The Daily Gouge, Thursday, October 11th, 2012

On October 10, 2012, in Uncategorized, by magoo1310

It’s Thursday, October 11th, 2012….and if you’ve never accessed all the features our home page (www.thedailygouge.com) has to offer, today’s your day. Between the featured videos (accessed through the numbered boxes beneath the Quote of the Day) and our Cover Story, it will be well worth your time.

Also, if you enjoy what you’re reading, please be sure to pass it on to your friends of similar political persuasion. The more the merrier….and the sooner we can do this full-time.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, courtesy of the AEI, The Daily Caller‘s Peter Wallison poses the question….

Is Obama overrated?

The excuses for President Obama’s shockingly weak performance in last week’s presidential debate are taxing the imaginations of the left. We’re told President Obama doesn’t like confrontations because he wants to be president of all the people (Paul Krugman); he doesn’t watch enough MSNBC (Chris Matthews); he’s a great thinker but a so-so debater (David Remnick); he may actually need that teleprompter (Bill Maher); and of course everyone’s all-time favorite: it was the altitude (Al Gore). On the right, the argument has been that the media has coddled Obama — so much so that he is unable to respond effectively to the challenges presented by Romney.

Few people, however, even on the right, have cited the two most plausible explanations for Obama’s failure, although these are staring them in the face.

First, in a debate that was supposed to elucidate the differences between the candidates, Obama had few accomplishments with which to differentiate himself from Romney. He couldn’t trumpet Obamacare, since most Americans want it repealed. He couldn’t cite the success of the $800 billion stimulus in bringing down unemployment, because most Americans view it as a failure. He couldn’t point out that his housing policies have awakened the sleeping giant of the housing market, because they haven’t. He couldn’t note that he has endorsed the Simpson-Bowles Commission’s deficit-reduction proposal, because he hasn’t. His whole campaign has been nothing more than a series of attacks on Mitt Romney, and more negative attacks are not what independents want out of a presidential debate.

But there is another possible explanation for President Obama’s weak debate performance. Perhaps Obama isn’t the remarkable intellect his supporters believe him to be. He’s written two autobiographical books, and he clearly has a gift for delivering prepared speeches. But does he really know anything beyond what his staff prepares? His college and law school grades are under seal, and the media always showed less interest in them than in Romney’s tax returns. He never ran a business, so its success could not be used as an index of his abilities. He got a law degree but never distinguished himself as a lawyer, wrote a winning brief or made a brilliant oral argument in an appeal. He was a U.S. senator for four years and an Illinois state senator for eight, but — to say the least — he did not distinguish himself by proposing significant legislation in either chamber.

So maybe he’s not the intellectual giant that his supporters and the media have supposed. We’ll know more after the next debate, but as a working hypothesis, this idea — after four years of failure and drift — certainly has some surface plausibility.

The Obamao….overrated? Is Bismarck….

….a hewing?!?

Next up, courtesy of The Washington Examiner, Michael Barone observes that despite being a….

A lawyer by training, Obama ignores rules of law

“The Illegal-Donor Loophole” is the headline of a Daily Beast story by Peter Schweizer of the conservative Government Accountability Institute and Peter Boyer, former reporter at the New Yorker and the New York Times. The article tells how Obama.com, a website owned by an Obama fundraiser who lives in China but has visited the Obama White House 11 times, sends solicitations mostly to foreign email addresses and links to the Obama campaign website’s donation page.

The Obama website, unlike those of most campaigns, doesn’t ask for the three- or four-digit credit card verification number. That makes it easier for donors to use fictitious names and addresses to send money in. Campaigns aren’t allowed to accept donations from foreigners. But it looks like the Obama campaign has made it easier for them to slip money in. How much foreign money has come into the Obama campaign? Schweizer and Boyer say there’s no way to know.

The campaign, as my former boss pollster Peter Hart likes to say, always reflects the candidate. A campaign willing to skirt the law or abet violations of it reflects a candidate who, as president, has been doing the same thing.

