It’s Wednesday, August 3rd, 2016…just one day before the 37th anniversary of when the most beautiful girl in the world allowed us to marry way over our head!
Though she never reads The Gouge, we’re still gonna take a moment and tell TLJ she’s the greatest!
And while fighter pilots…
…get all the hot chicks, we’re eternally thankful we got the hottest!
Now, here’s The Gouge!
At the top of today’s order, two noteworthy quotes and one late-breaking headline. First, the late-breaking headline:
“The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to U.S. and European officials and congressional staff briefed on the operation afterward.Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were flown into Iran on an unmarked cargo plane, according to these officials. The U.S. procured the money from the central banks of the Netherlands and Switzerland, they said.
The money (according to The Obamao Administration)represented the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 fall of Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The settlement, which resolved claims before an international tribunal in The Hague, also coincided with the formal implementation that same weekend of the landmark nuclear agreement reached between Tehran, the U.S. and other global powers the summer before.
“With the nuclear deal done, prisoners released, the time was right to resolve this dispute as well,” President Barack Obama said at the White House on Jan. 17—without disclosing the $400 million cash payment.
Senior U.S. officials denied any link between the payment and the prisoner exchange. They say the way the various strands came together simultaneously was coincidental, not the result of any quid pro quo…”
We report, YOU decide. But before making up your mind, consider the following: (1) The odds of Barry successfully confronting the Mad Mullahs are about as good as Kip taking on Rex:
Obama is the Iranians b*tch! (2) There’s no such thing as coincidence with this lying Islamofascist!
Next, the quotes, which are aimed specifically at those who maintain the certain disaster of four more years of Obama under Hillary is worse than the gut-wrenching gamble on Trump:
“By the final night of the convention and Hillary’s speech, no one still quite knew why she was running for president other than that it was her turn — and perhaps that having lived in the White House as First Lady, she wanted to occupy the Oval Office in her own right. In her speech she offered 50/50 split-the-difference banalities: The last eight years were good but the next years could be even better, cops must not be shot, police must not shoot suspects, we must build infrastructure and provide free college, and on and on. The real message was that the party of Harry Truman cannot even utter the phrase radical Islam or say, All lives matter. For independent and working-class Democratic voters, the message was: “You are either irrelevant or expendable.”” – Victor Davis Hanson
“Much has been made of Hillary’s “experience” in politics. But it has been an experience of having proved to be wrong, time and time again. As a senator she opposed the military “surge” in Iraq that rescued that country and defeated the terrorists. As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton carried out foreign policy decisions that led to major setbacks for American interests as far as the eye can see — whether in Egypt, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Ukraine, North Korea, or China. This is the kind of “experience” we don’t need to see repeated in the White House.” – Thomas Sowell
As Sowell so succinctly states in our Quote of the Day above:
“Voting for an out of control egomaniac like Donald Trump would be like playing Russian roulette with the future of this country. Voting for someone with a track record like Hillary Clinton’s is like putting a shotgun to your head and pulling the trigger. And not voting at all is just giving up. Nobody said that being a good citizen would be easy.”
Since the great Thomas Sowell has confirmed “giving up” is not an option, how does one explain the story the Communist News Network was crowing about earlier today:
Cruella DeVille announces she’s leaving the Republican Party.
“”This election cycle is a test,” Bradshaw said. “As much as I don’t want another four years of (President Barack) Obama’s policies, I can’t look my children in the eye and tell them I voted for Donald Trump. I can’t tell them to love their neighbor and treat others the way they wanted to be treated, and then vote for Donald Trump. I won’t do it.”
Her decision comes amid controversy over Trump’s criticism of the family of an Muslim-American soldier killed in action in Iraq in 2004. Bradshaw called that remark “despicable,” saying it “made me sick to my stomach.”
“Donald Trump belittled a woman who gave birth to a son who died fighting for the United States. If anything, that reinforced my decision to become an independent voter,” she said. “Every family who loses a loved one in service to our country or who has a family member who serves in the military should be honored, regardless of their political views.Vets and their family have more than earned the right to those views. Someone with the temperament to be president would understand and respect that.”…”
So,…Sally’s solution to Trump’s undeniable shortcomings is to…
…cast her support behind a serial liar who was similarly dismissive and disrespectful to a woman who gave birth to a son who died fighting for the United States because Hillary deliberately and purposefully abandoned him?!?
Sorry Sally; though military lives matter, and their families deserve our respect, once they express purely political views, said political views aren’t off-limits to criticism. Trump’s comments were clumsy and ill-advised. But once Mr. Khan waded into presidential politics, his statements were subject to cross-examination.
Writing at U.S. Defense Watch, Ray Starmann demonstrates the compassion and carefully-considered counterattack Trump should have employed, but the likes of which The Donald appears incapable.
An open letter to Mr. Khizr Khan
Sorry Khizr, but if you’d actually READ the Constitution, as James Taranto notes, it places no practical limit on Congress’s power to regulate immigration, and none at all on its power to control entry of unadmitted nonresident aliens.
