The Roots of Obama's Rage

Since I am not easily moved by eloquent rhetoric, nor is my mind hampered by left-wing ideology, by the spring or early summer of 2008 I was aware that Obama was a phony. Specifically, I had come to understand that Barack Obama hated America in general - and hated white Americans in particular, all the while pretending to be a centrist who wanted to bring people together.

But while I understood what Obama was, what I didn't understand was why. What was there in his life that fermented such deep hatred for me and for people like me?

Now I am on my way to understanding this hatred because I am reading a book by Dinesh D'Souza entitled, "The Roots of Obama's Rage". Like me, D'Souza at some point reached a similar conclusion about Obama and set out to try to understand where this hatred originated in a person who had such an easy, well-off and comfortable life, and who did not ever experience the racial prejudice many, older, black people had faced.

D'Souza's main theme is that, while Obama is a socialist, it is not socialism that really moves him; he is an anti-colonialist, and like many pseudo-intellectual anti-colonialists before him, his socialism springs from and is secondary to his anti-colonialist fervor. What drives him is the desire to pay back and tear down those countries he most sees as having practiced colonialism, America, Great Britain, France and Israel. What drives him is the desire to force the wealthy people in the United States (who he thinks gained their wealth by exploiting third-world peoples) to share their wealth.

Barack Obama has managed to seal off all his school and college records and writings and most of the details about his birth and his childhood. It is highly likely that he has done so because these records would reveal his true beliefs in ways everyone would understand. Author D'Souza has not been able to breach these barriers (we know much less about Obama than about any other American president), but he has been able to put together a very complete and fascinating picture of Obama's life and the influences on him.

D'Souza's second theme is that the primary influence on Obama was his father and what he thought (or imagined) what his father would want him to be. D'Souza maintains that, although his father deserted him at an early age, Barack Obama immersed himself in the writings and oral history of his anti-colonialist father's activities.

Dinesh D'Souza has done all Americans a favor for the research he has done to write this book, "The Roots of Obama's Rage". Get it and read it. Be armed with the truth about the man who is destroying America.

About That State of the Union Speech Last Night

Excuses, Excuses

By Jeffrey Folks January 26,2011 American Thinker

On January 25, the President delivered his State of the Union address. Speaking with vigor and aplomb, the President demonstrated once again that he can look serious, act like a president, and read the words that have been written for him. But so far he has not demonstrated his ability to be a president, create jobs, or do anything else.

In his well-scripted address, Obama spoke of the "accomplishments" of his first two years in office. Surprisingly, healthcare and financial regulation reform were not at the top of the list. In fact, they were barely mentioned. Instead, the President boasted of "his" extension of the Bush tax cuts. These are the same Bush tax cuts that the President consistently opposed extending until after his party's "shellacking" on Nov. 2.

If the Bush tax cuts are a good thing for the economy, why not make them permanent instead of blocking that proposal? If tax cuts are what it takes to spur growth, why not permanent tax cuts accompanied by spending cuts?

Instead, at the same time that he speaks of fiscal restraint, Obama proposes more spending. He calls this "encouraging innovation," but by that very phrase he shows how little he understands the free market. The American economy does not need the "encouragement" of government to engage in innovation. It is government "encouragement" that got us in the current housing mess, the deficit mess, and the regulatory mess. Government encouragement will only lead to further misallocation of the nation's resources.

Obama understands so little of capitalism that he actually thinks that businesses need more government oversight and "investment." He simply can't get beyond the idea of statism: the belief that every aspect of life, from what sort of car the public drives to how much profit a business is allowed to retain, must be decided by government planners in Washington. Now, at the desperate hour when America needs free-market capitalism above all else, Obama's response is more regulation.

The President, it seems, has experienced a "Sputnik moment." He now realizes, after 112 weeks in office, that America needs to compete with China and India rather than grow jobs, as Nancy Pelosi helpfully suggested, by handing out unemployment checks. The problem is he still thinks that government grows jobs by handing out stimulus checks.

