It’s Wednesday, April 11th, 2018…but before we begin, in a follow-up to an earlier item detailing Progressives’ rapidly increasing level of insanity, Richard Colt forwarded some more of that sh*t you just can’t make up:

London’s Mayor Declares Intense New ‘Knife Control’ Policies To Stop Epidemic Of Stabbings

The police will now stop and frisk people believed to be carrying knives.

“Never”?!?  PJ Media offers 5; insane doesn’t begin to describe Progressives!

“An epidemic of stabbings and acid attacks in London has gotten so bad that London mayor Sadiq Khan is announcing broad new “knife control” policies designed to keep these weapons of war out of the hands of Londoners looking to cause others harm.

The “tough, immediate” measures involve an incredible police crackdown, a ban on home deliveries of knives and acid, and expanding law enforcement stop-and-search powers so that police may stop anyone they believe to be a threat, or planning a knife or acid attack.

Khan announced Friday that the city has created a “violent crime taskforce of 120 officers” tasked with rooting out knife-wielding individuals in public spaces, and is pumping nearly $50 million into the Metropolitan Police department so that they can better arm themselves against knife attacks. He’s also empowering the Met Police to introduce “targeted patrols with extra stop and search powers for areas worst-affected,” according to a statement.

…Strangely enough, Khan is responsible for decreasing the number of stop-and-searches, having previously declared the tactic racist and potentially Islamophobic. It’s also not clear what local Londoners will now use to cut their food…”

What’s next…

…banning hammers?!?

When it comes to Liberal lunacy, Sam Kinison was dead-on balls accurate:

Speaking of lunacy, as regards the FBI’s raid on Michael Cohen, thus far, we’re with these three thoughts expressed by the editorial board of the WSJ…

“Contrast this treatment with the deference accorded Cheryl Mills, who was allowed to attend the FBI’s interview with Hillary Clinton as her counsel even though Ms. Mills was part of the personal email saga at the State Department.”

“The hilarious thought is that Mr. Trump or his lawyer believed they could protect Mr. Trump’s reputation.”

“Mr. Trump can’t control Mr. Mueller, but he can control himself. That may be the only way he can save his Presidency.”

…along with Andy McCarthy’s observation at NRO:

“Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign was caught hiding the sources of 1,300 large campaign donations, aggregating to nearly $2 million. The campaign also accepted more than $1.3 million in unlawful donations from contributors who had already given the legal maximum.

Under federal law, such campaign-finance violations, if they aggregate to just $25,000 in a calendar year, may be treated as felonies punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment — with offenses involving smaller dollar amounts punishable by incarceration for a year or more. (See Section 30109(d) of Title 52, U.S. Code, pp. 51–52 of the Federal Election Commission’s compilation of campaign laws.)

The Obama campaign did not have a defense; it argued in mitigation that the unlawful donations constituted a negligible fraction of the monumental amount it had raised from millions of “grass-roots” donors. Compelling? Maybe not, but enough to convince the Obama Justice Department not to prosecute the Obama campaign — shocking, I know. During the Christmas holiday season right after the 2012 campaign, with Obama safely reelected and nobody paying much attention, the matter was quietly settled with the payment of a $375,000 fine.

Is the $130,000 in hush money Donald Trump’s personal lawyer paid to porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election a campaign-finance violation? Probably, although it’s a point of contention. Even if we stipulate that it is, though, we’re talking comparative chump change.

Yet, as that lawyer, Michael Cohen, has discovered, what was not a crime in the Obama days is the crime of the century now…”

Meanwhile, we’ll wait for the facts to unfold; and The Donald needs to keep his cool…and his fingers off his cellphone.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

Since we’re on the subject of precipitately proliferating Progressive psychosis, Victor Davis Hanson examines…

“…How did we get to such a point of absurdity?

The ideology of illegal immigration rests on certain illogical assumptions that must not be questioned. Immigration exactly is one-way. But why exactly do we simply accept that without inquiry? What is it about a free-market, constitutional, transparent, and law-abiding America that draws in millions desperate to abandon their homes in otherwise naturally rich landscapes in Mexico and Central America?

In the absence of intellectual honesty about the need for political and economic reform in Latin America, mythologies can abound. Millions are desperate to enter a country antithetical to the protocols of their own. They are even more desperate to stay here — even as many mask that paradox by expressing ethnic and cultural chauvinism, along with anger at their hosts. Witness the signs, flags, and symbols of many open-borders, anti-immigration-enforcement rallies. Apparently, nations that create conditions that drive out their own can be the objects of romance, but only at a safe distance.

