It’s Monday, February 6th, 2017…and though the Patriots yet again proved cheaters sometimes do prosper, Hillary’s still not President…so all is right with the world!

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, writing at NRO, the always-insightful Kevin Williamson wonders…

What Is the Democratic Party?

‘Voting against their own interests’

“The popular progressive understanding of the Republican party and conservative movement is something like this: It is, at heart, a conspiracy of corporate oligarchs who use a collection of so-called social issues — religion, bigotry, racial resentment, anti-immigrant sentiment — to stir up the rubes in support of its own parochial economic agenda, tricking them into “voting against their own interests” in the popular progressive phrase. Wall Street guys pulling the strings and writing the checks, foot-washing snake-handlers manning the barricades.

This isn’t really true, of course, as anybody who ever has spent any time around actual Republican politicians or conservative activists knows. But might something similar actually be true of the Democratic party?

A few progressives have been wondering aloud this week why it is that Democrats have stirred themselves to oppose, with steely resolve, the nomination of Betsy DeVos as secretary of education, while more or less going along with the nomination of Jeff Sessions as attorney general. DeVos (a friend of this magazine) may have ideas about school choice that don’t comport with the views of some Democrats (though they comport very much with the views of other Democrats, particularly those of the black urban middle class), but she is a relatively anodyne figure, a philanthropist and activist who has made a career out of doing what she can to look after the interests of children who don’t have the advantages enjoyed by her own. Sessions, on the other hand, is — their view, not mine — a racist as well as a radical who as attorney general would be empowered to do real damage to all that progressives hold dear.

So why does DeVos get the Eichmann treatment while Sessions just gets a rap on the knuckles?

What’s the matter with Camden?

Here is one possibility: The Democratic party in reality is the cartoon version of the Republican party stood on its head, with cold-eyed self-serving economic interests using the so-called social issues to stir up the rubes while they go about seeing to their own paydays and pensions.

The economic interests attached to the Democratic party are fairly easy to identify: people who work for government at all levels. You may come across the occasional Ron Swanson in the wild, but when it comes to the teachers’ unions — which are the biggest spender in U.S. politics — or the AFSCME gang or the vast majority of people receiving a taxpayer-funded paycheck, the politics of the public sector is almost exclusively Democratic. And what they care about isn’t social justice or inequality or diversity or peace or whether little Johnny can use the ladies’ room if his heart tells him to — they care about getting paid.

Here’s an interesting point of comparison. When Barack Obama was running for president in 2008, he opposed gay marriage. So did Hillary Rodham Clinton, but Obama’s opposition was especially interesting in that he cited religious doctrine in support of his position: “My faith teaches me…that marriage is a union between a man and a woman. For me, as a Christian, it is also a sacred union — God’s in the mix.” George W. Bush, who was derided as a fundamentalist bigot by lifestyle liberals, never said anything like that. (Dick Cheney was well to the left of the Democrats on the question.) But there was barely a murmur of opposition to Obama’s staking out this ground “on the wrong side of history.”

…Think about that: If you are the candidate of the Left running in the party of the Left, you could, in 2008, run against equal rights for gay people — but you could not, if you had any sense of self-preservation, run in favor of school choice. Justice is one thing, but getting paid is the real issue.

That probably explains why Betsy DeVos is getting the business and Jeff Sessions really isn’t.

Democrats are in an awful position just now. Hillary Rodham Clinton was beaten by Donald Trump; Republicans control the Senate; Republicans control the House; Republicans are about to put an Antonin Scalia–style constitutionalist on the Supreme Court, a development made possible by the Democrats’ weak position in the Senate; Republicans control 34 of 50 governorships; Republicans control the great majority of state legislative houses. What, exactly, are the Democrats up to? Dressing up as vaginas and inviting Madonna to rile up the rubes with empty speeches in D.C. while the real power in the party — the public-sector unions — concentrate their fire on…Betsy DeVos, who believes that there should be some choice and accountability in public education.

What is the Democratic party? Is it a genuine political party, or is it simply an instrument of relatively well-off government workers who care about very little other than securing for themselves regular raises and comfortable pensions? If I were a progressive, I’d be curious about that.“

Curious?  Perhaps.  But as the continued subservience of Joe Manchin, Heidi Heitcamp, Claire McCaskill and Jon Tester to Chuck Schumer’s party line when it counts proves, not so curious as to bite the union hands which feed them. 

Next up, also writing at NRO, David French (no fan of The Donald he) reveals…

Five Myths of the Debate over Trump’s Refugee Executive Order

Before rushing to defend or excoriate Trump’s actions, we should all know the facts.

“Rarely has it been more important to consider all sides of a debate than in the last four days, as anger has raged over Trump’s executive order on refugees. Our atomized political discourse has led to parallel reactions of euphoria and fury that are far out of proportion to the contents of the order itself. Myths abound, and if you believe any of these myths you’re simply losing the truth and slipping into an alternate political reality. Here, in no particular order, are five of the most dangerous…

…Our nation is less than two weeks into a minimum four-year ideological and tribal war fought over Donald Trump. Given the intensity of the polarization and the mindlessness of much of the rhetoric, it’s clear that Americans are going to have to fight to find the truth. And the truth in this case is that Trump’s executive order is far less consequential than either side seems to believe. All the really hard work is still yet to come.“

Since we’re on the subject of deliberate misrepresentations perpetually peddled by Progressives, here’s another courtesy of G. Trevor and Larry Levy writing at the WSJ:

Voter Fraud a Myth? That’s Not What New York Investigators Found

Only one fake voter was refused a ballot. The clerk was the mother of the felon he was impersonating.

