Even with renewed demand from a global economic resurgence, energy prices continue to fall. The U.S. has suddenly become the world’s largest combined producer of oil and natural gas.
That fact — along with a desire to weaken hostile Iran and Russia — has prompted the oil-rich Gulf sheikdoms to keep pumping oil even as the price falls. In their game of petro-chicken, the desperate sheiks hope that either their poorer enemies will run out of cash or that fracking in the U.S. will become unprofitable and cease.
Everyone seems to have forgotten about “peak oil” — the catchphrase of the new millennium.
The world in general, and the United States in particular, supposedly had already burned more oil than was left under the Earth. Under President Barack Obama, gasoline prices had soared. When he entered office in January 2009, gas prices averaged around $1.60 per gallon. Four years later, by spring of 2013, gas prices had climbed beyond $3.50 a gallon.
The Obama administration never much worried about high energy costs. During the 2008 campaign, Obama promised that “under my plan . . . electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” Shutting down coal plants and using higher-priced but cleaner natural gas would pave the way for an even pricier mandated wind and solar generation.
In the vice-presidential debates of 2008, Joe Biden mocked Sarah Palin for the supposedly mindless campaign mantra of “Drill, baby, drill.” Biden intoned that “it will take ten years for one drop of oil to come out of any of the wells that are going to be drilled.”
The energy secretary-designate, the professorial Steven Chu, in 2008 had unwisely voiced a widely held but wisely unspoken progressive belief that “somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe” — or about $9 a gallon.
Just two years ago, when up for reelection, Obama reminded Americans, “We can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices.”
Obama ridiculed the Republican idea of lowering gas to $2 a gallon through new oil-recovery techniques. “They’re already dusting off their three-point plans for $2 gas,” Obama mocked. “I’ll save you the suspense: Step one is drill, step two is drill, and step three is keep drilling.”
Such easy rhetoric was backed by action — or lack of it. The Keystone XL pipeline was put on permanent hold. New fracking leases on federal lands were postponed. Huge areas of oil- and gas-rich federal lands were put off limits. Some blue states stopped fracking. Money poured into solar schemes like Solyndra.
Decreased use of expensive energy was deemed desirable. Cash-strapped commuters would be forced to drive less, thereby advancing the noble cause of curbing supposed man-made global warming. Federal subsidies flowed for high-speed rail. Wind, solar, and other alternate energies could at last become competitive. Cap-and-trade legislation looked as if it might sail through Congress.
Unfortunately for the Obama administration, the new age of sky-high oil prices proved an economic disaster. The natural cycle of recovery never quite followed the end of the recession in mid 2009, as U.S. budget and trade deficits soared.
Abroad, all the wrong countries were empowered as never before.
The late Hugo Chávez used his oil windfall in Venezuela to subsidize subversion throughout Latin America. Petrodollar-rich Russian president Vladimir Putin charted a confident anti-American foreign policy.
Iran used its growing riches to step up progress toward producing a nuclear bomb while upping subsidies to terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah.
Then, finally, oil and gas prices plunged owing to the “drill, baby, drill,” can-do attitude of the private sector. Americans should thank the U.S. oilman — from the drillers in the field to the engineers behind the scenes — who did the impossible. They vastly increased the supply of what was supposedly a permanently declining resource, and thereby helped to crash prices.
Oilmen, not the government, returned hundreds of billions of dollars to American consumers. They, not Ivy League experts and Wall Street grandees, kick-started the economy where federal subsidies had failed to. They, not the policies of the Obama administration or the rhetoric of Secretary of State John Kerry, weakened our enemies.
Almost everything Obama tried for six years in an effort to rev the economy — from near-zero interest rates and $1 trillion annual budget deficits to Obamacare and vast increases in entitlements — has failed. His foreign-policy stances of resets and leading from behind led to chaos and emboldened enemies.
