It’s Tuesday, December 17th, 2013…though we’re writing this Monday night while suffering through another opposition drive extended by a senseless Ravens roughing penalty.  Way to be gansta, Mr. Smith!  More on what is unfortunately an increasingly prevailing proclivity in the Sports Section.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, as Keith Koffler writing at White House Dossier details, in a rare fit of uncontrollably honest journalism, the WaPo reports…

White House Delayed Rules Until After 2012 Campaign

The White House “systematically” delayed regulations on the environment, worker safety and health care to prevent them from becoming issues during the 2012 election, according to the Washington Post.

Ah yes, the post-political president. The man corrupted the policy process in order to get reelected, essentially deceiving voters about what he would be up to once he had the presidency safely in his pocket again, disguising his true intentions by putting them off. (Though to not realize precisely what The Dear Misleader was up to you had to be an absolute idiot…or a dyed-in-the-wool Dimocrat; but we’re waxing repetitive!)

From the story, a great piece of journalism by veteran reporter Juliet Eilperin:

Some agency officials were instructed to hold off submitting proposals to the White House for up to a year to ensure that they would not be issued before voters went to the polls, the current and former officials said.

The delays meant that rules were postponed or never issued. The stalled regulations included crucial elements of the Affordable Care Act, what bodies of water deserved federal protection, pollution controls for industrial boilers and limits on dangerous silica exposure in the workplace.

And of course, they lied about it. It’s getting to the point where I wouldn’t believe this White House if they said night had fallen.

The Obama administration has repeatedly said that any delays until after the election were coincidental and that such decisions were made without regard to politics. But seven current and former administration officials told The Washington Post that the motives behind many of the delays were clearly political, as Obama’s top aides focused on avoiding controversy before his reelection.

And not everybody did this.

The number and scope of delays under Obama went well beyond those of his predecessors, who helped shape rules but did not have the same formalized controls, said current and former officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.

At the time, “Regulatory Czar” Cass Sunstein was heading up the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which oversees the implementation of federal rules. It seems the operation was thoroughly politicized under Sunstein, a prominent liberal theorist who was Obama’s colleague and friend at the University of Chicago law school and who advised Obama’s 2008 campaign.

Sunstein, unsurprisingly, declined to comment for the article.

And who, inquiring minds might want to know, is Cass Sunstein’s wife?  Only the latest liar…

…to join The Obamao’s pack of Progressive prevaricators!

In a related item, it’s the “Turnabout Is Fair Play” segment, courtesy of (GASP!) The New York Times…

Sheriffs Refuse to Enforce Laws on Gun Control

When Sheriff John Cooke of Weld County explains in speeches why he is not enforcing the state’s new gun laws, he holds up two 30-round magazines. One, he says, he had before July 1, when the law banning the possession, sale or transfer of the large-capacity magazines went into effect. The other, he “maybe” obtained afterward.

He shuffles the magazines, which look identical, and then challenges the audience to tell the difference. “How is a deputy or an officer supposed to know which is which?” he asks.

Colorado’s package of gun laws, enacted this year after mass shootings in Aurora, Colo., and Newtown, Conn., has been hailed as a victory by advocates of gun control. But if Sheriff Cooke and a majority of the other county sheriffs in Colorado offer any indication, the new laws — which mandate background checks for private gun transfers and outlaw magazines over 15 rounds — may prove nearly irrelevant across much of the state’s rural regions.

Some sheriffs, like Sheriff Cooke, are refusing to enforce the laws, saying that they are too vague and violate Second Amendment rights. Many more say that enforcement will be “a very low priority,” as several sheriffs put it. All but seven of the 62 elected sheriffs in Colorado signed on in May to a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the statutes.

The resistance of sheriffs in Colorado is playing out in other states, raising questions about whether tougher rules passed since Newtown will have a muted effect in parts of the American heartland, where gun ownership is common and grass-roots opposition to tighter restrictions is high.

If America’s to follow Der Obafuhrer’s example, what would lead anyone to follow any law?!?

Since we’re on the subject of guns and the law, or in this case, the “law-abiding”, here’s another revelation you won’t learn from the MSM:

Armed School Resource Officer Confronted Arapahoe High School Shooter

On December 13, 2013, 18-year-old Arapahoe High School student Karl Pierson entered his school armed with a shotgun, a machete, and molotov cocktails intending on killing his former debate coach and possibly others. After firing three shots down a hallway and injuring one of his classmates, Pierson killed himself in a classroom. Today it was revealed why he did this: a “good guy” with a gun had him cornered. Fox News reports:

Just ask the patrons in this Florida internet cafe:

Turning back for a moment to The Dear Misleader, courtesy of NRO, Victor Hanson presents…

How Presidents Lie

It’s nothing new for a president to lie to us, but Obama’s style is unique.

…At your own job, if you promise the boss that you will do something and then don’t, you’re likely to get fired; when presidents do the same, it’s called politics.

…What is different about Obama? Rarely, when caught, do presidents simply lie about their original dissimulation. Barack Obama, in contrast, when asked about his faux red line in Syria, simply denied ever issuing it (“I didn’t set a red line”).

Au contraire, mon prevaricating frere!

