The Great Pipeline Sellout

By Charles Krauthammer, Published: November 17

In 2008, the slogan was “Yes We Can.” For 2011-12, it’s “We Can’t Wait.” What happened in between? Candidate Obama, the vessel into which myriad dreams were poured, met the reality of governance.

His near-$1 trillion stimulus begat a stagnant economy with 9 percent unemployment. His attempt at Wall Street reform left in place a still-too-big-to-fail financial system, as vulnerable today as when he came into office. His green-energy fantasies yielded Solyndra cronyism and a cap-and-trade regime not even a Democratic Congress would pass.

And now his signature achievement, Obamacare, is headed to the Supreme Court, where it could very well be struck down. This comes just a week after its central element was overwhelmingly repudiated (by a 2-to-1 margin) by the good burghers of Ohio.

So what do you do when you say you can, but, it turns out, you can’t? Blame the other guy. Charge the Republicans with making governing impossible. Never mind that you had control of Congress for two-thirds of your current tenure. It’s all the fault of Republican rejectionism.

Hence: “We Can’t Wait.” We can’t wait while they obstruct. We can’t wait while they dither with my jobs bill. Write Congress today! Vote Democratic tomorrow!

We can’t wait. Except for certain exceptions, such as the 1,700-mile trans-USA Keystone XL pipeline, carrying Alberta oil to Texas refineries, that would have created thousands of American jobs and increased our energy independence.

For that, we can wait, it seems. President Obama decreed that any decision must wait 12 to 18 months — postponed, by amazing coincidence, until after next year’s election.

Why? Because the pipeline angered Obama’s environmental constituency. But their complaints are risible. Global warming from the extraction of the Alberta tar sands? Canada will extract the oil anyway. If it doesn’t go to us, it will go to China. Net effect on the climate if we don’t take that oil? Zero.

Danger to a major aquifer, which the pipeline traverses? It is already crisscrossed by 25,000 miles of pipeline, enough to circle the Earth. Moreover, the State Department had subjected Keystone to three years of review — the most exhaustive study of any oil pipeline in U.S. history — and twice concluded in voluminous studies that there would be no significant environmental harm.

So what happened? “The administration,” reported the New York Times, “had in recent days been exploring ways to put off the decision until after the presidential election.” Exploring ways to improve the project? Hardly. Exploring ways to get past the election.

Obama’s decision was meant to appease his environmentalists. It’s already working. The president of the National Wildlife Federation told The Post (online edition, Nov. 10) that thousands of environmentalists who were galvanized to protest the pipeline would now support Obama in 2012. Moreover, a source told The Post, Obama campaign officials had concluded that “they do not pick up one vote from approving this project.”

Sure, the pipeline would have produced thousands of truly shovel-ready jobs. Sure, delay could forfeit to China a supremely important strategic asset — a nearby, highly reliable source of energy. But approval was calculated to be a political loss for the president. Easy choice.

It’s hard to think of a more clear-cut case of putting politics over nation. This from a president whose central campaign theme is that Republicans put party over nation, sacrificing country to crass political ends.

Nor is this the first time Obama’s election calendar trumped the national interest:

● Obama’s decision to wind down the Afghan surge in September 2012 is militarily inexplicable. It comes during the fighting season. It was recommended by none of his military commanders. It is explicable only as a talking point for the final days of his reelection campaign.

● At the height of the debt-ceiling debate last July, Obama pledged to veto any agreement that was not long-term. Definition of long term? By another amazing coincidence, any deal large enough to get him past Election Day (and thus avoid another such crisis next year).

●On Tuesday it was revealed that last year the administration pressured Solyndra, as it was failing, to delay its planned Oct. 28 announcement of layoffs until Nov. 3, the day after the midterm election.

A contemporaneous e-mail from a Solyndra investor noted: “Oddly they didn’t give a reason for that date.” The writer was obviously born yesterday. The American electorate was not — and it soon gets to decide who really puts party over nation and reelection above all.

We can’t wait.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamas-politically-strategic-inaction/2011/11/17/gIQAPCbCWN_story.html

More Americans than not want health law repeal: poll

(Reuters) - As the Supreme Court prepares to review President Barack Obama's healthcare reform, more Americans want to see it repealed than want to keep it, a poll released on Wednesday shows.

A Gallup survey of more than 1,000 U.S. adults found that 47 percent favor the repeal of healthcare reform, versus 42 percent who want the law kept in place. Eleven percent had no opinion.

But the survey also showed that 50 percent of Americans believe the federal government has a responsibility to make sure everyone has health coverage, compared with 46 percent who do not.

The results, which have a 4 percentage point margin of error, suggest a sharply divided U.S. public as the Supreme Court prepares to begin hearing legal arguments next March from 26 states and an independent business group that want the law struck down as unconstitutional.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would extend health coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans by expanding Medicaid and establishing special state-run insurance markets called exchanges.

The law is Obama's signature domestic policy achievement, and a high court decision to overturn the reforms could deal a severe blow to his re-election prospects in the middle of the 2012 presidential campaign. A ruling to retain it could help his campaign.

The Supreme Court would be expected to rule by July.

Obama, a Democrat, is opposed by a field of Republican candidates who want the healthcare reform law repealed as a symbol of an intrusive government seeking to raise taxes and burden businesses with new regulation.

Public opposition to the law, particularly among the elderly, helped Republicans wrest control of the House of Representatives from Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections.

