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FRIDAY,  MAY 28,  2010

BULLETIN – AT 7:53 P.M. ET:  The president of the United States formally informed residents of the Gulf coast today that they're not alone.  This changes history.  From The New York Times:

GRAND ISLE, La. (AP) -- President Barack Obama has promised Gulf Coast residents that they are not alone and will not be abandoned or left behind.

Oh, that's so good to know.  The president won't leave a good chunk of the country behind.  You know, for a minute there...

Obama made the pledge as he visited Louisiana on Friday to tour areas threatened by the disastrous oil spill and get an update on response efforts.

Took him a few weeks to get there.  Could've come in a covered wagon. 

Speaking outside a Coast Guard station on a barrier island, Obama said he had a message for residents. He said: ''I'm here to tell you that you are not alone, you will not be abandoned, you will not be left behind. The media may get tired of the story but we will not. We will be on your side and we will see this through.''

Whaa..?  It's because the media didn't get tired of the story that the president was forced to delay one more vacation and go down to the Gulf Coast, which is not his idea of a playland.

Naturally, The Times had to get this in:

The promise might sound familiar to Gulf Coast residents who heard previous presidents -- such as former President George W. Bush after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

And yet, maybe that's a journalistic breakthrough.  The Times is comparing Obama with Bush, and Obama doesn't come out ahead. 

Progress.  Progress.

May 28, 2010    Permalink

OH, SO THAT'S IT – AT 7:25 P.M. ET:  Ah, finally, we know the truth about the Sestak affair.  Our great national nightmare is over.

You may remember (organ music, please) that Congressman Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania said that he was offered a job by the Obama White House, essentially a bribe, if he would drop out of the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate.  The White House hotly denied that anything improper had taken place.  Sestak did not drop out, has now won the primary against incumbent Arlen Specter, and is the Dem candidate, suddenly supported by Barack Obama.

So the White House comes clean, or at least as clean as this White House can come.  It now says that, yes, a guy had been recruited to talk to Sestak about his political future.  That guy was former President Bill Clinton.  And Clinton, yes, discussed in general terms, the possibility of other service for Sestak, like service on an unpaid government board.  And that's all there was to it.

Yeah?  Oh, yes, Sestak now says, that's all there was to it. 

Are we serious here?  Is the White House asking us to believe that it recruited a former president to have a general discussion with a candidate for the U.S. Senate about the glowing possibilities of unpaid service on a federal board, where the biggest perk is a better filing cabinet?  Are we really serious?

And if that's all there was, why has Sestak said, over and over, that he'd been offered a job, which implies a paycheck?  Was he lying?  If he's lying, why should anyone vote for him for senator?

This requires further inquiry.  Will we get it?  I doubt that the mainstream media, still cherishing its Obama buttons from the last election, will get too excited.  But the whole story doesn't hold water.  Fox News to the rescue, please.

May 28, 2010    Permalink

IT'S A GOVERNMENT MIRACLE! – AT 9:45 A.M. ET:  Have you noticed the absence of something?  Have you noticed that there hasn't been a single story about unintended acceleration in Toyotas in many weeks?

Now, if there was something really wrong with all those millions of Toyotas out there, don't you think there'd be more incidents?  Don't you think the industry-skeptical press would be right on them?  So how come they stopped on a dime?

I know.  The cars themselves decided to stop accelerating unintentionally when they heard of the government's approach to the problem.  As the Washington Examiner editorializes...

Members of the House will soon vote on the Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 2010, which is essentially the response by the House Democratic leadership to the Toyota sudden acceleration scandal.

The measure includes a $9 per car tax to fund a lengthy list of actions to be taken by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to make sure your car doesn't suddenly accelerate without your permision in the future. The tax will be disguised as a "Vehicle Safety Fund" fee to be collected by the manufacturers.

That's the spirit!  Have a problem?  Impose a new tax.  That'll solve it.

Only in Washington would the solution to sudden acceleration be a $9 tax hike. By the way, the bill also includes a provision authorizing the Secretary of Transportation under whom NHTSA labors to increase the tax with nothing more than a notice in the Federal Register.

COMMENT:  Meanwhile, some enterprising journalist might go back and check the unintended acceleration "scandal," and find out why we haven't heard of more cases.  It won't happen.

