Obama Fiddled, Stonewalled And Lied While Gulf Coast Drowned In Oil

When we find out the actual record of just how bad Obama failed us in the Gulf of Mexico during the BP oil spill disaster, we should all be enraged.

First of all, we now find that:

“The Obama administration blocked efforts by government scientists to tell the public just how bad the Gulf oil spill could become and committed other missteps that raised questions about its competence and candor during the crisis, according to a commission appointed by the president to investigate the disaster.”

And we now find that:

The Obama administration failed to act upon or fully inform the public of its own worst-case estimates of the amount of oil gushing from the blown-out BP well, slowing response efforts and keeping the American people in the dark for weeks about the size of the disaster, according to preliminary reports from the presidential commission investigating the accident.

You get the sense that Obama fiddled (I suppose the modern equivalent of ‘fiddling’ by incompetent tyrants today would be ‘golfing’) while the Gulf Coast drowned.

Disaster in the Gulf: 52 Days and Counting …
Published June 10, 2010

The Obama administration claims it has been on top of the Gulf oil spill disaster since “day one.” Here’s a look at what the president and administration have been doing every day since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20, triggering the massive spill. The following daily updates are based on a review of White House schedules, news releases and news coverage and do not cover every activity in the Gulf or in Washington:

June 10

In the Gulf: BP awaited the arrival of a second vessel to help pump more oil from the ruptured well up to the surface — the containment cap was capturing 630,000 gallons a day, but the second vessel is expected to double that. Meanwhile, local business owners and workers who have filed damage claims were complaining that BP is slow to respond and not paying them enough for their losses.

At the White House: President Obama was scheduled to meet in the afternoon with the families of those killed on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. He was also receiving a briefing on the oil spill in the morning and meeting with business leaders and energy experts to discuss energy reform after his meeting with the families.

June 9

In the Gulf: BP said it is dialing back a prediction by its chief operating officer that the leaking oil would be reduced to a “relative trickle” by next week. COO Doug Suttles now says it will take more time to reach that point.

At the White House: Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who is heading the U.S. oil spill response, said the containment operation is now catching up to 630,000 gallons (2.3 million liters) a day and that the amount could nearly double by next week as processing of the captured oil is expanded.

June 8

In the Gulf: While the wellhead has been capped, oil that was still leaking and oil that has already leaked was separating and spreading out along the Gulf shore. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen warned the day before that the slick is no longer a “large, monolithic spill.” Rather, it is an “aggregation of hundreds or thousands of patches of oil that are going a lot of different directions.” Local officials continued to express concerns about the impact the spill would have on the economy as tourism season begins.

At the White House: President Obama was receiving a briefing on the spill in the morning before leaving to conduct a “tele-town hall meeting” on health care issues concerning seniors. He and first lady Michelle Obama were holding a congressional picnic at the White House later in the day.

June 7

In the Gulf: Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen reported that the cap on the wellhead was capturing 460,000 gallons of oil a day — up from 250,000 on Friday. At that rate, the cap could be diverting as little as 37 percent or as much as 77 percent of the oil leaking from the Gulf floor. Patches of oil were spreading out all along the Gulf region. Florida’s Panama City Beach was expected to get hit by oil within 72 hours, while Pensacola Beach continued to have tar balls wash ashore.

At the White House: President Obama and top federal officials were briefed in Washington by Allen on the BP spill. The president said the Gulf region will “bounce back” from the crisis and be “stronger than ever.” Obama was scheduled to participate in a high school graduation ceremony in Kalamazoo, Mich., later in the evening.

June 6

In the Gulf: BP CEO Tony Hayward said the container collected 10,500 barrels in 24 hours. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said the spill is killing tourism though the beaches in his state are not suffering badly from the oil. National Incident Commander Adm. Thad Allen told morning news shows that progress is being made but the relief well is the ultimate solution.

At the White House: More Coast Guard are being sent to the region for direct oversight of the contractors. Allen said he reports to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and President Obama but he is the on-scene coordinator and he makes the calls in the gulf.

June 5

In the Gulf: BP worked on its latest attempt to tame the runaway well by capping it and trying to siphon off some of the crude. The damaged rig has disgorged at least 22 million gallons of crude in the Gulf.

At the White House: In his weekly radio and Internet address recorded from the Gulf, President Obama promised to fight the oil spill and maintained his increasingly forceful tone toward BP.

June 4

In the Gulf: BP engineers adjusted a sophisticated cap over the Gulf oil gusher, trying to collect the crude now fouling four states. Engineers hoped to close several open vents on the cap throughout the day in the latest attempt to contain the oil.

At the White House: President Obama was in Louisiana, his second trip in a week and the third since the disaster unfolded.

June 3

In the Gulf: BP CEO Tony Hayward hailed the company’s work after underwater robots successfully sheared off a busted oil pipe spewing millions of gallons of crude into the Gulf, telling reporters that the company would have a “fully sealed” containment system in place by the end of June.

At the White House: The White House announced President Obama will return to the Louisiana Gulf Coast Friday, his third trop to the region since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion on April 20.

June 2

In the Gulf: BP’s effort to contain the oil gusher hit a snag when a saw became stuck in a thick pipe on a blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said the goal was to free the saw and finish the cut later in the day.

At the White House: The Justice Department has announced it started criminal and civil probes into the spill, although the department did not name specific targets for prosecution.

June 1

In the Gulf: BP is moving to start its first major pipe cut as soon as Wednesday, after which they will attempt to place a cap-like containment device over the leaking riser that would siphon the mixture to the surface.

At the White House: President Obama gave the leaders of an independent commission investigating the Gulf oil spill marching orders to thoroughly examine the disaster and its causes to ensure that the nation never faces such a catastrophe again. He said if any laws were broken, people will be prosecuted.

May 31

In the Gulf: Transocean, which owned the rig that it leased to BP, said it would like its liability limited. The beach at Grand Isle, La., which was hit with oil from the spill, and other areas along the coast were opened but swimming and fishing was prohibited.

At the White House: The White House confirmed that its national incident commander Thad Allen will begin on Tuesday to hold daily press briefings from the scene of the spill. The Justice Department announced Attorney General Eric Holder and U.S. attorneys will meet with state attorneys general and hold a press conference on Tuesday.

May 30

In the Gulf: BP says it will try another containment effort beginning on Monday or Tuesday.

At the White House: Obama remained in Chicago for the Memorial Day weekend vacation. The White House released a summary of a discussion between Obama and chief liaison Thad Allen, which said the government is tripling its environmental cleanup team in areas affected by the spill. Environmental adviser Carol Browner appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” She said 150 government scientists are on the case.

May 29

In the Gulf: BP offered few details on its latest bid to plug the well as progress was difficult to measure from BP’s “spillcam” of mud, gas and oil billowing from the seafloor.

At the White House: Obama returns to Chicago for his Memorial Day weekend vacation.

May 28

In the Gulf: BP continues to try the “top kill” method, but also tries shooting rubber and other man-made “junk” into the well.

At the White House: Obama tours the Louisiana coastline. He says the federal government is treating the spill as its highest priority — he says the government has deployed 1,400 National Guard troops, 1,400 vessels and 3 million feet of boom

May 27

In the Gulf: BP continues to shoot heavy mud into the well, a process that appears to be making progress.

At the White House: Several developments related to the spill emerge in Washington. Minerals Management Service director Elizabeth Birnbaum resigns. The Obama administration announces new restrictions on offshore oil drilling, canceling and delaying certain projects. Obama holds a major press conference in which he declares the federal government is “in charge” and pledges to stop the leak. Obama leaves for a family vacation in Chicago at night.

May 26

In the Gulf: BP attempts to use the “top kill” method to shoot mud into the well. Meanwhile, BP says 25,000 claims for economic losses have been submitted, and that it has already paid close to $30 million.

At the White House: Obama visits a solar facility in Fremont, Calif.

May 25

In the Gulf: BP agrees to show a live feed of the “top kill” procedure under pressure from the Obama administration.

At the White House: Obama meets Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, then travels to San Francisco for fundraisers for Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

May 24

In the Gulf: BP continues to prepare for the “top kill” procedure, as oil moves deeper into the Louisiana marshes.

At the White House: Obama meets with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano lead a Senate delegation to the Gulf region.

May 23

In the Gulf: BP says it will take at least another two days before crews can start to implement the “top kill” plan to plug the leaking well. BP continues to siphon out some oil from the leak.

At the White House: Obama orders top administration officials back to the Gulf to monitor the response.

May 22

In the Gulf: BP says it intends to continue using chemical dispersants after the EPA raises concerns about their long-term effects. Oil continues to wash ashore.

At the White House: Obama announces a presidential commission to investigate the disaster. He says in his weekly radio address that the panel, which is given six months to complete its work, is intended to figure out the “root causes” of the explosion and figure out how to make offshore drilling safer. The president speaks at the West Point commencement ceremonies in the morning.

May 21

In the Gulf: BP continues to prepare for the “top kill” procedure, while officials find animals covered in oil.

At the White House: No public events.

May 20

In the Gulf: BP continues to siphon out oil from the busted well. The company begins preparing for a new plan to stop the oil leak called a “top kill.” The plan involves injecting mud into the top of the well and then sealing the area with cement.