Examples abound. Take the WARN Act, which requires employers to give a 60-day notice of layoffs. It was sponsored and passed by Democrats. The WARN Act requires defense contractors to give notice on Nov. 2 of layoffs that will be necessary on Jan. 3 when the sequestration law requires big cutbacks in defense spending. The administration has asked companies not to send out the notices. And it has promised to pay companies’ WARN Act fines. Why the solicitude? The warnings could cost Obama Virginia’s 13 electoral votes.

When did Congress give presidents the power to suspend operation of this law? What law authorizes the government to pay the fines of those who violate the law? (Why haven’t Congressional Republicans filed suit to stop him?!?)

Or consider the welfare waivers that HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius gives to states that want to relax work requirements. Democratic blogger Mickey Kaus makes a strong case that this violates clear language in the welfare reform act signed by Bill Clinton in 1996. If Kaus is right, Sebelius and Obama are brazenly rewriting the law — one of the most successful reforms of the last two decades.

Then there’s Obama’s promise not to deport young illegal immigrants brought into the U.S. as children who meet certain conditions — like going to college or serving in the military. It’s a policy that tests well in the polls. The problem is that Congress, even when controlled by Democrats, refused to relax immigration policy in this way.

You won’t hear much about this on the campaign trail. Mitt Romney says he won’t reverse it, since it seems harsh to penalize people who came forward in response to a president’s stated policy. Similarly, he’s not in favor of reversing the policy allowing open gays to serve in the military.

There’s one difference between the two situations. Congress actually passed a law (repealing one signed by Clinton) allowing gays to serve. It was one of the last acts of the outgoing Democratic Congress in 2010. But neither that Congress nor the current one passed a law authorizing mass nonenforcement of immigration laws. Nor did any Congress pass a law suspending the WARN Act when it jeopardizes a president’s chance to carry a target state.

Article II of the Constitution (not Article I, as Joe Biden appeared to say in the 2008 vice presidential debate) sets out the duties and powers of the president. Section 3 states that “he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” It does not give him the power to make laws. That’s given to Congress, in Article I.

Barack Obama was a lecturer in constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School. But he seems to take the attitude familiar to me, as an alumnus of Yale Law School, that the law is simply a bunch of words which people who are clever with words can manipulate to get any result they want. In public speeches he has defended such policies by shouting, “We can’t wait!” The results are good, or at least politically convenient, so why be held back by a few words written on paper?

The Constitution was written by men who had a different idea. They wanted a government bound by the rule of law. Do we?

Then again, given he knows nothing about management, leadership, foreign policy or economics….or anything else remotely connected to the presidency….would it really surprise anyone to learn he’s genuinely ignorant of the law?

In a related item, Jonah Goldberg politely suggests the Boy Blunder recognize his numerous shortcomings, focus on the job at hand and….

Quit Blaming Bush

“Now Gov. Romney believes that with even bigger tax cuts for the wealthy, and fewer regulations on Wall Street, all of us will prosper. In other words, he’d double down on the same trickle-down policies that led to the crisis in the first place.” — President Obama in an ad released Sept. 27. This is Obama’s core message. In one way or another, he says it all the time. It’s his kicker on the stump. You cannot watch an interview with the president or one of his subalterns without hearing it.

And yet, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a TV interviewer, host or pundit ask, “What are you talking about?”

Finally, the Washington Post’s “fact-checker,” Glenn Kessler, (not exactly a darling of the political right) tackled it recently. He found that it’s a lie, giving it three “Pinocchios” out of four. He also found that the Obama campaign has virtually no citations to back up the claim. The supporting material for the ad quoted above cites a single column by the Post’s liberal blogger, Ezra Klein, who told Kessler: “I am absolutely not saying the Bush tax cuts led to the financial crisis. To my knowledge, there’s no evidence of that.”

Klein is right. So is Kessler. “It is time for the Obama campaign to retire this talking point,” Kessler concluded, “no matter how much it seems to resonate with voters.” He would have given it the full four Pinocchios save for the fact that Obama occasionally throws in “deregulation” along with “tax cuts” as part of the explanation. In its defense, the Obama camp says it means all of Bush’s policies, not just the tax cuts it harps on almost exclusively — never mind that even Obama admits Bush issued more regulations than he did.

