It’s Monday, November 14th, 2011….and if you haven’t visited our home page, be certain to check out our tribute to the USMC and America’s veterans, as well as our latest video clips.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, the latest installment of the “Do As We Say, NOT As We Do!” segment, aka, the Some Are More Equal Than Others section, courtesy of….GASP!….CBS and Breibart TV.  THIS IS A MUST-SEE VIDEO!!!  There are a couple commercials, but trust us, they’re worth enduring; this video summarizes everything that’s wrong, and needs to be changed, about Washington:

Special health care….special pensions….almost unlimited privileges….not subject to any of the laws and policies they impose upon the rest of the country.  Any questions?

For more on one who’s far more equal, particularly in his own mind, than the rest of us, we turn to the latest from Victor Davis Hanson:

Obama Unbound

 

Richard Nixon went to Red China with political impunity. Had a Democrat tried that, he would have been branded a commie appeaser. To this day, liberals cannot conceive that during the two world wars, progressives like Woodrow Wilson, Earl Warren and Franklin Delano Roosevelt trampled on civil liberties in a way unimagined by Dick Cheney.

Ronald Reagan signed the most liberal illegal immigration amnesty bill in history, and ran larger yearly deficits than had Jimmy Carter. “Read my lips” George H.W. Bush agreed to huge tax increases. And George W. Bush ran up the largest debt of any eight-year president, outspending Bill Clinton by more than fivefold. The latter, remember, bombed Belgrade without either congressional or United Nations approval — and without antiwar protests. Without an opposition, almost anything goes.

In other words, right-wing presidents can sometimes act left-wing, and left-wing presidents can act right-wing — to the embarrassed silence of their respective bases, but to the private delight of their green-light opponents.

We have no better examples of that irony than our two most recent presidents. George W. Bush was still damned as an uncaring reactionary by the Left even as he pushed for big government and unfunded entitlements like No Child Left Behind and Medicare prescription drug coverage. Barack Obama was alleged to be squishy about hunting down terrorists, even as he increased targeted assassinations tenfold and found plenty of opportunistic former legal critics of Bush’s national-security protocols to write justifications for them.

In terms of the Obama presidency, there is now no antiwar movement. It simply vanished in January 2009. Former outrages like Guantanamo, renditions and Predator drone assassinations almost magically became A-OK. The left-wing base dared not continue its old Bush slurs, given its support for Obama’s liberal domestic agenda. Quiet conservatives were perplexed over whether to be outraged that Predator-in-Chief Obama proved to be such an abject hypocrite, or relieved that, better late than never, he had morphed into a Bush-Cheney national-security disciple.

The result is that for the next year or so, Obama can more or less do whatever he wishes abroad. If he chooses to bomb a country that poses no direct threat to the U.S. without congressional authority, like Libya, or to assassinate a U.S. citizen-terrorist, like Anwar al-Awlaki, the Left will keep mum. And the Right, for different reasons, probably will, too.

What, then, should we expect abroad in the waning months of Obama’s four-year term, with continuing economic bad news at home?

Suddenly, intelligence agencies at the U.N., and in the U.S. and Europe — after once denying, during the supposedly trigger-happy Bush administration, that Iran was close to getting a bomb — now warn us that Teheran may actually test a nuclear weapon after all. Iran poses an existential threat not only to Israel, but to the entire notion of nuclear nonproliferation in the key oil-exporting Gulf. Its missiles could reach southern Europe.

If we get to a scary point of Iran going nuclear in 2012, expect the Obama administration — up for re-election and without much of a domestic record to run on in these hard times — to consider a preemptive strike. Be assured that if it does, there will be no outrage in the Democrat-controlled Senate, no campuses on fire, no ad hominem Moveon.org ads in the New York Times — all the sorts of antiwar hysteria that once sought to turn a moderate like George W. Bush into a caricature of some trigger-happy yokel from shoot-’em-up Texas.

