It’s Monday, December 21st, 2020…but before we begin, in keeping with the spirit of this cartoon courtesy of the incomparable Stilton Jarlsberg, if America were an airline…

…we’d be shorting the stock.  For, as Red so eloquently observed in Platoon…

Though unlike John McGinley’s classic character, to mangle a phrase from the Bard, if we’re marked to die, we plan on precipitating the passing of as many Progressives to the infernal regions as possible prior to our departure for paradise.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, during a recent viewing of the opening installment of PBS‘s Battlefield series on the Vietnam War, we were struck by the disparate treatment accorded the North and South Vietnamese regimes, as exemplified by these three clips: 

All of which immediately brought to mind one of our favorite movie scenes ever:

This is not to argue the government of Ngo Dinh Diem and his infamous sister-in-law Madame Nhu…along with almost each one which followed…wasn’t both hopelessly corrupt and far from ideal.  But PBS‘s portrayal of the North Vietnamese Communists as a coalition of disparate patriots united by their love of peace and human rights is indefensibly inaccurate.

More importantly, it ignores the fact after invading the South…a existential threat the South never posed to the North…and successfully reuniting a country initially separated as a result of Diem’s refusal to hold elections, the Vietnamese Communists have never allowed free elections, opposition political parties or liberty of any kind…outside of the freedom to accept Party control over every aspect of one’s life.

Here’s a moderate view of the fate awaiting those who didn’t toe the Communist line.  And this doesn’t count those who, as in Cuba following another reportedly benign Socialist revolution, were executed outright or chose to risk their lives fleeing the country by sea.

Yeah,…only if you either never learned or were misinformed as to the history of the Vietnam War in the first place.

And, which is what made us think about the PBS series in the first place, about as good a deal as Progressives’ push to prioritize distribution of the Wuhan vaccines by race, as this article from the U.K.’s Daily Mail via George Lawlor informs us.  Again, what’s contained in the story isn’t accurate reporting but political propaganda, for nowhere in this rather lengthy account replete with numerous numbers, graphs, charts and statistics does it mention the actual reason COVID-19 has killed a greater proportion of Blacks than Whites: Namely, the significantly higher obesity rate among American Blacks…

…with all the accompanying comorbidities which are the coronavirus’s real killers.  Why?  Because highlighting what essentially amounts to a lifestyle choice would be judgmental and racist…as well as tantamount to political suicide.  So to hell with the truth, and long live the COVID cover-up!!!

Since we’re on the subject of The Left’s love affair with the twin tenets of totalitarianism and disinformation, here are a couple responses to Andrew Yang’s latest brainstorm:

In a related item regarding the Wuhan virus, the WSJ recently reported the…

U.K. Says New Variant of Coronavirus Is 70% More Transmissible Than Original

 

And you know what?  Even if the same “scientists” who got it so wrong the first time have somehow managed to belatedly get it right… 

As Townhall.com’s Bronson Stocking reminds us, though the lockdowns haven’t meaningfully limited the spread of the virus, their decidedly destructive impacts have certainly proved materially and adversely detrimental to the mental and physical health of those subjected to them. 

Here’s the juice: This stopped being about protection a long, long time ago; now it’s all about control!!!  And if you think the passing of this manufactured emergency spells the last time Progressives will try to frighten the public into granting them unconstitutional powers, we call your attention to this scene from Dirty Harry:

Does anyone really believe Progressive politicians are any different?!?

Seriously, Magoo?  Surely you don’t mean the same beneficent public servants whose counterproductive Great Society policies have destroyed uncounted American families and individuals…who wasted some $53 trillion in treasure on an utterly futile War on Poverty…whose slavish devotion to abortion has seen the slaughter of tens of millions of unborn infants…whose Gaia worship led to the wholly-unnecessary banning of DDT and the subsequent deaths of untold millions in the Third World…and who most recently left four of their countrymen to die in Benghazi so as to not risk adversely impacting the reelection of a Progressive President, then had no problem destroying an entire economy, not to mention the lives and businesses of hundreds of millions, to prevent the reelection of his successor.

Yeah, THOSE Progressive politicians!

