It’s Wednesday, January 25th, 2012….and it’s now 1,001 days since the Dimocratic-controlled Senate passed a budget.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up on the mid-week edition, a brief bit of commentary on the President’s Misstatement of the Union speech from Daily Gouge White House correspondent Vinny Gambini:

And no, we didn’t watch it; like Bill Meisen, we’ve heard it all before….

….ad nauseum!

Next up, the WSJ‘s Holman Jenkins details….

How Green Became Obama’s Albatross

The president is trapped by his own rhetoric amid America’s energy boom.

 

Barack Obama may believe a lot of things, but he probably doesn’t believe the Sierra Club is key to his re-election. His decision to nix the Keystone XL pipeline will cost him votes but he did it anyway.

We’ll admit that Mr. Obama’s global warming talk has often seemed to us perfunctory. Perhaps we mistook his lack of heat for a lack of conviction. He just released his first 2012 campaign ad and it’s a paean to green energy. Maybe he’s no less a believer than Al Gore, for all the problems this might seem to pose for what we thought we knew about our president.

For one thing, he’s not given to unrealistic goals. He knows China and India are opening a new coal plant every week. He knows the huge amounts of fossil energy lying at humanity’s feet won’t be abandoned just because an American president says so. He can’t fail to notice that Canada’s oil sands won’t remain undeveloped; the oil will go to the Far East.

Mr. Obama also seems enough of a free thinker to entertain the possibility at least that global warming theory may be wrong. In a telling exchange with interviewer Charlie Rose a few years ago, Al Gore was asked to describe the evidence of man’s role in climate change. Each time Mr. Gore recurred to some version of a “consensus of scientists” or “the most respected scientists whose judgment I think is the best.”

The truth is, the theory may be popular, but the evidence has thus far eluded the tens of billions spent on climate science. The temperature data are so noisy that they reveal no pattern connecting rising CO2 in the industrial age with temperature trends. Some say because CO2 is a “greenhouse” gas, shut up, case closed. But the known relationship between carbon and climate doesn’t actually indicate a big reason to worry.

To produce worrisome scenarios, climate models must posit “feedbacks” that magnify the impact of CO2 by 300% to 500%. A cynic notices that these models became especially popular in the ’90s, when measured warming exceeded what could be attributed to CO2, so new fudge was needed to preserve CO2 as the culprit.

Mr. Gore is not smart (no matter what the Nobel committee thinks) whereas Mr. Obama is smart and all these things have likely occurred to him. But he’s also a political operator and an acolyte of radical theorist Saul Alinksy. He understands politics as a matter of power, and democratic politics as a matter of powerful coalitions cultivated and maintained with self-interest (aka money, money, money).

Oil, in Mr. Obama’s world, is a “Republican” interest group; anything that’s good for the oil industry is bad for the alternate power structure he’s been trying to build with handouts and mandates for green energy. (Editor’s note: Regardless of the harm such green initiatives may be for America and her economy!)

Mr. Obama’s relationship with global warming may indeed be perfunctory, but he understands the necessity of shibboleths to rationalize and justify the “investments” he’s dishing out to manufacture a support base whose need for subsidies and regulatory favors jibes with the Democratic Party’s need for donations. Oil sands are the “dirtiest” fossil energy, requiring great releases of CO2. To approve Keystone, then, not only would undermine his side’s crucial shibboleths. It would compromise his own credibility as a leader who can be trusted to deny advantage to “Republican” industries and deliver it to “Democratic” ones.

Not for nothing did Canadian Resources Minister Joe Oliver, after Mr. Obama’s Keystone decision, gripe about the influence of “billionaire socialists from the United States.” Not for nothing did Mr. Obama’s own supporters crow about Mr. Obama’s ruling as a triumph over the industrialist Koch brothers, an allusion to whom even opens the new Obama campaign spot.

