It’s Thursday, October 18th, 2012..and please be advised, due to our participation in the Navy Homecoming golf tournament today and Friday, this will likely be the last edition of the week.  Also, be sure to check the numerous features on our home page at www.thedailygouge.com.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

At the top of today’s order, a few comments on the debate.  First, forget the back and forth about who won on points; here’s all you need to take away from last night’s debacle….er,….debate:

As James Taranto notes:

But three focus groups of undecided voters showed movement in Romney’s direction: One by Frank Luntz for Fox, one for MSNBC and one, reported by the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin, in Ohio organized by the Romney campaign.

It is certain that Obama succeeded in the necessary task of overcoming the left’s demoralization in the wake of the first debate. That will be sufficient only if the indications that Romney improved his standing among undecided voters turn out to be false.

Second, is anyone else curious why Candy Cowley conveniently had the transcript of the Rose Garden Benghazi speech so close at hand when The Dear Misleader said, “Get the transcript”; let alone why Mitt didn’t question this curious coincidence?

Lastly, how gullible were Republicans to agree to have these Liberal shills “moderate” not only the presidential debates, but the GOP primary events as well?!?  What….they couldn’t negotiate Brit Hume or Chris Wallace for at least one of the four?

For more on the debate(s), we turn to Dan Henninger, courtesy of the WSJ:

The Un-President

Barack Obama shows an unerring instinct for policy deniability.

 

Conventional wisdom holds that Barack Obama “lost” in Denver because he lacked intensity. He brought his A-game to Hofstra this week. There’s still a problem.

The most significant event in the 2012 presidential election remains the Romney miracle bump after the first debate. If Mr. Romney wins the election, analysts and scholars will spend years picking apart the Denver debate the way they have the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debate.

Richard Nixon didn’t lose that election because of his five o’clock shadow, and Barack Obama isn’t going to win or lose his presidency because he lacks intensity. What we learned on Long Island is that Mr. Obama lacks something more damaging to an incumbent—a sense of presidential responsibility.

One of the most familiar Obama positions—repeated at every campaign stop—is that he “inherited” a bad economy from George W. Bush. Set aside that whatever the cause, everyone concedes he took over a tough situation. More to the point is Mr. Obama’s compulsive insistence that anything awry in the economy during his first term is “not my fault.”

The Bush-did-it narrative was a banality by the time of the debates. Then came Benghazi. Within days, the political question at the center of the incident was: What did the White House know and when did it know it? No matter one’s politics, it became impossible not to see that the White House was intent on putting “distance” between the president and responsibility for the security breaches.

Vice President Biden in his debate with Paul Ryan explicitly transferred early responsibility to some offshore cloud called “the intelligence community.” Then this week, Secretary of State Clinton accepted formal responsibility. By now, this had the look of Hillary taking the fall for the president’s candidacy.

So came the moment late in the Hofstra debate when moderator Candy Crowley looked at Mr. Obama and asked: “Does the buck stop with your secretary of state as far as what went on here?”

Staring back, the president clutched for a second. He looked like a fourth-grader being confronted in front of the whole class by Miss Crowley of all our childhood nightmares. That moment revealed the problem: At the core of Barack Obama’s persona and his presidency is a constant instinct to deniability. (We term an affinity to vote “present”!)

It’s not my fault. He comes across as one of those smart kids who always had some elaborate excuse to disperse responsibility for anything bad in his vicinity. And so it was in his answer to Miss Crowley: “Secretary Clinton has done an extraordinary job. But she works for me. I’m the president. And I’m always responsible. And that’s why nobody is more interested in . . .” By the end, he said it was Mitt Romney’s fault for bringing it up! In contrast, the bin Laden takedown was accompanied by a Lady Gaga-like White House P.R. blitz in the media.

In hindsight, an irony of the 2012 campaign will be that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney traded places on stepping up to the plate. A main criticism from the right of Mr. Romney had been that he was playing it too safe, saying next-to-nothing about much of anything, such as his tax returns, for fear the Obama camp or the press would criticize him. No exposure, no responsibility.

That flipped in Debate No. 1. Mitt Romney exploded out of his turtle shell—and Barack Obama disappeared into his. Mr. Obama’s supporters want us to think that defensive performance was a one-off. It’s not. To be sure, Barack Obama is no shrinking violet. He loves the bright lights of the presidency. What he can’t handle are the embarrassments that come with it.

