Obama ‘Hope And Change’ You Can Take Right Out Of Your Own Pocket: Florida Drivers Are Paying Nearly $6 A Gallon For Gas (You Will Too Soon)

Many Americans heard allof Obama’s “promises” and listened to the mainstream media praise him as a “transformational candidate” who was “sort of God.”  They wanted to know what an Obama presidency would be like.

Well now they know:

Florida Drivers Shelling Out Nearly $6 A Gallon At Some Gas Stations
By Matthew L. Higgins
February 22, 2012 11:47 AM

TAMPA (CBS Tampa) — Talk about pain at the pump! Some Florida drivers are spending nearly $6 a gallon to fill up their gas tanks.

According to GasBuddy.com, motorists are shelling out $5.89 for a gallon of regular gas at a Shell station in Lake Buena Vista, topping out at $5.99 a gallon for premium. It doesn’t get better at a Suncoast Energy station in Orlando, where drivers are paying $5.79 for a gallon of regular.

“Prices over in the Disney World area are much higher than any other place in Florida,” Jessica Brady, AAA spokeswoman, told CBS Tampa, adding that people regularly complain about gas prices in that area.

The Sunshine State is opening up its wallet, paying an average of $3.67 a gallon of unleaded gas, 12 cents more than the national average. And it’s only expected to go up.

“It doesn’t look like we will have relief at the pump anytime soon,” Brady told CBS Tampa. “I do think we will see prices surpass $4 a gallon. I think we will see that closer to spring time.”

One reason for the high prices is the conflict with Iran over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has threatened to disrupt oil shipments through the waterway due to the European Union sanctions leveled against the country over its nuclear program, causing the price of crude to skyrocket. Trading on a barrel of crude today is a little over $106.

Another reason for the high gas prices: positive economic news. The drop in the unemployment rate and improved housing market numbers have caused gas and oil prices to rise.

“I know it frustrates quite a few consumers why positive news will lead to higher prices,” Brady told CBS Tampa. “It really just comes down to speculation.”

A third culprit behind the gas price boom is Greece. The EU’s bailout for the indebted country only adds to the global fuel demand.

And because of these reasons, Brady believes that Florida and the rest of the U.S. could see historic gas prices.

“I think this year we will see much higher highs.”

Believe it or not, those prices aren’t the highest in the nation. According to GasBuddy.com, motorists in Alaska are paying a whopping $6.34 for a gallon of regular at some gas stations. The cheapest gas can be found in Wyoming at $2.75 a gallon.

Obama is a pathologically dishonest weasel who is trying to take credit for BUSH’S ENERGY POLICIES to claim that we’re drilling more of our own oil than ever before.  Meanwhile, Obama has doubled down on PREVENTING drilling over every federal area that he can control:

“Since taking office, he has declared 85% of our offshore areas off limits, decreased oil and gas leases in the Rockies by 70%, rejected the Keystone XL pipeline, and has 10 federal agencies planning more regulation of hydraulic fracturing…. The president’s ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ approach to energy security is hurting consumers.”

As one fellow furious blogger notes:

Here are the facts. Offshore is down 30% since Obama took office. Rocky Mountain federal lands are down 70% under Obama. He has held 85% of the outer shelf off limits. Only 3% of federal lands are available for lease. Obama says domestic production is up. It’s up due to francking and many in his party and administration want to stop that.

Here’s a quote from his energy secretary, Chu. President Barack Obama’s Energy secretary unwittingly created a durable GOP talking point in September 2008 when he talked to The Wall Street Journal about the benefits of having gasoline prices rise over 15 years to encourage energy efficiency.

“Somehow,” Chu said, “we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”

Obama is a truly evil man.  He lies so outrageously it is beyond unreal.

Four years ago he was demonizing Bush for the price of gas.  Now all of a sudden everyone and everything is to blame except the same office of the president.

Our Former Socialist Neighbor Canada Is Doing Great. Why? Because It Went The OPPOSITE Way Obama Imposed On America.

Omigosh.  That stuff that Republicans keep talking about?  Yeah, it actually works.

It sure as hell works a lot better than Obama’s strategy to blame Bush for Obama’s entire failed presidency.

Too bad Americans would rather follow Obama and Democrats in the direction that the Dodo bird took:

Tax Cuts, Less-Intrusive Gov’t Help Canada Soar
Posted December 29, 2011 06:27 PM ET

Success: Away from the low growth and high regulation of an America under Washington’s thumb, our northern neighbor is economically strong. As 2011 ends, Canada has announced yet another tax cut — and will soar even more.

The Obama administration and its economic czars have flailed about for years, baffled about how to get the U.S. economy growing.

In reality, the president need look no further than our neighbor, Canada, whose solid growth is the product of tax cuts, fiscal discipline, free trade, and energy development. That’s made Canada a roaring puma nation, while its supposedly more powerful southern neighbor stands on the outside looking in.

On Thursday, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that he will slash corporate taxes again on Jan. 1 in the final stage of his Economic Action Plan, dropping the federal business tax burden to just 15%.

Along with fresh tax cuts in provinces such as Alberta, total taxes for businesses in Canada will drop to 25%, one of the lowest in the G7, and below the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development average.

“Creating jobs and growth is our top priority,” said Minister Jim Flaherty. “Through our government low-tax plan … we are continuing to send the message that Canada is open for business and the best place to invest.”

It’s not just that Canada’s conservative government favors makers over takers. Harper’s also wildly popular for shrinking government. “The Harper government has pursued a strategic objective to disembed the federal state from the lives of citizens,” wrote University of Calgary Professor Barry Cooper, in the Calgary Herald.

Harper also has made signing free trade treaties his priority. Canada now has 11 free trade pacts in force, and 14 under active negotiation — including pacts with the European Union and India, among others.

“We believe in free trade in Canada, we’re a free-trading nation. That’s the source of our strength, our quality of life, our economic strength,” Flaherty said last month.

Lastly, Canada has pursued its competitive advantage — oil. And it did so not through top-down “industrial policy,” but by getting government out of the way.

Harper has enacted market-friendly regulations to accomplish big things like the Keystone Pipeline — and urged President Obama to move forward on it or else Canada would sell its oil to China.

These policies have been well-known since the Reagan era. But in a country that’s been institutionally socialist since the 1950s, Harper’s moves represent a dramatic affirmation for free market economics.

For Canada, they’ve had big benefits.

Canada’s incomes are rising, its unemployment is two percentage points below the U.S. rate, its currency is strengthening and it boasts Triple-A or equivalent sovereign ratings across the board from the five top international ratings agencies, lowering its cost of credit.

Is it too much to ask Washington to start paying attention to the Canadian success story?

These sound principles work every time they are tried, and they have led to a transformation in Canada.

Imagine what they could do in the U.S.

Or stay socialist and perish.

I pointed out in an article nearly two years ago that Canada was on a far better path than the USA BECAUSE it didn’t go the way to Obama’s “stimulus hell.”  In particular, I cited an article by John Lott that documented Canada was doing far better BECAUSE it didn’t pursue a giant government stimulus.

