It’s Wednesday, January 18th, 2017…and before anyone reads too much into John Lewis’ boycotting of The Donald’s inauguration, as Austin Yack notes at NRO‘s The Corner, Lewis is a one-trick pony…

John Lewis Boycotted George W. Bush’s Inauguration, Too

“I’ze gotsta do sumtin‘ to stay repugnint…er,…redundint…er,…relevant!”

…whose act is increasingly tedious…

…and tiresome.  Particularly, as Jason Riley details at the WSJ, if you’re one of his constituents with any sense whatsoever:

“If Donald Trump had been referring to Rep. John Lewis’s civil-rights record when he wrote on Twitter Saturday that the congressman was “all talk” and “no action,” the president-elect might need a refresher course in U.S. history. One of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s closest allies, Mr. Lewis was on the front lines of the successful fight to end Jim Crow.

But for anyone who bothers to check out the full tweet, it’s clear that Mr. Trump was referring to Mr. Lewis’s record as a lawmaker. “Congressman John Lewis,” wrote Mr. Trump after the lawmaker questioned the legitimacy of the election, “should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk—no action or results. Sad!”

Mr. Lewis, a liberal Democrat from Georgia, was first elected to Congress in 1986, and he has spent much of the past three decades reminding people what he did before he got there. “Lewis has worked to commemorate the civil rights revolution in which he played such a large part,” explains the Almanac of American Politics. “He got a federal building in Atlanta named for King and won historic trail designation for the demonstrators’ route [for the 1965 march] from Selma to Montgomery [Ala.]. . . . Since 1998, he has led members of Congress on pilgrimages to civil rights sites.”

All of which should further secure John Lewis’s rightful place in U.S. history. But to Mr. Trump’s point, what do Mr. Lewis’s mostly black constituents in Atlanta have to show for his time in Washington representing them?…”

Other than increased crime, unemployment and poverty…not much!

Lewis reminds us in many ways of another former hero who’s used a past period of unquestioned courage…

…to continuously deflect legitimate criticism of a record long bereft…

The Gang of Eight…IQ’s!

…of anything remotely laudatory, let alone recalling his days of glory.

And since we’re on the subject of the tedious and tiresome, two more reasons to avoid The Five…

It’s a Reunion on ‘The Five’ as Bob Beckel Returns!

…and anything Hollywood has to offer… 

Filmmaker Joss Whedon goes after Paul Ryan with profane tweet

…like the plague!  After all, why on earth lend aid and comfort to the enemy?!?

Oh, and as the door to the Oval Office is about to hit Barry in the ass on his way out, can anyone really say they miss anything remotely connected to…

…his once-supposed successor?!?

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up from last Friday’s WSJ, Kimberly Strassel reveals how The Left has been reduced to…

Dumpster Diving for Dossiers

The team that created the Trump file went digging for divorce records in 2012.

Washington and the press corps are feuding over the Trump “dossier,” screaming about what counts as “fake news.” The pity is that this has turned into a story about media ethics. The far better subject is the origin of the dossier itself.

“Fake news” doesn’t come from nowhere. It’s created by people with an agenda. This dossier—which alleges that Donald Trump has deep backing from Russia—is a turbocharged example of the smear strategy that the left has been ramping up for a decade. Team Trump needs to put the scandal in that context so that it can get to governing and better defuse the next such attack.

The more that progressives have failed to win political arguments, the more they have turned to underhanded tactics to shut down their political opponents. (For a complete account of these abuses, see my book, “The Intimidation Game.”) Liberals co-opted the IRS to crack down on Tea Party groups. They used state prosecutors to launch phony investigations. They coordinated liberal shock troops to threaten corporations. And they—important for today’s hysteria—routinely employed outside dirt diggers to engage in character assassination.

This editorial page ran a series in 2012 about one such attack, on Frank VanderSloot. In 2011 the Idaho businessman gave $1 million to a super PAC supporting Mitt Romney. The following spring, the Obama re-election campaign publicly smeared Mr. VanderSloot (and seven other Romney donors) as “wealthy individuals with less-than-reputable records.”

