It’s Thursday, the 1st of September, 2011….and 72 years ago today miscalculation and abject appeasement plunged the world into war.

Get the picture?!?

Now, here’s the Gouge!

In a fitting first-up, when it comes to the Great Prevaricator, it’s still politics as usual….Chicago-style!

Obama Asks To Address Joint Session Of Congress Same Night As GOP Debate

Thankfully, Speaker Boehner told The Obamao to go to Hell in such a way the Marxist Mephistopheles couldn’t help but look forward to the trip….and once again, B. Hussein folded.

And if listening to what O-blame-a (Thanks, George; we love this one!) plans to offer as ground-breaking policy next Thursday gives you an overwhelming sense of deja-vu, take comfort; as James Taranto details, you’re not alone:

Are you sitting down? If not, you probably should be, because we have some stunning news: Barack Obama is giving a speech next week. “Obama plans to propose his new jobs plan in a prime time address to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 7, a week from today,” USA Today reports.

As blogger Ed Morrisseynotes, Obama previewed the blockbuster oration in an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams:

Williams: Let’s talk about another topic that’s part of the firmament here and everywhere. And that’s the economy. The New York Times said this weekend, “President Obama has another new plan on the economy. Now would be a good time to find out about it.” Do you have anything new on the economy? And while you’ve been away, we had a horrible GDP number last month.

Obama: Well, look, we–we anticipated that the recovery was slowing. The economy is still growing, but it’s not growing as fast as it needs to. I’ve got things right now in–before Congress that we should move immediately. And I’ve said so before I went on vacation, and I’ll keep on saying when I–now that I’m back.

Are you nodding off? Wait, there’s a punch line! That interview aired on Sunday, Aug. 29. How can that be, when today is Wednesday the 31st? The interview aired last year.

Can we keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result? Yes, we can! Ronald Reagan’s detractors called him the Great Communicator. In a sign of how standards have fallen, Obama’s admirers think him a great communicator. But he would be more aptly called the Great Perseverator. To the untrained ear, he sounds like a one-man echo chamber, endlessly repeating after himself.

Yet in reality, he doesn’t do it on his own. Rather, he is at the center of a feedback loop enabled by a vast media apparatus. He listens to “friendly” journalists and commentators who praise his brilliant oratory and his progressive ideas and scoff at his opponents. One example is the pundit who said of congressional Republicans: “These folks so far have not been very responsive to public opinion . . . which is why they are very unpopular right now. But they’re speaking only to a very narrow segment of the population, their base.”

In case “folks” didn’t give it away, that pundit’s name was Barack Obama.

 Speaking of pundits, here’s the latest from Jonah Goldberg, one of our favorites:

Seduced by the Cult of Experts

When asked what posed the greatest challenge to statesmen, Harold Macmillan, the former British prime minister, responded, “Events, my dear boy, events.” That’s because events tend to throw everybody off their plan. For example, Hurricane Irene ended President Obama’s vacation early. And the hurricane’s steady deterioration upset the plans of news producers who anticipated something more dramatic for their wall-to-wall coverage.

In a similar fashion, Obama and his advisors predicted the economy would do better — much better — than it has, and those predictions were wrong. The president blames events: the European debt crisis, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, the political tsunami of the 2010 elections. Some of that is plausible, but the two years of anemic job and economic growth that preceded those events can hardly be blamed on them. An earthquake in Japan didn’t make Obama’s green-jobs initiative a bust, and the Euro crisis didn’t render “shovel-ready jobs” a myth. And it’s those failures that have scuttled Obama’s plans for an easy re-election in 2012, and left him and his supporters stunned and shocked.

My National Review colleague Jim Geraghty has chronicled how, over the last few years, the media have greeted bad economic news by saying it is unexpected. For instance, Bloomberg reported “Sales of U.S. previously owned homes unexpectedly dropped in July.” Reuters tells us that “Consumer spending unexpectedly fell in June.” And so on.

Many who’ve been following the trend point to media bias. The press corps, writ large, wants Obama to succeed, argues American Enterprise Institute political analyst Michael Barone, so “they characterize economic setbacks as unexpected, with the implication that there’s still every reason to believe that, in Herbert Hoover’s phrase, prosperity is just around the corner.”

I certainly think there’s more than a little truth to that. The media get hooked on a story line — hurricanes are getting worse because of climate change, Obama’s a pragmatist doing the smartest things to fix the economy — and when the facts contradict the story line, it’s, well, unexpected.

But it can’t be simply media bias because the experts whom reporters call for quotes also are surprised. As Geraghty notes, groupthink is a culprit too. The guys on Wall Street use the same Keynesian computer models as the folks in the White House.

