New York Times — Obama Conveys Principle to Students
President Obama went on the road to Kalamazoo on Tuesday and tried out a new line on the oil spill.
But first, he told students at a school that had done well in his “Race to the Top” program: “Don’t make excuses. Take responsibility not just for your successes. Take responsibility where you fall short as well,” Obama said.
Quite so, Mr. President.
His school speech was a return to the Obama of the campaign when he warmed the hearts of the David Brooks set by talking about personal responsibility. But it got all messed up by what Obama was talking about the rest of the day: his own struggle to find a way to accept responsibility but avoid blame in the BP oil fiasco.
While still in southwest Michigan, the president made time to be nuzzled by Matt Lauer.
The administration likes the morning show anchors, whose audiences aren’t interested in rock ‘em, sock ‘em interviews so early in the day. It’s the kind of soft focus that helped our Oprah-backed president rise to power. He even did Larry King (!) last week.
Lauer, like many of his media colleagues, has been particularly interested in how Obama feels about the oil spill.
I don’t see how the president’s feeling matter much here. It is notable that the administration was so slow to act and had some apparent lapses, but the prevailing belief among the press corps that Obama’s problem has been his distant demeanor.
Certainly polls show that Americans increasingly think Obama is out of touch, but that’s mostly a consideration for political analysts. The psychoanalytic bent to the questioning of Obama, on the other hand, gives the administration something else to talk about.
Instead of asking why Obama called for more drilling before making sure the existing regulatory body was sound, Lauer asks Obama how he feels about things.
In an escalating effort to show his rage, Obama first leaked to the Washington Post that he wanted to “plug the damn hole.” Now, talking to Lauer, he takes it up a notch saying that a lust for somebody’s “ass to kick” is the reason he is so reliant on outside experts in his decision making.
“I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar. We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answer so I know whose ass to kick,” Obama said, a little sheepishly, to Lauer.
Can we be far from Obama calling “bull—t” on British Petroleum or that he’s getting really “p—-d? Perhaps then Lauer and his fellow Freuds will say that the president has had an emotional breakthrough.
Writer Sheryl Gay Stolberg seems to have seen the irony in Obama going back to banging on about not playing the blame game when he is blaming Washington for his political problems and looking for asses to kick.
“He returned to the responsibility theme in Kalamazoo, paired the message with a lament about Washington finger-pointing, when he said, ‘It’s the easiest thing in the world to start looking around for someone to blame.’
In urging the graduates to take on the challenges facing the country, he circled back to the oil spill in the gulf, which has gotten him caught up in that blame game.
‘We’ve got an economy to rebuild, children to educate, diseases to cure,’ Mr. Obama said. ‘We’ve got threats to face; we’ve got an oil spill to clean up.’”
Wall Street Journal — Obama to Reopen Oil Drilling
Writers Laura Meckler and Jonathan Weisman get the first part of a 1-2 punch on offshore drilling rules.
Locals on the Gulf Coast are furious about the temporary moratorium on shallow water petroleum exploration. Combined with the six-month halt to new deepwater wells, the moratorium is keeping people out of work. The folks on the gulf, including the widows of men killed in the BP fiasco, know there will be more drilling one day no matter what people say, and while they want better regulation, crippling another part of the economy doesn’t make sense to them.
There’s also the general economic concern that the oil smackdown being delivered by Obama will mean a rapid rise is energy prices, which might further stifle the shaky recovery in an election year.
The administration is doing a good news, bad news game on this one: first going to the Journal to say that they are moving fast to announce the rules for shallow-water exploration. Then when the folks at the WaPo start beefing about the return to drilling so soon, the Obamanauts will hit them with the second part of the news combo punch: The rules will be brutal!
That way you get an “Obama reopens oil drilling” headline for business folks and an “Obama cracks down on oil drillers headline” for the people who work in government and academia.
This is all part of an effort to fashion legislation that will permanently alter drilling rules and, the administration hopes, advance its anti-global warming agenda.
“Retired U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who heads the federal response, said BP’s latest emergency containment system is on track to capture as much as 15,000 barrels of oil per day, which is the maximum amount of oil the drill ship on the surface can process. BP’s latest update on the rate of recovery late Monday implies that the containment procedure is approaching that limit. Any leakage beyond 15,000 barrels per day will continue to go into the sea until a second ship arrives, likely in mid-June.”
New York Times — Merkel Unveils Austerity Package for Germany
The Germans are upset that their carefully pruned and nurtured 60-year-old welfare state has to take a hit because the Greeks were so greedy and lazy in soaking up the benefits of socialism and EUnion.
