It’s Friday, December 13th, 2013…and here’s The Gouge!
We lead off the last edition of the week with “The Pot Calling the Kettle Black” segment, brought to you today courtesy of Guy Benson writing at Townhall.com and the only Administration in history which, in the true fashion of Marxism, views the internal enemy as the most dangerous:
The latest middle finger from an increasingly lawless and desperate administration. I’m not a lawyer, but I’m fairly confident that “we don’t think much of you” is [not] an acceptable reason to ignore a Congressional subpoena:
The Health and Human Services Department told House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa that it won’t turn over documents related to the security of the Healthcare.gov website because it can’t trust him to keep secret information that could give hackers a roadmap to wreak havoc on the system. Issa has issued a subpoena to MITRE, a government contractor, to turn over unredacted copies of security-testing documents by noon Friday. At issue are website development plans MITRE drafted for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is under HHS. Already, Issa has been given access to the documents he seeks “in camera” — meaning committee staff were able to review them in a room but not keep them — but he is seeking physical copies…Administration officials worry that Issa intends to put them in the public domain, which Esquea argues could compromise the security of the site…While agency letters to Capitol Hill tend to be very deferential, Esquea’s did little to veil the administration’s feelings about Issa’s trustworthiness.
The website is secure, they insist, but they won’t corroborate that claim with evidence because Darrell Issa might leak the truth to the public — a public, incidentally, that is being urged by the government to enter their sensitive personal data into online state and federal systems that have been breached more than once. They warn that potential Issa leaks would jeopardize Healthcare.gov’s security, which is currently in strong shape. Just trust them — and ignore admonitions from IT security experts. What these Obamacare officials fail to understand is that for many Americans, it’s their trustworthiness that’s in question, not Issa’s.
This from the folks who revealed the existence of Stuxnet, the details of the bin Laden mission and who knows how many other bits of highly-classified intelligence in pursuit of short-term political gain.
Next up, some belated thoughts on the recent budget deal. First, two somewhat differing views from (a) the WSJ…
The best that can be said about the House-Senate budget deal announced late Tuesday is that it includes no tax increases, no new incentives for not working, and some modest entitlement reforms. Oh, and it will avoid another shutdown fiasco, assuming enough Republicans refuse to attempt suicide a second time.
…and (b) Mark Tapscott writing at the Morning Examiner:
Either the deal — which rolls back the 2011 sequestration budget ceiling by increasing federal spending from $967 billion to $1.012 trillion in 2014 — represents another cave by spineless congressional Republican leaders or a brainy, pragmatic decision to take the issue off the legislative calendar until after the 2014 election.
Either way, it’s indisputable that the same GOP leaders who in August said defending sequestration was far more important than defunding Obamacare are in December surrendering major ground on … sequestration. Go figure.
…Senate Democrats and a sizable chunk of the Senate Republicans will approve the deal, the former because it castrates sequestration and the latter because they think it enables them to claim to have “saved sequestration” or “cut spending.” In the House, Speaker John Boehner almost certainly has enough votes between supine Republicans and Democrats eager to join in the gutting of sequestration.
In other words, it’s more business as usual in the nation’s capital as taxes, spending and regulations all continue on steeply upward trajectories.
As for our thoughts, we’re with Commentary Magazine‘s Jonathan Tobin, who penned this opinion prior to the deal’s 332-94 passage in the House:
Ideologues Shouldn’t Torpedo Budget Truce
The first reviews are in on the budget deal agreed to by Republican House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan and Democratic Senate Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray, and people on both the left and the right have found plenty not to like about it. This is no grand bargain or long-term settlement of the great divide over how to achieve fiscal sanity. It neither reins in spending nor does it provide for what Ryan has always said was most needed for the government to get its fiscal house in order: fundamental entitlement reform. That’s more than enough reason for many conservatives and Tea Partiers to reject it out of hand as an inadequate compromise that merely keeps feeding the government leviathan that they rightly believe needs to be cut back rather than maintained.
But, if, like the those on the left who will vote against it because it makes some cuts and doesn’t give them their wish list items like an expansion of unemployment benefits, conservatives manage to torpedo Ryan’s efforts, they will be making a huge mistake. After a three-year standoff between the parties on the budget, it was time for a truce. The modest deal restores certainty to the economy and eliminates some of the most painful sequester cuts, including those involving defense. Though it falls far short of anything that might be called reform, it does establish a principle that is necessary to it: any discretionary spending increases are offset by mandatory spending cuts. That is a step toward fiscal sanity that should be taken.
Those on the right who are dismayed about the abandonment of the sequester have a point. Only by insisting on mandatory and draconian across-the-board cuts have Republicans been able to make any kind of an impact on the fiscal debate. But as useful as the sequester has been, it is too imprecise an instrument to become a permanent part of the process. As our Max Boot has repeatedly pointed out, the cuts that have been imposed on defense are damaging national security and must, sooner or later, be eliminated.
