It’s Friday, February 23rd, 2018…but before we begin, this headline confirms the entire world can’t provide enough grist for the Progressives’ victimization mill: 

‘Black Panther’ packed with action, diversity — but no gays

 

“Marvel Studios‘ “Black Panther” is being hailed as the most diverse superhero movie in Hollywood history, but it’s not diverse enough for some progressives who want to know: Where are all the gay characters?…”

Uhhh,…eaten by a pride of homophobic Wakandan lions?!?

On a more serious note, as Jane Robbins reports at Townhall.com…

The Transgender Totalitarians Can Now Legally Take Your Kids

 

“An Ohio court has removed a teenaged girl from the custody of her parents because they refused to consent to dangerous and experimental medical treatment. The teenager wants to undergo irreversible treatment (hormones and probably sex-reassignment surgery) that she hopes will alleviate the depression associated with her gender dysphoria. Based on 1) the scientific facts that such treatment will convert her into a lifelong medical patient and probably fail to alleviate her suicidal tendencies, 2) their religious belief that created reality is unalterable, and 3) their fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their minor child, the parents said no.

But the court concluded they have no right to make that decision. If they reject the radical new orthodoxy that replaces science with ideology, their authority to act for the good of their child is simply extinguished.

This shocking decision can be traced to the Obergefell case, in which the Supreme Court discovered a right to same-sex marriage. Leftists and libertarians assured us the ruling would be harmless, but the Ohio case illustrates the tragic shortsightedness (more like deliberate misrepresentation!) of that position.

LGBT ideologues had no intention of stopping with the legal sanction of marriage. Their goal was twofold: to eradicate the significance of biological sex differences entirely, regardless of the damage done to innocents; and to silence and ultimately obliterate any dissent, if necessary by dismantling social structures and belief systems. The ideologues are winning…”

For the time being.

Oh, and all the venomous invective of The Left notwithstanding, we’ve no doubt Billy Graham is not mourning his own passing, having been entered into the presence of God and Jesus Christ with the words we anxiously await:

“Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”

Not to mention, he’s with Ruth again:

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, in the latest installment of our Blind Leading the Blind segment, courtesy today of NRO, Ben Shapiro highlights…

Students’ Anti-Gun Views

 

“Are children innocents or are they leaders? Are teenagers fully autonomous decision-makers, or are they lumps of mental clay, still being molded by unfolding brain development?

The Left seems to have a particularly hard time deciding these days. Take, for example, the high-school students from Parkland, Fla. They’ve now been trotted out by advocates of gun control as newfound authorities on the evils of the Second Amendment. Seemingly every major media outlet has featured commentary from children ranging from 14 to 17 years old who attended Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. On Wednesday evening, CNN plans a full primetime special with the victims’ classmates, parents, and community members, titled “Stand Up: The Students of Stoneman Douglas Demand Action.” (Which predictably became an all-out assault on the NRA.)

What, pray tell, did these students do to earn their claim to expertise? They were present during a mass shooting, and they have the right point of view, according to the Left. There’s a reason that producers at CNN are eager to put junior Cameron Kasky in front of the cameras: He says things like “You’re either with us or against us.” It seems a stretch to think that if Kasky were instead advocating for more armed school security, CNN would be breaking into its primetime lineup to air his views.

The anti-gun views of these students define their capacity, according to the Left. That’s why Harvard Law professor Lawrence Tribe suggested this week, on the back of the youth push for gun control, that the voting age be lowered to 16 years old. Tribe ridiculously suggested, “Teens between 14 and 18 have far better BS detectors, on average, than ‘adults’ 18 and older…#Children’sCrusade?”

The same holds true when it comes to matters of sex and sexuality. The Left consistently pushes more sexual autonomy for youngsters: They proclaim that laws restricting minors’ access to abortion are unconstitutional, that children have the capacity to declare themselves prepared for gender transitioning, and that parents who disagree should be shoved aside. This week, a judge in Ohio ruled that custody of a 17-year-old girl suffering from gender dysphoria should be handed over to her grandparents rather than her parents, because her parents opposed doctors’ advice that she get hormone treatment and undergo surgery. Such logic is likely to be utilized more rather than less in the future.

But the same people on the left who declare that children are fully capable decision-makers suddenly balk when it comes to gun ownership. Now, leftist lawmakers state that the legal age for gun purchases should be raised to 21. They proclaim that “children” are disadvantaged if they are removed from their parents’ health-insurance plans before turning 26. They suggest that the criminal-justice system should treat young adults with greater leeway than it treats more mature adults, because brain development doesn’t truly complete until 25.

