It’s Friday, February 12th, 2016…but before we begin, one quick question: is there anything a Clinton…sorry,…”some people” won’t do, anything a Clinton…er, we mean…”some people”…won’t say for personal power and/or profit?  Based on the latest piece of patent propaganda promulgated by an already-experienced practitioner well-schooled in the art of prevarication by two of the masters, we humbly suggest the answer is not “no”, but…

Chelsea Clinton: I Left the Church at Age Six Over Abortion

 

“Seriously, Chelsea. You’re mother and I are both deeply religious! It’s what drives our moral compasses. Just ask Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, Jennifer Flowers, Monica Lewinsky, Vince Foster, Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty…although contacting those last five may prove problematic!” 

“…“My mother is very deeply a person of faith,” Chelsea said, the Post reports. “It is deeply authentic and real for my mother, and it guides so much of her moral compass, but also her life’s work.” “I find it quite insulting sometimes when people say to my mom, my dad or me . . . that they question our faith,” she added.

“I was raised in a Methodist church and I left the Baptist church before my dad did, because I didn’t know why they were talking to me about abortion when I was 6 in Sunday school — that’s a true story,” she said…”

Yeah…

Having been a Southern Baptist for almost the entirety of our 60 years, we’re left wondering which of Chelsea’s lies takes the greatest license with reality: (a) her mother’s “deeply authentic” faith; (b) her father feeling insulted by questions regarding his faith; (c) any Baptist church on the planet raising the issue of abortion with six-year-olds; or, (d) any six-year old taking it upon themselves to switch churches, let alone denominations, prior to their parents?!?

We report, you decide!

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, courtesy of NRO, Mario Loyola offers his insight into…

The 18th Brumaire of Donald Trump

Progressives apotheosized the dictatorship of the majority. Now they finally have reason to fear it.

 

“…Most Americans probably don’t realize that only a small fraction of our laws are passed by Congress. The vast majority are enacted as “rulemaking” by regulatory agencies in the executive branch, pursuant to congressional delegations of legislative authority. The Obama administration has been particularly virulent in this respect, with executive agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency enacting transformative regulations that would never pass in any Congress.

…Like most other limits on government power, the non-circumvention principle was substantially weakened by the New Deal. The most significant result has been “cooperative federalism,” the slow federal takeover of state agencies. The federal government uses conditional grants of money to the states, and conditional grants of permission for state agencies to implement federal regulations, in order to shape state spending and regulation in ways that everyone agrees it would not be able to do directly.

The Clean Power Plan uses the EPA’s control over coal-fired electrical generation to impose cap-and-trade or its equivalent on the areas of each state’s economy that fall outside the EPA’s jurisdiction. Likewise, the Department of Education has no jurisdiction to regulate American universities but is using its monopoly of federal student aid to force all universities to adopt the same definition of “credit hour.” These are just two examples among many of the executive branch’s escaping both the non-circumvention principle and the limits on congressional delegations simultaneously.

The progressive cookbook is full of recipes for the dictator of the future. Take, for example, Obama’s masterful use of regulatory uncertainty to achieve his goals, in defiance not just of Congress but of the federal courts. In the months after the Gulf oil spill, Obama imposed a moratorium on all offshore drilling, despite the fact that most of those operations were at stages of drilling in which there was virtually no chance of a spill. When one court tossed the moratorium out, the Obama administration came back with a modified version that actually expanded the moratorium; and by the time that one was tossed out, Obama simply slow-walked the needed permits. He had achieved his objective, which was to chase most of the Gulf’s deep-sea drilling rigs to other parts of the world.

