{"id":24198,"date":"2013-12-15T20:27:19","date_gmt":"2013-12-16T01:27:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedailygouge.com\/?p=24198"},"modified":"2013-12-15T20:27:26","modified_gmt":"2013-12-16T01:27:26","slug":"the-daily-gouge-monday-december-16th-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thedailygouge.com\/?p=24198","title":{"rendered":"The Daily Gouge, Monday, December 16th, 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s Monday, December 16th, 2013…and here’s The Gouge!<\/strong><\/p>\n

First up, it’s the “Let Them Eat Cake!” segment, and the latest travel plans filed by the More Equal Than Others on your<\/em><\/span> nickel:
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Beach bum: Obama to holiday in Hawaii<\/span><\/a>…AGAIN<\/em><\/span>!<\/span><\/h1>\n

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Hey, what’s another $20-$30 million?!?\u00a0 After all, as Jim Geraghty details in the “Your Tax Dollars at Work” segment, it’s not like America has any sort of a fiscal<\/em> crisis<\/em><\/span>!\u00a0 We can’t<\/em><\/span>; not when…<\/strong><\/p>\n

The U.S. State Department spent $150,000 to acquire the art exhibition “The Black Arch” by two Saudi sisters<\/span><\/h1>\n

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Raja Alem is a writer, Shadia Alem is a visual artist. For the exhibition, titled The Black Arch and curated by Mona Khazindar and Robin Start, the sisters worked closely together. The result is an installation that visually plays very much with darkness and light. It is about two visions of the world and about two cities, Mecca and Venice.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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“Boy, did we see these<\/span> suckers coming!”<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

As the press release states: “The work is a stage, set to project the artists’ collective memory of Black \u2013 the monumental absence of colour \u2013 and physical representation of Black, referring to their past.<\/strong><\/span> The narrative is fueled by the inspirational tales told by their aunts and grandmothers, and are anchored in Mecca, where the sisters grew up in the 1970s. The experience with the physical presence of Black is striking for the artists as Raja explains, “I grew up aware of the physical presence of Black all around, the black silhouettes of Saudi women, the black cloth of the Al ka’ba and the black stone which supposedly is said to have enhanced our knowledge.”<\/strong><\/span> As a counter point, the second part of the installation is a mirror image, reflecting the present. These are the aesthetic parameters of the work.”<\/p>\n

America’s bleeding red ink, and the fools in Foggy Bottom are buying “Black”.\u00a0 As Jim Geraghty noted, “I could have built a ‘Black Arch’ out of Legos for $150, tops!”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Turning from red to Reds, the WSJ<\/em>‘s Holman Jenkins injects a little reality into the over-hyped homage to “Mandiba” by reminding us…<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Communists Took Over South Africa<\/span><\/h1>\n

Nelson Mandela’s party opted for capitalism, even if the crony kind.<\/span><\/h3>\n

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As we now know, Nelson Mandela was a Communist Party member and leader since the early 60s, though he and his allies denied it all his life.<\/strong> <\/span>On his death, the South African Communist Party itself came clean, with deputy general secretary Solly Mapaila explaining that Mandela’s membership had been kept a fiercely-guarded secret for “political reasons.”<\/p>\n

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No kidding. The armed struggle, which Mandela had initiated in 1961, would prove a damp squib. It was Mandela’s international celebrity plus the collapse of the Berlin Wall that created the opening for fruitful change in South Africa.<\/p>\n

The story is told how Mandela came out of jail spouting traditional Marxist rhetoric but was set straight by Western business leaders at Davos. Another version holds that he was simply reading a script placed in his hands by the Communist Party and promptly switched when word arrived from Moscow that no resources would be forthcoming to help with nationalization, so the incoming government had better play up to Western capital.<\/p>\n

Yet another version holds that Mandela already knew which way the wind was blowing when he got out of jail and was just waiting for his comrades to catch up. This version is perhaps the most convincing.<\/p>\n

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To a visitor to South Africa in the months after Mandela’s 1990 release from prison, the most striking thing was the speed with which baggage was being shed. The end of the Cold War had transformed the country’s politics. White minority rule had been justified on grounds of South Africa’s alleged encirclement by Marxist states. Now a former military intelligence chief was telling me such scare talk had outlived its usefulness, adding with a shrug, “We got most of this from the States.”<\/p>\n

