The Daily Gouge Archive, Wednesday, July 29th, 2020

On July 30, 2020, in Uncategorized, by magoo1310

It’s Wednesday, July 29th, 2020…but before we begin, courtesy of Jeff Foutch, here’s another meme worth far more than a mere thousand words:

Now, here’s The Gouge!

We lead off the mid-week edition with the story of someone who’s finally had enough, bidding…

Goodbye, Washington DC.

Mayor Bowser broke her contract with residents like me. So we’re leaving.

“During the last night in my condo in DC, I had to walk my dog an extra lap around the block because a crazy person was outside screaming obscenities. I wasn’t afraid. I just didn’t feel like getting into it with him or having to listen to his story—his “Let me just tell you something,” attempt to get money from me. It was 1 A.M., and I was tired from a night out—but more so, just tired in general. Tired of it all.

…We put up with a lot in order to live in the city: lousy transportation, noise, traffic, pollution, and our fair share of homeless people. It’s all just a part of living in urban America. But I’ll gladly tolerate sirens and car horns in exchange for a new restaurant on the corner. For major league sports, performing arts, museums, and bars, I will put up with the occasional crazy guy on the street, metro derailment, or gridlocked traffic because an intersection is blocked by some group “raising awareness” about something or other. That’s just the price of the urban lifestyle, and as a life-long city dweller, I knew what I was paying for—and with what.

I did my part, too. My role in the fabric of urban society, overlooked but essential, was to spend my money. Eat, drink, shop, spend, tip, pay. And man, did I pay: taxes, rents, then a mortgage and HOA fees. I paid taxes on things the government deemed “bad” for me, like alcohol and cigarettes; taxes on services which organized labor deemed “bad” for them, like rideshare. I paid gas tax, cable tax, cell phone tax, and, of course, income tax. Lots of income tax.

All I asked in return was relative safety and to be left alone to enjoy the city. City-living in America, for decades, meant tolerating mild inconveniences so that you could be left alone, alongside millions of others. That was the tacit pact.

And DC broke it.

…I’ve left—we are leaving…”

And the District of Columbia will be the poorer for his leaving…and not only economically. Something tells us the author won’t be the last to leave…either D.C. or the numerous other urban hellholes Progressive policies have excavated over recent decades.

Here’s the juice: THE primary responsibility of ANY government is protecting the life and property of its citizens. Truth is, be it Seattle, Baltimore, Chicago, New York, Portland, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Louisville, Detroit, Atlanta, Austin or Washington, D.C., Dimocratic-controlled cities are failing miserably in performing their very reason for being.

Next up, as recently recorded by Lifezette…

High-ranking Democrat Jerry Nadler says Antifa violence in Portland is ‘a myth’

Oh,…really?!?

As our Man on the Scene Bill Meisen relates (unedited and with no emphasis added):

“I get so frustrated over the erroneous reporting of the Portland situation. Yes, Portland PD have been ordered to stand down. They will be nowhere to be seen in the riot footage. They keep saying federal agents are instigating the violence. Bullsh*t. Federal agents are staged inside the federal courthouse building. They are there to protect the courthouse which has been set on fire by rioters each night for the past months. Outside the federal building the agents have erected an 8 foot tall heavy metal fence along with concrete barriers. Protesters can march around the fence, yell at the fence, hang signs on the fence whatever you want peacefully and the federal agents will stay inside the courthouse and do nothing.

However, each night, anarchists show up with grinders and bolt cutters to breach the fence. Once breached, they begin to use crowbars to rip the plywood off the building and start breaking windows. Once the windows are broken, they start throwing Molotov cocktails, fireworks and mortars through the windows. They tape bolts and screws on the outside of the mortars to try and cause as much injury and damage as they can. Frankly, trying to blow up and burn down a building full of federal agents is attempted murder, isn’t it?

It’s only then that federal agents come out, in force, and start arresting and beating these punks back. It is quite literally self defense.

