'Stupid' and Oil Prices--Obama's Forrest Gump analysis of rising gas prices.

'Stupid' and Oil Prices

Obama's Forrest Gump analysis of rising gas prices.

'The American people aren't stupid," thundered President Obama yesterday in Miami, ridiculing Republicans who are blaming him for rising gasoline prices. Let's hope he's right, because not even Forrest Gump could believe the logic of what Mr. Obama is trying to sell.

To wit, that a) gasoline prices are beyond his control, but b) to the extent oil and gas production is rising in America, his energy policies deserve all the credit, and c) higher prices are one more reason to raise taxes on oil and gas drillers while handing even more subsidies to his friends in green energy. Where to begin?

It's true enough that oil prices can't be commanded from the Oval Office, so in that sense Mr. Obama's disavowal of blame is a rare show of humility in the face of market forces. Would that he showed similar modesty in trying to command the tides of home prices, car sales ("cash for clunkers"), or the production of electric batteries.

The oil price surge has several likely sources. One is the turmoil in the Middle East, especially new fears of a supply shock from a conflict with Iran. But it's worth recalling that Mr. Obama also blamed the last oil-price surge, in spring 2011, on the Libyan uprising. Moammar Gadhafi is now gone and Libyan oil production is coming back on stream, yet oil prices dipped only briefly below $90 a barrel and have been rising since October. Something else must be going on.

Mr. Obama yesterday blamed rising demand from the likes of Brazil and China, and there is something to that as well. But this energy demand is also not new, and if anything Chinese and Brazilian economic growth has been slowing in recent months.

Another suspect—one Mr. Obama doesn't like to mention—is U.S. monetary policy. Oil is traded in dollars, and its price therefore rises when the value of the dollar falls, all else being equal. The Federal Reserve throughout Mr. Obama's term has pursued the easiest monetary policy in modern times, expressly to revive the housing market. It has done so with the private support and urging of the White House and through Mr. Obama's appointees who are now a majority on the Fed's Board of Governors.

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Associated Press

Oil staged its last price surge along with other commodity prices when the Fed revved up its second burst of "quantitative easing" in 2010-2011. Prices stabilized when QE2 ended. But in recent months the Fed has again signaled its commitment to near-zero interest rates first through 2013, and recently through 2014. Commodity prices, including oil, have since begun another surge, and hedge funds have begun to bet on commodity plays again. John Paulson says he's betting on gold, the ultimate hedge against a falling dollar.

Fed officials and Mr. Obama want to take credit for easy money if stock-market and housing prices rise, but then deny any responsibility if commodity prices rise too, causing food and energy prices to soar for consumers. They can't have it both ways, as not-so-stupid Americans intuitively understand when they buy groceries or gas. This is the double-edged sword of an economic recovery "built to last" on easy money rather than on sound fiscal and regulatory policies.

As for domestic energy, Mr. Obama rightly points to the rising share of U.S. oil consumption now produced at home. But this trend began in the late Bush Administration, which opened up large new areas on and offshore for oil and gas drilling that are now coming on stream. Mr. Obama sneered at expanded drilling as a candidate in 2008 and for most of his term has done little to expand it.

In early 2010, he proposed to open some new areas to drilling but shut that down after the Gulf oil spill. According to the Greater New Orleans Gulf Permits Index for January 31, over the previous three months the feds issued an average of three deep-water drilling permits a month compared to the historical average of seven. Over the same three months, the feds approved an average of 4.7 shallow-water permits a month, compared to the historical average of 14.7.

Approval of an offshore drilling plan now takes 92 days, 31 more than the historical average. And so far in 2012, an average of 23% of all drilling plans have been approved, compared to the average of 73.4%.
Oh, and don't forget the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have increased the delivery of oil from Canada and North Dakota's Bakken Shale to Gulf Coast refineries, replacing oil from Venezuela.

The reality is that most of the increase in U.S. oil and gas production has come despite the Obama Administration. It is flowing from the shale boom, which is the result of private technological advances and investment. Mr. Obama has seen the energy sun rise and is crowing like a rooster that he made it happen.

Mr. Obama yesterday also repeated his proposal that now is the time to raise taxes on oil and gas companies, as if doing so will make them more likely to drill. He must not believe the economic truism that when you tax something you get less of it, including fewer of the new jobs they've created.

***

We'd almost feel sorry for Mr. Obama's gas-price predicament if it weren't a case of rough justice. The President has deliberately sought to raise the price of energy throughout the economy via his cap-and-trade agenda. He is now getting his wish, albeit a little too overtly for political comfort. Mr. Obama has also spent three years blaming George W. Bush for every economic ill. If Mr. Obama now feels frustrated by economic events beyond his control, perhaps he should call Mr. Bush for consolation.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203918304577241623995642182.html?mod=opinion_newsreel

Mountains Of Debt

by John Hinderaker in Federal Budget, Liberals

Maybe you have to be Greece before most people get seriously concerned about sovereign debt. Of all the good reasons to evict Barack Obama from the presidency in November, the most fundamental is that he is spending our country into financial ruin. I don’t think most Americans understand how much federal spending and debt have risen during the Obama administration (and even before it, when Democrats took control of Congress in 2007) and are projected to rise in the future under Obama’s budget proposal. These two charts, from the Senate Budget Committee, tell the story in a very simple way. This one shows the federal debt per household from 2000 through 2022; the numbers are actual to the present and thereafter represent the projections in Obama’s FY 2013 budget. Those projections are taken at face value, rosy assumptions and all. Still, the picture is staggering:



You can see how the increase in debt accelerates beginning in 2009, when Obama took office.

This one shows federal spending over the same period of time, once again taking the future numbers directly from Barack Obama’s own budget plan:



Why do we have too much debt? It’s no mystery; we have too much spending. I don’t know why the Republicans can’t make better use of simple graphics like these to show voters how extreme President Obama’s policies are.

Michael Ramirez weighs in on the debt crisis with a cartoon that is particularly appropriate on Washington’s birthday:



UPDATE: Here is another one, hot off the press: it shows each American’s share of the national debt, by age group. Children born today will be responsible for over $1.5 million in debt, according to the government’s long-term fiscal projections. You can go here to calculate your share of the national debt.