Yet the United States economy is slowly recovering with cheap energy. Consumers have more money. Industries are returning to U.S. soil.
Abroad, spendthrift oil producers such as hostile Iran, Russia, and Venezuela are nearly broke. Friendly rivals such as Japan and the European Union can’t compete with the U.S. energy edge.
What Obama once ridiculed is now saving him from himself — after he had championed policies that nearly destroyed him.
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No comments on Big Oil’s bailout of Obama
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Today’s first song is posted in honor of the first FM signal heard by the Federal Communications Commission today in 1940:
Today in 1968, Jimi Hendrix was jailed for one day in Stockholm, Sweden, for destroying the contents of his hotel room.
The culprit? Not marijuana or some other controlled substance. Alcohol.
Today in 1973, Bruce Springsteen released his first album, “Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.” It sold all of 25,000 copies in its first year.
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The number one single today in 1959:
Today in 1970, the Who’s Keith Moon was trying to escape from a gang of skinheads when he accidentally hit and killed chauffeur Neil Boland.
The problem was Moon’s attempt at escape. He had never passed his driver’s license test.
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The number one single on both sides of the Atlantic today in 1957:
Today in 1964, NBC-TV’s Tonight show showed the first U.S. video of the Beatles:
Today in 1967, Beach Boy Carl Wilson got his draft notice, and declared he was a conscientious objector.
Today in 1969, Jimi Hendrix appeared on BBC’s Lulu show, and demonstrated the perils of live TV:
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Who knew Barry Alvarez had dance moves? (If that’s what those are.)
But who can blame the Badgers for their enthusiasm after their unexpected 34-31 overtime Outback Bowl win over Auburn Thursday? (The dance moves followed Alvarez’s getting the ice-water bath at the end of his ESPN2 postgame interview.)
You’ve read or heard the two phrases “It’s better to be lucky than good” and “people make their own luck.” The Badgers were the beneficiaries of one of those in being able to overcome Joel Stave’s three interceptions and, other than Stave’s win-or-die fourth-down completion on their last drive of regulation, underwhelming play-calling and execution on their last two drives of the game.
One of my Theories of Football is that head coaches who come from the defensive side (that is, former defensive coordinators or defensive position coaches) are more conservative in a football sense than coaches that come from the offensive side. That might explain the Badgers’ try-not-to-lose approach after Stave’s first-down pass and in the overtime, though it seemed to me that the Badgers called too many passes and demonstrated poor clock management at the end of regulation.
Apparently Alvarez doesn’t see it that way, based on Jeff Potrykus‘ reporting:
Three times Alvarez decided to roll the dice on fourth down and all three times the Badgers converted in their 34-31 overtime victory over Auburn on Thursday in the Outback Bowl.
In chronological order:
■Corey Clement gained 2 yards on fourth and 1 from the Auburn 40 in the second quarter with UW trailing, 14-7.
That conversion turned out to be fruitless, however, because quarterback Joel Stave threw his second of three interceptions.
■Melvin Gordon ripped off a 53-yard touchdown run on fourth and 1 from the UW 47 with the Badgers trailing, 17-14, late in the third quarter.
■ With 56 seconds left in regulation, UW faced fourth and 5 from the Auburn 33. With the Badgers trailing, 31-28, Alvarez had the choice of rolling the dice one more time or letting freshman Rafael Gaglianone, who had made his last 13 field-goal attempts, try a 50-yard attempt.
Alvarez, who saw UW convert 11 of 15 fourth-down chances entering Thursday, gambled.
“It was a tough kick,” Alvarez said. “Quite frankly, I wanted to go for the win.
“We’re playing with a guard (Kyle Costigan) who’s got a leg he is dragging for an entire half. I didn’t know how much longer he would go.
“I just didn’t want to take a chance with a kick and go into overtime when we had a chance. If we can get a first down we can go in and have a shot to win and we had a shot.”