At the White House: No public events.

May 19

In the Gulf: U.S. officials reportedly hold talks with Cuban officials on response efforts amid concerns that the oil slick is spreading even farther.

At the White House: Obama welcomes Mexican President Felipe Calderon to Washington. Both heads of state publicly criticize Arizona’s new immigration law. The president hosts a state dinner for Calderon at night.

May 18

In the Gulf: A U.S. official says it is “increasingly likely” the oil will be swept out to the Florida coastline.

At the White House: Obama visits a factory in Youngstown, Ohio.

May 17

In the Gulf: BP claims the tube is sucking out more than 42,000 gallons a day from the Gulf floor to a tanker ship. That’s still a fraction of the oil leaking out from the well.

At the White House: Obama hosts the NCAA tournament champion University of Connecticut women’s basketball team.

May 16

In the Gulf: BP crews successfully hook the tube to the oil pipe to siphon oil to a tanker ship. Researchers say the oil has entered a current that could carry it toward the Keys.

At the White House: No publicn events.

May 15

In the Gulf: BP struggles to install the tube into the oil pipe, but expresses optimism in the plan. The company continues to drill a relief well, which is considered the permanent, though time-consuming, solution to the problem. The process is about halfway done.

At the White House: Obama speaks at the National Peace Officers Memorial Service. He delivers his weekly radio address on “Wall Street Reform.”

May 14

In the Gulf: BP uses robots to try to insert a small tube into the leaking pipe on the Gulf floor, in an attempt to seal it off and siphon oil to the surface.

At the White House: Obama honors TOP COPS award recipients at the White House.

May 13

In the Gulf: BP prepares to suck oil away from the spewing well before trying to place the smaller containment box on top.

At the White House: Obama flies to Buffalo, N.Y., for a tour and town hall meetings at a local factory. He later travels to New York City for a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee event.

May 12

In the Gulf: Crews lower the new, smaller containment box to the Gulf of Mexico floor.

At the White House: Obama meets with Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the White House, then takes questions from the press.

May 11

In the Gulf: Response crews replenish fuel and water in preparation for long-term relief efforts.

At the White House: Reports surface that the Obama administration has proposed splitting up the Minerals Management Service, the agency responsible for overseeing offshore drilling. One arm would be tasked with inspecting rigs and enforcing regulations while the other would oversee drilling leases.

May 10

In the Gulf: BP announces it will try to place a smaller dome over the leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.

At the White House: Obama meets with Cabinet officials and senior staff at the White House to discuss the oil spill response.

May 9

In the Gulf: BP officials say, after the 100-ton box fails to stop the leak, that they may try to do the same thing with a smaller box. Approximately 3.5 million gallons of oil have spilled into the Gulf at this point.

At the White House: Obama speaks to graduates at Hampton University in Virginia.

May 8

In the Gulf: Balls of tar begin washing up on Alabama’s beaches. Meanwhile, the 100-ton box meant to capture the leak is not working.

At the White House: Obama delivers his weekly radio address on holding insurance companies more accountable.

May 7

In the Gulf: Robots place a 100-ton box over the oil well on the ocean floor, in an unprecedented attempt to stop the flow. Officials expand the coastal area closed to fishing due to the spill.

At the White House: No public events.

May 6

In the Gulf: Officials confirm that oil has made landfall on the Louisiana coastline. BP prepares to lower a giant box over the oil well to capture the leak.

At the White House: Obama participates in a national security meeting on Afghanistan and Afghanistan.

May 5

In the Gulf: BP caps one of the three oil leaks, though thousands of barrels of oil continue to leak into the Gulf.

At the White House: Obama attends a Cinco de Mayo celebration at the White House.

May 4

In the Gulf: Winds in the Gulf of Mexico calm down, giving crews a chance to lay down boom by the shorelines. BP tries to cap a small leak while preparing to place a containment dome over the main leak.

At the White House: Obama speaks at the Business Council in Washington. There he pledges to minimize economic damage from the oil spill.

May 3

In the Gulf: BP’s executive says crews are reducing the amount of oil reaching the surface by using dispersants. He pledges that BP will pay “all necessary and appropriate” costs associated with the clean-up.

At the White House: The administration, holding a meeting with BP executives, presses BP to explain how it will cover those clean-up costs. The president has a conference call with Allen and local officials to discuss the response.

May 2

In the Gulf: More vessels and response teams are deployed. Fishing is shut down from the Mississippi River to the Florida panhandle.

At the White House: Obama travels to the Gulf coast to survey the damage and meet with local officials. He calls the spill a “potentially unprecedented” disaster and pledges a “relentless” federal response. Obama is later briefed on the attempted Times Square bombing.

May 1

In the Gulf: Two more offshore platforms are shut down in the Gulf of Mexico as a precaution. Crews continue using dispersants by the leak. The slick from the explosion has tripled in size. Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen is put in charge.

At the White House: Obama speaks at the University of Michigan commencement. Obama later attends the White House Correspondents Dinner.

April 30

In the Gulf: Oil reportedly begins to wash ashore in Louisiana’s wetlands. High winds make coastal protection efforts difficult.

At the White House: Obama again addresses the spill in public remarks. He suspends new offshore oil drilling but reaffirms his commitment to domestic oil production. The president order an immediate review on rig safety and sends top administration officials to the Gulf coast.

April 29

In the Gulf: The Coast Guard says the oil spill could soon reach landfall, while mitigation efforts continue.

At the White House: Obama, in his first public remarks on the spill, pledges to deploy “every single available resource” in response. He speaks with the governors from five Gulf states, while Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano declares a “spill of national significance.”

April 28

In the Gulf: Crews start to set fire to select sections of the spill. The Coast Guard reports that it has found a new leak, and updates its estimate of the spill from 1,000 to 5,000 barrels a day.

At the White House: Obama talks about the economy in Missouri. He later travels to Illinois to talk about financial reform. He is briefed on Air Force One about the spill on the way back to Washington.

April 27

In the Gulf: More boats are deployed to the Gulf. Coast Guard officials say they’re considering lighting the spill on fire.

At the White House: The Obama administration launches an investigation into the explosion. Administration officials meet with BP executives. Obama meets with the newly formed debt and deficit commission, then travels to Iowa to speak at an energy facility.

April 26

In the Gulf: About 15,000 gallons of dispersants and 21,000 feet of boom are used at the spill site to mitigate the damage from the leak.

At the White House: Obama greets the New York Yankees at the White House, then speaks at an entrepreneurship summit.

April 25

In the Gulf: The Coast Guard estimates up to 1,000 barrels are leaking in the Gulf every day in the wake of the blast. Dozens of boats and hundreds of response workers are deployed to contain the spill.

At the White House: Obama leaves Asheville to attend a memorial service for the West Virginia miners who died in the Upper Big Branch explosion.

April 24

In the Gulf: The Coast Guard discovers oil leaking from the ocean floor.

At the White House: Obama plays golf in North Carolina.

April 23

In the Gulf: The Coast Guard ends the search for the missing 11 workers, who are presumed dead, at the end of the day. The Coast Guard reports that oil does not appear to be leaking from the well head, though they are trying to contain what spilled in the explosion.

At the White House: Obama and the first family travel to Asheville, N.C., for vacation.

April 22

In the Gulf: The Deepwater Horizon rig sinks, while search-and-rescue efforts continue.

At the White House: Representatives from 16 federal agencies collaborate as part of a national response team to the Gulf disaster. Obama travels to New York City to discuss his financial regulatory bill. The president later holds a meeting in the Oval Office about the response to the oil rig tragedy. The White House releases a statement saying Obama is ensuring the government is offering “all assistance needed” in the rescue effort and in responding to the environmental impact.

April 21

In the Gulf: Coast Guard helicopters search for 11 missing oil rig workers.

At the White House: Obama meets with Senate Judiciary Committee members at the White House to discuss the Supreme Court vacancy. He later hosts a reception for G20 labor officials.

April 20

In the Gulf: An offshore oil drilling rig owned by Transocean and operated by BP explodes in the Gulf of Mexico nearly 50 miles of the Louisiana coast.

At the White House: The president returns to Washington from Los Angeles, where he was attending a set of Democratic fundraisers the night before.

And if that isn’t bad enough, the president added injury to incompetence.  Thanks to Obama’s incredible incompetence and failure as a president, more than 800,000 Americans are going to lose their jobs, according to a government report by the Environment and Public Works Committee.

… The noble Indian rode his horse up to the putrid brown muck that had once been known as the Gulf of Mexcico.  And he saw what President Barack Obama had allowed to happen to the majestic waters.  And he wept at the incompetence of the most evil American president since Democrat Andrew Jackson – who had ordered the genocidal march known as the Trail of Tears.

Oil Spill Panel: Obama Incompetence Destroyed Public Trust

Only one thing truly mattered to Barack Obama as millions of gallons of oil spewed out of the ocean floor to contaminate the Gulf Coast: that Barack Obama not be blamed:

President Obama may have decried finger-pointing today, but he also did a fair amount of it himself. Not only at the three companies, but at previous administrations.

