It’s Tuesday, September 10th, 2013, and we’re bound for the Land of Fruits & Nuts for our annual pilgrimage to perhaps the greatest sporting event on the planet: the Bob Hope Invitational at Lakeside Golf Club in Tolucca Lake, CA.  It’s an outstanding event at what we consider the best private golf club we’ve ever been privileged to frequent…and as Chris Wilson’s monthly bills can attest, we do mean frequent!  We’ll be gone for the better part of a week, but hope to get another column together for publication late Sunday.

In the meantime, here’s The Gouge!

First up, courtesy of Katie Pavlich writing at Townhall.com…

Possible Voter Fraud Crops Up in Colorado Recall Election

“Possible”?  That’s putting it rather nicely, particularly in light of Liberals’ undeniable track record of election chicanery.  Though with one of modern Progressivism’s sacred cows in danger of slaughter, no degree of duplicity should come as a shock.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, Der Obafuhrer must have no sense of irony whatsover:

W.H. Sends Out Rice, Who Misled on Benghazi, to Make Case for Syria

But why have just one unequivocal liar purporting to peddle the “truth” when you have two:

Hillary: If Assad Gave Up His Chemical Weapons, “That Would be an Important Step” Forward

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made some brief and widely anticipated remarks today at the White House about the ongoing crisis in Syria. In short, she reaffirmed her support for President Obama’s proposed resolution to launch limited airstrikes against the Assad regime — but also said that if the Syrian dictator gave up his chemical weapons, that would be an “important step” forward towards resolving the situation peacefully. CNN reports:

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says she backs President Barack Obama’s push to take military action in Syria.

If Syria’s government immediately surrendered its chemical weapons stockpiles to international control, “that would be an important step,” Clinton said Monday during an event at the White House. “But this cannot be another excuse for delay or obstruction. And Russia has to support the international community’s efforts sincerely or be held to account.”

Seven months after leaving her post as the United States’ top diplomat, Clinton said she discussed the latest developments in Syria with Obama on Monday.

And as the combined miscues…er,…efforts of Kerry, Clinton and Rice prove woefully inadequate to this President’s destructive designs, he is left grasping at straws:

Obama says Russian proposal on Syria a potential ‘breakthrough’

Yeah…

In light of the latest posting at the Facebook page of one of The Obamao’s new-found “allies” amongst the Syrian rebels…

…his desperation is understandable.  After all, with friends like these, who needs Al-Qaeda?  Wait a minute…they ARE Al-Qaeda!!!

Then again, as this forward from Jeff Foutch describes, the complexities of the Middle East may well be beyond even a Harvard-trained constitutional lawyer’s grasp:

In a related item, courtesy of Commentary Magazine, Jonathan Tobin puts into words what Inquiring Minds have known all along, no matter what Barry’s apologists in the Press may claim to the contrary:

Doubts About Obama’s Iran Resolve? Plenty

For those Americans who wonder whether Barack Obama’s bumbling response to the crisis in Syria is an indication of what he will do about Iran, Jeffrey Goldberg says not to worry. In an article published in Bloomberg last Wednesday, Goldberg makes the argument that the president’s feckless behavior on Syria that culminated in his shifting of responsibility to a divided Congress shouldn’t inform our expectations of what he will ultimately do about the Iranian nuclear threat. Though a firm supporter of the president, Goldberg has at times been rightly critical of his behavior on Syria, so that, along with his good sources in the White House, gives him some credibility on the issue. While, as he notes, the administration has itself made the argument that America’s willingness to step in on Syria will have an impact on Iran’s behavior, Goldberg argues such an assumption is mistaken. According to the writer, the president always viewed the Iranian issue as a fundamental threat to U.S. security and therefore should be trusted to act accordingly no matter how uninspired his leadership proves to be on Syria.

But while Goldberg is right when he cites the fact that Obama’s strident rhetoric on Iran has left little wriggle room for him to be able to punt on the issue, asking us to believe the president’s Hamlet-like inability to bridge the gap between his words on Syria (“Assad must go” and the use of chemical weapons constituting a “red line”) isn’t indicative of future problems strains credulity. It’s not just that the spectacle of an administration that spent two years dithering about Syria before deciding on action and then shifting the decision to Congress will reinforce Tehran’s belief that Obama is a paper tiger. It’s that over the course of the past five years the president’s actions on Iran have been as disconnected from his words as they have been on Syria. Even before the president choked when he could have legally ordered a strike on Syria, everything he has done with regard to the nuclear issue has given the world and the ayatollahs good reason to believe he will be equally unable to order action on Iran’s nukes.

