It’s Friday, December 10th, 2021…but before we begin, a brief explanation is in order.  First, allow us to express our sincere and heartfelt appreciation for all the email inquiries we received regarding our extended period of radio silence.  While we usually take a day or two off around Thanksgiving, a number of distractions, not the least of which were preparing to close on a major real estate transaction and personally helping to complete the yet-unfinished kitchen remodel from Hell, prevented us from putting together a complete publication.

Again, we were truly touched by your expressions of concern.

P.S. It’s been another long day, so we apoligize…apolagize…apologize in advance for any typos we missed.

So, without further ado, we’re…

And once again, here’s The Gouge!

First up, courtesy of Townhall.com‘s Katie Pavlich, we present incompetence personified, as…

Biden’s Energy Secretary Has No Idea How Much Oil Americans Need

Truth be told, none of them knows the difference between…

Clueless doesn’t begin to describe this clown car, from the driver on down to the very…if you’ll forgive the play on words…bottom:

And since we’re on the subject of prominent people playing the common folk for fools, our confidence in the country’s two-tiered system of justice just went up a notch.

In a related item, this headline tells anyone with an ounce of common sense the core beliefs and principles…

…at the heart of Black Lies Matter: 

Black Lives Matter stands in solidarity with Jussie Smollett: ‘We can never believe police’

BLM leader Melina Abdullah called trial a ‘white supremacist charade‘

Next, NRO‘s Kevin Williamson knocks it out of the park as he urges thinking Americans to…

“To believe the story the abortion-rights advocates tell you, you have to believe in magic.

There’s no magic required on the pro-life side.

That’s the real source of our long disagreement.

In its most basic version, the pro-life position is easy to understand, requiring no special intellectual training, no religious commitment, no mysticism, and nothing you’d really even call a philosophy. What we believe is that you don’t kill children who haven’t been born for the same reason you don’t kill children who have been born. That’s it. There isn’t some magical event that happens at some point during the pregnancy that transforms the unborn child from a meaningless lump of cells to a meaningful lump of cells. Modern, literate people don’t need the medieval doctrines of “quickening” or “ensoulment” (or some half-assed, modern, secular repackaging of those ancient superstitions) to know that the unborn child is an unborn child — we have biology, genetics, and, for those who need to see with their own eyes, imaging technology for that. The human organism that you hold in your arms six months after birth is the same organism it was six months before birth. It isn’t a different organism — it is only a little older. It is true that the child six months after conception isn’t fully developed — and neither is a 19-year-old. We have a natural, predictable, reasonably well-understood process of individual development. There is no magic moment, no mystical transformation, and the people who tell you that there is are peddling superstition and pseudoscience…”

For more on the subject, might we suggest Ramesh Ponnuru’s account of how Progressives have brought phony abortion history back to the Supreme Court.

from The Washington Free Beacon, we learn…

While Border Crossings Are at an All-Time High, the Homeland Security Department Is Prioritizing ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.’

DHS puts DEI ahead of ‘customer experience’ and ‘cybersecurity‘

“As patrol agents are overwhelmed with an all-time high number of crossings at the southern border, the Department of Homeland Security is prioritizing “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) in the 2022 fiscal year, according to documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

In a November report that outlined initiatives for agencies such as Customs and Border Protection, DHS listed compliance with federal regulations as first among six “priorities.” The second was “diversity, equity, and inclusion”—above “customer experience” and “cybersecurity.” The department sent the report to staff members following a town hall-like meeting, during which agency heads emphasized to staff the importance of DEI efforts.

That ranking concerned at least one senior DHS official, who criticized leadership for focusing on left-wing political initiatives while the southern border “remains a shit show.”…”

All of which means the DHS is no different than the other organization whose primary task is America’s defense, which, as this commentary from U.S. Defense Watch forwarded by Breeze Gould informs us, is completely permeated by the cancer of political correctness:

While America Sleeps

“There’s an ancient Chinese proverb from 400 B.C., “when an enemy is woke; first laugh at his strange ways, then kill him.” In today’s military, him can also be replaced with her, it, or whatever pronoun the sailor, soldier, Marine, air person is identifying with at that moment.

Across the world our enemies are on the move. China is conducting the biggest military buildup in the Pacific since Japan in the 1930’s. Putin is eyeing the Ukraine like Wily Coyote at an all you can eat Roadrunner buffet. Kim Jong Un is back to his old ways – conducting missile tests because he knows Trump’s promises of Miami real estate deals and South Beach babes are long gone…The Iranians continue to foment terrorism across the world as they routinely play chicken with the US Navy and win.

