It’s Friday, December 11th, 2015…but before we begin, the absurdity of The Left’s anti-gun rantings has reached a new low with this deranged drivel from one Phoebe Maltz Bovy writing at the New Republic:

“Ban guns. All guns. Get rid of guns in homes, and on the streets, and, as much as possible, on police.

Not just because of San Bernardino, or whichever mass shooting may pop up next, but also not not because of those. (?!?) Don’t sort the population into those who might do something evil or foolish or self-destructive with a gun and those who surely will not. As if this could be known—as if it could be assessed without massively violating civil liberties and stigmatizing the mentally ill. Ban guns! Not just gun violence. Not just certain guns. Not just already-technically-illegal guns. All of them.“

As for Ms. Bovy’s feelings for the mentally ill, wethinks her concerns are centered on…self-stigmatization.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, inquiring minds would think a $20 trillion national debt, which cannot possibly be serviced once interest rates inevitably rise absent major austerity measures…and the resultant civil and social unrest…should result in a modicum of fiscal conservatism from even the most spendthrift Liberals.

That’s what you get for thinking; after all, with all the “free” sh*t that’s out there, what’s the difference?!?

$100,000,000,000 here, a $100,000,000,000 there, pretty soon you’re talking what to The Left is still chump change!

Interestingly enough, even some of the Dimocrats’ most-devoted MSM disciples are beginning to wonder not only how much this free sh*t will actually cost…

…but how Liberals are going to pay for it all.

Since we’re on the subject of lies, damned lies and damned lying Liberals, from Frontpage Mag, a little bit of Presidential precedent those condemning Trump’s proposed slow-down of Islamist infiltration seemed to have overlooked:

Carter Banned Iranians from Coming to U.S. During Hostage Crisis

 

“Trump is a monster, a madman and a vile racist. He’s just like Hitler. Or Jimmy Carter.

During the Iranian hostage crisis, Carter issued a number of orders to put pressure on Iran. Among these, Iranians were banned from entering the United States unless they oppose the Shiite Islamist regime or had a medical emergency. Here’s Jimmy “Hitler” Carter saying it back in 1980.

Fourth, the Secretary of Treasury [State] and the Attorney General will invalidate all visas issued to Iranian citizens for future entry into the United States, effective today. We will not reissue visas, nor will we issue new visas, except for compelling and proven humanitarian reasons or where the national interest of our own country requires. This directive will be interpreted very strictly.

Apparently barring people from a terrorist country is not against “our values” after all. It may even be “who we are”. Either that or Carter was a racist monster just like Trump.

Meanwhile here’s how the Iranian students in the US were treated.

Carter orders 50,000 Iranian students in US to report to immigration office with view to deporting those in violation of their visas. On 27 December 1979, US appeals court allows deportation of Iranian students found in violation.

In November 1979, the Attorney General had given all Iranian students one month to report to the local immigration office. Around 7,000 were found in violation of their visas. Around 15,000 Iranians were forced to leave the US. Meanwhile any Iranians entering the US were forced to undergo secondary screening.

Interestingly enough, Carter did this by invoking the Nationality Act of 1952. A law originally opposed by Democrats for its attempt to restrict Communist immigration to the United States…”

We remain adamantly opposed to The Donald as President…unless the only other option is Hillary.  And no, Rush; one need not be a card-carrying member of the Republican Establishment to see Trump as a monomaniacal egotist.  Trump is a bloviating buffoon, possessed of no discernible core values other than an overblown love of publicity and himself.  What concerns us most is while we know where Hillary stands on the most problematic issues of the day, we really haven’t the slightest clue what The Donald believes; and that should worry anyone with the slightest clue, including Rush Limbaugh.  That it apparently doesn’t speaks volumes about where Rush’s head is at…and possibly where his loyalties lie.

That being said, Trump’s caution on Islamist infiltration may not be completely right, but the concept is certainly not without merit and deserving of discussion.

Which brings us to the latest from the greatest, Victor Davis Hanson, who in a must-read commentary weighs in on why…

Public Discontent Has Fueled the Trump Phenomenon

 

The more analysts try to figure out Donald Trump’s appeal, the more they sound baffled.

Pundits cite Trump’s verbal sloppiness and ridiculousness as proof that he must soon implode. But Trump sees his daily bombast as an injection of outrage for a constituency now hooked on someone who finally voices their pent-up anger. The more reckless Trump’s doses of scattergun outrageousness, the better the fix for his supporters.

Trump’s vague “make America great again” was the natural bookend to Barack Obama’s even more vacuous “hope and change.” The popularity of such empty slogans reflects a culture in which no one any longer trusts institutions, the media, government or politicians.

The public no longer respects U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the IRS, the VA or the GSA. Even the once-hallowed Secret Service has become a near laughingstock of incompetency, corruption and politicization. Is the purpose of NASA really Muslim outreach, as NASA chief Charles Bolden suggested in 2010?

