It’s Friday, February 22nd, 2019…but before we begin, NRO‘s Mairead McArdle records what was, at least prior to eight long, destructive years of The Great Divider, literally unthinkable:

‘Kissing Sailor’ Statue Vandalized with ‘#MeToo’ after Veteran Dies

 

Were we purposed to pick this particular perpetrator’s punishment, we’d be of a mind with one Josey Wales:

After which, in deference to the late, great R. Lee Ermey, we would of course…

We must regretfully observe certain Conservatives haven’t proved immune from the creeping tide of political correctness, as this commentary by NRO’s Kat Timpf on Washington University’s recent decision to drop the “Vagina” from The Vagina Monologues demonstrates:

“…In fact, the performance has become so controversial that its author, Eve Ensler, addressed the issue in an interview with Time in 2015:

‘The Vagina Monologues’ never intended to be a play about what it means to be a woman. It is and always has been a play about what it means to have a vagina. In the play, I never defined a woman as a person with a vagina.

Ensler is absolutely correct. Whether you identify as a woman or as a man, having a vagina is, in fact, a unique experience. Yes — in case you didn’t know this, there are things that you will experience with a vagina that you will not experience without a vagina, and VM is a work of art that’s meant to be centered around those unique experiences. How is this offensive? After all, art as a whole is made up of many different creative works that center around many different sorts of experiences. If you have a problem with VM because it doesn’t encompass every sort of experience, then you must have a problem with every work of art — because I don’t know of a single one that doesn’t tackle only a particular issue or subject matter.

So far so good, though we’d personally never term such a work as Ensler’s “art”, any more than we’d grant such approbation to anything produced by Andres Serrano or Robert Mapplethorpe.  But here’s where, in our opinion, Kat goes off the rails:

People who identify as women but do not have vaginas absolutely deserve acceptance and respect…”

No,…no they don’t.  People who identify as women but do not have vaginas are men, men with a serious mental condition, and thus are deserving only of our sympathy…and the same treatment we accord any other of God’s creatures.  But we are under no obligation whatsoever to “accept” anyone, and our respect is earned; and then, frankly, by damn few people.

Sorry, but this naughty Kitten has lost her mind…as well as her mittens…hence she shall get no pie!

Editor’s Note…if you’ll allow us to digress a moment: For those too young to have been read the story of the Three Little Kittens, we were privileged not only to have enjoyed our dear, departed Mother recount their tale of woe to us, but also to her three dear grandsons, our boys.  We can still hear her emphasis on the appropriate lines…and imagine she’s still with us.  A dream which will be realized when we hug her again in Heaven.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First, up, writing at his Morning Jolt, Jim Geraghty details the Socialists sympathies of…

Bernie Sanders, the Unchanging Man

 

“Bernie Sanders is running for president, again.

Bernie Sanders is pretty much the exact same guy that he was four decades ago, running on the same platform. (With a little racial divisiveness thrown in for good measure!) He’s making the same arguments for the same ideas about how America needs a socialist revolution that puts an end to millionaires and billionaires and private hospitals and moves social services from charities to government institutions. He’s always been friendly to leftist critics of America overseas and radicals eager to tear down the existing order and has been at best skeptical of U.S. military actions abroad (except during the Clinton administration) and U.S. intelligence agencies. Becoming a millionaire didn’t prompt him to revise his relentless demonization of millionaires as greedy.

The collapse of the Soviet Union, several American economic booms, innovative technological revolutions, the fracking and energy boom, the alleviation of poverty around the world through global trade over the past two generations — none of them prompted him to change much of what he thinks about economics, politics, international relations, or society.

No government management scandal of the past four decades — vets dying while waiting for care at the Department of Veterans Affairs, vast sums on nonfunctional web sites, lavish conferences at the General Services Administration, IRS abuses, Fast and Furious, substandard conditions for wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, endless allegations of cronyism, favoritism, and incompetence — has shaken Sanders’s faith that the federal government is equipped and ready to handle huge new programs that would exercise much more control over the daily lives of Americans.

No country’s experience with socialism, or countries that call themselves socialist, has prompted him to rethink whether the concepts work as well as the advocates insist.

In a 2016 debate, he showed his praise for Fidel Castro in 1985, saying that Castro “educated their kids, gave them health care, totally transformed their society.” Moderator Maria Elena Salinas asked Sanders three times if he regretted his characterizations of Nicaragua’s authoritarian ruler Daniel Ortega and Fidel Castro. Three times, Sanders dodged, saying that “the key issue here was whether the United States should go around overthrowing small Latin American countries” and finally reiterating his praise for Castro’s regime: “It would be wrong not to state that in Cuba they have made some good advances in health care. They are sending doctors all over the world. They have made some progress in education.”

Back in 2016, Venezuela’s dictatorial president, Nicolas Maduro, said that he supported Bernie Sanders in the U.S. presidential race, adding that the candidate, who describes himself as a democratic socialist, would win if the vote were “free.” (Sanders was uncharacteristically quiet about Venezuelan politics since Maduro came to power, but he offered some criticism of the Maduro regime in January.)

