It’s Monday, January 13th, 2020…but before we begin, if a video starts playing without you having opened one, it’s our Video of the Day, accessible through link #2 immediately beneath our Quote of the Day at the top of the page.  While we apologize for the distraction, certain FOX News clips open up automatically when embedded, and we’re still seeking a means of silencing them.

By the way, the clip features an in-depth analysis of current events in Iran by Qanta Ahmed, and is well worth your time.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, just when you thought The Left couldn’t get any loonier, this item forwarded by Breeze Gould proves you’re wrong, as a…

Maryland Legislator Wants To Steer Low-Income Housing To Affluent Suburban Neighborhoods

“A Maryland legislator wants to identify affluent suburban neighborhoods and target them for low-income, high-density housing. House Del. Vaughn Stewart, a Democrat, wrote Jan. 3 that he will introduce “Homes for All” legislation that would “legalize the construction of modest homes in neighborhoods close to affluent schools, reliable transit, and good jobs.”

“For too long, local governments have weaponized zoning codes to block people of color and the working class from high-opportunity neighborhoods, pushing them to the crumbling margins of cities and towns. (Which are, of course, the products of DECADES of Dimocratic policies and controls!) We must act boldly to reverse decades of these exclusionary policies,” he wrote.

The bill follows other efforts throughout the country to bring high-density housing to quiet neighborhoods of single-family homes, with advocates describing suburban neighborhoods with low crime rates and top-ranked schools as racially segregated.

The text of the legislation is not yet available and Stewart did not respond to a request for comment, but CityLab said the bill would bring more people into neighborhoods identified by a private tool called the “Opportunity Atlas,” which says it identifies neighborhoods where kids who grow up there tend to become high-earning adults.

The assumption appears to be that the neighborhood made the people wealthy, though in a previous article on the tool, CityLab staff writer Tanvi Misra said it could actually be factors specific to the people who happen to live there, such as “that the kids who grow up there are very likely to have a father figure.”…”

Forgetting for the moment single-family suburban communities “close to affluent schools” rarely offer easy access to either public transport or high-paying jobs, here’s the juice: the single biggest determinate in the U.S. for accurately predicting poverty remains being raised in a single-parent family with a female head-of-household.

This latest example of Montgomery County-bred idiocy aside, Mortimer and Randolph would be shocked…shocked…to learn it’s neither nature nor nurture…

…but rather one’s neighborhood which is the foremost factor in forecasting an individual’s outcome in life…all the evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

Next, writing at Townhall.com, Beth Baumann reports how the FBI has informed the FISA Court…

We’re Really Sorry for How We Treated Carter Page

So,…Chris Wray is sorry…Andrew McCabe is sorry…and Jim Comey has at least admitted he was wrong (which is the closest that piece of human scum will come to apologizing until his sorry-a*s is taking its first prison shower sans soap-on-a-rope): all of which leaves Carter Page repeating the question asked by Ray Donovan, the victim of a prior partisan Progressive witch hunt:

As one Brigid Kemmerer observed, though in an entirely different context, “You know what sucks about sorry? It’s the worst word in the world. Because it always happens after you f*ck up something good.”

Or as Gretchen McNeil wrote, again, not in the context of the FBI fiasco, “Everybody was sorry. Sorry was easy. Sorry was for suckers.”

Suckers we’re not; and, particularly in this case, sorry just ain’t gonna cut it…a sentiment we trust John Durham and Bill Barr will be demonstrating they share in the not-too-distant future.

In a related item, writing at the WSJ, Holman Jenkins offers his…

Anatomy of a Witch Hunt, Revisited

Kudos to a Washington Post writer for holding the media’s feet to the fire over the Steele dossier.

“Erik Wemple, the Washington Post’s media critic, has produced an 11-part series (so far) on the press’s handling of the Steele dossier in the wake of its debunking by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

The 10th installment consists of a simple “inventory” of TV talking heads and reporters insisting that large parts of the dossier had been “corroborated.” Notice that the statements Mr. Wemple has collected are mere declarations, the speakers offering little evidence or specificity about which parts had been corroborated. This is not journalism. This is availability bias, the social-science term for a readiness to embrace and repeat claims that are popular in one’s milieu.

He finds exactly one example of reporters claiming to have validated a Steele allegation through actual reporting—McClatchy’s famous story, which it continues to “stand by,” that Trump attorney Michael Cohen visited Prague during the 2016 campaign. Read closely, though, and McClatchy only claims to have cited its anonymous sources accurately. No statement is offered that Mr. Cohen was actually in Prague.

I addressed another partial example myself here in February 2018—a Politico story that found a Steele allegation about Carter Page more believable because a Steele source seemed to know in advance about a Rosneft transaction that would not take place until late in 2016. As I showed, the whole world knew about the pending sale and had for years. This was an example of what Mr. Horowitz would later call a sprinkling of “publicly available” information in Steele that created a patina of credibility for the unwary.

Whether this was honest or dishonest dimwittedness by Politico, it is emblematic of a pattern that increasingly prevails in newsrooms—seeing only evidence that supports the desired story line.

The following should not need to be said: A claim is not credible just by virtue of its being made. A bunch of unsupported claims do not become more credible because they come in a bunch. A media pathology is the “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” fallacy—i.e., one Christopher Steele allegation may be untrue, but, golly, they can’t all be untrue when there are so many…”

This is “fake news” at its finest; and life once more imitating art, as this scene from Absence of Malice relates:

We’re witnessing the suicide of the Fourth Estate, as truth, accuracy and integrity no longer enter into the equation in what’s become the MSM’s formula for fabricating fiction.

