Breakfast Scramble (Thursday)

Close to home, Associated Press:

TORONTO — A magnitude-5.0 earthquake struck at the Ontario-Quebec border region of Canada on Wednesday, the U.S. Geological Survey said, and homes and businesses were shaken from Canada’s capital in Ottawa on south to an arc of U.S. states.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

Morgan Moschetti, a seismologist with the USGS, said it was not unusual for an earthquake to be felt 300 miles (482 kilometers) from the epicenter and noted that the latest quake was felt in the U.S. from Chicago to Maine.

Other states that reported feeling tremors were Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey and New York.

Didn’t feel a thing.

Dumbo makes a change, via Sister Toldjah:

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama sacked Gen. Stanley McChrystal as his top commander in Afghanistan and will replace him with Gen. David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, a senior administration official said.

McChrystal was pushed out over his blistering remarks about administration officials, quoted in a Rolling Stone magazine interview.

The wrong one, from National Review:

It wouldn’t change the fact that our diplomatic team is a disaster. The work of both Af-Pak envoy Richard Holbrooke and ambassador Karl Eikenberry has been ham-handed and counterproductive. It’s understandable that General McChrystal would be frustrated with them, and it’s a scandal that they’ve been allowed to stumble along for this long.

How much confidence can you have in Team Obama when Stanley McChrystal  is out but Joe Biden is still in.   Barry sacks a general who supports his purported policy while keeping aides who do not.   Go figure.

Dumbo will not fight in Afghanistan, but continues to wage war on Louisiana, from Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit:

The Obama Administration continues to act as if they want the Gulf oil spill to destroy as much of the coastline as possible.

[…]

And, now the feds are shutting down the sand berm dredging off of the Louisiana coast.

More guns, less crime, by John Stossel, RCP:

[M]ore guns means — hold onto your seat — less crime.

How can that be, when guns kill almost 30,000 Americans a year?  Because while we hear about the murders and accidents, we don’t often hear about the crimes stopped because would-be victims showed a gun and scared criminals away. Those thwarted crimes and lives saved usually aren’t reported to police (sometimes for fear the gun will be confiscated), and when they are reported, the media tend to ignore them.  No bang, no news.

This state of affairs produces a distorted public impression of guns.  If you only hear about the crimes and accidents, and never about lives saved, you might think gun ownership is folly.

Citizens have the right to carry arms, wherever they may travel.  Serf s  do not.   Are we nation of citizens or serfs.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal in hot water with Obama after Rolling Stone interview. from Sister Toldjah.    My take, McChrystal can not publicly criticize his commander-in-chief, B. Hussein Obama.   However McChrystal can publicly criticize Obama’s inner circle of idiots like Vice President Joe Biden and national security adviser Jim Jones who are not in McChrystal’s chain of command.

Dumbo’s drilling ban overturned, from Associated Press:

NEW ORLEANS – A U.S. judge Tuesday ruled against the Obama administration’s six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the wake of the BP oil spill.

[,,,]

District Judge Martin Feldman said the Interior Department failed to provide adequate reasoning and that the moratorium seems to assume that because one rig failed, all companies and rigs doing deepwater drilling pose an imminent danger.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs countered that “continuing to drill at these depths without knowing what happened does not make any sense and …  potentially puts the safety of those on the rigs and the safety of the environment in the Gulf at a danger that the president does not believe we can afford rightnow.”

Dumbo has no way of knowing that sky rocketing electric rates via Cap and Tax would have any positive effect on climate.   Yet he wants to impose it anyhow.   Obama had no reason to believe that Obama Care would somehow bend the health care cost cure down, or that his so-called stimulus package would have any beneficial on the nation’s economy.   So after eighteen month of governing on sheer ignorance, Obama  only wants to produce oil after he knows all the facts.  Sure.   Your check is in the mail.

Judge’s order ignored:

WASHINGTON (AP) – Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says he will issue a new order imposing a moratorium on deepwater drilling after a federal judge struck down the existing one.

Salazar said in a statement Tuesday evening that the new order will contain additional information making clear why the six-month drilling pause was necessary in the wake of the Gulf oil spill. The judge in New Orleans who struck down the moratorium earlier in the day complained there wasn’t enough justification for it.

Salazar pointed to indications of inadequate safety precautions by industry on deepwater wells. He said he would issue a new order in the coming days showing that a moratorium is needed.

The White House also is appealing the judge’s ruling.

Henry Waxman,  when do the impeachment hearing start?

Public loses faith in Dumbo, from CBS News:

Most Americans do not believe President Obama has a clear plan to deal with the oil spill in the Gulf, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll.

