The Daily Gouge Archive, Monday, October 24th, 2022

On October 25, 2022, in Uncategorized, by magoo1310

It’s Monday, October 24th, 2022…but before we begin, in yet another example of life imitating art, in this case, one of our favorite lines from The Godfather…

…Xi Jinping’s preplanned, forcible removal of his predecessor from the closing ceremonies of the ChiCom Party Congress…

…in which Xi was given a third term as president is yet another reason every citizen of Taiwan needs to be ready, willing and able to…

As Gordon Chang sagely suggests…

…it’s time for anyone interested in saving their skin to leave Communist China.

And a word to the wise in Taipei: Don’t depend on Biden’s politically-correct Milleytary…

…to chamber a round in your defense.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

Speaking of our thoroughly modern Milleytary, in an item from Hillsdale College’s Imprimus forwarded by Balls Cotton, retired LTGEN Tom Spoehr, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense records…

The Rise of Wokeness in the Military

 

“Complaints by veteran soldiers about younger generations who lack discipline and traditional values are as old as war itself. Grizzled veterans in the Greek phalanx, Roman legions, and Napoleon’s elite corps all believed that the failings of the young would be the ruin of their armies. This is not the chief worry of grizzled American veterans today. The largest threat they see by far to our current military is the weakening of its fabric by radical progressive (or “woke”) policies being imposed, not by a rising generation of slackers, but by the very leaders charged with ensuring their readiness.

Wokeness in the military is being imposed by elected and appointed leaders in the White House, Congress, and the Pentagon who have little understanding of the purpose, character, traditions, and requirements of the institution they are trying to change. The push for it didn’t begin in the last two years under the Biden administration—nor will it automatically end if a non-woke administration is elected in 2024. Wokeness in the military has become ingrained. And unless the policies that flow from it are illegal or directly jeopardize readiness, senior military leaders have little alternative but to comply. 

Woke ideology undermines military readiness in various ways. It undermines cohesiveness by emphasizing differences based on race, ethnicity, and sex. It undermines leadership authority by introducing questions about whether promotion is based on merit or quota requirements. It leads to military personnel serving in specialties and areas for which they are not qualified or ready. And it takes time and resources away from training activities and weapons development that contribute to readiness.

Wokeness in the military also affects relations between the military and society at large. It acts as a disincentive for many young Americans in terms of enlistment. And it undermines wholehearted support for the military by a significant portion of the American public at a time when it is needed the most…”

Here’s a double shot of the juice: First, this a PURPOSEFUL push by Progressives to create a Military loyal not to the Constitution, but the Dimocratic Party, which intends it as a means to suppress internal opposition to its dictates; Second, his lack of effort to slow, let alone reverse, the tide of wokeness constitutes in our mind one of The Donald’s greatest failures.

Meanwhile, as NRO‘s Andy McCarthy details, much of America is on tenterhooks…

Waiting for Durham

The special counsel’s looming report is the only chance the American people will ever get to hold the Clinton campaign and the FBI accountable for Russiagate.

 

“Special counsel John Durham performed a valuable public service by bringing to cold, stark light the FBI’s Russiagate abuses and the imperative that the bureau — its reputation in tatters — be subjected to intense congressional scrutiny and reform. Nevertheless, the prosecutions by which he has thus far made his record could be its ultimate undoing.

In a four-year investigation, Durham has established collaboration — mostly of the nod-and-wink variety — between Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the government’s law-enforcement-and-intelligence apparatus, in an effort to baselessly frame Donald Trump as a clandestine agent of the Kremlin. What grates is that, far from being held accountable, the significant participants are still celebrated.

Then, later on in the commentary, McCarthy makes an interesting argument:

…To be sure, Durham’s apparent failures — not just the acquittals but the lack of prosecutions of Russiagate’s prime movers — are simply the nature of the beast. As I explained in my 2019 book about the Trump–Russia investigation, Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency, government abuses of power do not readily lend themselves to redress by criminal prosecution. They cannot — at least, not if we want to have national security and the rule of law.

You don’t need me to tell you that. Just have a look at surging crime in every American city that has consigned itself to the tender mercies of the progressive prosecutors and defund-the-police activists typical of one-party Democratic governance. If we convey to cops the message that they could be vilified, disciplined, and even prosecuted for the judgment calls they make in enforcing the law, then we get passive policing and rampant crime.

Widen the lens and we find no difference when it comes to national security. If fear of abuse induces us to clamp down on the government’s counterintelligence powers, our spy agencies will be hamstrung in probing the ambitions of malign regimes and foreign terrorists — in gathering the intelligence that is vital to protecting the homeland and American interests around the world.

We have learned this the hard way…”

While we understand Andy’s point, we can easily divorce future national security interests from the present-day convictions of rogue federal officials in the interests reinforcing the equal application of the rule of law.  Otherwise, regardless of Durham’s evidence of endemic corruption in the DOJ, the takeaway from three years of what in the eyes of most was a fruitless investigation is confirmation America has a two-tiered justice system which ensures abuse of power at the highest levels of government is beyond prosecution, not to mention conviction.

