It’s Wednesday, July 27th, 2016…but before we begin, courtesy of Balls Cotton, allow us to introduce you to the Dimocratic opposite of John Banner’s Sergeant Schultz:

How else can one explain her immediate employment with the Clinton campaign?!?

Then again, given DWS’ repeatedly-demonstrated penchant for patent prevarication…

…she’s a perfect fit; just like stink on sh*t!

Then there’s these observations on the Dimocratic National Convention courtesy of George Lawlor:

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, the carnage continues…

….as Christine Rousselle reports at Townhall.com:

Terrorist Who Murdered Priest In Normandy Was Under House Arrest For Previous Terrorism Charges

 

“…Security sources said one of the murderers [Adel Kermiche] was a convicted terrorist who was being monitored with an electronic tag and should have been living with his parents. He was allowed out unsupervised between 8.30am and 12.30pm. The Mass at Saint Etiennce’s church started at 9am.

The same source said the church was one of a number of Catholic places of worship on a hit list, discovered on an ISIS suspect in April 2015 – raising serious questions about France’s intelligence agencies…”

No,…rather raising serious questions about the intelligence of France’s leaders…not to mention a decided lack of concern for the safety of her citizens!

Immediately to the east, another EU member whose leaders once embraced open borders and unrestricted Islamic immigration isn’t faring much better:

Syrian who wounded 12, killed self in Germany bombing pledged allegiance to ISIS chief

 

Government officials had ordered to deport the man not once, but twice. He was most recently told July 13 that he would be deported to Bulgaria, spokesman for Germany’s interior ministry Tobias Plate told reporters. He said the first deportation notice was issued on Dec. 22, 2014. Herrmann said the man’s request for asylum was rejected a year ago, but he had been allowed to remain in Germany because of the strife in Syria.

“My personal view is that I unfortunately think it’s very likely this really was an Islamist suicide attack,” Herrmann told German news agency dpa…”

Herr Herrmann’s powers of deductive reasoning must be the pride of all Deutschland!

Meanwhile, back in the hopelessly-misnamed City of Brotherly Love, it took until Day 2 of the Dimocratic National Convention, and none other than Terry “The Bagman” McAuliffe, the Virginia governor who’s doing everything within his power…and without…to enfranchise convicted felons, for Progressives to even mention ISIS, let alone characterize its basis in Islam.

Had it been the Irreverent Wright’s neck under Adel Kermiche’s knife, any question The Dear Misleader and his party of misfit adolescents would’ve taken a keener interest in the event?

All of which leads the WSJ‘s Bret Stephens, in a truly must-read commentary, to wonder…

Is Europe Helpless?

A civilization that believes in nothing will ultimately submit to anything.

 

“At last count, members of the European Union spent more than $200 billion a year on defense, fielded more than 2,000 jet fighters and 500 naval ships, and employed some 1.4 million military personnel. More than a million police officers also walk Europe’s streets. Yet in the face of an Islamist menace the Continent seems helpless. Is it?

Was France helpless in May 1940?

Let’s stipulate that a van barreling down a seaside promenade isn’t a Panzer division, and that a few thousand ISIS fighters scattered from Mosul to Marseilles isn’t another Wehrmacht. But as in France in 1940, Europe today displays the same combination of doctrinal rigidity and loss of will that allowed an Allied army of 144 divisions to be routed by the Germans in six weeks. The Maginot Line of “European values” won’t prevail over people who recognize none of those values.

So much was made clear by French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who remarked after the Nice attack that “France is going to have to live with terrorism.” This may have been intended as a statement of fact but it came across as an admission that his government isn’t about to rally the public to a campaign of blood, toil, tears and sweat against ISIS—another premature capitulation in a country that has known them before.

Mr. Valls was later booed at a memorial service for the Nice victims. It would be heartening to think this was because he and his boss, President François Hollande, have failed to forge a strategy to destroy ISIS. But the public’s objection was that there hadn’t been enough cops along the Promenade des Anglais to stop the attack. In soccer terms, it’s a complaint about the failure of defense, not the lack of a proper offense.

Then there is Germany, site of three terror attacks in a week. It seems almost like a past epoch that Germans welcomed a million Middle Eastern migrants in an ecstasy of moral self-congratulation, led by Angela Merkel’s chant of “We can do it!” Last summer’s slogan now sounds as dated and hollow as Barack Obama’s “Yes we can!”

Now Germany will have to confront a terror threat that will make the Baader-Meinhof gang of the 1970s seem trivial. The German state is stronger and smarter than the French one, but it also surrenders more easily to moral intimidation. The idea of national self-preservation at all costs will always be debatable in a country seeking to expiate an inexpiatable sin.