And conservatives? Again, they would mumble that an Obama “wag-the-dog” strike would cynically be all about the president’s re-election. Or they would at least note the irony, given the Nobel Laureate-in-Chief’s prior demonization of Bush’s use of military force. Nonetheless, Republicans would largely grow silent if — a big if — a strike were successful and ended Iran’s nuclear threat.

The truth is that the more the Obama administration floats silly symbolic trial balloons like supporting a Ground Zero mosque, trying Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a Manhattan civilian court, or employing inane euphemisms like “overseas contingency operations” and “man-caused disasters” in the context of radical Islamic terrorism, the more it will try to assassinate foes such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, sidekick of the late Osama bin Laden, or consider, in Libyan fashion, giving a greater push to Syrian rebels.

I am not suggesting that bombing Iran is imminent or even wise, only that it is now far more likely than during the tenure of the Bush administration. That’s just a fact, given the weird paradoxes of American presidential politics.

Mere months ago we’d have disagreed with Hanson; but now, with Team Tick-Tock absolutely flat on their backs, totally out of airspeed and ideas….and the ground getting nearer by the minute….all bets are off.

These guys will do anything….ANYTHING….to retain their grip on power, as Ann Coulter’s latest column, courtesy of Daniel F. Feeney, suggests:

DAVID AXELROD’S PATTERN OF SEXUAL MISBEHAVIOR

 

Herman Cain has spent his life living and working all over the country — Indiana, Georgia, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Washington, D.C. — but never in Chicago. So it’s curious that all the sexual harassment allegations against Cain emanate from Chicago: home of the Daley machine and Obama consigliere David Axelrod.

Suspicions had already fallen on Sheila O’Grady, who is close with David Axelrod and went straight from being former Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley’s chief of staff to president of the Illinois Restaurant Association (IRA), as being the person who dug up Herman Cain’s personnel records from the National Restaurant Association (NRA).

The Daley-controlled IRA works hand-in-glove with the NRA. And strangely enough, Cain’s short, three-year tenure at the NRA is evidently the only period in his decades-long career during which he’s alleged to have been a sexual predator. After O’Grady’s name surfaced in connection with the miraculous appearance of Cain’s personnel files from the NRA, she issued a Clintonesque denial of any involvement in producing them — by vigorously denying that she knew Cain when he was at the NRA. (Duh.)

And now, after a week of conservative eye-rolling over unspecified, anonymous accusations against Cain, we’ve suddenly got very specific sexual assault allegations from an all-new accuser out of … Chicago.

Herman Cain has never lived in Chicago. But you know who has? David Axelrod! And guess who lived in Axelrod’s very building? Right again: Cain’s latest accuser, Sharon Bialek.

Bialek’s accusations were certainly specific. But they also demonstrated why anonymous accusations are worthless. Within 24 hours of Bialek’s press conference, friends and acquaintances of hers stepped forward to say that she’s a “gold-digger,” that she was constantly in financial trouble — having filed for personal bankruptcy twice — and, of course, that she had lived in Axelrod’s apartment building at 505 North Lake Shore Drive, where, she admits, she knew the man The New York Times calls Obama’s “hired muscle.”

Throw in some federal tax evasion, and she’s Obama’s next Cabinet pick.

The reason all this is relevant is that both Axelrod and Daley have a history of smearing political opponents by digging up claims of sexual misconduct against them. John Brooks, Chicago’s former fire commissioner, filed a lawsuit against Daley six months ago claiming Daley threatened to smear him with sexual harassment accusations if Brooks didn’t resign. He resigned — and the sexual harassment allegations were later found to be completely false.

Meanwhile, as extensively detailed in my book “Guilty: Liberal ‘Victims’ and Their Assault on America,” the only reason Obama became a U.S. senator — allowing him to run for president — is that David Axelrod pulled sealed divorce records out of a hat, first, against Obama’s Democratic primary opponent, and then against Obama’s Republican opponent.

