It’s Monday, January 25th, 2016…but before we begin, courtesy of Balls Cotton, one of those cartoons we feel compelled to pass on…

…along with Hope n’ Change‘s thoughts on the Blizzard of ’16:

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, echoing Jonathan Tobin’s article from Friday, NRO‘s Charles W. Cooke offers an elementary explanation…or in the case of these two, alimentary (lower alimentary to be precise) for Palin playing Trump:

Of Course Sarah Palin Is Endorsing Donald Trump

“…If you are surprised by this development, you shouldn’t be. Ours is an age in which politics and entertainment are melted together without opposition or disfavor; a silly, self-indulgent, shallow age in which Kanye West thinks he can be the president of the United States and the president of the United States thinks he can be Kanye West. That Palin and Trump are together at last is no accident of ideology or timing; rather, it is the inevitable and rational confluence of two ghastly cults of personality — a fat-cutting, cash-saving merger that will serve to increase overall market share. Under their own steam, both figures have convinced a significant portion of the American population that their personal advancement is the key to the country’s success. Together, just think how great America can be!

…Last year, long before Trump made his ambitions clear, I submitted that if one “wanted to find a figure to which Palin can be reasonably compared . . . it’s not Ronald Reagan. . . . It’s Donald Trump.” And so it has come to pass. Like Palin, Trump has mastered the art of the interminable ramble, the purpose of which is not to convey meaning or to advance a useful argument but to stun the audience into dumb submission. Like Palin, Trump has embraced his ignorance and wielded it as a sign of strength and normality against the ever-protean “elite.” And, like Palin, Trump has betrayed his desire to fix the political system not by mastering or replacing it, but by becoming it. This isn’t an insurgency, it’s a shakedown. And the conmen are moving in packs.

Alas, there is no grand principle on display here. There is nothing but opportunism and ego. For a long time now, Sarah Palin has been apt to say anything and everything to keep the cameras buzzing around her hive. This rotten endorsement completes the decline…”

Meanwhile, the junior Senator from Texas picks up an endorsement of his own:

Anyone who reads us regularly knows we’re not enamored of Trump in the least.  For any number of reasons, including having no idea whatsoever where he actually stands on anything…other than his level of infatuation with himself…we neither like, respect nor, most importantly, trust Trump.

But in the interest of fairness, Doug Giles offers an aspect of the polarizing Republican front-runner we at least found worth the time to read…though we disagree with a number of his assertions and comparisons: 

Trump Haters: Blinded By The ‘Right’

“I was watching a very angry conservative on TV the other day attempt to paint Trump as Satan’s blonde-headed younger brother. They also tried to make out anyone who claimed to be a conservative, that would ever remotely even consider voting for The Donald, to be the dumbest SOB on the planet… the bane of humanity.

…The weird thing was, if my memory serves me correctly, I don’t remember this talking head getting that irate about Romney in 2012.  Matter of fact, I believe they stumped arduously for Mitt going into the general election. (Which is what one would expect of a loyal Republican in a general election.) 

Y’all help me here: aside from the color of their coifs, please thrill me with what’s the big difference between the twain other than Trump’s way more aggressive against Islam, for more stringent border security and way more anti-Obama/Hillary than Mitt ever was. Also, I’m pretty certain said person also tried to sell us on McCain and they were very pro-George W. Bush. Go figure.

…Bottom line: good luck finding Mr., Ms., Miss or Mrs. Perfect when voting for president. And by your standards you might as well start practicing saying President Hillary Rodham Clinton.

One more thing: I will vote for either Trump or Cruz depending upon who gets the nod. Also, and pardon my redundancy, but don’t forget the wizards at the National Review told us Romney & Ryan were groovy. How’d that work out for them?“

This reminds of one of our favorite scenes from Godfather 2:

Unlike Don Corleone’s relative regard for Hyman Roth, we never liked, respected nor trusted John McCain or Mitt Romney, let alone thought George W. a very good President; though we’re most proud to have sounded general quarters over the peril posed by The Obamao long before his election.

And while we adamantly refuse to participate in national suicide by refusing to vote for The Donald should he carry the GOP convention, it’s only because we’d gladly cast our ballot for the Devil himself rather than Hillary…or Bernie for that matter.

Here’s the juice: Satan and Hillary are the devils we know; Trump‘s the devil about which we know nothing at all.  And as the next President will likely make four nominations to the SCOTUS, we for one are simply not willing to bet the future of America on a wild card who’s taken any and every position which puts money in his pocket!