Many on the right are also denouncing Ryan’s deal not just because it doesn’t give them what they want on taxes and spending but because they don’t see the need to compromise at this moment. They see President Obama’s poll numbers falling and think the time is right to push hard again for the kind of reform that is needed, not an agreement that merely kicks the can down the road. But this is the same kind of faulty thinking from groups like Heritage Action and Freedom Works that led conservatives to shut down the government as part of a vain effort to defund ObamaCare. Apparently they’ve learned nothing from that debacle.
This is exactly the wrong time for the GOP to go back to a scenario where they can be depicted as impeding efforts to keep the government working. Doing so would distract the country from the ongoing worries about the devastating impact of ObamaCare on individuals and the economy.
“If your enemy is superior, evade him. If angry, irritate him. If equally matched, fight, and if not split and reevaluate.” – Bud Fox quoting Sun Tzu
Tactics aside, the deal is necessary because it reflects the reality of divided government that both President Obama and the Tea Party have been butting heads over ever since the 2010 midterms. Under the current circumstances there is simply no way for either the Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives or the Democrats running the White House and the Senate to get their way. The accord reached between Ryan and Murray is simply an acknowledgement of this fact and an effort to keep the nation on an even keel until we can have another election to try and resolve this mess next November.
Avoiding compromise and setting off another cataclysmic fight over the budget or the debt ceiling (the latter is not part of this deal, leaving both parties free to set off another confrontation sometime in 2014 if they wish) satisfies the conservative impulse to draw a line in the sand over an ever-expanding government. But, as Ryan has said, Congress must deal with the world as it is rather than merely operate on the basis of how they’d like it to be. The only hope of getting closer to real entitlement reform is for the GOP to win the 2014 midterms. Some on the right are still laboring under the delusion that staging another shutdown or threatening a default is the right way to make their case to the country. But only someone utterly insensitive to the mood of the country would think that is either good politics or good public policy. If they go back to those tactics, Republicans will be forfeiting any chance of winning back the Senate in the coming year.
There’s little doubt that Republicans worried about primary challenges from the right or thinking about running for president in 2016 will be inclined to eschew any such compromise. But passing this budget will give their party a shot at winning in the midterms and take the wind out of the Democratic effort to paint them as irresponsible. Compromise is often the coward’s way out and leads to more trouble. But in this case, it is simply good sense. Though the cuts it imposes are no more than a rounding error, Republicans will do well to take what they can rather than to seek the impossible and thus render more progress less likely.
A truce is something you embrace when it will enable you to go back into the fray better prepared to prevail. Ryan is smart enough to know this, even if some of his colleagues don’t. It’s time for the GOP to keep its powder dry and come back to the table when they’ve got the votes and the seats to pass the kind of reform budget that Ryan and the rest of his party would prefer.
To paraphrase an old adage, he who fights and runs away from another unwinnable budget battle which could only serve to divert attention from the Unaffordable Care Act debacle just may live to take the Senate next November and the White House in 2016.
Meanwhile, PJ Media‘s Robert Spencer reminds us why 2016 can’t come soon enough:
The death of Nelson Mandela has been the occasion for a great deal of self-righteous preening. Barack Obama cribbed from Edwin M. Stanton in his statement, declaring that Mandela “belongs to the ages,” but CNN helpfully recalled more original words from Obama about Mandela from 2010, in which he laid claim to the great man’s mantle:
Through his choices, Mandela made it clear that we did not have to accept the world as it is — that we could do our part to seek the world as it should be….In the most modest of ways, I was one of those people who tried to answer his call.
The tributes to Mandela all sounded similar themes: he fought oppression and injustice and prevailed, transforming South Africa and the world. But Obama’s was by no means the only accolade to contain a self-congratulatory note. Numerous leftists and Islamic supremacists hurried to remind the world that Mandela was once branded a “terrorist,” implying that modern-day terrorists would one day be hailed as new additions to the pantheon of secular saints. Al Jazeera’s Wajahat Ali tweeted:
Let’s never forget #Mandela’s courage once made him despised & feared. The long road to icon-hood is paved w/ persecution & sacrifice.
Yet these modern-day mini-Mandelas, however they may style themselves as champions of the downtrodden and oppressed, laboring mightily against the contemporary incarnations of the architects of apartheid, have a curious blind spot. Mandela fought against an unjust system built upon racial prejudice. His struggle is easy enough to support from twenty-first century armchairs, when the oppressive system is long dead and no one in his right mind would support it or call for its revival. But oppression and injustice are by no means dead on the African continent – they’re just coming from a different source.
