The Daily Gouge, Wednesday, June 12th, 2013

On June 11, 2013, in Uncategorized, by magoo1310

It’s Wednesday, June 12th, 2013…and before we begin, a brief thought on the state of the Union. Viewed in a vacuum, the NSA surveillance wouldn’t amount to a tempest in a teapot. But as nature abhors a vacuum, that’s not where we’re operating; instead, we find ourselves living under the increasingly-heavy hand of the most corrupt, secretive and totalitarian Administration in our history.

While we’d be unconcerned, indeed, highly supportive of data gathering by an non-partisan, accountable intelligence organization, the total politicization of the IRS causes us to doubt the existence of a truly independent NSA. Couple this with the personal-data gathering capabilities of the Google, whose senior management is for all practical purposes an arm of the Oval Office, and the brute force and destructive power of the IRS, and you’ve got a weapon of political mass-destruction. One capable of ruining lives, businesses and political careers.

Thinking about contributing to a Conservative cause? Think again. Contemplating a run for political office? What’s this rather risque website you visited back in 2006? Just signed an on-line petition in opposition to Der Obamao’s policies? Let’s take a look at your tax return.

We’re not worried about what the NSA’s going to do with our phone records or emails; it’s how THESE guys…

…have in mind. Tomorrow, how the Koch brothers might consider spending their money if they really want to make a difference.

Oh, and a word to Dan Bongino, who sat in for Chris Plante on WMAL: that Obama was nice to you personally is totally immaterial. Hells Bells; Hitler liked dogs and kids. Neither one had the best interests of their respective countries at heart.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

For more on The Dear Misleader, we turn to this editorial from the Washington Examiner, which explains why it’s increasingly…

Hard to trust the Great Divider in the White House

Among President Obama’s first statements concerning the National Security Agency’s mining of metadata from billions of private telephone calls, emails and website visits was this curious observation: “If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust federal judges, to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.”

That is an especially curious statement because it was uttered by a chief executive who surely knew that public trust in every part of government in Washington (except the U.S. military) is already at historic lows. Washington’s credibility gap with the American people wasn’t produced by the NSA revelations — it predates Obama’s first inauguration — but the problem has grown measurably deeper on his watch, especially during and since his re-election campaign last year.

As the Pew Research Center for People and the Press reported in April, public trust in the federal government has reached its lowest point in the survey’s 16-year history, with only 28 percent of Americans expressing confidence in Washington. Even a majority of Democrats now have an unfavorable view of the federal government. In 2001, following the Sept. 11 attacks, the federal government enjoyed nearly unanimous public approval, but it’s been downhill ever since. Just in the past year under Obama, Washington’s public approval rating has sunk 5 more points.

And why not, considering what has happened in the past 12 months. Recall that discussion of Obama’s first-term record was almost entirely blocked out last summer by his re-election campaign’s incessant drumbeat of savage, often misleading personal criticism of Mitt Romney, his Republican opponent. Obama’s “rich versus poor” attacks against Romney may well have been the most divisive since the shameless waving of the bloody shirt every four years by Republicans in the years following the Civil War. Decades passed before that era’s wounds healed, and millions of Republican and independent voters who were repelled by Obama’s rhetoric won’t forget it anytime soon.

Then came the terrorist attack in Benghazi in September, when Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other brave Americans were butchered. Millions of Americans listened incredulously in the ensuing days as Obama, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, White House spokesman Jay Carney and other administration officials tried to sell the patently absurd notion that an anti-Muslim video produced in this country caused the violence.

In the months since, Clinton’s infamous “what difference does it make” query has been answered. Congressional testimony has left little doubt that Americans have not been told the whole truth about Benghazi. Not surprisingly, a recent Bloomberg poll found 47 percent of those surveyed think Obama is holding back on Benghazi. On top of all that, now come the IRS scandal, the NSA disclosures and an NBC survey in which 58 percent say Obama has a trust problem. The president is now paying the terrible toll of his divisive style of governing.

No, America‘s paying the terrible toll for his divisive style of governing; as embraced and indeed actively supported by Progressives and the Press. Der Obamao will never pay a dime, nor suffer the slightest consequence for his Socialist sedition.

Meanwhile, back at the Offal Office, it’s business as usual for the Most Transparent Administration in History, as reported by BuzzFeed.com, courtesy of Bill Meisen:

Obama Schmoozes Reporters At Secret Meeting

The president popped into an off-the-record briefing with reporters Monday.

President Obama held an off-the-record meeting with select reporters from some of the nation’s largest print and online outlets Monday, in the White House’s latest effort to placate an increasingly restive press corps.

