It’s Wednesday, August 24th, 2016…but before we begin, consider the opening lines of this scene from Air Force One we happened to overhear in passing as we stopped to give TLJ a little peck on the forehead…

…and tell us you don’t wish for once life would imitate art…with Barry, Moochie, Bill and Hillary all along for the ride! 

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, the man Trump should designate…NOW…as his Secretary of State:

Bolton would not only appeal to the hearts and minds of Conservatives, but stand in stark contrast to the bumbling buffoonery we’ve been forced to endure for the last 7-1/2 years; to wit:

Here’s Why the State Dept Is Now Warning Americans Not to Travel to Iran

 

The State Department – the same agency that assured us that $400 million cash payment to Iran wasn’t ransom for four American prisoners they had held hostage – is now warning Americans not to travel to the country.

“U.S. citizens traveling to Iran should very carefully weigh the risks of travel and consider postponing their travel,” the warning adds. “U.S. citizens residing in Iran should closely follow media reports, monitor local conditions, and evaluate the risks of remaining in the country.”

It’s more than mere talk. Another American was captured by Iranian authorities just last week. Isn’t this the same country President Obama has applauded for signing the White House’s nuclear deal last summer?

It’s as Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton observed:

Meanwhile, the J.V. team demonstrates it can go as low as any Liberal:

Since we’re on the subject of cretins who occupy a level in life even lower than…

…Townhall.com‘s Katie Pavlich informs us…

New Emails Show Huma Abedin Granting Meetings With Secretary Hillary After Clinton Foundation Donations

 

“Until they “give” to the Foundation, they can talk to the hand!”

“New emails unearthed through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by government watchdog Judicial Watch show longtime confidant and top Clinton aide Huma Abedin granting special access desired by foreign leaders and activists to Secretary of State Hillary (only) after they donated to the Clinton Foundation.

Essentially, the emails show Abedin working as a pipeline between Secretary of State Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. When individuals wanted meetings with Clinton, Abedin would deny the meeting, introduce them to the Clinton Foundation, the Foundation would accept a donation and then access to Clinton was granted.

In more than a dozen email exchanges, Abedin provided expedited, direct access to Clinton for donors who had contributed from $25,000 to $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. In many instances, Clinton Foundation top executive Doug Band, who worked with the Foundation throughout Hillary Clinton’s tenure at State, coordinated closely with Abedin. In Abedin’s June deposition to Judicial Watch, she conceded that part of her job at the State Department was taking care of ‘Clinton family matters,’ Judicial Watch detailed on its website Monday. Included among the Abedin-Band emails is an exchange revealing that when Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain requested a meeting with Secretary of State Clinton, he was forced to go through the Clinton Foundation for an appointment. Abedin advised Band that when she went through ‘normal channels’ at State, Clinton declined to meet. After Band intervened, however, the meeting was set up within forty-eight hours.

…When asked Monday about access being granted after donations to the Clinton Foundation, State Department Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner denied evidence of the situation, but would not say directly the actions didn’t occur. “We have no clear sign that that was the case. We’ve seen no evidence that’s the case,” State Department spokesman Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner said Monday.“

Such double-dealing bureaucrats should, quite literally, be put up against a wall and shot…along with those they’re lying to protect and their acolytes in the MSM.  Hells bells, like Hillary, they’re not even good liars.

But as Jonathan Tobin notes at Commentary Magazine:

“Any Republicans hoping the ongoing ethical problems revolving around the Clinton Foundation will somehow turn the tide in the presidential election are likely indulging in excessive optimism. That said, the Clinton camp is making a mistake if its denizens think the firestorm regarding conflicts of interest involving foundation donors at Hillary Clinton’s State Department can be doused by vague promises about the foundation’s future conduct. As the Wall Street Journal noted on Friday, assurances by former President Clinton that the foundation won’t accept corporate or foreign donations if his wife is elected won’t help. Nor will his promise to resign from its board. Or guarantees that Chelsea will stop raising money for it. As the Journal’s editorial correctly points out, if such activities become problematic once Hillary Clinton becomes president, why weren’t they just as inappropriate when she was secretary of state? During those four years, the Clinton family business—a political slush fund thinly disguised as a charity that peddles influence in exchange for supporting the former first family’s lavish lifestyle–was doing big business. And, as Clinton’s emails and the reporting done by liberal newspapers like the New York Times show, we’ve just started to scratch the surface of revelations involving links between those who gave the Clintons big bucks and their influence on U.S. foreign policy.

 Secure in the knowledge that Trump’s rants will keep the focus off of Hillary’s problems, their foundation is likely to keep on amassing huge donations right up until the last possible moment…”

Precisely as Hope ‘n Change so presciently predicted Monday:

In a related item, also writing at Commentary Magazine, Noah Rothman wonders whether her latest email corker about how…

…is finally…

One Lie Too Many for Hillary?

