konane's Blog

June 30, 2010 4:00 A.M.

"Obama the Edsel
Focus groups indicate independents are souring on Obama quickly.
Jim Geraghty
Source National Review Online

"Earlier this month, Resurgent Republic — an independent public-opinion-research group headed by former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie — conducted focus groups in five key House districts, measuring how independent voters and, separately, self-identified tea-party members felt about the direction of the country.

Bad news for President Obama and congressional Democrats is common these days, but these results unveiled Tuesday are simply dismal. Asked to compare Obama to a car, one Iowan chose an Edsel: “Something that had a lot of hype, but failed to live up to expectations.” Another older man described Obama as “a wrecked Ferrari, something that looked great to many people, but was now ruined.”

“In August 2009, [our focus groups found] there was a wait-and-see attitude towards the president. That has changed,” summarized Gillespie. “There is not only growing concern about spending, debt and the direction of economy but creeping doubts about the president’s leadership abilities, which is probably a more troublesome concern to the White House and the president’s supporters.”

Independents said that the manner in which President Obama responded to the oil spill made them more apprehensive about what would happen should a terrorist attack or foreign-policy crisis occur. The Democrats’ traditional advantage with women reversed, at least in regard to this issue. Jan van Lohuizen, who conducted the focus group in Orlando, noted that after the oil spill, “independent women are more pessimistic about his leadership” in dealing with another crisis in the future. “Men were a little more optimistic. You heard them saying, ‘He’ll learn, the people around him will learn.’ If President Obama mishandles the next serious challenge, these views will be set in cement,” he added.

But the pollsters also noted a challenge for Republican candidates in this cycle among women; while the tea-party voters embraced the “checks and balances” argument — that Republicans needed greater numbers in Congress to prevent Democrat excesses — independent women seemed unenthusiastic, lamenting that as a formula for more tiresome partisan division. “Where tea-party voters say, ‘let’s have more Republican members to check Democrats,’ independent women in particular see it as just more infighting, more gridlock, more nasty negative politics and they say, ‘I am really not looking forward to that,’” van Lohuizen said.

He noted several results that surprised him. “Independents are now thinking about the same issues that Republicans are, and their thinking is virtually indistinguishable from Republicans,” he said. “Independents are really engaged, they are really paying attention. That is not normal; usually independents are a little tuned out.”

He said that changes in independents’ perceptions of Obama can largely be attributed to a pair of key events. The first was the health-care legislation, “not the content but the way it was adopted. It was backroom politics, smoke-filled rooms, deals.”

The second was the Gulf: “They really looked at him and drew a different conclusion. They don’t see managerial experience; they started seeing that he hasn’t really managed the crisis.” The focus groups in Florida and Arkansas seemed most focused on the president’s response to the spill.

All of the bad news for Democrats is not necessarily good news for Republicans.

Glen Bolger, who conducted the focus groups among self-identified tea-party voters in Des Moines, Iowa, said that the participants didn’t quite match the common perception.

“They were really more frustrated and disappointed than angry — no raised voices, no curse words,” Bolger said. “You kept hearing words like ‘downhill,’ ‘bankrupt,’ ‘falling apart.’ There was no optimism or hope for the future. They have no reason to believe things will get better. . . . On Obama, they described him as ‘all style, no substance.’ They gave him credit for being a good speaker and charismatic, but characterized him as not coming through and not delivering.”

Gillespie said today’s tea-party voters were somewhat comparable to the H. Ross Perot voters who emerged as a bloc in the 1992 election. “They self-differentiate from Republicans,” he said. “If a former RNC chair sits in the National Press club and says, ‘They’re Republicans,’ that will [tick] them off. . . . We have to deliver. If we say we are going to cut spending, we have to deliver. . . . That’s why there are so many independents who are conservatives and tea-party types.” Emphasizing that elected Republicans have to establish that they keep their promises, Gillespie described the fights over spending waged by the two newest GOP governors, Bob McDonnell in Virginia and Chris Christie in New Jersey, as “very important fights for the party moving forward.”

