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Pickings has often used Roger Simon to kick off a theme for the day. Today he starts us off with the thought the whole Obama enterprise was based on lies. He is perhaps a little harsh, but Simon’s perceptions prepare the way for much of what follows from opinion makers from both center and right.
…I am speaking, alas again, of the Reverend Wright affair. I thought it was serious at the time. In retrospect, I think it was disastrous, probably fatal.
Barack Obama told us on several occasions then that he had not been aware of Wright’s extreme black nationalist views during the candidate’s twenty years in the reverend’s church. That made no sense, since Obama had dedicated his book to Wright, had his children baptized by him, etc. …
…And now the revelations of J. Christian Adams have shown that his Department of Justice has a racial bias not entirely dissimilar to those of Reverend Wright. Again the MSM is doing its best to ignore this, but the damage is still there and growing and Obama will not be able, this time, to make a speech in his defense. …
Rick Richman comments on the sudden change in Obama’s attitude about Israel.
…It is in fact all a bit whiplash-producing and somewhat reminiscent of the old saying about history in the Soviet Union — there the future was always known; it was the past that kept changing. In Obama’s new narrative, relations with Netanyahu are not only currently excellent but retroactively terrific as well.
Obama’s “unwavering commitments” are becoming the new “let me be clear.” They include his “unwavering” commitments to comprehensive immigration reform (which left Lindsey Graham unconvinced); to NASA (after he slashed its budget); to the gay community (in response to their growing impatience); and to Afghanistan (at least until next July). After canceling the U.S. commitment to build an anti-missile shield in Poland, Obama sent Joe Biden to tell the Poles: “Make no mistake about it: our commitment to Poland is unwavering.” This is the same message Biden delivered to Georgia, even as Russian troops continue their occupation while Obama’s reset proceeds apace. It is the rhetorical response of choice after Obama’s actions or inaction call into question one of his commitments.
After a year of sending signals to the international community that the U.S. commitment to Israel was wavering, it is good that it is unwavering again. But after November 2, whiplash may strike again. It would not be the first time.
To demonstrate the president’s troubles are sinking into the public’s consciousness, we have an item from AOL News analogizing those problems to the dud that is the new iPhone.
Isn’t it disappointing when a much-hyped arrival lands with a bit of a thud? We were told that this one would be different! Different and better! This one would change the world — make things easier, faster, cooler.
But that didn’t quite turn out to be the case, did it? It turns out that there are major reception problems. Folks are upset that when they needed most to be heard … there was silence on the other end.
Yes, yes, this ham-fisted analogy is supposed to make a brilliant connection between President Barack Obama and the iPhone 4. …
In the WaPo, Dan Balz and Jon Cohen review their in-house polls.
Public confidence in President Obama has hit a new low, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. Four months before midterm elections that will define the second half of his term, nearly six in 10 voters say they lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country, and a clear majority once again disapproves of how he is dealing with the economy. …
… Public opinion is split down the middle on the question of whether the government should spend more money to stimulate the economy in a way that leads to job creation. Among those who support such new spending, 18 percent change their minds when asked what they think if such outlays could sharply increase the budget deficit. In that scenario, 57 percent opposed another round of spending. …
Nile Gardiner in the Telegraph,UK comments on the WaPo/ABC poll too.
The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll is a major blow to the White House just four months before crucial mid-terms in November. According to the poll, “nearly six in ten voters say they lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country”, and two thirds “say they are disillusioned with or angry about the way the federal government is working.” A staggering 58 per cent of Americans say they do not have confidence in the president’s decision-making, with just 42 per cent saying they do. …
Things are getting so bad for the Dems, they’re fighting among themselves. Jennifer Rubin has the wonderful details.
… There are two noteworthy aspects to all this. First, as Pete and I observed yesterday, its a sign of the abject panic that has gripped Democrats. A party does not behave this way when things are going well. This is the first round of the blame game, which will officially start after the November election returns are in.
And more important, all the participants in this free-for-all are dancing around the real issue. The problem is not the number of campaign fundraisers Obama has held for Democrats. Nor is it favoritism for one house of Congress over another. It’s not even the lack of common courtesy shown by the White House, which seems to be an equal-opportunity insulter (Bibi, Democrats, the public, Republicans, the press, etc.). No, the unspoken but very obvious source of the angst is that the Obama agenda has driven the party into a ditch. …
Peter Wehner comments on the bogus reason for Berwick’s recess appointment.
…Like so much of what the Obama administration says, this charge is flat out false. It is not the GOP that is playing games but rather the White House. As ABC’s Jake Tapper reported last week:
“Republicans were not delaying or stalling Berwick’s nomination. Indeed, they were eager for his hearing, hoping to assail Berwick’s past statements about health-care rationing and his praise for the British health care system. … speaking not for attribution, Democratic officials say that neither Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., nor Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, were eager for an ugly confirmation fight four months before the midterm elections.”
