It’s Tuesday, June 26th, 2012….but before we begin, we take time for a brief public service announcement.  We will be on the road Wednesday morning through Friday evening in order to participate in our late father’s memorial golf tournament, so after the Wednesday edition, we’ll be off until Monday.

FYI, the tournament raises scholarship funds for student athletes in the Rush-Henrietta Central School District just south of Rochester, NY.  “The Bear”, as he’s most often remembered, started the football program at R-H, and after losing only 3 games in eight varsity seasons became the Athletic Director, a position he held until his retirement.  And yes, Mr. McQueen, they WERE better than Aquinas or McQuaid!  😉

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, Michael Barone details the first and most important rule for radicals: when the going gets tough, play the….

Obama Backers Use Race as Alibi for Ebbing Support

As Barack Obama’s lead over Mitt Romney in the polls narrows, and his presumed fundraising advantage seems about to become a disadvantage, it’s alibi time for some of his backers. His problem, they say, is that some voters don’t like him because he’s black. Or they don’t like his policies because they don’t like having a black president.

So, you see, if you don’t like Obamacare, it’s not because it threatens to take away your health insurance, or to deny coverage for some treatments. It’s because you don’t like black people.

This sort of thing seems to be getting more frequent, or at least more open. As White House Dossier writer Keith Koffler notes, HBO host Bill Maher accused Internet tyro Matt Drudge of being animated by racism because he highlights anti-Obama stories. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews asked former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown if House Chairman Darrell Issa’s treatment of Attorney General Eric Holder was “ethnic.” Brown agreed, and Matthews said some Republicans “talk down to the president and his friends.”

There’s an obvious problem with the racism alibi. Barack Obama has run for president before, and he won. Voters in 2008 knew he was black. Most of them voted for him. He carried 28 states and won 365 electoral votes. Nationwide, he won 53 percent of the popular vote. That may not sound like a landslide, but it’s a higher percentage than any Democratic nominee except Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.

Democratic national conventions have selected nominees 45 times since 1832. In seven cases, they won more than 53 percent of the vote. In 37 cases, they won less.

That means President Obama won a larger percentage of the vote than Martin Van Buren, James K. Polk, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and (though you probably don’t want to bring this up in conversation with him) Bill Clinton.

Now it is true that you can go out in America and find people who would just never vote for a black person. But it’s a lot harder than it was a generation or two ago, when most voters admitted to pollsters they would never vote for a black president. And you can probably find some people who usually vote for Democrats but would not vote for a black Democrat. But not very many of them, and they’re likely to be pretty advanced in age, and so there are likely fewer of them around than there were four years ago.

My own view is that such voters were more than counterbalanced by voters who felt that, as an abstract proposition in the light of our history, it would be a good thing for Americans to elect a black president.

In 2008, Obama, who came to national attention by decrying the polarization of Red-state and Blue-state America, had obvious appeal to voters. I think there is a similar, and similarly unquantifiable, factor working for Obama this year: Many voters feel, as an abstract proposition, that it would be a bad thing for American voters to reject the first black president.

Some conservatives complain that there is a double standard, that whites who vote against Obama are accused of racial motives, while blacks, 95 percent of whom voted for him, are not. I think that’s unfair. Members of an identifiable group that has been in some way excluded from full recognition as citizens will naturally tend to support a candidate who could be the first president from that group. In 1960, Gallup reported that 78 percent of American Catholics voted for John Kennedy. American blacks have suffered exclusion and discrimination more than any other group. And very large percentages of them regularly vote for candidates who share Obama’s views on issues.

What’s remarkable about our politics in 2008 and today is that most voters seem to be making their decisions based on their assessment of the issues and the character of the candidates. The fact that some have, at least for the moment, moved away from supporting Obama to opposing him, or remain unsure, reflects not an increasing racism, but the fact that we simply have more information than we had four years ago.

Most of us are disappointed when our candidates don’t win. But that’s no excuse for phony alibis.

It’s as phony as a $3 bill….or, if you prefer, The Obamao’s religiosity….but it’s all they’ve got!  And you can depend on the fact it only gets uglier from here ’til November….and well beyond.  Sending The Dear Misleader and his family of serial vacationers back to Chicago is just one battle in the never-ending conflict between the Right and the Wrong.  😉  And we’re in it for the long haul.

