It’s Friday, February 17th, 2012….and if you’ve never taken the time to read our Cover Story on the home page at www.thedailygouge.com, this is the time to do it.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, the WSJ‘s Kimberly Strassel details….

The War on Wyden

For daring to work on Medicare reform with Republican Paul Ryan, the Democratic senator from Oregon is lambasted by keepers of the liberal flame.

Mitt Romney has had a tough week, Newt Gingrich a tough month, Barack Obama a tough three years. But hey, they could be Ron Wyden.

Ticked off by Washington’s failure to tackle big problems? Spare a moment for Oregon’s senior senator. Mr. Wyden is the Democrat who in December had the audacity to team up with House Republican Paul Ryan on a proposal to reform and strengthen Medicare—the entitlement that is pushing the country, and seniors, off a cliff. As bipartisan exercises go, this was big, thoughtful, promising.

It was also a complete anathema to a Democratic establishment that is ideologically opposed to change, and cynically intent on using Mediscare to beat Republicans in 2012. Mr. Wyden, as a result, is taking a beating from his own.

“Ron Wyden, Useful Idiot,” railed New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. “Is Ron Wyden trying to get Mitt Romney elected?” fumed the Nation magazine. Ron Zerban, a Democrat running for Mr. Ryan’s seat, accused Mr. Wyden of giving the GOP cover and proclaimed him no longer a “Democrat.”

The White House went defcon, insisting that the plan would cause Medicare to “wither on the vine.” House Democrats hissed the plan would end “Medicare as we know it.” Most informative was the gripe of a former Senate staffer: Mr. Wyden was taking away “a key argument for Democrats that are trying to retake the House.” The nerve! Ugly, yes, though it washes over Mr. Wyden, who by Washington standards is one odd duck. On his voting record alone, he ranks with the best of progressives. Yet he’s spent most of his 16 Senate years working from the backbench, with Republicans, on big problems—with some 150 bipartisan bills to date.

Neither a headline-seeker nor a party rebel, he’s best described as a wonk, a workhorse, a doer. That’s kept him popular in his home state where—by contrast to the Beltway storm—the editorial boards praised his outreach to Mr. Ryan, and where seniors in recent town halls have been equally receptive.

As for this town, “you can’t have been in Washington for more than 15 minutes and not have known what was coming,” says a cheery Mr. Wyden, who agreed to an interview (and true to poindexter form, spent it talking policy)., The big issues require bipartisan buy-in, he says, “and you are never going to get good policy if you don’t try.” (See “Obamascare” and “Dodd-Frank”) He rejects Democratic complaints that he should have waited until after the election. “There is never really a good time to take on big, tough issues,” he says. Elections are in fact the opportunity to highlight them.

And Lord knows he’s trying. Mr. Wyden has been stressing to colleagues that this joint proposal is different from Mr. Ryan’s initial reform—which Democrats attacked—and offers plenty to reassure his party. It preserves the option for seniors to stay in government-run Medicare, makes Mr. Ryan’s “premium support” plan more generous, even adds a catastrophic benefit. Mr. Wyden notes there’d have been no plan had not Mr. Ryan agreed to “traditional Medicare remaining a permanent part of the program,” a fact, he says, that rebuts any notion of it “withering on the vine.”

The real problem, he acknowledges, is ideological opposition to any private-sector involvement—a position that frustrates the senator, since it is already reality. More than 40% of Oregon seniors already use private coverage, through Medicare Advantage or Medigap. “This is a disconnected conversation,” he pronounces. The Wyden-Ryan bill is simply acknowledgment that any serious entitlement reform must encompass choice and markets.

That’s been clear since the 1990s, when Democrats like John Breaux and Bob Kerrey came out for premium support. Then, as now, there followed not just the attacks, but the inevitable silence—from the media and those who otherwise make a career out of noisily deploring the deficit. With entitlements the crisis they say they are, you’d have thought at least the Erskine Bowles and the Alan Simpsons would be defending Mr. Wyden for acting.

They haven’t so far, which leads to one Senate Democratic staffer’s lament: “Republicans are better at using Paul Ryan than Democrats are at using Ron Wyden. They both are nerdy policy guys who work on ideas. Republicans embrace Ryan, they get behind him. Democrats look at Ron as an outlier who makes their lives more difficult.”

The Republican challenge is not to add to the difficulty. The GOP may be tempted to take the lazy route, to use Mr. Wyden as cover—which will only feed the liberal complaints. They’d be better off doing the hard work of explaining and promoting reform itself, positioning themselves, and Mr. Wyden, as the adults in the room.

That’s been Mr. Wyden’s focus, leading by example. Asked about the White House’s comments on Wyden-Ryan, he notes only that there is great opportunity to address “big issues” with a “presidential bully pulpit.” He hopes to help. “The first folks who reach out get the most flak,” but hopefully make it “easier for others.” It’s a big hope and, at least right now in liberal-land, a lonely one.

It’s life imitating art; the scene from Jaws where Mayor Vaughn is worried about saving the Summer, and finally, in utter exasperation, Matt Hooper exclaims, “I think that I am familiar with the fact that you are going to ignore this particular problem until it swims up and bites you on the ASS!

