It’s Monday, April 16th, Tax Day 2012….and here’s The Gouge!

First up, as FOX News reports….

Obama: Reported details of prostitution scandal fall short of Secret Service standards

 

President Obama, in his first public remarks on the prostitution scandal involving members of the Secret Service, said Sunday that he will be “angry” if the reported allegations against the agents turn out to be true. (Unless of course all the Secret Service agents were Black, in which case they could have been The Obamao’s sons, and the Columbian hookers had obviously entrapped them in some sort of racially-motivated conspiracy.) He said Secret Service personnel, like the rest of any U.S. delegation abroad, must “observe the highest standards.”

“We’re here on behalf of our people and that means that we conduct ourselves with the utmost dignity and probity. And obviously what’s been reported doesn’t match up with those standards,” Obama said, on the closing day of his visit to Colombia.

The president, though, said he would wait until the internal investigation is complete before rendering a judgment. (Since when?!?) He said he expects the probe to be “thorough” and “rigorous” — and that if the allegations turn out to be true, “then of course I’ll be angry.”

And we wouldn’t want The Incredible Obamao….

 ….ANGRY!  Then again, angry or not, what’s the difference?  We wouldn’t like BO calm or roiled, we wouldn’t like him clean or soiled, we wouldn’t like BO in a box, we wouldn’t like him with a fox, we wouldn’t like BO here or there, we wouldn’t like him….anywhere!

Rumors the Secret Service responded to B. Hussein’s comments by observing Team Tick-Tock in its entirety fell woefully short of America‘s standards remain unconfirmed.

In a related item, Bill Clinton wondered….

….what the fuss was all about?!?

Next up, yet another sign The Obamao’s desperate to divert attention to anything but his failed first term….

Obama urges Romney to release past tax returns

 

If Romney had half a clue, or a full set, he’d reply, “Sure….just as you release all your college transcripts and writings, previous passports and order the state of Hawaii to release your original birth certificate.”

And only when….

Obama declines to voluntarily pay more in taxes

 

….The Dear Misleader puts HIS money where his mouth is and cuts the IRS a check for more than The First Marxette and he owe.

Oh….and when he….

Obama paid lower tax rate than secretary

 

….pays a higher tax rate than his secretary; and provides….

Obama White House Pays Women Less Than Men

 

….equal pay for equal work!

And since we’re on the subject of signs of desperation, Townhall.com‘s Kate Hicks offers her observations on a possibility we’ve raised several times in the past:

Hillary for VP? The Saga Continues

 

To file under the Law of Unintended Consequences: speculation is rising that last week’s “Rosenflap” episode may have paved the way for an Obama/Clinton ticket. Hillary Clinton. (A point we made prior to Rosengate.) Hmm.

Hilary Rosen is the now-infamous Democratic strategist who shoved both feet in her mouth faster than you can say, “Stay at home mom,” and now, it seems, there’s some concern over the damage she may have done to a staunchly pro-Obama voting bloc: women. Indeed, both the President and the First Lady issued statements distancing themselves from Rosen, as did key campaign operatives Jim Messina and David Axelrod. The theory goes that if Mitt starts picking up more support of the feminine persuasion, the Dems may have to drop Joe for Hillary.

Michael Goodwin of the New York Post says he believes without a doubt that Team Obama would make the swap if it could secure them a win, despite the fact that they’re adamant about keeping Biden. Hillary, he says, is their potential ace in the hole, and the numbers show that Obama desperately needs women to be competitive this year.

According to data compiled by Rutgers University, the number of women voters has been higher than men in every presidential election since 1964. While a majority of men tend to vote Republican, women usually lean Democratic and with bigger numbers. They went for Obama by a huge margin in 2008.

Over 70 million women voted, against 60.7 million men, and women gave 56 percent of their votes to Obama and just 43 percent to John McCain. Men split almost evenly.

By comparison, Democrat John Kerry got 51 percent of a lower turnout among women in 2004 and lost to George W. Bush.

True, Obama had an 18-point lead among women, but if the ladies start feeling less passionately about what Obama can do for them, all they’d have to do is not vote, and Romney could clinch a win.

Now, the flip side of this is that Hillary has vehemently denied that she wants to be VP, and has even said she’ll retire at the end of her tenue as Secretary of State this term. But Goodwin has a theory about why she might have to sign on as number two:

As for Clinton, some in her camp say it’s not clear she would say yes even if Obama came begging. They say she doesn’t want to be vice president and doesn’t see how running on his ticket would help her win the Oval Office in 2016.

Good points — up to a point. But if Obama needs her, she has little choice. If she says no and he loses, she’ll be blamed. If she says no and he wins, he will owe her nothing in 2016.

Of course, there’s plenty of time for Team O to do some damage control, and it’s not even clear that female support has begun to wane for him. But the lefty pipe dream of HRC for VP lives on — and if that’s the case, then the GOP has its work cut out for it.

While we continue to believe Biden will be dropped from the 2012 ticket in favor of the love of the late Vince Foster’s abbreviated life….