There are no more devout members of the cult of expertise than mainstream journalists. They rely on experts for guidance about what is “mainstream” and accurate and what is not. Sometimes that’s fine. Surgeons are extremely reliable sources to explain how a heart attack happens. They’re not as reliable at telling you who will have one, save in a statistical sense, and even less reliable at telling you when a specific person will have one.

That’s because prediction is hard. Experts — in politics, economics, climate — are very, very bad at telling people what will happen tomorrow, let alone next year or next century. How many of the economists who tell us what to do now failed to see the mortgage debt crisis coming? Nearly all of them.

Philip Tetlock’s 2005 book, “Expert Political Judgment,” documents that the predictions of even the most credentialed and experienced experts are often worse and very rarely better than random guessing. “In this age of academic hyperspecialization,” he writes, “there is no reason for supposing that contributors to top journals — distinguished political scientists, area study specialists, economists, and so on — are any better than journalists or attentive readers of the New York Times in ‘reading’ emerging situations.”

The cult of experts has acolytes in all ideological camps, but its most institutionalized following is on the left. The left needs to believe in the authority of experts because without that authority, almost no economic intervention can be justified. If you concede that you have no idea whether your remedy will work, it’s going to be hard to sell it to the patient. Market-based ideologies don’t have that problem because markets expect events in ways experts never can.

No president since Woodrow Wilson or Franklin Roosevelt has been more enamored with the cult of expertise than Obama. That none of his economic predictions have panned out is not surprising. What is surprising is that so many people are surprised.

 Next up, another in a long line of CYA by the ATF and FBI in the wake of major f**k-ups, courtesy of Bill Meisen:

Ken Melson, acting ATF chief, steps down

The controversy over the Fast and Furious anti-gun-trafficking operation upended the careers of two Justice Department officials Tuesday (After costing Brian Terry his life!) as the interim head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was transferred to an obscure, new post and the well-connected chief federal prosecutor in Arizona resigned.

ATF’s current acting director, Ken Melson, will move to Justice’s Office of Legal Policy this week to become a senior adviser on forensic science, the Justice Department said. Dennis Burke, the U.S. Attorney for Arizona who oversaw prosecutions in that state related to the Fast and Furious operation, stepped down and left the federal government. (Allow us to translate: Melson gets a do-nothing job he can occupy until he’s eligible for a cushy government pension, and Burke’s moving on to lucrative career as a trial lawyer; talk about harsh!)

Neither Attorney General Eric Holder’s statements nor one from Burke made direct reference to the high-profile congressional investigation or a separate Justice Department probe into the ATF-led operation, which was aimed at reducing the flow of guns to Mexican drug gangs but allegedly allowed as many as 2,000 firearms to pass into the hands of criminals.

However, Holder and Burke — a prominent figure in Arizona politics — both made vague allusions to distractions currently facing federal prosecutors in Arizona.

And since we’re on the subject of gross miscarriages of justice, Mark Krikorian comments in the National Review Online regarding the drunken Uncle in The Obamao’s family tree, courtesy of Conn Carroll and the Morning Examiner:

How Did Obama’s Uncle Omar Get A SS#?

The Boston Herald is reporting that the president’s other illegal-alien relative, Uncle Omar Onyango Obama, arrested last week for drunk driving, has had a valid Social Security number for at least 19 years. Kerry Picket speculates it may just have been a nine-digit ID number made up by state employees for illegal aliens, but it could well be a genuine number, and here’s how: Uncle Omar might have had a visa that permitted work authorization and then simply overstayed, or he may have applied for asylum (which application, before 1995, gave you automatic work authorization) and then not left after he was turned down. In either case, the problem is the same — the Social Security Administration has no means of cancelling or freezing the numbers of temporary visa-holders after their legal period of stay here expires, or the numbers of legal residents who have been deported, say, for criminal activity. That means an overstayer can just keep using his genuine number, and a permanent resident who’s been deported can just sneak back in and resume use of his genuine number.

That’s why Rep. Lamar Smith, who’s ahead of the curve on this sort of thing, has in his E-Verify bill a requirement that DHS block for purposes of verification SSNs held by people who’ve been deported or by temporary workers whose time has expired. Combined with mandatory use of E-Verify for all new hires, this would have prevented the president’s Uncle Omar from getting his liquor store job.

The House Judiciary Committee is set to take up the bill in a couple of weeks, and Uncle Omar’s escapades should make the legislation that much easier to move out of committee.

