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The country elected somebody who had done nothing to be our president. How ironic he’s in trouble for something he did nothing to cause. Just how serious is the spill? Popular Mechanics lists the largest oil spills in history. No, the Exxon Valdez which spilled 10.8 million gallons did not make the list. The BP spill doesn’t make the list either. PM also informs us about the long-term damages caused by these spills. In the short-term, when calculating the costs to the Gulf Coast, the spill is devastating. It is entirely possible the livelihoods of millions of people will be wiped out for a couple of years. Long-term though, mother earth is a tough old broad.
In discussing the oil spill, David Broder compares the leadership skills of Obama and Carter.
…Obama keeps popping up in new settings, sounding as if he is in command, and he has refused to be confined to the White House as Carter was by the hostage crisis. His good-guy Coast Guard retired admiral has not melted under the pressure, and the BP execs we’ve seen on TV refuse to play cartoon capitalists, instead conveying the sense that they grieve over the accident.
As a result, this saga, painful as it is, has not yet become the simple demonstration of monumental futility and incompetence that the hostage crisis became for Carter, who let his personal frustration become the nation’s humiliation. When he finally mounted a rescue effort, and the helicopters crashed into each other in the desert before reaching the hostages, it was the final proof that he was cursed in anything he tried to do.
…Nothing is going to help Obama unless and until the engineers come up with a method for shutting down this gusher of pollution. He clearly couldn’t prevent it, and he was slow in signaling its severity. But he owns it now, and until it is over, the man who aspired to be the next John Kennedy or maybe Franklin Roosevelt will have to hope he doesn’t end up as Jimmy Carter.
John Fund has an interesting post on the bigger picture surrounding an Obama speech.
They’re calling it President Obama’s “malaise” speech, a reference to the infamous 1979 address in which President Jimmy Carter gave a downbeat assessment of America’s future. Yesterday, President Obama lamented that for many citizens today, there was a “feeling of not being in control of your own economic future, the sense that the American dream might slowly be slipping away.”
Mr. Obama’s speech at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University drew a sharp rebuke from Alan Meltzer, a leading economist at the school. He issued a statement saying it was the president’s tax and spending policies that were putting the country in peril. Mr. Obama’s “rhetoric was divorced from current reality,” he wrote. …
What was most visibly striking about Mr. Obama’s speech was who wasn’t there for it. … Lame-duck Senator Arlen Specter was there, but no other members of Congress attended — all pleaded other engagements. Joe Sestak, the congressman who defeated Mr. Specter in the Democratic primary last month, stayed in Philadelphia. For a state that Mr. Obama carried with 55% of the vote just a year and a half ago, the absence of prominent Pennsylvania Democrats clearly marked the decline of the president’s political fortunes. …
Charles Krauthammer writes an excellent analysis of Israel’s foreign policy and the abject stupidity of the UN’s responses.
…But as Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes, the blockade is not just perfectly rational, it is perfectly legal. Gaza under Hamas is a self-declared enemy of Israel — a declaration backed up by more than 4,000 rockets fired at Israeli civilian territory. Yet having pledged itself to unceasing belligerency, Hamas claims victimhood when Israel imposes a blockade to prevent Hamas from arming itself with still more rockets.
In World War II, with full international legality, the United States blockaded Germany and Japan. And during the October 1962 missile crisis, we blockaded (“quarantined”) Cuba. Arms-bearing Russian ships headed to Cuba turned back because the Soviets knew that the U.S. Navy would either board them or sink them. Yet Israel is accused of international criminality for doing precisely what John Kennedy did: impose a naval blockade to prevent a hostile state from acquiring lethal weaponry. …
…Land for peace. Remember? Well, during the past decade, Israel gave the land — evacuating South Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005. What did it get? An intensification of belligerency, heavy militarization of the enemy side, multiple kidnappings, cross-border attacks and, from Gaza, years of unrelenting rocket attack. …
In Forbes, Reihan Salam looks at historical tensions behind the flotilla propaganda.
…The fact that Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH), the Turkish aid organization behind the flotilla, has explicitly aligned itself with Hamas and has ties to global jihad networks was hardly encouraging, not least because Hamas has been receiving weapons transported by sea. Hamas recognizes that Turkish public opinion is crucial to its efforts to undermine Israel’s international legitimacy. After a long and fruitful period of close collaboration between the Israeli and Turkish militaries, Turkey’s AK Party government, led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has bolstered his political standing at home by loudly condemning Israel in international forums, and now his government is demanding that the U.S.condemn Israel. What appears to be a simple humanitarian mission was in fact part of a carefully orchestrated campaign designed to divide the NATO alliance and strengthen Hamas’ grip on Gaza. But no evidence will persuade the Turkish public that Israel had every right to enforce its blockade. The country’s political elites have every reason to direct the disaffection and anger of Turks away from themselves and towards Israel, a tactic also embraced by rulers throughout the region. …
Jennifer Rubin comments on continued foreign policy bungling.
Unmitigated chutzpah is the only way to characterize this, which comes via David Ignatius:
The Obama team recognizes that Israel will act in its interests, but it wants Jerusalem to consider U.S. interests, as well. The administration has communicated at a senior level its fear that the Israelis sometimes “care about their equities, but not about ours.”
