It’s Wednesday, December 19th, 2018…but before we begin, a quick observation on the reality behind the looming government shutdown.

If you haven’t already read it, check out the December 17th edition of Stilton’s Place, where a good friend of the author provides an account of his visit to a portion of the Arizona border, along with photographic evidence of what Dimocrats would have us believe constitutes a secure…

…southern boundary.  If only the concern was keeping cattle or horses from straying into Arizona, rather than preventing the intrusion of criminal trespassers whose numbers include violent felons and terrorists.

This reality is why Pelosi and Schumer…along with a number of RINOs…are loathe to build an effective wall, e.g., that which protects Israelis…

…from those intent on doing them harm.  Truth is, such a barrier would, in effect, take in the “welcome” mat they’d laid down for future Dimocratic voters and cheap laborers and instead replace it with a sign:

Frankly, we’ll be downright miffed if, as has been rumored, The Donald’s backing down; especially if, as has been reported, we’re giving Mexico an additional $4.8B in foreign aid. 

Math was never our strong suit, but, according to our calculations, $4.8B almost equals the $5B Trump sought to extort from the Dims.

And this just in from The Gang Who Still Can’t Shoot Straight: Arizona Governor Doug Ducey has appointed former Congresswoman Martha McSally to take the place of Jon Kyl, who’s retiring again after temporarily filling McCain’s seat.  As we noted back in the November 14th edition:

“Sorry, we’re confused.  After running what was at best a lackluster campaign, McSally lost to a bisexual former member of the Green Party; why on earth would you want to appoint a loser with a history of close calls to a Senate seat she’d likely give up in the next election?  Why not name someone, male or female, Black, White or Brown, with the solid Conservative record and charisma to keep it?!?” 

We don’t refer to the GOP as the Party of Stupid for nothing, despite the moniker being primarily due to an uncontrolled infestation of RINOs.

Still, while a significant number of RINOs may be dense, as this headline confirms…

Scottish Parliament Bans ‘Gingerbread Men’ in Coffee Shop Due to Sexism Concerns

…the vast majority of Progressives, irrespective of race, religion, class, color, creed, sexual preference or national origin, are stark, raving mad!!! 

Now, here’s The Gouge!

Turning from the stark, raving mad to the deliberately deceptive, as Jack Crowe reports at NRO… 

Comey Denies Responsibility for Decline in FBI’s Reputation

Consider the cast of characters involved with the Flynn set-up: Jim Comey, Pete Strzok and Andy McCabe; all disgraced, all terminated…and all crooked as a dog’s hind leg!

C’mon, at least two of the memos Comey gave his professor friend, possessed of neither the appropriate security clearance nor the need to know, contained information officials now consider classified.  Which has prompted, according to “people familiar with the matter”, a review by the Justice Department’s internal watchdog…toothless though he may be.

Here’s the best part: Comey continues to claim he considered the memos “personal” rather than “government” documents, and told Congress he wrote them and authorized their release to the media “as a private citizen”…despite his still being in the employ of the U.S. Government.

Is it any wonder Comey could conclude Hillary didn’t PURPOSEFULLY use a private server for the transmission of classified emails, and therefor didn’t MEAN to jeopardize national security?!?

This reminds us of one of our favorite lines from The Outlaw Josey Wales; indeed, one of our favorite movie lines ever:

If you’ll forgive us a bit of crudity, Comey’s claim is akin to us driving in our car when the only other passenger is our wife…and we smell gas…intestinal gas…and TLJ denies having emitted it.  Her denial doesn’t mean, let alone convince us  she didn’t do it; rather it only confirms, the facts to the contrary notwithstanding, she’s not willing to admit it.  Her’s is a harmless white lie; Comey’s is a patent prevarication worthy of incarceration.

As Victor Davis Hanson details, the answer to the question of why, in his second House appearance Comey responded with some variant of “I don’t know” or “I don’t recall” 254 times, is…

“…unfortunately, obvious. Comey has been called to testify before members of Congress on numerous occasions. He has written a long book and gone on an extensive book tour, and his paper trail is long.

He tweets almost daily and is often on television, and in those venues, he never seems to admit to any memory lapse. And Comey has been at the center of every major scandal involving the 2016 election. (As well as a number of major scandals pre-dating the 2016 election!)

In other words, Comey is realizing that almost anything he might say will likely be at odds with something he has already said, done, or written — and could potentially subject him to perjury charges.

So Comey dodges and hedges…”

Comey’s “flatulence in the car” reaction reminds us of Idris Elba’s response when asked about the perils of being a Hollywood leading man in #MeToo environment: “It’s only difficult if you’re a man with something to hide.”  And James Comey has more skeletons in his closet than Vincent Price.