…The country looks for leadership and finds none. A President with applesauce in his brain, who falls asleep at the podium after digesting his 3PM roast beef dinner special at Denny’s. As he prepares to pardon the Thanksgiving Turkey, he can’t find one, because there are no truckers to deliver it.

We have a Vice President who looks, acts and sounds like she just ingested a lungful of helium, a Vice President whose greatest political achievement was yelling ‘bread for the workers’ from her stroller at a 1967 Pot for Peace March at Berkeley.

To pump out the disinformation to a weary public and a room of mask clad subdued journalists, is a press secretary who looks like Raggedy Ann’s evil twin and has all the charm of a boa constrictor, as she condescendingly responds to anyone who would dare question the actions of the most incompetent presidential administration in living memory.

“Where have you gone, Ronald Reagan? Our nation turns a lonely eye to you…”

Combine all this with a nation where less than one percent of the population has ever served in uniform. Most Americans have a very limited understanding of military history and operations, and they’ve naturally given all responsibility for the nation’s defense to the people whom we pay for their unique experience and knowledge –

America’s senior military leaders – aka the Merchants of Featherdom…

It is the responsibility of those military leaders to warn us of dangers ahead on the road. Unfortunately, our senior leaders are mentally and spiritually AWOL.

In the Pentagon, General Milley looks on with apparent disregard and scorn as one debacle piles up after another on his watch, the worst being our disgraceful exit from Afghanistan, in what will one day be looked at as one of the greatest strategic military blunders since the Sixth Army took a construction detour south towards a place called Stalingrad.

This week the Taliban celebrated running us out of Afghanistan by putting on a military parade with our equipment.

What’s Chinese for Bagram Air Base, General Milley?…”

For more on the subject, we suggest, courtesy of Balls Cotton, this open letter to the Commandant of the Corps from a lowly 36-year Marine vet.  SPOILER ALERT: He doesn’t pull any punches.

Speaking of sh*t shows, as NRO reports, the…

NYC Council Passes Measure Allowing Noncitizens to Vote in Municipal Elections

Meaning, of course, now, just like freeloading native-born or naturalized citizens, non-citizens can  vote themselves access to federal tax dollars taken from taxpayers’ pockets.

Moving on, we present a sextet of items certain to pique the interest of inquiring Conservative minds: 

(1). In another victory for sexual predators over women’s rights, NRO is reporting another male inmate sexually assaulted a female prisoner after his transfer to a Washington women’s prison.

The Persian messenger in 300 had it right:

(2). Since we’re on the subject of madness, NRO features a link to a Twitter thread in which Amy Swearer offers answers to dozens of questions asking “What IF Rittenhouse was BLACK?“. 

Again, SPOILER ALERT: NO DIFFERENCE!!!

(3). Though we understand Charlie Cooke’s point when he writes Biden is losing his grip on the Democratic Party, we’d suggest Biden’s never had a grip on anything…other than the shoulders, necks and hair of unsuspecting women.  He’s a place-holder, the candidate of last resort who needed the intervention of the ChiComs with their WuFlu to have even the faintest chance of winning the presidency.

(4). Remember when presidential wanna-be Martin O’Money lowered the crime rate and raised test scores while mayor of Baltimore by changing crime criteria and lowering the passing grade by 10 points?  Well, writing at NRO, Dominic Pino relates how 46* hasn’t fixed the port crisis — ships are just being counted differently.

(5). As The Epoch Times reports, no documents exist explaining why officials decided to remove the definition of “gain-of-function research” from the NIH website.  You’ll recall the site used to include a 232-word definition of the research, but it was removed around the same time the agency disclosed that research it funded in China met the definition.  Which was then infamously denied by the greatest scam artist since Bernie Madoff.

(6). Since we mentioned Dr. Faux ChiICYMI, if ever there was a reason to put two behind Tony’s ear, this is it.

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

Then there’s these from Balls Cotton…

…Speed…

…Ed Hickey…

…and last, but certainly never least, Brenda Berry:

Magoo

Video of the Day

John Schneider offers a Colt .45 primer for those so unschooled in single-action handguns to believe Alec Baldwin’s demonstrably demented claim he never pulled the trigger on the set of Rust…the darn thing JUST WENT OFF!

Tales of The Darkside

From the video vault, we offer a classic installment of Ami Horowitz exposing the ignorance of educated idiots.

On the Lighter Side

This video from G. Trevor relates why there’s no need to go to Glasgow.