It’s Tuesday, May 15th, 2012….and after taking Monday off due to devoting our entire Sunday afternoon and evening to TLJ as part of her well-deserved Mother’s Day present, here’s The Gouge!
Leading off the Tuesday edition, the WaPo‘s completed its transformation from the heady days of Woodward and Bernstein, when it was widely viewed as a repository of truth, into a blatantly biased mouthpiece of modern Liberalism and the Dimocratic Party.
To whit, we’ll lay a little groundwork, courtesy of George Lawlor and Kimberly Strassel in last Friday’s WSJ:
Trolling for Dirt on the President’s List
First a Romney supporter was named on an Obama campaign website. That was followed by the slimy trolling into a citizen’s private life.
I am NOT a crook….just morally challenged!
Here’s what happens when the president of the United States publicly targets a private citizen for the crime of supporting his opponent.
Frank VanderSloot is the CEO of Melaleuca Inc. The 63-year-old has run that wellness-products company for 26 years out of tiny Idaho Falls, Idaho. Last August, Mr. VanderSloot gave $1 million to Restore Our Future, the Super PAC that supports Mitt Romney.
Three weeks ago, an Obama campaign website, “Keeping GOP Honest,” took the extraordinary step of publicly naming and assailing eight private citizens backing Mr. Romney. Titled “Behind the curtain: a brief history of Romney’s donors,” the post accused the eight of being “wealthy individuals with less-than-reputable records.” Mr. VanderSloot was one of the eight, smeared particularly as being “litigious, combative and a bitter foe of the gay rights movement.”
About a week after that post, a man named Michael Wolf contacted the Bonneville County Courthouse in Idaho Falls in search of court records regarding Mr. VanderSloot.Specifically, Mr. Wolf wanted all the documents dealing with Mr. VanderSloot’s divorces, as well as a case involving a dispute with a former Melaleuca employee.
Mr. Wolf sent a fax to the clerk’s office—which I have obtained—listing four cases he was after. He would later send a second fax, asking for three further court cases dealing with either Melaleuca or Mr. VanderSloot. Mr. Wolf listed only his name and a private cellphone number.
Some digging revealed that Mr. Wolf was, until a few months ago, a law clerk on the Democratic side of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He’s found new work. The ID written out at the top of his faxes identified them as coming from “Glenn Simpson.” That’s the name of a former Wall Street Journal reporter who in 2009 founded a D.C. company that performs private investigative work.
The website for that company, Fusion GPS, describes itself as providing “strategic intelligence,” with expertise in areas like “politics.” That’s a polite way of saying “opposition research.”
When I called Fusion’s main number and asked to speak to Michael Wolf, a man said Mr. Wolf wasn’t in the office that day but he’d be in this coming Monday. When I reached Mr. Wolf on his private cell, he confirmed he had until recently worked at the Senate. When I asked what his interest was in Mr. VanderSloot’s divorce records, he hesitated, then said he didn’t want to talk about that. When I asked what his relationship was with Fusion, he hesitated again and said he had “no comment.” “It’s a legal thing,” he added.
Fusion dodged my calls, so I couldn’t ask who was paying it to troll through Mr. VanderSloot’s divorce records. Mr. Simpson finally sent an email stating: “Frank VanderSloot is a figure of interest in the debate over civil rights for gay Americans. As his own record on gay issues amply demonstrates, he is a legitimate subject of public records research into his lengthy history of legal disputes.”
And we’re very proud to be on it!
A look through Federal Election Commission records did not show any payments to Fusion or Mr. Wolf from political players, such as the Democratic National Committee, the Obama campaign, or liberal Super PACs. Then again, when political groups want to hire researchers, it is not uncommon to hire a less controversial third party, which then hires the researchers.
This is not the first attack on Mr. VanderSloot. While the executive has been a force in Idaho politics and has helped Mr. Romney raise money, he’s not what most would consider a national political power player. Through 2011, nearly every mention of Mr. VanderSloot appeared in Idaho or Washington state newspapers, often in reference to his business.
That changed in January, with the first Super PAC disclosures. Liberal bloggers and media have since dug into his past, dredging up long-ago Idaho controversies that touched on gay issues. His detractors have spiraled these into accusations that Mr. VanderSloot is a “gay bashing thug.” He’s become a national political focus of attention, aided by the likes of partisan Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow.Bloggers have harassed his children, visiting their social media accounts and asking for interviews and information.
