The Daily Gouge, Saturday, February 2nd, Groundhog Day 2013

On February 2, 2013, in Uncategorized, by magoo1310

It’s Saturday, February 2nd, Groundhog Day 2013….where The Obamao comes out, sees his shadow….

….and America gets four more years of him shoveling the same, tired Socialist sh*t.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, courtesy of the WSJ, it’s the “Don’t Let The Door Hit You On Your Way Out” segment, as we say good-bye and good riddance to yet another member of Team Tick-Tock whose departure couldn’t come too soon:

Planes, Trains and Bike Paths

Ray LaHood’s transportation legacy.

Ray LaHood had no particular qualifications to be President Obama’s Transportation Secretary apart from his 14-odd years as a Republican Congressman who specialized in pork-barrel spending, and it showed. He’s the politician who found a way to lose $6.50 selling a $9.50 hamburger to diners with no other options.

Sixteen dollars is how much it costs Amtrak to prepare a burger amid $80 million in annual loses for its subsidized food service operations, according to federal auditors. Mr. LaHood, who announced this week he is leaving the Cabinet after four years, is likely to be remembered for similar achievements, such as presiding over a transportation policy predicated on the best the 19th century had to offer: railroads and bicycles.

“This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized,” Mr. LaHood wrote in 2010 about a funding rule “sea change” meant to promote bike paths instead of highways. He also doled out $8 billion in grants for high-speed rail projects that were stapled onto the 2009 stimulus because Mr. Obama “was aggravated when he was told that none of the money from the stimulus would be spent on a signature project, a modern-day Hoover Dam or Interstate Highway System,” as Ryan Lizza reported in the New Yorker magazine.

The President, according to the New York Times, thought that “simply building new futuristic trains . . . could lift the spirits of a recession-battered nation.” Mr. LaHood’s political maneuvering ensured one signature boondoggle—the $100 billion San Francisco-to-Anaheim bullet train—would be built, despite growing public opposition and the fact that California has no money. The first leg, which Mr. LaHood’s department is financing, will connect Merced to Bakersfield in the sparsely populated Central Valley.

“President Obama’s legacy will be high-speed rail,” Mr. LaHood told Congress in December. As a just reward for his tenure, Mr. LaHood’s next job should be managing the books for the California choo-choo.

Yeah, high-speed rail….and this:

Speaking of Cabinet Secretaries who cannot leave too soon, here’s a follow-up, courtesy of Hope n’ Change, to yesterday’s Tales From the Darkside video clip featured at our home page, which detailed DHS’s latest must-see self-help video:

Shear Madness

Following the tragic massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the government is doing everything in its power to make citizens safer by taking guns out of the hands of sane people. But that doesn’t mean that they intend to leave us totally defenseless when facing down a well-armed psychopath.

That’s why the Department of Homeland Security has produced a video which explains that in an “active shooter” situation, you can take out the bad guy using an ordinary pair of scissors – assuming that the shooter isn’t wearing body armor, that he doesn’t see you coming, that you don’t slip in the blood of other victims, and that the shooter doesn’t turn you into swiss cheese when he gets tired of receiving annoying little jabs.

The video, produced at taxpayer expense and having all of the cinematic panache of a 1950’s “Duck & Cover” public service film, gives additional helpful tips that people might not think of when confronted with a death-dealing maniac: run away if you can, or hide and be quiet while waiting your turn to die.

No mention is made of “shooting back,” because the only people who should be carrying guns are police, lunatics, and the Mexican drug cartels. Additionally, the video doesn’t clarify whether it would be permissible to use scissors against a radical Muslim like Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hassan, considering there’s a chance you might accidentally cut off part of his holy beard.

While some people viewing this video might feel like they’re not really getting topnotch value out of the tax dollars being spent at Homeland Security, it’s important to note that Ms. Napolitano’s agency offers protection for citizens which goes far beyond scissor-fu during an “active shooting.”

For instance, last week the DHS released important information about coping with the dangers inherent in an “active snowing.” Who knew that, in the midst of a blizzard, we should “stay indoors during the storm,” “walk carefully” on snow and ice, and “if you must shovel snow, stretch before going outside.” Take that, Al-Qaeda!

Still, in the wake of Sandy Hook it’s good to know that the Department of Homeland Security is on the job and that our children will be perfectly safe as long as they’re in a building with lots of scissors.

Like, say, an elementary school.

In other Departure Updates, some last-minute warnings from two teats on boars whose only skill is running their mouths:

Panetta: Iranian Threat Spreads

Iranian threat….WHAT Iranian threat?!?

As she leaves, Clinton sounds warning over Syria

“I’ve done what was possible to do.”

Yeah….

Maybe Hillary did do what was possible….for her; that’s just not setting the bar very high.

To all the notables departing various cabinet posts, a list which now includes Steven “Ah” Chu, so long, bon voyage, auf wiedersehen and….

Meanwhile, as the WSJ relates, Team Tick-Tock’s utterly inept and wholly-misguided diplomacy may well be approaching its inevitable end:

Another Mideast War?

The result of U.S. detachment in Syria is more disorder.

Israeli jets attacked a convoy of trucks early Wednesday morning somewhere along Syria’s border with Lebanon. Jerusalem has repeatedly warned Damascus that it would act militarily to prevent the transfer of major weapons to Hezbollah. The message didn’t penetrate so the bombs did.

Exactly what the trucks were carrying remains a matter of speculation. (At the risk of seeming biased, WTF cares?!? Last week Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned about the possibility that Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons—estimated at 1,000 tons—could fall into Hezbollah’s hands.

Reports on Wednesday suggested the convoy carried Russian-made SA-17 surface-to-air missiles, which are capable of shooting down planes to an altitude of 80,000 feet. If so, they could have provided Hezbollah with a formidable tactical advantage in the increasingly likely event of another war with Israel.