… It’s obvious what’s going on here. The Obama administration is afraid to engage in another debate about ObamaCare, having been trounced in the past. The president’s team fears that Dr. Berwick’s comments are both too controversial and too revealing. So Obama decided to skip the nomination hearing. The administration, unable to defend its actions, offers up — in the person of Robert Gibbs — a testy and transparently silly explanation of its position. What Gibbs cannot answer is this: If Dr. Berwick is so qualified, why not have the hearing and, if Republicans in fact attempt to block his nomination, recess appoint him in August? Why not allow Dr. Berwick to explain, in a public setting, what his true views are? …
Mort Zuckerman gives his opinion on the national mood.
…Republicans are benefiting not because they have a credible or popular program—they don’t—but because they are not Democrats. In a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, nearly two thirds of those who favor Republican control of Congress say they are motivated primarily by opposition to Obama and Democratic policy. Disapproval of Congress is so widespread, a recent Gallup poll suggests, that by a margin of almost two to one, Americans would rather vote for a candidate with no experience than for an incumbent. Throw the bums out is the mood. How could this have happened so quickly?
…Many people who joined the middle class, especially those who joined in the last few years, have now fallen back. It’s not over yet. Millions cannot make minimum payments on their credit cards, or are in default or foreclosure on their mortgages, or are on food stamps. Well over 100,000 people file for bankruptcy every month. Some 3 million homeowners are estimated to face foreclosure this year, on top of 2.8 million last year. Millions of homes are located next to or near a foreclosed home, and it is the latter that may determine the price of all the homes on the street. There have been dramatically sharp declines in home equity, representing cumulative losses in the trillions of dollars in what has long been the largest asset on the average American family’s balance sheet. Most of those who lost their homes are hard-working, middle-class Americans who had lost their jobs. Now many have to use credit cards to pay for essentials and make ends meet, and they are running out of credit. Another $5 trillion has been lost from pensions and savings. …
…Little wonder people have come alive to the issue of excess spending with entitlements out of control as far as the eye can see. The hope was that Obama would focus on the economy and jobs. That was the number one issue for the public—not healthcare. Yet the president spent almost a year on a healthcare bill. …
Ed Morrissey spotted the new liberal rag on our country – we’re ungovernable.
That’s the entire mindset of liberalism — that the masses can’t make their own decisions and need a cadre of elites to do it for them. That explains ObamaCare and every other social engineering project that we’ve seen since FDR, one of the people that Press claims couldn’t possibly govern the nation today if given the chance.
Expect to see more of the “ungovernable” argument as Obama continues to flop. We’ll hear it as an excuse for ever-increasing executive authority; we’ve already seen public paeans to authoritarian regimes by liberals like Thomas Friedman and Woody Allen, and we’ll likely see a lot more if the Republicans take control of the House in the fall.
The NRO staff posted Charles Krauthammer’s remarks on the current government’s negative effect on the economy.
…It’s also no answer to say that big business is cynical and unprincipled. That’s not news. But what is news is an administration that is adding not just costs but uncertainty.
There are three major areas a corporation, small or large, has to worry about: health-care costs, energy costs, and the cost of money. In each of these, the administration either has or is planning regulations worth thousands of pages which are going to raise costs, as we know, but also are going to interact in ways that nobody understands and that are going to create uncertainty.
If you‘re trying to figure out who you‘re going to hire and how many, and you have no idea if you’re going to be able to afford the extra health-care costs, you‘re not going to hire. …
…So in every area, there‘s going to be an increase in uncertainty. You know there’s going to be an increase in regulation. And when you don’t know what’s going to happen, you don’t invest. [That's why] we are having a capital strike.
John Stossel says we’re becoming a nation of a million laws. First, they came for the kindergartners…
…How about this one? Four kindergartners — yes, 5-year-old boys — played cops and robbers at Wilson Elementary in New Jersey. One yelled: “Boom! I have a bazooka, and I want to shoot you.” He did not, of course, have a bazooka. Nevertheless, all four boys were suspended from school for three days for “making threats,” a violation of their school district’s zero-tolerance policy. School Principal Georgia Baumann said, “We cannot take any of these statements in a light manner.” District Superintendent William Bauer said: “This is a no-tolerance policy. We’re very firm on weapons and threats.”
…Palo Alto, Calif., ordered Kay Leibrand, a grandmother, to lower her carefully trimmed hedges. Leibrand argued that no one’s vision was obstructed and asked the code officer to take a look. He refused. Then the city dispatched two police officers. They arrested her, loaded her into a patrol car in front of her neighbors and hauled her down to the station. …
…Congress creates, on average, one new crime every week. Federal agencies create thousands more — so many, in fact that the Congressional Research Service itself said that merely counting them would be impossible. …
Investor’s Business Daily editors look at the continued damage the Obama administration inflicts on the Gulf states.
What does it say about America’s investment climate when the Republic of Congo now attract oil rigs that once drilled the Gulf of Mexico? That’s the effect of the Obama administration’s nonstop bid to halt production here. …
…On May 27, in the wake of the BP oil spill that began three weeks earlier, the Department of the Interior issued a blanket ban on all drilling deeper than 500 feet. When a federal judge threw that out as unjustified, the administration came right back with a new diktat that amounts to the exact same ban.
For rig companies, such pigheadedness gave the game away: The Obama administration is determined to halt offshore drilling by any means necessary. And for energy companies, the only rational response is to pull out.