White House officials regularly meet with reporters for so-called “background briefing sessions,” where the attendees cannot be mentioned by name nor quoted directly, but Monday’s meeting was different. Initially billed as a conversation with White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, the president made a surprise appearance — a very unusual move — and the White House placed the proceedings off the record beforehand. The meeting came amid a series of scandals crashing over the White House that has placed the administration on defense in a way it hasn’t been until now.

As contributor Bill Meisen noted, “All of my personal phone calls and emails are transparent to the government yet our President’s meetings with the press are off the record?!?” Welcome to Obamaworld, where…

In this case, it’s the absolute asses!

In a related item…

Carney: Obama NOT George W. Bush

“Congratulations, son; that’s the nicest thing they’ve ever said about you!”

For once in his deliberately deceitful, equivocating existence, Carney speaks the truth; Der Obamao is decidedly NOT George W. Bush…

…he’s something much, much worse!

Then there’s this bit of pointed humor from James Taranto, who offers us…

Leadership Lessons From the Land of Lincoln

The Chicago Tribune reports on how Illinois is contending with its impending fiscal crisis:

Gov. Pat Quinn offered a compromise suggestion today on how to break the impasse on pension reform: combine the dueling plans into one bill and let the courts sort it out.

We were going to go for the cheap shot and say this is the kind of decisive leadership we’re used to from Illinois politicians. But that wouldn’t be fair. After all, when you’re governor, you can’t take the easy way out and vote “present.”

Next up, the latest from Thomas Sowell, who identifies the second-biggest lie* behind immigration “reform” (*after the securing of our southern border!):

Economics vs. ‘Need’

“Me no habla Inglais; what makes Marco Rubio think I’d habla Perl?!?”

One of the most common arguments for allowing more immigration is that there is a “need” for foreign workers to do “jobs that Americans won’t do,” especially in agriculture.

One of my most vivid memories of the late Armen Alchian, an internationally renowned economist at UCLA, involved a lunch at which one of the younger members of the economics department got up to go get some more coffee. Being a considerate sort, the young man asked, “Does anyone else need more coffee?” “Need?” Alchian said loudly, in a cutting tone that clearly conveyed his dismay and disgust at hearing an economist using such a word.

A recent editorial on immigration in the Wall Street Journal brought back the memory of Alchian’s response, when I read the editorial’s statement about “the needs of an industry in which labor shortages can run as high as 20 percent” — namely agriculture. Although “need” is a word often used in politics and in the media, from an economic standpoint there is no such thing as an objective and quantifiable “need.”

You might think that we all obviously need food to live. But however urgent it may be to have some food, nevertheless beyond some point food becomes not only unnecessary but even counterproductive and dangerous. Widespread obesity among Americans shows that many have already gone too far with food.

This is not just a matter of semantics, but of economics. In the real world, employers compete for workers, just as they compete for customers for their output. And workers go where there is more demand for them, as expressed by what employers offer to pay.

Farmers may wish for more farm workers, just as any of us may wish for anything we would like to have. But that is wholly different from thinking that some third party should define what we desire as a “need,” much less expect government policy to meet that “need.”

In a market economy, when farmers are seeking more farm workers, the most obvious way to get them is to raise the wage rate until they attract enough people away from alternative occupations — or from unemployment. With the higher labor costs that this would entail, the number of workers that farmers “need” would undoubtedly be less than what it would have been if there were more workers available at lower wage rates, such as immigrants from Mexico.

It is no doubt more convenient and profitable to the farmers to import workers at lower pay than to pay American workers more. But bringing in more immigrants is not without costs to other Americans, including both financial costs in a welfare state and social costs, of which increased crime rates are just one.

Some advocates of increased immigration have raised the specter of higher food prices without foreign farm workers. But the price that farmers receive for their produce is usually a fraction of what the consumers pay at the supermarket. And what the farmers pay the farm workers is a fraction of what the farmer gets for the produce. In other words, even if labor costs doubled, the rise in prices at the supermarket might be barely noticeable.

What are called “jobs that Americans will not do” are in fact jobs at which not enough Americans will work at the current wage rate that some employers are offering. This is not an uncommon situation. That is why labor “shortages” lead to higher wage rates. A “shortage” is no more quantifiable than a “need,” when you ignore prices, which are crucial in a market economy. To discuss “need” and “shortage” while ignoring prices — in this case, wages — is especially remarkable in a usually market-savvy publication like the Wall Street Journal.