Which puts us down solidly on the side of Sarah Sanders:

Since we’re on the subject of dodging responsibility, the editors at NRO have an interesting take on Judge Reed O’Connor’s recent decision overturning Obamascare:

Obamacare Needs an Out-of-Court Settlement

“Obamacare was a misbegotten law. It addressed real, if sometimes exaggerated, problems, but did so at an unnecessarily high cost. Some of that cost was economic: A large and arbitrary subset of the population has had to pay higher premiums, deductibles, and copayments, and enjoy reduced access to medical providers. Some of it was lost freedom, as Obamacare curtailed the space for voluntary transactions and expanded the field of required ones.

Congress should not have enacted the law over public opposition in 2010; the Supreme Court should have struck it down in 2012; the Court should have stopped the Obama administration from rewriting the law to give it a broader reach in 2015; and Congress should have replaced the law in 2017.

A new district-court decision striking down the law appears to give Congress an opportunity to start over. Yet we cannot applaud Judge Reed O’Connor’s decision. Indeed, we deplore it. It will not lead to the replacement of Obamacare, as much as we desire that outcome. It will instead give Republicans another opportunity to dodge their responsibility to advance legislation toward that end.

It will not lead to the replacement of Obamacare because it is very likely to be overturned on appeal; and it is very likely to be overturned on appeal because it deserves to be…”

Color us confused, both as to the Journal’s conclusions and where to begin our rebuttal.

First, stating the “problems” Obamascare was designed to address were “sometimes exaggerated” is truly disingenuous.  From the fable there were tens of millions of Americans who couldn’t afford health insurance (when the reality was the vast majority just didn’t want to pay for it) to the bald-faced lie “If you like your healthcare plan, you will be able to keep your healthcare plan”, the entire Unaffordable Care Act was sold on a pack of deliberate, carefully calculated lies.

The only actual problem Obamascare addressed was the coverage of pre-existing conditions, which in all fairness should only have been granted if the individual had lost their insurance through a change in employment or some other mitigating circumstance.

Second, letting the Courts off while blaming Republicans for not overturning the Unaffordable Care Act when it was only a fit of pique on the part of one man…

…(who is not missed) which prevented the GOP from doing so is somewhat disingenuous, particularly as the article identifies two points at which the courts should have stepped in.  Besides, now, a judicial remedy is the only realistic course available, as a legislative solution is, like the man who single-handedly prevented it, DOA.

Next up, writing at American Greatness, the inestimable Victor Davis Hanson exposes the reality behind…

The Globalist Mindset: They Hate You

“…The common target of all these populist pushbacks is an administrative and cultural elite that shares a set of transnational and globalist values and harbors mostly contempt for the majority of their own Neanderthal citizens who are deemed hopelessly unwoken to environmental, racial, gender, and cultural inevitabilities.

In a word, the Ivy League, Oxbridge, and the Sorbonne masters of the universe assume that the world is on a predetermined trajectory. We are to follow an arc of history bending toward state-managed social justice if you will—to end up as a sort of global Menlo Park, Malibu, Upper West Side, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Schwabing, or Kensington. No wonder, it is their ethical duty of transnationals to goad the fated, but sometimes stalled, process along.

…Globalism is both an ideology and a culture of behavior. The creed is that the Western world, given its colonial and imperialist past, has a duty both to make amends to the former third world through magnanimously lending the global community elite Western expertise—whether through Kyoto- or Paris-like climate accords, foreign interventions guided by Western humanitarian principles, asymmetrical trade agreements, open borders, or U.N. mandates.

The globalist alone knows how global warming threatens us and how the ignorant masses must sacrifice to cool things down, how nationalism supposedly causes world wars, how sexism, racism, and homophobia have warped Western, but non-necessarily non-Western, society, and how human nature can be modified to avoid these pathologies through greater coercion, more relevant social education, improved material conditions, and greater secular ecumenicalism—a far better religion than calcified Christendom. The Western consumer—fat, “lazy,” played out—surely does not need any more affluence or income. His nation, therefore, can afford to subsidize, through his superfluous lifestyle, far nobler international crusades for mankind.

The nation-state then is passé. Transnational organizations, the larger and more powerful the better, tame mindless Western chauvinism, while enhancing and making invaluable alternative post-Western paradigms. The Secretary-General of the United Nations, the chief executive officer of the World Bank, the Secretary-General of NATO, the Director-General of the World Trade Organization, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, the President of the Council of Foreign Relations, the president of CNN Worldwide, all these are certainly to be listened to in a way an elected senator from Kansas, the nuts who stirred up the gilets jaunes, the unhinged Poles and Bulgarians who wanted to build fences on their borders, or renegade British MPs pushing for Brexit should not be.

Globalist penance for past sins is accomplished in a variety of ways. (Though always paid by others!) Non-Westerns are not to be held to symmetrical value systems. Islamic countries can destroy churches, Western nations consider mosques sacrosanct. Illegal immigration force feeds diversity onto a tired and exhausted Western public in dire need of having its horizons expanded by the other. Dumping, patent and copyright theft, and technological appropriation are sins only for wayward Westerners.

