It’s Friday, February 27th, 2015…but before we begin, here’s a little walk down memory lane, courtesy first of the WSJ and this snippet from a February 23rd letter to FCC chairman Tom Wheeler from House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz regarding the FCC’s vote to reclassify the Internet as a public utility:
“The Communications Act of 1934 grants the Chairman of the FCC authority to act as the Commission’s Chief Executive Officer. As such, it is at the Chairman’s discretion that votes are scheduled and delayed, draft rules made public, and the comment periods provided. Yet, with regard to this 332-page order, there were no public hearings, the document remains secret, no comment period existed, and you declined to testify in an open hearing before the Committee. In addition to these concerns, questions exist as to whether the White House had an improper influence on the Commission’s drafting of these rule changes. These concerns were heightened by reports over the weekend that the emails exchanged between you and the White House represent “unprecedented coordination.” On February 6, 2015, the Committee requested documents in pursuit of this investigation, yet Friday’s deadline passed without the documents being produced.
The American people deserve—and have requested—an open and transparent FCC process. Recent polls show that 73 percent of Americans want greater disclosure of the details of the FCC’s proposal to regulate the Internet, and nearly eight in ten favor public disclosure of the exact wording and details of the proposal before the FCC votes on it. Indeed, Commissioners Ajit Pai and Michael O’Rielly just today called for exactly this—the public release of the 332-page order and a temporary delay of the vote. Nonetheless, citing past Commission practice, you refused to publicly release the text of the 332-page draft order. In a past rulemaking of similar magnitude, however, the Chairman did publicly release the rule prior to a vote. This was done in response to congressional requests, including calls from then-Senator Barack Obama.“
The second is brought to us by the biggest shyster since Harold Hill:
What a difference six years…and unbridled power…makes; “unbridled” only because the leadership of the GOP opposition has proved about as useful as a…
Oh,…and one more thought:
Right here, you ignorant bimbette:
What difference does it make NOW?!?
Coupled with the recent disclosure you took money from a foreign government lobbying the U.S. while Secretary of State, perhaps a great deal.
Now, here’s The Gouge!
We lead off the last edition of February with a must-read piece from the WSJ‘s Dan Henninger, who cautions GOP voters…
“…The task that Barack Obama is dumping on the next U.S. president, of either party, is overwhelming.
Here’s the job description: Needed, a U.S. president able to confront a world in chaos, rebuild shattered alliances, revive the country’s demoralized intelligence services and senior officer corps, manage foreign and domestic demands with a budget that will be drained for years by fantastically expensive debt servicing, and along the way restore public faith in an array of deeply politicized federal bureaucracies—Justice, HHS, EPA, Labor, Internal Revenue, the NLRB, FCC, EEOC, even the Federal Reserve.
The U.S. just tried electing a rookie president and had six years of amateur hour. It doesn’t work. And it won’t work again if the next president, whether rookie or former governor, shows up in the Oval Office in January 2017 with not much more than his victory cape and some political pals.
Given the scale of the challenge, the next U.S. president isn’t going to have a six-month honeymoon to figure out the policy details of what he wants to do. Whoever occupies the White House after the Obama Terminator presidency stops will have to hit the ground running from day one. Competent Cabinet secretaries and their deputies aren’t something you can grab off the shelf. The next president, before the Inauguration, will have to be someone who can attract about 100 of the most skilled and yes, experienced, people available into government.
By the way, the Clinton brigades could stock a respectable Democratic government overnight. Most of these Republican presidential candidates couldn’t name three people they’d bring into an administration today…”
Here’s hoping Scott Walker reads the WSJ; or better yet, subscribes to The Daily Gouge!
Next up, courtesy of NRO, Victor Davis Hanson relates how, particularly when it comes to Progressive public policy, garbage in equals garbage out:
“…President Obama did not, as he alleges, override Congress because it failed to act on immigration. Instead he ignored it because Congress would not act in a particular fashion that he found ideologically akin to his own beliefs.
