The Regressive Green Agenda & A History Lesson

At Oh What Now, the blogger, a retired marine engineer, has reposted a brilliant "comment" that he left at the radical green site, DeSmog Blog. In the comment - an essay, really - Nick discusses man's history of innovation in response to climate change and then challenges the modern greenie agenda as highly regressive:

Green thinking - more harm than good?

When the climate took a turn for the worse during the so-called Younger Dryas period some 12,000 years ago, our ancestors didn’t don a hair shirt and hope for the best. They innovated. A sharp return to ice age like conditions helped precipitate the development of agriculture in the Levant, a hugely successful innovation that soon diffused to other settled regions. So if contemporary climate change is to be taken as seriously as many Greens urge, our response should also be innovation driven. Why then does much of our current Green thinking focus on environmentally and socially regressive ideas?

While the development of agriculture during the Neolithic revolution was to change the world for the better, the real awakening from millennia of Malthusian stagnation was the industrial revolution. Whether through the far-reaching ideas of the Scottish enlightenment or the innovations of James Watt, it was realised that the future could be radically different from the past.

For example, in the late 19th century the growing use of steam power enabled energy and labour costs to decouple for the first time in human history. Energy became cheap while prosperity soared, not through crass consumerism, but through badly needed economic growth that provided an escape from agrarian poverty. It is the surplus from that innovation driven growth that now enables the provision of public services such as health and education. Nurses nurse and teachers teach only because someone else is providing their Joules, Calories and other material needs.

While innovation has undeniably delivered immense improvements in the human condition, innovation is also the principal route through which human needs can gradually be decoupled from the environment. . . .

Do read it all. It is simply a superb essay that I recommend to everyone.

I would add two things. One, Nick does his analysis assuming that green agenda is predicated on protecting Gaia. I don't. It appears to me that the green agenda and the acts taken to further it are, in large measure, a vehicle for gaining political power with a mandate to control man's activities. When you add that as an additional rubric for analysis, I think many of the green's acts and positions make musch more sense.

Further, Nick notes that his comment on DeSmog blog only lasted two days before it was deleted. Lefties, particularly the more radical ones, are not willing to tolerate any opinion that conflicts with their dogma. They don't debate facts, they just want to impose their beliefs. Such fanatics are, in equal measure, insecure, totalitarian and dangerous.

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Links For Sunday

Germany goes solar coal for cheap energy.

U.S. exports coal to China for their cheap energy - while at the same time Obama and the EPA conduct their own war on coal and our energy infrastructure. We do not have an energy policy in this country, and it is very shortly going to bite us in the ass - hard. As usual, those who suffer most will be those on the low end of the economic scale, the people the left supposedly represent.

At Nature, they are discussing what to expect in 2011. Among the hot topics:

. . . The North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling (NEEM) project reached bedrock in July 2010, at a depth of more than 2,500 metres. The fruits of that effort should soon be seen, now that researchers are analysing gas and particles trapped inside the ice core to reveal details of the climate of the Eemian interglacial period (130,000–115,000 years ago), when the average global temperature was about 5°C warmer than today.

That is a whopping 9 deg. Far. hotter then today. Nine degrees when there was no appreciable human contribution to carbon dioxide. And NASA's resident nut, Jim Hansen, is trying to convince us that 2010 is the "hottest year on record." Talk about requiring a willful suspension of disbelief.

Sage advice to the new Congress from Prof. Glen Reynolds:

. . . [R]emember that fortune favors the bold. It's true that ordinarily in politics, most progress occurs at the margins. But it's also true that these are not ordinary times. Big money-saving and government-shrinking proposals in the House, even if they're shot down by the Democrat-controlled Senate, will nonetheless establish a tone.

They're trying to hide it, but the Inside-the-Beltway permanent-government political class is currently scared. Keep them that way, while showing the public at large that you're serious. . . .

The NYT notes that the public is waking up to the toxic scam of public sector unions. Let us hope that the debacle in NYC, where lives were lost while the public union slow rolled clearing snow, becomes the icon for ending the pox of public sector unions on America. It is a fifty year old exercise in corrupt Dem. politics that needs to end before it buries us. As John at Powerline notes:

Enough is enough. Legalization of public employee unions has been a disaster. It is time to end the experiment and make them illegal once again, at both the federal and state levels. I expect that this will become one of the great political issues of the next decade.

And while we are waiting for that sea change, the next big step is to pass the legislation proposed by California Republican Rep. Devin Nunes (he's a lonely guy) that will require states to account for the degree to which their public sector pension funds are undercapitalized while also establishing a ban on federal bailouts of public pension programs.

The AP finally comes around to the position that the entitlement state is a disaster.

At the American, a fascinating article on how the government caused the Great Recession. In particular, they point to "a potent mix of six major government policies that together rewarded short-sighted collective risk-taking and penalized long-term business leadership." As an aside, it is worth noting that Obama's "bipartisan" Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission is finally set to release its fictional report in January, 2011. The Commission refused to consider the role of Fannie and Freddie in the crisis. Indeed, so useless is the report that Obama felt no need to wait on it before passing new financial regulations ostensibly intended to fix the causes of or financial meltdown.

Commenting on the MSNBC interview with GOPROUD chairman, Chris Barron, shown below, John at Powerline remarks: "[L]iberalism is all about screwing certain people so that others can enjoy a windfall, and trying to cobble together an electoral majority out of that corruption. Conservatism, on the other hand, is all about building a better society for everyone." Amen. And that indeed is a point that needs to be hammered home to each of the victim constituencies that the far left relies on for their power base. We want them to emerge from victimhood, the left, to survive, needs to keep them there.



And on this day in history, in 1492, the Reconquista of Spain was complete when the last Muslim ruler of Granada, Muhammad XII, surrendered his kingdom to Isabella I of Castile.

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Life In A Post-Global Warming World

In the aftermath of the foreseeable death of the Antrhopogenic Global Warming scare, we shall be experiencing life in a new world. What then? And of course, by that question, I mean after hunting down Al Gore and feeding him to the polar bears?

I was a bit horrified to see Instapundit's answer to that question:

Nothing. At least, in my opinion, we should continue to try to minimize the use of fossil fuels regardless. Burning coal and oil is filthy, and they’re more valuable as chemical feedstocks anyway. We should be building nuclear plants and pursuing efficiencies in the shorter term, while working on better solar (including orbital solar), wind, etc. power supplies for the longer term. That doesn’t mean “hairshirt” environmentalism, where the goal is for neo-puritans to denounce people for immorality and trumpet their own superiority. It just means good sense.

