Good News and Bad News on Energy

The Foundation

"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." --James Madison

Editorial Exegesis

"Sometimes the revolution politicians seek isn't the one they get. Consider the irony -- and the opportunity -- in Monday's report that the U.S. is likely to surpass Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer as early as 2020. In its annual world energy outlook, the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) says the global energy map 'is being redrawn by the resurgence in oil and gas production in the United States.' The U.S. will increase its production to about 23 million barrels a day in 10 years from about 18 million barrels a day now, the IEA predicts. ... The biggest potential threat may come from federal regulation in Mr. Obama's second term. Though he tried to take credit for the fracking revolution in his second debate with Mitt Romney, his EPA has long wanted to supplant state regulators and will grab any opportunity to do so. Perhaps the election of pro-fracking Democrats like soon-to-be Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota (home to the monster Bakken Shale field) can give the new energy revolution some needed bipartisan buy-in. Historians will one day marvel that so much political and financial capital was invested in a green-energy revolution at the very moment a fossil fuel revolution was aborning. But politicians failing to spot the trend until they start taking credit for it is an old story. Let's hope they don't ruin it now that they've noticed." --The Wall Street Journal

Upright

"[T]he key point about Barack Obama is not that he's a secret Muslim Kenyan Commie or whatever. Whether he was born in Honolulu or Mombasa or Stockholm or up on Planet Zongo, what matters ... is that in his general worldview he is entirely typical and perfectly representative of tens upon tens of millions of Americans. Tuesday's majority confirmed that. They don't need a 'conspiracy': They agree with him. That's the problem." --columnist Mark Steyn

"Men and women, whites and Hispanics, the young and the middle-aged: All of them want politicians to offer a practical agenda to create jobs, raise wages, and make health care and higher education more affordable. Most of them aren't wedded to liberal answers on those issues. They will take them over nothing, and that's what Republicans have been giving them." --columnist Ramesh Ponnuru

"We conservatives may never reach a consensus among ourselves as to the main factors that caused our election defeat, but surely we can agree that we must do a better job of selling our ideas." --columnist David Limbaugh

"So the administration would have us believe that only after the election was the president told by the FBI that an investigation with possible national-security implications -- involving no less than the director of the Central Intelligence Agency -- has been going on since the summer. We're also to believe that the director's resignation after the election and before congressional hearings on Benghazi is purely coincidental. Not only that, but when the most powerful man in the world learned of the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, he immediately ordered that everything be done to secure all personnel at the site -- but apparently, everyone ignored him. So he did what any commander in chief would do under such circumstances -- he went to bed. Yes, they really do think we're that stupid." --attorney Peter Kirsanow

"A cover-up in the Obama administration? I know what you are thinking: No way; not the most transparent, patriotic administration ever. It must be an act of the gods or perhaps the Mayan calendar. But really, the recent resignation of General Petraeus from the position of director of the C.I.A. has to be related to Benghazi. Either that or to the Bermuda Triangle. Because here is another remarkable coincidence: Neither the FBI, nor United States Marines are responsible for the security of consulates and embassies. The C.I.A. is tasked with that job. ... Notice how quickly the deputy director who is replacing Petraeus is ready to stand before Congress next week and truthfully testify by saying, 'I don't know, Senator'?" --columnist John Ransom

Essential Liberty

"Quite aside from the immediate effects of particular policies, Barack Obama has repeatedly circumvented the laws, including the Constitution of the United States, in ways and on a scale that pushes this nation in the direction of arbitrary one-man rule. Now that Obama will be in a position to appoint Supreme Court justices who can rubber stamp his evasions of the law and usurpations of power, this country may be unrecognizable in a few years as the America that once led the world in freedom, as well as in many other things. Barack Obama's boast, on the eve of the election of 2008 -- 'We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America' -- can now be carried out, without fear of ever having to face the voters again. This 'transforming' project extends far beyond fundamental internal institutions, or even the polarization and corruption of the people themselves, with goodies handed out in exchange for their surrendering their birthright of freedom." --economist Thomas Sowell

Insight

"The more people chant about their freedom and how free they are, the more loudly I hear their chains rattling." --English novelist George Orwell (1903-1950)

"One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary." --philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

"Every nation has the government it deserves." --Savoyard philosopher Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821)

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Demo-gogues

Says the guy who spent all the money: "I'm committed to solving our fiscal challenges. But I refuse to accept any approach that isn't balanced. I am not going to ask students and seniors and middle-class families to pay down the entire deficit while people like me, making over $250,000, aren't asked to pay a dime more in taxes. I'm not going to do that." --Barack Obama

"We can't accept an unfair deal that piles on the middle class and tell them they have to support it. We have to make sure that the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share." --Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) promising to pile on the middle class if Republicans won't ascent to raise taxes on the top brackets

Says the guy who doesn't cooperate: "What the American people are looking for is cooperation. They're looking for consensus. They're looking for common sense. Most of all, they want action. I intend to deliver for them in my second term, and I expect to find willing partners in both parties to make that happen." --Barack Obama

Says the guy who left the Americans in Benghazi to die: "We take care of our own. We take care of our veterans. We take care of your families, not just by saluting you on one day, once a year, but by fighting for you and your families every day of every year. That's our obligation, a sacred obligation to all of you." --Barack Obama