Often shortages have been predicted in various occupations — and yet never materialized. Why? Because the pay in those occupations rose, causing more people to go into those occupations and causing employers to reduce how many people they “need” at the higher pay rates.

Virtually every kind of “work that Americans will not do” is in fact work that Americans have done for generations. In many cases, most of the people doing that work today are Americans. And there are certainly many unemployed Americans available today, without bringing in more foreign workers to meet farmers’ “needs.”

After all, who would want to actually work when there’s…

…a never-ending stream of free sh*t?!?

Moving back to the ranch with The Gang Who Still Can’t Shoot Straight, Conn Carroll details what happens when RINOs repeatedly practice to deceive:

Pro-amnesty Republicans can’t get their legalization talking points straight

Like most Republicans in Congress, Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., desperately wants to vote for immigration reform. Being the bad guy on border security is not why she ran for the Senate and, like most Republicans, she just wishes the issue would disappear entirely. Hence her decision this weekend to support the Schumer-Rubio citizenship-for-illegal-immigrants bill that the Senate will begin debate on today.

When does legalization happen again?

Problem is, immigration reform is a very complicated issue that has been litigated by those truly interested in the topic for months, if not years. So when Ayotte sent out a newsletter justifying her embrace of amnesty, it was perhaps understandable that her talking points seemed a little stale.

For example, on the issue of legalization, her news letter to constituents reads:

Does the bill provide for immediate legal status for illegal immigrants?

No. The bill does not immediately grant legal status to anyone here illegally.

Unfortunately for Ayotte, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., was on Univision Sunday saying pretty much the exact opposite. “Let’s be clear,” Rubio said, according to a transcript obtained by The Washington Examiner‘s Byron York. “Nobody is talking about preventing the legalization. The legalization is going to happen. That means the following will happen: First comes the legalization. Then come the measures to secure the border.”

Not the only falsehood

Ayotte’s talking points are filled with other false statements too. She claims Schumer-Rubio mandates all employers use E-Verify. False. Schumer-Rubio eliminates E-Verify and calls for the creation of a brand new employee verification system.

She claims Schumer-Rubio forces illegal immigrants to pay back taxes. False. Only those illegal immigrants who have been previously assessed txes by the IRS will be forced to pay anything. In fact, most illegal immigrants will probably get checks from the IRS thanks to the Earned Income Tax Credit.

She claims illegal immigrants must show “knowledge of civics and English.” Again, false. Schumer-Rubio only requires illegal immigrants prove thy are taking an English class.

The Schumer-Rubio bill will be tough for many Republicans that will make many constituents unhappy regardless whether they vote Aye or Nay. One way to minimize the damage is to just not talk about provisions of the proposal about which they clearly are ill-informed.

Por favor, Senora Ayotte…

Speaking of those whose dissembling renders them incapable of keeping things straight, here’s another reason we stopped watching O’Reilly:

Bill at his gutless best.

And in the Environmental Moment, even the Old Grey Nag has finally been forced to notice the gaping hole in “settled science” of anthropogenic global warming:

What to Make of a Warming Plateau

As unlikely as this may sound, we have lucked out in recent years when it comes to global warming. The rise in the surface temperature of earth has been markedly slower over the last 15 years than in the 20 years before that. And that lull in warming has occurred even as greenhouse gases have accumulated in the atmosphere at a record pace.

The slowdown is a bit of a mystery to climate scientists. True, the basic theory (?!?) that predicts a warming of the planet in response to human emissions does not suggest that warming should be smooth and continuous. (Really?!?) To the contrary, in a climate system still dominated by natural variability, there is every reason to think the warming will proceed in fits and starts.

But given how much is riding on the scientific forecast, the practitioners of climate science would like to understand exactly what is going on. They admit that they do not (We’d like to see that in writing!), even though some potential mechanisms of the slowdown have been suggested. The situation highlights important gaps in our knowledge of the climate system, some of which cannot be closed until we get better measurements from high in space and from deep in the ocean.

As you might imagine, those dismissive of climate-change concerns have made much of this warming plateau. They typically argue that “global warming stopped 15 years ago” or some similar statement, and then assert that this disproves the whole notion that greenhouse gases are causing warming.

Rarely do they mention that most of the warmest years in the historical record have occurred recently. Moreover, their claim depends on careful selection of the starting and ending points. The starting point is almost always 1998, a particularly warm year because of a strong El Niño weather pattern.

Sooo…they don’t know how it works; but they want to bet the entire world economy on an outcome based on computer models utterly unsupported by real-time data.

Yeah…