‘Necessarily Skyrocketing’: Obama Gives Americans Highest Gas Prices IN HISTORY In 2011 – With 2012 Shaping Up To Be Much Worse

You remember that quip Obama gave us that under his policies, energy prices “would necessarily skyrocket“?

Remember that Obama appointed an energy secretary named Steven Chu who said, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe”???  With gasoline prices in Europe consistently hovering between $7 and $10 a gallon???  Steven Chu said that in explaining the Obama policy of “progressively” making gasoline more and more expensive in order to force Americans to turn to alternative energy sources.  And one of the ways Obama wants to accomplish that dream (which amounts to a nightmare for working Americans) is to tax Americans for driving by the mile.

Barry Hussein can file 2011’s gasoline prices under the category “mission accomplished.”  But, of course, he’s really only just getting started.

Gasoline prices were higher last year in America than they had EVER been:

U.S. drivers spend record amount on gasoline in 2011
Despite lower demand, more than $448 billion has been paid so far for fuel — $100 billion more than in 2010. Consistently high oil prices are blamed.
December 09, 2011|By Ronald D. White, Los Angeles Times

American drivers this week broke a record that will bring them no joy.

They collectively spent more than $448 billion on gasoline since the beginning of the year, according to the Oil Price Information Service, putting the previous record for gas expenditures — set in 2008 — in the rearview mirror with weeks of driving still to go.

It’s also a huge jump over last year, when U.S. drivers spent more than $100 billion less on gas.

The major reason for the record-setting gas spending in 2011 was that oil prices were consistently high all year. And that probably brought joy at the other end of the pipeline. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is on pace to top $1 trillion in net oil exports for the first time, or 29% more than last year.

Next week, OPEC convenes to discuss production levels. Analysts held out little hope that the group, which pumps 40% of the world’s oil, would raise output to lower prices and boost the economic recovery in the U.S. and Europe.

“They won’t do anything,” said Fadel Gheit, senior oil analyst at Oppenheimer and Co. “They can lay the blame on the banking sectors and debt and they are happy to keep providing oil at what are record prices for this time of the year.”

On Friday, crude oil for January delivery gained $1.07 to close at $99.41 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Nymex oil prices are up 8.8% so far for the year.

At the pump, gasoline prices hit a record for this time of year. On Friday, the average price of a gallon in California was $3.613, according to the AAA Fuel Gauge Report. That’s 27 cents a gallon higher than the record for a Dec. 9, set in 2007. It was 36.9 cents higher than last year.

Nationally, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline was $3.293, also breaking the 2007 record by 28.5 cents. Compared with last year, it was 31.8 cents higher.

Burbank resident Dan Bell, 38, said he recently turned down a job that would have paid him more because he would have had to spend too much on gasoline to get there.

“I just hate the fact that OPEC is making that much money,” Bell said. “There’s not much we can do. We still have to go to work.”

According to the Energy Department, the demand for vehicle fuel has been about 4% lower this year than in 2010. And domestic production of oil is on the rise.

But increasing amounts of oil produced in the U.S. are going to other countries. For the last three weeks, U.S. refineries have had a record high level of fuel exports, averaging about 2,984,000 barrels a day to markets overseas, the Energy Department said.

That was more than 600,000 barrels a day higher than last year and more than twice as much as was exported in 2008.

In 2008 when gasoline prices went up, Democrats in Congress (and one candidate for president named Barack Hussein Obama) demonized George Bush:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Thursday blamed the “two oil men in the White House,” President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, and their Republican allies in Congress for gas prices exceeding $4 a gallon.

Pelosi, a California Democrat, said multiple initiatives intended to lower high energy costs have passed the Democratically controlled House only to “run into a brick wall” in the Senate because they did not receive the 60 votes needed to overcome Republican filibusters.

“The price of oil is… is attributed to two oil men in the White House and their protectors in the United States Senate,” Pelosi said in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

Democrats think that preventing America from being able to drill for its own oil so we can bow down before OPEC is the key to low oil prices, apparently.

But my point in citing this is to ask, “Who is to blame for gasoline being more expensive than it has ever been in history of America now that Democrats are running things?”

How is this disaster NOT Obama’s fault, oh party that made everything Bush’s fault?

You know, Obama, the guy who said, “Under my plan energy prices will necessarily skyrocket“?  Why was Bush to blame for everything and Obama isn’t to blame for anything?

Other than the fact that the Democrat Party is the party of abject hypocrisy and if you get your “news” from the mainstream media you fill what little brain you have with propaganda.

This abject failure of Obama to control energy prices is nothing new; I was writing about this in 2010, too – at a time that under Obama’s watch gas prices had increased 55 percent.

Oh, btw, Obama isn’t starting 2012 so great when it comes to oil and gas prices, either:

Gasoline prices start the year at a high — and rising
Gas prices are the highest ever for this time of year, and analysts predict that motorists will be digging deep in 2012 to fuel their vehicles.
January 06, 2012|By Ronald D. White, Los Angeles Times

Not only are we worrying about the end of the world in 2012 — thanks, Maya calendar makers — but this also may be the year of the gas-pocalypse, analysts warn. That’s because gasoline prices are the highest ever for the start of the year, and they’re on the rise, supercharged by expensive oil and changes in refinery operations.

In California, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline was $3.666 on Thursday, up 8.1 cents from a week earlier and up 33.1 cents from a year earlier, which had been a record price for this time of year, according to the AAA Fuel Gauge Report. Nationally, a gallon of regular was averaging $3.319, up 6.5 cents from a week earlier. That topped 2011’s record-setting start by 24.2 cents a gallon.

It’s the wrong way to kick off the new year, said Susan Sutter of Anaheim, who has seen the price of a gallon of gasoline at her local Arco station rise 18 cents, to $3.49, in the last week.

“I’m just appalled,” said Sutter, 54, who drives a Honda Civic sedan. Sutter’s ire wasn’t cooled by the fact that she was paying quite a bit less than the state average.

“I just hate these prices,” she said. “Someone is lining their pockets, and it sure isn’t me.”

Of course, current prices don’t guarantee future prices, but analysts are predicting that motorists will be digging deep this year to fuel their vehicles.

“Average gasoline prices are moving up as we enter the new year, a trend that has held since 2008,” said Patrick DeHaan, senior petroleum analyst for GasBuddy.com, a website that tracks fuel prices. “We’re starting 2012 about 20 cents per gallon higher than 2011, setting up an ugly year for motorists.”

Energy Department statistics suggest that U.S. drivers won’t be getting any good news on prices soon.

In 2010, the year of the smallest recent gap between start-of-year prices and that year’s peak, the rise was 14.5% nationally and 10% in California. That translated into a jump of 38.7 cents a gallon in the U.S.’ average gasoline price and 30 cents in California’s.

The biggest recent start-to-peak increase came in 2009. Nationally, the average gasoline price started the year at $1.684 a gallon and climbed 60% to $2.694, a jump of slightly more than a dollar. In California, the average price per gallon soared 75%, to $3.287 from $1.874.

And 2011 showed that when prices start out high, it doesn’t take a huge percentage increase to add to consumer woes. Average prices rose 29% nationally in 2011, a jump of 89.5 cents a gallon to the year’s peak of $3.965. California prices also rose 29% last year, for a 95-cent rise to the high of $4.257.

The AAA Fuel Gauge Report mirrors the trend shown by the Energy Department’s weekly telephone survey of service stations. The averages reported by AAA are gathered daily by the Oil Price Information Service using credit card receipts from more than 100,000 outlets.