Speaking of fabricated fiction, writing at NRO, the great Victor Davis Hanson opines on…

Impeachment Fallouts

‘I hate the people who hate him.’

“…We are living in bizarre times — the rhetoric of Trump hatred is nearing its logical end, and scant further popular animus can be expressed beyond smashing his face, shooting him, burning him up, or blowing up the White House, and no further political venom voiced than urging progressives to surround Trump officials and harass them at restaurants and stores.

Many who voted for Trump (Ourselves among them.) were quite aware that Trump’s rhetoric often bothered them. They now weigh that discomfort against his achievements and the shrill Democratic alternative — and find the latter far scarier. (Actually, the latter was far scarier well before Trump’s achievements!) Few on the left ever contemplate the effect on the general public of the 24/7, 360-degree pure hatred of Trump on network and cable news, public TV and radio, and late-night TV talk shows, as well as print media. The silent disdain many people have for the progressive media nexus is especially potent when the haters so often fit a stereotypical profile in the public mind: counterfeit elite as defined by education, zip codes, careers, or supposed cultural influence; smug in their parrot-like group-speak and accustomed to deference.

This paradox was brought home to me not long ago when I asked an unlikely Trump minority supporter why in the world he would vote against his family’s and community’s political heritage. He answered at once, with simply, “I hate the people who hate him.”

Translated, I think that means we often are missing a cultural element to Trump Agonistes, exacerbated by the latest toxic impeachment episode. (Not mention the same counterfeit elite subsequently siding with Iran!)

Again, millions of Americans actually leave Trump per se out of their voting equations. They do not give him full credit for a remarkable economy and an unorthodox foreign policy that is addressing China, Iran, and the Middle East in a way many once advocated but few seriously believed would ever be enacted.

Instead, voters are exhausted by his haters and their crazy agendas. They grow enraged over how the Mueller and Horowitz investigatory reports have disproved all the daily media, celebrity, and political assertions. And they are upset about the larger culture of the anti-Trump Left, from the fundamentals of open borders and identity politics to the trivia of transgendered athletes, Colin Kaepernickism, and the open-border, Green New Deal socialism. An auto worker who votes as a true-blue union Democrat but likes Trump’s trade policies, a no-nonsense farmer who worries about farm exports but likes deregulation, and a teacher who votes a liberal slate but has no way to control his classroom may not seem like Trump voters, but some such voters are terrified by the cultural trajectory of what the Trump-hating Left has in store for them all.

For a majority, refined and arrogant progressive mendaciousness voiced in condescending nasal tones has become far more repugnant than all-American hype in a Queens accent.“

As Kevin Williamson (no friend of The Donald’s he!) notes at NRO…

“…Pelosi knew that opening an impeachment action against President Donald Trump was a dumb idea, because simply talkingabout impeachment would offer about 90 percent of the political benefit with none of the risk, whereas actually impeaching the president offered only a near guarantee of final failure. The point of this impeachment is not to remove Trump from office — everybody knows that is not very likely to happen — but to denounce him. (As if The Donald would be anything but empowered by denouncement!) Democrats victimized by wishful thinking may have believed that the testimony in the House and the howling 1,000-coyote chorus in the media would turn some Trump voters against him, but, if anything, both will have the opposite effect, giving the president the two things his style of politics most needs: a narrative of unfair victimization and an opportunity to proclaim victory. Trump is not a statesman but a culture-war WMD, and his admirers are not much interested in any kind of disarmament, and in unilateral disarmament least of all…“

Turning from the subject of a non-statesman to someone who isn’t any kind of a man at all, Townhall.com‘s Beth Baumann returns to tell us how…

Investigators Reveal Hunter Biden Used His Dead Brother’s Identity to Hide His Whereabouts

“…on Monday when newly-filed court documents revealed Hunter Biden used his older brother, Beau Biden’s, death to hide the fact that he checked into a rehab center in Arizona. He used the names Joseph R. Beau Biden III and Joseph McGee as his aliases, the Washington Examiner reported. The discovery was made when police found suspicious items inside a Hertz rental car on Oct. 28, 2018.

The information was submitted by D&A Investigations Inc., a firm owned by private investigator Dominic Casey, who has requested to be named an intervener in the paternity case, Fox Business reported. Casey, who has also worked on the high-profile Casey Anthony case, claims Hunter Biden has a history of stealing identities to conceal his location. 

…The more we learn about Hunter Biden, the uglier it gets…”

Along with his entire family.  Hey, like father…

…like son:

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

Then there’s this selection of timely memes from Powerline Blog via James Nichols…

…along these two from Ed Hickey and Speed Mach respectively:

Finally, we’ll call it a day with News of the Bizarre, and this headline informing us…

Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop is selling a vagina-scented candle, and it’s already sold out

“Apparently the idea for the candle, made by Heretic, originally started out as a joke.

As the product description reads: “This candle started as a joke between perfumer Douglas Little and GP — the two were working on a fragrance, and she blurted out, ‘Uhhh … this smells like a vagina’ — but evolved into a funny, gorgeous, sexy, and beautifully unexpected scent.”…”

To quote TLJ, “She’s an idiot”; to which we responded, “True, but the bigger idiots are the people buying it.”

Reports Paltrow’s initial sobriquet for the scent, This Smells Like a Cross Between Rosie O’Donnell and a Baboon’s Backside, met with a significantly less-enthusiastic reception remain unconfirmed.

Magoo