It’s Thursday, February 9th, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!
First up, the WSJ offers the latest evidence Dimocrats haven’t a clue how they’re going to pay for any of their pet policies or initiatives:
The Senate last passed a budget 1,106 days ago—that would be almost three years—and now the White House is telling Democrats not to bother this year either. Harry Reid will be pleased, because last week the Majority Leader said he had no plans to do so.
Asked yesterday about the lack of a Senate budget, spokesman Jay Carney said that “Well, I don’t have an opinion to express on how the Senate does its business with regards to this issue.” ABC’s Jack Tapper pressed, incredulously, “The White House has no opinion about whether or not the Senate should pass a budget?”
Mr. Carney reiterated that President Obama has “no opinion,” only that he “looks forward to the Senate acting on the policy initiatives contained within his budget.” But Mr. Carney refused to say the Senate should act by even proposing a budget, let alone, you know, actually passing one.
The running tally of days without a budget has become a Republican talking point, but there’s a lesson here about liberal governance and the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. That law, a Democratic creation, mandates that both chambers by April submit a formal budget blueprint that shows how the government will meet its obligations over the coming year, lays out a general fiscal framework for entitlements and sets priorities for spending and taxes. The law was supposed to increase the incentives for fiscal discipline. But now that House Republicans want to take it seriously, Democrats want to pretend it doesn’t exist.
Meanwhile, the GOP used its budget last year and will again this year to advance specific and credible alternatives to the Obama status quo. At least Democrats are conceding that they’re unwilling even to suggest solutions of their own.
As we’ve noted before, they’re out of airspeed, ideas and rapidly running out of altitude….
….and their only possible option is continuing to confuse voters while forestalling the inevitable impact until after November 6th.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch with The Gang That Still Can’t Shoot Straight, Conn Carroll makes what we consider some telling observations in the Morning Examiner:
Mitt Romney may not have lost any delegates Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri, but the breadth of his defeats raises serious questions about his viability as a general election candidate.
Yes, Romney spent no money on television ads in any of the states. Yes, Romney ignored Minnesota and Missouri completely, campaigning only lightly in Colorado. And yes, the vaunted Romney organization did not try to get voters to the polls in these states the same way they did for state contests that actually matter. But the results speak for themselves: the hard core conservative voters that did turn out to the polls don’t like Romney.
In Missouri, Romney lost by 30 points and did not win a single county. In Minnesota, Romney finished third behind Ron Paul and did not win a single county. And in Colorado Romney kept his loss within five points, but finished 35-points behind his 60 percent 2008 total.
When the Romney campaign does compete, when money is invested in television ads and a get-out-the-vote operation, Romney usually wins. But without these institutional advantages, Romney is just a much weaker candidate. And he will not have these advantageous in the general election. The desire for a new candidate from a brokered convention just went up.
Particularly when one considers Gingrich is unelectable, and Santorum, other than his steadfast opposition to abortion and gay marriage, is about as Conservative, at least based on his voting record, as Lindsey Grahamnesty.
As Alice said, curiouser and curiouser.
Next up, Ed Lasky, writing in the American Thinker, identifies yet another of The Dear Leader’s faults:
During his annual pre-Super Bowl interview America’s Commander-in-Chief said that he doubts Iran is seeking to carry out attacks in America, saying, “We don’t see any evidence that they have those intentions or capabilities right now.”
As Josh Gerstein writes in Politico:
Obama’s statement was a curious one, since an intelligence community assessment that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper presented to Congress last week said that some Iranian leaders “are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime.”
Gerstein notes only one problem behind Obama’s cheery assessment. There is one more significant issue that reveals a great deal about Obama’s mindset. America just a few months ago was subject to an Iranian plot to kill the Saudi Ambassador and attack the Israeli Embassy here in America. The attack on the Saudi Ambassador was to take place in a public spot, killing Americans along side the Ambassador. Yet, Obama says “we don’t see any evidence that they have those intentions or capabilities right now”. Obama’s own officials believe that Iran was behind this plot. CNN reported back in November, for example:
U.S. agents disrupted an Iranian assassination-for-hire scheme targeting Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, U.S. officials said Tuesday. Elements of the Iranian government directed the alleged plan, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said.