The world that we are told about by our government bears no resemblance to what we see and hear every day.

President Obama has exacerbated this current disconnect between the public and its officials. In unserious fashion, he shares his selfies, parades his annual Final Four picks and jets off to Los Angeles to appear on late-night talk shows, even as he hectors Americans in sermons about their Islamophobia, their carbon footprints, their immigration xenophobia and their gun obsessions.

Did the public earn such presidential rebukes because it believes that jihadism at home and the Islamic State abroad are more dangerous than global warming? Or because disarming law-abiding citizens will not prevent law-breaking criminals and terrorists from obtaining illegal weapons? Or because it is unwise to open the borders to anyone who can make it into the United States, few questions asked?

The first reaction of Attorney General Loretta Lynch after the recent San Bernardino terrorist attack was to warn the country about Islamophobia. Her implicit message to the families of the dead was not that the government missed a terrorist cadre or let Islamic State sympathizers carry out a massacre. Instead, she worried more about Americans being angry at the inability of the tight-knit Muslim community to ferret out the extremists in its midst.

So we live in an age of disbelief.

The government reports that a record 94.4 million Americans are not in labor force. That is almost a third of the country. How can the same government declare that the official unemployment rate is only 5 percent?

Economists warn that a $20 trillion national debt cannot be serviced without major calamities once interest rates rise. Yet even as interest rates are scheduled to go up, the government still borrows nearly $500 billion a year. It calls that profligacy fiscal prudence, because the borrowing is below the usual $1 trillion a year. (Which Obama, incidentally, made de rigueur.)

It may or may not have been wise for the Supreme Court to sanction gay marriage, or for the Pentagon to allow women in the military to join all combat units, or for the president to tacitly end border enforcement. But these changes were not made by majority legislative decision. And they have come thick and fast without time for the public to digest their consequences. Instead, if a new idea or agenda lacks majority support, then activists can confidently look for a court or bureaucracy to implement change by top-down order.

In short, millions of citizens think the nation is headed for a financial reckoning. They feel threatened by radical Islamic terrorism. They sense that cultural and social stability has disappeared. And they know that expression of these worries can be a thought crime — hounded down by politicians, media, universities and cultural institutions that do not enjoy broad public support and are not subject to the direct consequences of their own ideologies.

Amid these crises and the present absence of responsible leadership, if there were not a demagogic Donald Trump ranting and raving on the scene, the country would probably have to invent something like him.

As Guy Benson observes at Townhall.com…

“Surprise? Of course they would; this is how cults of personality operate.

Please recall this Huffington Post poll released in September. It demonstrated how Republican voters — driven, it would seem, by Trump backers — became astonishingly supportive of (a) maintaining the Iran nuclear deal, (b) government-funded and run healthcare, and (c) race-based affirmative action when the pollster informed respondents that those positions were held by Donald Trump, as opposed to Barack Obama.

These aren’t hypotheticals, by the way.  Follow those links, and you’ll discover that longtime Democrat Donald Trump has embraced all three liberal stances during his current presidential run. Not back when he was donating generously to Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid over the years (yes, yes, “because he’s a businessman!”), and not even more recently, when Trump was declaring his support for the wasteful “stimulus” package enacted by Obama, whom he declared had rescued the American economy; no, these are viewpoints articulated by the current iteration of Trump.

The punchline is that his supporters don’t care at all.  Trump’s Democrat-style campaign is driven by feelings and identity, not issues. (Heretofore almost exclusively a phenomenon of The Left!)

…The point is that emotion-based hero worship can heavily erode afflicted parties’ previous adherence to values, ideology, and critical thinking.“

Which could make large portions of The Right no different than the vast majority of The Left.

We’ll leave the last word on the sorry state of national politics to the WSJ‘s Kimberly Strassel, who opines The Obamao has left America dangerously exposed to more than Islamic terror:

No Political Guardrails

President Obama broke all the boundaries—and now Clinton and Trump are following suit.

 

“Twenty-two years ago, my esteemed colleague Dan Henninger wrote a blockbuster Journal editorial titled “No Guardrails.” Its subject was people “who don’t think that rules of personal or civil conduct apply to them,” as well as the elites who excuse this lack of self-control and the birth of a less-civilized culture.

We are today witnessing the political version of this phenomenon. That’s how to make sense of a presidential race that grows more disconnected from normality by the day.

Barack Obama has done plenty of damage to the country, but perhaps the worst is his determined destruction of Washington’s guardrails. Mr. Obama wants what he wants. If ObamaCare is problematic, he unilaterally alters the law. If Congress won’t change the immigration system, he refuses to enforce it. If the nation won’t support laws to fight climate change, he creates one with regulation. If the Senate won’t confirm his nominees, he declares it in recess and installs them anyway. “As to limits, you set your own,” observed Dan in that editorial. This is our president’s motto.

