The plot thickens

The Land of Gas and Honey

 Israel's giant new natural gas find will transform the Middle East -- and add more fuel to an already combustible region.

BY ROBIN M. MILLS

Mother Nature's distribution of oil and gas resources around the world suggests she has a mischievous sense of humor. In the Persian Gulf, South China Sea, and Caspian Sea, large fields lie in disputed zones between unfriendly neighbors.

Now we must add another hot spot to that list. New, giant, natural gas finds promise to transform the energy security and economy of Israel and, perhaps, its neighbors. But these treasures could hardly have been better placed to stir up trouble, complicating three of the world's most intractable conflicts: between Israel and the Palestinians, Israel and Lebanon, and Greek and Turkish Cypriots. The recent sharp deterioration in Turkish-Israeli relations makes disputes over gas even more fraught with danger.

Golda Meir, the feisty, cantankerous, and quotable fourth Israeli prime minister, used to complain that Moses led the Israelites through the desert for 40 years to bring them to the only place in the Middle East without oil. In 2000, after Britain's BG had discovered significant volumes of gas at Gaza Marine, she was proved at least half-wrong when U.S. exploration company Noble Energy found a similar-sized field, Mari-B, in Israeli waters.

In 2009, though, Noble put these efforts completely into the shade. Some bold and creative geological thinking led it to find 8.5 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of gas in deep water at Tamar, the world's largest discovery that year. In late 2010, Noble uncovered an even larger field, aptly named Leviathan, containing 16 Tcf. These fields alone could meet U.S. gas demand for an entire year.

The Levant Basin, the geological area containing Tamar and Leviathan, spans not only Israel's offshore but also that of Lebanon, Cyprus, and Syria. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates it could contain 120 Tcf of gas, equivalent to almost half of U.S. reserves. Given that Cyprus, Lebanon, Israel, and the Palestinian territories between them have a population of less than 17 million, that's potentially a huge windfall.

The gas, therefore, suddenly eliminates one of Israel's key strategic and economic weaknesses: its lack of indigenous energy resources. Tamar alone could supply all of Israel's power plants for more than 20 years. And the discoveries are very timely, because Mari-B will be depleted by 2013 and because of the sudden insecurity of Egyptian gas imports.

Israel receives about 40 percent of its gas consumption from Egypt, though the deal is deeply unpopular there, with ex-president Hosni Mubarak and his cronies accused of underpricing the gas and profiting corruptly from sales. The pipeline through the volatile Sinai has been attacked five times this year, cutting supplies and forcing Israel to raise electricity prices by almost 10 percent in August to cover the increased costs of burning oil.

Replicating Israel's success would likewise transform the prospects of energy-poor Lebanon and Cyprus. Cyprus is still reeling from the accidental destruction of its main power station, blown up in July by confiscated Iranian munitions stored with remarkable carelessness next to it.

Noble has been given the green light by the U.S. Embassy in Nicosia to go ahead with drilling in Cypriot waters adjacent to Leviathan. In contrast, Lebanon and Syria have been painfully slow to realize their opportunity. Major oil companies had looked at the area as early as 2001, yet Lebanon's fractious parliament only passed an oil law in 2010 after enviously eyeing Israel's success. Syria had planned to award exploration blocks this year, but this seems unlikely as long as the uprising against the Assad regime continues.

Meanwhile, the unfortunate people of Gaza, whose field arguably started the whole rush, suffer from daily power cuts. Long negotiations to develop their gas predictably went nowhere because the Israelis had no intention of giving the Palestinian Authority an additional source of revenue, especially after Hamas's 2007 takeover of the strip.

The Israelis now have an abundance of riches. They could export gas to Jordan, whose economy is struggling under the burden of expensive oil. The Jordanians, though, might play them off against Iraq, a more politically palatable supplier that will also have excess gas to sell within a few years.

Other than that, without any friends in the region, the Israelis will have to look west for markets. They could have built a pipeline through Cyprus and on to Turkey and mainland Europe. But, with impeccable timing, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has escalated a war of rhetoric against Turkey, as Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman reportedly threatened with his characteristic finesse to arm the Kurdish PKK group.

Instead, Israel will probably require more costly and complicated liquefaction facilities in order to ship the gas by tanker to customers in Southern Europe.

