It’s Monday, May 13th, 2019…but before we begin, a quick administrative note.  We continue to experience problems with our polls, which freeze out voting after the first person casts their ballot.  We hope to have the problem corrected in the very near future, and apologize for the inconvenience.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, consider these two memes, courtesy of Speed Mach and Bill Jarnagin respectively, and see if you can discern the focus of today’s column:

Here’s a hint: it’s what would lead a parent, one Larisa Schreiber, to react to the situation highlighted in this headline as shown if the meme below:

Pennsylvania Principal Banned from Saying God Bless America

Yes, children are indeed impressionable, which is why Progressives want to begin programming them at as young an age as possible; to wit:

CA overhauls sex ed guidance for teachers, encouraging them to talk about gender identity

We’re not talking high schoolers here; rather the powers-that-be in the Land of Fruits & Nuts are looking to indoctrinate kindergartners!  In all seriousness, how can one begin to understand the mindset of those who would object to a principal saying “God bless America” after a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance while countenancing the implanting of perverse, pernicious propaganda in the minds pre-pubescent children?!?

After all, no reasonable person (to use the Jim Comey standard) would suggest any connection between Progressives’ ongoing campaign to erase even the faintest remnants of Judeo-Christian morals and values from the public sphere and what’s occurring in America on a regular basis, be it in our nation’s schools…

(Editor’s note: the STEM shooters story just keeps getting curiouser and curiouser, a veritable smorgasbord of destructive Dimocratic policies!)

…or the local fast-food restaurant:

California woman accused of attempting to drown newborn in McDonald’s restroom avoids jail time

“…Sarah Jane Lockner, 27, received four years of supervised probation and was ordered to take parenting classes. SFGate reported, citing court documents. Lockner reportedly agreed to the plea deal in January. She was originally charged with attempted murder.

Lockner was in the middle of a shift at a McDonald’s in Redwood City in the Bay Area in September 2017 when she was complaining of stomach pains, according to the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office. When her fellow employees noticed she was trailing blood, Lockner told them she had a “heavy period.”

A co-worker went to check on Lockner in the restroom and allegedly discovered Lockner with the newborn’s head face-down in a toilet bowl, according to prosecutors. Lockner reportedly told the co-worker not to call police, but the co-worker did anyway, according to the Mercury News of San Jose.

Responding officers found the baby not breathing and without a pulse, the newspaper reported. The baby was rushed to a hospital and survived. The child is reportedly staying with the father’s aunt.

It wasn’t the first time this had happened to Lockner, according to prosecutors. She had given birth to another child in a restroom at home three years prior to the McDonald’s birth, prosecutors said. Lockner said both times that she didn’t know she was pregnant.“

Parenting classes?!?  She should have given a hysterectomy!!!

Then again, when the governor of Virginia publicly suggests, and the state of New York passes legislation legalizing the murder of a newborn infant based on the whims of the mother and a “physician”, what crime, at least in the eyes of Progressives, has Sarah Jane Lockner actually committed?!? 

As Kevin Williamson relates at NRO, Liberals are attempting to remove non-existent specks from the eyes of Conservatives while ignoring the 2×4’s solidly ensconced in their own:

“How to explain Brian Sims? None of the three most likely possibilities — that he is not very bright, that he is insane, that he is a fanatic — speaks very well of the Pennsylvania state representative, who for some reason decided to accost an elderly woman praying silently in front of an abortion facility, to film the attack, and then to boast about it on Twitter.

It is tempting to lean toward stupidity as an explanation for Sims’s shenanigans, if only because that is the most statistically likely scenario when the subject in question is a member of the Pennsylvania state legislature, as witless a collection of moldering goofs and ravening mediocrities as you will find in any of our state capitals.

…Some fanatics are dangerous. Almost all of them are boring. They are tedious in themselves and the cause of tediousness in others. Forgive me for repeating this story: I once had a student who discovered the Palestinian cause in college, as a certain kind of WASP suburbanite does, and she endeavored to turn every conversation to the evils of Israel, rarely speaking a sentence that did include the word “Zionist,” which she pronounced in a distinctly low-pH way. I shared with her Winston Churchill’s observation that a fanatic is “a man who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” She did not miss a beat. “Exactly. It’s like when you’re debating with a Zionist…”

Representative Sims is a low kind of man with a low kind of mind, but Representative Sims is, in fact, representative. In our time, politics has become a very strong part of some people’s identities, fundamental to their self-conception. Partly it fills the hole left by the attenuation of religion, but it is also a kind of identity politics for — Representative Sims surely will appreciate the irony — college-educated white people. People without a politically piquant demographic characteristic (and being gay ain’t what it used to be) sometimes use affinity groups as a substitute, seeking in being a vegan or a socialist or a Hamas apologist the solidarity, cohesion, and social cachet they imagine African Americans or transgender decathletes enjoying by virtue of their membership in those ranks. (See “Warren, Elizabeth”, “Dolezal, Rachel” and “Churchill, Ward”) They take up political causes just as some young people take up exotic religions, in the same way and for the same reason.

Representative Sims is an adult man and an elected representative in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Watching his rage-monkey videos, one wonders: “Does he not hear himself?”

Of course he hears himself. He doesn’t hear anything else.“

Orwell had it right:

And in another bit of Ivy League-inspired Newspeak insanity, vilification and marginalization becomes inclusion, as a…

Keynote speaker at Harvard diversity conference says Christians should be ‘locked up’

Christians ‘deserve to be mocked viciously and run out of the public square’

“To celebrate a “Decade of Dialogue” in its annual diversity conference, Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts & Sciences invited a straight white man to give the keynote lecture.