The State of the Union address, in fact, was a perfect reflection of policy-making based on political expediency. The address has been cobbled together in a continued attempt to placate the left wing of the Democratic Party, which Obama cannot abandon if he wishes to be reelected. The left is ideologically opposed to economic development of every kind, so there is nothing in this speech about removing environmental regulations and fast-tracking exploration and production of conventional fuels. Not only does Obama ignore the promise of the vast new natural gas reserves within our borders, he asks Congress to eliminate whatever subsidies now exist for conventional fuels and turn them over to less efficient producers of alternative fuels. And this at a time when the free market is turning its back on alternatives.

Then there is the President's plan for more spending on education. Spending on education has increased more rapidly in the past two years than any sector other than alternative energy. Yet the President reports that America continues to fall behind its competitors. There is no measurable evidence that Obama's injection of funds has had any effect other than enrich teachers' unions, which are then able to contribute to the political campaigns of Democratic candidates. Obama's call for more spending on education is nothing more than another payoff for his political constituency.

Making America greener and smarter is just a start. How about giving 98% of Americans access to high speed internet? Giving 80% of them access to high-speed rail? Giving them new roads and bridges so as to create more of those "shovel ready" jobs that weren't quite ready two years ago?

How about free-trade agreements with Korea, Columbia, and Panama? Fine, as long as the union bosses approve. Less regulation? Great, but not from EPA, SEC, FCC, and the thousands of other agencies that are doing such a fine job of strangling the economy.

And finally, let's talk about that little problem with the national debt. Let's freeze discretionary federal spending for five years at 2010 levels -- the highest levels of government spending in absolute terms and as a percentage of GDP since World War II. An effort of that magnitude will only add another $6 trillion dollars to the national debt, bringing it up to $20 trillion ahead of schedule. What a sacrifice!

Toward the end of his address, the President began to repeat the mantra "We do big things." There was nothing in his speech about big businesses doing big things -- nothing about the very real accomplishments of IBM, Microsoft, Boeing, Apple, Exxon Mobil, Wells Fargo, or America's other large and productive corporations, even his admirers at GE. So I assume he was speaking of government doing big things. That's certainly what he talked about for nearly all of his 65 minutes.

America's economy has already been wounded by Obama's politically inspired stimulus spending, healthcare bill, and financial regulation reform act. Now he wants to kill it off with two more years of "encouragement." Republicans in the House would have to be barmy to support any of it.

What we saw Tuesday night was not a new Obama. It was the same old Obama, a calculating politician schooled in the Chicago patronage system. Obama pretends to be a unifier speaking to the country as a whole. But on Tuesday, once again, he was speaking only to his political base. Obama will never turn his back on the political elite, greens, unions, trial lawyers, and the urban underclass. And yet he can never unleash the power of the free market to create jobs until he abandons these anti-growth constituencies.

Obama's solution: Pretend that he has shifted toward a more business-friendly, free-market stance while changing nothing. It's still the unions, environmentalists, lawyers, and welfare clients who matter -- not the middle class.

In reality, the State of the Union had nothing to do with creating jobs or competitiveness. Obama knows that he has lost the war on both of these fronts. Realistic economic projections indicate that the nation's unemployment rate will still be over 9% well into 2012. Obama will not win reelection on his job creation record. Nor will he win on competitiveness-a nebulous term that can mean just about anything, and does when the President uses it.

To win reelection, the President must re-ignite his political base-and raise a great deal of cash . Shamefully, and unabashedly, Obama devoted his second State of the Union address to these two goals. Winning reelection seems to be the only competition he is interested in.

Jeffrey Folks is author of many books and articles on American culture and politics.

Breaking News About the 'Ground Zero' Mosque

For those of you who understand the historical significance and meaning of the 'Ground Zero' mosque (now renamed, 'Park51') and its celebration of jihad and of the terrible events of 9/11, Pamela Geller writes the following piece to keep us informed:

Imam Shakeup at the Ground Zero Mosque

By Pamela Geller January 17, 2011 American Thinker

There has been a shakeup at the Cordoba Initiative/Park 51, the group behind the projected Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero. The deceitful pro-Sharia Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan are out, and an imam from Washington, D.C., Abdullah Adhami, is in.

What does this mean? First, it means that we won. We are declaring victory. It seems clear that Rauf had to go because he had become a liability to the taqiyya project of the Ground Zero mosque. And that is because of the light we shed on his true beliefs and allegiances. Rauf snagged more than $2 million in public financing to renovate low-income apartments he owns in New Jersey. He took the money and never made the repairs, forcing good people to live with vermin and dilapidation. Slumlord Rauf is also a prominent member of the Perdana organization , a leading funder of the flotilla launched against Israel by the genocidal Islamic terror group, IHH. He has made extreme statements like "the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al-Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims."

