It’s Monday, October 8th, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!

Leading off the week, submitted for your approval courtesy of Best of the Web, one of the best pieces of post-debate analysis we’ve read thus far:

Honey, I Shrunk the President

Journalists and pundits turn on Obama for failing to make their fairy tales come true.

 

Maybe there’s something to be said for clean living after all. Although Mitt Romney is closer in age to the venerable Jim Lehrer than to the callow Barack Obama, it was the Republican nominee who came across in last night’s debate as energetic and vigorous. And if Obama looked put upon when the cameras were on, imagine what he must’ve come home to. You spent our anniversary doing WHAT?!

About the private reaction of Obama’s wife, of course, we can only speculate. But many of his lovers went public with their devastation: “I don’t know what he was doing out there,” wailed Chris Matthews. “He had his head down, he was enduring the debate rather than fighting it.” One expected Matthews to burst into song: “The thrill is gone baby / The thrill is gone away / You know you done me wrong baby / And you’ll be sorry Election Day.”

Even better was Andrew Sullivan: “Look: you know how much I love the guy. . . . But this was a disaster for the president for the key people he needs to reach, and his effete, wonkish lectures may have jolted a lot of independents into giving Romney a second look. Obama looked tired, even bored; he kept looking down; he had no crisp statements of passion or argument; he wasn’t there.” Cue Shania Twain: “So you got the brain but have you got the touch / Don’t get me wrong, yeah I think you’re all right / But that won’t keep me warm in the middle of the night.”

We could spend hours quoting disparaging reviews of Obama’s performances from journalists who were never as head-over-heels as Matthews and Sullivan, but we like to pretend as if we have space constraints, so we’ll just take one representative example, also from the Daily Beast, where our friend Tunku Varadarajan writes: “My God, in the four years that we’ve seen him in the White House, I don’t think we’ve ever seen the president so flaccid, so dull-brained, so jejune, so shifty, so downcast.”

This columnist has to disagree. Obama’s lame performance last night seemed typical to us. We can think of a few occasions in which we’ve seen the president less flaccid, less dull-brained, less jejune, less shifty, less downcast. But only a few.

But these qualities–or, to put it another way, this lack of quality–was harder than usual to miss last night because of the contrast with the highly effectual Romney. One reason it came as such a shock to Obama is that it was the first time in his career that he shared a debate stage with a serious opponent.

Think about it: John McCain was feeble. Alan Keyes, whom Obama beat in his 2004 Senate campaign, was crazy. All the Democrats who ran in 2008 were preposterous except Hillary Clinton, and she, as a beneficiary of nepotism, was highly overrated as a politician. He used Chicago-style dirty tricks to dispatch his original opponent in 2004, as well as the state senator he replaced back in the 1990s. The test he failed last night is one to which he had never been put.

But the journalists who are pointing the finger at Obama have three fingers pointed back at themselves. Instead of challenging the president, the press corps–with a few honorable exceptions, like ABC’s Jake Tapper and the guys from Telemundo–have spent the past four-plus years puffing him up and making excuses for him. The American Spectator’s Jeffrey Lord explains:

The great James Taranto . . . long ago posited what is called the “Taranto Principle.” In short, it means that the liberal media so coddles liberal politicians that they have no idea how to cope outside that liberal media bubble. . . .

Barack Obama has been so totally coddled by the liberal media that he looked absolutely shell-shocked in this debate. Stunned, unhappy, angry, sour–and at some points genuinely incoherent.

Romney has had nowhere near that kind of treatment. He had serious opponents in the primaries–all of whom in their own way forced him to confront his ideas in a serious fashion. Conservatives were on his heels. The Obama media never let up. The man went through the political equivalent of boot camp.

Tonight, the Taranto Principle kicked in. Big time.

Outside the liberal bubble–forced to be alone on a stage with a very serious, very prepared candidate–Barack Obama was in trouble. Big Trouble.

One quibble, on a point of personal privilege: “Great” is not the right adjective. Isn’t “inimitable” in the Spectator stylebook?

Otherwise, though, Lord is right. What we saw last night was the real Obama–a bright but incurious and inexperienced man who four years ago was promoted well beyond his level of competency. The Obama that guys like Matthews and Sullivan expected instead was a character in a fairy tale–a fairy tale written by guys like Matthews and Sullivan.

Oh well, at least there are more debates. The last one, on Oct. 22, is on foreign policy, which is Obama’s strong suit. Then the handsome prince killed Osama bin Laden, and the ambassador lived happily ever after.

Think about it; if’n YOU were The Obamao, would you….

