The Daily Gouge, Friday, August 30th, 2013

On August 29, 2013, in Uncategorized, by magoo1310

It’s Friday, August 30th, 2013…and here’s The Gouge!

First up, Charles Krauthammer charitably characterizes Der Obafuhrer’s latest foreign policy embarrassment:

We’d suggest the Brits have just sent The Obamao an uncoded message:

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the WSJ‘s Kimberly Strassel offers The Gang That Still Can’t Shoot Straight a plan we recommended some weeks back:

A Test of GOP Resolve on ObamaCare

Congress begged for a White House handout and got one. Republicans ought to reject it.

Republicans are busy debating what gives them the most “leverage” in their fight to get rid of ObamaCare. One powerful tool, it happens, is an issue that few of them so far have wanted to talk about.

The issue is the White House’s recent ObamaCare bailout for members of Congress and their staffs. The GOP has been largely mute on this blatant self-dealing. The party might use what’s left of its summer recess to consider just how politically potent this handout is, and what—were they to show a bit of principle—might be earned from opposing it.

The [Un]Affordable Care Act states clearly that all members of Congress and their staff must buy their health insurance through an ObamaCare exchange. The law just as clearly does not reconstitute the generous government premium subsidies that members and staff currently receive. Since most members and staffers earn too much to qualify for subsidies in the dreaded ObamaCare exchanges, they were looking at an enormous financial hit come January.

Democrats in particular freaked out, and so the White House in early August conjured out of thin air a bailout for the political elite. The Office of Personnel Management announced—with no legal authority—that Congress could keep receiving its giant subsidies. Oh, and the OPM also declared that each member of Congress also gets to define which of his staff is covered by the law. Chances are many staffers will never have to deal with the exchanges at all.

This deal ought to have led to a wild GOP protest, both on philosophical and legal grounds. Instead, there has been nary a peep of complaint.

The charitable explanation is that the announcement came after Congress had left for recess, giving Republicans little opportunity to unify around a response. The less charitable explanation is that Republicans themselves are under huge pressure from their own staffers to shut up and keep the subsidies flowing. Some members, like Arkansas’s Tim Griffin, went so far as to post on his Facebook page a “myth vs. fact” explanation (read: defense) of OPM’s ruling. The responses on his Facebook page were scathing.

Few things infuriate Americans more than special privileges for Washington. The public could care less that insurance hikes might lead to a Washington “brain drain.” (Most would view that as progress.) Americans scrabbling for work, struggling to pay bills and facing soaring insurance premiums are not sympathetic to congressional complaints that the loss of their subsidies is unfair. As word has spread about the White House fix, a bipartisan fury has started to build at town-hall meetings, at rallies, and in letters and phone calls to Congress.

With a little fortitude, the GOP still has the opportunity to be on the right side of public opinion. The White House’s unilateral bailout is a tailor-made opportunity for the GOP to highlight, yet again, the administration’s unequal application of its flawed health law: waivers for Democratic union buddies, exemptions for big business, and now a special handout to Mr. Obama’s political class.

The special deal is also an opportunity to oppose, yet again, the White House’s extralegal actions.

Mostly, it is an opportunity to insist that Democrats either fully experience their experiment in social engineering—by living without subsidies within the ObamaCare exchanges they created—or give every other American relief. The reality is that Democrats, far more than Republicans, wanted this fix. They are terrified of their own creation. As leverage goes, there’s little to compare with Democratic self-interest.

Imagine forcing Democrats, daily, to justify this self-dealing—a gravy handout reviled equally by independent, Democratic and Republican voters. Imagine the House attaching to a must-pass piece of legislation, say, a provision that requires Congress and staffers and administration officials to live uniformly and subsidy-free in the ObamaCare exchanges, or give a pass to ordinary Americans. Let’s see Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid handle that one.

A handful of Republicans—Sens. David Vitter and Mike Enzi, and Reps. Ron DeSantis and Shelley Moore Capito—are already calling for action. Any of their legislative approaches might serve as a starting point for a broader effort.

Of course, for Republicans to take this route, they’d have to risk their own self-interest. The GOP is currently sniping over who has more “principles” in the fight against ObamaCare. Those advocating a defund provision for the law this fall seem willing to hold hostage the economy and American households as part of a shutdown fight.

Yet nothing would make a greater statement about principles than a GOP willingness to first hold its own financial self-interest hostage in a fight. If Republicans want to show that they “stand for something,” this is it. If they really are willing to do “whatever it takes” to oppose this law, there would be no more meaningful way to prove it.

Given the polling results David Drucker quotes in the Washington Examiner…

Poll: Americans don’t like Obamacare, but oppose defunding it

…Republicans would be well-advised to heed Strassel’s advice.

Next, an update from the AP via FOX News on one of the grossest miscarriages of military justice we’ve ever witnessed:

Accuser testifies at Naval Academy sex assault hearing

A midshipman testified Wednesday that she didn’t remember being sexually assaulted by three former Navy football players after a night of heavy drinking, but she said one of the men told her she had sex with him and another accused player. The woman, who is now a senior at the U.S. Naval Academy, testified for more than two hours at the Washington Navy Yard at a hearing to determine whether the three midshipmen will face court-martial. She described a night of drinking in her room at the academy with a friend before going to the toga-themed party in April 2012 at an off-campus house in Annapolis, Md.

