It’s Friday, December 9th, 2011….and here’s The Gouge!

First up on the last Gouge of the week, the WSJ offers at least a partial explanation for why The Obamao’s elevator doesn’t stop on every floor:

The Health Risks of Being Left-Handed

Lefties Face Chance Of ADHD, Other Disorders; Brain Wiring Holds Clues

 

“….Left-handedness appears to be associated with a greater risk for a number of psychiatric and developmental disorders. While lefties make up about 10% of the overall population, about 20% of people with schizophrenia are lefties, for example. Links between left-handedness and dyslexia, ADHD and some mood disorders have also been reported in research studies.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204083204577080562692452538.html

Be honest; haven’t you always had a sneaking suspicion the man was….

….a wee bit handicapped?

And since we’re on the subject of the psychologically challenged, Peggy Noonan explains in the WSJ why she believes….

Gingrich Is Inspiring—and Disturbing

The first potential president about whom there is too much information.

 

I had a friend once who amused herself thinking up bumper stickers for states. The one she made up for California was brilliant. “California: It’s All True.” It is so vast and sprawling a place, so rich and various, that whatever you’ve heard about its wildness, weirdness and wonders, it’s true.

That’s the problem with Newt Gingrich: It’s all true. It’s part of the reason so many of those who know him are anxious about the thought of his becoming president. It’s also why people are looking at him, thinking about him, considering him as president.

Ethically dubious? True. Intelligent and accomplished? True. Has he known breathtaking success and contributed to real reforms in government? Yes. Presided over disasters? Absolutely. Can he lead? Yes. Is he erratic and unreliable as a leader? Yes. Egomaniacal? True. Original and focused, harebrained and impulsive—all true.

Do you want evidence he’s a Burkean conservative? Start with welfare reform in 1996. A sober, standard Republican? Go to the balanced budgets of the Clinton era. Is he a Tea Partier? Sure, he speaks the slashing lingo with relish. Is he moderate? Yes, that can be proved. Michele Bachmann this week called him a “frugal socialist,” and there’s plenty of evidence of that, too.

One way to view this is that he is so rich and varied as a character, as geniuses often are, that he contains worlds, multitudes. One senses that would be his way of looking at it. Another way to look at it: In a long career, one will shift views, adapt to circumstances, tack this way and that. Another way: He’s philosophically unanchored, an unstable element. There are too many storms within him, and he seeks out external storms in order to equalize his own atmosphere. He’s a trouble magnet, a starter of fights that need not be fought. He is the first modern potential president about whom there is too much information.

What is striking is the extraordinary divide in opinion between those who know Gingrich and those who don’t. Those who do are mostly not for him, and they were burning up the phone lines this week in Washington.

Those who’ve known and worked with Mitt Romney mostly seem to support him, but when they don’t they don’t say the reason is that his character and emotional soundness are off. Those who know Ron Paul and oppose him do so on the basis of his stands, they don’t say his temperament forecloses the possibility of his presidency. But that’s pretty much what a lot of those who’ve worked with Newt say.

Former New Hampshire governor and George H.W. Bush chief of staff John Sununu told The Wall Street Journal this week: “Listen to just about anyone who worked alongside Gingrich and you will hear that he’s inconsistent, erratic, untrustworthy and unprincipled.” In a conference call Thursday, Jim Talent, who served with Mr. Gingrich in the House from 1993 through 2001, said, “He’s not reliable as a leader.” Sen. Tom Coburn, a member of the House class of 1994, called the former speaker’s leadership “lacking,” and according to a local press report, he told Oklahoma constituents last year that Mr. Gingrich was “the last person I’d vote for for president of the United States.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham told a reporter that Mr. Gingrich could be a historic president if he has “matured as a person and is, for lack of a better word, calmed down.” That is as close as most of those who’ve worked with him get to a compliment.

Yet the reservations and criticisms of the politico-journalistic establishment are having zero effect on Gingrich’s support. In a Quinnipiac poll this week he moved into a double-digit lead over Mr. Romney in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The antipathy of the establishment not only is not hurting him at this early date, it may be helping him. It may be part of the secret of his rise. Because establishments, especially the Washington establishment, famously count for little with the Republican base: “You’re the ones who got us into this mess.”

