It’s Monday, November 5th, 2012….and with only 1 day left until the most important election in America since 1864, here’s The Gouge!

First up, a truly must-see video forwarded by Jeff Foutch:

As Jeff urged us to do, please send this on to any and everyone you can.  As we noted in the Video of the Day at our home page (www.thedailygouge.com), if each of us can help just one other person see the light, it may prove the difference between national survival and servitude.

After all, if ignorance is bliss, Team Tick-Tock is totally dependent upon America staying fat and happy, but most importantly….

….dumb!

In a related item, the WSJ details what the last four years was all about:

Obama’s Progressive Gamble

He bet his Presidency on expanding government because that’s who he is.

And don’t forget, you pay for every round! (Clubs, shoes, balls, accessories, security and other costs not included)

Many of our friends who saw genius in the crease of Barack Obama’s trousers four years ago lament that he might be cruising to re-election had he only focused first on the economy and postponed his liberal social priorities. This may be true, but it also misjudges the man and his Presidency.

Mr. Obama has governed from the left not because he miscalculated his priorities but because these are his priorities. His first term is best understood as a race to put himself in the pantheon of the great progressive Presidents—Wilson, FDR, LBJ—who expanded the state’s control over the private economy and over the wants and needs of the American middle class. (We’d suggest, in somewhat stronger terms, Obama bears a hatred for certain aspects of America his Progressive predecessors never possessed.)

The price of this governing choice includes a weak recovery, achievements like ObamaCare that are unpopular, the loss of the House in 2010, and a polarized electorate. Unable to run on his record, he has conducted a low-down re-election campaign based on destroying his opponent’s character. If the polls are right, even if he wins re-election, he will do so as the first President since Wilson to win with a smaller margin than he did the first time.

But for Mr. Obama, this won’t matter. His great progressive gamble will have paid off. His second term will be about preserving the government gains of his first term, especially ObamaCare, and using regulation to press government control wherever else he can.

Rhetorically, the Barack Obama of 2008 was a centrist, a post-ideological pragmatist who was color blind to “red” and “blue” in his “one America.” But anyone who inspected the policy details (let alone half a brain!) (see our editorial, “A Liberal Supermajority,” October 17, 2008) could see he favored by far the most liberal program of any Democratic nominee since George McGovern in 1972.

This tendency came to the fore in his first days in the White House, when the Obamateers turned to fiscal policy. The popular President might have combined ideas from both parties, blending for instance a major corporate tax cut with public works spending for an easy political triumph. “Elections have consequences,” Mr. Obama instead told Republican Eric Cantor, “and Eric, I won.” He then outsourced his agenda to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and aging left-wing committee chairmen like Henry Waxman and David Obey whose policy ambitions had been frustrated since the 1980s.

They did what comes naturally and wrote a bill that was all about transfer payments, temporary tax subsidies, green industrial policy, homeowner subsidies, 99 weeks of jobless benefits and all the rest. The spending bonanza benefited every Democratic interest group—except the Obama voters who wanted jobs and higher incomes.

The $830 billion might have been merely wasteful instead of destructive had Mr. Obama then turned to nurturing a durable expansion. The pre-eminent goal ought to have been to rebuild business and consumer confidence and encourage the revival of animal spirits.

Instead, with a filibuster-proof Senate of 60 Democrats, he began the Bataan death march to national health care—a new entitlement at a time when the current entitlement state is buckling and unaffordable. The Affordable Care Act is among the worst pieces of legislation ever passed, not least because Mr. Obama might have notched another bipartisan victory had he sought GOP input. When the bill ran into trouble with the public and even moderate Democrats, he plowed ahead anyway.

The health-care takeover was merely part of a larger liberal agenda that frightened investors as much as the events of 2008 and led to a hiring and capital strike. The missteps have been legion: the political bonfire over the AIG bonuses; overhauling the financial system from top to bottom, rather than a more considered approach; the regulatory surge, especially at the Environmental Protection Agency; punishing Chrysler bondholders for the benefit of the UAW; and through it all the promise to raise taxes in 2013.

