Pump the Brakes on Fracking Regulations

NRO Editors  "In yet another Obama-administration Friday-afternoon news dump, the Bureau of Land Management announced that it is issuing broad and cumbrous new regulations on certain techniques of drilling for natural gas and oil — hydraulic fracturing, a.k.a. “fracking” — on land under its control. 

"The rules will mandate disclosure of fracking fluids, insert Washington into the well-design process, and add a new layer of regulation to wastewater-disposal procedures. 

"The BLM announcement originally had been scheduled for the latter half of 2012 but something (we can’t imagine what) caused the BLM to back off and then back off again at the end of 2014. The Obama administration, now facing the largest Republican majority in Congress since Teapot Dome was in the headlines, apparently calculates that it has not much to lose." . . .  More here

Accompanying this NRO column:
Washington's Redundant Fracking Regulations  "Today the Department of Interior announced new fracking regulations for federal and Indian lands, issuing the first nationwide federal regulations of the booming industry. 

"The regulations include rules about wastewater disposal, standards for well construction, and requirements for disclosure of the chemicals used in fracking fluid. But for years, states have competently overseen fracking. DOI’s redundant rules accomplish little, though they do give the federal government a new opportunity for overreach and meddling."  . . .

Fracking, Clean and Green  "Contrary to rumors, it’s environmentally friendly. 

"The only thing deeper than a natural-gas well is the ignorance of the anti-fracking crowd." . .

Why Won’t Liberals Talk about the Most Important Kind of ‘Privilege’ in America?

NRO

"It’s marriage. 

"Much has been written about privilege in academic settings over the past few decades. There’s the privilege of wealth, and the advantages wealth confers if a baby is lucky enough to be born into it. Much too has been written about the advantages of being born into this world as a Caucasian — known in academia as “white privilege.” 

"But not enough has been written about the most important advantage a baby can have in America: the advantage of being born with a mother and father who happen to be married. Call it “the marriage privilege” — the advantages are startling."  Read more

Gone for good: Clinton emailed aides on their personal accounts, too  . . . "What is “striking,” according to the four officials who characterized the 300 emails submitted to the House Benghazi committee, is that Clinton aides Cheryl Mills, Philippe Reines, Huma Abedin, and Sullivan often conducted public business over exclusively private channels."

The Arrogance of Hillary Clinton  "The story of Hillary Clinton’s email server is already getting lost in spin and talking points. It’s easy to forget the fundamental fact at the center of the issue. Hilary Clinton violated the law.

Bill Whittle gets right to the heart of it in the new edition of Firewall and frankly calls it criminal."

How's that Starbucks Race conversation going? UPDATED

Starbucks Brews Race Controversy

"It’s not often that a business with an unmistakable aura of holier-than-thou self-righteousness is willing to up the ante on its own obnoxiousness. But last week Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz plowed ahead with a political campaign that consists of printing the words “Race Together” on the chain’s coffee cups, and giving coffee-serving baristas the option of engaging in a discussion about race with their customers. USA Today will buttress this initiative with a series of inserts containing info on race relations, from a variety of perspectives. The inserts will also be available at Starbucks coffee shops." . . .

No doubt Gwen Ifill, co-anchor of “PBS NewsHour,” voiced what is undoubtedly the most widespread emotional reason for the animosity. “Honest to God, if you start to engage me in a race conversation before I’ve had my morning coffee, it will not end well,” she tweeted.

Starbucks on #RaceTogether: nevermind  "In the end, this turned out to be in ill considered experiment which essentially blew up in a rich, progressive person’s face. When you go to Starbucks tomorrow to get your morning coffee (assuming you can stomach their product) you will no longer be required to engage in a discussion on racial unrest."

Some conversation starters:  We can discuss this, Then there is this, and this, and don't forget this classic.

UPDATE: And this just in:  Black Teen Allegedly Guns Down Unarmed White Man Begging ‘Don’t Shoot’…Liberal Outrage?

. . .

. . . "According to the NBC station in the City of Brotherly Love, it was an apparent black-on-white crime. The suspects are three African-American teens. The victim was a 51-year-old husband and father who was walking his dog along a quiet street. And before he was gunned down in an apparent robbery, police say this man did, in fact, beg for his life, crying, “Please don’t shoot me, please don’t shoot me.”

