Hell. Freezes. Over.

 

A WSJ columnist grudgingly endorses Obama's Motown bailout: 

Today is the first anniversary of one of this country's less-than-crowning milestones: the bankruptcy of General Motors, once the largest and richest company in the country, and indeed the world....

Shareholders of both companies got wiped out. Creditors took major hits, including those who held secured debt at Chrysler. (Their loans to the company were reckless, the equivalent of subprime mortgage loans, but they did recover more than they would have in a Chrysler liquidation.) Many workers and executives lost their jobs. Many dealers lost franchises. The Jobs Bank was abolished, albeit belatedly. So was no-cost health insurance.

All this seems plenty of pain to discourage future moral hazard. Letting the companies liquidate would have produced far more pain, of course, but much of it would have fallen on innocent bystanders—the ordinary citizens who participate in an economy that was on its knees last spring. The Obama administration, to its credit, tried to walk a fine line: doing enough for Detroit to protect the economy, but not doing so much to foster future irresponsible behavior.

BTW, helping out someone in need is "compassion." When the government does it, that's "moral hazard."

(Photo: Getty Images)

 

 

 

The Palin watch.

Tina Fey lookalike with Vaughn Ward, failed contestant for a GOP nomination in Idaho. Dig that groovy tie-dye look. (AP)

Seems Sarah Palin's endorsement can be the kiss of death:

In the midst of one of the most precipitous political crashes in the Mountain West, Sarah Palin made a mad dash into Boise on Friday, urging the election of a man who had plagiarized his campaign speech from Barack Obama, had been rebuked by the military for misusing the Marine uniform and had called the American territory of Puerto Rico a separate country.

And why not? Vaughn Ward, the Republican congressional candidate from Idaho, has the dubious character trifecta of the Palin brand: bone-headed, defiant and willfully ignorant. When told that Puerto Rico was not a country, he said, “I don’t care what you call it.”

On Tuesday, this Palin protégé was routed in a huge upset, despite a big early lead in the polls, a 6-to-1 fundraising edge and that Friday fly-in by the former half-term governor, who has Idaho roots. [Emphasis added.]

With sue respect to the hilarious account above from NYT's Timothy Egan, Palin's "Idaho roots" might be a stretch. The long and winding road that the former Miss Wasilla took to an undergraduate degree wound through, among other places, Hawaii and a j-school in Idaho, her only connection with the Spud State. That's astroturf in my book. A man's man with genuine Idaho roots, that would be Larry Craig, ex of Minneapolis-St. Paul International, which may soon be adopting its own DADT policy.

Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan defends the bizarre investigative journalism tactics of Joe McGinniss (The Selling of the President 1968), who, as you know, has taken up residence next door to the Palins in Wasilla in preparation for the Palin book he's writing:

The MSM let this farce of a politician go an entire campaign without a single real press conference. Where was Crowley then? Waiting for a returned phone call from Goldfarb? Exercizing sufficient "deference"? The key point is that McGinniss has gone to Alaska and will stay there a while. That's how you find out who this delusional phony truly is. And that's why Palin may be a little rattled. She knows this won't be another bullshit profile from Time. I think the press should be right in front of powerful people's faces. Right there. Unblinking, so to speak.

WaPo's David Wiegel talks to McGinnis himself about renting the house next door to the Palins:

By being here I have learned things, and I've gotten an insight into her character, into her ability to incite hatred, that before I only knew about in the abstract.

Yikes.

And WaPo's Jessica Valenti isn't having any of Palin's faux feminism:

Palin is happily adopting the feminist label. She's throwing support behind "mama grizzly" candidates, describing the large number of women in the "tea party" as evidence of a "mom awakening" and preaching girl power on her Facebook page.

It's not a realization of the importance of women's rights that's inspired the change. It's strategy. Palin's sisterly speechifying is part of a larger conservative move to woo women by appropriating feminist language. Just as consumer culture tries to sell 'Girls Gone Wild'-style sexism as 'empowerment', conservatives are trying to sell anti-women policies shrouded in pro-women rhetoric.

 

H/T: Wascally Wabbit.

 

Note: Under Sec. 3, Clause xi of the Blogger's Code, I have obtained a waiver from EB's self-description as "a Palin-free zone," dating from the overkill coverage of the appearance of Palin's Going Rogue last year. Apparently I am permitted to invoke this waiver as WW recommends I deem appropriate.

 

  

High Noonan (cont.)

Seems I'm not alone in thinking Peggy Noonan was a little off her game in casting Obama as a failed Superman on the weekend.

Here's liberal Andrew Sullivan ("Noonan Unhinged"):

The premise of Noonan's moronic column is that the federal government, especially the president, should be capable of ending an oil-pipe rupture owned and operated by private companies, using technology that only deep-sea oil companies deploy or understand. And if such a technical issue is not resolved by government immediately, it reveals paralyzing presidential weakness and the failure of an entire branch of political philosophy. Again: seriously? It's Obama's fault that under Bush and Cheney, government regulation of oil exploration was so poor and corrupt, corner cutting appears to have been routine? And this, Peggy, is what governments do, even when run by crazy-ass liberals. Governments do not dig for oil; they merely regulate those who dig for oil. That the government failed to do so under the previous administration does not seem to me to be proof that this administration has failed.

