The Foundation

“Here comes the orator! With his flood of words, and his drop of reason.” –Benjamin Franklin

The Demo-gogues

The Oval Office Address (Short Version): “I’ve returned … I assembled a team … I’d like to lay out … I’ve authorized … I urge the governors … I saw and heard … I’ve talked … I’ve seen … I’ve talked … I refuse … I will meet … I make … I asked … I approved … I want to know … I met with … I’ve established … I’ve issued … I know … I urge … I expect … I was a candidate … I laid out … I say … I am happy … I will not accept … I will not settle…” –Barack Oblahblah

Never let a crisis go to waste: “[M]ake no mistake: We will fight this spill with everything we’ve got for as long as it takes. We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused. And we will do whatever’s necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy.” –Barack Obama

Wrong conclusions: “[O]ne of the lessons we’ve learned from this spill is that we need better regulations, better safety standards, and better enforcement when it comes to offshore drilling.” –BO (In other words, more of the same oppressive government that contributed to causing the spill.)

The BIG Lie: “We consume more than 20 percent of the world’s oil, but have less than 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves. And that’s part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean – because we’re running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water.” –Barack Obama (The reason for deepwater drilling is government putting land and shallow water off limits.)

Non Compos Mentis: “In the same way that our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy was shaped profoundly by 9/11, I think this disaster is going to shape how we think about the environment and energy for many years to come.” –Barack Obama

Surely she can’t be serious: “[C]arbon pollution, leading to climate change, will be, over the next 20 years, the leading cause of conflict, putting our troops in harm’s way.” –Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA)

Keep on blaming Bush: “Well, it runs out when the problems go away…. He brought us to the brink of financial crisis, he brought us to the brink of deep recession, ignoring issues related to climate change.” –House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on whether there is a statute of limitations on blaming George W. Bush

Editorial Exegesis

“In a ‘fireside chat’ to quell concerns about the Gulf oil disaster, the president announced the appointment of an oil czar. Is more bureaucracy the answer to every problem? … The president on Tuesday evening proved himself tone-deaf to this popular disenchantment, manifested in his sinking public approval ratings. He double-downed on his status as the federal government’s expander in chief by announcing the establishment of an oil czar who will join the nearly 30 other czars running various sectors of the American Leviathan absent public accountability. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs described the newest czar as being ‘in charge of a recovery plan, putting a recovery plan together … when we get past the cleanup and response phase of this disaster.’ It kind of begs the question: Why not a cleanup czar in the meantime? First things first. This is quintessential Rahm Think. Before the president was inaugurated, incoming White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, cutthroat even by the Chicago machine standards that spawned him, infamously declared that you should ‘never let a serious crisis go to waste.’ The Democrats in power used a financial crisis – of their own making, being the culmination of years of politicized housing policy – to fulfill every taxpayer-funded fantasy on their wish list. Now the president is using the BP oil gusher crisis to justify yet another new taxpayer-funded agency. … [M]illions of Americans would like to hear a reporter ask this president, ‘Can you solve anything without asking for more government?’” –Investor’s Business Daily

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Upright

“In a peculiar instance of synchronicity, President Obama’s Oval Office speech to the nation last night resembled the very calamity it was intended to address: Like the oil spewing into the Gulf, it began as a focused and narrow stream of words – and quickly spread out into an amorphous cloud of goo.” –columnist Jonah Goldberg

“Many Americans are beginning to pick up the strange vibe that for Barack Obama, governing America is 'an interesting sociological experiment’. … He’s the first president to give off the pronounced whiff that he’s condescending to the job – that it’s really too small for him, and he’s just killing time until something more commensurate with his stature comes along.” –columnist Mark Steyn

“We have become accustomed to [Barack Obama’s] management style – target a scapegoat, assign blame and go on the attack. To win health care legislation, he vilified insurance executives; to escape bankruptcy law for General Motors, he demonized senior lenders; to take the focus from the excesses of government, he castigated business meetings in Las Vegas; and to deflect responsibility for the deepening and lengthening downturn, he blames Wall Street and George W. Bush. But what may make good politics does not make good leadership. And when a crisis is upon us, America wants a leader, not a politician.” –former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney

“This energy bill of goods, as dangled before us by the administration since the 2008 campaign, obscures practical and economic realities. To wit, trucks and cars don’t run on sunlight or wind, and coal – whose cost of generation the U.S. energy department priced at 44 cents per megawatt three years ago – is our second cheapest form of energy, next to oil and gas, at 25 cents per megawatt. Nuclear power is $1.59. And how much, according to the energy department, is wind power? Oh, $23.37 per megawatt. Solar power? A whopping $24.34. Green jobs, anybody?” –columnist Bill Murchison

“Government is acting like the last drunk at the party. Government is spending at an unprecedented rate, regulating the minutest areas of our lives, and strutting around as if it’s solving problems as it creates them.” –investment newsletter publisher Robert Prechter

“Good intentions cause most of the world’s great evils. … In order to do good personally and in order to support social policies that do good, what humans need even more than a good heart (as beneficial as that can be) is wisdom.” –columnist Dennis Prager