"So far, there have been no reported protests over the senseless death of James Patrick Stuhlman. No marches against black-on-white crime. No outraged Sharpton or Jackson. No Justice Department probe into a possible hate crime. Stuhlman died on the street with his dog at his side.

"By clicking on the video above, you can watch the WCAU-TV news report on the murder of the man who, police say, was targeted because he appeared old and his dog looked weak." 
Read more

6 Reasons Why Ted Cruz Is Not A Serious Candidate For President; Cruz's speech live

Rocco Lucente  "It has been widely reported in the national media that Texas Senator Ted Cruz will formally announce his candidacy for the 2016 presidential election on Monday at Liberty University. This announcement comes at the very beginning of an expectedstring of campaign announcements for the 2016 presidential election. Many tea partiers and grassroots conservatives alike are excited about the prospect of a Ted Cruz candidacy, but questions have risen about his viability as a candidate. Indeed, there are several reasons to believe that Cruz has very little potential to win the Republican nomination."  Read the full article


Ted Cruz Speech LIVE

This man will turn us into the Vichy yet.

The Lid

"Barack Obama has seized upon news media reported quotes of Benjamin Netanyahu, not because they are true (they're not) but because they open up the door for him to publicly show the hatred of Israel that has dominated his Middle East policy since he ran for President.

"The two statements reported wrong were regarding Netanyahu's support for a Jewish State and his statement about Israeli Arabs voting

"It is very convenient for the media and President Obama to take half a statement and spin it the way they want, but the truth is Netanyahu never said he didn't believe in a two-state solution, nor did he ever say he would block a two-state, what he said was a Palestinian State would never be formed while he was premier because it would become a base for radical Islam. " . . .

“Asked by an interviewer with the Israeli news site, NRG [Ma’ariv] if it was true that a Palestinian nation would never be formed while he's prime minister, Netanyahu replied, ‘Indeed.’

His interview with NRG came as he courted conservative supporters a day before Israelis head to the polls for national elections.

‘Anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state, anyone who is going to evacuate territories today, is simply giving a base for attacks to the radical Islam against Israel,’ he said. ‘This is the true reality that was created here in the last few years.’

" 'That's what the guy said folks. Not "no two-state solution", or that "he would block a Palestinian State" but as long as they presented themselves as sponsors of terrorism there would be no Palestinian State, and based on that it will not happen on his watch."  . . .

Obama's Israel Hatred: A Timeline!

May be a retouched photo

. . . "But, in truth, this is the culmination of a longtime Obama policy of destroying the US-Israel relationship; Obama has spent his entire life surrounded by haters of Israel, from former Palestine Liberation Organization spokesman Rashid Khalidi to former Jimmy Carter National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, pro-Hamas negotiator Robert Malley to UN Ambassador Samantha Power (who once suggested using American troops to guard Palestinians from Israelis), Jeremiah Wright (who said “Them Jews ain’t going to let him talk to me”) to Professor Derrick Bell (“Jewish neoconservative racists…are undermining blacks in every way they can”). Here is a concise timeline, with credit to Dan Senor and the editors of Commentary:" . . . More at the link.

http://www.therightplanet.com/2015/03/pollster-obamas-role-in-israeli-elections-much-larger-than-reported-video/

For those who may be surprised by the level of pure dislike and disdain shown by Barack Obama towards anything Israel, you simply haven't had your eyes and ears open!

From the beginning Barack Obama has never shown himself to be a fan of the Jewish state and, as far as Jews themselves go, his close affiliation with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright was all that any Jew needed to know! ('Obama, Jews, Israel and the transitive property')
Read more at http://politicsandfinance.blogspot.com/2015/03/obamas-israel-hatred-timeline.html#xPDihqivemfzsDlG.99

For those who may be surprised by the level of pure dislike and disdain shown by Barack Obama towards anything Israel, you simply haven't had your eyes and ears open!

From the beginning Barack Obama has never shown himself to be a fan of the Jewish state and, as far as Jews themselves go, his close a

From the beginning Barack Obama has never shown himself to be a fan of the Jewish state and, as far as Jews themselves go, his close affiliation with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright was all that any Jew needed to know! ('Full article

Old Dogs Doing Old Tricks

Clarice Feldman  "There’s more than a passing similarity between Obama’s race baiting and his Netanyahu baiting: lies, agitprop, media complicity, shady financing, and prejudice  -- in one case against whites, in the other against Jews.

