It’s Friday, August 3rd, 2018…but before we begin, this could be a game-changer:
Stay tuned, sports fans!
Now, here’s The Gouge!
We lead off the Friday edition with two similar schools of thought, imperfect though one be, regarding The Donald’s seeming invulnerability to attack. First, writing at NRO, Rich Lowry accurately opines as to…
“…The tape’s political effect is muted because everyone is dug in. Trump’s foes have already concluded that he’s unfit for office and needs to be removed forthwith; Trump’s supporters (most of them) acknowledge his serious shortcomings but think it’s more important to focus on his agenda and accomplishments. It’s difficult to find a further personal peccadillo that can budge anyone from these trench lines, since there’s no real contest over his character to begin with.
The irony is that Trump’s detractors hate him so much that they have created, perhaps, an impossibly high standard for his misconduct.
It’s not damning enough for them that the Russians interfered in our election and Trump is dismissive of it; Trump has to be a quasi-Russian agent who actively colluded with the Kremlin, perhaps going back decades. It’s not damning enough that Trump had affairs with a porn star and Playmate; he has to have committed some serious criminal offense in the course of covering his tracks.
For their part, Trump’s allies rarely make a personal defense of him, i.e., this man would never do such a thing…”
And for two good reasons: (1) his personal conduct is often indefensible; and (2) they only care what he’s done while in the Oval Office, not prior to occupying it.
Next, courtesy of Real Clear Politics via Balls Cotton, Alex Castellanos explains…
“Washington is debating a different set of laws these days: The laws of physics. Do Newton’s principles affect Donald Trump like other inhabitants of our planet? There is evidence Trump has the power to defy gravity: When this president slips, he doesn’t fall, he floats. It is frustrating the establishment to no end.
President Trump went to Helsinki, made Vladimir Putin look the taller man, and undermined his own country’s intelligence agencies. He came home and resentfully explained he misspoke, only to reverse that and then face accusations of silencing an affair with a Playboy model. All this while separating immigrant parents from children. And continuing his street fight with Iran’s mullahs. And Twitter-bombing the Russia investigation. For anyone else, it would not have been a stellar week, but Trump’s polls ratings rose.
As Carl Cannon writes in “Trump Deserves a Nobel Prize – in Physics”: “What goes up, must come down, Isaac Newton taught the world. But Newton never met Trump. No matter what he says or does – and no matter what’s said to him or about him – the man’s poll numbers hang in suspended animation.” How, Cannon wonders, could this happen?
To understand, Washington may have to imagine an unfamiliar nation, the America that exists beyond the Beltway. There, Trump’s mistakes are not “screw-ups.” His “gaffes” are the reason he was handed the highest public office in the land.
Remember why Trump thrashed both big political parties and won the election.
His supporters can’t plead ignorance. We pretty much knew what he was before we voted for him. Trump is not subtle: He made his living billboarding who he is and what he does on tall buildings, in glowing neon, uncaring of whether it delights or offends. He is the most obvious politician we’ve ever had. (Outside of, in our opinion, Obama, who many read like the Communist Manifesto!)
He said John McCain wasn’t his type of hero, drooled about dating his own daughter, conceded some Mexicans weren’t rapists, admitted he does not ask God for forgiveness, testified about his profound faith and familiarity with two Corinthians, and boasted of grabbing women by the p-word, all before election day. Nearly half of American voters cast ballots for him anyway. They didn’t vote for him despite knowing he was a living hand grenade. They voted for him because of it – so they could roll that explosive device under Washington’s gate.
When Trump rends the fabric of the establishment’s universe, he is doing exactly what his supporters want him to do…”
While both Lowry and Castellanos make excellent points, the latter appears not to completely appreciate the mindset of many who pulled the lever for Trump.