The question of what caused the crisis is obviously still controversial (though, Kessler notes, the official inquiry makes no mention of Bush’s tax cuts). But a consensus seems to be forming around the following narrative: The federal government, out of an abundance of concern for the plight of the poor and middle class, made it too easy to buy a home. Congress, on a bipartisan basis, set unrealistic affordable-housing goals for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. President Clinton used those goals to expand access to mortgages to low-income borrowers. Then President George W. Bush, with the approval of Congress, expanded the practice, until way too many low-income or otherwise underqualified Americans owned mortgages they couldn’t afford.

A mixture of greed, idealism, cynicism and stupidity led to the practice of bundling those iffy mortgages into financial instruments that Wall Street didn’t know how to handle and regulators didn’t know how to regulate. As Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) put it in 2003, he wanted to “to roll the dice a bit” on regulating subprime mortgages.

When the Washington-abetted housing boom went bust, regulators demanded immediate markdowns of mortgage-backed securities, which required financial institutions to sell them, creating a fire-sale atmosphere that fueled the panic even more. The Federal Reserve responded by letting money tighten in a way it hadn’t since the 1930s.

Some Obama defenders will say that Bush’s deficits made it harder to deal with the crisis. That seems reasonable, even if it’s a red herring in the debate about what caused the crisis. And Obama’s record on deficits hardly gives him much standing.

I once thought that Obama’s relentless Bush-blaming was simply a mix of political expediency and gracelessness. But the truth is more complicated. Liberals have smartly, albeit cynically, laid the case that Bush was Herbert Hoover in order to make the claim that Obama is Franklin D. Roosevelt. For this to work, Hoover must be remembered as a do-nothing free-market guy. But Hoover was no such thing. He nearly tripled government spending in response to the Depression. FDR used Hoover’s spending as a baseline for his own, even as he dishonestly decried Hoover’s passivity.

Obama has done largely the same thing. The first bailouts of the crisis were supported by Obama but launched by Bush. The same goes for the first stimulus. Obama simply tripled down on all that while claiming he was breaking with Bush.

Or maybe I have that all wrong. Maybe we could get some clarity by asking the president, “What are you talking about?”

In other words, to borrow a phrase from Clint Eastwood….

Unfortunately for America, B. Hussein still doesn’t believe he has any….a fact which is manifestly obvious to our most implacable foes.

Since we’re on the subject of America’s enemies, Michael Rubin, writing at the Morningside Post wonders….

Can a nuclear Iran be contained?

It will be almost impossible to contain a nuclear Iran. Command, control, and custody over any future Iranian bomb will rest not among Iranian pragmatists, but rather within the most ideologically pure unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The vast majority of Iranians are moderate, cosmopolitan, and forward-thinking, but the concern of America policymakers must focus upon those whose fingers are on the button who may actually believe the Messianic rhetoric spouted by their leaders.

Should Iran go nuclear, it is doubtful the Iranian leadership will order a first strike on Riyadh, Tel Aviv, or regional American facilities. But, overconfident behind its nuclear deterrence, the IRGC will lash out. Export of revolution is the Islamic Republic’sraison d’être, enshrined in its founding documents. When former President Mohammad Khatami suggested the regime interpret revolutionary export through a soft-power prism, senior clerics and Revolutionary Guardsmen shot him down. Rather than bring peace, a nuclear breakout will lead to a resurgence of terrorism and asymmetric warfare.

That the Iranian regime is not suicidal does not mean deterrence can work. In 1999, 2001, and 2009, Iran erupted in nationwide protests. After each instance, the IRGC restored order. The problem comes when, as in Romania 1989 and Libya 2011, security forces begin to join the protestors. If the most elite and ideologically pure IRGC elements know that their regime will cease to exist within 24-hours, then they may act out their ideological imperatives. There is some precedent: After Muammar Qadhafi’s forces lost control of Tripoli, they launched SCUD missiles at the rebel-held city of Misrata for no other reason than sheer spite.

