John Hinderaker has le mot juste for Joe Biden, who dismisses the manager of Kopp's frozen custard who asked him to "lower our taxes" as a "smartass."

A simple way to think about the Democratic Party is, you're the human being, they're the tapeworm. Yet they claim a weird sort of parasite's moral superiority over you: if you point out that they have their hand in your pocket, you're a "smartass." The Democratic Party needs to be torn, root and branch, from our public life.

And good ole Joe, that man of the people, with his phony populism, let the mask slip. It's better to be a "smartass" than a horse's.

Good for Kevin Costner!Environmentalist or not, we ought to be able to agree that cleaning up oil spills fast is a good thing. If the government doesn't order a few thousand of these, well, that's just another reason to throw the bums out.

Gail Collins sends a belated Valentine:

Let us sing a song about the wonderfulness of Nancy Pelosi.

Egad, I think she's serious! Let's not.

JWF has more. The more I think about it, the more embarrassed I feel for Collins, but I'll bet nobody she knows even kids her.

Ever Hear of the Ixtoc Spill?

Some background:

Amidst the thick mangroves, under the turquoise tranquil waters and along the shoreline of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, the world's worst peacetime oil spill once hit here and more than 30 years later, there are still a few signs of Ixtoc.. . .

If the aftermath from Ixtoc is any indication, the environment and its recovery process will surprise many worried about the future. Marine biologists feared the Gulf would be ruined from the oil, but much of it repaired itself within two or three years. Even with the positive signs, the surprise and the good news of Mother Nature's strength, there are still signs.

Nevertheless, I don't want to hear Obama EVER discuss the size of anybody else's carbon footprint. I'm beginning to believe he is dragging his feet on cleaning this up. Never waste a good crisis.

The AP reports that nobody learned a lesson from Ixtoc:

While oil companies have spent billions of dollars to drill deeper and farther out to sea, relatively little money and research have gone into finding new, improved ways to respond to oil spills in deepsea conditions like those in the Gulf of Mexico.

Experts say the massive Gulf spill has exposed a failure by the industry
and the federal government to commit adequate resources to oil cleanup and response technology.

"Why they didn't start working on it after the (Ixtoc 1) Mexican spill in 1979 is beyond me," said Gerald Graham, president of Worldocean Consulting, an oil spill prevention and response planning firm in British Columbia. "Now they're trying to catch up."

If this one ends up costing BP $20 billion or more, this might change. The federal government's response to this also begs the question: why bother spending more in research on remediation if nobody's going to use it? At the very least, the government could accept offers from other countries to send help.

Florida Senator George LeMieux keeps demonstrating how big a failure the Obama Administration is when it comes to cleaning up the Gulf. Now why would that be?

Apparently Tom Harkin isn't worried about his seat in the Senate, since he's promising an attempt to pass card-check during a Lame Duck Session of Congress. May his party shrivel and die.

Another Question

Asking the unanswerable.
It really is as though the feds lost interest in the cleanup of the Gulf as soon as there was a deal over the costs.

Make that part of my list. Did the Obama administration just shelve this problem as soon as they had a $20 billion commitment from BP? And why are they putting more effort into putting a moratorium into effect than into figuring out an effective way to clean up the oil?

Questions

At the risk of looking stupid, I have a few questions:

Looking at the BP live camera at the well head, I keep wondering why they don't increase the suction on the pipe to suck more oil, although also more water, up to the surface.

What was McChrystal thinking?

I have others and will post them as they occur to me.

Canada creates jack-booted thug squad to prepare for the G20 conference. No more Mr. Civil Disobedience.

Yawn! This is about as relevant outside the beltway as who's taking whom to the Prom. The only real conservatives at the WaPo are syndicated.

Krauthammer: The fatal flaw in Obama's strategy in Afghanistan remains.

Sex crazed poodle? Sex-crazed elephant seal maybe, but the poodle part is just unbelievable.

At what point do we quit pretending and admit that Obama has become a dictator and most of Washington his facilitators?

STABENOW: REPUBLICANS 'WANT THIS ECONOMY TO FAIL'Hate to break it to her, but if it requires another $100 billion extension of unemployment benefits every month or two, it's already failed. What she means is that they want the Democrats' failures to become obvious, and they do.

An Orange Beach, Ala., charter boat captain shot and killed himself this morning just before his vessel was scheduled to set out to take part in oil cleanup and protection efforts, investigators said.

I watched Monk on the USA Network when it first started, and then left it for a while. Today the Sleuth Channel showed the last 5 or 6 episodes. The fact that the show ran for 8 seasons and ended on its own terms with one of the best conclusions I've ever watched is a real testament to its cast and writers, especially Tony Shaloub and Traylor Howard. The premise was that this brilliant detective had so many debilitating phobia's, OCDs and personal ticks as the result of a nervous breakdown following his wife's murder, that he could only function with the support of a full-time assistant and the Captain of the San Francisco Police homicide department. He has a decent, kind personality but it's buried under so many compulsions and annoying phobias and habits that it's hard to watch sometimes. I think that's probably why I lost track of the show after the first few seasons. But over the past few months, I've been recording all the episodes as they've been replayed, just to say I've seen them. That's one of my own little OCDs, which has become possible since I retired.

Too bad we can't keep McChrystal and fire Obama.

Oh, grow up! Save your righteous indignation for stuff like this.