Unlike presidents who paid high prices rather quickly for their dissimulations, Obama kept getting away with serial deception. The result was similar to a reckless bluffer at the poker table who keeps upping the ante each time he wins with a bad hand — only to lose his enormous pile of bluffed winnings when finally called out. Obama was empowered by a compliant public and a press invested (fully invested!) in his progressive agenda. He assumed that while others had had to atone for deception, he did not, given his utopian talk about lowering the seas and cooling the planet, his landmark racial profile, and his youthful charisma and scripted eloquence. Being hip and progressive, he assumed, exempted him from an accounting. Yet unless the economy is booming, even a cool president does not necessarily recover once the public ceases believing what he says. After five years of 7-plus percent unemployment, almost no GDP growth, and record debt, Obama now enjoys few extenuating offsets when he serially misleads.

Birds of a feather lie together!

When the president speaks now, few listen. He realizes that and so, like Richard Nixon, must add emphatics as a substitute for honesty. But by now we know ad nauseam all the banal intensifiers — “make no mistake about it,” “I am not kidding,” “in point of fact,” and “let me be perfectly clear.”…

Yeah…he’s about as perfectly clear as he is perfectly transparent!

Next up, it’s the “Look for the Union Libel” segment, courtesy of the Washington Examiner via The New Media Journal, as the…

Teamsters allege right-to-work laws are ‘slavery’

Michigan labor unions are understandably upset over the Wolverine State’s adoption of a right-to-work law and are fighting it in every way they can. Detroit-based Teamsters Local 214 has gone so far as to argue that it violates anti-slavery laws. Yes, anti-slavery.

In a Dec. 6 court filing, Local 214 argued that right-to-work laws are “a violation of the prohibitions against involuntary servitude” citing Article I, Section 9 of the state constitution: “Neither slavery, nor involuntary servitude unless for the punishment of crime, shall ever be tolerated in this state.”

“The claim was made in response to a lawsuit filed by four City of Dearborn employees who were going to be charged $150 by the union for any grievance they filed after they left the union when they exercised their rights under state law,” according to a blog posting by the conservative Mackinac Center. A Local 214 official could not be reached for comment by the Washington Examiner. (Likely ‘cuz they were out choppin’ cotton!)

Proof it’s not just the good things in life that never change!

Right-to-work laws prevent workers from being required to either join a union or pay dues to one as a condition of employment. In cases where workers do opt out they are often still required to go through the union to file any grievance with their employers. Local 214 has argued that requiring them to do this without charging the non-union workers a fee for the effort is, in effect, slavery because otherwise they would be forced to do the work without pay.

That sounds reasonable enough but it ignores why the non-union workers must go through the union in the first place: The union’s contract with management guarantees that it will be the sole employee representative. That is something unions typically demand during their negotiations with management. But nothing prevents them from negotiating “members-only” contracts under which they only represent their own members.

Which is yet another reason contemporary unions, having LONG outlived any value except to their bosses and Dimocratic political coffers, are about as useful as…

And in the Environmental Moment, courtesy of Jeff Foutch, as The Daily Caller‘s Michael Bastasch informs us…

Study: Earth was warmer in Roman, Medieval times

If you think the Earth is hot now, try wearing plate armor in the Middle Ages. A Swedish study found that the planet was warmer in ancient Roman times and the Middle Ages than today, challenging the mainstream idea that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are the main drivers of global warming.

The study, by scientist Leif Kullman, analyzed 455 “radiocarbon-dated mega-fossils” in the Scandes mountains and found that tree lines for different species of trees were higher during the Roman and Medieval times than they are today. Not only that, but the temperatures were higher as well.

“Historical tree line positions are viewed in relation to early 21st century equivalents, and indicate that tree line elevations attained during the past century and in association with modern climate warming are highly unusual, but not unique, phenomena from the perspective of the past 4,800 years,” Kullman found. “Prior to that, the pine tree line (and summer temperatures) was consistently higher than present, as it was also during the Roman and Medieval periods.”

Kullman also wrote that “summer temperatures during the early Holocene thermal optimum may have been 2.3°C higher than present.” The “Holocene thermal optimum was a warm period that occurred between 9,000 and 5,000 years ago. This warm period was followed by a gradual cooling period.” According to Kullman, the temperature spikes were during the Roman and Medieval warming periods “were succeeded by a distinct tree line/temperature dip, broadly corresponding to the Little Ice Age.”

For many years now, there was an alleged scientific consensus that the Earth was warming due to humans releasing greenhouse gases into the air — primarily through burning fossil fuels. However, temperatures stopped rising after 1998, leaving scientists scrambling to find an explanation to the hiatus in warming.

Increasingly, scientists are looking away from human causes and looking at solar activity and natural climate variability for explanations of why the planet warms and cools. “All other things being equal, adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere will have a warming effect on the planet,” Judith Curry, a climatologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, told the Los Angeles Times. “However, all things are never equal, and what we are seeing is natural climate variability dominating over human impact.”

The Kullman study points to mounting evidence that climate is largely out of human control, as humans were not burning large amounts fossil fuels during Roman and Medieval times.

On the Lighter Side…

Finally, in the Sports Section, as we hinted in our opening, an incident which epitomizes everything wrong in professional sports today…along with the rest of the country:

Dez Bryant has an excuse for walking off the field before the game ended

Yeah…he’s a self-absorbed, egotistical ass.  But should it really come as a surprise, given…

…his example?!?

Magoo