It’s Friday, April 21st, 2017…but before we begin, here’s another of those pictures worth far more than a mere thousand words; one which in fact says it all about its subject:
Yeah…as soon as one of their missiles gets off the ground…and one of their nuclear devices successfully detonates.
What’s next: a “double-secret super-mighty pre-emptive strike”?!? Seriously, this reminds us of a scene from A Few Good Men, where Kevin Pollack makes light of Demi Moore’s legal strategy:
That being said, it doesn’t mean Kim Jong-un shouldn’t be dealt with. We for one are all in favor of taking him out, if for no other reason than to invalidate our government’s asinine policy against eliminating tinpot dictators who egregiously abuse their own people while threatening world peace.
After all, when it comes to Kim, the Mad Mullahs or Raul Castro for that matter, like Saddam Hussein before them…
As regards the latter, we have no doubt!
Next up, Best of the Web‘s James Freeman details…
Bernie’s ‘Political Revolution’
The Democratic Party’s Sanders tour hits Miami.
Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) continue their “Come Together, Fight Back” tour tonight with a 7 p.m. show at Miami’s James L. Knight Center. This column noted on Monday that while Mr. Sanders was last year’s Democratic insurgent, he’s now being embraced as a leader by the party’s most senior executive. Miami voters considering whether they too should embrace the socialist Vermonter and his expected message of “political revolution” might first wish to observe what’s happening right now roughly 1,400 miles to the southeast.
Venezuelans living through their own socialist political revolution appear to have decided they’ve had quite enough of it. Reuters reports today that “Venezuelan security forces fired tear gas as demonstrators staged what they billed as the ‘mother of all marches’ against President Nicolas Maduro.” Reuters adds, “Opposition supporters protested in Caracas and other cities, denouncing Maduro for eroding democracy and plunging the economy into chaos.”
On Tuesday night in Kentucky, the Socialist Mr. Sanders said Democrats need to go beyond their “zone of comfort” to promote their agenda. Venezuelans have by now learned all about leaving their zone of comfort. On Monday the Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady noted that the Maduro government “is running out of money to buy imports, and since it has crippled domestic production, privation is growing more profound.”
Reuters reports today that “Carlos Moreno, 18, a student, was on his way to play soccer in Caracas and did not plan to take part in the demonstration when government supporters approached an opposition gathering and fired shots, according to witnesses and a family member. Moreno was shot in the head, they said.”
In Venezuela, resisting the socialist government takes a bit more courage than simply knitting a hat.Ms. O’Grady wrote on Monday:
So far this month pro-government militias or the police have allegedly killed three protesters in and around Barquisimeto, the capital city of Lara state. A demonstrator was fatally shot in Valencia—the third largest city in the country—and the governor of Carabobo state has admitted that the police were responsible. Another young protester was killed in a satellite city of Caracas, and an 87-year-old Caracas woman died when tear gas inundated her home.
Ms. O’Grady added that roving “bands of government-sponsored militias terrorize civil society.”But protesters seem increasingly unwilling to be intimidated. “It’s time to stop being poor and hungry. I’m going to stay in the streets until we get rid of this government,” 21-year-old graphic designer Rolisber Aguirre told the Associated Press last week.
The news from down south gives American voters an opportunity to consider just how revolutionary they want their leaders to be.
Over at White House Dossier, Keith Koffler rightly suggests giving Perez the raspberry ‘cuz he’s not to the left of Sanders is akin to booing Lenin because he’s not Stalin.
“…Welcome to today’s Democratic party, where dysfunction reigns — and fittingly, the wacky, melancholy Bernie Sanders, who refuses to even call himself a Democrat, is king.
To be fair, there is something truly majestic about a Bernie speech: The intensity, the deadpan delivery, and the fleeting impression that the senator is actually clinging to the lectern for safety, lest he slowly collapse into some invisible cavern of quicksand gurgling right below his feet. As he barks through a break-the-bank socialist laundry list, his hands occasionally float through the air, with loose jabs accompanying random syllables — the last two of “administration”; the first three of “irresponsible.” His ideology is a political cough drop, long-expired, crusty, and found at the bottom of your great-grandmother’s purse, right next to some equally old butter crackers secretly squirreled away from the local all-you-can eat buffet.
But to millions of Americans, he is a hero. His new podcast, The Bernie Sanders Show, hit the No. 2 spot on the iTunes charts in its first week. A new Harvard-Harris survey reveals that he is the most popular politician in the country, earning favorable marks from 57 percent of registered voters. Among Democrats, his favorability hits 80 percent. (Interestingly, just two-thirds of Republicans view the senator negatively, leading one to wonder whether the other third never heard him opine about how there are too many different brands of deodorant.)
