It’s Friday, September 25th, 2015…and as we’ve had a very busy week, here’s another abbreviated edition of The Gouge!
First up, courtesy of Commentary Magazine, Noah Rothmann opines on…
“…Do Americans no longer care about good governance? Has the public grown so inured to scandal that most are willing to dismiss them or to excuse them when they arise? Is the popular political press so committed to preserving the mythology surrounding this administration that it would abdicate its responsibilities to the public? The reprehensible revelations above are just a handful of the abuses of public trust that have occurred over the last six years. Americans have grown complacent over the course of Barack Obama’s presidency. A sense of disillusionment that would shrug off these and other misuses of the public trust is unnerving and dangerous. It is a level of dissatisfaction that paves the way for Caesarism. For the sake of the republican ideals, the voters and the press must get serious about holding this White House to account.“
We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: absent the heightened levels of melanin he inherited from his Communist absentee-father…along with the sycophantic subservience of a MSM thoroughly sympathetic to Socialism…Barack Hussein Obama couldn’t have been elected dog catcher.
Okay…MAYBE dog catcher.
In a related item highlighting either the realities of the Peter Principle or the inevitability of the prophecies of John set forth in The Revelation, as The Washington Times reports…
“…The pontiff didn’t mention illegal immigration during his speech Thursday, but did refer to the large numbers of people coming from Latin America. Advocacy groups cheered his words, saying his call for unity and acceptance should temper some of the harsh rhetoric that’s flared recently.
…Rep. Michael Burgess, Texas Republican, said the U.S. is already doing its part to heed calls for compassion.
“The thing that always strikes me when we get into these discussions is the United States takes in more people every year legally than the rest of the world combined,” he said. “You start from that premise — it was 1.7 million last year, you want to add another 400,000 to 600,000 that came in without the benefit of doing it the right way. What is the right number? If over 2 million is not enough, would someone please tell me what that right number is, and would other countries act accordingly.”
The Vatican, for its part, welcomes millions of visitors a year — but allows only a very select few, who meet strict criteria, to be admitted as residents or citizens.
Only about 450 of its 800 or so residents actually hold citizenship, according to a 2012 study by the Library of Congress. That study said citizens are either church cardinals who reside in the Vatican, the Holy See’s diplomats around the world, and those who have to reside in the city because of their jobs, such as the Swiss Guard. Spouses and children who live in the city because of their relationship with citizens — including the Swiss Guard and workers such as the gardener — have also been granted citizenship. But that means few of the Vatican’s citizens are women.
A Vatican spokesman did not return an email seeking comment on its policy.“
This reminds us of the scene from High Plains Drifter between The Stranger and the Preacher as Clint empties Lewis Belding’s hotel:
Preacher: See here, you can’t turn all these people out into the night. It is inhuman, brother. Inhuman!
The Stranger: I’m not your brother.
Preacher: We are all brothers in the eyes of God.
The Stranger: All these people, are they your sisters and brothers?
Preacher: They most certainly are.
The Stranger: Then you won’t mind if they come over and stay at your place, will ya?
What’s good for the goose is evidently not good for the gander!
Oh…and while droning on about the mythical menace of man-made global warming, the former Argentinian community organizer forgot to emphasize the evils of either ISIS…
…or his host’s pernicious policies towards the lives of the unborn. 56 million…and counting.
Gee…guess his judgment must have been clouded by either his over-hyped, hypothetical perils of anthropogenic climate change…
…or his continued recovery from nearly choking whilst chortling…
…with the cutthroat Castros!
What we impartially observe agrees with the assessment of the WSJ‘s Dan Henninger, who sees…
A Politicized Pope
The battlegrounds of secular politics may undermine Francis’ moral authority.
“…The day before Pope Francis met with Mr. Obama, one of the president’s aides, Ben Rhodes, said: “How can we make use of the enormous platform that the pope’s visit provides to lift up the work we’re doing and demonstrate how it’s consistent with the direction that’s coming from the pope?” (Thus does the “Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste!” policies of Rahmbo live on!) At the White House, Pope Francis praised Mr. Obama’s climate-change initiatives, and the president thanked the pope for supporting his policies on that and his opening to Cuba.
It is not possible to do this and be “above” politics. Everyone in politics is one of the boys, including the pope.
In Cuba, when the pope’s spokesman, Rev. Federico Lombardi, was asked if Pope Francis knew that 50 dissidents had been arrested, he said: “I don’t have any information about this.” Embarrassing bunk is standard for the Josh Earnests of the world. It should not become so for the pope’s spokesman.