Republicans on the ground who view Mr. Gingrich from afar, who neither know nor have worked with him, are more likely to see him this way: “Who was the last person to actually cut government? Who was the last person who actually led a movement that balanced the federal budget? . . . The last time there was true welfare reform, the last time government was cut, Gingrich did it.” That is Rush Limbaugh, who has also criticized Mr. Gingrich.

And that is exactly what I’ve been hearing from Newt supporters who do not listen to talk radio. They are older voters, they are not all Republicans, and when government last made progress he was part of it. They have a very practical sense of politics now. The heroic era of the presidency is dead. They are not looking to like their president or admire him, they just want someone to fix the crisis. The last time helpful things happened in Washington, he was a big part of it. So they may hire him again. Are they put off by his scandals? No. They think all politicians are scandalous.

The biggest fear of those who’ve known Mr. Gingrich? He has gone through his political life making huge strides, rising in influence and achievement, and then been destabilized by success, or just after it. Maybe he’s made dizzy by the thin air at the top, maybe he has an inner urge to be tragic, to always be unrealized and misunderstood. But he goes too far, his rhetoric becomes too slashing, the musings he shares—when he rose to the speakership, in 1995, it was that women shouldn’t serve in combat because they’re prone to infections—are too strange. And he starts to write in his notes what Kirsten Powers, in the Daily Beast, remembered: he described himself as “definer of civilization . . . leader (possibly) of the civilizing forces.”

Those who know him fear—or hope—that he will be true to form in one respect: He will continue to lose to his No. 1 longtime foe, Newt Gingrich. He is a human hand grenade who walks around with his hand on the pin, saying, “Watch this!”

What they fear is that he will show just enough discipline over the next few months, just enough focus, to win the nomination. And then, in the fall of 2012, once party leaders have come around and the GOP is fully behind him, he will begin baying at the moon. He will start saying wild things and promising that he may bomb Iran but he may send a special SEAL team in at night to secretly dig Iran up, and fly it to Detroit, where we can keep it under guard, and Detroiters can all get jobs as guards, “solving two problems at once.” They’re afraid he’ll start saying, “John Paul was great, but most of that happened after I explained the Gospels to him,” and “Sure, Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize, but only after I explained how people can think fast, slow and at warp speed. He owes me everything.”

There are many good things to say about Newt Gingrich. He is compelling and unique, and, as Margaret Thatcher once said, he has “tons of guts.”

But this is a walk on the wild side.

Turning from disasters waiting to happen to train already off the tracks, John Corzine does his best Uncle Billy impression:

Corzine: ‘I Simply Do Not Know Where The Money Is’

 

As frequent contributor Bill Meisen observed, shortly after the Enron scandle broke, Ken Lay immediately enjoyed a new moniker.  Despite having only the most casual acquaintance with Lay, the MSM subsequently referred to the energy scam’s disgraced chairman almost exclusively as “Bush’s buddy Ken Lay”.   Google it: you’ll find page after page of references.

Yet today, despite John Corzine enjoying a relationship with both B. Hussein and Hairplug Joe both men described as tighter than Barney Frank and Fannie Mae (or at least one fanny in particular!)….

 

Watching or reading the MSM, you wouldn’t know Corzine and The Dynamic Duo had even met.  Madoff’s in jail, Blago’s heading there and Kenny Boy’s dead; anyone wanna bet Corzine’s never even becomes the subject of a criminal investigation, let alone indicted?

Is it any wonder the American public hasn’t the faintest inkling The Obamao’s been up to his neck with the likes Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Frank Marshall Davis, Saul Alinsky, Rod Blagojevich and John Corzine? 

And inexplicably, the RNC appears in no hurry to educate them, ignoring the old Japanese proverb, “When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends.”

Speaking of those lacking even the faintest inkling, as this forward from Bill Meisen details, THIS was the best the GOP had to offer in 2008?!?

‘On What?’–McCain Says He Didn’t Know Defense Bill He Approved Repealed Military Ban on Sodomy, Bestiality

 

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told CNSNews.com on Wednesday that he did not know that the 926-page Defense Department authorization bill that came through his committee and was approved by the Senate last week on a 93-to-7 vote included a provision that would repeal the military’s ban on sodomy and bestiality if the bill becomes law.

CNSNews.com asked McCain: “Senator, did you read the Defense authorization bill that was passed last week? Were you aware of the language that repealed the ban on sodomy and bestiality?”

