While Obama-mania runs rampant in Hawaii – without any calls for him to get back to reality and deal with Gaza – we come across this from Think Progress:

While Bush has been briefed on the situation by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, he has opted not to interrupt his final vacation as president to make a public statement on the crisis.

And this from ABC News

:

Even an emerging crisis in the Middle East, one he pledged to resolve just 13 months ago, has not drawn President George W. Bush from his final vacation before leaving office.  Despite his personal pledge at Annapolis last year to broker a deal between Israel and the Palestinians before 2009, this weekend Bush sent his spokesmen to comment in his stead.

Despite his personal pledge?  What of Bill Clinton’s pledge? Or Carter’s? Or Reagan’s? Or Daddy Bush’s pledge?

Of course, if Bush were to make a statement from Crawford or head back to DC, these same folks would make little of it, ridiculing him as a lame duck or worse.  And even more certainly, anything Bush says, short of announcing troop deployment, neither Israel or Hamas would pay much attention.

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oday, president George W. Bush’s Commerce Dept. sided with environmental and no-growth loons and killed a much needed new toll road in OC.  Commerce was the final appeal after the draconian California Coastal Commission voted down the project.

There was a day when the Commerce Dept. stood for … get this! … commerce.  It supported the concept of the movement of goods and people, and gave the nation’s economic growth a higher standing than dubious arguments about perceived environmental harm or impacts on state parks.

Take state parks for a moment.  Opponents say  San Onofre Beach State Park is one of the most used in the state and the planned toll road’s impact on it will be devastating. The argument is so bogus only a fool (i.e., someone in the Bush admin) would believe it.

The park is L-shaped, with two distinct areas – one a lightly used, non-descript campground upstream, and one a heavily used campground along the coast, above Trestles Beach, one of the better surf spots along the coast.  The toll road will pretty much ruin any outdoors experience at the upstream campground, but that’s hardly an impact since it gets so little use.

The campground above the beach is immediately adjacent to Interstate 5, where cars and trucks roar by all day and night, and California’s major north-south rail line, where trains do the same, and finally, it’s next to the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, which is hardly a call back to nature.  This highly impacted setting is the popular part of the park, and people flock to it despite the cars, trucks, trains, exhaust fumes,  and near-by ongoing nuclear reaction.  The toll road would add almost nothing negative to this; in fact, it would reduce traffic jams in the area and probably marginally improve the overall experience.

Yet Bush’s Commerce Dept. fell for that, just as they fell for the argument that there’s a viable alternative route; there’s really not, and now we’re damned to increasing congestion and worsening runoff pollution from the I-5.  Worse, Bush has emboldened the greenie/no-growth movement and they’re probably even now in search of a new target for their efforts.

Ironically, all this happens as Obama calls for massive infrastructure improvements to spur the economy.  The toll road was such a project and it would have employed thousands for several years.  it is a harbinger of the environmental/no-growth opposition Obama will face when he tries to roll out his infrastructure-heavy stimulus.

Conservative ideals (remember those) are not anti-environment because stewardship is part of conservatism.  But our ideals should allow us to easily differentiate between a reasonable level of regulation and environmental protection on the one hand and environmental extremism on the other.  Commerce’s decision today is more evidence of how far from conservative ideals Bush has moved, and it’s a clarion call for the need for the GOP to not move away from those ideals.

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Welcome To The World Of Idiots

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here’s a fire! Quick, grab the fire extinguisher! … No, wait … we’re too stupid to use a fire extinguisher!

At least that’s how the world’s ultimate nanny state, the once-proud global empire of the United Kingdom:

Fire extinguishers could be removed from communal areas in flats throughout the country because they are a safety hazard, it has emerged.

The life-saving devices encourage untrained people to fight a fire rather than leave the building, risk assessors in Bournemouth decided.

Dorset Fire and Rescue defended the move, saying: ‘Obviously, in some cases, an extinguisher could come in useful but, with new building regulations, every escape route should be completely fireproof.’

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents backed their removal because different extinguishers should be used on different types of fire. (Source, via What Bubba Knows)

Yeah, that’s definitely too much for mere citizens like us to understand. Better we burn up than try to fend for ourselves without the help of our state-employed saviors, who are are smart enough to save us.  Bring on the Nannies. Continue Reading »

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T

he media bias never ceases … and never ceases to amaze me. Today, President-elect Obama came to the White House at the invitation of President Bush, and how does the Washington Post headline it on its home page?

