It’s Wednesday, January 17th, 2017,…but before we begin, while Sh*tholia (see cartoon above) is a creation of Stilton Jarlsberg’s matchless wit, were it a real country, we know two world-renowned sh*theads,…

…Frederica Wilson and Maxine Waters, either of who would easily qualify as its emissary.  Both have refused to attend Trump’s first SOTU address to Congress, with Wilson stating, “It would be an embarrassment to be seen with him”.

Somehow, Frederica, we’re relatively certain that feeling’s more than mutual!  Imagine the emotional pain and anguish which will well up inside The Donald as he looks out over the House chamber January 30th and can’t locate these two harpies in the audience.  Talk about knowing how to hurt a guy!

We should also mention, as James Freeman notes at Best of the Web, given the divisiveness and lies delivered by The Dear Misleader during his first SOTU address…

“Clearly, the bar has been set low enough for Mr. Trump to clear it.”

And since we’re on the subject of despicable human beings, the editors at NRO paint a most unflattering portrait of former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, chronicling deeds and providing aspects of Arpaio’s character you never got from FOX News. 

Oh,…and here’s proof positive the NFL is rigged as surely as the WWE:

And no, we didn’t watch the game; we heard about the play over lunch.  Frankly, we watched nary a minute of the NFL this year or last, and didn’t even know who had made the playoffs.  We just know nobody misses a tackle like that while at the same time taking out the only teammate capable of making the stop unless there’s an awful lot of cash changing hands. 

Seriously, it’s almost as bad as the fixed harness race in Easy Money:

Now, here’s The Gouge!

Leading off, courtesy of Yahoo News via Drudge, Reuters reports…

Pope warns world is one step away from nuclear war

“Pope Francis said on Monday he was really afraid about the danger of nuclear war and that the world now stood at “the very limit”.

…Pope Francis has often flagged the danger of nuclear warfare and in November he appeared to harden the Catholic Church’s teaching against nuclear weapons, saying countries should not stockpile them even for the purpose of deterrence.

As reporters boarded his plane bound for Chile, Vatican officials handed out a photograph taken in 1945 that shows a young Japanese boy carrying his dead brother on his shoulders following the U.S. nuclear attack on Nagasaki. “I was moved when I saw this. The only thing I could think of adding were the words ‘the fruit of war‘,” Francis said, referring to a caption put on the back of the image…”

First,…

Second, get your facts straight: Hiroshima wasn’t “the fruit of war”, it was the fruit of Japanese aggression and imperialism.

And as moving as Francis’s photo may be, he’d do well to remember while approximately 220,000 civilians were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, the Japanese slaughtered that many innocent Chinese during their Rape of Nanking…

…alone!  By the way, the mother being beheaded in the center photo is holding her baby.  “Fruits of war” our a*s; more like having sowed the wind, Imperial Japan was bound to reap the whirlwind.  Or perhaps that particular verse (Hosea 8:7) isn’t contained in Francis’ Socialist version of The Scriptures.

Next, in a follow-up to Shelby Steele’s WSJ commentary in our last edition detailing the futility of the monkey-see…

…monkey-do…

…protests of those the great Stilton Jarlsberg termed The Nuts Who Say Knee, courtesy of FOX News, Frank Miniter wonders…

What if NBC and the NFL had the guts to be honest about anthem protests at the Super Bowl?

Let alone the lies which form the supposed basis of their protests!

“NBC Sports executive producer Fred Gaudelli says NBC’s cameras will show any players who chose to kneel during the “The Star-Spangled Banner” when the network airs Super Bowl LII on Feb. 4. “The Super Bowl is a live event, just like ‘Sunday Night Football.’ When you’re covering a live event, you’re covering what’s happening,” said Gaudelli. “So if there are players that choose to kneel, they will be shown live.”

That at first feels like a defendable point of view. They are taking the journalist’s free pass as observers, not participants. The problem is that stance is a lie.

The Super Bowl is American theatre. It is perhaps the most orchestrated live event that takes place in the U.S. today. It is designed, carefully framed, its halftime show meticulously planned and the placement of its ads, which have become key accouterments to the show, are choreographed down to the second. All that surrounds the game is such a pre-written play that even the “fans” who cheer the bands on the field at halftime all have the same wave, the same color clothes or whatever fits the performance.

The Super Bowl is not just some live event journalists are watching. It is a composed affair designed to make us feel a certain way, even to buy certain products—the central product being the NFL.

