Posted on 02/18/2014 6:57:21 AM PST by SeekAndFind
There are many reasons that Barack Obama’s presidency has proven so ineffectual even by its own standards — boosting economic growth, improving health care, preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction, enhancing America’s world reputation. One reason is that Barack Obama is the most ideologically rigid president in American history. He believes in all the wrong ideas, and holds to them with mulish tenacity.
But there’s a second reason that was on vivid display in the past few days — overweening arrogance. This president has no patience with attempting to solve the actual problems that afflict the people he was elected to serve. That’s small beer. A great, world-historical figure like himself cannot be tending to trivial matters like whether HealthCare.gov will actually work, or whether there might be something the federal government can do to alleviate the effects of drought in California. Valerie Jarrett, the close aide who has been intimate with both Obamas for many years and is considered by many to be the most influential adviser in the White House, once described him as “somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. . . . He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.” Or what ordinary politicians do, apparently.
Consider the California drought. It has been a very dry year for the state of California. So severe have drought conditions become that farmers in the Central Valley, which provides one-third of the nation’s fruits and vegetables, have cut back their planting by 25 percent. An estimated 600,000 acres of farmland will lie fallow this year for lack of water.
Water has always been a relatively scarce resource in California, and previous droughts have created hardship. This may well be the most rainless winter in more than 100 years. But the farmers and ranchers of California have long relied on irrigation, not just rain, for their crops, and as National Review’s Charles C. W. Cooke explains, the pumps that supply the Central Valley have been dramatically curtailed for the sake of a small fish called the delta smelt. The Natural Resources Defense Council won a case against the California water system, arguing that the pumps that extract water from the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and send it south were “sucking in and shredding an unacceptable number of smelt.” Since the Endangered Species Act covers the smelt, the pumps had to be dialed down.
Other than performing a rain dance, there is little that politicians can do right now to coax water from the skies. But they can do something about hundreds of billions of gallons of water that are not pumping for the sake of a three-inch fish that may not even be endangered.
The Endangered Species Act permits a special committee to review cases in which protection of species might be outweighed by other considerations. The president could call for the committee to convene. He could instruct the director of the EPA to reconsider the evidence (there were allegations of zealotry on the part of the bureaucrats). Or he could endorse legislation proposed by former representative George Radanovich (R., Calif.), which would fund a fish hatchery to replace any smelts killed by the pumps.
Instead, the president traveled to Fresno in order to sermonize about climate change. When ordinary folks point to, say, the coldest winter in decades and wonder about warming, they are silenced with a great chorus of “weather is not climate” from the usual keepers of conventional wisdom. It doesn’t often work the other way. The president lectured: “We have to be clear: A changing climate means that weather-related disasters like droughts, wildfires, storms, floods are potentially going to be costlier and they’re going to be harsher. . . . Scientific evidence shows that a changing climate is going to make them more intense.”
This bit of opportunism was too much for Justin Gillis of the New York Times (yes, the New York Times). “While a trend of increasing drought that may be linked to global warming has been documented in some regions,” he wrote, “there is no scientific consensus yet that it is a worldwide phenomenon. Nor is there definitive evidence that it is causing California’s problems.” In fact, Gillis wrote, many believe that global warming should make California wetter, not drier.
Millions of California’s poorest will be out of work as farms lie fallow. Poverty will increase. Farmers will tap wells that may run dry, with consequences for the long-term viability of the world’s most fecund farmland. Prices of fruits and vegetables (so encouraged by Mrs. Obama) will rise.
These are the small problems of small people. The “too talented” president is made for bigger things.
— Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist
Last time I heard, cloud seeding was somewhat of a gamble.
The “Too-Talented President” somehow finds time to dabble in commentary about local crime investigations (Trayvon) and “police acting stupidly;” and picks for the NCAA tournament...
But something so trivial as the lives and livelihoods of Central Valley farmers... that’s just so beneath him.
I guess he’s convinced Californians will love him no matter what evil he brings to that state.
***Valerie Jarrett...once described him as “somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. . . . He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.” ***
Sounds to me like Obama has been lazy and narcissistic his whole life. Would Obama do actual work? Hahaha, you jest!
On another note, Californians, as a whole, voted this guy in twice. You’d think they would have figured him out the first time around, so I guess they get what they deserve. Sad, but true.
Needed a tweak.
He’s been bored to death his whole life. Oh Please, let him please be Bored, Bored, Bored, twiddling his thumbs in a corner until he tumps over and turns room temp.
I was wondering when the irrigation issue would be brought up.
I think that sometimes when people are bored, it’s just as often because the subject matter is over their heads versus it being beneath them intellectually. In other words, it involves work, and that is something our beloved dictator is allergic to.
There are no enough face-palms.
The Fed can make it rain?
Who knew?
Complex topic with no simple answers. $4B ag business vs $1.5B salmon / fishing business. Most concentrated ag-business is Westside, which historically was driest part of CA.
The “millions of California’s poorest” is composed of a great portion of citizens of other countries here illegally, who exacerbate the problem with their own water requirements.
HULU has new series “Farmed and Dangerous” which gives good background material.
20 years ago, Californians were warned that they needed to build desalination plants to insure they had water in the future. But they adamantly refused to do so. Then when it became obvious to about everyone that they faced drought, they even proposed building desalination plants in Mexico, so the Mexicans could pipeline water to California.
And the irony is that they could still start doing so, and would lessen their shortages in the future. But they still refuse to help themselves.
0bama's not looking to solve problems. He's looking for a good golf course.
I hope the cost of that healthy produce, fruits & vegetables, go sky high this year. I hope they triple in price. There I said it. Choke on it Obama.
King Narcissus’s hypocrisy doesn’t surprise me...
http://swampland.time.com/2014/02/17/obama-golfs-water-guzzling-desert-courses-amid-the-drought/
The 124 golf courses in the Coachella Valley consume roughly 17 percent of all water there, and one quarter of the water pumped out of the region’s at-risk groundwater aquifer, according to the Coachella Valley Water District. Statewide, roughly one percent of water goes to keep golf courses green. Each of the 124 Coachella Valley courses, on average, uses nearly 1 million gallons a day due to the hot and dry climate, 3-4 times more water per day than the average American golf course
No, but they can turn the pumps back on. The ones the environmentalnazis turned off—”to save the fish.”
The Kenyan is not bored with golf tho? I pretty much believe that is about his limit. You’d think a real genius would have shown us what he’s good for by now? Golf.
How can anyone be sure that all of those solar panel and windmills haven't affected the weather there?
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