Bush Meets with Obama at the White House

I kind of thought it was the other way around. Usually when you accept someone’s invitation and go to their place, you’re meeting with them. WaPo and the rest of the Mainly Marginalized Media just don’t know when to stop. Heck, I don’t think they even know how to stop.

The actual story, BTW, has a more moderate headline: Obamas Make Symbolic Visit to Future Home: White House.

How fitting for a guy whose entire political career has ridden on symbolism.

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M

y friend Jim usually just gets a hat-tip; this time he gets a post all his own.  Jim, carry on …

In a message dated 10/27/2008 10:43:59 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, “swingdawg” writes:

I do realize that the colosal [sic] failure of the Bush presidency, in every single area, will be incredibly difficult to fix, but the next 8 years of an Obama administration followed, no doubt, by a Biden or Clinton administration should be enough time to repair all the damage that has been done.

Oh, by the way, it was Bush who just ‘Socialized’ the banking/mortgage industry.

Excuse me, but haven’t the Democrats been in charge of both houses of Congress since the last election? What great things have they to show for their turn at the oars?  (Besides a 12% approval rating, the lowest in history, and considerably lower than President Bush’s.)

“Swingdawg” would like to have everyone forget or ignore history and join the folks over at MoveOn.org and Daily Kos and succumb to BDS, but (thanks to the wonderful Internet that Al Gore invented) we can actually go back in time and see what happened.

It was during the Clinton administration (a Democrat if memory serves) that they enacted policies that set up the collapse of the housing market.  1) On November 12, 1999, President Clinton repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which for 55 years had prevented banks, the nation’s lenders, to get into the so-called “investment banking” business (stock brokers).     2)  Also in 1999, Clinton appointed Franklin Raines… to become the CEO of the obscure but powerful Fannie Mae giant GSE (Government Sponsored Enterprise), which had been “privatized” and listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

So the pattern becomes clear. Harvard Law School attorneys – noted for their lack of economic knowledge — create an easy-money system which relies on flakey loans provided by fat-cat financial manipulators who are the primary contributors to the re-election campaigns of the legislators – almost exclusively Democrats. (Some more good history here.)

In 2005, we almost fixed the Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac problem, but the bill didn’t become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn’t even get the Senate to vote on the matter. We now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years.

(Another bit of historical data here.  [NOTE:  Do not read if you are a "Progressive," it is not healthy to be confused by facts after your mind is made up.])

Since your friend writes. “I do realize that the colosal [sic] failure of the Bush presidency, in every single area…”, I have to ask if he blames the 9/11 attack by radical Muslims, on President Bush’s policies as well?

Referring back to our Internet history sources once again, it seems that our earlier attacks go back to President Carter’s time (I think that he was a Democrat too), and really ramped up under President Clinton, where in 1993 we had our first attack on the World Trade Center; (and allowed our Special Forces to be humiliated by a pissant Warlord in Somalia); followed by (Oklahoma City in 1995?), the bombing of the Khobar Towers in 1996, and the coordinated bombings of our two US Embassies (Tanzania & Kenya) in 1998.  President Clinton then finished out his term with the attack on the USS Cole in 2000.

Please put me in the camp of right thinkers who believe that it was President Clinton’s do-nothingness in response to each of these attacks that emboldened our enemies and brought about the Islamist attack of 9/11.

In my opinion, President Bush’s kick-ass response to that is pretty much what has helped keep us safe for these past years, not the Democrats or Progressives!

Your friend might also want to consider how poorly Democrats do in other areas of government.  In spite of what the Media would like folks to believe, it was Democratic Mayor Nagin and NOT President Bush, who left all the school buses parked during Katrina.

Or how about those crime statistics?

A popular chain email, Chicago War Zone Information, sloshing around Chicago informs the reader, “Body count.  In the last six months 292 killed (murdered) in Chicago, 221 killed in Iraq.”

Sens. Barack Obama & Dick Durbin, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., Gov. Rod Blogojevich, House leader Mike Madigan, Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan, Mayor Richard Daley. . .  . our leadership in Illinois. . . . all Democrats.  Thank you for the combat zone in Chicago (a lot of good gun control does, huh?). Of course they’re all blaming each other.  Can’t blame Republicans; there aren’t any!