…The reason why immigration is now a mess is not because there are no liberal solutions, but because there are so many illiberal stumbling blocks…”
Since we’re on the subject of ill-advised, counterproductive Progressive public policy, here’s Dirty Jobs‘ Mike Rowe’s take on another of Liberalism’s all-purpose cure-for-whatever-ails-you:
“Back in 1979, I was working as an usher for United Artists at a multiplex in Baltimore. The minimum wage was $2.90, and I earned every penny.
When I wasn’t tearing tickets in half and stopping kids from theater hopping, I was cleaning out the bathrooms, emptying the trash, and scrapping dubious substances off the theater floor with a putty knife. I wore a silly outfit and smiled unnaturally, usually for the entirety of my shift. I worked 18 hours my first week, mostly after school, and earned $62.20. Before taxes. But I was also learning the importance of “soft skills.” I learned to show up on time and tuck my shirt in. I embraced the many virtues of proper hygiene. Most of all, I learned how to take shit from the public, and suck up to my boss.
…Last year, I narrated a commercial about US manufacturing, paid for by Walmart. It started a shitstorm, and cost me many thousands virtual friends. Among the aggrieved, was a labor organization called Jobs With Justice. They wanted me to know just how unfairly Walmart was treating it’s employees. So they had their members send my foundation over 8,000 form letters, asking me to meet with unhappy Walmart workers, and join them in their fight against “bad jobs.”
While I’m sympathetic to employees who want to be paid fairly, I prefer to help on an individual basis. I’m also skeptical that a modest pay increase will make an unskilled worker less reliant upon an employer whom they affirmatively resent. I explained this to Jobs With Justice in an open letter, and invited anyone who felt mistreated to explore the many training opportunities and scholarships available through mikeroweWORKS. I further explained that I couldn’t couldn’t join them in their fight against “bad jobs,” because frankly, I don’t believe there is such a thing. My exact words were, “Some jobs pay better, some jobs smell better, and some jobs have no business being treated like careers. But work is never the enemy, regardless of the wage. Because somewhere between the job and the paycheck, there’s still a thing called opportunity, and that’s what people need to pursue.”…”
How is it the host of a television show is able to grasp a reality which is totally lost on…
…the country’s Secretary of Labor?!? Hells bells, the vast majority of this Administration isn’t qualified to work as a secretary, let alone run the government of the (at least for now!) most powerful nation on the planet!!!
Moving on, though his suggestion undoubtedly falls upon dear ears, (not to mention closed minds), Kurt Schlichter urges…
The last few weeks have raised a critical question for all Americans: Is the liberal elite unbelievably dumb or unbelievably cynical? Do our over-credentialed, under-educated, would-be betters actually believe the bullstuff they are shoveling, or do they really think that we normal Americans are so stupid that they can lie to our faces and we will just take it?
I’m guessing Door Number Two. Liberals know they are full of it; they just think the rest of us are as foolish as the welfare-guzzling mouth-breathers who vote for them.
It’s time for the lies to stop.
…Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton. Lena Dunham. Jon Gruber. That woman with the glasses who thinks we should carpet bomb ISIS with want ads.All liberals.All liars.
And when not-so-subtle government persuasion doesn’t work…!!!
“Lawmakers from cattle producing states are seeing red following a 571-page federal report that that encourages Americans to go green. A panel of nutrition experts recruited by the Obama administration to craft the newest dietary guidelines suggested last week that the government should consider the environment when deciding what people should eat.
…Tufts University professor Miriam Nelson says the panel isn’t telling all Americans to become vegan but adds, “We are saying that people need to eat less meat.We need to start thinking about what’s sustainable. …Other countries have started doing this – including sustainability in their recommendations.We should be doing it, too.”
Talk about an oxymoron: “experts”…”recruited by the Obama Administration”.
Speaking of oxymorons, in the latest from the Religion of Peace…
Saudi Arabia court gives death penalty to man who renounced his Muslim faith
“…On Tuesday morning, Saudi newspapers reported that the death sentence had been handed down in the town of Hafr al-Batin to a man who had “denounced his faith”. He was not named but was said to have uploaded a video of himself tearing up a copy of the Koran and hitting it with his shoe.