Mr. Obama doesn’t need anyone to justify his actions, because he’s realized no one can stop him. He gets criticized, but at the same time his approach has seeped into the national conscience. It has set new norms. You see this in the ever-more-outrageous proposals from the presidential field, in particular front-runners Hillary Clinton andDonald Trump…”

And change in this case is definitely not for the better!

Next up, the WSJ offers yet another reason we’ll never contribute to the Republican Party again:

The Consumer Bureau Cover-Up

The feds knew their data showing racial bias was false but sued anyway.

 

Congressman David Scott recently lambasted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for its “deceitful” auto-loan regulation based on “shamefully flawed” information. Now it looks like the Georgia Democrat was being kind.

The Republican staff of the House Financial Services Committee has released a trove of documents showing that bureau officials knew their information was flawed and even deliberated on ways to prevent people outside the bureau from learning how flawed it was. The bureau has been guessing the race and ethnicity of car-loan borrowers based on their last names and addresses—and then suing banks whenever it looks like the people the government guesses are white seem to be getting a better deal than the people it guesses are minorities. This largely fact-free prosecutorial method is the reason a bipartisan House supermajority recently voted to roll back the bureau’s auto-loan rules.

The vote occurred before the release of the House committee report, which shows that the regulators were guessing and knew that they weren’t even making good guesses…

…What we can’t figure out is why, after the yeoman work of Jeb Hensarling’s House Financial Services Committee in exposing this outrage—and an overwhelming bipartisan vote on the House floor—Senators still don’t seem in any hurry to act. Banking Committee legislators on either side of the aisle aren’t making this a priority…”

The Left’s refusal we understand; after all, the CFPB is the brainchild of…

…Lie-a-watha and her buddy Barry.  As for the reluctance of Senate Republicans to pursue such obvious government waste, fraud and abuse…

…okay, we understand the failure on The Right as well!

And in the Environmental Moment, news that will allow the environmentally-conscious the world over to sleep better tonight:

Cardinal: If Climate Talks Stall, Pope May Gently Intervene

 

“If international climate talks really stall, don’t be surprised if there might be an ever-so-slight intervention by Pope Francis. Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace who helped draft the pope’s June encyclical on global warming, said the pontiff has “deep trust” that negotiators in Paris will get the job done. But just in case they don’t, the pope might possibly send a gentle message, he said.

“If it gets to a stalemate or whatever, he may utter a statement or make a comment or whatever, but he will refrain from exercising any coercive power on the things over here, because that would not belong to his style…”

Nor his area of even the remotest of expertise, let alone place!  Funny how before this Socialist became pontiff, Liberals denounced anything and everything emanating from the Holy See. Now…?!?

In a related opinion as well-informed and grounded in reality as the Bishop of Rome’s…

Han Solo Warns of Human Extinction if Climate Summit Fails

 

“Hollywood heavyweight Harrison Ford has told the ABC he hopes world leaders can “finally do something” about climate change as he launched a broadside at squabbling world powers.

During an interview with 7.30, Ford said the consequences of inaction were dire. “Nature will take care of itself — nature doesn’t need people, people need nature to survive,” Ford told presenter Leigh Sales. “The planet will be OK, there just won’t be any damn people on it.”…”

Coming up, the equally-expert assessments of Boba Fett, Lando Calrissian and Father O’Malley:

Hells bells; the dog probably knows more about climate change than Francis and Ford put together! 

On the Lighter Side…

Finally, in the Do As We Say, NOT As We Do segment, James Taranto notes the latest example of Progressive-inspired moralizing hypocrisy:

A New York Times editorial begins with a human-interest story:

A decade ago, when she was starting to transition genders, the artist known as Our Lady J steeled herself as she called endocrinologists, seeking one who would prescribe hormones. “I couldn’t find a doctor,” said the classical pianist and singer, who is currently a writer for the television series “Transparent.” “I was treated like a freak.”

Since then, the medical community in the United States has resoundingly concluded that transgender care—which includes hormone replacement therapy, counseling and surgical procedures—is medically necessary and should be covered by insurance.

Federal health officials say insurers and medical providers that discriminate against transgender individuals by denying transition-related care are violating the law.

But that doesn’t help Our Lady J:

When Our Lady J learned this fall that the Writers Guild of America health plan, which provides an insurance plan for writers in Hollywood, does not cover transition-related care, she was distraught. It reminded her of a darker time in her life, when she was suicidal and struggled with substance abuse, largely as a result of being unable to afford the medical care she needed.

We have an idea: Since she’s a writer, maybe the New York Times could give her a job so that its insurance would cover her transition. As it turns out, that won’t work. From the editorial:

(The New York Times Company’s health insurance plans retain an exclusion for gender reassignment surgery; because they are self-funded, they are not required to follow New York State policy.)

Sounds as if this shouldn’t have been an editorial but a memo to the human-resources department.

Magoo