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We still have to bring items on the fools running our governments. John Fund writes on the administration’s chaos and says Washington folks are beginning to believe a lot of the disaster comes from Valerie and Michelle.  

Are significant chunks of the mainstream media in despair over Barack Obama? This past week, Obama used 60 Minutes to attempt to shift blame for the failure to anticipate the rise of ISIS, endured a cover-up of White House security disasters by the Secret Service, and saw a government-agency report that he had skipped nearly 60 percent of his intelligence briefings. 

The reaction from some longtime Obama defenders was swift and harsh. “President Obama this week committed professional suicide,” wrote former CNN host Piers Morgan, now an editor-at-large for Britain’s Daily Mail.

He called Obama’s throwing of the intelligence community under the bus a “shameless, reprehensible display of buck-passing” that will result in some analysts’ exacting “cold-blooded revenge on Obama by drip-feeding negative stories about him until he’s gone.” As for the Secret Service fiasco, Morgan said it was “no wonder the Secret Service gets complacent when The Boss exudes complacency from every pore.”

Chris Matthews of MSNBC, the former White House speechwriter who once rapturously recounted that he “felt this thrill going up my leg” as Obama spoke, didn’t hold back on Wednesday’s Hardball. “Let’s get tough here,” Matthews began, as he lambasted Obama for being “intellectually lazy” and “listening to the same voices all the time.” He even named names, saying that Obama had become “atrophied into that little world of people like Valerie Jarrett and Mrs. Obama.” …

Law prof David Bernstein writes in Commentary on the administration’s constitutional violations.

During his first presidential run, Barack Obama repeatedly promised to roll back the imperial presidency that had grown inexorably over the past half century. “The biggest problems that we’re facing right now,” he explained, “have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m president of the United States of America.”

Then he was elected. Since 2009, Obama has claimed unprecedented power for himself while advancing a novel argument about his duty as president to ignore the separation of powers and act unilaterally to overcome congressional gridlock. “We can’t wait,” was his refrain—though he has, of course, been unable to cite a “we can’t wait” clause in the Constitution in defense of his actions. …

 

… The rule of law has suffered in many other ways under Obama, with his administration’s repeatedly having shown contempt for the norms of our legal and political process, including an extraordinary refusal to cooperate with congressional committees charged with overseeing various parts of the executive branch. The perpetrators of the IRS scandal, one of the most egregious misuses of government authority in recent times, have escaped not only punishment but also, for the most part, investigation by the Justice Department. Various government bodies have advanced radical theories of government authority and have been reversed 9–0 in an embarrassing series of Supreme Court defeats. …

 

… Ideology aside, another reason that President Obama has been especially aggressive in pursuing initiatives of dubious legality or even near-certain illegality is that he’s been able to get away with it. Previous presidents who engaged in wrongdoing have had members of their own political party who were willing to stand up and say so. Many Republicans turned on Richard Nixon as the Watergate scandal unfolded. More recently, Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman strongly criticized Bill Clinton for carrying on an affair in the White House and then lying under oath about it. …

 

… The traditional media establishment—newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, National Public Radio, the network news operations—could have served as a check on the Obama administration’s abuses. But they have largely given up their role as an independent watchdog, having been utterly tamed by the felt need to support the political agenda of coastal liberalism. …

 

… One also can’t discount arrogance as a factor in the Obama administration’s lawlessness. Of course, all presidents are arrogant; you have to be to think that you should lead the wealthiest and most powerful country the world has ever seen. Obama certainly is not exempt from this generalization. In 2006, he told a staffer: “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna’ think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

But the arrogance I’m talking about goes well beyond Obama’s personality. It pervades the administration. As a leading (but anonymous) left-wing activist told the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein: “These guys are stunningly arrogant. They really believe that their s—doesn’t smell, that they have all the answers. And that arrogance continues to hurt them.”

The source of this arrogance lies, at least in part, in the attitudes of post-1970s graduates of elite universities. The Obama generation of liberals, including many of the president’s top aides and appointees, believe in meritocracy, but a meritocracy based not solely on demonstrated achievement, but on where one went to college and graduate school as well.

