It’s Thursday, April 19th, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!

First up, as the WSJ notes, if you’re Team Tick-Tock, you’re committed to believing….

It’s 1936 All Over Again

The Obama 2012 campaign is channeling the ghost of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Depression.

With a small group of credulous millionaires joining him at a White House séance the other day to support the Buffett Rule, the Conjurer-in-Chief called forth the spirit of Ronald Reagan, who the president averred would have supported his magic tax on “millionaires.” There have been 43 other presidents of the United States. The last one you would associate with Barack Obama is Ronald Reagan.

But faced with the rather unhappy challenge of mounting a re-election campaign coincident with three years of rampant unemployment and next-to-no growth, little wonder Mr. Obama is looking for help from afar. And so it is that the ghost of a president past is indeed haunting the Obama White House—the ghost of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

FDR ran his first re-election campaign in 1936 when the United States was mired in the Great Depression. Barack Obama is running for the last time amid what he himself immortalized as the Great Recession. No surprise that Mr. Obama in his campaign speeches is channeling the master of Depression-era politics.

It worked back then. FDR walloped a somnambulant Republican candidate, Alf Landon, of whom the columnist Westbrook Pegler wrote: “Considerable mystery surrounds the disappearance of Alfred M. Landon of Topeka, Kansas.” But will Roosevelt’s politics work against Mitt Romney, who we presume will report for duty?

Franklin Roosevelt kicked off the 1936 campaign with an Oct. 31 speech to the Democratic faithful in New York’s Madison Square Garden. The Obama re-election campaign began April 3, with the president’s now-famous “Social Darwinism” speech at the Associated Press luncheon in Washington.

The similarity between the two speeches—both in tone and targets—is striking:

FDR: “Nine mocking years with the golden calf . . . “

Obama: “It was a decade . . . when profits for many of these companies soared.”

FDR: “We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking . . .”

Obama: “Our entire financial system was nearly destroyed.”

FDR: “I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match.”

Obama: “The share of national income flowing to the top 1% of people in this country has climbed to levels last seen in the 1920s. That is not fair. It is not right.”

FDR: “Of course we will continue our help for the crippled, for the blind, for the mothers . . . “

Obama: “Two million mothers and young children would be cut from a program that gives them access to healthy food.”

FDR: “Their solution for the relief problem is to end relief—to purge the rolls by starvation.”

Obama: ” . . . a cut that, according to one nonpartisan group, would take away health care for about 19 million Americans—19 million.”

In nearly every significant address since the ASNE speech—on the Buffett Rule, on the manipulators of the oil markets—Mr. Obama has revisited these themes. The differences between America in 1936 and America 76 years later hardly matter. In a time of genuine economic anxiety, as now, Team Obama has chosen a plausible strategy: During tough times, the government will be there for you.

However, the differences between Barack Obama and Franklin Roosevelt as retail politicians do matter in 2012. The Obama campaign can borrow Roosevelt’s content, but they can’t teach Barack Obama how to be FDR. FDR’s 1936 speech, however tough and accusatory, had Roosevelt’s natural personal buoyancy. Barack Obama has no such gift for popular uplift. Reagan and Bill Clinton had it, and it was an underestimated piece of George W. Bush’s two successful presidential runs.

Barack Obama is, frankly, a pretty grim guy. He does try to mitigate the downer mood—”This is also about growth”—but ultimately his audiences always hear about the ditch someone else put them in and the superhuman effort “we” have to make to pull out of this deep hole. Barack Obama is grim because he believes, and has always believed, that dark forces are actively at work in America to shaft the middle class. So do his closest supporters. So you run on anger and antipathy.

Can you re-run Roosevelt’s Depression strategy without Roosevelt? In tough times, some voters will buy it. But I don’t think enough will to produce a majority of the beleaguered. Barack Obama is asking people to cast a less-than-hopeful vote in November. Resentment is not something most people in 21st-century America carry around in the front of their heads. Once Barack Obama stirs it up, as he’s doing now, he has to sustain it for six months. He is asking people to vote out of something resembling, well, depression.

Incidentally, of the final four Republican primary candidates, three were about as personally grim and earnest as the incumbent. Only one ran with unmistakable personal optimism.

