{"id":19364,"date":"2013-06-13T23:08:14","date_gmt":"2013-06-14T03:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedailygouge.com\/?p=19364"},"modified":"2013-06-13T23:09:42","modified_gmt":"2013-06-14T03:09:42","slug":"the-daily-gouge-friday-june-14th-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thedailygouge.com\/?p=19364","title":{"rendered":"The Daily Gouge, Friday, June 14th, 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s Friday, June 14th, 2013…but before we begin, a brief thought as to how Conservatives can take the fight to the enemy (and believe us, we don’t use the term “enemy” lightly; we’re simply at a loss for a more appropriate term to describe those dedicated to the destruction of our country in the pursuit of personal wealth and power).<\/strong><\/p>\n

Like an updated version of General Winfield Scott’s Anaconda Plan Lincoln used to defeat the South, we need to strangle our enemy’s supply lines.\u00a0 Since fund-raising is the life-blood of any politician or party, this means limiting the availability of said donations.\u00a0 Which means restricting the ability of Google, GE, the AARP, unions, the entertainment industry and other solidly Liberal entities to fund Leftist politicians and causes; i.e., we need to vote with both our pocketbooks and boycott…quite quietly…anything or anyone supporting the Dims.
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Searching the web?\u00a0 Use an alternative search engine.\u00a0 In the market for a smartphone?\u00a0 Anything but an Android.\u00a0 Need\u00a0to replace some light bulbs?\u00a0 Buy Sylvania.\u00a0 Shopping for a new car?\u00a0 GM would be our last choice.\u00a0 And the list of actors and actresses we won’t<\/em><\/span> pay to see on the Big Screen is almost as large as B. Hussein’s ears.
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Will we be inconvenienced and put out?\u00a0 You bet.\u00a0 Might it hurt certain of our fellow citizens?\u00a0 Highly likely.\u00a0 Will it have an impact?\u00a0 Most certainly…but only if we all<\/em><\/span> put our money where our mouths are.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Perhaps the Koch brothers would consider funding an effective alternative search engine to Google.\u00a0 They needn’t make it overtly Conservative, nor should they use any profits to fund Conservative candidates; just advertise it’s apolitical…unlike Google.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just a thought.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now, here’s The Gouge!
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Leading off the last edition of the week, courtesy of Bill Meisen, an editorial from Investors.com<\/em> which points out that for all his talk…
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Obama’s Snooping Excludes Mosques, Missed Boston Bombers<\/span><\/h1>\n

Homeland Insecurity<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

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\"angry_muslims\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The White House assures that tracking our every phone call and keystroke is to stop terrorists, and yet it won’t snoop in mosques, where the terrorists are. That’s right, the government’s sweeping surveillance of our most private communications excludes the jihad factories where homegrown terrorists are radicalized.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents.<\/strong> <\/span>No more surveillance or undercover string operations without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee. Who makes up this body, and how do they decide requests? Nobody knows; the names of the chairman, members and staff are kept secret.<\/p>\n

We do know the panel was set up under pressure from Islamist groups who complained about FBI stings at mosques.<\/strong><\/span> Just months before the panel’s formation, the Council on American-Islamic Relations teamed up with the ACLU to sue the FBI for allegedly violating the civil rights of Muslims in Los Angeles by hiring an undercover agent to infiltrate and monitor mosques there.<\/p>\n

Before mosques were excluded from the otherwise wide domestic spy net the administration has cast, the FBI launched dozens of successful sting operations against homegrown jihadists \u2014 inside mosques \u2014 and disrupted dozens of plots against the homeland.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"ap_boston_suspects_kb_130419_wg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If only they were allowed to continue, perhaps the many victims of the Boston Marathon bombings would not have lost their lives and limbs. The FBI never canvassed Boston mosques until four days after the April 15 attacks, and it did not check out the radical Boston mosque where the Muslim bombers worshipped. The bureau didn’t even contact mosque leaders for help in identifying their images after those images were captured on closed-circuit TV cameras and cellphones.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the Muslim bombers made extremist outbursts during worship, yet because the mosque wasn’t monitored, red flags didn’t go off inside the FBI about his increasing radicalization before the attacks. This is particularly disturbing in light of recent independent surveys of American mosques, which reveal some 80% of them preach violent jihad or distribute violent literature to worshippers<\/em><\/span>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

