Obamanation

Obama even reversed an earlier decision to open access to coastal waters for exploration, placing a seven-year ban on drilling in the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Oil production in the Gulf is expected to drop by 220 thousand barrels per day in 2011, which is going to cost the U.S. some $1.35 billion in revenues in 2011. Not only are we losing oil production and revenues, the administration's actions are destroying jobs in the oil industry and elsewhere. Many companies are going out of business.

President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) will finally hit the links for a round of golf — and al fresco negotiation.... Obama prefers to hit public courses with a handful of friends and White House staffers while Boehner favors private courses, golf fundraisers and schmoozing sessions with other pols....

The president has been unable to curb the nation's nine percent unemployment rate, so he will be forced to put the best possible face on a sputtering recovery. Democratic strategists say that means adopting an ungainly three-pronged political approach: Talking up economic gains since the darkest days of 2008 and 2009, highlighting a modest job-creation agenda blocked by Republicans and making the case that things would be far worse if the GOP were in charge. Above all, he must avoid even the slightest hint of triumphalism on the economy — no missions have been accomplished — to avoid angering Americans still struggling to find jobs. [Obama looks at gardening gloves]

According to the unemployment data released this morning, the economy added only 54,000 jobs, pushing the unemployment rate up to 9.1 percent.... If Morgan Stanley is correct, about half of last month's job growth came from the venerable fast-food chain. That is hardly the sign of a healthy economy....

Does it matter if the president chooses to play golf on Memorial Day, and for the second time in his presidency (he did so as well in 2009)? I think it does, and it displays extraordinarily bad judgment, not only by Obama himself but also by his advisers. His chief of staff for example should have firmly cautioned against it. President Obama is not just any American but Commander in Chief of the US Armed Forces. The United States is currently engaged in a major war in Afghanistan with over 100,000 troops on the ground, and more than 1,500 have already laid down their lives for their country. The least the president can do on Memorial Day is spend the whole day with veterans and servicemen's families while acknowledging their sacrifice. As Koffler points out above, President George W. Bush stopped playing golf out of respect for the families of Iraq War dead. This demonstrated not only good judgment but humility and respect for the men and women who keep America safe.

Today Canada demonstrated leadership at the G8 and clobbered Barack Obama and his Israel hating buddies: "Canadian delegation blocks mention of 1967 lines in Group of Eight leaders' joint statement calling Israel, Palestinians to return to peace talks.

The bullet which killed Yonatan Netanyahu was most likely provided to his killer through the largesse of Andrei Gromyko. The same man to whom Zakaria now compares Yonatan's younger brother, Binyamin. Perhaps Zakaria just hadn't thought of calling Binyamin Netanyahu, the elected leader of a sovereign nation and a stalwart US ally, a talk show slut. With Zakaria's column, it becomes clear that Barack Obama's mainstream media will stoop to any low, no matter how vile or disgraceful or personal, to protect their guy.

The First Lady is not content with corrupting American children at the White House. In a Q&A with British high school girls at Oxford University Michelle continued to promote the rapper Common. Bizarre.

the last few weeks have cast him as the least competent manager of America's Middle East diplomatic portfolio in a very long time. He has infuriated and frustrated long term friends, but made no headway in reconciling enemies. He has strained our ties with the established regimes without winning new friends on the Arab Street. He has committed our forces in the strategically irrelevant backwater of Libya not, as he originally told us, for "days, not weeks" but for months not days. Where he has failed so dramatically is in the arena he himself has so frequently identified as vital: the search for peace between Palestinians and Israelis. His record of grotesque, humiliating and total diplomatic failure in his dealings with Prime Minister Netanyahu has few parallels in American history.

House Assistant Democratic Leader Jim Clyburn, the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, on Wednesday blamed most of President Barack Obama's political problems on racism. [They're getting lamer and lamer, these race-baiting Democrazies. It's raaaacism — sorry… not!]

What do psychopaths want? What are their motivations? Hare: They want many of the same basic things that the rest of us want, but, in addition, have an inordinate need for power, prestige, wealth, and so forth. They differ from most of us in terms of how much they "need," their sense of entitlement to whatever they want, and the means with which they are willing to achieve their ends. They also differ dramatically from others in the communal nature of their needs and goals. That is, the sense of altruism, concern for the welfare of family, friends, and society, and the social rules, expectations, and reciprocity that guide most people are irrelevant to psychopaths. They operate according to their own self-serving principle: look out for number 1, no matter what the cost to others, and without guilt or remorse.

Had Factcheck.org captioned a photo of the back of the document where the seal was admittedly applied, many of us may have long ago noticed that the seal's image and text were lowered, not raised, from the surface of the paper. The seal photographed appears on the back of the document as a "lowered" image of a 'Hawaii Department of Health' seal. It is not a 'raised' seal…and that means the document photographed by Factcheck.org is not legally certified according to Hawaii's regulations. This attempt to deceive the public is diabolically tricky, slippery and yet…so simple to prove: We have high resolution photographs of the front and back of the seal in various light and at various angles that prove it.

House lawmakers from both parties are siding with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over President Obama in their differing approaches to the Israel-Palestine border dispute. ... Rep. Robert Andrews (D-N.J.) said Tuesday that Obama is "tilting toward Hamas" ... Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.), for one, said the president "absolutely … made a mistake ... With all of the political turmoil and unrest in the Middle East, I don't understand why the president injected himself into that issue right now...." Both Rep. Steny Hoyer (Md.), the House Democratic whip, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) have also rejected Obama's proposal in recent days, telling the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that preconditions have no place in the negotiations. ...

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood unveiled new fuel-economy window stickers for cars and trucks, saying "we're not just sitting around waiting for high gasoline prices to come down." His ride of choice to the unveiling: This 12-mpg Chevy Suburban SUV.