It’s Tuesday, September 6th, 2011….and here’s the Gouge!

First up, the WSJ‘s William McGurn offers his insight into the who, what, where, when and why of what may be the least-anticipated speech by an American President in history:

The President’s Speech Impediment

The grander the stage, the smaller Mr. Obama comes across.

In everyday life, when you don’t have something to say, you avoid the stage. In our nation’s capital, by contrast, the world operates like the one Alice found behind the Looking Glass. That’s a world where you have to run as hard as you can just to stay still. Which helps explain why President Obama will this week be addressing a joint session of Congress that doesn’t really want to hear from him about a jobs plan that he doesn’t really have.

Expectations are high, the byproduct of a highly publicized back and forth with Republican Speaker John Boehner over the date of the president’s speech. If you’re a White House with a message, that’s a good thing. Unfortunately for President Obama, he doesn’t have one.

How do we know he doesn’t? We know it from the White House itself. On Friday, Ed Henry quoted an unnamed presidential aide telling Fox News that while he didn’t want to “downplay the speech,” he needed to shoot down “the idea that this is the be-all and end-all.”

So if this is not the “be-all and end-all” we’ve been told it was for weeks, why the initial announcement it would be held the same night Republican presidential candidates were holding a televised debate? And why do it before a joint session of Congress?

The answer to the first is that the speech most probably did not start out as a calculated attempt to upstage the Republican candidates. More likely, Thursday night was what White House aides originally had in mind—until they realized it would clash with the NFL’s opening day. So they moved it back a day. That backfired because it looked so ungracious, but if you were President Obama, whom would you rather go up against: the GOP or the Green Bay Packers?

The answer to the other question has more to do with our Looking Glass Beltway. In this universe, a bigger stage is often the solution for a lack of substance. Put it this way: Without the backdrop of a joint session of Congress, how many networks would broadcast another Obama jobs speech?

You can’t fault the logic. When Mr. Obama entered office, he told us unemployment would not rise over 8% if we passed his stimulus. Now his economic advisers have just told us that unemployment will not fall below the 9% mark through next year. As if to underscore the grim news, the latest jobs report—released in time for Labor Day weekend—shows zero net job growth for August.

The politics requires not only that the president address the economy’s dismal jobs performance but that he be seen by the American people to be doing it. And that’s where the teleprompter meets the road.

The truth is that there is practically nothing Mr. Obama could do to gin up better jobs numbers before next year’s election without massively increasing the deficit—and the Republicans won’t let him do that. Even with the word “stimulus” banished from his remarks this week, no one will be fooled by new calls to “invest” in roads and bridges and infrastructure. Or by the expected hodgepodge of other proposals from extending the payroll tax holiday to tax credits for new hires.

The irony is that the president has blown the one chance to do something of substance without looking weak. Back in July when he was negotiating with Speaker Boehner, the two had agreed on a grand bargain that would include real cuts in entitlements. The “give” on the Republican side was that the deal would address “revenues,” which to the president means raising taxes and to the speaker means relying on growth to bring in more money to the Treasury’s coffers.

For the president, that deal would have allowed him to do something serious about spending—in a highly public and bipartisan way. Even better for him, it might have split the opposition. For such a deal would likely have left Republicans bickering, with some arguing we should wait for a Republican president and others screaming “sellout.”

The president, however, got greedy, and killed the deal when he asked for more. That’s been his problem all along. Notwithstanding incessant calls to rise above politics, on issue after issue the president has proved himself incapable of matching his large rhetoric with equally large actions.

In music there’s a saying about a performance that was “too small for the house.” That’s becoming true of the president. There was a day when Mr. Obama’s taste for the marvelous—a campaign address in Berlin, the faux presidential seal, the Greek columns that surrounded him during his speech accepting the Democratic nomination—all seemed to herald something exciting and historic.

Even inside the Beltway, however, substance ultimately tells. Three years into his presidency, the grander the stage the smaller Mr. Obama comes across.

In a related item from the Morning Examiner, Conn Carroll suggests offering more of the same as a credible economic recovery plan won’t pass the smell test even in California, a state long-accustomed to the stench of bloated budgets:

There are few states more sympathetic to President Obama than California. While a bevy of national polls all show Obama sinking to all time approval rating lows in the 40s, 50 percent of Californians still approve of Obama’s job as president according to the latest Los Angeles Times poll. But as Obama heads into his Thursday jobs speech, even Californians have some bad news for Obama.