The five congressional districts in which Resurgent Republic held focus groups were won by either John McCain or George Bush and held by a Democratic member of Congress: Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District, represented by Leonard Boswell; Ohio’s 1st Congressional District, represented by Steve Dreihaus; New Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District, represented by John Adler; Arkansas’s 2nd Congressional District, where Democrat Vic Snyder is retiring and Tim Griffin — who was Research Director at the RNC while Gillespie was chairman — is the GOP nominee; and Florida’s 24th Congressional District, represented by Democrat Suzanne Kosmas. Gillespie said that during the focus-group discussions, none of the participants mentioned their congressman as an exception to their low opinion of Washington."

— Jim Geraghty writes the Campaign Spot on NRO.

http://article.nationalreview.com/437345/obama-the-edsel/jim-geraghty

Excellent article, valid points for both in and out of the box thinking.

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"RAHN: Obama's fiscal fantasyland
Only true Keynesians still think we can spend our way to prosperity

By Richard W. Rahn
5:52 p.m., Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Source The Washington Times

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jun/29/obamas-fiscal-fantasyland/

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/06/026603.php

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/06/026649.php

Masseuse Claimed Former Vice President Subjected Her to 'Unwanted Sexual Touching' in 2006

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/al-gore-sex-abuse-case-reopened-portland/story?id=11059203

http://www.nationalenquirer.com/new_evidence_gore_sex_scandal_exclusive_interview_masseuse_/celebrity/68913

June 29, 2010 Posted by John at 12:48 PM

"These days, there is no more effective public servant than New Jersey's governor Chris Christie. In this CNBC video, he runs a victory lap following the New Jersey legislature's adoption of his austerity budget on a bipartisan basis. The budget closes a massive deficit by cutting spending by 9%, with no increased taxes. Every special interest group hated the budget, and some have threatened to sue. Governor Christie's response: "If they want to sue me, they can get in line."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/06/026639.php

"After a couple of very quiet weeks, things became a bit hectic this week after our very own Director of Government Relations, Rosemary Jenks, learned of an Amnesty plan being discussed behind closed doors that includes the abuse of executive actions. The news was made public on Tuesday when Sen. Chuck Grassley drafted a letter signed by seven other Senators, asking the White House for answers.

So what exactly is being discussed behind closed doors by the Democratic Leadership?

Since Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi can't secure enough votes in Congress to pass a mass Amnesty bill this year, the Obama Administration is thinking of using two executive actions to offer an Amnesty to the nation's estimated 11-18 million illegal aliens.

By using 'deferred action' or 'parole', the Administration is planning to provide the nation's illegal aliens with work permits and temporary legal status while Congress searches for votes on a mass Amnesty bill.

Both actions are intended to be used on a case-by-case basis and only for extenuating circumstances. Though both actions are legal, they certainly weren't intended to be used for more than 10 million illegal aliens at one time.

Read a full analysis of what the Administration plans to do in Roy's blog, and then listen to this radio interview with Rosemary for more details.

Since we learned of this 'sneaky amnesty plan', you've sent more than 200,000 faxes to the White House and your three Members of Congress. We've also posted two phone notes on your Action Board with talking points for calls to your Members of Congress and Pres. Obama. We've also started a new petition to the President, voicing opposition to this plan."

Thanks,
Chris Chmielenski
Website Content Manager

http://www.numbersusa.com/content/node/6946?jid=593160&lid=9&rid=3838&tid=1092954

June 24, 2010 Posted by John at 6:26 PM

"Today's Rasmussen Reports has two surveys that relate directly to the Tea Party movement. The first is in Nevada, where Sharron Angle leads Harry Reid by 48-41 among likely voters. Eight percent prefer "some other candidate;" those, presumably, are the ones who would like to get rid of Reid but have serious reservations about Ms. Angle. Attitudes may change, in either direction, as voters learn more about the Republican nominee, but for now, at least, fears that the Tea Party movement has generated a weak candidate look overblown.

