Category Archives: oil
Bystander President
The NYT has called President Obama the bystander president because he’s deluged by events that seem to have nothing to do with him – unless they’re good. Like the U.S. oil boom which he fought against tooth and nail and now takes credit for.
Here’s a Dana Milbank Washington Post column pondering the problem.
Bystander Protector
Obama is fond of Czars. Could Valerie Jarrett be his protective Rasputin? John Fund thinks so. He quotes her appraisal of the president:
“I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. . . . He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. . . . So what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. . . . He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”
Says Fund, “As a court flatterer of that caliber it’s no surprise that Jarrett has outlasted almost everyone who was in Obama’s original White House team”
Unhappy Saudis
I don’t think it’s because he listens to their phone calls (though he probably does), but the dependably ungrateful Saudis have had it with Obama.
They think he abandoned Mubarak, is going wobbly on Iran, and is gutless on Syria. Besides that, despite all his best efforts, Obama has more oil than they do. Basically they don’t trust the guy.
The WSJ’s Daniel Henninger deals with this, and more, in a column “Obama’s Credibility is Melting”.
Border Battles
The president compared Israel and the Palestinians to the U.S. and Canada during his Middle East trip. Whatever, it’s all the same.
Drought
President Obama was in Iowa trying to give tax money to the wealthy. He wants us t0 ” ‘put politics aside’ and give farmers their money”. Ten percent of farmers get 74% of all farm subsidies. Forty percent of the U.S. corn crop is used to make federally mandated ethanol.
Crucifixion
EPA official Al Armendariz washed his hands of his Roman centurion approach to oil and gas executives.
“They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they’d crucify them,” Armendariz continued. “And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years. And so you make examples out of people who are in this case not compliant with the law.”
