It’s Wednesday, June 13th, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!

First up on the mid-week edition, Stephen Kilcullen, a Ranger School graduate and former officer in light, mechanized and mountain infantry, writing in the WSJ offers the truth about the political correctness infecting America’s Military:

Women Don’t Belong in Ranger School

Do individuals serve the military or does the military serve them?

“G.I. Jane”: about as real as “Top Gun”

The United States Army is debating whether to admit women to Ranger School, its elite training program for young combat leaders. Proponents argue this is to remove a final impediment to the careers of Army women. But the move would erode the unique Ranger ethos and culture—not to mention the program’s rigorous physical requirements—harming its core mission of cultivating leaders willing to sacrifice everything for our nation.

The Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment traces its roots back to World War II, when it won acclaim for penetrating deep behind Japanese lines. Founded in 1950, Ranger School teaches combat soldiers small-unit tactics and leadership under extreme duress. It pushes men harder than any other program in the Army’s curriculum.

Competition to attend the course is fierce, with about 4,000 men eligible to attend each year. Only about half graduate. Of those, only 20% make it through without having to retake various phases. For decades, completion of Ranger School has been the best indicator for determining which young men can handle the enormous responsibility of combat leadership.

The Ranger School debate is upon us because the Army is considering whether to overturn regulations excluding women from infantry battalions. This is part of a broader trend in the U.S. military. The Air Force allowed women to serve as combat pilots at the start of the first Gulf War in 1991. Following suit, the Navy in 2010 embarked on a taxpayer-funded retrofit of its submarines to accommodate 10-20 women in its submarine force each year. Now the Navy finds itself embroiled in controversy surrounding its process for determining their suitability.

Army women are not currently allowed to serve in frontline squads, platoons or rifle companies. But they can serve on battalion staffs: groups of 10 to 15 headquarters personnel who coordinate the actions of the smaller units in the organization. These roles do not involve small-unit combat leadership, tactics or direct combat—core aspects of the infantry mission. Ranger School develops those men best suited for precisely this infantry mission.

“Ninety-percent of our senior [infantry] officers are Ranger qualified,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno recently said. “If we determine that we’re going to allow women to go into infantry and be successful, they’re probably at some time going to have to go to Ranger School.”

But does changing the fabric of the military culture to improve the odds of individual achievement make sense for the military? Do individuals serve the military or does the military serve them? Remember, this is an all-volunteer force.

Ranger School isn’t about improving the career prospects of individual candidates. Our motto is “Rangers lead the way.” Many a Ranger has lived these words before being killed in action—certain that if a Ranger couldn’t accomplish the mission, nobody could. This unique culture lures the kind of young, smart soldiers needed to get the toughest jobs done. The promise of something bigger than oneself—bigger than any career track—is what motivates these men.

It is this culture of excellence and selflessness that attracts young men to the Ranger brotherhood. The Ranger ethos is designed to be deadly serious yet self-deprecating, focused entirely on teamwork and mission accomplishment. Rangers put the mission first, their unit and fellow soldiers next, and themselves last. The selfishness so rampant elsewhere in our society has never existed in the Ranger brotherhood.

And that is the secret of the brotherhood’s success. Some call it “unit cohesiveness” but what they are really describing is a transition from self-interest to selfless service. The notion of allowing women into Ranger School because denying them the experience would harm their careers makes Ranger graduates cringe. Such politically correct thinking is the ultimate expression of the “me” culture, and it jeopardizes core Ranger ideals.

The military has changed many policies in recent years, based on individual self-interest masquerading as fairness and antidiscrimination. As we debate new policies, decision makers need to ask two simple questions: Is a proposed move good for the majority of service members? And does it improve or hinder our ability to execute our mission?

After all, the military does not exist to provide careers. It is a responsibility, a way of life and a higher calling that only 1% of our citizens choose to follow. A top-notch fighting force composed of dedicated and strong men who are the very best at what they do is what defines our armed forces—and the Rangers as among their best. Let’s not destroy this small but incredibly important culture under the banner of “me.”

Gee….like we didn’t see THIS coming a mile away?!?  It’s never been about “justice” or “rights”, and always about the manipulation of public morality and societal norms….all at the expense of unit integrity, mission readiness and national defense.  Such a small price to pay so Progressives can feel better about themselves!

P.S.  We hope and pray the day will never come when female pilots engage a competent adversary in an equivalent machine; they’ll prove about as useful as a….