The Illinois state pension fund is $44 Billion in debt, the worst in country.  Cook County (Chicago) sales tax is 10.25%, the highest in country.  (Look’em up if you want).  Chicago’s school system one of the worst in country (despite the millions from Ayres/Obama).  This is the political culture that Obama comes from in Illinois.  He’s gonna ‘fix’ Washington politics?  Give me a break!!!

You might ask “Swingdawg” if he can give an example of where a Progressive policy (other than just a hand-out, of course) has actually improved conditions for a minority group?

Oh, and just for the record…

Demographers have shown that since the 1940s, the Democratic Party has segued from the party of the working middle class to the party whose voters look like a double-hump camel: they are either the poor who vote for entitlements or the extremely wealthy millionaires and billionaires who provide the “juice” to buy the allegiance of the first group.

McCain-Palin 2008!

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Updated

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t appears that under the plan Pres. Bush announced this a.m., the federal government (i.e., you and me) will spend up to $700 billion to buy back troubled mortgages from banks. AP characterizes these mortgages as “toxic,” and that’s a good definition.

I do not want one penny of my currently very dear money to go toward saving people who lied about their income on “‘no stated income” loans. And not a penny to people who made bad bets on the market with nothing down mortgages. And the people who sold and repackaged these mortgages? Let them stew in their own desperate financial juices.

Not one penny to any of them, and I don’t care what the consequences are!

Here’s what we should do instead: Be a government of the people, not a government of the businesses and the lobbyists. We should set up a short-term (three years ’til it sunsets) federal mortgage repackaging house. It would have only one purpose: To rewrite an individual taxpayer’s loan as a 50-year fixed (or even a 100-year fixed; such mortgages are common in Japan).

People who are in bad mortgages or are otherwise about to lose their houses would have show an ability to pay, with the term of the mortgage being flexible enough to allow some pretty underqualified people to slide through. Interest rates, though, would be competitive, not written down at our expense, so the government would be able to sell the mortgages to the private sector at auctions.

Those who are not able to meet the income requirements for a 50- or 100-year fixed would lose their houses. They don’t deserve to keep them; welcome to the wonderful world of personal responsibility. Even so, this would reduce dramatically the number of foreclosures on the market, which would help the homebuilding industry come back.

Also helping the homebuilders is the probability that new longer-term mortgages would become widely available through the private sector, to be used for new home purchases in addition to bail-outs. This is pivotal to a recovery because you just cannot underscore the importance of home-buying to the economy. In the early 2000s, the homebuilding industry had the highest sales of all industries in California – outpacing even retail for a year or two. That translates as jobs, purchases, taxes – what makes the world go round. If the “‘fix” doesn’t fix the homebuilding, it’s not a fix.

And what of the institutions, with their MBAs and PhDs that dreamed up mortgage based derivatives and other instruments of economic death? Let them all crash where they may, and watch very carefully the new institutions that will quickly rise to fill the void. Congressional hearings will be needed from day one to track what they’re doing and hold them responsible, and the members of Congress who serve on the oversight committees will just have to deal with the fact that America will no longer tolerate the acceptance of campaign funding from the industry they oversee, you SOB Chris Dodd.

Finally, we need to treat new financial products like we treat new pharmaceuticals. They need to be overseen, tested and certified by a Federal Financial Instruments Agency before they are foisted on the market, because like Thalidomide, they can create great human suffering if there’s something wrong with them.

This could work, and work without selling a lousy mortgage on America to our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, unlike the plan Bush outlined today. That plan just might prove the crazy liberals right: It just might make him the worst president in American history.

Update: Paul Krugman agrees:

I hate to say this, but looking at the plan as leaked, I have to say no deal. Not unless Treasury explains, very clearly, why this is supposed to work, other than through having taxpayers pay premium prices for lousy assets.

As I posted earlier today, it seems all too likely that a “fair price” for mortgage-related assets will still leave much of the financial sector in trouble. And there’s nothing at all in the draft that says what happens next; although I do notice that there’s nothing in the plan requiring Treasury to pay a fair market price. So is the plan to pay premium prices to the most troubled institutions? Or is the hope that restoring liquidity will magically make the problem go away?

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t is, in the end, all Bush’s fault.

