It’s Wednesday, June 20th, 2012….International Surfing Day as declared by the once-great state of California.  So call in sick, grab your board and head for the beach.  Given the mess Liberals have made of things, one more day of economic inactivity can hardly make a difference.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, courtesy of the WSJ, everything wrong with Washington in one easy lesson:

Food Stamp Fiasco

The Senate refuses to cut $20 billion out of $770 billion.

 

The next time someone moans about Washington “austerity,” tell them about the Senate’s food stamp votes on Tuesday. Democrats and a few Republicans united to block even modest reform in a welfare program that has exploded in the last decade and is set to spend $770 billion in the next 10 years.

Yes, $770 billion on a single program. And you wonder why the U.S. had its credit-rating downgraded?

When the food stamp program began in the 1970s, it was designed to help about 1 of 50 Americans who were in severe financial distress. But thanks to eligibility changes first by President George W. Bush as part of the 2002 farm bill and then by President Obama in the 2008 stimulus, food stamps are becoming the latest middle-class entitlement.

A record 44.7 million people received food stamps in fiscal 2011, up from 28.2 million as recently as 2008. The cost has more than doubled in that same period, to $78 billion, and is on track to account for 78% of farm bill spending over the next decade. One in seven Americans now qualifies.

Once there was a stigma to going on the dole, and it was seen as a last resort. But now the Agriculture Department runs radio and TV ads prodding people to get the free food, as in a recent campaign that says food stamps will help you lose weight. A federal website boasts about strategies that have “increased program participation” with special emphasis on Hispanics because “our data show that many low-income Latinos simply don’t apply for [food stamps] even though they’re eligible.”

In the 1990s Bill Clinton boasted that welfare reform took Americans off the dole. The Obama Administration boasts about how many it has added.

Enter Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions, who proposed reforms to limit the worst excesses. One proposal would have established a federal asset test to ensure that food stamps aren’t going to families that may not have an income but have tens of thousands of dollars in savings or may even live in a million-dollar home. Some 39 states have no real asset test for food stamps, which means wealthy families without anyone in the job market are eligible, and 27 have gross-income limits that are above 130% of the federal poverty guidelines.

That amendment lost 56-43, with every Democrat except Missouri’s Claire McCaskill opposing it. New England Republicans Scott Brown, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe and Nevada’s Dean Heller joined the antireformers.

Mr. Sessions also tried to end the preposterous federal policy of paying some $500 million in bonuses to states that sign up more people for food stamps. This is the way government becomes a permanent feedback loop promoting even bigger government. That amendment lost 58-41, with every self-described Democratic “deficit hawk” opposed.

Still to come is an amendment on another egregious practice that lets some 15 states automatically enroll families for food stamps if they get federal home-heating subsidies. Some states mail heating subsidy checks of as little as $1 a month so families can qualify for federal food stamp benefits of as much as $130 a month. That amendment too is expected to fail.

It’s true that the recession and feeble recovery have expanded the number of people who need food assistance, but Mr. Sessions’s reforms would have harmed no one who really needs help. His amendments would have saved at most some $20 billion over 10 years, which would still leave some three-quarters of a trillion dollars in outlays.

Earlier this year, House Republicans passed their own food stamp reform that will save some $34 billion over a decade. That bill will now go to a House-Senate farm bill conference, and perhaps some savings can be salvaged. But the news in the Senate vote is that the political class still isn’t remotely serious about reforming government. The voters are going to have to clean out a lot more spenders in November if they want real change.

One down….

….roughly eleven to go!

Unfortunately, as the Journal details, the domestic dysfunction evidenced on Capitol Hill carries consequences felt far beyond our borders:

A Leaderless World

Signs of disorder grow as American influence recedes.

 

Not so long ago much of the world griped about an America that was too assertive, a “hyperpower” that attempted to lead with too little deference to the desires of those attending the G-20 meeting today in Mexico. Well, congratulations. A world without U.S. leadership is arriving faster than even the French hoped. How do you like it?

• In Syria, a populist revolt against a dictator threatens to become a civil war as Russia and Iran back their client in Damascus and the West defaults to a useless United Nations. The conflict threatens to spill into neighboring countries.

• Iran continues its march toward a nuclear weapon despite more than three years of Western pleading and (until recently) weak sanctions. Israel may conclude it must strike Iran first to defend itself, despite the military risks, because it lacks confidence about America’s will to act. If Iran does succeed, a nuclear proliferation breakout throughout the Middle East is likely.

• Again President of Russia, Vladimir Putin snubbed President Obama’s invitation to the G-8 summit at Camp David and is complicating U.S. diplomacy at every turn. He is sending arms and antiaircraft missiles to Syria, blocking sanctions at the U.N. and reasserting Russian influence in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Mr. Obama’s “reset” in relations has little to show for it.

