Handicapping The Race

Looking at the Republican potential / declared candidates for President in 2012, here is how I see their chances:

3 to 1 - Paul Ryan: The economy is the single most important issue facing our nation going into 2012. Ryan understands the economics of our government the way few do - and he can explain the economics, albeit a bit woodenly. Most importantly, he has had the intellectual honesty and huevos grande to go where few politicians dare tread, proposing specific reforms to our entitlement boondoggles. Negatives - he says he won't run.
Ability to beat Obama: 54 to 46.

5 to 1 - Chris Christie: His winning wars with the unions and the democratic legislature in NJ have been the stuff of youtube gold. He is articulate and doesn't back down an inch. His ability to communicate is the best of any politician on either side of the aisle.
Negatives - He says he won't run. He wants to keep NJ pensions as defined benefit plans. Lastly, he seems to have RINO tendencies on issues such as gun control, as well as zero understanding of the threat we face from political Islam.
Ability to beat Obama: 53 to 47.

6 to 1 - Mitch Daniels: Daniels too understands economics, having served as Director of OMB. As a two-term Gov. of Indiana, Daniels has taken Indiana from a significant deficit to fiscal sanity. His first day as Gov., Daniels decertified all government employee unions by executive order and did away with the requirement that State employees pay mandatory union dues. In 2008, he passed laws creating a statewide school voucher program and merit pay for teachers. He also oversaw passage of laws penalizing companies who employed illegal aliens as well as denying illegal aliens in-state tuition.
Negatives: His earlier call for a truce on social issues has left SoCon's leery. Moreover, one of his first acts as Gov. was to submit a fiscal plan that called for tax increases. Lastly, he is still playing coy, promising to decide on whether to enter the race "soon."
Ability to beat Obama: 53 to 47.


8 to 1 - Mitt Romney: He is a well known quantity from the 2008 election. He was a very successful businessman and a former governor of bluest of blue Mass. He will likely be able to raise a huge warchest. And lastly, he is the "next man in line," which seems to be the way Republicans choose their nominees.
Negatives: Romneycare, Romneycare, Romneycare. Did I mention Romneycare.
Ability to beat Obama: 51 to 49.

10 - 1 Michelle Bachman: She is still a bit of a mystery to me. She has embraced the tea party and taken strong positions on social issues, leading others more knowledgeable about her than I to say that she has the SoCon vote largely sewn up. I have not heard her debate anyone yet. I do know that she has very strong money raising potential.
Negatives: She has already gotten a bit of the Sarah Palin treatment from the media, claiming that she is an intellectual light weight. If she does well in debates, she could easily move up the ladder.
Ability to beat Obama: 50 to 50.

10 - 1 Herman Cain: An extremely successful businessman and an arch-conservative talk show host. He is likable, well spoken and has the best business bona fides of anyone in the race. He is able to think quickly on his feet and is very knowledgeable about all of the major political issues.
Negatives: No experience in government. His health is also a concern.
Ability to beat Obama: 50 to 50.

15 - 1 - Sarah Palin: She is the most well known of all the potential candidates. She is intelligent, articulate and beautiful. But having been the subject of the most relentless leftwing media jihad in our nations history, she is a wild card. If she enters the race, and she might, I could easily see her placing second, if not first.
Negatives - She has already been successfully labled by the left as an intellectual lightweight. She would have to overcome that label and overcome questions regarding her decision to resign from the governorship of Alaska.
Ability to beat Obama: 49 to 51.

15 - 1 - Jeb Bush: He is the Bush that his family thought would be President. By all accounts, he did an excellent job as Gov. of Florida, making positive changes in the areas of education, medical malpractice and Medicare.
Negatives: He has indicated that he will likely not run. And of course, his last name is Bush - a liability for probably the next 4 to 6 years.
Ability to beat Obama: 49 to 51.

100 - 1 - Jon Huntsman: One of the key issues facing us is the left's insane push to treat carbon as a pollutant, with all the ramifications that has for our economy. A few days ago, Huntsman said he believes in man-made global warming. Moreover, while he was Gov. of Utah, he embraced the stimulus.
Negatives: I don't see much positive about Huntsman at this point.
Ability to beat Obama: 47 to 53.

999 to 1 - Ron Paul: From an uber-isolationist foreign policy to his embrace of the gold standard, Ron Paul is the Republican's crazy uncle.
Ability to beat Obama: 30 to 70.

