US Dollar, Housing, Oil And Food Markets Point To Dodo Bird Ending For America: The Beast Is Coming

This is your dollar.

This is your dollar on Obama:

APRIL 23, 2011
Dollar’s Decline Speeds Up, With Risks for U.S.
BY TOM LAURICELLA

The U.S. dollar’s downward slide is accelerating as low interest rates, inflation concerns and the massive federal budget deficit undermine the currency.

With no relief in sight for the dollar on any of those fronts, the downward pressure on the dollar is widely expected to continue.
The dollar fell nearly 1% against a broad basket of currencies this week, following a drop of similar size last week. The ICE U.S. Dollar Index closed at its lowest level since August 2008, before the financial crisis intensified.

“The dollar just hasn’t had anything positive going for it,” said Alessio de Longis, who oversees the Oppenheimer Currency Opportunities Fund.

The main driver for the dollar’s decline is low interest rates in the U.S. compared with higher and rising rates abroad. Lower rates mean a lower return on cash—and the pressure from that factor could intensify next week when the Federal Reserve’s rate-setting committee is expected to signal that U.S. short-term rates will likely remain near zero for many months to come. On Wednesday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is scheduled to give the central bank’s first-ever press conference following a policy-setting meeting.

But it is worry about the U.S. budget deficit that is intensifying the selloff. On Monday, investors were spooked by a warning from Standard & Poor’s that it might take away the U.S. government’s coveted AAA rating status amid concerns the Obama administration and Republicans in Congress might not be able to agree to significant reductions in the deficit.

In addition, Chinese government officials have stepped up rhetoric hinting they might diversify their $3 trillion of currency reserves away from U.S. dollars. Such a shift would chip away at what has been a substantial source of dollar-buying in recent years.

I dare say that the Wall Street Journal got it wrong this time.   While it certainly might be technically true that the immediate driver of the dollar’s decline is ” is low interest rates in the U.S. compared with higher and rising rates abroad,” that is only a symptom of the ultimate cause of the dollar’s decline.  The bigger picture can be summed up in two words: quantitative easing.  Obama’s Federal Reserve is creating money out of thin air.  And with more dollars chasing the same amount (and actually fewer) finite goods and services, the value of each dollar devalues. 

A week is a long time in Obama’s God damn America.  A fool-in-chief can do a lot of damage in a week:

APRIL 29, 2011
Dollar Skids to New Three-Year Lows
By JAVIER DAVID

NEW YORK—Investors wasted no time in sending the dollar to new three-year lows after the Federal Reserve gave them little reason to support it.

Weak U.S. growth and unemployment data quickened the dollar’s fall. Initial employment claims jumped back above the 400,000 level in the latest week. Meanwhile, gross domestic product data showed that economic growth slowed sharply in the first quarter, led by surging food and energy costs that sent a key gauge of inflation, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, soaring to its highest level in nearly three years.

Late Thursday, the euro was at $1.4821 from $1.4794 late Wednesday. The dollar traded at ¥81.54 from ¥82.04, while the euro was at ¥120.85 from ¥121.37. The U.K. pound bought $1.6640 from $1.6636. The dollar fetched 0.8733 Swiss franc from 0.8738 franc, plunging to a new record low.

The ICE Dollar Index, which tracks the U.S. dollar against a trade-weighted basket of currencies, was at 73.12 from 73.519, its lowest level since July 2008.

Has Obama made our economy better?  Really?  You’ve been watching and reading mainstream media propagandist lies, haven’t you?  Here’s the reality: our dollar situation is every bit as bad now as it was when the terrible economic implosion of 2008 hit us.  That giant sucking sound you hear all around you is the value and purchasing power of your dollar sinking into the abyss.

Here’s another major economic indicator going right down the toilet:

Home price gains since spring 2009 vanish
The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index for 20 major U.S. cities in February comes close to its previous bottom reached in April 2009.
By Alejandro Lazo, Los Angeles Times
 April 26, 2011, 5:06 p.m.

The home price gains made after the housing market bottomed in spring 2009 have vanished, with 10 cities posting fresh lows in February, according to a closely watched index that tracks home prices in America’s biggest metropolitan areas.

The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index for 20 major U.S. cities, released Tuesday, came within a hair of its previous bottom hit in April 2009. The renewed drop in home prices indicates the nation’s housing woes continue despite a recovery in the broader economy.

“There is very little, if any, good news about housing. Prices continue to weaken, while trends in sales and construction are disappointing,” said David M. Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at Standard & Poor’s.

[…]

Foreclosures remain a significant part of the market and probably will remain so for the foreseeable future as borrowers continue to fall behind on their mortgage payments.

Patrick Newport, U.S. economist for consultancy IHS Global Insight, wrote in a note Tuesday that the decline in the index and drops in other home price measures — specifically a monthly index produced by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which has seen steady declines in recent months — indicate that the housing slump is once again widespread.

The federal agency’s index’s “recent decline indicates that the vicious cycle in which falling prices lead to more foreclosures which lead to even lower housing prices, continues to play a role in keeping housing on the mat,” Newport wrote.

The Case-Shiller index has fallen to nearly the same level it was in April 2009, the last time it bottomed, evaporating the gains made last year after a popular tax credit for buyers fueled sales nationally. Experts predict prices will continue to fall this year, pushing past their previous lows into a much-feared double dip.

The only thing propping up the economy under Obama’s morally and fiscally idiotic policies is QE2.  Banks and major businesses are not being allowed to fail (it’s all too big too fail in an increasingly fascist system in which the government dominates the banking and corporate spheres).  Right now, the system Obama has only made more broken is being kept afloat in cash being created out of thin air.  The last time quantitative easing ended, the DOW immediately lost 16% of its value in two weeks.  And QE2 is set to end in June.

This means QE3, and then of course QE4.  Because “QE” means “Quack Economics” far more than it should mean anything else.

The following video WAS a fictional account warning us of what could happen.  But it is about to become news before history confirms it:

And do I really have to say anything about gas prices?  Gas was $1.79 a gallon when Obama took office; it is now $3.91 and going up every single day.  That is an increase of more than 118%.  How’s that hope n’ change workin’  out for ya?

Should I mention corn?  Field corn has increased 300% (from $2 a bushel in 2009 to $6 a bushel now) under Obama’s dreadful godawful policies. 

