Archive for the ‘energy’ Category

Drill, Baby, Drill.

Wednesday, March 25th, 2015

yemen-anti-houthi_3242589b

It looks like the battle for Saudi Arabia has begun and, if it follows the pattern of other Obama wars, it will be soon lost, or so Richard Fernandez believes.

Even the New York Times sees it.

President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi fled Yemen by sea Wednesday as Shiite rebels and their allies moved on his last refuge in the south, captured its airport and put a bounty on his head, officials said.

The departure of the close U.S. ally and the imminent fall of the southern port of Aden pushed Yemen further toward a violent collapse. It also threatened to turn the impoverished but strategic country into another proxy battle between the Middle East’s Sunni powers and Shiite-led Iran.

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies believe the Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, are tools for Iran to seize control of Yemen and say they intend to stop the takeover. The Houthis deny they are backed by Iran.

The stakes are very high for Europe, especially.

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Entropy takes over.

Friday, February 27th, 2015

Another excellent post from The Belmont Club, Which I read every day.

The barbarians of ISIS destroy ancient artifacts, in an outrage like those committed by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The Taliban’s rejection this month of international appeals to halt the destruction of much of Afghanistan’s pre-Islamic heritage — their leader Mullah Mohammed Omar termed them idols — indicates that those most determined to impose their vision of a perfect Islamic state are firmly in control.

That article was from the period before the US invasion. Many artifacts were repaired but that will stop and the destruction will resume after we leave.

The Mosul destruction is to be expected everywhere the Takfiri tide rises enough to control an entity.

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China and Russia

Thursday, December 4th, 2014

The future is unrolling before our eyes as idiots parade around in the US not knowing what they are doing.

I am always amazed at how prescient Tom Clancy was.

Richard Fernandez has a post about China and Russia’s resources in Siberia. That was the plot of the Tom Clancy novel, “The Bear and the Dragon.” In it he predicted a war between China and Russia for the riches of what he described as “The Northern Resource Area.”

The battle of Khalkhin ended Japan’s plan for ” Hokushin-ron”

800px-Hokushin-ron-Map

Clancy’s concept was that China would some day adopt this strategy and it seems to be coming to pass. The Soviet Union, prior to the German invasion of 1941, was strong enough to repel Japan, which concluded a nonaggression treaty, this freeing their rear for Pearl Harbor. Now, Putin’s Russia may not be strong enough to repel China. David Goldman sees the Chinese strategy in a time of US weakness and fecklessness.

Everything in tragedy happens for a reason, and the result always is sad; most things in comedy happen by accident and the outcome typically is happy. Sino-American relations are not destined for conflict, although that is possible. The misunderstandings that bedevil relations between the world’s two most powerful countries remain comedic rather than tragic. That probably is as good as it gets, for no amount of explanation will enable Chinese and Americans to make sense of each other.

Where the Chinese are defensive and cautious, the Americans tend to perceive them as aggressive; where the Chinese are expansive ambitious, the Americans ignore them altogether. The United States is a Pacific power accustomed to maritime dominance.

Under Obama, few can understand US foreign policy, least of all him.

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The Iran Nuclear Program

Tuesday, November 18th, 2014

The deadline for the US-Iran nuclear talks is coming soon. Next week, in fact.

The negotiations so far have been an exercise in duplicity. I thought they might have a bomb purchased from North Korea in 2013 but that may not be true.

the RAND Corporation reports that the third North Korean nuclear test appears to many experts to be fundamentally different from its previous two efforts. North Korea’s first tests used plutonium to trigger the nuclear explosion. This one, according to some atmospheric tests, likely used highly enriched uranium, exactly the form of nuclear weapon pursued by Iran.

We have heard no more about this.

What next ? Mark Dubowitz and Reuel Marc Gerecht have some thoughts about this. Gerecht is a former CIA agent who is fluent in Farsi and who has been studying Iran since the revolution in 1979. I read his book Know Thine Enemy, written under a pseudonym, a few years ago.

If the White House doesn’t end November with a cascade of concessions leading to a deal, there are four paths forward. None is appealing. Two might be effective—but the president is unlikely to choose either one.

They provide four options.

