by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n President Obama yesterday praised Brazil for its new offshore oil industry and said he wants to buy as much oil as possible in this new win-win partnership \u2014 although we have piled up $5 trillion in new debt, curtailed new petroleum exploration off shore and in the West, as well as kept Alaska off-limits. Our near-term energy future apparently lies in borrowing money to buy oil from those we praise for drilling where we never would ourselves.<\/p>\n In the face of $4-a-gallon gas, President Obama claimed that domestic oil and gas production was at a record level \u2014 failing to note that such expansion was due entirely to prior leases granted during the Clinton and Bush administrations of the sort that he has so far mostly denied. During the 2008 campaign, the president promised that under his leadership electricity prices would skyrocket and those who produced power through coal plants would be \u201cbankrupted.\u201d His secretary of energy, Steven Chu, in 2008 advocated ratcheting American gasoline prices up to European levels and, a year earlier, had complained that we had too much fossil fuels in America, enough, in fact, to \u201ccook us.\u201d So are we supposed to strive for astronomical gas prices to ensure fewer carbon emissions, the success of the government subsidized\u00a0Chevy Volt<\/a>\u00a0[1], and actualization of the green dreams of a Van Jones as outlined by Chu and Obama in 2007-8 \u2014 or will they imperil recovery and must be postponed until after the reelection of Barack Obama?<\/p>\n For two weeks, the administration was largely quiet about the unrest in Libya until the insurgents began taking entire cities and seemed on the verge of closing in on Gaddafi\u2019s Tripoli. Then President Obama called on Gaddafi to step down and stop the \u201cunacceptable\u201d level of violence. But things then got worse, not better, once Gaddafi began to employ a level of violence that his ilk counts on to stay in power (cf. Assad in Syria or Ahmadinejad in Iran). So at last we announced a funny sort of no-fly-zone, inasmuch as Gaddafi can put down the rebellion without use of his planes and gunships. We vowed to have an international commander soon; we promised to restrict our activity to patrolling the air only (after sending missiles into quite a lot of initial targets on the ground). We are not going after Gaddafi himself (although the tyrant has nowhere to go, must be taken out for the rebels to succeed, and seems to be already targeted by the Europeans, without our \u201cknowledge\u201d). In the new Middle East multilateralism, America supplies the firepower, Europeans the policy and high profile, Arabs the public cover, and the international community the legitimacy \u2014 as long as the campaigning is brief, the losses small, and the rebels supposedly somewhat Western in outlook. But no one yet has told us why we must not \u201cmeddle\u201d in Iran, must ignore the Saudis going into Bahrain, should continue \u201coutreach\u201d with Assad, must support the ouster of Mubarak and Ben Ali, but are so far mum about further challenges to pro-American authoritarians in the Gulf and Jordan.<\/p>\n Obama has scheduled $5 trillion in new debt since he took office, in part asKeynesian stimulus<\/a>\u00a0[2] to snap us out of a slowdown that seemed instead to get worse. The massive debt was incurred in service to new redistributive entitlements that, we are told, will level the playing field. And to implement a new government absorption of healthcare, the administration has so far granted over 1,000 exemptions from its own landmark legislation. Many of the labor unions that were the most vocal supporters of the president\u2019s agenda are the most eager to be freed from the consequences of his healthcare mandates.<\/p>\n There is no longer a \u201cwar on terror,\u201d and we are to understand that its former components \u2014 tribunals, renditions, preventative detention, Guantanamo, Predator assassinations, Iraq, the Patriot Act, wiretapping, and intercepts \u2014 were as subversive to the Constitution under Bush as they are essential to our security under Obama. Whatever happened to the impending civilian trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?<\/p>\n Debt is now the father of us all. In some sense, every cruise missile fired, every Social Security check cashed, ever NPR show aired is done so in part with borrowed money. In response, the president saw the impending doom of insolvency, appointed a bipartisan commission to draft a solution, and then ignored his own appointees\u2019 recommendations. So far the excuse is largely that George Bush ran up debt as well, although last month Obama\u2019s red-ink exceeded the entire 2007 budget deficit under Bush \u2014 30 days of Obama trumping 365 of Bush.<\/p>\n President Obama\u00a0ran on promises<\/a>\u00a0[3] of a new respect for the law. But the law is now malleable and predicated on its social utility. The government, along with the nation of Mexico, sues the state of Arizona for trying to craft legislation that enforces federal immigration statutes. The government takes over Chrysler and then\u00a0violates the contractual obligations<\/a>\u00a0[4] to its debtors. We announce that the careless BP simply put up $20 billion to ensure proper cleanup of the Gulf. The Defense of Marriage Act is the law, but deemed unconstitutional by the administration and thus by fiat not enforced, in the manner of the abandoned prosecution of the Black Panthers whose violations of election laws were considered not violations.