Presidents make traps for themselves: Signature initiatives cannot fail; they can only be doubled down on, as Mr. Obama was expected to do in Tuesday’s State of the Union even as he also tried to make peace with the natural-gas fracking boom. Only fresh waves of rhetoric praising electric cars will suffice when taxpayers are figuring out that Obama policy has them subsidizing electric playthings for the affluent. Solyndra must be defended all the more fiercely now that solar is collapsing globally as countries repent of foolish subsidies. Green energy must be hugged to Mr. Obama’s breast all the more tightly as the shale revolution renders hopeless any chance of wind and solar becoming cost-competitive with fossil fuels.

Mr. Obama is engaged in a “long game,” says Andrew Sullivan, writing in Newsweek, making a point that no one doubted. But there’s a difference between playing the long game and playing it well. The Obama long game is exactly how green energy metamorphosed from a policy notion into a political strategy and then into a dead weight his campaign must lug to November.

Still, let us admire the high-rolling political risk Mr. Obama takes in spurning affordable, strategically convenient energy from Canada. That risk includes, between now and Election Day, looking like a chump if oil prices surge because of the world’s vulnerability to the narrowness of the Strait of Hormuz.

Since we’re on the subject of frackin’ Obama, in the Environmental Moment, as the New York Post‘s Jon Entine reports, Tick-Tock’s Environazi allies already have America’s latest source of available, economic energy in their sights:

Killing drilling with farcical ‘science’

 

“At a minimum, the evidence suggests he [Cornell’s Robert Howarth] either acted in bad faith or is ignorant of gas technology.“–Jon Entine

The academic face of the anti-fracking movement — Cornell marine ecologist Robert Howarth — increasingly looks like he’s willing to turn science into farce. Last spring, the once-obscure professor became the go-to expert for anti-fracking journalists and lawmakers when he published a report claiming shale gas pollutes more than coal. The New York Times featured his study in two uncritical articles in one week, he was interviewed on dozens of talk shows — and the media echo chamber did the rest: He was a star.

Since then, other scientists have almost universally challenged his findings — but now he’s doubled down.

Last week, Howarth released another scientifically questionable study, now warning that fracking could push the world over a tipping point, sending temperatures irreversibly higher — an inflammatory and demonstrably incorrect assertion.

Here’s the backstory. Shale gas is acknowledged as an ideal “bridge fuel” to a cleaner energy future. It’s become cost-attractive thanks to fracking: a proven extraction technique used for decades, technologically tweaked to mine shale gas — notably the Marcellus Formation beneath a large swath of New York.

Thanks to fracking, America is poised to transform itself from a fuel pauper, dependent upon the whims of Mideast madmen and Russian oligarchs, into an energy exporter. (And all without government hand-outs and loan guarantees!) But hard leftists have always opposed any energy other than wind or solar. That’s where Howarth and the anti-fracking Park Foundation come in.

In an interview, Howarth told me his goal was to make the anti-fracking movement mainstream and fashionable. He said he met with the Ithaca-based foundation two years ago, agreeing to produce a study challenging the conventional wisdom that shale gas is comparatively clean.

The polluting impact of shale gas revolves around one key issue: how much methane gas is released during extraction. Methane has more short-term global-warming impact than any other fossil fuel. Howarth emerged from academic nowhere when he claimed shale-gas wells leak like sieves, venting methane half the time, spewing 7 percent to 8 percent of reserves into the atmosphere.

“That’s absurd,” says Michael Levi, director of the Program on Energy Security and Climate Change at the Council of Foreign Relations. “Most methane gas is either ‘delivered to sales’ with no leakage, or it’s burnt off through flaring, which diminishes its greenhouse impact.”

Renowned geologist Lawrence Cathles, also at Cornell, who published a scathing deconstruction of Howarth’s paper this month, says that he “doesn’t document venting but what the industry calls ‘capture.’”

Almost every independent researcher — at the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Energy Department and numerous independent university teams — has slammed Howarth’s conclusions. At a minimum, the evidence suggests he either acted in bad faith or is ignorant of gas technology. (What a SHOCK….Environazis falsifying data!)

The core problem: Howarth uses Environmental Protection Agency estimates dating to 2007 — ancient data, given how quickly the technology is evolving. (No, the core problem is Howarth is lying!) Crucially, he fails to account for innovation. Gas lost through leakage is money lost, literally into thin air. For that reason, new wells are now “green completed” — meaning most leaking gas is captured and sold rather than vented.

