It’s Wednesday, November 17th, 2021…but before we begin, one Malik Austin recently appeared at a Fort Worth-area school board meeting to defend the teaching of Critical Race Theory and tell parents opposed to the deliberately-divisive Marxist ideology…

He’s got 1,000 soldiers “locked and loaded“

Dude, this is TEXAS; EVERYBODY is armed!!!  Which gives you and your “1,000 soldiers” as much chance as Travis and Bowie’s bunch had at the Alamo.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, NRO‘s Charlie Cooke bids us…

Welcome to the Joe Biden Challenge!

All you have to do is name a single thing the leader of the free world can do competently. Hard, isn’t it?

“Roll up, roll up, roll up, for there are prizes to be won! That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it’s time for the Joe Biden Challenge. And all you need to do to win the big game is, wait for it . . . name a single — yes, a single — thing that this president has demonstrated himself to be good at since he took office back on January 20.

There are a few rules, caveats, and provisos here, of course. First, this is a game of absolutes, so you can’t use any relative words such as “better,” “preferable,” or “improvement.” If he’s not good at it in a vacuum, it doesn’t count. Second, we’re talking about President Biden — you know, the man in charge — so you can’t skirt the inquiry by shouting “but Donald Trump!” And, third, this is not a matter of whether you agree or disagree with the president’s political views, or whether you voted for him in the 2020 election given the choices that were on offer. It’s much, much simpler than that. To win the game, you just have to find a single concrete virtue that Joe Biden brings to the table as the head of the executive branch of the federal government. (Or any other position he’s occupied in his self-serving career.)

Tough, right? He’s not an ideas guy — indeed, it’s hard to conceive of a politician less likely to arrive at a coherent solution. He’s not an independent thinker. He doesn’t sit above the fray. And he’s more of a rambler than a listener, all told. As a communicator, he’s just awful. His speech is incomprehensible, his briefs are rarely mastered, and, on the rare occasions on which he has been permitted to try, he has proven unable to answer questions in an apprehensible manner. He has access to the bully pulpit, yes. But he has no idea how to use it. He is utterly, completely, unusually unpersuasive…”

And those are his best qualities!

In a related item from the Morning Jolt, Jim Geraghty details why, if Biden’s bad, Kommielaa’s even worse.  Then again, what should one expect from a woman who owes her position to having repeatedly assumed certain other positions as she clawed her way up the political ladder.

Next, in the Your Tax Dollars at Work segment, FOX informs us how a…

Texas lawmaker uncovers a secret operation to move migrants across the U.S., house them in abandoned hotels

The migrants were reportedly given packets on how to get past TSA and enroll kids in schools

“…During an appearance on “Fox & Friends” Monday, Gooden said that he was contacted by a whistleblower from San Diego who provided him with details on the kind of information the nonprofit groups were providing to the migrants.

The Texas representative subsequently hopped on a plane and discovered that abandoned hotels in the California city were being utilized as shelters for the migrants. Some of the locations he mentioned included SeaWorld, The Four Points by Sheraton and a Ramada Inn. “I managed to get in the gates, I demanded entry once and was refused. I talked a guard into letting me in on another occasion and when I was in there I saw busses pulling up, probably about 100 migrants over an hour got off of these busses,” said Gooden. 

Gooden said that upon arrival the migrants were “welcomed by people with open arms” before being processed, tested for COVID and then handed packets. “This packet is what I received from the whistleblower a few weeks ago,” said Gooden. “And these packets detail how to go to the airport, how to get past TSA without any identification, how to enroll your children in schools and assimilate in whatever community you desire to go in.”

…Gooden indicated that the biggest propagators of this operation were the Catholic charities of San Diego and the Jewish Family Association, nonprofits with prominent donors – including AT&T, Bank of America and the federal government.“

Which of course fairly screams the question why said “abandoned hotels” aren’t already being utilized to house homeless American citizens?!?  As we said, your tax dollars at work.