1,000,000 to 1 - Chuck Schumer: I list Schumer simply to put the chances of Newt Gingrich in perspective.
Ability to beat Obama: 0.

1,000,001 to 1 - Newt Gingrich: Having gone on the Sunday talk shows and played Russian roulette with all chambers filled, Gingrich has destroyed any possible chance of winning the nomination for Republican candidate for the Presidency. But all is not lost. He could still mount a primary challenge to Obama.
Ability to beat Obama: 0

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Thomas Sowell On The Subprime Crisis & Proposed Bailout

Economist Thomas Sowell weighs in on the need for the proposed bailout to stabilize the market and the politics at the root of this fiscal crisis.
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This from Thomas Sowell writing at the JWT:

Who was it who said, "crack-brained meddling by the authorities" can "aggravate an existing crisis"? Ronald Reagan? Milton Friedman? Adam Smith? Not even close. It was Karl Marx. Unlike most leftists today, Marx studied economics.

Is the current financial crisis going to lead to crack-brained meddling or to some rational actions? Predicting what politicians are going to do is risky business. We will have to wait and see.

Saints are no more common on Capitol Hill than they are on Wall Street. We can only hope that the political "solution" does not turn out to be worse than the problem.

There are times when government intervention can make things better. But that is no guarantee that it won't make things worse. As they say, "the devil is in the details"— and we don't know the details yet.

. . . Taking an optimistic view, this biggest bailout of all time may stop the problems in financial markets from spreading into the general economy— which is currently nothing like the disaster area that the media portray it to be.

. . . The American economy is growing, not declining. Our unemployment rate is up to 6 percent but there are countries that would be delighted to get their unemployment rate down to 6 percent. Our inflation rate is up a little but many countries would love to get their inflation rate down to where ours is.

Why then is there such a mess in the financial markets? Much of that mess is due to the very people we are now turning to for solutions— members of Congress.

Past Congresses created the hybrid financial institutions known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, private institutions with government backing and political influence. About half of the mortgages in this country are backed by these two institutions.

Such institutions— exempt from laws that apply to other financial institutions and backed by the implicit promise of government support with the taxpayers' money— are an open invitation to risky behavior. When these risks blew up in their faces, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the government, costing the taxpayers billions of dollars.

For years the Wall Street Journal has been warning that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking reckless chances but liberal Democrats especially have pooh-poohed the dangers.

Back in 2002, the Wall Street Journal said: "The time for the political system to focus on Fannie and Fred isn't when we have a housing crisis; by then it will be too late." The hybrid public-and-private nature of these financial giants amounts to "privatizing profit and socializing risk," since taxpayers get stuck with the tab when high-risk finances don't work out.

Similar concerns were expressed in 2003 by N. Gregory Mankiw, then Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to President Bush. But liberal Democratic Congressman Barney Frank criticized Professor Mankiw, citing "concern for housing" as his reason for supporting Fannie Mae. Barney Frank said that fears about the riskiness of Fannie Mae were "overblown."

Maxine Waters and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus have also been among the liberal Democrats defending Fannie Mae. Just last year, Senator Charles Schumer advocated legislation to allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase their already huge role in the mortgage market. Republican Congressman Mike Oxley has also defended these hybrid financial giants.

Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been generous in their contributions to politicians' political campaigns, so it is perhaps not surprising that politicians have been generous to them.

This is certainly part of "the mess in Washington" that Barack Obama talks about. But don't expect him to clean it up. Franklin Raines, who made mega-millions for himself while mismanaging Fannie Mae into a financial disaster, is one of Obama's advisers.

Estimates of how much money a government program will cost are notoriously unreliable. Estimates of the cost of the current bailout in the financial markets run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and some say it may reach or exceed a trillion.

Many people have trouble even forming some notion of what such numbers as billion and trillion mean. One way to get some idea of the magnitude of a trillion is to ask: How long ago was a trillion seconds?

A trillion seconds ago, no one on this planet could read and write. Neither the Roman Empire nor the ancient Chinese dynasties had yet come into existence. None of the founders of the world's great religions today had yet been born.

That's what a trillion means. Put a dollar sign in front of it and that's what the current bailout may cost.

Will that money be spent wisely? It is theoretically possible. But don't bet the rent money on it or you could end up among the homeless.

Whenever there is a lot of the taxpayers' money around, politicians are going to find ways to spend it that will increase their chances of getting re-elected by giving goodies to voters.

