It’s Monday, November 11th, 2011….and yes, today’s edition of The Gouge is decidedly late hitting the newsstands.  But between attending the Navy-Troy State game Saturday, watching the Ravens slug-fest with the Steelers Sunday evening and a plethora of other weekend events, little time was left for gouging.

So without further ado, here’s The Gouge….and on our 56th birthday no less!

First up, James Taranto details the Left’s perpetual confusion regarding the significance of the 1st Amendment:

Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper in France, was “firebombed [Wednesday] morning, after it published another stupid and totally unnecessary edition mocking Islam,” writes Time magazine’s Bruce Crumley, who doesn’t completely disapprove of the violence:

Not only are such Islamophobic antics futile and childish, but they also openly beg for the very violent responses from extremists their authors claim to proudly defy in the name of common good. What common good is served by creating more division and anger, and by tempting belligerent reaction? . . .

We, by contrast, have another reaction to the firebombing: Sorry for your loss, Charlie, and there’s no justification of such an illegitimate response to your current edition. But do you still think the price you paid for printing an offensive, shameful, and singularly humor-deficient parody on the logic of “because we can” was so worthwhile? If so, good luck with those charcoal drawings your pages will now be featuring. . . .

Apart from unconvincing claims of exercising free speech in Western nations where that right no longer needs to be proved, it’s unclear what the objectives of the caricatures were other than to offend Muslims–and provoke hysteria among extremists.

This column is on record as disapprovingof gratuitous mockery of Islam. But the whole point of free speech is that it demands tolerance of speech of which one disapproves. It is depraved for Crumley to condone violence (his disclaimers to the contrary notwithstanding), and it is bizarre for him to assert that the right to free speech “no longer needs to be proved” when writing about such a reaction to its exercise.

That’s “depraved”….spelled L-I-B-E-R-A-L!

And since we’re on the subject of depraved Liberals, Trevor Vietor forwarded the subject of today’s Bullwinkle J. Moose Memorial….

….”Hey Rock, Watch Me Pull A Number Out Of My Arse!” segment:

Pelosi: Absent Obama’s Stimulus, Unemployment Would Be 15%

15%?  Why not 20%….30%….hell, why not 50%?!?!  Seriously, if we were Nancy the Red, knowing in advance even the most fantastically farcical figure we cared to pull from our kiester wouldn’t raise even one eyebrow in the MSM, we’d have gone for broke and swung for the fence.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch with The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, the WSJ‘s Stephen Moore asks:

Will Boehner Get Bush-Whacked?

Democrats in Washington have been waiting for a repeat of 1990, when President George H. W. Bush broke his “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge in a budget deal. Mr. Bush’s blunder not only gave Democrats more revenues to spend but also tore the GOP apart and led to Mr. Bush’s defeat to Bill Clinton two years later.

Democrats would love to repeat that history, and House Republicans might be about to oblige after 21 years of swearing off taxes. House Speaker John Boehner may have opened the gate to a tax increase last week when he declared that “there is room for revenue,” though he also said there will be “no tax increase.” Mr. Boehner also said that “without real reform on the entitlement side, I’m not even going to put any new revenue on the table.” These are exactly the kinds equivocations we heard from Mr. Bush in the weeks before his ill-fated grand bargain with then-Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell.

Republicans on the deficit reduction supercommittee may also get cornered into agreeing to “revenue raisers,” which tax-reform advocate Grover Norquist and tea party activists are sure to view as a betrayal. The Republicans are now saying they want “revenues,” not new taxes, but that could be interpreted as a distinction without a difference. Last week 40 House Republicans endorsed “revenues” as part of a budget deal.

Congressional insiders who were around back in 1990 fear that Republicans are falling into the same old trap. Harry Reid has been baiting Republicans to come out of their no-new-taxes defense, which has frustrated big-spending Democrats for so many years. Last week Mr. Reid called Republican leaders “puppets” for doing the bidding of Mr. Norquist, whose Americans for Tax Reform urges elected officials to sign a no tax pledge. Mr. Norquist tells me: “The pledge [not to raise taxes] is to voters, not to me.” He also points out that any tax increase will inevitably lead to more spending, not less debt. “When have Democrats ever been for a balanced budget?” he asks. “It’s a ploy.”

A big tax-increase deal by Mr. Boehner is sure to rupture the GOP congressional delegation. Some members will no doubt rally around the Republican leader, as many did back in 1990, but others will revolt. That is what happened in 1990 when Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich moved into full scale opposition mode against the tax hike. Mr. Gingrich called the Bush capitulation on taxes “a supreme act of idiocy.” The GOP may repeat that idiocy in the weeks ahead.

We believe most Americans, ourselves included, would support moderate tax increases….provided such increases impact every American, including the 50% who currently pay no taxes whatsoever, and were accompanied by, at the very least:

(a).  the repeal of Obamascare.

(b).  even greater and far more reaching reductions in entitlement spending.

(c).  the elimination of a number of federal bureaucracies, including the Departments of Energy, Education and Labor.

(d).  absent a declared war, an overall cap on federal spending, and;

(e).  a significant simplification of the tax code.

The fact remains our nation’s economic woes are not the result of an underfunded pubic purse, but rather an overactive, overreaching and overspending bureaucracy at every level of government.  To put it in terms even a Dimocrat can understand, it ain’t that taxes are too low; it’s that spending’s far too high!