Cathles notes the latest Devon study, now being verified by the EPA, documenting that shale gas is vented in only 5 percent of wells. The Energy Department estimates only 1 percent to 2 percent of methane is now lost during production.

Bottom line, almost all non-industry-linked researchers believe Howarth exaggerates the impact of shale-gas leakage by 10 to 20 times. “His conclusions are more a politically charged articulation than a balanced scientific assessment,” Cathles says.

Howarth hired an aggressive PR firm, the Hastings Group, to promote his politicized viewpoint. Scientists aren’t buying it, but many journalists fall for the fear-mongering.

Howarth doesn’t have to convince anyone he’s right to devastate New York’s budding shale industry and put tens of thousands of jobs into question. He wins if he muddies the waters enough to give cautious Albany bureaucrats reason to stall.

Almost every news story now frames this issue as a standoff between equally valid scientific experts. In fact, it’s really a debate between science and ideology.

Just like the “theory” of anthropogenic global warming!

Oh, by the way….

GM Dealers Refusing to Take Shipments of Chevy Volts

 

In a related item, the WSJ has it’s first nominee for….

Dodo of the Year

A court throws out a fowl case of selective prosecution against oil and gas companies.

 

Dodos Douches, aka, Timothy Purdon, Esq.

Good news: It is not a felony if a bird happens to land on your property and dies. At least not yet. That’s the ruling out of North Dakota, where a federal court last week dismissed a complaint by the Obama Justice Department against three oil companies under the Migratory Bird Act (“A Bird-Brained Prosecution,” Sept. 29, 2011).

Continental Resources, Brigham Oil & Gas and Newfield Production Company were accused of causing the deaths of six Mallard ducks and one Say’s Phoebe, which had waded in oil pits. The criminal charges carried fines and potential prison sentences.

In a ruling that can only be called withering, district Judge Daniel Hovland contrasted “incidental and unintended” deaths during “legal, commercially-useful activity” with “hunting and poaching.” The court rejected U.S. Attorney Timothy Purdon’s “expansive interpretation of the law” because it “would yield absurd results”: If the government’s case carried the day, “many everyday activities become unlawful—and subject to criminal sanctions—when they cause the death of pigeons, starlings, and other common birds.”

The court wrote that among the potential felonious bird-killing habits are cutting brush and trees, planting and harvesting crops, driving a vehicle, owning a building with windows and . . . “owning a cat.” The court noted that cats kill “hundreds of millions” of birds each year and cars kill 60 million, while windows kill 97 million to 976 million. In short, every American could be an unwitting criminal bird killer.

Even the Obama Administration isn’t this “crazy”—to borrow White House spokesman Jay Carney’s favorite word—so this selective prosecution was probably an expression of its political hostility to oil and gas companies. By the way, Judge Hovland also noted that windmills kill “roughly 39,000 birds annually,” yet the Justice Department has indicted no wind power company under the Migratory Bird Act. Mr. Purdon takes the prize for dodo prosecutor of the year.

http://plainsdaily.com/entry/criticism-continues-to-mount-against-us-attorney-tim-purdon/

So to you, Mr. U.S. Attorney….

….just like your bosses!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch with The Gang That Still Can’t Shoot Straight, Thomas Sowell offers his insight into the….

South Carolina Message

 

Just days before the South Carolina primary, polls showed Mitt Romney leading Newt Gingrich. Then came the debates and the question about Gingrich’s private life, which brought a devastating response from the former Speaker of the House — and a standing ovation from the audience.

Apparently the television audience felt the same way, judging by the huge turnaround in the support for Gingrich. The stunning victory in South Carolina brought Newt’s candidacy back to life.

But the message from South Carolina was about more than a reaction to how Gingrich dealt with a cheap shot question from the media. Nor was it simply the Republican voters’ response to Newt’s mastery as a debater.