Contrary to Castellanos’ contention, any number, ourselves included, voted not for The Donald, let alone his explosive unpredictability, but most decidedly against Hillary; just as, in both 2008 and 2012, we weren’t so much supporters of either John McCain or Mitt Romney, but implacably opposed to the agenda certain to follow the election of Barack Obama. We held our noses and cast our ballots for candidates we knew to be imperfect yet infinitely preferable.
Five words confirm the wisdom of our choice: Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
There’s only been one perfect human being in history…and He wasn’t on the ballot in November of 2016…though He’s coming back to judge everyone, regardless of their voter registration.
Besides, next to LBJ, Trump is almost a saint!
Next up, courtesy again of NRO, this time via Tom Bakke, the great Victor Davis Hanson details…
“How, when, and why has the United States now arrived at the brink of a veritable civil war?
Almost every cultural and social institution — universities, the public schools, the NFL, the Oscars, the Tonys, the Grammys, late-night television, public restaurants, coffee shops, movies, TV, stand-up comedy — has been not just politicized but also weaponized.
Donald Trump’s election was not so much a catalyst for the divide as a manifestation and amplification of the existing schism.
We are now nearing a point comparable to 1860, and perhaps past 1968. Left–Right factionalism is increasingly fueled by geography — always history’s force multiplier of civil strife. Red and blue states ensure that locale magnifies differences that were mostly manageable during the administrations of Ford, Carter, Reagan, the Bushes, and Clinton.
What has caused the United States to split apart so rapidly?
…We forget especially the role of Barack Obama. He ran as a Biden Democrat renouncing gay marriage, saying, “I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage.” Then he “evolved” on the question and created a climate in which to agree with this position could get one fired. He promised to close the border and reduce illegal immigration: “We will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace. We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws.” Then he institutionalized the idea that to agree with that now-abandoned agenda was a career-ender.
Obama vowed to “work across the aisle” and was elected on the impression that he was a “bridge builder” who would heal racial animosity, restore U.S. prestige abroad, and reignite the economy after the September 2008 meltdown. Instead, he weaponized the IRS, the FBI, the NSC, the CIA, and the State Department and redefined the deep state as if it were the Congress, but with the ability to make and enforce laws all at once. “Hope and Change” became “You didn’t build that!”
President Obama, especially in his second term, soon renounced much of what he had run on. He raised taxes, stagnated what would have been a natural recovery, weighed in on hot-button racialized criminal cases, advanced a radical social agenda, and polarized the country along lines of difference.
Again, Obama most unfortunately redefined race as a white-versus-nonwhite binary, in an attempt to build a new coalition of progressives, on the unspoken assumption that the clingers were destined to slow irrelevance and with them their retrograde and obstructionist ideas. In other words, the Left could win most presidential elections of the future, as Obama did, by writing off the interior and hyping identity politics on the two coasts.
The Obama administration hinged on leveraging these sociocultural, political, and economic schisms even further…”
But as Bobby Jindal suggests in a recent editorial at the WSJ, “Even if Mr. Trump retired quietly to Mar-a-Lago, a return to civility would be unlikely”.
Though not, we must emphasize, because of the vast majority of true Trumpeteers, or Conservatives who support his deeds despite his words…not to mention his tweets! The massive injection of incivility into the political process which Hanson describes began long ago, and has been, almost exclusively, the result of the deliberate actions and policies of The Left.
Case in point:
Here’s the juice: far from being the type of activity in which Conservatives engage, it’s rather that which Progressives regularly practice…and with ever-increasing frequency. Sorry, but can anyone name one instance where a crowd of Conservatives shouted down a Liberal speaker, engaged in violence to shut down a Progressive protest or threatened Dimocratic politicians with physical harm…let alone visited it upon them?!?
We’re not talking about a White-supremacist, Neo-Nazi fringe with as much in common with Trump as we have with Bill Gates…other than our birth year. We mean your average, run-of-the-mill Tea Party protestor, whose only participation in the political process prior to Obama’s excesses was as a member of Nixon’s Silent Majority.
If any happen, they’re as rare as a virgin in a whorehouse.