Private Employment Has Recouped Only Three-Eighths of Its Recent Loss

Private Employment Has Recouped Only Three-Eighths of Its Recent Loss

By Robert Higgs

As the most widely reported rate of unemployment (U-3) has fallen in recent months, people with a political agenda served by painting a rosy picture of the recovery have made considerable noise about this decrease. Their political opponents have responded that one reason for the decline is that the labor force has fallen as more people have given up looking for work, some of them going into retirement sooner than they would have if the labor market had been more robust.

The best way to avoid the parsing and cherry-picking that plague such debates is to look not at unemployment, but at employment. After all, it’s employment that contributes to the production of goods and services and generates earnings for the job holders. Employment is less subject to interpretive ambiguity than unemployment is.

The most recently reported data on private nonfarm employment, for January 2012, show that employment has indeed continued its recovery. Since reaching its current-recession trough about two years ago, it has increased by about 3 million persons. Before starting a celebration, however, we should recognize that private nonfarm employment is still about 5 million persons less than it was at its pre-recession peak in 2008.



Moreover, such private employment is currently more than a million persons less than it was in December 2000, more than eleven years ago, on the eve of the dot-com bust. So, at this point, we have suffered more than the proverbial “lost decade” in the private labor market—the one in which employees are hired to produce goods and services that consumers and investors have demonstrated they actually value (or for which producers are convinced that such demand will be forthcoming).

To be sure, labor productivity has increased during this period, yet the likelihood is slight that sustained economic growth can take place in the future without long-term growth in private employment. A very large recession-related loss of private employment remains to be recouped, however, before we can even begin to think about the long-term growth of employment. The situation has improved somewhat in the past two years, no doubt, yet the labor market has a long way to go—it has about 5/8 of its recent loss to make up—merely to get back to its pre-recession peak.

Addendum I: Some recent survey evidence on why small businesses are not hiring:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=21618&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD

Although such evidence must always be interpreted with extreme care, giving due attention to how the questions are framed, what the sampling design is, and so forth, it seems clear that uncertainties related to the future costs of Obamacare and other regulations are a significant factor in deterring hiring. Note, too, that when businesses are not hiring because they do not foresee sufficient demand to justify expanding their payroll, this reason may also reflect indirectly the effect of regime uncertainty, which may depress demands by the surveyed small businesses’ potential customers.

Addendum II: U.S. population grew by 9.7 percent between 2000 and 2010. In recent decades the annual rate of growth has averaged approximately 1 percent per year.
http://blog.independent.org/2012/02/19/private-employment-has-recouped-only-three-eighths-of-its-recent-loss/

Beyond Blue Part 5: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs--self emplyoment made hard by regs

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Beyond Blue Part 5: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.

Currently, the American legal and regulatory system is set up to bind as many people to employers as possible. The government wants you to be a wage slave and sets up a regulatory framework that keeps as many of us as possible yoked to bosses and management.  

The IRS doesn’t like the self-employed, fearing they many conceal income. Banks and credit card companies view such people with suspicion, and it is notoriously difficult for start ups and part time enterprises to have access to formal finance. Many services are hard for the self-employed to get on terms like those made available to employees of large corporations: from health insurance to retirement planning, many things are harder and more expensive for the self-employed. The payroll tax system is brutal: the self-employed pay both the employer and employee halves of Social Security and Medicare taxes, almost 20 percent of income and likely to go higher. Many cities will tack on unincorporated business taxes, mass transit taxes, and other interesting feudal exactions and dues.

There are other, subtler ways in which the current system favors old style large employers over small firms. The cost of hiring people can be prohibitively high for small businesses: the paperwork involved in hiring so much as a cleaning person or babysitter can be cumbersome. Hiring full time workers involves negotiating the requirements for worker compensation, unemployment insurance and much else. The cost of these barriers cannot be calculated: jobs foregone, businesses stifled in their cradles, ideas untested, innovations untried.

In order to create the kind of job and service explosion that can provide better incomes for more Americans going forward, the government needs to shift policy. It must favor the small firm and entrepreneur: the owner-proprietor group needs to become the apple of the government’s eye. Their taxes should be cut; their paperwork burdens drastically reduced; regulations should be rewritten and simplified to meet their needs.

Indeed.

Posted at 2:40 pm by Glenn Reynolds http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/137485/

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/02/20/beyond-blue-5-jobs-jobs-jobs/

LightSquared CEO resigns amid revelations of company’s proximity to Obama White House

Published: 1:43 PM 02/28/2012

By Matthew Boyle - The Daily Caller

Bio | Archive | Email Matthew Boyle

 

Matthew Boyle is a reporter at The Daily Caller. He studied journalism at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida, where he worked as an editor at the school's newspaper, The Gargoyle.

LightSquared CEO Sanjiv Ahuja abruptly announced his resignation Tuesday amid revelations of his company’s political proximity — and his own closeness — to the White House and Obama administration officials.

The Daily Caller first reported one week ago on emails and documents that indicate political ties and numerous meetings between LightSquared and Obama administration officials as the was undergoing regulatory review.
Ahuja’s resignation comes after Obama’s FCC suspended conditional approval of a waiver LightSquared needed to complete its high-speed broadband network. Until two weeks ago, the company’s final approval appeared imminent.

Ahuja, who had never donated to Democrats before and has not since, gave the maximum allowable $30,400 contribution to the Democratic National Committee on the same day his lawyers were trying to arrange a meeting for him at the White House with top Obama technology adviser Aneesh Chopra and other officials.

In emails between Ahuja’s lawyers and White House officials Ahuja wanted to meet with, his lawyers pointed out that he would attend an Obama fundraiser on or about the same day he wanted the meeting.

In a statement accompanying the company’s announcement of Ahuja’s resignation, he made no mention of those revelations.

“During my tenure at LightSquared, we all worked tirelessly to create the nation’s first open wireless broadband network and provide consumers with a new wireless broadband experience,” Ahuja said. “That work continues and I wish the company and its fine management team well as they work to achieve this important goal.”

LightSquared spokesman Terry Neal did not immediately respond to TheDC’s request for comment on the possible connections between Ahuja’s resignation and revelations published exclusively by TheDC.

According to the release, Ahuja will remain LightSquared’s chairman.
Philip Falcone, the CEO of Harbinger Capital Partners — which created LightSquared from its predecessor, SkyTerra — was appointed to the LightSquared board on Tuesday as well. The Obama administration FCC approved Harbinger’s purchase of SkyTerra after what appeared to be a series of favorable regulatory decisions amid White House visits.

In the press release, Falcone said he remains confident in LightSquared’s future despite these new revelations and the company’s reported challenges related to GPS interference issues.

