It’s Wednesday, September 21st, 2011….and here’s the Gouge!

We lead off the mid-week edition with the “Are There Any Other Kind?!?” segment, courtesy of the WSJ and a Dimocratically-controlled Senate that in over 870 days STILL hasn’t passed a budget:

Do-Nothing Democrats?

Even Chuck Schumer has problems with Obama’s tax plan.

President Obama’s latest “pivot to jobs” has turned out to be more of a sharp left turn. First he announced a new $447 billion stimulus of new spending and temporary tax cuts. Then on Monday he proposed to offset it with $1.5 trillion over 10 years in permanent tax hikes. Mr. Obama knows that little of what he’s proposing will pass the Republican-controlled House, so the conventional wisdom has it that the President is trying to emulate Harry Truman by setting up a “do-nothing Congress” as a re-election foil.

But the bigger news may be how much resistance Mr. Obama’s ideas are drawing from the Democrats who control the Senate. Senators from energy-producing states object to targeting oil and gas companies. “Just picking out one industry is not acceptable,” said Alaska’s Mark Begich. Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu added: “That offset is not going to fly, and [Mr. Obama] should know that.”

Even New York’s Chuck Schumer, of all unlikely partisans, has objections—notably to Mr. Obama’s plan to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire on taxpayers earning more than $200,000 (or $250,000 for married couples): “$250,000 makes you really rich in Mississippi, but it doesn’t make you rich at all in New York, and there ought to be some kind of scale based on the cost of living on how much you pay.”

Mr. Schumer didn’t mention that one reason for the cost-of-living differential is the Empire State’s own sky-high taxes, but the important political point is that the Democratic Party’s chief Wall Street fund-raiser is tacitly acknowledging that raising taxes on the not-so-rich isn’t popular.

Other Senate Democrats don’t like the President’s basic priorities. “Tax increases have to come second to cutting [spending],” said Ben Nelson of Nebraska, perhaps the most vulnerable Democrat up for re-election next year. “I was just home over the weekend and that’s what [my constituents] were all talking about.”

Delaware’s Tom Carper, who ought to have an easier time retaining his seat, said: “I think the best jobs bill that can be passed is a comprehensive long-term deficit-reduction plan. That’s better than everything else the president is talking about—combined.”

Not all of the objecting Democrats are concerned about their own re-election. Virginia’s Jim Webb, who is retiring, called the President’s tax proposals “terrible,” adding: “We shouldn’t increase taxes on ordinary income. . . . There are other ways to get there.”

The Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman told a reporter from his home state of Connecticut that Mr. Obama’s plan “doesn’t represent the kind of comprehensive tax reform, entitlement reform and spending reduction that we need to get our country back into balance. And to me, therefore, it doesn’t pass the test. And I don’t think it can be passed.”

One of the many differences between 1948 and 2012 is that Republicans then had majorities in both houses of Congress. Mr. Obama will find it harder to run against a do-nothing Congress when his own party is rejecting his ideas.

Meanwhile, as The Obamao urges Congress to beat to quarters….

….his own crew appears on the verge of mutiny:

Obama:Pass Jobs Bill Now; Durbin: Senate Will Take It Up In October

No worries; whatever happens, it’s all the fault of Bush and those nasty House Republicans!

And if you’re wondering what America will look like in the wake of another 4 years of The Anointed One’s scorched-earth policies, the WSJ‘s Bret Stephens has the answer, courtesy of Art Santry:

What Comes After ‘Europe’?

The riots of Athens will become those of Milan, Madrid and Marseilles. Border checkpoints will return. Currencies will be resurrected, then devalued.

When the history of the rise and fall of postwar Western Europe is someday written, it will come in three volumes. Title them “Hard Facts,” “Convenient Fictions” and—the volume still being written—”Fraud.”

The hardest fact on which postwar Europe was founded was military necessity, crisply summed up by Lord Ismay’s famous line that NATO’s mission was “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” The next hard fact was hard money, the gift of Ludwig Erhard, author of the economic reforms that created the Deutsche mark, abolished price controls, and put inflation in check for generations. The third hard fact was the creation of Jean Monnet’s common market that gave Europe a shared economic—not political—identity.

