Mr. Obama, Lower Our Taxes!

Actually, the owner manager of a Wisconsin custard shop was asking Vice President (and court jester) Joe Biden to lower his taxes. Despite the VP calling him a "smartass" the manager allowed that Joe later told him he was "just kidding."

About what?

Video here.

Costner stymied by Feds in Gulf clean-up

Oscar winner and distant cousin, Kevin Costner, is doing more than Obama to clean up the Gulf. Unfortunately, the government is trying everything possible to slow him down

Flopping Aces has all the awful details.

Bam V. Stan. Did we learn anything? Saturday Steyn!

Take  a few minutes and read Mark Steyn's latest on BP, Obama, and the McChrystal saga:
 
The Unengaged President


McChrystal banned FoxNews and voted for Obama, so pardon me if I fail to shed a tear for another liberal burned by this president. As Steyn says:

"But what do McChrystal’s and BP’s defenestration tell us about the president of the United States? Barack Obama is a thin-skinned man and, according to Britain’s Daily Telegraph, White House aides indicated that what angered the president most about the Rolling Stone piece was 'a McChrystal aide saying that McChrystal had thought that Obama was not engaged when they first met last year.' If finding Obama “not engaged” is now a firing offense, who among us is safe?"

There's much more and better stuff at the link.

Secure the borders and perform our Constitutional duty? Not so much.

Some want us to think the Bam administration is lily pure like the driven snow and never practices politics. They are stupid.

This is the most political and ideological administration in modern history. They do nothing except that which gains them politically (or, at least that's the way they think). They thought the oil spill would not be so severe as to require government and presidential attention, but, it would be severe enough to curtail drilling and serve as impetus to revive cap and tax legislation. They were wrong. The people want leadership and they demand that it be competent leadership. Americans recognize incompetence, and they are seeing that now.

On immigration reform, the president told Senator John Kyl that "if we secure the border, then you all won’t have any reason to support ‘comprehensive immigration reform."

Hear Kyl tell it:



So, this administration, as Kyl points out, is more interested in winning a political battle than in their Constitutional duty to defend the United States.

That should tell you all you need to know about these incompetent cretins.

Bam trip to tout jobs costs some Ohioans a day of pay

Not only has Bam Bam put thousands of oil workers out of work with his moratorium on deep water drilling in the Gulf, his various visits to raise campaign money or tout all those jobs he's created or saved not only cost the taxpayers money, they put people out of work, too.  At least for a day.


H/T to Moonbattery

Obama: Shakedown Artist

When Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) apologized to BP for the Obama "shakedown" for $20B, some on the Left (sub blogger, Rob, among them) lambasted him.

Some, however, have rightly pointed out that this is a shakedown.  The only difference in this shakedown from the one's that Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton perform against Fortune 500 companies, is that this one is coming not from hypocritical race hustlers, but from the leader of the Free World, and, BP can expect the full force of the U.S. government to be behind it, despite the dubious (ok, complete lack of) Constitutionality of it.

I haven't posted on the oil spill, so, I'll let my thoughts out here.

Clearly, BP and those responsible for the Deepwater Horizon rig are culpable and will have to pay massive damages, and must get this thing capped and assist in the clean-up (and pay for it all).  This effort could bankrupt BP.  If it does, so be it.

But, let's look at what the U.S. government has done to contribute to the accident.

1. By preventing drilling in easily accessible spots on land - ANWR, the West where oil shale is accessible profitably, other areas - the government encouraged oil companies to seek oil in difficult to drill areas.
2. By preventing drilling in shallow waters off the U.S. coast - California, Florida, the East Coast, even Alaska - the government encouraged oil companies to seek oil in difficult to drill areas.
3. The MMS exempted oil companies (in 2008) from disclosing worst case scenarios.
4. We continue to subsidize energy industries that will do little to produce significant energy - solar, ethanol.

