The Cliffhanger, Feb.19

The Cliffhanger, Feb.19
By: John Hayward
2/19/2013 09:08 AM

Ever since the language of the “fiscal cliff” was appropriated to describe the political battle over a tax increase, it’s become increasingly clear that every issue is a “cliff” now. Here are today’s snapshots from the edge…

** Golf-gate scandal intensifies: Those who wondered if Barack Obama could ever do anything that would make the media fall out of love with him finally have their answer. He went golfing with Tiger Woods at a posh resort and didn’t invite the press to document this historic event. The media is far more upset by this than they were about Benghazi, “you didn’t build that,” “the private sector is doing fine,” the failure of the trillion-dollar stimulus bill, years of grinding unemployment, rising gas prices, Obama’s bottom-feeding re-election campaign, Solyndra, the shockingly poor confirmation performance of Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, the abuse of executive orders, or any other scandal from the past four years. It’s almost comical to watch the same press that yawned its way past Operation Fast and Furious suddenly begin muttering about the lack of White House “transparency” because Obama wouldn’t invite them on the links.

The UK Daily Mail pegs the cost of Obama’s latest luxury vacation at $989,207, and notes that President War-On-Women just spent the weekend hanging out with a “notorious philanderer.” Some might wonder if living such an ostentatiously aristocratic lifestyle will interfere with Obama’s attempt to force American citizens to cover more of the debt he ran up with reckless spending. But the press isn’t going to make those connections and weave a damaging “narrative,” as they would do with a Republican. They’re working through a disappointing interlude in a teenybopper crush, not filing for divorce. When they finally got to ask Obama a question, back in Washington, it was: “Did you beat Tiger?” Expect Obama’s coverage to return to Tiger Beat standards in no time. No word yet on whether Tiger Woods and/or the media will be invited to the “frequent skeet shooting sessions” Obama loves to hold at Camp David.

** Rape victims advised to arm themselves with whistles, vomit, urine: Speaking of the “War on Women,” Obama’s dopey (but effective) political narrative held that anyone reluctant to pay for other people’s birth control is waging a war on women. But gun control nuts are waging a far more real and dangerous war upon the fairer sex. Extremist ideology prevents them from giving women in jeopardy the perfectly sensible advice to arm themselves with a gun, so instead they offer ridiculous self-defense “advice” that is going to get women killed. The latest examples come from Colorado, where the University of Colorado advised victims of sexual assault to “tell your attacker that you have a disease or are menstruating,” adding that “vomiting or urinating may also convince the attacker to leave you alone.”

Meanwhile, the Democrats got their very own Todd Akin in the form of Rep. Joe Salazar, who offered the following reason for disarming female college students: “It’s why we have call boxes, it’s why we have safe zones, it’s why we have the whistles. Because you just don’t know who you’re gonna be shooting at. And you don’t know if you feel like you’re gonna be raped, or if you feel like someone’s been following you around or if you feel like you’re in trouble when you may actually not be, that you pop out that gun and you pop … pop a round at somebody.”

“Women, according to Rep. Salazar, are hysterical things which shoot indiscriminately at any and everything,” scoffed Dana Loesch at RedState. But let’s send them into front-line combat! Maybe Salazar would prefer arming female combat troops with rape whistles and vomit, just to be on the safe side. Salazar later apologized for his remarks, and that was good enough to save the career of Senator Todd Akin, so he should be just fine. For all the hysteria about Akin’s equally lunkheaded comments, the difference is that paying attention to him wasn’t going to get anyone killed.

** North Korea threatens South Korea with “final destruction” at UN arms conference: If you attend a conference on nuclear disarmament and threaten your neighbors with annihilation, you’re doing it wrong. But North Korea’s “diplomat” at such a meeting declared, “As the saying goes a new born puppy knows no fear of a tiger. South Korea’s erratic behavior would only herald its final destruction.” He described the Norks’ recent nuclear test as the first step in a process of “self defense,” assuring the world that his psychotic government was ready “to take the second and third stronger steps in succession.” The University of Colorado recommends that South Korea try vomiting or urinating on their aggressive neighbors to drive them off.

