It’s Thursday, January 19th, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!

First up, a story that definitively defines the unbridgeable divide between Liberals and Conservatives:

Murderer of Georgia girl, 7, gets life in prison without parole

The man who pleaded guilty to the brutal murder of a seven-year-old Georgia girl was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, WAGA reported. Dressed in a bulletproof vest and orange jumpsuit, 20-year-old maintenance man Ryan Brunn described to the court in detail how he lured Jorelys Rivera on Dec. 2 into a vacant apartment, molested her, then killed her.

Brunn said he used a photograph of the girl’s missing roller skate, which he had taken earlier in the day, to convince Jorelys to enter the empty unit with him. “I photographed it on my phone and showed it to her and asked her if it was hers,” he said. “I told her to come with me, and I’d get it for her, and she came.” When asked by the judge why he did this, Brunn calmly said it was for “sexual purposes.”

He told the court that after the molestation took place, he feared Jorelys would tell someone what had happened. “I was just so terrified and scared that … I didn’t want her to go home and tell her mom and dad on me. And I just … I cut her,” he said. Continuing, Brunn said he cut the girl’s neck with a razor and beat her to death with her own skate. Afterward, he dumped her body in a trash compactor.

He pleaded guilty to a number of charges, including murder, child molestation and abandonment of a dead body.

Prosecutors said they accepted a deal to keep the “sociopathic killer” under lock and key. “It’s not often that we get to see a monster appear in court and make full disclosure about the horrible crime that they’ve committed, and certainly we don’t get to see justice served this fast,” Georgia Bureau of Investigation director Vernon Keenan said.

We cannot fathom why the GBI’s director feels “justice” was served by forcing the taxpayers of Georgia to foot the bill for this animal’s continued existence.  Nor can we understand the mindset that would term “compassionate” a society which could coddle such a vicious killer for the rest of his natural life, while at the same time actively promoting the wholesale slaughter of over 40 million unborn infants a matter or privacy.

Sorry, but for once, the Environazis have it right; the Earth’s resources ARE limited….and wasting precious water, oxygen, food, fuel and financial resources on the likes of Ryan Brunn is,….well,….criminally insane.

Speaking of the criminally insane, James Taranto opines on the….

The Passive-Aggressive Presidency

You can make him decide, but don’t blame him for the decision.

The Obama administration today denied a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring crude from Canada’s tar sands to Texas’ refineries. But as National Journalreports, that doesn’t mean the pipeline will never get built. “The Obama administration has said it simply could not adequately review the proposed project in time to meet a 60-day deadline for a decision on the permit imposed by Congress in the payroll-tax package enacted in December.”

This looks to be a reasonably effective parry. The administration had initially said it would delay the decision until after the election for what critics took to be political reasons. On the one hand, the pipeline would create thousands of jobs and increase the supply of energy–and labor unions, which would fill some of those jobs, like it. On the other hand, environmental fundamentalists hate it. Thus either a “yes” or a “no” would carry risks for a Democratic president seeking re-election.

Its hand forced, the administration formally rejected the permit request. But by attributing the decision to a lack of time and leaving open the possibility of a reversal, it blunted Congress’s ultimatum.

Only for those too partisan, stupid or uninformed to differentiate fact from fiction.

Here’s the juice: this entire affair is a complete crock.  As the WSJ notes, the “Keystone XL has been planned for years and only became a political issue after the well-to-do environmental lobby decided to make it a station of the green cross.”

Consider the following:

(1).  TransCanada filed its application in 2008, and Foggy Bottom not once, but twice determined following exhaustive studies, first in 2010, than again in 2011, the project would have “no significant impacts” on the environment.

(2).  The Ogallala aquifer is already crisscrossed, quite literally, by thousands of miles of existing pipelines….

….including the existing Keystone pipeline, represented in green just to the east of the proposed XL right-of-way.

The absurdity becomes even more evident when one remembers a statement The Great Prevaricator uttered back in December, as quoted in the Washington Examiner courtesy of Bill Meisen:

As Obama called for passage of those bills, he also responded to a recent Republican push to require him to approve the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada. “However many jobs might be generated by a Keystone pipeline,” he said, “they’re going to be a lot fewer than the jobs that are created by extending the payroll tax cut and extending unemployment insurance.”

There you have it: unfettered economic activity and private industry don’t create jobs, government handouts….funded by your tax dollars….create jobs!

Here’s the WSJ‘s Mary Anastasia O’Grady’s take on the subject:

Meanwhile, the Boy Blunder’s own jobs panel recommended yesterday America’s economic future demands every ounce of fossil fuel we can lay our hands on.

Nothing to see here folks; move along!

Turning now to International News, John Bolton explains why….