This year’s gasoline prices could be significantly higher than in previous years, said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service.

“Somewhere between the Grammys and the Oscars, the gasoline market and perhaps the crude market will trend considerably higher,” Kloza wrote in his blog, Speaking of Oil.

Kloza cited three potential causes: “International worries about a second Arab Spring will combine with domestic concerns about U.S. refinery maintenance and the closure of at least two critical East Coast refineries” to push prices higher.

In addition, U.S. refiners have been exporting record amounts of diesel fuel as they pursue profits from foreign buyers, causing an increase in diesel production at the expense of gasoline production. Tighter gasoline supplies mean higher prices.

History isn’t on the side of U.S. consumers. Kloza said that U.S. average gasoline prices have jumped in 11 of the last 12 years, to the record-high average of $3.514 a gallon for all of 2011. Oil prices are also starting the year on the move, another discouraging signal for gasoline prices, Kloza said.

The U.S. benchmark grade of oil, West Texas Intermediate, has remained above $100 a barrel in the three trading days so far this year on concerns about Iran’s threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, a key passage for oil transport.

The price eased a bit Thursday, falling $1.41, or 1.4%, to $101.81 on the New York Mercantile Exchange after the Energy Department said U.S. oil stockpiles increased by 2.1 million barrels from a week earlier instead of declining 1 million barrels as analysts had expected. In London, the European benchmark, Brent North Sea crude, slipped 96 cents, or 0.8%, to $112.74.

Notice how the media – if they bother to talk about it at ALL (from my own searching the LA Times is about the only ones) – make sure to blame everyone and everything BUT the Fool-in-Chief.

When the media talks about the high gas prices of 2008, the somehow fail to mention the way DEMOCRATS created that mess.  Their steadfast refusal to allow offshore (or damn near ANY) drilling (see also here) is profoundly responsible for our high energy prices.

There are two competing policies.  First, let’s look at President Bush’s:

Gas prices have been on a roller-coaster ride over the past decade, dropping to near $1 after President George W. Bush’s first year in office, crossing the $2 mark in 2005 and reaching $4 in June 2008 before Congress and Mr. Bush took action, lifting presidential and congressionally imposed moratoriums on expanding offshore drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf.

Mr. Bush lifted the presidential moratorium in July that year. The congressional moratorium expired Sept. 30, and prices fell precipitously, dropping more than $1 in October.

“The reason that it dropped is because the U.S. sent a signal to the markets, by dropping the moratoria, that we’re going to drill on our lands. Obviously, we never followed up, and thus you see the crisis gradually rising,” said Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington, the ranking Republican on the Natural Resources Committee.

He said the solution is the same for both the short-term and long-term prices: Assure the markets that the U.S. will pursue domestic exploration.

You can see the impact that America drilling for its own oil has on prices – and how despicable the mainstream media can be in covering up the truth – in the following CBS piece entitled “The Immediate Benefit Of Offshore Drilling” from July 17, 2008:

After trading at a record high of $147 a barrel Friday, the price of oil saw its largest one-day drop since the 2003 beginning of the Iraq war on Tuesday, falling $6.44 a barrel. Wednesday, it fell another $3.71, to $135.03, and at one point was trading as low as $132.

So what happened? As is usually the case with markets, a variety of factors caused this dramatic drop. According to the Associated Press, the Energy Information Administration announced that U.S. crude-oil supplies rose by 3 million barrels; beleaguered banks have been selling off valuable energy contracts to pay for other debts; and there’s even some speculation that computer programs used by Wall Street may create a “cascading effect” once prices start to drop.

But bizarrely, the AP didn’t mention that on Monday – again, the day of the single biggest one-day drop in oil prices in five years – President Bush removed the executive order imposing a moratorium on offshore drilling in the United States.

To think that this dramatic and unexpected move by the Bush administration didn’t have a significant effect on oil prices is folly. Even Democrats admit that relatively small margins in oil production could have a huge impact on prices.

The price per barrel of crude oil – which was at an all-time high the day Bush signed the moratorium that ended the ban on offshore drilling after going up and up and up to that point – continued to drop and drop. By September, it was below $109 a barrel. By October it had dropped even more. And it kept dropping.

But now in the age of Obama, it’s going up and up and up again. We have had a 55% increase in the price of our gasoline during a terrible recession. Obama’s energy policies have hurt this nation badly at an incredibly vulnerable period, without so much as a peep from most of the media.

Prices were at an all time high in 2008, thanks to Democrat policies.  Bush lifted the ban on offshore drilling, and all of a sudden those sky-high oil prices that Democrats demagogued plunged dramatically.  And continued to plunge for the rest of 2008 until we elected a fool.

Now let’s consider Obama’s policies:

Barack Obama threatened to bankrupt the coal industry – which produces 49% of our nation’s electricity – and said that:

“Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

He told just enough lies and half-truths to get coal-state Democrats such as West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller to get them to believe he wouldn’t destroy their economies. But now that he’s elected he’s free to break those promises and pursue ruinous policies. Rockefeller is now saying of Obama that:

“he’s beginning to not be believable to me.”

But it’s like, “Sorry Sucker.” When you vote like a fool, you receive a fool’s fate.

Anyway, maybe you thought, “Well, I’m not in a coal producing state,” or “I’m not in a coal-fired electric grid,” so you thought Obama’s shockingly bad energy policies didn’t matter.

But you’re still going to have to put gas in your car, and Obama’s going to see to it that it costs you a pretty penny to do it.

In fact, gas will have to rise to the European level prices of at least $7/gallon in order for Obama’s policies to impact CO2 levels as per his energy policy. So you can bet that fuel prices will continue to rise, and rise, and rise.

Consider:

It wasn’t long ago that Barack Obama was saying that high fuel prices would be good for the country as long as they rose slowly enough that your stupid brain wouldn’t notice:

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.

And Obama’s appointments – particularly his appointment of the Secretary of Energy – affirm that he doesn’t mind you paying up the wazoo at every fill-up:

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.

Gas prices have DOUBLED since Obama assumed the presidency.

Hold him responsible. Get him out of the Oval Office before he poisons America even more.

The United States is the number ONE country in in the world in having the largest fossil reserves.

And the United States is currently the third largest oil producer in the entire world.

But as long as Obama – and probably as long as any Democrat – occupies the White House, you will not see America bothering to harness it’s own abundant natural resources no matter who gets hurt.

Who’s fault is it that oil and gas and energy prices are so shockingly high?  The mainstream media will never honestly or accurately report it, but you have Barack Obama and the Democrat Party to thank when you can’t fill your gas tank or pay your energy bill.

Right now the Keystone oil pipeline is in front of Obama – and he is just as determined to kill domestic oil and the domestic jobs that come with it as he’s ever been.

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.

Obama Guilty Of Crimes Against Humanity

The left called George Bush a war criminal, a man who was guilty of crimes against humanity.

Pretty much every day of his presidency.

Of course, Barry Hussein is at war in absolutely every country that George Bush fought in.  But that’s different.  Because liberals are hypocrites and don’t really give much of a damn about facts.

So they were beyond frothing-at-the-mouth outrage at every opportunity when the President was a Republican.

Analysis: Press Largely Ignored Incendiary Rhetoric at Bush Protest
By Bill Sammon
Published August 12, 2009
FOXNews.com

News outlets that are focusing on the incendiary rhetoric of conservatives outside President Obama’s town hall meeting Tuesday ignored the incendiary rhetoric — and even violence — of liberals outside an appearance by former President George W. Bush in 2002.