….we’re far from convinced the inclusion of Clinton will impress anyone other than hardcore Feminazis already married the Dimocrats.  Biden supposedly brought foreign policy expertise to a ticket devoid of any experience whatsoever; Hillary, on the other hand, lends nothing but her oversight of four years of diplomatic disasters. And her negative ratings are second only to Obama’s.

Speaking of diplomatic disasters, the WSJ details….

A Pyongyang Joke

The missile may have fizzled, but so did American policy.

 

North Korea’s declared intention in launching a ballistic missile Friday morning was to place a satellite in orbit to mark the 100th birthday of Kim Il Sung, the regime’s founder. After the missile’s failure 80 seconds into its flight, current leader Kim Jong Eun will have to come up with some other firecracker for his grandfather, probably another nuclear test. Maybe that will fizzle, too.

The missile failure is now being portrayed as a crashing humiliation for the North, particularly after it had invited foreign media to inspect the launch site. No doubt it represents a loss of face for the young Kim and his military machine, which spent an estimated $450 million on the missile. That the North admitted the failure to its people over state TV may also suggest that the Great Successor’s political grip isn’t firm.

Then again, more than the North Koreans should feel humiliated by the launch. It was only in February that the Obama Administration struck a deal with Pyongyang, offering 240,000 metric tons of food aid over the next year in exchange for the usual promises of good nuclear behavior. We warned at the time that the North was certain to break the deal. They did so within weeks.

Why they broke their word as quickly as they did is a good question. Maybe it reflects the regime’s internal power dynamics—or maybe the North figures it can extract a bigger bribe if it first indulges in some outrageous behavior. It won’t be the first time they’ve played that game to profitable effect.

Whatever the case, the North’s decision to launch is also an indication of its disdain for the protests of the U.S. and its allies. Yesterday the regime was proved right when the U.N. Security Council refused to impose additional sanctions, never mind that the launch violated two of its previous resolutions. “Members of the Security Council agree to continue consultations on an appropriate response,” said U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice. Consultation is not a policy.

The larger Administration error is that it continues to bounce between the equally futile alternatives of engagement with the regime and condemnation at the U.N. That may suit Barack Obama’s re-election interest in being seen as the President who ended all wars and other global unpleasantness. But it all but guarantees that the North will continue to provoke an “international community” that it reasonably has concluded will impose no serious penalties.

After Friday’s launch failure it will be tempting to think that the North Korean threat is best treated as a joke. But their proven nuclear capability is no joke, and it will be even less of one whenever the regime finally masters the ballistic technology that allows them to put parts of the U.S. at risk. And that’s to say nothing of the threat the regime poses every day to its own people.

U.S. policy would do better to leave the U.N. behind, work with like-minded countries such as Japan, and use sovereign U.S. means—particularly financial sanctions—to hasten this regime’s end. Otherwise the real joke is still on us.

Soooo….why aren’t we laughing?  Fool me once, shame on you; fool me forty-two consecutive times….that takes either a diplomat or a Dimocrat….or, as is more likely, both!

For more on the easily hoodwinked, we turn to James Taranto and the WaPo‘s E.J. “Da Idiot” Dionne:

In an op-ed about Mitt Romney in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Fred Barnes reports: “According to a Romney adviser, his private view of immigration isn’t as anti-immigrant as he often sounded.” The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne is shocked, shocked:

What exactly does that mean? Does it mean Romney said things that he doesn’t really believe? What are we supposed to make of a candidate who takes certain public positions to court one group of voters–and then tries to reassure an entirely different group of voters by leaking the fact that he doesn’t really believe what he said to win votes from the first group? How many other “private” positions does Romney hold that we don’t know about?

We’d like to wish Dionne a happy birthday. We know it’s belated, but we found out only now that he was born yesterday.

As Bugs Bunny would say, “What a….

….gullibull!

Next up, it’s the Natalie Holloway Memorial “We’ll Tell You What’s News” segment, courtesy of those, like Greta Van Susteren, dedicated to turning heartache into headlines.  We’d like to preface this item by saying our comments are not intended to minimize the untimely death of Eric Lederman, only point out the almost farcical reporting and response on the part of the local press and school authorities.

12-Year-Old Boy Fatally Struck by Baseball

 

At 12 years old, Eric Lederman was young, full of life and laughter. In just seconds his life abruptly came to an end Thursday night – as his fight to survive after being struck in the neck by a baseball during a travel league game in Wheaton Wednesday night. Lederman was a member of the Oswego Baseball and Softball Association – not affiliated with his school district. Parents attending a Friday night practice remained in shock by the child’s sudden death.

“Everybody is concerned. All parents should be,” parent Dave Teller said. (Why?  Because of a freak accident which occurred when the poor kid was playing catch?)

The 12-year-old’s baseball coach said he was an inspiration to his teammates, coaches, and baseball family – a community torn apart by a life lost far too soon. (“a community torn apart”; how?) FOX Chicago News has learned Lederman has an older brother in high school and a sister in college. His death has affected thousands of students from grades K-12. School district officials are urging parents to pay close attention to their children, especially in the coming days. (Eric was in 6th Grade….how many kids in other grades, let alone other schools, could possibly have KNOWN him, let alone been “affected” by his death?!?)

