It’s Wednesday, August 6th, 2014…and here’s The Gouge!
First up, Commentary Magazine‘s Jonathan Tobin reveals the reality the Left and their MSM shills want to remain unseen…and unknown:
“Last week, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency posed an interesting question to the New York Times: Why isn’t it publishing any pictures of Hamas fighters in Gaza? The answer from the Times and from other media outlets about the lack of any depictions of Hamas terrorists or rocket launchings speaks volumes about the biased nature of much of the coverage of the war.
The answer from the Times communications shop was candid if not particularly helpful. According to their spokesman, out of the hundreds of images of the fighting filed from Gaza by their photographers, there wasn’t a single clear one of one of the two sides in the conflict. The same appears to be true of all the other major news outlets, not to mention the broadcast networks and cable news channels operating in Gaza in large numbers. How is it that we have yet to see a single photo or video of Hamas personnel launching rockets at Israel even though we know that has happened literally thousands of times in the last few weeks? Is it that the intrepid war correspondents and video teams just happened to miss the chance to take the picture every single time the rockets went up? Or is there some other explanation?
…The answer is fairly obvious: despite denials, foreign journalists in Gaza take great care not to depict Hamas military actions because to do so would be to jeopardize their ability to continue to report from Gaza or, even worse, invite attacks from these terrorists. This is not the first time we’ve seen this sort of thing happening. A generation ago, Thomas Friedman and others wrote about the difficulty of reporting accurately about the Palestine Liberation Organization when Yasir Arafat’s terrorists exercised their reign of terror in southern Lebanon and parts of Beirut. The same was true in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq when CNN defended its exclusive niche in Baghdad by failing to tell the truth about what that evil regime was doing. Subsequent admissions from CNN about making tough decisions after Saddam’s fall make the network’s current disclaimers about its reporters and camera operators being subjected to intimidation ring false…”
Case in point:
This despite undeniable evidence Hamas is indeed the root cause of the suffering and civilian casualties their actions deliberately made inevitable:
Any question whatsoever had this story involved similar activities on the part of U.S. forces the story would have been broken by the American media?
In a related item, courtesy again of Commentary Magazine, Max Boot details how…
““ISIS now controls a volume of resources and territory unmatched in the history of extremist organizations. It possesses the means to threaten its neighbors on multiple fronts, demonstrating a military effectiveness much greater than many observers expected.”
So wrote my Council on Foreign Relations colleague Janine Davidson on July 24. And that was before this weekend’s reports that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria had routed Kurdish fighters from the town of Sinjar near the Iraq-Syria border–one of the few border posts it did not already control–and that it may have taken control of the Mosul dam, which if blown up could flood much of northern Iraq with a 65-foot wave.
Other reports indicate that ISIS has taken control of a Syrian oil field near Homs. As theWashington Post notes in a very comprehensive round-up of depressing news: “Experts estimate the group is pocketing as much as $3 million per day in oil revenue by selling off resources on black markets in the greater Levant.” Oh and ISIS also just staged an attack in yet another country–Lebanon.
In short, the news is about as bad as it could be. The question that remains is: What is the U.S. doing about it?…”
Here’s a hint:
Here’s another question: given Hamas’ stated goal is the utter annihilation of every man, woman and child in Israel, how are they any different from ISIS? And given this crisis was calculatingly conceived, commenced and continued by Hamas, why are the bleeding hearts on the Left, including the UN and other supposed “human rights” groups, continuing to blame Israel for the conflict?!? This despite Hamas doing its level best to deprive its citizens of everything from food to medical care to housing, while the Israelis did everything in their power to provide them.
Next up, the great Thomas Sowell defends Matt Drudge in the face of an assault from Geraldo Rivera, a man who in a battle of wits is quite literally unarmed:
“…In an age when scientists are creating artificial intelligence, too many of our educational institutions seem to be creating artificial stupidity…“
Writing at the Washington Examiner, Noemie Emery provides the solution to at least part of the puzzle:
“…Michael Dukakis, called a great brain because he took a book on Swedish land use policies to read on vacation, was never able to explain why it was prudent to give murderers unsupervised furloughs, an idea that elites found humane and progressive, and voters found mad. Similarly, Obama is in trouble because he could not get his brain around two base rules of politics so commonsense and self-evident as to need no explanation whatever: big and transformative laws cannot survive without deep, broad support from the public; the absence of power invites aggression, and withdrawing the carrots and sticks of American power from tense situations asks unbridled hell to step in.
Children should know this, which is why it eludes the more snotty among us — who should never be heard from again.”
Then again, we’d dispute The Obamao, or any other leading Liberal, possesses any significant level of intellect whatsoever. Being, as we are, a big believer in Occam’s Razor, we’d suggest a simpler explanation: if brains dynamite, education absent common sense doesn’t provide an individual the grey matter to blow their nose. And the nincompoop presently occupying the Oval Office, along with every other educated idiot on the Left…
…is living proof.
