It’s Friday, April 5th, 2019…but before we begin, as PJ Media reports, one candidate for the 2020 Dimocratic nomination truly walks in the footsteps of The One:

Chip Off the Ol’ Eastern Bloc: Pete Buttigieg’s Dad Was a Marxist

“I was baffled last week by Pete Buttigieg’s definition of “freedom“, which was eloquently stated, rousingly received, and 100% incorrect. To him, any adversity you face in life makes you less “free“. To him, being “free” means the government taking care of you from cradle to grave. As a fellow Hoosier, I was taken aback by how much Mayor Pete sounds like a damn communist.

Turns out there’s a very good reason for that, as Emily Larsen and Joseph Simonson report at the Washington Examiner:

The father of Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg was a Marxist professor who spoke fondly of the Communist Manifesto and dedicated a significant portion of his academic career to the work of Italian Communist Party founder Antonio Gramsci, an associate of Vladimir Lenin.

Joseph Buttigieg, who died in January at the age of 71, immigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s from Malta and in 1980 joined the University of Notre Dame faculty, where he taught modern European literature and literary theory. He supported an updated version of Marxism that jettisoned some of Marx and Engel’s more doctrinaire theories, though he was undoubtedly Marxist.

People keep calling Beto “the white Obama,” but Pete is the one with a commie college-prof dad.

So that explains why Buttigieg’s definition of “freedom” is the opposite of the one our founding fathers used. He grew up learning about a very different group of dead white guys…”

Consider this concept for a moment:

“To him, any adversity you face in life makes you less “free“. To him, being “free” means the government taking care of you from cradle to grave.“

Hardly the stuff of Braveheart…

…let alone what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they risked their very lives to bequeath us the greatest country on the planet.

We were reminded of Buttigieg’s Socialist definition of freedom as we listened to Congressman Tim Ryan (D-OH) announce for the presidency (1:03-1:26 mark):

Three thoughts: (1). As President, will Ryan personally oversee GM personnel transfers?  We for one would find this an incredible waste of the nation’s Chief Executive’s time.

(2). For a candidate supposedly committed to being a bipartisan President, he couldn’t have picked a more partisan venue for his announcement.

(3). While in no way minimizing the hardship of geographic dislocation, does Ryan think her daughter’s friend’s family is the first to be forced to relocate for employment opportunities and/or advancement?  Up until his retirement, TLJ’s dad moved every three years, including, but not limited to, Alameda, CA, Whidbey Island, WA, Chula Vista, CA, Meridian, MS and Pensacola, FL.  And though, in the interest of limiting moving expenses, Military personnel relocate less today than in the past, the pace and tempo of their deployments, i.e., time spent on duty away from home, have both increased rather dramatically.

Most importantly, the comments of both Buttigieg and Ryan clearly identify a need for a nationwide conversation about what constitutes real “adversity”, a recalibration as it were.

Seriously: in 1620, the Pilgrims crossed the Atlantic in leaky boats about the length of an average blue whale (the Mayflower‘s 80′-90’ of waterline were crammed to overflowing with some 132 passengers and crew), only to be met with what author Nathaniel Morton described as The Desolate Wilderness.  

Later, our forefathers (and mothers) pulled up stakes and went West in wagons, risking death from a variety of sources for the opportunity to better their lot and thereby claim for themselves, their families and their progeny a piece of the American dream.

But back to today.  Rather than indulging her detachment from reality, Ryan should have suggested his daughter toughen up, then educated her to what constitutes real misfortune and suffering…

…and included Buttigieg, along with the rest of the like-minded Socialists clamoring for the 2020 nod…

…in on the lesson.

Any questions?!?

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, the WSJ‘s Kimberly Strassel highlights the reasoning behind…

The Mueller ‘Coverup’ Gambit

Why Barr is right to release the report with redactions and publicly, all at once.

“The only surprising thing about the new “coverup” accusation against Attorney General William Barr is that it took it two weeks to get there. The question is whether Republicans fall for this naked effort to revive the collusion-and-obstruction narrative…”

Are you kidding,..The Gang Who’s NEVER Been Able to Shoot Straight Since Ronald Reagan Retired?  Say it ain’t so, Joe!

