It’s Monday, December 16th, 2013…and here’s The Gouge!
First up, it’s the “Let Them Eat Cake!” segment, and the latest travel plans filed by the More Equal Than Others on your nickel:
Hey, what’s another $20-$30 million?!? 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 crisis! We can’t; not when…
The U.S. State Department spent $150,000 to acquire the art exhibition “The Black Arch” by two Saudi sisters
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.
“Boy, did we see these suckers coming!”
As the press release states: “The work is a stage, set to project the artists’ collective memory of Black – the monumental absence of colour – and physical representation of Black, referring to their past. 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.” 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.”
America’s bleeding red ink, and the fools in Foggy Bottom are buying “Black”. As Jim Geraghty noted, “I could have built a ‘Black Arch’ out of Legos for $150, tops!”
Turning from red to Reds, the WSJ‘s Holman Jenkins injects a little reality into the over-hyped homage to “Mandiba” by reminding us…
When Communists Took Over South Africa
Nelson Mandela’s party opted for capitalism, even if the crony kind.
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. 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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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. 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.
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.
Some animals are just more equal than others…whether in Africa or the Oval Office!
At the moment, South Africa’s likeliest next president is Cyril Ramaphosa, a former militant union leader and Mandela protégé who serves as ANC deputy president. According to Forbes, Mr. Ramaphosa is worth $625 million—three times Mitt Romney’s wealth.
By some measures—education, public services, crime—South 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. 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.”
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. The most furious critics of the idea: the South African Communists.
Yeah…because nationalization might mean the True Believers would miss their chance for a piece of the pie! Call ’em what you will: Socialists, Progressives, Liberals; they’re nothing if not…
…utterly predictable!
Since we’re on the subject of Communists with a Capitalist bent, as Smoking Gun informs us, courtesy of George Lawlor…
Jane Fonda’s charitable foundation hasn’t made a charitable contribution in five years
Though Jane Fonda’s private foundation has nearly $800,000 in assets, the group has not made a charitable contribution during the last five years for which it has filed federal tax returns . . .
According to the Jane Fonda Foundation’s most recent tax return—filed last year and covering calendar year 2011—the 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.
The last donation listed for the foundation in IRS filings was in 2006, when $1,000 went to the Atlanta Obstetric and Gynecology Society…
Undoubtedly to defend the rights of the unborn.
Meanwhile, back in the Big Apple, courtesy of the New York Post via Drudge, another Limousine Liberal shows us how to celebrate the spirit of Christmas:
It’s black Thursday for Martha Stewart staffers
Martha Stewart gave the phrase “home for the holidays” 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.
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.
Stewart seemed content to follow his advice. 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. Last year, according to corporate filings, Stewart received total compensation of $5.5 million — including a $2 million base salary.
Rumors Stewart, a dyed-in-the-wool Dim, may cut back on next year’s costume expenses to preserve a menial job or two…
…remain both unconfirmed and highly unlikely!
And for those who’ve yet to realize Cap’n was speaking to Conservatives on behalf of Liberals everywhere when he strongly suggested…
…writing at The New Media Journal, Douglas Murray wonders…
Do You Think The Wrong Thing?!
We must face up to it. The Western democracies have a great and serious problem which appears only to be growing: the general public are developing views highly questionable to those in positions of power. Larger and larger swaths of people, when asked their opinion of certain matters, keep coming back with the wrong opinion. Whether it is opposition to the EU in Europe, or to Obamacare in the US, or to a hopeless deal with Iran to keep it from producing nuclear weapons, something, surely, must be done about this!
Take the latest example, a different matter that came to light with a school in Dundee, Scotland. The institution was recently forced to call in a crack-squad of head-scarf wearing Muslim women to help correct what the school felt was a “racist” view of Islam held by some of their students. When the school asked the pupils to say which which words came to mind when people talked about Muslims — and the response included “terrorist,” “oppressed,” “a threat” and “scary” — re-educating the pupils was found to be necessary. Some pupils even, outrageously, said “9/11.”
After the BBC and other media promptly picked up this disturbing story and asked what more can be done to “educate” Scottish youngsters, the school apparently corrected this problem.
But what to do about the recognition that problems like these may well be more widespread?
The reaction to the Dundee story was reminiscent to that which followed the publication of a poll carried out by BBC Radio 1 in June of this year. When it was released in September, it transpired that of 1,000 young people polled, 27% said that they did not trust Muslims, with 44% saying they thought Muslims did not share the same views as the rest of the population. On that occasion, too, the BBC and other media went into overdrive to work out what had gone wrong and how Britain could better “address” the problem that so many people thought this way.
Conversely, when the same poll showed that 15% of young people did not trust Jews, 13% did not trust Buddhists and 12% did not trust Christians, those facts were not deemed figures of significance.
As so often is the case today, a poll is carried out on public opinion and when it turns out that the public have the wrong views on whatever is the Dictate of the Day — the question then is asked, ‘What can people in positions of power do to ensure the public are made to think the right way?’
What is striking, is that despite the attempts to re-educate and otherwise alter the attitudes of the majority of the population, the population continue to understand — in ever larger numbers — that the problems lie not with them but with what is happening around them. As Daniel Pipes pointed out recently, for example, across much of Europe, Islam appears not to be growing as fast as negative perceptions of it.