The second survey typifies Rasmussen's knack for asking interesting questions. He asked adults (not likely voters) whether the government is a threat to individual rights, or a protector of individual rights. By a 48-37 margin, Americans see the government more as a threat to their rights than as their guarantor.

Liberals view Tea Partiers as weirdos largely because they do not understand why Americans would see their government as a threat. To liberals, government represents all that is good about the human condition. (I might see it that way if, like so many liberals, I was living on government checks.) As the Rasmussen survey indicates, however, the idea that government represents a threat to our liberties is not a fancy of the lunatic fringe; rather, it is the view of a plurality of Americans. As it was, of course, the opinion of the founders."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/06/026607.php

"An oil worker who survived the BP Deepwater Horizon explosion has claimed that the oil rig's safety equipment was leaking several weeks before it exploded, triggering the huge spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Tyrone Benton says that he spotted a leak on the rig's Blowout Preventer (BOP), the device that is meant to shut the well down if there is an accident. He told the BBC's Panorama programme that both BP and Transocean, who owned the rig, were informed of the leak, and the faulty part – a control pod – was switched off rather than being repaired.

"We saw a leak on the pod [and] we informed the company," Benton told the programme, which will be broadcast at 8.30pm tonight. "They have a control room where they could turn off that pod and turn on the other one, so that they don't have to stop production."

Benton added that he was unsure whether the leaking control pod had been turned back on again before a huge gas explosion ripped through the rig on 20 April, killing 11 workers.

The failure of the BOP was one key factor that led to the ongoing environmental disaster. The BOP is designed to clamp the well tightly shut, using cutting equipment to slice through the casing, but on 20 April it did not engage.

After the explosion, BP sent robot submarines down to the seabed to try to trigger the BOP, but failed. The company has already admitted to a Congressional committee that the robots discovered a leak in the BOP's hydraulic systems, which meant they could not generate enough force for its giant shears to cut through the pipe.

Last week, BP chief executive Tony Hayward repeatedly cited the BOP as a major cause of the disaster, saying it was "not as failsafe" as BP had been told.

Benton's revelations will pile even more pressure on BP, at a time when its minority party in the leaking well is refusing to pay its share of the costs. Anadarko Petroleum Corporation argues that BP was "grossly negligent" or guilty of "willful misconduct" in the way it drilled the Macondo prospect, which some workers described as a "nightmare well". Last week the Congressional committee accused BP of taking "risky" decisions to save time and money.

And in another development, BP has been accused of lying after internal documents showed that it has estimated that the leak could reach 100,000 barrels a day, much higher than its public forecasts.

$2bn and rising

The cost of the clean-up operation has now broken through the $2bn (£1.3bn) mark, BP told the City this morning. That is just a fraction of the total bill, though, with BP already committed to putting $20bn into an escrow account to cover compensation claims. That will not cap its liabilities, though, and there are suggestions that BP is now looking to raise $50bn.

The company has said it will sell off some of its assets. This has raised concerns in several countries, including Russia, where the TNK-BP joint venture generates around a quarter of BP's global production.

Hayward is to fly to Russia to assure the Kremlin that BP can survive the oil spill disaster, the Financial Times reported today.

BP's chief executive took the decision to meet Russian president Dmitry Medvedev in the next few weeks following a weekend board meeting, and after Medvedev warned that the catastrophe could lead to BP's "annihilation".

BP continues to insist that it will clean up the spill and pay "all legitimate claims", and rejected Anadarko's claims.

"These allegations will neither distract the company's focus on stopping the leak nor alter our commitment to restore the Gulf coast," said Hayward. "Other parties besides BP may be responsible for costs and liabilities arising from the oil spill, and we expect those parties to live up to their obligations."

Shares in BP fell by more than 3% this morning to 345p, making it the biggest faller on the FTSE 100. Swiss bank UBS warned shareholders that it did not expect the company to resume paying dividends until 2012. Last week it agreed to cancel payments for the rest of this year, but UBS believes that the cost of the Deepwater spill means a longer suspension is inevitable.

