The Keystone Proof

President Obama's decision to not allow the Keystone Pipeline project to move forward is the final proof that our national energy policy -- and our national security -- are firmly in the hands of left-wing wackos.  

Seriously. 

The Keystone Pipeline would have created 20,000 new jobs immediately and many more than that over the history of it's lifespan. It would have brought substantial oil to the United States from a reliable ally on our northern border, and would have been a significant step toward reducing our energy dependence on the Arab world.  

Obama claimed today that he rejected the pipeline because the Republican House's 60 day deadline for approval didn't give the president enough time to adequately review the proposal.  Really?  The pipeline has undergone 40 months of hearing and review, and an exhaustive State Department study which deemed it was not a threat to the environment.  The claim that it wasn't reviewed extensively enough is pure poppycock -- the average pipeline application and review process is 20-24 months.  Half the time of the Keystone proposal.

The reality here is that this is pure progressive ideology at work.  

The left hates oil.  It hates refineries that process it into gas, and it hates the cars that run on gas.  

It doesn't matter to the left whether or not 20 jobs or 200,000 jobs are linked to a pipeline that brings oil into the United States, or whether it means that gas prices will go up.  Never mind that it is poor people who must use their cars to get to work are the one's who get hurt the most by high prices at the pump.  

The poor, huddled masses are expendable in the cause of environmental purity.  

The left wants us in electric cars on a grid powered by solar and wind power.  And killing Keystone is one way to force this clean energy utopia upon us.

In the end, the GOP must tell the American people the truth: that the president caved to his progressive base by rejecting a proposal which has already gotten regulatory approval, and which would have immediately put thousands of Americans back to work.  This represents a big opportunity for conservatives to show that despite his rhetoric, Barack Obama is a committed left-wing ideologue.

  

And Keystone is the proof.

Newt's Night

I really enjoyed watching Newt last night in the South Carolina debate.  He just killed it.  His back and forth with Juan Williams on minority (un)employment showed that when Newt is on, he really can nail the left on its abject lack of common sense.  When Williams asked Newt whether suggesting that having poor kids work as janitors is somehow "racially insensitive" and demeaning to minorities, Newt simply said, "no".  He went on to say:

I believe every American of every background has been endowed by their Creator with the right to pursue happiness, and if that makes liberals unhappy, I'm going to continue to find ways to help poor people learn how to get a job, learn how to get a better job, and learn someday to own the job.

Only on the left is having a job as a janitor worse than no job at all.  Of course, being a lowly janitor is no job for a poor person, right?  After all, it's much better economically to stay home and collect welfare, food stamps and all sorts of other federal and state programs.

All of which is to state the obvious about leftism -- it's more concerned with equality than with opportunity.  In this view of the world, the person who started in the mail room and grew up to be the CEO of the company is a (literal) impossibility.  Work where? In the mail room? And risk a paper cut? (wait, do they even have mail rooms any more?  Nevermind -- you get the idea).

On the left, work that isn't well paid with cradle-to-grave benefits is somehow demeaning and not worth having.  The left misses an essential point that conservatives seem to understand clearly: work is, in itself, an essential element of a healthy life.  Work generates self-esteem, independence and the ability to make independent decisions.  It's affirming.  Whether it's being a janitor or a bus driver or a construction worker, earning a pay check is a good thing.

So the crowd last night at the South Carolina debate stood and cheered Newt when he pointed out the shear lunacy of Williams' question, and responded with a credo that any conservative can support: we affirm the right for any American -- of any background or race -- to get a job and make something of themselves.  It's the American dream.  

Had Enough?

Now, about that debt crisis...

The Obama Administration just lost $500 million in tax payer funds on an ill-advised bet on Solyndra, and now the Department of Energy has issued another $1 Billion in loan guarantees to two additional solar companies.  Yes, that's $1 Billion with a "B".  Given the debacle of Solyndra, wouldn't it make sense to press that "pause" button (at a minimum) on the DOE's solar energy industrial policy?

It would, unless you are too busy making political pay-offs in the process.  Now it comes out that the largest of the two solar grants given out today -- $737 MILLION -- goes to a firm called "Solar Reserve".  As the Weekly Standard points out, Solar Reserve as some very well-connected investors:

SolarReserve LLC, a closely held renewable energy developer, received a $737 million U.S. Energy Department loan guarantee to build a solar-thermal project in Nevada.

The 110-megawatt Crescent Dunes project, near Tonopah, Nevada, will use the sun’s heat to create steam that drives a turbine, the agency said today in a e-mailed statement. SolarReserve is based in Santa Monica, California.

