It’s Wednesday, September 27th, 2017…but before we begin, in what may be a first, we feel compelled to headline the Hillary clip featured at our Video of the Day, accessible through link #2 above:

Again, each and every time Trump tweets something which makes us even BEGIN to think about regretting having given him our vote, Hillary goes and demonstrates why The Donald was the lesser of two evils…by light years!

Oh, and had we our druthers…

…McCain, Paul, Collins and Murkowski would be on a slow, leaky boat to McMurdo Sound sans survival gear and lifeboats…or facing trial for treason.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, since we’re on the subject of treason, we’d initially planned to focus today’s column on the continuing fallout from the NFL’s weekend debacle.  But after scanning this first item from Matt Vespa at Townhall.com, we felt compelled to take a different tack:

West Point Cadet Tweets Kaepernick Support: ‘Communism Will Win‘

 

We know this is the “new” Army, but last time we looked, engaging in political activity in uniform as well as violating one’s oath to support and defend the Constitution were court-marshal offenses!

“So, while the nation has to deal with “take a knee” syndrome that’s infested sports, the last bastion of apolitical entertainment—there’s something going on at West Point. Second Lt. Spenser Rapone is an infantry officer and a member of Democratic Socialists of America. He sent some support for Colin Kaepernick via Twitter, showing him in uniform, with “communism will win” etched inside his officer’s cap. He also tweeted a photo of himself wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt under his uniform…”

Rapone added “In case there was any lingering doubt, hasta la victoria siempre“, the latter portion being a favorite phrase of Che’s, for good measure.

Then there’s this from James Freeman and Best of the Web:

The Women Who Suffered

The New York Times publishes another apology for murderous communists.

 

“This column has been trying to write jokes today about the New York Times’ descent into self-parody with its ongoing series of fond remembrances of communist dictatorships. But it’s getting increasingly hard to find the humor. It is, however, amazing that the Times can publish the grisly details of mass murder and then a few years later publish an author who seems determined to pretend the horror never occurred.

“How Did Women Fare in China’s Communist Revolution?,” asks the headline on an op-ed by Helen Gao, who is identified as “a social policy analyst at a research company.” Reading her whitewash of one of the bloodiest episodes of a bloody century, one might first wonder whether her employer is a private company or a state-owned enterprise.

But it hardly matters. She has published in the Times a more forgiving look at conditions under the communist regime of Mao Zedong than one can find on the website of the Chinese government’s own official news agency.

“For all its flaws, the Communist revolution taught Chinese women to dream big,” declares Ms. Gao. Still, she notes that “the narrative of an across-the-board elevation of women’s status under Mao contains crucial caveats.” For example, she writes:

When historians researched the collectivization of the Chinese countryside in the 1950s, an event believed to have empowered rural women by offering them employment, they discovered a complicated picture. (Yes, mass murder is sooo “complicated”; we wonder if Ms. Gao finds the Final Solution as complicated!) While women indeed contributed enormously to collective farming, they rarely rose to positions of responsibility; they remained outsiders in communes organized around their husbands’ family and village relationships. Studies also showed that women routinely performed physically demanding jobs but earned less than men, since the lighter, most valued tasks involving large animals or machinery were usually reserved for men.

From this account it sounds like being a female laborer at the time was no fun at all. But the truth was significantly worse, if less complicated. That’s because something else started happening in the Chinese countryside in the 1950s. And although Ms. Gao never mentions it, another Times contributor provided important context in a 2010 op-ed. Frank Dikötter described the results of his research into previously classified archives of local and national offices of China’s Communist Party:

In all, the records I studied suggest that the Great Leap Forward was responsible for at least 45 million deaths.

Between 2 and 3 million of these victims were tortured to death or summarily executed, often for the slightest infraction. People accused of not working hard enough were hung and beaten; sometimes they were bound and thrown into ponds. Punishments for the least violations included mutilation and forcing people to eat excrement.

One report dated Nov. 30, 1960, and circulated to the top leadership — most likely including Mao — tells how a man named Wang Ziyou had one of his ears chopped off, his legs tied up with iron wire and a 10-kilogram stone dropped on his back before he was branded with a sizzling tool. His crime: digging up a potato.

When a boy stole a handful of grain in a Hunan village, the local boss, Xiong Dechang, forced his father to bury his son alive on the spot.

Ms. Gao for her part has chosen to write about other challenges:

While the Communist revolution brought women more job opportunities, it also made their interests subordinate to collective goals. Stopping at the household doorstep, Mao’s words and policies did little to alleviate women’s domestic burdens like housework and child care. And by inundating society with rhetoric blithely celebrating its achievements, the revolution deprived women of the private language with which they might understand and articulate their personal experiences…”

Which brings us to this brilliant essay by Victor Davis Hanson writing at his personal blog:

The Progressive Octopus

 

“Politics lost, culture won.

It is the best and worst of times for progressives and liberals. Politically, their obsessions with identity politics and various racial and gender -isms and -ologies have emasculated the Democratic party: loss of governorships, state legislatures, the House, the Senate, the presidency, and the Supreme Court.