City sources believe that BP may have to sell its operations in the North Sea as part of its drive to cut spending and raise funds."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/21/bp-oil-spill-deepwater-horizon-leak

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/28/AR2010062802134_pf.html

"Want to protect the poor? Then give them jobs

Most people who are 'forced’ into minimum wage jobs move quite quickly up the earnings ladder, says Janet Daley

By Janet Daley
Published: 9:00PM BST 26 Jun 2010

Source Telegraph.co.uk

"At last, we are having the right argument for our time. Virtually everybody who is in touch with political reality now accepts that the old contest – socialism vs capitalism – is over. We all believe, with greater or lesser degrees of enthusiasm, in free-market economics. So the real source of contention that remains is the size and role of the state.

Anyone who thinks that this is a puny arena – that the boundaries of debate have shrunk to a less inspirational, purely managerial scale – is mistaken. The passion with which those on the Left are now defending their new turf should make it clear: this fight will be to the death because the power of government to control social and economic outcomes is seen by them as the last plausible incarnation of their moral world-view. The current arguments about welfare reform which the Government has robustly initiated are going to bring this abstract confrontation into the day-to-day experience of national life.

Now it is perfectly understandable that those who have a vested interest in state power – public sector trade union leaders, for example – should be prepared to risk everything to preserve it, but have the more thoughtful Left-liberal proponents really thought this through? Are they actually prepared to go down fighting for the idea that the state is the source of social virtue and must be the answer to all of our civic problems?

If we learnt anything from the terrible ideological crimes of the 20th century, it was that over-powerful states were dangerous: that even if they did not commit murder or enslave their own populations, their good intentions ended up producing perverse effects simply through the gross, insensitive interventions of central bureaucracy which could take no account of individual needs. Can anyone still believe that the largely catastrophic consequences of Big State solutions to poverty, to housing shortages, to unemployment, to educational disadvantage, have been pure coincidence?

The effect of government housing programmes is a perfect case. Council housing – with its class-ghetto implications – always seemed to me to be a pernicious social phenomenon, reinforcing social divisions and encouraging passivity. Not only were people told where they would live, but they were often forbidden to make changes to – or take responsibility for – their own homes. But now, in areas where unemployment has become endemic, council estates have become social death-traps.

As Iain Duncan Smith points out in our interview with him today, the security of tenure of the council tenant means that he dare not risk moving to another area of the country – or even to the far side of his own city – to seek employment for fear of losing his housing rights. So we have large swaths of unemployed people tied like serfs to the land, in workless communities, doomed to a hopeless future in which no one in their everyday acquaintance is in paid employment.

This is a grotesque state of affairs that was born out of good intentions, but by now it should be clear why it has come to this pass: when the state creates a mass, collectivist solution to a problem, it ends up treating people as categories (“the poor”, “the deprived”, “the homeless”) rather than as individuals who are ultimately going to have to determine their own fate.

Mr Duncan Smith speaks of introducing mechanisms for “portability” and “flexibility” in housing provision, which is another way of saying that we must create routes for people to escape from the monolithic state solution in which they are imprisoned.

The council estate is a way of encasing people in a bricks-and-mortar embodiment of government policy, but benefit dependency is a more all-encompassing form of incarceration from which it can be virtually impossible to break free. The scandal of welfare dependency as a way of life is now so well-established that there is no need to rehearse its depressing facts again.

But we must be clear that we have not got to where we are by accident. It is the basic premise of Big State thinking that has produced the monstrous edifice that we know as the benefits trap: the idea that “the poor” are a fixed and immutable section of society who must be “protected”. Sadly, what “protecting the poor” generally amounts to in practice is “protecting poverty” – which is to say, preserving it. Welfare dependency creates huge disincentives to entering employment because few jobs at entry level can offer a competitive package of payments and support equivalent to the benefits system.