The result was the Wirtschaftswunder in Germany, Les Trente Glorieuses in France and il miracolo economico in Italy. It could have lasted into the present day. It didn’t.

In 1965, government spending as a percentage of GDP averaged 28% in Western Europe. Today it hovers just under 50%. In 1965, the fertility rate in Germany was a healthy 2.5 children per mother. Today it is a catastrophic 1.35. During the postwar years, annual GDP growth in Europe averaged 5.5%. After 1973, it rarely exceeded 2.3%. In 1973, Europeans worked 102 hours for every 100 worked by an American. By 2004 they worked just 82 hours for every 100 American ones. (As Astro would say, “Ruh roh, Rorge!”)

It was during this general slowdown that Europe entered the convenient fiction phase.

There was, for starters, the convenient fiction that if you just added up the GDP of the European Union’s expanding list of member states, you had an economy whose size exceeded that of the United States. Didn’t this make “Europe” an economic superpower? There was the convenient fiction that Europe didn’t need robust military capabilities when it could exert global influence through diplomacy and soft power. There was the convenient fiction that Europeans shared identical values and could thus be subject to uniform regulations governing crime and punishment. There was the convenient fiction that Continentals weren’t lagging in productivity but were simply making an enlightened choice of leisure over labor.

And there was, finally, the whopping fiction that Europe had its own “model,” distinct and superior to the American one, that immunized it from broader international currents: globalization, Islamism, demography. Europeans love their holidays and thought they were entitled to a long holiday from history as well.

All this did wonders, for a while, to mask European failures and puff up European pride. But there is always a danger in substituting grandiosity for achievement, mistaking pronouncements for facts, or, more generally, believing in your own nonsense.

Here is where Europe slipped from convenient fiction to outright fraud.

There was the fraud of Greece’s entry into the euro, a double-edged affair since Athens lied about its budgetary figures and Brussels chose to accept the lie. There was the fraud of the so-called Maastricht criteria—the fiscal rules that were supposed to govern the euro only to be quickly flouted by France and Germany and then junked altogether in the current crisis. There was the fraud of the European Constitution, overwhelmingly rejected wherever a vote on it was permitted, only to be revised and imposed by parliamentary fiat. (Can you say “Obamascare”?  We KNEW you could!)

What is now happening in Europe isn’t so much a crisis as it is an exposure: a Madoff-type event rather than a Lehman one. The shock is that it’s a shock. Greece was never going to be bailed out and will, sooner or later, default. The banks holding Greek debt will, sooner or later, be recapitalized. The recapitalization will be borne by German taxpayers, and it will bring them—sooner rather than later—to the outer limit of their forbearance. The Chinese will not ride to the rescue: They know not to throw good money after bad.

And then Italy will go Greek. Europe’s crisis will lap on U.S. shores, and America’s economic woes will lap on Europe’s—a two-way tsunami. America will survive this because America is a state. But as Bismarck once remarked, “Whoever speaks of Europe is wrong. Europe is a geographical expression.” The “fiscal union” that’s being mooted will never come to pass: German voters won’t stand for it, and neither will any other country that wants to retain fiscal independence—which is to say, the core attribute of democratic sovereignty.

What comes next is the explosion of the European project. Given what European leaders have made of that project over the past 30-odd years, it’s not an altogether bad thing. But it will come at a massive cost. The riots of Athens will become those of Milan, Madrid and Marseilles. Parties of the fringe will gain greater sway. Border checkpoints will return. Currencies will be resurrected, then devalued. Countries will choose decay over reform. It’s a long, likely parade of horribles.

Where is the Europe of Ismay, Erhard and Monnet? It’s there in memory, if anyone cares to recover it. Give it another 50 years, and maybe someone will.

And since we’re on the subject of deliberate misrepresentation, James Taranto details another classic bit of Progressive prevarication from a member of the MSM who’s developed lying into an art-form:

“I’m not a crook,” Richard Nixon once said. “This is not class warfare,” President Obamainsisted yesterday as he introduced his proposal for massive tax increases. “It’s math.”

