It’s Monday, January 28th, 2019…but before we begin, we offer you a conundrum, a riddle as it were: what’s the difference between the impact of Hillary running again in 2020 on the Dimocrats’ chances of winning the White House and a Tu-22M3 landing in a blizzard?

Nothing at all.  So, as Speed Mach plaintively pleaded, “RUN, Hillary…

…RUN!!!”

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, consider this quote, courtesy of the WSJ, from C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, words every bit as applicable to today’s toxic political environment as they were when Lewis wrote them back in 1952:

“For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life—namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself…Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things.

Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again.

The real test is this. Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, “Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,” or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker.

If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally, we shall insist on seeing everything—God and our friends and ourselves included—as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.“

Which is where, we’re sorry to say, a significant portion of contemporary Progressives find themselves today…absent any cloak of Christian charity.

In a related item, writing at NRO, Alexandra Desanctis details…

The Indefensible Morality of Andrew Cuomo

On abortion, Cuomo casts aside his supposed Catholic convictions with greater ease than he takes them up.

“For as long as man has had religion, religion has had hypocrites. The Catholic Church is no exception — it is, like all churches and all religions, full of sinners. In fact, that is its boast: No sin is too great, no Pharisee too far gone to be saved.

The first pope was a man who fled from the Passion and death of his Lord, betraying Jesus three times rather than suffer beside him. One of the Church’s first great saints was a man who spent much of his life zealously persecuting and killing the earliest Christians.

Both men repented. Both were martyred for their faith.

Andrew Cuomo, their brother in baptism, has yet to find his road to Damascus. The governor of New York is proud to be a Catholic, but, like his father before him, only when it suits his political purposes…”

Mario Cuomo (who, were we a betting man, is now enjoying one of the hotter areas in Hades) indeed broke new ground in hypocrisy when, while maintaining he was personally opposed to the slaughter of the unborn, claimed he was compelled by a clear preponderance of his constituents to support it.  The hypocrisy comes in when, despite a clear majority of New York voters advocating for its application, the good governor banned the death penalty because of his personal opposition to capital punishment. 

Sorry, but his son Andrew’s “baptism” has as much in common with either Peter’s or Paul’s as do the “ministries” of Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Peter Popoff, Kenneth Copeland, Jesse Duplantis and Creflo Dollar have with the late, great Billy Graham’s.

Though it’s easy to deem as detestable those who, like Andrew Cuomo, for no reason other than moral opposition to their political policies already hate and vilify you, Christ calls us to hate the sin while loving the sinner, just as Christ loved us!  Never let yourself lose sight of this truth, as difficult as some…

…may make it!

Next up, courtesy of Tom Bakke and Of Two Minds, Charles Hughes Smith highlights why..

The Ruling Elites Love How Easily We’re Distracted and Turned Against Each Other

No wonder the ruling elites love how easily we’re distracted and divided against ourselves: it’s so easy to dominate a distracted, divided, blinded-by-propaganda and negative emotions populace.

“Let’s say you’re one of the ruling elites operating the nation for the benefit of the oligarchy. What’s the best way to distract the populace from your self-serving dominance in a blatantly neofeudal system?

1. Provide modern-day versions of Bread and Circuses to distract the commoners from what actually matters: “the golden age of TV” and binge-watching; a cultural obsession with glorifying oneself via selfies posted on Facebook and Instagram; tweeting outrage and indignation on Twitter; a corporate-state media which magnifies insignificant events into social crises, political “leaders” who intentionally inflame polarization and conflict and so on.

Combine all these distracting circuses into one 24/7 system-overload, and what do you get? A populace so distracted, so stressed, so emotionally dazed that they are unable to focus on the predatory exploitation of the ruling elites, much less figure out how to change the neofeudal status quo.

2. Divide the populace with calculatedly divisive cultural issues and turn the commoner class against itself: with no middle ground and no shared class identity allowed, the populace is easily sliced and diced into angry, disaffected tribes who blame whomever media propaganda has targeted as “the other” for the nation’s woes.

…Huxley spoke of loving our servitude: if we let the ruling elites distract and divide us, then we will in effect be choosing to love our servitude.

No wonder the ruling elites love how easily we’re distracted and divided against ourselves: it’s so easy to dominate a distracted, divided, blinded-by-propaganda and negative emotions populace.“

Because it diverts the attention of many from the truth:

Though we’d still maintain far more of those dedicated to this deception have a (D) after their names on ballots across the country than an (R). 

Which brings us to The Lighter Side:

Then there’s this set of memes forwarded by Balls Cotton:

Finally, we’ll call it a day with yet another titillating tale torn from the pages of The Crime Blotter, as one Keystone State…

Exotic dancer shot wealthy lover in the face after he dumped her

Holy “Three Faces of Eve”, Batman!

“A Pennsylvania exotic dancer on trial for murder allegedly shot her wealthy 64-year-old lover in the face after he dumped her, effectively ending her high-flying lifestyle, according to prosecutors.

Jennifer Morrisey, 34, faced the first day of testimony Thursday in her trial for allegedly killing her “sugar daddy” Michael McNew, who was shot dead in August 2017 at his Washington Crossing home, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Prosecutors argued in opening statements that Morrisey was “taken care of” by the pharmaceutical executive, but the relationship started heading south after four years together.

The pair — who met at a strip club where Morrisey worked — reportedly argued via text messages in the hours leading up to McNew’s death. In the messages, McNew threatened to shoot his lover and in turn, Morrisey said she would “gut” him like she was “field dressing a deer” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

…The prosecution said they believe she shot McNew between the eyes then fled the house, only to return hours later to stage the crime scene as a robbery…”

Oh,…and to gut him like she was field dressing a deer!  The only question is whether, like Lorena Bobbitt, she tried to mount his rack!?!

Magoo