The Mayor does nothing. I take that back. He filed a federal lawsuit, which is being heard in the very courthouse the federal agents are protecting, to have the fence around the courthouse removed immediately because it was erected without the proper permits. Are you f*cking kidding me. Wheeler looks at this total sh*t show and the only violation he wants to take action on is the failure to get a permit for the fence. Federal agents are getting injured every night. Three agents have been permanently blinded with lasers.

If the federal agents leave, the courthouse and other federal building will be burned to the ground. The tactics against the federal agents get ramped up each night becoming potentially more lethal each night. If it continues people are going to die.“

To borrow a phrase from the immortal Inspector Harry Callahan, there’s nothing wrong with people dying…as long as the right people die!

The great Stilton Jarlsberg provides us the definition of the “right people”:

Meanwhile, here’s the video the bitter, misshapen dwarf chairing the House Judiciary Committee refused to let Republicans show you:

In a related item, NRO‘s David Harsanyi records the latest iteration of…

The Chicago Gun Myth

Politicians blame out-of-state sellers, but the real problem lies at home.

“The tragically incompetent mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, appeared on CNN’s State of the Union this weekend to deflect attention from the horror show unfolding in her city by blaming interlopers for its spiking murder rate: “We are being inundated with guns from states that have virtually no gun control, no background checks, no ban on assault weapons — that is hurting cities like Chicago.”

Although these accusations have [been] leveled by Chicago politicians for decades now, they are a myth.

…Nearly 400 people have already been murdered in Chicago this year, around 100 more than in the entire year of 2019. On the night of May 29, 25 people were murdered and another 85 wounded by gunfire, more than any day in 60 years. And yet the mayor is appearing on TV to blame Mississippi and Texas. It is far more likely that black-market guns find their way to Chicago because the place has been a poorly run criminal mecca for decades.“

Most importantly, guns aren’t the problem of Chicago…or any other urban center polluted by Progressive “principles”; Chicago’s issue is it’s a massive moral morass.

Since we’re on the subject of a stench reaching up to Heaven, here’s three ways (to name just a few!) the Main Stream and Social(ist) Media seek to control the narrative: First: Censorship, as evidenced by a video from Balls Cotton we previewed Monday night for inclusion in The Gouge. It featured a group of doctors standing in front of the Capitol offering their professional opinions on what they perceived as misinformation concerning the Wuhan pandemic.

Early Tuesday morning, James Nichols forwarded this Twitter link:

Sure enough, when attempted to replay the video, which was still up on Facebook, here’s what came up:

Robby Starbuck tweeted it well: You can’t say listen to the doctors and then censor the opinion of doctors from social media because you don’t like their expert opinion, anecdotal evidence or studies. Once you censor them, what you’re really saying is: Listen only to the doctors we approve.

P.S. Our hat’s off to the doctors: as this follow-on video indicates, they won’t be easily silenced:

P.S.S. Once view the following, you’ll understand why YouTube has branded this video as offensive and unsuitable:it IS…for Socialists, snowflakes and members of the Deep State.

Watch it now, ‘cuz who knows how long it will be remain available.

Second: Malicious misrepresentation of facts, as recorded by the Morning Jolt:

All the News That’s Fit to Support the Narrative

“Here’s what Senator Tom Cotton said in an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: “We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise we can’t understand our country. As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction,” he said.

Here’s how the British Guardian newspaper described his remarks: “The Arkansas Republican senator Tom Cotton has called the enslavement of millions of African people ‘the necessary evil upon which the union was built.’”

No. Cotton didn’t say that. Cotton said that Lincoln said that, and that Lincoln was describing the view of the Founding Fathers.

If you’re wondering about the specific quote, here is Abraham Lincoln, in the third Lincoln-Douglas debate, September 15, 1858 in Jonesboro, Illinois:

I say, in the way our fathers originally left the slavery question, the institution was in the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind rested in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. I say when this Government was first established, it was the policy of its founders to prohibit the spread of slavery into the new Territories of the United States, where it had not existed. But Judge Douglas and his friends have broken up that policy and placed it upon a new basis by which it is to become national and perpetual. All I have asked or desired anywhere is that it should be placed back again upon the basis that the fathers of our Government originally placed it upon. I have no doubt that it would become extinct, for all time to come, if we but readopted the policy of the fathers by restricting it to the limits it has already covered-restricting it from the new Territories.

