Thursday Morning Links

From Politico, noting that like Dick Cheney, President Obama finds it best to meet in secret when meeting with the private energy industry:

The White House did not respond to queries from Politico about why the public and press were excluded from the discussion, which took place at the Energy Department.

During Obama's first bid for the White House, the freshman senator complained about then-Vice President Dick Cheney's private meetings with energy industry representatives.
"The oil companies were allowed to craft energy policy with Dick Cheney in secret while every other voice was silenced ­ including the NASA scientists who tried to warn us about the dangers of climate change," Obama said in a June 2007 campaign speech.

"When there are meetings between lobbyists and a government agency, we won't be going to the Supreme Court to keep it secret like Dick Cheney and his energy task force, we'll be putting it up on the Internet for every American to watch."

And so it goes. The mainstream media won't note this. The mainstream media is just happy the president acknowledges that the energy industry exists.

WSJ Links

Section D (Personal Journal):

• The musical score will be rap and hip-hop. Sad. I won't be going. 

• Vijay Singh filed a nasty lawsuit against the PGA. I've never cared for Singh after he expressed his views about women on the tour. That was some time ago. Deer antler spray.

Section C ( Money & Investing):

Section B (Marketplace):

• How low can they go: McDonald's and Wendy's in price war.

• Toyota profit surges.
  

Section A:

• Benghazi stories are the headline stories. Apologists for the president (who went to bed when he heard the embassy was under attack) and SecState (who missed the 3:00 a.m. call but was spinning the story by 6:00 a.m.) should be ashamed.

• The two brothers of the Cleveland man who enslaved three women for a decade were not aware of what he was doing. The fact that the windows of the house were completely blacked out; no one had access to the house; a nude woman was seen crawling on the floor/backyard (I forget the details); etc., were apparently not noted.

• Bangladesh factory toll surpasses 800: as the Illinois representative would say -- "death is a part of life." A lot of quotable quotes came out of the Benghazi hearing yesterday.

• Kurdish rebels are pulling out of Turkey; latest step in ending the 3-decade feud between the Kurds and Turkey.

• Op-ed: The Lost Generation (I've blogged about it many times). This will be the saddest legacy of this administration. 

• Op-ed: Reagan had Thatcher, Clinton had Tony Blair, Bush had Angela Merkel. Who is Obama close to? Chavez? But he died.

• Op-ed: in defense of carbon dioxide (CO2): the demonized chemical compound is a boon to plant life and has little correlation with global temperature. Hallelujah.

And how about this for timeliness? From the Canadian Water Security Agency, something rarely seen:

Ice Surge, Saskatchewan, May 1, 2013