….want to run on your record?!?

But now, having knocked Barack back on his heels, Mitt has to keep him reeling; Arthur Brooks, writing at the WSJ, advises how:

A ‘47%’ Solution for Romney

When he is attacked for his comments about Americans who don’t pay taxes, the candidate can counter that the president’s policies are stifling opportunity.

 

As Democrats bewailed their candidate’s performance at the presidential debate last week in Denver, they often noted with astonishment that President Obama didn’t bring up “the 47%.” Many assumed that Mr. Obama would assail Mitt Romney for his comments (recorded on video surreptitiously at a private fundraising event in May) writing off the possibility of winning the support of nearly half the electorate who don’t pay federal income taxes and feel like victims.

No matter that Mr. Romney has since repudiated his remarks. Democrats want him tarred with the line, and there is no doubting that as Team Obama reloads for the second debate, on Oct. 16, advisers are telling the president to be more aggressive.

Going after Mr. Romney regarding “the 47%” will be high on the list of targets. The Republican’s supposed insensitivity to the plight of ordinary Americans—long a theme of the Obama campaign—is sure to be central to the president’s message until election day.

So what should Mr. Romney do?

Start by emphasizing two facts. First, low-income Americans are struggling by any measure. Median household income has fallen for five straight years. While the unemployment rate announced last week fell below 8% for the first time in nearly four years, the true level of unemployment (the percentage of Americans who are unemployed, involuntarily working part-time or have given up looking for work) is still nearly 15%. The poverty rate is stuck close to 12% and shows no signs of declining.

Second, economic opportunity is declining. Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston reveal that from 1980-90, 21% of Americans in the bottom income quintile rose to the middle quintile or higher. From 1995-2005, that percentage had fallen by nearly a third, to 15%. Many studies find that economic mobility today is higher in Europe than in the United States.

These may seem to be simple facts for Mr. Romney to acknowledge. Yet, strangely, the theme of this year’s Republican convention was a cheerful affirmation that America is still the land of opportunity. Struggling Americans can be forgiven for saying that they don’t believe it, and that the Republicans seem out of touch. That is why the 47% comment created such a potent political opportunity for Mr. Obama.

Think of America in 2012 as an apartment building. In the penthouse, people are living pretty well—while the folks in the lower floors are getting flooded out. Unfortunately, the elevator hardly works anymore.

Mr. Obama’s only solution is to throw rocks at the top floor. The reason for our ruinous national debt? “Millionaires and billionaires” simply need to “pay their fair share”—despite the fact that eliminating the Bush-era tax cuts for households making over $250,000 a year would reduce the deficit by a paltry 5% annually. “You didn’t build that,” Mr. Obama lectures entrepreneurs, derisively accusing them of thinking they are smarter and harder-working than everyone else.

Mr. Romney needs to say how he intends to fix America’s elevator. That means promising three things.

• First, he needs to commit to an education system that serves kids, not rent-seeking adults. With little performance to show for it, public-school spending per child in America has increased by 35% in inflation-adjusted terms since 1992, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. California’s education system consumes 52% of that state’s Greek-style budget. Meanwhile, the Chicago schoolteachers last month rejected a 16% pay raise over four years and went on strike. Kids—especially poor kids—have the moral right to schools that deliver a brighter future, not an economy in ruins.

• Second, Mr. Romney can promise to fight for people of modest means who want to better their lives through hard work and private enterprise. At present, the government is working against them.

A good way to measure entrepreneurship among the economically vulnerable is by studying the percentage of laid-off workers seeking to start businesses. According to economist Scott Shane of Case Western Reserve University, the percentage of job-seeking business starters fell to 4% from 11% between 2007 and 2010. This is no surprise, given the labyrinthine regulatory and licensing complexity facing small business and the specter of exploding tax rates.

Politicians’ corporate cronies may be able to navigate the policy uncertainty of Obamanomics, but the little guy hardly has a chance. Mr. Romney should remind voters that in today’s anti-poor policy environment, their immigrant ancestors might well have chosen to stay home.

• Third, the Romney campaign must go on offense regarding the culture of family and work. My colleague Charles Murray’s best-selling book “Coming Apart” shows clearly that the predictors of a happy, successful life are cultural, most notably family, community and work ethic. (A family with two parents….of opposite sexes!)

The bottom 20% in America are not stuck because their welfare support is insufficient. It is because these cultural institutions are not helping them lead the lives they deserve. Volumes of research have shown that Great Society welfare policies—such as public housing and aid to families with dependent children—fueled family dissolution, community fragmentation, generational joblessness and government dependency. Many of Mr. Obama’s welfare and redistribution policies are encouraging a return to these conditions.

