BP ANNOUNCES ‘TOP KILL’ PROCEDURE has failed to plug the oil leak in the Gulf, yet another setback in trying to control the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

So -- now that the President has announced that he is 'in charge' why doesn’t he just walk out to the spill site and command the oil to stop flowing? Isn’t he the man who, two years ago this week, "declared that his very nomination as Democratic-party presidential candidate (never mind his election, or inauguration) marked the moment when ‘our planet began to heal’ and ‘the rise of the oceans began to slow’?"

IS OBAMA creating a new entitlement culture in America?

Entitlements in the Obama era are no longer a decent provision for the vulnerable; they are intended for citizens at every stage of life.

He’s certainly trying.

Americans resist taking this lollipop precisely because America is not Europe -- which even Europe, it seems, can no longer afford to be.

But, hopefully, not succeeding. Read the whole thing.

JINDAL ACTS; Obama waffles.

Louisiana's request to build sand barriers to protect marshes threatened by oil was still "under consideration" -- nearly two weeks after Gov. Bobby Jindal made the request.

Obama yesterday finally gave the go-ahead to build the sand barriers -- but only for half of the 86 miles requested.

That's hardly reassuring to the people of Louisiana -- who have already been forced to close three beaches.

“The 1990 Oil Pollution Act ... created new procedures for offshore cleanups, specifically putting the federal government in charge of such operations.” And 40 days later, our President finally “took charge.”

As I pointed out in an earlier post, the first priority should be to plug the d#*! hole; the second priority should be to clean up, and the last priority to apportion blame. Looks like the President got the order backwards.

SARAH PALIN: Passing the buck doesn’t “Plug the D#*! Hole.”

HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE COMPETENT. Peggy Noonan writing in the Wall Street Journal:

The president, in my view, continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen. This is a terrible thing to see in a political figure, and a startling thing in one who won so handily and shrewdly in 2008. But he has not, almost from the day he was inaugurated, been in sync with the center. The heart of the country is thinking each day about A, B and C, and he is thinking about X, Y and Z. They're in one reality, he's in another.

Of course. He’s from the “reality-based” community. Read it all.

ADDED. Peggy Noonan has joined the Tea Party: “When you ask a government far away in Washington to handle everything, it will handle nothing well.” Welcome, Peggy.