Thanks to the French Open tennis final on Sunday (congratulations, Rafa) we didn’t have the pleasure of marveling at David Gregory’s oddly perfect “Meet the Press” hair – so this week I watched Jake Tapper get run over by all of his guests on ABC’s “This Week” and Chris Wallace continue to uncover the depths of Barack Obama’s incompetence on “Fox News Sunday.”

BP Oil Spill

Remember the terrifying “Drill, Baby, Drill” chant at the Republican National Convention?  Well, the oil drenched chickens came home to roost on the Sunday political shows this week.  First, a quick update:  BP has placed a “containment dome” on the leak which is capturing approximately half of the leaking oil (depending on who you ask.)  Eventually they hope to contain 90% of the oil once they can figure out how to safely close the vents on the dome without launching the whole apparatus into orbit.  The featured guest on both shows was sacrificial administration lamb Admiral Thad Allen – Head Obama Oil Leak Honcho - who wanted to clear up any confusion about who is running the oil clean-up and containment operation:  The Obama administration is firmly in control of the situation and 100% accountable, he said, while BP is in charge and will be held 100% responsible.  See?  No confusion here.

Haley Barbour, Governor of Mississippi, was the second guest on “Fox News Sunday” and had one key message: “The coast is clear in Mississippi – come on down!  We don’t have any sad pelicans flopping around on our pristine beaches or oil-drenched dolphin carcasses washing up on our shores!  That’s cute little Bobby Jindal’s problem in Louisiana – God bless his heart.  Furthermore, what’s all this crazy talk of placing a moratorium on deep sea oil drilling just to figure out what went wrong?  Are you telling me that after the Obamanation has potentially destroyed the entire eco-system of the only God-fearing Christian states left in this country, he now wants to take our JOBS?  A pox on your Muslim prayer carpet, sir!”

The Fox News pundits were almost giddy this week.  Chris Wallace began the discussion with the provocative question: “Are Obama Administration officials a bunch of BUNGLING IDIOTS?”  Bill Krisol didn’t think so – it’s not THEIR fault they’re not Republicans, he said gently.  You know things are bad when Bill Kristol defends the Administration, apparently adhering to the Haley Barbour-ism as originally expressed by Napoleon – “Never interfere with the enemy while he’s in the process of destroying himself.”  Juan Williams did his best to fend off Bill’s quiet “I told you so” dignity, but acknowledged that Americans might be wondering if they picked the right person to answer that 3am phone call.  Ah, SNAP.

Meanwhile, Arriana Huffington and Liz Cheney engaged in a full-on smackdown on the “This Week” panel.  Arianna blamed the disaster on deregulation of the industry under Bush/Cheney exacerbated by Haliburton/Big Oil coziness, prompting Liz to warn the Chesire cat to leave her daddy alone or she’ll cut a bitch. 

In the coming weeks, as the extent of the disaster starts to unfold, it will be interesting to see if the Republicans can continue to blame the Obama Administration for causing the problem, deflect responsibility for supporting policies that led to the disaster AND support the continuation of offshore drilling without government oversight.  So far, they seem to be getting away with it.

Israel

The next item on the agenda was the international brouhaha created when the Israeli military boarded a ship bound for naval blockaded Gaza, supposedly to deliver humanitarian aid.  Well, long story short – 9 people on the ship were killed, including a 14 year-old American citizen who was allegedly shot 4 times in the head and once in the chest at close range – all because he may or may not have been armed with a metal baton.  Michael Oren, Israeli Ambassador to the United States, justified the action saying that Israel has every right to defend itself against 14 year olds, Hamas militants, and activist pansies of every size, shape and color – no matter what we or anyone in the International community thinks about it.  So there.

Israel kind of reminds me of Sarah Connor in the Terminator films; on the one hand you feel bad for her because she is constantly in the cross-hairs of an enemy who will stop at nothing to destroy her, but then she goes batshit PTSD crazy on a peripheral character because he may or may not have had something to do with creating the Terminator in the first place. 

The “This Week” panel was predictably divided among party lines, with Markos Moulitsas of “The Daily Kos” and Huffington calling it an Isreali PR disaster while George Will and Liz Cheney thought Sarah Connor should continue to strap on, shoot first and ask questions later.    

The Economy

The May jobs numbers came out this week, with the economy adding 431,000 jobs in the last month.  Sounds promising, right?  Well, not if you factor in that only 41,000 of those jobs were created in the private sector while the lion’s share consisted of temporary census worker jobs that go away again in August.  According to Bill Kristol and Dana Perino on “Fox News Sunday” and George Will and Liz Cheney on “This Week,” it’s because the socialist Obama bunglers are scaring the skittish business sector away with new healthcare requirements, climate change regulation and other nefarious plots to improve the lives of people and the planet.  See what do-gooding leads to, commies?  You ready for your double-dip recession?  With sprinkles on top? 

The truth is that economists aren’t entirely sure exactly why May sucked so badly – it could just be an anomaly.  But almost all panelists agree that if the numbers don’t improve, the Administration doesn’t get a hold of this oil spill, and Obama doesn’t start to get ahead of these issues as opposed to reacting to them, it’s going to be a brutal fall come mid-term election time.