Daily Gouge EXTRA courtesy G. Trevor: just when you thought Barry couldn’t bring the office of President of the United States any lower:

The world is in flames, and THIS is how our President spends his time; is it any wonder America’s enemies view us with utter disdain, and our allies with growing concern?!?

And we’ve still got two more years of him!

It’s Friday, February 13th, 2015…but before we begin, one of the advantages of having your own blog is the ability to feature whatever catches your fancy.  And this recent bit of news, courtesy of Townhall.com‘s Guy Benson, definitely caught our attention:

Did the White House Know Where ISIS Hostages Were Being Held for Months?

“Fox News’ Chief Intelligence Correspondent Fox News, Catherine Herridge, reported earlier in the week that Obama administration officials were in possession of “very specific intelligence” pertaining to the precise location where ISIS terrorists were holding a group of Western hostages, including since-murdered Americans James Foley, Steven Sotloff and Kayla Mueller. Herridge’s sources said the eventual rescue mission was launched seven weeks after the hostages’ location was identified, significantly longer than the 30-day delay reported last summer by Tony Harnden. The intelligence gathered had reportedly nailed down the exact building where the kidnapped parties were being held…”

Benson proceeds to act as a reporter rather than a partisan promoter, and extends The Obamao the benefit of the doubt…

Regardless of what one thinks of Obama, it’s unfathomable that he didn’t want to see these hostages rescued.  The criticism that may apply is that he was overly cautious to the point of indecisive paralysis, a state that has characterized much of his foreign policy

…a level of uncertainty we’re frankly unwilling to grant him.  Is The Dear Misleader paralytically indecisive?  AbsoLUTEly!  Do we believe he would delay or even refuse to authorize a rescue operation if its failure might damage him politically, regardless of the accuracy of the intelligence?  Most DEFinitely!!!

And the Three Stooges…

…would have been right there to back him up!

Contrast their craven cowardice with the incalculable courage of our rank-and-file Military…

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

…and the sacrifices they’ve made, and continue to make, every damn day:

By the way, that’s our eldest son Jon, a full-time fireman in Frederick County, MD, pictured above during training for his first deployment to Iraq.  For those who don’t know the song, it’s The Minstrel Boy, an Irish ballad written by Thomas Moore, likely composed in remembrance of friends who died during the Irish Rebellion.

Moving on, writing at First Things, Thomas Madden demonstrates why Ronald Reagan was right when he observed, “It isn’t so much that liberals are ignorant. It’s just that they know so many things that aren’t so.”:

Inventing The Crusades

“…On September 11, 2001, there were only a few professional historians of the Crusades in America. I was the one who was not retired. As a result, my phone began ringing and didn’t stop for years. In the hundreds of interviews I have given since that terrible day, the most common question has been, “How did the Crusades lead to the terrorist attacks against the West today?” I always answered: “They did not. The Crusades were a medieval phenomenon with no connection to modern Islamist terrorism.”

That answer has never gone over well. It seems counterintuitive. If the West sent Crusaders to attack Muslims throughout the Middle Ages, haven’t they a right to be upset? If the Crusades spawned anti-Western jihads, isn’t it reasonable to see them as the root cause of the current jihads? The answer is no, but to understand it requires more than the scant minutes journalists are usually willing to spare. It requires a grasp not only of the Crusades but of the ways those wars have been exploited and distorted for modern agendas…”

In a related item, we agree with Commentary Magazine‘s Seth Mandel when he suggests…

We Have to Talk About Obama’s Ignorance

“…Obama is wrong about Putin and the KGB. Ben Judah, a journalist who recently wrote a book on Putin’s Russia, responded: “The interesting and informative thing about Obama’s view on Putin is how uninsightful and uniformed it is.”

Putin ran the FSB–the successor agency to the KGB–and the difference matters. But what also matters is the emerging pattern for Obama’s view of the world: he has no idea what he’s talking about. The president, as Sam Cooke sang, don’t know much about history. And it’s evident in each major area of conflict the president seeks to solve and ends up only exacerbating.

It is not my intention to run down a list of all Obama’s flubs. Everybody makes mistakes, and any politician whose words are as scrutinized as the president’s is going to have their share of slip-ups. Yes, Obama is a clumsy public speaker; but that’s not the problem, nor is it worth spending much time on.