What other five-alarm jihadists are counterterrorism officials missing right now, thanks to restrictions on monitoring the one area they should be monitoring?<\/p>\n

Were radical Jews or Southern Baptists repeatedly killing innocent Americans, does anyone believe this Administration would hesitate a nanosecond<\/em><\/span> before monitoring synagogues or churches?!?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet outgoing-FBI Director Robert Mueller has the nerve to suggest were the NSA’s metadata collection effort been in place prior to 9\/11, they would have identified one of the hijackers in San Diego and likely foiled the plot.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah…<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"yeahright\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Authorities (the FBI included)\u00a0had, or should<\/span><\/em> have had, everything they needed to know about the Tsarnaev boys but a notarized copy of their plan prior to the attack…yet they failed to stop it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, if his bending over backwards to avoid offending the highly offensive doesn’t convince you B. Hussein isn’t serious about protecting America, this ought to do it:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s New Deputy CIA Director Has No CIA Experience But Reads Erotic Fiction Out Loud<\/span><\/h1>\n

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\"1_photo\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So, when your Deputy CIA Director steps down in the middle of a massive scandal, who do you suppose would be a good person to appoint. How about a lawyer with no intelligence experience who used to read aloud at \u201cerotica nights\u201d at her local bookstore.<\/strong><\/span> Yeah, that about sums up what Obama just did… The former host of \u201cErotica Night\u201d at a Baltimore bookstore will be the first-ever female No. 2 official at the CIA.<\/p>\n

Yeah, but she’s a lawyer<\/em><\/span>…and<\/em><\/span> she’s stayed in a Holiday Inn Express!<\/strong><\/p>\n

And remember, The Dear Misleader isn’t concerned about protecting the country from foreign threats; he’s all about preserving unfettered domestic political power.\u00a0 Two out of two Socialists surveyed agree:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"86f99__Forward_Obama_Lenin_330\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The internal enemy is always<\/em><\/span> the most dangerous!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Next up, Jonah Goldberg describes…<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Two Faces of Barack Obama <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/h1>\n

Obama\u2019s Ethically Challenged Administration<\/span><\/span><\/h1>\n

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\"RAMFNLclr-012113-lies.jpg.cms_\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Talk about collapsing standards. When Barack Obama ran for office, his promise wasn\u2019t that he\u2019d simply improve our politics; he would transform them.<\/strong> <\/span>He would appoint men and women of unblemished integrity who would serve the public interest. Mr. Obama would hold people accountable. He boasted in 2010 that he had put in place the toughest ethics rules in history. His administration would be the most transparent in history. And all of this would restore faith and trust in government.<\/p>\n

That was then<\/em><\/span>.<\/strong> <\/span>Let me tell you about now<\/em><\/span>.<\/strong><\/span> James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, clearly mislead Congress when in March of this year Clapper was asked by Senator Ron Wyden…<\/p>\n

One idealist, one pragmatist\u2014neither trustworthy. <\/span> <\/span><\/h3>\n

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\"images\"<\/a><\/p>\n

T<\/span>he contradictions at the heart of the Obama presidency are finally out in the open. As a result, a man who came into office hell-bent on restoring faith in government is on the verge of inspiring a libertarian revival.<\/strong><\/span> There have always been (at least) two Barack Obamas. There is the man who claims to be a nonideological problem-solver, keen on working with anybody to fix things. And there is \u201cThe One\u201d: the partisan, left-leaning progressive\u00a0redeemer.<\/p>\n