. . . Already Senator Christopher Dodd is talking about extending the bailout from the financial firms to homeowners facing mortgage foreclosures-- as if the point of all this is to play Santa Claus.

The huge federal debts that we already have are the ghosts of Christmas past.

Financial institutions are not being bailed out as a favor to them or their stockholders. In fact, stockholders have come out worse off after some bailouts.

The real point is to avoid a major contraction of credit that could cause major downturns in output and employment, ruining millions of people, far beyond the financial institutions involved. If it was just a question of the financial institutions themselves, they could be left to sink or swim. But it is not.

We do not need a replay of the Great Depression of the 1930s, when the failure of thousands of banks meant a drastic reduction of credit-- and therefore a drastic reduction of the demand needed to keep production going and millions of people employed.

But bailing out people who made ill-advised mortgages makes no more sense that bailing out people who lost their life savings in Las Vegas casinos. It makes political sense only to people like Senator Dodd, who are among the reasons for the financial mess in the first place.

People usually stop making ill-advised decisions when they are forced to face the consequences of those decisions, not when politicians come to their rescue and make the taxpayers pay for decisions that the taxpayers had nothing to do with.

The Wall Street Journal, which has for years been sounding the alarm about the riskiness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, recently cited Senator Christopher Dodd along with Senator Charles Schumer and Congressman Barney Frank among those on Capitol Hill who have been "shilling" for these financial institutions, downplaying the risks and opposing attempts to restrict their free-wheeling role in the mortgage market.

As recently as July of this year, Senator Dodd declared Fannie Mae and Freddie "fundamentally strong" and said there is no need for "panicking" about them. But now that the chickens have come home to roost, Senator Dodd wants to be sure to get some goodies from the rescue legislation to pass out to people likely to vote for him.

Don't make any bets on how this situation is going to turn out-- except that we can predict that politicians will blame the "greed" of other people. You can bet the rent money on that.

Read the articles - Part I and Part II.

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WaMu Swallowed Up In The Left's Subprime Swamp

CNBC is reporting that regulators have just taken over Washington Mutual. JP Morgan is set to buy its assets from the FDIC. Investors in WaMu have just seen their entire intestment disappear.

There needs to be a reckoning once a plan to meet this crisis is put in place. There are a lot of legislators who need to be held liable for this catastrophe. By far most of them are on the left - Schumer, Dodd, Frank, Reid among them - though a few are on the right. The purity of their holier-than-thou motives does not excuse the wholly foreseeable result.

Other posts related to Subprime Crisis (from oldest to newest):

McCain, The Fannie and Freddie Crisis, and Obamafuscation - Obama and the entire Democratic Party are trying to blame Republicans for the subprime crisis. But this crisis was created by Bill Clinton and protected against Republican efforts to reign it in over a decade – until it failed, nearly pulling out entire economic system into a depression.

A Washington Post Front Page Hack Job - The Washington Post does a hit job on McCain, grossly distorting his record on regulatory matters and ignoring his cosponsoring of legislation to establish much stronger regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Dodging a Depression - The NYT and WSJ document just how serious is the subprime crisis. Quite literally it brought us to the point of a complete and catastrophic stoppage of our financial systems as institutions lost confidence in their fellow institutions. This was not a stock market crash, it was a lending and credit crash. The WSJ describes the events of the week leading up to the crisis point.

Obama & The "Family" Of Fannie Mae - Documenting Obama’s relationship to Fannie Mae.

The Origins – And Foreseeability – Of the Subprime Crisis - A 1999 article in the NYT describes the Clinton Administration forcing subprime loans onto America and also forecasts that this will create a house of cards that will fall apart in a down market.

Covering The Left’s Fannie - The NYT tries to play up old ties of a McCain campaign worker with Fannie Mae while minimizing the fact that McCain himself, in 2005, co-sponsored legislation that may well have prevented the fiscal crisis we are in now.

The Left’s Subprime Meltdown - A post by the Anchoress discusses this subprime crisis as a creation of the left and a system that was protected to the end by the left. She adds additional sites, quotes and links to explain the mosaic.

Fannie & Freddie, McCain & Obama, Subprime & Wall St.The WSJ discusses both how the subprime loan market came about and how Democrats, including Obama, were both the cause of the problem and the roadblock to a solution that would have averted this catastrophe. Dafydd at Big Lizard's explains how Mortgage Backed Securities worked on Wall Street.