Here’s what he said today when he turned the finger at the federal government:

“For too long, for a decade or more, there has been a cozy relationship between the oil companies and the federal agency that permits them to drill. It seems as if permits were too often issued based on little more than assurances of safety from the oil companies. That cannot and will not happen anymore.””A decade or more” clearly encompasses the Bush Administration, and may include the Clinton years too. But Mr. Obama’s been president for nearly 16 months. Does he get at least a little piece of the blame?

Not a bit, he made clear. He portrayed his administration as valiantly fighting the good fight against the oil companies from day one […]

None of the following things that Barack Obama did were Barack Obama’s fault:

Barack Obama took more money from British Petroleum than any politician over a twenty year period.  In spite of the fact that he had only been in national politics for less than three years.  Barack Obama’s administration approved the project and granted the permit for the doomed BP drilling site.  Barack Obama’s administration helped quash environmental problems and issued an environmental waiver to BP at said doomed site only days before the disaster.  Barack Obama failed to take the disaster seriously and delayed serious action for weeks, fiddling with fundraisers, golf outings, and vacations while the Gulf went to hell.  The Obama administration has continued to delay and waste time pursuing the dotting of the i’s and the crossing of the t’s regarding mindless bureaucratic inanities.

It was also not Barack Obama’s fault that Barack Obama turned down virtually every international offer to help help him clean up his mess while he was clearly not up to the job.

It was not Barack Obama’s fault that Barack Obama seemed to have absolutely no clue whatsoever what to do – as testified by even his own fellow liberals.

Nor was it Barack Obama’s fault that Barack Obama’s deceit-based moratorium on drilling has cost the Gulf thousands of jobs in what can only be seen as a double-whammy-smackdown on a region that had already experienced disaster.

And so, clearly, it is not Barack Obama’s fault that the public lost trust in Barack Obama’s government due to Barack Obama’s incompetence:

Spill panel: Federal confusion lost public trust
By SETH BORENSTEIN and DINA CAPPIELLO, Associated Press Writers Seth Borenstein And Dina Cappiello, Associated Press Writers  – September 27, 2010

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration’s repeated low estimates of the huge BP oil spill undermined public confidence in the government’s entire cleanup effort, leaders of a White House-appointed commission declared at an investigatory hearing Monday.  One likened the mistakes to Custer’s disastrous decisions at Little Big Horn.

Federal officials botched the government’s response, a local official and government and university scientists contended as the commission focused on the questions of who was in charge and how much oil spewed out of the well into the Gulf of Mexico.

Eventually, U.S. officials said the spill was about 60 times bigger than originally estimated. Instead of 42,000 gallons a day, the volume of leaking oil was closer to 2.4 million gallons a day.

“It’s a lot like Custer,” said panel co-chairman Bob Graham, a former Florida senator and governor, referring to the battle that killed George Armstrong Custer and wiped out most of the Army’s 7th Calvary in 1876. “He underestimated the number of Indians on the other side of the hill and paid the ultimate price.”

And who was in charge? Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish, one of the coastal areas most affected by the spill, referred to another famous leader, this one fictional.

“It became a joke,” he told the commission. “The Houma command was the Wizard of Oz, some guy behind the curtain.”

Mistakes in the information that was being given out sapped confidence in the government on the issue, Graham and co-chairman William Reilly said at a news conference. Reilly described “repeated wrong numbers” on the amount of oil that was spilling.

I know who was supposed to be in charge: Barack Obama.  But he’s a total incompetent failure, who is skilled only in reading aloud whatever a teleprompter screen prompts him to say, and demagoguing.  And that’s why a crisis became such a pathetic and costly joke on every American citizen.

Just How Is Obama NOT An Abject Failure?

Under Barry Husseins’ pathetic failure of leadership, 24% of Americans believe that the recession will last 2 years.  And another 51% believe that it will last MORE than two years.  Given the fact that Obama will only be president for another two years, and given the fact that Obama was elected to fix the economy, what we basically have is a statement from 75% of Americans that Obama will be a completely failed president.

Here’s another one, and allow me to quote from below:

Only 13 percent of Americans say Mr. Obama’s economic programs, among them the stimulus package, have helped them personally. Twenty-three percent say they have hurt, while 63 percent say they have had no effect.

Now, understand: the stimulus is officially $862 billion, but it’s actual cost according to the Congressional Budget Office will be $3.27 TRILLION.  And 87% of the American people say that this beyond supermassive sum of money which will burden our children for decades either had no effect at all or actually HURT them.

Now, this $3.27 trillion will surely ultimately be ripped out of the hide of the US economy.  It’s only a matter of time.  An increase in the money supply is rather like an overdose of drugs.  And in this case the effect of the overdose will be hyperinflation.  Basically, the moment we have any kind of genuine recovery, our staggering deficit is going to begin to create an ultimately gigantic inflation rate.  Why?  Because we have massively artificially increased our money supply beyond our ability to actually produce real wealth, and that means that money will ultimately be devalued.  There’s simply no way it can’t be.  If simply printing money solved financial problems, the government could just mail everyone several million dollars, and we could all retire.  The problem is that more money chasing a limited supply of goods simply pushes up prices higher and higher without doing anything to solve the underlying economic problems.  If we have a recovery, with increased economic activity, there will be increased demand on the money supply, forcing an upward climb in interest rates as a means of controlling the currency.  And then we’ll begin to seriously pay for Obama’s and the Democrat Party’s sins.  Paradoxically, the only thing preventing hyperinflation now is the recession, because people aren’t buying anything and therefore aren’t competing for those limited goods.

That said, there is solid evidence that the stimulus actually HURT THE ECONOMY AND EMPLOYMENT IN THE RIGHT-HERE-AND-NOW by sucking money out of the private sector where it would have been put to good use and instead funneling it through the government were it was pissed away on political boondoggles and bureaucratic inefficiencies.  The evidence is clear: the governments that did not pass huge stimulus packages have fared much better than those like the US which did.

A further fact in our economic and political collapse is that Obama is creating a permanent elite class of government bureaucrats.  USA Today found that “At a time when workers’ pay and benefits have stagnated, federal employees’ average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn.”  Obama has massively expanded government, even as the the real pie for everyone (the economy) has been shrinking.  Since government workers don’t actually create wealth, but merely live off the taxes paid by those who create wealth, and since there are more and more government workers and fewer and fewer private sector workers, we’re heading for a real problem.  Again, “paradoxically” is a good word, as paradoxically Obama is creating a ruling class over the people who consume the peoples’ wealth in the name of helping the people.

And all of the above contributes to why Gerald Celente says America is about to experience what he calls “the Greatest Depression.”

July 13, 2010 6:30 PM
Poll: Americans Say Bad Economy Will Linger
Posted by Brian Montopoli

CBS News Poll analysis by the CBS News Polling Unit: Sarah Dutton, Jennifer De Pinto, Fred Backus and Anthony Salvanto.

(Credit: CBS)

A majority of Americans have a negative impression of the economy and expect the effects of the recession to linger for years, according to a new CBS News poll.

Most also say President Obama has spent too little time on the economy, which Americans cite as the country’s most important problem by a wide margin.

Three in four Americans now say the effects of the recession will last another two years or more. More than eight in 10 say the condition of the economy is bad, up five points from last month.

Just 25 percent of Americans say the economy is getting better – down from 41 percent in April. About half say it is staying the same, and the remaining quarter say it is getting worse.

More than half of Americans – 52 percent – say Mr. Obama has spent too little time dealing with the economy.

And with unemployment near 10 percent, the economy is their priority: Thirty-eight percent volunteer it as the country’s most important problem. That far outpaces the percentage that cited the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan (seven percent), health care (six percent), the deficit (five percent), and the oil spill in the Gulf (five percent).

The county’s most important economic problem, Americans say, is jobs, volunteered by 38 percent of respondents. Coming in a distant second was the national debt, the deficit and spending, cited by 10 percent in the poll, which was conducted between July 9th and 12th.

Just 27 percent of Americans say their local job market is good. Seventy-one percent call it bad. Nearly one in four expect their household finances to get worse over the next year, twice the percentage that expects their finances to improve.

Only 13 percent of Americans say Mr. Obama’s economic programs, among them the stimulus package, have helped them personally. Twenty-three percent say they have hurt, while 63 percent say they have had no effect.

Twenty-three percent say the stimulus package made the economy better – down from 32 percent in April and 36 percent last September. Eighteen percent say the stimulus package damaged the economy, while 56 percent say it had no effect.

The president’s job approval rating on the economy now stands at 40 percent – a drop of five points from last month. Fifty-four percent disapprove of his handling of the issue.

In general, Americans see Mr. Obama as spending too little time on the economy and the oil spill in the Gulf, and too much time on health care: Thirty-nine percent say he has spent too much time on the issue, while 24 percent say he spent too little time.

Americans do believe the president takes decisive action, with two and three suggesting he does. But more than half (53 percent) say he is not tough enough in his approach.

Americans are evenly split, meanwhile, on whether the president shares their priorities. Two in three believe he cares at least to some degree about people like them.