Let’s stipulate that, as Goldberg argues, the president has always been clear about his view that an Iranian nuke constitutes a direct threat to U.S. interests and the security of its allies. Obama said as much during his first presidential campaign in 2008 and went even farther in 2012 when he explicitly rejected “containment” of a nuclear Iran as an option and even said in one of his debates with Mitt Romney that any deal with Tehran would be predicated on the end of the Islamist regime’s “nuclear program.”

But he has also spent his time in office also making it clear that confrontation with Iran is something that he will go to virtually any lengths to avoid. Ignoring the history of Iran’s diplomatic deceptions he has wasted precious years on equally futile efforts at engagement that did nothing but buy them more time to get closer to their nuclear goal. The administration was slow to move to tough sanctions and only did so at the insistence of Congress. Though the president continues to talk tough, his willingness to ignore the repeated failure of the P5+1 talks and to invest more months, if not years, on outreach to new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and to buy into the spin that this veteran of the Islamist regime is a genuine moderate presages more indecision to come.

But the problem here is not just that there is a pattern of behavior here that cannot be ignored. It’s that, as Goldberg rightly concedes, when the moment of truth on Iran arrives (if such a moment on Iran ever arrives before Tehran is able to announce that it has a viable weapon) the evidence will probably be more inconclusive than the open-and-shut case that currently exists about Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons. Even though we know that Iran has been amassing large amounts of enriched uranium that could be quickly converted to military use while Obama delayed and talked, the Iranians have moved their massive nuclear program underground into hardened bunkers that shields their contents from scrutiny as well as possible attack from the air.

That means the same pressures and doubts that caused the president to repeatedly stumble on Syria will be even greater if he is ever able to admit that diplomacy has conclusively failed on Iran. Like the administration, Goldberg continues to insist that there is still plenty of time for diplomacy and sanctions to work before the use of force on Iran should be contemplated. That is highly debatable. But even if we were prepared to accept this dubious assertion, everything the president has done on both Syria and Iran would lead a reasonable person to conclude that decisive U.S. action on the nuclear threat is highly unlikely. While Goldberg may still believe in Obama’s promises on Iran, the ayatollahs and their intended victims in Israel cannot be faulted for drawing the opposite conclusion.

Seriously; Tel Aviv and New York would have to be smoking, radioactive ruins before the Manchurian Muslim…

…would even consider striking Iran.  For the record, we’d feel a lot sorrier about Tel Aviv than New York.

As Bret Stephens notes in the WSJ…

The Bed Obama and Kerry Made

America’s way of war: from shock-and-awe to forewarn-and-irritate.

“…Say what you will about the prospect of a U.S. strike on Syria, it has already performed one useful service: exposing the low dishonesty, the partisan opportunism, the intellectual flabbiness, the two-bit histrionics and the dumb hysteria that was the standard Democratic attack on the Bush administration’s diplomatic handling of the war in Iraq.

In politics as in life, you lie in the bed you make. The president and his secretary of state are now lying in theirs…”

Or, in the case of Obama and Kerry, simply lying!  As Rush so eloquently…and accurately…observed, we’ve traded “shock-and-awe” for “shuck-and-jive”!

Since we’re on the subject of shucking and jiving, it’s time we turn to the Financial Section, and more fuzzy math from the most fiscally-challenged Administration in American history:

Treasury: Debt Up $0 in August; CBO: But Deficit Was $146B

The federal deficit increased by $146 billion in August, according to a report released today by the Congressional Budget Office. But, at the same time, according to the U.S. Treasury, the federal debt did not increase at all during the month.

Total federal receipts were $185 billion during August, according to the CBO, while total federal outlays were $331 billion. Thus, the Treasury was forced to engage in $146 billion in deficit spending. Despite this deficit spending, the Treasury reported that at the close of every single business day in August, the federal debt subject to a legal limit by Congress remained exactly $16,699,396,000,000.

That is approximately just $25 million below the legal limit on the debt that is $16,699,421,095,673.60.

Yeah, and it’s been at the same figure every day since last May 17th!

Which makes this next graphic courtesy of Carl Polizzi and Zero Hedge even more intriguing:

On the Lighter Side…

And coming soon to a Prius near you…

Finally, a view of the D.C. government’s latest brainstorm from Townhall.com which should have occurred to us:

Washington DC Considers 24-Hour Waiting Period on Tattoos and Piercings—But Abortions are Available on Demand

Yet another Sign the Apocalypse is Upon Us!

Magoo