[…]

The spill isn’t the only issue on which the president is seen as lacking a plan of action: Just 41 percent say Mr. Obama has a clear plan for developing new sources of energy, while 45 percent say he has no clear plan. And when it comes to creating jobs, just 34 percent say he has a clear plan; 54 percent say he does not.

Might I suggest less time on the golf course and more time in the Oval Office.

Obama’s rocks drop home, by Alan Zibel, Forbes:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s flagship effort to help people in danger of losing their homes is falling flat.

More than a third of the 1.24 million borrowers who have enrolled in the $75 billion mortgage modification program have dropped out.

[…]

A major reason so many have fallen out of the program is the Obama administration initially pressured banks to sign up borrowers without insisting first on proof of their income. When banks later moved to collect the information, many troubled homeowners were disqualified or dropped out.

To some it is always tempting to label sound business practices as racist.    However when people with no incomes do not repay their loans, are we expected to shocked?

Hat tip and more, Gabreil Malor, Ace of Spades:

There was already some rumbling in the papers and definitely in the financial blogs, but the new numbers confirm it: Obama is, in fact, dumber than a box of rocks.

Bye.

A law degree has become the version, albeit a far higher priced one, of teaching certificate, to wit akin to worthless.  From the New York Slimes:

In the last two years, at least 10 law schools have deliberately changed their grading systems to make them more lenient.  These include law schools like New York University and Georgetown, as well as Golden Gate University and Tulane University, which just announced the change this month. Some recruiters at law firms keep track of these changes and consider them when interviewing, and some do not.

Law schools seem to view higher grades as one way to rescue their students from the tough economic climate — and perhaps more to the point, to protect their own reputations and rankings.

Our founding blogger can attest, that trucking firms don’t want people with driving certificates.   They want people who can drive trucks.   Likewise, law firms don’t want people with law school diplomas, they want people whn can do law.

Don’t believe me, how about John, Powerline:

The Law of  Supply and Demand Strikes the Law Business

[…]

The reality is that any society–even ours–has a limited need for lawyers. I’m reminded of a cartoon in the New Yorker from several decades ago. Two people are talking at a cocktail party; one of them says to the other: “How did I know you’re a lawyer? Simple: everyone is a lawyer.” That was how things seemed to be going during the 1970s, but like all trends, this one couldn’t continue forever.

Mixing chafe with wheat will not result in law firms hiring more chafe.   It will  result in  after market   thrashing.

Professor Althouse adds:

It’s not as if the students previously got the grades they deserved and now the grades are phony. When  lawprofs grade law school exams, we may start with raw scores that represent what we really think of them, but the final grades are determined by the school’s predetermined goals for averages and percentages at the various grade levels. If the school thinks those averages and percentages are set in the wrong place and it can reset them.

It never had to do with the actual performance of the students. It was always about where the school, as a matter of policy, decided the grades ought to be. It was always about communicating with law firms and other employers in the hope of advantaging our graduates in comparison to other law schools’ graduates. We’re all lawyers here.  This is all advocacy. Are you actually surprised?

What is a credential worth?   Not what the issuer says it worth, but rather what a prospective buyer, to wit law firm, perceives it to be worth.   Justice Clarence Thomas related how his Yale law degree was near worthless.   Employers perceived it to be an affirmative action degree and not a real one.

Dumbo’s green energy delusions, Robert J. Samuelson, Washington Post:

[Baracl] Obama has made vilification of oil and the oil industry a rhetorical mainstay. This is intellectually shallow, if politically understandable. “Clean energy” won’t displace oil or achieve huge reductions in greenhouse gas emissions — for example, the 83 percent cut by 2050 from 2005 levels included in last year’s House climate change legislation. Barring major technological advances (say, low-cost “carbon capture” to pump CO2 into the ground) or an implausibly massive shift to nuclear power, this simply won’t happen. It’s a pipe dream. In the EIA’s “reference case” projection, CO2 emissions in 2035 are 8.7 percent higher than in 2008.

If  you had two pigs, and painted one green, how many leprechauns would you have?    Just as you can’t make a leprechaun by painting a pig green, you can’t make some  energy green by relabeling it.

Obama Care chickens come home to roost, by Richard Wolf, Useless Toady:

WASHINGTON — The number of doctors refusing new Medicare patients because of low government payment rates is setting a new high, just six months before millions of Baby Boomers begin enrolling in the government health care program.

Health care is not a right.  It is a commodity, a product of human endeavor.  In a free  society, you can not create rights to commodities, not even if you named Dirty Harry Reid.

Mrs. Clinton gathers her army,  White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel to depart sinking Obama administration, from Alex Spillius, Telegraph (UK):

Rahm Emanuel expected to quit White House

Washington insiders say he will quit within six to eight months in frustration at their unwillingness to “bang heads together” to get policy pushed through.