Obama has demonstrated a willingness to use his constitutional powers against political opponents, as shown by the IRS persecution of tea-party groups, and by selective prosecutions — for example, targeting Senator Bob Menendez for accepting favors in connection with official duties, but not Hillary Clinton; or General David Petraeus for misuse of classified information, but not Hillary Clinton. Only Obama’s forbearance and wisdom, such as they are, have kept him from taking the approach of Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chávez and overtly intimidating critics by threatening their economic interests. With that in mind, consider Donald Trump’s attempt, before a recent Fox News GOP debate, to get anchor Megyn Kelly fired, or at least withdrawn from moderating the debate, as a condition of his participation. Imagine what he might do once armed with the powers of Obama’s post-constitutional presidency.

To accomplish their vision of social justice, progressives needed to do away with constitutional limits on government power. Sooner or later, they will wish they hadn’t, for the bane and enlightenment of us all.“

In a related item, the WSJ‘s Don Henninger offers this advice to the remainder of the rapid-dwindling Republican field:

Donald Trump Among the Canaries

Trump owns persona. His opponents have to go after him on policy and substance.

 

“The one reliably true thing we are witnessing in this 2016 election season is a bipartisan repudiation of Barack Obama’s presidency.When Democratic voters in Iowa and New Hampshire vote for a socialist senator because 79% of them say they are worried about the direction of the economy, the incumbent president’s seven years in office takes the fall.

When Republican voters make clear that their state of angst and anger is such that they will cast their unhappy lot with Donald Trump, that reflects disgust with Barack Obama’s conduct of the American presidency. This isn’t raised merely to throw sand on Mr. Obama’s last year. It is more serious than that. New Hampshire’s voters, all present for the Obama experience, are the canaries in the coal mines of American political life.

Just as dying canaries warned coal workers that the shaft was filling with toxic gases, New Hampshire’s voters have told the political status quo, to coin a phrase, you are killing us. Donald Trump owns the 35% of the Republican electorate that is hacked off about everything. In nearly every exit-poll category—age, ideology, the economy, terror—Mr. Trump has at least 35% secured. What this means for the other candidates is they cannot possibly compete with Donald Trump on his terms, on display in his victory speech Tuesday, which began contained and ended semi-unhinged.

A story from the political past will illustrate. In 1958, when George Wallace, then considered something of a Southern liberal, lost the Alabama governorship to a segregationist candidate, he remarked, “I will never be out-segged again.” Wallace became the premier angry-man populist of his era, running in four presidential races.

Rick Perry: right as rain…but five years late and tens of millions of dollars short!

No one is going to out-rant Donald Trump about the state of America. Chris Christie got in as the tough-guy candidate. He’s gone, unable to compete with the Marvel Comics character Donald Trump created. (And don’t let the door hit you in your ample RINO ass on the way out, Fat Boy!)

…If Mr. Trump’s persona is impermeable, the other candidates will have to go after him on substance. Mr. Trump has been floating in an inch-deep pool of policy and shows no inclination to expand his pre-existing knowledge of anything. It will require patience and persistence, but his opponents have no choice but to start challenging the implications of what he says and criticizing it in detail…”

For more on the GOP contenders still extant, we turn to NRO, and Jim Geraghty’s plea for…

No More Johns: New Hampshire’s ‘Moderate Republican’ Quagmire

The Kasich campaign feels disturbingly familiar.

 

“Way to go, New Hampshire. Your chosen alternative to the Trump colossus is the political-campaign equivalent of a basic-cable rerun.

If you feel like you’ve seen John Kasich’s 2016 campaign before, you’re probably thinking of Kasich strategist John Weaver’s other efforts . . .  the 2000 and 2008 campaigns of John McCain, where he pitched himself as a different kind of Republican, more focused on doing what’s right than what the rest of his party thinks . . . and Jon Huntsman’s 2012 bid, where he pitched himself as a different kind of Republican, more focused on . . . wait, wasn’t Marco Rubio supposed to be the repetitive one?

Yes, out of all the options, New Hampshire Republicans and independents chose to give a boost to Kasich, the favorite Republican candidate of the New York Times editorial board and Joy Behar.