One month before the 2004 Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, Obama was way down in the polls, about to lose to Blair Hull, a multimillionaire securities trader. But then The Chicago Tribune — where Axelrod used to work — began publishing claims that Hull’s second ex-wife, Brenda Sexton, had sought an order of protection against him during their 1998 divorce proceedings.

From then until Election Day, Hull was embroiled in fighting the allegation that he was a “wife beater.” He and his ex-wife eventually agreed to release their sealed divorce records. His first ex-wife, daughters and nanny defended him at a press conference, swearing he was never violent. During a Democratic debate, Hull was forced to explain that his wife kicked him and he had merely kicked her back.

Hull’s substantial lead just a month before the primary collapsed with the nonstop media attention to his divorce records. Obama sailed to the front of the pack and won the primary. Hull finished third with 10 percent of the vote.

Luckily for Axelrod, Obama’s opponent in the general election had also been divorced. The Republican nominee was Jack Ryan, a graduate of Dartmouth and Harvard law and business schools, who had left his lucrative partnership at Goldman Sachs to teach at an inner-city school on the South Side of Chicago.

But in a child custody dispute some years earlier, Ryan’s ex-wife, Hollywood sex kitten Jeri Lynn Ryan, had alleged that, while the couple was married, Jack had taken her to swingers clubs in Paris and New York. Jack Ryan adamantly denied the allegations. In the interest of protecting their son, he also requested that the records be put permanently under seal.

Axelrod’s courthouse moles obtained the “sealed” records and, in no time, they were in the hands of every political operative in Chicago. Knowing perfectly well what was in the records, Chicago Tribune attorneys flew to California and requested that the court officially “unseal” them — over the objections of both Jack and Jeri Ryan.

Your honor, who knows what could be in these records!

A California judge ordered them unsealed, which allowed newspapers to publish the salacious allegations, and four days later, Ryan dropped out of the race under pressure from idiot Republicans (who should be tracked down and shot). With a last-minute replacement of Alan Keyes as Obama’s Republican opponent, Obama was able to set an all-time record in an Illinois Senate election, winning with a 43 percent margin. (The majority of which were either dead, voted twice or….both!)

And that’s how Obama became a senator four years after losing a congressional race to Bobby Rush. (In a disastrous turn of events, Rush was not divorced.)

Axelrod destroyed the only two men who stood between Obama and the Senate with illicitly obtained, lurid allegations from their pasts.

In 2007, long after Obama was safely ensconced in the U.S. Senate, The New York Times reported: “The Tribune reporter who wrote the original piece (on Hull’s sealed divorce records) later acknowledged in print that the Obama camp had ‘worked aggressively behind the scenes’ to push the story.” Some had suggested, the Times article continued, that Axelrod had “an even more significant role — that he leaked the initial story.”

This time, Obama’s little helpers have not only thrown a bomb into the Republican primary, but are hoping to destroy the man who deprives the Democrats of their only argument in 2012: If you oppose Obama, you must be a racist.

Think about it: if Bill Clinton would bomb Iraq and an aspirin factory in the Sudan to divert the nation’s attention during the darkest days of Lewinskygate….when he wasn’t even standing for reelection….we can only imagine the depths to which the current Administration will sink in their quest for continued control.

Next up, two headlines that demonstrate the more things “change”, the more they remain the same:

Obama seeks Medvedev’s help with Iran Sanctions

 

Obama: U.S. Has Gotten A Bit “Lazy” Attracting Business

 

Yeah….like Medvedev goes to the bathroom without Putin’s permission.  Ya gotta love The Obamao: when he’s not eagerly engaged exposing America to her enemies overseas, he’s here at home, blaming others for problems he himself, through an incredible mix of ignorance and incompetence, has created.

And like the Boy Blunder has the slightest clue as to what attracts any kind of business….other than race-hustling!

Turning to the Transportation Section, the WSJ tells us all about Team Tick-Tock’s and Governor Moonbeam’s…

Train to Neverland

California’s railway gets more fantastic all the time.