This national shaming, by the president no less, painted a giant target on Mr. VanderSloot’s back. The liberal media slandered him daily on TV and in print. The federal bureaucracy went after him: He was ultimately audited by the IRS and the Labor Department. About a week after the Obama attack, an investigator contacted a courthouse in Idaho Falls demanding documents dealing with Mr. VanderSloot’s divorces, as well as any other litigation involving him. We traced this investigator to an opposition-research chop shop called Fusion GPS.

Fusion is run by a former Wall Street Journal reporter, Glenn Simpson. (For those who may be unaware, outside of its editorial page, the Journal‘s reporting slant rivals that of the Times and WaPo.) When we asked how he could justify dumpster-diving into the divorce records of private citizens, he said only that Mr. VanderSloot was a “legitimate” target. He refused to tell us who’d paid him to do this slumming, and federal records didn’t show any payments to Fusion from prominent Democratic groups or campaigns. The money may well have been washed through third-party groups.

Why does this matter? Guess who is behind that dossier against Mr. Trump: Fusion GPS. A Republican donor who opposed Mr. Trump during the primaries hired Fusion to create a file on “the real estate magnate’s past scandals and weaknesses,” according to the New York Times. After Mr. Trump won the GOP race, that donor pulled the plug. Fusion then seamlessly made its product available to “new clients”—liberals supporting Hillary Clinton. Moreover, it stooped to lower tactics, hiring a former British spook to help tie Mr. Trump to the Russians. (Fusion GPS did not respond to a request for comment.)

No media organization has so far been able to confirm a single allegation in the dossier. Given Fusion’s history and tactics, trying arguably isn’t worth the effort. Truth was never its purpose.

The point of the dossier—as with the dredging into Mr. VanderSloot’s personal life, or the smearing of the Koch brothers, or Harry Reid’s false accusation that Mitt Romney didn’t pay taxes—was to gin up the ugliest, most scurrilous claims, and then trust the click-hungry (and hopelessly biased) media to disseminate them. No matter how false the allegations, the subject of the attack is required to respond, wasting precious time and losing credibility. Mr. Trump should be focused on his nominations, his policies, disentangling himself from his business. Instead his team is trying to disprove a negative and prevent the accusations, no matter how flimsy, from seeping into voters’ minds.

Opposition research and false claims are an equal opportunity game. But it says something about the brass-knuckle approach of the left that it would go so far as to write a dossier suggesting that Mr. Trump is a Manchurian candidate—and then to foist that report into the hands of intelligence officials. (As well as a Useful Idiot/NeverTrumper like John McCain!)

Mr. Trump can expect plenty more of this to come. In winning the election, he blocked the left’s ability to use some of its favorite intimidation tactics. It no longer controls an accommodating federal bureaucracy. It no longer runs a Justice Department willing to threaten political opponents and turn a blind eye to liberal abuse.

So the left will increasingly rely on campaigns of delegitimization designed to force opponents onto a back foot, push them off task, or even bully them out of the public arena. In the absence of a winning policy argument, this is, in their minds, the best they’ve got. Republicans had better be ready for it.

To borrow a phrase from Diana Ross, ain’t no valley low enough…to get beneath a desperate Dimocrat.

In a related item, writing at NRO, Kevin Williamson reveals…

The Worst Perversion

Yes, there were Obama-administration scandals. Many, in fact.

“The Obama administration was full of scandal, though we have a lazy and partisan news media that is determined to see no scandal in it. The lame-duck columns have been nearly unanimous on the point: Barack Obama is remarkable among recent presidents for having been utterly untouched by scandal, personal or political.

