Monday, June 28, 2010

Larwyn's Linx: Robert Byrd Dead at 92; Kagan Kabuki Theater Begins

Have a great link you'd like me to review? Drop me an email. You can also install a Larwyn's Linx blog widget.

Nation

SCOTUS theater: Kagan kabuki: Malkin
The Phalanx of 41 Must Hold the Line: AT
Is DISCLOSE Dead in the Senate?: LibertyPundits

Robert Byrd Dead at 92: Breitbart
A Brief Discussion About WV Senate Seat Rules: Malkin
The Misplaced Faith in Federal Regulators: RWN

At G-20, Obama ditches press pool... again: RWN
Party Like It's 1773: PJM
We’re Here, We’re Queer and We’re in Abject Denial: iOTW

Economy

Federal Revenue and the Economy: AT
Chrysler's Restructuring Plans: Patterico
Moonshot: Graph of the Day: AT

Climate & Energy

Golfing the Gulf Away: Cold Fury
FAIL: Hundreds of Oil Skimmers AWOL: RWN
Day 68: Still No Skimmers Off MS Gulf Coast: GWP

Media

Democratic-Media Complex Comes Under Attack After Weigel Kerkuffle: GWP
It's the Media, Stupid: Marcus
Hitting Thomas Sowell Over The Head With Palin Derangement Syndrome: LegalIns

Vartan Gregorian, Bill Ayers and Barack Obama: Back in the Saddle Again: MagNote
The 2003 Rezko Fundraiser for Obama: Marathon
The Only Thing New Under the Sun: Cold Fury

The Fattest Cats of All: RWN
Welcome to East Germany on the Potomac: Driscoll
Atlas Book Review: the Grand Jihad: Atlas

World

Iran claims Israel pre-positioning strike force in Saudi Arabia: Ace
Seeing Iran Plain: Ledeen
Israeli policy in the age of Islamism: PJM

Moonbats on the March: Violence Breaks Out at G-20: RWN
Military-Civilian Relations Better Be A Two-Way Street: Kesler
Protesters Blast Israel at G8/G20 Summit in Toronto: AmPower

SciTech

Google Streetview's Latest Mystery: Horseboy: Daily Mail (UK)
Broadband Availability to Expand: CNet
G-20 Ministers on AGW Payments: GTFO: CBullitt (Language Warning)

Cornucopia

Have a Sip of George Washington’s Whiskey: iOTW
G-20: the Quicker Picker Upper, eh?: MOTUS
Enter the Dragon: IowaHawk

Image: John L. Wathen.
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: Joel Pollak for Congress - Defeat Jan Schakowsky.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Photos, Videos from the Air Document the Shocking Scope of the Gulf Spill and the Horrifying Incompetence of the Obama Administration Response

If you need visual proof of the shocking incompetence of the Obama administration, look no further than this heartbreaking video by John L. Wathen.

Flying over the Gulf, Wathen documented not only the horrific scope and scale of the catastrophe, but captured the misery and death afforded dolphins, whales and birds each desperately trying to escape an oily fate.

You'll need a strong stomach to tolerate the video -- and a stronger one to consider the level of incompetence demonstrated by this administration and this Congress, who dare to say that they can govern all aspects of private industry on the one hand, yet can't devote the necessary resources to sucking up the pollution their idiotic policies have helped touch off.

Consider, for a moment, the actions taken by the administration both before and after the disaster.

• The "Obama administration knew about Deepwater Horizon['s] 35,000-foot well bore, green-lighted [it] and fast-tracked the project"...

• Disregarded and underestimated the impact of the tragic explosion and spill for over a month...

• As of last week, had deployed only 20 of 2,000 skimmer (clean-up) vessels...

• Fought Louisiana's use of sand berms to prevent damage to the Gulf coast tidal region...

• Forced Louisiana to stop using 16 barges that were sucking up thousands of gallons of oil daily out of the Gulf...

• Refused to waive the Jones Act, which prevented foreign vessels and crews from cleaning up the Gulf, even though "American shippers who generally support the ban said they wouldn’t object to lifting it to fight the spill"...

Put simply, BP was betting big on "crony capitalism", donating heavily ($1 million-plus) to Barack Obama and significantly more to Democrats in general.

In fact, it appears that BP helped write the Kerry-Lieberman Cap-and-Trade bill so that it could profit from a new energy tax and drive smaller competitors out of business.

According to Energy Compass, "BP's overt support for climate change legislation brought it some favor with the Obama administration, as did the company's fundraising for Barack Obama himself."