At this point the Big State camp will shriek: “Why should people be forced into demeaning, low-paid jobs?” Answer: because most of them will not stay on such low pay for long. All the statistical evidence from the US welfare-reform programmes shows that people who are “forced” into minimum wage jobs initially, move up the earnings ladder quite quickly into better-paid employment, with their places at the bottom being filled by newer recruits to the workforce. Getting a job at almost any rate of pay is, indeed, the best and most lasting route out of poverty.

There may always be a cohort of people in low-paid work, but the important thing is that they not be the same people. Poverty should always be regarded as temporary: the goal should be to facilitate people moving out of it. At the moment, our tax and benefits system penalises people both for taking a job in the first place and then for climbing up the income ladder. This is crazy – and it is a direct consequence of the tendency of government programmes to regard personal initiative and effort as a bureaucratic inconvenience.

The tragic inevitability of government intervention is that when you create a permanent agency to deal with a problem it has an inherent tendency to make the problem itself permanent. This is not only for self-serving reasons – to justify its own continued existence – but because it prefers to deal in fixed entities such as poverty, deprivation, or educational inequality, rather than to view the infinite range of human possibilities and personal circumstances as a dynamic, ever-changing spectrum in which individual vagaries matter more than any total result.

Labour’s “target culture”, which is now being busily disowned by absolutely everybody, even its own architects, was the final apotheosis of Big State folly. But the idea that every social outcome and public-service goal could be quantified in objective terms was really just the logical conclusion of a philosophy of government that no one in his right mind should adhere to any longer."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/janetdaley/7856396/Want-to-protect-the-poor-Then-give-them-jobs.html

-

Long, detailed with dates, well worth the time to read.  

_________________

"Regulators Failed to Address Risks in Oil Rig Fail-Safe Device - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/us/21blowout.html

"It doesn't have quite the snappy ring of "Joe the Plumber," but it will do. Earlier today Joe Biden was in Wisconsin, trying to help Russ Feingold salvage his Senate run, and he stopped at a frozen custard stand. When he asked the proprietor how much the custard cost, the proprietor answered, "Nothing, just lower our taxes." Here is the exchange:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzBzytYUdhk

Biden, of course, had no response. The last thing Joe Biden or any other Democrat intends to do is lower any taxpayer's bill. The longer the Dems govern, the more obvious it becomes that there is a stark and growing division between two categories of citizens with diametrically opposed economic interests: those who work in the private sector and those who are government employees. The Democrats are the party of the public employee unions. That sums them up in a nutshell; there isn't much more to be said about them.

This graph, courtesy of Veronique de Rugy at The Corner, depicts the contrast in these two groups' fortunes. Since the recession started, almost eight million private sector jobs have been lost. But no worries if you're a government employee; in the public sector, almost 600,000 jobs have been gained. We are experiencing a deep private sector recession, combined with a government boom:

******GRAPH ******

The Democrats' "stimulus" bill was a joke. Much of the money never has been spent, and most of what was spent went to state and local governments to subsidize the salaries of public employees, the Democratic Party's core constituency. Consequently, the public employee boom continued as the recession deepened.

If you are a government employee, you have little reason to favor tax cuts: taxes pay your salary. As confiscatory taxation and over-regulation strangle private enterprise, the government is presented with endless excuses to increase public employment as a supposed response to the crisis in the private sector. It is a vicious cycle, but one that inevitably comes to an end. The goose stops laying eggs, or, as Margaret Thatcher put it, eventually you run out of other people's money.

In the meantime, the sharp conflict we are experiencing between government and the private sector is almost enough to make a neo-Marxist out of me. We have an oppressive ruling class--the government and its foot-soldiers, members of AFSCME--and an exploited, subservient working class, those who toil in the private sector for wages that currently average only around one-half of what our ruling class, government employees, are paid. The tick, in other words, is now faring much better than the dog.

Workers of the private sector, arise! You can no longer afford to keep your public sector masters in the lavish style to which they have become accustomed.