[..]

“I would bet he will go after the midterms,” said a leading Democratic consultant in Washington. “Nobody thinks it’s working but they can’t get rid of him – that would look awful. He needs the right sort of job to go to but the consensus is he’ll go

Emanuel maybe a thug from Chicago, but he may the only connection in the Obama White House to the real world.   Emanuel might kick ass, but at least he does not have his head buried up Saul Allinsky’s.

Mrs. Pelosi doesn’t do budgets, by Hugh Hewitt, Washington Examiner:

Democrats expect voters not to notice, or care if they do notice, that legislators have not passed a budget for next year’s federal spending.

The Pelosi-Reid “leadership” team have “gone off the grid” of congressional practice and not even pretended to care about spending targets and deficit projections. Humming “que sera sera, what ever will be will be,” they twirl toward summer vacation and the November elections beyond.

If  Mrs. Pelosi’s democrats will not do their job, they should all lose theirs come next January.  What say you?

Cathy Young versus the cows, from RCP:

It seems that, in [Amanda] Marcotte’s eyes, the real crime of the “independent feminists'” is helping preserve the idea that the presumption of innocence applies even in cases of rape and sexual assault.  If so, that is indeed a victory.  Depriving men of their civil rights is no victory for women — both as a matter of principle and because most women have men in their lives whom they would not want to see face a false charge of rape under Marcotte-style standards of justice.

Cows like Amanda claim to speak for all women, and get madder than heck when any female dares dissent.

Yes, I know, it’s been some time since I’ve cracked an editor open on this site.  It’s shameful, but you guys know the situation.  And anyway, and David is been doing a bang up job of keeping this site active and well read

The truth is, but a time I get home from my new job I’m too tired to do much beyond inning and going to bed.  Working fourteen hours a day will do that to one. That said, let’s look around and see what’s going on.

• LIBERAL BIGOTRY I note David Nesenoff  writing about Helen Thomas:
  

  I merely asked a question with a video camera to a columnist. She answered me with an opinion that was unacceptable not just to me but to former and current press secretaries, politicians, the president, her agent and a great many other people. Her freedom of speech was not stifled; on the contrary, it was respected.

  She didn’t say that the blockade was unjust, or that aid was not getting to Gaza, or that there was a massacre on the high seas, or that East Jerusalem is occupied, or that the settlements are immoral . . . and get out and go back to West Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Eilat. No. This was not the two-state solution. This was get the hell out and go back to the places of the final solution, Poland and Germany. The Jew has no connection with the land of Israel.

  And why? Because, as Thomas went on to explain to me, “I’m from Arab descent.” That’s it? That’s all you got? Do we all travel with only our parents’ stereotypes to guide us, never going beyond them to get to a peaceful destination?

  Glenn notes it as well and acts surprised….

  Funny, isn’t it, that the designated liberal icon turned out to be in the grip of ancient tribal bigotry?

  Of the answer of course, is “No, not really.” This is a point that many students of politics today fail to understand.  The supposedly Liberal solutions to many of the world’s problems and up being a mere implementations of bigotry.  How does one explain for example the war on poverty?  For all of the money that has been spent, poverty, particularly among the target subgroups named by LBJ back in the day, still is an issue.  The comments of Helen Thomas speak rather loudly on their own behalf.  While I daresay there are some who will argue that she’s gone senile , I think this falls down to the simple matter of her accurately reflecting her liberalism, at last. The clues, have been there for decades.The left, for its part, is ignoring these comments from Thomas, perhaps hoping not to be tarred by the comments of one who was carried their banner for so long.  I’d like to think they’re doing a little self examination, but I don’t think they’re that highly developed mentally speaking.

• BIOMASS: David has been posting rather frequently on the subject of alternative energy, particularly that resulting from biomass of some type or another.  He’s been pointing out, quite correctly, that it doesn’t work.  Now even the New York Times is reporting the doubts thereon. Personally, I’m thinking of starting a betting pool on how long it will be following the election in 2012 when our government which has been running headlong down the biomass route will finally figure out that it’s not going to catch fire?
• INCOMPETENCE OR MALICE? Mort Zuckerman the other day I wrote a rather blistering pace on the Obama administration, remarking on apparent incompetence.  The you can find it over to U.S. News and World Report. The fact is, I’m not convinced that incompetence is the problem here.  If Obama and company had occasionally gotten one correct, I would say it was probably incompetence, and would be lambasting them with the charge as Mort Zuckerman does. however, in looking at their record of performance, from the standpoint of a strong America, and an economy in recovery and growing, we find that the Obama administration has a record of 1000. In other words have read time a decision has been made by this administration it is gone precisely in the wrong direction.  It is not unreasonable given that, to raise the question is it incompetence, or is it instead malice… and intend to make America weaker, to kill off the private sector economy, and to reshape all of it in the socialist utopia that Obama sold us as hope and change. As a microcosm of this, let’s examine the handling of the oil spill.  If a leftist wanted to create an anti oil-drilling sentiment in this country how would one go about it?  How does this differ from what Obama has done?
• ETHERIDGE: I note Hawkins has an interview with Bob Etheridge’s Opponent, Renee Ellmers. Worth a look.