And, what has our government done since the spill:

1. Placed a moratorium on deep ocean drilling for six months.  I can see doing this for maybe three months.  But, we need this oil, and we need these people working.
2. Turned down offers from help from other countries, Obama has yet to give a Jones Act waiver, which would allow foreign vessels to assist in the clean-up in our waters.  Of course, our unions don't want this.
3. Has been very slow to allow LA, MS, AL to take steps on their own to protect their shores.  Famously refused LA the right to build temporary berms to protect their wetlands.
4. Spent time getting advice from "experts" on who's "ass to kick."
5. Shook down BP for $20B government-administered payback fund
6. Used the spill as an excuse to bring back "Cap" and "Tax" plan
7. Looked like idiots

New Blog Design

Blogger has finally offered some better out of the box templates for their blogs.  I hope you like the one I have chosen.  I have wanted to take advantage of all that empty space on the left side for a while, and now I can.

There are some useful links at the bottom, but it takes some scrolling to get to them.

Let me know if you hate it, or love it.

Goldberg on Obama becoming an object of ridicule...

With a h/t to the Patriot Post,

National Review editor Jonah Goldberg writes:

 

"[Barack] Obama is in danger of becoming a figure of ridicule, which is particularly ominous for a presidency that runs almost entirely on high-octane rhetoric. For instance, Obama recently told high school students in Kalamazoo, Mich., 'Don't make excuses. Take responsibility not just for your successes; take responsibility where you fall short as well.' As many immediately noted, this was odd advice from a man who would put the blame for the hitch in his golf swing on eight years of George W. Bush. In that same interview with Lauer, the president said he hadn't bothered talking to Tony Hayward, the CEO of BP, because he knew Hayward would 'say all the right things to me. I'm not interested in words. I'm interested in actions.' This from the man who swore that words were magical and thought it was worth sitting down to talk with the president of Iran? ... And as for the receding oceans, well, they're filling with light-sweet crude -- just one more thing the president blames Bush for. But there is good news. Any day now, after thorough interagency review, the Standing Committee for Posterior Selection will have given provisional approval for a working list of asses for POTUS to kick with an OSHA-approved shoe. Alas, final environmental-impact statements are pending. But once that hurdle is cleared, the president will focus like a laser on ass-kicking."

Hulu planning to go paid

For those of you who enjoy getting video content from Hulu for free, those days are probably going to be behind you.

Hulu, which is a joint venture of News Corp, NBC Universal, and Disney, plans to expand to devices beyond the PC, notably the XBox and iPad, and while the story is that first one shows (like Glee) will continue to be offered free, supported by advertising, older episodes of shows will use a subscription model.

Will users, accustomed to free content, rebel, or pay the fee?

Solving the Israel Problem. And California's

I have been thinking lately, in light of the fact that Israel can not get a break from the world, if there is an alternate solution to the "Israel" problem - especially now that we have the first openly hostile to Israel president here in the US.

Previous administrations would never have allowed the indignities foisted on Israel by the "Freedom Flotilla." 

So, I have a suggestion that I think will work to everyone's satisfaction, and solve some domestic problems, too.

Leftists and Islamofascists like to claim that if the Jews would just leave the Middle East, the Arab world would all be happy and leave the West alone.  I say we call their bluff, and, we remove the Jews from Israel and offer them a New Israel here in the New World.

My plan is - grant statehood to Puerto Rico.  That will keep the flag the same at 50 states, because we are then going to revoke California's statehood, and make that the New Israel nation.  Now, we'll want to get some treaty assurances from the Arab nations (I propose we have Egypt annex Israel, since they are one of the few countries in the Middle East we can trust) that they will protect religious shrines that are important to Christians and Jews in the Middle East, and that they will keep the Holy Land as a kind of protected zone for religious travelers and pilgrims.

By giving up California, we rid ourselves of the incredible drain the Golden State has become on the national treasury, we'll restore democratic rule to the state, and, perhaps, under the rule of Israelis, California (New Israel) will finally come to grips with their immigration problem.  Plus, we'll be able to ditch their debt, and maybe, just maybe, industry will return.

Politically, we'll rob the Democrats of 54 sure electoral votes (of course, we'll trade them the 4 or 5 that PR will bring, but, ok) and we'll gain a real military ally on our west coast.

I think this works out nicely.  I know it's a real problem for the Jewish people who have made Israel their home for a few thousand years, but, let's face it, their neighborhood sucks anyway, and this way, the Arabs can go back to killing each other, rather than using Israel and us as the locus of their anger.