Wheat prices have more than doubled.  These are basic staples used in everything. 

Food costs more than at any time since 1974.  And it’s going to get much, much worse.  Prices for food and meat are going to soar in the coming days.

Liberals say they care about the poor.  But they don’t give a damn about the poor.  All Democrats want is to “fundamentally transform” America into a socialistic system where they can maintain power forever.

The other thing to say about the above is that Gerald Celente predicted in 2008 that food riots and revolution would overtake America by 2012.  I pointed out in a recent article that what he said is exactly coming to pass both here and around the most flammable region on earth.

And all the unrest you’re seeing around you is simply the Cloward and Piven strategy for bringing about the downfall of the United States of America finally coming to pass exactly like the left wants, and exactly like people like me were talking about for the last two years.

Nobody’s really telling you about what’s happening or about what’s coming.  And that’s mostly because nobody wants to hear about it.

When Adolf Hitler seized power (he never took more than 37% of the vote, but that doesn’t stop a big government tyrant from seizing total power), he began to ruthlessly suppress dissent.  Today, the Democrat Party has pushed on attempt to impose one euphamistically-named “Fairness Doctrone” after another to shut down competing voices, even as Nancy Pelosi now demands a system in which “elections shouldn’t matter so much” in the aftermath of the one that drove her from power).

I think of one journalist named Stephen Laurent who was impriosoned for trying to tell the truth about Hitler.  He wrote:

“I am writing this from cell 24. Outside a new Germany is being created. Many millions are rejoicing. Hitler is promising everyone precisely what they want. I think when they wake to their sobering senses, they will find they have been led by the nose and duped by lies.”

And that is where America is heading.  Only there will be no America to rebuild America the way the United States of America rebuilt Germany in the aftermath of Germany reaping its whirlwind after sowing the wind.  Obama himself will have seen to that.

The funniest thing about this – if anything about America turning into a socialist banana republic is “funny” – is that it will be the left who so rabidly despise the Word of God (otherwise known as the Holy Bible) who will bring about it’s ultimate fulfillment.

The beast is coming.  He will be a one-world global leader who will take over in the catastrophic aftermath of false messiahs like Barack Hussein Obama.  He will be the personification of the United Nations and globalism and a world without borders and all the other total idiocy the left has been jabbering about for decades.  He will represent the sum total of everything the liberals have ever yearned for.

The secular humanist left has said that if they could just take over, they would create a humanist Utopia.  God is going to give them their chance in the Tribulation with the big government Utopia of the Antichrist.

And in just seven years he will have brought a literal hell on earth.

It will be the left – it will be the people who most hate and despise and mock the Bible – that brings about all of the end times prophecies of the very Bible they so ridicule.

Barack Obama is an example of the sneering tone of the left toward the Word of God:

Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount – a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let’s read our Bibles. Folks haven’t been reading their Bibles.

But I have been reading my Bible, President Obama.  And I’m seeing more and more reasons to believe it and accept it as God’s Word about a time which is now at hand.

I see the dollar devaluing to nothing; I see the cost of food skyrocketing.  And I consider the words of the book of Revelation:

“He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name” (Revelation 13:16-17)

.

Failed President Alert: Economists Say Stimulus Did NOT Help

You wouldn’t mind if I took $862 billion dollars of your money – actually $3.27 TRILLION if truth be told – and totally pissed it away, would you?

No, you don’t mind?  Good.  That’s a relief.  I mean, a lot of people would be a little upset that I’d bankrupted the country and ended up with absolutely nothing to show for it.

Obama, the White House, and the Democrats told massive and outrageous lie after massive outrageous lie to sell their load of porkulus crap.  But the American people didn’t believe it: a poll by the New York Times and CBS revealed that only 6% of Americans believed that the Obama stimulus created any jobs at all.

And now the economists are figuring out what the people understood all along:

Economists: The stimulus didn’t help
By Hibah Yousuf, staff reporterApril 26, 2010: 3:56 AM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The recovery is picking up steam as employers boost payrolls, but economists think the government’s stimulus package and jobs bill had little to do with the rebound, according to a survey released Monday.

In latest quarterly survey by the National Association for Business Economics, the index that measures employment showed job growth for the first time in two years — but a majority of respondents felt the fiscal stimulus had no impact.

NABE conducted the study by polling 68 of its members who work in economic roles at private-sector firms. About 73% of those surveyed said employment at their company is neither higher nor lower as a result of the $787 billion Recovery Act, which the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers says is on track to create or save 3.5 million jobs by the end of the year.

That sentiment is shared for the recently passed $17.7 billion jobs bill that calls for tax breaks for businesses that hire and additional infrastructure spending. More than two-thirds of those polled believe the measure won’t affect payrolls, while 30% expect it to boost hiring “moderately.”

But the economists see conditions improving. More than half of respondents — 57% — say industrial demand is rising, while just 6% see it declining. A growing number also said their firms are increasing spending and profit margins are widening.

Nearly a quarter of those surveyed forecast that gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity, will grow more than 3% in 2010, and 70% of NABE’s respondents expect it to grow more than 2%.

Still, the survey suggested that tight lending conditions remain a concern. Almost half of those polled said the credit crunch hurts their business. To top of page

The Democrat argument is that the economy is doing better; ergo sum the stimulus worked.  The problem is that that’s rather like saying that the economy is doing better; ergo sum the fact that I had a good bowel movement worked.  There’s simply no reason to correlate the one thing with the other.

I would also ask this: name the recession that lasted forever.  The closest we can come is the Great Depression under FDR.  His failed policies prolonged the depression and a lot of needless suffering for seven years.

The other thing I would say is that we are by no means out of the recession that we are in.  There is still abundant evidence to believe that we may very well be headed into a double dip recession – with Obama’s failed policies being completely responsible for that second dip.

Long term, I believe that Obama has doomed this country.  If we can’t undo the damage caused by his ObamaCare boondoggle before it begins to seriously take effect, I think it will amount to the anvil that broke the camel’s back.  And even if we CAN undo ObamaCare, the massive debt this president has imposed on us due to his now demonstrably failed policies will be like a cancer that will eat away at our way of life.