• In Egypt, the military and Muslim Brotherhood vie for power after the Arab spring—with the U.S. largely a bystander. The democrats don’t trust an America that helped them too little in the Mubarak days, while the military doesn’t trust a U.S. Administration that abandoned Mubarak at the end. Egypt is increasingly unwilling to police its own border with Israel or the flow of arms into Gaza.

• The countries of the euro zone stumble from one failed bailout to the next, jeopardizing a still-fragile global economy. The world’s most impressive current leader, Germany’s Angela Merkel, rejected Mr. Obama’s advice to blow out her country’s balance sheet with stimulus spending in 2009 and is thankful she did. Her economy is stronger for it.

The Obama Administration has since played the role mainly of Keynesian kibitzer, privately taking the side of Europe’s debtors in urging Germany to write bigger checks and ease monetary policy. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner elbowed his way into a euro-zone finance ministers meeting last September and then criticized European policies, and lately Messrs. Obama and Geithner have been blaming Europe for America’s economic problems. No wonder Frau Merkel doesn’t much care what the U.S. thinks.

• The countries of South Asia are recalculating their interests as the U.S. heads for the exits in Afghanistan. Pakistan demands the extortion of $5,000 a truck to carry supplies to U.S. forces, while continuing to provide sanctuary for Taliban leaders. Iran extends its own influence in Western Afghanistan, while the Taliban resist U.S. entreaties to negotiate a cease-fire, figuring they can wait out the departure.

For the Putins of the world and many American liberals, these signs of fading U.S. influence are welcome. They have finally tied down the American Gulliver. The era of “collective security” through the U.N. has arrived, and, whatever the future difficulties, at least there will be no more Iraqs.

But note well that the substitute for U.S. leadership is not a new era of U.N.-administered peace. It is often a vacuum filled by the world’s nastiest actors. That is nowhere clearer than in Syria, where Russia and Iran have a free run to fortify the Assad dictatorship. The price is high in human slaughter, but it may be higher still in showing other dictators that it hardly matters anymore if an American President declares that you “must go.” What matters is if you have patrons in Moscow, Beijing or Tehran.

The other claim, especially popular in Europe and China, is that this American retreat is inevitable because the U.S. is weaker economically. There’s no doubt the recession and tepid recovery have sapped U.S. resources and confidence, but economic decline is not inevitable. It is, as Charles Krauthammer put it in 2009, “a choice.”

America can choose to stay on its current path toward a slow-growth entitlement society that spends its patrimony on domestic handouts, or it can resolve to once again be a dynamic, risk-taking society that grows at 3% or more a year.

What the U.S. can’t do is expect to grow at the 2% annual rate of the Obama era and somehow finance both ObamaCare and the current American military. On present trend, America’s defense budget will inevitably shrink as Europe’s military spending has to 3%, then 2% or less, of GDP.

There are always limits to U.S. power, and American leadership does not mean intervening willy-nilly or militarily. It does require, however, that an American President believe that U.S. pre-eminence is desirable and a source for good, and that sometimes this means leading forcefully from the front even if others object.

Without that American leadership, the increasing signs of world disorder will be portents of much worse to come.

So….

….how’s that reset button working, Barry?!?  By the way, what little credibility David Gergen ever had was sacrificed long ago on the altar of Liberal advocacy; so it’s no surprise to us he’d suggest Obama’s nominally cordial relationship with Dmitry Medvedev….

….means squat, as Medvedev enjoys as much real authority as….

B. Hussein Obama is a joke….and Putin, Assad, Ahmadinejad, Chavez and every single other enemy of America the world over knows it.

Speaking of jokes, Thomas Sowell weighs in on….

The Immigration Ploy

 

President Obama’s latest political ploy — granting new “rights” out of thin air, by Executive Order, to illegal immigrants who claim that they were brought into the country when they were children — is all too typical of his short-run approach to the country’s long-run problems.

Whatever the merits or demerits of the Obama immigration policy, his Executive Order is good only as long as he remains president, which may be only a matter of months after this year’s election.

People cannot plan their lives on the basis of laws that can suddenly appear, and then suddenly disappear, in less than a year. To come forward today and claim the protection of the Obama Executive Order is to declare publicly and officially that your parents entered the country illegally. How that may be viewed by some later administration is anybody’s guess.

Employers likewise cannot rely on policies that may be here today and gone tomorrow, whether these are temporary tax rates designed to look good at election time or temporary immigration policies that can backfire later if employers get accused of hiring illegal immigrants. Why hire someone, and invest time and money in training them, if you may be forced to fire them before a year has passed?

Kicking the can down the road is one of the favorite exercises in Washington. But neither in the economy nor in their personal lives can people make plans and commitments on the basis of government policies that suddenly appear and suddenly disappear.