But not just any straight white man.

Tim Wise, an “anti-racism writer, educator and activist,” has denigrated Christians as “Jeezoids” and fascists and called Pope Francis evil. (Though we won’t disagree with that assessment, but for other reasons!) He has tweeted that “people who believe in a God of hell/damnation deserve to be mocked viciously and run out of the public square.”

Those who base their morality on the Hebrew Scriptures “deserve to be locked up,” he said in 2015, claiming to be “sorta kidding but not by much.”

The Diversity Dialogue Series provides a “retrospective look at diversity and inclusion, a discussion of current issues, and practical guidance on how we can move toward greater inclusion and belonging at Harvard,” according to the event description.”

So much for truth in advertising.  Not to say “we told you so”, but for years we’ve maintained, had Hillary, Barry, Bernie and the rest of the Lowing Liberal Herd had their way, we’d all be living behind barbed wire.  Think about it: when given unbridled power, Lenin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Chavez, Maduro, Mobutu, Mugabe, Uncle Ho and Uncle Joe have all proved the rule, rather than the exception.

For if there’s one constant…other than death, taxes and an eternal, loving God, who so loved the world He sent His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life…it’s that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Particularly when those in control are Progressives dedicated to giving said power to the People… as such most often takes the form of a 9mm round…

…right behind people’s ears!

Meanwhile, in a report from The Baltimore Sun via Mark Tapscott which highlights just how low Progressive-promoted political correctness has taken us, we learn…

WJZ says anchorwoman Mary Bubala is out in wake of her question about race, gender of recent Baltimore mayors

“WJZ anchorwoman Mary Bubala, who came under fire Thursday for a question she asked about the race, gender and leadership of Baltimore’s past three mayors, is no longer with the station, according to an email sent to The Baltimore Sun on Monday night by general manager Audra Swain.

…The criticism of Bubala that started last week in the wake of the WJZ anchor asking Loyola University Maryland Professor Karsonya “Kaye” Wise Whitehead an on-air question about the race and gender of the past three Baltimore mayors has continued to build.

“We’ve had three female, African-American mayors in a row,” Bubala said in setting up her question. “They were all passionate public servants. Two resigned, though. Is this a signal that a different kind of leadership is needed to move Baltimore City forward?”

…In a statement sent to The Sun today in the wake of WJZ’s action, Whitehead wrote, “The current conversations around leadership in Baltimore are challenging, emotional, and at times include layers of racism and sexism. There is an assumption that since three black women have served as mayor — and the city has not entirely changed for the better — then perhaps black women are not fit to lead this city. No one can ask racially biased questions in the public sphere — including in the media — without being held accountable.”

Nicki Mayo, who worked in TV news and is immediate past president of the Baltimore Association of Black Journalists (BABJ), posted video of the interview on Twitter last week, and the social media blowback to Bubala’s question was immediate.

…In addition to the racism of Bubala’s question, Mayo said she was also hurt by the sexism of it. “I fall at the intersectionality of being black and a woman,” she said. “In something like this, I expect a woman to be more sensitive to generalizing a demographic. I don’t know any white women who would be comfortable with an anchor or anyone asking a question like the one we heard, saying, ‘Well, we’ve had three women back to back. Do you think it’s time for a different kind of leadership?’ I think every white woman I know would have been, like, ‘What do you mean by that?’”

Mayo said, “I don’t understand how tone deaf a fellow woman could be. That broke my heart.”

“She messed up. I get it,” Mayo said. “But you know that line, ‘The mouth speaks the truth of the heart?’ She told you how she feels.”

Whitehead said in an email Tuesday that a question like the one Bubala asked ignores and can further mask the deeper structural forces that underlie Baltimore’s problems. “To imply that this city is where it is today because of the leadership is misleading at best and a lie that erases the systemic racism at work in this city at worst,” she wrote.

“Baltimore City is struggling under the weight of decades of historical divestment, systemic inequality, redlining, and a disconnect between the people in power and those who are being impacted by their decisions,” Whitehead added, saying that she has been discussing the controversy on her WEAA show this week.“

Here’s the juice: first, the only thing Bubala should have been fired for was her description of Baltimore’s last three mayors as “passionate public servants”, rather than the pillaging Progressive politicians they actually were.  Bear in mind, while two (Pugh and Dixon) were hounded from office for corruption, the third (Rawlings-Blake), evidently a graduate of the Jethro Bodine School of Rocket Surgery, actually suggested, in the midst of the arson, murder and theft following the death of serial criminal Freddie Gray…

Sorry, but three strikes in any league means you’re out!!!

Second, Blacks of both sexes, along with their White Dimocratic allies, have been in control of Baltimore since 1967, when Nancy Pelosi’s brother began 52 years of unbroken Progressive rule which marked the onset of a downward death spiral even 16 years of Willie Don Schaefer couldn’t correct.  To suggest otherwise, as “Professor” Whitehead does, is both disingenuous and deliberately deceptive. 

Lastly, The Amazing Lucas speaks for us:

In a rather curiously related item, somehow sharing in the invulnerability of leading Virginia Dimocrats to past racist/sexist acts, Hairplug Joe…

…continues to lead an increasingly crowded, ever-more Socialist 2020 field.

Which brings us to The Lighter Side:

Finally, we’ll call it a day with this rather apropos depiction of Dimocrats from Speed Mach:

Magoo