The other problem is the region's territorial disputes. Israel and the Republic of Cyprus -- that's the Greek one -- have delineated their maritime border and have shared economic interests. But the maritime border between Israel and Lebanon is not demarcated, and Lebanon has weakened its position with diplomatic missteps while each side has submitted its own claims. These will be hard to resolve: International courts and arbitration do not apply while the two states have no diplomatic relations, and Israel has not signed the 1994 Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The actual overlapping claims area is surprisingly small, and it seems clear that Tamar and Leviathan lie in Israeli waters. Yet Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah hasvowed to retaliate against Israel's gas installations for any attempt to "steal" Lebanese natural resources. It appears that underwater gas could become another Shebaa Farms issue, a minor territorial claim exploited to perpetuate the Lebanese-Israeli conflict.

The Israelis are probably well capable of defending offshore installations against Lebanese or Palestinian threats, particularly as the wells will be on the seabed beneath 1,600 meters of water. Turkey is an entirely different matter. Turkey, of course, recognizes neither EU member Cyprus, having backed the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus since the 1974 war and partition of the island, nor the Cyprus-Israel accord.

Turkish Cypriot President Dervis Eroglu said in early August that Cyprus's gas (not a molecule of which has yet been discovered) belonged not only to Greek Cypriots but to Turkish Cypriots and Turkey too.

Turkish pressure is likely to push Cyprus deeper into Israel's willing embrace. Solon Kassinis, head of Cyprus's Energy Service, fired back at the Turks, "I expected Turkey to bark, but I don't think they will do anything ... if they want to be considered a country that respects international law." Greece, which has been wooed by Israel following its rupture with the Turks, vowed to defend Greek Cypriot sovereignty.

The most explosive issue, however, is the rupture of Turkish-Israeli relations. Although Turkey has no maritime border with Israel, nor much prospect of sharing in the offshore gas bounty, the Cyprus and Lebanon disputes give it an excellent opening to retaliate for Israeli intransigence over the Gaza-bound flotilla raid and other areas of dispute.

Interviewed by Al Jazeera, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared on Sept. 8, "Turkey will not allow Israel exclusive use of the resources of the Mediterranean Sea" and said he planned to dispatch three frigates to confront Israeli warships. Israeli Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau responded, "Israel can support and secure the rigs that we are going to have in the Mediterranean." But in the current political climate, neither Turkey nor Lebanon wants to give Israel an easy path to riches.

The United States has urged Turkey and Israel to ease tensions, while saying that it viewed the gas discoveries overall as positive. In a few years, if all goes well, some brave soul in Congress might question the irony of a major gas exporter's being the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid.

But in the short term, the lure of riches makes conflict resolution more difficult and gives hard-liners on all sides another casus belli. Tamar and Leviathan are unfortunately not the catalyst for regional peace and prosperity, but, rather, more fuel in an already combustible mix.

Turkish gambit

The man who could trigger a world war

By David Warren,

The greatest threat to the world's peace, at this moment, comes from a man named Recip Tayyip Erdogan. He is the prime minister of Turkey, at the head of the Justice and Development Party ("AK," from the Turkish). A former mayor of Istanbul, he was arrested and jailed when he publicly recited Islamist verses ("the mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets are our bayonets," etc.), in defiance of the old secularist, Ataturk constitution, which made it an offence to incite religious and racial fanaticism.

Erdogan's credentials as an anti-Semite, but also as an anti-Communist, were established from his school days. He came from an observant Muslim family, and while nothing he says can be taken without salt, he claims an illustrious ancestry, of fighters for Turkish and Ottoman causes.

He is an "interesting case" in other respects. His post-secondary education was in economics; he is a very capable technocrat, and under his direction the Turkish economy was rescued. He is a dragonslayer of inflation, and public deficits; he took dramatic and effective measures to clean up squalor in the Turkish bureaucracy, and as the saying goes, "he made the trains run on time."

Erdogan is also a "democrat," who has no reason not to be, because he enjoys tremendous and abiding domestic popularity. The party he founded came to power by a landslide, and has been twice re-elected. (He had a stand-in for prime minister at first, for he was still banned from public office.) There are demographic reasons, too, why Turkish secularism has been overwhelmed by Turkish Islamism. The Muslim faithful have babies; modern secularists don't.