A Doddering Fool & Charlatan - Chris Dodd is up to his ears in the subprime crisis. With our economy teetering on an actual depression due to the Fannie/Freddie/subprime loan crisis, it was not merely surreal to watch Senator Chris Dodd chair an emergency hearing of the Senate Banking Committee to evaluate the Treasury's proposed rescue plan, it was obscene.

Finally – Oversight - The FBI has finally announced criminal investigations at Fannie and Freddie. When Will They File As A 527 – The NYT continues its wholly biased reporting on the subprime crisis, refusing to report on the genesis of the crisis and instead, reporting on the relationship between Fannie Mae and Rick Davis of McCain’s campaign team.

McCain The Chessmaster - Opining on the potential risks and rewards of McCain's decision to cancel campaigning, return to Washington to take part in negotiations over a response to the subprime crisis, and tentatively cancel the Friday debate.

The President Addresses The Nation - Bush explains the stakes involved for America with the subprime crisis.

McCain The Chessmaster Part II - McCain was responding to a 3 a.m. phone call in returning to Washington. He is given political cover and support by Bill Clinton.

A Spotlight On The Left's Subprime Crisis - A video summary of the origins of the subprime crisis with lots of footage of Rep. Barney Frank and others protecting Fannie Mae from regulation by the Bush Administration and McCain.

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A Spotlight On The Left's Subprime Crisis

Watch BOTH of these videos:





My hat is off to Fox News. That is a superb seven minute summation. They need to add about two more minutes to it - adding in video of Schumer, Reid, and Dodd as they protected Fannie Mae, calling Republican efforts to reign in this mess before it exploded wrongheaded. And Fox needs to expand on McCain's speech predicting the dire consequences to our nation if Fannie and Freddie were not subject to much tighter controls. And then of course, they need to add in the latest from Bill Clinton, who now says that Congressional Democrats thwarted his attempts to reign this in. This from Newsbusters:

Bill Clinton on Thursday told ABC's Chris Cuomo that Democrats for years have been "resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was President to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac"

(video available here, relevant section at 2:45).

Other posts related to Subprime Crisis (from oldest to newest):

McCain, The Fannie and Freddie Crisis, and Obamafuscation - Obama and the entire Democratic Party are trying to blame Republicans for the subprime crisis. But this crisis was created by Bill Clinton and protected against Republican efforts to reign it in over a decade – until it failed, nearly pulling out entire economic system into a depression.

A Washington Post Front Page Hack Job - The Washington Post does a hit job on McCain, grossly distorting his record on regulatory matters and ignoring his cosponsoring of legislation to establish much stronger regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Dodging a Depression - The NYT and WSJ document just how serious is the subprime crisis. Quite literally it brought us to the point of a complete and catastrophic stoppage of our financial systems as institutions lost confidence in their fellow institutions. This was not a stock market crash, it was a lending and credit crash. The WSJ describes the events of the week leading up to the crisis point.

Obama & The "Family" Of Fannie Mae - Documenting Obama’s relationship to Fannie Mae.

The Origins – And Foreseeability – Of the Subprime Crisis - A 1999 article in the NYT describes the Clinton Administration forcing subprime loans onto America and also forecasts that this will create a house of cards that will fall apart in a down market.

Covering The Left’s Fannie - The NYT tries to play up old ties of a McCain campaign worker with Fannie Mae while minimizing the fact that McCain himself, in 2005, co-sponsored legislation that may well have prevented the fiscal crisis we are in now.

The Left’s Subprime Meltdown - A post by the Anchoress discusses this subprime crisis as a creation of the left and a system that was protected to the end by the left. She adds additional sites, quotes and links to explain the mosaic.

Fannie & Freddie, McCain & Obama, Subprime & Wall St.The WSJ discusses both how the subprime loan market came about and how Democrats, including Obama, were both the cause of the problem and the roadblock to a solution that would have averted this catastrophe. Dafydd at Big Lizard's explains how Mortgage Backed Securities worked on Wall Street.

A Doddering Fool & Charlatan - Chris Dodd is up to his ears in the subprime crisis. With our economy teetering on an actual depression due to the Fannie/Freddie/subprime loan crisis, it was not merely surreal to watch Senator Chris Dodd chair an emergency hearing of the Senate Banking Committee to evaluate the Treasury's proposed rescue plan, it was obscene.

