It’s Friday, December 16th, 2016…but before we begin, The Dear Misleader’s self-serving and deliberately divisive comments regarding his personal, perverted perception of the state of race relations in America…

‘America has NOT overcome the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow’: Obama tells Trevor Noah that the country still has along way to go to beat racism

…caused us to consider the inherent contrast betwixt two distinctly different versions of the flash mob concept, as offered by inner-city America…

…and its more cultured counterpart:

A couple quick thoughts come to mind: first, the plagues of poverty, violence, ignorance and unemployment endemic to our inner cities have as much to do with the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow as Trump’s election was the result of Russian hacking.  America’s urban ghettos are the direct result of the disintegration of the Black family, itself the inevitable consequence of Progressive policies dating back to the Great Society.

Second, it’s not that America hasn’t overcome the legacy of slavery, but rather Liberals can’t afford to let it go!!!  Heightened racial animosity was as certain to result from The Obamao’s purposeful policy of divide-and-conquer as the targeting of police officers would dramatically increase due to his support of the lies behind Black Lives Matter.

But, just as personal profit…

…means more to Progressives than national security, political power…

…is far more valuable than the common good.

B. Hussein’s self-centeredness reminds us of the two campers being chased by a grizzly bear.  When one stops to put on his sneakers, the other incredulously inquires, “You really think you can outrun that bear?!?”  To which his friend replies, “The only thing I have to outrun is you!”

Likewise, the only thing the country need outrun in order to beat racism is Progressivism, and its poster child…

…for the myth of a perpetually bigoted America. 

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, as the WSJ‘s Jason Riley observes…

The Media Still Don’t Get Trump

The public doesn’t care about what obsesses pundits—and the president-elect knows it.

“Republican pols and their supporters are accustomed to biased media coverage from a Washington press corps dominated by liberals, but there’s reason to believe that Donald Trump could have it worse than his GOP predecessors.

We are told that Mr. Trump’s cabinet picks pose threats to the country ranging from merely grave to existential. Businessman Andy Puzder is unacceptable as labor secretary because he believes minimum-wage hikes hurt job growth. Never mind that McDonald’s is currently replacing human cashiers with automated kiosks to counteract the unions’ nationwide push for a $15 per hour minimum.

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, the president-elect’s choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency, is branded a climate-change “denier” for writing that scientists “continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind.” Liberals often (“Often”?  More like “always“!) resort to name-calling to shut down serious policy debates. Only a racist would criticize affirmative action, and only a homophobe would oppose same-sex marriage, right? But now we’ve reached a point where questioning the impact of something is no different from denying that it exists.

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, the nominee for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, is knocked for having no expertise in housing policy or running a government agency, which is apparently more difficult than brain surgery. While Elaine Chao, a George W. Bush administration veteran who’s been tapped to run the Transportation Department, is accused of being an “insider”—i.e., having too much experience in government. Rex Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, is unfit for secretary of state because his company does business with Russia. The same people who questioned the president-elect’s knowledge of foreign affairs during the campaign now tell us that he’s surrounding himself with too much military brass. Well, make up your mind.

Clearly, Mr. Trump can’t win, and the best way forward for him may be to not even try. The media establishment’s problems with the incoming president go deeper than ideology. The press still isn’t over the fact that a non-politician won the White House. The Trump victory knocked veteran journalists off their stride. Most of the political know-it-alls who type and talk for a living misread the candidates and the public mood, and we’re still coming to grips with that. Hillary Clinton promised to put the coal industry out of business and lost. Why should it shock or outrage anyone that Mr. Trump is appointing cabinet members who support the use of fossil fuels?…”

Particularly as his predecessor appointed avowed Communists Van Jones (no relation to Ham Jones, Lam Jones or John Paul Jones) and Anita Dunn (who named Mao and Mother Theresa as her two favorite philosophers) to nary a peep from a complacent MSM.  

Next, as Jonah Goldberg notes at NRO…

Trump Won the Election Fair and Square — That Doesn’t Mean the Russians Played No Part

The Russians did not decide the election, but their attempt to influence it merits serious attention from all parties.

