BloggeRhythms

At an appropriate time of year, Michael Goodwin wrote a typically astute analysis yesterday @nypost.com, of the failed Obama administration and the dismal results it’s leaving behind.

Mr. Goodwin describes missions never accomplished, such as “the creation of a new national power pyramid for decades, a new paradigm of liberals, progressives, the young, the old, the unions and blacks, Latinos, Muslims and Asians.” The torch was to be passed from Obama to Clinton, insuring a liberal Supreme Court vastly expanding executive power, a regulatory state that would enforce climate-change orthodoxy on all industry and elitist dictates on every American. “Globalism would be the new patriotism.”

“But a funny thing happened on the way to one-party dominance,” Mr. Goodwin writes. “The people who work for a living said no, hell no. Their revolt brings Donald Trump to the White House amid hopes of a revival of the economy and of the American spirit.”

Mr. Goodwin then relates that the Democrat party itself is at its lowest point in nearly a century, where from the White House to Congress to statehouses, they are on the outside looking in while “whimper wrapped in self-pity and recriminations.”  

Getting to the crux of today’s point regarding failure, Mr. Goodwin opines that their punishment was well-deserved, demonstrated by both Obama and Clinton being “full of excuses and blaming everyone except themselves,” their closing acts proving it’s time for them to go. 

And then, as if telepathically receiving Mr. Goodwin’s thoughts on blaming everyone but themselves for failure to advance, grow or learn from their mistakes, Obama reinforced Mr. Goodwin’s point amidst his Hawaiian vacation. 

According to Tom DiChristopher @cnbc.com, on Tuesday: “President Obama invoked a 1953 law which he claims gives him the authority to act unilaterally and declare a permanent drilling ban from Virginia to Maine on the Eastern Seaboard, as well as along much of Alaska’s coast.” 

“The law allows a president to withdraw any currently unleased lands in the Outer Continental Shelf from future lease sales. There is no provision in the law that allows the executive's successor to repeal the decision, so President-elect Donald Trump would not be able to easily brush aside the action.” 

In response, Charles Krauthammer said yesterday on “Special Report with Bret Baier” that President Barack Obama’s plan to ban offshore drilling in parts of the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans is “egregious” and reveals that the White House is trying to “nail everything to the floor so it can’t be moved” before Donald Trump takes over. 

“Of course it can be moved,” said Krauthammer. “The idea that because we're not going to drill, the oil or natural gas is not going to be produced is ridiculous, and it's going to end up being produced in Nigeria or places all over the world where the environmental standards are infinitely less than they are in the U.S.” 

While the outcome of the interpretation of precisely what can and cannot be done by a POTUS’s unilateral actions remains to be seen, this particular presidential edict seems to be just the tip of an iceberg covering huge indiscretions taking place throughout the global-warming debate. To the extent that highly renown experts were overridden or replaced had they disputed the tale the White House wished to spin.    

In that regard, Adam Kredo wrote @freebeacon.com/politics, about Texas Representative Lamar Smith, who chairs the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, releasing a wide-ranging report yesterday showing how “senior Obama administration officials retaliated against a leading scientist and plotted ways to block a congressional inquiry surrounding key research into the impact of radiation.” 

The report provides evidence that the administration worked to kill legislation in order to ensure it could receive full funding for “its own hotly contested climate change agenda.” When a top DoE scientist was too forthright with lawmakers, providing an in-depth look at the White House’s efforts to ensure senior staffers toe the administration’s line on the subject, she was summarily fired.

“Instead of providing the type of scientific information needed by Congress to legislate effectively, senior departmental officials sought to hide information, lobbied against legislation, and retaliated against a scientist for being forthcoming,” Smith said in a statement. “In this staff report based on lengthy record before the committee, much has been revealed about how senior level agency officials under the Obama administration retaliated against a scientist who did not follow the party line.” 

Confirming Emails “show a sequence of events leading to a premeditated scheme by senior DoE employees ‘to squash the prospects of Senate support'” for the radiation act, a move that lawmakers claim was meant to help advance President Obama’s own climate change goals.” 

The investigation concluded that “DoE placed its own priorities to further the president’s Climate Action Plan before its constitutional obligations to be candid with Congress,” the report states. “The DoE’s actions constitute a reckless and calculated attack on the legislative process itself, which undermines the power of Congress to legislate. The committee further concludes that DoE’s disregard for separation of powers is not limited to a small group of employees, but rather is an institutional problem that must be corrected by overhauling its management practices with respect to its relationship with the Congress.”

“These moves by the administration were part of an effort to secure full funding for the president’s climate change agenda, the report claims.” 

With Chairman Smith's report completing the circle of proof, we can now come back to Mr. Goodwin's column today, which he summarized by writing: “Having nothing new to offer, their vision of the future limited to larger doses of the same failing medicine and their intolerance for disagreement showing they would never learn from their mistakes. Their bad ideas had run their disastrous course. 

“Yet instead of analyzing what went wrong and trying to find new organizing principles, party leaders and activists are pointing fingers at the FBI and Russia, and engaging in a mad bid to overturn Trump’s Electoral College victory. 

“Because they are doomed to fail, we could be witnessing the death throes of the Democratic Party as we know it.”

And looking at the timing, Mr. Goodwin may be absolutely correct about the Democrat demise whereas major wheels have already fallen off the POTUS’s legacy train, with Clinton’s loss and the entire party’s national shrinkage, and Trump hasn’t even been sworn in as yet.

That's it for today folks.

Adios