The one place word hadn’t seemed to reach was headquarters of the newly unbanned African National Congress and its joined-at-the-hip ally, the Communist Party. Stacks of freshly printed pamphlets were emblazoned with the hammer and sickle. Walter Sisulu, the ANC elder statesman who had recruited Mandela and who would later acknowledge his own membership in the Communist Party, assured me that nationalization of the banks and industry remained the government-in-waiting’s top order of business.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I might have been tempted to take this threat more seriously if the ANC hadn’t been occupying a downtown Johannesburg office suite courtesy of a Munich insurance firm.<\/span> As I would write, “Once the scourge of Johannesburg’s diamond-studded burghers, these men now ride the same elevators, simmer in the same traffic jams and rush about trailing identical briefcases.” Two decades later Mandela’s ANC has indeed become a party of revolutionaries turned business owners and financiers.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In their well-researched 2012 book “Who Rules South Africa?” the journalists Martin Plaut and Paul Holden found that three-quarters of cabinet members had outside business or financial interests as did 60% the regime’s 400 members of parliament. They also report that, in 2011, South Africa’s auditor-general found that in the impoverished Eastern Cape, ancestral home of Mandela and many other top ANC leaders, 74% of government contracts went to companies owned by state officials and their families.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Some animals are just more equal than others…whether in Africa or<\/span> the Oval Office!<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

At the moment, South Africa’s likeliest next president is Cyril Ramaphosa, a former militant union leader and Mandela prot\u00e9g\u00e9 who serves as ANC deputy president. According to Forbes, Mr. Ramaphosa is worth $625 million<\/span>\u2014three times<\/span> Mitt Romney’s wealth<\/em>.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

By some measures\u2014education, public services, crime\u2014South Africa has gone backward under the new regime. One indisputable ANC success has been creating a new black business elite with a stake in preserving South Africa’s advanced capitalist economy.<\/strong> <\/span>The paradox is not lost on the still-influential Communists. Said Jeremy Cronin, a party stalwart and the government’s current deputy minister of public works: “Everything you have lived for appears to be failing. Everything you have fought for appears to be winning.”<\/p>\n

Give Mandela credit for making this victory-in-defeat possible. He was the most adept baggage shedder of them all. His example apparently continues to inspire his former secret comrades. Nationalization has lately come back on the ANC agenda at the behest of certain black business leaders hoping to be bought out of bad investments at a profit.<\/span> The most furious critics of the idea: the South African Communists.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/article>\n

Yeah…because nationalization might mean the True Believers would miss their<\/em><\/span> chance for a piece of the pie!\u00a0 Call ’em what you will: Socialists, Progressives, Liberals; they’re nothing if not…<\/strong><\/p>\n

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…utterly predictable!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since we’re on the subject of Communists with a Capitalist bent, as Smoking Gun<\/em> informs us, courtesy of George Lawlor…<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jane Fonda’s charitable foundation hasn’t made a charitable contribution in five years<\/span><\/h1>\n

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Though Jane Fonda’s private foundation has nearly $800,000 in assets, the group has not<\/em><\/span> made a charitable contribution during the last five years for which it has filed federal tax returns . . .<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

According to the Jane Fonda Foundation’s most recent tax return\u2014filed last year and covering calendar year 2011\u2014the organization’s cash, stock, and bond portfolio was valued at $798,133. The filing lists the 75-year-old actress as the foundation’s president and chairman of the board, and reports that she devotes 10 hours a week to the charitable group.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The last donation listed for the foundation in IRS filings was in 2006, when $1,000 went to the Atlanta Obstetric and Gynecology Society…<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Undoubtedly to defend the rights of the unborn.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, back in the Big Apple, courtesy of the New York Post<\/em> via Drudge<\/em>, another Limousine Liberal shows us how to celebrate the spirit of Christmas:<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s black Thursday for Martha Stewart\u00a0staffers<\/span><\/h1>\n

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Martha Stewart gave the phrase \u201chome for the holidays\u201d a whole new twist Thursday when the well-compensated chairwoman of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia axed about 100 employees. The layoffs, coming only a week an a half before Christmas, unnerved employees, many of whom left in tears, carrying their belongings in Martha Stewart bags.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The layoffs were the first moves unveiled by former scrap metal executive Daniel Dienst, a former MSO board member who was hired as the new CEO in October. Dienst is a media outsider, and based on his experience trying to salvage rust belt companies in the metals industry, many expected radical retrenchments. Those predictions came to fruition on Thursday. The cutbacks are estimated to save the company about $10 million next year.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Stewart seemed content to follow his advice<\/em><\/span>. She spent last week in Miami at Art Basel, the winter playground of the beautiful people, where dozens of private jets landed to party and peruse the international art market.<\/span> Last year, according to corporate filings, Stewart received total compensation of $5.5 million \u2014 including a $2 million base salary.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Rumors Stewart, a dyed-in-the-wool Dim, may cut back on next year’s costume expenses to preserve a menial job or two…<\/strong><\/p>\n

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…remain both unconfirmed and<\/em><\/span> highly unlikely!<\/strong><\/p>\n

And for those who’ve yet to realize Cap’n was speaking to Conservatives on behalf of Liberals everywhere when he strongly suggested…<\/strong><\/p>\n