And that brand has been tarnished. Not simply harmed by the protest Colin Kaepernick began and the NFL players after him who’ve kneeled during our national anthem have continued, but fundamentally damaged by a lack of honesty from the NFL and from many of the networks that broadcast NFL games.

If NBC focuses a camera in on players who choose not to respect the flag and all it stands for before the big game then they aren’t just showing what happens at a live event, but are making the protest a part of their choreographed show. Might they also, during the anthem, show a group of fans holding signs saying “God Bless America”?

This is at the heart of why fans are turning away from the NFL. It isn’t really because a few players are making this game political. It is rather because in today’s political climate the NFL nor the broadcasters have the guts to challenge these players and to ask them to explain what they are protesting. The NFL and NBC refuse to publicly question if this is really the proper way to protest.

With no check on the players who disrespect the flag, and all it stands for, the players who opt to kneel are instead treated as civil-rights activists—heroes in our culture. Meanwhile, the point of view that the good, ol’ red, white and blue is a symbol of what is best in America, not something to protest, isn’t given a voice…”

We only know we won’t be tuning in.

Turning from those who aren’t given a voice to those who should be silenced, can anyone tell us why on earth Jim Acosta still has access to Trump, let alone White House press credentials?!?

In a related item, as Deroy Murdock so accurately observes at NRO, the entire Trump Administration, from The Donald on down, needs to understand when it comes to The Left, including its MSM shills…

President Trump, Dr. King, and Sh**holegate

The president’s enemies have been chasing him since before his inaugural ball.

Which doesn’t say much, if anything at all!

“…Trump’s alleged language, if uttered, was unfortunate, vulgar, and unpresidential, although he hardly would have been the first chief executive to use profanity in office. His supposed words apparently were aimed at sh**hole nations, rather than sh**hole people. The latter would have been inexcusable.

…Whatever he stated or didn’t, President Trump should learn these lessons from this experience, and repeat them to himself daily:

“Every word I say matters.”

This is true in public, in private, and around the clock, until he leaves the White House and begins work on the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library.

“I constantly am on camera, surrounded by microphones.”

Trump should think of himself as Jim Carrey in the 1998 film The Truman Show. Except when he is in bed, Trump should behave as if every breath he takes were being broadcast live around the globe.

“Every Democrat is a human wiretap.”

And Dick Durbin is a liar.

Trump needs to remember that Democrats are not his pals. They almost universally crave his failure, resist his program, and want to yank him from office — never mind the 304 votes he legitimately won in the Electoral College. Anything he says in front of Democrats (and even some Never Trump Republicans, alas) can and will be used against him in the court of public opinion. Senator Durbin should be condemned for publicizing (or distorting) his private conversation with Trump, thus sabotaging efforts to reach a DACA deal. But this should be no more shocking than if, somewhere in Illinois, a rooster crowed at dawn.

“Bring the cameras in, when Democrats are in the room.”

Ned Ryun of American Majority has an excellent idea: Whenever President Trump meets with Democrats, he should summon news cameras and let them stay until Democrats leave. Trump displayed his leadership skills to almost universal applause when he allowed the media to broadcast live for 55 minutes from the Cabinet Room, as he negotiated immigration and border security last Tuesday. Doing this regularly when Democrats are around will prevent them from offering journalists an alternative version of events. With cameras present, Trump should be on his best behavior. And the American people will benefit from Senate-floor-like transparency inside the White House. This would be unprecedented and gain Trump considerable respect for opening a virtual sunroof atop the West Wing.

“My margin of error is 1/16th of an inch wide, and the media and the Left want me dead.”

Without developing a Nixonian sense of paranoia, Trump always must remember that he lacks a loyal opposition. What he has are enemies who salivate at the chance to destroy him. They even attack First Lady Melania Trump’s shoes and her Christmas decorations as they labor tirelessly to demolish him. Incapable of accepting Trump’s defeat of their golden goddess, Hillary Clinton, these bitter-enders never will stop trying to kill him via a thousand cuts and the occasional, strategically dropped anvil.

“…Trump’s job is to recall at all times, with the relentlessness of a bloodhound chasing an escaped Death Row inmate, that he must not give free knives and anvils to people who hate his guts and literally would cheer if he woke up dead tomorrow morning. (And the Left need not bother to deny this. Everyone knows this is true, as evidenced by the Left’s repeated fantasies about Trump being shot, stabbed, and decapitated.) These people would call Trump a racist for ordering vanilla ice cream. He should remember this without fail and act accordingly.

