It’s Saturday, February 11th, 2012….and circumstances demand we remain at our post to bring you the latest bullsh*t emanating from the confines of the Offal Office:

So here’s The Gouge!

First up, remember this bald-faced lie?

Unfortunately for America, the contraceptive/abortifacient misstep is only the latest demonstration of both B. Hussein’s amoral absence of conscience and utter disregard for the U.S. Constitution.  And today’s plainly political ploy….

….changes nothing.  As reader Bill Meisen details….

“This is no compromise.  The POTUS does not possess such authority, and perhaps he be kind enough to delineate precisely from where he believes his comes?  Certainly no the Constitution.

There’s a couple of things to note; first, Obama admits this was his decision personally. Next, he concedes that there are some legitimate religious issues deserving of consideration, while others are merely pesky little Constitutional issues he claims are the product of “cynical desire on the part of some to make this a political football.”

Right….the Constitution is just a political football. That alone tells you all you need to know about this man.

Then Obama says, “Insurance companies will be REQUIRED to reach out and offer the women contraceptive care without charge and without hassle.” Again, from whence cometh such power?  Let’s personalize it to make a point; what if he had said:

“Thom McKee and Steve Boss will be REQUIRED to reach out and offer the women contraceptive care without charge and without hassle.”

He has no more authority to order Thom, Steve, you or me to offer and pay for contraceptives and abortifacients than requiring insurance companies to do it.

Lastly, he levied this mandate on insurance companies without ever consulting with them. Big surprise there!

Anyone who believes this “compromise” is a win for conservatives or those of religious faith are grossly mistaken. Obama, through proclamation, just magically created a constitutional right for free contraceptive coverage with no Constitutional authority to do so whatsoever.”

Oh, for all you Catholics out there, whatever your political leanings, anyone who buys into this patent prevarication should begin acclimating themselves to excessively warm temperatures.

Here’s James Taranto’s take on what is a meaningful a commitment as Tick-Tock’s executive order for Bart Stupak, i.e., an olive branch to the willingly gullible:

President Obama has partially climbed down from his decree that Catholic institutions must insure their employees for abortifacient drugs and sterilization proceedings in violation of religious law, ABC News reports:

“Religious organizations won’t have to pay for these services and no religious institution will have to provide these services directly,” the president announced from the White House briefing room. “Let me repeat: These employers will not have to pay for or provide contraceptive services, but women who work at these institutions will have access to free contraceptive services just like other women.”

How will that work? “If a woman works for an employer that objects to providing contraception because of its religious beliefs, the insurance company will step in and offer birth control free of charge,” ABC reports.

It’s not clear who will “step in” if the institution self-insures, and in any case this sounds like something of a swindle. Unless insurance companies have access to magical abortifacient trees, somebody has to pay for this stuff. One way or another the benefits will be priced into the cost of insurance, and even if insurers give Catholic institutions a discount and pass the cost on to everybody else, the former will still be purchasing a package of benefits that includes what they find abhorrent.

Will Catholics accept the arrangement? Those who are ideologically committed to ObamaCare, like Carol Keehan of the Catholic Health Association and E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post, fell into line immediately. But the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said only that it was “a first step in the right direction.”

Obama’s abortifacient shell game reminds us of other work-arounds from religious law, such as Shariah mortgages and the selling of chametz for Passover (see our 2009 discussion for details). But whereas those are accommodations by religious authorities for the convenience of the faithful, the ObamaCare mandate is an imposition by the state. There is no reason for Catholics to accept it unless, like Keehan and Dionne, they are ideologically committed to the vast expansion of state power that is ObamaCare. (Along with complicity in the slaughter of tens of millions of unborn innocents.)

It’s what the WSJ terms the….

Immaculate Contraception

An ‘accommodation’ that makes the birth-control mandate worse.

Here’s a conundrum: The White House wants to impose its birth-control ideology on all Americans, including those for whom sponsoring or subsidizing such services violates their moral conscience. The White House also wants to avoid a political backlash from this blow to religious freedom. These goals are irreconcilable.

So you almost have to admire the absurdity of the new plan President Obama floated yesterday: The government will now write a rule that says the best things in life are “free,” including contraception. Thus a political mandate will be compounded by an uneconomic one—in other words, behold the soul of ObamaCare.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203646004577215150068215494.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

….or as we prefer to call it, the Immaculate Deception.  Anyone who believes Herr Hypocrite’s “commitment” will last much past November 6th, we’ve got a couple of prime pieces of waterfront Florida real estate we’re willing to sell….cheap!

Heading back to the ranch with The Gang That Still Can’t Shoot Straight, two pieces of thought-provoking commentary, the first from Jonah Goldberg, courtesy of AEI….

The GOP race gets messy

Is Santorum’s surge a sign of voters’ confidence in him or distrust of Romney?

Okay, I give up. About a week ago, I wrote a column making a case for Mitt Romney as the GOP nominee. My argument was aimed at fellow conservatives who just can’t get their minds — or at least their hearts — around a Romney candidacy. The details aren’t important right now (and they’re easy enough to find with the interwebs these days).

The reason I wrote the column in the first place was that I felt the cold steel barrel of reality’s revolver pressing up against the back of my head, saying “write it.” Romney’s going to be the nominee. He’s vastly preferable to Obama. If he’s the inevitable nominee, then better for conservatives to make peace with the idea.

And then, lo and behold, Rick Santorum bursts into the motel room, knocks the gun from reality’s hands and puts reality in a chokehold. “Not so fast.”