Mr. VanderSloot has said his attackers have misconstrued facts and made false allegations. In February he wrote a long reply, publicly stating that he has “many gay friends whom I love and respect” who should “have the same freedoms and rights as any other individual.” The Obama campaign’s response, in April, was to single out Mr. VanderSloot and repeat the slurs.
Political donations don’t come with a right to privacy, and Mr. VanderSloot might have expected a spotlight. Then again, President Obama, in the wake of the Gabby Giffords shooting, gave a national address calling for “civility” in politics. Yet rather than condemn those demeaning his opponent’s donors, Mr. Obama—the nation’s most powerful man—instead publicly named individuals, egging on the attacks.What has followed is the slimy trolling into a citizen’s private life.
Mr. VanderSloot acknowledges that “when I first learned that President Obama’s campaign had singled me out on his ‘enemies list,’ I knew it was like taping a target on my back.” But the more he’s thought it through, “the public beatings and false accusations that followed are no deterrent. These tactics will not work in America.” He’s even “contemplating a second donation.”
Still. If details about Mr. VanderSloot’s life become public, and if this hurts his business or those who work for him, Mr. Obama will bear responsibility. This is what happens when the president makes a list.
First, consider what would have been the WaPo‘s response, indeed, that of the entire MSM, had Richard Nixon or (gasp!) George Bush similarly attacked Mr. VanderSloot’s Progressive equivalent.
Next, courtesy of Bill Meisen and Guy Benson writing at Townhall.com, consider how the Post actually reacted:
New “Scandal:” Romney Pulled Pranks, Bullied Someone in High School
But as Matt Lewis and the Daily Caller revealed, the ink on the headline had barely dried before….
Cracks in the Washington Post story on Romney’s ‘pranks’ emerge
A question emerges in reading the Washington Post piece on Mitt Romney today: How can Romney’s old pal Stu White tell the Washington Post that he has “long been bothered by the Lauber incident” — and then later admit to ABC News that he was “not present for the prank” and “was not aware of it until this year when he was contacted by the Washington Post”?
This is curious.
The Washington Post story reports:
“I always enjoyed his pranks,” said Stu White, a popular friend of Romney’s who went on to a career as a public school teacher and has long been botheredby the Lauber incident.”
But ABC News, says:
“White was not present for the prank, in which Romney is said to have forcefully cut a student’s long hair and was not aware of it until this year when he was contacted by the Washington Post.” (Emphasis mine.)
What are we to make of this?
Can you say….
….We KNEW you could!
And not only had the veracity of the WaPo‘s actual reporting come into question, the paper chose to bury a particularly pertinent fact pointing to Romney’s innocence deep in both the online and print edition’s of their story:
Family of Alleged Romney Bullying Victim Denies Knowledge of Incident
“….The family of John Lauber is releasing a statement saying the portrayal of John is factually incorrect and we are aggrieved that he would be used to further a political agenda. There will be no more comments from the family,” she said.
In his memoir, Obama talked about routinely getting high. “Junkie. Pothead,” he wrote. “That’s where I’d been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man.” But, according to Obama, he only got high because he was contemplating deep matters: drugs could “push questions of who I was out of my mind.”
Obama told students in 2007 that this activity constituted “goofing off” and “wasting time”:
“I will confess to you that I was kind of a goof off in high school as my mom reminded me,” Obama said. “I went to high school in Hawaii, so there’s a lot of opportunity to goof off because the weather is really good all the time …
“You know, I made some bad decisions …. You know, got into drinking and experimenting with drugs. There was a whole stretch of time where I didn’t apply myself. It wasn’t until I got out of … high school, and went to college that I started realizing, man, I wasted a lot of time.”
Two thoughts come to mind; first and foremost, never try telling us again how the Washington Post is a voice of moderation in an otherwise Leftist MSM. G. Gordon Liddy had it right when he referred to them as the Washington Compost. And we for one believe had Watergate been the product of a Dimocratic administration, Woodward and Bernstein would still be enjoying relative journalistic obscurity.