When Bush visited Portland, Ore., for a fundraiser, protesters stalked his motorcade, assailed his limousine and stoned a car containing his advisers. Chanting “Bush is a terrorist!”, the demonstrators bullied passers-by, including gay softball players and a wheelchair-bound grandfather with multiple sclerosis.

One protester even brandished a sign that seemed to advocate Bush’s assassination. The man held a large photo of Bush that had been doctored to show a gun barrel pressed against his temple.

“BUSH: WANTED, DEAD OR ALIVE,” read the placard, which had an X over the word “ALIVE.”

Another poster showed Bush’s face with the words: “F— YOU, MOTHERF—ER!”

And exactly HOW MANY screaming-in-your-face protests have the left thrown at Zero?  Obama, that’s how many.  Or maybe it’s the other way around.

The mainstream media treated Cindy Sheehan like the incontrovertible voice of truth when Bush was president; now they just treat her like a demented shrew with Obama putting his feet up on the Oval Office desk.

Let us remember, and never ever forget:

So Bush was evil for fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.  And Obama is only a little bit guilty for completely lying about getting us out, and not a bloodthirsty warmonger at all.  Even though Bush got us into a war that we could win, whereas Obama said Bush’s war that we could win was evil, and we needed to put all our eggs in Vietnam I mean Afghanistan instead.

Barack Obama is a month away from equaling the total number of American casualties that George Bush lost in his entire eight years of war in Afghanistan.  Obama is every bit as much of a warmonger as George Bush ever was.

But that’s only part of Obama’s crimes against humanity.

Barack Obama is also guilty of crimes against human beings being able to have a job.

Want an example?  Here you go:

SHOCK! Offshore Drilling Moratorium Would Cost United States 175,000 Jobs Per Year Through 2035
by Bob McCarty

During a 45-minute conference call with journalists from 40 major media outlets this morning, Jack Gerard shared some startling predictions about the future health of the nation’s oil and natural gas industry if the Obama Administration gets its way in adding more regulation and increasing taxes on offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The biggest one of all is enough to cause anyone to take pause:

“The administration’s moratorium, if continued indefinitely — or similar legislative proposals which would make the deep water unavailable or uneconomic — would cost this country 175,000 jobs every year between now and 2035, according to our latest analysis,” said Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, a group representing some 400 oil and natural gas companies.

And that’s not all!

“The Gulf of Mexico accounts for 30 percent of our domestic oil production and 13 percent of natural gas,” Gerard explained. “The deepwater areas account for 80 percent of the Gulf’s oil production and 45 percent of its natural gas production. Twenty of the highest-producing leases are in the deep water.”

When one considers that the oil and natural gas industry, according to Gerard, supports 9.2 million workers and 7.5 percent of all U.S. gross domestic product, even a small percent of decline can have a tremendous impact on the economy.

According to an API-produced report released today, the economic impact of a complete shutdown of deepwater drilling would yield some awful results. For instance:

• Reduce direct and indirect employment in the oil & gas and its service industries by 93,000 jobs – every year through 2035;

• Reduce an additional 82,000 jobs every year through 2035 in non oil & gas related industries due to less income in the economy;

• Reduce annual GDP by over $20 billion per year or a cumulative impact of approximately $500 billion in the next 25 years;

• Reduce long-term U.S. oil production by 27 percent; and

• Increase long-term U.S. foreign oil imports by 19 percent.

And so we can add “crimes against employment” to “crimes against humanity.”

We need to grasp reality: Obama’s job killing policies kill jobs.  And the only thing Obama is stimulating is unemployment.

Let’s face facts: business leaders – you know, the people who actually know something about business – are out in force saying that Obama policies are ‘job-destroying.’

The Wall Street Journal views Obama’s policies as a manifesto for job destruction.

Barack Obama is destroying jobs.

By the Democrats’ own standards from their 2004 campaign rhetoric against George Bush, Barack Obama is the worst president in American history.

And the right to work is a basic human right, according to Franklin Delano Roosevelt:

“The inherent right to work is one of the elemental privileges of a free people. Continued failure to achieve that right and privilege by anyone who wants to work and needs work is a challenge to our civilization and to our security.”

I submit, therefore, that Barack Obama is guilty of crimes against humanity – and by the very standards that Democrats created.

Gas Prices Have Risen 55% On Obama’s Watch And Continue To Soar

Remember all the blame directed at George Bush when gas prices rose?  Remember how the Democrats literally began federal investigations over the price increases in what amounted to a political hit job?

Well, gasoline prices have quietly increased 55%, a dollar a gallon, under Obama’s watch, and suddenly the same Democrats who swore that high crimes and misdemeanors had been committed under Bush are now completely silent.

From the Washington Times:

Gas up $1 a gallon on Obama’s watch
Pressure rises for exploration
Thursday, March 25, 2010
By Stephen Dinan  and Kara Rowland

Gas prices have risen $1 since just after President Obama took office in January 2009 and are now closing in on the $3 mark, prompting an evaluation of the administration’s energy record and calls for the White House to open more U.S. land for oil exploration.

The average price per gallon across the U.S. hit $2.81 this week, according to the Energy Information Administration. That was up from $1.81 the week of Jan. 26, 2009, just after the inauguration, and marks the highest price since Oct. 20, 2008.

John B. Townsend II, a spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic, said price increases are a result of the cost of crude oil, thanks to a decision by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries not to raise production even as economic growth in countries such as Russia and China spurs more demand.

“From all indications, we’re going to see $3 gas again this summer,” he said.

The Obama administration also blames the market for the high prices and argues that its record for expanding energy development has been solid over the past year.

“The prices are set by the world market,” said Kendra Barkoff, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, which manages federal lands that would be leased for oil exploration.

Gas prices have been on a roller-coaster ride over the past decade, dropping to near $1 after President George W. Bush’s first year in office, crossing the $2 mark in 2005 and reaching $4 in June 2008 before Congress and Mr. Bush took action, lifting presidential and congressionally imposed moratoriums on expanding offshore drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf.

Mr. Bush lifted the presidential moratorium in July that year. The congressional moratorium expired Sept. 30, and prices fell precipitously, dropping more than $1 in October.

“The reason that it dropped is because the U.S. sent a signal to the markets, by dropping the moratoria, that we’re going to drill on our lands. Obviously, we never followed up, and thus you see the crisis gradually rising,” said Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington, the ranking Republican on the Natural Resources Committee.

He said the solution is the same for both the short-term and long-term prices: Assure the markets that the U.S. will pursue domestic exploration.

You can see the impact that America drilling for its own oil has on prices – and how despicable the mainstream media can be in covering up the truth – in the following CBS piece entitled “The Immediate Benefit Of Offshore Drilling” from July 17, 2008:

After trading at a record high of $147 a barrel Friday, the price of oil saw its largest one-day drop since the 2003 beginning of the Iraq war on Tuesday, falling $6.44 a barrel. Wednesday, it fell another $3.71, to $135.03, and at one point was trading as low as $132.

So what happened? As is usually the case with markets, a variety of factors caused this dramatic drop. According to the Associated Press, the Energy Information Administration announced that U.S. crude-oil supplies rose by 3 million barrels; beleaguered banks have been selling off valuable energy contracts to pay for other debts; and there’s even some speculation that computer programs used by Wall Street may create a “cascading effect” once prices start to drop.