Bernie’s impressive poll numbers, reports The Hill, “could buoy a potential 2020 presidential run.” Drumroll, please: Yes, ladies and gentlemen, things are that bad. A 75-year-old socialist who once literally honeymooned in the USSR is the brave new face of the Democratic party. America, it is apparent, has not suffered enough…”
Here’s the juice: the entire Dimocratic party is…
And the only reason a significant portion of Americans still don’t know it is Liberalism’s deliberate dumbing-down of public education, the effects of which are described in our next item, as NRO‘s Grant Addison records how, as a country, we’re…
“Last week, lawmakers in Oregon proposed a bill that would require all public-school students in the state to pass the civics portion of the U.S. naturalization test before receiving their high-school diploma. Under Senate Bill 1038, Oregon students would have to correctly answer 60 of the 100 civics questions to pass. A student could take the test as many times as necessary to reach that threshold and could begin taking the test even before high school. Just last month, Alabama, Arkansas, and Kentucky each enacted similar laws, joining at least 15 other states with such civics requirements for high-school graduation, according to the Joe Foss Institute’s Civics Education Initiative.
Though perhaps unintentional, the bill’s submission last week coincided with the 274th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson’s birth. A champion of the diffusion of knowledge, Jefferson is often — and incorrectly — credited as once saying, “An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic.” But, despite its spurious attribution, this popular axiom does reflect the significance Jefferson placed on education, particularly public education, and its role in civil society. Writing to fellow Virginian and lifelong friend James Madison in 1787, Jefferson stated: “Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to, convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.”
For Jefferson, education was vital for both individual and societal welfare. He called it “the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the conditions, promoting the virtue and advancing the happiness of man.” As for the national interest, Jefferson summed it up bluntly in an 1816 letter to Charles Yancey: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
Looking upon the present state of common education today, then, would no doubt make Jefferson question the safety of our liberty.When it comes to knowledge of history and civics — subjects Jefferson valued higher than any others for the preservation of good government — the picture is particularly bleak…”
This is why Liberals prefer their electorate either “educated” or illiterate. After all, if Little Johnny can’t read, he can’t reason. And if Little Sally is “educated“, at least by Progressive standards, she’s likely to be the living embodiment of Romans 1:22: “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”
Can we hear a hearty “AMEN”, brothers and sisters?!?
Since we’re on the subject of those who deem themselves wise acting as fools, they’re the subject of the latest from NRO‘s Deroy Murdock, who maintains, contrary to Progressive propaganda…
“Once again, the Trumpophobic Left has proved that it will not give President Donald J. Trump credit for anything, not even erasing Islamofascist killers who are the sworn enemies of every American — even those who despise Trump.
Acting on what President Trump called his “total authorization,” the United States armed forces on Thursday dropped a GBU 43/B device onto a maze of tunnels and bunkers occupied by ISIS terrorists in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangahar Province. This Massive Ordnance Air Blast weapon affectionately is nicknamed the Mother of All Bombs (MOAB). America’s most powerful non-atomic armament blasted these catacombs of hate with the equivalent of eleven tons of TNT.
The delightful result: destruction of this terror facility, along with at least 36 ISIS murderers, who were blown to bits, crushed beneath the cascading rubble, or otherwise liquidated. President Trump called this raid “very, very successful.” (Afghan officials said Sunday that the MOAB killed at least 94 ISIS members. Regardless, unless otherwise indicated, this opinion piece reflects the earlier, more conservative death toll.)
While Americans widely applauded this development, President Trump’s foes lined up to denounce this great news — and on the unlikeliest grounds: It cost too much.
These liberals didn’t utter a peep as Obama exploded America’s national debt from $10.62 trillion to $19.95 trillion — an 87.85 percent boom. Suddenly, as Business Insider observed, they had a collective spasm of fiscal conservatism and excoriated Trump via social media for what they consider the Mother of All Expenditures.
• “The ‘mother of all bombs’ dropped today in Afghanistan cost the US taxpayer $314 million,” James Melville moaned via Twitter. “And yet America can’t afford meals on wheels.”
• “Not 1 person in gov’t, can tell me this country doesn’t have enough money to fund social programs or water,” Tika Sumpter complained. “We just dropped 314 million.”
• “Useful context,” cracked Ian Millhiser. “Also, still a sh** load of money to spend on a mass killing authorized by a game show host.”
These and several comments got repeated across social media. This ignited news stories and additional comments, and — as happens too often these days — a manufactured controversy soon raged.
These liberal whiners totally miscalculated the cost of the MOAB that America lobbed at these bloodthirsty, anti-Semitic, homophobic, sadistic, homicidal ISIS scum. The price tag is not $314 million. Initial reports placed the price at $314 million for 20 MOABs, or about $16 million each. The Air Force announced on Friday, however, that each MOAB costs just $170,000.
Oops!
So, for $170,000, President Trump vaporized no fewer than 36 ISIS murderers. That equals $4,722 per dead ISIS terrorist.By any measure, that is a bargain.