On Iran, sanctions are not the answer

America is in a race to stop Iran from making the world’s most dangerous weapons, and we are losing

Sadly, we have been behind the curve for years, and recent Obama administration claims about slowing Tehran down are little more than re-election propaganda. President Obama is still naively fixed on diplomacy with Iran, though it is laughable to believe our smooth-talking negotiators will chitchat Iran out of its nuclear ambitions. If Iran returns to talks, what is the compromise between our insistence that Iran cannot have nukes and Iran’s determination to get them? That Iran gets to keep a small nuclear weapons program?

Sanctions have long been touted as the answer, but they are not. Iran has enough friends (Russia and China, plus Cuba, Venezuela and others on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent Latin jaunt) to withstand them. North Korea, the world’s most heavily sanctioned country, with a population perennially near starvation, has exploded two nuclear devices. Nonetheless, both the Obama and Bush administrations sought negotiations with Pyongyang’s criminal regime, an unfortunate tutorial for Tehran’s mullahs.

Nor have assassinations, sabotage or the Stuxnet computer virus materially damaged Iran’s program. While politicians claim these measures show they are “doing something” about Iran, objectively they simply enable its steady, clandestine progress. They are diversions masquerading as solutions.

Obama’s Plan B, containing a nuclear Iran, is dangerously misguided. The mullahs do not buy our theories of deterrence. Even if they did, the nuclear threat doesn’t stop in Tehran. Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt, among others, will seek nuclear weapons if Iran succeeds, and a multipolar nuclear Middle East simply awaits the first match.

The most likely outcome is stark: The world’s central banker of terrorism will very soon become a nuclear weapons state. The only other option is to take pre-emptive military action to break Iran’s program, and the odds of doing so successfully are deteriorating daily, as it hardens and deeply buries new facilities.

Indeed, faced with a weak, ineffective Obama, Iran’s smartest strategy is to accelerate its work, finishing the job before his potential defeat this November. Obama’s irresolution and inaction could well make a nuclear Iran his most lasting legacy.

Which he will promptly blame on George W. Bush and/or Congressional Republicans….with innocent Israelis and Americans footing the bill for his folly.

And since we’re on the subject of the Religion of Peace, here’s today’s Money Quote, courtesy of Adli Sadeq, the Palestinian ambassador to India, writing in the official PA daily:

“There are no two Palestinians who disagree over the fact that Israel exists, and recognition of it is restating the obvious, but recognition of its right to exist is something else, different from recognition of its [physical] existence.“

One has to admire their consistency and openness; after all, they’ve never denied nor tried to hide their hatred and intentions towards Israel.

On the Lighter Side….

Finally, we’ll call it a night with another story ripped from the pages of the Crime Blotter, courtesy of Bill Meisen and….a type of criminal activity we’ve frankly never before encountered:

Pair Busted For Flaming Tampon Attack On Car

Feminine hygiene products were stuffed inside auto’s oil, gas caps

Armed with flaming tampons–yes, flaming tampons–two young Pennsylvanians attempted to blow up a vehicle after severely vandalizing it, according to police.

The bizarre January 7 incident outside a bar in Metal Township resulted in the arrest of Patricia Deshong, 25, and Quentin Deshong, 22, on a variety of charges, including attempted arson, public drunkenness, and criminal mischief.

According to State Police troopers, the Deshongs seriously damaged a 2006 Ford Fusion, which had its windshield and windows either cracked or broken, was covered with dents, and had blood on the front passenger seat. The car’s hood was also open and various hoses had been disconnected.

As for the flaming tampons, a probable cause affidavit notes that investigators “discovered that the gas cap was removed and tampons were used to possibly ignite the gas tank.” Additionally, “Tampon was used in the engine compartment where the oil fill cap is located.” Since “ashes were at the gas cap area and the oil fill cap area,” troopers concluded that the tampons had been set ablaze at each spot.

The affidavit does not indicate why the Deshongs allegedly vandalized the vehicle, which is owned by Falon Clark, a 25-year-old woman whose Facebook page still includes Patricia Deshong among her friends. Hours after her car was trashed, a message on Clark’s Facebook page noted that she was “lookin for some revenge…”

A friend of Clark’s, Gary Boggs, told troopers that Patricia Deshong had thrown a beer bottle through the rear window of his Ford F-150 truck. The affidavit does not specify when this alleged attack occurred, nor does it describe the relationship between the Deshongs.

After arresting the Deshongs–both of whom were under the influence of alcohol (Now THAT’S a surprise!)–troopers discovered that Patricia was in possession of a license plate from the trashed Ford, as well as the vehicle’s registration card. As a result, she was charged with theft.

Flaming tampons?!?  As Mr. Meisen suggested, this sounds suspiciously like a resurgence by the Red Brigade!

Magoo