It’s Wednesday, September 19th, 2012….and just when you thought it was safe to open your email or surf the web….

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, as the WSJ details, apparently Mitt had the right words; he just didn’t have the sense to use them:

What Romney Might Have Said

Draft remarks for the candidate on taxes, dependency and the 47%.

 

Mitt Romney has been taking a beating for his remarks, taped at a May fundraiser, that 47% of Americans would automatically vote for President Obama because they are “dependent” on government. We could pile on, but instead we can report that we’ve been leaked pages of draft remarks that Mr. Romney might have delivered on the same subject but curiously didn’t.

Maybe he’ll deliver them some time before Election Day:

“One tragedy of the Obama Presidency is how many more Americans have become dependent on the government. I know it’s not their fault. Most want to be self-sufficient, to provide for their families, but they can’t because there aren’t enough jobs.

“That’s why 46 million Americans are on food stamps now, compared to 30 million in 2008. That’s why 10.6 million were on Social Security disability in 2011 compared to 9.3 million three years earlier. That’s why 40% of the unemployed have been out of work for six months or more, and the smallest share of the U.S. population is looking for work than at any time since 1981.

“This is a national scandal. Not because those fellow Americans are free-loaders, but because they aren’t able to get a good job that pays enough to be self-sufficient and lets them fulfill their human potential.

Mitt jet-skis while the Mid-Atlantic burns!

“I want Americans to be less dependent on government not because it costs too much. We will always help Americans who need our help. I want Americans to be independent so they can realize the pride of accomplishment and the dignity of work and contribute their God-given talents to build a better country.

“I think the success of a Presidency should be measured by how many fewer people need food stamps, how many fewer need disability, not how many more people are added to the rolls. I don’t want to take food stamps away from Americans in need. I want fewer Americans to need food stamps.

“Sometimes I wonder if President Obama shares that view. He and his economists keep saying that food stamps and unemployment benefits are a form of ‘stimulus.’ Well, we’ve sure had a lot of that kind of stimulus, and all we have to show for it are more people on food stamps and more people on welfare and more people looking for work. I think a real stimulus is a job, and I intend to help Americans create more of them.

Like maintaining my boat(s)!

“You’ve probably also heard some people—some even in my own party—divide Americans between ‘makers’ and ‘takers.’ As if half the country wants to live off the other half. I’ve never believed that. That’s no different from the kind of divisive politics that the President practices when he pits the wealthy against everyone else.

“We want a society in which one person’s success lifts everyone else. The job of government is to create the incentives and opportunity so everyone can become a maker. But too often government wants to take more from Americans so it can make more Americans dependent on government. That’s when we lose our way, and too many Americans lose hope that they can work and prosper.

“It’s the same with our broken tax policy. You may have heard some people say that about half the American people pay no income tax. That’s true. But I know millions of those people do pay Social Security taxes, which are a tax on work. They’re making their contribution to our government, and I don’t want to—and will not—raise their taxes.

“In fact, I want to reduce the tax on work by repealing ObamaCare, which will force employers to pay a tax if they don’t offer health insurance. That means they’ll hire fewer workers, as many companies are already doing.

“But I don’t want to stop there. I also want to fix our tax code so everyone plays by the same rules, and that includes the richest and most powerful. You know, the President seems to say every day that ‘millionaires and billionaires’ should pay higher tax rates.

“But what he doesn’t say is that if you raise tax rates, those millionaires and billionaires will hire lawyers and lobbyists to avoid those rates, to exploit loopholes and tax shelters, or to get special favors. Like Solyndra did. The government will get less revenue, and that means the middle class will end up paying more. The President won’t tell you that either.

“Think about it. Do you have a lobbyist in Washington? Do you have a guy you can call to get you in to see the Treasury Secretary or the Senators in Gucci Gulch? Of course you don’t. But the millionaires and billionaires do.

“That’s why so many people in both parties support tax reform that lowers tax rates and pays for it by closing loopholes and helping the economy grow faster.