And this is the same John Lott who wrote an article on February 3, 2009 boldy predicting what in FACT HAPPENED: that Obama’s stimulus would RAISE unemployment (which it did: unemployment went from 7.6% when Obama took office to 10.2% by October 2009).  Versus the Obama prediction that if his stimulus was passed unemployment wouldn’t go above 8%.

Conservatives have been right over and over again.  But it doesn’t matter when there is a party of genuine evil running things and when there is a media propaganda machine that fanatically supports that party of genuine evil.

The God damn America that Obama “fundamentally transformed” the United States into is a suicide machine.

64% Of Small Businesses Planning To Wait Out Obama, Will NOT Be Adding New Jobs (12% Say They Will CUT Jobs)

There’s the old conundrum about the wolf, the goat and the cabbage:

A farmer and his wolf, goat, and cabbage come to the edge of a river they wish to cross.  There is a boat at the river’s edge that only the farmer can row.  The farmer can take at most one other object besides himself on a crossing, but if the wolf is ever left with the goat, the wolf will eat the goat; similarly, if the goat is left with the cabbage, the goat will eat the cabbage.  How can the farmer get all of them across?

There’s actually a solution to that problem.

Now we’ve got an even more intractable problem, involving a healthy job-creating economy, a Marxist president and a Marxist Democrat Party.

This one is unsolvable, because unlike the above dilemma involving the wolf, the goat and the cabbage, BOTH the Marxist President AND the Marxist Democrat Party will devour the economy unless it is somehow taken away from them.  Like the goat with the cabbage, they will insatiably eat every job they can and turn those jobs into dead crap.  Like the wolf with the goat, they will kill the economy and systematically devour it until only bones are left.

We are still over a year away from getting the chance to save ourselves from this insoluble dilemma.

And here’s the consequence:

Little Hiring Seen by Small Business
JULY 11, 2011
By SIOBHAN HUGHES

WASHINGTON—The U.S. labor market could stay sluggish for a while, with small-business executives reluctant to hire amid the murky economic outlook.

A survey of small business owners shows a lack of
confidence in the U.S. economy. More than two-thirds indicated they do not plan
to add payrolls in 2011 or 2012. WSJ’s Siobhan Hughes reports. Photo: Justin
Sullivan/Getty Images

Almost two-thirds—64%—of small-business executives surveyed said they weren’t expecting to add to their payrolls in the next year and another 12% planned to cut jobs, according to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce report to be released Monday. Just 19% said they would expand their work forces.

This comes after a Labor Department report Friday showed employers added few jobs in June, and unemployment rose to 9.2%. The bleak figures joined other data showing the recovery losing momentum in recent months, which has caused many analysts and policy makers to lower their forecasts for economic growth in the second half of the year.

The Small Business Administration says small businesses, defined as companies with fewer than 500 workers, employ about half of the workers in the private sector. In the Chamber’s survey of 1,409 executives, conducted by Harris Interactive, small businesses were defined as firms with revenue of $25 million or less.

More than half of the small-business executives in the June 27-30 survey cited economic uncertainty as the main reason for holding back on hiring. About a third blamed lack of sales, while just 7% pointed to problems getting credit.

“I think it’s safer to stay on hold and not hire workers,” said Harold Jackson, chief executive of Buffalo Supply, a Lafayette, Colo., distributor of high-tech medical equipment used in operating rooms.

Mr. Jackson said he has halved his staff to 15 workers since 2009 and was unlikely to start hiring soon even if his business picked up. “I can handle a reasonably large increase in business without having to increase the staff.”

Many of the executives surveyed were gloomy about the economy’s prospects. About 41% see the business climate getting worse over the next two years, compared with 29% who expect the climate to improve.

The modest hiring plans of small businesses don’t make up for the job losses in the past year, when some 29% let go workers, far outpacing the numbers that now plan to hire.

As the wise philosopher Scoobert Doo once put it upon hearing dire news, “Roh-roh.”

Between ObamaCare and the massive $500 billion in taxes it’s going to take out of the private sector, along with the 158 government bureaucracies and the thousands of pages of regulations; between the trillion dollars in NEW taxes Obama is demanding as part of any debt ceiling deal; between the Obama EPA which is simply ruling by fiat and imposing regulations that were actually voted down by Congress; between the fact that Obama won’t let us drill for our own oil even as his green energy sends the cost of energy (in his own words) “skyrocketing”; between the Obama NRLB that is openly warring with companies like Boeing for creating jobs in non-union states; between the Obama Labor Department, which is putting together some 100 job-killing regulations to strangle businesses from further hiring as we speak; and between the Dodd-Frank legislation which will systematically cut businesses off from credit, we are pretty well screwed.

We can have jobs, or we can have Obama and his Democrats.  But we’re not going to get jobs until we get rid of the people who are demonizing the job creators.  And that should just be an obvious fact by now.

Hey, ‘Republicans Drove Us Into A Ditch’ Liberals, Put THIS Into Your Pipe and Smoke It: Conservative Economic Principles RULE In Texas

This isn’t a piece by conservative Jonah Goldberg saying what all conservatives already know.  This is a piece by a self-identified liberal writing in the Los Angeles Times acknowledging a FACT that is frankly the death knell of liberal economic policy.

43% of ALL jobs created in the United States since June of 2009 have come from a conservative state that represents 8% of the national economy.  And Barack Obama has taken credit for every single one of them even as he demonizes the policies that actually produced all of those jobs.

Now, notice how this liberal tries to give credit to the most successful job-engine in America, and then steal that credit away from the conservatives and the conservative policies that brought that job-engine about.

Texas, the jobs engine
Conservatives hail it and liberals dispute the story, but one thing is certain about the Lone Star State’s employment success: The number is real.

By Rick Wartzman
July 3, 2011

For the last few weeks, I’ve been unable to get a startling statistic out of my head: Since the recession officially ended, Texas has created more than 4 of every 10 new jobs in America.

That’s right, Texas: the reddest of red states, home to gun lovers and school textbooks that openly question whether the Founding Fathers intended for the separation of church and state. I am no ideologue. Still, whenever I get political, I tend to tilt reflexively to the left, making the jobs figure a bit disconcerting at first.

But there’s no escaping it. The number is real. Which means that if you care about putting people back to work at a time when nearly 14 million in this country are unemployed, maybe Texas has something to teach us.

Unfortunately, that’s not the posture many commentators have taken. Instead, when the data from Texas emerged — touted first by Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas — conservatives were quick to celebrate, embracing the jobs tally as powerful evidence of the superiority of Republican ideas as well as proof that Texas Gov. Rick Perry would make a good president. But that’s overly simplistic [me: yeah, that’s right.  Let’s keep re-analyzing this until we somehow we make it a victory for Obama liberalism in spite of the fact that Republicans have been running this state at every single political level].

Meanwhile, those on the liberal end of the spectrum immediately set out to shoot the numbers down. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, for instance, held up a giant bologna and mocked the notion of a “Texas miracle.” That view, however, is too cavalier.  [Me: yeah, you’ve got a better way to steal credit from conservatives, don’t you, Wartzman?].