Stave hit tight end Sam Arneson for a 7-yard gain to the 26 keep the drive alive.
What was Arneson’s reaction when the decision was made to eschew the field-goal attempt and go for the first down?
“If we don’t get it,” Arneson said smiling “it’s a tough way to go. But it’s the confidence this team had today.”
If you had the steamroller that is UW’s rushing offense, why would you not go for it on fourth and up to 4 yards? Particularly on Thursday, when the number of times Auburn’s rushing defense stopped UW was few.
Regardless of that, UW’s play-calling issues were not as bad as Auburn’s, which proved fatal in the overtime, reports Joel A. Erickson:
A high-flying offense held in check by its own mistakes, a defense unable to slow down an elite opponent and a baffling set of plays in overtime led to Daniel Carlson‘s missed field goal bouncing off the post and handing the Tigers a 34-31 loss at the hands of Wisconsin in the Outback Bowl. …
Marshall’s arm, as it has more than a few times this season, got a struggling Auburn running game untracked — he finished 15-of-22 for 217 yards and two scores — and when Cameron Artis-Payne powered over the goal line for the go-ahead score with 2:55 left, the Tigers had a 31-28 lead.
But a defense already in the middle of transition — a defense that cost coordinator Ellis Johnson his job and gave way to Will Muschamp — couldn’t seal the win, instead making a couple of mistakes that have become all too characteristic for Auburn this season: a 15-yard penalty by Frost on a late hit, and a 7-yard completion from Stave to tight end Sam Arneson on 4th-and-5. …
Auburn chose to put its struggling defense on the field first in overtime.
And the Tigers came up with a stop, forcing another Gaglianone field goal to give Wisconsin a 34-31 lead and Auburn a chance to win the game with a touchdown.
On the sideline, the Tigers’ offense was all thinking the same thing.
“I expected us to score,” Ricardo Louis said. “We just couldn’t finish.”
Auburn’s offense, which had piled up 452 yards to that point and repeatedly dented Wisconsin’s defense with the pass, instead kept it conservative.
A run to Artis-Payne, who finished with 128 yards, went for a 2-yard loss. A tunnel screen to Coates picked up nothing.
And on 3rd-and-12, Malzahn ordered a questionable trick play, a double pass from Uzomah to Marshall that went for a 1-yard loss, setting up Carlson’s missed 45-yard field goal.
“The thought process is, we were thinking we’d possibly get man,” [coach Gus] Malzahn said. “We were trying to win the game, we were setting it up earlier, and sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.”
One thing that can be said today is that the Big Ten has unified the state of Alabama by ending their two teams’ seasons. The one that gets more national notice, of course, is Alabama’s 42-35 national semifinal loss to Ohio State, which Al.com calls “humiliating.”
In fact, if you believe Ohio State coach Urban Meyer and Kevin Scarbinsky, the Outback Bowl win led to the Sugar Bowl win:
How do you convince your players that they can beat Alabama when most analysts and experts have told them they can’t?
You watch a Big Ten team you dominated beat an SEC team that made Alabama sweat.
Urban Meyer said Ohio State’s 42-35 victory over Alabama in the playoff semifinal Thursday night was made possible, in part, by Wisconsin’s 34-31 overtime win over Auburn in the Outback Bowl earlier in the day.
“There’s a perception out there” that Ohio State isn’t as good as Alabama, Meyer said. “I’ll tell you when I think the tide turned a little bit – when Wisconsin beat Auburn. Everybody on our team knew that. I made sure they knew that.”
Meyer said Ohio State was at its pregame meal when Wisconsin finished off Auburn. He said he mentioned it to his players then and again during a highlight video they watched before getting on the buses to head to the Superdome.
Ohio State had beaten Wisconsin 59-0 in the Big Ten Championship Game. Auburn had rolled up a ton of yards and points in a 55-44 loss to Alabama in the Iron Bowl.
