It’s Friday, February 10th, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!

First up on the last Gouge of the week, a quote worthy of Chairman Mao himself, courtesy of RedState.com:

Planned Parenthood leader: Sex selection abortions are just fine

 

Angie Murie: the Lorena Bobbitt of the unborn!

Angie Murie, executive director of Planned Parenthood Waterloo Region in Canada, was recently quoted in a National Post article claiming she opposed sex-selection abortions but essentially admitting that women should be able to have abortions for just about any reason.

“I wrestle with gender-based abortion more than any other reason [a person might give for choosing to have an abortion,]” she said. “From a macro perspective, I don’t think it’s a very good idea for us to be eliminating women. But if you look at it at the individual level, which is what we do, I don’t have any right to say that one person’s reason is better or worse than another’s.”

Soooo….what?  Planned Parenthood is now the Bizarro World equivalent of Communist China?!?  Can we not assume from Ms. Murie’s Feminazi perspective the deliberate elimination of MALE unborn children is just peachy!  Once again, modern Progressives had succeeded in turning the virtue of dispassionate objectivity into a vice….or, in this case, what amounts to gendercide!

In a related item, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, archbishop of Washington, Chuck Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship and Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University join together to declare….

United We Stand for Religious Freedom

ObamaCare’s contraception mandate stands the First Amendment on its head.

 

Stories involving a Catholic, a Protestant and a Jew typically end with a punch line. We wish that were the case here, but what brings us together is no laughing matter: the threat now posed by government policy to that basic human freedom, religious liberty.

Last month the federal Department of Health and Human Services announced that the Affordable Care Act requires employers to pay for insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilizations and contraception. What made the announcement especially troubling is that HHS specifically declined to exempt religious institutions that serve those outside their own faiths, such as hospitals and schools.

Coverage of this story has almost invariably been framed as a conflict between the federal government and the Catholic bishops. Zeroing in on the word “contraception,” many commentators have taken delight in pointing to surveys about the use of contraceptives among Catholics, the message being that any infringement of religious freedom involves an idiosyncratic position that doesn’t affect that many people.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The Catholic Church’s teaching on contraception (not to mention abortion and surgical sterilization) has been clear, consistent and public. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s decision would force Catholic institutions either to violate the moral teachings of the Catholic Church or abandon the health-care, education and social services they provide the needy. This is intolerable. (More importantly, it’s blatantly unconstitutional; most importantly, such unconstitutional overreaches have become de rigueur for this Administration.)

And while most evangelicals take a more permissive view of contraception, they share with Catholics the moral conviction that the taking of human life in utero, whether surgically or by abortifacient drugs, violates the basic human right to life. Evangelical nonprofits such as Prison Fellowship would therefore also have to choose between violating their consciences or paying fines that would ultimately destroy their ability to help the people they are committed to helping.

Even worse than the financial impact is the breach of faith represented by Ms. Sebelius’s decision, her notion of an “appropriate balance” between religious freedom and “increasing access” to “important preventive services” stands the First Amendment on its head.

In 1790, George Washington exchanged letters with Moses Seixas, the warden of the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, R.I. Seixas praised the newly formed United States for “affording to All liberty of conscience, and immunities of citizenship.” People who knew all too well what it meant to be deprived of the “invaluable rights of free Citizens” held religious liberty and freedom of conscience most dear.

In reply, Washington wrote that U.S. citizens had a “right to applaud themselves” for setting an example of “an enlarged and liberal policy” that enshrined freedom of conscience. He added that the ability of members of one faith to seek the benefit of all Americans is the foundation of America’s civic strength.

We see evidence of that strength all around us: If a working mother’s child needs to visit the emergency room, there’s a good chance the hospital is a Catholic one. If an ex-offender needs help readjusting to life outside of prison, there’s a good chance help will come from a Christian ministry like Prison Fellowship.

Yet instead of encouraging the different faith communities to continue their vital work for the good of all, the Obama administration is forcing them to make a choice: serving God and their neighbors according to the dictates of their respective faiths—or bending the knee to the dictates of the state.

For Jews, George Washington’s letter has always been cherished. It embodies the promise extended by America not only to them, but to all citizens. That is why many in the Jewish community are alarmed to see the very religious freedom Washington praised centuries ago endangered by Washington’s successor. “May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land,” Washington wrote, “continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants.”