The headline of Eugene Robinson’s column in today’s Washington Post echoes the president’s contention: “Obama’s Tax Plan Is Common Sense, Not Class Warfare.” This ought to be followed by an asterisk, with the first two sentences of the column as the footnote:

“Class warfare!” scream the Republicans, in a voice usually reserved for phrases such as “Run for your lives!”

Spare us the histrionics. The GOP and its upper-crust patrons have been waging an undeclared but devastating war against middle-class, working-class and poor Americans for decades. Now they scream bloody murder at the notion that long-suffering victims might finally hit back.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press has one of those “fact check” pieces on the president’s speech, and it actually contains some facts:

President Barack Obama says he wants to make sure millionaires are taxed at higher rates than their secretaries. The data say they already are. . . .

On average, the wealthiest people in America pay a lot more taxes than the middle class or the poor, according to private and government data. They pay at a higher rate, and as a group, they contribute a much larger share of the overall taxes collected by the federal government.

The 10 percent of households with the highest incomes pay more than half of all federal taxes. They pay more than 70 percent of federal income taxes, according to the Congressional Budget Office. . . .

This year, households making more than $1 million will pay an average of 29.1 percent of their income in federal taxes, including income taxes, payroll taxes and other taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.

Households making between $50,000 and $75,000 will pay an average of 15 percent of their income in federal taxes.

Lower-income households will pay less. For example, households making between $40,000 and $50,000 will pay an average of 12.5 percent of their income in federal taxes. Households making between $20,000 and $30,000 will pay 5.7 percent.

But don’t worry. According to Eugene Robinson, the president has a plan by which “long-suffering victims” will “hit back” at “the GOP and its upper-crust patrons” who “have been waging an undeclared but devastating war against middle-class, working-class and poor Americans.” Sounds like class warfare to us.

Yeah….but other than the underlying facts, the story’s TRUE!

Speaking of lies, we wish Anita “My Heroes Have Always Been Marxists” Dunn would pick a story and stick to it:

Author Provides Evidence of ‘Hostile’ Workplace Claim in White House

Saayy WHAAAATTT?!?

….According to a Washington Post account of the book, former White House communications director Anita Dunn is quoted as saying, “This place would be in court for a hostile workplace. Because it actually fits all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women.”

But Dunn, who is married to former White House counsel Bob Bauer, told the newspaper in an interview on Friday that she told Suskind “point blank” that the White House “was not a hostile environment.” “The president is someone who when he goes home at night he goes home to a house full of very strong women,” she said. “He values having strong women around him.”

But Suskind allowed a Post reporter to listen to a recorded excerpt of the original interview, which occurred via telephone in April, that includes Dunn’s “hostile” remark. “With Anita, The Washington Post this morning confirms the quote,” Suskind said. “I had to do something that I’ve never done before, but I said it’s a special occasion, which is I let The Washington Post listen to the tape. “They’re like, there it is clear as a bell.”

Next up, as the WSJ reports, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson suggests eliminating a….

Million-Dollar Mascot

And other ways to cut $1.4 trillion.

ESPN college football analyst Lee Corso likes to dress up as a school mascot to show which team he’s picking to win. Perhaps he’d be willing to serve his country in a similar way by choosing a mascot for the federal Department of Homeland Security. Turns out the feds have been creating various animated characters for materials intended to “prepare” kids for disasters, and Senator Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) reports that Washington could save $2.6 million over 10 years if the bureaucrats could simply settle on one mascot.

We trust Mr. Corso’s impeccable judgment in selecting among Herman the Crab, Jett the Turtle and other worthies, and we also find compelling Mr. Johnson’s new catalog of potential federal cost savings.

Going way beyond mascots, the Senator has identified $1.4 trillion in savings over 10 years for any Congressional “Super Committee” members looking to make sensible cuts on behalf of taxpayers. Reasonable people can argue over the details, but what’s encouraging about the plan is that it shows how much leaner the federal government could be without even cutting back on services that many voters demand.