And conservative Daniel Larison:

If a President does not actively 'take charge' and is not seen as 'doing something', he is ridiculed as weak and ineffective, when according to any vision of a less activist, less interventionist, less intrusive government the President would not involve himself closely in most events similar to this oil spill. It is a bit more absurd in the conservatives’ case. They are horrified by the tyranny of the individual mandate, but most otherwise seem content to demand the firm smack of a strong executive and the protections of an omnicompetent managerial state. Having mocked Obama’s more enthusiastic supporters for wanting him to be a savior of sorts, some Republicans seem genuinely annoyed that he has not been able to work miracles.

Redesign your own BP logo.

In 2000, BP PLC rebranded itself "Beyond Petroleum" to convey an eco-friendly image. Its new sunburst logo, inspired by that of the Green Party of Canada, was meant to suggest a BP committed to all forms of energy, including the alternative-energy sources it has indeed invested in. Thing is, those investments are a tiny fraction of what BP has since continued to invest in traditional oil and gas production. Environmental activists pointed out at the time that, despite the image makeover - which cost about $100 million - BP was still, after all, an oil and gas company, and one of the world's largest.

The PR campaign is in tatters now, of course, even if it remains the case that BP was the first to break with the oil majors in recognizing global warming as real and as a man-made, and not an act-of-God, threat. U.K. Greenpeace, headquartered in BP's home base, has launched a campaign inviting the public to submit updated BP logos. A few are shown below:  

 

 

 

Frequent EB contributor PJ Dempsey insists the ad below is genuine, from a 2009 BP campaign: 

 

 

 

 

He doesn't do hugging.

On the "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" last night, pundit Mark Shields had this response to Lehrer's question, Has Obama been sufficiently empathetic in handling the Gulf oil-spill crisis:

Well, empathy -- I think empathy is different in this sense, because President Obama came to his preeminence politically in September of 2008, in the time of the financial crisis, when he showed a sense of confidence and control and almost command, as John McCain didn't, quite frankly, at that time in September 2008.

And I think that probably sewed up the election right then and there, I mean, the events and his performance. Now I think that there is a certain passivity that has come through, that the president has not been assertive. The empathy thing, that -- he has to stay within his game. He is not, by nature, a demonstrative person.

It has served him very well. He is a controlled and cool and almost detached person publicly. And that has served him well in his career. And it would -- I think it might be artificial if he started showing tears or whatever at this point. But it would be nice to see him hug somebody in a way of consolation. [Emphasis added.]

It's true, Obama is among the most aloof and least tactile of presidents. But it's been only 18 months. Maybe he'll discover his inner empathizer. After all, he seems to have the "bromancer" thing nailed, hugging guys all over the place...

 

"I hate to do this to you, but some folks back in Washington want me to be in touch with the People, like literally."

"John, if you'd torn apart those Swift Boaters the way I shot down Hillary's 'revelation' about my kindergarten ambitions to be President, today this spread would be all yours."

"No, I'm not making myself clear - I want you to pretend Malaysia has nukes. Then you announce in a big voice you're giving them up. It'll get the ball rolling, trust me."

"I know how uncomfortable this is for you, Felipe. But I have even PBS - you know PBS, it's the one that's actually heard of Mexico - complaining I'm allergic to physical contact."

"You know I'm seriously married, right?"

 
"I'm not sure fist-bumping counts. If it weren't for your orange belt in judo, I'd try hugging you."

 

"Nancy, if were up to me, you'd be on the cover of Time, every week."

 

"You know you're seriously married, right?"

 

With Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of health and human services, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. "C'mon you two, enough shop talk. One of you's got to teach me to bowl."

"Ben - I want to say just word to you - just one word - derivatives."

 

"Not too close, Tim. I need Wall Street to hate you, not me."

 

"Bill, where ya goin'? Lewinsky, Katrina - it's a wash!"

 

"Okay, this doesn't count. She's hugging me."

 
"So, Kigali - you got a Dennys yet?"

 

"These embassy visits drive me nuts. Every staffer expects me to hug their kid, and every kid goes straight for my nose."

 

"So Helen, it's my 48th birthday and I need a taster for these cupcakes."

 

"I can say this now, actually I did want to be President in kindergarten."

 

"Man, this kid weighs a ton."

"Look, Denzel, I can't help with your studio bosses..." 

 

"...TV producers on the Coast..."

 

...record label. It is 'leader of the free world', but that doesn't apply to the cokeheads who make decisions in your business."

 

"Hey hey hey, Congress passed the bill, I just signed it. You should be hugging Harry Reid."

 

"Joe is not gonna say 'this is a big f---ing deal' and spoil the moment."

 

"When I'm a private citizen, you bet I'll get an Audi..." 

 

"...an Embraer private jet..."

 

...giganto Samsung flat-screen monitor. Uh wait, I think we already have one in the Situation Room."

 
"They are, really, much nicer than Michelle's. And if it gets back to her I said that, I'll toss you over this railing."

 

 

"Your husband's got to know, purple shirt, silver tie, doesn't work."

