It’s Friday, August 2nd, 2019…but before we begin, like a broken clock, every now and then even the WaPo is half-right:

Trump was wrong to attack Cummings, but right about Baltimore

“President Trump was wrong to personally attack Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D.-Md), a man widely respected by both Democrats and Republicans alike. But Trump was absolutely right when he called Baltimore “dangerous,” “filthy” and “rodent infested” — that is, if you can believe what you read in the “failing New York Times…”

Let’s deal with the last part first:

Turning now to the former from the latter, keep in mind, this is coming from Marc Thiessen, perhaps the only person at the Compost who can pass for a Conservative.  All of which begs the question what exactly HAS Elijah Cummings DONE to earn the supposed respect of “both Democrats and Republicans alike”?!?

As Jim Geraghty pointed out in a recent installment of Best of the Web…

“Cummings has real flaws. He’s had serious personal financial problems in the past — having more than $30,000 in unpaid federal taxes in the mid-1990s, having a campaign donor co-sign a loan, court fights to pay overdue bills. (No doubt Trump is familiar with that.) He fathered two children out of wedlock, and paid child support and for his children’s education. He’s been let off the hook for driving a car without insurance. His wife’s charity received generous contributions from donors who have business before Cummings’s committee. He accepted donations from a businessman convicted of tax evasion, then donated the equivalent to charity. His wife called Maryland governor Larry Hogan “a dog whistle white nationalist.” He was one of 75 House Democrats who voted to keep funding ACORN after the infamous videos from James O’Keefe.“

…not much!

And as the towering rage and righteous anger he summoned on command during his inquisition of Kevin McAleenan, acting head of Homeland Security…

…were both transparently staged and utterly inaccurate, there’s not much recommending respect there!

Sorry, but as stated in our Quote of the Day at the top of the page, we find nothing Cummings has ever done even remotely deserving of respect.  And it speaks volumes about the creatures populating The Swamp…including the MSM component…if, in fact, they do!!!

Meanwhile…

Just curious, does this make Elijah a racist?!?  That the “Reverend” Al is a racist is, if anything is, settled science.

Now, owing to an earlier celebration of our middle son Mike’s 34th birthday, here’s a somewhat truncated installment of The Gouge!

First up, courtesy of The Hill via Steve Boss, Mark Penn, former advisor and pollster to Der Schlickmeister, correctly concludes the…

Democrats’ debate was a panderfest

“…By the end of this endless debate, spooned out in one-minute dollops, I walked out with a $1,000-a-month check, an extra grand if I’m a female, untold reparations dollars if I am African American, Medicare from birth covering everything I’ll ever need until death, and the right to cross the border without any real penalty if I’m from another country. Prosecuting criminals of any kind generally got a thumbs-down, while white privilege made me immune from racist police who were painted as villains. And there will be no more pointless wars, carbon emissions will be zero by 2030, and it may take 10 years, but the government will run almost all health care.

While these same candidates earlier this week expressed outrage at President Trump for tweeting that Baltimore was a rat-infested mess, they all seemed to portray our entire country as in far worse shape than that Maryland oasis. America, it seems, is not the land of full employment, rising wages and decreased poverty. It’s not a country in which 90 percent have health insurance, almost everyone has a smartphone, and 64 percent own their home. It’s at heart a racist, misogynistic country dominated by fat cats and big corporations sucking the life out of us all. According to these candidates it’s a dark, dark place and, unless we usher them into office and save it through these programs and policies that start at a mere $30 trillion, America will continue to be a lost country…”

Thus is the 2020 Dimocratic platform summed up in two words:

In a related item, again courtesy of The Hill, this time via Jeff Foutch, a must-read commentary by Ann Coulter reveals…

How we became the world’s suckers on immigration

“Looking at our immigration policies compared to the rest of the world, you’d think America lost a bet…”

As we previously observed, Ann’s entire commentary is truly a must-read: you won’t believe what you read…let alone how deep The Swamp’s lies about illegal immigration go.

Which begs the question why The Donald hasn’t addressed same via an executive order.

Since we’re on the subject of must-read commentaries, here’s another from THE EXPERT on the truth behind police shootings, as NRO‘s Heather Mac Donald reveals…

“…A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demolishes the Democratic narrative regarding race and police shootings, which holds that white officers are engaged in an epidemic of racially biased shootings of black men. It turns out that white officers are no more likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot black civilians. It is a racial group’s rate of violent crime that determines police shootings, not the race of the officer. The more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that members of that racial group will be shot by a police officer. In fact, if there is a bias in police shootings after crime rates are taken into account, it is against white civilians, the study found.