About the only economic intervention Mr. Obama didn’t try post-stimulus was nationalizing the banks, and that was a close run thing. The White House even fought to the bitter end for a cap-and-trade bill that the House passed and would have imposed higher costs for electric power, transportation, manufacturing and most goods and services as this tax flowed down the energy chain.

Mr. Obama had numerous opportunities to see what was amiss politically and economically and correct his errors. There was the rise of the tea party and the summer 2009 popular rebellion against ObamaCare. Then Scott Brown’s Massachusetts election. Even after Republicans gained 63 seats in 2010, Mr. Obama might have imitated Bill Clinton after 1994 and made real bows toward centrist governing.

But that is not who he is. After a two-year extension of the Bush tax rates after 2010, he made no budget concessions and assailed the Paul Ryan budget as literally anti-American. He personally blew up a grand bargain with Speaker John Boehner in the debt-limit fracas after spurning his own deficit commission.

All of these were deliberate political choices, part of his progressive gamble that it will all be worth it if he can win re-election. Higher taxes are already locked into place, ObamaCare’s subsidies are ready to roll out, and the regulatory wave he has delayed past Election Day can recommence. He’ll have put the government in such a dominant position that its new powers will take decades to roll back or reform.

Mr. Obama’s trouser-crease admirers now say they hope Mr. Obama will emerge as a bigger man in his second term, and lately he has been using the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy to revive his postpartisan aura of 2008. But there is nothing—not one policy choice—in his first-term record to suggest this is anything but another ruse to attract independents. (i.e., the hopelessly ignorant and/or woefully uninformed.)

In his more candid moments, Mr. Obama has said he wants to be the progressive version of Reagan, that his goal is “fundamentally transforming” America. If he’s re-elected, that is what he will continue to try to do.

As Walter Russell Mead writes in today’s Money Quote, courtesy of former Dimocrat Sheldon Adelson, the WSJ and The American Interest, it’s part and parcel of the same plan that’s worked so well on a smaller scale:

“Illinois politicians, including the present president of the United States, have wrecked one of the country’s potentially most prosperous and dynamic states, condemned millions of poor children to substandard education, failed to maintain vital infrastructure, choked business development and growth through unsustainable tax and regulatory policies—and still failed to appease the demands of the public sector unions and fee-seeking Wall Street crony capitalists who make billions off the state’s distress.“

Other than that, how’d you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln?!?  All of which makes this reminder courtesy of Sandy Martindale of even more pressing importance:

Next up, the Journal highlights why a basic understanding of why and how things work should be a prerequisite not only to vote, but to even run for office:

New York’s Economics Blackout

Cuomo vs. Christie on gasoline shortages.

Public jobs would be so much easier if politicians could repeal the laws of economics, and some of the more obtuse keep trying. Today’s lesson comes from New York and New Jersey, both of which are suffering from severe gasoline shortages a week after superstorm Sandy.

In a dozen counties in the northern and central regions of the devastated Garden State, Republican Governor Chris Christie imposed gas rationing over the weekend via an emergency executive order. Nearly a million houses or about a quarter of the state still lacked power as we went to press, and demand for gas is surging for generators and pumps as well as transportation. Lines stretched for miles and hours at those service stations that did have power.

Drivers with license numbers that end in odd numbers can buy on odd days, and vice versa for those with even plates. For a state so regulated that even in normal times it doesn’t allow drivers to pump their own fuel, this disaster rationing is probably the best we can hope for. At least Mr. Christie understands that if markets aren’t allowed to allocate a scarce resource through prices—the optimum solution—temporary government controls are the only other option.

That was in notable contrast to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s New York, where 730,000 homes remain blacked out and the gas supply is also deficient. “Fuel is on the way. Do not panic. We don’t need anxiety. We don’t need the lines,” the Democrat said Saturday, before disclosing a plan to distribute “free” gasoline that came courtesy of the federal government.

The idea was that every consumer could pick up 10 gallons of gas at no charge from trucks stationed at armories across greater New York City and Long Island. Mr. Cuomo apparently didn’t learn in freshman economics that when something is “free,” you often get a surge of demand for it. He created the very panic he deplored.