“We really need parents to take a close look at their children over the weekend to see if they notice any differences or if they’re having any problems so that they can call the school and we can help those students get through this,” said Kristine Liptrot, Director of Communications for the Oswego Community Unit School District 308. Liptrot says grief counselors have been dispatched to all campuses. (Why?  The accident had no connection whatsoever with the public education system.)

“Because this effected so many students throughout our district not just at this school we have pulled together all of our social workers, all of our counselors as well as some of our school nurses,” said Liptrot. (Where WOULD modern society be without grief counselors?!?)

To summarize the hollow hyperboles:

(1).  Eric was hit in the neck playing catch during pre-game warm-ups; what about this freak accident should cause parents added concern?

(2).  We thought unfortunate tragedies brought communities together; so why would a freak accident tear this one apart, particularly when it’s doubtful the vast majority of residents even knew Eric or his family?

(3).  “Affected thousands of students grades K-12″….seriously?  Think about it; when you were in 6th Grade, how many high-schoolers or kindergarteners did YOU know?

(4).  Eric was playing on a travel team; why would this elicit any response or involvement whatsoever by the public school system, let alone the all-hands-on-deck activation of the grief-counseling industry?

(5).  How on earth did our parents and grandparents cope with, let alone live through the Great Depression, two world wars, a “police action” and Vietnam without the benefit of grief counselors?!?

Eric Lederman’s death was truly tragic; the reporting by the local media and reaction of school authorities borders, at least to us, on ghoulish.  But it’s all-too typical of a MSM and society determined to sensationalize every calamity that comes along.

On the Lighter Side….

Then there’s this sign of the times from Jim Gleaves:

Finally, we’ll wrap things up with the “Your Tax Dollars At Work” segment, and this little beauty from the City by the Bay, courtesy of Jeff Foutch and CNS News:

Shovel Ready in San Fran: $205,075 to ‘Translocate’ One Shrub from Path of Stimulus Project

 

Arctostaphylos franciscana: available at your local garden center

The government spent at least $205,075 in 2010 to “translocate” a single bush in San Francisco that stood in the path of a $1.045-billionhighway-renovation project that was partially funded by the economic stimulus legislation President Barack Obama signed in 2009.

“In October 2009, an ecologist identified a plant growing in a concrete-bound median strip along Doyle Drive in the Presidio as Arctostaphylos franciscana,” the U.S. Department of Interior reported in the Aug. 10, 2010 edition of the Federal Register. “The plant’s location was directly in the footprint of a roadway improvement project designed to upgrade the seismic and structural integrity of the south access to the Golden Gate Bridge.

“The translocation of the Arctostaphylos franciscana plant to an active native plant management area of the Presidio was accomplished, apparently successfully and according to plan, on January 23, 2010,” the Interior Department reported.

The bush—a Franciscan manzanita—was a specimen of a commercially cultivated species of shrub that can be purchased from nurseries for as little as $15.98 per plant. The particular plant in question, however, was discovered in the midst of the City of San Francisco, in the median strip of a highway, and was deemed to be the last example of the species in the “wild.” (Like so much else involving modern Liberalism, you simply cannot make this stuff up!)

Prior to the discovery of this “wild” Franciscan manzanita, the plant had been considered extinct for as long as 62 years–extinct, that is, outside of people’s yards and botanical gardens.

Before that, the bush had grown in the “wild” in two cemeteries in San Francisco’s Richmond District as well as on Mount Davidson, a peak in the middle of San Francisco. The Department of Interior said that there had also been “unconfirmed sightings” of the shrub in the city’s Haight-Ashbury District—an area that became famous in the late 1960s as the epicenter of the psychedelic hippie movement. (How does one have “unconfirmed sightings” of a plant; what….does it have legs?!?)

The Haight-Ashbury population of the plant, the Interior Department said in the Federal Register, was believed to have been “lost to urbanization.” On Oct. 16, 2009, Dr. Daniel Gluesenkamp, a botanist who was then the director of Habitat Protection and Restoration for Audubon Canyon Ranch, noticed the manzanita when he was driving along Doyle Drive (the highway leading to the Golden Gate Bride that is now under renovation). The manzanita had been previously hidden by other vegetation but was uncovered as the area was being cleared in preparation for road construction.

….The plant is now protected by a fence and its location is kept secret, in part because the Presidio Trust and the National Park Service fear that nature-lovers seeking to see the rare wild Manzanita might trample it to death.

The “rare wild Manzanita”; yeah….rare as a Liberal with common sense.  As for the “wild Manzanita”, seeing as it came from a median strip in San Francisco, it sounds less like an endangered plant and more like the name of….

….Bawney Fwank and David Bwock’s….

….favorite male exotic dancer.

Arrrrriiiiiiibbbba!

Magoo