But bizarrely, the AP didn’t mention that on Monday – again, the day of the single biggest one-day drop in oil prices in five years – President Bush removed the executive order imposing a moratorium on offshore drilling in the United States.

To think that this dramatic and unexpected move by the Bush administration didn’t have a significant effect on oil prices is folly. Even Democrats admit that relatively small margins in oil production could have a huge impact on prices.

The price per barrel of crude oil – which was at an all-time high the day Bush signed the moratorium that ended the ban on offshore drilling after going up and up and up to that point – continued to drop and drop.  By September, it was below $109 a barrel.  By October it had dropped even more.  And it kept dropping.

But now in the age of Obama, it’s going up and up and up again.  We have had a 55% increase in the price of our gasoline during a terrible recession.  Obama’s energy policies have hurt this nation badly at an incredibly vulnerable period, without so much as a peep from most of the media.

Barack Obama threatened to bankrupt the coal industry – which produces 49% of our nation’s electricity – and said that:

“Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

He told just enough lies and half-truths to get coal-state Democrats such as  West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller to get them to believe he wouldn’t destroy their economies.  But now that he’s elected he’s free to break those promises and pursue ruinous policies.  Rockefeller is now saying of Obama that:

“he’s beginning to not be believable to me.”

But it’s like, “Sorry Sucker.”  When you vote like a fool, you receive a fool’s fate.

Anyway, maybe you thought, “Well, I’m not in a coal producing state,” or “I’m not in a coal-fired electric grid,” so you thought Obama’s shockingly bad energy policies didn’t matter.

But you’re still going to have to put gas in your car, and Obama’s going to see to it that it costs you a pretty penny to do it.

In fact, gas will have to rise to the European level prices of at least $7/gallon in order for Obama’s policies to impact CO2 levels as per his energy policy.  So you can bet that fuel prices will continue to rise, and rise, and rise.

We’ve had a clear call from the American people to drill for our own oil before.  The Democrats who stopped us from drilling in the first place went utterly nutjob ballistic –

With fewer than 20 legislative days before the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1, the entire appropriations process has largely ground to a halt because of the ham-handed fighting that followed Republican attempts to lift the moratorium on offshore oil and gas exploration. And after promising fairness and open debate, Pelosi has resorted to hard-nosed parliamentary devices that effectively bar any chance for Republicans to offer policy alternatives.

“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.”

– in their campaign to prevent domestic energy production – until an overwhelming majority in American opinion made them change their tune.  And then they pledged that they would allow the offshore drilling ban to expire.

Only they didn’t, because Democrats are liars without shame.  Obama signed a brand new moratorium banning domestic drilling.  There will be no domestic energy production under his watch – unless you count the pathetic little toys he says he’ll build that won’t even put so much as a scratch our energy requirements.

Oh, Obama was perfectly willing to lie to us about domestic oil the same way he lied to Jay Rockefeller about domestic coal.  Lies come incredibly easy for Obama – especially since the lamestream propaganda won’t expose him – which leaves him free to tell a whopping load of them.

We have TRILLIONS of barrels of recoverable oil.

Democrats keep saying that there’s no point drilling for our own oil because it would take ten years for the oil to get into system and bring prices down.  First of all that isn’t true; energy companies say they could be up and running in only 3-4 years.  But even if we assume their ten-year figure, they’ve been saying it for decades – and if we’d drilled ten years’ ago, we’d have that oil in our system NOW, wouldn’t we?

Obama’s policy is based upon undermining oil, coal, and natural gas in order to foster the development of solar, wind, and other energy methods that the moonbeam crowd favor.

Here’s the problem: we can’t even BEGIN to address our energy needs with these “environmental” sources.  You get so much more energy at so much lower of a cost from oil, coal, and natural gas versus solar or wind that it isn’t even funny.

A couple of charts illustrate this point:

.

We need to harness our domestic energy.  We need oil, coal, and natural gas.

We’re not going to get them under Obama, or under any form of Democrat rule.

You can count on seeing a shocking trend of higher and higher gasoline prices, to go with a “necessary skyrocketing” of our energy prices, under Barack Obama.

At least until we vote Democrats out of office.

Dishonest Obama Administration Lies Re: People’s Demand To Harness America’s Oil Resources

From Big Government.com

Drillgate: Internal Emails Shows Obama Team Lying to Public
by Vince Haley

If you’re the President of the United States or one of his political appointees and you’re ideologically opposed to new oil and natural gas development offshore, what do you do when the public registers its overwhelming support for new drilling in public opinion polls?

You dance, delay, and deceive. You speak melodious words about seeking the wisdom of the public in making these decisions and then ignore evidence of the public will when you get it, or worse, you hide it.

First came the dance.  In August 2008, after soaring gas prices and a dramatic shift in public opinion caused President Bush, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, and Republican presidential candidate John McCain to reverse their positions on offshore drilling, then-Senator Obama also changed. The Democratic presidential nominee reversed his own position and that of his party, saying he was open to offshore drilling as part of an overall energy plan.  The Democratic Congress followed a month later by quietly dropping the 25-year Congressional ban on offshore drilling.

Then came the delay. In January 2009, President Obama inherited a draft five year offshore drilling plan prepared by the outgoing Bush administration.  The plan was already receiving public comment as part of the elaborate rule making process followed by federal agencies.  Ken Salazar, Obama’s new Secretary of Interior, determined the decision about new offshore drilling was so important that he ordered a six-month extension to the comment period.

Third comes the dishonesty.

In April of 2009, during a discussion about offshore exploration in San Francisco, Salazar said that President Obama directed him to “to make sure that we have an open and transparent government” and that “these are not decisions that are going to be made behind closed doors.” Salazar went on to say that President Obama wanted to make sure that DOI was “maximizing the opportunity for the public to give us guidance on what it is that they want to do.”

Yet, more than four months after the comment period ended, the Department of the Interior has failed to make any public announcement about the results, even though sources have told American Solutions for months the comments show a 2-1 advantage in support of offshore drilling.

It took American Solutions almost four months and the power of the Freedom of Information Act to finally uncover indirect confirmation that, out of over 530,000 comments submitted, pro-drilling comments outnumbered anti-drilling comments by a 2-1 margin.

In an email dated October 27, 2009, Liz Birnbaum, director of the Minerals Management Service, informs other Interior officials that a preliminary tabulation of the results of the comment period had not yet gone to Secretary Salazar, adding “[s]o the Secretary can honestly say in response to any questions that he’s [SIC] has not yet seen the analysis of the comments – staff is still working on it. I did, however, confirm to him the 2-1 split that these guys [at American Solutions] are emphasizing.”

When a public employee is on record condoning purposeful deception of the American people, the taxpayer should no longer have to fund his or her job.  Secretary Salazar should immediately fire Liz Birnbaum for purposefully deceiving him, and in turn, the American people.  It’s not possible for the Secretary to honor pledges of openness, honestly, and transparency in government if his staff is going to deliberately undermine such pledges.

Public opinion polls already measure near 70% support for offshore drilling, so the results from a public comment period that reflect the same public sentiment should not be surprising.  But after all this talk of wanting the public’s input, Secretary Salazar and his team must find it a real stumbling block to have to explain all their anti-energy development actions in light of the comment period results to which they previously attached such great importance.

This newly gained insight into the anti-energy exploration mindset within the Department of the Interior allows a new perspective of President Obama’s mention of offshore development in his recent State of the Union address.  Here is the one paragraph in which the President described offshore development:

But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.  It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies.  And, yes, it means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America.