UPDATE: Biden thought Kopp was being a "smartass" for suggesting that the Democrats should lower taxes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO13_tJ6x44

Everyone involved laughed it off, but a serious point lingered. 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."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/06/026620.php

Wonder what kind of storm this would have created if done under the Bush Presidency??????????????  Of course it doesn't give them the power to quiet dissension, censor or control information ..... because they said so.

___________

"Obama Internet kill switch plan approved by US Senate

President could get power to turn off Internet

By Grant Gross
Published: 11:02 GMT, 25 June 10

Source Techworld.com

"A US Senate committee has approved a wide-ranging cybersecurity bill that some critics have suggested would give the US president the authority to shut down parts of the Internet during a cyberattack.

Senator Joe Lieberman and other bill sponsors have refuted the charges that the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act gives the president an Internet "kill switch." Instead, the bill puts limits on the powers the president already has to cause "the closing of any facility or stations for wire communication" in a time of war, as described in the Communications Act of 1934, they said in a breakdown of the bill published on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee website.

The committee unanimously approved an amended version of the legislation by voice vote Thursday, a committee spokeswoman said. The bill next moves to the Senate floor for a vote, which has not yet been scheduled.

Obama security review gets mixed reception

The bill, introduced earlier this month, would establish a White House Office for Cyberspace Policy and a National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications, which would work with private US companies to create cybersecurity requirements for the electrical grid, telecommunications networks and other critical infrastructure.

The bill also would allow the US president to take emergency actions to protect critical parts of the Internet, including ordering owners of critical infrastructure to implement emergency response plans, during a cyber-emergency. The president would need congressional approval to extend a national cyber-emergency beyond 120 days under an amendment to the legislation approved by the committee.

The legislation would give the US Department of Homeland Security authority that it does not now have to respond to cyber-attacks, Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, said earlier this month.

"Our responsibility for cyber defence goes well beyond the public sector because so much of cyberspace is owned and operated by the private sector," he said. "The Department of Homeland Security has actually shown that vulnerabilities in key private sector networks like utilities and communications could bring our economy down for a period of time if attacked or commandeered by a foreign power or cyber terrorists."

Other sponsors of the bill are Senators Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, and Tom Carper, a Delaware Democrat.

One critic said Thursday that the bill will hurt the nation's security, not help it. Security products operate in a competitive market that works best without heavy government intervention, said Wayne Crews, vice president for policy and director of technology studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an anti-regulation think tank.

"Policymakers should reject such proposals to centralize cyber security risk management," Crews said in an e-mail. "The Internet that will evolve if government can resort to a 'kill switch' will be vastly different from, and inferior to, the safer one that will emerge otherwise."

Cybersecurity technologies and services thrive on competition, he added. "The unmistakable tenor of the cybersecurity discussion today is that of government steering while the market rows," he said. "To be sure, law enforcement has a crucial role in punishing intrusions on private networks and infrastructure. But government must coexist with, rather than crowd out, private sector security technologies."

On Wednesday, 24 privacy and civil liberties groups sent a letter raising concerns about the legislation to the sponsors. The bill gives the new National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications "significant authority" over critical infrastructure, but doesn't define what critical infrastructure is covered, the letter said.

Without a definition of critical infrastructure there are concerns that "it includes elements of the Internet that Americans rely on every day to engage in free speech and to access information," said the letter, signed by the Center for Democracy and Technology, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other groups.

"Changes are needed to ensure that cybersecurity measures do not unnecessarily infringe on free speech, privacy, and other civil liberties interests," the letter added."

http://news.techworld.com/security/3228198/obama-internet-kill-switch-plan-approved-by-us-senate/?olo=rss

"Teen shot by Border Patrol had smuggling arrests

Jun 26, 1:16 AM (ET)By ALICIA A. CALDWELL

"EL PASO, Texas (AP) - A 15-year-old Mexican boy shot and killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent was among El Paso's most wanted juvenile immigrant smugglers, according to federal arrest records reviewed by The Associated Press......."

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100626/D9GIOGSO0.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/heritage-foundation-budget-spending-deficit-2010-6#-1

"Mark Tapscott: Big Government is dying in the Gulf oil spill UPDATED!