The president’s overall approval rating now stands at 44 percent, matching his disapproval rating. It stood at 47 percent last month.

The Issues: Economic Priorities

Most Americans – 53 percent – say the best way to get the economy moving is to cut taxes. Thirty-seven percent instead choose government spending on job creation.

Americans are split about how the federal government should spend its money: Forty-six percent say the priority should be spending to create jobs, and 47 percent want to put the focus on deficit reduction.

More than half want Congress to extend unemployment benefits now, a Democratic priority that has been blocked by Congressional Republicans.

Immigration:

Support for Arizona’s controversial immigration measure has increased: Fifty-seven percent say the law is “about right,” up five points from May. Just 23 percent say the law goes too far, while 17 percent say it doesn’t go far enough.

More than half say states should be allowed to pass illegal immigration laws, while 42 percent say only the federal government should have that power.

Americans are somewhat split on the impact of illegal immigrants: 42 percent say they take jobs away from Americans, while more – 50 percent – say they take jobs Americans don’t want.

Health Care:

Americans still largely disapprove more than they approve of Mr. Obama’s sweeping health care reforms. Forty-nine percent of Americans disapprove of the health reform legislation, while 36 percent support the law. Support has dropped seven points since May.

The Oil Spill:

Americans are roughly evenly split on whether BP will stop the flow of oil in the Gulf of Mexico by the end of the summer. Most (58 percent) are not confident that the company will fairly compensate those affected by the spill.

Wall Street Reform:

With Democrats poised to pass sweeping reforms of Wall Street this week, a majority (57 percent) say bank regulations should be increased.

Afghanistan and Iraq:

Sixty-two percent of Americans say things are going badly for the United States in Afghanistan, up from 49 percent in May. Just 31 percent say things are going well.

In Iraq, 55 percent say things are going well, while 28 percent say things are going badly.

Most Americans favor a timetable for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. Fifty-four percent back a timetable, while 41 percent oppose one. Mr. Obama has said the United States will start removing troops from the country in July of next year, but only if conditions on the ground permit.

Elena Kagan:

Most Americans can’t say whether Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan should be confirmed. Among those who have an opinion, 21 percent say yes and 19 percent say no. Less than half say they are closely following news about her nomination.

The Long Run:

Despite their concerns about the economy, Americans do not believe their country is on the decline. Fifty-nine percent expect things to get better in the long run, while 36 percent say America’s best days have passed.

Read the Complete Poll

More from the poll:

Poll: Support For Health Care Reform Drops

Poll: Most Want Afghanistan Withdrawal Timeline

Poll: Support for Arizona Immigration Law Hits 57 Percent

Obama’s Approval Rating on Economy Drops

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This poll was conducted among a random sample of 966 adults nationwide, interviewed by telephone July 9-12, 2010. Phone numbers were dialed from random digit dial samples of both standard land-line and cell phones. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The error for subgroups is higher.

This poll release conforms to the Standards of Disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.

This article was written in July.  And it is amazing how far we have fallen since those days only a little over the month ago (that was back when Obama was pitching his pseudo “summer of economic recovery, donchaknow).

Now here we are, with Obama’s failures being revealed to be even MORE magnificent, as the jobless claims rise to their highest levels in 9 months (with over half a million new filings).

The Associated Press reports:

The layoffs add to growing fears that the economic recovery is slowing and the country could slip back into a recession.

There’s your double-dip recession for you.  And that recession belongs entirely to Obama and the Democrat Party, which are leading us toward complete ruination.

All Obama has going for him are false blame on Bush to explain his two-years’ worth of abject failure and outright lies, such as his recent one taking credit for a stimulus dollar success when the stimulus didn’t have anything to do with the project Obama cited.

For the record, Obama has been lying about employment all along.

With $862 billion dollars you’d think Obama could find at least one actual success.  But the porkulus was THAT bad; there weren’t any.

Some other things that the poll didn’t mention: a solid majority of Americans now believe that their president is a socialist (as people like me were saying all along).

And Americans now trust Republicans more than Democrats on ALL TEN of the most important issues facing the country, according to the lastest Rasmussen survey:

If all of this doesn’t represent a massive failure of leadership, precipitating a failure of trust which itself creates massive economic suffering, please tell me how it isn’t.

Pelosi And Democrats Block BP Oil Spill Investigation

Democrats really want to get to the bottom of the BP oil spill and all the failures of leadership and action thereafter.

In other related news, I have decided to sell the Golden Gate Bridge in a closed bidding process.  Just send me your bid, and I’ll let you know whether you’re the lucky winner.

From before the disaster – when Barack Obama received more money from BP than any politician over the past twenty years – to after the disaster, Democrats ought to be ashamed of themselves.

And their shame is showing:

Pelosi Blocks Oil Spill Investigation
by  Connie Hair
07/28/2010

The latest version of the CLEAR Act is slated for a floor vote in the House this week as Democrats look for ways to use the Gulf oil spill as a means to pass elements of their unpopular energy agenda.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) stripped out authorization for an independent investigation into the Gulf disaster.

The Natural Resources Committee unanimously passed the amendment in committee markup July 14 offered by Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) that would establish a bipartisan, independent, National Commission on Outer Continental Shelf Oil Spill Prevention.

Unlike the commission set up by President Obama — packed only with environmental activists and no petroleum engineers — the commission unanimously approved by the Natural Resources committee would be comprised of technical experts to study the actual events leading up to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Not a single member of the committee voiced opposition at the bill’s markup.  The Senate has also approved an independent commission.

“To investigate what went wrong and keep it from happening again, the commission must include members who have expertise in petroleum engineering.  The President’s Commission has none,” Cassidy, the amendment’s author, told HUMAN EVENTS after the announcement.  “It defies common sense that this amendment passed unanimously in committee, only to be deleted in the Speaker’s office.”

Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), top Republican on the Natural Resources Committee said the Obama’s administration’s commission was set up to protect the President.

“By deleting the bipartisan, independent oil spill commission that’s received bipartisan support in both House and Senate committees, Democrats have shown they are more interested in protecting the President than getting independent answers to what caused this tragic Gulf spill.  Some of the biggest failures that contributed to the Gulf disaster are the direct responsibility of the federal government and by deleting this bipartisan, independent commission, Democrats ensure that only the President’s hand-picked commission will be digging into any failures of his own Interior Department appointees.  There is widespread agreement that no member of the President’s commission possesses technical expertise in oil drilling, and several are on the record in opposition to offshore drilling and support a moratorium that will cost thousands of jobs,” Hastings said.

The bill also sets up myriad regulations and new standards and laws for drilling that have nothing to do with offshore drilling.

“Even more outrageous is this bill’s attempt to use the oil spill tragedy as leverage to enact totally unrelated policies and increase federal spending on unrelated programs by billions of dollars. What does a solar panel in Nevada, a wind turbine in Montana, uranium for nuclear power, or a ban on fish farming have to do with the Gulf spill? Nothing — but the spill is a good excuse to try and pass otherwise stalled or unpopular new laws,” Hastings said.

Another member of the committee, Rep. John Fleming (R-La.), pointed out the hand-picked Obama commission is just getting underway with no findings or recommendations made.

“This ‘fix it’ bill is being rammed through without an accurate and full understanding of what actually went wrong. The Presidential Commission is just barely beginning its work, no investigations are yet concluded, and the failed [blowout preventer] still on the ocean floor, yet we are voting on a bill without knowing what went wrong,” Fleming said.

“Furthermore, at a time when Washington should be focused on creating jobs, this bill will do just the opposite by hampering future energy development and stifling job creation along the Gulf Coast,” Fleming added.  “This knee-jerk legislation — coupled with the Administration’s damaging Moratorium on offshore drilling — will worsen, not help, the situation.”

Yet the House is poised to vote this week on the CLEAR Act, likely Friday.

“This bill has less to do with preventing another spill than it does preventing domestic energy production,” Cassidy said.

UPDATE: House Republicans released bullets on the CLEAR Act this morning breaking down some of the measures included in the bill, including:

–     Imposes job-killing changes and higher taxes for onshore natural gas and oil production. It fundamentally changes leasing onshore by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, which affects not just leasing for natural gas and oil, but also for renewable energy including wind and solar. Forest Service and BLM leasing are shoved into the three new agencies that are replacing the former Minerals Management Service (MMS).

–     Creates over $30 billion in new mandatory spending for two programs that have nothing to do with the oil spill (the Land and Water Conservation Fund and the Historic Preservation Fund). In the version of the bill headed to the House floor, Democrats added brand new language that expressly allows this $30 billion to be earmarked by the Appropriations Committee.

–     Raises taxes by over $22 billion in ten years – with the taxes eventually climbing to nearly $3 billion per year. This is a direct tax on natural gas and oil that will raise energy prices for American families and businesses, hurt domestic jobs, and increase our dependence on foreign oil. This tax only applies to U.S. oil and gas production on federal leases – giving an advantage to foreign oil and hurting American energy jobs.

–     Requires the federal takeover of state authority to permit in state waters, which reverses sixty years of precedent. The mismanagement, corruption and oversight failures of the federal government are being used as justification to expand federal control by seizing management from the states.