 

"Every time I turn around there's another Kennedy."

 

"I was thinking, for a little while, maybe we should let Jill handle your public appearances."

"I will take care of your members. Who knew the Secret Service has a union?"

(White House, Getty Images, Reuters, AP.)

 

Mercury. (1939-2010?)

Bloomberg News broke the news Thursday night, and the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News confirmed yesterday, that Ford Motor Co. is poised to kill the Mercury brand. Ford itself is mum on the topic, engaged in studying the move. That's no surprise, since its cost GM  about $1 billion to shut down the Oldsmobile brand. And Ford dealers carrying the Mercury brand likely will have to somehow compensated by Ford for the loss in revenue.

Not that there's much revenue to be lost, which obviously is why Mercury might soon be discontinued. The brand was launched, by Henry Ford's son Edsel, in 1939 as a "performance" brand a step up from the Ford brand, which was value-oriented, and a step down from Lincoln, Ford Motor's luxury brand. But the not terribly impressive history of Mercury - despite 71 years of operation - is that it has rarely been well defined for consumers. It was a quasi-luxury brand for a time, returning to its high-performance roots, but only briefly.

For most consumers of the past 20 years, Mercury has meant one thing - a slightly different styling of a companion Ford-brand vehicle. Plymouth played the same role at Chrysler Corp.; most of its vehicles were re-branded Dodges with minimal exterior and interior styling and features.

So you had the Ford Maverick, an early North American bestselling compact, and its almost indistinguishable Mercury Comet counterpart. This was done onlyto satisfy Mercury dealers, not the consume. The world didn't need a minimally modified Mustang with a Mercury badge. Both the Maverick and Comet were, in any case, hideous to look at, and were produced during the notorious "rusty Ford" days that contributed mightily to the decline of Ford Motor to the benefit of better-made Japanese imports.

Ford Motor, as you know, is in the midst of an impressive turnaround. It's the sole member of the Detroit Three that didn't require a government bailout. But it's also the most heavily indebted of the three, in large part because the Obama bailout of GM saw Washington take on GM's massive $50-billion-or-so debt load in exchange for shares in GM.

Ford's Lincoln division is flagging, and needs whatever attention Ford Motor can free up from the wise obsession it has with rejuvenating the core Ford brand. That leaves nothing much by way of resources to make Mercury relevant with a new line of distinctly engineered and styled cars vehicles.

So we likely will soon say goodbye to Mercury, which will join Studebaker, Hudson, Packard, Nash and other major brands that once gave us delight with certain of their models - superior styling, engineering and innovative features of just enough models over the years to give one the impression the brand was here to stay.

The fact is the lookalike brands Mercury, Plymouth and to a sad degree Buick/Olds and Chev/Pontiac were possible - and arguably imperative - in a vastly less competitive North American market than has existed since the imports began to really take hold in the 1980s. There now are about 22 major auto makers worldwide, and most compete in the U.S., still the largest and most lucrative market. By lucrative, I mean you charge far more for a vehicle in the U.S. than, say, Spain or Indonesia, where you can eke out a profit selling vehicles but because of a lower standard of living your price point, and thus profit margins, will be lower. That's why everyone from Mitsubishi to Volvo to Mazda and soon the Chinese and Indians, want a piece of the U.S. market. That's where the global industry's most affluent car buyers, willing to pay the highest prices for a vehicle, are located. And there's no longer room for the Detroit Three lookalike brands that helped Detroit satisfy demand in a market they once had to themselves. 

A now a trip down memory lane with Mercury:

Mercury Town Sedan, 1947.

Mercury Montclair, 1957.
Mercury Colony Park, 1957. Assembled at Metuchen, N.J.

Mercury Park Lane, 1959.

Mercury Frontenac 1960, made for the Canadian market, for one year only. Pontiac's Laurentian and Acadian were among the many Detroit Three vehicles rebadged for the Canadian market. Frontenac honors the French defender at Quebec City who, ordered to surrender by American marauders he easily defeated, responded: "I will answer from the mouth of my cannons."   

Mercury Meteor, 1963. Assembled at Dearborn, Mich.

Mercury S-55, 1966.

Mercury Cougar, 1967. This is the first-generation Cougar, and unlike most stablemates its design was markedly different from its companion Ford Mustang. They used the same platform, as stablemates almost always do, to save on engineering a separate drive-train, but the exterior shell and design cues are such that no one would mistake a Cougar for a Mustang or vice-versa - one of the last times this effort would be made with a stablemate. Partly that was Lee Iacocca's determination to preserve the distinct look of the remarkably successful Mustang. And it was an successful bet that "pony cars" (Mustang, Firebird, Camaro, Charger, Challenger) were then a sufficiently large segment to accommodate the Cougar, whose styling was much more refined than that of the Mustang. The more genteel look of Cougar is signalled immediately not just by the hidden headlights but the elegant grille that makes the headlights an integral part of the front-end look.

 

Mercury Park Lane Brougham, 1968, one of the three "Hawaii Five-O Mercs," as they're known among eBay traders, used by Jack Lord's character, Steve McGarrett, in the long-running TV series (1968-80). The others were a 1967 Mercury Brougham used in the pilot, and a hulking 1974 Marquis Brougham from 1973 to 1980. The show was a marketers' dream: McGarrett was filmed driving his elegant black Mercury against a spectacular Hawaiian backdrop in practically every episode of the 12-year series.