In 2007, now-Energy Secretary Steven Chu went on the record stating his unequivocal support for BP.

"From BP’s perspective, the evidence that climate change is happening, and that it is manmade, is mounting all the time. As the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found, the evidence is almost overwhelming. We could wait until the science is 100% certain, but BP believes that, as an energy company, it has a duty to act pre-emptively..."

"...When you balance the likely impacts of not taking action against the real opportunities that exist to take action, it is difficult to believe that humanity will not move towards a solution to climate change..."

"...We need to ensure that the costs of emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are included in the price we pay for everything – whether it be a television, a train journey, or switching on a light – all should reflect the cost of emissions in their price..."

"...This can be achieved through a Cap and Trade system, taxation, or regulation..."

It didn't hurt that Chu received $500 million from BP to "form the Energy BioSciences Institute."

Obama's Energy Secretary and BP are so close, in fact, that Chu hired BP's Chief Scientist as an undersecretary at the Department of Energy.

Chu went on to state that BP was "going to help save the world."

* * * * * * * * *

BP represents the epitome of crony capitalism. Every aspect of BP's operations appear to have been vetted, monitored and approved by Steven Chu and other Obama Democrats. Because they wanted BP's money. And its support for Cap-and-Trade.

And now, as life is snuffed out in the Gulf, Obama and BP are once again joined at the hip, a malevolent partnership of despair and incompetence.


Related: What the Obama administration has wrought: the world's first "Oilcane".

All photos and video: John L. Wathen.

Turkey's Humanitarian Flotilla Supporters Raise the Flag of Tolerance

Supporters of Turkey's "Humanitarian Flotilla" rallied this week under the universal banner of harmony and tolerance.

But don't worry: these are only the newest members of NATO -- and the most "civilized" of the merry band of neanderthals controlling 99% of the Middle East.

In related news, administration officials relayed an upbeat assessment regarding Iran's nuclear readiness, stating "Iran probably has enough low-enriched uranium for two nuclear weapons, but that it likely would take two years to build the bombs."

Dan from New York's analysis offers us his usual positive spin.

Thank heavens for that "but." It leaves plenty of time for the sanctions to bite, Obama to be reelected, Israel to build a vast network of underground shelters, lay in a good supply of radiation sickness medicine and keep the 'peace process' on track, don’t you think?

And how much damage can two puny H-Bombs do in the first place?

Yep, the nerve of those pesky Israelis, impeding the peace process and all. Everything would be much more harmonious if, as Helen Thomas advises us, they would just go back where they came from.

Like, say, Auschwitz-Birkenau or Treblinka.

Which, helpfully, is also the goal of the neanderthals when it comes to the Israelis.


Flotilla image hat tip: TROP.

Obama's ShoreBank: Jeremiah Wright's $10 Million Cash Machine

This is Senator Barack Obama with his pastor of 20 years, the Reverand Jeremiah A. Wright of Trinity United Church.

This is Rev. Wright in 2008, after a public repudiation by then-candidate Obama, for his series of incendiary and racist remarks such as "The government invented the AIDS virus as a means of genocide."

This is Rev. Wright, earlier in his career, railing against whites, Jews, and America. Wright built a small church called Trinity United into one of the largest of Chicago's south-side congregations with heated and divisive rhetoric sometimes called "Black Liberation Theology".

These are some of Rev. Wright's neighbors' homes, located on an exclusive golf course and country club in a Chicago suburb.

This is Rev. Wright's home, when it was under construction in 2008. He has since moved into the estate, estimated to have cost more than $1,000,000.

At 10,400-square feet, the home includes a large family room with wet bar, an exercise room, and a spare room that could be for a large home theater or indoor pool, based upon building plans.

The house features an elevator, a whirlpool, a butler's pantry and a four-car garage.

This is one of the loan agreements that Trinity United Church used to purchase the home for Rev. Wright. In addition to a $1.6 million mortgage, the agreement also attached a $10 million line-of-credit. As a non-profit entity, Trinity United did not have to report any of these financial dealings to the IRS, according to an April 2008 Fox News report.

Since that time, Trinity United Church sold the property to a trust company called ATG Trust, the executives for whom are all pictured above. Presumably ATG Trust, which specializes in tax shelters, trusts and investment management, created a trust and other investment strategies for Rev. Wright to minimize his tax exposure and maximize his returns.

Curiously, Wright appears to have utilized a firm with a distinct lack of diversity among its key executives in order to set up his tax shelters or whatever legal structures he used to protect his assets.

