It’s Monday, November 21st, 2011….and before we begin, two rather pointed pictures, courtesy of Dick Rotner and David Drucker, that place the OWS protests into proper perspective:

Any questions?!?

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, classic Krauthammer, courtesy of George Lawlor, James Patrick Crilley and NationalReview.com….

The Pipeline Sellout

Obama puts politics over nation, again.

In 2008, the slogan was “Yes We Can.” For 2011–12, it’s “We Can’t Wait.” What happened in between? Candidate Obama, the vessel into which myriad dreams were poured, met the reality of governance.

His near–$1 trillion stimulus begat a stagnant economy with 9 percent unemployment. His attempt at Wall Street reform left in place a still too-big-to-fail financial system as vulnerable today as when he came into office. His green-energy fantasies yielded Solyndra cronyism and a cap-and-trade regime not even a Democratic Congress would pass.

And now his signature achievement, Obamacare, is headed to the Supreme Court, where it could very well be struck down, just a week after its central element was overwhelmingly repudiated (2–1) by the good burghers of Ohio.

So what do you do when you say you can, but, it turns out, you can’t? Blame the other guy. Charge the Republicans with making governing impossible. Never mind that you had control of the Congress for two-thirds of your current tenure. It’s all the fault of Republican rejectionism.

Hence: “We Can’t Wait.” We can’t wait while they obstruct. We can’t wait while they dither with my jobs bill. Write Congress today! Vote Democrat tomorrow!

We can’t wait. Except for certain exceptions, such as the 1,700-mile trans-U.S. Keystone XL pipeline, carrying Alberta oil to Texas refineries, which would have created thousands of American jobs and increased our energy independence.

For that, we can wait, it seems. President Obama decreed that any decision must wait 12 to 18 months — postponed, by amazing coincidence, until after next year’s election.

Why? Because the pipeline angered Obama’s environmental constituency. But their complaints are risible. Global warming from the extraction of the Alberta tar sands? Canada will extract the oil anyway. If it doesn’t go to us, it will go to China. Net effect on the climate if we don’t take that oil? Zero.

Danger to a major aquifer, which the pipeline traverses? It is already crisscrossed by 25,000 miles of pipeline, enough to circle the Earth. Moreover, the State Department had subjected Keystone to three years of review — the most exhaustive study of any oil pipeline in U.S. history — and twice concluded in voluminous studies that there would be no significant environmental harm.

So what happened? “The administration,” reported the New York Times, “had in recent days been exploring ways to put off the decision until after the presidential election.” Exploring ways to improve the project? Hardly. Exploring ways to get past the election.

Obama’s decision was meant to appease his environmentalists. It’s already working. The president of the National Wildlife Federation told the Washington Post (online edition, November 10) that thousands of environmentalists who were galvanized to protest the pipeline would now support Obama in 2012. Moreover, a source told the Post, Obama campaign officials had concluded that “they do not pick up one vote from approving this project.”

Sure, the pipeline would have produced thousands of truly shovel-ready jobs. Sure, delay could forfeit to China a supremely important strategic asset — a nearby, highly reliable source of energy. But approval was calculated to be a political loss for the president. Easy choice.

It’s hard to think of a more clear-cut case of putting politics over nation. This from a president whose central campaign theme is that Republicans put party over nation, sacrificing country to crass political ends. Nor is this the first time Obama’s election calendar trumped the national interest:

Obama’s decision to wind down the Afghan surge in September 2012 is militarily inexplicable. It comes during the fighting season. It was recommended by none of his own military commanders. It is explicable only as a talking point for the final days of his reelection campaign.

At the height of the debt-ceiling debate last July, Obama pledged to veto any agreement that was not long term. Definition of long term? By another amazing coincidence, any deal large enough to get him past Election Day (and thus avoid another such crisis next year).

Tuesday it was revealed that last year the administration pressured Solyndra, as it was failing, to delay its planned October 28 announcement of layoffs until November 3 — the day after the midterm election. A contemporaneous e-mail from a Solyndra investor noted: “Oddly they didn’t give a reason for that date.”

The writer was clearly born yesterday. The American voter was not — and (s)he soon gets to decide who really puts party over nation and reelection above all.

We can’t wait.

Turns out we can….at least when the policy or project in question actually benefits AMERICA vice the Dimocratic Party.

Speaking of the Dims, as Jonah Goldberg suggests in RealClearPolitics.com, courtesy of Augie Diffenderffer, what their Anointed One is really saying….