It is possible that there may be a jobless recovery.  But Obama slit the hamstrings of the recovery we COULD have had when he pissed away what will ultimately cost us more than three trillion dollars.  That money – which didn’t create any jobs – is going to consume jobs by way of opportunity costs.  Businesses COULD have used that money to grow and hire; but instead Obama seized it, and poured it down the drain.  And now we get to experience the joys of the gift that keeps on giving as we pay billions of dollars in interest payments, which is money that again COULD have been used to create jobs but never will.

Whether the economy looks a little better or a lot worse than it did, we will not even possibly be able to grow under the massive debt load that Obama has forced upon us with his massively failed stimulus.

We need to hold him accountable for his failure, or he will continue to stockpile one disaster on top of another.

A Little Factoid: 77% Of Investors See Obama As ‘Anti-Business’

Stocks have tumbled 552 points as Obama announced his crackdown on American banks.  As a CNBC financial expert put it, “Obamanomics is a Chilling Experiment.”

From the AP on January 22:

NEW YORK – Stocks suffered their fourth sharp drop in five trading days as investors caved to growing anxiety about President Barack H. Obama’s plans to restrict big banks and earnings reports that just aren’t good enough.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 217 points Friday, having lost 552 points, or 5.2 percent, over the past three days. Over the past five trading days, the Dow has fallen 537 points, having gained 115 points on Tuesday.

The drop gave the Dow its worst week since the index hit a 12-year low in March.

Investors are saying to Obama, “Please don’t do this,” but he is showing the same deaf-eared fanatic-ideologue determination that he demonstrated in driving his awful ObamaCare forward.

Is it any wonder that most investors – by an overwhelming margin – now believe that Barack Obama is simply hostile to business and to the market forces that allow for economic growth?

From Bloomberg, via Yahoo News:

Obama Seen as Anti-Business by 77% of U.S. Investors
Heidi Przybyla Heidi Przybyla   – Thu Jan 21, 6:25 pm ET

Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) — U.S. investors overwhelmingly see President Barack Obama as anti-business and question his ability to manage a financial crisis, according to a Bloomberg survey.

The global quarterly poll of investors and analysts who are Bloomberg subscribers finds that 77 percent of U.S. respondents believe Obama is too anti-business and four-out-of-five are only somewhat confident or not confident of his ability to handle a financial emergency.

The poll also finds a decline in Obama’s overall favorability rating one year after taking office. He is viewed favorably by 27 percent of U.S. investors. In an October poll, 32 percent in the U.S. held a positive impression.

“Investors no longer feel they can trust their instincts to take risks,” said poll respondent David Young, a managing director for a broker dealer in New York. Young cited Obama’s efforts to trim bonuses and earnings, make health care his top priority over jobs and plans to tax “the rich or advantaged.”

Carlos Vadillo, a fixed-income analyst at Wells Fargo Securities LLC in San Francisco, said Obama has been in a “constant war” with the banking system, using “fat-cat bankers and other misnomers to describe a business model which supports a large portion of America.” […]

Obama’s 71 percent unfavorable rating among U.S. investors is almost matched by two members of his economic team. Both Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and Lawrence Summers, president of the National Economic Council. U.S. respondents give Geithner a 63 percent unfavorable rating and Summers 67 percent. In October, 57 percent held a negative view of Geithner and 66 percent said the same of Summers.

Like Obama, both men do better with Asian and European investors.

One financial figure to find favor among U.S. respondents is Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, who garners a 68 percent approval rating, which is in line with his marks from non-U.S. investors and the rating U.S. investors gave him in the October poll. […]

The U.S. investors’ overwhelming characterization of Obama as anti-business stands in sharp contrast to the results of a Bloomberg National Poll in December, when 52 percent of U.S. adults said the president had the right balance in his approach.

Obama gets considerably higher marks in Europe and somewhat higher marks in Asia.  Like I give a damn about what socialists think about our socialist president.

Take the Europeans (PLEASE!).  They claim to welcome Obama’s attack against banks, but at the same time announce they have absolutely no intention of killing their nations the way Obama is killing America.

One quote in particular that comes out of the above article:

“The Obama plan is really back to the future. These sort of plans were implemented after the Great Depression and then taken away in the 60s. He is sort of reinstating the same plans to deal with this crisis,” the source said.

Obama is taking us back to the Great Depression to “solve” our recession.  The problem is that economists now realize that FDR’s constant bureaucratic interference was what kept America in the Depression seven years longer than what was necessary.

Anyone with half a brain (which understandably rules out most Democrats) should readily understand that the cost of Obama’s taxes on and interference of banks will only end up being passed on to American consumers in the form of higher fees, charges, and penalties.  Obama is really only taxing us through the banks.  And he’s using populist demagoguery in hopes of making us want to punish the banks so much that we forget that we’ll be seeing higher fees as a direct result of that punishment.

Obama has lost more jobs in one year than any president has lost since 1940.  He has presided over the destruction of 4.1 million jobs.

This is NOT a “future” we should ever want to go “back to.”

Our investors – who far and away have been forced to live under Obama’s policies – pretty much realize he sucks across the board.

What does Obama have to offer?  No solutions, just more problems, and more attacks.  All to the tune of “It’s Bush’s fault.”

Obama Bank Restructure Attacks Market, Terrifies Investors, Hamstrings Economy

Before I go any further, let me point out that what I’m going to say isn’t just my personal opinion: it has the backing of 77% of investors, who correctly view President Barack Obama as “anti-business.”

From Bloomberg:

Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) — U.S. investors overwhelmingly see President Barack Obama as anti-business and question his ability to manage a financial crisis, according to a Bloomberg survey.

The global quarterly poll of investors and analysts who are Bloomberg subscribers finds that 77 percent of U.S. respondents believe Obama is too anti-business and four-out-of-five are only somewhat confident or not confident of his ability to handle a financial emergency.

The poll also finds a decline in Obama’s overall favorability rating one year after taking office. He is viewed favorably by 27 percent of U.S. investors. In an October poll, 32 percent in the U.S. held a positive impression.

“Investors no longer feel they can trust their instincts to take risks,” said poll respondent David Young, a managing director for a broker dealer in New York. Young cited Obama’s efforts to trim bonuses and earnings, make health care his top priority over jobs and plans to tax “the rich or advantaged.”

