It’s Wednesday, July 5th 2017…but before we begin, courtesy of Jeff Foutch and Ben Shapiro, another picture worth far more than a mere thousand words; one, in fact, which says it all:

Here’s wishing the greatest nation God ever ordained on the planet a very Happy Birthday!

Now, here’s The Gouge!

We lead off the day by grabbing the bull by the horns and jumping right into the Trump Twitter patch:

Reporters Committee condemns President Trump’s statement of violence against the press

First, we’ve reproduced the Reporters Committee statement in full…unlike the MSM’s coverage of anything Conservatives or Trump (as in their mischaracterization of his “Muslim ban”) have to say.

Second, we note the Reporters Committee also objected to Obama’s investigation of FOX News reporter James Rosen, though not nearly as strenuously.

Lastly, as we suggest below, no one is threatening “the press” with physical harm; such is simply the interpretation of a “press” which long ago forfeited any right or ability to provide the people a window into anything but Progressive propaganda points, let alone a check on the power of government at any level.

Here’s the juice; like any reasonable person, we take the threat inherent in Trump’s tweet about as seriously…

…as we do the reality of professional wrestling in general.  As James Freeman notes at Best of the Web…

“Outside of CNN, most people believe that professional wrestling features staged events built around simulated rather than actual violence.“

We view this simply as yet another example of the MSM not only taking themselves too seriously, but making themselves the center of the story.

We’re with Byron York as he offers…

Reflections on the president’s tweet

“…There is a relaxed way to read the tweet, and there is an alarmed way to read the tweet. The media-politico complex is choosing the alarmed way, with a vengeance.

The relaxed way to read the tweet is that the president is — among other things — an entertainer. He was an entertainer when he was a real estate developer, he was an entertainer when he was a reality show producer and star, and he is an entertainer as president. That doesn’t mean he is not other things — Trump Tower really was built, for example — but it means that he knows how to communicate in the style of an entertainer. That’s what he did in the WWE tweet.

The alarmed way to read the tweet is that the president is inciting violence against journalists. That is the way that most journalists chose to see it. (That’s because most journalist hyper-inflate their own sense of importance!) “The president of the United States is encouraging violence against journalists,” tweeted Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg Sunday morning, reflecting what dozens of other establishment journalists were saying. CNN’s statement in reaction to the president, plus that of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said much the same thing.

It’s just an impression, but one could note that some journalists seemed more alarmed by the president’s tweets than by other recent examples of violent political expression — Kathy Griffin holding what appeared to be Trump’s bloody, severed head, or the Trump-as-Caesar assassination, for example. That is probably because many journalists are simply more worried about the prospect of right-wing violence than they are about the prospect of left-wing violence. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a favored source among some reporters, did not build up a nine-figure endowment by warning about violence from the Left.

Even with a real act of politically-motivated violence — the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise, which turned out to be a left-wing attack — some found it less terrifying than the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords, which in a weird way was not politically motivated at all. Yes, all media outlets covered the Scalise shooting wall-to-wall on the first day, and on the second. But on the third? As Commentary editor John Podhoretz noted recently, “The news media focused on the Giffords shooting with little else in the mix for a week. Three days post-baseball field and they’re moving on.”

For those reasons — the fact that many journalists are more worried about the prospect of right-wing violence than left-wing violence, plus their belief that Trump is a threat to freedom of the press — many in the reporting and commentary world chose to read the president’s tweet in the most alarmed way possible…”

Not to mention they’re an integral part of a cabal dedicated to taking this President down in a way The Right never dreamed of doing with Obama.

Consider the words of Michael Goodwin in a speech he delivered in April at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Atlanta, as featured in the New York Post; it’s worth clicking on the headline link and reading in full:

Why the media has broken down in the age of Trump

“I’ve been a journalist for a long time. Long enough to know that it wasn’t always like this. There was a time not so long ago when journalists were trusted and admired. We were generally seen as trying to report the news in a fair and straightforward manner. Today, all that has changed. For that, we can blame the 2016 election or, more accurately, how some news organizations chose to cover it. Among the many firsts, last year’s election gave us the gobsmacking revelation that most of the mainstream media puts both thumbs on the scale — that most of what you read, watch and listen to is distorted by intentional bias and hostility. I have never seen anything like it. Not even close.

It’s not exactly breaking news that most journalists lean left. I used to do that myself. I grew up at the New York Times, so I’m familiar with the species. For most of the media, bias grew out of the social revolution of the 1960s and ’70s. Fueled by the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, the media jumped on the anti-authority bandwagon writ large. The deal was sealed with Watergate, when journalism was viewed as more trusted than government — and far more exciting and glamorous. Think Robert Redford in “All the President’s Men.” Ever since, young people became journalists because they wanted to be the next Woodward and Bernstein, find a Deep Throat, and bring down a president. Of course, most of them only wanted to bring down a Republican president. That’s because liberalism is baked into the journalism cake.