I still think that we are headed towards the mother of all energy problems if we "do nothing" and follow the current path laid out by Obama. He is warring on coal - something that provides over 50% of our electricity, and he is refusing permits that would allow us to exploit our other natural resources - oil, oil shale and natural gas. We are already relying on foreign oil to meet 70% of our daily needs, and it will only get worse as we come out of this recession. Alternative energy cannot possibly supplant fossil fuels on a cost efficient basis in the forseeable future, and we will be cutting our own throats if we don't soon go after our own natural resources. What I am suggesting is not in place of "building nuclear plants and pursuing efficiencies in the shorter term," but rather insuring that we are not devestated by an otherwise certain spike in energy costs during the period it will take to develop the technologies for out next generation of energy.

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Trans-Atlantic Green Economic Suicide

It seems a bit of insanity to be writing a post on global warming as the world suffers record low temperatures and snow fall. Indeed, I had to put an extra piece of coal on the fire to keep my extremities warm enough to type this post. But the AGW crowd will not be slowed by reality or revelations of highly politicized science. [And indeed, MSNBC posts an AP report today warning us not to be fooled, all of the experts say "despite" the "cold snap," earth "still warming." I find it somewhat mystifying that they couldn't find a dissenting expert, since we have had a decade of slight cooling, followed now by some significant cooling indeed.]

One would think that the implications and ramifications of Climategate for the theory of anthropogenic global warming would slow down Obama's push to reduce carbon emissions through a variety of taxes and a carbon trading market. But that Climategate hasn't caused Obama or the left to so much as blink is proof that this isn't about science. Its about power and money.

To see where Obama would lead us, just look at the UK. They are a decade into the push towards a green nirvana and five years into the carbon trading market. Their energy prices have doubled in five years and portend to grow exponentially over the next decade. This from the Daily Mail:

Household gas and electricity bills are expected to rocket fourfold to nearly £5,000 [$8,000 at the current exchange rate] a year by the end of the decade to meet Government-imposed green targets.

And the price heavy industry will have to pay by 2020 is so high that energy-dependent firms could be wiped out, causing thousands of job losses, said an industry spokesman." . . .

Already energy bills are loaded up by five separate charges to help fund the battle to combat climate change and become greener. They are the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target, the Renewables Obligation, the Community Energy Saving Programme and shortly there will be a levy on investing in clean coal projects.

Although householders will be badly hit, the damage to industrial energy users will be even more dramatic. These companies, which range from steel and chemical plants to industrial gas companies, are dependent on reasonable energy prices that can, in some cases, account for 70 per cent of their entire costs.

Jeremy Nicholson, spokesman for the Energy Intensive Users' Group, said the Government's own figures showed that the price of electricity would go up by up to 70 per cent and the price of gas by a further 50 per cent as a direct result of meeting its renewable energy targets.

And there are, as I have pointed out many times, a whole host of secondary costs to the economy that ripple out from these acts of insanity. As Dr. North points out at EU Referendum in commenting on this article:

But, if the £5,000 figure shocks, it is only part of the equation. Higher energy costs feed through into the price of every home-produced commodity and service, while the added costs of benefits paid to redundant workers, the loss of tax income as firms close down, and the fall-off in economic activity will impose their own substantial costs.

Tied in with the way we are miss-managing our energy supplies and we are looking at a slow-motion economic catastrophe far greater than the economic crisis we are weathering, the overall costs of which are set to exceed the entire tax bill for the average household.

We are only on the edge of imposing the extremely burdensome taxes that will come with EPA regulation or the insane Waxman Markey climate change legislation. But we are already well underway to miss-managing our energy supplies.

Coal fired plants account for over half of all electricity production in the U.S. It is estimated that we have over 25% of the world's coal. Yet Obama, for once true to his word, has declared war on coal. His EPA is refusing mining and plant creation permits at every turn, and even in some cases revoking previously issued permits. What he will have us replace it with - and how much more it will cost - is very much an unknown at this point. Given the centrality of coal to U.S. energy production, it will most certainly be steep indeed.

But that's not Obama's only war on our energy supplies. You will recall his promise during the campaign to open up our coasts for oil exploration and to allow for more drilling. That didn't survive his swearing in. We now import 57% of our oil. It is not because we don't have huge oil/natural gas reserves - we do. It is just that the far left, from Obama on down, is bound and determined that we won't touch them. And today brings news from the WSJ that the Obama administration is about to make it even tougher to drill:

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is expected to announce Wednesday that his agency will require oil and natural-gas companies to clear more regulatory hurdles before they are allowed to drill on federal lands.

Mr. Salazar's action is likely to make it more difficult for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to fast-track the permitting of oil and gas projects on federal land. BLM field staffers would be required to seek additional approvals from their supervisors and to undertake more visits to areas where energy companies are seeking access, according to people familiar with the matter.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, shown in December, is expected to make it more difficult to speed oil and gas projects on federal land. The BLM manages more than 260 million acres of federal land, and with it, a significant chunk of U.S. energy supplies. Domestic production from federal onshore oil and gas wells accounts for 11% of U.S. natural-gas supplies and 5% of the nation's oil.

The Obama administration is already locked in a bitter fight with the oil and gas industry over proposals to raise billions of dollars in additional taxes from energy companies, and to cap the emissions of gases caused by burning fossil fuels, which have been linked to global warming. . . .

This is just so wrong. One, oil is a national security issue. We could be moving towards self sufficiency from domestic supplies over the coming decades if the left did not oppose every new well, every new mine, every new energy plant. Instead, the left has us moving to ever more dependence on oil with many of the oil production centers being in countries who are not America's friends.

And of equal importance is the cost of oil and how that will effect our economy. The massive rise in fuel prices from 2006 to 2008 was hardly an anomaly. It came about because of world demand - a demand we can expect to see return if and when we come out of the Frank-Dodd-Clinton caused depression. If we do nothing else, T. Boone Pickens estimates we will see $300 a barrel oil in a decade. If that happens, it will be a dagger in the heart of our economy. Something must be done, but on both sides of the Atlantic, the left is bound and determined to head down the path to economic Armageddon.

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Posts of Interest

Some posts of interest that I don't have time to blog about:

AG Eric Holder engages in questionable legal reasoning to ignore Congressional intent and instead rule that ACORN is entitled to be paid under existing contracts. Powerline has the story.

The Cato Institute looks under the knickers of Obamacare and finds the actual price tag to be in the neighborhood of $6,000,000,000,000.00

The trials facing America that are being ignored by Obama could dwarf the problems seen so far. V. D. Hanson has the list. Topping both his - and my - concern is the price of oil.

The Weekly Standard has more on the boondoggle that are ethanol mandates.

