All true. However, oil is a global commodity. If the Middle eastern supplies go down we will suffer the price rises along with everyone else because the prices are determined in commodity markets over which our government has little control. We could theoretically put price controls on the Chicago commodity exchange, but traders would just go to the ICE in London and oil would go where the prices were highest.

It would be nice if the market was fragmented and we could just draw up the gang plank and isolate ourselves from the effects of Middle Eastern oil problems. If you have a plan for that, you should share it with the State Department.

If we produce more of our oil and Middle Eastern oil keeps flowing then prices will go down. Remove a portion of ME oil and the total supply goes down with attendant price increases. There was a time, back in the 70s when the OPEC oil shocks occurred, that we should have made it our national goal to explore for more of our supplies and to break up the OPEC cartel, but we were too worried about the environment and the USSR to take the necessary steps. This piece by Robert Zubrin explains what might have been:
http://tinyurl.com/8ftdd56

We need to go on a national crusade to discover more of our oil, break up OPEC, and demand that those who depend on ME oil (China, Japan, India, Europe) to assume more responsibility for keeping the oil flowing.

In ten – twenty years we might be able to encourage inter-tribal/intra-Islamic conflcit and not have to worry as much about the energy blowback. At a gut level, the idea is very appealing to me.

As someone who spent a good part of my life burning jet fuel and knowing my job security rested on it being reasonably priced and available, I have thought a lot about oil and the part it plays in our security.

I understand what you are saying, but I do not buy into that theory. Europe, Japan, China, and India are far more dependent upon ME oil than our economy. We get most of our imports from Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, and Nigeria. Plus, we know we have domestic and off shore supplies of oil and natural gas waiting to be exploited. We know that the potential for TS reactors is unlimited. We refuse to do what needs to be done.

To me, the question is “what stability?”. IMO there is no such thing as stability. History is a dynamic and ever changing flow of events. Adapt or wither away. From my POV we have decided to wither. The world of geopolitics requires a heart of stone.

Yep. The audacity of the Dems duplicity in the service of constructing an anti-Bush narrative for the all-important goal of winning the 2008 presidency is one for the books.

Look up Samantha Power. Taken off the 2008 campaign as an advisor (on paper) when she slipped from the campaign narrative on Iraq, then promptly brought back into Obama’s presidency in prominent roles in State and the NSC.

Or that Obama kept on the leaders of Bush’s war team (Gates, Petraeus, Mullen, Lute).

Or the things for which Ralph Nader has labeled Obama a “war criminal” and “worse than Bush”.

The Dems did create a false narrative of Bush’s foreign affairs. Bush was not the one-note unilateralist warmonger painted by the Dems. He deployed diplomatic, military, law enforcement, espionage, economic means and took pains in rallying, and trying to rally, multilateral partners. I believe, perhaps because I’m not a political consultant and don’t know the game, that the GOP has made a major mistake by not defending (at least justifying) Bush’s record, thus giving the appearance of shying away from Bush and tacitly verifying the Dems’ false narrative.

Worse, it’s affected our actual foreign affairs because the Dems, whether or not they actually believe their false narrative on Bush, have to account for it in their real decisions because anti-Bush remains the fallback position of their domestic politics.

You got it in one.

I’m sure the suspicions of the Eqyptian public won’t catch on. And they will be patient

Please. They already viewed Mubarak as an American puppet, and some wanted to put him on the Sadat plan. (I once was in the airport at Luxor when Mubarak arrived, unexpected and unannounced (for security reasons). His security was a phalanx half a dozen deep, and they meant business. The Egyptian public had no illusions about Mubarak, and would have had none about any successor to him.

I agree. But he sure isn’t young.

“Apart from that, Hispanics and blacks are pretty much at each others’ throats, at least here in CA.”

I’m in CA and I know what you mean. It will probably be the cause of a future progressive misstep that will set them back for a generation. Tossing the African American bloc under the bus in favor of courting Hispanics. They’ll see the big total number of Hispanics and forget that the smaller 11% of the population African American group vote for them in the 90% range. I saw initial bits of it starting when the dems made their last amnesty push. Anyways; apologies all for the crude racial politics but that’s the reality the progressives have created… and forced on us.