It’s Monday, January 15th, 2017…but before we jump into the sh*t, here’s another breath of fresh air courtesy of a President who, though incredibly crude, continues to be in many ways terribly effective:

Kentucky to add Medicaid work requirement; first state to follow Trump plan

 

Problem is, there’s far too few like him!

Kentucky received the green light Friday to require many of its Medicaid recipients to work in order to receive coverage. The Bluegrass State thus becomes the first state to act on the Trump administration’s unprecedented change that could affect millions of low-income people receiving benefits. 

Under the new rule, adults age 19 to 64 must complete 80 hours of “community engagement” per month to keep their care. That includes working a job, going to school, taking a job-training course or volunteering.

“There is dignity associated with earning the value of something that you receive,” Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin said. “The vast majority of men and women, able-bodied men and women … they want the dignity associated with being able to earn and have engagement.”…”

Unlike Republicans…

…Dimocrats have long preferred the soft bigotry of low expectations, along with the votes…

…of the entitlement-dependent, a condition they created and purposefully perpetuate to provide them power.

Speaking of the legacies of Progressives and their policies, what does it take for a bumbling bureaucrat…

Hawaii Receives Ballistic Missile Threat Warning

‘He feels really bad’: Civil Defense employee who sparked terror in Hawaii by accidentally triggering ballistic MISSILE warning will be ‘retrained’ say officials after thousands fled to bomb shelters

 

…to be fired for utter incompetence?!?  Seriously, not only did this boob initially push the wrong button, he doubled-down on his error by pushing it again, pressing “Yes” when the system asked him if he really meant to do that!

Here’s a hint: when a computer asks if you really MEAN to commit an earth-shattering error, the correct answer is, particularly if you haven’t the faintest clue as to what you’re doing, an emphatic “NO“!!!

Two other thoughts immediately come to mind.  First, “He feels really bad”: SERIOUSLY?!?  So did the aircrew who flew the Asiana Airlines Flight 214 into the seawall on final approach to SFO; but somehow we doubt they’ll ever again have their hands on the controls of a commercial aircraft.

As for the promise the individual will be “retrained”, one cannot be retrained if one’s never been “trained” in the first place. 

Now, here’s The Gouge!

We lead off the Monday edition with a few thoughts on the latest sh*tstorm resulting from our President’s limited vocabulary:

Trump questions taking immigrants from ‘shithole countries’ -sources

 

First, one truly needs to consider the source of the story:

Dick Durbin: Trump Said it and Sen. Graham Spoke Up

 

After all, others in the room, including Tom Cotton and David Purdue, didn’t recall Trump’s use of the term.  And it’s not like Durbin…

…hasn’t lied about what Republicans have said before:

Flashback: That Time Dick Durbin Made Up A Story About A GOP Leader Insulting President Obama

 

What’s next: we’re to trust Bill Clinton’s denial he’d never use Clinton Foundation contributions to pay for personal expenses?!?

‘Personal Insult’: Bill Clinton Slams Accusations Foundation Money Used for Chelsea’s Wedding

 

Second, Haiti and a significant portion of Africa ARE, in fact, sh*tholes.  This doesn’t make Haitians or Africans, individually or collectively, either pieces of sh*t or sh*theads.  But the fact remains large swaths of the Third World, largely as a result of the depredations of kleptocratic regimes similar to those in Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Haiti and Mexico, are hardly Malibu or Manhattan, Soho or San Francisco.

And no, Dick, “chain migration” is NOT a hate-filled, racist epithet…unless of course you yourself are a hate-filled racist, having used the term repeatedly in the past, and most recently only days ago in the famous DACA press-op with the President.

It’s also worth noting, as this cartoon from Day by Day reminded us…

…Bill and Hillary ARE two reasons Haiti remains the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

Here’s the juice: though he’s far from the most practiced liar ever to occupy the Oval Office…

…The Donald is undoubtedly, outside of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the crudest man ever to occupy the Oval Office.  He is a narcissistic, overbearing boor.  And we for one both condemn and regret his lack of refinement and self-control.