But as Jonah Goldberg notes, Tick-Tock faces a dilemma far more evocative of James Earl Carter than Franklin Delano Roosevelt:

Obama’s Problem? His Record

“The choice in this election is between an economy that produces a growing middle class and that gives people a chance to get ahead and their kids a chance to get ahead, and an economy that continues down the road we are on, where a fewer and fewer number of people do very well and everybody else is running faster and faster just to keep pace.”

That’s Obama advisor David Axelrod on “Fox News Sunday,” explaining why people should vote for … Barack Obama. Odds are this was simply poor phrasing. But it might not have been, given how desperately the Obama campaign wants to turn back the clock to 2008, when the choice was between hope and change or continuing “down the road we are on.”

Regardless of the spin, the simple fact is that Obama is the stay-the-course candidate stuck with a team, a record and an economy ill-suited for a stay-the-course strategy. That’s what gives poignancy to Obama’s recently renewed love affair with Ronald Reagan, whom Obama invokes these days as a model of reasonableness and bipartisanship. He even wants to rename the “Buffett rule” the “Reagan rule.”

Even before he got the nomination in 2008, Obama said he wanted to be a “transformative” president like Reagan had been. And last year, Time magazine featured a cover story, “Why Obama [Hearts] Reagan,” which in Time’s words gave the true story behind “Obama’s Reagan Bromance.”

There were two key elements to Obama’s man-crush. The first was the simple hope that history — or at least the business cycle — would repeat itself. The White House’s plan was to run for re-election in 2012 with a soaring economy at its back. After an absolutely bruising recession (that was in some ways worse than the one Obama inherited), Reagan got to ride a surging economy to re-election. America enjoyed 6 percent annual growth in 1984: In three of the four quarters before Election Day, GDP quarterly growth was more than 7 percent, while inflation and unemployment plummeted.

At Obama’s back is a dismayingly anemic recovery, constantly threatening to get worse. He wants credit for “creating” 3 million jobs but insists he be held blameless for millions more workers who’ve left the job market entirely.

The other reason the White House admired the Reagan White House? According to Time: “Both relied heavily on the power of oratory.” Then-Press Secretary Robert Gibbs added, “Our hope is the story ends the same way.”

And there’s the problem for Obama. He’s sticking to his rhetorical guns on the assumption that he’s the great orator his fans have always claimed. It’s admirably Gipperesque, I suppose, but the problem is that Obama has never once significantly moved public opinion on domestic issues with his arguments. If he had that power, not only would “Obamacare” be popular today, it would have been popular when he gave more than 50 addresses and speeches on it during his first year.

Obama’s out on the stump, embracing Obamacare, doubling down on green energy, on the need for “investments” in government programs, and for the whole hodgepodge of rationalizations for hiking taxes and “spreading the wealth around.” Asking whether Obama is as good a communicator as Reagan is like comparing boxers from different generations; there’s plenty of evidence to form opinions but no way to settle the matter.

But what must be very troubling for Obama is the mounting evidence that presidential persuasion is vastly overrated. Political scientist Brendan Nyhan has noted that Reagan’s rhetoric had little effect on the polls or his media coverage. Liberal Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein, surveying the academic literature in a recent issue of the New Yorker, found that there’s little evidence that any president has really moved the country with his rhetoric.

My hunch is that such findings are overdone and leave out some aspects of presidential persuasion. Still, what’s undoubtedly true is that results matter far more than words. And despite Axelrod’s assertions, the fact is that Obama has been leading us down the road we are on for more than three years, and that’s what voters will have in mind come Election Day.

Hence the necessity to dissimulate, obfuscate, exaggerate and prevaricate; by every single representative of the most transparent Administration….ever, along with the entire Liberal MSM….24/7.

Speaking of the legacy of the most transparent Administration….ever:

Inspector general: Scheming how to bill taxpayers for food was ‘running joke’ at GSA

Taking-the-5th Neely

Catching-rays-with-his-wife Neely in Samoa in 2008 on one of 131 trips he took, many to exotic locales, on the taxpayers’ dime during a 3 1/2-year period.

….only where and how long.

And since we’re on the subject of useless bureaucratic douche pumps soaking the American taxpayer for all they’re worth:

Karzai Wants ‘at Least $2 Billion’ a Year from US

To which we’d respond were we President….

In other International News of Note, the Useless Nations has dreamed up another cutting edge diplomatic concept:

Wives of UN ambassadors to Syria’s First Lady: ‘Stop your husband’

Yeah….that oughta do it!

