It’s Friday, April 26th, 2019…but before we begin, here’s a revealing report from Dennis Prager on the respective responses of B. Hussein and Hillary to the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka:

Why Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama Tweeted About ‘Easter Worshippers‘

“…Only leftists understand that one must vote left no matter who the Democrat is, no matter who the Republican opponent is. Leftists are completely interchangeable: There is no ideological difference among the 20 or so Democrats running for president. Mayor Pete Buttigieg is not one degree to the right of Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren.

That is why it is important to understand Clinton and Obama’s tweets: to understand the left, not to understand her or him.

Here are the tweets:

Obama: “The attacks on tourists and Easter worshippers in Sri Lanka are an attack on humanity. On a day devoted to love, redemption, and renewal, we pray for the victims and stand with the people of Sri Lanka.“

Three hours later, Clinton tweeted: “On this holy weekend for many faiths, we must stand united against hatred and violence. I’m praying for everyone affected by today’s horrific attacks on Easter worshippers and travelers in Sri Lanka.“

As they both spelled “worshipers” the same idiosyncratic way and used the term “Easter worshippers,” it is likely they either had the same writers or Clinton copied Obama.

Here’s what’s critical: Neither used the word “Christians.” And in order to avoid doing so, they went so far as to make up a new term — “Easter worshippers” — heretofore unknown to any Christian.

When Jews were murdered at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Clinton mentioned the synagogue in a tweet. But in her post-Sri Lanka tweet, despite the bombing of three churches filled with Christians, Clinton made no mention of church or churches. In a tweet after the massacre of Muslims in New Zealand, she wrote that her heart broke for “the global Muslim community.” But in her latest tweet, not a word about Christians or the global Christian community.

Obama similarly wrote in his tweet about New Zealand that he was grieving with “the Muslim community” over the “horrible massacre in the Mosques.” But in his tweet about Sri Lanka, there is no mention of Christians or churches.

The reason neither of them mentioned Christians or churches is that the left has essentially forbidden mention of all the anti-Christian murders perpetrated by Muslims in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and of all the Muslim desecration of churches in Europe, Africa and anywhere else. This is part of the same phenomenon — that I and others have documented — of British police and politicians covering up six years of rape of 1,400 of English girls by Muslim “grooming gangs” in Rotherham and elsewhere in England.

Essentially, the left’s rule is that nothing bad — no matter how true — may be said about Muslims or Islam and nothing good — no matter how true — may be said of Christians or Christianity.

Clinton’s post-New Zealand tweet also included these words: “We must continue to fight the perpetuation and normalization of Islamophobia and racism in all its forms. White supremacist terrorists must be condemned by leaders everywhere. Their murderous hatred must be stopped.”

She made sure to condemn “Islamophobia,” but she wrote not a word about the far more destructive and widespread hatred of Christians in the Muslim world, seen in Muslims’ virtual elimination of the Christian communities in the Middle East, the regular murder and kidnappings of Coptic Christians in Egypt and the murder of Christians in Nigeria. She calls on “leaders everywhere” to condemn “white supremacist terrorists,” one of the smallest hate groups on Earth, but never calls on leaders everywhere to condemn Islamist terrorists, the largest hate group on Earth.

These two tweets tell you a lot about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. But far more importantly, they tell you a lot about the left.“

Coupled with their worship of infanticide, promotion of multiple wealth appropriation schemes and commitment to unrestricted illegal immigration, Progressives’ implacable hatred of Christianity tells one all one need know about them and their programs.

Here’s the juice, the proverbial heart of the matter, as it were, regarding every Progressive policy:

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, borrowing a phrase from the great Thomas Sowell and building on our intro, we offer a few random thoughts on the passing scene, occasioned by this bit of brilliance from Stilton Jarlsberg:

In case you’ve been trapped in a cave for the last century, Progressives are waging an all-out war against reality and morality on every front possible.

In the language of Liberal Newspeak…

“Up” is “down”, “black” is “white” and, most importantly…at least for the moment…”he” is “she”.  Or whatever other appellation victims of gender dysphoria…or any other identification disorder…

…i.e., psychological problem or purposeful political scam…may feel appropriate on a given day.

Thus does the complete vindication of a duly-elected President against claims of collusion and/or obstruction resulting from two years and some $30,000,000 morph into, as this quote from G. Trevor Vietor suggests, into a case of…

 “While we recognize that the subject did not actually steal a horse, he is obviously guilty of trying to resist being hanged for it.“

Whoa…

From this encapsulation of Progressive economic policy provided by Fielding Cocke…

“A Liberal is someone who feels a debt owed to his fellow man, said debt he proposes to pay off using your money.“

…to this summary of their environmental hypocrisy…

“That gap between the Left’s loud talk and their unwillingness to make personal sacrifices is not an accident. It is now part of their dogma. Individual actions are mere “bollocks,” useless gestures. Only the sacrifices made by others will make a difference.” – Todd Myers, writing at the WSJ.