We exposed Imam Rauf. He is now attempting to crawl back under his rauf. The New York Times says that his dismissal was "announced unilaterally by Mr. Abdul Rauf's partner in the project, Sharif el-Gamal." If that is true, apparently there's some bad blood there. Sharif el-Gamal is the developer who is behind the Ground Zero mosque. This charlatan has said, "when you beat someone up physically, you get exercise & stress relief." The thug El-Gamal is also a deadbeat. This man who plans to build a 150-million-dollar mosque was evicted from his office for non-payment of rent , and he has another big debt he skipped out on, an un-repaid loan. It also came to light last summer that he owed $224,270.77 in back property tax on the mosque site, and failed to pay its bills in January and July.

What a pair, the extremist slumlord and the deadbeat mug. If someone like El-Gamal had had enough of Rauf, at least in a leadership role (he will continue on the Cordoba/Park 51 Board), you know the situation must be desperate.

To replace Rauf, they've named Abdullah Adhami, from Washington, D.C. They say that they're going to bring in others, also; they intend to bring in an army of imams to the Ground Zero mosquestrosity in their stead. But Adhami is no improvement on Rauf. If this guy is "modern" or a "moderate" or a "reformer," then I am the Pope. He's a "new imam," clearly intended to present a better public face for the Ground Zero mosque project than did Rauf, but he's the same as the old imam, essentially. The main evidence for that is his link to Siraj Wahhaj.

Siraj Wahhaj is a prominent American Muslim leader who has a reputation as a "moderate," but has a history of Islamic supremacist statements. In September 1991, he stated : "And [Allah] declared ‘Whoever is at war with my friends, I declare war on them.' ... Your true friend is Allah, the messenger, and those who believe.... The Americans are not your friends ... The Canadians are not your friends ... The Europeans are not your friends. Your friend is Allah, the Messenger and those who believe. These people will never be satisfied with you until you follow their religion..."

He has also said: "In time, this so-called democracy will crumble, and there will be nothing, and the only thing that will remain will be Islam....if only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate."

Wahhaj also has served on the Board of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). And most importantly, Wahhaj was named a possible co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Is there no one in Islamic leadership who is not tied in some way to jihad or terror? Or is it that El-Gamal and company really want these horrible connections to the terror attacks at Ground Zero?

Abdullah Adhami is an architect, and he is so enamored with this Islamic supremacist imam that he volunteered to design the masjid At-Taqwa, where Wahhaj incites his followers. Adhami has called Wahhaj "our beloved imam," and has said: "Siraj Wahhaj is the voice of the spirit of Islam in America and its pride."

This further demonstrates the true nature and belief system of Imam Rauf and Daisy Khan, whose reputations have been exposed to the American people. In a triumph for AFDI/SIOA and Americans across this great land, they slithered out of the Ground Zero mosque, opting out of the sunlight to work behind the scenes.

But we will continue to expose their stealth jihad.

Pamela Geller is the editor and publisher of the Atlas Shrugs website and former associate publisher of the New York Observer. She is the author of The Post-American Presidency.

I don't think Ms. Geller really means that "we've won", because she goes on to warn us to stay vigilant. We have exposed Rauf, but the drive to build the mosque and celebrate jihad and sharia goes on.

Comprehensive List of Obamacare Tax Hikes

For a comprehensive list of the tax hikes built into the Obamacare law, go here.

Please especially note what happens to the "Bush tax cuts" when the recently negotiated 'compromise' expires.

What Is Wrong With You?

When a liberal friend of mine here in Florida, at a men's breakfast, stated that there was no evidence that Major Hasan (the Fort Hood murderer) was a Muslim terrorist, I recoiled in disgust. This was several days after the massacre, when it was widely known that Hasan had shouted "Allahu Akbar" during the shootings, that he had often consulted terrorist websites and that he had communicated with terrorist leaders. What is wrong with the liberal mind?

