It’s Monday, March 5th, 2018…but before we begin, since a picture’s worth a thousand words, we’ll leave it to our two favorite cartoonists to sum up our thoughts on Hollywood’s arrogant orgy of hypocrisy and self-congratulation:
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up, ICYMI, we lead off the first full week of March with this item from the Evening Standard:
“…Experts believe the crackdown is part of leader Xi Jinping‘s plans to become a dictator for life. The move has been met with criticism from around the world.
The China Digital Times reports that a list of proposals made by Beijing’s National People’s Conference includes the letter ‘n’, George Orwell’s novels ‘Animal Farm’ and ‘1984’, and the phrase ‘Xi Zedong’, a combination of Mr Xi and former dictator Chairman Mao Zedong’s names.
It is not entirely clear why the letter ‘n’ was briefly banned, just one among hundreds of words and phrases, although some speculate it could be considered a sign of dissent…”
We guess Sesame Street won’t be brought to ChiCom viewers…
…by the letter “N”, at least not for the foreseeable future.
Keep in mind, Xi is the same guy who only days ago lectured Americans on the need for gun control:
Yeah, this from the folks who, using the ends of a variety of barrels, brought us the mass starvation of the Great Leap Forward…
…and the totalitarian, tank-enforced reality of Tiananmen Square; now THAT’S rich!!!
In a related item highlighting why the 2nd Amendment remains relevant, the U.K.’s Daily Mail reports how South Africa’s Black majority government has decided to abandon reconciliation in favor of racist revenge, and follow the spectacularly unsuccessful policies pioneered by Robert Mugabe…
…Sorry; the spectacularly unsuccessful policies pioneered by…
…Robert Mugabe (forgive our confusion; after a while, all these racist clowns look alike!):
If you haven’t yet grasped our point, the current South African constitution, passed in the halcyon days which saw the death of apartheid, specifically prohibits what the New Boss is attempting to enact against the Old Boss. So much for keeping promises, let alone respect for the rule of law.
All of which begs the question, does anyone really believe, given unfettered power similar to that enjoyed by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Xi, the Korean Kims, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Castro, Hugo Chavez, Mobutu, Mugabe or Julius Malema, America’s Left wouldn’t have every single Conservative in, at a minimum, re-education camps…and, absent any sort of effective control to the contrary…
…accommodations which would rival Auschwitz?!?
If you don’t, you should…’cuz they would!!!
And if providing John Q. Citizen the means to defend himself and his country against government-imposed tyranny isn’t enough, courtesy of Balls Cotton and the Daily Wire, Brad Schaeffer recalls…
“Several years ago I found myself pondering the meaning of the Second Amendment beyond the traditional argument that armed civilians are a check against the tyrannical inclinations of government. Rather, I considered its broader meaning through the prism of a regional catastrophe.
From October 29-31, 2012, Hurricane Sandy laid waste to much of New Jersey’s coastal region, flooding and washing away homes, ripping down power lines, paralyzing cable, internet, and telecom services, shuttering businesses, and halting food and gasoline shipments to some of the most densely populated areas of the most densely populated state.
Watching the chaos unfold in the storm’s wake,I was privy to a disconcerting fact of life: we in advanced societies have grown utterly dependent upon modern transportation and technology, but that doesn’t make us any more civilized than our medieval ancestors.All it takes to regress to our more lawless days is to turn out the lights, shut off the heat, close the supermarkets and make gasoline scarce; then you will see the baser elements of our human nature unleashed in no time…”
We for one…
…having performed under fire, are utterly unwilling to put the health and safety of our family in the hands of individuals we can outshoot with one eyed closed.
“Making schools safer and keeping guns away from people who shouldn’t have them are not mutually exclusive goals, even if our national discussions following tragedies like the one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., have tended to focus on gun control.
Civilians in America possess somewhere north of 300 million firearms, almost twice as many per capita as 50 years ago, and gun sales have continued to increase in recent years. Some amount of gun mayhem is probably inevitable in our society, and schools aren’t immune. The Second Amendment aside, forced confiscation or mass voluntary disarmament by law-abiding gun owners is a progressive pipe dream.
That doesn’t mean we should throw up our hands. Rather, it strengthens the case for taking practical steps in the short run to ensure that our sons and daughters return home from school each afternoon. While TV talking heads carry on about bump stocks, background checks and the villainous National Rifle Association, communities across the country are tackling the more immediate concern of school safety.
After the 2012 school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, the building was razed; a new structure was built on the same site and opened in 2016. It features bullet-resistant windows, reinforced classroom walls, and doors that can be locked from both sides. More schools have installed panic buttons and security systems that include cameras and require visitors to be buzzed in by staff. Regular lockdown drills have also become common and probably saved lives last year after a gunman in Northern California killed five people and then headed for a nearby elementary school.He was thwarted by a lockdown procedure initiated by school officials who had heard the earlier gunshots.
President Trump’s criticism of “gun-free zones” and his calls for arming teachers have been widely and somewhat unfairly mocked.Mass shooters—even the supposedly mentally ill ones—have a habit of choosing places where they are unlikely to find much resistance.Even the Fort Hood shooter chose a gun-free area on the Texas military base to begin his rampage. Mandating that all teachers carry firearms would be silly. Even people who are trained to make split-second decisions in life-or-death situations can panic, as we saw with the first-responders in Parkland. Arming Miss Crabtree won’t turn her into Rambo.