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She Speaks

Well, she writes, actually, in today's Washington Post, attacking the disaster that is Obama's cap and trade plan. It is vintage Palin, on point and with a bit of cynical humor.

. . . I am deeply concerned about President Obama's cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.

American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant, affordable energy. Particularly in Alaska, we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security. Consequently, many of us in this huge, energy-rich state recognize that the president's cap-and-trade energy tax would adversely affect every aspect of the U.S. economy.

There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn't lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive! Those who understand the issue know we can meet our energy needs and environmental challenges without destroying America's economy.

Job losses are so certain under this new cap-and-tax plan that it includes a provision accommodating newly unemployed workers from the resulting dried-up energy sector, to the tune of $4.2 billion over eight years. So much for creating jobs.

In addition to immediately increasing unemployment in the energy sector, even more American jobs will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under the cap-and-tax plan. For example, the cost of farming will certainly increase, driving down farm incomes while driving up grocery prices. The costs of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also increase.

The ironic beauty in this plan? Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics. . . .

Do read the entire article. Palin has composed an excellent piece that hits all the salient points in the cap and tax fiasco.

As to the last part about understanding supply-side economics, after listening to Pelosi, Reid and virtually the entire Democratic Party last year attempt to disavow that supply is actually part of any economic equation, I have my doubts about them. As to the rest of rank and file America, I am sure that is a lesson everyone will learn quite quickly.

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The Price Of Oil - NYT Mystified By Cause & Effect

The price of oil is swinging violently and trending ever upwards. The NYT is at a loss to explain it:

The extreme volatility that has gripped oil markets for the last 18 months has shown no signs of slowing down, with oil prices more than doubling since the beginning of the year despite an exceptionally weak economy.

The instability of oil and gas prices is puzzling government officials and policy analysts, who fear it could jeopardize a global recovery. . . .

A wild run on the oil markets has occurred in the last 12 months. Last summer, prices surged to a record high above $145 a barrel, driving up gasoline prices to well over $4 a gallon. As the global economy faltered, oil tumbled to $33 a barrel in December. But oil has risen 55 percent since the beginning of the year, to $70 a barrel . . .

Read the entire article. The NYT goes on to quote speculation that the instability in Nigeria and Iran are playing a significant role in the rise in oil prices, but both of those are of recent vintage and do not account for the steady upward rise in oil prices since the beginning of the year.

Anyone who couldn't see this coming is not paying attention. I wrote a month ago, in the post "The Looming Crisis In Energy Costs," that we would soon face another energy crisis. None of the causes in demand that gave rise to $145 a barrel oil have disappeared permanently. Obama has refused to live up to his promise to allow expanded exploitation and exploration of our domestic oil resources - perhaps the only thing in the near and mid-term that could actually stabilize world oil prices. And on top of that, he has, with the cap and trade bill, declared war on our energy industry, particularly on coal which provides almost 50% of our energy. This is bound to increase demand for oil. Lastly, oil is priced in dollars. A weak dollar causes higher prices for oil - and Obama is in the process of destroying the value of the dollar.

As I wrote in the above referenced post, all of these factors are clear indicators that we can expect a real crisis in oil costs. There is no reason for the NYT to be mystified by the rise in prices over the past six months. Cause and effect are clear. The NYT just needs to start some honest reporting.

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Energy, Fusion and Obama

While I am an anthropogenic global warming skeptic and think that the "green energy" being pushed down our throats is a disaster waiting to happen, I do believe that in a few decades, we will see a revolution in energy arising out of the experiments now being conducted in fusion. Check out some of these links:

National Ignition Facility from today's NYT.

International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in France.

And follow the links at Power and Control, a great site for following the advances in energy and fusion in particular.

The danger between now and then is that Obama and the left do irreparable harm to our economy by one, cap and trade, and two, refusing to allow us to exploit our domestic energy resources. Do recall that during the campaign, Obama promised to allow additional off-shore drilling as gas prices topped $4 a gallon. Is anyone surprised that this was pure bull, and that Obama, now in power, is pursuing the opposite course. This is setting us up for a true disaster as we will be ever more dependant on foreign oil - and oil will continue to rise.

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Heh

In a post below, I spent countless paragraphs attempting to explain how the green agenda of Obama, kicked off with EPA decision to list carbon dioxide as a pollutant, would be a tool for socialist control and prove devestating to our economy. But the poster below manages to convey all of that with humor.



(H/T Dr. Sanity)

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Heh

Some of the more humorous cartoons and photoshops I have run into today:

From Seraphic Secret . . .




From Moxargon Group . . .




And you'll have to go to Doug Ross's site to see Barack and his Magic Energy Beans.

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Pelosi's Fraud On America

After a year of mocking calls to drill for oil as no solution to the problem of oil supplies and gas costs, Nancy Pelosi listened to the polls and decided to put on a show for public consumption. Behind closed doors and with no Republican input, Pelosi wrote out a highly partisan energy plan. The plan did not go through committee. The plan was not made available to Republicans until 10 p.m. Monday night.

With the 88% of offshore oil between 3 and 50 miles from shore, the Pelosi Plan would put that off limits, it would only allow drilling more than 50 miles from shore, it would give the states a veto right but would not allow them to share in any of the royalties. It would do nothing to allow more nuclear power. It would do nothing to make it easier to build refiniries. This disaster of a plan crafted by a disaster of a speaker was passed by the House Tuesday, pretty much along a party line vote.
__________________________________________________

The entire purpose of this charade by Nancy Pelosi was to allow House Democrats the chance to say that they voted to approve offshore drilling. Pelosi has yet again perpetrated a fraud on the American people. The chance that one drop of energy will be produced pursuant to the terms of Pelosi's plan is nil. To give you an idea of how ridiculous this plan is, it has the support of the Sierra Club.

The bill now passes to the Senate. The Senate has three options - to do nothing prior to October 1, in which case the moratorium on drilling offshore upto three miles from the coast sunsets. The Senate can also play chicken with the President, putting a new moratorium on offshore drilling in a continuing budget resolution. If the President vetoes the legislation, the government would run out of funding. The third option would be to attempt to pass their own version of an energy bill and then negotiate with the House to pass a final bill before October 1, but that is going to mean moving at light speed. In any event, it seems clear that Democrats are going to try and spin this as much as possible while allowing the least possible amount of drilling. These people truly are scurrilous, and their near single digit approval rating is well earned.

Update: Michelle Malkin has more, including a link to the text of Pelosi's bill.