The "vision" of this politician, which he can articulate charismatically, is to combine efficient, basically free-market economic management, with a puritanized version of the religious ideals of the old Ottoman Caliphate. (Gentle reader may recall that I am allergic to visionary and charismatic politicians, who operate on the body politic like a dangerous drug.)

Erdogan's vision has turned outward. His strategy has been to seek better economic integration with the West, while making new political alliances with the East - most notably with Iran. He now presents Turkey as the champion of "mainstream" Sunni Islamism, while trying to square the circle with Persian Shia Islamism. This could still come to grief over Syria, where the Turks want Iran's man, Assad, overthrown, and the Muslim Brotherhood brought into a new Syrian government.

Turkey's military was the guarantor of pro-western Turkish secularism, under the Ataturk constitution. With characteristic incomprehension of the consequences, western statesmen supported Erdogan's efforts to establish civilian control over the generals - our old NATO friends. By imprisoning several senior officers on (probably imaginative) charges of plotting a coup, Erdogan was able to induce the entire Turkish senior staff to resign, last month.

They did this because they had run out of allies. Hillary Clinton and company hung the only effective domestic opposition to Erdogan out to dry. Turkey's powerful, western-equipped military is now entirely Erdogan's baby, and the country's secularist constitution is a dead letter. Erdogan, the Islamist, now has absolute power.

It was he who sent the "peace flotilla" to challenge Israel's right to blockade Gaza (recognized under international law and explicitly by the U.N.). He made the inevitable violent result of that adventure into an anti-Israeli cause célèbre. He has now announced that the next peace flotilla will be accompanied by the Turkish navy.

This will put Israel in the position of either surrendering its right to defend itself, or firing on Turkish naval vessels. There is no way to overstate the gravity of this: Erdogan is manoeuvring to create a casus belli.

He has made himself the effective diplomatic sponsor for the Palestinian declaration of statehood next week - from which much violence will follow. Every Palestinian who dies, trying to kill a Jew, will be hailed as a "martyr," with compensation and apologies demanded.

He has been playing Egyptian politics, by adding to the rhetorical fuel that propelled an Islamist mob into the Israeli embassy in Cairo last Friday. He is himself in Cairo, this week, on a mission to harness grievances against Israel, in the very fluid circumstances of the "Arab Spring." For action against this common enemy is the one thing that can unite all disparate Arab factions - potentially under Turkish leadership.

The West is just watching, while Erdogan creates pretexts for another Middle Eastern war: one in which Israel may be pitted not only against the neighbouring states of the old Arab League, but also Turkey, and Iran, and Hamas, and Hezbollah.

This is what is called an "existential threat" to Israel, unfolding in live time. It could leave the West with a choice between defending Israel, and permitting another Holocaust. In other words, we are staring at the trigger for a genuine world war. With Recip Erdogan's twitching finger on it.

Global warming

Could Israel and Turkey go to war?

by Soner Cagaptay

The Arab Spring and recent dramatic deterioration of Turkish-Israeli ties present Israel with a uniquely threatening security environment. Since 1949, Israel has always had the comfort of having Turkey, one of the two major Levantine powers, as its friend. This is no longer the case. In fact, conflict seems to be looming between Turkey and Israel.

In the aftermath of the 2010 Flotilla Incident, Ankara attempted to intimidate Israel by saying its warships would escort missions to Gaza. Now Turkey and Israel are at dangerously opposing ends of Levantine politics. Not only is Ankara no longer a trusted friend of Israel, but it has also begun to emerge as the key regional actor opposing Israel.

When Turkey became the first Muslim-majority country to recognize Israel in 1949, Israel took comfort in the fact that it had the backing of one of the Middle East's most influential players. The strength of the Turkish military allowed it to become and remain a friend of Israel despite Islamist opposition to it.

Following the Camp David Treaty in 1978, Israel established a cold peace with Egypt, bringing the second major Levantine power closer to its side. Whereas in the 1960s Nasser's Egypt represented the center of opposition to Israel in the region, Cairo ceased to pose a threat to Israel in the wake of Camp David. This security environment is all but gone.

