It’s Wednesday, August 15th, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!

Leading off the mid-week edition, two video clips forwarded by Bill Meisen which remind us, come November 7th, America truly has to make a choice; enslavement through government dependency, or….

….freedom….

….of choice, opportunity and achievement.

Or, as Thomas Sowell so eloquently summarizes, it’s….

The Paul Ryan Choice 

 

Governor Mitt Romney’s choice of Congressman Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential running mate is one of those decisions that seem obvious — if not inevitable — in retrospect, even though it was by no means obvious to most of us beforehand.

Anyone who wants to get a quick sense of who Paul Ryan is should watch a short video of a February 2010 meeting in which Congressman Ryan politely, but devastatingly, “schools” Barack Obama on the utter fraudulence of the statistics that the Obama administration was using to claim that ObamaCare would reduce the deficit….

As a long-time member, and now chairman, of the Budget Committee in the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan is thoroughly familiar with both the facts and the fictions in the federal government’s budget. In recent years, the fictions have grown much bigger than the facts. But, as Congressman Ryan reminded the president, hiding spending is not the same as reducing spending.

If this year’s election is going to be decided on the basis of hard facts, the Obama administration is doomed. But the Obama campaign is well aware of that, which is why we are hearing so many distracting innuendoes and outright lies about such peripheral issues as what Mitt Romney is supposed to have done while running Bain Capital — or even what is supposed to have happened at Bain Capital, years after Mitt Romney was long gone.

The Obama campaign’s big smear, about how Romney is supposed to have caused a woman to die of cancer, has been exposed as a lie by CNN, hardly a Republican network. What smears like this show is that the Obama administration cannot run on its track record, so it has to run on distractions from the country’s real problems.

When Senator Harry Reid claims that Mitt Romney hasn’t paid his income taxes, and demands that Governor Romney disprove this unsubstantiated allegation, that raises an obvious question as to why the Internal Revenue Service has not prosecuted Romney, instead of leaving that to a partisan politician in an election year.

What makes this a farce is that Senator Reid himself has not released his own income tax records, while claiming that Romney’s release of only two years of his income tax records is not enough, even though it has been enough for other candidates in other years.

If Mitt Romney releases all his tax records going back to his childhood, it will not put a stop to this fishing expedition, much less bring an apology when those records show nothing illegal. It will just provide more material for making more distracting claims to change the subject from the track record of the Obama administration.

When Ronald Reagan ran against President Jimmy Carter back in 1980, he asked the question that should be asked of the voters when any president is seeking reelection: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”

Four years later, when Reagan ran for reelection, he implicitly asked and answered that same question in a campaign commercial titled “Morning in America,” which listed the ways the country was better off than it had been four years earlier. Don’t look for any “Morning in America” ads from Obama. “Mourning in America” might be more appropriate.

This election is a test, not just of the opposing candidates but of the voting public. If what they want are the hard facts about where the country is, and where it is heading, they cannot vote for more of the same for the next four years.

But, if what they want is emotionally satisfying rhetoric and a promise to give them something for nothing, to be paid for by taxing somebody else, then Obama is their man. This is not to say that the public will in fact get something for nothing or that rich people will just pay higher taxes, when it is easy for them to escape taxation by investing overseas — creating jobs overseas.

Even if most Americans do not have their own taxes raised, that means little, if they end up paying other people’s taxes in the higher prices of goods and services that pass along the higher taxes imposed on businesses.

There are no doubt voters who will vote on the basis of believing that Obama “cares” more about them. But that is a faith which passeth all understanding. The political mirage of something for nothing, from leaders who “care,” has ruined many a nation.

Which is why, as Alana Goodman notes in CommentaryMagazine.com….

Dems Don’t Want a Big-Picture Election

 

For a party that’s supposedly so thrilled at the opportunity to run against Paul Ryan’s budget plan, the Democrats are spending an awful lot of time focusing on unrelated social issues. Here’s the DNC’s Debbie Wasserman Schultz hammering Ryan’s pro-life views in an email blast today (via Weekly Standard):

As a member of the House Budget Committee, I’ve seen firsthand just how extreme Paul Ryan is, so I’m not going to mince words: Paul Ryan in the White House would be a nightmare.

Over the last two years, we’ve seen an unprecedented number of attacks on a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions — and Congressman Ryan has been at the forefront of all of them.