The president’s current difficulties aren’t merely about instinctively stepping away from bad news. Another, unavoidable burden of the presidential office—this being a democracy—is the necessity to engage political adversaries. But it was noted before the first, disastrous debate that Mr. Obama’s opinion of Mr. Romney was so low, for some unexplained reason, that he didn’t think he was fit to be president. So why stoop to debate him?

This was of a piece with his famous speech at George Washington University in April 2011, when with the GOP congressional leadership seated before him to hear the administration’s counterproposals on reducing the deficit, Mr. Obama instead mocked them as “nothing serious.” Whatever else, that’s not presidential.

That former Obama voter at Hofstra who asked the president to respond to the state of “everyday living” in the U.S. deserved better than a reflexive deflection into ending the Iraq war and how “we saved an auto industry.”

For much of the American electorate, this began as an ideal presidency. But there is an institutional flaw at the center of Mr. Obama’s understanding of the presidency. He accepts the best of it but not responsibility for the inevitable worst of it. (Particularly the golf and vacations!) It is making his incumbency smaller than he thinks it is. His misfortune is that in the election’s last lap, the public has begun to notice.

Yeah….notice the would-be Emperor….

….has no clothes!

In a related item, courtesy of CommentaryMagazine.com, Jonathan Tobin avers that, The Dear Misleader’s lame protestations to the contrary notwithstanding,….

Yes, They Played Politics on Libya

 

President Obama went ballistic during the presidential debate at Hofstra University when Mitt Romney questioned the conduct of the administration in its reaction to the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya:

And the suggestion that anybody in my team, whether the secretary of state, our U.N. ambassador, anybody on my team would play politics or mislead when we’ve lost four of our own, Governor, is offensive. That’s not what we do. That’s not what I do as president. That’s not what I do as commander in chief.

It was potentially a strong moment for the president as he was able, at least for the moment, to deflect concern about the administration’s failure in Libya and turn into a question of whether Romney overstepped the mark in his criticism. But a dispassionate look at the question on which the president made his grandstand play shows that his administration stands guilty of doing exactly what he denied.

The whole point about the administration spending more than two weeks trying to claim that the assassination of the U.S. ambassador to Libya was merely the result of an overheated reaction to an offensive film is that it dovetails with the political needs of the Obama re-election campaign.

We have yet to discover exactly what President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice knew about Libya and when they knew it as well as why the consulate’s requests for security were denied and who made that decision. The president was asked a direct question about that at Hofstra and chose not to answer it.

Though this issue was diverted into one largely about whether the president called the incident a terror attack the next day, what is being ignored is the fact that even though Obama uttered the word “terror” the following day, his administration spent the following days and weeks shouting down those who spoke of it as terrorism.

Their motivation wasn’t just the product of confusion about the available intelligence. It was the product of a desire to silence any speculation about the revival of al-Qaeda affiliates in Libya.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 anniversary, U.S. diplomatic facilities were attacked throughout the Middle East with American flags being torn down and replaced by al-Qaeda banners. Throughout the region, Islamist terrorism continues to fester and even gain strength in certain countries.

That’s a grim fact that not only needs to be acknowledged but understood as a major cause of the Libya disaster. But it is not something that the administration is comfortable saying because the keynote to the president’s foreign policy and security re-election platform is the notion that al-Qaeda is as dead as Osama bin Laden.

Having staked so much on the “bin Laden is dead” theme, the administration dragged its feet when it came to telling the truth about Islamist terrorism in Libya. They repeatedly claimed that the ambassador died as the result of film criticism run amuck. While they claim this was the result of faulty intelligence, there’s no mystery about why they embraced this false narrative so enthusiastically. Talking about an offensive anti-Muslim video (albeit one that virtually no one has actually seen) allowed the president’s foreign policy team to avoid saying the words “terror” and “al-Qaeda.” Instead, they talked about a movie for which they endlessly apologized. The president’s faux outrage notwithstanding, if that isn’t playing politics with security issues and misleading the American public, I don’t know what is.

A point we fully expect Mitt to press home next Tuesday.  We only hope he’s better prepared with the facts AND an accurate timeline.