Armed in this way, Mr. Romney should be eagerly anticipating Mr. Obama’s inevitable “47%” attacks. He can counter that the Obama administration has proved itself more adroit at excuse-making and blame-shifting than creating opportunity, and that the administration seems ideologically incapable of pursuing the policies that fulfill the moral promise of earned success for all Americans. Instead of appearing insensitive, Mr. Romney has an opportunity to show some legitimate and righteous anger on behalf of Americans who are struggling—and to provide real solutions to do right by them for the first time in four years.

More like the first time since “workfare” passed in 1996.  Bush’s “compassionate Conservatism” was simply, as his chief speechwriter Michael Gerson wrote, “the bigotry of low expectations”; in other words, SS/DD.  And in the interests of fairness, Romney never said he didn’t care about the “47%”….only that “they” weren’t likely to vote for him.

Meanwhile, as this next item forwarded by Bill Meisen and courtesy of Keith Koffler and WhiteHouseDossier.com details, having been beaten like a rented mule in the first debate, Team Tick-Tock has shifted into full attack mode:

Obama Campaign Shifts Into Extreme Attack Mode

 

With its candidate having been swamped in the debate by an aggressive and articulate Gov. Mitt Romney, the Obama campaign is switching fully into attack mode, moving beyond earlier assaults on Romney’s business record and wealth toward a new drive to destroy his character.

Casting completely aside the Obama 2008 brand of a hopeful unifier, Obama’s operatives Thursday dived straight the jugular, working on multiple fronts to brand Romney a liar. The campaign, Obama aides made clear, would henceforth be conducted exclusively Chicago style.

In a vicious and personal assault rarely conducted at the highest level of U.S. politics, White House senior adviser David Plouffe repeatedly told reporters aboard Air Force One that Romney was “dishonest.” With the president of the United States in a cabin just a few steps away, his top adviser pushed out the new campaign theme that the man who had bested him in the debate Wednesday night is an untrustworthy scoundrel.

Generally presidential campaigns leave such personal attacks to surrogates, at least preserving the appearance that presidential candidates are above such things. Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki opened Plouffe’s remarks by airing for reporters the new Obama campaign ad, “Trust,” which claims that Romney is lying about his tax plan and can’t be trusted to be president.

On a separate front, top campaign adviser David Axelrod convened a phone call with reporters telling them that the “question” for them “is really one of character and whether or not a candidacy that’s so fundamentally rooted in hiding the truth and the facts from the American people and deception is the basis of trust on which you assign the presidency to a person.”

Axelrod announced that this would be the new theme of the Obama campaign. “That is what we are going to focus on moving forward,” he said.

As we’ve repeatedly warned….

….things were bound to get ugly; VERY ugly.

And since we mentioned the bigotry of low expectations, in another sordid story ripped from the pages of the Crime Blotter, we offer the latest cutting-edge crime-fighting concept from Charlie Beck, the crooks’ go-to-guy in the City of Angels:

LA police chief calls for releasing illegal immigrants involved in minor crimes

 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/05/la-police-chief-calls-for-releasing-illegal-immigrants-involved-in-minor-crimes/

Hey!  What about simply eliminating the criminal code in its entirety; with no laws whatsoever, not only could California ease it’s prison overcrowding, but Beck’s job would be even easier!

In another startling story of baffling buffoonery, James Taranto reports on a….

Florida man accused of slapping wife over ‘Obama, Romney’ dispute

 

“A 74-year-old Hollywood [Fla.] man has been arrested for allegedly slapping his wife in a heated dispute about the 2012 presidential election,” the South Florida Sun Sentinel reports:

On Wednesday, Peter Schwartz told Broward County Judge John “Jay” Hurley that he and his wife argued after they had gone out to eat. He said his wife told him she disliked him because of his choice of presidential candidate.

“She said, ‘You’re like my mother, you like Romney. That means I don’t like you,’ ” Schwartz said. “I said, ‘I didn’t say I don’t like Romney.’ ” (Confused?!?)

Hurley said that before Schwartz sees his wife again, he wants the issue to “settle down.” He ordered Schwartz to stay 500 feet away from his wife until another judge rules otherwise. Hurley allowed him only to talk to her by phone. The judge reminded Schwartz about the adage of never talking religion or politics in polite company.

“Sir, look where we’ve come in this,” Hurley said. “Now, we have spouses coming at each other over this.”