How hard is it for any reporter writing about Tom Cotton and the teaching of American history and slavery to look up that quote? The Lincoln–Douglas debates were not exactly some obscure, hidden chapter of American history.“

One can be certain it wouldn’t have been hard at all had the speaker been…say,…Barack Hussein; then again, had Obama said it, his words wouldn’t have been deliberately taken out of context in the first place.

Third: Mischaracterization of circumstances, which explains, courtesy of Jeff Foutch, how The Hill could carry this miscarriage of journalism:

Report: Oil and gas companies have extensive ties to police groups

“Major fossil fuel and utility companies as well as financial institutions have contributed to law enforcement organizations for years, according to a report published Monday.

The report from the left-leaning Public Accountability Initiative and its research arm LittleSis highlight contributions to police organizations in big cities from oil giants including Chevron, Marathon and Shell. Chevron, for example, has sponsored the New Orleans Police & Justice Foundation and the Houston Police Department’s Mounted Patrol, the group says. A Chevron staffer is also a board member of the Houston Police Foundation.

…The report notes that Americans of color, who are victims of police brutality at higher rates than the general population, are also disproportionately impacted by pollution. “This symbiotic relationship between the fossil fuel industry and police often means that the companies that are polluting Black and Brown communities…are the same ones that are aligned with and propping up police forces in these same cities,” it says.

“This is why divesting from fossil fuels and fighting to end environmental racism goes hand in hand with defunding the police in the fight for racial justice and reinvestment in Black and Brown communities,” it continues…”

The article at no time challenges the conclusions of the report, let alone their underlying “facts”.

Two thoughts come immediately to mind: (1). With every passing day, The Left grows far, far…

(2). Forget its failure to question the proffered “facts”, shame on The Hill for conflating “contributions” with “extensive ties”; we contribute to a variety of charities and groups without enjoying extensive ties with any beyond our monetary support.

But there’s censorship, malicious misrepresentation of fact and mischaracterization of circumstances…and then there’s total tone-deafness, as evidenced by this next item in which NRO‘s Jim Geraghty records the Old Grey Nag urging its dwindling readership to…

Pity the Wealthy, Enduring the Worst of Times from Their Hamptons Summer Homes

“Whatever else you think of the New York Times newspaper, there’s a particular deliciousness to the newspaper’s insanely insular lifestyle coverage of the city’s wealthy, entitled, and self-absorbed. This weekend’s Real Estate section brought a fascinating and inadvertently hilarious in-depth portrait of the struggles of Manhattanites trying to ride out the pandemic from their second homes in the Hamptons, the luxurious communities on the eastern end of Long Island:

While living full-time in places that usually get much less wear and tear, these homeowners share many of the same difficulties as anyone dealing with the coronavirus lockdown — working in communal spaces where their children now are present 24/7, discovering items in their homes that need updating, and then renovating a home while they are living in it. In addition, these homeowners must adjust to living in relatively unfamiliar towns, often far from friends, family, or creature comforts such as a favorite bagel shop or longtime barber.

You may be sick, you may have buried a loved one, you may be laid off or have lost your business, you may have put off hip surgery, you may be facing eviction, your kids haven’t been to school since March and won’t be back anytime soon, and your governor may have killed your elderly relatives in nursing homes through reckless policies, but please, take a moment to think of the publicists and “boutique wealth-management company” executives who haven’t been to their favorite bagel joint in weeks!…

…The people profiled in this piece are not necessarily bad people. (I can see you raising your hands regarding the gun-control activist.) By and large, life has been extremely good to them, and they’re entitled to enjoy their wealth however they like. But I find it pretty fascinating that the New York Times contemplated this as a story idea — how are the Manhattanites who fled the city when the pandemic started coping with life in their second homes? — and five wealthy Hamptons homeowners agreed to interviews and posed for photographs in their sumptuous secondary abodes.“

“Bad people”? Not necessarily, though given the chance to know them we might well conclude the world might be a better place without them. Tone-deaf? On a scale to match the witless Speaker of the House…