It’s Monday, September 2nd, 2019…but before we begin…

“…In the wake of the shooting, Democratic presidential candidates pressed for tighter gun laws. Former Housing Secretary Julián Castro, a Texan, told MSNBC that stricter gun controls should be in place, as well as higher taxes on firearms and ammunition.“

This before authorities released the name of or any information as to whether the killer legally acquired or possessed his weapon(s), not to mention prior to these posturing Progressives having the faintest clue as to how or if any legislation might have prevented the shootings.

But if (the aptly-named) Castro’s idea is to limit the availability of firearms through higher costs for both weapons and ammo, why not just legislate a prohibitively-high price at which manufacturers must sell their products?

Unless, of course, the intent is to further feed government coffers rather than limit the availability of guns and ammunition to otherwise law-abiding citizens?

Now, here’s The Gouge!

We lead off the first edition of September with yet another example of how Google‘s search algorithms skew the information you access: consider this screenshot from Google in response to our query “Liberals see racism everywhere”:

Now view the results from the same search on Bing:

Get “the picture”?  Not from Google you won’t…at least not if it’s in any way supportive of a Conservative viewpoint!

Next, NRO‘s Kevin Williamson suggests it’s time to have a frank conversation about the Dimocrats’ crazy, creepy, lying uncle in the attic:

“There are two possible explanations of Joe Biden’s inability to tell the truth about things: One is that his mind is failing him, the other is that his honor is. In neither case is Biden fit to hold the office of president of the United States of America, and Democrats would discredit themselves and endanger the nation to nominate him.

Yes, yes, go ahead — “But, Trump!” etc. — and continue when you’ve completed the ritual of equivocation, (remembering to include “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it!”)  and don’t think too hard about how far and in what direction that line of moral self-justification has carried the Republican party.

Joe Biden is a plagiarist and a liar, among other things. In the most recent example, detailed by the Washington Post, Biden made up a story in which he as vice president displayed personal courage and heroism in traveling to a dangerous war zone in order to recognize the service of an American soldier who had distinguished himself in a particularly dramatic way. It was a moving story. “This is the God’s truth,” he concluded. “My word as a Biden.”

But his word as a Biden isn’t worth squat, as the Post showed, reporting that “Biden got the time period, the location, the heroic act, the type of medal, the military branch and the rank of the recipient wrong, as well as his own role in the ceremony.” Which is a nice way of saying: Biden lied about an act of military heroism in order to aggrandize his own role in the story.

Like Hillary Rodham Clinton under fictitious sniper fire, Biden highlighted his own supposed courage in the face of physical danger: “We can lose a vice president. We can’t lose many more of these kids.” If Biden here is lying with malice aforethought, then he ought to be considered morally disqualified for the office. If he is senescent, then he obviously is unable to perform the duties associated with the presidency, and asking him to do so would be indecent, dangerous, and unpatriotic.

The evidence points more toward moral disability than mental disability, inasmuch as Biden has a long career of lying about precisely this sort of thing.

The most dramatic instance of that is Biden’s continued insistence on lying about the circumstances surrounding the horrifying deaths of his wife and daughter in a terrible car accident. It is not the case, as Biden has said on many occasions, that they were killed by a drunk driver, an irresponsible trucker who “drank his lunch,” as Biden put it. That is a pure fabrication, and a slander on the man who was behind the wheel of that truck and who was haunted by the episode until the end of his days. Imagine yourself in the position of that man’s family, whose natural sympathy for Biden’s loss must be complicated by outrage at his persistent lying about the relevant events.

Why would Biden lie about the death of his wife and daughter? Why would he lie about the already-heroic efforts of American soldiers? In both cases, to make the story more dramatic, to give himself a bigger and more impressive narrative arc. That he would subordinate other people — real people, living and dead — to his own political ambition in such a callous and demeaning way counsels strongly against entrusting him with any more political power than that which he already has wielded.

…Joe Biden has exhausted whatever presumption of goodwill or benefit of the doubt we might have extended to him for the past 46 years. He has had his chance to show that he is a man capable of honor, integrity, and honesty — and he has failed that test at every turn. If there ever was a time for him, that time has passed. The last thing this country needs is another pathological liar in its highest office. He is unfit for the presidency in every way, and Democrats owe the country better than to nominate him in the pursuit of their own selfish partisan interests.“

Two quick points we feel Williamson might have made: (1) Hairplug Joe’s need to burnish his courage credentials arises from him having avoided the draft…four times…due to an asthmatic condition which curiously never prevented him from prior participation in high school sports; and, (2) Biden’s observation “We can lose a vice president. We can’t lose many more of these kids.” sounds suspiciously like what a more proven patriot, Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, said at the battle of Gettysburg.  As Hancock sought to steady his II Corps on Cemetery Ridge by riding erect through the hail of Confederate cannon fire which presaged Pickett’s Charge, a staff officer protested “a corps commander ought not to risk his life that way”, to which Hancock replied, “There are times when a corps commander’s life does not count.”