Liberalism's Ugly Face

By Vasko Kohlmayer January 13, 2011 American Thinker

While most normal Americans still reeled in shock in the wake of the Tucson shooting, liberals across the country were out in force blaming conservatives for it. Given how heart-rending the whole tragedy was, their reaction is truly mind-boggling. One can only wonder what kind of human beings would react in this way.

To liberals' eternal shame, it turns out that the shooter was anything but a Tea Partyer and that his "conservative" credentials are rather thin indeed. In fact, the information that has emerged since then would appear to place him in the leftist camp, if anywhere in the political sphere. But in truth, he inhabited the alternate reality of a deranged mind.

This is what it boils down to: A madman shoots a Democrat Congresswoman and a group of innocent bystanders and liberals want to blame conservatives for it. This is worse than outrageous or cynical.

Liberals' response to this atrocity is not a normal human reaction. Normal human beings do not think like that. The normal reaction to this kind of event is grief and tears. Only morally and emotionally deformed individuals could embark on a political smear campaign just moments after such a tragedy without possessing any facts whatsoever.

When I first heard the news of the shooting, I immediately assumed that Giffords was a Republican and it took me several hours to register that she was not. Not once during that time it occurred to me to blame liberals for the atrocity despite the hateful and vitriolic rhetoric which is the hallmark of their political discourse. (Do you remember some of the things they have said about Bush or Palin or conservatives in general?)

As I followed the coverage I was stunned by the unspeakable pain that was inflicted on the victims and their families. The realization that Giffords was a Democrat changed absolutely nothing about the way I viewed the tragedy. When normal people see that a woman has been shot through the head and six others are dead -- including an angelic little girl -- scoring political points is as far from their minds as the east is from the west.

There is a point at which politicking ends and considerations of political gain or ideology fade into insignificance. For most people the Tucson tragedy was such a point. At such moments we can only shake our heads in disbelief at the diabolic insensibility of the shooter while our hearts overflow with love and empathy for those so grievously afflicted. It matters not a bit what their beliefs or ideological orientation is.

Whether liberal Democrats or conservative Republican, we are all human beings created in God's image. And even though we may sometime heatedly disagree on political issues, we should ultimately relate to each other on the basis of love. I believe that this how most ordinary Americans feel about what happened in Tucson. Sadly and shockingly, it quickly became obvious that many liberals had little love or empathy to waste.

I would like to ask my liberal friends these questions:

How come that upon seeing this terrible tragedy your first impulse was to gratuitously smear your political opponents?

Why instead of grieving and sorrowing -- which is what most normal people did -- you immediately began your sickly scheming to extract political advantage from such a direful event?

What's wrong with you?!

As if this were not enough, liberals demanded that Sarah Palin respond to the events in Tucson. But when she did so , eloquently, they denounced her as un-presidential and worse . Palin's connection to this tragedy can only on the human level. But even if the gunman had posters of Sarah Palin on his walls and memorized all her speeches, she would still not be in any way culpable. Sarah Palin has never advocated the assassination of politicians or mass shootings of innocent Americans.

John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan, because he wanted to impress the actress Jodi Foster. No one called on Jodi Foster to justify herself in that tragedy. So why should Sarah Palin? Why should she answer for someone else's actions, especially since that person is by all indications a left-wing lunatic?

The attempt by liberals to paint the Tea Party movement as a dangerous aberration that breeds homicidal maniacs is simply egregious. The Tea Party is a movement by everyday Americans who are sincerely concerned about the due intrusion of the federal government into their lives. If the last election is anything to go by, most current American voters are either part of it or in sympathy with at least some of its goals. In other words, Tea Party is a broad mainstream political phenomenon. That liberals want to brand it as part of a lunatic fringe is offensive beyond words.

As more information comes out about the shooter, the liberals' initial attempt at the blame game has become painfully embarrassing to them. We must, however, keep reminding the nation of what they tried to do, because it teaches an important lesson.

Carried away by the hope of scoring political points, liberals inadvertently revealed something about themselves and their system of beliefs. They showed us that liberalism is a convoluted ideology that strips its proponents of their humanness to the point where they do not think, act or feel like regular people.

May their behavior not become only a sad footnote to this tragedy, but may it be long remembered. Let the people of this nation behold the repulsive ugliness of liberalism and may they recoil from it in disgust.

