Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Headline of the day
14 Comments:
By 
, at
Tue Jun 22, 11:50:00 AM:
Not earthshattering or important, but mildly amusing.
By , at
Tue Jun 22, 12:09:00 PM:
I'm having this deja vu all over again feeling about this. That well is turning into his hostage crisis, with the Gulf Coast fishing industry, oil industry, tourist industry, and state finances as the hostage. Obama is permanently damaged by this. This incident is where the American people see him without the rose colored glasses, much like the rest of the world has come to see him. His Presidency is pretty much ruined, his chance of re-election seems nil, and I hope we survive him without greater catastrophe.
By , at
Tue Jun 22, 03:48:00 PM:
Agree with Mr Ed, especially as June becomes July, July becomes August.
Can you say "tar baby" ?
By 
MTF, at
Tue Jun 22, 05:34:00 PM:
Not every news outlet is changing it's stripes. CBS endures.
By , at
Tue Jun 22, 07:04:00 PM:
Sorry to be off topic but since when did buying a program online result in a message
"•We are reviewing your purchase at this time. You will receive a confirmation email with your Product Key as well as download instructions when our review has been completed. Please allow 4 to 6 hours for our review to be completed before inquiring about the status of your order. We recommend that you write down or print your Order Number for future reference.
•There was a problem processing your key request"
The operative sentence being the key request.
When I called the company the response was it could take up to 24hours to approve a key request,
This is the service you get from Microsoft's official link for buying Outlook 2010.
So much for needing the program in a hurry because my earlier edition crashed.
Back to regular posting.
By JPMcT, at
Tue Jun 22, 08:33:00 PM:
I'm really coming to the realization that Obama is nothing more than an expendable policy conduit.
A mystery man with a fuzzy lineage, fuzzy education and no imprint anywhere that would normally qualify him as a leader.
Basically he takes orders and provides political facility to a shadow enclave of VERY wealthy investors.
So if the press "turns" on him...even if the whole country turns on him...what he has done already will make a great deal of money for a very short list of people.
For that he will have been guaranteed adequate compensation.
Sad, really, for the first minority president to have such a role as a lackey.
By , at
Tue Jun 22, 09:00:00 PM:
What some Obama Fans and independents took for "Cool" turns out to have been naivete'.
He was able to crtiticize Bush and his Katrina performance and assert he would do better so confidently only because he was so completely clueless about what an executive needs to do in a crisis.
This is where the Obama administration's historically low ratio of private sector appointees catches up to us all. All the professors, community organizers, artists, political hacks, "journalists" with no real-world clue is dangerous and it shows in their abysmal performance on the spill, the economy,
He needs to be working overtime every day to get himself up to speed not spending 3 hours at a baseball game and 4 hours golfing.
But someone who wins an undeserved Nobel Prize for falling out of bed will never think like that. He believes his own press clippings.
Reach out and make that 3AM phone call and get some advice Obama before it is too late for us all!!
By Gary Rosen, at
Wed Jun 23, 01:23:00 AM:
"A mystery man with a fuzzy lineage, fuzzy education and no imprint anywhere that would normally qualify him as a leader."
This was quite obvious to a number of us during the election campaign. I know I've said this a hundred times before but the dereliction and abandonment of any kind of duty by the media in reporting on Obama was not only a shameful disgrace but very damaging to our country.
By , at
Wed Jun 23, 03:32:00 AM:
...President Obama's friends in the press are beginning to turn.
Obie better break out the sunscreen, because he may need it....
By , at
Wed Jun 23, 04:23:00 AM:
A mystery man with a fuzzy lineage, fuzzy education and no imprint anywhere that would normally qualify him as a leader.
Normally, politicians want to go on record with votes to establish their credibility and curry attention. That fact that Obama never really voted for anything (voting "present" instead), preventing him from being pinned down by opposition campaign ads, is so against the grain that it suggests somebody had a very long-term agenda for him.