"Jack Cashill, who often graces these pages, explains this week how the president has been ginning up racial animosity with the help of his friends and funders, describing techniques which I see Obama also using against Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israel."

. . .
"After all, Obama’s diplomatic efforts have not once redounded to our interests. As my friend Cecil Turner notes:

I think Obama's track record on "diplomatic solutions" is a bit checkered:
The Russian "reset" presaged takeovers in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, and raised tensions to dangerous levels (and spawned a series of military maneuvers, including the latest bizarre armored column touring Eastern Europe);
the Iraq pullout that spawned ISIS resurgence;
Syrian negotiations that strengthens Iran and leaves us picking between a dictator and terrorists;
"Kinetic military action" that replaced a relatively docile Libyan dictator with a hotbed of terrorist chaos;
The Yemeni government overthrown by Iranian-backed rebels; and,
Our strongest regional ally rejecting a State Department sponsored get-out-the-vote effort to depose its prime minister, with resultant dysfunction.
The negotiation track record on this issue is similarly unimpressive. Recognizing Iran's right to enrich (which was implicit in allowing them to continue during the current round of talks), and removing sanctions as a condition for talking (whilst missing deadline after deadline), and throwing away a strong hand engendered by a[n] oil market price collapse demonstrated our desire to negotiate from weakness. Not too surprisingly, I lack confidence in Obama's team to negotiate anything, but in any event I seriously doubt kissing Iran's a$$ on nuclear issues is the sensible way forward.
Obviously that makes me a racist.

Moloch Must be Appeased; The Death Cult of the Modern Democratic Party

By: Leon H. Wolf at RedState

"Democrats in Washington, DC are tying up both a human trafficking bill and the confirmation of Loretta Lynch for one simple reason: to an elected Democrat Senator there is no higher good than more dead unborn children.

"The Senate Democrats’ behavior in this fight has removed all doubt whatsoever about their motives in this regard. The fight here is not about expanding the legality of abortion or access to abortion. It is solely and exclusively about providing more money for abortions, which can only have one inevitable result: more abortions.

"Bill Clinton once declared that the goal of Democrats should be to make abortions “safe, legal and rare.” The Democrats’ war against regulations designed to prevent another Kermit Gosnell indicates that they never really meant the “safe” part. And now, by voluntarily putting the entire business of the Senate on hold because they wish to do away with the Hyde Amendment, they have indicated that they never meant “rare” either. Really, what the Senate Democrats want and have always wanted is for abortions to be “legal, frequent, and free.' ” . . .

Regardless of how you feel about the legality of abortion, there ought to be something within the soul of every marginally decent person that is horrified by the ghoulishness with which the Senate Democrats are pulling out every stop in the book for the sole and exclusive purpose of increasing the number of abortions that occur in this country. It’s almost unexplainable except in the context of the Old Testament death cults that required the sacrifice of children to an angry god Moloch.

More at this link. 

It’s Not Just Islam, It’s the Tribal Mentality

Bruce S. Thornton

"The “nothing to do with Islam” mantra took a hit recently in one of the premier organs of liberal received wisdom, The Atlantic. Many have greeted as a revelation Graeme Wood’s article on the Islamic doctrines behind ISIS’s atrocities. Regular readers of FrontPage and Jihad Watch will not be as impressed. For years they have understood the link between jihadism and Islam. In 1994 Andy McCarthy made this connection when he prosecuted the perpetrators of the first World Trade Center bombing the previous year, a connection that the FBI ignored or discounted at the time––a failure, by the way, that has become a pernicious tradition for those charged with protecting our nation’s security and interests. For everyone else who has been paying attention to the rise of modern jihadism, Wood’s article is a dog bites man story.

There is a lesson somewhere in this next excerpt:

Next, loyalty in tribal societies counts only for those within the tribe. Alliances with other tribes or peoples are ad hoc and contingent on the immediate interests of the tribe. They can be abandoned or betrayed if circumstances or perceptions change. Moreover, respect for others beyond the tribe is based solely on their capacity to inflict violence on their enemies. The “strongest tribe,” a status based on its effectiveness and success in conflict, will attract allies, who will abandon the hegemon once it loses that perception of its strength. Thus during Caesar’s wars in Gaul various Gallic and Germanic tribes would ally with the Romans when they appeared dominant, and betray them in an instant if they thought them weak. Likewise during the U.S. Cavalry’s wars against the Plains Indians, many tribes victimized by the Sioux or Apache or Cheyenne would ally with the Americans if they seemed to be winning, then switch sides the moment they seemed weak.