Dear Average American: It’s All Your Fault

Congratulations, average American! It’s your turn to be blamed for President Obama’s — and America’s — problems. This is the biggest honor you’ve won since Time magazine named “you” the Person of the Year.

The Dear Leader’s life imitating art, a modern-day, Oval Office of equivalent of Captain Queeg….

….”They were all disloyal. I tried to run the country properly….by Marx’s book; but they fought me at every turn.”  Seriously, come the Fall, and Team Tick-Tock’s confronting the reality of a one-term presidency, they’ll make Queeg look like….

Next up, Michael Barone offers these words of wisdom to certain Conservatives: 

Put Tax Breaks for Mortgages, Local Taxes on Table

Supercommittee members Sen. Pat Toomey and Rep. Jeb Hensarling are taking flak from some conservatives for proposing a deal including increases in “revenues,” and a Washington Post reporter had some fun insinuating that they were backing a tax-rate increase.

As this is written, no one knows what the supercommittee will do (or not do), but it’s worth taking a look at what Toomey and Hensarling actually were talking about. It may not matter now, but could after 2012. They were raising the possibility, as Barack Obama’s Bowles-Simpson commission did last December, of a tax reform bill that, like the 1986 tax reform act, would eliminate tax preferences and lower tax rates.

The 1986 bill was passed with bipartisan support, and there’s a potential for bipartisan support again. The problem in putting such a measure together is that most really egregious tax preferences don’t add up to much money. Just as the big money for long-term spending cuts must come from changes in entitlements — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid — so the big money you can get from eliminating tax preferences comes from three provisions that are widely popular.

The three are the charitable deduction, the home mortgage interest deduction, and the state and local tax deduction.

The charitable deduction should probably be off the table. The Obama administration has proposed reducing it for high earners. But this obvious attempt to channel flows of money away from the voluntary sector and toward the federal government went nowhere even when Democrats controlled the House and had a supermajority in the Senate. It’s anathema to many Democrats and just about all Republicans.

The home mortgage interest deduction may seem similarly sacrosanct. But the fact that the vast bulk of the “tax expenditures” — the money the government doesn’t receive because taxpayers deduct mortgage interest payments from total income— goes to high earners with big, expensive houses.

Traditionally it’s been argued that government should provide incentives for home ownership because homeowners more than renters have a stake in their community. But it’s obvious now that we have over-incentivized home ownership, with government encouraging loans to non-creditworthy borrowers.

At the same time, high earners don’t need an incentive to buy a home. If we limit the mortgage interest deduction to some amount near the median housing price, some folks will still buy $1 million homes, though they may financethem a little differently. And the government can get more revenue without an economy-crushing tax rate increase.

Similarly, what about a cap on the state and local tax deduction? Initial conservative reaction will likely be hostile: Why increase some people’s federal tax bills? Isn’t that attacking a core Republican constituency?

Actually, it’s not and not. The state and local tax deduction is worth a lot more to high earners than to modest earners, and it’s worth nothing to the nearly half of households that don’t pay federal income tax.

But it’s worth the most to high earners in high-tax, high-spending states. Those people are more likely to be Democrats than Republicans. The 2008 exit poll tells the story. Nationally, voters with incomes over $100,000 voted 49 percent to 49 percent in the presidential race. Those with incomes over $200,000 voted 52 percent to 46 percent for Barack Obama.

In high-tax, high-spending states, Obama did even better with high earners. He carried $100,000-plus voters with 55 percent in Connecticut, 56 percent in New York, 52 percent in New Jersey, 55 percent in Maryland, 54 percent in Illinois and 57 percent in California.

All those states have high state income taxes except for Illinois, and it increased its income tax rate by two-thirds earlier this year. And those states contain a huge share of the nation’s highest-priced housing. In contrast, in low-tax, low-spending states with relatively inexpensive housing, $100,000-plus voters favored John McCain, who won 65 percent of their votes in Texas, 55 percent in Florida and 61 percent in Georgia.

It is no coincidence that the high-tax, high-spending states tend to have strong public employee unions. In effect, the unlimited state and local tax deduction is a federal subsidy of the indefensibly high pay, benefits and pensions of public employee union members. Limiting the state and local tax deduction would create a political incentive to hold those costs down.

So ironically, limiting high earners’ lucrative tax deductions may prove a harder sell among Democrats than Republicans. But maybe Republicans should give it a try anyway.

