Click on WORD or PDF for full content
Last week we devoted some space to the president’s failure to get the leadership of the Gulf Arabs to attend his summit. Another of his failures took place closer to home as the Dems in congress snubbed his trade authorization bill. Along with this defeat, he went on to display the famous presidential petulance those of us on the right have seen for the last six years. It was fun to see it turned on the Democrats. Jonah Goldberg tells the story well.
These are not good times for the Republic (and if you laughed or scratched your head at me calling America a republic, I rest my case). But they are amusing times, at least for those of us capable of extracting some measure of mirth and schadenfreude from the president’s predicament. With the sand running out on the Obama presidency, it’s finally dawning on the president’s friends and fans that he can be a real jerk.
Consider the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank. For the last six years, he’s spent much of his time rolling his eyes and sneering at Republicans. His subspecialty is heaping ridicule on conservative complaints about, well, everything and anything. If it bothers conservatives, it must be irrational, partisan, churchy, fake, hypocritical — or all of the above. Meanwhile, poor Barack Obama, while not always without fault in Milbank’s eyes, is the grown-up, the good guy trying to do good things amidst a mob of malcontents and ideologues.
That is, until this month. President Obama wants to get a trade deal passed. He needs Democrats to do it. But, Milbank laments, Obama’s blowing it.
“Let’s suppose you are trying to bring a friend around to your point of view,” Milbank writes. “Would you tell her she’s emotional, illogical, outdated, and not very smart? Would you complain that he’s being dishonest, fabricating falsehoods and denying reality with his knee-jerk response?”
“Such a method of a persuasion is likelier to get you a black eye than a convert,” Milbank notes. “Yet this is how President Obama treats his fellow Democrats on trade . . .”
Yes, well, true enough. But lost on Milbank is the fact that this is precisely how Obama treats everyone who disagrees with him. …
Bill McGurn has more on President Arrogant.
So this is what the president means by having a “conversation.”
At a GeorgetownUniversity conference last week, President Obama appeared on a panel billed as a “conversation” on poverty. It proved illuminating, though not in the way its sponsors intended.
Begin with the panel itself. A solitary conservative, the American Enterprise Institute’s Arthur Brooks, was pitted against two liberals, President Obama and Harvard social scientist Robert Putnam. The panel was moderated by the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne.
To put it another way, what we had here was a “conversation” stacked in favor of liberals, moderated by a liberal, and taking place before a liberal crowd at a liberal university.
As if to underscore the point, the president and the moderator squeezed off three boorish references to House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—all rooted in the idea that it would take a “miracle” to get GOP leaders to care about the poor. …
Mona Charen calls it his “third class temperament.”
Like cult members who awake to find their leader swigging gin and squirreling money into a Swiss bank account, liberals are rubbing their eyes in disbelief at President Obama’s behavior. The figure they worshipped so fervently and for so long is now revealed to be a “sexist” – at least according to National Organization for Women president Terry O’Neill.
Her view is seconded by Senator Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio). They are upset about the president’s derisive treatment of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), who committed a sin to which the president does not take kindly: She disagreed with him. For differing about the merits of the TPP trade deal, she got what everyone should already recognize as the Obama treatment — her views were caricatured and her motives were questioned. “The truth of the matter is that Elizabeth is, you know, a politician like everybody else.” Senator Brown thought the president’s use of Warren’s first name betokened sexism.
No, Senator Brown, that’s not sexism, that’s all-purpose disrespect. The president has been displaying the same condescension to world leaders, Senate majority leaders, House speakers, and everyone else since first taking office. It was always “John” and “Harry” and “Hillary” — never Speaker Boehner, Leader Reid, or Secretary Clinton. It was “Angela” and “David,” not Chancellor Merkel and Prime Minister Cameron. Can’t wait to see whether, when the Pope visits in September, the president refers to him as “Jorge.” There was one exception to this rule — Obama was at pains to refer to Iran’s Ali Khamenei, who has never been elected to anything, as “Supreme Leader.”