One-The White House could give up on diplomacy and pre-emptively strike Iran’s nuclear sites.

There is no chance that Obama would do this. Would Israel ? Maybe but only if the urgency seems critical.

Two. The administration could give up on the current talks and default back to sanctions, but again trying to undercut their seriousness, as the president attempted to do in 2011 and 2012.

Congress may have a say here, especially the new Congress.

Congress imposed the most economically painful measures—targeting Iran’s oil exports, central bank and access to the Swift interbank system—over his objections. The president has always hoped that “rationality” would take hold in Tehran, that the regime would see the economic benefits that come with good behavior. The Islamic Republic has enjoyed an economic reprieve, thanks to Mr. Obama’s decision last year to de-escalate sanctions pressure by blocking new congressional action and giving billions of dollars in direct sanctions relief as part of the interim deal.

This is the Obama we saw in 2009 when the Iranians tried to revolt.

Any hope they might have had in the Obama White House was quickly dismissed in the administration’s two statements on the matter. The first came from the president himself, anticipating a Mousavi victory (it is too soon to speculate on the source of this happy thought), and of course, in his narcissistic way, taking personal credit for it.

What else ? Three. New, even more biting sanctions could be enacted, causing Tehran considerable pain. Current energy markets, with a declining price for crude, offer ample room for Congress to threaten sanctions against any country’s central bank involved in buying Iran’s oil exports, or in giving Tehran access to oil revenues now being held overseas and available only for trade with Iran’s five main oil buyers—China, India, Japan, South Korea and Turkey.

The new Congress might be willing to do this. Will Obama ?

The wiser bet is that sanctions—though important in restoring the U.S.’s negotiating leverage—will fail without other forms of coercion. And Ayatollah Khamenei, if he isn’t otherwise deterred, may well respond to new, economy-crushing sanctions by accelerating the nuclear program, presenting Mr. Obama with the choice he most dreads: launch militarily strikes or accept Iran as a nuclear state.

It seems obvious to me that he is willing to accept their bomb and then allege that “Containment” would suffice. Would anything work ?

The White House could try to reinforce new sanctions with the credible show of military force to intimidate the Iranian regime. President Hasan Rouhani has rather pleadingly confessed in speeches and in his memoirs that the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003 scared the clerical regime and led him to advocate, as Tehran’s chief nuclear negotiator between 2003-05, a tactical pause in the regime’s nuclear aspirations.
To achieve a more lasting impression now would require a significant military operation. Only one target would serve that purpose: Bashar Assad. Syria is Iran’s most helpful ally among Arab states. Taking Mr. Assad down would let Tehran know that America’s withdrawal from the Middle East and President Obama’s dreams of an entente with Iran are over.

I don’t see Obama doing this. Could Congress ?

Taking out Mr. Assad is unavoidable if Washington is serious about stopping the radicalization of Syria’s Sunni population and getting their help in defeating the radical Islamic State, also known as ISIS. And such an about-face by Washington would be shocking—perhaps paralyzing—in Tehran. Yet it is hard to imagine Mr. Obama taking such action.

Which means that Washington and its European allies will most likely angle for another extension of the talks. Ayatollah Khamenei may accept. The Iranian economy, despite the oil-price drop, has been noticeably improving since the interim deal was concluded in January—and the continuation of the talks poses no threat to further nuclear progress.

The Iranian bomb is probably inevitable, which will pose a severe challenge for Netanyahu, who seems the only adult in the room.

Putin, Crimea and Ukraine

Wednesday, March 5th, 2014

UPDATE: Michael Totten has an update on Crimea.

The new ruler is a former gangster whose street name was “Goblin.”

Lawmakers were summoned, stripped of their cellphones as they entered the chamber. The Crimean media was banished. Then, behind closed doors, Crimea’s government was dismissed and a new one formed, with Sergey Akysonov, head of the Russian Unity party, installed as Crimea’s new premier.

It if was a crime, it was just the beginning. Akysonov’s ascent to power at the point of a gun presaged all that has happened since — the announcement of a referendum on Crimean independence and the slow, methodical fanning out of Russian forces throughout the peninsula, ostensibly to protect Russians here from a threat no one can seem to find.