Isn’t it always? 9/11, Iraq, gas prices, and now the Russian invasion of Georgia, to the Bush-hating left, there is a common cause for all this, and its middle initial is W. Here’s the position, as espoused by Fred Kaplan in Slate:

Regardless of what happens next, it is worth asking what the Bush people were thinking when they egged on Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s young, Western-educated president, to apply for NATO membership, send 2,000 of his troops to Iraq as a full-fledged U.S. ally, and receive tactical training and weapons from our military. Did they really think Putin would sit by and see another border state (and former province of the Russian empire) slip away to the West? If they thought that Putin might not, what did they plan to do about it, and how firmly did they warn Saakashvili not to get too brash or provoke an outburst?

As always, there’s no effort to look at the other side. What would have happened if we hadn’t been friendly to Georgia? If we hadn’t offered military training and accepted their involvement in Iraq? If we hadn’t pushed to expand NATO to the former Russian republics slave states? My hunch: Putin’s KGB-based Russia would have attacked Georgia one way or the other.

But to the Left, the position is to see a crisis, dredge up a one-dimensional recitation of Bush policies and blame all the evil on Bush. And from that base assumption, everything the Bush administration does must be just as evil. More Kaplan:

Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly called Saakashvili on Sunday to assure him that “Russian aggression must not go unanswered.” We should all be interested to know what answer he is preparing or whether he was just dangling the Georgians on another few inches of string. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, told the Security Council, “This is completely unacceptable and crosses a line.” Talk like that demands action. What’s the plan, and how does he hope to get the Security Council—on which Russia has veto power—to approve it?

Again, what is the alternative? Would Kaplan prefer Cheney call Saakashvili and tell him, “Tough luck. We’re OK with Putin sending tanks into free democracies?” Is Khalilzad supposed to tell the UN no line was crossed when Russian troops poured over the borderline? That lifts appeasement to the level of acceptance and support and no American president, not even Jimmy Carter, has ever taken such a position.

Of course Russia must answer for its aggression because of course they crossed the line. Kaplan is right that there is no military solution; heck, the military options (short of nuclear holocaust) were gone as soon as Russian air strikes started because getting a military force into Georgia is a logistical nightmare – but not as bad as the idea of fighting Russian troops on the edge of the Russian nation.

Like many of us, when it comes to Georgia, I’ve gone a vaguely supportive, lightly educated follower of Saakashvili’s democratic revolution to a fairly well read interested party, but I’m hardly a policy wonk on the issues. With that introduction, here’s what I think:

We’re on the right side. Standing up for democracies is something we just have to do, even if they’re poorly functioning. We never supported Georgia to goad Russia; we did it to encourage more democracy in the region, including in Russia.

We should continue to push for NATO expansion. Kaplan says that if Georgia were in NATO, we’d be in a shooting war with Russia now, but that’s ridiculous. If Georgia were in NATO it’s much more likely Russian troops would not be in Georgia now. So, with the knowledge that we no longer need to or should support Europe with the sort of military actions that were anticipated when NATO was formed following WWII, we should continue expansive military alliances there, just as we promote economic alliances.

We should make Russia pay, literally, for rebuilding. They’ve got the money and if we force the issue at the U.N., they’re likely to be in the unfortunate position of having to veto the action, which would be a PR disaster for them.

We should work with nations dependent on energy from the trans-Georgia pipelines to secure broad legal protections for Georgia’s control over them, not Russia’s.

We should look to the other former Soviet vassal states and see what sort of support we can give them. Some are feeling very vulnerable today, and the creation of a united front of indignant outrage that includes these states and many, many others will send a message even to Russia.

We should not spill any blood over Georgia. Our support should be broad and deep but there’s no point in sending troops into anywhere we can’t sustain them.

Russia should be dis-invited from the G8 until they learn how to behave like a civilized nation.

We should pass quite a lot of anti-Russian legislation at the federal and state level. Public portfolios should be cleansed of any Russian filth. The Air Force tanker contract should to to Boeing because it’s the only bidder that doesn’t have partial Russian ownership. No banking or trade favors allowed.

And we should pass a law that no American president can ever again look a Russian president in the eye, see his soul and deem him trustworthy. That was, in fact, a very big mistake by George W. Bush

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W

hat’s at stake in Georgia today, as Russia seeks to secure its military advances? Let’s ask the country’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili.

Most obviously, the future of my country is at stake. The people of Georgia have spoken with a loud and clear voice: They see their future in Europe. Georgia is an ancient European nation, tied to Europe by culture, civilization and values. In January, three in four Georgians voted in a referendum to support membership in NATO. These aims are not negotiable; now, we are paying the price for our democratic ambitions.