The cult of the academic overachiever turned up early in the Obama administration. In early 2009, the New York Times profiled Brian Deese, a 31-year-old Obama appointee. As the Times put it, Deese found himself in his first government job in charge of “dismantling General Motors and rewriting the rules of American capitalism.” As the article pointed out, Deese had no prior experience with the auto industry, was “neither a formally trained economist nor a business school graduate,” and had “never spent much time flipping through the endless studies about the future of the American and Japanese auto industries.”

So what made him qualified for such an important position? Well, he was a not-quite-graduate of the elite YaleLawSchool and had impressed a lot of people in the Obama campaign and Democratic policy circles with his quick mind. While Deese is surely very bright, it’s hard even in retrospect to understand why anyone would think that he was competent to make life-or-death decisions for the auto industry—unless you understand that in today’s elite East Coast culture, just being very smart and impressing the right people with your intellect and credentials means you are unofficially qualified to do just about anything. But only, of course, if you share the prevailing set of political and cultural values. …

 

… President Obama and many of his advisers are part of a liberal intellectual class whose members typically consider respect for the Constitution and the rule of law as anachronisms at best and racist, patriarchal, and reactionary at worst. Obama came into office with a huge congressional majority, and what he and his supporters thought was a mandate to fundamentally move American society to the progressive left. Conservatives, however, have thwarted this ambition, especially after they took over the House in 2010. These same conservatives, meanwhile, are held in contempt by elite progressives. Faced with the prospect of compromising with conservatives, or “triangulating” as Bill Clinton did, Obama instead chose to unilaterally pursue as many of his policy goals as possible—and the Constitution and rule of law be damned.

Jonathan Tobin posts on a little mistake by Biden and a six year long mistake by the president.

For most casual observers, it will be filed under the category of “Biden being Biden.” But the story of the apology to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan tells us more about the Obama administration’s dysfunctional foreign policy than it does about the vice president’s predilection for saying embarrassing things. But rather than apologizing to Erdoğan for telling the truth about the Turks facilitating the rise of ISIS by letting Islamists enter Syria, it is Biden’s boss, President Obama, who should admit that it was his foolish decisions that did more to create the disaster in Iraq and Syria that allowed the rise of Islamist terrorists. …

… while the president blamed U.S. intelligence for failing to anticipate ISIS gaining strength—something that is a blatant lie since it warned Obama of the dangers of the course he was following—it is more than obvious that the administration chose to let the Turks run amok because of its reluctance to face up to the need for America to lead in the region. By ignoring the advice of his more sober senior advisers like Leon Panetta and Robert Gates, and pulling out of Iraq and dithering on Syria while he was cozying up to Erdoğan, it was Obama who created the power vacuum that gave ISIS its opportunity. …

The president says the elections are all about his policies so Scott Brown puts that in an ad. Jennifer Rubin with the post.

… “I am not on the ballot this fall. Michelle’s pretty happy about that. But make no mistake: these policies are on the ballot. Every single one of them. This isn’t a political speech, and I’m not going to tell you who to vote for — even though I suppose it is kind of implied.”

No doubt they are high-fiving one another in GOP Senate campaign offices around the country. There is more than a month to go, and the GOP by no means has the Senate majority locked up. But thanks to Obama, the party’s job just got a whole lot easier.

Another reporter is man-handled by the Dems. Story from Power Line. 

Meg Kissinger, a veteran reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, was assigned to cover Michelle Obama’s speech in Milwaukee on behalf of Mary Burke, the Democratic candidate for governor of Wisconsin. As she has done for the past 35 years, Kissinger tried to talk to people in the crowd.

She was not allowed to do so. Kissinger stated on her Facebook page:

“Assigned to cover Michelle Obama’s speech today and was told by a Mary Burke aide and one for the White House that I could not speak to the people in the crowd.

To say that I was creeped out is an understatement. …”

Andrew Malcolm with late night humor.

Fallon: More bad news for the president. Chicago reverses its plan to name a high school after President Obama, because it received multiple complaints from people in the community. I guess parents were afraid their kids would spend eight years at the school and STILL not get anything done.

SNL: New grandmother Hillary Clinton said she couldn’t be any happier about daughter Chelsea’s new baby unless the baby was a Latina in a swing state.