So what’s actually happening?

First, the basics. According to the Dallas Fed, Texas generated 43% of the net new jobs in the U.S. from June 2009 through May 2011 — an enormous share when you consider that the Lone Star State accounts for about 8% of the nation’s economy. (Critics, including Maddow, have been quick to note that the unemployment rate in Texas, at 8%, falls in the middle of the pack among the states. Yet total employment is a much more telling and reliable statistic than is the jobless rate.)

Aspects of the Texas economy are unusual, if not unique, and it will be difficult or impossible for other states to replicate them. For example, the energy industry is booming right now, as are agricultural commodities destined for export — a boon for a huge cotton and beef producer like Texas. [Me: Let’s simply ignore the fact that MANY states have abundant oil resources, but THOSE states are refusing to drill for them because they have a particularly nasty species of vermin called “liberals” running them.  Meanwhile, Democrats in California have gutted what had been the most productive agricultural region in the entire world by shutting off their water and protecting a stupid little fish.  It’s as if the other states are cutting their own throats and then pointing out that Texas is only doing so well because it hasn’t cut it’s own throat too].

What’s more, thorny tradeoffs surely exist. Texas is attracting businesses, in part, because it has low taxes. But that, in turn, makes for a smaller safety net, which is one reason Texas has a high incidence of poverty and, compared with every other state, the biggest proportion of its population without health insurance. There are also serious questions about the quality of jobs in Texas. A “right to work” state, it is tied with Mississippi for having the biggest percentage of workers paid at or below the minimum wage.  [Me: I’d rather have a job and make my own way than live off of a welfare state paid by other people’s money until the safety net collapsed.  But that’s just me.  This amounts to another way of saying, ‘Yes, Texas is creating all the jobs; but we want socialism in America, not jobs.  Aside from that, the data shows that Texas shares higher poverty rates with every single other state in the southern region (which shows that poverty is a problem with the entire region rather than a problem with Texas).  But hey, we have to bash Texas for being successful, right?  You need to understand something: Democrats don’t give a DAMN about creating jobs; they only care about leftwing UNION jobs, as what’s going on in South Carolina over a Boeing plant amply demonstrates].

But even with these significant caveats, Texas has long been the most robust jobs engine in the country, and its policies and practices deserve deeper reflection. Some say, for example, that an increase in education funding 25 years ago lifted the quality of the workforce. “That set the table for job expansion,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist Mitchell Schnurman has asserted. (Budget pressures in Texas are now forcing education spending to go in the other direction.).  [Me: you heard right; let’s give all the credit to what Democrats did 25 years ago so we don’t have to give any credit at all to what Republicans have done ever since.  Because liberals must always get the credit no matter how far back you have to go to do it; and conversely, conservatives must always get the blame no matter how far back you have to go to do it].

Also deserving of further exploration are the strict lending guidelines that Texas banks instituted after the S&L crisis of the 1980s. Those standards spurred institutions to keep larger capital reserves and take on fewer problem mortgages than were seen elsewhere in the country. As a result, the state emerged relatively unscathed from the most recent real estate meltdown.  [Me: this is an quick reference to the Democrat-imposed Fannue and Freddie subprime lending policies that were supposed to make home ownership a right for minorities who couldn’t repay their loans.  George Bush tried to reform these policies 17 times, but Democrats – who ran both the House and the Senate when our economy crashed – would have none of these common-sense Republican reforms.  Fortunately conservative Texas passed their own laws to protect them from the Community Reinvestment Act and all the other Democrat horrors].

At the same time — and this, of course, is the tough part for those on the left to swallow — it is clear that the state’s limits on taxes, regulations and lawsuits are contributing to the job machine. “The most important thing I think that’s happened to us is tort reform,” Fisher, the Dallas Fed president, has said. He added that when John Deere and other companies have decided to hire in Texas, they’ve been largely driven by steps the state has taken to cap non-economic damages in medical malpractice suits and to make it harder to bring product liability and class-action cases.

For those whose knee-jerk instinct is to dump on such logic, they would do well here to consider the source. Fisher served in President Carter’s Treasury Department and as a high-ranking trade official for President Clinton, and was a two-time Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate. Although the former investment banker is certainly not an ardent leftie, he is no right-wing zealot either.

To be sure, Texas is not without lots of problems. And its remarkable employment growth is not without attendant concerns. But for those on the left to dismiss the state’s jobs story out of hand, just because Republicans have embraced it as a showpiece, is counterproductive and foolish.

Counterproductiveness and foolishness are two of the three hallmarks that define the left.  Hypocrisy is the third.

A lot of Californians are whining about the fact that many “Texas jobs” came at California’s expense.  And the whiny liberals are right; many of those employers DID escape from the liberal hellhole known as the People’s Soviet State of California.  But here’s the question: do you want America to be more like California – which among other things features a $500 billion black hole of economic death known as unfunded liabilities from state union pensions – or do you want a job?  Do you want a demagogic excuse for why all the jobs are going elsewhere, or do you want a job?  Do you want to sit on your fat pimply sweaty ass living on welfare until the system crashes and you starve to death, or do you want a system that actually produces something?

If you want the former vote for Obama, vote for Democrats, and then go to hell when you die.  If you want the latter, for God’s sakes, please vote for the Republicans who  are actually creating jobs in America.

Democrats look back at 2008 and blame “failed Republican policies.”  Basically, all they have to point at is the fact that George Bush was president when it happened.  They ignore the fact that Democrats had total control of the House and near total control of the Senate for nearly two years prior to the disaster happening.  They claim that Republicans refusing to regulate was what created the mess.  They ignore the fact that Democrats REPEATEDLY refused ANY regulation whatsover of Fannie and Freddie which had overwhelming control of the housing market that actually caused the meltdown.  Look at the actual facts:

https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/aei-article-how-fannie-and-freddie-blew-up-the-economy/

https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/barney-frank-and-democrat-party-most-responsible-for-2008-economic-collapse/

https://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/barney-frank-video-proves-democrats-at-core-of-2008-economic-collapse/

http://hennessysview.com/business/franklin-raines-criminal-enterprise-and-barack-obama-his-accomplice/

http://politicsorpoppycock.com/2008/09/28/franks-fingerprints-are-all-over-the-financial-fiasco/

The last link above refers to a Boston Herald story which has since been scrubbed.  It’s amazing how articles that taint Democrats have a way of “vanishing.”  It’s one of the reasons I blog.  I want to preserve the record of what actually happened to this country.

All this to say that Democrats had a false demagogic narrative based on lies.

But the American people bought those lies in 2008.  And Democrats had dictatorial control of the White House, the House of Representatives and a filibuster-proof Senate for nearly two full years.  And they took their same failed policies which led to the economic collapse of 2008 and expanded them.  And they promised Americans that their godawful stimulus would work.  It not only failed; it completely failed even by the Obama White House’s own constantly-shifting standards.  And it cost us $3.27 TRILLION we didn’t have.