Next up, a rather revealing report from Newsmax.com, courtesy of Tim Lester:

Jeb Bush: GOP Shifting Beyond Reagan, Elder Bush

No offense, but frankly boys, is this is the best you have to offer, we don’t miss either one of you!

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is calling for a more moderate Republican Party — one that he says his father George Bush and Ronald Reagan would embrace. Jeb told reporters on Monday that his father and Reagan would not have agreed with today’s GOP, which has been moving more to the right and following a strict adherence to ideology, The New York Times reports.

“Ronald Reagan would have, based on his record of finding accommodation, finding some degree of common ground, similar to my dad, they would have had a hard time if you define the Republican Party — and I don’t — as having an orthodoxy that doesn’t allow for disagreement,” Jeb said at question-and-answer session in Manhattan by Bloomberg View. “Back to my Dad’s time or Ronald Reagan’s time,” he went on, “they got a lot of stuff done with a lot of bipartisan support that right now would be difficult to imagine happening.”

Jeb has increasingly become the Republican Party’s voice of moderation at a time when the tea party has become increasingly popular and has called for a tighter ideological discipline. He pointed to Democrats, too, whom he believes are equally entrenched in partisan battles on ideological grounds and added that, “this dysfunction, you can’t say it’s one side or another.”

He cast blame at President Obama saying he had failed as a leader who could unite, particularly in failing to follow the advice of his own partisan panel on the deficit, known as the Simpson-Bowles Commission. “It was purely a political calculation,” he said. “He created Simpson-Bowles and then abandoned it at birth.”

Jeb emphasized that he would accept a deal that included revenue increases with spending cuts.  He praised his father for having the political courage that Obama has not had, and he pointed to his father’s budget deal of 1990 as proof. That deal included tax increases in spite of the elder Bush’s “read my lips, no new taxes” decree.

Some Republicans have said that contributed to George Bush’s loss in 1992, but Jeb said, “He didn’t win, but at least he did it.”

This brings to mind comments made early Tuesday morning by Tom Davis, former Republican Congressman from Fairfax County.  Davis opined the GOP had no chance of winning Northern Virginia without abandoning its current what he described as an anti-government/anti-immigration platform.

When did Davis start reading from the Obamao’s teleprompter?!?  Let’s get real; what Davis is really wants gone is the influence of the Tea Party, which is only opposed to ILLEGAL immigration and is indeed in favor of a reduced federal government.  Yet even Paul Ryan’s “austerity” budget reduces not the size or cost of government, but only its growth.

So you tell us: what dope are Bush and Davis smoking?  Go to our home page at www.thedailygouge.com and voice your opinion in our daily poll.

Turning now to the latest from the greatest, Thomas Sowell poses the question whether The Obamao is a….

Socialist or Fascist

It bothers me a little when conservatives call Barack Obama a “socialist.” He certainly is an enemy of the free market, and wants politicians and bureaucrats to make the fundamental decisions about the economy. But that does not mean that he wants government ownership of the means of production, which has long been a standard definition of socialism.

What President Obama has been pushing for, and moving toward, is more insidious: government control of the economy, while leaving ownership in private hands. That way, politicians get to call the shots but, when their bright ideas lead to disaster, they can always blame those who own businesses in the private sector.

Politically, it is heads-I-win when things go right, and tails-you-lose when things go wrong. This is far preferable, from Obama’s point of view, since it gives him a variety of scapegoats for all his failed policies, without having to use President Bush as a scapegoat all the time.

Government ownership of the means of production means that politicians also own the consequences of their policies, and have to face responsibility when those consequences are disastrous — something that Barack Obama avoids like the plague. Thus the Obama administration can arbitrarily force insurance companies to cover the children of their customers until the children are 26 years old. Obviously, this creates favorable publicity for President Obama. But if this and other government edicts cause insurance premiums to rise, then that is something that can be blamed on the “greed” of the insurance companies.

The same principle, or lack of principle, applies to many other privately owned businesses. It is a very successful political ploy that can be adapted to all sorts of situations.

One of the reasons why both pro-Obama and anti-Obama observers may be reluctant to see him as fascist is that both tend to accept the prevailing notion that fascism is on the political right, while it is obvious that Obama is on the political left. Back in the 1920s, however, when fascism was a new political development, it was widely — and correctly — regarded as being on the political left. Jonah Goldberg’s great book “Liberal Fascism” cites overwhelming evidence of the fascists’ consistent pursuit of the goals of the left, and of the left’s embrace of the fascists as one of their own during the 1920s.