More is Dumbo Sane? From Linda Chavez, Washington Examiner:

The night he locked up the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama predicted that generations hence, people would look back on the historic day as “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” At the time, his words reeked of hubris.  Today, they look positively delusional.

President Obama can’t stop the oil leak in the Gulf, but he can and should be held accountable for the inept government response to cleaning it up and mitigating its worst effects on the shoreline. And you can bet that if George W. Bush were in the Oval Office, the media would be blaming the president for the worst environmental disaster in U.S.  history.

Arizona Senator Jon Kyl calls P:resident Obama a whore, from Cold Warrior, Red State.

Failing to perform your sworn duty, unless you receive compensation, sound like a whore to me.  What say you?

B. Hussein Obama loses his base, from Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit, video:

Imagine towel head talks about dignity.

t was nearly the end of the day, today , when I finally realized that I had not written anything in terms of a comment on the day.

Usually I tend to take the attitude that if I don’t have anything to say on a subject I won’t say anything at all.  Or perhaps, I will make a short comment and toss a link , but that’s all.  But there are occasions that seem to me to call for more comment than I’m capable of giving , and Fathers Day is one of them . But try as I might, today, I wasn’t getting it done.

Usually, when I can’t write something, it’s because my thoughts on the subject are well beyond crystallized, to the point where I consider it so obvious that no comment needs being made.  Other times, frankly, I simply don’t give a crap about a topic.  Events like Father’s Day come along and effortlessly blow all that out the window.  My lack of comment is not because I have nothing to say.  Indeed, the opposite is true; I have everything to say .  Yet, the words will not come into focus for me.  Perhaps, the reason for the difference here is that we are dealing more centrally on the issue of emotion, rather than on logic and reason…. The latter of which being by far the more simple to cast into words and discuss.

I think it this point, I’m just going to throw up my hands and repost something I wrote to address my thoughts on Father’s Day years ago.  I must tell you in all candor now, it’s one of the more personally difficult things I’ve ever written.  Perhaps some of you will see something of yourself in what I wrote, then :

-1-

I’ve always considered it something of a cruel, ironic joke, that he should have passed on, so close in the rolling year, to the day we’ve come to know as “Father’s day”… A hair longer than a week before it. There seems no particular significance to the relationships between the dates, but there’s no denying their closeness has always left me vaguely discomforted for reasons I’ve never fully worked out. Anyway;

I’ve come to understand quite a bit about my father in the last 15 years, or so. Oddly, most of my understanding came after he’d died a few years ago, and most of the revelations have been as a result of my having lived life. He’s never far from my thoughts, and so as life events unfold, I always have his guidance nearby to lean on, and his guideposts to measure by. And, as I go though this process, I’m leaning more about both who I am, and who he was.

And, oh boy has a lot ever happened since his death. Think about the changes in the last five years, in your own life. I suppose it could be fairly said that nothing has happened to me, though, that he hadn’t prepared me for. The funny part is, I didn’t know I was being prepared for it, at the time. I think he didn’t know what the future would bring, either. All he could do is impart the basic values, and hope I was able to apply them correctly. Apparently I have, for the most part.

What amazes me is how well I can hear his voice now that he’s passed on; in many ways, better than I ever could while he was alive. Those of you who have lost a parent will understand what I’m saying, here, I think. It is yet another cruel irony, I guess, that his voice seems to ring louder in my ears, in my head, now that he’s gone…. This is particularly true when value judgments come up. I suspect this is as it should be… Those being his most important lessons… But I still marvel at it all.

I also, within the last several years, find myself dimly aware that I’ve managed to pick up some of the traits he had, without trying. These are not things I’d picked up consciously… In fact, when I was seventeen, I think I might have made the choice to avoid these traits. Now at nearly three times that age, I have begun to regard adopting these things as the natural progression… That all is as it should be.