The more fundamental message is that the Republican primary voters do not want Mitt Romney, even if the Republican establishment does — and it is just a question of which particular conservative alternative the voters prefer. (We’d humbly suggest there’s not a TRUE Conservative left in the field.)

The successive boomlets for Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain showed the Republican voter’s constant search for somebody — anybody — as an alternative to Romney. The splintering of the conservative vote among numerous conservative candidates allowed Romney to be the “front-runner,” but he never ran far enough in front to get a majority.

Mitt Romney’s supposed “electability” — his acceptability to moderates and independents — has been his biggest selling point. Moreover, he is just the kind of candidate that the Republican establishment has preferred for years: a nice, bland, moderate who offends nobody.

This is the kind of candidate that is supposed to be the key to victory, no matter how many such candidates have gone down to defeat. If the bland and inoffensive moderate was in fact the key to victory, Dewey would have won a landslide victory over Truman in 1948, and John McCain would have beaten Barack Obama in 2008.

Whomever the Republicans choose as their candidate is going to have to run against both Barack Obama and the pro-Obama media. Newt Gingrich has shown that he can do that. Romney? Not so much. Mitt Romney’s fumbling when trying to answer the simple question of whether he would or would not release his income tax records is the kind of indecisiveness that is not going to cut it in a nationally televised debate with President Obama.

Gingrich is not just a guy who is fast and feisty on his feet. He has a depth of understanding of what issues are crucial, experience in how to deal with them and — almost equally important — experience in how to shoot down the petty, irrelevant and “gotcha” distractions of the media.

Does Gingrich have negative qualities? More than most. Wild statements, alienation of colleagues, reckless gambits. His use of the rhetoric of the left in attacking Bain Capital was a recent faux pas, though one that he quickly backed away from.

But if we are serious — and there has seldom, if ever, been a time in the history of this nation when it was more necessary to be serious — then we cannot simply add up talking points for or against a candidate. What matters is how that candidate stands on issues that can make or break the future of this country.

Polls show the public as a whole with more negative attitudes toward Gingrich than toward Romney. But negative opinions, like other opinions, are not set in stone.

If the election campaign changes the opinions of a significant minority of the anti-Gingrich voters — when the alternative is Obama — it will not matter how much the remainder may hate Newt.

Is this a gamble? The painful reality is that everyone in this year’s field of Republican candidates is a gamble. And re-electing Barack Obama is an even bigger gamble. (No, that’s a certainty….a DEAD certainty.)

Whichever candidate the Republican voters finally choose from this year’s field, they are bound to have reservations, if not fears. Gingrich’s worst could be worse than Romney’s worst, both as a candidate and as a president. But Gingrich’s best is much better than Romney’s best.

Sometimes caution can be carried to the point where it is dangerous. When the Super Bowl is on the line, you don’t go with the quarterback who is least likely to throw an interception. You go with the one most likely to throw a touchdown pass.

Then there’s this from Marc Thiessen in the WaPo, courtesy of AEI:

Romney’s Pawlenty moment

 

Mitt’s left asking himself the same question which still nags Tim: what the HELL was I thinking?!?

One week ago, Newt Gingrich was on the ropes in South Carolina, under near-universal assault on the right from his attacks on Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital. Everyone from Rush Limbaugh to the Club for Growth and the Wall Street Journal had all declared their disgust. The conservative backlash had given Romney a double-digit lead in the polls. At a candidate forum hosted by Mike Huckabee, Gingrich was booed by the crowd when he tried to defend his Bain attacks.

Fast forward one week, and Gingrich is the winner of the South Carolina primary. Not only did Gingrich win, he crushed Romney 40.4 percent to 27.9 percent — a swing of more than 20 points in just a week. And a new poll shows that, after trailing Romney by more than 20 points in Florida last week, Gingrich has now opened an eight-point lead in the Sunshine State.

What happened? Simply put, Romney let Gingrich up off the mat.

In his concession speech after Saturday’s loss, Romney laid into Gingrich, accusing him of “demonizing success” and using the “weapons of the left.” Romney declared, “If Republican leaders want to join this president in demonizing success and disparaging conservative values then they’re not going to be fit to be our nominee,” adding “We cannot defeat the president with a candidate who has joined in that very assault on free enterprise.”