On SolarReserve's website is a list of "investment partners," including the "PCG Clean Energy & Technology Fund (East) LLC." As blogger American Glob quickly discovered, PCG's number two is none other than "Ronald Pelosi, a San Francisco political insider and financial industry polymath who happens to be the brother-in-law of Nancy Pelosi, the Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives."

That's right!  Nancy Pelosi's brother-in-law is one of the investment partners in the very company that just pocked over $700 million in taxpayer funds.  Coinkydink?  I think not!

And, as the WS also points out, there's more:

One of Solar Reserve other investment partners is Argonaut Private Equity: Steve Mitchell and Argonaut Private Equity might have a chance to recoup some of their losses in the Solyndra debacle now that the Department of Energy has given a $737 million dollar loan guarantee to a company backed by Argonaut that also lists Mitchell among its board of directors.

Mitchell served on the Solyndra LLC Board of Directors. He also serves as Managing Director for Argonaut Private Equity, a company that invested in Solyndra through the LLCs parent company. After Solyndra declared bankruptcy, two Democratic members of the U.S. House asked that Mitchell testify about Solyndra. Though he has not appeared before Congress, he has "been asked to provide documents to Congress" pertaining to Solyndra.

This is all part and parcel to the insidious relationship between the Democratic Party and the green lobby.  Like the unionistas, the greens are in bed with the Democrats in Congress and they will shovel out as many dollars to their patrons as they can -- never mind whether the projects ever work or not.  We all know that solar energy will always be 2x or 3x the price of energy derived from carbon, and those economics are not going to change.  But it really doesn't matter in the end.  The important thing is that Democrats pay their dues to those who fill their campaign coffers, and so they bow obediently at the alter of climate change, giving away OUR money in the process.

Had enough?  I have.  This MUST end!

Heroism, defined

President Obama today will award the third Medal of Honor today to a living American veteran of the "war on terror".  U.S. Marine Corporal Dakota Meyer earned the highest medal for valor in Afghanistan in 2009.  Today in the WSJ, Bing West has a riveting account of Meyer's selfless heroism that day:

The setting was the remote Afghan village of Ganjigal, on the Pakistan border, where elders had requested aid in repairing a mosque. Hoping to win hearts and minds, a U.S.-trained Afghan battalion agreed to help. At dawn, about 100 Afghan soldiers and a dozen U.S. Marine advisers entered the valley where Ganjigal is found, picking their way up a narrow, rocky wash toward the stone houses dug into the far end. 

It was a setup. Hidden inside the houses and along the wash were 60 jihadists from Pakistan. The ambushers opened fire with machine guns, mortars and rockets. Immediately the foot patrol was pinned down and taking casualties. 

Back at the valley's entrance, 21-year-old Cpl. Meyer listened to radio calls for artillery fire that were refused by officers at higher headquarters due to concern for endangering villagers. Cpl. Meyer hopped into the gun turret of a Humvee and persuaded a fellow adviser, Sgt. Juan Rodriguez-Chavez, to drive him straight into the battle. 

When the Humvee lurched into the wash, Cpl. Meyer saw the bodies of roughly a dozen Afghan soldiers strewn across the terrain, some dead and others crying. With bullets striking his truck, he leaped out, stuffed five wounded Afghans inside, and then hopped back up behind the machine gun and hammered away as the pulverized vehicle crawled out of the wash. 

Leaving the wounded in the rear, Cpl. Meyer and Sgt. Rodriguez-Chavez swapped Humvees. This time the enemy was waiting in a dry streambed. Rocket-propelled grenades and machine-gun bullets followed Cpl. Meyer as he repeatedly left his armored turret to load the truck with wounded Afghan soldiers. At one point, he shot a tall man with a black beard. When another leapt forward under the barrel of his machine gun, Cpl. Meyer grabbed his M4 rifle and shot him in the head. 

"You'll have to kill me," he shouted in the rage of battle (he had expected to be killed, he told me a few days later at his outpost in Afghanistan), "because that's the only way you'll stop me." 

When Cpl. Meyer and Sgt. Rodriguez-Chavez again dropped off the wounded in the rear, they bumped into a backup American platoon in armored vehicles. The platoon refused to join them, so they went back in for a third time with no backup, driving into a torrent of automatic-weapons fire so a group of trapped American advisers could escape. Cpl. Meyer watched women and children darting among the houses, carrying ammunition to the jihadists. 

Cpl. Meyer, a qualified sniper, was hit in the right elbow but continued to shoot left-handed until the feeling returned to his right hand. Over the radio, he listened to Capt. Will Swenson, an Army adviser who remained in the valley to fight, calling repeatedly for artillery fire, only to be rebuffed by headquarters. 