A source of a darker complexion the Left refuses to recognize.
Which brings us to another, less-heralded Head of State The Obamao rubbed elbows with in the crowd of “mourners”:
Not that “Madiba” had any problem with this most blood-thirsty and destructive of dictators:
Speaking of insincerity and the Mandela memorial, courtesy of George Lawlor…
Obama snaps selfie at Mandela memorial
Taking selfies and hitting on some attractive Danish trim in front of his less-than-comely wife; isn’t that what every Leader of the Free World does at a state funeral?!?
Then again, The Obamao’s become rather accustomed to presiding over demises:
Since we’re on the subject of the worst performance overseas by an American President since Bush I blew chunks in front of Kiichi Miyazawa, here’s Hope ‘n Change‘s thoughts on Der Obafuhrer’s
Unreality Show
As Barack Obama delivered a self-serving eulogy which was only marginally about Nelson Mandela, his words were interpreted for the deaf by a man communicating in sign language which grew increasingly bizarre, while the message he was delivering became entirely meaningless. In other words, it was exactly like most of Obama’s speeches.
But in this case, the alleged sign-language interpreter, Thamsanqa Jantjie, claims he was actually having a severe schizophrenic episode in which he started hearing voices, seeing angels, and believing that if he liked his health insurance he could keep it. Adding to the problem, it now seems that Mr. Jantjie knew as little about sign-language for the deaf as Kathleen Sibelius knew about hiring competent web designers.
To his credit, Mr. Jantjie tried to remain cool and composed when he noticed the winged lizards crawling out of Barack Obama’s ears because he was still sane enough to realize that he was surrounded by dozens of well-armed security people who have extremely little tolerance for people who start to shriek and roll around on the ground near the president unless the SEIU has paid them to.
Happily, Mr. Jantjie is once again taking his anti-psychotic medications and should soon be ready to tackle an exciting new assignment: hosting his own show on MSNBC and using sign-language to communicate with their many “differently abled” audience members who are hard of thinking.
Then again, as Day-by-Day details, “self-service” is the only level with which this narcissist seems familiar:
He’s a helluva guy in a lot of ways; just ask him!
And for those still benighted enough not to realize the impact The OBozo’s clown act…
…is having on America’s image overseas, here’s some food for thought, courtesy of The Washington Free Beacon:
A Chinese naval vessel tried to force a U.S. guided missile warship to stop in international waters recently, causing a tense military standoff in the latest case of Chinese maritime harassment, according to defense officials. The guided missile cruiser USS Cowpens, which recently took part in disaster relief operations in the Philippines, was confronted by Chinese warships in the South China Sea near Beijing’s new aircraft carrier Liaoning, according to officials familiar with the incident.
…The Cowpens was conducting surveillance of the Liaoning at the time. The carrier had recently sailed from the port of Qingdao on the northern Chinese coast into the South China Sea. According to the officials, the run-in began after a Chinese navy vessel sent a hailing warning and ordered the Cowpens to stop. The cruiser continued on its course and refused the order because it was operating in international waters.
Then a Chinese tank landing ship sailed in front of the Cowpens and stopped, forcing the Cowpens to abruptly change course…
The last time a foreign power took similar advantage of an hopelessly inept White House…
…Jimmy Carter was wearing a sweater and suggesting America lower its collective thermostat.
In other International News of Note, it appears Kenyan authorities are both as inept and corrupt as their American cousin:
A report by the New York Police Department into the September terror attacks at an upscale shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya suggests that only four gunmen were involved — and all four may have escaped the clutches of the Kenyan police and armed forces.
The report, released Tuesday, casts new doubts on the official story of the attack, which began September 21 when gunmen from the Al Qaeda-linked Somali terror group Al-Shabab attacked the mall, a popular spot among Western diplomats and tourists. After a siege by Kenyan authorities, followed by several explosions that resulted in the partial collapse of the mall on the morning of September 24, government officials claimed that the site had been cleared and that four attackers had died.
…The report is highly critical of the response by Kenyan authorities, saying that a tactical response team did not arrive at Westgate until 90 minutes after the attack began. Police — who were fully armed, but were not carrying identification — entered the complex and were fired upon by Kenyan soldiers who had also been summoned. The friendly fire incident killed the tactical response team’s commander and wounded another officer.
The report also says that Kenyan police “had no idea what the mall looked like internally,” and didn’t know they could access the mall’s closed circuit TV system.
…The report also acknowledges “significant” evidence that Kenyan soldiers looted the mall during and following the siege.
Sorta like what the Lying King and his mate…
“…and rob entire countries!”
…have been doing to America since they came to town.
On the Lighter Side…
Then there’s this little bon mot forwarded by Mark Foster:
Until Monday…
Magoo
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