As we mentioned before, one thing’s for certain: between now and Tuesday, a number of Muslims are bound to get clipped….guilty or not.

Next up, Jonah Goldberg examines the difference a faith makes….dependent solely upon one’s associated political pesuasion:

Red, blue, and faithful

Are Paul Ryan and Joe Biden theocrats willing to use state power to impose their religious views on the rest of us?

 

Apparently, Paul Ryan and Joe Biden are both theocrats willing, nay eager, to use state power to impose their religious views on the rest of us. In last week’s vice presidential debate, moderator Martha Raddatz asked the two Roman Catholic politicians “to tell me what role your religion has played in your own personal views on abortion.”

“I don’t see how a person can separate their public life from their private life or from their faith,” confessed Ryan. “Our faith informs us in everything we do. My faith informs me about how to take care of the vulnerable, of how to make sure that people have a chance in life.” But he went on to make it clear that his views on abortion are based as much on “reason and science” as they are on his Catholicism.

Then it was Biden’s turn. He stopped laughing long enough to explain: “My religion defines who I am, and I’ve been a practicing Catholic my whole life.… [Catholicism] has particularly informed my social doctrine. The Catholic social doctrine talks about taking care of those who — who can’t take care of themselves.”

Biden says he personally accepts his church’s “de fide doctrine” that “life begins at conception.… I accept that in my personal life.” But he refuses to impose it on others who don’t share his faith. Unfortunately, given his pious bravado, Biden badly garbled church teaching: Catholic opposition to abortion isn’t in fact theological dogma (de fide) but a scientific and moral conclusion, much as Ryan suggested.

Reaction to the exchange has been predictable. Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker, for instance, was outraged — at Ryan. To say that faith informs everything you do is “disturbing and scary,” Gopnik insisted. “That’s a shocking answer — a mullah’s answer, what those scary Iranian ‘Ayatollahs’ he kept referring to when talking about Iran would say as well.” By that standard, Gopnik must consider the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln mullah-like too.

And Biden. Biden freely admits that his faith informs his “social doctrine.” And social doctrine is a euphemism for political worldview. It’s just that on abortion, his liberalism is more important.

Indeed, this has been the standard liberal Catholic Democrat argument ever since Mario Cuomo’s 1984 address at the University of Notre Dame. Cuomo argued that one could support the church’s abortion position personally while refusing to impose it on others. Cuomo’s argument impressed secular liberals but not the church itself.

In 2004, Catholic Democratic Sen. John Kerry declared in a presidential debate that his faith was “why I fight against poverty. That’s why I fight to clean up the environment and protect this Earth. That’s why I fight for equality and justice. All of those things come out of that fundamental teaching and belief of faith.” One of Ayatollah Kerry’s favorite rhetorical flourishes was to note that a Christian must “demonstrate faith with deeds” — and the deeds Kerry had in mind were the liberal policies he always supported. Abortion, of course, was the one great exception to his effort to impose his faith on Americans.

Let’s be clear: Anti-poverty programs, environmental regulations and tax increases are impositions too. Refuse to abide with any of them and the government will either force you to comply or put you in jail. If your Catholic (or Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist or pagan) faith drives you to pass regulations that shut down a coal mine, you’ll have imposed a lot of people right out of a job.

I strongly doubt that Gopnik and the rest of the faith-fearing liberals mind when progressive figures insist their policies are motivated by religion. President Obama routinely waxes biblical in his view of government: “I am my brother’s keeper,” he has said repeatedly. It is, to be sure, an odd recasting of the Bible, since Cain’s question to God, “Am I my brother’s keeper?,” was simply an attempt to dodge a murder rap. But he is invoking his faith nonetheless. And Nancy Pelosi says her Catholic faith “compels” her to support gay marriage. Really.

It might be that secular liberals aren’t offended by all this because they think Democrats are simply lying. That’s probably true in some cases, but it’s surely unfair in others. Biden seems sincere when he says he’s a faithful liberal Catholic. And that’s forgivable so long as he remembers that the “liberal” comes first in “liberal Catholic.”

The Bible, which we consider to be, quite literally, the inspired Word of God, teaches sin is sin.  That being said, we cannot help but believe there’s a warmer portion of Hell reserved for abortionists and their enablers:

Moving on, The Daily Caller features….