A naturalized U.S. citizen holding Iranian and U.S. passports and a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard face conspiracy charges connected with the plot. “In addition to holding these individual conspirators accountable for their alleged role in this plot, the United States is committed to holding Iran accountable for its actions,” Holder said.
Perhaps if one lived in Barack Obama’s fantasy land there are no problems with Iran. After all, despite Iranian’s continuing and accelerating progress towards developing nuclear weapons (Defense Secretary Leon Panetta recently said Iran was one year away from being able to build nuclear bombs), the White House Press Secretary recently said there was “no rush” in dealing with Iran. Despite Iran hosting Al Qaeda leaders, despite Iran being behind the murder of our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite constant threats to attack America coming from the mouths of mullahs, despite Iran’s ignoring entreaties to abide by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Obama still has the outstretched hand extended to the Iranian regime. Combined with his head being stuck in the sand, this approach and ignorance of recent history (and ignorance of his own officials statements) does not reflect well on Barack Obama’s stewardship.
What exactly does he do all day? Does he read the news? Or does he just sit around all day checking off boxes on memos sent to the Oval Office?
Hey, if there’s no problem….
….then there’s no need to deal with it! It’s new White House equivalent of voting “present”!
Turning now to our continuing coverage of Team Tick-Tock’s ongoing offensive against the Constitution, as this next item by Kathleen Parker in the WaPo, courtesy of Randy Jugs demonstrates, even some on the Left are honest enough to characterize the true nature of the conflict:
Most Americans can hardly believe we’re having a national debate about birth control in the 21st century — more than 50 years after the Pill became available and decades after condoms became as commonplace as, well, balloons.
The reason for the incredulity is because we’re actually not having a debate about birth control. To repeat: The debate is about freedom of conscience. It ain’t about the Pill.
This particular episode is significant because the Obama administration has provided the narrowest conscience protection in our nation’s history, according to legal experts who are challenging the administration’s rule. We have a long tradition in this country of working around religious differences so that people are not forced to violate their faith to satisfy a secular mandate. This is the essence of the debate.
To women who merely want help paying for birth control, this may seem an obnoxiously silly discussion. Noted. But the larger issue is worth paying attention to even at personal inconvenience. That inconvenience, by the way, needn’t be permanent. The immediate problem of providing birth control to those who can’t afford it can be massaged — for instance, the government can hand out contraceptives to the poor, as is already the case in some states. But the issue of religious liberty is one of those foundational principles that isn’t really up for revision.
As to the separation of church and state argument that church critics keep raising, keep in mind that this separation was also intended to protect religious believers from state interference. When the state insists that one’s religious beliefs be supplanted by another’s, in this case by secularism, then might one argue that the state is establishing a religion in contravention of the Constitution’s intent?
The new health-care reform act’s mandate that Catholic institutions pay for insurance to cover birth control and even abortifacient drugs (a.k.a. “morning-after” pills) runs deeply contrary to fundamental Catholic teaching. The argument that many Catholic women ignore this particular church commandment is a non sequitur. The church has consistently stood by this teaching. Catholics commit adultery and lie, too, but they don’t want or expect the church to condone those actions.
Although Catholic churches and their direct employees are exempt from the new rule, all those other Catholic-sponsored entities, from schools to hospitals to charities that employ non-Catholics, have to comply or pay prohibitive fines. Estimates are that Notre Dame University, which hosted President Obama as commencement speaker in 2009 against howls of protest, would have to pay $10 million in annual fines. That’s some expensive birth control, baby.
And we’re talking billions of dollars’ worth of lost services to the poor if Catholic charities shut down, as well as educational chaos, especially in inner cities where Catholic schools often provide the only stability in poor children’s lives.