Multiculturalism is not simply about walking into a sushi restaurant and ordering a mojito. At its core, it is the recognition that different peoples think in very different ways. By ignoring the ideology of those in Iran who would actually control the bombs, the strategic logic of the Cold War falls flat.

Sure….the logic of the Cold War falls flat, while Israel

….just falls.

And in the Environmental Moment, the AEI‘s Jon Entine reports on another example of science (somewhat miraculously) triumphing over hysteria:

Controversial phthalate plasticizer found safe for children’s toys, confounding activists

Bumbling coverage on phthalates underscores how activist journalism endangers ‘public science’

Last year, campaigning journalist Susan Freinkel noted that she wrote her anti-chemical book, Plastics: A Toxic Love Story, because she was shocked about how much modern society relied on plastics. In her mind, “synthetic materials” equated with poor health, pollution and western gluttony.

Freinkel’s perspective reflects a familiar and distressing trope in science journalism. Rather than contextualize an issue, activist reporters often dramatize it. Costs are rarely weighed with benefits. The risks of not using a substance are almost never balanced against the risks of using it. Like many reporters, Freinkel started out with a premise—plastics=toxic=bad—and then loaded the dice to hammer home that simplism.

“A” is also for “alar” and “another”, as in, “another EnviroNazi scam”.

What brings Freinkel’s book to mind is the recent news that Australia’s premier science risk assessment agency comprehensively assessed a common phthalate, DINP (diisononyl phthalate), used in toys and child care products and found that it poses no serious health concerns. That determination, which corresponds with reviews by major science bodies around the world, stands in contrast to the perspective on phthalates and most chemicals advocated by Freinkel and other activist journalists and NGOs.

Phthalates are plasticizers used to increase the flexibility and durability of a product. There are dozens of different types, but nine major ones, used in thousands of consumer and industrial applications including, cosmetics, cables, flooring, medical devices and children’s backpacks and toys. DINP is one type of phthalate.

According to the new review by the Australian government’s National Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme (NICNA), “Current risk estimates do not indicate a health concern from exposure of children to DINP in toys and child care articles even at the highest (reasonable worst-case) exposure scenario considered. The scientists concluded: “No recommendations to public health risk management for the use of DINP in toys and child care articles are required based on the findings of this assessment.”

“B” is for “billions”….roughly how many potato chips one would have to consume before having even a minimally-increased risk of cancer.

The finding revoked the categorization of DINP as a “priority existing chemical,” meaning that manufacturers and importers wishing to use it in a product need no longer apply for yet another assessment. Australia’s study is the latest in a long line of international government reviews affirming that DINP is safe for current uses.

Few chemicals on the market today have undergone as much scientific scrutiny as phthalate plasticizers. Environmentalists and industry groups can draw upon a plethora of studies, human and animal, in a hopeless attempt to definitively prove phthalates are dangerous or harmless. As in most reviews of chemical substances, science rarely yields perfect clarity. But in this debate, clarity is not the goal of phthalate critics who hold a distinct if perverse advantage. They are not trying to reach a “weight of evidence”conclusion (if they were, there would be few if any restrictions on phthalates); rather, their goal is to stir just enough concern that politicians will ban or heavily restrict the chemical based on precautionary fears.

Phthalates, Freinkel breezily writes in her book that phthalates “play havoc with the body’s endocrine system”—yet no scientific oversight body in the US, Europe or elsewhere has determined that plasticizers adversely impact humans in this way. According to last year’s report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “[p]hthalates are metabolized and excreted quickly and do not accumulate in the body.” That report echoed the findings in 2004 and 2010 by the Children’s National Medical Center and George Washington University School of Medicine showing no adverse effects in organ or sexual functioning in adolescent children exposed to phthalates as neonates. Another recent study has found that even high exposure levels have shown no effect on the genital development of marmosets—let alone humans.

“C” is for “climate”, as in “Climategate”.