Democrats, for the time being at least, are now reduced to largely a coastal, big-city party. It can certainly pile up lots of blue electoral votes. And, thanks to California, Democrats can capture the popular vote, without necessarily winning presidential elections.

The old liberal idea that the new demography is progressive destiny did not work out as planned. When the Blue Wall crumbled; Hillary Clinton lost a sure-thing election. Large Latino populations in red Texas and blue California are not likely to turn either one into a swing state. Inner-city voters so far have not transferred prior record levels of turn-out and bloc voting to candidates of the Hillary Clinton sort. Identity politics did not ensure that the white liberals who created it were always exempt from the natural boomerang of their own ideology.

Yet culturally, the progressive octopus continues to recalibrate popular life according to the new orthodoxies shared by a minority of the population.

Indeed, the octopus has formidable and far-reaching tentacles that reach into every crevice of modern American life. Our progressive mollusk is big, and he swims with us everywhere.

Most Americans are quite willing to concede spheres of partisanship — but not lawlessness. Some colleges, such as Evergreen State or UC Berkeley, while public and tax-supported, are, by definition, leftist in the manner that a private Hillsdale College or Saint Thomas Aquinas are traditionalist and conservative. But whereas the latter are calm and tolerant of dissent; the former, with public monies, are hysterical and often Stalinist when confronted by opposing views. That disconnect is unsustainable…”

Hence, the unfolding debacle which is the NFL can easily be seen for what it truly is: just another front in The Left’s ceaseless struggle against truth, justice and the American way.  We’d have featured a photo of Superman at this point, but even the former Man of Steel has fallen to the forces of Progressive political correctness and amorality.

In all seriousness: in anything other than today’s Liberal-inspired Bizarro World, could even a West Point grad countenance Communism and Che, let alone any sane journalist somehow twist 45 million slaughtered Chinese as somehow advancing the cause of women?!?

But back to football. 

As recorded at our Quote of the Day at the top of the page, at least as regards the latest insane professional sports utterances, we’re with the editors at NRO:

“…Of course athletes have the right to protest. Their employers also have the right to set standards of professional conduct, and football fans have the right to change the channel. The president has the right to tweet. This is not a question of rights but a question of judgment, which was, unhappily, in short supply over the weekend.“

It should also be noted, other than the requirement created by John Roberts’ garbage jurisprudence, consumers have the option not to buy or not to watch a proffered product or form of entertainment. 

What really gets our goat isn’t the protests, but the abysmal ignorance of the facts behind them…

…as well as the utter and abject hypocrisy of the NFL.

As we wrote in the Monday Gouge, the “facts” behind the “Hands up, don’t shoot” narrative and the entire Black Lives Matter movement upon which it was founded were so demonstrably false even the WaPo’s Jonathan Capehart had to acknowledge their complete and utter inaccuracy!

Anyone who’s read us knows we stopped watching the NFL last year, when Roger Goodell first violated his own rules (as reported by Grabien) by allowing, indeed encouraging, kneeling during the national anthem in the first place:

The rules are found on pages A62-63 of the league’s game operations manual:

The National Anthem must be played prior to every NFL game, and all players must be on the sideline for the National Anthem.

During the National Anthem, players on the field and bench area should stand at attention, face the flag, hold helmets in their left hand, and refrain from talking. The home team should ensure that the American flag is in good condition. It should be pointed out to players and coaches that we continue to be judged by the public in this area of respect for the flag and our country. (And the league, its owners and players have been found wanting!) Failure to be on the field by the start of the National Anthem may result in discipline, such as fines, suspensions, and/or the forfeiture of draft choice(s) for violations of the above, including first offenses.

But as Grabien goes on to highlight…

“…Goodell hasn’t always been so supportive of his players engaging in free speech on the field.

• Last year the NFL barred the Dallas Cowboys from wearing a decal on their helmet honoring the five police officers killed in a domestic terror attack.
• The NFL also banned the Tennessee Titan’s linebacker, Avery Williamson, from honoring 9/11 victims by wearing cleats that read “9-11/01” and “Never Forget” on the 15th anniversary of the terror attack.
• The NFL fined Robert Griffin III $10,000 for wearing a t-shirt during a press conference that said “Operation Patience.” (The shirt was created by Reebok and players are required to only wear clothing sold by Nike.)
• RGIII also ran into trouble with the league for wearing a shirt that said “Know Jesus, Know Peace.” (Can you say “Tebow”?!?)
• The NFL has banned players from wearing Beats headphones on the field (doing so violated the league’s deal with Bose).
• The Steelers’ William Gay was fined for wearing purple cleats, which he did to raise awareness for domestic violence (an issue Goodell claims the league takes seriously).
• Goodell’s opposition to speech he dislikes is so determined that he even has a Patriots fan who flipped him off fired from his job. (Though this one is subject to debate.)

And don’t even get us going on Goodell’s politically-correct attempt to shove Michael Sam, whose talents evidently lay off the field, down the fans’ throats.