Politics today—which transforms any major public figure into a celebrity—is more fraught, divided and risky than ever. On one hand, Francis is amenable to being photographed smiling and squeezing hands with Fidel Castro, a decades-long oppressor of his nation’s Catholics. But then the Vatican objects that the pope might be photographed with a famous pro-abortion nun invited by the White House. Barack Obama plays hardball. His Justice Department had already sued the anti-abortion Little Sisters of the Poor.
In the past two years, the plight of Christians in the Middle East has gone from persecution to slaughter. Decades of Vatican diplomacy there for the world’s most at-risk Christians has produced very little. Soon there may be nothing left to protect. On Friday, the pope reportedly will address the U.N. about climate change. A jeremiad against Christian extermination would be welcome this week, too.
Francis’ popularity remains high, but the dangers in his current course are high. What many of his new political friends mainly seek is to have the pope “moralize” their politics. Francis’ spiritual message could not be more secondary. They won’t be with him in Philadelphia. How allowing the papacy’s core moral authority to be politicized is in the interests of the Catholic Church as an institution is difficult to see.“
Unless he’s already on their side!
Speaking of those already pulling for the other side, also courtesy of the Journal, Kimberly Strassel updates us on the status of…
“If Hillary Clinton loses this election, it won’t be because of Bernie Sanders. It won’t be because of Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush or Carly Fiorina. It will be because of a 1966 statute.
The Clintons are street fighters, and over their scandal-plagued years they have mastered outwitting the press, Congress, the Justice Department, even special prosecutors. But the reason Mrs. Clinton isn’t winning her latest scandal is because she faces a new opponent—one she can’t beat: the Freedom of Information Act.
Of all the Clinton email revelations this week, none compared with a filing by the State Department in federal Judge Emmet Sullivan’s court in Washington on Monday. The filing was a response to a FOIA lawsuit brought in March by conservative organization Citizens United. The group demanded documents from Mrs. Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state related to the Clinton Foundation and to the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya. What the State Department revealed was a testament to the power of FOIA.
…All told, there are at least 35 FOIA lawsuits pending for Clinton-related email. Nearly everything important we’ve learned has come from those suits. They are why the State Department is releasing emails; why we know they contained classified information; why we know Mrs. Clinton’s aides also used unsanctioned email accounts; why we know that the State Department is covering for Mrs. Clinton.
Which explains why the Justice Department wants the judiciary to “consolidate” the lawsuits, claiming that the State Department is overwhelmed. The real goal is to shut down the process. Consolidation will slow discovery, and the chances of stopping the information flow is better if all the suits come before one judge, who might be friendly, rather than six unpredictable ones. But each organization bringing a suit deserves a separate hearing. It isn’t these groups’ fault that the State Department allowed Mrs. Clinton to go email rogue and now has a mess.
What Democrats are only beginning to understand is that 35 FOIA lawsuits is a guarantee of weekly Clinton email-news bombs. This isn’t ending. The polls keep measuring Mrs. Clinton in theoretical matchups. The only matchup that matters is this one: Clinton vs. FOIA. And FOIA is crushing it.“
As James Taranto details at Best of the Web…
The Chicago Tribune offers this advice:
[Mrs.] Clinton could demonstrate the good decision-making she hasn’t thus far by taking time from her campaign to fully explain to Americans what she was thinking, how she and her associates relied on a personal server for official business, and why she flouted the policies not only of her own State Department but also of President Barack Obama.
It’s no longer just the emails. It’s the judgment. Secretary Clinton, own this.
And here’s National Journal’s Ron Fournier, who’s been tilting at this windmill for months:
If the Democratic Party cares to salvage a sliver of moral authority, its leaders and early state voters need to send Hillary Rodham Clinton an urgent message: Come clean or get out. Stop lying and deflecting about how and why you stashed State Department email on a secret server—or stop running.
The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza observes that Mrs. Clinton “is breaking the first rule of crisis communications: Get EVERYTHING out all at once, take the hit and move on.”
It may be that calling on Mrs. Clinton to “come clean” is like exhorting Donald Trump to act like a statesman—she just doesn’t have it in her. Less charitably, it is possible that she’s been telling lies because the truth would damage her more (or more quickly). Why aren’t we inspired by Hillary Clinton? The best answer may be another question: How much time have you got?
Far more than we believe Hillary has!
Finally, on the Lighter Side…
Not that there’s anything…
…wrong with that!!!
Magoo
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