And what bank underwrote Wright's mortgage and $10 million line-of-credit? That would be none other than the troubled ShoreBank, a favorite of the Obama family and other Democrat politicians, who have worked mightily to have the feds rescue it despite the fact that it would otherwise not qualify for a bailout.

In fact, while other banks in ShoreBank's boat have been permitted to fail, the Obama administration allegedly pressured Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and others to prop up the bank. According to news reports, this infusion would permit ShoreBank to receive an additional $75 million in TARP funds. The Central Illinois 9/12 Project has described the bank's ties to the president and his associates, including Rev. Wright and Obama's self-described "Communist" associate Van Jones. In fact, according to Republican Congressional candidate Joel Pollak, incumbent Illinois Democrat Rep. Jan Schakowsky -- one of Nancy Pelosi's favorite far left House members -- has strenuously argued for the bailout of the bank.

Scum is too kind a word to use to describe the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright. Here is a man who lives in the lap of luxury, surrounded by the very white people he claims to despise. A man who hypocritically uses a lily-white firm to shelter and protect his own millions, though he preaches a poisonous form of Marxism and wealth redistribution for others.

Here is a man who attacks the very society that has allowed him to prosper -- the most magnificent society ever created on the face of the Earth -- and then stealthily embeds himself in that society, with law firms and gated communities protecting himself from the very rabble he claims to protect.

So, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer, just remember that when ShoreBank receives its inevitable bailout -- with money that you, your children and your grandchildren will have to repay -- you'll be pleased to know you're also helping to subsidize the despicable, racist and amazingly hypocritical teachings of one Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.


Linked by: Michelle Malkin. Thanks!

The Shameless Duplicity of the Obama Administration: Napolitano Directly Contradicts Solis on Immigration Enforcement; Media Strangely Silent.

Example 8,118 of the blatant, in-your-face contradictions -- I'm too polite to call them lies -- excreted by the Obama administration's apparatchiks:


DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, 6/24/2010
: "Instead of doing workplace raids the way they were being done before, we don't do those. What we do is, build cases against employers who consistently, knowingly and potentially violate our nation's immigration laws, going to the illegal labor market, exploit workers..."

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, 6/20/2010
: "You work hard, and you have the right to be paid fairly. I’m U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and it is a serious problem in this country when workers are not being paid every cent they have earned. Remember, every worker in America has a right to be paid fairly, whether documented or not. So call us, it is free and confidential..."
So which is it, Nappie? Which is it, Hildie? Are you going to prosecute businesses for employing illegals -- or just make sure they pay them fair wages? You know, for the jobs Americans won't do.

You people are pathetic. And that goes double for the legacy media.


Hat tip: Mark Levin.

Larwyn's Linx: Brewer to Obama -- Do Your Job, Secure Our Border

Have a great link you'd like me to review? Drop me an email. You can also install a Larwyn's Linx blog widget.

Nation

Brewer to Obama: Do Your Job, Secure Our Border: RWN
Confirmed: school vouchers improve grad rates: BigGovt
The Unengaged President: Steyn

An Open Letter to Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL): BackCon
Brewer: Most illegals are smuggling drugs: RWN
Dearborn on prohibiting the free exercise thereof: BeJohnGalt

Economy

New financial regulation bill a farce: AT
What the hell was the $1 trillion for, Pelosi?: BlogProf
Barney Frank Offers More Unclarity On FinReg Scam: ZH

Biden admits: jobs ain't coming back: GWP
Medicare cuts avoided…world saved…for now.: RWN
Was drilling moratorium a sop to unions?: RWN

Climate & Energy

Governed by Fools: ConfYank
Graph: Net Jobs Lost Per Megawatt: AT
I'll Take Your Worse-Case Scenario, and Raise It...: ConfYank

Media

Questions for Kagan: Will
Beyond Weigel: While the legacy media sleeps, new-media sleuths get the scoop: SISU
Kopp the custard-man has Hinderaker sounding like a neo-Marxist: Instapundit

Fox40 dudes slam Palin after CA speech: Toldjah
AP fights to cover a speech it then didn’t cover: Surber
Shop Manager Tells Biden ‘Lower Our Taxes’ :Malkin

World

Leftist Morality: Blame the Government, Not the People, Unless It’s Israel: PJM
The Gaza Blockade: a Dialogue: AT
Michael Yon Invited By Brits and U.S. To Embed Again: Jawa

President's first order of business at G8 Summit: GWP
Spectators in Body Armor: Steyn
Spain's Debt Maturity Wave Hits Next Month: It's Already Obvious They Don't Have Enough Cash: Insider

