It’s Monday, December 1st, 2014…but before we begin, a very Happy Birthday shout-out to our old friend Bob Martin! Where Y’at, Bobby?!?
Now, here’s The Gouge!
We lead off the first edition of the last month of 2014 with several uninformed observations on the MSM’s latest convenient distraction from what The Obamao’s doing to America. First…
“He wasn’t shot because of the placement of his hands; he was shot because he was a big, black, scary man,” said James Cox, 28, a food server who protested this week in Oakland, California.
Yes; and being a waiter living some 2,050 miles from Ferguson, James would know.
Next, the AP seeks to invalidate the entire American system of jurisprudence because…
The truth may never be certain. Despite a three-month state grand jury investigation and an ongoing federal probe, no one has publicly disclosed any photos or videos capturing exactly what transpired.
Really?!? Sooo…can we assume every other court verdict rendered without the benefit of indisputable video evidence should be similarly discounted?
Lastly…
The mostly black group of protesters chanted in the faces of the officers — most of whom were white — as shoppers looked on.
“We want to really let the world know that it is no longer business as usual,” said Chenjerai Kumanyika an assistant professor at Clemson University. He added although part of the aim in disrupting Black Friday was to call attention to disagreement with the grand jury’s decision and the way the case was handled, Kumanyika said it was also to highlight other forms of injustice. “Capitalism is one of many systems of oppression,” he said as the group cleared out of the parking lot.
Forgetting for the moment precisely who constitutes “we”, or what possible difference the relative racial composition of the crowd and the police might have had on the facts, who is this Chenjerai Kumanyika? As Shark Tank informs us…
Kumnayika is a retired Hip-hop rapper that went by stage name, HYPNO. His rap band was named, wait for it…wait for it…SPOOKS.
…As far as his work as a professor at Clemson University, read what his students had to say about him:
It’s all about him, all the time. He is a very angry person and enjoys making us feel stupid. Would NEVER recommend someone take his class.
Terrible. Worst class ever. Very condescending.
The man is basically lazy; gives a lot of non related assignments but very little feedback, never take this loser for a class, why did Clemson ever hire this jerk, rants about the poor black man, thinks white people are causes for the big welfare costs in America, supports every loser even though they are the problem.
Terrible, horrible, god awful. Late to class frequently, teaching an interpersonal communications class and is probably the worst communicator and most awkward person I’ve ever met, never know grades, get another professor if you can.
In other words, Kumnayika is just another Socialist agitator looking to take advantage of, at least in this case, the unfortunate stupidity of another human being.
Look, here’s the juice: as Chris Rock once noted…
To which we can now add, don’t assault a police officer; a simple solution, as evidenced by the mind-set of Eugene Robinson, Chuck Todd and Andrea Mitchell in our #3 video clip above, beyond the reasoning of the greatest Liberal pundits on the planet!
We’ll leave it to the great, and we mean great, Michael Ramirez to summarize the facts in this case:
In a related item, writing at NRO, Andrew McCarthy wonders, particularly in light of the Ferguson feeding frenzy…
“…And put aside the constitutional argument. Rabble-rousers want Wilson indicted, despite the lack of probable-cause evidence, on the theory that it would be more just to have a public trial in a case where a man has lost his life. But why would it not be equally justifiable to argue that, because a man has lost his life, the ultimate trial jury should also ignore the law and convict, despite an even more stark lack of murder evidence beyond a reasonable doubt? At what point do we stop enabling the grievance industry to override our core constitutional protections?
If we are going to uphold our Constitution, it does not matter that thoughtful commentators suppose a public trial would best serve the community. The Fifth Amendment holds that a person has the right not to be subjected to a public trial – i.e., the right not to be indicted — unless the state can prove to a grand jury that there is probable cause to believe he committed a crime.
Officer Wilson had a constitutional right not to be indicted in the absence of sufficient evidence. That right to individual liberty outweighs the media’s abstract claim that a public trial would serve the public interest.“
With apologies to the incomparable Winston Churchill, never in the field of human jurisprudence…or journalism…has nothing been owed so many with such incomplete information by…anyone!