Like so many other Obama ploys, his immigration ploy is not meant to help the country, but to help Obama. This is all about getting the Hispanic vote this November. The principle involved — keeping children from being hurt by actions over which they had no control — is one already advanced by Senator Marco Rubio, who may well end up as Governor Romney’s vice-presidential running mate. The Obama Executive Order, which suddenly popped up like a rabbit out of a magician’s hat, steals some of Senator Rubio’s thunder, so it is clever politics.

But clever politics is what has gotten this country into so much trouble, not only as regards immigration but also as regards the economy and the dangerous international situation. When the new, and perhaps short-lived, immigration policy is looked at in terms of how it can be administered, it makes even less sense. While this policy is rationalized in terms of children, those who invoke it are likely to do so as adults.

How do you check someone’s claim that he was brought into the country illegally when he was a child? If Obama gets reelected, it is very unlikely that illegal immigrants will really have to prove anything. The administration can simply choose not to enforce that provision, as so many other immigration laws are unenforced in the Obama administration. If Obama does not get reelected, then it may not matter anyway, when his Executive Order can be gone after he is gone.

Ultimately, it does not matter what immigration policy this country has, if it cannot control its own borders. Whoever wants to come, and who has the chutzpah, will come. And the fact that they come across the Mexican border does not mean that they are all Mexicans. They can just as easily be terrorists from the Middle East.

Only after the border is controlled can any immigration policy matter be seriously considered, and options weighed through the normal Constitutional process of Congressional hearings, debate and legislation, rather than by Presidential short-cuts.

Not only is border control fundamental, what is also fundamental is the principle that immigration policy does not exist to accommodate foreigners but to protect Americans — and the American culture that has made this the world’s richest, freest and most powerful nation for more than a century.

No nation can absorb unlimited numbers of people from another culture without jeopardizing its own culture. In the 19th and early 20th century, America could absorb millions of immigrants who came here to become Americans. But the situation is entirely different today, when group separatism, resentment and polarization are being promoted by both the education system and politicians.

All for their own short-term personal political gain….and the impact on the country be damned.

But regardless of the impact of The Dear Misleader’s sop to Hispanics, as John Podhoretz, writing at the New York Post and courtesy of George Lawlor details, all is not well at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue; in fact, far from it:

A White House mess

Dems’ advice to Team Obama

 

One little-known fact about the world of journalism is that news organizations prepare obituaries of famous people while those people are still alive, so that packages of material will be ready to go when a death is announced.

Over the past week, journalists have been writing articles that have the quality of these sorts of pre-obituaries — only the event they’re anticipating isn’t the last breath of an individual but the defeat of President Obama’s re-election bid. Even more striking, these journalists aren’t conservatives indulging in their deepest wish, but rather liberals who admire Obama and want to see him win a second term.

Al Hunt, who was for decades the voice of liberal conventional wisdom as the Washington bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal, declared yesterday in his Bloomberg column that Obama “needs an intervention.” Channeling the view of a dozen unnamed leading Democrats, Hunt said “the central challenge” is for Obama to craft “a compelling narrative from the president and campaign, which [these Democratic sages] describe as unusually insular and arrogant.”

The Obama people won’t listen, he complained: “Any outreach by Obama’s Chicago acolytes to hear out these arguments is limited and superficial. A longtime Democratic strategist predicts defeat unless there is some boldness.”

E.J. Dionne — perhaps Obama’s most devoted op-ed-writing fan — reported that campaign honcho David Axelrod was finding it necessary to buck up the staff because it has become clear their guy may lose. “Obama,” Dionne lamented, “is not blessed with the opportunity to be simple.”

Romney, you see, can be simple because he can say Obama’s policies haven’t worked. What a gyp!

Obama, Dionne continued, “has to show that he knows things are bad for a lot of people but also insist that his policies made things a whole lot better than they would have been. He has to argue that the Republicans are blocking his proposals to improve the economy, but he doesn’t want to look like a politician inventing an alibi.”

All of the president’s good work — which, in the view of these writers, includes the stimulus and ObamaCare — is simply too difficult to defend in the face of the “easy” Romney attacks.

This behavior should be familiar to anyone familiar with the behavior of political journalists from time immemorial — and it should worry Obama supporters. Well-run, well-managed campaigns are chronicled admiringly. Poorly-run and ill-considered campaigns are the recipients of massive amounts of unwanted, unsolicited and annoying advice. And part of the reason for the copious quantity of advice is to allow the adviser to say “I told you so” when his counsel is disregarded and the candidate loses.

