The President's Salty Language

The president sat down with NBC and said this now infamous phrase.

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 answers, so I know whose ass to kick.

The president will run into several problems with this comment. First, everyone from Maureen Dowd, James Carville, Frank Rich, and Spike Lee have all been out to proclaim the president isn't angry enough. Now, suddenly the president is acting angry. So, is this real or is it manufactured in response to the criticism? No one knows but the president has only recently shown anger.

The bigger problem is that this statement, along with many others, don't match with reality. The president has held BP responsible and a Department of Interior staffer was fired. Besides that, no one really knows "who's ass to kick". The president is proclaiming that he's holding round the clock meetings to figure out what happened and who to blame. So far, we know little about either.

Now, personally, I'd think that first and foremost you fix the problem and then investigate everything and hold everyone responsible. The president is determined to do both simultaneously. That's why the Attorney General was in the gulf. That's why he's already threatening to bring criminal charges.

All of that may in fact be necessary at some point. That said, oil spews, the gulf whithers away, and the president is helpless. Worse yet, for all his bluster about holding people responsible, he's held few responsible. He's not really doing either, cleaning the gulf or holding people responsible.

Obama; Government Can Solve All Problems..Except All It Can't

It appears that the so called top kill method has failed.

Three attempts to pump mud and 16 tries to stuff solid material into a breached Gulf of Mexico oil well failed to stop the flow, top BP executives said Saturday, and engineers and executives with the oil giant have decided to "move on to the next option."

That option: Place a custom-built cap to fit over the "lower marine riser package," BP chief operation officer Doug Suttles said. BP crews were already at work Saturday to ready the materials for that option, he said.

From here, BP is now admitting that it may not be until August until this leak is finally plugged.

A BP executive says a relief well is the "end point" of efforts to stop the Gulf oil spill — which suggests there's little chance of plugging the leak until the new well is completed in August.

With BP declaring failure in its latest attempt to plug the uncontrolled gusher feeding the worst oil spill in U.S. history, the company is turning to yet another mix of risky undersea robot maneuvers and longshot odds to keep crude from flowing into the Gulf.

Meanwhile, everyone watches helplessly as the oil reaches the shore slowly, more and more video of wildlife covered in oil come, and an environmental disaster begins. The one that looks most helpless is the President himself. It's unclear what if anything the president can do to make the situation better. What is clear is that in the campaign the president presented himself as herculean. Who can forget this piece of soaring rhetoric.

generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment” — when, among other wonders, “the rise of the oceans began to slow.”

Of course, it wasn't merely campaign rhetoric upon which Obama said that there was nothing the government couldn't do. The entire health care debate was predicated on the idea that health insurance companies were gouging us and the government was going to "hold them accountable".

The entire financial reform debate was predicated on the idea that the financial world was nothing more than the Wild Wild West and now there would be a new sheriff to reign them all in.

In Barack Obama's world, there is nothing that the government can solve. Nothing that is besides this sticky little oil leak. There we have a serious problem for this president. In the same vein, he also said that Cap and Trade would usher in a new day of energy independence. Again, there's nothing the government can't solve. Nothing that is but this sticky oil leak. The president sits back helpless. The oil leaks. It reaches closer to shore. The damage to the environment and to the economy is simply unimaginable and the president can't do a thing to stop it. If he's helpless here, how can he credibly claim to solve any problems?

Caldwell to Challenge Health Care's Constitutionality

By the end of 2010, I predict that Buddy Caldwell will take over for Joe Liberman as Republican's favorite Democrat. Caldwell is conducting the most serious investigation of ACORN. At some point, I believe he will come down with serious charges. He's also become the first Democratic AG to challenge the constitutionality of health care reform.

Caldwell said through a spokeswoman that he has not yet decided whether Louisiana will join other states that are fighting the health care bill on constitutional grounds, or file a separate suit to "protect the rights of Louisianians that are adversely impacted by the recently passed federal legislation on health care."

The comments by Caldwell, a Democrat, came on a day when Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum announced that he and nine other attorneys general plan to challenge the constitutionality of the bill as an infringement on state sovereignty.

Gov. Bobby Jindal said he supports Caldwell's efforts, and that the bill that cleared Congress late Sunday without a Republican vote is an unconstitutional expansion of federal power because it would require most Americans to carry health insurance by 2014 or face a fine.

This is a break through in that Democrats can no longer claim that these challenges are strictly partisan. The number of states that are challenging the constitutionality of health care reform is growing. That will become the story of the spring and summer. It's hard to imagine that the Supreme Court won't look at this case. From there, it's anyone's guess.

The issue will come down to whether or not the federal government can force an individual to buy anything, health insurance included. Such a view would see the powers of the federal government as quite expansive.

Whatever the outcome, the spectacle of about half the states taking on the federal government will be political theater at its finest. It will also be a major embarrassment for Obama as many states revolt against him. Of course, if he loses, his entire administration will again be in danger.