by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
NRO’s\u00a0The Corner<\/em><\/p>\n When President Obama virtually ceases all new federal oil and gas leasing on public property, why would he then brag that despite his efforts, private companies on private land increased U.S. oil and gas production to new highs? Is the logic something like, \u201cThank God, my opponents ignored my efforts and therefore lessened the country\u2019s dependence on energy imports\u201d? When he embraced or expanded almost all the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols he once blasted as unnecessary or unlawful, did his logic run thusly: \u201cGuantanamo, renditions, detentions, drones, tribunals, and the Patriot Act were so bad that I was obligated to keep them in force\u201d? Or why would he boast that illegal entries into the United States had at one point dipped to new lows \u2014 obviously not due to his various orders limiting deportations, but rather due to the static American economy. Is that logic, \u201cThanks to my near-record long economic slowdown, illegal aliens now prefer to stay home\u201d? Now in Mexico he is assailing his domestic opponents while on foreign soil, describing the Second Amendment as a sort of quaint oddity, while blaming his own country for the gun violence in Mexico. Is the logic here, \u201cI know very well that American guns find their way into the hands of Mexican \u00a0killers, because my administration took elaborate efforts to sell such weapons to such criminals\u201d? Is Joe Biden writing these speeches?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s\u00a0The Corner When President Obama virtually ceases all new federal oil and gas leasing on public property, why would he then brag that despite his efforts, private companies on private land increased U.S. oil and gas production to new highs?<\/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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11,536],"tags":[293,35,327,88,213,238,859,67],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1xt","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":982,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-un-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":5919,"position":0},"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":2248,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/being-frank\/","url_meta":{"origin":5919,"position":1},"title":"Being Frank","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 4, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner It Would Have Been Easier Just to Tell the Truth Given the recent arrests of several jihadist plotters, we can be thankful that Obama did not, as once promised in various early manifestations, end renditions, wiretaps, intercepts, and the Patriot Act (\"shoddy and dangerous\").\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "October 2009"","block_context":{"text":"October 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/october-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3418,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/america-through-the-looking-glass\/","url_meta":{"origin":5919,"position":2},"title":"America Through the Looking Glass","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 26, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3174,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/blame-bush-obama-or-us\/","url_meta":{"origin":5919,"position":3},"title":"Blame Bush, Obama–or Us?","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 16, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services When someone screams about a terrible policy of the present administration, just pose four questions: First, was the controversial decision taken with bipartisan support? Second, were there precedents for such action in prior Democratic administrations? Third, will such polices continue under the newly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "December 2008"","block_context":{"text":"December 2008","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2008\/december-2008\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7906,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/welcome-to-fantasy-island\/","url_meta":{"origin":5919,"position":4},"title":"Welcome to Fantasy Island","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 7, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ PJ Media Listen to the president and one would think that he was in office during the financial crisis that began on September 15, 2008. For the nth time, Obama reminded the nation on 60 Minutes of the financial meltdown he inherited. That is his usual\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 13 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 13 comments","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/welcome-to-fantasy-island\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via PJMedia","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/obama_fantasy_island_with_disc_10-5-14-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3420,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/president-hamlet\/","url_meta":{"origin":5919,"position":5},"title":"President Hamlet","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services More than 400 years ago, William Shakespeare wrote a riveting tragedy about a young, charismatic Danish prince who vowed to do the right thing in avenging his murdered father. That soon proved easier said than done. As a result, Hamlet couldn\u2019t quite ever\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Commentary"","block_context":{"text":"Commentary","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/commentary-obama-administration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5919"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5919"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5921,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5919\/revisions\/5921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}