So, which is it? Are children assets to be protected, or are they just adults in tiny people’s bodies? Are they sexual beings, or are they innocents? Are they rational actors, or are they still emotionally developing?

The answer seems to be relatively simple: Children and teenagers are not fully rational actors. They’re not capable of exercising supreme responsibilities. And we shouldn’t be treating innocence as a political asset used to push the agenda of more sophisticated players.

But the Left won’t stand for such line-drawing. That’s because for the Left, status as a rational actor, let alone as an expert, isn’t actually the chief qualification for political gravitas: It’s emotion. And children are as capable of emotional response as anyone else. So we should give children full leeway to express their emotions in any way they deem fit, and it should be our job to humor them so far as we can bear it — up to and including in policy considerations.

That’s a horrible style of parenting, let alone governing.

This discussion of young people’s political involvement leaves out one crucial element: the responsibility of older people to help inculcate expertise and reason in young people. The whole reason that young people are generally less capable of strong decision-making is that the emotional centers of the brain are overdeveloped in comparison with the rational centers of the brain. And it requires training to fully utilize what psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls System 2 — the analyzing portion of the brain. It’s the job of those who think most rationally to teach those whose rationality is still developing. Leaving individual decision-making, let alone general policy, to young people — those who respond most strongly to System 1, the intuitive, emotional brain areas — may be smart politics. After all, we all respond intuitively to slogans and emotional appeals. But it makes for rotten policy.

But perhaps that’s the point. If we can turn children into our decision-makers, we can infantilize our politics down to simplistic statements like “you’re either with us or against us” on preventing school shootings. And that infantalization certainly helps come election time.

As Michelle Malkin notes…

“This is not compassion, but abdication. America is not a juvenilocracy. It is a constitutional republic. There is a reason we don’t elect high school sophomores and juniors to public office or allow them to cast ballots. There are many, many reasons, actually. If you’re lucky, they’ve only Googled “Should I eat Tide pods?” or “What happens if I snort Ramen powder?” and not actually attempted the latest social media stunt challenges.“

More importantly, as the WSJ‘s Kim Strassel records…

“Republicans have held the political high ground on gun rights for decades, and they’ve done it by sticking together and sticking to the facts. Nothing will lose them that credibility faster than if they jump on the false-hope bandwagon.“

“Boy this gun-control Kool-Aid goes down good!”

Meanwhile, things continue to go from bad to worse for the law enforcement personnel involved in letting Parkland happen, as Broward County Sheriff Scott “It Was the Gun, Not My Department’s Failure to Act” Israel has been forced to admit the…

Deputy assigned to Florida school ‘never went in’ during shooting

 

“…Israel said he’s “devastated. Sick to my stomach. There are no words.” When asked about what law enforcement agencies entered the building first, and at what time, Israel said that it “doesn’t matter who went in first” or “what order you went in.” “What matters is that when we, in law enforcement, arrive at an active shooter, we go in and address the target,” the sheriff said. “And that’s what should’ve been done.”

Peterson, according to Israel, should’ve “went in. Address the killer. Kill the killer.” The sheriff said that he suspended Peterson without pay pending an internal investigation, but the officer resigned and retired. In 2014, Peterson was named School Resource Officer of the Year in Parkland, WSVN reported. The district stated “Deputy Peterson has proven to be reliable in handling issues with tact and judgment.”

Two other deputies from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office have been placed on restrictive duty as officials investigate “whether or not they could have done more, should’ve done more.” The officers were identified by WSVN as Edward Eason and Guntis Treijis. Their restricted assignments come as the bureau found it responded to 23 calls regarding Cruz or his brother since 2008. In two of the instances, Col. Jack Dale said, protocol might not have been followed…”

Seems to us Sheriff Israel has a lot of internal housekeeping to do before the CYA-ing hypocrite…

…falsely promotes Parkland as the fault of outside agents, including the NRA and “too many guns”.

Though in Scott Israel’s defense, were we the Broward County Sheriff, and our department had repeatedly failed to deal with Nikolas Cruz in the months leading up to his rampage, we too might be desperately seeking…

Sheriff Scott Israel to NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch: “You just told this group of people that you are standing up for them. You’re not standing up for them until you say, ‘I want less weapons.'” pic.twitter.com/JEDN5K7DcU

— Axios (@axios) February 22, 2018

…to scapegoat others for our bureaucratic bumbling.