Pulling back out, Cpl. Meyer took count. Four advisers were still missing. So he gathered those still willing to risk death. In addition to Sgt. Rodriguez-Chavez and Capt. Swenson, an Afghan interpreter and Lt. Ademola Fabayo, another adviser, climbed into the truck with Cpl. Meyer. An Army pilot in a tiny Kiowa helicopter, flying 10 feet above the ground, protected the Humvee from the rear. They drove back into the cauldron a fourth time. After seven hours of fighting, Cpl. Meyer found his four missing comrades, dead. At about the same time, the jihadists had collected their casualties and were trekking back into Pakistan.

Read the whole thing here.

It is hard for civilians to understand the loyalty and dedication that soldiers and marines have for one another in the field, and in those moments life comes down to a few very basic elements -- the main one being character. Are you going to leave your teammates behind?  Will you take cover while those who depend on you "having their back" take fire?

For Marines like Dakota Meyer, the answer is a resounding "no".  He put his life on the line to save both Afghans and Americans.  For those who see the U.S. military as a dark force or look at us as "occupiers", this kind of action should be a wake-up call.  Our men and women in harm's way are there to do good.  And to protect and defend each other, whatever the cost.

Semper Fi, Corporal Meyer.

Don't know much about business...

At the WSJ today, another devastating Op-Ed on the anti-business agenda of the Obama Administration:

The White House's economic logic seems to be that its new spending and temporary tax cuts will so fire up investment and hiring in the next 16 months that the economy will be growing much faster in 2013 and could thus absorb a leap off the tax cliff. But this requires its own leap of faith.

All of this assumes that American business owners aren't smart enough to look beyond the next few months. They can surely see the new burdens they'll face in 2013, and they aren't about to load up on new employees or take new large risks if they aren't sure what their costs will be in 16 months. They can also reasonably wonder whether Mr. Obama's tax hike will hurt the overall economy in 2013—another reason to be cautious now.

All of which is further proof that nobody -- and that includes our esteemed Boy Wonder president -- knows the first thing about how business runs.  As someone who has run a professional service business -- where by definition your employees are your product -- hiring is a very risky and costly decision under the best of circumstances.  People are expensive.  When my firm looked at bringing on new employees we had to very carefully assess the coming business climate -- knowing that if we hired someone on and couldn't keep them busy, we'd end up losing money in the end.  It's a tricky business.  Of course, its even harder when you don't know what regulations and rules are coming down the pike, or what your future tax burden is going to look like.


The notion that small firms like mine would suddenly go out and hire based on a set of incentives with a 16 month time frame is ludicrous, and that goes double when you know that at the end of that short period you will be blasted by massive new taxes and regulations.


Barack Obama doesn't know much (or anything) about business. That should be no surprise, of course, because he's existed his entire adult life in the public sector, and has never run anything of substance other than his 2008 campaign for president.  He's economically illiterate.  And he's so beholden to his union patrons that he continues to spend the public purse in pursuit of jobs for them.


Of course, I'm giving the president a lot of credit here.  I'm assuming he actually really does want to put people back to work but just doesn't know how.  The alternative explanation -- that he secretly wants high unemployment and big debt to fuel his statist ambitions of a dependent society -- is one that is held by many conservatives.


And this view may be correct.  But it is hard to see how Obama gets reelected in 2012 with 10% unemployment, and as the WSJ posits, it is likely he wants to juice the economy just enough to remain president in a second term, where he can really put the screws to the productive class.  So, I'm betting it may be a bit of both.  In the long-run he wants business to fail.  In the short-run he wants hiring to improve to give him political cover.  He's splitting the baby on this one.  And likely nobody will be happy in the end.

9/11 on the USS Midway

September 11 has always been a very personal day for me.  I've written about it every year since I started blogging in 2006, and each year I try and do something to memorialize the victims who died in this act of terror.  Last year I missed it, and then shortly thereafter stopped blogging regularly.  Call it blogging fatigue and just the normal ebb and flow of life, but I needed some time off.

Well, I'm back.  Today, on the 10th anniversary of 9/11/01, I reconnected with my passion for America and for my belief that we are in an epic struggle for the future.  It isn't just the battle against Islamic Jihad -- though that is a serious and enduring threat.  It is also about the insidious threat to our core values from progressivism -- from the liberal elite who guide the media, from the unions that teach our children and from the petty politicians who see government as a vehicle of social justice.  Our way of life -- the America of individual liberty, of self-determination and of God-given rights -- is under attack from without AND within.