…Can the decline be stopped? Yes, but that would require a great unlearning of the political mythologies on which modern Europe was built…”

Along with a willingness to consider anything other than their feelings, one aspect of contemporary Progressives we find utterly absent.

In a related item courtesy of The Washington Free Beacon, as Adam Kredo details, the Protocols of Zion are alive and well…at least in Progressiveworld:

Congressman who once feared Guam could capsize compares Jewish settlers to ‘termites’

 

A Democratic member of the House Armed Services Committee compared Jewish Israeli settlers to termites on Monday while speaking at an event sponsored by an anti-Israel organization that supports boycotts of the Jewish state. Rep. Hank Johnson, D- Ga., launched into a tirade against Israel and its policies toward the Palestinians, comparing Jewish people who live in disputed territories to “termites” that destroy homes. Johnson also compared Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, a remark that drew vocal agreement from those in the room.

“There has been a steady [stream], almost like termites can get into a residence and eat before you know that you’ve been eaten up and you fall in on yourself, there has been settlement activity that has marched forward with impunity and at an ever increasing rate to the point where it has become alarming,” Johnson said during an event sponsored by the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, an anti-Israel organization that galvanizes supporters of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS.

Johnson, who in 2010 voiced his fears that Guam would tip over and capsize if too many people resided on the island, said that “Jewish people” routinely steal land and property from Palestinians.

Yeah,…and they also sacrifice Gentile infants during secret sacrifices, own everything on Earth and steal the breath from babies.

Next up, an event, the horror of which serves to underscore the inanity of Liberal gun-control initiatives:

At least 15 dead, dozens injured in knife attack outside Tokyo

 

“At least 15 people were killed, and up to 45 injured when a knife-wielding man went on a rampage early Tuesday at a facility for the disabled in the Japanese city of Sagmihara, broadcaster NHK reported. Police told NHK they received a call from an employee of the facility, located west of Tokyo, just after 2:30 a.m. on Tuesday, who said a man carrying a knife broke into the building. The man later turned himself in at a police station.

Rumors President Obama immediately called for a ban on knives and an end to legal protections for knife manufacturers…while suggesting the killer’s motive are unclear…remain unsubstantiated.

In a related item…

Sorry, but Whitey and the supposed-legacy of Slavery can’t even begin to bear responsibility for this.  Rather the fault lies on decades of hopelessly misguided…and indeed counterproductive…Progressive policies!

Since we’re on the subject of the poisoned fruit of Progressive policies, the WSJ details… 

Obama’s Age of Discord

He has achieved most of his progressive agenda. So why is America so unhappy?

 

“President Obama said in 2008 that he wanted to be the reverse Ronald Reagan, and in one sense he has been. As he takes the Democratic stage in Philadelphia Tuesday he can rightly claim to have fulfilled most of his major progressive policy goals. The difference is the results. After eight years of Reagan, the Cold War was on the way to ending and the U.S. economy had grown by the size of Germany. Mr. Obama is leaving to his successor a world of spreading disorder and a country as economically anxious and more politically polarized than he inherited.

Even opponents of Mr. Obama’s agenda have to admit that he has achieved most of what he campaigned on…

…Democrats will cheer all of this, yet they might stop to ask themselves why, amid so much progressive success, the country is so frustrated and miserable. When Reagan left office the U.S. mood was buoyant and Americans celebrated immigration as a point of national pride. The political turmoil of the 1970s had vanished.

As Mr. Obama leaves office, the national mood is more sour than at anytime since the 1960s. The polls say some two-thirds of the voters think the country is on the “wrong track,” and a majority say they expect their children to do less well financially than they did…”

And every moment of it…every single moment…was deliberate!

Speaking of the The Left’s refusal to recognize reality, as John Lott writes at NRO, Progressive protestations to the contrary notwithstanding…or being worthy of consideration…Police know what pandering politicians refuse to acknowledge:

Gun Control Is Not the Answer to Shootings that Kill Police Officers

Just ask the officers themselves.

 

“…Research in my new book, The War on Guns, shows that each one-percentage-point increase in gun ownership is associated with a 3.6 percent decrease in the number of police killed. Clinton and Obama keep pushing for background checks on private transfers of guns, but using data from the handful of states that mandate such checks, I found no relationship between tighter restrictions and the number of police shot to death in the years 2000–2014.

