It’s Wednesday, July 30th, 2014…but before we begin, here’s a conundrum forwarded by long-time reader, contributor and friend Jim Gleaves the MSM hasn’t seen fit to contemplate, let alone question:
“On the map below, you must start somewhere in the green area. Let’s make it easy and start where green meets orange, so that you had the least mileage by not having to cover the whole green area. Just start where the green meets the orange. Blue, of course, is water.
Your task is to figure a route from the green area to the purple area without going into the blue area and while avoiding towns and cities in the orange area.
The black line is the distance from the nearest town to Mexico’s southern border that touches the green area to Laredo, Texas, one of the CLOSEST purple towns —1,220 miles across desert and mountains with no equipment or food or help.
If orange had stopped these innocents where orange touches green, problem would not have occurred. However, what six year old do you know who could walk 1,220 miles (minimum), probably more like 1,500 miles on their own without dying? How many days would it take for a 6 year old to walk 1,220 miles without help, directions, food, sun protection, etc.?
I am beginning to think that the truth of all this isn’t being given fully to us, folks. Someone created and assisted this, and the media should be figuring out who it is, don’t you think?”
We won’t hold our breath, as outside of a very few individuals whose character and Conservatism has made them resistant to mind control, the entire MSM is the very willing victim of…
…Hope-nosis!
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up, writing at the Washington Examiner, Byron York offers The Gang Who Still Can’t Shoot Straight a marksmanship tip:
“…Impeachment would, of course, fail. Even if House Republicans gathered the 218 votes required to bring articles of impeachment — a far-fetched scenario — conviction in the Senate requires a two-thirds vote, or 67 votes. There are now 45 Republicans in the Senate. In 1999, when the GOP impeached Bill Clinton, Republicans held 55 Senate seats, and got 50 votes to convict the president. So impeachment will not succeed now, any more than it did then.
The fact is, there is nothing House Republicans can do by themselves, short of another self-defeating government shutdown, to stop Obama if Senate Democrats are determined to block any move to assert congressional prerogatives and establish limits on executive overreach. But there is something House Republicans could do that would at least specifically target Obama’s immigration action: They could vote to overturn the president’s executive order…“
Putting 2014’s vulnerable Senate Dimocrats at the same time in a much tighter box.
Turning from the Dims to the dimmest, Commentary Magazine‘s Jonathan Tobin offers the story behind…
Only difference between the two is their immeasurable narcissism and unfounded overconfidence comes in a different-colored package.
“…But the incompetence didn’t begin with one ill-considered piece of diplomatic ineptitude. It must be understood that nothing that is going on today—including the grievous casualty toll inside Gaza—would have happened had not Kerry single-handedly forced both Abbas and the Israelis into a negotiation that both knew would only lead to disaster. Throughout the nine months during which the secretary orchestrated a new round of peace talks between Israel and the PA, the administration was warned that the problem wasn’t just that the effort couldn’t succeed so long as the Palestinians were divided between Abbas’s Fatah and Hamas. It was that once the failure occurred, it would provide a justification for a new round of violence in the same manner that past such efforts had done. Kerry not only ignored those warnings but raised the stakes by personally speaking about a third intifada happening if the two sides didn’t do as he bid. Those who pointed out that this was a self-fulfilling prophecy were denounced as insufficiently supportive of peace. But the reality is that Kerry not only set the stage for this new outbreak, he more or less gave Hamas a green light to go ahead and start shooting.
The only common threads in Kerry’s diplomatic endeavors have been his enormous self-regard and a clear animus for the Netanyahu government…“
As the WSJ‘s Mary Kissel and Paul Gigot note, nothing about this Administration’s Middle East “policy”…and we use the term as lightly as possible…makes the least bit of sense:
As Charles Krauthammer notes:
Meanwhile, Hillary touts, at least on HER watch, everything in Gaza, indeed, in the entire Levant, was just hunky-dory!
Oh…you mean the same “cease-fire” during which Hamas was busily and peacefully engaged…
…in digging their tunnels of death?!? Tunnels which, by Hamas’ own admission, (Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 41, No. 4), in 2012 alone became the grave of some 160 “Palestinian” children buried while slaving on their construction!
But what does THAT matter when Hillary? After all, she and her child…
…(not to mention her husband of convenience!) are making zillions off speeches to Liberal groups seeking their favor!
However, we do in fact believe Hillary would be willing to fly into Tel Aviv; after all, she was the first U.S. woman to serve in combat:
In a related item, courtesy of the WSJ, Bret Stephens hits the nail squarely on the head when he notes, at least for Liberals and the woefully ill-informed…
“Of all the inane things that have been said about the war between Israel and Hamas, surely one dishonorable mention belongs to comments made over the weekend by Benjamin J. Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications.
Interviewed by CNN’s Candy Crowley, Mr. Rhodes offered the now-standard administration line that Israel has a right to defend itself but needs to do more to avoid civilian casualties. Ms. Crowley interjected that, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Jewish state was already doing everything it could to avoid such casualties.
“I think you can always do more,” Mr. Rhodes replied. “The U.S. military does that in Afghanistan.”
How inapt is this comparison? The list of Afghan civilians accidentally killed by U.S. or NATO strikes is not short. Little of the fighting in Afghanistan took place in the dense urban environments that make the current warfare in Gaza so difficult. The last time the U.S. fought a Gaza-style battle—in Fallujah in 2004—some 800 civilians perished and at least 9,000 homes were destroyed. This is not an indictment of U.S. conduct in Fallujah but an acknowledgment of the grim reality of city combat.