Since we’re on the subject of the world’s greatest bloviator, the WSJ‘s Dan Henninger be…
“…In a speech last year, Mr. Obama announced the war on terror is over, and that he would adjust our antiterror policies to reflect that reality. Then he said in the same speech that the U.S. “is at war with al Qaeda” and the Taliban. Press reports on the speech said even the president’s own people weren’t sure what the new policy was.
ObamaCare, whatever it is now, isn’t what Mr. Obama’s public comments said it would be. He says what the U.S. did to its captured 9/11 terrorists was “torture,” but our torturers are basically good guys.
Barack Obama has been talking like this for a lifetime.
…The Obama gift is, or was, empathy. Every politician since Julius Caesar has known how to do empathy. Bill Clinton summited empathy’s Everest with, “I feel your pain.” But the Obama style of empathy hasn’t matched the office he achieved.
It started with all those weird, dropped “g’s.” A cranial gong goes off when Barack Obama starts droppin’ “g’s.” The American president who is seen discoursing eloquently at the African leaders summit hits the stump and suddenly he sounds like Gabby Hayes. “Folks like you are havin’ a hard time makin’ it when the wealthiest are grabbin’ it all in for themselves.”…”
More to the point, talking is all Barack Hussein Obama has done his entire life!
And just to prove unwarranted hubris and self-absorption aren’t exclusively the province of Progressives, there’s this from Jim Geraghty’s Morning Jolt:
The McDonnells and Our Increasingly Insane Political Class
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Ladies and gentlemen, I suspect you’ll understand that my kind words for former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell rank among my biggest professional regrets.
This is for several reasons, but preeminently, it appears the governor and his wife turned themselves into walking infomercials for the dietary supplements produced by one of the governor’s top donors. And they may very well have behaved in a manner you and I would consider . . . not quite sane:
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Look honey; this one’s for $100K and it’s made out to me personally!
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A day earlier, a onetime aide testified that after then-governor McDonnell endorsed Mitt Romney for president in 2012, McDonnell’s wife sought out the candidate at a news media session in South Carolina to promote the dietary supplement.
Phil Cox, Robert McDonnell’s chief political adviser at the time, said that he put a stop to that plan but that Maureen McDonnell went on to talk up the supplement to Romney’s wife on a campaign bus. He said she told Ann Romney that the anti-inflammatory supplement could “potentially cure MS.”
While Ann Romney, who has multiple sclerosis, listened politely, Cox said, he feared the episode would reflect poorly on his boss, who at the time was considered a possible Romney running mate.
“I was horrified,” Cox testified. “I thought it was a train wreck.”
How do you do that? How do you go up to a woman with multiple sclerosis and tell her that a dietary supplement produced by one of your top donors might cure her disease?
Are people crazy when they get into politics, or does the process of politics drive them crazy?
Every profession has their share of people who are “crazy”, and your garden variety of eccentricity and odd behavior is in the eye of the beholder. (In the first Blackford Oakes novel, Saving the Queen, a character declares, “Other people’s rituals always seem strange.”) But doesn’t it feel like, with increasing regularity, we hear about behavior on the part of elected officials that might get them steered to a psychiatric clinic, or at least counseling?
Yes, politics always had its Jim Traficants and Jesse Venturas. Some would toss Marion Barry into that mix, although I’m not sure mere poor impulse control and disregard for the law necessarily meet the threshold of “crazy” we’re examining. Jim Bunning’s behavior in his later years, perhaps. Mike Gravel’s campaign ad.
Perhaps Representative Sheila Jackson Lee’s belief that Neil Armstrong planted a flag on Mars qualifies, or her assertion that “Today, we have two Vietnams, side by side, North and South, exchanging and working.” Or perhaps Representative Hank Johnson expressing a fear during a hearing that the island of Guam could “tip over and capsize” if too many military personnel were stationed there.
How do we explain the behavior of, say, Anthony Weiner? Or David Wu?
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I suppose politics requires a person to be particularly good at two sometimes challenging tasks: (1) being particularly charming and appealing to immensely wealthy people, so charming and appealing that they’re willing to write checks to your campaign and (2) being appealing to the electorate at large.
There’s undoubtedly stress, fear of defeat, desperation, a widening gulf between the private self and the public face held up for approval. Does this, at some point, wear down one’s mental health? Is shamelessness such a prerequisite for running for office that candidates and their spouses lose a sense of what’s abnormal human behavior? Or is political ambition by itself a bit of abnormal human behavior?
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Another case in point:
Yeah…that oughta have Putin, ISIS, Iran, Al Queda, China and the NoKos shaking in their boots and sandals.
On the Lighter Side…
Finally, we’ll wrap things up with a rather perverse public service announcement from an entity which not only can’t make the trains run on time, but has yet to make them run profitably:
Yeah…run…faster than a bullet. Hide…quietly…then call 911. And when all else fails, fight back…by tossing a soft-sided duffel bag at a gun-carrying homicidal maniac. Judging from their girth, none of Amtrak’s featured security “experts” could outrun Oprah, yet alone a crazed gunman; which is why each and every one of them is packing the only true deterrent to armed assailants…an edge their management…
…is doing everything in its power to deny their passengers.
Magoo
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