Dear Mr. Khan:
I, like millions of Americans saw your speech at the DNC on Thursday night. I wish to offer my sympathy for the death of your son, Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed in action in Iraq. As a former US Army officer, and a veteran of the Gulf War, I can certainly understand the pain and anguish that you and your wife endure every day.
Your son died saving the lives of his fellow soldiers. As Jesus told his disciples according to the Gospel of John, Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Captain Khan is a hero. I am sure the soldiers he served with regard him as one. I know you and your wife do. Rest assured that millions of veterans regard your son as a hero as well.
To paraphrase from the Book of Ecclesiasticus, your son’s name liveth for evermore. Your son made the ultimate sacrifice for his country, a country that was new to you and your family and one which you openly embraced and certainly love.
When you and your family arrived to America from Pakistan, you assimilated into our country. You adopted American ways, learned our history and apparently you even acquired a pocket Constitution along the way. Good for you sir. But, there are many Muslims in America who not only have no desire to assimilate, but wish to live under Sharia Law.
That is unacceptable to Americans.There is only one law of the land. That is the U.S. Constitution.
As you well know, Mr. Khan, we live in violent times, dangerous times. Muslim madmen from ISIS and other radical Jihadi groups are on a murder and terror spree across the globe.
Your religion of peace, Islam, is anything but that in 2016. That is a fact that is confirmed every time a Muslim shoots, bombs, beheads and tortures innocent men, women and children. This does not mean that every Muslim is a terrorist, but most terrorists, sir, are indeed Muslims.
A Muslim terrorist attack has become the sign of the times.Regardless of what the feckless, naïve, leftist ideologue Barack Obama and his dimwitted colleagues John Kerry, Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel state, the United States and the West are at war with Radical Islam. It is the job of the President of the United States to protect his nation from all enemies; foreign and domestic. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama romanticizes Islam and refuses to accept reality, which has resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent people across the world.Groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda have one goal, the complete destruction of the Judeo-Christian culture, our religions and our way of life.
Many Americans have families that have been here for decades, even centuries. Many families like mine have relatives who fought in the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam and Desert Storm. Some families have relatives who fought in the American Revolution. We don’t plan on letting our country be devoured by Muslim maniacs. We are Americans sir, and not unarmed, socialist European zombies. We will do what is necessary to protect the United States. While many Democrats and liberals see the world through rose colored glasses, conservatives understand that there is good and evil in this world. Evil must be destroyed before it destroys us.
Strong measures, wartime measures, must be taken to protect this country from those that wish to annihilate us and our way of life. Mr. Trump’s plan to temporarily halt immigration from Muslim countries that are known to either support terrorism or harbor terrorist groups is not only pragmatic, but indeed it is constitutional.It is the constitutional duty of the President of the United States to protect this nation.
There is simply no way to vet hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees from war zones like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Europe is being destroyed because reckless leaders like Angela Merkel have opened the continent’s doors to a flood of over one million undocumented Muslims arriving with nothing more than a bad attitude and a haversack of Jihad.
Do you think Americans are stupid? While the left lives in a dream world, the right does not. Mr. Trump understands the threat to his nation and the threat, sir, is not from Swedish Lutherans named Anna and Lars. The threat, sir, is from Radical Islam.
How in God’s name are US immigration authorities supposed to know the true intentions of a 22 year old Syrian man? It is impossible.You know it is impossible. How in God’s name are US immigration authorities supposed to know the true intentions of hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees and thousands of other sundry Muslims who wish to arrive on our shores? It is impossible. You know it is impossible.
Whether you, your wife, the Muslim world and millions of Democrats are offended by Mr. Trump’s realistic view of the world is irrelevant.Whether you, your wife and son would have been prohibited from emigrating from Pakistan to America under Mr. Trump’s wartime plan is irrelevant.The security of this great land supersedes your desires and the desires of others who wish to come here now. The United States of America has no obligation to open its doors in order to placate foreigners and liberals in our government.
To adopt any other course but Mr. Trump’s would be a cause for further endangering the lives of Americans every day. That, sir, is unacceptable. You attacked Mr. Trump in front of a worldwide audience, yet you can’t understand the fact that he defends himself against attacks from you, Hillary Clinton and the left. What else is one to do sir?
We must live in a world of reality, not a world of denial, delusion and fantasy the Democrats inhabit every waking day of their lives. Radical Islam is the enemy of everyone on this planet who believes in freedom and justice. Until it is destroyed, this nation must protect itself from enemies both foreign…
…and domestic.
Talk about killing two birds with one photograph!
And for those on the “Trump Never Served” bandwagon, NRO‘s David French reminds you…
“Last week, Gold Star father Khizr Khan made headlines when he ripped Donald Trump’s proposed Muslim ban, declaring at the crescendo of his speech at the Democratic National Convention that Trump had “sacrificed nothing and no one.” It was an undeniably powerful moment — made only more powerful by Trump’s personal counterattack against Khan and his wife, Ghazala. The Khans’ son, U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan, was killed in action in Iraq in 2004. At the same time, however, calling out Trump’s lack of sacrifice was an odd choice — especially when Hillary Clinton is his opponent. After all, what has Hillary ever sacrificed?