Finally – Oversight - The FBI has finally announced criminal investigations at Fannie and Freddie.

When Will They File As A 527 – The NYT continues its wholly biased reporting on the subprime crisis, refusing to report on the genesis of the crisis and instead, reporting on the relationship between Fannie Mae and Rick Davis of McCain’s campaign team.

McCain The Chessmaster - Opining on the potential risks and rewards of McCain's decision to cancel campaigning, return to Washington to take part in negotiations over a response to the subprime crisis, and tentatively cancel the Friday debate.

The President Addresses The Nation - Bush explains the stakes involved for America with the subprime crisis.

McCain The Chessmaster Part II - McCain was responding to a 3 a.m. phone call in returning to Washington. He is given political cover and support by Bill Clinton.

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The Left's Subprime Meltdown

The Anchoress has a good post on the left's creation of the subprime nightmare that we are in today. She links to Mark Levin's broadcast, provides additional details and links.

This from the Anchoress:

Yes, I know his voice is grating, yes I know he can be too rude by half on his program, but take the time to listen to this audio of last Friday’s Mark Levin show. (H/T Ace) You want the breakdown of what happened and why it happened? Levin gives it to you in plain language. Listen to it, even if you really don’t want to. I didn’t want to, but it’s important that we understand what happened, here, historically, that we don’t simply succumb to spin. Look past Levin’s politics and his cranky yelling, and just get the history.

. . . Levin quotes the GOP senate in 2003 on their worries and their desire to address the coming problem. He also quotes the Democrats who blocked it. He has a lot of citations, here are a few:

In August of 2007, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), heading the Senate Banking Committee argued to life the portfolio cap from Freddy & Fannie to create more loans and allow F&F to buy more sub-prime mortgages “to calm the market.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, (D-NV) in 2005, in response to an effort by the GOP to trim Fanny & Freddy’s portfolios: “The legislation from the Senate banking committee, passed today on a party line vote by the Republican majority, includes measures that could cripple the ability of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to carry out their mission of expanding homeownership,” said Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the Senate Minority Leader Thursday…”While I favor improving oversight by our federal housing regulators to ensure safety and soundness, we cannot pass legislation that could limit Americans from owning homes and potentially harm our economy in the process,” Reid said.

Writing in the Wall St. Journal with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) argued to reduce the regulations passed after Enron. He plays an audio clip of Schumer trashing Bush and trying to get what he wants.

Do listen to Levin. He gets loud and shrill sometimes; he is certainly passionate. But he is also very, very informative, especially about the “corrosive cronyism,” as Levin describes it. I had not realized that so many of Barack Obama’s top financial advisors are people who made millions running Fan & Fred. And yes, that’s troubling. It would be troubling if it was true of McCain’s campaign, too. But it’s more troubling about Obama, because Obama has not done anything. He’s running for president on 140 days of experience in the Senate. It feels, increasingly, like he’s simply being put into place to maintain the status quo.

They wouldn’t work together in 2003 or 2005, but Schumer is making bi-partisan noises. One hopes he means it. Really. But one also cannot but remember how the Democrats in the Senate - led by Schumer - filibustered just about everything that Bush tried to do, whether it was address this problem, address Social Security, address the energy situation (we still don’t have the upgraded power grids we needed in 2003) they filibustered like mad on EVERYTHING until they got into power in 2007, at which time they stopped legislating at all, which may in the end be to our benefit. Remember those words: DEMOCRAT FILIBUSTERS. They used the filibuster constantly to prevent Bush from doing anything.

Gateway Pundit notes: repeated attempts in 2008 by the Bush administration to prevent what happened last week Couldn’t get the Dems to pay attention.
And please note: Social Security? The thing Congress would not work with Bush on, because they put partisanship before country? Obama is busily walking back his plans, there.

Meanwhile: Paulsen, like McCain, says the fundamentals of our economy are sound.
Instapundit links to the proposed bail out legislation.Lorie Byrd calls McCain The Paul Revere of the F&F disaster, at least in this campaign.

Ace notes that Obama’s finance chair is “the queen of sub-prime mortgages” and notices that the Huffpo talked about that back in February of ‘08.The New Yorker talks about the recklessness of Lehman Brothers and Bear SternsMelissa Clothier has more thoughts and a good round-up . . .