He has his theories about how the world ought to work, and he’s going to stick to it.“

Which will most certainly entail sticking it to the productive members of American society.

Not to be outdone by her millionaire Communist competition, She Who Speaks With Forked Tongue raises the stakes in the Dimocratic race to empty the country’s coffers:

Warren Backs Government Reparations for African Americans

 

Sorry, but what have we been paying for the last 60 years?!?

In a related item from his Morning Jolt, Jim Geraghty features a phobia common to Progressivism’s wealthiest elite:

The Fear of Being Considered the Wrong Kind of Billionaire

 

“…Throw some solar panels on your corporate headquarters, ensure your board had a few minorities, donate to the party, and the Democrats were generally going to be happy to see you.

In other words, left-leaning billionaires were happy to ally with the Democratic party on a wide range of social issues as the party enacted policies that posed no real threat to their wealth and stature (although they may hinder others’ efforts to climb the economic ladder). Throughout the Obama era, it became clear that political, financial, and cultural elites were (deliberately or inadvertently) establishing a progressive aristocracy — where once you had the right credentials and connections, and gave generously to the right causes, you were insulated from any real criticism or consequences of your actions. Nobody gave Tim Geithner grief for botching his taxes, environmentalists grief for their private jets, gun-control advocates flak for their armed security, or voucher opponents problems for sending their kids to private school. Filmmaker Michael Moore used non-union labor and lived to tell the tale; lawmakers insisting anything less than $15 per-hour wages was inhumane thought nothing about having unpaid interns. Apparently, the actions of Harvey Weinstein and Les Moonves were open secrets, but few high-profile feminist activists ever gave them too much grief; crossing them meant making a powerful enemy.

At a certain level of status, everyone agreed to avert their eyes from contradictions between how you live and what you profess.

The new socialism-friendly Democrats may not be willing to maintain this arrangement. Ironically, the part of this hypocrisy that they find most offensive is the part that the Right finds least offensive: being wealthy. Most conservatives don’t care if Al Gore uses a lot of electricity, Bloomberg has armed personal security guards, or that Democratic presidents send their kids to Sidwell Friends. Just don’t use your wealth and power to take away our options.

Even now, those who are quite wealthy on the Left are eager to establish that the threshold for problematic wealth begins just above what they could reasonably expect to earn, barring some unexpected good luck. Elizabeth Warren wants to “impose a 2 percent tax on Americans’ net worth above $50 million and a 3 percent tax on wealth above $1 billion.” Judging from her released tax returns and Senate financial-disclosure forms, Warren and her husband have combined assets between about $4 million and $11 million.

Quite the identity crisis: fake Native American, real multimillionaire.“

Turning from Progressive dogs too old to learn any new tricks, the WSJ‘s Holman Jenkins explains…

Airbus’s Lesson for Young Socialists

Its A380 debacle shows how hard it is for state planners to outguess markets.

 

“Years ago, when an editor asked me if Boeing would be around to pay off a 100-year bond it had recently offered, I flippantly replied that 100 years was only two product cycles for the company.

I underestimated the duration of its products. The Boeing 747 first flew in 1969 and a freighter version will continue to be built near Seattle at least through 2022. The Boeing 737, which first flew in 1967, faces an order backlog that extends through 2027. An all-new replacement for the commuter workhorse is unlikely to appear until the 2030s.

Which makes all the more anomalous Airbus’s decision to end production of its impressive and giant A380, which has been flying only since 2005.

Socialism is currently in vogue. If the word means anything in today’s context, it means projects of unusual government ambition, built on our globally shared capitalist technological and commercial base. The A380 was exactly such a project. Underwritten by massive European government subsidies, the plane was an engineering sensation. Passengers loved the roomy jet. Yet now it’s kaput. What went wrong? Or to phrase the question more usefully, what technological and commercial realities would its sponsors have had to overrule to assure its success?

The list is not a short one. They would have had to overrule the desire of passengers to fly direct, bypassing the crowded hub airports (like London’s Heathrow) for which the A380 was built.

They would have had to overrule the preference of business travelers for frequent departures. With 535 seats to fill, the superjumbo was hopelessly matched against operators offering more convenient schedules by using smaller planes.

Most of all, they would have had to overrule the public’s appetite for lower fares. On a per-seat basis, a new generation of super-efficient twin-engine planes such as the Boeing 787 proved cheaper to operate even though the four-engine A380 could accommodate twice as many customers…”

Passengers loved the Concorde as well.  And it made nary a franc or a shilling!

Meanwhile, as Kim Strassel relates at the WSJ, with the willing assistance of their shills in the MSM, Progressives are…

Schiffting to Phase 2 of Collusion

Conspiracy theorists look for something new, anticipating a Mueller letdown.