Fallon: Obama says he will “degrade and ultimately destroy” the terror group ISIS. Asked how, he said, “I’m gonna build their website.”

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So the students at a nothingburger college in Vermont invite a convicted cop-killer to be their graduation speaker. Pickerhead always said free speech makes it easy to spot the idiots. David Harsanyi posts on the controversy.

The perverted habit of glorifying people like Mumia Abu-Jamal has been part of tedious campus “radicalism” for the past 45 years. Still, I can’t get too worked up over the fact that a bunch of twits at GoddardCollege invited a murderer to their school. For one, these sorts of incidents help me compile a list of schools for my kids to avoid.

What is interesting, though, is how academics and administrators continue to rationalize moronic behavior:

“As a reflection of Goddard’s individualized and transformational educational model,” Goddard College Interim President Bob Kenny explained, “…choosing Mumia as their commencement speaker, to me, shows how this newest group of Goddard graduates expresses their freedom to engage and think radically and critically in a world that often sets up barriers to do just that.”

Oh, where to begin? …

American Interest on the transformative power of shale.

Eleven years ago, energy majors Qatar Petroleum, Exxon Mobil, and Conoco Phillips came together to construct a $2 billion liquified natural gas import facility in Texas. The enormous GoldenPass terminal was meant to regassify liquified gas being shipped overseas, but lately it hasn’t seen much action. Thanks to the shale boom, the United States is flush with natural gas—fracking has destroyed the need for imports. Now, in an attempt to salvage some of their investment, Exxon Mobil and Qatar Petroleum are investing an estimated $10 billion in converting the import facility into one suitable for gas exports. …

… You’d be hard-pressed to find a better example of the disruptive power of shale energy. …

The Chamber of Commerce says the shale boom makes the US the world’s top petroleum producer.

The International Energy Agency confirms what we’ve known for a while: The United States is the world’s top petroleum producer. The American Interest’s Walter Russell Mead quotes from a Financial Times story [subscription required]:

“US production of oil and related liquids such as ethane and propane was neck-and-neck with Saudi Arabia in June and again in August at about 11.5m barrels a day, according to the International Energy Agency, the watchdog backed by rich countries.

With US production continuing to boom, its output is set to exceed Saudi Arabia’s this month or next for the first time since 1991. [...]

Rising oil and gas production has caused the US trade deficit in energy to shrink, and prompted a wave of investment in petrochemicals and other related industries. [...] It is also having an impact on global security. Imports are expected to provide just 21 per cent of US liquid fuel consumption next year, down from 60 per cent in 2005. …”

While we’re having a boom, Europe is pretending to be green. American.com with the story. 

“Germany produces half of energy with solar.” That was the recent headline on a German website of news in English, and it would have duly impressed anybody whose understanding of energy matters extends to just such headlines. But the headline, totally wrong, was also a perfect example of why it is so important to deconstruct the reports about green Europe.

Analysis by the Fraunhofer ISE research institute showed that the recent peak of Germany’s solar energy usage lasted for only 1 hour, and that the record share (50.6 percent) was due not only to hot, sunny weather but that day being a public holiday with lower than normal demand — and, most fundamentally, to the fact that solar and wind have legal priority over fossil fuels and when available must be used to the maximum possible extent. But the key error of that headline’s claim is that it was not half of energy use (Energieverbrauch), it was half of electricity production (Stormerzeugung). And in Germany, as in any modern economy, electricity accounts for only a fraction of overall energy use, known as total primary energy supply, which consists of all fuels (be they fossil or biofuels) and all electricity produced by nuclear reactors, water and wind turbines, solar photovoltaics (PV), and geothermal steam.

So how green is Germany’s and Europe’s energy supply in reality? …

Nature tells us about new maps of the ocean floor provided by satellites.

As though someone had pulled a plug in the oceans and drained them away, a sea-floor map has exposed thousands of never-before-seen underwater mountains and ridges. The map — generated by the highest-resolution gravity model ever made for the oceans — will guide deep-sea research for years to come.

An international team of researchers led by David Sandwell, an oceanographer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, publishes the map in the 3 October issue of Science. The team created it using data mostly from two satellites: CryoSat-2, from the European Space Agency, and Jason-1, from NASA and the French space agency CNES.

