Via Wolf Files.
“Under Bush, we were the world’s policeman. Under Obama, the world’s Keystone Kops.“

‘We’re going on four weeks now, or more, that Barack Obama has been reading My Pet Goat.‘

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Carol Platt Liebau, March 2009 – [W]hen he was at the HLR you did get a very distinct sense that he was the kind of guy who much more interested in being the president of the Review, than he was in doing anything as president of the Review.
Michael Walsh, March 2011 – President Obama would be much more comfortable as a monarch without too many demanding duties, thus leaving him plenty of time for golf, hoops, trips to the winter palace in Hawaii, and, of course, vacations and down time.
Similar observations here… “he’s not even pretending anymore to take part in the governing process.”

Ken Salazar blinks?

Interior Secretary Salazar cracks under pressure and begins issuing Gulf of Mexico drilling permits

More like a wink.

Initial drilling on this well began April 16, 2010, in 6,500 feet water depth, and the activities were suspended June 12, 2010, under the temporary drilling moratorium, issued in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill.

h/t Adrian
Update:

More – “… it took a truly insane amount of pressure just to squeeze that one permit from the White House”

The Rule of Obama: the one-person Supreme Court!

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
CNN Money, Feb.21th – A federal court ordered the Obama administration Thursday to act on five deep water drilling permits in the Gulf of Mexico within 30 days, calling the delays in issuing new decisions “unreasonable, unacceptable, and unjustified.”
Dow Jones Newswires, Feb. 24th – In a letter to President Barack Obama Thursday, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee joined two other lawmakers in urging the president to consider opening the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to ease pressure on oil and gas prices in advance of the summer driving season.

Well, when the President does it that means that it is not illegal.

VDH;

…the actual implementation reflects somebody with the experience of two years in the Senate, who had never navigated outside of academia and Chicago tit-for-tat politics. So Mubarak is/is not a dictator, must leave now/yesterday/sometime soon as he serves as sort of a figurative leader/a critical transition player/a suspicious counter-revolutionary inasmuch as the U.S. must lay down conditions/advise only/respect Egyptian prerogatives, as private conversations with Egyptians are spilled to the press, Obama suggests the Cairo desire for freedom somehow channels his own support, and Biden, Clinton, and Obama contradict one another hourly.

Indeed: “Leon Panetta told us Mubarak was going. The perky newscasters kept telling us that Mubarak was going. President Obama (head left: utter a cliché; slowly pan right, emit another cliché) thought that too.” […] In a way, Hosni Mubarak is acting far more democratically then the protestors demanding his ouster. There is an election scheduled in Egypt for September. The democratic solution counsels patience: let the process unfold. Have the election. There is a difference, in short between what Plato called ochlocracy, i.e., mob rule, and democracy. It’s not at all clear that the cheerleaders for the Egyptian demonstrators have taken that distinction to heart.
Update: Mubarak has handed over power to the military and left Cairo. (The fine print).
Related: All is quiet in Iran. Speaking of Iran – “Interestingly, the Shah of Iran was also forced out on February 11. Let’s hope this isn’t an omen.”

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Barack Obama, Feb.6th, 2011 – You know, I think that the thing you understand intellectually, but you don’t understand in your gut until you’re in the job, is that every decision that comes to my desk is something that nobody else has been able to solve. The easy stuff gets solved somewhere by somebody else. By the time it gets to me, you don’t have easy answers.
Boston Herald – The MIT economics whiz who crafted President Obama’s national health-care overhaul now plans to explain the complex and controversial plan to the masses — in one long comic book.

Obama’s tough budget cuts in pictures

Via

Joe B. writes – “The meaning of ‘sputnik’ in Russian is ‘fellow-traveler’.”
From the comments;

I remember sputnik. I was about 4 years old, and my older brother took us outside to try and watch it pass overhead. I don’t remember actually seeing it, but a lot of people did keep an eye on it. Obama is right about it being a sputnik moment, but not in the way he perceives it. Sputnik scared the living daylights out of the general public, because no one was certain the commies wouldn’t load a bunch of them up with nukes. If they actually had developed the technology to that level, the west would have been seriously screwed. All the leaders of the day were old war horses, with no fear of launching an attack.
The current sputnik moment happened when the west realized we’ve allowed the commies to take control of the world economy. This might not frighten people as much as the threat of nuclear destruction, but it should. Death from a nuclear explosion is mostly quick and painless, while death from economic domination will be slow and torturous. Our society will not tolerate it, and the only way out will be war. So, instead of a quick and clean fight, with a slim chance of survival, we have a long drawn out prelude of painful economic decay, followed by a war with no chance of survival.

Heh. “Is it any coincidence that the acronym for Winning The Future is WTF?”

Well, when the President does it that means that it is not illegal.

See? She was right all along.

In his recently released book Leadership and Crisis, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal recounts an exchange with President Obama during the Gulf oil drilling moratorium. (Full disclosure: I co-wrote the book with Jindal.) After telling Obama that the moratorium would potentially cost tens of thousands of jobs, ”The president went on to assure me that anyone who lost their job would get a check from BP. When I explained that BP might not write them checks because it was the federal government that imposed the moratorium the president said, ‘Well, if BP won’t pay the claim, they can file for unemployment.’
For Obama, getting an unemployment check is about the same as getting paycheck.

That’s because he’s never really worked for one.
Related: Obama’s Energy Plan Coming Together Nicely.
(Via)

CNS News;

The federal government has accumulated more new debt–$3.22 trillion ($3,220,103,625,307.29)—during the tenure of the 111th Congress than it did during the first 100 Congresses combined, according to official debt figures published by the U.S. Treasury. […]
In fact, the 111th Congress not only has set the record as the most debt-accumulating Congress in U.S. history, but also has out-stripped its nearest competitor, the 110th, by an astounding $1.262 trillion in new debt.

But I’m sure they’re getting a handle on it.
Related: 1 Out Of 3 Americans Has Zero Dollars In A Retirement Account

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
“Collected via email”, 1999 – Dear Internet Subscriber: Please read the following carefully if you intend to stay online and continue using email: The last few months have revealed an alarming trend in the Government of the United States attempting to quietly push through legislation that will affect your use of the Internet.”
Wall Street Journal, 2010 – FCC Gives Government Power to Regulate Web Traffic
Update:

The net neutrality vision for government regulation of the Internet began with the work of Robert McChesney, a University of Illinois communications professor who founded the liberal lobby Free Press in 2002. Mr. McChesney’s agenda? “At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies,” he told the website SocialistProject in 2009. “But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.”

So there you have it – no need for concern.

“But wait, I thought it was the Bush Era tax policies that caused this recession?”

I just watched Barack Obama stand back as a former president took over the job he was elected to do.
Bizarre.
*
QOTD –

“I don’t want to make her mad, please go,” Clinton told Obama.”