“LightSquared’s objective, through its wholesale business model, is to provide increased competition and lower prices in the telecommunications industry, and to bring broadband cellular phone service to rural areas that currently don’t have such service and that has not and will not change,” Falcone said. “We are, furthermore, committed to working with the appropriate entities to find a solution to the recent regulatory issues. We, of course, agree that it is critical to ensure that national security, aviation and the GPS communities are protected.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/28/lightsquared-ceo-resigns-amid-revelations-of-companys-proximity-to-obama-white-house/#ixzz1nkF1zdLW

Campaign against Canadian Keystone XL pipeline driven by US foundation millions

Campaign against Canadian Keystone XL pipeline driven by US foundation millions

By David Martosko - The Daily Caller    

A Powerpoint presentation obtained by The Daily Caller shows that during a July 2008 meeting, the $789 million Rockefeller Brothers Fund proposed to coordinate and fund a dozen environmental and anti-corporate activist groups’ efforts to scuttle pipelines carrying tar sands oil from Canada to the United States.

The most recent incarnation of that pipeline plan, the Keystone XL project, was the subject of intense public controversy until the Obama administration rejected it in January.

The 2008 meeting consisted of presentations from Rockefeller Brothers Fund program officer Michael Northrop, Corporate Ethics International Executive Director Michael Marx, Natural Resources Defense Council attorney Susan Casey-Lefkowitz and the director of a Canadian activist group called the Pembina Institute.

(RELATED: See the 2008 Powerpoint slideshow)

Northrop’s presentation described the extraction of oil from Canada’s vast tar sands oil deposits as a threat to environmentalists’ efforts to curb global warming. He outlined a ”globally significant response” consisting of a “network of leading US and Canadian NGOs” engaged in a “coordinated campaign structure.”

TheDC made repeated requests for comments from Northrup, Marx and Casey-Lefkowitz. None of them responded.

The subject of U.S. interests raining money on environmental organizations north of the border is a front-burner issue in Canada.

On Jan. 15, Alison Redford, the premier of the Canadian province of Alberta, told a Global News television host that she resents some Americans’ use of hidden money and secretive agendas to affect Canadian energy policy. “I don’t like the fact that there are people that would try to hijack this process for their own political ends,” Redford said.

“It’s not about the money. It’s about the transparency of the process.”
Concerns about that lack of transparency found their vent on Feb. 9 when Brian Jean, a Conservative member of the Canadian Parliament, called for legislation to ban deep-pocketed foreigners from bankrolling what he called Canada’s “radical” green movement.

In retrospect, Northrop’s proposal and others like it appear to be squarely in Jean’s crosshairs. Northrop’s presentation promised funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation in the amount of $7 million per year. Named in the presentation were 12 participating environmental pressure groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and the Sierra Club.

According to Canadian writer and researcher Vivian Krause, U.S. foundations have poured more than $300 million into Canadian environmental groups since 2000. One foundation, endowed by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, has been single-handedly responsible for $92 million of that total, Krause wrote Jan. 17 in Canada’s Financial Post. Foundations flush with the wealth of computer pioneers William Hewlett and David Packard, she added, sent another $90 million to wage green-politics wars in the Great White North.

“Canadians can take care of Canada,” Krause told TheDC. “The Rockefellers and other billionaire philanthropists should spend their money reducing poverty in the U.S. and around the world, not on manipulating markets, swaying investment capital and protecting trade interests.”

Krause argued in the Financial Post that one outgrowth of demonizing oil development in Canada is an atmosphere in America that favors green-energy subsidies like the now-infamous Solyndra debacle. That company, a solar panel manufacturer, declared bankruptcy in 2011 after receiving $535 million in loan guarantees — funds that U.S. taxpayers ultimately had to pay the company’s creditors.

“The campaign against Canadian oil, put on steroids by U.S. foundations, has created a negative foil,” Krause wrote, “a background of bad press and fear without which it would have been more difficult to push through the billions in U.S. government grants, loans and subsidies that were made in the U.S. in order to develop renewable energy.”

Mississippi Republican Rep. Alan Nunnelee told TheDC that “Solyndra-style boondoggles” provide a strong argument against stalling the Keystone XL pipeline, and that President Obama has had longstanding alliances with environmental groups opposed to oil and gas development.

“It speaks volumes about the president’s priorities that he would side with big, radical environmentalist groups like these over American jobs and energy security,” Nunnelee told TheDC through a spokesman. “They are committed to regulating and taxing reliable energy supplies out of the market to make way for more Solyndra-style boondoggles.”

“If the president is re-elected, this type of activity will just be the tip of the iceberg.”

Nunnelee noted in a Nov. 4, 2011 House floor speech that Keystone ultimately won’t determine whether or not oil is extracted from Alberta’s tar sands.
“Canada is going to develop their resources,” he said. “And if we do not want their oil, that supply will go elsewhere, to our competitors such as China.”

In the face of all that supply and demand, $7 million per year in foundation largesse may seem small. But green groups have proven their ability to squeeze value from a dollar when they have an organized, specific campaign to spend it on — and foot-soldiers to carry green spears into battle.

Speaking for the anti-corporate campaign group Corporate Ethics International at the July 2008 meeting, Michael Marx outlined such a campaign. His idea was an unambiguous plan designed to “raise the costs” of pursuing pipeline projects, increase the public-opinion “negatives” of extracting oil from the Canadian tar sands fields and “slow down and stop infrastructure” before it could be built.

Canada’s tar sands, among the world’s largest, consist of concentrated bitumen deposits mixed with sand, clay and water. Unlike free-flowing crude oil, bitumen is a thick, paste-like form of petroleum that must be heated by steam injection and refined to remove the surrounding sand and clay before it can be used as an energy source.

The strategic plan Marx described in his presentation took the form of five separate “tracks,” to be implemented simultaneously in a carefully coordinated effort to prevent energy development and extraction. While one set of tracks was to “stop/limit pipelines and refinery expansions,” another would “force tar sands water, toxics, and land reforms,” presumably working to erect regulatory hurdles that would hamper approvals and practical infrastructure work.

Meanwhile, additional funding was to be directed to groups that would “significantly reduce future demand for tar sands oil.” Marx’s slide describing this strategic plank featured a photograph of a Greenpeace “Stop The Tar Sands” poster.

Other tracks involved funding organizations to ”leverage the tar sands debate for policy victories in the US and Canada,” and to “generate unity” around the future of renewable energy sources and “sell it to decision-makers.”