For starters, Turkey has become like the old Egypt under Nasser - positioning itself as the regional center of opposition to Israel. Meanwhile, Egypt is becoming like the old Turkey. The outcome of the forthcoming Egyptian elections is far from certain. Yet it is very likely that the Muslim Brotherhood will emerge as a power to be reckoned with in the Egyptian polls this fall. Even if the Egyptian military stands for maintaining ties with Israel, the Muslim Brotherhood will push for limiting those ties. Accordingly, Egyptian-Israeli ties will continue to become more cold and tenuous with each passing day.

For the first time, the two major states of the Eastern Mediterranean are aligning against Israel. This is the most important shift in Levantine politics since Camp David or even since 1949 when Turkey recognized Israel. This new balance is a serious threat for Israel, which must now consider an increasingly hostile Turkey and an ever colder and unfriendly Egypt when it evaluates its security environment.

Yet, the new balance carries risks for Turkey, too. Ankara's September 8th announcement that its warships will escort new flotillas to Gaza bears the potential of armed conflict between Turkey and Israel. What if the Israelis decide to stop the next Turkish navy-escorted flotilla as they stopped the Turkish-backed flotilla in 2010? Will the Turkish navy ships choose to react? As chilling as this scenario sounds, it is not unlikely. If the two countries fail to slow the escalating situation, they could well find themselves in conflict.

The specter of conflict also hangs over gas exploration in the Eastern Mediterranean. Turkey objects to Israel's desire to drill in its exclusive economic zone in the Mediterranean Sea largely because it hopes to block the Greek Cypriots from having the precedent of an exclusive economic zone in which they could drill for gas to the detriment of the Turkish Cypriots. The latest escalation between Turkey and Israel might just pour oil on the political flames of gas exploration in the Mediterranean Sea.

Perhaps Ankara is only bluffing to bring Israel to its knees, and perhaps the Israelis would rather let Turkish navy-escorted flotillas sail to Gaza than risk regional war. But one thing is clear: The Arab Spring and the Turkish-Israeli Winter are churning up the Mediterranean.

Talking about dhimmis ...

The European Caliphate

by Clifford May

For more than 30 years, Bat Ye'or, a refugee from Egypt, has been writing about dhimmis — Christians and Jews living under oppression in Muslim lands. Now, she has a new book,  Europe, Globalization, and the Coming Universal Caliphate, that looks at Muslims living in lands that once were Christian but today call themselves multicultural. She predicts Europe will not remain multicultural for long. She is convinced that Europe, sooner rather than later, will be dominated by Islamic extremists and transformed into "Eurabia" — a term first used in the mid-1970s by a French publication pressing for common European-Arab policies.

Immigrants can enrich a nation. But there is a difference between immigrants and colonists. The former are eager to learn the ways of their adopted home, to integrate and perhaps assimilate — which does not require relinquishing their heritage or forgetting their roots. Colonists, by contrast, bring their culture with them and live under their own laws. Their loyalties lie elsewhere.

Ye'or contends that a concerted effort is being made not only to ensure that Muslim immigrants in Europe remain squarely in the second category, but also that they become the means to transform Europe politically, culturally, and religiously. Leading this effort is the Organization of the Islamic Conference, established in 1969, which, a few months ago, no doubt on the advice of a highly compensated public-relations professional, renamed itself the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

The OIC represents 56 countries plus the Palestinian Authority. It claims also to represent Muslim immigrants — the "Diaspora" — in Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia. It is pan-Islamic: It seeks to unify and lead the world's 1.3 billion Muslims. In a manual first published in 2001, "Strategy of Islamic Cultural Action in the West," the IOC asserts that "Muslim immigrant communities in Europe are part of the Islamic nation." It goes on to recommend, Ye'or notes, "a series of steps to prevent the integration and assimilation of Muslims into European culture."

The IOC, she argues, is nothing less than a "would-be, universal caliphate." It might look different from the caliphates of the Ottomans, Fatimids, and Abbasids. It might resemble, instead, a thoroughly modern trans-national bureaucracy. But, already, the OIC exercises significant power through the United Nations, and through the European Union, which has been eager to accommodate the OIC while simultaneously endowing the U.N. with increasing authority for global governance. Among the other organizations that Ye'or says are doing the OIC's bidding are the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, and the European Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation (PAEAC).