For those wondering where such corruption of abuse of power ends, it’s no where in sight, as the results of a Journal investigation clearly indicates:

As Covid Hit, Washington Officials Traded Stocks With Exquisite Timing

Some sold in January 2020 when the government began mobilizing against the threat. Others bought shares as a market-rescue plan was taking shape.

 

“Federal officials working on the government response to Covid-19 made well-timed financial trades when the pandemic began—both as the markets plunged and as they rallied—a Wall Street Journal investigation found.

In January 2020, the U.S. public was largely unaware of the threat posed by the virus spreading in China, but health officials were on high alert and girding for a crisis. A deputy to top health official Anthony Fauci reported 10 sales of mutual funds and stocks totaling between $157,000 and $480,000 that month. Collectively, officials at another health agency, Health and Human Services, reported 60% more sales of stocks and funds in January than the average over the previous 12 months, driven by a handful of particularly active traders.

By March, agencies across the government were working on wide-reaching measures to prop the economy and markets. Then-Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao purchased more than $600,000 in two stock funds while her agency was involved in the pandemic response and her husband, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, was leading negotiations over a giant, market-boosting stimulus bill. And as the government was devising a loan package aimed specifically at helping companies including Boeing Co. and General Electric Co., a Treasury Department official involved in administering the aid acquired shares of both companies.

Federal officials owned millions of dollars of stock in industries most affected by the pandemic and the government’s response. About 240 officials at health agencies and at the Pentagon, a key player in the vaccine rollout, reported owning a total of between $9 million and $28 million in stocks of drug, manufacturing and biotechnology companies that won federal contracts related to Covid-19 in 2020 and 2021, the Journal’s analysis found. Nearly 400 officials across 50 agencies reported owning stocks in airline, resort, hotel, restaurant and cruise companies in early 2020, the review found.

By March, every major agency was drawn into the pandemic response. That month was the most active for trading by officials across the federal government, including at HHS, in the Journal’s analysis of financial disclosure forms for about 12,000 officials spanning 2016 to 2021. Federal officials reported more than 11,600 trades that month, 44% more than in any other month in the analysis.

The health agencies didn’t respond to requests for comment. A Pentagon spokeswoman said most defense personnel don’t work on matters affecting large defense contractors or affecting the finances of private companies, and said the department is “committed to preventing conflicts of interest.”

…Ethics officials certified that the employees identified by the Journal were in compliance with these rules.“

Don’t worry; As Joe Isuzu once guaranteed America…

Besides, what could possibly lead you to believe you can’t trust the word of a federal bureaucrat?!?

Think about it: In the midst of a public health crisis we were told threatened to cripple the country…a pandemic so lethal it required, we were assured, heretofore unthinkable unconstitutional restrictions to be placed upon the body politic by federal bureaucrats purportedly working tirelessly to rescue the Republic from ruin…hundreds, if not thousands of these same bureaucrats…you know, the more-equal animals…somehow found the time to make a profit off the misery their edicts inflicted on the rest of us. 

And please don’t say there ought to be a law against it, ’cause there is!  But like federal prohibitions against illegal immigration and the corrupt practices of Jim Comey and many other senior DOJ officials, they’re just not being enforced.

So, their assurances of legality notwithstanding, government ethics officials can…

Since we’re on the subject of corruption at the highest levels of government, writing at his Morning Jolt, Jim Geraghty breaks down…

How Biden Invited His Own Midterm Rebuke

 

“Since taking office, Biden’s had plenty of warnings that his policies and approach to the job were steering his party toward a midterm debacle, from the 2021 off-year elections to his historically low job-approval rating and persistently terrible numbers on the right track/wrong track direction-of-the-country question. As far as we can tell, Biden has ignored these warning signs, convinced that, somehow, he’ll find a way to excite the Democratic base enough to mitigate all of those irked independents and Republicans.

…But more often, once Biden makes a decision, he subsequently rejects all evidence that he’s made a mistake. In fact, there’s something cyclical about Biden’s bad decision-making. Because he sees adjusting course as a de facto admission that his earlier decision was wrong, he tends to stick with the bad decision or the unconvincing spin, hoping the situation will get better by itself. Inflation is transitory. The border is secure. “Shelves are not empty.” Afghanistan is stable. This weekend, after yet another month of inflation near the 40-year high, he insisted that the economy is “strong as hell.”

So, this coming November, Republicans may well win back the House and Senate and a slew of governorships, with big implications down-ticket, and Biden may still not change course much; he may genuinely believe that “it’s fair to say we’ve got more done in the first two years than — than any president in the past has.” (George Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan, and maybe even George W. Bush and Barack Obama would like a word. And in terms of greatest challenges faced in their first two years, I think Abraham Lincoln takes the gold, with Bush having a strong case for the medals podium.)

One other reason losing control of Congress may not faze Biden much is that, for much of his presidency, he has simply enacted the policies he wanted and dared the courts to stop him. As our Dan McLaughlin summarized:

He did not have the power to make national housing laws, yet he decreed that landlords could not evict deadbeat tenants. He did not have the power to make national medical decisions, yet he ordered every workplace to mandate vaccinations. He did not have the power to appropriate hundreds of billions of dollars to pay off college debts, but he did that, too. The courts have struck down the first two of those flagrant violations of his oath, and only the search for a proper party with standing to sue presents any real risk that they will not strike down the third.