Even if Romney becomes the nominee, it’s difficult to exaggerate the significance of Santorum’s trifecta this week in Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado. In 2008, Romney won Minnesota by a mile (if you define a mile as 19 percentage points), winning more than half the counties. On Tuesday, he lost every county and came in third place. In Missouri, he lost every county, and Santorum won every county. In Colorado, where Romney was the heavy favorite, he lost by 5 percentage points, 40- 35. In 2008, Romney won Colorado with 60 percent of the vote; he won 56 counties out of 64. On Tuesday, he captured a mere 16 counties in Colorado.

The lamentations of Team Romney count for little. They prattle about low turnout, as if the “front-runner’s” failure to excite the base is an asset. They mutter that these were beauty contests and non-binding votes where no delegates were awarded.

True enough. But no delegates were awarded in the Iowa Caucuses either. Romney seemed to think those mattered. More important, these three states offered a huge referendum on Romney, and the crowd rose up to say, “Meh.”

Team Santorum understandably wants everyone to believe that this was a huge endorsement of their guy’s message and candidacy. “I don’t stand here to claim to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney,” Santorum proclaimed Tuesday night in Missouri. “I stand here to be the conservative alternative to Barack Obama.”

I’m sure he’s sincere. Indeed, that’s one of the things people genuinely admire about Santorum: He doesn’t need to fake his sincerity about anything.

But I don’t really buy it. The single biggest factor in this campaign remains the fact that the base of the GOP is uncomfortable with Romney and refuses to believe that it can’t do better than the guy who invented Romneycare and talks to conservatives like he’s reading from a right-wing Berlitz phrasebook. He rails about “Washington politicians” –— which looks great on paper but sounds somewhat ridiculous coming from Romney, given that he seems more like a Washington politician than any of the Republican opponents left in the field.

The irony is that, in a weird way, Santorum has many of the same problems Romney has. Superficially, he looks like an anti-Romney when it comes to personality. Romney often sounds like HAL refusing to open the pod-bay doors in 2001: A Space Odyssey, while Santorum overflows with passion and emotion.

But simply having an authentic personally doesn’t necessarily mean you have a presidential one. All too often, Santorum looks like he has a thumbtack in his shoe that he presses down on to fool the polygraph. He can be dour and resentful.

Likewise, on substance, if you were going to design a GOP candidate to fit the moment, it wouldn’t be Santorum. The difference between him and George W. Bush: Santorum’s deadly serious about compassionate conservatism. (Which, by definition, is NOT Conservativism!) He is honestly and forthrightly committed to using government to realize his moral vision for America. That’s his prerogative, and he has many good (and some very bad) arguments on his side.

But, suffice it to say, he is not the one the tea partiers have been waiting for.

Now, the race is just a mess. I feel like the revolver in reality’s hand is full of blanks, and anyone who thinks they know what happens next is stabbing in the dark. I could live with either man being the nominee. And while I would happily vote for either in a contest against Obama, I honestly have no idea who would be more electable. Frankly, I find the prospect of any of them becoming the nominee worrisome and hard to imagine. A brokered convention seems ever more plausible –— and desirable.

….the second by John Hinderaker in Powerline.com, courtesy of Conn Carroll and the Morning Examiner:

Is 2012 Slipping Away From the GOP?

Then there’s this from Congressman Paul Ryan writing at RealClearPolitics.com, courtesy of George Lawlor:

America Deserves a Choice

“….A government that aspires to equal outcomes undermines the commitment to equal opportunity that is at the heart of the American Idea. As Lincoln said, the purpose of government should be “to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all,” so that all may have the same opportunity to rise.”

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/02/10/america_deserves_a_choice_113086.html

Meanwhile, The Obamao’s express train to insolvency continues to accelerate; it’s inevitable last stop, utter economic collapse.

Obama’s FY 2012 Budget to Forecast $1.33 Trillion Deficit

But while most of the rest of us suffer, the Anointed One’s most fervent disciples continue to rake in the cash like Jim & Tammy Faye in their prime:

No doubt given his support of increased taxes, Buffett will be donating all $154M of his ill-gotten gains directly to the Treasury Department!

On the Lighter Side….

Then there’s this photo of cash-strapped Sweden’s newest icebreaker, courtesy of Jim Gleaves, and….

Shannon Wood’s new recipe for Wild Turkey & Coke:

And in the Wide, Wild World of Sports….

Tiger gives himself a chance at Pebble

Yeah….sixteen other golfers have shot better than Tiger, yet he’s the Media’s sole focus of attention.  Is it any wonder we didn’t miss him when he was gone, and just wish he’d go away now that he’s back?

Finally, in News of the Bizarre….and Disgustingly Depraved, courtesy of Wild Bill Meisen:

‘Fear Factor’ Staffers: Killing Donkey Semen Episode Was an Expensive Mistake

Donkey semen is off the Fear Factor menu. NBC has yanked tonight’s planned episode of the reality series, after it broke late last week that contestants would be served donkey semen. The episode had groups of twins competing for $50,000 and competing a trio of stunts, with donkey semen chugging as one of the segments (and surviving an electric fence as another). Instead, NBC will air a Fear Factor repeat.

The network had no comment on its decision to yank the episode, which was a source of debate behind the scenes. Producers typically make the case to network censors that a gross food item on the show is always a delicacy in some part of the world (horse semen is consumed in Australia and New Zealand).

Yet the network’s discomfort with the episode was evident. Originally, the episode’s official description listed only the two other stunts, then vaguely noted “the teams also put themselves to the test eating the unimaginable.”

No wonder this donkey is….

….smilin’!

Magoo