Here's a headline Madison Avenue wouldn't get away with today, but commonplace in auto advertising from the 1950s into the the 1980s.

 
Mercury Capri, 1973, first of three generations of what started out as a "pony car." The European-built Capri was the most popular U.S. import after the VW Bug. Later versions were assembled by Ford Australia.

 
Mercury Colony Park, 1984. Assembled at St. Thomas, Ont.

Mercury Sable, 2008. This was the "stablemate" of the Ford Taurus.

Mercury Mariner Hybrid, 2008. Displayed at the Washington Auto Show.

Mercury Milan, 2010.

Photos: Wikipedia Commons, Ford Motor Co. handouts. 

High Noonan.

It's said even a broken clock gives the correct time twice a day. Which would make the disabled timepiece twice as accurate as Peggy Noonan.

There's this from the former Reagan speechwriter's WSJ column, "He Was Supposed to Be Competent," to appear in tomorrow's print edition:

I don't see how the president's position and popularity can survive the oil spill. This is his third political disaster in his first 18 months in office...There was the tearing and unnecessary war over his health-care proposal and its cost. There was his day-to-day indifference to the views and hopes of the majority of voters regarding illegal immigration. And now the past almost 40 days of dodging and dithering in the face of an environmental calamity. I don't see how you politically survive this.

Here's Noonan on Bill Clinton's Lewinsky confession speech, from an Aug. 31, 1998 column, "Why The Speech Will Live in Infamy":

After this speech, with its sullen anger and trimming, a chord may been broken, an estrangement begun. Something tells me 'He's not a slob, he's a bad man' is on the way, which will be especially wounding for one who so needily gulps the people's approbation.

And here's Noonan two days after Clinton was impeached by a GOP-controlled Congress, from a Dec. 21, 1998 column, "The Good Guys Finally Won":

It was moving, because they did it against the odds, and they stood on principle, and they didn't let the polls rule them, and they acted in a way that may have put them in both short-term and long-term political jeopardy. But they did what they thought was right. And down the road Republicans may see these nerve-jangling days as the time when their party, long buffeted by doubt and confusion, began to find its soul again.

Ahem.

Any attempt - a successful one in this remarkable case - to reshape one-fifth of the U.S. economy and make healthcare a right, rather than a privilege, of U.S. citizenship will be accompanied by much tearing and unnecessary war. The "unnecessary" part, incidentally, was wrought by GOP and blue-dog Dems. A mite of history scholarship is to be expected of the Noonan's of the world. A reading of the infighting among the Founding Fathers and Lincoln's cabinet, of leaders in the civil-rights movement, of even relatively minor initiatives like the creation of a national holiday marking MLK's birthday, reveals much tearing. The "unnecessary" depends on whether one supports or opposes the initiative. Noonan, of course, opposed Obamacare.

Obama has been wisely silent on immigration until the planets better align themsleves. So I have no idea what alternative-reality plane Noonan was on when she crafted this column. As for the oil spill, Obama could have directed the Coast Guard to act sooner - toward the end of Week One, I think - to begin amassing the booms required to rein in an immense oil spill in a worst-case scenario. As it is, the booms and other measures to dilute the growing slick took effect beginning in Week Two of what has been a six-week ordeal.

The less said on these matters the better, I think, for Noonan. Yes, there have been major disasters of late, most inherited from the president's laissez-faire predecessor. The Great Recession. The routine reneging on healthcare claims and the spiralling healthcare premiums. The Upper Big Branch mine disaster in West Virginia. The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. These all have been private-sector disasters that have inflicted tremendous damage on the wider community. The principal failure of government in each case was its regulatory inclination to let the free market rule with an absolute minimum of supervision.

Americans know Barack Obama did not cause the worst oil spill in American history, any more than they blamed George H.W. Bush for the second-worst, the Exxon Valdez. They blame BP and a predecessor company to Exxon Mobil Corp. And after the battering he has taken, mostly from right-wing distortions of who he is (a foreign-born socialist) and what he means to accomplish (a government takeover of our lives - although, oddly he chose not to oblige progressives in nationalizing the crippled banks, as Britain effectively did, and has successfully imposed not one but two massive middle-class tax cuts on Americans), Obama's popularity is unusually resilient. His current public-approval ratings, in an economy of more than 9% unemployment, range from 45% to 51%.

As to Clinton, the American people recognized a lynch mob when they saw one, and Clinton left office with higher public-approval ratings than the sainted Ronald Reagan. He was not convicted by the Senate. Richard Nixon remains alone among the 44 presidents in being driven from office. (1)

The post-presidential Clinton became a multi-millionaire from a bestselling memoir and so many invitations to speak that he has to turn down $100,000 offers to appear in Berlin and Biloxi. With his Clinton Global Initiative he managed to put nemesis Jimmy Carter in the shadows as a model of post-presidential effectiveness in humanitarian causes.