He wants to end Medicare as we know it. He co-sponsored a radical “personhood” bill that could have banned the birth control pill, in vitro fertilization, and all abortions — even in cases of rape or incest. What’s more? He wants to allow states to criminally prosecute women who choose to have abortions and the doctors who perform them.

We cannot afford to let this man be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

There’s only so much mud the Democrats can sling at Paul Ryan’s deficit plan before the public starts to catch on that the Democratic Party has no plan for tackling the problem whatsoever. So they’re still going to have to continue to make this election about small issues — hence the completely irrelevant attack on Ryan’s views on abortion. Planned Parenthood is also ramping up its Paul Ryan fear mongering, lest the American people elect a pro-lifer “a heartbeat away from the presidency” (ignore the fact that Romney, who would be the actual president under this scenario, is also pro-life).

The attacks are entirely predictable, and they have nothing to do with the candidate. As much as Democrats are crowing about how Ryan is so beatable because of the Ryan plan, they’re pulling out many of the same exact attacks that would have been launched against Pawlenty or Portman or Rubio.

Ryan is best when he’s talking about the budget and deficit; Democrats clearly want to push him onto less familiar social-issues territory in order to, a.) Knock him off his game and hope he makes a mistake, and b.) Ensure that he doesn’t have a chance to sell the plan to the public.

Whether they succeed depends on whether the Romney campaign — and the rest of the GOP — can stay focused on the big picture.

If these two ads, hot off the Republican presses are any indication, the Romney campaign is finally staying focused:

Next up, we take a ride with Sherman and Mr. Peabody via the Wayback Machine….

….to December 11, 2011 to recall how Ron Wyden felt about Paul Ryan before he was named the #2 on the GOP ticket, courtesy of his own words from the pages of the WSJ:

A Bipartisan Way Forward on Medicare

Allowing private plans to compete with traditional Medicare will help lower costs and spur innovation.

 

Few issues draw more heated partisan rhetoric than the future of Medicare. Seniors are a reliable and powerful voting bloc, and both Republicans and Democrats are guilty of exploiting Medicare to frighten and entice voters. But turning discussions of Medicare’s future into the third rail of American politics does nothing to guarantee that Medicare will continue to be a lifeline for America’s seniors.

So, before the partisan attacks begin to escalate and the 2012 election ads start to air, we are outlining a plan for how Democrats and Republicans can work together to ensure that American retirees—now and forever—have quality, affordable health insurance.

Our plan would strengthen traditional Medicare by permanently maintaining it as a guaranteed and viable option for all of our nation’s retirees. At the same time, our plan would expand choice for seniors by allowing the private sector to compete with Medicare in an effort to offer seniors better-quality and more affordable health-care choices.

Under our plan, Americans currently over the age of 55 would see no changes to the Medicare system. For future retirees, starting in 2022, our plan would introduce a “premium support” system that would empower Medicare beneficiaries to choose either a traditional Medicare plan or a Medicare-approved private plan. Unlike Medicare Advantage, these private plans would compete head-to-head with traditional, fee-for-service Medicare on a federally regulated Medicare exchange.

This reformed Medicare program would include the toughest consumer protections in American government.

Low-income seniors who qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid would continue to have Medicaid pay for their out-of-pocket expenses. Other lower-income seniors would receive fully funded savings accounts to help offset any increased out-of-pocket costs, while wealthier seniors would receive less help.

All health plans that participate in the Medicare exchange would be required to offer benefits that are at least as comprehensive as those covered by traditional Medicare, and participating plans would be forbidden to charge discriminatory premiums and would be required to cover everyone regardless of age, gender or health status.

The direct federal contribution to health plans that cover the sickest seniors would be higher than it would be for plans that cover healthier seniors, thus ensuring that more help goes to seniors with greater health-care needs.

Our plan wouldn’t merely ensure that American retirees have more health-care options than they have today. By allowing private plans to compete directly with traditional Medicare, our plan would also spur a wave of innovation to lower health-care costs and provide higher-quality health care.

The reason is simple: In order to offer better benefits and lower costs than traditional Medicare, private plans will have to develop better delivery models and design better ways to care for patients with chronic illnesses. Imagine health plans tailored to help patients manage diabetes, prevent heart disease, or combat high blood pressure.

