It’s Friday, February 3rd, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!

In a break with tradition, we lead off the last Gouge of the week with the “When You Lie Down With Dogs….or Asses….You Wake Up With Fleas” segment, and a political cartoon that perfectly portrays the perfidy of Progressive politics:

Meanwhile, while doing one thing in furtherance of his real goals, The Obamao continues to say the polar opposite, as this forward from Bill Meisen details:

Obama: I Pushed Dodd-Frank And Health Care Reform Because Of Christ

President Barack Obama has been taking lumps from Republicans for years over his support for Wall Street and health care reform, but today at the National Prayer Breakfast he claimed support from on high to defend two of his most controversial legislative achievements.

“And so when I talk about our financial institutions playing by the same rules as folks on Main Street, when I talk about making sure insurance companies aren’t discriminating against those who are already sick, or making sure that unscrupulous lenders aren’t taking advantage of the most vulnerable among us, I do so because I genuinely believe it will make the economy stronger for everybody. But I also do it because I know that far too many neighbors in our country have been hurt and treated unfairly over the last few years, and I believe in God’s command to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself.'”

“I know the version of that Golden Rule is found in every major religion and every set of beliefs — from Hinduism to Islam to Judaism to the writings of Plato,” Obama added. (Although what the teachings of Plata, Vishnu, Bhudda and Mohammad have to do with Christ we’ll never know!)

The president said he often falls to his knees in prayer, and emphasized the role of his religious values in determining where to lead the country. “I’d be remiss if I stopped there; if my values were limited to personal moments of prayer or private conversations with pastors or friends. So instead, I must try — imperfectly, but I must try — to make sure those values motivate me as one leader of this great nation.”

Imperfect is right, because his beliefs have no real basis.  This is classic Liberal double-speak, and the rankest form of hypocrisy, personified by the perfidy of former New York governor Mario Cuomo.  Cuomo based his opposition to capital punishment on deeply-held personal beliefs, despite a significant majority of his constituents favoring the death penalty.  Yet he hesitated not an instant surrendering his closely-held Catholic convictions in the face of the unwashed masses yearning to slaughter the unborn.

Thus did Pontius Pilate seek to wash his hands of responsibility for Christ’s crucifixion.

Likewise The Obamao preaches a gospel of wealth redistribution nowhere to be found in Scripture while actively advocating a practice God abhors: abortion….on demand….even to the point of refusing protection to infants who miraculously managed to survive late-term legal homicide procedures.

The Dear Leader conveniently omits Paul’s admonition in II Thessalonians that those who will not work should not eat; i.e., the lazy and indolent should not share in the fruits of the labor of others.  Not to mention the early Christians gave pooled their earnings with their fellow Christians willingly, under NO duress, and NOT with the rest of the Roman Empire.

And yet, Liberal Catholics, only slightly less naive than the infamous Bart Stupak, continue to express surprise at their betrayal by a man who, quite literally, threw his grandmother under the bus for personal political gain.

After all, as this little bit of history by Michael Novak in August 8, 2008 edition of NationalReview.com, courtesy of Frank Watkins, proves, the signs were there….for anyone interested in reading them:

Catholics for Obama?

Life matters.

Not long before he was elected pope (overwhelmingly), Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent a public rebuke to the U.S. bishops. He reminded them that the question of abortion must be judged in a far different category from war and capital punishment. War is a question of practical wisdom, he observed, about which prudent Catholics may form opposing practical judgments. Same with capital punishment, which for centuries was rated by the church as just and sometimes necessary. By contrast abortion, Ratzinger wrote, is “intrinsically evil” and “always and everywhere” to be opposed.

Many Catholics on the left wing of the Democratic party have never accepted this rebuke. The most some of them will concede is that abortion is a “profound moral question.” Cardinal Ratzinger’s point is that that question was long ago answered: Abortion is intrinsically evil. Never to be cooperated with.

….Thus, Catholic leftists need the “consistent ethic” argument to make any case at all in their support of a pro-abortion candidate. Conversely, they must also argue from an “ethic of prudence” in order to justify their peculiar calculation that abortion is not as important as war, capital punishment, and their (highly debatable) claims about the “common good.” Even in its logical form, their reasoning is a tangled mess: “Yes” to a consistent ethic of life when they need it, “No” when they don’t.

In the particular case of Barack Obama, their case is an even greater mess. Bill Clinton, the last Democratic president, frustrated the will of the U.S. Congress by refusing to sign legislation outlawing partial-birth abortion. Even though this procedure means — just before a full delivery — puncturing the head of the infant so that the brains may be suctioned out, Obama, as an assemblyman in Illinois, took the same position here as the Clintons did: in favor of this grim procedure.