During the years I spent teaching at the Columbia University School of Journalism, I often found myself telling my students that the job of the reporter was “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” I’m not even sure where I first heard that line, but it still captures the way most journalists think about what they do. Translate the first part of that compassionate-sounding idea into the daily decisions about what makes news, and it is easy to fall into the habit of thinking that every person afflicted by something is entitled to help. Or, as liberals like to say, “Government is what we do together.” From there, it’s a short drive to the conclusion that every problem has a government solution.

The rest of that journalistic ethos — “afflict the comfortable” — leads to the knee-jerk support of endless taxation. Somebody has to pay for that government intervention the media loves to demand. In the same vein, and for the same reason, the average reporter will support every conceivable regulation as a way to equalize conditions for the poor. He will also give sympathetic coverage to groups like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter. (Which are undeserving of any support whatsoever!)

…One study estimated that Trump had received so much free airtime that if he had had to buy it, the price would have been $2 billion. The realization that they had helped Trump’s rise seemed to make many executives, producers and journalists furious. By the time he secured the nomination and the general election rolled around, they were gunning for him. Only two people now had a chance to be president, and the overwhelming media consensus was that it could not be Donald Trump. They would make sure of that. The coverage of him grew so vicious and one-sided that last August, I wrote a column on the unprecedented bias. Under the headline “American journalism is collapsing before our eyes,”I wrote that the so-called cream of the media crop was “engaged in a naked display of partisanship” designed to bury Trump and elect Hillary Clinton.

The evidence was on the front page, the back page, the culture pages, even the sports pages. It was at the top of the broadcast and at the bottom of the broadcast. Day in, day out, in every media market in America, Trump was savaged like no other candidate in memory. We were watching the total collapse of standards, with fairness and balance tossed overboard. Every story was an opinion masquerading as news, and every opinion ran in the same direction — toward Clinton and away from Trump.

For the most part, I blame the New York Times and the Washington Post for causing this breakdown. The two leading liberal newspapers were trying to top each other in their demonization of Trump and his supporters. They set the tone, and most of the rest of the media followed like lemmings.

On one level, tougher scrutiny of Trump was clearly defensible. He had a controversial career and lifestyle, and he was seeking the presidency as his first job in government. He also provided (and continues to provide) lots of fuel with some of his outrageous words and deeds. But from the beginning there was also a second element to the lopsided coverage. The New York Times has not endorsed a Republican for president since Dwight Eisenhower in 1956, meaning it would back a dead raccoon if it had a “D” after its name. Think of it — George McGovern over Richard Nixon? Jimmy Carter over Ronald Reagan? Walter Mondale over Reagan? Any Democrat would do. And the Washington Post, which only started making editorial endorsements in the 1970s, has never once endorsed a Republican for president.

But again, I want to emphasize that 2016 had those predictable elements plus a whole new dimension. This time, the papers dropped the pretense of fairness and jumped headlong into the tank for one candidate over the other…

…Thus began the spate of stories, which continues today, in which the Times routinely calls Trump a liar in its news pages and headlines. (See “Morning Joe; Mika and Scarborough”) Again, the contrast with the past is striking. The Times never called Barack Obama a liar, despite such obvious opportunities as “you can keep your doctor” and “the Benghazi attack was caused by an internet video.” Indeed, the Times and the Washington Post, along with most of the White House press corps, spent eight years cheerleading the Obama administration, seeing not a smidgen of corruption or dishonesty. They have been tougher on Hillary Clinton during her long career. But they still never called her a liar, despite such doozies as “I set up my own computer server so I would only need one device,” “I turned over all the government emails,” and “I never sent or received classified emails.” (Not to mention parachuting into Bosnia under sniper fire!) All those were lies, but not to the national media. Only statements by Trump were fair game…”

And one need not wait even one news cycle to find yet another reason America holds the MSM is in such disrepute:

Media Talking Points on State Voter Data Request Don’t Hold Water

“A Presidential Commission formed to investigate voter fraud requested certain voter registration data from each state, among other things, in a letter sent June 28. Democrat politicians, supposed “experts,” and the media claim the request is a massive violation of privacy and the secret ballot, a “gold mine” for hackers, an infringement on state’s rights, and the first step in institutionalized voter suppression. 

Once you read the actual letter sent by commission Vice Chair Kris Kobach and do some research on the data and the people who are pushing the talking points, the truth is radically different…”

You mean that Kris Kobach is only seeking…

“In addition, in order for the Commission to fully analyze vulnerabilities and issues related to voter registration and voting, I am requesting that you provide to the Commission the publicly-available voter roll data for North Carolina, including, if publicly available under the laws of your state…”

…only information which is already a matter of public record?!?

Which means…“all of the information requested is already publicly available, and already online – just not in one big database.”  Or, to put it bluntly, “They’re sitting there with a trove of private information, waiting to be hacked. The hacking fear is completely baseless.”

A position which we suggest is…

And since we’re on the subject of deliberate Dimocratic deception, in today’s installment of the Environmental Moment, Bill Whittle lays bare the lies behind those peddling the false religion of climate change, including a number of points we’ve repeatedly raised:

Meanwhile, on The Lighter Side…

Then there’s this one we found rather curious…

…in light of what a legend of The Left…

…brought to America’s attention.

Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with this compilation of memes culled from the Pinterest page of a like-minded lady:

Magoo