“On what?” McCain replied. CNSNews.com followed up: “The repeal of the ban on sodomy and bestiality in the military, were you at all aware of that?” “I’ll have to ask my folks,” McCain said.  “I—I will check on it and have, and he’ll get back to you.” (Yeah….along with how many houses the beer heiress owns.)

CNSNews.com then asked: “You don’t agree with that language?” “I don’t, I don’t know what you’re—honestly.  I read the bill.  And I was there for many hours of deliberation and debate and amendments.  And probably spent hundreds of, several hundred hours on it.  But that particular provision I did not know.  So we’ll have, we’ll get back to you. We’ll get back to you. Just call.”

Like Nancy the Red, McCain evidently believes bill must first be passed in order to learn what they contain.

And in the Energy Section, Victor Davis Hanson asks if the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave might soon become….

Oil-Rich America?

 

There is a revolution going on America. But it is not part of the Tea Party or the loud Occupy Wall Street protests.

Instead, massive new reserves of gas, oil and coal are being discovered almost everywhere in the United States, due to revolutionary methods of exploration and exploitation such as fracking and horizontal drilling. Current prices of over $100 a barrel make even complex efforts at recovery enormously profitable.

There were always known to be additional untapped reserves of oil and gas in the petroleum-rich Gulf of Mexico, off America’s shores, and in the American West and Alaska. But even the top energy experts never imagined just how vast was the energy there — or beneath far more unlikely places like South Dakota, Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York. Some studies suggest the United States has now expanded its known potential gas and oil reserves tenfold.

The strategic and economic repercussions of these new finds are staggering, and remind us how a once energy-independent and thereby confident American economy soared to world dominance in the early 20th century.

America will soon again be able to supply all of its own domestic natural gas needs — and perhaps for the next 90 years at present rates of consumption. We have recently become a net exporter of refined gas and diesel fuel, and already have cut imported oil from OPEC countries by 1 million barrels per day.

With expanded exploration and conservation, the United States could also eventually supply half its own petroleum needs. If we were to eliminate just 5 million barrels of our current daily 9 million barrels of imported petroleum, the annual savings could reach nearly $200 billion per year. Eventually, the new gas and oil could add another 1.6 million new jobs and add up to nearly $1 trillion in federal revenue.

That windfall would cut out about a third of our present annual trade deficit — well apart from additional income earned by new natural gas exportation. “Investments,” “shovel-ready jobs” and “stimulus” would finally become more than empty sloganeering.

But America’s new oil discoveries are not occurring in a vacuum. The entire Western Hemisphere is enjoying a fossil fuel boom, from northern Canada to Brazil and Argentina. America’s backyard will soon be comparable to the oil-rich Persian Gulf, keeping more American money — and troops — at home. Illegal immigration should taper off as well, as oil-rich Latin American economies reap huge cash bonanzas. Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela will soon be simply one of many regional exporters.

Current crises in American foreign policy — Iran’s efforts to obtain the bomb, the protection of an embattled Israel, stopping the funding of radical Islamists — might be freed from the worries of perennial OPEC threats of cutoffs and price spikes.

Federal subsidies for inefficient corn-based ethanol production in the Midwest also could cease. That would save the Treasury billions of dollars and allow millions of American acres to return to food production to supply an increasingly hungry world.

The Obama administration’s efforts to subsidize “green” energy so far have proved both uneconomical and occasionally corrupt — as we have seen in the Solyndra affair. Yet more gas and oil can offer America critical breathing space until better technology makes wind, solar and electric power more price-competitive — without massive federal subsidies and a marked reduction in our standard of living.

Of course, there are sizable interests opposed to the new American gas and oil finds — not all of them foreign governments, but instead reflected in the current Obama administration policy of halting new pipelines, placing moratoriums on offshore drilling, and putting lucrative federal lands off-limits. Yet if the United States does not produce much of the fuel that it uses, will the oil-exporting Gulf sheikdoms, Nigeria or Iran better protect the world’s environment than American-based oil companies? Would our oil dollars or theirs be less likely to fuel terrorism, illegal arms sales and rogue regimes?

For the American poor and unemployed, how liberal is it, really, to keep energy prices high while stalling millions of high-paying private-sector jobs that would both lower government costs in entitlements and empower the working classes?

In the current presidential campaign, three issues dominate: national security, fiscal solvency and high unemployment. Development of America’s vast new gas and oil finds addresses all three at once.