Second, though we’ve never respected the WaPo or its reporting, in a similar fashion to Rathergate, this saddens us. Because it demonstrates the degree to which even nominally independent MSM outlets have become slaves of the Liberal agenda. And because it convincingly corroborates the conclusion you a cannot trust a thing you read or hear in the MSM, as they are so invested in The Dear Misleader’s political fortunes they, like he, will do anything….absolutely anything….to ensure his reelection.
And that’s neither good for either America or the WaPo.
In a related item, as The New Media Journal reports….
In a new crackdown, Florida officials are investigating the citizenship of thousands of registered voters. CBS4 News has learned 2,000 of those potential non-citizen voters are registered in Miami-Dade County. At least one person on the list has had the opportunity to vote for the past 40 years. “These are the people that we have to notify by mail that we have a reason to believe that they’re a non-citizen,” said Christina White, Deputy Supervisor of Elections.
Miami-Dade is not alone. Broward is looking at 260 registered voters and Monroe is investigating four. A CBS4/Miami Herald analysis of a partial list provided by Miami-Dade shows a large number of the suspect voters have cast ballots in the past. The party affiliations seem evenly split.
The analysis of 350 people shows one person voted at least 30 times. According to the analysis of the data, some of the potential non-citizens voted in the 2000 election, that’s when the presidency was decided by just over 500 votes.Each person has 30 days to respond to the County’s inquiry asking them to prove their citizenship.Up until recently, no proof of citizenship was required when registering to vote.
Proof of citizenship?!? Hells bells, the MSM is still trying to convince proof of IDENTITY is too high a hurdle when registering to vote!
MSM bias….WHAT bias?!?
And since we’re on the subject of patent prevarication and deliberate deception, here’s an item from Daniel Halper, writing in The Blog at the WeeklyStandard.com:
Obama Ad Claims to Have Helped Man Get a Job, but Man Claims Employment Since 2006
Matt Negrin of ABC reports that “A new ad by Obama tells the story of Brian Slagle, an autoworker in Ohio who says he was laid off and ‘scared to death’ until the president swooped in to save the industry.” In the spot, Slagle says, “Obama stuck his neck out for us, the auto industry. … He wasn’t going to let it just die, and I’m driving in this morning because of that, because of him.” The ad is meant to praise Obama’s auto bailout for saving jobs.
Watch here:
Indeed, it appears, via Facebook, that Slagle is an employee at Johnson Controls, a Wisconsin company that “create[s] quality products, services and solutions to optimize energy and operational efficiencies of buildings; lead-acid automotive batteries and advanced batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles; and interior systems for automobiles,” according to its website.
But the ad itself seems to be misleading. It is not because of Obama’s auto bailout that Slagle has a job. In fact, Slagle has been employed with Johnson Controls since February 2006, according to his own Facebook page:
Slagle has since taken down his employment information from his Facebook page, but not before these screenshots were taken.
For those unable to read the screenshot, Slagle’s Facebook page states he “Works at Johnson Controls” and then lists under Employers “Johnson Controls, Feb 2006 – Present”. Dimocrats: from Der Schlickmeister to Slagle, they’re always having trouble keeping track of their “Johnsons”.
Then, in an item associated to today’s Cover Story at www.thedailygouge.com,. there’s this from the WSJ‘s William McGurn….
Jerry Brown vs. Chris Christie
More states are realizing that the road to fiscal hell is paved with progressive intentions.
Hardy always was better at math!
In his January 2011 inaugural address, California Gov. Jerry Brown declared it a “time to honestly assess our financial condition and make the tough choices.” Plainly the choices weren’t tough enough: Mr. Brown has just announced that he faces a state budget deficit of $16 billion—nearly twice the $9.2 billion he predicted in January.(That’s a $7 billion difference….in four months; and The Obamao and his Disciples are asking Jamie Dimon to resign over a lousy $3 billion!) In Sacramento Monday, he coupled a new round of spending cuts with a call for some hefty new tax hikes.
In his own inaugural address back in January 2010, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie also spoke of making tough choices for the people of his state. For his first full budget, Mr. Christie faced a deficit of $10.7 billion—one-third of projected revenues. Not only did Mr. Christie close that deficit without raising taxes, he is now plumping for a 10% across-the-board tax cut.