The GOP certainly tried to hound Clinton out of office, beginning very early with its ceaseless inquiry into a Whitewater non-scandal that morphed into a searching examination of Clinton's personal life until the discovery was made of presidential perjury on a matter of no bearing on the health of the nation. Not compared with the record economic boom of the Clinton years and the creation of a staggering 23 million new jobs, for instance, or the double-digit decline in crime rates in every major U.S. city for the duration of Clinton's two terms in office. In embarking on this gutter enterprise, the GOP did not jeopardize, or imagine it was jeopardizing, its short- or long-term prospects. Which in any case it didn't, capturing the presidency in 2000 against long odds and retaining control of Capitol Hill.

Neither did the party "begin to find its soul," being sharply divided between the hard-right McCain and yet another centrist named Bush in the 2000 primaries. The hardliners got their revenge with a McCain presidential nomination in 2008, a disaster that finds the GOP now hopelessly fragmented, held hostage by an insurgent and politically unviable Tea Party movement and required to kiss the ring of its de facto leaders Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh.

And actually, it was the vastly more experienced Hillary Clinton and John McCain who were supposed to be competent, not the obscure former Illinois state senator with a notoriously thin resume. Obama's remarkable string of legislative accomplishments as president belies that thin resume. But in reading Noonan, one is never in doubt about hers.

 

Note: Only 43 men have held the presidency. Grover Cleveland, whose two terms of office were separated by the one term presidency of Benjamin Harrison, is counted as the 22nd and 24th president.

 

 

 

  

STFU

Karl Rove, former Bush policy advisor, in a WSJ op-ed yesterday:

It took Mr. Obama 12 days to show up in the region. Democrats criticized President George W. Bush for waiting four days after Katrina to go to New Orleans. Where has its plan been? And why has the White House been so slow with decisions?

Not having the benefit of Obama's hour-plus-long presser yesterday devoted to the BP Gulf spill, Rove wrote before having the questions he raised in his essay fully addressed. Then again, Rove and I knew Obama would be speaking yesterday - I learned at 6:43 a.m. that the president would be speaking on the spill at 12:40 pm. So I guess Rove was more interested in posing rhetorical questions than learning the facts.

In claiming personal responsibility for the crisis, something Bush rarely did, Obama allowed that the U.S. has deferred to BP on technological prowess, of necessity. But Washington has exercised veto power over everything BP has done since the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon drill-rig platform April 20.

For instance, BP felt that launching construction of one emergency relief well was sufficient. The WH thought differently. So BP has two relief pipelines underway. BP preferred to withhold video footage showing the flow rate of crude gushing from its wellhead at the seabed, 5,000 feet below sea level. The WH ordered video immediately be made public, which was done. At that point, experts worldwide reported that, judging from what they saw, the flow rate had to be far higher than the 5,000 bbl./day BP was claiming. Indeed, we now know it has been more like 19,000 bbl./day. 

The WH plan, the U.S. Coast Guard's activities, BP's strategy, have all been publicly detailed since April 20. Frequent updates have been forthcoming from BP, the WH, the Coast Guard and other official sources, in addition to informed speculation from industry and environmental experts. This has been promptly reported in the news media, including the non-loonie portion of the WSJ. (The non-editorial pages).

If this WH has "been slow with decisions," unlike this administration's predecessor, it prefers to act with more knowledge of the facts. Obama was similarly criticized last year for slow progress on dealing with the pirates in offshore Somalia. We didn't and for security reasons couldn't know he was rounding up the best marksmen in the world, four Navy Seals who managed, from their unstable floating vessel, to kill with one shot each the captors on aboard another unstable floating vessel. Don't mess with the U.S.

It was a failure to take the time to thoroughly test the equipment to be used on this, the deepest offshore well in history, that accounts for the hard lesson we're now learning. Which is that the industry lacks sufficiently advanced technology to drill at depths of 5,000 feet. The blowout protectors at seabed on all offshore wells don't, we now know, function at that unprecedented depth. BP should have tested the blowout protector it proposed to use - ideally this would been done by at least a couple of third parties - on two separate continents - to independently show that the all-important device would function in capping a well immediately even with the incredible water pressure at 5,000 ft. And the Obama administration and Congress - which were each given false assurances by BP about the safety of their proposed project - should not have granted the necessary license to proceed in the absence of verifiable third-party tests on the blowout protector and other equipment for Deepwater Horizon.

It being the case that lack of well-thought-out action got us into this mess, one is hardly surprised a more responsible one would act according to all facts available and proceed further only on obtaining new ones - which has been the defining characteristic of this evolving crisis, not atypical of all crises. Shooting from the hip is fine for op-ed columnists, but it's not acceptable when lives and the environment are at stake.