Now, amazingly, the fact that the president happens to be a Democrat – and the fact that that Democrat took bad news and made it far worse – no longer matters.  Now Democrats want to say that it’s the Republicans – who only control the House of Representatives – are blocking economic progress.  Even though it DIDN’T matter that Nancy Pelosi was running the House of Representatives into the ground in 2007 and 2008.  To go along with Harry Reid doing the same thing during the same time period in the US Senate.

Democrats don’t run on facts; they run on demagoguery.  Remember that the man who led Texas into the job-creating machine that it is not only has nothing to do with George Bush, he actually didn’t like Bush as a big spending and compromising “compassionate conservative.”  Because Democrats and their mainstream media propagandists are already starting to tell the demagogic lie that Rick Perry is somehow identical to George Bush simply because the two men were governors of the same state.

Obama’s Inner Jimmy Carter Comes Out With Soaring Energy Prices

Remember back when Jimmy Carter was urging us all to wear sweaters and turn down our thermostats because his failed energy policies had us in long communist-proletariat-peasant-bread-line-style lines for shockingly expensive gas and fuel oil?

Well, as we keep telling you over and over again, it’s Welcome back, Carter all over again.

Shivering in the dark and freezing at night was not an answer to America’s energy needs then, and it isn’t one now.

Speaking of “now,” Obama’s got a new, modern version of Carter’s “Energy?  We don’t need no stinkin’ energy!” policies:

“I know some of these big guys, they’re all still driving their big SUVs. You know, they got their big monster trucks and everything. You’re one of them? Well, now, here’s my point. If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting eight miles a gallon–(laughter)–you may have a big family, but it’s probably not that big. How many you have? Ten kids, you say? Ten kids? (Laughter.) Well, you definitely need a hybrid van then. (Laughter.) . . .
So, like I said, if you’re getting eight miles a gallon you may want to think about a trade-in. You can get a great deal. I promise you, GM or Ford or Chrysler, they’re going to be happy to give you a deal on something that gets you better gas mileage.”

One of the few remaining decent newspapers in the country wrote that Obama sans teleprompter line up this way:

The transcript shows that Obama got lots of laughs. But presumably he was speaking to a friendly audience–to people who regard the burning of gasoline as sinful and who, at least in theory, are attracted to the idea of $8-a-gallon gasoline.

People like that, to paraphrase Pauline Kael, live in a rather special world. For most Americans (we Manhattan residents are a notable exception), driving is a day-to-day necessity, and high gas prices are a constant source of economic pain. Sure, if you’re driving a guzzler, it might make sense to trade it in. But not everyone has the money lying around to buy a new car at the drop of a hat.  And owners of dinky cars and hybrids still have to buy gasoline for them.

One might point out in the president’s defense that he is putting his money–haha, we mean your money–where his mouth is. Last week, as the Detroit News reported, Obama announced a plan “to ‘green’ the federal fleet”:

“I’m directing our departments and our agencies to make sure 100 percent of the vehicles they buy are fuel-efficient or clean energy cars and trucks by 2015.Not 50 percent, not 75 percent–100 percent of our vehicles,” Obama said.

Well, maybe not quite 100%. The News also reports that “some federal vehicles for law enforcement and security purposes will be exempt”–among them “the GM-built Cadillac presidential limousine and other vehicles in the motorcade.”

Then again, Obama does atone by spending a lot of time in golf carts.

President Obama’s answer to the question about high gas prices is reminiscent of candidate Obama’s 2008 disquisition on the “bitter clingers” of Pennsylvania, although the latter was not meant for public consumption. There’s little doubt that he believes these things, that he is a creature of the liberal self-styled elite. But if he doesn’t get better at concealing it, voters may think about a trade-in next November.

It’s not that Obama is just unrealistic and completely out of touch with America’s needs in relation to his far-leftist socialist radical redistributionist policies, it’s that he is simply factually wrong.  An article titled “Obama fudges on oil production; snarks at big families” deals with a number of remarks Obama made during the appearance immortalized in the quote above that are simply wrong, period.

But let’s just deal with one of them, the hybrid van.  There ISN’T a hybrid van.  And there won’t be one any time soon:

Fuel for Thought

And finally, President Obama was asked about rising fuel prices at a town  hall last week and his answer raised some conservatives’ eyebrows. Now car  experts are weighing in as well.

The president said — quote — “If you’re complaining about the price of gas  and you’re only getting eight miles a gallon, you may have a big family, but  it’s probably not that big. How many [kids do] you have? Ten kids, you say? Ten  kids? Well, you definitely need a hybrid van then.”

However, Edward Loh of Motor Trend Magazine says a 12-person hybrid passenger  van does not exist because — quote — “for hybrids to be effective, weight must  be kept down. It wouldn’t be feasible to have a vehicle that large also be a  hybrid.”

And Edmunds.com agrees, saying there are no hybrid vans that accommodate 10  or more people.

Obama keeps mocking us.  We’re the bitter clingers he vilified and continues to vilify every day.  But neither he nor the liberal moral idiots nor the liberal moral idiot propagandists who call themselves “journalists” realize the joke is constantly on him.

Gasoline prices have DOUBLED since Obama became our president.

“Gas prices have doubled since Mr. Obama took office,” reports the Washington Times, as the Obama Administration has doggedly blocked new American energy production and pushed job-crushing policies – like a national energy tax – that drive up prices.

Gas is now over $4 a gallon in five states, and by widespread acknowledgment it will soon be over $5 as the summer driving season hits us.

But the same mainstream media and the same Democrat Congress that tore into Bush think the insane prices are fine, now.

Obama’s energy policy is a total failure.  And all the evidence is that Obama and his fellow Democrats WANT high energy prices so they can force the American people into their “green agenda” whether they want to go there or not.

Let’s look at what George Bush did when oil got expensive, and then let us consider the results of his intelligent policy:

On July 14, President Bush ended the executive ban on offshore drilling. The very next day saw the price of oil take the biggest drop in 17 years.

Within two days of Bush’s signing the executive order, the price of oil dropped from nearly $145 a barrel to $130.73 a barrel. And within four days, it had dropped to $128.88. And Harry Reid wants to take credit for this drop in price with his incredibly airheaded speculation bill that never really had a chance of overcoming a filibuster to begin with?

In the House, Democrats are putting the energy bill on the “suspension calender” in a move that will require a 2/3 majority to pass any legislation, but which prevents the Republicans from adding ANY amendments to allow for drilling on federal lands or contribute in any way.

Democrats are so paranoid that a drilling amendment might be introduced that they would rather scuttle any meaningful vote whatsoever.

Why did President Bush lift the ban?:

The White House announced today that President Bush will lift an executive order banning offshore oil drilling, a move aimed at stepping up pressure on Congress to end the prohibition it imposed in 1981.On July 14, President Bush ended the executive ban on offshore drilling. The very next day saw the price of oil take the biggest drop in 17 years.

At the time George Bush ended the ban on offshore drilling, oil cost $147 a barrel.  Oil had become more and more and more expensive in a staggering trend.  But from the moment – the moment – Bush ended the ban, oil prices immediately began to go down in a constant trend as the industry reacted to the idea that more oil would be available.  Within six months, the price of a barrel of oil had gone down to $37.