Next up, James Taranto provides the substance for today’s Jim Henson Memorial “One Of These Things Doesn’t Go With The Others” segment:

Brian Stelter, who covers the media for the New York Times, reports on problems with the coverage of the alleged murder of Trayvon Martin:

For one of the major networks, NBC, the tapes of Mr. Zimmerman’s calls to 911 were fodder for embarrassment. On two separate occasions, March 22 and 27, taped reports on the “Today” show took Mr. Zimmerman’s description of Mr. Martin’s race out of context, editing out the fact that the 911 dispatcher had asked him for the description.

One producer was fired after an NBC investigation. An NBC spokeswoman said a series of disciplinary actions had been taken against others, but she would not share specifics.

The case has been treacherous for other media outlets as well. Fox News was scrutinized after one of its hosts, Sean Hannity, was said to have talked off the record to Mr. Zimmerman. ABC was accused of misleading viewers by televising footage of Mr. Zimmerman after the killing that showed no blood or bruises on him, then showing an enhanced version of the footage that did seem to show a head wound.

Do you see what he did there? NBC and ABC used misleading audio and video clips, respectively–at best a serious error, at worst deliberate fraud. Fox, by contrast, “was scrutinized” (by whom?) because one of its journalists supposedly had an off-the-record conversation with a source.

Is it now unethical for a journalist to have an off-the-record conversation with a newsmaker? Or does that apply only when the source is a defendant in a trial-by-media?

MSM bias….WHAT bias?!?

And in today’s Money Quote, Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson on the Environazis’ unreasoned opposition to fracking:

“I think we have to deal in facts,” [Tillerson] says, his voice rising. “The assertions that our opponents make — why don’t you ask them to produce some facts, produce something? I mean, prove it.“

Tillerson believes the discourse about shale has been hijacked and distorted. He says that Exxon is transparent about its practices and points out, for instance, that the company was an early proponent of disclosing the chemicals that it uses in fracking. He argues that shale drillers are being held to an unrealistic safety standard. “What’s happened is the tables have been turned around now to where we have to prove it’s not going to happen,” he says. “Well, that is a very dangerous exchange to get into because where it leads you from a regulatory and policy standpoint is to govern by the precautionary principle. And the precautionary principle will absolutely undermine the economy.” He adds, “If you want to live by the precautionary principle, then crawl up in a ball and live in a cave.“

In a related item from the WSJ, Ron Bailey comments on global oil capacity and the supposed ‘limits to growth’:

Forty years ago, The Limits to Growth, a report to the Club of Rome, was released with great fanfare at a conference at the Smithsonian Institution. The study was based on a computer model developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and designed “to investigate five major trends of global concern—accelerating industrial development, rapid population growth, widespread malnutrition, depletion of nonrenewable resources, and a deteriorating environment.”

. . . In 1972, the Limits researchers estimated known global oil reserves at 455 billion barrels. Since then the world has produced very nearly 1 trillion barrels of oil and current known reserves hover around 1.2 trillion barrels, a 40-year supply at current consumption rates. With regard to natural gas supplies, the International Energy Agency last year issued a report asserting, “Conventional recoverable resources are equivalent to more than 120 years of current global consumption, while total recoverable resources could sustain today’s production for over 250 years.”

For more on the Left’s ongoing offensive against fossil fuels of any kind, we turn to the Journal as it details….

Obama’s Seinfeld Strategy

Hang the evil oil speculators, if anyone can find them.

On Tuesday President Barack Obama gave a speech about . . . nothing. At 11:27 a.m. in the Rose Garden, Mr. Obama did announce a crackdown on speculators in the oil markets. And he did call for more investigations, more regulation and more money for regulators. But we couldn’t help wondering if perhaps a few pages had been left out of the TelePrompter.

Nowhere in his remarks did the President claim that speculation is doing any harm. He did not cite any negative impact on the oil market. He did not say that speculators are manipulating oil prices, nor did he describe in even the vaguest terms the individuals or institutions that might be involved. He didn’t cite any research. Mr. Obama didn’t even, well, speculate about whether oil prices would be higher or lower if not for unnamed actors who may or may not be affecting the markets.