“That’s what Ronald Reagan did with Democrats like Bill Bradley and Dick Gephardt in the 1980s. That’s what Democrat Alice Rivlin and Republican Pete Domenici have proposed. And that’s what the President’s own deficit commission—led by Republican Alan Simpson and Democrat Erskine Bowles—proposed.

“I don’t agree with all of the details in these plans, but I do know they have the right general idea. We have the most complicated tax code with some of the highest tax rates in the world and yet it doesn’t raise the revenue we need to fund the government.

“We need tax reform to spur faster growth and to make American workers more competitive. But we also need reform to make the tax code fairer, and less open to exploitation by the rich and powerful who have friends in Washington.”

That’s where the speech excerpts end. No doubt there’s more, sitting in the PC of some young wordsmith in Boston who’s working for Mr. Romney. Somebody should sneak it past Stuart Stevens. Surely a man as smart as the former CEO of Bain Capital can give a better speech on taxes and dependency than he delivered at that fundraiser. If he can’t, he’ll lose, and he’ll deserve to.

Unfortunately, Mitt gets to keep his house(s), jet-ski(s), boat(s) and hundred(s) of millions.  The rest of have to live with the consequences of what could be, absent a drastic course correction….or better yet, a new crew….the biggest campaign debacle since Bush I.

For more on Romney’s latest bit of inarticulation, Kimberly Strassel offers her thoughts on the subject:

In a related item, Thomas Sowell’s right to wonder….

Can Republicans Talk? 

 

The first time I saw Chris Christie on television, shortly after he became governor of New Jersey, my immediate reaction was, “My Gosh! A Talking Republican!” It was almost like seeing a talking giraffe or a talking salamander.

Technically speaking, Republicans do talk, but talking is definitely not their strong suit. Nor do they seem to have put a lot of thought into what they say or how they say it. The net result is that articulate Democrats can get away with the biggest lies, without any serious rebuttal from most Republicans.

I have not heard any Republican official or candidate even try to answer a standard claim of the Democrats, that “deregulation” is the reason the housing market went haywire and brought down the economy. Therefore, according to the Democrats, Republicans who want to restore a free market are just trying to “go back to the same policies that got us into this mess in the first place.” That sounds very persuasive, if you don’t know the facts — and it sounds like pure hogwash if you do.

But facts don’t speak for themselves. And if we wait for the Republicans to speak, the whole country can be in big trouble.

The “deregulation” gambit is not new. It was tried out years ago, in California, when some of the most heavy-handed regulation of the electrical utility companies forced them to charge less for electricity than they had to pay to buy it. After this led to their financial collapse, and then to power failures and blackouts that outraged the public, the Democrats’ response was that this was all due to — you guessed it — “deregulation.”

It is the same story today on the national level. Federal agencies with powers of economic life and death over banks and other lenders forced these lenders to lower their lending standards. The words of the regulators themselves are a matter of public record, and they sound like something out of “Alice in Wonderland.” They ought to be quoted, to give the lie to claims that “deregulation” is the reason for the housing boom and bust.

Some people think that nonsense is too silly to answer. But not answering it can just allow nonsense to prevail — to the detriment of the whole country.

Much as I admire the approach of Congressman Paul Ryan, I cringed during one of his speeches when he said — in just one sentence — that none of his reforms would deny benefits to people already getting Social Security. When the truth is just a passing blip on the screen and the lies go on at great length, guess which one is likely to prevail politically.

Vulnerable people, depending on that monthly Social Security check, need to hear that you understand that they paid into Social Security for years when they were working, and that it would be unconscionable to now cheat them out of what they paid for.

Policy wonks already know that nobody in his right mind has proposed any such thing. But, if you depend on the votes of policy wonks to win elections, be prepared to lose in a landslide.

One of the biggest of the election year lies is that Republicans want to sacrifice the poor in order to have “tax cuts for the rich.” That would be grossly immoral — if it were true. Unscrambling the confusion in that argument can involve work. But if people on welfare can be expected to work, surely people running for high office can put in a little work too — including the work of explaining in plain words what is totally false about the “tax cuts for the rich” argument.

