The Daily Gouge Archive, Wednesday, February 17th, 2021

On February 18, 2021, in Uncategorized, by magoo1310

It’s Wednesday, February 17th, 2021…but before beginning, submitted for your perusal, Prager U‘s examination of what’s perhaps the single-most idiotic and indefensible policy Progressives promote, which is SAYIN’ SUMTHIN’:

Tucker offers up the all-too predictable outcome:

Sorry, but it takes a truly twisted mindset to defend such insanity.

We rest our case.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

We lead off the mid-week edition with a follow-up to Monday’s item detailing the government-induced disaster residents of the Lone Star State, including our brother Rob, are now experiencing, and these observations by NRO’s Kevin Williamson:

“…Consider the electricity situation. Texas produces a whole lot of natural gas, but the state does not have a natural-gas infrastructure sufficient to deal with an unusual winter storm. We have plenty of fuel, but we can’t get it to where it is needed, so it may as well not be there. (In the same way there are three useless things in aviation: runway behind you, altitude above you and fuel you left back on the ground.) And Texas, which is as susceptible to richly subsidized greenie-weenie shenanigans as any other state, relies on wind turbines for a non-trivial share of its electricity, and many of those have frozen.

Which is to say: It’s too cold outside to operate the things that help to keep us warm inside.

As forwarded by Jeff Foutch, “Oh, the…

…irony!!!

…Hayek, the great liberal economist, argued in favor of certain kinds of government-run social-insurance schemes (libertarians weren’t always so rigid) on the grounds that these offered protection against the “common hazards of life against which few can make adequate provision.” That is, really, all government is there to do. It is a convenience — when it is working. Good government is like good technology: If everything is functioning as intended, you never really notice it. You don’t think much about it — it just works.

…Government is there to plow the ***d*mned roads. It is there to secure the borders, defend against foreign invasion, and to make sure that the stuff sold in bottles labeled “aspirin” really is aspirin. None of that is simple, there is a large role for private action in most of it, and while Hayek was right about the social-insurance model, that does not mean that government can’t screw it up. Even genuinely needful things, like the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, end up getting done in a backward and counterproductive manner. The Biden administration can engage in all the moralistic huffery and puffery it likes, but it’s still messing things up, as a bipartisan group of governors will be happy to tell you.

…A theme emerges from the past 20 years of American government. Meaning no disrespect to the people who died on September 11, 2001, and none to the brave soldiers and others who responded, al-Qaeda was a backward gang of pissant fanatics hiding under the skirts of the Taliban, an even more backward gang of slightly less pissant fanatics. They were savages with box-cutters. We were lucky that the worst enemy we had at the turn of the century was al-Qaeda. Similarly, and meaning no callousness to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have died of COVID-19, we are positively lucky that we were not hit with a much nastier epidemic than this one. September 11 could have been a lot worse, and COVID-19 could have been a lot worse. And this relatively minor winter storm that has shut down Texas could have been a hell of a lot worse.

We’re getting beat silly by the junior varsities of national crises. Pray we don’t find ourselves facing a big-league opponent before we rediscover ourselves.“

You can say that…

…again!

And though Texicans can’t for the moment warm up, they can at least cheer up, as this forward from Mark Foster relates:

Next, we hope you enjoy another series of stories tailored to the inquiring mind:

(1). In a precursor to his inevitable executive order, The Epoch Times‘ Zach Steiber records 46* is calling upon Congress to restrict gun ownership. Which would be the straw that broke the back of Joe Manchin’s political career for West Virginians, which means The Groper’s only hope to enact it means another in his never-ending stream of executive orders, which means the issue will ultimately be decided by the highest court in the land, which, thanks to The Donald, enjoys a solid constitutionalist majority.

(2). In yet another striking example of life imitating art, New York’s governor accuses New York lawmakers of ‘extortion’ after they called for an investigation of the state’s nursing home deaths and contemplated terminating his emergency powers: “You can’t use a subpoena or the threat of investigation to leverage a person,” Cuomo said in a briefing on Monday. “That’s a crime, it’s called abuse of process, it’s called extortion.” So says Sonny, the current don of the Cuomo crime family; did anyone else hear theme music from The Godfather playing in the background as they read Sonny’s statement?

(3). Speaking of unindicted co-conspirators, courtesy of George Lawlor, Just the News revealed that in a January 2017 email to James Clapper, Jim Comey admitted the FBI was unable to ‘sufficiently corroborate’ the Steele dossier, then signed the FISA warrant application anyway, contradicting a sworn avowal Comey made to the FISA court the dossier was verified. And yet Messrs. Clapper, who’s admitted lying under oath to Congress, and Comey remain free men. We’re rapidly changing our opinion of both Bill Barr and John Durham.

(4). Since we’re on the subject of opinions, in this case someone’s we neither requested nor value, Bill Gates says rich countries should be eating 100% synthetic beef. The college drop-out went on to assure the unwashed masses, “You can get used to the taste difference“. We never ceased to be amazed at the number of wealthy individuals who believe their knowledge in one, narrow field somehow bestows upon them unlimited wisdom beyond that of other mortals in areas outside their expertise. YO, Bill, FYI: the rest of us can read just as well…if not better…than you.

(5). Trump’s attorney was dead-on, balls accurate…right to the point he offered up PBS as a paragon of unbiased journalism, and then urged we meet The Left in the middle, which always means we give up ground they then gain…until the next “compromise”, when we cede MORE ground. This is a road we for one refuse to travel.

(6). Writing at his Morning Jolt, Jim Geraghty wonders what’s happening after the CDC Director announced her organization is making changes to their guidance for reopening schools after meeting with parents and teachers and “education partners. So much for following science. And, given the results of every single poll we’ve ever read, with precisely which parents did the CDC meet?!? Not to mention, WTF is an “education partner”?!?

(7). The Southern Baptist Convention sent an email questioning Kennesaw, Georgia’s Towne View Baptist Church’s decision to extend membership to a gay couple and their three children. Senior Pastor Jim Conrad said his church’s membership has declined by as much as 30 percent, likely because of its stance on gay marriage. No, Pastor: something tells us your membership has declined because, rather than standing for the Word of God, you stand for NOTHING.

(8). Another of those hopelessly hyperbolic headlines, as FOX describes the “horror beyond horror” of a mother watching her daughter fall 25 feet from a chairlift…except it was from 20 feet…and she didn’t fall, she dropped…into a catch net:

Other than that, the FOX story was 100% accurate.

(9). Ya gotta love the response of Tampa Bay general manager Jason Licht to the histrionic reaction of the daughter of the guy who designed the Lombardi Trophy to Tom Brady tossing it to Gronk while afloat:

Here’s the juice: Sorry, but the lady’s claim “I didn’t sleep the past two nights because of this, I was that upset” tells you all you need to know about her mental state prior to one of Brady’s better passes.

Turning now to the Carl Spackler Memorial Pool AND a Pond segment…