If Obama’s Michigan Labor Day speech yesterday is any indicator, increased government spending, especially for infrastructure will be a major part of his new jobs plan. “We’ve got roads and bridges across this country that need rebuilding,” Obama said. “Labor’s on board, business is on board. We just need Congress to get on board.” There is just one problem. The American people are not on board either.

Even in ultra-liberal California there is little to no support for more government spending. Asked if they believed the government should “spend money to create jobs now,” only 37 percent said yes. By contrast, 49 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that the “best thing for the economy is to cut government spending, get the deficit under control, and reduce taxes on people and businesses.”

It is understandable why the White House wants to trot out Obama for yet another jobs speech. According to the latest George Washington University Battleground poll, 74 percent of Americans still approve of Obama as a person. But that same GW poll shows 59 percent of Americans disapprove of his handling of the economy. As popular as he is personally, Americans seems to have tuned him out on politically.

“74 percent of Americans still approve of Obama as a person”?!?  Sure….assuming the poll was conducted in the break room at the New York Times or the streets of Southeast Washington, D.C.  And we’re more than a little hazy as to what it means to approve of someone “as a person” in the first place.

Regardless, George Lawlor sent us this next item by Ramesh Ponnuru in NRO’s The Corner which helps explain the disparity between The Obamao’s supposed personal popularity and his performance reviews:

If it looks like President Obama has been flailing lately, it’s because he is. Remember: He has never really had to fight for votes outside the Democratic base. He lost a Democratic primaryto Bobby Rush (his biggest political setback) and won the primary contest against Hillary Clinton (his most impressive political victory). But he had an out-of-state fringe opponent in his 2004 Senate race, and in 2008 he benefited from possibly the most favorable circumstances for a non-incumbent since 1932. He has no experience at winning over non-liberal voters (as opposed to having them fall into his lap). And it shows.

Meanwhile, as the WSJ reports, back on Capital Hill, it’s business as usual….Dimocratic-style!

Leveraging a Hurricane

The real story behind the political theater over disaster relief.

Rahm Emanuel may have decamped to Chicago, but Democrats in Washington still won’t let a good crisis go to waste. Their current gambit is to use Hurricane Irene as a pretext to prevent spending cuts to one of Washington’s most notorious boondoggles.

This week the left-wing press has been attacking House Majority Leader Eric Cantor for holding disaster relief funding “hostage.” A more accurate way to put this is that Senate Democrats won’t approve new funding for disasters unless they get the funding they want for corporations that make electric cars.

Here’s the story: In June, House Republicans passed the 2012 Homeland Security appropriations bill, which included an amendment adding $1 billion to the Disaster Relief Fund of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). In a sensible move for taxpayers, the amendment offsets this new disaster funding by cutting spending on the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program. This may ring a bell with readers as the funding conduit for one of Washington’s adventures in crony capitalism.

In 2009, the Department of Energy announced that it would loan more than half a billion dollars through this program to a California-based company, Fisker Automotive, to make luxury electric cars. About a month after the loan package was conditionally approved, CEO Henrik Fisker and Joseph Biden appeared in the Vice President’s hometown of Wilmington, Delaware to announce that Fisker would now be making some of its cars at the city’s old General Motors factory.

At the event, Mr. Biden described many “long talks” he’d had with Mr. Fisker. The Vice President’s office later said that Mr. Biden didn’t make any direct appeals to Energy before the loan was approved, but Delaware’s chief of economic development told the Journal that Mr. Biden was the state’s “secret weapon, except there is nothing secret about Joe Biden.”

All of this is background to say that the GOP has found the federal program that is arguably the most deserving of a cut to free up funds for disaster victims. But Senate Democrats refuse to pass the House bill and Mr. Cantor has earned their ire this week by continuing to press for cuts in corporate welfare.

Perhaps unwilling to defend the indefensible, some have taken to claiming that the Republican bill cuts cherished liberal entitlements. In an email seeking donations for an anti-Cantor advertising campaign, the group Democracy for America exalted, “We’re hitting Eric Cantor hard—exposing his call to hold Hurricane Irene disaster relief hostage to more cuts in vital programs, like Medicare and Social Security—with in-district ads all next week.”