But the President did make clear that if speculators were manipulating markets, that would be bad. “We can’t afford a situation where speculators artificially manipulate markets by buying up oil, creating the perception of a shortage, and driving prices higher—only to flip the oil for a quick profit,” he said. “And for anyone who thinks this cannot happen, just think back to how Enron traders manipulated the price of electricity to reap huge profits at everybody else’s expense.”

The Enron scandal happened more than a decade and two major financial-regulation laws ago. “So today, we’re announcing new steps to strengthen oversight of energy markets,” said Mr. Obama. “Things that we can do administratively, we are doing. And I call on Congress to pass a package of measures to crack down on illegal activity and hold accountable those who manipulate the market for private gain at the expense of millions of working families. And be specific.”

That last line, delivered after a speech that contained not a sliver of evidence that even hinted at illegal activity, shows that at least Mr. Obama has a sense of humor.

But speaking of regulation, we doubt that MF Global customers are laughing. While $1.6 billion of their money remains missing and no federal charges have been brought against those who presided over the firm’s 2011 collapse, the President is now directing the relevant federal agencies to search elsewhere for offenses that he imagines might exist.

Why isn’t this the subject of continuous GOP commercials?!?

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) will soon find out if federal judges share Mr. Obama’s sense of humor. The CFTC, which was asleep on the MF Global watch, was nonetheless hailed by Mr. Obama Tuesday as deserving a bigger budget and more authority. But whether or not Congress chooses to reward the CFTC, the commission now must defend in court a rule it enacted last fall to curb speculation.

Like Mr. Obama in the Rose Garden, the regulator has to find a way to carry the argument without the evidence to support it. “No one has proven that the looming specter of excessive speculation in the futures markets we regulate even exists,” said then-Commissioner Michael Dunn before the CFTC voted on the new rule last October.

And you should hear what the rule’s opponents said. Mr. Dunn, a Democrat, provided the swing vote in favor of new limits on the size of trading positions only because he believed the Dodd-Frank law left him no choice. But even though he voted for the rule, Mr. Dunn said that “position limits may actually lead to higher prices for the commodities we consume on a daily basis.” Less liquidity makes it more difficult for market participants to hedge their risks, which could raise costs for everyone.

The CFTC is now using Mr. Dunn’s “Dodd-Frank defense” in a federal lawsuit brought by market players who say the CFTC didn’t demonstrate the need for its rule or perform an adequate cost-benefit analysis. In other words, the agency isn’t trying to argue that speculation is a problem and must be reduced but is simply saying that the 2010 financial law forced the agency to act. Bashing anonymous Wall Street “speculators” may be more effective as a political argument than as a legal strategy, but we suspect that even the demands of politics will eventually require Mr. Obama to provide some specifics.

At least with the Buffett Rule the President has a real live billionaire willing to serve as a prop. For now we’ll have to call this latest Obama policy the Seinfeld Rule. Much like the TV show, it’s a policy about nothing.

Meanwhile, The Dear Misleader’s past may once again be coming back to haunt him:

TransCanada submits new Keystone XL pipeline plan

On the Lighter Side….

Then there’s these two beauties, courtesy of J.C.:

And in the Wide, Wild World of Sports:

Petrino girlfriend resigns from position at Arkansas

The University of Arkansas announced Tuesday night that Jessica Dorrell had resigned from her position in the athletic department in the wake of the scandal that cost former football coach Bobby Petrino his job. The 25-year-old, who was with the 51-year-old married father-of-four when he crashed his motorcycle on April 1, has remained out of sight since it emerged last week she was allegedly involved in an “improper relationship” with Petrino.

Dorrell will receive a $14,000 settlement with the university, which had no immediate plans to reopen her position of student-athlete development coordinator, according to the release.

You know….sorta like how the University of Chicago hospital still has no plans to fill The First Marxette’s position….

….years following her resignation.

Finally, in News of the Bizarre….

Frozen Colorado cows may have to be exploded

It may take explosives to dislodge a group of cows that wandered into an old ranger cabin high in the Rocky Mountains, then died and froze solid when they couldn’t get out. The carcasses were discovered by two Air Force Academy cadets when they snow-shoed up to the cabin in late March. Rangers believe the animals sought shelter during a snowstorm and got stuck and weren’t smart enough to find their way out.

Reports the animals were registered Democrats could not be confirmed.

Magoo