Overlaid on this campaign structure, Marx’s presentation called for a “steering committee” comprised of coordinators, funding organizations, representative from activist campaign groups, and the Tides [Foundation] Tar Sands Fund.
The $7 million per year price tag, according to the presentation he delivered, was to be allocated to lawsuits, organization efforts, education campaigns and legislative lobbying.

Oklahoma Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, told TheDC that Marx’s strategy mirrors the Obama administration’s approach to fossil-fuel development.
“Sadly, at a time when our economy continues to struggle and unemployment remains sky high,” Inhofe said, “the president is working closely with radical green groups with the goal to ‘raise the costs’ of our energy and ‘slow down and stop infrastructure’ through legal suits and regulations.”

“This is further proof that President Obama’s decision to deny the Keystone XL Pipeline was to advance his radical global warming agenda,” Inhofe said.

During the July 2008 meeting, Susan Casey-Lefkowitz described specific steps the Natural Resources Defense Council was prepared to take in support of the larger campaign to hamper development of petroleum reserves in Canada’s tar sands. Among them was a campaign to “fight infrastructure subsidies” to pipeline companies and an effort to persuade local governments to adopt procurement resolutions eliminating tar-sands oil from their municipal energy plans, reducing demand for the product.

“The Midwest and Western regions of the United States,” Casey-Lefkowitz’s presentation said, “are ripe for regional campaigns focused on tar sands oil.”
She also described an ambitious anti-corporate campaign aimed at “rais[ing] the financial risks” for banks and investors dealing with energy issues involving oil from tar sands sources.

Her plan’s goals, according to her presentation, were to “raise [the] investment risk profile of toxics, health liability, water limitations, infrastructure limitations and global warming pollution” and “[p]revent the proposed modification of [Securities Exchange Commission] reserves reporting rules that would reward and encourage further tar sands exploitation.”
In the end, the money Northrop proposed for fighting Canadian tar sands development materialized — and then some.

Tax records from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund indicate that it sent $1.25 million to Michael Marx’s organization, Corporate Ethics International, between December 2007 and November 2010. The money was earmarked “to coordinate the initial steps of a markets campaign to stem demand for tar sands derived fuels in the United States.” The Fund has not yet filed its tax return for 2011.

Among other initiatives, Corporate Ethics International launched a campaign in July 2010 to persuade American and British travelers to avoid visiting Alberta while tar sands exploration was underway. Tourism brings $5 billion to Alberta, making it one of the Canadian province’s biggest industries.
“Alberta can’t destroy an area the size of England by producing the world’s most polluting oil and still be known for Banff [National Park],” Marx said in a press release.

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the second philanthropy Northrop mentioned in 2008 as a partner in the concerted effort to stop tar sands oil development, contributed far more.

Its tax returns indicate expenditures of more than $17.5 million targeted at tar sands oil development, including more than $15.4 million to the left-wing Tides Foundation and the affiliated Tides Canada Foundation. At the time, Tides was led by progressive millionaire Drummond Pike, and by ACORN co-founder and AFL-CIO organizer Wade Rathke.

A newer philanthropy, the Sea Change Foundation, also sent Tides $2 million in 2009, all of it to “promote awareness of an opposition to tar sands.” Another $3.75 million to Tides followed in 2010.

Funded by Renaissance Technologies hedge fund founder James Simons and his son, Nathaniel, Sea Change gave away $120 million between 2008 and 2010 in connection with energy-related issue activism. More than $18 million more of the Simons’ philanthropic funding in 2009 and 2010 went to organizations named in Northrop’s 2008 presentations, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, the World Wildlife Fund and Ceres, Inc., although Sea Change did not disclose the specific purpose of those grants.

Smaller tar sands-related contributions to Tides came from the Oak Foundation, endowed by Duty Free Shoppers tycoon Alan Parker; the New York Community Trust; and the Schmidt Family Foundation, whose millions come from Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendy.

Tides, in turn, made at least $8.6 million in grants to 44 different organizations, each time specifically mentioning its “tar sands campaign.” Funds went to Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, Forest Ethics, the Rainforest Action Network and dozens of others. Fully $2.2 million of that total went to Michael Marx’s Corporate Ethics International.

“We’re not surprised they were funded,” American Petroleum Institute spokeswoman Sabrina Fang told TheDC. “Really, this isn’t about the pipeline. These people don’t want fossil fuels to be used at all.”
Fang, like Rep. Nunnelee and Sen. Inhofe, quickly shifted the topic back to President Obama.

“The president has been getting help from his allies on this,” she said. “These are President Obama’s friends and it’s an election-year issue.”
“Obama approved the [Alberta] Clipper pipeline” in 2009,” she recalled. “The only difference was that he wasn’t running for re-election.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/20/campaign-against-canadian-keystone-xl-pipeline-driven-by-us-foundation-millions/#ixzz1nBbB6jxP

Unemployment Rising Again?

Unemployment Rising Again?

by John Hinderaker in 2012 Presidential election, Economy

The Gallup organization reported today that its mid-February survey found unemployment increasing to 9%:

The U.S. unemployment rate, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, is 9.0% in mid-February, up from 8.6% for January. The mid-month reading normally reflects what the U.S. government reports for the entire month, and is up from 8.3% in mid-January.

That is a very sharp jump, probably due in part to seasonal factors, and it is a little hard to believe that the official, seasonally-adjusted number that comes out in a couple of weeks will increase by as much. This graph puts today’s news in context and is a valuable overview, especially when you keep in mind that Gallup continues to find an additional 10% of Americans are underemployed:



What I really want to comment on, however, is the conclusion of Gallup’s report:

Further, it suggests that it is premature to assume the condition of the economy will not remain a major issue for Americans both financially and politically in 2012.

Premature? I should say so! It is hard to imagine how anyone could think that the years of economic misery we have endured under Obama will somehow fail to be a major campaign issue in 2012. Yet, make no mistake–the liberal media will do everything possible to make this the conventional wisdom: the economy is improving, so that’s off the table. Let’s make the election about the social issues, killing bin Laden, and how nice it is to have an African-American president! Republicans can trump that effort–the voters will not have forgotten what the Obama years have been like–but only if they keep a laser-like focus on the economy, and don’t let the media narrative distract them.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/02/unemployment-rising-again.php

More Than a Touch of Malice--the left's war on religion

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More Than a Touch of Malice

Paul A. Rahe

 

When Barack Obama first announced that he intended to force all employers, including Catholic institutions, to provide contraception and abortifacients as part of the healthcare package they offer their employees, my friend Michael Barone observed that the President “was spitting in the eyes of millions of Americans and threatening the existence of charitable programs that help millions of people of all faiths”; and, presuming that the President could not possibly have intended to stir up a hornet’s nest, he suggested that his decision in this matter must have been a function of ignorance and isolation.