Worse still, Obama strongly spoke out in opposition to legislation to disallow abortionists from putting to death infants who survived a first attempt at abortion. At the federal level, this legislation was called the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, protecting the human infant born alive despite a vigorous attempt to kill her in the womb.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/225260/catholics-obama/michael-novak

In another Obamao-related item, Victor Davis Hanson echoes the theme of Dan Henninger’s commentary we featured yesterday:

The un-Obama

Barack Obama’s favorability in the polls falls when he is himself — overexposed, hard left in his press conferences, and boastful about legislative achievements like Obamacare and a stimulus of more than $1 trillion.

Then a strange thing happened. Obama largely went quiet. Often he was out of sight, vacationing in Hawaii or golfing. It was almost as if he learned that the less he was seen or heard, the more Americans liked the idea of Obama as president rather the reality of his constant “Make no mistake about it” and “Let me be perfectly clear” sermonizing.

Obama has now edged ahead of his potential Republican Party rivals in the polls. He waited for the noisy Republicans to grab national attention in the debates and primaries before moving hard left to firm up his base. So while the nation was amused, repelled and bored by the constant back-and-forth over Mitt Romney’s moneymaking and Newt Gingrich’s marriages and off-the-cuff philosophizing, President Obama matter-of-factly canceled the vital Keystone pipeline project.

He even more quietly prepared to ask Congress to raise the debt ceiling to over $16 trillion to accommodate his fourth consecutive reckless trillion-dollar-plus annual deficit — while planning to slash the defense budget in the next decade. Did anyone notice that he made controversial “recess” appointments — which as a senator he had opposed — when most thought Congress was not really in recess?

Obama now rarely talks about his supposed signature achievements, whether the huge deficit “priming” or the unpopular Obamacare. Republicans have only controlled the House of Representatives for the past year, yet Obama now blasts them for stopping what he in theory wanted to do as president. In contrast, he hardly praises the Democrats who controlled both houses of Congress for twice that time and enacted all that he wished. How strange to keep silent about successes only to broadcast failed what-ifs.

President Obama now campaigns on events that happened despite, not because of, him. His Cabinet has cut federal oil leases by 40 percent, subsidized money-losing and now bankrupt green companies, and in the past openly wished that gas and electricity prices would skyrocket to make alternative energy cost-competitive. But recently he bragged that we are pumping more oil than ever. Natural gas is suddenly no longer an earth-warming pollutant but welcomed in vast abundance.

Left unmentioned was the cause of this unexpected energy bounty: The economic stagnation between 2009 and 2012 has curbed energy demand, while private entrepreneurs have used new fracking and horizontal drilling technology on largely private lands to revolutionize the production of fossil fuels. Again, Obama seems to take credit for things that occurred over his opposition — as if to say, “You will like what they didn’t let me do.” In the fine tradition of American politics, the successes of others are Obama’s; Obama’s failures are the failures of others.

Both as a candidate and early in his term, Obama blasted all the Bush-Cheney antiterrorism protocols as either unnecessary or illegal. Iraq was a “dumb” war, and he declared the surge a failure. But as president, Obama expanded these intelligence measures, and used a beefed-up military to kill Osama bin Laden and go after al-Qaeda captains. He followed the Bush-Petraeus timetable of withdrawal in Iraq and praised our successful nation-building there.

One could almost infer that Obama is now happy that he did not fulfill his earlier promises to close Guantanamo, end renditions and tribunals, prune back the Patriot Act, and get out of Iraq by March 2009. George W. Bush is still to be blamed for the present stagnating economy, as he is never to be praised for crafting the security measures vital for our current successes.

This year, Obama will run not so much on what he really did in 2009 and 2010, but more on what he wanted to do, but was stopped from doing, in 2011 and 2012. The president will tell his base that he really wished to go green in a big way while telling Middle America that lots of oilmen went ahead on their own to find new gas and oil. For his liberal supporters, Obama really did want to end the antiterrorism protocols, and for the rest of America he really did find those same protocols necessary to kill Islamic terrorists.

The message is clear: If voters do not see or hear the new un-Obama too often, if his left-wing legislative agenda is sidetracked, and if the private sector can ignore him, then voters may still sort of like the idea of him back as president.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch with The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, Peggy Noonan offers her take on the reality of the “Republican establishment” and it’s far-from-favorite son:

….Which leads us to the Republican establishment, and how it feels about Mr. Romney.