In a related item from the Morning Examiner, Conn Carroll offers his observations how….

Obama’s arrogance sunk Obamacare

“I love me, you love me, I’m the brighest you’ll ever see.” (The Obamao as Barney)

Some time this week, possibly today but more likely Wednesday or Thursday, the Supreme Court is expected to rule on whether or not Obamacare’s individual mandate is Constitutional. Most people, including most former Supreme Court law clerks, believe the Court will overturn the law. If they do, it would be a huge defeat for President Obama, a defeat that reporting from The Washington Post and New York Times suggests, could have been avoided.

The New York Times reports:

In passing the law two years ago, Democrats entertained little doubt that it was constitutional. The White House held a conference call to tell reporters that any legal challenge, as one Obama aide put it, “will eventually fail and shouldn’t be given too much credence in the press.”

And a separate New York Times article makes it clear that the White House’s low opinion of the legal case against Obamacare came straight from the top:

As he awaits the decision, Mr. Obama has no more knowledge of or influence on it than any of the other lawyers handicapping the odds in Washington bars and boardrooms. The former law professor turned president is scathing about the argument that the mandate violates the Constitution, saying it has no merit whatsoever.

Despite the fact that he never took the legal argument against Obamacare seriously, The Washington Post reports that Obama personally took a lead role in developing legal strategy:

Obama, a former constitutional law instructor, and White House lawyers helped shape a legal strategy essentially portraying health care as a unique marketplace that Congress, under the Constitution’s interstate commerce clause, could regulate by imposing the requirement that consumers buy insurance before receiving treatment or pay a penalty.

Many liberals had criticized Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. for a halting performance during the oral arguments on the case in March. But while Verrilli took the lead in shaping the government’s case, the broader strategy being questioned in some circles stemmed from a close partnership between the solicitor general’s office and the White House — with the strategy securing Obama’s approval.

If Obamacare is struck down this week, Obama has no one to blame but himself.

But he’ll give it the old college try!  Bush, Rove, racist Republican reactionaries, bitter clingers in Pennsylvania; take your pick.  Or better yet, select “all of the above”.  No matter; it’s NEVER….

….HIS fault!

Meanwhile, courtesy of Bill Meisen, Matt Cover writing at CNSNews.com reports on what should come as no surprise to anyone with half a brain….or a lick of common sense:

Study: More Than Half a Trillion Dollars Spent on Welfare – But Poverty Levels Unaffected

The government is not making much headway reducing poverty despite spending hundreds of billions of dollars, according to a study by the libertarian Cato Institute. Despite an unprecedented increase in federal anti-poverty spending the national poverty rate has not declined, it finds. “[S]ince President Obama took office, federal welfare spending has increased by 41 percent, more than $193 billion per year.” the study says. Federal welfare spending this year now totals $668 billion, spread out over 126 programs, while the poverty rate that remains stubbornly high at nearly 15 percent – roughly where it was in 1965, when President Johnson declared a federal War on Poverty.

While the study concedes that some of the increased spending under Obama is a result of the recession and the counter-cyclical nature of anti-poverty programs, it also finds that some of the increase is deliberate, with the government having expanded eligibility for welfare programs. “But the dramat­ically larger increase also suggests that part of the program’s growth is due to conscious policy choices by this administration to ease eligibility rules and expand caseloads,” the Cato report says. “For example, income limits for eligibility have risen twice as fast as inflation since 2007 and are now roughly 10 percent higher than they were when Obama took office.”

In fact, the study points out that according to the administration’s own projections, federal welfare spending is unlikely to decline even after the economy recovers – further evidence that not all of the increase in spending is recession-related. “All this spending has not bought an ap­preciable reduction in poverty,” the study says. “[T]he poverty rate has remained relatively constant since 1965, despite rising welfare spending.”

The study faults the way poverty programs are designed, saying that the increase in spending and largely unchanged poverty rate showed that the issue is not a matter of money, but a matter of what the programs aim to achieve. “The vast majority of current programs are focused on making poverty more comfortable – giv­ing poor people more food, better shelter, health care, and so forth – rather than giving people the tools that will help them escape poverty.”