Powerful former Obama aide says president ‘doesn’t really like people,’ apologizes after Drudge flags

 

A former aide to President Barack Obama is rushing to apologize for her candid analysis of Obama’s interpersonal skills after The Drudge Report spotted and promoted those remarks to the site’s vast audience.

“The truth is, Obama doesn’t call anyone, and he’s not close to almost anyone. It’s stunning that he’s in politics, because he really doesn’t like people,” said Neera Tanden — now president of the powerful Center for American Progress — in an interview with New York Magazine. ”My analogy is that it’s like becoming Bill Gates without liking computers.”

The only person Obama really likes!

The description is a jarring diversion for the Obama campaign whose candidate will seek to establish believable political empathy in tonight’s town-hall format presidential debate. After the quote went viral, Tanden tweeted out her regret for the way she expressed the thought:

Tanden did not elaborate on whether the follow up was induced by any member of the Obama campaign.

Yeah….like Susan Rice’s story about the video causing the Benghazi assault wasn’t influenced by the Obama campaign.  Notice the dissembling diction, dear ones; neither was influenced by members of the “Obama campaign” or “reelection team”.

Now the White House staff, THAT’S a different question; and one, you’ll note, the MSM’s intrepid newshounds hot on this burgeoning scandal failed to ask.

And in the Environmental Moment, the WSJ reports the realities behind….

Energy in the Executive

The President’s real record on fossil fuels.

 

How much can you really care about the Middle Class when you threaten to eliminate the source of almost 50% of their cheapest supply of energy?!?

One of the feats of President Obama’s re-election campaign is its ability to describe his record in a way that bears little or no relation to the reality of the last four years. Exhibit A is Mr. Obama’s riff on energy at Tuesday night’s debate, when he all but ran to the right of Mitt Romney, and maybe Sarah Palin.

The exchange began when an audience member asked Mr. Obama about Steven Chu’s job description, which the Energy Secretary has repeatedly said does not include helping to lower gasoline prices. Mr. Obama never answered that one, but he did use the opportunity to pose as the John the Baptist of fossil fuels, invoking oil drilling, the natural gas fracking boom and even coal production.

Mr. Obama (and his green allies) must have died a little on the inside when he said that, given that he ran in 2008 on a promise to build a “new energy economy,” by which he meant everything but fossil fuels.

As we have learned, the plan was to subsidize dozens of companies with little commercial potential but that were often owned by Mr. Obama’s green allies. Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency would go on a regulatory binge like nothing in modern U.S. history against traditional carbon-based sources of energy, coal in particular.

Mr. Romney went small bore in the debate, noting that the Administration has not in practice promoted the production of U.S. energy resources on federal lands and waters, in fact the opposite. Mr. Obama responded by flatly stating that “very little of what Governor Romney just said is true. We’ve opened up public lands. We’re actually drilling more on public lands than in the previous Administration.” He said he supported “an all-of-the-above strategy.”

“But that’s not what you’ve done in the last four years,” Mr. Romney said. “That’s the problem.” Mr. Obama: “Sure it is.” Mr. Romney: “In the last four years, you cut permits and licenses on federal land and federal waters in half.” Mr. Obama: “Not true, Governor Romney.”

Then there was this timeless bit:

Mr. Obama: “The production is up.”

Mr. Romney: “Production on government land of oil is down 14%.”

Mr. Obama: “Governor—”

Mr. Romney: “And production of gas is down 9%.”

Mr Obama: “What you’re saying is just not true. It’s just not true.”

The problem for the President is that a government outfit called the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) compiles these statistics. That’s where Mr. Romney got his accurate figures on oil and gas production on government land and permitting in Mr. Obama’s first term. The EIA also reports that total fossil fuel production in public areas—oil, gas and coal—has plunged to a nine-year low, to 18.6 quadrillion BTUs from 21.2 quadrillion in 2003.

Mr. Obama is correct that overall domestic energy production is up, thanks largely to the shale boom in states like Pennsylvania and North Dakota. But he’s trying to take credit for something he had nothing to do with, given that this surge is taking place on private property and the EPA is searching for an excuse to supplant state regulation and slow down drilling. Wait for the second term.