Moving on, courtesy of the Washington Examiner, Byron York details how…
Obama changes tune on immigration: Yes, I changed the law
Did President Obama change the law or not when he unilaterally decided that millions of illegal immigrants in the U.S. would be protected against deportation?
Until this week, both the president and White House staff insisted that Obama did not change the law and indeed could not change the law without the cooperation of Congress. Obama’s move was just a revision of executive branch enforcement priorities, according to the official White House line. A Justice Department memo backed up the president’s contention.
“This notion that somehow I can just change the laws unilaterally is just not true,” Obama said at a Hispanic Roundtable meeting in the White House in 2011. “We are doing everything we can administratively.” Obama said similar things several times since then, and on Nov. 18, just two days before Obama announced his action, White House spokesman Josh Earnest pointed to the “large number of cases in which the president has said, ‘I’m not an emperor, I’m not a king, and I can’t change the law.'” Fast forward to Tuesday, when Obama was speaking on immigration reform to a group in Chicago. When protesters began yelling at Obama to stop all deportations, the president became frustrated and answered: “There have been significant numbers of deportations. That’s true. But what you’re not paying attention to is the fact that I just took action to change the law.”
In an instant, Obama’s insistence that “this notion that somehow I can just change the laws unilaterally is just not true” became “I just took action to change the law.”
In Chicago, Obama went on to explain, “The way the change in the law works is that we’re reprioritizing how we enforce our immigration laws generally.” Perhaps defenders will take that to mean Obama really wasn’t saying he changed the law and just meant that he had changed enforcement. But a more reasonable reading would be that Obama was suggesting his “reprioritization” of immigration law enforcement is so broad and far-reaching that it amounts to changing the law itself. That’s why the president’s short-version description of his move was, “I just took action to change the law.”
Obama’s latest statement will give new energy to Capitol Hill Republicans who argue that he did indeed change the law, and that such sweeping changes lie within the exclusive authority of Congress. Until Tuesday, Obama had been quite disciplined in how he described his authority in the area of immigration. Now, that has changed.
Put more piquantly, once again, he’s the unchallenged, unassailable, indisputable…
Writing at NRO, Victor Davis Hanson identifies those bearing the cost of all The Obamao’s foibles and failures:
“…In our vast nation of 320 million people, there are still millions of mostly middle-class voters, along with the proverbial white working class, who are ignored by Democrats. They feel desperately squeezed by the higher taxes necessary to fulfill the dreams of progressive elites. And they feel they are not on the receiving end of government entitlements the way the underclass is, while being a regular target of cheap progressive rhetoric, from “clingers” to “stupid.”
But more importantly, the middle class resents wealthy progressives who lecture them about their supposed illiberality although they do not experience in their own lives the consequences of their ideology, whether that involves unchecked illegal immigration or job-killing regulations. Those who live in gated communities or mansions with heavy security talk down to those who don’t about their Neanderthal gun-owning. Wind and solar power seems to be supported by those who do not commute long distances in second-hand cars and who have enough money to care little about gas prices. If foreign nationals were swarming into the U.S. illegally from Europe to find jobs as journalists, government workers, and lawyers, the progressive elites might worry about their own employment and be less utopian about open borders…”
Instead, as noted above in the latest Quote of the Day, those who suffer most are the very ones Progressives claim to protect.
Which brings us to this bit of empirical wisdom from Jeff Jacoby:
“…”Anyone concerned about family inequality, men’s declining labor-force participation, and the vitality of the American dream should worry about the nation’s retreat from marriage,” the authors write. The steady fall in the percentage of married two-parent households — from 78 percent in 1980 to 66 percent in 2012 — goes a long way toward explaining why so many ordinary families have trouble climbing beyond the lower rungs on the economic ladder. Correlation isn’t proof of causation, of course. But there is no refuting the strong association between growing up with both parents in an intact family and achieving higher levels of education, work, and income as young adults.
