{"id":29684,"date":"2015-02-19T18:27:46","date_gmt":"2015-02-19T23:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedailygouge.com\/?p=29684"},"modified":"2015-02-19T18:27:52","modified_gmt":"2015-02-19T23:27:52","slug":"the-daily-gouge-archive-wednesday-february-18th-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thedailygouge.com\/?p=29684","title":{"rendered":"The Daily Gouge Archive, Wednesday, February 18th, 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s Wednesday, February 18th, 2015…and, submitted for your perusal, a special edition of The Daily Gouge dedicated exclusively to the most self-absorbed, thoroughly hypocritical nitwits (and yes, we meant to use the plural form!) ever to darken the corridors of the White House.<\/strong><\/p>\n

First up, the\u00a0WSJ<\/em>‘s Bret Stephens details the irreparable damage inflicted on his office by…<\/strong><\/p>\n

President BuzzFeed<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/h1>\n

\u2018You do you\u2019 is the ultimate slogan for the ultimate self-referential presidency.<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n

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“George Washington did not shake hands as president and would grip the hilt of his sword to avoid having his flesh pressed. The founding father understood that leadership in a republic demanded a careful balance between low populism and aristocratic lordliness. Personal comportment, the choice of clothes and carriage, modes of address: these things mattered. And so we have \u201cMr. President\u201d as opposed to \u201cHis Highness.\u201d Or \u201cGeorge.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Barack Obama \u2014you won\u2019t mind, Se\u00f1or Presidente, if we call you Barry?\u2014it\u2019s another story. Dignity of office? How quaint<\/span><\/em>.<\/span> In this most self-infatuated of presidencies, the D-word is at best an accessory and more often an impediment to everything Barry has ever wanted to be: Cool. Chill. Connected<\/em>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

So it was that, hours after the U.S. confirmed the murder of Kayla Jean Mueller at the hands of Islamic State, Mr. Obama filmed a short video for BuzzFeed<\/strong><\/span>, striking poses in a mirror, donning aviator shades, filming himself with a selfie stick and otherwise inhabiting a role that a chaster version of Miley Cyrus might have played had Hannah Montana been stuck in the White House after a sleepover with the Obama girls.<\/p>\n

…\u201cYou do you\u201d is the ultimate self-referential slogan for the ultimate self-referential presidency.<\/span> It\u2019s the \u201cbe yourself\u201d piety of our age turned into a political license by Mr. Obama to do as he pleases.<\/strong><\/span> It\u2019s what drives his political choices: the immigration amnesty; arbitrary rewrites of the Affordable Care Act; the Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s coal rules; the $128 billion in settlements the administration extorted from six banks convicted of no wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

It is also what seems to explain the president\u2019s insistently passive foreign policy<\/em><\/span>. In its 2015 National Security Strategy, unveiled earlier this month, the administration underscored the importance of what it called \u201cstrategic patience,\u201d a high-toned euphemism for doing as little as decently possible in response to crisis<\/em><\/span>.<\/span><\/strong><\/span> Invade Ukraine: You do you, Vladimir Putin. Build a robust nuclear infrastructure: You do you, Ali Khamenei. Continue gassing your own people: You do you, Bashar Assad…”<\/p>\n

It also explains the abject failure of said foreign policy. \u00a0Think about it; the only reasons Barry’s domestic idiocies survive is (a) the presence of a fawning MSM which shields his every misstep through either deliberately distorted reporting or a total news blackout, and (b) the craven cowardice of a Republican leadership unwilling to contest his unconstitutional executive orders.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For those unfortunate enough to suffer the consequences of The Dear Misleader’s feckless foreign forays, the world outside this carefully constructed domestic cocoon is populated by bad guys…REALLY<\/em><\/span> bad guys…whose only thought concerning The Obamao’s historical significance is to take advantage of every second his racially-based, Socialist-inspired invulnerability…and utter ineptitude…allows them.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a related item, courtesy of\u00a0<\/strong>Townhall.com<\/em>, the great Thomas Sowell relates the reality behind Team Tick-Tock’s…<\/strong><\/p>\n

Glib ‘Happy Talk’<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/h1>\n

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“When Alfred E. Neuman said “What me worry?” on the cover of Mad magazine, it was funny. But this message was not nearly as funny coming from President Barack Obama and his National Security Advisor, Susan Rice.\u00a0In a musical comedy, it would be hilarious to have the president send out his “happy talk” message by someone whose credibility was already thoroughly discredited by her serial lies on television about the Benghazi terrorist attack in 2012.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately — indeed, tragically — the world today is about as far from a musical comedy as you can get, with terrorists rampaging across the Middle East, leaving a trail of unspeakable atrocities in their wake, and with Iran moving closer to producing a nuclear bomb, with an intercontinental missile on the horizon.<\/p>\n

We will be lucky to get through the remainder of President Obama’s term in office without a major catastrophe, from which we may or may not recover<\/strong><\/em><\/span>…”<\/p>\n

It’s life imitating art…<\/strong><\/p>\n