May 28, 2010     Permalink

NOONAN NAILS IT – AT 9:12 A.M. ET:  Peggy Noonan has been pretty sharp recently, and today she writes one of her best columns on Obama, zeroing in on this president's bizarre notion of governing.  From The Wall Street Journal:

I don't see how the president's position and popularity can survive the oil spill. This is his third political disaster in his first 18 months in office. And they were all, as they say, unforced errors, meaning they were shaped by the president's political judgment and instincts.

There was the tearing and unnecessary war over his health-care proposal and its cost. There was his day-to-day indifference to the views and hopes of the majority of voters regarding illegal immigration. And now the past almost 40 days of dodging and dithering in the face of an environmental calamity. I don't see how you politically survive this.

The president, in my view, continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen. This is a terrible thing to see in a political figure, and a startling thing in one who won so handily and shrewdly in 2008. But he has not, almost from the day he was inaugurated, been in sync with the center. The heart of the country is thinking each day about A, B and C, and he is thinking about X, Y and Z. They're in one reality, he's in another.

Wonderfully stated, and entirely accurate. 

And...

What continues to fascinate me is Mr. Obama's standing with Democrats. They don't love him. Half the party voted for Hillary Clinton, and her people have never fully reconciled themselves to him. But he is what they have. They are invested in him. In time—after the 2010 elections go badly—they are going to start to peel off.

But word of caution:

But Republicans should beware, and even mute their mischief. We're in the middle of an actual disaster. When they win back the presidency, they'll probably get the big California earthquake. And they'll probably blow it. Because, ironically enough, of a hard core of truth within their own philosophy: when you ask a government far away in Washington to handle everything, it will handle nothing well.

COMMENT:  A column worth reading. 

The president is indeed out of touch.  Just as important, he seems bored by the job.  He seems to get no joy out of it.  He seems not to like his own country or its people.  He's president of us, but he's not of us.  His role model seems to be Jimmy Carter, who lectured us about our "inordinate fear of Communism" just before the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.  Obama lectures us on the evils of Arizona, and on our inordinate fear of terrorism, just as a bomber tries to blow up Times Square.

Jimmy Carter lives in retirement, and, like Obama, adorns himself with the Nobel Peace Prize.

Retirement.  Now there's a role model for the current president.

May 28, 2010     Permalink 

BAIT AND SWITCH – AT 8:26 A.M. ET:  He ran as a moderate, he governs as a doctrinaire leftist.  His greatest concern is that some foreign government might be upset with us.  Obama's latest border policy provides more proof of who we've really got in the White House.  From AFP:

US National Guard troops being sent to the Mexican border will be used to stem the flow of guns and drugs across the frontier and not to enforce US immigration laws, the State Department said Wednesday.

The clarification came after the Mexican government urged Washington not to use the additional troops to go after illegal immigrants.

And, after all, we must serve the Mexican government first, not the people of the United States.  Didn't Obama take some kind of oath, or somethin', when he was inaugurated?  I think I saw that on TV. 

President Barack Obama on Tuesday authorized the deployment of up to 1,200 additional troops to border areas but State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters, "It's not about immigration."

Do you get a sense of weirdness?  Why does Crowley think those troops were requested?

He said the move was "fully consistent with our efforts to do our part to stem, you know, violence, to interdict the flow of dangerous people and dangerous goods -- drugs, guns, people."

So who are the "people"?  Legal immigrants just strolling across the border?

He said the extra troops would be used to free up civilians engaged in support functions so that law enforcement personnel can be increased along the 2,000-mile-long (3,200 kilometer) border.

In other words, the troops will have desk jobs.  And the law enforcement people will be doing..?

Nearly 13 million Mexicans live in the United States, more than half of them illegally.

"We have explained the president's announcement to the government of Mexico, and they fully understand the rationale behind it," Crowley said.

Well, that's a relief.  We wouldn't want President Calderon to be running back here lecturing us again.  You know, our self-esteem is involved.

How many days to the next presidential election?  In this country, I mean.

May 28, 2010     Permalink

THIS JUST IN – SOMEONE TOLD THE TRUTH – AT 8:08 A.M. ET:  From CNN, where Christiane Amanpour used to work:

BP's top official, who had previously said the environmental impact on Gulf of Mexico would be modest, upgraded his assessment Friday to an "environmental catastrophe."

Hey, guy, thanks for noticing.  Your company's irresponsibility has messed up American energy policy for decades. 

At the same time, Washington talking heads are buzzing about Obama's painfully slow response to the crisis.  He has done nothing to answer Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's plea for help to contain the spill and prevent it from reaching shore.  It's as if, excuse me, the administration wants maximum environmental damage.