Instead, the study recommends refocusing anti-poverty efforts on keeping people in school, discouraging out-of-wedlock births, and encouraging people to get a job – even if that job is a low-wage one. “It would make sense therefore to shift our anti-poverty efforts from government programs that simply provide money or goods and services to those who are living in poverty to efforts to create the condi­tions and incentives that will make it eas­ier for people to escape poverty.

Which of course will never happen, as it would require Blacks to suddenly throw off the chains of 50 years of victimization.  More importantly, it would force Progressives to admit they’re the ones that forged the chains.

And in Economic News, the AEI‘s Kevin Hassett forecasts heavy weather ahead:

The storm approaches

With Greece in turmoil, Spain not much better off, and the rest of Europe on edge, the U.S. has been sitting on the periphery of a major European crisis in a manner that is reminiscent of the period preceding World War II. As then, many Americans seem convinced that European troubles will never spread across the Atlantic Ocean.

At its core, the crisis is one of investor confidence, and it comes in response to sober analysis of the finances of southern-European countries. Their deficits are large; their future looks bleak because so many of them have enacted entitlement programs that grow without bound, and because the recent financial crisis put overwhelming strains on their near-term budgets.

As economists struggle over the design of reforms to restore stability to international financial markets, their starting point is to define the problem. While there can be much debate about how to achieve balanced budgets, the question of how much balancing is needed — and in which countries — is a matter of arithmetic.

A recent series of papers from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) explores the relevant calculations. One study, by economists Rossana Merola and Douglas Sutherland, focuses on long-term projections for OECD member countries. The authors calculate fiscal gaps — the immediate and permanent changes in the governments’ financial position that are required to ensure that debt meets a specific target by a certain time. When assessing how much “fiscal consolidation” is needed, the authors estimate the potential effects of threats to smooth budgetary reform, such as unexpected shocks or rapidly aging populations.

The nearby chart presents one of their scenarios, which takes into account an increase in spending on health-care programs and pensions but assumes that certain policies will be in place to control for these quickly rising expenditures. The chart shows the change required to stabilize debt at 75 percent of GDP in 26 OECD countries by 2050. Whether this target is high or low, it unquestionably represents a circumstance far superior to the current trajectory.

Take Japan. The Japanese government needs to permanently increase revenues or reduce spending by 10.5 percent of GDP in order to put its finances on a glide path to the target debt-to-GDP ratio. The authors’ assumption that the Japanese government will implement policies to contain spending on health care and pensions is particularly relevant, given Japan’s graying population.

Some European countries, such as Sweden and Switzerland, have already taken steps to curb their deficits and have little or no work to do. Others, such as those in southern Europe, do not expect dramatic increases in entitlement spending, so their long-run picture is not as bleak as might be expected.

Consider, finally, the United States. It is in a different situation from that of the Europeans, but not in the way we would hope for. Our fiscal gap is the third highest, following Japan’s and New Zealand’s. As bad as things are in Europe, the chart suggests that there is no European nation in worse shape than the United States over the long run. Not Spain. Not Italy. Not Greece. The crisis looks set on crossing the Atlantic after all.

Coming soon….to a city, county, state and country quite near to you!

And in the Environmental Moment, Charlie Drevna tells it like it is: Liberal lies and White House’s policies are stifling oil and natural gas production:

On the Lighter Side….

Then there’s this beauty from Best of the Web:

Life Imitates the Comics

• Calvin: “See, the chicken pox are going away.” Calvin’s mom: “That’s good.” Calvin: “Well, just remember that this week doesn’t count.” Calvin’s mom: “Doesn’t count?” Calvin: “Right. Summer vacation days don’t count if you’re sick. I get to start school a week later now, so I get my full allotment of vacation.” Calvin (to Hobbes): “OK, what’s the next amendment say? I know it’s in here someplace.”–from Calvin and Hobbes, June 16, 1990
• “For most Europeans, almost nothing is more prized than their four to six weeks of guaranteed annual vacation leave. But it was not clear just how sacrosanct that time off was until Thursday, when Europe’s highest court ruled that workers who happened to get sick on vacation were legally entitled to take another vacation.“–New York Times, June 22, 2012

Seriously, you couldn’t make this stuff up!

And in the Wide, Wild World of Sports….

