Thanks (for nothing) Obama!

An article from the Wall Street Journal by Paul Rubin that pretty-much nails the relationship between the press and obama, and obama’s failure with the oil disaster.  I couldn’t figure out why obama was refusing to lift the Jone’s act– as Bush did within a couple days of Katrina.  But now I understand– when it is big labor (why doesn’t the press use that term, by the way) vs. the American people, who does obama ALWAYS choose?

I also have to take a moment to point out the hilarity of General McChristal being called to task by obama for comments in Rolling Stone Magazine.  I can imagine the discussion…

What are flies attracted to? Seems to be spewing from the mighty one...

Obama:  General, what is the reason for your negative comments about the Commander in Chief?

General:  Um… because with your policies on detainment… um….

Obama: What?  I can’t hear you!

General:  Because… um… this is a bit embarrassing but…

Obama: Go on!

General:  Um…. because YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE, SIR.  The men consider you to be a fool, sir.  And a coward.  Both.  And it’s even worse than that.  They just hate everything about you–  you see, they are told to be honest, and you’re a… you know… a LIAR….  so there’s that.  But you also tend to pass the buck and blame everyone else, and these are responsible men, sir.  So you can’t really blame them for considering you to be a fool.  And then I’m told to do this interview…  so what was I SUPPOSED to say?

Obama:  (this is where more and more Americans dream that he will do the decent thing, and say) You’re absolutely right.  Dismissed.

By PAUL H. RUBIN

In many respects, the Deepwater Horizon disaster and Katrina are mirror images of each other. The harm from Katrina was on state land—mainly Louisiana, but also Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. As a result, President George W. Bush and the federal government were limited in what they could do. For example, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff wanted to take command of disaster relief on the day before landfall, but Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco refused. Federal response was hindered because the law gave first authority to state and local authorities.

State and local efforts—particularly in New Orleans, and Louisiana more broadly—interfered with what actions the federal government could actually take. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was late in ordering an evacuation and did not allow the use of school buses for evacuation, which could have saved hundreds of lives. President Bush had no power to change that decision.

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is on federal offshore territory. The federal government has primary responsibility for handling the situation, while state and local governments remain limited in what they can do. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency has repeatedly changed its mind regarding the chemical dispersants that Louisiana is allowed to use. In the Florida Panhandle, Okaloosa County officials voted to disregard any restrictions from higher branches of government and allow its own emergency management team to do what it views as best, such as creating an underwater “air curtain” of bubbles to push oil to the surface, and using barges to block the oil once it rises. They believe that the federal government is undermining their efforts.

As opposed to Katrina, state and local attempts to address the oil spill have been hindered by an ineffectual and chaotic federal response.

The Coast Guard has played an important role in both disasters. During Katrina, it rescued over 33,000 stranded people and received commendations from the president and Congress. In the current disaster, the Coast Guard has received widespread criticism for forbidding 16 barges from skimming oil because they were not inspected for life preservers. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal tried to get the barges working, but was for a long time unable to convince the Coast Guard to permit them to deploy.

Two days after Katrina’s landfall, Mr. Bush suspended the Jones Act (which restricts the ability of non-American ships to work in U.S. waters) to allow assistance for Katrina victims. During Katrina, over 70 foreign countries pledged emergency assistance. In the current situation, President Barack Obama has not suspended the Jones Act. Many countries such as the Netherlands, which would like to help and have expertise in cleaning oil spills, can offer only limited relief. This is significantly delaying the cleanup.

The Jones Act, which requires American crews, is a favorite of organized labor, a major supporter of Mr. Obama.

Mr. Bush was a Republican, and elected Democrats controlled Louisiana and New Orleans, the main victims of Katrina. Many claimed Mr. Bush neglected New Orleans for this reason. Mr. Obama is a Democrat, and the states affected by Deepwater Horizon—Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida—all have Republican governors. I have not seen anyone, even on the right, claim that the ineffectual response of the Obama administration is due to partisan politics.

The final difference is in the press handling of the two issues.

Mr. Bush responded quickly to Katrina but was handicapped by regulations giving power to the states. Nonetheless, the federal response was well coordinated and helpful overall. But Mr. Bush was rapidly and widely blamed for the result of Katrina and for failures that actually occurred at other levels of government.

Now Mr. Obama has much more power than did Mr. Bush, but the federal response is ineffective and often stands in the way of those in the best position to know what to do. It is only in the last week or two that the mainstream press has voiced any criticism of Mr. Obama.

This is because the media’s default position for Mr. Bush was “Bush is wrong,” and it sought stories aimed at justifying this belief. For Mr. Obama the media’s default is “Obama is right,” and it takes a powerful set of facts to move it away from this assumption. As oil continues to gush from the unplugged well, this set of facts has unfortunately come to the fore.

Mr. Rubin is a professor of economics at Emory University, and held several senior government positions in the 1980s. He has a summer residence on the Florida Panhandle, where he is fearfully awaiting the arrival of the oil.

as in Liar…

We all accept the fact that politicians are not the most sincere bunch of humans on the planet. But every now and then a politician comes along who raises lying to an art form– who can simply spew our words that have no connection to the truth, and then look you in the face and say “I never said such a thing!” I forget which Dem it was who called Clinton ‘a particularly good liar;’ I really thought that Clinton would be the best liar of my generation. But our current embarassing pig in the White House just keeps on fighting for the prize as ‘best liar’– even after he has clearly won the award several times over.