Rove, of course, is transparently trying to get his former boss and himself, as a principal domestic policy advisor to then-President Bush, off the hook for their tragic ineptitude in Katrina. Rove might have touched on similar tragic ineptitude in 9/11, but doesn't dare go near that - for now. I once calculated the unnecessary deaths on Bush's watch - 9/11, Katrina, the minimum 200,000 Iraqi civilian deaths following the U.S.-led 2003 invasion of that sovereign country. The total is about 204,000, assuming the lowest figure in Iraq. (Some NGOs put the number closer to 600,000.) It excludes the U.S. military deaths in Iraq, which exceed 4,000. It exceeds the deaths among Saddam's forces and of insurgents fighting the occupation and killing each other in the "ethnic cleansing" between Shia and Sunni unleashed by the U.S.-led invasion. Going back to Texas's record number of governor-approved executions in Bush's brief six-year spell in Austin, this is man whom needless death follows wherever he goes. That Rove and his ilk - the two Bush WH aides on the WaPo editorial page - are given a platform to find fault with others when they should be the subject of Congressional and criminal inquries is Dreyfus Affair illogical injustices one has obvious difficulty grasping.

I marvel at Rove's ability to go blank on the principal distinction between these two crises. Which is that hundreds of people in New Orleans were drowning in the first four days of that catastrophe. There has been no loss of life in the BP spill since 11 rig workers were killed when the Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20 and sank two days later. It would appear most of those deaths were from drowning when the Deepwater Horizon sank. (Those 11 bodies have not been recovered.) Obama, preoccupied though he is with protecting the Gulf coast, went to the trouble yesterday to remind us of those 11 deaths. He was making the point we all know, that exploration for the world's declining reserves of oil is becoming ever more dangerous as the pursuit takes us to more geographically remote and hostile places.

As for the revisionist history, Frank Rich has a useful look-back at 2005:

It would be helpful to briefly revisit that increasingly airbrushed late summer of 2005. Whatever Obama’s failings, he is infinitely more competent at coping with catastrophe than his predecessor. President Bush’s top disaster managers — the Homeland Security secretary, Michael Chertoff, as well as the notorious “Brownie” — professed ignorance of New Orleans’s humanitarian crisis a full day after the nation had started watching it live in real time on television. When Bush finally appeared, he shunned the city entirelyand instead made a jocular show of vowing to rebuild the coastal home of his party’s former Senate leader, Trent Lott. He never did take charge.

The Obama administration has been engaged with the oil spill from the start — however haltingly and inarticulately at times. It was way too trusting of BP but was never AWOL. For all the second-guessing, it’s still not clear what else the president might have done to make a definitive, as opposed to cosmetic, difference in plugging the hole: yell louder at BP, send in troops and tankers, or, as James Carville would have it, assume the role of Big Daddy? The spill is not a Tennessee Williams play, its setting notwithstanding, and it’s hard to see what more drama would add, particularly since No Drama Obama’s considerable talents do not include credible play-acting.

A reminder that the death toll from Hurricane Katrina was 1,836 people. Many of those fated to die were dying before our eyes on television. But WH officials had to show President Bush a videotape they patched together of scenes from the drowning city before he was finally impressed enough with the severity of the crisis to visit the scene. Which for him didn't mean visiting New Orleans itself, but making a brief touchdown at that city's Louis Armstrong Airport on the northern outskirts. And a warehouse visit to congratulate Michael Brown ("You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie"). Brown was the unfortunate FEMA head, a GOP hack selected for the FEMA post from his gig as a recruiter of judges for Arabian horse competitions. His manifest incompetence resulting his firing only a short while after his boss complemented him for the benefit of CNN viewers. Bush was of course congratulating himself on appointing a crisis-management wizard; the subsequent firing, under immense public pressure, was done with as notice as possible, though Brown understandably balked initially, having just been publicly praised for his work, such as it was.

Sigh. Fifteen minutes writing in response to Karl Rove that I'll never get back. I'd profit more from responding to Kermit the Frog. But Rove's ill-informed scribbling forms the backbone of GOP talking points we will be hearing through to the mid-terms.  

Related

Transcript of Obama's opening statement and Q&A on the Gulf oil spill yesterday.

(Above: The feeling is mutual, Karl. Photo: AP)

 

Enjoy your day.

"Heh, heh, it always works. 'Hello there, Publishers' Clearinghouse calling!'" (AP)

QuickNews (Friday, May 28)

BREAKING

BP's Gulf of Mexico oil well is capped, says U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen. But BP warns that another 48 hours is need to determine if its "top kill" effort to inject mud into the world's deepest oil well has succeed in corking the spill.

Ford is widely rumored to be poised to kill Mercury brand. Ford itself mum on putting down 71-year-old Mercury. But firm is known to lack necessary funds to revamp tired Mercury nameplate, and Ford's flagging Lincoln marque needs whatever resources the company can spare from its core Ford brand.

GENERAL

Calderon, in presser with Harper, embarrasses PM by insisting climate-change action is required now, not after waiting to see what U.S. does. Grow a pair, Mexican president says, in breach of diplomacy. This is the same Calderon who in D.C. last week upset the applecart demanding tougher U.S. crackdown on flow of guns into Mexico. Sensible, if impolitic, statements on both occasions. I've taken a liking to this man, victim of assassination threats since launching a war against Mexican drug lords. Please let's put him in charge of a big issue requiring bold, urgent attention. McCain, of course, was among GOP solons asserting Calderon has no right telling U.S. what to do. Only the U.S. has the right to tell others what to do - or did Caleron not get that memo? (Photo: Calderon and Harper at Ottawa press conference yesterday. CP)

BP's Deepwater Horizon drill rig in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, two days before it sank. (Reuters)