Soooo…the Russians created the Clinton Foundation, gave Hillary her grating laugh and insufferable personality, coined the term “deplorables” and made her: (a) use an unsecured, private email server then repeatedly lie about it; (b) claim Benghazi resulted from a video; and (c) tell the fanciful tale about landing in Bosnia under sniper fire.

“The good news for Trump: No credible source has claimed that the Russians won the election for the Republican candidate. To believe that, you’d have to think that the Russians tricked Clinton into deploying her campaign resources disastrously, convinced her to set up her stealth server, or encouraged her to give a lackluster performance on the campaign trail. How did the Russians get Clinton to ignore Wisconsin and Michigan, I wonder? No credible source has claimed that the Russians won the election for the Republican candidate.

But countless credible sources have said that the Kremlin interfered with our election. Trump and his team are foolish and irresponsible to rain scorn on that. When the New York Times reported that the Russians also hacked the Republican National Committee’s servers but didn’t leak the results, campaign aide Sean Spicer tweeted, “Don’t miss tomorrow’s [David] Sanger New York Times exclusive interview with Elvis riding his unicorn on a rainbow with Santa.”

The Times story is not nearly as dispositive as Democrats claim, but it is hardly the stuff of psychedelic fantasy.

Then again, who trusts anything Clapper says…or, for that matter, Brennan or Comey?!?

The real debate is over whether the Russian meddling — which echoes similar meddling across Europe — was intended to get Trump elected or simply to erode confidence in the democratic process. I fail to see how this is an either/or choice. The hacking could have started with mere mischief in mind and evolved into a pro-Trump effort by the end. Most experts, including those on Trump’s team, didn’t expect to win (contrary to a lot of post-election spin), and it’s doubtful that Russia’s psephologists are that much better than ours. So the most likely goal for the Russians was to set up a defeated Trump to denounce the validity of the election and the integrity of the political process.

But then Trump won on the merits. The great irony is that the Democrats and the media — which not long ago were denouncing any suggestion that the system is rigged — are now echoing the very talking points Putin wants.

It’s a poisonous situation all around…”

True, but the toxin’s coming almost exclusively…

…from one side of the aisle.

In a related item, writing at his personal blog, the great Victor Davis Hanson accurately assesses The Left’s intent is to remake…

America as Animal Farm

New commandments replace the old ones on the barn wall.

Since his days fighting for the loyalists during the Spanish Civil War, the left-wing Orwell had become an increasingly outspoken enemy of Communism. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, when Stalin renounced all his wartime assurances and steamrolled Eastern Europe, Orwell came to see state socialism under authoritarian auspices as the greatest threat to human freedom. It was not as if right-wing dictators were not equally lethal, but the inclusion of the words “socialist” and “republic” in a left-wing tyrant’s official lexicon tended to fool millions.

Indeed, it was precisely the leftist totalitarians’ habit of embroidering their murderous pursuit of power with professions of “equality,” “fairness,” and “egalitarianism” that so often allowed them to employ any means necessary to achieve their supposedly exalted ends. (Sound at all familiar?) In sum, in Orwell’s eyes, the radical Left’s erasure of historical memory and its distortion of reality through the manipulation of language were the chief threat of the 20th century.

His 1945 novella Animal Farm — initially difficult for Orwell to publish and deeply hated by Western leftists — was an allegorical warning to liberals of the dangers of left-wing propaganda. Words and phrases changed their meanings — again and again — to serve a tyrannical agenda. The assorted creatures of Orwell’s fictional barnyard frequently wake up to new commandments posted on the barn wall by their Stalinesque pig leaders, with yesterday’s edicts crossed out or modified — and soon to be forgotten.

…No sooner did the progressive media and bureaucracy establish new barn-wall rules than Obama got set to leave office, soon to be replaced by a President Trump. Now the leftist project must scramble to hit reverse and start all over from the beginning.