The ethos of the Mexican government has become surreal. Its racist and imperial classes welcome the flight of 10 percent of its indigenous population. It assumes that the United States cannot, must not, adopt immigration laws similar to its own. Driving out one’s own people apparently vents social tensions in lieu of reform, and the government is thereby exempted from accountability for its utter failures. About $30 billion arrive in return as remittances, many of these transferences subsidized by American social services and entitlements.

To hide the asymmetry, Mexico becomes accusatory, playing the same role that China does with trade. The aggressive party is always the victimized. Mexico constantly warns us that an anti-American, left-wing presidential candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, may soon be elected.

But what exactly would the feisty Obrador do in anger: Punish the U.S. by closing the southern border, unilaterally quit NAFTA, accommodate the repatriation of 12 million of its citizens, build a wall of his own, forbid the emigration of the impoverished of Oaxaca, expel U.S. companies and investments, cut off the reception of billions of dollars in American remittances, drive out U.S. citizens, or demand the extradition of its own citizens now in American jails and prisons? And what would be the U.S. reaction to such “punitive” measures?

Promises, promises?…”

As we’ve observed of threats from Mexico before, please…

…don’t throw us into that briar patch!

Next up, writing at his Morning Jolt, Jim Geraghty reminds us there’s far more to Assad’s latest atrocity than just the chemical weapons he employed, as he suggests…

Syria’s Bashar al-Assad Has to Ask Himself One Question: Does He Feel Lucky?

How do you define a death wish? How about, “using chemical weapons in an area where their effects are likely to be recorded on camera, right before John Bolton becomes national security adviser”? You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, you don’t pull the mask off the ol’ Lone Ranger, and you don’t mess around with The ‘Stache.

A month ago, then-private citizen John Bolton wrote:

Security Council weapons inspectors monitoring North Korea’s compliance with United Nations sanctions have reportedly concluded that, for several years, the North has been selling Syria materials for the production of chemical weapons. Additional sanctions violations also are reported, but none compare to the gravity of this evidence that Pyongyang is trafficking in weapons of mass destruction (WMD) technology.

Pyongyang’s dangerous behavior today dramatically foreshadows exactly what it will do with nuclear and ballistic-missile technology as soon as it thinks it is safe to do so.

The U.N. report and other sources also indicate considerable involvement by Iran, China and Russia in financing and transporting North Korea’s chemical and other weapons-related materials to Syria. The complex web of business dealings shows serious, perhaps insoluble, problems in the enforcement of international sanctions applicable to both Pyongyang and Damascus.

That certainly sounds like a man fed up with the status quo approach to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. And certainly President Trump’s Sunday morning tweets — the first to criticize Vladimir Putin directly by name(!) — suggest the commander-in-chief is appalled and outraged at the use of chemical weapons.

Meanwhile, someone — everyone suspects the Israelis — bombed Syrian airbase T4 early Monday morning, a base used by Syrian and Iranian-backed militias.

Former secretary of State John Kerry, in his farewell memo to America’s diplomats, touted the alleged success of destroying 1,000 tons of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles and then added, “unfortunately, other undeclared chemical weapons continue to be used ruthlessly on the Syrian people.” It’s been said that the easiest way to persuade President Trump to do something is to tell him Obama refused to take a particular course of action. Is someone like Bolton going to tell Trump that Obama refused to enact a lengthy campaign of punitive airstrikes, aiming to destroy any suspected Syrian chemical weapons stockpiles?

We for one would believe the world would be better off without any more of its oxygen going to maintain the respiration of either Bashar al-Assad or Kim Jong-un.

In a related item, Geraghty offers additional evidence “why people don’t take the United Nations seriously: “Syria will next month chair the United Nations disarmament forum that produced the treaty banning chemical weapons.”

Yet another reason “utterly and completely insane” doesn’t remotely begin to describe contemporary Progressivism and its counterproductive policies.

In a related item, as The Washington Free Beacon details…

Iran Threatens to Restart Nuke Enrichment Program in Matter of Days

Threats ‘confirm that the Iranian regime never gave up on its atomic weapon ambitions’

“Iranian leaders are threatening to restart the country’s contested nuclear enrichment program in just a matter of days as the Trump administration and European allies scramble to address a range of flaws in the landmark nuclear accord ahead of a May deadline that could see the United States walk away from the accord, according to regional reports and administration insiders.