To the passive listener, it sounded like President Obama expressed at least rhetorical support for offshore drilling.

But the President only says we must make “tough decisions” on offshore drilling, deliberately refusing to apply that standard to other decisions on energy.

But tough for whom? Certainly not for the public that overwhelmingly supports more offshore drilling.

Indeed, the only person facing a tough decision is the President since an important part of his political base is opposed to new American energy development.

Bucking public opinion would indeed be a tough decision for this President, but he has shown himself quite comfortable with bucking public opinion to pursue stunningly unpopular policies on health care and cap and trade.

In short, it’s a fair conclusion that the tough decisions the President identified in his State of the Union was his intended decision not to pursue any new offshore oil and gas development. The actions by Salazar and his team are entirely consistent with that conclusion.

What makes all of this dispiriting, especially this month, is that with 15 million Americans out of work and with the President’s recently submitted budget projecting trillion dollar annual deficits for the next ten years and a near tripling of the national debt by 2020, the President is throwing away a golden opportunity over the next three decades to create millions of new jobs and generate more than $270 billion in annual economic growth from new oil and gas development, including $54 billion annually in federal tax receipts that could help lower the federal deficit and the national debt.

These extraordinary benefits of job creation and economic growth – all without requiring any federal spending – are, sadly, not on President Obama’s agenda, notwithstanding all the phony rhetoric to the contrary.

Indeed, we can look forward to the President’s continued strategy of dance, delay, and deceive.

In contrast to opening up our vital oil fields, which would have a huge positive impact in terms of both jobs, the economy, and our national security, it is interesting to compare Obama’s energy policy.

In Obama’s own words:

“You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, uh, you know — 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.”

You had a chance to decide which policy you wanted 16 months ago – and you chose national bankruptcy.

We voted for this foolish clown.  I guess we deserve to suffer until he’s finally, mercifully gone.

Obama “Inflate Tires” Story A Study In Arrogance, Biased Media Coverage

Rush Limbaugh pointed this out:

RUSH: The Obama camp continues to push the tire gauge.  I mean, this is incredible.  They continue to push this tire gauge thing as an energy plan.  They claim to have found proof somewhere that properly inflating your tires, if we all did it, would save something like 50,000 gallons or barrels a day or some such thing.  It’s just absurd.  The Drive-Bys continue to circle the wagons around Obama’s tire gauge thing, and then McCain continues to make fun of it…

RUSH: We have a montage of the Drive-By Media circling the wagons on this.

TAPPER:  If engines were tuned up and tires fully inflated, it could save 800,000 new barrels a day.

FOREMAN:  Would it produce the savings Obama is citing: three or four percent in overall oil consumption?  The answer is…yes!

CRAWFORD:  Truth is properly inflating your tires, uh, will do more for, uh, saving money on gas than anything the politicians are going to do right now!

MADISON:  Everybody and their grandmother knows you inflate tires!

At one point, in discussing this last week, Limbaugh said, “You’d think you would have to stop every few miles and siphon out some gas to make room in your tank for all the fuel you were saving.”

Whether we’re talking about the surge or the tire pressure, Obama simply doesn’t seem to have the ability to recognize when he’s wrong.

You get the idea that if Barack Obama were to say that we could stop global warming if we all took our clothes off and ran around naked praying to Beelzebub the media would come running to say, “Brilliant!!!  He’s right!”

The Reuters story, “FACTBOX: Government backs Obama call to inflate tires,” is a classic example of left-wing media disinformation, opening with the statement:

(Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate John McCain has criticized his Democratic challenger, Barack Obama, for advising people to make sure their car tires are properly inflated to help reduce gasoline use.

No.  Wrong.  McCain has criticized Obama for claiming that inflating tires can compensate for not drilling.  They are deliberately misrepresenting the McCain position in order to benefit Obama.  Reuters is willfully engaging in journalistic fraud.

This is what Obama said:

“There are things you can do individually, though, to save energy,” Obama said. “Making sure your tires are properly inflated – simple thing. But we could save all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling – if everybody was just inflating their tires? And getting regular tune-ups? You’d actually save just as much!”

The media is fixating on the claim that, “Obama is correct that properly inflating our tires would save fuel” and ignoring the fact that he is factually incorrect on a massive scale in claiming that the resulting savings in fuel would obviate the need to increase our domestic supply of oil.

Anne Mathias, an economist with the Stanford Group, said on Good Morning America:

MATHIAS: Unless everybody in the country is driving, you know, a 1969 Chevy Impala or something like that with the tires at half inflation, you’re not going to realize as much savings as he’s talking about.

But that’s not the overwhelming media narrative, is it?

Jake Tapper of ABC had the following analysis on his blog.  Maybe he should have read it before he allowed himself to be represented by his network as supporting Barack Obama’s claim:

Obviously, Obama wasn’t arguing that inflating tires would reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil — but he was saying such a move would save as much energy as drilling for oil in the continental shelf would provide.

Is that true?

If it does save gas, and it is a common problem, well, then what would the total savings be if we all were a bit more diligent about checking the pressure very morning?

Frank Verrastro, Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), says that it’s complicated, of course.

“The ‘x’ factors here are the fact that Sen. Obama used both tire inflation and tune ups in his remarks, and no one knows what volume you could/would get from additional drilling in the outer continental shelf,” Verrastro says.

As of now, all we have for the OCS are resource estimates, but no production.

Using the website FuelEconomy.gov, Verrastro writes, we can estimate that “the maximum (estimated) fuel economy (i.e., mileage) savings drivers could expect as a result of keeping their engines properly tuned (4%), replacing air filters (up to 10%), properly inflating tires (up to 3%) and using the correct motor oil (1-2%) is 18-19%.  Since American drivers use roughly 380 million gallons of gasoline (not including diesel) per day, an 18% improvement translates into a savings of 68 million gallons, or 1.62 million barrels of oil per day.”

Current crude oil and condensate production in the OCS is about 1.25 million barrels per day. [Editorial insertion: But with 85% of the outer continental shelf off limits, you know that figure ought to be MUCH, MUCH higher – and that’s precisely the point Republicans are trying to make.  It’s the failure to report this blatantly obvious fact that makes people like myself so furious.]

So… What does that mean?

It means that if every American was running around with significantly underinflated tires and improperly tuned cars, then, yes, Sen. Obama is right, the savings from inflating the tires and tuning the cars could arguably match or exceed current output from the OCS.

However, since estimates of significant tire underinflation affect only about a quarter of the cars on road — as we noted above with the NHTSA statistics — and it’s highly unlikely that 100% of the cars are in need of tune- ups at any given time, the maximum savings amount is probably closer to 10%, Verrastro says.

“So the production offset is more likely to approach 800 thousand barrels per day – a tidy sum and a worthwhile target for savings, but not equal to OCS output,” he rules. “Finally, without knowing what production volumes could be expected from lifting the ban on OCS drilling moratoria, it’s impossible to assert that taking these fuel savings actions would exceed future offshore oil volumes, and in fact, one might argue that the combination of achieving these savings AND developing new supply would doubly enhance US energy security.”

– Jake Tapper and Natalie Gewargis

Barack Obama is simply wrong.  What makes the story particularly troubling is that so much of the media is deliberately and steadfastly refusing to portray the difference of opinion between McCain and Obama fairly, or to report the facts accurately.