 

“It’s been over 260 days since Hillary Clinton held her last press conference. Surely, the former secretary of state knew that stonewalling the press like this would antagonize political media and hand her Republican opponents a powerful rhetorical weapon, but she must have determined it was a small price to pay. If Clinton thought avoiding the press would keep her name out of the news, however, that was a significant lapse in judgment. The former secretary of state is still generating headlines from inside the bunker, and few of them are good.

Last week, the New York Times reported that Clinton had told the FBI of an exchange she had had with Colin Powell in which she claimed George W. Bush’s one-time chief diplomat had suggested she use a personal email address. TheTimes cited an excerpt from a forthcoming Bill Clinton biography by journalist Joe Conason who described that precise exchange between Clinton and Powell at a State Department gathering:

“Toward the end of the evening, over dessert, Albright asked all of the former secretaries to offer one salient bit of counsel to the nation’s next top diplomat….Powell told her to use her own email, as he had done, except for classified communications, which he had sent and received via a State Department computer.”

This is no defense; it’s an indictment…”

As this cartoon from Mark Foster so eloquently puts it:

Progressives would counter racist, misogynistic, Israeli-loving Neanderthals like us just don’t get it; she’s 110% behind a woman’s unfettered right to chose!  In other words…

…slaughter her unborn daughter…at will!!!  Which perversely makes her all in for “women’s rights”!

All of which leads the New York Post‘s Michael Goodwin to conclude, not completely incorrectly (as we believe they collapsed decades before!)…

American journalism is collapsing before our eyes

 

“Donald Trump may or may not fix his campaign, and Hillary Clinton may or may not become the first female president. But something else happening before our eyes is almost as important: the complete collapse of American journalism as we know it.

The frenzy to bury Trump is not limited to the Clinton campaign and the Obama White House. They are working hand-in-hand with what was considered the cream of the nation’s news organizations. The shameful display of naked partisanship by the elite media is unlike anything seen in modern America.

The largest broadcast networks — CBS, NBC and ABC — and major newspapers like The New York Times and Washington Post have jettisoned all pretense of fair play. Their fierce determination to keep Trump out of the Oval Office has no precedent. (Other than their blind and unwavering support for anything Barack!)

Indeed, no foreign enemy, no terror group, no native criminal gang, suffers the daily beating that Trump does. (Though some of it’s deserved!) The mad mullahs of Iran, who call America the Great Satan and vow to wipe Israel off the map, are treated gently by comparison. (Because they’re Barry’s friends!)

…A recent article by its media reporter, Jim Rutenberg, whom I know and like, began this way: “If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?”

Whoa, Nellie. The clear assumption is that many reporters see Trump that way, and it is note­worthy that no similar question is raised about Clinton, whose scandals are deserving only of “scrutiny.” Rutenberg approvingly cites a leftist journalist who calls one candidate “normal” and the other ­“abnormal.”

Clinton is hardly “normal” to the 68 percent of Americans who find her dishonest and untrustworthy, though apparently not a single one of those people writes for the Times. Statistically, that makes the Times “abnormal.”

Also, you don’t need to be a ­detective to hear echoes in that first paragraph of Clinton speeches and ads, including those featured prominently on the Times’ Web site. In effect, the paper has seamlessly ­adopted Clinton’s view as its own, then tries to justify its coverage.

It’s an impossible task, and Rutenberg fails because he must. Any reporter who agrees with Clinton about Trump has no business covering either candidate.

…Now its only standard is a double standard, one that it proudly ­confesses. Shame would be more appropriate.“

But true believers are beyond shame…as well as any form of reason.

Which brings us, appropriately enough, to today’s installment of the Culture Section, as NRO‘s David French offers the cold, harsh truth behind…

The Tragic Transgender Contagion

Anguished parents note that entire peer groups seem determined to ‘transition’ together.

 

“When thinking about transgender issues, you can choose to believe either the Left’s comforting lie or the messy — and sometimes quite sad and scary — truth. Here’s the comforting lie: that there are a certain class of people who live in “a state of emotional distress” because their sex “assigned at birth” conflicts with their “gender identity.” For these people it is the height of cruelty to ask them to live according to their “assigned” sex. So, when even children demonstrate the allegedly objective criteria of “consistence, insistence, and persistence,” then they can and often should begin the process of transitioning to a new gender. It’s all science, you see. And denying that science not only makes you a Neanderthal, it makes you a bigot.

According to this lie, parents should rejoice when their children finally identify as transgender. After all, it’s the first step to becoming their “true selves.”