Framing the debate exactly backwards: "Republicans face a choice, and the choice is theirs. If they want to drive off the fiscal cliff, that means they want to go into January demanding that people like Mitt Romney get a bonus tax break or nobody gets any tax relief." --Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD)

Dezinformatsia

Redefinitions: "Three states voted to legalize same-sex marriage, which is the civil rights cause of our times. One day we will look back and wonder how people could have been so willing to deny equal treatment under the law to a small minority." --CNN's Fareed Zakaria

Sick excuses: "You know when you just showed that [election demographic] graph of the decline in the numbers, I thought, 'Maybe that's why [white people are] trying to eliminate all these abortions and stuff. They're trying to build up the race.'" --CBS's Nancy Giles

Not already! "Clinton has the leadership to be president" --The Buffalo News endorsing Hillary for president in 2016

"Can you think of a more qualified human being [than Hillary Clinton]? She lived in the White House for eight years with another president, she was a United States senator, and now she's got every world leader on speed dial, so there'd be no questions about her qualifications." --NBC's Willie Geist also endorsing Hillary

Hot air: "Researchers don't fly off the handle and make dire predictions. In fact they have been underestimating the rate of climate change and global warming ever since it was discovered. And that's odd, because one of the frequent accusations made by climate science deniers is that scientists are too alarmist. If anything, this study and a recent presentation at the annual meeting of Geological Society of America, underscore that a little more Revere-like alarmism may be a really good idea. It's even patriotic." --DiscoveryNews' Larry O'Hanion

Blind sycophant: "[Thomas Jefferson] was a tall, cool, cerebral president who won re-election, who was actually really good at politics even though he didn't want to act as though he was. So there's some similarities with President Obama." --former Newsweek editor Jon Meacham

Newspulper Headlines:

Out on a Limb: "Boehner: 'As a Political Party, We've Got Some Work to Do'" --Yahoo! News

Longest Books Ever Written: "Why US Economy May Be Headed for Another Recession" --CNBC.com

That's a Relief: "India's Poor Won't Disappear Overnight" --Daily Telegraph (London)

We Blame George W. Bush: "Climate Change May Have Doomed Ancient Maya, Study Finds" --Bloomberg

Questions Nobody Is Asking: "Michelle Obama 2016: Why Not?" --TheAtlanticWire.com

Bottom Story of the Day: "Election Over, K Street Ready to Cash In" --Politico.com

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto)

Village Idiots

Payback: "What do we want? We want, we want, we want, we deserve, we deserve ... a return on our investment. What's good for us is good for everybody. What's good for blacks is good for everybody. We bled too much, we died too young, we cried too much, we prayed too long, now we want a return on our investment." --the "Reverend" Jesse Jackson on having delivered black support for Obama

Sometimes they see the light: "Obama took a bad situation and, in certain ways, made it worse. ... I find Obama scary in a way that I had not done in 2008." --Oliver Stone in his book, "The Untold History of the United States"

Give 'em a pass: "What would we have done if FDR had not been our leader because he had an affair with Lucy Mercer? Think of the productive years that Clinton could have had if Monica Lewinsky hadn't derailed them. We've got to figure out a way that we give a private sphere for our public leaders. We're not gonna get the best people in public life if we don't do that." --liberal historian Doris Kearns-Goodwin

Useful idiot: "Of all the falsifications that go on in the school systems in this world, Soviet history is falsified the most. I have spent many years researching this and similar questions and I have yet to find one crime -- yet to find one crime -- that Stalin committed. I know, they all say he killed 20, 30, 40 million people -- it's bulls---! [Nazi propagandist] Goebbels said that the Big Lie is successful and this is the Big Lie. This is the Big Lie: that the Communists -- that Stalin killed millions of people and that socialism is no good." --Dr. Grover Furr, English professor at Montclair State University

More hot air: "[T]he most direct policy solution to the climate crisis is a carbon tax, offset by reductions in taxes on wages. By including the carbon tax in the solution to the fiscal cliff we can [get] away from the climate cliff. ... I do agree with those who are trying to stop the Keystone pipeline. The tar sands are just the dirtiest source of liquid fuel you can imagine. At a time when we are desperately trying to bend the emissions curve downwards it is quite literally insane to open up a whole new source that is much more carbon intensive and that makes the problem worse." --Al Gore, who knows a thing or two about insanity

Can't we all just get along? "If you set me up like this again, I'll punch you out." --Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to Colorado Springs Gazette reporter Dave Phillips after the latter asked him an unfavorable question in an interview

Short Cuts

"Cleveland police report that a convenience store robber in suburban Warren took the cash from the cashier and told him to vote for Obama. The robber is really sorry now. As soon as he put the cash in his pocket Obama declared him rich and took it all." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"Both parties in Washington now agree that our country is headed toward a 'fiscal cliff.' The bad news: We just elected a guy whose campaign slogan was 'Forward.' ... But the good news: President Obama says we will run out of gas long before we get to the cliff. So don't worry about it." --comedian Jay Leno

"The Pentagon has revealed that two Iranian fighter jets fired on an unarmed US Predator drone in the Persian Gulf. Just waiting for President Obama to claim it was because someone posted a bootleg copy of 'Top Gun' on YouTube." --Fred Thompson

"With all these affairs going on in the military, Bill Clinton's gotta be kicking himself for dodging the draft. I mean, look at what he missed. ... It sure seems to me that we have way too many generals taking orders from their privates." --radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team