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Bipartisan Support For The Pickens Plan

I blogged three weeks ago on Democrats and the Pickens Plan - a plan that includes everything from offshore drilling and drilling in ANWR to exploiting oil shale and natural gas. Its a kitchen sink plan with all of the above being in addition to pursuing development of alternative energy - something the left apparently hasn't yet grasped from their endorsements above. Unfortunately, all of the video was from Red Lasso which has now been shut down by law suits from the MSM. This you tube video from the Republicans via Hot Air makes the points just as well.

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Schumerian Hypocrisy & A McCain Problem

Senator Chuck Shumer finally figures out that the price of gas is determined by the law of supply and demand. And yet it was only a few weeks ago he was trying to repeal that law.
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Several weeks ago, the President addressed what needs to happen to bring down oil prices. We need to exploit our own vast resources, as discussed in a prior post here. That includes drilling in ANWR.



Nancy Pelosi responded by stating that all Republicans want to do is "veto (a Democratic sponsored plan to sue OPEC) and drill." Well, . . . yeah. Suing OPEC has no hope of winning and, indeed, has nothing but potentially catastrophic downsides. Demand has far outpaced existing world supplies such that small blips in the market cause huge market swings.

And seemingly within minutes of the President's speech, Chuckie Shumer shows up on the news claiming that drilling in ANWR would not appreciably effect gas prices. Most estimates of ANWR production put it as becoming available in one to three years from start of drilling and pumping about 1,000,000 barrels of oil per day.

So what is Shumer's latest effort? I missed it two weeks ago, but fortunately George Will didn't:

Rising in the Senate on May 13, Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat, explained: "I rise to discuss rising energy prices." The president was heading to Saudi Arabia to seek an increase in its oil production, and Schumer's gorge was rising.

Saudi Arabia, he said, "holds the key to reducing gasoline prices at home in the short term." Therefore arms sales to that kingdom should be blocked unless it "increases its oil production by one million barrels per day," which would cause the price of gasoline to fall "50 cents a gallon almost immediately."

Amazing. This man has yet to vote to allow one drop of oil to be pumped in America, he ignores the law of supply and demand, and he blames oil prices on a combination of greedy oil companies (who do not set the price) and a Bush administration that seeks to actually increase supply. And then he turns around and claims that forcing Saudi Arabia to increase their supply by the amount we would get from drilling in ANWR will drop oil prices significantly. This truly is hypocrisy of Schumerian proportions.

Unfortunately, the story does not end there. John McCain fancies himself Teddy Roosevelt reborn and is equally bound and determined to stand in the way of drilling, at least in ANWR. He does so out of the desire to protect an untouched wilderness, presumably rather than for the more socialist and punitive goals of the radical environmentalists who comprise a key special interest group of the Democratic party. But Teddy Roosevelt did not live in an age where energy is the lifeblood of the economy and where his America was potentially facing major economic hardship because rising world demand is effecting the costs of supplies the U.S. could access. Somebody needs to straighten Mr. McCain out on this one. Pristine wilderness is wonderful. Americans who are having trouble making ends meet so a caribou does not have its view of the sea obstructed by a few oil rigs is a far higher priority.

At any rate, to contine with George Will's article today:

". . . One million barrels is what might today be flowing from ANWR if in 1995 President Bill Clinton hadn't vetoed legislation to permit drilling there. One million barrels produce 27 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel. Seventy-two of today's senators - including Schumer, of course, and 38 other Democrats, including Barack Obama, and 33 Republicans, including John McCain - have voted to keep ANWR's estimated 10.4 billion barrels of oil off the market.

So Schumer, according to Schumer, is complicit in taking $10 away from every American who buys 20 gallons of gasoline.

"Democracy," said H.L. Mencken, "is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard." The common people of New York want Schumer to be their senator, so they should pipe down about gasoline prices, which are a predictable consequence of their political choice.

Also disqualified from complaining are all voters who sent to Washington senators and representatives who've voted to keep ANWR's oil in the ground, and who voted to put 85 percent of America's offshore territory off-limits to drilling. The US Minerals Management Service says that restricted area contains perhaps 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas - 10 times the oil and 20 times the natural gas Americans use in a year.

Drilling is under way 60 miles off Florida. The drilling is being done by China, in cooperation with Cuba, which is drilling closer to South Florida than US companies are.

ANWR is larger than the combined areas of five states (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware) and drilling along its coastal plane would be confined to a space one-sixth the size of Washington's Dulles Airport.