Dad was a product of his times. This is a crucial point to me of late, is the understanding of that one fact, because I still catch myself judging how I’m doing as a father, with my two boys, using his methods, and his… (what I will call for simplicity, though I mean nothing so flippant)… Style points…. As guideposts… And usually, in my estimation, coming up well short of that ideal in the judgment. It’s taken me quite a while… More time than most, I tend to think… To understand that those style points are nigh on useless given the difference between the times in which we live now, and the times then… That I have to look deeper than this. It’s something like allowing for inflation in an adjusted income figure over time, one adjusts the perception through for the times of each of us, there are more traits we share than we don’t.

I am reminded of this, today more than most days, as my two boys spend their day trying to make me feel special. I can see myself doing this at their age, and I marvel as history repeats itself. They tell me “Happy Father’s Day!” and mean it, and other than “thank you” (and a hug) I find myself unsure how to respond.

If you really want to know the truth, I’ve never been fully comfortable in the role of ‘father’, because I’m never sure I can fill the role I knew as father… Being, inside, the same scared- to- death twelve year old kid I was all those years ago. In thinking on this, I guess we, none of us, ever really grow up to the point where that small scared child is ever completely silent. We’d better hope not, anyway… That twelve year old kid is needed to keep us from falling into the Scrooge-like insanity, I think… as I wrote last Christmas. Still, we try to balance that twelve year old inside us with reality… A hellish task I don’t wish on anyone, but one we all face, I think.

An old Moody Blues tune comes into my mind, unbidden. It seems to speak to this situation rather clearly.

All my life, I
Never really knew me
’till today
Now, I know why;
I’m just another step
Along the way

…

I don’t know what I’m searching for
I never have opened the door,
Tomorrow might find me at last,
Turning my back on the past,
But, time will tell, of stars that fell,
A million years ago.
Memories can never take you back, home, sweet home.
You can never go home anymore.

That’s the reality that twelve year old inside us, doesn’t want to hear. But… And I don’t care if you’re a hundred and five years old; that twelve year old is still inside us, and still of a mindset that he’s waiting for his adult life to begin, and that mindset dims our vision to the reality that our adult life has ALREADY, long past begun. In many ways, I finally see this is a conflict we play out internally, all our lives. Implicit in that understanding, however, is the recognition that, for all that I held him to be when I was a child, Dad still had that twelve year old in HIM, too. Like the milestone of five years gone… Like the waking up in the morning, through the aches and pains and understanding that the grey-bearded guy in the bathroom mirror really IS me…it’s a startling discovery.

Its amazing, if you think on it for very long… All our childhood, we champ at the bit like race horses spoiling for a race to get started. Even at the very young ages, we yearn for adulthood…(“I’ll do it MYSELF, Daddy…”) When we finally do get to adulthood, we end up spending a lot of our young adult lives in this in-between stage, not fully understanding that the green flag has dropped, the race is on, and the turtle’s already got a 30 length lead, Mister Rabbit… And some of us never do make it beyond this stage at all, on ANY level.

It’s what Hayward of the Moodies was talking about in that same song I quoted before;

I lie awake for hours, I’m just waiting for the sign

When the journey we are making has begun,
Don’t deny the feeling that is stealing through your heart,
Every happy ending needs to have a start.

Perhaps I now have a working definition of a mid-life crisis; the feeling that I need to get going on things, because I’m running out of time.

Such are my thoughts this Father’s day.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad. This is me saying “I get it, now… at least part of it… better than I did. We were more alike than I knew.”, and it’s my Father’s day gift. More of you survives than either of us knew… and is with me every day.

And yet, I miss you.

Obama’s vision problem, Victor Davis Hanson, RCP:

Not being George W. Bush while apologizing for America’s purported sins is not a foreign policy

[…]

But what exactly does Barack Obama wish to accomplish abroad?

In interviews and speeches, Obama emphasizes his nontraditional background and his father’s Islamic heritage. Apparently, he hopes that by reminding the world that he is not George W. Bush, America will be better liked.

But without a strategic vision, “Bush did it” leads nowhere – given that most of the world’s problems predated and transcend Bush. Obama doesn’t seem to understand that wanting people to like America is only a means to an end, not a policy in itself – and an especially dubious means, given the character of many nations in the world today.

Road to Hell found, new paving material, via Doug Powers, posting from Michelle Malkin:

Most roads that are constructed are paid for with taxpayer dollars, but the fact that the first new road named after Barack Obama is being funded by his beloved “stimulus” is only appropriate.

If you’re in Orlando looking for this road, it’s just a mile west of the intersection of Hope and Change, and a half-mile east of the corner of Shovel and Ready. Why did local officials decide to name the stimulus road after the president? Because “A Blatant Attempt to Bankrupt America Boulevard” wouldn’t fit on the sign.

Eric has suggested that the paving material for the Road to Hell is good intentions.     With Obama, there are never any good intentions.