At this critical moment, Americans of every faith, as guardians of their own freedom, must, in the words of the First Amendment, “petition the government for the redress of grievances.” That’s why over the past two years more than 500,000 people have signed the “Manhattan Declaration” in defense of religious liberty. They believe, as do we, that under no circumstances should people of faith violate their consciences and discard their most cherished religious beliefs in order to comply with a gravely unjust law.

That’s something that this Catholic, this Protestant and this Jew are in perfect agreement about.

We needn’t bother commenting when the words of the Founding Fathers speak far beyond our humble powers of communication:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Any questions?!?

Next up, FreeBeacon.com, courtesy of Bill Meisen, asks, “When is a lobbyist not a lobbyist?”  Why….whenever it suits The Dear Leader!

‘I Am Not a Lobbyist,’ Says Registered Lobbyist

Former Rep. Ron Klein raised for Obama, despite lobbyist “ban”

 

Is that finger creeping towards his nostril?

http://freebeacon.com/spirit-lobbyist-bundled-for-obama-records-show/

And forget The Obamao being merely “The Food Stamp President”; as Marc Thiessen notes in AEI, he’s more the Duke of Dependency, the Emperor of Entitlements:

Dependency index up 23 percent under Obama

 

In this week’s Washington Post, I criticized Mitt Romney for his comments that he would help the very poor by “strengthening” the social safety net as president. The liberal project is to strengthen the social safety net and grow the nanny state, I argued. The conservative project is to help people escape it.

Today, more evidence that the nanny state is growing by leaps and bounds. Investor’s Business Daily reports:

The American public’s dependence on the federal government shot up 23% in just two years under President Obama, with 67 million now relying on some federal program, according to a newly released study by the Heritage Foundation….

The increase under Obama is the biggest two-year jump since Jimmy Carter was president, the data show. The rise was driven mainly by increases in housing subsidies, an expansion in Medicaid and changes to the welfare system, along with a sharp rise in food stamps, the study found.

Among other findings cited by the IBD:

1.       The number of people dependent on the federal government shot up 7.5 percent over the past two years.

2.       In 2010, for the first time ever, average spending on dependence programs per recipient exceeded the country’s per-capita disposable income.

3.       The dependency index has dipped only seven times in the past 49 years, three of which were under President Reagan and two under President Clinton.

4.       Some observers say the rise in dependence under Obama is merely a reflection of the deep and long recession.

5.       But William Beach [author of the study] says his team’s research shows that economic effects account for only one-fifth of the change in the index.

You can see the stunning rise in dependency since 1962 here:

All this underscores the fact that the last thing the country needs is a Republican president who wants to expand the safety net and grow the welfare state. Whoever the GOP nominee is, he should make clear that conservatives are not okay with having more and more of our citizens trapped in dependency on the federal government. He must lay out a vision for an America where every one of our citizens—no matter what their station in life—has an opportunity to escape the safety net and seek a better future.

The bottom line?  Despite having never contributed to his campaign, WE’RE financing his reelection!

Speaking of unwilling campaign contributors, the WSJ details a….

$25 Billion Bank Job

The Barker Gang would have loved this housing caper.

 

Obama Administration officials and various state Attorneys General looked gleeful yesterday announcing a $25 billion settlement with five big tobacco—er, banks—and why not? The bankers coughed up shareholder money to settle a pseudo-foreclosure scandal, while the White House moved closer to its political goal of guaranteeing every home mortgage.

Rarely have so many politicians cashed in so blatantly on so little wrong-doing. In 2010, a group of AGs led by Iowa’s Tom Miller spotted political gold in reports that some bank employees had approved legal documents without proper review. They quickly spun this into the fairy tale that evil banks were kicking borrowers out of their homes for no good reason. Former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, who parlayed his scare campaign into a job running the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said banks had “a business model based on fraud.”

The banks did have sloppy paperwork practices, but they were also dealing with a historic wave of foreclosures created in large part by government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. To date there’s no evidence that borrowers current on their mortgage payments were improperly ejected from their homes. Federal regulators have already stepped in, conducted lengthy audits, forced banks to change their internal procedures and yesterday levied $394 million in fines against four of them.

But the politicians know an election-year windfall when they see it. Ally Financial, Bank of America, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo promised to devote a mere $1.5 billion of the $25 billion to alleged victims of wrongful foreclosures between January 1, 2008 and December 31, 2011.

The rest of the loot will serve the political agenda of paying off favored home owners—er, voters—with principal reductions, refinancing programs and foreclosure forbearance. The states and feds will also get nice cash payments. Think of this as one more giant political stimulus package—Congressional approval not required.