To which we might add, there’s never a time Joe Biden’s word…or version of events…counted!  

In a related, but more local instance of Progressive prevarication, as WBALTV.com in Baltimore records, our own…

Howard County schools superintendent explains redistricting process

Superintendent wants to relocate nearly 7,400 students

“Michael Martirano, the superintendent of Howard County Public Schools, wants to relocate nearly 7,400 students. It’s part of his attendance area adjustment recommendation, which he said focuses on equity.

Martirano said change is necessary because Howard County is the fastest-growing county in the state, and there’s an urgent need to reduce overcrowding and balance the poverty rate among all schools in the district. According to the proposal, relocating students would spread those participating in the free and reduced meal program among more schools.

“All of our schools in Howard County are quality schools and no matter where a child is going to school, they’re going to receive a top-notch education,” Martirano said…”

We may not have Michael Martirano’s advanced degrees, but we’ve common sense enough to wonder if a child’s going to receive a “top-notch”…

…education no matter where they go to school, rather than spend the time, effort and money relocating them to schools outside their districts, why not simply allocate more money to the free and reduced meal programs in the schools they currently attend?

Here’s the juice: perhaps…just perhaps…because the goal isn’t optimization of opportunity or any kind of equity at all, but rather a redux of the failed Progressive busing policies of the ’60s.

Then there’s the latest on Comey’s conspiracy from Jim Geraghty writing at his Best of the Web:

“It’s kind of amazing; people who are big fans of James Comey and big foes of President Trump think “Comey didn’t leak classified information” is all they need to say in response to yesterday’s IG report. That report was pretty damning! If you’re FBI director, you don’t get to pick and choose which Bureau rules and regulations you follow, but some people seem to believe that it’s okay for the FBI director to leak sensitive but unclassified information if he has as sufficiently low opinion of the president.“

And in the EnvironMental Moment, as recorded by the WSJ via Jeff Foutch, there’s…

A Famine of Fact at U.N. Climate Panel

The IPCC sounds an alarm about food production, but another U.N. agency’s data show it’s a false one.

Global crop production sets new records virtually every year. That didn’t stop the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from publishing an alarmist report Aug. 8 that suggests global warming has devastated crop production and threatens food shortages.

“Climate change…has adversely impacted food security and terrestrial ecosystems as well as contributed to desertification and land degradation in many regions,” the report asserts. “Warming compounded by drying has caused yield declines in parts of Southern Europe. Based on indigenous and local knowledge, climate change is affecting food security in drylands, particularly those in Africa, and high mountain regions of Asia and South America.”

At the same time, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reports that new records were set for global corn, wheat and rice production five years running through 2017, the most recent year for which data are available. How is that possible?

The IPCC report parses words and engages in semantic tricks to give readers a false impression of declining global crop production. Note the reference to declining yields in “parts” of Southern Europe. The report doesn’t mention that yields are increasing in Southern Europe as a whole. What sense does it make to blame declining yields in a small portion of the world on global warming without crediting global warming for global gains?

The IPCC claims that “indigenous and local knowledge”—as distinct from objectively quantifiable data—supports its claim of declining food production in “drylands” of Africa, Asia and South America. Yet data show crop yields are increasing throughout all three continents and in almost all the nations characterized by drylands.

Environmental activist groups, bureaucrats, socialists looking to transform Western society, and biased journalists continue to make climate claims that have no basis in fact. They hope a constant drumbeat of authoritative-sounding falsehoods will convince you we’re in a crisis only they can solve.

What sense does such a report which flies in the face of the facts make?  None whatsoever…unless you’re selling something…like a political agenda unsupportable by the truth.

Fortunately for The Left, as long as they have the MSM solidly in their corner, neither the facts, nor the truth, matter one iota!

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

Finally, since we mentioned an evil duo, we’ll all it a wrap with a rather insightful bar graph courtesy of Balls Cotton:

Which is, perhaps why, Jim Comey lied his ass off…and that repeatedly!  Though that would make him a cowardly liar, rather than simply a liar!

Magoo