Another new breakthrough in lithium ion battery technology. Is this the one that will make electric cars economically viable? It would be nice, but we ought to be aware that to a lot of environmentalists, this will be threatening. It means a huge need for more electric power, that probably can only be met with nuclear power. I can't anticipate what other complaints will come up, I can anticipate that those touting alternative energy, won't be all that happy when it gets here.

It is no longer the Al Franken decade. Michael Gerson fisks his latest "rhetorical strikeout" in the Washington Post. I hope it hurts.

I'm starting to think that the best analogy for the Obama Administration is a game of pachinko. McChrystal must go. Afghan leaders back McChrystal.

Obama makes a deal to cover the costs of the BP spill, goes back to ignoring it.

And so on. I think the country is just weary of all this and waiting until November when it can deliver a backhand to these twits.

Oh, for crying out loud! The Federal Fish and Wildlife Service has nullified the permit issued by the Corps of Engineers to build sand berms to protect Louisiana wetlands so that the berms can be built two miles further out. The berms are the one thing that make sense, but it's as if the feds can't leave the state alone and let it get on with this. This is an urgent thing, because hurricane season is upon us. I haven't heard the other side of this, but you'd think that with thousands of barrels of oil pouring into the Gulf, they would get over this nitpicking and get something done.

Some context for the Deepwater Horizon fire and spill among other modern offshore drilling disasters. In lives lost, this wasn't the worst, but I'm not sure anybody can make an accurate guess of how much oil was spilled.

After watching the ROVs at work last night, I've begun to expect tube worms and white shrimp and crabs crawling around that chimney blowing black goo at the bottom of the Gulf.

So much for "I'm glad I don't live on the Gulf Coast.I live ten miles from Ferron.

Florida Senator LeMieux says that there are 2000 skimmers in Florida available plus some from foreign countries that have been offered, but Obama has refused to deploy them because they might be needed elsewhere for another oil spill. Expect the White House to deny this too, but if they do, what will their excuse be for refusing to deploy these skimmers?

Kyl's memory of what Obama said about why he won't enforce immigration laws. In the words of Jim Treacher,

Just because you’re the President of the United States doesn’t mean you’re obliged to uphold the Constitution

or execute the office of President?

More news making BP look reckless. Cracks were developing in the rock surrounding the drill bore and gas and drilling mud were leaking up through them. This was in February. They tried sealing the leaks with cement but continued to have surges of gas and probably should have closed in the well on March 10.

Kevin McCullough makes the following challenge:

First, change your tactics. Second, appear to care. Attempt to engage and empower Americans who can and will go solve this mess.

Otherwise resign.

For the good of the nation, for your own children's future, change your patterns or change your path... but change!

You do remember that word don't you, Mr. President?

As I've already said, if the president refuses to enforce the laws of the United States and doesn't challenge its constitutionality, merely as a matter of policy differences, does that rise to the level of an impeachable offense. I would say it does, but I'm sure it would only blow back on Republicans. So I'll add my own challenge.

Mr. Obama, if you are unwilling to enforce the laws of this nation forbidding illegal immigration, you are in violation of your oath to "faithfully execute the office of President of the United States." That being the case, and you having indicated that you don't intend to start executing your office, you should resign.

The White House denies Senator Kyl's story that Obama told him that if he started sealing the border, the Republicans wouldn't support a comprehensive immigration bill (i.e. one including amnesty.) Whatever his reasons, the fact is that he's not only in dereliction of his duties, but is actively trying to prevent border states from enforcing the law. I know it would never sell, but I consider those impeachable offenses and at least as damaging to the Constitution as Watergate.

The White House had a good play attacking Joe Barton, but by shading the truth, they've squandered it. They've also spurred a lot of defenders for his apology to BP, pointing out that the President has exceeded his authority and still doesn't seem to have a decent plan for cleaning up the Gulf.

Jay Tea on the disparity of the administration's rhetoric and their actions in the BP Oil Spill:

This is Katrina bad. This is 9/11 bad. This is JFK Assassination bad. This is Pearl Harbor bad.

And -- it should go without saying -- this is "screw politics, all hands on deck" bad.

But it isn't.

The Obama administration wastes no opportunity to remind us of how dire the situation is in the Gulf. But its actions are utterly inconsistent with their words.

Rahm Emanuel expected to quit White House

Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, is expected to leave his job later this year after growing tired of the "idealism" of Barack Obama's inner circle.

If you could live forever, would you want to? Not if it meant dealing with health insurance and government "benefits." Nor would I want to continue to live in this fallen world. Of course, I don't believe in permanent death, so the question seems a little irrelevant.

Charles Krauthammer:

Obama is dreamer in chief: He wants to take us to this green future “even if we’re unsure exactly what that looks like. Even if we don’t yet precisely know how we’re going to get there.” Here’s the offer: Tax carbon, spend trillions, and put government in control of the energy economy — and he will take you he knows not where, by way of a road he knows not which.

That’s why Tuesday’s speech was received with such consternation. It was so untethered from reality. The Gulf is gushing, and the president is talking mystery roads to unknown destinations. That passes for vision, and vision is Obama’s thing. It sure beats cleaning up beaches.

Something to do late at night when you can't get to sleep. Watch the BP Live Video ROV Link in the Gulf. There's a lot of strange stuff floating by and it's both interesting and boring at once.