So I’m not just some isolated nutjob. Rather,  Barack Obama is now the isolated nutjob.

President Obama demands that banks lend more money even as he massively over-regulates them, demonizes them, and undermines their ability to make any profit whatsoever from any loans they actually do make.

People want to invest and make money, no matter who is president, and no matter which party controls the government.  Investors aren’t ideologues, but opportunists.  Markets intend to improve on their own if they are just left alone, because individuals start making personal decisions with their own investments, with the net effect usually balancing out the big picture.

FDR wouldn’t or couldn’t allow the market to recover on its own; so he imposed on bureaucratic solution after another — and the economy remained in the Great Depression seven years longer than it would have if he hadn’t done anything at all.

And Barack Obama cannot leave well enough alone, either.  At his core, he is an elitist bureaucrat who truly believes he knows better than everyone else combined.  He believes he can push the buttons and pull the levers of market forces and human lives and run everything from the top.  He rewards losers by punishing winners as he tries to impose his warped philosophy of redistributionist “fairness” on the economy.  He will fail, and the country will fail along with him until he is gone.

From the AP via the Star Tribune:

Stocks set to continue sell-off after Obama’s new bank overhaul plans spook the market

By STEPHEN BERNARD , Associated Press
Last update: January 22, 2010 – 7:19 AM

NEW YORK – Stocks are set to extend their slide Friday, following the worst two-day stretch the market has seen since June.

Stock futures fell as better than expected earnings from General Electric and Google failed to inspire traders.

President Barack Obama spooked the market Thursday, after asking Congress for limits on how large big banks can be and to end some of the risky trading large financial companies have used in recent quarters to boost profits.

The market could be re-entering a period of uncertainty that defined the financial crisis and sent it cratering nearly a year ago before its 10-month rally.

Overseas, Asian markets overnight followed the U.S. sharply lower. European markets are also falling.

Not even the latest batch of upbeat earnings reports from major companies was able to provide some support for investors looking to limit the recent damage.

General Electric Co. reported fourth-quarter profit that beat analyst expectations. The conglomerate also said it is seeing an increase in orders and a growing backlog for products and services, sure signs that the economy is starting to improve.

Internet giant Google Inc. also provided an upbeat sign for the economy, posting robust fourth-quarter earnings that easily topped analyst estimates. The results were driven by a pickup in Internet advertising, which could be a sign companies are feeling more confident the economy will recovery and opting to spend more to draw in customers.

Credit card lender American Express Co. also beat expectations after it set aside less money for defaulting loans. Default and delinquency rates both fell from the previous quarter, another encouraging sign for the economy.

High loan losses have plagued the financial sector and any declines in defaults would be a welcome sign that the consumer is starting to recover.

Ahead of the opening bell, Dow Jones industrial average futures fell 39, or 0.4 percent, to 10,299. Standard & Poor’s 500 index futures declined 3.20, or 0.3 percent, to 1,107.90, while Nasdaq 100 index futures dropped 1.75, or 0.1 percent, to 1,839.25.

The Dow is trying to bounce back after losing 213 points Thursday and 336 points, or 3.1 percent, during the past two trading sessions. The losses have erased all the early gains seen in 2010.

Large financial firms, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. all plummeted Thursday. The three big banks, which have prominent consumer and investment banking operations, would likely be the hardest hit by Obama’s new regulations. Shares of each all declined more than 5 percent.

Meanwhile, bond prices dipped Friday morning. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, rose to 3.60 percent from 3.59 percent late Thursday.

The dollar was mixed against other major currencies, while gold prices declined.

Overseas, Japan’s Nikkei stock average fell 2.6 percent. Britain’s FTSE 100 declined 1.2 percent, Germany’s DAX index fell 1.1 percent, and France’s CAC-40 dropped 1 percent.

No president and no Congress can make the economy improve.  All either can do is allow the markets to have an opportunity to improve on their own by creating an atmosphere that is friendly to the small businesses that create jobs and drive the economy.

But neither Obama nor the Democrats in Congress are willing to do that.

Which is why we’re going to just keep limping along until they are gone.

Even Liberals Realizing Obama Has Been Total Bust At Creating Jobs

This article is in many ways typical New York Times.  It comes from a distinctly liberal perspective, and views solutions to the problems that America faces through a liberal prism.

The big difference in this case is that it really takes a critical look at a Democrat.  It slams Barack Obama as being basically disinterested and uninvolved in – and even uncomprehending of – the biggest crisis facing the country.

Does Obama Get It?

By BOB HERBERT
Published: October 5, 2009

The big question on the domestic front right now is whether President Obama understands the gravity of the employment crisis facing the country.  Does he get it? The signals coming out of the White House have not been encouraging.

The Beltway crowd and the Einsteins of high finance who never saw this economic collapse coming are now telling us with their usual breezy arrogance that the Great Recession is probably over.  Their focus, of course, is on data, abstractions like the gross domestic product, not the continued suffering of living, breathing human beings struggling with the nightmare of joblessness.

Even Mr. Obama, in an interview with The Times, gave short shrift to the idea of an additional economic stimulus package, telling John Harwood a few weeks ago that the economy had likely turned a corner. “As you know,” the president said, “jobs tend to be a lagging indicator; they come last.”

The view of most American families is somewhat less blasé. Faced with the relentless monthly costs of housing, transportation, food, clothing, education and so forth, they have precious little time to wait for this lagging indicator to come creeping across the finish line.

Americans need jobs now, and if the economy on its own is incapable of putting people back to work — which appears to be the case — then the government needs to step in with aggressive job-creation efforts.

Nearly one in four American families has suffered a job loss over the past year, according to a survey released by the Economic Policy Institute. Nearly 1 in 10 Americans is officially unemployed, and the real-world jobless rate is worse.

We’re running on a treadmill that is carrying us backward. Something approaching 10 million new jobs would have to be created just to get back to where we were when the recession began in December 2007. There is nothing currently in the works to jump-start job creation on that scale.

A massive long-term campaign to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure — which would put large numbers of people to work establishing the essential industrial platform for a truly 21st-century American economy — has not seriously been considered. Large-scale public-works programs that would reach deep into the inner cities and out to hard-pressed suburban and rural areas have been dismissed as the residue of an ancient, unsophisticated era.