–     Allows 10% of all offshore revenues – an amount possibly as high as $500 million per year – to be spent on a new fund controlled by the Interior Secretary to issue ocean research grants (ORCA fund). There is no requirement that the fund is used for the Gulf region or anything related to oil spills or offshore drilling. These funds can be earmarked.

If this wasn’t yet another way that Democrats are scheming to implode this country, it would be hilarious.  This bill is akin to my shooting you, and then using the shooting incident to pitch my gun-ban agenda.

You DO have to applaud the Democrats for their creative use of oxymorons.  I mean, to take a bill that deliberately prevents any kind of transparent independent investigation, and call it the “CLEAR Act,” is really something else.

Don’t forget to bid on my bridge.  You might be able to win it cheap!

And you can trust me not to rip you off, of course.  Because I’m at least as honest as Nancy Pelosi.

Oops.  My bad.  Nancy Pelosi famously promised to “drain the swamp,” but then she helped fill it instead.  So I’d have to be a total slimeball indeed not to be as honest as Nancy Pelosi.

‘No We Can’t’ Fixing To Be A Major Problem In God Damn America

We elected the man who stood for “God damn America”:

We elected the man who manifested the most amazing and narcissistic hubris in modern history:

“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal… This was the moment — this was the time — when we came together to remake this great nation …”

We voted for an evil and arrogant man whose only valuable skill was the ability to read from a teleprompter screen.

Barack Obama spent more than 20 years in a church that literally prayed that God would damn America.  His personal arrogance invited divine damnation.

It appears we have very likely got what we wanted: an America no longer under God’s protection, but only under Obama’s.

No, We Can’t [John Derbyshire]

Read this piece.

It’s technical, but not intractably so, if you’re willing to concentrate for half an hour and chase down the links.

It’s also deeply pessimistic about our chances of doing anything much about the Gulf oil spill.

In brief:

● BP drills a hole down through many layers of rock, of different strength and consistency, to the oil.

● The oil will then come up through this bore hole at great pressure.

● You do NOT want that pressure forcing the oil sideways into upper levels of the drilled-through rock.

● So you line the bore hole with steel casing, and cement in the space between casing and bore hole wall. This is deep-drilling S.O.P.

● Evidence from the Top Kill failure suggests that this casing-cement system is now fatally compromised.

● So we have “down hole leaks” — oil under colossal pressure forcing its way sideways into below-sea-bed rock formations.

● If you had (which of course we don’t) some massive cork to jam into the top of the bore hole and stop the gusher, all that sideways-leaked oil would just come bursting out through fissures opening up in the sea floor.

● For miles around.

● And even though we don’t have such a cork, the bore hole might collapse in on itself, with the same effect.

As the writer says: “The very least damaging outcome as bad as it is, is that we are stuck with a wide open gusher blowing out 150,000 barrels a day of raw oil or more.”

In slightly different words: The best we can hope for is that the thing just goes on gushing through the bore hole indefinitely. (Or until we can drill enough relief wells to reduce the pressure. Don’t hold your breath.)

I’m as horrified as anyone by this — if the guy has got it right, and I’ve understood him correctly. At the same time, as a constitutional pessimist, I’ll own to a certain grim satisfaction. The infantile optimism of post-JFK America may have met its match down there in the Gulf. Nature is not mocked.

If this analysis is correct, the consequences for America will be so devastating that they can’t be overstated.

The author says “Nature is not mocked.”  I say God is not mocked.

Dr. Anne Wortham wrote an inspired article entitled, “No He Can’t” shortly after Obama’s election victory.  On her highly insightful view, what won in 2008 was an attitude of helplessness begging for deliverance by a pseudo-messiah of big government socialistic bureaucracy.

We elected a president who promised to be our savior.  But what we are now learning is that he is an incompetent failure who can’t do anything.  We wait and wait for Obama to save us, but all he actually does is make a terrible problem even worse with his mismanagement.

Obama was hailed as our great deliverer.  But where are we a year and a half later?  Our unemployment rate is far higher now than it was when Bush left office (7.6%).  Our out-of-control debt is far higher now than it was when Obama assumed office.  Our housing industry is worse than it has ever been since records were maintained fifty years ago.  Our war in Afghanistan is far worse was than it was when Obama assumed office.

By the Democrats’ very own metric from 2004, Barack Obama is the worst president in the history of the nation.

And now we have oil spewing out of a hole in the sea floor, at a rate that is creating an Exxon Valdez damage every four days.

A writer from The Times in England, taking note of all the incredible arrogance of the Obama campaign, said the very day after Obama’s inauguration, “Obama may be the ‘no we can’t’ president.”  In hindsight, it seems readily obvious that Daniel Finkelstein was right.

Is what is happening God’s divine judgment on America for it’s foolishness and wickedness in electing an evil man?  I don’t know.  God doesn’t tell me when He’s judging a nation.  But I DO know that God DOES judge nations (see Psalm 82:8; 96:10; 110:6; Joel 3:12).  And I DO know that even liberal sources such as the Huffington Post (and see also here) and Newsweek are using the word “apocalypse” to describe the terrible Gulf oil disaster.  Maybe these liberal and very likely godless writers don’t realize it, but the term “apocalypse” is loaded with the sense of the revealing of divine judgment.

I also know that God is not mocked, and that whatever men sow, they will also reap (Galatians 6:7).

I am not a prophet, and God has not revealed to me that He is judging America for its departing from Him and turning to a false messiah who hates and mocks His ways:

But in my own heart, I believe that God is beginning to judge America by withdrawing His favor from this once great nation.

I believe that we are reaping the consequences of voting for “God damn America.”  I wrote about that the night Obama won the election, and I have never found a single reason to change my mind.

What Do McChrystal And BP Have In Common – Aside From Fact That Both Were Democrat Supporters?

The following article by Mark Steyn is brilliant.  My title isn’t an accurate summary of Steyn’s point (but maybe it got you to read an article you otherwise wouldn’t have read!).

It is certainly beyond hilarious that pro-Obama Democrat Stanley McChrystal and pro-Obama BP are now on the outs in a cloud of self-destruction, while George Bush’s Secretary of Defense and George Bush’s general have been called upon to save the day.

But the real meat of the article gets to the heart of one issue: Barack Obama is an empty suit who stands for nothing beyond self-promoting Barack Obama.

Published: June 25, 2010
Updated: 10:57 a.m.
Learning the rules of an unengaged president
By MARK STEYN
Syndicated columnist

What do Gen. McChrystal and British Petroleum have in common? Aside from the fact that they’re both Democratic Party supporters.

Or they were. Stanley McChrystal is a liberal who voted for Obama and banned Fox News from his HQ TV. Which may at least partly explain how he became the first U.S. general to be lost in combat while giving an interview to Rolling Stone: They’ll be studying that one in war colleges around the world for decades. The management of BP were unable to vote for Obama, being, as we now know, the most sinister duplicitous bunch of shifty Brits to pitch up offshore since the War of 1812. But, in their “Beyond Petroleum” marketing and beyond, they signed on to every modish nostrum of the eco-Left. Their recently retired chairman, Lord Browne, was one of the most prominent promoters of cap-and-trade. BP was the Democrats’ favorite oil company. They were to Obama what Total Fina Elf was to Saddam.

But what do McChrystal’s and BP’s defenestration tell us about the president of the United States? Barack Obama is a thin-skinned man and, according to Britain’s Daily Telegraph, White House aides indicated that what angered the president most about the Rolling Stone piece was “a McChrystal aide saying that McChrystal had thought that Obama was not engaged when they first met last year.” If finding Obama “not engaged” is now a firing offense, who among us is safe?

Only the other day, Florida Sen. George Lemieux attempted to rouse the president to jump-start America’s overpaid, overmanned and oversleeping federal bureaucracy and get it to do something on the oil debacle. There are 2,000 oil skimmers in the United States: Weeks after the spill, only 20 of them are off the coast of Florida. Seventeen friendly nations with great expertise in the field have offered their own skimmers; the Dutch volunteered their “super-skimmers”: Obama turned them all down. Raising the problem, Sen. Lemieux found the president unengaged, and uninformed. “He doesn’t seem to know the situation about foreign skimmers and domestic skimmers,” reported the senator.

He doesn’t seem to know, and he doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t care. “It can seem that at the heart of Barack Obama’s foreign policy is no heart at all,” wrote Richard Cohen in The Washington Post last week. “For instance, it’s not clear that Obama is appalled by China’s appalling human-rights record. He seems hardly stirred about continued repression in Russia.

The president seems to stand foursquare for nothing much.

“This, of course, is the Obama enigma: Who is this guy? What are his core beliefs?”

Gee, if only your newspaper had thought to ask those fascinating questions oh, say, a month before the Iowa caucuses.

And even today Cohen is still giving President Whoisthisguy a pass.

After all, whatever he feels about “China’s appalling human-rights record” or “continued repression in Russia,” Obama is not directly responsible for it. Whereas the U.S. and allied deaths in Afghanistan are happening on his watch – and the border villagers killed by unmanned drones are being killed at his behest. Cohen calls the president “above all, a pragmatist,” but with the best will in the world you can’t stretch the definition of “pragmatism” to mean “lack of interest.”