Wilcox and Lerman put dollar amounts to the “intact-family premium” reaped by those who are raised by their own biological or adoptive parents. By age 28 to 30, for example, men from such backgrounds are earning on average $6,500 more per year in personal income than their peers from single-parent homes. And since growing up with both parents increases one’s likelihood of marrying as an adult, men and women who were raised by married parents tend to enjoy much higher family incomes as well — in the case of that 28- to 30-year-old male, more than $16,000 higher, on average. (Among all married adults who were raised in a two-parent home, the annual average “family premium” is higher still: $42,000 more when compared to their counterparts from single-parent families.)
To be sure, not all families headed by married parents are stable or successful, and not all children raised by single parents struggle economically or professionally. Barack Obama, who was two years old when he was abandoned by his father, is dramatic evidence of that.
But as Obama himself says, the data aren’t in question. “Children who grow up without a father are more likely to live in poverty. They’re more likely to drop out of school. They’re more likely to wind up in prison. They’re more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol.”…”
We’d of course dispute any positive aspect of either The Obamao’s upbringing or influence on America.
Turning now to today’s edition of the Environmental Moment, it appears not every member of the increasingly radical Left is afraid to admit they wrong, as evidenced by the observations of Google engineers Ross Koningstein and David Fork as recounted in the WSJ:
“…At the start of RE<C, we had shared the attitude of many stalwart environmentalists: We felt that with steady improvements to today’s renewable energy technologies, our society could stave off catastrophic climate change. We now know that to be a false hope—but that doesn’t mean the planet is doomed. . . .
Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.“
Which provides the perfect prelude for the latest “Let Them Eat Cake” segment, again courtesy of the WSJ and one “Anita Singh, arts and entertainment editor at the Telegraph (U.K.), writing for the paper on Nov. 12″:
Dame Vivienne Westwood, the fashion designer, has declared that people who can’t afford to buy organic food should “eat less” and stop getting fat. The millionaire designer made the comments as she delivered a petition to Downing Street protesting about genetically modified food.
When a BBC Radio 5 Live interviewer suggested that “not everybody can afford to eat organic food”, Dame Vivienne replied: “Eat less!” Told that many people in Britain are visiting food banks because they don’t have enough to put on their tables, so “to eat less isn’t an option”, Dame Vivienne was dismissive. “They don’t have any choice—this is the point, isn’t it,” she said…
Dame Vivienne later issued a statement saying her comments had been misunderstood.
Yeah…
Then there’s this, again from the pages of the WSJ:
The program operates as one of America’s least-known wealth-redistribution schemes, forcing taxpayers to pick up the tab for wind farms beyond their borders. In 2012 more than 30 states paid more in subsidies than wind farms in those states received in tax credits. Citizens in five states paid more than $100 million more in federal taxes than they received from the PTC: California ($196 million), New York ($163 million), Florida ($138 million), New Jersey ($126 million) and Ohio ($104 million). Eleven states paid into the PTC even though they have no qualifying wind production. The unlucky losers included Florida, Virginia and North Carolina.
The credit also encourages abuse—both of the electricity grid and the taxpayer. Instead of paying wind producers based on how much of their electricity is used, the PTC pays them based on how much electricity they generate. Companies that invest in wind power thus receive tax credits to produce something that consumers may not actually want. In fact, producers often pay electricity-grid operators to take their product. This phenomenon is known as “negative pricing.”
Is this a great country, or…
…what?!?
On the Lighter Side…
Finally, we’ll call it a day with another titillating Thanksgiving tale torn from the pages of The Crime Blotter:
“…Incensed that her boyfriend began eating their Thanksgiving dinner while she was asleep following a day of drinking, a Pennsylvania woman grabbed a knife and stabbed the man after chasing him around the dining room table, cops report.
..Further investigation revealed that Blake’s beau, Benjamin Smith, had been stabbed in the chest. Smith, who was pressing a towel to his wound when police arrived, was later treated at a local hospital for the non-life-threatening injury. Smith told officers that he had argued earlier in the day with Blake, who was reportedly intoxicated and had gone upstairs to sleep. While Blake snoozed, Smith began Thanksgiving dinner without her.
When Blake awoke to discover that the festivities had commenced in her absence, things got bloody…”
And THAT, dear hearts, is rarely a positive development when poultry is the main course…or thanksgiving the primary reason for fellowship.
Magoo
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