But a new president came along, and the market realized that he had an anti-business, anti-oil and anti-growth policy.  And the markets reacted accordingly.

The Lonely Conservative quotes Politico on the fact that “Even Bill Clinton Thinks Obama’s Drilling Ban Is Ridiculous“:

The event was not covered by the press, but sources confirmed the exchange to Politico.

But according to multiple people in the room, Clinton, surprisingly, agreed with Bush on many oil and gas issues, including criticism of delays in permitting offshore since last year’s Gulf of Mexico spill.

“Bush said all the things you’d expect him to say” on oil and gas issues, said Jim Noe, senior vice president at Hercules Offshore and executive director of the pro-drilling Shallow Water Energy Security Coalition. But Clinton added, “You’d be surprised to know that I agree with all that,” according to Noe and others in the room.

Clinton said there are “ridiculous delays in permitting when our economy doesn’t need it,” according to Noe and others.

“That was the most surprising thing they said,” Noe said.

The two former presidents both generally agreed on the need to get offshore drilling workers back on the job.

Clinton and Bush also agreed on the need for more domestic shale gas production, with Clinton noting that it has been done safely for years in his home state of Arkansas.

Obama gave a speech in which he took credit for Bush and Clinton-era policies even as his own policies were strangling oil production.  And even Clinton had to agree that Obama’s policies were ridiculous and counter-productive.

We’ve got a complete fool, a moral idiot, a Jimmy Carter Part Deux, running things.

It’s just a small little part of “No, no, no!  Not God bless America, God damn America!”

For the record, it isn’t just Obama’s stupid and morally idiotic energy policies that are creating this self-inflicted open and infectious wound plaguing Americans at every fill-up.  There are other stupid and morally idiotic Obama policies at work, too.  Obama has seriously devalued the U.S. Dollar with his reckless spending policies.  The world oil supply is bought and sold in U.S. dollars.  And OPEC sure isn’t going to pay for Obama’s weak dollar.  Thus as the value of our dollar goes down, the more worthless dollars it will take to buy a barrel.

We need to get this fool and the fool Democrats out of power.  America’s very survival is at stake.

Why You Should Ask A Democrat To Fill Your Tank At Your Next Fill Up

As we speak, in terms of the national average price for gasoline, it will cost you about seventy bucks to fill a 20 gallon tank.

And in the People’s Republic of California – which taxes the hell out of gasoline just like they’re taxing the hell out of everything else – it’s actually a fair amount worse.  Just in case you needed more proof that Democrats and sky-high gasoline prices lovingly walk hand-in-hand.

When George Bush was president – even though Democrats were in control of both the House and the Senate – high gas prices were “Bush’s fault.”  It happened during his watch, and that was all the Democrats and their mainstream media intellectual soulmates needed.  And of course it doesn’t matter how lousy things are under Obama’s watch, because the Bush presidency is like the original sin to liberals; it extends backward and forward into eternity, so that all things evil can be attributed to it.  Basically that is because government is Democrat’s god, and Bush was a heretic who defiled the only god with whom they have to do.

It didn’t matter that polls showed that Americans overwhelmingly were on the Republicans’ side when they said, “Drill baby, drill.”

It didn’t matter that after George Bush ended a ban on drilling, gasoline prices in the US began to dip IMMEDIATELY.

You see, in the words of Nancy Pelosi, who ruled as Speaker of the House:

 “I’m trying to save the planet; I’m trying to save the planet,” she says impatiently when questioned. “I will not have this debate trivialized by their excuse for their failed policy.”

Harry Reid was uninterested in your being able to afford to drive to work; he was out to save you from yourselves:

“The one thing we fail to talk about is those costs that you don’t see on the bottom line. That is coal makes us sick, oil makes us sick; it’s global warming. It’s ruining our country, it’s ruining our world. We’ve got to stop using fossil fuel.”

Now contrast this with other Obama quotes, which puts his goals into much better perspective:

“So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can — it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”

And the result of shutting down plants that produce half our electricity in Obama’s own words:

“Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.”

 John Harwood asked then-Senator Obama, “Could the high prices help us?”  And Obama responded:

OBAMA: I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment. The fact that, ehh, this is such a shock t’American pocketbooks is not a good thing. Uh, but if we take some steps right now t’, uh, help people make the adjustment — first of all by putting more money into their pockets, but also by encouraging the market to adapt to these new circumstances more quickly, particularly US automakers.

What Obama would have said if he wasn’t a total idiot and a disgrace to the presidency is, “Of COURSE high gas prices won’t hurt us!  That would kill our economy!  Just what kind of idiot are you for even asking?!?!?”

Obama didn’t say that because he thinks high gas prices actually will help America.  That’s just the kind of incompetent disgrace to the American presidency that he is.

Fossil fuels are bad.  Using fossil fuels are bad.  Inexpensive energy is bad (at least as long as the price doesn’t rise too soon at any one time and make Americans react like frogs placed in boiling water) because it encourages Americans to keep using cheap energy when they should be using the expensive and inefficient energy sources that Democrats want to force them to use.  Which means being able to afford driving to work or heating your home is bad.

Nancy Pelosi’s failed policy, Harry Reid’s failed policy and Barack Obama’s failed policy are off-limits in the media, however.  You really don’t hear any stories on that stuff.  Our media “gatekeepers” have slammed the gates shut on that angle.

Last year – and that was before the crisis in Libya and before the “evil” Republicans took over the House of Representatives after two years of abject Obama failure to govern, I pointed out that gasoline prices had actually skyrocketed on Obama’s watch.  And dang oh boy hooeeeh they’ve skyrocketed since.  Which is to say that the fact of the matter is that the crisis in Libya or in the Middle East really doesn’t have anything to do with this.  It’s the fool we had in office a year ago when prices were skyrocketing who is the same fool we’ve got now that is the “crisis.”

A couple weeks ago I wrote this:

The headlines now –

Crisis in Libya Raises Fears of Skyrocketing Oil Prices Causing Pain at the Pump

– match what Obama was saying his policy was all along.

Obama has said that higher prices for oil are good.  He just wanted to spread out the pain over a longer period of time.

Obama’s appointments reflect his determination to drive up oil prices and therefore force the American people against their will to embrace his radical leftist energy agenda.  Take Obama’s Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, who has stated on the record that he wanted to“figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”  And at the time he said those words, gasoline prices were close to $8 a gallon.

[And the only reason our gasoline prices aren’t $8 a gallon is because there are still more socialists in Europe than there are here.]

Electicity?  Obama was perfectly fine if the cost of electricity skyrocketed.  In fact he said under his policies prices would “necessarily skyrocket.”

These people are getting exactly what they want.  And by “exactly what they want,” I mean the destruction of the American economy so a purely socialist system can be erected in the ashes.

Obama and his handpicked energy secretary are getting exactly what they want, and exactly what Obama said he would do if elected.  The same Democrats who demonically demonized Bush for high oil prices have all along wanted the price of oil to “necessarily skyrocket” so that automakers will be forced to manufacture little clown cars and the American people will be forced to buy those clown cars.

As Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel infamously put it:

“Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.”

And Democrats want to grab hold of the very crisis they created and seize control of our energy in a way that will make us “green.”  Dirt poor, of course, but “green.”

It’s part of the Democrats’ overall strategy, which so far is working brilliantly.

They want to say, “Oil is too expensive and too unstable.”  We’ve got to spend hunderds and hundreds of billions on an utterly stupid agenda such as high speed rail, solar panels, wind, etcetera.  And we’ve ultimately got to take cars and the freedom that comes with mobility away from the people so that we can better control and shape them into what we want them to be.

What Democrat John Dingell said of ObamaCare equally applies to energy policy:

“The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 [million] American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.”

We’ve got them in their own words.  We’ve got them telling us that they WANT high gas prices and expensive energy.  We’ve got them doing everything they can to prevent any and all American drilling. 

And yet Democrats agreed with this agenda and voted for these people and put them into power.

Democrats want seven dollar a gallon and higher gasoline prices?  Why not let them have it right now.  Isn’t that only appropriate?

And with national gasoline prices at the halfway point, it seems like the perfect solution:

EVERY SINGLE TIME A DEMOCRAT FILLS HIS OR HER TANK, THEY SHOULD FILL A REPUBLICAN’S TANK AT THEIR EXPENSE.

It’s a win-win.  Republicans get the inexpensive oil they want to fuel their cars and businesses, and Democrats get to go the way of the Dodo bird all the faster – which is exactly what they want for the rest of America.  And by extension, every single Democrat should pay the highest tax rates on every single Obama tax hikes.  They want it for others; let them pay it themselves.

So tell you what, Democrats.  And I mean every single one of you.  Fill our tanks, which will bring your costs to the minimum price of what Obama’s handpicked energy secretary said was “the goal.”

Or just shut the hell up and get the hell out of our lives, you hypocrites.

Redistributing Failure: Obama EPA Goes To War Against Texas

The last Census pretty much proved the point: there is a clear population flow from failed liberal states to successful conservative ones.  And the state of Texas was the biggest winner of all.

Here’s a great title that pretty much sums it up:

Census Winners (Texas) and Losers (Obama)

So what is a good liberal to do?

Ensure that Texas is forced to employ the same utterly failed and immoral policies that are crippling blue states across the country:

EPA, Texas go to war over carbon-emission rules
posted at 2:00 pm on December 27, 2010 by Ed Morrissey

And so it begins, and on the most fertile red-state territory in the nation.  Texas, which got four more seats in the House through the 2010 Census reapportionment, has had its air-quality rules superceded by the EPA as part of its aggressive new action on carbon emissions.  Governor Rick Perry promises a fight:

The federal Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday effectively declared Texas unfit to regulate its own greenhouse gas emissions and took over carbon dioxide permitting of any new or expanding industrial facilities starting Jan. 2.

The EPA also set up a framework for regulating greenhouse gas emissions in seven other states: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Oregon and Wyoming. In addition, the agency set a timetable on establishing regulated levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

The action will give the EPA permitting authority over refineries, power plants and cement facilities in Texas, the agency said, but will not affect small pollution source facilities, such as restaurants and farms.

Well, perhaps not directly, but the increase in energy prices and shortages created by the EPA imposition of what will essentially be carbon taxes will impact businesses throughout the Texas economy, as well as consumers who ultimately pay the costs of the regulatory regime. Rick Perry has signaled a court fight to stop the EPA and the Obama administration:

Texas is the only state that has refused to implement the new rules. President Barack Obama is pressing ahead with the regulations after Congress failed to pass legislation capping carbon emissions. Perry, a Republican, calls the rules overreaching by the federal government that will cripple his state’s economy.

“The EPA’s misguided plan paints a huge target on the backs of Texas agriculture and energy producers by implementing unnecessary, burdensome mandates on our state’s energy sector, threatening hundreds of thousands of Texas jobs and imposing increased living costs on Texas families,” Katherine Cesinger, a Perry spokeswoman, said in an e-mailed statement.

The timing is certainly interesting. The EPA made this move two days before Christmas, when most people had stopped paying attention to political news. The EPA’s move thus got missed by most of the national media, even though it demonstrates well the Obama strategy in 2011 to win through regulation what it could not win through legislation. And by focusing on Texas, where Republicans have a chance to redistrict with practically no interference from Democrats, the move will certainly incentivize the GOP to limit as much as possible the representation of Democrats in their Congressional delegation as the Republican-controlled House attempts to stymie the EPA’s regulatory innovation.

This also will vault Rick Perry to the highest level of national politics, even as he continues to insist that he won’t run for President. With a third term as governor in hand and a perfect political battle opening in front of him, though, the opportunity may be too much to resist for a man who could possibly unite conservatives and the GOP for a big run against a stumbling Obama in 2012.

There’s a joke I remember: What’s the difference between an American [capitalist] and a European [socialist]?  The American capitalist is riding on a bus and sees a man driving a fancy sports car and thinks, “Some day I’ll be able to afford a car like that.”  Versus the European socialist who is riding on the bus and sees the same thing and thinks, “Some day that sonofabitch will be riding the bus just like me.”

The liberal worldview was best summed up by Reagan:

“If it moves, tax it.  If it keeps moving, regulate it.  And if it stops moving, subsidize it” ~ Ronald Reagan

Punish success.  That way you can get to subsidizing failure.  And then you can move on to subsidizing all the failures that subsidizing failure produces.

Because failures will vote Democrat in order to keep benefiting from other people’s success.

Texas survived the Alamo.  But surviving Obama is like surviving stage IV brain cancer.

Democrats Abandon All Respect For American Voter And Electoral Integrity

The independent-minded American says, “Let the parties and candidates express their platforms in the open marketplace of ideas, and may the best candidate win.”

Unless you’re a Democrat, of course.

“If you’re a Democrat, it’s, “We stand for absolutely nothing but power over the people, we believe that ends justify means, and so go ahead and do whatever you need to do to win.”

Democrats need tyrant-power in order to shove terrible and evil legislation such as the $3.27 TRILLION stimulus which incredibly hasn’t even created any meaningful jobs; and ObamaCare, which is turning out to be so shockingly bad that even LIBERAL UNIONS tat supported this boondoggle are now pleading to be opted out; and Democrat environmental regulations that are destroying upwards of a million jobs and counting (and again, even UNIONS are begging for relief from these incredibly destructive policies).

You can’t destroy a country unless you have the total power to do so.  In America, the Constitution gives the people the right to rise up and throw off their shackles every two years.  At least, as long as we have a Constitution, and as long as judicial activists can’t interpret that Constitution any damn way they want to.

So Democrats have to cheat to get their “fundamental transformation.”  And cheat they do.

We think of Chicago and other Democrat strongholds, where dead people and inmates don’t only get to vote, they get to vote twice.  And apparently, Democrats are even paying dead people and inmates for their votes now.