Jackson’s claim about open-carry laws is simply wrong. From 2013 to 2015, the six states (plus the District of Columbia) that banned open carry actually experienced higher rates of police death (20.2 versus 17.3 per 100,000 officers).

But if Clinton, Obama, and Jackson don’t believe my research, maybe they’ll believe police officers. In fact, there is probably no group that supports private gun ownership more than the police do. Americans may be divided on this issue, but police know that allowing law-abiding citizens to keep and bear firearms improves everyone’s safety.

…Police are informed by what they see on the street every day. They know how important having a gun is to their own safety, and they know the help that private citizens can provide them if properly armed and trained.

Take just two cases from this year.

In the first, a drunk man attacked a deputy sheriff near Austin, Texas. “I remember thinking, ‘Stay in the fight. Just keep fighting, keep fighting. Do whatever you can do, just stay alive. You need to go home,’” The deputy recalled. He ended up having his gun taken away from him by the assailant. Fortunately, a nearby citizen with a conceal-carry permit pointed his handgun at the attacker and ordered him to, “Freeze!” The deputy said he owed that citizen his life.

In the second, an Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, police officer tried to break up a fight between two teenagers who had just gotten out of school. He quickly found himself being attacked by a crowd of 40 to 50 people. Fortunately, a permit holder kept the mob at bay until other officers arrived. Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood said that, thanks to the permit holder, the officer only suffered “significant hand injuries.”…”

Funny…we don’t remember hearing about either one of these incidents!  Nothing to see or hear here, folks…move along!

Which brings us, courtesy of NRO, to the latest from the great Victor Davis Hanson, and…

Trump and the Politics of Moral Outrage

We are very far from a politics of ideological purity and high character.

 

“…Amid the anguish over the Trump candidacy, we often forget that the present age of Obama is already more radical than most of what even Trump has blustered about. We live in a country for all practical purposes without an enforceable southern border. Over 300 local and state jurisdictions have declared themselves immune from federal immigration laws — all without much consequence and without worry that a similar principle of nullification was the basis of the American Civil War or that other, more conservative cities could in theory follow their lead and declare themselves exempt from EPA jurisdiction or federal gun-registration laws. Confederate nullification is accepted as the new normal, and, strangely, its antithesis of border enforcement and adherence to settled law is deemed xenophobic, nativist, and racist.

The president of the United States, on matters from immigration to his own health-care act, often has declined to enforce federal laws — sometimes because it was felt that to do so would have been injurious to his 2012 reelection bid. The reputations of agencies such as the IRS and the VA no longer really exist; we concede that they are politicized, corrupt, or hopelessly inept. An attorney general being found in contempt of Congress raises no more of an eyebrow than that same chief law-enforcement officer referring to African Americans as “my people” or writing off Americans in general as a “nation of cowards.”

On cultural matters, I too was disappointed at the plagiarism of lines in Melania Trump’s convention speech and thought her speechwriter should at least have been summarily fired. But I am afraid that ethical high horse also long ago left the barn. The new normal regarding intellectual theft was apparently established by the likes of Stephen Ambrose, Joe Biden, Fareed Zakaria, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Maureen Dowd, all of whom suffered few, if any, lasting professional consequences for their outright larcenies of others’ work.

Quite a while ago, too, we entered the age of postmodern fabulism, in which representatives of the president of the United States casually admitted, in response to criticism, that large segments of Obama’s best-selling autobiography were simply “composites,” a sort of euphemism for making stuff up. From Brian Williams’s pseudo-combat reporting to Hillary Clinton’s dodging bullets in the Balkans, we are now what we say we are — without much consequence any more for flat-out lying. Does any public commentator worry much that Senator Elizabeth Warren’s entire trajectory to Harvard was predicated on her abject and comical lie that she was a rare and sought-after Native American law professor?

…Despite the selective moral outrage, the election is about just two things. First, is Trump’s agenda more conservative than Clinton’s, or, inversely, is Clinton’s more liberal than Trump’s? And, second, is either Clinton or Trump so morally flawed, so incompetent, or so inexperienced as to render their policies and platforms irrelevant to their own followers?

…Like it or not, this election is about degree, relative political agendas, and comparative hazard, not about marrying ideological purity and consistency with sobriety and character — a sad fact that did not enter our politics with Donald J. Trump.“

In other words, Trump isn’t the byproduct…he’s the inevitable result!!!

On The Lighter Side…

Magoo

P.S.  Are we the only one convinced right now Marco Rubio’s sitting in his living room wishing he’d never even HEARD of John McCain or Lindsay Grahamnesty…

…let alone the Gang of Eight?!?