“The ugly truth,” wrote Thomas Friedman in The New York Times, “is that no one in the Obama White House wanted this Afghan surge. The only reason they proceeded was because no one knew how to get out of it.”

Well, that’s certainly ugly, but is it the truth? Afghanistan, you’ll recall, was supposed to be the Democrats’ war, the one they allegedly supported, the one the neocons’ Iraq adventure was an unnecessary distraction from. Granted the Dems’ usual shell game – to avoid looking soft on national security, it helps to be in favor of some war other than the one you’re opposing – Candidate Obama was an especially ripe promoter. In one of the livelier moments of his campaign, he chugged down half a bottle of Geopolitical Viagra and claimed he was hot for invading Pakistan.

Then he found himself in the Oval Office, and the dime-store opportunism was no longer helpful. But, as Friedman puts it, “no one knew how to get out of it.” The “pragmatist” settled for “nuance”: He announced a semisurge plus a date for withdrawal of troops to begin. It’s not “victory,” it’s not “defeat,” but rather a more sophisticated mélange of these two outmoded absolutes: If you need a word, “quagmire” would seem to cover it.

Hamid Karzai, the Taliban and the Pakistanis, on the one hand, and Britain and the other American allies heading for the check-out, on the other, all seem to have grasped the essentials of the message, even if Friedman and the other media Obammyboppers never quite did. Karzai is now talking to Islamabad about an accommodation that would see the most viscerally anti-American elements of the Taliban back in Kabul as part of a power-sharing regime. At the height of the shrillest shrieking about the Iraqi “quagmire,” was there ever any talk of hard-core Saddamite Baathists returning to government in Baghdad?

To return to Cohen’s question: “Who is this guy? What are his core beliefs?” Well, he’s a guy who was wafted ever upward – from the Harvard Law Review to state legislator to United States senator – without ever lingering long enough to accomplish anything. “Who is this guy?” Well, when a guy becomes a credible presidential candidate by his mid-40s with no accomplishments other than a couple of memoirs, he evidently has an extraordinary talent for self-promotion, if nothing else. “What are his core beliefs?” It would seem likely that his core belief is in himself. It’s the “nothing else” that the likes of Cohen are belatedly noticing.

Wasn’t he kind of unengaged by the health care debate? That’s why, for all his speeches, he could never quite articulate a rationale for it. In the end, he was happy to leave it to the Democratic Congress and, when his powers of persuasion failed, let them ram it down the throats of the American people through sheer parliamentary muscle.

Likewise, on Afghanistan, his attitude seems to be “I don’t want to hear about it.” Unmanned drones take care of a lot of that, for a while. So do his courtiers in the media: Did all those hopeychangers realize that Obama’s war would be run by Bush’s defense secretary and Bush’s general?

Hey, never mind: the Moveon.org folks have quietly removed their celebrated “General Betray-us” ad from their website. Cindy Sheehan, the supposed conscience of the nation when she was railing against Bush from the front pages, is an irrelevant kook unworthy of coverage when she protests Obama. Why, a cynic might almost think the “anti-war” movement was really an anti-Bush movement, and that they really don’t care about dead foreigners after all. Plus ça change you can believe in, plus c’est la même chose.

Except in one respect. There is a big hole where our strategy should be.

It’s hard to fight a war without war aims, and, in the end, they can only come from the top. It took the oil spill to alert Americans to the unengaged president. From Moscow to Tehran to the caves of Waziristan, our enemies got the message a lot earlier – and long ago figured out the rules of unengagement.

Too bad we elected a president who has a narcissism complex where his conscience should be and a vacuum where his soul should be.

Obama Regime Has Done Everything Possible To Halt Gulf Oil Spill Cleanup

Stop and think about it for a second.  We could have burned the oil – as per the original contingency plan that had been on the books since 1994.  But the Obama regime wouldn’t allow it.  We could have used dispersants to break down the oil and make it easier to deal with.  But the Obama regime wouldn’t allow it.  We could have borrowed skimmers – and all kinds of other critical equipment and clean-up know-how – from all over the world to collect the oil.  But the Obama regime wouldn’t allow it.  We could have used hundreds of miles of boom that were literally sitting unused in warehouses.  But the Obama regime didn’t bother to obtain it.  We could have built sand berms that would have blocked the oil from reaching the most critical coastal areas.  But the Obama regime has done everything possible to stop it.

June 24, 2010
Feds halt work on LA sand berms
Jeannie DeAngelis

Sand berms are an insurance policy meant to protect the Louisiana coastline from oil spill damage.  The Louisiana sand berm venture involves moving “sand from a mile out in the Gulf of Mexico and pumping it closer in to shore to build manmade barrier islands.”

Nevertheless, lacking a more formidable idea and one week into the project the federal government decided to shut “down the dredging that was being done to create protective sand berms in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Louisiana’s Republican Governor Bobby Jindal staunchly supports protecting the coastline with a sandy barricade, which may explain why the “berm issue has created its own toxic friction between Louisiana and the Obama Administration.”

It seems that ever since Obama took over the reins of reason the government’s first-and-foremost effort is directed at implementing the illogical, obstructing progress and public wellbeing and placing the vulnerable at risk.

Thus, while the duffer- president concentrates on sand bunkers on the golf course, the environmentally alert, “Obama Administration has asked for a halt on dredging sand berms off the Chandeleur Islands … until the project can be relocated farther into the gulf.

Federal costs, environmental concerns and efficiency are likely at the center of the controversy.  As a result, the coast of Louisiana is officially the first victim whose future is at the mercy of an Obama-style “death panel.” Bureaucratic technicalities will determine the extent of damage that will ensue before federal approbation either, administers critical care, or just allows the patient to die, one or the other.

If Obama refuses to lift the ban on the dredging plan Plaquemines Parish President, Billy Nungesser might be the next one called in for a presidential reprimand for public insubordination.

Nungesser, “one of the most vocal advocates of the dredging plan, sent a letter to President Barack Obama, pleading for the work to continue.”  The outspoken sand-berm proponent claims, “Once again, our government resource agencies, which are intended to protect us, are now leaving us vulnerable to the destruction of our coastline and marshes by the impending oil.”

Billy Nungesser targeted Obama as the only “hope for continuing the work.” In an unforgiving dispatch Billy outlined viable options for the President to consider.  Nungesser begged, “Don’t shut us down, let us lay the pipe three miles out and then … move the dredge so we will be down less than a day and we’ll refill the hole.”

Nungesser reminded Obama of the “threat of hurricanes or tropical storms,” which would put the Gulf coast “at an increased risk for devastation … from the intrusion of oil.”

What Nungesser fails to grasp is how a hurricane or tropical storm, coupled with tornadoes of spinning oil would be tailor made for an administration that cultivates and exploits any crisis that fortuitously comes along.

You’re not supposed to notice that Obama’s death panel machine is alive and well, and just waiting to get its chance to decide who lives and who dies in your home.

This disaster of failed leadership comes right after the Obama regime stopped boats involved in vital clean-up efforts for more than a day at a time to ensure that they had fire extinguishers, life jackets, and every single other inane bureaucratic regulation they could think of.

Day 66.  And counting.  Sixty-six days of abject failure.  And even the left recognizes that Obama has been an abject failure.

Instead, we’ve had a bunch of Obama photo ops.  Instead, we’ve had Obama walking on the beach in slacks stopping and stooping to pick up a few tar balls.  Instead, we’ve had a collection of demagogic “here’s someone else you can blame instead of me” speeches.

Obama was previously calling meetings on the subject of whose ass he should kick (needing the bureaucracy of a staff meeting to figure it out).  But he never considered that his own scrawny ass needed a good hard kicking.

As we consider Obama’s failure in the Gulf, let’s not forget that:

Barack Obama took more money from BP than any politician over a twenty year period.  In spite of the fact that he had only been in national politics for less than three years.  Barack Obama’s administration approved the project and granted the permit for the doomed BP drilling site.  Barack Obama’s administration helped quash environmental problems and issued an environmental waiver to BP at said doomed site only days before the disaster.  Barack Obama failed to take the disaster seriously and delayed serious action for weeks, fiddling with fundraisers, golf outings, and vacations while the Gulf went to hell.  The Obama administration has continued to delay and waste time pursuing the dotting of the i’s and the crossing of the t’s regarding mindless bureaucratic inanities.

And what has Obama proposed as his solution?  Nothing that could cap the damn hole, but his socialist cap-and-trade which he himself said would cause energy prices to “necessarily skyrocket.”  In the spirit of never letting a good crisis go to waste, Obama has stoked the boilers for more Marxism.  And the more oil that pours across our coasts, the better.

What has Obama proposed?  He has proposed a ban, or moratorium, on offshore drilling.  Would this cost a permanent loss of tens of thousands of jobs (in fact, well over 100,000 jobs) as drilling platform operators relocate long-term to other countries?  Of course it would.  Would it in fact actually result in more danger to the environment, as it would entail capping and then eventually uncapping wells – the most dangerous part of the entire drilling procedure, as we should frankly all realize by now?  Of course it would.  Would it effectively amount to a ban on ALL American drilling, such that we were at the complete mercy of foreign oil who presumably have the basic intelligence to not undermine their own economies and their own security?  Of course it would.