Speaking of those who would do anything to advance their political policies and power, courtesy of The American Spectator via George Lawlor, Melissa Mackenzie reveals the MSM’s new standard for covering a story: it must be…

Blue Dress Proof

What it takes to get the media to believe a Democrat did wrong.

 

“For a damaging story about a Democrat to be true, DNA must be found on a blue dress. There must be Blue Dress Proof™.  It’s not enough to have a witness and a victim. It’s not enough to have a computer, a cache of validated emails, thousands of affadavits signed under the threat of perjury. There must be actual DNA, videotaped evidence. If the bad guy is a Democrat, there must be Blue Dress Proof.

For a damaging story about a Republican to be true, nothing has to be true at all. Third-hand hearsay about hookers and pee, a smile on a face, or a sarcastic tweet or phrase taken out of context can make even the most absurd conclusion be portrayed as fact and conveyed as truth in perpetuity. If the bad guy is a Republican, no proof is needed.

Hunter Biden, the China-compromised (to the tune of a request of 10 million smackers), Russian oligarch–payoff taking, crack pipe–smoking, naked-picture havin’ Democrat has been given every benefit of the doubt. The media and technology companies forbade mentioning the story before the election. No one who watched CNN or NBC or MSNBC or read the New York Times or the Washington Post knew about the story. Those on Twitter whose tweets weren’t throttled or blocked outright were called names by the media. The story, which had witnesses, corroboration, and evidence, was deemed a conspiracy theory.

It’s all true. The DOJ and FBI knew it was all true, and, shockingly, the intelligence agencies that leaked like 30-year-old sieves throughout the Trump administration miraculously learned how to keep a secret for over a year. They stayed mum through the primaries. They were quiet through the presidential election while sitting on a laptop full of emails, images, and texts of Biden corruption…” *Hat tip to the lovely Shannon and G. Trevor for the Babylon Bee and Trump-Biden memes.

Case in point as, courtesy of The Washington Free Beacon, we learn…

Dem Tapped to Run Interior Smeared Covington Students

Rep. Deb Haaland accused Covington students of ‘hate’ and ‘intolerance‘

 

“Rep. Deb Haaland (D., N.M.), a freshman congresswoman and one of two Native-American women in Congress, accused the high school students of “hate” and “intolerance” in January 2019 after a selectively edited video clip of an encounter between pro-life student activists and counter-protesters in Washington, D.C., went viral.

“This Veteran put his life on the line for our country,” Haaland said of Nathan Phillips, a Native-American activist who confronted the Covington Catholic students. “The students’ display of blatant hate, disrespect, and intolerance is a signal of how common decency has decayed under this administration.”

Haaland followed up her accusations with a second tweet, saying, “A Native American Vietnam War veteran was seen being harassed and mocked by a group of MAGA hat-wearing teens.”…”

Except, as you’ll recall, Nathan Phillips never served in Vietnam, neither was he harassed nor mocked by the Covington Catholic contingent.  Rather, it was the other way around.  Which means…

As for Haaland, like Mayor Pete’s homosexuality, the only apparent asset and experience she’ll bring to the Department of the Interior is her American Indian ancestry.  Which begs the question why Liawatha…

…wasn’t offered the job?!?

Turning from Princess Moonbat to the Land of Fruits & Nuts, courtesy of the WSJ via Jim Fassio, Hank Adler reveals…

A California Plan to Chase Away the Rich, Then Keep Stalking Them

A proposed wealth tax would apply for a decade to anyone who spends 60 days in the state in a single year.

 

“…Each year this tax net would gather up a new crop of taxpayers for the next decade. The range of people it proposes to ensnare is staggering: every student attending college in California, anyone having a major medical procedure at a California hospital and needing an extended in-state recovery period, and those who spend two months in California away from New York or London winters. Under California tax law, there is no distinction between a nonresident from Minnesota and a nonresident from Dubai.

Assembly Bill 2088 proposes calculating the wealth tax based on current world-wide net worth each Dec. 31. For part-year and temporary residents, the tax would be proportionate based on their number of days in California. The annual tax would be on current net worth and therefore would include wealth earned, inherited or obtained through gifts or estates long before and long after leaving the state.