On the lighter side, after 2016, expect that the sight of a president golfing in sports attire and shades will be proof of his indolence and privilege, not necessary downtime as it was for an overworked and harried Obama. If First Lady Melania Trump takes two jumbo jets full of aides and government junketeers to vacation on Spain’s Costa del Sol next year — as did Michelle Obama for her 2010 getaway — expect media outrage over her supposedly callous selfishness and indulgence.

Here are the more serious and latest samples of the corrected Animal Farm Commandments on the American Farm barn wall for the age of the Trump presidency:

1. The Senate filibuster is an archaic and disruptive obstacle to government an essential tool of legislative democracy.

2. The Senate’s “nuclear option” of approving nominees by majority votes is a legitimate tool to restore legislative balance crackpot idea to erode Senate traditions.

3. Pen-and-phone executive orders are critical presidential prerogatives when Congress won’t act undermine the Constitution’s separation of powers.

4. Past Supreme Court decisions are always fluid rulings and hold no real sway over present court prerogatives established judicial precedents that should not be tampered with by current politicized justices.

5. Pressuring private companies like Boeing or Chrysler for political purposes like Carrier to keep jobs in the U.S. is unwise presidential intrusion into the marketplace.

6. Edgy, out-of-the-box foreign-policy outreach to democracies like Taiwan dictatorships like Cuba and Iran is proof of presidential leadership and imagination.

7. Presidential informality like inviting rappers with rap sheets to the White House or doing interviews with GloZell like tweeting and videos are ominous signs of presidential frivolity and immaturity.

8. States-rights nullification of federal law has been traditionally racist, and subversive to the idea of the United States, leading to crisis or war is a legitimate expression of progressive cultural exceptionalism.

9. Running up huge deficits in Keynesian fashion primes the economy is a dangerous sign of presidential laxity.

10. Regular press conferences with vigorous cross-examinations of the president are noisy anachronisms from the bygone age of print journalism a must for a functioning democracy.

11. Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio voting twice for Barack Obama over John McCain and Mitt Romney was at last proof that the white working class was tolerant and enlightened for Trump shows that these deplorable voters are still irredeemable white clingers and supremacists.

12. Worries that registration and voting can be rigged Rioting, demanding superfluous recounts, damning the legitimacy of the Electoral College, and threatening Electors are efforts to subvert American democracy.

13. Criticizing a former president allots proper blame where it belongs for current messes is bad sportsmanship, cheap, and unbecoming.

14. Former presidents making business deals and earning exorbitant speaking and consulting fees as they cash in and globe-trot demeans the office is an acceptable right and welcome duty of an ex-president.

15. Weighing in on contemporary news stories such as the Skip Gates psychodrama or the Trayvon Martin murder case a flag-burning incident is symptomatic of presidential puerility.

16. Vladimir Putin was unfairly alienated by George W. Bush, sophomorically hyped into an existential threat by Mitt Romney, and deserving of reset is dangerous, a Trump fan, and an inveterate enemy of the U.S.

All the above have a shelf-life of about four years and may be recalibrated according to the results of the 2020 election.“

All of which is why, as James Taranto details at Best of the Web, we should be thankful…

The Only Thing Saving Us From the Bureaucracy Is Its Abject Incompetence

…The New York Times, meanwhile, fills in some details on the hacking of campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails. It seems he received a “phishing” email informing him that someone had signed in to his account and inviting him to click on a link to change his password:

Given how many emails Mr. Podesta received through this personal email account, several aides also had access to it, and one of them noticed the warning email, sending it to a computer technician to make sure it was legitimate before anyone clicked on the “change password” button.

“This is a legitimate email,” Charles Delavan, a Clinton campaign aide, replied to another of Mr. Podesta’s aides, who had noticed the alert. “John needs to change his password immediately.”

With another click, a decade of emails that Mr. Podesta maintained in his Gmail account—a total of about 60,000—were unlocked for the Russian hackers. Mr. Delavan, in an interview, said that his bad advice was a result of a typo: He knew this was a phishing attack, as the campaign was getting dozens of them. He said he had meant to type that it was an “illegitimate” email, an error that he said has plagued him ever since.