It's official, or as official as it can be yet: BP spill is worst in U.S. history, eclipsing Exxon Valdez, 21 years ago. BP's 38,000-ft. well, deepest ever attempt, has already released an estimated 19 million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico, compared with about 11 million barrels spilled by an Exxon Valdez tanker run aground in the pristine Prince William Sound in 1989. (See related Business stories)

Obama officially takes responsility for BP spill in first formal presser in a year, something he actually began doing April 20, the day BP's Deepwater Horizon rig exploded. Head of Mineral Management Services is sacked, an unfair scapegoating as she's barely a year into the job, and her superior at the Interior Department, a former BP exec, is the scalp the environmentalists actually want. The upsides of this tragedy: It has potential as one of Obama's "teachable moments," and sure enough yesterday the president referred to increasing dangers of oil reliance as remaining crude reserves become more remote and technology fails to keep up. Also, it's in no one's interest for BP or U.S. to fail in their mission to put a cork in this thing - unlike, say, your average foreign policy crisis. (Think South Korean anger over alleged Pyongyang sinking of SK ship, where there are a bunch of conflicting agendas, including Beijing's.) Example: BP's rivals are suffering collateral damage, as Obama abruptly revokes Royal Dutch/Shell's permission to proceed with deep-sea drilling in Alaska, a hostile terrain in which post-spill oil recovery would be hugely more difficult. Example: someone might finally get around to pointing out the hypocrisy of our blithe ignorance of the far more routine oil spills in non-U.S. jurisdictions, notably poor West African nations and Indonesia, on which N.A. and Japan rely heavily on imported crude.

Toronto mayoralty candidate George Smitherman. (Andrew Wallace, Toronto Star) 

Good news/bad news: Smitherman, likely next Toronto mayor come October election, will announce today campaign pledge to expand subway and LRT lines. But Smitherman's proposed expansions to be funded and operated by public-private partnerships, the same "P3s" with which, as Ontario health minister, he oversaw new hospital construction. So all you fans of the pay-as-you go ETR can cheer. Will the new lines be non-union?

McGuinty, in radical step, wants to put docs on the provincial payroll. Some are already, of course. Scrapping the current pay-per-service, for which private-sector docs bill provincial health plans, would effectively make them civil servants and save taxpayers a ton of money. (Docs, after hospitals, are second-largest healthcare cost centre, ahead of drugs.) In France, most caregivers are civil servants and hospitals are government owned and operated. Ontario reacting, in part, to TD Bank report this week advising a move away from pay-per-service for docs. Nice idea, should apply it to Big Five bank CEOs no longer lavished with special bonuses for reaching a profit target they're already paid to meet, takeovers they're already paid to make or in their good judgment reject, and so on. (Photo: CP)

Ah, the good old days: Pierre Trudeau and Gerry Ford at the G-7 summit in Puerto Rico in 1976, the first year of Canada's membership in the exclusive club. No huge leaders' entourages, no armies of media and protesters. -CP) 

Jeffrey Simpson complains of a wasteful "siege mentality" in security prep for next month's G8 and G20 summit in Huntsville and Toronto, respectively. Admittedly, $1-billion security tab is a shocker. Then again, wasn't the time to start fretting about this a while ago, not a month before the thousands of guests arrive? I'm thinking we knew this might be an issue when, say, the Pittsburgh G20 concluded last year. Globe commentor says $1 billion would have paid for 2,500 Pride Days and 12,500 Lethbridge Whoop-Up days; another rushes to claim "Securitygate" tag for growing controversy. Good 'em both. Globe economics blogger Kevin Carmichael, veteran of mucky-muck summits, insists they're valuable and defends cost. Me too. If you've going to invite these folks, you have a solemn responsibility to protect them. Question is whether we should have accepted host role. Related: Parliamentary budget watchdog Kevin Page wants to examine the $1-billion in security expenses.

U.S. Senate panel and House vote on compromise language that will eventually scrap odious "Don't ask, don't tell." The catch is that the 17-year-old policy stands until Pentagon studies how to best deal with possible negative repercussions. This is, uh, sickening. Even before the Clinton-era DADT, the issue was well-known to everyone in U.S. military command. In the 17 years since a DADT policy widely recognized to be unworkable and morally crippled, the defense establishment - including its proxies on Capitol Hill - had time to examine the possible repercussions. When Candidate Obama, who vowed to scrap DADT, was poised by the late summer of 2008 to become Commander-in-Chief, that would have been a good time to start studying repercussions. The Department of Defense spent a nanosecond planning an Iraq invasion and occupation compared with the time wasted on joining the 34 other nations in which gays, lesbians and bisexuals are invited to serve their nations without fear of sanction. These include most of America's NATO partners, plus mildly to extremely homophobic Russia, Brazil, Australia, South Africa, Argentina and the Philippines. It's by now obvious the only way this belated progress will come about is to impose it, then let the armed forces cope with it. And discover, as Canada has since outlawing such discrimination eight years ago, that there's practically nothing to cope with. A disappointing dodge by Obama on this one, I'm afraid. (Above: The Pentagon, for decades the world's largest office building. -AP)

Polar bear flounders in melting Alaskan ice field. (Reuters) 

Canadian polar bear population forecast to drop by at 20% to 30%, maybe more, next year alone. Longer hibernation periods because of melting polar ice needed for travel and mating, and increasing scarcity of seals and other food. With only 900 polar bears remaining in Canada's Western Arctic, prospect of endangered-species status is increasingly likely.

