Quote of the Day:

Clearly, Americans are incapable of living their everyday lives without explicit written guidance from Washington bureaucrats.

Andrew Malcolm in Investor's Business Daily

Fortunately, Malcolm observes, tongue-in-cheek, a "caring" president and his bureaucrats are working "feverishly" to  impose an unprecedented barrage of new regulations before he leaves office in a mere 416 days (or 10,008, as Malcolm helpfully breaks it down).

President Obama used Thanksgiving week, a time when normal people are likely to think of friends and family, to issue 2,000 new rules, 144 of which, Malcolm reveals, will cost least $100 million each. Don't feel bad if you missed the new rules:  

You were supposed to miss the list, the Unified Agenda. It's set by law, but not the surreptitious timing. There'll be hundreds more on another list in six months. Rules on employers, banks, restaurants, importers. You name it.

While the president may have slipped the new rules by most of us, the IBD editors were vigilant:

Luckily, Heritage Foundation fellow James Gattuso is paying attention. He notes that the 144 new economically significant rules is a record, breaking the previous high of 136 set just last spring.

The regulations, he adds, "span the full scope of American life, ranging from labeling requirements for pet food, new test procedures for battery chargers, mandated paid sick leave for contractors and automatic speed limiters for trucks to a dozen new rules limiting energy use (and increasing the price) of everything from furnaces and dishwashers to dehumidifiers."

Those rules might not sound so bad, but that phrase "economically significant" means that each of them will cost the economy at least $100 million.

So, at minimum, those 144 new rules will cost us north of $14 billion a year. That doesn't include the other 1,856 or so new rules, which will cost billions more.

And remember: Regulation has a cumulative impact on the economy. It builds with time, going from molehill to mountain fairly quickly, a dead weight on the economy that lowers our standard of living.

After the new regs were promulgated, President Obama does what he most likes to do: climb aboard Air Force One:

Then, the Democrat and the Mrs. climbed aboard a 747 again to create a six-hour, jumbo-jet carbon footprint to Paris to talk about lethal carbon footprints causing global warming. Not counting the squadron of associated aircraft that accompany a POTUS. And those used by other world leaders gathering to blab.

Global warming is a varsity-level concern in Obama's ideological mind that's easily the worst national security threat facing the United States today.

Of course, you can guess what will ooze from this week's Paris meeting: More rules for you.

I have a suggestion for the world's elite: if global warming is really such a concern, why don't they use the phone instead of their jets? This would create less hot air in two ways.