Obama is misrepresenting both how much proper tire inflation would actually save the country on one end and how much oil we stand to gain by drilling offshore on the other.

Should we be regularly verifying that our tires are properly inflated?  Yes, we should – and I do (which by itself disproves Obama’s thesis, because his assumption is that EVERY SINGLE DRIVER is driving on underinflated tires).  But it is simply false – and frankly idiotic – to claim that doing so obviates our need to increase our domestic oil supply.  And when it comes to our domestic oil, we are not talking about thousands, or millions, or even billions of barrels of oil: between Alaska, and our shale oil deposits, and the outer continental shelf, we are literally talking about trillions of barrels of oil.

Why does the media continue to be so patently unfair, biased, and dishonest in its coverage?

Obama’s “New Stand” On Energy Just Dumb In A Different Way

Yesterday’s New York Times ran an article on Obama’s new energy plan, titled “Obama, in New Stand, Proposes Use of Oil Reserve” by Larry Rohter.

As the New York Times puts it, Barack Obama now has a “new stand” on energy. Maybe it’s a new stand, but it’s the same old flip flopping from a serial panderer who has long-since proven he will say anything to get elected.

And his energy plan is still dumb, just dumb in a slightly different way.

According to the article, Obama “outlined an energy plan that contrasts with Senator John McCain’s greater emphasis on expanded offshore drilling and coal and nuclear technology.” That’s his first mistake. It’s bad enough to take oil – by far and away our dominant energy source – off the table. But to then take coal and nuclear energy off the table as well is to remove the only alternatives to oil that could even theoretically take up the slack. It amounts to sacrificing common sense to political gamesmanship.

Most of the reasons liberals and environmentalists have given over the years in decrying nuclear energy have turned out to be patently false. The French have been safely, effectively, and efficiently using nuclear power for decades. Rather than the half life of their fuel being millions of years, we are learning that it is actually only about sixty years. Big diff.

What Obama is doing is frankly abandoning what would best work in favor of what is most politically expedient.

John McCain is promising to increase our energy supply. Obama is promising to conserve. The problem is, you don’t grow an economy by conserving energy. We need more energy in order to continue growing our economy, and Obama refuses to allow its production.

The second thing Obama says – in contradiction from his earlier positions – was to open up the reserves and swap heavy crude for light crude. The problem with that is that heavy crude is difficult to refine, and requires special refineries. Elgie Holstein, an Obama energy advisor, said that while fewer refineries now are capable of refining the heavier stuff into gasoline, that won’t be the case in the future.

But it certainly WILL be the case in the future, unless Barack Obama and the Democrats are swept from power in an overwhelming Republican victory. It has been Democrats who are overwhelmingly to blame for the fact that we haven’t built any refineries for over thirty years. And it has been Democrats’ liberal supporters among the ranks of environmentalists and lawyers who continue to thwart effort after effort to build this vital energy infrastructure.

There’s something even larger at issue regarding Obama’s reversal to open up the strategic reserves, however. Opening up the reserves would lower the price of fuel by temporarily injecting more oil into the market. The very fact that Obama is calling for this step is an implicit acknowledgment that we need more oil. His policy thus comes into direct contradiction with his rhetoric. If we do what he says and open the reserves, what will we do when the price goes back up? Where will we get the oil we need then? Thus we find that Obama – in calling for the reserves to be opened – is really only calling for a temporary solution that he hope will take oil prices off the table long enough to get himself elected. This “solution” is therefore really just incredibly cyncial politics of the very worst kind.

Tapping our Strategic Petroleum Reserves won’t increase the total supply of oil. Only drilling will.

This leads to another example of Obama’s hypocrisy and stupidity on energy.

“Obama said his goal was to have 10 percent of the country’s energy needs met by renewable resources by the end of his first term, more than double the current figure.” But again, can’t you see that he is implicitly affirming that the energy sources he is actively opposing would still amount to supplying 90% of our energy needs even given his own best case scenario?

An intelligent man would worry more about securing the more than 95% of our energy we currently use and less about the 5% he intends to double to 10%. His previous policy against ANY increased drilling amounted to a suicide pact with environmentalist groups. And regardless of what he says now – in direct contradiction to his past position – is simply not to be trusted. Barack Obama has already assured us that he is a candidate who doesn’t want more oil, coal, and nuclear power. He wants less of them. But those are the very things that give us 95% of our energy!!!

We have had solar and wind tecnhology since the early 1980s. It’s not that we don’t have the technology; it’s that these technologies – and others as well – are nowhere near cost effective, efficient, or versatile enough to meet our needs. And other alternative sources are still more theoretical than practical. Are you willing to gamble your future and your children’s future on unproven theories?

T. Boone Pickens has been calling for increased wind power in his massive advertising campaign. He is also calling to drill up the whazoo and to produce more oil, more coal, and more natural gas energy even as we develop the alternative source of wind technology.

The remaining thing that Obama wants is a bunch of handouts. He wants $150 billion to go to his voters as a big government transfer payment, and he wants to have the government subsidize hybrid automobiles to the tune of $7,000 each. He also wants to add on a massive “windfall profits” tax against oil companies.

What we want is better sources of energy; what we don’t want is worse sources of energy. When government takes the decision out of the hands of the market and subsidizes something, the political intrusion very often encourages bad ideas and discourages good ones. Politicians understand special interests, political action committees, and cleverly disguised quid pro quo donations well enough; but they don’t understand the fundamentals of science, engineering, or economics. A classic example of this is corn-based ethanol. Politicians were essentially induced by campaign donations from special interests to subsidize ethanol in order to bring the price down to a level where it could compete, thereby preventing other technologies from entering the market. And now we know that using our food source as an energy source was a very bad idea.

Children are literally starving to death in some parts of the world, thanks to the Democrat-inspired effort to turn our food into fuel to avoid using oil. And it is also causing food shortages, higher costs, and hunger in the U.S. It was a terrible and immoral idea; and it was your Democrats at work.

Barack Obama wants the government to make the same fundamental mistake again and again. He is a socialist at heart, and he simply can’t trust the wisdom of the free market.

But that isn’t the end of Obama’s error of subsidizing one thing and taxing another.

When you tax something, you make it more expensive and you make it more scarce. Taxing oil companies – which already are the most heavily taxed corporate entities – amounts to penalizing them for producing the very thing we need more of. We tried windfall profits taxes during the Carter years and it was a fiasco for the same reasons it would be a fiasco today. What we need is cheaper and more abundant energy; what Obama wants to bring us is scarcer and more expensive energy.

To then offset a terribly flawed policy by underwriting it with government funding is a fool’s solution.

Obama recently said, “Breaking our oil addiction is one of the greatest challenges our generation will ever face,” the Illinois Democrat told a supportive audience as he began a week’s focus on energy issues. “It will take nothing less than a complete transformation of our economy.”

Obama is just as wrong to call Americans’ need for oil an “addiction” as he would be to call our need for water, food, or clothing an addiction. The American way of life has been based on readily available oil. Obama’s slogan betrays an anti-American agenda that would dramatically alter and impoverish our way of life if implemented. He is also wrong in his lack of understanding as to what such a “complete transformation of our economy” would cost, and he is wrong for not informing the American people of the REAL costs of his policies.

On a whole host of issues that will face the next president and chief executive, we need a grown-up who can provide mature solutions. Barack obama – a pandering flip flopper who offers one bad idea after another – simply isn’t that guy.