As Pipes also cited, in Germany last year, a poll revealed that only 7% of Germans associate Islam with “openness, tolerance or respect for human rights.” 64% connect it with violence; 68% with intolerance towards other faiths, and 83% with discrimination against women. A poll in France earlier this year revealed that 67% of people believe Islamic values to be “incompatible with those of French society,” 73% view Islam negatively and 74 % consider it intolerant. If the problem of perception of Islam were limited to Dundee, that would be one thing. But the Dundee schoolchildren clearly perceive something which a growing number of people across Western Europe also perceive — as other people do about other problems surrounding them.
Of course, as some of us continue to try to point out, there are really only two ways to tackle these “problems.” The first is to change the opinions of all of the public. This could be tricky. It would require suppressing stories, misrepresenting events, possibly covering over the occasional beheading, the nuclear cheating, the circumvented law, the cancelled doctor, the terminated insurance policy, the high-handed directive, the repeated deception, the unequal application of the law, the unworkable economic model, the contorted cover-up, the inferior product, the false accusation, and generally trying to ensure that the general public stop noticing what is happening in the world around them.
Except that there is the internet of course, which is a nuisance. Although it is possible that some way could be found to shut down all social-networking and news sites and also persuade Google to bring up “daisies” and “recipes for apple pie” whenever anyone types “beheading” or “redistribution” or “uranium enrichment” or “Greece” into his search engine.
That is the start of one option. The other option is to de-link Islam and violence by ensuring that people stop carrying out acts of violence in the name of Islam; or to create ways for people actually to receive quality healthcare at affordable prices; or to seriously prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb, or to stop those in power from ‘making up the rules as they go along’, which as Daniel Hannan puts it, “means, in short, that there is no effective rule of law.” Those options are not easy either, but they are far easier than the first option, and ever less frequently tried.
As Grumpy Cat might note, courtesy of Balls Cotton:
Not to mention, unlike American Christians, a frequent affinity for using them against those espousing different beliefs.
And continuing our coverage of the greatest Progressive policy debacle since Eric Holder decided it was a good idea to arm Mexican drug cartels, Team Tick-Tock once again seeks to blame others for its own egregious errors:
The White House says that ObamaCare is all fixed, but its conduct suggests otherwise. As it has realized that the government-created chaos is exposing patients to nasty and even deadly surprises, the government is now forcing the insurance industry to cover everyone retroactively and also to waive the contractual terms of that coverage—or else.
Late Thursday, the Health and Human Services Department suddenly released a new regulation that explains “there have been unforeseen barriers to enrollment on the exchanges.” The passive voice is necessary because the barriers are all the result of politically driven delays, the botched website and the exchanges that transmit false information about enrollment to insurers.
So with a mere 11 business days to go before coverage is supposed to start on New Year’s Day, HHS is trying to pre-empt patient uproar by unilaterally ordering plans to backdate all exchange applications. People can sign up for a plan on the exchange as late as Dec. 23. If an application winds up in some technology void, or it is passed to the insurer inaccurately or too late to process, that coverage nonetheless begins on Jan. 1.
For decades, people have also paid the first month’s premium in full for coverage to start, but not under the new rule. Simply selecting a plan is sufficient as long as buyers eventually make a “down payment,” however much that might be. Upon receipt, the insurer is responsible for all medical claims incurred that month.
The White House seems to understand that hundreds of thousands of patients may soon discover that they face gaps in coverage through no fault of their own, but because their old plan was canceled and the exchanges malfunctioned. Some will have life-threatening illnesses, or be diagnosed as such, and require certain advanced or continuous treatments that they will not be able to obtain. ObamaCare will be blamed and rightly so, which is why the White House wants to transfer political accountability to the insurers.
…All this could have been avoided if President Obama had allowed Americans to keep the plans they liked as he promised. But liberal social equity goals require some people to be harmed so others will ostensibly benefit. What an irony that the White House is now scrambling to avert a political uproar over pre-existing conditions when ObamaCare was sold in the name of insuring those conditions.
It’s almost as if they…
…really didn’t care!
On the Lighter Side…
And in the “Match Made in Heaven” segment…
For Sochi Olympics, NBC Hires Former Soviet “Journalist” to Team With Bob Costas
Pozner posing with Bob Costas’ political soulmate and intellectual equal.
It’s somehow fitting a man who toed the Communist line to the point of rationalizing the arrest and exile of Andrei Sakharov, the invasion of Afghanistan and deliberate, unjustifiable downing of KAL Flight 007 would be teamed with another patently prevaricating propagandist like Costas. Perhaps Dan Rather will be available for some color commentary!
Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with “Where WOULD We Be Without Experts?!?”, as we learn…
Those who came into direct contact with cobalt-60 likely to die, expert says
Which, the way we see it, in the immortal words of Staff Sergeant Barnes…
…makes them pretty much like everyone else!
Our advice? Regardless of any exposure to cobalt-60, get a ticket for your final destination…
…well in advance of your departure date. We’ll be happy to help you with your reservation!
Magoo
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