I know it can be done because I have done it. You can see my essay on the subject on my website (www.tsowell.com) under the title “Tax Cuts.” But so long as Republicans don’t seem to feel any urgency about refuting the Democrats’ claim that they just want to help the rich at the expense of the poor, they are courting defeat on election day. Why lose to a lie because you didn’t bother to explain the truth?

Some of the time that was spent at the Republican convention trying to “humanize” Mitt Romney could have been better spent debunking the Democrats’ talking points. After all, we are not going to be voting for a Buddy-in-Chief in the White House, but for someone with some clear ideas about what this country needs — and who is willing to share those ideas with us in plain English.

Which is more amazing still when one considers his opponent has absolutely nothing to offer but the same menu from 2008.

Next up, also courtesy of the WSJ, Bret Stephens highlights one of the greatest hypocrisies of the modern Left….which is saying something:

Muslims, Mormons and Liberals

Why is it OK to mock one religion but not another?

 

‘Hasa Diga Eebowai” is the hit number in Broadway’s hit musical “The Book of Mormon,” which won nine Tony awards last year. What does the phrase mean? I can’t tell you, because it’s unprintable in a family newspaper.

On the other hand, if you can afford to shell out several hundred bucks for a seat, then you can watch a Mormon missionary get his holy book stuffed—well, I can’t tell you about that, either. Let’s just say it has New York City audiences roaring with laughter.

The “Book of Mormon”—a performance of which Hillary Clinton attended last year, without registering a complaint—comes to mind as the administration falls over itself denouncing “Innocence of Muslims.” This is a film that may or may not exist; whose makers are likely not who they say they are; whose actors claim to have known neither the plot nor purpose of the film; and which has never been seen by any member of the public except as a video clip on the Internet.

No matter. The film, the administration says, is “hateful and offensive” (Susan Rice), “reprehensible and disgusting” (Jay Carney) and, in a twist, “disgusting and reprehensible” (Hillary Clinton). Mr. Carney, the White House spokesman, also lays sole blame on the film for inciting the riots that have swept the Muslim world and claimed the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three of his staff in Libya.

So let’s get this straight: In the consensus view of modern American liberalism, it is hilarious to mock Mormons and Mormonism but outrageous to mock Muslims and Islam. Why? Maybe it’s because nobody has ever been harmed, much less killed, making fun of Mormons. (At least not since September 11, 1857.)

Here’s what else we learned this week about the emerging liberal consensus: That it’s okay to denounce a movie you haven’t seen, which is like trashing a book you haven’t read. That it’s okay to give perp-walk treatment to the alleged—and no doubt terrified—maker of the film on legally flimsy and politically motivated grounds of parole violation. That it’s okay for the federal government publicly to call on Google to pull the video clip from YouTube in an attempt to mollify rampaging Islamists. That it’s okay to concede the fundamentalist premise that religious belief ought to be entitled to the highest possible degree of social deference—except when Mormons and sundry Christian rubes are concerned.

And, finally, this: That the most “progressive” administration in recent U.S. history will make no principled defense of free speech to a Muslim world that could stand hearing such a defense. After the debut of “The Book of Mormon” musical, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints responded with this statement: “The production may attempt to entertain audiences for an evening but the Book of Mormon as a volume of scripture will change people’s lives forever by bringing them closer to Christ.”

That was it. The People’s Front for the Liberation of Provo will not be gunning for a theater near you. Is it asking too much of religious and political leaders in Muslim communities to adopt a similar attitude?

It needn’t be. A principled defense of free speech could start by quoting the Quran: “And it has already come down to you in the Book that when you hear the verses of Allah [recited], they are denied [by them] and ridiculed; so do not sit with them until they enter into another conversation.” In this light, the true test of religious conviction is indifference, not susceptibility, to mockery.

