Another Day In The Life Of Barry Soetoro

Why does Barack Obama hate the Boy Scouts?:

President Barack Obama, the honorary chairman of the Boy Scouts of America, will not speak in-person before the group on Wednesday at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia, as part of the organization’s 100th anniversary celebration. However, the president is sending a videotaped message to the scouts for Wednesday, the same day he will be in Manhattan to tape an appearance for ABC TV’s talk show The View.

Bob Dries, chairman of national news and media at the Boy Scouts of America Jamboree – a gathering that happens every four years and attracts thousands of scouts from around the world – told CNSNews.com that the organization was told on Monday that the president had scheduling conflicts and would not be speaking in-person at the week-long event.

The BSA had scheduled its Wednesday arena program to include remarks by the president at 11 a.m. in front of the more than 45,000 scouts who will be in attendance.

I find this baffling.  So I had always been told, the Boy Scouts are homophobic, not racist.  Has the BSA started branching out their "cultural intolerance" below the radar?  Or can they simply not compete with The One's own, um, incarnation of "thousands of boys who genuinely love God(bama) and country(wide)"?

The consolation prize is this tasty exerpt from J-Ger's "Jolt" today:

Day 98 since the oil spill. There’s actually been some relatively good news in the past few days. There’s been no disaster with the current cap (knocking on wood). Work on the permanent seal could begin August 2. Of course, we’re not out of the woods yet; even if the well gets permanently shut down, oil could keep coming ashore for weeks and 241 people involved in the cleanup are reporting sickness. It’s been a rough road, but maybe this is a chance for the president to demonstrate that he understands the enormous consequences of all this, how the slow-moving federal bureaucracy has often hindered efforts as much or more than it helped. Maybe we’ll get a bipartisan push to ensure an all-hands-on-deck cleanup, instead of a reheated call for his same old global warming legislation. Maybe a response with seriousness, empathy, a slogan-free determination, finally free from the attitude that the spill was just another crisis not to be “wasted”  . . .

. . . Eh, nevermind: “On Thursday, President Obama will be the first sitting president to appear on The View. He will have an open discussion with the ladies: moderator Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sherri Shepherd, and Elisabeth Hasselbeck, which is anticipated to include the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.”

ADDENDA: I don’t think I expected to see this from the editors of the Denver Post: “Jobs have vanished faster than BP’s credibility. And the oil leak has been a drain on the national psyche. Welcome to the summer of malaise. Welcome back, Carter. Even the talking heads at MSNBC have compared Obama’s sudden lack of leadership, his summer spent adrift, to the uninspiring Jimmy Carter presidency after last month’s remarkably lackluster national address about the Gulf oil leak.”

Yeeouch.  Break out the smelling salts after that shot.

It'll hurt all the more for being so, so true:

Confidence among U.S. consumers declined in July to a five-month low, a sign the lack of jobs will limit the economy’s recovery . . . Today’s figures showed income expectations at their lowest point in more than a year, posing a risk for consumer spending that accounts for 70% of the economy.

“Consumers’ faith in the economic recovery is failing,” said Guy LeBas, chief fixed-income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC in Philadelphia, whose forecast of 50.3 was the closest among economists surveyed by Bloomberg. “The job market is slow and volatile, and it’ll be 2013 before we see any semblance of normality in the labor market. It means weaker purchases.” 

. . . The proportion who expect their incomes to rise over the next six months fell to 10%, the lowest since April 2009, from 10.6%. The percent of respondents expecting more jobs to become available in the next six months decreased to 14.3 from 16.2 the previous month. The share of consumers who said jobs are currently plentiful held at 4.3%. Those who said jobs are hard to get increased to 45.8% from 43.5%.

Say all you want about Sarah Palin's being "unqualified" or the rest of the "potential" GOP field being lackluster (funny how they're not mentioning a certain Florida governor who isn't a famous tuna), but "no semblance of normality in the labor market" until after Red Barry faces the electorate again - i.e. unemployment high enough to guarantee regime change - just doesn't augur well for "four more years" of Obamunism, any more than it did for Carterism thirty years ago.

But again their is the solace of J-Ger's knockout punch:

In other news, President Obama is the guest of honor for a $30,000-a-head DNC fundraising event at the four-story Sullivan Street townhouse of Vogue editor Anna Wintour. I guess those donors have some consumer confidence.

Forget the smelling salts.  Just let us know when he awakens from the coma.

And no, I didn't refer to solace for B.O.  In the economic wasteland that is Obamerika, gallows humor is pretty much all we've got left.