I spent today on the USS Midway in San Diego harbor with my wife and son.  It's a museum now, but prior to its retirement from service in 1992, the Midway spent 47 years patrolling the world's oceans in defense of our nation.  Its a truly amazing place and well worth a trip to San Diego.  Today the museum opened its doors to the Retired NY Firefighters of San Diego, which since 9/11/2002 has held an annual remembrance of those first-responders who gave their lives on 9/11.  What started out as a small memorial service is now an annual event with more than 2500 people in attendance.  Among those were firefighters from all over the country, as well as decorated US Marines and Navy personnel.  The highlight of the day was a "missing man" formation flyover by four US Navy F-18 Hornets, after which a bell on the ships bow was rung for each of the 343 NYC firefighters, 37 NY Port Authority policeman and 23 NYC policeman killed in the collapse of the Twin Towers.  The tolling of the bell so many times -- representing only 15% of those killed on 9/11 -- really gives you some perspective on the scale of the human loss of that day.

US Marine Corps Color Guard

My Son in the cockpit of a jet on the Midway

San Diego Firefighter Tribute to First Responders

I had the pleasure of introducing my son to a young US Marine Lance Corporal who was at the Midway with his family.  He was in his dress blues, his chest adorned with medals rather than the customary ribbons.  The first medal in the row was the Purple Heart, awarded to those who have been wounded in combat.  I offered my hand and thanked him for his service, and my son managed a shy smile and a muted "thanks" while clinging to my leg.  It was a nice moment for me to meet a 22 year old "kid" who represents the future of this country and who has voluntarily gone into harm's way for us.  Newsflash to those who promote the culture of dependence: The next generation isn't all hanging out at the mall, or standing in line waiting for a handout.  Some of them are putting on combat boots and helmets and getting wounded in the process.

Thank goodness the America isn't the place that Maxine Waters, Barney Frank or Paul Krugman seem to think it is.

San Diego is a long way from NYC and Washington DC.  But with the big military presence here, the last 10 years of war against Islamic terror has been front and center.  You can't hide from 9/11 here.  And that is a good thing -- because as a people we should never, ever forget what happened that day.

A Humble Hero: SSgt. Sal Giunta

I imagine that most of you will have heard of Staff Sgt. Sal Giunta by now.  Sgt. Giunta was awarded the Medal of Honor yesterday at a ceremony at the White House.  He is the first living recipient of the nation's highest award for heroism since the Vietnam War.  Seven other MOH ceremonies have been held since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began in 2001.  All of them have been conducted without the recipient being present, the award having been given posthumously.  If you want to see what heroism looks like, check out the very thorough summary of these recent awards that the U.S. military puts together by clicking  here.

I can't tell you how moved I was learning about Sgt Giunta's story and watching the award ceremony.  I am going to link to several related stories here that I encourage all of you to click on.  This kid is absolutely what is right with America -- a young Iowan who risked his life to save his teammates after a brutal ambush in the Korengal Valley -- the so-called "Valley of Death" -- in Afghanistan.  Incidentally, when I heard of Giunta's award a month ago I remembered immediately the firefight he was involved in, as it was prominently described in a book that I read earlier this year -- Sebastian Junger's "War."  Junger was embedded for extended periods of time with the Army's 503rd Infantry Regiment of 2nd Battalion (airborne), and he and a filmmaker made a riveting movie of the experience entitled Restrepo.  I encourage you to read the book and/or see the movie -- it will give you a true taste of the life of the infantry and Marines in Afghanistan.

In any event, Giunta's story is particularly moving, and one that ever American should know.  At a time when so few are making such a huge sacrifice for our security, the heroism and selflessness of our troops often goes unnoticed.  This is a shame -- and the next time you see a man or woman in uniform give them a tip of the hat or a shake of the hand and say "thank you".

Here's the full video of the ceremony -- it's long but well worth viewing:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

As Allahpundit summarizes, the ceremony was moving and bittersweet:

“Watching him (Giunta) smile sheepishly as the room applauds is thus hopelessly bittersweet, gratifying in that he got to enjoy the recognition he deserves but painful as a reminder that most others didn’t. A precious moment. Don’t miss it.”

I actually thought that Barack Obama did a reasonably good job with this ceremony.  He seemed sincere in his admiration for Giunta.  One discordant note for me -- echoed by the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol today -- was Obama "going off script" to tell the audience that he "genuinely likes this guy" (Giunta).  The President was honoring Giunta on behalf of the nation, and not as a personal gesture of affection.  Who cares whether Obama likes Giunta or not?  Does that matter?  Of course, Obama thinks that everything is about him, so it is typical of the narcissus-in-chief to bring his feelings into this.  I didn't like it.  But I do understand why Obama would like this guy.  He seems like just the kind of humble warrior the U.S. military is  full of.  A true hero.

Here are a few other links to view:

Here's the Army's very personal tribute to Giunta.

Here's the 60 Minutes profile of Giunta.