That establishment is not what it was decades ago, when it was peopled by seasoned veterans who made decisions and got people in line. That’s gone. What has replaced it is a loose confederation of groups and professionals—current and former elected officials and their staffs, activists, the old party machinery, bundlers and contributors, journalists, radio and TV stars, mostly but not exclusively based in Washington.

The great myth of the election year is that they are for Mitt Romney. They are not. They are almost all against Newt Gingrich because they know him, they’ve worked with him. But they mostly do not love Mr. Romney.

The establishment didn’t get its candidate: Mitch Daniels or Jeb Bush, John Thune or Paul Ryan, Haley Barbour or Chris Christie. It is, secretly, as bereft as some of the grassroots.

Why doesn’t the establishment like Mr. Romney? Because they fear he won’t win, that he’ll get clobbered on such issues as Bain, wealth, taxes. Because when they listen to him, they get the impression he’s reciting lines his aides came up with in debate prep. Because if he wins, they’re not sure he’ll have a meaning or mandate.

But mostly because his insides are unknown to them. They don’t know what’s in there. They fear he hasn’t absorbed any philosophy along the way, that he’ll be herky-jerky, unanchored, merely tactical as president. And they think that now of all times more is needed. They want to reform the tax system and begin reining in the entitlement spending that is bankrupting us. They don’t read him as the guy who can perform those two Herculean jobs, each of which will demand first-rate political talent. And shrewdness. And guts.

Mr. Romney doesn’t have the establishment in his pocket. He needs to win it. All the more reason for him to get serious now. If he is serious.

This is the authentic sound of the establishment: At a gathering in Washington last week, I spoke to a grand old man of the party who enjoyed high and historic appointed position. “Where is the Republican Party right now?” I asked. “Waiting for Jeb,” he said. Waiting for rescue.

That’s what Mitt Romney’s up against, not Newt.

And as the WSJ suggests, given Romney’s gut reaction to his latest Mitticism, he appears less and less equal to the task:

Mitt at a Minimum

A sign of Romney’s moral defensiveness.

Serves us right. Yesterday we tried to defend, or at least explain, Mitt Romney’s remark that he didn’t worry about the poor because they had the government to help them. Then Mr. Romney tells the world he favors a rising minimum wage indexed for inflation that really would hurt the poor. (Once again demonstrating a lack of any Conservative core.)

Mr. Romney reaffirmed his minimum-wage views to reporters as he tried to extricate himself from the controversy over his “poor” remarks. (See “What Mitt Really Meant,” Feb. 2.) It was a classic political gotcha moment, and Mr. Romney’s response was more troubling than his earlier marks.

Few policies are as destructive as the minimum wage at keeping the young and least skilled out of the job market. By setting an arbitrary wage floor, politicians make it impossible for businesses to hire people for many entry-level positions. The jobs simply disappear.

In 2007 the Pelosi Congress passed a minimum-wage increase in three stages that coincided with the recession. The jobless rate for teenagers has since exploded to 23.1% from under 15%, and for minorities to 15.8% from close to 9%. For black teenagers, the jobless rate is still an incredible 39.6%.

But even the Pelosi Democrats didn’t index the minimum wage automatically for inflation. That would only increase the incentive not to hire those in society who have the hardest time finding work.

A higher minimum wage always polls well, though it is rarely a major issue for voters. It’s worrying that Mr. Romney, who has based his candidacy on his ability to create jobs, would endorse a policy that would make it more expensive to hire people.

If Mr. Romney wanted to help the poor and stay true to his free-market principles, he’d have cited the youth and minority jobless figures and proposed a special sub-minimum wage for teenagers. It’s hardly a radical position, and it would get him back on the moral and political offensive.

President Obama can’t defend his economic record, so it’s already clear he is going to portray the economy as a debate over values, justice and morality. Mr. Romney has to fight back on similar terms or he’ll constantly be on defense as the uncaring, rich technocrat. If his minimum-wage response is a sign of what’s to come, it is going to be a long four years—er, nine months.

No….a long four years!

On the Lighter Side….

Then there’s this plaintive plea from Jim Gleaves….

And in the Wide, Wild World of Sports….

‘They use you up’: Hall of Famer Dorsett suing NFL

The only thing “used up” is Dorsett’s savings….if’n he ever had any.  These guys had no problem with the life and everything it entailed, both on and off the field, during their heyday; sure they were misused….and they loved it….while it lasted.  Now that it’s over, they’re just looking to come back to the table for a piece of someone else’s pie.

Finally, in another sports-related story….

Colts hire Manusky to lead Defense

Defense….the Indianapolis Colts have a Defense?!?

Magoo