In the event that these efforts did not stem the rising tide of Medicare spending, there would be a cap on the program’s rate of growth. But unlike other proposals, spending that exceeds the cap would neither be addressed through bureaucratic cuts nor passed on to seniors by default as higher premiums.

Instead, Congress would be required to do its job: Determine why the costs exceeded the cap and—when the evidence merits—reduce payments to providers, drug companies, or others who may be responsible for escalating costs.

By giving seniors the power to choose among competing plans, our plan would add a level of cost control, customization and quality to the health security of older Americans that today’s Medicare is not in a position to achieve.

Our plan would also expand health-care options for working Americans by giving smaller businesses the opportunity to empower their employees to make their own health-care choices. Under this “free choice option,” employees take the amount that their employer was contributing toward their employer-provided health coverage and use it to purchase their own health insurance instead. The cost to the employer—and the tax-free benefit to the worker—would remain the same.

Combined with expanded choices for Medicare beneficiaries, this would also make it possible for more and more Americans to transfer into Medicare without having to change doctors and insurance.

Taken together, these reforms would ensure that Medicare remains the guaranteed, affordable lifeline that its creators envisioned, both for older Americans and for young families paying into the system.

Yes, these are ambitious reforms, and while we are hopeful for the future, we are under no illusions that they will pass tomorrow. Nevertheless, we offer this plan as proof that Democrats and Republicans don’t have to spend next year making Medicare reform more difficult. Instead, our parties can work together on bipartisan reforms to save and strengthen Medicare.*

* That is, until Republicans appear poised to actually implement our plan after after the 2012 elections….at which point I’ll deny Ryan and I ever agreed on anything.  In fact, now that he’s been picked as VP, I don’t recall ever even speaking to Paul Ryan!

In a related item, courtesy of the AEI, James Pethoukoukis lists….

3 things every voter needs to know about Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform plan — in 100 words

 

In his most excellent post on the Paul Ryan vice presidential pick, AEI’s Andrew Biggs highlights some key facts about Ryan’s approach to saving Medicare. These are clip and save:

1. No one over the age of 55 would be affected in any way.

2. Traditional Medicare fee-for-service would remain available for all. “Premium support”—that is, government funding of private insurance plans chosen by individuals—is an option for those who choose it. No senior would be forced out of the traditional Medicare program against his will.

3. Overall funding for Medicare under the Ryan-Wyden plan is scheduled to grow at the same rate as under President Obama’s proposals. Is this “gutting Medicare” and “ending Medicare as we know it”? In reality, it’s the market giving seniors cheaper, higher quality choices they can take if they wish, with the traditional program remaining an option.

Then there’s this from Jonathan Tobin, writing at CommentaryMagazine.com:

Liberal Surprise: Ryan Can’t Be Palin-ized

 

The liberal assault on Paul Ryan has commenced. But the first round of attacks can’t provide much solace to Democrats, who assume they will be able to demonize the Republican vice presidential candidate with ease. The first 48 hours of Ryan’s candidacy has already seen a deluge of abuse from the mainstream media editorial pages and columnists. If all you read is the opinion pages of the New York Times, which trotted out its second editorial rant against Ryan in two days, then you probably think that political strategist turned pundit Robert Shrum’s boast in the Daily Beast that by the time the Obama campaign is through with him, Ryan will be as toxic as Sarah Palin. Liberals like Robert Reich, who took to the Huffington Post to howl that Ryan’s ideas are “social Darwinism” or former Times editor Bill Keller who damned the prospective next GOP administration as a compendium of every wicked conservative idea ever conceived, clearly believe all they need to do is to just call Ryan and to a lesser extent Romney, every name they can think of.

But the problem with this effort to Palin-ize Ryan is that the first returns show it probably won’t work.

One piece of evidence is the full length front-page profile of Ryan published in today’s Times. The story it tells of a small town boy whose intellectual prowess is matched only by his work ethic is not one that easily lends itself to the “extremist” narrative that the paper’s editorial page has been screaming about since Saturday. But the authors do their best to skew the portrait with language that doesn’t belong on the news pages of a reputable newspaper.