The problem is that Obama tends to make mistakes that stem from a worldview often at odds with reality. Russia is a good example. Does it matter that Obama doesn’t know the basics of Vladimir Putin’s biography and the transition of post-Soviet state security? Yes, it does, because Obama’s habit of misreading Putin has been at the center of his administration’s failed Russia policy. And it matters with regard not only to Russia but to his broader foreign policy because Obama has a habit of not listening to anyone not named Jarrett. (Who knows even less than Barry!) Obama appointed among the most qualified American ambassadors ever to represent the U.S. abroad in sending Michael McFaul to Moscow. But with or without McFaul, Obama let his own naïveté guide him…”

As with every rule, there’s always an exception; and in the case of Reagan’s observation of Liberals, The Great Prevaricator’s it; Obama not only knows so many things that aren’t so, he’s supremely confident in not only his utter ignorance, but that of his cretinous counsels. 

And as our next two items detail, The Obamao’s lack of actionable intellect isn’t limited to distant shores.  First, Exhibit “A”, courtesy of Daniel Francis Feeney and Ethan Penner’s Blog:

Obama’s “Trickle Down” Recovery

I have been surprised recently at how often I hear from people who tell me how our economic recovery is now finally on firm ground.   This claim is based upon the fact that the stock market is at historical highs, the U.S. government can borrow money at historically low rates, the federal budget deficit is lower now than it’s been in years, inflation rates are extremely low, gasoline prices are lower than they’ve been in a long while, and the unemployment rate is down to a very nice level.  Most of those who express this exuberance are left-leaning Democrats, who in the same breath, knowing I’m no fan of our current President and believed he would lead us to some version of ruin, give me a version of “How does it feel to have been so wrong?”

What I find most ironic is that this recovery that the President and his fans are bragging about having engineered has benefited that dreaded 1% and has not delivered much if any benefit to anyone else.  Back in the 1980’s Republican economists coined the term “trickle down economics,” which meant initiating policies that would benefit the people at the top so that ultimately crumbs would fall and thus raise the lots of the masses.  Democrats ridiculed this notion then and have for years since until now when they have not only embraced it themselves but are actually bragging about how successfully they’ve pulled it off.  The only problem is that there has been no trickle down benefit to speak of.  The 99% are not doing any better than they were five years ago, and many, if not most, are doing worse.

Indeed, the cost of capital is super low, which many believed would spur corporate spending and hiring, as well as inspire the creation of new businesses.  None of this has happened.  Companies have hoarded cash, especially multi-nationals who do not wish to repatriate overseas earnings and pay huge tax bills.  Massive natural deflationary pressures born from the efficiencies brought about by technological innovation as well as globalized trade have rightfully spooked business leaders who have managed their companies with great frugality.  And, even though the cost of capital is low, restrictive lending policies that were introduced after the subprime crisis has limited its availability mostly to those who don’t need it or don’t want it.  New business creation has hovered near historical lows.  Real wages are stagnant, especially for a post-recession period, and people basically haven’t received a raise in decades.  The labor participation rate, which measures the percentage of people employed out of those eligible for employment, and is a far more accurate barometer of the employment situation, is at historical lows.  And, part time employment in the service sector (such as flipping burgers at McDonald’s) makes up far too large a portion of employment gains in recent years.  Low wage jobs account for more than 40% of all jobs added in this recovery.

The Obama recovery has been a huge success for those at the very top of the food chain, and a complete bust for everyone else.  This is the reality.  Trickle down economics, Democrat-style, has not worked.

Second, Exhibit “B”, brought to us by Breitbart.com:

Obama Lectures Staples for Limiting Part Time Hours: ‘Shame on Them’

President Obama doesn’t sympathize with companies that are cutting part-time hours to keep workers under the threshold of the 30-hour work week, thanks to Obamacare.

In an interview with Buzzfeed’s Ben Smith, Obama took issue with a story about the office supply company Staples threatening to fire workers who work more than 25 hours a week. “I haven’t looked at Staples stock lately or what the compensation of the CEO is, but I suspect that they could well afford to treat their workers favorably and give them some basic financial security,” he said. “And if they can’t, then they should be willing to allow those workers to get the Affordable Care Act without cutting wages.”

Obama indicated he was tired of hearing about companies cutting hours and wages from part time employees as a result of Obamacare. “[W]hen I hear large corporations that make billions of dollars in profits trying to blame our interest in providing health insurance as an excuse for cutting back workers’ wages, shame on them,” he said.