Angela Merkel is facing the orderly but obstinate protests of labor groups in her country who say that her $102 billion (When did the Times stop converting currency figures by the way? How boorish.) austerity package will deprive them of promised benefits.
As David Cameron gets ready to roll out his own austerity measures to prevent the Greek fire from spreading across the channel, he is watching very closely. It’s one thing to have revolting Greeks, but if the Northern Europeans will take to the streets over bennies, Cameron will have to be more cautious.
Socialism can be sustained for much longer in rule-following societies where social norms encourage thrift and industry and punish slothful violations of the social compact.
In laid back societies, getting that whole “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” deal to stick is pretty tough.
So now the Germans, who work hard for their lavish social welfare system of extended vacations and ample government services, have to pay the price because of Greek and Spanish profligacy.
But Merkel and Cameron aren’t just hearing from the prospective pensioners. They’re getting an earful from President Obama and his team who are warning strenuously against the curtailment of government supports for the economy.
(Imagine what they’re telling Ben Bernanke about keeping the fake money flowing here!)
Obama is paying lip service to fiscal restraint, but means to keep the cash flow flowing – his deficit reduction panel even asked for a budget increase.
But Germany has little choice because its Schuldenbremse – a “debt brake” that forbids the kind of binge deficit spending we’ve had in the past three years.
Writer Judy Dempsy explains that what really has team Obama steamed is that the Germans are doing better than the rest of the West right now and still refuse to keep slatternly books in order to pump funny money into the economy and induce irrational spending by its citizens.
“Timothy F. Geithner, the U.S. Treasury secretary, over the weekend urged “stronger domestic demand growth” in European countries, especially in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, which has a large trade surplus.
Opinion polls published Monday indicated that Germans were not willing to spend and instead would save because of the fear of losing their jobs. This is despite the fact that the unemployment rate in Germany fell for the 11th month running in May, a rare exception among euro-zone countries.
The decline pushed the adjusted jobless rate down to 7.7 percent in May from 7.8 percent in the previous month, according to the Federal Labor Office.”
Wall Street Journal — California Is Stuck in 1st Gear
If the United States were the European Union, we’d have our Greece where our Germany ought to be.
Our biggest, most economically important state is an economic basket case that has been pushed past the breaking point by unaffordable welfare programs and been rendered ungovernable by public trade unions.
While Texas provides an increasingly important economic engine, the tarnished Golden State is a real threat to the American Way and a continuing drag on the national economy.
As you watch the election returns tonight and read about them tomorrow, the fate of incumbent Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas will rightly predominate. She would be the fifth incumbent member of Congress to lose in a primary this year. There were four in all of 2008, all from the House. Lincoln would be the third senator this year.
Everybody thought 2008 was a realigning election. You ain’t seen nothing yet, folks.
(The Journal’s useful election guide is here.)
But the smart news consumer will watch what happens in California very closely and continue to do so.
Two mega-rich ladies who formerly helmed tech companies seem to have managed to spend their ways through the populist landmines of 2010 (primary spending in the two GOP races blew past the $150 million mark) and are poised to make a general election pitch about jobs, growth, etc.
If Californians are in a mood to listen, it will be a sign that our Athens on the Pacific is ready to change its ways. If traditional California politicians Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer can skate through easily because of union backing, we’ll know California is in a long-term haze.
Awesomely named writer Cari Tuna tells us why California elections matter so much.
“In April, the last month for which state data are available, California nonfarm employment fell 2.5% from a year earlier, compared with a 1.1% national drop, as the state lost a higher percentage of jobs in the recession and has added a smaller percentage this year. The state’s 12.6% jobless rate far exceeded the 9.9% U.S. rate in April, as reported by the Labor Department…
That has national implications, because California’s $1.8 trillion economy represents 13% of U.S. economic output, according to the California Department of Finance.”
New York Times — 10 NATO Soldiers Die in Afghanistan
Our Afghan enemies used to only fight battles, but came to also use the Iraqi-style improvised explosive device, greatly increasing their ability to inflict casualties on U.S. troops.
But we’ve now seen something even worse, which is the rise in suicide bombings. It increases the death toll for our boys and demonstrates that the locals are radicalizing and that global jihadis are making their way to the world’s backwater.
On Monday, eight Americans (including one contractor), and five allied troops were killed. That follows a deadly Sunday that saw five coalition troops killed.
That’s 245 killed so far this year, and fighting season is just getting started.
Writer Rod Nordland reports on Monday’s killings:
“The deaths came in six separate attacks in the south and east of the country, according to statements from the International Security Assistance Force, as the NATO force in Afghanistan is known.”
–To get Morning Must Reads in your inbox every weekday click here.