This was my first instinct as well. It seemed foolish – guaranteed to alienate a constituency that had supported Barack Obama in 2008 and had hailed his election.

We know a bit more now. We know that the President did not act on impulse, that he took his time in making this decision, and that he sought advice from a range of individuals within the Democratic Party. Vice-President Joe Biden and William Daley, who was then Obama’s Chief of Staff, both profess to be Catholic, and they strongly advised against doing anything that would antagonize the Catholic bishops and the laity. Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House and current Democratic minority leader, were also consulted. They, too, profess to be Catholic, and they fiercely advocated imposing this burden on all employers providing health insurance for their employees.

The decision appears to have been made before the New Hampshire primary. Otherwise, it would be hard to explain why, at the debate in New Hampshire in early January, George Stephanopoulos – who pretends to be a journalist but is still obviously nothing more than a Democratic operative – repeatedly pressed Mitt Romney to spell out where he stood on the question of contraception. Stephanopoulos’ disgraceful performance, which drew boos and catcalls from the crowd, is an indication that Obama and at least some of his aides thought that they had something to gain by injecting this question into this year’s campaign.

On the face of it, President Obama would appear to be shooting himself in the foot. Why would he risk losing the Catholic vote? One could, of course, argue that his aim was to excite the feminists and give them a reason to turn out in November. As a rationale, however, even this seems a bit lame. The benefit that the President proposes to provide is insubstantial. The administration’s claim to the contrary notwithstanding, the pill and other birth control devices are not free. But the expense involved is not great. Among those who are employed and have healthcare insurance, no one is hard put to come up with the paltry sum required.

This suggests that there can be only one reason why Sebelius, Pelosi, and Obama decided to proceed. They wanted to show the bishops and the Catholic laity who is boss. They wanted to make those who think contraception wrong and abortion a species of murder complicit in both. They wanted to rub the noses of their opponents in it. They wanted to marginalize them. Humiliation was, in fact, their only aim, and malice, their motive.
Last week, when, in response to the fierce resistance he had deliberately stirred up, the President offered the bishops what he called “an accommodation,” what he proffered was nothing more than a fig leaf. His maneuver was, in fact, a gesture of contempt, and I believe that it was Barack Obama’s final offer. From his perspective and from that of Sebelius and Pelosi, the genuine Catholics still within the Democratic coalition are no more than what Vladimir Lenin called “useful idiots,” and, now that the progressive project is near completion, they are expendable – for there is no longer any need to curry their favor.

In his piece in The Washington Examiner, which I link above, Michael Barone mentioned Obama’s decree with regard to contraception and abortifacients in tandem with a brief discussion of the President’s decision to reject the construction of the Keystone Pipeline. He was, I think, right to do so – for there is no good reason that any student of public policy can cite for doing what the President did. Cancelling the pipeline will not delay or stop the extraction of oil from the tar sands in Alberta, and the pipeline itself would pose no environmental threat. If the President’s decision had any purpose, it was symbolic – an indication to all that he cared not one whit about the plight of the white working class and that he was capable of punishing those whom he does not like and more than willing to do so.

In 2008, when he first ran for the Presidency, Barack Obama posed as a moderate most of the time. This time, he is openly running as a radical. His aim is to win a mandate for the fundamental transformation of the United States that he promised in passing on the eve of his election four years ago and that he promised again when he called his administration The New Foundation. In the process, he intends to reshape the Democratic coalition – to bring the old hypocrisy to an end, to eliminate those who stand in the way of the final consolidation of the administrative entitlements state, to drive out the faithful Catholics once and for all, to jettison the white working class, and to build a new American regime on a coalition of highly educated upper-middle class whites, feminists, African-Americans, Hispanics, illegal immigrants, and those belonging to the public-sector unions. To Americans outside this coalition, he intends to show no mercy.

Mark my words. If Barack Obama wins in November, he will force the Catholic hospitals to perform abortions, and the bishops, priests, and nuns who fostered the steady growth of the administrative entitlements state, thinking that they were pursuing “the common good,” will reap what they have sown.
In the end, politics has as its focus persuasion. Our difficulties are a function of policy, not of mismanagement. If we are to stop Barack Obama in 2012, we will have to find a standard-bearer who can articulate a compelling argument against the administrative entitlements state and, by means of persuasion and praxis, reverse our democracy’s inexorable soft despotic drift. Let us hope that one or another of the remaining candidates rises to the occasion.

ADDENDUM: This post is intended as a sequel to two earlier posts on related subjects: American Catholicism's Pact with the Devil and American Catholicism: A Call to Arms.

http://ricochet.com/main-feed/More-Than-a-Touch-of-Malice

"Permanent Downsizing of the American Dream"

"Permanent Downsizing of the American Dream" by Clark Judge

The weekly column from Clark Judge: managing director, White House Writers Group, Inc.; chairman, Pacific Research Institute

So what is happening with the economy?  Employment numbers go up and Greece gets bailed out.  Presto.  The markets rise and the clouds of bad times dissipate.  Or do they?

Yes, economic recovery has been in the news all week. The president has modestly credited his own policies as the cause.  And a media intent on his reelection and with no real grasp of economic data has embraced the Recovery February storyline.  And yes, the S&P is back close to its level of April a year ago, though that is still 13% below its decade peak in October 2007.  But can you take the recovery talking and “Happy Days Are Here Again” singing to the bank?

Buyer beware. Here is some of the unsettling data.

Jobs?  Yes, up.  The raw number of jobs has been rising despite occasional blips for most of the last two years.  But the rise has not kept pace with the growth in the workforce, which means mainly the pace at which young people are coming of age.  The labor force participation rate – the percent of the adult population with jobs -- is down to around 63 percent, considerably below the 66 percent of early 2008 (http://tinyurl.com/76tghzv%29.  And the trend is down, not up.
 