He’s so uninformed, so bereft of the slightest clue what’s in America’s best interest, it’s almost like…

…he’s playing for the other side; you know…sorta like…

…Pete Carroll!

Speaking of the utter ignorance of The Left and their MSM allies, CNSNews highlights how CNN anchor Chris Cuomo inexplicably…and inaccurately…claims…

‘Our Rights Do Not Come From God’

During a heated discussion over gay marriage, CNN morning Anchor Chris Cuomo opined that the unalienable rights endowed to all Americans do not come from God. Cuomo was debating Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage. Near the end of the back-and-forth and after Moore argued that rights cannot be handed down by men, Cuomo blurted out:

“Our rights do not come from God, your honor, and you know that. They come from man… That’s your faith, that’s my faith, but that’s not our country. Our laws come from collective agreement and compromise.”

Maybe Mr. Cuomo flunked elementary civics. The opening sentence of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence clearly affirms:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

It may be more convenient to Cuomo’s political philosophy that a select few are empowered to grant rights to the masses, but it certainly is not part of this country’s foundation.

What’s worse is Cuomo is advocating “collective” rights. He speaks as if every American right can simply be overturned at a whim simply because “times change.” “Sure, freedom of speech was great in 1789, but we’ve evolved beyond that as a collective society.” This is a very dangerous slope on which to tread.

Maybe CNN will help their anchors learn American history on the network’s new game show. Chris Cuomo desperately needs the tutoring.

Whoa!  Talk about an apple…

…falling not far from the tree!  A certain lack of comprehension regarding America’s heritage, not to mention her Constitution, appears to run in the Cuomo family (with apologies to Doug Burr!) like incest in certain parts of West Virginia.

Since we’re on the subject of Liberal ignorance, writing at Townhall.com, Thomas Sowell notes the connection between…

Measles, Vaccines and Autism

“…The story line was that pharmaceutical companies who produced the vaccine were callously risking and sacrificing helpless children in pursuit of profit. This is the kind of dramatic stuff the media love. It never seemed to occur to the media that lawyers who were suing pharmaceutical companies had a vested interest in this story line that the media fed on to the public.

Unfortunately, it takes time to run careful scientific studies, involving vast numbers of children in different countries. That allowed the propaganda against vaccines to go on for years. Eventually, however, the results of the studies so completely discredited the claim that the measles vaccine caused autism that the medical journal which had published the article publicly repudiated it. The doctor who wrote the article had his license revoked.

By this time, however, there was a whole anti-vaccine movement, and crusading movements are seldom stopped by facts…”

To mangle a phrase from Churchill, never have so many known so little about so much!

On the Lighter Side…

Turning now to the Entertainment Section, yet another Progressive prevarication (aka “myth”) courtesy of The Weekly Standard‘s Ethan Epstein:

The Myth of Jon Stewart’s ‘Millennial’ Following

“…Now one thing we millennials supposedly love is “data journalism.” So let’s back up and see whether there exists any data to back up Tumulty et al.’s claims that we millennials have just suffered a loss on par with the demise of the Lennon-McCartney partnership.

As of 2013, The Daily Show was bringing in approximately 2 million nightly viewers. And according to anexhaustive Pew Survey from 2012, 39 percent of The Daily Show’s regular viewers are between the ages of 18 and 29. That means that approximately 780,000 millennials are regular Daily Show watchers. In the United States, there are 53 million people between the ages of 18 and 29. That means that a whopping 1.5 percent of millennials watch the Daily Show regularly! Let’s be generous and assume that, say, 5 million people watch The Daily Show even occasionally. That would still mean a paltry 1.95 million out of 53 million millennials are Stewart fans…”

Finally, in the Sports Section, courtesy of Bill Meisen and Radio Havana (aka NPR)…

Little League Strips Chicago’s Jackie Robinson West Of U.S. Title

Chicago’s Jackie Robinson West team, the first all-African-American team to win the U.S. championship, has been stripped of its title after Little League International said today that the team had violated residency rules. Patrick Smith from member station WBEZ tells our Newscast unit that Little League International says the team illegally used players from outside its geographic area.

Talk about birds of a feather truly flocking together!  Based on this latest fiasco, Dimocrats really are all about the children! 

Magoo