“President Trump’s promise to investigate voter fraud has drawn predictable responses from Democrats and the media, who insist there is no such thing and have been fighting for years to prevent any inquiry into the matter. But an investigation in Mr. Trump’s hometown shows that the problem is real…”

…In 2014 President Obama’s bipartisan Presidential Commission on Election Administration concluded that maintaining accurate election rolls was a key part of the democratic process. Yet subsequent efforts to do so has led to claims of voter suppression, thereby stalling progress. And while New York does not require identification to vote, its registration requirements are fairly strict and there is no such thing as same-day registration. Many states are less stringent, which would make the opportunities for fraud greater.

America has a flawed voting system that is susceptible to fraud and has few precautions against it. A federal investigation could go a long way toward ensuring citizens U.S. elections are honest.“

Mitch McConnell’s protestations on CNN that voter fraud is a state issue notwithstanding.

In a related item detailing yet another example of Liberals taking license with the facts, writing at NRO, John Lott reports…

The New York Times’ Bogus Crime Data about Concealed-Handgun Permit Holders

If gun-control advocates’ claims were on solid ground, they wouldn’t need to make up numbers.

“…Concealed-handgun permit holders are also much more law-abiding than the rest of the population. In fact, they are convicted at an even lower rate than police officers. According to a study in Police Quarterly, from 2005 to 2007, police committed 703 crimes annually on average. Of those, there were 113 firearms violations on average. This is likely to be an underestimate, since not all police crimes receive media coverage.

With 683,396 full-time law-enforcement employees nationwide in 2006, we can infer that there were about 102 crimes by police per 100,000 officers. Among the U.S. population as a whole, the crime rate was 37 times higher than the police crime rate over those years — 3,813 per 100,000 people.

Now let’s look at permit holders. Between October 1, 1987, and January 31, 2015, Florida revoked 9,366 concealed-handgun permits for misdemeanor or felony offenses. This is an annual rate of 12.5 crimes per 100,000 permit holders — a mere eighth of the crime rate among officers. In Texas, 108 permit holders were convicted of misdemeanors or felonies in 2015 — the last year for which data are available. This is a rate of 10.8 per 100,000, scarcely more than a tenth of the rate for police.

Among police, firearms violations occur at a rate of 6.9 per 100,000 officers. For Florida permit holders, the rate is only 0.31 per 100,000. Most of these violations were trivial offenses, such as forgetting one’s permit. The data are similar in other states.

The New York Times is doing an injustice by providing false numbers about an issue with such immediate relevance to public safety. There is no excuse for this, as the Times has been repeatedly called out in letters to the editor and elsewhere. But the same fake numbers keep turning up because they fit the Times’ political agenda.

Counting legitimate cases of self-defense as unlawful homicide — sometimes three or four times — is clearly not legitimate.  And almost another third of these cases are suicides that clearly can’t be justifiably included. If gun-control advocates’ claims, such as those by the New York Times, were on solid ground, they wouldn’t need to make up numbers.“

Then there’s Alexandra Desanctis’ account of one particularly repugnant Progressive inadvertently revealing the truth behind her heinous organization’s facade of lies:

Cecile Richards Makes the Case for Defunding Planned Parenthood

Her answers on The Daily Show only confirm criticism of the abortion group.

Cecile Richards and her National Socialist soulmate Adolf Eichmann!

“…An accurate assessment of the group’s abortion numbers reveals that one in eight women who visits a Planned Parenthood clinic obtains an abortion. To obscure that fact, Planned Parenthood consistently overstates its other, supposedly crucial services, falsely claiming to provide mammograms and exaggerating its commitment to prenatal care. In fact, the group provides less than 1 percent of the nation’s pap tests and less than 2 percent of its breast exams and cancer screenings, while at the same time providing over 30 percent of its abortions.

Although thousands of federally qualified health-care centers (FQHCs) across the country are able to provide women with numerous necessary services — many of them more essential than those offered by Planned Parenthood — Richards maintained that FQHCs can’t handle the volume of patients currently served by Planned Parenthood and that women therefore will still lose health-care access if the organization is defunded. This is difficult to believe, given the 13,540 FQHCs and rural health-care clinics across the country, whereas Planned Parenthood operates a mere 665 facilities. (See this excellent map to understand how drastically community clinics outnumber Planned Parenthoods, by a ratio of 20 to one.)

Planned Parenthood executives contend that low-income women in rural areas in particular will be harmed if the abortion group is defunded. But take, for example, the rural state of Nebraska, which has a total of two Planned Parenthood clinics and 167 FQHCs. How could it be possible that two Planned Parenthood clinics serve so many women that 167 healthcare centers would be overwhelmed by an overflow of patients? Meanwhile, even in California, the state with the most Planned Parenthood clinics by far, the abortion group has a mere 114 centers compared with 1,694 community health clinics…”

Cecile Richard’s continued denial of the glaringly obvious brings to mind a scene from My Cousin Vinny:

Planned Parenthood’s claims are just as fanciful.

Finally, on The Lighter Side…

Magoo