…This is exactly what President Trump means when he says the Iran deal is the worst agreement ever negotiated,” said one Republican foreign policy adviser who is close to the White House.

“The Obama administration gave away the store, literally sending Iran billions and billions of dollars, but the deal left Iran with the ability to reverse their concessions in a couple of days,” the source said. “We gave away too much for too little, and every day the deal stays in place Iran gets more and more benefits from sanctions relief. No wonder the president is leaning toward getting us out.”

Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser and expert on rogue regimes, noted that while international inspectors have had access to some of Iran’s nuclear sites, it has not been permitted to inspect secret sites, including underground facilities that could have continued to serve as a nuclear research hub for Iran since the deal was implemented. “This is just one more statement to show what a mirage the JCPOA was,” Rubin said. “Iran built an underground facility under the nose of the IAEA, and Obama allowed them to keep it. The more we see the Iran nuclear deal, the more it seems about as effective as the deal to end Syria’s chemical weapons.”“

And Assad just proved how effective that was!  Further demonstration how the entire Obama Administration was the gift that keeps on giving…to America’s enemies…while at the same time continuing to take the lives of untold numbers of innocents around the globe.

Turning now to the Environmental Moment, Shane Smith forwarded this article from Investor’s Business Daily relating…

A Startling New Discovery Could Destroy All Those Global Warming Doomsday Forecasts

“Scientists just discovered a massive, heretofore unknown, source of nitrogen. Why does this matter? Because it could dramatically change those dire global warming forecasts that everybody claims are based on “settled science.”

The researchers, whose findings were published in the prestigious journal Science, say they’ve determined that the idea that the only source of nitrogen for plant life came from the air is wrong. There are vast storehouses in the planet’s bedrock that plants also feed on. This is potentially huge news, since what it means is that there is a vastly larger supply of nitrogen than previously believed.

University of California at Davis environmental scientist and co-author of the study, Ben Houlton, says that “This runs counter the centuries-long paradigm that has laid the foundation for the environmental sciences.”

Pay close attention to the word “paradigm.” If Houlton’s finding about these vast, previously unknown nitrogen stores holds true, then it would have an enormous impact on global warming predictions.

Climate scientists have long known that plants offset some of the effects of climate change by absorbing and storing CO2. But climate scientists assumed that the ability to plants to perform this function was limited because the availability of nitrogen in the atmosphere was limited. As a 2003 study published in the same Science journal put it, “there will not be enough nitrogen available to sustain the high carbon uptake scenarios.”

In the wake of the latest findings, Ronald Amundson, a soil biogeochemist at the University of California at Berkeley, told Chemical and Engineering News that “If there is more nitrogen there than expected, then the constraints on plant growth in a high-CO2 world may not be as great as we think.”

In other words, with more nitrogen available, plant life might be able to absorb more CO2 than climate scientists have been estimating, which means the planet won’t warm as much, despite mankind’s pumping CO2 into the atmosphere…”

Before declaring the demise of the anthropogenic global warming scam, there’s a lot of “ifs”, “mights” and “coulds” contained in this article.  Also, as the IBD article concluded…

“…With their reputations and huge amounts government grant money at stake, it’s unlikely that many climate scientists would ever admit to being wrong. No matter how obvious it became that they were.“

Not if the facts to the contrary were etched in stone by Obama’s own finger and then brought down from Mt. Sinai by Al Gore himself.

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

Then then there’s this series of memes brought to us by Balls Cotton:

Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with News of the Bizarre, as the New York Post informs us how a…

Russian woman embalmed alive in deadly hospital mistake

“A Russian woman was embalmed alive when doctors unwittingly put her on a formaldehyde-based drip instead of saline during a surgery, according to a report Sunday. Ekaterina Fedyaeva, 27, died from the gruesome medical blunder in which her veins were pumped full of the chemical, which is generally used to prevent the decomposition of corpses…

…Fedyaeva was getting a routine surgery at a hospital in Ulyanovsk last month when doctors placed her on a formalin drip…She suffered pain and convulsions for two days before falling into a coma and being rushed to a hospital in Moscow…”

While we grieve for Ekaterina Fedyaeva, we bid you welcome to the inevitable future of socialized medicine in Amerika.

Magoo