U.N. Seeks To Give Human Rights To ‘Mother Earth’

Just to make sure we understand, human babies in the womb do NOT deserve human rights.  But that tree over there, those bugs under that rock, do.

This is raw paganism (which also was quite characteristic of the Nazis, for what it’s worth).

And it’s nothing new at the United Nations, either.  Just recall the recent conference in which the U.N. officially affirmed that their “global warming” agenda was really all about socialist wealth redistribution (which was good) and invoked pagan Mayan goddesses to bring that agenda to fruition.

U.N. Prepares to Debate Whether ‘Mother Earth’ Deserves Human Rights Status
By Jonathan Wachtel
Published April 18, 2011 | FoxNews.com

United Nations diplomats on Wednesday will set aside pressing issues of international peace and security to devote an entire day debating the rights of “Mother Earth.”

A bloc of mostly socialist governments lead by Bolivia have put the issue on the General Assembly agenda to discuss the creation of a U.N. treaty that would grant the same rights found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to Mother Nature.

Treaty supporters want the establishment of legal systems to maintain balance between human rights and what they perceive as the inalienable rights of other members of the Earth community — plants, animals, and terrain.

Communities and environmental activists would be given more legal power to monitor and control industries and development to ensure harmony between humans and nature. Though the United States and other Western governments are supportive of sustainable development, some see the upcoming event, “Harmony with Nature,” as political grandstanding — an attempt to blame environmental degradation and climate change on capitalism.

“The concept ‘Mother Earth’ is not universally accepted,” said a spokesman from the British Mission to the U.N. about Bolivia’s proposal. “In general, our view is that we should focus on tackling important sustainable development issues through existing channels and processes.”

The General Assembly two years ago passed a Bolivia-led resolution proclaiming April 22 as “International Mother Earth Day.” The measure was endorsed by all 192 member states. But Bolivian President Evo Morales envisioned much more, vowing in a speech to U.N. delegates that a global movement had begun to lay “out a Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth.”

Morales, who repeatedly says “the central enemy of Mother Earth is capitalism,” called for creating a charter that defends the right to life for all living things. Morales, who was named World Hero of Mother Earth by the General Assembly, has since made great strides in his campaign.

In January, Bolivia became the world’s first nation to grant the natural environment equal rights to humans. Bolivia’s Law of Mother Earth is heavily influenced by the spiritual indigenous Andean world outlook that revolves around the earth deity Pachamama, roughly translated to Mother Earth.

The Bolivian law establishes 11 rights for nature that include: the right to life and to exist; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered; the right to have nature’s processes free from human alteration. The law also establishes a Ministry of Mother Earth to act as an ombudsman, which will ensure nature is “not being affected my mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities.”

Emboldened by this triumph, Morales’ goal is to emulate his domestic achievement as a U.N. treaty. In a 2008 address to a U.N. forum on indigenous people, he said the first step in saving the Earth is to “eradicate capitalism” and to force wealthy industrialized countries to “pay their environmental debt.” Morales presented 10 points, or Evo’s Ten Commandments, as they are affectionately called by devotees, to save the planet.

Among them is a call to end the capitalist system, and a world without imperialism or colonialism. Respect for Mother Earth is Commandment 6. U.N. critics slammed the decision to devote an entire day debating Mother Earth legislation as not only a waste of time and resources, but a major blunder.

“The UN is a one-act show,” said U.N. watchdog Anne Bayefsky, of Eye on the U.N., in which “Western democracies are responsible for the world’s ills and developing countries are perpetual victims.”

Bayefsky said the General Assembly’s focus on Mother Earth distracts from more pressing issues and problems at the U.N.

“The rights of inanimate objects violated by developed countries are considered a useful focal point this month,” she said, adding that, “Syria is scheduled to be elected next month to the U.N.’s top “human” rights body, and Iran is on the U.N.’s top women’s rights body.” Syria is one of the sponsors of the “Mother Earth” treaty.

Bolivia’s ambassador to the U.N., Pablo Solon, who will represent Morales at the debate and ‘expert’ panel discussions at U.N. headquarters, said, “Presently many environmentally harmful human activities are completely legal,” including those that cause climate change.

“If legal systems recognized the rights of other-than-human beings,” he says, such as mountains, rivers, forests and animals, “courts and tribunals could deal with the fundamental issues of environmental contamination.”

It is not clear if Bolivia’s new tough environmental laws will actually go as far as to protect life forms like insects, but the legislation does include all living creatures.

This is the “wisdom” of men.  But professing themselves to be wise, they became fools (Romans 1:22).

We are living in the last days, that should be readily evident to anyone who has ever read the book of Revelation with an attitude of belief.  2,000 years ago John saw the entire earth shaking its collectivist fist at God and exchanging the truth of God for a lie.