We seem to be waiting for some mythical rebound to come rolling in, magically equipped with robust job creation, a long-term bull market and paradise regained for consumers.

It ain’t happening.

While the data mavens were talking about green shoots in September, employers in the real world were letting another 263,000 of their workers go, bringing the jobless rate to 9.8 percent, the highest in more than a quarter of a century. It would have been higher still but 571,000 people dropped out of the labor market. They’re jobless but not counted as unemployed. The number of people officially unemployed — 15.1 million — is, as The Wall Street Journal noted, greater than the population of 46 of the 50 states.

The Obama administration seems hamstrung by the unemployment crisis. No big ideas have emerged. No dramatically creative initiatives. While devoting enormous amounts of energy to health care, and trying now to decide what to do about Afghanistan, the president has not even conveyed the sense of urgency that the crisis in employment warrants.

If that does not change, these staggering levels of joblessness have the potential to cripple not just the well-being of millions of American families, but any real prospects for sustained economic recovery and the political prospects of the president as well. An unemployed electorate is an unhappy electorate.

The survey for the Economic Policy Institute was conducted in September by Hart Research Associates. Respondents said that they had more faith in President Obama’s ability to handle the economy than Congressional Republicans. The tally was 43 percent to 32 percent. But when asked who had been helped most by government stimulus efforts, substantial majorities said “large banks” and “Wall Street investment companies.”

When asked how “average working people” or “you and your family” had benefited, very small percentages, in a range of 10 percent to 13 percent, said they had fared well.

The word now, in the wake of last week’s demoralizing jobless numbers, is that the administration is looking more closely at its job creation options. Whether anything dramatic emerges remains to be seen.

The master in this area, of course, was Franklin Roosevelt. His first Inaugural Address was famous for the phrase: “The only thing we have to fear. …” But he also said in that speech: “Our greatest primary task is to put people to work.” And he said the country should treat that task “as we would treat the emergency of a war.”

Now that’s the sense of urgency we need.

More Articles in Opinion » A version of this article appeared in print on October 6, 2009, on page A31 of the New York edition.

Not to dive into the genetic fallacy, as so many liberals so often do, but it is nevertheless significant that the Economic Policy Institute is a distinctly liberal think tank.  And Hart Research Associates aint exactly Rasmussen.  So while I don’t know that they aren’t right in their survey about Obama vs. Congressional Republicans, I would point out: 1) that I wouldn’t regard it as gospel; and 2) don’t forget that as LOW as Bush got in the polls, he STILL outperformed the Democrat-controlled Congress throughout his entire presidency.

In fact, Bush had more than DOUBLE the ratings of the Democrat Congress:

Bush’s job approval rating fell to 24 percent from last month’s record low for a Zogby poll of 29 percent. A paltry 11 percent gave Congress a positive grade, tying last month’s record low.

So in terms of net differences, Bush actually fared quite a bit better when pitted against a Democrat Congress than Obama is faring when pitted against Congressional Republicans.  And I would submit that the public thinks a lot more highly of Republican ideas than this smoke-and-mirror statistic would otherwise indicate.  Just sayin’.

I made that point just to demonstrate the statistical sleight of hand going on.

Now, Bob Herbert is a big government, rah-rah FDR guy, who sees the big public projects of the WPA as the model for our country’s salvation.

For what it’s worth, I – and Congressional Republicans – agree(d) that that would have been FAR better than Obama’s $3.27 trillion pork-laden employment bust known as the stimulus.

A New York Times story points out why Republicans opposed the porkulus so fiercely:

But the committee’s ranking Republican, Jerry Lewis of California, asserted that the program would do far too little to finance road construction, flood control projects and other works for the public good.

“Facts are stubborn things,” Lewis said, describing the package as a recipe for bloated government programs that would saddle taxpayers with a debt burden “well, well into the future.”

And now even the New York Times is essentially acknowledging that the Republicans were right and Obama was wrong.

I would also point out that the Hoover Dam is named the Hoover Dam because Herbert Hoover was doing public works projects before FDR.  And Herbert Hoover was the guy that every Democrat loves to blame for the Great Depression.

And while we’re on the subject of what happened in the 1930s, I might as well point out that things didn’t go so good under the leadership of FDR.

In fact, FDR’s Treasury Secretary had this to say as he looked back over the decade:

“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong… somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises… I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started… And an enormous debt to boot!” — Henry Morganthau, FDR’s Treasury Secretary, May 1939

A look at the graph of unemployment should help you understand what Henry Morganthau understood:

It shouldn’t surprise you when you take the time to learn about what FDR attempted that he actually prolonged the Great Depression by seven years.

Having mentioned the massive yet mysteriously ignored failure of FDR to solve unemployment or get the economy going, allow me to return to Obama’s current failure.

Still another liberal publication, Time Magazine, ran an article back in July entitled, “Obama’s Stimulus Plan: Failing by Its Own Measure.”  It begins:

Back in early January, when Barack Obama was still President-elect, two of his chief economic advisers — leading proponents of a stimulus bill — predicted that the passage of a large economic-aid package would boost the economy and keep the unemployment rate below 8%. It hasn’t quite worked out that way. Last month, the jobless rate in the U.S. hit 9.5%, the highest level it has reached since 1983.

And of course, it’s currently 9.8% – and almost certain to keep rising.

Now contrast what the Obama team predicted – a ceiling no higher than 8% unemployment – and then see what the administration is trying to pass off now:

Vice President Joe Biden delivered a rousing review of the government’s economic stimulus plan in a conversation with the nation’s governors. “In my wildest dreams, I never thought it would work this well,” he said. “Thank you, thank you.”

I mean, is this a statement that when team Obama said that they believed their stimulus plan would keep unemployment under 8% that they were being fundamentally dishonest with the American people?  And that 9.8% unemployment is better than their wildest dreams?

And don’t just say Vice President Joe Biden is an idiot and dismiss him.  He IS an idiot, of course.  But he is the official spokesidiot of the Obama Administration.

Having affirmed that significant public works-style projects would have been a massive improvement over the failed Obama stimulus, allow me to briefly point out a few other things that would have helped the nation restore confidence in the U.S. economy and the jobs that would have gone with it.

For one thing, tax breaks would have helped, but we didn’t get them.