It’s time for Weaver to stop running guys named “John” as the Republican candidate for people who can’t stand Republicans. These candidates throw themselves head over heels into a pitch for independents, failing to appeal to traditional Republican voters in the process and often alienating them. The John-Jons are touted for their “crossover appeal” without noting the lack of appeal on the original side. They win rave reviews from the media figures least likely to vote for a Republican and least influential among GOP primary voters…”

“Least likely”?  Howz ’bout “not a snowflakes chance in Hell”?!?  Sure the MSM supports candidates like McCain, Huntsman and Kasich; right up until the very moment they secure the Republican nomination…whereupon they instantaneously turn on them like a pack of rabid, hypocritical hyenas!

Frankly, if Kasich truly can deliver Ohio, given his politics, were we Hillary or Bernie we’d give serious consideration to him as our Veep!

Speaking of the wimp and the blimp, they’re the subject of the latest from the WSJ‘s Kimberly Strassel, who reports…

How Sanders Exposed Clinton

Hillary was ‘tough’ and ‘masterful’—until Bernie whispered what was obvious.

 

“Democrats awoke Wednesday with a thought usually reserved for Republicans: Hillary Clinton is a disaster. The marvel is that she fooled them for so long.

Picture Bernie Sanders as a small child in the court of Empress Clinton, and you have a modern twist on Hans Christian Andersen. The adoring Democratic townspeople oohed and aahed over their “tough” and “experienced” and “masterful” leader, the anointed heir to the Clinton throne. Then Bernie murmured what was obvious, and the crowd looked again.

What they saw in New Hampshire was a dour, 68-year-old woman, shouting at her audience in her best impression of emotion. They saw a gaunt former president, rambling to half-empty forums, grumping about his wife’s political opponent. They saw the candidate’s surrogates try to snag the votes of young women by threatening them with eternal damnation. They saw a campaign in disarray, dragging carload upon carload of ethical baggage. They saw that the empress has no (or very few) clothes…”

And trust us; you don’t WANT to see THIS would-be empress…

…sans clothes…or in anything else other than a pantsuit!

Since we’re talking things which aren’t what they seem, writing at NRO, Michelle Malkin details the true meaning of…

TSA: Total Security Abyss

 

“…Stunningly, the IG disclosed that TSA has had to “deny credentials to 4,800 individuals that the airports had previously cleared for work in the United States because it could not verify lawful status for those individuals.” The report does not specify when exactly these 4,800 potential illegal immigrants from around the world finally had their badges yanked.

Eight months after this disclosure, the IG reported this week, “as few as one percent of all aviation workers applications” at larger airports are subjected to the inspections process to screen out aliens here illegally, visa over-stayers, and individuals convicted of disqualifying crimes.

Only in the last year has the Obama administration cracked down on airport and airline employees’ unfettered access to sensitive areas and their ability to bypass security checkpoints.

Only in the last week has the federal government finally changed its policies to allow the TSA to access counterterrorism databases.

Actually, it’s not clear from the DHS inspector general John Roth’s follow-up testimony on Capitol Hill this week whether and when exactly this will happen. “TSA now or will soon have access to this information,” he told Congress. Hmm.

Even if and when TSA officials gain access to terrorism data, however, the question is whether that information is worth anything at all. DHS whistleblower Philip Haney, a 15-year veteran of the bureaucracy, reported last week on politically correct purges of counterterrorism databases ordered by his superiors. He says he was forced to “delete or modify several hundred records of individuals tied to designated Islamist terror groups like Hamas from the important federal database, the Treasury Enforcement Communications System.”

It gets worse. “Going forward,” Haney recounted, “my colleagues and I were prohibited from entering pertinent information into the database.” Whitewash in, whitewash out.

A budget of $7 billion. A workforce of 55,000. Useless explosives-screening “puffing” machines. Unreliable full-body scanners. Thousands of lost and stolen badges and weapons. Unknown numbers of criminals, illegal aliens, imposters, and terror operatives with security clearance to do as they please on ramps and runways across America.

