‘In the Treasury we do not speak of tons of silver. Our unit is the troy ounce.”
That was the response from some bureaucrat when Leslie Groves, the man who oversaw the Manhattan Project, sought thousands of tons of silver to be turned into electrical wires.
Groves got his silver. Why? Because completing the Manhattan Project — and winning the Second World War — was America’s top priority.
For three years, the Obama administration and its cheerleaders have tried to claim that they stand for the same can-do spirit. Administration officials have a rare form of Keynesian Tourette’s syndrome whereby they blurt out phrases like “Infrastructure!” . . . “Spending multiplier!” . . . “Shovel ready!” . . . “Nation-building at home!” . . . “Investment!” almost as often as they draw breath. Just last week, Obama’s own hand-picked jobs council — perhaps looking at the fully employed and booming oil state of North Dakota — advised that the U.S. must embrace an “all-in approach” to the energy sector, including the pursuit of “policies that facilitate the safe, thoughtful and timely development of pipeline, transmission and distribution projects.”
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Obama himself has insisted time and again he cares only about “what works” and not about ideological or partisan point scoring. Nary an utterance from the president doesn’t include some claim that his “top,” “chief,” “first,” and “number one” priority is to create jobs and get America working again.
Just last week he announced that he wants to streamline government to cut red tape and make both government and the economy more efficient.
It’s all a farrago of lies.
Now, maybe they believe all of this stuff, but that doesn’t disprove they’re lying; it just proves they’re lying to themselves, too.
Obama’s decision to block the building of the Keystone pipeline on the grounds that the Congress — in a bipartisan vote — didn’t give the bureaucrats enough time to study the issue is akin to Leslie Groves accepting that he couldn’t have his silver because he failed to ask for it in troy ounces.
The State Department simply didn’t have the time, Obama the alleged red-tape cutter lamented, to check every box on its mountains of triplicated forms. The eight-volume environmental-impact statement cogitates on the possible spreading of “137 federally restricted and regulated noxious weeds,” as well as an unspecified number of “state and local noxious weeds.” By all means, let’s hold up a massive infrastructure project that will cost taxpayers nothing and create bountiful jobs and tax revenues so we can check — again! — that local noxious weeds don’t gain the upper hand (upper leaf?).
Paraphrasing Cato the Elder, every Republican candidate, whether they are seeking the presidency or dog catcher, must finish up every speech with the words "And furthermore, it is my opinion that Keystone should be built."
Another simple explanation might be that our President prefers the status quo in which Marxist despots around the world make money from oil, but not us. It would explain our investment in Brazilian oil, where a Marxist was elected last year. It's good for Venezuela's Marxist dictator. I'm sure Iran is pleased with the decision. Who else benefits from it? Oh yeah, the Marxist environmentalists in this country. I see a pattern.
One of the local media arms of the democrat party had a story last week warning of $4+ per gallon gas by July 4th. This would increase prices throughout the economy, including arulgula. Evidently there are enough environmental wackos in the country to get Obama reelected, because stagnant wages and an increase in the cost of living may get more people off of the couch to pull the lever for Mittron Santorich.
His mysterious beliefs and priorities aside, his voting and governing style is ego driven passive-agressive (someone noted this yesterday) "present" and contrarian. Guaranteed odd results applied to the top position, regardless of your secret core belief in the wrongness of what came before.
With all due respect, so what? Shall we rip out all pipelines for fear of leaks? What about the pipeline that carries jet fuel (essentially kerosene) to JFK? By all means, let's have Canada sell the oil to the Chinese, who are much better stewards of the environment than Republicans.
De Souza's formulation of Obama as a Marxist who equates the United States with 19th century European colonialists in Africa seems about as good as any. It explains the pattern of favoring our Marxist and Islamic enemies. It explains the pattern of consistently taking decisions to weaken the United States and punish its citizens so long as it does not immediately conflict with his tenure. It explains the pattern of patronizing well-heeled supporters and funneling taxpayer monies to supporters.
If it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, ...
"...including the pursuit of “policies that facilitate the safe, thoughtful and timely development of pipeline, transmission and distribution projects.”
Safe = will never ever cause anyone to break a nail, step on an ant or, God forbid, get upset (see "the health of the mother" re abortion)
thoughtful = we're going to think about this for a long long time ... and then think some more.
timely = when I say so - right after Obama's election ... maybe
transmission projects = controlling the internet and airwaves (what? you thought they were talking about energy?)
ditribution projects = fundamentally transforming America into a Euro-socialist utopia through wealth distribution (ditto above)
Jonah, you and the rest of the gang here are too kind. The O-Man Wants to Hurt America!!! Could it be any plainer? He is using every resource he has, in the time he has, to do so, and to set events in motion to continue to do so after he is gone.
I don't think he intends for there to be a time 'after he's gone.' He has done so much by fiat already, (taking over the auto industry, voting in Obama care in secret, appointing 'recess appointments' that aren't). He has a DoJ that has as much contempt for the laws of this country and the constitution as he has. I was wondering to myself how he would implement a power grab in this country without the support of our military. It occurred to me that he may intend to do it with the support of another country's military. That would make the disabling cutbacks he's made to our military make sense from his perspective.
I'm not paranoid, I'm just looking at this all from an intellectual distance, and comparing it to other dictatorships and how they came about.
I agree. I don't know why more people don't worry (or worry out loud) about this possibility. Or, is expressing this worry aloud sedition and that sooner or later, after the watchers get around to reading the comments at NRO ,they eventually will come knocking on your door in the middle of the night? Perhaps this last sentence is a wee bit paranoid, but with the emphasis on "wee".,
If you examine the blogs and columns of Obama's True Believer supporters, you will find that jobs was never their top priority either. And Obama is keeping the faith with them.
On Daily KOS in 2008, the number of comments and diaries on Iraq or global warming dwarfed the number on jobs and employment by an order of magnitude at least.
The youthful "netroots" of Daily KOS and Moveon.org who made up the backbone of the Obama campaign started out as an antiwar movement, not an economic movement. Their goal wasn't economic populism but stopping the Iraq War.
And their secondary goal is to Save The World (tm) from global warming, which they blame primarily on the United States. When the U.S. is mentioned in that context, it's with the automatic attachment of fault:
"The U.S., the world's biggest polluter" or
"The U.S., the world's biggest contributor to greenhouse gases"
Not true anymore (China is surpassing us), but it's become habitual for them.
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