Mussolini, the originator of fascism, was lionized by the left, both in Europe and in America, during the 1920s. Even Hitler, who adopted fascist ideas in the 1920s, was seen by some, including W.E.B. Du Bois, as a man of the left.

It was in the 1930s, when ugly internal and international actions by Hitler and Mussolini repelled the world, that the left distanced themselves from fascism and its Nazi offshoot — and verbally transferred these totalitarian dictatorships to the right, saddling their opponents with these pariahs.

What socialism, fascism and other ideologies of the left have in common is an assumption that some very wise people — like themselves — need to take decisions out of the hands of lesser people, like the rest of us, and impose those decisions by government fiat.

The left’s vision is not only a vision of the world, but also a vision of themselves, as superior beings pursuing superior ends. In the United States, however, this vision conflicts with a Constitution that begins, “We the People…” That is why the left has for more than a century been trying to get the Constitution’s limitations on government loosened or evaded by judges’ new interpretations, based on notions of “a living Constitution” that will take decisions out of the hands of “We the People,” and transfer those decisions to our betters.

The self-flattery of the vision of the left also gives its true believers a huge ego stake in that vision, which means that mere facts are unlikely to make them reconsider, regardless of what evidence piles up against the vision of the left, and regardless of its disastrous consequences.

Only our own awareness of the huge stakes involved can save us from the rampaging presumptions of our betters, whether they are called socialists or fascists. So long as we buy their heady rhetoric, we are selling our birthright of freedom.

Though we appreciate Dr. Sowell’s point, it’s long been our opinion the political spectrum, rather than a straight line is a circle, with Fascism and Communism (aka, “Socialism”) melding together at a point somewhere on its circumference.  The rest is, as Sowell observes, a rather meaningless exercise in rhetoric, carrying as little import as debating the difference betwixt “Liberal” and “Progressive”.

And since we’re on the subject of misleading Marxists, here’s a few fitting factoids from Ed Carson and Investors.com, courtesy of Bill Meisen:

Private Jobs Down 4.6 Million From January 2008; Federal Jobs Up 11.4%

 President Obama’s statement Friday that the private sector is “doing fine” drew so much ridicule that he was forced to backtrack hours later. But it’s clear that Obama and many other Democrats see job problems — and solutions — starting and stopping with government employment. A quick look at payroll stats shows that’s not the case.

Private-sector jobs are still down by 4.6 million, or 4%, from January 2008, when overall employment peaked. Meanwhile government jobs are down just 407,000, or 1.8%. Federal employment actually is 225,000 jobs above its January 2008 level, an 11.4% increase. That’s right, up 11.4%.

Private payrolls have been trending higher in the last couple of years while government has been shedding staff. But that’s because governments did not cut jobs right away. Overall government employment didn’t peak until April 2009, 16 months after the recession started. It didn’t fall below their January 2008 level until September 2010.

The recession was boomtime for federal employment, especially after Obama took office. Federal jobs kept rising (excluding a temporary Census surge in early 2010) until March 2011 — more than three years after overall payrolls peaked.

Obama’s 2009 stimulus did little to revive private jobs, but did funnel massive funding to state and local governments. That, however, only delayed the day of reckoning for states and cities to curb spending. They finally did significantly slash jobs in 2010 and 2011. But those layoffs have slowed to a crawl in recent months — averaging less than 3,500 job cuts a month since November.

It’s easy to argue that Obama’s tunnel vision on government employment reflects his complete lack of experience in the business world. But it’s also mainstream Democratic thinking. The Wisconsin recall election was about liberals’ zeal to maintain government employees’ privileges far and above those of struggling private sector workers who pay their salaries.

Payroll change since January 2008:

Total: -5.01 million  -3.6%

Private: -4.61 million  -4%

Government: -407,000  -1.8%

Federal Government: (excluding post office) +225,000  11.4%

Sources: Labor Department, Datastream

Update: Why does Obama think the private sector is “doing fine”? “We’ve seen record profits in the corporate sector.” And high corporate profits are good for tax revenues to pay for government programs and government jobs. That’s the main reason Obama cares about the private sector.

Soooo….tell us again, Dear Misleader, how “fine” the private sector’s doing?

Speaking of The Anointed One, he’s the subject of today’s installment of Tales From the Darkside, courtesy of James Taranto:

If ‘Cool’ Is Racist, Is Racism Cool?

We ain’t cool; we bad….SOOOO BAD!