It’s hard to think of another figure whose self-esteem is so inversely proportional to his merit. …
… During the discussion, Mr. Obama disparaged John Boehner’s and Mitch McConnell’s interest in helping the poor. So it’s worth recalling that one of Obama’s first acts as president was to seek to defund the District of Columbia’s Opportunity Scholarship Program. When the Democrats controlled Congress, he succeeded. But someone who cared waited for a chance, and when Republicans gained control of the House and Congress was in a tense budget showdown with the White House, John Boehner personally saw to it that the program was revived.
So who is judging whom when it comes to the poor?
Enough of DC idiots. Here’s a story about California idiots? You know, the state that’s running out of water. The WSJ Weekend Interview is with a man who wanted to build a desalinization plant near San Diego. It took six years to get the permits.
… Poseidon does have a $1 billion desalination plant slated to open this fall in Carlsbad, north of San Diego. Upon completion it will be the largest in North America, capable of producing 54 million gallons of water each day. Construction began in 2013, but first Poseidon spent six years battling 14 environmental lawsuits.
For instance, the Surfrider Foundation charged that the plant’s open-ocean intakes might harm marine life, though a judge ruled that Poseidon had reasonably mitigated the threat. Mr. Riva says the intakes “entrain two to three fish eggs or larvae” for every thousand gallons of water sucked in. “Not to make value judgments about fish, but these aren’t from any protected species,” Mr. Riva says. “They’re anchovies and things like that.” He adds that environmentalists believe that “all fish life is precious, and you have to do everything to save it.”
Obtaining the dozen or so permits required to build the plant was vexing as well, since regulatory authority over water in California is spread among state, federal and local agencies—the Bureau of Reclamation, the State Water Resource Control Board and the California Coastal Commission, to name a few.
“Because there are multiple agencies,” says Mr. Riva, there are “multiple opportunities for intervenors to delay.” The CEO is careful in his choice of words to avoid giving offense. However, what he appears to mean is that environmental obstructionists waged war on numerous fronts. Not totally without success, either: To obtain final approval from the Coastal Commission, Poseidon had to agree to restore 66 acres of wetlands and buy renewable energy credits—green indulgences.
Urged on by the Surfriders, the Coastal Commission is now gumming up Poseidon’s plans to build a second plant, which has been in the planning stages for 15 years, south of Los Angeles in Huntington Beach. …
Back to Stephie. Turns out ABC has reason to be upset. They agreed to pay him $105 million for the next seven years. Emily Smith at NYPost Page Six has the story.
… Sources have said ABC News execs were blindsided by Stephanopoulos’ largesse, and one TV insider noted Monday that “ABC really has all their money on Stephanopoulos.”
“ABC was desperate to lock him down after Josh Elliott left,” the source said.
“But network execs didn’t announce the figure because they didn’t want George to get the kind of backlash that Matt Lauer got over his huge NBC contract,” which pays him $20 million a year to host the “Today” show.
“If [Stephanopoulos] stumbles, so does the network,” the source added.
When Stephanopoulos signed his contract extension in April 2014, an ABC spokesman said, “George is vital to the success of the news division and will continue to be a leader here at ABC News. We expect him to remain with us for many, many years.”
Republicans have already said that Stephanopoulos’ donations disqualified him from moderating a GOP primary debate, and a spokesman for one candidate, US Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), went even further on Monday. …
Howard Kurtz writes on the sinking reputation of the press.
By failing to disclose his donations to the Clinton Foundation, George Stephanopoulos has damaged his credibility and tarnished his network.
But you know something? He’s got plenty of company.
What an awful couple of years it’s been for the news business, even by our already-tattered standards.
While ABC’s chief anchor has landed himself in a heap of trouble, this comes at a time when NBC’s chief anchor, Brian Williams, is serving a six-month suspension for fabricating an Iraq war tale and possibly embellishing other reporting exploits. And it comes weeks after Rolling Stone had to retract its horrifyingly irresponsible tale of a gang rape at the University of Virginia.
When these episodes erupt, critics carp about how this or that organization has suffered a grievous blow. What’s often missed is that all of us who practice journalism suffer as well, that it reinforces public doubts about whether the business is riddled with bias and conflicts of interest. …