Hunt’s piece suggests the frustration in dealing with White Houses and re-election campaigns that don’t know how much trouble they’re in. Every president and his team seem to remain absurdly calm and preposterously sure of themselves even as the political winds are shifting. The odd habit of taking a cat nap on the subway track while the IRT is bearing down on you at 60 miles an hour isn’t unique to this administration. In 1993, I wrote a book, “Hell of a Ride,” that chronicled the suicide of the George H.W. Bush presidency in part due to the excess of calm inside the White House bubble.

The same self-destructive calm was in effect in 1994, when Bill Clinton’s party was shocked to find itself decimated by the Republicans in the midterm elections; in 2006, when George W. Bush’s party was similarly thumped — and in 2010, when Barack Obama’s party was shellacked.

To be sure, the Obamaites have revealed they’re not entirely without a pulse, as the president’s audacious declaration on Friday that he would simply not enforce immigration laws on around 1 million people demonstrated. That was a nervy move, designed to secure political advantage with Hispanic voters and put Romney in a difficult position.

Now, I think Obama is right that, as a matter of policy, the United States should make special provision for those brought to the United States as children by illegal-immigrant parents. But it is wrong, and possibly unconstitutional, for a president to arrogate to himself the power to pick and choose which laws his administration is going to enforce.

That is banana-republic stuff. Of course, you’ll never hear his acolytes saying so. They’re too worried about him losing to object to questionable behavior on a matter as inconsequential as the rule of law.

Which is likely why….

Democratic W.Va. governor won’t attend convention

 

Democratic West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin says he won’t attend the party’s national convention, citing serious problems with President Barack Obama. A Tomblin spokesman, Chris Stadelman, said Monday that the governor has serious problems with Republican Mitt Romney, too.

Tomblin is an automatic superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention. He says his time is best spent working in West Virginia, not attending the four-day political rally in Charlotte, N.C. In West Virginia’s presidential primary, Tomblin refused to say whether he voted for Obama.

Tomlbin isn’t alone in sitting this one out – West Virginia’s Sen. Joe Manchin and congressman Nick Rahall say they don’t plan to attend the convention, either. Each of the three faces a Republican opponent in November.

Yeah….

The only problem West Virginia Dimocrats have with Mitt Romney is the “R” next to his name on the ballot.  Then again, their main issue with The Obamao also involves letters….four of them: C-O-A-L.

And in Tales From the Darkside, FOX News reports why color of anti-Semitism today is purple:

‘The Color Purple’ author reportedly refuses to allow Hebrew translation of book

 

Author and noted anti-Semite Alice Walker, pictured above playing the race card after being denied the role of the alien in “Predator”.

The award-winning author of The Color Purple has reportedly refused to allow a Hebrew translation of the 1982 work, citing Israel’s “apartheid state.” In a June 9 letter to Yediot Books, author Alice Walker said she would not allow publication of the book into Hebrew because “Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories,” the Jerusalem Post reports.

In her letter, which was posted Sunday by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, Walker indicated her support of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, saying she hopes the campaign will “have enough of an impact on Israeli civilian society to change the situation.”

It was not immediately clear when Yediot Books — a division of the daily Yediot Aharonot newspaper — made the request, or whether Walker could in fact stop translation of the book. At least one version of the book has already appeared in Hebrew in the 1980s, the Jerusalem Post reports.

Walker, who has intensified her anti-Israel activism in recent years, said Israel’s policies were “worse” than the segregation she suffered as an American youth.

In a closely related item….

Ohio man was making meth inside Walmart, police say

 

Reports Alice Walker was his biggest customer remain unconfirmed; she’s certainly smokin’ something.

On the Lighter Side….

And finally, courtesy of Carl Polizzi, we’ll call it a day with News of the Bizarre, and further evidence why photo ID’s should be required to vote:

Bedford County dead dog receives voter registration forms 

 

When Tim Morris got his mail last week he found a pretty big surprise, a document asking his dog Mozart to register to vote. Not only is Mozart a dog but he’s been dead for two years. “I opened it up and looked at it and I just laughed,” Morris said. “I thought it was a joke at first and it turns out it’s real.” The form is addressed to Mo, the family’s nickname for the dog.

What amazed Morris is that if Mozart was human he would have been eligible to vote for the first time in 2012. “He would have been 19 years old this year and he passed away two years ago,” he said. “I still have no earthly idea how they got his information.”

10 On Your Side looked deeper and found that the voter registration forms were sent by the non-profit Voter Participation Center, not the State Board of Elections. So we contacted the Voter Participation Center and found that they purchase mailing lists from vendors and while they do try and check every name the organization admits that some do fall through the cracks. (Right into the hands of crack addicts!)

The voter registration efforts are focused on groups like young people, minorities, and unmarried women.

Along with, no doubt, illegal immigrants, dead people (or pets), as well as anyone or anything from which Progressives believe they can squeeze an extra uninformed vote….valid or not.

Magoo