Pelosi, Reid, and Obama: The Three Stooges of American Energy Policy

Remember Nancy Pelosi’s “commonsense plan” to lower gas prices, back when gas prices were half what they are since she and her fellow Democrats assumed power in Congress?

“With record gas prices, record CEO pay packages, and record oil company profits, Speaker Hastert and the Majority Congress continue to give the American people empty rhetoric rather than join Democrats who are working to lower gas prices now.

“Democrats have a commonsense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices by cracking down on price gouging, rolling back the billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, tax breaks and royalty relief given to big oil and gas companies, and increasing production of alternative fuels.”

Investors’ Business Daily came out with the following call for Nancy Pelosi:

Feckless To Reckless, Pelosi Should Resign

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Monday, July 14, 2008

Leadership: With oil hitting $147, Nancy Pelosi finally admits energy is a problem. But instead of drilling for it, she’s cooked up a new drain-the-reserves scheme. It’s pure politics at a time of crisis. She ought to resign.

Any leader with an energy record as derelict as Speaker Pelosi’s ought to step down. Where she once was just incompetent and irresponsible, she has now — with her latest scheme to fix oil prices — become dangerous.

Despite polls showing Americans in favor of drilling more oil from America’s huge untapped supplies, Pelosi won’t allow it. She just wants to empty our Strategic Petroleum Reserve for a short-term fix to get through Election Day.

It’s an irresponsible suggestion, signaling not only an ignorance of how the economy works but also a willingness to place the nation at risk in the case of emergency.

Last Tuesday, Pelosi sent a letter to President Bush urging him to release a “small portion” of the nation’s 706 million barrels of strategic-reserve oil to bring down prices. Regardless of how one feels about whether reserves should be held at all, two big problems stand out with Pelosi’s tiny demand.

One, she’s proposing a misappropriation of the reserves. The U.S. oil stockpile is a 58-day cushion for emergencies that today are all possible. If Israel attacks Iran, for example, and prices double again. Or if Hugo Chavez cuts off his supplies, as he threatened to do as recently as Sunday.

The reserve is there to cushion the blow of a market disruption; it’s not an open-market mechanism to manipulate prices for political ends.

Two, Pelosi has finally admitted that supply matters, something that contrasts with her entire legislative record. We count 14 energy actions to suppress supply on her Web site just since 2005.

She has blocked efforts to open Alaska to drilling, denounced fossil fuels, blamed oil companies for high gasoline prices, voted for biotech boondoggles and condemned speculators.

“Our coasts need lasting protection from oil and gas drilling,” she declared Dec. 6, 2006, after Democrats won control of Congress. Missing are any moves against petrotyrant regimes who drive prices skyward, or even lip service to the idea of ensuring supply through drilling.

Pelosi downplays her proposal as modest because it’s a “small” portion of the reserves to spend. And look what happened in 2000, she says, when an SPR release authorized by President Clinton lowered gasoline prices nearly 20%.

But she’s not fooling anyone. Then, like now, an election was coming up.

With Congress’ public approval at a subterranean 9% and falling, the speaker must be starting to realize that November may not be the Democratic cakewalk that pundits predict.

President Bush, however, isn’t about to be suckered into releasing the reserves just long enough for pump prices to fall by Election Day, thereby saving Democrats’ skins so they can carry on their drill-nothingism for an additional two years.

The president needs to do two things with Pelosi’s proposal: First, tell her “no,” unless she comes up with a plan to open up more drilling. Second, expose it for what it is — a bid to paint Bush as the problem to distract from her own sorry record.

In playing politics with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the speaker has moved beyond the incompetence and irresponsibility that have characterized her leadership to date.

It borders on reckless, something we cannot tolerate in such dangerous times.

Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid ought to join her, given that he thinks that the very substance our culture needs to survive is evil:

“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.”

Ohmigosh! The leaders of both the Democrat-controlled House and Senate are completely irresponsible – and completely useless – on energy, at a time when energy is becoming a genuine crisis!

Can we make it a trifecta? Do we have – dare I say it – THREE stooges?

Here’s what Barack Obama’s campaign says about President Bush’s lifting of the executive order prohibiting offshore oil drilling:

“If offshore drilling would provide short-term relief at the pump or a long-term strategy for energy independence, it would be worthy of our consideration, regardless of the risks. But most experts, even within the Bush administration, concede it would do neither. It would merely prolong the failed energy policies we have seen from Washington for 30 years. Senator Obama believes Americans need real short-term relief, which is why he has proposed a second round of stimulus with energy rebates for working families. And over the long-term, Senator Obama understands that our national security and the survivial of the planet demand a real strategy to break our dependence on foreign oil by developing clean, new sources of energy and by vastly improving the energey efficiency of our cars, trucks and our economy. He is ready to lead such a transformation.”

Yep. Three for three. We have the Three Stooges of energy. And I personally think Nancy Pelosi is the “Moe” of the bunch (I’ll leave it to others to decide which one is “Curly”).

What do we make of the Democrats’ proposals? How has House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “commonsense plan” performed since gas prices were a little over $2 a gallon when she took over?

Well, that’s clearly a rhetorical question; Pelosi, Reid, and their Democrat Congress haven’t done a single positive thing.

What do we make of Democrats’ excuses for refusing to allow drilling? Stop and thing about their answers: 1) there’s no point in drilling because it won’t produce a drop of oil for seven years; 2) we can’t drill our way out of the problem; 3) drilling simply represents the failed policy of the past; 4) we should open the strategic petroleum reserve to lower energy prices; 5) off-shore drilling will contaminate our environment and harm our tourism industries; 6) if we expand drilling we will contribute to global warming; 7) the oil companies have 68 million acres they can drill on; 8) the high price of gas is due to “price gouging” by big oil; 9) the high price of gas is due to speculators manipulating the market.

Think about it:
1) If there’s no point in drilling because it won’t immediately produce any oil, then by the same twisted idiot’s logic, there’s no point in investing in “alternative energy” – most of which is purely theoretical and which certainly won’t be producing real energy in seven years. This asanine point is simply breathtaking in its sheer brazen shortsightedness; better to have it in seven years than not have it at all! Particularly when, had Democrats allowed us to have this oil seven years ago, we wouldn’t be where we are now.

Democrats have been saying for 25 years that drilling won’t produce an immediate solution to our energy needs. Their current rhetoric merely reveals just how terribly wrong they were seven years ago! At some point we must hold them accountable for their criminal stupidity.

2) We may not be able to completely drill our way out of the problem (although many in the petroleum industry point to their studies and argue, ‘Yes we actually can!’). But there is absolutely no question that we can substantially increase our oil supplies – and have a massive impact on our energy problem – precisely by drilling.

Explain to me how hundreds of billions of barrels of domestic oil – immune from the whims of OPEC, and immune from the instability of the Middle East and Northern Africa – wouldn’t help us solve our problem?

3) If drilling – in Barack Obama’s words – would “merely prolong the failed energy policies we have seen” – than should we stop drilling? For one thing, for most of that time, the point is we haven’t drilled; drilling has been banned. So the actual “failed policy” would really be NOT drilling, wouldn’t it?

What is Obama’s and the Democrat’s meaningful alternative to drilling? When oil constitutes over 85% of our energy, just what do they propose to do to make up for that massive chunk of our requirement? The simple fact of the matter is that there is nothing out there that can begin to fill the void of oil – and by virtually all accounts we will continue to need oil for several decades to come.