** Hacker groups linked to Chinese military: 115 large-scale hacker attacks on U.S. companies have been traced to a single building owned by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in Shanghai. The hackers stole “blueprints, details on proprietary processes, pricing documents, and contact lists” from targets including “information technology firms and telecommunications to aerospace and energy companies.” Of course, the Chinese government denied its involvement in these attacks, even though investigators dug up a memo from Hacker HQ’s telecom provider promising to “smoothly accomplish this task for the military based on the principle that national defense construction is important.” The story broke with rather convenient timing, since President Obama just issued an executive order related to cyber-security, but China’s adventures in data theft have been an open secret for quite some time. Maybe China’s admirers in the United States, such as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, will recommend building a military hacker headquarters of our very own. Give out free Mountain Dew, online pornography, and “World of Warcraft” accounts to every employee, and the Pentagon might actually be able to staff the place more cheaply than China does.

** Chicago police chief explains why his gun-free utopia is a festering pit of violent crime: Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy took to the airwaves in Chicago on Sunday to explain that he’s a big part of the problem in his corrupt, crime-infested city, pleading with citizens to remove him from office at the earliest opportunity. He encoded his plea in a rambling diatribe about how “special interests” are the cause of street crime: “So, if it has to do with donating money, versus a popular vote, I think we have a bigger problem in this country and someone has to wake up to that.”

You see, if groups like the National Rifle Association, and people like Sarah Palin (who McCarthy has blamed for Chicago street crime in the past) weren’t opposing Washington’s noble efforts to spread Chicago’s ultra-tough gun laws to other states, gang-bangers in the Windy City wouldn’t be pumping each other full of lead, while ignoring Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s pleas to aim more carefully so they don’t hit innocent bystanders. They’re all basically associate members of the NRA.

“When people say concealed carry, I say Trayvon Martin, because the answer to guns is not more guns, and just simply putting guns in peoples’ hands is going to lead to more tragedy,” burbled McCarthy. So much for “innocent until proven guilty,” at least in the case of politically useful gun owners who make the mistake of using their weapons to repel violent assault. It takes decades of one-party rule to produce hacks like this. Chicago’s big problem is that it is Chicago. America’s big problem is that it is becoming Chicago.

** Washington State gun control bill erases Fourth Amendment: A new “assault weapons ban” pushed by Democrats in Washington State just happens to include a teensy-weensy little clause that gives the police power to inspect the homes of gun owners at least once a year, without any other probable cause. As critics of the law (commendably including Washington State liberals) were quick to point out, there’s another Amendment two slots down from the “right to keep and bear arms” thing that protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures. This prompted the Democrat who wrote the bill, state Senator Ed Murray, to admit he screwed up by including it – but not to worry, because the bill is just a symbolic gesture, “a guiding light of where we need to go.” It’s nice to have legislators who waste our time by scribbling out their anti-Constitutional fantasies and introducing them as bills that are really intended to be taken as performance art. How odd that Murray’s “guiding light” ended up looking just like the sort of worst-case scenario the NRA lays out in its fundraising letters.

** White House tries to swallow its immigration poison pill: A weekend leak to USA Today from someone in the White House enraged congressional Republicans, for it contained details of an immigration proposal brimming with poison pills, including an eight-year “path to citizenship” decoupled from border security improvements. The GOP’s point man on immigration reform, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, thundered that the plan was “half-baked and seriously flawed,” vowing that it would be “dead on arrival” in Congress, “leaving us with unsecured borders and a broken legal immigration system for years to come.” By Monday afternoon, the White House was walking the proposal back, claiming they were not “floating anything,” and describing the leaked info as a “backup plan” that nobody was supposed to see. This is the same White House under investigation for leaking national security information for political purposes, so it’s reasonable to discard all the spin and wonder what they were really trying to accomplish: goad the Republicans into swifter action? Divide the public by laying down more generous measures and prodding the Democrats’ treasured Hispanic constituency to hate the Republicans for offering something less expansive? Scuttle the whole “comprehensive immigration reform” drive so the Democrats can keep amnesty as a campaign issue?
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To read another article by John Hayward, click here.