Whatever the odds are that the church may change its position on contraception someday, it won’t be soon. For now the bishops are promising a fight to the end. It’s that important to them, a fact of which Obama was well aware. Catholic leaders are justified in their outrage, especially those who helped Obama with health-care reform and now feel betrayed.
Exhibit A: Sister Carol Keehan, CEO of the Catholic Health Association, who supported the health-care act with assurances from Obama that Catholics’ rights of conscience would be protected, despite criticism from many other Catholic leaders. She has now met the crowded underside of Obama’s bus.
Exhibit B: Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who had a private meeting with Obama in November, after which he said he was hopeful about the final rule. Headlines to that effect unleashed Planned Parenthood’s public relations whirlwind, prompting blog headlines such as “Will Obama cave to Catholic bishops?” Apparently not.
Obama’s calculation must have been that there are more women who want insurance coverage for birth control than there are obedient Catholics. Although Obama won with 54 percent of the Catholic vote last time, he may have miscalculated. Women are not a monolithic vote, and even though some Catholic women may disagree with the church, they still love and respect it and how it serves the poor. They may like Obama, birth control and Democrats, but they don’t want to see their church beaten up.
These are tough, emotional issues, to be sure. But consider that we allow even Nazis to march because we believe so fervently in freedom of expression. We should believe at least as strongly in freedom of conscience, not only for Catholics’ sake but also for our own.
And in a predictable ploy….
Yeah….and whatever form it takes, you depend on once thing: it will be good at least through November!
In a related item, another charter member of Bart Stupak’s Gang of the Gullible pleads stupidity:
Former Democratic congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper, a Catholic from Erie, Pennsylvania, cast a crucial vote in favor of Obamacare in 2010. She lost her seat that November in part because of her controversial support of Obamacare. But Dahlkemper said recently that she would have never voted for the health care bill had she known that the Department of Health and Human Services would require all private insurers, including Catholic charities and hospitals, to provide free coverage of contraception, sterilization procedures, and the “week-after” pill “ella” that can induce early abortions.
“I would have never voted for the final version of the bill if I expected the Obama Administration to force Catholic hospitals and Catholic Colleges and Universities to pay for contraception,” Dahlkemper said in a press release sent out by Democrats for Life in November. “We worked hard to prevent abortion funding in health care and to include clear conscience protections for those with moral objections to abortion and contraceptive devices that cause abortion. I trust that the President will honor the commitment he made to those of us who supported final passage.”
….Dahlkemper, Bart Stupak and a handful of other Democrats who held back on voting for final passage of Obamacare eventually voted for the exact same language in the Senate bill because the president signed an executive order saying the law wouldn’t fund abortions.
The Gang of the Gullible showing of their thirty pieces of silver
But the executive order signed by President Obama did nothing to prevent the subsidized health care exchanges from covering elective abortions.
Sorry Kathy; NOBODY‘s that stupid. You knew….and you did. Everything else is just a vain attempt at self-justification and….absolution!
Then there’s this bit of breaking news:
President Obama will again bypass Congress and grant waivers to at least 10 states struggling to meet ‘No Child Left Behind’ student proficiency requirements — a move that Republicans charge oversteps the president’s authority.
Congress? We don’t need no stinking Congress!
And in International News of Note, courtesy today of the Los Angeles Times via AEI, Jonah Goldberg suggests….
“….U.N. members vote for stuff, so people think it’s somehow democratic in more than a procedural way. But that’s not true. There’s nothing in the U.N. Charter — at least nothing that has any binding power — that says a government has to be democratic or even care for the welfare of its people. When the ambassador from North Korea claims to speak for his people at the U.N., it has no more moral legitimacy than a serial killer speaking for the victims he has locked in his basement.“
http://www.aei.org/article/foreign-and-defense-policy/international-organizations/a-unbut-for-good-guys/
On the Lighter Side….
Magoo
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