This story doesn’t quite make sense. If he meant “illegitimate” rather than “legitimate,” why would he type “a” rather than “an”? And why would he say John does need to change his password?

At any rate, it’s probably not the worst thing in the world that this gang isn’t going to be running the government.

To which we can only add a hearty, heartfelt, “AMEN“!!!

Then there’s this example of fake news/deliberate politically-correct deception we hope The Donald’s election will help to counteract:

White students hold ‘Trump’ sign, turn backs on black basketball team

“A Missouri school district has apologized for the “unsportsmanlike” and “insensitive” conduct of its white students after one of them displayed a Trump sign before a boys basketball team Monday night. The incident took place during player introductions of the opposing team from Center High School, where all of the players are black or biracial, according to the Kansas City Star.

In a video that has more than 6,800 shares on Facebook, the white students are seen turning their backs as the black students are being introduced.

The Warrensburg Missouri school district issued the following statement on Facebook:

Members of our student body acted inappropriately and were insensitive toward our opponents. The Warrensburg R-VI School District does not condone these actions and apologizes to anyone who was offended by the actions of these students. We will do everything we can to keep incidents like this from happening again.

But wait…

…there’s more!  Turns out, contrary to what the MSM and the Warrensburg school district would have you believe, far from being a statement of racial animosity, such action is a school tradition:

The Warrensburg district’s superintendent Scott Patrick said in an interview with the Star that the tradition of the student section turning its back on the opposing team is a longstanding one, but that this incident was different.

Why, and in whose opinion?!?

“I think in this case, (the Trump sign) was really the difference in what took this from something that was unsportsmanlike to something that was insensitive, not necessary and inappropriate,” Patrick said…”

We would challenge anyone to convince us the presence of a single Trump sign held aloft in the midst of a longstanding high school sports tradition following a hotly-contested presidential contest constitutes anything other than a effort to garner attention.

Only the educated idiots running America’s public Progressive indoctrination system could try to make it more.

Since we’re on the subject of fake news, remember this heart-rending story of racist religious intolerance?!?

To borrow a phrase from one of our favorite Bond villains…

Muslim college student made up Trump supporter subway attack story to avoid punishment for missing curfew

“…Police sources say Seweid made up the story because she didn’t want to get in trouble for breaking her curfew after being out late drinking with friends. Her strict, Muslim parents allegedly forced Seweid to shave her head over the incident and were upset that she was dating a Christian, sources said.

The bareheaded Baruch College student, not wearing her hijab, was charged with filing a false report and released after her arraignment early Thursday in Manhattan Criminal Court. A relative covered Seweid’s face with a black down jacket as she was escorted into a waiting SUV following her brief court appearance. She faces up to a year in jail for each charge.

…In a bizarre twist, Seweid’s older brother, Abdoul, was also charged with falsely reporting an incident back in 2012. Cops said Abdoul, then 17, claimed a pal was “assaulted by three unknown males,” according to a Newsday story at the time. He and four other teens were charged with grand larceny and conspiracy for allegedly breaking into parked cars and stealing any valuables they found.

Albert Cahn, an attorney for the New York Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the twist in Seweid’s case shouldn’t take away from the legitimate claims of bias and harassment against Muslims. “We’re very disturbed by these distressing developments, but we hope that they do not detract from the numerous reports coming from the Muslim community,” Cahn said…”

Holy Tawana Brawley, Batman!  The only thing missing from this sordid story is the repugnant presence of The Reverends.

Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side…

Finally, we’ll call it a week with these four memorable memes from Skip Zobel…

…followed by these five from Fielding Cocke:

Enjoy the weekend; and remember, there are only 8 shopping days left until Christmas.

Which makes now a wonderful time to order Hope ‘n Change‘s classic FREE no-strings-attached downloadable album of relaxing instrumental Christmas music!

We’re listening to it…

…as we write. 

Magoo