It’s Thursday, June 21st, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!

First up, that was then….

 ….THIS is now:

Obama asserts executive privilege over ‘Fast and Furious’ documents

As Senator Chuck Grassley observed, the White House assertion of executive privilege raises “monumental questions”:

“How can the president assert executive privilege if there was no White House involvement? How can the president exert executive privilege over documents he’s supposedly never seen? Is something very big being hidden to go to this extreme? The contempt citation is an important procedural mechanism in our system of checks and balances,” he said.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jun/20/obama-asserts-executive-privilege-over-ff-docs/

And the WSJ notes….

Holder’s Many Privileges

Obama invokes the arguments of the Bush Justice Department.

The Attorney General is supposed to protect a President from legal and political snares, a part of his job description that Eric Holder seems to have missed. He’s now succeeded in drawing President Obama into a brawl with Congress by invoking “executive privilege” to withhold documents.

For weeks, Mr. Holder has resisted Congress’s subpoena for documents investigating the botched drug-war operation Fast and Furious. But he expressly stopped short of claiming executive privilege, a power invoked only 24 times since the Reagan era that typically protects communications directly with the President or his senior aides. Mr. Holder instead claimed “deliberative privilege” within a Cabinet Department, a vague and much weaker claim that neither courts nor Congress have honored.

But suddenly on Wednesday, facing the threat of a criminal contempt vote in the House, Mr. Holder asked the President to invoke executive privilege after all. This is no small claim, and it raises a few new questions. Such as:

Did White House officials know and approve Fast and Furious before it went awry, and did they advise the Justice Department on how to respond to Congress’s investigation into the operation’s failure?

How can the President invoke a privilege to protect documents he and the White House are supposed to have had nothing to do with?

And what is so damaging or embarrassing in those documents that Mr. Obama is now willing to invest his own political capital to protect it from disclosure—at least until after the election?

Keep in mind that this uproar began over an obscure 2009 operation of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) to let some 2,000 illegal weapons get into the hands of a Mexican drug cartel in an effort to track the guns to other traffickers and kingpins. In December 2010, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed during a gunfight, and two of the operation’s illegal weapons were linked to the crime.

Congress decided to investigate, and in a February 4, 2011 letter to Congress, the Justice Department flatly denied that the operation existed. Ten months later it admitted that wasn’t true and retracted the letter.

Since that modified, limited mea culpa, Mr. Holder has acknowledged that the program was fatally flawed and said he was the one who ended it. But rather than cooperate fully with the investigation, Mr. Holder’s department began an epic stonewall to block Congressional attempts to find out what really transpired.

Among the facts worth pursuing are wiretap applications leaked to the House Oversight Committee that indicate senior Justice Department officials knew about the program when it was originally denied. In March 2011, former Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson sent an email suggesting the Department should recant its denial based on the wiretap documents. Also curious is that Justice has given at least 80,000 documents to the Department’s Inspector General for the internal investigation but only some 7,600 to Congress.

These columns have long defended the ability of executive branch officials to advise Presidents freely, and to protect that advice from Congressional trawling operations. But Congress also has every right to investigate a policy failure, especially one that cost an American law enforcement agent his life.

In this case, Congress has been seeking internal emails and documents not about advice to the President but between Justice officials to see if they misled Congress. Mr. Holder has been around the Beltway long enough to know that these kinds of communications aren’t typically protected by executive privilege, and that Congress eventually gets its way.

One of the ironies of Mr. Holder’s claim is that, in his letter to Mr. Obama requesting executive privilege, he cites Bush Administration arguments during the battle over the dismissal of several U.S. Attorneys. Readers may recall how Democrats, including a Senator named Obama, denounced the “tendency” of the Bush Administration “to hide behind executive privilege.” (Available in the video clip above.)

Yet compared to Mr. Holder, Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was a model of candor and his department complied with nearly every document request. The Bush White House also turned over piles of documents, and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and White House counsel Harriet Miers eventually both gave interviews to House investigators. You can find them on Democratic Congressman John Conyers’s website. The Reagan Justice Department also bent to Congress when Democrats sought documents while probing the EPA in the 1980s.

These document fights are invariably settled politically, and we hope this one is too. A committee voted 23-17 Wednesday to hold Mr. Holder in contempt, and if the entire House follows, the matter will be referred to a U.S. Attorney who works for the AG, who will no doubt tell him not to prosecute. Meanwhile, the American people can reach their own conclusions about Mr. Holder’s credibility. His serial privilege claims make him—and now the President who is coming to his rescue—very hard to believe.

The only things transparent about this entire Administration are its lies and rank hypocrisy.  Think about it: they’re literally tripping over each other in a mad rush to release sensitive intelligence to make for short-term political gain, i.e., a second term, then expect us to believe there’s nothing incriminating in these unreleased documents?