…does there remains a HUGE gap betwixt Socialist theory and harsh reality.

Consider Dallas’ refusal to recognize the criminality of thefts of $750-and-less based on need.  Question: who precisely is going to determine what constitutes a necessity versus the legitimacy of how a potential thief spent their other taxpayer-provided funds?

And, as we wonder with Lieawatha’s college loan scam, who in Dallas will willingly compensate those from whom these goods were stolen?  As long as we’re at it, why not have the government assume existing home mortgages…small business loans…consumer loans…or credit card debt?  Hells bells, why not pick up the vig gamblers owe to loan sharks?!? 

Rest assured it won’t be on Bernie Sanders’, Lizzie Warren’s, Cory Booker’s, Kamala Harris’ or Butt-egg-egg’s dime!

As we mentioned earlier, when it comes to Progressives…

Next, the WSJ‘s Kim Strassel highlights what should have been an aspect of his investigation Bob Mueller curiously missed:

The Russians and the Dossier

Mueller should have investigated whether Moscow used Steele in its interference.

“Politicians keep reminding us not to lose sight of special counsel Robert Mueller’s broader assignment: to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. If only someone had reminded Mr. Mueller.

One of the biggest failures of the Mueller probe concerns not what was in the final report, but what was not. Close readers will search in vain for any analysis of the central document in this affair: the infamous “dossier.” It’s a stunning omission, given the possibility that the Russians used that collection of reports to feed disinformation to U.S. intelligence agencies, sparking years of political maelstrom.

…The Mueller report exposes the dossier claims as pure fiction. Yet in describing the actions of the Trump campaign figures the FBI accused, the report assiduously avoids any mention of the dossier or its allegations. Mr. Mueller refers to Mr. Steele and his work largely in passing, as part of the report’s description of how former FBI Director James Comey informed Mr. Trump of the dossier’s existence. The dossier is blandly described several times as “unverified allegations compiled” by Mr. Steele.

Once Mr. Mueller established that the dossier was a pack of lies, he should have investigated how it gained such currency at the highest levels of the FBI. Yet his report makes clear he had no interest in plumbing the antics of the bureau, which he led from 2001-13. Instead, he went out of his way to avoid the dossier and give cover to the FBI.

The special counsel had another, more pressing reason to look at the dossier: It fell within his core mission. Since its publication by BuzzFeed in January 2017, we’ve learned enough about Mr. Steele and Fusion GPS to wonder if the Russians used the dossier for their own malign purposes.

…How did Mr. Mueller spend two years investigating every aspect of Russian interference—cyberhacking, social-media trolling, meetings with Trump officials—and not consider the possibility that the dossier was part of the Russian interference effort?

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz and Attorney General William Barr may answer some of the questions Mr. Mueller refused to touch. Thanks to the special counsel we know Republicans weren’t playing footsie with Russians. But thanks to BuzzFeed, we know that Democrats were. America deserves to know how far that interaction extended.“

With all due respect to Kim Strassel, which is quite significant…

The nation NEEDS to know!

Moving on, courtesy of American Greatness, Victor Davis Hanson asks what inquiring minds want to know: from the perspective of Progressives…

Are There Any Limits to Illegal Immigration?

“The U.S.-Mexican border is essentially wide open.

Why? Because there is a general expectation in Mexico and Latin America that American immigration law is unenforced…

…Some polls in the past have suggested that a third of Mexico’s population would immigrate to the United States if possible. The percentages of would-be immigrants from Central America are likely to be even higher. In theory, 50 million could cross the border in the next two decades, which poses the question: what are the theoretical limits on illegal immigration? When would it cease? When 50 million or 60 million or maybe 80 million foreign nationals entered illegally, without meritocratic criteria or much diversity?

…In sum, either when Mexico resembles California, Texas, Arizona, or New Mexico, or when these border states resemble Mexico, then illegal immigration will likely cease. Conventional wisdom has always postulated that declining birth rates, economic reforms, and globalization south of the border will discourage Mexicans and Central Americans from coming north as rough parity is achieved.

But it may be that as so many have already come north—and they are coming in increasing numbers—and as so few feel a need to assimilate, that an impoverished “north” is no longer a promised land and thus not necessarily a place for which it is worth abandoning one’s homeland. (Just as Americans generally don’t leave other parts of the country to move to Baltimore, Detroit or Cleveland!)

The other day I noticed for the first time that I have a lot more fear of an oncoming car in rural California than I had of intersections in Libya; a lot more worries about a wild stray dog wandering into my yard than I did while living in Greece; a lot more anxiety of being shot or robbed than I did when visiting the current Middle East; and a lot less hope of being treated promptly in extremis at the local emergency room than I would have expected in Eastern Europe.

