It’s Friday, June 15th, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!

First up, all you need to know about The Obamao’s reframing refrain:

And that from one of his disciples.  As another devoted Liberal acolyte, the WaPo‘s Dana Millbank observed:

“….Obama’s speech was a rehash of earlier proposals — such as sending more Americans to community college and spending more on clean energy. Those plans for additional spending would be more credible if he had a plausible plan to reform entitlement spending, the biggest driver of future debt.”

And oh, by the way….

ID Required At Obama Speech But Not To Vote

Obama Campaign Checks IDs At The Door

No hypocrisy there.

Meanwhile, as Peter Wehner details, courtesy of CommentaryMagazine.com Speed Mach, an increasingly desperate dilettante continues his descent into darkness:

Obama Entering a World All His Own

Barack Obama’s increasingly desperate struggle to win re-election is causing some of his worst traits to be put on display, including petulance and self-pity. The latest example occurred during a fundraiser in Baltimore, when the president said, “Because folks are still hurting right now, the other side feels that it’s enough for them to just sit back and say, ‘Things aren’t as good as they should be, and it’s Obama’s fault.’”

This is rich. No president in human history has quite equaled Obama when it comes to blaming others for his problems. And during the 2008 campaign, everything wrong with America could be laid squarely at the feet of President Bush. But now Obama, having presided over what at this stage must qualify as among the most inept presidencies in American history, is complaining because he’s being held accountable.

What is fairly astonishing in all this is the utter lack of self-awareness by the president. A jolting collision is occurring between his own self-conception (Obama views himself as a world-historical figure and Great Man) and the multiple and multiplying failures of his presidency. Obama appears incapable of processing the truth or coming to grips with reality. And so he’s spinning tales day after day, including his fantastic (and thoroughly discredited) claim that “Since I’ve been president, federal spending has risen at the lowest pace in nearly 60 years.”

Obama has now entered a world all his own. It’s a world where up is down, hot is cold, north is south, and Barack Obama is fiscally responsible and blameless. In its own way, it’s a fascinating psychodrama that’s unfolding. Given that there are still 146 days until the election, it’s hard to imagine where the president will eventually end up.

Down and out and back in Chicago is our fervent hope.

And as this bit of news forwarded from Bill Meisen reports, the hits on Hussein just keep on coming:

Jobless claims on the rise

The number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits climbed last week, indicating continued trouble for the labor market. The Labor Department reported Thursday that 386,000 people filed new jobless claims in the week ended June 9, up 6,000 from the previous week’s revised figure.

That was 11,000 more than expected. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast 375,000 people would file new claims.

Initial claims are a volatile number. But because they’re closely correlated with layoffs, economists consider them to be a key gauge of the job market. Nearly 3.3 million people filed for their second week of unemployment benefits or more in the week ended June 2, the most recent data available. That number was down 33,000 from the previous week.

In a related item, in the Mr. Peabody Memorial “Wayback Machine” segment, further evidence the good things in life don’t change:

As AllahPundit notes at HotAir.com, courtesy of Bill Meisen, “Eighteen years, a catastrophic global recession, and 100 rounds of golf later, here we are.”  Yup; same song, but a strikingly different tune.

Then there’s this warning from the WSJ:

Phony Bush Nostalgia

Beware liberals bestowing praise 20 years later.

You can tell an election is coming because the press corps is having a bout of nostalgia for former Republican Presidents—you know, the ones they opposed in office. The latest focus of Strange New Respect is George H.W. Bush, who in multiple columns is being portrayed as the kind of reasonable Republican who would negotiate with Democrats and raise taxes, unlike Mitt Romney and those nutjobs in the House.

The other President Bush, George W., hasn’t been gone long enough for a Beltway revival, especially because President Obama still needs to blame him for the current economy. But other son Jeb, the former Governor of Florida, has joined his dad in receiving a media love bomb for breaking with the GOP in recent days on immigration and defending his father’s notorious 1990 budget deal.

We agree with Jeb Bush on immigration, among other things, and his father’s Presidency had many accomplishments. But other than filial piety, there’s no good reason to defend the 1990 budget deal, which cost his father a second term and helped to make voters more cynical about politics.

Democrats loved the 1990 deal because a Republican President repudiated his most memorable campaign pledge: “Read my lips: No new taxes.” Democrats ran Congress during the Bush 41 Presidency, and Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell refused any budget deal unless Mr. Bush broke his pledge. Mr. Bush agreed, trading what was claimed to be $1 of tax increases for $2 of spending cuts. In practice the taxes were real but spending increased.

The $137 billion tax increase hit as the economy was weakening and contributed to what was already a recession. Mr. Bush fought for a cut in the capital gains tax to spur investment, and the Senate mustered 51 bipartisan votes for it. But Mr. Mitchell killed it with a filibuster, as he did every other Bush attempt to spur growth. The media never portrayed Mr. Mitchell as an obstructionist.

The tax increase, which raised the top income-tax rate to 31% from 28% (plus the hidden increase from a phase-out of deductions and exemptions), also began the long-unraveling of tax reform. Reagan’s 1986 reform passed on the principle of lower rates with fewer loopholes. But once another Republican President agreed to higher rates, Democrats pocketed the concession and demanded more. Bill Clinton campaigned for higher rates and lifted the top rate to 39.6%. The tax code has since only grown more complicated.

The budget deal was disastrous for Republicans because it undermined their main fiscal difference with Democrats. It was also the kind of insider deal that united both parties in conspiring against the voters to increase spending. That painful lesson helps to explain why many Republicans who are old enough to remember don’t want to repeat the experience.