If Trump becomes blurry about this fact, he should remember the very first fake-news story to emerge on his watch. On January 20, during his very first day as president, Time magazine’s Zeke Miller reported that Trump removed a bust of Dr. Martin Luther King from the Oval Office. This confirmed that Trump was a racist who couldn’t wait to evict that troublemaking black from his new office.

Just one thing: This was not true.

The bust was exactly where it had been for years. It merely was blocked briefly by a door. President Trump’s enemies have been chasing him since before his inaugural ball. And chase him, they will. He must see that these hyenas starve from exhaustion and hunger rather than drop slices of raw meat in their path.“

Sound advice…which means it likely won’t resonate.

Moving on, here’s Bill Whittle’s analysis of what’s behind Never-Trumper Bill Kristol’s abdication of reason in endorsing Orca over The Donald:

Speaking of derangement, in today’s edition of the Environmental Moment, Jeff Foutch forwarded this commentary by Benjamin Zycher writing at Investor’s Business Daily which highlights the latest insanity from the Environazis:

The Children’s Climate Lawsuit Against The Children

“Litigation may be as American as apple pie, but some lawsuits are so destructive that they stand out even among the hugely expensive wreckage wrought by our legal system. The most prominent current example is the “children’s” climate lawsuit (Juliana v U.S.): A group of kids, including “future generations, through their guardian Dr. James Hansen,” claim that the government’s actions and failures to act have caused climate change, thus violating the youngest generation’s constitutional rights to life, liberty and property, and have failed to protect essential public trust resources.

I leave the numerous legal issues to the lawyers, although precisely how the ineffable Hansen came to be the “guardian” for future generations is a question both fascinating and amusing. Instead, it is crucial to recognize first that the fundamental policy assumption underlying this lawsuit — we can make “the children” better off by making them poorer — is preposterous.

More generally, the lawsuit is a blatant attempt to circumvent democratic processes, in terms of both the Congressional power to make policy and the authority of the president to implement it.

Climate policies — mandated reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions — by and large are energy policies, and the constitution is silent on which such policies would serve the interests of future generations, or on the appropriate tradeoffs between the interests of “the children” and the adults alive in the here and now.

Those are policy questions, and this attempt to induce judges to interfere with Congress’ legislative powers is deeply destructive of our constitutional institutions. Should “the children” not be concerned about that? Why are “the children” not suing about, say, the national debt?

Second, the claim about the protection of “essential public trust resources” boils down to an assertion that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant.”  No, it is not: A certain minimum atmospheric concentration of it is necessary for life itself. (Merely look at NASA’s time-lapse photo of the earth’s greening over the last 30-plus years.) By far the most important GHG is water vapor; does anyone claim that it is a “pollutant?” Obviously not, and not because ocean evaporation is a natural process; so are volcanic eruptions, and the massive amounts of effluents emitted by volcanoes are pollutants by any definition.

Third, consider a homo sapiens baby born in a cave some tens of thousands of years ago, in a world with environmental quality effectively untouched by mankind. That child at birth would have had a life expectancy on the order of ten years; had it been able to choose, it is obvious that it willingly would have given up some environmental quality in exchange for better housing, food, water, medical care, safety, ad infinitum. That is, it is obvious that people willingly choose to give up some environmental quality in exchange for a life both longer and wealthier.

In other words, the children’s lawsuit is inconsistent with actual interests of future generations, as the obvious underlying assumption is that future generations would prefer the purest possible environmental quality. That is not correct: Future generations want to inherit the most valuable possible capital stock in all of its myriad dimensions, among which environmental quality is one important component among many, and among all of which there are tradeoffs that cannot be avoided.

…Precisely what is the children’s climate lawsuit trying to achieve? It cannot be protection of our constitutional principles, or protection of future generations, or environmental improvement. Only one possibility remains: It is part of the long-term effort by the environmental left to use any means possible to exert control over other people’s property, economic choices, and lifestyles. The plaintiff attorneys are happy to participate in a litigation process in which “the children” are irrelevant.“

Particularly “the unborn children”, who remain in Liberal eyes utterly irrelevant. 

Since we’re on the subject of environmental idiocy, Mr. Foutch also forwarded the following in which The Daily Caller reports how the…

NAACP Says MLK’s Vision Can’t Be Achieved Without Fighting Global Warming