In the eyes of OIC officials, no problem in the contemporary world is more urgent than "Islamophobia," which it calls "a crime against humanity" that the U.N. and the EU must officially outlaw. Even discussing why so much terrorism is carried out in the name of Islam is to be forbidden. The OIC insists, too, that international bodies ban "defamation of religion," by which it means criticism of anything Islamic. Defamation of Judaism, Christianity, Bahai, Hinduism, and even heterodox Muslim sects such as the Ahmadiyya is common within the borders of many OIC countries, a fact the OIC refuses to acknowledge.

Instead, the OIC has specifically "warned" the EU and the "international community" of the "dangers posed by the influence of Zionism, Neo-Conservatism, aggressive Christian evangelicalism, Jewish extremism, Hindu extremism and secular extremism in international affairs and the 'War on Terrorism.'"

Though funding for terrorist groups flows generously from individuals in oil-rich OIC countries, the organization itself is not a supporter of terrorism. Neither, however, is it an opponent. Violence directed against those it views as enemies of Islam is defined as "resistance" — even when civilians, including women and children, are the intended victims.

While the OIC expresses concern for the rights of Muslim immigrants in the West, the egregious mistreatment of foreign workers in the Gulf countries (and other Muslim countries as well) is not something OIC officials deign to discuss. Nor has the OIC ever condemned the genocide of the black Muslims of Darfur or the genocidal intentions toward Israelis openly expressed by Hamas, Hezbollah, and the rulers of Iran.

European diplomats might at least insist that the OIC accept the principle of reciprocity. If there is to be a "dialogue of civilizations," shouldn't both sides get to air their grievances? Shouldn't Europeans work to end the persecution of religious and ethnic minorities in OIC countries and to grant foreign workers in Muslim countries basic rights and a path to citizenship? If the Saudis want to fund and control tens of thousands of mosques around the world, is it too much to ask that they permit people of other faiths to at least worship on their soil? Evidently it is, and Ye'or offers this explanation: Committed to a multicultural, multiethnic, multireligious, and multilateral ideology that rejects patriotism and even national identity and cultural pride, afflicted by guilt over their imperial and colonial past — and ignorant about more than a thousand years of Islamic imperialism and colonialism — Europeans have become dhimmis in their own lands; inferiors who accept their status and submit. The OIC, by contrast, rejects multiculturalism, openly professing the superiority of the Islamic faith, civilization, and laws.

The caliphate," Bat Ye'or concludes, is "alive and growing within Europe. . . . It has advanced through the denial of dangers and the obfuscating of history. It has moved forward on gilded carpets in the corridors of dialogue, the network of the Alliances and partnerships, in the corruption of its leaders, intellectuals and NGOs, particularly at the United Nations."

If you think that's alarmist, if you think the OIC sincerely seeks cooperation with the West or that Europeans know where lines must be drawn and have the courage to draw them, read her book. Or just wait a few years.

The strange history of the State

The enemies of Jim Crow

by Jeff Jacoby

Something to ponder during  Black History Month:

In the long dark night that followed Reconstruction, what was the engine that drove Jim Crow? Did segregationist laws codify the existing social practice, or was it the laws themselves that segregated the South?

Many people might intuitively assume that Southern racism had led to entrenched public segregation long before Southern legislatures made it mandatory. Not so. Separate facilities for blacks and whites were not routine in the South until the early 20^th century. Racism there surely was, but as C. Vann Woodward observed in The Strange Career of Jim Crow, his influential history of post-Civil War segregation, the idea of formally separating the races in places of public accommodation initially struck many white Southerners as daft. In 1898, the editor of South Carolina's oldest and most conservative newspaper, the Charleston News and Courier, responded to a proposal for segregated railroad cars with what was meant to be scathing ridicule:

"If we must have Jim Crow cars on the railroads, there should be Jim Crow . . . passenger boats," he wrote. "Moreover, there should be Jim Crow waiting saloons at all stations, and Jim Crow eating houses. . . . There should be Jim Crow sections of the jury box, and a separate Jim Crow dock and witness stand in every court -- and a JimCrow Bible for colored witnesses to kiss."