But advocates of the reforms say the law will reduce the soaring growth of healthcare costs over time and provide medical care to millions of families who currently have no protection.

The November 3-6 Gallup poll also showed a small reduction in public support for private insurance as the basis for gaining medical services in the $2.6 trillion U.S. healthcare system.

The findings said 56 percent of adults continue to prefer private insurance versus 39 percent who would favor a government-run system. That compares with a 61 percent to 34 percent margin a year ago.

(Reporting by David Morgan; editing by Philip Barbara)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/16/us-usa-healthcare-poll-idUSTRE7AF1BD20111116

Mathmatical Prediction

Be honest and don't look at the movie list below till you have done the math!

Try this test and find out what movie is your favorite.

This amazing math quiz can likely predict which of 18 movies you would enjoy the most.

It really works!

Pick a number from 1-9.

Multiply by 3.

Add 3.

Multiply by 3 again.

Now add the two digits of your answer together to find your predicted Favorite movie in the list of 18 movies below.

Movie List:

1. Gone With The Wind
2. E.T.
3. Blazing Saddles
4. Star Wars
5. Forrest Gump
6. The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.
7. Jaws
8. Grease
9. The Obama Farewell Speech of 2012
10. Casablanca
11. Jurassic Park
12. Shrek
13. Pirates of the Caribbean
14. Titanic
15. Raiders Of The Lost Ark
16. Home Alone
17. Mrs. Doubtfire
18. Toy Story

Ain't that something..?

Libyan ‘crossfire’

By Charles Krauthammer, Published: October 27

You’ve got your Mexican standoff, your Russian roulette, your Chinese water torture. And now, your Libyan crossfire. That’s when a pistol is applied to the head and a bullet crosses from one temple to the other.

That’s apparently what happened to Moammar Gaddafi after he was captured by Libyan rebels — died in a “crossfire,” explains Libya’s new government. This has greatly agitated ACLU types, morally unemployed ever since a Democratic administration declared Guantanamo humane. The indignation has spread to human rights groups and Western governments, deeply concerned about the manner of Gaddafi’s demise.


Let’s begin at the beginning. Early in the revolution, Gaddafi could have had due process. Indeed, he could have had something better: asylum (in Nicaragua, for example) with a free pass for his crimes. If he stepped down, thereby avoiding the subsequent civil war that killed thousands of his countrymen, he could have enjoyed a nice, fat retirement, like that of Idi Amin in Saudi Arabia.

Like Amin, Gaddafi would not have deserved a single day of untroubled repose. Such an outcome would itself have been a gross violation of justice, as he’d have gone unpunished for his uncountable crimes. But it would have spared his country much bloodshed and suffering.

Such compromises are fully justified and rather common. They are, for example, the essence of the various truth and reconciliation commissions in countries transitioning from authoritarianism to democracy. In post-Pinochet Chile and post-apartheid South Africa, it was decided that full justice — punishing the guilty — would be sacrificed in order to preserve the fragile social peace of the new democracy.

The former oppressors having agreed to a peaceful relinquishing of power, full justice might have ignited renewed civil strife. Therefore, these infant democracies settled for mere truth: a meticulous accounting of the crimes of the previous regime. In return for truthful testimony, perpetrators were given amnesty.

Under the normal rule of law, truth is only a means for achieving justice, not an end in itself. The real end is determining guilt and assigning punishment. But in war and revolution one cannot have everything. Justice might threaten peace. Therefore peace trumps full justice.

Gaddafi could have had such a peace-over-justice compromise. He chose instead to fight to the death. He got what he chose.

That fateful decision to fight — and kill — is the prism through which to judge the cruel treatment Gaddafi received in his last hours. It is his refusal to forgo those final crimes, those final shellings of civilians, those final executions of prisoners that justifies his rotten death.

He could have taken a de facto amnesty for all his previous crimes, from Pan Am 103 to the 1996 massacre of 1,200 inmates at Tripoli’s Abu Salim prison. To reject that option and proceed to create an entirely new catalogue of crimes — for that, there is no forgiveness. For that, you are sentenced to die by “crossfire.”

So he was killed by his captors. Big deal. So was Mussolini. So were the Ceausescus. They deserved far worse. As did Gaddafi. In a world of perfect justice, this Caligula should have suffered far more, far longer. He inflicted unimaginable suffering upon thousands. What did he suffer? Perhaps an hour of torment and a shot through the head. By any standard of cosmic justice, that’s mercy.

Moreover, Gaddafi’s sorry end has one major virtue: deterrence. You are a murderous dictator with a rebellion on your hands. You have a choice. Relinquish power and spare your country further agony, and you can then live out your days like Amin — or like a more contemporary Saudi guest, Tunisia’s Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Otherwise, you die like Gaddafi, dragged from a stinking sewer pipe, abused, taunted and shot.

It’s not pretty. But it’s a precedent. And a salutary one. One that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, for example, might contemplate. Continue to fight and kill, and expect thereafter no belated offers of asylum — not even the due process of a long, talky judicial proceeding in The Hague with a nice comfy cell, three meals a day and the consoling certainty that your captors practice none of your specialties: torture and summary execution.

Call it the Gaddafi Rule: Give it up and go, or one day find death by “Libyan crossfire.” Followed by a Libyan state funeral. That’s when you lie on public view for four days, half-naked in a meat locker.

article pulled from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/libyan-crossfire/2011/10/27/gIQA1DXMNM_story.html

letters@charleskrauthammer.com