The defense could add that a great religion surely cannot be goaded into frenetic mob violence on the slimmest provocation. Yet to watch the images coming out of Benghazi, Cairo, Tunis and Sana’a is to witness some significant portion of a civilization being transformed into Travis Bickle, the character Robert De Niro made unforgettable in Taxi Driver. “You talkin’ to me?”

A defense would also point out that an Islamic world that insists on a measure of religious respect needs also to offer that respect in turn. When Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi—the closest thing Sunni Islam has to a pope—praises Hitler for exacting “divine punishment” on the Jews, that respect isn’t exactly apparent. Nor has it been especially apparent in the waves of Islamist-instigated pogroms that have swept Egypt’s Coptic community in recent years.

Finally, it need be said that the whole purpose of free speech is to protect unpopular, heretical, vulgar and stupid views. So far, the Obama administration’s approach to free speech is that it’s fine so long as it’s cheap and exacts no political price. This is free speech as pizza.

President Obama came to office promising that he would start a new conversation with the Muslim world, one that lectured less and listened more. After nearly four years of listening, we can now hear more clearly where the U.S. stands in the estimation of that world: equally despised but considerably less feared. Just imagine what four more years of instinctive deference will do.

On the bright side, dear liberals, you’ll still be able to mock Mormons. They tend not to punch back, which is part of what makes so many of them so successful in life.

Which is the same reason Liberals feel comfortable making sport of Christianity; and why they hold the photo on the left to be art, while the photo on the right….

….to constitute grounds for slaughtering innocents and suspending the First Amendment.

Moving on, this just in courtesy of George Lawlor and FOX News:

Emails show Justice working with Media Matters on stories that target critics

 

Newly published emails show the top spokeswoman at the U.S. Justice Department regularly collaborating with the liberal advocacy group Media Matters on stories that slam the administration’s critics. The emails, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request and published by The Daily Caller, often show department public affairs chief Tracy Schmaler communicating with Media Matters bloggers. Sometimes, the emails were in response to inquiries. Other times, Schmaler was pitching ideas, according to the Caller.

….while Rome burned.

In other news of Team Tick-Tock dissimulations…..

NBC News: Obama Administration Not Telling the Truth on Benghazi Security Lapses

 

Uh-oh; if The Obamao’s lost NBC, he’s lost .05% of the television-viewing public!

And since we’re on the subject of gross distortions and outright fabrications, writing at the WaPo, Marc Thiessen details….

 The myth of Barack the liberator 

 

The anti-American violence spreading across the Middle East is not, as some suggest, blowback for President Obama supporting the overthrow of friendly dictators — irresponsibly pushing out autocrats who kept a lid on the forces of Islamic radicalism. The current unrest is indeed a result of Obama’s feckless policies in the Middle East — but overthrowing dictators is not one of them.

When tens of thousands of Egyptians poured into Tahrir Square last year to demand an end to dictatorship, the Obama administration stood with the Egyptian regime. Obama’s handpicked envoy, Frank Wisner, declared that Hosni Mubarak “must stay in office” to implement reforms. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the United States announced, “Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.” The hopes of ordinary Egyptians that Obama might stand with them soon gave way to disappointment and anger. Demonstrators began carrying signs that declared “Shame on you Obama!” and showed Mubarak depicted as Obama in his iconic “hope” image — with a caption that read “No You Can’t.”

Egyptians did not forget how in 2009 — the same year Obama gave his Cairo speech promising to “a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world” — Obama cut pro-democracy funding for Egypt in half. Or how Clinton declared, “I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family.” Egyptians saw that Obama only began to shift his position after the momentum had shifted to the protesters. As one opposition leader put it before Mubarak’s fall, Obama and his advisers “are just waiting to see which side wins and then they will claim to have backed them all along.” That is exactly what Obama did. His failure to stand up against Mubarak alienated the Egyptian people, and cost us our ability to influence the post-Mubarak transition.