SciTech

Obama internet 'kill switch' bill approved: SMH
Oil Skimmers and the Dutch: Patterico
Exploring The Popular Myths About BP's "Culpable Conduct": Hindenblog

Cornucopia

Just An Okie From Muskoka, Eh!: MOTUS
A Conservative 11-Year Old Tries To Survive In California Schools: AT
Labor Department Announces Reduction in Vice President's Hours: Diogenes

Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: Christine O'Donnell for U.S. Senate 2010 - Defeat Mike Castle


Saturday, June 26, 2010

The Real Reason Obama's 'Propeller-Head', David Orszag, Quit

Inquiring minds want to know why Dr. Peter Orszag -- President Obama's Director of OMB (Office of Management and Budget) -- suddenly and unexpectedly resigned this week.

Word on the street has it that Orszag lashed out at Obama and his merry band of socialists Keynesians.

Mr. Orszag, whose publicly stated reasons for leaving were that he was exhausted after years in high pressure jobs and also that he wanted to plan for his wedding in September --

Hold it! "Plan for his f***ing wedding?" "In September?"

[Orszag] is seen as the guardian of fiscal conservatism within the White House... the budget director has become increasingly frustrated with the administration’s [lack of] caution on longer-term fiscal restraint.

...Mr Orszag, whom Mr Obama has dubbed a 'propeller-head' because of his brilliant facility with projections and spreadsheets, has tried but failed to convince his colleagues to “step up the action”, according to one insider.

In particular, he has collided with the political team, led by Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama’s chief of staff, over Mr Obama’s 2008 election pledge not to raise taxes on any households earning less than $250,000 a year [which] would put all the fiscal emphasis on draconian – and highly unrealistic – spending cuts, or else pushing the marginal tax rates on the very rich to confiscatory levels...

“Peter feels strongly that this is a pledge that has to be broken if the President is to take a lead on America’s fiscal crisis,” says an administration official not authorised to speak on the matter.

David Axelrod? Is that you?

Tyler Durden offers the executive summary: "This bankrupt country truly deserves all of its elected individuals."


Our friends the Saudis: 11 men, 4 women sentenced to lashes, prison for the high crime of... uhm... ehh... 'mingling'. Yes, 'mingling'.

The level of tolerance is overwhelming.

Judicial officials say a Saudi court has convicted four women and 11 men for mingling at a party and sentenced them to flogging and prison terms.

The men, who are between 30 and 40 years old, and three of the women, who are under the age of 30, were sentenced to an unspecified number of lashes and one or two year prison terms each.

The fourth woman, a minor, was sentenced to 80 lashes and was not sent to prison.

This type of 'tolerance' is a recurring theme in Andrew McCarthy's The Grand Jihad, the seminal work that forever links the Islamist and Leftist agendas.

And it's 4.5 stars at Amazon, so it's not just me saying that.


All you need to know about Democrats' "Comprehensive Financial Reform" bill: the multi-trillion dollar time-bomb called Fannie Mae isn't addressed

All of the reforms forced down the throats of the American people by Democrats in Congress are helpfully termed "comprehensive". Consider the terminology, casually tossed about while ignoring the fundamental failure of every, large-scale federal program in history: "Comprehensive Immigration Reform"... "Comprehensive Health Care Reform"... "Comprehensive Financial Reform"...

Of the latter, 2,000-plus pages are devoted to revamping the entire financial "sector". The result is an orgy of central planning, authoritarian controls, and Democrat skulduggery that Nikita Krushchev would love --- and James Madison would despise.

As for the effectiveness of the reforms: the Democrats have completely ignored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSEs), which were the lynch-pins of the 2008 economic meltdown. The reasons are many:

• Fannie and Freddie have been described as "job-shops for out-of-work Democrats"; during the Clinton era, they were tasked with subsidizing zero-documentation (no proof of income) loans under HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo and Attorney General Janet Reno;

• Fannie and Freddie's executives were all loyal Democrat cronies -- from Jamie Gorelick, to Jim Johnson, to Franklin Raines -- who took a couple of hundred million in compensation while touching off a multi-billion dollar accounting scandal. All the while, they extolled the virtues of the GSEs' economic health, knowing full well that they were teetering on the brink;

• Fannie and Freddie were protected from Republican scrutiny despite numerous inquiries into financial shenanigans, outsized pay for executives, bogus audits and the like. Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, in particular, threatened every sort of legislative roadblock if the GOP pursued investigations into the GSEs. The latter even conducted an 8-year sexual affair with a Fannie Mae executive -- a prototypical conflict-of-interest;

In short, the GSEs remain a multi-trillion dollar, ticking time-bomb. They own nearly $6 trillion in residential mortgages, with millions of individual bad loans that are still sitting on their books.