Welcome to the TSA: the Total Security Abyss.“

The TSA is an absolute joke; has been since its inception.

Thank you, George W.!

So why aren’t we laughing?  Oh…

…yeah.

For more on the subject of useless, bottomless spending pits swallowing endless billions of taxpayer dollars, we turn to this report from FOX News Latino:

Los Angeles schools close their doors to immigration agents

 

“How many of you are in the U.S. illegally?  Okay, you with the crew cut and pale skin; come with us!”

“In response to the federal government raids announced at the beginning of this year to apprehend undocumented Central American immigrants, public schools in Los Angeles, where about 50 percent of the student body is Hispanic, will not allow immigration authorities to enter the campuses.

The decision taken on Tuesday by the Los Angeles Unified School District board is for all schools, from kindergarten through high school, to be declared “safe zones” and resource centers for students and families threatened by the enforcement of immigration laws.

…The LAUSD resolution also enourages the superintendent to increase and broaden alliances with community orgnaizations and legal services to offer resources for families facing deportation…”

Except that the INS doesn’t conduct raids in schools, churches or other areas it deems “highly sensitive”.  Talk about a “principaled” stand!  Way to go, LAUSD; LOUSY is more like it…and all on your dime!

Which brings us to today’s installment of the Environmental Moment, as the WSJ informs us what else is happenin’ in The Land of Fruits & Nuts:

The Campus Climate

From the University of California, Irvine, “Teaching Climate and Sustainability: A Faculty Skills-Sharing Workshop”

 

“This workshop aims to engage, inspire, and support faculty members from across disciplines who are interested in voluntarily infusing relevant climate change and/or sustainability concepts into their courses. The overall goal of this curriculum program is to boost climate change/sustainability education at UCI, especially targeting those students for whom climate and sustainability may not be a focus.

Who: UCI faculty members

What: A Faculty Skills-Sharing Workshop

Where: The workshop will be hosted at the beautiful Steele/Burnand Anza-Borrego Desert Research Center during the height of spring wildflower season in the desert. Lodging and meals at the Research Center will be provided.

When: 4:00 pm, Friday, April 15 through 4:00 pm, Saturday, April 16, 2016. The Research Center is family-friendly and participants may opt to spend the night Saturday to explore the Borrego Springs region.

Why: To integrate climate and sustainability into already existing courses at UCI, especially targeting students who wouldn’t be exposed otherwise to these concepts.

Incentive: Participating faculty members receive $1000 for completing the workshop and subsequent course revision. Faculty will also receive an additional $200 for attending a follow up Faculty Networking Event on Friday, November 4, 2016 to showcase their revised course material (note: revised courses do not need to be taught by November 4, 2016, however, course materials will need to be updated to include sustainability by this time).

Space is limited to 20 qualifying faculty members. Lecturers are encouraged to apply. The Sustainability Initiative Executive Committee will review applications on a rolling basis. Priority will be given to faculty members who teach students for whom climate and sustainability may not already be a focus of their academic studies.

On The Lighter Side…

Every now and then we receive a series of memes we’re compelled to forward; you know…sorta like every edition of Hope n’ Change!  So here, courtesy of Balls Cotton, is one of those times:

Finally, in the Sports Section, one last bit of tone-deaf, egocentric defiance:

Cam Newton fires back, has no regrets about Super Bowl walk-off: ‘I don’t have to conform’

 

You’re right, Cam; you don’t have to conform.  But neither are the rest of us obliged to approve of your asinine, adolescent antics; nor does our disapproval in any way, shape or form make us racists.

Meanwhile, all you’ve really proved is, like so many of God’s creations, asses…

…come in all shapes, sizes and colors!

But that’s our opinion; we’ll leave the last word on the subject to the inimitable Bill Whittle:

Any questions?!?

Magoo