The idea of vastly expanding American gas and oil production in the 21st century is almost as unbelievable as the present administration’s apparent reluctance to capitalize on its windfall.

Only because Team Tick-Tock will every thing in its power, legal or otherwise, to stop it, as cheap and plentiful fossil fuels are diametrically opposed to their agenda.

In a related item….

Obama defends Keystone pipeline delay

 

President Obama used the unveiling of a new trade agreement with Canada on Wednesday to defend his administration’s delay of a planned pipeline between the two countries, an action criticized by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Republicans alike as a job killer.

In recent weeks, the Obama administration decided to delay a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast, angering Harper, who said the project would produce thousands of jobs. Harper declined to comment on the president’s position, saying it was a “domestic” political situation.

Obama ordered the State Department to conduct new environmental studies, a move critics said was designed to punt the issue until after the 2012 election. Republican lawmakers have attempted to force the president’s hand on the development, saying they would block his desired payroll tax cut extension if he dithered on the pipeline.

Standing alongside Harper, Obama defended the red tape that has stalled the pipeline decision, saying it was “important to understand all the questions surrounding the project.” (Not when each one’s already been answered….at least three or four times!) And he also warned Republicans against using Keystone to derail his other initiatives. “Any effort to try to tie Keystone to the payroll tax cut, I will reject. So everybody can be on notice” Obama said. “It shouldn’t be held hostage.”

Then there’s this….

Senator Inhofe to U.N. Climate Change Conference: Nobody Cares

 

The most succinct yet fully-informative commentary we’ve read or heard since Congressman Joe Wilson voiced the national consensus on Obamascare during the President’s address.

Here’s the juice on the Keystone XL, borrowing heavily on an email from Mr. Meisen: the Obamao’s energy policies in general, and the Keystone XL in particular, prove beyond any doubt the only job B. Hussein cares about is his.  Consider for a moment why else he’d delay a project which will undeniably:

–  Lessen our dependence on energy from unfriendly or undependable sources.

–  Create thousands of good-paying private sector jobs.

–  Not require a penny of public funding.

–  Lower oil and gasoline prices at a time Americans are scrimping to save every penny possible.

–  Serve to further strengthen our friendship with our Neighbor to the North.

Here’s the scoop: The Obamao’s fighting for his political life, and his fate may ultimately depend on how much campaign cash he raises.  Currently, three of his largest sources of cash are labor unions, the Environazis and a host of energy-related concerns.

Regardless of what decision he makes, he’s certain to offend at least one of them, thus not only materially reducing his available campaign funds, but adversely impacting turnout on election day.

The delay keeps everyone on the hook and the cash flowing, as all parties concerned must continue to grease The Dear Leader’s palm in hopes they’ll ultimately realize a return on their….investment; you know….the Chicago way.

Bottom line: The Anointed One cares more about securing his personal power than he does about America’s jobs, economy, dependence on foreign oil or relationships with her closest allies.

Oh….as for the Environazis, get a clue; regardless of whether the Keystone XL’s built or not, Canada will still recover and sell every drop of oil they can possibly recover from the Athabascan Oil Sands, if not us then to China.  And last time we looked, the Chinese operate the least environmentally-friendly nation on the planet.

Happy now, you simple bags of douche?!?

Which brings us to the Environmental Moment, where we learn of….

More Ninth Circuit Mayhem

The Supreme Court has another legal clean-up job.

 

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is often a source of national amusement, but if one of its recent decisions on the Clean Water Act is allowed to stand, it will wreak havoc on the timber industry and damage other agricultural management as well. Today the Supreme Court is likely to decide whether to hear the appeal on a case that could reinterpret a longstanding classification in environmental law.

In Georgia Pacific v. Northwest Environmental Defense Center, the question concerns whether rural roads used for hauling timber should be subject to the same stringent environmental permitting process as major industrial sites and municipal systems.

An environmental group claimed that water runoff from logging roads was getting into fish-bearing streams. The District Court said there was no case but in its ever-willful way the liberal Ninth Circuit overturned, ruling that the roads should fall under so-called “point source” standards, which require special permits from the EPA.

The stricter classification is a perennial on the wish list of environmentalists because it would introduce an army of lawyers and specialists every time a new logging road was built. Under the roads’ historical Clean Water Act classification as “non-point source,” storm-water runoff on the roads is regulated by the states, which develop their own requirements and restrictions on road use. The stricter category would delay the process as the permits themselves become a new locus for additional environmental litigation.