In that strange sense, I guess I have some hope that illegal immigration will soon taper off.“

When it comes to immigrants, legal or illegal, we know one who definitely constitutes one too many, as this next item from NRO‘s Kevin Williamson details:

Ilhan Omar: A Hostage Situation

When the ‘victim’ is the victimizer

““It has to stop,” says Representative Ilhan Omar.

No, it does not.

Representative Omar, the Jew-hating Minnesota Democrat, is engaged in one of her usual games of misdirection, a pattern of hers that by now is familiar enough to be predicted: She says something outrageously stupid, offensive, anti-Semitic — or all three at once — and then attempts to parry the thrust of inevitable criticism by characterizing it as an attack on Muslims, women, women of color, Muslim women of color, etc.

In this case, Representative Omar characterized the events of September 11, 2001, this way: “Some people did something.” Someone assembled a video intercutting her blasé account of mass murder with images of that day’s events, and Donald Trump, who serves simultaneously as president of the United States and the nation’s social-media intern, tweeted the video, along with some vintage all-caps emoting: “WE WILL NEVER FORGET!”

The New York Times stepped on Representative Omar’s cue and uttered her lines itself, insisting that the criticism of Representative Omar is necessarily part of an attack on Muslims categorically. Trump of course has on more than one occasion treated Muslims categorically, for instance in calling for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” which, like so many of President Trump’s blustery promises, never came to pass and never even was given serious consideration. (The actual policy consists of restrictions on travel from six predominantly Muslim countries, along with North Koreans and officials of the Venezuelan government.) Representative Omar is not all Muslims, and she is not Muslims categorically: She’s a loopy left-wing identity-politics entrepreneur whom the Democratic party has carried to the U.S. House of Representatives. Criticism of elected officials is not only permissible but necessary.

But Representative Omar believes she is above such criticism: “It has to stop,” she said, citing death threats she has received since the presidential tweet. That argument is pure horsepucky. It is an unfortunate fact of life in Anno Domini 2019 that practically everyone in public life receives death threats, often on social media or in online forums. Elected officials do. Journalists and commentators do. Entertainment figures do. I do, and my colleagues do. That’s our dumb world. And, currently, it’s part of the price for certain kinds of careers. There isn’t anything special about Representative Omar in this regard. She’d get death threats if she were a Fox News host, too.

But such threats are a useful pretext for politicians who want to shut down criticism for their own narrow political ends. Senator Bernie Sanders, the socialist rape-fantasy entrepreneur from Brooklyn who represents Vermont in the Senate, insisted that criticism (he wrote “attacks”) simply “must end.” Senator Elizabeth Warren, the fake Indian from Oklahoma who represents Massachusetts in the Senate, accused the president of attempting to “incite violence.”

The Democrats are in a political pickle. They would very much prefer that the Jew-hating caucus shut up, and they are not crazy about the fact that the public face of the Democratic party is, at the moment, risible and demented amateurs such as Representative Omar and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, i.e., the people who are even crazier than Senator Sanders. But intersectionality is a jealous god, and they cannot simply tell Representative Omar et al. to sit down and clam up. All they can really do is to try to raise the price of criticizing the nut cutlets on the Democrats’ menu by insisting that criticism of Representative Omar is an attack on Muslims as such, that criticism of Representative Ocasio-Cortez is an attack on Latinas who don’t know how a bill becomes a law, that criticism of Robert Francis O’Rourke is an attack on…whatever it is that “Beto” is pretending to be this week. The New York Times et al. are reliable allies on that front.

This is, incidentally, what all those fake hate crimes are really about: Redefining criticism of Democratic politicians and constituencies as violence. When there isn’t enough violence to make that case in a sufficiently dramatic fashion, then violence can simply be invented — and, if the case of Jussie Smollett is anything to go by, the cost of doing so is pretty low. When’s the last time you heard of a prosecutor dropping a 16-felony indictment in exchange for a firm handshake?

That’s a neat trick, really: to be the hostage and the hostage-taker at the same time.

Representative Omar may not be the most intelligent person in Congress, but she is not so dumb that she does not know what she is doing when she dismisses 9/11 as an event in which “some people did something,” because below-average oysters and cuttlefish aren’t that dumb. She is following a pretty obvious career path and hopes to be to American Muslims what the Reverend Jesse Jackson has been to African Americans and what Hillary Rodham Clinton has been to embittered left-wing women who faint a lot: a sacred person, beyond the reach of the profane.

And, apparently, beyond criticism, too.“

As America is obviously not meeting Omar’s expectations, we’ll be only too happy to book her a first-class seat on the next flight back to Mogadishu…one-way!

Which brings us to The Lighter Side:

Finally, since we’re on the subject of being careful, we’ll call it a wrap with this video courtesy of G. Trevor:

Magoo