It’s almost like saying that “eating would merely prolong the failed dietary policies of the past.” Even under the valid assumption that we’ve had a poor diet plan in the past, does that mean we should starve ourselves to death?

4) Opening our strategic reserve to reduce oil prices would lower gas prices. This is undoubtedly true, but what happens if we have a crisis? What happens if Israel – acting in its legitimate self interests – takes out some of Iran’s nuclear capability? That strategic reserve is there for emergencies, and we face some very real potential global crises today. What would we do if Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz and we didn’t have any oil on reserve? what would we do if we had another Hurricane Katrina that damaged oil refineries?

But another problem with this line of argument is that it exposes the gaping hole of stupidity of the Democrat’s arguments against drilling. They’re claiming on the one hand that the millions of barrels of oil a day that domestic drilling would produce wouldn’t solve our problems, while simultaneously claiming that a much smaller contribution to the oil supply would be beneficial. Which is it?

The best way to increase our national oil supply is to move toward a solution that would actually increase our oil supply. That means drilling.

5) Will off-shore drilling harm our tourism industries?

Well, a big problem with that hypothesis is that tourism isn’t going to do very well as long as fuel is so expensive that nobody can afford to go anywhere. So there’s a clear counterproductive notion to protecting our pristine beaches (particularly given that the oil rigs would be located miles out to see beyond the horizon anyway).

Let’s all agree that ANWR is not a tourist hot spot.

Will drilling create massive footprints in pristine wilderness and offshore areas? Not nearly as much as the Democrats disingenuously claim it will. And the question is, would even a large footprint in some way-far-away place like ANWR really be worth destroying our national economy over? Let’s put it to a vote: should we abandon the American way of life, or drill? Right now, 70-75% of the American people are screaming, “Drill!” And as the crisis mounts, that percentage is going to get higher.

We have dramatically improved the environmental impact of our drilling operations. We can do it cleanly, and with a surprisingly small “footprint.”

6) Will drilling increase global warming? Please, PLEASE realize that the best measurable (as opposed to abstract computer models!) scientific evidence is that we have been having warming and cooling cycles for millennial, and that we are currently in a cooling cycle.

Furthermore, we have evidence of a tropical heat vent in our climate system – not considered in computer models – which provides a “natural thermostat” that all by itself renders much of the alarm over global warming moot.

Are we really prepared to dramatically reduce our lifestyle in order to fight a cyclical climate phenomena that we can do nothing to stop anyway, and which will not even be all that bad given the documented human history through previous warmings?

And if all that isn’t enough, then tell me how refusing to drill for our own oil, while at the same time begging OPEC countries to drill more of theirs, helps prevent global warming. If we drilled for our oil, we would actually be using techniques that are much more environment-friendly.

7) The oil companies have 68 million acres to drill on, so they don’t need any more.

I can’t help but wonder: are Democrats really this stupid, or do they have an ulterior agenda for wanting to prevent America from accessing its vast domestic oil reserves?

When it comes to drilling, one acre is most definitely NOT as good as another. You don’t just drill a hole in the ground, and oil comes out.

Oil companies lease all the land they can, and then they begin the lengthy phase of doing geological studies and drilling test wells. Most of the ground comes up empty. Other ground has oil, but not in enough quantities to produce profitably.

The areas that most definitely DO produce are off-limits because of Democrat’s actions. The off-shore areas – overwhelmingly off-limits to drilling because of Democrats in Congress – are KNOWN to be the most productive of all.

And even those leased areas that WOULD actually produce oil all-too frequently tend to become off-limits to oil companies because of the actions of liberal groups such as environmentalists. To cite merely one case among many, the sage grouse is definitely more important to liberals than the fact that your family will suffer over high oil prices. This is an area that most definitely produces oil, and which is located in such a way that it will prevent drilling throughout the region.

As one other fact that Democrats and their media lackeys tend to conveniently ignore, some of that “68 million acres” we keep hearing about are actually being worked by the oil companies. The term “production” applies to sites that are actually producing oil right now, irregardless of the fact that oil companies have invested millions there, and are working toward production.

8) The excessive profits and price gouging of oil companies is to blame for high oil prices.

Well, oil trades at a world price, not one set by American oil companies. The fact is that U.S. oil has lost considerable influence to both OPEC and to foreign government oil, and has little influence over the market price of a barrel of oil. The largest American oil company – Exxon Mobil – is only the 14th largest in the world today. Therefore, much of the criticism of American oil is literally just another one symptom of the “blame America first, blame America for everything” ideology of liberals.

Democrats also perform another bait and switch: when they talk about the “obscene profits,” they always talk about the gross profit in total dollars, and never about profit as a percentage of costs. But think about it: if you had a 10% profit with a commodity that sold for $100 a unit, and the cost per unit went up to $200, you’re profit in dollars would double – even though it remained the exact same percentage. Given that virtually every corporation focuses on profits as a percentage of its costs, the oil companies aren’t doing anything that other businesses don’t do and have been doing.

Oil companies make billions of dollars in profit because they have hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in assets and costs. But their profits are actually well within the normative range of corporations in other industries. Oil companies have to continue to make reasonable profits, or else stockholders will withdraw their money and invest in other, more profitable, industries.

The following chart is illustrative of oil company profits relative to other industries:

Do oil companies benefit from sweetheart tax deals, as Democrats constantly claim? Look at the facts and make your own determination:

A study reveals that just one corporation (Exxon Mobil) pays as much in taxes ($27 billion) annually as the entire bottom 50% of individual taxpayers (65,000,000 people!). Moreover, the tax rate for the bottom 50% of taxpayers is only 3% of adjusted gross income ($27.4 billion in income / $922 billion paid in taxes), and the tax rate for Exxon was 41% in 2006 ($67.4 billion in taxable income, $27.9 billion in taxes).

So the oil companies – which in the 1990s actually suffered huge losses resulting in major layoffs (and no Democrats wailed about it or demanded hearings then) – are not “price gouging,” are not “making windfall profits,” and are certainly not “benefiting from sweetheart tax subsidies.”

9) Speculators’ have been driving up the price of oil.

The fact is that no one is able to prove that speculation is having ANY effect on oil at all. Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t, but it’s a purely theoretical argument. Most of the so-called “speculators” are companies with commercial fleets and airlines who need to buy oil at the best prices in order to keep their costs down. If they believe that oil is becoming more expensive, what do you think they will do? They will buy oil now to save money later. And that raises the price now. It’s a simple market phenomenon.

I heard a pertinent illustration to the speculation issue: Imagine that the city of Chicago announced a moratorium on any new building. No new building permits. No new construction. What do you think would happen to the price of real estate in Chicago? It would skyrocket. Now, imagine what would happen if you announced a major new construction program in Chicago: do you think that would raise or lower the price of real estate?

We saw something like this in the past two days: oil has dropped dramatically – $15 a barrel – in just two days. And what accompanies that decrease? President Bush lifted the executive ban on offshore drilling.

The mere lifting of the ban encouraged the market that more supplies could be on the way, and therefore lowered the price of oil today. When more is coming, you don’t have a scarce – and therefore more valuable – resource. When less is coming, the price increases. Everyone understands this except Democrats.

We have the Three Stooges of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama, who have announced that they are determined to pursue a policy that will keep the price of oil shockingly high and leave us vulnerable to foreign price manipulation.

If I were from a country that is hostile to the United States, I would be watching this current version of the Three Stooges and laughing my head off over their ridiculous antics. But I love my country. And I can only mourn the fact that two stooges are in power, and a third may be on the way.