If Wisconsin could beat Auburn, why couldn’t Ohio State beat Alabama?
Or, put another way by Facebook:
So the Paul Chryst era begins on a good note. Chryst’s challenge will be to get better quarterback play, whether from Stave, Bart Houston, D.J. Gillins or someone not currently on the roster. Chryst’s previous work with Scott Tolzein and Russell Wilson should make one optimistic. Finding better receivers will be helpful too.
Finally, if you’re near an Outback Steakhouse today, run in and get your free coconut shrimp, courtesy of the Badgers.
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The number one album today in 1965 was the soundtrack to “Roustabout”:
Today in 1968, the complete shipment of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s new album, “Two Virgins,” was confiscated by New Jersey authorities due to the album cover. A revised cover was used in record stores:
The number one album today in 1971 was George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass”:
Speaking of passing, Wis U.P. North reminds us that today is the anniversary of the 55-mph speed limit, signed into law by Richard Nixon. Never mind Watergate; Nixon should have been impeached for signing this stupid idea into law. There is only one truly irreplaceable, nonrenewable resource — time.
The number one British album today in 2005 was Green Day’s “American Idiot”:
Just two birthdays today: Roger Miller …
… and Chick Churchill, who played guitar for Ten Years After:
Three deaths of note: Tex Ritter, country singer and father of John, in 1974 …
… David Lynch of the Platters in 1981 …
… and guitarist Randy California of Spirit, who drowned while saving his 12-year-old son from a rip tide off Hawaii in 1997:
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I’m going to guess that not many readers will read this immediately upon posting.
Perhaps that was the problem for the Beatles in 1962, when they went to Decca Records for an audition, and Decca declined to sign them.
Before that, the number one single (for the second time) today in 1956:
Today in 1964, BBC-TV premiered “Top of the Pops”:
The number one single today in 1966:
Today in 1967, the Doors made their first live TV appearance, on KTLA in Los Angeles:
Today in 1968, the ABC Radio Network split into four separate networks, each with their own news sounder:
The number one British single today in 1977 got almost no American airplay:
Today in 1982, ABBA made its final live appearance:
The short list of birthdays starts with Country Joe MacDonald:
Jim Gordon was a drummer for such groups as Derek and the Dominos who ended his career by murdering his mother and receiving a life sentence upon conviction:
Morgan Fisher played keyboards and was one of the young dudes of Mott the Hoople:
One death of note: Hank Williams, at 29 in 1953:
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That Was the Year That Was, which is based on the old British TV show …
… is a tradition of, well, anywhere I’ve worked dating back to years beginning with the number 19.
Thanks to poor Internet connections (this means you, Centurylink) and my overloaded schedule, this will be more brief than previous years, which is too bad because 2014 was a really strange year.
The biggest Wisconsin political news of 2014 was obviously the reelection of Gov. Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s political Energizer bunny …
… or perhaps Wisconsin’s own Obi Wan Kenobi …
and Republicans controlling both houses of the Legislature again, in fact expanding their majorities in both houses.
Democrats tried to pick off Walker in Recallarama in 2012, and failed. Democrats then came up with the focus-group-tested Mary Burke — rich businessperson with suitable liberal credentials, or so it seemed — and failed again.
Burke represents a grotesque failure on the part of Wisconsin’s news media to investigate the background of a candidate for public office. It took the non-mainstream media to point out the giant holes in Burke’s resume at Trek Bicycle — for instance, why she left — and ask such inconvenient questions as why no non-Burke could attest to her work at Trek, or whether she was qualified to be governor. The voters decided she wasn’t.
The economy seems better this year only because of the steep drop in gas prices, something opposed by Barack Obama. There is really no other reason to think the economy is better other than more money in people’s pockets due to said gas price drop.
Obama proved himself as one of the most effective presidents ever by delivering the Senate to Republican control and expanding the GOP’s control of the House of Representatives. It makes one wonder why Democrats continue to slavishly, blindly, stupidly support him.