And for those trying to convince America mass shootings are exclusively associated with White males…

…the facts say otherwise:

In the meantime, The Daily Gouge proudly presents Scott Peterson its coveted Brave Sir Robin award for extraordinary cowardice under fire:

So here’s to you, Officer Peterson, Parkland’s 2014 School Resource Officer of the Year:

And a cowardly douchebag at that.

Since we’re on the subject of bumbling bureaucratic failures, the WSJ‘s Dan Henninger provides additional details on…

The FBI’s Parkland Fail

The list of fatal mistakes by federal agencies in recent years is staggering.

 

“…we’ll turn to the problem that affects everyone else: a federal agency failure that contributed to 17 deaths in Florida. This wasn’t the first time. Or the second, or the third. The number of catastrophic events attributable in no small part to federal-agency failure in recent years is staggering.

Missed signals at some level of the federal government or other public agencies preceded mass shootings at Sutherland Springs, Texas (25 killed), Charleston (nine people); the Orlando nightclub (49); Fort Hood (13); San Bernardino (14) and the Boston Marathon bombing (three dead and multiple severed limbs). (Other than that, how’d you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln?!?)

The error list goes on: Amtrak’s derailments, the National Security Agency letting Edward Snowden walk away with its crown jewels on a thumb drive, or the deadly Veterans Administration.

Why do these public-agency mistakes continue to happen? The reasons are complex, so an appeal to Occam’s Razor is in order. The simple answer is that the federal government has become too big to succeed. Its vastness ensures mistakes, and its public-safety responsibilities ensure that some of those mistakes will be fatal.

Two pained words emerge from the ashes of every such event: “Do something.”

Nearly every function government performs is at some level a response to “Do something.” A bad event happens, and the political default is to add another layer to what we expect government to do.

The 9/11 Commission was a positive response to “Do something.” It exposed the resistance of the FBI, CIA and State Department to sharing intelligence. But Russian spies running wild in the U.S. from 2014 through 2017 suggests the silos have re-formed, or the agencies have too many distractions.

Dodd-Frank, the do-something response to the 2008 financial crisis, mainly deepened the economic bog called the compliance industry.

Even if the FBI responds to all the pressure being brought on it now, what’s to ensure that its policy fix won’t break down or itself be an error? After the thalidomide birth-defects crisis of the 1960s, the Food and Drug Administration—vilified then as the FBI is this week—turned the goal of minimal error rates for drug approvals into a caricature that slowed the delivery of life-saving pharmaceuticals to the public. Call it the Do Something Paradox.

The Department of Homeland Security, whose creation was a case study in do-something syndrome, is responsible for monitoring terrorism, ensuring the safety of more than 825 million annual passengers in U.S. airports plus controlling the flow of immigrants into and around the U.S. Does the phrase “falling through the cracks” come to mind?

One verity now of “our democracy” is that any effort to enhance the possibility, say, of early intervention with the mentally ill or even would-be terrorists will have to run through a matrix of pre-existing legal, cultural and political constraints. The legal and mental-health activists opposed to civil commitment of disturbed persons make the National Rifle Association look like Little Bo-Peep. Suggesting out loud a predictive link between terrorism and radical Islam will draw condemnation by superiors…”

In a similar vein, as David French notes at NRO, the staggering shortcomings evidenced by the FBI and Broward County Sheriff’s office are largely because…

Our Government is Not Constructed for Competence

Federal bureaucracies are insulated from effective accountability and discipline. 

 

“…Some of the most traumatic events in recent American history could have been avoided through simple competence. Mistakes foiled the background-check system before the Virginia Tech massacre, the Charleston church shooting, and the Sutherland Springs massacre. The Orlando nightclub killer had been on the FBI’s radar screen well before he committed the second-worst mass shooting in American history. The FBI even intercepted the Fort Hood shooters’ communications with al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and took no meaningful action.

Mass shootings often highlight the problem of governmental incompetence, but even the most cursory review of government bureaucracies reveals that it’s not limited to law enforcement. In fact, law enforcement may ultimately represent one of the least incompetent branches of government service. Compared with the VA, the FBI looks like a model of efficiency and excellence.