In the Senate, Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin seems unwilling to accept even the idea that the government might set priorities and choose to fund disaster aid instead of other claims on the federal fisc. “If [Mr. Cantor] believes that we can nip and tuck at the rest of the federal budget and somehow take care of disasters, he’s totally out of touch with reality,” said Mr. Durbin.

One reason the House bill has less funding for Democratic priorities is because, even before the hurricane, Republicans had decided that the President’s budget didn’t have enough money for the Disaster Relief Fund. So they funded it at $850 million above the President’s request. Then as they realized that the damage in places like Joplin, Missouri would put additional strain on the fund, the GOP added the amendment that provided still more disaster assistance and cut funding for Mr. Biden’s beloved electric cars.

The White House hasn’t asked for more funding, though White House budget director Jacob Lew wrote to lawmakers Thursday suggesting it could be well north of $5 billion. But so far Mr. Cantor is being blamed for opposing disaster relief because he has been trying to spend more than the President, and to place that above other spending priorities.

By the way, this political theater is having no impact on victims in need of help. The MSNBC gang may like to pretend that Mr. Cantor is stealing blankets from homeless flood victims, but the Washington debate is largely about funding for construction projects that may be years in the future.

Yes, FEMA has warned that its disaster fund is running low, a warning it issues almost annually. And the agency has said it won’t approve new municipal construction projects until it gets more funding. But rebuilding, for example, a bridge in Vermont likely couldn’t happen for months or years anyway as the locals debate designs, approve plans and conduct environmental reviews. The agency’s emergency assistance—water and generators, or money for new windows or clothing—continues without interruption.

To have any hope of controlling spending, Congress has to make choices. That means having the fortitude to give up more corporate welfare to finance more urgent disaster relief.

Over $500,000,000 to a California-based company for a “green” energy product?!?  Simply substitute “Solyndra” and “solar panels” for “Fisker Automotive” and “luxury electric cars” and you can file this one under “SS/DD”!

Next up, in the “Liberals Are From Mars, Conservatives From Reality” segment, Thomas Sowell opines on the almost unbridgeable gulf between….

Two Different Worlds

Ideological clashes over particular laws, policies and programs often go far deeper. Those with opposing views of what is desirable for the future also tend to differ equally sharply as to what the reality of the present is. In other words, they envision two very different worlds.

A small but revealing example was a recent New York Times criticism of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs for not contributing to charity as much as the New York Times writer thought he should. The media in general are full of praise for business people and their companies for giving away substantial amounts of their wealth. Indeed, that is one of the few things for which many in the media praise businesses and the wealthy.

Americans in general — whether rich, poor or in between — have one of the most remarkable records for donating not only money but time to all sorts of charitable endeavors. Privately financed hospitals, colleges and innumerable other institutions abound in the United States, while they are rare to non-existent in many other countries, where such things are usually left to government or to religious organizations.

However, with charity as with everything else, it cannot simply be assumed that more is always better. A “safety net” can easily become a hammock. “Social justice” can easily become class warfare that polarizes a nation, while leading those at the bottom into the blind alley of resentments, no matter how many broad avenues of achievement may be available to them.

Judging businesses or their owners by how much wealth they give away — rather than by how much wealth they create — is putting the cart before the horse. Wealth is ultimately the only thing that can reduce poverty. The most dramatic reductions in poverty, in countries around the world, have come from increasing the amount of wealth, rather than from a redistribution of existing wealth.

What kind of world do we want — one in which everyone works to increase wealth to whatever extent they can, or a world in which everyone will be supported by either government handouts or private philanthropy, whether they work or don’t work?

It is not an abstract question. We can already see the consequences on both sides of the Atlantic. Those who have grown used to having others provide their food, shelter and other basics as “rights” are by no means grateful.

On the contrary, they are more angry, lawless and violent than in years past, whether they are lower-class whites rioting in Britain or black “flash mobs” in America. Their histories are very different, but what they have in common is being supplied with a steady drumbeat of resentments against those who are better off.

Politicians, intellectuals and whole armies of caretaker bureaucrats are among those who benefit, in one way or another, from picturing parasites as victims, and their lags behind the rest of society as reasons for anger rather than achievement.

