Gary Varvel cartoon

An Offer BP Couldn’t Refuse

Heritage "Last night on CNN former Clinton Administration message man James Carville said: “It looks as if President Obama applied a little old-school Chicago persuasion to the oil executives.” Making “offers you can’t refuse” may be a great way to run the mob, but it is no way to run a country."

Floating Above the Chaos  "[Obama's] reinforcement of a six-month moratorium on deep-sea drilling for safety checks reprised my conviction, that Obama, for all his brilliance, has no real, felt understanding of management structures or of business."

Barack Obama: the most unpopular man in Britain?  "The key catalyst for rising anti-Obama sentiment in the UK has been his disastrous handling of the BP issue, and his relentless desire to crush Britain’s biggest company. There is no doubting BP’s responsibility over the Gulf oil disaster, and it is right that the firm is being held to account for its failures. But the brutal, almost sadistic trashing of BP by the imperious Obama administration, which has helped wipe out about half its value, threatens its very future, as well as the pensions of 18 million British people and the jobs of 29,000 Americans."

The Secret Sauce of Politics

The Weekly Standard "Washington transformed into a hotbed of new policies, programs and initiatives, bringing government activities and political bargaining closer than ever before. Any citizen watching developments in federal spending and debt, health care, student loans, energy, and the financial services sees federal activity growing like a thunderhead. Washington now finds policies to “fix” every problem; it uses crises and villains to leverage more ambitious goals. The president again on Tuesday night used the BP disaster to promote his broader agenda. For many, it looks like Obama and his party needs political Ritalin.
"Most Americans want a government that works, not an ever-expanding Leviathan that can’t sit still."

Rahming Through a Lame Duck Climate Bill?

 Patrick J. Michaels  "So, if the Senate indeed does pass far-reaching climate legislation after the election but before the new Congress sits, a compromise House-Senate bill will likely be negotiated by the party that the people have just thrown out of power. "

'Bush Did It' Is Not a Foreign Policy

Victor Davis Hanson "After 9/11, George W. Bush sought to keep America safe from another round of Islamic terrorism while promoting Middle East constitutional government as a way of weakening Islamic terrorism. But what exactly does Barack Obama wish to accomplish abroad?"...."So after 16 months of the Obama presidency, we are starting to see the sort of chaos that results from America's lack of strategic vision or advocacy of its own values."

Alvin Greene: The Most Qualified Democrat I've Ever Seen

Ann Coulter "Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said Greene was not a "legitimate" candidate and called his victory "a mysterious deal." (Yes, how could a young African-American man with strange origins, suspicious funding, shady associations, no experience, no qualifications, and no demonstrable work history come out of nowhere and win an election?)"
"They're hopping mad, these liberals, but it's not clear what their theory of the crime is. Before accusing Republicans of committing a dirty trick, apparently no one asked the question: "OK, but what was the trick?"  The key to Greene's victory, you see, is that he got more votes. How do liberals imagine Republicans pulled that off? Mesmerize the Democrats into voting for an idiot? If they could do that, John McCain would be president."

Unmasked in Plain Sight

Commentary Magazine "Peter Wehner and Jennifer Rubin have thoroughly dissected the lameness of Obama’s speech last night on the oil spill. I agree with their takes, but was also struck by the reaction of the people in the Frank Luntz citizen panel featured by Sean Hannity in his Fox show after the speech. I expected them to find the speech weak, but I was surprised to hear so many argue that Obama’s rhetoric had focused on getting cap-and-trade legislation passed rather than on responding pragmatically to the oil spill."

Obama Asks America to Commit Suicide

Warning Signs  "The president cited China as a nation pursuing “clean energy”, but the president said nothing of the new coal-fired plants to generate electricity that China has been opening every week in recent years and will continue to do in the years ahead. The president did not mention that China is literally drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Cuba. Like every modern nation, China needs oil.
"America needs oil, but the policies of previous administrations from the 1970s onward have stymied production, shut down existing wells, driven oil companies to seek it anywhere but here!"   Alan Caruba.

Which Way: Chamberlain's Or Churchill's?

Investors.com "With time running out, Israel may decide that a preemptive military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities is its only remaining option to prevent Tehran and its terror surrogates from obtaining nuclear weapons capability. Should Israel take such action, its success can only be guaranteed by the U.S.
"With such high stakes, let's hope that if the critical moment arrives, we are as committed an ally to Israel as Israel has been to the United States. Which way will it be? Chamberlain or Churchill?"

What we didn't hear from Obama last night

American Thinker "Lastly, we didn't hear him propose tax credits to develop our nations 400 year supply of natural gas or at least take the government boot off the neck of the domestic oil and gas industry. But then that would solve a problem and we now know this progressive government has no intention of solving problems - they only exacerbating them to accrete power under the pretense solving them."

Soros hedge fund invests $811m to buy Petrobras stake  From 2008.

Understanding the Tea Party movement

World Magazine   "You cannot understand American politics today without understanding the Tea Party movement. Especially after last Tuesday’s Republican primaries, everyone from the president and the speaker of the House down to the voting citizen should get a handle on it. Get it wrong, and you get everything wrong. It is a truly American movement. It is popular in origin, protective of property, rooted in the Founding, and morally serious."  D.C. Innes; an associate professor of politics at The King's College in New York