Second, Russia’s future is at stake. Can a Russia that wages aggressive war on its neighbors be a partner for Europe? It is clear that Russia’s current leadership is bent on restoring a neocolonial form of control over the entire space once governed by Moscow.

Saakashvili paints a story in his WSJ op/ed today of a compromise-seeking Georgia, an aggressively expansive Russia and a Europe that cried for negotiations and diplomacy, but took no overt action. Sound familiar?

Saakashvili was kind to us because he was writing in the WSJ to American opinion leaders, but he could have included us with the Europeans. President Bush has visited Georgia and praised it as a showcase of how democracy can bloom where totalitarianism once reigned. (Of course, that vision was tainted by Saakashvili’s heavy-handed treatment of opposition in Georgia’s last election.) We’ve cast our lot with Georgia, encouraged its participation in NATO, and stood by its president. Now Georgia is turning to us … and not finding much beyond words at this early hour.

The NYT’s focus this a.m., natch, was on the sort of criticism of America Saakashvili avoided.

Georgians around Gori spoke of America plaintively, uncertainly. They were beginning to feel betrayed.

“Tell your government,” said a man named Truber, fresh from the side of the Tbilisi hospital bed where his son was being treated for combat injuries. “If you had said something stronger, we would not be in this.”

He had not slept for three days, and he was angry — at himself, at Georgia, but mainly at the United States. “If you want to help, you have to help the end,” he said.

What can we do? What should we do? It’s a question that will play itself out in our election. Today, both candidates have pretty much the same position (after Obama ratcheted up his rhetoric from his early bland mumble-mouth position – see Gateway Pundit for more).

If we take this back to the Cold War, where we fought Soviet expansionism through proxies, which candidate would be more likely to provide Georgia with arms and training? McCain, of course. If it’s to be a diplomatic war, which candidate would be more likely to be able to put together an international condemnation of Russia with sufficient teeth to influence Moscow?

Good question. Obama is the international darling so the answer should clearly be him. But would his appointments be the ones that could carry out such a task? So far, it looks like Obama foreign policy will be that of Madeline Albright, which doesn’t bode well. McCain has the pugnaciousness to bare some teeth and has been drawing on a kitchen cabinet of foreign policy pros from Kissinger to Kristol that in my opinion are much better suited for this sort of affair.

Lots of questions … but one’s already being answered: The American left is going to duck the issue. Tigerhawk did the digging:

Well, as of this morning, you can find no mention of the war on A.N.S.W.E.R.’s home page. The group is addressing many other pressing matters, but apparently not the unremitting attack on Georgia. Code Pink? Nyet. Democracy Now!, which is a left-wing media group, has lots of news about American wars on its web page but nothing about Russia or Georgia. Nothing from the comrades at Peace Action. Stop the War Coalition? What war? You can search the home pages of left-wing groups until the cows come home and not find anything on the Russo-Georgia war.

For its part, Daily Kos poses a survey question this morning. No, not about Russia and Georgia, but about how the summer weather’s been this year.

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Y

es, of course the quote of the day is this, from Barack Obama, answering ABC’s Terry Moran:

“Here is what I will say. I think that, I did not anticipate, and I think that this is a fair characterization, the convergence of not only the surge but the Sunni awakening in which a whole host of Sunni tribal leaders decided that they had had enough with Al Qaeda, in the Shii’a community the militias standing down to some degrees. So what you had is a combination of political factors inside of Iraq that then came right at the same time as terrific work by our troops. Had those political factors not occurred, I think that my assessment would have been correct.”

So, Obama still refuses to call the surge a success, despite the evident truth that since the surge, Iraq has become a very different place. Did we ever think he would reverse his core position?

His new position can be restated as this:

“The bravery and competence of the American armed forces had little or nothing to do with the improved situation in Iraq. We have the Sunni awakening to thank, because even though our troops did terrific work, it wasn’t that terrific work that changed things.”

Well, he just might be right. And oh so wrong.

There was a certain political, not military, factor that is primarily responsible for the change we see in Iraq. It was George Bush’s commitment to doing it right, even after the 2006 GOP melt-down. Instead of reading the cards that had been dealt and waffling, Bush sent more troops to Iraq. The number wasn’t all that much, but the psychological message to the Iraqi government and those who would overthrow it couldn’t have been more overwhelming: We are going to stay until it’s right, no matter what.