Obama also didn’t support the overthrow of Moammar Gaddafi. Indeed, he explicitly rejected making his removal a military objective, declaring, “We are not going to use force to go beyond a well-defined goal — specifically, the protection of civilians in Libya.” Obama’s top military adviser, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, went further declaring that “the goals of this campaign right now again are limited, and it isn’t about seeing him go. It’s about supporting the United Nations resolution, which talked to limiting or eliminating his ability to kill his own people, as well as support the humanitarian effort.” David Gregory pressed Mullen, asking: “So the mission can be accomplished, and Gaddafi can remain in power?” Mullen replied: “That’s certainly, potentially, one outcome.”

A State Department spokesman said that arming the rebels would be “illegal.” It was the British and French who insisted on making Gaddafi’s removal the goal of our intervention, and arming and training the rebels to accomplish it. They had to drag Obama into it. Thank goodness they did. Today, unlike the Egyptian people, the Libyan people don’t think we stood with their dictator. When Gaddafi did finally fall, the administration tried to claim that Obama was for his removal all along but was simply “leading from behind.” The truth is he wasn’t leading at all.

We see that lack of presidential leadership today in Syria, where Iran’s closest ally slaughters innocent men, women and children by the tens of thousands while Obama stands by and does nothing. The Syrian people can be excused for wondering: Where is Barack the Liberator? Obama’s failure to lift a finger to protect the population is alienating Syrians who will remember our reticence when Assad is gone. His failure to back responsible elements of the Syrian opposition is creating opportunity for Islamic radicals to seize control of a post-Assad Syria. And his failure to act is seen across the Middle East as a sign of American weakness and vacillation.

That is what is causing the unrest in the Middle East today — a perception of American weakness. Across the region, people see the United States in retreat. They see Obama pulling all U.S. forces out of Iraq and preparing to do the same in Afghanistan. They see an American ambassador killed in Libya, the flag of al-Qaeda raised over our embassy in Egypt, and our diplomats fleeing from Khartoum and Tunis. Instead of looking to the United States and asking, “Where are you, Obama?”, the crowds in Cairo today are chanting, “Obama, we are all Osama.”

The failure of Obama’s policies in the Middle East is not the fall of dictators in Cairo and Tripoli; it is the failure of leadership in Washington. On taking office, Obama promised to usher in a new era of popularity in the region. Well, ask yourself this: Are we more popular now than we were four years ago?

As noted previously, that answer is clearly and emphatically….

….NO!!!

Speaking of the highly unpopular….

Chicago teachers vote to return to classroom

 

First the Cubs, now this behemoth; Chicago children really can’t catch a break!

On the Lighter Side….

Oh….and Turkish jets!

Finally, in the “Everybody Gets A Trophy” segment, it appears, at least in Liberland, every cop who dies is a hero:

Police lieutenant hails ‘bravery’ of retired NYC cop that died in chopper crash

 

A retired New York City police officer was killed Saturday when the small helicopter he was piloting crashed in a central New Jersey cornfield, authorities said. Michael Scarfia, 65, of Staten Island, N.Y., was identified by West Windsor police as the pilot of the Aerospatiale AS355 twin-engine helicopter that went down shortly after noon in West Windsor. Scarfia apparently was the only person aboard.

“By diverting his failing helicopter into the cornfield and away from crowded shopping malls, he again showed his bravery and dedication to others,” West Windsor police Lt. Robert Garofalo said in a news release.

Sounds great; but Scarfia’s supposed heroism is based on….what?!?

It was not immediately clear what caused the accident. Garofalo said several people reported that a flock of birds appeared to make contact with the helicopter shortly before it crashed. He said authorities still were investigating those reports Saturday evening. “Eyewitnesses said they saw pieces of (the helicopter) coming apart, including the main rotor of the helicopter itself,” Garofalo said during an earlier news conference held near the crash scene. Several witnesses also reported hearing grinding noises and possible explosions shortly before the helicopter went down in the field near Route 1 and Quakerbridge Road in the Mercer County community.

Authorities said the pilot did not report any trouble or make any emergency transmissions.

Sorry, THIS is a hero:

THIS, with all due respect….

….is a statistic; a sad one to be certain, but certainly no hero.  Any lesser definition cheapens the meaning of the word.

Magoo