It is impossible to know what Syrian President Bashar Assad was thinking when he authorized this transfer—assuming he authorized it at all. One of the consequences of Syria’s civil war, which will enter its third year in March, is that the country has gradually become a playground for dangerous interlopers on both sides, including Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps. (Which, according to SecDef nominee Chuck Hagel is the radical Shiite equivalent of the Boy Scouts….without the gays!)

Assad may not want a war with Israel, but Tehran could have other calculations. Over the weekend Iran warned that it would consider any attack on Syria to be an attack on Iran. Claims by Syrian TV that Israel hit a research facility near Damascus might be a pretext for an Iranian escalation with Israel.

Jerusalem is taking no chances. Mr. Netanyahu dispatched his National Security Adviser to Moscow—another Assad patron—presumably to discuss the fate of those SA-17s. The Israeli army also deployed some of its Iron Dome batteries to northern Israel for the first time. It would not have done so if the chances of a war on Israel’s northern border weren’t increasing.

“I’ve done what was possible to do; all is well!”

As for the United States, well, haven’t you heard the tide of war is receding? President Obama warned Syria last year against transferring chemical weapons, but there has been little follow-up. In an interview this month with one of his top campaign donors—er, the new publisher of the New Republic—the President stressed “our limitations” in intervening in Syria, along with the risk that U.S. intervention would only make things worse.

“How do I weigh tens of thousands who’ve been killed in Syria versus the tens of thousands who are currently being killed in the Congo?” mused the President, posing a question that would effectively have prevented every U.S. intervention in history.

Allow us to answer. Unlike in the Congo, the U.S. has vital national interests in the Syrian war. One interest is to inflict a strategic blow to Iran by deposing its principal Arab client. Another is to cut Iran’s military-supply link to Hezbollah, a terrorist group that has killed hundreds of Americans. A third is to prevent Syria’s unrest from spilling into its neighbors. A fourth is to avoid the outbreak of a wider regional war. A fifth is to make sure that the U.S. might have some leverage and standing with a post-Assad government in Syria. (Unlike post-Mubarak Egypt!)

A sixth is to prevent further thousands from being killed. Oh, sorry, that’s an issue less of American interests than of our values, which aren’t in vogue these days.

The fruit of two years of U.S. inaction in Syria is that the very nightmare scenarios the Administration fretted about are closer to occurring. The U.S. doesn’t have to put boots on Syrian ground to help bring the Assad regime to an end, such as by imposing a no-fly-zone over Aleppo and the rest of western Syria. A similar no-fly-zone over Libya in 2011 helped spell Moammar Gadhafi’s demise.

In his inaugural, Mr. Obama declared that the era of endless war is over. If he really believes that, the result will be more war.

All of which makes the subject of this next item, courtesy of James Taranto, even less-qualified to lead America’s Military than ever:

‘Like a Stone in a Placid Lake’

Help me out here; if the Air Force flies and the Navy floats, what’s up with these aircraft carriers?

We wish we’d watched the Chuck Hagel hearings yesterday. From what we’ve heard, the defense secretary-designate was entertainingly confused. But Bloomberg’s Jeff Goldberg finds a written whopper in Hagel’s recent past:

In his 2008 book, “America: Our Next Chapter,” Hagel wrote that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “cannot be looked at in isolation. Like a stone dropped into a placid lake, its ripples extend out farther and farther. Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon feel the effects most noticeably. Farther still, Afghanistan and Pakistan; anything that impacts their political stability also affects the two emerging economic superpowers, India and China.”

Goldberg deftly refutes the idea that the Middle East would be a “placid lake” but for Israel:

Come with me on a quick tour of the greater Middle East. The Syrian civil war? Unrelated to the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. The slow disintegration of Yemen? Unrelated. Chaos and violence in Libya? Unrelated. Chaos and fundamentalism in Egypt? The creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank would not have stopped the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, nor would it have stopped the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. Terrorism in Algeria? Unrelated. The Iranian nuclear program? How would the creation of a Palestinian state have persuaded the Iranian regime to cease its pursuit of nuclear weapons? Someone please explain. Sunni-Shiite civil war in Iraq? The unrest in Bahrain? Pakistani havens for al-Qaeda affiliates? All unrelated.

Perhaps Hagel is engaged in psychological projection, having seen a placid lake when he looked deep into his own mind.

We note no one asked Hagel….

….likely because the answer was evident.

If America were a stock, we’d be shorting her; and going deep with gold….and lead.

But never fear, Biden‘s here!

Biden says US prepared to hold direct talks with Iran

Whew! For a moment there, we were really getting worried. You’re going to TALK to them; why didn’t you say so in the first place?!? After all,….

We had better hope Ted’s still in business:

And since we’re on the subject of those who robotically recite the virtues of the Religion of Peace, Greg Hengler, blogging at Townhall.com, offers the latest senseless support of Islam from….

Al Gore: Al Jazeera “Tell It Like It Is,” They’re “Respected” — Fox News Is “Propaganda”

Gore appeared on the Charlie Rose show last night, unfortunately the editors left the part where Gore rips Fox News as “propaganda” on the cutting room floor. I’ve watched Gore’s appearance on the Charlie Rose show on my DVR and also on Charlie Rose’s web site and the “propaganda” part is not there. The editors did leave in the part where Gore praises the Al Jazeera network–so I grabbed that. Having said that, someone who attended the live taping of the show recorded the “propaganda” part on their cell phone. The video is not stellar but the content is worth watching (or perhaps more accurately, hearing.) –especially when it is juxtaposed with Gore’s praising Al Jazeera.

First, the defense: