The Daily Gouge Archive, Monday, November 28th, 2016

On November 29, 2016, in Uncategorized, by magoo1310

It’s Monday, November 28th, 2016…but before we begin…

…the wicked old Commie son-of-a-b*tch…

Hasta la vista, Fidel; Bienvenido al infierno, baby!

…at last is dead. And while we take no joy in his fate, we’re with Newt Gingrich in believing his passing certainly shouldn’t be mourned:

“Under no circumstance should President Obama, VP Biden or Secstate Kerry go to Cuba for Castro’s funeral,” Gingrich, who serves as an adviser to President-elect Donald Trump, wrote in a Twitter post, adding, “He was a tyrant.”

In an earlier tweet, Gingrich labeled Castro a “relentless dictator who imprisoned thousands (and) killed and tortured many Cubans” and went on to say, “the outpouring of praise for Fidel Castro is tragic…Build a list of those praising Castro and you will have a list of leftists who reject reality for an ideological fantasy.”

Only educated idiots could suggest…

…so cruel a dictator will truly be missed by the people he enslaved and impoverished for almost six decades. As the WSJ records, the facts belie The Left’s fiction:

“The Cuba that Castro inherited was developing but relatively prosperous. It ranked third in Latin America in doctors and dentists and daily calorie consumption per capita. Its infant-mortality rate was the lowest in the region and the 13th lowest in the world. Cubans were among the most literate Latins and had a vibrant civic life with private professional, commercial, religious and charitable organizations.

Castro destroyed all that. He ruined agriculture by imposing collective farms, making Cuba dependent first on the Soviets and later on oil from Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela. In the past half century Cuba’s export growth has been less than Haiti’s, and now even doctors are scarce because so many are sent abroad to earn foreign currency. Hospitals lack sheets and aspirin. The average monthly income is $20 and government food rations are inadequate.”

Those who bemoan this despot’s demise are either: (a) utterly ignorant as to what Castro cost his people; (b) fully vested in the fable of Fidel’s benevolent dictatorship, or; (c) like the Clintons rape of Haiti, profiting from the misery of the average Cuban.

As MRC‘s Rich Noyes chronicles, when it comes to the MSM, it’s (b), since the Progressive Press has been blindly singing Fidel’s praises since he ascended to power:

ABC News‘ Tom Llamas puts it perfectly:

Here’s the juice: Fidel Castro was a cruel Communist autocrat who, having achieved power in the guise of a liberator, oppressed generations of his people through rampant repression, mass incarceration and state-sanctioned mass murder.

The answers to four simple questions reveal the lies behind Liberals’ lamentations for this monster:

(1). If Cuba’s the worker’s paradise Progressive pretend, why over the years have so many risked not only their own lives, but the lives of their loved ones to escape the Castro brothers’ benevolent despotism? Because it’s not.

(2). If Cuba’s health care system truly is “world-class”, “cutting edge” and indeed, if we’re to believe Michael Moore, Barry Obama and the rest of the lowing Liberal herd, superior to its American counterpart, why isn’t the world beating a path to Havana’s door for life-saving treatments and surgeries rather than the good, old U.S. of A.? Because it isn’t.

(3). What benefit does the finest education pipeline provide a populace living under an economic system which, upon graduation, not only offers zero immediate employment opportunities, but no hope for any in the future? None whatsoever.

(4). If Castro actually enjoyed the continuous, overwhelming support of his people, why in 57 years did he never allow opposition parties, let alone free and democratic elections? Because he didn’t.

Cubans don’t live, they exist; and that solely at the whim of the Castros. More importantly, does anyone really believe, were they able to pursue their goals unencumbered by the Constitution and an armed citizenry, American Progressives would act differently?!?

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, a post-election ballad courtesy of Balls Cotton:

The election is over. The talking is done.

Your party lost. My party won.

So let us be friends. Let arguments pass.

I’ll hug my elephant. You kiss your ass.

And ours while you’re at it!

Next up, courtesy of NRO, Kevin Williamson suggests the more things change, the more Dimocrats remain the same:

Learning from Nancy Pelosi

Moral hysteria makes political consensus impossible.

“Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio is challenging former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi for the leadership of the Democratic party in the House of Representatives. “This thing where an obscure male backbencher thinks he deserves to replace the most accomplished woman in Congress is how sexism works,” scoffed Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress.

Well.

Mrs. Pelosi is the scion of an old Democratic political clan (her father served in the House and was later the mayor of Baltimore but, because of the moral failings of our international crimes-against-humanity tribunals, was never brought to justice for his role in helping to turn Baltimore into Baltimore), and her accomplishments (like Hillary’s) consist of — nothing obvious. That she seems to the gentlemen of ThinkProgress more “accomplished” than, say, combat helicopter pilot and Iraq War veteran Tammy Duckworth says a great deal about the gentlemen from ThinkProgress. Aside from her relative success in the matter of accumulating intra-party power for herself, Mrs. Pelosi is not an obviously more accomplished woman than is Doris Matsui, who also treats politics as a family business.

But of course this must be sexism, since it always is sexism when a Democratic woman is criticized or, angels and ministers of grace defend us, challenged. Never mind that the rogues’ gallery of female Democrats — Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sheila Jackson Lee, etc. — is notable only for the fact that the worst of them seem to go by three names, like serial killers, and that together with such nominally truncated worthies as Elizabeth Warren and the hilariously corrupt Corrine Brown they make a pretty good case that the flower of Democratic womanhood is hemlock.

The fact that the progressive case against Representative Ryan is going to be that he has a penis attached to his pubic symphysis rather than pickled in a jar in a cupboard opened only for very special coven conclaves is of some interest beyond low-minded amusement.

As my colleague Jonah Goldberg has documented, one of the Left’s habitual tactics is treating every progressive political project as “the moral equivalent of war,” a rhetorical innovation that goes back at least to Woodrow Wilson. If it is not the moral equivalent of war, then it is an extraordinary moral panic, which is what we are seeing right now in response to the fact that the United States has had a presidential election and is preparing for the peaceful transfer of power from a formerly obscure male backbencher (who famously and successfully challenged the other most accomplished woman in Congress) to an oddball game-show host who once pretended to be his own press agent in order to lie about his sex life to the New York press.

Hurray, democracy…”

Turning now to the Trump Transition, also writing at NRO, Heather Mac Donald wonders…

Would James Mattis Reverse the Pentagon’s Women-in-Combat Policy?

Donald Trump is being criticized for considering too many former generals for leading roles within the military. Yesterday, the New York Times ran an article suggesting that putting former fighting men at the top of the military chain of command threatened traditional civilian control of the military. The article focused on retired Marine Corps General James N. Mattis, among other contenders for top slots; Mattis is reputedly being considered for secretary of defense.

The issue of civilian control is certainly a valid one. (Why: is Mattis not now a civilian?!?) But Mattis would bring something to the position that no civilian possesses: experience with the exigencies of battle. And such experience should make the idea of inserting females into all-male combat units a non-starter. In the case of Mattis, it appears to have done just that. Last December, Mattis was the only member of a security panel at the Hoover Institution who was willing to question the Pentagon’s current position on co-ed fighting units, particularly in the Marines. (Mattis was at Hoover for a symposium honoring George Shultz, as was I.) William Perry, by contrast, Bill Clinton’s first secretary of defense and a former mathematician, saw no reason why females should not be included in male fighting units, taking the usual line that feminist empowerment was a relevant consideration in deciding military policy. That is also the position of the current civilian secretary of defense, former physicist Ashton Carter.

The Pentagon has already begun devising what it calls “gender-neutral” strength and stamina standards for combat positions, hoping that no one will notice that the military already had gender-neutral standards — they were called the standards. The alleged need to make them “gender-neutral” is a smokescreen for watering them down so that females, with their enormously inferior upper body strength, can qualify. (See, “Introduction of Women to the U.S. Naval Academy, 1977”) There are virtually no females who would be able to lug a fallen male solider weighing 200 pounds naked, before donning battle equipment, 200 yards out of the line of fire. But even if such Amazons existed, the inevitable introduction of Eros, with its attendant jealousies and resentments, into tightly knit combat units would spell the end of vital unit cohesion.

Trump’s instincts on such matters are as yet unknown. Despite his healthy repudiation of political correctness, he may be clueless enough about the pernicious influence of gender politics that he would be influenced by his daughter, say, to think that co-ed fighting units are a fine idea. Mattis’s awareness of the incompatibility between military preparedness and feminist propaganda is a strong count in his favor.

Assuming of course Mattis maintains the courage of his convictions…and The Donald deigns his advice worth heeding. We cannot stress enough the importance such a drastic change in Obama’s politically-correct course holds for America’s military readiness and national defense.