Oh, and by the way, American towns and cities were not being rocketed from above or tunneled under from below as the Fallujah campaign was under way.
Maybe Mr. Rhodes knows all this and was merely caught out mouthing the sorts of platitudes that are considered diplomatically de rigueur when it comes to the Palestinians. Or maybe he was just another victim of what I call the Palestine Effect: The abrupt and often total collapse of logical reasoning, skeptical intelligence and ordinary moral judgment whenever the subject of Palestinian suffering arises…“
It’s a malady, the symptoms of which Liberals willingly welcome…without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. Though being possessed of less-than-average common sense and analytical skills makes them particularly susceptible to the disease effects.
Then there’s this from the great Thomas Sowell:
“…According to the New York Times, Secretary of State John Kerry is hoping for a cease-fire to “open the door to Israeli and Palestinian negotiations for a long-term solution.” President Obama has urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to have an “immediate, unconditional humanitarian cease-fire” — again, with the idea of pursuing some long-lasting agreement.
If this was the first outbreak of violence between the Palestinians and the Israelis, such hopes might make sense. But where have the U.N., Kerry and Obama been during all these decades of endlessly repeated Middle East carnage? The Middle East must lead the world in cease-fires. If cease-fires were the road to peace, the Middle East would easily be the most peaceful place on the planet.
…It is not at all clear what Israel’s critics can rationally expect the Israelis to do when they are attacked. Suffer in silence? Surrender? Flee the Middle East? Or — most unrealistic of al — fight a “nice” war, with no civilian casualties? General William T. Sherman said it all, 150 years ago: “War is hell.”
If you want to minimize civilian casualties, then minimize the dangers of war, by no longer coming to the rescue of those who start wars. Israel was attacked, not only by vast numbers of rockets but was also invaded — underground — by mazes of tunnels.
…As for the ever-elusive “solution” to the Arab-Israeli conflicts in the Middle East, there is nothing faintly resembling a solution anywhere on the horizon. Nor is it hard to see why. Even if the Israelis were all saints — and sainthood is not common in any branch of the human race — the cold fact is that they are far more advanced than their neighbors, and groups that cannot tolerate even subordinate Christian minorities can hardly be expected to tolerate an independent, and more advanced, Jewish state that is a daily rebuke to their egos.“
A Jewish state various and sundry Arab entities (Hamas, Hezbollah and their Iranian masters are only the most recent) have repeatedly and consistently vowed to destroy from the day Israel was first conceived.
Moving on, as David Harsanyi points out in the July 25th edition of Reason.com, courtesy of the WSJ…
Teachers actually do quite well for themselves when you consider the economic realities of their profession.
A teacher in South Dakota with a bachelor’s degree and 10 years of experience earns $33,600 per year, which is less than the average auto repair worker. This grievance against salary injustice is nothing new, of course, but this particular example comes to us from a new national study by the Center for American Progress, which details the chicken feed teachers are forced to subsist on as they altruistically keep your hopeless children literate.
Teachers are underpaid. In politics and also in everyday life, this is almost universally accepted. Everyone admires teachers. Everyone wants good teachers for their children. And naturally, liberals believe that contrasting these salaries will emphasize the irrationality and unfairness of the marketplace.
But it doesn’t. And the first and most obvious reason it doesn’t is that teachers actually do quite well for themselves when you consider the economic realities of their profession.
A 2012 study conducted by The Heritage Foundation found that workers who switched from private employment to teaching most often took an hourly pay increase, whereas most of those who left teaching for the private sector took pay decreases. More specifically, a few years back, using Bureau of Labor Statistics and National Compensation Survey numbers, the Manhattan Institute looked at the hourly pay of public-school teachers in the top 66 metropolitan areas in the country. It found that teachers pulled in about $34.06 per hour. Journalists, who have the vital job of protecting American democracy, earned 24 percent less. Architects, 11 percent less. Psychologists, 9 percent less. Chemists, 5 percent less.
Which of course begs the question…
That’s easy: because of bloated, bloviating union bovines…
…like Chicago’s Karen Lewis!
Since we’re on the subject of unions serving only their leadership rather than those actually footing the salaries of their members, the New York Post reports…
She walked through her running tests and got winded climbing stairs, yet a physically unfit female FDNY probie was still allowed out in the field like a normal graduate — and given a year to pass, The Post has learned. “She’s literally the most pathetic specimen of physical fitness I’ve ever seen,” fumed an academy classmate of Choeurlyne Doirin, 39, who was given a uniform and a “light-duty” assignment even though she did not graduate on June 2 with the other 286 cadets.
Prospective firefighters are required to complete a grueling 18 weeks of academy training that includes being able to run 1¹/₂ miles in 12 minutes without gear. But the over-the-hill Doirin failed to meet the required time, taking more than 18 minutes to huff-and-puff her way across the finish line. “She started walking halfway through the run,” the source said. “She couldn’t even make it up the stairs to the locker rooms without taking a break.”
Doirin, a former EMT and mother of two, said her age and physical fitness had nothing to do with her abysmal performance — claiming she had been hampered by an injury she received during training.
Would it surprise anyone in the least to learn the, uh…measured…Ms. Doirin declined to offer any details on her “injury”?
On the Lighter Side…
Magoo
P.S. We’re taking the rest of the week off; so until next week, don’t you go changin’!
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