As goes Energy, so goes the country.

“The worse, the better,” Vladimir Lenin is said to have observed. What Lenin meant was that the worse social conditions became in Russia, the more likely he and the Bolsheviks could foment a communist revolution. President Barrack Obama’s White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel recently updated Lenin’s maxim, saying, “Never allow a crisis to go to waste.”Last Friday, the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives took those maxims to heart when they pushed through their 1,200-page American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act by a vote 219 to 212. The bill is supposed to address the twin crises of economic recession and climate change by creating millions of new “green” jobs. Instead of an old-fashioned Soviet-style five-year plan, ACES can be thought of as 50-year plan to radically transform how Americans produce and use energy.

…Well, look, Ron Bailey, this entire administration seems to me to emulate the tactics of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, in all things, not just energy… and in my view we’ve not seen nearly the worst of it yet. (A Depressing thought as we come to July 4th, isn’t it?)

So why should Energy be any different? Energy, after all, is the key to our country and it’s prosperity. Which of course was why I raised such holy hell when the first thing Obama did upon being sworn in was to reverse President Bush’s sign off on offshore drilling. That action is the major reason oil prices have better than doubled in the last 6 months.

The question that Ron asks, though, seems to me pertinent:

Will Americans tolerate such sweeping interventions into their lives and workplaces?

…

The 1994 mid-term election became a referendum on [...]

Arthur Brooks, at The Wall Street Journal suggests that there’s a bit of a culture war going on about the future of capitalism. The headline suggests that “The Real Culture War Is Over Capitalism “

There is a major cultural schism developing in America. But it’s not over abortion, same-sex marriage or home schooling, as important as these issues are. The new divide centers on free enterprise — the principle at the core of American culture.

I dare suggest Brooks in this quote, has this exactly backward. He’s pointing at a symptom and labeling at the root cause. Not that I blame him, really. It’s been so long since we’ve dealt with things on the level of principle that even the more learned among us get it garbled in translation.

I agree with Arthur that this is a war that is cultural in its nature. However, the war over capitalism, as he calls it, is part of the war on culture because capitalism in its truest sense can only exist in a free society, which is a culturally generated condition. It is the product of a particular variety of culture that… (at least until recently)… we here in these United States have been blessed with. What I am suggesting is that the principle at the core of the American culture is in fact freedom, of which capitalism is a product.

While it is true that there are a few places in the communist world, China for example, where capitalism raises its head in some form, it is diluted in the extreme. It is in fact, capitalism in name only. Alas in the view of many, a goodly number of which were out on the front lines of the tea party protests last month, that kind of weak as dishwater capitalism, capitalism in name only, is the [...]

So, how much credit does Barrack Obama deserve for the rescue of Captain Phillips? The efforts of Obama and his supporters to claim Obama was the reason behind this rescue, Black Five says… Not so fast.

The AP is reporting that President Obama gave the order to use military force to rescue the hostage, that is misleading.

WASHINGTON (AP)—Administration officials say President Barack Obama approved the military operation that rescued a U.S. captain held hostage by Somali pirates.

The officials say Obama ordered the Defense Department to use military resources to rescue Richard Phillips from a lifeboat off the Somali coast.

He did affirm the military’s authorization to use force if the captain’s life was in danger, but they already would have had that authorization as part of their standard rules of engagement. If there are innocents about to be slaughtered the same reasoning that authorizes self defense also covers an [...]

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Tags: administration, administration officials, Barrack Obama, Democrat, Democratic, Emanuel, innocents, Iran, Life, North Korea, phillips, President Obama, President of the United States, richard phillips, somali coast, somali pirates, Syria, United States, White House, willingness

Former GW Bush White House Spokesman, conservative political pundit, newspaper columnist and talk show host, Tony Snow, has died of cancer at 53.
Snow also served in the GHW Bush White House as a speech writer and Deputy Assistant of Media Affairs.
Tony will be missed.  Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family.

This afternoon, my post about Iowa considering raising the Gas Tax to help pay for flood recovery was clicked into by someone on the “house.gov” network… that is, someone probably working in some congressperson’s office took a look at the post.. I have no idea who.  But less than an hour later, I notice a [...]

I make no bones about it: I’m a Conservative and a Republican.  If I ever think think the Party is a lost cause, I could abandon it, but current circumstances don’t put me there.  Not even close.
I read with some appreciation Cal Thomas’ column on this subject last week.  His comments regarding the romanticism of [...]