It’s Friday, June 8th, 2018, and here’s The Gouge!

First up, further evidence confirming Victor Davis Hanson’s contention lying under oath was an requisite for high position under The Great Prevaricator as NRO‘s Jack Crowe details how the…

Obama Administration Secretly Helped Iran Skirt Financial Sanctions

“The Obama administration helped Iran utilize sanctioned oil revenue stranded in a foreign bank account in 2016 while actively misleading Congress about the cooperation, according to the results of a Republican led Senate investigation released Wednesday night.

After signing the 2015 nuclear deal, which unfroze Iran’s U.S. accounts in exchange for the regime’s non-proliferation pledge, the Obama administration publicly maintained that all non-nuclear sanctions barring Iran from operating within the U.S. financial system would remain in place. “Senior U.S. government officials repeatedly testified to Congress that Iranian access to the U.S. financial system was not on the table or part of any deal,” congressional investigators wrote in the report.

Despite this pledge to the public and Congress, in February 2016 the administration assisted Tehran in recovering $5.7 billion held in the Bank Muscat in the Persian Gulf state of Oman, according to the report, compiled by the Senate’s permanent subcommittee on investigations. And, according to the report, administration officials continued to misled Congress after the license was issued. “Even after the specific license was issued, U.S. government officials maintained in congressional testimony that Iran would not be granted access to the U.S. financial system,” the report noted.

…According to the report, the Obama administration’s plan ultimately proved unsuccessful, but in undertaking the effort without informing Congress, officials “misled the American people by saying that Iran was not going to be granted access to the U.S. financial system,” Subcommittee Chairman Rob Portman (R., Ohio), the subcommittee’s chairman, told the Washington Post in an interview. “I think they did it because they were so eager to get an agreement with Iran.” Access to the American financial system “is the crown jewel, what all these countries would love. Yet our government offered it, while at the same time telling the American people they weren’t offering it,” Portman added.

An unnamed former Obama official disputed Portman’s characterization, telling the Post that granting a “narrow specific license” for the transaction “cannot be described as granting access to the U.S. financial system.’”…”

Yeah, just like…

While the question whether this entire “deal” was an act of abject appeasement or outright treason is open to debate, what’s certain is it was sold through deception, dissimulation and bald-faced lies.

And as Hope ‘n Change noted at the time, the only aspect of Iran’s pursuit of the Big One impacted by The Obamao’s Iran Deal…

…was its supposed secrecy.

Since we’re on the subject of those incapable of discerning good from evil, also courtesy of NRO, Dennis Prager records…

“The original slogan of Google was “Don’t be evil.” When Google changed its corporate name to Alphabet in 2015, it changed the slogan to “Do the right thing.” If it were to be true to its values, Google should have changed its slogan from “Don’t be evil” to “Don’t fight evil.”

Here is the New York Times report from this past Friday:

Google, hoping to head off a rebellion by employees upset that the technology they were working on could be used for lethal purposes, will not renew a contract with the Pentagon for artificial intelligence work…

Google’s work with the Defense Department on the Maven program, which uses artificial intelligence to interpret video images and could be used to improve the targeting of drone strikes, roiled the internet giant’s work force. Many of the company’s top A.I. researchers, in particular, worried that the contract was the first step toward using the nascent technology in advanced weapons…

About 4,000 Google employees signed a petition demanding “a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology.”

CBS News reported that the petition also said, “We believe that Google should not be in the business of war.” In other words, to the heads of Google and thousands of its elite employees, it is immoral to aid in the defense of their country, and all war is immoral. Google and these 4,000 employees embody two terrible traits: moral idiocy and ingratitude…”

Not to mention one of the primary reasons George Santayana is remembered to history, as well as why, were Violet Beauregard alive and living in the Bay Area, she’d likely be working for Google:

Next up, writing at the Hoover Institution, Victor Davis Hanson lists…

Ten Paradoxes Of Our Age

Numbers 7 & 8 are featured below, while the rest can be accessed through the title link above:

“…7. The great immediate dangers to Western Civilization are not hunger, global warming, inequality, or religious fundamentalism, but obesity, consumer culture, utopian pacifism, multiculturalism, declining demography, the secular religion of political correctness that threatens the right to free speech, an inability to protect national borders and to create a common culture rooted in the values of the West, and an absence of belief in spiritual transcendence and reverence for past customs and traditions. The challenge is not just that Australians, Canadians, Europeans, and Americans increasingly cannot articulate the values that explain why throngs of immigrants migrate to their shores, but that even if they could, they feel that they probably should not.