Oh, and Roger’s loosening of the touchdown celebration restrictions notwithstanding…

…it’s our informed opinion viewers have tired of grown men imitating seizure sufferers on LSD every time they enter the end zone.

Here’s the juice: none of these overpaid, overhyped clowns holds a candle to any of the three greatest running backs in the history of the sport…

… all who knew how to act like they’d been there before.

In a related item, as Townhall.com‘s Matt Vespa reports, in a new CBS…

Poll: 72 Percent See Kaepernick’s National Anthem Antics As ‘Unpatriotic‘

 

The NFL should be worrying not about how a random sampling of Americans respond in a poll, but as one Larry O’Connor correctly suggests…

We would suggest, given the sharply declining television ratings and stadium attendance…

…the fans are fed up!

In a related item, we present the best…

…and the worst…

…reactions to the craven capitulation of the NFL and its owners.

We close our coverage of the fall of America’s most-watched professional sport with two excellent articles on the subject from two of our favorite Conservative writers: first, VDH details the unstable nature of…

The NFL House of Cards

 

“The problem with the NFL is not just Donald Trump, but the greater dilemma that the league’s reason to be has become predicated on a labyrinth of lies.

The majority of the viewing audience is not young, hip, and loyal as hyped, but, even if fading, still largely reflects the majorities in red-state America that have no patience with gratuitous insults to the National Anthem and flag. The NFL apparently never grasped the political truism that you never insult your base and core supporters; sympathetic CNN talking heads and the solidarity of progressive political activists will not turn around sagging revenues, but will only contribute to them.

Outside the NFL toady bubble, most of America, to the extent it still watches, now sees Sunday afternoon pop demonstrations as increasingly a farce, played out among players who appear neither exploited nor as exemplary model sportsmen, but rather as overpaid and pampered. Given the NFL’s enormous overhead, even a 10–20 percent reduction in attendance and viewing could send financial tsunamis throughout the league.

Nor do the protesting players come across as informed, brave social-justice warriors on the barricades of dissent, but as mostly unable to explain to their fans precisely why and how they are mistreated or why America is a flawed society that does not deserve momentary iconic respect each week. If players were concerned about violence and injustice, why not collect a voluntary 10 percent contribution from the league’s multimillionaire players and use it to fund programs that address systematic and lethal violence in inner-city communities such as Baltimore or Chicago? And if ethics and values are the players’ issues, why over the last decade has there been an increase in player off-field violence and arrests, often marked by well-publicized violence against women?…”

Wait until Trump starts looking at the league’s tax breaks…or the voters begin to consider the owners’ unconscionably bloated stadium deals.

Second, courtesy of the Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro offers…

TRUMP VS. THE NFL: 6 Things You Need To Know About The #TakeTheKnee Explosion

 

“…Here’s the bottom line: this conflict isn’t good for the country. We need our shared symbols, and we need our shared spaces. Both of those elements are being destroyed for political and ratings gain. If that doesn’t stop, we’re not going to have anything at all in common anymore.“

Then again, should the NFL fold, we for one won’t mourn its passing…along with the NBA and MLB if they continue down the path pioneered by these preening prima donnas.

And here’s a wake-up call for The Donald:

WSJ NEWS ALERT: Roy Moore Wins Alabama’s Republican Senate Primary

 

Trump on the stump for Strange.

Ruh-roh, Rorge!

Speaking of preening prima donnas, in the Details, Details segment, The Daily Caller‘s Amber Athey informs us how…

TIME Tweet Leaves Out That Anthony Weiner Sexted A Minor

 

“TIME Magazine left out one major — or rather, minor — detail of Anthony Weiner’s sentencing in a tweet Monday morning. “Anthony Weiner is being sentenced for sexting,” TIME wrote. “He faces up to 27 months in prison.”

Of course, as many Twitter users pointed out, Weiner isn’t being sentenced for “sexting,” but rather for sexting a minor. Weiner pleaded guilty to one charge of transferring obscene material to a minor — the girl he sexted with was 15 years old. He also asked the girl to “sexually perform” for him on video chats…”

Democrats: they’re nothing if not…

…consistent!

And in the Environmental Moment, Shannon Wood shared this succinct summary of…

Turning now to The Lighter Side…

Finally, we’ll call it a day with News of the Bizarre, and this rather strange story from a Spotsylvania steakhouse:

Woman walks into LongHorn Steakhouse in Spotsylvania, gets bitten by a copperhead

 

Call us suspicious, but this one just gets curiouser and curiouser…particularly as Clem, after breeding and raising reptiles for 15 years, allowed Dylan, his girlfriend’s 13-year-old son, to stomp to death the very viper which had supposedly just bitten his mother; a shovel, yes…but using his feet?!?

Three questions immediately come mind: (1) What are the odds Clem is short one baby copperhead back at the snake ranch?; (2) What do Myrick’s and Clem’s finances look like?; and, (3) How long will it take them to file a lawsuit?

The answer to that last one will tell us all we need to know. 

Magoo