Thursday, January 02, 2013
Lots of things that should have happened in 2013 did not.
We were supposed to have long ago reached "peak
oil" and an age of always-higher gas prices. Wind and solar power -- and a
reduced lifestyle -- were our dismal future.
But someone or something did not cooperate with gloomy
government predictions. After all the failed subsidized green companies, the
postponement of the Keystone Pipeline, the radical restrictions of new gas and
oil leasing on federal lands, and the promises for radical climate-change
legislation curtailing carbon energy use, the United States nevertheless seems
awash in old energy.
Gas prices have been going down. Oil and natural gas
production is going up. America may soon be the largest coal exporter in the
world. There is little worry over any more Middle East embargoes and cutoffs of
oil.
Energy-intensive industries talk of relocating from Asia
and Europe to a new America of cheaper electricity. The more the Obama
administration wanted a landscape of alternative energy, the more it seemed
traditional oil and natural gas gushed out of American soil.
Obamacare may take its place among Sasquatch, crop
circles and the Loch Ness monster as one of the great hoaxes of all time.
Before the 2012 election, Americans swallowed hook, line and sinker the con that
they could all at once keep their existing health plans, keep their own
doctors, keep their 25-year-olds on the family health plan, never be denied
coverage for a costly pre-existing condition, sign up instantaneously on a
website, buy insurance only after becoming seriously ill -- and yet save $2,500
in annual premiums as part of the bargain. And all that without any new taxes
on the middle class.
In 2013, the ruse was revealed. Voters learned that
nothing is free, and that it's impossible to get more coverage for more people
at less cost. Plans were cancelled, doctors were dropped, premiums soared,
websites crashed. Medicare was raided. Taxes were raised on everything from
medical devices to real estate sales. Medicaid enrollments spiraled.
In 2013 the grievance industry also fizzled. For all the
demands to change the supposedly insensitive name of the Washington Redskins,
team owner Daniel Snyder said no, the public nodded, and that apparently was
that.
No one much bought Oprah Winfrey's contention that a tony
boutique in Switzerland had discriminated against her because a clerk at Trois
Pommes failed to recognize the billionaire -- and therefore was reluctant to
show Oprah her desired $38,000 crocodile bag. For that matter, few were
convinced that an entire generation of Americans must die off, as she suggested
in a BBC interview, to satisfy her visions of a racially harmonious America.
GLAAD, a gay and lesbian advocacy group, was no more
convincing in its demands that Phil Robertson of "Duck Dynasty" be
summarily fired from the show for making insensitive remarks. Although A&E
caved for a few days by suspending Robertson for his rude comments in a
magazine interview, the network's outrage apparently did not last long.
With finger to the monetary wind, executives at A&E
discovered that more viewers sided with free speech than with GLAAD's demands
for censorship, so they flip-flopped to cash in with a Christmas marathon
session of money-making "Duck Dynasty" reruns. Even the customary
intervention of Jesse Jackson did not result in "Duck" apologies or
curb A&E's desire for lucre.
It should have been a banner year for the re-elected
Barack Obama. In January he promised us the rollout of new health care and climate
change legislation, immigration reform, more gun control, and new federal
spending initiatives. Instead, his approval ratings dived to the lowest level
at this point in a president's second term since Richard Nixon's.
Why the sudden unpopularity of the mellifluous and
charismatic Obama?
He forgot the old rule that a president can mislead,
misstate and misquote only so many times. And there were many, many times in
2013. Can we ever recall them all?
The false red lines in Syria. The promise to intervene
and then not to intervene against Bashar Assad in Syria. The need for tough and
suddenly not-so-tough sanctions against Iran. The ongoing vows to find the
allegedly video-inspired killers of Americans in Benghazi. The good and then
bad Muslim Brotherhood, and the good and then bad junta that followed. The
once-"outrageous" IRS scandal now dismissed as a mere hyped media
melodrama. The doctors and health plans you can keep -- period! The serial
summers of recovery.
Finally, all that rhetoric became an overload. The
American people shrugged and the great second term began to fizzle in the year
of the dud.
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