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Palin On Drilling, Energy, Alternative Energy & A Biden Vote To Kill The Alaska Pipeline

I am not sure when this CNBC interview occurred - from the sounds of it a few weeks ago. In it, Gov. Palin discusses our nation's energy needs, the need for drilling, and the attempt by Congress 30 years ago to kill the Alaskan oil pipeline - and she specifically mentions Biden on this. She also talks about how dangerously unrealistic are those who believe we can forego the exploitation of our own resources for a green utopia today.



We've gotten billions of barrels of oil from Alaska and this pipeline over the years - and it has occurred with no adverse effects to the environment - well, discounting a drunk Captian on the Exon Valdez. Thanfully, Sen. Biden's vote did not carry the day thirty years ago or we would be in even more dire trouble today.

(H/T Stop the ACLU)

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Biden Slings The Bull

Biden’s speech last night was a series of outrageous falsehoods, one after the other and one bigger than the other. Everyone expected him to go on the attack. There is no problem with that. But the substance of his attacks was patently ridiculous. If this is the best the far left has, their troubles have just begun.

You can read the transcript of Biden's speech here. The really over the top stuff was on foreign issues. First, Afghanistan:

Should you trust the judgment of John McCain, when he said only three years ago, "Afghanistan, we don't read about it anymore in papers because it succeeded"?

Or should you believe Barack Obama who said a year ago, "We need to send two more combat battalions to Afghanistan"?

This is so dishonest its mind-numbing. It doesn’t even rise to the level of comparing apples to oranges – they are at least two fruit. Three years ago, Afghanistan was a success. Obama was not calling for sending combat brigades to Afghanistan either three years ago. In fact, as you can see in the post below, he was calling for sustained operations in Iraq and arguing against cutting and running or setting a timeline for withdraw.

You will note in the above quote that Biden also calls for two battalions to Afghanistan. Does Biden, a career politician with no military, executive, or private sector experience, understand the difference between a brigade and battalion? I will grant that he may merely have mispoken on this one, but if there is any other indication that he is actually this clueless about the composition and organization of our military, then there is a major problem.

One would think Biden could go no further into outrageous and disingenuous fantasy. One would be wrong.

Should we trust John McCain's judgment when he says -- when he says we can't have no timelines to draw down our troops from Iraq, that we must stay indefinitely? Or should we listen to Barack Obama, who says shift the responsibility to the Iraqis and set a time to bring our combat troops home?

Now, after six long years, the administration and the Iraqi government are on the verge of setting a date to bring our troops home. John McCain was wrong, and Barack Obama was right.

Can Joe get more unethical. The only reason for our success in Iraq - the surge and its most vociferous champion, McCain – just got written out of history. Also written out of history is Biden and Obama’s opposition to the surge and their efforts to legislate defeat in Iraq. What makes this even more outrageous is that both Biden and Obama were on record arguing vociferously against timelines before they saw partisan gain to be had by tossing our national security under the bus and embracing defeat. See here and here.

Then there is Iran, where the myth of the left is that we have ignored Iran by not talking to them during the Bush presidency:

Should we trust John McCain's judgment when he rejected -- when he rejected talking with Iran and then asked, "What is there to talk about?" Or Barack Obama, who said, "We must talk and make clear to Iran that it must change"?

Now, after seven years of denial, even the Bush administration recognizes that we should talk to Iran because that's the best way to ensure our security.

We’ve been talking with Iran throughout the entire period of the Bush presidency. They have been stringing us along and negotiating with all the sincerity of Japan in 1941. Beyond our Ambassodor level talks in Iraq, we have fully supported talks with Iran by the Europeans in an effort to get them to suspend their nuclear program the past four plus years. Bush actually joined the last round of talks with a high level state dept. official. Even the Russian diplomat in attendance called Iran’s attitude a joke. And Biden would have us believe that unconditional talks with the One will solve the problems? This is not only disingenuous, it is dangerous.

McCain rejected unconditional talks with the Iranian regime. Not since Neville Chamberlain in 1938 or JFK in 1960 has any politician embraced unilateral and unconditional talks with an aggressive enemy. Both proved disastrous. I have yet to hear from the One why he expects his plans to do so would achieve any different result.

And finally, Biden highlight the Russian invasion of Georgia. He doesn't lie on this one about McCain, but he completely ignores Obama's response:

Ladies and gentlemen, in recent years and in recent days, we've once again seen the consequences of the neglect -- of this neglect with Russia challenging the very freedom of a new democratic country of Georgia. Barack and I will end that neglect. We will hold Russia accountable for its actions, and we will help the people of Georgia rebuild.

I'll leave the response here to Victor Davis Hanson:

Why evoke Georgia and Obama—when Obama had a three-strike-out response: 1) initially both sides were equally at fault; 2) then go to the UN and find resolution; 3) then suggest our taking out a genocidal dictator was equivalent to Russia attacking a democracy.

That is the most outrageous of it all. But on domestic issues and bipartisan issues, Biden was equally as disingenuous.

Theme one for Biden was the “American Dream slowly slipping away. . . “ He gave a litany of problems that he had heard from middle class people as he sped into Washington on the taxpayer dime, using Amtrak – a boondogle he has vigirously defended during his entire Senate career and to which he has directed billions in taxpayer dollars to subsidise. At any rate, back to the litany of problems from the middle class - as Biden says “he can almost hear them.” Yes, that’s right, the world "almost" is key. The conversations of utter misery he describes are imaginary.

Not surprisingly, these imaginary folk are suffering from a litany of economic ills and hard times as a result of Republican policies that have reduced their standard of living over the past eight years. No mention of –

- unemployment far lower during the Bush years than the Clinton years

- Economic growth just posted at a healthy 3.3% this past quarter

- The business cycle that occurs in capitalist economies

- The energy crunch caused by over 30 years of Democratic refusal to allow the exploitation of our resources and the creation of a regulatory scheme that further ties our abilities by handing the keys to the court house to radical environmentalists.

- The effect of ethanol subsidies on the cost of food

- The fact that capitalism, individualism and freedom are what have combined over two centuries to give us the highest standard of living in the world

The incredible concluding line to Biden’s theme one – “And, folks, these are not isolated discussions among families down on their luck.” They weren’t discussions to begin with. They were plucked from Biden’s imagination – the imagination of a doctrinaire progressive on the far left fringe of his party.

Theme two for Biden was Barack the Saviour, where he tried to take Obama’s paper thin record and turn into substance. Biden made it sound as if Barack, in his three years following in Saul Alinsky’s footsteps as a community organizer in Chicago, was the savior of Illinois. Biden really glosses over Obama’s record as a State Senator in Illinois, though he suggests that Obama was responsible for welfare reform in Illinois. This is another lie. Obama voted against the such reform in Illinois.