Has Israel “condemned” the U.S.? Has Israel sought to reorient itself away from the U.S.? Demanded unilateral concessions by the U.S.? Snuggled up to foes of the U.S.? Or snubbed its president repeatedly?
The arrogance is stunning, even for the Obama crowd. …
Jennifer Rubin highlights the difference between the current administration stance on the flotilla propaganda and Marco Rubio’s response.
Contrast Obama’s testiness with Israel over the Jewish state’s temerity to defend itself with the sentiments of Marco Rubio, who writes, “Of course, we should stand with Israel.” It is worth reading Rubio’s comments in full, but this is particularly noteworthy:
As many in the international community use this flotilla incident to predictably rally against Israel, it is important to stand firmly behind our ally. In no way can the U.S. allow a path to be cleared that would enable the United Nations or any international body to discredit and diminish our democratic friend and partner. If Israel’s right to self-defense is undermined by misguided efforts to lift its legal and necessary blockade of Gaza, which serves to stop Hamas from arming itself with deadly weapons, there will be lasting consequences not only for Israel, but also for the U.S. and the entire world.
Make no mistake: while we await all the facts to emerge about this incident, it is clear the sponsors and participants of the Free Gaza Movement’s Flotilla have been thoroughly documented in their support of violent extremism. A far cry from being “humanitarian relief workers,” the activists on board the Mavi Marmara had a cache of bulletproof vests, night vision goggles and gas masks. This was no humanitarian mission.
No equivocation, no hand-wringing, no second-guessing. The un-Obama approach to our ally Israel.
The Obama administration has set the bar so low that we are delighted when it at least withholds judgment. But that is the wrong standard. …
Written just before the flotilla clash, Claudia Rosett gives us background on the Islamist terrorists that control Gaza, and the hypocrisy of the United Nations.
…Recall that in 2002, trying to stop the violence of Yasser Arafat’s second intifada, former President George W. Bush proposed a “roadmap” for peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. In the multilateral haggling that followed, Israel in pursuit of that peace withdrew in 2005 from Gaza–a move that required Israeli authorities to forcibly drag some Jewish residents from their homes. But peace did not follow. In the ensuing Gaza elections in January 2006, Palestinian voters gave a large majority to Hamas. Five months later an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, was kidnapped into Gaza. Today, almost four years later, he has still not been released.
In 2007 Hamas in a bloody coup ousted the remaining parliamentarians of the rival Fatah party and after a spree of murdering fellow Palestinians took complete control of Gaza. During 2008, according to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, terrorists in Hamas-run Gaza fired 1,750 rockets and 1,528 mortar bombs into southern Israel. This was a gross and deliberate provocation which the United Nations and its constituent members of the so-called international community did nothing effective to stop. In late December 2008 Israel finally launched Operation Cast Lead, sending troops into Gaza for just over three weeks to try to shut down the attacks.
Hamas has not renounced its aim of destroying Israel. On the contrary, Hamas has been receiving military training and smuggled weapons from Iran, where the nuclear-wannabe rulers have openly expressed interest in wiping Israel off the map. In February 2009 Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, who operates out of Damascus, openly praised Iran for helping Hamas fight Israel. …
In the Corner, Daniel Foster explains how the government statistics show increased employment because the government counted short-term jobs with the Census in their “official” numbers.
New jobs numbers released this morning show the economy added 431,000 jobs in may as the unemployment rate fell to from 9.9 to 9.7 percent. But as with all employment reports, the government arithmetic shouldn’t fool you — these are disappointing numbers.
All but 20,000 of the 431,000 jobs added were temporary hires for the U.S. Census, and the dip in unemployment rate is the result of the continued exodus of Americans from the ranks of the job-seeking to the merely jobless — 322,000 in May. By contrast, employment decreased by 35,000 to 139.4 million…
David Harsanyi offers some additional sarcasm on the jobs-for-dropouts affair.
…But let’s pose broader questions regarding the Andrew Romanoff and Ron Sestak affairs: Why is it illegal to offer a position for a favor in the first place? What’s the big deal? Happens all the time. After all, it’s not as if our vast government bureaucracies employ a strict merit-driven hiring process.
If they did, would Ken Salazar be deemed the most capable person in the nation to lead the Department of the Interior? Solar-powered platitudes, empty threats and a cowboy hat can get you so far. What could possibly be the reason for a union-lackey like Hilda Solis running the Department of Labor? Labor in this case means actual jobs, right?
And, sadly, I have more business managing the Transportation Department than Ray LaHood, who believes cars are immoral, planes are unsafe and bicycles hold the key to solving the nation’s congestion. …
Scott Adams In Dilbert’s blog has a funny piece on the value of execution over ideas.
…Evaluating whether an idea is good enough for a movie is a bit like an automobile expert saying a certain brand of car doesn’t taste good. It’s absurd. …
…For example, here’s the world’s worst idea for a movie: Titanic. It did okay at the box office.
…The self-appointed movie critics went on to point out that Office Space was already a movie, so there was no room left in the universe for a Dilbert movie. That’s a bit like saying there’s no point in creating a romantic comedy because someone already did that one. …
… How about a Broadway musical about a bunch of frickin’ cats? Done!
You’d be hard pressed to come up with an idea so bad that it couldn’t succeed with the right execution. And it would be even harder to imagine a great idea that couldn’t fail if the execution were left to morons.
Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything.
Don’t miss the cartoons today. They’re awesome.