Offshore? Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed or damaged hundreds of drilling rigs without causing a large spill. There hasn't been a significant spill from an offshore US well since 1969. Of the more than 7 billion barrels of oil pumped offshore in the last 25 years, 0.001 percent - that is one-thousandth of 1 percent - has been spilled. Louisiana has more than 3,200 rigs offshore - and a thriving commercial fishing industry.

. . . In September 2006, two US companies announced that their "Jack No. 2" well, in the Gulf 270 miles southwest of New Orleans, had tapped a field with perhaps 15 billion barrels of oil, which would increase America's proven reserves by 50 percent. Just probing four miles below the Gulf's floor costs $100 million. Congress' response to such expenditures is to propose increasing the oil companies' tax burdens.

America says to foreign producers: We prefer not to pump our oil, so please pump more of yours, thereby lowering its value, for our benefit. Let it not be said that America has no energy policy."

Read the entire article. I also ran across a great post at Astute Blogger on our self inflicted energy woes. I highly recommend it.

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The History of the Surge Against the Surge . . .

And a sordid history it is. At the Weekly Standard, Noemie Emery does an exceptional job of memorializing all of the low points, including among them these gems:

. . . As Harry Reid put it on July 9, "Democrats and military experts and the American people know the president's current strategy is not working and we cannot wait until September to act." As Dianne Feinstein put it, "Today, a majority of the Senate sees that the surge is not working. Do we change course now or do we wait until September? I believe the answer is clear." James Webb, sponsoring an amendment that would cripple the surge, made it clear that whatever Petraeus said wouldn't matter to him. "I don't care what the report says next week. I don't care what the report says in September."

. . . Fearful that Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker might report too much progress in their much-anticipated testimony to Congress in September, Democrats launched a preemptive assault on the duo. "Leading Democrats preemptively assailed the expected findings on Iraq due this week from Gen. David H. Petraeus as 'dead, flat wrong' and said President Bush's likely call for continued patience in the war would simply extend an 'unconscionable' and 'completely unacceptable' policy," reported the International Herald Tribune on September 9, two days before the hearing was scheduled. "The pointed comments from the Democrats seemed designed to undercut the impact of the much-awaited reports." Representative Ed Markey of Massachusetts referred to the general's testimony as a "Petraeus village . . . a façade to hide from view the continuing failure of the Bush administration's strategy." Rahm Emanuel said, "We don't need a report that wins the Nobel Prize for creative statistics, or the Pulitzer for fiction." The testimony required the "willing suspension of disbelief," said Hillary Clinton (a past master at the skill, as she had suspended it often enough in regard to her husband). "By carefully manipulating the statistics, the Bush-Petraeus report will try to persuade us that the violence in Iraq is decreasing, and the surge is working," said Dick Durbin. In an unintentional echo of the New York Times's famous "fake but accurate" defense of Dan Rather's fictional documents about President Bush's presumed derelictions of duty in the Texas Air National Guard, Durbin said: "Even if the figures are right, the conclusion is wrong." In less than a year, the Democrats had gone from demanding a change in a policy that was failing, to demanding a change in a policy that hadn't been tried yet, to demanding a change in a policy that at the very least had forestalled disaster and was proving to have some success.

October 2006 was the worst month in Iraq since the war started, with violence spiking all over the country, and death numbers reaching new highs. In November 2006, the Democrats had their best midterm election in 20 years, winning back both the House and the Senate and gaining a large lead in the generic ballot heading into the election of 2008. The two incidents were not unrelated, and, as a result, the party laid down a huge bet on Iraq the Debacle, calculating that the disaster would drive swing voters into their column. "Senator Schumer has shown me numbers that are compelling and astounding," a gleeful Harry Reid said on April 12, 2007, to reporters. "We are going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war." . . .

. . . As they took control of Congress at the start of 2007, the Democrats vowed this would be a year of historic importance, and it seems they were prescient: Seldom before in the annals of governance have so many politicians fought so long and so hard to completely screw up a winning strategy being waged on their country's behalf. . . . It was the Stab in the Front, the Surge-against-the-Surge, the Pickett's Charge of the Great War on Terror. It was a year to remember, that will live in the annals of fecklessness. . . .

Read the entire article. And as to Emanuel's comment, referenced above, on handing out the Nobel prize for creative statistics, I do believe Al Gore and the UN shared that one this year.

Update: (H/T Instapundit)And in a similar vein, there is this today from Don Surber, explaining that "[v]ictory was never an option for Democrats."

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