Except Hooper’s played by Paul Ryan….and Washington Dimocrats, collectively, are cast as Mayor Vaughn.  The problem is, they’re safe ashore; WE’RE the ones on the menu!

Next up, courtesy of Bill Meisen, the march of the Nanny State continues, as….

Debbie Squires, Education Official, Says Teachers Know What’s Best For Kids, Not Their Parents

It‘s a comment that’s causing quite the controversy in Michigan and forcing the question: Who knows whats‘ best for a child’s education?

During a Michigan House Education Committee hearing earlier this month, Debbie Squires, director of the Michigan Elementary and Middle Schools Principals Association, told members that while parents may have have the best intentions, they may not know what‘s best for their children’s education.

Yeah….parents may not know how best to educate their own children; but Squires and the rest of the Education Establishment does.  After all, their record….

….speaks for itself.

Meanwhile, for the latest on Team Tick-Tock’s unconstitutional War on Religion, we turn to the NewMediaJournal.us, as a….

Catholic Bishop Warns Pelosi, Biden, Sebelius

Politicians who consider themselves Catholic but collaborate in “the assault against their faith” should remember they will one day have to give account for their acts before God, Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria, Illinois said Feb 10. “There is a last judgment. There is a particular judgment. May they change their minds and may God have mercy on them,” he told CNA during his visit to Rome.

When asked specifically about recent actions of Democratic Health and Human Services Secretary Sebelius Kathleen Sebelius and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Bishop Jenky replied “I am utterly scandalized.” “The Lord once said ‘if you deny me at the end, I will deny you,’ this from our most merciful, good Savior. And so if it is a choice between Jesus Christ and political power or getting favorable editorials in leftist papers, well, that’s simply not a choice.”

Both Sebelius and Rep. Pelosi have been at the forefront of attempts to force Catholic institutions to cover contraception, sterilizations and abortifacients as part of their staff’s health insurance plans.

Bishop Jenky said there are too many Catholic politicians in the US who “like to wear green sweaters on St. Patrick’s Day and march” or “have their pictures taken with the hierarchy” or “have conspicuous crosses on their forehead with ashes” but who then “not only do not live their faith they collaborate in the assault against their faith.”

The 64-year-old Chicago native is currently making his “ad limina” visit to Rome to discuss the state of his diocese with the Pope and the Vatican. He is part of a larger episcopal delegation from the states of Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. Bishop Jenky said the issue of religious freedom in the United States has featured in all their meetings so far, including their audience with Pope Benedict XVI Feb. 9.

“Determined secularists see the Catholic Church as the largest institutional block to a completely secularized society and not for the first, and probably not for the last time, we’re under assault,” he said drawing parallels with the anti-Catholic “Kulturkampf” in late 19th century Germany or the anti-clerical laws in France in the early 20th century.

“I am a Holy Cross religious and my own community had six colleges in France and they turned our mother house chapel into a stable,” he said. As for the United States in 2012, “it is always difficult to predict the future but the intensity of hatred against Catholic Christianity in elements of our culture is just astounding.”

He believes the present White House administration is also motivated by a “determined secularism,” while Communist dictator Joseph Stalin would “admire the uniformity of the American press, with some exceptions.”

As most of you know, we’re not Roman Catholic; so would someone out there who is please tell us how much more serious the situation needs to become before the Holy Father weighs in?

And in the “Do As I Say, NOT As I DO!” segment, Liberal hypocrisy is once again on parade:

Brock and the Glock: Armed men guarded Media Matters boss as he took $400,000 gun control donation

Brock (we don’t even want to know where!) with Bawney Fwank.

The recent revelation that the head of Media Matters walked the streets of Washington with a Glock-toting personal assistant acting as a bodyguard may make it a little awkward for the group the next time it seeks a donation from a gun control advocacy group.

Media Matters reportedly took more than $400,000 from the Joyce Foundation specifically earmarked to promote a $600,000 initiative on “gun and public safety issues.” At the same time, Media Matters’ gun-guarded boss David Brock reportedly obsessed over his own security….

Brock reportedly told confidantes that he feared for his safety and needed hired guns to keep him safe. (Just like the late-not-great Carl Rowan, who constantly railed against the 2nd Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens, but saw to his own illegal .22 caliber protection.)  The District’s gun laws are among the strictest in the nation, which raises the question of whether Brock’s assistant at times was in violation of its ban on carrying a concealed weapon.

“He had more security than a Third World dictator,” one Media Matters employee told The Daily Caller. Brock’s guards rarely left Brock’s side and even accompanied him to his home in a tony Washington neighborhood where they “stood post” nightly, the source told the DC.

You don’t understand; he’s an intellectually-superior gay Liberal….rules don’t apply to HIM!

On the Lighter Side….

Then there’s this, which contributor Shannon Wood entitled Ironic Girl, which, in the Latin, translates as Elitist Hypocritia:

And finally, in the “Life Imitates Art” segment, we learn….

One-armed California man claims he was denied Starbucks employment due to disability

This poor guy’s had it tough ever since he got out of the Big House after serving 20 for killing Richard Kimble’s wife.

Magoo