By: Mark Tapscott
Editorial Page Editor
June 24, 2010

Source Washington Examiner 

"It's not just millions of gallons of black gold spilling into the Gulf of Mexico that are being lost. Also disappearing into watery despair are the last shreds of credibility for progressive Big Government.

It's Day 65 of the Deepwater Horizon spill and the only hope of stopping the flow of thick, gooey crude remains the relief well being drilled by the private sector.

None of the ass-kicking political speeches by President Obama, bureaucratic edicts by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar or EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, or hypocritical posturing for the cameras in Congress has plugged the hole to stop the flow of suffocating oil headed to the beaches.

We see this week a remarkable confluence of events signaling the eventual end of Big Government: The bureaucrats and politicians can spend trillions but they can't plug the Gulf oil spill, agree on a budget in Congress or end the Great Recession's foreclosures and unemployment.

We've been here before. In the 1950s and '60s, Detroit's Big Three automakers utterly dominated the market. Americans bought only Chevys, Fords and Plymouths because our cars and trucks were "the standard of the world."

Detroit auto execs just laughed when Volkswagen Beetles trickled over here from Germany. Then, as Toyota and Honda began attracting serious attention from early adopting consumers, the Big Three confidently vowed to push the new invaders back to Japan.

It didn't happen. Instead, Detroit steadily lost the ability to produce quality products. By the 1970s, late-night comedians joked that every new Chrysler came with its very own union worker to reattach the chrome pieces as they fell off.

Imports couldn't be rolled back because General Motors, Ford and Chrysler were hamstrung by executive hubris and the endless demands of the United Auto Workers union for higher pay, more generous benefits and permanent job security. Give us the welfare state in microcosm or we will shut down the assembly lines, the union bosses shouted.

The execs caved, so American cars cost on average $2,000 more to build than those from Japan, and the union refused to give up the insanely complicated work rules that robbed management of needed flexibility to respond to a changing marketplace.

Predictably, when consumers compared Detroit's costlier offerings with cheaper, better-made Japanese products, they logically chose the latter. GM went from 60 percent market share to less than half that in the 1980s. Ford barely evaded bankruptcy and Chrysler survived only because Washington bailed it out.

Now it's Big Government that needs a bailout because its progressive politicians and bureaucrats can't stop doing what they've always done -- spending more, taxing more, regulating more, grabbing more power for themselves and their special interest buddies.

The result is that by trying to do everything for everybody, Big Government steadily loses the capacity to do anything for anybody. Thus, the oil keeps spilling into the Gulf as the politicians speechify, the bureaucrats issue new orders and the congressmen posture.

This is why, as just as most Americans long ago stopped trusting Detroit to build the world's best cars, today we no longer believe the grand promises that more massive, wasteful government will bring prosperity and good health for our families, security in our old age and a better life for our kids. We see the Gulf.

So do the progressives. Worrisome hints abound of their response to their swelling crisis:

They wrote Obamacare behind closed doors in Congress, then rode roughshod over public opposition to make it the law of the land.

At the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Election Commission, they're reaching for tools to silence their critics in the media and on the campaign trail. And when a judge rules their Gulf drilling ban is unconstitutional, they give him the middle finger, too, with a vow to impose a new ban.

In short, they're doing what they always do -- grabbing more power over the rest of us. And telling us it's for our own good.

UPDATED: New NBC/WSJ poll has jolt for Obama

AllahPundit at Hot Air says the oil spill calamity has finally begun to hurt President Obama's popularity and this development is reflected in the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal survey. The survey finds 42 percent approve of Obama's handling of the spill, while 50 percent disapprove.

Overall, according to NBC/WSJ, Obama's approval ratings stand at 45 percent approving and 48 percent disapprove. There is much, much more in the data and AllahPundit suggests starting on page 19 of the crosstabs."

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Big-Government-is-dying-in-the-Gulf-oil-spill-96985504.html