Given that any one of these ISIS butchers could drive a truck bomb into a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, level the American embassy in Pakistan, or fly to Mexico, run across the southern “border,” and detonate a bus full of American schoolchildren, these taxpayer dollars were spent beautifully…”
“…Another maddening aspect of this story is how the Left erupted without nailing down several basic facts. As the Daily Caller noted, none other than Edward Snowden kept the $314 million snowball rolling when he wrote on Thursday: “The bomb dropped today in the middle of nowhere, Afghanistan, cost $314,000,000.” He, in turn, cited a Los Angeles Times article, which also was wrong.
Even worse than botching the cost of each MOAB by 1,847-fold, major news organizations initially claimed that the MOAB was nearly as powerful as “Little Boy,” the atomic bomb that President Harry Truman dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in August 1945.USA Today offered its readers a detailed graphic comparing the Hiroshima device and the MOAB. (Shown below.) It claimed that Little Boy’s blast equivalent was 15 tons of TNT versus 11 tons for MOAB. In other words, President Trump slammed ISIS and eastern Afghanistan with 73 percent of the firepower that Truman rained down on Hiroshima.
Um, just one problem:
Little Boy leveled Hiroshima with the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT. So, USA Today was off by only a factor of 1,000.Thus, Trump hammered ISIS with a blow equal to 0.073 percent of Truman’s hit on Hirohito.
USA Today corrected this mistake. Nonetheless, the Media Research Center’s Tom Blumer calls it Trump Derangement Syndrome when a leading news outlet makes this contrast in the first place.
“USA Today’s error gives away the fact that someone there actually believed that the U.S. military under Donald Trump — but not requiring his permission — dropped a bomb 73 percent as destructive as the Hiroshima A-bomb,” Blumer observed. “Further, those involved in reviewing the graphic before or perhaps immediately after it went live, which one would hope included reporters Jim Michaels and Tom Vanden Brook, either agreed with that comparison or were too naive to question it…”
Soooo…other than that…and that…the story was 100% dead-on balls accurate!
For a related item highlighting overhyped, highly-inaccurate reporting, we turn to today’s edition of MSM Bias…WHAT Bias?!?, brought to us by Christine Rousselle writing at Townhall.com:
On Wednesday, the New England Patriots visited the White House to be honored for their victory in Super Bowl LI. Although several players announced that they planned to boycott the event for political reasons (and QB Tom Brady had to miss the event due to a last-minute personal family matter), the New York Times took the celebration as an opportunity to snark the Trump administration.
The NYT Sports account tweeted an image purportedly comparing the turnout the last time the Patriots won a Super Bowl to Wednesday, implying that more players than normal were skipping out on meeting President Trump. The tweet went viral, garnering over 44,000 retweets.
One problem: it simply isn’t true.The picture of the 2015 event includes members of the Patriots staff, who were not present in the 2017 picture shared by the NYT. (When one zooms in, it becomes clear that everyone in the 2015 picture isn’t actually a member of the Patriots roster–unless they’ve secretly had several women and older men on the team this entire time without anyone noticing.) The team’s official Twitter account stepped in to help provide context to the images.
Christine goes on to conclude…
“…This is why people are having trouble trusting the media. (ParticularlyThe New York Times!)It would have taken a 30-second Google search to count the number of players who visited the White House in 2015 compared to 2017, or one could simply use their ocular nerves to realize that hey, everyone pictured in that first picture isn’t actually a member of the New England Patriots. Of course, the old adage that a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can get its pants on holds true once again–the corrected tweet has fewer than 500 retweets.“
MSM bias…WHAT bias?!?
For those still requiring proof of the MSM’s politically-correct Progressive agenda, we submit for your perusal the following forward from Jeff Foutch, as Truth Revolt reveals…
“…The Associated Press, however, is really going overboard to to make sure you don’t assume this guy is a Muslim terrorist. They went to the trouble of editing his words. The Daily Caller reports:
Rather than reporting the gunman’s literal words, however, the AP reported the gunman as saying “God is great.”
On Twitter, the AP’s report gave no indication that the suspect’s words were said in Arabic.
“God is great,” is the type of thing that a person of any faith might say. Perhaps Muhammad is a member of a roving band of Baptists? Or an angry Presbyterian? Of course, the gymnastics that the mainstream media will undertake to obscure a murderer’s Islamic faith speaks volumes about their bias.Fake news strikes again…and this time, it’s in the service of whitewashing Islam.“
PLEASE, tell us something we didn’t already know!
In a related item of deliberate MSM disinformation…
“French President Francois Hollande said he is convinced the circumstances of the Paris shooting points to a terrorist act.”
Sorry, but our bewilderment over the fact John Koskinen is still running the IRS is second only to our incredulity an acknowledged liar like Brian Williams still has a job promulgating “facts” at NBC. Seriously, Williams practically invented Fake News!!!
At least FOX polices itself.
Turning now to The Lighter Side…
Then there’s these three gems from Balls Cotton:
Finally, courtesy of our old buddy Bill Meisen, we’ll call it a week with this bit of confirmation why Millennials may well be remembered at The Useless Generation:
Howard Schultz, give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back; this knuckle-nose represents the inevitable end-product of decades of Progressive policies.
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