This and That

General Stanley McChrystal used surprisingly poor judgment in a Rolling Stone magazine article, where he openly criticized and, at times, unabashedly mocked President Obama, Vice President Biden, and other senior officials. As the Commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A), McChrystal has been a no-nonsense and an American hero.

However, as much as what the General said may well have been true, the fact is that a general - no matter how many stars he has - is still a subordinate to the President of the United States. And as such, can not, nor should not, say something that will embarrass his superior.

The question is, will President Obama pull the trigger? I guess that depends on how badly he wants to keep the general quiet. More than any American today, General McChrystal has the ammunition to completely embarrass Obama on his handling of the war. How much worse will it be for Obama if relieves the general and the general decides to start talking?

Could make for some serious drama.

What I find most interesting about all of this is how the main stream media is attacking this story. For the most part, they are all in lockstep calling for McChystal's resignation. The pundits mostly agree that embarrassing the President is needed to restore honor to the White House. While I agree with this point, I'm curious why when the roles were a bit different, when George Bush was in office, the media openly supported criticism of the President by his generals.

Well, I know the answer to that. In today's media, a scandal isn't a scandal unless it's caused by a Republican.

And speaking of scandals, it's now been 62 days since the Deepwater Horizon explosion started spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, in what has become the worst environmental disaster in American history. And what did the media focus on this weekend? The fact that the CEO of BP spent Saturday with his son, watching a yacht race that he had entered.

Some people, apparently, had a problem with this. I didn't. For one thing, BP CEO Tony Heyward has passed on the responsibility of the containment to BP Executive Robert Dudley. So for all intents and purposes, there isn't much Heyward can do. And besides, considering how awful a job Heyward had done, do we really want him on this?

But the same people who are furious with Heyward for spending an afternoon with his son, seem to always be giving a pass to President Obama. Granted, as he said, he can't suck the spill up with a straw (very Presidential comments, by the way). However, Obama did say, repeatedly, that he "will not rest until this is fixed."

By judging from the President's schedule since he made this statement, it appears that he really hasn't rested. Unfortunately, he hasn't actually done anything about the spill, either. Doug Ross has an accurate timeline about how laser-sharped focus the President has been in response to this crisis. And this was done before he partied with Paul McCartney and played round after round after round of golf. His dereliction of duty has become so transparent that even MSNBC, including the sycophants Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, have openly criticised Obama.

Adding to the misery in the Gulf, Obama used his speech last week to not only suspend all drilling in the Gulf, which puts not only a lot of people out of work, but will cause a tremendous trickle down effect on gasoline prices (a federal judge just struck down the ban, but of course, the White House is appealing the verdict), but he also used that platform to push for cap and trade, which is the absolutely dumbest idea one can do in the throws of a bad recession.

As we are all aware, Rahm Emanuel has always advised Obama that he should never let a good crisis go to waste. It was the financial crisis that allowed Obama to seize banks and car companies. It's the rising cost of health care that allows his to nationalize medical care. Now, he is attempting to control every aspect of our energy independence through cap and trade. Aside from the fact that the idea of cap and trade was based on the fiction of Global Warming, the fact remains that cap and trade is disastrous for our economy and must not be allowed to pass.

The idea that Obama could mismanage this crisis so badly speaks volumes about his executive inexperience and extreme left ideology. No, I don't necessarily expect Obama to cap the well. But instead of sitting on ass, or golfing, or looking for more ways to transform this country into a third-world hell hole, I'd expect instead for him to start appointing capable, EXPERIENCED people to fix this mess. From my vantage point, it almost looks as if this crisis was exactly what he wanted in order to advance his ideological plans. The more he sat on it, the worse it became and the more power he could grab because of it.

This spill is destroying the region and it must be contained and cleared. That Obama turned down equipment that would have done just that after just three days, seems to be to be an impeachable offense. He has proven to be incapable, immature and a bully. If not before 2012, he must be sent to the ash heap of history, before he causes even worse damage.