The President’s cameo as a coal guy is even more amazing. In 2008 Mr. Obama declared that he wanted electricity rates for so-called dirty fuels to “necessarily skyrocket” and “if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can—it’s just that it will bankrupt them.”

That’s one promise he’s kept: For the first time, coal is in decline, with production falling 6.5% since 2008, according to the EIA. Part of the reason is a shock from cheap natural gas. But the major reason is a surge of EPA air and water rules, such as an unrealistic and pointless $9.6 billion rule for trace mercury emissions that the agency put out last year.

The EIA expects 8.5% of the coal-fired fleet to retire by 2016, and 17% by 2020, and those are very conservative estimates. Coal has fallen to 32% of U.S. net electric generation, according to preliminary EIA data for 2012. This share stood at about 48% when Mr. Obama took office.

All of this amounts to one of the fastest energy transitions in U.S. history. Even some regulators within the Administration oppose the EPA’s force majeure, fearing blackouts and other reliability issues as plants are retired despite many remaining useful years. Amid mine closings and layoffs, the United Mine Workers of America declined to endorse Mr. Obama this year, though the union did in 2008.

And let us not forget the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada, which Mr. Obama personally rejected amid a furious green lobbying campaign. His debate answer to that fact was to assert that “we’ve built enough pipeline to wrap around the entire Earth once,” whatever that means. It reflects well on Mr. Romney’s temperament that he didn’t pull the full Joe Biden and start hooting.

But he sure as hell needs to mention it in the Foreign Policy debate.  Why mention domestic energy independence in a foreign policy forum?  Because absent our nation’s incredibly restrictive energy exploration and development guidelines, America not only could achieve energy independence; we could replace the Middle East as the preferred source of gas and petroleum to the EU and Japan.

And THAT would certainly impact our foreign policy, particularly with regard to the member states of OPEC.

On the Lighter Side….

And in another sordid story ripped from the pages of the Crime Blotter, Bill Meisen sent us this titillating tidbit from the Sunshine State:

Florida Couple Had Sex Atop Restaurant Table While Parents, Kids Watched

 

A couple who decided to have sex atop an outdoor table at a Florida restaurant–in full view of families dining nearby–avoided criminal charges because witnesses declined Monday night to provide statements to police. The manager of Paddy Murphy’s, an Orlando eatery, summoned cops after he “was notified by several patrons that a couple was having sex on a table in view of minor children,” according to an Orlando Police Department report.

Tom Murphy told officers that he approached the couple early Monday evening and told them to stop. But the man, identified by cops as Jeremie Calo, responded, “She can’t get up at this time.” Calo, 32, was referring to his companion Tiffani Lynn Barganier.

….Murphy told police that he directed Calo to “Compose yourself, pay your tab or I’ll call the police.” Calo, however, signed his check “NO” and then scuffled with a restaurant employee when he tried to leave without paying. Murphy and the worker restrained Calo until the arrival of cops, who arrested Calo for defrauding an innkeeper.

But Calo and Barganier dodged charges related to their alleged public lewdness on Paddy Murphy’s patio. “The parents of the young children that observed Calo and Barganier having sex declined to write statements regarding their observations,” noted police. The report does not further detail why the witnesses opted not to provide statements.

Calo and Barganier were both “trespassed from Paddy Murphy’s for a period of one year,” reported Officer Anthony Wongshue.

Jersey Shore….Desperate Housewives….Modern Family….sex on a picnic table in full view of adjacent families who refuse to testify; what’s the difference?!?

Finally, in a related item….

New York man says he snapped, killed girlfriend with curling iron, sheriff says

 

Police say a New York man told them he “just snapped” and killed his girlfriend with his fists and a curling iron while visiting her college dorm last month. A Monroe County Sheriff’s Office report released Wednesday says 21-year-old Clayton Whittemore detailed the killing to an officer on Sept. 29. Whittemore had been arrested earlier that day.

The report says Whittemore said he and 18-year-old Alexandra Kogut got into a shoving match while arguing over “stupid stuff” in her room at the State University of New York College at Brockport. It says he told the officer when her breathing sounded bad he hit her with a curling iron because he loved her and didn’t want her to suffer.

We guess it’s true what they say: love hurts.

Magoo