Thank God Most Muslims Are Far Away From Us

If you think that something like this can't happen here, you have not been watching recent events in places like Sweden, Germany, France and England. All Muslim immigration must be ended.

Thank God These People Are on the Other Side of the World

By William Tucker on 1.7.11 The American Spectator

Just curious, but is anybody paying attention to what just happened in Pakistan? It's dribbled out in bits and pieces, but I don't recall anyone putting the whole picture in perspective.

Here's what's happened. More than a year ago, Asia Bibi, a 45-year-old mother of five, was working in the fields in the Punjab province when some of the Muslim women working alongside her asked her to fetch water. When she returned, several women said they would not accept it because she was a Christian and therefore "unclean." Insults were exchanged and in the process Bibi made some insulting remarks about the Koran and Islam.

The incident blew over at first, but word spread through the town and a few days later Bibi was being pursued by a Muslim mob. The police intervened and rescued her but felt obliged to satisfy the mob's bloodlust so they charged Bibi with blasphemy.

This is a capital offense under a law dating back to British colonialism. Bibi was held in solitary confinement for more a year until she was finally put on trial in October. She was convicted in the provincial court and sentenced to die on November 9.

By now the case was drawing international attention. Christian groups began to protest and Pope Benedict XVI appealed for clemency, complaining that Christians in Pakistan are "often victims of violence and discrimination." Other minority groups in Pakistan began calling for the repeal of the blasphemy law, saying it was used to persecute all minorities. The execution was postponed. Then in mid-November, Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab and apparently a decent man, called for issuing a pardon and said that blasphemy should not be punishable by death. In late November, an aide to President Asif Ali Zardari put out word that a pardon would be forthcoming. All the while, Bibi remained in jail.

So on last Tuesday, Governor Taseer, the man who had spoken up for softening the law, was assassinated by one of his own guards. The killer, one Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, said that Taseer had committed blasphemy by siding with Bibi. Qadri was known for his extreme views and acted alone, but none of the governor's other guards seemed to make any attempt to stop him. Yesterday when Qadri appeared in court, he was mobbed by a throng of admirers who garlanded him with flowers. Meanwhile, Taseer's family couldn't find a Muslim cleric to preside over his funeral.

SO THERE YOU have it. An incident that might take place on a playground in this country becomes an international incident in Pakistan with one of the highest public officials in the land assassinated while the crowds cheer.

Press coverage has been typically boring and mealy-mouthed. The Voice of America found the whole thing emblematic of class conflict:

Political power in Pakistan has usually rested with an educated, liberal, and often wealthy elite -- at least when the country was not under military rule. With his push to roll back the country's blasphemy laws, Punjab Governor Salman Taseer epitomized what radicals view as an alarming secular drift in Pakistan.
Lisa Curtis, of the Heritage Foundation, of all places, ascribed the incident to a kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome:

"It's been events over the past 30 years, like the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Islamization policies of General Zia ul-Haq during the 1980s, which has really strengthened the Islamist forces and the more puritanical sects in Pakistan over the more traditional and moderate Sunni sects."

Ravi Agrawal, reporting for CNN, explains it all as a reaction to colonialism.
[Taseer's] political thoughts were forged at his English-style high school in posh Lahore, and then furthered in his time studying accounting in England. Taseer lived and died a Muslim. But he was also modern, with western views on law and democracy. And it was those views that clashed with a country that has increasingly identified itself as Islamic, shedding the anglicized traditions of its colonized past.
Sounds like he deserved to die to me.

Here's an alternative explanation to the story. These people are crazy. They live in a world that most Europeans left behind when Hieronymus Bosch hung up his paintbrushes -- a world that most contemporary American leave behind somewhere around first grade. I remember well the panic we all felt that year trying to escape some particularly unpopular girl's "cooties." After another year, however, the terror subsided. We began to lead rational lives. Not so in the great Islamic Republic. The phobias, irrational fears, superstitions, and delusions that most cultures would ascribe to madness are part of daily life. The place is a lunatic asylum. Thank god they live on the other side of the world. But of course, as 9/11 showed, that's not really true anymore. And they do have a nuclear weapon, too -- think of that.