We think of ACORN and years and years of voter registration shenanigans until they were finally caught on video doing something so vile that even many (but certainly not all) Democrats found them despicable beyond the pale.

We think of the Al Franken Senate election in Minnesota, in which a lead by the Republican candidate was overcome after new, uncounted ballots just kept magically turning up in the back seats of cars.  And then, lo and behold, we find that inmates’ ballots – well over the Franken margin of victory – were illegally counted.

We think of the vile Democrat Rep. Alan Grayson and the shockingly dishonest campaign ad that he ran, in which he deliberately tried to smear his Republican candidate for the exact opposite of what the man clearly actually said.

And now we’ve got Democrats trying to undermine the will of the American people by fraudulently running candidates to leech votes from the Republican and steal an election:

Report: Dems planted NJ tea party House candidate
By GEOFF MULVIHILL
The Associated Press
Saturday, October 9, 2010; 5:36 PM

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. — A New Jersey Republican congressional candidate criticized his Democratic opponent Friday amid mounting evidence that Democratic officials planted a tea party candidate in the race to siphon off conservative votes.

“My opponent, John Adler, represents everything that is wrong with politics in our country today,” Republican Jon Runyan said. “I would ask for an apology. But frankly, an apology from someone like Congressman Adler would be so meaningless that it’s not worth seeking.”

He spoke at a news conference as Adler, a first-term Democratic lawmaker, and his campaign remained mum about a report in the Courier-Post of Cherry Hill in which Democratic operatives speaking on the condition of anonymity confirmed what Republicans have believed for months: That tea-party candidate Peter DeStefano was put on the ballot by Democrats.

The operatives said a county Democratic employee is running at least the Web elements of DeStefano’s campaign.

Tea party organizations, which have denounced DeStefano since he entered the race in June, called on him Friday to quit. About 50 tea party activists gathered in protest outside a restaurant in Medford where DeStefano had scheduled a fundraiser Friday night.

DeStefano arrived at the fundraiser after the protesters left and told reporters he would remain in the race, but he would not answer specific questions about the newspaper’s report, dismissing the allegations as “hearsay.”

“I’m an average guy who’s running for Congress on the independent ticket,” DeStefano said.

One tea party group, the West Jersey Tea Party, said it plans to file a voter-fraud lawsuit against Adler next week.

Adler has previously denied the accusations. Adler and top officials in Adler’s campaign and did not return calls or e-mails from The Associated Press on Friday.

In an August interview with the AP, DeStefano excoriated both Adler and Runyan.

He fended off questions about Republicans’ accusations and tea party organizations’ claims that he wasn’t even a member, though he was running for Congress with the slogan “New Jersey Tea Party.” While there are several tea party groups in New Jersey, none goes by that name. Some tea party groups are supporting Runyan.

“Any American citizen can run for any office they want,” DeStefano said. “I think it’s time we get past this crap.”

He refused to answer questions about precisely when he decided to run.

In August, Adler told the Courier-Post: “I know we weren’t part of it.”

Runyan said his campaign was looking into whether there’s any legal action that could be taken against Adler.

The operatives told the Courier-Post that the plan was shared with members of the South Jersey Young Democrats, and some in that group gathered signatures for DeStefano – while others didn’t because they thought the plan was unethical.

Republicans started raising suspicions about DeStefano months ago when they found many of the signatures on his nominating petitions were from Democrats, including a former Adler campaign staffer.

I wrote about a related issue a little over a week ago, pointing out the fact that Democrats Don’t Give A DAMN About The Constitution Or Any Limits On Their Power.

In that article, I cited the audio of Democrat Robin Carnahan openly mocking the election process and the will of the voters in an exchange that went as follows:

Carnahan: “We’re going to also have a libertarian and a Constitution Party candidate running.  And I will tell you no one’s going to know who they are, but it’s not going to matter, because Glenn Beck says you’re supposed to be for the Constitution, and there is some percentage of people who will go vote for them.  And in our internal polling about six or seven percent goes like that to the Libertarian and Constitution Party.  So I’m quite sure that whoever wins is going to do it with less than fifty percent of the vote.” […]

Donor: “You just don’t sound like those Constitution Party votes are going to come out of your account.”

Carnahan: “What do you think?” (Audience laughter)

Donor: “I think you’re right.” (Audience laughter)

These Democrats don’t care about fairly and honestly winning elections; they care only about power and totalitarian control over government.  And they will use every UNFAIR and DISHONEST tactic to gain the power over the people that they seek.

And if you care about your country’s Constitution, why, you’re just an idiot schmuck to these contemptible Democrats.

I also wrote about some of the utterly contemptible examples of fraud that are besetting the Democrat Party, including the fact that ALL EIGHT of the vile little cockroaches in Bell, California, who stole millions from a town whose per capita income was only half the national average, were DEMOCRATS.

And it’s not a matter that Democrats did this a long time ago, or that they just did it recently; it’s about the fact that they are doing these things RIGHT THE HELL NOW.

If you think that Democrats have demonstrated that they deserve the right to continue governing, all I can say is that you personally are disgusting.

‘How Do You Create A Job?’ Don’t Ask Democrats Unless You Enjoy Gibberish

The transcript may not do the embarrassment to Richard Blumenthal (and by extension the entire Democrat Party) justice, but it’s still worth reading:

LINDA McMAHON: A follow-up, Mr. Blumenthal. You’ve talked about you want to incentivize small businesses. Tell me something, how do you create a job?

RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: A job is created, and it can be in a variety of ways, by… a variety of people, but principally by people and businesses in response to demand for products and services. And the main point about jobs in Connecticut is we can and we should create more of them by creative policies. And that’s the kind of approach that I want to bring to Washington.

I have stood up for jobs when they’ve been at stake. I stood up for jobs at Alderman Motors when GM wanted to shut down that automobile dealership. I stood up for jobs at Pratt & Whitney when that company wanted to ship them out of state and overseas. I stood up for jobs at Stanley Works when it was threatened with a hostile takeover.

I know about how government can help preserve jobs. And I want programs that provide more capital for small businesses, better tax policies that will promote creation of jobs, stronger intervention by government to make sure that we use the ‘Made in America’ policies and ‘Buy America’ policies to keep jobs here rather than buying products that are manufactured overseas, as WWE has done.

McMAHON: Government, government government.

Government does not create jobs. It’s very simple how you create jobs. An entrepreneur takes a risk. He or she believes that he creates goods or service that is sold for more than it costs to make it. If an entrepreneur believes he can do that, he creates a job.

The video is even better yet, because you can almost see the scarecrow actually twisting in the wind:

It was almost as though Richard Blumenthal was having a flashback to his Vietnam days, you know, when he wasn’t there, and could see only empty, deceitful vacuity.

Linda McMahon has made millions of dollars doing something that Richard Blumenthal has never done and will never understand.  She has created jobs.

Blumenthal sees only government, because he is a pompous bureaucrat.  He doesn’t see risk; he can’t possibly see risk.  Because his government is the kind of entity that can piss away nearly a trillion dollars, and continue on as though nothing had happened.  And if the government gets in a real bind, as it already is now, it can engage in abstract games such as “quantitative easing” – which is government euphemism for basically printing more money and reducing the value of every American’s savings so that it can pay its obligations and keep humming merrily along.