But here’s the most interesting bit: Aksyonov’s sudden rise as Moscow’s crucial point man in Crimea has revived simmering allegations of an underworld past going back to the lawless 1990s, when Akysonov is said to have gone by the street name “Goblin,” a lieutenant in the Crimean crime syndicate Salem.

Putin is dealing from a weak hand but Germany was near bankruptcy when Hitler invaded Poland. Holman Jenkins at WSJ, has a nice summary of where we are.

Vladimir Putin probably would not have spent 90 minutes on the phone with President Obama on Saturday if he intended to make a grab for eastern Ukraine. He would not have jawed twice on Friday and Sunday on the phone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who subsequently doubted his grip on reality.

He is not going to try to annex the eastern Ukraine where Russian speakers are alleged to be crying for rescue from The Ukraine.

He is even using fake videos like the Palestinians have done before to make his argument. The Russian speakers are not buying.

The Russian speakers are only about 17% of the whole Ukraine population.

350px-Russians_Ukraine_2001

They are concentrated in the eastern portions which are also the poorest and least productive. Ukraine could do without them except for the precedent set.

Western leaders are a risk-averse, short-term-minded lot, but if their decisions are dictated by a conviction of Mr. Putin’s iron grip on Russia, they make a mistake. Many sanguine voices, in fact, already note how the U.S. shale revolution has weakened Mr. Putin’s hand. If Western leaders were so inclined, they might surprise themselves at how vulnerable Mr. Putin’s petro-dependency makes him.

Ukraine has signed contracts with western oil firms to explore what seems to be a large area of oil shale. This is a big threat to Russia’s sole export and prop of its declining economy.

Withdraw Europe’s support for pipelines Mr. Putin wants to build. These, by way of the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea, aim to reduce Ukraine’s leverage as transit path for gas exports that generate much of his regime’s income. Mr. Putin might like to shut off the gas but he can’t. He needs the money.

Get moving on the pending U.S. trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic trade partnerships, which grant member countries automatic approval of U.S. liquefied gas exports. The mere prospect of U.S. exports has already eroded Russia’s pricing power.

Let Exxon and other Western oil firms queuing up to explore Siberia and Russia’s Arctic know their efforts are not currently appreciated. A single caustic hearing on Capitol Hill should do it.

They could do as well in Ukraine.

Ukraine, with its control of strategic pipelines, moving toward energy independence and even energy competition with Russia (it recently signed shale deals with Shell and Chevron ) was not acceptable.

Most of all, “Putin lost Ukraine” would have been a powerful meme in the hands of his enemies, who are numerous and don’t actually care about Ukraine.

The West followed down his path, which bears passing resemblance to the petro-regime of Saddam Hussein, because Russia has nuclear weapons and Mr. Putin seemed preferable to chaos. The West may eventually get chaos anyway. Secretary of State John Kerry managed to put his finger on a truth. Mr. Putin knows no more about the true sources of 21st-century wealth and power than a swordfish knows about macramé. No, the Cold War is not returning. Russia does not have the heft to sustain a Cold War even against placid Europeans or a strategically listless President Obama. His current Western enablers just hope Mr. Putin self-destructs on somebody else’s watch.

The Russian speakers in east Ukraine are not convinced this is the right course.

But in Monday’s survey, 82% of his party’s loyalists rejected any such generosity. Even the adherents of the Communist Party, who tend to feel entitled to all of Russia’s former Soviet domains, said with a broad majority — 62% — that Russia should not jump into Ukraine’s internal crisis.

Putin’s captive media in Russia can convince Russians in Russia that the west was behind the coup in Ukraine.

Moreover, 45% blamed western influence for bringing people on to the streets of Kiev, where the “Euromaidan” protests that were originally in favour of further European integration later turned into a general condemnation of the corrupt regime.

The results are still in doubt.

Global Cooling continues.

Sunday, February 16th, 2014

It is becoming more apparent that the earth is cooling in spite of continued leftist propaganda.