It’s not just looks that make Mr. Brown Laurel to Mr. Christie’s Hardy. It’s also their political choices.
When the Obama administration’s Transportation Department called on California to cough up billions for a high-speed bullet train or lose federal dollars, Mr. Brown went along. In sharp contrast, when the feds delivered a similar ultimatum to Mr. Christie over a proposed commuter rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey, he nixed the project, saying his state just couldn’t afford it.
On the “millionaire’s” tax, Mr. Brown says that California desperately needs to approve one if the state is to recover. The one on California’s November ballot kicks in at income of $250,000 and would raise the top rate to 13.3% from 10.3% on incomes above $1 million. Again in sharp contrast, when New Jersey Democrats attempted to embarrass Mr. Christie by sending a millionaire’s tax to his desk, he called their bluff and promptly vetoed it.
On public-employee unions, Mr. Brown can talk a good game—at Monday’s press conference, he announced a 5% pay cut for state workers, and he has proposed pension reform. Yet for all his pull with unions (the last time he was governor, he gave California’s public-sector unions collective-bargaining rights), Gov. Brown, a Democrat, has not been able to accomplish what Republican Gov. Christie has: persuade a Democratic legislature to require government workers to kick in more for their health care and pensions.
Now, no one will confuse New Jersey with free-market Hong Kong. Still, because the challenges facing the Golden and Garden States are so similar, the different paths taken by their respective governors are all the more striking. And these two men are by no means alone.
Our states today are conducting a profound and contentious rethink about the right level of taxes, spending and government. Most obvious is the battle for Wisconsin. There Republican Gov. Scott Walker finds himself pitted against public-sector unions that successfully forced a recall election for June 5 after the legislature adopted the governor’s package of labor reforms last spring.
Amid the turmoil—Democratic legislators fled the state to prevent a vote, while union-backed protesters occupied the Capitol—Mr. Walker looked weakened. Now he has taken the lead in polls. More than that, voters have taken the lesson: A recent Marquette University Law School poll showed only 12% of Wisconsin voters listing “restoring collective bargaining rights for public employees” as their priority.
Indeed, the American Midwest today is home to some of the biggest experiments in government. Republicans now hold both the governorships and the legislatures in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio, and in Wisconsin they control all but the Senate. In each they are pushing for smaller, more accountable government. The outlier is Illinois, where Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn and his Democratic legislature pushed through a tax increase on their heavily indebted state.
Now ask yourself this. Can anyone look at Illinois and say to himself: I have seen the future and it works?
You can say THAT again!
Indiana’s Mitch Daniels, a Republican, is probably the only governor who can truly claim to have turned around a failing state. That may change if we get eight years of Mr. Christie in New Jersey. Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal, also a Republican, may be another challenger for the title, having just succeeded in pushing through arguably the most far-reaching reform of any state public-school system in America.
Hard economic times bring their own lessons. Though few have been spared the ravages of the last recession and the sluggish recovery, those in states where taxes are light, government lives within its means, and the climate is friendly to investment have learned the value of the arrangement they have. They are not likely to give it up.
Meanwhile, leaders in some struggling states have taken notice. They know the road to fiscal hell is paved with progressive intentions. The question regarding the sensible ones is whether they have the will and wherewithal to impose the reforms they know their states need on the interest groups whose political and economic clout is so closely tied with the public purse.
Mr. Brown’s remarks Monday suggest the answer to this question is no.
Which doesn’t speak well for the future of either California or its citizens….unless of course your George Clooney.
And in the Environmental Moment, apparently what’s bad to Liberals is good for the rest of America:
GAO: Recoverable Oil in Western States ‘About Equal to Entire World’s Proven Reserves’
On Thursday, the Government Accountability Office informed Congress that the Green River Formation, under a basically empty tract of mostly federally-owned land that covers the area where Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming come together, contains about as much recoverable oil as the rest of the planet’s proven reserves, combined:
“The Green River Formation–an assemblage of over 1,000 feet of sedimentary rocks that lie beneath parts of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming–contains the world’s largest deposits of oil shale,”Anu K. Mittal, the GAO’s director of natural resources and environment said in written testimony submitted to the House Science Subcommittee on Energy and Environment.