Soccer fan dies after reportedly staying awake for 11 days to watch Euros

A Chinese soccer fan died at his home after going 11 nights without sleep as he watched every single Euro 2012 game from Poland and Ukraine. Jiang Xiaoshan died from exhaustion June 19 after reportedly staying up every night to watch the Euros with his friends.

Exhaustion our ass!  11 nights of soccer?!?  He died of boredom!

Next up, another sign the Apocalypse is upon us, the

Bronx school bus driver dead after being beat up for knocking off side-view mirror

A Bronx school bus driver died yesterday from the beating he suffered after he accidentally knocked a side-view mirror from a double-parked car, a spokeswoman for his bus company said. Juan Delvalle, 65, never regained consciousness after Joey Scott, 30, allegedly punched him twice in the face June 11, said Carolyn Daly, a spokeswoman for the Atlantic Express bus company.

He died peacefully at St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx. “The family had been struggling all week with whether or not to take him off life support,” Daly said. “The swelling and bleeding in the brain were extensive,” Daly said. “He was hooked up to a ventilator and that was the only reason he could breathe. He never regained consciousness. It was a very, very severe injury.”

….Delvalle, who’d driven for Atlantic Express for eight years, was driving two middle-school students in his yellow bus on Anthony Avenue near Echo Place when he clipped Scott’s illegally-parked Chrysler Sebring. The passing school bus ripped off the Chrysler’s mirror. In an extreme display of road-rage, Scott lost it and punched the grandfather twice, police said. Delvalle fell backward and his head struck the pavement. He was rushed to the hospital and never woke up again.

Delvalle’s family and friends hope the Bronx DA’s charges will charge Scott with homicide, Daly said. Scott, who has a long rap sheet, fled the scene. Cops found him at his Tremont apartment, and needed two hours to negotiate his arrest.

Bush, Rove, racist Republican reactionaries, bitter clingers in Pennsylvania, take you pick; but it wasn’t Mr. Scott’s fault.

Finally, we’ll call it a day with another titillating tale ripped from the pages of the Crime Blotter:

Judge orders Utah mom to chop off daughter’s ponytail in courtroom

Kaytlen Lopan: Mommy’s Little Angel….with vicious streak a mile wide!

A Utah judge told the mother of a 13-year-old girl who chopped off a toddler’s long hair in a restaurant that he would reduce her daughter’s sentence if she cut off the teenager’s own ponytail in court. District Juvenile Judge Scott Johansen gave Valerie Bruno the option to either cut off her daughter Kaytlen Lopan’s long hair “right now” with courtroom scissors or have the teen spend an extra 150 hours in detention as punishment for hacking off the locks of a 3-year-old girl she befriended in a McDonald’s in Price.

Bruno opted for the haircut but later expressed her anger over the judgment and said that she had filed an official complaint against the judge. “She definitely needed to be punished for what had happened,” she told the Deseret News. “But I never dreamt it would be that much of a punishment.”

Mommy dearest: the probable source of most of this budding Bonnie Parker’s problems.

Mindy Moss, the mother of the 3-year-old girl, supported the decision and even was asked by the judge if she was satisfied with the length Bruno initially cut off her daughter’s blonde hair in court. “No,” Moss replied. “My daughter’s hair that had never been cut, that was down to [the middle of her back], was cut up to here [her jaw].” Johansen then ordered Bruno to “take it off clear up to the rubber band.”

On the day of the attack, Kaytlen and an unnamed 11-year-old female friend spoke to the girl in McDonald’s, then asked a server there if they could borrow a pair of scissors. When their request was refused, the youngsters went to a nearby dollar shop to buy a pair and returned to the restaurant to carry out the act.

At an earlier hearing, Johansen ordered the 11-year-old girl to have her hair cut as short as his but allowed the child to have the haircut in a salon.

Bruno added, “I guess I should have went into the courtroom knowing my rights because I felt very intimidated. An eye for an eye, that’s not how you teach kids right from wrong.” Kaytlen also admitted to charges in another case rising from eight months of phone calls she made to a Colorado teen that included threats of rape and mutilation.

The only thing that has Bruno intimidated is her Little Angel….who at this rate is on the express train to the 7th level of Hell.  Our suggestion?  Both mother and daughter need an overnight excursion to Singapore; forty whacks with a cane ought to do it.

Magoo