At the same time, there are teachers with military backgrounds or other training who are willing to take on this role if the need arises. Nor should we rule out putting more armed officers in schools and increasing police presence overall. The concern about creating a fortress atmosphere at schools is understandable, but safety ought to trump aesthetics, and children will be safer if a crazed killer on a shooting spree also has to worry about defending himself.
An academic paper published in 2011 by University of Memphis psychologist Richard James and two co-authors found that school-based police officers “appear to reduce crime in their assigned schools” and “had a positive impact on reducing school violence and disciplinary infractions.” The researchers cite a survey of more than 800 school guards and note that “75% reported taking weapons from students on school property.”Increasing police presence in schools made students feel protected rather than trapped. “Student deportment appeared to change in positive ways,” they write, “and students reported feeling safer.”
There are more than 14,000 public school districts across the U.S., and attitudes toward guns in schools vary widely. According to the Pew Research Center, only 16% of adults in the Northeast report owning a gun, versus 36% in the South, 32% in the Midwest and 31% in the West. How you feel about guns in general tends to inform how you feel about them in schools.Which is why school security ought to be a local matter, not some inevitably overreaching federal policy handed down from Washington and incapable of reflecting the country’s wide-ranging views on the best way to protect students and teachers…”
As for any anti-gun zealots still committed to overturning the 2nd Amendment, we suggest you put your personal safety and that of your loved ones where your mouths are and take The Daily Gouge challenge by placing the following in your front yard:
Here’s hoping the locks on your doors and glass in your windows are industrial strength!
Meanwhile, as FOX News reports, Progressives politicians continue to put the welfare of criminal illegal aliens above the interests of law-abiding U.S. citizens:
“A sweep of Northern California by federal immigration officials this week, which was partly thwarted when the Oakland mayor sounded the alarm, nabbed a number of illegal immigrants convicted of a variety of serious and violent crimes.
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials announced this week that the four-day raid led to the arrest of 232 illegal immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area. Of those 232, 180 “were either convicted criminals, had been issued a final order of removal and failed to depart the United States, or had been previously removed” from the country and had come back illegally.
Another 115 “had prior felony convictions for serious or violent offenses, such as child sex crimes, weapons charges and assault, or had past convictions for significant or multiple misdemeanors.”
The numbers might have been greater, but for the intervention of Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, who tweeted out a warning of the impending raid, tipping off others who might have been caught.
Acting ICE Director Tom Homan said on “Fox & Friends” that Schaaf’s warning meant that there are roughly 800 illegal immigrants they were unable to locate. “What she did is no better than a gang lookout yelling ‘police’ when a police cruiser comes in the neighborhood, except she did it to a whole community. This is beyond the pale,” he said…”
All in a day’s work for your average anti-American Dimocrat!
Then there’s this headline, the accuracy of which we question, from The Sun:
“US military chiefs say a war with North Korea could result in around 10,000 American combat-related casualties in just the opening days – 3,000 more than the total killed fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. They raised their concerns after attending a classified gathering in Hawaii where they looked at how a full-scale conflict with the rogue nuclear state could play out.
…The New York Times reports they also concluded the number of civilian casualties on both sides could reach hundreds of thousands.
The US currently has about 28,500 troops in South Korea, while the capital of Seoul – easily in range of Kim Jong-un’s artillery fire – has a population of 24 million. Given all the factors, Gen. Milley reportedly said that “the brutality of this will be beyond the experience of any living soldier.”“
First, the performance of predecessors like Martin Dempsey and George Casey notwithstanding, we’re willing to give Mark Milley the benefit of the doubt and conclude his casualty assessment constitutes a statement of fact rather than a “concern”. After all, there is no doubt whatsoever a conventional war on the Korean peninsula would be costly in terms of casualties, both civilian and military.
But if not, with no offense intended, perhaps it’s time our Military’s leadership toughened up. In another day and age, Allied casualties during the Normandy invasion totaled 209,000, with nearly 37,000 dead amongst the ground forces and a further 16,714 deaths amongst the Allied air forces. And at Antietam, the bloodiest single day of America’s Civil War, Union casualties alone totaled over 12,000.
War is indeed hell. But if America’s going to restrict herself to engaging only in conflicts where casualties can be controlled…
Not only for us, but for the world at large.
Which brings us to The Lighter Side:
Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with an article featuring a woman who takes ignorance and ingratitude to a new level:
““My son had Serious Anaphylaxis symptoms on our flight home last night. He ate one cashew from the nut mix he was served on our flight and within minutes he had severe stomach pain , chest pain and stridor breathing. If it was not for the quick thinking stewardess on the plane. The nurse who admistered the epi pen and cared for him the entire trip and passengers who gave us their epi pens this would have been fatal,” Ingrassia wrote.
“We were not aware of any allergies that our son had with cashews before this flight. The scariest thing was that American Airlines did not have an epi pen in their medical kits and served nuts on a plane? We need to change this. Shame on American Airlines for not having an epi pen in their medical kits,” she added…”
And now, as the late, great Paul Harvey always said, a spokesman for American Airlines offers the rest of the story:
““The medical kits onboard our aircraft comply with federal regulations and contain Epinephrine – the same medicine contained in an Epi-Pen. Our professional flight attendants are familiar with the contents of the onboard kits. They are able to provide general First Aid and are trained in CPR and using an AED. But we require a licensed medical professional to administer more extensive forms of treatment like injections for the health and safety of our customers,” she added…”
Sorry, but in our humble opinion, Mrs. Ingratitude should be on her kneesthanking this aircrew for saving her son’s life. And any Monday-morning quarterbacking should be directed at the FAA.
Loading ...
You must be logged in to post a comment.