Bipartisanship is far from dead in Washington. Republican Paul Ryan and Democrat Ron Wyden have united on a significant Medicare reform, and 37 House Democrats recently voted with House Republicans to repeal ObamaCare’s tax on medical devices. A bipartisan tax and budget reform deal is possible with a new President, but the model to follow is Reagan’s of lowering rates, not Mr. Bush’s of raising them.

As for Jeb Bush, like Newt immediately following his infamous global warming commercial with Nancy the Red, color his political career….at least as a Republican….over.

But at the same time the MSM follows the White House narrative by waxing nostalgic over previous Republican Presidents, the Washington Examiner‘s Byron York, courtesy of Conn Carroll, diagnosis the curious case of….

Obama’s amnesia about his first year as president

What is it with Barack Obama and 27 months? Listen to the president and his aides talk, and you’ll soon hear claims that the administration has accomplished great things in the last 27 months. “The private sector creat[ed] nearly 4.3 million new jobs in the last 27 months,” the president said at a fundraiser in Baltimore on Tuesday. “We have created 500,000 manufacturing jobs over the last 27 months,” top Obama economic adviser Gene Sperling said the same day on CNN. “We’ve had 4.3 million private-sector jobs created over the last 27 months,” Obama campaign spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said in a conference call with reporters Monday.

There are plenty of other examples. Beyond that, whenever Mitt Romney or some other Republican attacks the president’s record, the Obama campaign sends out reams of rebuttal material pointing to economic progress — all in the last 27 months.

The problem, of course, is that Barack Obama has been president for 40 months. So why do he and his supporters speak as if he has only been in the White House for the last 27 — that is, since March 2010? It’s as if the first third of Obama’s presidency just doesn’t count.

Obviously, the president is trying to make his record look better; his first months in the White House saw devastating job losses and economic misery. Yet most of what Obama accomplished domestically also occurred in that unmentioned period. In fact, March 2010 just happened to be the month in which the president’s signature achievement, the national health care program known as Obamacare, became law.

It came at a time when Americans were desperate for Obama to devote all of his attention to fixing the economy and helping create jobs. What is sometimes forgotten today is that, at the time, the president and his allies in Congress argued that passing Obamacare was, in fact, the most important thing they could do to create jobs.

Democrats had wanted to pass national health care for generations. But faced with a terrible economic crisis, they were pressed to explain why they were spending time on health care rather than the economy. So after passing the $826 billion stimulus in February 2009 (another accomplishment of the lost period that sometimes goes unmentioned), they began to argue that passing the health care bill was critical for economic recovery. Obamacare, they claimed, was really a jobs bill.

In an April 2009 speech at Georgetown University in which he laid out “five pillars” of economic recovery, Obama argued that an economic comeback would be impossible without passing his health care bill. “If we don’t invest now in a more affordable health care system,” he said, “this economy simply won’t grow at the pace it needs to in two or five or 10 years down the road.”

Six months later, in October 2009, with health care still consuming the Democratic Congress and his administration, Obama said, “We know that reforming our health insurance system will be a critical step in rebuilding our economy.” Even later, in January 2010, a headline on the website Politico told the story straight out: “Obama: Health bill will create jobs.”

The president’s Democratic allies were just as vocal. “The key issue in building a sustainable recovery is reform of health care,” said Rep. Henry Waxman, then chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce committee, in March 2009. “[Obamacare] will create 4 million jobs,” then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said nearly a year later, in February 2010. “Four hundred thousand jobs almost immediately.”

Even as the president and his team claimed that passing Obamacare was the most important thing they could do to bring about economic recovery, they also promised that at some point in the future they would “pivot” from health care to the economy. It was a little confusing — why the need to pivot if Obamacare was really about jobs? — but in the end, there would be no pivot until after the health care bill became law. It came first.

These days, the president doesn’t talk about pivoting much — his campaign even became angry recently when Romney brought it up. But Democrats are likely to hear much more about it as the campaign goes on. Whenever Team Obama touts its record over the past 27 months, the Romney campaign will remind them that’s not the whole story.

The Obamao: less and less like Lincoln….and a heckuva lot more suggestive of….

Next it’s the Nanny State update; you knew they weren’t going to stop at transfats and supersized sodas:

After soda ban proposal, NYC officials set sights on popcorn and milk shakes

Watch out, moviegoers — Nanny York City is taking aim at yet another of life’s gluttonous pleasures. On the heels of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s call for a ban on jumbo-sized sodas and other sugary drinks, city officials are now considering restrictions on treats ranging from popcorn to milkshakes.

At a meeting Tuesday, members of the New York City Board of Health expressed support for Bloomberg’s proposal. They then started brainstorming other ways to cut the fat, according to MyFoxNY.com. Member Bruce Vladeck proposed limiting movie-theater popcorn containers. “The popcorn isn’t a whole lot better than the soda,” he said. 

Another member suggested limits for milkshakes and “milk-coffee beverages.” 

The board, whose members were appointed by Bloomberg, will vote on the mayor’s drink proposal — but agreed to a six-week, public-comment period before taking a vote, according to MyFoxNY.com.

Bloomberg’s now gone a bridge too far even for FOX News’….

Dr. Manny: Ban on popcorn sizes is a step too far

Which begs the question why Dr. Manny, whose opinion on anything is generally as valuable as Harry Reid’s, didn’t see this coming a mile away?

On the Lighter Side….

And in the Wide, Wild World of Sports….

Lance Hit With Doping Charges

No word on whether The Dear Misleader….

….may soon face similar charges; anyone who voted for him has already been declared a dope!

Finally, we’ll call it a week with another classic sports moment, a video clip showing why pitchers don’t throw perfect games by themselves:

No doubt Matt Cain will be showing Gregor Blanco, and the rest of his defense, some small token of his appreciation.

Magoo