According to this lie, there is nothing to fear except discrimination itself. Once individuals embrace their true identity, only intolerance can destroy their lives. Thus the fury at dissenters. Thus the academic censorship. Because of high suicide rates in transgender populations, endorsing ideological conformity becomes a matter of life and death.

The truth, however, is stubborn. Human experience simply doesn’t conform to ideological models, and the far worse damage is done when we try to impose radical ideology onto the complexities of individual, troubled lives. In reality, people are far more vulnerable to suggestion and fashion than the Left lets on. Rather than affirming an immutable identity, our culture is ratifying and rendering permanent what often amounts to little more than a troubled youthful phase — one that is subject to all the whims of fashion that mark any other cultural trend.

Let’s be clear: The vast majority of kids who experience a period of discomfort with their biological sexual identity eventually desist. Indeed, the number may well be over 90 percent. In other words, kids who are growing and learning about life and themselves sometimes endure a period of confusion. This should shock exactly no one. What is shocking, however, is the insistence that this period of confusion should be treated as a period of confirmation — and that medical intervention is the logical and tolerant next course…”

Chalk up another “victory” for the triumph of politically-correct Progressivism over common sense.

Turning now to The Lighter Side…

Then there’s these four bits of nostalgia from Shannon Wood:

Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with what can best be described as a cross between Tales From the Darkside and another sordid story straight from the pages of The Crime Blotter: Thomas Sowell detailing…

A Clash of Police Policies

 

Surely the only time in living memory Liberals gave the opinion of a White cop any credence whatsoever in opposition to the beliefs of a Black man!

Amid the rioting in Milwaukee, there is also a clash between two leading lawmen there — Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke and the city of Milwaukee’s Chief of Police Edward Flynn. They have very different opinions about how law enforcement should be carried out.

Chief Edward Flynn expresses the view long prevalent among those who emphasize the social “root causes” of crime, such as income disparities and educational disparities, as well as the larger society’s neglect of black communities. Chief Flynn puts less emphasis on aggressive police action and more on community outreach and gun control.

Sheriff David Clarke represents an opposite tradition, in which the job of the police is to enforce the law, as forcefully as necessary, not to make excuses for law-breaking or to ease up on enforcing the law, in hopes that this will mollify rioters. Sheriff Clarke would also like to see law-abiding blacks be armed.

Differences of opinion on law enforcement are sharp and unmistakable — and have been for more than 50 years. However, as the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan used to say, “You’re entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.” Unfortunately, facts seem to play a remarkably small role in clashes over law enforcement policies. And that too has been true for more than 50 years.

In his memoirs, the Supreme Court’s Chief Justice Earl Warren declared that “all of us must assume a share of the responsibility” for rising crime rates in the 1960s because “for decades we have swept under the rug” the slum conditions that breed crime. But the hard fact is that the murder rate in the country as a whole was going down during those very decades when social problems in the slums were supposedly being neglected.

Homicide rates among black males went down by 18 percent in the 1940s and by 22 percent in the 1950s. It was in the 1960s, when the ideas of Chief Justice Warren and others triumphed, that this long decline in homicide rates among black males reversed and skyrocketed by 89 percent, wiping out all the progress of the previous 20 years.

The same reversal in the country at large saw murder rates by 1974 more than twice as high as in 1960. This was after the murder rate had been cut in half from where it had been in the 1930s.

Ghetto riots, which erupted in the 1960s, were blamed on poverty and discrimination. But what were the facts?

Poverty and discrimination were worse in the South than in the rest of the country. But ghetto riots were not nearly as common in the South. The most deadly ghetto riot of the 1960s occurred in Detroit, where 43 people were killed — 33 of whom were black. In Detroit at that time, black median family income was 95 percent of white median family income. The unemployment rate among blacks was 3.4 percent and black home ownership was higher in Detroit than in any other major city.

What was different about Detroit was that politicians put the police under orders that restricted their response to riots — and some rioters said “the fuzz is scared.” It was black victims who paid the highest price for letting rioters run amuck.

By contrast, Chicago’s 1960s mayor Richard Daley came on television to say that he had ordered his police to “shoot to kill” rioters who started fires. There was outrage among the politically correct across the country. But Chicago, with a larger population than Detroit, had no such death rate in riots.

In later years, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s aggressive police policies in high-crime neighborhoods cut the murder rate down to a fraction of what it had been before. But, in England, opposite policies prevailed, with what London’s “Daily Telegraph” newspaper referred to as “politically correct policing” that has police acting “more like social workers than upholders of law and order.”

Although England had long been regarded as one of the most law-abiding nations on Earth, riots that swept through London, Manchester and other British cities in 2011 were virtually identical to riots in Ferguson, Baltimore and other American cities. Most of the British rioters were white but what they did was the same, right down to setting fire to police cars.

But do facts matter anymore?

Not to Liberals!

Magoo