Linda McMahon sees risk.  And she sees government as something that gets in the way, and then gets even more in the way the more “helpful” it tries to be.

Linda McMahon understands that the essence of job creation is someone taking a risk.  If a potential business owner or investor believes that he or she can make a reasonable profit by creating a product or funding its creation, that person has to take a risk.  They could be wrong, and lose everything.

Will the government come to the rescue and print money for the business owner or investor if he or she turns out to be wrong, or fails to deliver on his or her vision?  Only in a Democrat like Blumenthal’s world.

For the rest of us, the prospect of huge tax hikes, extreme regulations, huge health care cost increases due to ObamaCare, energy-depleting radical environmentalist policies, politically correct garbage, and the like, can and do make the difference between deciding to take the risk inherent in job creation, and deciding to put your money somewhere else instead.

Conservatives understand the bottom-line behind job creation; liberals understand governmental gibberish.

Pelosi And Democrats Block BP Oil Spill Investigation

Democrats really want to get to the bottom of the BP oil spill and all the failures of leadership and action thereafter.

In other related news, I have decided to sell the Golden Gate Bridge in a closed bidding process.  Just send me your bid, and I’ll let you know whether you’re the lucky winner.

From before the disaster – when Barack Obama received more money from BP than any politician over the past twenty years – to after the disaster, Democrats ought to be ashamed of themselves.

And their shame is showing:

Pelosi Blocks Oil Spill Investigation
by  Connie Hair
07/28/2010

The latest version of the CLEAR Act is slated for a floor vote in the House this week as Democrats look for ways to use the Gulf oil spill as a means to pass elements of their unpopular energy agenda.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) stripped out authorization for an independent investigation into the Gulf disaster.

The Natural Resources Committee unanimously passed the amendment in committee markup July 14 offered by Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) that would establish a bipartisan, independent, National Commission on Outer Continental Shelf Oil Spill Prevention.

Unlike the commission set up by President Obama — packed only with environmental activists and no petroleum engineers — the commission unanimously approved by the Natural Resources committee would be comprised of technical experts to study the actual events leading up to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Not a single member of the committee voiced opposition at the bill’s markup.  The Senate has also approved an independent commission.

“To investigate what went wrong and keep it from happening again, the commission must include members who have expertise in petroleum engineering.  The President’s Commission has none,” Cassidy, the amendment’s author, told HUMAN EVENTS after the announcement.  “It defies common sense that this amendment passed unanimously in committee, only to be deleted in the Speaker’s office.”

Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), top Republican on the Natural Resources Committee said the Obama’s administration’s commission was set up to protect the President.

“By deleting the bipartisan, independent oil spill commission that’s received bipartisan support in both House and Senate committees, Democrats have shown they are more interested in protecting the President than getting independent answers to what caused this tragic Gulf spill.  Some of the biggest failures that contributed to the Gulf disaster are the direct responsibility of the federal government and by deleting this bipartisan, independent commission, Democrats ensure that only the President’s hand-picked commission will be digging into any failures of his own Interior Department appointees.  There is widespread agreement that no member of the President’s commission possesses technical expertise in oil drilling, and several are on the record in opposition to offshore drilling and support a moratorium that will cost thousands of jobs,” Hastings said.

The bill also sets up myriad regulations and new standards and laws for drilling that have nothing to do with offshore drilling.

“Even more outrageous is this bill’s attempt to use the oil spill tragedy as leverage to enact totally unrelated policies and increase federal spending on unrelated programs by billions of dollars. What does a solar panel in Nevada, a wind turbine in Montana, uranium for nuclear power, or a ban on fish farming have to do with the Gulf spill? Nothing — but the spill is a good excuse to try and pass otherwise stalled or unpopular new laws,” Hastings said.

Another member of the committee, Rep. John Fleming (R-La.), pointed out the hand-picked Obama commission is just getting underway with no findings or recommendations made.

“This ‘fix it’ bill is being rammed through without an accurate and full understanding of what actually went wrong. The Presidential Commission is just barely beginning its work, no investigations are yet concluded, and the failed [blowout preventer] still on the ocean floor, yet we are voting on a bill without knowing what went wrong,” Fleming said.

“Furthermore, at a time when Washington should be focused on creating jobs, this bill will do just the opposite by hampering future energy development and stifling job creation along the Gulf Coast,” Fleming added.  “This knee-jerk legislation — coupled with the Administration’s damaging Moratorium on offshore drilling — will worsen, not help, the situation.”

Yet the House is poised to vote this week on the CLEAR Act, likely Friday.

“This bill has less to do with preventing another spill than it does preventing domestic energy production,” Cassidy said.

UPDATE: House Republicans released bullets on the CLEAR Act this morning breaking down some of the measures included in the bill, including:

–     Imposes job-killing changes and higher taxes for onshore natural gas and oil production. It fundamentally changes leasing onshore by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, which affects not just leasing for natural gas and oil, but also for renewable energy including wind and solar. Forest Service and BLM leasing are shoved into the three new agencies that are replacing the former Minerals Management Service (MMS).

–     Creates over $30 billion in new mandatory spending for two programs that have nothing to do with the oil spill (the Land and Water Conservation Fund and the Historic Preservation Fund). In the version of the bill headed to the House floor, Democrats added brand new language that expressly allows this $30 billion to be earmarked by the Appropriations Committee.

–     Raises taxes by over $22 billion in ten years – with the taxes eventually climbing to nearly $3 billion per year. This is a direct tax on natural gas and oil that will raise energy prices for American families and businesses, hurt domestic jobs, and increase our dependence on foreign oil. This tax only applies to U.S. oil and gas production on federal leases – giving an advantage to foreign oil and hurting American energy jobs.

–     Requires the federal takeover of state authority to permit in state waters, which reverses sixty years of precedent. The mismanagement, corruption and oversight failures of the federal government are being used as justification to expand federal control by seizing management from the states.

–     Allows 10% of all offshore revenues – an amount possibly as high as $500 million per year – to be spent on a new fund controlled by the Interior Secretary to issue ocean research grants (ORCA fund). There is no requirement that the fund is used for the Gulf region or anything related to oil spills or offshore drilling. These funds can be earmarked.

If this wasn’t yet another way that Democrats are scheming to implode this country, it would be hilarious.  This bill is akin to my shooting you, and then using the shooting incident to pitch my gun-ban agenda.

You DO have to applaud the Democrats for their creative use of oxymorons.  I mean, to take a bill that deliberately prevents any kind of transparent independent investigation, and call it the “CLEAR Act,” is really something else.

Don’t forget to bid on my bridge.  You might be able to win it cheap!

And you can trust me not to rip you off, of course.  Because I’m at least as honest as Nancy Pelosi.

Oops.  My bad.  Nancy Pelosi famously promised to “drain the swamp,” but then she helped fill it instead.  So I’d have to be a total slimeball indeed not to be as honest as Nancy Pelosi.