The first half of this year’s Northern Hemisphere (NH) winter season was especially brutal. December 2013 and January 2014 were the third-coldest Decembers and Januaries in the past 30 years averaged over the contiguous 48 United States, with temperatures plummeting to ?10°C in Atlanta and ?26°C in Chicago. Residents of North East India struggled with unusually severe snow and ?10°C temperatures without home heating. Snow and extreme cold also impacted the Kashmir Valley in India, where many elderly and very young people died of hypothermia. At the time of this writing, most of India is two to five degrees C colder than usual, a serious problem when 95% of all Indian homes lack central heating.

This has not deterred the alarmist camp which still believes the planet is warming due to human actions.

According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this shouldn’t be happening. The IPCC asserted in their Fourth Assessment Report (2007) that, as an impact of the carbon dioxide (CO2)-induced global warming that activists say is still going on:

There is likely to be a decline in the frequency of cold air outbreaks (i.e., periods of extreme cold lasting from several days to over a week) in NH winter in most areas.

The US administration is no better.

Yet, in his January 8 online video, Dr. John Holdren — President Obama’s Science and Technology advisor — explained that as a consequence of recent global warming that he maintains is occurring, the Arctic is warming roughly twice as fast as the mid-latitudes. This means that the temperature difference between the Arctic and the contiguous U.S is shrinking, thereby weakening the circumpolar vortex, a swirling mass of cold air that hovers over the Arctic. The result is that the boundaries of the vortex become wavier, allowing increased excursions of cold Arctic air into more southerly regions.

Of particularl concern are the warnings from solar scientists that over the next three decades, we are headed toward significant global cooling as the sun weakens into a grand minimum. The last time the sun was as weak as solar experts predict will occur starting after 2030, the Earth was in a particularly cold phase of the Little Ice Age that lasted from about 1350-1850, a period when there was great misery around the world.

Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov of Russia’s Pulkovo Observatory in St. Petersburg warns:

After the maximum of solar Cycle 24, from approximately 2014, we can expect the start of the next bicentennial cycle of deep cooling with a Little Ice Age in 2055 plus or minus 11 years.

Dr Richard Lindzen, a well known climate scientist who doesn’t buy the warming hysteria Has teed off on the climate lobby.

MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen told Climate Depot on September 27, 2013:

I think that the latest IPCC report has truly sunk to level of hilarious incoherence. They are proclaiming increased confidence in their models as the discrepancies between their models and observations increase.

Their excuse for the absence of warming over the past 17 years is that the heat is hiding in the deep ocean. However, this is simply an admission that the models fail to simulate the exchanges of heat between the surface layers and the deeper oceans. However, it is this heat transport that plays a major role in natural internal variability of climate, and the IPCC assertions that observed warming can be attributed to man depend crucially on their assertion that these models accurately simulate natural internal variability. Thus, they now, somewhat obscurely, admit that their crucial assumption was totally unjustified.

The “Ocean Deep” theory has recently been proposed as an explanation.

Finally, in attributing warming to man, they fail to point out that the warming has been small, and totally consistent with there being nothing to be alarmed about. It is quite amazing to see the contortions the IPCC has to go through in order to keep the international climate agenda going.

Global cooling, as occurred during the The Little Ice Age, a period from 1300 to 1870, is far more dangerous.

maunder_minimum

The data in that graph ends at 2000. Since that year, the number of sunspots has sharply declined and is now approaching the Maunder Minimum.

index

The second graphic illustrates this.

The climate change debate should move away from unsubstantiated warming fears and focus instead on determining if the extreme cold of recent years is a precursor to significant global cooling. If it is, then reliable and inexpensive energy sources such as coal-fired electricity generation will become crucially important for our survival. The last thing we should be doing is closing down these stations in the questionable belief that we are helping to prevent global warming, a phenomenon that has already stopped all on its own.

Science and Politics

Tuesday, December 10th, 2013

The usual theme on the left is that Republicans are opposed to science. Usually this is accompanied by some link to a GOP legislator talking about the Bible. A typical example is seen in this thread on Powerline, The original post refers to this article about the coldest temperature ever recorded.