Federal court ruling overturns Canadian immigration officers' practice of denying refugee status to Haitian women claiming they will be raped if returned. Judge cites a two-decade-old Supreme Court ruling that sexual abuse is so prevelant in developing-world nations and that overwhemingly the victims are women that special consideration should be made for refugee applicants on these grounds.

FINANCE

Amazing, Apple overtakes the much larger Microsoft in stock-market value. In the 1990s, before an ousted Steve Jobs' return, Apple was given up for dead. In fact, on his return one of the first things Jobs did was swallow his pride and ask, and receive, a bailout cash injection from Bill Gates. ("You're helping save the world," or words to that effect, Jobs told Gates - a hint of Jobs' Mount Baker-sized ego. But as Reggie Jackson said, "It ain't braggin' if you can do it.") Lots of lessons here. The crippling power of complacency, which caused a then king-of-the-hill Microsoft to "miss the Internet" phenomenon's impact, as Gates conceded in the late 1990s. And the paramount importance of product design and marketing, of which Apple is the undisputed master from notebooks to smartphones. (Photo: Wikipedia Commons)

Royal Dutch/Shell to pay $4.7 billion for a firm with shale-gas expertise. Stiff price, but shale-gas is viewed by some experts as a plentiful alternative to conventional crude.

U.S. revises Q1 growth down to 3.0% from 3.2%; and latest weekly jobless claims, while lower, still disturbingly high. Signals that U.S. recovery, while not stalled, isn't as robust as previous post-recession comebacks.

BP's Gulf of Mexico fiasco has already cost it $930 million. Which, some say, makes the weakened BP a takeover target. BP might have thought of that before learning the hard way that blowout devices might not worked at unprecedented depth of one mile below sea level, where water pressure is exponentially greater than at shallower depths where they have reliably functioned. And that fixing a leak with that kind of water pressure to contend with makes everything more difficult.

Canada's Big Five banks post impressive numbers, but market punishes their stock as performance fails to meet or exceed high Bay Street expectations. If only Citi, Bank of America and Royal Bank of Scotland could complain of such woes.

Bark & Fitz, upscale pet-supplies retailer, at odds with franchisees. Relations are so bad B&F franchisees want to keep the stores but drop the name, alleging franchisor abuse.

THE WAY WE LIVE TODAY

Kids are less likely than adults to disclose personal data on social-networking websites. (AP)

Who's least likely to trust social networking sites, especially on privacy reassurances? The young and tech-savvy, of course.

Teen pregnancies in Canada plummeted 40% in decade following 1996. And by 25% in U.S. during that time, the commencement of which coincides with the Clinton's scrapping of Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the principal welfare program. Cash-strapped provinces, notably Ontario, also began slashing welfare payouts in the mid-1990s. Two ways to look at this: The progressive argues that the drop in household income encouraged teens to engage in safe sex and dissuaded them from the financial burden of committing to bringing a pregnancy to term, either way depriving a young woman the opportunity to have a child. The conservative argues that reducing income supports ended child-raising as an affordable means of achieving self esteem for impoverished potential mothers. Some truth in both views, I expect.

Cyberspace swallows the phone book. Following Verizon's lead, Canada's Yellow Pages seeks regulatory permission to stop distributing residential phone books. In Toronto alone, ending this 121-year-old tradition will save estimated 3,500 metric tons of paper. Since choosing not to deliver the Toronto books at the usual time earlier this year, just 1,000 of the more than 1 million households that stopped receiving the doorstoppers have complained.

Chicago Blackhawks legend Bobby Hull proudly displays NHL team's mascot. (AP) 

Offensive Blackhawks Indian warrior logo has to go, argues Star's Damien Cox. Montreal varsity footballers are no longer the Redmen, after all (Red Storm now), and no one today would name a team for an ethnic group. No P.C. backlash in D.C., though, where Redskin tickets still the hottest in town, especially among lobbyists and their pol and bureaucrat guests at RFK Stadium. I dunno. It has been an issue for the Cleveland Indians for decades. But, and I don't pretend to be right about this, the Indians' and Blackhawks iconography suggests to me only good things - bravery, persistence, ferocity, nobility, pride. Just me, I suppose.

Not to worry: Only Collingwood's business district is car-congested. (Toronto Star file photo)

Your guide to Top 10 one-day motor getaways in Ontario, from Mark Richardson, editor of Star's Wheels section. His picks: Belfountain, Hockley Valley, Campbellville and escarpment, Niagara Peninsula, Port Britain/Cobourg, Hastings/Rice Lake, Collingwood/Owen Sound, Picton ferry, Muskoka cottage country and Bancroft and Rte. 509. Be sure to read commenters on the unfairly omitted, including Port Elgin, Port Dover and Creemore. (There will be more after I write this.) Richardson did say he wasn't making a complete list.