Most of the people pushing this socialist, virently anti-capitalist movement really couldn’t give a fig about “Mother Earth.”  Do you think Evo Morales is going to find another place to sleep if he finds a bug on his bed?  How many of them are like Al Gore, urging world leaders to impose fascistic totalitarian policies in the name of saving the planet while they personally spew out hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon in their own personal lives as they jetset from here to there?  For them, it is all about power and the ability to control the lives of billions of people.  They want to be able to decide (“dictate” really being a better word) who lives and who dies, who wins and who loses, who pays and who receives.  All based on who supports them and who opposes them.  Or as fellow socialist traveller Barack Obama put it:

“We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.”

And the ultimate goal is to have far-leftist socialist environmentalist whackos “chanelling” Mother Earth and telling the courts that she wants all the capitalists to die and be used for fertilizer and a good firewood substitute.

And the United States under Obama and Democrat leadership is very much a part of this.  As Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi shrilly declared, “I’m trying to save the planet; I’m trying to save the planet!”  And Barack Obama was waxing megalomaniac, saying, “This is the moment, as Nancy [Pelosi] noted, that the world is waiting for… I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.”  Because Obama ALWAYS claims to want to return to our “best traditions” when they never WERE our traditions and never SHOULD BE.

Maybe the U.N. can make Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid the “channeler” for Mother Earth.  And he crouch down and put his ear to the ground and then solemnly tell us that:

“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.”

And if your family starves because you can’t drive to work anymore, well, too bad so sad.  Mother Earth has rights.  And both she and the socialists who are interpreting her cries are both far bigger than you little human beings.  Why, you’re practically as small as babies in the womb compared to them.

And, of course, it becomes readily apparent why socialists don’t dare give those precious little human beings in the womb human rights.  Because someone could channel their cries and complain that America (as just one particularly reckless example) must stop borrowing $188 million dollars every hour that they will be forced to repay when they grow up.

One of the major themes that erupts from this article is “Don’t compromise with these depraved fools.  Don’t give them anything.  Because it will only embolden them to keep pushing for more and more and more.”

Oops.  Just like those Nazis, again.

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.

Obama’s Energy Plan: Inflate Here, Inflate Now, Pay More

Even as we hear Ludacris’ racist, misogynistic, hateful rap playing in the background noise of a culture that liberals are screwing up more every day, we can consider Barack Obama’s contribution to that which is truly ludicrous:

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!”

In short, Obama is saying, “Inflate here. Inflate now. Pay More.”

There’s no question that properly inflating one’s tires and getting regular tune-ups can in fact contribute to fuel efficiency. That’s why I check my tire pressure regularly and top-off as necessary. Not enough people check their tire pressure, which is why the only truly over-inflated thing in this country is Barack Obama’s ego.

But come on!!!

An individual driver can in fact save up to 3% of his or her fuel economy by keeping the tires properly inflated.  But do you see what Obama did here?  In order to “inflate” the power of his statistic, he arbitrarily assumes that every single car in the nation currently has four under inflated tires.  There’s lies, damn lies, statistics – and now we have ourselves a fourth category – “Obama statistics.”

If we everybody properly inflated our tires we could save oil (though by nowhere near the amount Obama says). Yes, and if everybody drove less we could also save oil. If everybody drove slower we could save oil. If everybody drove electric electric cars we could save oil. If everybody rode bikes we could save oil. If everybody had Star Trek transporters we could save oil. If everybody rid themselves of their physical bodies and became non-corporeal entities we could save oil.

I see an overwhelming majority of people fly by me on the freeway and realize every single day that these “ifs” have virtually nothing to do with the real world. If everybody had wings we could save oil. We need oil because we consume a lot of energy in a country that has millions of miles of roads, and we need oil because oil will continue to provide 85% of our total energy consumption for decades to come.

It reminds me of a joke…

How many Democrats does it take to change a light bulb? 1,001. One to hold the light bulb, and 1,000 to turn the house around and around. Frankly, it’s far easier for a relative few Democrats in the Congress to vote to allow for increasing our oil supply than it is to demand that 300,000,000 Americans change their behavior. Drill here. Drill now. Pay less.

I guess there’s one good thing about Obama’s “We can inflate our way out of our energy crisis” remark: its addition brings to an even ten my list of the stupid and bogus pseudo-reasons that Democrats are using to avoid passing drilling legislation, even as it further corroborates my claim that we really are talking about “the three stooges” here.

We can add this sheer idiocy to Nancy Pelosi’s “I’m trying to save the planet! I’m trying to save the planet!” insanity and Harry Reid’s “coal makes us sick, oil makes us sick, its Global Warming, its ruining our Country, its ruining our World” craziness.

The Democrats seem to think that if they just stall long enough as regards increasing our domestic oil production, that just maybe they will get a large enough majority in Congress to repeal the law of supply and demand.

Until then we can count on them to use every procedural trick in the book to block any debate over drilling for oil to increase our desperately-needed energy supply.

Note to self: only vote for sane people.

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.