Road to Hell, path well traveled, by John Howting,Human Events:

The FBI released over 2,000 pages from their files on Monday concerning the late Sen. Edward Kennedy. The files further solidify Teddy’s image as a promiscuous, immoral, trembling blob of sexual excitement.

Most people will read about “sex-parties with John, Bobby, Marilyn Monroe, rat pack members” and think nothing of it. This seems about par for the course, doesn’t it?

The most surprising fact about the late senator is that he received the public Catholic funeral of a saint! Despite towing an ardently pro-abortion agenda for decades, despite advocating for so-called “gay marriage,” and despite using countless women as tools for instant gratification, he received a funeral fit for a saint. Did he really deserve this? Is this the sort of man that the American Catholic Church should venerate?

If there is a Hell, Senator Oldsmobile is in it.

New York State increases Indian subsidy, by Tom Precious, Buffalo News:

ALBANY — The state plans to raise cigarette taxes by $1.60 per pack and this summer start collecting taxes on tobacco sales by Indian retailers.

The tobacco measures — designed to bring the deficit-ridden state about $440 million — will be included in an emergency appropriation measure Gov. David A. Paterson is giving to the Legislature on Monday.

So much tobacco tax is Blind Man Patterson going to collect if  everybody just drives to the reservation got cigarettes?  Don’t spend it all in one place Dave.

Thanks to the Cincinnati Business Courierfor including me in the “Technology Roundtable” insert in the June 18th, 2010 issue of the Courier!

This is the second time they have asked me to participate, check it out for some great insights into the state of technology.

Is Dumbo Sane? From Byron York, Washington Examiner:

There was one particularly striking moment in President Obama’s widely panned Oval Office speech on the Gulf oil disaster. About midway through his talk, Obama acknowledged that he had approved new offshore drilling a few weeks before the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion on April 20. But Obama said he had done so only “under the assurance that it would be absolutely safe.”

Absolutely safe? Even before the Gulf spill, few defenders of offshore drilling would go that far. And when the president announced his drilling plan, on March 31, he said it was “not a decision that I’ve made lightly” and that he and his advisers had “looked at [it] closely for more than a year.” Surely he was told of the possible risks.

About the only absolute, is the absence of  absolutes.   That is absolute safety absolutely does not exist.    Yet for some strange reason, Barack Hussein Obama said that he did believe it did exist.  Now no sane and competent energy expert could believe in absolutely safe energy development.  So either Obama has incompetent advisers, and given that Obama hired both Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano,  that is a definite possibility, or Obama is hearing voices in his head.

So I call on Obama to either identify the hack who gave him a totally impossible assurance,  or submit to psychological evaluation.   Either Obama has a hack on his staff or a screw loose in his head.   Which one is it?

More, Dr. Charles Krauthammer,Investors Business Daily:

Obama is dreamer in chief: He wants to take us to this green future “even if we’re unsure exactly what that looks like. Even if we don’t yet precisely know how we’re going to get there.”

Here’s the offer: Tax carbon, spend trillions and put government in control of the energy economy — and he will take you he knows not where, by way of a road he knows not which.

That’s why Tuesday’s speech was received with such consternation. It was so untethered from reality.

Dreams are good.    However a dream that is not tethered to reality is simply a delusion.

More Obama  delusion, from Robert Stacy McCain, Other McCain, video:

Now this does call into question the claims that Barack Hussien Obama is a Muslim.   Given that in the Muslim world, homosexual behavior is a hanging offense.

Professor Jacobson bids farewell to the Times of London.  from Legal Insurrection:

The Times of London and the Sunday Times are among my favorite sources of news, and I have linked to them very frequently.

But now I must say good-bye.

Bye.

Dumbo turns United Stats into banana republic, from Steve McCann, American Thinker:

The Obama administration has just made certain that there will be minimal foreign or even domestic investment in the United States.   Their shakedown and blackmail of BP has major corporate investors looking elsewhere for expansion and exploration.   No company answerable to their shareholders or investors will risk capital in a country which has brutally abandoned the rule of law.

My company is headquartered in Switzerland and in recent conversations with business executives and clients overseas, they have told me that this and many of this governments actions has completely chilled their enthusiasm to invest in the United States.

Want to attract and inspire investment, build a reputation as country that respects and honors the Rule of Law.    Add economics, history and the Constitution as classes Obama never attended.

Enough about that Nobel Prize, Eugene Robinson, Washington Post:

Less than a minute into President Obama’s Oval Office address, my heart sank. For the umpteenth time since the Gulf of Mexico oil spill began, an anxious nation was informed that Energy Secretary Steven Chu has a Nobel Prize. Obama’s speech pretty much went down hill from there.