From there he moves from into the realm of pure falsehood in an attempt to show that Obama is above partisan politics:

And when [Obama] came to Washington, when he came to Washington, John and I watched with amazement how he hit the ground running, leading the fight to pass the most sweeping ethics reform in a generation.

Describing McCain’s reaction to Obama as “amazement” is more than a gross distortion, as is using this example to claim that Obama acts bipartisan and not as a far left ideologue. McCain made no secret of his disdain for Obama when it became clear that his talk on ethics reform was smoke and mirrors. I well remember this event when it happened because of the stinging criticism McCain directed towards Obama. Obama began working with McCain on an ethics reform bill. Within a week, he backtracked on his statements to McCain and pulled out of the bipartisan effort. The incident and McCain’s written response to Obama were reported in the papers at the time:

Republican Sen. John McCain on Monday accused his Democratic colleague Barack Obama of “partisan posturing” on the issue of lobbying ethics reform . . . “I concluded your professed concern for the institution and the public interest was genuine and admirable,” McCain, R.-Ariz., wrote in a letter to Obama, D-Ill., Monday. “Thank you for disabusing me of such notions.”

This whole episode is so well documented that I can’t believe Biden highlighted this as their biggest and brightest example of bipartisanship by Obama. This goes beyond trying to turn chicken excreta into chicken salad. Its just renaming the excreta. Moreover, the other examples of bipartisanship cited by Biden had nothing to do with reaching across the aisle on issues of any controversy.

Biden still wasn’t done with his rewrites. He moved into oil and energy.

as oil companies post the biggest profits in history, nearly $500 billion in the last five years, John wants to give them another $4 billion in tax breaks.

McCain voted against the energy bill to give tax breaks to oil companies. Obama voted for it. This is at best, a complete distortion of reality, besides being populist pandering.

Millions of Americans have seen their jobs go off-shore, yet John continues to support tax breaks for corporations that send them there. That's not change. That's more of the same.

This is not a falsehood, but it is such wrongheaded populist pandering it deserves a mention. Businesses move off-shore if the combination of taxes, costs and regulations make it cost effective to do so. Haliburton is a classic recent example. Punishing corporations by increasing their costs of business in the U.S., a nation with already the second highest corporate tax rate in the developed world, is clearly going to hurt our nation.

In summary, this was a real hatchet job that no one with an ounce of ethics or integrity could have given. It shows just how weak Obama is and just how base, unethical and transparent Joe Biden is. And as I say, if this is the best he can do, problems for the Democrats are just beginning.

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The Democratic Convention Night 2

It was the second night of the Democratic Convention with all eyes on Hillary and all thoughts on party unity. Beyond that, the speakers tonight spent an inordinate amount of time on the reoccuring theme that drilling for oil and exploiting our resources is all just an evil plot. Lastly, the keynote speaker, Gov. Warner, got demoted from his time slot for refusing to attack John McCain.

Whenever I hear Hillary speak in her incredibly grating tones, it effects me just like fingernails down a chalkboard. At any rate, her speech was the big event of the evening. It seemed a very carefully couched monologue with an eye towards 2012.

You can find the text of Ms. Clinton’s speech here. Her speech was as much if not more centered on herself than on Obama. She used her speech to paint herself into the feminist Hall of Fame. Beyond that, she listed her many policy positions, noting that Obama has the same positions.

I was listening for her to endorse Obama as having the experience necessary to be Commander in Chief and the judgment necessary to deal with our foreign policy challenges. Those are the gaping holes in Obama's resume that she so effectively exploited during the final primaries. And there is no question that those are the weaknesses hurting Obama’s campaign at the moment. But I heard none of that from her tonight. Seemingly her only message beyond self promotion was vote for Obama as better than the alternative. She said just enough to innoculate herself from any charges that she undercut Obama.

Even though Hillary mouthed the words "party unity" and stated that she now supports Obama for President, she did Obama no great favors this evening. It is an open question just how much of an impact this will have on the polls and, more particularly, on the PUMA wing of the party. My gut feeling is that it will not have a substantial impact on either.

Various other speakers spent a lot of time talking about energy policy and the futility of drilling for oil. I was amazed that they are still pushing that at this point. I hope the RNC is smart enough to make one night of the Republican convention nothing but a primer on oil and the utter fantasy being spun by the left on both supply and demand and the current cost and viability of alternative energy. We are at crunch time on energy. Failure to start the process to exploit our resources now will have potentially devestating effects on our economy years into the future.

The only other thing of note was the decision to bump Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia, out of the prime slot just before the Hillary speech. Indeed, Gov. Warner was named as the Democrat’s "keynote speaker," not simply for his oratory, but because Virginia is a key state in play this campaign. The reason for the bump – apparently Gov. Warner has some ethics. This from the blog at the Weekly Standard:

Bill Kristol calls in from the Pepsi Center. . . . Mark Warner was originally scheduled to speak in the 10 o'clock hour in primetime before Hillary Clinton, but Warner was moved to the less desireable pre-primetime bloc because he apparently refused to turn his speech into an attack on John McCain. . . .

Recall that Warner was given the primetime spot because the Obama campaign expected Virginia to be in play. Now apparently they think attacking McCain is more important. A touch of panic?

Read the entire post.

And so ends Day 2. The real fun is tomorrow when former President Clinton takes the stand. I really hope he loosens up with a few martinis before that one. I really do want to hear him repeat the words "Chicago thug."

Update: According to the Washington Post, many of the PUMA's remain unconvinced:

Hillary Rodham Clinton's most loyal delegates came to the Pepsi Center on Tuesday night looking for direction. They listened, rapt, to a 20-minute speech that many proclaimed the best she had ever delivered, hoping her words could somehow unwind a year of tension in the Democratic Party. But when Clinton stepped off the stage and the standing ovation faded into silence, many of her supporters were left with a sobering realization: Even a tremendous speech couldn't erase their frustrations.

Despite Clinton's plea for Democrats to unite, her delegates remained divided as to how they should proceed.

There was Jerry Straughan, a professor from California, who listened from his seat in the rafters and shook his head at what he considered the speech's predictability. "It's a tactic," he said. "Who knows what she really thinks? With all the missteps that have taken place, this is the only thing she could do. So, yes, I'm still bitter." . . .

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Grand New Party?

I have long thought that the conservative values of the Republican party are much more closely aligned with the non-ideological component of the Democratic base - i.e., the working class. Democrats claim to fight for the "working class" but it is becoming ever more apparent that Dem's rely on the blue collar vote while pursuing avant garde policies that only help narrow special interests. At the same time, these policies actually harm the working class portion of their base. You can see it in every aspect of Democratic politics, from the massive payoff to Big Labor with the Employee Free Choice Act to protectionism and the war on free trade. But nowhere is it more apparent than in regards as to energy. Obama and his far left ideologues embrace $4 a gallon gas as a means to force conservation and a switch to unproven alternative fuels, irrespective of cost. No thought is given to the incredible impact this has on every aspect of life for the average person.