<\/p>\n If we think the country is topsy-turvy, the president\u00a0offered an explanation<\/a>\u00a0[5] the other day to a group of donors and supporters:<\/p>\n The first time around it\u2019s like lightning in a bottle. There\u2019s something special about it, because you\u2019re defying the odds. And as time passes, you start taking it for granted that a guy named Barack Hussein Obama is president of the United States. But we should never take it for granted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In short, all of the above was \u201cspecial\u201d because it \u201cdefied the odds\u201d and was brought to us by \u201ca guy named Barack Hussein Obama.\u201d<\/p>\n And that is all ye need to know.<\/p>\n URLs in this post: \u00a92011 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media President Obama yesterday praised Brazil for its new offshore oil industry and said he wants to buy as much oil as possible in this new win-win partnership \u2014 although we have piled up $5 trillion in new debt, curtailed new petroleum exploration off shore and in the West, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[146,536],"tags":[12,747,42,1057,173,293,50,1048,88,213,238,219,1022,67],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-T8","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3336,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/dreamland-usa\/","url_meta":{"origin":3418,"position":0},"title":"Dreamland, USA","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 18, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Barack Obama just gave a belated but stern warning about escalating debt \u2014 a few weeks after he presented a 2011 budget with a $1.6 trillion annual deficit, the largest shortfall in American history. Congressional Republicans are now crowing about reducing Obama's red\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Debt and Deficits"","block_context":{"text":"Debt and Deficits","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/debt-and-deficits\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3405,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-man-made-energy-crisis\/","url_meta":{"origin":3418,"position":1},"title":"A Man-Made Energy Crisis","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Gas is well over $4 a gallon in most places in California \u2014 and soaring elsewhere as well. But are such high energy prices good or bad? That should be a stupid question. Yet it is not, when the Obama administration has stopped\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Energy"","block_context":{"text":"Energy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/energy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":877,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/faith-based-energy-policy\/","url_meta":{"origin":3418,"position":2},"title":"Faith-Based Energy Policy","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 27, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services When the summer driving season starts soon, and tension heats up over Iran, gas may reach $5 a gallon. Nothing bothers voters more than paying an extra $20 or $30 every time they fill up. In times like these, they soon might prefer\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Energy"","block_context":{"text":"Energy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/energy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":982,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-un-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":3418,"position":3},"title":"The Un-Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Barack Obama\u2019s favorability in the polls fell when he acted like himself \u2014 overexposed, hard-left in his press conferences, and boastful about legislative achievements like Obamacare and a stimulus of more than $1 trillion. Then a strange thing happened. Obama largely went quiet.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "First Term Policies"","block_context":{"text":"First Term Policies","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/first-term-policies\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1329,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/oil-rich-america\/","url_meta":{"origin":3418,"position":4},"title":"Oil-Rich America?","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 12, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services There is a revolution going on in America. But it is not part of the Tea Party or the loud Occupy Wall Street protests. Instead, massive new reserves of gas, oil, and coal are being discovered almost everywhere in the United States, due\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Energy"","block_context":{"text":"Energy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/energy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":806,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/sitting-out-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":3418,"position":5},"title":"Sitting Out Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online We recently saw lots of sit-down strikes and demonstrations \u2014 the various efforts in Wisconsin, the Occupy movements, and student efforts to oppose tuition hikes. None of them mattered much or changed anything. 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\n[1] Chevy Volt:\u00a0http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/2011\/03\/16\/chevy-volt-ayn-rand-opinions-patrick-michaels_print.html<\/a>
\n[2] Keynesian stimulus:http:\/\/pajamasmedia.com\/eddriscoll\/2011\/02\/18\/keynesian-economics-and-the-miracle-of-the-1940s\/<\/a>
\n[3] ran on promises:\u00a0http:\/\/www.verumserum.com\/?p=22788<\/a>
\n[4] violates the contractual obligations:\u00a0http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a5u0MEwLik7A<\/a>
\n[5] offered an explanation:http:\/\/gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com\/2011\/03\/winning-barack-obama-reminds-us-why-we-should-never-take-barack-hussein-obama-for-granted\/<\/a><\/p>\n