That being said, as Roger Kimball notes in this commentary (which deserves to be featured in full) from American Greatness via Speed Mach, while an ill-advised dependence on vulgar vocabulary may make you uncouth, it does not make you wrong:

Of Home Truths and Shitholes

 

“It is curious how close certain seemingly contrary emotions can be. Consider, to take just one example, the feelings of glee and outrage. At first blush, they seem very different. Glee occupies a positive register in the metabolism of human emotions. There is such thing as malicious glee, of course—the German word schadenfreude captures that perfectly. But by and large, I believe, glee is a sunny, allegro emotion.

Outrage, on the contrary, is a dour beast. It glowers. It fulminates. It glories in moral indignation, which it eagerly manufactures whenever it is in short supply.

And it is there, in the manufacture, affectation, the pretense, of moral indignation that that outrage shades in smarmy gleefulness. You can see this in operation right now, today, by the simple expedient of turning to CNN and watching commentator after commentator explode in gleeful outrage over Donald Trump’s alleged comments about the relative desirability of immigrants from countries like Norway, on the one hand, and countries like Haiti, El Salvador, and various apparently unnamed African countries on the other. (I say “alleged” not because I doubt the substance of the report, but simply because the president has disputed some details of the reporting.) (in other words, what unbiased “reporters” and “journalists” are supposed to do!)

Two questions: Were all those commentators at CNN (and the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other purveyors of sanctimony)—were they more delighted or unhappy about the president’s comment? Think carefully before answering.

Sometimes, the experience of outrage, and its accompanying moral indignation, is essentially a feeling of displeasure—at a wrong done or suffered, an injustice or cruelty observed, etc.

But sometimes, outrage is but a patina of indignation whose chief motive is incontinent delight. Which is it for the talking heads at CNN? Are they genuinely morally offended by the president’s comments? Or are they really absolutely delighted by the opportunity he has given them to say “shithole” over and over again while also running endless chyrons reminding viewers that the president referred to (if he did refer to) Haiti, El Salvador, etc., as “shithole countries” from which we should not seek immigrants?

I think it is the latter, and I believe there are two parts to the delight. One is the natural expectation of a ratings boost in the wake of all that potty-mouthed commentary. The other is the prospect, once again, of being given free rein to lay into Donald Trump and deplore how horrible, uncaring, racist, and vulgar he is. Maybe, just maybe, this exhibition of political incorrectness will turn the tide of public opinion against this most improbable president. Maybe, just maybe, it will administer the coup de grace against a man who is the walking embodiment of everything enlightened progressive opinion loathes.

Maybe. But I wouldn’t count on it.

Which brings me to my second question: Was the president right to question the desirability of accepting immigrants from places like Haiti? Let’s leave his colorful language to one side. That was just a bit of rhetorical salsa on the burrito. The coarsening of language in the public square (and the private hearth) means that virtually anyone not cloistered hears and/or utters much ruder language almost daily.

The real issue is whether we justly prefer immigrants from some places over others.

I would say that the answer is an unequivocal YES. Of course we do. Not only was the president correct when, some time ago, he said that we should favor immigrants who knew English and brought with them marketable skills, he is also correct now when he suggests that someone from Norway, say, is more likely to bring those desirable qualities than someone from Haiti, El Salvador, etc.

He is further correct that the Haitis of the world are conspicuously undesirable places: crime- and disease-ridden trous de merde that we may pity and may endeavor to help but that are not necessarily good sources of helpful immigrants.

And here we come to a second curiosity in the preening and ecstatic outrage over the president’s comment. Everyone, near enough, knows that he was telling a home truth. It was outrageous not because he said something crude that was untrue. Quite the contrary: it was outrageous precisely because it was true but intolerable to progressive sensitivities.

In other words, the potency of taboo is still strong in our superficially rational culture. There are some things—quite a few, actually, and the list keeps growing—about which one cannot speak the truth or, in many cases, even raise as a subject for discussion without violating the unspoken pact of liberal sanctimoniousness.