Part of the problem is that the Times can’t seem to find anyone who knows the likable congressman to dish any non-existent dirt on him. For example, in describing Ryan as an ambitious and accomplished teenager with numerous activities to his credit, the Times stoops to describe him as a “politically astute suck up.” No, that’s not a quote from some teenage rival but an editorial comment inserted into the article by the authors without quotes or even an attempt to attribute this opinion to anyone who knew him.

The article describes Ryan’s college career by again using a pejorative without quotes in which it characterizes his economic philosophy as “trickle down economics.” One can disagree with Ryan’s belief in the importance of economic freedom and the importance of encouraging the creation of wealth rather than expecting it to emerge as a result of some miraculous government intervention, but to use that kind of language again shows liberal reporters are trying a little too hard to follow their paper’s editorial party line in descriptions of the candidate.

Reality again collided with ideology last night on “60 Minutes.” The CBS program got the first post-announcement interview with Romney and Ryan last night, and there’s little doubt that liberals tuning into the program were hoping the Ryan roll-out would conjure up memories of how Sarah Palin was felled in her first network interviews after John McCain tapped her to be his vice presidential nominee. But Bob Schieffer never laid a glove on either Romney or Ryan. Much of the interview was softball material, but even when Schieffer attempted to attack the duo on the Ryan budget plan or entitlement reform, they easily turned away the assault and honed in on the president’s failings and the need to have the country face up to the tough issue of entitlement reform. Just as important, unlike Katie Couric’s confidence that she could embarrass Palin in 2008, Schieffer knew better than to try to tangle with the formidable Ryan.

While we can expect the assault on Ryan to only intensify in the coming days, liberals are already starting to show some frustration as they come up against the fact that whatever you may think of his ideas, he is both likable and admirable, something even President Obama was willing to admit earlier in his administration when he hoped to co-opt the intellectual leader of House Republicans.

Moreover, unlike Palin, Ryan is clearly ready to not merely hold his own on the enemy turf of the mainstream media but, as President Obama learned to his sorrow, is able to go on the offensive and challenge liberal orthodoxies without appearing like the snarling cartoon character that Democrats hope to paint to the public.

As I wrote earlier, it is an open question as to whether the American public will be willing to choose Ryan’s ideas about reforming our out-of-control tax and spend cycle over Democrat demagoguery intended to defend the status quo. But whatever the outcome of the election, the liberal boasts about turning Ryan into another Palin will fail miserably.

Just like every other policy, program or play they’ve attempted to employ.

Speaking of failed policies and programs, as the WSJ reports, when all else fails, The Obamao falls back on the patent prevarication ploy:

Obama’s Iowa Hostage

He blocks drought relief in order to pass a $1 trillion farm bill.

 

A “farm” bill….with precious little to do with anything connected with farming.

President Obama is in Iowa this week to play farm politics, blaming Republicans for a legislative stalemate that is delaying drought relief in the parched Midwest. The all-powerful Paul Ryan, the President declared, is “standing in the way.” That’s a good one. The truth is that Mr. Obama has taken drought relief as a hostage in order to pass another trillion-dollar farm and food-stamp blowout.

Mr. Ryan’s role, for the record, has been to call for reforms to a bloated farm program that today serves mainly to subsidize agribusiness and dispense food stamps. The current farm bill is due to expire next month and the Senate passed its extension in June with 64 votes. But this is hardly something to cheer. The product of Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow and Kansas Republican Pat Roberts would cost nearly $1 trillion over 10 years.

Mrs. Stabenow claims the bill represents “significant reform,” and it does eliminate some $5 billion in “direct payments”—handouts that go to growers whether they produce a crop or not. Instead, however, the Senate bill expands the government-subsidized crop insurance program. And the savings from ending direct payments are rolled into a new “shallow loss” program.

While crop insurance covers farmers with low yields or price declines, a shallow-loss program guarantees farmer revenues. Even at today’s historically high crop prices, this program will cost taxpayers $3 billion. The American Enterprise Institute estimates that when prices inevitably fall, shallow-loss payments will balloon to as much as $14 billion a year.

The bigger embarrassment is the Senate’s failure to address the out-of-control food stamp program, which will cost $770 billion over 10 years, or nearly 80% of farm-bill spending. Think about that one for a minute: Nearly $80 billion a year for a single welfare program. Food stamps have exploded under this Administration, with 44.7 million recipients in fiscal 2011, up from 28.2 million as recently as 2008. Yet the Senators passed only a token $4.5 billion cut in spending over 10 years.