Europe rescued? Yes, Greece is being bailed out, again.  Some time ago Greece’s creditors accepted a 21 percent write down of their loans to Athens.  Now they are talking of writing down as much as 70 percent on conditions of future performance that look laughably unachievable.  This is default in slow motion.  The idea is to allow banks holding Greece’s bonds time to adjust -- write-down by write-down -- and to give the European Central Bank time to provide replacement liquidity.  Since July, according to Alvaro Vargas Llosa in Forbes (http://tinyurl.com/76s2zvx%29, the ECB has increased its balance (meaning printed money) 38 percent.  In the end the Euro may or may not be saved.  But to European authorities the true test of policy now, it appears, is whether the European banks can be saved.  And until they are secure again, which may take years, chances are Europe cannot grow.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S., according to George Mason University bankruptcy law expert Todd Zywicki, also in Forbes (http://tinyurl.com/7lexmaz%29, the recent robo-signing settlement between banks and a consortium of state attorneys general and the Obama administration is a sign that the government remains in the business of looting American banks, at least that how I read Zywicki.  And if he is right, how can domestic lending recover (and with it strong economic growth) while this willy-nilly rewriting of contacts (which is what a loan is) and using of banks as a surrogate funder of government social policies continues?

With all these signs that the economy is burning, the administration keeps playing its Keynesian fiddle and putting politics (as in the Keystone decision) ahead of economics.  Press releases don’t bring back an economy.  That takes reducing the government’s dead-weight burden on the economy, which means cutting unproductive spending, stifling tax rates and paralyzing regulation – a lesson this administration has yet to learn.

So, Recovery February? Yes, if you accept a permanent downsizing of the American dream.  I am not one who believes we are in another Great Depression.  But it is all more than a little depressing.

http://www.hughhewitt.com/blog/g/4b362b1a-3476-435f-8e71-a7976845a5c6

Obama Skins the Cat--the ideological, warmist fantasy driving O

Obama Skins the Cat

By S. Fred Singer

Much of White House policy is driven by pathological fear of global warming and the unreasonable compulsion to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, a non-toxic natural constituent of the atmosphere and an absolute necessity for the survival of plants, animals, and humans. Never mind that there's no significant evidence that any recent warming has been caused by CO₂ increases -- or indeed, that any such warming would endanger human health and welfare. In addition, it should be quite obvious that any attempt by the U.S. to reduce its emissions unilaterally is an exercise in futility and self-delusion: it would have little measurable impact on the ongoing rise of global atmospheric CO₂ and would certainly not affect climate in any way.

But evidently, ideology trumps science, economics, and logic. Even common-sense considerations have not stopped President Obama from listening to his science adviser, Dr. John Holdren, one of the chief apostles of the global warming religion. Holdren is a former collaborator and associate of Stanford Prof. Paul Ehrlich, whose seminal book The Population Bomb, published some 40 years ago, preaches population control to achieve zero growth.

In this Malthusian spirit, we will shortly be "celebrating" the 40^th anniversary of the publication of Limits to Growth, a book sponsored by the so-called Club of Rome, which -- like Ehrlich's -- predicted all kinds of imminent disasters for the world's population: famines, resource depletion, dying oceans, etc. In spite of complete failure to use sound science and economics, there are still many "believers" happily ensconced in the present administration. It is interesting to note that Limits to Growth did not concern itself in any way with global warming; climate disasters came along only since 1992, courtesy of the infamous Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, which also produced U.N. Agenda 21.

But one must give the Obama administration credit for trying hard to mandate CO₂ limits to "save the climate." Its high point came in mid-2009, when the House barely passed the Waxman-Markey "cap & trade" bill -- also known as the "tax & spend" bill. It was so bad that even the Democrat-controlled Senate refused to touch it. Then, by the end of 2009, the Climategate e-mails revealed evidence of U.N.-IPCC skullduggery -- followed by the utter collapse of U.N. negotiations in Copenhagen. But in spite of all this, the EPA has been moving ahead and issued an "Endangerment Finding" (EF) that claims CO₂ as an atmospheric pollutant, subject to regulation by the Clean Air Act.

Full disclosure: We (SEPP) are part of the plaintiff group that has sued the EPA for not using sound science in arriving at its EF. Oral arguments are scheduled for late February 2012. And we are hoping the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will rule in our favor and toss out the EF. On further appeal, it might even lead the Supreme Court to rectify its 2007 decision declaring CO₂ a pollutant subject to regulation -- but with this all-important proviso: EPA must first demonstrate that CO₂ "endangers human health and welfare."

Once it had become clear to Obama that there was no chance to pass legislation to force CO₂ control, he vowed to find other ways to "skin the cat" (his words). Three of these subterfuges are underway, disguised in various ways to hide their true purpose.
1. Doubling mileage standards for automobiles by 2025 -- meant to reduce smog and other urban pollution, as well as the need for imported oil -- thereby improving national security. But the EPA, which has already drastically tightened existing standards, is quite open about the real purpose -- to reduce CO₂ emissions. In essence, EPA has preempted the role of the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration), which has the statutory responsibility for setting CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards. However, there is little chance that auto companies can produce reasonably priced cars that people will want to buy and -- note the irony -- are safe to drive. (Oh, Ralph Nader, where are you when we need you?)
2. In its December 2011 rule of 1,117 pages, EPA sets unrealistic limits on the emission of mercury from coal-fired power stations; it is part of their scheme to get rid of coal as a fuel, even though coal is the cheapest domestic energy source and requires no imports. The U.S. is blessed with abundant coal resources; over 50% of electric power was generated from coal, though the percentage has now dropped to 45%. The Chicago Tribune foresees a rise of 40%-60% in Midwest electricity rates; nationwide, the respected national economic consulting firm NERA predicts an 11% rise and a loss of 144,000 jobs by 2020.

The lame excuse the EPA is using is "to protect the children," but again, the science is lacking. In any case, most of the mercury emitted into the atmosphere comes from natural sources. Human sources, like coal-burning power plants, are located mostly in China or other regions outside the U.S. and outside EPA jurisdiction. In other words, mercury pollution is a global problem, much like CO₂; U.S. power plants contribute only 0.5% of all emissions.