Donald Trump, of course, does this regularly, delightedly. Hitherto, his brazenness has only endeared him to his base and driven his critics mad. Perhaps it will be different this time. Maybe the angry censors will descend en masse in effective indignation and drag him from the stage. Again, though, I wouldn’t count on it. Trump’s Haiti moment is cut from the same script as Trump’s “Rosie O’Donnell is a fat pig” mot. Uncouth. Crude. But was it untrue?

We live in a surreal moment when it becomes ever harder to tell the truth about sensitive subjects. Donald Trump has strutted across our timid landscape like a wrecking ball, telling truths, putting noses out of joint. The toffs will never forgive him, but I suspect the American people have stronger stomachs and are up to the task.“

He’s also, as we noted in our opening, done a lot of positive things for everyday Americans, his coarseness notwithstanding.

As for the tweet from former Mexican president Vicente Fox suggesting Trump’s “mouth is the foulest sh**hole in the world”, while questioning “With what authority do you proclaim who’s welcome in America and who’s not”, actually, Vicente, we’ve heard YOU say a lot WORSE…and Trump proclaims it with all the authority vested in the President by the United States Constitution.

Not that we’d expect a kleptocrat who used illegal immigration as a relief valve for the internal pressures his corruption created to understand the rule of law.

And should it surprise us while the MSM feeds their own firestorm over Trump’s purported words, they ignore what the WSJ recently recorded Nancy the Red as undeniably relating:

“About that time, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House, offered her thoughts on colleagues who are negotiating an immigration bill with the White House: “The five white guys I call them, you know. Are they going to open a hamburger stand next or what?”“

Any questions?!?

Next up, courtesy of the WSJ and Richard Jameson, we present another brilliant essay from Shelby Steele, who details why…

Black Protest Has Lost Its Power

Have whites finally found the courage to judge African-Americans fairly by universal standards?

 

“The recent protests by black players in the National Football League were rather sad for their fruitlessness. They may point to the end of an era for black America, and for the country generally—an era in which protest has been the primary means of black advancement in American life.

What they missed is a simple truth that is both obvious and unutterable: The oppression of black people is over with. This is politically incorrect news, but it is true nonetheless. We blacks are, today, a free people. It is as if freedom sneaked up and caught us by surprise.

…To hear, for example, that more than 4,000 people were shot in Chicago in 2016 embarrasses us because this level of largely black-on-black crime cannot be blamed simply on white racism.

We can say that past oppression left us unprepared for freedom. This is certainly true. But it is no consolation. Freedom is just freedom. It is a condition, not an agent of change. It does not develop or uplift those who win it. Freedom holds us accountable no matter the disadvantages we inherit from the past. The tragedy in Chicago—rightly or wrongly—reflects on black America.

That’s why, in the face of freedom’s unsparing judgmentalism, we reflexively claim that freedom is a lie. We conjure elaborate narratives that give white racism new life in the present: “systemic” and “structural” racism, racist “microaggressions,” “white privilege,” and so on. All these narratives insist that blacks are still victims of racism, and that freedom’s accountability is an injustice.

We end up giving victimization the charisma of black authenticity. Suffering, poverty and underdevelopment are the things that make you “truly black.” Success and achievement throw your authenticity into question.

…The NFL protests were not really about injustice. Instead such protests are usually genuflections to today’s victim-focused black identity. Protest is the action arm of this identity. It is not seeking a new and better world; it merely wants documentation that the old racist world still exists. It wants an excuse.

For any formerly oppressed group, there will be an expectation that the past will somehow be an excuse for difficulties in the present. This is the expectation behind the NFL protests and the many protests of groups like Black Lives Matter. The near-hysteria around the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray and others is also a hunger for the excuse of racial victimization, a determination to keep it alive. To a degree (a very LARGE degree, in our opinion), black America’s self-esteem is invested in the illusion that we live under a cloud of continuing injustice.

When you don’t know how to go forward, you never just sit there; you go backward into what you know, into what is familiar and comfortable and, most of all, exonerating. You rebuild in your own mind the oppression that is fading from the world. And you feel this abstract, fabricated oppression as if it were your personal truth, the truth around which your character is formed. Watching the antics of Black Lives Matter is like watching people literally aspiring to black victimization, longing for it as for a consummation.