In his closing remarks at Wednesday night’s debate, President Obama said that four years ago, he “promised that I’d fight every single day on behalf of the American people and the middle class, and all those who are striving to get into the middle class. I’ve kept that promise. And if you’ll vote for me, then I promise I’ll fight just as hard in a second term.”

In the Schwartzes’ tragic story, we see an example of the kind of thing that can happen when people take the president’s violent rhetoric to heart.

Obama: the greatest divided since the onset of continental drift.

And in the Environmental Moment, courtesy of The New Media Journal, the Washington Free Beacon informs us….

EPA Execs Used Secret Email Addresses to Skirt FOIA

 

Environmental Protection Agency senior executives used secret email addresses to skirt freedom of information laws, a lawsuit by a free-market think tank alleges. The Competitive Enterprise Institute filed a lawsuit against the EPA last week claiming senior executives at the agency used secret email accounts to conduct public business, shielding their communications from the Freedom of Information Act.

The suit cites an internal EPA memo, first revealed in a 2008 Government Accountability Office, which describes secondary email accounts known only to a “few EPA staff members, usually only high-level senior staff.” CEI is asking the court to compel production of three FOIA requests to the EPA regarding these secondary email addresses. “In the face of revelations about organized and systemic abuses by senior federal employees to hide from the public their activities, particularly their email, EPA has constructively denied CEI’s requests and its appeal, leaving Plaintiff no recourse but this lawsuit asking this Court to compel EPA to comply with the law,” the complaint states.

In a statement to the Free Beacon, an EPA spokeswoman said the agency “is strongly committed to transparency and strictly complies with open government laws such as the Freedom of Information Act. We will review this lawsuit closely and respond as appropriate.”

The lawsuit was filed last week by CEI counsel for special projects Hans Bader, CEI senior fellow Chris Horner, and general counsel Sam Kazman. Horner released The Liberal War on Transparency, a book describing the use of private email addresses by administration officials. The Obama administration has often used such methods to keep information out of the public record.

Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee released a report in July detailing how White House officials met off-site with lobbyists and used private email addresses to avoid triggering disclosure laws…. A Bloomberg investigation found “19 of 20 cabinet-level agencies disobeyed the law requiring the disclosure of public information”.… An August Washington Post analysis found that early freedom of information progress by the Obama administration “stalled and, in the case of most departments, reversed in direction.”

The number of FOIA requests denied in full due to exemptions rose more than 10 percent last year, to 25,636 from 22,834 the previous year, according to the Post’s analysis.

On the Lighter Side….

Then there’s this exclusive photo of Barry’s debate notes forwarded by Balls Cotton:

And in the “Try Explaining THAT to the Missus” segment, courtesy of Bill “Bladder” Meisen:

Suit: Penthouse Club stripper ruptured man’s bladder at bachelor party 

 

Incoming!!!

The incident occurred in late November 2010, when Gallagher visited the club on Castor Avenue near Balfour Street with friends to celebrate his impending marriage, said his attorney, Neil T. Murray. His friends bought him the bachelor’s package, and the dancers brought him onstage, directing him to lie flat on his back beneath the pole, Murray said. One dancer shimmied up the pole, and “from a great height, she launched herself down onto his abdomen,” Murray said.

The boom left the groom in such severe pain that he and his friends left. By the next morning, Gallagher was suffering so much he went to the hospital, where doctors diagnosed a ruptured bladder that required surgery to repair, Murray said. Murray said Gallagher also suffered nerve damage in his back and hip.

The lawsuit accuses the club of negligence and seeks at least $50,000 for medical costs, pain, humiliation and mental anguish. A club manager referred comment to the owner, who couldn’t be reached.

Something tells us an out-of-court settlement involving some sort of payment-in-kind isn’t out of the question.

Finally, in the Sports Section, another day, another insolvent superstar:

Curt Schilling might have to sell famous bloody sock to cover loans

 

Former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling says potentially having to sell the famed blood-stained sock he wore during the 2004 World Series to cover loans he guaranteed to his failed video game company is part of “having to pay for your mistakes.” Schilling told WEEI-AM in Boston on Thursday that he “put himself out there” in personally guaranteeing loans to 38 Studios, which filed for bankruptcy in June.

He listed the sock and other memorabilia as collateral to a bank in a September filing with the Massachusetts Secretary of State. Schilling told the station he is seeking an “amicable” solution with the bank. 38 Studios was lured to Rhode Island from Massachusetts with a $75 million loan guaranteed by the state.

Another sterling example of Liberals’ absolute inability to differentiate between winners and losers, in business….or anywhere else!

Magoo