The elite must never be subject to the sometimes unfortunate ramifications of their own ideologies—any more than a laboratory scientist need be singed when he recklessly puts the wrong volatile ingredients into his beaker mix. Open-borders architects in the U.S. need not put their children in schools overwhelmed by illegal immigrants. Walls are useless on borders but effective around Malibu and Napa estates. The elite need not live in neighborhoods where European languages are rarely spoken; others less liberal need such exposure and enlightenment. French citizens must pay high gas taxes for their huge carbon footprints, French elites fly private jets to conduct profitable business in the carbon-rich Gulf, India, and China…”

It’s all in Orwell’s Animal Farm:

Speaking of animals…and, as with all Socialists species, cowardly animals at that…FOX News relates how…

Marines testify about Antifa mob attack in Philadelphia

“Two alleged Antifa activists accused of attacking a pair of Marines in Philadelphia were ordered to stand trial just after Christmas on aggravated assault and conspiracy charges following a dramatic day of testimony last week in which the Marines described being beaten and called ethnic slurs.

U.S. Marine Corps reservists Alejandro Godinez and Luis Torres, dressed in their military uniforms, testified Thursday against suspects Thomas Massey and Tom Keenan, who were allegedly part of a larger group of leftwing Antifa activists who began beating the Marines after mistaking them for participants in a November “We the People” rally in Old City. The two Marines testified they were in Philadelphia to attend a Marine event at a local hotel and were touring attractions around the city when they were approached by Keenan, who allegedly asked the men if they were “Proud Boys” – an allusion to one of the rightwing groups behind the Nov. 17 rally, the Philly Mag reported.

Torres said he didn’t know what “Proud Boys” meant. It was after that interaction, Godinez said, that Keenan, Massey and approximately ten other people – men and women, some masked and some unmasked – began attacking the Marines: punching and kicking them, using mace and hurling slurs and other insults.

Godinez testified he was bewildered by being called a white supremacist and reportedly yelled out “I’m Mexican.” But, he said, that didn’t deter his attackers, who then started yelling ethnic slurs as well…

Keenan and Massey did not speak at the hearing. But Keenan’s attorney was mildly rebuked after referring to the incident as a tussle, leading the judge to reply, “This isn’t like kids at a playground.”

A felony charge of ethnic intimidation was added against Keenan for allegedly yelling the ethnic slurs. The two men also face a host of misdemeanor charges…”

We trust the residents of whatever cellblock in which these two cowards are confined will provide them an experience similar to that which they gave the two Marines…along with a little sumpin’ extra…

…for the chubby boy!

Which brings us to The Lighter Side:

Then there’s these five bon mots from Bob Chagares:

Finally, if you ever wondered why “torture” begins with “tort”, this item from the Court Calendar provides the answer, as the WSJ explains the relationship between…

Cheez-Its and the Judiciary

She bought three boxes of crackers in 2013. Now she wants justice.

“…Three women in federal court are suing Kellogg’s, the manufacturer of Cheez-Its, over crackers labeled “Whole Grain” or “Made With Whole Grain.” As the box explains, they contain 5 to 8 grams of whole grain for each 29-gram serving. That isn’t nothing, but the package lists “enriched flour”—meaning processed flour—as the largest ingredient.

The plaintiffs feel deceived. One of them, Linda Castle, purchased the crackers “approximately three times” in 2013 from a grocer in Torrance, Calif. She apparently wanted something closer to 100% whole grains but didn’t read the label. “The Cheez-It Whole Grain crackers that Ms. Castle received were worth less than the crackers for which she paid,” the lawsuit says. “Ms. Castle was injured in fact and lost money.” Strangely, if the package were changed “she would continue to purchase the products in the future.”

Ms. Castle and the other plaintiffs, who used to buy Cheez-Its once a week, are seeking “damages, other monetary relief, declaratory relief, and an order enjoining Kellogg from continuing its false and misleading marketing.” They demand a jury trial. (In The Land of Fruits & Nuts, we bet they do!)

A federal judge dismissed the case in 2017, ruling that the “Whole Grains” wording was factually correct. In toto, the label “would neither mislead nor deceive a reasonable consumer.” (“Reasonable”: aye, there’s the rub!)

But last week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the dismissal. A three-judge panel held that a reasonable consumer would think Cheez-It Whole Grain crackers were made with “predominantly whole grain.” Additional verbiage on the front and side of the package is no defense, the court said. Thus America’s “reasonable consumer” is held to be dumber than a box of crackers.

The Second Circuit remanded the case for further proceedings, putting the federal judiciary one step closer to legal discovery and a potential jury trial on the content of Cheez-Its. The plaintiffs want the court to certify a class consisting of anyone in the U.S. or its territories who bought the crackers since May 19, 2010. That’s thousands or possibly millions of people, nearly all of whom munched away happily without formal complaint. When people sometimes ask if the American legal system has lost its mind, this is what they’re referring to.“

Cheeseheads?  No.  Cheesedicks?  Spot on!  Which means, absent continued radical course corrections, Confucius will be proven dead-on balls accurate.

Magoo