Related, obviously:  Obama: The Weak Horse

 . . . "Obama's bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia; his hopeless incapacity or disinterest in stopping Iran's development of nuclear weapons; his illegal and ill-advised entanglements in the Sudan, Somalia, Uganda, and Libya; his interfering with the rules of engagement in Afghanistan; and his dithering in Iraq -- his countless blunders and misguided ideology -- all send a clear message to our Islamic enemies: Barack Hussein Obama is a weak horse.  America is an easy target."  . . .   Full article.

Troop Withdrawal: Is America the Weak Horse?

Under Health Care Act, Many Tax Filers Are Discovering Costly Complications

NY Times    "When he signed up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act last fall, J. C. Ciesielski estimated his income at $19,400, qualifying him for a federal subsidy that cut his premiums in half. But Mr. Ciesielski, an actor, earned an extra $2,340 from a voice-over job in December, and that welcome bit of income proved problematic when he did his taxes this month."

A tax preparer told Mr. Ciesielski that because he had not informed the federal health insurance marketplace, HealthCare.gov, of his additional income, he had to repay $118 of his subsidy. Mr. Ciesielski, who is being treated for a brain tumor, looked perplexed as he learned the money would come out of his refund check.

“This is definitely the lowest refund I’ve ever gotten,” Mr. Ciesielski, 34, said as he drummed his fingers on the tax preparer’s desk. “But it boils down to I have health insurance, which I desperately need.”

We’re Doing Great in Yemen Except Our Remaining Forces Had to Flee Yesterday

peacealliancewinnipeg

Independent Sentinel

"From our success stories in Yemen, to Russia doesn’t want Ukraine, to ISIS is being decimated, the administration’s fairy tale foreign policy was regurgitated by James Clapper Sunday on Fox News. Yemen’s third largest town has been seized by Iranian-backed rebels and because of it, our military had to flee. The loss of U.S. intel is enormous.

"The al-Annad base is where American and European military advisers help Yemen battle the country’s local al-Qaida branch through drone strikes and logistical support – it’s a U.S. drone base. Josh Earnest lied about it and that should be that. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the U.S. had seen no indications of an operational link between ISIS and Friday’s attacks. He said the U.S. was investigating to see whether the ISIS branch in Yemen has the command-and-control structure in place to substantiate its claim of responsibility.

"On Fox News Sunday, CIA Director John Brennan spoke with Chris Wallace on a number of issues from defeating ISIS to Russia needs to respect territorial integrity to our “shared” interests with Iran.

Wallace played a video clip of Clapper having said: “There’s an alignment of some interest between ourselves and Iran, clearly in terms of what ISIL has done there.” Wallace then asked Clapper if he really believed the U.S. and Iran had shared interests."  . . .

Tweets from Iran’s Ayatollah embarrass America’s diplomatic efforts

Legal Insurrection

“We reject US fraudulent offer of reaching a deal with Iran first then lifting sanctions”

"As the arbitrary deadline to strike a deal with Iran draws close, Secretary Kerry says “genuine progress” has been made.

"France is not so sure the negotiations are going well, and neither is Israel. Both nations share concerns that Iran is receiving far too many concessions, saying any rush to relax sanctions is not a deal worth making.

"While talks proceed, and Kerry attempts to assures America with platitudes, Senator Cotton reminds us who we’re negotiating with:

Tom Cotton        ✔ @SenTomCotton

Follow

Take a minute to scroll through @khamenei_ir’s twitter feed today. Further proof Iran is not a rational, peaceful actor. #IranTalks

3:26 PM - 21 Mar 2015

"Regardless of what Secretary Kerry tells the Associated Press, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader is not exactly a fan of Obama, America, or any deal that doesn’t remove sanctions. And if you need more proof, look no further than than the Ayatollah’s Twitter feed."  . . .

 Mr. Congeniality has much to say about all this in his numerous tweets in this link.