It’s time for Americans to face facts. With few exceptions, our governments — local, state, and federal — are not constructed to be competent. The permanent class of civil servants —the career officials who work for multiple presidents, governors, mayors, or town officials — work within bureaucracies that are designed from the ground up to be insulated from effective accountability and discipline. They enjoy a job security that private-sector workers can’t begin to imagine.

A few years ago, a USA Today report rocketed around the Internet for a few days and then faded into obscurity. Too bad. It should have triggered an extended national conversation and extensive legal reform. The headline was sensational, but true: “Some federal workers more likely to die than lose jobs.” It traced the number of employees laid off or fired in multiple federal agencies and found that turnover was microscopic to nonexistent.

Even assuming that a federal worker is a better class of employee than your average private-sector employee (a debatable presumption), the numbers were amazing. The Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission collectively employed 3,000 people. They fired no one. NASA employed almost 19,000 and fired 13. The EPA employed almost 19,000 and fired 19.

In other words, incompetence is baked into the bureaucratic cake.

How does this happen? How did a government job become the most secure job in the United States? After all, aren’t government functions among the most vital, where failure has the most consequence? Yet perversely, failure is punished the least in the public sector…”

For those still wondering why, can you say “steadfast Socialist deep-state supervision and millions of dependable Dimocratic votes come before public safety and service”?!?  We knew you could!

Since we’re on the subject of deep-state Socialists and their steadfast shills in the MSM, in the Wake Up and Smell the Totalitarianism segment, as Jim Geraghty recently noted in his Morning Jolt…

“Elsewhere in the New York Times, Andrew Ross Sorkin writes that “Visa could easily change its terms of service to say that it won’t do business with retailers that sell assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and bump stocks, which make semiautomatic rifles fire faster.” In other words, having failed to persuade lawmakers to make these changes he prefers, Sorkin wants the executives at economically powerful institutions to create a de facto ban on legal products and blacklist companies for holding a different view. What could go wrong, right?

Sorkin casually acknowledges, deep in the column, “the banks’ actions would affect millions of their own law-abiding customers, effectively dictating what they can and cannot buy.” This is a future he is comfortable with, a world where CEOs at companies decide what you’re allowed to purchase; Sorkin is fine with that as long as the companies are banning things he doesn’t like.“

After all, in Sorkin’s Socialist utopia, though all animals are equal, some animals…

…are more equal than others!  Somewhere in Hell, the spirit of Walter Duranty must be laughing his a*s off…between the wailing and gnashing of teeth.

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

Finally, we’ll call it a week with News of the Self-Absorbed, and this item relating how a…

Taco Bell employee is fired for ‘derogatory slur’ printed on receipt

 

“…In Young Lee, a first-year Ph.D. student at Penn Medicine in Pennsylvania, visited a Taco Bell in Philadelphia at around 1:40 am, after a night out with some friends. According to Lee, he ordered his food and gave the cashier a fake name of “Steve” to save time, since trying to explain the spelling of his name is “inconvenient for both the cashier and me,” he told CBS Philly. (Yeah,…since “Lee” is so difficult for most Philadelphians to spell!)

Lee said he confronted the cashier who allegedly wrote the slur, but was not happy with the response. “I was so infuriated that I couldn’t help but to confront the cashier. When I confronted him, he said that there are three Steve’s in the restaurant so he needed to differentiate. It made me even more upset that he was protecting his case rather than apologizing so I lashed out and told him that it is extremely disrespectful to use such a derogatory slur.”

Eventually Lee said he received an apology from the cashier and decided to drop it — until he overheard a conversation between the fast-food workers making fun of him and using the word “chink” again. “He used the word chink again and they were joking about it,” Lee told CBS Philly. Lee said in his post after hearing the Taco Bell employees continue to make fun of him, he “snapped and stormed to the counter” where he starting yelling and snatched his food from a worker…”

Holy overreaction, Batman!  Seems to us “Steve” has a chip on his shoulder to rival the one Moochie Obama carries!  Seriously, were we to drop in for a late night snack at Taco Bell, we cannot even begin to imagine getting even remotely upset if an ethnic cashier recorded our order with the added appellation “Honky”, “Whitey” or “Mick”.

Then again, maybe the real reason the oversensitive Mr. Lee got so upset is he considers himself a “gook” or a “slant”, rather than merely a “chink”!

Sorry, but as you can tell, we’ve no patience whatsoever for such self-absorbed, victimization bullsh*t!

Magoo