8. The great dangers to modern constitutional government and a free press come not from silly and easily identifiable right-wing racists and bumbling fascists, but rather, as George Orwell saw, from glib social utopians. Similarly dangerous are their compliant media enhancers who insidiously tolerate the abuses of the administrative state, in the exalted quest for equality, justice, and fairness. Those responsible for eroding our freedoms will not likely be jowled generals in shades and epaulettes, but the lean and cool in hip suits who speak mellifluously of a predetermined arc of history bending toward their utopian mandate. Nothing is more dangerous to democratic government than a media that believes it is an agent for social justice, voluntarily surrenders its autonomy, and sees the loss of its independence as a small price to pay for the adulation it receives from the state…”

In a related item brought to us today via Katie Pavlich and Townhall.com, we learn a…

New DOJ Report Indicates 1-in-5 Federal Prisoners are Illegal Aliens

“…A new Department of Justice report released Thursday reveals 20 percent of federally incarcerated individuals in the United States are illegal aliens, costing taxpayers $1.5 million per day. Many (We’d say the vast majority!) of these individuals committed serious and violent crimes, in additional (What, no spellcheck at Townhall.com?) to entering the country illegally.

…“The illegal immigrant crime rate in this country should be zero,” Attorney General Sessions released in a statement. “Every crime committed by an illegal alien is, by definition, a crime that should have been prevented. It is outrageous that tens of thousands of Americans are dying every year because of the drugs and violence brought over our borders illegally and that taxpayers have been forced, year after year, to pay millions of dollars to incarcerate tens of thousands of illegal aliens…”

Which is yet another reason, if you’ll permit us to borrow a phrase from The King, we write upon them…

Which brings us to The Sports Section, and what we deem a generally common-sense suggestion from Scott Rasmussen, also writing at Townhall.com:

Let’s End Official White House Visits for Sports Champions

“One of this week’s silliest news “controversies” swirled around the Philadelphia Eagles’ cancelled visit to the White House. Pundits on the right were offended that many players refused the honor of a White House invitation just because they don’t like the president. On the left, CNN’s Chris Cillizza was deeply offended by President Trump’s decision to rescind the invite and his “appalling” statement about it.

In other words, the entire episode was simply a Rorschach test that provided a platform for partisans on both sides to voice entirely predictable opinions. If the president said his favorite color was yellow, some would hail the wisdom of the choice while others would find evidence of corruption. That’s just the way things work in politics today.

But this incident reveals a deeper rot in the entire political process. Both sides in the partisan sniping implicitly assume that the president should act like royalty and treat the White House like a palace. It’s part of a larger attitude pretending that the president’s every utterance is of supreme importance and that he must express an opinion on just about everything.

I disagree.

The president’s job is to lead the government, not bestow royal blessings on successful citizens or offer a running commentary on every fad in the news cycle. Bluntly, I don’t care what President Trump thinks about the Philadelphia Eagles any more than I cared about the March Madness brackets filled out by President Obama. If you want royalty, go to London.

In America, it should be possible to watch a football game or go to the theater without hearing from or about the president. (OR, as Rasmussen omits, from the PLAYERS!!!) In fact, it should be normal to go about daily life without encountering the intrusion of partisan politics into every nook and cranny of society. Unfortunately, that’s not the case today. (Again, not because of the President, but because of the players!)

…President Trump could take a simple step in the right direction by ending the practice of inviting teams to the White House…”

As for Malcolm Jenkins, Chris Long, LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Devante Smith-Pelly, Colin Kaepernick and anyone else who’s either refused to stand for the National Anthem or supported those who don’t…

In an inevitable extension of Progressive race-based policies, Tucker Carlson highlights the insanity of placing qualifications above skin color: 

Congratulations, morons (including professional athletes, regardless of color, who, absent the investment of risk-taking White men, would be tallest/largest janitors in the world): enjoy your next flight!

Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:

Then there’s this rather poignant obituary forwarded by Mr. Sensitivity himself, Bill Meisen:

“We wanted to finally get the last word,” said the late adulteress’ abandoned son Jay, who added, “You could write it all down in a book or turn it into a movie and people wouldn’t believe what we went through.”

After reading that obituary, we believe it, even if we can’t begin to relate to the experience.

Finally, since we’re on the subject of individuals lacking in feelings, we’ll call it a wrap with News of the Bizarre, courtesy of an Australian with a curious sense of responsibility:

Crocodile eats small dog that spent years chasing it back into river

“It was something that had a high probability of happening sometime,” Hansen told an interviewer.

Funny as hell, mate!

Hansen’s right up there with this touchy-feely fellow: 

Driver in deadly hit-and-run crash says ‘accidents happen,’ and ‘people hit and run people all the time‘

According to the website of a Massachusetts attorney, leaving the scene of a personal injury resulting in death is a felony carrying a mandatory minimum jail term of 1-10 years in state prison, $1,000-$5,000 fine and 3-year-indefinite loss of license.

Congratulations, you heartless homey: you’ve just made the prosecution’s case.

Magoo