What?  Like we all just….

….fell off the turnip truck?!?

Here’s the juice: this man’s entire life and political career are built on deliberate lies and outright obfuscation, as detailed above and in today’s Cover Story at www.thedailygouge.com.  He’s a manufactured, maleficent Manchurian candidate, and the truth is simply not in him.  Invoking executive privilege in the face of Darrell Issa’s reasonable requests only confirms what we already knew.  As we’ve learned from his fabricated autobiographies, when it comes to lies….

….The Obamao quite literally wrote the book!

Besides, as the WSJ‘s Dan Henninger notes, come November 6th,….

It’s a Single-Issue Election

Barack Obama could not be more right: Economic growth is the “defining issue” of this campaign.

The terms on which the 2012 U.S. election will be contested have been set, appropriately by the incumbent president speaking recently at a community college in Ohio. Mr. President, the microphone is yours:

“Yes, foreign policy matters. Social issues matter. But more than anything else, this election presents a choice between two fundamentally different visions of how to create strong, sustained growth.“

The Obama speech at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland produced carping and sneering from left to right. Reflecting the attention deficit disorders of a constantly tweeting world, his critics said the speech was too long at 53 minutes, and that it was a rehash of what Mr. Obama himself often calls “stuff.”

Days before the speech, the Democratic wizards James Carville and Stan Greenberg pleaded with Mr. Obama to admit the economy smells and explain “how are you going to make things better over the next four years.” The New York Times warned, “The president has less than five months to find a way to make a vital message sink in.”

What vital message? That speech was the basis on which Mr. Obama will seek re-election. The president’s Cleveland oration was terrific. If for the next five months the president and Mitt Romney spoke of nothing other than economic growth—on the stump, in their debates, in their sleep—this election would be the best $2 billion “investment” of campaign funds that Citizens United ever enabled. Get the growth choice right, and we’ll be ok. Get it wrong and your kids will be talking Australia emigration.

Right now, with growth stuck below 2%, we’re toast. With strong growth at 3% or better, there will be jobs. With long-term growth, Medicare, debt and the rest of the horribles that keep worrywarts awake at night are solvable. With strong growth, the U.S. will not have to cede world leadership prematurely to whichever Chinese functionary slugs his way to the top of their heap. With strong growth, your college graduate can move out of the house. With normal American growth, Europe may be irrelevant but it won’t die, and a U.S. president won’t look oddly small talking to the Vladimir Putins of the world.

Mr. Obama was exactly right in Cleveland when he said economic growth “is the defining issue of our time,” that his and his opponents’ views on growth are fundamentally different and “this election is your chance to break that stalemate.” This he gets. Only the most obtuse “pragmatists” persist in believing the solution lies in a mystical center somehow combining elements from this ideological oil and water.

Put differently, this is a substance election. It’s not about whether one “likes” Barack Obama or can’t warm to Mitt Romney. Voters have to pick two competing growth models, which means paying attention to what the candidates are saying about economic growth.

It’s true the Obama Cleveland speech had many familiar rhetorical distortions. One of the most revealing, though, is that “Governor Romney and his allies in Congress believe deeply in the theory that . . . the best way to grow the economy is from the top down.” Whatever that may mean, more interesting is the Obama counter-theory found here, what he calls “our North Star—an economy that’s built not from the top down, but from a growing middle class.”

There is no theory anywhere in non-Marxist economics that says growth’s primary engine is a social class. A middle class is the result of growth, not its cause. Barack Obama not only believes in class-based growth but has built his whole growth strategy around it.

One word appears nowhere in the 53-minute Obama speech on economic growth: “capital.” Human, financial, whatever. Capital dare not speak its name.

Most revealing is that the phrases “my plan” and “I have a plan” appear 13 times. A central role for planning often appears in emerging, underdeveloped economies, not in an advanced economy like ours in which the discovery and diffusion of productive new ideas is spontaneous, rapid and unpredictable. But he’s right: Trying to conjoin Obama growth theory with that of his opposition will produce economic stalemate. Voters have to choose.

Mr. Romney has been giving fine speeches on “the liberating power of the free enterprise system.” One hopes the Romney camp doesn’t think everyone knows what that means. These are difficult and confusing economic times, and Team Romney should not underestimate the appeal of Mr. Obama’s confused economic ideas if drilled daily into the electorate’s soft clay.

If Mr. Romney hopes to win what Barack Obama is rightly calling a defining growth election, the governor will have to refute in detail the president’s notions of how growth happens and then explain to voters the real-economy alternative. Mitt Romney says, “I’ve done it.” To win, he’ll have to tell voters what “it” means.

Unfortunately, words, and more importantly sincerity, aren’t among Mitt’s more obvious talents.