At least $10 billion will go toward principal reduction for delinquent borrowers or those on the brink of foreclosure with loans issued by private lenders. In other words, Washington is taking money from bank shareholders and investors in mortgage-backed securities, who will see the value of their holdings fall, and giving it to people who aren’t paying their bills. Welcome to the “fairness” era. (Yeah….meanwhile, we’re dipping into our IRA and 401K to stay current; so much for the value of honesty and integrity!)

Iowa’s Mr. Miller argued yesterday that principal reduction will salvage loans on the path to delinquency and thus save investors money—the proverbial free lunch. But mandated principal reduction may not save the borrowers if housing prices don’t rise. Meanwhile, 42% of all borrowers with loans in foreclosure haven’t made a mortgage payment in two years, according to Lender Processing Services. They are being rewarded for not paying their bills.

The settlement also has at least $3 billion to refinance homeowners who pay their bills but owe more than their home is worth—in other words, people who bought more home than they could afford. Another $7 billion will go to “other forms of relief,” including loan forbearance for the unemployed, “anti-blight programs,” “transitional assistance” and other political transfer payments.

Incredibly, the settlement doesn’t prevent states or the feds from pursuing more criminal cases, civil-rights or securitization lawsuits, or more claims against the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems. So even after this round of political extortion, the banks will be asked to pay again and again. They have little ability to say no because Mr. Cordray and regulators now have life-or-death control over nearly every bank product. Ma and Pa Barker should have gone to law school and run for office.

All of this will entrench the government ever-deeper into the housing market, and this may be the real political goal. In January the Administration announced it would take billions of dollars in leftover TARP funds to entice Fan and Fred’s regulator to do principal writedowns. Last week, the White House asked Congress to let the taxpayer-backed Federal Housing Administration—which is already insolvent—underwrite loan refinancing for underwater borrowers with private mortgages.

Mr. Miller added yesterday that he hopes “widespread” principal reductions become “commonplace,” and President Obama said “we’re going to keep on at it until everyone shares in America’s comeback.” Translation: The politicized lending that led to the housing crisis has turned into politicized settlements, which will in turn lead to more politicized lending.

However this helps the politicians, it won’t revive the housing market. CoreLogic’s latest data show some 10.7 million residential properties have underwater mortgages, representing 22.1% of all housing loans, or $699 billion. Even $25 billion in income redistribution can’t clear the market any faster of excess homes, or produce more buyers who can afford to buy them. Presumably that can wait for the second Obama term.

Would it surprise anyone to learn Iowa AG Miller is a Dimocrat?  Or that since he began coordinating this shakedown in 2010 he’s raised $261,445 from finance, insurance and real estate contributors?  And that’s 88 times as much as he received over the previous decade?!?

P.S.  Al Gore’s attorneys David Boies, Donald Flexner and Robert Silver, partners in the firm Boies, Schiller and Flexner – gave Miller a total of $60,000.

Nothing to see here folks….at least in the MSM….move along!

And in the Environmental Moment, courtesy of the WSJ, Alaska Governor Sean Parnell, 

What’s the Hold-Up on Alaskan Oil?

My state’s ANWR region could produce one million barrels of oil per day if only Washington let us.

 

Finally, some welcome news from Washington: With a bipartisan voice, the House Natural Resources Committee passed H.R. 7, the American Energy Infrastructure & Jobs Act. This bill ties energy production to key projects that would generate well-paying jobs sorely needed for our economy and our energy security. It also enables us in Alaska to pursue production on a small section of the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR).

This legislation opens 400,000 acres of the ANWR coastal plain’s 1.5 million acres—land specifically set aside (by a 1980 federal law) for oil and natural-gas development. (WHOA….EASY big fella; not until the Senate and President sign on….which has no chance of happenin’ until after November!) The 400,000 acres represents less than 3% of ANWR’s 19 million total acres.

So what have we been waiting for? Twenty-five years ago, the U.S. Department of the Interior recommended that Congress open up this area for oil and gas development. Yet year after year, Washington has blocked Alaska from delivering America’s oil to Americans, even as the Energy Department calculates that for every barrel produced from ANWR, one less barrel of imports would be needed. (And gasoline prices have steadily risen!)