On Saturday, I made that point on Twitter, and the backlash was immediate: Hillary gave up high-paying jobs to work in Arkansas and teach law school; she has a lifetime of “public service.” How dare I compare Trump’s private-sector greed with Hillary’s public-sector “sacrifice.”
Let’s be clear. Hillary Clinton hasn’t sacrificed — she’s lived the progressive dream. And she’s certainly not a “public servant” — she’s a cynical, grasping, and ambitious politician. Her accomplishments are meager, and her one guiding star is her own self-advancement.
First, let’s dispense with the notion that there is anything at all sacrificial about her career. Walk into any elite law school and lay out her career path — work for fashionable left-wing causes, teach law school, make partner in a state’s premiere law firm, move into the White House, and then run for a gift-wrapped Senate seat — and you’ll watch students knife one another in the back for the opportunity to have half her chances. Every one of her jobs has been “cool.” Each of her jobs helped build her résumé. Not one of her jobs involved any serious sacrifice for her country.
Most progressive students don’t want to start or end their careers in big corporate law firms. Indeed, they often choose that life only because they feel boxed-in by student loans and try to escape the big firm the instant they’re financially able. It’s not a “sacrifice” to choose to escape the 70-hour work weeks. It’s not a “sacrifice” to avoid endless hours of thankless document review and mindless discovery.It’s a dream.
Second, it’s simply false that activists, politicians, or bureaucrats are — by definition — “public servants.” Instead, they’re often wannabe rulers, seeking their own good at the expense of the public. Activists and politicians have pulled off a neat trick. Unlike other professionals, they’ve figured out a way to cast their naked ambition as selfless and righteous. If public office is such a sacrifice, why do senators and representatives hold on to their offices with a vise grip? Many of them love the perks. Most of them love the power. Some of them love the public.
So, please, spare me the rhetoric that any given politician is a public servant. Hillary Clinton has mainly been a destructive force in American life. Her zealous defense of abortion-on-demand has helped maintain a culture of death that has cost millions of young lives. Her foreign-policy missteps have helped turn Libya into an ISIS playground and assisted in squandering American victories in Iraq and Afghanistan. Her Russian “reset” merely lulled Americans into believing the Russian bear was benign. Her unrelenting personal corruption has helped degrade American politics. She serves mainly herself…”
Frankly, from where we sit, she serves herself exclusively!
Next up, writing at Commentary Magazine, Noah Rothman details Hillary, even absent her Progressive policies, is in no way preferable to Trump, as both are…
“The ease with which both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton appeal to falsehoods is matched only by their clumsiness.It isn’t just that the Republican and Democratic presidential nominees are habitual liars but that they are simply inept practitioners of the craft. No one has to dig into the annals of history to support this contention. You only had to watch a selection of moments on the Sunday morning news programs in to understand the full measure of these candidates’ compulsive need to distort the truth.
…What is the point of all these lies? For Clinton, they are to find exculpation for her reckless behavior. For Trump, they are to telegraph fealty to the Russian government, as well as to seek his own personal aggrandizement. For both, lies come easily to their lips. One of these two people will be elected to the White House. They will become role models for America’s children, and they will guide the course of our national culture. What will that culture look like four years from now?“
About as undeniably decadent as the difference between “Black society” prior to The Great Society and today.
And in the Sam Kinison Memorial Segment, Breitbart’s reporting…
“Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta sat on the board of a small energy company alongside Russian officials that received $35 million from a Putin-connected Russian government fund, a relationship Podesta failed to fully disclose on his federal financial disclosures as required by law…”
Why should he; after all, it’s not like any laws apply to the Clintons! Clinton corruption:
And it will never end; not unless we vote it out of existence in November!
Meanwhile, back on the papal plane with the first Socialist pontiff, as Justin Holcomb reports at Townhall.com…
Pope Francis Parallels Islamic and Christian Violence, “It’s Like a Fruit Salad, There’s Everything”
“Madre mia; WTF was I THINKING…other than Socialist thoughts?!?”
During a press conference on the papal plane this weekend, the Pope said that he has a hard time distinguishing between Islamic and Christian violence because there are violent Catholics as well.He cited a man who killed his girlfriend to justify his reasoning.
“If I speak of Islamic violence, I must speak of Catholic violence,” Pope Francis said on Sunday. “And no, not all Muslims are violent, not all Catholics are violent. It is like a fruit salad; there’s everything.”
Speaking directly about Islam, he said that “in pretty much every religion there is always a small group of fundamentalists. Fundamentalists. We have them.”
He then went on to speak of money and capitalism as the root of terrorism. “Terrorism grows when there are no other options, and when the center of the global economy is the god of money…this is already the first terrorism…this is a basic terrorism against all of humanity! Think about it!“
We will…for about as long as such inanities deserve consideration…which is far shorter than the time it took us to type this sentence. Every time this Socialist-in-Catholic-clothing opens his mouth we’re of the opinion…
Loading ...
You must be logged in to post a comment.