It was the right message, delivered a week too late. If Romney had made those very points in the South Carolina debates he might have been the one who received the standing ovations instead of Gingrich — and might well have emerged the winner in the Palmetto State.

But instead of seizing on the conservative anger over Gingrich’s attacks and going in for the kill, Romney gave Gingrich a pass. Instead of putting Gingrich on the defensive for channeling Michael Moore, Romney spent not one but two debates on the defensive over releasing his tax returns. At the conclusion of Thursday’s CNN debate, Romney was asked if he had any regrets about his campaign. He replied that he regretted the time he had spent talking about his opponents instead of focusing on Barack Obama. Wrong answer. His mistake was precisely the opposite. When Romney had the opportunity to attack Gingrich from the right and deliver a devastating coup de grace, he demurred. It was his “Pawlenty moment.”

With a free pass from Romney, Gingrich shined in the South Carolina debates and used them to right his faltering campaign. He used moderators Juan Williams and John King as foils, declaring to cheers from the audience: “I am tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans.” He deftly put the Bain debacle behind him and rallied conservatives behind his candidacy once again. And Romney stood there helplessly and let it happen.

Gingrich was nimble and flexible in the face of adversity. Romney was stiff and flatfooted — and he lost the South Carolina primary as a result.

The damage to Romney’s campaign could extend beyond South Carolina for this reason: The central premise of Romney’s candidacy is that he is the best man to beat Obama. But in South Carolina, Gingrich borrowed directly from Obama’s playbook, launching the exact same attack Obama will use against Romney this fall if he is the nominee. Romney responded with all the agility of a deer caught in headlights. He had a chance to show just how he would take the fight to Obama in November — and he failed miserably.

This should raise a question in the minds of GOP voters: If Romney can’t defend free-market capitalism against Gingrich, how will he be able to defend it in the fall against Obama?

Romney’s debate strategy of staying above the fray and focusing on Obama while the lesser creatures of the forest fight among themselves has run its course. This approach may have worked when there were eight or nine candidates on the stage. But now there are just four — and only one, Gingrich, poses an existential threat to Romney’s presidential aspirations. Romney and Gingrich will meet in at least six more debates before the primaries are over — starting Monday night at Florida State University. If those debates go the way the South Carolina debates did, Romney is in deep trouble.

Romney may have outlasted Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman and Rick Perry. But he will have to defeat Newt Gingrich to win the GOP nomination.

Admit it; whoever you’re current candidate of choice, like us, you can name at least two Republicans NOT running you’d rather have in the race.

Moving on to the subject of national defenselessness, we present a provocative piece of prose by Thomas Donnelly writing in The Weekly Standard, courtesy of AEI; it’s a bit long, but well worth the read:

The Obama way of war

 

“Even eliminating the U.S. military entirely would have no serious effect on the government’s balance sheets.“

You can criticize Barack Obama—and fear not, I’m about to—but he has been a consequential president. Obamacare, his signature domestic accomplishment, is a substantial step toward the government-run health care program that Democrats have long desired. It may be hard to get rid of, even with a Republican president and congressional majorities. Undoing the effects of Obama foreign and defense policy won’t be any easier. Beginning with the Libya intervention, the president has been charting a new direction for American strategy and acting with great energy to create a fait accompli that will make it difficult for a successor to reverse course.

The leading-from-behind Obama Doctrine consists of three main tenets: a smaller, secret, and “silent” approach to the Long War in the greater Middle East; a “Pacific pivot” that would deter China from the temptations of aggression but ask allies to carry much of the burden; and a restructuring of the U.S. military to forestall any future return to a more ambitious—and more traditional—form of American leadership….

http://www.aei.org/article/foreign-and-defense-policy/defense/the-obama-way-of-war/

Following up on yesterday’s item detailing The Obamao putting his daughters’ dreams ahead of the lives of tens of millions of unborn babies, here’s a rather appropriate riposte by John Hinderaker writing in Powerlineblog.com, courtesy of Speed Mach:

Obama’s Government vs. Your Family

 

Whose numbers include Yours Truly!