That said, because of other, more ambiguous studies of rodents exposed to doses hundreds or even thousands of times higher than what humans encounter, some political bodies have instituted bans or restrictions on some types of phthalates. Regulators have long noted that plasticizers are not all alike. So-called low phthalates—DEHP, BBP, DBP and DIBP—are less stable and release out gasses. Although major science bodies in the US, like CDC, have found low phthalates that are taken into the body are safely metabolized, precautionary fears abound. In the US, current law bans the sale of toys intended for children 12 or younger, or child-care articles for children 3 and under, when they contain more than 0.1 percent of DEHP, DBP and BBP.

The long-term regulatory fate of what are known as high phthalates such as DINP, DIDP and DPHP is less sure. They have been widely tested. From a chemical perspective, they are tightly bound, more stable and more resilient than low phthalates. Pending the results of an ongoing review at the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), there now exists a temporary ban on any child-care article that contains more than 0.1 percent of DINP, DIDP or DPHP

“D” is for “DDT”, the banning of which saved neither fish nor fowl, but cost the lives of tens of millions in the Third World who never heard of Rachel “Killer” Carson.

European Union scientists and the Danish Environmental Protection Agency have classified low phthalates as reproductive toxicants based on rodent studies, but have concluded DINP, DIDP, and DPHP are safe as used. Frank Jensen, chief adviser to the Danish EPA’s chemical unit, has concluded that DINP is a cost effective, quality substitute for the low molecular weight ones.

Such distinctions between high and low phthalates are critical for scientists and public health officials but an anathema for activists who brandish a broad, anti-chemical bias. Despite writing an entire chapter on plasticizers in her book, Freinkel demonstrated she did not have even a passing knowledge of the different risk profiles of phthalate plasticizers. Her goal was demonization and not enlightenment, and her unbalanced writing does not encourage more effective, scientifically balanced public policy decisions.

“E” is for “electricity”, which is delivered to consumers via high-tension lines….and whose EMFs are about as dangerous to humans as potato chips.

Restricting specific types of phthalates may yet prove appropriate, but regulators need to assess the chemical that could be used in its place. Often a substitute chemical has only one virtue—it’s been less studied than the chemical being targeted and therefore is less likely to be publicly vilified by activists. A ban may serve the short-term interests of campaigners, but it may not serve children’s safety or other public health interests. It’s often a vanity victory. Real life goes on, choices are made and consumers are often victimized by politicized reactions to complex science controversies.

Will the comprehensive Australian review resonate with other regulatory bodies around the world which are facing pressures to institute wholesale bans of industrial chemicals, many with safe risk profiles? The CPSC is currently considering its options. This is a great opportunity to let science drive regulation—and maybe science journalists can discuss this issue with context that such critical decisions warrant.

Then there’s today’s “Heads I Win, Tails You Lose” segment, courtesy of Newsbusters.org, in which Noel Sheppard informs us the Climatescammers are at it again….twisting science and logic into shapes Snyders of Hanover couldn’t hope to duplicate:

‘Experts: Global Warming Means More Antarctic Ice’

Yeah, yeah, yeah; then what? Rivers turning to blood? Plagues of locusts and frogs? Dogs and cats living together?!?

As Chris Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute notes:

“Oddly, for years they dined out on talk of ‘melting polar ice caps’, always and clearly in the plural. That’s what the theory and their models said. Just not what reality said. After confrontation with defiant reality became too much, Al Gore famously shifted his rhetoric to refer only to ‘the north polar ice cap’.

“Now the theory has evolved to match unhelpful observations. As we are hearing in other contexts, ‘things evolved’.

“In this case, that thing is their theory. Even if it means trashing all of the models they’ve sworn were really, seriously, credible, apparently this beats saying embarrassing things like ‘there must be something wrong with the observations’. Which they actually said about uncooperative ocean temperatures.

“Here you see the sausage-making of ‘science’, though I use the term loosely. Now, I suppose it’s time to scrub history to bring it up to date!”

On the Lighter Side….