 

“There’s been no more reliable regurgitator of fantastical Trump-Russia collusion theories than Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff. So when the House Intelligence Committee chairman sits down to describe a “new phase” of the Trump investigation, pay attention. These are the fever swamps into which we will descend after Robert Mueller’s probe.

The collusionists need a “new phase” as signs grow that the special counsel won’t help realize their reveries of a Donald Trump takedown. They had said Mr. Mueller would provide all the answers. Now that it seems they won’t like his answers, Democrats and media insist that any report will likely prove “anticlimactic” and “inconclusive.” “This is merely the end of Chapter 1,” said Renatto Mariotti, a CNN legal “analyst.”

Mr. Schiff turned this week to a dependable scribe—the Washington Post’s David Ignatius—to lay out the next chapter of the penny dreadful. Mr. Ignatius was the original conduit for the leak about former national security adviser Mike Flynn’s conversations with a Russian ambassador, and the far-fetched claims that Mr. Flynn had violated the Logan Act of 1799. Mr. Schiff has now dictated to Mr. Ignatius a whole new collusion theory. Forget Carter Page, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos—whoever. The real Trump-Russia canoodling rests in “Trump’s finances.” The future president was “doing business with Russia” and “seeking Kremlin help.”

So, no apologies. No acknowledgment that Mr. Schiff & Co. for years have pushed fake stories that accused innocent men and women of being Russian agents. No relieved hope that the country might finally put this behind us. Just a smooth transition—using Russia as a hook—into Mr. Trump’s finances. Mueller who?

What’s mind-boggling is that reporters would continue to take Mr. Schiff seriously, given his extraordinary record of incorrect and misleading pronouncements. This is the man who, on March 22, 2017, helped launch full-blown hysteria when he said on “Meet the Press” that his committee already had the goods on Trump-Russia collusion.

“I can’t go into the particulars, but there is more than circumstantial evidence now,” Mr. Schiff declared then. Almost two years later, he’s provided no such evidence and stopped making the claim—undoubtedly because, as the Senate Intelligence Committee has said publicly, no such evidence has been found…”

The term “sh*t house rat” doesn’t begin to describe the insanity exhibited by Adam Schiff, not to mention AOC, both of who, were they ever the subject of a Kim Carnes cover song, would be described not only as having…

…Charlie Manson eyes…but sharing his world view as well!

Since we’re on the subject of batsh*t crazy, as NBC Chicago informs us…

Smollett, now 36, was sentenced to two years probation and a choice of a fine or jail in the 2007 case, an LA City Attorney’s spokesman told NBC News.

 

Reports Smollett not only opted for jail, but requested as his cellmate…

…along with soap without a rope, remain unconfirmed.

Thus do those ignorant of history…

…condemn themselves to be taken in again by their own biases.

Then there’s this bit of Breaking News:

Police Say Smollett Faked Hate Crime Because He Was Dissatisfied With His Salary

 

“Smollett has helped to “drag Chicago’s reputation,” [Chief of Police] Johnson said. Furthermore, the police superintendent worries that hate crimes will “now be met with a level of skepticism.” “I only wish the truth about what happened received the same amount of attention that the hoax did,” Johnson regretted.

Smollett’s orchestrated attack was “shameful,” he said, because it “takes away the resources we could put into other crimes.”…”

As Kyle Smith observes at NRO…

“The reasons for Smollett’s hoax didn’t boggle anyone’s mind, assuming that the mind in question was functioning above the level of someone who eats a bowl of lead-paint chips for breakfast. In America, victimhood is currency. It is easily converted into actual currency, and if Smollett had gotten away with his hoax, he had every reason to expect that his vastly increased celebrity would have led to the salary bump Chicago police said he wanted from his show Empire.“

Here’s the juice: it wasn’t the reason behind the hoax which stopped Smollett, it was the plan.  In this case, a plan which might have been hatched by Jethro Bodine, world-famous brain surgeon and double-naught spy:

We’re reminded of an incident from our time at NAS Miramar in the early ’80’s.  Seems a certain enlisted trooper, anxious his work might prevent him from participating in a squadron basketball game, came up with a plan worthy of Jussie Smollett.  He reasoned, if one can call what went on in this young man’s brain as “reasoning”, if he blew the canopy off the F-14A on which he was working in the hangar, he’d be able to knock off work early and make the hoops contest.

So he pulled the canopy jettison handle…

Simulated F-14A in simulated hangar.

… sending the $300,000 piece of plexiglass into the rafters.  Though his plan worked…he did, after all, get to knock off work early…his destination was the brig rather than the basketball court.  Replace “brig” and “basketball court” with “jail” and “a raise”, and it’s SS/DD: Same Sh*t/Different Day. 

Then again, there’s at least one person who views Jussie Smollett’s hypocritical subterfuge as a godsend:

By the way, we’re boycotting FOX until they can Smollett’s sorry a*s.

Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:

Then there’s this from our sister-in-law Jackie:

Finally, we’ll call it a week with this series of cartoons from Ed Harvey, sentiments with which we can relate more and more each day:

Magoo