The key to success for the Democrats has been to keep the scales over the eyes of this portion of their base for decades. Those scales are starting to fall off. And as it happens, it presents an ever clearer opportunity for the GOP to capture these voters in a new coalition that is much more of a fundamental and permanent shift than the ad hoc movement of "Reagan democrats." Patrick Ruffini blogs at The Next Right on this opportunity:

Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam's Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam's Grand New Party contemplates a future GOP coalition anchored around the working class. In the past, I've been a bit skeptical of this idea. But with #dontgo, Drill Now, and the current economic situation, I'm starting to think that activating such a coalition may be possible -- and in a way that doesn't require the Republican Party to expand government.

Those seeking a coherent narrative of the two parties can find it in something deceptively simple: the politics of price. Republicans want the things you pay for everyday to cost less. Democrats would make them cost more.

Want cheaper energy? Drill now, expand refinery capacity, go nuclear, and diversify into renewables. Republicans want energy sources that are cheap, reliable, and abundant. Democrats want higher prices to force us off fossil fuels to address environmental concerns first, and affordability concerns last.

Want cheaper consumer products? Fight protectionism and forced unionism.

Want cheaper food? Get rid of ethanol subsidies.

Want cheaper health insurance? Get rid of irrational regulations and frivolous lawsuits, and let people buy health insurance across state lines. The left scoffs at more affordable plans that make sense for cost-conscious Gen Y Obama supporters.

Want cheaper government? Cut spending.

Want cheaper tax bills? This is self-explanatory.

Most of this is not new. However, Republicans have largely been unable to capitalize on wanting things to cost less because the country was relatively prosperous and inflation has not been a real concern for a generation. With the country now facing tangible inflation in the food and fuel sectors, an affordability agenda for the working class is now much more salient.

. . . If we can get out from under the dead weight that is 28% Presidential approval, the economic issue environment can be turned against the progressives. Liberalism is built around sacrificing lower prices for social goods like the environment, health care, or economic equality. . . This is the underpinning of their hatred of low-cost Wal-Mart, their thinly-veiled sense of satisfaction with high energy prices, and their consistent opposition to lower taxes.

A gold-plated agenda that might seem semi-plausible in good times appears laughable in leaner ones, particularly with public attention to prices high as it is.

This is why the reaction to something like domestic oil drilling has been unexpectly strong. The public wants to do something, anything to bring down the price at the pump. This is also why every other ad on the Olympics is about hybrid cars or other kinds of green technology. It's not that the public is greener per se. It's that oil is getting to be so darned expensive that people are looking for alternatives. Hybrids or electric cars will take off once they are demonstrably cheaper than their CO2-spewing counterparts, not when the public has some altruistic environmental epiphany. Why do people buy CFL bulbs? Not because of the environmental benefits (which have always been there) but because of the advertised savings. The American people will not willingly pay for things that cost more.

Read the entire post. The opportunity is there. The question is whether our current crop of Republican leadership can see it and exploit it. To be frank, this probably requires more foresight and leadership than our current crop of leaders possess.

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Environmentalists & Dems Opposed To Alternative Energy

If you listen to Obama's ad running during the Olympics, the only reason we do not live in alternative energy utopia today is because we have held back building it. Merely elect the One and he will "fast track" alternative energy to solve our needs and create millions of new jobs. It is the modern equivalent of promising to feed the masses with a few fish and loaves.

And the Goracle is pushing the same snake oil in television ads. His latest organization, WeCanSolveIt.org, is running its an ad pushing for a compete change to a carbon free U.S. in ten years. According to his site, with $4 gas prices, we can not longer afford to wait to get rid of gas and oil.

Alternative energy is far from ready for prime time. None of it is close to being cost effective nor is any of it proven to scale. Wind power and solar power combine to provide less than 1% of our energy today and both suffer significant drawbacks in their current form. That does not mean we do not want to toss a great deal of R&D money at it. But it does mean that anyone today who promises to replace oil, coal and gas with solar, power and bio-fuels is either insane or has an ulterior motive. And don't tell me that subsidizing the alternative energy is the key. That is simply hiding the true cost of energy by paying for the bulk of it through taxes. Further a massive change in infrastructure is going to take years - much of it because of opposition from Democrats and environmentalists.

But in at least one comparison, oil and gas exploitation stand on precisely the same footing as alternative energy. That is that both are exposed to the same insane environmental laws that hand the keys to the court house to every radical environmental group in and out of the U.S. And, as the WSJ points out today, when one goes from the utopian rhetoric to the real world practicalities, Democrats and the environmental lobby are as opposed to exploiting alternatives as they are to exploiting oil and gas:

This from the editors at the WSJ:

In this year's great energy debate, Democrats describe a future when the U.S. finally embraces the anything-but-carbon avant-garde. It turns out, however, that when wind and solar power do start to come on line, they face a familiar obstacle: environmentalists and many Democrats.

To wit, the greens are blocking the very transmission network needed for renewable electricity to move throughout the economy. The best sites for wind and solar energy happen to be in the sticks -- in the desert Southwest where sunlight is most intense for longest, or the plains where the wind blows most often. To exploit this energy, utilities need to build transmission lines to connect their electricity to the places where consumers actually live. In addition to other technical problems, the transmission gap is a big reason wind only provides two-thirds of 1% of electricity generated in the U.S., and solar one-tenth of 1%.

Only last week, Duke Energy and American Electric Power announced a $1 billion joint venture to build a mere 240 miles of transmission line in Indiana necessary to accommodate new wind farms. Yet the utilities don't expect to be able to complete the lines for six long years -- until 2014, at the earliest, because of the time necessary to obtain regulatory approval and rights-of-way, plus the obligatory lawsuits.

In California, hundreds turned out at the end of July to protest a connection between the solar and geothermal fields of the Imperial Valley to Los Angeles and Orange County. The environmental class is likewise lobbying state commissioners to kill a 150-mile link between San Diego and solar panels because it would entail a 20-mile jaunt through Anza-Borrego state park. "It's kind of schizophrenic behavior," Arnold Schwarzenegger said recently. "They say that we want renewable energy, but we don't want you to put it anywhere."

California has a law mandating that utilities generate 20% of their electricity from "clean-tech" by 2010. Some 24 states have adopted a "renewable portfolio standard," while Barack Obama wants to impose a national renewable mandate. But the states, with the exception of Texas, didn't make transmission lines easier to build, though it won't prevent them from penalizing the power companies that fail to meet an impossible goal.