The proposed wealth tax would fall on a star high-school or college athlete who grows up in California but becomes a wealthy professional in another state after graduation. It would grab a scientist who develops a drug to cure cancer years after leaving California. A grandchild who spent a single summer surfing in Southern California would be subject to the tax. It would include anyone returning home to a foreign country after 60 days in California.

Imagine the child of a Saudi prince being asked to pay a California wealth tax during college and for nine years after graduation…”

Since we’re on the subject of Progressives who believe there exists a magical, bottomless well from which they can draw any amount of money at any given time, NRO‘s Kyle Smith expands upon his earlier commentary concerning the paucity of non-M.D. Jill Biden’s dissertation, as he details…

The Contradictions and Conceptual Errors of Jill Biden’s Garbage Dissertation

Walk with me through the vapid pages of her 20,000-word piece of litter-box lining.

 

“Jill Biden’s embarrassing 2006 dissertation, which I mocked here and extensively quoted here, is essentially a weakly argued 20,000-word op-ed that offers zero hard evidence for her policy proposals, which are that Delaware Tech (her employer at the time) should beef up its Wellness Center, add a student center, and offer lots of counseling and mentorship to students in order to increase retention rates, which she says were about two-thirds at her institution, about par for community colleges.

Everything is based on anecdotes or soft data, such as the results of insipid surveys she sent out asking Delaware Tech students whether they agreed with her ideas. Surprise! Students would like a student center to be built. But so what? Wouldn’t students say yes to any proposed amenity? Students would likely say yes to a new screening room, tennis court, or fro-yo lounge, but that doesn’t mean these would be wise uses of the institution’s money. How much would a student center cost? Biden doesn’t say. Would the benefit be worth the cost? Biden is silent on the question. Even if a student center were worth the cost, would some other potential use of that money be even more worthwhile? The question never crosses Biden’s mind. Biden simply proceeds from the assumption that the world is a place of unlimited resources for things she wants. Whatever additional time, money, and effort are required will magically appear. This is not a scholarly approach…”

While certainly not scholarly, it is, in keeping with the actions of California’s lawmakers, consistent with Socialists’ disdain for cost-benefit analyses and their belief in the inexhaustible nature of wealth.

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

Then there’s these from Balls Cotton…

…along with one from Brendan Clark:

Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with this Reuters report on the efforts of a…

Chinese “iron crotch” kung fu master’s fight to preserve a painful-looking tradition

 

“Wang Liutai is no ordinary kung fu master. The 65-year-old from a village in central China practises a unique and excruciating-looking strand of martial arts coined “iron crotch kung fu”. Its most famous technique involves a steel-plate capped log, 2 metres (6.5 feet) in length and weighing 40 kilograms (88 pounds) that swings through the air and smashes into a man’s crotch.

“When you practise iron crotch kung fu, as long as you push yourself, you will feel great,” said Wang, head of the Juntun Martial Arts Academy.

Wang, who has been practising the technique for around half a century and has two children, insists that with the correct methods and sufficient practice, it does not hurt and has no effect on fertility…”

Five thoughts come immediately to mind: (1) Forget its effect on fertility (unless they have neither milkmen nor mailmen in China), we’d like Mrs. Wang’s observations on the Iron Crotch‘s impact on performance; (2) The initial encounter has to be at least somewhat…uncomfortable; (3) Any question Iron Crotch training is part of the ChiComs’ efforts to genetically engineer a super warrior?; (4)…

And, (5) this story requires we pay homage to the memory of Iron Balls McGinty:

Magoo

Video of the Day

The shilling is truly shameless. In all seriousness, if Hunter’s the smartest man Joe Biden knows perhaps Kamala Harris IS a preferable President.  But then, it’s been that way ever since Slick Willy.

Tales of The Darkside

Courtesy of James Nichols, Oklahoma’s Jim Lankford hits the issue of voter fraud squarely on the head. Absent any consequences WHATSOEVER, this problem is here to stay, and it will ALWAYS benefit one party.

On the Lighter Side

The Hodge Twins lend their usual politically-incorrect humor to another faux “first”.