As it happens, I got to witness the two strangest Wisconsin political stories this year, both of which involved Sen. Dale Schultz (R–Richland Center). At the start of the year, Schultz announced he wasn’t running for reelection, and said he wouldn’t endorse Rep. Howard Marklein (R–Spring Green), who announced in April 2013 he was running for Schultz’s seat.
Democrat Ernie Wittwer of Hillpoint, a retired state employee, announced he was running for Schultz’s seat. Unimpressed, state Democratic Party officials convinced Pat Bomhack of Spring Green, former aide for the phony maverick Sen. Russ Feingold, to, instead of running for Marklein’s seat (for the second time, after Bomhack lost the 2012 Democratic primary), run against Marklein. Democratic Party chair (if there is such a thing) Chris Larson even endorsed Bomhack, choosing one Democrat over another.
The early morning after the Aug. 12 primary, Wittwer was announced defeating Bomhack by two votes. That margin grew to seven after the county canvasses. Then Bomhack requested a recount, and more than 100 ballots from Monroe disappeared. That and irregularities in other counties switched Wittwer’s nine-vote win to a 33-vote Bomhack win. Wittwer’s wife and campaign manager sent a letter to 17th Senate District newspapers that burned holes in the newsprint on which it was printed over how state Democrats treated her husband and favored a pretty obvious carpetbagger.
Then, two weeks before the general election, the state Democratic Party sent out a flyer with a picture of Schultz and Bomhack together, with a quote from a Schultz story in The Capital Times:
“Pat Bomhack is a good fit for the district because his values and positions on the issues that people care about, from my perspective, are similar to mine.”
Was that an endorsement? Both Schultz and his campaign manager weaseled out of using the E word, with Schultz saying, “I think people are smart enough to read between the lines, and I encourage them to do their research and come to their own conclusion.”
Well, here’s the conclusion: Marklein beat Bomhack, and Marklein is being succeeded by another Republican, Dodgeville Mayor Todd Novak. (Who won his race by 65 votes.) So Schultz went out the door 0 for 2 in trying to influence the 2015–16 Legislature.
That, I thought, had to be the strangest thing I would witness in 2014. (Other than, perhaps, having a tornado pass within one-half mile of me and another apparently pass over closer than that, three days after a murder.) Then, two weeks after the election, I went to a speech by Madison Catholic Diocese Bishop Robert Morlino. Or so I thought. A journalist is supposed to report on stories, not be the story, but I ended up doing both, continuing my professional tradition of making people really angry at me.
It was cold this year — hideously (though sadly not abnormally) cold in the winter, cold in the spring, and below-normal in temperatures in the summer. The fall was OK, November was cold and snowy, but December was warmer than normal, giving us a brown Christmas after the snow melted away. Of course, the wind chill is below zero outside today. Wisconsin weather sucks.
The Packers had a brief 2013 playoff trip (which took place in January), then won the NFC North for the fourth year in a row, thanks to a legendary last-game performance by quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who channeled his inner Favre by returning to the field after an injury. The Badgers made the basketball Final Four, which was cool. The Badgers had a reasonably good football season with another strange coda, the departure of coach Gary Andersen after two seasons. But that worked out much better than it could have. The Brewers, meanwhile, looked inconceivably good for much of the season, then deflated like the Hindenburg. One suspects, given the upgrades to the south, that there will be no potential postseason excitement for the Brewers in 2015.
As always, may your 2015 be better than your 2014. I would say “less interesting” too, but that would be against my professional interests.
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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 42,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 16 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
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Similar to Christmas, more happened on New Year’s Eve in rock history than one might think.
Today in 1961, the former Pendletones made their debut with their new name at the Long Beach Civic Auditorium in California: the Beach Boys:
Today in 1963, the Kinks made their live debut at the Lotus House Restaurant in London:
The number one single today in 1966:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 