Contrary to Democrat fluffery, there really weren’t “tax breaks” in the stimulus.  Rather, the people who got the “breaks” didn’t actually pay federal income taxes.  The “tax breaks” were really welfare breaks.  Lowering taxes stimulates more investment and more productivity by allowing investors to keep more of what they earn, rather than incentivizing them to shelter their money, which raising taxes invariably does.  Transferring money from the pockets of tax payers and giving it to those who didn’t pay federal income taxes – even if you euphemistically call it a “tax break” – simply doesn’t accomplish that goal.

Another thing that would have helped was targeting stimulus toward the businesses that actually do most of the hiring.

Small businesses which employ 20 or fewer workers are responsible for 50% of the jobs in this country.  And businesses defined as “small businesses” are responsible for nearly 3/4ths of the total jobs in the USA.

And what did small businesses get from the stimulus? Butkus.  The porn-loving National Endowment for the Arts actually got more stimulus funds than all the small businesses in the country combined.

If Democrats wanted to create jobs, they might have considered giving the money to businesses that actually created jobs, rather than to their politically connected liberal special interest groups.  Again, just sayin’.

It also would have helped if the stimulus had been something that actually helped more than it hurt.  The Congressional Budget Office, hardly a conservative bastion, reported that the stimulus bill would lead to a lower GDP 5 to 10 years out than if Congress had done absolutely NOTHING.  The enormous government spending will ultimately crowd out private investment which would have had a much higher chance of increasing GDP than the spending in the stimulus bill.

Obama’s Absolutely Inexcusable (NON)-Energy Plan

Barack Obama had this to say the other day on July 11:

I’ve often said that the decisions we make in this election and in the next few years will set the course for the next generation. That is true of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s true of our economy. And it is especially true of our energy policy.

The urgency of this challenge is clear to anyone who’s tried to fill up their tank with gas that’s now over $4 a gallon. It’s clear to the legions of scientists who believe that we are nearing a point of no return when it comes to our global climate crisis. And with each passing day, it is clear that our addiction to fossil fuels is one of the most serious threats to our national security in the 21st century.

…An even more immediate and direct security threat comes from our dependence on foreign oil. The price of a barrel of oil is now one of the most dangerous weapons in the world. Tyrants from Caracas to Tehran use it to prop up their regimes, intimidate the international community, and hold us hostage to a market that is subject to their whims. If Iran decided to shut down the petroleum-rich Strait of Hormuz tomorrow, they believe oil would skyrocket to $300-a-barrel in minutes, a price that one speculator predicted would result in $12-a-gallon gas. $12 a gallon.

The nearly $700 million a day we send to unstable or hostile nations also funds both sides of the war on terror, paying for everything from the madrassas that plant the seeds of terror in young minds to the bombs that go off in Baghdad and Kabul. Our oil addiction even presents a target for Osama bin Laden, who has told al Qaeda, “focus your operations on oil, since this will cause [the Americans] to die off on their own.”

If we stay on our current course, the rapid growth of nations like China and India will rise about one-third by 2030. In that same year, Middle Eastern regimes will be sitting on 83% of our global oil reserves. Imagine that – the very source of energy that fuels nearly all of our transportation, controlled almost entirely by some of the world’s most unstable and undemocratic governments.

This is not the future I want for America. We are not a country that places our fate in the hands of dictators and tyrants – we are a nation that controls our own destiny. That’s who we are. That’s who we’ve always been. It’s what led us to wage a revolution that brought down an Empire. It’s why we built an Arsenal of Democracy to defeat Fascism, and stopped the spread of Communism with the power of our ideals. And it’s why we must end the tyranny of oil in our time.

Notice the last sentence. “It’s why we must end the tyranny of oil in our time.”

Obama doesn’t say, “the tyranny of Middle Eastern oil,” or “the tyranny of oil controlled by terrorist and totalitarian regimes.” He says, “the tyranny of oil.” Period. “Oil” is a tyrant. Hope you knew that.

Please understand the history that Barack Obama foolishly ignores even as he attempts to cite it. One of the key stratagies we used to defeat Nazi fascism was to systematically deny them the fuel they needed to keep their war machine running. Had the Nazis had adequate oil supplies, it is almost certain that they would have broken through the American lines during the Battle of the Bulge. Conversely, had the United States not had adequate oil, we would not have won the war.  Citing the defeat of fascism with cutting ourselves off from oil is historical revisionism that borders on criminal irresponsibility. Oil made us strong. Oil helped us defeat fascism.

It is with this fact in mind that I consider Obama’s last sentence, “And it’s why we must end the tyranny of oil in our time” in light of Neville Chamberlain’s now infamous “peace in our time” statement. Chamberlain has gone down in history as being the ignominous fool who actively prevented England from arming itself and standing up to the real tyranny of Adolf Hitler even as the threat of Hitler loomed ever larger and ever darker. Barack Obama is a fool in the same mold as Neville Chamberlain, because he urges the same pathetic mindset that characterized Chamberlain. Obama refuses to allow drilling to develop a stable domestic supply of what the United States absolutely needs to remain strong.

Barack obama ignores the lessons of history. And he views oil as a moral evil rather than as a vitally needed source of energy. That’s why he can run an ad like this:

SCRIPT: Announcer: “On gas prices, John McCain’s part of the problem. McCain and Bush support a drilling plan that won’t produce a drop of oil for seven years. McCain will give more tax breaks to big oil. He’s voted with Bush 95 percent of the time. Barack Obama will make energy independence an urgent priority. Raise mileage standards. Fast track technology for alternative fuels. A thousand-dollar tax cut to help families as we break the grip of foreign oil. A real plan and new energy.”

Obama: “I’m Barack Obama, and I approve this message.”

You see, oil is “a tyrant” for Barack Obama. And John McCain – like that evil George Bush – support drilling. Drilling to provide the world with still more oil, and therefore still more tyranny. Barack Obama is a clever speaker, but the simple fact of the matter is that he is taking the far left position that fossil fuels – which contribute to global warming – are therefore evil and their use contributes to “tyranny.” Let me tell you what: an attitude like that may be as politically correct as the sky is blue, but it most definitely won’t fill your gas tank.

Obama acknowledges the dilemma we now find ourselves in: that of facing the prospect of $12 a gallon gasoline because of our dependence on foreign oil, the volatility of a Middle East that could erupt at any moment, and the increased global competition for dwindling supplies. [Note: I’ve already written about why we face $12 a gallon gas].