Now, I say that with no real evidence that it's true, and this site is hardly known for conspiracy theories.  But there are some people suggesting that, the greater the damage, the greater the victory for environmental extremists.  Sacrifice Louisiana for the greater environmental good.  Again, I stress that I have no evidence, but there seem to have been some awfully convenient things that have advanced the agenda of the political left – like the 2008 economic collapse that occurred right in the middle of the presidential campaign, and now this, occurring just before Congress takes up energy legislation.

Maybe Obama, in a perverse sense, is just lucky.  We haven't been.

May 28, 2010     Permalink

HOUSE REJECTS "DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL" – AT 7:58 A.M. ET:  The House voted to permit the military to abolish the "don't ask, don't tell" rule regarding gays in the service:

 WASHINGTON — The House voted Thursday to let the Defense Department repeal the ban on gay and bisexual people from serving openly in the military, a major step toward dismantling the 1993 law widely known as “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

The provision would allow military commanders to repeal the ban. The repeal would permit gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military for the first time.

It was adopted as an amendment to the annual Pentagon policy bill, which the House is expected to vote on Friday. The repeal would be allowed 60 days after a Pentagon report is completed on the ramifications of allowing openly gay service members, and military leaders certify that it would not be disruptive. The report is due by Dec. 1.

The full Senate is expected to take up the measure soon.

At the same time, the Senate rejected a demand from Sen. John McCain that more troops be sent to secure the southern border:

Senate Democrats managed Thursday to block deployment of 6,000 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, but the proposal still garnered a majority of senators, showing widespread support for a border-security-first strategy and underscoring why President Obama is having difficulty trying to win an immigration-legalization bill.

Ah, yes, abolish "don't ask, don't tell," but refuse to send more troops to the border.  Our soldiers may not be sent on too many useful missions by the Obama administration, but at least we know they'll be fabulous.

May 28, 2010    Permalink

THURSDAY,  MAY 27,  2010

THE GULF OIL SPILL HAS ITS CONSEQUENCES  – AT 8:47 P.M. ET:  Radical environmentalists should give an award to BP for making their job so easy.  President Obama, already moving to strengthen his political base, throws the enviros a bone:

WASHINGTON — President Obama said on Thursday that he is extending the moratorium on permits to drill new deepwater wells for six more months, as the head of the agency that oversees offshore drilling resigned under pressure...

...Mr. Obama’s order is intended to halt further permits for new wells for six months, delay planned exploration in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas off the coast of Alaska, cancel an August lease sale in the western Gulf and cancel a lease sale off the coast of Virginia, said a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity before the formal announcement.

The Virginia lease sale had drawn environmental concerns and objections from the Defense Department. The Alaska project will be delayed for six months while a new presidential commission studies how to regulate offshore drilling.

COMMENT:  This was inevitable, given the disaster in the Gulf.  But Americans are going to start feeling it at the pump.  Prices are expected to rise dramatically, and five-dollar-a-gallon gasoline, the pipe dream of well-heeled environmentalists who don't feel the pain themselves but think everyone else should, is not out of the question.

Meanwhile, a Zogby interactive poll revealed that only 16% of Americans approve of Mr. Obama's handling of the oil spill.  I question the accuracy of Zogby's polls, but, even given a wide margin of error, the president is getting no applause from the nation for his slow, indifferent response to the flowing oil.

We haven't seen the last of this story, even if BP caps the well.  The repercussions, political and economic, will last for years.

May 27, 2010     Permalink

FROM BAD TO WORSE – AT 7:45 P.M. ET:  Does Rand Paul have any political common sense at all?  He knows he's fumbled badly since winning the GOP nomination for the Senate from Kentucky.  So what does he do?  Read on, from The Politico:

Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul has replaced his campaign manager with a former communications aide to his father’s presidential campaign, an aide to Paul tells POLITICO.

Say what?  As nutty as Rand is, his father is ten times worse – a certified whacko who attracts the "I was abducted by an alien who looked like Golda Meir – crowd.  Does Rand understand the importance of symbolism in politics?

Jesse Benton, who served as communications director for Rep. Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential bid, will take the official title as campaign manager, replacing David Adams.

Adams will remain on the team and serve as campaign chairman.

The shuffle comes a week after the GOP nominee caused an media firestorm by making ambiguous comments about his support for the Civil Rights Act.