Lines promptly stretched for miles as the National Guard was unprepared for the crowds and chaos. They had to turn away motorists even as emergency vehicles and first (or second and third) responders lacked the resources they needed. Mr. Cuomo then had to importune the public to wait until the most urgent needs could be filled. He’s lucky no one was hurt.

Meanwhile, cooler heads have helped to ease the crisis by easing federal regulations, albeit too slowly. At the end of last week the Environmental Protection Agency finally waived rules about anti-pollution gasoline blending that were restricting supply, a lesson that should have been learned from Katrina.

Washington also waived the Jones Act requiring fuel tankers to pay a tax before unloading cargo between U.S. ports. The waiver is making it easier to ship more oil faster from the Gulf of Mexico to the Northeast, proving once again that the Jones Act should be repealed in toto.

That’s no doubt too much to hope for, but perhaps someone can teach Mr. Cuomo the law of supply and demand.

Which, as this quote from Milton Friedman writing on gas lines in 1974 goes to show, the less Dimocrats change, the more things stay the same:

How is it that for years past, you and I have been able to find gas stations open at almost any hour of the day or night, and have been able to drive up to them with complete confidence that the request to “fill up” would be honored with alacrity and even with a cleaning of the windshield. To judge from the rhetoric that pollutes the air these days, it must have been because there was a powerful Federal Energy Office hidden somewhere in the underground dungeons in Washington . . . efficiently allocating petroleum products throughout the land, riding herd on greedy oil tycoons lusting for an opportunity to mess things up and create long lines at their gas stations.

Of course, we know very well that the situation is precisely the reverse. The lines date from the creation of a real Federal Energy Office. . . .How can thinking people believe that a government that cannot deliver the mail can deliver gas better than Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, Gulf and the rest?

Despite the passage of almost 40 years, and literal mountains of evidence to the contrary, the answer to Friedman’s question remains as elusive as ever.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch with The Gang That’s Finally Beginning To Shoot In The Right Direction, James Taranto and Best of the Web describes the Left’s curious vision of a….

Radical Romney

Yesterday’s email brought an amusing note from reader Wayne Rutman, inspired by a piece on the Daily Beast titled “Carl Bernstein on Mitt Romney’s Radicalism.” Writes Rutman:

Of all the hyperbole spewed during this presidential election, the idea that Mitt Romney is somehow a “radical” has to be the most bizarre. Yet you keep seeing it from left-wing pundits.

I can’t quite tell whether in their twisted minds they really believe this or if it’s just a crude attempt to influence barely-paying-attention undecided voters. Regardless, in plain English, it would be hard to find anyone in America less “radical” than Romney. I mean, just look at the guy. He’s a caricature of the stable, suburban, rich white guy. He’s practically Mr. Status Quo, and his politics are almost entirely designed to restore the “good life” as Americans have imagined it for the past 65 years or so.

The left seems to want to believe that if you don’t want to increase government spending and–God forbid–you actually talk a little about reining in some recently enacted programs that might bankrupt the government, you are “a radical.” Could anyone not living in a parallel universe believe this? Lenin, Mao, Che–and Romney? Really. It’s wacko.

Something of an explanation can be found in a piece by Nahlah Ayed of Canadian state television, titled “Why the World Wants Obama to Win.” Here’s a sample:

“It’s the nature of Obama to create expectation,” French journalist and political commentator Anne-Elisabeth Moutet told me over the telephone from Paris.

Presumably the French find that sense of expectation eternally endearing. They also seem to have bought into the Democrats’ portrayal of Republican Mitt Romney in this election, Moutet added. “They think he’s a fanatic,” she said. “The second coming of Bush, with Mormons added.”

American leftists’ oikophobia leads them to adopt similar Old World political sensibilities. To someone who sees the world this way, Romney is radical precisely because he reflects ordinary American values so well.

In a similar vein, here’s the latest commentary from Salena Zito writing at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, courtesy of Randy Jugs and RealClearPolitics.com:

Main Street in Revolt

On the Lighter Side….

Then there’s this beauty from Balls Cotton….

Finally, we’ll call it a day with the Sports Section, and a recent offering on FOX NFL Sunday, courtesy of Sandy Martindale, that brought back many fond memories:

As we told Sandy, it’s sort of a cross between Tic Tac Dough and Stepbrothers.

Magoo