At the crowded party, which took place in what was known as “the football house” because of its association to the team, the woman said she felt “overwhelmed” and “dizzy” from drinking too much. “I felt like I was going to pass out,” she said, noting that she leaned against structural beams in the basement to keep from falling over.

The woman said she spent the night at the house and woke up the next morning without her phone or purse. “I was really confused, and I noticed my back was really sore,” she said. She also testified that she had consensual sex that Sunday morning with a student at the house who has not been charged.

The woman described feeling troubled by not remembering what happened and asked Tate, who had initially invited her to the party, to come to her room to see what he knew. The woman also noticed “lewd comments” on Twitter that seemed directed at her and tagged to people she had slept with in the past. She also testified that rumors had spread rapidly that she had had sex with multiple partners at the party.

When Tate came to her room, she testified that he joked about her not remembering and suggested he refresh her memory. “He told me that we did have sex,” she said. The woman also said she asked Tate if she had had sex with Graham. “He said yes, and then I was like, `I don’t want to hear anymore,”‘ she said.

The woman also described being reluctant to seek an investigation at first. “Mainly, I was scared,” she said. “I didn’t want anyone else to get in trouble.” She also said she feared her mother would find out and force her to leave the academy. The woman said she decided to cooperate after hearing rumors that other people, specifically underclassmen, could be blamed. Her cooperation with Navy investigators included wiretaps.

On cross-examination, Andrew Weinstein, Bush’s attorney, noted that the woman had had a previous sexual relationship with Bush. When asked by Weinstein whether she had ever considered him capable of rape, she said, “I don’t think that he would.” She also said, “He wasn’t mean to me by any means,” during their previous sexual relationship.

The female midshipman also testified that she didn’t remember whether she had sex with Bush that night. Weinstein noted that it was Bush who told her he had told Navy investigators that the two had had sex.

When did Sandra Fluck receive an appointment to the Naval Academy? With all due respect to this young…”woman” (which is self-evidently very little), let’s get this down to a manageable number: how many male members of the Brigade of Midshipmen hasn’t she serviced?!?

Seriously: she drinks in her room; continues drinking at a house party at the invitation of the friend of a former (?) paramour ’til she’s too drunk to stand up; wakes up in the morning with no memory of the night before and a sore back… though not sore enough of course to prevent her engaging in sexual congress with yet another mid.

Hells bells; even Lili von Shtupp…

…needed some rest!

Just so we’re clear on this: a young “lady” with more notches on her belt than Kim Kardashian can’t remember a thing about an evening some 18 months ago, an evening undoubtedly like sooo many others, but “feels” she may have been sexually assaulted?!? That the Navy gave her charges any credence whatsoever after even cursory consideration confirms the primary focus of America’s Military is no longer national defense, but the enactment of a Progressive social agenda.

There’s no one in the sordid little story who’s innocent, including the “victim”. But unless there’s evidence we haven’t heard or seen, neither are the accused by any reasonable standard guilty of anything.

In a related story, courtesy of the WSJ, Midshipman Trollop should thank her lucky stars she’s not attending the North Korean Naval Academy:

Breaking Up Badly in Pyongyang

Kim Jong Un sends his ex-girlfriend to a firing squad.

“Don’t make me angry, Hyon…”

Miley Cyrus, take note: Acting out lewdly at Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards might have garnered some stinging public criticism for the former Disney child star. But consider the fate of Hyon Song Wol in Pyongyang.

According to South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper, Hyon, a popular North Korean singer, was arrested August 17 and executed three days later, along with a dozen members of her orchestra. The charge was that she had made a sex tape, later released in China, with another musician, and, incongruously, that they also had Bibles in their possession. “‘They were executed with machine guns while the key members of [their bands] as well as the families of the victims looked on,'” the Chosun reports, citing a source. The families of the executed were then sent to prison camps.

Hyon was also the ex-girlfriend of “Great Successor” Kim Jong Un, the North’s 29 year-old dictator. The Chosun reports that the two had been an item a decade ago but were ordered to break it off by Kim’s late father, Kim Jong Il. The younger Kim then married Ri Sol Ju, a former bandmate of Hyon, who married a soldier.

“You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”

This being North Korea, it’s hard to tell if the executions are a case of Kim’s vindictiveness as an ex-boyfriend, Ri’s jealousy as a wife, or something else. The executions coincide with the reported purging of Kim Ok, Kim Jong Il’s last wife and Kim Jong Un’s stepmother. That would be in keeping with Kim Jong Un’s broader effort to purge his father’s military and political cronies as he consolidates his power.

The manic cruelty of the North Korean regime, reaching from the bottom of society to its upper echelons, may sometimes seem like a subject best suited for parody. But it was no joke for Hyon, her fellow musicians or their families. That’s something for South Korea, the Obama Administration and the rest of the civilized world to remember when they seek the next rapprochement with the Kims.

But why should Kim worry? After all, these are the fools that said Bashar al-Assad…