Heck, if Republicans win control of Congress, will Biden even notice?“

More importantly, regardless of whether Republicans win control of Congress, will Biden even know what year it is?!?

Moving on, here’s a sextet of specially selected items guaranteed to pique the interest of inquiring Conservative minds:

(1). NRO reports Hispanic voters are far more likely than white Democrats to say the southern border is “not secure” — and less likely to say it is secure — according to a new survey from the Republican polling firm WPA Intelligence.

(2). Best of the Web explains why, as the “reporting” of CNN and the WaPo confirm, it’s easy to completely misrepresent the findings of a scientific study regarding precipitation and increased greenhouse gas concentrations when you don’t actually read it.

(3). An “expert” at the Iowa Department of Natural Resources now says the “possible mountain lion” in Des Moines was really someone’s house cat.  Which begs the age-old question, where WOULD WE BE without experts?!?

(4). As this video forwarded by Nick confirms, if one married up Hillary’s words with the actions of Biden and Barry…

…for once in her lying life, she’d actually be telling the truth.

(5). In two related items, Townhall.com‘s Derek Hunter recounts (i) how The Left is losing what little is left of its collective mind, and (ii) as Daniel Francis so insightfully observed decades back, if you want to understand who Progressives are, look at what they accuse Conservatives of being.  

(6). Speaking of the groupthink which dominates Progressivism, in what should come as a shock to no one, the sisters of Sacheen Littlefeather revealed the late activist was a liar and a fraud, as she had nary a drop of Native American blood whatsoever:

“…Trudy Orlandi and Rosalind Cruz shared that they are not ethnically Native American and that they identify as “Spanish.” Littlefeather, the sisters said, was born Marie Louise Cruz but changed her name after rediscovering what she purportedly believed was her Native American heritage and becoming active in protests as a young woman.

Orlandi said, “It’s a lie; My father was who he was. His family came from Mexico. And my dad was born in Oxnard.”“

“Littlefeather” ordering a beef burrito and frijoles refritos for her awards dinner should have been a dead giveaway.

Thus does Marie Louise Cruz posthumously join the ranks of other notable lying race hustlers like Canada’s White-bread Carrie “Morning Star Bear” Bourassa…

…Ward “Heap Big Pile of Buffalo Sh*t” Churchill…

…Lizzie “Lieawatha” Warren…

…Rachel “I’m Black AND Indian” Dolezal…

…and last but not least, Jessica “Blacks Eat Kosher Too!” Krug:

At least Oscar de Corti, who Madison Avenue cast in the role of one of the most recognizable Indians of our generation…

…never lied about his Italian descent.

Which brings us to, no pun intended, The Lighter Side:


Then there’s these from Ed Hickey…

…Speed…

…the lovely Shannon…

…and Balls:

Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with yet another sordid story straight from the pages of The Crime Blotter, as police in Clearwater, FL say a…

Tampa man ‘showed no remorse’ after allegedly killing Clearwater bicyclist with tire iron

 

“…[Jermaine] Bennett (above left) reportedly admitted to attacking [Jeffrey] Chapman (above right) more than 10 times with a tire iron because “the ills of society had gotten to him,” Walek said. Clearwater police said the incident was “totally random” and Chapman was not targeted. “It was a chance encounter that turned deadly while the victim was simply trying to ride his bike home,” Walek said.

Bennett reportedly “showed no remorse for his actions” and went to work at Insight Family Eye Care in Wesley Chapel after allegedly killing Chapman. Clearwater police are also looking for a second suspect in the attack described as a slender man between 6 feet tall and 6 feet, 2 inches. “It’s only a matter of time until we get you,” Walek said while encouraging the second suspect to come forward.

…Police said it is not clear why Bennett and the second suspect were in the Clearwater area…”

This story is noteworthy not for what it says, but what it doesn’t.  For example, after viewing the map below, consider the Black Mr. Bennett, a Tampa (bottom right) resident who worked in Wesley Chapel (top right) traveled at least 30 minutes out of his way to Clearwater (bottom left) for his “totally random” encounter with the White Mr. Chapman.

Then ponder when police fail to include race in their description of a wanted individual, there’s little question as to what it is.  So now you have two Black males involved in the reportedly random killing of a White male one of them drove 30 minutes out of his way to bludgeon to death with a tire iron.  Lastly, view this recent clip from Tucker…

…then hazard a guess as to why Bennett and his accomplice might have taken their frustrations over the “ills of society” out on a random White guy.  Any questions?!?

Magoo

Video of the Day

John Stossel details the difference between the Makers and the Takers. Spoiler Alert: The latter are addressed in verse 10 of chapter 3 of Paul’s Second Epistle to the Thessalonians.

Tales of The Darkside

Jesse Watters highlights a storyline intelligent Pennsylvanians ought to know…which leaves over half the state in the dark.

On the Lighter Side

Enjoy Episode 1 of Matt Walsh’s Who’s the Biggest A-hole?




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