Relying heavily on the work of Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn as well as independent groups like Third Way, Mr. Johnson has found impressive savings across federal operations. The biggest item takes $248 billion out of salaries for most federal workers, but no one gets fired or suffers a pay cut. The cuts are achieved through attrition and a pay freeze for civilians through 2015. Mr. Johnson reports that federal workers are now making 30% to 40% more in combined wages and benefits than comparable workers in the real economy. His plan therefore gives taxpayers a fighting chance to catch up with the public servants they’re supporting.

The Johnson plan also has at least one element that President Obama should love: eliminating federal reviews on transportation projects whenever state and local rules meet or exceed federal standards. Cutting this duplicative red tape and streamlining approvals would save $50 billion. Mr. Obama should sign this—if we may borrow a phrase—right away.

At least the Senate will get right to it….in October….of 2013!

And in the Solyndra update:

Solyndra Executives to Plead Fifth at Congressional Hearing

In other green-related news, here’s today’s Environmental Moment, where we learn….

Times Atlas Apologizes for Global-Warming Error

Climate-gate, Himalaya-gate, and now … Atlas-gate? Publishers of the Times Comprehensive Atlas of the Worldscrambled Tuesday to correct a controversial statement that Greenland had lost 15 percent of its permanent ice cover over the last 12 years — an assertion scientists labeled “incorrect and misleading.” The gradual melting was also depicted in the atlas itself, as cartographers carved out huge chunks of ice to reflect the apparent results of a warming planet.

That was a mistake, scientists say. Poul Christoffersen, a glaciologist at the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, said the 15 percent decrease in permanent ice cited “is both incorrect and misleading.” He believes the actual number is closer to 0.1 percent. “It is regrettable that the claimed drastic reduction in the extent of ice in Greenland has created headline news around the world,” Christoffersen said. “There is to our knowledge no support for this claim in the published scientific literature.”

HarperCollins on Monday tried to justify its position. “We are the best there is. We are confident of the data we have used and of the cartography,” a company spokesman explained to the Guardian. “We use data supplied by the U.S. Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Col. They use radar techniques to measure the permanent ice. We have compared the extent of the ice surface in 1999 with that of 2011. Our data shows that it has reduced by 15 percent. That’s categorical.”

But with mounting pressure from the scientific community, the publisher took an about-face one day later, retreating from earlier claims and admitting the company may have been “misleading with regard to the Greenland statistics.”

“The conclusion that was drawn from this, that 15 percent of Greenland’s once permanent ice cover has melted away, was highlighted in the press release, not in the Atlas itself,” HarpersCollins said in a statement. “This was done without consulting the scientific community and was incorrect. We apologize for this and will seek the advice of scientists on any future public statements.”

Maintaining the accuracy of the new maps though, may not be enough. When comparing the maps to recent satellite images Christofferson and his team found “numerous glaciers and permanent ice cover where the new Times Atlas shows ice-free conditions and the emergence of new lands.”

“In the aftermath of ‘Himalayagate,’ we glaciologists are hypersensitive to egregious errors in supposedly authoritative sources,” Graham Cogley of Trent University in Canada told the BBC, referring to a debunked claim that the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035. “Climate change is real, and Greenland ice cover is shrinking. But the claims here are simply not backed up by science; this pig can’t fly.”

HarpersCollins did not return FoxNews.com requests for comment.

What a surprise!  Climate change may in fact be real; but humans are neither causing it, nor can we do the least little bit to retard or impact its progress.

On the Lighter Side….

Finally, we’ll wrap things up with a public service announcement from John Plunket via G. Trevor, Lord High King of All Vietors: submitted for your approval, the Obamlich:

Caution: the Obamlich should only be applied to those experiencing two or more symptoms of SOBSS (Severe Obama Ballot Self-Reproach Syndrome), which include:

• Muttering, “WTF was I THINKING?!?
• Doggedly claiming they’d have voted Republican, but Joe Biden was more qualified than Sarah Palin.
• Excusing the inexcusable by maintaining, “How did I know he was a Marxist?!?”
• A large “L” tattooed on their forehead.

Magoo