“USGS estimates that the Green River Formation contains about 3 trillion barrels of oil, and about half of this may be recoverable, depending on available technology and economic conditions,” Mittal testified.…
“As you can imagine having the technology to develop this vast energy resource will lead to a number of important socioeconomic benefits including the creation of jobs, increases in wealth and increases in tax and royalty payments for federal and state governments,” she said.
In her written testimony, Mittal noted that three-fourths of the Green River shale oil is under federal land.“The federal government is in a unique position to influence the development of oil shale because nearly three-quarters of the oil shale within the Green River Formation lies beneath federal lands managed by the Department of the Interior’s (Interior) Bureau of Land Management (BLM),” she testified.
Environmentalists have a peculiar penchant for predicting imminent catastrophe, which makes sense: nobody’s going to help them get their way if we’ve got time and resources to spare! Besides humanity’s forthcoming doom via global warming or population boom, one of their favorites is a looming energy crisis that will come to pass when we shortly suck Mother Earth dry of all of her oil supplies. For decades, they’ve been heralding a shortage only a few years away, but the calamity has never come to pass. After all, they reason, oil a finite resource, and there’s only so much to be had, especially as other nations like China and India are hitting the road and increasing global demand.
But these greenies’ doomsday predictions are often focused on scary statistics that only tell half of the story. Their conjectures usually assume current levels and methods of efficiency sans new innovation, as well as our known reserves that are currently recoverable given present technology. But the fact is, not only are we likely to continue the trend of increasing efficiency and getting more out of the resources we have (and perhaps even bringing non-traditional sources into the mix, if the government would just let ‘investments’ happen naturally), but improving technology is constantly helping us to advance our access to oil as well as discover new deposits. The outlook really isn’t all that bleak, folks, and shame on the Obama administration for constantly withholding permits that would bring us a greater market share in the global oil market, providing jobs and economic growth.
And you can bet your assets Team Tick-Tock will do everything withing their power to prevent the Green River Formation’s development. Yet another reason to send The Dear Misleader back to Chicago in November.
On the Lighter Side….
Then there’s these three beauties from Hank Murphy, Barbara Brady and JC:
And in the Wide, Wild World of Sports, we ask the question “How low can the NBA go?!?”:
OKC Thunder announcer arrested for allegedly forcing children to watch him masturbate
The public address announcer for the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder was reportedly arrested Thursday over allegations that he forced children to watch him masturbate. Jim Miller was arrested on three felony counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child under 16, news9.com reported.
Court documents state that three children — all under age 16 — allege Miller forced them to watch him masturbate as he viewed pornography on his computer. Two of the alleged victims also claim they were sexually abused by Miller, according to the website.
Following Miller’s arrest Thursday, Thunder Vice President Dan Mahoney reportedly released a statement, saying, “Mr. Miller has been removed from his duties as Thunder PA announcer.”
Given the NBA’s tolerance of the criminally inclined, if the guy caught wearing ladies undergarments by dental imprints on a woman’s buttocks is any indication….
….Miller will be back at his job inside of a year! Hey Marv….nice rug!
Finally, we’ll call it a day with the “Be Careful What You Wish For” segment, courtesy of Best of the Web:
“The consensus is that [Barack] Obama has not lived up to the lofty expectations that surrounded his 2008 election and Nobel Peace Prize a year later,” the Associated Press reports. But actually this is good news for Obama, since these people who are disappointed with Obama can’t vote against him. They’re foreigners.
The bad news for Obama is that he “still enjoys broad international support,” because non-Americans really dislike Republicans. We particularly enjoyed this defense of Obama:
Foreign policy expert Josef Braml, who analyzes the U.S. for the German Council on Foreign Relations, said many Germans give Obama too much of the blame because they don’t understand the limits of his powers.
“There’s a lack of understanding both of how the system of checks and balances works–or doesn’t work any longer–and a lack of understanding of how big the socio-economic problems in the United States are, which cause the gridlock,” Braml said in a telephone call from Greece, where he was on vacation.
So the problem isn’t that Obama is weak or out of touch with Americans but that he is constrained by a system of checks and balances. If only the top executive had fewer limits on his power!And we all remember how well that worked out for the Germans.
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