Tragically, what the Charleston editor intended as mockery would soon become reality across the South -- "down to and including the Jim Crow Bible," as Woodward noted. But it wasn't an overwhelming grassroots demand for segregation that institutionalized Jim Crow. It was government, often riding roughshod over the objection of private-sector entrepreneurs.

Far from craving the authority to relegate blacks to the back of buses and streetcars, for example, the owners of municipal transportation systems actively resisted segregation. They did so not out of some lofty commitment to racial equality or integration, but for economic reasons: Segregation hurt their bottom line. For one thing, it drove up their expenses by requiring them -- as the manager of Houston's streetcar company complained to city councilors in 1904 -- "to haul around a good deal of empty space that is assigned to the colored people and not available to both races." In many cities, segregation also provoked black passengers to boycott the streetcars, cutting sharply into the companies' revenue.

In a notable study published in the Journal of Economic History in 1986, economist Jennifer Roback showed that in one Southern city after another, private transit companies tried to scuttle segregation laws or simply chose to ignore them.

In Jacksonville, Fla., a 1901 ordinance requiring black passengers to be segregated went unenforced until 1905, when the state legislature mandated segregation statewide. The new statute "was passed by the Legislature much against the will of the streetcar companies," reported the Florida Times-Union. So well-known was the companies' hostility to the law that when a group of black citizens mounted a court challenge to overturn it, their attorney felt compelled to deny being "in cahoots with the railroad lines in Jacksonville."

In Alabama, the Mobile Light and Railroad Company reacted to a Jim Crow ordinance by flatly refusing to enforce it. "Whites would not obey the law and were continually . . . refusing to sit where they were told," the company's manager told a reporter in 1902. In Memphis, the transit company defiantly pleaded guilty to violating a Tennessee segregation statute, explaining that it believed the law to be "against the wishes of the majority of its patrons." In Savannah, the local black paper noted that streetcar officials "are not anxious to carry into effect the unjust laws . . . requiring separate cars for the races," since it would put them "to extra trouble and expense."

Eventually, of course, the government got its way, as companies surrendered to pressure from city hall and the statehouse. In a victory of government regulation over the free market, Jim Crow took hold across the South, where it would cruelly hold sway for the next 60 years.

Many Americans know that it took strong government action in the 1950s and 1960s to end segregation and bring civil rights to the South. Fewer realize that it was government action that established segregation in the first place. Today, when the power of the state is being aggrandized as never before, the history of Jim Crow offers a cautionary reminder: When the political class overrides the private sector, what ensues is not necessarily an improvement. It may even be a national disgrace.

THE "PASS THIS BILL NOW!" BILL

The President achieves new heights of post-modern politics

By MARK STEYN


The president has taken to the campaign trail to promote his American Jobs Act. That’s a good name for it: an act. “Pass this bill now!” he declared 24 times at a stop in in Raleigh, North Carolina, and another 18 in Columbus, Ohio, and the act is sufficiently effective that, three years into the Vapidity of Hope, the president can still find crowds of true believers willing to chant along with him: “Pass this bill now!”
Not all supporters are content merely to singalong with the prompter-in-chief. In North Carolina, a still-devoted hopeychanger cried out, “I love you!”

“I love you, too,” said the president. “But… .”

Oh, no, here it comes: conditional love. “But, if you love me, you’ve got to help me pass this bill!” You’d be surprised how effective this line is: I tried it on Darlene in the back of my Ford Edsel when I was 17, and we didn’t get home till two in the morning.

Pass this bill now, or I’ll say “Pass this bill now!” another two dozen times! With this latest inspiration, Obama has taken the post-modern phase of democratic politics to a whole new level. “Pass this jobs bill”? Simply as a matter of humdrum reality, there is no bill, it won’t “create” any jobs, and it will be paid for with money we don’t have. But the smartest president in history has calculated that, if he says the same four monosyllables over and over, a nonexistent bill to create nonexistent jobs with nonexistent money will be yet another legislative triumph in the grand tradition of his first stimulus (the original Dumb And Dumber to the sequel’s Stimulus And Stimulusser).