Dezinformatsia

Treatises on the constitutional role of the executive: “[C]an this president honestly claim he has command and control when it looks like BP is the boss? … [L]ooking down the road is BP going to be the big shot, and he’s going to be, as I call him, the Vatican observer watching them do what they do? And that’s all he can do.” –MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on the oil spill

“[Obama’s] an observer. I think he’s usefully and rightfully dangerous about power. I think he thought George Bush, George W. Bush overstepped in terms of executive power. And it’s also, he’s an observer by nature. … If you don’t use [power], you lose it. Barack Obama should overdo. He should overstep … even at the risk of having a lawsuit filed against him.” –Newsweek’s Howard Fineman

Political booms: “Has the president contained the political damage?” –ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on what’s really important about the oil spill

Token blame passing: “The oil spill is the perfect metaphor for Obama’s presidency so far. It’s been cleaning up a lot of the messes left to him by his predecessors, whether it was bank bailouts, auto bailouts, Afghanistan … preventing a depression that, you know, began to happen on George Bush’s watch. … It is a distraction from Obama’s own agenda. … And in that sense, it irritates him.” –Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter on the president who thinks government is the answer to everything

What would we do without reporters? “Politically, Bob Etheridge … is fairly safe. He won his district with 57 percent of the vote back in 2008. Obama actually won his district 53 percent to 47 percent in North Carolina, in the Raleigh area. So politically, he should not lose his seat from this. However, at the end of the day, everyone agrees, it’s never a good idea to physically assault somebody who’s trying to videotape you, especially in the YouTube age.” –MSNBC’s Luke Russert on the congressman who assaulted two young men who asked him a question on video

Newspulper Headlines:

Advice From John Kerry: “Flip-Flop Do’s and Don'ts for the Summer” –WTOP-FM Web site (Washington)

Questions Nobody Is Asking: “If Helen Thomas can win the Helen Thomas Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Society of Professional Journalists, why can’t James Taranto win the James Taranto Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Society of Professional Journalists?” –Don Surber, Daily Mail Web site (Charleston, WV)

Too Much Information: “Helen Thomas: Celebrated for Her Sex, Not for Her Accomplishments” –BigJournalism.com

Bottom Stories of the Day: “Hezbollah Lauds Helen Thomas” –YnetNews.com (Israel)

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto)

Village Idiots

A rant from the insane: “I say seize their assets. Right now. Seize their assets today. Take over the [company]. I don’t care [how]. Issue an executive order. … Call it socialism, call it communism, call it anything you want. Let’s watch Rush Limbaugh explode on TV. … Seize the assets. Take over BP.” –noted constitutional scholar Rosie O'Donnell

And again: “We’re all culpable in America. We all fill up our gas-guzzler cars. We all don’t have solar power on our window[s]. We have been sold the drugs by the dealer, which is our own government, of oil, and we’ve been shootin’ up and we’re addicted to it. … This time, we’ve screwed with Mother Earth. We broke the freakin’ womb of Mother Earth. … We split it open, and she’s hemorrhaging.” –Rosie O'Donnell

“The United States Defense Department is the largest procurer of oil in the world, it uses more oil than anywhere else to kill people in the Middle East to get fuel to fight wars. It’s sort of a cycle of life thing. Now, I’m not trying to be a conspiracy theorist. But I do think there’s something – just the way the pharmaceutical companies sometimes come up with a pill before they come up with the disease – I think maybe we need a war all the time so we can wear out equipment and buy oil.” –HBO’s Bill Maher, who probably has been using too many “pharmaceuticals”

Useful idiot: “The inconvenient truth is that we share this planet with the rest of creation for a very good reason – and that is, we cannot exist on our own without the intricately balanced web of life around us. Islam has always taught this and to ignore that lesson is to default on our contract with creation.” –Prince Charles of England

Short Cuts

“I couldn’t help but grin when I read World Cup referees are studying English swear words so that they can hand out yellow cards if needed. All they need to do is YouTube the current administration for a crash course in what not to say. We’ve got President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who is to the swear word what Webster was to the dictionary.” –columnist Elisabeth Meinecke

“I noticed recently that Barack Obama was holding out an olive branch to the Taliban. He claimed to recognize that some of them were not as radical as others. I find it odd, though, that he can somehow spot nuances in terrorists 7,000 miles away, but every member of the Tea Party looks like a thug and a racist to him.” –columnist Burt Prelutsky

“The president was back on the Gulf Coast again Monday, looking for a plug to stuff into that hole in the bottom of the sea (or at least the hole in his approval ratings).” –columnist Wesley Pruden

“British Prime Minister David Cameron flew to Washington over the weekend where he urged President Obama to stop bashing British Petroleum. The president needs a reality check. Polls show that if Barack Obama forces Americans to choose between him and England he could reverse the American Revolution just in time for the Fourth of July.” –comedian Argus Hamilton

“President Obama announced [Tuesday] that he wants to use the oil spill to move America toward green energy. I have a crazy idea. Maybe he should use the oil spill crisis to fix the oil spill.” –comedian Jay Leno