Since we’re on the subject of…

…the Devil herself, writing at NRO‘s The Corner, David French observes how…

For Some, Mishandling Classified Information Has Lasting Consequences

It turns out that General David Petraeus’s troubles are far from over. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter is considering demoting Petraeus, a humiliating move that would cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars:

The Pentagon is considering retroactively demoting retired Gen. David Petraeus after he admitted to giving classified information to his biographer and mistress while he was still in uniform, three people with knowledge of the matter told The Daily Beast.

The decision now rests with Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, who is said to be willing to consider overruling an earlier recommendation by the Army that Petraeus not have his rank reduced. Such a demotion could cost the storied general hundreds of thousands of dollars—and deal an additional blow to his once-pristine reputation.

“The secretary is considering going in a different direction” from the Army, a defense official told The Daily Beast, because he wants to be consistent in his treatment of senior officers who engage in misconduct and to send a message that even men of Petraeus’s fame and esteemed reputation are not immune to punishment. (Emphasis added.)

While I appreciate sincere efforts to hold even the most powerful of men to the same standards that govern the rank and file, it will be interesting to see if the same beliefs about fairness and the rule of law prevail in the FBI and DOJ, the entities tasked with investigating and potentially prosecuting Hillary Clinton.

Members of the military and other government employees have been prosecuted and disciplined for infractions far less serious than storing hundreds of emails containing classified information on an unsecured, private server. And the fact that Clinton was Secretary of State makes her infractions worse. She was a prime target for espionage, and her violations of the law gave foreign powers an opening to penetrate deliberations at the highest levels of government.

She has no excuse. But she does have power. That’s often enough to not just escape accountability but to prosper in spite of lawlessness. Just ask her husband.

We won’t shed a tear for Petraeus under any circumstances, as his release of classified information to his mistress was almost as reprehensible and inexcusable as having her in the first place.

And in the Environmental Moment, Patrick J. Michaels, climatologist and director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute writes at the WSJ of…

The Climate Snow Job

A blizzard! The hottest year ever! More signs that global warming and its extreme effects are beyond debate, right? Not even close.

Yours truly clearing a path for TLJ’s pack of Pomeranians!

“…NOAA’s alteration of its measurement standard and other changes produced a result that could have been predicted: a marginally significant warming trend in the data over the past several years, erasing the temperature plateau that vexed climate alarmists have found difficult to explain. Yet the increase remains far below what had been expected.

It is nonetheless true that 2015 shows the highest average surface temperature in the 160-year global history since reliable records started being available, with or without the “hiatus.” But that is also not very surprising. Early in 2015, a massive El Niño broke out. These quasiperiodic reversals of Pacific trade winds and deep-ocean currents are well-documented but poorly understood. They suppress the normally massive upwelling of cold water off South America that spreads across the ocean (and is the reason that Lima may be the most pleasant equatorial city on the planet). The Pacific reversal releases massive amounts of heat, and therefore surface temperature spikes. El Niño years usually set a global-temperature record. What happened this year also happened with the last big one, in 1998.

Global average surface temperature in 2015 popped up by a bit more than a quarter of a degree Fahrenheit compared with the previous year. In 1998 the temperature rose by slightly less than a quarter-degree from 1997.

When the Pacific circulation returns to its more customary mode, all that suppressed cold water will surge to the surface with a vengeance, and global temperatures will drop. Temperatures in 1999 were nearly three-tenths of a degree lower than in 1998, and a similar change should occur this time around, though it might not fit so neatly into a calendar year. Often the compensatory cooling, known as La Niña, is larger than the El Niño warming.

…Without El Niño, temperatures in 2015 would have been typical of the post-1998 regime. And, even with El Niño, the effect those temperatures had on the global economy was de minimis.”

Never in recorded history have so many been so willingly taken in by so obvious a scam as the acolytes of anthropogenic global warming.  They’re being conned by a covert cadre of Environazis devoted to dragging the world back to the Stone Age…and loving every ignorant minute of it.

On The Lighter Side…

Finally, for those still beguiled by the con artists at Black Lives Matter, we’ll call it a wrap with yet another dose of cold, hard reality straight from the pages of The Crime Blotter, courtesy of Celina Durgin and NRO:

The Myth of Wanton Police Shootings Collapses under the Weight of Facts

“In a project titled “The Counted,” the Guardian is tracking killings by police in the United States and has compiled a comprehensive list for the year 2015. The tracker was motivated by much-discussed but poorly founded concern about excessive use of police force particularly against blacks.

…The basic facts of each case in the month of December are summarized below; links to coverage of the incidents in local media are also provided…”

Proof again, as if any were needed, why you can’t spell “Liberal” without an “L-I-E”!

Magoo