“In the video he cursed God, Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) and his daughter Fatimah and ripped a copy of the Holy Qur’an and hit it with a shoe,” the Saudi Gazette quoted an official as saying. “The death sentence was issued after his apostasy was proved.”
The death penalty is the standard penalty for apostasy in the Muslim world, though it is rarely carried out, even in Saudi Arabia which still carries out regular executions. The man in this case has the right to appeal, and can also avoid the penalty by repenting…”
What should concern the world isn’t the Islamic penalty for apostasy, but that Islam even considers apostasy deserving of a penalty…let alone capital punishment! More on this in Monday’s edition.
Turning now from those unjustly incarcerated to those inexplicably not imprisoned, it appears Iowans aren’t nicknamed “Hawkeyes” for nothing:
…as in nada, zip, zilch, goose egg, diddly-squat! Guess Marty O’Money’s tax-and-spend show doesn’t travel well outside of The People’s Dimocratic Republic of Maryland. Or perhaps more accurately, his utter economic inanities don’t play outside the Up-and-Coming-Communist-Confines of Baltimore City and Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties.
Then again, Marylanders thought so much of him by the time his 2nd term expired they passed up the chance to elect the state’s first Black governor and voted in a Republican!
And in the Environmental Moment, the WSJ‘s Holman Jenkins weighs in on The Obamao’s latest flip of the bird…
Activists get their jollies blocking pipeline construction, but the crude still flows through your neighborhood.
“…Opposing Keystone, it goes without saying, will not make the slightest difference to things opponents claim to care about. It will not alter by an infinitesimal fraction of a degree mankind’s reliance on fossil fuels or the continued development of hydrocarbon resources.
…Which raises a question: What are Mr. Obama’s true policy convictions, if any?
After the midterm elections, we might have expected him to try to tempt the new Republican majority with a tax-reform deal in return for a carbon tax. Even if the effort didn’t bear immediate fruit, the way would be pointed toward a long-term bargain to restore growth while addressing climate-change fears. We also would have expected him finally to wave through the Keystone pipeline, if only out of irritation with green allies for tormenting him over a phony symbolic issue.
Wrong on both counts. Polls show the public supports the pipeline; labor wants the jobs. But for Mr. Obama, the balancing factor is clearly the criticism he would receive from the Sierra Club, the hostile tweets that might be directed at him from millennials, and the money that a handful of green billionaires might redirect to the Clinton Foundation rather than Mr. Obama’s own post-presidential occupations.
What seems absent from his calculations are any practical considerations outside the political bubble, such as the millions of barrels of flammable liquid that will be rumbling through America’s residential neighborhoods aboard mile-long oil trains.“
Just ask the good citizens ofLac-Mégantic, Quebec:
At least, those still alive to answer.
But what’s 47 lives compared to the hundreds of millions, even billions, The Dear Misleader can expect from wealthy Environazis after leaving office?!?
On the Lighter Side…
Finally, courtesy of the WSJ, Seth Cropsey offers some nautical food for thought:
“…In the Cold War era, the U.S. Sixth Fleet, America’s Mediterranean naval force, consisted of two aircraft carriers, an amphibious ready group and escorting vessels. Today it consists of a command ship based in Italy and a handful of destroyers armed with guided missiles based in Spain. In a crisis the Sixth Fleet commander must rely on naval combatants that might be passing through on their way to or from the Persian Gulf.
Some might see this reduction in force as a peace dividend.But the result is diminished American influence in a region that is increasingly unstable…”
Meanwhile, as Barry and Kerry continue to negotiate an indefensible capitulation to the inevitability of an Iranian nuke, Tehran conducts actual attacks…
…against a mock-up of a Nimitz-class carrier.
Anyone else have a reasonable explanation why this wasn’t the lead story on every Evening News telecast?
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