The answer to this dilemma, according to Barack Obama, is to absolutely refuse to increase our domestic oil production, and to instead wave a magic wand that will give us a powerful new alternative source of energy that will somehow meet all our needs and solve all our problems.

John McCain is “part of the problem” because he – like that George Bush – “supports a drilling plan that won’t produce a drop of oil for seven years.”

Well, a few things. First, I can not even begin to comprehend the irrationality of claiming that any attempt to increase our own oil supply – and we have massive oil potential – must not be considered as a solution to obtaining energy independence from foreign oil. Apparently as part of his plan to end “the tyranny of oil,” Barack Obama is literally in favor of preventing private corporations – using private money – from increasing our domestic oil supply while at the same time decrying our dependence on foreign oil. This is absurd. It is insane.

Second, Obama – joining a chorus of other Democrats in claiming that drilling “won’t produce a drop of oil for seven years” is equally irrational. Had people like Barack Obama gotten the heck out of the way seven years ago – instead of using the power of government to prevent drilling – we would not be where we are now. To use a criminally stupid policy that prevented us from drilling seven years ago in support of an even more criminally stupid policy to therefore not drill now is simply incredible. How on earth can everyone not see this? Had we drilled seven years ago we would have increased supplies now. If we don’t drill now, we will for a certain fact place ourselves in an even more dire situation in seven years. Period. End of story.

As a further note, oil experts say they could have some production on line in as little as one year. And many financial experts say that – to whatever extent “speculation” is driving up the price of oil – a firm commitment to increase our supplies would dramatically reduce the problem.

Third, Barack Obama is literally blaming George Bush and John McCain for attempting to do what would have worked had we only done it earlier, and would still work now but for obstructionist Democrats who have no energy plan at all.

House Democrats have literally been blocking any vote on energy at all for fear that Republicans would introduce a vote requiring domestic drilling. This is the epitome of not having a plan. (Maybe blocking any bill on energy is part of Nancy Pelosi’s brilliant “commonsense plan” that has seen the price of gas double since she began to implement it?)

Now, at this point, a liberal (I don’t use the word “progressive” because that would imply they want “progress,” when these people stand in the way of genuine progress) will probably stand up and say, “Obama DOES have an energy plan.”

Well, keep in mind that Barack Obama himself has said that he was all in favor of gas becoming more expensive; he only regretted that the price rose so steeply and thereby ignited the ire of Americans.

But let’s look at Barack Obama’s plan to solve our energy dilemma. Let’s see who is really “part of the problem.”

What is Obama proposing?

Well, he absolutely stands against increasing the amount of the stuff that fills our tanks and keeps our economy flowing.

In place of “the tyranny of oil” (and especially “the tyranny” of domestic oil), Obama proposes:

* A second, $50 billion stimulus package that would send energy rebate checks to every American.* A $1,000 middle-class tax cut that will go to 95% of all workers and their families.

* A crack down on oil speculators who may be artificially driving up the price of oil.

* A fast-track $150 billion of investment in a clean energy fund to help create the fuel-efficient cars and alternative sources of energy that will secure this nation and jumpstart a green economy.

* Doubling fuel mileage standards over the next two decades utilizing much of the technology we have on the shelf today – a step that will save this country half a trillion gallons of gasoline, the equivalent of cutting the price of a gallon of gas in half. And I will provide tax credits and loan guarantees for our automakers to help them make this transition.

* A Venture Capital Fund that will provide $50 billion over five years to get the most promising clean energy technologies out of the lab and into the marketplace.

* Requiring that 25% of U.S. electricity comes renewable sources by 2025, and that the U.S. produce two billion gallons of advanced cellulosic biofuels by 2013. (Pointedly, he says that the U.S. will “also invest in finding cleaner ways to use coal, our nation’s most abundant energy source, and safer ways to use nuclear power and store nuclear waste.”

* Using the U.S. clean energy fund to invest over $1 billion a year to re-tool and modernize our factories and build the advanced technology cars, trucks and SUVs of the future.

* Calling on businesses, government, and the American people to make America 50% more energy efficient by 2030.

The first two proposals have nothing to do with energy whatsoever, apart from essentially subsidizing the frightenly high cost of gas. I enjoyed my last $300 handout from the government, and would enjoy the next one just as much. But that money in my pocket is going to have to be paid by the next generation. We do have a nearly $10 trillion national debt, and eventually this kind of debt level is going to implode this country.

As for Obama’s $150 billion investment in clean energy – which by the way would come on the backs of those evil oil companies who produce that “tyrant” substance oil (and which would drive up their costs and thereby drive up the price they charge for gasoline) – how long will it take before we’re driving happily along with cheap fuel? He ridicules drilling because it will take “seven years,” after all. Well, by his own incredibly stupid logic, let’s ridicule investment in alternative energy! It will take YEARS before we have any significant energy from such alternatives.

Keep in mind, alternatives such as ethanol (which is E-85, aka “flex fuel”) has been fool’s gold. It is incredibly expensive to produce, relies on huge government subsidies to bring the cost down to level’s that Americans are willing to pay, and has caused enormous increases in the price of our food. If that isn’t bad enough, desperately poor people around the world are literally starving for this insane government-propped “alternative fuel.”

Ethanol truly IS an “alternative”; it is an alternative to what actually works. It is an alternative to sanity.

Every other part of Obama’s plan is tantamount to an act of bowing down before the pagan idol of big government. Private enterprise is irrelevant for Barack Obama, other than the fact that they are obstacles in the way, who must be forced by the government in order to do what is right and good as decreed by the standards of political correctness.

The idea of getting out of the way and allowing the private sector to produce the innovations we need is shockingly absent from Obama’s plan. Instead, the private sector is “required” to do one thing, and “called on” to do another.

Keep in mind, Democrats in the Senate couldn’t even run a freakin’ cafeteria without running it into the ground.

And how much energy will Obama’s plan actually produce? What kind of energy? How much will it cost?

This isn’t an energy plan. It is a typical liberal NON-energy plan from a typical liberal politician.