Both satellites sought to chart the planet, but with different goals. The ongoing CryoSat-2 mission studies the polar ice caps, whereas Jason-1 studied changes in sea level before it was turned off last year. Both probes carried radar altimeters, instruments that measure the precise distance between the satellite and the surface of the land or ocean below. …

Nautilus tells us about the sound so loud it circled the earth four times.

On 27 August 1883, the Earth let out a noise louder than any it has made since.

It was 10:02 AM local time when the sound emerged from the island of Krakatoa, which sits between Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. It was heard 1,300 miles away in the Andaman and Nicobar islands (“extraordinary sounds were heard, as of guns firing”); 2,000 miles away in New Guinea and Western Australia (“a series of loud reports, resembling those of artillery in a north-westerly direction”); and even 3,000 miles away in the Indian Ocean island of Rodrigues, near Mauritius (“coming from the eastward, like the distant roar of heavy guns.”) In all, it was heard by people in over 50 different geographical locations, together spanning an area covering a thirteenth of the globe.

Think, for a moment, just how crazy this is. If you’re in Boston and someone tells you that they heard a sound coming from New York City, you’re probably going to give them a funny look. But Boston is a mere 200 miles from New York. What we’re talking about here is like being in Boston and clearly hearing a noise coming from Dublin, Ireland. Travelling at the speed of sound (766 miles or 1,233 kilometers per hour), it takes a noise about 4 hours to cover that distance. This is the most distant sound that has ever been heard in recorded history. …

Good news for couch potatoes. BioSpace says just a small amount of weight bearing exercise can improve memory.

… “Our study indicates that people don’t have to dedicate large amounts of time to give their brain a boost,” said Lisa Weinberg, the Georgia Tech graduate student who led the project .

Although the study used weight exercises, Weinberg notes that resistance activities such as squats or knee bends would likely produce the same results. In other words, exercises that don’t require the person to be in good enough shape to bike, run or participate in prolonged aerobic exercises. …

We close with a sweet story. In a WSJ interview, actress Rene Russo talks about growing up broke in blue collar Burbank.

I grew up in Burbank—but not the Burbank of valet parking and TV studios. In the late 1950s, there was a small apartment complex on Elmwood Avenue that rented mostly to families on welfare. I lived there from age 3 to 11 and again from 14 to 18 with my mother, Shirley, and my younger sister, Toni. It wasn’t pretty. …

… I dropped out of high school when I was in the 10th grade. My sister was in the eighth grade and dropped out, too. I took a job near our apartment at an eyeglass factory inspecting frames.

Then the oddest thing happened. In June 1972, I went with friends to see the Rolling Stones at the Los Angeles Forum. After the concert, as we crossed through the parking lot, a guy in a brown Mercedes stopped in the middle of the street and got out. He came up to me and asked if I had ever modeled. I could see he had a woman in the car and was well dressed, so I took the card he held out. He said, “Have your mother call me,” which put me at ease.

Me, a model? Crazy, I thought. When I got home, I told my mother. She called the guy—an agent named John Crosby—and we went to see him at his office on Sunset Blvd. …

… As soon as the modeling checks started coming in 1974, I began saving to get my mom out of Elmwood. Within a year, I was able to move her into a rental apartment in Burbank near StudioCity. Two years later in 1977, Toni and I decided to send my mom and two of her friends on vacation to Palm Springs. The day she returned, I picked her up and asked if she’d mind looking at a few open houses before I dropped her off at her apartment.

We passed a one-story ranch with an “open house” sign out front. Once inside, mom seemed puzzled. Looking around at the furnishings, she said, “Wow, that’s strange, I have a coffee table just like that one—and this lamp, too.” What she didn’t know is that Toni and I had saved enough to buy her the house and had moved in her stuff while she was away. In the backyard, all of her friends yelled, “Welcome home!” She was overjoyed—and still lives there today.

As for me, modeling turned into acting in 1987 when I auditioned for “Sable,” a TV series. Today, I live with my husband and our daughter in a one-story, three-bedroom contemporary house in the hills above Brentwood. As for John Crosby, he’s still my manager.

How about that? A complete edition of Pickings without items on the miscreants in our governments. We’ll get back to those creeps tomorrow.