And in today’s Money Quote, Victor Davis Hanson comments on the significance of presidential fidelity:

“Was the wonderfully devoted Harry Truman a better president than Dwight D. Eisenhower (who once or twice probably strayed with his chaufferess), and if so, was it because he never looked at other women other than Bess? In short, the ABC interview [with Newt Gingrich’s second wife, Marianne] was a dud. It only confirmed that dragging out a 12-year-old story on the eve of an election told us more about the morality of ABC than of present-day Newt Gingrich.“

On the Lighter Side….

Then there’s this photo of another satisfied Testemax customer, courtesy of Bill Meisen….

….as well as Wink Martindale’s definition of….

The inability to become aroused over any of the current Republican candidates for President.

We saw no need to mention the Dimocratic candidate, as it’s an established scientific fact pulling the lever marked “D” causes your Johnson to turn black and fall off.

Turning next to the Wonderful World of Science, the AEI‘s Thomas Hemphill questions….

Just How Dangerous Is Talking and Driving?

The NTSB, cell phones, and regulatory hyperbole.

 

A recent announcement by the National Traffic Safety Board (NTSB), the federal agency responsible for traffic safety and investigating traffic-related accidents, recommended that all states ban drivers from using portable electronic devices (PEDs) while operating a motor vehicle. According to the Governors Highway Traffic Association, 35 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam ban texting while driving; nine states and the District of Columbia forbid hand-held cell phone use by drivers; and 30 states prohibit all cell phone use for beginning drivers. Interestingly, no state (or the District of Columbia) presently bans the use of hands-free telecommunication devices for the general populace.

The results of a July 2009 study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) found that texting while driving increased the probability of a crash by a factor of 20 times, but dialing a cell phone only increased the risk of accident by a factor of 2.8 times, while talking or listening to a cell phone conversation increased it 1.3 times. In comparison, reaching for an object while driving increases the risk of an accident by 1.4 times. (No worries; a ban on reaching is next on the agenda….although in obedience to the gay lobby, reach-arounds will still be legal.) The Insurance Institute of Highway Safety has found no evidence suggesting that a driver using a hands-free PED has a lower risk of crashing than a driver using a hand-held PED. However, these study results by no means imply that cell phones, whether hand-held or hands-free, should be considered dangerous. According to VTTI, the most consequential factor in determining the likelihood of a traffic accident is whether the driver keeps his or her eyes on the road.

In 2010, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported that 32,788 people died as a result of motor vehicle accidents on American roadways. This is the lowest level of fatalities since 1949, when there were 30,246 fatalities recorded. Also in 2010, the fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles driven fell to a historic low of 1.09. According to the NHTSA, 3,092 of the 32,885 reported fatalities were distraction-related (down 43.5 percent from 5,474 fatalities in 2009). They are attributed to a variety of driver distractions, such as a driver’s cell phone use (including texting), eating, drinking, conversing with passengers, interacting with in-vehicle technologies, daydreaming, and dealing with intense emotions.

However, the percentage of distraction-related fatalities that can be attributed to cell phone use is unclear. Based on the 20 times increased risk factor for accidents associated with texting, it is reasonable to assume that this source of driver distraction significantly exceeds fatalities related to drivers speaking on cell phones (a 1.3 times increased risk factor). The majority of state governments have already instituted legal bans on driver texting, with most of the remaining states considering enacting such legislation; the sooner, the better. The problem of comparing cell phone usage to texting as a major source of driver distraction is that no empirical evidence exists to support this claim. To have federal regulatory authorities cavalierly lump them together is simply disingenuous.

As well as unnecessary….unless of course your goal is to fatten civic coffers with the resultant fines.

Finally, in the Entertainment Section, another example of Liberal chutzpah, stunning in its scope:

Robert Redford says Sundance, the corporate sponsored playground for celebrities, is for the ’99 percent’

 

Yeah….sure, Sundance….particularly with the Chase Sapphire logo prominently featured directly behind your hypocritical head!

Magoo