The U.S. Forest Service says that if the ruling stands, it would have to obtain more than 400,000 permits, working with 46 states, a process that could take 10 years. And that’s the green goal: to create enough delay and bureaucracy that timber harvesting will cease to be profitable. (You know….sorta like nuke and coal-fired power plants!)

According to Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, the Ninth Circuit’s radical interpretation “would shut down forestry on private, state and tribal lands” in the states where it applies. That list would include Oregon, Washington, Idaho, California, Nevada and Montana.

As a legal matter, the Ninth Circuit’s decision was a particularly blatant power grab in the kind of matter traditionally left to an agency with specific judgment and knowledge. In deciding environmental complaint cases, courts are supposed to defer to the Environmental Protection Agency, as long as the agency has acted reasonably.

In the case of the logging roads, the non-point source classification represented 35 years of consistent interpretation by the EPA, that storm-water runoff was “better controlled through the utilization of best management practices” and “ill-suited for inclusion in a permit program.” After Congress amended the law in 1987, the agency again rejected including logging roads in the category for heavy industrial pollutants.

The interpretation has been confirmed by two other circuits, but if the Ninth Circuit’s wacky ruling is allowed to stand it will impose major economic burdens and a litigation free-for-all in the Pacific Northwest. No doubt some Supreme Court Justices are frustrated that they must keep playing janitor after the legal elephant parade that is the Ninth Circuit, but no one else has the authority. We hope the High Court takes the case.

Next up, it’s the “THAT was then, THIS is now!” segment, brought to you today by Best of the Web and, as James Taranto so eloquently termed it, “Two Superlatively Bad Writers in One!”

• “And, as we sit here today, the popular trend is not with the Muslim Brotherhood. Indeed, what makes the uprising here [in Egypt] so impressive–and in that sense so dangerous to other autocracies in the region–is precisely the fact that it is not owned by, and was not inspired by, the Muslim Brotherhood.”–Thomas Friedman, New York Times website, Feb. 13
• “The fact that the Muslim Brotherhood and the even more fundamentalist Salafist Nour Party have garnered some 65 percent of the votes in the first round of Egypt’s free parliamentary elections since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak should hardly come as a surprise. Given the way that the military regimes in the Arab world decimated all independent secular political parties over the last 50 years, there is little chance of any Arab country going from Mubarak to Jefferson without going through some Khomeini.”–Friedman, New York Times, Dec. 7

Like most of the modern MSM, even when Friedman’s right, he’s wrong….or is it the other way ’round?!?

And in today’s Muslim Minute, the latest from the Religion of Peace:

Muslim Cleric’s Warning: Cucumbers Too Sexy for Women

 An Islamic cleric living in Europe reportedly has warned Muslim women not to get too close to bananas, cucumbers or other produce — to avoid having “sexual thoughts.”

The unnamed cleric, whose directive was featured in an article in el-Senousa, a religious publication, purportedly said that if women wanted to eat these foods, a third party — preferably a male related to them, such as their father or husband — should cut the items into small pieces before serving, the Egyptian website Bikya Masr reported.

Carrots and zucchini also were added to the alleged cleric’s list of forbidden foods for women.

On the Lighter Side….

And in the “Great Moments In Education” segment:

NC Principal Forced to Retire After Suspending 9-Year-Old for Calling Teacher ‘Cute’

 

Finally, we’ll call it week with this classic letter to the editor, courtesy of James Taranto:

From the Austin American-Statesman comes one of the best letters to the editor of all time (hat tip: Tom Elia):

Lotto stimulus

We heard about Powerball winners of more than $200 million on TV. I thought, “Why in the world do one, two or three people need all that money?” I propose we cap the winnings at $1 million for all lotto games and let more folks win $1 million. There would be many more people in our states that could be pay their morgages [sic] with ease and pay their bills without stress. It would ease the unemployment burden and put smiles on lots of people’s faces. They would shop, which would be good for the economy. Since the gap between the rich and the not-rich is so huge, it would even the playing field. Seven days a week, more people could be out of debt. Of course, there is always the chance folks who win would squander the money, but I think the majority of folks would do the right thing.

Laurie Gonterman
Cedar Park

Why not do away with lotteries altogether? That would give people who don’t understand math a chance to keep a dollar of their hard-earned money.

Enjoy the weekend!

Magoo