As E. J. Dionne, a columnist who can usually be counted on to make the case for Obama better than Obama can, recently wrote, the president \u201chas been a master, as good politicians are, at presenting different sides of himself to different constituencies. In 2008, he was the man who would bring us together by overcoming the deep mistrust between red and blue America and<\/em> the champion of progressive change, the liberal answer to Ronald Reagan.\u201d<\/p>\n

The dilemma for Obama is that neither is panning out because both incarnations rely on trust.<\/strong><\/span> The president never had much trust among Republicans, and he lost what he had when he opted to steamroll the stimulus and, later, Obamacare, on a partisan basis.<\/p>\n

Of course, that\u2019s not how most Democrats have seen things.<\/strong><\/span> They\u2019ve seen the last five years as a tale of Tea\u00a0Party\u2013fueled madness and racism. The conviction that conservatives are crazy, stupid, and\/or bigoted in their opposition to Obama is what has allowed the two Obamas to exist side by side. Both iterations could blame the Republicans for any shortcomings or failures.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Libyan-Ambassador-Dies-Obama-Lied1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Then came the Benghazi debacle<\/span><\/em>.<\/strong><\/span> The president\u2019s base, according to polls and what little MSNBC viewing I could stomach, never wavered in its conviction that Benghazi was a nonscandal. But even if you don\u2019t think it was a scandal (I do), many partisans admit the administration\u2019s response, politically and in real time, was a mess, casting the White House as deeply political and not exactly truthful.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Cue the Justice Department, which deployed the Espionage Act against a Fox News reporter and subpoenaed the records of more than 20 Associated Press phone lines. Obama tried to play the Janus game again, saying that he was \u201ctroubled\u201d by the reports of his own administration\u2019s actions. The media have let him get away with this bystander act when it comes to things like the prison at Guantanamo Bay, but not necessarily when it comes to threats to themselves.<\/p>\n

And then<\/span> the floodgates opened<\/em>.<\/strong><\/span> The IRS compromised the integrity of the domestic agency that is supposed to be the most immune to politics.<\/strong> <\/span>Worse<\/em><\/span>, the White House\u2019s best defense was that it was simply asleep at the switch as the agency went rogue \u2014 in ways that just happened to align with the president\u2019s oft-expressed ideological and political preferences<\/span><\/em>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"obama-big-brother-cartoon\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The IRS scandal is a cancer because if you can\u2019t trust Obama to keep that agency from being politicized, you can\u2019t trust him to keep anything<\/span> immune from politics \u2014 including health care and, more relevantly, the National Security Agency<\/span><\/em>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I have some sympathy for Obama in that his support of these vast data-mining programs might be a sign that he has matured in office. He naively denounced the \u201cfalse\u201d choice of compromising our ideals for the sake of security in his 2009 inaugural speech. Now he\u2019s touting such trade-offs as essential.<\/p>\n

Or it could be that, like so many presidents before him, Obama thinks there\u2019s nothing wrong with executive power when he\u2019s the executive. Either way, the NSA story undermines trust in both<\/em><\/span> Obamas.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Barack<\/a><\/p>\n

In late May, the president announced in a speech that the War on Terror was essentially over. In early June, he\u2019s defending a data-mining operation that even Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R., Wis.) \u2014 an author of the PATRIOT Act, which authorizes surveillance by the NSA \u2014 is denouncing as dangerous overreach he never intended.<\/p>\n

The idealist wants credit for ending the war, while the alleged pragmatist wants to keep a surveillance apparatus that has no justification<\/span> if the War on Terror is truly<\/span> over<\/em>.<\/strong> <\/span>Maybe he\u2019s right on the merits. The problem is that fewer and fewer people are willing to take his word for it.<\/p>\n

But even if Goldberg’s right, and Der Obamao is<\/em><\/span> half-idealist\/half-pragmatist, one thing’s for certain; he’s a complete<\/em><\/span>…<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Obama_Postage\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For more on the subject of our prevaricating President, we turn to\u00a0Commentary Magazine<\/em>, where Peter Wehner offers his thoughts on…<\/strong><\/p>\n