Fast-forwarding to today, Republicans tried….it died.  Which leads us to conclude the Dims were never….NEVER….serious about a budget deal in the first place.  This has all been political burlesque; all show and no go.

Meanwhile, in the Heartland, a….

Nebraska County Won’t Provide Election Ballots in Spanish

Dodge County will not print its election materials in Spanish although 10 percent of its population is Hispanic.

County Clerk Fred Mytty told supervisors during Wednesday’s meeting that bilingual ballots are only required if a minority population exceeds 5 percent and has a low literacy rate. While the county surpasses the threshold for the minority population, Mytty said area schools have done a good job of raising the literacy rate so that it’s above the national average.

“Apparently we’ve done a good job of educating the Hispanic population in Dodge County. … I think that’s what saved us,” Mytty said.

What a revolutionary concept; American citizens (after all, only U.S. citizens can vote….right?!?) who can read English!

Since we’re on the subject of Nebraska….and other things no one really cares about:

5 Things Women Want Most in a Man

And in the Environmental Moment, responding to yet another piece of pseudo-science from the Climatescammers, James Taranto asks what inquiring minds want to know:

From a Washington Post piece summing up the latest global warmist alarmism:

Connie Hedegaard, the European Commissioner for Climate Action, said in an interview Thursday that policymakers cannot afford to ignore the sort of scientific findings summarized in the new IPCC report. “The science is not getting more uncertain; it’s actually getting more and more certain,” she said. “It’s getting in line with what people intuitively feel.”

Isn’t that exactly the problem with so-called climate science?

Liberalism: it ain’t about facts; dude….it’s like, about feelings!

In yet demonstration of fiction having heretofore trumped fact, NewMediaJournal.com reports:

Duke of Edinburgh: ‘Wind Farms Are Useless’

In a withering assault on the onshore wind turbine industry, the Duke said the farms were “a disgrace.” He also criticised the industry’s reliance on subsidies from electricity customers, claimed wind farms would “never work” and accused people who support them of believing in a “fairy tale.”

The Duke’s comments will be seized upon by the burgeoning lobby who say wind farms are ruining the countryside and forcing up energy bills. Criticism of their effect on the environment has mounted, with The Sunday Telegraph disclosing today that turbines are being switched off during strong winds following complaints about their noise.

The Duke’s views are politically charged, as they put him at odds with the Government’s policy significantly to increase the amount of electricity generated by wind turbines. The country has 3,421 turbines — 2,941 of them onshore — with another 4,500 expected to be built under plans for wind power to play a more important role in providing Britain’s energy.

Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, last month called opponents of the plans “curmudgeons and fault-finders” and described turbines as “elegant” and “beautiful.”

The Duke’s attack on the turbines, believed to be the first public insight into his views on the matter, came in a conversation with the managing director of a leading wind farm company.

When Esbjorn Wilmar, of Infinergy, which builds and operates turbines, introduced himself to the Duke at a reception in London, he found himself on the end of an outspoken attack on his industry. “He said they were absolutely useless, completely reliant on subsidies and an absolute disgrace,” said Mr. Wilmar. “I was surprised by his very frank views.”

Surprised, no doubt, because the Duke spoke the truth….something the politicians married to the campaign contributions and votes of the Environazis and their financiers rarely hear, let alone heed.

On the Lighter Side….

Turning next to the Wonderful World of Science, there’s this bit of sterling sagacity, courtesy of FOX News’ entertainment section:

Natalie Wood Had Eerie, Lifelong Connection to Water

Yeah….sooooo….like….other than it constituted 75% of her body, she drank it on a regular basis….and it’s everywhere on the friggin’ planet?!?

Finally, Best of the Web ripped this last item straight from the pages of the Crime Blotter:

Assault With a Salty Weapon

“A Tennessee man is facing a domestic assault charge after he allegedly struck his mother with a ham during an argument Tuesday afternoon in their home,” reports The Smoking Gun:

Emanuel Cordell Kennedy, 37, was collared after his mother told cops that she was hit in the back with the thrown ham as she was walking down the hall, according to a Union City Police Department report excerpted here.

In an interview with police, Kennedy claimed that he did not intend to hit his mother, 55-year-old Brenda King, with the tossed ham. King apparently was not injured by the pink missile, the size of which was not detailed by investigators.

If the prosecutors can find two slices of bread and some mustard, they’ll have all they need to persuade a grand jury to hand up an indictment.

Magoo