Benton was previously serving as senior vice president of the senior Paul’s Campaign for Liberty group.

COMMENT:  Reports indicate that the national GOP realizes it has a serious problem with Randy.  The fear, of course, is that Dems will try to "nationalize" the Rand Paul campaign, portraying it as symbolic of the Republican Party, which it ain't.  The fear is justified.  The sound you hear is the Obama White House sharpening its knives.

Employing his father's campaign manager links Rand Paul directly with dad, whose foreign policy views are neo-isolationist, and, in a strange way, to the left of the Democratic Party.

May 27, 2010    Permalink

CYNICISM IN ACTION – AT 7:34 P.M. ET:  The perpetual campaign that is the Obama administration is in action again.  From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — The Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday voted to let the Pentagon repeal the ban on gay men, lesbians and bisexual people from serving openly in the military, a big step toward dismantling the Clinton-era policy widely known as “don’t ask, don’t tell” as part of the annual defense authorization bill.

The House has included a provision for repealing the ban in its version of the defense authorization bill, and a vote on the legislation was possible late Thursday.

The Senate Armed Services Committee voted in a closed session, after about an hour of heated debate.

COMMENT:  This has nothing whatever to do with human dignity, the effectiveness of our armed forces, or anything else of importance.  This is pure politics.

The Pentagon has an ongoing study into the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, to be completed in December.  There was a general understanding that no action would be taken until that study was finished.  But the president is in political trouble, and is trying to shore up his base, which includes the gay and lesbian community.  This acceleration of action on "don't ask, don't tell" is the result. 

I have no opinion on the matter.  I want to see the results of the study.  It would have been nice had Congress waited.  But politics got there first. 

May 27, 2010     Permalink

POLITICALLY, NEW YORK IS BECOMING THE LOUISIANA OF THE NORTH – AT 9:06 A.M. ET:  We are a laughingstock.  Disgraced Governor Eliot Spitzer and his harem of hookers; Charlie Rangel and his strange tax returns; Governor David Paterson and his monumental incompetence.  Now comes Andy.  From the New York Post:

ALBANY -- Gubernatorial hopeful Andrew Cuomo put state workers on notice yesterday -- naming a union-battling upstate mayor to be his running mate.

The surprise selection of Rochester Mayor Robert Duffy -- a tax-cutting, tough-talking ex-police chief -- was meant to bolster Cuomo's tack to the political right and deliver on his pledge to pick a lieutenant governor who would be ready to take charge immediately if needed.

At a Manhattan news conference, the Democratic attorney general praised Duffy's efforts to consolidate agencies and bring mayoral control of schools to New York's third-largest city over the objection of teachers unions.

COMMENT:  Huh?  This is a Democratic candidate for governor?  Unions?  Hate 'em.  Taxes?  Hate 'em.  Cops.  Love 'em.

I mean, come on.  This guy Cuomo is the Democratic establishment.  His father, a three-term governor, is a liberal's liberal.  These guys have been in bed with unions and taxers so long that they set each other's alarm clocks. 

Now, suddenly, Andy emerges as the reincarnation of Barry Goldwater, with a little bit of George Patton.

Will anyone believe this?  And why is he trying so hard?  The Republicans, true to form in New York, haven't even got a viable candidate for governor. 

Look, it's obvious.  Andy isn't running for governor.  That's just a watering stop.  He's running for president.  His father, strangely, never ran, giving rise to rumors that he was hiding a family secret.  But Andy's the son.  No one would hold him responsible for anything awkward in the family's past, if anything actually exists. 

But this posturing is hilarious.  This is like the queen of England coming out against horse-drawn coaches. 

As Cindy Adams likes to put it, only in New York, kiddies.  Only in New York.

May 27, 2010    Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 8:22 A.M. ET:  From Victor Davis Hanson, angry over Obama's regular apologies for the U.S., and especially his groveling before the Mexican president last week.  From NRO:

Instead of seeing his nation or its states as the problem, our president would do better to focus on the woes of the European Union, North Korea’s sinking of a South Korean ship, Iran’s plans to get the bomb, continued terrorist attacks in the U.S., wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Mexico’s encouragement of its own citizens to violate American immigration law.

Right now there are quite enough foreign felonies in the world without dwelling on American misdemeanors.

COMMENT:  A fine Hanson column, and worth reading. 