By , at
Wed Jun 23, 06:19:00 AM:
I'm not entirely sure what else the President or CEO could be doing - people seem to lose their heads when these issues arise. The two individuals on whom this issue has the greatest impact have been obsessively (and quite rationally) trying to stop it. And yes, it impacts on each of them more than some sad looking fisherman. I don't like Obama - I'd certainly vote Republican if I lived in the US - and I have no particular affection for Hayward, however the rabid attacks on each are completely over the top. What else can be done?
They took a few hours off on the weekend after a crazy few weeks - cry me a river.
The part of this story that I loathe though - and it completely shits me to tears - is the obscene hypocrisy of Obama and his mates.
FFS.
By , at
Wed Jun 23, 07:30:00 AM:
What else could he be doing? he could have suspended the Jones act post haste and invited the Dutch oil skimming ships to the Gulf, for one thing. They had (and have) the capacity to prevent the spread of the slick at the surface level completely. he could have accepted the proffered Norwegian assistance in working on the broken pipe located actually at the spew itself. Not as certain an outcome as the Dutch offer, but it certainly couldn't hurt and they probably know something about working below sea level. He could have (and could still!) bring far more boom into the Gulf, along with supplementing the very small number of skimmer ships he has assigned (what is it? something less than 5% of the total available fleet?).
Perhaps most importantly, when in February BP reported to their regulator that they were having serious problems with the rig, a well run agency would have followed up with questions to BP, a request for a disaster plan, or even an order to suspend production. A well run agency would have not offered BP waiver after waiver of important safety provisions, but then a well run agency would have reported to a CEO who had established process discipline and whose administration was not beholden to the company in question. Heck, they even indirectly paid Rahm's rent during his years in Congress. The Obama administration was literally sleeping in BP's bed.
A well run administration would by now have established control over all operations in the gulf, so that some stupid Coastie didn't prohibit what few oil skimmers we have there from proceeding to sea pending a life jacket inspection. It goes on.
By , at
Wed Jun 23, 08:39:00 AM:
A mystery man with a fuzzy lineage, fuzzy education and no imprint anywhere"
We already know more about Elena Kagan's back-story than we do about Obama's. But here's a few revealing points in a timeline:
1) Obama was an abandoned child, who grew up in the most racist state in the Union. Under that cool, he has a lot of issues. Ironically, he wasn't exposed to the anti-academic culture of our inner cities. He's actually a bit of a spoiled faculty brat -- growing up, he never knew anyone with a real job.
2) While in college, Obama finally found a family when he got adopted by radicals. Obama was groomed and financially supported by Khalid al-Mansour, a connected black Muslim activist, who got him into Harvard Law School. Just ask Percy Sutton.
3) Obama was annointed for Bigger Things when he became the first black to head the Harvard Law Review. This happened at exactly the same time that Professor Derrick Bell was leading an insurrection over racial issues at HLS -- complete with candlelight vigils and sit-ins.
4) While Obama was at HLS, the Critical Legal Studies Movement (the "Crits") still had influence. Some Crit professors are beyond Trotsky. Obama was almost certainly an acolyte.
5) If you combine the teachings of the Crits with the teachings of Saul Alinksy, together with the racial indignation of Derrick Bell, you have Obama's mental tool box. There's no room in this tool box for math, free market economics nor science.
6) If you dig into the back story of Obama's 2004 senate run, it's an eye-opener as to what Obama and Axelrod are really about. They're nasty dirtbags, even by the standards of Chicago politics. It's also revealing about how good Axelrod is at manipulating MSM.
7) Obama got lucky in the 2008 campaign. Many Democrats wanted an anti-Bush, and many didn't want another Clinton. Obama may have gotten help from the likes of Soros in 2008, but not until then -- I don't think.
Obama is a chameleon. Part of his magic trick is to do little in public and only speak in lofty generalities, and let people project what they want. It doesn't work well for someone with executive responsibilities.
Obama wants to leverage his pseudo-mandate into permanent structural changes to America effected through legislation, most of which will play out after 2012.
Energy and Immigration are next up, the public be damned.
By , at
Wed Jun 23, 08:56:00 AM:
Here is today's dereliction of duty by the President: Feds stop barrier island construction.