[…]

We can all applaud Chu’s accomplishment. But here’s the thing: Chu is a physicist, not an engineer or a biologist. His Nobel was awarded for the work he did in trapping individual atoms with lasers. He’s absurdly smart. But there’s nothing in his background to suggest he knows any more about capping an out-of-control deep-sea well, or containing a gargantuan oil spill, than, say, columnist Paul Krugman, who won the Nobel in economics. Or novelist Toni Morrison, who won the Nobel in literature.

With Chu’s Nobel, and  dollar twenty-five, you and get a cup of coffee.

Done that,  Fox News:

A man died after being stung more than 500 times by honeybees Wednesday as he cleared brush in Encinitas, California, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

The bees attacked after the 55-year-old’s backhoe struck their nest, which was on the ground at the man’s rural property.

I’ve cleared  brush, riled a few bees in my time, and been stung a bit.    Just not five hundred times.

Dumbo and the Czars, Michelle, “Stuck on Stupid:”

Here is the Obama Disaster Management Theory: In times of crisis, you can never have enough unelected, unvetted political appointees hanging around. Nearly two months after the BP oil spill, the White House will now name an oil-spill-restoration point person to oversee recovery efforts in the Gulf of Mexico. Too many czars have already spoiled this administration’s credibility. Might as well pile on another.

If  you can not, or will not lead, appoint yet another Czar.

Sarah Palin is no Maggie Thatcher, Claire Berlinski, Guardian (UK)

That said, if [Sarah] Palin hopes to style herself as the second coming she has a few things to learn. She might wish to study Thatcher’s disciplined command of arguments, facts and statistics, for instance. By the time Thatcher was elected, she’d enjoyed a 20-year parliamentary career. Her clearly expressed views – clearly expressed, I stress – about every crisis, problem and debate of concern to Britain were a matter of public record. Palin has neither said nor written a line so far that would allow anyone reasonably to conclude that her opinions about economic and foreign policy are as cogent and informed as Thatcher’s. No one (not me, anyway) can argue with her conservative instincts, but to compare her ability to express them with Thatcher’s would be ludicrous

Few mortals, including Sarah Palin,  can stack up to Maggie Thatcher.   Lucky for Mrs. Palin  sho would not be facing Mrs. Thatcher,  but either Barack Hussien Obama or Mrs B.J. Clinton, not exactly the two sharpest knives in the drawer.  Obama does not stack up well with Jimmie Carter.

Bobby Gibbs is dumber than a brick, from DRJ, Pattericos Pontifications:

“We need to take some bold steps, and Congress needs to work with this President to take bold steps to break once and for all our dependence, as you said, on foreign oil and on fossil fuels and make sure that the car that my son drives and the car that my grandchild drives isn’t powered by something that has to be imported from overseas or drilled at 5,000 feet below the ocean, but is powered by the sun and the wind and the rain.”

I can jsut see it.  Every car with rain basin on its roof to power the hydro generator.  Yeah that’s the trick Bobby.   DRJ has the video, if can abide that much of Gibbs idiocy.

Serial Murder Amy Bishop indited by Massachusetts. Better late than never.   Maybe if  Bishop has been prosecuted in1986, her Alabama murder spree would have been averted.    Details from Donovan Slack and Shelley Murphy Boston Globe:

CANTON — Amy Bishop has been charged with murder for the 1986 shotgun slaying of her 18-year-old brother in their Braintree home, Norfolk District Attorney William R. Keating said this afternoon.

[…]

The slaying of Seth Bishop was declared an accident by Norfolk County authorities at the time. But questions were raised about the investigation after Bishop, a college professor, was charged in February in a shooting rampage at the University of Alabama Huntsville. Three of Bishops’ colleagues were fatally shot and three wounded in that

Bishop should never again be allow to walk free.

None dare call it journalism.  Shublog, Ace of Spades, dissects the Washington Post:

News Judgment, Washington-Post style

Senator George Allen says “macaca” on camera? 131 articles, 13 on the front page.

Congressman Bob Etheridge commits battery on camera?  Three paragraphs on page C3.

Compare. Contrast.

Oh, by the way.  The Washington Post’s Ombudsman is Andrew Alexander.  Just sayin’.

On the other foot, I will call it journ-whore-ism.   And you?

Who will call it sanity? Barbara Boxer believes that so-called anthropogenic global warming to pose major security threat, from Fox News:

On the floor, she [Barbara Boxer] warned that climate change would have far-reaching consequences in the not-so-distant future.

“I’m going to put in the record … a host of quotes from our national security experts who tell us that carbon pollution leading to climate change will be over the next 20 years the leading cause of conflict, putting our troops in harm’s way,” Boxer said. “And that’s why we have so many returning veterans who want us to move forward and address this issue.”