The estimated cost of the non-bill is just shy of half a trillion dollars. Gosh, it seems like only yesterday that Washington was in the grip of a white-knuckle, clenched-teeth showdown over whether a debt ceiling deal could be reached before the allegedly looming deadline. When the deal was triumphantly unveiled at the eleventh hour, it was revealed that our sober, prudent, fiscally responsible masters had gotten control of the runaway spending and had carved (according to the most optimistic analysis) a whole $7 billion of savings out of the 2012 budget. The president then airily breezes into Congress and in 20 minutes adds another $447 billion to the tab. That’s what meaningful course correction in Washington boils down to: seven billion steps forward, 447 billion steps back.

This $447 billion does not exist, and even foreigners don’t want to lend it to us. A majority of it will be “electronically created” by the Federal Reserve buying U.S. Treasury debt. Don’t worry, it’s not like “printing money”: we leave that to primitive basket-cases like Zimbabwe. This is more like one of those Nigerian email schemes, in which a prominent public official promises you a large sum of money in return for your bank account details. In the case of Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner, one prominent public official is promising to wire a large sum of money into the account of another prominent public official, which is a wrinkle even the Nigerians might have difficulty selling.

But not to worry. On Thursday night, the president told a Democratic fundraiser in Washington that the Pass My Jobs Bill bill would create 1.9 million new jobs. What kind of jobs are created by this kind of magical thinking? Well, they’re “green jobs” – and, if we know anything about “green jobs,” it’s that they take a lot of green. German taxpayers subsidize “green jobs” in their wind-power industry to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars per worker per year: $250,000 per “green job” would pay for a lot of real jobs, even in the European Union. Last year, it was revealed that the Spanish government paid $800,000 for every “green job” on a solar panel assembly line. I had assumed carelessly that this must be a world record in terms of taxpayer subsidy per fraudulent “green job.” But it turns out those cheapskate Spaniards with their lousy nickel-and-dime “green jobs” subsidy just weren’t thinking big. The Obama administration’s $38.6 billion “clean technology” program was supposed to “create or save” 65,000 jobs. Half the money has been spent – $17.2 billion – and we have 3,545 jobs to show for it. That works out to an impressive $4,851,904.09 per “green job.” A world record! Take that, you loser Spaniards! USA! USA!

So, based on previous form, Obama’s prediction of 1.9 million new jobs will result in the creation of 92,000 new jobs, mostly in the Federal Department of Green Jobs Grant Applications.

Just to put it in perspective, the breezy $447 billion price tag for the Pass My Jobs Bill jobs bill is about 20 times higher than the most recent Greek government deficit currently threatening the stability of the entire Eurozone. Indeed, Greece’s projected 2011 deficit – $24 billion at last count – is little more than half of just one of Obama’s boutique, niche “green jobs” programs. As Churchill almost said, never in the field of human con tricks has so much been owed by so many to so little effect.

Fortunately, there is no “American Jobs Act”. Indeed, the other day, tired of waiting for Obama to turn his telepromptered pseudo-bill into a typewritten actual bill, the Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert waggishly introduced an “American Jobs Act” all of his own. But back on the campaign trail the chanting goes on, last week’s election results in Nevada and New York notwithstanding. America has the lowest employment since the early Eighties, the lowest property ownership since the mid-Sixties, the highest deficit-to-GDP ratio since the Second World War, the worst long-term unemployment since the Great Depression, the highest government dependency rate of all time, and the biggest debt mountain in the history of the planet. And the president has just announced to the world that he’s checked the more-of-the-above box. The Pass My Jobs Bill jobs bill proclaims that this is all he knows and all he wants to know.

In my new book, I point out that Big Government leaves everything else smaller – and, when it’s bigger than anything ever attempted, the everything else is going to be way smaller. Maybe if you’re a “public service” worker or a tenured professor at Berkeley or a green-jobs racketeer or a New York Times columnist married to an heiress, you can afford Obama. But, if you’re not, look at your home, look at your savings, and figure out what’ll be left after another four years of “stimulus.”

“I love you!” squeals the Obammybopper in North Carolina. “I love you, too,” says Obama. “But… .”

But: You gotta take this half-trillion dollar bill, and the next one, and the one after that. Like Al Gore says in “Love Story,” love means never having to say you’re sorry.