 

California Governor Jerry Brown must have loved “The Little Engine That Could” as a kid. Last week his state’s high-speed rail authority released a new business plan that estimates its 500-mile bullet train from San Francisco to Anaheim will cost $98 billion. The state and federal governments are broke, and private capital won’t finance the project, but Mr. Brown still thinks the state can build the train.

Three years ago the rail authority sold a $9 billion bond measure to voters on the pretext that the bullet train would cost $33 billion and be financed mostly by private investors and Uncle Sam. They also claimed the train would draw 90 million riders per year—about 15 times what Amtrak’s Acela in the Northeast draws—and wouldn’t need a subsidy. Taxpayers were all aboard.

Then reality struck. (OUCH!  Don’t you just HATE when that happens?!?) A study last year by Stanford economist Alain Enthoven, former World Bank analyst William Grindley and financial consultant William Warren examined high-speed trains in Europe and Japan and concluded that the California train could cost upward of $100 billion and would be lucky to draw 10 million riders. The authors also reported that investors were refusing to finance the project without a subsidy, which the bond measure that voters approved had prohibited.

The White House has so far offered the state $3.2 billion in grant money—provided that it builds the train in a way that guarantees a taxpayer loss. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has required the state to construct the first segment in the scarcely populated Central Valley and break ground next year. The Obama Administration’s logic seems to be that if it forces the state to build a train to nowhere, the state will then dig deeper into taxpayer pockets to connect it to somewhere.

The rail authority last year chose to build the first segment between Merced and Bakersfield. The state watchdog Legislative Analyst’s Office called the decision a “big gamble” since ridership would be too low to operate the train without a subsidy. And if the project runs over budget—what are the chances?—the authority won’t have enough money to complete the segment or electrify the tracks. The best outcome then would be for the authority to sell the tracks to a museum for an exhibit on California dreams.

At the urging of the state analyst’s office, the legislature directed the authority to produce a more honest business plan before the state issues bonds. The authority now predicts that the train will draw 37 million riders by 2040—about equal to the state’s current population—and turn a profit on all segments. Sounds fantastic. Literally. They make the math work by assuming per-mile ticket prices at about half of what most high-speed trains around the world charge and an operating margin that’s about 50% of their revenues. Most high-speed trains run at a loss or just break even.

Rail authorities say that once the first segment turns into a gusher of revenue, private money will jump on board and finance the train’s completion. When that doesn’t happen, there’s Plan B: public borrowing.

Hold that idea. The state treasurer’s office recently released a report warning that the state can’t afford to authorize much more debt without severely squeezing public services. Debt service costs California $7 billion per year. Borrowing $90 billion to finance the train would cost about $10 billion a year. Forget about building new schools or revamping the state’s rickety water system.

Fortunately, the rail authority needs the legislature’s approval before it can start wasting taxpayer money and evicting home and business owners to pave the way for the train with no future. The legislature should just say no, but if members lack the nerve, they could at least leave the decision up to voters.

State Senator Doug LaMalfa suggests that the legislature give voters a do-over on the $9 billion bond measure they approved in 2008 when they were high on hope. Sounds reasonable. Congressman Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield has also proposed legislation to freeze federal funding for the project, which would make the train a nonstarter. It’s time Governor Brown put away childish things.

As Mark Landsbaum notes in the Orange County Register….

How many times have you heard someone pining: “Gee, I sure wish there was a really fast locomotive to ride from Anaheim to San Francisco that costs more and takes longer than flying there in an airplane.” Yeah, I’ve never heard anyone say that either. . . .

Come the end of the day, this boondoggle will make the Big Dig look like a bargain!

And in the Environmental Moment, the WSJ questions….

The EPA’s Reliability Cover-Up

Why did the agency erase its own doubts about the U.S. electrical grid?