Next up, Thomas Sowell offers his….

Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene

Many people may have voted for Barack Obama in 2008 because of his charisma. But anyone familiar with the disastrous track record of charismatic political leaders around the world in the 20th century should have run for the hills when they encountered a politician with charisma.

What is scarier than any particular political policy or issue is the widespread tendency to treat political issues as personal contests in talking points — competitive skill in fencing with words — rather than as serious attempts to find out what the facts are and what the options are.

People who are wondering what to get as a graduation present this year should consider “The Passage of Power” by Robert Caro, the recently published 4th volume in his monumental biography of Lyndon Johnson. Its revelations of the cynical, fraudulent and vicious politics in Washington should counter the pious graduation speeches that young people hear about the nobility of “public service.”

The new French president, a socialist, says frankly that he does not like rich people, that “my real enemy is the world of finance,” and apparently he has plans for much higher tax rates on high incomes. Has he not noticed how easy it is for the rich to move to some other country where the tax rates are lower — or to send their money there?

For a long time, Democrats have gone to Washington to win at all costs, while too many Republicans went to Washington to compromise with Democrats. The rise of the Tea Party may change that.

Increasing numbers of people seem to have convinced themselves that they are entitled to a “fair share” of what someone else has earned. Whole nations now seem to think that they should be bailed out from the consequences of their own reckless spending by nations that lived within their means.

Those who favor huge cuts in military spending seem not to understand that our military exists not simply to win wars, but to present such overwhelming superiority to potential enemies as to prevent having to fight a war in the first place.

Some people who are belatedly seeing what Obama is really like are saying that he has changed. This is probably easier to say than admitting that you were blind to the man’s whole history before, and were taken in by his rhetoric and geniality.

Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.

The visceral hostility of liberals against Sarah Palin is something that liberals themselves ought to be concerned about. After all, she is just someone who has a different opinion about politics and a different social background and style. What I fear the liberals most resent is their perception that she is someone who is talking back to her betters.

When Harry Truman was President of the United States, he had a sign on his desk in the White House that said: “The buck stops here.” If Barack Obama had a sign on his desk, it would say: “The buck stops with Bush.”

Does anyone seriously believe that short dresses, exposing bony knees, make women look more attractive?

In most discussions of the problems of American public schools, the low intellectual quality of people who come out of our schools of education is the 800-pound gorilla that keeps getting ignored. Such teachers cannot give their students intellectual abilities that they themselves don’t have.

Did we have to wait for the Solyndra and other government “investment” disasters to learn what economic nonsense political “investments” are? Reckless spending to win votes, or campaign contributions, from the recipients of government largesse is still reckless spending, regardless of what other words are used to try to dignify it — whether these words are “stimulus,” “jobs,” “investment” or whatever.

In liberal logic, if life is unfair then the answer is to turn more tax money over to politicians, to spend in ways that will increase their chances of getting reelected.

On the Lighter Side….

Then there’s this from Bill Magruder:

And in another sordid story ripped from the pages of the Crime Blotter:

Mom found naked, eating ice cream after leaving kids in wrecked car

A mom was found naked and eating ice cream in a Houston drug store after leaving her three children alone in a car when she crashed it. Stephanie Dillard, 34, was charged with endangering a child after her vehicle collided with a METRO bus on Friday, KPRC reported. Her three children — ages 5, 12 and 16 — suffered minor injuries and were shaken up after the crash.

Detectives said Dillard got out of the car after the collision and walked away. She then went to a nearby CVS store and began to undress as she ate ice cream.

Anyone with a photo of Dillard in the buff could make a mint marketing it as a revolutionary diet plan: one look and you’re guaranteed to lose your appetite….and likely your lunch!

Finally, in News of the Bizarre:

Man with 100-pound scrotum REJECTS offers to perform $1 million corrective surgery for free because his giant organ has made him famous

A Las Vegas man who suffers from a rare condition that made his scrotum swell to 100 pounds is basking in the fame that his giant organ has brought him. In fact, the attention is proving so intoxicating that Wesley Warren Jr turned down an offer to perform the $1 million corrective surgery for free because he would have had to give up the rights to his story. A second doctor has agreed to waive most of the cost for the procure, but Mr Warren still hasn’t taken him up on the offer.

The watermelon-size scrotum Mr Warren carries between his legs has landed him on the Howard Stern Show and the Comedy Central program Tosh.0 and made him a local celebrity in his hometown. Firecracker Films, the company behind ‘Big Fat Gypsy Weddings’ has already signed a contract to make a documentary about him.

He also shot a segment for TLC.

We’re uncertain which aspect of this story amazes us most; testicles weighing a combined 100 lbs….or a nut sack elastic enough to hold them?!?

Magoo