It’s not lack of government money that has prevented nuclear power and clean coal-burning technology, it’s been Democrats and their innumerable laws, restrictions, and regulations. Private money would flood in if Democrat’s would quit imposing one burden after another upon energy providers and let them produce energy.

We don’t have nuclear power because liberals and environmentalist foolishly despised it and demonized it twenty years ago. We don’t have it because Democrats have imposed so many hurdles, so many regulations, so many restrictions, so many environmental studies, so much bureaucracy and so much red tape, that it has been unprofitable – and even impossible – to build a nuclear power plant (or, for that matter, an oil refinery).

Barack Obama went to Las Vegas and had this to say:

Under the bleach-bright Las Vegas summer sun, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Tuesday checked out the solar panels that shade cars in the parking lot of the Springs Preserve while powering the facility.

“What we are seeing here … is that the green, renewable energy economy is not some far-off, pie-in-the-sky future,” Obama said in a speech at the local nature attraction. “It is now. It’s creating jobs now. It is providing cheap alternatives to $140-a-barrel oil now. And it can create millions of additional jobs, entire industries, if we act now.”

Really? How much? What’s it going to cost? Will it keep my car running?

Keep in mind, liberals recently blocked a massive solar panal plan on federal land. They have blocked wind mills. Ted Kennedy has personally done everything he could to block a wind farm in Massachusetts. They have blocked nuclear power for decades.

But the problem with alternative energy isn’t just obstructionist Democrats. It goes far, far deeper.

Obama went to Las Vegas to sing Kumbaya to solar energy. So let’s look at solar energy:

Can renewable energy make a dent in fossil fuels?

4.2 billion. [Emphasis mine]

That’s how many rooftops you’d have to cover with solar panels to displace a cubic mile of oil (CMO), a measure of energy consumption, according to Ripudaman Malhotra, who oversees research on fossil fuels at SRI International. The electricity captured in those hypothetical solar panels in a year (2.1 kilowatts each) would roughly equal the energy in a CMO. The world consumes a little over 1 CMO of oil a year right now and about 3 CMOs of energy from all sources.

Put another way, we’d need to equip 250,000 roofs a day with solar panels for the next 50 years to have enough photovoltaic infrastructure to provide the world with a CMO’s worth of solar-generated electricity for a year. We’re nowhere close to that pace.

Great googley moogley! That’s a whole bunch of solar panels. Particularly with liberals blocking the ones we’re trying to build now. Clearly, solar energy won’t even scratch the surface of providing a real solution to oil.

Well, beyond solar energy, there’s also wind power. And Obama talked about nuclear power, too. Could they provide us with a real alternative to oil? Not even close:

But don’t blame the solar industry. You’d also have to erect a 900-megawatt nuclear power plant every week for 50 years to get enough plants (2,500) to produce the same energy in a year to equal a CMO. Wind power? You need 3 million for a CMO, or 1,200 a week planted in the ground over the next 50 years. Demand for power also continues to escalate with economic development in the emerging world.

“In 30 years we will need six CMOs, so where are we going to get that?” Malhotra said. “I’m trying to communicate the scale of the problem.”

The article above, by Michael Kanellos, has a neat little pie chart for you “a picture’s worth a thousand words” types:

The problem is that abandoning the use of oil and then relying on the “alternative” solutions that we currently have is analogous to draining all the oceans dry and then trying to refill them by spitting. And there just aint enough spit to make a hill-of-beans’ worth of difference. And there aint enough “alternative energy.”

Michael J. Economides, writing for China Daily, says in an article titled, “Fossil fuels still the best,” writes:

Of the world energy demand 87 percent comes from fossil fuels, oil, gas and coal. This fraction has not changed much since the 1970s and the first “energy crisis”, while energy demand has more than doubled.

By almost everybody’s estimates by the year 2030, the total world demand will increase by 50 percent and oil, gas and coal will still provide 87 percent of the world energy. The reason we use them is not because of some evil conspiracy headed by a dark knight. We use them because they are the easiest, most flexible, most reliable and most efficient forms of energy.

Biofuels as done today, cause a negative energy balance not even considering their impact on food prices. I have no aversion to wind or solar. I love the sun, I am Greek. But they are eminently unreliable and, even in their best case, without government subsidies, they make $200 to $2000 oil still attractive. It is that simple.

But here is how we are ridiculous in the developed world and it would have been funny had we not run the danger of committing societal hara-kiri. We have let dazed environmentalism of the most outrageous variety put on a tie and become mainstream, dominate the covers of national newsmagazines and, predictably as of late, earn Oscars, Emmys and Nobels.

There are no alternatives to fossil fuels for decades and the transition will be long and painful. Nothing will happen overnight. We will continue to be a fossil fuel-dependent economy for the foreseeable future.

We desperately need oil. But Barack Obama stands in the way of obtaining the oil we need. We can not possibly maintain any semblance of the lifestyle that we have come to enjoy without oil. Ergo sum, Barack Obama is a clear and present danger to the American way of life.

And Barack Obama, due to the brand of pure foolishness he shares with his fellow Democrats, requires the United states remain completely dependent on foreign oil – and Middle Eastern oil – for decades to come. Ergo sum, Obama is a clear and present danger to our security.

In concluding, let me state that I am a religious person, and I believe that God gave us oil for a reason. I also believe that He gave us more than enough to meet our needs.

I am in favor of genuine, practical, clean alternatives to oil. I am in favor of providing tax breaks to ALL current and potential producers and suppliers of energy – including oil companies (in order to develop shale oil technology, clean coal technology, etc.). I believe that we will find the solutions that we need in a timely manner if we act wisely.

But demonizing the oil that sustains us, and pursuing a liberal-socialist radical environmentalist agenda that literally keeps us in the dark is not wisdom. It is in fact the very worst kind of foolishness.

See my other articles on Democrats and their obstruction to our energy supply:

Democrat’s ‘Commonsense Plan’ Revealed: Let’s Nationalize the Oil Industry

Blame Democrats for Sky-High Gas Prices

Democrats Block US Energy Independence, Send Gas Prices Soaring

Democrat’s Ideological Stand Against Domestic Oil Terrible for US Economy & Security

If You Want $12 A Gallon Gas, Vote for Obama and Democrats

My articles on the pseudo-menace of global warming:

What You Never Hear About Global Warming

What the Science REALLY Says About Global Warming