 

Some 830,000 Connecticut customers are only now having their power restored after a snowstorm knocked out the state’s grid last month—but the Environmental Protection Agency continues to claim that its regulatory agenda won’t degrade U.S. electric reliability. The reality is that the EPA’s own staffers are—or used to be—worried, and their political superiors have erased the warnings.

In recent months, concerns have been growing that the agency’s torrent of new air-pollution rules will lead to blackouts or to the rolling outages that crisscrossed California and Arizona in September. Yet the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has continued its “who’s on first” routine to avoid its mandate to protect electric grid reliability, while the EPA is trying to rush out a new utility rule that on paper will reduce mercury and other emissions but is really designed to close coal-fired power plants.

Congressional and industry investigators have combed the EPA’s rule-making docket that contains hundreds of thousands pages of electronic documents. Many of these files are for some reason not “smart” PDFs (i.e., they’re unsearchable). But lo and behold, they uncovered one 934-page EPA draft that was circulated within the Administration sometime before the utility rule was formally proposed.

In a “What are the energy impacts?” section, the EPA concedes that it “is aware that concerns have been expressed by some, even in advance of this proposed rule, that this regulation may detrimentally impact the reliability of the electric grid.” The agency admits that what it calls “sources integral to reliable operation” may be forced to shut down—those would be the coal-fired plants the EPA is targeting—and that these retirements “could result in localized reliability problems.” The EPA insists that it knows how to balance “both clean air and electric reliability,” but all along in public it has denied that reliability is in any way at risk.

The draft document also “strongly encourages” the people who run the grid, like regional transmission operators and state regulators, to start planning “as soon as possible” for “potential retired units.” The EPA recommends “transmission upgrades, targeted demand side management strategies, and construction of new generation.” This helps to explain why even the EPA admits the utility rule is the most expensive it has ever proposed.

But here’s the kicker: This reliability section was gone when the EPA released its utility rule proposal in May 2011. Why did it vanish? Where did it go?

This matters because the draft report contradicts EPA leaders who have publicly portrayed anyone worried about reliability as an industry shill. More importantly, as a technical and legal matter, issues that are excluded from the Federal Register mean that the public is denied the opportunity to meaningfully comment on them.

For more than a year the EPA has claimed that it doesn’t need more time to finalize the rule, only to reverse itself and extend the deadline by 30 days to mid-December. But that still leaves barely any time for the White House regulatory office to review the utility rule, even as the EPA continues to rewrite major elements that supposedly resolve the reliability question but that no one outside of EPA has seen. The rule hasn’t been submitted, while White House regulatory flyspecking usually takes 90 days.

We hear the EPA’s overreach has created more than a few internal OMB critics while generating an internal Administration debate on whether to cashier or delay the utility rule, like the ozone rule earlier this year. Such adult supervision is long overdue, especially because EPA continues to stonewall.

On Wednesday Senators Lisa Murkowski and James Inhofe sent another letter to EPA chief Lisa Jackson, after Ms. Jackson refused to answer letters of August 3 and 16 and September 7 about reliability. The Senators modestly ask the EPA not to “impair electric reliability and affordability,” though they also ask “why and on what legal basis” the agency buried its own reliability announcement.

All of this may lack the allure of Herman Cain’s travails, but, with Congress deadlocked, these regulatory battles are the biggest economic story in town. The EPA’s campaign risks blackouts and will cause consumer rate increases and a load of pointless new business costs that deter hiring. At least some people are finally starting to notice.

As if The Dear Leader’s own words regarding the stated goals and impacts of his energy policies….

….what….weren’t enough?!?

On the Lighter Side….

Speaking of Mexicans, it once again appears certain Liberal jurists believe they possess more rights than Americans….IN America:

Court Backs High School in Flap Over American Flag T-Shirts

 

A California school principal did not violate the freedom of speech of a group of students who wore American flags on their shirts on Cinco de Mayowhen he told them to turn the shirts inside out or go home, a federal judge has ruled.

Forget the stitches; what the guy REALLY needs is glasses!

Magoo