Meanwhile, the House Agriculture Committee produced a bill that cut $16.5 billion over 10 years from food stamps. But this falls well short of reforms in the Ryan budget that would return food stamps to their pre-2008 spending levels as well as block-grant the money to states. Speaker John Boehner knew his pro-reform caucus would revolt on the floor against the committee product, and he chose not to bring it up for a vote.

Instead, the House passed a stand-alone $383 million emergency drought relief bill before it left for recess. The Senate could also have passed the relief measure and debated the $1 trillion farm bill another day, but Mrs. Stabenow and the White House blocked it. Why? Well, Iowa is a swing state this year, and Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats figure they can use drought relief to force Republicans to lock in a decade worth of bigger government and record food-stamp spending.

The truth is that farmers and ranchers would already be getting drought relief if Mr. Obama weren’t using them as pawns for his own re-election.

Not to mention the relief the rest of the country would be getting is “President” Obama weren’t!

And since we’re on the subject of the Department of Agriculture, Bret Baier and Special Report details….

One for the Record Books

 

Two million of your taxpayer dollars were spent on an internship program at the Agriculture Department that resulted in the hiring of one full-time intern. One.

A new inspector general report focuses on the agency’s $63,000,000 effort to improve information technology security. The audit finds the systems are still at risk because the projects were poorly managed. The IG also says $3 million were spent on hardware that was never used and almost a $250,000 went to a project that was later canceled.

Another example of how government does it better, brought to you by the same folks that oversee the Food Stamp program!

Which brings us, appropriately enough, to the “Your Tax Dollars At Work” segment, and another example of why spending cuts, via the simple elimination of fraud, waste and abuse, NOT tax increases are the answer to budget deficits at every level of government:

California officials stashed $54M while asking for donations to keep parks open

 

Ruth Coleman: “personally apalled to learn” her department’s “documents were not accurate”.

“Personally appalled”?!?

On the Lighter Side….

And in the “Questions Nobody’s Asking” segment, FOX News attempts to tell us….

Why They Pose for Playboy

 

And here we thought it was because they were attention-grabbing sluts….like Sandra Fluke.

Finally, in the Sports Section….

300-pound Texas 12-year-old told he’s too big to play Pee Wee football

 

A 12-year-old football player in Texas was told by his Pee Wee football league that he is too big to play with boys his age. Elijah Earnheart stands more than 6 feet tall and weighs almost 300 pounds, comparable in size to players in high school or college. The president of the league says the rule states that any seventh-grader exceeding 135 pounds is barred and must play in the school league.

“I had, I don’t know how many kids coming to me yesterday say, ‘Is he playing against us?'”  said Ronnie Henderson, the president of the Mesquite Pee Wee Football Association.

Earnheart’s coach, Marc Wright, is protesting the league’s decision and says there are seventh-graders over the weight limit allowed to take the field. He says the rule states that any player over 135 pounds wears an ‘X’ on his helmet and is limited to playing on either the offensive or defensive lines.

Henderson says he’d investigate the coach’s allegations about other seventh-graders over the weight limit, but insists that “rules are rules.” “We hate it,” he said. “I don’t like it for the kid or the parents.”

Earnheart’s mother, Cindy Earnheart, has been contesting the ruling and plans to protest with painted signs and shirts that say, “Let Elijah Play.” “For him to come home and just cry and go to his room and say, ‘I give up.’ I’m not going to let him give up. This is his dream. This is what he wants to do. And I’m going to make it happen,” she said.

Earnheart had been practicing with the team for three weeks and was apparently told the news on Sunday at a pre-season weigh in. Henderson, the league’s president, said if Earnheart was in sixth grade he’d be able to play, but seventh-graders over the weight limit must play in a school league.

We must confess we almost began to sympathize with the young giant’s plight….until we got the rest of the story:

“I don’t want to play in school right now because it’s people that’s had experience and I want to get some experience first and then start playing,” he said. “I just want to play because my teammates are my friends. I know them. I don’t want to go play for somebody else I don’t know.”

We could quote a line from the Stones, but suffice it to say that last paragraph just pegged….

….our sympathy meter.  What the young Mr. Earnhardt needs is a good, swift kick in the ass….with two for his over-protective mother to grow on!

Magoo