But the NFL protests may be a harbinger of change. They elicited considerable resentment. There have been counterprotests. TV viewership has gone down. Ticket sales have dropped. What is remarkable about this response is that it may foretell a new fearlessness in white America—a new willingness in whites (and blacks outside the victim-focused identity) to say to blacks what they really think and feel, to judge blacks fairly by standards that are universal.

We blacks have lived in a bubble since the 1960s because whites have been deferential for fear of being seen as racist. The NFL protests reveal the fundamental obsolescence—for both blacks and whites—of a victim-focused approach to racial inequality…”

Primarily because there are fewer and fewer actual victims; to the point they have to start creating them from the ranks…

Freddie, Trayvon and The Gentle Giant; the contemporary Progressive equivalent of Abraham, Martin and John.

…of thugs and criminals.

Moving on, here’s a story from FOX News we find doubly concerning:

Texas Tech student questioned by TSA for brandishing school’s ‘finger gun’ salute

 

“…In a nod to TTU’s mascot, the Masked Rider, Durkin said that Texas Tech fans often salute each other with a finger gun and a “Wreck ‘em” slogan when they see each other — which is exactly what got her flagged by the TSA. Waiting on line for security, Durkin spotted a man in a Texas Tech hoodie, and reflexively threw up a finger gun, to which he gave an odd look. Moments after, a TSA agent led her out of line to question the gesture.

Taking to Twitter in a panic to detail the incident, Durkin’s well-intentioned mishap soon went viral. (Soooo,…in her state of “panic”…over being taken out of line by a TSA agent… she…takes to Twitter?!?) “In the airport security line and I see someone wearing a Texas Tech hoodie and I look at them and do the gun hand signal because wreck em amiright [sic]. tsa is now pulling me aside to talk to me,” she wrote in a post that soon won over 3,700 retweet sand 38,000 likes.

“‘What are you doing? You can’t do that in an airport,’” Durkin remembered the agent telling her, reports BuzzFeed. She added that the agent followed up by giving her a full screening and pat down, nearly sending Durkin to tears. “Oh my gosh, they think I’m a terrorist… Oh my gosh I’m going to jail,” Durkin remembered thinking. “I’m just sitting there, almost in tears, like, ‘No, I’m just really dumb, I’m not a terrorist!’”

Durking is right on both counts.  Might we add “emotionally immature”.  Seriously: being taken out of line by TSA nearly sent Durking “to tears”; “to tears“?!?  WTF is this country coming to?!?

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

Then there’s this instant classic from our eldest son Major Jon:

Finally, the Entertainment Section presents the perfect exemplification of how Liberals are out of touch not only with those portions of the country between Beverly Hills and the Hamptons, but with reality, as…

Rob Lowe slams Bella Thorne over tweet after Santa Barbara mudslides

 

“Actor Rob Lowe took to Instagram on Thursday to slam actress Bella Thorne, who complained on Twitter that the road closures in Santa Barbara, Calif., forced her to miss her boyfriend’s concert performance.

“This attitude is why people hate celebrities/Hollywood. Bella, I’m sorry you were inconvenienced. We will try to move out our dead quicker,” Lowe posted.

More than two full days after mudslides ravaged the coastal town of Montecito, the search for the missing became an increasingly desperate exercise Thursday, with growing doubts about whether anyone would be found alive. Seventeen people from ages 3 to 89 were confirmed dead, and more than 40 others were unaccounted for.

…Thorne’s tweet read, “F—k u 101 so santa Barbra (sic). I’m missing my boyfriends (sic) first date on his tour.”“

Which brought to mind the most recent observation by The Manchurian Candidate:

“If you watch Fox News, you are living on a different planet than you are if you are listening to NPR.”

So true; but for reasons completely the opposite of what Obama intended.  We’d be tempted to characterize B. Hussein as the proverbial broken clock…but we cannot recall a single occasion on which he’s been correct, let alone correct twice in one day.

We hold him, along with Bella Thorne, to be far more like a used, leaking douchebag.

Magoo