Texas is now the wind capital of America (though wind still generates only 3% of state electricity) because it streamlined the regulatory and legal snarls that block transmission in other states. By contrast, though Pennsylvania's Democratic Governor Ed Rendell adopted wind power as a main political plank, he and Senator Bob Casey are leading a charge to repeal a 2005 law that makes transmission lines slightly easier to build.

Wind power has also become contentious in oh-so-green Oregon, once people realized that transmission lines would cut through forests. Transmissions lines from a wind project on the Nevada-Idaho border are clogged because of possible effects on the greater sage grouse. Similar melodramas are playing out in Arizona, the Dakotas, the Carolinas, Tennessee, West Virginia, northern Maine, upstate New York, and elsewhere.

In other words, the liberal push for alternatives has the look of a huge bait-and-switch. Washington responds to the climate change panic with multibillion-dollar taxpayer subsidies for supposedly clean tech. But then when those incentives start to have an effect in the real world, the same greens who favor the subsidies say build the turbines or towers somewhere else. The only energy sources they seem to like are the ones we don't have.

Read the entire article. If we are going to stand any chance of addressing our energy needs before our economy gets truly hurt over the next one to two decades, the first thing that has to happen is a massive overhaul of the legal and regulatory framework that I blogged about here. The overhaul does not mean that we need to stop common sense protection of the environment, but it does mean that we need to take the ultimate decisions out of the hands of a judiciary and streamline the process for dispute resolution.

Update: EU Referendum notes a similar situation on their side of the pond:

Of course, we are experiencing exactly the same dynamic over here, as the greenies get their knickers in a twist over the conflict between saving the little tweetie birds and indulging in their wet dreams of a carbon-free future.

But then, since the real greenie agenda is to force us back into the Stone Age – as long as we don't light any fires with our flints – this sort of confusion is grist to the mill. There is nothing quite so carbon-free as no power at all – the inevitable consequence of this greenie schizophrenia.

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Amateur Hour

We better hope this man is not as totally clueless as he appears when speaking extemporaneously.

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Obama cannot seriously believe what he is saying here. Even the crowd of Obama supporters, whose silence is defeaning, seem to understand that what Obama is saying does not pass the laugh test. Given that the latest CNN poll shows over two thirds of all Americans support offshore drilling and the exploitation of our own resource, it would seem there were a few of that two thirds in the audience.



This from Powerline:

Just for fun, I did the math. Properly inflating your tires can improve gas mileage by 3%. Of course, many people already keep their tires properly inflated, and many more are at least close to being properly inflated. Let's be generous and assume that one-half of the total possible savings would be realized if we all inflated our tires properly; that's a net gain of 1.5% fuel efficiency.

Americans drive approximately 2,880 billion miles per year. If we average 24 mpg, we use around 120 billion gallons of gasoline in our vehicles. If, through perfect tire inflation, we improved our collective fuel efficiency by 1.5%, that would be 1.8 billion gallons. A barrel of oil produces around 20 gallons of gasoline, so the total savings available through tire inflation is approximately 90,000,000 barrels of oil annually.

How does this stack up against "all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling?"

ANWR: 10,000,000,000 barrels
Outer Continental Shelf: 18,000,000,000 barrels (estimated; the actual total is undoubtedly much higher, since exploration has been banned)
Oil shale: 1,000,000,000,000 barrels . . .

You actually have to break into exponential notation to show the mathmatical relationship between the oil to be had from drilling our own resources and the pittance to be saved from tire inflation. This really is amateur hour.

The press will have a field day with this tomorrow. There is no way they can try to cover-up a gaffe of this magnitude on this important of an issue. So you know the press corps are sharpening their quills now. Just hold your breath and wait for it . . .

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Stop The Destruction of Our Environment - Drill Now

Did you know that:

1. According to the National Academy of Science, over 60% of the oil that pollutes our coastal waters is caused by oil just left in the sands below the ocean bottom and allowed to seep naturally into our waters.

2. Only 1% of the pollution in our coastal waters is attribuatable to accidents or human error involving offshore drilling.

The facts are clear.

We must act now to save Willie and all of our other furry and feathered friends

Think of the children.

Call your Congressman and demand that we end this destruction of our environment.

Demand that we safely and immediately begin removing the oil from the ocean floor before it has any further chance to pollute our environment.

For Gaia's Sake

EMBRACE THE GREEN.

SAVE THE WHALES.

DRILL OFFSHORE NOW.

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McCain Passes Economics 101 With High Marks

Some time ago, McCain admitted that his weakness was economics. At the start of the semester / campaign season, he was pushing an economy busting cap and trade plan and refusing to allow drilling even in the face of our energy crisis. Today, cap and trade is dead, taxes are to be lowered, the dollar to be made stronger, and McCain has a sensible energy plan. Even Larry Kudlow's giving him a gold star. The Danes don't even think we need an election, from their viewpoint. I fully concur with their logic.
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On Monday at a town hall in Denver, John McCain laid out his "Jobs for America" plan that you can find here. You can also find an online briefing detailing the plan here. Then there is this from Larry Kudlow writing at NRO:

After writing favorably about Sen. McCain’s recent economics speeches, where he clearly shifted toward the supply-side both on tax cuts and producing more energy, I went back last evening and carefully read his 15-page policy pamphlet called “Jobs for America.” Here’s what I found:

There is no mention of cap-and-trade. None. Nada. There is a section about “Cheap, Clean, Secure Energy for America: The Lexington Project.” But that talks about expanded domestic production of oil and gas, as well as the need for more nuclear power and coal along with alternative sources. Then it has the $300 million battery and flex-fuel cars. But nope, no cap-and-trade. So I picked up the phone and dialed a senior McCain official to make sure these old eyes hadn’t missed it. Sure enough, on deep background, this senior McCain advisor told me I was correct: no cap-and-trade. In other words, this central-planning, regulatory, tax-and-spend disaster, which did not appear in Mac’s two recent speeches, has been eradicated entirely — even from the detailed policy document that hardly anybody will ever read. So then I asked this senior official if the campaign has taken cap-and-trade out behind the barn and shot it dead once and for all — buried it in history’s dustbin of bad ideas. The answer came back that they are interested in jobs right now — jobs for new energy production and jobs from lower taxes. At that point I became satisfied. . . .

. . . I might add that in this lengthy policy document there’s a strong statement about appreciating the value of the dollar. “John McCain’s policies will increase the value of the dollar and thus reduce the price of oil.”This is good. It’s not perfect. Neither is McCain’s tax plan and new energy plan. But it is excellent progress.