The following video is truly a classic, and has entertained viewers around the world.  The sad thing is that obama will still have his loyal idiots;  the folks who think Dems are the ‘good guys’, no matter how many times they are caught red-handed abusing interns and insisting ‘I did not have sexual relations with that woman’ (depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is), no matter how many times the Charlie Rangels write tax policy for the rest of us and are then caught ‘forgetting’ about millions of dollars of real estate, and no matter how many Chris Dodds get sweetheart deals from bank execs as they write favorable regulations, and then blame the other party for the fallout.

The one good bit of news is that the bloom may be coming off the rose.  Even the obama fan club, also known as the mainstream media, is having a hard time ignoring obama’s lies.  The problem is that there really is nothing truthful to write about anymore!  Throw in the facts of what is going on out there– terrorists being moved from a military base in Cuba to the middle of Illinois where they can breed their terror among America’s lowest;  repeated attacks against American targets despite obama’s apologies to every country that would have him for a visit;  the trillions of dollars of deficit spending reaching as far as the eye can see;  the lack of job production in the private sector, largely thanks to obama’s reckless spending that leaves private businesses afraid to expand– which is no surprise, given the promise of higher taxes, higher inflation, and a weak dollar.

Only a fool can pretend that obama’s policies hold water.  The Dems with experience are lining up for retirement, hoping to get out before being labelled as a member of the party that destroyed the country in 2009 before being thrown out in 2010.  Good riddance– I just hope we can recover from the doubling of the country’s debt under two years of obama– not even counting the damage yet to come from the destruction of our health care system.

Enjoy the video.  If you still respect the guy, leave a comment and tell me what you’re smoking- I’d like to check it out myself!

Obama insisted on pushing through nearly a trillion dollars of phony ‘stimulus money’ over a period of a couple weeks, and successfully wasted more money in the first month of a presidency than any of his predecessors.   The costs will be felt by generations of Americans, and Obama will likely  become a new word in the dictionary– as in ‘to pull an obama’, which means to do something colossally stupid while at the same time claiming it is very important and necessary.

Meanwhile, after telling voters he ‘had a plan’ with Afghanistan, he took several months to simply give the necessary orders to continue the fight that he called ‘a just war’ back when he was courting votes.  Yesterday he gave his long-awaited speech on his plans for Afghanistan.  I am sorry to quote someone else, but it is useful to realize that the people who just a year ago packed the fields near the Berlin Wall to cheer for Obama have a different reaction now.  You will read mild criticism in the US but have to go abroad to hear what people think about our president– someone who the rest of the world is quickly realizing is an amateur, an embarrassment, a weakling.  The followinig is from Der Spiegel:

Searching in Vain for the Obama Magic

By Gabor Steingart

Never before has a speech by President Barack Obama felt as false as his Tuesday address announcing America’s new strategy for Afghanistan. It seemed like a campaign speech combined with Bush rhetoric — and left both dreamers and realists feeling distraught.

One can hardly blame the West Point leadership. The academy commanders did their best to ensure that Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama’s speech would be well-received.

Just minutes before the president took the stage inside Eisenhower Hall, the gathered cadets were asked to respond “enthusiastically” to the speech. But it didn’t help: The soldiers’ reception was cool.

One didn’t have to be a cadet on Tuesday to feel a bit of nausea upon hearing Obama’s speech. It was the least truthful address that he has ever held. He spoke of responsibility, but almost every sentence smelled of party tactics. He demanded sacrifice, but he was unable to say what it was for exactly.

An additional 30,000 US soldiers are to march into Afghanistan — and then they will march right back out again. America is going to war — and from there it will continue ahead to peace. It was the speech of a Nobel War Prize laureate.

Just in Time for the Campaign

For each troop movement, Obama had a number to match. US strength in Afghanistan will be tripled relative to the Bush years, a fact that is sure to impress hawks in America. But just 18 months later, just in time for Obama’s re-election campaign, the horror of war is to end and the draw down will begin. The doves of peace will be let free.

The speech continued in that vein. It was as though Obama had taken one of his old campaign speeches and merged it with a text from the library of ex-President George W. Bush. Extremists kill in the name of Islam, he said, before adding that it is one of the “world’s great religions.” He promised that responsibility for the country’s security would soon be transferred to the government of President Hamid Karzai — a government which he said was “corrupt.” The Taliban is dangerous and growing stronger. But “America will have to show our strength in the way that we end wars,” he added.

It was a dizzying combination of surge and withdrawal, of marching to and fro. The fast pace was reminiscent of plays about the French revolution: Troops enter from the right to loud cannon fire and then they exit to the left. And at the end, the dead are left on stage.

Obama’s Magic No Longer Works

But in this case, the public was more disturbed than entertained. Indeed, one could see the phenomenon in a number of places in recent weeks: Obama’s magic no longer works. The allure of his words has grown weaker.

It is not he himself who has changed, but rather the benchmark used to evaluate him. For a president, the unit of measurement is real life. A leader is seen by citizens through the prism of their lives — their job, their household budget, where they live and suffer. And, in the case of the war on terror, where they sometimes die.

Political dreams and yearnings for the future belong elsewhere. That was where the political charmer Obama was able to successfully capture the imaginations of millions of voters. It is a place where campaigners — particularly those with a talent for oration — are fond of taking refuge. It is also where Obama set up his campaign headquarters, in an enormous tent called “Hope.”

In his speech on America’s new Afghanistan strategy, Obama tried to speak to both places. It was two speeches in one. That is why it felt so false. Both dreamers and realists were left feeling distraught.

The American president doesn’t need any opponents at the moment. He’s already got himself.