A commenter says: “First of all, this is a bit of a joke. Mr. Hayward is not a scientist by any reasonable stretch. He has never done research on climate change; rather, if you read his blog writings, he represents an extreme ideological view which is not supported by fact. Any reputable scientist at NOAA would be embarrassed to debate someone like this. Scientists debate all the time in the literature. That is where ideas are tested against data. Mr. Hayward doesn’t participate in that debate, it is likely he is unable to. In fact, a debate against someone like Mr. Hayward would look great for his resume but (as I stated before) be embarrassing for a real scientist. You can see that we would never send such a debate request to one of our members. Sorry.”

That was from John Abraham (who, by the way, does not work for NOAA or accept money for his work on climate change).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Abraham_(professor)

Conservative peer-reviewed scientific thinking here: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44958.html

(We still think it would be cool to see Hayward flail in front of a real scientist. Maybe Hayward can contact NOAA himself…? Propose a debate…? All ya gotta do is call! Go for it! It would look great on your resume!)
http://www.boulder.noaa.gov/?q=node%2F4

The “Conservative peer-reviewed scientific thinking ” is, of course, a link to a Congressman saying something foolish. “Rep. John Shimkus is standing by a controversial comment that global warming isn’t something to worry about because God said he wouldn’t destroy the Earth after Noah’s flood. ”

Ha ha ha. Stupid Republicans.

I see no mention of the state of science in the Democrats’ public statements. For example:

Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson is worried that stationing more Marines on Guam could cause the island to capsize. Guess what party he belongs to.

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Iran wins. We lose

Sunday, November 24th, 2013

The announced “six month” agreement between the European nations negotiating with Iran, with the US included, and the Mullahs of Iran is an complete surrender to the Mullahs. I say the Mullahs since it appears that the people of Iran are no more part of the government than were the people of the Soviet Union.

I am not an expert on Iran so I will quote one:

This interim agreement is badly skewed from America’s perspective. Iran retains its full capacity to enrich uranium, thus abandoning a decade of Western insistence and Security Council resolutions that Iran stop all uranium-enrichment activities. Allowing Iran to continue enriching, and despite modest (indeed, utterly inadequate) measures to prevent it from increasing its enriched-uranium stockpiles and its overall nuclear infrastructure, lays the predicate for Iran fully enjoying its “right” to enrichment in any “final” agreement. Indeed, the interim agreement itself acknowledges that a “comprehensive solution” will “involve a mutually defined enrichment program.”

There’s more:

Tehran correctly assessed that a mere six-months’ easing of sanctions will make it extraordinarily hard for the West to reverse direction, even faced with systematic violations of Iran’s nuclear pledges. Major oil-importing countries (China, India, South Korea, and others) were already chafing under U.S. sanctions, sensing President Obama had no stomach either to impose sanctions on them, or pay the domestic political price of granting further waivers.

We are now in a position where we must trust the rationality of the Iranian Mullahs who have previously declared their willingness to die if they can eliminate the state of Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu is not impressed.

“What was concluded in Geneva last night is not a historic agreement, it’s a historic mistake,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters. “It’s not made the world a safer place. Like the agreement with North Korea in 2005, this agreement has made the world a much more dangerous place.”

“For years the international community has demanded that Iran cease all uranium enrichment. Now, for the first time, the international community has formally consented that Iran continue its enrichment of uranium.”

What will happen now ?

We should be eager to see fracking decrease our reliance on middle east oil. The Democrat repudiation of the filibuster will allow anti-fracking regulations to be enacted by extreme Obama appointees who have been held up by the threat of filibuster. One example is this EPA official.

Confirming what many in the industry long suspected, a video surfaced Wednesday in which Al Armendariz, an official at the Environmental Protection Agency, promotes the idea of crucifying oil companies. Armendariz heads up the EPA’s region 6 office, which is based in Dallas and responsible for oversight of Texas and surrounding states. The former professor at Southern Methodist University was appointed by President Obama in November 2009.

He will be joined by others.

On Thursday, after five years of Republican filibusters holding back progress on environmental regulation, Senate Democrats began the process of restoring democratic accountability to their broken institution and eliminated the filibuster on presidential appointments (excluding the Supreme Court). The final straw for the Democrats, who’d been reluctant to invoke the so-called nuclear option: Republicans had refused to allow votes on three qualified, ideologically mainstream nominees to vacancies on the D.C. District Court of Appeals.

