Breakfast Scramble

Obama dithered while the Gulf burned, a time line from Doug Ross:

Perhaps if the oil breached the Louisiana levees, then caught on fire, and then turned New Orleans into a Dresden-like inferno, the President would stop campaigning for a couple of days and actually pay attention to his own, personal Katrina.  Even The New York Times has noticed, decrying the President’s lackadaisical response.  But I’m guessing that somehow, someway, it’s all President Bush’s fault.

Doug has an impressive array of photos.

Send in the lawyers, more Doug Ross:

But the White House response has consisted of dispatching lawyers to New Orleans and shutting down other rigs that have nothing to do with the BP disaster.  On April 30th — ten days after the catastrophic explosion — the oil and gas news site RigZone reported that the White House had forbidden new drilling.

Note the Obami’s first response was not to contain the spill or to implement the existing contingency plan.  Rather the Obami’s first move was to shut down the oil industry in the entire Gulf.

Liar, liar, panties on fire, from Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit.

The Obami stuck on stupid, Reuters:

According to figures released by the Pentagon, the U.S. nuclear arsenal has been reduced by 84 percent from its maximum level of 31,225 warheads at the end of fiscal year 1967.

By releasing the data during the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference, analysts said the United States was trying to show it is cutting its arsenal so as to help persuade other states to tighten the global nonproliferation regime.

[…]

Historically, the overall size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal has been kept secret to help prevent potential adversaries from using the information to more precisely neutralize U.S. nuclear forces, analysts said, saying the stance was a Cold War relic.

Never let it be said that the Obami let a little thing like national security stand in the way of advancing Dim Won’s objectives.

Mickey Kaus, have unions gone too far? From Los Angeles Slimes:

Do you have to love labor unions to be a good Democrat? That was the question raised last year by the unpopular bailouts of unionized Detroit automakers. It’s been raised again this year by California’s budget crisis, created at least in part by generous pensions for unionized public employees. I think the answer is no. It’s time for Democrats, even liberal Democrats, to start looking at unions and unionism with deep skepticism.

The differentiation Kaus is missing is the difference between private and public sector unionsl.  I do not dispute the overall benefit of private sector unions.  I dispute any more need for public sector unions at all.   Kaus is at least on the right tracks, which not bad for a ‘rat.

Conflating legal with illegal, Peter Beinart, Daily Beast:

More than a decade later, it is now clear that native-immigrant relations drive American politics more than white-black relations. Of course, African-Americans still encounter significant racism, but today’s fear-mongers don’t try to win elections with images of black men raping white women; they do it with images of Mexicans hopping the border, stealing jobs and committing crimes. Today’s closest equivalents to George Wallace and Strom Thurmond are J.D. Hayworth and Tom Tancredo

Our millions of legal immigrants didn’t break laws by legally migrating here.   More over blacks never had the ability to change magically change their race.   In contrast, an illegal can simply go back home, and should.

American Board of Anesthesiologist killing murders is bad, Rob Stein, Washington Post:

A national physicians organization has quietly decided to revoke the certification of any member who participates in executing a prisoner by lethal injection.

The mandate from the American Board of Anesthesiologists reflects its leaders’ belief that “we are healers, not executioners,” board secretary Mark A. Rockoff said. Although the American Medical Association has long opposed doctor involvement, the anesthesiologists’ group is the first to say it will harshly penalize a health-care worker for abetting lethal injections

But murdering babies is good, by Douglas Johnson:

The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) recently issued a warning that medical “misinformation” about a bill awaiting action in the U.S. Senate is posing a threat to the health and lives of pregnant women nationwide.

The president of the ASA, Dr. Norig Ellison, said, “We at ASA have…felt it our responsibility as physicians specializing in the provision of anesthesia care to seek every available forum in which to contradict” this misinformation, which has been widely disseminated in the mass media.

That sounds like an important “women’s health” story, right? Yet, the ASA’s warning has gone virtually unreported, so far.