight could orchestrate, two sources we trust implicitly give us pause for thought…and hope for the future.  First, Best of the Web‘s James Taranto offers his insight into clarifying…

Trade Secrets?

Answers to a misinformation campaign on the right.

“…Whereas most contentious political issues these days polarize left against right, trade also polarizes moderates against both sides’ extremists. If one accepts that characterization, the Democratic center is a good deal more extreme than the Republican center. But the right is what interests us, because it’s the side we know better. We’ve received emails from readers and queries at parties from people who generally favor free trade but are suspicious of what they’ve heard about secret deals. Today’s column is an effort to clarify matters.

There’s an awful lot of confusion, much of it no doubt sincere, but some of which we suspect is deliberate misinformation. In the former category is this exchange between Fox News’s Bret Baier and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a TPA supporter. It was noted by the Daily Caller:

Baier: Why not make the trade bill transparent? Why not tell people what’s in it?

McConnell: Oh, we’re going to find out what’s in it because—

Baier: That sounds like Nancy Pelosi. You’re going to find out after you pass it.

McConnell: No, no. It hadn’t been finalized yet.

Baier: But you passed it though—

McConnell: What Trade Promotion Authority is, is a process to deal with it. The trade agreement will be completely transparent. We’ll have a chance to vote whether to approve it or not.

Baier: So all this criticism about we don’t know what’s in it yet, you discount that?

McConnell: I don’t buy that because the agreement hasn’t been finalized. What we’ve been voting on is a procedure that allows it to be dealt with once it’s completed. We’ll know what’s in it. We’ll know everything about what’s in it and we’ll be able to decide whether to pass it or not. 

Do you understand that? We do, but only because it had previously been explained to us by somebody with better explicative skills than McConnell displays here.

…TPA, in short, is not a rubber stamp on TPP, which Congress would still have the power to reject. Even so, one can understand why a lawmaker who opposes TPP on the merits, as Sessions does, would want to vote down TPA, which would stop it now. But unless one is hostile to trade agreements altogether, that’s a shortsighted view.

…Distrust of Obama may be entirely justified, but if Republican lawmakers make that the deciding factor now, it could well be to the detriment of his GOP successor.

Then there’s this from editors at NRO, who urge us…

Don’t Call It ‘Obamatrade’

“Republicans are often charged with opposing good ideas President Obama supports just because he supports them. This is nonsense, but it is beginning to sound a little less ridiculous when it comes to the debate over giving the president trade-promotion authority. Republican House leadership is considering bringing a bill on that issue up for a vote this week, but it could fail because some conservatives oppose it.

They argue that the trade authority would unwisely cede powers to President Obama and advance a secret trade deal without Congress’s getting to subject it to appropriate scrutiny. Neither argument really holds up.

Congress isn’t, as a matter of fact, specifically entrusting President Obama with trade-promotion authority — it is giving the office of the president the power to reach trade deals and present them to Congress for an up-or-down vote over the next six years. The majority of that window, President Obama won’t even be in office…”

That being said, we trust the judgment of the editors of National Review and James Taranto FAR more than that of either Mitch McConnell or John Boehner…

Douche and Lips…or, more accurately, lack thereof!

…or Paul Ryan for that matter, especially in light of the fire-sale he held for his Conservative principles when campaigning as Romney’s running mate.

Here’s the juice: given the collective brain power of the GOP leadership, we remain unconvinced the TPA won’t prove as costly a faux pas as the TSA; but at least, given the opinions expressed above, you can color us less pessimistic.  Chalk up our complete lack of confidence to the body of lies which is The Obamao, and the utter ineptitude of the any Republican of note since Ronaldus Maximus.

Since we’re on the subject of the past, if the revisionists formulating the AP History test have their way, as the WSJ‘s Dan Henninger suggests, we can bid…

Bye, Bye, American History

Professors and historians urged opposition to the College Board’s new curriculum for teaching AP U.S. History.

“…Let’s cut to the chase. The notion that this revision, in the works for seven years, is just disinterested pedagogy is, well, claptrap. In the 1980s, Lynne Cheney, as chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, threw down the gauntlet over the leftward, even Marxist, class-obsessed drift of American historiography. She lost.

At one point the curriculum’s authors say: “Debate and disagreement are central to the discipline of history, and thus to AP U.S. History as well.” This statement is phenomenally disingenuous. From Key Concept 1.3: “Many Europeans developed a belief in white superiority to justify their subjugation of Africans and American Indians, using several different rationales.” Pity the high-school or college student who puts up a hand to contest that anymore. They don’t. They know the Orwellian option now is to stay down.

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld got attention this week for saying he understood why other comics such as Chris Rock have stopped performing on campuses beset by political correctness, trigger warnings and “microaggressions.” He said young people cry “racism,” “sexism” or “prejudice” without any idea of what they’re talking about.

How did that happen? It happened because weak school administrators and academics empowered tireless activists who forced all of American history and life through the four prisms of class, gender, ethnicity and identity. What emerged at the other end was one idea—guilt. I exist, therefore I must be guilty. Of something…”

Hey, Bill Watterson had it right:

Which brings us, appropriately enough, to today’s installment of Tales From the Darkside, as we ask readers, “Can you spell “lawsuit“?!?

‘He did nothing wrong’: Florida principal ousted after defending Texas cop

“A Florida high school principal, who defended the Texas police officer at the center of that infamous pool melee, has become the latest victim of radical speech police hell-bent on trying to silence public discourse. Alberto Iber lost his job as the principal at North Miami Senior High School after he wrote a comment about the McKinney, Texas incident on the Miami Herald’s website.

“He did nothing wrong,” Iber wrote. “He was afraid for his life. I commend him for his actions.” Three sentences. Sixteen words. Sixty-two characters.

Miami-Dade County Public Schools released a statement on June 10 announcing that Mr. Iber had been removed from his position at the high school and reassigned to an administrative position. The district said they require their employees to conduct themselves “in a manner that represents the school district’s core values.”

“Judgment is the currency of honesty,” Superintendent Alberto Carvalho wrote in a statement.

“Insensitivity – intentional or perceived – is both unacceptable and inconsistent with our policies, but more importantly with our expectation of common sense behavior that elevates the dignity and humanity of all, beginning with children.”

Yeah…

The school district told me the superintendent would have no further comments on the matter. And his silence is damning.

Superintendent Carvahlo sent a very chilling message to his employees – any opinion that is contrary to liberal ideology must be silenced. And those who dare to voice such an opinion in the public marketplace must be severely punished…”

Now this is a legal action, the costs of which we’ll be happy to cover! 

On the Lighter Side…

Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with the Entertainment Section, where we learn…

Paleontologists Slam ‘Jurassic World,’ Call Movie ‘Major Step Backward For Accuracy’

“…They say while it’s good the movie series has renewed interest in dinosaurs, audiences come away with skewed ideas about how dinosaurs really lived. “You deal with these inaccuracies over and over every time you give a talk,” James Kirkland, who has been involved in the discovery of 20 dinosaurs, including the Utahraptor, told CBS News.

He would rather filmmakers focus on science, and not make people believe that a T-Rex can’t see you if you stay perfectly still or that velociraptors can open doors. “It gets really old after a while,” Kirkland added. “If they wouldn’t do that, we wouldn’t have to deal with this. We could step to the more interesting issues like what we are discovering next.”…”

Uhhh…dude; try explaining the truth behind Top Gun for over 30 years!  And last time we looked, doesn’t Jurassic World fall in the category of science fiction?!?

Magoo