The personal can be conceded: There is no serious allegation that President Obama suffered from the liberated appetites of a Bill Clinton, and the White House interns have by all accounts gone unmolested. But this is hardly remarkable: There were no such allegations about George W. Bush, either, or about George H. W. Bush, or about Ronald Reagan, or Jimmy Carter. Richard Nixon’s name is a byword for scandal, but not scandal of that sort. Nixon’s shocking personal perversion was his taste for cottage cheese with ketchup.

So, three cheers for Barack Obama’s manful efforts to live up to the standard of Gerald Ford. Well done.

The political issue is a different question entirely.

Not only was the Obama administration marked by scandal of the most serious sort — perverting the machinery of the state for political ends — it was on that front, which is the most important one, the most scandal-scarred administration in modern presidential history.

For your consideration…”

As Williamson goes on to write, the catalogue of The Great Divider’s scandals is indeed voluminous.

Thus the bias of the MSM in allowing The Obamao and his minions to make such a demonstrably disingenuous claim without the least bit of pushback is as obvious as the ears on Barry’s head, as Mika Brzezinski notes:

And when Mika Brzezinski highlights a Progressive transgression, it’s a misdeed of monumental proportions.  

Next up, courtesy of Townhall.com, Todd Starnes reports that a…

Church Won’t Mention Trump’s Name in Prayers, Fearing Microaggressions

“Parishioners at a California Episcopal church will no longer pray by name for the president of the United States over fears the name “Donald Trump” might trigger microaggressions among sanctified snowflakes.

Mike Kinman, the rector of All Saints Church in Pasadena, broke the news to the congregation in a blog posting that was filled with all sorts of liturgical lunacy. “If you come to All Saints this Sunday, you’ll notice that we have removed the proper names from our prayers for those in authority. Whereas before we prayed for ‘Barack, our president,’ we are now praying for “our president, our president-elect, and all others in authority.” This practice will continue for at least the near future,” he wrote.

Kinman went on to say the safety of the congregation could be jeopardized by the mere nation of the president-elect’s name. “We are in a unique situation in my lifetime where we have a president elect whose name is literally a trauma trigger to some people – particularly women and people who, because of his words and actions, he represents an active danger to health and safety,” he wrote. (No, you are in un-unique position of being a Progressive imbecile!)

…While it seems there has been some debate over the issue, the rector told the congregation his “pastoral” decision will stand. “There are indeed people in our congregation for whom the anticipation of praying for Donald Trump by name in the worship service is legitimately triggering trauma and compromising the safety of the worship space,” the rector wrote. “I am talking about the clinical definition of trauma not just ‘I don’t like it’ or ‘It’s really hard for me.'”

It sounds like a good many people parked in the pews at All Saints Church may be slap crazy. Lord, have mercy.”

Soooo, praying for “the President“…who will be Donald Trump…won’t trigger trauma or microaggression…but using his name in a prayer will.  Yeah…

We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: Liberalism is a mental disorder; Conservatism is the cure!

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

Finally, for those still confused as to whose team The Dear Misleader is playing for, these last two items should settle the question:

Obama commutes Bradley Manning’s sentence for leaking Army documents

Manning’s reportedly already attempted suicide twice.

Here’s hoping the third time’s the charm!

Obama commutes sentence of FALN member Oscar López Rivera

We found the report of ABC‘s Chicago affiliate particularly revealing as regards Progressivism’s moral relativism in the white-washing of Lopez-Rivera’s crimes:

“Depending on who’s doing the talking, Lopez-Rivera was either a dangerous terrorist who used booby trap bombs and other weapons or he was a freedom fighter who became a political prisoner since being convicted of seditious conspiracy and on weapons charges.

Under Lopez-Rivera, the FALN, headquartered in Chicago and New York City, planted more than 130 bombs in U.S. cities beginning in 1974…His Chicago north side apartment was the bombing-making headquarters for the FALN. The FBI found 10 pounds of dynamite and blasting caps in Lopez-Rivera’s apartment…”

Gee…wonder which he was?!?  Lopez-Rivera’s guilt is as much in question as Obama’s anti-American Islamofascism.

Magoo