We are not to blame for Pakistan. As Iraqis have gone on killing each other for the last five years, it was always possible to say that we set the ball rolling by invading in the first place. But Pakistan is sui generis. These people are not rejecting colonialism, they are rejecting civilization. Sunnis kill Shi'ia, Shi'ia kill Sunnis, and Sunnis and Shi'ia combine to kill Suffi. Then they all get together and murder Christians or someone who can speak English or whoever else happens to be at hand. Me and my cousin against the world.

I think we should finish whatever the hell it is we are doing in Afghanistan but then get the hell out. Forget about this "nation-building." These people are incapable of holding a wedding or a funeral without somebody blowing himself up and taking half the crowd with him. Maybe in some other century we can sit down and talk about a peaceful future. For now, I say let them broil in their own inferno.

Obama Rules Drop Oil Supplies 13% Gas Now $3.10

With demand down, one need look no further than the Obama drilling ban in the Gulf followed by the imposition of impossible new rules to explain $100 oil and $3.00 gas predicted to hit $4.00 soon.

Drilling Is Stalled Even After Ban Is Lifted

By BEN CASSELMAN And DANIEL GILBERT JANUARY 3, 2011 Wall St Journal

More than two months after the Obama administration lifted its ban on drilling in the deep-water Gulf of Mexico, oil companies are still waiting for approval to drill the first new oil well there. Experts now expect the wait to continue until the second half of 2011, and perhaps into 2012.

The administration says it is simply trying to enforce new safety rules adopted in the wake of the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which killed 11 workers and set off the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. Environmental groups say the administration is right to take its time because the Gulf disaster exposed the risks of offshore drilling.

But the delay is hurting big oil companies such as Chevron Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC, which have billions of dollars in investments tied up in Gulf projects that are on hold and are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a day for rigs that aren't allowed to drill. Smaller operators such as ATP Oil & Gas Corp., which have less flexibility to focus on projects in other regions, have been even harder hit.

The impact of the delays goes beyond the oil industry. The Gulf coast economy has been hit hard by the slowdown in drilling activity, especially because the oil spill also hurt the region's fishing and tourism industries. The Obama administration in September estimated that 8,000 to 12,000 workers could lose their jobs temporarily as a result of the moratorium; some independent estimates have been much higher.

The slowdown also has long-term implications for U.S. oil production. The Energy Information Administration, the research arm of the Department of Energy, last month predicted that domestic offshore oil production will fall 13% this year from 2010 due to the moratorium and the slow return to drilling; a year ago, the agency predicted offshore production would rise 6% in 2011. The difference: a loss of about 220,000 barrels of oil a day.

Drilling in waters of less than 500 feet also has been snared by the government's increased scrutiny. Regulators requested modifications to 101 shallow-water drilling plans in 2010, compared with 59 such requests in 2009 and just 31 in 2008. Rig operators say drilling permits once approved in a matter of weeks have taken up to five months to process as the government introduced new rules.

The lengthy delays in reviewing new permits have caught the industry off guard. When the Obama administration lifted its ban on deep-water drilling on Oct. 12, many experts had expected a few permits to be issued before the end of 2010, followed by a gradual ramp-up of activity this year.

Among the new rules: Companies must hire outside engineers to certify key well-safety equipment and subject the gear to more rigorous tests. They require more worker training, more documentation and detailed plans of how they would respond to a worst-case well blowout.

Environmentalists say the Deepwater Horizon disaster proved reviews needed to be more thorough. "The process can work efficiently. Maybe not as quickly as it did before, but that's understandable," said Elgie Holstein, a staff expert at the Environmental Defense Fund.

But with no deep-water permits yet issued and companies still struggling to comply with new, tougher safety rules, experts say it could be 2012 before drilling approaches pre-disaster levels. Even when it does, projects that were once approved in weeks will likely take months to get past increased regulatory scrutiny.

"There was a sense that we would start to see deep-water permits approved by year end," said Arun Jayaram, an energy analyst with Credit Suisse in New York. Mr. Jayaram said he now doesn't expect much deep-water drilling at all this year.

Some companies are shifting investments out of the Gulf. BP PLC recently said it would move a brand-new rig that was meant to work in the Gulf, Pride International Inc.'s Deep Ocean Ascension, to Libya. Marathon Oil Corp. has tried to cancel a contract for a newly built Gulf rig owned by Noble Corp. Noble declined to comment, but last month it said it would "vigorously defend its rights under the drilling contract." Wall St Journal