The Bush administration had already promulgated plans to reduce U.S. emissions; any further tightening by the EPA will produce little marginal benefits but huge additional costs -- all for the sake of some reduction in CO₂ emissions. As usual, the EPA greatly underestimates costs by a large factor and hugely inflates benefits, claiming prevention of 11,000 premature deaths a year. In addition, EPA double-counts benefits; only 0.1% can be assigned to the reduction of mercury emissions.
3. Finally, we have the much-discussed Keystone XL pipeline, which is supposed to bring oil from Canadian tar sands to U.S. refineries on the Gulf coast. Obama has decided to stop this pipeline in order to ingratiate himself with extreme environmentalists, who oppose the project -- as just revealed in the San Francisco Chronicle of Feb 16. Their weak excuse is that an oil leak in Nebraska might produce pollution to the underlying aquifer. Of course, there is no reason why oil should leak over Nebraska -- and in any case, some 20,000 miles of various pipelines already cross the state. The real reason: production of oil from tar sands requires large amounts of heat and thus emissions of CO₂.

Opposition to this capricious action by the White House is non- partisan. It involves labor unions, who see "shovel-ready jobs" disappearing; it involves national security concerns; and it involves the general public, who want cheaper and more secure oil from nearby sources -- not from overseas producers in the Persian Gulf, brought here by tankers.

In his 2008 election campaign, Obama promised to make electricity prices "skyrocket." He seems to be succeeding beyond all expectations, as a combination of White House policies is raising fuel prices. But as the cost of essential energy jumps upward, households are sliding into poverty; they can no longer afford to buy treats for the children; it's more important to keep them from starving and freezing to death. "Skinning the cat" may be a neat way of getting around the express wishes of the Congress and the public, but it is sure to backfire against the Obama White House in the November elections.

S. Fred Singer is professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and director of the Science & Environmental Policy Project, specializing in climate science and energy policy. An expert in remote sensing and satellites, he served as the founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service and, more recently, as vice chair of the US National Advisory Committee on Oceans & Atmosphere. He is a senior fellow of the Heartland Institute and of the Independent Institute. In 2007, he founded and chaired NIPCC (Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change). For recent writings see http://www.americanthinker.com/s_fred_singer/ and Google Scholar.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/obama_skins_the_cat.html

More Deception on Energy From Obama

More Deception on Energy From Obama

by John Hinderaker in Energy Policy, Obama administration

President Obama gave a speech on energy today, evidently in response to rising gasoline prices. As always on this topic, his claims were mostly deceitful. He dragged out the long-exploded canard that America can’t drill its way to lower gas prices, since we have “have only 2% of the world’s oil reserves.” We and others have written about this many times, as has the Congressional Research Service, so Obama and his staffers–Robert Gibbs repeated the same talking point today–undoubtedly know that it is a lie.

As we have said over and over, the U.S. actually has the largest fossil fuel deposits of any country in the world. Most people assume, as Obama intends, that “reserves” means oil in the ground. It doesn’t; not in the U.S., anyway. Here, the definition of “reserves” is controlled by securities law, not be geology. Oil isn’t counted as part of our “reserves” unless it is 1) legal to extract under current laws and regulations, and 2) economic to extract at current prices. So ANWR isn’t part of our reserves; the large majority of offshore areas that are off-limits to drilling are not part of our reserves; and all other deposits that can’t be accessed under current EPA regulations are not part of our reserves. Our reserves would grow overnight if the Democrats would allow more areas to be opened up for energy development.

Investors Business Daily has a good editorial on the “Five Biggest Whoppers In Obama’s Energy Speech.” They include:

“We’re focused on production.”

Fact: While production is up under Obama, this has nothing to do with his policies, but is the result of permits and private industry efforts that began long before Obama occupied the White House.
Obama has chosen almost always to limit production. He canceled leases on federal lands in Utah, suspended them in Montana, delayed them in Colorado and Utah, and canceled lease sales off the Virginia coast.

His administration also has been slow-walking permits in the Gulf of Mexico, approving far fewer while stretching out review times, according to the Greater New Orleans Gulf Permit Index. The Energy Dept. says Gulf oil output will be down 17% by the end of 2013, compared with the start of 2011. Swift Energy President Bruce Vincent is right to say Obama has “done nothing but restrict access and delay permitting.”

“The U.S. consumes more than a fifth of the world’s oil. But we only have 2% of the world’s oil reserves.”

See the many posts we have written about this fib, like this one.

“Because of the investments we’ve made, the use of clean, renewable energy in this country has nearly doubled.”

Fact: Production of renewable energy — biomass, wind, solar and the like — climbed just 12% between 2008 and 2011, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.

“We need to double-down on a clean energy industry that’s never been more promising.”

Fact: Renewable energy simply won’t play an important role in the country’s energy picture anytime soon, accounting for just 13% of U.S. energy production by 2035, according to the EIA.

“There are no short-term silver bullets when it comes to gas prices.”

Fact: Obama could drive down oil prices right now simply by announcing a more aggressive effort to boost domestic supplies. When President Bush lifted a moratorium in 2008, oil prices immediately fell $9 a barrel.

The Obama administration has engaged in a deliberate policy of suppressing fossil fuel development while subsidizing Obama’s political allies who are perpetrating “green” scams. For an overview of the Obama energy scandal, see Cronyism 101.

There are many good reasons to evict Barack Obama from office, but one of the best is that he is exceptionally dishonest for a politician.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/02/more-deception-on-energy-from-obama.php

Warning: 'Lone wolf' terrorists work in packs

This artist rendering shows Amine El Khalifi before U.S. District Judge T. Rawles Jones Jr. in federal court in Alexandria, Va., Friday, Feb. 17, 2012. El Khalifi, a 29-year-old Moroccan man was arrested Friday near the U.S. Capitol as he was planning to detonate what he thought was a suicide vest, given to him by FBI undercover operatives, said police and government officials. (AP Photo/Dana Verkouteren)

Examiner Editorial

Amine el Khalifi wanted to kill as many Americans as possible in the U.S. Capitol building either by shooting them with the MAC-10 machine gun he was carrying or by detonating the bomb concealed in his vest. The vest bomb was packed with nails, a standard terrorist method of maximizing the horror and casualties of a suicide bombing. Born and raised in Morocco, Khalifi came to America in 1999 with his parents on a trip to Disneyland. He arrived on a tourist visa, then remained in this country illegally after the temporary document expired. He believed the U.S. war on terrorism was in fact a war on Muslims and he thought his co-conspirators -- "Hussein" and "Yusuf" -- were al Qaeda operatives in the war against the Great Satan, America.

Khalifi was not was simply a "lone wolf," as assumed by officials like Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, the Maryland Democrat who is a member of the House Intelligence Committee, as well as by most reporters and editors in the mainstream media. Lone wolves don't band together with others claiming to be comrades on a lethal mission. Khalifi believed he was acting in concert with al Qaeda, which he asked to join. He thought his attack was to be coordinated with a larger one being mounted by other al Qaeda operatives. In short, he believed he was on the al Qaeda terrorist team. So using the term "lone wolf" to describe Khalifi is, at best, a misnomer and at worst a dangerous misrepresentation.