Next, courtesy of the WSJ via Jeff Foutch, as Karl Zinsmeister observes…

If You Like Socialism, You’ll Love the VA

Cradle-to-grave care for American veterans and their families. How’s it working out?

Put another way, if you like the efficacy of the VA, you’ll love single-payer healthcare!

Think about it: how could anyone with even a modicum of common sense, knowing the mess the federal bureaucracy’s made of the VA hospital system, think, “Yeah, THAT’S the kind of healthcare the country needs!”

And in a follow-up to earlier items concerning Progressives’ ongoing effort to cram Newspeak down America’s collective throat, writing at NRO, the great Victor Davis Hanson recounts how, at least for now,…

The Virtuous Can Never Be Guilty

Virtue-signaling is now the refuge of scoundrels.

“Since ancient times, it has always been scary when moral auditors audit their own. Or as the Roman satirist Juvenal put it of male guardians entrusted to shield chaste girls from randy males, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (“Who will watch the watchmen?”)

When humans sense that there’s neither an earthly nor divine deterrent between them and social acceptance, power, riches, or their appetites, what follows is a foregone conclusion.

…Say what one wishes about President Trump, but his first two years were the most scrutinized, audited, and examined of any presidential tenure in memory. It was not so much that Donald Trump’s inner moral voice would never have approved of a Lois Lerner in the IRS, or of his intelligence services and FBI sandbagging a Democratic presidential campaign, or of his attorney general surveilling Associated Press and Fox journalists or flying on a government jet to the Belmont Stakes with his family.

The point was instead that Trump likely could not have gotten away with any of that in his first two years. And that fact was known to Trump — given media coverage that was more than 90 percent negative, a hostile administrative state, and a censorious culture.

The exact opposite geography characterized the governance of his predecessor — and it showed, from Benghazi to the 2016 systematic subterfuge of the Trump campaign and transition.

In the past three weeks, we’ve seen an epidemic of all sorts of progressive exemption.

…The Steeles, Smolletts, and Dees of the world will continue to con their way to fame and riches while damaging the country — until it no longer pays. And it will no longer pay when we have the collective courage to accurately and matter-of-factly label Steele a pathological liar and fraud; and Smollett for what he is, a racist con artist; and Dees for what he has become, a virtue-signaling grifter; and our elite college system for what it has descended to, a non-meritocratic, cattle-branding operation that fast-tracks its chosen herd into green careerist pastures.“

…Joe!!!

Liberals Are Eating Their Own

Joe Biden got trapped in the spider web of identity politics. He won’t be the last.

Here’s the juice: his penchant for swimming naked in his pool while female members of his Secret Service detail were on watch notwithstanding (along with the self-created meme above), we don’t believe Uncle Joe’s a sex-crazed deviant…though we’re open to the impact of additional evidence!

Rather, when one combines Biden’s over-inflated opinion of himself with his startling stupidity, we can easily see him thinking this is what any female enjoying the pleasure of HIS company undoubtedly DESIRES.  After all, THEY’RE mere mortals; while HE’S Shotgun Joe Biden!!!

Still, the look on his face when touching and whispering his unfortunate female companions is unquestionably creepy.

Moving on, courtesy of FOX News via George Lawlor, Andy Puzder calls into question the value of contemporary “higher” education:

What Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t understand about minimum wage

Then there’s this feel-good study from Finland:

Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure

If you’re wondering what this sorry bullsh*t even means, it’s simple: ignorance is bliss…particularly when accompanied with money for doing nothing!!!

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

Then there’s these two beauties from Bob Chagares…

…this one from Shannon Bush…

…and this string from Balls Cotton:

And last, but certainly not least, one of our personal favorites:Finally, we’ll call it a week with this rather bizarre entry in the Health Section:

Girl’s feet infested with parasitic sand fleas after running through pigsty barefoot

“A 10-year-old girl who had developed itchy, painful brown-colored papules on the bottom of her feet was actually suffering from a parasitic sand flea infestation. The girl, who had traveled to Brazil with her family two-weeks prior to visiting a health clinic, reported running through a pigsty with no shoes on…”

We won’t darken your day with a photo of the poor girl’s feet, but suffice it to say it left us wondering why her parents thought running through a Brazilian pigsty barefoot was a good idea, then waited her condition to reach the point it did.

Bearing children: no license or training required!

Magoo