Read the entire post. (H/T Classical Values.) Now it would seem time for Econ 102.

This is all quite good news. Though even without these big strides, the worst McCain could do is far less than the far left who seem prepared to sing the requiem for capitalism and enact socialism in one fell swoop, shades of Britain in 1946.

Not surprisingly, there is a tremendous amount of interest in the U.S. general election overseas, though there is also some confusion as shown in this e-mail from some individuals in Denmark:

We in Denmark cannot figure out why you are even bothering to hold an election.

On one side, you have a bitch who is a lawyer, married to a lawyer, and a lawyer who is married to a bitch who is a lawyer.

On the other side, you have a true war hero married to a woman with a huge chest who owns a beer distributorship.

Is there a contest here?.

This joke cribbed, with great appreciation, from fellow Watcher's Council member The Colossus of Rhodey, with a hat tip to Soccer Dad.

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DOD's Releases Quarterly Iraq Report

The quarterly DOD report, Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq, June 2008, has been released. It contains some good news, some troubling, particularly as to Iran and the Kurdish north. The report is definitively at odds with the GAO report below. What follows is a brief summary of the DOD report:



1. Political Stability:

 "With recent improvements in security, the current political environment in Iraq is becoming more hospitable to compromises across sectarian and ethnic divides. In general, Prime Minister Maliki’s tough stand against the Jaysh al-Mahdi (JAM) militia and the criminal elements in Basrah, and his subsequent operations in Baghdad and Ninewa, seem to have generated an improved atmosphere of political unity."

2. National Reconciliation:

 Maliki's offensives against Sadr have "served to galvanize Iraq’s political parties, revealed strong support for a national response to these problems and demonstrated a willingness of most party officials to build upon the recent gains in security and reconciliation." The political parties are showing an increase in mutually beneficial cooperation.

 "Prime Minister Maliki’s willingness to confront criminal militias and protest Iranian involvement directly with the Iranian Government also generated a positive response from Sunni communities and was cited as one of the primary reasons the Tawafuq party has announced an intention to return to the Council of Ministers."

 Iraq's government has institutionalized power sharing.

3. Politics:

 A motion for a vote of no-confidence in PM Maliki was proposed by the Sadrist bloc in Parliament but received no support outside the block.

 The goals for the next three months are passage of an Elections Law, negotiating compromise legislation on a national hydrocarbon policy, pushing through an amendment to the recently passed Accountability and Justice Law and identifying funding requirements for a 2008 supplemental budget for the ministries and provinces.

 The Parliament recently passed a law updating civil service salaries and a law
on university services.

 The Accountability and Justice Law has been passed but is in the process of amendment to allow those individuals subject to de Ba’athification to apply for a pension, continue to work or return to work.

 The Elections law to set the framework for October provincial elections recently had its second reading.

 The UN is doing a good job of dealing with the highly divisive Kurdish problem and Article 140 - an agreement to allow a referendum in disputed provinces that the Kurds want to claim. They are recommending that the issue be resolved by political accomodation.

 Iraq approved the Amnesty Law on February, 2008. Amnesty review committees have considered nearly 65,000 amnesty applications and approved over 48,000. The bad news is that because of problems with coordination, only 1,700 people on the approved list have so far been released.

4. Government Reform:

 The various government ministries have somewhat increased their performance but still have significant short comings in the areas of technology development, strategic planning and human resource management. The Embassy is addressing these systemic shortcomings, but there are a myriad of challenges to overcome.

 The Iraqi judicial system also faces a myriad of challenges, not the least of which is a logjam of criminal cases. The "lack of timely and complete investigations, combined with poor court administration and intimidation of judges, hampers the ability of investigative courts to process cases in a timely manner." Work on reform in this area continues.

 Great effort is being placed on anti-corruption efforts, including institutional and legal reforms to detect corruption and increase transparency.

5. Transnational Issues:

 "Iran’s negative role in Iraq has emerged as a major security challenge. . . . Iran continues to fund, train, arm and guide JAM Special Groups and other Shi’a extremist organizations. In Basrah, Iraqi troops uncovered massive caches of Iranian-origin weapons and ammunition, including some items manufactured in Iran in 2008. The GoI has begun to directly engage the Iranians on this issue and recently confronted Iranian national leadership with evidence of Iran’s widespread efforts to destabilize Iraq. In response, Iran denied its involvement and sought to blame the Coalition for Iraq’s instability—a response that suggests Iran will continue to provide lethal support to Iraqi extremists."
. . . .
"Despite pledges from [Iran] . . . to stop providing weapons, training and funding to militias in Iraq, evidence indicates that Iran has not yet stopped the flow of lethal aid. Security operations by the ISF to end widespread criminal activity in Basrah in late March 2008 resulted in significant clashes with elements of JAM and SGs that revealed extensive evidence of Iran’s malign influence and ongoing efforts to destabilize the political and security environment in Iraq. Specifically, the discovery of weapons caches and information obtained through interrogation of detainees prove that the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) has provided many of the weapons and explosives used by extremists, including rockets, mortars, bulk explosives and Explosively Formed Penetrator (EFP) components. The IRGC-QF has also provided weapons and tactics training and train-thetrainer programs for many Iraqi militia members. Continuing Iranian lethal aid enables criminal JAM elements and SGs to attack Coalition and Iraqi forces throughout Iraq and may well pose the greatest long-term threat to Iraqi security."

 Syria continues to be a destabilizing influence in Iraq. It remains a transit point for foreign terrorists into Iraq and harbors former Iraqi regime elements involved in supporting terrorism in Iraq.

 While Turkey continues operations against PKK terrorists on the Iraqi side of the border, the Kurds have opted to cooperate with Turkey. A series of agreements on terrorism and trade have defused some of the tension.

6. Economy:

 Oil production in May 2008 reached its highest level since September 2004, with an average daily production of 2.61 million barrels per day, with the increases largely due to security gains.

 The Iraqi economy grew 4.1%, after adjusting for inflation.

 Inflation was reduced two fold from 2006 and is now at 12%.

7. Security:

 Security has improved dramatically. Despite a spike of activity in late March and April 2008 in Basrah and Sadr City, overall violence levels have dropped to mid-to late-2005 levels.

 These improvements coincide with the growing willingness of Sunni and
Shi’a tribal leaders to cooperate with the Coalition in an effort to reduce violence in their neighborhoods and provinces.

 The overall security situation in Iraq is still reversible.

Part II of the report deals with the statistics governing the growth in training and operations of Iraqi military, police and other security forces.

You can find the entire DOD report here.

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