It is not surprising, however, to hear the term being used to describe how Muslim terrorists plan to unleash their bloody, destructive rage against innocent men, women and children. Recall last summer when President Obama told Wolf Blitzer of CNN that a lone-wolf attack was "the most likely scenario that we have to guard against right now. When you've got one person who is deranged or driven by a hateful ideology, they can do a lot of damage, and it's a lot harder to trace those lone-wolf operators." Similarly, Janet Napolitano, Obama's secretary of Homeland Security, said lone wolves "were harder to detect in part because by their very definition, they're not conspiring with others, they may not be communicating with others, there's very little to indicate that something is under way."

But by Napolitano's own words, Khalifi doesn't fit the "lone wolf" profile because he believed "Hussein" and "Yusuf" were his al Qaeda co-conspirators. It doesn't matter that they were in fact FBI operatives working undercover to ferret out Khalifi-style plots. And there is nothing in the FBI's criminal complaint filed in federal court last week against Khalifi to suggest he had to be pushed or otherwise encouraged to participate in the plot. Which leaves us with this issue: How many more Khalifis are out there, having resided undisturbed here in the U.S. illegally for years just waiting to connect with co-conspirators, ready to don suicide vests and cause carnage in a crowd? Next time, the FBI might not catch them in time to prevent the carnage.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/2012/02/warning-lone-wolf-terrorists-work-packs/295011?utm_source=Washington%20Examiner%20Opinion%20Digest%20-%2002/21/2012&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Washington%20Examiner:%20Opinion%20Digest

Obama Is Driving Us Crazy

Obama Is Driving Us Crazy

by John Hinderaker in Economy, Obama administration

Unemployment is down, according to the official numbers, yet more people than ever are not working. What are they doing instead? The New York Post reports that an astonishing number of them are classifying themselves as disabled in order to continue receiving government benefits:

Standing too many months on the unemployment line is driving Americans crazy — literally — and it’s costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.

With their unemployment-insurance checks running out, some of the country’s long-term jobless are scrambling to fill the gap by filing claims for mental illness and other disabilities with Social Security — a surge that hobbles taxpayers and making the employment rate look healthier than it should as these people drop out of the job statistics. …

As of January, the federal government was mailing out disability checks to more than 10.5 million individuals, including 2 million to spouses and children of disabled workers, at a cost of record $200 billion a year, recent research from JPMorgan Chase shows.

The sputtering economy has fueled those ranks. Around 5.3 percent of the population between the ages of 25 and 64 is currently collecting federal disability payments, a jump from 4.5 percent since the economy slid into a recession.

Mental-illness claims, in particular, are surging. During the recent economic boom, only 33 percent of applicants were claiming mental illness, but that figure has jumped to 43 percent, says Rutledge, citing preliminary results from his latest research. …

The jump in successful disability claims also is making the unemployment picture look extra rosy because those folks are falling off the jobless rolls.

“If they’re on disability they’re generally not counted,” says Feroli, who estimates that a quarter of those dropping out of the job market are getting disability. “It’s no trivial number.”

That last statistic is remarkable: a quarter of those who are dropping out of the job market, and hence out of the unemployment statistics, are going on disability instead. Disability, unlike unemployment benefits, will most likely go on forever. So this is one more way in which Obama is making the U.S. more like Europe–Scandinavia, in particular, where large numbers of seemingly able-bodied individuals live much of their adult lives on disability benefits.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/02/obama-is-driving-us-crazy.php

Victor Davis Hansen

It is hard to remember a more tense time in the last 20 years. Tiny Israel may be poised to preempt the nuclear capabilities of Iran (an Iran that itself once attempted, unsuccessfully, to take out the Iraqi reactor at Osirak before Israel finished the job), whose terrorist appendages and missiles have the ability to do it a great deal of damage in return. How such a war would escalate or end, no one knows. There is no sense of a global effort to stop Iran’s proliferation, given that China and Russia seem to enjoy the irritation that Iran causes the West. I think U.S. policy amounts to a sort of shrug (we publicly discourage the Israelis, privately sorta hope they do, and publicly will sorta condemn them if they do). Whatever is happening in Afghanistan and Iraq, no one seems to know, or — despite our tens of thousands of troops in combat — even seem to care, given that the administration seems irked more than engaged.

In California gas is already over $4 a gallon — in an off-peak February, amid slow growth and high unemployment. What it will be during the summer driving season and if there is a tiny upturn in the economy — or as the Strait of Hormuz heats up — we can only guess. Once more trying to release some oil from the strategic petroleum reserve — while putting new leases off limits in the west, in Alaska, offshore, and in the gulf, coupled with the Keystone cancellation — is not going to do much. Putin killed the Russian reset and wants everyone to know it. The Arab Spring is a bitter winter. There is no Libyan model for Syria. Mexico blames us for its own gun violence (despite guns flowing to the cartels from all over the world), and is suing an American state to force it not to enforce U.S. immigration law. It seems to think that 11 million of its nationals who entered the U.S. illegally and with Mexican government encouragement must be de facto American citizens — given their lucrative multibillion-dollar remittances.

Germany is getting to the point that it would rather write off the $400 billion than listen to chronic Greek slurs and whining; what Greeks rioters will do when they get their wish and have their drachma no one knows, but the country will soon be de-Europeanized. For now it is sorta doing to Germany what Germany did to its creditors in the 1920s. As for the EU: Once Greece implodes, nothing is off the table. It seems more like 1936 than 2012 in Europe. A U.S. that ran up $5 trillion debt in three years is in no position either to sermonize or to help much. Turkey, our newfound close ally, has warned us not to share NATO intelligence and de facto now has a free hand in the Eastern Mediterranean.

In such times, rumors of a possible vast unilateral reduction in the U.S. strategic arsenal cannot reassure our non-nuclear allies, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan (who could all, if they so wished, become nuclear by next month), that they are safely within the U.S. umbrella in a world of China, North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran. The Obama administration does not seem to grasp that the current favored policy of “’leading from behind” –that is, being exceptional only to the degree that Italy, say, or Greece likewise thinks it is exceptional — or a U.N.-adjudicated foreign policy is not really a reset of past American policy, but ultimately just chaos.