The federal government must drop these roadblocks. This should not be controversial: The vast majority of Alaskans favor the oil and gas development of this small portion of ANWR. Nor does this have to be a partisan issue: Three Democrats joined 26 Republicans in the 29-13 vote.The essence of this long-standing argument is this: Greater oil and gas production means jobs and economic growth, which develop the stable communities that underpin a strong nation. Somehow this reasoning continues to fall flat.

Just last month, President Obama said in his State of the Union address that he had directed his administration to “open more than 75% of our potential offshore oil and gas resources.” He should have said “redirected,” for this simply repackaged his current position on the Outer Continental Shelf, which slowed Arctic development and did nothing to advance ANWR’s potential.

ANWR oil—more than 10 billion barrels of it—is accessible. It’s extractable. Yet we wait. Ignoring promising domestic production means willingly accepting a steady diet of foreign oil. That’s exactly what’s happening.

At peak production, ANWR could supply the U.S. with up to 1.45 million barrels of oil per day. Over 10 years, it could produce a sustained rate of one million barrels per day. We have a world-class pipeline ready to assist with delivery. We currently ship slightly more than 600,000 barrels of oil a day through the Trans Alaska Pipeline, but that figure once stood at two million per day.

With oil from ANWR in the Trans Alaska Pipeline, oil producers could develop nearby fields that otherwise might not be economically feasible.

We have a chance to make this happen under a measure cowritten by House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R., Wash.) and Rep. Don Young (R., Alaska) within the American Energy Infrastructure & Jobs Act. It’s the Alaska Energy for American Jobs Act, which will:

• Direct the secretary of the interior to hold lease sales on the North Slope of at least 50,000 acres within 22 months of enacting this legislation, then hold subsequent lease sales.

• Direct the secretary of the interior to ensure that this would result in no significant adverse impacts to fish, wildlife, habitat or environment, while the best available technology is employed.

• Ensure a minimal environmental footprint by requiring that land used for production and support facilities does not exceed 10,000 acres for every 100,000 leased acres.

Protecting our lands has long been a priority in Alaska. Prudhoe Bay, which sits 60 miles west of ANWR, has churned out 16 billion barrels of oil over more than 30 years. During that time, the central Arctic caribou herd in the Prudhoe Bay area has grown to nearly 70,000 in 2008 from 5,000 in 1975.

It’s no coincidence that the states holding their own during this prolonged economic downturn include America’s major energy producers, such as Alaska. Yet regulators keeping federal lands off-limits to oil and gas production also keep Alaska from contributing more affordable energy to other Americans.

For those who don’t believe one state can make a difference in helping our nation, just look at the boom in North Dakota. The Bakken region is producing nearly 500,000 barrels of oil per day, pushing North Dakota’s unemployment rate down to 3.5%, among the lowest nationally. If the Obama administration is serious about job creation, it can look to Alaska to boost America’s work force. These are jobs Americans can do immediately. They are drillers, drivers and roustabouts, engineers, graphic designers and geologists, plumbers, painters and educators.

We don’t have to make out-of-work Americans wait any longer.

Unfortunately, Governor Parnell is a Republican, which means Team Tick-Tock doesn’t hear him….and couldn’t make sense of his message if they could!

On the Lighter Side….

Finally, we’ll call it a week with Liberal Lunacy on Parade, courtesy of Bill Meisen and the educated idiots running Los Angeles County:

LA County OKs $1,000 Fine For Throwing Football, Frisbee On Beaches

 

When you head down to the beach for a little fun this summer, county officials want you to leave the pigskin at home. The Board of Supervisors this week agreed to raise fines to up to $1,000 for anyone who throws a football or a Frisbee on any beach in Los Angeles County.

In passing the 37-page ordinance on Tuesday, officials sought to outline responsibilities for law enforcement and other public agencies while also providing clarification on beach-goer activities that could potentially disrupt or even injure the public. The updated rules now prohibit “any person to cast, toss, throw, kick or roll” any object other than a beach ball or volleyball “upon or over any beach” between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

Exceptions allow for ball-throwing in predesignated areas, when a person obtains a permit, or playing water polo “in or over the Pacific Ocean”. Officials warned that any activities that could potentially harm “any person or property on or near the beach” should not be allowed during the peak summer season. However, during the winter off-season, the new rules will be relaxed.

Your kids could also end up costing you big bucks: the ordinance also prohibits digging any hole deeper than 18 inches into the sand except where permission is granted for film and TV production services only.

None at all….unless we rid ourselves of the offal currently occupying the Oval Office!

Magoo