The “ideologically mainstream” nominees are closer to the above example than to mainstream as the rest of us understand it. The truth is better explained as:

“Many of us believe the D.C. Circuit is the most important court in the country for environmental health and safety protections,” says John D. Walke, director of the Climate & Clean Air Program at NRDC. “In 90 to 95 percent of Clean Air Act regulatory challenges, they are the only court to rule.”

We can only hope that an Iran-Iraeli war would find us with adequate energy sources in spite of Obama.

Global Warming and Cooling.

Sunday, October 20th, 2013

I have been frustrated by the antics of the AGW alarmists. Scientific American, for example, has lost whatever reputation it once had for objective science. In an another example, the actions of Michael Mann should make for an interesting discovery in his suit against Mark Steyn.

Today, I find a nice discussion of global warming and cooling over the past epoch. The Greenland ice cores are, or should be, the gold standard of temperature measurement. For example.

Summary:
Records of past temperature, precipitation, atmospheric trace gases, and other aspects of climate and environment derived from ice cores drilled on glaciers and ice caps around the world. Parameter keywords describe what was measured in this data set. Additional summary information can be found in the abstracts of papers listed in the data set citations.

Now, to the data.

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What is coming ?

Friday, September 14th, 2012

The attacks on American embassies across the middle east, but especially Egypt and Libya, are the harbinger of a new era in that area. With the assistance of the US, including force in Libya, we have brought forces to power that have been disguised by our leftist president and administration as peaceful democrats seeking freedom. They are not. They represent the Muslim Brotherhood and worse. These organizations are radical islamists who seek to return Muslim society to the 7th century of Muhammed in law and policy. There is no precedent in Muslim society for peaceful coexistence with Christian or other religious believers. Islam in the 7th and 8th centuries was spread by conquest. It was stopped France by Charles Martel at Tours in 732, This stopped the northward invasion of Europe from north Africa that surged into Spain and held part of that country for another five hundred years.

The Arabs regrouped and next attacked Byzantium, which fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, This followed a period of turmoil within the world of Islam. The Arabs conquered Palestine but lost it to the Seljuk Turks in 1071. They, in turn, were defeated by the Ottomon turks after being defeated by the Christian crusaders trying to reclaim the Holy Land from the infidel. There was a Mameluke empire for a time composed of Mamelukes, soldier slaves who had been taken from often Christian families of Georgia and other smaller countries to the northwest of the Turks. The entire middle east was involved in chaos for hundreds of years as various factions maneuvered for power.

The Ottomans revived the aggressive instincts of the Muslims and attacked Vienna in 1529, beginning with a siege, the usual tactic against fortified strongholds. They had already conquered most of Hungary and the Danube Valley. They were finally defeated by inadequate logistical support and most of Europe remained Christian.

There is no period in early Islam when advancing the religion by force was not the policy, Peace with Europe after Vienna followed exhaustion of the Muslim armies. They did not stoop fighting but moved on to the Siege of Malta after Vienna. The Knights Hospitalers of Jerusalem had been expelled from the Holy Lands and settled in Rhodes. There, they were expelled by the Siege of Rhodes in 1522 and settled in Malta. Here, they faced another siege by the Turks but prevailed. The Batle of Lepanto, in 1571, ended the Turks invasion of the eastern Mediterranean.

The last attempt at Vienna ended in 1683 and the next encounter between Ottomans and Europeans came with Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt.

The present era of conflict between Islam and the west began with the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the 1920s. The appearance of Sayyid Qutb, who spent time teaching school in 1950s America where he acquired a hatred of western values, even those of a quiet midwestern town in Greeley, Colorado. His influence on the Muslim Brotherhood has been baleful.

The present Obama/Clinton policy toward the middle east has been disastrous. Obama’s speech in Cairo in 2009 set the tone, as did Clinton’s use of the “reset button” as her approach to Russia. These people are unqualified for their positions in government and the amateurism is leading us into a very dangerous phase of history. Our best course, in my opinion, is to develop out energy sources as quickly as possible to free us from the coming turmoil, phase out aid to Islamist regimes and strengthen Israel for the coming test. We will be fortunate if this decade does not end with another Holocaust. I fear we will not be fortunate.