Another adjective has been added to the ever-growing list of Obama-era racial slurs. Angela Rye, executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus (above, center), identifies it in a C-Span interview:

I think that some of the language that’s used; I’ll give you an example. There’s an ad talking about the President is too cool. Is he too cool? And it’s this music that reminds me of you know some of the blacksploitation films from the ’70s playing in the background; him with his sunglasses. And to me it was just very racially charged.

They weren’t asking if Bush was too cool, but yet people say that that’s the number one person they’d love to have a beer with. So if that’s not cool, I don’t know what is. But I just think even cool; the term cool could in some ways be deemed racial in a sense.

And if you think racism isn’t a ubiquitous problem, get a load of this:

We have a annual reception in September where we recognize person who got the most votes online as the IMPACT leader of the year, which is always, I think a really cool award to win from your peers.

Who used that invidious slur? Angela Rye, in that same C-Span interview.

Which begs the question….

….as well as explains why we’ll never accept Rye’s word on anything….ANYthing!

In a seemingly incongruous yet strangely related item….

Indiana First State to Allow Citizens to Shoot Law Enforcement Officers

Can you say “Ruby Ridge”, “Waco” and “Elian Gonzalez”?  We KNEW you could!

Police officers in Indiana are upset over a new law allowing residents to use deadly force against public servants, including law enforcement officers, who unlawfully enter their homes. It was signed by Republican Governor Mitch Daniels in March.

Just as George Zimmerman will be punished should a jury of his peers find he shot and killed Trayvon Martin without just cause, anyone attacking a policeman in the lawful discharge of his duties will be subject to arrest and trial for assaulting an officer.

After all, when has the mere existence of a law ever deterred a criminal in the past?

Which brings us to the subject of today’s Money Quote, courtesy of the most partisan, corrupt Attorney General in American history:

“I’ve stuck by my guns,” Attorney General Eric Holder said describing his tenure as the top law enforcement officer in the country when he testified before the Senate Judicary Committee today on Capitol Hill.

That ought to make….

….Brian Terry’s family feel oh so much better.

And in the Environmental Moment, as the Dutchman used to say….

EPA power grab to regulate ditches, gullies on private property

Lawmakers are working to block an unprecedented power grab by the Environmental Protection Agency to use the Clean Water Act (CWA) and control land alongside ditches, gullies and other ephemeral spots by claiming the sources are part of navigable waterways. These temporary water sources are often created by rain or snowmelt, and would make it harder for private property owners to build in their own backyards, grow crops, raise livestock and conduct other activities on their own land, lawmakers say.

“Never in the history of the CWA has federal regulation defined ditches and other upland features as ‘waters of the United States,’” said Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), the ranking committee member, and Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio), chairman of the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment. “This is without a doubt an expansion of federal jurisdiction,” the lawmakers said in a May 31 letter to House colleagues.

The unusual alliance of the powerful House Republicans and Democrat to jointly sponsor legislation to overturn the new guidelines signals a willingness on Capitol Hill to rein in the formidable agency….

The House measure carries 64 Republican and Democratic cosponsors and was passed in committee last week. A companion piece of legislation is already gathering steam in the Senate and is cosponsored by 26 Republicans.

“President Obama’s EPA continues to act as if it is above the law. It is using this overreaching guidance to pre-empt state and local governments, farmers and ranchers, small business owners and homeowners from making local land and water use decisions,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said in announcing their measure in March. “Our bill will stop this unprecedented Washington power grab and restore Americans’ property rights.” “It’s time to get EPA lawyers out of Americans’ backyards,” Barrasso said.

More importantly, it’s time to rid America of the EPA!

On the Lighter Side….

Finally, in the Entertainment Section, life once again imitates art:

Mass. mobster Bulger’s longtime lover gets 8 years

The longtime girlfriend of mobster James “Whitey” Bulger was sentenced Tuesday to eight years in prison for helping him stay on the run for 16 years. Catherine Greig showed no emotion when the U.S. District Judge Douglas Woodlock handed down the sentence. The 61-year-old Greig had pleaded guilty in March to charges of conspiracy to harbor a fugitive, identity fraud and conspiracy to commit identity fraud.

The judge admonished Greig for her unfailing loyalty to Bulger, who is awaiting trial on charges he participated in 19 murders. “We are all responsible for what we do. We all make choices,” Woodlock said. “There is a price to be paid.”

Greig, who was also fined $150,000, nodded to her twin sister in the front row as she was led from the courtroom.

Birds of a feather flock together; particularly….

….jailbirds!

Magoo