…The “policing is racist” discourse is poisonous. It exacerbates anti-cop tensions in minority communities and makes cops unwilling to engage in the proactive policing that can save lives. Last month, viral videos of pedestrians in Harlem, the Bronx, and Brooklyn assaulting passive New York Police Department officers showed that hostility toward the police in inner-city neighborhoods remains at dangerous levels.

The anti-cop narrative deflects attention away from solving the real criminal-justice problem, which is high rates of black-on-black victimization. Blacks die of homicide at eight times the rate of non-Hispanic whites, overwhelmingly killed not by cops, not by whites, but by other blacks. The Democratic candidates should get their facts straight and address that issue. Until they do, their talk of racial justice will ring hollow.“

Yes; and unfortunately, deliberately so.

Speaking of lying Liberals, the venom and vitriol afforded anyone remotely supportive of The Donald leads Jim Freeman to wonder…

Do Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders Like You?

Beyond the radical agenda, they also share a contempt for many of their fellow citizens.

We know the answer in our case.

And in the EnvironMental Moment, brought to us today by Bill Meisen, Page Six recounts how…

A-listers flock to Google summit in private jets, mega yachts to talk climate change

“…The billionaire creators of Google have invited a who’s who of A-list names— including former President Barack Obama, Prince Harry, Leonardo DiCaprio and Katy Perry — to the Sicilian seaside for a mega-party they’ve dubbed Google Camp.

The three-day event will focus on fighting climate change — though it’s unknown how much time the attendees will spend discussing their own effect on the environment, such as the scores of private jets they arrived in and the mega yachts many have been staying on. “Everything is about global warming, that is the major topic this year,” a source told The Post.

…Many of the guests, including Obama and DiCaprio — who has his own climate change foundation — have described global warming as the biggest threat to future generations. But according to Italian press reports, the attendees were expected to show up in 114 private jets, and 40 had arrived by Sunday.

The Post crunched the numbers and found that 114 flights from Los Angeles to Palermo, Italy, where Camp guests landed, would spew an estimated 100,000 kilograms of CO2 into the air.

“Google Camp is meant to be a place where influential people get together to discuss how to make the world better,” one regular attendee told The Post…”

Only because Jeffrey Epstein’s Island of Sin is off-limits, and the Lolita Express grounded.

For more on the scam which is the junk science of anthropogenic global warming, we turn to Watts Up With That, as David Middleton offers the cold, hard facts behind Progressives’…

Common Fantasy: “Red States Are Dumping Coal for Solar”

Allow us to sum up Middleton’s analysis of the EnviroNazis “reasoning” in one brief video we will certainly be featuring again:

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

Then there’s these pearls of wisdom forwarded by G. Trevor:

…as well as this one from Ed Harvey:

Finally, we’ll call it a week with yet another sordid story straight from the pages of The Crime Blotter, and this just in from the Lone Star State:

Texas mom accused of leaving infant in running car, taking shots in nightclub

“…Samantha Vaughan, 26, was discovered inside TrackSide, a nightclub in Copperas Cove, just before 2 a.m., according to local reports. Minutes before, investigators said they found her baby in the backseat of a car outside. Officers who spotted Vaughan said they smelled “a strong odor commonly associated with the consumption of an alcoholic beverage emitting from her person,” KWTX reported, citing an arrest warrant affidavit.

Vaughan allegedly told officers she was picking up her husband at the club, went to the bathroom, then “sat with him while she consumed the two shots.” When officers tried taking her into custody, the mother wouldn’t comply, according to the report. After dropping herself to the ground, she “continued to thrash her body around…yell and throw herself about,” police said.

At one point, Vaughan allegedly yelled: “You will not take my child and place her with a f—— [n-word].”

Investigators said Vaughan “smashed her forehead” into a steel bar inside the police vehicle two times, causing a cut to her head, during her arrest. Officers said a breathalyzer test determined her blood alcohol level was 0.148. The state of Texas defines alcohol intoxication as having a blood alcohol content of 0.08 or more…”

We’re of the opinion Ms. Vaughan fell into the “or more” category.

This, quite literally, breaks our heart.  We can be tempted, on the one hand, to condemn Vaughan, while pitying her on the other…not to mention pitying her poor daughter more.  Better yet, we’ll pray for both of them.

Magoo