The European Union is fracturing over its economic problems; North Korea has suffered no consequences over its sinking of a South Korean warship; Iran remains unscathed in its nuclear-bomb march; terror attacks against Americans are increasing; and the president sends a minimal, thoroughly inadequate force of 1,100 guardsmen, many in desk jobs, to protect the southern border.

Mr. Obama will grudgingly visit the Gulf coast, having demonstrated an indifference to the oil spill that makes George W. Bush's response to Katrina look like Superman in action.  Mr. Obama will then leave for another vacation.

"One-term president" sounds just right to me.

May 27, 2010    Permalink

DEMS IN VERY HOT WATER – AT 8:05 A.M. ET:  The great Michael Barone, who predicted the Democratic disaster in 1994 by looking at poll numbers in individual races where incumbents were running, now does the same, and again has no encouragement for Democrats.  From the Washington Examiner:

Usually House incumbents don’t trail challengers in polls at any point in the campaign, because they almost always start off better known. For an incumbent to trail in a poll is a sign of serious danger.

Such signs abound for Democrats these days. For example, Republican Jim Renacci leads incumbent Democrat John Boccieri 47%-36% in Ohio 16. Boccieri won this district, which had been held by Republicans since 1950, by a 55%-44% margin in 2008. He switched from no to yes on the health care bill in March 2010. That doesn’t seem to have helped.

And...

...Republican former Congressman Steve Chabot leading Democratic incumbent Steve Driehaus 53%-39%. Driehaus was one of the “Stupak five” who said they wouldn’t support a health care bill that funded abortion but who turned around and provided the key votes that passed the bill March 21.

And...

Meanwhile, Scott Rasmussen reports that Republican Rick Berg leads 18-year incumbent Democrat Earl Pomeroy 52%-43%.

And...

And here’s a shocker from a governor race. According to Rasmussen, Republican Chris Dudley leads Democrat John Kitzhaber for governor of Oregon 45%-44%. That’s not statistically significant, but it’s a lot different from Kitzhaber’s winning margins of 51%-42% in 1994 and 64%-30% in 1998. The last time a Republican was elected governor of Oregon was 1978.

COMMENT:  Don't relax.  The election is five months away.  The White House is already in campaign mode.  Never underestimate Democrats in danger of losing their publicly funded health plans.

May 27, 2010      Permalink

AMONG OUR HONORED GUESTS – AT 7:49 A.M. ET:  Homeland Security has issued a new alert about those crossing our southern border.  From Fox:

The Department of Homeland Security is alerting Texas authorities to be on the lookout for a suspected member of the Somalia-based Al Shabaab terrorist group who might be attempting to travel to the U.S. through Mexico, a security expert who has seen the memo tells FOXNews.com.

The warning follows an indictment unsealed this month in Texas federal court that accuses a Somali man in Texas of running a “large-scale smuggling enterprise” responsible for bringing hundreds of Somalis from Brazil through South America and eventually across the Mexican border. Many of the illegal immigrants, who court records say were given fake IDs, are alleged to have ties to other now-defunct Somalian terror organizations that have merged with active organizations like Al Shabaab, al-Barakat and Al-Ittihad Al-Islami.

In 2008, the U.S. government designated Al Shabaab a terrorist organization. Al Shabaab has said its priority is to impose Sharia, or Islamic law, on Somalia; the group has aligned itself with Al Qaeda and has made statements about its intent to harm the United States.

In recent years, American Somalis have been recruited by Al Shabaab to travel to Somalia, where they are often radicalized by more extremist or operational anti-American terror groups, which Al Shabaab supports. The recruiters coming through the Mexican border are the ones who could be the most dangerous, according to law enforcement officials.

COMMENT:  Hmm.  "Be on the lookout"?  Precisely what does that mean?  Does it mean stopping people who might look Somali?  Does it mean looking only for this one chap, or for others who might be his allies? 

Does the word "profiling" come to mind?

The hypocrisy just flows, doesn't it?  At a time when the self-declared righteous of the Earth are denouncing the carefully crafted Arizona anti-illegal-immigration law out of one side of their mouth, out of the other they're issuing this warning.

I'm glad they've issued the warning.  It's appropriate and correct.  But let's understand that it implies a certain kind of profiling that's inevitable in these cases.  What must end is the political grandstanding that is designed only to frighten the Hispanic community and grab its votes.  If the Obamans would stop exploiting Hispanics and explain the border situation thoughtfully, they will find a community that is very supportive of law and reasonable action to deal with the illegal immigration issue. 

May 27, 2010    Permalink