Moving on, as the San Francisco Chronicle reports, courtesy of Conn Carroll and the Morning Examiner, there’s at least one true American left in Oakland, CA:

Developer with shotgun scared off Oakland rioters

Oakland developer Phil Tagami is used to working behind the scenes to broker some of the biggest deals in town. Late Wednesday, he was using different persuasive skills – holding a loaded shotgun to scare away rioters trying to get into a downtown building.

“We had people who attempted to break into our building,” the landmark Rotunda Building on Frank Ogawa Plaza outside City Hall, Tagami said Thursday. He grabbed a shotgun that he usually keeps at home, went down to the ground floor and “discouraged them,” he said. “I was standing there and they saw me there, and I lifted it – I didn’t point it – I just held it in my hands,” Tagami said. “And I just racked it, and they ran.”

Although they didn’t get inside the building – Tagami, 46, oversaw its $50 million renovation and has an office there – vandals did scrawl graffiti on the outside walls during the post-midnight riot that broke out after Occupy Oakland’s daylong general strike.

The Rotunda Building was far from the only target. Graffiti was spray-painted on many buildings along Broadway from 14th to 16th streets. Masked vandals shattered windows, started fires and threw objects at police, including lit flares and powerful M-1000 firecrackers. Officers responded by firing tear gas and flash-bang grenades and arresting 103 people, including those from as far away as Michigan and New York. Five civilians and three police officers were hurt.

As the sun rose, downtown Oakland business owners were again assessing the damage, much as they did after a series of protests related to the killing of unarmed BART rider Oscar Grant in 2009. Crews were boarding up broken windows at the Tully’s Coffee shop just steps from Occupy Oakland’s camp at Frank Ogawa Plaza outside City Hall. Graffiti was sprayed on the Rite Aid and Walgreens drugstores across from each other at 14th and Broadway. The city estimated it would cost up to $25,000 to replace broken windows at city buildings.

City Administrator Deanna Santana apologized to business owners for the “chaotic events” that enveloped the city. Mayor Jean Quan called the rioters “a small and isolated group.” “It shouldn’t mar the overall impact of the demonstration and the fact that people in the 99 percent movement demonstrated peacefully and, for the most part, were productive and very peaceful,” Quan said. (“productive”?!?

Tagami disagreed, calling the Occupy Oakland encampment “basically concealment and cover for anarchists who are doing this to our city.”

Which, for some odd reason, brought to mind this classic SNL skit:

And in the Education segment, Mark Hemingway, courtesy of the WeeklyStandard.com, examines….

What’s Wrong with Obama’s Student Loan Policy in a Single Chart

Via the Twitter feed of Fareed Zakaria, a brief snapshot into the terrifying future of higher education. Currently, more American students are majoring in visual and performing arts than engineering:

Despite this, Obama just doubled down on the federal government’s backing of student loans, limiting payments to ten percent of a person’s income above the poverty levels and absolving student debt altogether after 20 years. Aside from the general problem of government-backed loans artifically inflating tuitition costs, it might be time to use student loan policy to incentivize students into getting a degree that might be more beneficial to taxpayers and society as a whole.

Nothing against students majoring in visual arts/liberal arts, but clearly we have a relative shortage of engineering and hard science majors. Part of the reason why students seem to be less practically-minded about their education than in the past might well be that favorable government loans have made it easy to disregard the earnings potential of your chosen degree. The comparion to the distribution of majors among international students seems to suggest that’s the case.

But faaather, I want to….

….I want to SING!

On the Lighter Side….

Next up, startling evidence emerges suggesting the first South Africans may have come from West Virginia:

Expectant South African Couple Discover They Are Brother and Sister

Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with the “What’s In A Word” segment, courtesy today of FOX News and another obvious product of the Columbia School of Journalism:

Woman Says Amputated Leg Is Growing Back

Not growing….”growing back”, as in regenerating, which is how most every reasonable person would interpret the headline.  Now, to quote the late Paul Harvey, the rest of the story: 

A woman who had one of her 70-pound legs amputated claims the limb is growing back, the Daily Mail reported. Mandy Sellars, 36, is suspected to suffer from a rare condition called Proteus syndrome, which caused her to be born with abnormally large legs and feet. Proteus syndrome is a congenital disorder that causes atypical growth of the bones, skin and head, as well as numerous tumors. Only 120 people in the world currently live with the condition, according to experts.

Despite her condition, Sellars was able to spend much of her life walking and engaging in normal activities until two years ago, when one of her legs became infected with septicaemia. Sellars consented to surgery to amputate the leg after doctors told her she could die from the infection. According to current guidelines regarding Proteus syndrome, surgery to remove an overgrown portion of bone should be performed only if the overgrowth affects normal functioning because this can sometimes increase the growth of the remaining bone.

And now, 22 months later, Sellars told reporters that the amputated leg is indeed growing back – and fast.

“I hoped the amputation would stabilize my condition, but I think I knew in my heart that it would start growing again,” Sellars told the Daily Mirror. “Almost straight away the stump beganincreasing in circumference and I was finding it harder to fit inside my prosthetic leg.” “Then the stump got so heavy that it nearly broke the prosthetic leg.” The leg now weighs 42 pounds and is nearly 40 inches in circumference, she said.

Magoo