Turning from Uncle Omar to Uncle Sam, Power Play reports on Team Tick-Tock’s latest attempt to define the debate:

Out: ‘US Government’ — In: ‘Federal Family’

“The good hands people” and “like a good neighbor” were already taken, so it was the next obvious choice:

But before Irene fizzled, the Obama White House wanted to make sure that Irene was no Katrina and that, in fact, the president and his aides would be seen in compassionate command of the situation.

Hence the introduction of what may be the most condescending euphemism for the national government in its long history of condescending euphemizing: “federal family.”

This new phrase was supposed to, Power Play supposes, make anxious East Coasters feel the love of a caring federal government — tender squeeze from the Department of Homeland Security, a gentle embrace from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The phrase was a centrally distributed talking point, appearing in op-eds, press releases and statements from across the administration.

So keep in mind that even if the storm is a category 1, you can expect a caring category 5 embrace from your federal family….

If my “family” was $14 trillion in debt I’d put myself up for adoption.

Not to mention the crazy aunt’s and ugly sisters….

….with which you’d have to contend!

Next up, today’s Money Quote, courtesy of Jeff Foutch and Allen Brooks’ Musings From the Oil Patch:

“Another interesting item in the discussion about reorganizing of NOAA was an answer to a question about how the agency was “strengthening science” in the FAQ section on the NOAA web site dealing with the climate service. One portion of the answer said, “NOAA has been working to develop a scientific integrity policy that would ensure a continued culture of transparency, integrity, and ethical behavior in NOAA. The NOAA policy will be consistent with guidance issued by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in December 2010.” One wonders why a scientific organization such as NOAA would even have a question about “transparency, integrity, and ethical behavior.” Given recent scientist behavior, hopefully this policy won’t be a repeat of the Obama administration’s January 2009 avowed transparency policy.“

Which brings us to the Environmental Moment, and an update on O-blame-a’s “green” economy, courtesy again of Jeff Foutch and profligate Progressives:

Solyndra to Declare Bankruptcy

Solyndra, a major manufacturer of solar technology in Fremont, has shut its doors, according to employees at the campus. “I was told by a security guard to get my [stuff] and leave,” one employee said. The company employs a little more than 1,000 employees worldwide, according to its website.

Shortly after it opened a massive $700 million facility, it canceled plans for a public stock offering earlier this year and warned it would be in significant trouble if federal loan guarantees did not go through. The company has said it will make a statement at 9am California time, though it’s not clear what that statement will be. An NBC Bay Area photographer on the scene reports security guards are not letting visitors on campus. He says “people are standing around in disbelief.” The employees have been given yellow envelopes with instructions on how to get their last checks.

Solyndra was touted by the Obama administration as a prime example of how green technology could deliver jobs. The President visited the facility in May of last year and said  “it is just a testament to American ingenuity and dynamism and the fact that we continue to have the best universities in the world, the best technology in the world, and most importantly the best workers in the world. And you guys all represent that. “

The federal government offered $535 million in low cost loan guarantees from the Department of Energy. NBC Bay Area has contacted the White House asking for a statement.

Then there’s this in the “Climatescam….WHAT Climatescam?!?” segment:

NASA Top Climate Scientist Arrested at WH Protest

Aaaahhh!  This must be one of those unbiased climatologists dedicated to the scientific method Algore keeps telling us about!

On the Lighter Side….

Then there’s The Obamao’s new favorite beverage….

….and G. Trevor, Lord High King of All Vietors’ favorite new t-shirt:

Finally, we’ll call it a day with News of the Bizarre, and an item from Scott Neidhold which indicates, like most private clubs, qualifications for gang memberships are slipping with the economy: 

Hamilton man arrested for sex act with inflatable raft

A Hamilton man is facing a felony public indecency charge for an alleged sex act with an inflatable pool raft.

Edwin Charles Tobergta, 32, was arrested around 5 a.m. Aug. 29 after the alleged crime was witnessed by a resident of Howell Avenue, where the act occurred. Hamilton police say Tobergta was observed by the neighbor in the alley laying on top of a blow up pool raft, and “appeared to be having sex with the raft,” because his pants were down around his ankles, according to police records.

The witness told police when he yelled at Tobergta, he stopped, “stood up and pulled his pants up, picked up the raft and started walking towards Harmon (Avenue),” according to police. The witness then followed Tobergta to his house on Harmon Avenue, when he allegedly threw the pink raft over the fence. Police later located the raft at a neighboring property.

Police identified Tobergta as being affiliated with the Crips gang, according to court records. He allegedly told police he committed the crime “only because he has a problem and that he needs help and please don’t send him to prison, but send him somewhere to get help,” according to the arrest report.

And admitting you have a problem is always the first step towards a cure!

Magoo