Boxer is an all beef patty short of a quarter pounder.

Glenn Greenwald makes right call, and is calling for the arrest of Congressman Bob Etheridge.   I have slammed Greenwald enough. but here he is right, in priniple, from  Salon:

That’s a clear case of assault and battery (the unedited video from the first camera is here).  There is some speculation that the individuals questioning him have some connection to the right-wing organization of Andrew Breitbart.  I hope it goes without saying how irrelevant that is.   The only reason I think this is worth noting is this:  imagine what would have happened to those students if this situation had been reversed, and it was they who had physically assaulted Rep. Etheridge, rather than the other way around. How quickly would they have been arrested and prosecuted?  The application of our laws isn’t supposed to depend upon who is perpetrating the crime and who the victim is.  Obviously, there are few principles, if there are any, more discarded than that one in Washington, but it would be nice to see its being applied in this instance by having this Congressman, obviously inebriated with an extreme sense of entitlement, arrested and charged.

Should Etheridge’s victim come forward and press charges,  Etheridge should be charge for the criminal he is.   However, I would hope that Etheridge’s victim not come forward.  Right now, the Eric Holder’s Justice Department do not know who the victim is.    Should be step forward, the victims would likely be subject to a full scale Joe the Plumber style assault on his rights.   Stay silent  and stay safe.

What’s up in Knoxville:

• In my best  Groucho Marx,  excuse me ma’am while check your voting record.
• In the voice of  B.J. Clinton, wanna kiss my voting record?
• As Mae  West,  want to come up sometime and check my voting record?
• As Pee-Wee Herman:   Honestly officer, I was just showing em by voting record.
• Reference,  Knoxville News Sentinel

Online Reputation Management
http://www.nkycc-trc.com/ebooks/Business_Journal_June_2010/In_House_Digital_Publishing/index.html

This article was published in the June 2010 issue of the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce’s “Business Journal”.

If I do say so myself, it has some good advice to help you manage and protect your reputation online, which is increasingly important in today’s hyperconnected, always-on world! 

The article is on page 7, I’d love to hear your feedback!

Bye-bye Eric Holder? From the Sharp Tack, Clarice Feldman, American  Thinker:

Eric Holder has been a disastrous attorney general. “Classic 101 Boobery” was how one Democratic operative memorably called his decision, now on hold, to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court in lower Manhattan. Other blunders have piled up and the White House has been repeatedly embarrassed by his string of ill-considered decisions and gaffes. With the midterm elections approaching, it would not be surprising if Holder soon finds himself under the Obama bus, lying next to former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair.

Hello Jim Hoft, Eric color me green with envy.    the Gateway Pundit has been attacked by the Washington Post:

Seems President Obama on Sunday compared the BP oil spill to 9/11, then went golfing for four hours. At least that’s the sort of crack reporting that Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft offered his readers yesterday. Hoft’s dismissive, one-word take: “Leadership.” My reaction: So what?

Hat tip:  the famous Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit.

Thug congressman assaults citizen, from Mike  Flynn, Big Government:

Last week, Democrat Congressman Bob Etheridge (D-NC2) attended a fundraiser headlined by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He was asked by some students on the street whether he supported the “Obama Agenda.” He didn’t take it well.

video:

Hat tip video: Doug Power posting at Michelle Malkin.

Statement from Congressman Bob Etheridge(North Carolina – 2)

“I have seen the video posted on several blogs.  I deeply and profoundly regret my reaction and I apologize to all involved.  Throughout my many years of service to the people of North Carolina, I have always tried to treat people from all viewpoints with respect. No matter how intrusive and partisan our politics can become, this does not justify a poor response.  I have and I will always work to promote a civil public discourse.”

Statement from Renee Ellmers ( candidate North Caroline -2)

If a teacher or principal treated a student this way – it would raise serious questions and he would be suspended. This kind of behavior is equally unacceptable in a Congressman. Bob Etheridge needs to make a full, complete and candid public explanation for this behavior. His describing his behavior as “a poor response” is not adequate. Most important of all, Congressman Etheridge should apologize – in person – to the two students.

Hat tip:  John Hawkins, Right Wing News.

Commentary by Melissa Clouthier, Liberty Pundits:

Well, this is stupid. A Democrat Congressman assaults a random student for asking him questions on camera: par for the course. These guys are used to not being questioned and don’t take kindly to being questioned and you little people need to back off, thank you very much.

[…]

On the flip side of this, the students should identify themselves.  Why don’t they just say their names and the school they attend? I’m guessing they aren’t this guy’s constituents and don’t want to say so, but who knows.

I agree with the good doctor.