Leading people into the blind alley of dependency and grievances may be counterproductive for them but it can produce votes, money, power, fame and a sense of exaltation to others who portray themselves as friends of the downtrodden.

Both private philanthropy and the taxpayers’ money support this whole edifice of a make-believe world, where largesse replaces achievement and “rights” replace work. Trying to rope Steve Jobs into this world ignores how many other famous businessmen, whose achievements in business have benefited society, have created philanthropies whose harm has offset those benefits.

Henry Ford benefited millions of other people by creating mass production methods that cut the cost of automobiles to a fraction of what they had been before — bringing cars for the first time within the budgets of people who were not rich. But the Ford Foundation has become a plaything of social experimenters who pay no price for creating programs that have been counterproductive or even socially disastrous.

Nor was this the only foundation created by business philanthropy with a similar history and similar social results.

Let business pioneers do what they do best. And let the rest of us exercise more judgment as to how much charity is beneficial and how much more simply perpetuates dependency, grievances and the polarization of society.

We find it more than ironic, i.e., incredibly hypocritical (in other words, par for the course!) the Times would brand Steve Jobs as uncharitable without noting the almost non-existent philanthropy of the nation’s two Misers-in-Chief, Messrs. Scrooge and Marley….

….perhaps because Team Tick-Tock has proven so adept at contributing SO MUCH of OTHER people’s money?!?

Then there’s today’s entry in the Albert Einstein Memorial “Definition of Insanity” segment, courtesy of Mayor Michael Bloomberg:

24 Shot in 24 Hours Prompts Bloomberg to Call for Tougher Gun Laws

Yet another brilliant idea from the Liberal mind that brought us….

On The Lighter Side….

And in the Wide, Wild World of Sports, proof again of Longfellow’s wisdom when he wrote, “into each life a little rain must fall”:

Former Giants Star Tiki Barber ‘Devastated’ at Being Snubbed by Every NFL Team

Former Giants running back Tiki Barberwas said to be “devastated” that no NFL team expressed an interest in him following his return as a 36-year-old free agent, Sports Illustrated reports. Barber, who led the NFL’sbacks in rushing-receiving yards in his final three pro seasons, filed papers in March to come out of retirement and was officially removed from the Giants retired list in late July.

But Barber’s agent, Mark Lepselter, confirmed his expectations at landing a team after four years out of the game were not fulfilled by the time teams finalized their 53-man rosters for Week 1. “We are flabbergasted that Tiki has not had an opportunity with any team, especially when rosters were at 90 players this year,” Lepselter said. “I certainly thought some team would be intrigued to see what he had left in the tank.”

Barber, who was drafted by Big Blue in the second round of the 1997 NFL Draft, announced the end of his playing days in October 2006….

“Flabbergasted” indeed!  After all, isn’t every NFL franchise looking for an over-the-hill, disruptive, financially-strapped former running back who, after running out on his team and his pregnant wife, needs money to pay for his divorce settlement while keeping his 24-year-old former-NBC-intern-girlfriend in the style to which she’s become accustomed?!?

Finally, we’ll call it a day with News of the Bizarre:

Man Killed in Airplane Collision With Girlfriend Over Alaska

A pilot was communicating by radio with her boyfriend before their planes collided in the air over Alaska last week, killing him, a federal investigator said. The two pilots took off from different western Alaska villages Friday but met up in the air on the way to Bethel, Alaska, National Transportation Safety Board investigator Clint Johnson told the Anchorage Daily News Sunday.

Kristen Sprague, 26, was flying a Cessna 207 operated by rural freight carrier Ryan Air, according to Alaska State Troopers. She made an emergency landing with one airplane wing seriously damaged and wasn’t hurt. The other plane, a Cessna 208 Caravan, crashed and burst into flames Friday at about 1:30 p.m. local time near the village of Nightmute, Alaska, about 400 miles west of Anchorage, Alaska, killing Scott Veal, 24, of Kenai, Alaska. Each was the only person onboard.

In Friday’s collision, the two pilots were traveling together to Bethel and were communicating on a prearranged radio frequency while in the air, Johnson said. It’s too early in the investigation to say whether pilot error was a factor in the crash, he added.

Sprague, of Idaho, told the investigator she was dating Veal, who reportedly was going through a divorce, Johnson said.

Though it’s safe to say pilot skill has almost certainly been ruled out!

Magoo