Fortunately, a judge struck down Obama’s newest naked power grab as “overbearing,” “rash,” and “heavy handed.”  In other words, Obama acted in an incredibly Stalinist manner, didn’t he?

You’d almost think Obama was the Manchurian President, destroying America on purpose in his pursuit of the Cloward and Piven strategy for a Marxist America.  It has got to be either that, or he is so shockingly incompetent that it is utterly unreal.  Which scenario is more the frightening, I frankly don’t know.

Obama Worst President In History, According To 2004 Democrat Campaign Rhetoric

This is just too good.  Barack Hussein is far and away the very worst president in American history.  And that according to the very same standards that Democrats attacked George Bush with in 2004.

Democrats of 2004 Brand Obama Worst President
By Kevin Hassett – Jun 20, 2010

As we approach another general election, it will be interesting to see how the economic performance of Democrats is judged. If voters borrow the preferred method of John Kerry and other Democrats from 2004, Barack Obama will be revealed to be among the worst presidents in history.

During the 2004 election, Democrats constantly reminded voters that George W. Bush was the first president in decades to oversee a net loss of jobs.

The drumbeat was incessant. “This administration is the first since Herbert Hoover’s to actually lose jobs on its watch — 1.8 million jobs,” Kerry said at a campaign stop. His campaign chairman, Jeanne Shaheen, said Bush deserved “the first-ever ‘Herbert Hoover Award’ for having the worst jobs record since the Great Depression.”

The Hoover analogy was a stretch, as some recognized even back then. The watchdog election site factcheck.org wrote, “Comparing the Bush economy to Hoover’s Great Depression is just silly, and implying that tax cuts are not contributing to job growth deserves an ‘F’ in freshman economics.”

As an adviser to the Bush re-election campaign, I regularly rebutted the Hoover charge when I appeared on television to debate Kerry supporters in 2004. Here’s what I said then, and still say now: While some presidents arrive in Washington during boom times, others come during busts, and those often are the ones elected precisely because voters hope that they will change economic policies.

Jobless Recovery

Bush arrived just as the last recession was beginning — a bit of timing that Obama can relate to. Though that recession was brief, the subsequent jobless recovery did little to strengthen Bush’s record as he entered his reelection year.

Obama, of course, is just 17 months into his presidency, and more than two years from facing the voters personally. But with a big midterm congressional election upcoming, let’s see how Obama would fare if Kerry-like tactics were used on him.

The answer: not well. Whether the measurement is job creation, unemployment or growth of gross domestic product, the economy has been worse under Obama than it was under Bush.

First, job creation. According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. shed 2.3 million jobs since February 2009, Obama’s first full month in office. Going back to World War II, that is by far the worst record for any president in his first 17 months, outpacing the job destruction experienced in the early Bush years by more than 800,000 jobs.

Campaign Fodder

For Obama, there is an even worse way to play the data, which might just become fodder for a political ad: From November 2008, the month he was elected, until now, the economy has shed an astonishing 4.4 million jobs. That’s worse than Hoover.

Sure, you can blame the first few months of that period on lame-duck President Bush. But perhaps companies accelerated their shedding of jobs because they were bracing for higher tax rates, increased union power and costly environmental taxes under Obama.

Other measurements are only slightly kinder to Obama. The two-percentage-point increase in unemployment rate during his presidency, to 9.7 percent from 7.7 percent, is the third-worst since World War II. Dwight Eisenhower and Gerald Ford saw bigger increases.

GDP growth under Obama, an abysmal 3 percentage points so far, is the fourth-worst in the postwar period. Eisenhower, Ford and Ronald Reagan all began their terms with worse GDP growth.

But hey, it was Kerry and the Democrats who made job creation the be-all and end-all measurement of a presidency, and by that standard, Obama is dredging a new low. It’s probably a good bet that Democrats who became so enamored of Hoover’s name in 2004 won’t be mentioning it much this year.

Republicans should be willing to drop it too — so long as some economic adviser to Kerry-Edwards ‘04 admits the campaign was wrong to bring up Herbert Hoover in the first place.

(Kevin Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, is a Bloomberg News columnist. He was an adviser to Republican Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. The opinions expressed are his own.)

So if you want to see the case that Barack Obama is the worst president in history, don’t bother reading what conservatives say; just listen to Democrats own rhetoric from just a few years ago.

This article’s findings as to just what a disaster Obama has been even measuring by the Democrats’ own standards does not include the recent information that Obama’s mortgage modification program has totally failed in every way imaginable, and that sales of new homes has fallen to the lowest level ever recorded? It was the mortgage industry that created the 2008 collapse – and Obama has done nothing but make a black hole of crisis even worse.

I can’t even imagine how shrilly the Democrats would have decried those facts had they occurred during the Bush years.

And, to go on, you want to talk about a president’s ability to handle a national disaster such as the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, day 64?  No matter how bad you want to say Bush was regarding Hurricane Katrina, Bush is now widely recognized to have done a far superior job.  How about war fighting?  Bush won in Iraq; Obama is floundering enormously in Afghanistan.

Basically, by whatever metric you want to use, Obama is the biggest disgrace to ever occupy the White House.

If this doesn’t prove that Democrats are a) pathological demagogues and b) completely unfit to govern, what possibly could?

Obama Total Failure As Leader: Even Uber Liberals Throwing Obama Overboard In Gulf Disaster

If you see Obama covered in oil, it’s because a gang of liberals shoved him overboard into the sticky muck.

It appears that things are really getting desperate for the left.  Leftwing journalists, who have always been such reliable propagandists for Democrats, might finally be at that point where they realize if they don’t report the truth, their viewers will go to those that will.

From the gang of liberals at MSNBC:

MSNBC Trashes Obama’s Address: Compared To Carter, “I Don’t Sense Executive Command” Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Howard Fineman react to President Obama’s Oval Office Address on the oil spill. Here are the highlights of what the trio said:

Olbermann: “It was a great speech if you were on another planet for the last 57 days.”

Matthews compared Obama to Carter.

Olbermann: “Nothing specific at all was said.”

Matthews: “No direction.”

Howard Fineman: “He wasn’t specific enough.”

Olbermann: “I don’t think he aimed low, I don’t think he aimed at all. It’s startling.”

Howard Fineman: Obama should be acting like a “commander-in-chief.”

Matthews: Ludicrous that he keeps saying [Secretary of Energy] Chu has a Nobel prize. “I’ll barf if he does it one more time.”

Matthews: “A lot of meritocracy, a lot of blue ribbon talk.”

Matthews: “I don’t sense executive command.”

VIDEO: Obama: Oil Disaster “Most Painful And Powerful Reminder” That We Need Clean Energy

VIDEO: Krauthammer: Obama Gave It A Shot, But The Story Will Not Be His Speech

VIDEO: Frank Luntz Focus Group On Obama’s Address: “Negative”

Here’s the Youtube video in which the above comments were made:

From the New York Times:

From the beginning, the effort has been bedeviled by a lack of preparation, organization, urgency and clear lines of authority among federal, state and local officials, as well as BP. As a result, officials and experts say, the damage to the coastline and wildlife has been worse than it might have been if the response had been faster and orchestrated more effectively.

“The present system is not working,” Senator Bill Nelson of Florida said Thursday at a hearing in Washington devoted to assessing the spill and the response. Oil had just entered Florida waters, Senator Nelson said, adding that no one was notified at either the state or local level, a failure of communication that echoed Mr. Bonano’s story and countless others along the Gulf Coast.

“The information is not flowing,” Senator Nelson said. “The decisions are not timely. The resources are not produced. And as a result, you have a big mess, with no command and control.”

They were supposed to be better prepared. When the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska in 1989, skimmers, booms and dispersants were in short supply for the response, which was led by a consortium of oil companies in which BP was the majority stakeholder.

A year later, lawmakers passed the federal Oil Pollution Act to ensure that plans were in place for oil spills, so the response effort would be quick, with clear responsibilities for everyone involved.

No skimmers were available when the Exxon Valdes ran aground.  And – thanks to our fool-in-chief Barry Hussein – when we had a chance to get some much needed assistance to supply much-needed skimmers, Barry apparently thought they said, “We’d like to send you winners” and turned them down fearing they would make him look bad.

U.S. and BP slow to accept Dutch expertiseBy LOREN STEFFY –  Houston Chronicle – 06/08/2010

Three days after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch government offered to help.

It was willing to provide ships outfitted with oil-skimming booms, and it proposed a plan for building sand barriers to protect sensitive marshlands.

The response from the Obama administration and BP, which are coordinating the cleanup: “The embassy got a nice letter from the administration that said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’” said Geert Visser, consul general for the Netherlands in Houston.

Now, almost seven weeks later, as the oil spewing from the battered well spreads across the Gulf and soils pristine beaches and coastline, BP and our government have reconsidered.

So we’ve got this complete, unmitigated, and inexcusable disaster:

Had Obama accepted the offer back then and not allowed BP to use illegal dispersants, the oil would have never made landfall 48 miles away.