For Maliki and the Iraqi government, it meant breathing room that was needed to carry out new initiatives and check off the boxes on Congress’ checklist for progress.

For al Qaeda it meant their terror efforts building up to the election got them nothing, and they were on the ropes.

For Iran it meant that their continued support of anti-US efforts in Iraq would come at a price to dear for them to pay.

For the Dems in Congress, it meant that America would continue to put the troops and victory first for at least another two years, and there was nothing they could do about it. (And Lord knows, they tried.)

And for our military it meant a green light to continue to work with Shi’a and Sunni alike to create a new set of alliances that Obama merely passes off as Iraqis deciding a new way to go on their own – as if the groundwork laid by military officers in Iraq over the past several years had nothing to do with it.

Maliki’s infamous quote is being passed off as the end of the McCain campaign. Witness Matthew Yglesias today, under the title McCain’s Waterloo:

[McCain had] spent several weeks with the main theme of his campaign being, quite literally, to criticize Barack Obama for not having been physically present in Iraq recently. This (of course) got Obama to go to Iraq, thus setting up a dilemma. Either Obama would survey the “progress” in Iraq and change his position, thus making him a flip-flopper, or else he would refuse to change his position, thus making him obstinate and out of touch with reality. But instead of either of those things happening, Obama went to Iraq and Iraqi leaders said he’d been right all along!

That’s about as close to “game, set, match” as you get in terms of real world events influencing your political campaign.

So it might seem, as long as you’re looking at the world the way Barack Obama does. But about half of us U.S. voters don’t see it that way, and what I, as just one of that group, now see happening is this: Obama will get a false confidence from his trip because he hadn’t been right all along, he just happened to be right at this perfect moment of time, and had he been “right” about the surge as a doomed prospect, Maliki wouldn’t be in a position to be calling for short timeframes today.

Thus, once again, Obama is developing a false read on certain things we hold dear – our military, our commitment to victory – and therefore he has considerable opportunity to plunge from today’s high peak. He is, today, the hare in the race, with McCain plodding along far behind but steady.

The finish line is a long ways away, and my bet’s on the tortoise.

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E

ver since the great drilling debate was launched, I’ve wondered why President Bush linked lifting the federal executive orders banning offshore drilling to Congress lifting its own drilling bans. It was a ridiculous position strategically, and it’s good that Bush is not so stubborn that he refused to change his tactics.

Now that he’s scratched the executive orders, all eyes are on Congress, where Bush should have directed them in the first place. (Is this really that hard to figure out?!)

From this a.m.’s WSJ, we see the Obama response to Bush’s call for expanded drilling:

Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said that if lifting the moratorium on offshore exploration “would provide short-term relief at the pump or a long-term strategy for energy independence, it would be worthy of our consideration, regardless of the risks. But most experts, even within the Bush administration, concede it would do neither.” The White House said Mr. Bush’s proposals would take years to have their full impact.

So? Let’s ask the obvious unasked question: How do oil’s years-to-market compare to the number of years it’ll take to get the ramshackle gaggle of alternative energies to make as big a contribution? No one’s guessing; but anyone with any critical capacity at all can and should question the Dem supposition that it’ll take capitalists sniffing money 10 years to stuff their pockets with bucks from new oil sales.

How about one year instead? Sound more realistic? From the same article:

A Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst said in a report there is a lot of offshore crude that can be produced relatively quickly. The problem: It is located off California, where politicians have built careers opposing new drilling.

The Minerals Management Service said that of the estimated 18 billion barrels of oil in off-limits coastal areas, almost 10 billion are off the coast of California.

“California could actually start producing new oil within a year if the moratorium were lifted,” the Sanford C. Bernstein report said, because the oil is under shallow water, has been explored and drilling platforms have been there since before the moratoria. (emphasis added)

One year! That would generate instantaneous downward price pressure on the oil futures market and would quickly impact the price at the pump.

So what did Obama’s Chicago hack politics buddy and DNC dirty work king Rahm Emanuel have to say about all this?

“I’ve been in Washington long enough to know a political stunt when I see one.”

And I know a political party trying desperately to appease its environmentalist, anti-corporate, elitist special interests when I see one.

Photo: Ian Parker

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