And we should note, despite his lack of decorum, history proved Joe Wilson right: Obama was lying…and that continuously!
Since we’re on the subject of deliberate deception, or, if you prefer, intentional ignorance, consider this next item:
“…Yelp said in a statement that the decision to start the “Open to All” campaign was to “build awareness and understanding of the importance of nondiscrimination laws and defend the bedrock principle that when businesses open their doors to the public, they should be Open to All.”
Yelp referred to the Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Right Commission case – where the Supreme Court ruled a cake maker could refuse service to a gay couple based on his religious beliefs – as a reason for creating the category.
“[It will] help protect consumers from discrimination,” the company said…”
Except Masterpiece Cakeshop was ALWAYS open to all; the proprietor only refused to prepare a custom-made cake specifically for a gay wedding ceremony.
Now consider this caption headlined by FOX News:
Contrary to the hopelessly hyperbolic headline offered by FOX, what the unknown (at least by us) actress revealed in her Glamour cover story was the claim she was raped by a POLICE CADET when she was 17. So, at best, it was “cop“, not “cops“…and not even a true “cop” at that! And this from FOX!!!
In a related item found at today’s installment of the Do as we SAY, NOT as we DO segment, NRO‘s Jack Crowe reports the…
“Sarah Jeong, who will be joining the New York Times editorial board in September, has expressed open disdain for white people in numerous tweets sent between 2013 and 2015.
Jeong’s Twitter account is replete with racial insults against white people, whom she has described as “groveling goblins,” “bullshit,” “miserable,” and “dogs.” “Dumba** f***ing white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants,” Jeong wrote in November 2014. “Are white people genetically predisposed to burn faster un the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins,” she wrote a month later.
…The Times cast Jeong’s tweets as ill-advised responses to online harassment in a statement released Thursday.
We can’t speak to the “weird dog smell when it rains”, but we certainly know odor of patent Progressive bullsh*t!
Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:
Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with a pair of sordid stories straight from the pages of The Crime Blotter. First, meet Michael Wilson and Dakota Saldivar, two young men who felt their adopted mother did protest too much:
“…Dakota Saldivar and Michael Wilson, both 17, were arrested early Wednesday after their mother, Dawn Liebig, 46, was reported missing from her Pahrump home on Monday. They now face charges of open murder, conspiracy to commit murder and domestic battery with a deadly weapon in the stabbing and bludgeoning attack, KVVU reports.
…Saldivar told detectives during subsequent interviews that he and Wilson decided on July 19 to kill Liebig because “they couldn’t take her complaining,” police said.
The last post on Liebig’s Facebook profile is from July 19. A picture of four male teens sits atop the profile. “Im a mom that hopes she did okay,” the profile reads. “I want my boys to become the men I hope for. I live for them.”
We’re somehow certain this was not the future Dawn Liebig envisioned for her adopted sons.
Second, say hello to Trevyon D. Shepheard and Rafeasia Kirkland, the two…
“The violence unfolded after a cream Lincoln Town Car driven by Leonard Joyner, 57, rolled back at a Kansas City intersection and tapped a Chevrolet Trailblazer driven by Rafeasia Kirkland, 18, and that had Trevyon Shepheard sitting in the passenger seat, according to charging documents obtained by the Kansas City Star.
Several witnesses said Kirkland and Shepheard, 19, hopped out of their SUV to meet Joyner, who also stepped out of his car. Joyner then pulled out cash and appeared to offer it to the teens to repair the damage, but Shepheard returned to the SUV and pulled out a black semi-automatic handgun — which he used to shoot the man down in the street, police said.
Kirkland ran back to the SUV, while witnesses said Shepheard pumped several more shots into Joyner while he was on the ground…”
We assume this was because Shepheard believes in the old adage, “any job worth doing is worth doing right“…regardless of the number of rounds required!
Two things are certain: the world will not miss these four, and the global gene pool will definitely be deepened by their departure.
Magoo
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