Needless to say, had we been inclined to contribute to the either of the non-profits mentioned before this story broke, we certainly wouldn’t now.  As indicated by the meme accompanying the headline, these people’s concept of charity reminds us of one of our favorite scenes from High Plains Drifter:

And in the EnvironMental Moment, writing at AEI, Steven Koonin correctly concludes…

It’s time to cancel the climate crisis

“After two weeks of continuously pressing the panic button in Glasgow, the climate-alarmed departed the 26th UN climate conference (better known as COP26), despondent at missing the latest “last best chance” to save the planet.

While the apocalyptic rhetoric used by politicians and activists to describe the changing climate has outpaced reality, there is some good news: First, science tells us that there is no crisis and we have ample time to respond to a changing climate. Second, terms such as “existential threat,” “climate catastrophe,” or “climate disaster” aren’t found anywhere in the most recent UN assessment of the science. The phrase “climate crisis” does appear, once — not as scientific finding, but as a description of how the media have increased the alarm.

There is, however, an urgent need to quell the hysteria with a factual check before hasty “climate action” causes more damage than it averts…”

Though stopping the insanity would rob us of the laughs provided by the sheer lunacy of moments like John Kerry flying to Iceland via private jet to accept an award for fighting climate change.

Then there’s this quintet of items which should proved of interest to inquiring Conservative minds:

(1). ICYMI, NRO‘s Jack Crowe reports the judge presiding over Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder trial has dismissed a lesser weapons charge which held that the 17-year-old was too young to legally carry the AR-15 he used to shoot three people during the riots in Kenosha, WI last year. Judge Bruce Schroeder commented in the courtroom last week that the law delineating the misdemeanor charge could be too difficult for an “ordinary citizen” to understand, observing “I have been wrestling with this statute with, I’d hate to count the hours I’ve put into it, I’m still trying to figure out what it says, what’s prohibited. I have a legal education.”

(2). In a related item also courtesy of NRO, Michael Brendan Dougherty records what Rittenhouse’s crying means to psychos, as advanced degrees haven’t stopped many “media experts” from openly suggesting, “In a fair and non-racist society, Rittenhouse would have been killed before he turned 18.”

(3). Best of the Web relates how a relatively obscure mayoral election in the Rust Belt dealt A Buffalo Saber to the Socialist Heart, as The Left discovers their ideas just aren’t popular, even in a Left-leaning city.

(4). Writing at Substack.com, Michael Scellenberger explains Why Wokeism Is A Religion…

…as well as providing this helpful primer for understanding Progressivism paganism at its most primitive:

(5). Consider a graphic FOX recently featured…

…then read the story at a less sensational source and ask yourself, as 90% of the school’s drug offenses have been occuring in the restrooms, and all the stalls still have doors and are not visible from the hallways, how was any student’s “dignity flushed away”, or their privacy stripped?!?  Funny, we seem to recall nary a door on any restroom in any airport we’ve used in the last 40 years. 

We were, however, amused by the comment of one senior, who, with a certain amount of indignation, expressed the view, “They didn’t really inform anybody that it was going to happen, so it’s not really fair to just take it away and not let everybody get an opinion in on it.”

Which recalled a dressing down Kirk gave a rather ratey subordinate with the temerity to offer an unasked-for, unneeded opinion:

Though there’s something to be said for the more forceful and direct approach Matthew McConaughey employed in U-571:

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

Then there’s these from Balls Cotton…

…and Ed Hickey:

Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with an administrative note: We apologize if we failed to include certain submissions, or provide proper attribution for those we did.  As per Aol‘s instructions, we updated our email service Tuesday afternoon, immediately after which every email in our Inbox vanished into the ether.  Working later that evening, we found four forwards had gone straight to our Trash.

Our IT department has promised to look into the matter later today.

Magoo

Video of the Day

Tucker details all the deliberate disinformation endemic in the attempted lynching of Kyle Rittenhouse.

Tales of The Darkside

With a few simple name changes, this clip from Atlas Shrugged gains greater pertinence with every passing day.

On the Lighter Side

For those too young to have grown up with The Avengers, here’s a tribute to Diana Rigg, one of the sexiest ladies ever to grace a television screen.