Obama's Answer To Spill Comes Up Short

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER "It wasn't until the end of the speech — the let-no-crisis-go-to-waste part that tried to leverage the Gulf Coast devastation to advance his cap-and-trade climate-change agenda — that Obama warmed to his task. Pedestrian is beneath Obama. Mr. Fix-It he is not. He is world-historical, the visionary, come to make the oceans recede and the planet heal.

"How? By creating a glorious, new, clean green economy."

A Mind-Changing Page

Thomas Sowell "If more government regulation of business is the magic answer that so many seem to think it is, the whole history of the 1930s would have been different. An economic study in 2004 concluded that New Deal policies prolonged the Great Depression. But the same story can be found on one page in "Out of Work."
"While the market produced a peak unemployment rate of 9 percent-- briefly-- after the stock market crash of 1929, unemployment shot up after massive federal interventions in the economy. It rose above 20 percent in 1932 and stayed above 20 percent for 23 consecutive months, beginning in the Hoover administration and continuing during the Roosevelt administration."

WSJ: Drilling moratorium a second disaster

Hot Air "The White House acknowledged ... that they took the experts’ advice in reaching those conclusions that led to the moratorium. The Wall Street Journal decided to consult with the same experts — and report that their opinions diametrically oppose the White House position:"..Read the article here:

"All this is even before raising ban's economic consequences, which already threaten tens of thousands of jobs. This is why Louisiana politicians are now pleading with the Administration to back off a ban that is sending the Gulf's biggest industry to its grave.
"Mr. President, you were looking for someone's butt to kick," said Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph, recently. "You're kicking ours." The sooner the Administration climbs down from this pointless exercise, the better for a Gulf that needs real help."

Thomas, Turkey, and the Liberation of Israel

Victor Davis Hanson "Israelis should assume by now that whether they act tentatively or strongly, the negative reaction will be the same. Therefore why not project the image of a strong, unapologetic country to a world that has completely lost its moral bearings, and is more likely to respect Israel’s strength than its past concern for meeting an impossible global standard?
"How odd that the more the activists, political leaders, and media figures issue moral strictures against Israel, the more they prove abjectly amoral. And the more they seek to pressure Israel, the more they are liberating it to do what it feels it must."

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.