Meanwhile, despite having yet to take the oath of office, Trump appears to be breaking promises faster than B. Hussein in an Obamacare presser:

Trump won’t pursue charges against Clinton

“President-elect Donald Trump won’t subject Hillary Clinton to a criminal inquiry — instead, he’ll help her heal, his spokeswoman said Tuesday. “I think when the president-elect who’s also the head of your party…tells you before he’s even inaugurated he doesn’t wish to pursue these charges, it sends a very strong message, tone and content, to the members,” Kellyanne Conway told the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” who first reported that the president-elect would not pursue his campaign pledge to “lock up” Clinton, his Democratic opponent.

“Look, I think, he’s thinking of many different things as he prepares to become the president of the United States, and things that sound like the campaign are not among them,” Conway, who is now on the Trump transition team, said in her interview.

She continued: “I think Hillary Clinton still has to face the fact that a majority of Americans don’t find her to be honest or trustworthy, but if Donald Trump can help her heal, then perhaps that’s a good thing.”…”

On the surface, Conway’s comments are nothing if not disturbing, particularly as regards her differentiation between campaign promises and governing policies. So ask yourself, what does Trump gain from such an announcement now?!?

Here’s a possible hint from Reince-and-Repeat:

President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming chief of staff Reince Priebus said Tuesday that Trump “would rather look forward instead of backwards” after the real estate mogul indicated he did not favor an ongoing investigation of his election opponent, Hillary Clinton.

“Look, he’s not going to spend his time sitting around thinking about how he’s going to prosecute Hillary Clinton, he’s going to think about the future of America,” Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus told Fox News’ Eric Bolling on “The O’Reilly Factor.”

“Now, I’m sure if something comes around that is some kind of bomb that we don’t know about, we’ll have to take a look at it,” Priebus added, “but his point [Trump is] looking forward to leading this country, he’s not looking to further injure the Clintons.”

Priebus also said that Trump would allow ongoing congressional investigations of Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state to move forward, but said as far as Trump is concerned, “it’s time to move forward and heal America and lead.”

Thus could the Republican House continue to investigate Clinton’s (or, perhaps more accurately, the Clintons’!) criminal activities while The Donald, in Pilate-like piety, washes his hands of what’s to come by either allowing Hillary’s indictment or pardoning her for her crimes. Either way, her guilt would be confirmed and justice served.

Given what we perceive to be the overriding importance of establishing every American, regardless of privilege or position, is subject to the same set of laws, we hope and pray this is Trump’s gambit.

In a related item, writing at The New American, Bob Adelman observes how faR the once-mighty and completely corrupt have already fallen:

Clinton Foundation Donations Fall Precipitously After Trump’s Election

“Thanks to revelations by Charles Ortel, Peter Schweizer, Dinesh D’Souza, WikiLeaks, and Judicial Watch, the use of the Clinton Foundation by the Clinton family as its own personal piggy bank has been exposed. Donations began dropping off as early as 2014 but they have all but disappeared since Hillary failed to gain the White House.

…Donations began to shrink in light of these revelations, beginning in 2014 when “contributions” plunged 37 percent, to $108 million, from the year before. And Bill’s income from speaking has all but disappeared, dropping from $36 million in 2014 to just $357,500 so far this year.

Norway just announced that it has cut its donation to the Clinton Foundation from $20 million to just $4.2 million this year, giving further evidence that previous donations were obviously part of an effort to gain access and influence to the likely incoming president. With Hillary’s defeat, however, she won’t be able to complete her part of the deal, and so Norway is redirecting its contributions elsewhere. In addition, the foundation reported only five new donors between July 1 and September 30.

When the Clinton Foundation was initially established, it was “to alleviate poverty, improve global health, strengthen economies and protect the environment.” Now that its cover has been blown and its real purpose exposed, observers now know just whose “economies” were strengthened and whose “poverty” was relieved…”

As Thomas Lifson notes at American Spectator:

“Why, it’s almost enough to make you believe that Hillary’s speeches weren’t about wonderfully entertaining and enlightening presentations at all, but rather about bribing a future president.“

Next up, Townhall.com‘s Leah Barkoukis offers yet another reason Donald Trump is our President-elect:

Obama’s DOJ Fines Denver Sheriff Department For Not Hiring Non-Citizens

“President Obama’s Justice Department is penalizing the Denver Sheriff Department for making U.S. citizenship a requirement for applicants. The sheriff’s department will now have to pay a $10,000 fine for its hiring practices in 2015 and 2016. Additionally, the DOJ is requiring them to comb through old applications for those who were disqualified for being a non-citizen and consider those people for future positions…”

Meanwhile, Obama’s true legacy is the gift which keeps on taking…