Yet the Democrats' "comprehensive financial reform" package completely ignores the critical, government-sponsored malignancies at the very epicenter of the meltdown.


Oh, goodie: Moody's Says Provisions Of Fin Reg Reform Bill May "Trigger Disruptions" In Credit Market


Related: The Fannie Mae testimony that will make you scream in anger.

What the Obama administration has wrought: the world's first "Oilcane"

Art Horn, writing at OilPrice.com, describes the catastrophic potential of an oil-infused hurricane in the Gulf. Consider the series of missteps by the White House that has led up to this point, wherein the entire Gulf waits on pins and needles for the impending "Oilcane":

• The "Obama administration knew about Deepwater Horizon['s] 35,000-foot well bore, green-lighted [it] and fast-tracked the project"...

• Disregarded and underestimated the impact of the tragic explosion and spill for over a month...

• As of last week, had deployed only 20 of 2,000 skimmer (clean-up) vessels...

• Fought Louisiana's use of sand berms to prevent damage to the Gulf coast tidal region...

• Forced Louisiana to stop using 16 barges that were sucking up thousands of gallons of oil daily out of the Gulf...

• Refused to waive the Jones Act, which prevented foreign vessels and crews from cleaning up the Gulf, even though "American shippers who generally support the ban said they wouldn’t object to lifting it to fight the spill"...

Whether or not the bungling is intentional, it's clear that not enough has been done by the White House to mitigate and clean up the spill. Therefore, Horn's description of an Oilcane's effects are increasingly relevant as we move into full-bore hurricane season.

The gulf oil spill is bad but it could become much, much worse and soon. The threat is a hurricane moving over the spill. If a hurricane’s violent winds track over the spill, we could witness a natural and economic calamity that history has never recorded anywhere or anytime. We will literally be in oil-soaked waters. We will have witnessed the first oilicane.

A category one hurricane (on a scale of 1 to 5) has maximum sustained winds of 74 to 95 miles per hour near the eye. A category five hurricane has maximum sustained winds of 156 to 200 miles per hour. The difference between the two storms is gigantic and non-linear. The latter hurricane may cause 250 times more damage than the former.

...The winds of a hurricane are so strong that the normal interface between ocean and atmosphere disappears. The winds begin to generate large waves. Spray is blown off the top of the waves. That spray mixes with the air so that after a short time there is no real boundary between what is ocean and what is the atmosphere. If a large hurricane moves over the spill, this chaotic mixture of water and air will inevitably also contain oil. The oil will become airborne and travel with the hurricane.

When hurricanes make landfall the winds push the ocean onto the land in what is called a storm surge... The water off the gulf coast is shallow. The elevation inland is only a few feet. This area is prime territory for devastating and deeply penetrating storm surges.

Should a major hurricane push the spill towards the gulf coast there will be nothing that can be done to stop it. No amount of planning or engineering will help. No number of visits to the gulf by the president or any other official will stop the inevitable. The storm surge will drive the water and the oil miles inland. Everything in its path will be coated in a greasy bath of crude. Even the wind may have oil in it... In the case of the gulf it will be oil that will spray the trees, buildings and everything else in the way. How far inland this oily mess will blow is anyone’s guess but it will be unprecedented in its economic and environmental damage.

The recovery period after a hurricane can take years. It was 10 years until some communities fully recovered from Hurricane Andrew in South Florida, some never recovered at all. The New Orleans area is still putting itself back together after Katrina in 2005. The recovery period after an oil-soaked hurricane -- or what could be called an Oilicane – is impossible to forecast but it could take years and many billions of dollars. One wonders if BP has the money to survive such a unique disaster. The human and natural losses from such an event could be historic.

There's that word again: historic. Everything about this administration is historic -- and none of it in a good way.

Should, heaven forbid, the world's first Oilcane wreak havoc in the Southeast, one man will have to shoulder substantial blame. One man's legacy will be utter economic and environmental ruin. One man's unsuitability for the highest office in the land will be crystal clear even to the most obtuse observer.


Related: Obama Administration Blocks Clean-Up of Oil Spill by Louisiana and Foreign Allies By Imposing Red Tape (GlobalWarming.org). Linked by: The Anchoress and Confederate Yankee. Thanks!