Today, (a month and half to late) there are US tankers that are steaming to the site with four pairs of modern skimming booms that were airlifted from the Netherlands and should be sucking up oil at the flow site within days.

Each pair can process 5 million gallons of water a day, removing 20,000 tons of oil and sludge.

If those skimmers were in place when they were offered a month ago, each pair could presumably recover 4.4 million barrels of oil. Four pairs of the state of the art skimmers would be able to suck up 17.6 million barrels in a month, although they will not be able to reach the depths of the plumes that are floating away with the illegal dispersants.

Thirteen nations offered to give us help to mitigate this massive disaster.  And Obama basically wrote, “To whom it may concern, please to get the hell out of my business” letters to all of them.

And, of course, this failure is too big for just one inexcusable and stupid and unforgivable abandonment of leadership, judgment, and basic common sense.  In addition to the “Thanks, but up yours” response to other nations’ offers to supply skimmers, Obama also allowed MILES of boom that would have been hugely important in protecting the coasts to sit useless in warehouses:

UNBELIEVABLE! How’s this for HOPE AND CHANGE?

Tar blobs began washing up on Florida’s white sand beaches near Pensacola this past weekend. Crude oil has already been reported along barrier islands in Alabama and Mississippi, and has impacted about 125 miles of Louisiana coastline.

It didn’t have to be this way.

(Reuters)
There are miles of floating oil containment boom in warehouse right now and the manufacturer Packgen says it can make lots more on short notice.
There’s just one problem… No one will come get it.

It’s unfair to compare Bush’s failure at the 500-year hurricane striking the worst possible location with Obama’s failure in this oil leak disaster – Obama’s failure is incommensurately worse.

And the American people know it.  A new poll–by a left leaning public opinion firm–finds that:

Our new Louisiana poll has a lot of data points to show how unhappy voters in the state are with Barack Obama’s handling of the oil spill but one perhaps sums it up better than anything else- a majority of voters there think George W. Bush did a better job with Katrina than Obama’s done dealing with the spill.

50% of voters in the state, even including 31% of Democrats, give Bush higher marks on that question compared to 35% who pick Obama.

Since Obama was elected, I’ve been saying that a third of American voters would continue to support Obama even if he led us into the stone-age-like conditions that Kim Il Jong has led his people into.  We could be living in the dark and freezing at night, and scratching our own fecal matter from the ground in order to have something to burn, and this group of people would still adore their Dear Leader.

And what is Obama’s response to this terrible crisis?  Well, his golf game certainly hasn’t suffered in any way.  He’s been very busy doing fundraisers so his fellow liberal buddies can have a chance to stay in office.  He got a nice vacation in.

Oh, and he gave a speech.  A speech in which Obama sought to seize advantage of the disaster in order to impose his monstrous and disastrous cap-and-trade system that would cause energy prices to “necessarily skyrocket.”  Obama is no leader who can possibly solve this crisis; he is rather a demagogic community organizer who can only seek to ideologically benefit from the crisis.

And MSNBC and the New York Times aren’t the only liberals who realize the disastrous and disgraceful failure that Obama has been.  Longtime liberal Democrat political strategist James Carville realized it.  Liberal journalist and former Clinton administration public affairs hack Kirsten Powers realized it.  I’m sure a lot of other liberal media pukes are realizing that we’re coming to the place where they either throw Obama overboard for his incompetence, or demonstrate that they themselves are clearly incompetent in their analysis.

I like the way the American Thinker concludes on Obama’s performance:

The utter lack of leadership and hands-on management in responding to the Gulf oil crisis is an embarrassment to the President, as well as a hideous disaster for the Gulf and those who live near it. Can Obama’s first-ever Oval Office address make the damage to his standing go away? I seriously doubt it. Obama has failed in his duty to protect the homeland through sheer inexperience, incompetence, and indolence. The man who has planty of time for golf, hoops, parties, and fund-raisers is asleep at the switch when it comes to making the system respond effectively to an emergency. There is no papering over the spectacle with rhetoric.

.

Obama Likens Gulf Oil Disaster To 9/11, As If Free Market Enterprise Is Akin To Terrorism

Obama – who has all but destroyed relations with one of our closest allies in Israel – has gone on to all but destroy relations with our very closest ally of all.

From an article which the Desert Sun appropriately entitled, “Gulf disaster jeopardizes U.S., British relations”:

Obama has said he would have fired BP’s top executive if he were in charge. He embraced the idea that the oil company suspend its quarterly dividend. He reproached BP for spending money on a public relations campaign. This past week, he said in a television interview, “I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar; we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers — so I know whose ass to kick.”

He occasionally refers to “British Petroleum,” although the company years ago began using only its initials and is a far-reaching international corporation with extensive holdings in the United States, including a Texas refinery and a share of the Alaska oil pipeline.

The angry words from Washington have produced a backlash in Britain, where BP is viewed as a corporate pillars. Millions of British retirees depend on BP dividends since pension funds are heavily invested in the oil company, the world’s third-largest.

I have written that Obama should start by kicking his own ass elsewhere.  But that’s another matter.

Obama has been hard at work undermining the historic relationship between England and America since he took office and told England it could have its crappy bust of irrelevant Winston Churchill back.

Oh, well.  What’s a special relationship that has stood for nearly two centuries and led to victory over evil in two world wars?

How does that any of that compare to the gain of directly attacking capitalism and the free market system when you’re a Marxist?

The Lonely Conservative has an article that includes Youtube video of Obama adviser Robert Reich calling for the US to socialize – er, nationalize – BP.  And Reich (and Maxine Waters, of course) are joined by uber-liberal Rosie O’Donnell, who says:

“Seize their assets today. Take over the country, I don’t care. Issue and executive order. Say BP guess what…call it socialism, call it communism, call it anything you want. Lets watch Rush Limbaugh explode…on TV when he talks….SEIZE THE ASSETS, take over BP.”

So I’m just agreeing with a liberal icon and calling it what it is.

And in that spirit, we have this latest:

Obama likens Gulf environmental disaster to 9/11
Jun 14 09:37 AM US/Eastern President Barack Obama likened the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to the September 11 attacks in an interview published on the eve of his fourth visit Monday to the stricken region.

“In the same way that our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy was shaped profoundly by 9/11, I think this disaster is going to shape how we think about the environment and energy for many years to come,” he told Politico.com.

Obama said he would be making a fresh bid to get Congress to pass a major energy and climate bill.

He was quoted as vowing to “move forward in a bold way in a direction that finally gives us the kind of future-oriented … visionary energy policy that we so vitally need and has been absent for so long.”

“One of the biggest leadership challenges for me going forward is going to be to make sure that we draw the right lessons from this disaster,” he said.

Flopping Aces has several humorously illustrated pictures that get to the heart of the joke Obama and his stupid remarks are:

Some 56 days into the disaster and this is the best this fool can come up with???  Seriously???

Is BP like Osama bin Laden?  Is free market enterprise no different from al Qaeda?  Should our response to BP and the free market system be war, such as it was following 9/11?

Apparently so, according to the latest from the Failure-in-Chief.  You don’t think that Karl Marx and the demagogic propagandists his ideas inspired wouldn’t have compared capitalism and the free market system to a terrorist entity that we needed to declare war upon?

Obama is once again revealing his profoundly deep Marxist roots that go all the way down to that tiny black shriveled thing he calls his soul.

And apparently drawing “the right lessons from this disaster” means more Stalinism.

Obama, in the mantra of his chief of staff, has the position to “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.  What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.”

Is the oil leak that is turning the ocean black a disaster?  Not for Obama: it’s an opportunity to usurp more power from the private sector, to seize more power for mega-government.  For Obama, hard-core leftist ideologue, the oil disaster is an opportunity to impose his cap-and-trade system, which had been DOA.  It’s an opportunity to impose a system which he himself said would make energy prices “necessarily skyrocket.”  Who cares if it is shockingly expensive?  Who cares if it amounts to yet another Marxist redistribution of wealth?  Who cares if little people get hurt?  The government will be to tax more, and have more power to regulate every detail of our lives.

Obama and his people are Marxist-facists.  They are demagogues; they are fearmongers and propagandists.  They are out to undermine our relationships with our greatest allies, and they are out to undermine this country in hopes of being able to impose a Marxist system following an engineered economic collapse (see also here).

The UK Telegraph features a piece which is considerably nicer.  It basically says that Obama isn’t a Marxist plant out to destroy America, but rather just a pathetically ignorant cheap political opportunist.  Here’s how the article begins:

Increasingly, political judgment as well as basic common sense is being suspended in the White House. We are witnessing not only the dramatic dumbing down of US policy under the Obama administration, with cheap soundbites standing in for strong leadership, but also a staggering inability to comprehend the scale of the global war the West is engaged in, as well as a disturbing willingness to downplay its importance and forget the scale of the loss the American people suffered nine years ago.

And from that high point, Nile Gardiner, in this piece entitled, “The Gulf oil spill is not 9/11: the Obama administration plumbs new depths of stupidity,” takes off the kid gloves.

Ignorant dumbass or Manchurian Candidate?  You decide.